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runedgirlTheir Bruises On The Inside
Genre: Wincest
Pairing: Sam/Dean (with Sam/Jess, Sam/OMC, Sam/OFC, Dean/Cassie, Dean/OMC, Dean/OFC)
Rating: NC17
Word count: 21,200
Summary: Sam and Dean through the eyes of the people they meet while Sam is at Stanford – strangers, friends, lovers – as they make their way back to each other. Outsider pov for most of the story.
“They used to put up with each other, but Sam— He never wanted what Dad wanted for us. Even when he was a kid, always asking for books and doin’ his homework in the back seat and balking when Dad wanted us to train—do other things.”
“Other things.”
“Important things. Sam just, you know, he had his head in the clouds. Smart, smart as a whip, like you. Big words, big thoughts. Big brain. He could figure out the most obscure mysteries, research the hell out of anything you threw at him, figure it out, just… You wouldn’t believe how smart he was.”
“Was? Is he—”
She can feel the tension rocket through Dean’s body, like she just gave him an electric shock with her question. His heart thump-thump-thumps, triple-time, just like that.
“No! No, he’s away. He’s at school. Stanford.”
That is not what Cassie was expecting. Dean’s little brother, at Stanford?
“What’s he studying?”
“He’s prelaw,” Dean says, and there’s unmistakable pride in his voice, but there’s also an edge of anger that Cassie doesn’t understand.
“That’s good, right?”
He huffs again. His heart rate is still kicked up, coming down slowly. He runs a hand absently up her arm, slides fingers through her hair.
“He’s got a different life. He’s a different person. So much has happened over the past year, and I don’t know any of it—and neither does he. Knew every single thing that happened to me for eighteen years, and now… We’d be strangers if I ever saw him again.”
It’s a strange way to talk about his brother being at college, but every time Dean talks about his family even a little, it’s strange. There’s hurt in his voice, and regret. Longing.
“Why don’t you go visit him if you miss him that much?”
Dean stiffens. She touched some kind of nerve.
“Who says I miss him? I don’t fucking miss him. He left— He chose that life; he didn’t want the life he had with us. He doesn’t want me there, that’s obvious. Just be an embarrassment.”
Whoa. Maybe the reason he’s not talking about his family is because they are seriously fucked up. Cassie sits up, rolling to the side and off of him. He’s agitated, and it’s bringing her wide awake when she was hoping to be asleep.
“Look, I don’t know why you think you’d be an embarrassment, but it’s crystal clear that you’ve got an issue with your brother going to college. Were you mad that it couldn’t be you? That you had to stay behind in this family business you won’t talk about?”
“No, I’m not mad about that—I’m proud of that! I’m proud of the family business.”
“Really? Because you could’ve fooled me. You won’t even tell me what the hell it is! You seem more ashamed than proud, honestly.”
He’s the angriest she’s ever seen him; so angry that he clams up and rolls over, facing away from her.
“Very mature,” she can’t resist saying to his bare back.
He doesn’t answer.
She doesn’t bring it up again.
Two days later he gets a text and starts packing his duffel, saying he’ll probably “only” be gone for a week or two.
“That’s it? That’s all you’re gonna tell me, and I’m just supposed to wait around? Fuck you, Dean. I’m not having a relationship with someone who doesn’t trust me enough to share who they are. You say that’s so important to you—it’s obvious you miss Sam being that person—so why not let me be that for you?”
To her shock, he does. Or he tries. Or he makes up something that he thinks she’ll buy simply because it’s so preposterous, because who would make up that shit about hunting monsters and killing ghosts? His phone keeps buzzing the whole time, and he’s increasingly agitated, pacing and raising his voice and insisting that this is life-and-death and he has to go like now.
She finally tells him to go and not come back, even though it feels like it’s breaking her heart in two.
“Really? You too? That’s just priceless—another person who claims to love me and then walks the fuck out on me.”
He doesn’t even give her a chance for a rebuttal. The big black Impala roars away, kicking up dust, and she pictures his hands on the wheel, white knuckled with rage. And still a mystery.
She meets Sam Winchester for the first time at a party in her friends’ off-campus apartment. The living room is crowded, people raising their voices to be heard over the music that’s probably going to get the cops called sooner or later, scent of weed thick in the air. Jessica retreats to the kitchen for a break from the noise, grabbing a soda from the fridge for a change of pace because keeping your wits about you when you’re around this many strangers is always a good idea.
Her friend Joey raids the fridge a minute later, pulling out two beers and handing one to the tall guy he’s sort of propelling into the kitchen with him.
“Just have one more drink before you go, Sam,” he’s urging, and the tall guy—Sam—does a little bit of an eye roll but accepts the bottle being held out to him. “Oh, hey, Jess, how are you?”
They hug, because everyone’s been drinking or smoking and nobody ever gets enough affection to mitigate the stress they’re all under, and then Joey nods at Sam.
“Jess, this is Sam. He’s in most of my prelaw classes, and he’s always walking around looking like Eeyore, so I thought he needed some cheering up.”
“I am not,” Sam protests, blushing. It’s kinda adorable.
“You definitely are,” Joey insists, oblivious to the fact that he’s embarrassing Sam and probably a bit too drunk to care, if the way he’s slurring his words is any indication. “Last week you didn’t even know the answer when Doc called on you, because you spent the whole class staring at your phone like it was gonna blow up at any second.”
“No, I didn’t.”
Joey gives Sam a shove, which is amusing because Sam has the better part of a foot on him and is skinny but solid. Exercise physiology has taught her a lot of things; right now, appreciating the muscles in Sam’s arms and shoulders is one of them.
“You did, and it’s not the first time. I swear you spend more time staring at your phone than anyone I know—and less time talking on it!”
“Okay, Joey, we get the picture. Give the guy a break, huh?”
Sam looks grateful. When he smiles just a little, he looks even more adorable than before. “I just… there’s a lot going on—in my family—and I’m just keeping an eye out, is all.”
“When my mom was sick a few months ago,” Jess agrees, “I’d jump out of my skin every time I got a text, thinking it was gonna be bad news. And then when I didn’t get one, I’d think the same thing. It’s hard to be away from someone you care about. Especially when you’re a worrier like me.”
Sam smiles more and nods. “Yeah,” he agrees quietly.
Joey looks between the two of them in that way-too-obvious way that drunk people have when they think they’re being subtle. “I’ll just go… out there,” he says, then makes it even worse by winking at Jessica on his way out.
“Sorry,” Sam says, shaking his head.
“He’s my friend. I should be the one apologizing for him.”
Sam drinks his beer; Jess drinks her soda.
“I get the feeling you relate to how hard it is to be away from someone you care about,” she says. She’s intrigued by just how not intrigued Sam seems to be.
Sam snorts. “A little.”
“Well, if you ever feel like talking about it, you know how to find me. Our embarrassing mutual friend.”
Sam nods, but he doesn’t acknowledge it for the expression of interest it is, so he continues.
“It’s just that I miss them, is all. My family. My sister’s the only one who really knows me, you know? All of me, from the time I was a spoiled two-year-old who wanted all her toys. I threw her under the bus every chance I could when we were little, and she still loves me. Who does that?”
Sam looks up, seeming interested for the first time as he nods again. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”
“Can’t really replace that, can you?”
Sam shakes his head. He’s got his hand on his phone. He half brings it up to look at it and then thinks better of it. “I guess not,” he says and takes another gulp of his beer. “I’ve gotta get going. It was nice to meet you, Jess.”
Jessica says goodbye and finishes her soda and thinks, fuck it. She grabs a beer and heads back to the living room.
Sam texts her three weeks later.
“Hey, it’s Sam. We met at that party. My drunk friend Joey tried to embarrass me in front of you.”
“I remember. He does that.”
“Was thinking about what you said. Would you want to grab something to eat?”
That first date lasts almost six hours. It’s a beautiful 65-degree day, so they sit on the expansive lawn between the sociology buildings and the psych labs and picnic, lattes from Starbucks and takeout sushi between them. Sam puts his overshirt down on the ground for her, and Jess laughs, and Sam mutters something about expecting her to call him a girl.
They talk about their classes, their mutual dislike of Professor Schmidt who likes to have three assignments due in the last two weeks of class and has never said yes to an extension request ever. They have weird things in common, things that are inconsequential in the broad scheme of things but make Jess feel like she “gets” him. They both have a fascination with the tacky motels that dotted the back roads that Jessica’s family drove on their annual trip to Long Beach Island every summer, with their colorful names and equally colorful paint jobs, their tiny pools surrounded by cracked tile and their proud announcements of “Cable TV” and, a little later, “Free Internet.” They both loved Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as kids, and they fight about who was the fiercest character. Jess says it’s Raphael, and Sam insists it’s Michelangelo, but he seems delighted that she doesn’t agree with him.
“When’s your birthday?” Sam asks after a couple of hours. It seems like an expected part of the first-date inventory, but when she answers, his head snaps up and his mouth falls open and his eyes go warm in a way she hasn’t seen yet.
“Let’s spend it together,” he says, and that’s when Jess knows there will be a second date, and a third.
He asks about her sister, and she tells him some of their greatest hits—the tales that are trotted out at Thanksgiving and weddings so everyone can laugh, and at funerals so they can all remember that life isn’t always easy but laughter always comes back. The time Jess followed Sophie around so much that her big sister announced that she was not Sophie at all, but merely a zombie who had replaced her—and Jess, tearful, walked away. Sophie celebrated that it worked for all of a half hour before sheepishly announcing that the zombie was gone and becoming herself again, to Jessica’s delight. The time Sophie decided they should be dancers and choreographed an entire routine for them, then had a temper tantrum and dissolved in tears when four-year-old Jessica couldn’t remember the steps.
“Yeah,” Sam agrees, “being the youngest sucks sometimes.”
“Not so much now,” Jess says, munching on the chocolate chip cookies they’d also brought. “I mean, believe me, there were times I couldn’t stand her—and times I was jealous of her being able to stay out later than me and do things I wasn’t allowed to—but I don’t know how I would’ve gotten through middle school without her talking me off the ledge when some kid made fun of my braces in the hallway and I wanted to die. Or when Tommy Simmons dumped me the night before the seventh-grade dance and I was convinced no one would ever want me.”
Sam’s got a soft smile on his face, wistful and maybe a little sad.
“So you’re a little brother?”
“Yeah. I guess I was jealous of him for a long time too. He was always the one the girls would fall all over themselves for, always the center of attention. And he knew it, played it up, you know? He wasn’t even working for it, that’s the really hard part—he’s just that good-looking.”
Jess groans in empathy. “That’s hard. Sophie is a knockout too, so I know how you feel. But you’re not exactly hard on the eyes either, you know.”
Sam snorts. “If you saw my brother, you wouldn’t say that.”
“I think I would.”
Sam digs into his wallet and pulls out a photo, handing it across the table. It’s Sam and another young man, both of them grinning at the camera. It’s true, he’s striking. But then again, so is Sam.
Sam cocks an eyebrow and waits.
“I guess good genes just run in the family.”
He snorts, but smiles too. He looks at the photo for several long seconds before he puts it away.
“I shared my sister horror stories. Your turn. What are your and your brother’s infamous stories?”
Sam looks puzzled for a second, scratching his head like it’s a hard question. “Oh, I— There are probably a lot of them,” he says finally.
“Like what? Come on, share one with me.”
He seems to sift through some options in his mind before a smile crosses his face and he nods.
“There was one Christmas, it was… Our dad was really busy with work, and so Dean tried to take over a little, make sure we had a nice Christmas, but he was just a kid too. So he got—he picked out—gifts that were prewrapped, and when I opened them it was this sparkly princess Barbie doll and some baton thing with streamers on it.”
Jessica laughs, picturing their parents laughing and Sam’s older brother blushing, well-meaning but embarrassed.
“Oh my god, how old were you? How old was he?”
“I was little, maybe five or six. Dean was nine or ten.”
“Your parents must have thought it was so cute.”
Sam says “Huh” and looks down for a second before continuing. “Yeah, yeah, of course they did. I was mad at the time, I think, but his heart was in the right place, you know?”
“What did you give him that year, do you remember?”
The smile disappears from Sam’s face, and he looks away, busying himself with the cookies. “No, I was just a kid,” he says after a pause. “Probably nothing special.”
“I’m sure he appreciated it, whatever it was,” Jessica assures him, not sure what derailed Sam’s mood so quickly. “Did your brother ever babysit you? Sophie used to hate having to take care of me, but I loved it—she’d always end up letting us do things we weren’t really allowed to. Once we decided to bake a cake and made such a mess of the kitchen, I don’t think our parents left us alone again for months.”
“Yeah, Dean watched me a lot. Dad was… busy, with work. It was just me and Dean, a lot of the time. Our mom died when I was a baby.”
“Oh my god, Sam, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know.”
“I don’t remember her.” Sam shrugs, like that makes it okay. “But yeah, Dean… He’s always been kinda protective of me, I guess. Drives me up the wall a lot of the time.”
Jess nods, a rush of affection making her hope there are a lot more dates with Sam in her future.
“What you said, about missing your sister because she’s the only one who really knows you—I know what you mean. As much as I hate his guts sometimes, Dean’s the only one who really knows me. And I miss that.”
“Well,” Jess says, putting her hand over his, “maybe we can change that. I’d like to get to know you better, Sam Winchester. Tell me your life story, I’m all ears.”
He never really does.
It’s not the night in the alley that makes Sam text Joey and ask for Jessica’s number, not really. Not what they did in the alley, anyway. He’s weirdly okay with that, no guilt eating away at him, no shame expressing itself in his subconscious with nightmares of monsters coming to punish him for his transgressions. His feelings for his brother are what they’ve always been, and Sam came to terms with that a long time ago. It’s not even that you can’t always get what you want; it’s that, the vast majority of the time, you get all sorts of things you were praying you wouldn’t. That includes werewolves and ghosts and ruined holidays and a mother you never knew, so a little lust for his brother doesn’t even rise to top-ten level of concerns in Sam Winchester’s life.
He’s always suspected that Dean felt the same, though he’d never let Sam know or lift a finger that wasn’t meant to poke Sam in brotherly sadism or pull him out of the line of danger. Nothing about their lives has ever been appropriate, but Dean has always been scrupulously appropriate with Sam. It’s that hundred-percent level of appropriate that lets Sam know it’s intentional, nothing organic about it.
What happened in the alley feels like the fantasy he’s been holding out for in dreams he’d never admit to, that one day the love of his life was going to reappear and swoop him up on a shiny black horse and take him away. Sam has no doubt that wouldn’t be for the best and even less doubt that it wouldn’t result in a happy ending, but it’s a fantasy, and they don’t have to make sense. Every birthday, or holiday, or anniversary of something only the two of them knew about, Sam would wait, checking and rechecking his phone and thinking about what he would say and wondering if Dean was still out there at all. He couldn’t let himself think about that last one too much, or the panic attacks would come back. Sam had taught himself to breathe through them, let the waves wash over him, tell himself that Dean was fine and Dad was fine and they were the most competent hunters on the planet, and the fact that there were no messages on his phone didn’t mean something had gotten its jaws around both of them.
It’s not what happened in the alley; it’s what didn’t.
The kiss didn’t change anything. The climax, as amazing as it was, didn’t change anything. Dean still walked away, and Sam still let him.
It was a mirror of what had happened two years before. Somehow, this time, knowing it was Dean who turned away and disappeared around that corner made it real for Sam in a way it never had been when he was doing the leaving. As though, as long as it was his decision, he could change his mind if he really wanted to. Sam realized he’d been clinging to that too—a different fantasy, but just as unrealistic. He’d made the choice for both of them the day he got on the bus, the anguish and betrayal in Dean’s eyes seared into his memory forever.
There was no going back. That part of his life was over, and they both knew it. It was time to move on.
It didn’t stop the fantasies, but Sam kept those safely boundaried and didn’t allow himself any hope that they’d ever be anything but. It helped a little to remember the look on Dean’s face when Sam had kissed him, the helpless way he leaned into it, taking all Sam’s love and giving it right back. No one was ever going to love him like Dean did, but that wasn’t something the world was ever supposed to offer Sam Winchester anyway.
Sam holds it inside him, the knowledge that his brother loves him—and that Dean finally knows that Sam feels the same. It’s freeing, a touchstone that lets Sam think about moving ahead, just like his trust in Dean’s love gave him the courage to think about being something else and the guts to pursue it in the first place. He’s always going to wish that Dean was there beside him, working at the garage down the road or getting his engineering degree at night—because Sam has no doubt that Dean’s smarter than most of the people he’s met at Stanford. But that’s a fantasy, and Jess is real, and Sam is going to study his ass off and be a lawyer and help save the world in his own way.
Jessica says she loves him four months after their epic first date, and, to his surprise, Sam finds himself able to say it back and not feel like he’s lying. It’s a different kind of love, but that was a given; maybe no one could survive the kind of all-encompassing love the Winchesters have between them anyway.
It takes three states and too many drinks to count for Dean to stop avoiding his own thoughts long enough to believe that Sam kissed him. Another few nights of heavy drinking and a not-well-thought-out hookup with a woman with a killer body and Dean has no clue what else, except she took it personally when he teared up a little after she got him off, before he can let himself remember that Sam did that too: got him off. He’s never going to forget a second of that night in the alley, the feel of Sam’s hair in his hand, the press of Sam’s arm across his throat. The way Sam groaned against his mouth when he came and the feel of his big, rough hand on Dean’s cock, pleasure that left him mindless and dizzy.
That night in the alley eradicated the fantasy Dean’s been carrying around in his head, holding up as a real option whenever he misses Sam so bad he thinks he’s gonna die from it. The fantasy that one day he’ll meet someone who makes him feel the way Sam always has, who he’ll look at and feel that burst of love and affection and exasperation that looking at Sam has always conjured in him. Someone he’d lay down his life for in an instant, a second, a moment, without a second thought.
He’d let himself believe Cassie could be that person, for those few weeks of ignoring the pull of the road and the knowledge that Dad would be needing his help soon and the awareness that Sam was thousands of miles away becoming a stranger. He’d let himself think that could be his life, that his feelings for Sam would fade and he could let someone else know him and they’d love him anyway.
Cassie herself had blown up that fantasy, and after that job was done, the Impala headed to California almost of her own volition. Dean had just wanted to see him, wanted to have proof that Sam existed in the world; that someone out there did know him and maybe even love him. If Dean had clung to the conviction that he knew Sam inside out and could predict what he’d do—which even Sam’s announcement that he was going to college hadn’t completely eradicated, because of course his brilliant, rebellious little brother would do something like that—what happened in the alley extinguished it. Dean didn’t expect Sam’s rage, and he didn’t expect Sam’s desire.
And he sure as hell didn’t expect his own resolve. It was Dean who had walked away this time, and it had taken every ounce of strength he possessed to do it.
Most days, he regrets it so much he can hardly breathe.
He’s not usually the suspicious type, or at least he doesn’t think of himself that way. This isn’t a bad neighborhood, a mix of single-family homes small enough to be something close to affordable and apartments mostly rented by students at the university. Glenn is outside waiting for their new puppy who needs to go out way too often to do his business on the patch of yard when he hears the rumble up the road. It’s already after ten, so it’s quiet, and Glenn is bored, so he looks for the source of the sound. It’s a big old car, classic Impala if he’s not mistaken, so no wonder the rumble. The car pulls over to the curb and parks, but nobody gets out, which is weird.
Ten minutes go by, twenty, and still no one has gotten out, and Glenn wonders if he should walk down the block and check on the person, see if they’re okay. He’s just about to go back inside and ask Rob what he thinks when the door creaks open—he can hear it from where he’s standing—and a man gets out.
Glenn was expecting someone older, some midlife-crisis classic car collector, but as the man comes closer, Glenn can see that he’s young, probably in his twenties. A college student, maybe, although he’s not dressed like one. He’s got on an oversized leather jacket that looks almost as vintage as the car, jeans, and boots, like he could belong to any era and not look out of place.
The man stops outside the house converted to apartments right across the street and stands on the sidewalk staring up at the second story, where there’s a light on.
Pepper starts whining, so Glenn lets her in, then comes back outside, closing the door carefully behind him. The guy is still standing there, watching someone in the apartment above moving around. Glenn has met the couple who live there, Sam and Jess, two university students. They seem like nice kids.
The hair on the back of his neck stands up as the stranger continues to watch, hands in his pockets. Eventually Rob comes out to collect him, the gruff “Come to bed” whispered in his ear enough incentive for Glenn to shrug off the sense he has that something’s not quite right.
He wakes up two hours later. On impulse, he looks out the window as he makes his way to the bathroom, and he gasps when he sees that the man is still there.
He’s pacing, looking up at the now-darkened window and pausing every few seconds to turn toward the walkway. Three times he takes a tentative step toward the house, then shakes his head and retreats back to the place he’s been standing for—Glenn checks his watch—over three hours. He looks like he’s talking to himself, some kind of animated conversation. Glenn slides the bathroom window up as slowly as he can, craning his neck to see if he can overhear anything.
“Just go tell him. What’s he gonna do, kick you out?”
The man shakes his head, paces, shoves his hands in his pockets again.
“That’s exactly what he’s probably gonna do. What do you expect?”
Once, he turns around and starts heading back to the big black car, still mumbling to himself. He gets twenty yards and then returns, striding toward the apartment building with purpose.
“Just do it. Have some balls, just do it— God, Sammy, please, please don’t tell me to get lost, please. I don’t know if I can do this without you.”
It’s spoken out loud, like he’s talking to someone right in front of him, but it doesn’t sound threatening so much as… heartbreaking? Is this guy talking to the Sam who lives with Jessica? Is this a love triangle gone wrong?
Part Four
Genre: Wincest
Pairing: Sam/Dean (with Sam/Jess, Sam/OMC, Sam/OFC, Dean/Cassie, Dean/OMC, Dean/OFC)
Rating: NC17
Word count: 21,200
Summary: Sam and Dean through the eyes of the people they meet while Sam is at Stanford – strangers, friends, lovers – as they make their way back to each other. Outsider pov for most of the story.
“They used to put up with each other, but Sam— He never wanted what Dad wanted for us. Even when he was a kid, always asking for books and doin’ his homework in the back seat and balking when Dad wanted us to train—do other things.”
“Other things.”
“Important things. Sam just, you know, he had his head in the clouds. Smart, smart as a whip, like you. Big words, big thoughts. Big brain. He could figure out the most obscure mysteries, research the hell out of anything you threw at him, figure it out, just… You wouldn’t believe how smart he was.”
“Was? Is he—”
She can feel the tension rocket through Dean’s body, like she just gave him an electric shock with her question. His heart thump-thump-thumps, triple-time, just like that.
“No! No, he’s away. He’s at school. Stanford.”
That is not what Cassie was expecting. Dean’s little brother, at Stanford?
“What’s he studying?”
“He’s prelaw,” Dean says, and there’s unmistakable pride in his voice, but there’s also an edge of anger that Cassie doesn’t understand.
“That’s good, right?”
He huffs again. His heart rate is still kicked up, coming down slowly. He runs a hand absently up her arm, slides fingers through her hair.
“He’s got a different life. He’s a different person. So much has happened over the past year, and I don’t know any of it—and neither does he. Knew every single thing that happened to me for eighteen years, and now… We’d be strangers if I ever saw him again.”
It’s a strange way to talk about his brother being at college, but every time Dean talks about his family even a little, it’s strange. There’s hurt in his voice, and regret. Longing.
“Why don’t you go visit him if you miss him that much?”
Dean stiffens. She touched some kind of nerve.
“Who says I miss him? I don’t fucking miss him. He left— He chose that life; he didn’t want the life he had with us. He doesn’t want me there, that’s obvious. Just be an embarrassment.”
Whoa. Maybe the reason he’s not talking about his family is because they are seriously fucked up. Cassie sits up, rolling to the side and off of him. He’s agitated, and it’s bringing her wide awake when she was hoping to be asleep.
“Look, I don’t know why you think you’d be an embarrassment, but it’s crystal clear that you’ve got an issue with your brother going to college. Were you mad that it couldn’t be you? That you had to stay behind in this family business you won’t talk about?”
“No, I’m not mad about that—I’m proud of that! I’m proud of the family business.”
“Really? Because you could’ve fooled me. You won’t even tell me what the hell it is! You seem more ashamed than proud, honestly.”
He’s the angriest she’s ever seen him; so angry that he clams up and rolls over, facing away from her.
“Very mature,” she can’t resist saying to his bare back.
He doesn’t answer.
She doesn’t bring it up again.
Two days later he gets a text and starts packing his duffel, saying he’ll probably “only” be gone for a week or two.
“That’s it? That’s all you’re gonna tell me, and I’m just supposed to wait around? Fuck you, Dean. I’m not having a relationship with someone who doesn’t trust me enough to share who they are. You say that’s so important to you—it’s obvious you miss Sam being that person—so why not let me be that for you?”
To her shock, he does. Or he tries. Or he makes up something that he thinks she’ll buy simply because it’s so preposterous, because who would make up that shit about hunting monsters and killing ghosts? His phone keeps buzzing the whole time, and he’s increasingly agitated, pacing and raising his voice and insisting that this is life-and-death and he has to go like now.
She finally tells him to go and not come back, even though it feels like it’s breaking her heart in two.
“Really? You too? That’s just priceless—another person who claims to love me and then walks the fuck out on me.”
He doesn’t even give her a chance for a rebuttal. The big black Impala roars away, kicking up dust, and she pictures his hands on the wheel, white knuckled with rage. And still a mystery.
She meets Sam Winchester for the first time at a party in her friends’ off-campus apartment. The living room is crowded, people raising their voices to be heard over the music that’s probably going to get the cops called sooner or later, scent of weed thick in the air. Jessica retreats to the kitchen for a break from the noise, grabbing a soda from the fridge for a change of pace because keeping your wits about you when you’re around this many strangers is always a good idea.
Her friend Joey raids the fridge a minute later, pulling out two beers and handing one to the tall guy he’s sort of propelling into the kitchen with him.
“Just have one more drink before you go, Sam,” he’s urging, and the tall guy—Sam—does a little bit of an eye roll but accepts the bottle being held out to him. “Oh, hey, Jess, how are you?”
They hug, because everyone’s been drinking or smoking and nobody ever gets enough affection to mitigate the stress they’re all under, and then Joey nods at Sam.
“Jess, this is Sam. He’s in most of my prelaw classes, and he’s always walking around looking like Eeyore, so I thought he needed some cheering up.”
“I am not,” Sam protests, blushing. It’s kinda adorable.
“You definitely are,” Joey insists, oblivious to the fact that he’s embarrassing Sam and probably a bit too drunk to care, if the way he’s slurring his words is any indication. “Last week you didn’t even know the answer when Doc called on you, because you spent the whole class staring at your phone like it was gonna blow up at any second.”
“No, I didn’t.”
Joey gives Sam a shove, which is amusing because Sam has the better part of a foot on him and is skinny but solid. Exercise physiology has taught her a lot of things; right now, appreciating the muscles in Sam’s arms and shoulders is one of them.
“You did, and it’s not the first time. I swear you spend more time staring at your phone than anyone I know—and less time talking on it!”
“Okay, Joey, we get the picture. Give the guy a break, huh?”
Sam looks grateful. When he smiles just a little, he looks even more adorable than before. “I just… there’s a lot going on—in my family—and I’m just keeping an eye out, is all.”
“When my mom was sick a few months ago,” Jess agrees, “I’d jump out of my skin every time I got a text, thinking it was gonna be bad news. And then when I didn’t get one, I’d think the same thing. It’s hard to be away from someone you care about. Especially when you’re a worrier like me.”
Sam smiles more and nods. “Yeah,” he agrees quietly.
Joey looks between the two of them in that way-too-obvious way that drunk people have when they think they’re being subtle. “I’ll just go… out there,” he says, then makes it even worse by winking at Jessica on his way out.
“Sorry,” Sam says, shaking his head.
“He’s my friend. I should be the one apologizing for him.”
Sam drinks his beer; Jess drinks her soda.
“I get the feeling you relate to how hard it is to be away from someone you care about,” she says. She’s intrigued by just how not intrigued Sam seems to be.
Sam snorts. “A little.”
“Well, if you ever feel like talking about it, you know how to find me. Our embarrassing mutual friend.”
Sam nods, but he doesn’t acknowledge it for the expression of interest it is, so he continues.
“It’s just that I miss them, is all. My family. My sister’s the only one who really knows me, you know? All of me, from the time I was a spoiled two-year-old who wanted all her toys. I threw her under the bus every chance I could when we were little, and she still loves me. Who does that?”
Sam looks up, seeming interested for the first time as he nods again. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”
“Can’t really replace that, can you?”
Sam shakes his head. He’s got his hand on his phone. He half brings it up to look at it and then thinks better of it. “I guess not,” he says and takes another gulp of his beer. “I’ve gotta get going. It was nice to meet you, Jess.”
Jessica says goodbye and finishes her soda and thinks, fuck it. She grabs a beer and heads back to the living room.
Sam texts her three weeks later.
“Hey, it’s Sam. We met at that party. My drunk friend Joey tried to embarrass me in front of you.”
“I remember. He does that.”
“Was thinking about what you said. Would you want to grab something to eat?”
That first date lasts almost six hours. It’s a beautiful 65-degree day, so they sit on the expansive lawn between the sociology buildings and the psych labs and picnic, lattes from Starbucks and takeout sushi between them. Sam puts his overshirt down on the ground for her, and Jess laughs, and Sam mutters something about expecting her to call him a girl.
They talk about their classes, their mutual dislike of Professor Schmidt who likes to have three assignments due in the last two weeks of class and has never said yes to an extension request ever. They have weird things in common, things that are inconsequential in the broad scheme of things but make Jess feel like she “gets” him. They both have a fascination with the tacky motels that dotted the back roads that Jessica’s family drove on their annual trip to Long Beach Island every summer, with their colorful names and equally colorful paint jobs, their tiny pools surrounded by cracked tile and their proud announcements of “Cable TV” and, a little later, “Free Internet.” They both loved Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as kids, and they fight about who was the fiercest character. Jess says it’s Raphael, and Sam insists it’s Michelangelo, but he seems delighted that she doesn’t agree with him.
“When’s your birthday?” Sam asks after a couple of hours. It seems like an expected part of the first-date inventory, but when she answers, his head snaps up and his mouth falls open and his eyes go warm in a way she hasn’t seen yet.
“Let’s spend it together,” he says, and that’s when Jess knows there will be a second date, and a third.
He asks about her sister, and she tells him some of their greatest hits—the tales that are trotted out at Thanksgiving and weddings so everyone can laugh, and at funerals so they can all remember that life isn’t always easy but laughter always comes back. The time Jess followed Sophie around so much that her big sister announced that she was not Sophie at all, but merely a zombie who had replaced her—and Jess, tearful, walked away. Sophie celebrated that it worked for all of a half hour before sheepishly announcing that the zombie was gone and becoming herself again, to Jessica’s delight. The time Sophie decided they should be dancers and choreographed an entire routine for them, then had a temper tantrum and dissolved in tears when four-year-old Jessica couldn’t remember the steps.
“Yeah,” Sam agrees, “being the youngest sucks sometimes.”
“Not so much now,” Jess says, munching on the chocolate chip cookies they’d also brought. “I mean, believe me, there were times I couldn’t stand her—and times I was jealous of her being able to stay out later than me and do things I wasn’t allowed to—but I don’t know how I would’ve gotten through middle school without her talking me off the ledge when some kid made fun of my braces in the hallway and I wanted to die. Or when Tommy Simmons dumped me the night before the seventh-grade dance and I was convinced no one would ever want me.”
Sam’s got a soft smile on his face, wistful and maybe a little sad.
“So you’re a little brother?”
“Yeah. I guess I was jealous of him for a long time too. He was always the one the girls would fall all over themselves for, always the center of attention. And he knew it, played it up, you know? He wasn’t even working for it, that’s the really hard part—he’s just that good-looking.”
Jess groans in empathy. “That’s hard. Sophie is a knockout too, so I know how you feel. But you’re not exactly hard on the eyes either, you know.”
Sam snorts. “If you saw my brother, you wouldn’t say that.”
“I think I would.”
Sam digs into his wallet and pulls out a photo, handing it across the table. It’s Sam and another young man, both of them grinning at the camera. It’s true, he’s striking. But then again, so is Sam.
Sam cocks an eyebrow and waits.
“I guess good genes just run in the family.”
He snorts, but smiles too. He looks at the photo for several long seconds before he puts it away.
“I shared my sister horror stories. Your turn. What are your and your brother’s infamous stories?”
Sam looks puzzled for a second, scratching his head like it’s a hard question. “Oh, I— There are probably a lot of them,” he says finally.
“Like what? Come on, share one with me.”
He seems to sift through some options in his mind before a smile crosses his face and he nods.
“There was one Christmas, it was… Our dad was really busy with work, and so Dean tried to take over a little, make sure we had a nice Christmas, but he was just a kid too. So he got—he picked out—gifts that were prewrapped, and when I opened them it was this sparkly princess Barbie doll and some baton thing with streamers on it.”
Jessica laughs, picturing their parents laughing and Sam’s older brother blushing, well-meaning but embarrassed.
“Oh my god, how old were you? How old was he?”
“I was little, maybe five or six. Dean was nine or ten.”
“Your parents must have thought it was so cute.”
Sam says “Huh” and looks down for a second before continuing. “Yeah, yeah, of course they did. I was mad at the time, I think, but his heart was in the right place, you know?”
“What did you give him that year, do you remember?”
The smile disappears from Sam’s face, and he looks away, busying himself with the cookies. “No, I was just a kid,” he says after a pause. “Probably nothing special.”
“I’m sure he appreciated it, whatever it was,” Jessica assures him, not sure what derailed Sam’s mood so quickly. “Did your brother ever babysit you? Sophie used to hate having to take care of me, but I loved it—she’d always end up letting us do things we weren’t really allowed to. Once we decided to bake a cake and made such a mess of the kitchen, I don’t think our parents left us alone again for months.”
“Yeah, Dean watched me a lot. Dad was… busy, with work. It was just me and Dean, a lot of the time. Our mom died when I was a baby.”
“Oh my god, Sam, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know.”
“I don’t remember her.” Sam shrugs, like that makes it okay. “But yeah, Dean… He’s always been kinda protective of me, I guess. Drives me up the wall a lot of the time.”
Jess nods, a rush of affection making her hope there are a lot more dates with Sam in her future.
“What you said, about missing your sister because she’s the only one who really knows you—I know what you mean. As much as I hate his guts sometimes, Dean’s the only one who really knows me. And I miss that.”
“Well,” Jess says, putting her hand over his, “maybe we can change that. I’d like to get to know you better, Sam Winchester. Tell me your life story, I’m all ears.”
He never really does.
It’s not the night in the alley that makes Sam text Joey and ask for Jessica’s number, not really. Not what they did in the alley, anyway. He’s weirdly okay with that, no guilt eating away at him, no shame expressing itself in his subconscious with nightmares of monsters coming to punish him for his transgressions. His feelings for his brother are what they’ve always been, and Sam came to terms with that a long time ago. It’s not even that you can’t always get what you want; it’s that, the vast majority of the time, you get all sorts of things you were praying you wouldn’t. That includes werewolves and ghosts and ruined holidays and a mother you never knew, so a little lust for his brother doesn’t even rise to top-ten level of concerns in Sam Winchester’s life.
He’s always suspected that Dean felt the same, though he’d never let Sam know or lift a finger that wasn’t meant to poke Sam in brotherly sadism or pull him out of the line of danger. Nothing about their lives has ever been appropriate, but Dean has always been scrupulously appropriate with Sam. It’s that hundred-percent level of appropriate that lets Sam know it’s intentional, nothing organic about it.
What happened in the alley feels like the fantasy he’s been holding out for in dreams he’d never admit to, that one day the love of his life was going to reappear and swoop him up on a shiny black horse and take him away. Sam has no doubt that wouldn’t be for the best and even less doubt that it wouldn’t result in a happy ending, but it’s a fantasy, and they don’t have to make sense. Every birthday, or holiday, or anniversary of something only the two of them knew about, Sam would wait, checking and rechecking his phone and thinking about what he would say and wondering if Dean was still out there at all. He couldn’t let himself think about that last one too much, or the panic attacks would come back. Sam had taught himself to breathe through them, let the waves wash over him, tell himself that Dean was fine and Dad was fine and they were the most competent hunters on the planet, and the fact that there were no messages on his phone didn’t mean something had gotten its jaws around both of them.
It’s not what happened in the alley; it’s what didn’t.
The kiss didn’t change anything. The climax, as amazing as it was, didn’t change anything. Dean still walked away, and Sam still let him.
It was a mirror of what had happened two years before. Somehow, this time, knowing it was Dean who turned away and disappeared around that corner made it real for Sam in a way it never had been when he was doing the leaving. As though, as long as it was his decision, he could change his mind if he really wanted to. Sam realized he’d been clinging to that too—a different fantasy, but just as unrealistic. He’d made the choice for both of them the day he got on the bus, the anguish and betrayal in Dean’s eyes seared into his memory forever.
There was no going back. That part of his life was over, and they both knew it. It was time to move on.
It didn’t stop the fantasies, but Sam kept those safely boundaried and didn’t allow himself any hope that they’d ever be anything but. It helped a little to remember the look on Dean’s face when Sam had kissed him, the helpless way he leaned into it, taking all Sam’s love and giving it right back. No one was ever going to love him like Dean did, but that wasn’t something the world was ever supposed to offer Sam Winchester anyway.
Sam holds it inside him, the knowledge that his brother loves him—and that Dean finally knows that Sam feels the same. It’s freeing, a touchstone that lets Sam think about moving ahead, just like his trust in Dean’s love gave him the courage to think about being something else and the guts to pursue it in the first place. He’s always going to wish that Dean was there beside him, working at the garage down the road or getting his engineering degree at night—because Sam has no doubt that Dean’s smarter than most of the people he’s met at Stanford. But that’s a fantasy, and Jess is real, and Sam is going to study his ass off and be a lawyer and help save the world in his own way.
Jessica says she loves him four months after their epic first date, and, to his surprise, Sam finds himself able to say it back and not feel like he’s lying. It’s a different kind of love, but that was a given; maybe no one could survive the kind of all-encompassing love the Winchesters have between them anyway.
It takes three states and too many drinks to count for Dean to stop avoiding his own thoughts long enough to believe that Sam kissed him. Another few nights of heavy drinking and a not-well-thought-out hookup with a woman with a killer body and Dean has no clue what else, except she took it personally when he teared up a little after she got him off, before he can let himself remember that Sam did that too: got him off. He’s never going to forget a second of that night in the alley, the feel of Sam’s hair in his hand, the press of Sam’s arm across his throat. The way Sam groaned against his mouth when he came and the feel of his big, rough hand on Dean’s cock, pleasure that left him mindless and dizzy.
That night in the alley eradicated the fantasy Dean’s been carrying around in his head, holding up as a real option whenever he misses Sam so bad he thinks he’s gonna die from it. The fantasy that one day he’ll meet someone who makes him feel the way Sam always has, who he’ll look at and feel that burst of love and affection and exasperation that looking at Sam has always conjured in him. Someone he’d lay down his life for in an instant, a second, a moment, without a second thought.
He’d let himself believe Cassie could be that person, for those few weeks of ignoring the pull of the road and the knowledge that Dad would be needing his help soon and the awareness that Sam was thousands of miles away becoming a stranger. He’d let himself think that could be his life, that his feelings for Sam would fade and he could let someone else know him and they’d love him anyway.
Cassie herself had blown up that fantasy, and after that job was done, the Impala headed to California almost of her own volition. Dean had just wanted to see him, wanted to have proof that Sam existed in the world; that someone out there did know him and maybe even love him. If Dean had clung to the conviction that he knew Sam inside out and could predict what he’d do—which even Sam’s announcement that he was going to college hadn’t completely eradicated, because of course his brilliant, rebellious little brother would do something like that—what happened in the alley extinguished it. Dean didn’t expect Sam’s rage, and he didn’t expect Sam’s desire.
And he sure as hell didn’t expect his own resolve. It was Dean who had walked away this time, and it had taken every ounce of strength he possessed to do it.
Most days, he regrets it so much he can hardly breathe.
He’s not usually the suspicious type, or at least he doesn’t think of himself that way. This isn’t a bad neighborhood, a mix of single-family homes small enough to be something close to affordable and apartments mostly rented by students at the university. Glenn is outside waiting for their new puppy who needs to go out way too often to do his business on the patch of yard when he hears the rumble up the road. It’s already after ten, so it’s quiet, and Glenn is bored, so he looks for the source of the sound. It’s a big old car, classic Impala if he’s not mistaken, so no wonder the rumble. The car pulls over to the curb and parks, but nobody gets out, which is weird.
Ten minutes go by, twenty, and still no one has gotten out, and Glenn wonders if he should walk down the block and check on the person, see if they’re okay. He’s just about to go back inside and ask Rob what he thinks when the door creaks open—he can hear it from where he’s standing—and a man gets out.
Glenn was expecting someone older, some midlife-crisis classic car collector, but as the man comes closer, Glenn can see that he’s young, probably in his twenties. A college student, maybe, although he’s not dressed like one. He’s got on an oversized leather jacket that looks almost as vintage as the car, jeans, and boots, like he could belong to any era and not look out of place.
The man stops outside the house converted to apartments right across the street and stands on the sidewalk staring up at the second story, where there’s a light on.
Pepper starts whining, so Glenn lets her in, then comes back outside, closing the door carefully behind him. The guy is still standing there, watching someone in the apartment above moving around. Glenn has met the couple who live there, Sam and Jess, two university students. They seem like nice kids.
The hair on the back of his neck stands up as the stranger continues to watch, hands in his pockets. Eventually Rob comes out to collect him, the gruff “Come to bed” whispered in his ear enough incentive for Glenn to shrug off the sense he has that something’s not quite right.
He wakes up two hours later. On impulse, he looks out the window as he makes his way to the bathroom, and he gasps when he sees that the man is still there.
He’s pacing, looking up at the now-darkened window and pausing every few seconds to turn toward the walkway. Three times he takes a tentative step toward the house, then shakes his head and retreats back to the place he’s been standing for—Glenn checks his watch—over three hours. He looks like he’s talking to himself, some kind of animated conversation. Glenn slides the bathroom window up as slowly as he can, craning his neck to see if he can overhear anything.
“Just go tell him. What’s he gonna do, kick you out?”
The man shakes his head, paces, shoves his hands in his pockets again.
“That’s exactly what he’s probably gonna do. What do you expect?”
Once, he turns around and starts heading back to the big black car, still mumbling to himself. He gets twenty yards and then returns, striding toward the apartment building with purpose.
“Just do it. Have some balls, just do it— God, Sammy, please, please don’t tell me to get lost, please. I don’t know if I can do this without you.”
It’s spoken out loud, like he’s talking to someone right in front of him, but it doesn’t sound threatening so much as… heartbreaking? Is this guy talking to the Sam who lives with Jessica? Is this a love triangle gone wrong?
Part Four
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