He never wanted to go there. He was lost, lonely and desperate and she was warm, her voice persuasive, her tone gentle, her body throbbing and alive beneath his trembling fingers. One frantic kiss later and he was doomed.
Her body is injured in a fight and it can't go on. Sam can feel the blood seeping from her veins; feel her heart fluttering weaker and weaker. He is on his knees, scrabbling at her shirt, pressing his hand over the wound.
"It's ok," she says, gripping his wrist, "I can find another one."
It should sicken him but it doesn't and he wonders how far he has fallen.
***
The second body is a blonde, another coma patient, life support turned off, grieving parents unaware that young Alice is up and about again.
Dean doesn't say anything but Sam can feel his brother's eyes on the back of his neck and he knows what his brother is thinking.
"We don't – we don't do it anymore," Sam says, swallowing hard, denial thick in his throat, "it was just once, just that once. You were gone and I was…"
"Too much information," his brother says but his smirk is false, a mask.
***
Sam tries to harness his powers, tries to stop using them, tries to fight without them. Trouble is, he can't, he can't control them anymore and, to be truthful, they control him. He is falling down the slippery slope to who knows where and there is only his brother and – and her – to anchor him.
***
She takes a knife for him in Idaho and he has to watch her die again. He wonders why it hurts so much. She doesn't really have a body, just a damned soul, but he is becoming attached to her, unhealthily so and he knows it freaks Dean out, even though he can't help it.
***
She lets him choose the next body. He protests, shakes his head, tells her it is wrong. He doesn't hesitate, however, when the girl he finds is tall and elegant with blonde wavy hair and a big, broad smile.
Dean doesn't comment, just looks at him through slitted eyes. The angels hiss and sigh but Sam doesn't listen. He doesn't want to hear them anymore. He just wants it all to be over.
***
He knows it is wrong, he knows that what he is doing is bad, evil, wrong, but he can't help it anymore. He has Dean back sure, but he OWES Ruby. That is what he says to himself when he lies in his bed at night, hard, aching, wanting.
They go to a bar to talk but Dean gets drunk, refuses to speak to Sam, refuses to listen, to understand, to share. Sam takes him back to the motel and leaves him slumped in his bed, gross and snoring. Sam sits on his own bed, Ruby watching him with bright, blue eyes. He knows, deep inside of him, that it is Ruby, but she looks so much like…that he can't stop himself.
***
She doesn't seem to mind that he calls her Jess.
End
