SPN fic: What It Means (Ellen/Sam)
Title: What It Means
Pairing: Ellen/Sam
Summary: I don't know. Suddenly it seemed hot. Spoilers for 2.22 ("All Hell Breaks Loose, part two"). Approximately 4800 words.
Note: A late birthday present for elise_509, who is so funny and smart, but who also listens so very well.
What It Means
Dean started pouring long before dawn, but for all his talk of enjoying the victory, he and Bobby seemed more interested in rehashing the past and pondering the future than just tasting the success of the here and now, the way it was a flavor nothing like this cheap bourbon. Sure, the bourbon was helpful; it knocked the adrenaline back and made the long night seem a little like a dream. But that only gave her the distance to see how far they'd come, understand what they'd escaped. Because there had been victory, and she noticed it most in the cool taste of the air hovering above the parking lot, the blue-blackness of the sky against the trees, and Sam.
She sat with her back to the stony façade of the building, right outside the door of the room, smoking for the first time in years but only because she couldn't get Jo on her cell. She knew her worry was excessive, that Jo wasn't anywhere near the roadhouse when it burned, but she couldn't shake off the feeling that the girl hadn't really disappeared, run off on her own, but was somewhere in the roadhouse all along, now beneath that rubble. She knew, too deep down to dredge it up, that maybe the charred remains of her livelihood were simply a sign impossible to ignore, about Jo and about everything. Gone.
She tried not to think about it. The bourbon helped, so she had been grateful to see Sam emerge from the room with the bottle, drop right down onto the concrete beside her and press his wide back against the same cool fake stone, like they were holding it up, together. He didn't say anything for a while, just looked out at the same night she was drinking in and let his head fall back. They should be asleep. They were hangdog tired and bone weary, but sleep wouldn't come.
Of course, sleep never came very easily for Ellen anymore, not in the last five years or so. She lay awake a lot in the early mornings, listening to the world bring itself back to life. Sometimes she worried-about Jo, about Ash, about the other hunters she knew by reputation, by face, a handful intimately. And though she thought about these boys, she never worried about them. It wasn't because she trusted them not to fuck up. They were too much their father's sons-Dean in his rigidness, Sam in his stubbornness-to make life easy for themselves. But she trusted the universe to take care of them. It always did take care of fools. Or maybe it's just that the fools always take care of each other.
When she shook out a Marlboro from the pack, startled to see that half the pack was already gone, this time Sam stuck out his hand for one.
"You don't smoke," she said, shaking her head.
He said with mock cockiness, but he meant it: "You don't know what I do."
It was true. Now, Dean-a person could read him like a book, especially a woman who'd known John Winchester. She'd've never handed over that pack to Dean, choosing instead to frown at him or fight him tooth and nail, because he inspired that sort of ready obstinacy. But Sam just stuck out his hand, those long fingers curling slightly, and she handed over the pack, then the lighter, and watched his mouth close around the cigarette; and it wasn't until he flicked the lighter, took a long drag, exhaled, tipped his head back slightly, and blew the smoke to the sky without so much as a cough, that she finally decided maybe that wasn't the smartest thing to do, giving him these cancer sticks. But she didn't say a word, just watched her own exhalations drift up into the air, white under the dim orange lights of the parking lot. It was easier than trying to read him, which was damn near impossible, if only because it seemed like it should be easy.
Nothing about this life, though, was easy. She was beginning to see that, possibly because it was slowly starting to feel like her life again, like it sometimes used to when Bill was still alive. She'd forgotten the nerves in the hunt, the fear, the sweet rush of adrenaline when it was all over and she realized she'd saved something, if only herself. It could be addictive, so it didn't surprise her to see Sam and Dean taking up that life for good, even though they'd gotten the revenge John had sacrificed their childhood and his own life for. Now they'd sacrificed their own lives, too, and although it frustrated her sometimes, when she thought of them in the lonely morning hours, it also made her proud. They were strong.
When she looked over at Sam again, he took the bottle from her hands and said, "Did you see him?"
"Who?"
"My dad."
"Yeah."
When she turned to look at him, she saw that his clear brown eyes had clouded over with tears. He concentrated on that Marlboro, his eyes wide open and staring ahead. Always ahead. That was Dean's doing. She'd never met men with more blind determination to keep moving, even if they didn't know where to. She could use that, she thought, her mind drifting to the roadhouse, or at least the one she imagined filled with people, not the one that went with a reality that now seemed rather unreal to her. She wondered if that was what it was like for Sam, those first few months after Dean brought him out on the road. She wondered how a person survived the battle in their soul between the fear in their gut and the feel of their body traveling fast over the ground, the purr of a car underneath it, taking them wherever it took them. It didn't occur to her until that moment that she lives in that sort of limbo every day, especially since Bill: too close to this other world for comfort, but not close enough to really do anything about it.
"Ellen?" Sam said suddenly. "Does it freak you out that I was…" He chuckled sardonically. "…dead yesterday?"
She didn't even hesitate. "No."
"No?"
"I didn't see you. Dead. I didn't see you dead. Makes a difference."
He nodded. "But what Dean did…?"
"Was exactly what you would've done under the same circumstances."
His expression, his whole body, came to a stop for a moment, considering her words so internally she couldn't even tell that he was doing it until he simply nodded.
Sam shifted a little then, his shoulder falling against hers. "What are you gonna do?"
"About…?"
"Everything."
His voice was so forthright and open it made her nervous, like it could reach down inside her and dig out things she didn't want unearthed. And his arm was too warm, so that now she could smell the sweat lingering in his clothes and on his skin, mixed with deodorant and dirt. Like the road, the hunt. Like every other hunter she'd known, except he was different and she couldn't put her finger on why.
"The roadhouse," he said.
"It's gone."
"I know, but…?"
"Sam. It's gone." She tipped the bottle to her lips and tried not to look at him; that was the first time she'd said it out loud. "I really don’t know what happens now."
Before she could stop it, probably because she hadn't in the least expected it, he laid his hand over hers on the concrete, his palm hot over her knuckles and his fingers settling into the spaces between hers. She'd been drifting out over the parking lot like the smoke, imagining herself all cool and weary-gray like the sky, because that was easier. Now she was right here, on the ground, heart unaccountably thudding, everything too fucking warm. Thinking too much. She took another drink, her one hand on the bottle so cool and the other so warm, not knowing why he was doing it and only caring because it was confusing as hell and ordinarily she'd know what to do about it, but not now, not like this.
She didn't look at him, and he didn't seem to want anything more, not that she didn't feel an undercurrent of tension. His other hand tapped the ashes off his cigarette as his leg, the one nearest hers, came down to lay flat on the ground beside their hands. He just perched his other hand on his bent knee and occasionally pulled the cigarette to his lips. She was watching them, the fleshy pinkness of them, the way he pulled them into a taut line, and he didn't even turn and look at her, but she felt his thumb start a light, slow pattern up and down the outside of her pinky finger.
She couldn't decide if it was pissing her off or just making her antsy or if maybe it was exactly what she needed. Didn't matter too much, because the door of the motel room swung open without warning, and Dean and Bobby came swirling out into the half-light of the almost-cool almost morning. Sam's hand slid up to her elbow before he let it fall again on his own thigh.
Dean said, "We're going for food."
"Good," Sam said, and his voice startled her for no good reason. It was calm, deep, even, but maybe that was enough. "I'm starving. I think."
Ellen grimaced at Bobby, too lazy for a fight but feeling the need to put one up anyway. "One of you sober enough to…?" She waved her hand at the Impala.
Bobby didn't answer, he just lumbered off toward the car with Dean right behind him. He spun momentarily and said, "Considering you two've been out here for damn near an hour and a half with the bottle…"
After they couldn't hear the sound of tires anymore, Sam looked at her like he was just as shocked about the passage of time as she was. He pushed himself up off the concrete and held out both hands to pull her up.
The door to the room shut out that morning, and even if she thought she'd be sorry to see it go, she wasn't. The bed looked strangely comfortable, lived-in, like the rest of the room, like the boys themselves, somehow. Sam saw her eyeing the bed as he dropped down heavy into one of the chairs at the beat-up old table by the window.
He said, "You can sleep if you want."
"Nah. I think I'll wait for whatever mess of grease your brother drags in here for breakfast."
So she sat down in the chair across from him and let her boots settle in beside his, her one leg stretched out against his. Despite the pointed contact, which she now found that she craved even if she couldn't say why, she had no intention of taking this thing any father, opening herself up to whatever this way; but his eyes pierced, with this blunt inquisitive stare that seemed to both see her and understand her and be totally puzzled all at once. She was no less puzzled about him. Sometime since the time she met him a few months back, he'd taken on a mature face, one that finally matched the measured, careful man he was. But his eyes reminded her he was very much his daddy's son: things wrapped up tight in there, only let out when they needed to be.
But he had been so forthright, even if she didn't have a handle on him yet, so she felt the overwhelming urge to test him, see if she could make him falter or maybe retreat, perhaps knowing deep down that he would do neither.
She said, "So, what was that?"
"What was what?"
She held up her hand.
"I don't know," he said, shrugging his shoulders.
"I doubt that."
He smiled. "Impulse." Then more cautiously: "Did it bother you?"
"You don't bother me, Sam."
"I said, did it bother you?"
"Depends on what you mean by bother."
He raised his eyebrows, amused. "Fair enough."
He'd brought the bourbon back in, and he offered it to her first before he took another slow drink.
"Do you know what I keep thinking about?" he said.
"What?"
"I'm not supposed to be here."
"Sam."
"No. It's okay. It's just that I didn't get what Dean was going through until now. And I'm not just talking the guilt. I don't know where I'm supposed to be, but I know I'm not supposed to be here."
"I get it." He just looked at her curiously. "If I hadn't gone out for limes and toilet paper, I'd be…" She shook her head.
"No," he said firmly but quietly. "Obviously you weren't meant to be at the Roadhouse. You weren't meant to…"
"But I could have. Still amounts to the same thing."
"What?"
"Right now, I feel…lost?"
He just shook his head, laying out his hands over the surface of the table, looking at them briefly before he looked at her, this weird warm brown sparkle in his eyes. "Not lost. Free."
"I don't think-"
"No. I know it…hurts. And half of that is not knowing where to go, what to do." He smiled almost wistfully, his eyes focused out the window for a moment as he gathered up his thoughts. He took another drink and said, "What's funny is that everything's realer now, but it seems more unreal. At least for me. Like I'm suddenly looking into my life, trying to figure out what to do with it."
"What?"
"You see your life from the outside, and maybe at first you don't recognize it because you're seeing it too clear. Maybe you think you can't live it, even if you did before. You just have to figure out how to do it again, or maybe how it needs to be different now."
"You really are drunk, aren't you?"
He nearly laughed, but it was like he was too tired for anything more than that warm glow of a smile spreading over his face. "Yeah. But I know what I know. The yellow-eyed demon is gone, and now, what do I do? I hunt, I think, and I'm…really pretty okay with that. In theory. Just takes some getting used to."
"It's what you were doing before."
"But I get it now. And I'm choosing it."
He shifted his leg against hers and she didn't say a word, halfway afraid of the kind of things she might say. So they sat there across the table from each other, quiet again. But after a long moment, too long with the undercurrent of physical tension between them, Sam got up and went back to the bathroom, leaving her both rattled and suddenly almost unable to hold her eyes open anymore. Like when you wake up from a bad dream and you try to come down from it without falling asleep and falling right back into it-heart pounding but clinging desperately to those shreds of consciousness.
As Sam came back, he flipped off the light over the sink and then he pulled the curtains back to let in the sunlight. It was still just a gray glow, filtering into the room and illuminating his tired eyes and the way his forehead wrinkled as he sat back down. He sat with his legs jutting toward the bed, he body perpendicular to hers but his face turned to look at her, and rather unabashedly, the way some of the hunters did before they realized she was off limits.
Luckily, her back was to the window, so her face was still in shadow; maybe it wouldn't look as pink as it felt. She wanted to look away, but she really couldn't. It hadn't escaped her notice that he was tall and broad and strong, maybe a hair too pretty, but in no way he'd use like it was an advantage. She'd normally find him quietly charming, pleasant testosterone, a nice person to pass an hour or two with, raising eyebrows and pausing to talk over the bar, not that there was a bar anymore to talk over. But here, in this cramped little room, there was too much of him. She couldn't wander away from him. She didn't want to.
Nor could she move. She waited to feel his hands searching out hers or his legs sliding against hers under the table, something that might mean she really was crazy enough to consider…
Her palms pressed cool into the table as she stood up. "Do you want a glass of water?"
As she passed him on her way to the sink, he caught her by the wrist. "No," he said, turning her back to him, pulling her, and she let herself be pulled, even if she had to make some verbal refusal just for propriety.
"Sam." He held her there, standing between his legs, and his hands on her hips pulled her closer. She didn't resist except with words she didn't really believe in but she thought she should: "I'm old enough to be-"
"Hey," he said with a sly smile. "Do you want to argue with me, Ellen, or do you want to kiss me?"
His hands no longer pulled her, probably because they didn't need to. Under normal circumstances, she might have been able to turn him down-might-but not now. So she settled herself in his lap, straddling his narrow thighs, and his hand threaded up into her hair as he tugged her head closer to kiss her, quick tongue sliding into her mouth before she could think too much.
Despite the initial urgency, it was all so slow, like they had all the time in the world and the curtains weren't open. Like they were drunker than they were. She didn't mind. It had been a while since she had this, so long that part of her foolishly refused to equate those long, deep kisses with what would inevitably be sex. When she really settled herself in, flush with his hips, she felt him come up hard between her legs and he gave this low quiet groan that shook something loose in her. She kissed him more hungrily, her hands on his neck angling his mouth into hers, as if he didn't already know how to kiss her until she was about as wet as she could remember being in a long time, so fast and that sweet tension just gathering, pulling her tight into herself, and she wanted nothing better than to have him coax it out of her with those serious eyes and strong hands and knowing smile.
But her legs shook as she stood up, so she knew how it would be. "Come here," she said as she tugged him toward the bed. He didn't need to be tugged, really.
He fell on top of her already fumbling with the button on her jeans. He got one finger slicked down inside her before she could even get her hands on his waistband. He didn't let her get very far with that before he unzipped her jeans and tugged them down around her hips. He stared at her for a long moment, considering, then he smiled and backed himself down to the end of the bed and jerked off both of her boots, then pulled her jeans down her legs and off.
He looked like he was about to stop and be slow and sweet, and that made her nervous as hell. She didn't want him looking at her this way, her naked thighs, stopping to make this too soft and kind, because she really would fall absolutely to pieces. But he must've sensed it or felt it himself, because he just climbed back on top of her and kissed her, hard, as he pulled her panties to the side and thrust his long fingers inside her again, his thumb circling her clit.
"Fuck, Sam," she moaned, and he grinned against her collar bone before he sucked at her breast through her t-shirt and bra. Her hands scrambled for his waistband, to work his pants open, get her hands on his cock. She'd already come this far, and she needed it too much to stop.
But his hand stopped hers. "I don't have any condoms," he mumbled. Then she knew he wanted it just as bad as she did. He was slowing them down, or trying to, and it was becasue he didn't think he could have what he really wanted--not simply a hand job, an orgasm, but sex, a whole body to come together with, two people finding the deep places in each other for a little while.
"It's fine."
"Ellen."
"Now. Sam."
He stripped her underwear down her legs and off, but he didn't even pause to look. He just jerked open his fly and pushed his jeans halfway down his hips, and she barely had time to look over his cock, the slight curve of it as it hung there between his legs, before he was parting her with his fingers and sliding himself inside with a slow, firm thrust.
Once there, he stopped for what seemed like an eternity, maybe trying not to come, maybe wondering if he was really going to do this, if she really wanted it; but then he started to move his hips, and once she got her ankles hooked around his back, he didn't stop moving.
Every thrust shoved her up into the headboard of the bed, but after a while she didn't care. She didn't have a coherent thought in her head. Everything was the feel of him splitting her open, thrusting deep until their bodies slid into place all hot and slick together. They built up sloppy rhythm, her thighs burning as she pulled him closer and closer and his thighs trembling from thrusting so hard and fast.
She groaned every time he pushed into her, and he gave a gasp every time he pulled out. He pounded into her over and over, like he was trying to push her toward it, needed her to come as badly as she needed it. But it wasn't going to happen, wasn't the right angle, and she didn't care in the slightest. It was too good feeling his body rocking into hers, his hips slapping up against her ass, his cock slipping in and out of her so easily now, the friction almost as good as the adrenaline rush of pulling at his body, feeling her hips rising off the bed to meet his over and over, a little frantic, maybe even a little animal.
It didn't surprise her to see him trying to hold it back, but she wanted to see him come. She needed to feel it, so she just laid herself open and rolled her hips up into his to let him take it, drive as deep as he wanted to go. As soon as he shuddered and clenched up and grunted, as soon as she felt the warmth come out of him in a rush, she wrapped herself around whatever part of him she could get her hands on, taking him in her arms as completely as she could to clutch him tight so he could thrust into her and come as hard as he wanted, as he needed to.
When he pulled out, he stayed crouched over her for a second as he got his breath back. "Jesus, Ellen." When his eyes met hers again for the first time since before they started, he said, "You didn't…?"
She shook her head. He looked annoyed with himself, which she should have expected, so she added, "It's fine. I usually don't. Not that way. It felt good anyway. I-"
But he slid down her body, and now he parted her with his hands now, just like he'd done before. She almost told him to stop, that oral sex hadn't ever done a lot for her, and certainly not when it was given by someone who probably didn't have much idea what he was doing. But either he actually did or she was wound so tight that the first swipe of his tongue over her clit made her shiver and squirm against him. His fingers probed back into her as he mapped every one of her folds with his tongue until he figured out what made her gasp for air and warningly call out his name.
He looked up, two fingers still inside her, pulling out and spreading her juices. "Tell me what'll…"
"Pressure. Hard." His lips sucked in her clit, and she moaned. "That. Just keep- God, Sam."
As both hands slid up her stomach, crept under her shirt and pulled at the cups in her bra, just enough that he could tweak her nipples in each hand, she felt all the muscles in her body just give, like somehow in the midst of this insane tension it was just too much to hold together anymore. She didn't fight it, just laid herself open like she had before while he was fucking her, except now she was the one that was about to come undone. When she did, feeling this warm rush and tingle over her whole body, she wondered at it, thinking how it might've been weeks since she had an orgasm, months since she'd felt this shaky from one, even as Sam crawled back up her body and gave her a long, wet kiss. Then he pulled his pants back up and lay himself out on his back beside her. She thought she probably ought to at least put her underwear back on, but she didn't have the give a damn to move.
Sam said, "Sorry."
"Why?"
"Been a long time."
She just laughed. "No. That was…real good. But I know the feeling."
"I never…" She looked over and he was shaking his head. "I didn't think about you like before."
"That makes two of us."
"I don't know why I…"
"Sam," she said. "Ain't none of us playing with a rulebook anymore. How old are you?"
"Twenty four."
"Good lord," she said, shaking her head. Just a few years older than Jo. "Anyway, you're old enough to know how to be." Was Jo? Was anybody? But she said maybe too emphatically, "You're capable of taking care of yourself."
He rolled over on his side and pushed the hair out of her face. Even having his fingers on her now was too much. He said, "You gonna be okay?"
Holding in her diaphragm, she said, "I reckon."
"I'm serious."
"I don't know, Sam. You gonna be okay?"
"I think so. I mean, I'm alive, right? And you are, too."
He suddenly sat up, and she thought she'd maybe never seen such a sincere pair of bloodshot green-brown eyes, not even on his daddy. He said, "Let me try to get Jo on the phone."
"You don't have to-"
He just held up his finger and grabbed the cell phone off the bedside table to dial it. "Maybe she's not picking up because it's your number."
"And she'd pick up yours?"
"Dean's phone," he said with an amused smile. "But if I can't get her, you should sleep for a while. I'll…keep them out of your hair."
Jo didn't answer, and that made Ellen's heart hurt just a little more, but instead of wallowing, she gave way to the exhaustion. She managed to retrieve her underwear and pants from the floor, and she shimmied back into them, conscious of Sam pacing by the window, looking softer and less worried, but more tired, beaten down by the chronic stress. His face probably looked at lot like her own when she got up every morning after laying awake for so long, feeling how her life was this static hub in the middle of so much confusion. But this morning, by the pale yellow light of the sun at daybreak, she had the luxury of remembering action, feel it in her arms and legs and deep inside her, and for some reason that meant she could think of nothing better than burrowing into the blankets and letting herself fall into oblivion.
Actually, there would've been only one thing better, but she couldn't see explaining to Bobby and especially Dean why she was curled up on Sam's chest, the two of them dead to the world--if only because they weren't actually dead and they'd managed to prove to themselves what that meant.
Pairing: Ellen/Sam
Summary: I don't know. Suddenly it seemed hot. Spoilers for 2.22 ("All Hell Breaks Loose, part two"). Approximately 4800 words.
Note: A late birthday present for elise_509, who is so funny and smart, but who also listens so very well.
What It Means
Dean started pouring long before dawn, but for all his talk of enjoying the victory, he and Bobby seemed more interested in rehashing the past and pondering the future than just tasting the success of the here and now, the way it was a flavor nothing like this cheap bourbon. Sure, the bourbon was helpful; it knocked the adrenaline back and made the long night seem a little like a dream. But that only gave her the distance to see how far they'd come, understand what they'd escaped. Because there had been victory, and she noticed it most in the cool taste of the air hovering above the parking lot, the blue-blackness of the sky against the trees, and Sam.
She sat with her back to the stony façade of the building, right outside the door of the room, smoking for the first time in years but only because she couldn't get Jo on her cell. She knew her worry was excessive, that Jo wasn't anywhere near the roadhouse when it burned, but she couldn't shake off the feeling that the girl hadn't really disappeared, run off on her own, but was somewhere in the roadhouse all along, now beneath that rubble. She knew, too deep down to dredge it up, that maybe the charred remains of her livelihood were simply a sign impossible to ignore, about Jo and about everything. Gone.
She tried not to think about it. The bourbon helped, so she had been grateful to see Sam emerge from the room with the bottle, drop right down onto the concrete beside her and press his wide back against the same cool fake stone, like they were holding it up, together. He didn't say anything for a while, just looked out at the same night she was drinking in and let his head fall back. They should be asleep. They were hangdog tired and bone weary, but sleep wouldn't come.
Of course, sleep never came very easily for Ellen anymore, not in the last five years or so. She lay awake a lot in the early mornings, listening to the world bring itself back to life. Sometimes she worried-about Jo, about Ash, about the other hunters she knew by reputation, by face, a handful intimately. And though she thought about these boys, she never worried about them. It wasn't because she trusted them not to fuck up. They were too much their father's sons-Dean in his rigidness, Sam in his stubbornness-to make life easy for themselves. But she trusted the universe to take care of them. It always did take care of fools. Or maybe it's just that the fools always take care of each other.
When she shook out a Marlboro from the pack, startled to see that half the pack was already gone, this time Sam stuck out his hand for one.
"You don't smoke," she said, shaking her head.
He said with mock cockiness, but he meant it: "You don't know what I do."
It was true. Now, Dean-a person could read him like a book, especially a woman who'd known John Winchester. She'd've never handed over that pack to Dean, choosing instead to frown at him or fight him tooth and nail, because he inspired that sort of ready obstinacy. But Sam just stuck out his hand, those long fingers curling slightly, and she handed over the pack, then the lighter, and watched his mouth close around the cigarette; and it wasn't until he flicked the lighter, took a long drag, exhaled, tipped his head back slightly, and blew the smoke to the sky without so much as a cough, that she finally decided maybe that wasn't the smartest thing to do, giving him these cancer sticks. But she didn't say a word, just watched her own exhalations drift up into the air, white under the dim orange lights of the parking lot. It was easier than trying to read him, which was damn near impossible, if only because it seemed like it should be easy.
Nothing about this life, though, was easy. She was beginning to see that, possibly because it was slowly starting to feel like her life again, like it sometimes used to when Bill was still alive. She'd forgotten the nerves in the hunt, the fear, the sweet rush of adrenaline when it was all over and she realized she'd saved something, if only herself. It could be addictive, so it didn't surprise her to see Sam and Dean taking up that life for good, even though they'd gotten the revenge John had sacrificed their childhood and his own life for. Now they'd sacrificed their own lives, too, and although it frustrated her sometimes, when she thought of them in the lonely morning hours, it also made her proud. They were strong.
When she looked over at Sam again, he took the bottle from her hands and said, "Did you see him?"
"Who?"
"My dad."
"Yeah."
When she turned to look at him, she saw that his clear brown eyes had clouded over with tears. He concentrated on that Marlboro, his eyes wide open and staring ahead. Always ahead. That was Dean's doing. She'd never met men with more blind determination to keep moving, even if they didn't know where to. She could use that, she thought, her mind drifting to the roadhouse, or at least the one she imagined filled with people, not the one that went with a reality that now seemed rather unreal to her. She wondered if that was what it was like for Sam, those first few months after Dean brought him out on the road. She wondered how a person survived the battle in their soul between the fear in their gut and the feel of their body traveling fast over the ground, the purr of a car underneath it, taking them wherever it took them. It didn't occur to her until that moment that she lives in that sort of limbo every day, especially since Bill: too close to this other world for comfort, but not close enough to really do anything about it.
"Ellen?" Sam said suddenly. "Does it freak you out that I was…" He chuckled sardonically. "…dead yesterday?"
She didn't even hesitate. "No."
"No?"
"I didn't see you. Dead. I didn't see you dead. Makes a difference."
He nodded. "But what Dean did…?"
"Was exactly what you would've done under the same circumstances."
His expression, his whole body, came to a stop for a moment, considering her words so internally she couldn't even tell that he was doing it until he simply nodded.
Sam shifted a little then, his shoulder falling against hers. "What are you gonna do?"
"About…?"
"Everything."
His voice was so forthright and open it made her nervous, like it could reach down inside her and dig out things she didn't want unearthed. And his arm was too warm, so that now she could smell the sweat lingering in his clothes and on his skin, mixed with deodorant and dirt. Like the road, the hunt. Like every other hunter she'd known, except he was different and she couldn't put her finger on why.
"The roadhouse," he said.
"It's gone."
"I know, but…?"
"Sam. It's gone." She tipped the bottle to her lips and tried not to look at him; that was the first time she'd said it out loud. "I really don’t know what happens now."
Before she could stop it, probably because she hadn't in the least expected it, he laid his hand over hers on the concrete, his palm hot over her knuckles and his fingers settling into the spaces between hers. She'd been drifting out over the parking lot like the smoke, imagining herself all cool and weary-gray like the sky, because that was easier. Now she was right here, on the ground, heart unaccountably thudding, everything too fucking warm. Thinking too much. She took another drink, her one hand on the bottle so cool and the other so warm, not knowing why he was doing it and only caring because it was confusing as hell and ordinarily she'd know what to do about it, but not now, not like this.
She didn't look at him, and he didn't seem to want anything more, not that she didn't feel an undercurrent of tension. His other hand tapped the ashes off his cigarette as his leg, the one nearest hers, came down to lay flat on the ground beside their hands. He just perched his other hand on his bent knee and occasionally pulled the cigarette to his lips. She was watching them, the fleshy pinkness of them, the way he pulled them into a taut line, and he didn't even turn and look at her, but she felt his thumb start a light, slow pattern up and down the outside of her pinky finger.
She couldn't decide if it was pissing her off or just making her antsy or if maybe it was exactly what she needed. Didn't matter too much, because the door of the motel room swung open without warning, and Dean and Bobby came swirling out into the half-light of the almost-cool almost morning. Sam's hand slid up to her elbow before he let it fall again on his own thigh.
Dean said, "We're going for food."
"Good," Sam said, and his voice startled her for no good reason. It was calm, deep, even, but maybe that was enough. "I'm starving. I think."
Ellen grimaced at Bobby, too lazy for a fight but feeling the need to put one up anyway. "One of you sober enough to…?" She waved her hand at the Impala.
Bobby didn't answer, he just lumbered off toward the car with Dean right behind him. He spun momentarily and said, "Considering you two've been out here for damn near an hour and a half with the bottle…"
After they couldn't hear the sound of tires anymore, Sam looked at her like he was just as shocked about the passage of time as she was. He pushed himself up off the concrete and held out both hands to pull her up.
The door to the room shut out that morning, and even if she thought she'd be sorry to see it go, she wasn't. The bed looked strangely comfortable, lived-in, like the rest of the room, like the boys themselves, somehow. Sam saw her eyeing the bed as he dropped down heavy into one of the chairs at the beat-up old table by the window.
He said, "You can sleep if you want."
"Nah. I think I'll wait for whatever mess of grease your brother drags in here for breakfast."
So she sat down in the chair across from him and let her boots settle in beside his, her one leg stretched out against his. Despite the pointed contact, which she now found that she craved even if she couldn't say why, she had no intention of taking this thing any father, opening herself up to whatever this way; but his eyes pierced, with this blunt inquisitive stare that seemed to both see her and understand her and be totally puzzled all at once. She was no less puzzled about him. Sometime since the time she met him a few months back, he'd taken on a mature face, one that finally matched the measured, careful man he was. But his eyes reminded her he was very much his daddy's son: things wrapped up tight in there, only let out when they needed to be.
But he had been so forthright, even if she didn't have a handle on him yet, so she felt the overwhelming urge to test him, see if she could make him falter or maybe retreat, perhaps knowing deep down that he would do neither.
She said, "So, what was that?"
"What was what?"
She held up her hand.
"I don't know," he said, shrugging his shoulders.
"I doubt that."
He smiled. "Impulse." Then more cautiously: "Did it bother you?"
"You don't bother me, Sam."
"I said, did it bother you?"
"Depends on what you mean by bother."
He raised his eyebrows, amused. "Fair enough."
He'd brought the bourbon back in, and he offered it to her first before he took another slow drink.
"Do you know what I keep thinking about?" he said.
"What?"
"I'm not supposed to be here."
"Sam."
"No. It's okay. It's just that I didn't get what Dean was going through until now. And I'm not just talking the guilt. I don't know where I'm supposed to be, but I know I'm not supposed to be here."
"I get it." He just looked at her curiously. "If I hadn't gone out for limes and toilet paper, I'd be…" She shook her head.
"No," he said firmly but quietly. "Obviously you weren't meant to be at the Roadhouse. You weren't meant to…"
"But I could have. Still amounts to the same thing."
"What?"
"Right now, I feel…lost?"
He just shook his head, laying out his hands over the surface of the table, looking at them briefly before he looked at her, this weird warm brown sparkle in his eyes. "Not lost. Free."
"I don't think-"
"No. I know it…hurts. And half of that is not knowing where to go, what to do." He smiled almost wistfully, his eyes focused out the window for a moment as he gathered up his thoughts. He took another drink and said, "What's funny is that everything's realer now, but it seems more unreal. At least for me. Like I'm suddenly looking into my life, trying to figure out what to do with it."
"What?"
"You see your life from the outside, and maybe at first you don't recognize it because you're seeing it too clear. Maybe you think you can't live it, even if you did before. You just have to figure out how to do it again, or maybe how it needs to be different now."
"You really are drunk, aren't you?"
He nearly laughed, but it was like he was too tired for anything more than that warm glow of a smile spreading over his face. "Yeah. But I know what I know. The yellow-eyed demon is gone, and now, what do I do? I hunt, I think, and I'm…really pretty okay with that. In theory. Just takes some getting used to."
"It's what you were doing before."
"But I get it now. And I'm choosing it."
He shifted his leg against hers and she didn't say a word, halfway afraid of the kind of things she might say. So they sat there across the table from each other, quiet again. But after a long moment, too long with the undercurrent of physical tension between them, Sam got up and went back to the bathroom, leaving her both rattled and suddenly almost unable to hold her eyes open anymore. Like when you wake up from a bad dream and you try to come down from it without falling asleep and falling right back into it-heart pounding but clinging desperately to those shreds of consciousness.
As Sam came back, he flipped off the light over the sink and then he pulled the curtains back to let in the sunlight. It was still just a gray glow, filtering into the room and illuminating his tired eyes and the way his forehead wrinkled as he sat back down. He sat with his legs jutting toward the bed, he body perpendicular to hers but his face turned to look at her, and rather unabashedly, the way some of the hunters did before they realized she was off limits.
Luckily, her back was to the window, so her face was still in shadow; maybe it wouldn't look as pink as it felt. She wanted to look away, but she really couldn't. It hadn't escaped her notice that he was tall and broad and strong, maybe a hair too pretty, but in no way he'd use like it was an advantage. She'd normally find him quietly charming, pleasant testosterone, a nice person to pass an hour or two with, raising eyebrows and pausing to talk over the bar, not that there was a bar anymore to talk over. But here, in this cramped little room, there was too much of him. She couldn't wander away from him. She didn't want to.
Nor could she move. She waited to feel his hands searching out hers or his legs sliding against hers under the table, something that might mean she really was crazy enough to consider…
Her palms pressed cool into the table as she stood up. "Do you want a glass of water?"
As she passed him on her way to the sink, he caught her by the wrist. "No," he said, turning her back to him, pulling her, and she let herself be pulled, even if she had to make some verbal refusal just for propriety.
"Sam." He held her there, standing between his legs, and his hands on her hips pulled her closer. She didn't resist except with words she didn't really believe in but she thought she should: "I'm old enough to be-"
"Hey," he said with a sly smile. "Do you want to argue with me, Ellen, or do you want to kiss me?"
His hands no longer pulled her, probably because they didn't need to. Under normal circumstances, she might have been able to turn him down-might-but not now. So she settled herself in his lap, straddling his narrow thighs, and his hand threaded up into her hair as he tugged her head closer to kiss her, quick tongue sliding into her mouth before she could think too much.
Despite the initial urgency, it was all so slow, like they had all the time in the world and the curtains weren't open. Like they were drunker than they were. She didn't mind. It had been a while since she had this, so long that part of her foolishly refused to equate those long, deep kisses with what would inevitably be sex. When she really settled herself in, flush with his hips, she felt him come up hard between her legs and he gave this low quiet groan that shook something loose in her. She kissed him more hungrily, her hands on his neck angling his mouth into hers, as if he didn't already know how to kiss her until she was about as wet as she could remember being in a long time, so fast and that sweet tension just gathering, pulling her tight into herself, and she wanted nothing better than to have him coax it out of her with those serious eyes and strong hands and knowing smile.
But her legs shook as she stood up, so she knew how it would be. "Come here," she said as she tugged him toward the bed. He didn't need to be tugged, really.
He fell on top of her already fumbling with the button on her jeans. He got one finger slicked down inside her before she could even get her hands on his waistband. He didn't let her get very far with that before he unzipped her jeans and tugged them down around her hips. He stared at her for a long moment, considering, then he smiled and backed himself down to the end of the bed and jerked off both of her boots, then pulled her jeans down her legs and off.
He looked like he was about to stop and be slow and sweet, and that made her nervous as hell. She didn't want him looking at her this way, her naked thighs, stopping to make this too soft and kind, because she really would fall absolutely to pieces. But he must've sensed it or felt it himself, because he just climbed back on top of her and kissed her, hard, as he pulled her panties to the side and thrust his long fingers inside her again, his thumb circling her clit.
"Fuck, Sam," she moaned, and he grinned against her collar bone before he sucked at her breast through her t-shirt and bra. Her hands scrambled for his waistband, to work his pants open, get her hands on his cock. She'd already come this far, and she needed it too much to stop.
But his hand stopped hers. "I don't have any condoms," he mumbled. Then she knew he wanted it just as bad as she did. He was slowing them down, or trying to, and it was becasue he didn't think he could have what he really wanted--not simply a hand job, an orgasm, but sex, a whole body to come together with, two people finding the deep places in each other for a little while.
"It's fine."
"Ellen."
"Now. Sam."
He stripped her underwear down her legs and off, but he didn't even pause to look. He just jerked open his fly and pushed his jeans halfway down his hips, and she barely had time to look over his cock, the slight curve of it as it hung there between his legs, before he was parting her with his fingers and sliding himself inside with a slow, firm thrust.
Once there, he stopped for what seemed like an eternity, maybe trying not to come, maybe wondering if he was really going to do this, if she really wanted it; but then he started to move his hips, and once she got her ankles hooked around his back, he didn't stop moving.
Every thrust shoved her up into the headboard of the bed, but after a while she didn't care. She didn't have a coherent thought in her head. Everything was the feel of him splitting her open, thrusting deep until their bodies slid into place all hot and slick together. They built up sloppy rhythm, her thighs burning as she pulled him closer and closer and his thighs trembling from thrusting so hard and fast.
She groaned every time he pushed into her, and he gave a gasp every time he pulled out. He pounded into her over and over, like he was trying to push her toward it, needed her to come as badly as she needed it. But it wasn't going to happen, wasn't the right angle, and she didn't care in the slightest. It was too good feeling his body rocking into hers, his hips slapping up against her ass, his cock slipping in and out of her so easily now, the friction almost as good as the adrenaline rush of pulling at his body, feeling her hips rising off the bed to meet his over and over, a little frantic, maybe even a little animal.
It didn't surprise her to see him trying to hold it back, but she wanted to see him come. She needed to feel it, so she just laid herself open and rolled her hips up into his to let him take it, drive as deep as he wanted to go. As soon as he shuddered and clenched up and grunted, as soon as she felt the warmth come out of him in a rush, she wrapped herself around whatever part of him she could get her hands on, taking him in her arms as completely as she could to clutch him tight so he could thrust into her and come as hard as he wanted, as he needed to.
When he pulled out, he stayed crouched over her for a second as he got his breath back. "Jesus, Ellen." When his eyes met hers again for the first time since before they started, he said, "You didn't…?"
She shook her head. He looked annoyed with himself, which she should have expected, so she added, "It's fine. I usually don't. Not that way. It felt good anyway. I-"
But he slid down her body, and now he parted her with his hands now, just like he'd done before. She almost told him to stop, that oral sex hadn't ever done a lot for her, and certainly not when it was given by someone who probably didn't have much idea what he was doing. But either he actually did or she was wound so tight that the first swipe of his tongue over her clit made her shiver and squirm against him. His fingers probed back into her as he mapped every one of her folds with his tongue until he figured out what made her gasp for air and warningly call out his name.
He looked up, two fingers still inside her, pulling out and spreading her juices. "Tell me what'll…"
"Pressure. Hard." His lips sucked in her clit, and she moaned. "That. Just keep- God, Sam."
As both hands slid up her stomach, crept under her shirt and pulled at the cups in her bra, just enough that he could tweak her nipples in each hand, she felt all the muscles in her body just give, like somehow in the midst of this insane tension it was just too much to hold together anymore. She didn't fight it, just laid herself open like she had before while he was fucking her, except now she was the one that was about to come undone. When she did, feeling this warm rush and tingle over her whole body, she wondered at it, thinking how it might've been weeks since she had an orgasm, months since she'd felt this shaky from one, even as Sam crawled back up her body and gave her a long, wet kiss. Then he pulled his pants back up and lay himself out on his back beside her. She thought she probably ought to at least put her underwear back on, but she didn't have the give a damn to move.
Sam said, "Sorry."
"Why?"
"Been a long time."
She just laughed. "No. That was…real good. But I know the feeling."
"I never…" She looked over and he was shaking his head. "I didn't think about you like before."
"That makes two of us."
"I don't know why I…"
"Sam," she said. "Ain't none of us playing with a rulebook anymore. How old are you?"
"Twenty four."
"Good lord," she said, shaking her head. Just a few years older than Jo. "Anyway, you're old enough to know how to be." Was Jo? Was anybody? But she said maybe too emphatically, "You're capable of taking care of yourself."
He rolled over on his side and pushed the hair out of her face. Even having his fingers on her now was too much. He said, "You gonna be okay?"
Holding in her diaphragm, she said, "I reckon."
"I'm serious."
"I don't know, Sam. You gonna be okay?"
"I think so. I mean, I'm alive, right? And you are, too."
He suddenly sat up, and she thought she'd maybe never seen such a sincere pair of bloodshot green-brown eyes, not even on his daddy. He said, "Let me try to get Jo on the phone."
"You don't have to-"
He just held up his finger and grabbed the cell phone off the bedside table to dial it. "Maybe she's not picking up because it's your number."
"And she'd pick up yours?"
"Dean's phone," he said with an amused smile. "But if I can't get her, you should sleep for a while. I'll…keep them out of your hair."
Jo didn't answer, and that made Ellen's heart hurt just a little more, but instead of wallowing, she gave way to the exhaustion. She managed to retrieve her underwear and pants from the floor, and she shimmied back into them, conscious of Sam pacing by the window, looking softer and less worried, but more tired, beaten down by the chronic stress. His face probably looked at lot like her own when she got up every morning after laying awake for so long, feeling how her life was this static hub in the middle of so much confusion. But this morning, by the pale yellow light of the sun at daybreak, she had the luxury of remembering action, feel it in her arms and legs and deep inside her, and for some reason that meant she could think of nothing better than burrowing into the blankets and letting herself fall into oblivion.
Actually, there would've been only one thing better, but she couldn't see explaining to Bobby and especially Dean why she was curled up on Sam's chest, the two of them dead to the world--if only because they weren't actually dead and they'd managed to prove to themselves what that meant.