Sam's POV of Dean's phone calls to him at Stanford, from bigpink's Fire In the Hole. Read that first. Follows Incommunicado 1 by Lemmypie.
Pre-series, gen, no spoilers.
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Who the hell was he kidding with this?
The numbers melted into each other, and he'd been staring at the same page for ten minutes without absorbing a word.
Sam rocked the chair back on two legs, stretching his legs and letting his head fall back almost between his shoulder blades, pulling his eyes open with the heels of his hands. Most of the study carrels in the library were wonders of modern ergonomic design, flooded with natural light, soft sound-absorbing carpeting underfoot… but not here, deep in the bowels of the medical library.
Here was the leftover of a less enlightened time when studying was something done in the dark; hard, cold and alone. Dusty shelves of books forgotten for decades surrounded him, with the occasional distant murmuring of people moving, shifting, pages turning, pens scraping paper – a tradition of scholarship that stretched back to the Dark Ages and monks scraping Greek parchments of poetry, science and literature to rewrite them with the Latin Bible and the Malleus Malificarum.
Here was the only part of the Stanford campus where you could escape the constant tip-tip-tap of laptops – the university's wireless reception was spotty at best down here – and where Sam could force himself not to check his phone messages every five minutes.
The downside was that his back ached from bending over the too short desk, his legs were shooting pains up and down, criss-crossed underneath in an effort to fit, and his ass was numb from the hard oak chair.
Two weeks into his fourth quarter, and his faculty advisor was breathing heavily down his neck about declaring a major. Decide, Sam. You can't study everything.
He wasn't going to be studying much of anything if he didn't pound this Stats course into his brain, but it wasn't happening today. It wasn't the course so much, Sam knew as he packed the text and other books into his pack. It was his own fault for letting Dean's call rattle him, distract him.
Back above ground the last horizontal light of the day made the orange tile and buff sandstone of the university's distinctive buildings glow with warmth. Palm trees lined the walk, silent stationary fireworks, the hedges were filled with flowering shrubs and the lawns mowed to golfing perfection.
Still, still, after nearly a full year, Sam had to convince himself that this was real. He was here, he had earned the right to be here. Paid for it.
He passed a tight knot of frightened teenagers, led by someone walking backwards waving his arms as he talked, orange T-shirt loudly proclaiming 'Ask me, I know ΣΗΙΤ.' Next year's freshmen on orientation tour. At what point, Sam wondered, had he stopped being one of them, and turned into one of the ones who knew ΣΗΙΤ.
He leaned up against the sun-warmed sandstone before he took out his phone. Four messages. Breath caught, one from Dean, immediately recognizing the number. He skipped the others to push the button for that one, not bothering to justify if he should or shouldn't. Ten days since the last one, he'd almost convinced himself that Dean wouldn't call again. Convinced himself that he didn't want Dean to call again.
Ten days with the temptation to call back coiling around him, tripping his thoughts like a minor earthquake. Reminding him that the terra firma of his life here was anything but. Teasing him with questions, what ifs, and maybes.
Machine again, I guess. Campus life, it must agree with you. Big man on campus, right?
Dude, you are delusional, Sam thought, the knot under his breastbone unfurling, just as if they were back in the car, Sam in the backseat, Dean riding shotgun, talking at each other, talking past each other.
Sam wasn't anything like the big man on campus. Not at Stanford. At Stanford he was a little tiny fish in a really big, really fast moving ocean. Filled with a lot of really big really fast moving sharks.
Getting into Stanford made Sam one of the chosen few. He knew that better now than he ever had before. But now that he was here – man – the nightmares of people finding out, pointing fingers, laughing, had been replaced with ones of 'never catching up'.
Maintaining his scholarship was demanding enough. Doubt was an ache in his gut. Pressure stood on his shoulders. Sometimes the only thing keeping him here was the knowledge that he couldn't go back. Forward, or failure.
And now, Dean, again, on top of everything else. It didn't surprise him in the least that Dean had tracked him down, found his new number. He was listed in the campus directory. He wasn't hiding. He wasn't running. Not anymore.
Thought of you, a while back, when we went to that place in the Piedmont – Jefferson's mansion? All these little kids, parking lot full of yellow buses. Hell, you probably went there on a field trip, didn't you? Still. It's got history, I'll give it that. They always say Jefferson was some kind of super-duper nice-guy slave owner, but a slave's a slave, you know what I mean?
Jesus, Dean.
A familiar frustration rose up in Sam's throat. Professor Jakes' lectures, and the desperate, desolate images beamed up on the screen behind him as illustration were fresh in Sam's mind.
You're not a fucking slave, Dean. You have a choice. You make it every single day.
Sam's head felt about two sizes too small for his brain right now, the way it was stuffed with facts, too full and too randomly, late night cramming for exams as efficient as late night packing for a quick back door exit out of town. Everything thrown in at once and you could only hope you could find what you needed when you needed it.
'A slave is a slave' Dean? That's brilliant. Goddamn genius. You should be here, not me.
Sam's eyes swam suddenly. Filled up with all the emptiness inside him until it threatened to spill out. Because Dean should be here, or Sam there, or something – somewhere in the middle – because this, this, apart business – this was shit.
Dean. Where the fuck are you?
Why didn't you come with me?
Why him, and not me?
It's pretty up there,remember? But fucking humid. The Blue Ridge, right up in the hills it's like a goddamn sauna. And you know how the car can get, fry a grilled cheese sandwich on the dash.
Sam's finger, hovering over the 'Reply' button, moved away.
How was it possible to have grown up practically inside each other's skins and still have such different memories? He remembered Woodstock, Virginia, population: more than a village, less than a town, Dad chasing will-o-the-wisps in the Appalachian forest. He remembered they had arrived two days after New Years, and left just before Easter. Humid, if by that Dean meant cold, and sleet, shoes that were never dry and mold on the windowsills from the constant running condensation.
If Dean was remembering the Blue Ridge mountains in humid summer then he was remembering it without Sam.
That hurt, somehow. He hadn't expected his dad and Dean to stay in Niagara Falls, and he hadn't expected them to somehow give up hunting just because he wasn't there. Had he? But he had somehow managed to forget how their lives would continue on without him. His approval or disapproval had never made the slightest difference when he was there – how could he expect anything different when he wasn't there.
Anyway. You into exams now? I'd wish you luck, but you don't need it, Einstein. Just letting you know we're still alive. In case you're wondering.
He heard the catch in Dean's voice, after 'just', as if he'd been going to say something else.
Sam looked down at his shoes, his hand clamped painfully tight around the phone, one plastic corner digging into his ear. His big damn fearless big brother had chickened out on a goddamn phone message. Lying to him.
They weren't in the Blue Ridge mountains right now. Or in the Natchez Trace. Or anywhere in the South, likely. Dean's fondness and nostalgia for a place was directly inverse to his distance from it. But Dean couldn't up and tell him where they were, could he? He couldn't actually say – I wish you were here. I wish I'd gone with you. I was wrong.
Because Dean was still hunting. Still hiding, still running.
And it was still Dad over Sam.
End of message. Press 3 to save or 7 to delete this from your mailbox.
Decide, Sam. You can't have everything.
Sam pressed the "7", and shut off the phone without listening to the other messages.