THIS TIME I MEAN IT

Sam swore he was done hunting, but if really pressed, he'd admit that he knew he wasn't. Palo Alto had old buildings, cemeteries and unexplainable deaths, the usual things that Sam had learned to watch for. He'd been there less than two months when a couple of girls went missing during sorority rush week. Sam wanted to deny it but he knew too much to pretend it was anything else so while the rest of his Greek history and mythology class studied things Sam had learned at ten, he dug up the rejected girl's grave to salt and burn her bones. He walked away swearing that Inow/I he was done with hunting.

Two months after the sorority salt and burn Dean showed up to ask him for backup on a case just two hours out of town. Sam made a show of resisting but packed his guns and knives, all carefully hidden around the apartment he shared with three other guys, and took his rightful place, shotgun in the Impala. It was just a wood sprite gone bad, nothing Dean couldn't have taken care of himself but by the way Dean led them through a circuitous route seemingly designed as an obstacle course Sam knew it was Dean's way of making sure he hadn't gotten soft, that whatever he faced alone at Stanford, he was ready for.

Just before finals Dean showed up again, but this time he really did need his help. Dad was out hunting down something big but when they'd caught wind of the coven he'd sent Dean to handle it, preferably with Sam's help. Sam didn't ask if his dad had specifically said that or if that was just Dean's preference. Didn't matter, he knew more about witches and spells than Dean did so he went.

That summer he met Jess. They moved in together in the fall. Sam hid his weapons better. He let her think he was a little odd for always keeping a flask from which he never drank in his pocket. She told him he'd get high blood pressure before he was thirty with all the salt he bought. They never talked about the fact that he didn't actually use it on his food.

They were happy together and Sam was relieved that she never asked him why he occasionally came home covered in dirt and soot, or why he smelled like gasoline or lighter fluid, or why his neck had purple marks. She must have really believed that rugby on the quad was almost lethal, and sometimes took all night to play.

Sam had gone to Stanford to have a normal, safe life. Sam had gone to Stanford to stop hunting. Sam found out early after his departure that hunting was not something Winchesters stopped doing, even if they really wanted to.

When he saw Jess on the ceiling and was surrounded by the overwhelming heat and guilt at once he realized that normal wasn't something that Winchesters got to be, even if they really wanted to.