Supernatural Fic: the last rites of st. joan
the last rites of st. joan
There’s a message on her voicemail, a long pause, and then a sigh, “babe, I love you” as if the ample reassurance was supposed to be better for the both of them. Sam is Sam is Sam and Jess slights a turn into a memory, drunk over Jack and making him laugh over Green Eggs and Ham.
supernatural. jess. sam/jess.
pilot; 2506 words, pg.
She buys groceries before.
There’s a message on her voicemail, a long pause, and then a sigh, “babe, I love you” as if the ample reassurance was supposed to be better for the both of them. Sam is Sam is Sam and Jess slights a turn into a memory, drunk over Jack and making him laugh over Green Eggs and Ham.
But she’s worried.
It’s the sense of detachment that she tries to avoid; lunch with friends is exactly that, her seat in the corner and her chin propped against her palm. It’s too warm in the coffee shop, her skin flushing. A boy winks. She snorts. There’s laughter and she smiles faintly, ducking questions about what’s the next step? and stays amused through when’s the wedding? because these are the things she’s supposed to do.
A follow-through opens though, and maybe it’s this indirect confrontation that she’s having with the idea that there’s family and Sam, Sam still hasn’t told her everything. It’s not that she’s angry. She’s just -
“Jess?”
Her lips press together. “Hmm,” she blinks, and there’s a collective smile, oh girls, “sorry - I’m just thinking about, uh, my umdream dress?”
A collective squeal sounds across the table. Stares drop from guys behind the counter and her own amusement thickens for a brief breath. Girls are easy, she thinks, but bites her mouth to keep her laugh closed. Sam would just die.
“So when is Sam getting back?” Annette is small, pushing as she mirrors Jess’ posture. There is the bitter crush - if only Jess hadn’t taken history, she still snarls, “He is coming back, right?”
But Jess is used to it and the eye roll that she falls into is the clear assertion that she doesn’t care about theatrics. It does bite a little, just a little, with just more awareness that she really doesn’t know it all.
Excusing herself, she drops her coffee into the wastebasket. Passes a wave and a smile; it’s more of wanting to go home, wanting to wait, and trying to understand. She doesn’t care for the family secrets, everybody has them, but she’s too used to sharing wide and open spaces with a number of people, of craving that intensity and satisfaction that comes with a sense of privacy. She’s trying to get it, she keeps telling herself.
Her hand takes to her pocket again, her nail clicking over the cover of her cell phone. Come on, come on. It’s not like he hasn’t called - there was the brief message and then another. Always too quick, always stopping quietly. She dreams of the murmuring of the radio. A slight tension in his voice. There’s something different about this time and it’s almost too unsettling that she can now flesh one of the faces from the photograph that he tries to hide and overlook.
She presses her thumb against her phone again, thinks about trying another time, and wonders if there’s such a thing as getting lucky. She doesn’t like being this nervous - it’s the fact that he’s not here. Or is it? They’ve done things apart before. Weekends with friends. Parties. Late nights at the libraries. Vacations. And she tries stretching away from the idea of hunting trip, the color of his gaze when he heard it, and submits instead to almost hearing him laughing at her in the back of her mind. Too many horror flicks. He hated it all, but it was a tradeoff, is a tradeoff because morning runs are always his idea.
You’re going to drive yourself crazy, she tells herself.
It’s a passing, ducking and stepping around people. She’s swift, long legs, and barely glances at the passing windows. Late day around the university is a sure way to get trampled by clusters of freshman. She remembers - it’s always embarrassing.
There’s a buzz at her hip and she jumps, shoulder pushing into a passing guy. She slips an apology, smiles lightly as the guy ducks and shrugs. There’s a slur of sweetheart and she wrinkles her nose at whiskey breath.
“Buy ya a drink?”
He’s over her, looming, and she snorts, batting away the smell. She clicks back, her heel dusting against the sidewalk.
“I’m okay,” she says, shrugging, “Meeting someone.”
She steps around him, crosses the street, and takes the side route, between two cars and a store here and there. There’s always a place, somewhere within campus, that has a little cluster of somewhere to disappear into. She hears missin’ out briefly, a yell, snorting again and shaking her head. Sam, Sam sates under her breath and she really just wishes for something more than Dad needs help.
She’s worried, you know.
A buzz slips against her hip and she stops, whirling. Her back hits the wall and she’s fumbling self-indulgent apologies to air as she tries to grasp her phone. Too deep. It could be Sam. It should be Sam - she’s going to kill him when he gets back; she’s not looking for an everyday call, it’s the voicemail thing that becomes an obnoxious addition to the things that she’s started to list in her head.
But it’s one missed call and not Sam, but Mom, and that sudden institution kick slips over her shoulders in weight. “Shit,” she murmurs, closing her eyes. There’s a coming headache, a sharpness dulling to a hum. She stops to watch nothing. Counts the bricks. Figures dinner, again, will be enough to say that she’s missed him - although, there’s the strange worry that he’ll think she’s overdoing it. Maybe, they’ll go out and then he can laugh at her, at how big of an idiot she’s feeling like right now.
Jess pushes her shoulder off the wall, ducking back into crowd. Over their heads, posters are flying; there’s a game coming up, the sectioned school spirit that she and Sam share might be amusing to go and share with the rest of them. She feels like it’s getting colder too, but it always ends up being her, being the odd tune she carries to the weather.
It’s about getting home anyway.
-
There are no messages in your mailbox; this is Sam and Jess and we’re busy -
She plays to replay, laughing softly as she slips deeper into the apartment. Her bag hits the carpet, moaning across the floor as two of her textbooks stumble and streak to hit the bottom of the couch. His shoes are skewed still in the corner, next to a bag of stuff that she’s started - and always he tells her - to never finish for spring cleaning donations. It’s the beginning of fall, her excuse always drops.
But the routine skips as it always has.
The television is on. Ignore the news, return to a rerun of Lucy and Ethel in some factory. Drop homework on the coffee table. She sets to baking too, fast; it’s a thing she has. She isn’t bitchy at uneasy, she just bakes. And bakes. And bakes - probably to the point that she could warrant some donations, somewhere on campus or at a school to just go ahead and give away. She blames genetics.
But she’s practicing too, the pads of her fingers slipping into the dough. Press and roll. She hopes she didn’t forget about the chocolate chips. It does start in her head, turns, and blurts out as she starts too aware of being home alone.
“Do you want to talk about it?” She wrinkles her nose, curving her wrist to push her hair out of her face again. “You know I’m here,” she tries and then again, “I’m here. Whenever you want to talk.”
She’s making the assumption that they’ll fight though. Fight and fuck and have one of those moments, a practical one, where he’s dipping between her breasts and says maybe, later like she’s the world but that might be enough, really, in the end. It’s more of her wanting him to know that she’s willing to be here. She never wants to see that look, the look, the one that crossed his face and wrinkled his mouth at the edge of panic that he was trying not to voice to her.
Out of curiosity though, she digs and turns, settling the cookies - the first batch, she thinks in amusement - in the oven. She sets the timer and turns back, moving into the bedroom. There’s a series of photos over their dressers. Him and her to the front, flanking and even covering Christmas dinners and breaks with her parents and family. There’s one of just her. There’s one of just him. The ridiculous, often necessary photos that couples subject themselves to; she carries his when she travels alone, with random spurts of affection, tucked between the pages of her planner. She feels silly about it, most of the time, and hides the frame in her bottom drawer of stuff until she gets back from wherever.
But she picks out the one photograph, the one hidden between the rest of hers and the sketches of friends and random people. She picks it up, picks Sam and Dean - Dean, she reassures herself - and Dad and Mom and wonders things about kind smiles and attics, wonders what he might tell him now, if anything.
“You’re going to laugh at me,” she breathes.
Her amusement slides into a laugh, thick and soft. She shakes her head, putting the picture to the front and dropping to the bed. The corner cuts and sinks under her legs as she slumps back. The sheets stay skewed and tucked against her back, peeking against her hip as she remembers she should fix the bed, if anything. But it’s going to be a bath instead, the knots in her shoulders screaming for some time for attention.
She checks on the cookies twice.
-
Steam rises and thickens against the glass.
Jess sits on the sink, her legs dangling off the counter. She watches the water, waits, and stares at her phone. She smiles, shaking her head and turning the off button. An hour, she thinks, and Sam will get a kick out of her days living as the super-girlfriend, worried and almost cleaning.
She drops the phone to the side then, sliding off the counter and running her hand through her hair. With fingers thick and knotted, she bites a wince and moves to take a check of the shower temperature.
“Almost, huh?”
It is never within the expectation; she’s slow, turning around with wide eyes and a narrow mouth. Her arms rise to her breasts, pressing hard as she backs away. She smells the whiskey, straight from the mouth of the bottle. It’s a picture pasting in her head and the man steps forward, chuckling as her shoulder hits the glass.
“Oh, now, now,” widens his smile, the thickness of his teeth glow yellow and brown, “you want to stay the brave little girl, from him, you know? Gotta give him one last shinnin’ memory, okay?”
There’s a cough and she thinks, she thinks she should’ve stayed longer at the coffee shop. Made the excuse of going the library. But the thoughts slip and she tenses. The old curtain rod’s still around here somewhere, she thinks and he’s ducking, the creep closing the door. Her foot hits the bottom of the toilet, the curve wincing as she spots the rod behind the door. Damn it, she thinks, damn it.
But he just waves his hand, the curl of his fingers drifting over a lingering amusement. She swallows thickly, but straightens. There’s a sudden rest of numbness. It starts at her shoulders, rising and falling to her eyes and then to her legs. Her hands relax and drop and she’s staring blankly at the man.
“There’s something -”
He’s glowing with giddiness. Picks up a half-empty bottle of mouthwash, tosses it to each hand, from side to side and with a laugh. She wonders where he started. If she was the first. Or the last. It’s episodic marathons of Law & Order, Sam’s fault and Jack McCoy’s and everything else that she can find for a quick distraction.
“There’s something I gotta do, sweet girl. All apologies.”
Another laugh; it burns.
-
She wakes to the bedroom fading.
The weight of her outline still sinks into the sheets. She watches it disappear though, the pillows rising, the sheets straightening, and the man’s still here, humming lightly. Her eyes shoot to the side and she’s watching his fingers drift over the spines of the few books that they have in the room, over Shakespeare, over coding, and over her magazines. Her mouth starts to tremble and the man sighs.
“Shh,” comes the murmurs, “there’s just no need for that.”
But she has no idea, no idea at all - her vision’s blurring, her hands streaked to the side. Her palms feel the paint bubbles and the memory, slow, starts to rise. It took three hours of Sam on a ladder, configuring, and she remembers laughing -
“Hard? It’s sweet, you kids.”
Her mouth frames closed. The humming starts again and she’s memorizing the tops of his shoulders, the arches of his hands, just something, anything that sticks. That has to stick and maybe give her enough time to get out.
But there’s a hard laugh and she winces, her neck cracking hard. She fights to keep her eyes open. A stretch of pain slips though and a low buzzing strikes against the corners of her head. She winces and cries out softly, under the laugh.
She can hear the shower still running. The steam is gone now, it has to be, no heat peeks out from the rim of the door and she’s sheltering herself. It makes her face this disconnected sensation of uneasiness as the man continues to laugh at her.
“It’ll be quick,” he promises. The husky curl of amusement lingers, “Bang, bang, and all good to go, you know?”
She tries to open her mouth.
Music stays rolling in the back. It could be something. Nothing. It might be one of his CDs, one of hers, and thought after thought winces by. Her eyes start to drop quietly and she’s rising to a murmur. But what about Sam, her Sam; she’s arranged for plans, their moment. Things for them to have. It’s so strange and she feels a separation begin to intensify as she starts to split from this, from the books and the man, from what is going to be left for.
I’m sorry, you’d hope she thinks, but she’s returning to a number of thoughts and clippings, things that are going to stay lost. She doesn’t say dying. And even then, the thought brings her back to Sam.
At least, he’s gone and can’t see.
-
Something opens. It might be hours, drifting in a fashion. There’s cough and a laugh, the music drifting farther away. Sleep, sleep cycles slowly.
And she slips with eyes closed to the man’s coyness; “to the greater good” is the faint toast.
-
There’s a message on her voicemail, a long pause, and then a sigh, “babe, I love you” as if the ample reassurance was supposed to be better for the both of them. Sam is Sam is Sam and Jess slights a turn into a memory, drunk over Jack and making him laugh over Green Eggs and Ham.
supernatural. jess. sam/jess.
pilot; 2506 words, pg.
She buys groceries before.
There’s a message on her voicemail, a long pause, and then a sigh, “babe, I love you” as if the ample reassurance was supposed to be better for the both of them. Sam is Sam is Sam and Jess slights a turn into a memory, drunk over Jack and making him laugh over Green Eggs and Ham.
But she’s worried.
It’s the sense of detachment that she tries to avoid; lunch with friends is exactly that, her seat in the corner and her chin propped against her palm. It’s too warm in the coffee shop, her skin flushing. A boy winks. She snorts. There’s laughter and she smiles faintly, ducking questions about what’s the next step? and stays amused through when’s the wedding? because these are the things she’s supposed to do.
A follow-through opens though, and maybe it’s this indirect confrontation that she’s having with the idea that there’s family and Sam, Sam still hasn’t told her everything. It’s not that she’s angry. She’s just -
“Jess?”
Her lips press together. “Hmm,” she blinks, and there’s a collective smile, oh girls, “sorry - I’m just thinking about, uh, my umdream dress?”
A collective squeal sounds across the table. Stares drop from guys behind the counter and her own amusement thickens for a brief breath. Girls are easy, she thinks, but bites her mouth to keep her laugh closed. Sam would just die.
“So when is Sam getting back?” Annette is small, pushing as she mirrors Jess’ posture. There is the bitter crush - if only Jess hadn’t taken history, she still snarls, “He is coming back, right?”
But Jess is used to it and the eye roll that she falls into is the clear assertion that she doesn’t care about theatrics. It does bite a little, just a little, with just more awareness that she really doesn’t know it all.
Excusing herself, she drops her coffee into the wastebasket. Passes a wave and a smile; it’s more of wanting to go home, wanting to wait, and trying to understand. She doesn’t care for the family secrets, everybody has them, but she’s too used to sharing wide and open spaces with a number of people, of craving that intensity and satisfaction that comes with a sense of privacy. She’s trying to get it, she keeps telling herself.
Her hand takes to her pocket again, her nail clicking over the cover of her cell phone. Come on, come on. It’s not like he hasn’t called - there was the brief message and then another. Always too quick, always stopping quietly. She dreams of the murmuring of the radio. A slight tension in his voice. There’s something different about this time and it’s almost too unsettling that she can now flesh one of the faces from the photograph that he tries to hide and overlook.
She presses her thumb against her phone again, thinks about trying another time, and wonders if there’s such a thing as getting lucky. She doesn’t like being this nervous - it’s the fact that he’s not here. Or is it? They’ve done things apart before. Weekends with friends. Parties. Late nights at the libraries. Vacations. And she tries stretching away from the idea of hunting trip, the color of his gaze when he heard it, and submits instead to almost hearing him laughing at her in the back of her mind. Too many horror flicks. He hated it all, but it was a tradeoff, is a tradeoff because morning runs are always his idea.
You’re going to drive yourself crazy, she tells herself.
It’s a passing, ducking and stepping around people. She’s swift, long legs, and barely glances at the passing windows. Late day around the university is a sure way to get trampled by clusters of freshman. She remembers - it’s always embarrassing.
There’s a buzz at her hip and she jumps, shoulder pushing into a passing guy. She slips an apology, smiles lightly as the guy ducks and shrugs. There’s a slur of sweetheart and she wrinkles her nose at whiskey breath.
“Buy ya a drink?”
He’s over her, looming, and she snorts, batting away the smell. She clicks back, her heel dusting against the sidewalk.
“I’m okay,” she says, shrugging, “Meeting someone.”
She steps around him, crosses the street, and takes the side route, between two cars and a store here and there. There’s always a place, somewhere within campus, that has a little cluster of somewhere to disappear into. She hears missin’ out briefly, a yell, snorting again and shaking her head. Sam, Sam sates under her breath and she really just wishes for something more than Dad needs help.
She’s worried, you know.
A buzz slips against her hip and she stops, whirling. Her back hits the wall and she’s fumbling self-indulgent apologies to air as she tries to grasp her phone. Too deep. It could be Sam. It should be Sam - she’s going to kill him when he gets back; she’s not looking for an everyday call, it’s the voicemail thing that becomes an obnoxious addition to the things that she’s started to list in her head.
But it’s one missed call and not Sam, but Mom, and that sudden institution kick slips over her shoulders in weight. “Shit,” she murmurs, closing her eyes. There’s a coming headache, a sharpness dulling to a hum. She stops to watch nothing. Counts the bricks. Figures dinner, again, will be enough to say that she’s missed him - although, there’s the strange worry that he’ll think she’s overdoing it. Maybe, they’ll go out and then he can laugh at her, at how big of an idiot she’s feeling like right now.
Jess pushes her shoulder off the wall, ducking back into crowd. Over their heads, posters are flying; there’s a game coming up, the sectioned school spirit that she and Sam share might be amusing to go and share with the rest of them. She feels like it’s getting colder too, but it always ends up being her, being the odd tune she carries to the weather.
It’s about getting home anyway.
-
There are no messages in your mailbox; this is Sam and Jess and we’re busy -
She plays to replay, laughing softly as she slips deeper into the apartment. Her bag hits the carpet, moaning across the floor as two of her textbooks stumble and streak to hit the bottom of the couch. His shoes are skewed still in the corner, next to a bag of stuff that she’s started - and always he tells her - to never finish for spring cleaning donations. It’s the beginning of fall, her excuse always drops.
But the routine skips as it always has.
The television is on. Ignore the news, return to a rerun of Lucy and Ethel in some factory. Drop homework on the coffee table. She sets to baking too, fast; it’s a thing she has. She isn’t bitchy at uneasy, she just bakes. And bakes. And bakes - probably to the point that she could warrant some donations, somewhere on campus or at a school to just go ahead and give away. She blames genetics.
But she’s practicing too, the pads of her fingers slipping into the dough. Press and roll. She hopes she didn’t forget about the chocolate chips. It does start in her head, turns, and blurts out as she starts too aware of being home alone.
“Do you want to talk about it?” She wrinkles her nose, curving her wrist to push her hair out of her face again. “You know I’m here,” she tries and then again, “I’m here. Whenever you want to talk.”
She’s making the assumption that they’ll fight though. Fight and fuck and have one of those moments, a practical one, where he’s dipping between her breasts and says maybe, later like she’s the world but that might be enough, really, in the end. It’s more of her wanting him to know that she’s willing to be here. She never wants to see that look, the look, the one that crossed his face and wrinkled his mouth at the edge of panic that he was trying not to voice to her.
Out of curiosity though, she digs and turns, settling the cookies - the first batch, she thinks in amusement - in the oven. She sets the timer and turns back, moving into the bedroom. There’s a series of photos over their dressers. Him and her to the front, flanking and even covering Christmas dinners and breaks with her parents and family. There’s one of just her. There’s one of just him. The ridiculous, often necessary photos that couples subject themselves to; she carries his when she travels alone, with random spurts of affection, tucked between the pages of her planner. She feels silly about it, most of the time, and hides the frame in her bottom drawer of stuff until she gets back from wherever.
But she picks out the one photograph, the one hidden between the rest of hers and the sketches of friends and random people. She picks it up, picks Sam and Dean - Dean, she reassures herself - and Dad and Mom and wonders things about kind smiles and attics, wonders what he might tell him now, if anything.
“You’re going to laugh at me,” she breathes.
Her amusement slides into a laugh, thick and soft. She shakes her head, putting the picture to the front and dropping to the bed. The corner cuts and sinks under her legs as she slumps back. The sheets stay skewed and tucked against her back, peeking against her hip as she remembers she should fix the bed, if anything. But it’s going to be a bath instead, the knots in her shoulders screaming for some time for attention.
She checks on the cookies twice.
-
Steam rises and thickens against the glass.
Jess sits on the sink, her legs dangling off the counter. She watches the water, waits, and stares at her phone. She smiles, shaking her head and turning the off button. An hour, she thinks, and Sam will get a kick out of her days living as the super-girlfriend, worried and almost cleaning.
She drops the phone to the side then, sliding off the counter and running her hand through her hair. With fingers thick and knotted, she bites a wince and moves to take a check of the shower temperature.
“Almost, huh?”
It is never within the expectation; she’s slow, turning around with wide eyes and a narrow mouth. Her arms rise to her breasts, pressing hard as she backs away. She smells the whiskey, straight from the mouth of the bottle. It’s a picture pasting in her head and the man steps forward, chuckling as her shoulder hits the glass.
“Oh, now, now,” widens his smile, the thickness of his teeth glow yellow and brown, “you want to stay the brave little girl, from him, you know? Gotta give him one last shinnin’ memory, okay?”
There’s a cough and she thinks, she thinks she should’ve stayed longer at the coffee shop. Made the excuse of going the library. But the thoughts slip and she tenses. The old curtain rod’s still around here somewhere, she thinks and he’s ducking, the creep closing the door. Her foot hits the bottom of the toilet, the curve wincing as she spots the rod behind the door. Damn it, she thinks, damn it.
But he just waves his hand, the curl of his fingers drifting over a lingering amusement. She swallows thickly, but straightens. There’s a sudden rest of numbness. It starts at her shoulders, rising and falling to her eyes and then to her legs. Her hands relax and drop and she’s staring blankly at the man.
“There’s something -”
He’s glowing with giddiness. Picks up a half-empty bottle of mouthwash, tosses it to each hand, from side to side and with a laugh. She wonders where he started. If she was the first. Or the last. It’s episodic marathons of Law & Order, Sam’s fault and Jack McCoy’s and everything else that she can find for a quick distraction.
“There’s something I gotta do, sweet girl. All apologies.”
Another laugh; it burns.
-
She wakes to the bedroom fading.
The weight of her outline still sinks into the sheets. She watches it disappear though, the pillows rising, the sheets straightening, and the man’s still here, humming lightly. Her eyes shoot to the side and she’s watching his fingers drift over the spines of the few books that they have in the room, over Shakespeare, over coding, and over her magazines. Her mouth starts to tremble and the man sighs.
“Shh,” comes the murmurs, “there’s just no need for that.”
But she has no idea, no idea at all - her vision’s blurring, her hands streaked to the side. Her palms feel the paint bubbles and the memory, slow, starts to rise. It took three hours of Sam on a ladder, configuring, and she remembers laughing -
“Hard? It’s sweet, you kids.”
Her mouth frames closed. The humming starts again and she’s memorizing the tops of his shoulders, the arches of his hands, just something, anything that sticks. That has to stick and maybe give her enough time to get out.
But there’s a hard laugh and she winces, her neck cracking hard. She fights to keep her eyes open. A stretch of pain slips though and a low buzzing strikes against the corners of her head. She winces and cries out softly, under the laugh.
She can hear the shower still running. The steam is gone now, it has to be, no heat peeks out from the rim of the door and she’s sheltering herself. It makes her face this disconnected sensation of uneasiness as the man continues to laugh at her.
“It’ll be quick,” he promises. The husky curl of amusement lingers, “Bang, bang, and all good to go, you know?”
She tries to open her mouth.
Music stays rolling in the back. It could be something. Nothing. It might be one of his CDs, one of hers, and thought after thought winces by. Her eyes start to drop quietly and she’s rising to a murmur. But what about Sam, her Sam; she’s arranged for plans, their moment. Things for them to have. It’s so strange and she feels a separation begin to intensify as she starts to split from this, from the books and the man, from what is going to be left for.
I’m sorry, you’d hope she thinks, but she’s returning to a number of thoughts and clippings, things that are going to stay lost. She doesn’t say dying. And even then, the thought brings her back to Sam.
At least, he’s gone and can’t see.
-
Something opens. It might be hours, drifting in a fashion. There’s cough and a laugh, the music drifting farther away. Sleep, sleep cycles slowly.
And she slips with eyes closed to the man’s coyness; “to the greater good” is the faint toast.
-