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It’s not like he had ever been homesick. He figured it might be because he had never really belonged anywhere, but sitting here next to his older brother he felt for the first time that maybe — for once — he was.
It confused him. He didn’t know where the feeling had come from and he didn't know what home he was so desperately aching to have, but nonetheless here he was, homesick for the first time in his life.
He wonders what the home he longs for is, why he feels like this — like something is missing, deep inside him — like if he got there, everything would be okay.
Maybe it had been because of the constant moving or the fact that he’d never had a friend for longer than a month.
He hopes it might be a part of why he feels like this, like something is deeply wrong, like he’s missing something everyone else seems to have so effortlessly.
He knows — deep down — that he’s just trying to make excuses, trying to make himself feel better about being a freak, subconsciously he hopes that it was truly one of those things that had left this feeling, and that he hadn’t been born like this, empty like a puzzle that had all its pieces which just never quite fit together right.
He supposes his family knew too — that he was different — never quite right. He wonders if they knew why, maybe if he’d have the courage to ask Dean, he’d tell him he knew what was wrong, he’d know how to fix him.
Silently he wishes there was nothing to fix, he often did that — made wishes — he’d wish for his mother to be alive, for Dean to be happy, for his father to unconditionally love him, but that’s all those little thoughts were, wishes. Sitting here in the back of his father’s car, he wished for a miracle.
He was 18 when he left, his father shouted, yelled words that Sam tried to pretend hadn’t hurt as he felt them engraved into his soul, into his being. John told him not to come back, he wondered if secretly his father had been relieved when still, he left.
He’s in college when for the first time, he thinks he sees it, sees himself whole. Standing there — looking at himself — he wonders what gave him this feeling, this feeling of being complete, like for once he wasn’t missing anything, like being Sam Winchester was enough.
Maybe it was his hair, he’d been letting it grow subconsciously. He looked at the long strands of hair and felt something like awe. Maybe it was his clothes, thinking about it made him feel weird, “his clothes”, for the first time he was wearing something that hadn’t been passed down to him through his older brother.
A few weeks ago, he’d gone shopping and seen this top, it had looked beautiful like the summer sky, like a kiss in the sunset, the color matched his eyes in a way that was just right. It wasn’t very boyish, a small part in the back of his mind had shouted. Still, he had bought it, it wasn’t all too feminine, but deep down he desperately wanted it to be.
He thinks about another a woman wearing it — how it’d make her look beautiful — he hoped people would think he was beautiful too, desperately he wished that it would make him look the way a woman would look wearing it. He knows it’s foolish, knows it’s his wishful thinking again, wanting something that just wasn’t, wanting something that was impossible.
This wish had been in the same nature as all his other wishes had been, and yet, it felt like it wasn’t. He thought of the definition, such a simple word it was but still it expressed so much, he thinks of his other wishes, the definition they would fit, “used with the past simple to express that you feel sorry or sad about a state or situation that exists at the moment”. He supposes it fit this one too, but for the first time he had hope, hope that it wasn’t impossible.
When he looks at other women, he longs, longs for the way their femininity comes so easily to them, longs for the way they’re perceived, beautiful. When he meets Jess it’s another feeling entirely, it confuses him, makes him say all the wrong things and stumble over his words.
Jess is pretty and her smile lights up a room. She makes Sam feel a kind of ease he had long forgotten, and for a while, it makes him feel like he isn’t so wrong after all.
Jess kisses him for the first time, and it feels like a dream, it makes him feel the way he felt looking at himself with the top he bought so long ago.
He isn’t sure what drove him to tell Jess one day, but he is forever glad he did, she tells him he’s not broken and that he is not worth any less because he’s different, for the first time in forever, he feels whole.
Jess and he had gone shopping that day. Later, as they were sitting in their apartment, Jess was helping him with his make up, he fears he might cry. He hopes he won’t, he didn’t want to ruin the eyeliner she’d had put on his eyes, he didn’t want to ruin it, it felt like a shield, like if he’d wash it away, he’d wash himself away too.
That day she asks him what he’d like to be called, asks him what he’d like to be referred to as. It takes him a long time to answer, she waits patiently, he is so thankful for her, at last, he finally answers her, lets himself herself have this.
She keeps the name Sam, everyone has always just called her Sam anyways, she does change her legal name to Samantha though, her letter arrives with the message that it had been changed, and suddenly, she feels so light.
A small part of herself still never feels quite right, she misses something, misses it the way you miss something you never even had, she wishes for the first time as her new self, wishes that she knew what it was.
When she finally sees her brother again, she thinks it’s almost funny, the way it happened, like not even their reunions could be the way they would be for anyone else.
She wakes up that night, tense and like she knew something was coming, she hears the floorboards creak, hears someone walking around. For a second she’s scared, scared it might be a monster she wants so desperately to protect Jess from.
She’d imagined often, how seeing her brother again would go, perhaps he would hate her, hate her for taking away his baby brother, she doesn’t want to imagine such a possibility and yet, it scares her to death.
She definitely hadn’t imagined it would be because her brother broke into her home, but in hindsight she supposes she should’ve seen it coming.
Once she had finally figured out that the intruder was her own brother after he wrestled her to the ground and she fought him off, she almost laughed, she figured she might have if she wasn’t absolutely terrified.
Because when Dean finally sees her, really sees her it scares Sam, scares her deep to her core, she feels like all the air has been punched out of her lungs. Dean just looks at her, Sam thinks it looks like the way she’d always looked at herself, like something was just off, there is confusion on Deans face, if she looks hard enough, she thinks she might see fear too, she doesn’t know what for.
They stand there, looking at each other and it feels like an eternity before Dean finally speaks up, it shouldn’t surprise her she supposes, yet it does. He asks her then if she’s happy, if she’s finally who she always longed to be. In the end Dean had known after all, Sam thinks, had known that she never was whole, always something incomplete.
She tells him she’s happy, and he hugs her, and suddenly, she feels at home. Deans acceptance had felt like all those things she had always quietly longed for, she feels warm, she feels happy, she’s crying and yet she doesn’t wash away. She stays right there, whole and finally home in her brother’s arms.