Sam finally found Jessica Moore standing outside on the porch in the somewhat crisp night. She looked an angel and once again Sam found himself taken with her beauty.
Jess smiled at him. "There you are."
She handed him a bottle of beer by the neck. "Grabbed you one."
"Thank you." Sam expertly banged the cap off on the side of the porch railing.
He looked to Jessica. She grinned sheepishly and handed him hers so he could do the same thing.
"My brother has a ring he always uses to twist off the caps with," he said as he lined it up and gave it a quick sharp jerk down. The top flew off into the bushes.
He smiled. "But I always preferred guillotining them off on the side of the table."
He handed her the opened bottle and she took a sip.
Sam took a swig himself. This was his fifth beer of the night and he was actually starting to feel a little pleasantly warm buzz.
Jess inclined her head to the door. "How long have you known Zach?"
"Oh since I've been here." Sam replied. "Probably about 2 and a half years. You?"
"Just the past year." She leaned against the porch railing with her ass. She was a tall girl, Sam noted. Almost as tall as Dean. He didn't dwarf her like he did most of the women he met.
"How about Brady?"
Jess wrinkled her nose. "Mmmm. I think about four months ago. He's in my class but we never talked til then. He had to borrow my book."
"So you have a brother?" She raised an eyebrow.
"Yeah." Sam replied.
"I'm an only child. I always wanted a sibling like Zach and Rebecca are."
Sam's mouth tightened a little. "They've got something special."
Jess's eyes grew penetrating and Sam could see a glimpse of the intellect behind them. "Not close to your brother?"
Sam paused. "We," he took a breath. "Drifted when I moved away to college."
"So you don't talk often?"
Sam shrugged. "We talked recently but it's been close to two years."
Her eyes widened. "Two years? What about holidays and stuff?"
Sam looked out into the night. "I haven't really spent them with my family since I left for college."
She was staring at him. "You don't even talk to your mother? All moms want their babies home for the holidays."
"My mom..." Sam paused, unsure of how much to reveal. The alcohol made him more loquacious than usual. "She died when I was six months old in a house fire."
"Oh my god!" Jess tipped her head. "I'm really sorry."
"It's okay." Sam replied, moving to stand next to her and leaning his own ass on the railing. He scuffed the toe of his sneaker against the ground. "I mean I don't remember her at all. It's always just been me and my brother and our father."
"And your dad moved you around a lot?"
"Yeah." He blew out a long breath.
"So why don't you talk to your brother?" Jess asked, closing her full lips around the bottle neck and taking a long pull before she spoke again. "Is he a jerk or somethin'?"
"No." Sam replied reflexively, almost a little defensively. "No. Dean's not a jerk... well," he huffed a little amused breath out of his nose, "not usually anyway."
"Then why don't you talk to him?" She asked conversationally.
Sam dropped his eyes, one side of his mouth turned up in a nervous almost smile. "He... my dad drew a line in the sand and Dean, well he stayed on the other side of it."
"So you're angry at him."
"No...not angry just..." Sam paused, searching for the correct wording. "Disappointed. I always thought he'd have my back."
Jess turned her head to watch him closely. "So basically you're angry at him."
"I'm not ang..." Sam paused in mid protest. Oh she was dangerous. She wasn't even going to let him lie to himself without calling on him on it. "Okay. Yeah I guess a little."
She studied him carefully. "You feel betrayed he took your father's side over yours."
Sam dropped his gaze to the floorboards. Studied the wooden slats, worn in spots. "Guess so."
She clicked her nail against the amber glass of her beer bottle. "Betrayal is the worst emotion."
Sam brought his eyes back up to meet hers. "You're speaking from experience, I take it."
"Yes." She shook her head. "My last boyfriend cheated on me."
"What an idiot." Sam said without even thinking.
She grinned at him and her dimples gave her a playfully innocent look. "I like to think so... hey I want to thank you in advance for helping me out even though this is like no warning whatsoever."
He shrugged. "It's fine. Really. I don't mind at all. Just feed me pizza and I'm good."
"I will get you the best pizza. But mostly because I want pizza. You can have my scraps."
Sam smiled at her. "Thank you for your generosity."
Sam left the party late. He and Jess had dragged their conversation out for several hours until most of the guests had left. He offered to walk her back to her dorm, but she declined and said she was going back with Rebecca to bunk at their place. She'd see him in the morning.
Sam walked home, a lightness in his step that he hadn't had in a long time. A little thrill of excitement. A little crescent of hope shining in the dark corner of his mind. He had also drunk way too much. It was making him feel loose and silly and loquacious.
He flipped his cell phone open without even registering what he was doing and dialed Dean. Liquor helped him to not over think things. To tamp his mind down a bit.
Dean picked up on the third ring. "Hey."
"Hey," Sam replied. He felt his heart swell at hearing the familiar voice. "My nose bleed stopped."
"Thank god or I think you might be dead by now, Sammy."
Sam placed one sneakered foot down off the curb and started to cross the street. The headlights of a car dazzled him for a moment and it took him a second to get out of the way and back onto the safety of the sidewalk. He blinked. "It's late."
He heard a skeptical edge in Dean's voice. "Thank you Captain Obvious." Then there was a pause with a dawning realization. "Sammy, are you drunk?"
"It's Sam." He insisted stubbornly, as if the topic wasn't open for discussion.
"Yeah, whatever."
Sam squinted and started his loose amble back to the dorm. "No I'm not drunk. I'm a little buzzed..." he slowed his pace a little, feeling that awkward lack of things to say creeping in. Usually he let Dean throw the conversation out like a ball on the floor and it would roll along where Sam took his cue as he watched it bounce. "How is Dad?"
"Why?" Dean's tone was sharp. "You care suddenly?"
"You know what?" Sam shot back, suddenly feeling his emotions spike in defense. "Forget I called. This was a bad idea."
He hung up and put the phone into his pocket, trudging toward his dorm, his good mood suddenly evaporated. Why did Dean always have to do this shit to him? He was so sick of taking the accusations and being quiet about it.
He found himself blinking back tears, his mouth twisting a little. This is why he knew better than to drink too much. He either became irrationally angry or an emotional bitch.
He trudged into the hall, letting the wide double door swing shut behind him with a click. He felt his phone buzz in his pocket. He took it out and stared at it for a moment. Closed his eyes and let out a long breath.
Sam answered. "What?"
"You done with your hissy fit yet?"
Sam's hand tightened on the phone. "I didn't call you to get bitched out over asking how Dad was, okay?"
There was a deep sigh on the other line. Almost in resignation. "What do you want, Sam?"
"Nothing. I'm... I'm calling you back. We got cut off kind of abruptly the other night."
"You were so desperate to get off the phone with me you tried to bleed to death."
Sam blinked. It was a dumb throwaway line meant as a joke but for some reason it stung him a bit. He covered it with a retort. "Be careful, next time I might get dramatic." He leaned his back against the stone wall in the hallway and huffed out a breath. "You know I'm not sure Smurfette was actually a smurf."
"Course she was a smurf. What the hell else would she be?"
"I thought Gargamel created her for some reason."
"He hated smurfs. Why would he make one?"
"I can't remember." Sam furrowed his brow. He swallowed. "I remember so much crap..." he thought of his father passed out drunk on the couch and squeezed his eyes shut. Seemed that was the only way he recalled him most of the time...half in the bag. "But I can't remember about the Smurfs."
Dean paused and then snorted. "Yeah, well its okay, Sammy. No reason to get emotional about it."
Sam blinked. "I'm not emotional about smurfs." He muttered.
He started down the hallway again, his gait felt meandering and he realized he really had had too much to drink. He stopped in the middle of the hall wondering if he should tell Dean about Jessica or keep it close to his vest.
Something, perhaps some honed instinct or maybe his secretive nature, made him decide to bury it in the back of his mind. No good had ever come out of letting people in on something positive he saw on the horizon. Dean would twist it, turn it into a joke when Sam really didn't feel like joking about it at all.
Meeting her had him feeling vulnerable and a bit insecure. His ego couldn't take whatever jab Dean might aim in his direction. Not when the prospect was this new. This unsteady. He wasn't even certain where his friendship with Jessica may lead. She may not even be interested in him.
"Then what are you all emo about, Dude?"
"I'm not emo."
"Sam come on, this is like pullin' teeth. If we're gonna talk then I'm here. Let's talk."
Sam squinted and opened his dorm room. His room mate had obviously been in. Some things were shuffled around.
Sam tripped over a pile of his own dirty laundry and almost fell head first into the wall. He caught himself against the drywall with a thump of his shoulder blade.
"What the hell are you doing?"
"I tripped." Sam picked up the jeans he had fallen over and whipped them angrily into the corner with a whistle snap of flying fabric. "That's what I get for leaving my laundry to build up like this."
"And here I thought you'd be all organized and Martha Stewart on your own."
"I don't always have the extra cash to do it. But this is just...I haven't had time. Working and school and homework. I've let it go..." Sam squeezed his eyes shut. "I've let everything go."
"What the hell does that mean? You flunkin classes or something."
"What? No. I need to keep my grades up or they yank my scholarship."
"Well at least something of yours would be getting yanked."
Sam slapped his forehead. "Really, Dean?"
"Being drunk doesn't take the stick out of your ass, does it?"
Sam bit his lip. "Cause this is...me, Dean."
Dean went silent and Sam could tell he honestly didn't know what to say. "You always wanted me to be different, but this is who I am."
"I like you just fine, Sam. Just wish you'd loosen up a little."
"Yeah." The sound was non-committal. So much he wanted to say but couldn't. He didn't know what to tell Dean. There was so much hurt buried here and he could feel the earth being churned up as he listened to their own voices.
"There's so much fun to be had if you just loosen up."
"I'm pretty sure you have enough 'fun' for both of us."
"Can never have too much of that, Sammy."
"Oh I've seen you with enough hang overs to disagree."
"Worth it."
"Sure it is." Sam sank onto his bed, kicked off his shoes and laid down.
"Pretty little red head in Colorado a few nights ago..." Dean began.
"I thought you were in Wisconsin dealing with a coven."
Dean went silent for a moment. "That was before this."
"What happened anyway?"
"With the redhead?" He deflected, almost predictably. "She liked to-"
"With the coven? You sounded pretty shaken up."
"I'm fine, Sam."
Sam paused, reading what was wrong in the silences between Dean's words.
"Someone die?" He asked.
Dean let out a long trailing breath. "Woman. Dad took it hard."
Sam frowned. "I'm... I'm sorry. He okay.?"
"Self-medicating." Dean responded.
"Of course," Sam replied, unable to keep the biting edge from his voice.
"Hey!" Dean's tone turned sharp with the rebuke. "Lay off him."
"I didn't even say anything."
"You didn't have to."
"So. Dad is shaken up but you're totally fine?"
Dean went silent again and Sam could read 'no. I'm not' in the pause.
"I'm fine."
Sam shook his head and closed his eyes. "Of course you are...because of course a woman dying wouldn't affect you at all. I mean...why would it?"
"Shut up, Sam."
"You can talk to me about it, you know. I'm not in the Life anymore...but I know what goes on."
"Bullshit."
"Bullshit?" Sam huffed, disbelieving. "You don't think I know what goes on?"
"You have never been on the front lines like I have!" Dean's voice rose into an emphatic almost shout. "You've never held someone and watched the...the life go out of 'em and known you could have prevented it if only you'da been quicker."
Sam felt that like a punch in the gut. "I don't have to have experienced that in order to know it sucks."
"Yeah," Dean said. "It does suck. But you're in your ivory tower over in Rich Asshole University so I guess it doesn't matter to you anymore."
"Yeah. And you wonder why I wanted out."
He could feel Dean's anger swell on the other side of the phone. "Well you got out. Left me and Dad to deal with this on our own."
"No one is making you do that job, Dean."
"Someone has to do it, Sam."
"Well that someone doesn't have to be us." Sam replied heatedly.
"You're such a selfish asshole you know that?"
Sam's jaw tightened and he felt his hand crush around the cell phone. "You know, Dean, you keep saying that but I don't think not wanting to see people disemboweled on a regular basis qualifies as me being selfish."
"Yeah. Of course you wouldn't think that."
Sam's nose scrunched as he drew his brows together in anger. "Is this how it's gonna be with us, huh?"
"Is what gonna be like what?"
"We're either going to talk to each other like strangers and dance around what we really want to say or else we're going to be at each other's throats over me going to Stanford. There's no middle ground to meet on here?"
"I don't even know what you're talking about."
Sam closed his eyes. "Of course you don't. You know, I hoped maybe two years would give you enough time to cool out about me leaving but I guess not."
"You're gone. Whether it's been one month or two years or ten. You still left us, Sam."
Sam closed his eyes, suddenly on the verge of tears. He tried to swallow the lump in his throat and blinked rapidly. "If...if you're going to bitch at me about leaving every time we talk from now on...maybe..." his voice broke off. He bit it back before he completed the sentence.
"Maybe what?"
Sam drew a deep breath. "Then maybe you should lose my number."
Dean went dead quiet. Sam could tell his words had hit him like a physical blow.
Dean finally spoke, all hurt anger. "You know what, Sam. Stay with your little rich friends. Pretend to be one of them. I don't care. I'll stay here where I belong."
Sam felt their stretched over burdened bond starting to tear. It hurt him somewhere in his chest. "Can't we just..."
"Just what, Sam? Pretend it never happened? Pretend we have anything in common."
"Pretend to be a functional family for once!"
"No families are functional. They're all fucked up once you scratch the surface."
"We don't even have a surface to scratch!" Sam blurted out, no longer measuring his words. "Dammit Dean. Just let me go. Let me do what I have to do."
"I'm letting you go alright." He could hear the tightness in Dean's voice. "Have... have a nice life, Sam."
"Dean...I..." Sam paused, felt his lower lip tremble. This was a losing battle. They'd both lost. He swallowed the lump in his throat. "Yeah. You too, buddy."
The other line went dead.
Sam tried not to cry.
He didn't make it long.
Thanks for the reviews, guys. Please leave one if you have the time. It makes me keep writing. And thanks to Dom Darkwolf for her smurfs knowledge. LOL
