A Papa for Dean - A Daddy Series Timestamp

A Papa for Li'l Man

Chad Michael Murray and Samuel Wesson had been best friends for so long you would think they had been raised in the same house. He and Sam were inseparable since Kindergarten nap-time. Whenever other kids wanted one of them to play the other would have to come along, that was the deal breaker. The reaction was instantaneous and finite. Sam was shy, but sweet and Chad was boisterous and cunning. If the kids wanted to play ball, Chad delayed the game to go and get Sam and drag him to play. Once Sam was in, though, he was every bit the energetic pup. If anyone refused to play or did not want to wait for Sam to warm up to them, Chad was done playing.

There had been an incident once. A 2nd grader had invited himself over to play tag, to start the game really. All was well until he decided to get a bit more enthusiastic with the smaller kids. The minute he got too rough with Sam, Chad had ended any niceties by kicking the poor kid in the chins. He then proceeded to "lecture" the boy on the fact that he needed to play nice. The bigger kid, pride shattered, got up and left the playground altogether. The other kids had just learned that game, so they gave up playing it that day.

Their physical appearances once their growth spurts had taken over in high school were in no way indicative of their dynamic with each other. Sam, who was taller, had always been the one talking Chad out of trouble; Chad had always been the one to back Sam up in a physical fight. When Alec had tried to make Chad look stupid in class, Chad had instead turned the tables on him, and he was not exactly tactful about it. When the teacher had prepared to send Chad to the principal for his language, Sam had talked her out of it. A budding master of debate, he had brought up every logical argument for why ejecting Chad from her classroom would be a bigger detriment to keeping him.

When Chad was the only kid behind Sam in the running for Valedictorian, that same teacher decided she had been the turning point in Chad's amazing scholarly achievements.

It was so unusual to see one without the other that when their college plans eventually sent them on separate paths, their families were worried. Sam's mother, however, knew that her "big, handsome boy" and her pseudo-second son would never let some small stint in college put a rift between what took their entire lives to build.

Law school had started out a bit intimidating for Sam. Although, without Chad constantly by his side, he learned quite a bit about himself. He was very capable of solving his own problems, he was a natural at defending others (not just his bestie), he was on the fast track with many of his professors and colleagues, and he was unquestionably, without a doubt, attracted to men. In the beginning, the discovery was odd, yet not surprising. He'd dealt with enough of the teasing as a teen. He'd just basically gotten used to attributing such degradation to the fact that he and Chad were around each other so much. Even during law school, with Chad approximately 2500 miles away, and people surrounding him who were supposed to be more mature, the frequency of Chad's visits made Sam a target for nosy inquiries and joking jabs.

They had never felt loneliness or the absence of a significant other because he and Chad were always with each other. They just never thought about it from a romantic standpoint, and they never felt pressure to label it. Neither of them had ever felt jealousy when they had other friends, and Chad never brought a significant other around.

Sam, ever the over-thinker, was constantly on a mission to find, prove, define, and reinvent himself. So, when he found himself in a few experimental situations, and then a few short relationships, and not one of them had been with a woman, he finally decided to let his family and his best friend in on things. Of course, Sam's mother found a very cute, non-invasive way to say, "I knew it," when she sent him flowers and balloons.

Chad had no issues with his friend's news. Quite to the contrary, he found it intriguing in ways he was yet unable to figure out for himself. He decided to let well enough alone and not make a big distracting deal about himself. He figured Sam would more than likely need him to have his back now more than ever. At least, that was the excuse he gave Sam's mom every time he made the trip to see Sam at that huge graduate school he ended up making it into.