Disclaimer: I do not own Supernatural at all. I do not make money from my fanfiction. I do now listen to way more mullet rock.

Oneshots for season 3 episode Mystery Spot

The Bed You Made (Sam)

Sam keeps his apartment tidy. He keeps it tidy in a way that would have driven Dean crazy. Research goes on the wall behind the bed, dirty cloths go in the hamper, the bed is made every morning. He keeps the kitchen stocked with actual food and actual dishes. At one point in his life it would have been because he was looking for normality. Normality, an ordinary home, organized into ordinary tasks.

He wakes up every morning at six. He exercises, does laundry, reviews his hunt, investigates, and finishes the job. He packs up, leaves, arrives, rents a new apartment and starts again. When he leaves, he takes the news articles, the laundry hamper, the bed sheets, the groceries with him. He takes the laundry detergent, the dish soap, the cleaner that smells like pine. It's not like he doesn't have space in the car.

Every new apartment he organizes the same way. He cleans the same way, till each is the same place he just left, the same place he comes back to, but it's not about uniformity.

Every night he comes in, puts his bloody clothes in the hamper, takes a shower, goes to bed. He wakes up the next morning at six. It's not that he has an alarm clock, he just does.

Sam lives his overwhelmingly controlled life, because he still has the smallest gasp of hope. Hope that one day he'll wake up at seven, on worn sheets, in a messy room, that smells of old cigarette smoke and discarded burgers. Hope his bed will be a disaster and that Asia will be blaring in his ears.

He also knows that if he wakes up to even a hint of that, and no Dean, he will shatter.