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Sam stands in front of the stained mirror, examining his body under the dim lighting in the motel room bathroom. The faint buzz of the lights and his choked-off gasps echoing off the walls as he tries to keep himself under control are the only things he can hear. He pinches his cheek, feeling the urge to reach under his skin and pull out yellow, sickly blobs of fat out from under it when he’s able to feel a piece of flab between his thumb and pointer finger. He leans in closer to the mirror to get a closer view of his eyes, and he hates how they look like a muddled mess, a mistake that couldn’t decide what it wanted to be.
When he pulls off his shirt, he’s scared of what he’ll see. He doesn’t think he can take seeing his own, nasty skin. There’s a pouch on his stomach where there should be smooth, flat muscle (Dean’s is flat and muscular and perfect. Dad wants him to be more like Dean Why can’t Sam just learn to be more like Dean?) He feels like there’s an extra layer of flubber between his skin and bones where there should be nothing but empty. Instead, there’s this sludge inside of him that slows him down and clogs his veins. It’s a sickly-sweet tar coating his insides, and he wants it out.
His thighs are too thick, and his arms look like logs dangling from his body. A tear slips down his face as he’s overwhelmed with self-hatred, but he tries to stop himself before he loses control by forcing a smile. Instead, he breaks down the second he sees the way the chub on his cheeks bunches up and how his face is covered with baby fat. His teeth are crooked and the tiny gap between his two front ones sends him over the edge.
Sam leans into the mirror, and stares into the reflection of his eyes. “Freak,” he whispers. He won’t forget it.
He cups a hand under the running water in the sink to wash away the tears on his face and make the swelling go down. (When he sees a trail of snot leaking from his nostril, all he can think is the word “pathetic” before angrily wiping it away on a piece of tissue). Sam makes sure to remove any traces of his presence in the bathroom before scurrying away. The last thing he needs is for Dad or Dean to start questioning why he was taking so long to piss.
The thought of facing the mirror is what keeps Sam Winchester strong throughout the day. It’s what keeps the word “no” firmly on his tongue as he’s offered a brownie by the girl he sits next to in the cafeteria or when Dean tries to get him to eat a slice of pizza for dinner. It’s what makes him choose the first when debating between going for another run or relaxing after an exhausting John Winchester-mandated trading session, what keeps his willpower firm when Dean asks him if he wants to go out into the town and see a new movie at the theatre, just the two of them. He doesn’t deserve that yet. Soon, maybe, if this works.
He slips into the bathroom whenever he can without wandering eyes questioning his actions. Sam slips away at school, endless motels, grease-drenched diners with Dean and their dad waiting in the booth just a few feet outside the door. He sees the changes, the surfacing of bone and the depletion of muscle, but he’s not satisfied. Months later, when he’s withered away into almost nothing, he’s still not satisfied.
Sometimes he sees Dean give him this look, just for a second, like he can see straight into Sam’s insides and knows all of his secrets. But then the moment’s over, and it’s back to how it always is, with Dad at the top dictating everything and Dean somewhere in the middle, not quite the leader but more than a soldier. He’s at the bottom, a fifteen-year-old scrawny screw-up who’s getting weaker and weaker by the day.
“You just need to train harder, Sammy.” “We can’t afford to fool around, Sam, your mile time can be the difference between life and death for a civilian.” “You’re not trying.” (he is though, he promises)
One night at a diner in just another nameless town, things boil over in a true Winchester-style explosion. They’d had a long, stifling drive, and all of their tempers were running a little high. Sam’s blood sugar dropped absurdly low that morning, but he hadn’t bothered to remedy that at all. Why should he? It’s not like there’s a point to any of this.
He feels the consequences as he drags himself out of the Impala and into the sticky booth waiting for them inside. John and Dean are already seated when he gets there. The world’s spinning. The scene’s coming in as bits and pieces, a snatch of the wall color here or a flash of the tune playing in the restaurant there. He can’t seem to make the puzzle come together into a picture no matter how much maneuvering he does, though.
Black and silence flash behind his eyelids for a second as his muscles start to give in, but he doesn’t let it show. He resolutely plops down on the bench across from his dad. Sam doesn’t notice the waitress coming by to drop off the menus, but he feels one being shoved into his hand. “Eat up boys,” dad says, voice as commanding as usual. “We haven’t stopped all day, and we probably will be driving all day tomorrow, too.”
“I’m starved,” Dean says as he picks up the menu, immediately flipping to the section dedicated to the hamburgers that this diner claims to be its specialty.
Sam uses his thumb and middle finger to flip the menu open since he feels his dad’s gaze burns into the top of his head. He hates menus, the feel of the touch of the hundreds who have used it before him. He doesn’t want their germs and dirt and oil tainting his skin, but for the sake of hiding in plain sight he’ll just have to suck it up for the time being. He’s so close to being clean, to being pure, that he can feel it, that it’s a tangible presence just over the horizon. The peace is floating in the back of his mind, ready to consume him anyday now. He can’t afford to ruin everything by being discovered when he’s already made it this far.
The first page is beverages, which he skips over without giving the names so much as a glance. He already knows that he wants a water. Besides, Sam’s not entirely sure that the words would make much sense at the moment. The letters are blurry, and it feels like the words are floating above the table, reaching up from the menu to wrap themselves around his throat and make it impossible to breathe.
The next page looks like it’s the list of health food. The words aren’t clear enough to make out, but every diner around the country that’s worth its weight in fry grease has a house salad of some sort (dressing to the side, please). The waitress puts a cup of water in front of him, and a cola for both dad and Dean (how did he miss their orders being taken?). He feels it begin to rise up inside him, that itch of I don’t want this in me. He just has to get through this one meal, though, and then he’ll be free. Sam forces a gulp of water down his throat. It’s harder than a lump of coal, ripping cells from the lining of his throat on the way down. It sits heavy in his stomach. The second it makes contact, he feels his body start to rebel. He swallows saliva.
Their meals come, and both Dad and Dean are watching him wearily. With that in mind and a growing sense of dread in his heart, he ever-so-slowly lifts a single piece of shredded carrot to his lips and begins to c h e w. 1 2 3 4 5 6 times. Six is a nice number, Sam thinks through the haze that his mind’s become. Each move of his lips leaves him fatigued, and swallowing seems more daunting than running a marathon. Sam realizes with a jolt that his body’s shutting down.
He’s not ready to die. Not yet.
Dad’s voice cuts through his jumbled thoughts. “Are you alright there, Sam? You’re looking a little clammy.” It takes a tremendous amount of effort, but Sam manages to nod his head slightly. That movement makes the world begin to tumble around him. The last thing he gets a glimpse of before everything turns black is the bright green glow of Dean’s eyes.
-
Sam lays on the bed, staring at nothing. He’s already counted all the cracks on the ceiling and holes in the wall. He hasn’t quite reached the level of desperation required to count the number of cockroaches in the carpet yet. This particularly hotel room doesn’t even have a television, so he sits. And he waits.
Dad had decided an hour or so ago to go and get all the food he could possibly carry from the grocery store, and Dean had gone with him to get away from the tense silence pervading the cramped room. Even with Sam as small as he can possibly be while still hanging onto life, he feels too big. He uses too much air and takes too many calories, and he’s just not worth it.
Too bad they disagree.
They hadn’t brought him to the hospital after passing out. Dad had been able to spin some lie to the other shocked patrons in the restaurant, and they had carried him into the Impala, where he had regained at least a sliver of consciousness about fifteen minutes later. They had been convinced that it was just some hunting injury that he had been hiding, which explained his odd behavior and blackout. For two people who claimed to be so vigilant and on top of things, they sure could miss the point sometimes, especially when it came to Sam.
Dean had been the one to take off Sam’s shirt, in the end. They had bombarded him with questions, about where are you hurt and are you bleeding. He couldn’t get his mouth to cooperate, and even if he had been able to, he’s not sure what he would have said (Haha yeah your freak for a son hasn’t eaten enough calories to sustain himself in almost three years and he almost died today?? Oops).
Dad had eventually told Dean just to help Sam strip while he grabbed the first aid kit from the car since he obviously couldn’t communicate what the issue was. Dean had been horrified, complete with a gasp and a lone tear. Figures that the sight of his naked body would be enough to make somebody cry.
When dad had come back in he had dropped the first aid kit in the doorway, before snapping, “Put your freakin’ shirt back on, Sam.” So he had, struggling to fit his tired limbs through all the proper holes, but he managed in the end. Not another word had been said the rest of the evening. No explanations were asked for, so none were given.
The clock continues to tick into the heavy silence of the room. Sam Winchester has been Discovered, and he can’t hide anymore. This won’t stop him from trying, though. He knows there’s a fight brewing just on the horizon, that they’ll want to talk when they get back, which will lead to fighting, which will lead to yelling, and eventually one or more persons will just storm out of the room. They’re Winchesters, after all. (he doesnt think that he’d be here if he wasnt) For now, he just wants to sleep. After a few more minutes of tossing and restless fidgeting, he does.
-
The stench of a grimy hamburger is what draws him back to the present. There’s almost tangible droplets of grease in the air, enveloping him until it becomes a firm and smothering blanket and he can’t get in any air. There’s the sound of running water coming from the pipes in the wall shared with the bathroom. His father’s sitting at the kitchen table, watching Sam carefully. When John realizes that he’s awake, a shutter flickers over his eyes. He says, “Sam.”
“Sir.”
“Are you able to get up? We have some food for you, but it’s best that you eat it at the table.” The stern set of Dad’s face means there’s no way he’s getting out of this, so he simply nods and struggles to untangle himself from the cocoon of sheets wrapped around him. The second he’s upright the world is spinning again, but he doesn’t have very far to walk and he is strong. A little wooziness won’t beat him (it did just a few hours ago, and it will again, the snide voice in the back of his head remarks, but he ignores it.) Time to shovel in food until he can’t see straight and play pretend. Sam’s gotten pretty good at the latter. He’s not looking forward to the first.
The table’s stacked high with grocery bags. Sam has no idea how they afforded this. Sitting directly in front of the empty seat waiting for him is a takeout bag from some out-of-the-way diner, a different one than they had gone to for dinner. “Dig in,” Dad says, face still tight and voice terse. Sam complies.
The first bite of burger sits heavy in his stomach, but he pastes a smile on his face and eats another. Everything inside of him is rebelling, screaming nonon o nono no youreruiningit, but the look on John’s face cancels out all of that. He puts the burger down after the second bite, though, to take in a shaky breath. This is even harder than he thought it’d be. Just get through this, Sam. Then everything will go back to normal, and they’ll stop watching your every move.
He tears the burger into six pieces, chunks of soggy bun and sticky ketchup and slimy grease. Each one of those is torn in half, and each of those into three more. In the end, all he has is a mutilated mess in front of him and not another bite in his stomach. John raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t say anything. Dean’s still in the bathroom. Sam thinks the shower’s running, though it could be from the room next door. He’s not really sure what else would be taking Dean so long.
They sit there in a silent battle of wills for almost an hour: Dean behind a cracked, closed door, John a silent bar of steel, unmoving but solid, and Sam the lost little kid stranded somewhere in the middle, unsure of everything but the fact that he most certainly does not want to eat. When the bathroom door finally opens and Dean walks out amidst a cloud of steam, his face is puffy and red, like he’d been crying. That’s what puts the final crack into Sam’s heart, not the crushing weight of his father’s disappointment or the churning mass of two bites of burger in his stomach. It’s the look of heartbreak in his brother’s once lively green eyes that sends Sam over the edge.
He sends the leftover burger and the container of fries that he hadn’t even touched off the table with one giant, felling sweep of his arm. There’ll probably be a permanent ketchup stain in the carpet, a permanent marker of the place where Sam Winchester Finally Had Enough. A drink spills onto the carpet, but he ignores it. He says a simple, single word, one that holds all the meaning in the world. “No.”
Sam’s up and running, far far away into the nothing. He sprints out of the room before Dean and his dad have time to react, down the motel porch. He has to swerve to avoid a concrete pillar in his path, but he keeps running. The air burns like glass on its way down to his lungs. Tree branches sweep over his face and sting his eyes but he doesn’t even register them. It’s not until he’s on the ground gasping for air that he comes back to himself. He doesn’t know how long or far he ran; the only thing he’s sure of while staring at the vast night sky above him full of twinkling, bright stars is that he’s tired.
-
Dad and Dean find him eventually. The doctors fill their heads with scary, scary words (heart failure, dehydration, imbalance of electrolytes, on and on and on). The three of them sit down for a nice, long bonding session, and they try to get him to talk. Even Dean, “no chick flick moments,” is nearly begging for him to speak. Sam’s never been able to resist Dean when it really counts. So he does. He talks and talks and talks, says all the right words, the perfect phrases. Sam doesn’t mean a word of it.
That night when Deans looks at him, really looks at him, taking in his full figure and posture for the first time in years, and asks him, “Are we good?”, Sam almost starts cackling. Sam WInchester, the boy whose existence is imbued with despair, blood, and death is most certainly not ok. His stomach is cramping up and full to bursting from all of the nasty food that was shoved into it, and he can’t wait until he can go for a jog or at least the next moment he’s alone so he can take care of it. He can’t let them know that, though, so he replies with a quick, “Yeah, definitely. I’m fine.”
Sam Winchester is okay. He always is.