Down the Road the Streetlight Glows (Crossover, PG)
Title: Down the Road the Streetlight Glows
Rating: PG
Category: Crossover (Gilmore Girls/Supernatural) oneshot
Word Count: 5773
Characters: Sam (as Dean Forester)/Rory, Dean Winchester, Lorelei Gilmore, John Winchester, the Foresters and assorted other Gilmore Girls characters
Spoilers: None for SPN. Season one and early season two for GG.
Summary: His name is the only thing that stays a lie. Everything else becomes a truth.
Warnings: None
Author’s Notes: Takes place pre-series SPN and season one for GG. Thank you to mcee who had a similar idea first but was kind enough to let me play with this on my own. Also thank you to equinox_blue for the beta and more. Any remaining mistakes are mine alone. Crossposted around.
Disclaimer: The following characters and situations are used without permission of the creators, owners, and further affiliates of the television shows, Supernatural and Gilmore Girls, to whom they rightly belong. I claim only what is mine, and I make no money off what is theirs.
- - - - -
He only has one bag to pack. One bag of belongings that he has carried with him from one motel to another, never seeing any shame in it until he places it next to the heaping boxes that aren’t his in the van. Sam shoves his hands, deep and searching, in his pockets and waits as Dad finishes his conversation with Randy. The Foresters’ daughter, Clara, is asleep in the van’s backseat; her face is smashed against the glass. It’s closing in on one in the morning, and Sam’s sure the little girl has never been awake past ten o’clock.
Dad comes around the back of the vehicle to Sam. “Look, Sammy,” he says, voice hushed in the empty Chicago street. The apartment buildings loom, tall and silent, around them. “I’m doing this to keep you safe.”
Sam nods, throat tight. He knows. They have spent hours discussing the situation. A pack of vampires is after Dad and Dean following the murder of the coven leader less than a week ago. It’s well known that vampires don’t stop the hunt until their prey is dead, and Dad can’t take the chance of Sam being caught in the crossfire.
Randy Forester, who bled alongside Dad in Vietnam and sat in the bed next to him in the foreign hospital, is moving from Chicago to a small town in Connecticut. His wife, Barbara, cooked casseroles and biscuits for John and the boys following Mary’s funeral. The Foresters’ move seems the perfect cover for Sam to begin a new life where the vampires will not find him.
“Just keep a low profile,” Dad tells Sam now. “Don’t try to be anything special. Even getting your photo in the paper for good grades could lead the vampires to you. You should be protected with a name change, but…They’re smart. They know what you look like.”
“I know,” Sam replies. “Just be average.”
Dad smiles and places his hands on Sam’s shoulders. His thumbs press in tightly beneath Sam’s collarbone. Strong with warning. Stronger still with worry. “The Foresters are good people. They’ll take care of you, all right? But-just remember what I’ve taught you, okay? Randy believes in what we do, but he doesn’t understand it. Can you do that? Remember everything? Protect them if something happens?”
Sam whispers a pinched, “Yes, sir,” before Dad hugs him and gives him a final pat on the shoulder.
Then Dean comes to him. This is the first time they will be separated for longer than a week. Sam isn’t sure what life will be like without Dean watching his back, offering advice, being the person he depends on. Without Dean being his constant brother.
“We’ll be back before you know it,” Dean says optimistically, but the night is not enough to hide the falseness of his brave smile. “Just think,” he continues, “you’ll get to live like a normal person for once.”
“But I don’t want that. I want to be with you and Dad. I’m not going to fit in. They’ll know I’m…I’m different.”
Dean starts to speak, perhaps to offer reassurances, but Dad calls out. They need to keep moving. Cannot linger much longer here.
Tightly, Dean hugs Sam. He is already shorter than his younger brother. “You’ll be fine,” Dean says. As he pulls away, he stops. “Wait, though…I feel like I should give you something for a going away present or some shit like that.”
“There’s really nothing I want,” Sam admits.
Dean nods with lips pressed tight, thinking. “I guess…maybe this…” Sam watches Dean pull one of his bracelets from his wrist. “Here, it’s not much, but…” His words stumble awkwardly as he presses the black band into Sam’s hand. “I’ll be coming back for that. We’ll take care of those bitches, no problem there, so you better not lose that, gottit?”
He turns away and begins to return to the Impala when Sam calls out, “Dean?”
Dean looks up as John starts the car. They stand, brothers parting in the sharp flood of light from the headlights. “Yeah?” Dean asks. The shadows across his face are dark and long.
“There is something I want. Something of yours.”
“Name it.”
“That’s it.”
It takes Dean a minute of furrowed brow and drawn face of confusion before he smiles. “Yeah,” he says, last words before he climbs into the Impala, “yeah, you can keep that as long as you need.”
Sam watches the Impala turn away and drive into the Chicago darkness. Randy appears from around the other side of the van to stand beside him.
“We should get going,” he tells Sam, softly and kindly. “We’ve got quite the drive ahead of us. Plus, I agree with John about staying on the move. At least ‘til you change your name and get away from being a Winchester.”
Sam waits a moment until he sees the Impala disappear completely before nodding. “All right,” he replies. With one final glance down the street, he climbs inside the van and shuts the door behind him.
- - - - -
Stars Hollow. A small town of pink-blossomed trees bending over narrow streets and white picket fences lining neatly tended lawns. Where everyone’s name is known to their neighbors and monsters do not exist even in novels. It is the life that Sam has only seen in the movies; he has never dared to dream it for himself.
After he has helped the Foresters move their boxes into the house, lift furniture up stairs and down hallways, and has hung his own clothes in a closet just for him, he asks if he can take a walk around town. Night is falling in soft shades of purple but Randy, curled on the couch next to his wife, only tells Sam to return in about an hour. Barbara asks him if he wants a coat and reminds him to be careful out there.
Sam walks the streets alone, an odd solitary figure where everyone seems to have a someone, and he tries not to notice the way people stare at him. If Dean were here, Sam thinks, he would laugh and make a comment about the people never seeing a fine looking Winchester before. But Dean is gone to the shadows where Sam-for the first time-cannot follow.
Sam finds himself beneath a gazebo amidst a cluster of trees. He collapses onto its white steps and runs his fingers through his hair. Resting his head against the railing, he gazes up to the stars. The knowledge that his family-his real family-is also under the same stretch of sky makes him dizzyingly lonely.
- - - - -
In the small office he fills out the paperwork the school secretary gives him. “What brought you to Stars Hollow?” she asks politely, making a copy of one of the forms. She has a family photo with a husband and a baby on her desk, and a spray of roses exclaim “Happy Anniversary!” next to her paperweight from Hawaii.
“My dad, he, uh, he got a new job,” Sam tells her. He scribbles an awkward signature on the bottom of a blue sheet of paper before handing it back to her. The buttons on the copier beep with each press of her finger, and the machine hums before spitting out the paper.
“New job, huh?” she comments, voice perky and warm. “How ‘bout that?” She straightens his forms, places them in a folder and asks, “So what does he do?”
“Car stereos. Selling them. He has his own store.” Sam stands, backpack strap sliding down to the crook of his elbow, and he feels foolish in these clothes that Barbara bought for him last week. They fit this life, but they do not fit him.
“Well, I’m sure you’ll make friends really quick here at Stars Hollow High,” the secretary says. “You seem like a very nice young man.”
“Thanks,” Sam replies, blushing. No one, in all his years, has ever referred to him as a “very nice young man.” He decides not to correct her with stories of how he’s slaughtered zombies beside his father or watched a chupacabra eat a dog alive while his brother crept close enough for the kill.
As he exits the office into the bustling hallway for his first day of school, the secretary calls out, “Have a good day, Dean.”
His response to turn and look at the sound of the name is automatic. He has been doing it his whole life because wherever Dean has gone so has Sam.
- - - - -
Her name is Lorelei, like her mother, but she is to be called Rory.
She talks fast, thinks even faster, and he doesn’t ask her to slow down. Being with her as they walk down the sidewalk, her books in his arms, is a rush. Even though he’s only started talking to her today, he feels like he already knows her; he has been watching her for a while.
He asks her how she likes Moby Dick, the book he’s seen her with this week, and he thinks about the long drives curled in the back of the Impala with Melville resting against his knees. But he doesn’t tell her what it was like to read with Dean driving at only fourteen and Dad sleeping in the passenger seat. Instead, he makes up stories about Chicago and admits that he’s searching for a job. She tells him about a Miss Patty who teaches dance and points out a bakery with round cakes.
After they part and he leaves with a flutter in his stomach, he thinks that this girl, this Rory Gilmore, is the first good thing about Stars Hollow he’s found so far.
- - - - -
Dean tries to call once a week if he can. Sam offers to call him, but Dean always tells him it’s too risky. Dean needs to make sure he and Dad are safe enough for time for a phone call.
Sam looks forward to the calls, hoping but never expecting. Each time the phone rings and Clara hands it to him saying, “It’s your brother,” Sam hurries up to his room. He trusts the Foresters, knows they understand, but still does not like them hearing him talk to Dean.
“So how’s life been?” Dean asks around a yawn.
“Got a job.”
“Oh?”
“Just at the supermarket here. It doesn’t pay much, but having that extra cash is nice, y’know. For whatever.”
Dean murmurs thoughtfully in agreement. “How’re the kids at school treating you?” He chuckles. “Anybody make any stupid ‘you’re so tall, freakboy,’ jokes yet? Those were always my favorite.”
Sam shrugs. He looks out his opened window to the tree where the leaves have a milky glow under warm streetlights. “The usual. Kids, I mean. Not jokes. Nobody really talks to me much. I did meet this girl-”
“A girl? Oh, do tell.”
“Not like that,” Sam replies quickly, stopping any perverted thoughts of Dean’s before they have a chance to continue. “She just showed me around town, and we’ve hung out a few times. It’s not like we’re dating or anything.”
“Have you kissed her?”
“No!” Sam exclaims.
“Why? Is she ugly?”
“No,” Sam huffs, thinking of Rory and her smile that makes his cheeks flush hot. “She’s pretty-”
“Then she’s too short,” Dean interrupts.
“Everybody’s short compared to me.”
“Good point.”
“Look. I just-I just don’t think it’d be right. She probably doesn’t even like me anyway…”
“But you like her.”
“I don’t think that’s any of your business.”
“Think about it though, Sammy, will ya?” There’s a pause, and Sam can hear springs squeaking. He pictures Dean reclining on the bed, shifting to get more comfortable as he talks. “She’ll be the first girl you don’t have to leave behind on a moment’s notice when Dad gets a bug up his ass to chase down a spirit across the country. Hell, when she asks you about your family, you can show her the Foresters. You don’t have to worry about ghosts and demons and shit. Think about it.”
“Dean…”
Dean sighs, sending static through the line. “Look, I…I, dammit, I just want you to be happy, okay? That’s all. And if this chick-”
“Rory,” Sam corrects.
“All right. If Rory makes you happy, then you should be with her.”
There is a pause as Sam considers Dean’s words before he starts laughing lowly. “You’re such a sap sometimes. You put on this big badass front, but really, you’re a sap.”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever, dickwad. Last time I try to help you out.”
Sam snickers before asking, “How much longer will you guys be?”
“Dunno. Just hang in there. We’ll get you soon enough. I promise we won’t forget about you all the way out there.”
“I miss you and Dad.”
“Yeah,” Dean replies, voice soft. “Yeah, we miss you too, Sammy.”
- - - - -
For her birthday, he makes her a bracelet from a medallion and strips of leather. When he ties it around her wrist, she gives him that smile that makes him grin giddily all the more. Only later with his pillow clutched stupidly to his chest while he thinks of her, will he laugh over the irony of yet another Dean giving yet another bracelet as a gift to a person he cared about.
- - - - -
Their kiss happens in Doose’s. He’s never kissed a girl before. Girls have kissed him, taken him by the hand when he’s been too shy or scared, but this is the first time he leans into her and kisses. It feels too right not to take the chance with her.
The cans of pop-soda in Connecticut-are still behind his back, aluminum bodies slipping in his sweating hands when he pulls away. His hair is falling in his eyes, and Rory looks up at him, wide-eyed and silent.
When she remains quiet, he begins to form worries. Did she not like it? He should have taken her someplace special instead of this. Did someone see them? It should have been planned. Never should have been this. What was he thinking?
But Rory bows her head and says, “Thank you,” before she hurries away.
He watches her leave with a box of cornstarch still held in her hands. His heart is a loud beat in his ears, and he’s caught between excitement and terror. When Taylor yells at him to get back to work, Sam’s so startled that he drops both cans of pop where they explode into fizzy messes on the store’s sleek tiles.
- - - - -
“I kissed her! In the grocery store with everybody around. I just-oh God, I really did.”
Dean snickers between smacking chews. He’s on a payphone in a diner, he said, with a basket of fries next to him. The jukebox is playing a country song. It’s clichéd and sad.
“Public kissing, huh?” Dean says. “Sam Winchester, you are turning out quite nicely. I think I’m finally rubbing off on you after all.”
Sam, still floating, can only join Dean in laughter.
- - - - -
He attends breakfast with Lorelei and Rory only after persistent urging from Rory. At Luke’s diner Sam sits with his hands pressed nervously between his legs and glances around fitfully. He has never met Luke before, but from the way that Lorelei talks, Luke is protective of Rory. Sam doesn’t want to create trouble.
Suddenly, Sam hears, “You must be the new guy in town.”
Sam turns around in his chair to look over his shoulder. A man wearing a blue baseball cap and button-down flannel shirt is holding two coffee mugs in one hand and a pot of steaming coffee in the other.
“Morning, Luke!” Lorelei says cheerfully. Luke gives her a quick glance before turning his attention back to Sam.
“You the new guy?” Luke repeats.
“Yeah. I mean, yes,” Sam replies. “That’d be me.”
“Where you from?”
“Chicago.”
“C’mon, Luke, coffee already!” Lorelei whines. “Interrogate him later. My needs are suffering.”
“We’re going to die! Wither away!” Rory pipes in.
“And then we’re going to look like that witch from the Wizard of Oz! ‘I’m melting’!” Lorelei grins at Luke. “Coffee. Any time now would be nice.”
Luke looks as if he’s going to argue with her, but he sets the two mugs on the table and pours coffee into them. Sam watches in shock at how fast Lorelei and Rory reach for their coffee. Even Dean on his worst mornings has never attacked his coffee like this.
Once Luke has taken their orders, he nods to Lorelei. “Can you come up to the counter? Gotta ask you something.”
“Oh really?” she muses, casting a sidelined glance at Rory, who smirks back at her mom. Lorelei pushes her chair out and follows Luke to the front of the store. “Don’t touch my food,” she warns Rory and Sam.
Eating his breakfast, Sam watches Luke talking to Lorelei. Luke keeps his voice low but sends pointed glares in Sam’s direction. Instantly, Sam knows Luke’s warning Lorelei about him.
“I don’t think Luke likes me much,” Sam whispers to Rory.
“Luke doesn’t like anybody.” She takes a sip of her coffee and frowns. “He probably doesn’t trust you because you’re new. It’s a small town thing.”
Sam glances back to Luke and Lorelei. “I hope he gets over it,” Sam admits. “I don’t like feeling like I’m on a most wanted list.”
“Don’t worry,” Rory reassures with a pat on his back, “Luke’ll warm up. He always does. Besides, you’re a trustworthy person. Luke will see that.”
Sam swallows. Trustworthy. He’s living with a family that is not his own, using his brother’s first name while pretending to be a person that doesn’t even exist. Of course, Sam thinks wryly, Luke will see how trustworthy he is.
- - - - -
Up in his bedroom, Barbara helps him get ready for Rory’s formal that night. Sam’s never been to a school dance before. He keeps glancing at himself in the mirror as Barbara fusses over him and Randy slouches in the doorway. The sound of Clara’s television program drifts up the stairs.
“Never done this before, have you?” Randy asks, taking a swig of his beer.
Sam shakes his head. “Never had the chance.”
“Well, you sure do clean up nice,” Barbara comments before giving him a playful pinch on the cheek. “Rory’s lucky to be with you.”
“I hope she agrees with that,” Sam replies. He sighs and stares in the mirror. For a moment, he doesn’t even recognize himself.
“How are you liking this?” Randy says. “This life, I mean. ‘Normalcy,’ as your dad calls it.”
Sam looks up at him. He still misses Dad and Dean but there are other people now. He likes being able to sleep in on the weekends when there is no target practice, and he is starting to feel safe without the presence of a shotgun in his closet. He doesn’t miss the constant hospital visits and late night drives across the country. “It’s growing on me,” he admits finally.
“Good,” Randy responds. “That’s good to hear.” He smiles widely. “Now you go and just have a good time.”
- - - - -
It’s been three weeks since Dean’s last call and Sam has borrowed Randy’s cell phone to go outside on a bridge overlooking a small pond. The sun is setting over the tops of trees, and the air is cool with autumn on its edges. Dean asks about Rory and the dance. He hopes for embarrassing photos of when Sam and Rory fell asleep in Miss Patty’s together, and he listens to Sam’s stories without interruption.
“How are the vampires?” Sam asks when he’s answered Dean’s questions.
“Killed two of them. We think there’re still six more of the bitches.”
“Six? Shit, man,” Sam hisses.
“You’re telling me. Dad’s pissed as hell. He thought we’d be done by now.”
“How is he?”
“Dad? Okay, I guess. Considering, y’know, everything. I’d let you talk to him, but he’s sleeping. First chance we’ve had to rest in a few days.” Dean sighs. “It’s been a rough week. You remember how it goes.”
“Yeah, I-” Sam stops when he hears the soft approach of footsteps behind him. “Something came up. Can I call you back?” He doesn’t wait for Dean’s response before hanging up and sliding the phone into his pocket. “Hello?” Sam calls, moving to the area where he heard the sounds. He instinctively reaches for a knife that would be stored in the top of his boot, but his tennis shoes now offer him only the soft cotton necks of his socks. Instead, he clenches his hands into tight fists. “Is there somebody there?”
“Yeah,” a voice answers back. “Who the hell are you anyway?” Luke, white plastic grocery bags in each hand, appears through the trees just as he finishes his question.
“What?”
“Overheard your conversation. Part of it anyway. Vampires?”
“It’s, uh, it’s for a school project. Novel we’re reading.” Sam’s words are surprisingly even and confident. Years of lying will expect nothing less. “I missed school the other day and was just catching up on some notes with one of my group members.”
Luke narrows his eyes, looks as if he’s going to say more, but grunts. “You should be at home,” he grumbles in a moody fashion that seems typical of him. He pushes past Sam to walk to the other side of the pond back to his restaurant. As Luke moves away, Sam sighs. He’ll have to be more careful. He can’t risk losing this life now.
- - - - -
He is invited over once for a movie. But one movie turns to two and two to three and soon, he never really leaves. Lorelei and Rory don’t cook, and they order all their food in cardboard boxes from stores around the town. They wipe their fingers with stiff paper napkins and eat ice cream from the container. Lorelei’s pepperonis become angry at the mushrooms. Rory’s mushrooms argue that they don’t have an attitude like the pepperoni claim. The Gilmores know the lines to all their favorite movies and laugh even though they already know the jokes.
They mock Donna Reed, and he thinks of his mother who died pinned to a ceiling. Thinks of how he would give anything just to have that life and its happiness. Knowing Rory and her mom’s disapproval of such a world, he doesn’t mean to admit out loud that coming home to dinner on the table and a smiling family would be nice. Lorelei and Rory turn on him with protests of feminism and oppression.
And he almost tells them. What it is like not to have a mother to squeeze up close to her children on the couch. How an older brother tries so hard to cook dinner night after night. That a dad never returns from work with a smile unless he’s drunk.
But days after Rory gives him that Donna Reed life just for a few precious moments, he’s back with them again. The movie’s black and white, food greasy and hot, and suddenly, it all seems so familiar he wonders why it took him so long to recognize it before.
- - - - -
He tells Rory he loves her.
She doesn’t say the same.
Dad’s hot temper climbs through him, and they break up. Back home, he regrets it all as soon as he closes the front door behind him, but it’s too late to take it back now. In the kitchen, dark and quiet, he calls Dean’s cell phone and prays for an answer. The line rings and rings as he twists the crinkled cord around his fingers. He hangs up angrily when he hears Dean’s voicemail greeting.
Sam collapses at the kitchen table. With his head in his hands, he bites his lip and tries to breathe. He thinks of how she felt pressed against him in that car beneath the sky and how she cried when he dropped her off at her house. Outside the window the crickets chirp and his heart races. He has no idea of what he’s done. He has just lost the first person he has ever loved outside his family.
- - - - -
Luke confronts him on the street by the diner once news of the breakup has traveled around the town. “Even before I heard your stupid conversation about goddamn vampires, I knew you were gonna be trouble,” he hisses, finger pointing accusingly. “Never should’ve trusted you with Rory.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Turn around bag boy.”
Sam gapes incredulously. “Are you serious?” he asks. Luke hasn’t been friendly to him following that night by the pond, but Sam finds it hard to believe that Luke’s going to stop him from going in the diner now.
When Sam tries to push past just to get some coffee for the morning, Luke grabs him and soon, they’re spinning clumsily on the sidewalk. Sam knows that he could throw Luke to the ground, break his wrist and smash his kneecap. But Luke is not the one who matters.
Besides, Sam knows that Dean Forester never spent the majority of his childhood practicing basic sparring maneuvers at sunrise with his older brother. So when Lorelei and Rory rush outside to pull Luke away, Sam only stares at his feet miserably before leaving.
- - - - -
Without Rory, Sam begins to question where he really belongs. Perhaps, he thinks as he mindlessly finishes his homework, he is not meant for this life after all. Maybe that was the reason she would not say the words back to him that night in the car. He can see the difference between a hunter and a civilian. She might not have recognized what she was seeing, but there might have been something in him anyway that she couldn’t understand. He wonders if he’ll ever be anything but a hunter of darkness.
Yet the idea of returning to that life is no longer easy. The guns and rock salt on the window ledges. Always in pain and never rested. Where the chance to die is so strong every day.
He stares at his paper until the numbers blur together; his head spins sickly. This, he realizes with a low heat in his gut, is the first time he’s ever wanted something other than to hunt for the rest of his life.
- - - - -
“How’re you doing?” It’s Dad this time, voice deep and scratchy. He sounds exhausted but doesn’t tell Sam that. Dad doesn’t admit to weaknesses.
“I’m all right.”
“You don’t sound ‘all right.’ Are the Foresters giving you trouble?” Dad asks.
“No, no. No, they’re fine. They’re great.”
“Then what’s wrong?”
Sam sighs. He has never been able to talk to Dad like he can Dean. Dad has never been able to read him like Dean can either. So Sam blows air into the phone and lies, “Just stressed. School stuff, I suppose. Stupid, really.”
Dad murmurs unintelligibly. “Don’t worry about that. You know it’s not really your life anyway.”
“Yeah.”
“You’ll be back to hunting soon enough and all of this will be behind you.”
After a long pause Sam replies, “Okay, Dad, okay.”
- - - - -
At Chilton he stands stupidly next to the truck as Rory leaves with Tristan who is carrying her books. Sam recoils, hurt even more that everyone can see him trying and see him failing. Embarrassment ignites her old rejection, and he turns away.
“Dean,” she says from behind him.
“What.”
“Stop.”
“Why,” he spits out, hand on the truck door, ready to leave for the last time. He can’t keep doing this. Somehow he’s got to get her out of his head. He’s not sure how but continuing to follow her in hopes of reconciliation is not helping.
There is a moment of silence before she blurts out, loud enough for all the people around to hear, “Because I love you, you idiot!”
Her words turn him back to her. His heart has leapt up into his throat, and for a moment, he thinks he imagined her words. But, then she smiles, wide and beautiful, and he knows the truth.
Rory and Sam surge into each other, and he has his hands in her hair, on her face and hips, pulling her tight and never letting go.
“Dean,” she whispers when he breaks away to breathe at last. Their foreheads bump together so close now.
He kisses her desperately, wanting to cry, wanting to love her and burst with being loved in return. Wanting more than anything to say, “Call me Sam. Tell me that you love-me-Sam.”
- - - - -
The town overflows with one thousand yellow daises. He finds the flowers an appropriate match to how he feels.
At a normal dinner with the Foresters where Randy and Barbara are passing the potatoes and Clara’s kicking Sam under the table mischievously, the doorbell rings. Setting his fork down on his plate, Sam says, “I’ll get it.” With thoughts of Rory waiting for him, he swings the door open happily. His smile falters.
Dean, shoulders hunched and eyes sunken, lifts his head.
“Hi Sammy.”
“What are you doing here?” Sam asks, trying to keep the irritation, the panic that Dean is here now, at bay. Dean’s presence signals the end.
“That’s a hell of a greeting,” Dean replies. “Could I come inside before somebody pulls a gun on me? People’ve been staring at me since I drove in. I feel like there’s a goddamn sign on my back or something.”
Sam steps back, allows Dean to enter and closes the door behind him. They stand, facing one another in the foyer. Dean’s in dark leather and muddy boots. Sam is wearing a striped polo shirt and new tennis shoes.
“I didn’t expect you so soon,” Sam remarks, choosing to look at the floor instead of his brother.
“Soon?” Dean snorts a dry laugh. “Do you have any idea how long it’s been?” He almost continues but stops as the Foresters emerge into the foyer. Randy glances from one brother to the next and Barbara brings a curled fist to her mouth.
Clara looks up at her mom and asks, “Who’s that?” Barbara shushes her and takes her back into the dining room.
“I’m sorry to intrude like this,” Dean says, all good natured charm to Randy who remains, “but I’ve got to take Sam away.”
“Why?” Sam snaps. He can’t leave. Not now with Rory back and life so perfect. He can’t imagine leaving Rory, knowing the pain that it would cause her. More than anything, the sheer thought of returning to hunting sickens him.
“Because the vampires are dead and Dad’s in the hospital,” Dean shoots back angrily. “He’s not far from here. They-the doctors-they don’t know how much longer he’s got. It doesn’t look good.” Before Sam can protest further, Dean nails the final blow, “He got hurt when the vampires learned you were here and began getting close. Okay? He got hurt trying to keep you safe.”
Silenced by Dean, Sam can only swallow thickly. He knows what he has to do, despite the agony he has to go through to get there. Clearing his throat, he tells Dean, “I need to pack.”
“Okay,” Dean says. “We’ll leave right after.”
“No. No, I have to tell her good-bye before we go. I need to give her that much.”
Dean doesn’t ask who “her” is and he doesn’t argue. He merely nods and says, “Let’s get started then.”
- - - - -
Sam stands on her doorstep, holding both her hands in his own, while Dean leans against the car and waits. The television’s on inside her house, and it’s one of her favorite movies that she’s missing just to talk to him. He remembers watching it with her when they snuggled under a fleece blanket with their sock clad feet bumping clumsily against each other.
“I need to leave,” he says, unable to meet her eyes.
“I don’t understand. I thought we were okay again. You can’t leave now. People don’t leave after they get back together like we did. It’s just not right. It’s breaking all the rules of dating. I don’t have the rulebook, but I’m sure this is going against a top commandment.”
He smiles faintly before whispering another pitiful apology, bending and kissing her. “I love you, Rory,” he whispers with a crack in his voice. “You have no idea how much. I’ll always love you.” When he pulls away, his cheeks are wet, but he does not know if they are her tears or his.
Weakly, he turns to return to the car when she cries out, “Dean!” The brothers both turn at the name; it is Sam who answers.
“Yeah?”
“Wait. Wait,” she calls and disappears inside the house. When she emerges, she’s holding a yellow daisy that she gives him. “Don’t call it a going away present because that means you’ll go away forever, so call it a ‘leaving for a short time with plans to return’ present. That doesn’t seem as permanent.” She looks up through watery eyes and squeezes his hand tightly, pressing the flower into his palm. “But you’ll be back, won’t you? You can’t stay away.”
“I don’t know,” he admits softly. “But if I ever need a good round cake, I’ll be sure to come back to Stars Hollow.” He tries to keep his words strong for her.
She throws her arms around his neck and kisses him. “You’ll always be my first,” she tells him, threading her fingers through his hair.
He doesn’t tell her that she’ll be his everything.
- - - - -
The town shrinks in the Impala’s rearview mirror, and Sam stares at the yellow flower in his hand. In the driver’s seat next to him, Dean squeezes his shoulder once, a gesture of reassurance without false platitudes of returning someday because they know they never will. It hasn’t even been five minutes, and Sam’s perfect life is already crumbling. It can never be rebuilt as perfectly as it was before.
Thank you, Sam thinks, looking down at the daisy and knowing what he should have told Rory before he left. Thank you for showing me your world. Thank you for loving me. Thank you for teaching me there was more in life besides monsters. Thank you for giving me hope for something better.
He places the flower in the sheath of Dean’s knife on the dashboard in front of him. When the bright yellow petals flutter before resting against the hilt, Dean glances at it and says nothing. Sam rests his head against the back of his seat to sleep and dream of a different future his family will never understand.
End
Rating: PG
Category: Crossover (Gilmore Girls/Supernatural) oneshot
Word Count: 5773
Characters: Sam (as Dean Forester)/Rory, Dean Winchester, Lorelei Gilmore, John Winchester, the Foresters and assorted other Gilmore Girls characters
Spoilers: None for SPN. Season one and early season two for GG.
Summary: His name is the only thing that stays a lie. Everything else becomes a truth.
Warnings: None
Author’s Notes: Takes place pre-series SPN and season one for GG. Thank you to mcee who had a similar idea first but was kind enough to let me play with this on my own. Also thank you to equinox_blue for the beta and more. Any remaining mistakes are mine alone. Crossposted around.
Disclaimer: The following characters and situations are used without permission of the creators, owners, and further affiliates of the television shows, Supernatural and Gilmore Girls, to whom they rightly belong. I claim only what is mine, and I make no money off what is theirs.
- - - - -
He only has one bag to pack. One bag of belongings that he has carried with him from one motel to another, never seeing any shame in it until he places it next to the heaping boxes that aren’t his in the van. Sam shoves his hands, deep and searching, in his pockets and waits as Dad finishes his conversation with Randy. The Foresters’ daughter, Clara, is asleep in the van’s backseat; her face is smashed against the glass. It’s closing in on one in the morning, and Sam’s sure the little girl has never been awake past ten o’clock.
Dad comes around the back of the vehicle to Sam. “Look, Sammy,” he says, voice hushed in the empty Chicago street. The apartment buildings loom, tall and silent, around them. “I’m doing this to keep you safe.”
Sam nods, throat tight. He knows. They have spent hours discussing the situation. A pack of vampires is after Dad and Dean following the murder of the coven leader less than a week ago. It’s well known that vampires don’t stop the hunt until their prey is dead, and Dad can’t take the chance of Sam being caught in the crossfire.
Randy Forester, who bled alongside Dad in Vietnam and sat in the bed next to him in the foreign hospital, is moving from Chicago to a small town in Connecticut. His wife, Barbara, cooked casseroles and biscuits for John and the boys following Mary’s funeral. The Foresters’ move seems the perfect cover for Sam to begin a new life where the vampires will not find him.
“Just keep a low profile,” Dad tells Sam now. “Don’t try to be anything special. Even getting your photo in the paper for good grades could lead the vampires to you. You should be protected with a name change, but…They’re smart. They know what you look like.”
“I know,” Sam replies. “Just be average.”
Dad smiles and places his hands on Sam’s shoulders. His thumbs press in tightly beneath Sam’s collarbone. Strong with warning. Stronger still with worry. “The Foresters are good people. They’ll take care of you, all right? But-just remember what I’ve taught you, okay? Randy believes in what we do, but he doesn’t understand it. Can you do that? Remember everything? Protect them if something happens?”
Sam whispers a pinched, “Yes, sir,” before Dad hugs him and gives him a final pat on the shoulder.
Then Dean comes to him. This is the first time they will be separated for longer than a week. Sam isn’t sure what life will be like without Dean watching his back, offering advice, being the person he depends on. Without Dean being his constant brother.
“We’ll be back before you know it,” Dean says optimistically, but the night is not enough to hide the falseness of his brave smile. “Just think,” he continues, “you’ll get to live like a normal person for once.”
“But I don’t want that. I want to be with you and Dad. I’m not going to fit in. They’ll know I’m…I’m different.”
Dean starts to speak, perhaps to offer reassurances, but Dad calls out. They need to keep moving. Cannot linger much longer here.
Tightly, Dean hugs Sam. He is already shorter than his younger brother. “You’ll be fine,” Dean says. As he pulls away, he stops. “Wait, though…I feel like I should give you something for a going away present or some shit like that.”
“There’s really nothing I want,” Sam admits.
Dean nods with lips pressed tight, thinking. “I guess…maybe this…” Sam watches Dean pull one of his bracelets from his wrist. “Here, it’s not much, but…” His words stumble awkwardly as he presses the black band into Sam’s hand. “I’ll be coming back for that. We’ll take care of those bitches, no problem there, so you better not lose that, gottit?”
He turns away and begins to return to the Impala when Sam calls out, “Dean?”
Dean looks up as John starts the car. They stand, brothers parting in the sharp flood of light from the headlights. “Yeah?” Dean asks. The shadows across his face are dark and long.
“There is something I want. Something of yours.”
“Name it.”
“That’s it.”
It takes Dean a minute of furrowed brow and drawn face of confusion before he smiles. “Yeah,” he says, last words before he climbs into the Impala, “yeah, you can keep that as long as you need.”
Sam watches the Impala turn away and drive into the Chicago darkness. Randy appears from around the other side of the van to stand beside him.
“We should get going,” he tells Sam, softly and kindly. “We’ve got quite the drive ahead of us. Plus, I agree with John about staying on the move. At least ‘til you change your name and get away from being a Winchester.”
Sam waits a moment until he sees the Impala disappear completely before nodding. “All right,” he replies. With one final glance down the street, he climbs inside the van and shuts the door behind him.
- - - - -
Stars Hollow. A small town of pink-blossomed trees bending over narrow streets and white picket fences lining neatly tended lawns. Where everyone’s name is known to their neighbors and monsters do not exist even in novels. It is the life that Sam has only seen in the movies; he has never dared to dream it for himself.
After he has helped the Foresters move their boxes into the house, lift furniture up stairs and down hallways, and has hung his own clothes in a closet just for him, he asks if he can take a walk around town. Night is falling in soft shades of purple but Randy, curled on the couch next to his wife, only tells Sam to return in about an hour. Barbara asks him if he wants a coat and reminds him to be careful out there.
Sam walks the streets alone, an odd solitary figure where everyone seems to have a someone, and he tries not to notice the way people stare at him. If Dean were here, Sam thinks, he would laugh and make a comment about the people never seeing a fine looking Winchester before. But Dean is gone to the shadows where Sam-for the first time-cannot follow.
Sam finds himself beneath a gazebo amidst a cluster of trees. He collapses onto its white steps and runs his fingers through his hair. Resting his head against the railing, he gazes up to the stars. The knowledge that his family-his real family-is also under the same stretch of sky makes him dizzyingly lonely.
- - - - -
In the small office he fills out the paperwork the school secretary gives him. “What brought you to Stars Hollow?” she asks politely, making a copy of one of the forms. She has a family photo with a husband and a baby on her desk, and a spray of roses exclaim “Happy Anniversary!” next to her paperweight from Hawaii.
“My dad, he, uh, he got a new job,” Sam tells her. He scribbles an awkward signature on the bottom of a blue sheet of paper before handing it back to her. The buttons on the copier beep with each press of her finger, and the machine hums before spitting out the paper.
“New job, huh?” she comments, voice perky and warm. “How ‘bout that?” She straightens his forms, places them in a folder and asks, “So what does he do?”
“Car stereos. Selling them. He has his own store.” Sam stands, backpack strap sliding down to the crook of his elbow, and he feels foolish in these clothes that Barbara bought for him last week. They fit this life, but they do not fit him.
“Well, I’m sure you’ll make friends really quick here at Stars Hollow High,” the secretary says. “You seem like a very nice young man.”
“Thanks,” Sam replies, blushing. No one, in all his years, has ever referred to him as a “very nice young man.” He decides not to correct her with stories of how he’s slaughtered zombies beside his father or watched a chupacabra eat a dog alive while his brother crept close enough for the kill.
As he exits the office into the bustling hallway for his first day of school, the secretary calls out, “Have a good day, Dean.”
His response to turn and look at the sound of the name is automatic. He has been doing it his whole life because wherever Dean has gone so has Sam.
- - - - -
Her name is Lorelei, like her mother, but she is to be called Rory.
She talks fast, thinks even faster, and he doesn’t ask her to slow down. Being with her as they walk down the sidewalk, her books in his arms, is a rush. Even though he’s only started talking to her today, he feels like he already knows her; he has been watching her for a while.
He asks her how she likes Moby Dick, the book he’s seen her with this week, and he thinks about the long drives curled in the back of the Impala with Melville resting against his knees. But he doesn’t tell her what it was like to read with Dean driving at only fourteen and Dad sleeping in the passenger seat. Instead, he makes up stories about Chicago and admits that he’s searching for a job. She tells him about a Miss Patty who teaches dance and points out a bakery with round cakes.
After they part and he leaves with a flutter in his stomach, he thinks that this girl, this Rory Gilmore, is the first good thing about Stars Hollow he’s found so far.
- - - - -
Dean tries to call once a week if he can. Sam offers to call him, but Dean always tells him it’s too risky. Dean needs to make sure he and Dad are safe enough for time for a phone call.
Sam looks forward to the calls, hoping but never expecting. Each time the phone rings and Clara hands it to him saying, “It’s your brother,” Sam hurries up to his room. He trusts the Foresters, knows they understand, but still does not like them hearing him talk to Dean.
“So how’s life been?” Dean asks around a yawn.
“Got a job.”
“Oh?”
“Just at the supermarket here. It doesn’t pay much, but having that extra cash is nice, y’know. For whatever.”
Dean murmurs thoughtfully in agreement. “How’re the kids at school treating you?” He chuckles. “Anybody make any stupid ‘you’re so tall, freakboy,’ jokes yet? Those were always my favorite.”
Sam shrugs. He looks out his opened window to the tree where the leaves have a milky glow under warm streetlights. “The usual. Kids, I mean. Not jokes. Nobody really talks to me much. I did meet this girl-”
“A girl? Oh, do tell.”
“Not like that,” Sam replies quickly, stopping any perverted thoughts of Dean’s before they have a chance to continue. “She just showed me around town, and we’ve hung out a few times. It’s not like we’re dating or anything.”
“Have you kissed her?”
“No!” Sam exclaims.
“Why? Is she ugly?”
“No,” Sam huffs, thinking of Rory and her smile that makes his cheeks flush hot. “She’s pretty-”
“Then she’s too short,” Dean interrupts.
“Everybody’s short compared to me.”
“Good point.”
“Look. I just-I just don’t think it’d be right. She probably doesn’t even like me anyway…”
“But you like her.”
“I don’t think that’s any of your business.”
“Think about it though, Sammy, will ya?” There’s a pause, and Sam can hear springs squeaking. He pictures Dean reclining on the bed, shifting to get more comfortable as he talks. “She’ll be the first girl you don’t have to leave behind on a moment’s notice when Dad gets a bug up his ass to chase down a spirit across the country. Hell, when she asks you about your family, you can show her the Foresters. You don’t have to worry about ghosts and demons and shit. Think about it.”
“Dean…”
Dean sighs, sending static through the line. “Look, I…I, dammit, I just want you to be happy, okay? That’s all. And if this chick-”
“Rory,” Sam corrects.
“All right. If Rory makes you happy, then you should be with her.”
There is a pause as Sam considers Dean’s words before he starts laughing lowly. “You’re such a sap sometimes. You put on this big badass front, but really, you’re a sap.”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever, dickwad. Last time I try to help you out.”
Sam snickers before asking, “How much longer will you guys be?”
“Dunno. Just hang in there. We’ll get you soon enough. I promise we won’t forget about you all the way out there.”
“I miss you and Dad.”
“Yeah,” Dean replies, voice soft. “Yeah, we miss you too, Sammy.”
- - - - -
For her birthday, he makes her a bracelet from a medallion and strips of leather. When he ties it around her wrist, she gives him that smile that makes him grin giddily all the more. Only later with his pillow clutched stupidly to his chest while he thinks of her, will he laugh over the irony of yet another Dean giving yet another bracelet as a gift to a person he cared about.
- - - - -
Their kiss happens in Doose’s. He’s never kissed a girl before. Girls have kissed him, taken him by the hand when he’s been too shy or scared, but this is the first time he leans into her and kisses. It feels too right not to take the chance with her.
The cans of pop-soda in Connecticut-are still behind his back, aluminum bodies slipping in his sweating hands when he pulls away. His hair is falling in his eyes, and Rory looks up at him, wide-eyed and silent.
When she remains quiet, he begins to form worries. Did she not like it? He should have taken her someplace special instead of this. Did someone see them? It should have been planned. Never should have been this. What was he thinking?
But Rory bows her head and says, “Thank you,” before she hurries away.
He watches her leave with a box of cornstarch still held in her hands. His heart is a loud beat in his ears, and he’s caught between excitement and terror. When Taylor yells at him to get back to work, Sam’s so startled that he drops both cans of pop where they explode into fizzy messes on the store’s sleek tiles.
- - - - -
“I kissed her! In the grocery store with everybody around. I just-oh God, I really did.”
Dean snickers between smacking chews. He’s on a payphone in a diner, he said, with a basket of fries next to him. The jukebox is playing a country song. It’s clichéd and sad.
“Public kissing, huh?” Dean says. “Sam Winchester, you are turning out quite nicely. I think I’m finally rubbing off on you after all.”
Sam, still floating, can only join Dean in laughter.
- - - - -
He attends breakfast with Lorelei and Rory only after persistent urging from Rory. At Luke’s diner Sam sits with his hands pressed nervously between his legs and glances around fitfully. He has never met Luke before, but from the way that Lorelei talks, Luke is protective of Rory. Sam doesn’t want to create trouble.
Suddenly, Sam hears, “You must be the new guy in town.”
Sam turns around in his chair to look over his shoulder. A man wearing a blue baseball cap and button-down flannel shirt is holding two coffee mugs in one hand and a pot of steaming coffee in the other.
“Morning, Luke!” Lorelei says cheerfully. Luke gives her a quick glance before turning his attention back to Sam.
“You the new guy?” Luke repeats.
“Yeah. I mean, yes,” Sam replies. “That’d be me.”
“Where you from?”
“Chicago.”
“C’mon, Luke, coffee already!” Lorelei whines. “Interrogate him later. My needs are suffering.”
“We’re going to die! Wither away!” Rory pipes in.
“And then we’re going to look like that witch from the Wizard of Oz! ‘I’m melting’!” Lorelei grins at Luke. “Coffee. Any time now would be nice.”
Luke looks as if he’s going to argue with her, but he sets the two mugs on the table and pours coffee into them. Sam watches in shock at how fast Lorelei and Rory reach for their coffee. Even Dean on his worst mornings has never attacked his coffee like this.
Once Luke has taken their orders, he nods to Lorelei. “Can you come up to the counter? Gotta ask you something.”
“Oh really?” she muses, casting a sidelined glance at Rory, who smirks back at her mom. Lorelei pushes her chair out and follows Luke to the front of the store. “Don’t touch my food,” she warns Rory and Sam.
Eating his breakfast, Sam watches Luke talking to Lorelei. Luke keeps his voice low but sends pointed glares in Sam’s direction. Instantly, Sam knows Luke’s warning Lorelei about him.
“I don’t think Luke likes me much,” Sam whispers to Rory.
“Luke doesn’t like anybody.” She takes a sip of her coffee and frowns. “He probably doesn’t trust you because you’re new. It’s a small town thing.”
Sam glances back to Luke and Lorelei. “I hope he gets over it,” Sam admits. “I don’t like feeling like I’m on a most wanted list.”
“Don’t worry,” Rory reassures with a pat on his back, “Luke’ll warm up. He always does. Besides, you’re a trustworthy person. Luke will see that.”
Sam swallows. Trustworthy. He’s living with a family that is not his own, using his brother’s first name while pretending to be a person that doesn’t even exist. Of course, Sam thinks wryly, Luke will see how trustworthy he is.
- - - - -
Up in his bedroom, Barbara helps him get ready for Rory’s formal that night. Sam’s never been to a school dance before. He keeps glancing at himself in the mirror as Barbara fusses over him and Randy slouches in the doorway. The sound of Clara’s television program drifts up the stairs.
“Never done this before, have you?” Randy asks, taking a swig of his beer.
Sam shakes his head. “Never had the chance.”
“Well, you sure do clean up nice,” Barbara comments before giving him a playful pinch on the cheek. “Rory’s lucky to be with you.”
“I hope she agrees with that,” Sam replies. He sighs and stares in the mirror. For a moment, he doesn’t even recognize himself.
“How are you liking this?” Randy says. “This life, I mean. ‘Normalcy,’ as your dad calls it.”
Sam looks up at him. He still misses Dad and Dean but there are other people now. He likes being able to sleep in on the weekends when there is no target practice, and he is starting to feel safe without the presence of a shotgun in his closet. He doesn’t miss the constant hospital visits and late night drives across the country. “It’s growing on me,” he admits finally.
“Good,” Randy responds. “That’s good to hear.” He smiles widely. “Now you go and just have a good time.”
- - - - -
It’s been three weeks since Dean’s last call and Sam has borrowed Randy’s cell phone to go outside on a bridge overlooking a small pond. The sun is setting over the tops of trees, and the air is cool with autumn on its edges. Dean asks about Rory and the dance. He hopes for embarrassing photos of when Sam and Rory fell asleep in Miss Patty’s together, and he listens to Sam’s stories without interruption.
“How are the vampires?” Sam asks when he’s answered Dean’s questions.
“Killed two of them. We think there’re still six more of the bitches.”
“Six? Shit, man,” Sam hisses.
“You’re telling me. Dad’s pissed as hell. He thought we’d be done by now.”
“How is he?”
“Dad? Okay, I guess. Considering, y’know, everything. I’d let you talk to him, but he’s sleeping. First chance we’ve had to rest in a few days.” Dean sighs. “It’s been a rough week. You remember how it goes.”
“Yeah, I-” Sam stops when he hears the soft approach of footsteps behind him. “Something came up. Can I call you back?” He doesn’t wait for Dean’s response before hanging up and sliding the phone into his pocket. “Hello?” Sam calls, moving to the area where he heard the sounds. He instinctively reaches for a knife that would be stored in the top of his boot, but his tennis shoes now offer him only the soft cotton necks of his socks. Instead, he clenches his hands into tight fists. “Is there somebody there?”
“Yeah,” a voice answers back. “Who the hell are you anyway?” Luke, white plastic grocery bags in each hand, appears through the trees just as he finishes his question.
“What?”
“Overheard your conversation. Part of it anyway. Vampires?”
“It’s, uh, it’s for a school project. Novel we’re reading.” Sam’s words are surprisingly even and confident. Years of lying will expect nothing less. “I missed school the other day and was just catching up on some notes with one of my group members.”
Luke narrows his eyes, looks as if he’s going to say more, but grunts. “You should be at home,” he grumbles in a moody fashion that seems typical of him. He pushes past Sam to walk to the other side of the pond back to his restaurant. As Luke moves away, Sam sighs. He’ll have to be more careful. He can’t risk losing this life now.
- - - - -
He is invited over once for a movie. But one movie turns to two and two to three and soon, he never really leaves. Lorelei and Rory don’t cook, and they order all their food in cardboard boxes from stores around the town. They wipe their fingers with stiff paper napkins and eat ice cream from the container. Lorelei’s pepperonis become angry at the mushrooms. Rory’s mushrooms argue that they don’t have an attitude like the pepperoni claim. The Gilmores know the lines to all their favorite movies and laugh even though they already know the jokes.
They mock Donna Reed, and he thinks of his mother who died pinned to a ceiling. Thinks of how he would give anything just to have that life and its happiness. Knowing Rory and her mom’s disapproval of such a world, he doesn’t mean to admit out loud that coming home to dinner on the table and a smiling family would be nice. Lorelei and Rory turn on him with protests of feminism and oppression.
And he almost tells them. What it is like not to have a mother to squeeze up close to her children on the couch. How an older brother tries so hard to cook dinner night after night. That a dad never returns from work with a smile unless he’s drunk.
But days after Rory gives him that Donna Reed life just for a few precious moments, he’s back with them again. The movie’s black and white, food greasy and hot, and suddenly, it all seems so familiar he wonders why it took him so long to recognize it before.
- - - - -
He tells Rory he loves her.
She doesn’t say the same.
Dad’s hot temper climbs through him, and they break up. Back home, he regrets it all as soon as he closes the front door behind him, but it’s too late to take it back now. In the kitchen, dark and quiet, he calls Dean’s cell phone and prays for an answer. The line rings and rings as he twists the crinkled cord around his fingers. He hangs up angrily when he hears Dean’s voicemail greeting.
Sam collapses at the kitchen table. With his head in his hands, he bites his lip and tries to breathe. He thinks of how she felt pressed against him in that car beneath the sky and how she cried when he dropped her off at her house. Outside the window the crickets chirp and his heart races. He has no idea of what he’s done. He has just lost the first person he has ever loved outside his family.
- - - - -
Luke confronts him on the street by the diner once news of the breakup has traveled around the town. “Even before I heard your stupid conversation about goddamn vampires, I knew you were gonna be trouble,” he hisses, finger pointing accusingly. “Never should’ve trusted you with Rory.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Turn around bag boy.”
Sam gapes incredulously. “Are you serious?” he asks. Luke hasn’t been friendly to him following that night by the pond, but Sam finds it hard to believe that Luke’s going to stop him from going in the diner now.
When Sam tries to push past just to get some coffee for the morning, Luke grabs him and soon, they’re spinning clumsily on the sidewalk. Sam knows that he could throw Luke to the ground, break his wrist and smash his kneecap. But Luke is not the one who matters.
Besides, Sam knows that Dean Forester never spent the majority of his childhood practicing basic sparring maneuvers at sunrise with his older brother. So when Lorelei and Rory rush outside to pull Luke away, Sam only stares at his feet miserably before leaving.
- - - - -
Without Rory, Sam begins to question where he really belongs. Perhaps, he thinks as he mindlessly finishes his homework, he is not meant for this life after all. Maybe that was the reason she would not say the words back to him that night in the car. He can see the difference between a hunter and a civilian. She might not have recognized what she was seeing, but there might have been something in him anyway that she couldn’t understand. He wonders if he’ll ever be anything but a hunter of darkness.
Yet the idea of returning to that life is no longer easy. The guns and rock salt on the window ledges. Always in pain and never rested. Where the chance to die is so strong every day.
He stares at his paper until the numbers blur together; his head spins sickly. This, he realizes with a low heat in his gut, is the first time he’s ever wanted something other than to hunt for the rest of his life.
- - - - -
“How’re you doing?” It’s Dad this time, voice deep and scratchy. He sounds exhausted but doesn’t tell Sam that. Dad doesn’t admit to weaknesses.
“I’m all right.”
“You don’t sound ‘all right.’ Are the Foresters giving you trouble?” Dad asks.
“No, no. No, they’re fine. They’re great.”
“Then what’s wrong?”
Sam sighs. He has never been able to talk to Dad like he can Dean. Dad has never been able to read him like Dean can either. So Sam blows air into the phone and lies, “Just stressed. School stuff, I suppose. Stupid, really.”
Dad murmurs unintelligibly. “Don’t worry about that. You know it’s not really your life anyway.”
“Yeah.”
“You’ll be back to hunting soon enough and all of this will be behind you.”
After a long pause Sam replies, “Okay, Dad, okay.”
- - - - -
At Chilton he stands stupidly next to the truck as Rory leaves with Tristan who is carrying her books. Sam recoils, hurt even more that everyone can see him trying and see him failing. Embarrassment ignites her old rejection, and he turns away.
“Dean,” she says from behind him.
“What.”
“Stop.”
“Why,” he spits out, hand on the truck door, ready to leave for the last time. He can’t keep doing this. Somehow he’s got to get her out of his head. He’s not sure how but continuing to follow her in hopes of reconciliation is not helping.
There is a moment of silence before she blurts out, loud enough for all the people around to hear, “Because I love you, you idiot!”
Her words turn him back to her. His heart has leapt up into his throat, and for a moment, he thinks he imagined her words. But, then she smiles, wide and beautiful, and he knows the truth.
Rory and Sam surge into each other, and he has his hands in her hair, on her face and hips, pulling her tight and never letting go.
“Dean,” she whispers when he breaks away to breathe at last. Their foreheads bump together so close now.
He kisses her desperately, wanting to cry, wanting to love her and burst with being loved in return. Wanting more than anything to say, “Call me Sam. Tell me that you love-me-Sam.”
- - - - -
The town overflows with one thousand yellow daises. He finds the flowers an appropriate match to how he feels.
At a normal dinner with the Foresters where Randy and Barbara are passing the potatoes and Clara’s kicking Sam under the table mischievously, the doorbell rings. Setting his fork down on his plate, Sam says, “I’ll get it.” With thoughts of Rory waiting for him, he swings the door open happily. His smile falters.
Dean, shoulders hunched and eyes sunken, lifts his head.
“Hi Sammy.”
“What are you doing here?” Sam asks, trying to keep the irritation, the panic that Dean is here now, at bay. Dean’s presence signals the end.
“That’s a hell of a greeting,” Dean replies. “Could I come inside before somebody pulls a gun on me? People’ve been staring at me since I drove in. I feel like there’s a goddamn sign on my back or something.”
Sam steps back, allows Dean to enter and closes the door behind him. They stand, facing one another in the foyer. Dean’s in dark leather and muddy boots. Sam is wearing a striped polo shirt and new tennis shoes.
“I didn’t expect you so soon,” Sam remarks, choosing to look at the floor instead of his brother.
“Soon?” Dean snorts a dry laugh. “Do you have any idea how long it’s been?” He almost continues but stops as the Foresters emerge into the foyer. Randy glances from one brother to the next and Barbara brings a curled fist to her mouth.
Clara looks up at her mom and asks, “Who’s that?” Barbara shushes her and takes her back into the dining room.
“I’m sorry to intrude like this,” Dean says, all good natured charm to Randy who remains, “but I’ve got to take Sam away.”
“Why?” Sam snaps. He can’t leave. Not now with Rory back and life so perfect. He can’t imagine leaving Rory, knowing the pain that it would cause her. More than anything, the sheer thought of returning to hunting sickens him.
“Because the vampires are dead and Dad’s in the hospital,” Dean shoots back angrily. “He’s not far from here. They-the doctors-they don’t know how much longer he’s got. It doesn’t look good.” Before Sam can protest further, Dean nails the final blow, “He got hurt when the vampires learned you were here and began getting close. Okay? He got hurt trying to keep you safe.”
Silenced by Dean, Sam can only swallow thickly. He knows what he has to do, despite the agony he has to go through to get there. Clearing his throat, he tells Dean, “I need to pack.”
“Okay,” Dean says. “We’ll leave right after.”
“No. No, I have to tell her good-bye before we go. I need to give her that much.”
Dean doesn’t ask who “her” is and he doesn’t argue. He merely nods and says, “Let’s get started then.”
- - - - -
Sam stands on her doorstep, holding both her hands in his own, while Dean leans against the car and waits. The television’s on inside her house, and it’s one of her favorite movies that she’s missing just to talk to him. He remembers watching it with her when they snuggled under a fleece blanket with their sock clad feet bumping clumsily against each other.
“I need to leave,” he says, unable to meet her eyes.
“I don’t understand. I thought we were okay again. You can’t leave now. People don’t leave after they get back together like we did. It’s just not right. It’s breaking all the rules of dating. I don’t have the rulebook, but I’m sure this is going against a top commandment.”
He smiles faintly before whispering another pitiful apology, bending and kissing her. “I love you, Rory,” he whispers with a crack in his voice. “You have no idea how much. I’ll always love you.” When he pulls away, his cheeks are wet, but he does not know if they are her tears or his.
Weakly, he turns to return to the car when she cries out, “Dean!” The brothers both turn at the name; it is Sam who answers.
“Yeah?”
“Wait. Wait,” she calls and disappears inside the house. When she emerges, she’s holding a yellow daisy that she gives him. “Don’t call it a going away present because that means you’ll go away forever, so call it a ‘leaving for a short time with plans to return’ present. That doesn’t seem as permanent.” She looks up through watery eyes and squeezes his hand tightly, pressing the flower into his palm. “But you’ll be back, won’t you? You can’t stay away.”
“I don’t know,” he admits softly. “But if I ever need a good round cake, I’ll be sure to come back to Stars Hollow.” He tries to keep his words strong for her.
She throws her arms around his neck and kisses him. “You’ll always be my first,” she tells him, threading her fingers through his hair.
He doesn’t tell her that she’ll be his everything.
- - - - -
The town shrinks in the Impala’s rearview mirror, and Sam stares at the yellow flower in his hand. In the driver’s seat next to him, Dean squeezes his shoulder once, a gesture of reassurance without false platitudes of returning someday because they know they never will. It hasn’t even been five minutes, and Sam’s perfect life is already crumbling. It can never be rebuilt as perfectly as it was before.
Thank you, Sam thinks, looking down at the daisy and knowing what he should have told Rory before he left. Thank you for showing me your world. Thank you for loving me. Thank you for teaching me there was more in life besides monsters. Thank you for giving me hope for something better.
He places the flower in the sheath of Dean’s knife on the dashboard in front of him. When the bright yellow petals flutter before resting against the hilt, Dean glances at it and says nothing. Sam rests his head against the back of his seat to sleep and dream of a different future his family will never understand.
End