Someone else who popped up to bat for bi!Dean said that he checks two guys out (instead of the chick) at the tailor's in Time After Time

I would wonder in that case if he was just ogling the clothes. Dr. Sexy and Nick the Siren are my earmarks for bi!Dean canon.

Hey, if his fictional crush and magically-idealized perfect seducer are both guys, I say throw the men at the tailor's onto the Swings Both Ways pile for free!

Nick the siren! How do I always forget him? I go directly to Dr. Sexy and Cas-directed sass.

But let me go do the Time After Time research and report back.

Somewhere I saw a gif of that bit from Time After Time and he definitely looked at the guys over the girl.

Oh yeah, blink and you miss it, he grins and points at the dudes in uniform as they walk past. Yeah yeah, he could be wishing he was in 1940's military dress A's, but he the fact that he chose "I'd dig wearing that" over "I'd dig stripping that" is suspect.

Okay, so I'm reading a fic that's bringing real angels into season 2's episode Touched. And it hit me like it never really did before that John, man obsessed to the point of abuse and neglect wrt to his children, gave up his life's mission to save one of his sons. He deliberately let his obesssion, the object of his life's mission to kill, kill him. As a point of pride and stubbornness, that is huge. The fact that he just wasn't losing his life, but being sent to hell is enormous. That he was able to step back from the brink of obsession, that he hadn't lost sight of what was truly important, in the end. He wasn't a Gordan (oh Dean!).

I know that was all there during his deal, but the weight of it didn't hit me until just now. There's more niggling at me that counters all this, but let me bask in my moment.

Even though it's totally not how you raise and nurture kids, that's a big portion of why I can't hate John. He's a lousy father in almost every practical sense, but by god, he CARED. Fiercely and absolutely, he cared.

I was just reading a D/C that covered the pre-series of Amy the kitsune (introducing Castiel into their lives at that point), and it was interesting from John and Sam's POVs. It was kinda clunky, but I liked the idea. Lotsa fierce John. And Sam.

Sometimes I think about the father John would have been if Mary had lived, to figure out which traits would have surfaced anyway and which were directly a result of him being alone and parenting two very small children on his own after the violent, horrifying, mysterious death of his wife.

That's trauma enough, but I think people forget how young the boys were -- parenting a six-month-old baby on your own would be incredibly hard, and then you add a grieving four-year-old to the equation. Plus, as involved and loving as I assume he was while Mary was alive, he was still working full-time, so he would have missed a lot of the daily grind of fussiness and diapers and naplessness and toilet training.

I'm willing to forgive him a lot, I guess, even when I know I probably shouldn't.

Sometimes I think about the father John would have been if Mary had lived

I think probably fairly decent, but would probably trip up frequently by his own stubbornness. I could also see there being problems if he didn't admit when something was wrong (e.g. him not telling Mary he'd lost his job).

I didn't realize that I thought John might have been an awesome dad but for Yellow Eyes until Dark Side of the Moon, and Dean's "happy" memory of Mom arguing on the phone and the revelation that John "moved out for a few days", and that it was an argument they'd had before. I like the realism that their marriage wasn't perfect until after Mary died. It still bugs that it's part of Dean's greatest hits in Heaven.