it's in those moments (the "my kind of girl" remix) [Supernatural; Sam & Dean]
Title: it's in those moments (the "my kind of girl" remix)
Remix Author: dontyouwaitup
Summary: Sam tells Dean about Jessica and remembers telling Jessica about Dean.
Rating: PG
Fandom: Supernatural
Warnings: A teeny bit "wincest"-ish.
Spoilers: Through "Bloody Mary", I think, though I imagine that this would come right before the "Skin" episode.
Original Story: It's In Those Moments by storydivagirl
it's in those moments (the "my kind of girl" remix)
Sam stutters awake, jerking out of his nightmare with a breath that feels like a robbery. One hand flies to his forehead, fingers skittering across the skin above his eyebrow. The drop of Jessica's blood is long gone, though. It was months ago. Sam had been nearly catatonic that night, wrapped in a blanket outside his burning home, and Dean had pulled his sleeve over his hand, scrubbed at the darkening spot on Sam's forehead until it was invisible.
"You okay, Sammy?" Dean grunts across the dark motel room, voice like gravel under car wheels. The clock says it's four thirty-two. Dean shouldn't be awake.
"Yeah," Sam breathes. "Sorry, did I - was I yelling, in my sleep?"
Dean punches his pillow a bit before settling down to it. When he speaks the rough cotton muffles his voice, sleep creeping back. "Nah," he says. "You were breathing different."
-
Sam hadn't even kissed her yet, when she'd asked about his family.
They'd been having coffee at CoHo when her phone buzzed. "Sorry," she'd said, ignoring the call. "It's my little sister. I'll call her back."
"You have a sister," Sam had said dumbly. It wasn't a question, but he was still learning how to speak with Jessica looking at him.
"Yeah," Jessica had replied easily. "Emma. She's in high school. She's a freak." She grinned, then. Remembering something, probably. Sam focused on the tiny smudge of whipped cream at the corner of her mouth. "You got any brothers or sisters?" she'd asked then.
Sam had been startled by the intimacy of the question, feeling split open there in the middle of the café. Naked-in-class vulnerable, as if she'd asked him about something violently personal, like religion or scars or masturbation habits. "Uh."
She quirked an eyebrow. "You're a real talker, Sam Winchester," she said, New Jersey sarcasm hiding where her tongue touched her teeth.
"I've got a brother," he'd blurted out, finally. "Dean. He thinks I talk plenty."
"Yeah?" Jessica had prompted, leaning forward in her seat, closer to him.
"He's older than me," Sam had added, tearing a napkin nervously. "Uh, he's… he'll be twenty-three on the twenty-fourth. He's got… we don't really get along, right now."
"That's my birthday, too!" Jessica had squeaked. "Do you have a fake ID, Sam? Because if you do, you should come out with us."
Sam had smiled and maybe blushed, reached for his drink. A soy mocha latte with whipped cream and white chocolate, but underneath he could still taste the sharpness of the coffee, the familiar darkness of it curling up against the roof of his mouth.
-
"So what was she like?" Dean asks in the morning, spitting gobs of sparkly blue toothpaste into the sink while Sam's trying to shave.
"That's disgusting, man, get out," Sam grunts, shoving Dean with his hip. Dean elbows him and the razor slips. A spot of blood blossoms at his jaw. "Damn it."
Dean doesn't apologize, but he reaches up and holds the edge of his sleeve against the side of Sam's face for a count. "Pussy."
Sam grabs a tissue. "What was who like? Jessica?" he asks, batting Dean away and blotting the blood with his Kleenex. "What do you want to know for, Dean?"
Dean shrugs, looks at Sam in the mirror. "Hell, I don't know. Figured maybe if you talked about her, you'd be able to get some sleep."
"Huh?"
"Christ, never mind, Sam." Dean reaches for the deodorant in Sam's toiletry kit.
"The hell, Dean!" Sam howls. "Use your own!" He presses a palm to Dean's chest, shoving him back against the towel rack.
Dean makes another grab, but his arms are shorter than Sam's. "I'm out," he laughs, pushing at Sam's stomach. "Besides, you're the one's gonna hafta smell me."
"That's gross," Sam repeats, but he nudges his toiletry kit closer to Dean and sighs.
They're on their way to Arizona and Mick Jagger singing "but laugh, laugh, laugh, I nearly died" from the tape deck, when Sam's eyes snag on the edge of Dean's sleeve. The shirt is old cotton that used to be white, but has dulled to a blue-gray from lazy laundering. There, at Dean's wrist, is the tiny, dark brown spot of Sam's blood from this morning.
Dean is bopping his head to the music, his lips twitching with the lyrics. Sam swallows.
"I think you might've liked her," he blurts suddenly.
Dean's hands freeze in the middle of drumming on the wheel. He presses his lips together, hesitates before glancing at Sam. "I'm sure I would've, Sammy."
-
They'd been dating a while before they slept together. Jessica, Sam was learning, was good in the way parents were proud of. For all her love of tiny t-shirts and over-glossed lips, she was actually surprisingly demure. Sam liked that; the solid knowledge that Jessica wasn't the kind of girl his brother could have picked up in a bar somewhere.
She wasn't the kind of girl that Sam would smell on Dean's clothes later, doing laundry while his brother and father cleaned guns and knives and their own wounds.
They had been studying - her reading up on impressionism, him on amino acids - when her roommate had called to say she wasn't going to be home that night.
Sam had blushed, when Jessica told him. "Okay," he'd stuttered. "Well, okay."
"So, you know, you could spend the night. Or whatever," Jessica had offered.
"I - no, don't worry about it, it's-."
"Sam," she had laughed, tugging his textbook away from him, sliding closer, touching his shirt. "Sam, I'm asking you to stay." He could smell her shampoo, the turpentine from her studio time this morning.
"I love you," he had said, suddenly.
Her eyes widened, bright and laughing, though not at him. "Wow. You say that to all the girls who ask you to sleep over?"
"No." He had leaned forward, catching her face in his hands, closing his mouth over hers. "No, I don't. I've never said that before."
She swung one leg over his lap, perching on his thighs. "Ever? Not to anybody?"
"Nobody," Sam had replied.
She had pushed her hands into his hair, touched his ears, his neck. "Not even, like, your brother, or your dad, when you were a kid?"
"Nobody."
Her eyes went quiet, and she sat back on his legs, regarding him for a serious moment. "I guess I'm pretty special, then, huh?"
-
That night, they're in a bar spilling over Sam's clippings about some cursed necklace in Bisbee, Arizona, when Dean brings it up again. "Jessica drink beer?" he asks off-hand, watching Sam's hands on his own bottle.
Sam glares. It hurts, talking about her, thinking about her, but it's a bright, tangible kind of pain, which feels almost better than the dull ache behind his ears that comes when he's actively trying not to think about her at all. "Sure, sometimes," he finally answers. "She liked tequila more, though. She was real good at taking shots - a lot better 'n me."
"My kind of girl," Dean says, grinning.
"Not really," Sam replies quickly. "I mean… you'd have gotten along, I think. But she wasn't… your kind of girl."
Dean is quiet for a minute. "That's good, Sammy."
-
They'd been together for a little over a year on Jessica's twentieth birthday, and Sam was already starting to feel like he could do this forever. He could wake up to her singing eighties songs in the shower for the rest of his life, he could get married to the smell of her oil paint - smudging from her fingers to his cheeks when she grabbed his face and kissed him, promising to quiz him on the bio chem as soon as she was done painting this one stupid tree.
Her twentieth birthday, and he was giving her a piggy-back ride home from the bars. "Shoot," she had mumbled happily against his neck. "How'd you let me get so drunk?"
"Trust me, Jess, there was no getting between you and that last shot of tequila."
"Hey," she'd laughed in mock-defense. "I am two whole decades old. I can do what I want. I'm an adult."
"Your My Little Pony panties beg to differ."
"You love those panties, jerk."
She'd had her face tucked into his hair, pressing tiny kisses against the nape of his neck. He had laughed, tightening his hands around the backs of her thighs and adjusting her position on his back. "I do, Jess, I really do, and if my back doesn't break before we get back to your place, I'll show you exactly how much I love them-."
"Whatever, I'm light as a feather."
"Yes, a feather and sixteen shots of te…." And suddenly, Sam had frozen where he stood, his gaze caught on a familiar glint of dark paint, on a license plate he's known by heart since before he could read. The breath had disappeared from his lungs like it was never there to begin with."…quila."
Jessica's tongue brushed the back of his earlobe. "What's the hold up? Home, Jeeves. It's straight ahead, up a couple of stairs - you can make it."
Sam had swallowed, thought about the way that black coffee tasted on his tongue. "Um, actually. I gotta - how bout you run upstairs. I'll be there in five minutes."
She had sighed indignantly, but slid off his back anyway. "Fine," she had said, standing on her toes to kiss his cheek. "But Sam, if it's six minutes, I'm gonna be asleep, and you're going to seriously miss out on taking advantage of your drunk girlfriend on her twentieth birthday. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity, Winchester. Don't let it slip away."
She hadn't asked him for any explanations.
After she'd disappeared into the apartment building, Sam had approached the Impala slowly, a knot in his stomach - how a person would expect to feel, seeing his childhood home for the first time in years, unchanged, solid. The car had seemed smaller than he remembered.
He had touched the car with his fingertips first. It was cool; the engine hadn't been running for a couple hours. Finally, he bent down, rapped hard against the passenger's side window.
Dean jerked in the driver's seat, reaching blindly for whatever weapon he was keeping in the backseat, before he saw Sam and relaxed. He reached over and unlocked the door, grinning.
Sam didn't smile back as he slid into the seat. "What are you doing here? Where's Dad? Is something-."
"He's in Chino," Dean had reassured him. "We thought werewolves, turned out to be a possessed dog. And hello to you, too, little brother."
"Dean, what are you doing here?" Sam had scowled.
Something passed over Dean's face, then - surprise, maybe, that Sam might not be tickled to see him here, sitting outside his house like he used to sit outside the school, waiting for Sam to finish play practice. "Just - like I said, we were in Chino, and it turned out to be a one-man job. So I figured I'd come say hi."
"How long have you been waiting here?"
"Couple hours, maybe. Got some shut-eye. So what do you say, Sammy, you want to grab a beer?"
"Dean, it's nearly two in the morning - I've got… I have things to do."
"You have things to do, at two in the morning?"
The campus cruiser had passed by, and for a moment Dean's features were illuminated by the headlights. Sam had taken a quick inventory while he had the light. Dean had a slow-healing cut on his chin; his hair was shorter than it was the last time Sam saw him, but he looked the same, mostly, the patterns of freckles familiar and the flecks of light in his eyes exactly as Sam remembered them, when he bothered to remember.
"Yeah," Sam had answered. "I can't." Dean had sat up straighter in the seat, then, flicked his eyes away from Sam, and Sam suddenly felt fourteen again, watching Dean shoot a gun with disturbing accuracy. "Are you going to be in town a while?"
"No," Dean had said, unable to hide the regret in his mouth. "Dad's gonna be done tonight. We're headed to Arizona next."
Sam ran a finger over the leather, running out of time to soak in the familiar smell of home. "And you gotta get back. Because Dad doesn't know you're here."
"I'm twenty four years old, Sam, I don't need Dad's permission to-."
"No, I know that," Sam interrupted. "I really have to go, Dean." His fingers had fumbled on the door handle, though, sweat-slick.
"I - it's good to see you, Sammy."
Sam had turned back, then, slid across the seat, closer to his brother. "Dean," he'd whispered, reaching out, touching Dean's shirt, curling his fingers into it.
Dean had leaned into his hand. "Yeah."
But the car wasn't home anymore; hadn't been for a long time, and Jessica was upstairs, probably brushing the taste of tequila out from behind her teeth, waiting for him to come up behind her in the bathroom and brush her hair away from her shoulder-
"It's Sam," he'd said, finally, and when he walked across the street, he pretended that the sound of the ignition turning over didn't feel like a bullet to his lungs.
It was hours later, Jessica sleeping warm against his chest, under his arm, when he remembered Dean's birthday.
-
Dean takes a well-endowed, probably slightly underage brunette girl out to the parking lot a little while past midnight, saying, "Just gonna show her the car, Sammy, she's real into cars."
Sam finishes his beer and walks the four blocks to the motel, intentionally averting his eyes when he passes the Impala in the lot.
He falls asleep in his jeans, watching an infomercial for Windsor Pilates.
The infomercial is repeating itself when Dean jostles Sam awake. He's drunker than he was when Sam left him, jagermeister on his breath and fog in his eyes. "Dean?"
Dean pats Sam's leg and stands up, turning away to unbutton his shirt. "Still got your boots on, Sammy," he says. "Nobody sleeps right with his boots on."
Sam grunts and sits up to fumble with his laces. The room is dark except for the muted television, its glow reflecting off of Dean as he tugs his clothes off. "Have fun?"
"Sure," Dean replies, climbing under his covers. "You get any good infomercials?"
"There was one on before about a bra that sticks on. No straps or hooks or anything." Sam says, laying back down as he kicks his boots away. "You'd have liked it."
"Bitch."
"Yeah." Sam tugs the sheets up to his neck, but his toes poke out from the bottom. He sighs and shifts until he's diagonal on the bed, limbs skewed awkwardly.
"Hey, Sam?"
"Sleep, Dean."
"C'mon, tell me something else about Jessica."
Sam squeezes his eyes shut. "Why."
"Just… you liked her. Kinda wish I'da known her, I guess. Just tell me something."
-
"Sam?"
Sam jerked awake, sitting up before his eyes were even completely open. He was breathing hard, shallow and gasping. "Jess."
She smiled teasingly. "Nightmare?"
"Jesus. Jess."
"Oh, Sam," she laughed, tugging him back down to his pillow. "Was it clowns?"
He touched his fingers lightly to his forehead, feeling for wet heat, but they came away clean. His mouth still tasted like ash though, like old fire. "Yeah," he said hoarsely, just watching as Jessica fit herself against his side, slid a foot between his calves to warm it. "Clowns."
"Dork."
"Yeah," he huffed, forcing a chuckle.
She kissed his chest, mouth on the rise of muscle he was still adjusting to. "Tell me a story."
"I don't have stories."
"Come on, Sam. Tell me a ghost story, or something. I can't sleep."
"I really don't have any ghost stories, Jess."
"Then tell me a story about you. About when you were a kid, or something. Please, Sam?"
He bit his tongue around the revelation that his childhood memories are ghost stories, most of them, and instead he just started to talk. "I've got one memory," he lies.
"Tell me."
"We were at a park. Me, and Dean. And my dad. We were - traveling, and I think we were in Colorado. Or Utah, maybe." He spoke easily, telling the story as if it were true.
"Dean was twelve," he continued. "So I must've been eight - it was fall. The leaves were turning, you know?"
She smiled against his skin, a long finger rubbing along his clavicle, and suddenly he realized that he wasn't lying at all. He remembered it, out west in October. Dean hadn't discovered leather jackets yet, and their Dad was there.
"It was really pretty," he whispered, burying a hand in the curls of blonde at Jess's neck. He didn't think about the way Dean would have laughed, if he was there to hear this story. "Sunny, you know, warm enough that it was comfortable, not so warm it was hot."
"Pretty," Jessica echoed.
"Dean tackled me, I think. We rolled around in the leaves for like, hours, fighting and playing, til my dad made us leave."
Jessica lifted up, then, pressed chaste kisses to Sam's chest and neck and jaw. "You had a boring childhood, you know that, Sam?"
Sam smiled weakly and turned to meet her mouth, rolling over her and kissing, kissing, kissing so he wouldn't have to answer.
He had hoped she couldn't taste the soot on his tongue.
-
"Just tell me something," Dean is saying, whispering between their motel beds. Sam swallows.
"I missed you," he blurts, suddenly betraying himself. "Just… you know that, right?"
Dean snorts. "Sam."
"I'm a girl, I know. I just…"
"You know I'd have done anything to change it," Dean says then, serious. "What happened to you. To Jessica."
Sam blinks and turns his head, looking away from the window at Dean. He can only see the shadows around Dean's cheekbones, but he knows Dean is looking at him, too. "I know, Dean," he says quietly. "I know."
Remix Author: dontyouwaitup
Summary: Sam tells Dean about Jessica and remembers telling Jessica about Dean.
Rating: PG
Fandom: Supernatural
Warnings: A teeny bit "wincest"-ish.
Spoilers: Through "Bloody Mary", I think, though I imagine that this would come right before the "Skin" episode.
Original Story: It's In Those Moments by storydivagirl
it's in those moments (the "my kind of girl" remix)
Sam stutters awake, jerking out of his nightmare with a breath that feels like a robbery. One hand flies to his forehead, fingers skittering across the skin above his eyebrow. The drop of Jessica's blood is long gone, though. It was months ago. Sam had been nearly catatonic that night, wrapped in a blanket outside his burning home, and Dean had pulled his sleeve over his hand, scrubbed at the darkening spot on Sam's forehead until it was invisible.
"You okay, Sammy?" Dean grunts across the dark motel room, voice like gravel under car wheels. The clock says it's four thirty-two. Dean shouldn't be awake.
"Yeah," Sam breathes. "Sorry, did I - was I yelling, in my sleep?"
Dean punches his pillow a bit before settling down to it. When he speaks the rough cotton muffles his voice, sleep creeping back. "Nah," he says. "You were breathing different."
-
Sam hadn't even kissed her yet, when she'd asked about his family.
They'd been having coffee at CoHo when her phone buzzed. "Sorry," she'd said, ignoring the call. "It's my little sister. I'll call her back."
"You have a sister," Sam had said dumbly. It wasn't a question, but he was still learning how to speak with Jessica looking at him.
"Yeah," Jessica had replied easily. "Emma. She's in high school. She's a freak." She grinned, then. Remembering something, probably. Sam focused on the tiny smudge of whipped cream at the corner of her mouth. "You got any brothers or sisters?" she'd asked then.
Sam had been startled by the intimacy of the question, feeling split open there in the middle of the café. Naked-in-class vulnerable, as if she'd asked him about something violently personal, like religion or scars or masturbation habits. "Uh."
She quirked an eyebrow. "You're a real talker, Sam Winchester," she said, New Jersey sarcasm hiding where her tongue touched her teeth.
"I've got a brother," he'd blurted out, finally. "Dean. He thinks I talk plenty."
"Yeah?" Jessica had prompted, leaning forward in her seat, closer to him.
"He's older than me," Sam had added, tearing a napkin nervously. "Uh, he's… he'll be twenty-three on the twenty-fourth. He's got… we don't really get along, right now."
"That's my birthday, too!" Jessica had squeaked. "Do you have a fake ID, Sam? Because if you do, you should come out with us."
Sam had smiled and maybe blushed, reached for his drink. A soy mocha latte with whipped cream and white chocolate, but underneath he could still taste the sharpness of the coffee, the familiar darkness of it curling up against the roof of his mouth.
-
"So what was she like?" Dean asks in the morning, spitting gobs of sparkly blue toothpaste into the sink while Sam's trying to shave.
"That's disgusting, man, get out," Sam grunts, shoving Dean with his hip. Dean elbows him and the razor slips. A spot of blood blossoms at his jaw. "Damn it."
Dean doesn't apologize, but he reaches up and holds the edge of his sleeve against the side of Sam's face for a count. "Pussy."
Sam grabs a tissue. "What was who like? Jessica?" he asks, batting Dean away and blotting the blood with his Kleenex. "What do you want to know for, Dean?"
Dean shrugs, looks at Sam in the mirror. "Hell, I don't know. Figured maybe if you talked about her, you'd be able to get some sleep."
"Huh?"
"Christ, never mind, Sam." Dean reaches for the deodorant in Sam's toiletry kit.
"The hell, Dean!" Sam howls. "Use your own!" He presses a palm to Dean's chest, shoving him back against the towel rack.
Dean makes another grab, but his arms are shorter than Sam's. "I'm out," he laughs, pushing at Sam's stomach. "Besides, you're the one's gonna hafta smell me."
"That's gross," Sam repeats, but he nudges his toiletry kit closer to Dean and sighs.
They're on their way to Arizona and Mick Jagger singing "but laugh, laugh, laugh, I nearly died" from the tape deck, when Sam's eyes snag on the edge of Dean's sleeve. The shirt is old cotton that used to be white, but has dulled to a blue-gray from lazy laundering. There, at Dean's wrist, is the tiny, dark brown spot of Sam's blood from this morning.
Dean is bopping his head to the music, his lips twitching with the lyrics. Sam swallows.
"I think you might've liked her," he blurts suddenly.
Dean's hands freeze in the middle of drumming on the wheel. He presses his lips together, hesitates before glancing at Sam. "I'm sure I would've, Sammy."
-
They'd been dating a while before they slept together. Jessica, Sam was learning, was good in the way parents were proud of. For all her love of tiny t-shirts and over-glossed lips, she was actually surprisingly demure. Sam liked that; the solid knowledge that Jessica wasn't the kind of girl his brother could have picked up in a bar somewhere.
She wasn't the kind of girl that Sam would smell on Dean's clothes later, doing laundry while his brother and father cleaned guns and knives and their own wounds.
They had been studying - her reading up on impressionism, him on amino acids - when her roommate had called to say she wasn't going to be home that night.
Sam had blushed, when Jessica told him. "Okay," he'd stuttered. "Well, okay."
"So, you know, you could spend the night. Or whatever," Jessica had offered.
"I - no, don't worry about it, it's-."
"Sam," she had laughed, tugging his textbook away from him, sliding closer, touching his shirt. "Sam, I'm asking you to stay." He could smell her shampoo, the turpentine from her studio time this morning.
"I love you," he had said, suddenly.
Her eyes widened, bright and laughing, though not at him. "Wow. You say that to all the girls who ask you to sleep over?"
"No." He had leaned forward, catching her face in his hands, closing his mouth over hers. "No, I don't. I've never said that before."
She swung one leg over his lap, perching on his thighs. "Ever? Not to anybody?"
"Nobody," Sam had replied.
She had pushed her hands into his hair, touched his ears, his neck. "Not even, like, your brother, or your dad, when you were a kid?"
"Nobody."
Her eyes went quiet, and she sat back on his legs, regarding him for a serious moment. "I guess I'm pretty special, then, huh?"
-
That night, they're in a bar spilling over Sam's clippings about some cursed necklace in Bisbee, Arizona, when Dean brings it up again. "Jessica drink beer?" he asks off-hand, watching Sam's hands on his own bottle.
Sam glares. It hurts, talking about her, thinking about her, but it's a bright, tangible kind of pain, which feels almost better than the dull ache behind his ears that comes when he's actively trying not to think about her at all. "Sure, sometimes," he finally answers. "She liked tequila more, though. She was real good at taking shots - a lot better 'n me."
"My kind of girl," Dean says, grinning.
"Not really," Sam replies quickly. "I mean… you'd have gotten along, I think. But she wasn't… your kind of girl."
Dean is quiet for a minute. "That's good, Sammy."
-
They'd been together for a little over a year on Jessica's twentieth birthday, and Sam was already starting to feel like he could do this forever. He could wake up to her singing eighties songs in the shower for the rest of his life, he could get married to the smell of her oil paint - smudging from her fingers to his cheeks when she grabbed his face and kissed him, promising to quiz him on the bio chem as soon as she was done painting this one stupid tree.
Her twentieth birthday, and he was giving her a piggy-back ride home from the bars. "Shoot," she had mumbled happily against his neck. "How'd you let me get so drunk?"
"Trust me, Jess, there was no getting between you and that last shot of tequila."
"Hey," she'd laughed in mock-defense. "I am two whole decades old. I can do what I want. I'm an adult."
"Your My Little Pony panties beg to differ."
"You love those panties, jerk."
She'd had her face tucked into his hair, pressing tiny kisses against the nape of his neck. He had laughed, tightening his hands around the backs of her thighs and adjusting her position on his back. "I do, Jess, I really do, and if my back doesn't break before we get back to your place, I'll show you exactly how much I love them-."
"Whatever, I'm light as a feather."
"Yes, a feather and sixteen shots of te…." And suddenly, Sam had frozen where he stood, his gaze caught on a familiar glint of dark paint, on a license plate he's known by heart since before he could read. The breath had disappeared from his lungs like it was never there to begin with."…quila."
Jessica's tongue brushed the back of his earlobe. "What's the hold up? Home, Jeeves. It's straight ahead, up a couple of stairs - you can make it."
Sam had swallowed, thought about the way that black coffee tasted on his tongue. "Um, actually. I gotta - how bout you run upstairs. I'll be there in five minutes."
She had sighed indignantly, but slid off his back anyway. "Fine," she had said, standing on her toes to kiss his cheek. "But Sam, if it's six minutes, I'm gonna be asleep, and you're going to seriously miss out on taking advantage of your drunk girlfriend on her twentieth birthday. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity, Winchester. Don't let it slip away."
She hadn't asked him for any explanations.
After she'd disappeared into the apartment building, Sam had approached the Impala slowly, a knot in his stomach - how a person would expect to feel, seeing his childhood home for the first time in years, unchanged, solid. The car had seemed smaller than he remembered.
He had touched the car with his fingertips first. It was cool; the engine hadn't been running for a couple hours. Finally, he bent down, rapped hard against the passenger's side window.
Dean jerked in the driver's seat, reaching blindly for whatever weapon he was keeping in the backseat, before he saw Sam and relaxed. He reached over and unlocked the door, grinning.
Sam didn't smile back as he slid into the seat. "What are you doing here? Where's Dad? Is something-."
"He's in Chino," Dean had reassured him. "We thought werewolves, turned out to be a possessed dog. And hello to you, too, little brother."
"Dean, what are you doing here?" Sam had scowled.
Something passed over Dean's face, then - surprise, maybe, that Sam might not be tickled to see him here, sitting outside his house like he used to sit outside the school, waiting for Sam to finish play practice. "Just - like I said, we were in Chino, and it turned out to be a one-man job. So I figured I'd come say hi."
"How long have you been waiting here?"
"Couple hours, maybe. Got some shut-eye. So what do you say, Sammy, you want to grab a beer?"
"Dean, it's nearly two in the morning - I've got… I have things to do."
"You have things to do, at two in the morning?"
The campus cruiser had passed by, and for a moment Dean's features were illuminated by the headlights. Sam had taken a quick inventory while he had the light. Dean had a slow-healing cut on his chin; his hair was shorter than it was the last time Sam saw him, but he looked the same, mostly, the patterns of freckles familiar and the flecks of light in his eyes exactly as Sam remembered them, when he bothered to remember.
"Yeah," Sam had answered. "I can't." Dean had sat up straighter in the seat, then, flicked his eyes away from Sam, and Sam suddenly felt fourteen again, watching Dean shoot a gun with disturbing accuracy. "Are you going to be in town a while?"
"No," Dean had said, unable to hide the regret in his mouth. "Dad's gonna be done tonight. We're headed to Arizona next."
Sam ran a finger over the leather, running out of time to soak in the familiar smell of home. "And you gotta get back. Because Dad doesn't know you're here."
"I'm twenty four years old, Sam, I don't need Dad's permission to-."
"No, I know that," Sam interrupted. "I really have to go, Dean." His fingers had fumbled on the door handle, though, sweat-slick.
"I - it's good to see you, Sammy."
Sam had turned back, then, slid across the seat, closer to his brother. "Dean," he'd whispered, reaching out, touching Dean's shirt, curling his fingers into it.
Dean had leaned into his hand. "Yeah."
But the car wasn't home anymore; hadn't been for a long time, and Jessica was upstairs, probably brushing the taste of tequila out from behind her teeth, waiting for him to come up behind her in the bathroom and brush her hair away from her shoulder-
"It's Sam," he'd said, finally, and when he walked across the street, he pretended that the sound of the ignition turning over didn't feel like a bullet to his lungs.
It was hours later, Jessica sleeping warm against his chest, under his arm, when he remembered Dean's birthday.
-
Dean takes a well-endowed, probably slightly underage brunette girl out to the parking lot a little while past midnight, saying, "Just gonna show her the car, Sammy, she's real into cars."
Sam finishes his beer and walks the four blocks to the motel, intentionally averting his eyes when he passes the Impala in the lot.
He falls asleep in his jeans, watching an infomercial for Windsor Pilates.
The infomercial is repeating itself when Dean jostles Sam awake. He's drunker than he was when Sam left him, jagermeister on his breath and fog in his eyes. "Dean?"
Dean pats Sam's leg and stands up, turning away to unbutton his shirt. "Still got your boots on, Sammy," he says. "Nobody sleeps right with his boots on."
Sam grunts and sits up to fumble with his laces. The room is dark except for the muted television, its glow reflecting off of Dean as he tugs his clothes off. "Have fun?"
"Sure," Dean replies, climbing under his covers. "You get any good infomercials?"
"There was one on before about a bra that sticks on. No straps or hooks or anything." Sam says, laying back down as he kicks his boots away. "You'd have liked it."
"Bitch."
"Yeah." Sam tugs the sheets up to his neck, but his toes poke out from the bottom. He sighs and shifts until he's diagonal on the bed, limbs skewed awkwardly.
"Hey, Sam?"
"Sleep, Dean."
"C'mon, tell me something else about Jessica."
Sam squeezes his eyes shut. "Why."
"Just… you liked her. Kinda wish I'da known her, I guess. Just tell me something."
-
"Sam?"
Sam jerked awake, sitting up before his eyes were even completely open. He was breathing hard, shallow and gasping. "Jess."
She smiled teasingly. "Nightmare?"
"Jesus. Jess."
"Oh, Sam," she laughed, tugging him back down to his pillow. "Was it clowns?"
He touched his fingers lightly to his forehead, feeling for wet heat, but they came away clean. His mouth still tasted like ash though, like old fire. "Yeah," he said hoarsely, just watching as Jessica fit herself against his side, slid a foot between his calves to warm it. "Clowns."
"Dork."
"Yeah," he huffed, forcing a chuckle.
She kissed his chest, mouth on the rise of muscle he was still adjusting to. "Tell me a story."
"I don't have stories."
"Come on, Sam. Tell me a ghost story, or something. I can't sleep."
"I really don't have any ghost stories, Jess."
"Then tell me a story about you. About when you were a kid, or something. Please, Sam?"
He bit his tongue around the revelation that his childhood memories are ghost stories, most of them, and instead he just started to talk. "I've got one memory," he lies.
"Tell me."
"We were at a park. Me, and Dean. And my dad. We were - traveling, and I think we were in Colorado. Or Utah, maybe." He spoke easily, telling the story as if it were true.
"Dean was twelve," he continued. "So I must've been eight - it was fall. The leaves were turning, you know?"
She smiled against his skin, a long finger rubbing along his clavicle, and suddenly he realized that he wasn't lying at all. He remembered it, out west in October. Dean hadn't discovered leather jackets yet, and their Dad was there.
"It was really pretty," he whispered, burying a hand in the curls of blonde at Jess's neck. He didn't think about the way Dean would have laughed, if he was there to hear this story. "Sunny, you know, warm enough that it was comfortable, not so warm it was hot."
"Pretty," Jessica echoed.
"Dean tackled me, I think. We rolled around in the leaves for like, hours, fighting and playing, til my dad made us leave."
Jessica lifted up, then, pressed chaste kisses to Sam's chest and neck and jaw. "You had a boring childhood, you know that, Sam?"
Sam smiled weakly and turned to meet her mouth, rolling over her and kissing, kissing, kissing so he wouldn't have to answer.
He had hoped she couldn't taste the soot on his tongue.
-
"Just tell me something," Dean is saying, whispering between their motel beds. Sam swallows.
"I missed you," he blurts, suddenly betraying himself. "Just… you know that, right?"
Dean snorts. "Sam."
"I'm a girl, I know. I just…"
"You know I'd have done anything to change it," Dean says then, serious. "What happened to you. To Jessica."
Sam blinks and turns his head, looking away from the window at Dean. He can only see the shadows around Dean's cheekbones, but he knows Dean is looking at him, too. "I know, Dean," he says quietly. "I know."