heartache to heartache we stand
Title: heartache to heartache we stand
Pairing: Gen; mentions of Sam/Jess, Deanna/OMC
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Somewhat angsty
Summary: It's a lot easier than it should be, adjusting. Girl!Sam, girl!Dean, early Season 1.
It takes her all of thirty seconds to spot Dee, even in this crowd. By the bar, glass in one hand and two empties at her elbow, tight black shirt cut low enough to show the edges of her bra, twenty pounds of eye makeup and lips the color of blood. Dee isn't exactly subtle.
Sam cuts her a glance over the shoulder of one of the guys who's trying to fall into her cleavage, and she rolls her eyes. "'Scuse me, fellas. Got a little bit of family business to take care of, you know how it is--"
One of the other guys says something that Sam can't hear and doesn't want to, reaching for Dee, but she slides out of his grip like she's greased, winds her way down to the end of the bar where Sam is waiting. "This had better be good."
"Oh, I'm sorry, am I interrupting something?"
"Fun, Sam. You ever hear of fun?"
"My idea of fun doesn't involve getting my ass groped by drunk rednecks."
Dee grins. "To each her own, I guess. You find something, or did you just want to make sure I wasn't staying out past curfew?"
"You're going to get hurt one of these days if you keep doing this."
"Oh, Christ," Dee says. "Spare me."
"Seriously, Deanna--"
"Seriously, Sammy, we hunt monsters. If some jackass in a dive like this gets the jump on me, I'll deserve it. What do you have?"
"The priest," Sam says.
"Father McKinney?"
"Yeah. He's dead."
"Shit." Dee drains the rest of her glass absently, sets it down on the bar next to her. Her nail polish is blue this week, cracked and ragged at the tips, stained with grease from the last oil change she did on the Impala. "When?"
Sam shoves the crumpled printout into her hands. "Ten years ago."
"We just talked to him this morning."
"Yeah," Sam says again. "So, do you think that qualifies as something we should look into?"
"Hm." Dee sucks her lower lip into her mouth, thoughtfully, and glances over her shoulder at the cluster of guys still waiting over at the other end of the bar. One of them smiles back at her. He's good-looking, Sam guesses, if you're into that kind of thing. Which Sam isn't, thanks anyway. "Can it wait until morning?"
"Jesus, fine," Sam grumbles. "Go get laid. Or whatever it is you're doing."
"Laid," Dee agrees cheerfully. "Big time. You should try it sometime."
"Maybe I have enough self-respect that I don't need to spread for every douchebag who tries to stick his hand down my pants," Sam snaps, then bites her lip. That's mean. That's something that might have made one of her friends at Stanford cry, that might have started an argument, would definitely have been one more thing that marked her as just a little off. Rough around the edges, is how Jess put it. She always smiled when she said that kind of thing, like it was cute, like it wasn't a bad thing that Sam was a too-tall, too-serious dyke with a collection of scars she wouldn't explain.
That's how Jess put it, but Jess is gone. And Dee doesn't know anything that isn't rough around the edges. Dee's never been treated right. She doesn't even know to miss it. "Maybe you just wish some douchebag wanted to stick his hands down your pants."
"No, thanks."
"Aw, Sammy, loosen up. You're gonna start squeaking when you walk."
"And you're going to die of syphilis."
"Hey," Dee says, grinning easily. "Gotta go somehow."
Sam sighs. "I'm going back to the motel."
***
The thing about being a Winchester is that you leave the kid gloves at the door. Conversation is no-holds-barred, as much battle as talk even when it's friendly, and it's a little unsettling how easy it is to fall back into that same rhythm she spent four years training herself out of.
Being a Winchester means that you can call your sister a tramp, but you can't say that you're worried about her.
***
Dee wanders in at three in the morning, smelling like smoke and latex and humming a meandering little tune under her breath. Sam has the lights off, but she's not asleep, and after the third time Dee trips over her feet and swears, she kicks the covers off, irritably. "Is it really that hard to find the bed?"
"Well, since you're up anyway--" Dee flicks the light on, then bends down to work on her bootlaces. She's already got her shirt off, and there's a ridiculously huge hickey decorating the bare slope of her shoulder.
"Did he have suction cups or something?" Sam asks. "Jesus Christ."
Dee smirks. "Jealous?"
Jess wasn't a biter. Jess liked to kiss her while they fucked, use her hands, those long clever fingers--
"No," Sam snaps.
Dee kicks her jeans off and flops down onto her bed in her underwear. Her hair is tangled and her lipstick mostly worn off. Kissed off. "Seriously, Sammy, you need to get a little action. There's gotta be a gay bar around here somewhere, we could--"
"Please," Sam says. "Don't help. And anyway, this isn't about me."
"I'm just saying--"
"You're being stupid, Dee. You're taking risks--"
"--I don't need your--"
"--and stop acting like this doesn't have anything to do with Dad being gone!"
"It doesn't," Dee says stonily.
Dee's been acting like she doesn't care. Dee's still acting like she doesn't care, like this is just another job, find Dad and he'll make everything all better, just like when they were kids. And self-destructing in the meantime. "You really expect me to believe that Dad wouldn't have something to say about you crawling in at three AM looking like--" she waves her hand at the hickeys, the mussed hair. "--that?"
"I'm not sixteen, Sam. Unlike you, Dad doesn't give a shit who I sleep with."
Sam thinks that maybe Dad should have given a shit about that, at some point in Dee's life, but that point is probably long past by now. "That isn't what this is about."
She softens her voice as she says it, enough that Dee will read the worry she doesn't know how to express any other way. Dee rolls her eyes, but relaxes. "Can we skip the Oprah moment, please?"
"I did some more research while you were gone," Sam offers.
"I knew I kept you around for a reason."
"I thought you kept me around so you'd have someone to break you out of jail," Sam says.
Dee flaps a hand. "Details. Talk to me."
"Okay." Sam turns the laptop back on, spins it to face her, and Dee wiggles forward on her belly to peer at it. There's a foreign musk clinging to her skin, a strange masculine smell that will linger, Sam knows from experience, until the next time she takes a shower. She has enough practice to refrain from wrinkling her nose. "I think this is the most likely option."
"Doppelgangers? Seriously?" Dee sounds more interested than argumentative, though, and she reaches across the space between them to scroll down.
"Hey, if you have any better ideas..."
"No, no." Dee glances up, grins at her over the top of the laptop. She looks tired, rumpled, and more than a little drunk, but still. Happy. Cheerful, anyway. Sam can vaguely remember what that feels like. "Still don't see anything here that we need to take care of tonight, though."
Sam rolls her eyes. "Far be it from me to interrupt your beauty sleep. I just thought you might be interested."
"Geek," Dee says fondly, rolling back onto the bed and closing her eyes.
***
She dreams of Jess less and less often as time passes, but that doesn't make the nightmares hurt less when they come.
She's not sure what wakes her. For a moment, she's not sure where she is, or who's there with her, and her hands flail, half-asleep and reaching for someone who isn't--can't be--there.
"Shh," murmurs a quiet voice in her ear, as warm hands catch her wrists and bring them back down. "Shh, Sammy, it's okay."
Dee, her mind acknowledges distantly. Dee, not Jess.
Her hands curl uselessly in the tangled sheets, and her throat closes on a sob.
***
Dee is back in her own bed when morning comes. Sprawled out with her face mashed in the pillow and one sock dangling precariously from her red-painted toenails, snoring. There's an intricately tattooed tramp-stamp at the base of her spine that Sam's fairly sure Dad doesn't know about, and the underwear she's sleeping in is white-trash haute couture in tatty lace and cheap satin.
The tattoo is cut through by scars that look like they were made by large claws, and Dee has one hand under her pillow, where Sam knows she keeps a knife. When Sam sits up, she stops snoring, stiffens for a moment, then rolls over with an exaggerated groan. "Jesus, how much did I drink last night?"
"Too much," Sam says dryly. "I think you wrote his phone number on your hand."
Dee glances at the number scribbled in blue ink on the back of her hand, and groans again. "Fuck. I think I gave him my number, too. You think we could just skip town now?"
"Sorry," Sam says unrepentantly. "Doppelganger, remember?"
Dee's response is a middle finger as she rolls out of bed and heads for the bathroom. "Your turn to get coffee. Hop to it."
The door slams shut behind her, and a moment later, the shower kicks on.
Sam sighs, reaches down to hunt for the cleanest pair of jeans she can find. In the bathroom, Dee is singing Pat Benatar--badly--over the sound of the water. They have a monster to hunt, and then three hundred miles of highway to the next coordinates Dad texted. Stanford is three weeks and almost a thousand miles behind them. Jess is gone, and Dee is here.
Like it or not, this is her life, for now.
Pairing: Gen; mentions of Sam/Jess, Deanna/OMC
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Somewhat angsty
Summary: It's a lot easier than it should be, adjusting. Girl!Sam, girl!Dean, early Season 1.
It takes her all of thirty seconds to spot Dee, even in this crowd. By the bar, glass in one hand and two empties at her elbow, tight black shirt cut low enough to show the edges of her bra, twenty pounds of eye makeup and lips the color of blood. Dee isn't exactly subtle.
Sam cuts her a glance over the shoulder of one of the guys who's trying to fall into her cleavage, and she rolls her eyes. "'Scuse me, fellas. Got a little bit of family business to take care of, you know how it is--"
One of the other guys says something that Sam can't hear and doesn't want to, reaching for Dee, but she slides out of his grip like she's greased, winds her way down to the end of the bar where Sam is waiting. "This had better be good."
"Oh, I'm sorry, am I interrupting something?"
"Fun, Sam. You ever hear of fun?"
"My idea of fun doesn't involve getting my ass groped by drunk rednecks."
Dee grins. "To each her own, I guess. You find something, or did you just want to make sure I wasn't staying out past curfew?"
"You're going to get hurt one of these days if you keep doing this."
"Oh, Christ," Dee says. "Spare me."
"Seriously, Deanna--"
"Seriously, Sammy, we hunt monsters. If some jackass in a dive like this gets the jump on me, I'll deserve it. What do you have?"
"The priest," Sam says.
"Father McKinney?"
"Yeah. He's dead."
"Shit." Dee drains the rest of her glass absently, sets it down on the bar next to her. Her nail polish is blue this week, cracked and ragged at the tips, stained with grease from the last oil change she did on the Impala. "When?"
Sam shoves the crumpled printout into her hands. "Ten years ago."
"We just talked to him this morning."
"Yeah," Sam says again. "So, do you think that qualifies as something we should look into?"
"Hm." Dee sucks her lower lip into her mouth, thoughtfully, and glances over her shoulder at the cluster of guys still waiting over at the other end of the bar. One of them smiles back at her. He's good-looking, Sam guesses, if you're into that kind of thing. Which Sam isn't, thanks anyway. "Can it wait until morning?"
"Jesus, fine," Sam grumbles. "Go get laid. Or whatever it is you're doing."
"Laid," Dee agrees cheerfully. "Big time. You should try it sometime."
"Maybe I have enough self-respect that I don't need to spread for every douchebag who tries to stick his hand down my pants," Sam snaps, then bites her lip. That's mean. That's something that might have made one of her friends at Stanford cry, that might have started an argument, would definitely have been one more thing that marked her as just a little off. Rough around the edges, is how Jess put it. She always smiled when she said that kind of thing, like it was cute, like it wasn't a bad thing that Sam was a too-tall, too-serious dyke with a collection of scars she wouldn't explain.
That's how Jess put it, but Jess is gone. And Dee doesn't know anything that isn't rough around the edges. Dee's never been treated right. She doesn't even know to miss it. "Maybe you just wish some douchebag wanted to stick his hands down your pants."
"No, thanks."
"Aw, Sammy, loosen up. You're gonna start squeaking when you walk."
"And you're going to die of syphilis."
"Hey," Dee says, grinning easily. "Gotta go somehow."
Sam sighs. "I'm going back to the motel."
***
The thing about being a Winchester is that you leave the kid gloves at the door. Conversation is no-holds-barred, as much battle as talk even when it's friendly, and it's a little unsettling how easy it is to fall back into that same rhythm she spent four years training herself out of.
Being a Winchester means that you can call your sister a tramp, but you can't say that you're worried about her.
***
Dee wanders in at three in the morning, smelling like smoke and latex and humming a meandering little tune under her breath. Sam has the lights off, but she's not asleep, and after the third time Dee trips over her feet and swears, she kicks the covers off, irritably. "Is it really that hard to find the bed?"
"Well, since you're up anyway--" Dee flicks the light on, then bends down to work on her bootlaces. She's already got her shirt off, and there's a ridiculously huge hickey decorating the bare slope of her shoulder.
"Did he have suction cups or something?" Sam asks. "Jesus Christ."
Dee smirks. "Jealous?"
Jess wasn't a biter. Jess liked to kiss her while they fucked, use her hands, those long clever fingers--
"No," Sam snaps.
Dee kicks her jeans off and flops down onto her bed in her underwear. Her hair is tangled and her lipstick mostly worn off. Kissed off. "Seriously, Sammy, you need to get a little action. There's gotta be a gay bar around here somewhere, we could--"
"Please," Sam says. "Don't help. And anyway, this isn't about me."
"I'm just saying--"
"You're being stupid, Dee. You're taking risks--"
"--I don't need your--"
"--and stop acting like this doesn't have anything to do with Dad being gone!"
"It doesn't," Dee says stonily.
Dee's been acting like she doesn't care. Dee's still acting like she doesn't care, like this is just another job, find Dad and he'll make everything all better, just like when they were kids. And self-destructing in the meantime. "You really expect me to believe that Dad wouldn't have something to say about you crawling in at three AM looking like--" she waves her hand at the hickeys, the mussed hair. "--that?"
"I'm not sixteen, Sam. Unlike you, Dad doesn't give a shit who I sleep with."
Sam thinks that maybe Dad should have given a shit about that, at some point in Dee's life, but that point is probably long past by now. "That isn't what this is about."
She softens her voice as she says it, enough that Dee will read the worry she doesn't know how to express any other way. Dee rolls her eyes, but relaxes. "Can we skip the Oprah moment, please?"
"I did some more research while you were gone," Sam offers.
"I knew I kept you around for a reason."
"I thought you kept me around so you'd have someone to break you out of jail," Sam says.
Dee flaps a hand. "Details. Talk to me."
"Okay." Sam turns the laptop back on, spins it to face her, and Dee wiggles forward on her belly to peer at it. There's a foreign musk clinging to her skin, a strange masculine smell that will linger, Sam knows from experience, until the next time she takes a shower. She has enough practice to refrain from wrinkling her nose. "I think this is the most likely option."
"Doppelgangers? Seriously?" Dee sounds more interested than argumentative, though, and she reaches across the space between them to scroll down.
"Hey, if you have any better ideas..."
"No, no." Dee glances up, grins at her over the top of the laptop. She looks tired, rumpled, and more than a little drunk, but still. Happy. Cheerful, anyway. Sam can vaguely remember what that feels like. "Still don't see anything here that we need to take care of tonight, though."
Sam rolls her eyes. "Far be it from me to interrupt your beauty sleep. I just thought you might be interested."
"Geek," Dee says fondly, rolling back onto the bed and closing her eyes.
***
She dreams of Jess less and less often as time passes, but that doesn't make the nightmares hurt less when they come.
She's not sure what wakes her. For a moment, she's not sure where she is, or who's there with her, and her hands flail, half-asleep and reaching for someone who isn't--can't be--there.
"Shh," murmurs a quiet voice in her ear, as warm hands catch her wrists and bring them back down. "Shh, Sammy, it's okay."
Dee, her mind acknowledges distantly. Dee, not Jess.
Her hands curl uselessly in the tangled sheets, and her throat closes on a sob.
***
Dee is back in her own bed when morning comes. Sprawled out with her face mashed in the pillow and one sock dangling precariously from her red-painted toenails, snoring. There's an intricately tattooed tramp-stamp at the base of her spine that Sam's fairly sure Dad doesn't know about, and the underwear she's sleeping in is white-trash haute couture in tatty lace and cheap satin.
The tattoo is cut through by scars that look like they were made by large claws, and Dee has one hand under her pillow, where Sam knows she keeps a knife. When Sam sits up, she stops snoring, stiffens for a moment, then rolls over with an exaggerated groan. "Jesus, how much did I drink last night?"
"Too much," Sam says dryly. "I think you wrote his phone number on your hand."
Dee glances at the number scribbled in blue ink on the back of her hand, and groans again. "Fuck. I think I gave him my number, too. You think we could just skip town now?"
"Sorry," Sam says unrepentantly. "Doppelganger, remember?"
Dee's response is a middle finger as she rolls out of bed and heads for the bathroom. "Your turn to get coffee. Hop to it."
The door slams shut behind her, and a moment later, the shower kicks on.
Sam sighs, reaches down to hunt for the cleanest pair of jeans she can find. In the bathroom, Dee is singing Pat Benatar--badly--over the sound of the water. They have a monster to hunt, and then three hundred miles of highway to the next coordinates Dad texted. Stanford is three weeks and almost a thousand miles behind them. Jess is gone, and Dee is here.
Like it or not, this is her life, for now.