home again (we're home)
Something short that started with no direction, but waiting for Sam's next video is consuming my brain SO
Full thing is here AND on AO3. Paging @ejunkiet, as requested
You feel like home, Darlin'
They almost hadn't heard the rest, and Sam seemed to take their initial silence as fear. But they weren't scared, no, and they rushed to reassure him, pushing aside the thoughts that had frozen them in some semblance of hesitation.
feel like home
It echoes in their head as they lay curled against Sam's side later, swirling through a cocktail of emotions. A little disbelief, a little confusion, but eclipsing everything is a dizzying giddiness, and in between reveling in that unfamiliar feeling they try to pin down what about Sam's words had stunned them.
home
They don't know what home is. Not really. They know it in a textbook sense, they know it in the kitschy quotes about where the heart is way. But if they had been asked about their home?
Ever since moving to Dahlia during high school they'd felt relegated to the edges. Present and there, but not within. They know, consciously, that they do belong, especially with the way David has been careful to remind them lately, but that sense of belonging that was supposed to come with home had never been there. Before they left or after they returned, it didn't feel like home.
They had hoped that returning to their father's side of the family in Washington would have helped, but the sense of trespass was even worse there. They had been gone too long, and they didn't have the time-proof bond to that pack that their father had had. And even if it had as a child, it didn't feel like home.
They don't think about it often. Not in the way someone might avoid thinking about an uncomfortable subject, just as something that rarely floats to the surface of their thoughts. They've gone so long feeling rootless that it's simply a state of being, as neutral and unfeeling a law as gravity. It's made it just as easy to come back to Dahlia as it was to leave.
No, whatever Sam had seen in their reaction hadn't been apprehension or fear, but surprise as they were confronted with a sudden rewriting of their definition.
I feel like home
The thought makes them smile, and they smother a giggle by turning their face against Sam's side.
"Somethin' funny, Darlin'?" Sam's question comes in a quiet murmur, and they can tell he's wearing one of those smug little smiles of his.
They turn their head to narrow their eyes at him, but they can't hide a smile of their own. They try to make it more of a smirk, at least. "Pretending to sleep so you can spy on me? That's rude, old man."
He is smiling, but it's not smug, it's soft. It's never so conceited to be called smug, like the smiles they're used to seeing on others. They still marvel at how much he's capable of showing in such a small expression, and that the softness is directed at them so often. "My apologies, but your choice of where to laugh makes it a bit difficult to ignore." He doesn't comment on their change of subject, allowing the evasion.
But the deflection had been a reflex, a long-perfected habit of avoiding answering questions of all sorts. Sam never pushed when they did it, and many times they took the out that he offered.
They don't want to do that.
"I was just… thinking about home."
He's still looking at them, and they drop their gaze. Too soft; they still struggle to feel like they deserve any of that softness, and expressing their own? They're almost painfully out of practice, but they hope it gets easier.
"Oh?"
They take a slow breath as they shift, forcing themself to look again. It has to get easier.
"I think we're both home now."
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