burning in your promised land- fic for velvetine01
Author/Artist: coyotesuspect
Recipient: velvetine01
Rating: NC 17
Warnings: incest, sex
Pairing: girl!Sam/Jess, girl!Sam/girl!Dean
Summary: It takes Sam three buses and two days to get to Stanford. It takes Dea three months to follow her.
Word Count: ~4200
Notes: Title, cut text, and inspiration taken from the lyrics given as a prompt . Many thanks to familiardevil for the beta and scorpiod1 for helping me get this done.
The girl across the hall says she has serious eyes. It’s the third thing she says to Sam. The first being, “Hi, I’m Jess. You must be Sam,” the second, “Where are you from?”
Sam nods jerkily at the first, mutters Kansas to the second, and is completely unable to come up with a response for the third. Jess is tall, only an inch or two shorter than Sam, with long, yellow hair. Sam feels her stomach warm while looking at her, a familiar swooping sensation of falling in love. It’s not unusual; she has a whole adolescence behind her of mooning after waitresses with dark hair, cheerleaders with trim waists, her sister’s lips and smile curving through half her dreams.
Sam’s fresh off three days on the bus. She hasn’t showered or changed clothes. She’s barely eaten. But Jess appears not to notice; she grabs Sam by the elbow and drags her into her own room to meet, “My roommate, Lindsey. She’s from New York.”
Lindsey is either less oblivious or less kind than Jess is, because she takes one look at Sam and the smile she flashes is barely that and close-cousin to a sneer.
“You look tired,” is all Lindsey says when Jess introduces them.
“She just got in,” says Jess. Her hand is still wrapped around Sam’s elbow. She smiles at Sam. “You flew in from Kansas, right?”
Sam shifts uneasily. “Took the bus, actually,” she says. “From Iowa.”
“Was that a choice?” asks Lindsey. “Or could your parents not afford to pay for your flight?”
Her voice is light, cultured, rot-sweet with mock sympathy. Sam raises her head and stares her down. She has Lindsey figured out in a second- rich parents, nice clothes, private school.
“I couldn’t afford to fly myself,” she says sharply. Anger crackles within her, and it makes her feel sick. She thought she’d burned the emotion out of her, left the ashes two thousand miles away with her sister and father. She wonders then if anger is something that will always follow her, the curse she was struck with since she got out of the curse of her family. “My mom’s dead. My dad didn’t want me to go to college. My sister wasn’t too keen on it either.” Lindsey’s beginning to turn red. “I’m also getting tuition and everything paid for, in case you were wondering,” she adds. “Stanford’s got pretty good financial. And, yeah, my shirt’s from Goodwill if that was your next question. Got it for a buck fifty.”
She tears her arm out of Jess’ hold and stalks out. She slams into her room nauseous and shaky like she just ran a marathon instead of just losing her temper at trust-fund baby.
Someone knocks.
“Sam,” Jess calls through the door. “Let me in.”
She lets Jess in against her better instincts, and Jess sits down on her bed. Sam doesn’t say anything. She feels like she should apologize. Not because she’s in the wrong, but because she doesn’t want to make enemies. She wants things to be easy, smooth. She wants normal. Or at least as much normal as a six-foot tall lesbian can get.
“So,” says Jess, after a moment. “My roommate is kind of a bitch.”
***
Lindsey really is a bitch, and Jess starts spending more time in Sam’s tiny single than in her own room. Sam’s not entirely sure how they become friends; she doesn’t think their mutual distaste for Lindsey is enough to bond them. But Jess keeps insisting they hang out together, all through orientation and then after.
“You’re shy,” Jess tells her straightforwardly over lunch one day, when Sam asks her. “I thought you’d need a friend.”
Sam frowns at her salad, bangs swinging forward in front of her face. “So I’m a charity case?” she demands.
Jess leans across the table and tucks her hand under Sam’s chin, pulling her head up.
“No,” she says firmly. “You were a gamble. And you paid off awesomely.” She smiles; it’s a certain smile that reminds Sam of Dea, all confidence and sex appeal. She feels her face heat up.
“Besides,” adds Jess. “You’re tall. I’ve always wanted a tall friend I could share clothes with.”
Sam snorts, and the conversation drifts away from their friendship and into the paper Sam is writing for her IHUM.
She’s pretty sure she’s in love. It’s a feeling she knows even better than falling in love, because she’s been experiencing it since she was fourteen.
***
She gets a work study job at the circulation desk in the law library. It’s mostly just law students who pass in and out, and she watches them with the same kind of intensity Dea would watch men at bars while trying to determine who’d a be a good lay, who an easy mark, and sometimes the same guy could be both of those things. Sam’s trying to figure out something else.
An idea is beginning to form in the back of her head, hid back behind everything else and she doesn’t bother it, doesn’t poke at it. She begins to tentatively use the word pre-law when asked about her major. It’s a more satisfying answer than undecided, gives her the sense that there might be some future for her after college, something permanent and hers alone.
Even the dark bags under the eyes of the law students don’t deter her. She understands dedication, and she thinks eight hours hunched over a book on 17th century navigational law can’t be worse than a day spent hunched over thirty years of obituaries.
The students flirt with her, sometimes. And for all its liberal California, it’s always just guys. Sometimes she doesn’t respond, and sometimes she flirts back. She thrills at their response. Sam’s never thought that she was all that pretty, especially not compared to Dea. Men normally like Dea better. She’s smaller, softer, more traditionally beautiful. She’s abrasive, but in a way that most men find refreshing, like the kind of onscreen female character who little girls are supposed to admire because they’re so goddamn feisty.
But out of her sister’s shadow and using her sister’s tricks, Sam begins to see interest. It’s just another kind of power, a form Dad could never teach them, and that Dea taught herself, that Sam's picked up through imitation. She spent the first sixteen years of her life trying to jam herself into her sister's shadow.
But she doesn’t like the crestfallen look on one of the men’s face when he finally works up the courage to ask her out.
She stops flirting after that. She’s efficient at her job, cool to the men who lean in too close, and she’s pretty sure she develops a reputation for being a cold bitch.
She thinks about going to the Queer Students Association meetings, but everyone in her dorm already knows that she’s estranged from her family. She doesn’t want them thinking that’s the reason why.
Her dad’s a lot of things, a lot of them not good, but she’ll grudgingly admit that he’s not a bigot. Coming out had gone a thousand times more smoothly than saying she wanted to go to college. Truth be told, she thinks he was mostly relieved she wasn’t in danger of getting knocked up. It was a constant fear with Dea, for all Dea has always been careful.
So she doesn’t meet anybody. There are a few girls who maybe, but Sam’s not really sure how to tell. It's wandering through the woods with just a broken compass to guide her.
Besides, there’s Jess. Sam’s not dating her, but they spend enough time together that they might as well be. Except for the part where there’s no sex.
She gets herself off as best she can, arching into her hand.
***
Sam never hears from Dea or Dad. Still, she expects to see them again someday. They’re family. She thinks Dea will come around, and Dad will have to follow. She doesn’t want to hunt, and that’s a fair thing to want, but she still wants to be in their lives.
She has a panic attack after IHUM one day, when she realizes that she really might not see them again. A lifetime is a long time for someone to forget their grievances, but Dea and Dad don’t have a a whole, normal, human lifetime ahead of them. Her brain rattles through everything supernatural ever known to kill a man, adds car crash and hustle gone wrong and pneumonia and hypothermia and food poisoning to the list. There isn’t one aspect of her previous life that isn’t deadly.
Sam locks herself in her room and sits in the closet until she can breathe normally again, until the tight, terrified feeling in her chest dissipates. She ignores what’s probably Jess knocking at her door.
She still doesn’t call them though.
***
“So how come your family kicked you out?” asks Jess, one night. She’s sleeping on the floor in Sam’s room, sexiled from her own.
“Like I said,” says Sam, turning on her side to face the wall. “My dad didn’t want me to go to college. He was scared.”
“But that’s,” Jess cuts herself off, breathes in deep and frustrated. “That’s not really an answer, you know?”
Sam doesn’t say anything, and after about twenty minutes, she’s pretty sure Jess’ breathing has evened out into sleep.
She tells Jess about Dea the next day as an apology. Dea’s hard to explain. There’s no word for someone who’s your sister and your mother and your best friend and your worst enemy and your first love.
“My sister practically raised me,” she explains. “My dad had to travel a lot for work. So she’d, you know, cook, do my laundry, make sure I got to school on time.”
Jess frowns at her. “So if your dad was willing to ditch you and have your sister look after you, how come he was so scared about you coming to college?”
Sam doesn’t have an answer for that. It’s the one thing she doesn’t like about Jess. She doesn’t need someone to justify her decisions. She needs someone to tell her they don’t have to be permanent.
***
“I don’t have anything to wear!” whines Sam one night when Jess tries to drag her to a frat party. Jess just scoffs.
“Well I do,” she says. “And you’re only like two inches taller than me and you’re skinnier.” She loops an arm around Sam’s waist, and Sam’s body goes cold then hot. “We’ll find something that fits.”
Jess ends up pulling a slinky blue dress out of the depths of her closet and handing it to Sam.
“It’ll be a little short,” she says. “But you’ll be able to pull it off. You’ve got great legs.”
Sam blushes and looks away, but she accepts the dress out of Jess’ hand. “Should I just get dressed here?”
“Yeah!” says Jess brightly, back in the closet to find something for herself to wear. Sam begins stripping down in the middle of Jess’ room. She pulls the dress on over her head and arranges it so it looks okay. It has a high front but the back is open almost the waist. Sam turns slowly in front of the mirror to get a good look at herself. She’s barefoot and her hair is still pulled back into its typical ponytail. She looks too plain and too young to be in a dress like this.
Behind her, she hears Jess breathe in, sharp and shocked. Sam turns immediately at it, her face flaming with heat.
“Sorry!” she says, tugging at the dress. “It doesn’t look- I’ll change.”
Jess gives her a puzzled look. “What are you talking about?” she demands, striding toward Sam. “Your scar, Sam. Holy crap. What happened?”
“My scar?” says Sam blankly. Jess turns her back to face the mirror and presses her hand against the bare skin of Sam’s back. Sam goes stiff and paralyzed at the touch. Then she remembers the scar, long and silver-pink, that runs up the side of her back, from a black dog just the summer past. It had been barely healed when she got on the first bus to Stanford, still new enough to not have been etched into memory as a part of herself.
“Oh,” she says. “That. I,” she has dozens of scars all over the body and except for one on her knee from when she fell out a tree, no proper excuses for any of them. This scar is a neat, clean slice, obviously not an accident.
“There was a dog,” she says, struggling through the lie. Thankfully, Jess mistakes Sam’s struggle for repressed trauma and she immediately blushes.
“I shouldn’t have brought it up,” she says. “God, I’m an idiot.”
“No, it’s fine,” protests Sam. “It’s just not something I like to really talk about.” She pauses and chuckles. “I thought you were just upset that I looked awful.”
Jess rests her head on Sam’s shoulder and stares at the two of them in the mirror.
“No,” she says softly, her hand still on Sam’s back. “You’re beautiful.”
***
Sam’s walking back from a football game with Jess the night Dea shows up. Sam’s not one for football games, but Jess enjoys them. And it was nice to be in the crisp November light, Jess warm and golden and shouting at her side.
They lost. But, like Sam said, she didn’t really care.
She does care that Dea is standing in the hallway, leaning against her door.
“Hey Sammy,” she says with a smirk.
Sam doesn’t say anything; she just stares. She whirls to face Jess.
“Sorry,” she says. “I gotta go.”
Jess opens her mouth to say something, but Sam doesn’t hear it. She’s too busy opening her door and hustling Dea inside, slamming the door shut behind her.
“What are you doing here?” hisses Sam immediately.
“Looks like there might be a ghost up in Eureka,” says Dea with a shrug. She looks amused at Sam’s discomfort and turns slowly, taking in Sam’s room. Dea’s a redhead at the present moment, changing her hair color the one rebellion she ever allowed herself. Dad’s always seemed more amused by it then anything. Sam imagines her leaning over some motel sink, the red dye swirling like blood. “So we stopped by here for the night.”
“Yeah,” says Sam. “So where’s Dad? He know you’re visiting me?”
“Dad thinks I’m out for the night,” says Dea with a leer. “Picking up some local color.”
She says it smugly, like she’s a sixteen year old girl who’s managed to sneak out past curfew and not a twenty-two year old woman.
Besides, Dad’s smart and Palo Alto’s not on the road to anything. Sam’s about ninety-five percent sure he expected Dea to come visit Sam and make sure she’s okay.
“Good for you,” says Sam sharply. “So you’re babysitting me, then.”
Dea arches an eyebrow. “I just wanted to see you, all right? Me and Dad-”
“You and Dad?” interrupts Sam shrilly. “You know Dea, you’re not my mom.” Dea tries to say something, and Sam cuts her off again, “Or his wife.”
For a moment, she’s pretty sure Dea might hit her. She would deserve it; she knows she does. But Dea doesn’t. She just turns away.
“Okay,” says Sam, to Dea’s back. “You’ve seen me.”
“You know what?” says Dea, turning back to face Sam. “Fuck you.” She makes a show of washing her hands, always gave Sam shit for being dramatic and was never willing to admit Sam picked it up from her. “I just wanted to check on you, and you’re being a bitch.”
“You just wanted to check on me? I never hear from you!” yells Sam, and until just now, she hadn’t realized just how much that upset her, that Dea could so easily and so neatly remove her from her life. She knows it’s hypocritical; she wants to leave and she wants to hold on. “You could be fucking dead, and I wouldn’t know, and now you just show up in the middle of nowhere?”
Dea’s face is in lockdown, her eyes a cold, dark color.
“What?” she says, one corner of her mouth curling up into a smirk. “You want me to write you love letters? Ain’t happening Samantha.”
“That’s not-” the words get stuck in Sam’s throat. She sits on her bed, heels pressed against her eyes. She’s not going to cry. “You could at least call,” she says miserably.
Dea hesitates, and then she sits down on the bed next to Sam and leans into her. Dea’s always been physically affectionate. Sam can’t recall a part of her childhood when Dea didn’t have her hands on her, combing her hair or washing her face or just a steady, anchoring point of contact on her shoulder or back, guiding her throughout life.
Sam feels some of the tension seep out of her shoulders. She sighs. She wants to fight, wants to scream at Dea some more for letting Dad kick her out. But she knows it won’t do any good.
Dea’s hands twitch in her lap. She’s never still, never has been. There’s always been too much energy in her, makes Sam think of suns living and dying beneath her sister’s skin, whole universes being created and destroyed.
“I wasn’t sure you’d pick up,” says Dea softly. She moves one of her hands from her own lap and onto Sam’s thigh.
Sam inhales softly and she turns to face Dea.
Dea is very close.
“I miss you,” Dea says.
“You’re not coming home,” Dea says.
Sam watches her sister’s mouth move as if she’s speaking in a foreign language, alien words. Dea’s breath is mint and coffee. Her hand is warm on Sam’s thigh. It hits Sam then, all the momentum of Newton’s unstoppable force, that Dea is here. For the first time in months, Sam has her sister in front of her. She no longer feels like she took out some important but nonvital piece of herself and left it behind.
“No,” breathes Sam.
Dea nods, more to herself than to Sam, and then she closes the distance between them.
Sex is nothing they haven’t done before. The first time was when Sam was fifteen, not long after she’d told Dea she was gay. But they’ve never kissed; it’s always just been getting each other off. Dea told her that if she was going to be a lesbian, she should at least have a clue as to what she was doing. And Sam had been too stupid in love to doubt her.
Dean kisses like she’s lost something, and Sam thinks that that’s because she has.
Sam presses into the kiss, gets her hands under Dea’s shirt and slides them up to cup them over her breasts. Dea moans into her mouth. She runs her thumbs over the hard nubs of Dea’s nipples then shoves at Dea until Dea’s lying flat on her back. She pulls off her shirt and then wriggles out of her jeans, makes note of how Dea watches appreciatively.
“Take your shirt off,” she orders huskily, straddling Dea once she’s just in her bra and underwear. Dea smiles up at her through her lashes and complies, wiggling out of her shirt and throwing it to the side. She’s wearing a pink cotton sports bra and takes that off next. Her breasts are fuller than Sam’s, and Sam leans down and licks at a nipple.
Dea makes a high, whining noise and Sam nips softly. The whine turns into a thready moan. Dea bucks against her, one hand sliding down between them.
“Hey,” snaps Sam, sitting back up. Dea’s nipple is red and wet and so are her lips. “Don’t touch yourself. Not yet.”
Dea smirks up at her, face flushed. “Someone’s bossy.” She makes a show of stretching, showing off lean lines and soft curves. She smiles, all teeth. “You know I’m not wearing any underwear?”
Sam catches her breath.
“Unsurprising,” she manages to croak out. She leans back down and begins sucking and teasing at Dea’s other nipple. Dea gasps and shudders, grinding up against her. Sam moves her mouth up, over the swell of her breast and along her collar bone. Dea tastes like salt.
Then her mouth finds Dea's and they’re kissing again. Dea slides her hands up Sam’s sides, grips her tight around the waist.
She flips Sam.
Sam lands on her back with an oof, and glares at Dea. Dea grins proudly down at her and then she’s sliding slowly down Sam’s body, tongue tracing the arc of her ribs. She places her hands on the inside of Sam’s thighs and spreads her legs apart. She presses her tongue flat against Sam’s panties and Sam shudders in a breath.
“Christ, you’re wet,” says Dea. She hooks a finger around Sam’s panties and pulls them to the side, then curls the fingers on her other hand and slides them into Sam. She doesn’t move them, and Sam growls impatiently.
“Whoa there tiger,” murmurs Dea, voice honey and sex. “So how are we gonna do this?” she asks.
“Just fuck me,” grits out Sam, slamming her head back against the bed.
Dea doesn’t say anything, just starts moving her fingers in and out, fucking them into Sam. Sam hisses with pleasure and arches, vision going a little wobbly. And then Dea adds her mouth, tongue flicking against Sam’s clit, a light counterpoint to the hard slam of her fingers.
It’s not long after that. Sam comes with a sharp, stifled cry, the orgasm blowing through her like a tornado, tearing everything down and leaving her wrecked.
Dea crawls back up her body and kisses Sam again. Sam tastes herself on Dea’s tongue.
“I should-” says Sam, breaking off the kiss and half-rising. Dea hasn’t gotten off yet.
“No, it’s fine,” says Dea. She looks embarrassed. “I already. Right after you…”
“Oh,” says Sam. Dea sighs and kisses Sam’s cheek.
“So how about we get some sleep?” she says. “We can go again in the morning.”
Sam nods and turns onto her side, facing the wall. Her bed is narrow, narrower than the motel beds they slept in together all through their childhood. But they make do. Dea curls around her, one arm wrapped around Sam’s waist. Her sister’s smell envelopes her, cheap motel shampoo and sweat and the apricot body wash she likes to use and something beneath that, present since childhood, that’s all Dea, that's familiar and lulling as the movement of the car across a deserted highway.
She’s not sure how long she’s asleep, but it’s still dark when she opens her eyes. It doesn’t take her long to figure out what woke her. Dea’s slipping off the bed, picking her clothes up off the floor. Sam watches her through eyes half slit, her sister’s body pale and smooth in the dim light of the room.
Dea smoothes a hand over Sam’s hair and then starts when Sam reaches up to wrap her hand in the hem of Dea’s shirt. Dea exhales a shaky laugh and makes a noise like she’s about to say something, then doesn’t.
They remain locked in that position.
Sam wants to say, “Stay,” and she feels the word balanced precariously on the tip of her tongue, feels the word swell up inside her until it's all she's made of- the consuming urge to have her sister stay.
She holds the word tight in her mouth, doesn’t let it slip out. Dea gently tugs away. Sam drops her hand and rolls onto her back, eyes locked on the ceiling. She hears the door open and the room blooms with light. Then the door shuts, and the light drops away.
She closes her eyes.
***
“Was that your girlfriend last night?” asks Jess unhappily, the next morning.
Sam’s head jerks up and she nearly sends her bowl of oatmeal flying onto the floor.
“What! No!” she cries. “She,” she hesitates, doesn’t want to tell Jess the truth. “She’s working on a project with me for class.”
Jess stares at Sam like she doesn’t believe her.
Sam coughs awkwardly, searching for something to distract Jess, and then it hits her.
“Girlfriend?” she squeaks. “I’m not-”
Jess makes a face. “Oh come on Sam,” she says. “Do you have any idea how obvious you are? You’re always checking out girls.”
Sam pauses for a long moment, and then she asks, voice strangled and high. “And how do you know I’m always checking out girls?”
“Because,” says Jess. She has a determined look on her face, jaw set and eyes leveled. “I’m always checking you out.”
“Oh,” says Sam, dumbfounded. Jess continues to stare at her, face darkening slowly from pink to red.
“I,” says Sam, and then she stands up. She leans over the table and tips Jess’ head up.
Jess’ kiss is soft, sweet, none of the neediness behind it that was in Dea’s. Sam pauses, mouth going still, and Jess makes a small, inquiring noise against her lips. Jess who isn’t Dea. She shouldn’t be comparing them; Dea is her sister and Sam let her go.
She kisses Jess again.
***
Her paycheck is put in her student mailbox every other Friday, and she picks it up one week with the expectation of receiving only that. She wasn’t lying when she told Dea no one ever sent her mail. There’s no one in the world who would.
But there’s something else this time, and after the first pause of surprise, Sam pulls it out. It’s a postcard from Memphis, Tennessee of all places and Sam knows instantly who it’s from. She flips it over; the back doesn’t say much beyond confirming her initial suspicion. There’s only a ‘Hope you’re well,’ and beneath that, -D, written in a bold hand.
She smiles all the same and tucks the postcard into her pocket.
She’ll pin it to her wall later.
Recipient: velvetine01
Rating: NC 17
Warnings: incest, sex
Pairing: girl!Sam/Jess, girl!Sam/girl!Dean
Summary: It takes Sam three buses and two days to get to Stanford. It takes Dea three months to follow her.
Word Count: ~4200
Notes: Title, cut text, and inspiration taken from the lyrics given as a prompt . Many thanks to familiardevil for the beta and scorpiod1 for helping me get this done.
The girl across the hall says she has serious eyes. It’s the third thing she says to Sam. The first being, “Hi, I’m Jess. You must be Sam,” the second, “Where are you from?”
Sam nods jerkily at the first, mutters Kansas to the second, and is completely unable to come up with a response for the third. Jess is tall, only an inch or two shorter than Sam, with long, yellow hair. Sam feels her stomach warm while looking at her, a familiar swooping sensation of falling in love. It’s not unusual; she has a whole adolescence behind her of mooning after waitresses with dark hair, cheerleaders with trim waists, her sister’s lips and smile curving through half her dreams.
Sam’s fresh off three days on the bus. She hasn’t showered or changed clothes. She’s barely eaten. But Jess appears not to notice; she grabs Sam by the elbow and drags her into her own room to meet, “My roommate, Lindsey. She’s from New York.”
Lindsey is either less oblivious or less kind than Jess is, because she takes one look at Sam and the smile she flashes is barely that and close-cousin to a sneer.
“You look tired,” is all Lindsey says when Jess introduces them.
“She just got in,” says Jess. Her hand is still wrapped around Sam’s elbow. She smiles at Sam. “You flew in from Kansas, right?”
Sam shifts uneasily. “Took the bus, actually,” she says. “From Iowa.”
“Was that a choice?” asks Lindsey. “Or could your parents not afford to pay for your flight?”
Her voice is light, cultured, rot-sweet with mock sympathy. Sam raises her head and stares her down. She has Lindsey figured out in a second- rich parents, nice clothes, private school.
“I couldn’t afford to fly myself,” she says sharply. Anger crackles within her, and it makes her feel sick. She thought she’d burned the emotion out of her, left the ashes two thousand miles away with her sister and father. She wonders then if anger is something that will always follow her, the curse she was struck with since she got out of the curse of her family. “My mom’s dead. My dad didn’t want me to go to college. My sister wasn’t too keen on it either.” Lindsey’s beginning to turn red. “I’m also getting tuition and everything paid for, in case you were wondering,” she adds. “Stanford’s got pretty good financial. And, yeah, my shirt’s from Goodwill if that was your next question. Got it for a buck fifty.”
She tears her arm out of Jess’ hold and stalks out. She slams into her room nauseous and shaky like she just ran a marathon instead of just losing her temper at trust-fund baby.
Someone knocks.
“Sam,” Jess calls through the door. “Let me in.”
She lets Jess in against her better instincts, and Jess sits down on her bed. Sam doesn’t say anything. She feels like she should apologize. Not because she’s in the wrong, but because she doesn’t want to make enemies. She wants things to be easy, smooth. She wants normal. Or at least as much normal as a six-foot tall lesbian can get.
“So,” says Jess, after a moment. “My roommate is kind of a bitch.”
***
Lindsey really is a bitch, and Jess starts spending more time in Sam’s tiny single than in her own room. Sam’s not entirely sure how they become friends; she doesn’t think their mutual distaste for Lindsey is enough to bond them. But Jess keeps insisting they hang out together, all through orientation and then after.
“You’re shy,” Jess tells her straightforwardly over lunch one day, when Sam asks her. “I thought you’d need a friend.”
Sam frowns at her salad, bangs swinging forward in front of her face. “So I’m a charity case?” she demands.
Jess leans across the table and tucks her hand under Sam’s chin, pulling her head up.
“No,” she says firmly. “You were a gamble. And you paid off awesomely.” She smiles; it’s a certain smile that reminds Sam of Dea, all confidence and sex appeal. She feels her face heat up.
“Besides,” adds Jess. “You’re tall. I’ve always wanted a tall friend I could share clothes with.”
Sam snorts, and the conversation drifts away from their friendship and into the paper Sam is writing for her IHUM.
She’s pretty sure she’s in love. It’s a feeling she knows even better than falling in love, because she’s been experiencing it since she was fourteen.
***
She gets a work study job at the circulation desk in the law library. It’s mostly just law students who pass in and out, and she watches them with the same kind of intensity Dea would watch men at bars while trying to determine who’d a be a good lay, who an easy mark, and sometimes the same guy could be both of those things. Sam’s trying to figure out something else.
An idea is beginning to form in the back of her head, hid back behind everything else and she doesn’t bother it, doesn’t poke at it. She begins to tentatively use the word pre-law when asked about her major. It’s a more satisfying answer than undecided, gives her the sense that there might be some future for her after college, something permanent and hers alone.
Even the dark bags under the eyes of the law students don’t deter her. She understands dedication, and she thinks eight hours hunched over a book on 17th century navigational law can’t be worse than a day spent hunched over thirty years of obituaries.
The students flirt with her, sometimes. And for all its liberal California, it’s always just guys. Sometimes she doesn’t respond, and sometimes she flirts back. She thrills at their response. Sam’s never thought that she was all that pretty, especially not compared to Dea. Men normally like Dea better. She’s smaller, softer, more traditionally beautiful. She’s abrasive, but in a way that most men find refreshing, like the kind of onscreen female character who little girls are supposed to admire because they’re so goddamn feisty.
But out of her sister’s shadow and using her sister’s tricks, Sam begins to see interest. It’s just another kind of power, a form Dad could never teach them, and that Dea taught herself, that Sam's picked up through imitation. She spent the first sixteen years of her life trying to jam herself into her sister's shadow.
But she doesn’t like the crestfallen look on one of the men’s face when he finally works up the courage to ask her out.
She stops flirting after that. She’s efficient at her job, cool to the men who lean in too close, and she’s pretty sure she develops a reputation for being a cold bitch.
She thinks about going to the Queer Students Association meetings, but everyone in her dorm already knows that she’s estranged from her family. She doesn’t want them thinking that’s the reason why.
Her dad’s a lot of things, a lot of them not good, but she’ll grudgingly admit that he’s not a bigot. Coming out had gone a thousand times more smoothly than saying she wanted to go to college. Truth be told, she thinks he was mostly relieved she wasn’t in danger of getting knocked up. It was a constant fear with Dea, for all Dea has always been careful.
So she doesn’t meet anybody. There are a few girls who maybe, but Sam’s not really sure how to tell. It's wandering through the woods with just a broken compass to guide her.
Besides, there’s Jess. Sam’s not dating her, but they spend enough time together that they might as well be. Except for the part where there’s no sex.
She gets herself off as best she can, arching into her hand.
***
Sam never hears from Dea or Dad. Still, she expects to see them again someday. They’re family. She thinks Dea will come around, and Dad will have to follow. She doesn’t want to hunt, and that’s a fair thing to want, but she still wants to be in their lives.
She has a panic attack after IHUM one day, when she realizes that she really might not see them again. A lifetime is a long time for someone to forget their grievances, but Dea and Dad don’t have a a whole, normal, human lifetime ahead of them. Her brain rattles through everything supernatural ever known to kill a man, adds car crash and hustle gone wrong and pneumonia and hypothermia and food poisoning to the list. There isn’t one aspect of her previous life that isn’t deadly.
Sam locks herself in her room and sits in the closet until she can breathe normally again, until the tight, terrified feeling in her chest dissipates. She ignores what’s probably Jess knocking at her door.
She still doesn’t call them though.
***
“So how come your family kicked you out?” asks Jess, one night. She’s sleeping on the floor in Sam’s room, sexiled from her own.
“Like I said,” says Sam, turning on her side to face the wall. “My dad didn’t want me to go to college. He was scared.”
“But that’s,” Jess cuts herself off, breathes in deep and frustrated. “That’s not really an answer, you know?”
Sam doesn’t say anything, and after about twenty minutes, she’s pretty sure Jess’ breathing has evened out into sleep.
She tells Jess about Dea the next day as an apology. Dea’s hard to explain. There’s no word for someone who’s your sister and your mother and your best friend and your worst enemy and your first love.
“My sister practically raised me,” she explains. “My dad had to travel a lot for work. So she’d, you know, cook, do my laundry, make sure I got to school on time.”
Jess frowns at her. “So if your dad was willing to ditch you and have your sister look after you, how come he was so scared about you coming to college?”
Sam doesn’t have an answer for that. It’s the one thing she doesn’t like about Jess. She doesn’t need someone to justify her decisions. She needs someone to tell her they don’t have to be permanent.
***
“I don’t have anything to wear!” whines Sam one night when Jess tries to drag her to a frat party. Jess just scoffs.
“Well I do,” she says. “And you’re only like two inches taller than me and you’re skinnier.” She loops an arm around Sam’s waist, and Sam’s body goes cold then hot. “We’ll find something that fits.”
Jess ends up pulling a slinky blue dress out of the depths of her closet and handing it to Sam.
“It’ll be a little short,” she says. “But you’ll be able to pull it off. You’ve got great legs.”
Sam blushes and looks away, but she accepts the dress out of Jess’ hand. “Should I just get dressed here?”
“Yeah!” says Jess brightly, back in the closet to find something for herself to wear. Sam begins stripping down in the middle of Jess’ room. She pulls the dress on over her head and arranges it so it looks okay. It has a high front but the back is open almost the waist. Sam turns slowly in front of the mirror to get a good look at herself. She’s barefoot and her hair is still pulled back into its typical ponytail. She looks too plain and too young to be in a dress like this.
Behind her, she hears Jess breathe in, sharp and shocked. Sam turns immediately at it, her face flaming with heat.
“Sorry!” she says, tugging at the dress. “It doesn’t look- I’ll change.”
Jess gives her a puzzled look. “What are you talking about?” she demands, striding toward Sam. “Your scar, Sam. Holy crap. What happened?”
“My scar?” says Sam blankly. Jess turns her back to face the mirror and presses her hand against the bare skin of Sam’s back. Sam goes stiff and paralyzed at the touch. Then she remembers the scar, long and silver-pink, that runs up the side of her back, from a black dog just the summer past. It had been barely healed when she got on the first bus to Stanford, still new enough to not have been etched into memory as a part of herself.
“Oh,” she says. “That. I,” she has dozens of scars all over the body and except for one on her knee from when she fell out a tree, no proper excuses for any of them. This scar is a neat, clean slice, obviously not an accident.
“There was a dog,” she says, struggling through the lie. Thankfully, Jess mistakes Sam’s struggle for repressed trauma and she immediately blushes.
“I shouldn’t have brought it up,” she says. “God, I’m an idiot.”
“No, it’s fine,” protests Sam. “It’s just not something I like to really talk about.” She pauses and chuckles. “I thought you were just upset that I looked awful.”
Jess rests her head on Sam’s shoulder and stares at the two of them in the mirror.
“No,” she says softly, her hand still on Sam’s back. “You’re beautiful.”
***
Sam’s walking back from a football game with Jess the night Dea shows up. Sam’s not one for football games, but Jess enjoys them. And it was nice to be in the crisp November light, Jess warm and golden and shouting at her side.
They lost. But, like Sam said, she didn’t really care.
She does care that Dea is standing in the hallway, leaning against her door.
“Hey Sammy,” she says with a smirk.
Sam doesn’t say anything; she just stares. She whirls to face Jess.
“Sorry,” she says. “I gotta go.”
Jess opens her mouth to say something, but Sam doesn’t hear it. She’s too busy opening her door and hustling Dea inside, slamming the door shut behind her.
“What are you doing here?” hisses Sam immediately.
“Looks like there might be a ghost up in Eureka,” says Dea with a shrug. She looks amused at Sam’s discomfort and turns slowly, taking in Sam’s room. Dea’s a redhead at the present moment, changing her hair color the one rebellion she ever allowed herself. Dad’s always seemed more amused by it then anything. Sam imagines her leaning over some motel sink, the red dye swirling like blood. “So we stopped by here for the night.”
“Yeah,” says Sam. “So where’s Dad? He know you’re visiting me?”
“Dad thinks I’m out for the night,” says Dea with a leer. “Picking up some local color.”
She says it smugly, like she’s a sixteen year old girl who’s managed to sneak out past curfew and not a twenty-two year old woman.
Besides, Dad’s smart and Palo Alto’s not on the road to anything. Sam’s about ninety-five percent sure he expected Dea to come visit Sam and make sure she’s okay.
“Good for you,” says Sam sharply. “So you’re babysitting me, then.”
Dea arches an eyebrow. “I just wanted to see you, all right? Me and Dad-”
“You and Dad?” interrupts Sam shrilly. “You know Dea, you’re not my mom.” Dea tries to say something, and Sam cuts her off again, “Or his wife.”
For a moment, she’s pretty sure Dea might hit her. She would deserve it; she knows she does. But Dea doesn’t. She just turns away.
“Okay,” says Sam, to Dea’s back. “You’ve seen me.”
“You know what?” says Dea, turning back to face Sam. “Fuck you.” She makes a show of washing her hands, always gave Sam shit for being dramatic and was never willing to admit Sam picked it up from her. “I just wanted to check on you, and you’re being a bitch.”
“You just wanted to check on me? I never hear from you!” yells Sam, and until just now, she hadn’t realized just how much that upset her, that Dea could so easily and so neatly remove her from her life. She knows it’s hypocritical; she wants to leave and she wants to hold on. “You could be fucking dead, and I wouldn’t know, and now you just show up in the middle of nowhere?”
Dea’s face is in lockdown, her eyes a cold, dark color.
“What?” she says, one corner of her mouth curling up into a smirk. “You want me to write you love letters? Ain’t happening Samantha.”
“That’s not-” the words get stuck in Sam’s throat. She sits on her bed, heels pressed against her eyes. She’s not going to cry. “You could at least call,” she says miserably.
Dea hesitates, and then she sits down on the bed next to Sam and leans into her. Dea’s always been physically affectionate. Sam can’t recall a part of her childhood when Dea didn’t have her hands on her, combing her hair or washing her face or just a steady, anchoring point of contact on her shoulder or back, guiding her throughout life.
Sam feels some of the tension seep out of her shoulders. She sighs. She wants to fight, wants to scream at Dea some more for letting Dad kick her out. But she knows it won’t do any good.
Dea’s hands twitch in her lap. She’s never still, never has been. There’s always been too much energy in her, makes Sam think of suns living and dying beneath her sister’s skin, whole universes being created and destroyed.
“I wasn’t sure you’d pick up,” says Dea softly. She moves one of her hands from her own lap and onto Sam’s thigh.
Sam inhales softly and she turns to face Dea.
Dea is very close.
“I miss you,” Dea says.
“You’re not coming home,” Dea says.
Sam watches her sister’s mouth move as if she’s speaking in a foreign language, alien words. Dea’s breath is mint and coffee. Her hand is warm on Sam’s thigh. It hits Sam then, all the momentum of Newton’s unstoppable force, that Dea is here. For the first time in months, Sam has her sister in front of her. She no longer feels like she took out some important but nonvital piece of herself and left it behind.
“No,” breathes Sam.
Dea nods, more to herself than to Sam, and then she closes the distance between them.
Sex is nothing they haven’t done before. The first time was when Sam was fifteen, not long after she’d told Dea she was gay. But they’ve never kissed; it’s always just been getting each other off. Dea told her that if she was going to be a lesbian, she should at least have a clue as to what she was doing. And Sam had been too stupid in love to doubt her.
Dean kisses like she’s lost something, and Sam thinks that that’s because she has.
Sam presses into the kiss, gets her hands under Dea’s shirt and slides them up to cup them over her breasts. Dea moans into her mouth. She runs her thumbs over the hard nubs of Dea’s nipples then shoves at Dea until Dea’s lying flat on her back. She pulls off her shirt and then wriggles out of her jeans, makes note of how Dea watches appreciatively.
“Take your shirt off,” she orders huskily, straddling Dea once she’s just in her bra and underwear. Dea smiles up at her through her lashes and complies, wiggling out of her shirt and throwing it to the side. She’s wearing a pink cotton sports bra and takes that off next. Her breasts are fuller than Sam’s, and Sam leans down and licks at a nipple.
Dea makes a high, whining noise and Sam nips softly. The whine turns into a thready moan. Dea bucks against her, one hand sliding down between them.
“Hey,” snaps Sam, sitting back up. Dea’s nipple is red and wet and so are her lips. “Don’t touch yourself. Not yet.”
Dea smirks up at her, face flushed. “Someone’s bossy.” She makes a show of stretching, showing off lean lines and soft curves. She smiles, all teeth. “You know I’m not wearing any underwear?”
Sam catches her breath.
“Unsurprising,” she manages to croak out. She leans back down and begins sucking and teasing at Dea’s other nipple. Dea gasps and shudders, grinding up against her. Sam moves her mouth up, over the swell of her breast and along her collar bone. Dea tastes like salt.
Then her mouth finds Dea's and they’re kissing again. Dea slides her hands up Sam’s sides, grips her tight around the waist.
She flips Sam.
Sam lands on her back with an oof, and glares at Dea. Dea grins proudly down at her and then she’s sliding slowly down Sam’s body, tongue tracing the arc of her ribs. She places her hands on the inside of Sam’s thighs and spreads her legs apart. She presses her tongue flat against Sam’s panties and Sam shudders in a breath.
“Christ, you’re wet,” says Dea. She hooks a finger around Sam’s panties and pulls them to the side, then curls the fingers on her other hand and slides them into Sam. She doesn’t move them, and Sam growls impatiently.
“Whoa there tiger,” murmurs Dea, voice honey and sex. “So how are we gonna do this?” she asks.
“Just fuck me,” grits out Sam, slamming her head back against the bed.
Dea doesn’t say anything, just starts moving her fingers in and out, fucking them into Sam. Sam hisses with pleasure and arches, vision going a little wobbly. And then Dea adds her mouth, tongue flicking against Sam’s clit, a light counterpoint to the hard slam of her fingers.
It’s not long after that. Sam comes with a sharp, stifled cry, the orgasm blowing through her like a tornado, tearing everything down and leaving her wrecked.
Dea crawls back up her body and kisses Sam again. Sam tastes herself on Dea’s tongue.
“I should-” says Sam, breaking off the kiss and half-rising. Dea hasn’t gotten off yet.
“No, it’s fine,” says Dea. She looks embarrassed. “I already. Right after you…”
“Oh,” says Sam. Dea sighs and kisses Sam’s cheek.
“So how about we get some sleep?” she says. “We can go again in the morning.”
Sam nods and turns onto her side, facing the wall. Her bed is narrow, narrower than the motel beds they slept in together all through their childhood. But they make do. Dea curls around her, one arm wrapped around Sam’s waist. Her sister’s smell envelopes her, cheap motel shampoo and sweat and the apricot body wash she likes to use and something beneath that, present since childhood, that’s all Dea, that's familiar and lulling as the movement of the car across a deserted highway.
She’s not sure how long she’s asleep, but it’s still dark when she opens her eyes. It doesn’t take her long to figure out what woke her. Dea’s slipping off the bed, picking her clothes up off the floor. Sam watches her through eyes half slit, her sister’s body pale and smooth in the dim light of the room.
Dea smoothes a hand over Sam’s hair and then starts when Sam reaches up to wrap her hand in the hem of Dea’s shirt. Dea exhales a shaky laugh and makes a noise like she’s about to say something, then doesn’t.
They remain locked in that position.
Sam wants to say, “Stay,” and she feels the word balanced precariously on the tip of her tongue, feels the word swell up inside her until it's all she's made of- the consuming urge to have her sister stay.
She holds the word tight in her mouth, doesn’t let it slip out. Dea gently tugs away. Sam drops her hand and rolls onto her back, eyes locked on the ceiling. She hears the door open and the room blooms with light. Then the door shuts, and the light drops away.
She closes her eyes.
***
“Was that your girlfriend last night?” asks Jess unhappily, the next morning.
Sam’s head jerks up and she nearly sends her bowl of oatmeal flying onto the floor.
“What! No!” she cries. “She,” she hesitates, doesn’t want to tell Jess the truth. “She’s working on a project with me for class.”
Jess stares at Sam like she doesn’t believe her.
Sam coughs awkwardly, searching for something to distract Jess, and then it hits her.
“Girlfriend?” she squeaks. “I’m not-”
Jess makes a face. “Oh come on Sam,” she says. “Do you have any idea how obvious you are? You’re always checking out girls.”
Sam pauses for a long moment, and then she asks, voice strangled and high. “And how do you know I’m always checking out girls?”
“Because,” says Jess. She has a determined look on her face, jaw set and eyes leveled. “I’m always checking you out.”
“Oh,” says Sam, dumbfounded. Jess continues to stare at her, face darkening slowly from pink to red.
“I,” says Sam, and then she stands up. She leans over the table and tips Jess’ head up.
Jess’ kiss is soft, sweet, none of the neediness behind it that was in Dea’s. Sam pauses, mouth going still, and Jess makes a small, inquiring noise against her lips. Jess who isn’t Dea. She shouldn’t be comparing them; Dea is her sister and Sam let her go.
She kisses Jess again.
***
Her paycheck is put in her student mailbox every other Friday, and she picks it up one week with the expectation of receiving only that. She wasn’t lying when she told Dea no one ever sent her mail. There’s no one in the world who would.
But there’s something else this time, and after the first pause of surprise, Sam pulls it out. It’s a postcard from Memphis, Tennessee of all places and Sam knows instantly who it’s from. She flips it over; the back doesn’t say much beyond confirming her initial suspicion. There’s only a ‘Hope you’re well,’ and beneath that, -D, written in a bold hand.
She smiles all the same and tucks the postcard into her pocket.
She’ll pin it to her wall later.