Part Two
Dean always takes the bed nearest the window. Sam knows it's because Dean thinks he's a baby, that he needs to be protected, but he doesn't really mind. Sam's bed is always warmer that way, and he's been freezing ever since he lost his baby fat and his bones started to grow nearly too fast for his skin. Besides, he likes looking out the window and being able to see Dean at the same time.
He's decided he's going to let his stupid infatuation with Dean go. He doesn't know how--loves Dean so much it hurts him, sometimes--but he will. He'll just ignore it. He'll focus on something else. He'll ignore it until it withers away and dies and then he'll be OK again.
"I hate my job," Dean says, throwing himself across the room onto his bed.
"You love your job." Sam doesn't look up from the book he's studying. He's not going to look to see what Dean's wearing or if he's got a smear of grease on his cheek or whether or not he's wearing shoes.
"OK," Dean admits, "as far as civilian jobs go, mine doesn’t completely suck. But, my God, Sam, you would not believe the condition some of the cars I see are in. No regular oil changes, no regular tune-ups--I drained transmission fluid today that looked like three-week old coffee. With grounds. It should be illegal."
"It should," Sam says.
"Are you mocking me?"
Sam sighs and looks up from his book. No grease smears. Dean looks scrubbed clean even though he just got home. Sam's throat tightens and he looks back down quickly. "Not mocking," he says. "I just think people shouldn't be allowed to have something they can't take care of."
"Exactly. You're not so stupid after all."
Sam rolls his eyes.
"Dude," Dean says, his voice switching to a low whisper, "that girl Alicia was waiting outside the garage when I got off and--"
"No," Sam says sharply. "I don't want to hear one of your perverted stories, Dean."
"You say that like I tell them all the time." Dean crosses his arms over his chest.
Sam nods, "Yeah. That's 'cause you do."
"I imply," says Dean. "I make use of innuendo. That is not the same thing as giving you details."
Sam laughs. Dean tries to play the dumb high school dropout a lot of the time, but when he uses words like "innuendo" Sam's reminded of what an act it is. "So what makes you want to give me details now?"
"I didn't say details. Just, well, religious experience, Sammy. Seriously. I may never look at women in the same way."
"Did she have tentacles?" Sam asks, deadpan. "Are you into that? Because I'm not going to judge if you're into that."
"Smartass," Dean says, whipping a pillow at Sam's head. Sam catches it and whips it back.
The first thing Sam has to do, he thinks, is spend less time at home. Because when he's home all the time, he sees Dean all the time, and if he's going to let it go he has to keep his mind off it.
When Dean yawns and stretches and closes his eyes to nap after a full day's work and whatever life altering sex he'd just had, Sam flips a page in his notebook and gazes down at the blank page. He thinks for a moment, pen poised in his hand, then begins to write.
1. Outside activities
a. clubs
b. sports
c. job
He's already found out that the track team doesn't start practicing until March, and it's too late in the season to join the basketball team, but he might be able to find something.
There's nothing much to do in Snow Pass but snowmobile or hang out at the YMCA after school. There's no way Sam could ever afford a snowmobile of his own, but he does have the fifteen dollars it takes to register for the after school program. He goes with Aaron to play half-court basketball, noting the study lounge and the game room on the way.
The whole building smells like chlorine from the pool in the basement, and the hallways to the locker rooms are small and humid, stripes painted in mustard yellow and burnt orange and avocado green along the walls, turning into arrows that tell them where to go. The yellow stripe peels off early, says "Women" and points down another long hall. The orange stripe flips overhead, going across the ceiling and ending at the doors to the men's locker room. The green stripe continues to a short stairwell and a dark door that's always locked, the sign saying, "Pool."
Aaron tries to tell Sam that the pool is haunted, that the reason no one's allowed down there is because the ghost of a kid who drowned after cracking his head on the side. The place doesn't feel haunted, though, no flickering lights or sudden temperature changes, so Sam just shrugs it off and smiles when Aaron gets annoyed that Sam doesn't believe him.
Sam doesn't love basketball, not the way he loves track or soccer, but he's pretty good at it. He's the tallest sophomore, taller even than most of the juniors and seniors, and he's not easily intimidated. A guy on the other team is the kind of guy you can just look at and know he's a poor sport and a cheater. Sure enough, he throws elbows like they're going out of style, so Sam offers to guard him; he figures if the guy's going to be aggressive, he might as well be covered by somebody who won't back down or stoop to his level. Sam takes an elbow in the ribs and one in the back without even blinking, but he kind of wants to tell the asshole that he'll take him outside and show him how to spar if it's a contact sport he's interested in.
Aaron grins at the way Sam brushes the guy's aggressive guarding off, passes to him and whoops when Sam jumps and shoots a textbook perfect three pointer. On the way down, the guy gives Sam an elbow in the neck that hurts like a bitch.
"God damn it," Sam says, hand to his neck, even as the ref blows his whistle and the guy says, "It was an accident."
"The hell it was," Sam snaps. Another two inches over and the guy would have gotten him in the windpipe.
"It was an accident," they guy insists, throwing innocent eyes at the ref.
"That's it, Mark," says the ref in a weary voice. "You're gone."
"What?"
"Every damn week I tell you to keep your elbows to yourself and every damn week you play like you're looking to draw blood. You've had enough warnings. You're gone and you're not coming back."
"This is bullshit," the guy, Mark, snaps.
"Get off my court. You show up tomorrow and I'll throw you out again. Understand?"
"Fucking bullshit," Mark says again, but he stalks towards the locker rooms without much more of a fight, and nobody on either team seems sorry to lose him.
"You all right?" the ref asks, peeling Sam's hand away from his neck. "You breathing OK?"
"He just got me in the muscle," Sam says. "I'll be fine."
"Ice it down. There's packs on the shelf in my office."
Sam nods and follows the guy's outstretched arm to a door off the side of the courts. Just down a short hall there's an office on the left with the door open and the light on. Sam sticks his head in, sees the first aid gear on a shelf on the far wall, and grabs one of the chemical ice packs. He snaps the capsule, shakes it up, and places it against his neck, then looks around the ref's office.
He's obviously more than just a ref, since it says "Program Director" on his door and he's got a diploma on his wall from the University of Washington. Christopher James Watrous, the diploma says, awarded a Master of Public Administration.
"What's that mean?" Sam asks, tapping the diploma frame, not looking over his shoulder when the ref, Mr. Watrous, walks in.
"It means I'm underpaid, overworked, drowning in debt, but happy," Mr. Watrous tells him. "Let me see where he got you."
Sam pulls the ice pack away and tips his head to the side and then notices that, hey, Mr. Watrous is pretty built. He's got strong forearms with sparse brown hairs, thick biceps, broad shoulders. Sam winces a little bit when his cool, dry fingers prod the bruise, and it's kind of hard to swallow. He's never really been that attracted to another guy before, not any guy besides Dean, and he's not quite sure what to do about it. He decides just to ignore it and feels a little relieved when Mr. Watrous steps back and pronounces him bruised but otherwise all right.
"You're Sam, right?" he asks.
Sam presses the ice pack to his neck again and nods. "Yeah."
"I'm CJ. I'm sorry about Mark. He's not a bad kid, he's just got issues."
"Who doesn't?" Sam asks. He doesn't care what Mark's problem is, he'd just rather not take any more dirty hits from the guy.
He gets a couple free throws once he gets back onto the court and the rest of the game goes well. CJ gives him another icepack after the game and Cora coos over him when she comes to pick him and Aaron up, touching the spreading bruise with cool, delicate fingers.
When Sam gets home nobody else is there and he's hungry, so he gets dinner started, throws the pork chops Dean had bought the day before into a casserole dish, covers them with sliced potatoes and onions, seasons the whole thing with salt and lots of black pepper.
He sits at the kitchen table and does his homework, eats two apples and a cheese sandwich in the hour it takes for Dean to get home.
"Dude, making an honest living sucks balls," Dean calls out as he removes his boots by the front door. He wanders into the kitchen, stretching his arms above his head, and Sam pointedly doesn't look at where his Henley rides up exposing a sliver of skin. He's heading towards the fridge when he detours sharply and tips Sam's head up, exposing the bruise on his neck. "The hell happened?"
"I'm fine. I played basketball at the Y after school and one of the guys was all elbows."
"You kick his ass?"
Sam smiles wearily and shakes his head. "Is that always your answer to everything?"
"If you didn't kick his ass, I'll kick his ass. You can't let somebody get away with that."
"They ejected him from the game for it. Actually, I'm pretty sure they banned him from the Y. There are rules and consequences in most of life, Dean, apart from kicking ass and taking names."
Dean furrows his brow, like he's thinking about it. "Yeah. Well. Kicking ass is way more fun. You sure you're OK?"
Sam turns back to his trig homework. "I'm sure."
Dean opens the fridge, stares inside for a moment, then pulls back and turns towards the oven. He flips the oven light on and peers through the door. "What...did you...?"
"I've seen you make baked pork chops and potatoes a million times, Dean. I'm pretty sure I'll have the recipe memorized for the rest of my life."
"You don't have to cook, Sam. I know I'm home later than you're used to, but--"
"Seriously, Dean," Sam says, looking up at him. "Not a big deal. I'm fifteen. I can handle a gun. I don't think I'm going to burn myself on the stove."
"It's not..." Dean frowns and runs his fingers through his hair.
"Did you not want baked pork chops and potatoes for dinner tonight?"
"No, I did."
"So what's the problem?"
"You spend all day at school. You don't have to come home and cook."
"And you spend all day at work. How about from now on whoever gets home first starts dinner? It'll probably be you most days, anyway, since I went ahead and signed up for that afterschool thing at the Y."
Dean crosses his arms over his chest and looks annoyed but finally sighs and gives in. "Fine." He moves around the kitchen for a little while like he's not sure what to do if he's not taking care of Sam, then finally gives in and cracks a beer and leans over Sam's shoulder too close just to annoy him.
"Fifty seven," Dean says loudly right next to Sam's ear.
Sam's working on his Spanish homework, so he's pretty damn sure the answer isn't fifty seven. "Dean? Will you quit?"
Dean snatches Sam's worksheet off the table and skims over it, lets loose with a rapid string of purring Spanish that Sam only understands half of.
"I'm pretty sure there'd be a parent-teacher conference involved if I told my Spanish teacher to such my dick," Sam says, snatching the worksheet back. "Stop being such a jerk."
"You're a jerk," Dean says with a grin.
Sam sighs and grabs the beer from Dean's hand, takes a long swig, then hands it back. "Go watch TV or something."
"Sammy," Dean says, looking at the beer in his hand, then at Sam with a spark that might be pride. "I cannot believe you just did that."
"You're driving me to the brink of insanity. Go watch TV or look at porn or clean your guns and let me finish my homework."
"You're driving me to the brink of insanity," Dean mutters as he wanders away. His comebacks are never very good after he's had to spend an entire day doing actual work.
Sam shifts in his chair and tries to ignore the hardon he's got from Dean's proximity and the sound of his voice speaking Spanish and the way his breath had felt against Sam's ear. He definitely needs to crash in the study lounge before coming home, get as much as he can done without the distraction of Dean around.
That night he dreams about Dean kissing his neck, right where the bruise is, and whispering soft words of encouragement as Sam parts his lips and takes CJs cock into his mouth. He wakes up with a gasp, shoves his hand down into his briefs and comes with the first stroke, biting his lip hard to keep back a groan.
Back when Dean hit puberty, Sam had been horrified. "You're gross," he'd declared once Dean explained to him what sex was, that not only did Dean get close enough to girls to touch them, that he kissed them on purpose, and sometimes they took each other's clothes off. "Girls are gross and sex is gross and I'm never going to do it."
Dean had sighed and shaken his head. "You'll change your tune one day, Sam. One day, it's gonna be all you can think about. Trust me."
Sam had rolled his eyes and been completely disgusted. Now, though, he knows Dean was right. He thinks about sex all the time. Everything makes him think about sex--from cheerleading uniforms, to cars, to guns. He imagines what his French teacher's boobs must look like. He follows the long line of Kasie Harrington's leg from the heel of her shoe to the hem of her denim miniskirt and he's instantly aroused.
He thinks about what it must look like in the girls' locker room, bare legs and bellies, breasts curving up over the tops of bras. He doesn't look in his own locker room, doesn't let his gaze linger on bare shoulders and strong backs, asses and bulges and glimpses of bare hip and thigh where towels don't cover.
Pretty much any time he looks at a girl he wonders if she's done it, if she liked it, if she'd ever want to do it with him. He looks at guys and wonders what it would be like to kiss them, to feel their muscles against his own, to feel them hard against him. There's not a day he doesn't think about sex, not an hour, sometimes it feels like there's not even a minute when he's not thinking about it. If he hadn't seen Dean go through the same thing, he'd worry he'd been taken under the spell of a succubus.
Dean, though, had girlfriends when he was Sam's age, had probably slept with at least ten of them by the time he was sixteen. Sam doesn't have anybody, just himself, just his hand in the shower every morning and sometimes after school. Just his hand at night, silent beneath the sheets, biting his lip so Dean won't hear.
He's had sex ed. in three different school districts so even if he hadn't had Dean to tell him, he'd know it was normal to jerk off. He just doesn't know if it's normal to do it so much, if other guys sometimes have to do it four or five times a day.
He knows it's normal to be curious about guys, too. Dean hadn't ever mentioned it thank God, but it had been right there in his textbook in Jefferson Heights, that sometimes teenagers wondered about people of their same gender. He looks up bisexual in the dictionary hoping for something to go on, but it doesn't really shed any light on the subject, and only the first definition really pertains to him, anyway.
It had always been sort of academic before, Dean the only actual guy Sam had ever been interested in. He starts thinking about it more, though, starts considering guys he knows. Aaron's too short, which Sam thinks maybe makes him a jerk, but it's true; they wouldn't be able to make out without Sam getting a crick in his neck.
Most of the guys in his grade are too short, which isn't really fair since he hit his growth spurt early, but he thinks about it as he walks through the halls of his high school, learns to identify the things that attract him--muscles and stubble and pretty much half the guys who hang out in the end of the far hallway near the auto shop. The fact that Dean spent most of his time in auto shop isn't lost on him.
He's exhausted the Friday morning before some big game--he doesn't really keep track of Snow Pass basketball--and he's half grateful that he doesn't have to feign alertness through Spanish and half annoyed that he has to sit through another stupid pep rally at a high school he'll leave behind in a couple of months.
He leans his elbows on the empty bleacher behind him and watches all the pep and pomp sleepily. Cora's pretty, leading the cheerleading squad, but she's not his type. He wonders how anyone could think that Cora was the most beautiful girl in the school when Natalie Powell's sitting right there in the fourth row, dark hair falling around her shoulders, book hidden low to the side. She's a junior, but Sam's in her pre-calc class; math's the only thing he's managed to stay ahead in with all their moves.
He sits behind Natalie in pre-calc, sometimes can't concentrate when she's got her hair pulled up and he can see the soft, pale nape of her neck.
He cranes his neck to see if he can tell what she's reading. He can't see the title of the book but he likes that she's reading during a pep rally, anyway.
"She's a weirdo," Aaron whispers to him.
"What?"
"Natalie. You're always looking at her. She's weird."
"You're weird," Sam says.
"I mean it."
"She's interesting," Sam says, and Aaron rolls his eyes. He goes back to watching the pep rally, though, doesn't want to be stalkery and weird, staring at Natalie all the time. He thinks he doesn't really have a physical type, though he seems to have a strong preference for guys that look like men instead of boys. He thinks about all the girls he's had crushes on before and thinks that the only thing they have in common is not being stupid.
"You look like shit," Aaron tells him.
"I didn't really sleep last night," Sam says. "My brother snores like a freakin' grizzly."
It's mostly true. Dean does snore like a grizzly when he's drunk. Only it hadn't been snoring that had kept him awake, it had been his father's surprise five AM readiness drill. Sam's pretty sure that waking your kids up and making them jog five miles in the dark in the snow is probably illegal.
The cheerleaders start urging everyone to their feet and any other day Sam might enjoy being part of a group for once, but he's too tired. He stands when the people around him do, but instead of screaming out chants he yawns and wonders if he should take a nap after school and then finish his homework, or just finish his homework first and then go to bed early. He glances down towards Natalie and freezes mid-yawn when he realizes that she's looking back at him. She flashes him an amused smile, and Sam's stomach does a backflip that keeps him breathless for the rest of the day.
In the end, he doesn't nap or do his homework. Aaron nags at him until he agrees to come to the Y, where they're going to play dodgeball. Sam's amazing at dodgeball, loves diving for the ball, rolling up to his feet in one smooth motion, choosing his target and letting the ball fly in less than a second. He's not a bully about it, not like a lot of the other athletic guys he's known. He doesn't throw full strength at most people, just hard enough to graze them. When it's down to him and Aaron against three other guys, though, it turns to murder and Sam's laughing hard as he leaps and twists out of the way, grabs the ball like a ricochet and lets it fly back hard and fast, leaving red marks on thighs and shoulders.
After the third game of dodgeball, everybody decides they'd rather shoot hoops instead. Sam hits the showers and then crashes in the study room. Everybody else in the study lounge is laughing and talking and not studying at all, but Sam doesn't mind. He's had years to get used to focusing with chaos going on around him: practicing multiplication tables in the back seat of the Impala, only the light of the full moon and passing cars to read by; memorizing Latin verbs with Motorhead blaring in the next room.
It takes him a second to realize someone's talking to him. He looks up and it's CJ, the youth director.
"Sorry," Sam says. "I was in my own world there. What did you say?"
CJ smiles and leans against an empty study desk. "I just asked if it's your family that moved into the rental on Whistler."
"Uh, yeah," Sam says, surprised. "How'd you know?"
"Because we're neighbors."
"Really?"
"Yeah. I'm in the green bungalow to the east."
Sam nods. It's right on the other side of the fence, next to the garage. "I don't think I've ever seen you."
"I only noticed you this morning, piling out of that pickup at the crack of dawn." CJ smiles at him. "You know, that's the time most people leave the house, not get home."
Sam rolls his eyes. "Seriously. My dad was a Marine. He believes in things like five AM runs to keep us on our toes."
"Brutal," CJ says. "I grew up on Air Forces bases, so I know how bad that sucks."
"It's not like I enlisted," Sam says. "It's not like I'm actually a soldier. It's not like he's a soldier. He hasn't been a Marine for twenty years."
CJ shakes his head. "Once a Marine, always a Marine."
"I guess," Sam says. He fiddles with his pen, rolls it between his fingers.
"I'll let you get back to your homework," CJ tells him. "You seemed to be pretty into it before I distracted you. Just, if you ever need a break from the barracks, come on by."
"I couldn't," Sam says.
"Seriously. I've always got soda and frozen pizza, and even a hoop in the driveway once the ice melts."
Sam grins. "Yeah," he says. "Yeah, OK."
Cora shows up half an hour later to pick him and Aaron up. She's talking excitedly about the game as she drives Sam home but he's not really listening. He doesn't know most of the people she's talking about, and he suspects that she's talking more for herself than for him or Aaron. Sam's in the back seat of her white '93 Chevy Cavalier convertible. He has to kind of sit sideways in the tiny back seat to make room for his legs, but he doesn't mind. It's better than walking the twenty minutes home from school, anyway.
"So you're coming tonight, right?" she asks as she pulls into Sam's driveway.
"I don't know, I think I'll just crash," he says. He slaps Aaron on the back of the head to make him open the door and slide the seat forward enough for Sam to get out.
"Don't crash, loser," Aaron says, elbowing Sam in the ribs when he climbs out of the car. Sam presses on the back of the seat, crushing Aaron in the process, and laughs when Aaron's arms flail helplessly.
He lets go of the seat and steps back, out of Aaron's range. "I might be there, but don’t count on me, OK?"
Cora sighs and says, "OK." She looks towards the garage, which is empty. "You could, uh, bring your brother."
"Dean? At a high school basketball game? That's so not going to happen."
"Doesn't he have any school spirit?" Cora asks.
"He didn't have school spirit when he was in high school," Sam tells her. "He definitely doesn't have any now."
Cora frowns but doesn't say anything else and Aaron pulls the door closed. Sam waves at them as they back out of the driveway. He glances at the green bungalow to the left, then heads inside and drops his backpack by the front door, shrugs off his coat and heads into the kitchen. There's something in the crock pot that smells good. He lifts the lid and sniffs at the steam, sees it's roast with carrots and celery and onion and big chunks of potatoes, then puts the lid back on. He's hungry and the roast won't be done until Dean's home at least, so he makes himself a peanut butter sandwich and eats that and an apple and a whole bunch of celery dipped straight into the peanut butter jar.
He washes his hands and goes to grab his backpack, and his father's sitting in his chair in the living room, hunched over his journal. "Who was that girl that gave you a ride home?" he asks.
"Cora Hamilton."
"Hmmm," his father says. He flips a page in his journal and doesn't seem to have any further questions, so Sam takes his backpack into the kitchen and starts on his homework.
An hour and half later, Sam hears his father say, "Dean, come here," as soon as Dean gets in the front door. There's some hushed conversation and Sam catches the words ride home and girl. He rolls his eyes. Only his father would find something suspicious about him getting a ride home with a girl. He probably thinks she's a demon.
Dean groans and though Sam can't hear the words, he can tell from the tone that Dean's not happy.
They argue for a while in hushed voices. He hears Dean say that he just got of work, damnit, but then he sighs and Sam knows Dean's given in. Dean always gives in and does whatever their father wants him to.
They both walk past the kitchen and Dean stops. Their father keeps walking, goes into his room and shuts the door.
"I didn't sign up for this!" Dean shouts at his father's retreating form. He sighs, then, and rakes his fingers though his hair. He has a smudge of grease on his chin that Sam wants to rub away. "So," he says, turning to face Sam.
Sam feels nervous, suddenly, like the feeling he gets when something's watching him from the shadows. "So?" he asks.
Dean pulls out the kitchen chair on the other side of the table and straddles it. He leans his arms on the back of the chair. "I think we should talk about sex."
Sam swallows hard. "I...what?"
"Sex, Sammy. We should talk about it."
"I'm, um, I'm actually reading a biology textbook right now," Sam tells him. He gestures towards the book to prove his point. "Not to mention the fact that I've had Sex Ed. More than once. I know what sex is and we really don't have to talk about it."
Dean blows a puff of air out between his lips and nods. "Yeah. Look. It’s not like I'm chomping at the bit over this, either." He sighs. "I could just give you Dad's sex talk if you want. It's pretty simple."
Sam thinks he'd rather crawl beneath the table and die.
"Wear a condom," Dean says.
"Duh," says Sam.
"That's Dad's sex talk. The one I got, anyway. The one you get from him goes something like, 'Dean, I think you should talk to Sam about girls.'"
Sam winces and looks down at his textbook. He supposes it could be worse. He could have to talk about sex with his dad.
"So, condoms," says Dean. "You say 'duh' now, but when the time comes and she's willing and you're ready and there's no condom within five miles, you're going to be tempted to rethink that. You're going to think one time without a condom can't hurt but, seriously? AIDS, the clap, a kid, nobody wants any of that, Sammy. You hear me?"
Sam nods. He can feel the blood heating his cheeks.
"And there's nothing to be embarrassed about. Sex is a beautiful, natural thing, and that was a great talk." He gets up and spins he chair back around, rubs the back of his neck. "Man, I need a beer."
Sam stares down at his textbook trying to concentrate on mitochondrial DNA while Dean opens the fridge and pulls out a beer. He pops it open against the edge of the counter and drains half of it at once.
"So," says Dean. "You, uh...that was good, right? I mean protection's important and that's all...you know the details, right?"
Sam nods. He does. In theory.
"Do you have any questions for me?" He looks like the last thing he wants is for Sam to ask him something.
"Nope." Sam shakes his head. "No, I think we're good. Condoms. Gonna use 'em. Good talk."
"Great."
"Only, I'm never getting laid." Sam hates it when his mouth moves before he gives it permission to. It's almost worth it, though, to watch Dean struggle not to spew beer out his nose.
"OK," Dean says after a hard swallow. He coughs a couple times, thumps his chest. "Went down the wrong pipe, there."
"I'm serious, Dean. How many girls had you slept with by the time you were my age?"
"It's not quantity that matters, Sam--"
"As long as the quantity's greater than zero, you mean."
Dean sighs and sits down, rubs his hand over his hair. "Look. Don't stress about this, OK? It'll happen when it happens."
Sam huffs out an annoyed breath. He doesn't need platitudes.
"I didn't know you were that worried about it. Because if you are, I can arrange--"
"I'm not worried," Sam says. "I just..." He sighs. "It's all I can think about. I can't concentrate on school, I can't concentrating on basketball, I jerk off, like, six times a day--"
"Six?" Dean asks. He chuckles softly and looks impressed.
"It's not funny. It's...I don't know. Freakish."
Dean waves his hand dismissively. "Don't worry about it. Eventually things'll calm down, all right? You'll stop getting a hard on every time the wind blows the right way, I promise."
Sam groans and drops his face into his hands. He wishes he just would have kept his mouth shut.
"Every single guy your age is going through the same thing. I went through the same thing."
"You had girls to have sex with when you were going through it."
"Because I went out and got them. They're not just going to fall into your lap, OK? It takes an effort. Not much of an effort if you're lucky, and as good looking as I am--"
Sam looks up at him with a withering glare.
"You have to make the effort, Sam. Talk to some of those girls who giggle when you walk by. It's unnerving, I know, but the giggling's actually a good thing. Girls giggle when they talk about you, and they only talk about you if they notice you."
"Notice that I’m a freak."
"I've seen the way those girls look at you when I drop you off in the mornings. They don't think you're a freak."
"Really?"
"Really." And Dean doesn't seem to be lying, either. It floods Sam with relief. Dean never holds back when he thinks Sam's a freak, always takes every advantage to tease him about girls. If he honestly thinks Sam has a chance at having a girlfriend, though, then Sam believes him.
He considers asking Dean exactly how he's supposed to go out and get the girl, but he's had enough humiliation for the night and Dean seems to be glad to be finished with the whole conversation, anyway. Instead of asking he just goes back to his biology homework and tries to keep his mind of the idea of Natalie Powell maybe possibly liking him back.
"Dean," their father says from the hallway. He and Sam have been circling around each other since the fight in Indiana. Sam can't decide if he likes his father's distance or not.
Dean gets up and Sam finishes his homework and listens to their low, murmured voices. It's a calm back and forth with the undercurrent of energy that means they're planning a hunt. He considers getting up and asking what the hunt's about, but he's not sure he wants to know. He's not sure his father would tell him. He still treats Sam like a civilian most days, like he's too stupid to understand.
"Hey," Dean says later that night while Sam's getting ready for bed. "You gonna be OK on your own this weekend?"
"Sure," says Sam. Because he's fifteen years old and he knows how to salt windows and doors, knows how to put up protective sigils, knows how to handle a gun.
"OK. We're, uh, driving over to Olympia to see about a car tomorrow," Dean says. As far as lies go, it's one of his worst.
"Have fun," Sam says, a little annoyed that Dean thinks he has to lie to Sam to protect him but mostly relieved that he doesn't have to join them on the hunt. He doesn't ask where they're really going, what they're hunting. The details never make it better. He sifts through the papers on his father's desk after they leave, anyway, doesn't find much. Bigfoot lore, notations about werewolves that follow astrological patterns that have nothing to do with the moon, a spell to protect against creatures that want to eat your eyes, or maybe want to force-feed you eyes. Sam's Sumerian isn't good enough for him to be completely sure.
He gets into bed and cracks open his book, Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, which isn't for school but is turning out to be really freaking beautiful. Sam wonders what Dean would say if Sam told him he thought a book was beautiful. He'd probably tell Sam not to get paper cuts on his dick.
He reads for a while, then loses focus and fidgets for a while and finally gives the book up. The house seems too empty. He gets up and makes sure the wards are secure and all the salt lines are in place. He makes himself a sandwich. He eats half of it and decides he's not hungry. He refuses to worry about Dean or their dad.
He watches TV, but there's nothing on except a crafting show and a rerun of Family Matters. He wonders what the hunt is about, goes back to his Dad's room and feels like he's doing something wrong as he reads every piece of paper tacked up neatly on the wall, studies every photograph and drawing.
There's a spate of unexplained suicides in central Oregon. There are pages of copies from books describing vrykolakas. There are photographs of women and men who have gone missing near Sekiu. There's no way for Sam to tell where Dean and their father have gone, what they're hunting.
He thinks about jerking off, now that he's alone and can take his time, but he's not in the mood. He heads back to the family room to watch whatever stupid thing is on TV when he sees movement out the big front picture window. It's CJ, he can see that now, even though he's wrapped up in a big coat and hat and scarf. He's shoveling the sidewalk in front of Sam's house, and Sam hurries for his boots, pulls on his coat and hat and heads out the side door to grab the shovel from the garage.
"Need help?" he asks, and doesn't wait for a response before he starts working on clearing away the few gentle inches they'd received overnight.
"Hey," CJ says with a grin. "I was gonna hit down to the end of the block, then go snowshoeing. You in?"
"I don't know how to snowshoe ," Sam admits.
"Well, we can't have that. You have to run laps at five in the morning but you don't know how to snowshoe? Sounds like that Marine father of yours is getting sloppy."
Sam laughs and they clear the rest of the sidewalk in less than ten minutes.
When Sam thinks of snowshoes, he thinks of large ovals strung like tennis rackets. Instead, CJ hands him a pair of powder-coated aluminum and a steel snowshoes that look like something out of a spy novel. They snap on easily over his boots and after five minutes instruction in CJ's back yard, they're off towards the mountains. It's a little awkward at first, widening his stance enough to keep from knocking them together, but once he gets the hang of it he can walk and run just like it's nothing, just like he'd always been doing it.
"You feel like you can go four miles there and back?" CJ asks him.
"Easy," says Sam.
"Cool. I'll take you on my favorite trail. It's awesome."
They head past the tree line and into the forest, mostly narrow spruce with some hemlock pine. It's so quiet and so beautiful, Sam forgets that's he's worried about Dean and just focuses on the world around him, snow covered and silent, no sound except bird song and their feet in the snow.
After a few miles, Sam can hear water, and they end up parallel to a small stream, half iced over, still gurgling over rocks beneath patches of ice and snow.
"I was born in Texas," CJ tells him, "but we moved before I was a year old. I've lived on bases in seventeen states, plus stints in Italy and Korea, never knowing how long we'd be there or where we'd go next."
"It's just, like, pack up, son, we're moving on," Sam says, shaking his head.
"Exactly. Chin up. Good little soldier. We ended up at McChord when I was sixteen, that's near Tacoma, and I decided I didn't want to move anymore."
"Just like that?" Sam asks.
"No. There was a lot of fighting. My mom was pretty freaked out when I told her I wanted to move out on my own. But I did it, graduated early, paid my way through college."
"You didn't miss them?" Sam asks. He can't imagine a life without Dean, without their dad.
"Of course I did. But it was time for me to move on, to be on my own. I still miss them sometimes, but it's not like we never see each other. It's a lot easier to get along with your father when you don't have to live with him."
Sam thinks about that for a moment. "You don't know my dad," he says. "I don't think we'll ever get along."
"You'd be surprised."
"Seriously. I'm never going to be like Dean, and that's all he wants. Another Dean, another good soldier who's willing to follow orders and," he pauses. "I don't mean that Dean doesn’t have a mind of his own, because he does. It's just...I don't know. They get along. They're nothing alike and they get along and I don't understand."
"Tell me about Dean."
Sam shrugs. "I don't...he's just Dean. Our mom died when I was a baby. I don't remember her. But ever since then, Dean's taken care of me. He gets me. I mean, yeah, he makes fun of me for liking school and getting good grades and not sleeping with every slutty girl I meet, but he doesn't mean it, not really. He gets that I'm different and he doesn't try to punish me for it. My dad, though, it's like he keeps trying to slam me into this mold and I just won't fit and he won't stop trying to force me into it, getting pissed at me every time he realizes I'm not the right shape. Dean lets me be myself. Mostly. He probably wouldn't talk to me for a week if he knew I was telling you all of this."
"Why's that?"
"Because if there's a problem, we keep it in the family. We don't let anyone else in. It's like me and Dean and our dad, that's the entire world, and it's..." Sam sighs.
"Suffocating," CJ says
Sam nods. He was going to say "safe," but it's suffocating, too.
The last half mile is steeper than the previous parts, so they don't talk much, CJ just gives him tips on how to climb in snowshoes and suddenly they're over a rise and Sam's gazing down into an untouched, pristine basin, perfectly smooth lake filling its center. It's frozen over on the far side, the ice becoming thinner and then nonexistent towards the near shore.
"I love this place," CJ says. "You should see it after the snow melt, asters and bluebells everywhere, it smells, God, it's like heaven."
It is a little bit. They hike down around the lake's edge, stop for a while and eat the protein bars CJ kept in the inside pocket of his coat. On the hike back, they're halfway there when a snowball hits Sam on the shoulder. He turns and sees CJ grinning at him, whoops with laughter as he gathers up snow and shows CJ what a real snowball assault feels like, from somebody who's actually been trained in offensive combat.
"I say we bake up, like, three pizzas and see if there's a game on," CJ says when they get to his backyard.
"I have homework," Sam says.
"And I have paperwork. Bring it over."
Sam grins at him and nods, "Yeah, OK." He eats an entire pepperoni pizza by himself and finishes off nearly a liter of soda. He tries to convince CJ that he's old enough for a beer, but CJ just raises an eyebrow and hands him another Coke.
He spends Sunday at CJ's, too, reading his book and not thinking about where Dean is or if he's all right.
Monday he walks to school and calls Dean's cell phone, says, "Where the hell are you, you idiot? I have to walk in the freezing cold because you haven't gotten your ass home. Next time, I'll drive the Impala by myself, swear to God." He doesn't ask Dean if he's alright.
He goes to the Y after school, lets Cora drive him home, and when he sees his dad's truck in the driveway he doesn't let anyone else see how relieved he is. His dad's in his room going through research and Dean's stretched out on the couch, ice pack on his shoulder, battered but alive and Sam thinks that, really, sometimes that's all that matters.
Part Three
He's decided he's going to let his stupid infatuation with Dean go. He doesn't know how--loves Dean so much it hurts him, sometimes--but he will. He'll just ignore it. He'll focus on something else. He'll ignore it until it withers away and dies and then he'll be OK again.
"I hate my job," Dean says, throwing himself across the room onto his bed.
"You love your job." Sam doesn't look up from the book he's studying. He's not going to look to see what Dean's wearing or if he's got a smear of grease on his cheek or whether or not he's wearing shoes.
"OK," Dean admits, "as far as civilian jobs go, mine doesn’t completely suck. But, my God, Sam, you would not believe the condition some of the cars I see are in. No regular oil changes, no regular tune-ups--I drained transmission fluid today that looked like three-week old coffee. With grounds. It should be illegal."
"It should," Sam says.
"Are you mocking me?"
Sam sighs and looks up from his book. No grease smears. Dean looks scrubbed clean even though he just got home. Sam's throat tightens and he looks back down quickly. "Not mocking," he says. "I just think people shouldn't be allowed to have something they can't take care of."
"Exactly. You're not so stupid after all."
Sam rolls his eyes.
"Dude," Dean says, his voice switching to a low whisper, "that girl Alicia was waiting outside the garage when I got off and--"
"No," Sam says sharply. "I don't want to hear one of your perverted stories, Dean."
"You say that like I tell them all the time." Dean crosses his arms over his chest.
Sam nods, "Yeah. That's 'cause you do."
"I imply," says Dean. "I make use of innuendo. That is not the same thing as giving you details."
Sam laughs. Dean tries to play the dumb high school dropout a lot of the time, but when he uses words like "innuendo" Sam's reminded of what an act it is. "So what makes you want to give me details now?"
"I didn't say details. Just, well, religious experience, Sammy. Seriously. I may never look at women in the same way."
"Did she have tentacles?" Sam asks, deadpan. "Are you into that? Because I'm not going to judge if you're into that."
"Smartass," Dean says, whipping a pillow at Sam's head. Sam catches it and whips it back.
The first thing Sam has to do, he thinks, is spend less time at home. Because when he's home all the time, he sees Dean all the time, and if he's going to let it go he has to keep his mind off it.
When Dean yawns and stretches and closes his eyes to nap after a full day's work and whatever life altering sex he'd just had, Sam flips a page in his notebook and gazes down at the blank page. He thinks for a moment, pen poised in his hand, then begins to write.
1. Outside activities
a. clubs
b. sports
c. job
He's already found out that the track team doesn't start practicing until March, and it's too late in the season to join the basketball team, but he might be able to find something.
There's nothing much to do in Snow Pass but snowmobile or hang out at the YMCA after school. There's no way Sam could ever afford a snowmobile of his own, but he does have the fifteen dollars it takes to register for the after school program. He goes with Aaron to play half-court basketball, noting the study lounge and the game room on the way.
The whole building smells like chlorine from the pool in the basement, and the hallways to the locker rooms are small and humid, stripes painted in mustard yellow and burnt orange and avocado green along the walls, turning into arrows that tell them where to go. The yellow stripe peels off early, says "Women" and points down another long hall. The orange stripe flips overhead, going across the ceiling and ending at the doors to the men's locker room. The green stripe continues to a short stairwell and a dark door that's always locked, the sign saying, "Pool."
Aaron tries to tell Sam that the pool is haunted, that the reason no one's allowed down there is because the ghost of a kid who drowned after cracking his head on the side. The place doesn't feel haunted, though, no flickering lights or sudden temperature changes, so Sam just shrugs it off and smiles when Aaron gets annoyed that Sam doesn't believe him.
Sam doesn't love basketball, not the way he loves track or soccer, but he's pretty good at it. He's the tallest sophomore, taller even than most of the juniors and seniors, and he's not easily intimidated. A guy on the other team is the kind of guy you can just look at and know he's a poor sport and a cheater. Sure enough, he throws elbows like they're going out of style, so Sam offers to guard him; he figures if the guy's going to be aggressive, he might as well be covered by somebody who won't back down or stoop to his level. Sam takes an elbow in the ribs and one in the back without even blinking, but he kind of wants to tell the asshole that he'll take him outside and show him how to spar if it's a contact sport he's interested in.
Aaron grins at the way Sam brushes the guy's aggressive guarding off, passes to him and whoops when Sam jumps and shoots a textbook perfect three pointer. On the way down, the guy gives Sam an elbow in the neck that hurts like a bitch.
"God damn it," Sam says, hand to his neck, even as the ref blows his whistle and the guy says, "It was an accident."
"The hell it was," Sam snaps. Another two inches over and the guy would have gotten him in the windpipe.
"It was an accident," they guy insists, throwing innocent eyes at the ref.
"That's it, Mark," says the ref in a weary voice. "You're gone."
"What?"
"Every damn week I tell you to keep your elbows to yourself and every damn week you play like you're looking to draw blood. You've had enough warnings. You're gone and you're not coming back."
"This is bullshit," the guy, Mark, snaps.
"Get off my court. You show up tomorrow and I'll throw you out again. Understand?"
"Fucking bullshit," Mark says again, but he stalks towards the locker rooms without much more of a fight, and nobody on either team seems sorry to lose him.
"You all right?" the ref asks, peeling Sam's hand away from his neck. "You breathing OK?"
"He just got me in the muscle," Sam says. "I'll be fine."
"Ice it down. There's packs on the shelf in my office."
Sam nods and follows the guy's outstretched arm to a door off the side of the courts. Just down a short hall there's an office on the left with the door open and the light on. Sam sticks his head in, sees the first aid gear on a shelf on the far wall, and grabs one of the chemical ice packs. He snaps the capsule, shakes it up, and places it against his neck, then looks around the ref's office.
He's obviously more than just a ref, since it says "Program Director" on his door and he's got a diploma on his wall from the University of Washington. Christopher James Watrous, the diploma says, awarded a Master of Public Administration.
"What's that mean?" Sam asks, tapping the diploma frame, not looking over his shoulder when the ref, Mr. Watrous, walks in.
"It means I'm underpaid, overworked, drowning in debt, but happy," Mr. Watrous tells him. "Let me see where he got you."
Sam pulls the ice pack away and tips his head to the side and then notices that, hey, Mr. Watrous is pretty built. He's got strong forearms with sparse brown hairs, thick biceps, broad shoulders. Sam winces a little bit when his cool, dry fingers prod the bruise, and it's kind of hard to swallow. He's never really been that attracted to another guy before, not any guy besides Dean, and he's not quite sure what to do about it. He decides just to ignore it and feels a little relieved when Mr. Watrous steps back and pronounces him bruised but otherwise all right.
"You're Sam, right?" he asks.
Sam presses the ice pack to his neck again and nods. "Yeah."
"I'm CJ. I'm sorry about Mark. He's not a bad kid, he's just got issues."
"Who doesn't?" Sam asks. He doesn't care what Mark's problem is, he'd just rather not take any more dirty hits from the guy.
He gets a couple free throws once he gets back onto the court and the rest of the game goes well. CJ gives him another icepack after the game and Cora coos over him when she comes to pick him and Aaron up, touching the spreading bruise with cool, delicate fingers.
When Sam gets home nobody else is there and he's hungry, so he gets dinner started, throws the pork chops Dean had bought the day before into a casserole dish, covers them with sliced potatoes and onions, seasons the whole thing with salt and lots of black pepper.
He sits at the kitchen table and does his homework, eats two apples and a cheese sandwich in the hour it takes for Dean to get home.
"Dude, making an honest living sucks balls," Dean calls out as he removes his boots by the front door. He wanders into the kitchen, stretching his arms above his head, and Sam pointedly doesn't look at where his Henley rides up exposing a sliver of skin. He's heading towards the fridge when he detours sharply and tips Sam's head up, exposing the bruise on his neck. "The hell happened?"
"I'm fine. I played basketball at the Y after school and one of the guys was all elbows."
"You kick his ass?"
Sam smiles wearily and shakes his head. "Is that always your answer to everything?"
"If you didn't kick his ass, I'll kick his ass. You can't let somebody get away with that."
"They ejected him from the game for it. Actually, I'm pretty sure they banned him from the Y. There are rules and consequences in most of life, Dean, apart from kicking ass and taking names."
Dean furrows his brow, like he's thinking about it. "Yeah. Well. Kicking ass is way more fun. You sure you're OK?"
Sam turns back to his trig homework. "I'm sure."
Dean opens the fridge, stares inside for a moment, then pulls back and turns towards the oven. He flips the oven light on and peers through the door. "What...did you...?"
"I've seen you make baked pork chops and potatoes a million times, Dean. I'm pretty sure I'll have the recipe memorized for the rest of my life."
"You don't have to cook, Sam. I know I'm home later than you're used to, but--"
"Seriously, Dean," Sam says, looking up at him. "Not a big deal. I'm fifteen. I can handle a gun. I don't think I'm going to burn myself on the stove."
"It's not..." Dean frowns and runs his fingers through his hair.
"Did you not want baked pork chops and potatoes for dinner tonight?"
"No, I did."
"So what's the problem?"
"You spend all day at school. You don't have to come home and cook."
"And you spend all day at work. How about from now on whoever gets home first starts dinner? It'll probably be you most days, anyway, since I went ahead and signed up for that afterschool thing at the Y."
Dean crosses his arms over his chest and looks annoyed but finally sighs and gives in. "Fine." He moves around the kitchen for a little while like he's not sure what to do if he's not taking care of Sam, then finally gives in and cracks a beer and leans over Sam's shoulder too close just to annoy him.
"Fifty seven," Dean says loudly right next to Sam's ear.
Sam's working on his Spanish homework, so he's pretty damn sure the answer isn't fifty seven. "Dean? Will you quit?"
Dean snatches Sam's worksheet off the table and skims over it, lets loose with a rapid string of purring Spanish that Sam only understands half of.
"I'm pretty sure there'd be a parent-teacher conference involved if I told my Spanish teacher to such my dick," Sam says, snatching the worksheet back. "Stop being such a jerk."
"You're a jerk," Dean says with a grin.
Sam sighs and grabs the beer from Dean's hand, takes a long swig, then hands it back. "Go watch TV or something."
"Sammy," Dean says, looking at the beer in his hand, then at Sam with a spark that might be pride. "I cannot believe you just did that."
"You're driving me to the brink of insanity. Go watch TV or look at porn or clean your guns and let me finish my homework."
"You're driving me to the brink of insanity," Dean mutters as he wanders away. His comebacks are never very good after he's had to spend an entire day doing actual work.
Sam shifts in his chair and tries to ignore the hardon he's got from Dean's proximity and the sound of his voice speaking Spanish and the way his breath had felt against Sam's ear. He definitely needs to crash in the study lounge before coming home, get as much as he can done without the distraction of Dean around.
That night he dreams about Dean kissing his neck, right where the bruise is, and whispering soft words of encouragement as Sam parts his lips and takes CJs cock into his mouth. He wakes up with a gasp, shoves his hand down into his briefs and comes with the first stroke, biting his lip hard to keep back a groan.
Back when Dean hit puberty, Sam had been horrified. "You're gross," he'd declared once Dean explained to him what sex was, that not only did Dean get close enough to girls to touch them, that he kissed them on purpose, and sometimes they took each other's clothes off. "Girls are gross and sex is gross and I'm never going to do it."
Dean had sighed and shaken his head. "You'll change your tune one day, Sam. One day, it's gonna be all you can think about. Trust me."
Sam had rolled his eyes and been completely disgusted. Now, though, he knows Dean was right. He thinks about sex all the time. Everything makes him think about sex--from cheerleading uniforms, to cars, to guns. He imagines what his French teacher's boobs must look like. He follows the long line of Kasie Harrington's leg from the heel of her shoe to the hem of her denim miniskirt and he's instantly aroused.
He thinks about what it must look like in the girls' locker room, bare legs and bellies, breasts curving up over the tops of bras. He doesn't look in his own locker room, doesn't let his gaze linger on bare shoulders and strong backs, asses and bulges and glimpses of bare hip and thigh where towels don't cover.
Pretty much any time he looks at a girl he wonders if she's done it, if she liked it, if she'd ever want to do it with him. He looks at guys and wonders what it would be like to kiss them, to feel their muscles against his own, to feel them hard against him. There's not a day he doesn't think about sex, not an hour, sometimes it feels like there's not even a minute when he's not thinking about it. If he hadn't seen Dean go through the same thing, he'd worry he'd been taken under the spell of a succubus.
Dean, though, had girlfriends when he was Sam's age, had probably slept with at least ten of them by the time he was sixteen. Sam doesn't have anybody, just himself, just his hand in the shower every morning and sometimes after school. Just his hand at night, silent beneath the sheets, biting his lip so Dean won't hear.
He's had sex ed. in three different school districts so even if he hadn't had Dean to tell him, he'd know it was normal to jerk off. He just doesn't know if it's normal to do it so much, if other guys sometimes have to do it four or five times a day.
He knows it's normal to be curious about guys, too. Dean hadn't ever mentioned it thank God, but it had been right there in his textbook in Jefferson Heights, that sometimes teenagers wondered about people of their same gender. He looks up bisexual in the dictionary hoping for something to go on, but it doesn't really shed any light on the subject, and only the first definition really pertains to him, anyway.
It had always been sort of academic before, Dean the only actual guy Sam had ever been interested in. He starts thinking about it more, though, starts considering guys he knows. Aaron's too short, which Sam thinks maybe makes him a jerk, but it's true; they wouldn't be able to make out without Sam getting a crick in his neck.
Most of the guys in his grade are too short, which isn't really fair since he hit his growth spurt early, but he thinks about it as he walks through the halls of his high school, learns to identify the things that attract him--muscles and stubble and pretty much half the guys who hang out in the end of the far hallway near the auto shop. The fact that Dean spent most of his time in auto shop isn't lost on him.
He's exhausted the Friday morning before some big game--he doesn't really keep track of Snow Pass basketball--and he's half grateful that he doesn't have to feign alertness through Spanish and half annoyed that he has to sit through another stupid pep rally at a high school he'll leave behind in a couple of months.
He leans his elbows on the empty bleacher behind him and watches all the pep and pomp sleepily. Cora's pretty, leading the cheerleading squad, but she's not his type. He wonders how anyone could think that Cora was the most beautiful girl in the school when Natalie Powell's sitting right there in the fourth row, dark hair falling around her shoulders, book hidden low to the side. She's a junior, but Sam's in her pre-calc class; math's the only thing he's managed to stay ahead in with all their moves.
He sits behind Natalie in pre-calc, sometimes can't concentrate when she's got her hair pulled up and he can see the soft, pale nape of her neck.
He cranes his neck to see if he can tell what she's reading. He can't see the title of the book but he likes that she's reading during a pep rally, anyway.
"She's a weirdo," Aaron whispers to him.
"What?"
"Natalie. You're always looking at her. She's weird."
"You're weird," Sam says.
"I mean it."
"She's interesting," Sam says, and Aaron rolls his eyes. He goes back to watching the pep rally, though, doesn't want to be stalkery and weird, staring at Natalie all the time. He thinks he doesn't really have a physical type, though he seems to have a strong preference for guys that look like men instead of boys. He thinks about all the girls he's had crushes on before and thinks that the only thing they have in common is not being stupid.
"You look like shit," Aaron tells him.
"I didn't really sleep last night," Sam says. "My brother snores like a freakin' grizzly."
It's mostly true. Dean does snore like a grizzly when he's drunk. Only it hadn't been snoring that had kept him awake, it had been his father's surprise five AM readiness drill. Sam's pretty sure that waking your kids up and making them jog five miles in the dark in the snow is probably illegal.
The cheerleaders start urging everyone to their feet and any other day Sam might enjoy being part of a group for once, but he's too tired. He stands when the people around him do, but instead of screaming out chants he yawns and wonders if he should take a nap after school and then finish his homework, or just finish his homework first and then go to bed early. He glances down towards Natalie and freezes mid-yawn when he realizes that she's looking back at him. She flashes him an amused smile, and Sam's stomach does a backflip that keeps him breathless for the rest of the day.
In the end, he doesn't nap or do his homework. Aaron nags at him until he agrees to come to the Y, where they're going to play dodgeball. Sam's amazing at dodgeball, loves diving for the ball, rolling up to his feet in one smooth motion, choosing his target and letting the ball fly in less than a second. He's not a bully about it, not like a lot of the other athletic guys he's known. He doesn't throw full strength at most people, just hard enough to graze them. When it's down to him and Aaron against three other guys, though, it turns to murder and Sam's laughing hard as he leaps and twists out of the way, grabs the ball like a ricochet and lets it fly back hard and fast, leaving red marks on thighs and shoulders.
After the third game of dodgeball, everybody decides they'd rather shoot hoops instead. Sam hits the showers and then crashes in the study room. Everybody else in the study lounge is laughing and talking and not studying at all, but Sam doesn't mind. He's had years to get used to focusing with chaos going on around him: practicing multiplication tables in the back seat of the Impala, only the light of the full moon and passing cars to read by; memorizing Latin verbs with Motorhead blaring in the next room.
It takes him a second to realize someone's talking to him. He looks up and it's CJ, the youth director.
"Sorry," Sam says. "I was in my own world there. What did you say?"
CJ smiles and leans against an empty study desk. "I just asked if it's your family that moved into the rental on Whistler."
"Uh, yeah," Sam says, surprised. "How'd you know?"
"Because we're neighbors."
"Really?"
"Yeah. I'm in the green bungalow to the east."
Sam nods. It's right on the other side of the fence, next to the garage. "I don't think I've ever seen you."
"I only noticed you this morning, piling out of that pickup at the crack of dawn." CJ smiles at him. "You know, that's the time most people leave the house, not get home."
Sam rolls his eyes. "Seriously. My dad was a Marine. He believes in things like five AM runs to keep us on our toes."
"Brutal," CJ says. "I grew up on Air Forces bases, so I know how bad that sucks."
"It's not like I enlisted," Sam says. "It's not like I'm actually a soldier. It's not like he's a soldier. He hasn't been a Marine for twenty years."
CJ shakes his head. "Once a Marine, always a Marine."
"I guess," Sam says. He fiddles with his pen, rolls it between his fingers.
"I'll let you get back to your homework," CJ tells him. "You seemed to be pretty into it before I distracted you. Just, if you ever need a break from the barracks, come on by."
"I couldn't," Sam says.
"Seriously. I've always got soda and frozen pizza, and even a hoop in the driveway once the ice melts."
Sam grins. "Yeah," he says. "Yeah, OK."
Cora shows up half an hour later to pick him and Aaron up. She's talking excitedly about the game as she drives Sam home but he's not really listening. He doesn't know most of the people she's talking about, and he suspects that she's talking more for herself than for him or Aaron. Sam's in the back seat of her white '93 Chevy Cavalier convertible. He has to kind of sit sideways in the tiny back seat to make room for his legs, but he doesn't mind. It's better than walking the twenty minutes home from school, anyway.
"So you're coming tonight, right?" she asks as she pulls into Sam's driveway.
"I don't know, I think I'll just crash," he says. He slaps Aaron on the back of the head to make him open the door and slide the seat forward enough for Sam to get out.
"Don't crash, loser," Aaron says, elbowing Sam in the ribs when he climbs out of the car. Sam presses on the back of the seat, crushing Aaron in the process, and laughs when Aaron's arms flail helplessly.
He lets go of the seat and steps back, out of Aaron's range. "I might be there, but don’t count on me, OK?"
Cora sighs and says, "OK." She looks towards the garage, which is empty. "You could, uh, bring your brother."
"Dean? At a high school basketball game? That's so not going to happen."
"Doesn't he have any school spirit?" Cora asks.
"He didn't have school spirit when he was in high school," Sam tells her. "He definitely doesn't have any now."
Cora frowns but doesn't say anything else and Aaron pulls the door closed. Sam waves at them as they back out of the driveway. He glances at the green bungalow to the left, then heads inside and drops his backpack by the front door, shrugs off his coat and heads into the kitchen. There's something in the crock pot that smells good. He lifts the lid and sniffs at the steam, sees it's roast with carrots and celery and onion and big chunks of potatoes, then puts the lid back on. He's hungry and the roast won't be done until Dean's home at least, so he makes himself a peanut butter sandwich and eats that and an apple and a whole bunch of celery dipped straight into the peanut butter jar.
He washes his hands and goes to grab his backpack, and his father's sitting in his chair in the living room, hunched over his journal. "Who was that girl that gave you a ride home?" he asks.
"Cora Hamilton."
"Hmmm," his father says. He flips a page in his journal and doesn't seem to have any further questions, so Sam takes his backpack into the kitchen and starts on his homework.
An hour and half later, Sam hears his father say, "Dean, come here," as soon as Dean gets in the front door. There's some hushed conversation and Sam catches the words ride home and girl. He rolls his eyes. Only his father would find something suspicious about him getting a ride home with a girl. He probably thinks she's a demon.
Dean groans and though Sam can't hear the words, he can tell from the tone that Dean's not happy.
They argue for a while in hushed voices. He hears Dean say that he just got of work, damnit, but then he sighs and Sam knows Dean's given in. Dean always gives in and does whatever their father wants him to.
They both walk past the kitchen and Dean stops. Their father keeps walking, goes into his room and shuts the door.
"I didn't sign up for this!" Dean shouts at his father's retreating form. He sighs, then, and rakes his fingers though his hair. He has a smudge of grease on his chin that Sam wants to rub away. "So," he says, turning to face Sam.
Sam feels nervous, suddenly, like the feeling he gets when something's watching him from the shadows. "So?" he asks.
Dean pulls out the kitchen chair on the other side of the table and straddles it. He leans his arms on the back of the chair. "I think we should talk about sex."
Sam swallows hard. "I...what?"
"Sex, Sammy. We should talk about it."
"I'm, um, I'm actually reading a biology textbook right now," Sam tells him. He gestures towards the book to prove his point. "Not to mention the fact that I've had Sex Ed. More than once. I know what sex is and we really don't have to talk about it."
Dean blows a puff of air out between his lips and nods. "Yeah. Look. It’s not like I'm chomping at the bit over this, either." He sighs. "I could just give you Dad's sex talk if you want. It's pretty simple."
Sam thinks he'd rather crawl beneath the table and die.
"Wear a condom," Dean says.
"Duh," says Sam.
"That's Dad's sex talk. The one I got, anyway. The one you get from him goes something like, 'Dean, I think you should talk to Sam about girls.'"
Sam winces and looks down at his textbook. He supposes it could be worse. He could have to talk about sex with his dad.
"So, condoms," says Dean. "You say 'duh' now, but when the time comes and she's willing and you're ready and there's no condom within five miles, you're going to be tempted to rethink that. You're going to think one time without a condom can't hurt but, seriously? AIDS, the clap, a kid, nobody wants any of that, Sammy. You hear me?"
Sam nods. He can feel the blood heating his cheeks.
"And there's nothing to be embarrassed about. Sex is a beautiful, natural thing, and that was a great talk." He gets up and spins he chair back around, rubs the back of his neck. "Man, I need a beer."
Sam stares down at his textbook trying to concentrate on mitochondrial DNA while Dean opens the fridge and pulls out a beer. He pops it open against the edge of the counter and drains half of it at once.
"So," says Dean. "You, uh...that was good, right? I mean protection's important and that's all...you know the details, right?"
Sam nods. He does. In theory.
"Do you have any questions for me?" He looks like the last thing he wants is for Sam to ask him something.
"Nope." Sam shakes his head. "No, I think we're good. Condoms. Gonna use 'em. Good talk."
"Great."
"Only, I'm never getting laid." Sam hates it when his mouth moves before he gives it permission to. It's almost worth it, though, to watch Dean struggle not to spew beer out his nose.
"OK," Dean says after a hard swallow. He coughs a couple times, thumps his chest. "Went down the wrong pipe, there."
"I'm serious, Dean. How many girls had you slept with by the time you were my age?"
"It's not quantity that matters, Sam--"
"As long as the quantity's greater than zero, you mean."
Dean sighs and sits down, rubs his hand over his hair. "Look. Don't stress about this, OK? It'll happen when it happens."
Sam huffs out an annoyed breath. He doesn't need platitudes.
"I didn't know you were that worried about it. Because if you are, I can arrange--"
"I'm not worried," Sam says. "I just..." He sighs. "It's all I can think about. I can't concentrate on school, I can't concentrating on basketball, I jerk off, like, six times a day--"
"Six?" Dean asks. He chuckles softly and looks impressed.
"It's not funny. It's...I don't know. Freakish."
Dean waves his hand dismissively. "Don't worry about it. Eventually things'll calm down, all right? You'll stop getting a hard on every time the wind blows the right way, I promise."
Sam groans and drops his face into his hands. He wishes he just would have kept his mouth shut.
"Every single guy your age is going through the same thing. I went through the same thing."
"You had girls to have sex with when you were going through it."
"Because I went out and got them. They're not just going to fall into your lap, OK? It takes an effort. Not much of an effort if you're lucky, and as good looking as I am--"
Sam looks up at him with a withering glare.
"You have to make the effort, Sam. Talk to some of those girls who giggle when you walk by. It's unnerving, I know, but the giggling's actually a good thing. Girls giggle when they talk about you, and they only talk about you if they notice you."
"Notice that I’m a freak."
"I've seen the way those girls look at you when I drop you off in the mornings. They don't think you're a freak."
"Really?"
"Really." And Dean doesn't seem to be lying, either. It floods Sam with relief. Dean never holds back when he thinks Sam's a freak, always takes every advantage to tease him about girls. If he honestly thinks Sam has a chance at having a girlfriend, though, then Sam believes him.
He considers asking Dean exactly how he's supposed to go out and get the girl, but he's had enough humiliation for the night and Dean seems to be glad to be finished with the whole conversation, anyway. Instead of asking he just goes back to his biology homework and tries to keep his mind of the idea of Natalie Powell maybe possibly liking him back.
"Dean," their father says from the hallway. He and Sam have been circling around each other since the fight in Indiana. Sam can't decide if he likes his father's distance or not.
Dean gets up and Sam finishes his homework and listens to their low, murmured voices. It's a calm back and forth with the undercurrent of energy that means they're planning a hunt. He considers getting up and asking what the hunt's about, but he's not sure he wants to know. He's not sure his father would tell him. He still treats Sam like a civilian most days, like he's too stupid to understand.
"Hey," Dean says later that night while Sam's getting ready for bed. "You gonna be OK on your own this weekend?"
"Sure," says Sam. Because he's fifteen years old and he knows how to salt windows and doors, knows how to put up protective sigils, knows how to handle a gun.
"OK. We're, uh, driving over to Olympia to see about a car tomorrow," Dean says. As far as lies go, it's one of his worst.
"Have fun," Sam says, a little annoyed that Dean thinks he has to lie to Sam to protect him but mostly relieved that he doesn't have to join them on the hunt. He doesn't ask where they're really going, what they're hunting. The details never make it better. He sifts through the papers on his father's desk after they leave, anyway, doesn't find much. Bigfoot lore, notations about werewolves that follow astrological patterns that have nothing to do with the moon, a spell to protect against creatures that want to eat your eyes, or maybe want to force-feed you eyes. Sam's Sumerian isn't good enough for him to be completely sure.
He gets into bed and cracks open his book, Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, which isn't for school but is turning out to be really freaking beautiful. Sam wonders what Dean would say if Sam told him he thought a book was beautiful. He'd probably tell Sam not to get paper cuts on his dick.
He reads for a while, then loses focus and fidgets for a while and finally gives the book up. The house seems too empty. He gets up and makes sure the wards are secure and all the salt lines are in place. He makes himself a sandwich. He eats half of it and decides he's not hungry. He refuses to worry about Dean or their dad.
He watches TV, but there's nothing on except a crafting show and a rerun of Family Matters. He wonders what the hunt is about, goes back to his Dad's room and feels like he's doing something wrong as he reads every piece of paper tacked up neatly on the wall, studies every photograph and drawing.
There's a spate of unexplained suicides in central Oregon. There are pages of copies from books describing vrykolakas. There are photographs of women and men who have gone missing near Sekiu. There's no way for Sam to tell where Dean and their father have gone, what they're hunting.
He thinks about jerking off, now that he's alone and can take his time, but he's not in the mood. He heads back to the family room to watch whatever stupid thing is on TV when he sees movement out the big front picture window. It's CJ, he can see that now, even though he's wrapped up in a big coat and hat and scarf. He's shoveling the sidewalk in front of Sam's house, and Sam hurries for his boots, pulls on his coat and hat and heads out the side door to grab the shovel from the garage.
"Need help?" he asks, and doesn't wait for a response before he starts working on clearing away the few gentle inches they'd received overnight.
"Hey," CJ says with a grin. "I was gonna hit down to the end of the block, then go snowshoeing. You in?"
"I don't know how to snowshoe ," Sam admits.
"Well, we can't have that. You have to run laps at five in the morning but you don't know how to snowshoe? Sounds like that Marine father of yours is getting sloppy."
Sam laughs and they clear the rest of the sidewalk in less than ten minutes.
When Sam thinks of snowshoes, he thinks of large ovals strung like tennis rackets. Instead, CJ hands him a pair of powder-coated aluminum and a steel snowshoes that look like something out of a spy novel. They snap on easily over his boots and after five minutes instruction in CJ's back yard, they're off towards the mountains. It's a little awkward at first, widening his stance enough to keep from knocking them together, but once he gets the hang of it he can walk and run just like it's nothing, just like he'd always been doing it.
"You feel like you can go four miles there and back?" CJ asks him.
"Easy," says Sam.
"Cool. I'll take you on my favorite trail. It's awesome."
They head past the tree line and into the forest, mostly narrow spruce with some hemlock pine. It's so quiet and so beautiful, Sam forgets that's he's worried about Dean and just focuses on the world around him, snow covered and silent, no sound except bird song and their feet in the snow.
After a few miles, Sam can hear water, and they end up parallel to a small stream, half iced over, still gurgling over rocks beneath patches of ice and snow.
"I was born in Texas," CJ tells him, "but we moved before I was a year old. I've lived on bases in seventeen states, plus stints in Italy and Korea, never knowing how long we'd be there or where we'd go next."
"It's just, like, pack up, son, we're moving on," Sam says, shaking his head.
"Exactly. Chin up. Good little soldier. We ended up at McChord when I was sixteen, that's near Tacoma, and I decided I didn't want to move anymore."
"Just like that?" Sam asks.
"No. There was a lot of fighting. My mom was pretty freaked out when I told her I wanted to move out on my own. But I did it, graduated early, paid my way through college."
"You didn't miss them?" Sam asks. He can't imagine a life without Dean, without their dad.
"Of course I did. But it was time for me to move on, to be on my own. I still miss them sometimes, but it's not like we never see each other. It's a lot easier to get along with your father when you don't have to live with him."
Sam thinks about that for a moment. "You don't know my dad," he says. "I don't think we'll ever get along."
"You'd be surprised."
"Seriously. I'm never going to be like Dean, and that's all he wants. Another Dean, another good soldier who's willing to follow orders and," he pauses. "I don't mean that Dean doesn’t have a mind of his own, because he does. It's just...I don't know. They get along. They're nothing alike and they get along and I don't understand."
"Tell me about Dean."
Sam shrugs. "I don't...he's just Dean. Our mom died when I was a baby. I don't remember her. But ever since then, Dean's taken care of me. He gets me. I mean, yeah, he makes fun of me for liking school and getting good grades and not sleeping with every slutty girl I meet, but he doesn't mean it, not really. He gets that I'm different and he doesn't try to punish me for it. My dad, though, it's like he keeps trying to slam me into this mold and I just won't fit and he won't stop trying to force me into it, getting pissed at me every time he realizes I'm not the right shape. Dean lets me be myself. Mostly. He probably wouldn't talk to me for a week if he knew I was telling you all of this."
"Why's that?"
"Because if there's a problem, we keep it in the family. We don't let anyone else in. It's like me and Dean and our dad, that's the entire world, and it's..." Sam sighs.
"Suffocating," CJ says
Sam nods. He was going to say "safe," but it's suffocating, too.
The last half mile is steeper than the previous parts, so they don't talk much, CJ just gives him tips on how to climb in snowshoes and suddenly they're over a rise and Sam's gazing down into an untouched, pristine basin, perfectly smooth lake filling its center. It's frozen over on the far side, the ice becoming thinner and then nonexistent towards the near shore.
"I love this place," CJ says. "You should see it after the snow melt, asters and bluebells everywhere, it smells, God, it's like heaven."
It is a little bit. They hike down around the lake's edge, stop for a while and eat the protein bars CJ kept in the inside pocket of his coat. On the hike back, they're halfway there when a snowball hits Sam on the shoulder. He turns and sees CJ grinning at him, whoops with laughter as he gathers up snow and shows CJ what a real snowball assault feels like, from somebody who's actually been trained in offensive combat.
"I say we bake up, like, three pizzas and see if there's a game on," CJ says when they get to his backyard.
"I have homework," Sam says.
"And I have paperwork. Bring it over."
Sam grins at him and nods, "Yeah, OK." He eats an entire pepperoni pizza by himself and finishes off nearly a liter of soda. He tries to convince CJ that he's old enough for a beer, but CJ just raises an eyebrow and hands him another Coke.
He spends Sunday at CJ's, too, reading his book and not thinking about where Dean is or if he's all right.
Monday he walks to school and calls Dean's cell phone, says, "Where the hell are you, you idiot? I have to walk in the freezing cold because you haven't gotten your ass home. Next time, I'll drive the Impala by myself, swear to God." He doesn't ask Dean if he's alright.
He goes to the Y after school, lets Cora drive him home, and when he sees his dad's truck in the driveway he doesn't let anyone else see how relieved he is. His dad's in his room going through research and Dean's stretched out on the couch, ice pack on his shoulder, battered but alive and Sam thinks that, really, sometimes that's all that matters.
Part Three