Thanks for the reviews! By the way, if you're curious, the song Dean's listening to at the end is "Laugh, I Nearly Died." Stay tuned for heartbreak!
Jess watches as Dean crosses the room in a few, measured strides, sliding up on Sam's left and leaning a hip on the desk at his brother's elbow, head bent close with some whispered taunt as he nudges Sam's shoulder teasingly with a lazy push of his beer bottle. Sam's only response is to shove easily back with an elbow to Dean's thigh and a soft laugh, turning his attention back to studying, but not before shifting his chair incrementally toward Dean, adjusting his orientation slightly to better fit his brother's.
There it is again, that closeness, that narrowing of the world down to 'he' and 'me.'
Jess supposes that other girls would be jealous, would hate - if only a little - the closeness shared by the two brothers.
But this is Sam.
Serious, studious, secretive Sam. So-not-sneaky Sam, who asked Becca what kind of ring Jess would like days after not-so-casually poking through Jess's jewelry box to 'help her get ready.'
Really, he was hopeless.
And seeing him like this, open and smiling and relaxed against Dean like he almost never is? Well, it warms something in Jess.
Knowing that Sam has this, someone else who puts him at ease, who worries about him and cares for him and wants him to be happy, not because they gain from it but because Sam deserves it. He deserves to be safe and happy, relaxed and smiling with someone he loves.
Sam has Jess. He has Jess, and he always will, if she has any say in the matter. But he doesn't only have her, and knowing that, seeing it with her own eyes?
It's a good thing. It lets Jess let go of a worry that she didn't know she had.
On impulse, she quietly steps from the kitchen, plucks a blank notebook from the bookcase and starts tracing, in quick, sure strokes of graphite, the loose line of Sam's shoulders, the hint of a smile at the corner of Dean's mouth, the way they're turned to each other, drawn close like magnets, north to south, a whole world between them but touching, always touching, two pieces of the same puzzle.
And it almost feels like voyeurism, recording the way Sam's elbow is brushing Dean's thigh, the way they're angled together - silent, separate, but still wholly, undeniably together - two parts of one whole. The tension that's been following Sam since he got back from Louisiana is gone, washed away by the gentle brush of his brother at his side, who's nursing a beer and seema free, for the first time since he stepped out of that Impala in the parking lot, of the restless, nervous unease that's kept him stiff and uncomfortable until now. Jess can't help it, can't do anything but trace it out in carbon and graphite, capture this one, small moment of peace, of ease, in the world they made for themselves.
She's smudging shadows into charcoaled plaid and denim when her train of thought is derailed by a series of impatient smacks on the door. Dean appears at Jess's elbow as she moves to answer it, armed with cash and ready for a brief skirmish over who gets to foot the bill for dinner.
He loses, but only because the delivery guy is more interested in Jess unbuttoning her sweater to fish a twenty out of her shirt pocket than Dean, awkwardly trying to reach around her without brushing against anything Sam would kill him for touching.
Really, he never had a chance.
Wings acquired and ceasefire achieved, they retreat to the kitchen, Jess rolling her eyes at Sam, still completely immersed in his interview prep at the desk, as Dean digs through plastic bags and piles of napkins to crack open takeout containers of hot wings, territorially dumping bleu cheese over the container of honey barbecue.
"Sammy! Food's here!" he barks, grabbing a couple of beers from the fridge.
Jess tries not to look surprised as he opens one with the ring on his right hand and offers it to her. Instead, she pokes her head into the next room and calls to Sam at the desk, "Sam, come on. It's gonna get cold!"
"Yeah," Sam answers absently, not looking up as he flicks a page and scribbles a note on one of the legal pads at his elbow. "In a minute."
"You know what that means," Jess sighs, taking a seat at the table and smirking a little ruefully at Dean.
"Never," Dean nods, putting his beer down next to the wings he's claimed and grinning at her. "Wanna see a trick?"
Jess raises an eyebrow at him warily.
"Sure…"
"Hey, Sam!" Dean calls. "You don't get your ass in here, I'm coming in THERE and setting every book you own on fire!"
Nothing happens for a minute, and Jess tries to keep the smirk from her face as she takes a sip of beer.
Dean just holds up a finger for her to wait a minute and fishes around in his pocket, pulling out a battered silver Zippo and flicking the starter in the silence, letting the scratching click of the lighter reach Sam in the next room.
In a heartbeat, Sam appears in the kitchen, toting a book and grumbling about pyromaniacal older brothers, and how fire isn't the solution to fucking everything, Dean, and dammit, why did you have to go and ruin all the honey barbecue wings with bleu cheese?! It's an affront to taste! Don't look at me like that! You read Vonnegut, I know you know what 'affront' means!
Jess just laughs and digs into her pile of lemon-pepper wings.
"You've gotta let me borrow that lighter sometime," she jokes, looking at Dean.
"Nah," Dean shakes his head with a grin, hot sauce already smeared at the corner of his mouth. "It only works if he thinks you'd really do it."
Sam grumbles into a wing, pointedly not looking up from the law review squashed between a pile of napkins and the ranch dressing no one is using.
"Aww, what is it, Sammy?" Dean teases, wadding up the napkin he was using and tossing it to bounce off of Sam's head. "Still upset about that copy of My Friend Flicka?"
"It was Fahrenheit 451, Dean," Sam protests, law text totally forgotten as he bats Dean's next napkin missile aside, "and I had a test the next day!"
"'S not like you didn't ace it," Dean shrugs, snagging one of Sam's wings.
"That's not the point, Dean!" Sam claims, grabbing his brother's beer in retaliation.
Jess finishes with her wings and shoves her takeout container in the trashcan, leaving the brothers to bicker over chicken bones and wet naps as she goes into the bedroom to get some work done on her studio project.
Glaring at the stiff, gessoed expanse of cream and charcoal, she replaces the half-finished lily on her easel with her barely-begun fall assignment.
Most of her classmates were desperately trying to do something innovative and original, so while there were about a half dozen woolen scarves and foggy mornings and steamy cups of almost-rippled cocoa, hers was the only painting in the works featuring leaves.
It may be trite, but when Jess saw those green maple leaves refusing to fade, still glowing with the vibrant, flashing green of spring, bright and alive but being slowly swallowed by licks of spreading, rising, burning red, so dark at the tips that they were almost black…
Well, she couldn't think of anything else that summed up the sweeping, sleeping, sudden change of fall better.
Even if the douchey hipster next to her had snorted into his caramel soy latte when he saw what she was doing.
Asshat.
Jess is layering greens on the canvas with a little more force than necessary when Sam edges past her into the bedroom, digging his iPod out of the back pocket of his pants before shucking off his jeans and slipping into track pants and running shoes.
"Going for a run, baby?" she asks, turning to watch as Sam kneels down to tie his shoes, fabric clinging in all the right places.
She is a lucky, lucky girl.
"Running?" Dean scoffs from the doorway. "From what?"
Sam just glares at him from across the room, tying the final knot on his track shoes with a defiant tug.
"Jogging, Sammy?" Dean laughs, following Sam out of the bedroom. "Really? You really have gone full-borne yuppie on me, haven't ya?"
Jess trails after them into the kitchen, idly rinsing a paintbrush as she listens to them bicker like an old married couple.
"Shut up, Dean," Sam grumps, grabbing his hoodie from the back of a chair in the kitchen and zipping into it.
"Whatcha gonna do, Tae Bo me to death? Maybe do some yoga? Make me a really bad frappachino?"
"What's that?" Sam asks too loudly as he shoves ear buds in. "I can't hear you over the sound of music made after 1985!"
"So mature," Jess shakes her head, stepping forward and winding her arms around Sam causally, brushing a soft kiss against his lips before asking: "You know where you're going?"
"Just around the block a little," Sam shrugs as his hands find her hips, bumping their noses together. "Clear my head, you know?"
Jess nods, leaning into him.
"Be safe, okay?"
"'Course," Sam grins, giving her a quick peck before he's flipping Dean off and ducking out of the apartment.
Sam gone and brushes rinsed, Jess makes her way back into the bedroom, Dean awkwardly trailing a few steps behind her.
"Sasquatch'll probably hog the shower when he gets back, right?" he asks, leaning against the door jamb.
"Probably," Jess nods, smearing red into darker, purpling black at the tip of one of her leaves. "You gonna go ahead and get in there?"
"Yeah, if you don't need it," Dean nods.
He shifts from one foot to the other, like there's something he wants to say, but doesn't know how.
"You're good with Sammy," he gruffs, after a little bit of an awkward silence.
Jess has a hard time figuring out if that's a compliment or a question.
"Yeah, well, Sam..." Jess trails off, smiles down at her hands, smeared in shades of charcoal and red, thinking of her exhausted, brilliant, beautiful idiot of a boyfriend. "Well, I guess you know better than I do. It's Sam. How do you quit that?"
"Yeah..." Dean mutters, then looks up, his eyes suddenly seeking, sharper. "You'll keep an eye on him? Makes sure he eats, sleeps? The whole nine? 'Cause I swear, I turn around and he's as strung out as he was when he found me-"
"Of course I will," Jess assures, "but Dean, I thought you were just going to shower..."
"Yeah, sure. 'Course I am," Dean mumbles, scrubbing a hand over his face in an undeniably Sam-like gesture. "I just..."
"I'll take care of him, Dean," Jess reassures, not only because it's true, but because he seems to need to hear it said, out loud, by someone else.
It hits Jess, sudden and sad, just how unused to trusting anyone outside of each other these boys are.
"Maybe you should turn in early tonight, get some rest," she suggests gently. "You're not looking so good."
"Maybe I'll do that," Dean nods, and the smile he gives her doesn't reach his eyes. "You mind if I go ahead and get in there?"
He nods toward the bathroom door.
"Sure!" Jess chirps, standing up and scrubbing the worst of the paint off her hands with a towel. "Do you need anything?"
"I should be good," Dean holds up the duffle he brought up from the car, making his way towards the bathroom. "Everything's pretty much in here. Thanks, though."
Turning and sitting back down at her easel as the water in the bathroom kicks on, Jess chews at her bottom lip, darting an anxious glance over her shoulder to where Dean has disappeared behind the wooden door, shadow in his eyes and a heavy set to his shoulders.
Really, Jess thinks with a sigh, if it wasn't one thing with these boys, it was another.
Maybe Sam could help, when he got back.
Dean hates himself as he slips out of Sam's bathroom window, shimmies down the drain like a thief in the night as his brother's girl paints flowers and leaves and worries for him.
He hates that he's doing this.
He hates leaving Sam.
He hates what this is gonna do to his brother, to Jess, to the fragile, slowly mending something they've built since Louisiana.
But better this.
Better this than the alternative, better to have Sam angry at him than putting himself in danger over and over again on Dean's behalf.
Dean's feet hit the pavement outside of Sam's apartment building, and his hand finds the key to the Impala in his pocket, safe and sound and making Dean hate himself that much more.
Stealing is a fact of Dean's life. His baby won't run on good intentions, and all the saved lives in the world won't put a roof over his head or silver in his gun. He's never felt bad about it before. Never hated himself in the same way he did when he slipped his hand into Jess's pocket as they were grappling for the check before dinner.
But if Jess is just another bridge he's gonna have to burn to keep Sam safe, he'll do it. Hell, if leaving like this isn't striking the match, Dean doesn't know what is.
If Dean closes his eyes, shoves down hard on the knowledge that's been drilled into him since he was four, he can almost believe that the sweet, soft girl sitting at the easel upstairs will take good enough care of his brother.
Can almost lie to himself.
Can almost believe that someone's gonna be able to protect Sammy better than he can.
He knows, logically, that this is gonna be better for Sam in the long run. And he wants this. Really, he does. He wants the very best life for Sam he can give him.
But wanting it, needing to see his brother safe and happy more than anything he's ever needed in this life, doesn't make this easy. Doesn't make what he has to do here any less painful.
As he shoves his things in the Impala's trunk, Dean can't escape the constant litany in his head.
This is wrong.
This is right.
This is the only way to keep Sammy safe.
He hates it. Hates leaving. Hates what it means for his life, for him and Sam.
But this is the price. This is what a good life for Sam is gonna cost. This is the only way Sam can have what he wants, a life with his girl, as happy and apple-pie normal as can be, with no salt or smoke or long black cars on the horizon or in his heart.
Sacrificing his happiness for Sam's isn't a hard choice to make, but it still hurts like hell.
The Impala takes the deserted road out of Stanford easy, the Stones clicking on to fill the cold, empty night air.
It's sad. And final. And more of a goodbye than Dean ever thought he'd get for this brief, bright coda to his life with Sam.