Chapter Text
Sam walks into his dark apartment. He's willing to admit that it's been kind of fun hunting with his brother again, but at the moment he's glad to be back in Palo Alto, excited about his interview in the morning. Happy to be back with the girl that he's pretty sure he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. “Jess? You home?” he calls. It's late, so she may have already gone to bed. He smiles, seeing a plate of cookies that she had left for him, and starts eating one as he makes his way to the bedroom. The bathroom light is on and the shower is running, so he figures he'll just wait there for her to get out of the shower.
He sits on the bed, then lays back, closing his eyes. He'll get up, change out of his jeans, actually get in bed when Jess is ready to go to bed with him, but for the moment he just happily relaxes onto the bed- he's tired, and a bit sore, and the soft, familiar mattress feels good
A drop of liquid falls on his forehead.
Then another.
He opens his eyes and gasps.
Jessica is on the ceiling, a long line of blood staining her white nightgown across her stomach.
Sam's mind goes a million different places at once. This is wrong. Nothing could be more wrong than this. His girlfriend, the woman he loves, the person he's thought of as the most important person in his life for the last few years, and perhaps most importantly his biggest anchor in a world away from bizarre occurrences and evil things, is pinned on the ceiling, bleeding, her mouth wide open in terror.
In a flash of white-hot rage he- for lack of a better word- wills her to come down.
As Sam yell “No!” two things happen in quick succession, a fraction of a second apart. Jess suddenly drops from the ceiling, and immediately after, a huge fireball bellows out above her.
It isn't just like whatever had been holding her up there had stopped holding her- Jess is yanked down, pulled by some invisible force. It kind of feels like that force had originated from Sam himself, but he doesn't have time to think about that as he rolls out of the way so that Jessica would land on the mattress instead of on top of Sam. He doesn't quite have time to get out of the way, however, and her head ends up knocking hard against his. He may have lost a second or two, but he's moving again as quickly as he can, getting on his knees next to her on the bed, flipping her over quickly but gently, feeling the heat of the rapidly spreading fire on his back.
“Sam...” she mutters. Jess is conscious, but only just.
Sam cradles her face in one enormous hand. “You're all right, Jess. We're all right. I'm going to get you out of here.” He isn't sure whether or not he's lying to her, but she's so scared, and he just wants to make it all right.
“Sam!” Dean appears at the door to the bedroom, his arms lifted to shield his face from the heat.
“Dean, we have to...” Sam starts, but Dean is already at the bed, scooping Jessica up in his arms.
Sam follows his brother out of the room, then out the front door, his eyes watering from the smoke- or maybe he is actually crying.
When they reach the sidewalk, Dean orders Sam to sit down, and Sam, more or less in shock at that point, obeys him without really thinking him about it. Dean gently lays Jess on the pavement, her head in Sam's lap. She's unconscious, but Sam starts stroking her hair and muttering to her reassuringly anyway. Sam feels Dean put a reassuring hand on top of one of his for a second, then Dean leans over to look at the slash across Jessica's stomach after cutting open her nightgown with a knife he took from his belt.. “This isn't too bad, Sammy,” he says, using that voice that he's put on as long as Sam can remember when he wants to convince Sam that things were all right whether or not they really were. “I think she's going to be okay.”
Sam gulps and nods. Not that he believes Dean. Jessica probably isn't going to be okay. Not that he disagrees with Dean's medical assessment, but Sam is pretty sure that, in the long run, she will never be okay, because she knows him, because they love each other. Good things didn't happen to him, and while they got her out this time, there is no way that Jessica will ever really be out of danger.
A firetruck drives up, and half a dozen men climb out in full gear. Just behind it is an ambulance. Dean immediately jumps up and directs the paramedics over to Sam and Jessica. One of the medics asked Sam what happened and he tells her that a mirror had broken and a large piece had fallen on Jess. It isn't that convincing of a story, but what else was he supposed to say? The two paramedics get to work on Jess, and try to get a better look at Sam but he didn't let them. He's fine, he tells them, as long as she is all right.
They load Jessica into the back of the ambulance, allowing Sam to come with her. Dean follows in the Impala, speeding all the way there so that he arrives just a few minutes after the ambulance. They've already taken Jess into a trauma room, and Sam is standing outside the door arguing with a nurse who is trying to get him to go to a different part of the ER to get checked out for smoke inhalation.
“He hit his head, too,” Dean tells the nurse. Sam shoots a bitchface at his brother for the obvious act of betrayal, and tells the nurse that he really is fine.
“Did you lose consciousness?” she asks. “Any headache, dizziness, or nausea?”
He shakes his head, but now that she mentions it, his forehead is pretty sore where it had knocked against his girlfriend's, and he isn't feeling entirely steady on his feet. Besides, Dean is giving him a look that says he was going to have to just suck it up and let someone check him out, or he'll have his big brother physically forcing him to. Sam sighs. “Okay, but this better be quick.”
“Lead the way...” Dean takes a look at the nurse's name tag, and looks her straight in the face with his signature Dean Winchester smirk. “Nicole.”
She smiles and takes them to a curtained-off cubicle, and a few minutes later an attractive, blonde, female doctor just a few years older than Dean shows up to give Sam the once-over, concluding that he has a mild concussion and no significant smoke inhalation injury. Sam volunteers that Dean had also been in the fire, and Dean allows the doctor to check his lungs and airway too, probably because it gives him a bit more of an opportunity to flirt. She tells them they were both good to go, and Sam gets down from the gurney where he had been sitting and goes straight back to the trauma room, Dean at his heels.
As they reach the trauma room doors, a doctor comes out and asks Sam, “You're Jessica's boyfriend?”
Sam nods. “Yeah, I'm Sam Winchester, this is my brother Dean.” He gets straight to the point. “Is Jess going to be all right?”
“She should be fine,” the doctor assures him. Sam lets out a breath that he hadn't really been aware that he was holding. “The gash on her stomach is deep, but didn't make it through the muscle, so her vital organs weren't injured at all. Our main concern was the blood loss, but we've given her a transfusion and her vitals have already greatly improved.”
“Can I see her?”
“Yes, she's been in and out of it, but I'm sure she would appreciate a familiar face.”
Sam follows the doctor into the trauma room, Dean staying out in the hall after giving Sam a reassuring pat on the arm. Jess is lying on the bed in the middle of the room, which looks huge now that it was mostly empty- when she'd first come in and Sam had been standing in the doorway, there had been six or eight people in there working on her, but now only one nurse, and the doctor who had come out to talk to Sam remain. A mostly full bag of clear liquid and a mostly empty one of dark red liquid are connected the IV that is going into her arm. The oxygen mask that had been on her face in the ambulance has been replaced by a nasal cannula, and her color has improved, though not as much as Sam would have liked. A bruise is starting to form on her forehead where it hit his.
Jess's eyes flutter open when Sam takes her hand in both of his. “Sam?” she says when she sees him.
“Yeah, I'm here Jess.” he say, willing his voice not to break.
“Are you alright?”
He squeezes her hand. “Yeah Jess, I'm alright as long as you are.” Why the hell is she worrying about him?
“What... what happened?”
He opens his mouth and shuts it a couple of times, trying to figure out what to say. “There was a fire in our apartment. I'll tell you everything when you're better, okay, Jess?” He isn't sure what that will actually end up meaning. He could just tell her an outright lie, and go on as if this hadn't been something supernatural, something that he had brought on her. Or he could just disappear, go with Dean, not tell Jess anything. But some part of him really wants to tell her the truth about what happened, about himself.
She closes her eyes, and he thinks she had fallen asleep- or unconscious- again, but a few seconds later, she opens them again and asks, “Did you find your dad?”
He hadn't been expecting that. The search for his dad, the case that he's just wrapped up with Dean, all that seems so distant and unimportant now. “Uh, no. But we know he's all right now.” Again, technically not the truth, but he doesn't want to worry her. She has enough on her mind with the fire and being in the hospital with a foot-long gash on her stomach.
Jessica closes her eyes again, and Sam stands by her side for a while, still holding onto her hand, watching her chest rise and fall. She wakes up a few more times, but he just tells her that everything is all right, that she should rest. Eventually, a different doctor comes in to stitch up Jessica's wound, and Sam is asked to leave. This time he puts up much less of a fight, and he plant a gentle kiss on her forehead before going to the waiting area to join his brother.
They sit in silence, shoulder to shoulder, for a while before Dean speaks. “I tried calling dad.”
“He didn't answer?”
“I left a message. He'll come, Sammy. This is the thing that killed mom, he'll be here.” Again, Dean is using the I'm-trying-to-convince-you-things-will-be-okay voice.
“Yeah, I guess.” Suddenly something occurs to him. “Crap. My interview.”
“If anyone has a reason to ditch an interview, it's you right now. Anyway, do you really think you're going to law school after this?”
Sam feels anger rise in his chest, anger at Dean for even suggesting it, but he has a point. After this, can he just go back to his life at Stanford? There is no way of ever guaranteeing that his past as a hunter won't catch up with him again. But there is still some part of him that doesn't want to burn that bridge just yet. “I'll call and see if I can reschedule.”
For a moment, Dean looks like he's about to argue about that, but he just says, “Yeah, good plan. One thing at a time.”
***
Six days later.
Jessica sits on her friend Morgan's couch, curled up under a blanket, trying to concentrate on the book that she's supposed to be reading for the lit class that she is currently missing. It's turning out to be a losing battle- she's only actually read four or five pages since she opened the book half an hour previously. She's blaming it on her brain being a little cloudy from pain medication and from the physical fatigue that comes along with healing from a major injury, but on top of that, she is starting to really worry about her boyfriend.
In the days since the fire, Sam has obviously been putting a lot of effort into making sure Jessica feels safe and taken care of. He stayed by her side almost constantly during the first day while she was in the hospital, offering reassuring words and gentle kisses. Once she'd been released and had gone to her friend's apartment, he maintained the same caring demeanor, but he started splitting his time between Jessica and... well she wasn't really sure what he was doing while he was gone. Presumably he was working on something with his brother- Jess had heard Sam having whispered conversations with Dean over the phone when he thought she was asleep, and she's pretty sure she's been seeing Dean's car driving past several times a day.
The third day after the fire, Sam showed up smelling like smoke, and when she asked about it he tried to brush it off and she had to press him to get him to say he'd been at the apartment. He said it was just to pick up a few things that hadn't been destroyed in the fire. She asked where those things were, and he said they were still in the Impala and changed the subject. Sam was definitely hiding something, something that had him scared. Any time that Jess asked about the fire, or about the trip that Sam had just returned from when the fire happened, Sam would give a vague non-answer, or suddenly need to leave.
Jess closes her book and looks at the clock on the wall. It's 2:15. Sam told her he would be back around three, which actually lined up with his school schedule, so maybe he had gone to class. He's been telling her that he was heading off to class for at least the last three days, but Jess knows Sam's schedule, and most of the time he was leaving at the wrong times for him to actually be going to school.
Anyway, there's still 45 minutes until Sam said he'd be back. It's actually the first time Jess has really been alone since the fire, since Sam keeps getting people to come over to babysit her. Not that anyone's actually said that's what's happening, but random friends of Jess's have been showing up every time that Morgan and her roommates are going to be out of the house. About the time that Jason and Natalie, who are really more Sam's friends than hers, showed up at nine o'clock on Saturday morning saying they just wanted to hang out with her, Jess became fully convinced that it was Sam's doing. The only reason that she has the place to herself this afternoon is because she told her latest Jess-sitter, Dana, who happened to be her freshman year roommate and a very close friend, that she was going to be boring and take a nap, so you might as well leave, but if Sam asks can you do me a huge favor and say you were here until 2:45? Dana had given her a slightly concerned it's-not-like-you-to-ask-your-friends-to-lie-to-your-boyfriend look but had told Jess to call if she needed anything and gone home. She lived like a block away, anyway, so if Jess did need someone, which she wouldn't, Dana could be back in five minutes.
Jess gets up off the couch, a little bit slowly, but at least she can stand up straight and walk around at this point without any major pain. As she is walking toward the kitchen, she sees an old duffel bag behind the couch that she recognizes as Sam's. For some reason, he's been taking it with him when he leaves the apartment, but apparently this time he's forgotten. A little surprised at herself for what she's about to do, Jessica kneels down next to the bag and unzips it. Good one, Jess. It's a blatant invasion into Sam's privacy, but she tells herself that she has a good reason, he's definitely been acting cagey, and she's genuinely worried about him.
There's a few changes of clothes in the top of the bag, some books, other normal stuff. But, after she shifts the top layer, she starts to find things that aren't so normal. A bag of - salt? Sugar? She tastes a few crystals. Definitely salt. And there's a couple of old banged-up flasks, mostly full, but when she opens one and sniffs it it seems like it's full of water. Then under that...
Why the hell does Sam Winchester have a sawed-off shotgun in his bag? Wait, scratch that, two sawed-off shotguns, a handgun, and a couple of nasty-looking hunting knives.
Jess puts everything back in place as well as she can and zips up the bag, not sure what to think. She's a little less surprised than she wishes she was – throughout their relationship, Jess has had to do some serious prying to get anything out of her boyfriend about his life before Stanford. Obviously there's things in his past that he doesn't like to talk about, and she's always respected that. She's entertained the thought that maybe her boyfriend has some sort of dark past but for the most part, she has trusted that he wouldn't keep anything from her that she really needed to know about, and there have been a few times when Sam has had a little too much to drink and started thanking her for being so understanding. Well, now it looks like she may have been a little too understanding.
There's a knock on the door. Is Sam back early? Jess stands up, wincing just a little as she feels the pull on the cut across her stomach, and walks to answer the door.
***
Dean expects to see Sam open the door at the apartment where he and Jess have been staying, or else one of their seemingly endless supply of friends, but when the door opens it's Jess herself, dressed in a pair of running shorts and an old t-shirt that's about three sizes too big so it must be Sam's, looking a little pale but overall worlds closer to the happy, healthy Jess in the smurf shirt that Dean had first met than the bleeding, unconscious Jess that he had carried out of the fire.
“Hey Jess, you look great!” Jess shoots him a brief half-smile. “Is Sam here?”
She shakes her head. “No, he's been gone since this morning, should be back soon.”
“In that case, is it all right if I wait here for him?” Dean has never spent any time with Jessica without Sam there, and even then it had only been brief, a few minutes at a time, so the two of them don't really know each other at all. He's still trying to convince Sam that the best thing for everyone involved would be for him to make a clean break and leave Jess behind, but Sam is as stubborn as he's ever been, and Dean's starting to accept that Jess might be a part his life for quite a while.
“Uh yeah, that's fine, I guess.” She lets him in, and tells him she was about to make herself a sandwich and asks if he would like one too. He says yes, and goes into the living room to wait while she goes into the kitchen. He sees Sam's duffel on the floor in the living room, supposes that Sam would want weapons readily accessible in case whatever it was that tried to kill Jess came back to finish the job, though maybe it's a little sloppy for him to leave his bag out in the open like that.
Dean sits down in one of the living room chairs and a few minutes later Jess comes out with two plates, setting them down on the coffee table, one in front of Dean and the other next to her blanket nest on the couch. “You want anything to drink?” She asks.
“Do you have a beer?”
“Sure.” She goes back into the kitchen, he hears the refrigerator open and close, and she comes back with a can of beer in one hand and a can of Diet Coke in the other. “I'd totally have a beer with you, but, you know, vicodin.” She smiles. He takes a sip and smiles back. Jess is acting all casual, but Dean's years of hunting experience are telling him that she's not as relaxed as she's trying to let on, that something is bothering her and she's trying to hide it.
Of course, she did almost die less than a week ago, so maybe he's just picking up on her not being as chill about that as she wants people to think.
They exchange small talk for a few minutes, just filling the silence. Dean asks Jess about her family, because he suspects that that's the kind of thing people do when they've just met their brother's girlfriend. She tells him about her parents, says she's an only child but she'd always wanted a sibling, expresses how lucky she thinks Sam and Dean are to have each other. He jokingly says that she's the lucky one, and that having a little brother is a pain in the ass, and she laughs.
There's one of those awkward breaks in the conversation that just spontaneously happen, and they just kind of stare at each other for a moment or two. Finally, Jessica breaks the silence. “I'm kind of worried about Sam.”
So that's what's bothering her? Well, Dean can do some damage control there. “Jess, Sam's fine. A little messed up because you got hurt, but he's fine.”
Jessica doesn't look very convinced. She fidgets with the edge of the blanket she has pulled up over her lap as she says, “I don't know, I'm pretty sure he's hiding something. Like he's worried that someone's after him, or after me, or...”
Shit. Either Sam's been a complete open book, which has been known to happen, or Jess knows him way too well, or, probably, both. Well, Dean can still try and downplay this. “You were hurt pretty bad. Sam was really worried that he was going to lose you for a few minutes there. And I don't know if he's told you this, but our mom was killed in a fire.” She doesn't look shocked, so Sam must have at least mentioned it. “That's sure been on my mind, and it's got to be on his too. So maybe he's being a little paranoid, but it'll get better.”
She frowns. Still not convinced. “Dean I... that duffel of his? The one behind the couch. I... I opened it.” Her voice is shaking a little, she's no longer looking Dean in the eye. Dean's a little glad she's not looking directly at him, as he concentrates on keeping a poker face. There's no way Sam doesn't have at least a couple of weapons stashed in there. Jess isn't just worried because her boyfriend's been a little extra protective, she's worried because she found her boyfriend's gun. Gun singular, if they're lucky, but Sam's probably got a small arsenal in that duffel bag.
Okay. He doesn't know exactly what she saw. He's going to act like he doesn't know what she saw, and he's going to have a serious talk with Sam when he gets back, because the current gameplan, patrolling around and trying to find clues about the thing that tried to kill Jessica while keeping her in the dark so she can rest and recover, is clearly not working anymore.
Dean silently wills Sam to get back sooner rather than later, and for once he gets a stroke of good luck as he hears the door open seconds later, and a few moments later Sam walks into the living room. Jess and Dean both look at Sam. Sam looks at Jess, then Dean, then back to Jess, and his face goes from a slightly forced-looking smile to something between confused and scared. Before either Sam or Jess has a chance to say anything, Dean breaks the silence, saying calmly but firmly, “Jessica, excuse me, I need to talk to my brother.” He quickly gets up, gives Sam a follow me look and walks into one of the bedrooms in the back of the apartment.
***
Jess can hear Sam and Dean talking back in Morgan's bedroom, but they've closed the door and they're not loud enough for her to make out what they're saying. She can imagine that they're discussing what to tell her, what to do about her admission that she's worried, and that she knows about the weapons. She probably shouldn't have said anything to Dean. She should have waited and talked to Sam directly about it because they trust each other (at least she thought they did) and she doesn't even know Dean. Maybe she shouldn't have said anything to either of them, just let Sam hide whatever he was hiding, and trust that he has a good reason for the bag of guns.
What's a good reason to keep a bag of guns around? She's feeling a little nauseous.
They're in there for what feels like ages. Jess has lost all interest in the sandwich she made, but she takes occasional sips from her can of soda, because her mouth keeps feeling dry. She opens the book she was trying to read earlier, but doesn't even go as far as finding the right page, just sits there, trying to hear what her boyfriend and his brother are saying in the other room. Every once in a while one of them raises his voice and she can hear what he's saying, and after a while Jess gets the impression that Dean is trying to convince Sam to take off without explaining anything and Sam... she isn't sure what Sam's trying to do. Maybe Sam isn't sure either.
After the first few moments the discussion apparently gets less heated, because they stop getting loud enough for her to tell what they're saying at all. Probably meaning that they've agreed on some course of action, and are now trying to figure out exactly what they're doing. That would be Sam's approach, at least. Know what they're doing before they start doing it. As for Jess, she doesn't know what she is hoping the result will be. On the one hand, she's pretty sure that she means enough to Sam that he's not going to just take off never to be heard from again, and she knows that if that were to happen, it would be devastating, because he really is her best friend, the person she loves and genuinely wants to spend her life with.
On the other hand, she could do without any more near-death experiences. She knows, at least on a logical level, that she would eventually be okay if Sam left, and if the end result of his staying could be her getting killed...
She isn't used to feeling scared for her life. Not a feeling that she wants to get used to.
She realizes there's tears running down her face, and wipes them with the hem of the old t-shirt of Sam's she is wearing.
***
Sam takes a deep breath, and opens the door to the bedroom. He's been there with Dean for more than half an hour, first trying to decide on a gameplan, and then trying to figure out how to execute it.
Dean obviously isn't happy about it. Hell, Sam isn't happy about it either, but there isn't an alternative that he liked any better.
They walk back into the living room. Jessica's sitting where they'd left her, a book open on her lap that she isn't reading. Her eyes are a little red, and Sam knows she's been crying. He isn't surprised. Obviously he's been scaring the hell out of her, and here he is about to make it even worse. Sam sits on the opposite end of the couch from where Jess is, and Dean goes back to his chair.
“Jess, you might hate me for what I'm going to do right now, you might think I'm crazy, you might never want to see me again, but I just want you to hear me out.” He pauses for just a second, giving her the chance to cut in if she wanted, but she just keeps looking at him, shaking almost undetectably. “I'm going to tell you the truth. About me. About everything.”