Chapter Text
Sam Winchester has always known he was different. Always.
And it wasn't just because he murdered fairy tale creatures six days a week, or that his family lived off of credit card scams, or even that he sometimes felt like he was falling apart inside and no one seemed to understand.
It wasn't because of the fact that he didn't have any real friends until college, never dated a girl before Jess, never had a birthday party that consisted of more than Dean and himself. No, Sam just feels in his bones that he isn't like anyone else.
He hides it. Fairly well, he thinks. He lives a lie and then slowly becomes one. Sam finds that he doesn't mind being different. He can tolerate hunting (but only with Dean), and he becomes a master in breaking and entering. He doesn't mind helping people, and sometimes he finds himself smiling at Dean's ancient rock CD's and the beaten down Impala.
It's worth feeling like you'll never belong if you can make it to Stanford. Especially if you get to meet a girl like Jess, the first real friend he's actually had. And he knows that he'll never be like Dean or Bobby or Dad, and that's okay because he can be better. And he can be more determined and leave the family business and he won't feel a thing because he's different and strong and it feels good.
Sam is okay with feeling like he has a hole straight through his heart, because its only a small hole that he thinks is probably cause by excessive studying and his emotionally unstable family. Probably. He kinda doesn't really know why he feels like he does, but he doesn't really care because he can be happy and go to college parties and skip the biweekly demonic exorcisms for once.
It feels nice. It feels... happy? Almost happy? He has only felt this kind of content a select few times, and always with Dean. Dean was so, excruciatingly and painfully different from Sam, and no matter how hard the younger Winchester tried, he could never seem to fit in with the rest of the army-family facade. He doesn't care, though, as long as he can go a month without killing anything, Sam is overwhelmingly happy.
Except for that small difference, the void between himself and the world around him that seems to carve him out and string him up and leave him raw. The hole that empties even more after Jess is killed, after he witnesses more deaths than he has in years. And the hole grows wider, gaping at him through his dreams and visions that threaten mind-numbing headaches that last for hours (he doesn't tell Dean). As it grows, Sam is proud. Irrevocably proud that he is useful and special. And different.
Yeah, Sam doesn't mind being different, until it turns out that he is a demonic human hybrid and is also the vessel of Lucifer. Who is real. And trying to hit on him so they can share Sam's body.
Then Sam begins feeling a tiny bit uncomfortable.