fic: the girl i mean is not refined (SPN, Sam/OFC, Dean/OFC, NC-17)
the girl i mean is not refined
Author: Regala Electra
Fandom: SPN
Pairing: Sam/OFC, Dean/OFC
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Sexual Content, Language
Spoilers: S3, Mystery Spot
Summary: They were once expansive, these men, the kind that could move and shake the air around them, oh yes Jeanie saw such things and assumed everyone did until she realized they did not.
Word Count: 6,437
Author's Notes: Title misappropriated from the e.e. cummings poem the boys i mean are not refined. I cannot define vinylroad’s audiencing of this fic as anything other than awesometastic. Many thanks to ignited for the beta work.
*
Once upon a time there was a girl named Jeanie who never needed a fairytale for comfort’s sake and she often got exactly what she wanted.
There weren’t any high-spun fantasies that broke when even the most delicate of fingers touched the crystallized consistency of it, spun sugar unable to withstand the gentlest of touch. Goals that were simpler were the best to want-wanting a distraction from the day-to-day doldrums yielded in success more often than not. She lived her life in misdirecting those around her, she fooled them and she tried to feel guilty about it but she never did.
Jeanie didn’t live a fairytale life and she never went to bed fearing monsters. Her story was no different from anyone else: she was born, she grew up, and then she had to figure out what it meant to be a grownup until the word had no meaning for her and she was as she always was, another person, living day by day. Plans were made and some dissolved and eventually she learned to love drifting from want-to-want and when money was necessary there wasn’t trouble getting employed. Perhaps it could be called luck but she always found a career that struck her as deeply amusing and therefore completely agreeable.
She took a job as a waitress the same way a person would accept a career in charming snakes. The exoticism of being held accountable to the hungers of strangers was profoundly entertaining her and if ever asked, she’d admit that the regular customers were a particular favorite.
Everyone had a story and few possessed the skills to tell it even though they tried. When they asked Jeannie, she demurred or made up a story that fit well into their perceptions only striking an odd embellishment here or there. She decided to attend the local college when she grew tired of making herself out to be some sort of eternal near-drifter for the amusement of her regulars. There were only so many times she could joke about leaving the quiet little town and venturing out to a big city before the distaste settled in and she sought a new distraction.
If there was anything that terrified her it was the idea that her games and pretenses were all the reality that she could ever experience and that there was something fundamentally empty inside of her that everyone else seemed to possess in excess. But that was always pushed away to the recesses of her mind, filed carefully as something to mull over on another gloomy day.
Those gloomy days were rare at best and she made a point of personally chasing them away.
Though she never ran, certainly never ran away, no matter how such things could be construed, she never let herself get mired down in the listlessness that seemed to plague everyone else.
She was able to recognize the need of distraction in other people, not a shocking gift, but she liked to think of it as special: being able to sort people into two distinct categories. She took those two men walking into the dinner as a paired prime example of people in desperate need of some kind of diversion, their closed off looks shuttering them to the rest of the world.
Their eyes were weary and they were both in need of something more significant than rest but they didn’t trust their own needs. Instead, they calculated their surroundings, dismissing the other patrons and even sizing her up only to find her wanting. Or wanted, an opportunity she would gladly seize.
Each of them separately gave her a lingering once-over and Jeanie knew better than to let them see her as anything but harried and a little sad. It was one of the great ironies, in Jeannie’s humble opinion, that a little sadness went a long way but happiness was regarded with distinct suspicion unless someone knew exactly what she was doing.
Jeanie knew she was one of the few people to accurately figure out what mood a person needed to be lifted (for even misery could be elevated to a loftier status when a little imagination and subterfuge were all that it took to worry it along) and there had never been a good time to analyze why she’d been able to master it so she took it at face value. That which may be given ought not to be feared, went the saying as far as Jeanie remembered (and she might be remembering incorrectly but she didn’t care). She never feared she’d ever done a great disservice simply by acting within her nature.
These men drowned in sorrow and she sipped at their overwhelming sadness until the salt stung the back of her throat and she’d successfully recreated herself into what they needed her to be-a sad little waitress in need of rescuing, in need of them, in need of their version of living. A study in grief.
She never said she was a good person and could not be held to those standards. She always wanted too much.
*
They were once expansive, these men, the kind that could move and shake the air around them, oh yes Jeanie saw such things and assumed everyone did until she realized they did not. She made a point of not mentioning it to others, for it was too other and strange to explain how natural it was for her. The world was dead on their shoulders but they pushed up against it out of habit and she shook her head when the sharp green-eyed one asked her if studying at work helped her concentrate, an attempt at teasing even he knew fell flat.
The world is flat, she wanted to tell him but he wouldn’t understand her. She’d spread textbooks across the counter because Jeanie-the-hardworking-student was a good story to be until she got tired of it. And that was wrong, as she never got tired, not really. She just found something better to do.
If she lingered over the taller one (no way of identifying him beyond that, taller and desperate to be less substantial that he actually was but it was a trick he hadn’t learned yet-a trick Jeanie knew all too well), well, that was no problem. Her choice never had to be one over the other.
Their names are overhead, natural as anything, one of the perks of waitressing, and she carefully noted the tones they used for each other. Sam. Dean. Patience and sympathy, frustration and loyalty. Strong bonds and it terrified her briefly though she’d never be able to explain why it struck her so hard.
There was a lot of nonsense about the power of names and while she didn’t believe it, she tried to pay attention to such things in case she was ever wrong. If she lost the shape of a name, then what could slip from her grasp?
Sam and Dean ate dinner in an unconscious ritual and they wouldn’t share their story for her. She scrambled at it and picked up bits and pieces indistinct and useless but she wouldn’t cast them off. These were the little specks that might one day be cobbled together to form an understandable mosaic upon the discovery of the pattern. To accept defeat didn’t cross her mind and Jeanie went for her final attack she was quite happy to unleash, a spidery scrawl of a number on a torn piece of paper.
Sam opened the folded paper and tucked it into the pocket of his jacket before Dean noticed.
An unfair advantage Jeanie decided and when Dean went to the bathroom, she cornered him there, let him take in her scent of warmth and sweet, the slight sweat she was always mindful of, never trying to overheat. He’d not said much, a little murmured noise, hey sweetheart a faint protest against her lips when she’d leaned up and brought him down to her.
His mouth was gentle and she was surprised by her reaction to that, as though she’d prefabricated his story all wrong and he would have to be reconstructed piece-by-piece until she had the whole summation properly decided.
His hands lingered on her face for too short a time and she nearly whined in the back of her throat when he broke away first. Before he left, his lips touched hers briefly, in thanks, anyone could decipher such an action but he took it no further.
Dean was too far away by the time she opened her eyes and she watched them leave, and nearly considered them cowards.
No, she decided, they were something far more tragic than that.
*
Pity would be a strange weight in her stomach so she was quite relieved that she was freed from it. By the time her shift ended, she’d gotten a call on her cell phone and stuttered her way through a halted and strange conversation, the silences saying more than the words. He played a good, unintentional game and if she was some other kind of person, she’d fall for him honestly.
When the door was opened to his low-key, near-desperate motel, she was at an immediate disadvantage, forced to peer up at the serious face and the look he gave her was too confusing. It was familiar but disconnected as though they’d met before but she had a memory for faces, for names, had stored all this information the same way a packrat stored away bits of torn ribbon and other broken odds-and-ends. She didn’t remember him from any past she had and yet he looked at her as though he had.
“Jeanie,” he said and then fidgeted at the door as though weighing his options before he let her inside.
“Sam. I, um,” she shoved her hands in the pockets of her thin jacket, studied the faded green carpet for an appropriate amount of time to appear nervous, “I don’t normally do this.”
If he could tear apart that flimsy lie then she’d be done for but he did not seem to want to look beyond the superficial. A small slight in her estimation of him but it didn’t matter not when he towered over her and looked at her with such want she could let herself become fanciful enough to hope she’d found someone similar. That she wasn’t merely using someone used up and at the end of the line as she had suspected earlier.
Though she was still a little cold, she deliberately took off her jacket, folding it over a chair, waiting for him to speak and break the spell, that tense snap of promise building between them.
“What do you do?” he asked and before she was given the slight consideration of answering, he’d gotten her spread across his bed (a bed she must corrected herself here, for there is a twin, far sloppier, the bed sheets left in pooling heaps haphazardly across its surface) and she’d gasped in his mouth, a poor response.
Jeanie couldn’t tell if he was kissing her to remember or to forget some very vital thing once lost and she combed her fingers through his hair, rocked her body against his and found his body too substantial, the taste of him too desperate. This was wrong, all too wrong because she knew people and knew things too much and too well but he didn’t allow her measured evaluation of him to stick, it shifted into something deeper. There was more as his tongue slid hot deep in her mouth and she uselessly pulled at his long-sleeved shirt, trying to will it to come off his shoulders, so wide and she wouldn't manage this alone. He didn't seem to make any move to help assist her and if she didn’t know better he was going to stay clothed and this wouldn’t progress any further.
"Sam," she groaned against his mouth and that seemed to be enough for him.
Sam pulled back only to strip off the first layer of his clothing, leaving a thin t-shirt still on, and he said, “Let me make you feel good. I can do that. Will you let me?”
She shouldn’t have lied to him and let it carry on further, to imply he’s getting more comfort out of her than vice-versa but when she drew in a shaky breath, she knew she’d done it now.
He unbuttoned her pathetically drab uniform, popping buttons open with deft fingers that skimmed each inch of exposed skin with exacting pressure until he’d replaced fingers with tongue and still he went lower, until the top half was opened and she’d shimmied the uniform up her hips. Her underwear, pacific blue briefs, were exposed.
The press of his nose against her should shock her, yes it would be time for her to gather her thoughts but she set her feet down firmly on the mattress, pushed her hips forward and watched as he slid her panties off. Stupid to even dream of saying you’ve done this before and she won’t speak another word to break the strange enchantment, his single-minded pursuit of her body. Each touch was too measured for her to ignore that there was too much feeling behind it and she needed to push deeper because that’s what she did every time and why should this time be any different?
Her fingernail might be trimmed sensible and there was no rough edge for worthy scratching but that didn’t stop her from running fingers down his arms, catching up with his hands as he pushed her wrinkled uniform up even further, hitching it solidly round her waist. He’d restricted her movements so that she’d need to push up and closer and when he breathed against her thigh, so close and too far away, she’d swallowed hard.
“I want you,” she said in the general direction of the ceiling but Sam knew it was for him, his fingers spreading her legs apart wider until she’d exposed all of herself to him.
“I wanted you first time I saw you,” he admitted, hitch of pain in his voice. “Let me.”
He was not romantic with her. Did not ease her into the embarrassing intimacy of being utterly exposed in a way that left her free to his judgment. A lifetime of obfuscating ended in this bed, he could determine her and find her wanting or immensely pathetic, the way she’d gotten so wet for him the moment his finger crooked inside of her as his tongue flicked against her clit in a mere preemptive strike, testing her.
Jeanie was very close when he’d gotten two fingers inside, so long and perfect, crooked at the right angle, rubbing again, again, again until she’d merely followed his pace, hips shifting when he’d skirted away from pressing his tongue deep against her. He instead favored bites of near-kisses against her inner thighs, his free hand stroking up her leg as he pulled her leg over his shoulder. She kept her left leg down, even hooked her leg at a strangle angle off the bed, and resisted pulling at his hair while he continued to slowly and messily lick her.
She didn’t lose control. It wasn’t something she’d apologize for as it was a fact of her existence, she never went to one extreme and stayed there, never came and remained punch-drunk on the exhilaration. But she was so close-so very close-and when Sam stopped it was all she could do to keep from screaming a protest, from shoving his face back down and making him finish.
And since she didn’t lose control, she opened her eyes in time to see Sam was staring at the door and when she glanced over she saw Dean standing at the doorway, a closed-off but very uncomfortable expression on his face.
“Sorry, I, uh, didn’t realize. Jesus, Sammy,” Dean said, and he nearly fled, backing away and shutting the door closed.
He’d recognized Jeanie but there wasn’t anything like regret or jealously in his look at her. He’d been more focused on Sam’s mouth, glistening wet.
She was so wet and she very nearly throbbed at the loss of contact, slickness between her legs needing the friction and heat of him. It wasn’t the first time Jeanie had blinked back tears, for though she did live a charmed life, she wasn’t freed from crying. But this time her body was too on edge and she had no resolution just want overheating her senseless and she knew she was cheating, that she was reaching out to the energy in the air, but she needed.
It was hard to focus but suddenly, on the tip of her tongue, she had the words for what she could always do-
Only she felt it smacked down by a dormant energy that shifted in the air, some secret thing that not even she could dare explain. She wouldn’t dare because for a moment, it terrified her, an unknown and she had spent all her life knowing.
Jeanie was splayed on the bed, one good touch away from orgasm, and she felt desperately elated, dizzyingly so and perhaps this is what it meant when someone lost control but she’d gladly match it and she gave up the distortion, the meek act that she’d crafted, and said, “I want him to fuck me, Sam. I kissed him.”
Sam didn’t miss a beat and she sat up when he bent down to kiss her, helped as he tugged off the rest of her pathetic uniform, costume, losing a few buttons along the way, and she peeled her bra off. “I saw the way you looked at him,” Sam said, an unkind bluntness so direct she flinched at the harshness in his voice. “But I want-”
“What do you want?” She had never said that before and truly meant it. The words fell awkwardly out of her mouth, and she tried to recover, a crooked smile faltering when she stared deep into his eyes.
“I’m going to talk to Dean,” Sam said. He swept his thumb across her bottom lip and she nearly caught it, sucked him wet but she’d only chased the pad of his thumb before he pulled back.
It was only after the door shut that Jeanie pressed her index finger against her clit, shuddering into an unsatisfying climax but oh god. There would be more after that, she had no doubt there.
*
It had been too undignified to merely wait and she didn’t like sitting naked on the rucked up bed sheets so she’d stripped away the top sheets, draped the thinnest sheet over her lap, not bothering to wipe away the sweat clinging to her skin, the wetness still between her legs. Her breasts were bare and she reclined against the pillows, shifting her legs now and then to tease a faint echo of a tremor.
Her hair had still been up in a dropping bun when she'd arrived at the motel room so she’d carefully taken out the pins (a morning ritual that amused her as did curling the free tendrils around her face so if someone looked hard enough they’d see the wolf-in-Little-Red-Riding’s-Hood-costume) and spread the golden-brown bobby pins in even rows on the bedside stand. Though her hair fell in uneven, choppy waves, she didn’t much care.
Jeanie was idly stroking a nipple when they both walked in, Dean first and she’d never seen someone look so hopelessly fallen. While she’d always prided herself on her ability to eavesdrop, she’d missed whatever Sam whispered in Dean’s ear and all Dean responded with was a quick nod, pulling off his jacket in jerky, nervous movements.
Perhaps she was the villain here, opening her arms to him as he walked closer, leading him to abandon all hope but then he said to her, “Hey sweetheart. You want this?”
“I want you.”
She told Sam as much and why should she bother explaining she wanted what they could both give her since they were so willing to indulge her selfishness, ah but perhaps she was wrong. Sam sat on the other bed, unzipping his jeans but taking it no further than that. He rubbed the outline of his dick, an erection Jeanie could see was pressing hard and needed to be taken care of but she was too far away.
There had been rules set, a game devised that she was not allowed to completely control, and strangely, it intrigued her.
She kissed him hard and brutal, the way she expected Dean to kiss her only he returned the kisses softer and more refined, pulling back when she’d tried to catch his bottom lip with the edge of her teeth, one hand cupping her face to tilt her to an angle where she couldn’t force him in any other direction, where she waited for his measured responses and didn’t notice when he’d slipped the sheet completely off, that his other hand smoothed over her skin in a ghost of a touch that she’d barely registered before he’d explored some other part of her, the slight stickiness of her when he’d gotten to her pubic hair caused him to fully pull back.
Dean licked his fingers and he very baldly said, “Tell me how you want it. Any way, fuck any way you want it.”
Jeanie pulled at the bottom of his t-shirt, tugging at it, “I want you under me. And god, take off your damn clothes.”
The curse slipped out smooth and it threw her off as though she’d gotten a bit of a personality bleed, she’d spent too much time redefining herself, but she pushed forward, got to her knees for the best angle, tossing Dean’s shirt off and together they’d made short work of tugging down his jeans and he’d kicked off his boots. She made a point of peeling off his socks, a healing cut angry red across his right angle, the kind of jagged thank you from a barbwire’s kiss.
Dean took off his curious necklace, an amulet, with a strange gesture as though he was making a point.
He had to stand back up to take off his jeans, taking a condom out of his pocket before stepping out of his jeans. Though he wasn’t as tall as Sam, she still had the same height disadvantage when she knelt on the mattress but there wasn’t any problem with hooking her thumbs in Dean’s boxer-briefs and pulling down, his cock half-hard and she didn’t need to look behind her to know exactly who Dean was staring at.
“Relax,” she murmured and he’d chuckled at that.
“Think I should be telling you that.”
She hmmed in the back of her throat as she touched the base of his cock then brushed the length of him with her cheek. She could feel him getting harder, thicker and she couldn’t help taking in the scent of him, a deep musk.
Decided against sucking him at the very last moment when her mouth was open and she had instead curled her fingers around his dick, when she’d heard the slick uneven slide of Sam’s hand, touching himself as he watched. She'd have change her course of action; merely leaned up to embrace Dean in a loose hug, taking in the warmth of his skin, trying to see if she could feel his heartbeat chest to chest. No, she wasn’t tall enough for that, her breasts skimming midway across his ribcage, chest.
Not much of a trick to snatch the condom out of his fingers, tearing the wrapper with her teeth. He kissed her as his hand covered hers as she rolled it on and before she could check to confirm it was secure, he felled her.
He rocked against her, she rolled her hips forward to feel more, sucked his tongue harder, grabbing at his ass, stilling him.
Dean groaned in her mouth and she moved her face away, huffed in his ear. Said loud enough so Sam could overhear, “I want to ride you.”
His cock twitched against her and she resisted letting go any further, to simply guide him in and watch him fuck into her.
Rolled so that she landed hands and knees above him, her pussy too far away for direction contact and he tried to grab her hips, to force her to settle on top of him but she stopped that with just a finger to his lips. It wasn’t entirely fair when he sucked the tip of her index finger, a calculated flick that had her consider turning around and settling down on his face, letting him eat her out while she tried her best to suck him as far as she could manage.
She gripped the root of his cock in a careless hold, fingers not too tight, rubbing herself against the head and considered what if she pulled off the condom and let him fuck her bare, felt him shooting inside of her and begged him to lick it all out.
Dean would do that and more and she felt too much then, the unspoken sacrifice, and she stared at Sam, not Dean, when she sank down on Dean’s cock, watched him stroking himself, long hard strokes, a puff of breath when he caught her staring. For him, she leaned back, putting weight on her knees, felt the slight burning already starting in her thighs as she lifted and rocked back down onto Dean.
Had to bite her lip in frustration because she knew then that that wouldn’t get her off, that she wouldn’t be able to watch Sam shooting over himself, see what kind of face he made when he came.
Not even her fingers working herself off helped get her closer and Dean had forced her to take a harder pace, matched her thrusts but she couldn’t get back to that teetering edge, and she shook her head, saw him grit his teeth and then he said, “Say it, Jeanie. Won’t do it until you do. Say it.”
“Fuck me.”
“Doing that.”
“Fuck me into the mattress,” she hissed, a needy whine to her voice that startled her but he let that keep her off-balance, rolled her over as she’d thrust back down, pulled her knees up and pressed her legs down, pining her with his arms. If she craned her neck all the way, if she dared, she’d see an upside-down Sam at his wit's end. Already she could hear his jagged breathing, a fuck slipped out in between breaths.
Dean didn't get the perfect angle, didn't sink into her too deep, kept his thrusts shallow, waited for her to set the pace, insisted that she counter-balance him without asking, without begging. Dean was prone to shutting his eye closed when he thrust in, ducking his face away so she couldn't memorize that exquisite look, as though he was returning home.
His breath was hot against her cheek when he'd bent down to whisper in her ear, "God damn. The way you feel."
Couldn't answer that, not when his fingers dragged slowly down her stomach, slipping past curls, index finger rubbing close to her clit. Jeanie rocked against him harder, shifted her hips to guide him at first before grabbing a hold of his wrist, correcting his direction.
"No, here," she moaned, and it was Sam who responded to that and it threw off Dean, and she knew then that Sam came, awkwardly she twisted to see him losing any attempt at finesse, the come dribbling over his hand.
Dean wasn't going to last much longer and he's set a harder pace. Not that it was difficult matching it. Jeanie struggled more with the need to blurt out a demand for Sam to get over here, to break whatever agreement that he and Dean had reached, and she could do that, she'd never quite done it, but she didn't want to, didn't want to disrupt the thing building inside in her, the ache forming into little pinpricks of energy. Time nearly shattered when she came, throwing her head back and Dean's mouth sucked at her pulse point, secret little spot on her neck she never revealed to anyone and he'd found it, stilling inside her as she clenched around his cock, body shaking as she tried to gather herself, sink back into the let down.
Now he was merciless, riding her as though he was trying to make her come all over again, mumbling dirty promises in her ear, all the things he'd do to her if she'd only let him, and would she, would she let him?
"God. I'd want. Anything. Everything." It was the most honest she'd ever been. "Come all over me. Just. Please."
"Fuck. Can't believe," but he didn't get to finish whatever he was going to say, jerking inside her, spilling into the condom. He slid out of her and she gracelessly let her legs flop on the bed, wondering at how badly she'd be cramped tomorrow. Not a real dilemma especially as she was still trying to catch her breath. Cautiously rubbing at her slick folds only left her wincing.
Jeanie didn't expect that after Dean has disposed of the condom, after Sam had stiffly walked over to kneel at the bed, kissing her fiercely as though he was trying to steal the taste of Dean out of her mouth, that she'd be invited to stay but exhaustion did none of them good and she felt Dean curled around her, Sam watching and then she drifted off to sleep where dreams, as always, evaded her.
It was only in the waking hours that she experienced anything that could be considered a dream.
*
She didn’t wake to a blissful morning after or live happily ever after.
When she did wake up it was at one of those hours of the night that no one believed in unless you had the misfortune to work a night shift and then watch the unmitigated gall of the clock to turn past three a.m. into some secret stolen hour.
Dean slept soundly beside her, his arm curled protectively around her waist but it was quite easy to wriggle away, leave the heat of his body for the welcome crackle of the air.
It was another matter when she crept past Sam, or attempted to rather, as he said softly, “Mornin’ Jeanie.”
A rumble more than spoken words and she stopped in her tracks, shifted a little, resisting the urge to cover her blatant nudity. Instead she tipped her chin down in defiance and put her hands on her hips. “How long were you awake?”
Too easy to keep her voice from carrying too far but it did strike interest in Dean as he shifted in sleep, mumbling indecipherable nonsense.
“I don’t sleep much.” It was not said as an apology although it seemed he intended her to take it as such.
There was little choice in taking the discussion elsewhere, they both separately made the decision to head toward the bathroom. Sam offered her a wrinkled but mildly clean shirt to wear which she accepted as now that she’d been emptied of want she had no real desire to progress further, letting herself feel pleasantly sore, an ache that sang with every step she took.
The moment the door shut, Sam said, shortly, “I met you before.”
He wasn’t looking at her when he said this; he’d glanced at the mirror, the faded shower curtain, his eyes determinedly not focusing on her.
“I would remember.”
His hand flexed as though he intended to reach out for her but he smothered the impulse at the last moment. The air around them was stifled, aged. “We never met.”
She nodded then because it didn’t make sense but then she didn’t make much sense, or rather she made more sense than the world accepted. She spun dross into gold and let the gold threads spool out of her hands, a wind catching them and taking them far, far away.
“Tell me,” she said and she used her voice unfairly, pushed a little too much and he shook his head. Fine then she’d employ the magic word then. “Please.”
“Once. I uh. There was a time when. I met you when I had nothing left.”
He struggled with his story but this she wanted, this she was greedy for, and she’d gotten too good at peeling the story apart and secreting the most vital aspects away for her own amusement.
Though it did not amuse her this time for it was the curiosity she yearned for, the need to know how he knew her too well. How he had watched her fuck his brother with such apprehensive longing as though another opportunity was offered to him and he purposefully spurned that for a seeming compromise.
Not like she could complain, after all she was a satiated recipient of a bargain made far more in deference to her own pleasure.
Touching him was cheating, fingers spread wide against his chest as she didn’t quite hold him, let the story come to them, the awkward misshapen thing willingly distorted as he tried valiantly to rewrite history.
Then when she’d nearly gotten the whole of it, she’d stepped back, looked in the mirror expecting one of those monsters she never believed in to stare back but found nothing but herself.
“You were looking for a Trickster. In a time that never was. But,” she licked her lips, tried to clear her throat. “But why did you go looking for me?”
He was almost too kind to her and she should hate him for it. To tear down her carefully crafted story.
“I didn’t know I was looking for you. It was just how the stories sounded too good to be true. I'm sorry. It was too similar to the whims of a Trickster. Thought maybe you’d be able to help. But you didn’t know. What you were, I mean.”
“Know,” she parroted weakly. Because words were all it took, she knew then that she was more than just a girl, no mere woman. She now knew the incomplete inheritance, the fairytale of a man arriving to a war widow’s home in the guise of her husband (and she wouldn’t know her true husband was dead till the next morning and how would she explain the baby?). But blood didn’t make magic unless there was something else there, the desire to use it. The want.
Once upon a time there was a girl named Jeanie and she wanted.
And inside of her, one-quarter of herself, said thy will be done.
Now, poorly dressed in a t-shirt too big for her and nothing else, she sat down on a fortunately well-scrubbed toilet seat cover, and learned that all she ever had been was a third-generation incomplete Trickster. It was a difficult truth to face, even for someone like herself, who’d made a habit of slipping in-between lies and honesty.
“I’m sorry,” Sam said and she nearly slapped him for that. She could if she wanted to after all he’d gotten down on his knees to her level, hands gentle on her knees, comforting her as though she was some wild animal.
“What are you going to do?”
Because she plucked more out of his story that she should have, had seen the death bearing down on him and Dean was often wrought by their own hands or by their good intentions, which in many ways was so much worse. She had never, not since that very first moment when she’d first been conscious of the world and her place in it, thought about her death.
He kissed her.
It didn't last long but the impression of it imprinted on her mouth and she knew she'd compare every kiss to this one, the lazy slide ending in a brief nipping reminder that she was so alive, so vibrant in this moment, even when everything she had ever known had been thrown into chaos.
“I’m going to hope you have a good life, Jeanie. Someone deserves it and I don't know if I'll...just do that. If you can,” he said.
“If you asked me, I could try to-” the words stuttered to a dead halt and she pressed her lips shut. Was she to play fairy godmother to Sam and Dean? Offer them a resolution for a question Sam refused to properly ask of her? Never, in all her life, had she managed anything like what she nearly proposed. Her ability was innately selfish and never had she wished to be selfless. Jeanie shook her head. “I don’t know how to fix things.”
“Your kind, the full-blooded ones, don’t either,” and she flinched at the venom in his voice. He sighed then. “It’s-I have to take care of this.”’
It was an abrupt shift, Sam standing up, opening the door a crack to look into the main room. “You should leave before Dean wakes up.”
So that they would start the day constructing their own lies for what transgressed last night. She nodded to show she understood.
“I’m going to take your shirt,” she told him.
His smile was tight. “Just don’t leave your bra.”
It was a comment on something else, some private joke she wasn’t going to forcibly uncover so she willingly went along with the unknown.
“No trophies,” she promised.
It was dark out when she left, her uniform unbuttoned under the loose shirt, jacket folded over her arm. Her shoes made no sound as she walked to her car.
As she drove away from the motel, the world so viscerally malleable yet pointedly fixed, waiting for the rest of the living to wake up for the harsh business of living, Jeanie knew the only true ending was and no one ever lives happily ever after.
She willed away the melancholy seeping in her bones, the worry gnawing at her now that she had the exact understanding of her awkward presence in the world. For the first time in her life, she got a headache, trying to keep her emotions shuttered off.
She didn’t want, not for lack of trying at least, to wish it away for it was far easier to accept the pressure of a newly experienced migraine than the inexplicable heartache pounding in her chest.
Once upon a time there was a girl named Jeanie and she wanted comfort. Yet she didn't realize that there was a terrible price for it until it was too late.
end
Author: Regala Electra
Fandom: SPN
Pairing: Sam/OFC, Dean/OFC
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Sexual Content, Language
Spoilers: S3, Mystery Spot
Summary: They were once expansive, these men, the kind that could move and shake the air around them, oh yes Jeanie saw such things and assumed everyone did until she realized they did not.
Word Count: 6,437
Author's Notes: Title misappropriated from the e.e. cummings poem the boys i mean are not refined. I cannot define vinylroad’s audiencing of this fic as anything other than awesometastic. Many thanks to ignited for the beta work.
*
Once upon a time there was a girl named Jeanie who never needed a fairytale for comfort’s sake and she often got exactly what she wanted.
There weren’t any high-spun fantasies that broke when even the most delicate of fingers touched the crystallized consistency of it, spun sugar unable to withstand the gentlest of touch. Goals that were simpler were the best to want-wanting a distraction from the day-to-day doldrums yielded in success more often than not. She lived her life in misdirecting those around her, she fooled them and she tried to feel guilty about it but she never did.
Jeanie didn’t live a fairytale life and she never went to bed fearing monsters. Her story was no different from anyone else: she was born, she grew up, and then she had to figure out what it meant to be a grownup until the word had no meaning for her and she was as she always was, another person, living day by day. Plans were made and some dissolved and eventually she learned to love drifting from want-to-want and when money was necessary there wasn’t trouble getting employed. Perhaps it could be called luck but she always found a career that struck her as deeply amusing and therefore completely agreeable.
She took a job as a waitress the same way a person would accept a career in charming snakes. The exoticism of being held accountable to the hungers of strangers was profoundly entertaining her and if ever asked, she’d admit that the regular customers were a particular favorite.
Everyone had a story and few possessed the skills to tell it even though they tried. When they asked Jeannie, she demurred or made up a story that fit well into their perceptions only striking an odd embellishment here or there. She decided to attend the local college when she grew tired of making herself out to be some sort of eternal near-drifter for the amusement of her regulars. There were only so many times she could joke about leaving the quiet little town and venturing out to a big city before the distaste settled in and she sought a new distraction.
If there was anything that terrified her it was the idea that her games and pretenses were all the reality that she could ever experience and that there was something fundamentally empty inside of her that everyone else seemed to possess in excess. But that was always pushed away to the recesses of her mind, filed carefully as something to mull over on another gloomy day.
Those gloomy days were rare at best and she made a point of personally chasing them away.
Though she never ran, certainly never ran away, no matter how such things could be construed, she never let herself get mired down in the listlessness that seemed to plague everyone else.
She was able to recognize the need of distraction in other people, not a shocking gift, but she liked to think of it as special: being able to sort people into two distinct categories. She took those two men walking into the dinner as a paired prime example of people in desperate need of some kind of diversion, their closed off looks shuttering them to the rest of the world.
Their eyes were weary and they were both in need of something more significant than rest but they didn’t trust their own needs. Instead, they calculated their surroundings, dismissing the other patrons and even sizing her up only to find her wanting. Or wanted, an opportunity she would gladly seize.
Each of them separately gave her a lingering once-over and Jeanie knew better than to let them see her as anything but harried and a little sad. It was one of the great ironies, in Jeannie’s humble opinion, that a little sadness went a long way but happiness was regarded with distinct suspicion unless someone knew exactly what she was doing.
Jeanie knew she was one of the few people to accurately figure out what mood a person needed to be lifted (for even misery could be elevated to a loftier status when a little imagination and subterfuge were all that it took to worry it along) and there had never been a good time to analyze why she’d been able to master it so she took it at face value. That which may be given ought not to be feared, went the saying as far as Jeanie remembered (and she might be remembering incorrectly but she didn’t care). She never feared she’d ever done a great disservice simply by acting within her nature.
These men drowned in sorrow and she sipped at their overwhelming sadness until the salt stung the back of her throat and she’d successfully recreated herself into what they needed her to be-a sad little waitress in need of rescuing, in need of them, in need of their version of living. A study in grief.
She never said she was a good person and could not be held to those standards. She always wanted too much.
*
They were once expansive, these men, the kind that could move and shake the air around them, oh yes Jeanie saw such things and assumed everyone did until she realized they did not. She made a point of not mentioning it to others, for it was too other and strange to explain how natural it was for her. The world was dead on their shoulders but they pushed up against it out of habit and she shook her head when the sharp green-eyed one asked her if studying at work helped her concentrate, an attempt at teasing even he knew fell flat.
The world is flat, she wanted to tell him but he wouldn’t understand her. She’d spread textbooks across the counter because Jeanie-the-hardworking-student was a good story to be until she got tired of it. And that was wrong, as she never got tired, not really. She just found something better to do.
If she lingered over the taller one (no way of identifying him beyond that, taller and desperate to be less substantial that he actually was but it was a trick he hadn’t learned yet-a trick Jeanie knew all too well), well, that was no problem. Her choice never had to be one over the other.
Their names are overhead, natural as anything, one of the perks of waitressing, and she carefully noted the tones they used for each other. Sam. Dean. Patience and sympathy, frustration and loyalty. Strong bonds and it terrified her briefly though she’d never be able to explain why it struck her so hard.
There was a lot of nonsense about the power of names and while she didn’t believe it, she tried to pay attention to such things in case she was ever wrong. If she lost the shape of a name, then what could slip from her grasp?
Sam and Dean ate dinner in an unconscious ritual and they wouldn’t share their story for her. She scrambled at it and picked up bits and pieces indistinct and useless but she wouldn’t cast them off. These were the little specks that might one day be cobbled together to form an understandable mosaic upon the discovery of the pattern. To accept defeat didn’t cross her mind and Jeanie went for her final attack she was quite happy to unleash, a spidery scrawl of a number on a torn piece of paper.
Sam opened the folded paper and tucked it into the pocket of his jacket before Dean noticed.
An unfair advantage Jeanie decided and when Dean went to the bathroom, she cornered him there, let him take in her scent of warmth and sweet, the slight sweat she was always mindful of, never trying to overheat. He’d not said much, a little murmured noise, hey sweetheart a faint protest against her lips when she’d leaned up and brought him down to her.
His mouth was gentle and she was surprised by her reaction to that, as though she’d prefabricated his story all wrong and he would have to be reconstructed piece-by-piece until she had the whole summation properly decided.
His hands lingered on her face for too short a time and she nearly whined in the back of her throat when he broke away first. Before he left, his lips touched hers briefly, in thanks, anyone could decipher such an action but he took it no further.
Dean was too far away by the time she opened her eyes and she watched them leave, and nearly considered them cowards.
No, she decided, they were something far more tragic than that.
*
Pity would be a strange weight in her stomach so she was quite relieved that she was freed from it. By the time her shift ended, she’d gotten a call on her cell phone and stuttered her way through a halted and strange conversation, the silences saying more than the words. He played a good, unintentional game and if she was some other kind of person, she’d fall for him honestly.
When the door was opened to his low-key, near-desperate motel, she was at an immediate disadvantage, forced to peer up at the serious face and the look he gave her was too confusing. It was familiar but disconnected as though they’d met before but she had a memory for faces, for names, had stored all this information the same way a packrat stored away bits of torn ribbon and other broken odds-and-ends. She didn’t remember him from any past she had and yet he looked at her as though he had.
“Jeanie,” he said and then fidgeted at the door as though weighing his options before he let her inside.
“Sam. I, um,” she shoved her hands in the pockets of her thin jacket, studied the faded green carpet for an appropriate amount of time to appear nervous, “I don’t normally do this.”
If he could tear apart that flimsy lie then she’d be done for but he did not seem to want to look beyond the superficial. A small slight in her estimation of him but it didn’t matter not when he towered over her and looked at her with such want she could let herself become fanciful enough to hope she’d found someone similar. That she wasn’t merely using someone used up and at the end of the line as she had suspected earlier.
Though she was still a little cold, she deliberately took off her jacket, folding it over a chair, waiting for him to speak and break the spell, that tense snap of promise building between them.
“What do you do?” he asked and before she was given the slight consideration of answering, he’d gotten her spread across his bed (a bed she must corrected herself here, for there is a twin, far sloppier, the bed sheets left in pooling heaps haphazardly across its surface) and she’d gasped in his mouth, a poor response.
Jeanie couldn’t tell if he was kissing her to remember or to forget some very vital thing once lost and she combed her fingers through his hair, rocked her body against his and found his body too substantial, the taste of him too desperate. This was wrong, all too wrong because she knew people and knew things too much and too well but he didn’t allow her measured evaluation of him to stick, it shifted into something deeper. There was more as his tongue slid hot deep in her mouth and she uselessly pulled at his long-sleeved shirt, trying to will it to come off his shoulders, so wide and she wouldn't manage this alone. He didn't seem to make any move to help assist her and if she didn’t know better he was going to stay clothed and this wouldn’t progress any further.
"Sam," she groaned against his mouth and that seemed to be enough for him.
Sam pulled back only to strip off the first layer of his clothing, leaving a thin t-shirt still on, and he said, “Let me make you feel good. I can do that. Will you let me?”
She shouldn’t have lied to him and let it carry on further, to imply he’s getting more comfort out of her than vice-versa but when she drew in a shaky breath, she knew she’d done it now.
He unbuttoned her pathetically drab uniform, popping buttons open with deft fingers that skimmed each inch of exposed skin with exacting pressure until he’d replaced fingers with tongue and still he went lower, until the top half was opened and she’d shimmied the uniform up her hips. Her underwear, pacific blue briefs, were exposed.
The press of his nose against her should shock her, yes it would be time for her to gather her thoughts but she set her feet down firmly on the mattress, pushed her hips forward and watched as he slid her panties off. Stupid to even dream of saying you’ve done this before and she won’t speak another word to break the strange enchantment, his single-minded pursuit of her body. Each touch was too measured for her to ignore that there was too much feeling behind it and she needed to push deeper because that’s what she did every time and why should this time be any different?
Her fingernail might be trimmed sensible and there was no rough edge for worthy scratching but that didn’t stop her from running fingers down his arms, catching up with his hands as he pushed her wrinkled uniform up even further, hitching it solidly round her waist. He’d restricted her movements so that she’d need to push up and closer and when he breathed against her thigh, so close and too far away, she’d swallowed hard.
“I want you,” she said in the general direction of the ceiling but Sam knew it was for him, his fingers spreading her legs apart wider until she’d exposed all of herself to him.
“I wanted you first time I saw you,” he admitted, hitch of pain in his voice. “Let me.”
He was not romantic with her. Did not ease her into the embarrassing intimacy of being utterly exposed in a way that left her free to his judgment. A lifetime of obfuscating ended in this bed, he could determine her and find her wanting or immensely pathetic, the way she’d gotten so wet for him the moment his finger crooked inside of her as his tongue flicked against her clit in a mere preemptive strike, testing her.
Jeanie was very close when he’d gotten two fingers inside, so long and perfect, crooked at the right angle, rubbing again, again, again until she’d merely followed his pace, hips shifting when he’d skirted away from pressing his tongue deep against her. He instead favored bites of near-kisses against her inner thighs, his free hand stroking up her leg as he pulled her leg over his shoulder. She kept her left leg down, even hooked her leg at a strangle angle off the bed, and resisted pulling at his hair while he continued to slowly and messily lick her.
She didn’t lose control. It wasn’t something she’d apologize for as it was a fact of her existence, she never went to one extreme and stayed there, never came and remained punch-drunk on the exhilaration. But she was so close-so very close-and when Sam stopped it was all she could do to keep from screaming a protest, from shoving his face back down and making him finish.
And since she didn’t lose control, she opened her eyes in time to see Sam was staring at the door and when she glanced over she saw Dean standing at the doorway, a closed-off but very uncomfortable expression on his face.
“Sorry, I, uh, didn’t realize. Jesus, Sammy,” Dean said, and he nearly fled, backing away and shutting the door closed.
He’d recognized Jeanie but there wasn’t anything like regret or jealously in his look at her. He’d been more focused on Sam’s mouth, glistening wet.
She was so wet and she very nearly throbbed at the loss of contact, slickness between her legs needing the friction and heat of him. It wasn’t the first time Jeanie had blinked back tears, for though she did live a charmed life, she wasn’t freed from crying. But this time her body was too on edge and she had no resolution just want overheating her senseless and she knew she was cheating, that she was reaching out to the energy in the air, but she needed.
It was hard to focus but suddenly, on the tip of her tongue, she had the words for what she could always do-
Only she felt it smacked down by a dormant energy that shifted in the air, some secret thing that not even she could dare explain. She wouldn’t dare because for a moment, it terrified her, an unknown and she had spent all her life knowing.
Jeanie was splayed on the bed, one good touch away from orgasm, and she felt desperately elated, dizzyingly so and perhaps this is what it meant when someone lost control but she’d gladly match it and she gave up the distortion, the meek act that she’d crafted, and said, “I want him to fuck me, Sam. I kissed him.”
Sam didn’t miss a beat and she sat up when he bent down to kiss her, helped as he tugged off the rest of her pathetic uniform, costume, losing a few buttons along the way, and she peeled her bra off. “I saw the way you looked at him,” Sam said, an unkind bluntness so direct she flinched at the harshness in his voice. “But I want-”
“What do you want?” She had never said that before and truly meant it. The words fell awkwardly out of her mouth, and she tried to recover, a crooked smile faltering when she stared deep into his eyes.
“I’m going to talk to Dean,” Sam said. He swept his thumb across her bottom lip and she nearly caught it, sucked him wet but she’d only chased the pad of his thumb before he pulled back.
It was only after the door shut that Jeanie pressed her index finger against her clit, shuddering into an unsatisfying climax but oh god. There would be more after that, she had no doubt there.
*
It had been too undignified to merely wait and she didn’t like sitting naked on the rucked up bed sheets so she’d stripped away the top sheets, draped the thinnest sheet over her lap, not bothering to wipe away the sweat clinging to her skin, the wetness still between her legs. Her breasts were bare and she reclined against the pillows, shifting her legs now and then to tease a faint echo of a tremor.
Her hair had still been up in a dropping bun when she'd arrived at the motel room so she’d carefully taken out the pins (a morning ritual that amused her as did curling the free tendrils around her face so if someone looked hard enough they’d see the wolf-in-Little-Red-Riding’s-Hood-costume) and spread the golden-brown bobby pins in even rows on the bedside stand. Though her hair fell in uneven, choppy waves, she didn’t much care.
Jeanie was idly stroking a nipple when they both walked in, Dean first and she’d never seen someone look so hopelessly fallen. While she’d always prided herself on her ability to eavesdrop, she’d missed whatever Sam whispered in Dean’s ear and all Dean responded with was a quick nod, pulling off his jacket in jerky, nervous movements.
Perhaps she was the villain here, opening her arms to him as he walked closer, leading him to abandon all hope but then he said to her, “Hey sweetheart. You want this?”
“I want you.”
She told Sam as much and why should she bother explaining she wanted what they could both give her since they were so willing to indulge her selfishness, ah but perhaps she was wrong. Sam sat on the other bed, unzipping his jeans but taking it no further than that. He rubbed the outline of his dick, an erection Jeanie could see was pressing hard and needed to be taken care of but she was too far away.
There had been rules set, a game devised that she was not allowed to completely control, and strangely, it intrigued her.
She kissed him hard and brutal, the way she expected Dean to kiss her only he returned the kisses softer and more refined, pulling back when she’d tried to catch his bottom lip with the edge of her teeth, one hand cupping her face to tilt her to an angle where she couldn’t force him in any other direction, where she waited for his measured responses and didn’t notice when he’d slipped the sheet completely off, that his other hand smoothed over her skin in a ghost of a touch that she’d barely registered before he’d explored some other part of her, the slight stickiness of her when he’d gotten to her pubic hair caused him to fully pull back.
Dean licked his fingers and he very baldly said, “Tell me how you want it. Any way, fuck any way you want it.”
Jeanie pulled at the bottom of his t-shirt, tugging at it, “I want you under me. And god, take off your damn clothes.”
The curse slipped out smooth and it threw her off as though she’d gotten a bit of a personality bleed, she’d spent too much time redefining herself, but she pushed forward, got to her knees for the best angle, tossing Dean’s shirt off and together they’d made short work of tugging down his jeans and he’d kicked off his boots. She made a point of peeling off his socks, a healing cut angry red across his right angle, the kind of jagged thank you from a barbwire’s kiss.
Dean took off his curious necklace, an amulet, with a strange gesture as though he was making a point.
He had to stand back up to take off his jeans, taking a condom out of his pocket before stepping out of his jeans. Though he wasn’t as tall as Sam, she still had the same height disadvantage when she knelt on the mattress but there wasn’t any problem with hooking her thumbs in Dean’s boxer-briefs and pulling down, his cock half-hard and she didn’t need to look behind her to know exactly who Dean was staring at.
“Relax,” she murmured and he’d chuckled at that.
“Think I should be telling you that.”
She hmmed in the back of her throat as she touched the base of his cock then brushed the length of him with her cheek. She could feel him getting harder, thicker and she couldn’t help taking in the scent of him, a deep musk.
Decided against sucking him at the very last moment when her mouth was open and she had instead curled her fingers around his dick, when she’d heard the slick uneven slide of Sam’s hand, touching himself as he watched. She'd have change her course of action; merely leaned up to embrace Dean in a loose hug, taking in the warmth of his skin, trying to see if she could feel his heartbeat chest to chest. No, she wasn’t tall enough for that, her breasts skimming midway across his ribcage, chest.
Not much of a trick to snatch the condom out of his fingers, tearing the wrapper with her teeth. He kissed her as his hand covered hers as she rolled it on and before she could check to confirm it was secure, he felled her.
He rocked against her, she rolled her hips forward to feel more, sucked his tongue harder, grabbing at his ass, stilling him.
Dean groaned in her mouth and she moved her face away, huffed in his ear. Said loud enough so Sam could overhear, “I want to ride you.”
His cock twitched against her and she resisted letting go any further, to simply guide him in and watch him fuck into her.
Rolled so that she landed hands and knees above him, her pussy too far away for direction contact and he tried to grab her hips, to force her to settle on top of him but she stopped that with just a finger to his lips. It wasn’t entirely fair when he sucked the tip of her index finger, a calculated flick that had her consider turning around and settling down on his face, letting him eat her out while she tried her best to suck him as far as she could manage.
She gripped the root of his cock in a careless hold, fingers not too tight, rubbing herself against the head and considered what if she pulled off the condom and let him fuck her bare, felt him shooting inside of her and begged him to lick it all out.
Dean would do that and more and she felt too much then, the unspoken sacrifice, and she stared at Sam, not Dean, when she sank down on Dean’s cock, watched him stroking himself, long hard strokes, a puff of breath when he caught her staring. For him, she leaned back, putting weight on her knees, felt the slight burning already starting in her thighs as she lifted and rocked back down onto Dean.
Had to bite her lip in frustration because she knew then that that wouldn’t get her off, that she wouldn’t be able to watch Sam shooting over himself, see what kind of face he made when he came.
Not even her fingers working herself off helped get her closer and Dean had forced her to take a harder pace, matched her thrusts but she couldn’t get back to that teetering edge, and she shook her head, saw him grit his teeth and then he said, “Say it, Jeanie. Won’t do it until you do. Say it.”
“Fuck me.”
“Doing that.”
“Fuck me into the mattress,” she hissed, a needy whine to her voice that startled her but he let that keep her off-balance, rolled her over as she’d thrust back down, pulled her knees up and pressed her legs down, pining her with his arms. If she craned her neck all the way, if she dared, she’d see an upside-down Sam at his wit's end. Already she could hear his jagged breathing, a fuck slipped out in between breaths.
Dean didn't get the perfect angle, didn't sink into her too deep, kept his thrusts shallow, waited for her to set the pace, insisted that she counter-balance him without asking, without begging. Dean was prone to shutting his eye closed when he thrust in, ducking his face away so she couldn't memorize that exquisite look, as though he was returning home.
His breath was hot against her cheek when he'd bent down to whisper in her ear, "God damn. The way you feel."
Couldn't answer that, not when his fingers dragged slowly down her stomach, slipping past curls, index finger rubbing close to her clit. Jeanie rocked against him harder, shifted her hips to guide him at first before grabbing a hold of his wrist, correcting his direction.
"No, here," she moaned, and it was Sam who responded to that and it threw off Dean, and she knew then that Sam came, awkwardly she twisted to see him losing any attempt at finesse, the come dribbling over his hand.
Dean wasn't going to last much longer and he's set a harder pace. Not that it was difficult matching it. Jeanie struggled more with the need to blurt out a demand for Sam to get over here, to break whatever agreement that he and Dean had reached, and she could do that, she'd never quite done it, but she didn't want to, didn't want to disrupt the thing building inside in her, the ache forming into little pinpricks of energy. Time nearly shattered when she came, throwing her head back and Dean's mouth sucked at her pulse point, secret little spot on her neck she never revealed to anyone and he'd found it, stilling inside her as she clenched around his cock, body shaking as she tried to gather herself, sink back into the let down.
Now he was merciless, riding her as though he was trying to make her come all over again, mumbling dirty promises in her ear, all the things he'd do to her if she'd only let him, and would she, would she let him?
"God. I'd want. Anything. Everything." It was the most honest she'd ever been. "Come all over me. Just. Please."
"Fuck. Can't believe," but he didn't get to finish whatever he was going to say, jerking inside her, spilling into the condom. He slid out of her and she gracelessly let her legs flop on the bed, wondering at how badly she'd be cramped tomorrow. Not a real dilemma especially as she was still trying to catch her breath. Cautiously rubbing at her slick folds only left her wincing.
Jeanie didn't expect that after Dean has disposed of the condom, after Sam had stiffly walked over to kneel at the bed, kissing her fiercely as though he was trying to steal the taste of Dean out of her mouth, that she'd be invited to stay but exhaustion did none of them good and she felt Dean curled around her, Sam watching and then she drifted off to sleep where dreams, as always, evaded her.
It was only in the waking hours that she experienced anything that could be considered a dream.
*
She didn’t wake to a blissful morning after or live happily ever after.
When she did wake up it was at one of those hours of the night that no one believed in unless you had the misfortune to work a night shift and then watch the unmitigated gall of the clock to turn past three a.m. into some secret stolen hour.
Dean slept soundly beside her, his arm curled protectively around her waist but it was quite easy to wriggle away, leave the heat of his body for the welcome crackle of the air.
It was another matter when she crept past Sam, or attempted to rather, as he said softly, “Mornin’ Jeanie.”
A rumble more than spoken words and she stopped in her tracks, shifted a little, resisting the urge to cover her blatant nudity. Instead she tipped her chin down in defiance and put her hands on her hips. “How long were you awake?”
Too easy to keep her voice from carrying too far but it did strike interest in Dean as he shifted in sleep, mumbling indecipherable nonsense.
“I don’t sleep much.” It was not said as an apology although it seemed he intended her to take it as such.
There was little choice in taking the discussion elsewhere, they both separately made the decision to head toward the bathroom. Sam offered her a wrinkled but mildly clean shirt to wear which she accepted as now that she’d been emptied of want she had no real desire to progress further, letting herself feel pleasantly sore, an ache that sang with every step she took.
The moment the door shut, Sam said, shortly, “I met you before.”
He wasn’t looking at her when he said this; he’d glanced at the mirror, the faded shower curtain, his eyes determinedly not focusing on her.
“I would remember.”
His hand flexed as though he intended to reach out for her but he smothered the impulse at the last moment. The air around them was stifled, aged. “We never met.”
She nodded then because it didn’t make sense but then she didn’t make much sense, or rather she made more sense than the world accepted. She spun dross into gold and let the gold threads spool out of her hands, a wind catching them and taking them far, far away.
“Tell me,” she said and she used her voice unfairly, pushed a little too much and he shook his head. Fine then she’d employ the magic word then. “Please.”
“Once. I uh. There was a time when. I met you when I had nothing left.”
He struggled with his story but this she wanted, this she was greedy for, and she’d gotten too good at peeling the story apart and secreting the most vital aspects away for her own amusement.
Though it did not amuse her this time for it was the curiosity she yearned for, the need to know how he knew her too well. How he had watched her fuck his brother with such apprehensive longing as though another opportunity was offered to him and he purposefully spurned that for a seeming compromise.
Not like she could complain, after all she was a satiated recipient of a bargain made far more in deference to her own pleasure.
Touching him was cheating, fingers spread wide against his chest as she didn’t quite hold him, let the story come to them, the awkward misshapen thing willingly distorted as he tried valiantly to rewrite history.
Then when she’d nearly gotten the whole of it, she’d stepped back, looked in the mirror expecting one of those monsters she never believed in to stare back but found nothing but herself.
“You were looking for a Trickster. In a time that never was. But,” she licked her lips, tried to clear her throat. “But why did you go looking for me?”
He was almost too kind to her and she should hate him for it. To tear down her carefully crafted story.
“I didn’t know I was looking for you. It was just how the stories sounded too good to be true. I'm sorry. It was too similar to the whims of a Trickster. Thought maybe you’d be able to help. But you didn’t know. What you were, I mean.”
“Know,” she parroted weakly. Because words were all it took, she knew then that she was more than just a girl, no mere woman. She now knew the incomplete inheritance, the fairytale of a man arriving to a war widow’s home in the guise of her husband (and she wouldn’t know her true husband was dead till the next morning and how would she explain the baby?). But blood didn’t make magic unless there was something else there, the desire to use it. The want.
Once upon a time there was a girl named Jeanie and she wanted.
And inside of her, one-quarter of herself, said thy will be done.
Now, poorly dressed in a t-shirt too big for her and nothing else, she sat down on a fortunately well-scrubbed toilet seat cover, and learned that all she ever had been was a third-generation incomplete Trickster. It was a difficult truth to face, even for someone like herself, who’d made a habit of slipping in-between lies and honesty.
“I’m sorry,” Sam said and she nearly slapped him for that. She could if she wanted to after all he’d gotten down on his knees to her level, hands gentle on her knees, comforting her as though she was some wild animal.
“What are you going to do?”
Because she plucked more out of his story that she should have, had seen the death bearing down on him and Dean was often wrought by their own hands or by their good intentions, which in many ways was so much worse. She had never, not since that very first moment when she’d first been conscious of the world and her place in it, thought about her death.
He kissed her.
It didn't last long but the impression of it imprinted on her mouth and she knew she'd compare every kiss to this one, the lazy slide ending in a brief nipping reminder that she was so alive, so vibrant in this moment, even when everything she had ever known had been thrown into chaos.
“I’m going to hope you have a good life, Jeanie. Someone deserves it and I don't know if I'll...just do that. If you can,” he said.
“If you asked me, I could try to-” the words stuttered to a dead halt and she pressed her lips shut. Was she to play fairy godmother to Sam and Dean? Offer them a resolution for a question Sam refused to properly ask of her? Never, in all her life, had she managed anything like what she nearly proposed. Her ability was innately selfish and never had she wished to be selfless. Jeanie shook her head. “I don’t know how to fix things.”
“Your kind, the full-blooded ones, don’t either,” and she flinched at the venom in his voice. He sighed then. “It’s-I have to take care of this.”’
It was an abrupt shift, Sam standing up, opening the door a crack to look into the main room. “You should leave before Dean wakes up.”
So that they would start the day constructing their own lies for what transgressed last night. She nodded to show she understood.
“I’m going to take your shirt,” she told him.
His smile was tight. “Just don’t leave your bra.”
It was a comment on something else, some private joke she wasn’t going to forcibly uncover so she willingly went along with the unknown.
“No trophies,” she promised.
It was dark out when she left, her uniform unbuttoned under the loose shirt, jacket folded over her arm. Her shoes made no sound as she walked to her car.
As she drove away from the motel, the world so viscerally malleable yet pointedly fixed, waiting for the rest of the living to wake up for the harsh business of living, Jeanie knew the only true ending was and no one ever lives happily ever after.
She willed away the melancholy seeping in her bones, the worry gnawing at her now that she had the exact understanding of her awkward presence in the world. For the first time in her life, she got a headache, trying to keep her emotions shuttered off.
She didn’t want, not for lack of trying at least, to wish it away for it was far easier to accept the pressure of a newly experienced migraine than the inexplicable heartache pounding in her chest.
Once upon a time there was a girl named Jeanie and she wanted comfort. Yet she didn't realize that there was a terrible price for it until it was too late.
end