Seventeen bottles of beer on the wall
Summary: Sam's overwhelmingly normal twenty-first birthday isn't exactly how he'd imagined it would be.
It's My Party
Sam eyes the shot glass full of amber liquid with some trepidation.
It's not as if he's never had a drink before. Because he has, on numerous occasions. Or maybe not that many. But he's had his fair share, for a just-turned-twenty-one year-old anyway, and not all just for fun and giggles.
Like that time when he was seventeen. A werewolf had sneaked up on him and slashed him across the back. He doesn't remember much about what happened that night, just the excruciating, white-hot pain exploding across his spine, the loud bang of his brother's gun launching a bullet into the monster, the werewolf's angry snarl as the silver hit its chest. He remembers Dean's cool hands and steady voice near him, trying to calm him so Dad could stitch up the gushing wound.
Sam remembers too the fiery liquid Dad finally forced down his throat to knock him out (so he'd stop screaming and let him work), and Dean's knowing and apologetic look of sympathy on his worried face before the darkness took him over.
Dean.
The one constant in his life, until Sam decided he'd had enough of Dad and his crusade. The thought of Dad makes his blood boil, a Pavlovian response.
Sam throws his head back and dumps the contents of the shot glass down his throat like a seasoned alcoholic, much to the amazement and admiration of his friends.
Yeah, it's not the first drink Sam's ever had, but it's his first legal one.
His first first drink was with Dean. The night of his sixteenth birthday, after a pretty awesome Star Wars marathon and pizza dinner, Dean had suddenly stood up, pulled the keys to the Impala out of his pocket, and thrown them at Sam.
"Hey Sammy. Ya wanna go to a bar? You're driving."
Pretty sweet, huh? Well, aside from the "Sammy" part of it. And the killer hangover.
It feels wrong somehow that Dean isn't here to share a drink with him. The thought makes him glance at the cell phone that he's subconsciously pulled out of his pocket.
He flips it open…and snaps it closed again. No, he's not giving in to the sudden roiling wave of homesickness that has overcome him. Not tonight. It's his birthday, his twenty-first birthday. This should be a day of celebration, spent with his friends and fa-…spent with his friends.
Sam puts the phone back in his jacket and directs a smile that he hopes is natural at his aforementioned friends. They don't seem to have noticed his momentary lapse in jollity.
Except for Jessica. Always perceptive (kind of like Dean, his traitorous mind supplies), she shoots a worried glance at Sam from beside him. He shakes his head and broadens his smile. When she nods, still looking not quite satisfied, he puts his arm around her, reassuring her that he's really alright. She settles into his side with a contented sigh and nestles her head trustingly back against his shoulder.
Brady slaps him on the shoulder and invites him to a game of pool. "I'll go easy on you," he says.
Sam accepts with a hidden smirk. Yeah, more like he'll be the one going easy on him.
He's lining up his shot when he hears the muffled revving of a familiar engine somewhere outside the bar. He freezes, heart stuttering in his chest. Then he smiles and chuckles softly. No way. Just his overactive imagination that Dean always used to tease him about…right?