"Straight Line" - SPN - Sam/OFC - R/NC17
Title: Straight Line
Author: femmenerd
Characters/Pairings: Sam character study, Sam/OFC, Dean, (John)
Rating: R/NC17
Disclaimer: Not mine. Not for profit. Don’t sue.
Summary: Future!fic. Vague spoilers through SPN 2.09. She’s the first woman Sam sleeps with after they kill the demon. It’s a new beginning for the Winchesters, and he has no idea what to do with himself.
Author’s Note: The lovely and talented poisontaster had a birthday recently. She asked me to make her fic about Sam Winchester knocking someone up. It ended up being about more than that. Title comes from this song, by one of my favorite humans on earth.
Word Count: About 3500.
*****
She’s the first woman Sam sleeps with after they kill the demon. It’s a new beginning for the Winchesters, and he has no idea what to do with himself.
Dean knows. He wants to work at Bobby’s shop fixing cars during the week, drink beer and play pool on the weekends (for fun not necessarily profit), and fight evil on the side because they’re good at it, not because there's nothing else. And he wants Sam to be happy. But Sam’s still restless. He goes on hunting trips alone at the drop of a hat. He wanders.
But he always comes back to crash on his brother’s couch.
Fucking her makes Sam feel like a man--like an adult, not a little brother, or an orphan, or someone who needs to be protected.
She’s older than him, just a bit, and she has a real job, in the children’s section of the library. She has a little house, and a dog, nice bookshelves filled with novels and DVDs, flowerbeds out front. She’s content.
Sam meets her at Dean’s favorite bar, where all the regulars know his brother’s name and the bartender has a whiskey with a beer back out on the counter before Dean’s ass hits the barstool. “Make that two,” Dean says, and slaps a twenty down, grinning at Sam. “I can cover my shiftless brother here.”
Sam also has no idea how Dean’s suddenly become so much more adept at “normal” than he is.
She’s drinking cosmos with her friends at the other end of the bar, laughing, still wearing a straight skirt and cardigan, but her hair’s down, thick and brown and curly. That’s why he doesn’t recognize her at first.
“Dude, you’ve completely lost your manners,” Dean cracks when he catches Sam staring.
“What?”
Dean sighs, handing Sam some money. “Go buy her another foo foo girly drink, and get on with it. Seriously, you’ve gotten uncivilized.”
She says, “I’ve seen you before, at my work,” when he walks over. Sam doesn’t respond immediately and she explains, “The microfiche is right by the staff coffee machine. I’m an addict.” Her smile is big, and genuine, and for the first time in awhile, something besides hunting seems natural. “Do you work with your brother?”
“I’m, ah, freelance,” he says. “Security. Investigation.” And those aren’t even lies.
“So you live in a Noir film?” she says, unfazed. “I’m sorry, but I’m not a femme fatale,” she mock apologizes, straw clutched between her teeth.
Her easy boldness relaxes him, and Sam chats her up with the extent of what he learned in Intro to Film History. For whatever reason, Sam doesn't second guess; he goes home with her, leaving Dean mired in a friendly debate about the best years for Mustangs, nodding goodbye.
Sam says, “Do you want to watch a movie or something?” as he’s examining her collection.
“No point. We wouldn‘t finish it, I think,” she responds, tugging on his shirt tails. He laughs into her mouth as he leans down to kiss her.
“Okay then. Bedroom it is. No arguments here.”
She has plaid flannel sheets, cheery red curtains and knick knacks. This is nothing like a dorm room. Or a motel room. Those are the kinds of rooms Sam’s used to fucking in.
She knows what she wants and tells him. Use your mouth on me. Your hands. Yeah, that’s good. She calls him Daddy when she comes and Sam doesn’t think about his father or hers, just the rhythm of his weight moving over her body, open for him, and the flash in her eyes when she says it. And there’s no shame on her face after, so he doesn’t bother with it either.
*****
Of course, Sam doesn’t always go hunting alone. Dean goes with him when he has time, or is bored, or it’s a really tough job. It’s a relief, that Dean seems to just get him even if Sam really doesn’t understand himself of late. When Sam’s in town, he does odd jobs for Dean and Bobby, keeps their books up to date. He’s happy that Dean’s happy, but Sam can’t help feeling like he’s a little old, or maybe a little young, to be going through “a phase” like this, and he can see in the looks exchanged between his brother and Bobby that that’s what they think is going on.
He’s driving a truck now, a big black one, because really it’s more practical for the job than the Impala ever was, and Sam is a professional now; this is what he does.
*****
Sam’s always had a lot of personal rituals, even when he was a little kid. Like saving the blue M&M’s for last, or packing his duffel in the same order, jeans first, socks last. When he was at school, he used to make lists of homework assignments, carefully crossing out tasks accomplished in thick black lines. Now, after a job’s completed, it’s playing solitaire on his motel room bed. He likes games he can win.
Sam jerks off after he’s had a shower, not before, fully naked, covers splayed, warming himself up by slowly circling his thumb around the head of his cock before shifting to hard strokes, warm friction from his outstretched palm. It’s a pattern with room for deviation in the middle section, but always beginning slow, ending rough.
He finds himself focusing on the juxtaposition of her soft, breezy smiles during conversation with the pained, blown-open expression on her face when he started fucking her in earnest. She said, I’m not fragile, when she wanted more. She cried out, So good, so good. Want it hard. Want it. And he remembers how big that made him feel.
*****
The next time he sees her is at a town potluck. He was surprised Dean wanted to go.
“It’s my first night back, man. I’m tired. Besides, since when are you into this kind of thing?”
Dean just shrugged and said, “There’s food, lots of it, and all I have to do is bring a case of beer and my charming self. C’mon lazy ass, let’s go.”
They roll up to a big, old farmhouse with dozens of cars parked out front. Dean’s tossing smiles and greetings right and left. She’s by the punch bowl, talking to a middle-aged woman he recalls from the main reference desk at the library where she works. She’s got on a knee-length dress with a blue flowered print, flaring out to frame the wide expanse of her hips. He looks down at her flip-flop clad feet instead, feeling suddenly much less exhausted.
“Hey there, girl,” he says quietly when she’s done with her conversation.
She looks up, and Sam finds himself trying to figure out what color her eyes are. Hazel, maybe? That’s the catch-all description.
“So the prodigal brother is back?”
Sam scratches the back of his neck, training his eyes on the constellations of light freckles on her cheeks. He hadn’t noticed those before. “Uh yeah, for a little while anyway.”
“Well, Dean must be glad. He talks about you all the time.”
“Are you guys, ah, friends?” Sam feels like he should know these things, perhaps.
“Oh, well my car breaks down a lot. Old Volvo, you know. He works on it for me anyway, even though I’m a heathen who doesn’t drive American. But then, he kind of has to-my Dad and Bobby go way back.”
“So you’re like, from here from here,” Sam says, thinking about how once upon a time he knew these sorts of things about a woman before he’d had his cock inside her.
“Yep,” she replies. “Small town girl, that’s me. Went away for college, then again for my Master’s, but I always knew I was coming back. Maybe you’ll think it’s weird, but I’ve known since I was five that I wanted to end up helping kids find Nancy Drew books right here in this town.”
“You had a plan,” Sam murmurs.
“Yeah,” she says brightly. “I did.”
Sam thinks about the plans he once had, the ones that took him to California, the test scores and applications and that law school interview he never ended up making, but that line of thought makes him feel dizzy, empty. He looks down at her exposed legs, light brown and smooth, and shakes it off. “I’ve got one, right now,” he says, and touches his fingertips to her wrist.
They end up in the barn, her back up against a wooden pillar, dress rucked up high. Her ass is round and soft, pliable under his hands as Sam holds her up, underwear pushed to one side as he fucks into her.
“I’m a nice guy,” he pants into her neck.
“And I’m a nice girl,” she says, laughing as she squeezes him hard from the inside, making him gasp.
“It’s funny,” she says after, “it was your brother that Bobby warned me about when you two first came to town.”
“D’you think I’m dangerous?” Sam asks playfully. He feels oddly buoyant, outside of time, himself but not.
She considers it as she adjusts her panties. “I think I want to fuck you again. A lot.”
On the ride home, he picks a stray piece of straw out his hair, ignoring Dean’s amused snorts.
*****
Sam’s had plenty of sex in his life-not just Jessica, but an assortment of shorter term girlfriends and a few drunken one night stands as well. But usually it was one way or the other-either he was full-on with the girl or just having a good time. This time he’s not really sure what they’re doing.
He starts sometimes driving straight to her place when he gets to town instead of going immediately to Dean’s. When he’s been away for a particularly long stretch he tries to imagine what her life looks like day to day while he’s gone. He wonders when the bubble’s going to burst and she’s going to start wanting a full time lover, not just some guy who shows up unexpected with a sack full of dirty laundry and vague descriptions of where he’s been and what he’s been doing.
He thinks she deserves better. Something like the endings to the old time movies they watch together, covers pulled up under their armpits, steaming mugs of hot cocoa between their hands.
Sam’s not old fashioned; he took Intro to Women’s Studies at Stanford (one of four guys in the class). He knows that there’s nothing necessarily incongruous about the fact that she’ll slip a slender finger into his ass while she’s blowing him or beg him to spank her and then wander around in drawstring pajamas, sweet and pink-cheeked. Her sexual appetites don’t make him think she’s any less intelligent or worthy or good.
It’s just-he thinks maybe she should want things, other things.
*****
She asks him to pick her up at work one day-her car is, once again, with Dean at the shop. When Sam walks in she’s still busy, so he leans against the wall and just watches her as she helps a very little boy pick out picture books.
It’s cliche, so he doesn’t ever tell her, but her work clothes turn him on-Mary Janes and neat skirts, button down shirts and sweaters. It’s not a pervy porn thing though-it’s just what she looks like if you don’t know her.
He watches her ass as she’s walking to the desk. She thinks it’s too big but he loves it-likes how she’s substantial. But then he looks up at her face as she’s smiling at the kid and there’s a pain in his chest that almost distracts him from making a mental list of what he’s going to do to her body once he gets her out of those clothes.
That night, as she’s helping slide the condom on and looking down at him with greedy eyes, Sam can’t stop thinking about being naked inside her, his wetness slishsloshing with hers.
It’s a game she likes, stating the obvious during sex, so when he feels the telltale rushing in the pit of his stomach, Sam puts pressure on her forehead with the flat of his hand, holding her still.
“Gonna come. Gonna come inside you.”
*****
He knows her body well. Knows its workings and secrets like Dean knows the Impala. The mole on the underside of her left thigh, how she giggles when he pinpoints it with the tip of his tongue. One breast slightly larger than the other, nipples big and pink-if he suckles there and humps over her underwear sometimes that’s enough. The woman-smells of her cunt and armpits end up trapped in the soft cotton of his pajama pants.
He doesn’t wash those before he takes off on the road.
*****
“Your brother’s quite the eligible bachelor in this town,” she said at some point and at the time Sam thought it was funny, because well, it’s Dean and that’s funny.
But when he comes back from a hunt further upstate and finds the two of them on Dean’s couch, laughing and carrying on over beers and pizza, he remembers that throwaway comment and sees red.
Sam throws his bag down on the floor and ignores their, Hey, didn’t expect you back so soon, Sam. Good to see you, exclamations, glancing at them both with cold eyes and curtly saying that he stinks and needs a shower. He stands motionless under the falling water, blindly and irrationally angry as he pictures Dean’s hands on her tits, imagines her sucking other guys’ dicks, her eyes lighting up as someone else fucks her. He uses up all of the hot water before it even occurs to him to soap himself and ends up bathing with freezing cold water.
When Sam goes back into the living room, she’s gone.
“What the hell is your problem?” Dean asks.
Sam can’t answer that. So he drives to her house the next morning, knowing she’ll be at work, and leaves a note in her mailbox.
I’m an asshole. I’m sorry.
He fills the truck up with gas at the station by the highway and doesn’t come back for three months.
*****
The first time Sam went hunting by himself was weird. Dad never let them before Sam left for Stanford, and since then, well, it was always him and Dean. And that was weird at first too, like those years of being on his own in California-of paying his own bills and sleeping in the same bed every night-counted towards a different kind of manhood, one that doesn’t necessarily apply here.
Now it’s normal, or at least less confusing than staying in one place. All his life, Sam had big, clear cut goals. First it was to get out, then to find his father, and there were, of course, deaths to avenge. Sam tries to imagine what John would have done if he’d lived to see Mary’s killer wiped out. He wonders if maybe Dad ever had women he visited when he was on the road.
Sam calls Dean less than a day after he leaves to say he’s okay.
“I wouldn’t fuck your girl, man, if that’s what you were thinking,” Dean says almost immediately.
“I-I know that.”
“Is she your girl, Sammy? Figure your shit out.”
*****
A few weeks in, Sam realizes that every place he goes is somewhere he’s been before-somewhere they’ve been before. Him and Dean and Dad.
Sometimes people remember him, want to talk about his father. And surprisingly, for the first time in years, he wants that too.
In Arizona, he walks down the street where he first learned how to ride a bike. Sam was six, and John was walking beside him, his dark shadow blocking out the sun until he let go of the handlebars and Sam kept pedaling, making it all the way to the next block by himself.
There’s a town in Texas that they stayed in for close to a year. The waitress at the diner by their old house coos over how tall he’s become, and Sam blushes when she teasingly remarks on how good looks run in the Winchester line, tucking a pencil into her permed gray hair. She brings him a second piece of apple pie free of charge.
So many towns, each with their own history. New signs, street lights, and chain stores. They’re all the same in the end.
His final stop is California, Jess’s grave. Her parents have kept it up well, neat grass, potted flowers. Sam doesn’t go to Lawrence. He doesn’t need to, after all.
*****
On the drive home, Sam loads up on coffee and red bull and candy, driving straight through the night. He listens to the radio and in Nebraska there’s a station he silently dubs the “Dean station” that lasts, miraculously, for dozens of miles longer than it should.
Robert Plant sings, All I ask for, all I pray, Steady loaded woman gonna come my way, and Sam wonders what her real favorite kind of music is, the stuff that you don’t admit to new friends. The old cassette tapes under the bed.
He remembers wrestling for the remote with her and losing it in the fray, with him finally having to excavate under the dust ruffle to find it. There were loud protestations on her part as he found the secret stash of romance novels gathering dust down there in direct contradiction to the Jane Austen and Milan Kundera displayed on her shelves in the living room.
Sam arrives at her place at four AM, dusty and sweaty and disoriented from caffeine. He doesn’t know what day it is, but her car’s there, brown and old and boxy. He pulls his keys out of the ignition and walks up to her doorstep, knees shaking, but ends up going back and sleeping in the cab of his truck.
He wakes up with sun streaming on his face and her voice exclaiming, “Sam! What are you doing out here?” She’s wearing sweat pants and an oversized T-shirt-his, he realizes-with her hair corkscrewing every which way.
Sam blinks and looks up at her, bleerily staring into surprised, concerned eyes. They’re green, he decides, and it means something.
“I just-I want to know you,” he says, cotton-mouthed and choking. “I hope it’s not too late.”
To his relief, she exhales a laugh, and opens the door, gathering him up. “That’s good,” she whispers into his ear, rubbing her cold nose against the side of his face. Her cheeks are wet and Sam wants to say so many things, but he just inhales her shampoo and opens and closes his eyes rapidly. His boots hit the pavement, sending shock waves up his tired legs, and then he looks at her. She’s crying and smiling, nose red.
He leans down all the way to kiss her gently, feeling his back crick and crack, and she pulls his hand to the slight swell of her stomach under his T-shirt and says, “This is yours.”
Now Sam’s fully awake. “I-you-really?”
“Yeah,” she says, biting her lip. “I mean, you don’t have to-”
“No,” he says, and kisses her hard on the mouth, forgetting about the stale thirst on his tongue.
*****
“I’m sorry,” he says into the damp skin above her hipbone.
“I missed you,” he tells her navel, laving her belly button with his tongue.
“I was an idiot,” he whispers between her thighs, licking from top to bottom.
She coughs out a cry as he slides a long finger inside her. “This-before-that’s not who I am,” he says urgently, moving up to cover her, kisses missing her mouth and falling all over her face, neck, shoulders.
“Okay,” she says, shakily. “Okay.” I want you inside me. Please Sam, please.
It’s musky dark inside her bedroom, curtains drawn. It must be Saturday. She doesn’t skip out on work. Just sex, that’s what it was supposed to be, and yet he knows these things about her after all.
He slides between her thighs quietly this time, slowly painting himself with her slickness before pushing all the way in, his arms in a straining push-up. She groans, round cheeks turning pink as she tries to look away, tears rushing down her face. Sam looks down to the place where they’re joined, then up to her stomach, barely swollen but full of potential, and feels calm.
*****
Note: There is now a sequel to this story here.
Author: femmenerd
Characters/Pairings: Sam character study, Sam/OFC, Dean, (John)
Rating: R/NC17
Disclaimer: Not mine. Not for profit. Don’t sue.
Summary: Future!fic. Vague spoilers through SPN 2.09. She’s the first woman Sam sleeps with after they kill the demon. It’s a new beginning for the Winchesters, and he has no idea what to do with himself.
Author’s Note: The lovely and talented poisontaster had a birthday recently. She asked me to make her fic about Sam Winchester knocking someone up. It ended up being about more than that. Title comes from this song, by one of my favorite humans on earth.
Word Count: About 3500.
*****
She’s the first woman Sam sleeps with after they kill the demon. It’s a new beginning for the Winchesters, and he has no idea what to do with himself.
Dean knows. He wants to work at Bobby’s shop fixing cars during the week, drink beer and play pool on the weekends (for fun not necessarily profit), and fight evil on the side because they’re good at it, not because there's nothing else. And he wants Sam to be happy. But Sam’s still restless. He goes on hunting trips alone at the drop of a hat. He wanders.
But he always comes back to crash on his brother’s couch.
Fucking her makes Sam feel like a man--like an adult, not a little brother, or an orphan, or someone who needs to be protected.
She’s older than him, just a bit, and she has a real job, in the children’s section of the library. She has a little house, and a dog, nice bookshelves filled with novels and DVDs, flowerbeds out front. She’s content.
Sam meets her at Dean’s favorite bar, where all the regulars know his brother’s name and the bartender has a whiskey with a beer back out on the counter before Dean’s ass hits the barstool. “Make that two,” Dean says, and slaps a twenty down, grinning at Sam. “I can cover my shiftless brother here.”
Sam also has no idea how Dean’s suddenly become so much more adept at “normal” than he is.
She’s drinking cosmos with her friends at the other end of the bar, laughing, still wearing a straight skirt and cardigan, but her hair’s down, thick and brown and curly. That’s why he doesn’t recognize her at first.
“Dude, you’ve completely lost your manners,” Dean cracks when he catches Sam staring.
“What?”
Dean sighs, handing Sam some money. “Go buy her another foo foo girly drink, and get on with it. Seriously, you’ve gotten uncivilized.”
She says, “I’ve seen you before, at my work,” when he walks over. Sam doesn’t respond immediately and she explains, “The microfiche is right by the staff coffee machine. I’m an addict.” Her smile is big, and genuine, and for the first time in awhile, something besides hunting seems natural. “Do you work with your brother?”
“I’m, ah, freelance,” he says. “Security. Investigation.” And those aren’t even lies.
“So you live in a Noir film?” she says, unfazed. “I’m sorry, but I’m not a femme fatale,” she mock apologizes, straw clutched between her teeth.
Her easy boldness relaxes him, and Sam chats her up with the extent of what he learned in Intro to Film History. For whatever reason, Sam doesn't second guess; he goes home with her, leaving Dean mired in a friendly debate about the best years for Mustangs, nodding goodbye.
Sam says, “Do you want to watch a movie or something?” as he’s examining her collection.
“No point. We wouldn‘t finish it, I think,” she responds, tugging on his shirt tails. He laughs into her mouth as he leans down to kiss her.
“Okay then. Bedroom it is. No arguments here.”
She has plaid flannel sheets, cheery red curtains and knick knacks. This is nothing like a dorm room. Or a motel room. Those are the kinds of rooms Sam’s used to fucking in.
She knows what she wants and tells him. Use your mouth on me. Your hands. Yeah, that’s good. She calls him Daddy when she comes and Sam doesn’t think about his father or hers, just the rhythm of his weight moving over her body, open for him, and the flash in her eyes when she says it. And there’s no shame on her face after, so he doesn’t bother with it either.
*****
Of course, Sam doesn’t always go hunting alone. Dean goes with him when he has time, or is bored, or it’s a really tough job. It’s a relief, that Dean seems to just get him even if Sam really doesn’t understand himself of late. When Sam’s in town, he does odd jobs for Dean and Bobby, keeps their books up to date. He’s happy that Dean’s happy, but Sam can’t help feeling like he’s a little old, or maybe a little young, to be going through “a phase” like this, and he can see in the looks exchanged between his brother and Bobby that that’s what they think is going on.
He’s driving a truck now, a big black one, because really it’s more practical for the job than the Impala ever was, and Sam is a professional now; this is what he does.
*****
Sam’s always had a lot of personal rituals, even when he was a little kid. Like saving the blue M&M’s for last, or packing his duffel in the same order, jeans first, socks last. When he was at school, he used to make lists of homework assignments, carefully crossing out tasks accomplished in thick black lines. Now, after a job’s completed, it’s playing solitaire on his motel room bed. He likes games he can win.
Sam jerks off after he’s had a shower, not before, fully naked, covers splayed, warming himself up by slowly circling his thumb around the head of his cock before shifting to hard strokes, warm friction from his outstretched palm. It’s a pattern with room for deviation in the middle section, but always beginning slow, ending rough.
He finds himself focusing on the juxtaposition of her soft, breezy smiles during conversation with the pained, blown-open expression on her face when he started fucking her in earnest. She said, I’m not fragile, when she wanted more. She cried out, So good, so good. Want it hard. Want it. And he remembers how big that made him feel.
*****
The next time he sees her is at a town potluck. He was surprised Dean wanted to go.
“It’s my first night back, man. I’m tired. Besides, since when are you into this kind of thing?”
Dean just shrugged and said, “There’s food, lots of it, and all I have to do is bring a case of beer and my charming self. C’mon lazy ass, let’s go.”
They roll up to a big, old farmhouse with dozens of cars parked out front. Dean’s tossing smiles and greetings right and left. She’s by the punch bowl, talking to a middle-aged woman he recalls from the main reference desk at the library where she works. She’s got on a knee-length dress with a blue flowered print, flaring out to frame the wide expanse of her hips. He looks down at her flip-flop clad feet instead, feeling suddenly much less exhausted.
“Hey there, girl,” he says quietly when she’s done with her conversation.
She looks up, and Sam finds himself trying to figure out what color her eyes are. Hazel, maybe? That’s the catch-all description.
“So the prodigal brother is back?”
Sam scratches the back of his neck, training his eyes on the constellations of light freckles on her cheeks. He hadn’t noticed those before. “Uh yeah, for a little while anyway.”
“Well, Dean must be glad. He talks about you all the time.”
“Are you guys, ah, friends?” Sam feels like he should know these things, perhaps.
“Oh, well my car breaks down a lot. Old Volvo, you know. He works on it for me anyway, even though I’m a heathen who doesn’t drive American. But then, he kind of has to-my Dad and Bobby go way back.”
“So you’re like, from here from here,” Sam says, thinking about how once upon a time he knew these sorts of things about a woman before he’d had his cock inside her.
“Yep,” she replies. “Small town girl, that’s me. Went away for college, then again for my Master’s, but I always knew I was coming back. Maybe you’ll think it’s weird, but I’ve known since I was five that I wanted to end up helping kids find Nancy Drew books right here in this town.”
“You had a plan,” Sam murmurs.
“Yeah,” she says brightly. “I did.”
Sam thinks about the plans he once had, the ones that took him to California, the test scores and applications and that law school interview he never ended up making, but that line of thought makes him feel dizzy, empty. He looks down at her exposed legs, light brown and smooth, and shakes it off. “I’ve got one, right now,” he says, and touches his fingertips to her wrist.
They end up in the barn, her back up against a wooden pillar, dress rucked up high. Her ass is round and soft, pliable under his hands as Sam holds her up, underwear pushed to one side as he fucks into her.
“I’m a nice guy,” he pants into her neck.
“And I’m a nice girl,” she says, laughing as she squeezes him hard from the inside, making him gasp.
“It’s funny,” she says after, “it was your brother that Bobby warned me about when you two first came to town.”
“D’you think I’m dangerous?” Sam asks playfully. He feels oddly buoyant, outside of time, himself but not.
She considers it as she adjusts her panties. “I think I want to fuck you again. A lot.”
On the ride home, he picks a stray piece of straw out his hair, ignoring Dean’s amused snorts.
*****
Sam’s had plenty of sex in his life-not just Jessica, but an assortment of shorter term girlfriends and a few drunken one night stands as well. But usually it was one way or the other-either he was full-on with the girl or just having a good time. This time he’s not really sure what they’re doing.
He starts sometimes driving straight to her place when he gets to town instead of going immediately to Dean’s. When he’s been away for a particularly long stretch he tries to imagine what her life looks like day to day while he’s gone. He wonders when the bubble’s going to burst and she’s going to start wanting a full time lover, not just some guy who shows up unexpected with a sack full of dirty laundry and vague descriptions of where he’s been and what he’s been doing.
He thinks she deserves better. Something like the endings to the old time movies they watch together, covers pulled up under their armpits, steaming mugs of hot cocoa between their hands.
Sam’s not old fashioned; he took Intro to Women’s Studies at Stanford (one of four guys in the class). He knows that there’s nothing necessarily incongruous about the fact that she’ll slip a slender finger into his ass while she’s blowing him or beg him to spank her and then wander around in drawstring pajamas, sweet and pink-cheeked. Her sexual appetites don’t make him think she’s any less intelligent or worthy or good.
It’s just-he thinks maybe she should want things, other things.
*****
She asks him to pick her up at work one day-her car is, once again, with Dean at the shop. When Sam walks in she’s still busy, so he leans against the wall and just watches her as she helps a very little boy pick out picture books.
It’s cliche, so he doesn’t ever tell her, but her work clothes turn him on-Mary Janes and neat skirts, button down shirts and sweaters. It’s not a pervy porn thing though-it’s just what she looks like if you don’t know her.
He watches her ass as she’s walking to the desk. She thinks it’s too big but he loves it-likes how she’s substantial. But then he looks up at her face as she’s smiling at the kid and there’s a pain in his chest that almost distracts him from making a mental list of what he’s going to do to her body once he gets her out of those clothes.
That night, as she’s helping slide the condom on and looking down at him with greedy eyes, Sam can’t stop thinking about being naked inside her, his wetness slishsloshing with hers.
It’s a game she likes, stating the obvious during sex, so when he feels the telltale rushing in the pit of his stomach, Sam puts pressure on her forehead with the flat of his hand, holding her still.
“Gonna come. Gonna come inside you.”
*****
He knows her body well. Knows its workings and secrets like Dean knows the Impala. The mole on the underside of her left thigh, how she giggles when he pinpoints it with the tip of his tongue. One breast slightly larger than the other, nipples big and pink-if he suckles there and humps over her underwear sometimes that’s enough. The woman-smells of her cunt and armpits end up trapped in the soft cotton of his pajama pants.
He doesn’t wash those before he takes off on the road.
*****
“Your brother’s quite the eligible bachelor in this town,” she said at some point and at the time Sam thought it was funny, because well, it’s Dean and that’s funny.
But when he comes back from a hunt further upstate and finds the two of them on Dean’s couch, laughing and carrying on over beers and pizza, he remembers that throwaway comment and sees red.
Sam throws his bag down on the floor and ignores their, Hey, didn’t expect you back so soon, Sam. Good to see you, exclamations, glancing at them both with cold eyes and curtly saying that he stinks and needs a shower. He stands motionless under the falling water, blindly and irrationally angry as he pictures Dean’s hands on her tits, imagines her sucking other guys’ dicks, her eyes lighting up as someone else fucks her. He uses up all of the hot water before it even occurs to him to soap himself and ends up bathing with freezing cold water.
When Sam goes back into the living room, she’s gone.
“What the hell is your problem?” Dean asks.
Sam can’t answer that. So he drives to her house the next morning, knowing she’ll be at work, and leaves a note in her mailbox.
I’m an asshole. I’m sorry.
He fills the truck up with gas at the station by the highway and doesn’t come back for three months.
*****
The first time Sam went hunting by himself was weird. Dad never let them before Sam left for Stanford, and since then, well, it was always him and Dean. And that was weird at first too, like those years of being on his own in California-of paying his own bills and sleeping in the same bed every night-counted towards a different kind of manhood, one that doesn’t necessarily apply here.
Now it’s normal, or at least less confusing than staying in one place. All his life, Sam had big, clear cut goals. First it was to get out, then to find his father, and there were, of course, deaths to avenge. Sam tries to imagine what John would have done if he’d lived to see Mary’s killer wiped out. He wonders if maybe Dad ever had women he visited when he was on the road.
Sam calls Dean less than a day after he leaves to say he’s okay.
“I wouldn’t fuck your girl, man, if that’s what you were thinking,” Dean says almost immediately.
“I-I know that.”
“Is she your girl, Sammy? Figure your shit out.”
*****
A few weeks in, Sam realizes that every place he goes is somewhere he’s been before-somewhere they’ve been before. Him and Dean and Dad.
Sometimes people remember him, want to talk about his father. And surprisingly, for the first time in years, he wants that too.
In Arizona, he walks down the street where he first learned how to ride a bike. Sam was six, and John was walking beside him, his dark shadow blocking out the sun until he let go of the handlebars and Sam kept pedaling, making it all the way to the next block by himself.
There’s a town in Texas that they stayed in for close to a year. The waitress at the diner by their old house coos over how tall he’s become, and Sam blushes when she teasingly remarks on how good looks run in the Winchester line, tucking a pencil into her permed gray hair. She brings him a second piece of apple pie free of charge.
So many towns, each with their own history. New signs, street lights, and chain stores. They’re all the same in the end.
His final stop is California, Jess’s grave. Her parents have kept it up well, neat grass, potted flowers. Sam doesn’t go to Lawrence. He doesn’t need to, after all.
*****
On the drive home, Sam loads up on coffee and red bull and candy, driving straight through the night. He listens to the radio and in Nebraska there’s a station he silently dubs the “Dean station” that lasts, miraculously, for dozens of miles longer than it should.
Robert Plant sings, All I ask for, all I pray, Steady loaded woman gonna come my way, and Sam wonders what her real favorite kind of music is, the stuff that you don’t admit to new friends. The old cassette tapes under the bed.
He remembers wrestling for the remote with her and losing it in the fray, with him finally having to excavate under the dust ruffle to find it. There were loud protestations on her part as he found the secret stash of romance novels gathering dust down there in direct contradiction to the Jane Austen and Milan Kundera displayed on her shelves in the living room.
Sam arrives at her place at four AM, dusty and sweaty and disoriented from caffeine. He doesn’t know what day it is, but her car’s there, brown and old and boxy. He pulls his keys out of the ignition and walks up to her doorstep, knees shaking, but ends up going back and sleeping in the cab of his truck.
He wakes up with sun streaming on his face and her voice exclaiming, “Sam! What are you doing out here?” She’s wearing sweat pants and an oversized T-shirt-his, he realizes-with her hair corkscrewing every which way.
Sam blinks and looks up at her, bleerily staring into surprised, concerned eyes. They’re green, he decides, and it means something.
“I just-I want to know you,” he says, cotton-mouthed and choking. “I hope it’s not too late.”
To his relief, she exhales a laugh, and opens the door, gathering him up. “That’s good,” she whispers into his ear, rubbing her cold nose against the side of his face. Her cheeks are wet and Sam wants to say so many things, but he just inhales her shampoo and opens and closes his eyes rapidly. His boots hit the pavement, sending shock waves up his tired legs, and then he looks at her. She’s crying and smiling, nose red.
He leans down all the way to kiss her gently, feeling his back crick and crack, and she pulls his hand to the slight swell of her stomach under his T-shirt and says, “This is yours.”
Now Sam’s fully awake. “I-you-really?”
“Yeah,” she says, biting her lip. “I mean, you don’t have to-”
“No,” he says, and kisses her hard on the mouth, forgetting about the stale thirst on his tongue.
*****
“I’m sorry,” he says into the damp skin above her hipbone.
“I missed you,” he tells her navel, laving her belly button with his tongue.
“I was an idiot,” he whispers between her thighs, licking from top to bottom.
She coughs out a cry as he slides a long finger inside her. “This-before-that’s not who I am,” he says urgently, moving up to cover her, kisses missing her mouth and falling all over her face, neck, shoulders.
“Okay,” she says, shakily. “Okay.” I want you inside me. Please Sam, please.
It’s musky dark inside her bedroom, curtains drawn. It must be Saturday. She doesn’t skip out on work. Just sex, that’s what it was supposed to be, and yet he knows these things about her after all.
He slides between her thighs quietly this time, slowly painting himself with her slickness before pushing all the way in, his arms in a straining push-up. She groans, round cheeks turning pink as she tries to look away, tears rushing down her face. Sam looks down to the place where they’re joined, then up to her stomach, barely swollen but full of potential, and feels calm.
*****
Note: There is now a sequel to this story here.