Please Don't Stand There and Watch Me Fall
A/N: I really didn't expect as many people to want to see where this story is headed - hope that I can live up to your expectations of it. And thanks for adding me to your alert lists - that's pretty freakin' cool, actually. What I didn't really realize until I was proofing this chapter is that what I've managed to do with this story is drop current-day Sammy into the Pilot episode. I find Season Four Sam incredibly sexy, so I think that might be the bare-bones description of this story. Ya know, if you wanna tell your friends about it . . . or whatever. :) Enjoy!
If Sam had any kind of a temper, he would have been blazing angry with Dean for showing up in the middle of the night, breaking into his house, and demanding that he just leave his life and take up the search for their father. If Sam had any kind of loyalty, he would have packed his bag, made up some excuse for Jess, and slipped off into the night with his brother. If Sam had any emotions at all, he would have been bothered by the fact that he wasn't the least bit worried over any of the events of the last thirteen hours.
But instead of raging on about Dean's nerve for attempting to disrupt Sam's life, he had just peeled himself off the couch, dragged Jessica back to the bedroom, and smoked another rock. In a matter of minutes, he was too far gone to even think about the life he had, let alone the one he'd left behind. And that was exactly the way that Sam Winchester liked things these days.
Directing the sleek, silver convertible he was driving into the empty lot behind his favorite strip club, Sam killed the engine and pushed the door with his forearm. Sunglasses shielding his sensitive eyes from the glaring afternoon sun, he pocketed the keys and leaned back against the vehicle to finish his cigarette. Fuck Dean. Fuck Dad. They didn't need him. And he sure as hell didn't need them.
"There's my baby," a low, seductive voice sounded from the club's back doorway.
A smile tweaked the corners of Sam's lips as he blew a plume of white smoke into the heavy air and watched the shapely brunette stalk slowly toward him, one foot deliberately in front of the other as her wide, hazel eyes twinkled with a hint of mischief and a whisper of something far more dangerous. Stopping just inches from him, she leveled the younger man in her sights and let her tongue run the length of her plumply inviting lower lip.
Snapping his head quickly to the right, Sam shook a strand of shaggy hair from his eyes and took another drag of his cigarette while raking his eyes shamelessly over the club owner's figure. "Took a little longer than I anticipated," he apologized, though his tone wasn't thoroughly convincing. Remorse was another pesky emotion he'd given up on months ago.
The woman said nothing, only tore her eyes from the young man standing before her and held a hand out. "I charge interest, ya know," she reminded him.
Sam pulled the keys from his pocket and dropped them into her waiting palm. "I got your interest right here, Sweetheart," he smirked slightly, exhaling his final drag before crushing the butt of the cigarette against the worn asphalt beneath the heel of his sneaker.
Nikka Righetti was, far and away, the most intoxicating woman in Palo Alto. Probably, Sam often thought, in the state of California. And it was going to be the death of him, he knew. But hell if he remember that when she was standing so close.
When he'd met Jess, she had just started working in Nikka's club, just as a waitress, she assured him. She needed the money, and she wasn't getting naked or anything. Just delivering drinks to horny business men and even hornier college boys, dressed in hot pants and a sequined bra. He hadn't liked it, but what could he say? It was far more savory than some of the ways he and Dean had made money over the years, after all.
Six months into their relationship, Sam and Jess had moved into a new apartment, and bills were far more difficult to pay than either of them had imagined. His pool hustling at drunken frat parties combined with her tips from waitressing barely covered the bills. Any hopes they had for any kind of a social life squeezed in between classes and studying became unrealistic in the light of real-world expenses. So Sam had agreed to let Jess start dancing a couple of nights a week, because Nikka had promised that she would more than triple her income in doing so.
It was supposed to be temporary. Just enough to build a savings, and for Sam to get a real job. But his course load increased, and a job just wasn't feasible if he was going to score high enough on his LSATs to get into a reputable law school. Jess said that she understood, that she didn't mind making the sacrifice, and Sam pretended to be too busy with his school work to notice that the declaration never quite reached her sparkling eyes.
After awhile, it became impossible to ignore, though. The way she would stumble through the door at the end of the night, not quite drunk, but nowhere close to sober bothered Sam. The fact that she was doing this for him, so that he could pursue his own studies unfettered by the responsibility of a real job, weighed on him heavily, especially the morning he'd found a deceptively bright cocktail of unlabeled pills absently left on the bathroom counter. She was getting high to numb the pain, that much he couldn't deny.
Angry with himself and needing to lash out, Sam drove to Nikka's club that afternoon, intent on giving the woman a piece of his mind. Who the hell did she think she was? And who in their right mind gave that many pills to a college kid? One who barely weighed a hundred pounds, soaking wet? What the hell was wrong with her? Didn't she know Jess had a life outside of her club? That she still had classes to get to, and dreams of her own? Why was this bitch trying to ruin his girlfriend's dreams with a bunch of junk that she'd never be able to part with when the dancing was over? Didn't she know this was just a temporary arrangement?
Sam was a fairly docile man most of the time, but when someone he loved was in danger, his Winchester hunting instincts still fought to the surface. He would put her head through a wall before he would let this strip-club skank ruin the plans they had dreamt of for nearly a year together. She was not going to ruin his normal, happy future.
Had he known her reputation, Sam might have prepared himself for that meeting with Nikka a little more carefully. He might have been ready for her to invite him calmly into her office. He might have known how to answer when she asked, eyes full of nearly maternal concern, how much longer he thought he could operate at a functional level with all that stress on his shoulders. He might have been able to resist when she made him the offer that would change his life forever.
One simple statement: Your girlfriend is busting her ass so you don't have to, Sam. And a follow up question: Who's fault is it, really, that Jess has to sell her soul to make your life easier?
And Sam's soul was sold, too. Without really knowing what he was even agreeing to, he'd taken the small baggies of white powder that she offered, tucked them into his pocket, and promised to return her profits by the end of the week. By the time he got into his car, he knew it was a mistake. He didn't even know what the powder did, let alone who in the hell was going to buy it from him.
Convincing himself, in a way that only a lawyer can truly convince a jury of something completely convoluted, that he couldn't put it out there if he didn't know what it was, Sam cut the line the way he'd seen at a few parties, and held his finger to his nose. It burned like a bitch, and tears sprang to his eyes, but he blinked them back. Nothing worse than some of the monsters he'd run into in his past. He could live through it.
And then the adrenaline surge. The pounding of his heart. The demanding need to move, to get something done. Pacing the living room of their small apartment, Sam flipped through the pages of his assigned reading and then paced some more as he quizzed himself over the material, just to make sure he got it all down. When the walls seemed to close in on him, he grabbed his backpack, set his iPod to a professor's latest lecture and listened intently as he walked toward campus for his study group.
The fact that it was a three-mile hike didn't really occur to him, nor did the fact that he was dripping in sweat by the time he arrived bother him. Everyone else seemed to move in slow motion, and the fact that he was forced to sit on the floor nearly drove him crazy as he listened to their warped words, like a tape player running at half speed. The girl seated to his left asked him to stop tapping his foot against the floor at one point, and he did so in favor of rattling the eraser of his pencil against his thigh.
He bolted from the room as soon as the group was done, intent on doing something other than sitting around. He could feel his muscles itching beneath his skin, silently begging him to let them play, let them do something. Anything. When he passed a group of kids on the steps outside the Administration building, he heard one of them say, "Dude's jacked up on somethin', man. Look how twitchy he is." They were right. He was jacked up, alright. But it felt damn good.
When a quiet kid from his study group showed up at his apartment later that night, Sam was already beginning the let down, a grouchy funk settling in where the previous bursts of energy had been. When the young man asked Sam what he was on, Sam nearly took his head off. But when he explained that he was having a hard time keeping up with his classes, his job, and his wife, Sam almost giggled. Selling to Simon was as easy for him as he had been for Nikka.
Other stressed out kids followed, and before Sam realized it, he'd started his own following. They requested, Nikka obliged, teaching Sam all sorts of wonderful tricks along the way. Which powder to snort for a quick pick-me-up, which pills to swallow when he couldn't sleep at night, and which rocks to burn down if he wanted to shoot a longer-lasting numb. She taught him what to smoke if he just wanted to unwind without going too far under, and how to maximize his target demographic, minimize his overhead, and optimize his selling potential. She turned him from a lawyer into a business man within six months time. A damn good one. Always the overachiever, Sam Winchester was.
"What?" Nikka finally responded to Sam's innuendo by raising a thin hand to his face, gingerly fingering the welted bruise on his jaw. "You hidin' my interest behind this beauty?"
There was a bit of a smirk in her tone, but Sam didn't find it funny. He didn't want to talk about Dean, or anything remotely related to Dean, at the moment. "Dude broke into my apartment last night," he mumbled angrily, digging in his pocket for another cigarette as Nikka's bright eyes grew wider. "No, he didn't take anything," he assured her before she could even ask about her precious stash.
Dropping her hand, Nikka stuffed her car keys into the pocket of her tight jeans and crossed her arms over her chest. She leaned back beside Sam and stared at the back of her club. Grafitti and other muck clung to the building, and she couldn't help but be somewhat pleased that her higher-end clientele never made it around to the back entrance. That was probably why she never bothered to clean it. "So, this intruder," she started, the question in her tone, but not spilling over her tongue.
Sam sighed and shook his head. "Just a, uh, blast from the past," he answered as vaguely as he could.
"Demons tryin' to drag you back, huh?" Nikka nodded, as though she had some sort of experience with it herself. "Intervention style?"
But Sam puffed another cloud of smoke and shook his hair from his eyes again, though the action made it feel as though his brain was rattling against its cage in his skull. "Less rehab, more run away," was all he said, unsure if it even made sense. Most of the time, he felt like the words tumbling past his lips didn't really mean anything these days. Only a select few seemed to comprehend his words, reacting instead to a furrowed brow of anger or a pleased smile of satisfaction.
Nikka was one of the few. For as much as Sam professed his undying love to Jess, there was only one woman for whom he'd do absolutely anything, and she was standing at his side now. Not because she was so loyal to him - he knew that their relationship was more about the business than anything, for both of them - but because she always knew exactly what he needed. And gave it to him freely, without question. He was her favorite, and they both damn well knew that.
Pivoting on her heel, Nikka rested her hands against Sam's trim waist, easily slipping her fingers beneath the hem of his threadbare tee shirt. Not only was he the best distributor she had, he was far and away the prettiest. With his smarts and his chiseled physique, there was no way that Nikka wasn't going to fall for Sam Winchester. Not in a romantic way, of course. She wasn't picking out china patterns and pining over when he was going to leave his precious little girlfriend. But for purposes of both business, and pleasure, he was the best of all worlds. And she wasn't about to let him go. For anybody.
With a soft kiss on his stubbley chin, she slid her hands over his sculpted abs and rested them against the hardened planes of his chest beneath the soft fabric of his shirt. "Sammy," she crooned, smiling slightly when his jaw clenched at the nickname. "Baby, look at me."
Even if Sam hadn't wanted to oblige her request, there wasn't much choice when Nikka used her 'sex and whiskey' voice. Sultry, husky, and full of desire, it was the only sound in the world that could make him half-hard without so much as a hint of a visual. "What?" he demanded, biting at the inside of his cheek as he reluctantly met her gaze.
Nikka captured Sam's bottom lip between her teeth and pulled at it playfully, before wrapping her own pillowy lips around it and sucking. When Sam's free hand gripped her hip, she released him and smiled fully. "Baby, your life before was miserable." It wasn't as if she knew any specifics, but she had been 'treating' him for everything from insomnia, to repressed anger, to self-conscious insecurity for as long as she had known him. Sam Winchester was an emotional fucking mess, and Nikka was the only one who knew how to take him away from that. "You know you're better off with me, right?"
Though Sam couldn't say that he was any happier now than he had been a couple years back with Dean and his dad, he knew that Nikka was right. So what if he hadn't really dealt with the past? With her help, he could forget it for a little while, and that was more than Stanford, Jess, and his 'normal' life had been able to provide. It was, he was sure, the best that he could hope for. Though hope was another emotion Sam Winchester had long ago abandoned.
"Whatever," he gave her hip a squeeze and then shoved his hand into his own pocket. "Look, I just came by to drop off the car and cash out before I pick Jess up," he tried to change the subject as smoothly as possible.
The manicured nail of Nikka's thumb flicked over Sam's nipple as she let a knowing smirk break out on her full lips. "How you gonna pick the Girl Wonder up without a car, College Boy?" she teased.
Holding his cigarette butt between his thumb and forefinger, Sam flicked it a few feet away and then raked his hand through his hair. He honestly hadn't thought about how he was going to retrieve Jess from her internship at the psychiatrist's office across town. Probably should have done that before returning Nikka's car, but his girlfriend had been pissed enough when her boss started loaning the damn thing to him. She refused to ride in it, and on the rare occasion that she didn't have a choice, she would ask a thousand fucking questions about what he was doing for Nikka besides selling. There was no way in hell Nikka would willingly hand over her keys to anyone, even if he was Employee of the Month.
"I'll figure somethin' out," he answered coyly, shooting her a half-smile of his own. Even faked and forced, a Sam grin still went miles with a woman of any age. Beneath the image of someone with ice water in her veins, and balls of steel, Nikka was still a woman, after all. "I always do," he added, his hand sliding down the back of her denim-clad jeans to squeeze playfully at her firm, rounded ass.
"Yeah?" she half-laughed, and half-groaned the question as she raked the blunt edges of her nails back down his chest and abdomen. "Can you figure out a way to convince me to have Luther loan you his truck?" she asked before pressing her open lips against his neck, her tongue darting out to flick at his Adam's apple.
Using both hands to grip her ass, Sam pulled her hips flush to his and tilted his hips just a little bit. "Figurin' somethin' out right now," he hissed before darting his tongue out to lick at the shell of her ear. When her hand nimbly popped the button on his jeans, Sam chuckled low in the back of his throat and added, "We don't take this into your office, those cops stakin' you out are gonna get more exposure than they ever expected."
With a quick squeeze to his hardening package, Nikka pulled back slowly and spun on her heel once more, leading the way to the building without so much as a glance backwards. She was more impressed with the fact that he had spotted the surveillance team before she had than she was thinking about what he was going to do to her.
Once inside the safety of her office, she ripped her sweater over her head and watched as Sam shed his jeans just inside the closed door. "Mmm," she moaned to herself as he pulled the tee shirt over his head, nothing but miles and miles of tight skin and lean, striated muscle.
Sam crossed the room quickly and yanked Nikka's jeans to the ground without preamble, hoisting her by her armpits onto the top of her desk and stepping between her instinctively spreading thighs. He needed to pick Jess up soon, but it wasn't like Nikka was going to ask him to stick around and cuddle or anything. Besides, the only option outside Luther's truck was taking a bus, so it wasn't like he even had a choice. At least, that's what his burnt out brain told him as he sank fully into her inviting heat and found the rhythm they'd so expertly perfected over the last few months.
When it was all said and done, Nikka left Sam to clean himself up while she fetched her bouncer's keys and promised him that pretty little Jessica would bring the vehicle back to him fully intact later that night. Sam didn't need to know how many wickedly dirty things Luther wanted to do with the blond dancer on a nightly basis. Because Nikka didn't need Sam busting her favorite guard dog's face.
He was pulling his tee shirt down over the waistband of his jeans when she returned and tossed him the keys. Pocketing them, Sam ran his fingers through his hair and thought about how he needed to swing by the house and hit a spritz of cologne before he got Jessica. Nikka's wasn't a scent that faded quickly, and he didn't want to risk another fight about his afternoon's activities. Not tonight. Not when she was already going to be pissed that he'd skipped classes again. That his scholarship was all but gone. That he was nothing more than a drop out junkie.
"Hey, Sam," Nikka's voice drew him back as his hand met the cool metal of her door knob. He just cast a look over his shoulder, one that didn't quite reach the place where she was standing behind her desk. "You still havin' those nightmares?"
His shoulders visibly tensed at the question, but he just shrugged them instead of trusting his voice to answer. When he'd told her that he'd been having trouble sleeping, she hadn't hesitated to load him up with a heavy-duty sedative, one that she warned him not to overuse or take with alcohol, unless he wanted to stop dreaming permanently. And they had worked, for awhile. But the inexplicable visions were coming back, and he knew that she could see it in the hollowness of his eyes. Knew that's exactly what Dean had been seeing, too.
The thought of his brother brought another angry clench of Sam's jaw, and wordlessly, Nikka pulled a pill bottle from her desk drawer and walked back to his side. Stuffing the small bottle into the pocket of his jeans, she raised herself onto the tips of her toes and pressed a kiss to his jaw, just below his ear. "What would you do without me, Sammy?"
He honestly didn't know. It was impossible to imagine a life without her anymore. "Crash and burn." Without another word, or a look back, Sam left her behind the closed door of her office.