Fic: Three's Company Too 2/7
Chapter Two
Sam dropped heavily into the passenger seat as Jess nimbly climbed into the back. Rock music played from the speakers, and although she didn’t recognize it, the tune grated faintly in the back of her skull and she steeled herself for a long trip, frustrating trip.
Dean’s head jerked up and whirled around first to her, then to Sam, then back to her. “What’re you doing here?” he demanded, and then turned to Sam. ”What’s she doing here?”
“Back-up,” she replied, wriggling to get comfortable in her seat.
Dean’s eyes widened, then narrowed. He reached for the volume knob and turned his music down low. “Look, sweetheart,” he drawled softly, oily charm sliding over his words like grease on a pizza. “I appreciate the effort on behalf of my brother, but this isn’t really the type of trip for a girl like you.”
Jess couldn’t help it. The voice of her Women’s Studies prof from last semester was urging her to kick him in the balls. Unfortunately, they were sitting in a car, so she would have to be a little more creative.
“Look, douchebag,” she began, batting her eyes and speaking with the same false sweetness he had just used on her. “Spending my weekend having my boyfriend’s older brother slobber on me isn’t really my idea of a great time, either. But I was raised a hunter and so if you think I’m going to watch you two run off without any backup then you’re not as bright as I thought. And at this point, Dean, you really can’t afford to lose any more IQ points.”
Dean’s mouth quirked as he studied her silently. She glared back at him, arms crossed over a proudly Smurf-less t-shirt.
Sam remained sitting in his seat, watching the whole thing with a grin playing on his lips. Apparently, he was going to let her slug it out on her own.
“You’re a hunter,” Dean finally stated, a question implied at the end.
“Was raised a hunter,” she corrected.
“Alright, then, Miss Hunter, if you’re telling the truth, then you can answer a few questions. Do you kill vampires with silver, or wooden stakes?”
“Neither,” she replied quickly, rolling her eyes at the impromptu quiz. “You cut their heads off.”
“Okay, what do ghouls-”
“Are you just going to ask me a bunch of gross questions because I’m a girl? Because if so, I will make this trip very uncomfortable for you.”
Dean grinned, and then reached past Sam to get into the glove box. He pulled out a .45 and handed it to her.
It was a nice piece: pearl inlay handle and engraved along the barrel. She flicked her eyes up at his watchful ones. “What, no stopwatch?”
“Just show me what you got, Jessie.”
“Jessica,” she corrected with narrowed eyes. Then, she quickly dismantled the gun, laying all the pieces out in careful display for Dean. It was put back together and handed back to Dean in even less time. “Is that all you wanted, Deano, or did you want me to shoot my initials in the dash or something?”
He pouted, actually pouted at her, and returned the gun to its place. “It’s Dean,” he corrected moodily.
“You gotta watch the threats against the car, Jess,” Sam informed her, clapping a hand on his brother’s arm. “He’s overly attached to it.”
“Good to know,” she replied shooting an evil grin at Dean. “So have I passed your test yet, Dean? Can we get driving? Cause it’s gonna take us long enough to get there without you wasting time parked in front of our apartment.”
Dean gave her a look that appeared to be the adult equivalent of sticking your tongue out, and then started the car. He threw it into gear and Jess found herself knocked against the back of her seat as they accelerated.
“Okay, here’s the deal,” Dean told her as they whipped through the silent streets. “We drive to go check out this thing. You come along and help with whatever. But on the way, I get to ask you all the questions I want, and trust me, sweetheart, I have a lot.”
“Dean,” Sam interjected quietly. “If she doesn’t want to answer-”
“It’s fine, Sam,” Jess replied, leaning forward in her seat to stick her chin between the two boys. “He needs to know who he’s hunting with. And you deserve some answers as well.”
“Okay, we’ll start with that one,” Dean spoke. “Why does Sam deserve answers?”
There was an uncomfortable silence while Jess shifted in her seat. Finally, Sam answered for her.
“I had no idea she was a hunter until tonight,” he explained to his brother.
“What, you’ve been living with a hunter and you didn’t even know it? Jeez, Sammy, I knew you were rusty, but this is a whole new level of bad.”
“I’m not hunting right now,” she reminded Dean for the umpteenth time. “Haven’t been ever since I got to Stanford.”
“Why?” Dean asked.
“Why what?”
“Why did you give it up?”
She swallowed the sudden lump that had appeared in her throat. It had been four years; she needed to be able to talk about it.
“My dad died,” she explained softly. “He was the person who taught me everything about hunting. He and my stepmom split when I was five. With the lifestyle he lived, marriage just didn’t work out. And even though I still stayed with her, he would still come and visit me whenever he could. He’d take me out on trips and teach me everything. When he died… It just reminded me of everything my stepmom had said about hunting. That it’s dangerous and there’s no future in it and a million other problems. And Dad died in a car accident of all things. Not even going down fighting like he would have wanted…”
“Hey, Jess.” A large, comforting hand settled on her shoulder, and Jess recognized it as her boyfriend’s.
Wiping absently at the tears on her cheeks, she continued. “Anyway, I needed to get away from all of it, so I dropped out of the game completely when I came to Stanford.” Abandoning her father’s quest, in the meantime. If she allowed it to, the guilt still gnawed at her on sleepless nights. After all, she had just as much reason to take up his vendetta as he did, although it had never felt as real to her as it must have to him.
“So, when are you going to ask the big question, Dean?” she asked tiredly
“Huh?”
“Well, every hunter has a story of how they got in the game,” Jess told him. “I’m assuming you want to know what my dad and mine’s is.”
Dean was quiet for a second, eyes tracking the road carefully. “Yeah, everyone’s got a story,” he replied finally. “And everyone’s story is a shit-filled package of grief. Going through what you did with your dad was bad enough. I’m not gonna make you rehash any other crap you’ve gone through.”
“Oh. Thank you,” she spoke awkwardly. That response has surprised her. Up until then, she had thought Dean to be a loyal son, a good brother, an experienced hunter, but an otherwise shallow man with no personality beyond women, cars, and guns. And probably booze. But his comment reminded her that every hunter did have a past, and his was likely to be just as painful and scarring as her own.
Sam never talked much about his family. They only clue was an old framed photo from when Sam was a baby. As much as she had studied that picture for clues, she had never been able to discern much from it. And to have another member of that picture appear in live action served to remind Jess that although she knew that Sam was a hunter, she was still far from understanding everything about him.
“I have a question,” Sam spoke up, filling the silence.
Jess pulled herself out of her revere to toss a smile in his direction.
“Shoot.”
“Okay, I understand how I never found the salt lines in the apartment. We’re both good enough at hiding them that I wouldn’t have seen yours unless I tore up the place looking for them. But no one who’s hunted in the past would go without having something hidden in their home to protect them in case something got through.”
“You mean weapons?” Jess clarified.
“Yeah.” Sam turned to Dean. “No matter what you say, dude, there’s no way Jess could have hidden that in the apartment without me finding it.”
“I didn’t,” Jess admitted.
“Really?” Dean raised an eyebrow in her direction.
“Well, I was planning on it, but then I found the stuff that you had already, Sam, and I thought that it wouldn’t be worth the bother when I could just borrow yours.”
Sam let out a bark of laughter and Dean turned his quizzical brow towards his younger brother.
“Jess is the master moocher,” he explained. “I just never expected it to extend to weaponry.”
Dean nodded. “Okay, I got another question.”
“What if I want to ask some?” Jess interrupted.
“Not in the deal, sweetheart.”
“Stop calling me that,” she snapped, gritting her teeth together. “And I decided to change the rules of the deal. It’s not fair that you get to find out everything about me, and I have to go on a hunt with you and know nothing about you.”
“You know Sam,” Dean pointed out.
“Not this part of him,” Jess corrected softly.
Sam twisted around fully and gave her one of those mournful looks he was so skilled at. “Jess, I-”
“No, wait,” Dean interrupted. “I’m setting some ground rules right now. My car is not the place for impromptu couple’s therapy. You have your issues and you’re not sure if you can trust each other and blah blah blah. You work out your shit outside of this car. Preferably in a place where I can’t see or hear you. Got it?”
Jess glanced over at Sam, who was rolling his eyes but otherwise agreeable. Apparently, this was something Dean was allowed to do. And really, it probably was a better idea to keep her dirty laundry inside her bag while they were all on the road together.
“Fine,” she agreed shortly. “But I still get to ask you questions, Dean. I’ll even make a nice little deal for you. You ask one then I’ll ask one.”
“You think I’m going to agree to 50/50? I get two, then you get one. I know you’re way more curious about me than I am about you.”
“How is that fair?” Jess protested. “What if we pick a topic and then-”
“God, this is starting to sound like a car game,” Dean groaned. “I hate car games. Sam, is this a car game?”
“If it’s making you uncomfortable, Dean, Jess and I can always go back to talking about our relationship.”
“Shoot me. Okay, fine, Jessica. You get one question for now.”
Jess weighed her options carefully before deciding to play it a little safe. If she asked him something relatively impersonal to start out with, he was more likely to let her continue asking.
“Ghosts or werewolves?” she polled.
“What about ‘em?” Dean shot back quickly.
“Which would you prefer to hunt?”
Dean snorted. “Is there any contest? Werewolves are badass.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Jess shrugged.
“What, you’d rather do the ghost?” Dean had been the brother to ask the question, but it was Sam who was watching her carefully as she drew breath to answer.
“With a ghost, there’s always a story,” she explained. “Something to connect you to the person they once were. Werewolves are just violent, and bloody. And occasionally depressing.”
“With werewolves, you don’t have to dig up a corpse,” Dean argued.
Jess shrugged. “It’s not the most pleasant, but there’s always something gross, no matter the creature.”
“I guess,” Dean replied, conceding to her point reluctantly. “Okay, my turn now.”
Jess pressed her lips together to refrain from telling him that he sounded very much like he was playing a car game at the moment.
“Guns or knives?” Dean asked her.
“Knives,” she replied without hesitation.
“Really?” Dean had the same note of scepticism in his voice as when they were talking about the werewolves.
“Yes, really. Knives are quieter, safer in close quarters, and more versatile. Plus, they’re more elegant.”
Dean snorted at the elegant line, like she suspected he would.
“Hey! I’m a girl, Dean, I’m allowed to be elegant.”
“Whatever,” he grumbled. “But what’s a knife gonna do against the Caspers that you like so much?”
“If it’s made of iron, it’s pretty effective. And I never said that I didn’t like guns. I’m just saying that if I had to choose only one weapon to use the rest of my life, I would have to go with a knife.”
“And I still don’t buy it,” Dean argued with interest. “Say you’re on the other end of the room with the thing. Who wants to get closer than they have to?”
“Close isn’t a problem for me,” she shrugged. “I don’t mind getting dirty. It’s when you have to worry about misfires and ricochets that you get real problems. My dad got clipped in the leg one time from a bouncing bullet. And I’ll have you know that on that particular hunt, it was my knife that finally saved the day. I managed to sneak behind and stab the jinn before it got to my dad.”
“You’ve fought jinn before? Where did you-”
“As much as I’d love to listen to more of my girlfriend proving my brother wrong, I’d like to try to get some sleep so I’m not dead to the world tomorrow,” Sam interrupted.
Dean glanced over to Sam with a cocky smirk. “I told you college’s made you soft, Sam. You can’t even last one night in the car anymore.”
“Whatever, dude,” Sam brushed off. “Just don’t turn the music up too loud and try not to get us killed. Wake me up when we get to Jericho.”
Sam settled down in his seat as far as he could and closed his eyes, wrapping his large arms around himself.
Even with the car motor grumbling and the stereo playing some band very quietly, thick silence filled the car. Jess rested her head against the window, pulling her sweater tight around her. There were too many thoughts crammed in her head, and she knew that Sam must be going through the same thing. Lame excuses aside, he couldn’t really want to sleep. And she hadn’t missed the fact that he interrupted her halfway through a violent hunting story.
Like Dean said, they had shit to work out. And although there was nothing she wanted more than to rip open that box and tear through the contents, she recognized the wisdom in Dean’s ruling. It was best to wait to air it out until they were on their own and didn’t have an audience.
Because road trips held all sorts of opportunity for quiet chats away from your fellow travel mates. Yeah, right. Jess grimaced. It could be a very long trip.
Chapter Three