Title : Ghost Stories
Genre: Het. Preseries- a Stanford Fic, in fact.
Characters/Pairing: Sam/Jess
Warning : Not so much. Pre-series, no spoilers. Language.
Disclaimer : Not mine, never have been. No harm is meant.
Notes : About 2200 words. How Jess meets Sam, from Jess' point of view.
Thank you, roguemouse , for the quick beta. All errors are mine. I've never been to Stanford, just researched via the website, so let me know if I got it wrong.

Jess saw the guy for the first time through a window when she'd spaced during a lecture. You wouldn't think a class called "Ghost Stories: why the dead come back" would be boring, but this Prof managed it. It was something about his voice, soothing and hypnotic, like an insomnia cure in human form.

It worked even if he was talking about things that should be interesting in a train wreck way, like some kid that had taken a header off a building after flunking an exam a few years back and was now supposed to be cursing the Hoover Building.

That meant plenty of time staring glazed eyed out the window and over the quad, because this would be the one class they actually took attendance at, so skipping was no option. Watching people herd through the green was a break from playing solitaire or minesweeper on her laptop for the forty millionth iteration. And then there he was, and she sat up a little straighter in her seat.

Tall, really tall, big hands moving in sharp animated gestures as he spoke to the guy next to him. Hair too short and choppy, like it was just growing out of a botched buzz cut. And then he smiled wide and brilliant, and Jess couldn't help but smile back, even though, of course, there was no way he could see her from where he was.

So, that made her day that much brighter. It didn't even get to her when the Prof momentarily killed the drone of lecture to ask her, "And do you have an opinion on the construct of authorial intent, Ms. Moore?" and she had to scramble for it, as if she'd been listening.

By the time she looked again, the boy was gone.

The next time she saw him it was when she was picnicking with her boyfriend. It was Matt's first trip to Cali and she knew he'd probably struggled to scrape up the cash for the flight. Jess tried to feel happy about it, that he still cared about her after graduation, but she felt mostly guilty instead.

It had been kinda hot back in high school, having the quarterback of the football team salivating over her. Not out of bounds, she'd been a cheerleader, but then again, she'd been a cheerleader with Stanford ambitions, and Matt had been- well, not. Anyway, he got A's in shop. Now he ranted about the accounting class he was flunking back home at Broome Community College and Jess had never felt as happy to be out of the fucking upstate New York boonies in her life.

She didn't know how to say it though, not when Matt was here, talking and glaring and just expecting sympathy. Jess had never been about sympathy, but she tried, damnit. Didn't yawn once, just nodded and made noises at the appropriate times- what she hoped were the appropriate times, and wondered what Matt would say if she started talking to him about acing every exam in Calc III when he was being defeated by business math. There was a reason they'd never talked about school before.

But Matt's thigh was warm against hers in the late October sun and Jess let him talk. Let her gaze wander over to a pick up game of Frisbee, watching the players dive after a neon orange disc. Wearing the shirts of a frat she didn't recognize. Mostly she didn't recognize the players either, except for the one guy.

Tall and familiar, and Jess was caught by his glinting smile and the way his jeans clung to the scant curve of ass. And she knew she was pretty much going to have to break up with Matt before he left, because anything else was just being cruel and stretching out the inevitable.

She was lucky she was watching because it meant she had the chance to reach out and grab the Frisbee before a wild throw sent it slamming toward what would have been her head. She rolled her eyes, pulling away from Matt and holding it up as she pushed to her feet.

"Hey, be a little careful, can you?" she said to him. That boy. Up close his eyes were a bluer shade of hazel against the perfect, cloudless sky. He hadn't thrown the damned Frisbee and she knew it, but he ducked his head as if to accept the criticism anyway.

"Sorry about that," he called back, holding out his hand to catch the Frisbee when she threw it. A bad throw, but he dashed for it and caught it anyway, long legs- to heaven and back- and all in motion. He gave another one of those blinding smiles. Except this one was different. This one was actually for her.

"Yeah, no problem, just be careful," Jess said, stifling the urge to tell him he could make it up to her if he wanted, and but how. Because, fuck it, Matt was right next to her, watching her with familiar, warm eyes, and she was maybe. Probably going to break it off with him, but not like this.

Sometimes Jess wished she could be a little better at being a bitch. But that was how she sort of met Sam Winchester.

The third time was in the library when she was skirting around the edges of the "special collection" looking for a short cut that turned out not to be. Frankly, Jess couldn't wait until she finally stopped getting turned around here.

This time she found she didn't mind that much, because she recognized him, bent over a book that looked older than god, face relaxed in concentration and scribbling little notes on a yellow pad next to him.

"Heavy reading," she said softly, almost jumping when his neck jerked abruptly and he was looking right at her. Eyes brown and deep in the artificial light. She wanted to kick herself as soon as the words slipped out of her mouth, because… lame. If there was one thing that annoyed Jess it was when people made stupid comments about blondes and cheerleaders and heavy reading when they found out she preferred Thackery and Baudelaire to Anne Rice.

He didn't look annoyed, though, just a little surprised, caught in motion, hand hovering near the back of his spine like he was going to grab something from his back pocket, before he got a really good look at her and relaxed.

"Yeah, kinda," he said, and then leaned aside for her to come closer and take a look at the book. Her eyes widened at the text. Latin- she was pretty damned sure it was Latin, but not really like her Virgil text.

"Latin," he admitted when she asked. "Church Latin, not Roman. For a paper," he said, quickly, as if he were making an excuse for something.

"That's cool. What class? Oh, yeah, and I'm Jess. Jess Moore."

"Sam Winchester. I've made a point of protecting pretty girls from Frisbees. You know, ever since that talking to you gave me on the quad the other day," he added. His mouth quirked into an expression she could only call inviting.

"Well, then my work here is clearly done," Jess laughed and let the conversation go. Later she might have vaguely remembered that he never did tell her what class he needed the church Latin for, but it never seemed that important.

The fourth time was completely unexpected. It was midnight on the observation deck of the Hoover Tower and Jess had no idea what exactly she was doing here. Her roommate was the one rushing a sorority, not her. Jess had enough of sisterhood and solidarity when she was a cheerleader. Thanks and no thanks.

But Rachel whined like a little bitch and Jess was tired of listening to the creepy initiation prank that the girl was supposed to pull on Halloween.

"Story goes this kid, Steve Something, was pre-med, right? A senior," Rachel had said, talking too fast, like there wasn't time for breath, or at least it wasn't important. Jess had already heard the story in her ghost stories class, but she hadn't really been paying that much attention. More to the point- two months of long, long experience had taught her that interrupting Rachel was more trouble than it was worth. "And, anyway, he was taking some supposedly easy A humanities class and the Professor actually flunked him. Screwed up his GPA and his med school revoked his acceptance. Really harsh."

"Yeah," Jess nodded, as if she cared, while idly scribbling little hearts around the name 'Winchester' in the corner of her organic chem lab notebook, right next to the beginning of an experiment involving more Latin than chem.

"So, anyway, story goes he begged the Professor to change his grade, but she told him forget it," Rachel continued, eager as though she were delivering a winning lottery ticket. "And he like, strangled her. Strangled her and then jumped right off the Hoover Tower holding her. They both died."

"Huh. I didn't hear that version," Jess murmured, eyes narrowing and shaking her head. Figured Professor Boring had left out the gory bits. Or else that Rachel and her friends had stuck in some gory bits, hard to tell.

"Anyway, anyway," Rachel hurried, looking vaguely put upon by the interruption. "I'm supposed to, like hold a vigil at midnight over at Hoover. Cause, you know, Steve- he haunts it. He's been trying to toss Pre-Med kids off the balcony on the observation deck ever since the 'accident'."

"No kidding," Jess said. She reinforced the little black heart with a yellow highlighter, before trying to turn her attention back to atomic structure and valences. Not easy.

"So that's why you have to come with me. It's for the sorority," Rachel said, as if she'd brought some argument to its logical conclusion.

"Huh." The atomic structure of Carbon is… wait. "Huh? Why?"

"Are you listening? He only shows up for Pre-Med kids, Jess. I'm still undecided."

"Technically so am I," Jess pointed out reasonably. "It's the first semester."

"But you aren't really. I mean, everyone knows you're like, totally this genius and going to Med School- come on, you have to help me. What's the point if the ghost doesn't show up?"

Jess snorted. "Uh, yeah, I'm not going to worry too much about Steve Somethingorother showing up, if that's cool with you."

Which should have been that, except it wasn't, because Jess really had to stop being nice to people like Rachel. And that was how she found herself walking toward Hoover at midnight, when it was actually cold out, and almost ran headlong into Sam Winchester. He smelled faintly of smoke and salt, like he'd been swimming or… no, and barbecuing. Jess didn't wonder too much about who did that at midnight. College kids were freaks that way.

"Oh, hey, are you rushing too?" Rachel said as soon as she saw him, like she knew him or something. Though, really, it was the obvious conclusion and Rachel did get the obvious. She couldn't possibly be as dumb as she looked, not and be at Stanford.

Sam laughed, but his eyes were black in the streetlights and they were fixed on Jess. She smiled back at him. "Nah, not me. I'm not doing Pre-Med. All the blood and guts, not for me, you know?"

"Yeah, gross," Rachel squealed agreeably.

"So, you aren't here to see poor Steve up there?" Jess asked, tilting her head a little toward Hoover Tower. She reached into her purse with one hand, fumbling for a piece of paper she'd kept just for this kind of occasion, but of course it was buried under credit card slips and class notes, so she had to keep digging.

"I doubt anyone is going to see Steve unless they're smoking something they're not sharing," Sam said. His smile was small, more a curve of the mouth. He yawned and scratched the back of his head, jostling the black bag at his side. "Anyway, I gotta get to bed. Early classes just kinda suck."

"Sure. Maybe I'll see you around?" Jess asked lightly, like the answer didn't matter. Her fingers closed over the right paper and she pulled it up, feeling it crinkle against her palm.

"Well, we do seem to keep running into each other," Sam said, but he was already angled away, toward the door.

"Yeah." Jess grinned and leaned forward, just fast enough to get into his space before he could flinch. Having brothers was good for that much anyway. She slid the paper into his front pocket and gave him a quick, almost questioning, kiss on the cheek. She didn't wait for a reply, just took off up the stairs, after Rachel.

He could find her if he wanted to.

He'd damn well better. It had taken her way longer than it should have to find out how to offer someone your phone number and an invitation in blocky, and surprisingly obscene church Latin.