Just a Dream

Summary: How did the demon know about Jess? My take on Sam's last couple of months at college with Jess. Set roughly 2 months before the pilot. Rated T to be safe. Minor spoilers for the pilot episode. This isn't AU at all right now but might be as the second season expands on Sam's abilities, the demon, and what it all means.

Rating: T

Note: This is a pretty dark fic, in terms of Sam's condition. In the episode "Skin," he tells Dean that he never really fit in at Stanford. From what we see of him at Stanford in the pilot episode, he's perfectly normal in all outward appearances, so his not being able to fit in (or at least his feeling that he didn't fit in) was probably something internal. I've taken that idea and expanded it into a story centered around how he really felt at Stanford and what his relationship with Jess really meant to him, as well as my take on how the demon found out about Jess. If Sam is so important, the demon should have been keeping track of him somehow, right?

Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural or any of its characters; this is purely for fun.

Chapter 1

He had been sitting there all day, thinking. Just thinking.

Half of his face was cast in the murky shadows of dusk's light filtering through the apartment's small window, the other half in darkness. His tall frame was hunched over in defeat, and he ran a hand through the long brown curls hanging down into his eyes. No matter how many times he thought about it, he always came to the same conclusion.

He couldn't tell Jess.

He'd thought about it every summer for the past two years, and off and on during the school year, but mostly in the summer. It was during the summer when he felt the loneliness take over. All of his friends fled Stanford for home as soon as finals were over, and he was left behind. Some of them—even Jess—had offered to let him come home with them for the summer, but he had declined. The fact of the matter was that he no longer had a home to return to.

At one point, halfway through the summer when his isolation had become almost unbearable and the long days before school started back up stretched out endlessly ahead of him, he had thought about calling his Dad. But as soon as the thought occurred to him, it vanished. John Winchester had made it clear, when Sam chose Stanford over a life of hunting, that he saw it as a betrayal. The last order John had ever given Sam played over in his mind—If you're gonna leave, don't bother comin' back—and he knew that even if he ever found enough courage to call, his father wouldn't want to talk to him.

That, of course, led to his brother. Dean. It took a little longer for Sam to eliminate calling Dean as a possible option. He and Dean had always been close, which had made their separation that much harder. Dean had been the one to help Sam figure out how to play soccer one afternoon when they were supposed to be practicing shooting guns loaded with rock salt. Sam had been 11, Dean, 15, and it took them almost the whole afternoon to learn all the rules of the game and really get playing, because Dean had never played, either. Dean had been the one to help Sam learn how to recite his lines for the school play late at night one year when Sam was a junior in high school. Dean was supposed to be teaching him how to properly pronounce Latin incantations at a volume high enough to be heard over angry spirits and screeching demons, but their Dad was out late every night that week going after a nasty spirit that had needed more attention than the usual salt-and-burn, and Dean had caved. Dean had never been able to refuse Sam those little pieces of the normal life he craved, and for that, he was grateful.

Sam had hoped that Dean would at least be secretly proud when he got a full ride to Stanford and announced that he was taking it. But if Dean had felt anything either way, he hadn't shown it. Sam and John had fought and Dean had looked on silently, as always. Sam still wondered if Dean thought the same as their Dad, that Sam had deserted them, or if Dean agreed with Sam's decision but wouldn't admit it because of their father. No matter what, Dean had never and most likely would never disobey John's orders. It was one thing during a hunt, when trusting each other and obeying an order without hesitation might mean the difference between life and death. But outside of that…Sam had always wanted to take charge of his own life, and couldn't understand why Dean didn't. Therefore, another summer had passed in which Sam thought about calling his brother but never actually did.

This summer had been a little different than the last two, though. He had convinced Jess to stay for a couple weeks after finals so that they could pick out an apartment close to campus. He'd live in it during the summer, and she would move in when she came back for school. It was a big step, but they both felt that it was the right one to take.

He loved her. He loved her more than he'd ever thought he could love anybody, and that's why he hated lying to her so much. John and Dean had taught him how to lie, and he'd perfected the talent over his high school years when they began including him on hunts (It was best not to tell the doctors at the hospital that it was a poltergeist that had slammed you into the wall and then thrown you down the stairs). He could have made up anything about some happy family or troubled childhood and Jess would have believed him, but to him, that was worse. He'd rather lie by omission, tell her as little as possible about his life before Stanford and avoid all the questions that were too dangerous to answer.

He hadn't ever lived in the same place for more than a few months because his Dad's job forced them to move a lot, but he wouldn't go into detail about what his Dad did. Yes, his mother had died in a fire when he was sixth months old, but he wouldn't tell her that the fire wasn't an accident, that his Dad had walked into his nursery to find Mary suspended on the ceiling right before she burst into flames. No, he'd rather not talk about the long, thin scar that ran all the way across his chest down to his hip, because that was from the wendigo in Montana when he was 14. He kept in shape, practiced martial arts every day, and went to a shooting range every Saturday because he wanted to, but he never told her that what he really wanted was to be able to protect her from all the things out there in the dark that nobody else believed in if one ever showed up close by.

He wanted so badly to tell her everything, but he had long since realized that that would be selfish. Sam knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that some kinds of ignorance really were bliss. Everyone else around him had a sort of innocence that he had never had, and it shone in Jess like a beacon of light that kept him from slipping back into the darkness. He couldn't be the one to destroy that. He couldn't tell her that the things you see in horror movies are real, that he'd seen and experienced things like them all his life, and that he'd seen people ripped to shreds because they couldn't get there in time to save them.

He couldn't tell her, and that was that. He had had another lonely summer, but he had survived things a lot worse than loneliness before. Besides, it was over now. He had worked his last shift stocking shelves at the local grocery store that morning. Jess would be here any minute, and all of his friends would be back by tomorrow.

Sam stood up, the springs of the old mattress squeaking as they relinquished his weight, and he stretched up to his full height. He smoothed the wrinkles he had made on the covers and turned on the light, willing its florescent aura to chase away his morbid mood, and made sure everything was in order for Jess's arrival.

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"So…are we doing something tonight?" Sam heard Jess say from the kitchen.

So much for getting a head start on my reading, Sam thought, but couldn't keep the corner of his mouth from turning up in simple, glorious contentment. Though the textbooks he had just purchased for the classes he'd be starting tomorrow would normally command his never-ending intellectual curiosity and attention, he could never refuse Jess when she wanted to spend time with him.

He heard her come into the room and move to lean over behind him. She wrapped her arms around him and rested her chin on his shoulder. The presence that was wholly hers—white daisies and the summer sun after the rain—surrounded him as her long blonde curls fell down over his shoulder.

"It's our last night of freedom…" she sang in his ear tantalizingly. He made a show of sighing in defeat as if he was having to tear himself away from the riveting pages of An Effective Closing Argument: The Lawyer's Most Overlooked Advantage in order to give her his full attention; she didn't have to know she'd had him as soon as she had opened her mouth.

"What do you want to do?" he asked, turning to look at her.

She shrugged. "You have any ideas?"

"We could go out to eat. Maybe try a nice restaurant for a change, something more expensive than the greasy spoon down the street."

She laughed and he smiled. Neither of them had much extra spending money, so a lot of their "nights out" over the past few years had consisted of burgers and, if they were lucky, a movie.

"You must have been really good at stocking shelves, if you can afford to take me somewhere nice all of a sudden," she teased.

"Oh, I was," he replied with mock sincerity. "In fact, I think I've found my new calling. No more working my ass off to get into law school!" He closed the textbook he had been reading with a flourish to accent his newfound enthusiasm for minimum wage work and grinned at her defiantly.

Jess wrinkled her nose in obvious disapproval of his plan, but there was mirth in her eyes. Suddenly, he saw her expression change into one of devilish amusement, and he knew she'd had an idea that he probably wouldn't like.

"I know where we can go eat," she stated matter-of-factly.

"Where?"

"Ben's Pizza Place!" she exclaimed triumphantly, and Sam groaned in protest. He hadn't been there in almost two years, and he would prefer to keep it that way.

"Oh, come on, it'll be fun!" she said.

"There will be nothing fun about reminding me of the disaster that was our first date."

"How many times do I have to tell you, it wasn't that bad!"

"It was compared to how I wanted it to go," he said sulkily.

She laughed. "Well, I had a good enough time to agree to go out with you again, didn't I? And that's what counts, right?"

"I guess," he responded, but knew that it wasn't what counted for him. He had wanted it to be really special. He had planned out everything and had gotten them reservations at a really nice steakhouse in Palo Alto. They had arrived at the restaurant all dressed up only to find that there had been a "misunderstanding," and the restaurant didn't have their reservation down. Sam had felt awful, and they'd spent a good hour and a half walking around to some of the other nice restaurants in the area trying to find somewhere to eat with no luck. They were so hungry that when they passed the tiny, hole-in-the-wall Pizza joint known as Ben's Pizza Place, Sam admitted defeat and they went in to order, fancy apparel and all. They had had a good time, but Sam had felt guilty and was disappointed over their ruined plans.

"Ben's might not be anybody's first choice of restaurant," Jess said wryly, "but it's still where we had our first date, so it's special. We should go."

"Alright," Sam conceded and moved to get up as Jess unwrapped her arms from around him. He picked up his keys and wallet and looked up to see Jess going into the closet.

"What are you doing?" he asked, confused. Why did she need to change to go to a pizza place that had probably barely passed its last health inspection?

She poked her head out of the closet door long enough to flash him an impish grin. "Putting on the dress I wore on our first date. And you better wear your nice suit."

She retreated into the closet before Sam had time to protest. He stood there in disbelief for only a moment before he laughed and followed her into the closet to retrieve his suit, knowing that it would be futile to resist.

"Hey, have you heard from Pete?" he asked as he rummaged on the floor for his shoes.

"No," Jess replied, her voice muffled from deep in the recesses of her hanging clothes. "Why?"

"I haven't talked to him for over a week. He told me he'd call me when he got back on campus, which was supposed to be yesterday. Tried calling him this morning and got his voicemail."

"Well, maybe he decided to come later, or he's busy or something," Jess replied.

"Yeah…guess so," Sam said, frowning. He knew Jess was probably right, but it didn't keep him from worrying. Pete probably would have called if he had just decided to come later. What if something…

Sam banished that thought before he could complete it. He was being paranoid. Just because his friend didn't feel the need to update Sam on his every move didn't mean that he had had an encounter with something.

Sam spotted the shoes he was looking for and picked them up. He was going to humor Jess by getting dressed up and going to a crappy pizza place, and he was going to enjoy every moment he had with her before classes started and they got too busy to do stuff like this. He wasn't going to think about anything supernatural, not even once. He wasn't even going to think about Dad and Dean.