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Sam Winchester ran away. He ran away as fast and as far as he could.
He sent applications to all the colleges he could afford to, and he applied for every scholarship. He had the letters mailed to Bobby’s house, and Bobby called to let him know as each acceptance letter came. Sam decided on Stanford in April of 2001; he did not tell his family until August.
They spent that dusty summer driving around in circles. John claimed he was “right on the tail” of the thing that had killed their mother. Honestly, Sam wasn’t sure that monster was even real, but at least he wasn't stuck behind in motel rooms anymore, so he tried to argue less than he normally would, at least for the first two months.
Despite their father’s increasing mania, Sam and Dean didn’t really have a terrible summer. They pissed each other off like they always did, and they laughed like they always did. They played awful pranks on each other for a couple of weeks, until it got out of hand when Dean loosened all the stitches in Sam’s jeans and they fell off as he walked. Sam made fun of their dad, and Dean pretended not to agree. It was their first summer as two adults, but it didn’t really feel that different.
Sam and Dean were driving back from a gas station at almost midnight in August. They’d left their dad back at the motel when they went to get slushies and bandages. It had been such a good day, and the summer was ending, so Sam decided to use the first silent moment he got to tell his brother the truth.
“I’m going to Stanford,” Sam announced, staring straight forward, like he was speaking to the darkness.
“What?” Dean turned his head slightly but kept his eyes on the road.
“The school,” Sam clarified.
“Okay, why?” Dean still didn’t look at Sam.
”For uh, for college, I’m going to college.” Sam faced his brother now, looking for a response in his face, but it was too dark to see.
”What the hell are you talking about?” Dean shifted in his seat, asking for clarity he didn’t really need.
”I’m going to California for school next month,” Sam explained clearly but not without nervousness.
Dean kept driving; he didn’t say anything for a couple minutes, but the motel wasn’t very far away, and he had to say something, so he pulled over. Sam spoke first, but he was quickly interrupted.
“Dean-“
”How long ago did you plan this?”
Sam felt a tinge of guilt in his response. “I applied a year ago. I got accepted in the spring.”
Dean put his head down on the steering wheel, then looked back up. He swallowed. “You didn’t think to tell us then?”
“I thought about it.” Sam looked down. “I’m sorry.”
He tried to ignore Dean’s use of the word “us,” but he couldn’t. “You can’t tell dad,” Sam begged.
”Are you serious?” Dean laughed like it wasn’t funny at all. “You don’t think he’s gonna notice you’re gone, Sammy?”
”No- I mean I’ll tell him, I will. You just can’t snitch yet, okay?” Sam was still turned in his seat.
”You can’t just leave,” Dean said, almost under his breath.
“Yes, I can.” Leaving was all he could do.
“Fucking California?” Dean was laughing again.
“It’s a really good school.” Sam hated that he was defending himself right now. He wished someone would just be proud of him.
“Better be good. Dad is gonna kill you.” Dean hated that he couldn’t just be proud of his brother; he wished he wasn’t so angry or so scared.
Dean turned the music way up. They drove the rest of the drive back without saying a word.
As they left the car, Sam turned to his brother again. “Please don’t tell him,” he pleaded once more. Dean didn’t answer.
That month, they spent time in eleven different states, and they came back to the same states six times. John never explained what they were doing. He kept talking about how he was tracking a monster and saying they were “closing in,” but it didn’t really feel like they were any closer than they’d been three months or ten years ago.
Sam was frustrated, and he let his father know this. Sam and John spent all of August at each other’s throats. Sam thought his father was untrustworthy and crazy. He begged for him to just explain to them what was going on. John ignored his complaints. He called Sam childish and disloyal. They screamed at each other for hours. Dean got in the middle, like he tended to do, and he tried to mediate, but it just sort of made him an enemy of them both.
Things were quiet between the brothers, and things were very loud between Sam and John.
It was getting cooler outside, and their dad assured them that they “really had the son of a bitch this time.” Dean wanted to believe him, pretended to believe him, but it wouldn’t have taken a hunter to see that they weren’t hunting anything.
He couldn’t even remember what state they were in when it finally happened. They sat at a motel table, the brown room was lit lightly by a couple of dying lamps, and the three of them were separately hunched over an assortment of newspapers and stolen files.
They sat in shuffling silence until Sam broke it, saying he had to tell about them something. John barely looked up from the table.
“You better not be telling me you’re gay,” he taunted. Sam rolled his eyes, and Dean fake laughed a little too loud.
“No, I uh- I’m going back to school, to college, I mean,” Sam announced, with his eyes fixated on his father.
John looked up, but he didn’t speak. Sam and John sat opposite each other at the table, and now made eye contact across it. They both knew that this would be a fight, but their silence was as if they each believed that whoever spoke first would lose it.
Dean spoke first. He sat with John on his left and Sam on his right. He sat straight up, and asked, “Are you sure about this?”
Sam turned his head toward Dean, but hesitated to break eye contact with his father for half a second. “Yeah, I’m sure.”
Dean opened his mouth and then closed it.
“You’re doing what?” John enunciated like a viper.
“I said, I’m leaving for college. I’m going to Stanford,” Sam clarified, his voice strong.
The father stood up. “Like Hell you’re leaving! You don’t get to make that decision.”
Sam and Dean both rose to their feet as their father did.
“Yes, I do. I’m the only one who gets to make that decision,” Sam scoffed.
John yelled, “How can you be this selfish, especially when we’re so close?”
“So close to what?” Sam threw his arms up.
”To getting our revenge,” John responded, quieter.
Sam stepped closer. “To getting your revenge, and you aren’t any closer than you’ve ever been. You’re delusional.”
John pushed Sam back. “You have no clue what’s going on here. Don’t you care about your mother?”
Sam got right up in his father’s face. “Is this what you think she would want? For you to become some vengeful creep? You think she’d like that?”
Dean pushed them both back. John started shouting something, but Dean spoke louder. “Okay, stop it! Shut the hell up, just- talk!”
John spun quickly towards Dean. “You already knew about this?”
Dean froze. He said nothing, but stayed standing between the two men, until John shoved Dean aside, and he stayed aside.
Sam stepped forward again “Listen Dad, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, I thought about it every day but I-“
“Well thinking about it wasn’t fucking enough, was it boy? You better be sorry,” John jeered as he grabbed at Sam.
“I don’t have to tell you everything about my life,” Sam retorted. He pushed back against John so hard that the older man actually lost balance and had to catch himself on the counter. For the first time, everyone in the room seemed to notice who was actually the tallest.
Then, John threw his fist hard into Sam’s mouth.
Every other time when John had hit Sam in front of Dean, the older boy had immediately stopped it. (Once when Dean was eight and Sam was four, John had smacked Sam for taking an ID from the glove-box, and when John turned around, Dean was pointing a gun at his head.) This time though, Dean just stood there.
Blood dripped from Sam’s broken lip, and he stared at his father in silence for a second before slamming him back against the counter, screaming something about control and hating his life.
Dean stepped in, trying to pull the two apart as all three of them yelled over the others. John pushed Dean away with forceful apathy, and violently separated himself from Sam.
Sam and John Stood at a distance from each other. “I’m leaving, whether you like it or not,” Sam stated, and walked toward the door.
“If you walk out that door, don’t you ever come back,” John roared with seriousness and rage.
Sam grabbed his duffel bag which sat already packed behind the motel couch, and walked out the door.