Lots of people find it annoying when someone posts a story with a disclaimer along the lines of, "this isn't very good, but read it anyway!" and I'm one of those people, so I'm not going to do that. But, you know. I'm rusty, I'm trying to remember how to write, I'm working on longer things in four fandoms at once, and my brain is like a disaster site these days. This is just a thing that happened, and so. Not exactly a story, just a thing. (Seriously, Destina, I will actually write this story one day for real.)
Rated... maybe PG13? And slightly Sam/Dean.
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a journey of a thousand miles
by Killa
It's not the things in the dark that scare him as much as the never being able to tell the truth to anyone, never knowing where they're going to sleep, always worrying about the cops. Always wondering if Dad's going to come home sober or not.
Wondering if he's ever going to be grown up, so he can stop being afraid.
Dean's sixteen and Sam is twelve. All Dean talks about is girls, and sex, and Sam gets used to it after a while.
It's hard to keep them straight, all of Dean's girls, but Sam does, more or less. He pretends he's not interested, but the truth of it is that he idolizes Dean in pretty much everything that matters, and girls are no exception. When Dean finally loses his virginity, it's to an older woman. She's twenty-two and works at the pool hall, waiting tables. Dad doesn't notice anything different. It's Sam who gets the whole story in graphic detail, the two of them shooting hoops at the old, cracked apartment complex court.
One day, not long after his thirteenth birthday, Sam walks in on Dean jerking off in the bathroom of their tiny apartment. Sam's the one who's more or less mortified -- Dean laughs about it, tells him it's no big deal. Tells him he should try it. Sam tells him to fuck off, but his face is still hot. It's almost three days before he does try it.
And if he thinks about things he shouldn't think about, if certain images are imprinted on his brain, well, it's not like he's not used to keeping secrets.
Sam is fourteen, in his first year of high school. They've lived in the same place for almost a year, but it doesn't matter -- nothing's really changed. He still hates the lying, the scams, still hates having to always worry about whether social services is going to show up at school, what they'll do if Dad ends up in jail. Being in one place just means more chances for people to notice there's something different about them. Sam's seen the looks, heard the whispers. He tries to pretend he doesn't care, like Dean, but he's never quite gotten the knack.
He doesn't know how to be like Dean, to flirt and be cool with girls, to always be in control of the situation. He's at what they call "that awkward age," having finally outgrown his adolescent chubbiness, suffering through nightly growing pains as his height shoots up. Dean's not home much. When he is, he and Sam fight more than they ever have before, and Sam feels like everything's raw and sharp edges and wrong. He hides behind his hair, his clothes, and wishes he were anyone else.
Summer comes, finally; they're on the road again, and it's kind of a relief in some ways. Dad always does better when they're hunting. In upstate New York, they go after a chimera in the sewers that's taking children from playgrounds, all claws and yellow eyes and reptile skin, and it's Sam who ends up taking the thing down with a crossbow bolt. It happens so fast, he almost doesn't realized he's killed it until Dean's there, whooping and grabbing him and thumping the air out of him.
Dean doesn't treat him like a baby quite so much after that, and for a while, they get along. They move around a lot that fall, but it's not so bad, Sam doesn't miss having friends as much as he thought he would. Dean teaches him how to drive without telling Dad. One day he comes and gets Sam from second period and they sneak in to see the re-release of Psycho. Dean produces M&Ms and two bottles of Dr. Pepper, and they sit in the back row and laugh themselves into hiccups over the movie. The day stands out in Sam's memory as every kind of perfect he's ever known.
Later, he'll get it. He'll know to call his sudden, almost painful hero-worship of his brother what it was: a crush, not much different than the one he'd had on Ashley Porter in the third grade.
Except one afternoon over Christmas break when they're about to move again, Dad's out getting them traveling money when Dean comes back sweaty and streaked with grease from working on the car, and gets in the shower, and Sam sits on the couch in the middle of the living room with the TV on low, listening to the water run. Minutes pass, and he's not just listening, he's thinking about Dean in the shower, and it's like he can't stop himself when his hand sneaks down and he touches himself. Even knowing his dad could come home any minute, something just... switches over, in his head. He ends up jerking off, fast and rough right there on the couch, and when he comes, making a mess of himself, his brother's name is caught in his throat.
He has a fight with his dad later. He needs to get out of the apartment, and Dad forbids him going out because he should have been packed already, and he's not. Dean went out, Sam argues back. That's right, Dad says, because Dean's nineteen, and he does what he's told. Maybe next time, you won't leave it until the last minute.
Sam packs his clothes in bitter silence, knowing there's no point in arguing any more, but it's when he comes into the living room and starts with his books that Dad tells him he's going to have to pare down -- that he's collected too many since they've been there, and there isn't room in the car for books they don't need.
Sam, furious, says he's never going to learn anything worth anything if they keep moving around. Dad tells him he's learned what matters -- how to survive. Did you ever think maybe I want more than that? Sam says. And he sees how it wounds, and knows he should feel awful about it, but there's something knotted and angry inside him, something so big he can't stop it. Did you ever think maybe we'd be better off without you?
The expression on his dad's face will stay with him for a long, long time after that. Dad leaves the apartment without another word, and Sam finishes packing in a kind of numb rage, throwing his books savagely one by one into the garbage. By the time he's done, his anger has waned away to nothing, and he sits with the TV on, not seeing it for hours, waiting. Neither his dad nor Dean comes home, and Sam finally goes to bed miserable and sick to his stomach. Sometime in the night he dreams a dream full of blood and smoke, where he's so angry at his dad, he points a gun at him point blank and pulls the trigger, and his dad just looks at him like he knew, he knew all the time.
He wakes up choking on tears, and after a few minutes Dean, home and asleep in the other bed for once, hears him and wakes up, too.
"Sammy, is that you?" Sam doesn't say anything. "What's the matter?"
"Nothing."
But Dean must hear that there's something wrong with his voice, because he rolls over, pushing himself up a little. "What the hell? Are you hurt?"
"I'm fine!" It comes out sounding a lot more angry than he means it to. "I'm fine. Go back to sleep."
"Sam--"
"Fuck off, okay? Just-- just go to sleep." He's cried himself out. Just tired now, and miserable, feeling shaky. He hasn't done that since he was seven.
"Sam." And Dean has to pick now, of all times, to be nice about it. He sits up, trying to see Sam's face in the faint light that comes through the gap in the curtains. "You sick?"
Sam tries not to laugh. It almost makes him cry again. And sure, what the hell, it's as good an explanation as any. "Yeah. I guess."
"You gonna throw up?"
This time, he does laugh. "No."
"Okay. Good." He can hear Dean frowning at him in the dark. Trying to figure out what to do. Always trying to figure out what to do, Dean and Dad, both -- Sam always the one who's the problem, the one who needs protecting. The one who's messed up. The one who needs things he shouldn't, wants things he's not supposed to have.
He wipes his face, and sighs. "It's okay. Go back to sleep, okay?"
"Yeah, okay." Dean lies back down, but Sam can see the telltale gleam of his eyes, still open. Sam's throat feels tight. He remembers the afternoon, the sun slanting in over the couch. How he'd touched himself shamelessly, jeans down around his hips, so turned on and needing so much he hadn't cared whether Dad came home or zombies broke in or about anything but how badly he wanted just to feel good for a while, just to have something good.
"Dean?"
"Yeah?"
"Do you ever... do you ever think about what it would be like?"
"What d'you mean?"
"You know. If things were different. If you could be anyone you wanted?"
He can feel Dean looking at him, can picture that perplexed, annoyed look he gets when Sam says something monumentally dorkish. "Come again?"
"Never mind. It's stupid."
"Are you okay? You didn't hit your head on something, did you?"
Sam laughs. Ever since Dean realized Sam has a good two inches on him, he's been making jokes about it. It doesn't matter that he's self-conscious about his height, Dean can always make him laugh, even when he doesn't feel much like laughing. "No, idiot. It's just--" He cuts himself off.
"Just what?"
"Just-- I don't know if I can deal with Dad anymore. I don't know if--" He feels like crying again, and has to stop. I don't know if I can deal with us anymore. God, why does he have to be such a crybaby all of a sudden?
"Sam, what the hell are you talking about? Okay? You're kind of freaking me out, here, man."
"Forget it."
Dean sits up. "Dude, quit it. Just say whatever you're trying to say, and maybe we can both get some sleep."
"It's just-- it's not supposed to be like this, you know? We're supposed to be in school. Like, all the time, not just when Dad feels like it. We're supposed to take the SATs, and go to parties, and do homework, and maybe play soccer or football or something after school. We're supposed to have friends." Not just each other, he thinks. But he doesn't say that.
Dean's eyes flash in the dark. He runs his hand through his hair, and Sam can see he's done it again-- said things they're not supposed to say, even if they're true. "Says who, Sam? You read that somewhere in a book?" Dean's voice turns hard, angry. "You think things always work out how they're supposed to? How about Mom? Was she supposed to burn up in a fire? Was that little girl in Ashland supposed to get taken out of her bed in the middle of the night and tortured and strung up by her hands?"
"No, but--"
"You think the world is fair, Sammy? Is that it? Because if you do, where the hell have you been the last fourteen and a half years?"
And Sam's tied up in knots, and he wishes he had a good answer, but all his frustration is just pushing at him and he can't think of a way to say any of it that Dean will understand. What he wants is for Dean to question Dad now and then, too. To wake up and want something better for himself. To look at Sam and really see him, not just his baby pain in the ass brother, but him. "It's not about fair," he says.
"Well, what the hell is it about, then?"
It's about being afraid of what's happening to me. What I'm turning into. But he doesn't know how to say that. And suddenly all he really wants is for his big brother to say, I know, Sammy. I'm scared, sometimes, too.
But Dean's never scared. And Sam just lets out the breath that's choking him, and shakes his head.
"You are a pain in my ass, you know that?" Dean says, but he sounds tired more than pissed.
"Yeah," Sam says. And then his throat closes, and he shuts up and is grateful for the dark. The tears slip down his face; he swallows, putting his arm over his eyes.
"Oh, for--" Dean says then. And, "Sammy," in another voice entirely. "Sam. It's okay. He'll be back."
"Don't--" Sam manages. Because Dean is sitting on the bed next to him, touching him, and Dean doesn't do that, not since Sam was little and his nightmares woke him up and Dean climbed into the bed with him and told him stories until he fell asleep. Sam shies away, his thoughts stuttering in a numb panic, unable to even articulate what he's so scared of. He's just embarrassed, that's all. Embarrassed that he's acting like a little kid, crying over nothing. What's wrong with him?
"Hey."
"Fuck you, Dean," Sam says, and he doesn't even know where that came from, he doesn't mean it -- he's getting up before he even knows where he's going, what he's doing. He can't see, and he runs into the foot of the bed in the dark, the sharp metal bed frame jamming hard between his toes. "Fuck!" He slams into the bathroom and locks the door.
When he finally comes out, feeling completely ridiculous and even worse than before, Dean is asleep in his own bed, one hand flung out like he's reaching for something. It hurts to look at him, for more reasons than Sam has words for.
Sam is fifteen, but he feels a lot older than that. It's almost dawn before he can sleep.
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