Disclaimer: I own nothing. Boy, girl and other boy belong to Kripke.
A/N: I have no idea where this comes from and no clue how it ended up where it did. Although, it's my baby sister's birthday today and I just finished the story. That fact amuses me more than it probably should.
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Wheel keeps turning
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Dean is born in January, exactly a month after Christmas evening. The promise of snow hangs in the air still and Mary screams into the night, cursing John for ever touching her and not meaning a word of it.
Dean is born in January and it's touch and go for a while because he is so small and sick, but he holds onto his parents' fingers with determination and a ruthless desire to live that twists his tiny face into something almost fearsome.
It's like the little man has big plans, John jokes once they have stopped quietly crying at his crib every night, waiting for their firstborn son to stop breathing.
He takes after you, Mary answers as she lifts him, swings him around and kisses his round baby tummy.
Dean is born in January so he'll be there when Sam comes.
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Jess gets kissed for the first time in June and it tastes like pop tart and Mountain Dew and Jimmy Andrews' spit and sweat. It's kinda okay, she figures, for a first kiss, but it could be better. She is twelve and she read books and she doesn't feel like swooning at all.
Okay, Jimmy asks as he pulls back and she nods and reels him in by the collar of his red and white striped shirt.
Again, she says because if the first time is kinda okay, then the second time is probably better and if she does it a hundred times it might become great. Also, the pop tart taste isn't all that bad, if you get right down to it.
It could be worse. Christine, this girl down the street, she got her first kiss from Adam and he smokes and that was probably seven kinds of awful even if she says it wasn't.
So Jess kisses Jimmy all afternoon long and it gets to the point where it's actually good.
Years later Sam takes her to the beach and they lie in the sand, sun burning against their eyelids and they kiss and kiss for hours and Jess thinks of that day by the lake just a bit before forgetting again.
Sam tastes like sand and salt and fire.
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In March John buys Dean his first football. He is three and the winter is finally breaking up and they spend the whole weekend tossing the ball around.
The routine is easy. Dean throws and John pretends to have a hard time catching and then John throws and Dean misses and shoots off after the ball, catching it in mid-run and tumbling through the yard with it.
Later Mary gives John hell for all the grass stains on Dean's clothes and she fixes them hot chocolate because it's not all that warm yet. She sits her little big man on her lap and listens to his tall tales of catching the ball every time, all the while trying to avoid his flying hands as he demonstrates his technique. Daddy says like this. And he lunges and almost falls out of her lap and she has to lunge too, to catch him and they laugh and laugh and laugh.
That night, drooping with exhaustion, Dean curls into his bed, Mr. Ruggles, his teddy, at his side and John tucks him in, kisses his mop of dirty blonde hair and bursts with a mixture of love and panic.
Dean mumbles, Dad?
Yes, Ace?
C'n we teach Sammy w'n h' g'ts 'ere?
Sure, John says, making a mental note to ask Mary if Dean has a friend called Sammy. He ruffles his son's hair one last time and stands back to watch until his breathing evens out and he sleeps, safe and sound, their little miracle.
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Jess is born in January, too, on the same day as Dean, who sits up in his bed halfway across the country and wipes his eyes tiredly, wondering what woke him up.
She is born strong and healthy and with a pair of lungs her father eternally swears she gets from her mother. Mom always says, can't be, still got mine.
They take their little screamer home two days after she's born and they put her in Amy's arms carefully, telling her, see, this is your little sister. Isn't she sweet?
Amy finds Jess ugly but that's okay, cause she's still kinda funny to look at and she never screams when Amy makes faces at her.
Jess is born in January so Sam will have something to remind him of Dean when he's not there.
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Dean loves and hates August in equal measures because of the heat. Sam thrives on it, getting tanned and tall like a weed, but Dean only freckles and burns and feels like he's melting right there on the bed, where he flung himself down when the heat got unbearable just after sunrise.
He drags his tired carcass into the bathroom every couple of hours to run water in the sink and dunk his head. It helps only momentarily because the water's not all that cold either and afterwards, with trails of moisture sliding down between his shoulder blades, he feels itchy all over.
Sam kicks him in the leg once on his way past the bed and says, come on man, I'm bored. Dean grumbles into the pillow and doesn't move a muscle.
It's not that hot, Sam tells him, standing there in shorts and his entire thirteen-year-old gangly glory, bitchface in place.
Dean grunts again.
Come on. Someone said there's a lake outside of town. I wanna go there.
Too. Hot. Dean reiterates and hopes it will stick to his sweat slicked and way too happy brother eventually. There is no way he is trekking all the way out of town for a lake that might or might not be there. No fucking way.
Please, man? For me? And Sammy's voice does that funny thing where it gets real low with the promise of height and size his body can't fulfill yet and he looks at Dean real intense like and screw it, it's not like Dean isn't putty in Sam's hands anyway.
For you, he says, and drags himself to his feet. Sam crows and goes to find the swim trunks he probably grew out of during the winter.
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February is Jess favorite month because until she's eight she doesn't really get the concept of leap years. To her four-year-old self, February is unpredictable because it's always shorter than all other months, but sometimes it's longer because there's this one extra day that only shows up in the calendar sometimes. It fascinates her. Dad says it's just typical of her to know the calendar before she knows all her numbers, but time is important, Jess feels that in her bones.
She spends February informing people of the day that comes and goes and she practices her numbers until she can easily count to thirty-one, which is now many numbers she needs to make sure no day sneaks up on her. She can count them all now, all days of the months. Amy says she's being a retard and Jess asks Mom what a retard is and Amy doesn't get dessert for being mean to Jess, who's only being a bright girl, after all.
Amy grumbles and says, always Jess, Jess, Jess. She's not that smart.
Dad tells Amy not to be unfair, Jess is very smart. And Jess proves it by counting all the way to thirty-one and telling Amy all about how tricky days can be, just leaping out at you.
Amy calls her retard again as soon as their parents are out of sight and Jess calls her a retard, too, because if Amy uses it as a bad word, then Jess can, too. Amy pauses in her anger, snorts and says, you're such a freak.
She lets Jess sleep in her bed that night. But only if she promises to stop counting.
Jess loves February.
She meets Sam on the twenty-eighth and wishes Amy was there so she could tell her all about him.
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Dean's life goes up in flames in November. His innocence and his dreams, his hopes and wants and desires, his whole future and everything he might have been goes up in flames with Mommy on the ceiling and he clutches Sammy tight and doesn't shed a tear.
He has to look after his brother now.
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Jess dies in November, too, golden and white on the ceiling. Just like Mary.
But Mary screamed and Jess never does. She closes her eyes against the flames and regrets only that she didn't get more than two years with Sam after waiting for him all her life.
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Dean doesn't give a rat's ass about how many days February has. He's more concerned with surviving them all, which is not actually a given, seeing as how he and his fifteen-year-old kid brother are ass deep in snow, stuck in some tiny, ratty cabin at the butt end of Montana with freaking yetis about to kick down the door.
Yes, yetis. Fucking huge ones, too, if he does say so.
Dean, Sam asks, you okay?
Dean grunts and shifts his wounded leg so he can see out the window better. Yep, still there. He slaps his cell phone against his thigh and immediately regrets the action when it does nothing for reception but sends a spike of searing agony through him.
Fantastic. He still can't reach Dad. Who, by the way, is out there, somewhere, hunting, you guessed it, yetis. Only he's not gonna find any because they're all camped out in the damn front yard.
Sam sighs and plucks the phone from his hand, demanding, will you let me look at that?
I'm fine, Sammy.
Like hell you are, Sam argues and to emphasize his point the little shit punches him in the leg. Fucker.
We're not gonna outrun those things anyway, so forget about my leg. Go check the ammo. Sam complains and bitches and whines, but Dean just looks at him, nineteen years old and so damn tired. Sam goes and moment later starts rattling off numbers. Silver bullets, regular bullets, salt, iron, charms and flares.
Especially flares. Those things hate fire. In fact, the brightly light windows and the scent of smoke from the chimney are probably the only things keeping them outside so far.
Dean, Sam asks, voice small as he check the guns for the third time because Dean won't let him look at his legs and he has to do something. We're gonna get out of here, right?
Course we are, Sammy, course we are.
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Jess and Sam move together in October. She spends a whole week packing everything up, constantly chatting with her mom on the phone, getting her to send this, and send that. She has room now, for the big desk she got for graduation, the one that she couldn't take into the dorms.
Brady and Josh and all the others help with the actual moving and they do something to screw up the bed and she and Sam end up having the world's best sex on the mattress in the hallway because after carrying shit all day, neither of them thinks they can move the heavy thing another inch.
They order Chinese and Sam pulls on jeans when the doorbell rings and opens the door just wide enough to take the food and pay and the delivery boy gets an eyeful of naked Jess sitting on the mattress in the hall, wrapped in an old quilt she pulled out of a nearby box.
They eat right there and then they have sex again and she falls asleep to Sam joking that they should have just rented the hallway and let someone else take the rooms. Everything I need is right here, he whispers in her ear, and he's not talking about the Chop Suey.
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April is awesome because it has the one day in the year where Dean can pull pranks on Sammy without dad busting his ass for it. Like, he tapes the tap shut so that Sam gets sprayed from top to bottom when he turns it on to brush his teeth and he switches the sugar for salt and hides his Chemistry homework.
Sam leaves for school without noticing and comes back fuming and angry and all bitchfacey and Dean laughs so hard he almost falls off the couch and then he really does fall, because the little shit pushes him, sits on his chest and refuses to move until Dean releases the homework he took hostage.
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Jess meets Dean in September. The new school year just started and he's the new kid in Amy's class and he's a rebel, dark, dangerous. A bad boy. That's just how Amy likes her boys and she brings him back home a time or two.
He's nice to her, smiles, treats her with respect. He doesn't call her kid and try to ruffle her hair just because she's only thirteen. She still doesn't like him because Amy gets stranger every day, but that's probably not his fault.
Amy's been getting strange for a long time.
After she runs away with a guy – not Dean, Dean was old news after two weeks – he shows up on their doorstep one day. Mom and Dad are down at the station yet again, asking for news. He blinks at her as she opens the door, as if he's unsure what to say, rubs a hand over his skull. Then he says, I'm sorry she left you.
Not: I'm sorry she's gone. Not: I'm sorry she's such a bitch. Only this. Only I'm sorry she left you. Like that's the worst thing. I got a little brother, he adds, and I would never…
Jess nods and bites her lip and tries to be brave, like she's been for her parents, but Amy is her sister and suddenly she's just gone.
Dean keeps making faces as she sobs into his shoulder, but he holds her until she's all cried out.
The next day, he's gone, too.
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Sammy comes to Dean in May. It's a sunny day, balmy, warm, with a light breeze. Dean comes skidding into the kitchen before breakfast and smacks into John's legs before he catches himself and scrambles over to Mary. He stands on tiptoes, presses his little hands and ear to her stomach and whispers, he's finally coming, Mommy.
Dean? John asks, unsure whether or not to take his son seriously. Who's coming?
Two hours later contractions start. Twelve hours later Dean is allowed to sneak a peek at his new little brother and he stands at the crib solemnly, telling him, I waited so long, Sammy.
And he did.
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March is when Jess's heart breaks for the first time. She's fourteen and Amy's been gone without a trace for six months. Her mom says she has to go out again, meet friends.
There's this boy in her class, Sam, and he smiles at her and asks her out. She tells him no twice and then, when he asks for a third time, she agrees. Live a bit, Amy would tell her.
They go to a movie on their first date and for a milkshake and a walk on their second and she really likes him. And then he takes her down to the lake, the one where she kissed Jimmy all day long, and they sit on a bench because it's not quite warm enough to sit on the ground comfortably and Sam kisses her, too.
And kisses her. And kisses her. She tells him to stop and he says no. She tells him she has to go home and he calls her a pussy. She tells him to back off, or else and he laughs.
So she kicks him in the balls and runs all the way home and doesn't go out for another six months.
It's funny how, when she meets her Sam for the first time, she doesn't think of that Sam for even a second.
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Dean spends December riding next to his silent brother in the Impala, watching him grow thinner and quieter, watching him flinch every time a blonde woman walks past, every time a lighter snicks and a match hisses.
He spends December trying to beat life back into Sam in any way he knows. He cajoles, he begs, he teases, he annoys. Even anger is better than this. He hopes Christmas will draw his little brother out, but it just makes things worse.
Sam was supposed to spend Christmas with Jess and her parents. A real Christmas, he says when Dean gets him drunk one night. Family Christmas. Away from Dean and Dad and their freakishness. The freakishness that got Jess killed. Dean grits his teeth against the flash of angryhurt and steers Sammy into bed to sleep off the booze.
He spends December picking up the pieces of his brother but he has no fucking glue to put them back together.
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There is no December for Jess anymore.
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July is almost as hot as August, but infinitely better, too.
Sammy is only two months old and kind of boring, but Dean can spend all day in the backyard, sitting on a blanket with him, telling him all the things he knows. About football and tying your shoelaces, about girls – who have cooties – and all the games they're going to play.
Just as soon as Sammy can walk. And maybe stop with the drooling, because that's kind of annoying. Mary tries to shoo her firstborn away from his brother halfheartedly every now and then, but it never works for long.
Dean is glued to Sammy and Sammy gets fussy when Dean's not there to babble at him.
So she sits next to them when there's nothing that needs to be done and watches them, her boys. Her beautiful, beautiful boys.
Mommy, Dean asks, clambering over his brother with more care than a toddler should be capable of, Can we teach Sammy how to make cake?
Mary laughs and shakes her head, wondering if Dean will still love baking as much once he realizes it's a girl thing to do. No honey, she denies earnestly, not yet. Maybe next year, okay?
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April is when the news come that they finally found Amy. Jess is seventeen, as old as Amy was when she disappeared and she doesn't have it in her to cry when the police call and ask if someone could go to Detroit please, to identify the body.
Dad goes and she holds mom close all night, rocking her gently and watching the stars through the windows.
The next day, after she puts mom to bed, she pulls an old shoebox out of her closet and fills it with all the things that remind her of Amy. The letters she wrote to her absent sister. The book Amy ripped a page out of when they fought over it. The ring she gave Jess for her tenth birthday. The ticket from the circus they went to together.
She puts them in the box one by one, smiling at some, frowning at others. Then she goes to the lake, to the place where Amy pushed her in and gave her the scar on her left shin when she was nine. She buries the box there and then sits on top of the spot and waits for sunset.
She promises herself to do better than her sister. She promises herself to have a wonderful life.
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Dean's June is a mess of chasing a pissed off werewolf through the woods of Colorado on foot after three days of no sleep. His leg throbs from his first meeting with the wolf, his head feels stuffed and empty at the same time from lack of rest and water and every single muscle in his body is lead.
And still the sucker refuses to lie down and die. He shot it twice and the silver should be poisoning the werewolf, even if it won't kill it, only slow it down. Dean's gonna take slowed down right about now. Actually, Dean's gonna take just about anything right now if it means he can limp his way back to the car – assuming he can find it – and conk out in the backseat for a few days.
Suddenly he can make out a solid shape in the swaying shadows of the trees, square and hard. A cabin. It's old and worn, but obviously taken care of. Someone uses it still, even if it's empty now. There's a shadow in the dark, a shape slipping around the corner of the building. The wolf.
Dean cocks his gun as quietly as he can and thinks of cracking a joke about the big bad wolf and grandmother's house in the woods, but Sammy's not there to snort and call him an idiot, so he doesn't.
He's got a fugly to kill.
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In August Jess figures out that post-graduation parties aren't all they're cracked up to be. For one, too much beer makes her sick. And not in the drunk-and-puking way, but in the way that turns her stomach and makes her wish for her bed.
Beer, she decides, sucks, and switches to vodka. Which, in hindsight, isn't one of her brighter schemes. She pukes her guts out anyway, with Clarissa Woodgrows holding back her hair and she feels impossibly cheap afterward. The two of them sling their arms around each other and stumble back into the house the party originated from before spilling all over the place. They find a sofa to fall into and spend the rest of the night giggling at everyone that passes them by and provoking the boys by flashing their panties.
They find it all terribly amusing, right up until they more or less pass out at four in the morning, curled into each other like they're friends when, actually, they spent their high school years giving each other fake smiles in the halls and not talking at all.
In the morning Jess wants to die really, really badly, but she doesn't. Sam laughs when she tells him why she never touches vodka anymore.
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October is the month where Dean's skin always feels too small, too itchy. He's tense and constantly moving, legs bouncing, fingers tapping, mouth running off. He's waiting for November and he hates himself for it because dad's waiting, too, and he's tense as hell and likely to go off at the smallest provocation.
Sam, of course, notices their father's mood and because he's a little shit sometimes he just keeps hitting where it hurts, picking fights all the time. Once Dean has to physically carry his not-so-small-anymore brother out of the apartment to stop them from killing each other.
He yells at Sam, which he hates to do but can't not do. Not in October. He yells and Sam kicks at the ground, sullen and skinny and in the end, Dean sighs and takes him to McDonald's because what else is he gonna do?
By the time they get home, dad is out like a light on the couch, empty bottle of Jack in hand and Sammy whispers, I'm sorry, Dean.
Dean nods and carefully extracts the bottle from his father's hand before untying his boots and pulling them off, too. He throws a blanket over the sleeping man and tells his brother, just go to bed, Sammy.
Sam nods and turns to leave before suddenly turning back around and darting in for a quick and hard hug that leaves Dean a bit dazed but with a fuzzy warmth in his stomach. Night, Dean, Sam mutters against his neck before letting go.
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In July Sam takes Jess out for a candle light dinner in a small Italian restaurant he can't afford. He's wearing a dress shirt instead of his usual layers and he smiles at her like she hung the moon, telling her how beautiful she looks. She feels underdressed in her cheap summer dress, but he just keeps on smiling, tracing a hand down her spine as they wait to be seated and she keeps blushing because she's pretty sure she's glowing and the whole world can see it.
They agree to forego the starters so they'll have room for dessert and they have maybe a bit too much wine. The chocolate cake tastes like sin and while Sam goes for little boys, Jess waves down the waitress and orders another piece to go, fully intending to smear it all over her boyfriend and then licking it off. Slowly.
The waitress grins and winks at her and packs the cake, managing to slip it to Jess before Sam comes back. On the house, too.
Sam wants to make the evening perfect and take her for a walk but Jess will hear nothing of it, dragging him back on campus instead. She calls ahead and tells her roommate that she has ten minutes to make herself scarce and when she flips the phone shut, Sam is there, in front of her, eyes wide and dark.
I, he starts and then trails off, taking a deep breath. I…
She smiles and buries her fingers in the nape of his hair. I know, you idiot. I love you, too.
He smiles, grateful and ridiculously in love with her and it's enough. The word come later, after Jess has had her second dessert and they lie curled together in her tiny bed and everything feels… it feels right.
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September always means a new school for Dean. They spend the summer on the road and then settle wherever for a few months at the beginning of the new school year. On his first day he sneaks outside to get some fresh air during lunch and runs right into Amy, who is smoking behind the gym.
She snorts at his jokes and offers him a smoke. He turns her down but chats with her for a while because she's wearing a Metallica t-shirt and doesn't buy into the lemming mentality the rest of the school – any school – has going on. He tells her so and she laughs, sharp and loud and hysterical, looking like she's about to cry. He should probably back off slowly, but he can't help himself. She's fucked up, yeah, but it takes one to know one.
He fucks her five days later in the backseat of the Impala, is madly in love with her for another week and then she breaks it off because she's screwing her dealer. He didn't even know she does drugs but he shrugs and lets her go anyway.
Two weeks later the police knock down his front door, demanding to speak to him concerning the disappearance of Amelia Moore. It actually takes him a moment to compute the information because the girl he ran with for a few days, well, she's little Amy. He never even knew her last name.
The police leave again and he forgets about her, eventually. Girl like her, looking to kill herself so badly? She found a way. He remembers her kid sister though, the one who cried in his arms, sweet girl, like Sammy, bright and warm. She didn't deserve her fuck up of a sister and sometimes he wonders if she got past it.
If she did better than Amy.
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Jess is waiting for him at the Gates of Hell in May, her dress singed and her belly slit. She smiles at him and says, Dean.
Her voice drowns out the barking and growling off the hounds looking to crowd him into eternal damnation. Jessica, he answers and then smiles sadly. I didn't recognize you, back at Stanford.
She smiled. I know. I recognized you, though.
She comes to a halt in front of him, tracing his cheek with her fingers. There is sobbing behind Dean and they both shift to look down at Sammy, who is clutching his torn corpse close, looking like the world is ending. Dean screws his eyes shut.
I'm sorry, Jess says. That you had to die.
It's okay, he shrugs. If Sam lives, it's okay in his book. You deserved it less than I did, he adds.
She shakes her head and echoes his thought, knowing and understanding perfectly. It's okay. Sam's okay. That's what matters.
He smiles crookedly at her and she returns it, taking his hand. The hounds get closer, driving them backwards, like cattle. Towards the Gate.
Jess squeezes his hand and he squeezes right back and with one last look and a fervent prayer, they walk into Hell together. They're dead, but Sam lives.
They were born in January so they would be there for him in May and they died so he could live. For Sam, there will be a June, a July, a September, a December.
That's their gift to him and they can't bring themselves to regret it as the hounds reach them and the Gate slams shut.
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