Sam's eighteenth birthday is spent in the backseat of his dad's muscle car. They are on their way to Willow Creek, Wisconsin to investigate reports of a poltergeist on a dairy farm there. Sam had actually thought his birthday, one of his more important ones so far, had gone by the wayside because of their current hunt.
Kind of like his sixteenth birthday had.
Dean and his dad surprised him though, presenting him with gifts and a package of Sno Balls with candles unceremoniously stuck on top. They have been on the road for... actually, he can't remember now. They have been driving in shifts and he fell asleep on Dean's jacket in the backseat at eleven the night before when his shift had ended.
When he wakes up at dawn, all he can see is farmland and more farmland. He isn't sure what state there are in and he reflects that most of his childhood has been spent just like this. In the back of his dad's car, chasing some... thing.
Always something.
Sam pulls his bag -- an old leather backpack that has seen better days -- onto the seat beside him and digs inside. Dean is still sleeping and his dad is blaring Black Sabbath and Sam figures he probably isn't even aware he's woken up. He pulls the brochures he managed to hide from prying eyes (Dean's) and pores over them. Again. For the umpteenth time (which is apparent by the dog-eared corners).
Stanford University. Pre-Law. Sam has the test scores and grades. It's just the small matter of making his dad see that he didn't want this... half-life. Living out of a suitcase and trunk full of weapons, chasing demons and the boogey man. He wants a career that he can tell other people about without fear of being locked away. He wants a wife and kids and a golden retriever and a mortgage.
He wants a normal life.
He knows it's possible. Is pretty sure from the small bits and pieces he's been able to glean from Dean and his dad over the years that before his mom was killed, the Winchesters were a normal family. Normal house, normal jobs... Just... normal.
Sam sighs and puts the brochures back in his pack. He digs out his unopened presents from the night before. He quietly unwraps first the one from his dad, hoping the crinkling paper doesn't alert his father to the fact that he is awake. He isn't up to dealing with his dad as of yet. The yellowed paper (he's surprised it's actually real wrapping paper as opposed to the newspaper he usually gets) reveals a worn copy of The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their Meanings that he recognizes as his dad's own. He half-smiles, touched at the sentiment but he also realizes that the talk about his future has to come sooner than he wants it to. The gift from his brother turns out to be a mixed cassette tape containing, from what Sam can discern from Dean's chicken scratch on the paper inside the case, a mix of Foghat, Black Sabbath, Bachman Turner Overdrive, Jethro Tull and a few other choice bands from the 1970s. He lets his half-smile grow to an actual one at that, knowing how much his brother is always trying to get him to listen to "real" music. He chuckles under his breath as he places them both back in the bag. Dean never did let up in that respect.
He loses his smile as he looks up at his dad behind the wheel. No, Winchester men were determined. His dad was determined to find whatever killed his mother, Dean was determined to help their father to that end and to also educate his brother on his "woefully lacking musical tastes" and Sam was determined to go to law school and have a normal life.
He sighs as Dean shifts awake in the front seat. Sam knows he has a hell of a fight in front of him.
But he is determined to win it. For the sake of his own sanity.
and we are vagabonds/we travel without seatbelts on/we live this close to death
