Hi kids, this is a one-shot that may become more (depending on reviews!). Based off the song "You Don't Know Me At All", Don Henley.
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Thoughts of their final fight still made Sam's stomach clench. The fight that had torn the family apart, the fight that had ended with his father telling him that if he left, he should stay gone. And he had. God, how he had tried to stay gone.
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"Stanford, Sammy?"
There were so many questions written in Dean's eyes as his brother confessed his bittersweet secret, showed him the acceptance letter with shaking hands. The bewilderment in Dean's eyes was mixed with hurt. Sam sighed.
"I'm not going, of course...I mean, we're brothers, right? Dad...well, Dad would never forgive me. I just thought..."
Dean nodded. Their father had beaten bruises across Sam's skin on more than one drunken night as they grew up, the angel patterns spreading over pure muscle beneath Sam's summer kissed skin. Once, when Sam had asked about staying somewhere permanently after a particularly difficult hunt, John had beaten him unconscious on the dirty floor of the motel room, leaving Dean to wipe away the blood and tears long after he had gone. Sam fantasized about normality every night, imagined what it would be like to fall in love, to trust someone who wasn't his older brother...
"Yeah, I know, Sammy. You just wanted to be normal."
Sam nodded quietly, his green eyes shimmering with unstated emotion. They both jumped as the motel room door banged open. Dean quickly slid the letter into his back pocket. John walked in, threw a file at Sam, his eyes stormy and dangerously lit.
"Looks like you have an excuse to leave after all, pretty boy."
John snorted, glaring down at Sam. Sam opened the file with frozen fingers, fear making his normally steady fingers tremble. As he had gotten older, filled out his coltish form with solid muscle, he could have easily taken his father out. He had never fought back against John, though.
"W-what is this?"
Dean cringed as Sam's voice broke. His father snickered, whiskey wafting over them in a sickly sweet cloud.
"Adoption papers, Sammy-boy. Turns out, you're not even my fucking kid."
Dean's stomach clenched at the look in Sam's eyes. John leaned in very close, his black eyes focused on Sam,
"But let me make one thing very clear. If you leave, you will not be coming back."
Sam flinched, but didn't pull away. He had learned quickly that resisting only meant John would hit him that much harder. John laughed at the helpless expression on his face, and something gave inside of Sam.
"I got accepted to Stanford. Full ride."
Sam's breath barely above a whisper. John looked his son over carefully, his eyes glossing dangerously,
"What the fuck were you doing applying to college? Didn't I raise you right? Don't you feel even a little bit guilty for your mother's death?"
Sam's eyes glittered as he raised his head to look at John,
"I guess it turns out she wasn't my mother."
John backhanded him across the face, his head snapping back with the force of the stinging handprint—hardly unexpected.
"Get the fuck out of my motel room. You have an hour. If you're not gone, I'll kill you."
...
Sam didn't even flinch as the door slammed closed, shaking the walls as John stormed out of the room. Dean turned to look at him, his eyes lit with shadows. Sam took a deep breath, tossing clothes into his duffel bag—dirty, clean, his, Dean's. Dean's hand on his arm stopped him.
"Sam..."
Sam turned to look at him. His gaze softened at the look in Dean's eyes.
"I guess now I have an excuse to leave."
"Sammy...no. She's still your mother, she raised you as a son. She's still the woman you call mom."
A shadow passed over Sam's eyes, the green momentarily eclipsed by the darkness of his emotion.
"No, Dean...she's the woman you called mom. I killed her before I even got to meet her, remember?"
"You didn't kill her. She loved you. I love you. Please, Sam..."
Sam shook his head.
"You don't get it Dean...I feel so dirty. Dirty all the way down, just like this fucking town. I'm sick of sitting in limbo, sick of just trying to reach the end of the day sane..."
Dean flinched, withdrawing his hand from Sam's arm. Sam ignored the sparks of heat his handprint left against his skin. Didn't mention that part of the reason he felt so dirty were the feelings he kept hidden from the world. Kept hidden because it was wrong to love your brother like that...but they weren't brothers anymore. Sam kept his face carefully blank, closed the curtains over his darkest secret,
"Dean...I've given you everything. I put the walls up, pushed everything down—the Winchester way, right? I learned to confess. I've told you everything, but I can't keep living a lie like this."
Sam's voice was rough, his eyes glittering with unshed tears.
"Please. Try to understand. After all these years, all the twisted roads we've travelled down together? Dean, it's time to say good-bye."
His voice broke as he zipped up the duffel bag with shaking fingers.
"That's it, Sam? This is goodbye?"
Dean's voice was harsher than he intended it, his words sparking Sam's defence mechanism.
"Fuck you, Dean. You don't know what it's like. Dad's never hit you. Never called you a murderer while he beat you into the fucking floor of whatever motel room."
"Is that what this is about? Dad getting angry when he's drunk?"
"Not just angry, Dean! Abusive! Dad's injured me more times than anything we've ever hunted!"
Dean blanched at Sam's blatant truth, his eyes recounting every scar visible on Sam's body.
"And that's an excuse to walk out on your family? Walk out on me?"
"Maybe if you were there to protect me from Dad, Dean. Maybe if he had even once raised his hand to you—"
"Maybe I don't deserve to get hit, Sam!"
Silence dropped suddenly over them. Silent tears spilled over Sam's pronounced cheekbones as he yanked the duffel bag over his shoulder.
"Fuck you, Dean."
Slipped away into the night as the Impala roared back into the parking lot, his heart aching for the brother he had left behind.
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And God, how he had tried to push those feelings for Dean down. He tried alcohol, but couldn't quite bring himself to use his father's favourite excuse for violence to dull the pain. Tried drugs, but found little solace in the mind numbing dances the junkies did with the devil. Had tried to fill the void—guys, girls, a string of one night stands, eventually settling on Jessica, her blonde hair contrasting with his tanned skin, her blue eyes never questioning too deeply. When the night got too dark, too lonely, Sam wrapped himself in the old shirt of Dean's he had thrown into the duffel bag as he left that night, now tight across his shoulders, and tried to imagine Dean's smell—earthy, pungent leather ghosting with sweat and the heady, spicy scent that was only Dean's. Sam didn't even cry anymore when he realized he had used the scent up in the shirt, that his brother was gone. Sam had adjusted to normal life.
But then Dean had shown up. Stolen Sam's breath away with his velvet voice, rough but slick as honey as his tongue caressed the language. Sam had known better, but Dean was such a pretty mess, lost without his father. So he got into the car, worked the case, tried to memorize every detail of Dean, every piece of his body, voice and smell, because Sam was going to law school, the ultimate act of normalcy, and soon his childhood would be nothing but a forgotten memory. Even Dean, with his beautiful eyes and stunning body, would be nothing but a hazy memory of lust. And then Azazel had struck once more.
Now Sam's piece of normal was gone. Jess was dead, and he was suddenly faced with a choice: Face his darkest secrets, or try to rebuild the plastic world he had been living in.
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Please review, kids! Reviews are better than candy. (: I wonder what Dean was doing while Sammy was off at school "adjusting"?