Sam walked around the apartment quietly, noticing the little details about it that made it a home even though it was simply the humble abode of students. There were the comfortable chairs that Sam and Jess had found in IKEA; the pictures on the mantle of them on vacations together; the cookies she'd baked for him; the warmth of her body as he slipped into bed and she snuggled closer without waking.
Sam put an arm around her, and any lingering doubt or guilt at returning to his life with Jessica dissipated.
The law school interview went well, and Sam found himself very much on track for his new life.
The only problem was that his old life keep on dropping by and snoring on the sofa.
The first time Sam's friends heard of Dean, they were all piled in someone's old Camaro and it started to make a freaky noise. Sam called his brother—who diagnosed the "freaky noise" over the phone and told his brother to stay put.
Dean had been nearby, and he pulled up an hour later in the most bad ass car any of them had ever seen. He refused to let the owner of the Camaro do anything to fix his own car, but "Sammy" assisted him like an old pro—although he didn't seem to know exactly what to do, he certainly knew the names of all the tools, which was more than the rest of them knew.
If Sam's friends wondered why Sam, who was definitely bigger than his older brother, and an amazingly frightening fighter on the few occasions he'd been persuaded to spar in the gym, put up with the way Dean bossed him around, none of them brought it up. Dean had an aura of capability, maturity, and carefully repressed violence that intimidated the college kids. They felt like he'd seen things—done things.
He seemed like a veteran of a war.
Nevertheless, they invited him out for drinks to thank him for the rescue. To their surprise, he came.
Sam seemed uncomfortable around his brother, maybe because despite the fact that they seemed pretty close in age Dean tended to treat Sam like he was ten years old.
"So, you all wanna be lawyers?" Dean asked the group.
Most of them did, but those who didn't let Dean in on their ambitions. He didn't seem all that interested, but he listened with what was almost politeness.
"What do you do?" one of them asked.
Dean's eyes shifted to Sam's face and they both looked uncomfortable for a moment, and then Dean answered. "I work as a mechanic, sometimes, but mostly I'm a security consultant."
"Like a bodyguard?" Luis asked.
"Yeah, only none of my clients are particularly rich or famous," Dean said.
"Well, if they aren't rich or famous, why do they need a bodyguard?" Luis asked.
"Cause they're in danger," Dean answered simply.
They all looked at Sam to see if this was some kind of a joke; yeah, Dean seemed tough but he also seemed like a lout—a joker. From what they could gather, he lived in his car, for Chrissake! But Sam seemed to agree with Dean's characterization of what he did, so they let it go.
The next time Sam's friends saw Dean, he arrived unexpectedly during Jess and Sam's first real dinner party.
It would have been nice and the more the merrier, but Dean was hurt. Sam left the table before the main course was even served to bandage him up.
"Why wouldn't he go to a hospital?" Luis asked.
"Maybe he works for the mob," Tanya, Luis's girlfriend, suggested.
"I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure the mob has their own doctors," Luis answered.
Sam came back in time for the dessert course, and didn't seem the least bit concerned about his brother.
"Why didn't he go to a hospital?" Tanya asked tactlessly. "Does he work for the mob?"
Sam laughed uneasily. "No, of course not. Dean would never work for the mob. He may seem gruff or like he doesn't care about people, but he's literally the most selfless person I've ever known."
"Then why didn't he go to a hospital?" Tanya asked again.
"It's hard to get health insurance in my line of work," Dean said. "Besides, I wasn't hurt that bad." Sam shifted uncomfortably in his seat, probably wondering if Dean had heard what he'd said about him. "Nothing my baby brother couldn't treat with a few bandages."
"I thought you were going to sleep," Sam said.
"I sensed there might be pie," Dean said, leveling his most charming smile at Jess. "Nothing heals cuts and bruises like pie."
"Dean, it's easier to make a bunch of pies at once, so I made you a whole raspberry pie. I was going to freeze it and take it out the next time you dropped by," Jess said. "I haven't put it in the freezer yet."
Dean looked ridiculously happy with this news, and crossed the room to hug Jess. "I love her, Sammy," Dean said. He left the room with Jess, his arm still draped across her shoulder.
"Doesn't that worry you a bit?" Luis asked.
"What, Dean and Jess? I trust Jess, and as much as Dean seems like the type of guy to hit on his brother's girl—he's really not. He'd cut off his right arm before he'd hurt me," Sam said.
That was when the gang realized they probably shouldn't bother questioning Sam about his brother anymore. He wasn't exactly unbiased. Sam didn't just love the man, he obviously idolized him. It came as a surprise to Sam's friends to realize this, considering how annoyed Sam usually seemed to be with Dean.
One of them even remarked on this to Sam and he said, "I'm still a little bit like a six year old who wants to be able to do all the things his big brother can do. But at the same time, I know I'll never been as good as Dean, so why bother trying? Most people start to see their brothers as only human when they get older—but its Dean. He's not only human."
None of them really knew what to say about that. Dean was a good looking guy and seemed like a nice enough person, but superhuman seemed like a stretch. Also, what kind of crazy family made a guy who went to Stanford law feel like the one who didn't measure up to the vagrant who lived in his car?
The first time they saw Dean fight none of them even knew what it was about. They were all sitting together in a campus pub and a man walked in and attacked Dean. The fight had been epic—jaw dropping and amazing—and Sam hadn't even stopped sipping his beer. Sam had of course mentioned that his family wasn't exactly the Brady Bunch—but what kind of person would find such a savage fight normal?
And when the police showed up, Sam, smooth as glass, said, "We don't know Dean, alright? We just had a beer with the guy. Never met him before."
Then he grabbed Dean and showed him the back door.
When his friends asked Sam about it, he just said none of them could afford to have a record, and when they asked Dean, he said he'd cleared the whole thing up with the police the next day.
"Not even mobsters lie to the police about knowing their own brothers," Tanya said. "What is with the Winchester boys?"
No one really knew but them, and they never spoke about it. It made Sam's friends wonder, though, what else Sam was hiding from them. They tried to ask Jess, but she denied that it had anything to do with her or Sam. Dean had a strange life, but her Sam was the same person he'd always been.
One day that summer, Sam picked up his brother's phone while his brother was asleep upstairs and the gang was playing video games.
"Where are you, Dad? You've been missing for a year. Dean's been going crazy. He thought you were dead," Sam said. He paused to listen. "God, Dad, of course I care. I have my own life. I can't just give up everything I've built for myself because of something I can't even remember."
Then Dean crashed down the stairs and grabbed the phone out of his brother's hand.
"Dad—are you okay? I've been—" he began, and then listened. "Okay, just let me get a pen," he said, and then he was writing something down.
"Yes sir," he said.
"No sir.
"I understand." He hung up.
"Dean, did he even tell you where he's been? He just went M.I.A. for a year! Doesn't that show you how little he respects you? Doesn't it at least piss you off?" Sam asked.
"He does what he has to do, and I do what he tells me to do. It's called having respect, Sammy. You should try it," Dean said.
"He's not a general! This isn't a war!" Sam said.
"Oh yeah? Well, what is it, then?" Dean asked. "Who cares about the fact that our mother was murdered if you can't remember it, right? Nothing is as important as anything you've got going, I guess."
"That's not what I meant, Dean," Sam said.
"I just hope this war never comes to you in a way you can remember, Sammy," Dean said.
He grabbed his stuff and left. Sam wouldn't say a thing about his mother being murdered, or Dean, or their argument, and none of Sam's friends saw Dean again for six months, and that was on the news.
"Did you see that picture of your brother on the news? They had his name as Samuel Rodney Haggar, but it was so Dean," Luis said.
"Listen, please don't go to the cops and tell them he's my brother. He might come here and if I'm under surveillance he might get taken in," Sam said.
"Would you want him to come here? He's been charged with multiple murders in a small town diner. Shouldn't you be trying to get him taken in? I mean, I thought you wanted to be a district attorney one day, not defend the bad guys," surprisingly it was Jess who raised this point, and in front of all their friends, too.
"Look—Dean could never be a bad guy. It's not what it looks like. Dean wouldn't hurt innocent people just for the hell of it—"
"—they said it was a robbery gone wrong," Jess cut in.
"—there are easier ways to get money, and Dean knows them all. Credit card fraud, hustling pool—some of our clients even gave us money, sometimes, if they had it," Sam said.
"Our clients? Did you scam people before you came here?" Jess asked.
"It's all part of the family business," Sam said faintly.
"Jess, he was a teenager. He didn't know right from wrong," Luis said.
"He should know right from wrong by now. You don't know what happened in that diner. Look, I won't tell the police Dean is your brother—but unless you do, we're over," Jess said.
"Are you seriously asking me to choose between you and my own brother?" Sam asked.
"You're supposed to trust the justice system. If he's so innocent, you can help him prove it," Jess said.
"Are you serious, Jess? Trust the justice system? No one can be that naïve, right? No, you're actually serious. Dean would never go to trial, anyway. He'd escape if I had to bust him out myself. And you should be thankful there are people like him around," Sam said.
"Bust him out yourself? You're really not that bad ass," Luis said. He was laughing quietly at the image of Sam as an outlaw.
"Why Sam? What has Dean ever done that's so great?" Jess said, ignoring Luis.
"He raised me, for one," Sam said. "Any of those things about me you love—kindness, caring, empathy—he taught me those things. He saved my life probably a dozen times—he saves people. These people in the diner—all I can tell you is that they probably weren't really…people…for lack of a better explanation. There are things out there that you can't imagine."
"Are you trying to say they were vampires or werewolves or something?" Luis asked.
"Vampires are extinct. I don't know what they were, but if Dean killed them, there were bad," Sam said.
"My God, he's done this before, hasn't he? Have you killed people before? What have your father and your brother convinced you of? Vampires aren't extinct—they aren't real. None of that stuff is real. You have to turn him in, and then we'll get you some help," Jess said. Her voice was getting higher and higher, and she was practically hysterical.
"You think I'm crazy and Dean's some kind of mass murderer? You've known me for years. You said you loved me. Can't you just trust me a little, here? I can't believe this. I never should have let Dean back into my life. I knew I couldn't just be normal," Sam said.
"Sam, I know you and Dean think that there's some kind of war going on. Maybe it's some kind of collective delusion that your father convinced you of. Has he ever been treated for a mental illness? It's nothing to be ashamed of. A lot of veterans have trouble when they return to civilian life," Luis said.
"I'm not delusional! Neither are my father or Dean. God, I should never have tried to have a normal life. Hunters can't go back. You can't get out of the life. There are no happy endings," Sam said heavily.
"A hunter? The life? What the hell are you talking about?" Jess asked.
"I could tell you, but it would only drag you into that world. I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy—and even though we're over, I still love you. I guess it's better if you think I'm crazy," Sam said.
"We're over?" Jess asked in a small voice.
Sam looked at her with his eyes full of regret. "I won't betray my family. Dad and Dean may be difficult for me to get along with—but they're all I've ever had. I thought I had you—but I guess I was just fooling myself. Dean was right. This isn't my life. This isn't where I'm supposed to be."
"But Sam, you've worked so hard—for God's sake, you're almost a lawyer!" Luis said.
"What does being a lawyer matter, really? What does any of it matter?" Sam asked. His friends and his lover had no answers for him, and he slowly walked up the stairs to pack his things.
"We should do something," Jess said. "He's going to leave and put himself in danger. He's going to be the Dean—the man's a mass murderer who thinks he's on a mission from God!"
"What do we do?" Luis asked. "Can we have him committed?"
"It's not that easy," Tanya said. "It's not like in the movies. If he doesn't agree to stay in we could only have him held for 48 hours, and only if we convince them he's a danger to himself or others on absolutely no evidence."
"But if he talked like he was just talking to a psychiatrist, they'd commit him and help him, wouldn't they? Maybe it's worth the lie," Jess said.
"He never said a word about any of that for almost six years. He knows how to play it sane," Luis said.
"So we just let him walk out of our lives?" Jess asked.
"If you're smart, that's exactly what you'll do," Dean said from the doorway. "And don't bother trying to commit Sammy. He'd be released into a brother's care in a minute."
"How did you get in here?" Jess gasped. "Get out or we'll call the police."
"Door was open. I'm just here for my brother. I was just about here when he called me to pick him up. Great minds, right?" Dean said, grinning with inappropriate jocularity.
"Why did you kill all those people?" Jess whispered.
"They weren't people. They were a hive. Look, Sammy should have told you the way it was. I'm sorry. I always told him it was better not to make friends at all cause you can't just lie to people about who you are. It never works," Dean said.
"What should he have told us?" Luis asked. "Convince us, and maybe Sam can stay here."
"Why would you believe me? Your girlfriend is trying to be subtle about calling 911 on me cause you think I'm a murderer. I'm not who you think I am, but the real kicker is that Sam is not who you think he is, either."
Sam walked down the steps heavily, seeing Dean at the door. He had a bag over his shoulder.
"That all you're taking?" Dean asked.
"What's the point in taking anything else? We won't have room for it," Sam said.
"I'm sorry, Sammy. I should have left you alone," Dean said.
"No Dean—it's my fault. I never should have tried to leave the life. You shouldn't have had to do this all on your own. Dad's a selfish prick, but that's no reason I should be one, too," Sam said.
Dean ignored the comment and pulled his little brother in for a hug. Sam's friends were surprised by this act of caring. Not only had they thought that Dean was a little "macho" for something like that, but he and Sam had never been touchy-feely with each other before. Sam seemed less adverse to his brother babying him than before, too. When Dean told him not to forget his laptop and phone and took the rucksack from Sam and carried it for him, the gang were surprised he didn't tell Sam to go to the bathroom and wash his hands afterwards. Sam seemed to need the help—he was acting dazed and depressed—he was acting like his whole world had been shattered.
It had been.
"Sam, please…I take it back. I won't tell anyone about your brother. You stay here, and we'll get you some help. Not commit you—just someone to talk to about all of this. I don't care what Dean does, now or ever," Jess said.
"But I do! You wouldn't let him come visit me, would you? And what if something happens to him or my Dad and I have go help them? You'd never let me go. And it could have been me on that news report. It probably will be, someday. Why keep this relationship going when I know it's going to fall apart one day anyway? You won't believe what I am, and I won't turn my back on my family."
"Sam, it doesn't have to be like this. We could give 'em proof. Tell them the truth about everything," Dean said.
"They think you're a mass murderer and I'm delusional. They won't come with us or listen to us. Their minds are made up," Sam said.
"Sammy, come on. They love you. They'll try to understand. No one ever really lives up to your expectations, do they? I'm almost glad they disappointed you, too, just like me and Dad did. They're doing the best they can with the limited information you've given them about your life. Don't throw this all away just because you're disappointed," Dean said.
"We never could have it both ways," Sam said darkly. "Let's just go find something to kill."
"Music to my ears," Dean muttered.
Sam's friends called the police and told them everything they knew about the brothers, but they never saw Sam or heard from him again.