(no subject)
I promised myself that I would finish this before the new year and finally be able to document a year where I didn't completely fail at smut. Not that anything in this is particularly smutty, but it is very positive progress. I love that fandom inspires resolutions like 'be more porny.' *chuckles*
This is selected scenes from the SuperPretendNatural version of 'No Exit'. It's funny how we took an episode that was, in a lot of ways, All About Dean and turned it into one All About Sam. Also, I have to apologize to hiyacynth again because baylorsr and I are horrible people who don't deserve her. Seriously, we don't.
And on that cheery note, have some SPN AU fic!
When they pulled up the Roadhouse was jumping. Sam and Dean simultaneously swung out of the Impala, the slam of its doors lost underneath the music and chatter spilling out of the bar.
Sam took point as they headed in. The place was packed to the gills, raucous groups of farmers and good ol’ boys (and a more than a couple gals) were gathered around the tables and bar with a loners holed up in the dark corners. There was even what looked to be a pick-up pool tournament going on at the table in the back. The sudden shift from the solitude of the Impala to a noisy, crowded bar was like being thrown into the deep end of an ice-cold pool. The shock to his system left Sam stunned long enough for Dean shake his head in exasperation and head off towards the bar.
Sam blinked his eyes and internally shook himself back into focus. He started scanning the crowd for Jem, his height giving him the chance to see her before she saw him. Anxious butterflies started fluttering in his stomach. He hadn’t realized how nervous, and excited, he was at the prospect of seeing her again.
He moved through room, his head moving back and forth in an attempt to find her. He wasn’t paying attention to what was going on directly around him so he didn’t notice the woman standing right in front of him until it was too late. He stumbled into her and with a squawk she fell backwards onto the floor.
“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry,” he apologized, feeling like an overgrown idiot. He reached a hand down to help pull her back up and was so shaken that he didn’t really see her until she had grabbed his hand. When he realized who she was he almost let go of her hand.
He stared at her, wide-eyed, for a second and then said the first stupid thing that popped into his head. “Rachel, what are you doing here?”
She laughed, loud and bright, her eyes dancing. “It’s good to see you too, Sam. It’s been a long time.”
His smile widened. Warmth flowed through him, happiness tinged with only the slightest hint of residual embarrassment. “It really has,” he said and instinctively pulled her into a hug.
When they pulled apart a moment later they were both still grinning. Rachel patted Sam’s upper arm fondly. “I can’t believe it. Sam, how are you even taller? You can’t still be growing.”
Sam chuckled. “I’ve always been taller than you, Rachel. Your memory is just playing tricks on you.”
She snorted. “Yeah, uh huh. You were absolutely the most gigantic seven year-old in the world when I met you. I never said anything, but I was sure you were going to squish me flat.”
A delighted peal of laughter burst out of Sam. “That’s nothing,” he retorted. “I thought you were going to let Bobby’s dog eat me. That beast was terrifying.”
Rachel grinned and then sobered. She squeezed his hand. “I was really sorry to hear about your Dad.”
“Yeah,” Sam replied, his voice thick. He looked at the floor for a second and blinked, tears pricking at the corners of his eyes. The magnitude of his Dad’s death could still catch him unawares and knock him sideways.
“Sam!” A delighted shriek cut through both the noise of the bar and Sam’s grief. He turned just in time to catch Jem who had thrown herself at him. She gave him a friendly welcoming kiss.
Surprisingly, when he set her back down she turned on Rachel, her finger wagging. “Hand’s off, Rachel. This one’s mine.”
Rachel laughed and put her hands up in a conciliatory gesture. “Don’t worry, he’s all yours. I definitely don’t have any designs on Sam’s virtue.”
“You’d better not,” Jem replied in a jokingly serious tone. They grinned at each other, sharing a silent joke that Sam didn’t understand.
Jem turned back to Sam her eyes wide in a gleeful imitation of innocence. “So, did you bring me something?” she asked, bouncing a little on the balls of her feet.
He pulled a package out of his pocket. “One finger bone of St. Cyriacus, as requested.”
“You’re the best,” she crowed and stretched up to give him a sloppy smooch on the cheek. She turned back to Rachel. “Okay, we can leave for that hunt now.”
Sam’s head jerked. “But we just got here,” was his involuntary rebuttal.
“Hell yeah we just got here and here we’re staying,” Dean said from his other side. He bumped Sam in the shoulder and handed him a longneck. “Here you go, Sammy.”
Dean turned to Jem, a playful leer on his face. “Hey there, Jem. How you doin’?”
Jem snorted. “Hi Dean,” she drawled. She turned back to Sam with a delighted smile. “I know, you guys can come with us!”
“Us?” Dean asked. His mouth tightened when he noticed Rachel standing next to Jem. “Oh.”
“Hi Dean,” she greeted him with a tense, awkward smile.
Jem seemed oblivious to the sudden tension between Dean and Rachel. She watched Sam and her smile just grew. “We’re going to look into some weird abductions in Philadelphia and you guys should totally come with us. It’ll be fun!”
Sam’s mood brightened even more, buoyed up by Jem’s enthusiasm. “That’s a great idea. We’re in between jobs right now anyway. It’s a date.”
Jem shrieked a little in glee and jumped up to give Sam a thorough kiss. Neither of them noticed the way Rachel’s mouth pinched in dismay or how Dean’s shoulders stiffened with stress.
“Yeah, terrific,” Dean muttered and took a long pull from his beer.
~~~
“We are awesome.” Jem sashayed down the hallway, a grinning Rachel following in her wake.
“Oh, I think there’s awesome enough to go around,” Dean said with a triumphant smirk. He slapped Sam on the shoulder and Sam held up the baggie they’d scraped some of the ectoplasm into. Sam gave it a little shake for effect.
“Neato,” Jem cooed. She poked at the gelatinous mass. “I don’t think I’ve seen ectoplasm since-”
“That thing with the witches in Providence,” Rachel finished. She and Jem shared a nostalgic grin.
“That was fun.” Jem sighed happily. “And I don’t think I’ve ever eaten better pie.”
“They made you eat evil witch pie?” Dean’s eyes widened with incredulous horror.
Jem and Rachel shared another amused look. “No, the good witches made me delicious pie that I ate all on my own. Except I let Rachel have a piece because I’m just that good a friend.”
“And now, before Dean can turn that into something dirty,” Rachel quickly added, purposefully ignoring the ‘too late’ smirk on Dean’s face. “While you guys were getting slimed, Jem and I finagled an apartment from the landlord. Free of charge.”
“You guys are awesome,” Sam said.
“We try.” Rachel grinned. “Though it never hurts to let the desperate landlord think that you’re a pair of off-duty reservists with vigilante tendencies.”
“Batman eat your heart out,” Jem chortled. She blinked and then her face lit up with a self-congratulatory smile. “I’ve got a great idea. Rachel, you and Dean should head out to the registrar of deeds’ office while Sam and I look over the rest of the building.”
“Jem-” Rachel began, a hard, dark note in her voice.
Jem blithely ignored her and grabbed Sam by the arm, spinning him around and dragging him back down the hallway. Sam only had time to shoot a baffled look at Dean and catch a glimpse of his brother’s perturbed, tight-drawn face.
“You guys have fun!” Jem shouted over her shoulder with a wave. “Come on Sam,” she said more quietly, a wicked curve to her lips. “Let me show you the bedroom.”
~~~
“Ready or not, here we come,” Jem sing-songed down the hallway. She didn’t have to look at Sam to know that bright smile of his was lighting up the bland hallways.
“Do you think that’ll bring our mystery spook out of the woodwork?” Sam teased.
“Not really.” A grin tugged at the edges of Jem’s mouth. She swayed into Sam’s side and draped her arm through his. “But you never know. Weirder things have happened.”
Sam’s grin widened. They strolled down the hallway like that, their strides in sync. Sam felt good, he felt really good. The Dean-in-his-head wolf-whistled and shared a particularly dirty comment about the Jem-shaped reasons for Sam’s excellent mood, but Sam knew there was more to it than sex. For the first time in weeks he felt like the weight of Dean’s grief had been lifted from his shoulders, not to mention his own. Jem was someone who was all his, someone who cared about Sam for Sam, not because he was John’s son or Dean’s brother. She made him feel like a person again.
He looked over at her. Warmth spread in his chest at the way she scanned the hallway with her sleek little EMF meter, the tiny line of concentration that furrowed her forehead. She glanced up and smiled when she caught him staring at her. She squeezed his arm and returned her focus to her work.
Sam never wanted this moment to end.
Gruffly he cleared his throat. “So, how did you get into all of this-” He waved his hand.
“Hunting evil bullcrap?” She winked at him and then her gaze slipped into the distance, her pace slowing. “My mom died when I was young, from cancer, if you can believe it. So it was pretty much just me and my dad when I was a kid.” Her face softened with fondness. “He could make pretty much anything. He wasn’t a hunter but he knew a lot of them. They were always coming by, looking for new tools and gadgets.”
She chuckled a little and leaned against Sam’s shoulder. “They called him the Tinkerman. He loved it, loved the challenge of figuring out new and creative ways to help people. When he died I realized that that’s what I wanted to do, help people. So I started hunting, little weekend jobs at first, but before I knew it I had a truck full of my dad’s gadgets and a bunch of old books.”
They turned a corner and Jem stopped. She turned to face Sam, her mouth creased in a small, painful, happy smile. “And, you know, even with all of the hard jobs and lonely times, it really is the best job in the world. We get to actually, physically save people. That’s something most office drones can only dream of doing.”
Sam reached over and pushed an errant strand of hair out of her face. His fingers lingered on her cheek. She was amazing.
Both of their EMF meters screamed and they jerked in tandem surprise. Jem started chuckling and Sam couldn’t help joining in. She rolled her eyes and turned towards the wall, back to work and following the unseen breadcrumbs.
Sam pushed his mind back into job-focus. He scanned the wall nearest him. The meter pinged all over the place, the pattern not making any sense.
“Oh, eew,” Jem said from behind him. She was crouched down by a vent by the floor, peering into it with narrowed eyes. She pulled a small flashlight and a cheap pen out of her pocket. As Sam crouched down beside her, she pushed the pen through the holes in the grate following the flashlight’s path. He pulled a plastic bag out of his pocket in time to catch a clotted mess of blood, hair, and scalp from the tip of her pen.
For a second he could feel cold eyes staring into the back of his neck, icy fingers tickling along his spine.
They stood up. Sam held the bag up towards the light fixture on the wall, better to examine the mess. Jem brushed off her knees and joined him in contemplation.
“Blonde hair,” Sam said.
“Yeah.” Jem sighed. “Looks like our spook is dragging its victims behind the walls somehow. Great.”
Sam nodded and shoved the bag in his pocket. A chill swept over him. For a split second he could feel malevolent eyes searing into him, hatred and bile thick in his throat. Hoarse, wheezing breaths rattled in is ears.
He blinked and it was gone, as if it had never been. He sucked in a quick, shaky breath.
Jem stood beside him, her hand on his arm. “Are you all right?” she asked, words tight with concern.
He swallowed and stared at where her hand rested on his arm, her fingers so small and fragile. Residual sparks prickled the cold sweat on the back of his neck.
“Do you ever worry about all of this, that we could become the kinds of things we hunt?” He couldn’t suppress the waver in his voice, the depth of his fear peeking through.
“Sometimes,” Jem quietly admitted. “That danger is always there, that we’ll fall over the ledge into the darkness and not come back.” Her eyes gleamed. “We just have to hold on to the things, the people, who keep us human.”
Sam smiled in reply, tears welling at the corners of his eyes. God, he was turning into a huge crybaby.
“Come on, we’d better head back to base.” Jem’s hand slid down and grabbed his, squeezing it tight. “Let’s go see if the sulky twins are back with anything useful.”
Sam gripped her hand, letting his actions say what he couldn’t. He followed her down the hall.
~~~
The tension, when Sam and Jem walked into the room, was thick enough to cut with a knife. And not some extra-crappy serrated knife from the silverwear drawer, no, you’d have to use one of the super-sharp ones carefully stowed in the back of the Impala.
“Hi honeys, we’re home,” Jem trilled, seemingly unaware of or unfazed by the twin looks of death Dean and Rachel shot her way.
“Good. Fine. Excellent,” Rachel announced, each syllable tightly bitten off. She shoved out of the kitchen chair and stood up. “There’s all kinds of info here. Have fun going through it. I’ve gotta take a walk.”
The doorjamb rattled under the force of Rachel’s departing slam. Sam darted a glimpse at Jem whose mouth was set in a firm, flat line. When she caught his look she rolled her eyes and gave her head a miniscule shake. Rachel needed her space.
Sam looked back at Dean who still stared grimly at the laptop’s computer screen, but Sam could tell that his attention wasn’t on it. Dean’s face was set and blank, his thoughts turned inward on some memory Sam couldn’t parse.
“What’s up with her?” Sam asked, a reckless attempt to lighten the pressure in the room.
Dean slammed out of his seat. “Damned if I know,” he said, voice tight. He grabbed his coat off of the back of the chair and shrugged it on. “I need a drink.”
Dean banged the door shut behind him, a twin to Rachel’s departing blow. The echo of its reverberations vibrated through Sam’s head, sweeping his good mood away. He blindly maneuvered through the room. His knees collapsed under him, only chance landed him on the couch with a thud. Momentum pulled his head down into his upturned hands.
He didn’t know how much longer he could do this.
The cushion beside him dipped under Jem’s weight. She rested her hand lightly on his upper arm, a silent support at his side.
“He won’t let me in,” Sam breathed, head still buried in his hands.
Jem’s hand slowly began to move up and down on his arm, stroking along the stiff-corded muscles in his back. “After my dad died things were pretty bad for me.” She took a deep breath and swallowed. “I did some really dangerous, reckless stuff. I just didn’t care anymore, I was hurting and I wanted everything else to hurt too.”
Sam raised his head and looked at Jem. She stared forward as her hand clenched, crumpling folds of his shirt into her fist. “I nearly died a hundred times. It’s blind luck that kept me going long enough to find the Roadhouse, to find Ellen and people who gave a crap about what might happen to me.”
Jem leaned against him. Sam wrapped his arm around her and she looked up at him, her eyes shimmered. “It means something to Dean that you’re here and that you care. Maybe he can’t say anything now, but just knowing that he has someone who will be around to pick him back up is doing more for him than you know.” Her lips curved in a small smile. “And, you know, that goes for you, too. There are people who care about you, who will listen when you want to talk.”
“I know,” Sam said softly. He breathed for a second, memories of his dad pouring through his mind. “I was six or seven, and he took me shooting for the first time,” spilled out of his mouth. “You know, bottles on a fence, that kind of thing. I bulls-eyed every one of them. He gave me this smile, like ... I don't know.” He shrugged, blinking tears out of his suddenly full eyes. “We butted heads all of the time, but I never doubted that he loved me, even when it seemed like he loved other things more.”
“Family sucks sometimes, doesn’t it?” Jem’s voice was thick with memories of her own.
Sam reached over and gently bracketed her face with his hand. He blinked and he was kissing her. She sighed into him, mouth open and warm. His hand swept down until it rested at the small of her back. Her breath hitched and he came undone. He needed more, he needed her.
He lifted and pulled and in one move she was on his lap. Jem twisted, bracketing his legs with her knees. She put her hands on either side of his head and carded them down through his hair. “Are you with me?” she whispered against his lips.
He growled and pulled her closer. She arched into him, and then leaned in and claimed his mouth with her own. He poured everything he had into her, all of his rage and grief, and wrapped up with it love, so much love. He wanted to cry, he never wanted to stop.
Jem broke away with a gasp. A soft smile twisted at her mouth. “Yeah, me too.”
He surged against her in response. She collapsed into him with a moan. He would never let her go.
~~~
Sam stared at the beer bottle cradled between his hands. Music played on the Roadhouse’s jukebox, Soundgarden, he was pretty sure, but the place was empty, except for their muted little party. They’d all been high on adrenaline by the end of it all in Philadelphia. He could still see the manic smile on Jem’s face as they dumped cement down that deep, dark hole, still taste the bitter tang of fear that clung to her even during their life-affirming kiss. He’d been so scared, so certain that he’d have to see someone else he cared about die.
It had seemed only right to run with Rachel’s idea of a celebratory post-hunt drink at the Roadhouse, to caravan all the way back to Nebraska, regardless the distance or their collective exhaustion. So here they all sat, hunched over at the bar, Sam and Jem sandwiched between Dean and Rachel. Somehow, it didn’t feel much like a celebration anymore.
Jem shifted on her barstool and Sam looked up. She raised her bottle in the air. “To H.H. Holmes. May he rot for all eternity in his toxic grave.”
“Hear, hear,” Rachel agreed, voice hoarse but strong. They all clinked their bottles together and drank. Sam felt an unconscious weight lift off his shoulders. Maybe now he could remember how to breathe.
Ellen came out from the back and set a crate of beer behind the bar, glass bottles clacking against one another. “Glad to see you all feel free to come by my place and drink all my booze. Remind me to have the locks changed after the door hits your backsides.”
Jem grinned at her. “Whine, whine, whine. You know you owe me more than this for all the hours I put in last week. Admit it, you’re happy we’re here.”
“I’d be happier if I weren’t paying a certain someone who takes off in the middle of her shift with perfectly good booze.” But Ellen grinned around the words, her tone warm and teasing.
Rachel rolled her eyes. “Yack, yack, yack,” she said, her right hand flapping up and down like a clacking mouth. At that all three women started laughing. Sam and Dean just shared a bemused look and took simultaneous swigs of beer.
“So,” Ellen continued after the laughter died down and she started stocking the bar. “I had a hunter come through her while you all were off almost getting yourselves killed.”
Jem jerked a little, startled. “That’s weird. They have any news?”
Ellen shrugged. “Was pretty shook up, actually. After a liberal application of booze I finally got the story out of him. He’d apparently had to take care of some kid who was setting people on fire with his brain.” She put down the bottle in her hand and gave them each a serious, weighing look. Sam breathed slowly, hoping she couldn’t see the knots that had just tied themselves in his stomach. There was no way that she could know anything about him.
“The funny thing was,” Ellen finally said after a long, tense moment. “That wasn’t the first psychic kid that hunter’d had heard of. A few months back a friend of his had dealt with some crazy bastard who’d been electrocuting people. And, apparently, both of those kids were the same age, both born in 1983. And they both had dreams about a yellow-eyed man.”
“We might know something about that,” Sam heard himself say. It had been weighing on him since Guthrie, since Andy and his brother, this secret that he wasn’t sure he could keep any longer. There was something inside of him, something that scared him more than anything ever had. It was dark and evil and he didn’t know what to do. Maybe if he told them, told Jem, he might find a way to get through. “I’m-” He swallowed, his instinct to lie warring against his need to tell.
Dean tensed beside him. “Sam,” he gritted, voice tight.
Ellen rounded on Dean before Sam could respond. “You let your brother talk. This thing is bigger than you Winchesters. It’s war and their side’s holding all the cards.”
Sam hunched in on himself, he had to talk, he had to. He took a deep breath and straightened. He looked Ellen straight in the eye. “I have these dreams and sometimes they come true.”
Silence thudded around them. Ellen blinked at Sam as Jem’s cold, steady hand wrapped around his wrist. He put his other hand over hers and squeezed. “And they’ve started coming while I’m awake. They only seem to happen when we’re around other people like me.” Sam’s throat closed around the terror that threatened to spill out of his chest.
“The only pattern we’ve been able to track is that they’re all Sam’s age.” Dean seamlessly picked up, his voice a path for Sam to follow out of his own head. “We think it’s all tied up with that demon we ran into a couple months ago.”
“The one that killed your Dad,” Ellen whispered. Her mouth flattened under the weight of Dean’s eyes, all of his grief and guilt there for her to see. Jem leaned against Sam’s side and he wrapped his arm around her, holding on for all he was worth.
Ellen pulled a bottle and five shot glasses out from under the bar. “This calls for something stronger than beer.” She poured them each a shot.
This is selected scenes from the SuperPretendNatural version of 'No Exit'. It's funny how we took an episode that was, in a lot of ways, All About Dean and turned it into one All About Sam. Also, I have to apologize to hiyacynth again because baylorsr and I are horrible people who don't deserve her. Seriously, we don't.
And on that cheery note, have some SPN AU fic!
When they pulled up the Roadhouse was jumping. Sam and Dean simultaneously swung out of the Impala, the slam of its doors lost underneath the music and chatter spilling out of the bar.
Sam took point as they headed in. The place was packed to the gills, raucous groups of farmers and good ol’ boys (and a more than a couple gals) were gathered around the tables and bar with a loners holed up in the dark corners. There was even what looked to be a pick-up pool tournament going on at the table in the back. The sudden shift from the solitude of the Impala to a noisy, crowded bar was like being thrown into the deep end of an ice-cold pool. The shock to his system left Sam stunned long enough for Dean shake his head in exasperation and head off towards the bar.
Sam blinked his eyes and internally shook himself back into focus. He started scanning the crowd for Jem, his height giving him the chance to see her before she saw him. Anxious butterflies started fluttering in his stomach. He hadn’t realized how nervous, and excited, he was at the prospect of seeing her again.
He moved through room, his head moving back and forth in an attempt to find her. He wasn’t paying attention to what was going on directly around him so he didn’t notice the woman standing right in front of him until it was too late. He stumbled into her and with a squawk she fell backwards onto the floor.
“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry,” he apologized, feeling like an overgrown idiot. He reached a hand down to help pull her back up and was so shaken that he didn’t really see her until she had grabbed his hand. When he realized who she was he almost let go of her hand.
He stared at her, wide-eyed, for a second and then said the first stupid thing that popped into his head. “Rachel, what are you doing here?”
She laughed, loud and bright, her eyes dancing. “It’s good to see you too, Sam. It’s been a long time.”
His smile widened. Warmth flowed through him, happiness tinged with only the slightest hint of residual embarrassment. “It really has,” he said and instinctively pulled her into a hug.
When they pulled apart a moment later they were both still grinning. Rachel patted Sam’s upper arm fondly. “I can’t believe it. Sam, how are you even taller? You can’t still be growing.”
Sam chuckled. “I’ve always been taller than you, Rachel. Your memory is just playing tricks on you.”
She snorted. “Yeah, uh huh. You were absolutely the most gigantic seven year-old in the world when I met you. I never said anything, but I was sure you were going to squish me flat.”
A delighted peal of laughter burst out of Sam. “That’s nothing,” he retorted. “I thought you were going to let Bobby’s dog eat me. That beast was terrifying.”
Rachel grinned and then sobered. She squeezed his hand. “I was really sorry to hear about your Dad.”
“Yeah,” Sam replied, his voice thick. He looked at the floor for a second and blinked, tears pricking at the corners of his eyes. The magnitude of his Dad’s death could still catch him unawares and knock him sideways.
“Sam!” A delighted shriek cut through both the noise of the bar and Sam’s grief. He turned just in time to catch Jem who had thrown herself at him. She gave him a friendly welcoming kiss.
Surprisingly, when he set her back down she turned on Rachel, her finger wagging. “Hand’s off, Rachel. This one’s mine.”
Rachel laughed and put her hands up in a conciliatory gesture. “Don’t worry, he’s all yours. I definitely don’t have any designs on Sam’s virtue.”
“You’d better not,” Jem replied in a jokingly serious tone. They grinned at each other, sharing a silent joke that Sam didn’t understand.
Jem turned back to Sam her eyes wide in a gleeful imitation of innocence. “So, did you bring me something?” she asked, bouncing a little on the balls of her feet.
He pulled a package out of his pocket. “One finger bone of St. Cyriacus, as requested.”
“You’re the best,” she crowed and stretched up to give him a sloppy smooch on the cheek. She turned back to Rachel. “Okay, we can leave for that hunt now.”
Sam’s head jerked. “But we just got here,” was his involuntary rebuttal.
“Hell yeah we just got here and here we’re staying,” Dean said from his other side. He bumped Sam in the shoulder and handed him a longneck. “Here you go, Sammy.”
Dean turned to Jem, a playful leer on his face. “Hey there, Jem. How you doin’?”
Jem snorted. “Hi Dean,” she drawled. She turned back to Sam with a delighted smile. “I know, you guys can come with us!”
“Us?” Dean asked. His mouth tightened when he noticed Rachel standing next to Jem. “Oh.”
“Hi Dean,” she greeted him with a tense, awkward smile.
Jem seemed oblivious to the sudden tension between Dean and Rachel. She watched Sam and her smile just grew. “We’re going to look into some weird abductions in Philadelphia and you guys should totally come with us. It’ll be fun!”
Sam’s mood brightened even more, buoyed up by Jem’s enthusiasm. “That’s a great idea. We’re in between jobs right now anyway. It’s a date.”
Jem shrieked a little in glee and jumped up to give Sam a thorough kiss. Neither of them noticed the way Rachel’s mouth pinched in dismay or how Dean’s shoulders stiffened with stress.
“Yeah, terrific,” Dean muttered and took a long pull from his beer.
~~~
“We are awesome.” Jem sashayed down the hallway, a grinning Rachel following in her wake.
“Oh, I think there’s awesome enough to go around,” Dean said with a triumphant smirk. He slapped Sam on the shoulder and Sam held up the baggie they’d scraped some of the ectoplasm into. Sam gave it a little shake for effect.
“Neato,” Jem cooed. She poked at the gelatinous mass. “I don’t think I’ve seen ectoplasm since-”
“That thing with the witches in Providence,” Rachel finished. She and Jem shared a nostalgic grin.
“That was fun.” Jem sighed happily. “And I don’t think I’ve ever eaten better pie.”
“They made you eat evil witch pie?” Dean’s eyes widened with incredulous horror.
Jem and Rachel shared another amused look. “No, the good witches made me delicious pie that I ate all on my own. Except I let Rachel have a piece because I’m just that good a friend.”
“And now, before Dean can turn that into something dirty,” Rachel quickly added, purposefully ignoring the ‘too late’ smirk on Dean’s face. “While you guys were getting slimed, Jem and I finagled an apartment from the landlord. Free of charge.”
“You guys are awesome,” Sam said.
“We try.” Rachel grinned. “Though it never hurts to let the desperate landlord think that you’re a pair of off-duty reservists with vigilante tendencies.”
“Batman eat your heart out,” Jem chortled. She blinked and then her face lit up with a self-congratulatory smile. “I’ve got a great idea. Rachel, you and Dean should head out to the registrar of deeds’ office while Sam and I look over the rest of the building.”
“Jem-” Rachel began, a hard, dark note in her voice.
Jem blithely ignored her and grabbed Sam by the arm, spinning him around and dragging him back down the hallway. Sam only had time to shoot a baffled look at Dean and catch a glimpse of his brother’s perturbed, tight-drawn face.
“You guys have fun!” Jem shouted over her shoulder with a wave. “Come on Sam,” she said more quietly, a wicked curve to her lips. “Let me show you the bedroom.”
~~~
“Ready or not, here we come,” Jem sing-songed down the hallway. She didn’t have to look at Sam to know that bright smile of his was lighting up the bland hallways.
“Do you think that’ll bring our mystery spook out of the woodwork?” Sam teased.
“Not really.” A grin tugged at the edges of Jem’s mouth. She swayed into Sam’s side and draped her arm through his. “But you never know. Weirder things have happened.”
Sam’s grin widened. They strolled down the hallway like that, their strides in sync. Sam felt good, he felt really good. The Dean-in-his-head wolf-whistled and shared a particularly dirty comment about the Jem-shaped reasons for Sam’s excellent mood, but Sam knew there was more to it than sex. For the first time in weeks he felt like the weight of Dean’s grief had been lifted from his shoulders, not to mention his own. Jem was someone who was all his, someone who cared about Sam for Sam, not because he was John’s son or Dean’s brother. She made him feel like a person again.
He looked over at her. Warmth spread in his chest at the way she scanned the hallway with her sleek little EMF meter, the tiny line of concentration that furrowed her forehead. She glanced up and smiled when she caught him staring at her. She squeezed his arm and returned her focus to her work.
Sam never wanted this moment to end.
Gruffly he cleared his throat. “So, how did you get into all of this-” He waved his hand.
“Hunting evil bullcrap?” She winked at him and then her gaze slipped into the distance, her pace slowing. “My mom died when I was young, from cancer, if you can believe it. So it was pretty much just me and my dad when I was a kid.” Her face softened with fondness. “He could make pretty much anything. He wasn’t a hunter but he knew a lot of them. They were always coming by, looking for new tools and gadgets.”
She chuckled a little and leaned against Sam’s shoulder. “They called him the Tinkerman. He loved it, loved the challenge of figuring out new and creative ways to help people. When he died I realized that that’s what I wanted to do, help people. So I started hunting, little weekend jobs at first, but before I knew it I had a truck full of my dad’s gadgets and a bunch of old books.”
They turned a corner and Jem stopped. She turned to face Sam, her mouth creased in a small, painful, happy smile. “And, you know, even with all of the hard jobs and lonely times, it really is the best job in the world. We get to actually, physically save people. That’s something most office drones can only dream of doing.”
Sam reached over and pushed an errant strand of hair out of her face. His fingers lingered on her cheek. She was amazing.
Both of their EMF meters screamed and they jerked in tandem surprise. Jem started chuckling and Sam couldn’t help joining in. She rolled her eyes and turned towards the wall, back to work and following the unseen breadcrumbs.
Sam pushed his mind back into job-focus. He scanned the wall nearest him. The meter pinged all over the place, the pattern not making any sense.
“Oh, eew,” Jem said from behind him. She was crouched down by a vent by the floor, peering into it with narrowed eyes. She pulled a small flashlight and a cheap pen out of her pocket. As Sam crouched down beside her, she pushed the pen through the holes in the grate following the flashlight’s path. He pulled a plastic bag out of his pocket in time to catch a clotted mess of blood, hair, and scalp from the tip of her pen.
For a second he could feel cold eyes staring into the back of his neck, icy fingers tickling along his spine.
They stood up. Sam held the bag up towards the light fixture on the wall, better to examine the mess. Jem brushed off her knees and joined him in contemplation.
“Blonde hair,” Sam said.
“Yeah.” Jem sighed. “Looks like our spook is dragging its victims behind the walls somehow. Great.”
Sam nodded and shoved the bag in his pocket. A chill swept over him. For a split second he could feel malevolent eyes searing into him, hatred and bile thick in his throat. Hoarse, wheezing breaths rattled in is ears.
He blinked and it was gone, as if it had never been. He sucked in a quick, shaky breath.
Jem stood beside him, her hand on his arm. “Are you all right?” she asked, words tight with concern.
He swallowed and stared at where her hand rested on his arm, her fingers so small and fragile. Residual sparks prickled the cold sweat on the back of his neck.
“Do you ever worry about all of this, that we could become the kinds of things we hunt?” He couldn’t suppress the waver in his voice, the depth of his fear peeking through.
“Sometimes,” Jem quietly admitted. “That danger is always there, that we’ll fall over the ledge into the darkness and not come back.” Her eyes gleamed. “We just have to hold on to the things, the people, who keep us human.”
Sam smiled in reply, tears welling at the corners of his eyes. God, he was turning into a huge crybaby.
“Come on, we’d better head back to base.” Jem’s hand slid down and grabbed his, squeezing it tight. “Let’s go see if the sulky twins are back with anything useful.”
Sam gripped her hand, letting his actions say what he couldn’t. He followed her down the hall.
~~~
The tension, when Sam and Jem walked into the room, was thick enough to cut with a knife. And not some extra-crappy serrated knife from the silverwear drawer, no, you’d have to use one of the super-sharp ones carefully stowed in the back of the Impala.
“Hi honeys, we’re home,” Jem trilled, seemingly unaware of or unfazed by the twin looks of death Dean and Rachel shot her way.
“Good. Fine. Excellent,” Rachel announced, each syllable tightly bitten off. She shoved out of the kitchen chair and stood up. “There’s all kinds of info here. Have fun going through it. I’ve gotta take a walk.”
The doorjamb rattled under the force of Rachel’s departing slam. Sam darted a glimpse at Jem whose mouth was set in a firm, flat line. When she caught his look she rolled her eyes and gave her head a miniscule shake. Rachel needed her space.
Sam looked back at Dean who still stared grimly at the laptop’s computer screen, but Sam could tell that his attention wasn’t on it. Dean’s face was set and blank, his thoughts turned inward on some memory Sam couldn’t parse.
“What’s up with her?” Sam asked, a reckless attempt to lighten the pressure in the room.
Dean slammed out of his seat. “Damned if I know,” he said, voice tight. He grabbed his coat off of the back of the chair and shrugged it on. “I need a drink.”
Dean banged the door shut behind him, a twin to Rachel’s departing blow. The echo of its reverberations vibrated through Sam’s head, sweeping his good mood away. He blindly maneuvered through the room. His knees collapsed under him, only chance landed him on the couch with a thud. Momentum pulled his head down into his upturned hands.
He didn’t know how much longer he could do this.
The cushion beside him dipped under Jem’s weight. She rested her hand lightly on his upper arm, a silent support at his side.
“He won’t let me in,” Sam breathed, head still buried in his hands.
Jem’s hand slowly began to move up and down on his arm, stroking along the stiff-corded muscles in his back. “After my dad died things were pretty bad for me.” She took a deep breath and swallowed. “I did some really dangerous, reckless stuff. I just didn’t care anymore, I was hurting and I wanted everything else to hurt too.”
Sam raised his head and looked at Jem. She stared forward as her hand clenched, crumpling folds of his shirt into her fist. “I nearly died a hundred times. It’s blind luck that kept me going long enough to find the Roadhouse, to find Ellen and people who gave a crap about what might happen to me.”
Jem leaned against him. Sam wrapped his arm around her and she looked up at him, her eyes shimmered. “It means something to Dean that you’re here and that you care. Maybe he can’t say anything now, but just knowing that he has someone who will be around to pick him back up is doing more for him than you know.” Her lips curved in a small smile. “And, you know, that goes for you, too. There are people who care about you, who will listen when you want to talk.”
“I know,” Sam said softly. He breathed for a second, memories of his dad pouring through his mind. “I was six or seven, and he took me shooting for the first time,” spilled out of his mouth. “You know, bottles on a fence, that kind of thing. I bulls-eyed every one of them. He gave me this smile, like ... I don't know.” He shrugged, blinking tears out of his suddenly full eyes. “We butted heads all of the time, but I never doubted that he loved me, even when it seemed like he loved other things more.”
“Family sucks sometimes, doesn’t it?” Jem’s voice was thick with memories of her own.
Sam reached over and gently bracketed her face with his hand. He blinked and he was kissing her. She sighed into him, mouth open and warm. His hand swept down until it rested at the small of her back. Her breath hitched and he came undone. He needed more, he needed her.
He lifted and pulled and in one move she was on his lap. Jem twisted, bracketing his legs with her knees. She put her hands on either side of his head and carded them down through his hair. “Are you with me?” she whispered against his lips.
He growled and pulled her closer. She arched into him, and then leaned in and claimed his mouth with her own. He poured everything he had into her, all of his rage and grief, and wrapped up with it love, so much love. He wanted to cry, he never wanted to stop.
Jem broke away with a gasp. A soft smile twisted at her mouth. “Yeah, me too.”
He surged against her in response. She collapsed into him with a moan. He would never let her go.
~~~
Sam stared at the beer bottle cradled between his hands. Music played on the Roadhouse’s jukebox, Soundgarden, he was pretty sure, but the place was empty, except for their muted little party. They’d all been high on adrenaline by the end of it all in Philadelphia. He could still see the manic smile on Jem’s face as they dumped cement down that deep, dark hole, still taste the bitter tang of fear that clung to her even during their life-affirming kiss. He’d been so scared, so certain that he’d have to see someone else he cared about die.
It had seemed only right to run with Rachel’s idea of a celebratory post-hunt drink at the Roadhouse, to caravan all the way back to Nebraska, regardless the distance or their collective exhaustion. So here they all sat, hunched over at the bar, Sam and Jem sandwiched between Dean and Rachel. Somehow, it didn’t feel much like a celebration anymore.
Jem shifted on her barstool and Sam looked up. She raised her bottle in the air. “To H.H. Holmes. May he rot for all eternity in his toxic grave.”
“Hear, hear,” Rachel agreed, voice hoarse but strong. They all clinked their bottles together and drank. Sam felt an unconscious weight lift off his shoulders. Maybe now he could remember how to breathe.
Ellen came out from the back and set a crate of beer behind the bar, glass bottles clacking against one another. “Glad to see you all feel free to come by my place and drink all my booze. Remind me to have the locks changed after the door hits your backsides.”
Jem grinned at her. “Whine, whine, whine. You know you owe me more than this for all the hours I put in last week. Admit it, you’re happy we’re here.”
“I’d be happier if I weren’t paying a certain someone who takes off in the middle of her shift with perfectly good booze.” But Ellen grinned around the words, her tone warm and teasing.
Rachel rolled her eyes. “Yack, yack, yack,” she said, her right hand flapping up and down like a clacking mouth. At that all three women started laughing. Sam and Dean just shared a bemused look and took simultaneous swigs of beer.
“So,” Ellen continued after the laughter died down and she started stocking the bar. “I had a hunter come through her while you all were off almost getting yourselves killed.”
Jem jerked a little, startled. “That’s weird. They have any news?”
Ellen shrugged. “Was pretty shook up, actually. After a liberal application of booze I finally got the story out of him. He’d apparently had to take care of some kid who was setting people on fire with his brain.” She put down the bottle in her hand and gave them each a serious, weighing look. Sam breathed slowly, hoping she couldn’t see the knots that had just tied themselves in his stomach. There was no way that she could know anything about him.
“The funny thing was,” Ellen finally said after a long, tense moment. “That wasn’t the first psychic kid that hunter’d had heard of. A few months back a friend of his had dealt with some crazy bastard who’d been electrocuting people. And, apparently, both of those kids were the same age, both born in 1983. And they both had dreams about a yellow-eyed man.”
“We might know something about that,” Sam heard himself say. It had been weighing on him since Guthrie, since Andy and his brother, this secret that he wasn’t sure he could keep any longer. There was something inside of him, something that scared him more than anything ever had. It was dark and evil and he didn’t know what to do. Maybe if he told them, told Jem, he might find a way to get through. “I’m-” He swallowed, his instinct to lie warring against his need to tell.
Dean tensed beside him. “Sam,” he gritted, voice tight.
Ellen rounded on Dean before Sam could respond. “You let your brother talk. This thing is bigger than you Winchesters. It’s war and their side’s holding all the cards.”
Sam hunched in on himself, he had to talk, he had to. He took a deep breath and straightened. He looked Ellen straight in the eye. “I have these dreams and sometimes they come true.”
Silence thudded around them. Ellen blinked at Sam as Jem’s cold, steady hand wrapped around his wrist. He put his other hand over hers and squeezed. “And they’ve started coming while I’m awake. They only seem to happen when we’re around other people like me.” Sam’s throat closed around the terror that threatened to spill out of his chest.
“The only pattern we’ve been able to track is that they’re all Sam’s age.” Dean seamlessly picked up, his voice a path for Sam to follow out of his own head. “We think it’s all tied up with that demon we ran into a couple months ago.”
“The one that killed your Dad,” Ellen whispered. Her mouth flattened under the weight of Dean’s eyes, all of his grief and guilt there for her to see. Jem leaned against Sam’s side and he wrapped his arm around her, holding on for all he was worth.
Ellen pulled a bottle and five shot glasses out from under the bar. “This calls for something stronger than beer.” She poured them each a shot.