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“Sam? Sam!”
Jim called out with all the gentleness he could muster, but the boy’s name bounced off the high ceilings like something thrown to the ground and shattered. Damn this old building. As the moonlight filtered through the stained glass it struck Jim how this church, his home (or, maybe, His home more accurately) could look so warm in daylight and yet look so punishing at night. Something muffled and small slowly traveled from the very back of the church to the side door near the altar from which Jim was surveying. Jim strained his aging eyes and could just make out the hunched silhouette of Sam Winchester in the very back row.
Oh, kid. Jim took his time as he made his way down the aisle towards the boy, taking heavy, slow steps so the boy wouldn’t startle.
“Sam?”
Sam looked up.
Sam had shot up since the last summer he’d visited, and was taller now than his father and brother, gangly and coltish. However, Jim would wager that at that moment, Sam had never looked smaller. His cheeks were watercolour washed with an angry red and his eyes weren’t much better, wet from tears and pink from the force with which Sam had been scrubbing at them.
“Hey, uh, Pastor Jim,” The words tumbled from Sam’s mouth like something had chased them out.
Sam wouldn’t meet his eyes. Jim sighed.
“Mind if I sit here?”
Sam tensed slightly before relaxing, consciously. Trying desperately to pretend they were about to have a normal conversation. “Um, Sure, of course.”
He scooched over obediently and Jim lowered himself into the seat next to Sam on the bench against his protesting joints.
“Your old man called,” he began.
Sam looked ahead, unspeaking.
“He’s worried sick. You bolted on him.”
Quietly, Sam muttered something Jim couldn’t quite make out.
“Come again, Sam?”
“He’s not gonna want me back. Not this time.”
Jim’s mouth, which had been curved in his patented pastor’s smile, serene and approachable, fell limp at that. He tried not to betray this as he spoke.
“How come he was calling, asking about you, then?”
“He couldn’t want me back, Jim. He couldn't.”
“Sam, don’t take what I’m about to say flippantly, but what in God’s name did you do that was so awful?”
Sam looked at Jim first with the shock of someone who’d been slapped (the effect that tends to come with a pastor taking the Lord’s name in vain), before it turned to something like frustration.
“You know, Jim.”
“You mean you and that boy?”
The room fell silent. It was so quiet and Sam’s shoulders were so motionless that Jim was sure the boy was holding his breath. Perhaps Sam thought that if he stayed very still, and very quiet, then time couldn’t find him, couldn’t move to the next moment with him in it, and whatever apocalypse Sam was imagining would never come to pass. Jim took a different approach.
“Do you think you’re going to hell, Sam?” he asked, soft, but not so sweet or cloying as to come across like he was talking to a child.
Sam had always been more receptive to the good word than his father or brother. His sweetness, Jim thought. The boy seemed very interested in the moral message of it all, in the ideas of good will to all men and the redeeming power of faith. Jim had had similar conversations with his young churchgoers a hundred times before.
“I…no. maybe,” he responded, and the ‘maybe’ came out like a kind of shameful admission, a kind of defeat that such a dark ages view had wormed its way into the head of Sam, a kid who’d made a fake I.D just so he could vote for Al Gore a few months back.
“What makes you say that?”
Sam scoffed. “C’mon, Jim…”
Jim didn’t say anything. Just raised an eyebrow. Sam responded better to a rhetorical challenge maybe. Argument, evidence, expansion. Dissection, discussion.
But no answer came. The kid just looked away, guilty.
“I don’t…I don’t think it’s because I’m…y’know. I don’t know for sure I’m ending up there. It just…crosses my mind sometimes.” he said, eventually. It sounded like he was trying to convince himself as much as Jim. Of what, Jim couldn’t be sure.
The sound of tires on gravel rumbled outside the door, headlights flashing through the gap between the bottom of the doors and the floor. Sam froze.
“Time to go, Sam.” Jim said. He walked over to the door and had his hand on the knob before he even realised that Sam was still sitting on the bench. It wasn’t even defiance or hesitation, Jim could tell. It was something close to (but not quite) fear. The pastor turned to face him.
“Sam…God gives us all our own unique challenges to face.”
Sam looked up, eyes pleading as his face fell.
“Some of those challenges lie within us and some…come from small-minded people who won’t let themselves take some artistic liberty with a thousand year old book.” Jim chuckled softly at the look on Sam’s face at hearing that. If only Jim had his camera.
“But…you’re a pastor!”
“And a hunter. I don’t exactly live by the good book Sam. Can’t really afford to turn the other cheek at a Chupacabra.” Sam started laughing too at that, and Jim considered that a sign that he’d done his job.
He walked over to Sam and placed a firm hand on his shoulder. it’s time. Sam stood up without complaint, even as that heavy expression crept back onto his face, and Jim walked him out of the church.
The Impala was an imposing car at the best of times, but parked on the gravel with the beamers on, mist spilling in from the graveyard as dark clouds rolled overhead promising thunder, a notion entered Sam’s mind, not for the first time, that he was going to die in that car.
Normally, Sam took this thought to mean in a distant future after a lifetime of hunting, which was a dismal enough thought, except that tonight, the idea felt more immediate.
John wouldn’t kill him. Sam’s no use to him dead, and even though he seems oblivious or content with the idea that Sam and Dean may die of either negligence or in the ‘line of duty’ (a phrase Sam hated because at least Mulder and Scully decided to work at the FBI, Sam didn’t even get that much freedom), Sam wasn’t altogether too convinced that his father would do the deed himself.
That didn’t mean Sam wouldn’t die in there the moment one of them opened their mouths and this all became real. In a manner of speaking.
Jim said nothing, just gently ushered him towards the car.
Sam felt a bit like everything was happening in crossfade. One minute he was outside the car, the next he was in it, sitting next to his father. Sam rarely sat in the front seat. He didn’t know why he’d chosen now of all times to start.
When Sam looked again, Jim was gone. John didn’t move to start the car. Or start the conversation. He didn’t even move to look at Sam.
Sam should have left it alone.
“Dad, I, uh…”
“So that track and field crap you’ve been doing’s been paying off, huh?”
Sam swallowed. Small and strangled, he said "I'm sorry.”
Under his breath, John muttered that he “wished you’d put half that speed into hunting.” Sam rolled his eyes, pointedly turning away from his father. He knew it looked petulant, and that he was sulking when he had no right to, but c’mon, for a man so supposedly worried about his son, he sure had no problem criticising him the moment he was in earshot.
John was quiet for a long time after. What had he been expecting Sam to say? Sam could never tell what he was thinking. If he could just figure out what his father wanted from him…
His father was quiet when he next spoke.
“Been out all night lookin’ for you.”
Sam didn’t say anything.
His father shook his head, rubbed his hand across his face.
“The hell’d you go and do that for Sam?”
Sam glanced sideways at his father. Was John playing dumb? Because Sam thought it was pretty self-evident why he ran. He ran because his father came back early from a hunt (one where he’d taken Dean and left Sam with Jim, something he hadn’t done since Sam was 13 and was clearly intended as a punishment for his ‘insubdordiance’) and found Sam in town, at the library, doing SAT prep with Eric Baldoni from his AP physics class. Or, Sam guessed, they had been doing SAT prep. After a few hours SAT prep turned to talking, to laughing, and then to getting kicked out of the library for laughing. Sam didn’t know Eric all that well (he’d only been in town for a few weeks- it was a longer hunt, but still a hunt. Only temporary) but in the time he’d known him, Eric had spotted him 5 dollars for lunch money, loaned him the new Nirvana album on CD, pulled an all-nighter with Sam for a test, and driven Sam from Jim’s to the library that day for some last minute SAT prep before Sam left town. Eric wanted to intern at NASA someday and could name every major celestial body in the solar system and loved his mom.
And by the end of the 6 hour SAT prep session in the library, Sam and Eric found themselves in the parking lot, kissing. A bit hungry and cross-eyed from reading, but kissing nonetheless, and a feeling had washed over Sam that amounted to something like lift-off. It was the feeling he’d gotten at flagstaff, the first time he’d ran away successfully- that his wheels were off the ground, and as long as no one caught him, he could stay in the air forever.
So naturally, John stepped out of the Impala and stopped dead in his tracks having caught Sam in the act.
And Sam ran. Because it was that, or talk. And he didn’t think he could stomach that. Not because he thought John was going to beat him senseless or anything. He could, if he wanted to. But Sam didn’t think he really cared that much, in the same way he didn’t care so much about Sam’s track and field meets, the music Sam was listening to or the books Sam was reading, or his speech and debate competitions. He only cared about the fact that those things interfere with the hunt. About how they all made Sam ‘too soft’.
And he’d been right. His son was soft. He was a pansy.
And now his pansy son was in a car with his stalwart marine father and nobody was talking.
“You hear me, son? I asked you why the hell you thought it was a good idea to take off and run, against my orders!”
Sam finally looked away from the rain-slicked windshield and turned in a blur towards his father. He hated that word, ‘orders’. Again, when the hell was he going to realise Sam didn’t enlist?
“I was scared, okay!”
Sam was breathing heavy now.
“I was scared…sorry.” He muttered the last part. He didn’t really know why he was apologizing. Or, he did, but his mind and heart disagreed on whether or not he should even have to. His heart said ‘Dad’s angry, Dad’s sad, You did that, Say you’re sorry’ and it sounded breathless and childlike. His mind sounded a lot more like he did now and said ‘Daddy’s a sociopath with control issues and needs to get a grip.’
Heart always seemed to win in the end.
“You're scared because I caught you with that boy,” John grunted.
Sam nodded. It wasn’t a question, but he felt the need to confirm. Subordination might make this less painful, he thought, and then just as quickly dismissed because that had never been true before for Sam, why would it start to be now?
“Who the hell is he anyway?”
Sam sniffled, his face reddening. He couldn't believe he was having this conversation with his father. Sam knew the question wasn’t altruistic. John’s shotgun Dad schtick (that he’d taught to Dean, just in case Sam wasn’t suffocated enough) didn’t come from protectiveness, it came from the aforementioned psychotic need for control. It also made Sam feel, just a little, like his Dad actually cared about his life outside the hunt for a change.
“No one, just a study partner. He knows I’m moving this week. We’re…it’s nothing, Dad.”
John nodded, curtly. His eyes darted and shifted this way and that, anywhere but Sam’s face as he brought a hand to scratch his head and began to speak.
“And…you two, uhm…you…haven’t…?”
It took Sam a minute to parse what his father was saying and by the time he figured it out, his face had gone so hot he thought he might pass out, head flopping on the dashboard. If he was lucky he’d crack open his skull and die right there and then.
“Wait- wh- no! God, no! Don’t ask me that!”
“Alright, alright, don’t get your panties in a twist!”
Sam huffed. Classy, Dad.
“I’m just wonderin’ if you’re…sure.”
Sam paused.
“...if I'm sure?”
“I mean- what about that girl, in Louisiana? I thought you liked her.”
Sam thought. Penelope Coleman? Yeah, Penelope. Sam and Dean had gotten part time jobs working at her family’s restaurant while tracking a series of hauntings in the area. Sam and her had worked the afterschool shift together and gotten friendly. Very friendly. Very friendly in the supply closet, to be specific.
“I- yeah, I did dad-”
“Then how come now you’re…”
Sam swallowed. He’d looked into it. Researched. Of course he had, he was Sam Winchester. He’d learned all kinds of fascinating words from the various forums and archives he’d found online, and in the books he’d read in the library, too afraid to actually take them out. He knew what ‘bisexual’ meant. That didn’t mean that he was comfortable trying it on like it was anything definitive. Or that he knew how to explain any of this to his father.
“I don’t know,” he eventually said, quiet again. “I just…like who I like, I guess.” God, that sounded lame.
The car was silent again for a long time. Logically Sam knew that the rattle of the heater, the wind against the roof, the cars on the road outside the graveyard were all making noise. But none of it reached him.
Eventually, John spoke.
“Sammy, despite what you think I’m not an idiot. I know you. Know you’re worried ‘bout what I’ll say. But I’m not angry. I couldn’t care less what you do with…” John cleared his throat. “What you do. I’m still your father. I still…”
Sam's breath hitched. ‘Love you’. That was what parents said to their kids, right? ‘I still love you’? Nevermind that Sam couldn’t remember the last time his father had told him or Dean that, or that Sam couldn’t remember the last time he’d said it himself, that his thing with Penelope Coleman had ended precisely because she told Sam she loved him and he sat there with his mouth hanging open like a dog on a hot day. Stupid.
John spoke again, matter of fact this time, that commander’s authority back in his voice. Sam didn’t know where he was going with his last sentence then. Whatever. As if it mattered.
“I just don’t know that this is something you wanna be doing, Sammy. Not ‘cause it’s wrong- even if I can’t say I understand. But…I don’t wanna see you make your life harder than it needs to be.”
Sam’s heart felt like it was caught in a closed-fist training its grip strength. Or a bear trap. He valiantly resisted the urge to cry and scream at his father that the only person making his life harder than necessary was him, that Sam could have easily skipped a year of school instead of being held back if they hadn’t moved so much, that Sam could have had a boyfriend or girlfriend or whatever and heard nothing of it if he hadn’t had John breathing down his neck telling him connections would only slow him down, only serve to hurt him. Sam could think of just one connection in his life that was hurting him, and he was sitting in the driver's seat right now.
Sam brought his eyelids down over hot, wet eyes, screwed the lids shut as he tried to speak calmly.
“It’s not really a choice, Dad. It's just me.”
“Maybe not. But not everyone is like me and Jim, Sammy. You better be prepared for those consequences, cause me and Dean, we…” John’s voice wobbled for a moment, the way it normally did when he was drunk and sloppy and came in late ranting to Dean thinking Sam couldn’t hear him spilling his guts on the mattress right next to his. “...we can’t always protect you, Sam.”
Sam bit his cheek, hard, enough to draw blood he had no choice but to swallow. His throat hurt from stifling sobs.
“I understand, sir.”
And that was enough for John, who pulled out of the driveway of the graveyard and started down the road. It was a short ride to the motel Dean was meeting them at, 20 minutes at most. 5 minutes from arrival, a thought floods into Sam’s mind and he feels like an idiot for not thinking of it sooner.
Dean.
He speaks up, the first time since the church. If Sam didn’t know any better, he’d say his father almost seemed startled at it.
“Uh, Dad?”
A grunt from Dad. ‘Yeah?’
“Can we, um, not tell Dean? About any of this?”
John glanced over Sam, curious. He didn’t remark on his son’s request, though.
“Sure, if that’s what you want.”
“Yeah. Yeah it is.”
It's the most certain Sam’s sounded all night.
They came home to Dean, pacing around the room and worried sick, with Sam unsure if his brother wanted to hug him or wallop him for running off. In the end all Sam got was a brief earful before John declared the situation ‘handled’, excusing himself for the night, whiskey glass in hand. Which was enough for his brother, ever the picture of filial loyalty.
“So? What the hell happened?” His brother asked, sitting right on the edge of agitated and confused with one foot in the waters of concern.
“Nothing,” Sam lied. “I just…got mad.”
“You got mad?”
“At Dad. For ditching and leaving me with Jim. It was stupid of me, it won’t happen again.”
Dean looked him over sceptically. Sam was a good liar, most of the time. But Dean was good at pressing down on Sam until the truth came out somehow, like a tube of colgate.
But he didn’t this time.
He just nodded and said, satisfied, “Alright…as long as you don’t go bolting on us again.”
He gave Sam a playful shove, a sign they were back on solid ground, before retiring to their shared room.
Sam stayed up a while after that. He hadn’t finished all his homework during the study session with Eric. His eyes drifted from physics paper to the bulky off-white plastic of the landline. Sam thought he should call him, maybe. Tell him he’s alright, in case Eric assumed the worst.
He didn’t though. He didn’t want to wake Dean, or Dad, and have everything start all over again.
Dad was right about one thing. Sam’s life didn’t need to be any harder than it already was.