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Before he left the life for a college degree and a future, Sam had never learned to savor tea. Truth be told, he could count on the fingers of one hand how many times he’d actually made tea for himself, and most of that was some sort of purification ritual herb shit Bobby made up for him after witch hunts, after the first time he got cursed. It was (like every other habit engrained in his bones) a family thing. Winchesters drank coffee, black. (As many scoops of sugar as he could pour in, stolen creamer poured in on the sly if Dean wasn’t watching).
Jess had loved tea. She made herself a huge thermos in the morning, put in exactly as many tea bags as she needed for full flavor, steeped for four or six or eight minutes, poured in a precise little dollop of milk to watch it billow out. She made her morning routine a tiny pause of comfort and warmth, whenever she had the chance. Sam was pretty sure that on the days she ran late, she would set a timer to stop her bike and take out the teabags so they didn’t over-steep. Inevitably, the little drawer of tea in her dorm room became an overflowing box under her bed became a cabinet overflowing with boxes and canisters in their kitchen.
Inevitably, as Jess introduced him to her favorite blends, Sam left the coffee camp entirely. He came to savor the tang of citrus in earl grey, the scent of chai, the soothing peppermint of one of her favorite Christmas blends. He read a psychological study one time about how people think better of you if you offer them a warm drink because of how the cup mimics human warmth. He felt like he was inhaling some of her heat every time she pressed a steaming mug into his hands.
Which was hilarious, because Jess was, physically, the coldest person he’d ever met. Her toes were tiny blocks of ice attached to corpse-cold feet (he never told her he knew exactly how cold a corpse feels, how it’s just slightly less cold than the absolute zero of a ghost’s presence). Her hands were perpetually frigid, blue veins easily visible on her wrists and the back of her palms. (She would stick them against his neck when she came home, he would chafe them and stick them in his pockets when they went out). She bundled in layers of shirts (stole his favorite oversized plaid over-shirts), crammed her hair under wool hats and wound scarves around her neck as soon as leaves start turning brown. As soon as the weather turned California warm, she was one of the first to slather on sunscreen and study on the grassy fields, ducking the shots of overenthusiastic volleyball players. (He would be right next to her resting his head on the slope of her back if she read on her stomach, leaning against her back to back if she was upright, helping her move the towel if the shade chased them.)
If he hadn’t met her happy and (honestly slightly frighteningly) blond and athletic family, he might think she was starved for warmth as a kid and attempting to make up for it. But no, she must have gotten hugs and tea aplenty in her youth. It was him. He was the one soaking up her warmth, stealing naps in her sunshine. She taught him that you can hug someone just for the joy of holding them and not because they’d narrowly survived. She taught him that touch, with someone you trusted, could be like coming home. He was the lucky one, he knew, cradling a mug between his hands.
He was the lucky one.
Dean bugs him about every girly latte he gets from Starbucks, makes little digs about how real men should only drink coffee so thick they can strain the grounds through their teeth. (For that “real men” dig, Sam carefully and subtly sabotages every single cup of coffee Dean drinks for the next two weeks. It may take him years, but he WILL train Dean not to undermine his gender presentation. )
Sam cradles his mug of borrowed (stolen) warmth in his palms, inhales the scent of bergamot he used to kiss off of the corner of Jess’s smile as she left for the morning. When Dean isn’t present, he curls up on his chair, presses the mug against the dull ache under his sternum, as if he could press her warmth back under his skin where it used to burn. Sometimes he grinds his teeth at the wrenching irony of his cold girl always chasing warmth, burning up as she reached for him. Every fire they make, salt and smoke blowing into his eyes, he wonders what it would be like to join her in the flames. Would she still be screaming in his dreams if he had climbed up to reach her? Would she still be reaching out in terror? Or (as she does in his very worst dreams, the ones he would never tell to Dean) would she smile that crooked Jess grin, bury her face in his shoulder and hold him tight, as the heat wrapped around them both?
Sam has always worn more layers than Dean, partly to obscure his frame and partly to hide the bruises from sparring. After Jess’s... after Jess, he buys out the goodwill’s plaid shirt section, long sleeved shirts, white undershirts he will never call wifebeaters, and a shirt with a purple hound he buys solely for the way Jess would have laughed to see him in it. Dean makes fun of him for how it makes him sweat, long sleeves with thick socks and long jeans, but Sam just buys more laundry soap and antiperspirant and ignores him. He wraps himself in layers and grips his tea like a lifeline, he stands at gravesides and stares into the fires they set, he dreams of flames and Jess’s golden hair. He waits for the day the warmth he’s trying to borrow will settle into the cold, aching void under his sternum where Jess’s love used to live.