Fic: Three's Company Too 4/7
Summary: An AU story where Jess not only figures out for herself where Sam is going with Dean for the weekend, but has a hunting past of her own. Of course, she insists on inviting herself along for the trip.
Rating: T for some language
Jess dunked her spoon into her teacup and tried to squish a little more flavour out of her teabag. So far, it tasted like dishwater. She reached for another packet of sugar, and dumped it in. After stirring thoroughly, she took an experimental sip. Nope, still dishwater. Giving up, she turned all of her attention to the conversation at the table. It had been easy enough to find Amy, and even easier to convince her to sit down with Troy’s “uncles” and answer questions. Jess had forgotten how simple it was to manipulate small-town innocence.
“I was on the phone with Troy,” Amy was saying, “he was driving home. He said he would call me right back. And, uh… He never did.”
“He didn’t say anything strange?” Sam asked. “Or out of the ordinary?”
“No, nothing I can remember.”
Jess tilted her head, studying Amy carefully. The girl was holding up surprisingly well, considering.
“How long have the two of you been together?” Jess asked.
Amy reached up to fiddle with the pentagram pendant she wore around her neck. “A year,” she spoke quietly, looking away from Jess and out the window.
“You’re happy?” Jess pressed.
“Yeah, of course,” Amy shrugged. “Troy is… a really great boyfriend.”
The pause didn’t go unnoticed by Jess, but Amy seemed unwilling to talk about it any further. Her friend squeezed her hand, and Amy continued to look resolutely out the window.
“I like your necklace,” Sam finally spoke, easing the tense silence.
“Thanks,” Amy replied. “Troy gave it to me.” Her words were strangely blank. “Mostly to scare my parents. With all that devil stuff?”
Knowing smiles flickered across both Sam and Dean’s faces. “Actually, it means just the opposite,” Sam informed the girls. “A pentagram is protection against evil. Really powerful. I mean, if you believe in that kind of thing.”
“Okay,” Dean interrupted. “Thank you, Unsolved Mysteries.” Jess bit back a smile at how well the brothers were working together. Sam, gently suggesting the possibility of supernatural forces, and Dean keeping the conversation grounded so the girls didn’t get too freaked out. “Here’s the deal, ladies,” Dean continued. “The way Troy disappeared. Something’s not right. So if you’re heard anything…”
The girls looked at each other hesitantly.
“What is it?” Dean demanded.
“Well, it’s just…” Amy’s goth friend trailed off. “I mean with all these guys going missing… Well, people talk.”
“What do they talk about?” The question was asked in unison by Sam and Dean, coupled by an identical lean forward and quizzical eyebrow tilt. Jess had to take a long sip of her disgusting tea to cover up her grin.
The girl hesitated for a moment. “It’s kind of this local legend,” she explained. “This one girl? She got murdered out on Centennial. Like, decades ago.”
Jess shared a knowing glance with the boys.
“Well, supposedly she’s still out there. She hitchhikes, and whoever picks her up… Well, they disappear forever.”
Jackpot, Jess thought. So-called local legends often had at least a scrap of truth to them, and the supposed murder sight matched the location of all the real-life disappearances.
She looked back over at Amy again. The girl seemed distracted. Not by the story, but by something else…
Acting on impulse, Jess stood up from her seat. “I hate to bother you, Amy,” she spoke apologetically, “but I really could use a bathroom break. Come with me?”
Amy looked a little startled, but agreeably stood up and led Jess to the back of the diner where the bathrooms were located. She felt Dean and Sam’s eyes on her the whole time, and she buried a smirk. They weren’t the only ones who could get a witness to share something.
Once they were inside, Jess fussed with her hair in front of the mirror, not entirely faking her disgruntled look. A night sleeping in a car had not been kind to it.
“How does it look?” she asked Amy. “I can’t get it to behave today for some reason.”
Amy hesitated, and then pulled a bobby pin out of her pocket.
“Probably my only option at this point,” Jess agreed ruefully. “God, I can’t tell you how nice it is to be with a girl who has a bobby pin in her pocket. I’ve been on the road with…” she hesitated before giving Sam the ridiculous fake name Dean had bestowed on him, “Julius and his brother for weeks now, and I’ve been starved for conversation that doesn’t revolve around cars and rock bands.”
Amy cracked a smile. “I know what you mean. I have brothers. I know all too well how the male mind works.”
Jess paused, giving Amy a look of consideration. “Can I ask you something, Amy? I don’t want to weird you out or anything, but none of my girlfriends seem to really get what’s going on, and I can’t really talk about it on the phone, anyway.”
Amy leaned forward, natural instinct for gossip lighting up in her eyes. “Yeah, what is it?”
“Well, I love Julius, don’t get me wrong. But sometimes I wonder if everything’s… okay with us, you know? Like if he’s telling the truth about everything.”
“You mean if he’s cheating on you?”
Jess straightened her face, but inwardly she gave herself a fist-pump and pat on the back for having the right instincts. The fact that Amy jumped to the conclusion of cheating said a lot about her relationship with Troy.
“Well, I don’t know,” Jess continued, playing the part of desperate girlfriend. “He calls me to cancel plans sometimes, or makes excuses for not meeting up with me. And once he said he had to work late, but I know he wasn’t at work.”
Amy appeared horrifically spellbound, and Jess felt a flash of guilt for putting the girl through this, but it was important to the case. Besides, Amy didn’t seem like the crazy jealous type. If she suspected that Troy was cheating on her, her instincts were probably correct.
“But I don’t want to confront him if I’m not sure,” Jess kept talking. “I know you’ve only met him like twenty minutes ago, but sometimes an outside opinion is what you need, you know?”
“I don’t know,” Amy shrugged. “But if you think something, chances are you’re right. And it’s better to confront him and be honest about what you think before it’s too late…” she trailed off, eyes distant.
Jess’ heart went out to the girl. Having Amy’s memory of her boyfriend permanently tainted by the suspicion of cheating was so unfair.
“Thanks,” she said to Amy, reaching to give her a hug. “You’ve been a huge help.” And although the embrace between the two of them was a lie, Jess hoped that Amy would still receive some comfort from it.
She caught up with Sam and Dean outside the diner.
“Troy was cheating on Amy,” she announced as they walked back to the car.
“What? She told you that?” Sam asked, surprised.
“Not so much in words,” Jess shrugged. “But I know what she was thinking. We need to talk to families of the other people and see if it’s a pattern.”
“How did you know what she was thinking?” Dean demanded, yanking open the car door.
“Female intuition?” she shrugged.
Dean snorted. “Yeah, right. I’m not buying it, sweetheart. You may think that’s what was happening, but we know that there’s the story of the murdered woman. We’re going after that angle first.”
“But-” Jess sputtered. “Sam, c’mon, don’t you believe me?”
“Jess, of course I believe you,” Sam told her, staring at his shoes. “But I think our time is better spent in the library researching this murder story. You understand, right?”
Jess glanced between the two brothers, one adjusting the volume on the car stereo and the other scuffing his sneakers on the pavement. There was no way she was going to win this one.
“Fine,” she grumbled, climbing into the backseat of the car. “We’ll go to the library.”
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Sitting at a table, almost buried in piles of newspaper, Jess still fumed. Fine. Whatever. If Sam and Dean were determined to ignore her ideas, then she would play along. After all, who didn’t want to spend the day in a stuffy library? And who cared if Sam waited until after the Rock Paper Scissors match to tell her that Dean always chose scissors? Because she loved being stuck with the crummy job of sifting through all the old newspapers while Sam and Dean played on the computer.
Her eyes were starting to ache. Unlike Sam, she was not cut out for research sessions that stretched for hours at the library. She was about to take a break when she felt a familiar looming shadow over her and a paper coffee cup was plunked on the table beside the papers.
“The diner tea didn’t look so great, so I got some tea bags at the grocery store before I picked up coffee for me and Dean.”
“I love you,” Jess breathed, inhaling the gentle aroma. She had come to depend on her regular tea breaks as much as the average college student depended on morning coffee.
“Was that directed at me or the tea?”
Jess shrugged. “Take it however you like.”
Sam had settled into the chair beside her and flipped through a couple pages of newspaper. “Sorry I didn’t pay more attention to your cheating idea with Amy.”
Jess bristled. “It’s not an idea, I know it’s true. An unresolved affair would be a good reason for me to stick around after I’ve died. That could be the key to this ghost. If we interviewed the families of the other people who’ve gone missing, we could find our connection.”
“Okay,” Sam agreed, “but if even if we find that connection, that doesn’t get us any closer to finding out who this woman is. We need to know her history in order to stop her.”
Jess opened her mouth with a ready retort before realizing the truth in Sam’s words. Damn him for being right.
Sam’s large hand rubbed across her shoulder blades and she leaned against him, taking comfort in his warm arms and the feel of his chin resting on her head.
“You haven’t done a lot of hunting before, have you?” Sam asked with curiosity. Jess could feel the rumble of his chest as he spoke and she shifted closer. This was her safe space where she could talk about anything and not be harmed.
“No,” she replied. “My dad was a hunter for pretty much my whole life. My mom died while I was young, and he was obsessed with catching whatever had killed her. He remarried, but it only lasted a few years before my stepmom had had enough. Dad left to go hunting, and I grew up with my stepmom and half-brother. You’ve met them; they’re my family, regardless of blood relation.
“Dad would blow into town like a travelling circus with stories of monsters and demons and ghosts. He taught me about the supernatural, took me on a few hunts, taught me to shoot straight and how to lie to people. That’s about it. I had joined with him roughly part time in my senior year of high school, but then he died. And when I thought about what he left behind, two kids who hardly saw him and a divorced wife, I realized that I didn’t want anything to do with hunting. I wanted a normal life with college and a boyfriend. And later, a husband and kids.” She paused, considering her words. “I’m sorry if you thought I was hiding the hunting part of me from you, but really, I just needed to get away from all of that. And sure, I still take precautions. I’d be an idiot not to. But that doesn’t mean I’m a hunter. Not really.”
“You’re a hunter on this trip,” Sam pointed out.
“Well, that’s because it’s your dad, Sam. I’m going to help you find him in any way that I can.”
“I love you,” he whispered softly in her ear.
“But, Sam,” she pulled away from him, needed to see his face for this. “After we’ve found him, and we know that he’s okay… I’m going back to Stanford. I can’t be a hunter, I know that. I want that normal life.” She chewed her lip waiting for a response.
“Jess.” Sam caught her hand. “I want that normal life, too.”
“You and Dean are pretty close,” she said doubtfully. Huge understatement. They hadn’t seen each other in years, and they could predict each other’s every move.
Sam was shaking his head, though. “Dean and I grew up on the road, in that car that’s parked out front. What kind of life is that? When I told my dad I got a full ride to Stanford, he went ballistic. Told me that if I left, I should never come back. I took him for his word.”
“He’s your dad, I know he loves you.” Jess wasn’t sure what made her so certain. She just knew.
“Maybe,” Sam shrugged, unmoved. “But he’s never going to accept what I want to do. And, yeah, Dean and I are close, but that doesn’t mean we both have to be hunters. I want the same things you do. College. And-”
“And a boyfriend?” she questioned, grin on her face.
“And you,” Sam corrected with a smile. “So, let’s finish the case, find my dad, and then head back to our life together in Stanford.”
“Sounds like the perfect plan.”
The scraping of a chair pulled them out of their little bubble as Dean plunked himself beside them.
“Check it out.” He threw a few pages on the table. Jess quickly read the headline Suicide on Centennial. “1981,” Dean summarized. “Constance Welch jumps off the bridge after finding her two kids drowned in the tub. Survived by husband Joseph Welch. And take a look at that bridge.” Dean’s calloused finger jabbed at a picture on the page.
Jess stared for a second, and then gasped as the pieces fell into place. “That’s the same bridge Troy’s car was found on.”
“Yep.” Dean grabbed the article and stuffed it into his jacket. “C’mon, lovebirds, we’ve got work to do.”
Chapter Five