A/N: Thank you to everyone who's read this and favourited and followed! You guys mean the world to me! I hope you continue to read and enjoy these little one-shots of mine.
Spoilers: Potential spoilers for 1x01, Pilot, but none after.
What would I do without you?
Crash and burn.
'Crash and burn.'
It was their thing. Their line. The one they used when they needed to cheer the other up, or when they were laying in each other's arms at night, reflecting on what they had done to deserve the person next to them.
Sam would come home from a difficult day in college and Jess would kiss him and shove a plate of her homemade cookies under his nose. He'd laugh and take her in his arms and suddenly all his worries would disappear. He'd whisper into her ear:
"What would I do without you?"
Her soft laugh would tickle his neck and she'd whisper back. "Crash and burn."
On their first date she had asked him about his family. He had mumbled something incoherent and stared at his feet, wondering how he'd managed to screw everything up so badly so quickly. But then she'd taken his face in her hands and told him that it didn't matter and that she knew all about having a difficult family. He remembered looking into her eyes and watching the way the sun turned her hair to gold and thinking that this was the girl he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. He'd smiled and nervously asked her if she wanted to do this again sometime. Her eyes had lit up and she accepted with a laugh.
"What would I do without you?"
"Crash and burn."
On Sam's 21st birthday he'd stared at his phone for hours, hoping that it would light up with a call - hell, a text would do - from Dean just to tell him that they were alive and safe. None came and Sam had tried not to be too disappointed. After all, he'd had nothing but radio silence since he left anyway. He'd put on the mask of indifference that he'd perfected over years of hunting and pretended to be happy when his friends tried to get him drunk to celebrate the fact that he could legally drink now.
Jess, however, had seen through that mask. When the two of them were finally alone, she had pulled him into a gentle hug and curled her fingers into his unruly hair. No words needed to be said; just that one gesture told Sam that she understood and that she was here for him.
"What would I do without you?" He'd mumbled into her soft hair.
"Crash and burn."
When he'd decided he wanted to propose, he'd practised for hours whenever he was alone. He would come up with a thousand different ways to tell her how much he loved her and a thousand more to ask her that one simple question but it was by far the hardest thing he'd ever done, hunting included. Everything he thought of seemed fine in his head but when he spoke it out loud it never seemed quite right. He made himself so anxious about it that Jess eventually noticed his odd mood and asked him what was wrong. He looked into her beautiful blue eyes and suddenly he knew exactly what he wanted to say.
"Jessica Moore, what would I do without you?"
Her laugh filled the room. "Crash and burn."
They were the last words he ever heard her say. He'd called on the way back from Jericho with Dean to tell her everything was fine and he'd be back home soon. To hear her voice after an entire weekend of missed phone calls and voice messages had immediately lifted Sam's spirits and returned him in some way to the normalcy of college that he'd become accustomed to. He'd listened to her talk about her weekend with a smile on his face and, for once, he didn't care what Dean thought about him. He'd ended the call with a promise to talk again soon and the same question he always asked.
"What would I do without you?"
"Crash and burn."
On the day of her funeral he'd stood at the grave far longer than anyone else. Her parents had come over and shook his hand, making it clear that, whilst they did not blame him for their daughter's death, they didn't want to see him again either. And why should they? He knew he was to blame, even if they didn't, and that wasn't exactly something that could be forgiven.
He crouched down next to the polished stone and laid a hand on the freshly turned earth at his feet. It seemed impossible that she could be just ashes and dust, when just a few weeks ago she had been laughing in his arms on that Halloween night. He let a few tears slip down his cheeks as he lay the bunch of lilies on the ground, smiling as he remembered how much she'd hated roses. He reached into his pocket and brought out the engagement ring that he'd bought for her in secret, the one that she'd never get to see. He turned the ring over in his fingers and choked around the lump that had formed in his throat.
"What am I going to do without you?"
This time there was no whisper, no laugh. No voice comforted him and no arms wrapped around his shoulders. Sam bent his head and cried.
Crash and burn.
A/N: I hope you guys liked that. I'm crying now; I didn't mean to make it that sad. Oh well. Please leave a review if you have a request you'd like me to fulfil, or if you just want to anyway, and I'll update again next week. Bye!