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“Are you still taking cold showers?” Jess asks one day, apropos of nothing. Sam looks up at her from where he’s lying across their lap, the book he’s meant to be studying open but face down on his chest. Jess has their own book open against Sam’s face, the pages brushing his cheek and her wrists pressing lightly against his crown and chin to hold the book in place. His face is blocking the bottom of the pages but she doesn’t seem to mind, just lifting the book to read the last couple paragraphs every few minutes.
“Yeah?” he says cautiously, “Why?”
Jess takes a moment to close her book and toss it to the side, where it bounces off the duvet and lands with a whump on the carpet. Her hands land on Sam’s chest and head, both of them stroking soothingly against his skin. Her right hand combs through his hair, fingers cool. He always seems to have a bit of a headache these days, and nothing soothes it like Jess’s gentle touch against his hot skin.
“You know you don’t have to, right?” they say. “Whatever military regimen you grew up with, you can actually use the hot water here. A 5 minute freezing speed-rinse is just sad, Sam.”
“It’s efficient,” Sam hedges, thinking of motel bathrooms with limited hot water and shitty pressure, fighting with Dean for the first shower and losing more often than not. Dad had always enforced short showers anyway, Marine-style, so even without the physical limitations of motel water supplies Sam thinks it would have always been that way.
“Showering isn’t about efficiency ,” Jess says, rolling her eyes. “It can even be fun , you know?” Their voice takes on a flirtatious tone, and Sam raises an eyebrow.
“Yeah?” he says, grinning and watching a matching smile spread slowly across Jess’s features. She waggles her eyebrows at him.
“Come on,” she says, wiggling until he lifts his head and she can escape from under him. “I gotta show you what you’ve been missing.”
Sam allows himself to be led to the bathroom, where Jess leans into the shower cubicle and fiddles with the dials before she turns it on, holding a hand under the spray for a minute and nodding in satisfaction when she’s happy with the temperature. She turns back to Sam and frowns when she sees he’s still fully dressed.
“What are you waiting for? Chop chop,” she says, clapping her hands for emphasis before she starts on her own clothes, stripping off their peach and yellow striped crop top in one smooth movement. Sam lets himself stare openly at her breasts, mouth dry. Jess flicks him on the nose.
“What? Not my fault I have the sexiest girlfriend in the world,” Sam says, grinning, but pulls his own shirt over his head without further protest. Jess wolf-whistles as she shimmies out of her sleep shorts, pulling her panties down at the same time. Sam flushes, both at the whistle and at the sight of her. He’s not self conscious, he wouldn’t say, but he’s got a few more scars than most people his age, even if it’s less than any other Winchester. He doesn’t usually let Jess see them all at once, or this close up. He’s nowhere near in her league.
“And I have the handsomest boyfriend in the world,” Jess returns, coming up close to kiss him, her bare skin warm against his chest. Her hands stroke firmly down his shoulders, the length of his arms, briefly squeezing his hands before they land on the waistband of his pajama pants. She tugs on them significantly. “Off.”
Sam pushes them down and awkwardly steps out of them, feeling gangly and exposed in a way that has more to do with the intimacy of the situation than the nudity itself. Or maybe both. He can’t quite tell - it’s all just anxious excitement bubbling in his stomach, making his ears burn hot. Jess kisses him again, their lips tasting faintly of strawberry.
“Whenever you’re ready,” they say, and step under the water. Her hair takes a moment to get fully permeated by the water, sticking flat to her shoulders and face until she pushes it back, face turned into the spray, eyes closed. They’re the most beautiful woman Sam has ever seen. He takes a deep, nervous breath and follows her in.
Jess turns to face him, wiping water out of their eyes and smiling that beautiful smile. “Hey, Sam,” she says. Sam can’t help the smile that creeps onto his face.
“Hi, Jessica,” he says. Jess kisses his nose. The steam coming off the hot water billows around them both like fog, like a barrier between them and the world outside. Jess’s fingers comb his hair back, plastering his bangs against the top of his head as she maneuvers him so he’s standing under the spray with his head tilted back. The water feels so good that he almost wants to fall asleep. Jess’s hands scratch lightly against his scalp.
“Keep those eyes closed,” she says, and there’s the familiar click of a bottle opening, and then cold against his scalp. The smell of passion fruit and honey diffuses through the steam; the fancy shampoo Jess only uses on special occasions, the one where the smell stays in her hair for days after. They massage it through his hair steadily and thoroughly, then guide him back under the spray to rinse it out with equal care.
The last time Sam got his hair washed by someone else comes rushing back - him and Dean in a motel bathroom, back when he was maybe 7, and Dean was 11, and they still shared showers to make sure they both got hot water and Sam didn’t slip and fall. He’d done that once and hit his head when he was younger, and Dean had freaked. There had been so much blood, because head wounds always bleed like a bitch, and Dean had been half convinced Sam was dying. That last time, before Sam told him to back off, Dean, I’m big enough to wash my own hair, you know , Dean had made him sit in the tub while Dean scrubbed through his hair with the cheap complimentary shampoo he took with them from a fancier motel a while back. It smelled vaguely floral in a chemical way, and it made Sam’s hair feel like straw the next few days, but he still remembers Dean’s hands in his hair, trying to be gentle and getting shampoo in his eye anyway. Sam had cried, because that shit hurt, and Dean had told him to stop being a baby and then let him pick the channel later, as an apology.
Jess, however, doesn’t get shampoo in his eye, and when she smooths his clean hair back from his face and kisses him all thoughts of Dean and his childhood disappear like the steam hitting the cooler air of their bedroom. He kisses back, abruptly so full of gratitude and love that he might choke on it.
“You okay, baby?” Jess asks. She always seems to be able to tell when he’s thinking about his life before Stanford. He can never bring himself to tell her more than the bare bones. He nods, trying not to cry. Their hands cup his face, manicured nails scratching gently against the smooth skin where he shaved this morning; he’s long enough on T for facial hair to be noticeable, but not long enough for it to be thick as he wants it. Jess swears he’ll get there. She’s the one who taught him to shave it.
Jess searches his face for a long moment, then nods in return, her eyes gentle and understanding. They kiss him again and then click open another bottle, one Sam recognises as the expensive body wash she also only uses on special occasions.
“You don’t have to use that one,” he says quickly, before she can pour it. “I know it’s pretty expensive, and-”
“Sam Winchester, you be quiet,” Jess says, pouring a generous portion into her palm. “If I want to lather my boyfriend up with my best smelling lotion so he smells like me, then that’s what I’m going to do.” She raises an eyebrow at him and he smiles back, feeling his dimples show. “That’s better,” they say, satisfied. “Hold still, okay?”
He nods again, and Jess rubs her hands together for a moment and then presses them against his shoulders, working in circles to rub the creamy lather into his skin. She turns him around and does his whole back, then turns him back around to do the front of his torso, their hands pressing firmly against his breasts for a few seconds and making him squirm. She pinches a nipple to make him laugh, then follows it with an apologetic kiss to the skin just above. Her hands work their way down to his hips, and then his groin, and while it feels weird for her to wash his ass she doesn’t stay long, moving methodically and pressing just hard enough for it to not tickle. When she washes his feet Sam thinks, bizarrely, of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples. A cleansing of sin. Jess stands again and moves him under the spray, like a baptism. The smell of aloe and fruit hangs heavy in the air.
This is the closest to peace Sam can remember in a long, long time. There’s a distant part of him that’s turned on, because his girlfriend is naked and touching him and he’s so, so in love with her that it hurts in his chest, but mostly he just feels full and light. Like the hot water is rinsing off more than just bubbles.
Jess doesn’t say anything, just cups his face in their hands and strokes her thumbs across his cheeks until he can rouse himself enough to open his eyes.
“Hi,” he whispers. Jess smiles.
“Hi,” she says, equally quiet. “You see what I meant about fun over efficiency?”
Sam nods, drowsy. Jess kisses him again. “Let’s get you dried off, hm?” they murmur, moving to step out of the cubicle. Sam catches her wrist.
“Wait,” he says. “Let me?”
Jess looks at him for a moment, then blushes, unusually shy for a moment. “Sure,” she says. “If you really want to? You don’t have to.”
“More than anything,” he says, meaning it with his whole heart. “I… I don’t know if I’ll be good at it, I’ve never washed someone else’s hair before, but-”
“I’ll tell you if you’re tugging,” she says, eyes liquid-warm. Sam kisses her, tasting her skin, the lip gloss she favored gone in the fall of the water.
Her hair is silky with water in his hands, and he works through the shampoo as carefully as he can, trying not to tangle anything. Jess tilts her head back, eyes closed. Her lashes rest dark almost against the apple of her cheek, water clinging and dripping from them. Sam scratches her scalp a little with his blunt nails as he massages the shampoo in and she hums in drowsy pleasure.
It takes a while to get all the shampoo out - Jess’s hair is thick and long, and it holds onto water like a sonuvabitch - but he manages eventually. The whole apartment must be steamed up by now, but Sam doesn’t let himself think about it. He doesn’t like charity but Jess comes from a richer family than he does (not that that’s hard), and if she says they can afford this then he trusts her. He wants to do this for her. He kisses her uptilted forehead, standing on his tiptoes a little. God, he loves how tall she is.
“Was that good?” he murmurs. Jess nods, slowly opening her eyes.
“10/10, babe,” they say, looking just as calm and loved as Sam feels. He kisses her temple, and then picks up the body wash.
He starts where she did, with her neck and shoulders, working his way down. She’s been on E for longer than he’s been on T, and her breasts are bigger than his ever were, not that that’s hard. Sam kisses them on his way down, then just above her belly button, following the trail of darkening blonde hair down to the base of her cock. Jess hadn’t taken it there, made it sexual, so he doesn’t either, just kisses it once like he has the rest of her and washes it carefully, moving quickly on to her thighs. When he reaches her calves and feet - her toenails painted a light, turquoisey blue - he hopes she can feel the devotion like he did. The same intimacy and humility and love that God’s son himself showed to the people closest to him. He presses a kiss to the top of each foot before he stands, directing her under the water as she did him, watching the bubbles slough off and helping them along when needed, feeling her slick, soft skin against his fingertips and palms. When they’re clean Jess turns to him and wraps her arms around his shoulders, their breath mingling.
“No more cold showers,” Jess says, turning off the shower so the only sound is the water dripping off their bodies, their slow, calm breathing. Their quiet voices murmuring to each other.
Sam wraps his arms around her waist, feeling the soft give of the layer of fat there. The way it feels like his arms belong there, cushioned by her, enveloping her. He presses a kiss to her lips, breathing in passion fruit and steam.
“No more cold showers,” he agrees.