Work Text:
Dean scrubbed out the letter ‘C’ one last time, almost ripping a hole in the motel paper with his pen nib. Now, aside from the massive blotch of blue ink beside the printed logo and the heading he’d written, the paper was blank.
He loosened the tight set of his jaw, swallowing.
Dr. Sexy, for sure. That one was easy.
He wrote down the name, smiling at the pad as he held it on his lap. He was hunched up by the bed’s headboard, his shoulders resting on the gaudy wallpaper. Over the last few minutes, the wall had grown hot from his body heat.
The air-conditioning was the only thing keeping him from sweating profusely. The whole room reeked of Sam’s antiperspirant, but that was better than the smell of vaporised carpet dirt that had been in the air when they first booked this room.
Dean glanced over at Sam, who sat perched over his laptop, too big for the table and too big for the room. Second-guessing a half-formed plea for his brother’s thoughts, Dean ducked his head and looked back to his page.
Harrison Ford. In his younger days. Raiders era, maybe.
...With the hat still on.
Dean took a tiny breath, then sucked the inside of his lip, satisfied Indy was in good company with Dr. Sexy there. Cowboy boots, fedora. Perfect.
He dragged the end of the pen on the notepad, tracing swirling circles as he thought.
His eyes drifted to the TV, which was playing infomercials with the volume set low. Daytime television in the Arizona desert was as bad as everywhere else. Dean watched something about makeup for a few minutes, mostly zoned out.
Eventually he murmured over at Sam, “Hey, could you google something for me?”
Sam peered across the room, fingers poised over his keyboard. “Uh, okay? Case related?”
Dean’s gaze fell to his page, then flicked back to Sam’s. “Not exactly.”
Sam’s lips flattened, but he didn’t complain. Dean parted his dry lips with his tongue, then posed his question: “Okay, there’s this guy. He did makeup commercials or something, saw it months back. Covered in tattoos.” Dean flicked a hand down from his face to his waist, illustrating. “His face has got, like... a skull, all in black.” The ‘kinda hot’ part stayed silent, unsaid. “I wanna know what his name is. I think he was famous, you should find something...”
Sam narrowed his eyes, but with only a tiny frown between his eyebrows, typed a search on Dean’s behalf.
Dean fiddled with his pen, flipping it back and forth between his fingers. He felt on edge, but knew perfectly well that Sam would never let him google anything on his laptop himself unless it was case-related. They had sworn never to talk about the hundreds of pop-ups his searches invited last time, so Dean just let Sam get on with it.
“Rick Genest,” Sam said. “Zombie Boy?”
Dean smirked. “Yeah, that’s him.” He wrote the name down underneath Harrison Ford’s, then drew a tiny skull beside it. Cowboy boots, fedora, tattoos. Still good.
Sam shifted, and Dean looked up to see his brother looking back, curious.
“What?” Dean said innocently.
“What are you writing?” Sam asked, turning away from his laptop and towards Dean.
Dean gulped quickly, shooting Sam a disarming smile. “Does it matter?”
“If you’re opting out of credit card scams, good for you for being an upstanding citizen for once, but you won’t be eating dinner until you help me.”
Dean huffed, crossing his legs at the ankle over the bed, boots thumping together. “I’ll help. Soon.”
Sam hummed and leaned back in his chair, stretching his arms out behind him until they clicked. “But what are you doing?”
Dean shrugged a shoulder. “Making a list.”
“Of what?”
Dean rounded his lips, tapping his pen faster. “Uhh. Of... of people.”
Sam flopped forward out of his stretch, a frustrated expression forming on his face.
Dean saved him the trouble of probing, and explained, “A list of people I’d... go gay for.”
Sam’s mouth opened slightly in shock or surprise, which made Dean look away immediately, staring at the paper pad in his hands. He felt all fidgety, but held the pen steady, trying not to move so Sam wouldn’t see his sudden nervousness.
“Okaaay,” Sam said after a few seconds. “Who’ve you got so far?”
Dean’s eyes rested on the inky splodge at the top of the page, then moved down. “Dr. Sexy, obviously... Harrison Ford, Rick Genest.”
Sam made a huffy noise of amusement, but Dean didn’t look over at him.
“So I take it fictional characters and people who are thirty years older than you count.”
Dean doodled, pen poking the right side of his paper, slowly marking the blank space. “Uh-huh. But I was thinking Indiana Jones rather than the actual Ford. But Star Wars Ford counts too. So.” He shrugged.
Sam made another mildly amused sound, which disarmed Dean to some degree, made him less nervous.
“Who’s next?”
Dean shook his head. “That’s as far as I got.”
“Do dead people count?”
Dean raised his eyebrows, watching his pen colour in the circle of an eye, then move to draw eyelashes. “I guess.”
“So―
“Ooh, James Dean,” Dean blurted, grinning as he wrote the name down, working less fussily over the surname, since it was his own name and he’d written it so many times in his life. He went over it with the pen again, just to establish firmer lettering.
Cowboy boots, fedora, tattoos, classic car.
Something about this was very satisfying. Fun, too. He tilted his head and leaned back, slumping down the headboard. He lifted his eyes to Sam, who hadn’t yet returned to his work. “Whatd’ya think, any suggestions?”
Sam raised his hands in surrender with a grin on his face. “Oh, no way. Your list, man.”
Dean rolled his lips over his teeth, warming them with the tip of his tongue. He flapped the pad against his hand, then let it settle, moving in to doodle some more as he racked his brain for another name.
The next few minutes provided him with ‘Batman / Bruce’, which made Sam laugh affectionately. Dean jibed at his brother and called him Wonder Woman, which made Sam preen with unabashed pride. Dean grinned and turned his face down, scouring for more.
Cowboy boots, fedora, tattoos, classic car, heroic alter ego.
“You like cowboy movies, though,” Sam offered, running a hand back through his hair. “Eastwood maybe?”
Dean pulled a face. “Hmm.”
“He... um, looked pretty good when he was younger, right?”
Dean thumbed his cheek, trying to hide a very fast flush of heat on his face; it seemed like Sam was nudging for agreement. Dean shrugged it off and humoured him. “Yeah, I guess.”
He wrote Eastwood’s name down, because Sam wasn’t wrong. Given the chance, if Dean time travelled, somehow ended up in a spaghetti western, and Eastwood swaggered up and made eyes at him, Dean had no doubt he’d give in. That was what the list was for, after all: guys he’d make an exception for.
His eyes drifted as he lost himself in quiet fantasy for a while, and Sam didn’t interrupt him. Dean thought about fingering the bare skin under a loose shirt, dry in the blistering heat. Old smiles, black and white.
Dean returned to his senses, blinking a few times to dissipate heat-induced daydreams. He sighed, watching the weather man on the TV demonstrating the drift of an animated sun as it covered Arizona. His dark skin shone under studio lights, showing up high cheekbones and a friendly smile.
Dean blinked at the window, where real sun poured inside through lace privacy curtains. He didn’t need a skinny three-piece-suited weather man to tell him that it was hot as heck outside and inside.
Dean again watched the man’s dark hands move over the bright background for some time. Dean was still lingering on the thought of male touch, wide hands on his hips, fingers pressing into his muscle as they held him down.
These fantasies were things he played with often, but they were all... y’know, fantasy. That was okay, same way that making a list was okay. He’d never touched a guy that way, so it didn’t count. Sam could think whatever he wanted to, Dean was secure enough as a person to know he liked women. It wasn’t a difficult thing for him to know, it was just there, it was fact.
He smiled softly, then wrote ‘the hot and sunny Arizona weather man’ on his notepad.
Heroic alter ego, cowboys, a good suit.
He doodled some more, completing the angles and points that filled in the image of a man’s white dress shirt and tie. His pen was blue, so the tie was blue.
Dean’s eyes landed on the splodge of ink covering over the name at the top.
He stared at it.
No, he eventually decided, and shifted his thoughts away.
“What’ve you got so far?” Sam prompted after a while.
Dean scratched his forehead with the end of the pen, reading out the list. He smirked awkwardly as he finished with, “And the weather presenter.”
Sam chuckled. “Well, that makes a small difference,” he muttered.
“What, what does?” Dean asked.
Sam gestured at the TV. “He’s a bit closer to home. What you see on the screen is probably a persona, but he’s not old or dead or fictional, so that’s something.”
Dean narrowed his eyes. “What are you saying?”
Sam crossed a boot over his thigh, leaning back in his chair. “Only that you’re... I don’t know, picking safe options. Guys you wouldn’t ever meet in real life.”
Dean felt a little uncomfortable. “W... Well, yeah, but...?”
“Is there nobody you actually see in real life, and you think, hey, he’s - heh - cute? Or something?”
Dean scoffed, bending a leg to use as a defensive barrier between him and Sam’s words. “No. C’mon, Sam, it’s just a list. It’s just a jokey thing. Everyone has one, it’s not something you actually do for real.”
Sam wrinkled his lips. “Um. What makes you think that?”
“What?”
“What makes you think everyone has a list of people they’d go gay for?”
Dean grinned hugely. “Aww, Sammy. C’mon, who’s on yours? Don’t hold back, I’m listening.” He beckoned to Sam with his hand, encouraging.
Sam opened his mouth, frowning. “Dean, I don’t have a list.”
“Don’t be shy. I’m not judging, I swear,” Dean beamed. “If I took a guess, Brad Pitt’s stuck at the top, am I right?”
Sam scowled. “Dean. I don’t have a list. I don’t need to think about that stuff. If I saw a guy I liked, then okay, I’d go with it. I won’t deny something like that would throw me for a loop - I mean, I’m not exactly expecting it, but I wouldn’t stop myself.” He shrugged broadly, open and honest.
Dean tapped his pen some more, eyes darting between his page and Sam, until he finally ended up frowning at the notepad. “Wh... So... You...”
“I don’t have a list,” Sam said again, kindly this time, probably to soothe Dean’s building unease. “I think it’s great that you’re doing one, though. You’ve got, what, seven guys now? You should keep going. See if you can make it to ten.” He grinned when Dean looked up and met his eye. “Although I can think of one name that ought to be right at the top.”
Dean’s gaze locked to the inky blotch on the paper. He couldn’t bring himself to ask Sam whose name he meant, because then he’d never be able to deny it. He couldn’t stay quiet, either, because then Sam would realise he already knew the name.
So, instead, Dean offered the first deflection that came to mind: “You want me to pick someone close to home? How about that guy we passed in the street yesterday outside the embassy. Uh, white uniform and a hat?”
“The Navy captain?”
Dean’s lips pulled up in a smile, glad Sam took the bait. “Yeah. He, uh, kind of smiled at me when we walked past.”
Sam was smirking, Dean could see it. With a sniff, Dean bent his head down and wrote ‘smiley Navy captain’.
“You turned around, too,” Sam said.
Dean’s eyes shot up. “Huh?”
“When the captain walked past. You did a complete 360 to check out his ass and almost tripped over your own feet. And then you didn’t stop smiling for ages after.”
Dean covered his face and lowered his chin further so Sam didn’t see his embarrassed frown. He remembered walking on air after being smiled at like that, but he hadn’t realised Sam had noticed. Licking his lips, he put on his poker face and looked over at Sam. “So what?”
Sam was still smirking, the bastard. He pursed his lips at Dean and said, “So nothing. Keep going, would you?”
Dean took a calming breath, trying to dislodge the thought that Sam was judging him. Until a few minutes ago, Dean had been fully convinced that every guy had a list. He hadn’t had time to compile his own comprehensively until now, but he’d been so sure that it was just a staple thing that people did. Everyone had their exceptions.
Maybe it was just Dean. Maybe he was the only one who sometimes got off to the thought of men but still didn’t want anyone but ladies in his bed. He knew James Dean liked to dabble, and he knew there were a good few of his favourite musicians who didn’t much care what their bedmates had in their pants. But Dean still felt like an outlier.
His mind flitted back to fantasies he’d had over recent months, and he smirked at the recollection of a particular one. To Sam, he grinned. “A male version of Scarlett Johansson,” he said. “Call him Black Widower, or something.”
Sam looked up from his laptop. “You’re allowed to do that?”
“No rules,” Dean shrugged, writing it down, still with a big smile on his face. He really loved the thought of someone so pretty and badass pushing inside him, eyes locked. To be honest, he’d take the actual female Scarlett, too. Strap-ons were something he wanted to play with someday. Entertaining that thought, he supposed he ought to make a list of things he wanted to try in bed. Perhaps he’d write that list when he’d finished this one.
The thought of Scarlett led him on a journey of musings about movies, which in turn led him to think about Star Trek. “Captain Kirk,” he said, flicking the end of his pen.
Upon comparing the older and younger incarnations of his favourite space captain, he figured, actually, he’d take Chris Pine over the Navy captain and the weatherman - and Scarlett, too. He drew a little arrow under ‘Batman’ and added in Kirk’s name. Yeah, that was good. He’d be thinking about lens-flare orgasms in the shower later on.
He considered David Bowie in Labyrinth, but didn’t linger for very long before writing ‘Goblin King (leather pants)’ at the bottom of his list.
Bob Dylan and Jimmy Page made it in there too, but Dean recognised how far they were from the top of the list, and decided he ought to finish there, lest he note down every musician he’d ever had a crush on as a teenager. Cowboys, leather pants, music. All were enticing, but he had to stop somewhere.
It still felt incomplete.
He eyed the mess at the top of the page, running a finger over it. Indents were left by the pen nib, and when he looked at his fingertip, there was ink on his skin. He could still feel the letters under the scribble; they were still there because he knew they were there.
It was inevitable, really. He had to write it out again, or the list wouldn’t be right.
Without any more feelings of resignation, he used all of his bravery to put his pen nib at the end of the list. It wasn’t in order of preference any more, because, truly, the whole list was fantasy. Every name on this list was unobtainable for him. He’d never have any of these men, not in reality.
The name he wrote at the end was the only name that mattered.
He smiled once he’d written it. Now he’d admitted it to himself. All things considered, that was really why he’d done this list to start with. Getting it in the open, coaxing his worries out of his head so they weren’t all bundled up and confusing.
He looked his completed list up and down, counted the fourteen names. He was pleased with what he had, and cleared his throat to get Sam’s attention.
He read out most of the list, but became antsy when Sam pursed his lips towards the end.
“What, what’s wrong with it?” Dean asked, pausing at Bob Dylan.
Sam took a soft breath. “You know what I said about picking people closer to home?”
Dean shifted in place. “Uh. Yeah?”
“You flipped back and picked more completely unobtainable guys.”
“You got a problem with that?” Dean sneered.
Sam sighed, fingers tapping on his knee. “Look, I know this is for fun, and all that. But don’t you think there’s something... there? Something you ought to be thinking about?”
Dean drew his lips back, confused. “Like what?”
Sam waved a hand vaguely, giving away the fact he was tiptoeing around his point. “Has it ever occurred to you that... Okay, don’t take this the wrong way - but maybe you actually are... attracted, to men.” He laid his hands down on the desk, finalising his statement.
“What, you’re saying I’m gay?” Dean said, incredulous. That was really what Sam was going for?!
“No, not gay. But attracted to men.”
Dean gaped slightly. How was he supposed to answer that? Obviously he knew he liked men. Obviously. But did Sam not know? Why was he encouraging Dean, if he didn’t already know?
Sam sighed and set a hand over his eyes. “Dean, sexuality isn’t binary. It’s not as simple as gay and straight. I know you like women, but don’t you think the fact that you enjoy looking at Navy captains, or weather men... Doesn’t that make you―”
“Sam, would you stop?” Dean huffed. “Oh my god, just... stop. You’re embarrassing yourself.” He shook his head in disdain, turning his eyes to his notepad. He gritted his teeth together, seeing the doodles at the side of the page. Blue eyes, blue tie.
“I’m saying,” Sam went on, as if Dean hadn’t cut him off, “that perhaps you ought to consider that there is one man... who you actually―”
“Would you shut up?!” Dean snapped, standing up so fast he got dizzy. Frustration clouded him, but he swallowed, took a deep breath, and calmed himself. He fiddled with the notepad he held, running his fingers down the list, feeling the ridges of his pen marks under his fingertips. He looked over at Sam, who stayed quiet, but peered at Dean with a borderline pleading expression.
Dean might as well show Sam, since he refused to listen to Dean reading his list aloud.
Shaking his head, Dean stepped up to the table Sam sat at. Sweat stuck his shirt to his lower back, and he pinched the hem of his shirt to flap cooler air underneath. He took a second to reassure himself that Sam would understand. He would.
Then Dean put the notepad on top of Sam’s laptop keyboard. He turned it so Sam could see, then swung his arm back, turning away and rubbing at his neck. Sam would be reading the list... And eventually he’d get to the bottom.
Dean’s List of Men I’d Go Gay For
###
Dr. Sexy
Harrison Ford
Rick Genest ☠
James Dean
Batman / Bruce
➜ (Captain Kirk)
Clint Eastwood
the hot and sunny Arizona weather man
smiley Navy captain
male version of Scarlett Johansson
Goblin King (leather pants)
Bob Dylan
Jimmy Page
CAS.