Supernatural: Cradlesong [Part 3/3]
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Sam spends the last month of Jess’s pregnancy in a haze of alcohol and misery. Jess doesn’t hold it against him, she isn’t much better off.
She tells herself it will be better for both of them after the baby is born. They’ll pull it together, they’ll have to. But in the back of her head, she knows Sam won’t ever be together again. In the back of her head, a voice tells her things will be worse.
She gives birth on June 11th. Jess spends twelve hours with Sam holding her hand, pushing her hair back, whispering distractions to try to get her through. Their son is born in the same hospital Sam once spent a week in with the flu, back when he was nine years old and they were spending a summer at Bobby’s.
They hand him to Jess first, but she pushes him into Sam’s hands immediately. Sam needs him more, needs to see that good things can come even after the worst has happened. She watches him accept the baby, watches the little spark of light that forms in Sam’s eyes, and commits to memory the tiny turn of Sam’s lips-up into a smile instead of down for the first time since before Dean was taken.
They name him Dean, Sam insists on Dean. Jess won’t bring it up that Dean didn’t want that, isn’t cruel enough to point it out if Sam is being selfish, won’t tell him he’s disobeying his brother. She doesn’t think Sam could handle the accusation, not in the state he’s in.
“I know, you know,” Sam says, bouncing the baby next to Jess’s bedside, pressing his lips into its bald little head. “I know I wasn’t supposed to name him Dean. But Dean wasn’t supposed to…”
Jess reaches out and takes his wrist, shaking her head to silence him. “We’ll make his middle name Hunter,” she says. “Then you can both have pissed each other off about it.”
Sam laughs, hardly even scowls as Jess writes the name his brother had jokingly suggested down, making it last, because it’s the only thing Dean can do for the baby now.
She frowns at the Moore printed for the baby’s last name, knows that her son will always be a Winchester to her, and finds it amusing that each of them has a problem with one of the baby’s three names. They turn in the paperwork and, two days after the birth, Sam drives them home for the first time.
They lay their child in its crib, watch over him until he falls asleep, they make love and drift off in each other’s arms. It almost feels like it’s supposed to, but there’s an awful reminder in every kick of Hunter’s tiny feet, every gurgling sound out of his mouth, every little moment that Dean will never share. They welcome their baby into the world with less cheer than Jess would have preferred.
Sam doesn’t need books to tell him what to do, learns how to parent by example. Jess stays in bed recovering, waited on by Sam, and he takes pleasure in the late night cries that rouse him from bed, begging for help. He has nothing to do but nurture, no way to express his grief but to love Jess and the baby the way Dean would have. The way Dean loved him.
The problem is that he can’t go on forever like that, it’s not his nature, and it’s not long before Sam’s desperate attempt to drive Dean from his memory by becoming him backfires. He starts having nightmares. Jess wakes to his crying more often than the baby’s, hears him whispering his brother’s name with a paralyzing desperation. They never settle into anything normal. Sam will never settle into anything normal.
Jess sees Sam’s sadness rotting over the first few weeks of Hunter’s life, watches it become something even uglier. It goes from pathetic and weak and passive to something too awake to be human. Hate. Bloodlust. Sam is only gentle when he’s got their child in his hands, when he’s got Jess’s sitting beside him. As soon as he thinks he’s alone, his eyes go dark and Jess can hear what he’s thinking, even though he never speaks the word out loud. Every step he sets down on their wooden floors echoes with his single thought. Revenge.
He says it’s for them, tries to feed Jess the same bullshit Dean had about selling his soul for selfless reasons. Their Dean is supposed to have a better father than Sam can be, he tells her. Jess never should have lost someone she loved as much as she loved his big brother. Sam is going to make Hell pay for taking that from them.
He starts going on hunts without her, first small trips, just as far as Bobby’s for the run down on demon activity. Jess doesn’t even see the red flags go up, feels safer when Sam knows what’s going on.
Then Sam starts going further, coming home every other day instead of every day. The demons he finds don’t give him much to work with, generally aren’t important enough to know anything, and Sam’s threat of an exorcism is not enough to make them talk if they do. Jess sees him come home more disappointed with each hunt, but Sam has never known how to give up.
It’s when he brings her home that Jess even starts to suspect things might somehow get worse. Ruby’s new meat suit is a brown haired girl who looks frustratingly innocent, she gives Jess a nasty sneer when Sam’s got his back turned, doesn’t see her as much of a threat now that it’s no longer Jess and Dean united against her, holding too much of Sam for her to be able to get close to him without convincing them first. Ruby plays the Dean card, and Jess feels sick and angry every time Sam lets his brother’s name even pass the bitch’s lips.
Jess doesn’t know what Ruby is teaching him, but at first Sam returns smiling, fucks Jess with a life she’d been sure Dean took with him. They’re getting somewhere, he tells her. They’re finally making a difference. Everything is going to be as close to okay as it can be.
This doesn’t last for long. One night Sam comes home, Jess hardly has the chance to taste something metallic mixing with the strong liquor in his mouth before Sam pushes her away, tells her not to kiss him. After that, Jess begins to dread the moments in the day when Sam stumbles home: drunk, miserable, and much too quiet. He stands over Hunter’s crib, watches the baby with soft, adoring eyes, but doesn’t smile at him like he used to, doesn’t pick him up to play, almost seems to avoid anything that would make him touch their child.
Sam never hurts her, certainly never hurts the baby. He cradles them both with a need to protect, but the need is too strong, too determined to make up for his failings with Dean. He can’t handle it, especially not when he’s coming home from whatever horrors Ruby is dragging him into.
Jess tries talking to him about it to no avail. She tries to make him see that he should stop what he’s doing with the demon, if he hates it, he should stop. There’s no reason left to keep on with it. It’s too late to get Dean back. Dean wouldn’t want him this unhappy. Sam shakes his head, tears rising in his eyes, and tells her he’s doing it for Dean, that he owes his big brother and he’s not going to even try to be happy until he’s done right by Dean.
She doesn’t know what to do about it. She spends months waiting for Sam to snap out of this or finish whatever he’s set out to do. He won’t tell her. She knows it’s about killing Lilith, but it’s not that easy. Jess and Bobby both offer to help with that, but the only help Sam wants is Ruby’s and that lets Jess know that whether he’s hurting them or not, Sam is doing things she doesn’t trust him to come home to her after.
He doesn’t seem to trust himself with them as much, either, and he starts coming home once a week instead of every day or every few days. Jess waits on pins and needles to know he’s alive, to see him slip into the house and kiss their son goodnight, curl up in bed when she’s already asleep so he can press her to his chest like he’s depending on her to save him.
Jess hates every minute of it, starts to resent Sam and Dean for doing this to Sam and, above all, herself for loving and understanding him too much to turn him away, for failing Dean and not being able to save his brother from whatever he’s falling into. Dean would have, could have made Sam repent with a single sad look.
Finally, Jess accepts the ugly truth: things can’t go on this way forever.
_______________________________________________________________
“No,” Sam says. The consummate little brother, he doesn’t seem to realize Jess is serious and isn’t going to change her mind because he wants her to. “You don’t mean that.”
Jess stares at the table, knows that if she looks at Sam, she really will take it back. “I do. I’ll go crazy if we keep on like this. I can’t.”
“You can’t? Jess, I can’t. If you…you two’re all I have. You can’t take that away from me.”
“Sam, I don’t want to. I’m giving you a choice. It’s her or it’s me. Stay or go. It can’t be both anymore.”
“Is that it? Are you jealous? It’s not like that with Ruby, Jess. You know I would never do that to you.”
“You might as well, Sam. Whatever’s going on is probably worse.”
“No, it’s…I’m doing what I have to do for Dean.”
“You keep saying that, but I’m not seeing how this crusade against Lilith is going to fish him out.”
“Don’t you care about what she did at all? She took him from us. He was ours, and she took him, and I want her to pay.”
“Of course I care, but Sam, this isn’t how you fix it. You know how you win? Keep on living. Try to be happy. Remember Dean, fucking honor his dying wish. He didn’t want you to do these things.”
Sam shakes his head. “Jess, you’ll see when it’s over, okay? You’ll see that it’s better this way.”
“Never, Sam.”
“Just have a little faith in me. When have I ever hurt you? When have I lied? I’m not okay. You of all people, you know that. I need you and the baby or I’ll…I don’t know what I’ll become.”
“Listen to what you’re asking us for, Sam. It’s not fair. We can’t be that for you. We’re human, just human.”
Sam takes her hand, forces her to look up at him. She regrets it immediately when she sees how wrecked he is. “You don’t love me anymore?”
“Of course I love you. I’m always gonna love you.”
Sam lips tremble. He shakes his head. “No, you don’t. You don’t.”
Jess knows Sam has never had to question if he’s loved before, and he doesn’t know how to handle it.
“Sam, I’m sorry. But I need you to tell me what you’re going to do.”
Sam stands up, looks both like an upset, innocent child and a little like a demon in the same instance. “I’m going if you want me to go,” he says.
Jess tries to reach out to him, make him see it from her point of view, but Sam’s too hurt to stay. He looks at her like he’s going to kiss her, then shakes his head, doesn’t pause to say goodbye to the baby on his way out the door. Jess sees something terrifying in his eyes as he turns from her, something completely lacking in the small shreds of warmth she’s been hanging on to so desperately for months.
Jess knows she’s only made it worse, hopes Sam will wake up one day seeing how wrong they’ve both been and come back to her. But Sam stays gone.
_______________________________________________________________
It’s funny how the most mundane things can completely change a life. There’s a knock at the door-it’s just another day and it’s just another knock, but when Jess opens it, everything turns back upside down.
As usual, it’s the Winchesters responsible for all this topsy-turvy.
“Sam?”
Sam looks just as worn down as he did the last time she saw him, but he’s smiling from ear to ear, and that’s definitely new. A little too new-Jess instinctively reaches for the silver loaded gun she keeps by the door, but Sam pushes it open further, and then it all makes perfect sense.
“Dean?” she asks, eyes shifting back to Sam for confirmation. Sam’s smile softens, no less genuine, but now just a small, private turn to his lips. “Dean, how?”
Dean doesn’t bother answering the question, steps forward and grabs Jess up in his arms. She smiles and kisses him and as soon as he puts her down, she pulls Sam in for a kiss, too. He squeezes her hand, which Jess decides to take as an apology. She’ll accept it now that Dean’s here. Sam will be back to normal again-everything will be-and Jess missed him too much to hold grudges.
Dean steps to the side and inspects Jess, tilting his head a little. “Sammy said there was something here I needed to see?”
Jess smiles and nods and she turns to where Sam was standing. He’s already vanished into the house. Dean has hardly stepped past the doorway when Sam’s back, baby pulled close to his chest and a look on his face like he can’t imagine anything better than what’s happening.
He holds his arms out to Dean and Dean looks down, then back up at Sam, his lip trembling. Sam smiles, nods, and hands the baby off.
“Dean, I want you to meet our son,” he says.
Dean shakes his head, offering the baby his finger. His entire hand wraps around Dean’s index finger and Dean laughs like a child himself.
“Hey,” Dean whispers. “Hey, little guy.”
“Dean,” Sam says.
“Yeah?” Dean replies, looking up.
“No, I mean, that’s his name. Dean.”
Dean scowls. “I thought I told you not to name the baby after me.”
“I couldn’t hear you,” Sam replies, fighting a smirk. “The music was too loud.”
Dean rolls his eyes and leans in to kiss his brother. “Asshole,” he mutters against Sam’s lips.
“No cussing in front of the baby,” Jess says out of habit, slapping Dean’s shoulder, and closing the front door.
Sam and Dean both laugh and just like that they’re the three musketeers again-plus one extra.
_______________________________________________________________
They’re lying in bed together, naked and breathless, and all pushed so close there’s hardly room to breathe. Dean’s fingers rest on Jess’s thigh, moving in absent patterns. Jess feels like she’s dreaming. The moment is too much like the familiar nights they used to share and therefore can’t be real.
He leans down and kisses her softly, and Sam smiles over at them from his side of the bed. Jess wonders if she’d imagined everything about Sam that summer. It doesn’t seem possible that the man sitting there, looking at her through warm hazel eyes and smiling like he’s never seen a bad moment in his life, could be the same person who had terrified her so much just a few weeks ago.
The baby starts crying while Dean’s still got his lips on hers, and Jess groans, pushing aside the covers. Sam puts one warm hand on her thigh, holding her in place.
“You two stay. Just like this. I’ll take care of Dean.”
“Dude, we need to rename the kid.”
“We should call him by his middle name now that we have two Deans,” Jess offers, watching Sam rise from bed and put on boxers.
“Never,” Sam replies on his way out.
“What’s his middle name?” Dean asks.
Jess turns to him with an amused smirk. “Hunter.”
Dean laughs hysterically. “Jesus, between that and the Dean thing, you two should never be allowed to name children.”
“That part was your idea, Dean.”
“Yeah, but I wasn’t serious!”
Jess bites her lip. “I know. But we wanted…but we did what we had to.”
Dean frowns, but he leans down to kiss her again. “I missed you, both of you. So much.”
Jess doesn’t bother wasting her breath returning the sentiment.
“What have you two been up to, anyway?” Dean asks.
Jess shrugs. “This and that. Bobby got me a job as a secretary in town. Boring as all hell, but safe.”
“How about Sammy? Please tell me he’s a janitor.”
Jess feels her eyebrows draw. “He didn’t tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
Jess says nothing.
Dean sits up and looks at her closely, something awful dawning on his face. “He wasn’t here.”
“Dean, we had a really long summer.”
“Oh, I sympathize,” he says coolly. “Why?”
“He was hunting.”
Dean’s lips turn down, but he nods. “He didn’t get himself hurt?”
“Not that I know of.”
“How could he leave you, leave the baby? To hunt? There something you’re leaving out, Jess?”
“I told him to leave.”
Dean pulls away from her. “You broke up with him? In the state he was in, you broke up with him?”
“You have no idea about the state he was in. He was…He’s not okay, Dean. I know he seems better than fine, but he’s just happy you’re back. He was a wreck, and he was scaring me.”
Dean makes a worried face, but before he has the time to respond, Sam comes in, smelling a little like baby formula, and tackles him to the bed, laughing. Dean laughs too, kisses him, seems to forget the conversation altogether. Jess prays that Sam will stay this okay and Dean will never have to see what happened to him over the summer firsthand. She knows Dean won’t understand, won’t be able to grasp how bad it got unless he sees it for himself. He still believes in his brother, and Jess starts to believe again, too.
_______________________________________________________________
“We gotta find out what did this,” Dean says over breakfast.
Sam shakes his head, poking at his pancakes. “I don’t care what did it, Dean. It’s done. I’ll take it.”
“It’s something bad, man. We gotta stop it.”
“It’s not. Don’t talk about it like that.” Sam reaches out and strokes his thumb over Dean’s jaw.
“I’m just saying, Sam.”
“You just got back from Hell. You deserve to relax. Get to know the baby. What are you gonna learn that’s better than that?”
Jess almost laughs at the irony, but she keeps quiet, just focuses on breastfeeding Hunter.
“I don’t know, you’re about to go on a hunt. What’s better than being here for you?”
“I have work,” Sam says, straining to keep his tone light. Jess sighs inwardly.
“Work with me and we’ll get it done faster, and then we can both come back here and stay.”
Sam obviously has no plans of doing it, but he smiles at the thought of it, at the fact that it’s Dean suggesting it, and nods. He looks damn near beautiful as he turns to face Jess, stands up and kisses her on the top of the head.
“Alright, then. Let’s get ready and go.”
_______________________________________________________________
“A what now?” Jess asks into the receiver.
“An angel.”
“You’re making that up.”
“I’m not! Dean met the damn thing. And that handprint on his shoulder? I guess you could say he’s been touched by an angel.”
“That was awful, Sammy,” Jess hears Dean say from the driver’s seat.
“No, but seriously, why?”
“Who gives a shit?” Sam asks. “Says it was God’s idea. Best idea the guy’s ever had, if you ask me.”
“I’m pretty sure that counts as blasphemy.”
“Whatever. The point is: it means Dean’s back to stay. That’s all I needed to know.”
“Me, too,” Jess agrees. “You boys coming home soon?”
“On the way there already.” Jess can hear Sam smiling.
“Good, I’m making stew.”
“Mmm, I’m excited,” Sam says. “I miss you.”
“Yeah, you too.”
“I love you, too, Jess. I really, really do.”
“Sam, it’s over, okay? I don’t want to talk about it.”
She hears Sam make an uncomfortable noise and he changes the subject, “Give Dean love from his dads, okay?”
“You’re really gonna refuse to call him Hunter?”
“Until my dying day.”
The connection cuts out and Jess chuckles to herself.
_______________________________________________________________
“So this is real, then?” Dean asks, his body splayed out on the couch.
Jess relaxes into Sam on the arm chair and Sam snorts. “Are we going to have a philosophical debate?”
“I see the table, therefore the table is,” Jess says with pomp.
“College ruined both of you.” Dean yawns. “I meant all of this. We’re really gonna stay here and be respectable and live like normal people?”
“Dean, last night you sucked your brother off, and we’re in a committed three person relationship.”
“You know what I meant!”
“The answer is yes.”
Dean and Jess both turn to Sam.
“What? This is perfect. We’ve got a home, and each other, and a kid for crying out loud. I know this is what you want to do, Dean.”
“Yeah, it is.”
“So do it. You earned it.”
“Yeah,” Jess says slowly, not quite believing this from Sam. “And what about you?”
“I haven’t yet. But I will. I have some things to do. It won’t take long, and then I’ll come back, too.”
“Sam, no way.”
“Yes way. I’ve got a job left and I’m gonna do it. That’s how you taught me, right?”
“But what job? You won’t even tell me.”
“It’s not your problem, Dean. I don’t want it to be your problem.” Sam gets up and lies over Dean on the couch, kissing him. “I want you and Jess to be happy.”
“How are we supposed to be happy while you’re off on the road risking your neck?”
“I don’t know, Dean, figure it out. You’ll be safe here, and you’ll keep them safe, too. I’ll be happy knowing that. You’ll be happy if I am. That’s just how you work.”
_______________________________________________________________
Dean lets Sam go the next day, thinking it’s one hunt. When Sam keeps leaving, Dean starts to realize Sam is playing down his commitment to whatever he’s doing, trying to trick Dean into staying, like Dean can’t handle himself. Jess’s guess is that Sam knows what Dean can’t handle is whatever he’s doing with Ruby.
Dean is antsy and uncomfortable waiting for his brother all day, pretends not to be as worried as he is. Whatever happiness he is supposed to be finding with Jess, there’s no chance for it while Sam’s away. And if Jess is being honest, she’d feel a whole lot better raising Hunter alone, like she did for the last month, if it means there’s someone watching Sam, someone who can actually keep him in check and maybe make him realize how pointless his revenge mission is now that Dean is right there waiting for him.
But Sam is stubborn, and Dean is weak when it comes to doing what Sam wants him to. Sometimes, Sam asks him to come along and help on hunts. When that happens, Dean goes without a moment’s hesitation. The rest of the time, he stays with Hunter, saving Jess the money she’d been sacrificing to a nanny.
It starts to get more frequent, though. Sam makes a half-assed effort at being selfless, but the time he’s willing to give up now that his brother is back steadily decreases, until he’s taking Dean on one of three hunts, every other hunt. Jess is waiting for it to become every hunt.
In late October, Sam comes home one night in awful condition, can hardly hold himself up long enough to knock on the door and get their attention. All he has time to say is ‘demons’ before he passes out, leaving Dean to tend to his wounds and sit up by his bedside all night, just in case something goes wrong. Jess joins him in the guest room, where they’ve spread Sam out so he can have more room for himself, at around 3 a.m.
“Hey,” she says, not bothering to whisper. No way Sam’s waking up for hours.
Dean does whisper, “Hey.”
He smiles and accepts the glass of water she brings him, setting it down on the nightstand. She ignores the bottle of whiskey set down next to Dean’s chair, knowing that her efforts at keeping him hydrated won’t come to much use.
“How is he?”
Dean shakes his head, hand reaching for the bottle and then pausing.
“You don’t have to worry about it, Dean. I can see your fingers itching.”
Dean smiles thankfully and pulls the top off, taking a long swig. “I hate seeing him like this. Always have. I used to pull the craziest shit when we were kids, and Dad would get so pissed at the trouble I’d fling myself into, but it was always better for me than…”
Dean takes his brother’s hand and runs his fingers over it.
“Dean, I’m worried about him.”
“He’ll be okay, babe. He’s been worse off than this before.”
“No, not because of this. Because of...” Jess can’t stand to make Dean question Sam by telling him the real reason she thinks he needs a babysitter, so she plays an angle Dean’s more likely to respond to, anyway. “I don’t like him hunting alone, Dean. I think you should go with him.”
“No way, Jess. We’ve got a kid. You need help.”
“I know. Believe me, I know. But…I’ve been taking care of him alone for months now. It’s not ideal, but it’s doable. We don’t need you as much as he does right now. Just take my word for it.”
“I’m not ditching the kid. Sam can take care of himself.”
“Can he?” Jess arches an eyebrow and inclines her head towards the bed. “The next time this happens, he may not make it home at all.”
Dean flinches at the implication.
“Just for right now. Just until he’s ready to settle. God knows I’ll miss you both to death, but I think you’re what he needs. If you don’t go with him, he’ll never stop. If you do, I’ll get you both back much sooner.”
Dean nods and stands up, bending over the bed to press a kiss against his brother’s sweaty temple. He moves to Jess then, kisses her long and hard, and they go back to their bedroom. They have sex, slow and lazy and gentle, and Jess knows it’s a goodbye.
_______________________________________________________________
They keep in touch, which is a big relief for Jess. Sam is usually the one to call, stays on the phone with her for hours telling her about their hunts. Dean calls when Sam can’t or when he wants to hear her voice. They both huddle around the phone and beg her to put the baby on. Sometimes they call while they’re fucking, tell her all the things they’d be doing to her if she were there. Jess begins to feel a bizarre sense of calm, even happiness sometimes, knowing that they’re alright, that she is not forgotten, and that soon, they will all be together again.
The things they tell her are on a completely different level than what she had to deal with as a hunter, and Jess is a little grateful to be out of it. There are angels and demons left and right, threats of apocalypse, things Jess can’t begin to wrap her head around. But they cope, and Jess knows that if anyone is going to get the job done, it’s Sam and Dean.
They usually sound okay to her, even if it’s strained sometimes. It’s not until Dean calls one night, drunk and upset, and asks if she knew Sam was working with Ruby that Jess begins to be cut out of the picture. She’s on Dean’s shit list for not telling him, and she wants to be sorry. She couldn’t bring herself to break them apart when they’d just gotten each other back, naively hoped Sam would drop Ruby because of Dean’s return. She took the coward’s route, she knows it. But Jess is only human, and she doesn’t mean it when she apologizes.
_______________________________________________________________
They don’t stop calling altogether, but they do stop visiting. It’s March before she sees either of the Winchesters again, and when Sam stumbles in, condition almost as bad as it had been last summer, a part of her wishes they’d stayed gone, let her keep on believing they’re as okay as they pretend to be on the phone.
“Sam, what’s wrong?” she asks, though she crosses her arms over her chest and stays planted in the doorway, making it clear she’s not going to welcome him into her house without a damn good reason.
“Dean,” he says weakly. “It’s Dean.”
“What happened to Dean?”
“He’s in the hospital,” Sam says. “He’s in the hospital and those sons of bitches won’t even heal him.”
“The angels?”
“Yeah. Fucking angels.” Sam grimaces. “Let me come in, babe. I need somewhere to sleep. I can’t sleep anywhere anymore.”
Jess lets the door swing open and immediately heads for the kitchen, hoping putting something warm in Sam’s stomach will make it easier to get details out of him. He sits at the table, spoons his soup but doesn’t eat much, and looks like he’s ready to give up on something important.
“He was always the strong one,” he says after a while. “He used to be so strong.”
“Sam, he’ll heal.”
“No, I know. But he won’t. Ever, I don’t think. He’s so weak since he got back, and I can’t protect him, no matter how hard I try. He’s so weak. I wish he’d stayed here with you, like I told him. You could take care of him like this. I can’t take care of anyone.”
Sam sighs and rests his forehead against one hand. Jess comes up behind him and tries to rub the tension out of him, but Sam doesn’t loosen up.
“Do you know what they did to him? Do you know what they made my big brother do? They made him torture. The angels did.”
Jess feels her features betraying her confusion and Sam laughs bitterly.
“That’s what he did in Hell. It wasn’t his fault. That’s what happens in Hell. But they’re angels, Jess, I used to believe in them. They made Dean torture. He can’t.” Sam shakes his head. “It would be different if it was someone else. Someone who isn’t Dean. They don’t understand what it’s doing to him. And he won’t let me protect him.”
“Shh,” Jess says, taking Sam’s hand. “You need to go to bed, okay?”
Sam nods and lets her lead him upstairs. She pauses in front of the nursery and turns to Sam.
“Do you wanna see Hunter?”
Sam shakes his head. “Not like this. Soon. I’ll be fine, or I’ll be dead. But I don’t wanna see him like this.”
Jess doesn’t want particulars on exactly what “like this” entails, so she just leads Sam to the room and waits for him to fall asleep before slipping downstairs to clean up the dishes he left almost untouched on the table.
_______________________________________________________________
“Dean?” Jess asks, double checking the caller ID.
“Demon blood,” Dean says.
Nice to hear from you, too, she thinks. “What?”
“Sam has been sucking demon blood. For months now. Like a fucking vampire or something.”
Jess feels her knees shaking and sinks onto the first horizontal surface she sees. “What? Why?”
“It’s been helping him gank demons. I’ve been wondering how he’s been doing it, but I never thought…” Jess hears something rattle as Dean vents his anger on it. “It’s not him, Jess. It’s that demon bitch. She’s got him completely strung out, he doesn’t know up or down until she tells him.”
Jess feels the bile in her throat rising, remembers a metallic kiss, and it all makes too much sense for her to pretend Dean’s made a mistake.
“I’m gonna shred her into pieces.”
“Good, that’s a start,” says Jess. “What about Sam? What are you doing about Sam?”
“What am I doing about Sam? Well, I was trying to detox the little shit in Bobby’s panic room until he could see a little sense, but somehow he got out.”
“Crap.”
“Yeah, crap. Look, he’s been gone for a few hours. More than enough time to…I just have to ask. Is he there?”
“No, I haven’t seen him in more than a month.”
“I figured as much,” Dean admits, sounding defeated. “If he stops by, you have my permission to shoot him. But he won’t.”
“No,” Jess agrees. “He won’t.”
“All right. I’ve gotta try some other options, then.”
“Dean.”
“Yeah, Jess?”
“Let me know what happens. Either way. I hate not knowing.”
“It’s worse to know,” Dean says, sounding distracted. “Look, I’ll call you and tell you what’s up.”
Of course, he never does. Jess turns on the TV the next day and sees the patterns Bobby’s been having her help him isolate for months, patterns that mean the Devil is walking the Earth. Jess fills in the rest of the mess, knows Dean doesn’t call because he can’t bring himself to tell her that his little brother may have ended the world.
_______________________________________________________________
“You gotta be kidding me,” Jess says, completely exasperated. “This shit again? Can you two make up your goddamn mi-?”
Jess’s question is cut short by a kiss. It’s the passionate, hungry kind of kiss that generally means one of two things in movies: a) everyone is going to live happily ever after or b) we’re all going to die. Jess swallows hard as she pulls away. She’s not really in the mood to die.
“Christ,” she says, wiping her mouth and scowling. “What now?”
“So you have no reason to love me or even want to see me anymore,” Sam says softly. “But, if by some chance you do anyway…I really need you to know how sorry I am. For everything I’ve done to you. For the last two years since Dean went…maybe longer. Maybe I never should have even met you.”
“Sam, don’t say that.”
“It’s true,” he reaches out to run the ends of his fingertips on her face. She closes her eyes and leans into it, even though she really should know better. “I’m so sorry, Jess.”
Somehow, Jess can tell this isn’t the Sam she’s been dealing with for the past two years talking to her. He looks miserable, completely destroyed, but he looks like the man she met at Stanford, same sad, lost look that was always on his face in their first few months together, a look Jess now knows comes about from the absence of his brother. “I know you are.”
“I…” He shakes his head. “I left Dean.”
“You did?”
“I have a problem, Jess, and I don’t trust myself and…when he looks at me…it hurts to have him look at me like that and know he’s right.” He pauses. “He told you, right? What I was doing with Ruby?”
“Yes. He told me.”
“I can’t stop thinking about it, so I can’t be around demons. And I know you and Dean are better off without me, but I couldn’t help…I mean, since I won’t be hunting. This is the only place I would ever want to…you don’t have to say yes.”
“I know I don’t,” Jess says firmly. “But the answer is yes.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, Sam. I still love both of you idiots for some reason. If you’re not with him, then I want you with me.”
Sam makes a face like he’s trying to smile and doesn’t even remember how anymore.
“You’re not gonna regret this, Jess. I swear, babe, I will never make you regret this again.”
Jess nods and helps him carry his bags in.
_______________________________________________________________
The next day, Sam gets a job in town as a bartender. Things are fine at first, better than fine. After two months, Sam starts having nightmares, wakes up with Dean’s name on his lips every night. There’s nothing surprising in that, but the way Sam says it makes it sound like the Dean he’s dreaming about isn’t his brother, is doing something awful to him. Jess isn’t strong enough to ask, just pushes the sweat matted hair away from his eyes and kisses him back to sleep.
This is routine for a month; Jess puts up with it because Sam needs it, and Sam is good to her. He works hard. He helps at home. He pampers their child. They’re a family, a normal cookie-cutter man and wife and baby family and no one talks demons or angels or brothers.
It isn’t Sam’s fault when things get ruined. It’s just more of the same shit he’s been dealing with since before he was born, the kind of shit that would drive anyone to do what he did when it was his fault. Hell, a weaker man would have done worse and not felt the need to repent that drives Sam’s every breath now.
She’s on her way home from work, hand on the door knob that would have meant safety, and it’s a testament to how out of shape she is that they surprise her. Three years ago, any hunters that tried to ambush Jess would have been on the floor bleeding out before they had the time to pull a knife on her.
But it’s not three years ago. Jess ends up tied up in the back of a van, thanking whatever pathetic excuse for a God there is for the fact that these hunters don’t know about her son, and that she left the baby at Bobby’s that morning instead of with a nanny she couldn’t trust to protect him.
They take her to the bar Sam works at, he’s closing out a shift, and Sam-even Sam-looks at them like he can’t believe anything human could sink to the depths they’re sinking to. They order him to drink demon blood, they threaten Jess. She laughs with more confidence than she feels and tells Sam that she’ll never forgive him if he does it. Sam tries to talk it out with them, but the hunters are relentless, and Jess goes home that night with a cut on her neck from where they were pressing their blades too hard, much too earnest in their threats.
Sam spits it out. Sam stops them but doesn’t kill them. Sam does all the things Dean used to bitch at him about in happier days, the things even Jess sometimes secretly rolled her eyes at. Too much of a conscience, Winchester, they used to tell him. It’s the single greatest thing Jess thinks she’s ever seen in her life.
He doesn’t see it that way. When they get home, Jess tries to get him to go upstairs with her, desperate to touch the man she saw Sam become in that bar, but he draws away from her like he did back when he was full of poison, back when he had every reason to draw away.
“Sam, what’s wrong?” she asks, taking his hand and pressing it against her thigh.
Sam lets her hold him there, she sees how bad he wants it, but he shakes his head.
“You know,” he says, soft and sad. “Sometimes it feels like the entire universe is aligned to make me get you killed.”
“Sam?”
“I’m the worst thing that ever happened to you. To Dean. To my mom. I…” He shakes his head. “Look, I need to sleep and think things out a little, okay?”
Jess nods, says, “Yeah, of course.”
He wakes up that night with the worst nightmare yet and a look of terrifying calm, like everything in his life suddenly makes some morbid sense.
“It was him,” he says, as if Jess is going to know what the hell that means.
“Sam, can you not be cryptic at four in the morning?”
Sam turns to look at her. “It wasn’t Dean. Of course it wasn’t. It was him, Jess, the nightmares, they were Lucifer.”
“Why would Lucifer be-?”
“I’m supposed to be his…” Sam begins. “Oh, God. I’m gonna be sick.”
Jess understands what Sam couldn’t bring himself to say, pretends to be asleep when he gets back in bed. He kisses her softly on the neck as he settles back into place behind her and whispers something about not hurting her anymore. Jess isn’t surprised that she wakes up the next morning alone.
_______________________________________________________________
She doesn’t hear from them for months after Sam leaves. He doesn’t answer her calls or texts, she never finds out if Dean takes him back. She spends the better part of a year trying to go to work, raise her child, go on with life, wondering if one or both of them are dead. She figures that if either was she would know, the world would be crashing around her, and she can’t decide if she’s being melodramatic and self-important or just properly interpreting everything the angels have told them.
Then one night, a night of no particular importance, there’s a knock on her door. Dean is there, alone and drunk, and Jess has flashbacks to that terrible summer, when this was a regular occurrence, when it was Sam on her doorstep instead of his brother.
“Dean? Are you okay?”
Dean shakes his head. He reaches out to brush a hair out of her face and laughs. “No,” he says. “I don’t think I am.”
“What are you-?”
Dean leans in and kisses her, missing her mouth by about a mile. “I miss you.”
“I miss you, too, Dean. But you gotta tell me what’s going on.”
“Did you know that you and the kid are the only things I have?”
Her brain shuts down with terror and she grabs Dean and shakes him. “Dean, Where’s Sam? Is Sam okay?”
“No, not Sam. You. Only you.”
“Dean, where is he?”
“I don’t know,” he says with a shrug. “Playing dress-up with the Devil, probably. I can’t trust him alone for five minutes.” Dean laughs and drops his face into Jess’s shoulder. “But we could always trust you.”
“Dean, you’re scaring me to death, please tell me something useful.”
“I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna say ‘yes’ to Michael,” Dean says. “But don’t worry, because I’m gonna make sure you and little Dean and everyone we saved-you’re all gonna be okay. Even Sam, unless he…” Dean frowns. “Probably not Sam.”
“Dean, come inside and we’ll talk this out, okay? Tell me what happened. Did Sam say ‘yes’?”
Dean shakes his head. “Not yet. I give him a week. We should place bets.”
“That’s not funny.”
“Nothing’s funny.”
“Dean, is he planning to?”
“No, but he will.”
“What are you saying? This is Sam you’re talking about.”
Dean makes a hurt face. “Like I don’t fucking know that already.”
“Dean,” Jess places a hand on each side of his face. “Talk to me.”
“Let me see the baby. Even if he’s asleep. I won’t bother him, I promise. I just want to see him one more time.”
“Yeah, of course.”
Jess moves out of the doorway and lets Dean lead the way to the nursery. He hovers over the crib, runs a finger down his son’s face, and actually smiles. He’s there for less than a minute before he nods and starts walking to the door. Jess catches him by the sleeve as he moves past her. He turns quickly, pushes her into the wall, and kisses her hard. She can taste everything he’s had to drink and closes her eyes, accepting the kiss without any drive to return it.
When Dean pulls away, he looks much more sure of himself than before, which is not an effect Jess was trying to achieve.
“Our baby is beautiful, Jess. I have to make sure he’s okay.”
“Dean, there are better ways. Please don’t do this.”
Dean yanks his arm out of her grip and is gone as quickly as he came.
_______________________________________________________________
They come back to her a week later-both of them this time-looking battered and broken and fucking happy of all things. She tries to hold the image of Dean in front of her next to the one she remembers appearing on her doorstep and has to triple check to make sure this one isn’t a demon or a shifter.
She welcomes them into the house out of pure confusion. Processing the rate of change will take too long, and Jess is pretty sure letting them in is the right answer, however infuriatingly confusing and withholding they’ve been for the last year and a half.
They fill her in on the gaps in her narrative, which are not few or slight. They tell her that their brother Adam is probably dead (again), that they can’t find Castiel (who thought it would be a brilliant idea to nuke himself), they still have no idea how to stop Lucifer. It all sounds pretty dismal, but their hands don’t stop finding each other and the touches are just like before-neither of them can really give up much hope when his brother is looking over at him like he’s the universe wrapped up with a bow.
Dean does pull her aside and apologize at one point, but mostly they seem to have forgotten everything that’s gone wrong. They laugh and joke and want to take their minds off whatever the angels have done to them, and Jess can’t spoil that for them by bringing up old grievances. She watches them instead, feeling the warmth of what this used to be like flood over her as they tumble and crawl with their son on the floor.
After they put the baby to bed, they fuck like old times, just because it’s what they feel like doing. Sam falls asleep first; Dean explains later that Zachariah had done a number on him before he was killed. Dean doesn’t make much pretence of going to sleep, though; he sits up and watches his brother, stroking his fingers through Sam’s hair.
It’s too much for Jess to take for granted, and she has to ask.
“Dean, what happened with you two?”
“I was all set to say ‘yes’ and fuck everything up, and he saved me.”
“But why were you going to say ‘yes’ to begin with? You didn’t exactly explain yourself when you dropped by.”
“We, uh, died and went to Heaven and…it was the worst night of my life,” Dean says.
“You did what now?”
Dean snickers. “Jess, the year we’ve had.”
“I can imagine,” she says. “But what’s Heaven got to do with it?”
“I don’t know.” He shakes his head a little. “It messed with my head. I thought Sam didn’t…”
He looks up, but the starry expression doesn’t fade from his eyes, and his fingers don’t stop working gently on his brother’s scalp.
“I was wrong, Jess. I was so wrong.” He leans down to kiss Sam’s forehead. “My little brother never let me down. It was just me.”
Jess knows Sam, Dean, and the situation too well to buy this assessment, but it’s the Dean Winchester she fell in love with talking, and it’s better to err a little in Sam’s favor than to sell him short completely. She doesn’t correct him.
_______________________________________________________________
About a week after Sam and Dean arrive, there’s another knock at the door. Jess opens it and finds a man in a trench coat staring at her through wide blue eyes. She knows him on instinct.
“Hello,” he says, scratchy voice vibrating over her.
“Castiel.”
“Yes. I cannot stay for a proper introduction. It would be an honor to meet you under different circumstances. I must speak with the Winchesters.”
Just then, one of the aforementioned Winchesters reaches the bottom of the staircase, laughing brightly and carrying a giggling toddler in his arms. Sam freezes when he sees who’s in the doorway, and his expression falls. “Cas? You’re alive?”
“Barely,” the angel replies.
“Shit, come in,” Sam says, opening the door. Jess doesn’t even bother telling him to watch his mouth, not right now.
“We do not have time to linger. It took me three days to get here. The news I bring is losing its relevance and I have no means to update it.”
“Three days? Why didn’t you-?”
“My cell phone has run out of batteries, Sam.”
“You can’t charge it on your own?”
“Not without my…”
“You’re not an angel anymore.”
Castiel shakes his head.
“Dean, get down here,” Sam shouts up the stairs.
“I don’t have the energy to chase you and that kid all over this house, Sammy,” Dean says in a laughing tone as he descends the staircase. “I’m getting up there in yea-Cas?”
“Hello, Dean. I am sorry to hear that you are having such a hard time here.”
“Wow,” Jess says. “You didn’t mention how snarky he was.”
“He wasn’t,” says Sam, sounding a little sad about it.
“We are to leave immediately,” Castiel tells Dean, ignoring all other comments.
Dean shakes his head. “No, come on, man. All we want is a few more days.”
“You’ve had all the days we could spare. There are not supposed to be resting periods when you’re stopping the Apocalypse, Dean. You should have never come here to begin with, Pestilence is-”
“Cas is human now,” Sam explains. Dean’s eyes widen, but Castiel scowls and soldiers on. Jess didn’t realize angels had sore spots, but then maybe they don’t. This doesn’t seem to count for much as far as meeting one is concerned.
“Pestilence is on the move. I need your help. I need it now.”
Sam and Dean sigh deeply. Sam hands the baby over to Jess and they both move to the corner where their duffels have been sitting since they arrived. Sam and Dean were never naïve enough to unpack them. Jess had thought about doing it for them on more than one occasion.
Sam gives her a kiss and follows the angel out the door. Dean does the same, then smiles his trademark grin, just because he knows it’ll make her feel a little better.
“Don’t wait up,” he jokes.
_______________________________________________________________
Jess is expecting not to hear from them for months. Jess expects things to get bad. Jess expects to have to deal with some kind of fallout. What Jess doesn’t expect is to find Dean on her doorstep again two weeks later, looking worse than he ever has.
Her first thought is that Sam’s fallen off the wagon, or that the plan Sam called to ask her opinion on was every bit as stupid as it sounded. But Jess knows Dean wouldn’t be here right now if Lucifer was wearing his brother’s meat. No, Dean would have died smiling before he would have come knocking on her door, knowing the only thing that would lie ahead for him would be to kill his brother in the hopes of taking out what Sam let inside of him.
“We won,” Dean says, like it’s the worst news he’s ever delivered. “Sam won.”
Jess shakes her head and feels tears stinging her eyes. It’s a good thing. She knows it’s supposed to be a good thing, but all she can say is, “no, no, no, no.”
Dean grabs her into his arms and buries his face in her shoulder. He smells like graveyard dirt, not something that’s new for him, but knowing whose grave it is makes her want to push him away. She can’t though, not now. Jess wouldn’t be surprised if he just stopped working.
“Dean, come inside.”
Dean doesn’t answer, doesn’t do anything. He stares ahead, he takes mechanical steps. He’s a corpse, and Jess gets to be the person stuck trying to bring him back to life.
He looks around at the house like he’s never seen it before, and when Jess tries pressing a kiss on his lips, he doesn’t return it.
“His,” he says when she pulls away. He looks at her with wet eyes, reaches out and kisses her. “This was supposed to be his.”
“Dean.”
His face gets confused for a second and he looks down. Hunter is smiling up at him, tugging at his pants leg. “Daddy,” he says.
Dean picks him up and scans his face, and Jess knows that he’s seeing what she realized months ago. He’s holding Sam’s child.
That’s when he cracks. Jess tries to take Hunter out of Dean’s hands, send him off to play, because the last thing he needs to see is Dean right now. Dean clings to him, though, draws him into his shoulder.
“You look so much like your father,” he says, still clutching their son. Hunter looks back at her confused, his face on the verge of crying, like he thinks he did something wrong to make Dean respond like this.
“Dean, give him to me,” Jess says.
Dean lets her take him reluctantly, lips trembling as he watches her carry the toddler out of the room. He’s helped himself to a glass of whiskey by the time she gets back from putting the baby to bed, and he wipes at his cheeks when he notices her.
“I shouldn’t be here,” he says. “Sammy made me promise to come to you. He wants us to be…Jess, I can’t be happy.”
“Dean, it’s okay. We’ll work on it, all right?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t want you to have to deal with this. But you can’t tell me to go. I can’t go, Jess. This is what he wanted.”
Dean downs the rest of his drink and shakes his head as he pours another one. He laughs bitterly when Jess grabs another glass off the shelf and takes just as generous a serving.
“Probably wasn’t what he was picturing when he made you promise, huh?” Jess asks, looking into the amber in her glass.
“Probably not,” Dean says with a shrug.
They sit in silence for a while before Jess lifts her drink.
“To Sam?”
Dean looks up at her, fragile, but he smiles faintly and nods, willing to give Sam a few seconds of happy after everything he gave up. “Sammy,” he says, toasting.
“Bed?” she tries as he drains the last drops.
“I guess,” he says slowly.
Dean staggers slightly as he rises. Jess has to wrap her arm around him to keep him up. She pauses briefly to turn off the dining room light, and, as darkness falls on the house, a streetlight outside their window flickers and dies out.
End.
Masterpost ∴ Art Masterpost
Sam spends the last month of Jess’s pregnancy in a haze of alcohol and misery. Jess doesn’t hold it against him, she isn’t much better off.
She tells herself it will be better for both of them after the baby is born. They’ll pull it together, they’ll have to. But in the back of her head, she knows Sam won’t ever be together again. In the back of her head, a voice tells her things will be worse.
She gives birth on June 11th. Jess spends twelve hours with Sam holding her hand, pushing her hair back, whispering distractions to try to get her through. Their son is born in the same hospital Sam once spent a week in with the flu, back when he was nine years old and they were spending a summer at Bobby’s.
They hand him to Jess first, but she pushes him into Sam’s hands immediately. Sam needs him more, needs to see that good things can come even after the worst has happened. She watches him accept the baby, watches the little spark of light that forms in Sam’s eyes, and commits to memory the tiny turn of Sam’s lips-up into a smile instead of down for the first time since before Dean was taken.
They name him Dean, Sam insists on Dean. Jess won’t bring it up that Dean didn’t want that, isn’t cruel enough to point it out if Sam is being selfish, won’t tell him he’s disobeying his brother. She doesn’t think Sam could handle the accusation, not in the state he’s in.
“I know, you know,” Sam says, bouncing the baby next to Jess’s bedside, pressing his lips into its bald little head. “I know I wasn’t supposed to name him Dean. But Dean wasn’t supposed to…”
Jess reaches out and takes his wrist, shaking her head to silence him. “We’ll make his middle name Hunter,” she says. “Then you can both have pissed each other off about it.”
Sam laughs, hardly even scowls as Jess writes the name his brother had jokingly suggested down, making it last, because it’s the only thing Dean can do for the baby now.
She frowns at the Moore printed for the baby’s last name, knows that her son will always be a Winchester to her, and finds it amusing that each of them has a problem with one of the baby’s three names. They turn in the paperwork and, two days after the birth, Sam drives them home for the first time.
They lay their child in its crib, watch over him until he falls asleep, they make love and drift off in each other’s arms. It almost feels like it’s supposed to, but there’s an awful reminder in every kick of Hunter’s tiny feet, every gurgling sound out of his mouth, every little moment that Dean will never share. They welcome their baby into the world with less cheer than Jess would have preferred.
Sam doesn’t need books to tell him what to do, learns how to parent by example. Jess stays in bed recovering, waited on by Sam, and he takes pleasure in the late night cries that rouse him from bed, begging for help. He has nothing to do but nurture, no way to express his grief but to love Jess and the baby the way Dean would have. The way Dean loved him.
The problem is that he can’t go on forever like that, it’s not his nature, and it’s not long before Sam’s desperate attempt to drive Dean from his memory by becoming him backfires. He starts having nightmares. Jess wakes to his crying more often than the baby’s, hears him whispering his brother’s name with a paralyzing desperation. They never settle into anything normal. Sam will never settle into anything normal.
Jess sees Sam’s sadness rotting over the first few weeks of Hunter’s life, watches it become something even uglier. It goes from pathetic and weak and passive to something too awake to be human. Hate. Bloodlust. Sam is only gentle when he’s got their child in his hands, when he’s got Jess’s sitting beside him. As soon as he thinks he’s alone, his eyes go dark and Jess can hear what he’s thinking, even though he never speaks the word out loud. Every step he sets down on their wooden floors echoes with his single thought. Revenge.
He says it’s for them, tries to feed Jess the same bullshit Dean had about selling his soul for selfless reasons. Their Dean is supposed to have a better father than Sam can be, he tells her. Jess never should have lost someone she loved as much as she loved his big brother. Sam is going to make Hell pay for taking that from them.
He starts going on hunts without her, first small trips, just as far as Bobby’s for the run down on demon activity. Jess doesn’t even see the red flags go up, feels safer when Sam knows what’s going on.
Then Sam starts going further, coming home every other day instead of every day. The demons he finds don’t give him much to work with, generally aren’t important enough to know anything, and Sam’s threat of an exorcism is not enough to make them talk if they do. Jess sees him come home more disappointed with each hunt, but Sam has never known how to give up.
It’s when he brings her home that Jess even starts to suspect things might somehow get worse. Ruby’s new meat suit is a brown haired girl who looks frustratingly innocent, she gives Jess a nasty sneer when Sam’s got his back turned, doesn’t see her as much of a threat now that it’s no longer Jess and Dean united against her, holding too much of Sam for her to be able to get close to him without convincing them first. Ruby plays the Dean card, and Jess feels sick and angry every time Sam lets his brother’s name even pass the bitch’s lips.
Jess doesn’t know what Ruby is teaching him, but at first Sam returns smiling, fucks Jess with a life she’d been sure Dean took with him. They’re getting somewhere, he tells her. They’re finally making a difference. Everything is going to be as close to okay as it can be.
This doesn’t last for long. One night Sam comes home, Jess hardly has the chance to taste something metallic mixing with the strong liquor in his mouth before Sam pushes her away, tells her not to kiss him. After that, Jess begins to dread the moments in the day when Sam stumbles home: drunk, miserable, and much too quiet. He stands over Hunter’s crib, watches the baby with soft, adoring eyes, but doesn’t smile at him like he used to, doesn’t pick him up to play, almost seems to avoid anything that would make him touch their child.
Sam never hurts her, certainly never hurts the baby. He cradles them both with a need to protect, but the need is too strong, too determined to make up for his failings with Dean. He can’t handle it, especially not when he’s coming home from whatever horrors Ruby is dragging him into.
Jess tries talking to him about it to no avail. She tries to make him see that he should stop what he’s doing with the demon, if he hates it, he should stop. There’s no reason left to keep on with it. It’s too late to get Dean back. Dean wouldn’t want him this unhappy. Sam shakes his head, tears rising in his eyes, and tells her he’s doing it for Dean, that he owes his big brother and he’s not going to even try to be happy until he’s done right by Dean.
She doesn’t know what to do about it. She spends months waiting for Sam to snap out of this or finish whatever he’s set out to do. He won’t tell her. She knows it’s about killing Lilith, but it’s not that easy. Jess and Bobby both offer to help with that, but the only help Sam wants is Ruby’s and that lets Jess know that whether he’s hurting them or not, Sam is doing things she doesn’t trust him to come home to her after.
He doesn’t seem to trust himself with them as much, either, and he starts coming home once a week instead of every day or every few days. Jess waits on pins and needles to know he’s alive, to see him slip into the house and kiss their son goodnight, curl up in bed when she’s already asleep so he can press her to his chest like he’s depending on her to save him.
Jess hates every minute of it, starts to resent Sam and Dean for doing this to Sam and, above all, herself for loving and understanding him too much to turn him away, for failing Dean and not being able to save his brother from whatever he’s falling into. Dean would have, could have made Sam repent with a single sad look.
Finally, Jess accepts the ugly truth: things can’t go on this way forever.
_______________________________________________________________
“No,” Sam says. The consummate little brother, he doesn’t seem to realize Jess is serious and isn’t going to change her mind because he wants her to. “You don’t mean that.”
Jess stares at the table, knows that if she looks at Sam, she really will take it back. “I do. I’ll go crazy if we keep on like this. I can’t.”
“You can’t? Jess, I can’t. If you…you two’re all I have. You can’t take that away from me.”
“Sam, I don’t want to. I’m giving you a choice. It’s her or it’s me. Stay or go. It can’t be both anymore.”
“Is that it? Are you jealous? It’s not like that with Ruby, Jess. You know I would never do that to you.”
“You might as well, Sam. Whatever’s going on is probably worse.”
“No, it’s…I’m doing what I have to do for Dean.”
“You keep saying that, but I’m not seeing how this crusade against Lilith is going to fish him out.”
“Don’t you care about what she did at all? She took him from us. He was ours, and she took him, and I want her to pay.”
“Of course I care, but Sam, this isn’t how you fix it. You know how you win? Keep on living. Try to be happy. Remember Dean, fucking honor his dying wish. He didn’t want you to do these things.”
Sam shakes his head. “Jess, you’ll see when it’s over, okay? You’ll see that it’s better this way.”
“Never, Sam.”
“Just have a little faith in me. When have I ever hurt you? When have I lied? I’m not okay. You of all people, you know that. I need you and the baby or I’ll…I don’t know what I’ll become.”
“Listen to what you’re asking us for, Sam. It’s not fair. We can’t be that for you. We’re human, just human.”
Sam takes her hand, forces her to look up at him. She regrets it immediately when she sees how wrecked he is. “You don’t love me anymore?”
“Of course I love you. I’m always gonna love you.”
Sam lips tremble. He shakes his head. “No, you don’t. You don’t.”
Jess knows Sam has never had to question if he’s loved before, and he doesn’t know how to handle it.
“Sam, I’m sorry. But I need you to tell me what you’re going to do.”
Sam stands up, looks both like an upset, innocent child and a little like a demon in the same instance. “I’m going if you want me to go,” he says.
Jess tries to reach out to him, make him see it from her point of view, but Sam’s too hurt to stay. He looks at her like he’s going to kiss her, then shakes his head, doesn’t pause to say goodbye to the baby on his way out the door. Jess sees something terrifying in his eyes as he turns from her, something completely lacking in the small shreds of warmth she’s been hanging on to so desperately for months.
Jess knows she’s only made it worse, hopes Sam will wake up one day seeing how wrong they’ve both been and come back to her. But Sam stays gone.
_______________________________________________________________
It’s funny how the most mundane things can completely change a life. There’s a knock at the door-it’s just another day and it’s just another knock, but when Jess opens it, everything turns back upside down.
As usual, it’s the Winchesters responsible for all this topsy-turvy.
“Sam?”
Sam looks just as worn down as he did the last time she saw him, but he’s smiling from ear to ear, and that’s definitely new. A little too new-Jess instinctively reaches for the silver loaded gun she keeps by the door, but Sam pushes it open further, and then it all makes perfect sense.
“Dean?” she asks, eyes shifting back to Sam for confirmation. Sam’s smile softens, no less genuine, but now just a small, private turn to his lips. “Dean, how?”
Dean doesn’t bother answering the question, steps forward and grabs Jess up in his arms. She smiles and kisses him and as soon as he puts her down, she pulls Sam in for a kiss, too. He squeezes her hand, which Jess decides to take as an apology. She’ll accept it now that Dean’s here. Sam will be back to normal again-everything will be-and Jess missed him too much to hold grudges.
Dean steps to the side and inspects Jess, tilting his head a little. “Sammy said there was something here I needed to see?”
Jess smiles and nods and she turns to where Sam was standing. He’s already vanished into the house. Dean has hardly stepped past the doorway when Sam’s back, baby pulled close to his chest and a look on his face like he can’t imagine anything better than what’s happening.
He holds his arms out to Dean and Dean looks down, then back up at Sam, his lip trembling. Sam smiles, nods, and hands the baby off.
“Dean, I want you to meet our son,” he says.
Dean shakes his head, offering the baby his finger. His entire hand wraps around Dean’s index finger and Dean laughs like a child himself.
“Hey,” Dean whispers. “Hey, little guy.”
“Dean,” Sam says.
“Yeah?” Dean replies, looking up.
“No, I mean, that’s his name. Dean.”
Dean scowls. “I thought I told you not to name the baby after me.”
“I couldn’t hear you,” Sam replies, fighting a smirk. “The music was too loud.”
Dean rolls his eyes and leans in to kiss his brother. “Asshole,” he mutters against Sam’s lips.
“No cussing in front of the baby,” Jess says out of habit, slapping Dean’s shoulder, and closing the front door.
Sam and Dean both laugh and just like that they’re the three musketeers again-plus one extra.
_______________________________________________________________
They’re lying in bed together, naked and breathless, and all pushed so close there’s hardly room to breathe. Dean’s fingers rest on Jess’s thigh, moving in absent patterns. Jess feels like she’s dreaming. The moment is too much like the familiar nights they used to share and therefore can’t be real.
He leans down and kisses her softly, and Sam smiles over at them from his side of the bed. Jess wonders if she’d imagined everything about Sam that summer. It doesn’t seem possible that the man sitting there, looking at her through warm hazel eyes and smiling like he’s never seen a bad moment in his life, could be the same person who had terrified her so much just a few weeks ago.
The baby starts crying while Dean’s still got his lips on hers, and Jess groans, pushing aside the covers. Sam puts one warm hand on her thigh, holding her in place.
“You two stay. Just like this. I’ll take care of Dean.”
“Dude, we need to rename the kid.”
“We should call him by his middle name now that we have two Deans,” Jess offers, watching Sam rise from bed and put on boxers.
“Never,” Sam replies on his way out.
“What’s his middle name?” Dean asks.
Jess turns to him with an amused smirk. “Hunter.”
Dean laughs hysterically. “Jesus, between that and the Dean thing, you two should never be allowed to name children.”
“That part was your idea, Dean.”
“Yeah, but I wasn’t serious!”
Jess bites her lip. “I know. But we wanted…but we did what we had to.”
Dean frowns, but he leans down to kiss her again. “I missed you, both of you. So much.”
Jess doesn’t bother wasting her breath returning the sentiment.
“What have you two been up to, anyway?” Dean asks.
Jess shrugs. “This and that. Bobby got me a job as a secretary in town. Boring as all hell, but safe.”
“How about Sammy? Please tell me he’s a janitor.”
Jess feels her eyebrows draw. “He didn’t tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
Jess says nothing.
Dean sits up and looks at her closely, something awful dawning on his face. “He wasn’t here.”
“Dean, we had a really long summer.”
“Oh, I sympathize,” he says coolly. “Why?”
“He was hunting.”
Dean’s lips turn down, but he nods. “He didn’t get himself hurt?”
“Not that I know of.”
“How could he leave you, leave the baby? To hunt? There something you’re leaving out, Jess?”
“I told him to leave.”
Dean pulls away from her. “You broke up with him? In the state he was in, you broke up with him?”
“You have no idea about the state he was in. He was…He’s not okay, Dean. I know he seems better than fine, but he’s just happy you’re back. He was a wreck, and he was scaring me.”
Dean makes a worried face, but before he has the time to respond, Sam comes in, smelling a little like baby formula, and tackles him to the bed, laughing. Dean laughs too, kisses him, seems to forget the conversation altogether. Jess prays that Sam will stay this okay and Dean will never have to see what happened to him over the summer firsthand. She knows Dean won’t understand, won’t be able to grasp how bad it got unless he sees it for himself. He still believes in his brother, and Jess starts to believe again, too.
_______________________________________________________________
“We gotta find out what did this,” Dean says over breakfast.
Sam shakes his head, poking at his pancakes. “I don’t care what did it, Dean. It’s done. I’ll take it.”
“It’s something bad, man. We gotta stop it.”
“It’s not. Don’t talk about it like that.” Sam reaches out and strokes his thumb over Dean’s jaw.
“I’m just saying, Sam.”
“You just got back from Hell. You deserve to relax. Get to know the baby. What are you gonna learn that’s better than that?”
Jess almost laughs at the irony, but she keeps quiet, just focuses on breastfeeding Hunter.
“I don’t know, you’re about to go on a hunt. What’s better than being here for you?”
“I have work,” Sam says, straining to keep his tone light. Jess sighs inwardly.
“Work with me and we’ll get it done faster, and then we can both come back here and stay.”
Sam obviously has no plans of doing it, but he smiles at the thought of it, at the fact that it’s Dean suggesting it, and nods. He looks damn near beautiful as he turns to face Jess, stands up and kisses her on the top of the head.
“Alright, then. Let’s get ready and go.”
_______________________________________________________________
“A what now?” Jess asks into the receiver.
“An angel.”
“You’re making that up.”
“I’m not! Dean met the damn thing. And that handprint on his shoulder? I guess you could say he’s been touched by an angel.”
“That was awful, Sammy,” Jess hears Dean say from the driver’s seat.
“No, but seriously, why?”
“Who gives a shit?” Sam asks. “Says it was God’s idea. Best idea the guy’s ever had, if you ask me.”
“I’m pretty sure that counts as blasphemy.”
“Whatever. The point is: it means Dean’s back to stay. That’s all I needed to know.”
“Me, too,” Jess agrees. “You boys coming home soon?”
“On the way there already.” Jess can hear Sam smiling.
“Good, I’m making stew.”
“Mmm, I’m excited,” Sam says. “I miss you.”
“Yeah, you too.”
“I love you, too, Jess. I really, really do.”
“Sam, it’s over, okay? I don’t want to talk about it.”
She hears Sam make an uncomfortable noise and he changes the subject, “Give Dean love from his dads, okay?”
“You’re really gonna refuse to call him Hunter?”
“Until my dying day.”
The connection cuts out and Jess chuckles to herself.
_______________________________________________________________
“So this is real, then?” Dean asks, his body splayed out on the couch.
Jess relaxes into Sam on the arm chair and Sam snorts. “Are we going to have a philosophical debate?”
“I see the table, therefore the table is,” Jess says with pomp.
“College ruined both of you.” Dean yawns. “I meant all of this. We’re really gonna stay here and be respectable and live like normal people?”
“Dean, last night you sucked your brother off, and we’re in a committed three person relationship.”
“You know what I meant!”
“The answer is yes.”
Dean and Jess both turn to Sam.
“What? This is perfect. We’ve got a home, and each other, and a kid for crying out loud. I know this is what you want to do, Dean.”
“Yeah, it is.”
“So do it. You earned it.”
“Yeah,” Jess says slowly, not quite believing this from Sam. “And what about you?”
“I haven’t yet. But I will. I have some things to do. It won’t take long, and then I’ll come back, too.”
“Sam, no way.”
“Yes way. I’ve got a job left and I’m gonna do it. That’s how you taught me, right?”
“But what job? You won’t even tell me.”
“It’s not your problem, Dean. I don’t want it to be your problem.” Sam gets up and lies over Dean on the couch, kissing him. “I want you and Jess to be happy.”
“How are we supposed to be happy while you’re off on the road risking your neck?”
“I don’t know, Dean, figure it out. You’ll be safe here, and you’ll keep them safe, too. I’ll be happy knowing that. You’ll be happy if I am. That’s just how you work.”
_______________________________________________________________
Dean lets Sam go the next day, thinking it’s one hunt. When Sam keeps leaving, Dean starts to realize Sam is playing down his commitment to whatever he’s doing, trying to trick Dean into staying, like Dean can’t handle himself. Jess’s guess is that Sam knows what Dean can’t handle is whatever he’s doing with Ruby.
Dean is antsy and uncomfortable waiting for his brother all day, pretends not to be as worried as he is. Whatever happiness he is supposed to be finding with Jess, there’s no chance for it while Sam’s away. And if Jess is being honest, she’d feel a whole lot better raising Hunter alone, like she did for the last month, if it means there’s someone watching Sam, someone who can actually keep him in check and maybe make him realize how pointless his revenge mission is now that Dean is right there waiting for him.
But Sam is stubborn, and Dean is weak when it comes to doing what Sam wants him to. Sometimes, Sam asks him to come along and help on hunts. When that happens, Dean goes without a moment’s hesitation. The rest of the time, he stays with Hunter, saving Jess the money she’d been sacrificing to a nanny.
It starts to get more frequent, though. Sam makes a half-assed effort at being selfless, but the time he’s willing to give up now that his brother is back steadily decreases, until he’s taking Dean on one of three hunts, every other hunt. Jess is waiting for it to become every hunt.
In late October, Sam comes home one night in awful condition, can hardly hold himself up long enough to knock on the door and get their attention. All he has time to say is ‘demons’ before he passes out, leaving Dean to tend to his wounds and sit up by his bedside all night, just in case something goes wrong. Jess joins him in the guest room, where they’ve spread Sam out so he can have more room for himself, at around 3 a.m.
“Hey,” she says, not bothering to whisper. No way Sam’s waking up for hours.
Dean does whisper, “Hey.”
He smiles and accepts the glass of water she brings him, setting it down on the nightstand. She ignores the bottle of whiskey set down next to Dean’s chair, knowing that her efforts at keeping him hydrated won’t come to much use.
“How is he?”
Dean shakes his head, hand reaching for the bottle and then pausing.
“You don’t have to worry about it, Dean. I can see your fingers itching.”
Dean smiles thankfully and pulls the top off, taking a long swig. “I hate seeing him like this. Always have. I used to pull the craziest shit when we were kids, and Dad would get so pissed at the trouble I’d fling myself into, but it was always better for me than…”
Dean takes his brother’s hand and runs his fingers over it.
“Dean, I’m worried about him.”
“He’ll be okay, babe. He’s been worse off than this before.”
“No, not because of this. Because of...” Jess can’t stand to make Dean question Sam by telling him the real reason she thinks he needs a babysitter, so she plays an angle Dean’s more likely to respond to, anyway. “I don’t like him hunting alone, Dean. I think you should go with him.”
“No way, Jess. We’ve got a kid. You need help.”
“I know. Believe me, I know. But…I’ve been taking care of him alone for months now. It’s not ideal, but it’s doable. We don’t need you as much as he does right now. Just take my word for it.”
“I’m not ditching the kid. Sam can take care of himself.”
“Can he?” Jess arches an eyebrow and inclines her head towards the bed. “The next time this happens, he may not make it home at all.”
Dean flinches at the implication.
“Just for right now. Just until he’s ready to settle. God knows I’ll miss you both to death, but I think you’re what he needs. If you don’t go with him, he’ll never stop. If you do, I’ll get you both back much sooner.”
Dean nods and stands up, bending over the bed to press a kiss against his brother’s sweaty temple. He moves to Jess then, kisses her long and hard, and they go back to their bedroom. They have sex, slow and lazy and gentle, and Jess knows it’s a goodbye.
_______________________________________________________________
They keep in touch, which is a big relief for Jess. Sam is usually the one to call, stays on the phone with her for hours telling her about their hunts. Dean calls when Sam can’t or when he wants to hear her voice. They both huddle around the phone and beg her to put the baby on. Sometimes they call while they’re fucking, tell her all the things they’d be doing to her if she were there. Jess begins to feel a bizarre sense of calm, even happiness sometimes, knowing that they’re alright, that she is not forgotten, and that soon, they will all be together again.
The things they tell her are on a completely different level than what she had to deal with as a hunter, and Jess is a little grateful to be out of it. There are angels and demons left and right, threats of apocalypse, things Jess can’t begin to wrap her head around. But they cope, and Jess knows that if anyone is going to get the job done, it’s Sam and Dean.
They usually sound okay to her, even if it’s strained sometimes. It’s not until Dean calls one night, drunk and upset, and asks if she knew Sam was working with Ruby that Jess begins to be cut out of the picture. She’s on Dean’s shit list for not telling him, and she wants to be sorry. She couldn’t bring herself to break them apart when they’d just gotten each other back, naively hoped Sam would drop Ruby because of Dean’s return. She took the coward’s route, she knows it. But Jess is only human, and she doesn’t mean it when she apologizes.
_______________________________________________________________
They don’t stop calling altogether, but they do stop visiting. It’s March before she sees either of the Winchesters again, and when Sam stumbles in, condition almost as bad as it had been last summer, a part of her wishes they’d stayed gone, let her keep on believing they’re as okay as they pretend to be on the phone.
“Sam, what’s wrong?” she asks, though she crosses her arms over her chest and stays planted in the doorway, making it clear she’s not going to welcome him into her house without a damn good reason.
“Dean,” he says weakly. “It’s Dean.”
“What happened to Dean?”
“He’s in the hospital,” Sam says. “He’s in the hospital and those sons of bitches won’t even heal him.”
“The angels?”
“Yeah. Fucking angels.” Sam grimaces. “Let me come in, babe. I need somewhere to sleep. I can’t sleep anywhere anymore.”
Jess lets the door swing open and immediately heads for the kitchen, hoping putting something warm in Sam’s stomach will make it easier to get details out of him. He sits at the table, spoons his soup but doesn’t eat much, and looks like he’s ready to give up on something important.
“He was always the strong one,” he says after a while. “He used to be so strong.”
“Sam, he’ll heal.”
“No, I know. But he won’t. Ever, I don’t think. He’s so weak since he got back, and I can’t protect him, no matter how hard I try. He’s so weak. I wish he’d stayed here with you, like I told him. You could take care of him like this. I can’t take care of anyone.”
Sam sighs and rests his forehead against one hand. Jess comes up behind him and tries to rub the tension out of him, but Sam doesn’t loosen up.
“Do you know what they did to him? Do you know what they made my big brother do? They made him torture. The angels did.”
Jess feels her features betraying her confusion and Sam laughs bitterly.
“That’s what he did in Hell. It wasn’t his fault. That’s what happens in Hell. But they’re angels, Jess, I used to believe in them. They made Dean torture. He can’t.” Sam shakes his head. “It would be different if it was someone else. Someone who isn’t Dean. They don’t understand what it’s doing to him. And he won’t let me protect him.”
“Shh,” Jess says, taking Sam’s hand. “You need to go to bed, okay?”
Sam nods and lets her lead him upstairs. She pauses in front of the nursery and turns to Sam.
“Do you wanna see Hunter?”
Sam shakes his head. “Not like this. Soon. I’ll be fine, or I’ll be dead. But I don’t wanna see him like this.”
Jess doesn’t want particulars on exactly what “like this” entails, so she just leads Sam to the room and waits for him to fall asleep before slipping downstairs to clean up the dishes he left almost untouched on the table.
_______________________________________________________________
“Dean?” Jess asks, double checking the caller ID.
“Demon blood,” Dean says.
Nice to hear from you, too, she thinks. “What?”
“Sam has been sucking demon blood. For months now. Like a fucking vampire or something.”
Jess feels her knees shaking and sinks onto the first horizontal surface she sees. “What? Why?”
“It’s been helping him gank demons. I’ve been wondering how he’s been doing it, but I never thought…” Jess hears something rattle as Dean vents his anger on it. “It’s not him, Jess. It’s that demon bitch. She’s got him completely strung out, he doesn’t know up or down until she tells him.”
Jess feels the bile in her throat rising, remembers a metallic kiss, and it all makes too much sense for her to pretend Dean’s made a mistake.
“I’m gonna shred her into pieces.”
“Good, that’s a start,” says Jess. “What about Sam? What are you doing about Sam?”
“What am I doing about Sam? Well, I was trying to detox the little shit in Bobby’s panic room until he could see a little sense, but somehow he got out.”
“Crap.”
“Yeah, crap. Look, he’s been gone for a few hours. More than enough time to…I just have to ask. Is he there?”
“No, I haven’t seen him in more than a month.”
“I figured as much,” Dean admits, sounding defeated. “If he stops by, you have my permission to shoot him. But he won’t.”
“No,” Jess agrees. “He won’t.”
“All right. I’ve gotta try some other options, then.”
“Dean.”
“Yeah, Jess?”
“Let me know what happens. Either way. I hate not knowing.”
“It’s worse to know,” Dean says, sounding distracted. “Look, I’ll call you and tell you what’s up.”
Of course, he never does. Jess turns on the TV the next day and sees the patterns Bobby’s been having her help him isolate for months, patterns that mean the Devil is walking the Earth. Jess fills in the rest of the mess, knows Dean doesn’t call because he can’t bring himself to tell her that his little brother may have ended the world.
_______________________________________________________________
“You gotta be kidding me,” Jess says, completely exasperated. “This shit again? Can you two make up your goddamn mi-?”
Jess’s question is cut short by a kiss. It’s the passionate, hungry kind of kiss that generally means one of two things in movies: a) everyone is going to live happily ever after or b) we’re all going to die. Jess swallows hard as she pulls away. She’s not really in the mood to die.
“Christ,” she says, wiping her mouth and scowling. “What now?”
“So you have no reason to love me or even want to see me anymore,” Sam says softly. “But, if by some chance you do anyway…I really need you to know how sorry I am. For everything I’ve done to you. For the last two years since Dean went…maybe longer. Maybe I never should have even met you.”
“Sam, don’t say that.”
“It’s true,” he reaches out to run the ends of his fingertips on her face. She closes her eyes and leans into it, even though she really should know better. “I’m so sorry, Jess.”
Somehow, Jess can tell this isn’t the Sam she’s been dealing with for the past two years talking to her. He looks miserable, completely destroyed, but he looks like the man she met at Stanford, same sad, lost look that was always on his face in their first few months together, a look Jess now knows comes about from the absence of his brother. “I know you are.”
“I…” He shakes his head. “I left Dean.”
“You did?”
“I have a problem, Jess, and I don’t trust myself and…when he looks at me…it hurts to have him look at me like that and know he’s right.” He pauses. “He told you, right? What I was doing with Ruby?”
“Yes. He told me.”
“I can’t stop thinking about it, so I can’t be around demons. And I know you and Dean are better off without me, but I couldn’t help…I mean, since I won’t be hunting. This is the only place I would ever want to…you don’t have to say yes.”
“I know I don’t,” Jess says firmly. “But the answer is yes.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, Sam. I still love both of you idiots for some reason. If you’re not with him, then I want you with me.”
Sam makes a face like he’s trying to smile and doesn’t even remember how anymore.
“You’re not gonna regret this, Jess. I swear, babe, I will never make you regret this again.”
Jess nods and helps him carry his bags in.
_______________________________________________________________
The next day, Sam gets a job in town as a bartender. Things are fine at first, better than fine. After two months, Sam starts having nightmares, wakes up with Dean’s name on his lips every night. There’s nothing surprising in that, but the way Sam says it makes it sound like the Dean he’s dreaming about isn’t his brother, is doing something awful to him. Jess isn’t strong enough to ask, just pushes the sweat matted hair away from his eyes and kisses him back to sleep.
This is routine for a month; Jess puts up with it because Sam needs it, and Sam is good to her. He works hard. He helps at home. He pampers their child. They’re a family, a normal cookie-cutter man and wife and baby family and no one talks demons or angels or brothers.
It isn’t Sam’s fault when things get ruined. It’s just more of the same shit he’s been dealing with since before he was born, the kind of shit that would drive anyone to do what he did when it was his fault. Hell, a weaker man would have done worse and not felt the need to repent that drives Sam’s every breath now.
She’s on her way home from work, hand on the door knob that would have meant safety, and it’s a testament to how out of shape she is that they surprise her. Three years ago, any hunters that tried to ambush Jess would have been on the floor bleeding out before they had the time to pull a knife on her.
But it’s not three years ago. Jess ends up tied up in the back of a van, thanking whatever pathetic excuse for a God there is for the fact that these hunters don’t know about her son, and that she left the baby at Bobby’s that morning instead of with a nanny she couldn’t trust to protect him.
They take her to the bar Sam works at, he’s closing out a shift, and Sam-even Sam-looks at them like he can’t believe anything human could sink to the depths they’re sinking to. They order him to drink demon blood, they threaten Jess. She laughs with more confidence than she feels and tells Sam that she’ll never forgive him if he does it. Sam tries to talk it out with them, but the hunters are relentless, and Jess goes home that night with a cut on her neck from where they were pressing their blades too hard, much too earnest in their threats.
Sam spits it out. Sam stops them but doesn’t kill them. Sam does all the things Dean used to bitch at him about in happier days, the things even Jess sometimes secretly rolled her eyes at. Too much of a conscience, Winchester, they used to tell him. It’s the single greatest thing Jess thinks she’s ever seen in her life.
He doesn’t see it that way. When they get home, Jess tries to get him to go upstairs with her, desperate to touch the man she saw Sam become in that bar, but he draws away from her like he did back when he was full of poison, back when he had every reason to draw away.
“Sam, what’s wrong?” she asks, taking his hand and pressing it against her thigh.
Sam lets her hold him there, she sees how bad he wants it, but he shakes his head.
“You know,” he says, soft and sad. “Sometimes it feels like the entire universe is aligned to make me get you killed.”
“Sam?”
“I’m the worst thing that ever happened to you. To Dean. To my mom. I…” He shakes his head. “Look, I need to sleep and think things out a little, okay?”
Jess nods, says, “Yeah, of course.”
He wakes up that night with the worst nightmare yet and a look of terrifying calm, like everything in his life suddenly makes some morbid sense.
“It was him,” he says, as if Jess is going to know what the hell that means.
“Sam, can you not be cryptic at four in the morning?”
Sam turns to look at her. “It wasn’t Dean. Of course it wasn’t. It was him, Jess, the nightmares, they were Lucifer.”
“Why would Lucifer be-?”
“I’m supposed to be his…” Sam begins. “Oh, God. I’m gonna be sick.”
Jess understands what Sam couldn’t bring himself to say, pretends to be asleep when he gets back in bed. He kisses her softly on the neck as he settles back into place behind her and whispers something about not hurting her anymore. Jess isn’t surprised that she wakes up the next morning alone.
_______________________________________________________________
She doesn’t hear from them for months after Sam leaves. He doesn’t answer her calls or texts, she never finds out if Dean takes him back. She spends the better part of a year trying to go to work, raise her child, go on with life, wondering if one or both of them are dead. She figures that if either was she would know, the world would be crashing around her, and she can’t decide if she’s being melodramatic and self-important or just properly interpreting everything the angels have told them.
Then one night, a night of no particular importance, there’s a knock on her door. Dean is there, alone and drunk, and Jess has flashbacks to that terrible summer, when this was a regular occurrence, when it was Sam on her doorstep instead of his brother.
“Dean? Are you okay?”
Dean shakes his head. He reaches out to brush a hair out of her face and laughs. “No,” he says. “I don’t think I am.”
“What are you-?”
Dean leans in and kisses her, missing her mouth by about a mile. “I miss you.”
“I miss you, too, Dean. But you gotta tell me what’s going on.”
“Did you know that you and the kid are the only things I have?”
Her brain shuts down with terror and she grabs Dean and shakes him. “Dean, Where’s Sam? Is Sam okay?”
“No, not Sam. You. Only you.”
“Dean, where is he?”
“I don’t know,” he says with a shrug. “Playing dress-up with the Devil, probably. I can’t trust him alone for five minutes.” Dean laughs and drops his face into Jess’s shoulder. “But we could always trust you.”
“Dean, you’re scaring me to death, please tell me something useful.”
“I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna say ‘yes’ to Michael,” Dean says. “But don’t worry, because I’m gonna make sure you and little Dean and everyone we saved-you’re all gonna be okay. Even Sam, unless he…” Dean frowns. “Probably not Sam.”
“Dean, come inside and we’ll talk this out, okay? Tell me what happened. Did Sam say ‘yes’?”
Dean shakes his head. “Not yet. I give him a week. We should place bets.”
“That’s not funny.”
“Nothing’s funny.”
“Dean, is he planning to?”
“No, but he will.”
“What are you saying? This is Sam you’re talking about.”
Dean makes a hurt face. “Like I don’t fucking know that already.”
“Dean,” Jess places a hand on each side of his face. “Talk to me.”
“Let me see the baby. Even if he’s asleep. I won’t bother him, I promise. I just want to see him one more time.”
“Yeah, of course.”
Jess moves out of the doorway and lets Dean lead the way to the nursery. He hovers over the crib, runs a finger down his son’s face, and actually smiles. He’s there for less than a minute before he nods and starts walking to the door. Jess catches him by the sleeve as he moves past her. He turns quickly, pushes her into the wall, and kisses her hard. She can taste everything he’s had to drink and closes her eyes, accepting the kiss without any drive to return it.
When Dean pulls away, he looks much more sure of himself than before, which is not an effect Jess was trying to achieve.
“Our baby is beautiful, Jess. I have to make sure he’s okay.”
“Dean, there are better ways. Please don’t do this.”
Dean yanks his arm out of her grip and is gone as quickly as he came.
_______________________________________________________________
They come back to her a week later-both of them this time-looking battered and broken and fucking happy of all things. She tries to hold the image of Dean in front of her next to the one she remembers appearing on her doorstep and has to triple check to make sure this one isn’t a demon or a shifter.
She welcomes them into the house out of pure confusion. Processing the rate of change will take too long, and Jess is pretty sure letting them in is the right answer, however infuriatingly confusing and withholding they’ve been for the last year and a half.
They fill her in on the gaps in her narrative, which are not few or slight. They tell her that their brother Adam is probably dead (again), that they can’t find Castiel (who thought it would be a brilliant idea to nuke himself), they still have no idea how to stop Lucifer. It all sounds pretty dismal, but their hands don’t stop finding each other and the touches are just like before-neither of them can really give up much hope when his brother is looking over at him like he’s the universe wrapped up with a bow.
Dean does pull her aside and apologize at one point, but mostly they seem to have forgotten everything that’s gone wrong. They laugh and joke and want to take their minds off whatever the angels have done to them, and Jess can’t spoil that for them by bringing up old grievances. She watches them instead, feeling the warmth of what this used to be like flood over her as they tumble and crawl with their son on the floor.
After they put the baby to bed, they fuck like old times, just because it’s what they feel like doing. Sam falls asleep first; Dean explains later that Zachariah had done a number on him before he was killed. Dean doesn’t make much pretence of going to sleep, though; he sits up and watches his brother, stroking his fingers through Sam’s hair.
It’s too much for Jess to take for granted, and she has to ask.
“Dean, what happened with you two?”
“I was all set to say ‘yes’ and fuck everything up, and he saved me.”
“But why were you going to say ‘yes’ to begin with? You didn’t exactly explain yourself when you dropped by.”
“We, uh, died and went to Heaven and…it was the worst night of my life,” Dean says.
“You did what now?”
Dean snickers. “Jess, the year we’ve had.”
“I can imagine,” she says. “But what’s Heaven got to do with it?”
“I don’t know.” He shakes his head a little. “It messed with my head. I thought Sam didn’t…”
He looks up, but the starry expression doesn’t fade from his eyes, and his fingers don’t stop working gently on his brother’s scalp.
“I was wrong, Jess. I was so wrong.” He leans down to kiss Sam’s forehead. “My little brother never let me down. It was just me.”
Jess knows Sam, Dean, and the situation too well to buy this assessment, but it’s the Dean Winchester she fell in love with talking, and it’s better to err a little in Sam’s favor than to sell him short completely. She doesn’t correct him.
_______________________________________________________________
About a week after Sam and Dean arrive, there’s another knock at the door. Jess opens it and finds a man in a trench coat staring at her through wide blue eyes. She knows him on instinct.
“Hello,” he says, scratchy voice vibrating over her.
“Castiel.”
“Yes. I cannot stay for a proper introduction. It would be an honor to meet you under different circumstances. I must speak with the Winchesters.”
Just then, one of the aforementioned Winchesters reaches the bottom of the staircase, laughing brightly and carrying a giggling toddler in his arms. Sam freezes when he sees who’s in the doorway, and his expression falls. “Cas? You’re alive?”
“Barely,” the angel replies.
“Shit, come in,” Sam says, opening the door. Jess doesn’t even bother telling him to watch his mouth, not right now.
“We do not have time to linger. It took me three days to get here. The news I bring is losing its relevance and I have no means to update it.”
“Three days? Why didn’t you-?”
“My cell phone has run out of batteries, Sam.”
“You can’t charge it on your own?”
“Not without my…”
“You’re not an angel anymore.”
Castiel shakes his head.
“Dean, get down here,” Sam shouts up the stairs.
“I don’t have the energy to chase you and that kid all over this house, Sammy,” Dean says in a laughing tone as he descends the staircase. “I’m getting up there in yea-Cas?”
“Hello, Dean. I am sorry to hear that you are having such a hard time here.”
“Wow,” Jess says. “You didn’t mention how snarky he was.”
“He wasn’t,” says Sam, sounding a little sad about it.
“We are to leave immediately,” Castiel tells Dean, ignoring all other comments.
Dean shakes his head. “No, come on, man. All we want is a few more days.”
“You’ve had all the days we could spare. There are not supposed to be resting periods when you’re stopping the Apocalypse, Dean. You should have never come here to begin with, Pestilence is-”
“Cas is human now,” Sam explains. Dean’s eyes widen, but Castiel scowls and soldiers on. Jess didn’t realize angels had sore spots, but then maybe they don’t. This doesn’t seem to count for much as far as meeting one is concerned.
“Pestilence is on the move. I need your help. I need it now.”
Sam and Dean sigh deeply. Sam hands the baby over to Jess and they both move to the corner where their duffels have been sitting since they arrived. Sam and Dean were never naïve enough to unpack them. Jess had thought about doing it for them on more than one occasion.
Sam gives her a kiss and follows the angel out the door. Dean does the same, then smiles his trademark grin, just because he knows it’ll make her feel a little better.
“Don’t wait up,” he jokes.
_______________________________________________________________
Jess is expecting not to hear from them for months. Jess expects things to get bad. Jess expects to have to deal with some kind of fallout. What Jess doesn’t expect is to find Dean on her doorstep again two weeks later, looking worse than he ever has.
Her first thought is that Sam’s fallen off the wagon, or that the plan Sam called to ask her opinion on was every bit as stupid as it sounded. But Jess knows Dean wouldn’t be here right now if Lucifer was wearing his brother’s meat. No, Dean would have died smiling before he would have come knocking on her door, knowing the only thing that would lie ahead for him would be to kill his brother in the hopes of taking out what Sam let inside of him.
“We won,” Dean says, like it’s the worst news he’s ever delivered. “Sam won.”
Jess shakes her head and feels tears stinging her eyes. It’s a good thing. She knows it’s supposed to be a good thing, but all she can say is, “no, no, no, no.”
Dean grabs her into his arms and buries his face in her shoulder. He smells like graveyard dirt, not something that’s new for him, but knowing whose grave it is makes her want to push him away. She can’t though, not now. Jess wouldn’t be surprised if he just stopped working.
“Dean, come inside.”
Dean doesn’t answer, doesn’t do anything. He stares ahead, he takes mechanical steps. He’s a corpse, and Jess gets to be the person stuck trying to bring him back to life.
He looks around at the house like he’s never seen it before, and when Jess tries pressing a kiss on his lips, he doesn’t return it.
“His,” he says when she pulls away. He looks at her with wet eyes, reaches out and kisses her. “This was supposed to be his.”
“Dean.”
His face gets confused for a second and he looks down. Hunter is smiling up at him, tugging at his pants leg. “Daddy,” he says.
Dean picks him up and scans his face, and Jess knows that he’s seeing what she realized months ago. He’s holding Sam’s child.
That’s when he cracks. Jess tries to take Hunter out of Dean’s hands, send him off to play, because the last thing he needs to see is Dean right now. Dean clings to him, though, draws him into his shoulder.
“You look so much like your father,” he says, still clutching their son. Hunter looks back at her confused, his face on the verge of crying, like he thinks he did something wrong to make Dean respond like this.
“Dean, give him to me,” Jess says.
Dean lets her take him reluctantly, lips trembling as he watches her carry the toddler out of the room. He’s helped himself to a glass of whiskey by the time she gets back from putting the baby to bed, and he wipes at his cheeks when he notices her.
“I shouldn’t be here,” he says. “Sammy made me promise to come to you. He wants us to be…Jess, I can’t be happy.”
“Dean, it’s okay. We’ll work on it, all right?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t want you to have to deal with this. But you can’t tell me to go. I can’t go, Jess. This is what he wanted.”
Dean downs the rest of his drink and shakes his head as he pours another one. He laughs bitterly when Jess grabs another glass off the shelf and takes just as generous a serving.
“Probably wasn’t what he was picturing when he made you promise, huh?” Jess asks, looking into the amber in her glass.
“Probably not,” Dean says with a shrug.
They sit in silence for a while before Jess lifts her drink.
“To Sam?”
Dean looks up at her, fragile, but he smiles faintly and nods, willing to give Sam a few seconds of happy after everything he gave up. “Sammy,” he says, toasting.
“Bed?” she tries as he drains the last drops.
“I guess,” he says slowly.
Dean staggers slightly as he rises. Jess has to wrap her arm around him to keep him up. She pauses briefly to turn off the dining room light, and, as darkness falls on the house, a streetlight outside their window flickers and dies out.
End.
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