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hournites · 2 years ago

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Lavender Blue

Hournite as adults! Just a LOT of fluff!! You’ve been warned!

~.~

Breakfast is pancakes with blueberry compote and homemade hash browns. Beth dusts her fingertips on the sides of her apron, assessing the dining table. The tissue paper sticks out from the small gift bag in front of Rick’s plate. Beth worries her lip for the twentieth time, running her hand over the front of the apron, again and again, wrapped up in her nerves. This is what she always does, it’s bound to be predictable that he can tell something is up. She gets all worked up and makes a big meal. She thought of doing something different to surprise him, but this felt like the way to go. Food is her love language and baking is her coping mechanism, so it goes hand in hand that their dining room looks like a Michelin-star restaurant this morning. She knows Rick knows this, but even as she looks at the robin blue tablecloth and their wedding napkins set out, he’s going to be suspicious. Is he going to like it? Should I add powdered sugar to the pancakes? Should I play music? Did I take the syrup out? Should I set my goggles up to record this?

She just wants this to be perfect. As perfect as it can be.

The clock on the oven reads that it’s almost nine AM—It’s a Saturday, and they usually do like to sleep in, but Rick should be up by now. Beth sighs and finds some tin foil to cover over the warm food, then takes her apron off to wash her hands. Beth leans against the doorframe of their bedroom as Rick breathes evenly, fast asleep. A smile creeps up her face when she hops onto their wonderfully fluffy king-sized bed, crawling over the blankets to reach him.

“Rick,” she whispers as she gently shakes him awake. She lifts his limp arm, but it flops right back onto the bed. “Rick, wake up.”

He groans like he’s been shaken out of a grave.

“Honey, I made pancakes.”

Beth leans back on her heels as Rick slowly pulls himself up from his sleep stupor.

“Pancakes?” he mumbles. He squints at her, blinking harshly through the crust in his eyes. His hair is a bird's nest of a disaster, but she loves it all the same. She soaks up his squishy-soft drowsiness. “Good morning, handsome.”

“‘Morning,” Rick echoes back roughly. He drags his hand over his face, hiding a yawn. “I don’t know why I’m so tired.”

“I do.” Beth rolls her eyes lightly. “You’ve been working overtime at Bannerman all week.”

“I’m working for the—”

“The promotion,” Beth finishes with him. She kisses his cheek when he looks at her softly. “I know. And you’re going to get it. But I’d like my husband to be less of a zombie, more of a man once you get the job. I’m going to need you.”

Rick's tired face crinkles into one of confusion as he shuffles out of bed. He gets dressed and Beth watches, wondering what must be going through his head. Rick doesn’t ask her to elaborate, so Beth takes his hand once he meets her at the doorway. “Pancakes are getting cold,” she reminds him.

“Breakfast already? When did you wake up?”

“…I couldn’t sleep,” Beth admits.

“At all? Why?”

“You’ll see when you come to the kitchen area. I have a surprise for you.”

“A surprise?”

They pad into the dining room, and Rick falls silent at the elaborate set up. Beth pulls on his hands, guiding him to his usual chair. Again, she can read Rick’s face like a book. It’s not his birthday or their anniversary or any JSA victory day, and yes, Beth likes to shower him with affection now and then, but that usually accompanies a lot of talk and a lot of flirting, which Beth is doing neither of right now. Her stomach flips again. She’s too nervous..

“Beth…What’s going on?”

Beth chews on her inner cheek, gesturing to the gift. “Open it.”

Rick sighs, reaching for the present. He lifts the tissue paper and pulls out a small vintage teddy bear. It’s one Beth had as a child.

“What is this?”

“A beanie baby.”

“A beanie baby?” He’s wholly confused and Beth would laugh about it if she wasn’t holding her breath.

“There’s something else in there.”

He catches her gaze and quirks an eyebrow. “Okay.” His hand goes inside the bag and pulls out a wrapped box. He slowly peels the paper backwards at the tape so that it doesn’t rip, exceedingly cautious for Hourman.

A lightweight rectangular box stares up at him. Rick shakes it by his ear, trying to get a feel for what is sliding around inside. “Is it another watch?” He chuckles, trying to tease a hint out of her. The JSA’s inside joke at every holiday is to give Rick a time-piece of some kind. Last year for Christmas, Courtney bought them a cuckoo clock that was cute for all of two weeks before driving them both crazy. Beth had begged Rick to smash it in one night after a tireless mission, coming home at 3 AM exhausted to be greeted by its shrieking.

Beth shakes her head now.

“Who are you and what have you done to my talkative wife?”

Beth crosses her arms over her chest shyly. “I’m here.” She gives his shoulder a squeeze. “I’m just anxious. Please open it.”

“Okay,” he relents with a hint of concern, finally lifting the flap.

Rick sucks in a sharp breath at the two blue and white sticks inside. Beth doesn’t breathe at all, her hand clamped tightly on his broad shoulder. She’s already holding in tears when Rick’s voice breaks. “W-What?”

“I’m pregnant.”

Rick stares at the pregnancy tests, stunned. His eyes flicker back and forth between the beanie baby and the tests, very slowly putting two and two together. He blinks up at her. “We’re having a baby?”

It’s overwhelming to hear Rick say the very words that have been bouncing around her head nonstop since Beth found out. The joy consumes her as tears spill over her eyes. “We’re having a baby, Rick.”

Rick stands, then immediately sits back down; his legs uncooperative with the shock.

“Are you okay?”

“A-Are you sure?”

Beth laughs a bit. “Yes, I’m sure, honey.” When Rick doesn’t snap out of his state, still staring at one of the tests in his hand, she sighs and finds her goggles.

She straps them over her eyes and turns on the diagnostic mode, looking down to scan herself the way she had just discovered yesterday. Rick follows the harsh green holographic light projecting the embryo across the room. Statistics pop up on her hormonal levels. Beth flicks on the button to zoom in on the image, focusing on the contracting spasms–The baby’s heartbeat.

Beth raises the goggles up to her hair. “See?”

“Holy—” Rick stands again, this time successfully, pulling her into his arms. He doesn’t say anything. Beth lets herself be hugged, so relieved to share her secret. She pulls back to gauge his reaction, still unsure of whether or not he’s frozen because he’s astonished and processing or because he’s scared.

“This is a good thing, right?” She turns his head, making him look at her. “You’re happy? Rick? I need you to say something.”

“I’m sorry,” Rick trips over his words, they’re stilted but at least it’s something. “Yes.”

Beth grins breathlessly. “You are?”

“Of course I’m happy, Beth. I just, I-I-I…” He kisses her hard, unable to use language to convey how he feels. Beth melts, gripping onto his t-shirt to kiss him back.

“It’s a lot,” she agrees, hands still on his face, just desperate to see him smile. Their noses brush, and she kisses him again, this one is slower, sweeter, as she cards her fingers through his hair, trying to wake him up from his shock.

It works. A little bit. “How long have you known?”

“Two days.”

“You were sick last week,” Rick realizes. “We thought it was something you ate. But it was…

“Morning sickness, yeah.”

“You didn’t find out then?”

“I didn’t think to check.”

Rick touches her blouse gingerly. Only the bottom edge, fingers fidgeting underneath at the hem. He looks up from her blouse to look at her. His eyebrow raises, face cleared with a storm of emotion Beth can’t identify. Like his entire being is in controlled stasis, waiting for her permission.

Beth falls in love with him all over again. She grabs his hands, moves them underneath her shirt, lets him feel the skin that’ll stretch in the weeks to come.

“That’s our baby.”

His breath hitches, pupils blown wide.

Her belly gurgles, hungry, and it breaks them both out of their dazed spell. They sit down to eat as Beth explains how she wanted to surprise Rick with this breakfast to break the news. She removes the tin foil from the pancake plate and serves them both. Rick still doesn’t make any move to eat or even touch the coffee in his mug, still processing everything.

Beth goes to grab the syrup but her hand closes around thin air. She frowns. “I thought I brought out the maple syrup.” She makes a move to go get it, but Rick rockets out of his chair first, telling her to stay seated.

Beth settles back as he rummages through their fridge, wondering if she’s signing herself up for months of Rick doing things for her like this. She can’t decide if it’ll get annoying or not. For now she chooses to enjoy it.

“Babe, it’s not here.”

“What?” Beth turns in her chair. “Did you try the cupboard?”

“Not here either. I think we ran out.”

“We don’t need it. I made the blueberry compote.”

“But you always have syrup.”

Rick’s already putting on his leather jacket. “I can run over to the grocery store. It’ll be five minutes.”

“Rick!”

“Ten tops!” he promises, jingling his keys. He swipes his wallet from his bedroom, passing back to press a kiss on her forehead. “I’ll be right back.”

The front door closes and Rick’s car pulls out of their driveway.

Beth sits alone, drumming her fingers against the tabletop. She sighs and toys with the ice in her glass, wondering if sticky syrup is even a good idea when her stomach lurches again. The food at this point will not be warm by the time Rick gets back. She gathers it all and puts it back in the oven to keep, then leans against the door of the kitchen appliance. She wrings her hands, twisting her wedding ring.

That went…okay.

Beth doesn’t want to be concerned by Rick’s very quiet reaction. She knows she needs to give him time to digest this life-altering news. Rick has always been this way. He’s learned to be stone faced to big changes so that others won’t see his real feelings. It’s wired from his childhood. But Rick wasn’t entirely stoic, not at all. She saw the lump in his throat, the vulnerable stammer in his voice. Beth felt the love in his kiss.

She just wants to know what he’s thinking.

He said he’s happy, and Beth wants to believe him, but it’s possible he’s saying it to convince himself, and might need some more time to truly get there. Parenthood is a delicate subject for Rick. He misses his dad terribly, and scorns the man he’d been forced to call his dad even more. Every time they’ve talked about children, he said he’d be open to them trying, and that she’d make an amazing mother, but now that she's mulling it over, he’d never mentioned how he feels about himself becoming a dad.

There’s going to be a lot to talk about over breakfast. They’re going to need to have JSA meetings too, as soon as they’re ready to share with their family and friends. She’s the first of the girls to get pregnant, they’ve never discussed what their game plans were for such a shift to their team.

Sooner than she expects, the front door unlocks. Beth goes to greet him, opening the door to the foyer. Rick steps inside the house with a brown paper bag. Beth covers her mouth.

“I got your syrup.”

He’s drowning in tears and he sniffles hard, fighting off sobs that shake his frame. He covers his face with the back of his sleeve and cries.

“Rick. Come here.”

He drops the grocery bag and folds for a crushing hug. “We’re having a baby.” He picks her up and squeezes her, spinning her around slow enough not to give her vertigo, but fast enough for Beth to gasp and hold on as he says it over and over, dumbstruck with awe. “We’re having a baby!”

“We’re having a baby,” Beth replies, crying with him.

Rick finally, finally grins.

“I love you,” he tells her, all choked up.

“I love you.”

They abandon the jug of syrup that rolls around on the floor. Rick sitting back at the table with Beth on his lap. She uses one of the wedding napkins to wipe the flood trickling from his eyes. “What happened back there in that head of yours? I was almost worried.”

“I don’t know. I was shocked. Got to the store and the cashier asked me if I was okay. I told them my wife was pregnant and I burst into tears.”

Her lip wobbles, imagining the scene. “Look at us,” she laughs. “Us Tylers are such softies.”

Rick places his hand over her flat stomach, quirking a brow. “Us Tylers, huh?”

Beth throws her arms around his neck, kissing her husband. “You’re not scared?”

“Oh, I’m terrified,” Rick says frankly, meeting her gaze. “But we’ve got time to work that through.”

Her stomach gurgles again and she leans against his shoulder and groans. “Rick can we please eat now?” She shimmies off his lap and runs to the oven, pulling the pancakes and hash browns out. “I’m eating for two. I’m starving.”

Rick rushes after her, pulling the hot plates from her oven-mitts with the dish towel. “I got it.”

“No, I’ve got it, I’m good.”

“Beth, you’re pregnant. You should be the one sitting down.”

“Rick, you were literally just sobbing your eyes out–”

“You were throwing up last week!”

“That was five days ago!”

“You’re hungry! I don’t want you to faint!”

“I’m not going to–”

Beth sighs and lets Rick take the pancake tray, backing down when he hands a fluffy one over. She scowls and takes a bite, following him back to the dining room. “Oh–these are amazing, Rick try.” She breaks her pancake in half and stuffs half of it into Rick’s mouth. He splutters, forced to chew and swallow. “Wow…You…Wow. Yeah. Those are good pancakes.”

“I told you!”

The beanie baby sits on the table, staring at them with its beaded eyes.

Rick squints at it. “Is the bear judging us?”

“I think he is.”

Rick and Beth look at each other, both breaking out into matching giddy smiles. She doesn’t even care that they’re being so silly. They’re having a baby. Beth is on cloud nine.

Beth sits down and finally digs in. Once she’s downed two pancakes and at least half of her hash brown, she looks up again to find Rick staring at her with his chin in his hand in wonder, the delicious pancakes still untouched.

She rolls her eyes fondly. “Honey.”

“Hmm?”

“If you die from starvation, you’ll never meet this baby.”

Rick reluctantly picks up his fork. He takes a bite and immediately frowns.

“What’s wrong? I thought you liked them.”

“I do. It’s just...What happened to the syrup?”

#beth chapel #rick tyler #hournite #rick x beth #stargirl #fluff #MEGA FLUFF #hn fic #tkv fic #thank you tay @ cameronmahkent for telling me rick cries when he finds out jesse is pregnant lol #needed to do this for hournite

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prentissluvr · 5 months ago

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literary parallels — sam winchester

pairing : sam winchester x gn!reader ➖⟢ genre : light angst, fluff ➖⟢ cw : small injuries, few seconds of physical fighting (self-defense), no use of y/n, you have a dad and i gave him a name (rick lol), mentions of death of loved ones, sort of case fic, kinda ignores canon timeline in terms of a few minor things but canon doesn't matter much in this fic lol, poorly edited most likely ➖⟢ wc : 3.6K summary : sam is someone from your past at stanford university, and the last place you expect to see him again is on a case. that's exactly where you find him. i plan on doing a part two for this one in the future! :))

MOVED BLOGS TO @sammyluvr !! no longer active on this blog! all fics can be found there!

today is one of those days where the reality of your life feels strange, unwelcome, and somewhat foreign. it’s not as if you’re new to the hunting life; it’s just the opposite, and yet, you often feel removed from it, especially after having lived normally at college for a few years. but you were ripped back into hunting without being able to finish your degree by your father after the death of your closest cousin.

so now you’re cooped up in a crappy motel room searching endlessly through detailed lore websites and the few books you have on you, trying to make sense of the odd patterns of killings in the small california town. that’s part of the pit in your stomach for today; the beach town, cayucos, is only three hours from stanford.

being so close to your former university after almost a whole year brings back a whole lot of mixed feelings. mostly longing for the normalcy that you loved and lost, but also a renewed urgency to find what killed your cousin. she had been studying at a different college just an hour inland from you. when she died, you had wanted to salt and burn her body and move on. but when your father showed up with proof of odd circumstances, he pursuaded you to rejoin him in the hunting life.

the deaths in cayucos are certainly odd, but they lack the defining features that would allow you to identify the creature at fault. so, you’re searching for anything with a grudge against hot men and a killing cycle of seven years since those are about the only patterns so far. your dad is at the coroner’s office, meeting with an old hunter friend to check out the body of the latest victim.

that’s been another reminder of your brief time at a normal school with normal friends and normal hobbies. when your dad first told you he called in a friend to help, he’d asked you, “d’you remember john winchester? you met him once when you were a kid, he’s an old buddy of mine.” you shook your head and he shrugged, saying something about how it makes sense; you were young and only met him once. but the name stuck in your mind as he left, and it had nothing to do with hunting or when you were a kid on the road, stuck in motels, school if you were there long enough, or the town library if you were lucky.

that name, or the last name anyway, comes from the stanford part of your life, the one you keep cherished in the most protected corners of your heart. sam winchester was one of your few friends during your time there, and after hearing his family name spoken aloud, he’s floating through your mind all day.

he disappeared after jess, his girlfriend and one of your other few friends, died, mere weeks before your own cousin died and you left standford as well. you’ve always wondered what happened to him, the best conclusion you could come to being that he couldn’t bear her death. they were absolutely in love with each other, but you know jess would have wanted him to finish at stanford, then head to that law school he was bound to get that full-ride to. sam always had an air of strength about him, so it surprised you when you never saw him again. he wasn’t even at her funeral, and to this day, that’s your singular bone to pick with him.

but, you can’t afford to think about him too much as you search for answers about the case. abandoning the lore websites for the meantime, you look over the police records of all the deaths that you can find, hoping to draw together any more patterns that you can use to narrow down your research. you’re jotting down a few notes, thinking you may have found something regarding accounts of a few of the men being last seen with a woman, when your train of thought is interrupted by an unexpected knock on the door.

on instinct, you draw your gun as you cross the room, looking through the peephole and silently cursing when you realize the light out front has gone out. all you can make out is the tall, broad silluete of a man thanks to the dimness of the twighlight sky.

you wait for a moment at the door, hoping he’ll just walk away after he doesn’t get an answer. but you’re unlucky, and he knocks again before calling out, “hello? rick sent me here to … help with the case, he said his kid was here. i’m john winchester’s son, sam.”

if you were in an old-timey cartoon, your jaw would’ve dropped to the floor. sam … sam winchester. it sounds just like him. trying to keep your head, you swap your gun for a nearby canteen of holy water and slip a silver knife into your pocket for accessibility. it’s too much of a coincidence for you to believe it.

you crack the door, just enough for him to hear you a bit better. “sam winchester? like stanford full-ride, lawyboy sam winchester?”

“i– how do you–” there’s a moment of silence, and you know that he’s piecing together the few clues he has; your voice and the last name you must share with your dad, the man he knows as rick. his voice is just as cautious as yours as he says your name like he can’t really believe it.

for a moment, you stop thinking when you hear his voice saying your name after so long, and you throw open the door and let him in. the light from the motel room finally illuminates his face, and it’s him, it’s really him. and the moment you think that is the moment you realize that could absolutely not be the case.

the second he turns to you from closing the door, you’re splashing holy water in his face so fast you barely catch the look he was about to give you; eyes so full of surprise and wonder and confusion and something akin to joy. you react quickly to his lack of reaction besides the normal surprise at getting splashed in the face, slashing at his arm with your silver knife to finish testing him. but he reacts just as fast as you, grabbing both of your wrists, spinning you around and pinning you to the flat surface of the door.

his hold is quite strong, but he doesn’t have the time to bear his full weight into holding you down before you react, so you’re able to manuever out of his hold with practiced ease. you lift one arm up as you yank the other down to make it so you’re able to slip down and to the side, out of his hold. then you’ve got a strong hand to his back, shoving him face-first against the door and your other arm bringing your knife to his throat.

the thought that his profile view with his pulled-taut eyebrows and the grimace on his mouth looks pretty has the audacity to float up to the forefront of your mind before you can squash it down. the whole struggle had taken mere seconds, and he resigns the minute you’ve got him pinned down.

“it’s me,” he pants, “i swear. ‘m not a shapeshifter or ghoul or anything, it was just instinct. sorry,” he explains quickly, “go ahead, test me.”

you debate saying “don’t mind if i do,” but decide that you don’t have to be teasing or snarky about it. instead, you tamp down your hesitance to hurt him, even a little bit because he still sort of feels like innocent, regular, lawboy sam to you, and you draw a thin line of blood at the spot where his neck slopes into his broad shoulder. there’s no burning, just a normal wince from his mouth, so you loosen your hold on him and step back, internally cringing at the small bit of blood beginning to slip down towards his collarbone.

“sorry,” you say, far more sincere than you would be if it’d been anybody else. this is the norm for hunters, but you haven’t quite wrapped your mind around the fact that sam is a hunter. you’d never once would have guessed, though you suppose that was the point. you had done everything you could to hide that part of your life during your time at stanford.

“it’s fine,” he gives you an awkward half-smile, just as sincere as you. “just, y’know, your turn.” you’d been so busy taking in the sight of him standing there, looking almost exactly the same, but not quite, as he had in college, that you forgot about the courtesy of testing yourself too.

“right,” you clear your throat, “of course.” without the hesitance any normal person would have, you take the knife to your forearm and splash a bit of holy water on your skin. “there we go. no demons or shapeshifters or the like. that’s good.” you feel incredibly awkward all of the sudden, still so bewildered and thrown off balance by the collision of your two words. it feels like too much of a coincidence for you to be this close to your old school, be thinking about sam winchester, a symbol of that old life, then for him to show up and flip your whole entire understanding of him. there’s just about a million things running through your mind at just about a million miles per hour and it’s starting to make your head hurt.

the movement of his hand, reaching up to hold the small cut you gave him is what brings you out of your short lived reverie.

“god, i’m sorry. let me get you something for that.” you don’t give him the time to politely tell you, “no, it’s okay,” like you know he would before you’ve turned your back and crossed the room to grab a first aid kit from your bag and some rubbing alcohol from the bathroom. “sit down,” you urge him when you turn back to him, motioning towards the table you’d been seated at when he arrived.

he complies and once again, you’re thinking about the strangeness of sharing this sort of space with him. you’re used to seeing him in libraries so big that they’re almost grand for quiet study sessions or in the dining hall with his nose buried in a book or in the lecture hall where you first met him in a gen-ed class. you’re used to seeing him on one of the grassy quads with jess by his side or him in the big, open, and fancy old university buildings. now he looks right at home in the dingy motel room, so small it feels like his tall, broad frame shouldn’t fit in here, so dim that his sometimes blue or green eyes look sort of muddy. they’re pretty, nonetheless.

you set the first aid kit on the table and pull out a large bandaid and a bit of gauze. you reasses the cut to be sure he doesn’t need any other sort of bandaging and almost sigh in relief when you see how shallow it is. sam doesn’t speak or protest that he’s fine to do it himself as you pull the collar of his t-shirt aside just a bit. you’re sure his mind’s busy with a whole load of questions for you, just like you for him. the brush of your knuckles against his skin suddenly makes his presence feel more real. whatever contact you’d had during the short-lived fight you’d had was completely surreal; you weren’t sure he was really even sam, and if he was, it would feel like a lie anyways, for his hands to be rough or so quick in a fight.

he doesn’t so much as wince when you press alcohol soaked gauze to the cut, and though the wound is small and shallow enough that you’re sure it barely stings, it still feels like a sign of his being a hunter, being used to pain. you don’t like that thought; sweet, sincere, and ever so smart sam being used to pain. as you take care of the cut, he lets his eyes wander around the room, probably taking in how familiar it is, and how weird that it’s your motel room and all of your belongings packed into a single bag and your computer screen displaying hacked into police reports and the very same lore websites he frequents to solve a tricky case.

when you’re done he thanks you with a small smile and you take the seat across from him. as your fingers had brushed over his bare skin and felt a whisper of his strong shoulders, you’d gotten the strong urge to hug him. you missed him even more than you thought. that urge doesn’t leave when you move away from him.

you make a confused face at sam when he reaches for the first aid kit and pulls out another set of bandaids and gauze. he just hands you a gauze now soaked with alcohol and nods at you.

“for your arm,” he explains, because you’ve already forgotten about that as you accept it with a questioning brow.

“right,” you chuckle softly, swiping over the cut with the gauze, then taking and applying the bandaid that sam opened for you. when you’re done you have to drag your eyes up to meet sam’s gaze. there’s tension in the room, and though it’s not bad per se, it’s begging to be addressed and you’re not sure how to even start. it seems like sam’s not sure either.

so, you choose to jump right into the fire.

“it’s so good to see you, sam,” you confess, pushing all your sincerity into your voice, “i mean, this is absolutely insane and i can’t quite wrap my mind around it, but i guess i don’t really care because it’s so good to see you. i worried about you so much after … after jess died, i mean, you just dissappeared and … and i can imagine that has something to do with the fact that you’re a hunter, which is sort of incomprehensible to me, but–,” suddenly you’re hit with a new realization. if sam’s disappearance had to do with the supernatural, you wonder if jess’s death did too. but you don’t want to ask, not right now. “oh, god, and i never got to tell you how sorry i am. i– i mean. i can’t imagine.” there’s where your voice trails off and you look to sam to be the one to say something now.

“thanks,” he answers simply, voice gentle but a little pained, rightfully so. “she was your friend, too. i mean, we were all friends. and i’m sorry i disappeared like that. i, um, well, you’re right. hunting dragged me away. it’s complicated and i’ll explain it to you later. you deserve to know what happened to jess, but– but it’s a lot.” a moment of silence allows that to sink in; so something did happen to her, something more than just faulty electrical wiring in her apartment. sam’s genuine as he goes on, “and it’s great to see you too, really. it’s so strange, i mean all of this, obviously, but it’s even stranger how close we are to stanford. i was already thinking about it, about you all on the way over, and the next thing i know, you’re the suspicious hunter throwing holy water in my face.”

you cringe a little at that, but sam smiles a little wider than he has all night. “that’s a good thing,” he half-laughs, “i don’t care how weird this coincidence is, i’m glad for it.” his hand twitches, almost as if he’d wanted to reach over and grab your hand, but thought better of it before it could happen. “i gotta ask, did you finish your degree?” the way he asks is so hopeful, and you immediately know how much he wants the answer to be yes. he’s thinking, if i couldn’t finish, please tell me at least one of us could. that one of us poor and foolish hunter kids who thought we could escape managed to long enough to finish a degree, prove that we could make something of ourselves in the normal world. it would be so nice to see that, if it couldn’t be me, it could be somebody, it could be you.

his face falls a little when he registers the sad smile on your face. your expression is more than enough of an answer, and the fact that he wanted so badly for you to have made it makes your heart break a little, for both him and you. we deserved better, you think.

“just about the same thing happened to me,” you begin to explain, “you remember my cousin, bex?” sam nods, recalling the way the two of you acted like siblings the few times he met her, how much you liked alike when you smiled, already sad for what he suspects he might hear. “she died a few weeks after jess. she and i both grew up hunting, and we both thought we got out of it, at least for a little while. we almost lasted all four years … i didn’t think there was anything weird with her death, but … my dad showed me proof of just that at her funeral, convinced me to come back to hunting with him. she was– she was hiding something, and, honestly i’m still not sure what happened. progress on her case has been slow. real slow, so we’ve been working on others in the meantime. keeping busy, you know.”

“oh, i know,” sam sighs, and you completely believe him. you wonder for a moment what bigger things he’s digging into before deciding it’s best if the two of you stick to what’s in front of you. if you go too deep, having each other, a new kind of steady presence from better times, might start feeling too unreal again.

you want to preserve this delicate balance, where sam is still stanford sam and you’re still stanford you, but now there’s just a deeper understanding of each other. a knowing of what it’s like to grow up with a hunter for a father, to want to get away from it all, to want a sense of normalcy, and to want to learn and become something more and say “screw you!” to all of the expections. and on top of that, knowing how it feels to get so close to the finish line, only to have it ripped out of your hands like you’re a child who’s parents think they’ve had too much candy. only it’s far worse than a half eaten lollipop in the trash because people that you love died, and it was all so much more than just chasing after a momentary sugar high.

“i’m sorry about bex,” sam says, this time actually reaching out and placing his hand on yours for a moment. his voice is as full of empathy and sincerity as ever. “she was amazing the few times i met her. i could see how close you two were.”

“thanks, sam.” you give him a small smile because those words feel so much better coming from him than just about anyone else. with that, the air seems to settle a little, and it’s far more bearable. you’ve still got a hundred and one questions to ask and a hundred and one more things to say to each other, but to find out you have this near-exact shared experience is like having so much of the weight of loneliness lifted from your chest. and it all feels even better because you know sam. you know him already.

sure, there’s a whole lot you missed before, but you don’t doubt for a second that the sam sitting in front of you is as kind, funny, smart, witty, sincere, adorably awkward, and good as the sam you met and came to know at stanford. in fact, knowing he grew up the way he did just reaffirms his goodness to you. it’s not easy to live like that and continue choosing to be kind and well-meaning and true to yourself. then there’s this feeling of admiration for sam, just blooming in your chest and you hold back a wide grin because the timing’s not quite right. you still can’t shake the urge to hug him.

“well,” you smile casually, if not a little rueful as you say your next words, “i think our dads will go all hunter-dad-crazy on us if we keep playing catch up. i’ll give you a run down of everything i’ve got, then we can do what dropouts from the west coast’s most prestigious school’s do best; research.”

sam’s smile matches your own, and it’s achingly familiar. “well, we can’t have those asses ruin our not-quite-stanford-alumni reuinion. let’s get to work. we can pretend it’s like the good old days, spring freshman year, all of us cramming for the way-er exam at the back of the library and getting shushed by the librarians. we can pretend john and rick are the librarians.”

for the first time in a long time, you let out a loud laugh, surprised and pulled right out of you without warning. he smiles wide at the sound and finally, without restraint, you grin back. god, you missed him.

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