Sam Winchester (![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} _bitch) wrote, |
“Fine,” he snaps, because leave it to Dean to completely ignore logic if it means any sort of self-examination and figuring out why he does stupid things. It’s not Sam’s fault if he wants to keep doing it, though, so he’ll just go, and when Dean manages to get himself in trouble for something he didn’t do and had no valid reason to even be lying about, well, then maybe next time he’ll think about it before he does it again. Probably not, though.
Maybe he slams the door behind him a little harder than he needed to, and maybe he’s still fuming a little the whole way to the library. But that’s not his fault, because Dean’s the one being stupid and stubborn and acting like Dad’s God or something, someone worth fear and awe and undying devotion when all he does is drag them around, order them around, and never sticks around.
-
He’s not aware of consciously making the decision, but somewhere between staring blankly into the reference section and the corner table he settles at with his computer and a newly selected stack of books, he knows he’s going to fill out those papers tucked between the pages of his text book, forms he’d gotten in a moment of rebellious bravery and then hidden when he’d realized just how unlikely it is he’d ever be able to do anything with them, even if he tried. Now, it’s back to that rebellion, coiled tight inside like a spring, like it’s ready to burst free.
When he fills out the applications, he writes Sam Winchester in black ink and puts Pastor Jim’s address down in place of his own (he can’t send it to any of the postal boxes they keep, because anything relating to college is going to set Dad off and make Dean start going on about family loyalty and he doesn’t want to deal with any of that, and he knows Pastor Jim won’t say anything to Dad or to Dean; he’ll understand where they never would).
He feels a little like a prisoner scraping away at the cement wall with a plastic spoon - it’s not going to work, it won’t be enough, but he’s got no other choice. This is it - if this doesn’t work, he’ll spend the rest of his life stuck in the ‘family business’ and probably get killed before he’s thirty, or watch his father and his brother die, or probably both. If it does, he’ll have a normal life - an education and a job and maybe a family of his own that he won’t drag all over the continental US; he’ll have a home and a future.
When the library closes he’s only about half done with the paper, but he’s filled out three financial aid applications, two scholarship forms, and checked out a pile of books on Japanese mythology that might have the things he’s supposed to research in them - which was an afterthought, but he thinks it might serve as some kind of apology in his weird family.
On the way home he stops and mails the forms, feels twitchy and nervous as soon as the envelopes are in the bin, wondering if he did it right if they’re going to accept him if this is going to work how he’s going to tell Dean and Dad.
If he stops on the way back and buys some chicken sandwiches (a compromise between salad and burgers) and pie with the ten bucks he has left after postage (his own money, rare as that is, so he can do what he wants with it), that has nothing to do with guilt. It’s just that he hasn’t eaten, and he’s pretty sure even Dean didn’t really like the burgers much, and it’s been hours anyway, so Dean’s probably hungry again because Dean’s always hungry.