Sam straddled the chair of his old antique desk and watched Jess with unabashed affection as she flashed him a couple of bottles of nail polish. They clinked together in her hand like tiny shot glasses. "Which color?"
Sam tilted his head, considering with the seriousness he leant most everything in his life. "The peach."
She smiled at him, radiant, gorgeous as always. "My boyfriend has excellent taste."
Sam felt a little touch of pride as she said the word. Boyfriend. He was hers. She was his. He still couldn't wrap his head around it.
She pulled her foot toward her chest, her dark blue sleep shorts rode up tantalizingly as she bent her knee. She opened the bottle and the unfamiliar tang of nail polish wafted strongly over to his nose. He still wasn't used to it. He wasn't used to any of the scents associated with femininity. -Her shampoo, her baby powder deodorant. The way the soap she borrowed from him interacted with her skin differently than his. Nail polish and hair spray and even the scent of her berry lip gloss. All exotic and new and exquisite, just as she was.
His once spartan dresser was littered with her colorful rubberized hair ties and soft bristled brush. Her curling iron. All little bits of Jess she left with him when she was gone, although she rarely slept at her dorm room anymore. Instead they ended up tangled together on Sam's too small mattress, Jess sleeping practically on top of him, his face buried in that wavy golden hair.
She glanced up at him as she wiped the excess paint off on the lip of the glass bottle and started to paint her toe. "Crap! I can never do this right."
Sam angled his head again. "It looks hard to do to yourself."
"It is unless you're a contortionist." She said, wiping off her mistake with her finger. Sam stood up and sat down beside her on the bed. He held out his hand, palm up. "Hand it over."
She gave him a smile and put her foot on his lap, handed him the bottle. "Have you ever done this before?"
"Yes. I painted Dean's toes all the time." He gave her his dimpled smile and dropped his eyes to the task at hand. "No. But I'm a quick learner."
She nudged his thigh with her other foot. "Oh yes you are."
He caught the double entendre behind the words and repressed another grin, feeling himself flush a little.
Sam wiped the excess paint off the brush as he'd seen her do and laid a stripe of color carefully on her big toe. Then repeated next to it, methodically covering the area. It took a bit of concentration to keep his hand steady but once he got into the rhythm of working, he didn't mind it at all.
"So what's with the painted nails?" He asked, furrowing his brow as he worked.
She shrugged. "Just kind of a fun change and I have a physics exam I should be studying for, so this is a great excuse to put it off."
He snorted and started on the next toe. "You know, Jessica..." Sam bit his lip and looked up at her.
"What?" She asked.
"I..." he swallowed. "I've never been this happy before." He felt himself coloring. The words seemed stupid and trite leaving his mouth but her look upon hearing it was anything but judgmental. She looked pleased.
He winced. "That sounds so dumb. I'm sorry."
"What about saying I make you happy sounds dumb? For someone so smart you are..."
"Dumb?" He supplied.
She giggled. "I was gonna say clueless. But dumb works too."
He snorted and finished with her toe. Moved to the next one. "I was thinking after the semester ends...do you wanna get an apartment together?"
"And get off freaking campus? And away from the most annoying roomie in the world. Yes!"
Sam smiled broadly. He finished her first foot and started on the second, adjusting his grip on the nail polish brush. "They make these things too tiny."
"I don't think your size hands belong to their target demographic."
He smirked. "Probably not."
"You're pretty good at this."
"I'm just methodical." He replied. "Dad grilled doing things correctly into us."
"What, he a perfectionist or something?" She asked, laying back against the mattress and flopping her arms out. A tiny bit of her stomach peeked out from under her shirt. She breathed deeply. Sam wanted to kiss it but he kept his attention on her feet.
"Military."
"Oh." She replied, tucking her chin to look at him from her sprawl on the bed. "I still wish you'd tell me a little more about him"
Sam's jaw tightened. "Not much to tell."
"You..." she picked up his pillow and tossed it at his head. It thunked off his temple and he blinked and dove to save the nail polish bottle from tipping. "Jessica!"
She giggled. "Oops, sorry."
"You're almost as bad as Dean sometimes."
"Maybe Dean is fun."
"I'm fun." Sam replied, a little petulantly. He grabbed her ankle. "Stop wiggling, I want to finish this."
She wiggled her toes on purpose and Sam snorted a reluctant laugh. "Stop."
"Sam, you know everything about me. Like where I went to school. Who my friends were. My mom and dad and cousins. I know that your dad made you guys move a lot, you're really mad at him right now, and you and your brother fight like cats and dogs."
"You like to reminisce because you had a normal life...I didn't.." he paused, searching for a word. He couldn't find an adequate one so he copped out with a lame descriptor, "like a lot of my childhood and talking about it makes me unhappy."
"Maybe you need to let it out." She said, arms still outstretched as she lay there.
"I enjoy things now. So I'm just trying to live in the now...you know," he glanced up at her with affection... "with you."
He finished her toes and replaced the screw on cap on the nail polish.
"I just want to know where my boyfriend comes from." She coaxed, still stretched out alluringly. Sam slid his hand up her smooth naked leg. Watching her expression.
She grinned at him. "Sam..."
"Huh," he asked, moving to stretch his long lanky body over hers. He kissed her softly.
She moved her head to come up for air. "Stop trying to distract me."
Sam touched his nose to her with a smile. "Why?"
"Because..."
He felt his body responding to her. He never got tired of her. "I love you." She told him unabashedly.
"I love you too." He replied. It was one of the first times he'd heard the words from someone...ever. His heart swelled with emotion.
"I've never been this happy before, Jess."
As his lips met hers it occurred to Sam that he could have simplified the sentence and it would have remained just as accurate.
'I've never been happy before.'
He knew what it felt like now. And deep down he was afraid to lose it.
Palo Alto weather had a tendency to skip spring and move directly into summer. So it was truly summer-like to Sam when easter break came sliding into view and Sam wondered what he was going to do without Jessica Moore for two weeks.
"I think you should come meet my family and spend the holiday with us." She dropped the bomb three days before vacation.
Sam stiffened in his seat. "I've got work," he said automatically.
"The library is closed, goofy."
"The lawn care."
Jess narrowed her gaze in one of the first looks of disapproval she'd ever given him. He felt small under it. He felt it as a sharp rebuke, even though there had really been none.
"I'm movin' in with you. I think it's time my parents met you, Sam."
He ducked his head, feeling a tightness in his chest that he recognized as anxiety. Sam had learned to supress that beginning-of-fear reflex long ago, to stamp it out immediately. It muddled your thoughts and in their old line of work that meant the difference between life and death.
He wondered about Dean and if he did the same thing when faced with something that terrified him.
"I'm not so good at social interactions. You may have noticed."
"You," Jess straddled his lap. "Will..." she kissed his nose. "Be." She kissed his forehead. "Perfect."
He drew in a deep breath and pushed down the fear reflex. "How important is this to you?"
Her blue eyes met his. "Very." She told him.
Then he had no choice. He'd have to face the monster like he always had.
"If you want me to then I will." He told her softly. "I love you."
"I love you and I will be there with you every second."
Somehow that made him feel better, just like it did when he had to do a salt and burn and he knew Dean had his back.
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