Fic: How To Save A Life (Supernatural)
Apr. 25th, 2006 01:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
apocalypsosTitle: How To Save a Life
Author: Troll Princess
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: R
Word Count: 3,000 words
Pairing: Sam/Jess
Warnings: Violence, bad language
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters, I just like playing with them.
Summary: Four times at college that Sam was a Winchester, whether he liked it or not.
*****
How To Save A Life
*****
1.
Sam's at this campsite with some of his buddies when it happens, Zach and Kenny one too many beers down and laughing at one of Chris' stupid jokes and Mark more out of it than the rest of them and threatening to throw up. Like, literally threatening, continuously mumbling that if Chris doesn't stop making all those dumb cracks about that time Mark accidentally tried to pick up a transvestite, Mark's going to open his mouth and -- in his own words -- "spew forth a vile cascading fountain of vomit reeking of the ominous but inevitable stench of death."
Mark's going to be a writer, and the more drunk he gets, the more he tries to prove it.
"Man, how much did you have?" Zach asks, choking back laughter as Chris counts the empties on the ground between him and Mark.
Mark sways a little at that, like he's trying to think and the brain cells rubbing together in his head are making him queasy, and he declares, "If you want my advice, Zach, you will move from the opposite side of the fire before I take too deep of a breath and singe off your eyebrows."
It's hilarious is what it is, this whole stupid thing, and Sam and Chris are practically falling all over one another in hysterics when Mark stumbles from the ground next to the campfire to start some shit with Kenny and falls backwards into the underbrush.
Everyone else fucking dies at this point. Mark's a funny drunk, not wittier-than-you-will-ever-be Dudley Moore in Arthur funny but still pretty goddamn amusing when he's just completely gone like this. One time he finished off an entire bottle of Southern Comfort and the night ended with him dancing to a tinny Muzak version of "Blame It On The Bossa Nova" with some clown on the way home from a kid's birthday party at a Denny's. Sam doesn't even know what the hell it is about a drunk Mark, but it's ridiculous and amazing and ...
... and currently bleeding all over the campground.
"Mark?" Sam says, because everyone else has slumped over with a serious case of drunken giggles and that growing scent of blood in the air hasn't hit them yet.
Sam's closest, and downwind in the light summer breeze. It's an easy enough excuse, if it has to be.
Sam calls Mark's name again as he scrambles to Mark's side, because Mark's moving and groaning but his right leg's not doing much twitching. A sharp branch glistens with the dark stain of blood only inches from where Mark lies.
And the others are starting to get it now, slow but steady through the haze of more beer than they'll ever admit to. Kenny's gone white as bone in the flickering golden light of the campfire and Sam can read it in his eyes before he focuses on the tear in Mark's pant leg soaking with blood.
We're all pre-law is what Kenny's thinking, and probably the others, too, and if Sam were lucky, he'd be just as clueless as the rest of them.
Later on after they've carried Mark out of the woods on a makeshift pallet (Oh, my father's got a huge spread in the middle of East Bumblefuck where no one will bother us for days has Chris apologizing to Mark for months after the camping trip), after they've carted him off to the emergency room and Sam accepts a half-dozen compliments on his stitching, Kenny pulls him aside and straight-out asks him. He's all-of-a-sudden sober, that kind of clear and empty sober you only get from blood and pain and fear. If you're lucky, you don't have them all at once, Sam knows by now, but it works a hell of a lot better than a squad car in your rearview.
"How did you do that, man?" Kenny asks, still that bone-white pale. His hair and eyes are dark brown, and the stark pale glory of his skin combined with that and the fluorescent hospital lighting make Sam's hands itch for a shotgun and a prayer for warding off zombies.
Sam shrugs and plasters on that bright wide smile, that plastered-on charmer Dean practically trained him how to wield like any other weapon at his disposal. "My dad had some first aid training," he says, because the military part's pretty obvious to anyone who knows him for long enough the way he can snap out a "Yes, sir" with the best of them.
"And he taught you how to give a guy seventeen stitches with some fishing line?"
Another shrug, another smile, and if Sam leaves a tall smoky outline of himself behind when he walks away without an answer, he wouldn't be surprised.
*****
2.
Sam doesn't see it the first time they go to the apartment, when Jess keeps making these jokes about the two of them being poor little college students and Sam is too worried to mention the well-lived-in (read: routinely trashed) apartment may be the nicest place he's ever called home. But the second time they go there to drop off some kitchen supplies and books, Jess is the one who spots it, this quick dark flash out of the corner of her eye before one of the windows they've cracked open slams shut.
"I think we've got ourselves a ghost," she says, and when she does Sam's blood flows cold and icy.
His voice takes on that practiced lightness that he's always surprised she never recognizes. "Just because a window slid shut?"
"Sam, those windows were painted shut," she points out, "and you had to struggle to get them to move at all."
She's got a point, even if she is just trying to make this dump's past a little more interesting than a dozen years of dorm-hating Stanford students huddled over their textbooks or getting wasted with their friends. And maybe she did see something, the childish giggle she'd heard afterwards not the laughter from another apartment that Sam convinced her it was.
But if there is weight and measure to a suspicious gaze, it pushes down on the skin on the back of Sam's neck, a sharp steady tingle that has him looking over his shoulder that entire second visit.
The third visit happens after midnight the day before they move in, the slide of the key into the lock echoing in the hallway like a church bell ringing in Sam's ears. The pockets of his jacket overflow with the usual suspects -- a container of salt, a box of sidewalk chalk, the scribbled notes he'd salvaged from the one urban mythology book in the college library that read worth a damn. His skin doesn't crawl and his stomach doesn't roll from their presence in his jacket, and he curses them both as betrayers.
The second he closes the door behind him, she appears at his side with her bright eyes wide and curious.
"You opened the window," she says, like she can't believe he'd ever be that stupid. She can't be more than six, her tiny overalls stiff and black with blood, and the angle of her neck isn't right at all.
Sam hasn't flipped on the switch but the lights flicker just the same, and when nothing else happens, he kneels beside her and keeps his hands where she can see them. The kind of thing you do with cops and criminals in the real world, he thinks, no weapons in hand, no threats in sight. "I'm sorry," he says. Her head wobbles a little, the wrong sounds coming from her neck, and he adds, "I didn't know."
She smiles at that, a silent thank you, and she says, "You can see the stars from the fire escape. It's pretty out there."
It's like the denim of her overalls grows darker in response to that, and Sam covers the choking sound in the back of his throat with a smile. "Yeah, I'll bet."
"I think that pretty girl would like to see the stars," she says. "The roof is nicer, though."
Sam takes her hand, and the small cold memory of it in his palm won't leave for days. "I'll remember," he says.
When Jess recounts the whole thing later on, she inevitably tells people the ghost said hello and goodbye with a single slam of the window, like an old tenant waving as he walked out the front door as they walked in. And it makes their friends roll their eyes with a smile when she tells it, the way her eyes dance, the sense she's bought into it like the only spooky story she'll ever get to tell at Halloween.
"I'll bet this big lug scared it off," she always says, sliding her foot along Sam's leg under the table with a wink and a grin.
Sometimes, Sam even remembers to smile back.
*****
3.
The problem is that Kenny's seen Sam do it, seen him trounce the stuffing out of these two idiots at some hole-in-the-wall bar and walk away with a wad of twenties in his hand. Hell, Sam wouldn't even have done it in the first place if his laptop hadn't been boosted from his apartment the week before, and the catcalling preppies hanging off a pair of pool cues and leering at every girl who passed were asking for it.
"Sam Winchester?" Chris shakes his head as he puts a hand on Sam's shoulder and says, "Wait, this Sam Winchester?"
"Guys, come on," Sam warns, but no one's listening.
Across the bar, there's a trio of guys pooling their cash, the little one giving him that easy-money look Sam recognizes from every time he's seen Dean bury it behind a charming grin. Johnny Cash warbles deep and uneven on the cheap stereo system in the bar, and Mark makes some grumbled comment about how anyone can think of anything that isn't drinking with that shit playing. He tosses the contents of his wallet into their pot before wandering over to the jukebox and puts in some trendy Nickelback song Sam loathes but can't complain about now.
"Sam, this would pay for every single round next week." Kenny grins and gives Sam this friendly punch on the arm. "I know you're a lowly scholarship student, man, but you've got to start chipping in for shots eventually."
"I pay for shots," Sam says.
"Yeah, your own," Chris throws back at him, and Kenny beams in that smug way he's got down to a science and shoves the cue into Sam's hands before he can protest anymore.
The little guy restrains his swagger as he walks up to the pool table but Sam knows a ringer when he sees one, especially one as bad at it as this one. Everything reads in his eyes like it's been scribbled in bold neon letters inside his skull, and the bright abrasive reflection of the lie makes Sam sorely tempted to throw the game.
"Go easy on me, pal," the little guy says. He rubs chalk on the cue, smearing blue streaks all over his palm, and tosses the chalk to Sam before swiping his hand across his T-shirt. Faint blue smudges stand out against the faded black cotton, and Sam thinks, When Dean's hustling, sometimes he pops the cue ball right off the goddamn table. People make mistakes when they're smug enough to think they're playing a moron.
Sam takes it back. The lie doesn't make him want to throw the game anymore.
It makes him want to thrash the fucker.
He lets the little guy take the break, stands back and nurses a beer as the guy knock in four balls in a row. Kenny, Mark and Chris keep driving him up a fucking wall, giving this punk exactly what he wants by being about as vocal with their growing discontent as they can manage. One of them -- Sam's too focused to recognize who -- calls the little guy a fucking cocksucker, and the little guy grins and licks his lips like he's offering to prove him right on that.
Sam chuckles under his breath before the little guy gets to fumble his next shot, almost ready to ask Mark to pump the jukebox full of AC/DC because that's really how goddamn familiar this feels. Maybe that's what throws the hustler off, the sound of Sam's soft derision forcing the shot wide.
"Well," the little guy says, "your turn at bat."
You that far off your game?, Sam nearly asks.
And the best part of it is the way the guy's facade completely crumbles with every shot Sam ropes into the pockets, even and steady like there's never a question of missing them. He's this close to nailing them all in order just for the hell of it, working his way down to the eight-ball like a silent threatening countdown.
The money he wins covers shots at the bar for the guys for four straight weeks. Sam never drinks any of them.
*****
4.
So Jess used to date this guy before she ever met Sam, right, this bastard named Keith whose pitbull of a mother sold real estate that could be yours for only eight figures. Sam suspects he hit Jess once but can never get her to admit it, the way she always changes the subject like she does, and Jess isn't the kind of girl who'd let herself get hit twice by anyone. In his mind, Sam sometimes sees the outline of a meaty handprint on her cheek, so distinct he could reach out and trace it with his fingertip if he had to.
He tries to be sensible about that hint of a handprint, five fingers in reddened skin and mottled bruises marring her pale skin in his mind, but there's no such thing as sensible with that ghost in Sam's mind.
About four weeks after Sam starts dating Jess -- four weeks of fast-food picnics and study sessions that only counted as study sessions if they were working on chemistry homework or anatomy reports -- Sam walks out of the library after sunset and finds Keith waiting for him.
"You're dating my girl," he says, like Sam's committed a mortal sin or something.
Sam keeps walking, through, shrugs the bastard off and throws him off-balance all at once. Sam would place bets on the guy not getting that much, not having to handle someone who takes what he throws at them and lets it slide off their skin like a heavy rain. Fucker's the size of a goddamn truck, taller than Sam by an inch or two and broader by half. This out-of-control thought flashes through Sam's brain wondering how the hell Jess ever made out with this moron without a ladder or an elevator.
Keith's got to hustle if he wants to catch up, and in Sam's head is a steady one-two, one-two count of the heavy rhythm of the guy's footsteps. "I said --"
"I heard what you said," Sam tosses back.
"Well, don't you have anything to say about that?"
There's this dean streak running through Sam right then and there, not the same but pretty fucking close, like liquid daring and stupidity flooding his veins at the same time. So when he stops walking just then, stares this guy down with a muttered, "Yeah," then puts on a straight face and says, "You date girls?", he figures he'll need to pass on the black eye that's bound to be coming when Keith's broad fist flies towards his face.
Sam's got a choice, to take it or dodge, and he loses seconds where this is no thinking, where the next thing he knows, Keith's stumbling around cradling his wrist and students passing by stop and whisper.
A blank spot in time, and Keith's on his ass glaring up at him with murderous intent, a circle gathering around them.
Another blank spot, and Keith has a bloody nose, Sam a set of bruised knuckles, and the crowd someone to root for.
Another blank spot, and Keith stumbles to his feet off-balance and dazed, campus security racing towards them as one of Sam's friends appears out of nowhere and hauls him away. "Come on, dude," a familiar voice says, and Sam suddenly realizes Zach's the one sliding his knapsack onto his shoulder, that the crowd's pointing accusatory fingers at Keith, that Sam's muscles are screaming in pain and screaming for more, more, more.
The butcher's bill is only a lot of bruises for Sam, but it's a broken nose and wrist and even more black marks of his skin than Sam's got, like an apple dropped a dozen times over.
The next day, Jess ghosts gentle kisses across the breaks in the skin on his knuckles, and Sam thinks it's the sweetest thanks he's ever gotten.
Author: Troll Princess
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: R
Word Count: 3,000 words
Pairing: Sam/Jess
Warnings: Violence, bad language
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters, I just like playing with them.
Summary: Four times at college that Sam was a Winchester, whether he liked it or not.
How To Save A Life
*****
1.
Sam's at this campsite with some of his buddies when it happens, Zach and Kenny one too many beers down and laughing at one of Chris' stupid jokes and Mark more out of it than the rest of them and threatening to throw up. Like, literally threatening, continuously mumbling that if Chris doesn't stop making all those dumb cracks about that time Mark accidentally tried to pick up a transvestite, Mark's going to open his mouth and -- in his own words -- "spew forth a vile cascading fountain of vomit reeking of the ominous but inevitable stench of death."
Mark's going to be a writer, and the more drunk he gets, the more he tries to prove it.
"Man, how much did you have?" Zach asks, choking back laughter as Chris counts the empties on the ground between him and Mark.
Mark sways a little at that, like he's trying to think and the brain cells rubbing together in his head are making him queasy, and he declares, "If you want my advice, Zach, you will move from the opposite side of the fire before I take too deep of a breath and singe off your eyebrows."
It's hilarious is what it is, this whole stupid thing, and Sam and Chris are practically falling all over one another in hysterics when Mark stumbles from the ground next to the campfire to start some shit with Kenny and falls backwards into the underbrush.
Everyone else fucking dies at this point. Mark's a funny drunk, not wittier-than-you-will-ever-be Dudley Moore in Arthur funny but still pretty goddamn amusing when he's just completely gone like this. One time he finished off an entire bottle of Southern Comfort and the night ended with him dancing to a tinny Muzak version of "Blame It On The Bossa Nova" with some clown on the way home from a kid's birthday party at a Denny's. Sam doesn't even know what the hell it is about a drunk Mark, but it's ridiculous and amazing and ...
... and currently bleeding all over the campground.
"Mark?" Sam says, because everyone else has slumped over with a serious case of drunken giggles and that growing scent of blood in the air hasn't hit them yet.
Sam's closest, and downwind in the light summer breeze. It's an easy enough excuse, if it has to be.
Sam calls Mark's name again as he scrambles to Mark's side, because Mark's moving and groaning but his right leg's not doing much twitching. A sharp branch glistens with the dark stain of blood only inches from where Mark lies.
And the others are starting to get it now, slow but steady through the haze of more beer than they'll ever admit to. Kenny's gone white as bone in the flickering golden light of the campfire and Sam can read it in his eyes before he focuses on the tear in Mark's pant leg soaking with blood.
We're all pre-law is what Kenny's thinking, and probably the others, too, and if Sam were lucky, he'd be just as clueless as the rest of them.
Later on after they've carried Mark out of the woods on a makeshift pallet (Oh, my father's got a huge spread in the middle of East Bumblefuck where no one will bother us for days has Chris apologizing to Mark for months after the camping trip), after they've carted him off to the emergency room and Sam accepts a half-dozen compliments on his stitching, Kenny pulls him aside and straight-out asks him. He's all-of-a-sudden sober, that kind of clear and empty sober you only get from blood and pain and fear. If you're lucky, you don't have them all at once, Sam knows by now, but it works a hell of a lot better than a squad car in your rearview.
"How did you do that, man?" Kenny asks, still that bone-white pale. His hair and eyes are dark brown, and the stark pale glory of his skin combined with that and the fluorescent hospital lighting make Sam's hands itch for a shotgun and a prayer for warding off zombies.
Sam shrugs and plasters on that bright wide smile, that plastered-on charmer Dean practically trained him how to wield like any other weapon at his disposal. "My dad had some first aid training," he says, because the military part's pretty obvious to anyone who knows him for long enough the way he can snap out a "Yes, sir" with the best of them.
"And he taught you how to give a guy seventeen stitches with some fishing line?"
Another shrug, another smile, and if Sam leaves a tall smoky outline of himself behind when he walks away without an answer, he wouldn't be surprised.
2.
Sam doesn't see it the first time they go to the apartment, when Jess keeps making these jokes about the two of them being poor little college students and Sam is too worried to mention the well-lived-in (read: routinely trashed) apartment may be the nicest place he's ever called home. But the second time they go there to drop off some kitchen supplies and books, Jess is the one who spots it, this quick dark flash out of the corner of her eye before one of the windows they've cracked open slams shut.
"I think we've got ourselves a ghost," she says, and when she does Sam's blood flows cold and icy.
His voice takes on that practiced lightness that he's always surprised she never recognizes. "Just because a window slid shut?"
"Sam, those windows were painted shut," she points out, "and you had to struggle to get them to move at all."
She's got a point, even if she is just trying to make this dump's past a little more interesting than a dozen years of dorm-hating Stanford students huddled over their textbooks or getting wasted with their friends. And maybe she did see something, the childish giggle she'd heard afterwards not the laughter from another apartment that Sam convinced her it was.
But if there is weight and measure to a suspicious gaze, it pushes down on the skin on the back of Sam's neck, a sharp steady tingle that has him looking over his shoulder that entire second visit.
The third visit happens after midnight the day before they move in, the slide of the key into the lock echoing in the hallway like a church bell ringing in Sam's ears. The pockets of his jacket overflow with the usual suspects -- a container of salt, a box of sidewalk chalk, the scribbled notes he'd salvaged from the one urban mythology book in the college library that read worth a damn. His skin doesn't crawl and his stomach doesn't roll from their presence in his jacket, and he curses them both as betrayers.
The second he closes the door behind him, she appears at his side with her bright eyes wide and curious.
"You opened the window," she says, like she can't believe he'd ever be that stupid. She can't be more than six, her tiny overalls stiff and black with blood, and the angle of her neck isn't right at all.
Sam hasn't flipped on the switch but the lights flicker just the same, and when nothing else happens, he kneels beside her and keeps his hands where she can see them. The kind of thing you do with cops and criminals in the real world, he thinks, no weapons in hand, no threats in sight. "I'm sorry," he says. Her head wobbles a little, the wrong sounds coming from her neck, and he adds, "I didn't know."
She smiles at that, a silent thank you, and she says, "You can see the stars from the fire escape. It's pretty out there."
It's like the denim of her overalls grows darker in response to that, and Sam covers the choking sound in the back of his throat with a smile. "Yeah, I'll bet."
"I think that pretty girl would like to see the stars," she says. "The roof is nicer, though."
Sam takes her hand, and the small cold memory of it in his palm won't leave for days. "I'll remember," he says.
When Jess recounts the whole thing later on, she inevitably tells people the ghost said hello and goodbye with a single slam of the window, like an old tenant waving as he walked out the front door as they walked in. And it makes their friends roll their eyes with a smile when she tells it, the way her eyes dance, the sense she's bought into it like the only spooky story she'll ever get to tell at Halloween.
"I'll bet this big lug scared it off," she always says, sliding her foot along Sam's leg under the table with a wink and a grin.
Sometimes, Sam even remembers to smile back.
3.
The problem is that Kenny's seen Sam do it, seen him trounce the stuffing out of these two idiots at some hole-in-the-wall bar and walk away with a wad of twenties in his hand. Hell, Sam wouldn't even have done it in the first place if his laptop hadn't been boosted from his apartment the week before, and the catcalling preppies hanging off a pair of pool cues and leering at every girl who passed were asking for it.
"Sam Winchester?" Chris shakes his head as he puts a hand on Sam's shoulder and says, "Wait, this Sam Winchester?"
"Guys, come on," Sam warns, but no one's listening.
Across the bar, there's a trio of guys pooling their cash, the little one giving him that easy-money look Sam recognizes from every time he's seen Dean bury it behind a charming grin. Johnny Cash warbles deep and uneven on the cheap stereo system in the bar, and Mark makes some grumbled comment about how anyone can think of anything that isn't drinking with that shit playing. He tosses the contents of his wallet into their pot before wandering over to the jukebox and puts in some trendy Nickelback song Sam loathes but can't complain about now.
"Sam, this would pay for every single round next week." Kenny grins and gives Sam this friendly punch on the arm. "I know you're a lowly scholarship student, man, but you've got to start chipping in for shots eventually."
"I pay for shots," Sam says.
"Yeah, your own," Chris throws back at him, and Kenny beams in that smug way he's got down to a science and shoves the cue into Sam's hands before he can protest anymore.
The little guy restrains his swagger as he walks up to the pool table but Sam knows a ringer when he sees one, especially one as bad at it as this one. Everything reads in his eyes like it's been scribbled in bold neon letters inside his skull, and the bright abrasive reflection of the lie makes Sam sorely tempted to throw the game.
"Go easy on me, pal," the little guy says. He rubs chalk on the cue, smearing blue streaks all over his palm, and tosses the chalk to Sam before swiping his hand across his T-shirt. Faint blue smudges stand out against the faded black cotton, and Sam thinks, When Dean's hustling, sometimes he pops the cue ball right off the goddamn table. People make mistakes when they're smug enough to think they're playing a moron.
Sam takes it back. The lie doesn't make him want to throw the game anymore.
It makes him want to thrash the fucker.
He lets the little guy take the break, stands back and nurses a beer as the guy knock in four balls in a row. Kenny, Mark and Chris keep driving him up a fucking wall, giving this punk exactly what he wants by being about as vocal with their growing discontent as they can manage. One of them -- Sam's too focused to recognize who -- calls the little guy a fucking cocksucker, and the little guy grins and licks his lips like he's offering to prove him right on that.
Sam chuckles under his breath before the little guy gets to fumble his next shot, almost ready to ask Mark to pump the jukebox full of AC/DC because that's really how goddamn familiar this feels. Maybe that's what throws the hustler off, the sound of Sam's soft derision forcing the shot wide.
"Well," the little guy says, "your turn at bat."
You that far off your game?, Sam nearly asks.
And the best part of it is the way the guy's facade completely crumbles with every shot Sam ropes into the pockets, even and steady like there's never a question of missing them. He's this close to nailing them all in order just for the hell of it, working his way down to the eight-ball like a silent threatening countdown.
The money he wins covers shots at the bar for the guys for four straight weeks. Sam never drinks any of them.
4.
So Jess used to date this guy before she ever met Sam, right, this bastard named Keith whose pitbull of a mother sold real estate that could be yours for only eight figures. Sam suspects he hit Jess once but can never get her to admit it, the way she always changes the subject like she does, and Jess isn't the kind of girl who'd let herself get hit twice by anyone. In his mind, Sam sometimes sees the outline of a meaty handprint on her cheek, so distinct he could reach out and trace it with his fingertip if he had to.
He tries to be sensible about that hint of a handprint, five fingers in reddened skin and mottled bruises marring her pale skin in his mind, but there's no such thing as sensible with that ghost in Sam's mind.
About four weeks after Sam starts dating Jess -- four weeks of fast-food picnics and study sessions that only counted as study sessions if they were working on chemistry homework or anatomy reports -- Sam walks out of the library after sunset and finds Keith waiting for him.
"You're dating my girl," he says, like Sam's committed a mortal sin or something.
Sam keeps walking, through, shrugs the bastard off and throws him off-balance all at once. Sam would place bets on the guy not getting that much, not having to handle someone who takes what he throws at them and lets it slide off their skin like a heavy rain. Fucker's the size of a goddamn truck, taller than Sam by an inch or two and broader by half. This out-of-control thought flashes through Sam's brain wondering how the hell Jess ever made out with this moron without a ladder or an elevator.
Keith's got to hustle if he wants to catch up, and in Sam's head is a steady one-two, one-two count of the heavy rhythm of the guy's footsteps. "I said --"
"I heard what you said," Sam tosses back.
"Well, don't you have anything to say about that?"
There's this dean streak running through Sam right then and there, not the same but pretty fucking close, like liquid daring and stupidity flooding his veins at the same time. So when he stops walking just then, stares this guy down with a muttered, "Yeah," then puts on a straight face and says, "You date girls?", he figures he'll need to pass on the black eye that's bound to be coming when Keith's broad fist flies towards his face.
Sam's got a choice, to take it or dodge, and he loses seconds where this is no thinking, where the next thing he knows, Keith's stumbling around cradling his wrist and students passing by stop and whisper.
A blank spot in time, and Keith's on his ass glaring up at him with murderous intent, a circle gathering around them.
Another blank spot, and Keith has a bloody nose, Sam a set of bruised knuckles, and the crowd someone to root for.
Another blank spot, and Keith stumbles to his feet off-balance and dazed, campus security racing towards them as one of Sam's friends appears out of nowhere and hauls him away. "Come on, dude," a familiar voice says, and Sam suddenly realizes Zach's the one sliding his knapsack onto his shoulder, that the crowd's pointing accusatory fingers at Keith, that Sam's muscles are screaming in pain and screaming for more, more, more.
The butcher's bill is only a lot of bruises for Sam, but it's a broken nose and wrist and even more black marks of his skin than Sam's got, like an apple dropped a dozen times over.
The next day, Jess ghosts gentle kisses across the breaks in the skin on his knuckles, and Sam thinks it's the sweetest thanks he's ever gotten.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-04-25 05:53 am (UTC)So, yeah. This was awesome. And I was literally leaning forward, breathless as I read. I gotta stop staying up this late. :D
no subject
Date: 2006-04-26 12:11 am (UTC)And thanks! :)
no subject
Date: 2006-04-25 05:57 am (UTC)I love Sam at college, being a Winchester. It makes me think about his friends getting together and discussing him, saying to each other, "Hey, the hell? He does this and he knows this and what. The. Hell?"
no subject
Date: 2006-04-26 12:12 am (UTC)And thanks!
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2006-04-25 06:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-26 12:13 am (UTC)And thanks! :)
no subject
Date: 2006-04-25 06:07 am (UTC)♥♥
no subject
Date: 2006-04-26 12:15 am (UTC)And thanks!
no subject
Date: 2006-04-25 07:06 am (UTC)There's this dean streak running through Sam right then and there, not the same but pretty fucking close, like liquid daring and stupidity flooding his veins at the same time.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-26 12:21 am (UTC)And thanks! :)
no subject
Date: 2006-04-25 07:28 am (UTC)I love that you have to tag it "non-wincest". *g*
no subject
Date: 2006-04-26 12:23 am (UTC)And thanks!
no subject
Date: 2006-04-25 08:44 am (UTC)I really liked Jess - I'd love to see a flashback episode where Dean & Sam have to face something in Stanford that Sam faced alone during those years.
It'd make a great story and we could see some more Jess.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-26 12:28 am (UTC)And thanks! :)
How to...
Date: 2006-04-25 09:18 am (UTC)Thank you
Re: How to...
Date: 2006-04-26 12:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-25 09:25 am (UTC)thank you :)
no subject
Date: 2006-04-26 12:34 am (UTC)And thanks! :)
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2006-04-25 10:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-26 12:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-25 01:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-26 12:41 am (UTC)And thanks! :)
no subject
Date: 2006-04-25 02:15 pm (UTC)These were all terrific. It's so in-character for Sam to both act on behalf of his friends and yet try to deflect attention from those actions. Thanks for this one!
no subject
Date: 2006-04-26 12:42 am (UTC)And thanks! :)
no subject
Date: 2006-04-25 02:32 pm (UTC)Great job!
no subject
Date: 2006-04-26 12:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-25 02:50 pm (UTC)thank yooooou.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-26 12:47 am (UTC)Thanks so much!
no subject
Date: 2006-04-25 05:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-25 06:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-25 11:19 pm (UTC)That was wonderful. Sammy! He's so soft and so hard at the same time. The darling boy. You know a ton of stuff like this had to happen at college. And you capture it so well :)
no subject
Date: 2006-04-26 12:33 am (UTC)Including this one. I loved it- it was melancholy and kind of funny, all at once. And I loved how Sam can't really run away from the instincts that got drummed into him, and how the past is meshing with the present and... yeah.
This is so good that I can't even describe what's good about it- and believe me, I'm usually far too wordy on that part.
~DF
no subject
Date: 2006-04-26 02:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-26 04:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-26 10:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-26 03:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-05 05:33 am (UTC)Things like this have been flying round my head for age, just all the things that Sam knows and knows how to do that he'd have to pretend he didn't, situations he'd get into - like, being the one to break into friends cars when they lock themselves out, but having to look like it's not as easy as it is, it was great getting glimpses of that.
:D
no subject
Date: 2006-05-10 02:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-07 02:09 am (UTC)