fic: City Lights Lay Out Before Us (part one)
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The first thing Sam did when he got to San Jose was ditch his cell phone. It never got used for much other than John checking in about a hunt -Sam never collected phone numbers like Dean - and he hardly expected dear old dad to be ringing him up any time soon.
He bummed a ride to the nearest Radio Shack and bought the cheapest - but sturdiest, Sam had a tendency to drop things - phone they carried. When the man behind the counter asked him if he wanted any of the data on his old phone backed up onto the new model, Sam said no thanks. The only number he needed was stuck in his head like it had been burned there, and Sam could no more forget it than he could his own name.
He walked down the street to get a coffee while he waited for the bus to Palo Alto, and didn’t even notice until his name was called that he had ordered two. He left the medium extra-bold no-cream-or-sugar sitting on the counter and waited for the bus in the rain.
*****
The first two weeks were the worst. But it wasn’t any of the normal things that usually plagued freshman. Sam wasn’t homesick; he had no home to be sick for. It wasn’t having to adjust to a roommate either; Sam had applied for a single and besides, he had shared motel rooms smaller than this with Dean.
It was the silence of the prestigious California streets, the lazy pace with which everyone seemed to move, the lack of a hunt to keep him busy. There was an ache in Sam’s chest that had nothing to do with first day jitters and everything to do with missing Dean.
Those first two weeks before classes started Sam couldn’t stop seeing the world through Dean’s eyes. Dean would have thought that joke was hysterical. Dean would have hit on the girl in room 204 who walked down the hall in her bright pink towel. Dean would love the burger joint down the street.
He saw Dean everywhere he went, and it was starting to wear on him. But then classes started, and things got better.
*****
Sam knew he was smart, he'd to have been to get in to Stanford, but he studied as if his life depended on it anyways. He took the heaviest course load allowed, never once put down his pen in class, and by the end of the first month everyone knew the table in the back left corner of the library’s third floor belonged to Sam Winchester.
He took Intro to Philosophy and learned about existentialism and the Ubermensch. He took Freshman Lit. Read Hemmingway and Lee and Vonnegut. Debated the efficacy of Burgess’s aversion therapy.
He wondered what other parts of himself he would lose when he lost Dean.
He took Psychology 1000, and learned words like codependent and separation anxiety and hero worship and other, darker, things that he had already known but couldn’t make fit where they were supposed to.
Besides, it wasn’t like that.
When he wasn’t studying, he was training. Not like when they were kids in Bobby’s salvage yard learning how to spar between the bodies of rusted cars, but because he could.
He pushed his body further than he had on any hunt, wondering if an extra mile would harden his heart the same way it did the rest of him. He learned fighting techniques that he never had the time or the means to learn on the road. He grew a few more inches, got tan from the California sun, and didn’t look twice at the heads turning his way.
Sam spent enough nights staring at his ceiling that before long he knew the patterns in the stucco by heart. He bounced around between loneliness and anger and worry and sadness so fast it made him dizzy.
Dad was easy. Sam had never worshiped him the same way Dean did. It was easy to be nothing but angry at the man who never let him have a chance at a normal life. Dean was harder. Always had been. It was almost Halloween, and Sam had to own up to the fact that his plan wasn’t working.
The distance, the studying, the sunrise runs, none of it could get rid of how he felt when he thought of Dean, filling up and empting out all at once. Sam was hard pressed to find a memory that didn’t start and end with Dean. All of the thoughts that he shoved down during the day would come rushing back as soon as his head hit the pillow.
He wanted to talk to Dean. To hear his voice. To tell him about how he aced his psych paper - he figured it was because he had so much raw material to work with - and how he bet he could totally take Dean and actually win now. He was angry at Dean for letting him leave but, if he was honest with himself, Sam just plain missed him.
Just last week, he had been getting ready to cross the road cutting between campus and his dorm, when he heard the rumble of an old car engine. He could’ve sworn he heard Metallica seeping faintly from somewhere down the road. When the car passed, it was a bright red Chevelle.
He’d gone for a second run that day.
But no matter how much he missed his brother, Sam never called. He would pick up the phone and dial Dean’s number and just stare at those nine numbers that were as familiar to him as his own name but he would never press send. He moved out here to be normal, and if he couldn’t be normal the least he could do was pretend. Pretend that there wasn’t this thing inside him that called out for Dean, and only Dean.
On November 2, Sam woke up with a pit in his stomach.
When he was applying to schools, even when he was packing up to leave, he was thinking about all the firsts he would have. First room to himself. First time he didn’t have to be embarrassed for wanting to go to school. First time he could stay in one place for more than a few months. First time he could be on his own.
What he wasn’t thinking about were all the other firsts.
The first time he got sick and Dean wasn’t there to make him soup. The first time Zeppelin came on the radio and Dean wasn’t there singing along. The first anniversary away from Dad’s hollow and unconsciously accusing stare.
Sam ran an extra five miles that morning, ran until his lungs burned and muscles screamed, and tried not to think about the fact that it would be Dean’s first November 2nd alone too.
It didn’t work.
When he got back to the dorm he ran the hottest shower the pipes would allow, hoping that
maybe the scalding water would do the trick that the run couldn’t. But of course that didn’t work either.
He changed into a Stanford t-shirt and a pair of old, worn sweatpants, one of the few things he took with him when he left, and went off to sit in the quad. Sitting on the park bench watching the students mill about, Sam let his mind wander. The sight of a young family - mother, father, and two small children, maybe even two sons - had Sam reaching into his pocket and before he had a chance to change his mind he dialed the nine numbers that hadn’t left his thoughts all morning.
The phone rang and rang and rang and Sam was just about to put down the phone when he heard something that made his heart stop and race all at once.
“’Lo?”
The rough gravel in his voice meant Dean had been asleep, which also meant he had probably had a rough night since it was already ten in California and Dean never slept past seven unless he was in seriously bad shape. Sam could feel his heart threaten to beat out of his chest. He never thought Dean would pick up, was just hoping to hear his voicemail.
“Who is this?” Sam could practically hear Dean’s brain rifling through the possible options.
“If it’s Bobby or Pastor Jim or whoever, I told you. Not today.”
Sam had never felt the way about the anniversary that Dean and Dad did, but hearing the way Dean’s voice wavered when he acknowledged it made Sam’s throat clench.
“Look, uh, I don’t know how you got my number, and frankly I couldn’t give a shit. I ain’t got the money to buy whatever you’re sellin’, and I sure as hell don’t have the time to sit on the phone with someone about as talkative as a corpse. Call back when you got the balls to actually speak.”
Sam winced when the first drone of the dial tone played. He snapped the phone shut as the weight of it all plowed into him. He tried to tell himself that it was just the date and not the sound of his brother’s voice after so many weeks that had hot tears burning their way down his cheeks.
He tried to scrub away the image of Dean alone in some shady motel room. One bed with tussled sheets and a knife under the pillow, the other made so perfectly you know no one’s slept in it. Or maybe there was no other bed at all.
Sam was wondering if Dean felt as lonely in that room as Sam did in his when the phone rang, startling Sam halfway off the bench. After quickly wiping his eyes with the back of his hand, Sam slowly brought the phone to his ear and waited.
“S-Sammy?”
Sam’s breath hitched and a strangled sound slipped past his lips.
“God. Sam. Didn’t recognize the area code ‘till after I hung up and I thought there’s no way it’d be you but it is and shit it’s good to hear from you man.” Dean’s words came out in a rush; like he wasn’t sure he had enough time to get them out.
“But uh…did something happen? Cuz Dad took the car but I could call him or something. I don’t know how long it’d take for him to get back and we’re kinda waiting to hear about a case. But if you needed something…”
Sam’s head was reeling and Dean was talking too fast for him to pick up on everything and he really hadn’t planned for this. Years of practice at shutting up his brother’s ramblings kicked in, and he somehow managed to keep the shaking out of his voice.
“No, no man I’m fine. It’s nothing like that.”
“Oh.”
“ Yeah, I just uh, figured I’d call since it’s…”
“Right.”
The pit in Sam’s stomach deepened at Dean’s tone. Dean still hadn’t forgiven Sam for leaving, probably never would. He only called back because he thought Sam might need something, old habits dying hard and all, but clearly the idea that Sam just wanted to talk to his brother had never crossed his mind.
Suddenly, Sam felt the burning urge to get Dean off the phone as soon as possible. “Look, uh sorry I bothered you I’ll just uh, I won’t call again alright?”
“Wait, Samm-Sam,” Sam could hear Dean strain to cut off the nickname, and he couldn’t tell if
that made him want to laugh or cry. “You’re uh, you’re really okay?”
“‘M fine Dean, you’re off the hook. Don’t tell Dad I called.” Sam shut the phone so hard he thought he heard a spring pop.
He was breathing hard, a combination of shock and anger. Anger towards Dean for still hating him. Anger towards John for making Dean choose sides. But mostly, anger towards himself for calling in the first place.
Sam all but sprinted back to his dorm room, taking the stairs two at a time. It wasn’t even noon yet, but Sam dug out the bottle of whiskey he kept hidden in the back of his closet for ‘just such emergencies.’
He knew from watching his father and his brother that he wouldn’t find any answers at the bottom of the bottle, but as he took one swing, then another, he thought that maybe - just maybe - the burn in his throat would make him forget the other fire.
The one that lived somewhere between his chest and his stomach and was content to smolder quietly in the background but had sent flames sky high the moment Dean’s voice was in his ear.
onwards
The first thing Sam did when he got to San Jose was ditch his cell phone. It never got used for much other than John checking in about a hunt -Sam never collected phone numbers like Dean - and he hardly expected dear old dad to be ringing him up any time soon.
He bummed a ride to the nearest Radio Shack and bought the cheapest - but sturdiest, Sam had a tendency to drop things - phone they carried. When the man behind the counter asked him if he wanted any of the data on his old phone backed up onto the new model, Sam said no thanks. The only number he needed was stuck in his head like it had been burned there, and Sam could no more forget it than he could his own name.
He walked down the street to get a coffee while he waited for the bus to Palo Alto, and didn’t even notice until his name was called that he had ordered two. He left the medium extra-bold no-cream-or-sugar sitting on the counter and waited for the bus in the rain.
*****
The first two weeks were the worst. But it wasn’t any of the normal things that usually plagued freshman. Sam wasn’t homesick; he had no home to be sick for. It wasn’t having to adjust to a roommate either; Sam had applied for a single and besides, he had shared motel rooms smaller than this with Dean.
It was the silence of the prestigious California streets, the lazy pace with which everyone seemed to move, the lack of a hunt to keep him busy. There was an ache in Sam’s chest that had nothing to do with first day jitters and everything to do with missing Dean.
Those first two weeks before classes started Sam couldn’t stop seeing the world through Dean’s eyes. Dean would have thought that joke was hysterical. Dean would have hit on the girl in room 204 who walked down the hall in her bright pink towel. Dean would love the burger joint down the street.
He saw Dean everywhere he went, and it was starting to wear on him. But then classes started, and things got better.
*****
Sam knew he was smart, he'd to have been to get in to Stanford, but he studied as if his life depended on it anyways. He took the heaviest course load allowed, never once put down his pen in class, and by the end of the first month everyone knew the table in the back left corner of the library’s third floor belonged to Sam Winchester.
He took Intro to Philosophy and learned about existentialism and the Ubermensch. He took Freshman Lit. Read Hemmingway and Lee and Vonnegut. Debated the efficacy of Burgess’s aversion therapy.
He wondered what other parts of himself he would lose when he lost Dean.
He took Psychology 1000, and learned words like codependent and separation anxiety and hero worship and other, darker, things that he had already known but couldn’t make fit where they were supposed to.
Besides, it wasn’t like that.
When he wasn’t studying, he was training. Not like when they were kids in Bobby’s salvage yard learning how to spar between the bodies of rusted cars, but because he could.
He pushed his body further than he had on any hunt, wondering if an extra mile would harden his heart the same way it did the rest of him. He learned fighting techniques that he never had the time or the means to learn on the road. He grew a few more inches, got tan from the California sun, and didn’t look twice at the heads turning his way.
Sam spent enough nights staring at his ceiling that before long he knew the patterns in the stucco by heart. He bounced around between loneliness and anger and worry and sadness so fast it made him dizzy.
Dad was easy. Sam had never worshiped him the same way Dean did. It was easy to be nothing but angry at the man who never let him have a chance at a normal life. Dean was harder. Always had been. It was almost Halloween, and Sam had to own up to the fact that his plan wasn’t working.
The distance, the studying, the sunrise runs, none of it could get rid of how he felt when he thought of Dean, filling up and empting out all at once. Sam was hard pressed to find a memory that didn’t start and end with Dean. All of the thoughts that he shoved down during the day would come rushing back as soon as his head hit the pillow.
He wanted to talk to Dean. To hear his voice. To tell him about how he aced his psych paper - he figured it was because he had so much raw material to work with - and how he bet he could totally take Dean and actually win now. He was angry at Dean for letting him leave but, if he was honest with himself, Sam just plain missed him.
Just last week, he had been getting ready to cross the road cutting between campus and his dorm, when he heard the rumble of an old car engine. He could’ve sworn he heard Metallica seeping faintly from somewhere down the road. When the car passed, it was a bright red Chevelle.
He’d gone for a second run that day.
But no matter how much he missed his brother, Sam never called. He would pick up the phone and dial Dean’s number and just stare at those nine numbers that were as familiar to him as his own name but he would never press send. He moved out here to be normal, and if he couldn’t be normal the least he could do was pretend. Pretend that there wasn’t this thing inside him that called out for Dean, and only Dean.
On November 2, Sam woke up with a pit in his stomach.
When he was applying to schools, even when he was packing up to leave, he was thinking about all the firsts he would have. First room to himself. First time he didn’t have to be embarrassed for wanting to go to school. First time he could stay in one place for more than a few months. First time he could be on his own.
What he wasn’t thinking about were all the other firsts.
The first time he got sick and Dean wasn’t there to make him soup. The first time Zeppelin came on the radio and Dean wasn’t there singing along. The first anniversary away from Dad’s hollow and unconsciously accusing stare.
Sam ran an extra five miles that morning, ran until his lungs burned and muscles screamed, and tried not to think about the fact that it would be Dean’s first November 2nd alone too.
It didn’t work.
When he got back to the dorm he ran the hottest shower the pipes would allow, hoping that
maybe the scalding water would do the trick that the run couldn’t. But of course that didn’t work either.
He changed into a Stanford t-shirt and a pair of old, worn sweatpants, one of the few things he took with him when he left, and went off to sit in the quad. Sitting on the park bench watching the students mill about, Sam let his mind wander. The sight of a young family - mother, father, and two small children, maybe even two sons - had Sam reaching into his pocket and before he had a chance to change his mind he dialed the nine numbers that hadn’t left his thoughts all morning.
The phone rang and rang and rang and Sam was just about to put down the phone when he heard something that made his heart stop and race all at once.
“’Lo?”
The rough gravel in his voice meant Dean had been asleep, which also meant he had probably had a rough night since it was already ten in California and Dean never slept past seven unless he was in seriously bad shape. Sam could feel his heart threaten to beat out of his chest. He never thought Dean would pick up, was just hoping to hear his voicemail.
“Who is this?” Sam could practically hear Dean’s brain rifling through the possible options.
“If it’s Bobby or Pastor Jim or whoever, I told you. Not today.”
Sam had never felt the way about the anniversary that Dean and Dad did, but hearing the way Dean’s voice wavered when he acknowledged it made Sam’s throat clench.
“Look, uh, I don’t know how you got my number, and frankly I couldn’t give a shit. I ain’t got the money to buy whatever you’re sellin’, and I sure as hell don’t have the time to sit on the phone with someone about as talkative as a corpse. Call back when you got the balls to actually speak.”
Sam winced when the first drone of the dial tone played. He snapped the phone shut as the weight of it all plowed into him. He tried to tell himself that it was just the date and not the sound of his brother’s voice after so many weeks that had hot tears burning their way down his cheeks.
He tried to scrub away the image of Dean alone in some shady motel room. One bed with tussled sheets and a knife under the pillow, the other made so perfectly you know no one’s slept in it. Or maybe there was no other bed at all.
Sam was wondering if Dean felt as lonely in that room as Sam did in his when the phone rang, startling Sam halfway off the bench. After quickly wiping his eyes with the back of his hand, Sam slowly brought the phone to his ear and waited.
“S-Sammy?”
Sam’s breath hitched and a strangled sound slipped past his lips.
“God. Sam. Didn’t recognize the area code ‘till after I hung up and I thought there’s no way it’d be you but it is and shit it’s good to hear from you man.” Dean’s words came out in a rush; like he wasn’t sure he had enough time to get them out.
“But uh…did something happen? Cuz Dad took the car but I could call him or something. I don’t know how long it’d take for him to get back and we’re kinda waiting to hear about a case. But if you needed something…”
Sam’s head was reeling and Dean was talking too fast for him to pick up on everything and he really hadn’t planned for this. Years of practice at shutting up his brother’s ramblings kicked in, and he somehow managed to keep the shaking out of his voice.
“No, no man I’m fine. It’s nothing like that.”
“Oh.”
“ Yeah, I just uh, figured I’d call since it’s…”
“Right.”
The pit in Sam’s stomach deepened at Dean’s tone. Dean still hadn’t forgiven Sam for leaving, probably never would. He only called back because he thought Sam might need something, old habits dying hard and all, but clearly the idea that Sam just wanted to talk to his brother had never crossed his mind.
Suddenly, Sam felt the burning urge to get Dean off the phone as soon as possible. “Look, uh sorry I bothered you I’ll just uh, I won’t call again alright?”
“Wait, Samm-Sam,” Sam could hear Dean strain to cut off the nickname, and he couldn’t tell if
that made him want to laugh or cry. “You’re uh, you’re really okay?”
“‘M fine Dean, you’re off the hook. Don’t tell Dad I called.” Sam shut the phone so hard he thought he heard a spring pop.
He was breathing hard, a combination of shock and anger. Anger towards Dean for still hating him. Anger towards John for making Dean choose sides. But mostly, anger towards himself for calling in the first place.
Sam all but sprinted back to his dorm room, taking the stairs two at a time. It wasn’t even noon yet, but Sam dug out the bottle of whiskey he kept hidden in the back of his closet for ‘just such emergencies.’
He knew from watching his father and his brother that he wouldn’t find any answers at the bottom of the bottle, but as he took one swing, then another, he thought that maybe - just maybe - the burn in his throat would make him forget the other fire.
The one that lived somewhere between his chest and his stomach and was content to smolder quietly in the background but had sent flames sky high the moment Dean’s voice was in his ear.
onwards