Throughout his years Sam had developed a 'live and let live' philosophy. He'd had to in order to cope with Dean's behavior. His brother constantly did something Sam secretly disapproved of: mouthing off to authority. Drinking. Skipping school. Fighting. Women. Sam usually gave a world weary eye roll and then helped his brother cover up whatever he'd been doing when their father came home. His loyalty to his brother always made him complicit in some crime.
As such Sam tolerated most of Brady's behavior over the break. Booze, women-even the occasional drug use. It was nothing he hadn't encountered before with his big brother.
Sam gently tried to steer Brady back onto the right path when the opportunity presented itself. But other than that, he kept his mouth shut and suffered through it with his usual quiet disapproval.
However, Brady's behavior was different than Dean's in a subtle way. Less bon vivant, more pathological somehow. It was also different than his father's liberal use of alcohol to drown his pain. It wasn't a sad world weariness that drove Brady...it was...Sam didn't know what it was. Brady almost seemed high on his new found power to not follow the plans laid out for him, as if he was heady on his ability to step off the path.
Sam understood that a little. His departure to Stanford and out of the sheer dysfunction that drove his family had been a relief at first, like throwing off a fifty pound back pack.
The rain had picked up outside the window.
Sam poured himself some coffee.
Brady wandered into the kitchen in disarray. "What time is it?"
Sam looked at him. "I don't know. Noon?" He bit into a bagel he'd toasted.
"Noon? Why are you getting up at noon you lazy ass?" Brady quipped, heading for the coffee. "I mean I was up with a couple bimbos all night, but what is your excuse? Snuggling with a physics book?"
Some days he sounded just like Dean.
Sam shrugged. "Holidays make me unsettled."
Brady tipped his head. "That's right! It's Christmas Eve, isn't it?"
"Yeah," Sam said. "You should go home to your parents."
Brady looked at him and took a sip of coffee. "Yeah, that's taking a stand."
"You already took a stand. Go home. They love you. They'll forgive you." Sam shifted as he took a seat at the table and set his bagel down on the Corelle wear plate.
"What if I don't want forgiveness, Sam. What if I just don't want to be fucking suffocated with their plans for me?"
Sam closed his eyes and shrugged. "It's your life man."
Brady studied Sam. "Why don't you go home?"
"I can't. There's no home to go to."
"Well you're wandering around bleeding for your family like Little Orphan Annie. You might as well go."
Sam set his coffee spoon down. His brow wrinkled and he curled his lip up defensively. Why did Brady keep bringing up this fucking issue? "Since when has me and my family been such a big concern for you, huh? You're pushing and pushing." He felt affronted. He wasn't sure why. He guessed because Brady assumed that he had normal family dynamics to go home to...like his own. He should fucking know better by now.
Sam had never revealed the truth of what they did, but Brady damn well knew that Sam didn't come from the kind of past Brady and their friends did. Truth was, Sam was bothered by Brady's attempt to sever ties with his own family. They were good people, and though they may have pushed their son a little, they were pushing him to do his best. It had been with love.
There was some part of his consciousness that said in a small voice: Dad pushed out of love. Sam quashed it down without giving himself time to ponder it. He sensed that was a concept that would shake the very foundation he'd so painstakingly constructed. Push forward. Leave the past. It was the only way to get through it without wanting to die.
"I'm pushing you because you're pushing me."
"Because you HAVE a place to go back to, Brady."
"Maybe I don't want to go back there. Ever think of that."
"Why?" Sam's expressive brow furrowed. "You love your family."
"And you don't love yours?"
Sam felt that like a knife. His heart gave a painful little twist. "That's not fair." He said softly. "You know I do."
Sam picked up his half-eaten plate of bagel and headed to the sink, his appetite gone completely. He'd always been a little bit of a fussy eater. Not fussy per se, since he usually had to eat what was on hand. But he'd never consumed much of it for his height and he was put off his appetite fairly easily it seemed. When he'd been with Dean and Dad, it had been often that he'd wanted to turn his nose up at mac and cheese or KFC. During his youth, if it was merely him and his brother, he would refuse to eat and let Dean polish off whatever he had left. If Dad were around he usually forced himself to finish his plate out of fear of the repercussions if he wasted food because it wasn't always easy to come by. He knew that. Dad did what he could to make sure they were fed and clothed but it was hard on him. A thankless job with no monetary reward. Not the wisest way to raise children.
Sam dumped the plate in the sink.
Brady cocked an eyebrow. "Really? You're not finishing your breakfast now?"
Sam whirled around on him, actually pissed. "You know what Brady? Back the hell off."
Was this their first fight? Seemed to be heading down that path. If it were he and Dean there'd be fists involved shortly. He was surprised that he almost wanted to pound the crap out of his friend for taking a charmed life and pissing on it and then lighting it on fire.
Brady gave a little smirk and settled back at the table. "Or what, Sam? You're gonna punch me? You gonna storm off like you do anytime something gets tough?"
Sam's nose wrinkled. "How the hell do you know what I do when things get tough?"
"You're about to do it, aren't you?"
Truth be told, he was. And now Brady's accusation was forcing his hand and going to make him stick here where he didn't want to be.
"What the hell is going on with you man? You're like a different person lately." Sam wrinkled his nose and turned to look at him.
Brady sat smugly. So far from being rattled by their conflict that it took Sam aback.
Brady didn't like discord. He was a sweet, easy going guy. To be unaffected by it like he seemingly was at the moment was so out of character that Sam wasn't sure how to react.
At all.
"I told you, Sam. I had an epiphany. I'm not a door mat anymore. You should try it."
"That's bullcrap! You weren't a fucking doormat. You were a good person. You made good choices."
"I made a choice to be pushed around and taken advantage of. I made a choice to be eaten up by the system. I made a choice to worry all the time about everyone but me." Brady paused. He seemed like he was accessing some memory or something he'd stored up recently. "You remember Trainspotting?"
Sam paused. "The...movie?"
"Yeah. The movie." Brady replied with an eye roll.
"Well there was a book too. Irvine Welsh."
Brady waved the tidbit off. "Okay nerd. The speech. Choose a job, choose a career. Chose life. I chose not to choose life. I chose something else. Well, I'm choosing something else."
Sam squared up with Brady's recumbent figure, the indignant bafflement on his features obvious. "He chose fucking heroin, Brady!"
"Your point?"
"That's not a viable option!"
Brady didn't respond to his anger with his own. He shrugged his shoulders. "I just suddenly see through the bullshit we are all caught up in."
Sam snorted. "I can't believe I'm having this conversation with you."
"Something more than abject philosophical debates, you mean? Something REAL?"
Now that actually sounded a little more like Brady's usual level of intellect.
Sam was trying to figure out how deeply he wanted to wade into the water in this debate. Fuck it. Lay it all out on the table.
"You wanna be real? Let's get real. You had a great life. Yes you worked hard but you had opportunities given to you, Tyson. A lot of them. And you recognized that. I know you were stressed this semester..." Sam paused, could see Brady's worn features in his minds eye. "But... you were working toward something great. And that takes a toll and sacrifices sometimes. You knew that. You were gonna push through and then all the sudden you just burned the bridge."
"I didn't burn it." Brady said. "I napalmed that fucker."
"Yes! You did!" Sam ran a hand through his hair, his distress apparent. "Why?"
"Because if you leave a bridge there you're tempted to cross back over. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but It will always be in the back of your mind that you can go back. If you leave it burning, you can put out the fire. If you detonate it, you've chosen your new path and you're set on that for better or worse, Sam." Brady looked smooth, passionate, like he had his life together.
"You..." Sam was at a loss as to what to say. There was a certain fucked up logic to the whole thing. And he saw echoes of himself and his father in it. His dad napalmed their bridge the minute Sam chose Stanford. And so this was the path he was on for better or worse. No going back. No going back.
"The other path was a good path, Brady. With good things."
"This had good things on the path." He raised his eyebrow and smiled wickedly. "Trust me."
"Binge drinking and women and drugs are not good things. Those are things people use as as a stop gap when they are suffering. And don't pretend I haven't noticed."
Brady shook his head slowly. His cat eating the cream look still there. "I am not suffering. I am enjoying my life."
He looked so earnest Sam almost believed him.
"You're the one suffering." Brady replied.
"What?" Sam scoffed with a little disbelieving huff through his nose.
"You're the one out of place and struggling."
"I'm home here." Sam said.
"Sure you are." Brady nodded his head in the direction of Sam's room. "You're that old writing desk in the middle of a post-modern mansion."
That hurt again. Really hurt. Sam felt his eyes well reflexively before he channeled it into ire. "Why..." he turned around and put his hand on the cupboard, leaned on it for a minute, the turned back around. "Why the hell are you trying to make me feel lesser? When I first got here, you were the one who reached out to me. You were the one to include me. And now I'm just some...outcast, some scruffy..." he paused, at a loss for words.
"...Looking nerf herder?" Brady quipped and the humor was so Dean, Sam almost wanted to cry for that alone.
"Sam, I'm not trying to hurt you. I'm trying to show you I'm okay man. I'm right where I need to be."
"This is gonna spin out on you. It always does."
"Well that's life, huh?" Brady asked philosophically. "You think you got it all together and some bitch nail has to puncture your tire and send you into a spin out."
Sam took a breath. "Yeah."
There was a long pause. "Brady don't self destruct, okay. I don't wanna. I don't wanna watch it."
Brady nodded. Stood up and clapped Sam on the back. "Friends?" He asked.
"Yeah." Sam replied, looking at him.
In that moment Brady did seem so confident and smooth and together that it made Sam question his perception of reality. Maybe he was the one headed for the nail in the road.
