Every Friday, you've got a tradition— you drag Sheldon, your terrifyingly clever and terrifyingly bratty son, to George Jr.'s game. He spends it complaining under his breath (or over his breath). You spend it two inches away from slapping him upside the head, feeling as though since the hunting trips, the fighting lessons, and the poker all fell through, he could maybe stop making you feel like you've wasted your every paternal effort.

You love Sheldon— you do— but sometimes (always) that isn't enough. Love won't teach him field theory or erase the fact that he's an eleven-year-old robogeek with the mind of Einstein and the maturity of a toddler, and neither will football, but at least football you understand.

"This is puerile," Sheldon protests, a broken record; he's tiny in George's old sweatshirt, and the wind has long since made his hair a rat's nest. "Why, exactly, do you want to spend hours of your life watching a hoard of sweaty athletes ram into each other?"

You take a surreptitious swig from the whiskey bottle you'd stashed beneath your coat, just for, um, emergency purposes. "Fun?"

Sheldon snorts. "Right. Fun. Can I go home and do my calculus homework now?"

(It's pretty obvious that the kid hates you. The way he looks at people alone, like he's Jesus fucking Christ himself back to judge, is enough to flay you, but you refuse to move an inch; Mary already coddles him far too much as it is, made him as soft as rotten fruit. You worry about him, how he's going to be a man and navigate his headlong sprint into adulthood when his great big brain can barely handle tying shoes, if he'll become a target for every predator in the world the second he leaves your sight. You worry about him a lot, no matter how grown he thinks he is now.)

No, you want to say, you're his father and he'll mind if he doesn't want his ass whipped, goddammit. But you know exactly what kind of response that'll get. "Your mama told you to come," you say instead. The boy loves his mother. Ashamed as hell of the rest of you, but he loves his mother.

"Mama wanted me to bond with siblings," he clarifies. "Missy attends art class. Why couldn't I go with her?"

"Because you're a man, not a fag," you snap, the last of your patience well and truly gone. Shit, he'd drive anyone to drink. "Now are you gonna watch the game?"

"Yes," he mutters, looking distinctly put out.

"Yes, what?" you insist, just to keep up the charade that your youngest son has the tiniest shred of respect for you.

"Yes, sir." The honorific has a tinge of sarcasm attached, and he slumps further in his seat.

"The hell are you so eager to do your homework for, anyway?" You can't remember a single instance in your miserable academic career when you'd had the desire to sit down with a worksheet on a Friday night, or any other time. Not one.

"Calculus," he answers primly, "is the foundation of theoretical physics. If I master multivariable—"

God, you'd forgotten that when you give Sheldon a prompt he likes, he won't ever let go of it. Boy talks and talks and talks whether he has a willing audience or not, so you halfway pretend to listen while he jabbers on.

(You've got to take your time with Sheldon, you told a frazzled Mary a lifetime ago. You've got to take your time with Sheldon. So he won't toilet train or eat anything that hasn't been thoroughly vetted for germs first or really speak to anyone who isn't his bespectacled scholar of a pop-pop, it doesn't matter, you reassured. The kid had been kind of cute then, like a walking encyclopedia on crack. Don't worry, he'll grow up, you told her, smooth out. Become more normal.

That was before she took him to some fancy specialist in Houston who said that Sheldon had the highest IQ he'd ever seen.)

You watch your son instead, shaking these thoughts out of your head— your firstborn son, the only one you can claim to know. He's a good quarterback. Not the sharpest strap in the shed, but a damn good quarterback.

Final touchdown, delivered by none other than George Cooper, Jr, and the stands erupt with cheers. A little shakily, you clamber to your feet, pull an unwilling Sheldon up. "That's my boy," you shout, loudly informing the spectators of the fact that your genes were responsible for Galveston's victory— something in your sorry excuse for a life you can take credit for.

"You see that, Dad?" George asks after the team celebratory huddle, cheeks glowing. "Hey, runt," he adds as an afterthought towards his brother. Sheldon scowls, which is the only expression he ever seems to make at George.

"You're damn right I saw that. The way you intercepted the last pass—"

Sheldon irritably tugs your sleeve. "Great, they won. Now can I go home and do my calculus?"

He hates football, you realize— or, more like you realized that from the first match you ever made him watch and are just now admitting it to yourself. The kid hates football and he hates you, and he hates these attempts at making a man out of him. He can recite every great sports victory from the past five years, but he no more appreciates it than he appreciates Arabic. Fuck, who does he think he is, this smug, superior brat you spawned? What right does he have to condemn you, a little kid who has to have the right breakfast cereal each morning lest he wage an unholy tantrum re: proper fiber content?

"Yeah, sure," you finally dismiss with a casual wave, turning back to your eldest. He can walk, and if he leaves, maybe you can take George to the bar for dinner without having to hear his smartass remarks for a change.

He looks like you did in high school, George— same wavy brown hair, same strong jaw, same lean, muscular figure. Plays great football, most popular guy in the junior class, a new girlfriend on his arm every week. Beer and shotguns and reckless driving. At least you can say this one lived up to your expectations.

(The only thing you gave Sheldon was his electric blue eyes, eyes that see all of you for what you really are— and a temper that flares quick and burns hot. It does not bother you, it does not bother you.)

"So, Mr. High-And-Mighty's gone," you say, clapping a hand on George's shoulder, as if Sheldon had been there by choice. "Come on, give me the details. How hard did you make those bitches from Beaumont cry?"