Title: Eyes Locked in Downcast Love

Disclaimer: All this is still not mine.

Summary: AU Sam/Dean slash sequel to Innocence and Feathers, so read that first. Going home is never easy. Especially when you’ve got a failed acting career under your belt, and a morally questionable almost boyfriend.

Pairing: Sam/Dean

Feedback: Is love.

A/N: Well, I am finally free to write properly and this is what I wanted to get down to straight away.

1. Real Life

Happiness was too rough a word, too narrow; to clearly define what it was that Sam was feeling. He thoughtlessly licked the palm of his hand and ran it over his hair, trying to look somehow respectable in early anticipation of seeing his parents later that day. It hadn’t even been a month since he had last seen them, but he had left in sort of a rush of disapproval, so he figured it couldn’t hurt to look better, more grown up. He felt he should be wearing a suit and tie, maybe that way they wouldn’t even recognize him.

“Too much forehead,” Dean commented, reaching up and pulling his hair forward again, “besides, everyone’s a sucker for a wounded puppy.”

Sam smiled, wavering. “I’m not wounded.” He watched as Dean thought twice about his over-familiar actions and dropped his hand. But Sam’s skin continued to tingle from the calloused touch. “We’ll have to catch a cab. Its a little way to the house and I need to see Jess beforehand, kinda do some damage control...” he trailed off as his grin swallowed his words. He was here. He had made it back with Dean. That seemed like a much bigger triumph than having a successful career under his belt, or whatever people usually used to measure success.

Dean eyed him with suspicion growing in his cloudy eyes. “You want to go to your girlfriend’s?”

“She’s the only one who knows I’m coming. And she’s just my friend. Besides...I want to find out how exactly Mom and Dad are handling... everything.”

“You want to know if they’re ready to meet me.”

Sam had no idea where Dean had gotten that from. In fact, his reluctance to barge straight in on his parents had nothing to do with Dean, it was completely his bad that he’d left home to try his hand at a career for which he had little talent and barely any passion. Of course, it wasn’t like he had known that at the time – acting had seemed like such a big deal to him, it had been the first thing he had truly felt for, bar Jess, and taking photographs and that was just what he did to relax. He had confused some kind of little kid excitement with passion and then he’d met Dean and... Well, now Sam had a clearer picture of what it really felt like to want something so badly it literally lit you up inside.

“No, I want to figure out if they’re ready to see me again,” Sam countered and comfortably shifted his luggage into his other hand so he could link fingers lovingly with Dean’s again. “You’re not gonna be the problem. I’m the problem. I’m kinda... I’m kinda the family disappointment.” He looked down at his feet. This was so true it wasn’t even funny.

“I find that hard to believe, even if you have a brain surgeon in the family.”

“No doctors just... um... my sister,” Sam said vaguely, not wanting to go into it right now.

He could feel Dean’s eyes widen in surprise. “Hold up. You never told me you had a sister.”

“It’s not important.”

“It’s not important? Sam, I’m going to be meeting these people in a couple of hours, I think I’d like to know who is going to be there.”

“She probably won’t be there, anyway. It doesn’t matter, Dean, please. I just have to see Jess, just to check things out, and then I promise you can meet my family and see exactly what I’m talking about.” He almost stopped breathing, wishing that Dean would just agree with him.

Finally, Dean tilted his head. “You’re not scared, are you?”

Sam pursed his lips. Yes, he was scared to death, scared that his family would not understand how his little jaunt in Los Angeles had turned into a bigger prize than he could have hoped, scared that they would lay eyes on Dean and not be able to see how beautiful and wonderful and talented he was. They would just see Sam’s latest obsession, not his soul mate, his one true love, his forever. “Nervous,” he said, a compromise, and shrugged, “you’ll get it. I promise – everyone gets it.”

It took them all of twenty minutes to get to the place Sam was headed and then all too soon Dean was shuffling his feet and wishing he was anywhere but standing outside the front door of what amounted to an admittedly average looking house. No matter how normal it looked, it frightened him to know who he was about to meet, the girl who up until this point had only been a word, a description, a photograph, a pretty voice on Sam’s phone.

The door flew open and then the blonde girl he recognized from Sam’s picture let out a happy noise and threw her arms around Sam – around his Sam. Dean shook his head to stop himself from feeling so needlessly possessive. What he had to remember was that just days ago he wasn’t even sure of Sam... hell, he still wasn’t sure of Sam, but he was sure that there was something between them that either needed to be severed or explored and now here he was, in Lawrence, so it was a bit late for him to start sawing off his leg to save his own life. He was going down.

But when he saw Jess – long hair, stunning smile; wide open eyes – he couldn’t fail to feel a stab of something like jealousy. It wasn’t jealousy, because that was ridiculous, and Dean was fully expecting that when Sam saw Jessica he would wake up and realize that what he was doing with Dean was crazy, that Dean was just a body and a face and a mess of dependencies and insanity. He wasn’t special or precious or any of those things that Sam kept saying... he was a stray dog, a mutt masquerading as a poodle.

“Sam... Oh my god, you’re early!”

“Hi...” Sam sounded slightly less enthused, which comforted and confused Dean. He noticed that they were no longer holding hands, felt the loss in his bones, and though he could put this down to the fact Sam was hugging his ex and carrying a bag at the same time... Dean found himself wanted to fix that, to put his hand on Sam and say, very clearly, Back Off to the whole world. He thought they should have stayed in LA, where he might have self-destructed but at least they were a world away from Sam’s family, people who could change his mind about his heart.

Now he remembered why being drunk in social situations was preferable, at least it dulled things a little, stopped the invisible bruises from getting bigger and more sensitive. He hated himself for feeling like this, some way that didn’t even make sense, he couldn’t figure it out, and now both Sam and his so-called ex were both looking at Dean and oh crap, crap, crap what had he missed?

“It’s good to meet you, finally,” Jessica said and smiled at him. He tried to see a crack in the glossy pink smile, something that would say she was drop dead jealous and hated his guts, was just putting on this nice girl front for Sam’s sake, so he didn’t just dump her friendship like a dead weight. She was a gorgeous girl, there could be no discussion about that, and it seemed real, her sweetness. Dean thought then that he should have never confessed to Sam about his and John’s plan to rip Sam off, because that moment had brought into the open this whole host of new feelings – things like guilt.

Dean was feeling horribly guilty now and he couldn’t see why. Sam had left her before he’d met Dean, it wasn’t like cheating or anything... oh, yeah, because Dean was so the poster child for fidelity.

Also, that word – finally – worried him. Had Sam been talking about him? When he had called Jess from the rest stop yesterday, had he said something, something like: Oh, you might want to be careful around Dean. He’s weird as hell. Dean was being weird, he agreed, but it was not his fault. His skin hurt, he was tired and felt like someone was shaking his stomach all the time. Sam had made him eat a chicken sandwich along with drinking some water. When Dean complained that he needed coffee to function, Sam had bought him some sort of decaffeinated crap which did nothing for his exhaustion, did nothing at all except irritate him. Still he had made himself smile and act grateful, because all Sam wanted was for him to get healthy. If only Sam could have realized what Dean would have done right then, standing in front of Jess, for something to drink, or just anything if it would make his heart stop pounding, stop him from sweating.

Jess was beginning to look at him strangely and then Dean realized that he hadn’t spoken in what felt like a very long time.

“You, too,” he said stiffly and cracked what he hoped was a charming grin, “Sam’s picture doesn’t do you justice.”

She raised one eyebrow. “Oh, I doubt that. Sam’s a great photographer. Besides, I look a mess. I should’ve dressed up for his big homecoming.”

Dean looked her up and down. The thing was that she was dressed up in quite an understated way, clearly prettying herself up for Sam’s benefit. She was wearing red sweatpants and a tank top which fully showed off what great breasts she had. Once again, Dean found himself bubbling up. He couldn’t compete with that. He didn’t want to compete with that. What he wanted was to crawl out of the light and back into the darkness where strangers bruised his ass for a price, and he was allowed to drink as much coffee and alcohol as he wanted.

“You look good,” Sam blurted and put his hand on Jess’s elbow, “you look really good, Jess.”

Jess laughed and said, “Flatterers, both of you. Come on in. My parents are in Florida for a month. You remember, Sam? Their anniversary’s coming up.” She turned and ushered them inside. Dean dragged his feet in after Sam and followed his lead in dumping their bags in the hallway.

“Didn’t you want to go with them?” Sam asked sweetly. So his whole borderline moron sweetie pie act wasn’t just for Dean’s benefit, it was his real personality. Dean had already known this, but it was hard to accept. Still, maybe now he would get a better picture of why Sam was such a big kid.

“Are you kidding me?” Jess pulled a face and took them into the sunlit peachy living room. “Sam, gross, I can think of easier ways to make myself suicidal than listening to my parents doing it for a whole month.”

There was a silence and when Dean looked up from checking out some family photographs – so Jess had always been a looker, that wasn’t good for him – he realized that Sam was staring at him with an apologetic and nervous expression on his face.

It took Dean a minute to catch up to what Jess had said. Suicidal... did Sam really think that he was that tender, that easily spooked? He pasted on another smirk and said, “Yeah, I can see why that’d be a bitch.”

But she’d caught it. “What did I say?”

“Nothing,” Dean said firmly, looking at Sam, “I was just lookin’ at your pictures – that’s all.”

Sam seemed relieved and instantly became more talkative, chattering on about what LA was like; how he had lived alone and gotten some work. Dean only half-listened, accepting when Jess offered them diet soda and cookies, letting Sam go into the kitchen with her. He figured they probably needed at least five minutes alone together, though it really killed him to give it. He pretended to be absorbed in his own thoughts, silently praying that Jess wouldn’t ask him any questions about where he came from, what sort of things he liked. He wasn’t sure she was ready to hear that the things he liked doing were numbing himself to the world and pretending to be different people on a daily basis.

God, if it was this hard to be around Jessica, how difficult was he going to find it to be anywhere near Sam’s family? Dean closed his eyes against the perfect home he was in and ignored the pain throbbing in his head. This was good. He was still sitting there; he hadn’t skipped out the front door the minute he was left alone. He was doing really well and what was completely pathetic was that all he wanted was for Sam to take his hand again and tell him this, say: You’re special. Just because it wasn’t true didn’t make it any less wonderful to hear – but Sam was preoccupied with his old life, his real life, and Dean was just yesterday’s news, fading away, dirtying up a perfectly clean couch with his filthy, screwed up aura.