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You’ve been friends with him for years. You had been in trouble one day and suddenly he’d been there, rosy cheeks littered with a burst of freckles, forest eyes sparkling at you as he reached out one warm hand towards you.
He’d grinned at you and you’d known everything was going to be okay. His smile did that to you. You took his hand and never let go.
You stayed by his side for years. He never pushed and you never asked for more. You knew what your role in his life was and that was always going to be enough for you. You had a chance to be with the sun, did it really matter so much how you were with him?
You had laughed and gone fishing, celebrating with beers as the sun went down.
You caught the flash of his teeth in the glint of the dipping sun and you had wondered sometimes if you were in love with him.
You wondered sometimes if he knew this.
Then there was him.
He had to have known. He always looked at you with that squint, the tilted head and curious eyes. Like he was trying to assess if you were a threat.
You had looked at him, caramel topped head thrown back in a whole body laugh as the other man slowly smiled, catching on to the joke that he’d just made. His smile had fallen slightly when he had looked at you. But you had looked at both of them, shook your head and threw your hands up in surrender.
Even if he didn’t know it, Dean had decided a long time ago.
And he hadn’t picked you.
You couldn’t even find it in your heart to be upset about it. You still can’t. He was the sun to you, but he glowed in the presence of the other man and looked at him like he hung the moon just for him. He had never looked at you like that.
It was okay. You could still be with him, be the best friend that sat with him on the dock for hours at a time, charting the sun as it rose in a marigold haze before it peaked in a bliding gold before melting into streaks of raspberry and banana across a navy tinged sky. You were used to tracking the sun as it changed. He was your sun, and he was changing.
You smiled at him, charted the changes before he himself even noticed them.
You wondered sometimes if the other man even knew that Dean was changing. You wondered if he knew that he was the one causing the changes.
The thing was, you had only known him for a few years. He was all cocky swagger and repressed issues wrapped up in a leather jacket. He joked to mask his trauma and you tried not to push him too much.
But the other man, the one who had stolen his heart before either of them realised it, he’d known Dean much longer than you had. He’d staked his claim long before you came onto the scene, long before you were graced with the warmth of knowing Dean Winchester.
You watch Dean smile at him sometimes and you wonder how much Dean smiled before he came into his life. You may not have known that Dean and yet you’re thankful to the other man that you never had to. You can see the ghost of it sometimes still living behind his eyes and you know that it’s better to only see the ghost of it.
You made your peace with everything long ago. There was no point to fighting a lost cause. You’d seen enough stand in the way of Dean’s happiness and you weren’t going to be one of those things. You knew you could make Dean happy, you knew that you already did. But not in the same way he did. You were not him, he who shared a bond with Dean the like of which you’d never seen before.
It made it all easier. Knowing that someone loves Dean in the way that he deserved.
You had never seen someone more deserving of love. Someone who had suffered enough hardship and pain while asking for very little in return. Sometimes you wanted to go after the world, hunt down anyone who had ever dared to marr that brilliant smile and tear them limb for limb. Sometimes he would catch your eyes and you knew that even without words you were both in total agreement about that.
That’s what makes it easier. You see all the looks he sends to Dean, even if the ones the man himself doesn’t notice. There’s an awful lot of them. They’re the looks of someone who has found the love of their life but won’t tell them that until they’ve single handedly made their life better. It wouldn’t surprise you if he dug up the past just to beat it up personally.
Sometimes you think you’d just follow him and not question it. There’s just some things you do for love you don’t need to talk about.
You don’t talk to him much. Not without the sarcastic lilt in your voice, the good natured ribbing that usually flies over their heads. You think you’re entitled to it. Neither of them complains.
Then again, you’re not sure either one of them truly realises the depth of what they mean to each other.
It drives you crazy.
There’s some days you want to literally smack their heads together. Or lock them in a closet. Dean has a best friend, a fiery redhead who shows up in a hoodie with a plastic crown on her head and immediately knows everything about you from one look. She tells you you’re not the first one and then helps you plot various ways to get them to admit their feelings.
You think she likes you.
She shows up with your favourite pastries the next time you see her. She understands, and she’s helping. You know then that she does. You both want the best for Dean and you’ve both come to agreement that the other makes the cut.
She’s another one who looks at Dean like he’s the sun incarnate, but in a different way than you do. She says she has no family but you see how she looks at him and you know that’s not true. He holds her tight and presses kisses to her temple, tucks her hair behind her ear and swats her away. He loves her. You smile. He deserves a family like her.
He only deserves good things. Sometimes you catch a sad shadow sweep across his face but all it takes is for him to sweep a gentle hand along his arm and it’s gone. You’re happy someone is able to always take his pain away.
He doesn’t deserve the burden of pain he always carries. You notice that it always seems lessened than when you first met him. You look to him, the almost permanent fixture by his side and you think you know who to blame.
Sometimes you want to thank him for everything he’s done for Dean but you don’t have the words to express that kind of gratitude.
Sometimes you think he knows anyway.
He probably does.
Today you’re all at his place. It’s basically theirs at this point, not that either of them would put that kind of label on it if you asked. You’ve seen them break into mumbles and avoided gazes too many times to not be able to predict them. They’re still sitting so close to each other that they’re basically on top of each other, gravitating back to the same position after greeting every new person who troops into the small flat. Even the ones you don’t recognise the faces of, you’ve heard of. Dean always speaks of them with such evident love in his words, no matter how he might try to grumble about them turning up to eat all his food. You laugh along with him, slap his shoulder and chart the way his blush deepens. He may be told by so many that he should be too old to care about his birthday but the pleased feeling on his face when you’re setting up is impossible to ignore. You joke, and he reassures, and you both agree silently that Dean deserves all the good things that he could ever want.
He has his brother, a tall, gangly fellow who turns up every now and again with loud laughter and wide smiles. Today they crush each other into hugs and pretend they don’t miss each other as much as they do. He shows up with a smaller woman, a cheeky smile seemingly permanently fixed to her face as her hands fly alongside her words. Dean signs back sister instead of her name and every time she delights like it’s the first time he’s called her that.
He has an uncle who only shows up on game days, holidays and birthdays, always a six pack in hand as he makes demands in a gruff voice that are always met with a familiar eye roll. You notice that he gets the best seat in the house and looks as pleased as Dean does when he says “thank you, son.”
There’s a friend that he pretends not to like hugging. He’s got a jovial smile and talks earnestly about this girl he wants to marry and tells wild stories about old escapades with Dean that make the man blush as everyone else laughs. He makes a joke about dental care when the cake comes out and you watch Dean roll his eyes fondly.
There’s the mysterious neighbour who is always wearing ball gowns for some reason. There’s a glint in her eyes and a Scottish twang to her voice and she spins around with impossible grace, drinking daintily and smirking at the other redhead over the top of her glass. The other one, the best friend who understands without words, blushes the colour of hair and tries to hide her pleased smile behind layers of sarcasm.
There’s the two women who come in, pretending they’re not as joined as the hip as they are, but you’re too used to seeing the signs by now. They’ve got two teenagers with them, a blonde and a brunette, and although they try to play it cool, you see the matching grins on their faces as Dean envelopes them into a bear hug. The brunette moves to go talk to the dentist, but the blonde stays where she is, perfectly content to sit on the floor, framed in by two pairs of legs. She sees you looking at her and she smiles like she gets it. You absently wonder if she’d join you in the plan to knock their heads together so they come to their senses. Watching the way she’s placed herself so they can’t get up without disturbing the other, you wonder if she’s not three steps ahead of you anyway.
They crowd in, this tiny party and their laughter fills the entire space. This is family. The family he deserves. This mismatched group of people brought together by a shared love for one man, they’re the ones that he can rely on. You laugh with the neighbour, trade silent words with the best friend, agree to meet the crazy friend for a drink next time, debate with his brother and one of the sheriffs, get force fed cake by the other, and you look at the man who loves him and you smile to yourself. There’s a room full of people and yet there’s times when they only seem to have eyes for each other. The spell is only broken when someone proposes a toast.
You raise your drink alongside everyone else and you catch deep blue eyes for a split second and nod your drink towards him before you turn back to the burning sun at the centre of everyone’s attention.
Of course you love him, he’s hard not to love.
But someone just loves him more, and that’s okay.
He smiles and everything’s okay.