A/N Okay since several people have asked I have now extended this to a three part series called 'Into Dust' starting with Sam's POV in the previos fic 'Dimonds'.
This is the second story, 'Intangible' and is Jess' POV though centers just as much on Sam and Dean's relationship. I know that this may bore people but to me it was the part that fitted into the center of this work and I won't appolgies for it- it's important.
The final segment in this series (still to be written) will be from Dean's POV and will be called 'Dust,Glitter,Rain' (as in the book Before I die- Jenny Downham.)
I'm sorry to ayone who wanted a John segment because there won't be one. However I am writing a one-shot called 'the firefly' which will be about John and his raising of Sam.
For those who enjoyed 'Dimonds' but wanted it more about Sam and Dean you might like my new one-shot 'Lights.' And also coming for those who enjoyed 'Permanancy' a one-shot called 'Stagnate/ Still Water' (Name under construction lol)
In terms of long works, chp 3 of 'APFTS' is in the works and I have the prolog of a supernatural series parallel but AU, to put up called 'A daughter of knives.' Possible one or two others may appear (you know what I'm like.)
Anyway here's Intangible, I hope you like it and please take the time to review, it makes me so happy.
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
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Intangible
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'what should I say on the shore of a small dead sea? Slowly the water fills the shape of feet which have vanished.' Zbigniew Herbert, Episode.
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At six o'clock she's in the kitchen, finishing off the stir-fry she's finally learnt how to cook without burning. If it were up to Sam they would live off takeaways every night, (and she has a sneaky suspicion that this would not be detrimental to him at all.) But Jess would prefer not to develop gout or catch scurvy. She likes her curvy four figure too.
So three or four nights a week she's at the stove trying to bring something healthy through the cooking process without it turning from green to black. If Sam's home and feeling generous, he'll give her a hand. For someone completely inexperienced he's annoyingly talented.
Tonight Sam's out, working a evening function down at Figaro's, so she dumps his, limp but edible mess of veg, meat and noodles in the microwave and plops down in the lounge to watch old Buffy reruns.
She wishes she was an awesome vampire hunter.
--
When Jessica was seven her parents adopted her a large Labrador mutt from the local animal shelter, whom she dubbed Jasper. He was a giant, uncoordinated thing; all paws, eyes and shaggy fur.
Jasper was two when he came to Jess, and whatever strange life he'd possed before their meeting, was unknown to her. Jasper had been an affiable, friendly creature, but still some part of this otherness had lingered with him always. He'd had habbits quiet unusual and precious for a dog and yet there were other, rather normal things- stairs, cat boxes, delivery boys- that were completely foreign to him. Often her parents had speculated on the nature of this history and how it may account for his actions now. Jess had wondered why it mattered because that was simply Jasper.
Now at 22, Sam reminds her of that family dog, a strange changling that never quiet fitted and never knew how to fit. She catches him spinning unawear at times, over the most ordinary of situations. Sees dark looks that frightened her roommate once, pass over his expression.
Jess isn't afraid of Sam though, not the least, and nor does she wonder too often what childhood must have lead him to this disposition.
If nothing else Jess knows that what is important is not who Sam was, but who he is, who he is not and who he wants to be.
These are the things to place judgement on.
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At nine o'clock she's board. Buffy finished hours ago and she's not really into whatever reality show's currently on. She mulls briefly over calling Sam since he's probably on his break right now but dismisses the thought- she's not that girlfriend.
She gets a sweet craving. Checks the cupboard and finds the milk and the cookie dough. Biscuits, unlike vegetables are something she is good at, as long as they come from a packet.
She grins, the evening looking up. Puts on a feel-good CD and mixes the batter, singing out loud during the choruses. The artists a young girl with guitar and mushy lyrics. Sam's mocked her more than a few times about liking her.
Alone now, Jess sings all the louder for it.
When she takes the biscuits out- hot and sticky and golden- she snags two, nearly burning her mouth in her greed. She opens the microwave and stashes four more beside Sam's dinner. The rest go in a baking dish in the cupboard.
She beams, dinner and desert, I'm getting far too domestic. That boy'd better appreciate it
Jess isn't foolish, she knows how this will go down. Tomorrow Sam's dinner will still be there, the cookies will not.
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It's a month or so after they move in together when she first realises. Jess grew up with a two younger brothers, so she's weary of the perils of living with boys- how they drink from the carton and leave dishes in the lounge.
Sam fulfils none of her expectations. He slips into her apartment, much like he slipped into her life, quietly and unobtrusive. Hesitant, as though expecting some rebuttal, to be pushed out again, or as she sometimes thinks, to be dragged away, if that made any sense.
His arrival is anti-climatic, unremarkable, but it's impact is deep. Jess doesn't comprehend really how much he changes the world, until one day she's dusting in the lounge and she doesn't recognise half the knickknacks and books. Realizes the fridge is stocked with the beer Sam prefers and that she's blown off two evenings out with friends to stay home with him.
That without her knowledge and possibly her permission, Sam's become something inextricably important. An epicentre, both in the flat and her life.
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At midnight She's lying half asleep on the couch, the TV playing infomercials and set on mute. Every few minutes she glances at the clock, expectant.
It's become a ritual for her, this waiting for his return. She knows the rhythm of exercise, kitchen wear and beauty product advertisements as well as any insomniac. Jess is only one when Sam isn't home.
Perhaps it's the idea behind the gesture, appealing to her closeted, romantic soul. The sort of thing she'd appreciate someone else to do for her.
Or maybe it's the idea of the big empty bed, two rooms away, where the heating doesn't reach and there is no large body to snuggle into for warmth. She's never liked being alone in slumber but since she started dating she's hated it all the more.
But in the end she thinks it's simply because he allows it of her. Because he lets her cross that final gap in intimacy that she doesn't believe any woman before her has been permitted.
She has no doubt he has been a caring, protective lover to others. This is different; this is how he lets her care and protect him.
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After a night with the girls, she arrives home nicely buzzed to an amused Sam awaiting her. She grins at him, moving across the room and halfway trips and knocks a photo off the shelf.
Jess picks it up, surprised to find faces she doesn't know; two young boys in a grubby kitchen beside a large blue cake.
"Sam, who's this?"
Sam moves up behind her, takes the frame from lax fingers and looks down at it with a smile. "Me." He tells her quietly. "The day of my brother's ninth birthday. We were somewhere outside Johannesburg, I think."
She turns to him surprised, "You never told me you had a brother."
Sam's expression changes swiftly, an indefinable twist to his eyes and the set of his jaw. "Yeah. His name is Dean, we don't…we're not really talking at the moment. I...He…it's complicated."
"Did he…do something to you?"
She's puzzled, worried and partly torn, not wanting pry yet intrigued by this revelation. Sam must see some of this expression on her face, heard it in her voice because he shakes his head clearly and defiantly.
"No! No. Dean wouldn't…it's nothing sinister, just a family dispute. Dean's really important to me, we…We'll always be close, even if we never speak to each other again. If anything ever happened I'd want…It doesn't matter."
It's not enough, and Jess wants to ask more, frustrated by this distance he imposes on himself, on them. She lets it go, breaths out the emotion.
This is not her place. Not her right. Jess has known that almost as long as she's known Sam. An unspoken clause in their relationship.
Sam loves her and wants her and needs her yes; but she owns only their future. The past, the spaces of his mind in which it lurks, are forbidden. A cornerstone to which, she will never hold any claim.
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At three o'clock the call comes. For hours she sat here a bunndel of anxiety; rapidly growing terror as the minutes have ticked by and the door hasn't opened and Sam hasn't arrived home.
And then the call comes, surreal and abstracted; exactly like every depiction of it she's seen in flims and t.v and books.
Miss Moore, this is the Palo Alto Homicide department…
She is left…breathless. Utterly breathless and without cause or reason. With an ache that is spreading over every facet of her, searing every nerve end and she doesn't know, doesn't know, doesn't know….
Miss Moore? Miss, we need you toc come down here…the body, it has to be verified by a relative or partner, we…
Jess wants Sam. Wants Sam helping cook dinner and fighting for the remote and all awkward over that damm paint for the bathroom. Jess wants Sam, needs him. Needs this all to be some horrific nightmare.
The tears are stinging her eyes and she doesn't wake up, doesn't wake up doesn't…
Deftly, calmly, rationally she changes. Finds her purse, her jacket, keys. Turns out the lights and and locks the door as she leaves.
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When Jessica was eleven, Jasper got into a fight and died. The reasons why never to be discovered or understood.
She'd found him, curled in on himself along the path back to their house. A destination it seemed he'd been unable to reach.
Jess had been heartbroken, caught unawear and unexpected, not ready for his loss. She'd cried for days, inconsolable.
In death, Japser had taken whatever strage nature he possessed with him- he died the way he'd lived secretive, quiet and painfully. Whatevr knowledge and history that had been hidden from her, bleeding out onto the pavement on a mild January evening.
This is how she sees Sam, when they show her the body at the station (And it is him, is him, oh God!) she doesn't want to, but she finds the parallel holds and hates it.
Laid out in clinical white and the grey of steel he is suddenly intangible to her; is not the weird and wonderous thing that has dominated so much of who she is for so many months now.
She sees the body, not the boy and can barely connect the two.
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At six o'clock she's finally leaving the station, washed out and blurred at the edges. She's fallen into an introspective devastation and doesn't know how to get out, what to do now or where to go.
Eventually her muscles lead her to her car and to home. Her mind is lost, elsewhere.
Sam Winchester: Personal effects.
She clutches the bag like a life line. It ties her back, to that place and time where he still dwells. Her eyes move over the jacket, the jeans (away from the blood stains) onto the smaller details; key chain and keys, a bright copper ring, wallet and phone.
It's the last of these she removes, absently. Fingers trailing over the buttons, worn smooth by use. By Sam's fingers moving across them the way hers are now. By Sam's touch, as real on this phone as it was on her.
And even though it's absurd, Jess feels a little less like she's drowning.
She doesn't remember entering the contacts list, but she's suddenly confronted by the names, black on glowing green, shivering over her skin.
Jess doesn't know Dean, has never seen or spoken to him, has barely ever heard Sam talk of him. And she doesn't understand (thinks maybe she never could) whatever frayed and complex relationship they share.
But she does know that it is something- that Dean is someone-incredibly important to Sam, whatever communication they currently hold. Could see it in the way he'd stared at their photo and stumbled over words. At the fact the brother he supposedly hasn't talked to in two years is first listed here, before even herself.
And Jess doesn't own Sam, not all of him, and not the part that Dean inhabits. In the past she's speculated that perhaps that is partly why. Sam can't give her everything, because parts of him have already been given away.
The ringing in her ears is impossibly loud, an unknown voice asking her to leave a message. She grips the phone tighter and reachs out to a stranger a millon miles away.
Because he's the closest thing to Sam she'll ever find again.
-fin-
please review and tell me what you think.