Supernatural: Cradlesong [Part 1/3]
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For the tenth time in as many minutes, Jess opens her mouth to say something and closes it. Dean doesn’t notice. Of course Dean doesn’t notice.
She watches him sitting with his head in his hands for another fifteen minutes before she finally moves to sit next to him and puts what she hopes is a reassuring hand on his shoulder. She doesn’t tell him it’s okay because it isn’t and nothing ever will be again. Not for either of them.
There’s a knock at the door. It hardly registers for Jess and she’s pretty sure Dean doesn’t even almost hear it. The door opens without either of them responding.
“Dean? Jess? I brought some food.” Bobby stands in the doorway looking uncomfortable and fixes his eyes on the opposite wall. His gaze is too still and his effort to not bring attention by sending a glance in the wrong direction is too obvious. Dean and Jess both look at what he’s avoiding anyway.
“We’re not hungry,” Jess says.
“You’ll have to eat someday.”
“He’s not eating,” Dean replies coldly, eyes not moving from the body on the bed across the room. “I’m not eating.”
“Dean, don’t be ridi-Dean. I know what this is like for both of you, but life is going to have to…Sam would have wanted…” Bobby trails off, clearly realizing what Jess had learned hours ago. Nothing anyone can say to Dean will ever be better than an insult.
“You should go,” Jess tells him, hand beginning to circle on Dean’s back. The way he likes it. The way Sam used to do it. Used to. Jess shivers.
“I’m not going anywhere until-”
“Get out, Bobby. Leave us alone.”
Bobby’s hand fidgets on the door handle. “You two sure now is really a good time to-”
Dean stands up then, scary, more alive than he’s been since…well, since.
“Don’t you hear her? Man, you should know what she lost. Cut her some slack.”
The ‘we’ is implied. Bobby sends them both sorry looks, puts down the bucket of chicken he brought them on the table.
“When you guys do decide, it’s here.”
The door closes softly behind him and Jess and Dean resume their routine of staring out in morbid silence. Sam, ironically, looks better off than either of them. Hell, he probably is.
Jess starts shaking with tears before Dean does, just because she knows the longer he goes without it, the worse it’ll be when he cracks. He responds, puts his arm around her and draws her in, which shouldn’t be a surprise to Jess, but it is. Dean hasn’t heard anything through his grief until now.
He holds on to her with too much force, but she’s not exactly present enough to feel if there’s pain. Sam is still watching them, smiling as they share their loss, smiling like he had so many times watching them together.
Dean makes a keening sound; it comes from somewhere so deep inside of him that Jess hadn’t known it existed until this moment. He kisses her hair and she knows there are tears falling into it. Dean’s not much of a crier, but she doesn’t need to see or feel the tears to know they’re running off him without pause.
Jess doesn’t know how long they stay like that. Who the fuck is keeping time nowadays? She just knows it’s hours or days or years or an entire miserable lifetime before she can pull away from Dean and wipe at her cheeks.
She’s exhausted from the effort of crying like this and, as much as she’s dreading what nightmares she’ll fall asleep to, she’s more afraid of staying awake for this one.
“We should,” Jess sniffles, “I don’t know. Sleep or something.”
“Go ahead,” Dean says, running a hand down her back. “Yeah, you should sleep.”
“What are you gonna do?”
He smiles pathetically. “I’ll watch Sammy.”
He does for hours, keeps guard over him and occasionally mumbles something to his brother, something soft and lovely that Jess can’t make out the words to, but understands anyway. After a while, Dean doesn’t even seem to realize Sam isn’t answering.
“Dean,” she says, lifting herself on the couch.
He turns to look at her. “Are we keeping you up?”
Jess doesn’t even kind of have the strength to argue with Dean’s delusions right now. She holds a hand out for him.
“I don’t wanna sleep alone tonight, Dean.”
Dean looks back at Sam for a long moment before nodding. He stands up and wraps his body around Jess, rocking her slightly, like a baby in a crib. Jess knows Dean thinks she’s asleep when he presses his lips to her shoulder and whispers, “I’m gonna get him back for you, Jess.”
It doesn’t scare her more than any of the other denial-ridden promises he’s whispered in the last few hours.
_______________________________________________________________
When Jess wakes up the next morning, Sam and Dean are on the bed across the room kissing. That’s nothing new, and it takes a solid thirty seconds for Jess’s brain to catch up with her eyes and then everything crashes in on her.
Sam is sitting up. Kissing Dean. Sam is alive. And that definitely means trouble.
Sam pulls out of the kiss, Dean cups his hand around his brother’s head, lowering him gently onto his pillow. He tries to move down for another kiss and Sam’s hand reaches out to stop him.
“Hey, how about a minute or two to breathe?”
Dean laughs like it’s the best damn joke he’s ever heard, presses one hand over Sam’s heart and Jess can just hardly see his lips moving from where she’s lying, knows he’s counting out beats and how many seconds there are between each one. Memorizing what Sam sounds like alive.
“What do you wanna do, Sammy? I’ll let you do anything to me. You want me to suck you?” His voice lowers. “You wanna fuck me? Anything you want, Sam.”
Sam teases, “You were really worried, huh?”
“Nah, I knew you’d be fine. But Jess. Poor thing was a mess.”
Sam rolls his eyes and pulls Dean into a kiss.
“Hey, I’m serious. Say the word, Sam, I’ll do anything.”
“Dude, I just got stabbed. You look like you haven’t slept all night. What I think we both want is some sleep.”
Dean nods and Sam tries to tug him down, to get Dean to lie next to him so he can get his arms around him. It’s, apparently, the only thing Dean won’t do for his brother right now.
“Not here.” Dean lifts off the bed and tugs at Sam, who makes a sore noise and sits up slowly. “I don’t want you lying here anymore.”
Jess isn’t overeager to wake up and see Sam sleeping peacefully in that same spot, making this all seem like a dream, either.
“It’s perfectly comfortable,” Sam says.
Dean shakes his head. “Look. Jess is on the bed across the room, Sammy. Let’s go sleep with her. She was worried. I wanna see you guys together.”
Sam still looks a little lost, but he can tell it matters to Dean, so he gets out of bed as carefully as he can and lets Dean lead him to where Jess is lying.
She pretends to be asleep, stays passive as Sam lies behind her and passes a warm-which is so different from the way he’d felt the last time she’d touched him-hand through her hair. She closes her eyes and feels Sam kiss her softly and tries to convince herself that this is not a good thing.
_______________________________________________________________
Sam hardly even seems to remember what happened after a few hours of sleep. He’s moving easily when they wake up, laughing, completely unaware of the heavy sadness Jess still can’t shake away. The broken house rings with his and Dean’s laughter, but all Jess hears are the echoes of her and Dean mourning just hours earlier. Everything here reminds her of Sam’s death, and nothing lets her forget for even a moment that something bad has to be coming.
“Bobby, why don’t you and Sam go grab some more of those maps out of your trunk. Me and Dean will stay and set the guns up.”
Bobby nods, obviously seeing what Jess is getting at, and leads the way. Sam follows without any hint that he might be catching on to the tension in the room. Jess watches them through the window until they’re far enough for her to be sure they’re safe and turns on Dean.
“What the fuck did you do to bring him back?”
Dean is watching Sam and Bobby through the window. Sam laughs good-naturedly at something the older man says and Dean’s lips turn up softly. “Who cares?”
“Excuse me?”
Dean looks at Jess, still smiling and shrugs. “Who cares what I did, Jess? He’s alive.”
“You have to be kidding me. I know you’re not that stupid, Dean.”
“Maybe I am.”
“You made a deal? You didn’t even stop to talk to me about it? It never even occurred to you that selling your soul just might be a bad idea?”
“You would have tried to talk me out of it.”
“Damn right I would!”
Dean shakes his head. “Out of obligation, Jess. This is better for everyone. You two are going to finally get to be together and I,” Dean shrugs, “I get to know I gave that to you.”
He reaches a hand out and tries to touch her cheek, but Jess slaps him away.
“What the fuck is wrong with you, Dean? This wasn’t selfless, don’t pretend-”
“I brought him back for you, Jess. I don’t get to keep him. You do. You should be thanking me.”
Jess’s fists curl and she considers doing all the things Dean taught her to do-the things he warned her to never even try unless she was sure she wanted to take an opponent out for good. “Kiss my ass.”
“I don’t need your permission. I don’t need you to be okay with it. It’s done and I couldn’t be sorry if…I’m never gonna be sorry.”
“Oh, really? Because Sam will. Did you even stop for a minute to think that he’ll take this just as bad as you did?”
“Maybe at first,” Dean says. “He’ll get over it.”
“And what about me? We’re both going to have to lose you and he’s going to have to live with the fact that you did this for him and I’m going to have to watch him fall apart.”
“No, Jess. You’re going to help him stay together. Don’t you get it? It’s okay that I did this because he has you. I won’t be leaving him alone. It’ll be exactly like it was supposed to be before I showed up at Stanford and fucked everything up.”
“You’re pathetic.”
“Yeah, well, you’ll be rid of me soon enough.”
Jess’s jaw clenches, but she doesn’t take the bait. “How long, Dean? Ten years?”
Dean laughs. “Something like that.”
“Dean.”
“A little less than ten years.”
“This isn’t a fucking game. How long did you get?”
“One.”
The words sits between them, grows steadily louder as the silence following it stretches on.
“I’m going to fucking kill you,” Jess finally says evenly.
Dean smiles. “See? Itching to get some alone time already.”
She shoves him-he hardly budges, but the contact still gives her enough of a vent. Dean stares down, looking just a little sorry, and makes no move to stop her as she begins to pound her fists into his chest, even though she knows that her hits are hysterical and not causing him any real pain.
Eventually he catches her hands and uses the grip to pull her in. “I’m sorry, Jess, I shouldn’t have said that,” he whispers. “I’m sorry.”
She lets herself cry into his chest until his hold on her loosens and she slides away from him.
“How are you planning to tell Sam about this genius move?” she asks.
Dean shoots forward then, snatches her hand and holds it tight. “Jess, you gotta promise me you won’t do that.”
“You really have lost your mind, haven’t you?”
“Please. We don’t have to make this a big deal. He doesn’t need to know.”
“Not a big deal? Dean, you think he might notice in a year when the hell hounds bust in and tear you to shreds?”
Dean flinches, but Jess isn’t really concerned with his feelings at the moment.
“Let him deal with it then. No use making him stress over it for a year.”
“No. No way. I’m telling him now if you’re too much of a coward to do it. And for the record, if you can’t handle telling him you did it, it probably means you shouldn’t do it.”
Dean pulls her against him then and kisses her hard, desperate, begging. “Don’t tell him. Babe, please don’t tell him. I know you don’t understand, but I had to do it. Don’t punish me for it.”
Jess shoves the kiss away but can’t make herself let go of his hand or ignore how solemn his eyes are. “You really fucked me over, Dean,” she says with resignation. “I won’t tell him, but I’m siding with him when he figures it out.”
_______________________________________________________________
Of course, Sam does figure it out. Dean’s sorry attempt at keeping the mess secret collapses as soon as Jake gets a look at him. Jess has no idea why Dean bothered pretending Sam would be stupid or uninterested enough to miss the signs for a year, but she’d maybe hoped for his sake that he’d get more than a few hours of peace.
Bobby and Ellen wave goodbye, say something about where they’re going next and how they plan to deal with stopping the mess of demons Jake let out of Hell, but only Dean seems to have the presence of mind to pay attention to the details.
“Damn,” Dean says, lowering the Colt into the Impala’s trunk with a whistle. “Can you believe it, Sammy? The Demon’s dead. We really got it.”
Sam doesn’t say anything, and Dean is taken by surprise when he turns to find his brother right behind him.
“Uh, hi there,” Dean says awkwardly when Sam makes no effort to move out of his space.
“I was dead.”
“Huh?”
“He killed me.”
“And you just got back up and walked out? You oughta teach me that trick some time, kid.”
“Dean,” Sam says, all business. “Dean, was I dead?”
“No?”
Sam shoves him and turns his attention to Jess. “He’s lying, isn’t he? He made a deal?”
Jess nods just once before she’s forced to turn away, can’t even pretend to be okay with the way Sam’s face drops. He bunches Dean’s jacket up in his fists and starts shaking. “How could you do that to me, Dean? How could you?”
Dean reaches out to try to stop Sam’s hands and Sam doesn’t have the energy to resist, just keeps holding on and repeating the question.
“Sammy, I had to. Come on, don’t pretend you don’t understand that.” Dean smoothes a hand over one of Sam’s cheeks and his fingers just hardly begin to play in the loose strands of Sam’s hair. “You can’t get mad at me for this. I can’t handle it and it wasn’t…I didn’t have a choice, man.”
To Jess’s surprise, Sam lets go of Dean and nods. “I know you think you had to.”
Sam takes the spot next to him on the Impala and leans against the trunk. Dean doesn’t try giving Sam all of the bullshit excuses he’d fed her, it’s all understood between Sam and Dean, as usual.
“How long?” Sam asks after a long silence.
“A year.”
Sam sucks in a deep breath and slams his hand down on the car with force that would usually get him a lecture, but which Dean knows better than to criticize now.
“Okay,” Sam says standing up and nodding. “Okay.”
He grabs the keys out of Dean’s hands and rounds the car to get into the driver’s seat. His face is blank and almost tranquil, and Jess wonders if she should rehash everything he and Dean just talked about, because it obviously isn’t sinking in properly.
He hovers in front of the door for a few seconds before opening it. “Jess rides shotgun,” is the last thing he says before sliding into place and slamming the door. Dean, who hardly lets Sam drive, let alone lets anyone else decide the seating arrangements, hangs his head and obeys instructions. They’re in the car for four hours after that, but nobody says a word.
_______________________________________________________________
For three weeks, all Sam and Dean do, day in and day out, is argue. If Jess thought Sam was taking Dean’s deal too well, she was quickly disillusioned in the days that followed. Sam doesn’t want to hunt, Sam doesn’t want to eat, Sam doesn’t want to fuck, and when he does, it’s either sad or angry, never fun anymore, never gentle. All Sam does is rummage through any source he can get his hands on that might help Dean until he falls asleep, eyes weighed down by dark bags, head resting in books instead of the pillow Jess and Dean save for him in vain.
Dean tries to stop him, reminds him that breaking the deal is essentially suicide. Sam never replies to that, just smiles like it would be a relief to him and turns back to the book. Dean gets angry then, pushes Sam’s research away, starts yelling, and Sam yells right back.
Jess can more or less recite the fights word for word by now, even though she has no part in them. Bored, she stares at the book of lore she’s got open-all of the research for actual cases has fallen to Jess lately, since Sam is too busy searching for a way to save Dean and Dean is too busy sitting around looking bitter about it-and yawns as they begin.
“What are you reading there, Sammy?”
“Nothing, Dean. Leave me alone.”
“Sam, I thought I told you, you can’t poke at it.”
“Dean, I thought I told you, I don’t care.”
“I didn’t sell my soul to have you go and undo it, man.”
“And I didn’t ask you to do it to begin with!” Sam stands up, pointing at Dean and practically spitting the words out. His chair leaves scratched wood on the floor as it’s forced back.
“You said it was okay. You said you understood why I did it.”
“I do understand, Dean. So you really owe me one on understanding why I’m not going to spend the next year ignoring this when there’s a shot in hell I can help you.”
“There isn’t. You’ll just drive yourself crazy.”
“Yeah, well, it’s better than dead, right?”
“Dammit, man, you’re acting like a whiny teenager again.”
“You think I’m overreacting? That’s hilarious coming from you, Dean.”
“I didn’t overreact, Sam.”
“I say you did.”
Jess flips a page, coughs. No acknowledgement.
“Why can’t we just be happy for one year? That’s all I’m asking for.”
“That’s why, Dean. Because it’s one year. And you’re going to Hell. Imagine what you would do if it were me.” Sam sits and rests his head in one hand with a tired sigh. Dean steps closer and tries to calm him.
“It’s not, Sammy. It never would be. You’ve got Jess and you’re…you’ve always had a shot. It was never like it is for me.”
Sam’s other hand moves to rest over Dean’s on his shoulder. All the fight has gone out of him. “I wish you knew how wrong you are about that,” he says, his voice trembling. “You never would have done it if you knew.”
_______________________________________________________________
“Sam,” Jess tries in her softest voice. Sam looks up from whatever dark magic book he’s pouring over while Dean’s away and gives her a strained smile. “Can we talk?”
He closes the book. “Sure, what’s up?”
Jess sits across from him. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“About what?”
“Dean’s deal, Sam, what else?”
His open posture breaks down in a moment, he folds his arms over his chest. “No.”
“Okay. Well I do.”
“Talk to Dean about it, then.”
“We’re in this together, Sam. I’m going through it, too. You and Dean are acting like I have nothing to do with it, but he’s mine, too. Maybe not as much as he’s yours, but he is.”
“Yeah, I know,” Sam says bitterly.
“So why won’t you let me share it?” She tries to take his hand but he pulls back.
“I don’t want to talk to you about this, Jess.”
“Why not?”
She can see Sam get angry then, but he keeps his tone civil. “Not talking to you about it.”
“Sam, come on, at least give me a reason.”
“There is no reason,” Sam says coolly and suddenly it all makes sense.
“Oh my god,” Jess gasps. “You blame me, don’t you?”
“No.” Sam stands up. “There’s nothing to blame you for.”
“You don’t believe that.”
“Leave me alone, Jess.”
“No, seriously, talk to me.”
“I don’t want to talk.”
“How can you blame me? You know this is as awful for me as it is for-”
“Then you should have stopped him.”
She sits frozen and watches Sam’s glare melt into something softer.
“I’m sorry. Jess. This isn’t your-this isn’t anyone’s fault. This is just the way things happen.”
“You’ve been punishing me this whole time? I would have stopped him if I’d had the chance, I would have done anything.”
“I know,” Sam says, sounding centuries older than he should. He sits next to her and takes her hand, giving it a squeeze. “I wasn’t trying to punish you, Jess, but if I talk to you, I’ll get angry, and I know it’s not your fault, but I’m convinced it’s everyone’s fault. I hate everyone for it. The Demon, Jake, me for not killing him before he could kill me, Dean for not being able to help himself, you for not being enough to stop him, hell, I blame Bobby, and the car for not breaking down, and my mom for dying and leading to this whole mess between us. I just can’t get used to this.”
Jess leans her head on his shoulder. “See, now isn’t it nice to let it all out?”
Sam laughs unexpectedly and turns to press a kiss into her hair.
_______________________________________________________________
Sam and Dean touch like everything’s okay and Jess thinks, just maybe, they’re finally dealing with the problem. Not moving on, but finding a healthier way to live for the next eleven months. Dean still makes faces when Sam’s obviously not researching what Dean thinks he should be researching, but he doesn’t say anything; Sam rewards his silence by backing off on the fighting, not all the time, but enough to get by.
And Jess finally exists to them again. Sam isn’t holding her at arm’s length, afraid to make her feel guilty; Dean isn’t hiding from her, knowing he’ll feel guilty if he doesn’t. There’s a wonderfully fake sense of calm about them, and a longing for normal so strong they somehow convince themselves life is going on.
For his own part, Dean really is okay, which is more than a little infuriating to Jess. He only seems upset when he looks at one of them too closely. Sam is, unsurprisingly, worst off, and Jess walks on eggshells around him, knowing that anything she says can trigger the wrong memory, send him almost to tears or to anger, either of which is terrifying, though for vastly different reasons. Sam lives his life like a rubber band pulled a mile too thin and Jess knows that in a little bit less than a year, he’s going to snap, and she’ll be the one caught in the aftermath.
It’s not always bad, though, not like it was at first, and that’s a lot to be thankful for. Sometimes, things are natural and good again. The rest of the time…well, Jess is a Winchester now. She’s learning to cope.
_______________________________________________________________
Sam grinds down, pressing hard kisses along Dean’s jaw line. Dean paws his brother away from his face and laughs, turning to face Jess.
“I like that outfit,” he says, bucking up as the hundreds of pounds of Sam resting on top of him groan.
“Yeah?”
“You should wear it more.”
Jess nods, looking down at her towel. “I don’t know how practical that would be, Dean.”
Sam turns in her direction and smiles. He crawls off Dean and gets up from the bed, moving towards her. “I don’t like it,” he says, pressing his lips to her ear. “Rather see you take it off.”
Jess reaches out to stroke his bare chest, and Sam takes the window, one hand undoing the fastening on her towel and letting it drop to the floor.
“Yeah, don’t worry about me. I’ll just sit here a twiddle my thumbs,” Deans shouts from the bed, interrupting Sam and Jess’s kiss.
“Oh, please can we ignore him?”
She feels Sam smiling into her neck, but Sam can’t do anything with more than a foot between himself and Dean lately, so he takes her hand and turns back to the bed.
“You’re the only person here still wearing pants,” Sam points out. “I feel like I’m in The Twilight Zone.”
Dean pretends to laugh, then shoots his brother an annoyed look as he moves his hand down, cupping himself through his jeans.
“That means take them off, not show us how hard you are under them, moron.”
Dean smirks at Jess, sitting up to kiss her, mumbling something about needing to shut her up, and, just to frustrate her, waits for one of them to make the move to get him naked. Jess isn’t in the mood for being prideful and Sam squeezes the back of her neck gratefully when she unhooks his jeans and pulls them low.
Dean waits for her to finish taking them off before he flips her onto her back, leaning down to kiss her gently. She’s not paying enough attention to her surroundings to know how Sam ends up on her left, kissing her neck, but she’s not complaining. They both pull their mouths off her at the same time, identical smirks as they look at each other and seem to get the same idea.
Sam reaches over Jess and takes Dean’s hand, moving them both down until they’re each resting palms against the insides of her uppermost thigh. Jess’s breath speeds up and she closes her eyes in anticipation as they each slip one finger inside of her. It should feel weird and confused, but the boys move in perfect sync and the result of it is almost better than she can bear. Whichever one of them is on top, she thinks it’s Dean but can’t think clearly enough to be sure, begins to press his thumb against her clit, eliciting a wanton moan.
They don’t stop there. As soon as they have a rhythm going inside of her, each brother takes one breast into his mouth and begins to suck and lick at her, Dean teasing at her nipple with his tongue and Sam biting her lightly. She’s shuddering and warning them that she’s going to come in a matter of minutes and it’s only because of this that Sam pulls away, taking his hand back and licking his fingers. Dean pauses, too, looks up to watch his brother, but doesn’t remove his hand from her cunt or break the contact between his tongue and her breast. Greedily, she pushes his face back down and rolls her body into the finger still sitting inside of her limply, torturing her.
“Don’t let her, Dean,” Sam warns. “Don’t let her come yet.”
Dean gives her an apologetic kiss as he takes his fingers back and wipes them on the sheets.
“What do you have in mind, Sammy?” he asks.
Sam smiles. “Wanna take turns fucking her. Me first.”
“Always you first,” Dean complains, but he smiles warmly.
Jess watches Dean move to the nightstand and grab a condom, but when he tries giving it to Sam, Sam shakes his head.
“Sam, I’m not on-”
Sam moves down and kisses her with a violent desperation, doesn’t let her finish the warning. He holds her thighs apart and lowers himself into her, completely bare for the first time in years, and Jess can’t deny how wet it gets her to know that Sam can feel it. He presses close and whispers so softly she knows Dean doesn’t hear, “I know that, Jess. I know.”
Sam begins to move then, his thrusts careful. Jess knows he’s doing this exactly the way she likes it best, trying to make her feel even better than he usually does, because he needs her to agree to this. He doesn’t need to explain what he’s doing, and Jess isn’t surprised that he pulls out of her without coming and urges Dean to take his place. He doesn’t give Dean a chance to get a condom, whispers all kinds of filth to him about fucking her raw, things they both know Dean will be too turned on to refuse.
Sam forgets to mention the part where he’s trying to get Dean to get her pregnant. It makes Jess realize he isn’t as cocky about saving Dean as he acts, that he wants her to do this for him, so that some part of Dean will make it if he doesn’t manage to save him. Jess doesn’t know how she didn’t see through Sam’s façade, but she looks over at him now, sees the sad, calculating look in his eyes as his brother fucks her, and nearly breaks down crying.
Dean hears her aborted sob and misinterprets it. He’s completely clueless to the silent conversation going on between her and Sam. He moves to kiss her softly, lovingly, and rolls his hips just as gently, promising to make her feel good. Jess doesn’t want to lose those kisses or Dean’s promises or the soft strokes on her back when they’re drifting off to sleep, not ever. The thought that she could makes her wrap her legs around him, pull him in closer, and hold him in place as he begins to come, not letting him pull out, not letting him lessen the chance that Sam will get his wish, and not caring that Sam and Jess are being selfish by not giving Dean a choice in the matter. Dean didn’t exactly give them a choice, either.
Jess loses it the moment she feels Dean beginning to fill her up, and she hears Sam coming into his fist beside her.
_______________________________________________________________
They stop using condoms altogether after that. Jess waits impatiently for one month to pass by, gets her period, and waits for another. It becomes an obsession, almost as desperate as Sam’s searching for a way to break the deal. Jess is his only back up and she can’t stand the thought of letting them both down.
It’s not until three months of trying have passed, early September, that Jess’s period is late. She tries not to get too excited, doesn’t want to tell Sam until she knows she’s pregnant for sure, but waiting for another month or longer seems like an impossible task when she’s four days off and already bursting to let him in on it. She buys a test that night and tries it out, then buys three for the next morning when it comes out positive.
She does manage to keep it a secret, finds excuses to slip away. Two weeks after the missed period she finds a clinic near their motel and gets checked out, assured that everything looks in order.
It’s hell right away to keep up with Sam and Dean. She wants to sleep later, can’t move as fast, starts getting sick. Sam and Dean get worried, despite her efforts to hide it. She does a good job masking the really obvious signs, but there are times she does next to nothing right on hunts, which is what frustrates her more than anything. The boys are encouraging, but Jess doesn’t miss the looks they exchange when she makes novice mistakes.
_______________________________________________________________
“I don’t like it,” Dean says for the hundredth time.
“What’s there not to like?” Sam leans forward, trying to reach the front of the Impala. Jess smacks him back for the hell of it.
“It’s a little suspicious, if you ask me. Chick shows up just in time and saves the day? How’d she even get a demon killing knife?”
“How’d we get a demon killing gun? It happens when you’re a good hunter, Dean. She obviously knew what she was doing or we’d all be dead right now.”
“I don’t like it.” Dean turns to the passenger seat. “What do you think?”
Jess looks back at Sam and then at Dean. They’re both staring at her expectantly, and she’s hardly staying awake through this whole fight. “Yes,” she answers.
“Yes what?”
“Yes.”
“Pain in my ass, both of you.”
“Sam more than me, usually.”
Sam snickers.
“Look, Dean, I’m not in love with the situation we’re in right now, either, but we’re in it, and as long as there’s however many hundreds of demons hanging around courtesy of our friend Yellow Eyes, we need all the experienced hunters we can get out there. Especially when they can actually kill the damn things.”
“You were supposed to side with me,” Dean says, looking at Jess from the corner of his eyes.
“Says who?” Sam asks. “I saw her first.”
He reaches over her seat and gives her a massage and she closes her eyes, more appreciative than Sam knows.
“That’s very mature, Sam, girls really like being treated like property.”
“Don’t blame me, I learned it from him.”
Dean laughs. “That’s my boy.”
“You’re both pigs,” Jess says, squeezing Dean’s thigh.
“Anyway, look, Dean, I’m not saying we make best friends with her or invite her to take up residence in the back seat. I’m just saying, we need people we can work with and depend on, and the girl saved our asses.”
“Once. It was great. I appreciate it. We don’t need to go sniffing her out.”
“Yeah, well, according to you we shouldn’t look too hard into anything.”
“Boys, boys, calm down now.”
They both huff, but they drop it, acknowledging that it was going in the wrong direction. The car falls silent for a few minutes.
“Jess, are you all right?” Dean finally asks.
She blushes, knowing that he’s referring to the stupid mistake she’d made while fighting Sloth. She’d had a clear shot at dousing the bastard in holy water and was still too sick from the morning to focus. She’d be dead if Dean hadn’t intervened, and that’s not really something she wants to be reminded of.
So she scoffs at his concern. “Ugh, never mind. Go back to arguing about what’s-her-face.”
“I wouldn’t be bringing it up if…”
“It’s the third time this month, Jess,” Sam says, picking up where Dean left off. “You’re a better hunter than that.”
“Guys, I know I’ve been a little scatterbrained on hunts lately, and I apologize, really, I do. There’s nothing wrong with me, okay? I’m just distracted.”
Sam squeezes her shoulder understandingly and Jess almost feels guilty that it’s not really Dean’s deal stopping her from getting the jobs done.
“Yeah, all right,” Dean says reluctantly. She catches him dodging worried glances towards her for the rest of the ride.
_______________________________________________________________
“More demons,” Dean grumbles. “I want a fucking werewolf or something. Something fun.”
“Well, you get demons,” Sam says, clearly annoyed. Jess can tell he’s been listening to Dean whine about this all morning. “Shut up and eat your breakfast.”
Dean makes a face at Sam when his brother turns his head and then looks at Jess standing in the entrance to the kitchen area. His eyes fall to her chest. Jess was feeling a little contrary this morning, decided instead of covering her tattoo up, she’d show it off with a low cut shirt-nice and proud, so all the demons trying to take over the city have one last thing to look at before she sends them back to hell.
Dean licks his lips. “Damn, that turns me on.”
Jess smirks but doesn’t move. Sam turns and creases his eyebrows. “That’s not a good idea. They’ll know you’re a hunter on sight.”
“I think a woman wearing clothes in this town is already going to set off a few warning bells, Samantha,” Dean replies, eyes still stuck in place. “I like our girl bold.”
Jess shrugs. She knows, logically, that Sam is right, but Sam doesn’t know that in a few months she’ll be blown up like a balloon and Jess won’t be able to make either of the brothers look at her the way Dean’s looking at her right now for a long, long time. “You’ll protect me, won’t you?”
Sam smiles grudgingly and kicks a seat out where her breakfast is waiting on the table.
“Who said chivalry is dead?”
Dean snorts.
“So what have you figured out about the case?” she asks, plopping into her seat.
“It’s definitely demons, the question is how many. The way the town is acting, they might as well all be possessed.”
Dean nods at Sam’s summary. “Think it’s something like with the Seven Sins again?”
“I’m not so sure. The suicide thing is throwing me off.”
“Well, the town didn’t just wake up one morning and decide to go batshit, Sammy.”
Jess inhales a few bites and stands to grab her gun, eager to get on with what she has a feeling will be her last hunt. “Better go figure it out instead of sitting here bitching, eh boys?”
“I like her so much,” Dean says, sounding like an excited child as he follows her out.
_______________________________________________________________
Jess makes sure she is completely positive about the baby before she tells them. She’s two months in and the perfect opportunity presents itself, so Jess figures, what the hell, they’re going to figure it out eventually.
“Hey, do you know what today is?” Sam looks up from his newspaper suddenly, very excited, and Jess leans closer to look at the date. November 19. Nothing rings any bells in her head.
Dean grunts uninterestedly.
“What’s today, Sam?” Jess asks.
“Our anniversary.”
Dean laughs. “What are you talking about?”
Sam looks down; Jess almost thinks his ears are pink enough for him to be blushing. “Forget it.”
“No, what?”
“It’s been two years since we started, you know, whatever.”
“Oh, right,” Jess says, nodding. “Our You Know Whatever anniversary. How’d we forget that one, Dean?”
Dean’s lips quirk. “Sometimes it just feels like we’ve been You Know Whatever our whole lives, Jess.”
“God, I hate you both.”
“Why would someone You Know Whatever with people he hates?” she asks Dean.
“I don’t know, Jess. Doesn’t make a lick of sense.”
Sam pouts.
“We should do something,” Dean says after a few seconds of silence.
“We are doing something. We’re having breakfast.” Jess holds her fork up and flourishes her hand like it’s impressive.
“No, I mean, to celebrate. It’s not every day you get to glorify being in some kind of weird clusterfuck with your brother and his girlfriend.”
“Really romantic, Dean,” Sam says sourly.
“I’m serious. We deserve some fun, right? Two years is a long time.”
Sam coughs uncomfortably. “For you in particular.”
“Sam, I’m offended. I was always the picture of commitment and-”
Jess tosses a hash brown at him just to shut him up and immediately regrets it when he picks it up off his booth seat and eats it.
“You know, you give the rest of us germs when you do shit like that,” Jess says.
“You had zombie blood on your face yesterday,” Sam points out.
“That’s unavoidable. He’s going out of his way to be gross!”
“No bickering on our anniversary, bitches,” Dean says.
It’s clear that he’s not talking about the tater tots. Sam meets his gaze and, to Jess’s relief, he swallows hard and nods his assent. She nearly throws her hands up in the air in celebration-it’s been over three months since they went an entire day without fighting about something, even if they’ve stopped addressing the real problems and begun using euphemisms like ‘dirty socks’ for ‘why’d you sell your soul, you dumb asshole?’
“So what do you do on a clusterfuck anniversary?”
“I don’t know. And why didn’t we have one last year if you’re keeping track, you girl?”
Sam admirably manages to smile instead of pointing out just why every bullshit occasion feels more important this year. It’s better than Jess probably would have done if the question had been aimed at her.
“I’ve got something,” Jess says.
They both turn to face her and she smiles.
“I, uh. I wasn’t going to say anything until I was a little more sure, because. Well.” Jess takes a deep breath. She knows Sam wants this, she’s pretty sure Dean would want Sam to have a family when he’s gone, but the timing isn’t exactly ripe and they haven’t talked about it. “Look, I think I’m knocked up.”
Sam and Dean make the same deer-in-the-headlights face.
“Knocked up like how?”
“Well, Sammy, when a mommy really loves a daddy-”
“Shut up, asshole. Jess, are you serious?”
“Do I look like I’m bluffing?”
Sam reaches out and grabs her hand, seems to forget there are bones inside it that should all stay in the same formation.
“Ow, Sam,” Jess says. He lightens up and takes Dean’s hand, too.
“Whose is it?” he asks.
“Don’t be a moron, Sam, she can’t know that yet.”
“Right, of course. I know,” Sam says gently. He gives Jess’s hand a squeeze and she practically hears him thinking let it be Dean’s, please, please, let it be Dean’s. Sam shakes his head as if to clear it and then focuses back on Jess. “I should have known with the way you’ve been lately. You know you have to stop hunting, right?”
Dean makes a lazy sound of agreement.
“Yeah, of course. But I’m not even far along yet.”
“You’re getting there, Jess, and it’s been bad enough for months now. I wish you hadn’t gone on this long.”
“I know, but. We have to…it’s not the time to be slacking off.”
Sam nods sadly, but Dean scowls. “No way you’re doing anything to put yourself at risk after this.”
“I was planning to stop as soon as I was positive. Hunting, at least, not the whole thing. I can still do research and help with interviews.”
“You two are such geeks,” Dean says with a laugh. “I’d grab on to anything that got me out of that shit.”
Jess smiles. “Yeah, you really would. But not me. I’m your Oracle.”
Dean leans over the booth to kiss her, despite the eggs she’s got in her mouth.
“Real sexy, Dean.” Jess imagines the face her mother would make if she could see that her etiquette classes amounted to Jess sleeping in sleazy motels with two men and talking with her mouth full of greasy diner food. It’s comedic gold.
“Comics are always sexy,” he insists.
“And I’m the geek,” says Sam.
Dean snorts, turning his attention to Sam, and takes his brother into a headlock. “We’re gonna be dads, man!”
Sam laughs, beams at his brother, and Dean beams back. The three of them sit there smiling stupidly at each other for the entire meal, and Jess almost forgets that Dean will probably never meet the kid at all.
BACK TO MASTERPOST
or
ON TO PART TWO
For the tenth time in as many minutes, Jess opens her mouth to say something and closes it. Dean doesn’t notice. Of course Dean doesn’t notice.
She watches him sitting with his head in his hands for another fifteen minutes before she finally moves to sit next to him and puts what she hopes is a reassuring hand on his shoulder. She doesn’t tell him it’s okay because it isn’t and nothing ever will be again. Not for either of them.
There’s a knock at the door. It hardly registers for Jess and she’s pretty sure Dean doesn’t even almost hear it. The door opens without either of them responding.
“Dean? Jess? I brought some food.” Bobby stands in the doorway looking uncomfortable and fixes his eyes on the opposite wall. His gaze is too still and his effort to not bring attention by sending a glance in the wrong direction is too obvious. Dean and Jess both look at what he’s avoiding anyway.
“We’re not hungry,” Jess says.
“You’ll have to eat someday.”
“He’s not eating,” Dean replies coldly, eyes not moving from the body on the bed across the room. “I’m not eating.”
“Dean, don’t be ridi-Dean. I know what this is like for both of you, but life is going to have to…Sam would have wanted…” Bobby trails off, clearly realizing what Jess had learned hours ago. Nothing anyone can say to Dean will ever be better than an insult.
“You should go,” Jess tells him, hand beginning to circle on Dean’s back. The way he likes it. The way Sam used to do it. Used to. Jess shivers.
“I’m not going anywhere until-”
“Get out, Bobby. Leave us alone.”
Bobby’s hand fidgets on the door handle. “You two sure now is really a good time to-”
Dean stands up then, scary, more alive than he’s been since…well, since.
“Don’t you hear her? Man, you should know what she lost. Cut her some slack.”
The ‘we’ is implied. Bobby sends them both sorry looks, puts down the bucket of chicken he brought them on the table.
“When you guys do decide, it’s here.”
The door closes softly behind him and Jess and Dean resume their routine of staring out in morbid silence. Sam, ironically, looks better off than either of them. Hell, he probably is.
Jess starts shaking with tears before Dean does, just because she knows the longer he goes without it, the worse it’ll be when he cracks. He responds, puts his arm around her and draws her in, which shouldn’t be a surprise to Jess, but it is. Dean hasn’t heard anything through his grief until now.
He holds on to her with too much force, but she’s not exactly present enough to feel if there’s pain. Sam is still watching them, smiling as they share their loss, smiling like he had so many times watching them together.
Dean makes a keening sound; it comes from somewhere so deep inside of him that Jess hadn’t known it existed until this moment. He kisses her hair and she knows there are tears falling into it. Dean’s not much of a crier, but she doesn’t need to see or feel the tears to know they’re running off him without pause.
Jess doesn’t know how long they stay like that. Who the fuck is keeping time nowadays? She just knows it’s hours or days or years or an entire miserable lifetime before she can pull away from Dean and wipe at her cheeks.
She’s exhausted from the effort of crying like this and, as much as she’s dreading what nightmares she’ll fall asleep to, she’s more afraid of staying awake for this one.
“We should,” Jess sniffles, “I don’t know. Sleep or something.”
“Go ahead,” Dean says, running a hand down her back. “Yeah, you should sleep.”
“What are you gonna do?”
He smiles pathetically. “I’ll watch Sammy.”
He does for hours, keeps guard over him and occasionally mumbles something to his brother, something soft and lovely that Jess can’t make out the words to, but understands anyway. After a while, Dean doesn’t even seem to realize Sam isn’t answering.
“Dean,” she says, lifting herself on the couch.
He turns to look at her. “Are we keeping you up?”
Jess doesn’t even kind of have the strength to argue with Dean’s delusions right now. She holds a hand out for him.
“I don’t wanna sleep alone tonight, Dean.”
Dean looks back at Sam for a long moment before nodding. He stands up and wraps his body around Jess, rocking her slightly, like a baby in a crib. Jess knows Dean thinks she’s asleep when he presses his lips to her shoulder and whispers, “I’m gonna get him back for you, Jess.”
It doesn’t scare her more than any of the other denial-ridden promises he’s whispered in the last few hours.
_______________________________________________________________
When Jess wakes up the next morning, Sam and Dean are on the bed across the room kissing. That’s nothing new, and it takes a solid thirty seconds for Jess’s brain to catch up with her eyes and then everything crashes in on her.
Sam is sitting up. Kissing Dean. Sam is alive. And that definitely means trouble.
Sam pulls out of the kiss, Dean cups his hand around his brother’s head, lowering him gently onto his pillow. He tries to move down for another kiss and Sam’s hand reaches out to stop him.
“Hey, how about a minute or two to breathe?”
Dean laughs like it’s the best damn joke he’s ever heard, presses one hand over Sam’s heart and Jess can just hardly see his lips moving from where she’s lying, knows he’s counting out beats and how many seconds there are between each one. Memorizing what Sam sounds like alive.
“What do you wanna do, Sammy? I’ll let you do anything to me. You want me to suck you?” His voice lowers. “You wanna fuck me? Anything you want, Sam.”
Sam teases, “You were really worried, huh?”
“Nah, I knew you’d be fine. But Jess. Poor thing was a mess.”
Sam rolls his eyes and pulls Dean into a kiss.
“Hey, I’m serious. Say the word, Sam, I’ll do anything.”
“Dude, I just got stabbed. You look like you haven’t slept all night. What I think we both want is some sleep.”
Dean nods and Sam tries to tug him down, to get Dean to lie next to him so he can get his arms around him. It’s, apparently, the only thing Dean won’t do for his brother right now.
“Not here.” Dean lifts off the bed and tugs at Sam, who makes a sore noise and sits up slowly. “I don’t want you lying here anymore.”
Jess isn’t overeager to wake up and see Sam sleeping peacefully in that same spot, making this all seem like a dream, either.
“It’s perfectly comfortable,” Sam says.
Dean shakes his head. “Look. Jess is on the bed across the room, Sammy. Let’s go sleep with her. She was worried. I wanna see you guys together.”
Sam still looks a little lost, but he can tell it matters to Dean, so he gets out of bed as carefully as he can and lets Dean lead him to where Jess is lying.
She pretends to be asleep, stays passive as Sam lies behind her and passes a warm-which is so different from the way he’d felt the last time she’d touched him-hand through her hair. She closes her eyes and feels Sam kiss her softly and tries to convince herself that this is not a good thing.
_______________________________________________________________
Sam hardly even seems to remember what happened after a few hours of sleep. He’s moving easily when they wake up, laughing, completely unaware of the heavy sadness Jess still can’t shake away. The broken house rings with his and Dean’s laughter, but all Jess hears are the echoes of her and Dean mourning just hours earlier. Everything here reminds her of Sam’s death, and nothing lets her forget for even a moment that something bad has to be coming.
“Bobby, why don’t you and Sam go grab some more of those maps out of your trunk. Me and Dean will stay and set the guns up.”
Bobby nods, obviously seeing what Jess is getting at, and leads the way. Sam follows without any hint that he might be catching on to the tension in the room. Jess watches them through the window until they’re far enough for her to be sure they’re safe and turns on Dean.
“What the fuck did you do to bring him back?”
Dean is watching Sam and Bobby through the window. Sam laughs good-naturedly at something the older man says and Dean’s lips turn up softly. “Who cares?”
“Excuse me?”
Dean looks at Jess, still smiling and shrugs. “Who cares what I did, Jess? He’s alive.”
“You have to be kidding me. I know you’re not that stupid, Dean.”
“Maybe I am.”
“You made a deal? You didn’t even stop to talk to me about it? It never even occurred to you that selling your soul just might be a bad idea?”
“You would have tried to talk me out of it.”
“Damn right I would!”
Dean shakes his head. “Out of obligation, Jess. This is better for everyone. You two are going to finally get to be together and I,” Dean shrugs, “I get to know I gave that to you.”
He reaches a hand out and tries to touch her cheek, but Jess slaps him away.
“What the fuck is wrong with you, Dean? This wasn’t selfless, don’t pretend-”
“I brought him back for you, Jess. I don’t get to keep him. You do. You should be thanking me.”
Jess’s fists curl and she considers doing all the things Dean taught her to do-the things he warned her to never even try unless she was sure she wanted to take an opponent out for good. “Kiss my ass.”
“I don’t need your permission. I don’t need you to be okay with it. It’s done and I couldn’t be sorry if…I’m never gonna be sorry.”
“Oh, really? Because Sam will. Did you even stop for a minute to think that he’ll take this just as bad as you did?”
“Maybe at first,” Dean says. “He’ll get over it.”
“And what about me? We’re both going to have to lose you and he’s going to have to live with the fact that you did this for him and I’m going to have to watch him fall apart.”
“No, Jess. You’re going to help him stay together. Don’t you get it? It’s okay that I did this because he has you. I won’t be leaving him alone. It’ll be exactly like it was supposed to be before I showed up at Stanford and fucked everything up.”
“You’re pathetic.”
“Yeah, well, you’ll be rid of me soon enough.”
Jess’s jaw clenches, but she doesn’t take the bait. “How long, Dean? Ten years?”
Dean laughs. “Something like that.”
“Dean.”
“A little less than ten years.”
“This isn’t a fucking game. How long did you get?”
“One.”
The words sits between them, grows steadily louder as the silence following it stretches on.
“I’m going to fucking kill you,” Jess finally says evenly.
Dean smiles. “See? Itching to get some alone time already.”
She shoves him-he hardly budges, but the contact still gives her enough of a vent. Dean stares down, looking just a little sorry, and makes no move to stop her as she begins to pound her fists into his chest, even though she knows that her hits are hysterical and not causing him any real pain.
Eventually he catches her hands and uses the grip to pull her in. “I’m sorry, Jess, I shouldn’t have said that,” he whispers. “I’m sorry.”
She lets herself cry into his chest until his hold on her loosens and she slides away from him.
“How are you planning to tell Sam about this genius move?” she asks.
Dean shoots forward then, snatches her hand and holds it tight. “Jess, you gotta promise me you won’t do that.”
“You really have lost your mind, haven’t you?”
“Please. We don’t have to make this a big deal. He doesn’t need to know.”
“Not a big deal? Dean, you think he might notice in a year when the hell hounds bust in and tear you to shreds?”
Dean flinches, but Jess isn’t really concerned with his feelings at the moment.
“Let him deal with it then. No use making him stress over it for a year.”
“No. No way. I’m telling him now if you’re too much of a coward to do it. And for the record, if you can’t handle telling him you did it, it probably means you shouldn’t do it.”
Dean pulls her against him then and kisses her hard, desperate, begging. “Don’t tell him. Babe, please don’t tell him. I know you don’t understand, but I had to do it. Don’t punish me for it.”
Jess shoves the kiss away but can’t make herself let go of his hand or ignore how solemn his eyes are. “You really fucked me over, Dean,” she says with resignation. “I won’t tell him, but I’m siding with him when he figures it out.”
_______________________________________________________________
Of course, Sam does figure it out. Dean’s sorry attempt at keeping the mess secret collapses as soon as Jake gets a look at him. Jess has no idea why Dean bothered pretending Sam would be stupid or uninterested enough to miss the signs for a year, but she’d maybe hoped for his sake that he’d get more than a few hours of peace.
Bobby and Ellen wave goodbye, say something about where they’re going next and how they plan to deal with stopping the mess of demons Jake let out of Hell, but only Dean seems to have the presence of mind to pay attention to the details.
“Damn,” Dean says, lowering the Colt into the Impala’s trunk with a whistle. “Can you believe it, Sammy? The Demon’s dead. We really got it.”
Sam doesn’t say anything, and Dean is taken by surprise when he turns to find his brother right behind him.
“Uh, hi there,” Dean says awkwardly when Sam makes no effort to move out of his space.
“I was dead.”
“Huh?”
“He killed me.”
“And you just got back up and walked out? You oughta teach me that trick some time, kid.”
“Dean,” Sam says, all business. “Dean, was I dead?”
“No?”
Sam shoves him and turns his attention to Jess. “He’s lying, isn’t he? He made a deal?”
Jess nods just once before she’s forced to turn away, can’t even pretend to be okay with the way Sam’s face drops. He bunches Dean’s jacket up in his fists and starts shaking. “How could you do that to me, Dean? How could you?”
Dean reaches out to try to stop Sam’s hands and Sam doesn’t have the energy to resist, just keeps holding on and repeating the question.
“Sammy, I had to. Come on, don’t pretend you don’t understand that.” Dean smoothes a hand over one of Sam’s cheeks and his fingers just hardly begin to play in the loose strands of Sam’s hair. “You can’t get mad at me for this. I can’t handle it and it wasn’t…I didn’t have a choice, man.”
To Jess’s surprise, Sam lets go of Dean and nods. “I know you think you had to.”
Sam takes the spot next to him on the Impala and leans against the trunk. Dean doesn’t try giving Sam all of the bullshit excuses he’d fed her, it’s all understood between Sam and Dean, as usual.
“How long?” Sam asks after a long silence.
“A year.”
Sam sucks in a deep breath and slams his hand down on the car with force that would usually get him a lecture, but which Dean knows better than to criticize now.
“Okay,” Sam says standing up and nodding. “Okay.”
He grabs the keys out of Dean’s hands and rounds the car to get into the driver’s seat. His face is blank and almost tranquil, and Jess wonders if she should rehash everything he and Dean just talked about, because it obviously isn’t sinking in properly.
He hovers in front of the door for a few seconds before opening it. “Jess rides shotgun,” is the last thing he says before sliding into place and slamming the door. Dean, who hardly lets Sam drive, let alone lets anyone else decide the seating arrangements, hangs his head and obeys instructions. They’re in the car for four hours after that, but nobody says a word.
_______________________________________________________________
For three weeks, all Sam and Dean do, day in and day out, is argue. If Jess thought Sam was taking Dean’s deal too well, she was quickly disillusioned in the days that followed. Sam doesn’t want to hunt, Sam doesn’t want to eat, Sam doesn’t want to fuck, and when he does, it’s either sad or angry, never fun anymore, never gentle. All Sam does is rummage through any source he can get his hands on that might help Dean until he falls asleep, eyes weighed down by dark bags, head resting in books instead of the pillow Jess and Dean save for him in vain.
Dean tries to stop him, reminds him that breaking the deal is essentially suicide. Sam never replies to that, just smiles like it would be a relief to him and turns back to the book. Dean gets angry then, pushes Sam’s research away, starts yelling, and Sam yells right back.
Jess can more or less recite the fights word for word by now, even though she has no part in them. Bored, she stares at the book of lore she’s got open-all of the research for actual cases has fallen to Jess lately, since Sam is too busy searching for a way to save Dean and Dean is too busy sitting around looking bitter about it-and yawns as they begin.
“What are you reading there, Sammy?”
“Nothing, Dean. Leave me alone.”
“Sam, I thought I told you, you can’t poke at it.”
“Dean, I thought I told you, I don’t care.”
“I didn’t sell my soul to have you go and undo it, man.”
“And I didn’t ask you to do it to begin with!” Sam stands up, pointing at Dean and practically spitting the words out. His chair leaves scratched wood on the floor as it’s forced back.
“You said it was okay. You said you understood why I did it.”
“I do understand, Dean. So you really owe me one on understanding why I’m not going to spend the next year ignoring this when there’s a shot in hell I can help you.”
“There isn’t. You’ll just drive yourself crazy.”
“Yeah, well, it’s better than dead, right?”
“Dammit, man, you’re acting like a whiny teenager again.”
“You think I’m overreacting? That’s hilarious coming from you, Dean.”
“I didn’t overreact, Sam.”
“I say you did.”
Jess flips a page, coughs. No acknowledgement.
“Why can’t we just be happy for one year? That’s all I’m asking for.”
“That’s why, Dean. Because it’s one year. And you’re going to Hell. Imagine what you would do if it were me.” Sam sits and rests his head in one hand with a tired sigh. Dean steps closer and tries to calm him.
“It’s not, Sammy. It never would be. You’ve got Jess and you’re…you’ve always had a shot. It was never like it is for me.”
Sam’s other hand moves to rest over Dean’s on his shoulder. All the fight has gone out of him. “I wish you knew how wrong you are about that,” he says, his voice trembling. “You never would have done it if you knew.”
_______________________________________________________________
“Sam,” Jess tries in her softest voice. Sam looks up from whatever dark magic book he’s pouring over while Dean’s away and gives her a strained smile. “Can we talk?”
He closes the book. “Sure, what’s up?”
Jess sits across from him. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“About what?”
“Dean’s deal, Sam, what else?”
His open posture breaks down in a moment, he folds his arms over his chest. “No.”
“Okay. Well I do.”
“Talk to Dean about it, then.”
“We’re in this together, Sam. I’m going through it, too. You and Dean are acting like I have nothing to do with it, but he’s mine, too. Maybe not as much as he’s yours, but he is.”
“Yeah, I know,” Sam says bitterly.
“So why won’t you let me share it?” She tries to take his hand but he pulls back.
“I don’t want to talk to you about this, Jess.”
“Why not?”
She can see Sam get angry then, but he keeps his tone civil. “Not talking to you about it.”
“Sam, come on, at least give me a reason.”
“There is no reason,” Sam says coolly and suddenly it all makes sense.
“Oh my god,” Jess gasps. “You blame me, don’t you?”
“No.” Sam stands up. “There’s nothing to blame you for.”
“You don’t believe that.”
“Leave me alone, Jess.”
“No, seriously, talk to me.”
“I don’t want to talk.”
“How can you blame me? You know this is as awful for me as it is for-”
“Then you should have stopped him.”
She sits frozen and watches Sam’s glare melt into something softer.
“I’m sorry. Jess. This isn’t your-this isn’t anyone’s fault. This is just the way things happen.”
“You’ve been punishing me this whole time? I would have stopped him if I’d had the chance, I would have done anything.”
“I know,” Sam says, sounding centuries older than he should. He sits next to her and takes her hand, giving it a squeeze. “I wasn’t trying to punish you, Jess, but if I talk to you, I’ll get angry, and I know it’s not your fault, but I’m convinced it’s everyone’s fault. I hate everyone for it. The Demon, Jake, me for not killing him before he could kill me, Dean for not being able to help himself, you for not being enough to stop him, hell, I blame Bobby, and the car for not breaking down, and my mom for dying and leading to this whole mess between us. I just can’t get used to this.”
Jess leans her head on his shoulder. “See, now isn’t it nice to let it all out?”
Sam laughs unexpectedly and turns to press a kiss into her hair.
_______________________________________________________________
Sam and Dean touch like everything’s okay and Jess thinks, just maybe, they’re finally dealing with the problem. Not moving on, but finding a healthier way to live for the next eleven months. Dean still makes faces when Sam’s obviously not researching what Dean thinks he should be researching, but he doesn’t say anything; Sam rewards his silence by backing off on the fighting, not all the time, but enough to get by.
And Jess finally exists to them again. Sam isn’t holding her at arm’s length, afraid to make her feel guilty; Dean isn’t hiding from her, knowing he’ll feel guilty if he doesn’t. There’s a wonderfully fake sense of calm about them, and a longing for normal so strong they somehow convince themselves life is going on.
For his own part, Dean really is okay, which is more than a little infuriating to Jess. He only seems upset when he looks at one of them too closely. Sam is, unsurprisingly, worst off, and Jess walks on eggshells around him, knowing that anything she says can trigger the wrong memory, send him almost to tears or to anger, either of which is terrifying, though for vastly different reasons. Sam lives his life like a rubber band pulled a mile too thin and Jess knows that in a little bit less than a year, he’s going to snap, and she’ll be the one caught in the aftermath.
It’s not always bad, though, not like it was at first, and that’s a lot to be thankful for. Sometimes, things are natural and good again. The rest of the time…well, Jess is a Winchester now. She’s learning to cope.
_______________________________________________________________
Sam grinds down, pressing hard kisses along Dean’s jaw line. Dean paws his brother away from his face and laughs, turning to face Jess.
“I like that outfit,” he says, bucking up as the hundreds of pounds of Sam resting on top of him groan.
“Yeah?”
“You should wear it more.”
Jess nods, looking down at her towel. “I don’t know how practical that would be, Dean.”
Sam turns in her direction and smiles. He crawls off Dean and gets up from the bed, moving towards her. “I don’t like it,” he says, pressing his lips to her ear. “Rather see you take it off.”
Jess reaches out to stroke his bare chest, and Sam takes the window, one hand undoing the fastening on her towel and letting it drop to the floor.
“Yeah, don’t worry about me. I’ll just sit here a twiddle my thumbs,” Deans shouts from the bed, interrupting Sam and Jess’s kiss.
“Oh, please can we ignore him?”
She feels Sam smiling into her neck, but Sam can’t do anything with more than a foot between himself and Dean lately, so he takes her hand and turns back to the bed.
“You’re the only person here still wearing pants,” Sam points out. “I feel like I’m in The Twilight Zone.”
Dean pretends to laugh, then shoots his brother an annoyed look as he moves his hand down, cupping himself through his jeans.
“That means take them off, not show us how hard you are under them, moron.”
Dean smirks at Jess, sitting up to kiss her, mumbling something about needing to shut her up, and, just to frustrate her, waits for one of them to make the move to get him naked. Jess isn’t in the mood for being prideful and Sam squeezes the back of her neck gratefully when she unhooks his jeans and pulls them low.
Dean waits for her to finish taking them off before he flips her onto her back, leaning down to kiss her gently. She’s not paying enough attention to her surroundings to know how Sam ends up on her left, kissing her neck, but she’s not complaining. They both pull their mouths off her at the same time, identical smirks as they look at each other and seem to get the same idea.
Sam reaches over Jess and takes Dean’s hand, moving them both down until they’re each resting palms against the insides of her uppermost thigh. Jess’s breath speeds up and she closes her eyes in anticipation as they each slip one finger inside of her. It should feel weird and confused, but the boys move in perfect sync and the result of it is almost better than she can bear. Whichever one of them is on top, she thinks it’s Dean but can’t think clearly enough to be sure, begins to press his thumb against her clit, eliciting a wanton moan.
They don’t stop there. As soon as they have a rhythm going inside of her, each brother takes one breast into his mouth and begins to suck and lick at her, Dean teasing at her nipple with his tongue and Sam biting her lightly. She’s shuddering and warning them that she’s going to come in a matter of minutes and it’s only because of this that Sam pulls away, taking his hand back and licking his fingers. Dean pauses, too, looks up to watch his brother, but doesn’t remove his hand from her cunt or break the contact between his tongue and her breast. Greedily, she pushes his face back down and rolls her body into the finger still sitting inside of her limply, torturing her.
“Don’t let her, Dean,” Sam warns. “Don’t let her come yet.”
Dean gives her an apologetic kiss as he takes his fingers back and wipes them on the sheets.
“What do you have in mind, Sammy?” he asks.
Sam smiles. “Wanna take turns fucking her. Me first.”
“Always you first,” Dean complains, but he smiles warmly.
Jess watches Dean move to the nightstand and grab a condom, but when he tries giving it to Sam, Sam shakes his head.
“Sam, I’m not on-”
Sam moves down and kisses her with a violent desperation, doesn’t let her finish the warning. He holds her thighs apart and lowers himself into her, completely bare for the first time in years, and Jess can’t deny how wet it gets her to know that Sam can feel it. He presses close and whispers so softly she knows Dean doesn’t hear, “I know that, Jess. I know.”
Sam begins to move then, his thrusts careful. Jess knows he’s doing this exactly the way she likes it best, trying to make her feel even better than he usually does, because he needs her to agree to this. He doesn’t need to explain what he’s doing, and Jess isn’t surprised that he pulls out of her without coming and urges Dean to take his place. He doesn’t give Dean a chance to get a condom, whispers all kinds of filth to him about fucking her raw, things they both know Dean will be too turned on to refuse.
Sam forgets to mention the part where he’s trying to get Dean to get her pregnant. It makes Jess realize he isn’t as cocky about saving Dean as he acts, that he wants her to do this for him, so that some part of Dean will make it if he doesn’t manage to save him. Jess doesn’t know how she didn’t see through Sam’s façade, but she looks over at him now, sees the sad, calculating look in his eyes as his brother fucks her, and nearly breaks down crying.
Dean hears her aborted sob and misinterprets it. He’s completely clueless to the silent conversation going on between her and Sam. He moves to kiss her softly, lovingly, and rolls his hips just as gently, promising to make her feel good. Jess doesn’t want to lose those kisses or Dean’s promises or the soft strokes on her back when they’re drifting off to sleep, not ever. The thought that she could makes her wrap her legs around him, pull him in closer, and hold him in place as he begins to come, not letting him pull out, not letting him lessen the chance that Sam will get his wish, and not caring that Sam and Jess are being selfish by not giving Dean a choice in the matter. Dean didn’t exactly give them a choice, either.
Jess loses it the moment she feels Dean beginning to fill her up, and she hears Sam coming into his fist beside her.
_______________________________________________________________
They stop using condoms altogether after that. Jess waits impatiently for one month to pass by, gets her period, and waits for another. It becomes an obsession, almost as desperate as Sam’s searching for a way to break the deal. Jess is his only back up and she can’t stand the thought of letting them both down.
It’s not until three months of trying have passed, early September, that Jess’s period is late. She tries not to get too excited, doesn’t want to tell Sam until she knows she’s pregnant for sure, but waiting for another month or longer seems like an impossible task when she’s four days off and already bursting to let him in on it. She buys a test that night and tries it out, then buys three for the next morning when it comes out positive.
She does manage to keep it a secret, finds excuses to slip away. Two weeks after the missed period she finds a clinic near their motel and gets checked out, assured that everything looks in order.
It’s hell right away to keep up with Sam and Dean. She wants to sleep later, can’t move as fast, starts getting sick. Sam and Dean get worried, despite her efforts to hide it. She does a good job masking the really obvious signs, but there are times she does next to nothing right on hunts, which is what frustrates her more than anything. The boys are encouraging, but Jess doesn’t miss the looks they exchange when she makes novice mistakes.
_______________________________________________________________
“I don’t like it,” Dean says for the hundredth time.
“What’s there not to like?” Sam leans forward, trying to reach the front of the Impala. Jess smacks him back for the hell of it.
“It’s a little suspicious, if you ask me. Chick shows up just in time and saves the day? How’d she even get a demon killing knife?”
“How’d we get a demon killing gun? It happens when you’re a good hunter, Dean. She obviously knew what she was doing or we’d all be dead right now.”
“I don’t like it.” Dean turns to the passenger seat. “What do you think?”
Jess looks back at Sam and then at Dean. They’re both staring at her expectantly, and she’s hardly staying awake through this whole fight. “Yes,” she answers.
“Yes what?”
“Yes.”
“Pain in my ass, both of you.”
“Sam more than me, usually.”
Sam snickers.
“Look, Dean, I’m not in love with the situation we’re in right now, either, but we’re in it, and as long as there’s however many hundreds of demons hanging around courtesy of our friend Yellow Eyes, we need all the experienced hunters we can get out there. Especially when they can actually kill the damn things.”
“You were supposed to side with me,” Dean says, looking at Jess from the corner of his eyes.
“Says who?” Sam asks. “I saw her first.”
He reaches over her seat and gives her a massage and she closes her eyes, more appreciative than Sam knows.
“That’s very mature, Sam, girls really like being treated like property.”
“Don’t blame me, I learned it from him.”
Dean laughs. “That’s my boy.”
“You’re both pigs,” Jess says, squeezing Dean’s thigh.
“Anyway, look, Dean, I’m not saying we make best friends with her or invite her to take up residence in the back seat. I’m just saying, we need people we can work with and depend on, and the girl saved our asses.”
“Once. It was great. I appreciate it. We don’t need to go sniffing her out.”
“Yeah, well, according to you we shouldn’t look too hard into anything.”
“Boys, boys, calm down now.”
They both huff, but they drop it, acknowledging that it was going in the wrong direction. The car falls silent for a few minutes.
“Jess, are you all right?” Dean finally asks.
She blushes, knowing that he’s referring to the stupid mistake she’d made while fighting Sloth. She’d had a clear shot at dousing the bastard in holy water and was still too sick from the morning to focus. She’d be dead if Dean hadn’t intervened, and that’s not really something she wants to be reminded of.
So she scoffs at his concern. “Ugh, never mind. Go back to arguing about what’s-her-face.”
“I wouldn’t be bringing it up if…”
“It’s the third time this month, Jess,” Sam says, picking up where Dean left off. “You’re a better hunter than that.”
“Guys, I know I’ve been a little scatterbrained on hunts lately, and I apologize, really, I do. There’s nothing wrong with me, okay? I’m just distracted.”
Sam squeezes her shoulder understandingly and Jess almost feels guilty that it’s not really Dean’s deal stopping her from getting the jobs done.
“Yeah, all right,” Dean says reluctantly. She catches him dodging worried glances towards her for the rest of the ride.
_______________________________________________________________
“More demons,” Dean grumbles. “I want a fucking werewolf or something. Something fun.”
“Well, you get demons,” Sam says, clearly annoyed. Jess can tell he’s been listening to Dean whine about this all morning. “Shut up and eat your breakfast.”
Dean makes a face at Sam when his brother turns his head and then looks at Jess standing in the entrance to the kitchen area. His eyes fall to her chest. Jess was feeling a little contrary this morning, decided instead of covering her tattoo up, she’d show it off with a low cut shirt-nice and proud, so all the demons trying to take over the city have one last thing to look at before she sends them back to hell.
Dean licks his lips. “Damn, that turns me on.”
Jess smirks but doesn’t move. Sam turns and creases his eyebrows. “That’s not a good idea. They’ll know you’re a hunter on sight.”
“I think a woman wearing clothes in this town is already going to set off a few warning bells, Samantha,” Dean replies, eyes still stuck in place. “I like our girl bold.”
Jess shrugs. She knows, logically, that Sam is right, but Sam doesn’t know that in a few months she’ll be blown up like a balloon and Jess won’t be able to make either of the brothers look at her the way Dean’s looking at her right now for a long, long time. “You’ll protect me, won’t you?”
Sam smiles grudgingly and kicks a seat out where her breakfast is waiting on the table.
“Who said chivalry is dead?”
Dean snorts.
“So what have you figured out about the case?” she asks, plopping into her seat.
“It’s definitely demons, the question is how many. The way the town is acting, they might as well all be possessed.”
Dean nods at Sam’s summary. “Think it’s something like with the Seven Sins again?”
“I’m not so sure. The suicide thing is throwing me off.”
“Well, the town didn’t just wake up one morning and decide to go batshit, Sammy.”
Jess inhales a few bites and stands to grab her gun, eager to get on with what she has a feeling will be her last hunt. “Better go figure it out instead of sitting here bitching, eh boys?”
“I like her so much,” Dean says, sounding like an excited child as he follows her out.
_______________________________________________________________
Jess makes sure she is completely positive about the baby before she tells them. She’s two months in and the perfect opportunity presents itself, so Jess figures, what the hell, they’re going to figure it out eventually.
“Hey, do you know what today is?” Sam looks up from his newspaper suddenly, very excited, and Jess leans closer to look at the date. November 19. Nothing rings any bells in her head.
Dean grunts uninterestedly.
“What’s today, Sam?” Jess asks.
“Our anniversary.”
Dean laughs. “What are you talking about?”
Sam looks down; Jess almost thinks his ears are pink enough for him to be blushing. “Forget it.”
“No, what?”
“It’s been two years since we started, you know, whatever.”
“Oh, right,” Jess says, nodding. “Our You Know Whatever anniversary. How’d we forget that one, Dean?”
Dean’s lips quirk. “Sometimes it just feels like we’ve been You Know Whatever our whole lives, Jess.”
“God, I hate you both.”
“Why would someone You Know Whatever with people he hates?” she asks Dean.
“I don’t know, Jess. Doesn’t make a lick of sense.”
Sam pouts.
“We should do something,” Dean says after a few seconds of silence.
“We are doing something. We’re having breakfast.” Jess holds her fork up and flourishes her hand like it’s impressive.
“No, I mean, to celebrate. It’s not every day you get to glorify being in some kind of weird clusterfuck with your brother and his girlfriend.”
“Really romantic, Dean,” Sam says sourly.
“I’m serious. We deserve some fun, right? Two years is a long time.”
Sam coughs uncomfortably. “For you in particular.”
“Sam, I’m offended. I was always the picture of commitment and-”
Jess tosses a hash brown at him just to shut him up and immediately regrets it when he picks it up off his booth seat and eats it.
“You know, you give the rest of us germs when you do shit like that,” Jess says.
“You had zombie blood on your face yesterday,” Sam points out.
“That’s unavoidable. He’s going out of his way to be gross!”
“No bickering on our anniversary, bitches,” Dean says.
It’s clear that he’s not talking about the tater tots. Sam meets his gaze and, to Jess’s relief, he swallows hard and nods his assent. She nearly throws her hands up in the air in celebration-it’s been over three months since they went an entire day without fighting about something, even if they’ve stopped addressing the real problems and begun using euphemisms like ‘dirty socks’ for ‘why’d you sell your soul, you dumb asshole?’
“So what do you do on a clusterfuck anniversary?”
“I don’t know. And why didn’t we have one last year if you’re keeping track, you girl?”
Sam admirably manages to smile instead of pointing out just why every bullshit occasion feels more important this year. It’s better than Jess probably would have done if the question had been aimed at her.
“I’ve got something,” Jess says.
They both turn to face her and she smiles.
“I, uh. I wasn’t going to say anything until I was a little more sure, because. Well.” Jess takes a deep breath. She knows Sam wants this, she’s pretty sure Dean would want Sam to have a family when he’s gone, but the timing isn’t exactly ripe and they haven’t talked about it. “Look, I think I’m knocked up.”
Sam and Dean make the same deer-in-the-headlights face.
“Knocked up like how?”
“Well, Sammy, when a mommy really loves a daddy-”
“Shut up, asshole. Jess, are you serious?”
“Do I look like I’m bluffing?”
Sam reaches out and grabs her hand, seems to forget there are bones inside it that should all stay in the same formation.
“Ow, Sam,” Jess says. He lightens up and takes Dean’s hand, too.
“Whose is it?” he asks.
“Don’t be a moron, Sam, she can’t know that yet.”
“Right, of course. I know,” Sam says gently. He gives Jess’s hand a squeeze and she practically hears him thinking let it be Dean’s, please, please, let it be Dean’s. Sam shakes his head as if to clear it and then focuses back on Jess. “I should have known with the way you’ve been lately. You know you have to stop hunting, right?”
Dean makes a lazy sound of agreement.
“Yeah, of course. But I’m not even far along yet.”
“You’re getting there, Jess, and it’s been bad enough for months now. I wish you hadn’t gone on this long.”
“I know, but. We have to…it’s not the time to be slacking off.”
Sam nods sadly, but Dean scowls. “No way you’re doing anything to put yourself at risk after this.”
“I was planning to stop as soon as I was positive. Hunting, at least, not the whole thing. I can still do research and help with interviews.”
“You two are such geeks,” Dean says with a laugh. “I’d grab on to anything that got me out of that shit.”
Jess smiles. “Yeah, you really would. But not me. I’m your Oracle.”
Dean leans over the booth to kiss her, despite the eggs she’s got in her mouth.
“Real sexy, Dean.” Jess imagines the face her mother would make if she could see that her etiquette classes amounted to Jess sleeping in sleazy motels with two men and talking with her mouth full of greasy diner food. It’s comedic gold.
“Comics are always sexy,” he insists.
“And I’m the geek,” says Sam.
Dean snorts, turning his attention to Sam, and takes his brother into a headlock. “We’re gonna be dads, man!”
Sam laughs, beams at his brother, and Dean beams back. The three of them sit there smiling stupidly at each other for the entire meal, and Jess almost forgets that Dean will probably never meet the kid at all.
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