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The first of Sam's collection was a stick of stolen eyeliner.
It hadn’t even been on purpose - he hadn’t realised until long after the hunt was over. It had been a long and gritty week, and honestly he was in such a rush to take a shower and pass out that he only took notice of it when he felt a thin shape jutting into his ribs from his jacket pocket.
He didn’t sleep in pyjamas any more by that point - too big of a chance that they had to up and run at short notice.
It was 1998, and Sam Winchester was panicking.
The sane thing to do would be to chuck it in the nearest trash can and pretend he had never seen it. Then he could have avoided everything from the beginning. But they were in the motel already, he and Dean, and if his brother saw it in the bin then there might be questions, and accusations, and god only knows what Dad would do when (if) he got back-
So he hid it. Stuffed it in an inside pocket of his duffel back, and vowed to throw it away as soon as he was alone and safe, and that was that.
When Dean came back from his turn in the shower he noticed Sam being shifty - because of course he did. He asked what was up, and Sam really didn’t want to lie to his brother. He always felt vaguely ill for days afterwards, like it wounded something small within him.
Sam said he just felt really bruised up from that spirit - he was tired, that’s all.
Dean got that concerned look in his eyes that he always tried to hide by looking away, which was difficult when he was also scanning Sam for any possible injuries at the same time. It mostly resulted in this dont-look-now game that he usually secretly found funny, but other secrets were keeping him on edge.
So Sam rolled his eyes and mocked his big brother for caring too much - got called a bitch, said “jerk” right back because how could he possibly not. It seemed the moment was over now that Dean had assured himself that his little brother wasn’t going to keel over any minute, so they both went to bed content and only slightly hungry.
Sam felt hyper-aware of the secret in his duffel bag. He reminded himself to throw it away as soon as he could. He fell asleep repeating that mantra in his head.
It stayed buried, there in that bag, until a vengeful hellfire-red ghost threw the big beat-up mixed fabric monstrosity into the middle of a creek. And his secret sank with it.
And that was that.
So that wasn’t the first item, not really. He’d lost it within a month or so (35 days, he counted) after it had ended up with him by chance, and he couldn’t explain how he felt both relieved and strangely disappointed at once. He told himself he was put out at having lost the rest of his gear. He knew he was lying.
The second time he found himself with something like that in his possession was…less than an accident.
He was 16 now, with more mind-blanks than memories, and had honestly forgotten all about that- fluke. Dad was gone for longer and longer stretches of time, and when he was there it felt like they fought more than talked, and Dean could only step between them so many times before it got old. So they argued a lot, a cruel little back and forth that never really stopped, the three of them almost getting kicked out of their motels a few times per noise complaints.
This was one of those days. They had spent the entire night staking out a werewolf den that yielded nothing but one lone straggler, the rest having moved on long before. Dad came up with some bullshit excuse on Sam’s deadweight making too much noise, his words slurring with heated vitriol and whiskey. Dean of course came to his defence, and of course Sam had to ruin it by defending himself, which only spurred Dad on. Sam ended up storming out, shouting behind him that he would be back within the day.
So now he was feeling sour and worn out at 5am while the first strains of sun crawled up into the sky. Jaw still aching from a stray rawhead graze the other week and eyebrows deeper than a grave, the familiar strain of living scarce with no good sleep had been getting to him. He felt like doing something that neither Dean nor Dad would approve of in any scenario, and that urge put him in the makeup aisle of a miraculously-open Walgreens.
He didn’t know there could be so much variety. Well, he’d gotten a vague idea from passing makeup adverts now and then, but confronted with all these options to his face: brands, types of eyeliner, different types of those types of eyeliner, at least 20 different shades of blush altogether…He couldn’t begin to imagine going into an actual brand makeup store.
“You need a hand?” Came from his left, and he jumped in his skin only to see an employee wearing a fantastically false smile and a nametag that read ‘Lucy’.
“Uh, I-” He eloquently replied. “No, I’m fine. All good. Um. Thanks.” Nice one, smooth. Convincing!
“You don’t sound too sure about that, pal.” Came Lucy’s reply, and oh no, it didn’t look like she was going to leave until she got reassurance that her help was not wanted. Who felt charitable at 5am in a Walgreens?
Could he have a girlfriend? People his age had girlfriends, right? Or maybe he just has…friends. Yeah, that’s a safer bet. Sam said as such.
“And this…friend. Of yours,” the woman drawled, “She couldn’t come and buy it herself? Seems an whole lot of trouble to make you go the distance when you don’t even know what half this stuff is, I’m guessing.”
“Yeah, i- you would be right. Guess she just really didn’t want to leave the house.” Sam managed to choke out a strained chuckle. This was going so, so well. Why did he put himself through this. “Don’t suppose you have any, uh, suggestions? For what to buy, i mean.”
Lucy shrugged considering. “Well what kinda makeup does she wear? It some full-face, smokey kind of look?” These words were accompanied by vague, wispy gestures around her face. She paused, hands dropping, with an inscrutable expression. “Or something more subtle. Low-key, natural, y’know.”
Sam relaxed a little at the options. “Yeah, uhm, the second one.”
“Then…” Lucy stretched her arm out this way and that to pluck out a small assortment of things. Sam felt his face getting hot. Why, why did he put himself through this. He was so screwed. “Try these out.” Her voice snapped him back. “Just don’t break the seals before you buy, and put back the ones you don’t want in the right place.”
“Of course. Thank you.” He was sure to add. Even though it had been supremely awkward, she had reduced his confusion by about a metric ton.
“It’s my job. And kid?” He looked up. “Relax a little. It’s makeup, not a gun store. Ain’t no one gonna kill you for experimenting.”
And she was gone behind the endless shelves before he could splutter out a reply. He looked down at the options in his hands, and up again at the now empty aisle. Down again, and started to weigh his options.
In the end, he decided on just a small eyeliner pencil and a nude-coloured eyeshadow palette. One that he could pass off as something normal, and one that would start a fight. He wasn’t sure that’s what he wanted now, but whatever. He had gotten this far.
The cashier was some random guy who couldn’t care less, thank god. ‘Darren’ blinked exactly twice their entire exchange, and said precisely three words. Sam did not want a receipt, thanks and bye.
Out in the suncast lightening streets, his pockets felt heavy and incriminating, but his shoulders were strangely light. He was almost euphoric, even as the rundown motel came into sight again.
Dad was gone he got back in. Dean looked up and there on his face, his cheek was slowly mottling some awful shades of purple-blue-green.
Sam stopped talking with Dad so much after that day, to avoid a repeat. He could never tell which injuries Dean gained were from a hunt, and which were- not. He never asked, though he knows he really should have tried at least. Sam didn’t deserve to be spared from the pain his mistakes wrought others just for his brother to get beat on instead. Dean might have shut him down, but it was so terrible staying quiet.
The quiet did give him chances to mess with the things he bought, though. He was sort of proud how quickly he got good at it, actually, considering how he had to scrub it off with a towel rough like sandpaper whenever he heard the deep animal rumble of the Impala rolling up. He always caught on quick when it felt like a life or death matter.
His collection grew slowly after that over the course of two years, little things that found its way into that little zipper of his duffel. He bought some, but he stole most. He was with Dean too often to risk him noticing the little addition to their shopping load, so he shoved it in a back pocket or his shoe or waistband or something. He mostly had eye stuff, though he did also pick up blush, and a few lipstick-adjacent things. Once again - why were there so many different kinds of lip things? He didn’t know they could look so shiny before he accidentally bought-stole some ‘lip oil’. He kind of enjoyed the way they reflected in the light, like someone had layered the thin shiny white gleam of a pearl onto cracked desert earth.
Dean only caught wind of it once. Looking back, it was impossible to keep hiding it from him forever, considering how they were practically always together.
Sam had been stupid enough to forgo the immediate duffel zipper for once, instead cramming it deep enough in his jacket that he was sure it was secure and wouldn’t betray him by doing something silly like fall out.
He had been wrong.
His small solace was that Dad had been absent for a few days by then, and was likely not to come back until the end of the week. It was just him, Dean, and the unmistakeable tube of fresh black eyeliner that had fallen on the motel floor when Sam took off his jacket. Could’ve been worse. Maybe.
But still: Sam was 17 and surely about to die. This is what would kill him.
Sam snatched it up immediately and stuffed in his duffel bag (which - mistake number two, because now he couldn’t pretend it wasn’t his), studiously examining literally anything but Dean’s expression right then.
He was taking extreme notice of the table's hardwood interlocked grain pattern when he almost flinched at Dean finally speaking up.
“Dad said he’d be another week on the hunt. Called me today.”
Ok, so they were ignoring it. That’s good, he could do that - better than the alternatives. “Sounds-” he cleared his throat, forcibly dipping his voice down into his Dad’s painful low register, “Sounds good. We got enough to last?” Food, money, the whole lot.
Dean grunted an affirmative. Sam’s shoulders finally loosened from where they had locked up tight like a petty shield against a storm, and he stood to go to the bathroom. Anything to escape this awkward air he had created. He hadn’t been careful, never careful enough.
Dean’s voice stopped him in his tracks. “Hey, uh, Sammy.”
Sam tensed, didn’t bother telling him that it was Sam, not Sammy. “What’s up?”
There was a long pause. “Just. Don’t- You can’t…” He fumbled. “Be careful, man.” around Dad, went unsaid. Sam’s fists clenched and unclenched. He ached to punch something, but Dean’s voice had been so soft, so- pleading, that he could not bear to take his sourceless anger out on him.
“Yeah,” He acknowledged, shutting the door to the bathroom behind him maybe a bit harsher than he meant to. He looked in the mirror and saw his own tired eyes glaring back at him like a wounded animal. There was a smudge of black still under one of them that only sort of looked like eyebags, and he cursed and rubbed at the spot ferociously with a water-wet hand.
The eyeliner went in the bin. He’ll find another one later.
Then a year passed, and the Stanford fight happened, and Dad told him to never come back and Dean said nothing, nothing at all.
It was only when Sam was sitting under the shelter from rain of the second nearest bus-stop that he realised what he’d forgotten, then Dean was there with the bag Sam had somehow managed to keep with him since he started his little collection, up until now.
He stood from the bench, a little uncertain, like Dean would laugh cruelly and pull it back after having gone all the way to find him. But his brother only stood there, arm outstretched.
“C’mon Sammy, my arm’s gonna fall off soon,” Dean tried. Sam finally stepped forwards one and took the bag from him, slowly.
“You’re not- mad?” Sam carefully said, like speaking quicker will shatter the illusion of kindness.
Dean hesitated. “Right now? I don’t know. I mean, Dad is-” He cut himself off, rubbing his jaw. “Dad’s fucking furious, man. Pretty sure he’s gonna bite my head off when I go back.”
Suddenly it hit Sam that he was leaving Dean. Dean, alone with Dad. Dean alone with the man called John Winchester for weeks, months, on end, with no other outlet for his anger excluding hunts. “Dean, you can come with me. Dad can’t keep you there! You don’t have to go at this alone, we-”
“No, Sammy.”
“Come on. You can’t say you haven’t been- look. Look, right here. I got enough money to get a ticket for you. The two of us, all the way to the other end of the country. If we just-”
“Sam,” Dean interrupted, looking a little too sad, too wizened for a 22-year old, for Sam not to feel horribly guilty all of a sudden. “One of us has to stay and make sure the old man don’t reach a grisly death, y’know? Hey - you gotta go be smart for the both of us, man. Stanford won’t see you coming.”
“Dean…” Sam, mortifyingly, felt tears welling in his eyes. He had held them back by sheer willpower all through the fight with Dad, but now, now, here with Dean he felt himself slipping.
“Yeah, yeah.” And then he was being hugged so tight he thought he would never breath right again. “You keep that bag safe, Sammy. I know it’s got some stuff you don’t wanna lose.” His brother leaned back and cupped his face tenderly, the way only someone who raised him could. The way John never did. “And you know-” He turned away for the slightest second before making this determined straight eye contact with him that churned up Sam’s insides with a mortar and pestle. “I say some stuff, you know I do, but. Not for something like this. There isn’t anything you could do, and I mean nothing,” here his voice broke, “that could make me turn away or judge you, kid. Well,” he chuckled wetly, “unless we’re looking at that hair rock, man. But- Sam. Sammy. You hear me? You have my number. Do you hear me, Sam?”
Sam hiccuped, and nodded. His voice failed him. He’s not sure what he would’ve, or could’ve said right then if it hadn’t.
So Dean patted him once on the shoulder, firm, and then Sam was alone at the bus stop.
The duffel had three hundred dollars in cash, that he knew for certain he didn’t put there, when he looked on the bus. The pocket was still full of his mismatched makeup. The fingerprint-fogged window was cold with condensation against his forehead when he sagged sideways in bone-deep tiredness, and he’s pretty sure he only cried a lot.
It took him a while to realise that in Stanford, he didn’t have to hide it. He wasn’t completely delusional - the world had not miraculously been healed of its prejudices overnight - but that duffle, still packed and prepared to enable him for flying off at a moments notice, no longer had to be the container of his bigger secrets. Except for the gay thing; the gay thing probably trumped this by a fraction.
He had occasionally been haunted with nightmares over the thought of being outed unwittingly, but the concept just seemed so unlikely that it was hard for it to be a recurring fear. There was little chance for him to even consider hooking up or building something with another man with how often they moved around, and even then - getting close with anyone, for any time, just meant someone else to be held and bled dry for leverage by the monsters. Too often, any connection was sought out, monsters following the tense red string of bare affection like a bloodhound.
He still liked women as well, so Dad technically couldn’t have called him out on anything.
Besides, he didn’t exactly carry a full grown man or gay pornos in the pocket of his duffel bag. He never really got the appeal of paper magazines for any gender. That had strictly been a Dean thing in the household.
To refrain from digressing - Stanford, despite half the pupils choking on trust funds and backyard pools and ignorance, was a period of comparative freedom to the restricted, enclosing routine of rigid secrecy he upheld prior to running away. He says running - it was more like he was effectively kicked out by Dad.
He recognised this freedom. Theoretically.
In the spaces between classes though, between days, he still felt stuck in the vestibule between stages of life at times. Still felt as though: some many-clawed thing masquerading as his father, or his father masquerading as someone who cared, would reach out and cage him back in, fit him back into the cursed Winchester pattern of hunts and hiding from the monsters outside the room and the monster far too close inside.
So he, as a coward goes, didn’t act upon this new liberty until he met Jessica.
She met him and showed him a new pattern, of shrugging off deadlines and warmed sheets and skincare crowding the sink and budget haircare options. And then she crowded him against the sink and the little pint-sized bottles of lotion and cleanser clattered onto the floor like pinballs, and he couldn’t care less.
They were together now, Sam thinks. Like, as a couple. It scared him a little when he thought about it too much - it was the first time in his life entering anything near official like this. Amy had been a secret, one with an orange firey crash-and-burn ending because Sam was a hunter and Amy was a monster and this is why we cant have nice things.
This relationship was his first time, too, having to be so completely normal about…everything. He’d wake up in a cold sweat sometimes, breath leaving him faster than he could take it in, heaving with fear. Across the splotches of darkened night in their bedroom would flash a fang there, a swiping claw here, and an encroaching certainty of old devilish monsters under the bed. And then, before he is completely overtaken by old memories and fear, Jess would roll over all sleep-addled yawning and somehow still framed by heavenlocks and gold. She’d ask what was wrong, and all that came out, all that he could possibly tell her were lies.
Perhaps that was why he suppressed anything veering off of the straight and narrow line of Normal. He kept telling himself: next week, next time i’m out with Jess, then i’ll tell her - then she’ll know, next small moment where it won’t matter and I wont die on the spot-
It’s possible he’s overthinking this.
It’s hardly on the level of hunting. Tell her that, and best case scenario is she’ll label him wacko and cut contact forever. No, this is…trivial, in comparison! Negligible. Really.
And next week subtly becomes the next month becomes March, April, until Sam thinks. Boundaries. Boundaries? Fuck it - possibly his first boundary ever, he deserves to use it to keep a secret. This one, he reasons, this one isn’t going to ruin the relationship if it ever gets out. Not like all the other things he hides. He deserves something of his own.
(This is how he reasons away his cowardice.)
So Sam sets up his metaphorical wall, and as soon as he does that Jessica walks into their apartment with a metaphorical sledgehammer and sets it by the bed, by his head, and says, she says:
“You ever thought about trying makeup?”
Well, actually, there’s a great deal of fluff before that, something about meeting up with one of her old friends, and the serendipity of the perfect weather today, but Sam can’t be pressed to remember any of the details when she somehow jumped subjects smoothly and said that.
And she’s facing the door so she can’t possibly see Sam’s face right now. Part of him wishes she’d turn and hit him with this great terrible invisible sledgehammer so he doesn’t have to answer, but she just takes the silence as a queue.
“Not like, anything crazy or anything. I just think it’d be fun, you know. I’ve always thought you had a great eye shape for- Sam? Hey, baby, you okay?”
He realises he’s breathing a little unsteady as she turns to fully see his face. “Yeah, I’m okay. Of course I'm-” he breaks off to swipe a shaking hand through his hair, tremors leaving his body fraught. He breaths out a little pooft of air to make light of everything. “It’s a fun idea. Maybe, uh, for a costume occasion - this coming halloween, or something?”
Jessica narrows her eyes, and the little mole above her eyebrow shifts when she furrows them. He wants to kiss it. He refrains. “You hate halloween."
“Nnno I don’t.”
“Sam.”
“Really, it’s,” he fades off, unsure where he’s going, how he is getting there.
"If you don’t want to, you can just tell me-”
“I want to,” he said brokenly and fuck, too much, abort, he needs air, he needs help, he
Jessica joins him out in the park westwards from their apartment a while later. He comes here when the apartment feels too fleeting and impermanent. The apartment might not stay but these birds here, with the nest in the trees that shake and sigh like content lovers, like the low firm tones of fondly familiar old folk - this will be here long enough for it to matter. For him to come back with certainty in his heart that the apartment failed to bore in him.
Something bright and red flickers in the distance and Sam leans forward, squinting to get a better look. All the way on the other side of the park, he thought the strange light came from, but now he doesn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Out of the hunting life as he is, Sam still feels an impulse to investigate to soothe himself.
Just a woman and her two dogs, a blond man reading a book on apparently moose hunting by the cover, some kids playing a card game in the grass…Sam chalks it up to a trick of the light. Strange book to be reading in california with a moose population of approximately zero, but he can judge.
The man reading on the bench looks up then, and his eyes glint red in the sun.
His attention is taken away by Jess. She is silent like a ghost as she slots into place a safe distance from him on the bench, just shy from touching. He wishes she would be louder. They sit in parallel positions, both watching the green park and its people.
“Sam,” She starts slowly. “You know you can tell me anything, right?”
“Don’t do that,” He bites out before almost instantly losing his urge to fight. He doesn’t want to solve things that way (cause things don’t get solved that way, just barrelled past and buried) but the pattern is something he could trace half-dead, so he carries on half-hearted. “Don’t treat me like I’m volatile.”
Jess turns to face him in his peripheral, but Sam remains trained on the green in front of him. “Then don’t run away when you disagree, because-”
“I wasn’t disagreeing-”
“Because,” she continues pointedly, “not every disagreement or lapse in conversation has to turn into a fight. I’m not going to try hold you to all my thoughts or opinions. That’s, like, crazy psycho stuff.”
She’s not wrong. “I wasn’t disagreeing with you,” Sam repeats. “I just,” He loses his words between all the things he wants to but cant say to her, “I just have a lot of baggage behind that sort of stuff. Y’know.”
“That sort of stuff?” Jess repeats back at him and hell, he’s really doing this. She isn’t letting him hide behind vague phrases.
“Well, my- I used to. Um. Experiment with all that?” So help him, it sounds ridiculous and cliché when he says it like that but what else to call it? “But my dad, he wasn’t the sort to condone anything straying even the slightest bit from his idea of a capital-M ‘Man’, so. He’d kill me if he found out, he would. Like, I wanna piss him off, but I also wanna live.” He laughs humourlessly.
“You should invite him over sometime, I’d kill him for you.”
Sam swings his head around and her face is bright with mirth, but Sam has learnt not to underestimate the things that Jessica Moore promises. “Jess-”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m kidding. Totally! Don’t worry. Look,” She changes the subject way too quickly, “I wont ever, ever make you do something that you aren’t okay with, Sam. But your dad isn’t here. And don’t try to throw me off with your sad puppy act because I definitely saw you knock a man flat on the ground with one punch last month at Brady’s, so you could totally bat off anyone who tries to say fuck-all about it. Besides, you know what they say! College is meant a time of experimentation, and self discovery. You know, all that jazz.” She rubs his hands softly within her own, and he returns the instinctual smile. “Think about it? Please?”
Okay. Okay.
Sam stands up abruptly, shaking out the jitters in his arms as he turns in a half circle. He paces two steps before he realises maybe this is a bit overkill preparation for what he was about to say. Forcing his feet to slow, Sam huffs slightly.
“Sure.”
“You sure?” Jess checks. Her face is composed into a forced casual look, but he can see the shielded excitement behind it at the prospect.
“Yeah, I’m sure. As long as it’s you doing it.” He runs his tongue over the inside of his lower lip, a nervous habit. “Just don’t make me look too stupid.”
Jess laughs and he sees sunlight in her face like it could never shine from the sky. “Sam, you and I both know that’s not possible with a face like yours.”
So they’re doing this. Sam is somehow more nervous than the first time they had sex.
He curls his lips over his teeth at Jess’ command, twitching a bit as the tube met his skin. All her requests for him have been soft this evening. ‘close your eyes’, ‘purse your lips’, ‘turn to the side now’, as though the inherent romanticism, the ritualistic atmosphere that came with Jess doing this to Sam required a veil of smoky amber quiet to settle over their shoulders. It’s like the world has been muffled, even the lights are low. He doesn’t mind it. He feels strangely at peace.
“Gosh.”
The quiet exclamation makes Sam reflexively open his eyes, but Jess quickly makes him close them again with a hurried flap of her hands in front of his face. “What happened?” he asks, wry.
“You have the perfect eyes for this. Hey, don’t laugh, ‘cause I’m not kidding. It’s actually like I’m following a guideline or tutorial right now. I mean, your eyes are so…I could just eat them.”
Sam ignores the goosebumps that crawl over him and smirks, wishing he could see her expression right now. “All the better to see you with, my dear,” he mimics that stereotypical crotchety old grandma voice, then they’re both choking down bubbly laughter.
“Hey- Okay.” Jess says. “Settle down, Mr. Wolf, I need to get to the finished look and you’re not helping.”
“Oh, sorry.” He offers his face into her hands, and she cradles it briefly before reaching to the side and picking up some palette or other.
There’s no clock in their bedroom, so Sam lets time pass unobserved as he zones out into a warm, fuzzy place in his mind. Going out with makeup caked claustrophobically on his face is an entire other unbreachable barrier but here? Right now? Oh, but this is good.
“There. Wait, wait- Okay. There.” Jess leans back, and Sam opens his eyes in response.
Instead of his girlfriend in front of him, there is the folding mirror that she usually keeps in the bathroom. In it, Sam is reflected back at him.
At first, he almost doesn’t recognise himself under all the powder and matte pigment and- are those false lashes? It was an entirely foreign experience even compared to what little he had done on himself in the past, and therefore took some major adjusting.
But as he stares almost entranced into the mirror, the person who stares back at him begins to reconcile with who he has seen in the mirror his whole life. Not perfectly, though. Its like a slightly off-centered translucent image layered over another, or a visual illusion - pink over blue over pink over blue to create a shifting image when the lights shining upon the paper switch over themselves often enough. Sam feels skinned, peeled thin into rough hide sheets of paper, in shades of beige, rich greens and browns like the eyeshadow Jess had put on him.
He’s so vulnerable. He’s so….pretty.
“I- my eye itches.”
Jess peals out surprised laughter, stuttering like she’s trying to stuff it back down her throat. “Wow, that’s all you have to say?”
He pats at her arm-shoulder-elbow region blindly, eyes glued to the mirror. “Jess, i’m serious! What do- I don’t wanna smudge it.”
“I’m sorry, babe, you’re just gonna have to wait it out. Or - here, where does it-”
She reaches out manicured fingers to frame his face as he directs her to where the persistent itch has sprouted up. “Are you saying my fingers are too fat for this?”
“Yes.” Her fingertip, admittedly much slimmer by extension of being attached to a smaller-proportioned (normal-sized, she would say - ‘you’re the freakishly tall one here’) body, deftly deals with the irritation. “There, better?”
“Uh huh, thank you.” He is sufficiently distracted from her barbless jab when confronted with any amount of her at close range. “It looks really nice.”
Jess smirks, wearing a faux-bemused expression. “My hand?”
“Your- Well, yeah, but- the make-up. Obviously.” Sam says.
She hums. “Yeah, it does. You look really nice.”
“You did a great job.”
“So you like it?”
Sam laughs. “I do, yeah, I like it.”
His girlfriend tucks his hair behind his ear. "I can’t believe you’ve had to hide this from everyone. Like, to deprive the world of-” She gestures vaguely at his face, “-all this. I mean, it’s practically a crime.”
“A crime?” Sam lifts a brow. “Well, as someone who has spent the last three years studying just that I can assure you-”
“Okay, okay, smartass, I get it.” Jessica cuts him off. “Not a crime, but….almost illegal.” She makes a pinching motion with her index and thumb, holding them the slightest millimeter apart. “Just think about it. I mean, Gosh.” She gasps, sinking back into the bed.
Sam leans forward in tandem, smiling. “What?”
Jess blinks. “We would be. Such a power couple.”
“What?”
“Seriously, you don’t see it? Like, I think you suit makeup even more than me.”
“Okay, now you’re being ridiculous.”
“No, Sam-” She smushes his face like soft goo between her palms and turns him back to the mirror, letting go to attach herself to his side. “Look at that.”
Even Sam had to admit he didn’t look terrible. Together, side by side in the mirror barely big enough for one, they did compliment each other in a way that felt terrifyingly natural. Like he was made for her.
It struck him that even despite his burgeoning barely-scruff, the combination of his wavy hair which he had been growing out and the precise, winged eyeliner made it almost easy to mistake him for a girl at first. And…..hm. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that.
(Now that was a huge fat lie. His heart swelled nearly to the point of pain just thinking of the potential in a makeup brush, like some burning star going supernova. Just as it had done with unerring consistency every time before - in all the similar squalid, sour yellow-greenlit bathrooms that were more enclosed than a coffin, where his white-hot exploding feelings could not have possibly been contained.
Those liminal dinky rooms had held such conflicting emotions. The frustration of being left behind on a hunt, of having to hide such a simple act, but then the overarching joy, mirrored in every mirror and smothering the disappointment of abandonment completely.
The frame is different now, the room and company infinitely more loved and loving, but by now Sam knows euphoria when they feel it.
But he’s working towards a law degree on scholarship and therefore does not have the time nor money to broach that gender bender catastrophe waiting to happen. He stores it away with everything else in that tiny square gilded box in his mind.)
“Huh.” Is all he says in response. “Yeah, I mean- I still wouldn’t say I look better than you, but. Yeah. You did a great job.”
Jess murmurs her agreement. “Your stunning face did a ton of the heavy lifting.” She kisses his cheek softly. Her voice is almost a whisper when she next speaks, the strength behind it stolen. “You look beautiful like this.”
Sam shies away from the words, but she pulls him back with another kiss, this time on his lips. He gives in quickly enough to the temptation.
For a while, his world is whittled down to the space between them and all the best ways to close it. Her tongue is wet and wandering as it pushes into his mouth, and Sam only has a half a second to think about how weirdly cold and slick it feels before she's shoving him back playfully onto the bed. He can’t remember when they moved to the bed. Jess slinks forward and straddles his hips, and he decides it doesn’t matter.
In between wandering hands and snuffed out sounds, Jess begins to speak. Low mumbling, so low he couldn’t hear it when he strained his ears. She crawls back up to meet the side of his face and he catches the tail end of her sentence.
“…and just what are you hiding in there?”
Sam feels his stomach drop to his feet like a stone. On the outside, he only smiles a bit as he leans away. “What do you mean?”
Jess tilts her head and presses her lips to his neck. “All those secrets,” she whispers into the thin warm skin of his throat, “It feels like I don’t know you sometimes.” Her voice lowers to a rasp. “I could dig them out.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sam tries.
"Don’t you?” Jessica counters. Her fingers come up to frame his clavicle. They inch closer to his jugular. “You can tell me.” She meets his eyes. “Promise I won’t freak.”
“Jess, you-” He laughs awkwardly. “Where has this come from?”
But she just continues as though he hasn’t spoken. “Come on, Sam. You wouldn’t even tell me your dad’s name last week when I asked.
Last time Sam checked, John Winchester was wanted in at least three states. That wasn’t the sort of icebreaker one wanted to share with their partner. “I told you, I can’t.”
“Why?” Jess presses. “Why does everything need to be a secret? Just let me in.”
Sam frowns. Something about this didn’t feel right to him. “Jess?”
“Let me in, Sam.” Both her hands lay lax at his throat. “Just say yes. I can share the weight of your secrets.”
Sam swallows. “No. Jess, I-” Then he can’t breath, the nails curling deep and vicious into his neck. “Stop-”
“Just say yes, babe.”
“You’re- choking me-”
“Say,” She hisses into him, serpentile, hands tightening by terrible increments, “yes, boy.”
And Sam knows.
And who is not, has never been, Jessica, pulls back to loom over him. Her eyes absorb the orange-red candlelight and it flays him from the inside out, tearing through his not-flesh wetly and catching inexplicably hot like a a sun-warmed iron on every crevice all the way out to his skin. “Six years. This time round took you a while, Sammy, might need to up your game if you want to keep that mind of yours.
“Get off me.” Sam ignores how his hands shake, focuses on sharpening his voice to a growl.
“That’s no way to talk to your girlfriend.” Lucifer snarks, but he shuffles off and turns away into their- Sam’s bedroom, except now the memory has melted away and there’s the cage in its abyssal squandor stretching out.
“That was-”
“Real, of course. Even I can’t make up that level of pathetic.” Lucifer tuts, turning over a tongue in his mouth as he pops in another eyeball.
“But….I never-”
“Never had Jessica caress your newborn foal’s face and paint you up like a whore?” He chews obnoxiously, spittle flying as he speaks. “I don’t think you should trust what you think never happened, Sam, because I remember it clear as day. Yeah,” Lucifer catches his eyes and holds them in place, “I was there. You were 15 and crying fat snotty tears and I was there, and you stared into the mirror and tried to become someone else and I was there watching because we’ve always been connected. It’s you for me, Sam, that’s all the truth there is down here.”
“Stop saying-"
“Your name? Stop saying the truth? Sorry, sucker, but that’s kind of in my base functioning.” Lucifer flicks out a snake’s tongue. Flecks of viscera drip down his chin. “You can try and block your ears but it won’t do much good, sorry.” That last word is so insincere Sam could have laughed if he wasn’t busy berating himself for falling for a memory. Again.
Lucifer continues on with his dramatic monologues, as all villains are wont to do. “And you were so determined to stay in that cute little fantasy of yours! I left all sorts of clues but nooo, you stuck to the beaten path, I mean, you were hellbent on it. Not funny? No? Agh,” He bemoans, “My humour is wasted on you. Come on, lighten up a little, Sammy!”
Sam flinches at the mirrored words of more than two (but also so, so much longer) years ago. “Nice try. I’m not going to say it.”
“Oh, but what use is it now?” His only companion in the dark empty, over which he would choose Literally Anyone Else, slumps down into a mound next to to him. Three of his bones break on impact. There they both lie in the truth, the two of them broken down, against a wall that no longer exists. But Lucifer believes in it’s existence, so it does. Sam just tries not to think about it too much in general.
“What use?” Sam echoes. There’s not much to do in the Cage other than make conversation with your tormenter.
“Yeah. You let me in, I rejoice, then I just. Sit here? Prance around trapped but now i’m trapped and in my true vessel! Hurrah.”
Sam sits with that for a while as Lucifer saws off his leg. “Doesn’t seem to be much point. Might as well give up.”
“Okay, that is not proper therapist speak, Sammy. Where’s the support? The stretch-out couch?” Lucifer berates.
Sam stands up to walk away, slightly less efficiently with one leg semi-detached. It sort of just slides behind the rest of his memory of a body. “You just put me in a six-year memory to take it away in exchange for a lackluster attempt at possession that failed. Possession, by the way, of my body. Which I kinda, a tiny bit, wanna keep. After torturing me for decades. Why should I encourage your attempts at taking my autonomy?”
Lucifer taps his chin. “Well, I don’t know, when in the last twenty seconds did you swallow the DSM-4 thesaurus?”
“Preferably never, considering its horrible inconsistencies.”
“Touche. Look, if you really want to stop living through the best memories of your life, I can go back to the torture. At least that was a mutual experience.” He spreads his arms wide over a newly-formed rack of assorted sharp things. Sam knows its mostly for show - Lucifer always likes to use his hands to dissemble him.
“I think i’ve had better memories. Try and find those first or I might think you’re a one trick pony, pal.”
“Don’t call me pal, I’m the devil,” Lucifer said mildly. “And hey, it’s difficult when your life is so doom and gloom, cut me some slack. It’s like looking for a dull needle in a pile of needles.”
Sam elects not to respond to the obvious attempt to get a rise out of him.
“What, run out of quips? Wow, Sam, I never thought I’d see the sass disappear.”
Upon failing to get a reaction, Lucifer lets his mouth run like an irritating, relentless…lethal…little bug. “You know what,” he says, pulling a clipboard out of the darkness, “Lets talk about this recurring addiction to the thrill of secrets. I mean, you say you don’t like keeping them but golly, Sam, you seem to make them up for fun! Don’t even get me started on the makeup.
“Lets face it; between your ingrained pastime of pushing back against your dad, your psychic powers, and oh yeah: you being the vessel for me, the devil - a little face paint would have been the least of his problems. What, were you afraid of him calling you a fag? Or do you just feel like you’re so similar to all his worst qualities that you needed something to yourself? Where do you get off on this? It’s been a little embarrassing to watch you trip over yourself to hide irrelevant shit from a father that was always going to shoot you dead himself if he had to. Like a terminal sick dog beating itself up to look just a bit more pathetic. Reminds me of my early days actually. I think you call it my fall-”
“Is there a point to this?” Sam bites out. “You’ve ran the highlight reel on my worst points. Great! I’ve heard it all before.” From himself, mostly. From Dean, when it hurt the most. From Lucifer, it’s mostly just a harmless echo. Annoying, but harmless.
Lucifer rubs his chin, troubled. “Theres only so many buttons I can press, I guess. You’re right, I kind of am a one-trick pony. Guess I should do to you what I do best.”
“Guess you should.” Sam smacks his lips obnoxiously. Dean has taught him a thing or two or five-hundred on obnoxiousness.
So Lucifer shrugged, raised his hands to split muscle and bone. Sam dug his teeth deep into Lucifer’s heart and held in tight through the onslaught, exchanging blow for habitual blow. This was easier than the attempt at peace. This facade of mindless violence was easier to bear than Lucifer’s bullshit psychoanalysis. At least this way, he could shut him up for a bit by stealing his jaw.
And so Sam endured, and did not think about Jessica until the next time the devil wore her skin.