A long awaited RB preview (of a chapter that needs editing)
“How did you know?” I asked. I wasn’t really surprised, and didn’t bother to hide it.
“I sensed and suspected during your instruction…” he explained, keeping his voice low, while keeping an attentive gaze over my shoulder for any prying eyes or ears. When he looked back at me his expression softened from caution to something almost grandfatherly. “But I can see it in your face clearly now.”
I nodded, a little shiver running down my spine with the recall — the emotions and thoughts coming back as if they happened moments ago.
“I have… memories now. Hers and mine. Mostly mine… and a name. My name.”
Tindomiel.
It rang through my mind like the words of a childhood song I’d been struggling to remember for years. But I didn’t speak it aloud, some shapeless instinct in me holding it back.
“Ah…” He looked genuinely sad, and made no effort to mask it. “And you have not yet shared it with your companions?”
“Not yet.”
“You should,” he stated, gaze drifting toward where Legolas and Gimli had headed to see Haldir and his brothers off. “Though I would advise you choose your moment wisely… and privately.”
“I was planning on it…” I couldn’t quite restrain a somewhat dry smile up at him. “Though I don’t suppose you can tell me why you’re giving me this advice now that I have my name specifically?”
He smiled, the sadness not quite leaving despite the warmth of it.
“You should know by now, Eleanor, that it is the prerogative of a Wizard to be cryptic,” he murmured softly, reaching out to rest a weathered hand on my shoulder. “So I hope you won’t begrudge me one more piece of veiled advice: Tread carefully with the answers you pursue weilding that knowledge, especially now. Each answer you uncover will have far-reaching consequences, for you both. Many that you cannot yet see or understand yet.”
I hadn’t told Gandalf any details of what I’d experienced in the memories during the palantir attack, but somewhere in my guts, I was utterly certain he knew exactly what I’d seen. Who I’d seen. Every detail. And he understood in unfathomable detail all the consequences of what was to come, now that I had this one crucial piece of the puzzle resting in my hands at long last — whether I heeded his warnings or not."
Amabilis Insania (Rávamë's Bane: Book 3)
Chapter 3: A White Tree Burning
I was on a roll until the book announcement came out, but I’m going to see if I can pick my momentum up again here soon!
Anyways! A Regency!lark snippet from Misunderstandings
Surrounded by ribbons of every shade, she thought nothing of pointing out one that reminded her of the willow tree that greets her outside her window each morning when he’d asked her favorite color. He’d smiled so sweetly her heart had done a small flip before she could ask him his own. He had selected one the color of the sunset beyond the meadow and in a moment of boldness, she’d plucked up the orange ribbon and purchased a small length. Seeing her do so, Peeta had done the same with the green. They hadn’t exchanged their purchases, it would have been improper to do so, but it had felt like a small rebellion to tuck the orange trim into her pocket.
Try as you might you couldn’t stop your eyes from looking - with an unamused glint - over the rims of your sunglasses that were shielding your vision as you read and at the person responsible for the voice.
High above you the rays beat down on your already sun kissed skin, as you laid out towards the back of the speedboat and felt the heat linger regardless of it being later in the afternoon.
There was a soft bob to your place of rest as the boat sat atop the lapping waves and you relaxed. Occasionally you found yourself dipping in and out of conversation with Harry, letting your eyes get drawn to him or the picturesque Italian scenery all around.
For the past twenty, maybe even thirty, minutes however you had wanted to make it so you were shouting ‘man overboard’ as you pushed him into the water that he seemed so desperately to take a dip into.
A/N: Just a Literati trifle in celebration of GG’s 20th Anniversary Week. I still have another chapter or two to write but I wanted to get this out before the event officially ended. (Canon compliant + OS + divergences)
Also here: (AO3)
Enjoy!
xx Ashlee Bree
An Archive of Words Between Us
One day, many weeks into it but still no closer to clarity about what it is between them, Rory does what she does best: she makes a list.
Marked at the beginning, from when she and Jess first met, she soon starts to add to it with frightening regularity. A new entry comes any time there’s news, insight, questions, or growing confusion to report. She writes it all down. Out. She compiles everything in a beat-up old notebook she’s taken to carrying around.
Over the years that follow it becomes a confessional of sorts for her, a still developing story. She reaches for a pen whenever the mood strikes, and writes…then writes some more…
Committing to paper all the things they’ve said to each other over the course of their history, as well as many of the things they didn’t.
- i. things we said when we were strangers -
“Hey, Dodger, wait a minute,” she calls out before he disappears behind the gazebo. “Is this a gimmick of yours? Do you always write margin notes in the books you steal from strangers?”
Jess stops. Casts a cursory glance over his shoulder before turning back around with hands in his hoodie pocket.
“Depends, I guess.”
“On?”
“Does it matter?”
Rory shrugs.“You could be a literature-defacing miscreant on the lam for all I know. Your face might be tacked to Wanted posters all over New York City. I’ve got to edge my bets, protect my assets.”
“What,” he says, “you aiming to sentence me without a trial or something?”
“Thinking about it.”
“Wow. I can’t believe you’re going to bust out the cuffs already, Judge Judy,” he chuckles, raising his hands in supplication before rocking backwards on his heels like he’s been shot. “That’s not very neighborly.”
“Sounds like there’s evidence to be had if I dig a bit.” A pause. A teasing quirk of an eyebrow. “Is there?” she asks.
Though he stays silent at this, a spark of something catches deep in his dark eyes as their gazes meet, and Rory's stomach flips.
“Well?”
“You tell me,” he says, all smooth and inscrutable and James Dean cool as hell.
“I’m no Agent Scully at the FBI, but the truth is out there. Don’t think I won’t uncover it,” Rory replies, her wit flowing strong and sure. “If I think it’s warranted I could hire Kirk to lay chase for a while…he likes detecting. Takes payment in Skittles, too. Boxes of which I will have no trouble acquiring, I assure you.”
“Who the hell’s Kirk?”
“Let me worry about that,” she beams back at him coyly, bouncing the book he’d pilfered earlier against her hip.
“Save your Skittles, concerned citizen. I’m clean.”
“Oh, yeah? And why should I believe you when I hold proof to the contrary?”
“Because—” Ambling backwards in the middle of the street, a crooked smirk forms along the corner of Jess’s mouth as he gives her one last idle loll of his shoulder. “I only leave notes for people who might appreciate them. Start with the one on page three, by the way,” he adds with a farewell salute. “It’s a doozy.”
Curiosity piqued, Rory ignores the warmth in her chest as she watches him turn to leave a second time. Instead, she buries her nose in the margins of Howl and peruses. Losing herself in his tiny blocked script the whole walk home.
- ii. things we said because we were lying to ourselves -
Pacifying the town's fears about their friendship isn’t easy.
Especially not after Jess outbids her boyfriend at the basket-bidding festival to win an afternoon of her company. Or the night he shows up on her doorstep unannounced, bearing food and intellectual discussion after she swears to everybody else she wanted to spend the evening alone. Or when he wrecks her car on their way back from a spontaneous hunt for ice cream cones.
Then there’s the time she misses Lorelai’s graduation because she’s stuck on a bus next to some scruffy-looking creep who spits chew into a soda can while he mumbles the names of state capitals under his breath in an Appalachian-sounding litany, Rory having skipped town impulsively to visit Jess in the Big Apple after Luke had sent him packing because of an accident that had no real bearing or blame. At least not unless it was half hers to share in, too, in any case.
She expends a lot of energy defending what they are to people. Clarifying what they’re not.
Pretty soon a truncated version of the truth skips from her mouth like a message she’s spent months concocting, memorizing, and then recording, with her smart enough not to speak it aloud until it sounds convincing. And it does. She makes sure of it.
Tensions abate after that, for a time. Mostly because of the distance.
Mom and Dean, in particular, seem to breathe easier with so much of it stretched between them. They’re much happier once Jess is no longer there to lurk around Luke’s, or clog the aisles of Doose’s, or stake out chalkperson outlines on the sidewalks of town where he can draw her closer to him. Too close for comfort, as far as anyone else is concerned. Even if his only aim in doing so had been to imbibe her in intellectual conversation.
Rory finds it funny how his absence from Stars Hollow makes it both easier and harder for her to placate everyone’s misgivings. The words may be simple to say, but the meaning behind them feels deflated. Half-bodied at best.
Like calculus, it causes her headaches. Forces her to work twice as hard to make everyone believe she doesn’t care that he’s gone and likely never coming back again. That the vacant space he’s left behind doesn’t sting whenever her gaze passes over it, remembering.
Exhausting though it is, however, she does her best. She makes the effort.
She starts by dolling out extra attention and assurances to Dean about her commitment to him. To their relationship. Then she pivots around mention of Jess’s existence to her mom because she knows she doesn’t approve of him let alone agree about any of his good qualities. With Lane, she focuses on school and Mrs. Kim and music they can add to her floorboard collection. And in front of Luke, so as not to burden him with more disappointment, she acts as if nothing is different. Pretends that nothing much has changed.
Omission quickly becomes a habit for Rory. A way of life.
Only once does exposure threaten to spoil everything when her mom confronts her openly one afternoon about a placeholder that’s slipped out of her copy of For Whom The Bell Tolls.
“It’s nothing,” Rory says as she makes a quick grab for it in the kitchen and blushes.
“Really? Because nothing to me looks a hell of lot like a paper plate fragment. One that’s smudged in pizza grease and blue scribbles.” Laughing, completely unaware of her daughter’s wide-eyed discomfort and humiliation, Lorelai hands it back to her without inspecting it closely. “I’m surprised by your choice is all. Messy and makeshift isn’t your typical bookmark M.O., hun.”
“Yeah, well, that’s what happens when Paris accosts you at the break bell. You drop things. People jump, drinks spill. Beloved bookmarks go soaring…”
“Ah. I take it she was yelling in dog decibels again?”
“More like she put out an APB on all aliens living a few hundred million lightyears away and then gave them exact shouting coordinates for where to find her. So same difference, really.”
Her mom snorts. Passes over the ranch dressing.
“She’s a pill, that one. I’m telling you Pink wrote that song with her in mind.” Shaking her head, Lorelai closes the fridge behind her as she bites into another French fry. “So how’d you come by the plate?” she asks, her mouth full.
“It was spontaneous. I was running late so I nicked it from the cafeteria on my way out,” Rory lies, knowing full well Chilton never dispenses paper or plastic dishes for dining.
“Oh.” Her mom considers this. “Well, I suppose there were times even Madeleine Albright couldn’t find anything better to use in a pinch. That was very…replateful of you.”
“What can I say,” she exhales with relief, feigning amusement as her fib is accepted with alacrity, “the Forks was with me.”
“Only the Forks? Don’t tell me you’re leaving out the spoons and the knives. How could you?” says Lorelai, aghast, as she scoops stray kitchen utensils to press them against her chest in a bodily cuddle. “It’s cutlery discrimination!”
“No, it’s punning.”
“Says who?”
“Me.” A pause. A nibble of pizza. “Also, Shakespeare would agree.”
“Psssh, Shakespeare! That old killjoy,” her mom says dismissively, rolling her eyes in good humor as she tucks a box of strawberry Pop Tarts under her armpit and motions toward the living room. “What’s that you have written on the inside there, anyway? French? Calculus? Rolling Stone lyrics? A blueprint for the evil plan you’ve hatched to shoot Grandma to the moon? I’m dying to know.”
Waving her off, Rory tucks the shard back into the spine of her book where it belongs. Hiding it from view. “It’s for school,” she assures her as they settle onto the sofa.
“So tell me about it. I don’t care if it’s boring.”
“Pass.”
“Come on! I could use a good Chilton-instigated snooze.”
“Too bad. No beauty naps for you.”
Lorelai pouts, fake affronted. “Rude!”
(Turns out that ‘shard,’ that ‘thing for school’ which is stuck between the pages of Rory’s Hemingway, isn’t boring at all. In fact, it has a history. A story. The truth is it’s a souvenir she’s saved ever since she and Jess talked books over pizza at Antonioli’s on basket-bidding day.
Toward the end of the meal he’d ripped off a piece of plate so he could jot down his phone number and a quote. Only sliding it into her hand, folded in half, crinkled up like a note passed between desks at school, in the moments before they parted ways and headed home.
It’s stupid she’s kept it. She realizes that now. Stupider still to slip it between the pages of each new book she reads or unfurl it in the privacy of her bedroom to puzzle out if the line he’d included from A Moveable Feast is meant to have double meaning:
“We ate well and cheaply and drank well and cheaply and slept well and warm together and [liked] each other,” it reads.
Stupidest of all, she can’t seem to bring herself to stop looking at it. To throw the darn thing away. A note…a number…a greasy sliver of paper plate!)
“Like I said, Mom,” Rory swallows before smiling over at her convincingly, “it’s nothing. Really.”
- iii. things we said on the verge (of something) -
In early June, Sookie’s wedding day arrives.
Things are static again. Serene. Normal.
Granted, slight changes do sprinkle into the mix here and there because of her dad’s presence, because Dean holds her a little tighter around the waist now than he once did, but mostly it’s the same here as it’s always been. Pleasant people fade into gossip and nonsense while fun blurs into peculiarity.
Life feels simple once more. A tad plain and colorless, maybe, but simple.
Then Jess returns to town on a whim or a fluke or a who the devil knows what he’s thinking and everything goes sideways, pear-shaped, belly-up-and-down in seconds because this is the last thing she’d been been expecting and suddenly the only thing that registers is the length of the grass plus the number of steps it will take to close the distance between them. All that matters is he’s here, he’s back, he’s near enough to touch, and she’s smiling so hard she can hardly breathe as she drinks him in from head to foot like a glutton: her pulse leaping, her heart lurching free from the cage of her chest.
The whole world tilts. Collapses. The pale yellow of the sun shines down like a spotlight so it’s only a rippling alcove she sees. Just him, just her. Just them canopied beneath these flittering fronds of green.
Any rational thought Rory possesses scatters across the wind with the pollen. And then before she knows it, the ground tilts out like a ramp underfoot.
It pushes her forward. Outward. Sliding her toward him until she’s thrust and tangled in his arms with no memory at all of how she got there, or why their mouths feel so hot and wanton like this, so damn unsatisfied. It all seems impossible considering they’re still pressed together in a kiss that can only be described in one way: illicit.
“Not a word,” Rory pants when they stop and Jess pulls back, his jaw taut, his expression shuttered, to nod once understanding.
“Okay,” he says.
“Promise me.” The huskiness of her voice feels at odds with this demand, with the trembling fist she still has curled in the lapel of his jacket, but she cannot think about her stinging mouth or his tongue right now so she clings to desperation instead. “Can you do that?”
“Okay,” he repeats, all eyes, eyes, eyes. And with that single look, she forgets to breathe let alone digest anything he’s promised.
In the end, it’s an impulse that overtakes them not a decision. It’s a moment of clandestine passion they share, not a confession that will alter the circumstances any.
And yet it’s guilt, not regret, that begins to pull like an anchor in her belly until she’s running in shoes that chafe the back of her heels. It’s terror and confusion, not apology, that ripples along her nerve endings until she’s dashing through the trees like a coward or a swindler because she needs to believe behind her there’s still a haven of black and white she can cross with both feet.
Only when Rory stops does she feel the change. Does she discern the difference. It takes one sting, one breathless stitch in her side, for her to know she’s tumbled forward into color without noticing.
Looking down, and there it is. His name already singed across her chest in scarlet letters.
- iv. things we whispered on the hood of your car -
“Tell me something no else knows.”
“About what?” he asks around midnight the following April, the two of them sprawled on the hood of his car at a deserted rest stop off the I-95 on their way back from a concert in the city.
“You, silly.”
“Funny you’re thinking about penning my biography already, Churchill. I’m honored, truly, but aren’t I too young for that sort of enumeration?”
With a roll of her eyes plus a protracted har-har, Rory lifts their intertwined hands, watching, mesmerized, as their fingers thread then unthread as they lay side-by-side parked beneath the Big Dipper in this forsaken parking lot. Though they’ve been together about six months now, prying Jess open has been slow work. It’s like taking a crowbar to cement: one chip, one crack, one crumble at a time.
“Stop deflecting, Mariano,” she warns. “Evasion’s for chumps.”
“Fine,” he sighs. She presses a kiss of reward against his knuckles before curling tighter into his side. “How about this: every year roughly sixteen hundred people in New York City are bitten by other humans.”
“Bitten?”
“Yep.”
“Why?”
“That’s just it,” he says in his best horror story voice, “could be vampires, could be cranky commuters, could be urban mania or road rage…nobody knows.”
“Oh, please. As if I’d let you off the hook with that obvious dodge. You’re killin’ me here, Smalls!” Rory says with an elbow rib and tsk. “Second of all, you so made that biting thing up.”
When she edges her head back onto his shoulder to look at him, Jess drags his pointer finger down her forehead before bopping her affectionately on the nose, his expression neutral.
“Didn’t you?” He shrugs in that cute off-the-cuff way of his then smirks into her hairline. “That’s unbelievable!”
“It is what it is.”
“So, what,” she says as she throws her leg over his hip to lug him closer, her arm already stretched out across his middle, “is there a case of zombiepox going around that the CDC has neglected to inform us about? Because I’ve got to tell you if that’s so then I’ll need an inoculation ASAP, mister! Frazzled, bloodshot, and half-rotted is not a good look for me. It just isn’t.”
“Oh, I know.”
“Hey!” she exclaims.
“No offense, critter of Frankenstein,” he chuckles, absorbing her retaliatory swat with a grunt and rolling her further on top of him, “but I’ve seen you pre-coffee. It isn’t pretty. We’re talkin’ bolts out your neck, monster glares, frothing purple mouth and everything.”
“Yeah, yeah. Keep up your running tally and you might find I bite you next. Rory the Ripper does have a nice alliterative ring to it—you best remember that,” she warns all narrowed eyes and silky breath and arms folded under her chin.
Jess cocks his left eyebrow, brushes his thumb over her bottom lip. “Idle threats don’t scare me, Gilmore.”
“They should.”
“Maybe.” A lazy grin forms at the edges of his mouth. “But yours don’t.”
“Fine,” she blows out a breath. With her head resting in the center of his chest, Rory fixes him with one long steady look, her voice dropping an octave lower as it drains free of sarcasm to assume a more serious edge. “Name one thing that does then. That scares you, I mean,” she says.
He doesn’t answer right away. In fact, he fidgets so long beneath her that by the time he settles with his hands clasped behind his head, lost in thought and translation, peering up at the sky, she’s half convinced that silence or deflection is the best she can hope to expect from him in reply.
Reticence is a quality she’s come to recognize in Jess. It’s one she can reflect back at him in part because they’re both cut from the same quiet, introspective cloth. However, it’s also one that restricts her access to his thoughts and feelings when she most wants it, and that can take a toll. Makes her wonder if they’re parked at different weigh stations in this relationship or not.
It’s bizarre to reconcile how she can understand him so well in some contexts, to the point where she can predict his next reaction or sense a good joke hanging in the periphery that's about to descend; while in others, he’s a total head-scratcher. Like a Sudoku puzzle with numbers that don’t add up to anything.
The silence between them continues to stretch. It becomes an awkward, formless wall.
The stillness, too, which is illuminated only by the light of the moon and the faint din of the car radio, hangs between them until he draws her up his body and folds her over him with a green plaid blanket. His fingers tracing languid strokes up and down her spine.
“Swans,” he says at last, his tone subdued. Scratchy. “Swans scare me.”
“What else?”
“Tennis balls. They’re too small and fast as they zip past. I hate how they can leave imprints on your face like ugly yellow snitches.”
“Okay then. Weird but fair. What else?” Rory asks all warmth and eagerness, her eyes searching his for something he wouldn’t want to slip free.
“Pennywise.” Though she snickers at that, it’s a valid fear. Clowns unsettle her, too. Evil ones especially. She’d had nightmares for eight months after she’d read Stephen King’s It for the first time, and had taken to sleeping with the bedside lamp on for years.
“Anything more?” she asks.
“Cricket bats.”
“Ooh-ho!” Poking him, “So Mrs. Kim got to you, did she?”
“Listen, I tried to be cool and unaffected but who knows what would’ve become of my head if she’d taken a swing with that thing?” Jess shudders at the same time she imagines Humpty Dumpty and laughs. “Jeez.”
“Things would’ve gotten messy,” she adds honestly.
He stalls a moment, then blinks back at her all wariness to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. “How messy are we talking here?”
Rory cocks her head and bites the corner of her mouth, musing. “Think pumpkins.”
“Smashed ones?”
“Yep.”
“Figures,” he mutters miserably.
With an encouraging pat, “Don’t worry, I would’ve stepped in before Mrs. Kim buried your handsome yet indignant face beneath the floorboards or behind a brick wall in the catacombs with Fortunato. It’s the least I could do since I sort of like you and all.”
“Sort of?” Jess asks.
“Yeah. I’m no unreliable narrator girlfriend who'd escort you to your doom, you see. I’d much prefer to keep you,” she says with an adoring grasp and swivel of his chin, which he deflects by tickling her breathless as she bends down over him.
“Gee thanks, Casper. Nice to know you care about me.”
“Not about you exactly,” she teases, her flip-floppy giggles still piercing the air. “Just your head.”
That stops him. “My head, huh?”
“Sure.” Still a little breathless, she reaches toward him to fist her fingers through thick black tendrils along his nape. “It’s pretty.” She gives the strands a little tug. “Full of thoughts I’m hoping to pilfer for further study.”
“You know, I always thought there was some hoodlum in your DNA. Now I’m convinced,” he says as he leans over to commence the tickling again. “And you will pay."
The two of them continue to roll then thump against his windshield all elbows and knees until the levity starts to leaden and transform. As Jess reaches over to cup her cheek, their gazes meet in the silvery darkness and hold, kindling like flint.
Quiet washes over them again for a moment. Only this time, it’s bloated; it’s heavy. It’s a mess of a hundred thousand decipherable something’s teetering on the precipice of expression.
A flicker of alarm passes over his features as he frames her face with his hands, palms flat against the car. He hovers aloft, unsure. Indecision mixes with fear to tangle with retreat even as gravity beckons him nearer, his head dropping low enough for their foreheads to touch.
“I sort of like you, too, you know,” Jess breathes softly, his lips lowering to press against her mouth in a quick but lingering kiss. “A lot.” His jaw clenches. “Maybe too much.”
Suddenly there’s a tightrope pulled taut and vibrating in every direction because there’s no shrinking back from the dense electricity pulsating between them. There’s no more room to dance around unnamed emotion whenever it identifies itself in blown pupils, in a bobbing Adam’s apple, in hands that slip and slide until they fit together like aligning planets.
In that instant Rory knows. She knows right then and there she’s falling in love with him, that she’s half fallen already. And it’s both a revelation and a fact so natural she can feel the truth of it whistling from deep in her bones.
Looking nervous, vulnerable, more fragile than she’s ever seen him, he swallows hard then shifts to squint out at the shadowy tree line while scratching at his nape. “It’s just…so many people have treated me like garbage that all I know how to do is spoil things. I destroy, Rory—ruin what’s good. It’s what I do best. It’s all I know. I’m trying here and all, but I…don’t know how to do this,” he says, gesturing lamely between them. “How to do us right.”
“Hey now,” she thumbs his cheek, tries to turn his head back toward her but it won’t budge, and neither will he. “That’s my boyfriend you’re talking about. Go easy on him, will you?” He nods into her palm, softening a little. The tension leaves his body as he gathers her in his arms again, her head conforming to the crook of his neck, but she’s not convinced all is well yet.
“There’s no rulebook or anything,” Rory says placatingly. “We’ll figure it out together, okay? You and me.”
“Yeah.”
“We will,” she says with an emphatic, assuring squeeze. “I know we will.”
With a caustic laugh, a heavy sigh, he runs his teeth over his lip, “I’m a screw up, Rory.”
“Hey. Not true.”
“I am.” Jess sounds so resigned, so convinced, it ties her into knots thinking he sees himself that way.
“Not to me, you’re not.”
“No,” he says with a deadened inflection, with a sad downturn of his mouth. “Not to you.”
Frowning, she feels his cynicism, his self-deprecation, descend like a slash across the gut. Helpless to do anything but try to be a soft place for him and his insecurities to land, she pulls him toward her, embracing him, quieting him, caring for him more with each passing second even though a warning gong goes off in her heart when she leans in to steal another kiss.
“Maybe I’m not a screw up to you yet,” he whispers, “but I could be at another time. On another day.”
“Stop,” Rory declares forcefully, holding her finger against his lips so he knows she means it.
Jess relents. “Okay,” he sighs. “Just know I’ll get it if you change your mind.”
- v. things we cried out at a crossroads -
Strained.
Silent.
Distant.
Those are the best adjectives to describe the status of her and Jess’s relationship as the bus pulls away from the curb a couple weeks later. After the party from hell. From her place on the sidewalk, her chest full of a heaviness she can’t name, Rory stares after it - after him - with little to no regard for the hour’s lateness or for the morning bell which signals the start of homeroom.
It’s the middle of May. That means finals, graduation, and summer loom on the periphery but she doesn’t care. None of it resonates. In the background she can hear Paris barking orders at a few trembling freshman and minted sophomores, but she does nothing to intervene. She makes no move to prevent her frenemy’s yellow journalistic splatter from crushing the innocents to smithereens.
Instead, she watches the hum and bump of the vehicle’s dusty rubber wheels as they roll down the street. She tracks the plume of smoke swirling from the exhaust pipe into the sky, which clouds over with blacks and grays instead of with clearing blues and radiant yellows. She waits until the bus turns left, its engine loud, roaring, to putt around the corner. Disappearing from view.
I hope he calls later, she thinks with a pang, with an iota of hope. We need to talk soon.
Rory’s eyes want to keep traveling with him long after he’s gone. So do her feet. They seek to follow along wherever Jess has gone, to ride beside him until they’re able to make sense of this mess between them and fix it. Fix them again.
Unfortunately for them both, they don’t. And it’ll be some time before they can, let alone before they do.
Summay: Tonight was a very not good night for Sam, but things change, and thankfully, some things don’t.
Warning(s): Mentions of Attempted Rape. (Not between the brothers.)
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
Sam wasn’t home when he got back from work. He knew the reason; of course he did. Sam wasn’t exactly good at hiding the fact that he had met someone in this bumfuck town. Or someone’s. The hickies and the late nights spoke for themselves.
It led to fights, at first. But Sam was older than Dean was when he started doing the same. Acting out in the same damn ways. Only it was different somehow. Sam didn’t seem proud of his conquests. No, Sam always sulked after coming back. So much more quiet and accommodating the next few days. He caught Sam crying more than once the morning after.
Dean didn’t know what to say, or what to think, really. When Dean had started screwing around he always felt lighter afterwards, somehow. The release he felt within these men and women didn’t soften the edges of his life for long, but it never made his mood worsen like he saw happening within Sam.
Now that he thinks about it this seems a lot like Sam’s reaction when Dean did start spending time away late into the night. Which just makes things seem all the more confusing. Sam couldn’t have been older than 11 at the time and Dean had chocked up the tears to his little brother missing him and not being answered outright about where his big brother was going.
He usually told Sam everything.
Just as Dean was pulling his left boot off, and ponder the enigma that was Sam, further, the motel room door busts open. And in walks the very person he can’t get his mind off of. Sam.
Who’s limping and teary eyed, with a bruised cheek.
“Sam. What the fuck.” He growls. Dean leaves his boots as they are. One tied and one untied and he walks the few feet that had separated them. Dean’s hands instantly wrapping around Sam’s crestfallen face.
“Hey, hey, shhh, hey now— it’s just me, remember? You can tell me anything. You know that.” Dean’s eyes piercing into hazel.
“Hmm, Sammy? Isn’t that right?” Dean slides his hands down to his little brother’s trembling shoulders, holds, and then drops them further to take hold of Sam’s soft, also trembling, hands.
And Dean can’t help but give in to the pull that drives him to press his face into Sam’s, nudging his nose into his cheek, breathing in Sam’s still baby-soft scent.
His cheek is cold to the touch.
Dean stealthy pulls the door shut behind them before locking it up, and ushering Sam toward the little brother’s bed— the one furthest from the door.
Once seated, Dean takes his hands back, tries not to fidget, fails, and proceeds to run his left hand in Sam’s hair while he waits.
Sam will tell him. When he can. When he feels like he can. And Dean will be here when that’s the case.
No pressure.
Even if it is eating Dean alive, he knows Sam needs agency in this.
“I, um, well, I-I should have trusted Kyle when he said that Adrian was bad news... I should have stayed in tonight. Here. With you. But I— I fucked up, Dean. I’m sorry.” Sam’s outright sobbing and curling into himself by the end of it.
“Sammy. Hey. Stop. This— what ever happened tonight. Whatever it was, it wasn’t your fault. Baby, please— listen to me. If— if someone hurt you, or they didn’t take “no” for an answer, or— or they tricked you in some way, that’s not your fault, okay? You have to believe me. I’m not just saying this because I’m your big brother.” Dean’s whispering into Sam’s ear, where Sam’s head his being cradled by Dean’s strong hands, nudged up under his chin.
Sam’s still a pup, so the position isn’t exactly a strange or romantic one, Dean reminds himself. But having an Alpha like John made it near impossible for either boy to remember when they had last given in to this form of comfort.
It felt nice. It felt amazing, actually.
Dean wraps his arms further around Sam’s thin frame, and Sam responds by climbing into Dean’s lap. Like back when they were both still pups and they couldn’t get their mom’s burning... scent out of their nostrils.
Their dad being no comfort to them, at all. Leaving them for weeks at a time. They were the only pack they had. The only pack they’ll ever truly need.
Dean leans up and places his nose along Sam’s throat.
Sam sniffles.
“My pack.” Dean dazedly states, then nods his head.
Dean lies back fully, unconsciously running his warm, war-strengthened palms down Sam back, in wide paths, when his mind unhelpfully conjures up a picture of a baby koala being held by their mother.
He rolls his eyes at the thought while staring up at the popcorn ceiling so intently you’d think he was getting direct messages sent there by the goddess herself.
Sam’s tears have begun to lesson, and his breath is evening some, but the trembling is still present, and Sam’s right hand that jerks sporadically when he’s been triggered by something is still bothering Sam, he can tell.
So he takes it into his and presses it down onto his chest. Laying it there to rest and clench.
It’s not something Sam should feel like he needs to hide.
Sam’s left hand is playing with Dean’s hair at the nap of his neck. He can feel Sam’s sniffles from where his nose is still smushed up against Dean’s neck. Scenting him. Seeking further comfort.
The thought brings a tingle down Dean’s spine.
Dean shakes his head to free himself from his cobwebbed thoughts, and settles his hands on the skin that’s peaking out from above Sam’s jeans. Pressing soothing and firm strokes along the expanse of Sam’s lower back.
“You take such good care of me, Alpha. I—I, fuck, absolutely nothing hurts me more than the thought of disappointing you.” Sam squeaks out from where he’s seemingly trying to squeeze his face deeper into his big brothers’s neck and shoulder to hide.
For Sam’s tears haven picked back up. Fucking hormones.
“You could never disappoint me, Sammy. Not ever.” He pets Sam’s hair away from his forehead, keeping his left hand pressed firmly down on Sam’s over-warm lower back.
“Adrian had Todd over. We were playing video games.. and then Jake showed up. Like it was planned or something.. they— they wanted to have a foursome or something. They wanted to pass me around, Adrian said, and Jake was going to film it. Said they knew my heat was coming and that because we’re ‘travelers,’ that they wouldn’t have to face the pups that I bore.. that the mighty John Winchester would sooner cut my throat out than witness me presenting as Omega. I— I was in shock... at first, but I ran. I ran so fast, just like we did in training, but I tripped and they got a few lucky punches... and kicks in, but I’m okay! Dean.. you trained me, remember? They didn’t hurt me; not like that. Not like they had intended.” Sam’s voice tapering off into a resigned sigh.
He didn’t want to admit to any of this, but deep down he knew, Dean was his Alpha above all others. There was no keeping this from him.
He’s pulled out of his musings when he feels Dean’s chest vibrate with the force of Dean’s inhuman growl.
Sam jerks up and whimpers, unhappily, hands instinctively clenching around themselves, with anxiety. Sam was moments away from jumping off of Dean when Dean’s brain catches up and his hold strengthens around his Omega.
His Omega; who’s days away from his first heat, his Omega; who’s 16 years old, his little brother, and the boy in his arms that’s one wrong move away from having a panic attack.
“Hey, little one— those stupid Alpha’s, those soon to be dead Alpha’s, don’t know shit. Dad can’t put his hands on you. You, my love, are mine. My Omega! I won’t fight it any longer. Not when you’re about to present and not when you need me the most. You’re perfect, Sammy. And I shouldn’t be surprised, but damn baby, an Omega, huh? Always the overachiever.”
Sam nods, presses his nose back into the juncture of Dean’s. What would be considered nothing less than a kiss, if they were in wolf form.
“Only for you.”
That’s Sam’s voice alright but Sam didn’t open his mouth. Which would be possible if they were mates, but Sam and Dean hadn’t been more physical than they are now, ever.
They’re not bonded, yet.
Dean confusedly looks at Sam’s face that’s now directly above his own.
“Perks of being true mates, love. I didn’t want to scare you away, Dean.. I’m sorry.” Sam whispers while staring intently into his soulmates green eyes.
“Since... when?” Dean swallows.
Sam shuffles back some before responding. He needs to be brave for once. Taking comfort in the fact that Dean’s hands haven’t wondered away.
“May 2nd... 1982.”
Neither of them could tell you whether Sam had shared that over their bond or if he had used his voice but a weight on Sam’s shoulders lessened non the less.
Dean sits up so fast that Sam squawks; a noise that would’ve got Dean laughing his ass off at any other time but this one. He moves his hands from around Sam’s back to his little one’s face and neck.
“I should’ve known, Sammy... I-I adore you. You know that. Will you forgive your Alpha for being slow, on the uptake?” Dean says, over their bond for the first time.
“...there’s nothing to forgive, Dean. You— you’re an Alpha Dean. You don’t owe me any—“
Dean’s mouth is over Sam’s before he can finish his little speech. His speech that Dean doesn’t agree with at all.
“I’m going to make it up to you.“ Dean promises over their bond.
Sam’s so lost in Dean’s lips and warmth and scent that he doesn’t care to argue the subject further. He feels like he’s in heaven.
And that’s before he feels Dean’s hand settle low on his jean clad, but still, leaking, ass and the hardness that’s rubbing up against his own.
“Fuck.” Sam pants out across Dean’s face, following their first kiss.
Dean winks. All the arrogant big brother he knows so well.
Sam giggles, and then wipes his face with the back of his palm, before giving up and taking the bottom of his Alpha’s shirt to finish the job of drying his face.
“What now?” Sam wonders aloud.
“Well, I’m going to take advantage of my rank, for once, and send the authorities to Adrian’s place, then, then I’m going to make you mine. Officially. If you’ll have me, Omega -mine,” Dean looks away, humbly, before continuing their mutual staring..
Sam’s gasp catches Dean’s complete attention. He looks like he’s about to start crying again.
“Sam—“ Dean begins to reassure when he feels Sam’s hands search for and then wrap around his.
Then he notices Sam’s mouth is moving.
“You? You want to mate me? Of all people, Dean? And before my heat?” Sam stutters out, mildly confused.
Dean’s having non of it though because he has Sam lying out under him before he can continue asking such stupid questions.
He growls for good measure.
Then kisses Sam under his left ear, where their mating mark will go.
“Don’t talk about my Omega like that. There’s nothing in this world I’m more sure of than this, than you. I won’t say it again.”
“Dean...” Sam taps out, questioning. Through the bond.
“Yeah?” Dean answers, voice soothing.
“But... you repeat yourself all the time.”
Dean feels like a pup again, he’s laughing so breathlessly.
“Fair point, bitch.” Dean‘s throat feels dry, now, using their nickname after piecing together the weight of the sentiment.
“Your bitch.” Sam flirts.
“Mine.” Dean growls before nudging up close and rubbing his nose into Sam’s cheek before diving between Sam’s collar and neck, biting down and holding while Sam’s arms clamp down around Dean’s shoulders.
Once Sam’s body locks up and then releases, melting beneath Dean, further, Dean’s mouth detaches. Licking the blood away softly, Dean nudges Sam’s forehead with his own.
Sam’s eyes are closed and he’s biting his lip.
Then the whimpering starts.
Dean’s got a newly presented Omega and Mate, in heat, to satiate and devour.
