Sammy

This was how it was going to be from now on, I thought. I was lying awake in bed in my dorm room. I had a roommate, but he was asleep. He seemed nice enough. Bearable, at the very least, but I didn't know him and the whole thing was strange.

It was strange being homesick, because logically, I knew I didn't even have a home to miss, not since I was six months old, and even if I did, I wasn't allowed back there. But I was. I was homesick. And it was strange because it was something I never thought would happen. I didn't think I could be homesick.

It had been a week since I left, but tonight was the first night I had trouble sleeping. I guess it's the roommate. His name is Scott. He's rich. I'm the scholarship student. It felt like I was in some teenage romantic comedy about star-crossed lovers, except without the whole star-crossed lovers bit. Scott was sleeping and his breathing filled the room, way too loud and way too even for me to not think about how I was in an unfamiliar room, trying to sleep, staring up at a water-marked ceiling, and the person who was sleeping across the room that's too small, but not small enough to be called across anywhere, isn't Dean.

And that, in that very moment, was when I realized how much I missed them. How much I missed Dad and Dean. I was still pissed at Dad, and no doubt, Dad was still pissed at me, but I missed him. I missed his huge presence that filled a room without anyone noticing he was there, I missed how he would threaten anything that tried to hurt me or Dean just by breathing. Hell, Ieven missed fighting with Dad. And I missed Dean the same way. Only about a hundred times more. I missed how if Dean was being gentle it meant he was scared, and how if he was joking he knew things could get better. Dean's quiet reassurance beneath his smartass.

It was tonight that I felt homesick for the first time. Scott was sleeping and he was dreaming of home like he had been for the past three nights, and I was awake with a knife under my pillow, feeling homesick for an indefinable and off-limit place. For a couple of people who didn't want anything to do with me, and who I didn't want anything to do with. We were all mad at each other. Dean had been just as bad. Dad kicked me out of the imaginary house and Dean stood behind him. I knew that Dad was going to be mad, but I thought that Dean would have stuck up for me. He had always stuck up for me before, but when Dad threw me out, all I got was a "call me when you get there, Sam."

I didn't call him and he didn't call me, so we weren't speaking to each other. And just as well too. I bet Dad and Dean wouldn't go anywhere near California for months.

I turned over in bed, away from Scott and the door and Dean, and thought about how all three of us decided it was better this way to distract myself from the ache of losing a home I didn't know I had.

August turned into September, and even in California the seasons change. That was one of the perks of living on the road with a couple of guys with lead feet; you drive north in the summer and south in the winter so it's between fifty and seventy degrees all year and you don't really notice the change in seasons. September eventually gave way to October and I was making friends. They dragged me out to a Halloween party at the end of the month, and eventually, those last few days of October trudged into November. For the first time in my whole life, there wasn't a huge, dark oppressive cloud over the month, making Halloween scary for all the wrong reasons and Thanksgiving meaningless. I was looking forward to the first November I wouldn't hate.

It wasn't the only day Dad drank, but it was the only day of the year Dad drank himself into oblivion, and the way Dean was heading these past few years, he was soon to follow. I was glad I wasn't home for the anniversary of a family tragedy that didn't mean much to me except that I didn't get a mom or a normal life. But that was different now. All of it.

Dean broke our unspoken agreement to never contact each other again by calling on that day.

"Dad's missing, Sam," he said before I even said hello. I didn't answer. It wasn't because I didn't care. "You hearin' me, dude? Dad's missing!"

"Yeah, Dean, I heard you," I told him. "What do you want me to do about it?"

"I want you to get your ass down here and help me find him, dumbass, what do you think I want?"

"I can't help you, Dean," I told him. "He's not missing. He's just working." I used the term loosely.

I heard Dean take a deep breath on the other end of the line. "But it's Today, Sammy."

"Yeah, Dean," I snapped. I could almost picture Dean frowning like he was going to panic if he wasn't able to do something in exactly two and a half minutes. I sighed. Three-hundred-sixty-four-and-a-quarter days of the year, Dean had always taken care of me, and one day a year, I was allowed to take care of him. "Where are you?" I asked.

"You coming?" he asked. One day of the year, Dean was needy and abrasive, and if he was drunk then he was needy, abrasive, and angry. He'd been drunk since he was about seventeen.

"No," I told him flatly. "It's the middle of the week, Dean. If Dad's still missing this weekend, I'll come." Dean didn't say a thing. "Okay?"

"Yeah, whatever, Sammy," he grunted. He hung up with a sharp click. He never told me where he was, and I wondered if he was nearby.

Then I realized something else too; he called me Sammy. It was the first time anyone had called me Sammy in about two months, and for the first time in my life, the name made me cringe.

The pros of going away outweighed the bad. I had friends now. I was getting a top-notch education, I was safe, and I had someplace to call my own more permanently than I ever had before. And yet, I went throughout the rest of the day worrying the name over and over in my head. I replayed it and it sounded just the way it always did when Dean called me Sammy, but it was wrong. Maybe that was what was wrong. That it didn't sound like I hadn't seen Dean in two months. Like I was still a part of the life that I had tried so hard to escape from.

The second time I ever felt homesick was on that day, of all days. I thought about Dean, all alone, following in his father's footsteps on the Healthy-Way-To-Deal-With-Grief Path, and that Dad may be putting better use to almost twenty years of pent up rage and grief than Dean was at the moment, and how usually, I'd be with them taking care of them both, and I wouldn't be Sam. I'd be their Sammy. Scrawny, helpless, little Sammy, who could be protected from the evils that big ol' Dad and Dean were faced with everyday.

It used to be nice to be their Sammy. It was humiliating and patronizing, but somehow nice that I was being protected, even only in spirit, but being protected all the same. But now, it was stupid and it made me angry. They didn't even want me around, and Dean still had the nerve to think that I would still sit back and be Sammy for them. Not for Dean, and especially not for Dad.

I called Dean on Saturday morning anyway. I figured that the lack of communication was because Dad stumbled back in eventually, and he didn't need me after all. But I just wanted to be sure.

Dean picked up after the first ring. "Sam!" he barked. "You okay?"

"Yeah, Dean, I'm fine," I said. "Is Dad there?"

"Oh," said Dean. "Yeah, he's uh…he's fine. He was just working. Forgot to tell me, or something. I panicked. False alarm. Sorry, Sammy."

And there it was again. That name. The name only Dean and Dad used to be able to use without sounding like they were making fun of me. I would have said goodbye as bitterly as possible, but that stupid name caught me off guard, even though it was the first name I'd known, even farther back than just Sam.

"Sammy?" asked Dean, after I hadn't hung up or said anything for a few seconds. "No smartass response or anything?"

"Uh," I stuttered. "Sorry, I just…"

"Cat got your tongue, College Boy?" he asked. He sniggered. At least he was doing better than the last time I talked to him. At least. "You doing okay?" he asked more seriously. "Need anything?"

"I don't need my big brother taking care of me," I scoffed. I almost hung up the phone, just to make a point, but Dean laughed, really laughed, before I got the chance, and I realized that there wasn't a moment that I'd been here that I hadn't been homesick. I wanted Dean to be here to back me up, but I couldn't figure out a way to make Dean fit into my new life. My life that didn't belong to anyone but myself, and especially didn't belong to Dean. But now that I'd heard him call me a name I didn't want to belong to me anymore, and him laugh the kind that comes from deep inside his chest just because he's happy, I didn't know how I survived two months without him by my side. I did the only thing I knew how. "I'll call you tomorrow, okay, Dean," I said.

"Yeah, Sammy," he said. He sounded smug and I hated that almost as much as I hated Sammy.