"If you knew that I was gonna say that, then you must know I'm right," Sam pointed out, "you deserve so much more than you believe you do. It's not fair that you go around thinking that you don't, because you do." Sam thought that it was fair that he got to make that call for the both of them. If Ruby tried to say that her victims wouldn't agree, he'd be real quick to say that he had been one of her victims at one point, too, and that he believed more than anything else that Ruby deserved her shot at happiness in every way possible. It didn't matter that he held an extremely biased opinion on the matter, Sam was pretty sure that anyone around here would say the same if Ruby asked them. She was a person. A good person with a bad history, that was all. She couldn't keep living in a world where she kept punishing herself for things that were buried deep down into her past. She was trying, every day, to better herself and Sam thought that was more than good enough. For every life she didn't go around destroying, she was making a difference. She was one less bad demon in the world, fighting against the very creatures she used to be. And she did a damn good job at it, as far as Sam was concerned. "Promise me you'll stop beating yourself up about this, Ruby. Promise me you'll start thinking more of yourself, 'cause I can't stand to see you put yourself down the way that you do. You don't deserve it."
He only realized, then, that he was being something of a hypocrite. Fortunately, he wasn't the subject of the conversation, so his hypocrisy didn't exactly linger in the limelight. Sam didn't want it to. This was about Ruby and her issues, which were a lot more alarming to him than his own.
Okay, maybe there was an unfortunate part to this conversation. Ruby was bringing up school. Sam had hoped to use that for an example, not something that Ruby genuinely wanted to talk to Sam about. He didn't even think she ever really thought about him going back before, but here she was, insisting that he promise her he'd go. Sam shifted a little and shook his head, immediately disagreeing with the suggestion. "I can't. I'm legally dead. My name won't go through the system without ringing a hell of a lot of bells and then it'd just be the FBI chasing me and Dean and you down all over again. It'd get messy and we don't need anything to be more messy than it already is." He shrugged. Or tried to shrug as much as he could with a stabbed shoulder, which didn't go over all that well. Suppressing another wince, Sam tightened his hold on Ruby with his good arm and shook his head again. "I can't. Anyway, school isn't for me, Brady and Jess proved that, right? I'm just - I'm a hunter now. And I'm okay with that. I've settled, you know?"
Sam felt Ruby pulling him back, fighting his stubborn insistence to sit upright and be all supportive and comforting in a position that didn't make his entire body ache in protest, and Sam found that he wouldn't have been able to fight the gesture off even if he had tried. She was strong. His back hit the pillows propped up behind him and Sam felt his body loosening up. Relaxing. It was good. "Hey, it's not guy love, it's - we're just good friends, okay?" Sam made a face. "Don't call it guy love." Sam was pretty sure that Booth would be on his side on this one. Guy love sounded...less awkward that he was married, but still pretty awkward. Sort of.