(no subject)
Untitled
by whereupon
Supernatural: Sam/Jessica, preseries, 970 words, R.
She loved him too much for something as slight as the dead to come between them.
for maerhys.
Jessica Moore stopped believing in ghosts when she was thirteen years old and she did not begin again until she met Sam Winchester. First, she saw them in his eyes, though those ghosts were merely those of grief, the sort that most do not know until they are much older than he was, but which no one does not know by the time that they are old. Second, she heard them in his voice as she lay beside him, the fingers of one hand twined around his wrist as he spoke in his sleep the words of a dead language, and she heard, beneath the drowse-slurred intonations, all that they conjured: she knew the scrape of the wind beneath a moonless sky down a street whose windows grew covered in frost as though foggy with the very breath of death itself, and she knew the splash of blood spilled quick and sorrowful as a sacrifice upon knotty floorboards while crows watched soundlessly from the other side of the glass, and she knew the cries of the cursed and of the dying, and how they mingled with the prayers of those left behind until no difference could be made between the two. Third, she ran her hand alongside the thin line of salt, so meager as to be nearly invisible, which he'd pushed against the window of their bedroom, and after doing so, she rested her palm against the cool pane and watched, half-frozen herself, as the shape of another palm bloomed into view, flared foxfire-bright for a moment before fading into the corona of the streetlight's glow and becoming indiscernible from the play of shadows which flickered there.
She had drawn the curtains, then, careful not to disturb the salt, but the curtains had needed to be drawn anyway, as they did every night; otherwise, the streetlight would have kept the both of them awake long past dawn. Her lover was a tall, kind boy with eyes like the first breath of fall, who was studying pre-law and who treated with ghosts upon occasion. She could have left him, she supposed sometime after she came to terms with that realization; or it was theoretically possible to have done so, anyway, but the thought stole the breath from her lungs and left her heart gasping, and so maybe it was never truly possible in the first place. She loved him too much for something as slight as the dead to come between them, so she made her excuses when it was necessary, overlooking the obvious when that too became necessary, and kissed him and slept beside him and walked to the market with him on Saturdays for fresh milk.
"I think we should go out of town," she said, the second year that she loved him. "For my birthday, I mean. We could go for the weekend, maybe be gone half of Friday, too." She knew by then that she shared a birthday with his brother, about whom he did not speak. On that date the year before he had been silent, so silent, though he'd smiled at her, when he'd felt her eyes upon him. That night she had tasted tequila upon both their tongues, and though it tasted of celebration, it tasted too of loss, and was tempered by it. She'd wanted to ask him why, what it had cost him to leave his brother behind, but she wasn't sure that he would answer her, and she didn't think that she had in her the words to lessen his grief, if he did. It was not hers to lessen.
"Where do you want to go?" he said. It was earliest January and the windows were splotched with rain, casting watercolor shadows across their bed. She closed her eyes for a moment and thought of sunlight; she opened them and said, "Somewhere cold. It always snowed on my birthday, when I was a kid." She had dreamed the night before of cruel weather, and of the sickle-silver moon; she had woken with the taste of gunpowder in her throat and had touched her lover's hair, tangled with sleep and salt-water, to wake him.
"I thought you liked the sun," he said, and pressed his mouth briefly to the bare curve of her shoulder.
"I do," she said. "But I want to watch the snow fall, I want to be cold and to feel the firelight warming me. I want," she said, "to see my breath in the air, and I want to feel the ice melt when you kiss me." She hadn't known she would say those things, not when she began to speak, but as she said them, she knew that they were true, and she could not explain the urgency she felt when she thought of them.
"Okay," he said after a moment, breath like the memory of summer across her skin, and she shivered. "Whatever you want, Jessie, babe," and she closed her eyes and saw red and fire-gold, the trees burning with sunlight as her autumn boy took her down deep, narrow hips working until she caught the back of his neck and dragged him in close, her breath skittering, ratcheting, as she came, his arms around her like the promise of shelter all through the chilblain days of winter. It was a lie, but she did not know it then; neither of them did. She opened her mouth against his skin, she opened her mouth to his, and it's forever, this moment as they breathe in each other, and it's only an instant; she turns her mind to the future, days unspooling, unwinding as thread, and already the first leaf is falling, November-fallow, coin-tossed, as pale and bright and brief as the press of a palm against a darkened window one night on a winding California street.
--
end
by whereupon
Supernatural: Sam/Jessica, preseries, 970 words, R.
She loved him too much for something as slight as the dead to come between them.
for maerhys.
Jessica Moore stopped believing in ghosts when she was thirteen years old and she did not begin again until she met Sam Winchester. First, she saw them in his eyes, though those ghosts were merely those of grief, the sort that most do not know until they are much older than he was, but which no one does not know by the time that they are old. Second, she heard them in his voice as she lay beside him, the fingers of one hand twined around his wrist as he spoke in his sleep the words of a dead language, and she heard, beneath the drowse-slurred intonations, all that they conjured: she knew the scrape of the wind beneath a moonless sky down a street whose windows grew covered in frost as though foggy with the very breath of death itself, and she knew the splash of blood spilled quick and sorrowful as a sacrifice upon knotty floorboards while crows watched soundlessly from the other side of the glass, and she knew the cries of the cursed and of the dying, and how they mingled with the prayers of those left behind until no difference could be made between the two. Third, she ran her hand alongside the thin line of salt, so meager as to be nearly invisible, which he'd pushed against the window of their bedroom, and after doing so, she rested her palm against the cool pane and watched, half-frozen herself, as the shape of another palm bloomed into view, flared foxfire-bright for a moment before fading into the corona of the streetlight's glow and becoming indiscernible from the play of shadows which flickered there.
She had drawn the curtains, then, careful not to disturb the salt, but the curtains had needed to be drawn anyway, as they did every night; otherwise, the streetlight would have kept the both of them awake long past dawn. Her lover was a tall, kind boy with eyes like the first breath of fall, who was studying pre-law and who treated with ghosts upon occasion. She could have left him, she supposed sometime after she came to terms with that realization; or it was theoretically possible to have done so, anyway, but the thought stole the breath from her lungs and left her heart gasping, and so maybe it was never truly possible in the first place. She loved him too much for something as slight as the dead to come between them, so she made her excuses when it was necessary, overlooking the obvious when that too became necessary, and kissed him and slept beside him and walked to the market with him on Saturdays for fresh milk.
"I think we should go out of town," she said, the second year that she loved him. "For my birthday, I mean. We could go for the weekend, maybe be gone half of Friday, too." She knew by then that she shared a birthday with his brother, about whom he did not speak. On that date the year before he had been silent, so silent, though he'd smiled at her, when he'd felt her eyes upon him. That night she had tasted tequila upon both their tongues, and though it tasted of celebration, it tasted too of loss, and was tempered by it. She'd wanted to ask him why, what it had cost him to leave his brother behind, but she wasn't sure that he would answer her, and she didn't think that she had in her the words to lessen his grief, if he did. It was not hers to lessen.
"Where do you want to go?" he said. It was earliest January and the windows were splotched with rain, casting watercolor shadows across their bed. She closed her eyes for a moment and thought of sunlight; she opened them and said, "Somewhere cold. It always snowed on my birthday, when I was a kid." She had dreamed the night before of cruel weather, and of the sickle-silver moon; she had woken with the taste of gunpowder in her throat and had touched her lover's hair, tangled with sleep and salt-water, to wake him.
"I thought you liked the sun," he said, and pressed his mouth briefly to the bare curve of her shoulder.
"I do," she said. "But I want to watch the snow fall, I want to be cold and to feel the firelight warming me. I want," she said, "to see my breath in the air, and I want to feel the ice melt when you kiss me." She hadn't known she would say those things, not when she began to speak, but as she said them, she knew that they were true, and she could not explain the urgency she felt when she thought of them.
"Okay," he said after a moment, breath like the memory of summer across her skin, and she shivered. "Whatever you want, Jessie, babe," and she closed her eyes and saw red and fire-gold, the trees burning with sunlight as her autumn boy took her down deep, narrow hips working until she caught the back of his neck and dragged him in close, her breath skittering, ratcheting, as she came, his arms around her like the promise of shelter all through the chilblain days of winter. It was a lie, but she did not know it then; neither of them did. She opened her mouth against his skin, she opened her mouth to his, and it's forever, this moment as they breathe in each other, and it's only an instant; she turns her mind to the future, days unspooling, unwinding as thread, and already the first leaf is falling, November-fallow, coin-tossed, as pale and bright and brief as the press of a palm against a darkened window one night on a winding California street.
--
end