Title: Send You Down to War
Author:![]()
vinylroad
Recipient:![]()
kickaboutheart
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Dean/Jess
Summary:In the rearview mirror, he can see her twist around, her delicate white dress splattered with blood twirling in the wind. Watching him drive away.
Author's Notes: Post!apocaplypse AU. Spoilers up until the end of season 3.
He wakes up confused, the sort of daze he is unaccustomed to. He sleeps heavy and deep, but he never loses his bearings, never forgets the quickest routes outta dodge, the shape of the hotel room, the number of steps to the door, or the gun hidden under his pillow.
The light stings at first, his eyes smarting from the pale beam drifting in from the window. It’s only moonlight, hung low and filtered through dusty, mud streaked glass, but it’s enough to make the ugly expanse of stucco-coloured ceiling visible above him. He recognizes it, the dark black waterstains morphed around the broken drywall like an odd map.
He feels groggy, his arms and legs refusing to move like they don’t understand the orders. The muscles finally contract as he concentrates, erratic jerking that feels like spasms along his spine, like electricity moving down frayed wires.
He shifts on the mattress, the coils squeaking angrily as he tries to lodge his elbows into it for purchase. It’s old – musty, damp, and stinks like piss and earth. His hands sink into the mottled fabric lining like moss, making his fingertips wet with the rusty-coloured water that seeps out.
His legs swivel over the side as he sits up, his head spinning like a bad hangover. When the room stops swirling, he spots the table in the corner, candles burned down to the wick, red and black wax spilt on the surface. He feels the bile rise in his throat as he recognizes the room, wading through the haphazard shuffle of his memories until he pulls out the right one.
Over his shoulder, he can see the large red stain near the center of the mattress, a dried blood lake. Sam’s blood.
He’s not quite sure what he expects, but he definitely doesn’t anticipate the Impala parked on the gravel road outside the cabin. She isn’t dusty, but there’s something different about her, the way she sits on the ground, the angled slope of her body. The metal of the car is warm to the touch, even though the night is cool, and when he opens the door and sinks behind the wheel, he can feel his body slide into the soft groove in the seat. Perfect.
The keys are already in the ignition, his Metallica key chain drifting back and forth gently. Rocking.
The streetlights are out along the highway. Everything is black save for his headlights that struggle against the dark, twin beams that float into the distance and disappear too quickly. He nearly runs off the road twice, the highway curling dangerously around clumps of tall cedars and deep ravines.
After a half-hour without seeing a single car, he switches on his highbeams and guns it up to seventy, the engine groaning under the weight of his foot on the accelerator.
The first city he hits - Lincoln, population 250,000, home of the Nebraska Cornhuskers and birthplace of Johnny Carson - is a giant crater.
He doesn’t stop driving, doesn’t feel tired even after the sun finally rises and he hits the Colorado border. He fills up at a deserted gas station halfway between Holly and Lamar, pushing the button for premium instead of regular because he knows there isn’t a station attendant behind the register.
The small bell over his head jingles when he pushes the door in, stepping inside the small convenience store attached to the gas station. The electricity is still on, oddly enough, and when he opens the door to one of the small fridges to get at the cans of Red Bull and Coke, the cold air mists as it hits the hot air outside, snaking out of the bottom of the fridge like a heavy fog, swirling around his boots.
The cash register is open, the bills and coins inside untouched. He thinks about taking the money for a moment, a swirling instinct in his gut that reminds him he has no cash, no wallet in his pocket. The same gluttonous feeling he fought when he was younger and more impulsive, wilfully deaf when his father’s authoritative voice echoed we’re not thieves, Dean, in his ear.
He leaves the money. Wouldn’t do him much good anyway.
He thumbs through the magazines on the stand across from the register, the dishevelled stacks of newspapers below. His thumb brushes through the thick layer of dust covering the front page, scrubbing until he can see the date.
May 21st, 2010
Breakfast is a microwaved burrito, three Slim Jims and half a can of Red Bull consumed while he sits perched on the hood of the car. He chews deliberately, trying not to think about the abandoned cars a few feet away, their doors still open.
Ninety-six miles later, along a highway running between fields being chewed away by swarms of locusts, he finally sees someone. She’s bent over something on the shoulder of the road, crouched down, the hem of her sundress brushing over the loose gravel. She’s small, and when she looks up toward the slowing Impala, Dean guesses she’s maybe seven or eight, her face still round and chubby with baby fat.
Behind her, he can see a foot and part of a leg resting near the open door of a car. Blood on her hands, dripping off her fingers. She smiles at him gently, calm black lakes floating in her eyes.
He guns the engine, roaring past her. In the rearview mirror, he can see her twist around, her delicate white dress splattered with blood twirling in the wind. Watching him drive away.
Dean drives for two days straight. He knows which way to turn at the stop signs and traffic lights that all blink red. His head fills with roads that he remembers even though he’s never driven them before, directions to a place he’s never been but that he can see clearly in his mind like a fresh planted memory.
When he stops along the road – to piss, to eat, to fill up the gas tank – he feels sick, tipsy and nauseous until he gets back into the car and starts up the engine again. It pushes him hard, doesn’t let him sleep, doesn’t let him rest. The pleasure builds up in the back of his skull, like a gentle pat on the head when he makes the right turns, eats up the distance underneath his tires.
The ranch is thirteen miles south of Lone Pine, California; a two story farmhouse flanked by a wilted forest and bone-dry fields just outside Death Valley. This time when he kills the engine there’s a plum of contentment swirling low in his belly, so pleasurable that he feels himself start to get hard, has to shove a hand over the crotch of his jeans to calm his dick down. Get it to settle.
He has to stop a few hundred yards back from the house, the gravel driveway torn up, a ditch dug a few feet deep to make it impassable by car. He takes the last distance by foot, stripping off his leather jacket to ward off the heat. It’s at least a hundred and humid and he can feel the sweat start to build up along his spine and under his arms without the cool breeze of the car’s air conditioner.
Closer, he can see something burnt into the ground around the house, dark charcoal lines that stretch across the ground and end in a giant circle.
A devil’s trap.
Maybe. The lines are arranged in a way that isn’t familiar, the markings… different.
He hears her before he sees her, the low growl of her warning caught in the desert winds.
She’s on the porch, a rifle tucked solidly against her shoulder, raised. Aimed at him.
“Jess.” The sound is muted by the whipping wind; he can barely hear it himself over the thumping of his heart, the seasick churn returning to his stomach. “Jess,” he says again louder, clearing his throat, turning to face her properly, feet anchored behind the line of the devil’s trap.
For a moment she looks stunned, almost hurt, before her face twists into something bitter. Angry. “This isn’t fucking funny, Sam. Not again.”
“What?” He moves closer, his feet dragging, picking up dust off the ground.
“Stop. It.” She grunts the words roughly, but he can hear the telltale crack in her voice, the same when the werewolves’ teeth got a little too close, when the cuts and bruises were a little too deep, when there was a little too much blood in the backseat. “Don’t.”
“Jess,” he says dumbly, stunned like cattle caught between power lines, the hair on the back of his neck prickling.
He steps over the line, into the circle.
Dean knows it’s a mistake the moment he does it, the way Jess’s face flinches, the way her shoulders rise like the hackles of a dog, aggressive.
He doesn’t actually hear the shot, but he feels the bullet hit his skin, tearing into flesh. For a moment it doesn’t hurt, just a fleeting sting, the prick of a needle. Then he feels it, the wet warmth of the blood trickling out of his shoulder, down his chest, the blooming agony settling into his bones, up his neck and through the corded muscles of his arms.
Knees to ground, the hard gravel digging into flesh through his jeans painfully until he tips over, landing on his side.
He hears the crunching of her boots echoing along the ground until her shadow drifts over his prone body, offering relief from the unrelenting sun. She has the rifle trained down on him, circling him like a vulture. Face flat and sore, she watches him bleed.
“What the fuck?” he whines, clutching at his shoulder.
Jess’s face softens, her eyebrows arching high as she drops the barrel of the gun away from him.
“Dean?” she asks gently before he passes out.
He wakes up settled into something soft. He’s groggy. Drugged.
When he shifts in the large bed, he feels something wrapped around his shoulder. He sees white out of the corner of his eye, the bandage spotted with a whisper of red, a dark stain below hidden by thin layers of cotton. It doesn’t hurt, not really, though he can feel the ache of the muscle beneath his skin like a subtle threat, lost in the distance.
“Don’t move,” he hears her say softly, her voice calm, but authoritative. He lolls his head to the side to find her curled into a small chair near his bed, her legs bent and folded up to her chest. She leans forward to rest her chin on her knees, wrapping her arms around her lithe, toned legs. “Don’t tear the wound.”
“Jessie?” She reacts to the unwelcome nickname as expected, the corners of her mouth tipping down, but she doesn’t complain. She sighs over his drunk-sounding voice, patient as he slurs.
“Where’s Sam? Jess, where’s Sam?” he asks roughly before he passes out again.
She’s still in the chair the second time he wakes up. He feels lethargic, though the hazy drunkness is gone. But with the missing haze comes the pain that is so thick for a second it doesn’t register at all, just a heavy blanket of gravity over his body, pulling him down. But the telltale spike, the sharpness of the wound sneaks to the surface and then it’s a constant thrum in his shoulder.
Gunshot wounds are different than knives or claws, less of the burn of friction on the edges of the skin pulled apart. Bullet wounds feel hollow, empty aching that makes Dean want to pound his chest, fill in the hole. He’s been shot three times: once by a state trooper on his first hunt alone, thinking he, and not the body of the chaos jackal at his feet, had been the one slicing open all the pizza delivery boys in the area. Once by Sam when he was fifteen and the buck of the shotgun had caught him offguard, blown the spray wide, killing the satyr but knicking Dean as well; his father had spent the better part of an evening pulling buckshot out of his left ass cheek, a memory Dean is happy to bury deep.
And now once by Jess.
Her eyes are shut, her head tilted against the high back of the chair, her chest rising softly below her collarbones. Rhythmic breath of sleep.
Her eyes crack open a minute later, blinking quickly before settling. She disentangles her arms from her legs, stretching them out beneath her. He’s forgotten how long she is, the way her limbs seem to go on forever, miles and miles of skin and flesh.
The curves are still there, the soft roundness of her face and her breasts, easy slope of her hips and thighs. But it’s different now, a sharpness hidden just below the surface, like stripped away she’d be nothing but angles and corners. She has a sunburn, dark pink skin down her nose and along the ridges of her cheeks, bleeding into the paler spots around her mouth.
She stares, silent.
“Gotta piss,” Dean mumbles, thumping his head back onto the soft pillow beneath it. He hisses when his shoulder moves the wrong way as he sits up, a sharp, hot pain sliding through the flesh of his chest and shoulder like lightning. He lets out a huff of pain, a shaky exhale, and she stands quickly, pulling open a drawer next to the bed.
“Here,” she says, wrapping her fingers around his wrist and turning his palm up. She lets a few small pills drop into his cupped hand and passes him a coffee mug filled with lukewarm water. He tilts his head back, lets the pills slide down his throat dry before he gulps down the water.
He looks at the bottle. Oxycodone. Carl Forester. Take as needed for pain.
“Give me your-” she says, not waiting for compliance before slipping her hands under his good shoulder, helping pry him away from the headboard and swing his legs over the side of the bed. He can feel her hands shaking underneath him, even as she lets his weight fall back on the bed. It isn’t from the strain.
She leans down to scoop his body up, levering her shoulder under his to hold his weight more securely. Getting up feels like hot blades being slipped into his body slowly, a hot, aching stretch and burn. She grunts low when he finally lets all of his weight rest on her, and she wraps an arm around him to steady their movement, his hip slotting perfectly into the crook of her elbow. When he turns his head her hair brushes against his face, along his lips and across his cheek. Thin, soft strands that smell like wood and linen, sheared off at the ends like she took a razor to it. She had cut it that first year with them, most of it burned up in the fire and the rest hacked off in the shitty motel bathroom outside Palo Alto when they finally let her out of the hospital. Ended up with chunky layers that she never let grow past her shoulders, that spent most of the time up in a haphazard ponytail that Sam used to tug on to piss her off.
He lets his face fall into her neck, his nose brushing up into the unguarded spot behind her ear.
He feels her tense, all of her muscles suddenly pulled tight, the sharp corners under her skin prickling to the surface. “It’s ok,” he says, the soft wavy bits of her hair tickling at his mouth as he moves his lips. He lets his hand settle on the supple, tanned skin of her shoulder.
He pulls his face away from her neck, his lips worrying into a flat line as his hand falls down her back, fingertips dragging along unmarked skin.
“Jess?” he asks, feeling the ghost of mutilated flesh under his palm. She flinches.
He shakes his head, confused. “What happened? Where’re your-”
She shuffles off his hand roughly, using her body to steer him towards the bathroom.
He’s almost afraid to ask. He doesn’t want to know why Sam isn’t there because any answer she could give isn’t going to be one that he wants to hear. She doesn’t offer any answers either, silent as she pulls off the old dressing on his shoulder and inspects the wound, slathering ointment along the weeping flesh.
“I’m sorry,” she says finally, taping the new dressing to his skin. The silver bullet she dug out of his shoulder is still sitting on the kitchen table in a small dish, tweezers set across the top.
“And you shot me because?” The tone is light, almost joking, but she doesn’t smile.
He can tell from her mouth, from the way she sets her jaw and sucks at her bottom lip that she’s deliberating how much she’s planning on telling him. It irritates him more than he’d like to admit, suddenly feeling like a child that she feels needs protection.
She sighs, letting her fingers drift down until her nail catches on his bicep. “After-” she starts, pausing for a moment to breathe shakily. “You weren’t the only thing that showed up wearing your face.”
His lips part in shock. He leans back against the chair, the wood back digging into his sore shoulder.
“You called me Sam, Jess,” Dean pressures, urging her on gently.
It sets her off anyway, her face snapping closed like a steel trap, her eyes shifting to the left, away from him.
The instant coffee tastes like shit, but it’s hot and thick and that’s good enough for Dean. It’s humid as hell in the house, but he curls his hands around the cup like it’s the middle of winter, feeling the heat burn through the cheap porcelain.
Jess just watches her cup steam on the table. Drops in another sugar cube, watching it melt into the dark liquid.
“At first, I thought it was going to be ok. He didn’t talk for a couple weeks, slept most of the time, wouldn’t eat unless I shoved the food down his throat.” She snatches up a small spoon off the table, tapping it against her thigh nervously. “But then he started eating again, started talking, even picked up a couple hunts. I thought he was going to be ok.”
Dean sucks in a harsh breath, winded. His chest aches, the bullet wound forgotten. He doesn’t want to hear this, not at all. It was easier to die for a reason, to know that Sam would be ok, that he’d mourn and move on. Not this.
“He started changing,” Jess explains, rubbing her thumb over the surface of the spoon. “When he realized we couldn’t get you out of hell. Slow. Like your last year. Started using his powers.”
She runs her middle finger along her collarbone, letting it trail up over her right shoulder, along the skin that had once been marked and burnt, twisted masses of scar tissue. “I woke up one night and he had just done it,” she says. “Like it was nothing.”
The spoon lands on the table with a loud clatter. “But I knew. I knew it. Saw it in his face.” Her eyes narrow. “He was practicing.”
She stands up suddenly, jerkily, grabbing her coffee cup, crossing the kitchen and tossing it into the sink. He hears the distinct crack of porcelain as the cup hits the metal. Her white-knuckled hands grip the edge of the counter as she stares out the small window above the sink.
“Five months later, your body showed up at the door.”
He wakes up on the bed, plucked out of a dream he forgets the instant his eyes flutter open. But the pleasant feeling in his chest makes him think it was a good one. Maybe something with Sammy and Dad. Maybe their camping trip to Mt. Hood, when Dad had let them build the campfire and Sam nearly singed his eyebrows right off. It had been a trip to celebrate Sam’s thirteenth birthday, even though Sam’s idea of a good time was camped out between bookshelves at the library, his nose stuck between musty, brittle pages. But Sam had a good time fishing and picking up broken bits of Latin from Dad, and Dean had lost his virginity to one of the hippie girls living out of a broken down Winnebago parked near the abandoned ranger station by the lake.
He’s about to slip back into it, remembering the hippie’s long black hair and silver bangles that had tinkled together next to his ear as he fucked her, when a soft sigh startles him, wakes him up the rest of the way. He notices the weight on his hip, the warmth of another body bearing down on him.
He finds Jess curled up beside him, her hip knitted to his side. Her arm is slung across his waist, her hand wormed up inside his t-shirt, and her fingers curled against his ribs. He can feel the pads of them against him, the sweet weight of them on his skin.
He moves into it, curving his body, making room for her.
In the morning, when he wakes, she’s back in the chair, curled around herself, her chin tucked down to her chest in sleep.
He sneaks out of the bed slowly, carefully, partially because of his shoulder and partially because the house is old enough that even the slightest weight on the wood floorboards causes them to groan and creak. He plots his course to the bathroom cautiously, stepping on the seams between boards when he can, finding the places that will take his weight.
The small florescent lamp above the mirrored medicine cabinet inside the bathroom flickers, struggling to light. It bathes his face in unnatural light.
Carefully, he lifts the hem of his grey, worn t-shirt. He looks for them, the little trophies of battle, memories etched in scar tissue. The claw marks from the succubus. The long curved wound from the scythe of a dreamwalker around his torso, dipping down over his hipbone in a pink-silver strand. The patch of skin burnt by the fiery exhale of a phantom Klansman’s horse below his shoulder blade. The scar just under his nipple from Sam, where he nicked Dean with a knife during physical training when Sam was seventeen and already had his bags packed, secretly, for college.
He sees nothing but skin, perfectly smooth.
Dean would kill for eggs and bacon. Or eggs and sausage. Or eggs and Canadian bacon. Basically, something… porky – he’s really not that picky. Fatty and delicious, crispy, crunchy bacon-
Jess sets down the bowl of fruit loops roughly, pouring thin looking milk out a pitcher with cows painted along the base. The milk is so watery it almost looks blue in his bowl.
He considers it for a minute before his stomach begins to complain, and he figures it’s better than nothing, so he scoops too big a spoonful into his mouth, leaving the spoon in his mouth until he manages to swallow some of it, reduce the threat of leakage. It tastes about as good as it looks. He smacks his lips, running the flavour off his tongue.
“Sorry, powdered.” She pours some into her own bowl, scooping up the floating coloured hoops with her spoon and popping them into her mouth. “You’ll get used to it.”
“Uch,” Dean moans, shrugging before he pops another bite into his mouth, resigned.
“There was a lot of the fresh stuff in the freezer,” she explains, “but I went through most of it by the end of the first year.”
Dean freezes, his spoon halfway to his mouth. “How long have you been here?”
She brings the bowl up to her mouth, tips it against her lips and drinks the leftover milk-water. She smudges her wrist along her jaw when she finishes. Sloppy.
“I stopped counting,” she says.
The heat is uncomfortable. Dean’s always preferred the cold of the northeast, the bitter winters of Maine and Delaware. The heat is inescapable, makes him feel trapped and desperate, like an unshakable fever.
This close to Death Valley, he can see the heat in the air, whipping up off the sandy, dead grass, hazy.
“The house-” Dean starts to say, his foot scrapping along the lines of the trap in the gravel outside.
Jess squints as she stares into the wind. It’s coming from the East – strong. The weathervane on the roof of the house screeches as it’s spun around carelessly.
“We were in Vermont in early May. Sam had started tracking these omens across the Midwest - blood rivers, rain of toads, swarming serpents. Got this frantic voicemail from Bobby and I couldn’t get him on the damn phone.” She runs a hand through her choppy hair, hanging on to the ends when she gets there. “I went to bed in Vermont and woke up here.”
She laughs, but it isn’t friendly or carefree. Just dark, her teeth bared. She shakes her head, lets her hair droop down in front of her eyes. “I should’ve seen this coming. Should’ve seen it coming.”
“This?” Dean asks, kicking dirt over a section of the charcoal lines. It immediately blows away, the lines undisturbed.
“It was here,” she says. “It was already done.” She stares into the distance like there’s something out there other than flat fields of chewed, dead grass. Then back toward the house behind them, the yellow paint of it being stripped by the salty air. “Packed full of food, ready. He’d been planning it.”
He asks because he has to. “What did he do?”
This time she doesn’t hesitate. “He opened the gate again.”
His hands curl into fists, his nails digging into his fleshy palm. He knows why. He knows why.
“That first time… that wasn’t the army he was supposed to lead. Those demons - they’re infants, Dean. We thought Yellow Eyes was the top of the food chain.” She shakes her head. “Teenager. What Sam let out…”
Her words are short, out of breath, like she’s run a mile in the heat. Like it hurts to push the air out of her lungs. “They don’t even look like them. They’re not smoke. They have shape. They’re… different.”
She turns to him. “Can’t exorcise them, can’t kill them. Their only weakness is salt.”
“Death Valley,” Dean mumbles to himself, suddenly realizing the importance of their location.
“Yeah. The salt pans. They’ve all congregated inland, around Kansas and Nebraska, last I’d heard; they won’t go near the coasts – too much salt in the air. But the salt pans are as good as consecrated ground. They don’t come ‘round here unless they have to.”
She walks over to him, her toes brushing up to the edge of the circle. “That,” she says, her toes shifting in the dust, pointing, “keeps them away. I don’t think they can see anything inside it.” She swallows and he watches her throat work, the clean, beautiful line of her neck. “I think they’ve been looking for me.”
The temperature swings wildly, unbearably hot during the day to mind-numbingly cold at night. As soon as the sun hits the edge of the horizon, the cool air floats into the house, swirling violently against the hot air still trapped behind the curtains.
Changing the gauze again, she’s careful as she peels the tape off his skin, inching it slowly until it finally detaches with a loud slurping sound, tossing the damp bandage into the trashcan by the chair he’s sitting in. She thumbs at the wound thoughtfully, checking the stitching. He can see the perfect zig-zag of dark thread in his shoulder, bold through the red, angry flesh.
“No fluid build up,” she says under her breath. “Good, good.”
He had been the one to teach her how to put in stitches, how to snag the skin just right so the wound would heal properly, how to clean the wound out, how to sterilize the needles to prevent infection. She had bent over his shoulder in a poorly-lit motel room, Sam passed out face-down on the bed beside them with a fresh line of stitches up his back like a crooked ladder, and he had shown her, walked her through it as she pinched the broken skin from the machete wound back together.
He had kissed her for the first time that night, too. Her fingers still rich with his blood, she had left fingerprints on his face, lines of it dragging down his neck. It hadn’t felt like a betrayal and Sam didn’t treat it as one, touching the bloody marks on Dean’s neck the next morning.
“How’s the pain?” she asks quietly, moving the hand from his shoulder to his head, her fingers trawling gently through his soft spikes, her thumb rubbing against his forehead
“S’okay,” he answers, his voice catching roughly as one of her nails snags against his scalp. She’s standing between his legs, her body so close he can smell the hard medicinal lime scent of her soap. She lets out a shocked oh when his hands wrap around the backs of her thighs, tugging her closer and locking her in. He puts his face into her belly, noses her shirt up so he can put his cheek against her bare skin.
He lets his hands drift up, sliding until he feels the plane of her thigh curve into the round of her ass. Her stomach jumps under his face, shaking as he lets his thumb trace the curve slowly, the nail scraping against the denim on the way back.
“Dean,” she warns quietly.
One of his hands slides around, quick, wrapping in her shirt and tugging her down, making her bend at the knees until her nose bumps his. Her mouth splits open for him like a ripe piece of fruit, perfect and sweet. Takes his tongue when he offers it.
He finds her on the porch on the half-broken swing.
“You angry at me?” he asks, feeling stupid. Vulnerable.
Her mouth screws together, puckered like she’s sucking on something sour. She rubs at her bare arms, warming them against the cold. “You didn’t even think about it, did you?” she asks bitterly. “You didn’t even think about what it was going to be like for me to lose you.”
“What?” he asks, his heart accelerating, thumping hard and fast in his chest. He lets his hip rest against the rail of the porch.
“You just left me there, in that cabin with his body rotting on that mattress. Left me to sell something that you had no right to sell.” Her hand slams down on the banister, making the wood groan. “You were mine too, Dean. All those months after, telling me what I needed to do once you were gone, how to take care of Sam, like I wasn’t fucking losing something too. Like I wasn’t losing you too!”
He takes a deep breath, the chilly air cooling his overheated chest. “I thought…” He pauses, trying to choose his words, trying to help her understand. “You and Sam had a life before me. You could’ve had one after me. I got you two into this – got Sam back into this when he was ready to... it was my fault.”
The memories feel too raw still, like sandpaper sliding up his back, stripping away layers of skin and flesh. Sam face-up on the mattress in the dank, musty cabin, lips already turning blue, pasty-coloured skin stark against the slow bloom of red forming underneath his corpse. Jess tucked in next to him, head on his chest, arm over his waist. Shaking.
“You really believe that?” The swing’s rusty joints squeal when she gets up, moving toward him. She wraps her hand around his talisman, her knuckles skimming his chest. She tugs on the leather rope, making it dig into his neck. “You’re a fucking idiot, Dean.”
She disappears back into the house.
This time he wakes up when she gets on the bed.
It’s dark. The moon’s only a sliver in the sky, just enough light to see the silhouette of her face against the backlight of the window. She’s crawling over him when he opens his eyes, her hands brushing over his torso as she searches for purchase. When she finds the position she’s looking for, she drops her weight slowly onto him, plastering herself to his bare chest, nuzzling her face along his good shoulder until she reaches his neck.
“Jess,” he croaks softly. She’s straddling his hips, her bare legs cocked wide and rubbing against the thin skin near his hipbones. One hand wormed into the tight cove beneath the small of his back, the other on his chest, palm warm against his nipple. She’s so close he can feel her eyelashes dancing along his jaw when she blinks, her nose rubbing against his adam’s apple when he swallows.
She shifts until their mouths are only inches apart; he can feel her hot breath against his lips, a rhythmic puff that grows ragged when he lifts his hands, running them up her loose t-shirt, against the flat of her stomach to the swell of her breasts. When one of his thumbs tilts up, stroking the underside of her breast, she moans sweetly, squirms against his chest and lets her mouth slot with his. She opens the kiss, nudging her mouth up until she’s dragging her teeth down his upper lip.
By the time she reaches down to cup him through his boxers, he’s blindingly hard; he can feel the damp fabric brush his dick when she presses it down, roughing up his crotch. She slithers down his body, bumping her tits along his torso, dragging them down hard enough for him to feel the hard pebbles of her nipples through her shirt.
His boxers come down with a hard tug, resting on his thighs as she takes his cock in her hand, stroking, her thumb running up the underside. He bends a knee when she settles between his legs and takes him into her mouth, chasing her lips with her hands when she sucks up and off. Her suction is gentle and sweet, but she’s mean with her teeth, dragging them just hard enough to contrast with the soft touch of her tongue. He slaps the mattress with an open palm when they catch on the head of his dick, and she kisses the hurt better. She rubs the head against her lips after, spreading the precome and spit across her swollen mouth before she takes him in her mouth again, sinking down as far as she can.
“Oh God. Jesus- your mouth. Fuck,” Dean grunts inelegantly, trying to hold his hips down, trying to resist fucking up into her mouth, forcing her to take the rest of him.
When he starts to feel the telltale signs, the tight, short feeling rising up in his balls, he reaches down and pulls her up, making her pop off his dick with a soft cry of complaint. He kisses her when she comes up, eats at her mouth until he can taste the bitter-salt of himself on her tongue.
“Take it off,” he says roughly, tugging at her shirt. His arm is still too sore to pull it over her head, so he lets her remove it, instead sneaking his hand into her white cotton underwear, feeling for her. Her shirt is only halfway off when he pushes a finger into the wet cleft, collar still snagged around her head; she moans, trapped by the wound cotton of her shirt as he fingers her clit sloppily. After she pulls it off, he leans up, taking one of her nipples into his mouth. She hisses when he bites down and then suckles, raking her nails down his back, leaving a sharp, hot pain. He releases her breast, twisting her hips and flipping her down onto the bed. She spreads her legs lewdly, making room for him between them. He settles, using his good shoulder to support his weight, opening his mouth over her panties, scrawling his teeth over the damp, scratchy material. He can taste her through them, through the light, flowery tang of the fabric detergent. It makes his mouth water, his hips hump against the sheets, dragging the wet tip of dick against the cool cotton.
“Ah, Fuck,” she whines, her hand reaching down to fist in his hair. “Fuck. Dean.”
He uses his bad arm to snag her underwear to the side, runs his thumb over the top of her cunt before he leans into lick it, the flat of his tongue running against her. Her hips jump, her thighs shaking, and he knows that it won’t take much, that she’s already worked herself halfway there. She tastes perfect, like girl, but distinctly Jess, familiar on his tongue.
He lets her underwear go, the sticky fabric staying put, and uses his free hand to touch her pussy, wetting his fingers before he presses lower. He hears her let out a low cry when he circles a finger around her asshole, teasing her.
“Please,” she whispers, begging, and the sound of it makes him lean in, take her clit between his lips and suck. Her thighs close around his head, pinching at his ears while her hips jerk up, humping at his face.
The pressure between his ears fades as her thighs unclamp, slowly spreading, her muscles loose and relaxed with her orgasm. She sighs, reaching a hand down to run her fingers over his wet, sticky lips. “Such a pretty mouth,” she says hazily, bringing her damp fingers back to her own lips, sucking on them softly, innocently. Her eyes grow dark after though, and she extends one of her legs, running her toes along his back, over his hips and against his ass. “Fuck me, Dean.”
He moves quicker than she expects him to, and he sees it in her eyes, the way they widen in the dark, glassy as he moves over her. He hooks a leg quickly, spreading her, snubbing his dick roughly against her until he finally slides into the perfect wet heat. He leans over as his hips work, sucking and biting the skin around her neck roughly, grunting into her collarbone before she drags his head up and kisses him, sucks on his sneaky tongue.
He fucks her like that until the pain in his shoulder gets too strong, too much for him to handle. She sees it in his face, running a hand along his jaw before she disentangles herself, letting him guide her over onto her knees. He balances himself behind her, fucking into her again, reaching a hand underneath her to rub at her warmth.
One hand on the small of her back, his wet finger leaving streaks along her spine, he pushes her chest down to the mattress and she grunts, falling the rest of the way, finding her own angle, where he slides into her just right. It makes her tight, and his thigh quake, his orgasm rushing up through him, spilling hot and wet inside her.
She stays on her knees when he pulls out, and he leans down, flicks his tongue over her, curling along her sore, swollen clit. She explodes, her fingers clawing into the sheets, a soft wail exhaled into the mattress.
Her legs threaten to collapse, so he wraps an arm around her waist to support her body, helping her down to the mattress. He curls his body around her, shapes her tired, haphazard limbs until she’s tucked against him. He can feel the mixture of their come seeping out onto his thigh.
The room is quiet when she says it, filled with his sleepy breath. “You really thought I could choose between you.”
She’s still asleep beside him when he wakes up.
“Do you remember anything?” she asks groggily when she wakes under his roving hands, her body stretching leisurely against his.
“No,” he says honestly, his fingers finding a rosy nipple and stroking it, feeling it harden under his touch.
She sighs deeply, taking one of his thighs between her own. “Good.”
There’s real coffee in the kitchen. He can smell it when he reaches the bottom of the stairs, the distinct smell of freshly ground beans lingering in the air. On the table, there’s a pound of it in a small sack, flanked by packages of sugar and flour.
In the fridge, there’s fresh milk, cuts of pork and beef wrapped in brown paper. The door to the pantry swings open on its hinges, and he can see the shelves lined with cans and bottles. He knows without looking there will be seedless raspberry jam and pumpkin pie filling.
“What the fuck,” Dean barks as Jess rounds the corner in her t-shirt and panties. She freezes in the doorway.
She looks strangely guilty.
“He was here?”
She shrugs her shoulders, looking defeated.
“What the hell, Jess. What does that mean?”
“It means I don’t fucking know.” She leans against the doorframe, gripping the stained wood with nervous fingers. “I’ve never seen him. Shit would show up - food and books and things. But…”
“But what?”
“I know you can feel it too,” she says in a whisper, hushed like a secret. “Watching. He’s watching.”
Dean falls into the chair, the legs scraping against the floor when he hits the seat, propelled by the heavy weight. He thinks of his drive to California, the sick push in his gut, the way he knew where to go. How the passenger seat never felt empty. Never.
He touches the sacks, lets his fingers sink into the coffee grounds. Sammy.
He decides then. “We need to go,” he says. He bolts out of the chair and moves toward the door. “We need to go, now.”
Jess shakes her head vehemently, snapping her hand across the doorway, blocking Dean’s retreat. “We can’t.”
He crowds into her space, challenging her. She doesn’t fold, keeps her hand firmly planted in front of him, so he reaches for it, tugs it down with mean fingers and curls it between them. “The fuck we can’t. You want to sit here and play house?”
She looks hurt, like his words were a slap to the face. “You think that’s what I’ve been doing?” Her mouth sours.
He calms himself, lets go of her arm. She snatches it back to her body, curling it into herself protectively. He loosens his shoulders, pulls them up and back, but moves closer, less threatening. Searching for closeness. “We need to find him, Jess.”
“You’re fucking injured, I’ve only got a couple clips of ammo left. You don’t know where you’re going.”
The clock on the wall shaped like a rooster crows as it hits the hour.
“I need to go, Jess. I need to find him. Do you understand? I can’t stay here with you, I need to find my brother.”
“How the hell do you think you’re going to find him?” she asks. Her voice takes on a new tone, frantic and scared, like the beat of a heart on the hunt. “You think I didn’t try? He doesn’t want to be found, Dean. And let’s face it, they’re sure as hell more likely to find you first. I don’t know what Sam’s doing, but whatever it is, they don’t fucking like it much.”
And then she says it. Quietly. Like a dark confession. “Or worse, what if I’m wrong. What if he isn’t really Sam anymore?”
He looks at her and he finally sees it - the worn, rough look in her eyes. “I don’t have any answers for you, Dean. I don’t have any answers at all.”
Their sleep is jagged. She tosses and turns, talks in her sleep. Says things that make his stomach flip and his heart ache.
He can’t sleep at all, caught somewhere between wake and rest. His body demands sleep, but his brain refuses to shut down, humming busily with images animated by Jess’s words.
Dean wraps his hand around her, curling up behind her. Finds her heartbeat under his palm and holds on.
He wakes to an empty bed.
Outside on the porch, Jess guards the front door, her boots dragging on the weathered boards as she paces. The rifle lies cocked against the railing, the metal muzzle pointed up toward the sky.
Dean walks out, letting the screen door clatter back against the doorframe. She doesn’t turn, but he can tell that she’s looking for him out of the corner of her eye.
She jumps when he slithers his hands around her from behind, drops his chin onto her shoulder. He breathes her in before he speaks, lets her adjust to his presence. “I won’t leave you,” he promises gravely, his voice hard and sure. “We need to find Sam, but I’m not leaving you behind and I’m not forcing you to come with me. We’ll figure it out.”
He can feel her cheeks lift gently, a hand scooping back to rest against the scruff of his neck, thumbing at the soft hair there. “Ok,” she says.
Suddenly, her muscles tense. He follows her line of sight and in the distance, he can see a figure walking up the road. The outline is tall, lanky, striding quickly toward the house; fanning out behind him, a slew of other shapes appear, flanking the leader.
For a moment, he sees Sam. His crooked nose, obnoxiously flippy hair, and stupid smile, and his heart clenches with something stuck between fear and utter joy. But as they grow closer, the image of Sam fades away, replaced by an older looking man, at least forty, with pitch black eyes and a mouth full of shiny, sharp teeth. He stops at the edge of the circle surrounding the house, staring at it curiously.
Jess pulls away from Dean, moving toward the rifle to her left.
“Hi there,” the man says cheerfully. He straightens his business suit out, fussing with the folded handkerchief in his breast pocket and pulling at his tie. “We’ve been looking for you for a while, sweetheart.”
He winks at Dean. “Thanks.”
Jess brings the rifle to her shoulder as the man steps over the circle, firing one shot between his eyes. The man drops to his knees, his body lit with fire as the demon inside him dies. The others in the group fall back, giving clearance to the circle. They hiss out their anger, but smile viciously. They don’t advance, but instead spread around the perimeter, surrounding them.
Waiting.
Jess turns to Dean, fisting her hand in his shirt with shaky fingers.
“Dean,” Jess says, her voice cracking, fear deep and solid in her tone. He reaches up to touch her face, calm her. “Dean, did anyone see you? Did anyone follow you?”
He freezes, his hand cupping the gentle slope of her jaw.
In the rearview mirror, he can see her twist around, her delicate white dress splattered with blood twirling in the wind. Watching him drive away.
Jess closes her eyes at his silence, her breath ragged. “Oh no.”
In the horizon, a black tide washes in, swallowing the morning sky. The beat of wings echoes in the distance.
Author:
vinylroadRecipient:
kickaboutheartRating: NC-17
Pairing: Dean/Jess
Summary:In the rearview mirror, he can see her twist around, her delicate white dress splattered with blood twirling in the wind. Watching him drive away.
Author's Notes: Post!apocaplypse AU. Spoilers up until the end of season 3.
He wakes up confused, the sort of daze he is unaccustomed to. He sleeps heavy and deep, but he never loses his bearings, never forgets the quickest routes outta dodge, the shape of the hotel room, the number of steps to the door, or the gun hidden under his pillow.
The light stings at first, his eyes smarting from the pale beam drifting in from the window. It’s only moonlight, hung low and filtered through dusty, mud streaked glass, but it’s enough to make the ugly expanse of stucco-coloured ceiling visible above him. He recognizes it, the dark black waterstains morphed around the broken drywall like an odd map.
He feels groggy, his arms and legs refusing to move like they don’t understand the orders. The muscles finally contract as he concentrates, erratic jerking that feels like spasms along his spine, like electricity moving down frayed wires.
He shifts on the mattress, the coils squeaking angrily as he tries to lodge his elbows into it for purchase. It’s old – musty, damp, and stinks like piss and earth. His hands sink into the mottled fabric lining like moss, making his fingertips wet with the rusty-coloured water that seeps out.
His legs swivel over the side as he sits up, his head spinning like a bad hangover. When the room stops swirling, he spots the table in the corner, candles burned down to the wick, red and black wax spilt on the surface. He feels the bile rise in his throat as he recognizes the room, wading through the haphazard shuffle of his memories until he pulls out the right one.
Over his shoulder, he can see the large red stain near the center of the mattress, a dried blood lake. Sam’s blood.
He’s not quite sure what he expects, but he definitely doesn’t anticipate the Impala parked on the gravel road outside the cabin. She isn’t dusty, but there’s something different about her, the way she sits on the ground, the angled slope of her body. The metal of the car is warm to the touch, even though the night is cool, and when he opens the door and sinks behind the wheel, he can feel his body slide into the soft groove in the seat. Perfect.
The keys are already in the ignition, his Metallica key chain drifting back and forth gently. Rocking.
The streetlights are out along the highway. Everything is black save for his headlights that struggle against the dark, twin beams that float into the distance and disappear too quickly. He nearly runs off the road twice, the highway curling dangerously around clumps of tall cedars and deep ravines.
After a half-hour without seeing a single car, he switches on his highbeams and guns it up to seventy, the engine groaning under the weight of his foot on the accelerator.
The first city he hits - Lincoln, population 250,000, home of the Nebraska Cornhuskers and birthplace of Johnny Carson - is a giant crater.
He doesn’t stop driving, doesn’t feel tired even after the sun finally rises and he hits the Colorado border. He fills up at a deserted gas station halfway between Holly and Lamar, pushing the button for premium instead of regular because he knows there isn’t a station attendant behind the register.
The small bell over his head jingles when he pushes the door in, stepping inside the small convenience store attached to the gas station. The electricity is still on, oddly enough, and when he opens the door to one of the small fridges to get at the cans of Red Bull and Coke, the cold air mists as it hits the hot air outside, snaking out of the bottom of the fridge like a heavy fog, swirling around his boots.
The cash register is open, the bills and coins inside untouched. He thinks about taking the money for a moment, a swirling instinct in his gut that reminds him he has no cash, no wallet in his pocket. The same gluttonous feeling he fought when he was younger and more impulsive, wilfully deaf when his father’s authoritative voice echoed we’re not thieves, Dean, in his ear.
He leaves the money. Wouldn’t do him much good anyway.
He thumbs through the magazines on the stand across from the register, the dishevelled stacks of newspapers below. His thumb brushes through the thick layer of dust covering the front page, scrubbing until he can see the date.
May 21st, 2010
Breakfast is a microwaved burrito, three Slim Jims and half a can of Red Bull consumed while he sits perched on the hood of the car. He chews deliberately, trying not to think about the abandoned cars a few feet away, their doors still open.
Ninety-six miles later, along a highway running between fields being chewed away by swarms of locusts, he finally sees someone. She’s bent over something on the shoulder of the road, crouched down, the hem of her sundress brushing over the loose gravel. She’s small, and when she looks up toward the slowing Impala, Dean guesses she’s maybe seven or eight, her face still round and chubby with baby fat.
Behind her, he can see a foot and part of a leg resting near the open door of a car. Blood on her hands, dripping off her fingers. She smiles at him gently, calm black lakes floating in her eyes.
He guns the engine, roaring past her. In the rearview mirror, he can see her twist around, her delicate white dress splattered with blood twirling in the wind. Watching him drive away.
Dean drives for two days straight. He knows which way to turn at the stop signs and traffic lights that all blink red. His head fills with roads that he remembers even though he’s never driven them before, directions to a place he’s never been but that he can see clearly in his mind like a fresh planted memory.
When he stops along the road – to piss, to eat, to fill up the gas tank – he feels sick, tipsy and nauseous until he gets back into the car and starts up the engine again. It pushes him hard, doesn’t let him sleep, doesn’t let him rest. The pleasure builds up in the back of his skull, like a gentle pat on the head when he makes the right turns, eats up the distance underneath his tires.
The ranch is thirteen miles south of Lone Pine, California; a two story farmhouse flanked by a wilted forest and bone-dry fields just outside Death Valley. This time when he kills the engine there’s a plum of contentment swirling low in his belly, so pleasurable that he feels himself start to get hard, has to shove a hand over the crotch of his jeans to calm his dick down. Get it to settle.
He has to stop a few hundred yards back from the house, the gravel driveway torn up, a ditch dug a few feet deep to make it impassable by car. He takes the last distance by foot, stripping off his leather jacket to ward off the heat. It’s at least a hundred and humid and he can feel the sweat start to build up along his spine and under his arms without the cool breeze of the car’s air conditioner.
Closer, he can see something burnt into the ground around the house, dark charcoal lines that stretch across the ground and end in a giant circle.
A devil’s trap.
Maybe. The lines are arranged in a way that isn’t familiar, the markings… different.
He hears her before he sees her, the low growl of her warning caught in the desert winds.
She’s on the porch, a rifle tucked solidly against her shoulder, raised. Aimed at him.
“Jess.” The sound is muted by the whipping wind; he can barely hear it himself over the thumping of his heart, the seasick churn returning to his stomach. “Jess,” he says again louder, clearing his throat, turning to face her properly, feet anchored behind the line of the devil’s trap.
For a moment she looks stunned, almost hurt, before her face twists into something bitter. Angry. “This isn’t fucking funny, Sam. Not again.”
“What?” He moves closer, his feet dragging, picking up dust off the ground.
“Stop. It.” She grunts the words roughly, but he can hear the telltale crack in her voice, the same when the werewolves’ teeth got a little too close, when the cuts and bruises were a little too deep, when there was a little too much blood in the backseat. “Don’t.”
“Jess,” he says dumbly, stunned like cattle caught between power lines, the hair on the back of his neck prickling.
He steps over the line, into the circle.
Dean knows it’s a mistake the moment he does it, the way Jess’s face flinches, the way her shoulders rise like the hackles of a dog, aggressive.
He doesn’t actually hear the shot, but he feels the bullet hit his skin, tearing into flesh. For a moment it doesn’t hurt, just a fleeting sting, the prick of a needle. Then he feels it, the wet warmth of the blood trickling out of his shoulder, down his chest, the blooming agony settling into his bones, up his neck and through the corded muscles of his arms.
Knees to ground, the hard gravel digging into flesh through his jeans painfully until he tips over, landing on his side.
He hears the crunching of her boots echoing along the ground until her shadow drifts over his prone body, offering relief from the unrelenting sun. She has the rifle trained down on him, circling him like a vulture. Face flat and sore, she watches him bleed.
“What the fuck?” he whines, clutching at his shoulder.
Jess’s face softens, her eyebrows arching high as she drops the barrel of the gun away from him.
“Dean?” she asks gently before he passes out.
He wakes up settled into something soft. He’s groggy. Drugged.
When he shifts in the large bed, he feels something wrapped around his shoulder. He sees white out of the corner of his eye, the bandage spotted with a whisper of red, a dark stain below hidden by thin layers of cotton. It doesn’t hurt, not really, though he can feel the ache of the muscle beneath his skin like a subtle threat, lost in the distance.
“Don’t move,” he hears her say softly, her voice calm, but authoritative. He lolls his head to the side to find her curled into a small chair near his bed, her legs bent and folded up to her chest. She leans forward to rest her chin on her knees, wrapping her arms around her lithe, toned legs. “Don’t tear the wound.”
“Jessie?” She reacts to the unwelcome nickname as expected, the corners of her mouth tipping down, but she doesn’t complain. She sighs over his drunk-sounding voice, patient as he slurs.
“Where’s Sam? Jess, where’s Sam?” he asks roughly before he passes out again.
She’s still in the chair the second time he wakes up. He feels lethargic, though the hazy drunkness is gone. But with the missing haze comes the pain that is so thick for a second it doesn’t register at all, just a heavy blanket of gravity over his body, pulling him down. But the telltale spike, the sharpness of the wound sneaks to the surface and then it’s a constant thrum in his shoulder.
Gunshot wounds are different than knives or claws, less of the burn of friction on the edges of the skin pulled apart. Bullet wounds feel hollow, empty aching that makes Dean want to pound his chest, fill in the hole. He’s been shot three times: once by a state trooper on his first hunt alone, thinking he, and not the body of the chaos jackal at his feet, had been the one slicing open all the pizza delivery boys in the area. Once by Sam when he was fifteen and the buck of the shotgun had caught him offguard, blown the spray wide, killing the satyr but knicking Dean as well; his father had spent the better part of an evening pulling buckshot out of his left ass cheek, a memory Dean is happy to bury deep.
And now once by Jess.
Her eyes are shut, her head tilted against the high back of the chair, her chest rising softly below her collarbones. Rhythmic breath of sleep.
Her eyes crack open a minute later, blinking quickly before settling. She disentangles her arms from her legs, stretching them out beneath her. He’s forgotten how long she is, the way her limbs seem to go on forever, miles and miles of skin and flesh.
The curves are still there, the soft roundness of her face and her breasts, easy slope of her hips and thighs. But it’s different now, a sharpness hidden just below the surface, like stripped away she’d be nothing but angles and corners. She has a sunburn, dark pink skin down her nose and along the ridges of her cheeks, bleeding into the paler spots around her mouth.
She stares, silent.
“Gotta piss,” Dean mumbles, thumping his head back onto the soft pillow beneath it. He hisses when his shoulder moves the wrong way as he sits up, a sharp, hot pain sliding through the flesh of his chest and shoulder like lightning. He lets out a huff of pain, a shaky exhale, and she stands quickly, pulling open a drawer next to the bed.
“Here,” she says, wrapping her fingers around his wrist and turning his palm up. She lets a few small pills drop into his cupped hand and passes him a coffee mug filled with lukewarm water. He tilts his head back, lets the pills slide down his throat dry before he gulps down the water.
He looks at the bottle. Oxycodone. Carl Forester. Take as needed for pain.
“Give me your-” she says, not waiting for compliance before slipping her hands under his good shoulder, helping pry him away from the headboard and swing his legs over the side of the bed. He can feel her hands shaking underneath him, even as she lets his weight fall back on the bed. It isn’t from the strain.
She leans down to scoop his body up, levering her shoulder under his to hold his weight more securely. Getting up feels like hot blades being slipped into his body slowly, a hot, aching stretch and burn. She grunts low when he finally lets all of his weight rest on her, and she wraps an arm around him to steady their movement, his hip slotting perfectly into the crook of her elbow. When he turns his head her hair brushes against his face, along his lips and across his cheek. Thin, soft strands that smell like wood and linen, sheared off at the ends like she took a razor to it. She had cut it that first year with them, most of it burned up in the fire and the rest hacked off in the shitty motel bathroom outside Palo Alto when they finally let her out of the hospital. Ended up with chunky layers that she never let grow past her shoulders, that spent most of the time up in a haphazard ponytail that Sam used to tug on to piss her off.
He lets his face fall into her neck, his nose brushing up into the unguarded spot behind her ear.
He feels her tense, all of her muscles suddenly pulled tight, the sharp corners under her skin prickling to the surface. “It’s ok,” he says, the soft wavy bits of her hair tickling at his mouth as he moves his lips. He lets his hand settle on the supple, tanned skin of her shoulder.
He pulls his face away from her neck, his lips worrying into a flat line as his hand falls down her back, fingertips dragging along unmarked skin.
“Jess?” he asks, feeling the ghost of mutilated flesh under his palm. She flinches.
He shakes his head, confused. “What happened? Where’re your-”
She shuffles off his hand roughly, using her body to steer him towards the bathroom.
He’s almost afraid to ask. He doesn’t want to know why Sam isn’t there because any answer she could give isn’t going to be one that he wants to hear. She doesn’t offer any answers either, silent as she pulls off the old dressing on his shoulder and inspects the wound, slathering ointment along the weeping flesh.
“I’m sorry,” she says finally, taping the new dressing to his skin. The silver bullet she dug out of his shoulder is still sitting on the kitchen table in a small dish, tweezers set across the top.
“And you shot me because?” The tone is light, almost joking, but she doesn’t smile.
He can tell from her mouth, from the way she sets her jaw and sucks at her bottom lip that she’s deliberating how much she’s planning on telling him. It irritates him more than he’d like to admit, suddenly feeling like a child that she feels needs protection.
She sighs, letting her fingers drift down until her nail catches on his bicep. “After-” she starts, pausing for a moment to breathe shakily. “You weren’t the only thing that showed up wearing your face.”
His lips part in shock. He leans back against the chair, the wood back digging into his sore shoulder.
“You called me Sam, Jess,” Dean pressures, urging her on gently.
It sets her off anyway, her face snapping closed like a steel trap, her eyes shifting to the left, away from him.
The instant coffee tastes like shit, but it’s hot and thick and that’s good enough for Dean. It’s humid as hell in the house, but he curls his hands around the cup like it’s the middle of winter, feeling the heat burn through the cheap porcelain.
Jess just watches her cup steam on the table. Drops in another sugar cube, watching it melt into the dark liquid.
“At first, I thought it was going to be ok. He didn’t talk for a couple weeks, slept most of the time, wouldn’t eat unless I shoved the food down his throat.” She snatches up a small spoon off the table, tapping it against her thigh nervously. “But then he started eating again, started talking, even picked up a couple hunts. I thought he was going to be ok.”
Dean sucks in a harsh breath, winded. His chest aches, the bullet wound forgotten. He doesn’t want to hear this, not at all. It was easier to die for a reason, to know that Sam would be ok, that he’d mourn and move on. Not this.
“He started changing,” Jess explains, rubbing her thumb over the surface of the spoon. “When he realized we couldn’t get you out of hell. Slow. Like your last year. Started using his powers.”
She runs her middle finger along her collarbone, letting it trail up over her right shoulder, along the skin that had once been marked and burnt, twisted masses of scar tissue. “I woke up one night and he had just done it,” she says. “Like it was nothing.”
The spoon lands on the table with a loud clatter. “But I knew. I knew it. Saw it in his face.” Her eyes narrow. “He was practicing.”
She stands up suddenly, jerkily, grabbing her coffee cup, crossing the kitchen and tossing it into the sink. He hears the distinct crack of porcelain as the cup hits the metal. Her white-knuckled hands grip the edge of the counter as she stares out the small window above the sink.
“Five months later, your body showed up at the door.”
He wakes up on the bed, plucked out of a dream he forgets the instant his eyes flutter open. But the pleasant feeling in his chest makes him think it was a good one. Maybe something with Sammy and Dad. Maybe their camping trip to Mt. Hood, when Dad had let them build the campfire and Sam nearly singed his eyebrows right off. It had been a trip to celebrate Sam’s thirteenth birthday, even though Sam’s idea of a good time was camped out between bookshelves at the library, his nose stuck between musty, brittle pages. But Sam had a good time fishing and picking up broken bits of Latin from Dad, and Dean had lost his virginity to one of the hippie girls living out of a broken down Winnebago parked near the abandoned ranger station by the lake.
He’s about to slip back into it, remembering the hippie’s long black hair and silver bangles that had tinkled together next to his ear as he fucked her, when a soft sigh startles him, wakes him up the rest of the way. He notices the weight on his hip, the warmth of another body bearing down on him.
He finds Jess curled up beside him, her hip knitted to his side. Her arm is slung across his waist, her hand wormed up inside his t-shirt, and her fingers curled against his ribs. He can feel the pads of them against him, the sweet weight of them on his skin.
He moves into it, curving his body, making room for her.
In the morning, when he wakes, she’s back in the chair, curled around herself, her chin tucked down to her chest in sleep.
He sneaks out of the bed slowly, carefully, partially because of his shoulder and partially because the house is old enough that even the slightest weight on the wood floorboards causes them to groan and creak. He plots his course to the bathroom cautiously, stepping on the seams between boards when he can, finding the places that will take his weight.
The small florescent lamp above the mirrored medicine cabinet inside the bathroom flickers, struggling to light. It bathes his face in unnatural light.
Carefully, he lifts the hem of his grey, worn t-shirt. He looks for them, the little trophies of battle, memories etched in scar tissue. The claw marks from the succubus. The long curved wound from the scythe of a dreamwalker around his torso, dipping down over his hipbone in a pink-silver strand. The patch of skin burnt by the fiery exhale of a phantom Klansman’s horse below his shoulder blade. The scar just under his nipple from Sam, where he nicked Dean with a knife during physical training when Sam was seventeen and already had his bags packed, secretly, for college.
He sees nothing but skin, perfectly smooth.
Dean would kill for eggs and bacon. Or eggs and sausage. Or eggs and Canadian bacon. Basically, something… porky – he’s really not that picky. Fatty and delicious, crispy, crunchy bacon-
Jess sets down the bowl of fruit loops roughly, pouring thin looking milk out a pitcher with cows painted along the base. The milk is so watery it almost looks blue in his bowl.
He considers it for a minute before his stomach begins to complain, and he figures it’s better than nothing, so he scoops too big a spoonful into his mouth, leaving the spoon in his mouth until he manages to swallow some of it, reduce the threat of leakage. It tastes about as good as it looks. He smacks his lips, running the flavour off his tongue.
“Sorry, powdered.” She pours some into her own bowl, scooping up the floating coloured hoops with her spoon and popping them into her mouth. “You’ll get used to it.”
“Uch,” Dean moans, shrugging before he pops another bite into his mouth, resigned.
“There was a lot of the fresh stuff in the freezer,” she explains, “but I went through most of it by the end of the first year.”
Dean freezes, his spoon halfway to his mouth. “How long have you been here?”
She brings the bowl up to her mouth, tips it against her lips and drinks the leftover milk-water. She smudges her wrist along her jaw when she finishes. Sloppy.
“I stopped counting,” she says.
The heat is uncomfortable. Dean’s always preferred the cold of the northeast, the bitter winters of Maine and Delaware. The heat is inescapable, makes him feel trapped and desperate, like an unshakable fever.
This close to Death Valley, he can see the heat in the air, whipping up off the sandy, dead grass, hazy.
“The house-” Dean starts to say, his foot scrapping along the lines of the trap in the gravel outside.
Jess squints as she stares into the wind. It’s coming from the East – strong. The weathervane on the roof of the house screeches as it’s spun around carelessly.
“We were in Vermont in early May. Sam had started tracking these omens across the Midwest - blood rivers, rain of toads, swarming serpents. Got this frantic voicemail from Bobby and I couldn’t get him on the damn phone.” She runs a hand through her choppy hair, hanging on to the ends when she gets there. “I went to bed in Vermont and woke up here.”
She laughs, but it isn’t friendly or carefree. Just dark, her teeth bared. She shakes her head, lets her hair droop down in front of her eyes. “I should’ve seen this coming. Should’ve seen it coming.”
“This?” Dean asks, kicking dirt over a section of the charcoal lines. It immediately blows away, the lines undisturbed.
“It was here,” she says. “It was already done.” She stares into the distance like there’s something out there other than flat fields of chewed, dead grass. Then back toward the house behind them, the yellow paint of it being stripped by the salty air. “Packed full of food, ready. He’d been planning it.”
He asks because he has to. “What did he do?”
This time she doesn’t hesitate. “He opened the gate again.”
His hands curl into fists, his nails digging into his fleshy palm. He knows why. He knows why.
“That first time… that wasn’t the army he was supposed to lead. Those demons - they’re infants, Dean. We thought Yellow Eyes was the top of the food chain.” She shakes her head. “Teenager. What Sam let out…”
Her words are short, out of breath, like she’s run a mile in the heat. Like it hurts to push the air out of her lungs. “They don’t even look like them. They’re not smoke. They have shape. They’re… different.”
She turns to him. “Can’t exorcise them, can’t kill them. Their only weakness is salt.”
“Death Valley,” Dean mumbles to himself, suddenly realizing the importance of their location.
“Yeah. The salt pans. They’ve all congregated inland, around Kansas and Nebraska, last I’d heard; they won’t go near the coasts – too much salt in the air. But the salt pans are as good as consecrated ground. They don’t come ‘round here unless they have to.”
She walks over to him, her toes brushing up to the edge of the circle. “That,” she says, her toes shifting in the dust, pointing, “keeps them away. I don’t think they can see anything inside it.” She swallows and he watches her throat work, the clean, beautiful line of her neck. “I think they’ve been looking for me.”
The temperature swings wildly, unbearably hot during the day to mind-numbingly cold at night. As soon as the sun hits the edge of the horizon, the cool air floats into the house, swirling violently against the hot air still trapped behind the curtains.
Changing the gauze again, she’s careful as she peels the tape off his skin, inching it slowly until it finally detaches with a loud slurping sound, tossing the damp bandage into the trashcan by the chair he’s sitting in. She thumbs at the wound thoughtfully, checking the stitching. He can see the perfect zig-zag of dark thread in his shoulder, bold through the red, angry flesh.
“No fluid build up,” she says under her breath. “Good, good.”
He had been the one to teach her how to put in stitches, how to snag the skin just right so the wound would heal properly, how to clean the wound out, how to sterilize the needles to prevent infection. She had bent over his shoulder in a poorly-lit motel room, Sam passed out face-down on the bed beside them with a fresh line of stitches up his back like a crooked ladder, and he had shown her, walked her through it as she pinched the broken skin from the machete wound back together.
He had kissed her for the first time that night, too. Her fingers still rich with his blood, she had left fingerprints on his face, lines of it dragging down his neck. It hadn’t felt like a betrayal and Sam didn’t treat it as one, touching the bloody marks on Dean’s neck the next morning.
“How’s the pain?” she asks quietly, moving the hand from his shoulder to his head, her fingers trawling gently through his soft spikes, her thumb rubbing against his forehead
“S’okay,” he answers, his voice catching roughly as one of her nails snags against his scalp. She’s standing between his legs, her body so close he can smell the hard medicinal lime scent of her soap. She lets out a shocked oh when his hands wrap around the backs of her thighs, tugging her closer and locking her in. He puts his face into her belly, noses her shirt up so he can put his cheek against her bare skin.
He lets his hands drift up, sliding until he feels the plane of her thigh curve into the round of her ass. Her stomach jumps under his face, shaking as he lets his thumb trace the curve slowly, the nail scraping against the denim on the way back.
“Dean,” she warns quietly.
One of his hands slides around, quick, wrapping in her shirt and tugging her down, making her bend at the knees until her nose bumps his. Her mouth splits open for him like a ripe piece of fruit, perfect and sweet. Takes his tongue when he offers it.
He finds her on the porch on the half-broken swing.
“You angry at me?” he asks, feeling stupid. Vulnerable.
Her mouth screws together, puckered like she’s sucking on something sour. She rubs at her bare arms, warming them against the cold. “You didn’t even think about it, did you?” she asks bitterly. “You didn’t even think about what it was going to be like for me to lose you.”
“What?” he asks, his heart accelerating, thumping hard and fast in his chest. He lets his hip rest against the rail of the porch.
“You just left me there, in that cabin with his body rotting on that mattress. Left me to sell something that you had no right to sell.” Her hand slams down on the banister, making the wood groan. “You were mine too, Dean. All those months after, telling me what I needed to do once you were gone, how to take care of Sam, like I wasn’t fucking losing something too. Like I wasn’t losing you too!”
He takes a deep breath, the chilly air cooling his overheated chest. “I thought…” He pauses, trying to choose his words, trying to help her understand. “You and Sam had a life before me. You could’ve had one after me. I got you two into this – got Sam back into this when he was ready to... it was my fault.”
The memories feel too raw still, like sandpaper sliding up his back, stripping away layers of skin and flesh. Sam face-up on the mattress in the dank, musty cabin, lips already turning blue, pasty-coloured skin stark against the slow bloom of red forming underneath his corpse. Jess tucked in next to him, head on his chest, arm over his waist. Shaking.
“You really believe that?” The swing’s rusty joints squeal when she gets up, moving toward him. She wraps her hand around his talisman, her knuckles skimming his chest. She tugs on the leather rope, making it dig into his neck. “You’re a fucking idiot, Dean.”
She disappears back into the house.
This time he wakes up when she gets on the bed.
It’s dark. The moon’s only a sliver in the sky, just enough light to see the silhouette of her face against the backlight of the window. She’s crawling over him when he opens his eyes, her hands brushing over his torso as she searches for purchase. When she finds the position she’s looking for, she drops her weight slowly onto him, plastering herself to his bare chest, nuzzling her face along his good shoulder until she reaches his neck.
“Jess,” he croaks softly. She’s straddling his hips, her bare legs cocked wide and rubbing against the thin skin near his hipbones. One hand wormed into the tight cove beneath the small of his back, the other on his chest, palm warm against his nipple. She’s so close he can feel her eyelashes dancing along his jaw when she blinks, her nose rubbing against his adam’s apple when he swallows.
She shifts until their mouths are only inches apart; he can feel her hot breath against his lips, a rhythmic puff that grows ragged when he lifts his hands, running them up her loose t-shirt, against the flat of her stomach to the swell of her breasts. When one of his thumbs tilts up, stroking the underside of her breast, she moans sweetly, squirms against his chest and lets her mouth slot with his. She opens the kiss, nudging her mouth up until she’s dragging her teeth down his upper lip.
By the time she reaches down to cup him through his boxers, he’s blindingly hard; he can feel the damp fabric brush his dick when she presses it down, roughing up his crotch. She slithers down his body, bumping her tits along his torso, dragging them down hard enough for him to feel the hard pebbles of her nipples through her shirt.
His boxers come down with a hard tug, resting on his thighs as she takes his cock in her hand, stroking, her thumb running up the underside. He bends a knee when she settles between his legs and takes him into her mouth, chasing her lips with her hands when she sucks up and off. Her suction is gentle and sweet, but she’s mean with her teeth, dragging them just hard enough to contrast with the soft touch of her tongue. He slaps the mattress with an open palm when they catch on the head of his dick, and she kisses the hurt better. She rubs the head against her lips after, spreading the precome and spit across her swollen mouth before she takes him in her mouth again, sinking down as far as she can.
“Oh God. Jesus- your mouth. Fuck,” Dean grunts inelegantly, trying to hold his hips down, trying to resist fucking up into her mouth, forcing her to take the rest of him.
When he starts to feel the telltale signs, the tight, short feeling rising up in his balls, he reaches down and pulls her up, making her pop off his dick with a soft cry of complaint. He kisses her when she comes up, eats at her mouth until he can taste the bitter-salt of himself on her tongue.
“Take it off,” he says roughly, tugging at her shirt. His arm is still too sore to pull it over her head, so he lets her remove it, instead sneaking his hand into her white cotton underwear, feeling for her. Her shirt is only halfway off when he pushes a finger into the wet cleft, collar still snagged around her head; she moans, trapped by the wound cotton of her shirt as he fingers her clit sloppily. After she pulls it off, he leans up, taking one of her nipples into his mouth. She hisses when he bites down and then suckles, raking her nails down his back, leaving a sharp, hot pain. He releases her breast, twisting her hips and flipping her down onto the bed. She spreads her legs lewdly, making room for him between them. He settles, using his good shoulder to support his weight, opening his mouth over her panties, scrawling his teeth over the damp, scratchy material. He can taste her through them, through the light, flowery tang of the fabric detergent. It makes his mouth water, his hips hump against the sheets, dragging the wet tip of dick against the cool cotton.
“Ah, Fuck,” she whines, her hand reaching down to fist in his hair. “Fuck. Dean.”
He uses his bad arm to snag her underwear to the side, runs his thumb over the top of her cunt before he leans into lick it, the flat of his tongue running against her. Her hips jump, her thighs shaking, and he knows that it won’t take much, that she’s already worked herself halfway there. She tastes perfect, like girl, but distinctly Jess, familiar on his tongue.
He lets her underwear go, the sticky fabric staying put, and uses his free hand to touch her pussy, wetting his fingers before he presses lower. He hears her let out a low cry when he circles a finger around her asshole, teasing her.
“Please,” she whispers, begging, and the sound of it makes him lean in, take her clit between his lips and suck. Her thighs close around his head, pinching at his ears while her hips jerk up, humping at his face.
The pressure between his ears fades as her thighs unclamp, slowly spreading, her muscles loose and relaxed with her orgasm. She sighs, reaching a hand down to run her fingers over his wet, sticky lips. “Such a pretty mouth,” she says hazily, bringing her damp fingers back to her own lips, sucking on them softly, innocently. Her eyes grow dark after though, and she extends one of her legs, running her toes along his back, over his hips and against his ass. “Fuck me, Dean.”
He moves quicker than she expects him to, and he sees it in her eyes, the way they widen in the dark, glassy as he moves over her. He hooks a leg quickly, spreading her, snubbing his dick roughly against her until he finally slides into the perfect wet heat. He leans over as his hips work, sucking and biting the skin around her neck roughly, grunting into her collarbone before she drags his head up and kisses him, sucks on his sneaky tongue.
He fucks her like that until the pain in his shoulder gets too strong, too much for him to handle. She sees it in his face, running a hand along his jaw before she disentangles herself, letting him guide her over onto her knees. He balances himself behind her, fucking into her again, reaching a hand underneath her to rub at her warmth.
One hand on the small of her back, his wet finger leaving streaks along her spine, he pushes her chest down to the mattress and she grunts, falling the rest of the way, finding her own angle, where he slides into her just right. It makes her tight, and his thigh quake, his orgasm rushing up through him, spilling hot and wet inside her.
She stays on her knees when he pulls out, and he leans down, flicks his tongue over her, curling along her sore, swollen clit. She explodes, her fingers clawing into the sheets, a soft wail exhaled into the mattress.
Her legs threaten to collapse, so he wraps an arm around her waist to support her body, helping her down to the mattress. He curls his body around her, shapes her tired, haphazard limbs until she’s tucked against him. He can feel the mixture of their come seeping out onto his thigh.
The room is quiet when she says it, filled with his sleepy breath. “You really thought I could choose between you.”
She’s still asleep beside him when he wakes up.
“Do you remember anything?” she asks groggily when she wakes under his roving hands, her body stretching leisurely against his.
“No,” he says honestly, his fingers finding a rosy nipple and stroking it, feeling it harden under his touch.
She sighs deeply, taking one of his thighs between her own. “Good.”
There’s real coffee in the kitchen. He can smell it when he reaches the bottom of the stairs, the distinct smell of freshly ground beans lingering in the air. On the table, there’s a pound of it in a small sack, flanked by packages of sugar and flour.
In the fridge, there’s fresh milk, cuts of pork and beef wrapped in brown paper. The door to the pantry swings open on its hinges, and he can see the shelves lined with cans and bottles. He knows without looking there will be seedless raspberry jam and pumpkin pie filling.
“What the fuck,” Dean barks as Jess rounds the corner in her t-shirt and panties. She freezes in the doorway.
She looks strangely guilty.
“He was here?”
She shrugs her shoulders, looking defeated.
“What the hell, Jess. What does that mean?”
“It means I don’t fucking know.” She leans against the doorframe, gripping the stained wood with nervous fingers. “I’ve never seen him. Shit would show up - food and books and things. But…”
“But what?”
“I know you can feel it too,” she says in a whisper, hushed like a secret. “Watching. He’s watching.”
Dean falls into the chair, the legs scraping against the floor when he hits the seat, propelled by the heavy weight. He thinks of his drive to California, the sick push in his gut, the way he knew where to go. How the passenger seat never felt empty. Never.
He touches the sacks, lets his fingers sink into the coffee grounds. Sammy.
He decides then. “We need to go,” he says. He bolts out of the chair and moves toward the door. “We need to go, now.”
Jess shakes her head vehemently, snapping her hand across the doorway, blocking Dean’s retreat. “We can’t.”
He crowds into her space, challenging her. She doesn’t fold, keeps her hand firmly planted in front of him, so he reaches for it, tugs it down with mean fingers and curls it between them. “The fuck we can’t. You want to sit here and play house?”
She looks hurt, like his words were a slap to the face. “You think that’s what I’ve been doing?” Her mouth sours.
He calms himself, lets go of her arm. She snatches it back to her body, curling it into herself protectively. He loosens his shoulders, pulls them up and back, but moves closer, less threatening. Searching for closeness. “We need to find him, Jess.”
“You’re fucking injured, I’ve only got a couple clips of ammo left. You don’t know where you’re going.”
The clock on the wall shaped like a rooster crows as it hits the hour.
“I need to go, Jess. I need to find him. Do you understand? I can’t stay here with you, I need to find my brother.”
“How the hell do you think you’re going to find him?” she asks. Her voice takes on a new tone, frantic and scared, like the beat of a heart on the hunt. “You think I didn’t try? He doesn’t want to be found, Dean. And let’s face it, they’re sure as hell more likely to find you first. I don’t know what Sam’s doing, but whatever it is, they don’t fucking like it much.”
And then she says it. Quietly. Like a dark confession. “Or worse, what if I’m wrong. What if he isn’t really Sam anymore?”
He looks at her and he finally sees it - the worn, rough look in her eyes. “I don’t have any answers for you, Dean. I don’t have any answers at all.”
Their sleep is jagged. She tosses and turns, talks in her sleep. Says things that make his stomach flip and his heart ache.
He can’t sleep at all, caught somewhere between wake and rest. His body demands sleep, but his brain refuses to shut down, humming busily with images animated by Jess’s words.
Dean wraps his hand around her, curling up behind her. Finds her heartbeat under his palm and holds on.
He wakes to an empty bed.
Outside on the porch, Jess guards the front door, her boots dragging on the weathered boards as she paces. The rifle lies cocked against the railing, the metal muzzle pointed up toward the sky.
Dean walks out, letting the screen door clatter back against the doorframe. She doesn’t turn, but he can tell that she’s looking for him out of the corner of her eye.
She jumps when he slithers his hands around her from behind, drops his chin onto her shoulder. He breathes her in before he speaks, lets her adjust to his presence. “I won’t leave you,” he promises gravely, his voice hard and sure. “We need to find Sam, but I’m not leaving you behind and I’m not forcing you to come with me. We’ll figure it out.”
He can feel her cheeks lift gently, a hand scooping back to rest against the scruff of his neck, thumbing at the soft hair there. “Ok,” she says.
Suddenly, her muscles tense. He follows her line of sight and in the distance, he can see a figure walking up the road. The outline is tall, lanky, striding quickly toward the house; fanning out behind him, a slew of other shapes appear, flanking the leader.
For a moment, he sees Sam. His crooked nose, obnoxiously flippy hair, and stupid smile, and his heart clenches with something stuck between fear and utter joy. But as they grow closer, the image of Sam fades away, replaced by an older looking man, at least forty, with pitch black eyes and a mouth full of shiny, sharp teeth. He stops at the edge of the circle surrounding the house, staring at it curiously.
Jess pulls away from Dean, moving toward the rifle to her left.
“Hi there,” the man says cheerfully. He straightens his business suit out, fussing with the folded handkerchief in his breast pocket and pulling at his tie. “We’ve been looking for you for a while, sweetheart.”
He winks at Dean. “Thanks.”
Jess brings the rifle to her shoulder as the man steps over the circle, firing one shot between his eyes. The man drops to his knees, his body lit with fire as the demon inside him dies. The others in the group fall back, giving clearance to the circle. They hiss out their anger, but smile viciously. They don’t advance, but instead spread around the perimeter, surrounding them.
Waiting.
Jess turns to Dean, fisting her hand in his shirt with shaky fingers.
“Dean,” Jess says, her voice cracking, fear deep and solid in her tone. He reaches up to touch her face, calm her. “Dean, did anyone see you? Did anyone follow you?”
He freezes, his hand cupping the gentle slope of her jaw.
In the rearview mirror, he can see her twist around, her delicate white dress splattered with blood twirling in the wind. Watching him drive away.
Jess closes her eyes at his silence, her breath ragged. “Oh no.”
In the horizon, a black tide washes in, swallowing the morning sky. The beat of wings echoes in the distance.