killersmurff:

                     It’s one in the morning.

        It’s one in the morning and she still smells soot if she breathes too deep and sometimes she just aches, no matter how many pain pills she takes and Dean flushed them all down the toilet 3 days ago because he said she’d been looking at them funny and the doctor at the free clinic said she shouldn’t be hurting anymore anyway. It was a complete miscarriage and she should be healed by now.

        But he’s overworked and they waited 5 hours to be seen so what does some doctor on his 2nd rotation in as many hours of sleep know anyway?

        It’s been 3 weeks since their past - Sam’s past, hers, it doesn’t matter, they both lied and that’s the long and short of it - reared it’s ugly head and really, Jessica could care less about their dumpy little apartment.

                               She just wants her baby. That’s all.

        But sleep is good too. Until Sam wakes her and her eyes are already burning when she blinks away. All she wants is to sleep. Being awake, without a demon to salt or a werewolf to slice up, it’s all too much to deal with.

        “…What?” Dean’s somewhere, Jess doesn’t know where, doesn’t really care but she does care that it’s 1am.

                “Sam, what are you talking about?”

         _{sam is used to pain. trouble follows the winchesters 
around like a lost puppy, resting its head on its paws and
waiting for the right moment to pounce. but although he
is not a stranger  to  pain,  he  still  feels  it  like  any  other.
it hurts the worst at times like these, when he’s alone with
his  grief  and  his  bed  and  he  doesn’t have to be strong
because jess has her pretty little head pillowed on her arm,
eyes slipped close in sleep.}

                          _{she’s so pretty when she wakes, shaking off sleep’s  greedy
                 fingers,  and  sam  is  hit  with  desire  burning  deep  in  his belly.
                 that’s  not  fair,  he  thinks,  because she will hate him for what he
                 has to say and she is scared and hurting and now, of all times, his
                 body decides to betray him.}

                                               _{❝ it’s not —- it’s just not safe here, jess. dean and i have to
                                      find whatever did this and stop it from doing it again. i can’t lose
                                      you, jess, i just can’t, okay?  ❞}

      _{he feels his throat burn and he looks away, picturing jess
in flames like his mother was, imagining coming back here to
an empty  home.  sam  swallows  hard  against  the  thoughts,
forcing  them back  down  into  the  pit  of  his  stomach,  and
gathers jess in his arms.}

                                                                                                                      _{❝ p l e a s e. ❞}       

                       _{jess. it is all his mind can really focus on at the moment.  jess  j e s s   jess   j e s s. sam buries his nose in her soft curls, inhaling the subtle scent of her shampoo and closing his eyes against the sudden onslaught of emotions the simple act brings.  if he’d only been there to protect her, if he’d only acted on the dream.} 

        _{if only, if only. that is the winchester curse, isn’t it? if only. if only i was stronger, if only i was there, if only god helped me. sam’s if only weighs down on his chest like an iron ball, crushing his chest slowly in toward his heart.}

                           _{he hates dean for bringing this upon him and hates himself for not seeing it. sam hates his father for raising them into this business and hates whatever the hell murdered the child in jessica’s stomach, hates them all with an intensity and a fear that he cannot shake.}

                                                       _{❝ —- jess. ❞}

                                                                               _{he says, simple and low, pushing stray blonde locks back off her forehead. overcome with desire and relief and pain, sam presses his mouth to hers, soft as he can manage with the churning in his stomach. she’s so  s o f t  , so delicate, and sam can’t lose her, he just can’t. not after all they’ve been through. he’d been lost for so long, carted around across america on a whim, and in jessica sam had finally found his home. this is the life he wants, plain and simple, and he won’t relinquish it even if satan himself tries to wrench it from his fingertips.}

                  _{❝ jess, you can’t stay here. you have to go home —- to wisconsin. ❞}

_verbotii:

                                slight fondness curls around dean’s small features, the heavy scent of petrichor clinging to the air as he digs his hands into his pockets and tries to fight back a small shiver. he supposes the rain was a good thing. a metaphor, perhaps, for new beginnings and idle conversation as the darkness around the edges slowly fades away into something more. he glances back into the windshield of the impala, malachite eyes searching for the broad shoulders of a sibling that could brighten his day even more.

                        a metaphor, he thinks, for the ability to renew a withering connection between shattered hearts and dreams — rain supposedly meant cleanliness and purity, and if there was one thing any son of winchester needed, it was a good metaphor.

         ❝Rise and shine, Sammy—❞

                                 calls he, loud enough to be heard through the window slightly cracked on the driver’s side. whether sam was actually asleep or not, he doesn’t know. dean just likes to be partially irritating.

            _{nights spent in the impala are both sam’s salvation and the bane of his existence. he clings to the feeling of freedom, the memories, the scent of worn leather. sometimes dean will park near a lake or a forest and sam will crack his window just a bit more and let the scent of calm and peace wind its way around that of gunpowder and sweat, cleansing him of his sins.}

                                            _{but sam is tall and the impala is small, so he wakes with a stiff neck, joints cracking and groaning like his late father’s. today, though, he finds only b l e s s i n g in the numbness of his tailbone, sees only s a l v a t i o n in the ridged imprints the leather has carved into his cheek. they’re signs, sam thinks —- markers of the start to his long journey of penance and redemption. dean has not cast him out like a pariah. dean t r u s t s him; dean believes in him. the hope swells in his chest, so childlike and innocent that he has to keep his eyes screwed shut against the onslaught of relief that builds and builds in his chest until it feels like he will burst open at the seams.}

                 _{still, he puts on a show, groaning and scrubbing at his eyelids with the heel of his hand. it takes more effort than usual to scrounge up an irritated glare in dean’s direction, because although    s  a  m  m  y    is young and childish and girly, ‘sammy’ is something that has not passed dean’s lips for far too long.}

                                                                           _{❝ —- what time is it? ❞} 

_{ferociousfreckles:}

                    ^{“Seriously, Sammy?” Dean squinted, green eyes tracing over the features on his face. “Whatever?” What was this, highschool? Something was eating at him… or had his panties in a knot —- and honestly Dean wasn’t sure he wanted to know what it was. Maybe it was that time again, that time when one of them questioned what it was they were doing. Two brothers out on the road —- killing monsters. Ready to call it quits. It happened. The hunter just wasn’t ready for it right now; hoped that this wasn’t what it was. It was going to be Christmas soon after all —- Sam wouldn’t leave him before Christmas would he? He’d stick around long enough for the 25th, right? Dean could stop… he could stop being annoying, and stop with the songs and the cookies and the tinsel. Give Sam a break, take it easy on the hunts —- could leave him alone for a day or two —- pay for some late night cable for his brother and some alone time. He’d do what he had to in order to keep him there.}

                    ^{“If you don’t want to listen to Frosty the Snowman, that’s cool. Ozzy’s just as cool.”}

      _{hunting is in his blood; that doesn’t mean he has to  l i k e  it. it is in his veins like wildfire, the curse of the winchesters, the winchesters’ blessing. but fire is untamable and unquenchable, and sometimes it burns its way out through sam’s tender skin and blazes and b l a z e s like the ceiling of his little apartment in palo alto.}

                   _{he fights it down, compressing the heat and the flames back into the space behind his heart, but there is only so much he can do, so hard he can press, before his little jail cell shatters and the flame licks its way free.}

                                            _{it’s worse, now, when the trees turn white with snow, boughs laden down with ice. it’s worse when he can smell eggnog and cinnamon on every furl of the wind, giggling and whirling with lost childhood and broken dreams.}

       _{but d e a n likes christmas, dean, who fed and watered him like a little sapling, who was his sun when his sky was full of clouds. and dean is still his sun because dean is dean, and long after all his sparkling stars have been blanketed over with velvet night, dean will be there.}

                                                                                       _{❝ —- anything beats  f r o s t y  ❞}

                _{it’s as close to an apology as he can give, with the heat still burning in his veins, but he forces a smile with tightened lips, gaze sliding over sheepishly to his brother behind the wheel.}