Brady leaned forward over the table with his charming, slightly mischevious white smile. "So how was it playing meet the parents?"

Sam took a pull of his beer. "It was..." he dropped his gaze under his fringe of bangs and gave a deferential shrug. "Awkward."

Brady grinned at him. "Oh so you made a great impression, huh?"

"I made somethin." Sam said.

Jessica nudged him and Sam colored. "Knock it off. They liked you fine."

Sam's eyes slid sideways and downward in a way that clearly said he didn't agree. The youngest Winchester was a master at letting his feelings be known through his body language alone.

"Of course Sam is terminally shy so he wasn't so good at answering, like, anything about himself beyond his major and that his dad traveled a lot."

"That's all he ever says," Brady teased. "You should have just made up a back story for him. Like we do."

Sam's shoulders went tight. Jessica noticed and put her hand between his shoulder blades to rub them. "My mom thought he was adorable. I mean, who wouldn't?" She smiled fondly.

Sam traced his fingernail into the groove of the table. He stood up. "I gotta use the bathroom."

Jessica and Brady watched him go.

"So," Brady turned to her., his coiffed blonde bangs falling into one eye. "What is the real scoop?"

"Sam was just really quiet. He's so shy that he just doesn't let people get to know him." She glanced toward his retreating tall figure. "He seemed like he just didn't know how to be with a family."

Brady shrugged. "Well, duh. He doesn't."

She bit her shiny glossed lip. "I know. Poor Sam. I feel kinda like he was sad half the time."

"He's always a bit of a party pooper on holidays, Jess." Brady rolled his eyes.

She brushed her mane of wavy hair back and took a pull of her bottle. Brady couldn't help but imagine those lips around his dick. Shame she was Sam's.

"I always wonder how bad his home life was. He just..." She paused, searching for words. "He's so sad when he talks about it."

Sam was heading back to them and they broke off the conversation almost guiltily.

He sat back down at the table and leaned over to give her a peck on her cheek. Jessica accepted the affection with an indulgent smile.

Brady shook his head. "She's kinda perfect, Sam. You're gonna have to marry her."

Sam flushed a little and looked up at Brady. "It's a little early for that but you never know. I just might someday."


The following months were the most peaceful Sam Winchester had ever known in his life.

He and Jessica had to be careful with finances, yet there was something romantic about slowly accumulating the things they needed for the apartment and spending the first few months together on a mattress thrown on the wooden floor with their belongings in boxes, eating Phil's Pizza in front of a tiny TV Zach had given them.

They had Jessica's tall wooden dresser. A queen-sized mattress Sam bought, the television, and Sam's antique wooden desk. Later they added some odds and ends Brady gave them. Jessica's parents lent them assorted things from their house.

Sam quit the lawn care job and kept the hours at the library and things turned into a peaceful rhythm. School and study, work, and Jessica to come home to every night. He was content...except on the occasion when Dean crept into his thoughts and he felt a small squeeze in his chest for that little piece that was missing.

Eventually though, his recollections of Dean grew a little less often, a little less urgent, and it seemed that his childhood and adolescence was something from another life, some strange fever dream separate from his reality.

He should have known better. Peace wasn't for Winchesters.


It was October. There wasn't much chill in the air in Palo Alto. No leaves turning, no dark and frosted nights. Just more pleasant weather.

"Sam, what are we going to be for Halloween?" Jess asked brightly, her hand laced in his as they passed a Halloween shop in the strip mall.

Sam turned his head to look at the display window stocked with various latex masks. A parade of the grotesque.

He shrugged. "I don't dress up."

She tugged him inside the shop and Sam followed like a dog on a leash...or an obedient husband. One in the same sometimes, Dean would have said.

"Oh, come on." She said brightly, letting go of him and weaving through the store. Sam paused, casting an eye around the macabre display. Some of it was comical, he supposed.

Bits of knowledge gleaned from his past came flooding through to his current life. He knew from experience flesh wounds didn't gape in quite that way. They puckered in a different pattern. The meat slick and shiny underneath. Sometimes there was fascia visible in the bits of bloody muscle fibers. An axe embedded in a skull didn't look like that either. It was more horrible in real life, though somehow less dramatic.

Based on the lore and Dad's accounts- werewolves definitely didn't look like that.

He circled around behind Jess and knocked into a mask that brushed his shoulder.

He started and stepped away. "God dammit!"

An evil clown's face leered up at him, sharp yellowed teeth and yellow eyes. Something about the yellow eyes made him recoil instinctively. Brought up some recollection he didn't want to recall. Couldn't quite grasp, although it wanted to bleed through a gauzy shield in his memory.

She turned to look at him, eyebrow raised in surprise. "Not a fan of clowns?"

Sam stepped away, blinking. "I freaking hate clowns."

"Does this extend to mimes?" she asked, dead pan.

"Uh, pretty much anything in the clown realm." Sam replied. He took a breath to calm his racing heart and suddenly didn't feel very well. A sense of doom flooded him. Memories of days spent in lonely, isolated boredom at Plucky Pennywhistle's, abandoned by Dean with a only a handful of quarters to keep him company. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting for someone to come get him.

Or at the library, buried in books. Waiting. Waiting.

In the car. Waiting. Waiting. Wondering if his brother and father would come back alive. Wondering what he would do if they didn't.

The air left his lungs.

Jessica had turned away and didn't seem to notice. "You read Stephen King's IT too young?"

Sam shook his head to clear it, his former reality catching up to him. He swallowed hard, unsure why the sensations were overwhelming him like this. He steadied his voice. "Something like that."

Jess picked up a Sailor Moon outfit and held it up to herself, cocking her head coyly.

"What do you think?"

Sam forced a smile. "I...I think you'd make a... hot anime character."

She smiled brightly, but the smile faltered on her full lips as she studied his face. "Hey, what is it?" She tilted her head and a cascade of blonde mane fell over her shoulder.

"I'm just not fond of the holiday."

"Everyone loves Halloween, Sam."

"I'm..." he steadied himself. He'd been around this shit his whole life. Facing a few rubber masks should be nothing to him. Not even a blip on the radar. "I don't."

"Why?"

"I just..." he took a breath again and squared his shoulders. "Look, you can love it. I don't have to."

Jessica seemed a little baffled by his personality shift. "I want to share it with you. Come on. Let's do a couple's thing."

Sam's tone was sharper than he'd meant it to be. "Jessica, no."

She seemed shocked. As if her mild-mannered puppy had growled at her. "You don't have to be a jerk about it. Are you still upset by the clown?"

"Look I gotta...I'm gonna wait outside." He turned on his heel and left the store, back into the Palo Alto sunshine.

Jess came out a few minutes later. She extended a hand to take his arm. "Hey. Talk to me."

"I'm sorry I snapped at you." He said, his face soft with apology

"Just tell me what's wrong?" She asked, stepping into his space a bit.

"Nothing."

"Oh come on, Sam, don't do that." She looked a little defeated, her hand still on his arm before she let it go.

Sam glanced around at the people passing by, automatically feeling shy. He shrank into himself a little. "I don't... can we talk about it later?"

"You never want to talk about anything that's happened to you and I try not to push. But you need to let me in sometimes, you know."

"I let you in more than I've ever let anyone in." He protested.

"That makes me sad for you." She didn't say it with any malice or irony.

Somehow the remark hurt him. He blinked back his emotion, tried to cover it.

"Yeah." He tightened his jaw.

She looked frustrated and he could see she was debating whether to push him or not.

"It's a holiday that celebrates everything wrong with the world, Jess. All the cruelty and depravity. Man's darkest impulses. Our nightmares."

"It's a dress up day!" She countered. "It's a time to thumb our collective noses at death."

Sam shrugged. "I just don't do it...I mean you can. I'm not gonna stop you."

"Fine. I'll dress up."

Sam nodded. "Good. You should."

"This feels like it's more a personal reaction rather than a philosophical one."

Dammit. She knew him too well.

She looked up into his face, studying him. "You gonna tell me about it so I can understand?"

Sam's shoulders tightened again. He hadn't quite adapted to being with a person who wanted to talk feelings out- drag them out into the open, examine them.

Sheer vulnerability.

Openness and trust.

It was so opposite what he'd been conditioned to do. What he did on instinct.

Ironically, of the Winchesters, Sam himself was the one most apt to want to talk things out...but he realized now that he had nothing on women.

They were amazing to him-all that openness right there on the surface. They could verbalize feelings before he even had time to process WHAT he was feeling. It was like alchemy.

It was also maddening when he wanted to escape the scrutiny.

"It's complicated."

"Of course it is. Everything is complicated with my Sam." She took his hand. "Come on, Mr Privacy." She led him circling around the side of the building, where there was less people and sat on empty iron bench with a plaque commemorating a long deceased family member no one knew or cared about. She pulled him down with her.

He sat down and sighed, dropping his elbows onto his knees and curling his height into himself a little.

"Tell me what's wrong." She said again. "I'm tired of being locked out."

Her authoritative tone surprised him. That wasn't Jessica's manner.

"I..." he pulled himself up to look at her. "To you the gore is fun and silly but I've seen it. I've lived with the effects my whole life. My dad...he woke at night terrified from what he saw in Nam. I've heard the stories. Seen those old black and white documentaries. My mom..." he swallowed. "She burned to death, Jess. In my nursery. I don't remember it, but I saw what that did to my Dad. To Dean, even. I spent most Halloweens alone in crappy motel scared of drunks and watching people parade around in masks." He paused in his litany, his brows knitting together. "Can you understand what I'm saying?"

She'd gone soft-eyed. "God, Sam. I'm so sorry your life has been unkind."

The sympathy made him feel sorry for himself and he shoved the emotion down.

"I've got you now. So maybe it's making up to me," he told her. He took her beautiful hands in his and kissed her gently.

He should have known better. Life didn't make anything up to Winchesters.

Life was unkind.

Always.

And ever.

Thank you for the reviews! I tried to answer them all this time. Please forgive me if I missed you. I promise that the shit is going to hit the fan soon. Stay tuned!