Sam surveyed the wreckage of the dorm room. Brady and Jessica hadn't been exaggerating with their claims that the pipes had burst spectacularly. The floorboards were warped. The walls were stained with water that had begun to rot the cheap plasterboard.

Sam looked to Jessica. "What the hell happened?"

She shrugged and tossed her hands into the air. "The pipes burst?"

"Burst or exploded?" Sam stared in horror.

He and his father and brother had squatted in their share of empty buildings. They'd experienced remnants of pipes bursting in the cold when trying to get by in abandoned houses with no utilities. Those were usually up North. In harsh climates.

Jess cocked her head and gave him her dimpled smile. "Exploded. I forgot to tell you I build pipe bombs."

Sam smiled. "Oh, good. I like dangerous friends."

"So..." she dropped her eyes to the ground shyly and traced a toe over one of the distressed floor boards. "You have the honor of being the only person who didn't bail on me for today."

Sam raised an eyebrow. "Really?"

She gave him a girlish shrug. She was wearing a crop top with wide boatneck that draped off one shoulder. Sam was having a hard time keeping his eyes off of the smooth cream skin. "Yeah." She looked up at him from under her lashes.

"Brady?" Sam inquired.

"Bailed this morning."

Sam shook his head and couldn't stop his eye roll. "Typical anymore."

"But..." Jess swept her long blonde waves back into an elastic band as she spoke. "That means you get ALL the pizza I don't eat. So not all is lost."

Sam flashed her a wide grin. Jessica didn't know him well enough to appreciate how very rare they were on Sam Winchester.

"Not at all," he said.


Moving Jess' stuff down the hallway turned out to be a logistical pain in the ass, with both of them attempting to wrestle a few cumbersome pieces through a narrow doorway, but Sam found himself enjoying doing it with her.

Eventually her roommate, Rose, joined in for about a half hour before she left again. Sam had found himself thoroughly enjoying being the only male amongst the female attention. Dean would have harassed him about it mercilessly if he'd known. If he'd been there.

The thought wandered through his mind that there would be no Dean to harass him after that last phone call. He was set loose.

Sam tried to convince himself he was fine with it. Most of him was fine with the freedom from his family entanglements, but part of him missed the yoke.

Jess leaned over to toss a used box from the grocery store laden with belongings onto her mattress. It made a jangling clink. Sam entered behind her with a chair under one shoulder and a duffle bag of crap clutched in his other hand. With all the moving he and his brother had done over the years, he was efficient at carrying odds and ends.

The boxes and bags were nothing. It had been getting her heavy wooden dresser through the doorway earlier that had proven challenging.

Sam let his gaze flick appreciatively over Jessica's backside as she bent over to shove the box against the wall. Her jeans fit her like a second skin. His mind went to a dirty visual and he pulled it back to the present as he set down her chair and tossed the duffle down.

Jess flopped onto the bed. It made a squeak of springs. "Oh my god. My back aches." She stretched her arms. "You okay there, Sam? You did all the heavy lifting."

Sam nodded. "I'm fine. I make a good beast of burden."

He sat on the chair he'd been carrying to take a breather and looked shyly at her through his lashes.

She met his gaze and her demeanor sobered a little. They shared a long charged look between them before Jess cleared her throat.

"You hungry? I think it may be pizza time."

"Yeah." Sam said slowly. "I'm really hungry."

"Okay, so what pizza place? You okay with Phil's?"

"Phil's is great." Sam responded.

Jess flipped open her cell phone. "I have them on speed dial..." she looked up. "That's kind of sad, actually."

One side of Sam's lip lifted in a smirk. "Me too."

She laughed. "Seriously?"

"I'm not joking. I don't cook anything but Ramen." He gave an amused huff through his nose and then looked toward the window as she dialed and ordered a pizza with everything on it. The sunlight dappled through the shadow cast by trees and buildings.

She snapped the phone shut.

"Sam?"

He pulled himself back to reality. "Yeah."

"You look pensive. What's up?"

He shrugged. "Just thinking that I'm not used to the constant sun here."

She cocked her head with a raised eyebrow. "Haven't you been here for like 2 years?"

"Yeah."

"Still not adjusted? Where did you live... a cave?"

He snorted. "May as well have. I'm just...It's weird to think it's warm here when half the US is plunged in snow."

"We're lucky." She smiled.

"Yeah." He replied, gaze turned inward for a moment.

"You left behind people in the snow, huh?"

Once again, she understood his unspoken thoughts. She was good at it. Unnervingly good.

Sam bit his lip. "Yeah."

Jess seemed fluent in the double entendre they were speaking in. "You know, there's no shame in getting out of a bad situation."

She'd caught him out.

Sam turned his head; his hair fell into his eyes. "Aren't you supposed to stay behind and help though?"

"Well not if they want to be in the situation. Then all you do is ruin your life trying to save people who can't be saved."

'Not everyone wants to be saved. Save them anyway.' Dad's refrain floated through his head.

Sam's mood had sunk.

Jessica noticed immediately.

"Hey." She stood up, and god, she was beautiful. Her face all framed in that glorious golden hair, which had fallen out of her haphazard pony tail in wisps. "You can help me figure out where my stuff goes."

"I flunked out of interior design."

"Use your instincts." She grabbed a poster and unrolled it. "So... does the Pink Floyd poster go here..." she stood on the bed and held it to the side. Sam couldn't help his attention wandering to the slight bit of bared midriff exposed when she stretched. "Or here." She moved it to the head of the bed, bouncing as the walked and stretching out to hold it against the wall.

Sam laughed. "I think we should figure out where the dresser goes first."

"No. Pink Floyd. Then the dresser."

"This sounds like my brother's line of reasoning."

"Just one thing to make it feel like home and then we put in the big stuff."

"Well, then I vote for the head of the bed."

"Okay." She turned to face him, still holding the sheet of unrolled paper pressed against the wall.

Sam stood up and routed around for a hammer.

"Tape will do for now." Jess told him.

"If we're gonna do it," he said, lifting random papers and objects, knowing he brought in a small cache of tools earlier in a little red box. "We should tack it up right. Saves us going back in later and cleaning up." Sam was aware that in that moment that he sounded like his father. "Bingo."

He found a little tack hammer and a plastic box with a few nails in it. He grabbed it and walked over to the side of the bed.

He didn't have to stand on it to stretch and drive the tack in with a few taps, but to reach the other side he had to step up. Jess furrowed her brow and adjusted the poster so that it was level. She moved a bit out of Sam's way, her weight shifting the mattress under his feet. He tacked a second tiny nail in and then finished the bottom. One tack on each of the four corners.

He nodded and looked over to her. "There. Nice and sturdy."

Jess was in close proximity. They paused, almost nose to nose and Sam felt the tension again. A pull, almost magnetic in its attraction.

He backed up a step and his weight shifted the springs beneath her feet and made her lurch uneasily forward as she struggled to keep her balance. She banged into him and Sam fell back into the wall, her with him.

He dropped the little tack hammer onto the mattress and reached with his hand to catch himself. There was the tearing sound of paper beneath his outstretched palm and Sam felt her weight on his chest as she yelped and then righted herself. He withdrew his hand in horror.

The poster gaped with the rip he'd put into it.

He grimaced. "Oh shit. I'm sorry."

They both looked at the torn black poster.

Jess started to laugh.

"Okay." She said when she'd stopped. "Maybe we should have started with the furniture after all. Where's the tape?"

They repaired the torn poster with some clear tape. Jessica held the torn paper together like she was performing field surgery and mended it with a stripe of sticky cellophane. It didn't blend well, the repaired part was obvious, the light gleaming off the smooth surface of the clear tape. Jess didn't seem to mind.

They sat down for pizza and Sam thought to himself that if she could overlook the torn and patched poster, maybe she wouldn't mind the torn and patched pieces of himself.

Thanks for the reviews! Please send more! XOXO. Michele, tell Phil he has his own Pizza Place now.