It's been months. It's been almost five months. Sam has traded feelings of loneliness and grief for bitterness and rage. It's better this way. It's less draining and it keeps him going, keeps him hunting –for Dad and for monsters. It's not just a front either, like it was in the beginning. Now it's all there is. He's not afraid to let his guard down because he knows he won't collapse into a heap of sadness. Because there's nothing behind his anger. Just…resentment at Dad and at Dean and at the life they live. It's not so bad.
It's getting on Dean's last nerve, but really, it's okay. A little bitterness gives Sam some perspective about how screwed up their lives are that the idea of making honest money makes Dean gag, and how sad it is that this perfect little suburban town is everything that Sam wants (minus killer bugs and old curses) but makes Dean feel claustrophobic. Sam thinks that's just an act. Dean really wants to live in a world with perfectly manicured lawns and steam showers and reassuring realtors. Sam wants it. He wants it desperately. And he's done grieving for it. Instead he's just bitter and resentful that Dad made him quit soccer to move schools, and that Jess died and burned down his apartment. That is LSAT score means nothing since he missed his interview.
But he sees himself in that bug kid, whose dad is too worried about selling houses than what his kid wants. Sam knows how it feels. When you want something good for yourself, but your dad is too focused on "what's best." How that really is claustrophobic, how it made his blood boil when he was sixteen. To seeing Matt's Dad talk to him, scold him, in front of a yard full of strangers makes him red in the face now.
"It's not like you were a saint," Dean has told him at least once a week since the grief turned into anger. He says it now too, more or less. It wasn't just Dad yelling at Sam. It was a fight. A nasty fight. They both said things that they both really, really thought that they meant. It was a fight that ended when Sam said that it didn't matter if Dad didn't like it; he was an adult and he couldn't make Sam do anything he didn't want to anymore. He was going to college. He wasn't going to hunt anymore. He wasn't going to die bloody and young like him, like Dean. Like Mom.
And then he left, wishing them good riddance, and he didn't call. He didn't write. He never picked up the phone when Dad called him, sporadically, once every two or three months. He didn't listen for the growl of the Impala's engine passing by his building. He lived in bliss. He lived in safety. It was enough for Sam, and apparently, eventually, it was enough for Dad.
He's tired. Getting stung by hundreds of cursed bees will do that to you. He's not as angry as he was this morning. He misses his dad. He misses his soft, gruff voice, and the rough hands that patched him up more times than he can count. Hell, he even misses fighting with him. And Sam is worried. It's possible –more and more possible every day –that Dad is dead. And it weighs on Sam that some of the things he felt so earnestly, so heatedly four years ago, he feels a little less strongly about now. He's said some things, to him, about him, that he doesn't think he would have said if the fight hadn't escalated. Not that it didn't always escalate. He doesn't want Dad to die before he can take some of it back. He doesn't want his dad to die thinking that Sam hates him.
Matt and his dad made amends, so Sam is sure that he can make up with his dad too.
A/N: I took a break for a long time from these, but I am back and school and need to write something fun every once and a while. Here's something small about John Winchester (who I love) to get back into things. Maybe I'll only do 7 episodes at a time, and Supernatural will be on it's fifteenth season by the time I finish. Have a good weekend, everyone. I should be posting one a week between Friday and Sunday from now on.