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The whole car would rumble under Johns steering.
Once Dean was old enough to drive Sam realised he could tell them apart with his eyes closed. He could wake up in the backseat and know who was driving even in the misty half-waking of his dreams.
The ride into Arkansas was quiet, the Impala’s stereo cutting in with something by Creedence Clearwater Revival that Sam was trying to ignore. Revising and memorising an exorcism he had streamlined to almost half its size, he just had to test it out sometime, if John let him.
But his mind kept wandering. A hard shove in the hallway and a harsh remark, playing over and over in his head. Dean had probably said it a hundred times about a hundred different things. But hearing it alongside feeling the back of his head slam into a locker and its’ combination lock. That red raging flash in front of his eyes that he blinked away.
“What does ‘gay’ mean?”
He asked it without looking up, it was risky, he only flicked his eyes to Dean to meet his surprised expression in the front seat.
It took Dean a second to reply — and a glance to John in the front seat — that being gay was ‘just’: girls liking girls, guys liking guys.
“Oh.” Sam sat back in his seat, watching the sky. He could feel the sort of angry tension John could produce in silence start flowing through the car. It had been risky to bring it up.
“But it’s kind of just a thing you say when something’s stupid.” Dean added, scratching behind his ear – the last something in question had been Sam’s hair.
“So it’s bad? Being gay?” Sam sat up in his seat, tucking his pen between his leg and the seat, looking at his brother with scrunched expressions.
Dean sighed, “Well it’s not bad but-,”
John coughed, Dean shut up.
Sam would be told his hair was gay at plenty more schools, along with his good grades, and his hand-me-down jeans, and how short he was, and how thin he was.
They came into their school in Arkansas just in time for their one Sex-Ed talk, Mr. Nelson — probably the oldest gym teacher the boys had ever seen in their long career of schools — ran the all-boys assembly. He looked around expectantly as he talked, assumably hoping they would all nod and say they already knew it all. Dean certainly could have, he was sitting in the back, itching to leave, and rolling his eyes. Mr. Nelson had finished and was taking questions — really stupid questions — so Sam wasn’t nervous to stick his hand in the air, his question was definitely not as stupid as the others. He was smart, but he couldn’t work out why they wouldn’t have explained it at some point in the assembly.
“What about being gay?”
It sounded to Sam that all the students laughed, or at least snickered, even Dean must have snickered to hide his mortification. Mr. Nelson started stuttering, and one of the younger teachers jumped in with an awkward wave to the boys and a pat on the older teacher’s shoulder. Saying something about sickness and a little bit about it being an ‘inappropriate subject’ to close out.
“You idiot,” Dean had elbowed him while waiting after school, once no one was there to see them together, “you’re lucky they didn’t call dad or something.”
“I thought you said it wasn’t bad?”
“Yeah Sammy,” Dean rubbed a hand over his face, “but you don’t ask about it in assembly! They didn’t even mention condoms – they are definitely not okay with… that.”
“So, some people think it is actually bad...?”
“Yeah Sam.” He threw his hands up, “I’m sure Mr. Nelson wants you to pray for your forgiveness for even bringing it up, okay? It isn’t like- evil though, it’s just weird. Not normal. So please stop bringing it up.”
Sam did stop bringing it up. He breathed a sigh of relief leaving Arkansas, his question in assembly left him more bullied than any school before. It was a lesson learned. But he learnt what gay meant to people. He could see the look on John’s face, accompanied by the tension that emanated from him when the subject came near. Sam made sure to never bring it up again after that car ride, he couldn’t risk the real suspicion. He felt the discomfort from Bobby, or Pastor Jim, or Dean. None of them said they hated gays outright, but they were uncomfortable. He knew — like Dean said — it wasn’t normal.
And Sam would probably always be a freak.
Lucas Fudel running by in his track uniform while he waited for the Impala, Tony Grace at a stilted house party, when he stole Sam’s drink, took a swig, and gave it back with a grin, Andy Pond when he kissed him, Barry Cook touching his hand when he handed him his copy of To Kill A Mockingbird.
Keeping it a secret was easier than he could have imagined, you could play off never talking about girls or sex as teen embarrassment. And he could see his father assuming, in the moments Sam would slip up, that this was just a part of Sam’s looming unsaid cosmic impurity. Something he knew existed, and only guessed at. The thing that meant never talking about mum, never ‘overstepping’ his knowledge, lest John level him with that superstitious glance.
Being gay was a not-normal he couldn’t share.
He’d always had secrets he could share. Hunting he could share with Dean and dad: praying he shared at least with Pastor Jim.
It started sometime after he and Dean stayed at Pastor Jim’s during one of Johns hunts. Jim seemed relieved that they weren’t off on whatever hunt they’d been dropped off for. Dean had been trying to find a girl willing to risk it all and fool around behind the church and Sam was talking to Pastor Jim.
Sitting in the quiet for what felt like the first time. No hum from the Impala, no AC from the motel, no Dean interrupting him, no class, no shouting, no gunshots.
He sat and learnt about scripture the whole stay. Not to hunt, not to study the next creature — just to learn. Pastor Jim smiled, twinged with sadness, ruffled Sam’s hair.
When John picked them up Sam left with a tiny pocket copy of the Bible, stuffed into the bottom of his backpack.
So Sam started praying.
All the time.
Lying in motel beds, under the faint light leaking through grimy curtains, mouthing out the lines he’d learnt. Sitting at Bobby’s kitchen table, praying his dad and brother were okay when hunting. Praying that they’d be safe and come to pick him up, wishing he wouldn’t have to go once they were there. And as he learnt more about what being gay meant, Sam started praying about that too.
He couldn’t say queerness wasn’t a part of why he wanted to get away from his family and hunting. Johns drinking buddies — quickly becoming Deans — left Sam going to get air, or to go study in the Impala — anything to avoid them. A growing unnameable need to leave piled on top of all of the others. The angry questions left murkily unanswered as he carried his bags to Stanford.
Getting away could have been the perfect chance to explore. He did for a few moments, Brady. But he introduced him to Jess. And he loved Jess, maybe not how he was meant to, not in the way other people meant, not in a way anyone would want to hear.
But it was love.
When he’d left it felt right to miss Dean. Who’d taken care of him his whole life, made him breakfast as a kid, taken care of him — and called Bobby when it all became too scary — when Sam had whooping cough. Dean was the snore across the room, the kick in the back of the knee, the movie night partner, and the rushing cleanup of junk food when John was almost back.
Sam had never had free time, alone time, for so long. He’d sit, staring at the wall and think. Pray. Were they okay? What were they hunting? Think of all the times they’d under-researched a hunt, nearly died without him. If they called would he drop everything and start reading up on this monster of the week?
It was insufficient, but all he could do to stop the hyperventilating pressure of guilt that he wasn’t there. That they would die because of him. That it had been his job so long to keep them alive in the ways Dean didn’t. In suffering moments nauseated at the distance he had made, half agreeing with John, that he was responsible, that he was abandoning them.
It felt weird to include John… dad in his prayers too.
To miss him, to miss that, not the orders and the training, not the yelling or the missed Christmases. But the times dad was there, those rare rays of hope. When John Winchester was proud of his boys, when he let them be kids and let himself be a father. Those bittersweet moments that Sam had clung to as a kid.
Because dad just hugged him, and that had to mean things were getting better.
Dad stayed in town for a little longer this time, does that mean we can stay even longer next time?
Cause dad had smiled at an idea Sam came up with for the first time and it meant he really believed in him this time.
But they were moments few and far between. Moments he missed and hated himself for missing. Why was the most childish part of him still doing this? Still clinging to John Winchester for anything? He knew that he knew that Dean had been the one to raise him. Why was he missing John then?
And praying helped with that too.
Jess thought it was sweet, and great, and tried to kindly recommend therapy as ‘an additional support’. But then therapy wasn’t really worth it if you had to lie about your whole life, while trying to be as honest as you possibly can. Jess had sighed and smiled at the excuses he had to give her.
She was patient with his nightmares, and twitches, and anxiety.
Things Sam didn’t realise he’d had or maybe just didn’t realise weren’t normal. Every hunter he’d ever met was a functioning alcoholic, some less functioning than others. He had found himself refreshingly well adjusted until he joined the normal world. It had only really taken Sam his first year away to see all that in himself, to see how fucked hunting really was.
He started praying that Dean wouldn’t be as burdened as their dad, as all the other hunters Sam had seen get old and burdened. Four years at Stanford, two since he’d spoken to Dean. He still missed Dean. He still missed John. And he kept up that prayer.
Jess invited him to meet her family last Christmas, a full, over the top Christmas, a hallmark movie if ever there was. They went to Midnight Mass, and Sam resisted his urge to talk about the black mass. Old habits die hard.
But he sat and prayed with Jess and her parents and all her uncles and aunts, and tried not to think about the normal things they were praying for, and wished that all he was praying for was a good proposal, praying that Jess would say yes.
But he prayed to be normal, not a hunter. And he prayed to be straight. Prayed that he and Dean could be more okay than their lives had been. And he prayed that his brother and father wouldn’t get their throats or intestines ripped out on whatever hunt they were on.
Maybe he was praying that they’d be alright without him so they’d stay away, so he could propose, so he’d be happy in it, so he could think all those dreams about Jess, and the fire, and the ceiling were just dreams, so he could be normal.
But dad went missing. And Dean came to him, for help.
And he went.
And none of those prayers were answered.