Chapter Text
"Sam, there's someone out there."
Normally, the way Sam leaps from sleep to action makes her sad in some unnameable way. But, at times like this (when the dark is dark and the quiet is loud) Jess only feels relief.
"Stay here," Sam does that thing where he can walk without making any noise. "Don't come out until I say, okay?"
Jess lies there for a few minutes, straining to hear over the sound of her own heart. It's probably nothing, she knows. It's probably that racoon again. And even if it is a person, Sam is tall and strong and has told her enough about his childhood for her to know he can handle himself in a fight. So it's not anti-feminist of her to let him be the hero, even if she has been taking self-defence classes at the gym and even if all the valuable stuff in the house is hers anyway and even if she's the one that keeps putting the spare key under the plant pot because that's easier when she's drunk or tired or when Brady needs to crash on the sofa because Marissa locked him out again.
She hears a muffled crash and grunt, like someone being hit with something, and she's on her feet before she has time to think. She barely has time to take in the strange tangle of limbs and hair before it separates into Sam and a man. Sam’s on the bottom.
“Sloppy,” is all the man says, then Sam has kicked him off. It feels like Jess blinks and they’re both standing, breathing hard. There’s something about them both – the slope of the shoulders maybe – that makes Jess think of funhouse mirrors.
“Dad,” Sam says. “What the fuck?”
“Nice to see you too,” the man snorts.
Jess looks to the one photo Sam has out, and supposes this man does match it – worn, crumpled, and a little dirty. Life on the road, she assumes, will do that.
She must make some kind of noise, because two pairs of eyes snap to her immediately. They have the same eyes, both gazes sharp and piercing. She likes that about Sam, normally, the way he looks at you with his whole self. Right now, though, she feels a bit like a bug with a spotlight pointed on it. Two spotlights.
Sam’s dad (and why has Sam never told her his name?) looks shocked and then, abruptly, sad. His face twists into a grimace, like the sight of her is physically painful. She thinks about the photo again, and yeah, maybe she’s never wanted to think too hard about the blonde woman this man is attached to in it. Sam said he was a baby when she died, that he didn’t really remember her, and it’s not like he calls her ‘mommy’ in bed, and she’s pretty sure they said in her Intro to Psych class that Freud was mostly disproven anyway.
“Um,” she says, thinking that it might be best to fill the silence, except she has no clue what to say. “Sam?”
“Jess,” the awkwardness of the situation seems to hit Sam all at once. “This is um…”
“John,” the man holds his hand out, a smile on his face that might’ve been charming if he hadn’t just broken into their living room and had maybe shaved at some point in the last week. “John Winchester. You Sammy’s girl then?”
“My name’s –”
“Don’t talk to her,” Sam steps between them before she can decide whether or not to shake it. “Why are you even here? Get out.”
“Really?” John rolls his eyes. “I haven’t seen in you in, what, four years, and this is how you behave?”
“And who’s fault is that, dad?” Sam snaps. “You’re the one that said –”
“It doesn’t matter now anyway,” John interrupts. “I need to talk to you about something,” his eyes flit back to Jess. “Alone.”
“No,” Sam steps back, winds an arm around her waist. He’s tense, she can feel him vibrating against her. She squeezes him back, subtly. “You have something to say, you say it here.”
She can see the conflict play out over John’s face. He’s stubborn, she’s sensing that’s probably where Sam gets it from, but there’s something else at play here, something that had him breaking into his estranged son’s apartment after four years.
“It’s your brother,” he says eventually, and Jess feels Sam’s sharp inhale like an electric shock. “He’s on a hunting trip, and he hasn’t been home in a few days.”