Supernatural fic: In the Dark
Title: In the Dark
Fandom(s): Supernatural
Rating: PG
Word Count: 4,019
Summary: Jessica is well aware Sam’s got some stuff to work through. But it still hurts when she knows, she knows, and he still won’t tell her.
In the Dark
Better to stay in the dark, and stay alive…
She met him middle of sophomore year, Brady (of all people!) introduced her, and her immediate thought was Him? He looks like a puppy who chewed up some shoes, not a pre-law, full-ride undergrad. Plus, the guy rarely talked. By rarely, she meant never, never besides when he was rattling off lawyerly facts or quietly correcting Luis on how to kill a werewolf. And then give the excuse that he saw it on some History Channel special on deviance. Which, given the way he looked, no one questioned.
No one except her.
Their friends pulled the lame-and entirely noticed by the two of them-ploy of “Let’s all go out for a group dinner, but then mysteriously have other places to go” in order to get them alone on a date. It’d been awkward at first, neither knowing really what to say. Sam was an introvert, a loner, a pre-law student; Jessica was an extrovert, a social butterfly, an anthropology student.
But then he’d looked up at her through those long eyelashes and unsure eyes and asked her if she wanted to play darts. She’d withheld a smile at his discomfort but agreed. To her surprise, he’d hit the bull’s-eye every time. To his surprise, so did she. Then he’d muttered something about how he bet he could outshoot her, and she left it alone, but made a note that if ever the opportunity to go to a gun range presented itself, she’d be sure to make use of those deer hunting trips back in Minnesota and clean the floor with him. Turns out, he was an incredible lightweight when it came to drinking, and even though he didn’t exactly share his life story, with the things he did divulge, Jessica realized one thing by the end of the night:
She was done for.
Unlike in the movies, they didn’t spend every waking minute together after that. In fact, they spent more time fighting than they did at peace. But, she’d put it this way-that fire in his gaze, that hard set to his mouth, that restrained anger made him all the more enigmatic. Moreover, the weird, random things he’d get upset or even cry over that didn’t make any sense.
Their friends always ribbed Sam about it, and he brushed it off good-naturedly. She, of course, saw right through it, saw how it affected him. She simply accepted that that’s who Sam was, that he was locked up tighter than a ship in a bottle, and would only show bits of himself when he wanted to.
When he’d shyly asked her if she wanted to share an apartment with him, she’d said yes right away. He’d been somewhat taken aback, but pleased. They co-signed on the lease, she moved in her sizable amount of possessions, Sam moved in his Spartan amount of possessions, and they made it their home. (So to speak.)
She’d inquired once about his family, and that was their first fight. She hadn’t understood why he didn’t even want to say their names, let alone any specifics. He’d let spill his brother’s only once, when he was frustrated and flustered-Dean, she’d immediately cemented to memory-and just from the brief mention, she gathered that he was his older brother, and that he was a pain in the ass.
Another thing that she didn’t know until she moved in was that Sam had weird patterns. He’d get up in the middle of the night, throw on a sweatshirt and shoes so soundlessly that she hadn’t even registered he was awake the first couple of times, and head outside for a few hours doing…something. Sometimes, he’d forget to eat, and she had to snatch the LSAT prep book from his hands, slam down a heaping plate of pasta on the table and stand there until he ate it all. For his size, Sam ate remarkably little.
She didn’t know why he was like this, but it was a part of who Sam was, and, odd as it seemed, she wouldn’t have had it any other way.
It was a pretty average day when Sam changed from enigmatic to What the fuck, Sam?! Jessica had had a final to study for and so passed on Luis’s offer to go bar-hopping, but had convinced Sam to. He’d given her a kiss on her forehead, grabbed a cookie, and left, Luis swearing that he’d end up hammered, so she’d better be prepared to drive over and pick him up. She’d laughed but promised.
Of all things, her pencil had run out of lead. She had no makeup on and was comfortable in sweats, so really didn’t feel like heading out to the store to get some more, and figured that Sam, conscientious to a fault as he was, would have some. She’d never looked inside Sam’s book bag before, but when she finally did, she realized that it wasn’t so much she hadn’t had the intention to, but rather that Sam hadn’t let anyone. When she thought back, Sam had always kept it close to his person. She’d had no reason to search the bag before, so hadn’t thought anything of it. It was just another amusing Sam-ism.
The somewhat weathered bag was set neatly next to the desk, the prep book open on the surface-of course it was-and she’d walked unassumingly over to it. It was normal-looking inside, containing notebooks and textbooks and a calculator. His pencil case was shoved at the bottom, and when she pulled it out, it got caught on something. She tugged it free, but there was a ripping sound, and with dread at having to explain it all to Sam, she inspected the damage.
There, in a duct tape pocket at the bottom, lay an item that she would have never-never-in a billion lifetimes expected Sam to have. A weapon she identified precisely as a Browning nine-mil semi-automatic. She pulled it out with shaking hands, noting that it wasn’t just your average pistol for protection: there was a bullet in the chamber, it was polished and oiled to perfection, and tiny nicks and dings in it suggested it had been used more than once.
She tore apart their home.
She found another pistol hidden underneath their mattress, an abnormal amount of rock salt in the cabinet that stuck when you tried to open it, an old-looking flask filled with water and a box of iron and silver rounds on the top shelf of the closet where she couldn’t reach but he could, and a curved, razor-sharp blade in a false bottom of his nightstand.
She’d been all too ready to shriek at him until she was blue in the face, when she found something else, also hidden in the false bottom. It was a photo, a crinkled photo, and she sat on their bed amongst the impressive array of weapons and looked at it. It was of Sam in a cap and gown, obviously from his high school graduation. He was standing with his arms around two other grads, a large grin on his face, if a bit strained. She smiled despite herself.
It was then that she discovered something else. Someone else, rather. Standing a good few yards behind Sam was another man, one she’d put early-twenties, with shorn hair, a leather jacket, heavy boots, and a smirk that, had she not been completely and head-over-heels in love with Sam, she imagined she’d swoon at.
There was no doubt about it: this was Dean.
Sam was the focus of the picture, clearly, but she didn’t spend much time looking at him. Instead, she looked at Dean. His face was somewhat hurt, but for the overwhelming majority, it was-there was no other word to describe it-proud.
His eyes glinted with satisfaction, his angled stance saying with painful certainty that he wanted to be the one with his arm around Sam’s shoulders, congratulating him (or, perhaps, giving him a brotherly punch on the arm) for making it through high school hell.
She didn’t know Dean, didn’t know practically anything about Sam pre-Stanford, but the scene played out in her head as if she’d been right there. Sam, receiving his diploma, shaking the principal and superintendent’s hand, Dean standing up at the top bleacher, observing the ceremony from a distance; Sam hadn’t asked him to be there. Dean walking down as stealthily as Sam sneaked from the apartment at night down to the milling students post-ceremony, watching with hands shoved in his jeans pockets as Sam grinned and laughed and celebrated with his friends and not with his brother.
Dean on the fringes of Sam’s priorities, Dean wishing nothing more than to look after his little brother, to clap Sam on the back like a big brother does.
It was one small five-by-seven, a snapshot that shouldn’t have revealed anything but Sam’s happiness with his two friends and faceless bystanders in the background, but Jessica didn’t study human behavior for nothing. She didn’t know if Sam kept the photo to remember his friends or because Dean was in the picture, but she did know one thing: she wasn’t going to mention it.
She sat on the bed for hours, just staring at the photo, staring at the objects that defined a facet of Sam she never would have imagined existed. Luis called around two in the morning, voice slurred and too-happy, telling her that Sam hadn’t had more than a shot or two and so was on his way home. Luis, apparently, had hit it off with the bartender, and Jessica hung up on him when he started going into details of what he planned on doing later.
It couldn’t have been more than twenty minutes to whatever bar Sam was at, and Jessica, feeling warring emotions in her chest, meticulously put everything back where it belonged. (That is, “belonged.”) She threw on a nightshirt and shorts, shut her book with her lead-less pencil holding her place, and trudged upstairs again, climbing into bed and feigning sleep.
Sam arrived scant minutes later, turned the key in the lock and made his way to their bedroom just as noiselessly as ever. Jessica concentrated on her breathing, making it as deep as if in slumber, but her eyes stayed open, even as she felt Sam get changed, slip under the covers on his side of the bed, kiss her shoulder, and try to sleep himself.
That middle of junior year was when her view of Sam had all changed, and also when she’d become a hell of a lot more perceptive.
Evidently, when you find out your boyfriend has a secret weapons cache, affinity for condiments, and odd graduation photo, you notice lots of things, and others fall into place.
She made sure her own actions and rituals remained the same, and Sam, for all his abnormally high intuition, didn’t notice. She stayed to the shadows, stayed to the doorways, and watched. She watched as Sam refilled the old flask of water, dropped in a rosary-where’d he get that?-and murmured a few sentences over it, words she vaguely recognized as Latin. She watched as he took down a homemade sawed-off and reloaded it with what looked like salt rounds, before placing it back on the high shelf of their closet.
She followed him once when he did his periodical jaunts out of their apartment. There’d been a recent string of suicides on campus, but it was dead week, and they’d been grad students in the School of Engineering, all vying for a prestigious semiconductor position. It wasn’t all that unprecedented.
She followed Sam as he drove to a local cemetery, she followed him and hid behind a tree and watched as he dug up a grave in a frighteningly short amount of time, then broke open a coffin, poured in rock salt and lighter fluid, then tossed in a Zippo, illuminating the area with orange light. She studied Sam’s face, which was fatigued and taut, but the things that were missing were fear, revulsion, bewilderment, the kinds of emotions someone should have when torching a corpse. But Sam’s was as if he’d done it a million times before.
She left before he did, getting in her car and driving back to their apartment, settling once more into their bed and not knowing what to do with herself. A sane person would make tracks out of there, quite possibly contact the nearest psychiatric facility, she knew that. She wasn’t stupid. And yet she couldn’t bring herself to abandon her boyfriend. It wasn’t that Sam was perfect, even before this…creepiness: Sam was a weird dude, his known family history was just about nil, and he had a free ride. She knew-and many had told her-that she could find someone more “suitable” than Sam.
But she couldn’t help herself. She wouldn’t abandon Sam, because she couldn’t.
So she did the next logical thing. She researched. She researched, and she found that what Sam was doing could be considered normal…in certain circles. Upon reaching the first few paranormal sites, she rolled her eyes. No way was this what Sam was involved in. But as she read further, and looked at websites that weren’t so Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Sam’s actions kind of made sense. (“Sense,” of course, being a relative term.)
And though she was very disinclined to believe that it was Sam’s doing, the suicides stopped, and the chill around the School of Engineering that everyone had simply attributed to being a cold two weeks in May disappeared.
No one commented on Sam’s behavior, because as far as they knew, Sam was acting his usual self. It was only she who’d caught the difference, apparently. And now she knew what he was doing, his mindset, she wasn’t sure she wished she was apprised.
But what could she do? Call her a coward, but she didn’t want Sam to just lie to her face, which is what she feared he’d do. She wasn’t naïve, she’d assumed Sam had bent the truth before, as everyone is wont to do, but she didn’t want outright lies.
So she fell into as similar a routine as before she found Sam’s arcane double life, and tried to come to grips with the fact that her boyfriend was kind of a freak.
It was all fine and dandy until September of their senior year.
When a certain relative of Sam’s broke into their apartment and said hello by way of getting into a scuffle with him. She’d awakened easily, and burst into the front room, switching on the light and seeing Sam and the intruder’s eyes squint at the abrupt change in light.
“Sam?” she asked, frowning as she looked from him to the man beside him. Her eyes widened the slightest bit as she recognized the face.
“Jess. Hey,” said Sam, somewhat panting. He turned to whom she now knew to be his brother, and introduced uncomfortably, “Dean, this is my girlfriend, Jessica.”
“Wait, your brother Dean?” she asked innocently, playing her part well.
She smiled-this was genuine-and literally saw Dean put up a mask, his drawn face changing to that of relaxation and wandering eyes. As charming as she’d gathered from the photo. “I love the Smurfs,” he commented, staring at her barely-covered chest. Sam glowered as Dean walked towards her and smirked, “You know, I gotta tell you: you are completely out of my brother’s league.”
Jessica chuckled, unimpressed, and said something about wanting to go put on a shirt. (Which, as she said it, she acknowledged it was rather true; she was fine with Sam seeing her like this, but she really didn’t know Dean. Awkward.)
She was entirely unsurprised when Dean told her it was unnecessary; but then his joking manner immediately fell into one of barely-restrained, serious urgency, and he backed up to where Sam was. Gesturing to his brother, he asserted, “Anyway, I gotta borrow your boyfriend here, talk about some private family business. But nice meeting you.”
She fully intended to leave them to it, but some stupid, girly, curious part of her wanted to see how Sam acted around Dean. She was ignoring the fact that Dean had obviously broken into their apartment, and she was ignoring the fact that they were out of breath as if their tussle was more of a brawl, but she could literally feel the tension in the air. Call it her anthropological side or whatever, but she wanted to make note of the brothers’ deportment. Especially these two-Sam didn’t talk much at all about his family, which meant only one thing: dysfunctional. Dr. Phil dysfunctional.
Sam didn’t disappoint, and he defiantly walked over to her, putting his arm securely, if rather stiffly, around her shoulders, staring at Dean. “No,” he said sternly. “No, whatever you want to say, you can say it in front of her.”
“Okay,” agreed Dean amicably enough. But she saw the look in his eyes, that calculated, I’ve-known-you-your-whole-life stare that bored straight into Sam’s, and she knew right then that, regardless of the fact she was in the room, she’d be confounded. “Dad hasn’t been home in a few days.”
“So he’s working overtime on a Miller Time shift, he’ll stumble back in sooner or later,” said Sam. Jessica winced at the harsh tone in his voice. She’d reiterate: dys.func.tional.
“Dad’s on a hunting trip,” said Dean, his voice dark and significant. “And he hasn’t been home in a few days.”
Jessica looked up at Sam, only to see his face in a conflicted but comprehending expression. It’s one she’d never seen him wear before, and was certain she never wanted to see again.
“Jess, excuse us,” he said, his voice matching his expression, and his eyes never moving from Dean’s. “We have to go outside.”
She watched as Sam, shoulders tighter than she’d ever seen, pulled on a sweatshirt and walked heavily out the door, Dean flashing her a last, halfhearted grin before following. She went to the window, and a few moments later, saw the two boys emerge, walking to a black car (a totally sweet car, if she had her say), Dean throwing open the trunk. Their frames were close enough together that she couldn’t quite see what was inside, but she could definitely tell that there was a false bottom-like Sam’s nightstand-and that a shotgun was propping it open.
A year and a half ago this would have shocked her, and she was sure she would’ve run down there and demanded an explanation. But…instead, she simply continued to watch, the boys both still awkward around each other. However, once Dean brought out a tape recorder and hit Play, she saw Sam’s face morph into one of recognition, and suddenly, much like Dean’s had hidden behind a mask, she saw Sam’s-her Sam-fade away into a hard, purposeful visage.
Sam said something, and Dean put away the recorder, tossing the shotgun in the trunk and slamming the top down. Their voices were still indistinguishable from her vantage point, but they were obviously terse, Dean snapping something at Sam, Sam responding just as upsettingly.
Ultimately, Sam must have won over (or at least temporarily persuaded) Dean, because he left his brother standing there, face shadowed harshly in the streetlamp, and headed back into the apartment.
Knowing it wouldn’t bode well if Sam caught her observing, she retreated into the bathroom, pretending to be fixing her hair or some such. She listened as Sam went into their bedroom, sounds of packing reaching her ears.
She’d had a feeling that from the moment Dean broke in that her life was about to be upended, hers and Sam’s, and she wasn’t wrong. Creeping out of the bathroom, she looked in the bedroom, seeing an overnighter filled with nearly all of Sam’s meager wardrobe. She watched as he took the wicked, curved blade from the nightstand and placed it in the bag as well, and sighed.
But she had a role to perform, and so she alerted her presence, waiting until Sam had at least closed the bag. She was, after all, not supposed to be aware of Sam’s other belongings. “Wait, you’re taking off?” she asked, not bothering to hide the hurt confusion in her voice. “Is this about your dad? Is he all right?”
“Yeah,” said Sam, slinging the bag over his shoulder. “You know, just a little family drama.”
No shit, Sam, she wanted to say but didn’t. “Your brother said he was on some kind of hunting trip.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Sam. He’d never lied to her before, not completely, but she saw his expression, and it was…different, and she knew he was about to. “He’s just deer hunting up at the cabin.” You don’t have a cabin, Sam! “He’s probably got Jim, Jack, and José along with him. I’m just going to go bring him back.”
“What about the interview?” she asked, hoping at least Sam couldn’t-wouldn’t-lie about that.
“I’ll make the interview,” he said, and she was pretty sure he was at least truthful then. “This is only for a couple days.”
“Sam,” she pleaded, giving up on the act. “I mean, please. Just stop for a second. You…sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine,” answered Sam, and she knew she’d lost him. Lost his honest self for the minute, anyhow.
She looked at the carpet a second, and then met Sam’s blue-green eyes again. “It’s just…you won’t even talk about your family,” she said, thinking of the hoops she’d unintentionally jumped through in order to find out what his only brother even looked like. “And now you’re taking off in the middle of the night to spend a weekend with them? And with Monday coming up, which is kind of a huge deal.”
Easy as breathing, Sam fabricated, “Hey. Everything’s going to be okay. I will be back in time, I promise.”
Before she could say anything else, he pecked her on the cheek, more chaste than usual, and hightailed it out of there. She bit her lip and shouted after him, “At least tell me where you’re going!”
He didn’t.
He didn’t, and it hurt. It hurt that she knew, she fucking knew, and he still wouldn’t tell her. He wouldn’t tell her that he killed ghosts and all sorts of other things she’d only seen in her Mythology and Folklore class, and seemed merely resigned about Dean busting into their apartment and demanding he come with him to find their father.
It hurt that Sam lied to her. That Sam had never lied to her, and had suddenly started.
And it hurt that she baked cookies for him for his return, in the hopes that maybe, just maybe he’d tell her.
And now, as she’s pinned to the ceiling, pain as never before ripping through her stomach and watching in horror as Sam comes into the room, it hurts that she’s never going to know Sam’s family. She’s never going to meet Dean again, never going to decipher what makes him tick like she’d intended. Never going to kiss Sam again, or hug Sam again, or accept the proposal she knew he was going to ask. Never going to hear from Sam’s mouth what he does, what monsters he goes after.
And more than the literal fire surrounding her, more than Sam’s sheer terror as he sees her on the ceiling, more than Dean’s terror as he sees her and tears Sam from the room, it hurts that she knows and she’d never be able to tell Sam that it’s okay. That maybe one day, she’d like to go with him, see what Sam grew up doing, what Dean grew up doing.
Most of all, it hurts that she’d never again get to say the words that she’d always adored coming out of her or Sam’s mouth as she looked into his eyes or he whispered in her ear.
I love you.
Fandom(s): Supernatural
Rating: PG
Word Count: 4,019
Summary: Jessica is well aware Sam’s got some stuff to work through. But it still hurts when she knows, she knows, and he still won’t tell her.
In the Dark
Better to stay in the dark, and stay alive…
She met him middle of sophomore year, Brady (of all people!) introduced her, and her immediate thought was Him? He looks like a puppy who chewed up some shoes, not a pre-law, full-ride undergrad. Plus, the guy rarely talked. By rarely, she meant never, never besides when he was rattling off lawyerly facts or quietly correcting Luis on how to kill a werewolf. And then give the excuse that he saw it on some History Channel special on deviance. Which, given the way he looked, no one questioned.
No one except her.
Their friends pulled the lame-and entirely noticed by the two of them-ploy of “Let’s all go out for a group dinner, but then mysteriously have other places to go” in order to get them alone on a date. It’d been awkward at first, neither knowing really what to say. Sam was an introvert, a loner, a pre-law student; Jessica was an extrovert, a social butterfly, an anthropology student.
But then he’d looked up at her through those long eyelashes and unsure eyes and asked her if she wanted to play darts. She’d withheld a smile at his discomfort but agreed. To her surprise, he’d hit the bull’s-eye every time. To his surprise, so did she. Then he’d muttered something about how he bet he could outshoot her, and she left it alone, but made a note that if ever the opportunity to go to a gun range presented itself, she’d be sure to make use of those deer hunting trips back in Minnesota and clean the floor with him. Turns out, he was an incredible lightweight when it came to drinking, and even though he didn’t exactly share his life story, with the things he did divulge, Jessica realized one thing by the end of the night:
She was done for.
Unlike in the movies, they didn’t spend every waking minute together after that. In fact, they spent more time fighting than they did at peace. But, she’d put it this way-that fire in his gaze, that hard set to his mouth, that restrained anger made him all the more enigmatic. Moreover, the weird, random things he’d get upset or even cry over that didn’t make any sense.
Their friends always ribbed Sam about it, and he brushed it off good-naturedly. She, of course, saw right through it, saw how it affected him. She simply accepted that that’s who Sam was, that he was locked up tighter than a ship in a bottle, and would only show bits of himself when he wanted to.
When he’d shyly asked her if she wanted to share an apartment with him, she’d said yes right away. He’d been somewhat taken aback, but pleased. They co-signed on the lease, she moved in her sizable amount of possessions, Sam moved in his Spartan amount of possessions, and they made it their home. (So to speak.)
She’d inquired once about his family, and that was their first fight. She hadn’t understood why he didn’t even want to say their names, let alone any specifics. He’d let spill his brother’s only once, when he was frustrated and flustered-Dean, she’d immediately cemented to memory-and just from the brief mention, she gathered that he was his older brother, and that he was a pain in the ass.
Another thing that she didn’t know until she moved in was that Sam had weird patterns. He’d get up in the middle of the night, throw on a sweatshirt and shoes so soundlessly that she hadn’t even registered he was awake the first couple of times, and head outside for a few hours doing…something. Sometimes, he’d forget to eat, and she had to snatch the LSAT prep book from his hands, slam down a heaping plate of pasta on the table and stand there until he ate it all. For his size, Sam ate remarkably little.
She didn’t know why he was like this, but it was a part of who Sam was, and, odd as it seemed, she wouldn’t have had it any other way.
It was a pretty average day when Sam changed from enigmatic to What the fuck, Sam?! Jessica had had a final to study for and so passed on Luis’s offer to go bar-hopping, but had convinced Sam to. He’d given her a kiss on her forehead, grabbed a cookie, and left, Luis swearing that he’d end up hammered, so she’d better be prepared to drive over and pick him up. She’d laughed but promised.
Of all things, her pencil had run out of lead. She had no makeup on and was comfortable in sweats, so really didn’t feel like heading out to the store to get some more, and figured that Sam, conscientious to a fault as he was, would have some. She’d never looked inside Sam’s book bag before, but when she finally did, she realized that it wasn’t so much she hadn’t had the intention to, but rather that Sam hadn’t let anyone. When she thought back, Sam had always kept it close to his person. She’d had no reason to search the bag before, so hadn’t thought anything of it. It was just another amusing Sam-ism.
The somewhat weathered bag was set neatly next to the desk, the prep book open on the surface-of course it was-and she’d walked unassumingly over to it. It was normal-looking inside, containing notebooks and textbooks and a calculator. His pencil case was shoved at the bottom, and when she pulled it out, it got caught on something. She tugged it free, but there was a ripping sound, and with dread at having to explain it all to Sam, she inspected the damage.
There, in a duct tape pocket at the bottom, lay an item that she would have never-never-in a billion lifetimes expected Sam to have. A weapon she identified precisely as a Browning nine-mil semi-automatic. She pulled it out with shaking hands, noting that it wasn’t just your average pistol for protection: there was a bullet in the chamber, it was polished and oiled to perfection, and tiny nicks and dings in it suggested it had been used more than once.
She tore apart their home.
She found another pistol hidden underneath their mattress, an abnormal amount of rock salt in the cabinet that stuck when you tried to open it, an old-looking flask filled with water and a box of iron and silver rounds on the top shelf of the closet where she couldn’t reach but he could, and a curved, razor-sharp blade in a false bottom of his nightstand.
She’d been all too ready to shriek at him until she was blue in the face, when she found something else, also hidden in the false bottom. It was a photo, a crinkled photo, and she sat on their bed amongst the impressive array of weapons and looked at it. It was of Sam in a cap and gown, obviously from his high school graduation. He was standing with his arms around two other grads, a large grin on his face, if a bit strained. She smiled despite herself.
It was then that she discovered something else. Someone else, rather. Standing a good few yards behind Sam was another man, one she’d put early-twenties, with shorn hair, a leather jacket, heavy boots, and a smirk that, had she not been completely and head-over-heels in love with Sam, she imagined she’d swoon at.
There was no doubt about it: this was Dean.
Sam was the focus of the picture, clearly, but she didn’t spend much time looking at him. Instead, she looked at Dean. His face was somewhat hurt, but for the overwhelming majority, it was-there was no other word to describe it-proud.
His eyes glinted with satisfaction, his angled stance saying with painful certainty that he wanted to be the one with his arm around Sam’s shoulders, congratulating him (or, perhaps, giving him a brotherly punch on the arm) for making it through high school hell.
She didn’t know Dean, didn’t know practically anything about Sam pre-Stanford, but the scene played out in her head as if she’d been right there. Sam, receiving his diploma, shaking the principal and superintendent’s hand, Dean standing up at the top bleacher, observing the ceremony from a distance; Sam hadn’t asked him to be there. Dean walking down as stealthily as Sam sneaked from the apartment at night down to the milling students post-ceremony, watching with hands shoved in his jeans pockets as Sam grinned and laughed and celebrated with his friends and not with his brother.
Dean on the fringes of Sam’s priorities, Dean wishing nothing more than to look after his little brother, to clap Sam on the back like a big brother does.
It was one small five-by-seven, a snapshot that shouldn’t have revealed anything but Sam’s happiness with his two friends and faceless bystanders in the background, but Jessica didn’t study human behavior for nothing. She didn’t know if Sam kept the photo to remember his friends or because Dean was in the picture, but she did know one thing: she wasn’t going to mention it.
She sat on the bed for hours, just staring at the photo, staring at the objects that defined a facet of Sam she never would have imagined existed. Luis called around two in the morning, voice slurred and too-happy, telling her that Sam hadn’t had more than a shot or two and so was on his way home. Luis, apparently, had hit it off with the bartender, and Jessica hung up on him when he started going into details of what he planned on doing later.
It couldn’t have been more than twenty minutes to whatever bar Sam was at, and Jessica, feeling warring emotions in her chest, meticulously put everything back where it belonged. (That is, “belonged.”) She threw on a nightshirt and shorts, shut her book with her lead-less pencil holding her place, and trudged upstairs again, climbing into bed and feigning sleep.
Sam arrived scant minutes later, turned the key in the lock and made his way to their bedroom just as noiselessly as ever. Jessica concentrated on her breathing, making it as deep as if in slumber, but her eyes stayed open, even as she felt Sam get changed, slip under the covers on his side of the bed, kiss her shoulder, and try to sleep himself.
That middle of junior year was when her view of Sam had all changed, and also when she’d become a hell of a lot more perceptive.
Evidently, when you find out your boyfriend has a secret weapons cache, affinity for condiments, and odd graduation photo, you notice lots of things, and others fall into place.
She made sure her own actions and rituals remained the same, and Sam, for all his abnormally high intuition, didn’t notice. She stayed to the shadows, stayed to the doorways, and watched. She watched as Sam refilled the old flask of water, dropped in a rosary-where’d he get that?-and murmured a few sentences over it, words she vaguely recognized as Latin. She watched as he took down a homemade sawed-off and reloaded it with what looked like salt rounds, before placing it back on the high shelf of their closet.
She followed him once when he did his periodical jaunts out of their apartment. There’d been a recent string of suicides on campus, but it was dead week, and they’d been grad students in the School of Engineering, all vying for a prestigious semiconductor position. It wasn’t all that unprecedented.
She followed Sam as he drove to a local cemetery, she followed him and hid behind a tree and watched as he dug up a grave in a frighteningly short amount of time, then broke open a coffin, poured in rock salt and lighter fluid, then tossed in a Zippo, illuminating the area with orange light. She studied Sam’s face, which was fatigued and taut, but the things that were missing were fear, revulsion, bewilderment, the kinds of emotions someone should have when torching a corpse. But Sam’s was as if he’d done it a million times before.
She left before he did, getting in her car and driving back to their apartment, settling once more into their bed and not knowing what to do with herself. A sane person would make tracks out of there, quite possibly contact the nearest psychiatric facility, she knew that. She wasn’t stupid. And yet she couldn’t bring herself to abandon her boyfriend. It wasn’t that Sam was perfect, even before this…creepiness: Sam was a weird dude, his known family history was just about nil, and he had a free ride. She knew-and many had told her-that she could find someone more “suitable” than Sam.
But she couldn’t help herself. She wouldn’t abandon Sam, because she couldn’t.
So she did the next logical thing. She researched. She researched, and she found that what Sam was doing could be considered normal…in certain circles. Upon reaching the first few paranormal sites, she rolled her eyes. No way was this what Sam was involved in. But as she read further, and looked at websites that weren’t so Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Sam’s actions kind of made sense. (“Sense,” of course, being a relative term.)
And though she was very disinclined to believe that it was Sam’s doing, the suicides stopped, and the chill around the School of Engineering that everyone had simply attributed to being a cold two weeks in May disappeared.
No one commented on Sam’s behavior, because as far as they knew, Sam was acting his usual self. It was only she who’d caught the difference, apparently. And now she knew what he was doing, his mindset, she wasn’t sure she wished she was apprised.
But what could she do? Call her a coward, but she didn’t want Sam to just lie to her face, which is what she feared he’d do. She wasn’t naïve, she’d assumed Sam had bent the truth before, as everyone is wont to do, but she didn’t want outright lies.
So she fell into as similar a routine as before she found Sam’s arcane double life, and tried to come to grips with the fact that her boyfriend was kind of a freak.
It was all fine and dandy until September of their senior year.
When a certain relative of Sam’s broke into their apartment and said hello by way of getting into a scuffle with him. She’d awakened easily, and burst into the front room, switching on the light and seeing Sam and the intruder’s eyes squint at the abrupt change in light.
“Sam?” she asked, frowning as she looked from him to the man beside him. Her eyes widened the slightest bit as she recognized the face.
“Jess. Hey,” said Sam, somewhat panting. He turned to whom she now knew to be his brother, and introduced uncomfortably, “Dean, this is my girlfriend, Jessica.”
“Wait, your brother Dean?” she asked innocently, playing her part well.
She smiled-this was genuine-and literally saw Dean put up a mask, his drawn face changing to that of relaxation and wandering eyes. As charming as she’d gathered from the photo. “I love the Smurfs,” he commented, staring at her barely-covered chest. Sam glowered as Dean walked towards her and smirked, “You know, I gotta tell you: you are completely out of my brother’s league.”
Jessica chuckled, unimpressed, and said something about wanting to go put on a shirt. (Which, as she said it, she acknowledged it was rather true; she was fine with Sam seeing her like this, but she really didn’t know Dean. Awkward.)
She was entirely unsurprised when Dean told her it was unnecessary; but then his joking manner immediately fell into one of barely-restrained, serious urgency, and he backed up to where Sam was. Gesturing to his brother, he asserted, “Anyway, I gotta borrow your boyfriend here, talk about some private family business. But nice meeting you.”
She fully intended to leave them to it, but some stupid, girly, curious part of her wanted to see how Sam acted around Dean. She was ignoring the fact that Dean had obviously broken into their apartment, and she was ignoring the fact that they were out of breath as if their tussle was more of a brawl, but she could literally feel the tension in the air. Call it her anthropological side or whatever, but she wanted to make note of the brothers’ deportment. Especially these two-Sam didn’t talk much at all about his family, which meant only one thing: dysfunctional. Dr. Phil dysfunctional.
Sam didn’t disappoint, and he defiantly walked over to her, putting his arm securely, if rather stiffly, around her shoulders, staring at Dean. “No,” he said sternly. “No, whatever you want to say, you can say it in front of her.”
“Okay,” agreed Dean amicably enough. But she saw the look in his eyes, that calculated, I’ve-known-you-your-whole-life stare that bored straight into Sam’s, and she knew right then that, regardless of the fact she was in the room, she’d be confounded. “Dad hasn’t been home in a few days.”
“So he’s working overtime on a Miller Time shift, he’ll stumble back in sooner or later,” said Sam. Jessica winced at the harsh tone in his voice. She’d reiterate: dys.func.tional.
“Dad’s on a hunting trip,” said Dean, his voice dark and significant. “And he hasn’t been home in a few days.”
Jessica looked up at Sam, only to see his face in a conflicted but comprehending expression. It’s one she’d never seen him wear before, and was certain she never wanted to see again.
“Jess, excuse us,” he said, his voice matching his expression, and his eyes never moving from Dean’s. “We have to go outside.”
She watched as Sam, shoulders tighter than she’d ever seen, pulled on a sweatshirt and walked heavily out the door, Dean flashing her a last, halfhearted grin before following. She went to the window, and a few moments later, saw the two boys emerge, walking to a black car (a totally sweet car, if she had her say), Dean throwing open the trunk. Their frames were close enough together that she couldn’t quite see what was inside, but she could definitely tell that there was a false bottom-like Sam’s nightstand-and that a shotgun was propping it open.
A year and a half ago this would have shocked her, and she was sure she would’ve run down there and demanded an explanation. But…instead, she simply continued to watch, the boys both still awkward around each other. However, once Dean brought out a tape recorder and hit Play, she saw Sam’s face morph into one of recognition, and suddenly, much like Dean’s had hidden behind a mask, she saw Sam’s-her Sam-fade away into a hard, purposeful visage.
Sam said something, and Dean put away the recorder, tossing the shotgun in the trunk and slamming the top down. Their voices were still indistinguishable from her vantage point, but they were obviously terse, Dean snapping something at Sam, Sam responding just as upsettingly.
Ultimately, Sam must have won over (or at least temporarily persuaded) Dean, because he left his brother standing there, face shadowed harshly in the streetlamp, and headed back into the apartment.
Knowing it wouldn’t bode well if Sam caught her observing, she retreated into the bathroom, pretending to be fixing her hair or some such. She listened as Sam went into their bedroom, sounds of packing reaching her ears.
She’d had a feeling that from the moment Dean broke in that her life was about to be upended, hers and Sam’s, and she wasn’t wrong. Creeping out of the bathroom, she looked in the bedroom, seeing an overnighter filled with nearly all of Sam’s meager wardrobe. She watched as he took the wicked, curved blade from the nightstand and placed it in the bag as well, and sighed.
But she had a role to perform, and so she alerted her presence, waiting until Sam had at least closed the bag. She was, after all, not supposed to be aware of Sam’s other belongings. “Wait, you’re taking off?” she asked, not bothering to hide the hurt confusion in her voice. “Is this about your dad? Is he all right?”
“Yeah,” said Sam, slinging the bag over his shoulder. “You know, just a little family drama.”
No shit, Sam, she wanted to say but didn’t. “Your brother said he was on some kind of hunting trip.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Sam. He’d never lied to her before, not completely, but she saw his expression, and it was…different, and she knew he was about to. “He’s just deer hunting up at the cabin.” You don’t have a cabin, Sam! “He’s probably got Jim, Jack, and José along with him. I’m just going to go bring him back.”
“What about the interview?” she asked, hoping at least Sam couldn’t-wouldn’t-lie about that.
“I’ll make the interview,” he said, and she was pretty sure he was at least truthful then. “This is only for a couple days.”
“Sam,” she pleaded, giving up on the act. “I mean, please. Just stop for a second. You…sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine,” answered Sam, and she knew she’d lost him. Lost his honest self for the minute, anyhow.
She looked at the carpet a second, and then met Sam’s blue-green eyes again. “It’s just…you won’t even talk about your family,” she said, thinking of the hoops she’d unintentionally jumped through in order to find out what his only brother even looked like. “And now you’re taking off in the middle of the night to spend a weekend with them? And with Monday coming up, which is kind of a huge deal.”
Easy as breathing, Sam fabricated, “Hey. Everything’s going to be okay. I will be back in time, I promise.”
Before she could say anything else, he pecked her on the cheek, more chaste than usual, and hightailed it out of there. She bit her lip and shouted after him, “At least tell me where you’re going!”
He didn’t.
He didn’t, and it hurt. It hurt that she knew, she fucking knew, and he still wouldn’t tell her. He wouldn’t tell her that he killed ghosts and all sorts of other things she’d only seen in her Mythology and Folklore class, and seemed merely resigned about Dean busting into their apartment and demanding he come with him to find their father.
It hurt that Sam lied to her. That Sam had never lied to her, and had suddenly started.
And it hurt that she baked cookies for him for his return, in the hopes that maybe, just maybe he’d tell her.
And now, as she’s pinned to the ceiling, pain as never before ripping through her stomach and watching in horror as Sam comes into the room, it hurts that she’s never going to know Sam’s family. She’s never going to meet Dean again, never going to decipher what makes him tick like she’d intended. Never going to kiss Sam again, or hug Sam again, or accept the proposal she knew he was going to ask. Never going to hear from Sam’s mouth what he does, what monsters he goes after.
And more than the literal fire surrounding her, more than Sam’s sheer terror as he sees her on the ceiling, more than Dean’s terror as he sees her and tears Sam from the room, it hurts that she knows and she’d never be able to tell Sam that it’s okay. That maybe one day, she’d like to go with him, see what Sam grew up doing, what Dean grew up doing.
Most of all, it hurts that she’d never again get to say the words that she’d always adored coming out of her or Sam’s mouth as she looked into his eyes or he whispered in her ear.
I love you.