Christmas came and almost went and Sam wouldn't have acknowledged it, or remembered really, except for the fact that nothing was open and that included his jobs at the the local bookstore and the part time thing he had going on as a grunt for a local landscaping contractor. It was under the table and hourly. Not stable work by any means, but a good way to pick up fifty bucks here and there without having to pay taxes on it. Dad's warnings about leaving a paper trail still stuck in his head somehow, even though he damn well had a paper trail now that he was enrolled on full scholarship in an Ivy League Institution. Although the scholarship was on his father's social security number...to the best of his knowledge Sam didn't have a real one. He'd slipped through the system. He supposed he'd have to rectify that one day.
And if he followed his path to become a lawyer, well...he really would have to apply for a social security number and he'd be pretty damned easy to find.
Brady was home that night, coming in from wherever he'd been. "Hey Sam."
He tossed him a beer from the fridge. Sam caught it reflexively without looking up from his book on the couch.
"Hey," Sam said in greeting.
"Merry Christmas. That's my gift for you."
Sam snort laughed. "Thanks."
The little shitty lamp he had on the table flickered. Sam flicked it with his finger. "I think your gift should be new wiring."
"This apartment isn't that freaking old. How about a bulb that didn't come from the dollar store?"
"Yeah that'd help too," Sam admitted.
"Come on," Brady said, holding up a stack of casino cards. "Christmas Poker. What do you say?"
Sam laughed and shut his book. "What are we betting?"
"Who has to clean the bathroom the next 3 weeks."
Sam raised an eyebrow. "Wait...Someone cleans the bathroom?"
Brady leveled a finger at him in response. "Exactly!"
Sam followed Brady in to the kitchen, settled in on the wooden chair and took a sip of his beer as his friend shuffled.
"You know," Sam said conversationally, "those used to be used as tarot cards years ago. There's a whole occult symbolism behind them."
"Someday you have to tell me how you know all this weird shit." Brady replied.
Sam shrugged. "Just a hobby."
"Useless Occult Info 101. Yes, I know." Brady tossed a card randomly face up on the table. "Ten of Spades. There. What's that mean.?"
"You're supposed to set out three for a reading." Sam set down his beer.
Brady tossed two more. The Three of Spades and the Five of Clubs.
Sam raised an eyebrow and looked them over. "Well Spades correlate to Swords and Clubs are Wands..." he trailed off, "which... so yeah, this reading basically sucks." He fingered the three. "The tarot card for this is a heart pierced by three swords. Loneliness and separation from loved ones." Sam turned the ten around. "This one is a dead man stabbed in the back by ten swords."
Brady snorted. "Okay. Violent. You gonna be mass murdered?"
"It means a really hard hit. Betrayal by someone you love, feeling backstabbed or just a really bad time-destruction of hopes and dreams. And the Clubs there means struggle and competition."
Brady laughed. "Well good thing these things are full of shit."
"Yeah." Sam said. "Good thing because otherwise one of us is in for some heavy crap."
Brady shuffled the cards back in and eyed Sam carefully. "You don't actually believe in this shit do you?"
Sam felt the scrutiny from the blue eyes and shrugged, dropped his gaze to the cards as Brady dealt the hand.
"I don't discount stuff," he said slowly, as if choosing his words with care.
"I thought you were more scientific than that." The tone had a slight accusation to it.
"The two can coexist," Sam said glancing at his hand. It was a mess. No matching suits, no runs of numbers. A mishmash of useless cards. "Maybe."
"Yeah, about as easily as a woman can be both a virgin and a slut."
Sam looked up at the phrase and huffed. "All women were virgins once. Even the sluts."
Even Dean, he thought to himself wryly.
Brady sipped his beer again. "Speaking of virgins, when you gonna find a girlfriend?"
Sam smiled shyly, his dimples showing. "When I get time. I don't have time for a relationship right now."
"So when you graduate."
Sam shook his head. "Just play the game."
Several rounds of poker turned into them drunk and betting random things that held no value whatsoever. Like Sam's sneakers or a losing lotto ticket that Brady had in his pocket. Then poker devolved rather unexpectedly into a drunken, cutthroat game of Go Fish.
It was a good Christmas.
The best Sam could remember in a long while.
New Year's came and went quietly.
Well, not quietly in Brady's world.
He was out partying, Sam was certain. But Sam wasn't.
Sam's other friends were all back home with their families. At least work had been opened for part of the day, so he'd had something to set his mind on. He'd stayed out as long as he could before heading back to an empty apartment. He tossed his keys on the table and came in, cracked himself open a beer, and sat on the sofa with his feet propped on the coffee table.
He thought of Dean. Dean was like the refrain to a song that he couldn't get out of his head. One that popped in all loud with the chorus at each silent moment.
They hadn't really talked in so long now. So long, that despite the fact that Sam wasn't really mad at him anymore, there was an awkward distance between them that he didn't know how to breech. Or even if he should.
Maybe Dad and Dean were better off without him?
The last few years of his adolescence he'd been a constant source of friction for Dad...calling him out for every shitty behavior the boys had let slide throughout their childhood. Dad met the accusations with anger and indignance. Dean with annoyance that Sam couldn't just let it be.
Sam had called Dean "an enabler" at some point and Dean had called Sam an asshole. Maybe he was. Maybe they were better off with him away.
He had the briefly melodramatic thought that maybe everyone was better off without him. Maybe it wasn't them, maybe it was him. Something wrong with Sam Winchester. Something tainted and broken and awful.
Sam shook his head to clear it. No. He knew better than to follow that line of reasoning. Those thoughts led nowhere. Nowhere good at all. Still, sometimes he wished he had at least one person who understood him. That used to be Brady, but not anymore it seemed.
His text went off and Sam flipped the phone open. It was from Rebecca. Happy new years! We love you xoxo.
Sam smiled. Women he liked; he understood.
They communicated vastly different than men. The Language of Men, of course, had been the only language Sam had grown up with: Dad's taciturn moods, Dean's rough teasing, Bobby's hard bitten rebukes that spoke of love underneath.
But since escaping to Stanford, he'd found women just said things. They just said "I love you," instead of a rough slap on the back or a noogie that communicated the same thing.
They weren't afraid to confront issues and just talk about them.
There were hugs and words of encouragement and "I love yous...and xoxos." Despite what he'd said to Brady about not caring about being in a relationship...he really wanted to be in one. A month or two long hook up like he'd had here and there wasn't what he needed. He needed a girl who wanted to stick. Wanted to stick with Sam Winchester. One who understood his flaws and held him while his wounds bled.
He wondered if, at its core, that's what having a mom was like. Then he decided that that was way too Oedipal and dropped the line of thought.
Happy New Years! Miss you. Sam sent back.
He bit his lip and leaned back against the couch. He should find something to do. Boredom was his enemy. It made his analytic mind start whirling and remembering and picking apart all the trauma from his past. And that never led anywhere good.
He went for his usual method to keep his internal monsters at bay.
Sam got up, cracked open one of his law textbooks and started reading. He was doing that well past when the clock struck midnight.
Brady never came home.
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