Chapter Text
When Sam tells the story later, he’ll say that Brady introduced them. He won’t forget a second of it, will share in careful and loving detail everything from the taste of the dining hall coffee, to the punk-rock music playing on the speakers, to the quirk of her smile, to the way the afternoon sun made her hair glow gold. He marks the date on his calendar, desperately wanting to have an anniversary that doesn’t end with hangovers and fury and guilt and Dean’s quiet, terrible sorrow. February 15, 2003, he writes on every calendar in big, bold letters, delighting in how it makes her blush, First Meeting. He drags her to that same dining hall every year, makes her swallow that bitter, too hot coffee, but she doesn’t mind, not really, not when he also makes a point to kiss her soundly until her head spins and sit on her side of the table, so close their knees knock. He adds other anniversaries too--first date, first kiss, one-month, six-months, nineteen-and-a-half months (don’t ask)--but by his own admission, February 15th is his favorite, and he always buys her two dozen roses and rocky road ice cream (her favorite) to celebrate.
The problem, with all this pomp and circumstance, of course, is that Jessica actually knew Sam before that day in Stern Dining when Brady waved her over to introduce her to a guy he swore was as crazy weird and angsty as you, Blondie, in that fond, obnoxious way of his. She doesn’t tell him, doesn’t want to burst his bubble when he clearly finds so much joy in the memory, but she’ll probably spill the beans someday when they’re forty-something and the kids are all in college and they need to spice up their love life in a way that doesn’t require shelling out an insane amount of money for a cruise to the Bahamas.
Jessica Moore meets Sam Winchester in Introduction to 20th Century American Poetry.
She takes it fall semester of her freshman year after Sophie harasses her about it all through registration, texting her in all caps to TAKE THE GODDAMN CLASS JESS YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO and getting their dad to call her twice a day with a reminder to explore classes that align with your interests, not just your career goals, baby. So she ignores the pang of guilt she feels at taking yet another class that will do nothing for her psych degree and takes the second section of the seminar, Tuesday from noon to two-forty.
It’s a cool class. They hit all the big names— T.S. Eliot, e.e. cummings, Maya Angelou, W.H. Auden— along with a few lesser known ones. They even do a whole unit on LGBT poets, which leaves more than a few students spitting mad but warms Jess down to her toes and gives her the courage to come out to her sister who rolls her eyes good-naturedly and tells her I already knew genius, no straight woman watches Bend It Like Beckham like you watched Bend It Like Beckham, it was obscene. It’s all pretty straightforward until early November when their professor, bored of grading analysis papers and synthesis essays, tells them to write a poem about their childhood.
It’s clear that Professor Claytor is expecting all of his students to pen some milquetoast poetry that waxes on and on about the innocence of youth as if there’s something new to say about it. It’s a gimme assignment essentially, and the entire class knows it. Still, he divides them into small groups so they can read them aloud to one another and give and receive critique. It’s actually kind of fun—yeah, most of the poems are all basically saying the same thing (hard for them not to when over ninety percent of the class is rich, Christian, and white and at least forty percent are Stanford legacies), but everyone has a good time with it, and Jess’s study partner, Leah (one of the only sane people in the class—she’s a working class Jewish kid from Brooklyn who wants to be a rabbi or an astronaut, whichever opportunity presents itself first), writes a poem about her childhood best friend who died from leukemia that leaves their group gasping for air. The forever young can’t grow old together, Leah tells them, and Professor Claytor, who’s weaving his way around the room, actually claps.
When it’s Jess’s turn to read, her throat almost closes up. It’s out of character—she’s been a performer all her life, so something as simple as reading from a slip of paper should be the easiest thing in the world. But besides Leah, no one in her group has really… well, it’s clear they’ve all lived good lives. Not perfect by any means—they all have their private hurts, their own grief. Jess is not and has never been so arrogant to think she has the monopoly on suffering. How could she, when the woman who ruined her life hurt so loudly? But for all that she thoroughly enjoyed writing her poem, had reveled in the opportunity for blunt honesty in the guise of whimsy, she hadn’t been prepared to own it like this. She fears that if she speaks her story out loud to the room it will make it real, as if by keeping her silence she’s holding reality hostage.
But Leah looks up at her, her dark eyes warm and knowing like Sophie’s always are now that they live with their dad full-time and Jess owns her body again, and dammit, Jess likes what she’s written, likes the rhythm of it, the image of her older self talking to her over a glass of wine and nine years of control, control, control. She likes how Sophie went real quiet when she read this to her over the phone, how her voice shook with anger when she told Jess, I love you so goddamn much, you talented asshole, and she doesn’t owe the past (or her mother) anything except for an exorcism.
So Jess clears her throat and reads aloud:
“baby, she tells me, smoke sliding out of her mouth, a dragonborn girl, baby,
don’t waste time on your father and his daughter. talk to me about your mama, baby.
talk to me about your mama.
(when she was six-years-old her mama entered her in a county beauty pageant
without telling her what it was for
prettied her up in cotton-candy fluff and smack-sticky lip gloss
blue raspberry gave her baby-pale lips some color, some dark
she got out of the van wearing white socks with lace on the foldover cuffs
and her big sister’s old mary-janes with scuffs on the heels
her mama said to smile bright-wide-white
and sing a song about a red bird and a sunflower
and the lights made her eyes smart and sting and the shoes pinched her left toe tighttighttight
and the hairdo mama bought was heavy and crunched like leaves in her shaking fists
but her mama cried bittersalt tears when she won the fifty dollar cash prize
and a handshake from the judge with the bald spot and the green-sick eyes
so when she asked if she’d like to win it again she smiled up bright-wide-white
and sang a song about feeling like a real-live princess
and won thirteen more pageants by the time she was twelve)
she wears her hair short now, curls tight on her skull, my lady augustus.
she wears thick-soled boots and smokes cigars on sundays and mismatches her socks for kicks.
but she still kisses with blue raspberry lip gloss, chemical-sweet,
and sings songs about star signs and violets under her breath,
quietquietquiet in case someone hears,
and sends her mama’s home an extra fifty bucks a month.
baby, she tells me, baby.
i’m the sorta woman my mama needed, not the sort my daddy wanted.
don’t go blaming boys for me, ‘cause any man who looked at me saw me through her eyes first.
so tell me about your mama, baby, she insists, all nostalgic sympathy.
tell me about your mama.”
The group goes quiet for a moment once she finishes reading, and in that quiet, Jessica Moore meets Sam Winchester.
She doesn’t recognize him from class—she finds out later that it’s because he signed up for the first section of the seminar but had to miss his critique session after catching a bad flu, so Professor Claytor let him complete the assignment that day instead. His group is to the left of hers, so she can watch him through her peripheral.
Her first thought: he’s beautiful.
She’ll keep thinking it for the rest of her life. Sam Winchester is beautiful. There’s a warmth to him, a glow that pours out of him like so much water. He makes eye contact with everyone in the group as he speaks, earnest, and that, more than his height or his pretty eyes or his full mouth or the angle of his jaw, makes Jess want to touch him, want to thread her hands in his hair (it looks soft and smooth and she likes that in a man, sue her) and bring his mouth down to hers (wouldn’t be that far, would it, God, he’s so tall). It’s a quick, visceral attraction, and it only grows stronger and fiercer when he clears his throat delicately so he can read his poem aloud.
“I’ve, uh—” he stutters a bit, his cheeks flushed a little pink, and all the girls in his group (and at least one of the guys) lean forward in their seats, mesmerized because, damn. This kid probably has no idea, does he? What a shame. “I’ve never written a poem before, so I didn’t expect—I didn’t expect to like it so much. With poetry I could focus less on the particulars and more on the—the real truth, you know? So I sort of-- ignored the trees so I could really get a feel for the forest. Just, um,” he bites his lip here, charming, “be kind, alright?”
His group makes all the reassuring noises and Jess watches, spellbound, as he looks down at his paper—it’s a little crumpled at the edges, he must have been fiddling with it, he looks the nervous type—and, with shaky hands, begins to read.
“five years old.
dad’s working overtime. big boots. heavy pour. slits for eyes.
dean tells me to stay out of his way.
it’s november, sammy, leave him be. just keep outta the way, kid, don’t run your fool mouth.
what he doesn’t say, not yet, not til i’m ten and he’s a little meaner: don’t you know it’s your fault.
i don’t listen.
mrs. davidson gave me a gold star in spelling and i want dad to see.
i want him to smile at me like he smiles at dean when he hits the bull’s eye. crooked. all teeth.
my quiz shoved under dad’s nose. excitement. heart skipping one beat. two.
dad rips it out of my hands. slices skin. what the hell is this.
dean makes a quiet noise. quieter movement towards me. but he’s slow.
he’s nine-years-old and dad’s a man on a mission. we’re all soldiers first.
dad’s angry when he’s working overtime. red eyes. glass bottles. big hands.
blue bruises. mrs. davidson doesn’t see me again.
we’re on our way to poughkeepsie by then.
fourteen years old.
dad’s on the road again. car door-slam. summer means no school, so no sammy.
dad takes dean with him now. he packs up his shiny new ged and a coupla smokes.
tells me to stay inside, motel’s paid up, food money’s in the safe. 1102.
don’t make trouble, kid, i got a girl here, don’t want to have to run. you be good, okay.
i don’t listen.
i learn every crack on the pavement in homer, louisiana, trying to get lost.
sweating through dean’s old zeppelin shirt and wearing through his trainers.
i find a penelope, maryanne waters, and kiss her til i taste like strawberries.
her dad went to tulane, she’s gonna go there too. she asks where my dad went. vietnam.
dad comes home late august. food money’s gone.
i’ve been at maryanne’s. not just hungry for kisses.
dad tells me to be smarter with my money.
dean tells me he’ll slip me some more next time. guilty. nicer for it. i try not to be too grateful.
we leave two days later. maryanne cries and dad calls me a ladies' man til i cry too.
nineteen years old.
dad’s got an envelope in his hand. crisp. white. gold seal. welcome class of 2006.
he’s yelling. spitting mad. what the hell is this. traitor. after everything i’ve done for you.
dean’s hands in fists. won’t look at me. nods along. traitor. after everything he’s done to us.
if you walk out that door don’t you dare come back, sammy. don’t you come back.
this time i listen.
pack up the duffel. carry out two cracked ribs and one black eye.
steal a picture of mom and dad from before the fire. happy strangers. warm smiles. no babies yet.
i hitch a ride to wells, nevada. vegas next for irony. then a greyhound to palo alto, california.
freedom tastes like a home cooked meal. real houses with four walls. gotta get me one of those.
i’m wearing dad’s old flannel and ratty jeans. big boots. those were his once, too.
computer money in my pocket. curled up. safe. skipped breakfasts, lunches, and dinners.
it’s good. worth it. i can eat in california. all’s well that ends well and all that.
my chest hurts. wrap it up. my hands are shaking. smiling. crying. both.
dean’s blocked my number. didn’t say goodbye.”
His poem is like a sucker punch to the gut. Technically, it’s not anything revolutionary, and there are clearly weaker spots where he struggled to make his words fit together. If Jess had read it in a book, she wouldn’t have thought it anything special-- a sad story about a sadder life, but certainly nothing to write home about. But seeing it performed by its writer, watching his throat work as he spoke, his eyes gleam with the suggestion of tears, kept from falling only by the rage in those shaky hands, has left Jess aching and breathless and feeling a kind of camaraderie that she never has before, because Sophie and her dad might love her but they don’t understand and they never will. Jess has only just begun belonging to herself, has only just started learning that her body is hers first, has only just allowed herself to be angry, to be so fucking angry. His poem, full of learned helplessness and empty bellies and useless ambition, is as familiar to Jess as her own, so similar that she might have penned those lines herself.
Oh, she thinks deliriously, her own poem forgotten as she watches this boy who quivers with nerves and the same restless fury that she feels every hour of every day. It’s you. You’re the one, aren’t you?
Leah is the one to snap her out of it with a well, damn, Jess, way to show me up and Jess is so shocked by her easy dismissal of her own fantastic writing that she gets dragged into defending a poem that isn’t even hers, a good-natured debate that the whole group gets really into. The rest of the class flies by. Leah and the rest of Jess’s group dig into her poem, “talking to myself,” with gusto, and by the end, Jess’s notebook is filled with notes, suggestions, and alternate verses. She doesn’t know if she’ll take all their advice-- she quite likes what she has as it is, but it’s fun to talk about her work like this, to examine it from angles she wouldn’t have thought to consider, to walk around it and study it like it’s an exhibit in a museum, and even though she reminds herself again and again not to get too sucked in, to keep her eye on that boy before he can get away, she gets so caught up in the critique session that by the time two-forty rolls around, she looks up to find that he’s gone.
Jess asks everyone in the class if they knew his last name (he called himself Sammy in his poem, but that’s a pretty common name and there are thousands of undergraduate students), but comes up with nothing. For the rest of the semester, she keeps her eyes peeled, searching for the boy with those kind eyes, broad shoulders, and shaky hands. Jess tells Sophie all about him during winter break while she does her sister’s nails, driving her crazy with her monologues about his smile, Soph, his voice, his mouth, and, oh God, his poetry, until Sophie locks her out of the house on Christmas Eve until she promises to shut the fuck up about Mystery Boy and his shitty poetry, Jess, and find a more socially acceptable way to masturbate, oh my God. She writes about him, or rather who she thinks he might be based on his poem, even dreams about him sometimes, about that earnest grin and that soft hair. He smiles at her in her dreams, calls her baby, but she never touches him, never even gets close.
So when Brady (who she met in one of her psychology courses) waves her over to introduce her to Sam Winchester on the Friday after Valentine’s Day, Jess is ready to meet him. She’s ready to know him, really know him, to dig into his past and share her own. They’ll understand each other, she’s sure. They both know what it’s like to be hungry for food and a future.
He smiles at her, a small, crooked thing, and introduces himself as Sam, not Sammy, and Jess makes a note of that as he shakes her hand (with his big, big hands, this boy is really something) and invites her to sit down next to him, moving his laptop (she remembers: skipped breakfasts, lunches, and dinners) so that she can set down her coffee. Stern Dining is still decorated with red streamers and truly horrifying cut-outs of baby angels and candy hearts and the coffee is shit, but Sam is sweet and a little shy with her and brash and teasing with Brady and he lets her have a piece of his gum and gets into an argument with her about whether or not Emily Dickinson was actually that good and Jess knows, she just knows, that this is going to be a good thing, a real thing.
She’s right. It takes Sam two days to ask Brady for her number and three weeks to ask her out. They go to a free concert put on by some students for their first date, and he kisses her on the cheek after he walks her back to her dorm room. From there, they go to museums, art galleries, and any performances that offer student discounts, exploring Palo Alto like he explored Homer, Louisiana when he was fourteen and in love with another girl. They take art classes and cooking class and recreate the pottery scene from Ghost while giggling like children and Jess feels so, so lucky. He kisses her easily, freely, and whenever he can, holding onto her like he’s a drowning man and she’s the one thing that can save him. It’s not entirely healthy, and after it doesn’t calm down in the first few rose-tinted months, she sits him down in her dorm room and makes him promise to see a psychologist, at least for a few sessions. He pushes back more than she expected him to, arguing that he doesn’t need to get my head shrunk, Jess, come on, but after a few days of stewing he tells her that he’s made an appointment.
“What changed?” she asks him, tying his tie for him. Sophie’s in town, her boyfriend having snagged some tickets to the opera, and the four of them are going out to dinner after. It’s the first time that Sam’s meeting a member of Jess’s family, and she can tell he’s nervous because his hands are shaking more than ever.
“I realized I sounded like my dad,” he sighs, catching one of her hands to press a kiss to her palm and it’s all Jess can do not to melt into a puddle on the floor. “But you’re right. I have stuff to work through.”
“I love you,” Jess says, because even though he’s got her wrapped up in the circle of his arms and doing his best to act okay, he still looks like he needs the reminder. “And I am so unbelievably proud of you.”
She kisses him softly, letting the tenderness linger, before they get in her car (he drives) and head over to the opera house.
After he starts seeing someone, Sam relaxes a little, though Jess doubts he’s ever been completely at ease anywhere outside of her bed. He kisses her more softly, though, and gets more playful and less desperate when they have sex, and when he asks her to move in with him she knows he’s asking because he loves her, not because he’s afraid she’s going to leave him. They move into an apartment the beginning of their junior year, and it’s easy, so easy she starts to wait for the other shoe to drop because Jess doesn’t get to be this happy, does she? She doesn’t get to be loved like this, doesn’t deserve it.
But she is happy, and she is loved, and eventually her poems lose that haunted edge that was so present in her earlier work. She fills her journal with curious musings on Sam and triumphant exclamations of her joy and confesses to Sophie that she knows Sam’s gone shopping for rings, biting her lip to keep herself from laughing aloud because this boy, this beautiful, kind, clever boy, loves her and he’s not going to stop, not ever.
By fall of her senior year, Jess feels like she’s flying. She’s acing all her classes in her psych major and creative writing minor, Sam’s got an interview with the law school and she’s considering going to graduate school in the UC system, Brady seems to be doing a little better, and Sophie and her husband have decided to start trying for a baby. So when Sam’s brother breaks into their apartment in the middle of the night and eyes her like a piece of meat before dragging Sam away to go look for their delinquent asshole of a father, Jess tries not to let herself get too anxious. She finishes a paper and tidies up the apartment before flipping through the journal Sam got her for their three-month-anniversary. She keeps all the first drafts of her poetry in it, and reading through it grounds her, keeps her from spiraling as she remembers the last lines of that poem that made her fall in love (dean’s blocked my number. didn’t say goodbye.)
Jess is allowed to say whatever she likes about John Winchester, but she’s learned not to say a word against Sam’s brother, because he’s not angry at Dean, not like he is at John, he’s not there yet. Sam still thinks it’s his fault, the fact that Dean won’t speak to him until he needs something, and it makes Jess’s blood boil so badly she has to start stress baking before she decides to grab her car and track them both down and drag them back by their ears. So Jess makes cookies and dresses up a little, planning on being extra nice to Sam when he gets back, has just settled down to write a little when there’s a knock on the door.
She opens the door to find Brady smiling maniacally at her, eyes black as pitch, and some part of her hindbrain, some long-forgotten part of herself that recognizes a threat instantly, screams monster, monster, monster. Jess opens her mouth to scream, but before she can some invisible force pushes her back into the apartment and leaves her in a heap on the floor. The door slams shut behind Brady, and she watches in horrified, mute shock as Brady walks towards her, utterly inhuman.
She tries to fight him, she does, and she screams and begs and asks what he’s doing, I’m your friend, Brady, please I’m your friend, but he only laughs and laughs and laughs, kicking her down the hall until they’re in her bedroom, her and Sam’s bedroom, oh God, but as Brady studies her it’s sexless, clinical, even as he takes such obvious joy in her confusion and pain. With another eerie, cruel grin, he puts down his backpack and pulls out a knife, long and sharp, and it gleams silver in the faint light of the sunset.
“Not here,” Jess begs, and she doesn’t beg for her life, not now, not when Brady-- fuck, Brady-- is clearly fixed on his goal, but she can’t let Sam find her in their bedroom, can’t let that be the last memory he has of this room. “Please, don’t let him find me here.”
“But that’s the whole point!” Brady cackles, addressing her for the first time as he hauls her up by her hair and stabs her in the abdomen and twists, laughing louder as she screams. “His mommy dies in his nursery. His girlfriend dies in his bedroom. Poetic, don’t you think?”
Brady uses more of that strange power to push Jess towards the ceiling, pinning her there, and she’s losing blood so quickly, she must be, because only people mad with bloodloss would imagine a man’s eyes gleaming like that. She can’t even cry, can hardly breathe, as she watches her blood (her blood, oh God) drip down onto her pillow below her.
Time moves slowly. She hears Sam call her name. Sees him walk into their bedroom. He doesn’t look up, not yet and she’s grateful, so grateful. She hurts, she’s hurting, but he’s smiling, and it’s for her, and he’s beautiful. Sam Winchester is beautiful, even as his eyes widen in horror, even as he screams and fire surrounds them. She’s on fire, she can feel the flames licking her skin. When did Brady light a fire? Sam reaches for her. Jess can’t reach back, and doesn’t try. His brother grabs him, drags him away. Again. Good.
Jess is dying. She has seconds left. Her hair’s on fire, her nightgown, her very skin. She closes her eyes.
Everything goes red, then white, then blue.
Time moves slowly. Jess opens her eyes.