Archive of Our Own

They've been back less than an hour when Dean mentions casually that he's going "out," and that he might not be back tonight. He's about as transparent as Saran wrap, and Sam counts it towards his eternal credit that he responds only with, "Mmm. You heading over to Abyssus?"

"Yeah. For a while, anyway."

I will not smirk, Sam tells himself. I will not smirk. He has to repeat this several more times. "OK," he says. "Have fun."

The house is quiet now that Dean's gone: Faith has an early class on Wednesdays and is always asleep early on Tuesday nights, and Veronica is either also asleep or off somewhere. He stretches out across the couch with The Autumn of the Patriarch (in translation; he's lost too much of his Spanish to be able to read the original). He'd like to see Ginevra, but it's too late to call the apartment, so he'll wait until tomorrow.

He's read maybe ten pages when the buzz of his phone from his hip pocket startles him nearly off the couch.

The caller ID reads "Gin & Herm."

Perplexed (there's no reason for Hermione to be calling him; he's given Ginevra the number, but the phone is clearly not her native method of communication), he answers with a noncommittal, "Hello?"

"Oi, Sam! Can you hear me?"

"Loud and clear," he says. "I thought you had Quidditch practice."

"I did; we've finished. Are you hungry? I could eat a hippogriff."

He's not completely sure what a hippogriff is, but he gathers that they're big, and he remembers from one of Ginevra's stories that they can fly. "Probably difficult to find one of those around here," he says. "I had something disgusting with Dean a few hours ago, so I could eat again."

They wind up meeting at Yaffa, on St. Mark's. The subways at this hour are unpredictable at best—and he's learned that the 6 train, which runs closest to Faith's and to the restaurant, is unpredictable at any hour of the day. It's walkable, but the simple fact is that he doesn't have that kind of patience at the moment, and he winds up taking a cab instead.

Her apartment is only a couple of blocks from there, so Ginevra's already in front when he gets out of the taxi. Her smile when she sees him does strange, nearly unfamiliar things to his heart, and when he kisses her, it's as though he hasn't seen her in weeks, and not just a few days. The last time he felt like this was with Jess, early on, and the fact of love has become so intrinsically linked with the eventuality of loss (Jessica, his father, his unceasing fear of something happening to Dean) that what grips him for a moment is sheer and overwhelming terror. He gathers her to him (she's so tiny, tiny and fierce with a warrior's courage, and he loves her already, and he thinks he's known that more or less since they met); he smells the sweetness of her freshly washed hair; and he kisses her again, until some drunk idiot probably from NYU yells, "Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuude! Fuckin' hot, man!" Ginevra buries her face in his chest, and Sam's torn between laughing and glaring holes in the moron's skull.

It's much more fun to laugh and hold Ginevra, which he hasn't done for days.

"I hate people," Ginevra mutters. "Except for you."

"That was someone from NYU, I think," Sam says. "The species of their undergraduates has yet to be determined."

"You're a snob," she says, but she's snickering.

"I am not. It's not snobby to have standards."

"Maybe not," she says, still snickering, "but you're still a snob."

Apparently recovered from her embarrassment, she's the one who kisses him this time—until there's a wolf whistle and a catcall of, "You go, girlfriend!"

But this time Ginevra just laughs, and Sam says, "Maybe we should go inside."

Ginevra's horrified at the idea of a "Sunshine burger" ("It should be meat, Samuel, not...tofu! And hot sauce—that's a crime against nature!"). But she calms down when she sees the pastas—Faith has introduced her to pesto, and Ginevra has declared it good.

She steals about half of his stir-fry, and he steals about half of her ravioli. She doesn't say much about the funeral, just that it was horrible and Odin bless Tracey for bringing firewhiskey; she does tell him about the salting-and-burning, and about the argument with her family and its eventual resolution; as much as she fought them over going back to school, she seems guardedly optimistic about the idea of studying with a teacher. "She's a friend of Tonks's," Ginevra says, "so at least I know she won't be some old stodgy person. Tonks is hilarious; I hope you get to meet her. She makes your brother look reserved and tactful."

Sam is somewhat frightened by that idea.

He tells her about the swamp monster, and getting clobbered with a tentacle, as a result of which he has bruises down most of his left side. She tells him about her brothers' mysterious new roommate-to-be. They have dessert; she eats half of his key lime pie, and he has a couple of bites of her cheesecake, though in general it's not his favorite thing.

It's warm outside—enough that they're both in short sleeves—and they go for a walk afterward. The streets are alive despite the hour on a weekday—the bars are open, and while the crowds spilling out of them are smaller than on weekends, they're still crowds. Ginevra's hand slides into his as they're walking up First Avenue, and the whole thing feels so achingly normal, just a guy and a girl in a city. He wants it to last, and he knows that it can't, because she has a life and a future in the UK, and he...doesn't. She deserves someone who can love her and take care of her for the rest of her life (without, of course, being obvious that they're taking care of her, because this is Ginevra we're talking about). Someone who's not a wanted criminal. Someone from a nice family, with an education, with a good job, all of that.

He doesn't know how long he has until Dean decides that Hendrickson's moved on to something else—or until Dean freaks out that he's gotten too attached to Hermione (and as far as that's concerned, Sam thinks, too late)—and declares that they have to get back on the road again. The girls are here for another three months, but there's no guarantee that he and Dean will be here that long. Sam doesn't want to bring it up, because he wants to postpone any flip-outs on the part of his brother for as long as possible, so he's just waiting, and hoping that Dean will settle into being happy. He's talked about it with Faith, who's doing her best to encourage Dean to stay put, but she knows Dean, and she knows there's only so much you can do overtly. Mostly they're both hoping Dean will break character for once.

They walk up First Avenue, across one block on Fourteenth Street, and then circle back down Avenue A towards Ginevra's apartment. Sam's ready to kiss her on the stoop, let her go in and get some sleep, but she preempts him with, "Do you want to come in and watch a movie?"

He does, of course, though he extracts a promise that no Jerry Springer will be involved.

There's a substantial DVD collection—the professors they're house-sitting for must be movie buffs—and he wraps his arms around her from behind while they stand in front of the shelves, arguing good-naturedly about what to watch. He vetoes Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (too many cultural references that will mystify her) and Brokeback Mountain (he prefers a lack of tragedy in his movie-watching). They wind up settling on What's Eating Gilbert Grape?, and curling up together on her bed to watch it on the tiny TV in her room.

The pillows are soft, and Ginevra's warm in his arms, and he could fall sleep right here, like this. But he doesn't—he watches the movie, and lets her hair fall through his fingers, and explains the odd point of Muggle or American culture. Still, he's drowsy by the time the credits roll, and when he moves to get up, Ginevra puts her hand on his arm. "Stay?" she says, oddly tentative. "I mean, only if you want to."

Which of course he does.

She goes to brush her teeth, and he lies there, content in a way he hasn't been in a long time. There have been two or three nightmares bad enough to force him to swallow his pride and crawl into bed with Dean—none since they've been in New York, one right after Jessica's death and another shortly after their dad's—but not counting that (which for these purposes he doesn't), the last time he just lay next to someone, sleepy and peaceful, was with Jess. There's a hundredweight of tension that seems to lift, and it's only when it's gone that he realizes how heavy it was. He feels himself sinking, his breaths evening out, when the bedroom door closes and suddenly there's a warm and much more pleasant human weight on top of him.

"You weren't falling asleep, were you?" she says in a tone that falls only slightly short of accusatory.

"Of course not."

"Liar."

"Not lying...Well, OK, yeah, maybe I was." He wraps his arms around her, tracing the muscles of her shoulders through the soft cotton of her T-shirt, and when she leans down to kiss him, he follows willingly, falls into it, wanting to learn all of her by touch and by taste.

Not yet. Not yet.

They sprawl together, her legs on either side of his hips, his hands tangled in her hair. He rolls them onto their sides, settles her leg around him. He rises on one elbow, kisses along the arched tendons of her throat, licks the shell of her ear, smiles when she breathes his name. "Can we turn on a light?" he says, low.

"Why?" One of her hands settles on his belly, and he feels his breath start at the touch.

"Because I'd like to be able to see you."

"Really?"

He runs a finger across the line of her jaw, over her lips. "Yes."

She twists, reaches back and takes her wand from the nightstand, and murmurs something he can't hear. Suddenly she seems to be holding a handful of soft white flame, which she—as he stares—sets on the bedside table. The flames flicker, but nothing burns, and the room is illuminated with a shadow of pale light.

"How's that?" she says.

"Good. And a little surprising."

She shrugs. "Just basic light magic," she says, and pulls him close again.

They stay like that for a long time—minutes or hours, time is fast and slow all at once—curled into each other. It's slow; they're not in a hurry. She pulls him on top of her and he pauses: "Are you sure this is OK?"

"Yes," she says with utter contentment, and he kisses her closed eyelids, the corners of her mouth. Her lips are swollen—just a little bit—from his kisses, and there's something fierce and atavistic and possessive that rears up in him then. Mine, he wants to say, and yours, but he can't promise her that, not with the kind of life he lives, not with a demon gunning for him.

He does outline her lips with a finger—and when she licks at his fingertip, takes it into her mouth, his gasp is sharp and involuntary. He can feel her tongue flick at the pad, and his arms nearly give out. He buries his face in her neck, trying to send his breathing down to something like normal, realizing that at least one of his exhalations was her name.

"You liked that," she says.

"God, yes."

She looks at him, eyes heavy-lidded and pleased. "I wondered what you would sound like if I did that."

"Was it what you had imagined?"

"Better."

They're kissing again; it's hard, intense, as though they want to crawl into each other's skins. She slides her hands up his back, underneath his shirt, then breaks away and says, "Can I?" tugging at the hem.

"Only if you want to."

The eye roll tells him more than the words do. "I want to," she says. "I've been wanting to for weeks. You wear so many layers, it's like you're going on an Arctic expedition, and"—she pauses, bites her lip, loses her bravado—"I want to see what you look like. If that's alright, I mean."

He's her canvas, as far as he's concerned: six foot five inches of Sam with which she can do whatever she likes. "Yes," he says, and raises his arms, and sighs with pleasure when she runs her hands over his chest, his shoulders.

She's gentle over the bruises from this past weekend, fingertips light where the skin is blues and purples. "Tentacles?"

"Sixteen of them."

He lets her explore, and she traces his collarbone, the hard lines of muscle in his chest and stomach. He can't help the blush, though he's able to fight the urge to shy away. It's not that he doesn't want her to touch him; he does. But he was chubby as a kid (before he went from five-two to six-two the year he was sixteen), and even this much later, he still retains the residue of that shame and self-consciousness.

She feels him tense, though, and looks up at him. "Are you sure this is OK?"

"Yes," he says. "I'm just"—he stops, has to look away from her, decides to admit it—"stupid about my body sometimes."

"For Merlin's sake," she says, running her tongue across his pectoral, smiling again when he gasps, "why?"

"It's stupid, like I said."

She arches a ginger eyebrow at him, but doesn't push. "You'll tell me later."

"Yes," he agrees.

He stretches out half on her, half on the bed, and lets his palm lie on her belly as he kisses her again. She's built curvy, like an even-lusher Marilyn Monroe or Bettie Page, and her stomach isn't completely flat, most likely never will be, and he hopes she doesn't hate that. He loves the softness of her body, covering as it does a core of steel, magic, and determination.

She wriggles away, and he's off her as soon as he feels her move. He expected this; he just didn't know when precisely it would happen—

Except she's dropping her shirt onto the floor, and, OK, he wasn't expecting that.

"Ginevra, you don't have to—"

Her bra is black, sensible. She's full-busted enough that she'll probably never be able to go comfortably without one. He wants his hands underneath it—wants to know what her nipples will feel like hardening against his fingers—and he deliberately keeps them down by his sides.

"I know that, you great berk," she says. "Do you want me to put it back on?"

"I didn't say that."

She reaches for her wand, says another series of syllables he can't understand, and the bra disappears. Literally.

It's safe to say he wasn't expecting that, either.

"What did you just do?!"

"Vanishing spell." Her grin is wicked. "I can call it back when I like. Convenient, no?"

"Ginevra!"

"Do you want me to call it back?" She's sitting up now, hair falling around her face, delicate skin glowing in the flame-light, and what he wants is to put his mouth on her dark areolae, to suck them into his mouth and listen to her moan, to kiss his way down her belly, circle her navel with his tongue, and smell her arousal.

That's not happening tonight.

He clears his throat. "Once again, I didn't say that. I just don't want you to do anything you don't want to do. Or to feel like there's anything you have to do, for some reason."

When she looks at him this time, it's with uncharacteristic tenderness. "I know," she says. "And thank you. Now will you please come here?"

He sits up, and she arranges herself in his lap, legs around him. He's done this before, but the sensation of skin on skin is new every time—shocking, intimate, warm. He kisses her, hands on her bare back; she returns it, then pulls away and sets them on her breasts. "Don't ask me if I'm sure," she whispers. "Because I am."

Her shiver and gasp when he plays his thumbs over her nipples are as satisfying as he's imagined.

He explores her at his leisure, flicking his tongue across the base of her throat. He can not only hear but see her quickened breathing, watch her chest rise and fall, feel her fingers slide into his hair and tighten when he finds some mysteriously wired spot. She's not a talker, but she's certainly not silent, letting out happy little whimpers as he touches her breasts, belly, sides, back, as he licks salt from her skin. "How does that feel?" he asks, low, lips close to her ear.

He has only a second's warning before she's pulling them down again, using that preternatural strength to draw him with her. "Good," she says, and bites his shoulder. "How does that feel?"

"Do it again."

She does, harder, smiling with satisfaction at the "God!" it produces. It'll leave a mark, and he's glad. She bites him again, this time hard enough and low enough on his bicep that he hopes the unseasonable warm weather lifts and he can wear long sleeves comfortably. "Do you like that?" she wants to know.

"You have to ask?"

"Even though it hurts?"

"It doesn't. Not in a bad way."

"Do it to me," she says, turning her head, baring her throat.

He's not going to do it there—neither of them will ever hear the end of it. Instead, he nips lightly at her upper arm, right below her shoulder, then follows with his tongue. He does it again, a little higher and a little harder, and he feels the sting of her nails in his back, feels the unconscious arch of her hips into his. He kisses the soft flesh at the joint of her shoulder. "You like that?"

Her voice is breathless, laughing. "You have to ask?"

He bites there, but very gently, and gives the spot another kiss.

He feels her hand stroke over his head, settle on the back of his neck. "You can...you can put your mouth on them. I mean. Only if you want to."

He moves so that his head is even with hers, kisses her lips. "Only if I want to. Are you insane?" Seeing her expression, he adds, "Of course I want to. I'd have to be dead, salted, and burned not to want to."

They kiss for a while, though, until she's melted into the crisp white of the duvet. He keeps touching her, lightly, enjoying her sighs, the periodic "oh, like that, Sam." When he finally moves away from her mouth, she murmurs, "Yes, Sam, now, please," though it sounds less like a plea than like a hurry up, you git. He swallows a laugh, because that's his Ginevra—way ahead of him, not to mention the rest of the world, and would he like to put a move on it, because she's not going to wait all day.

"I'm getting there," he says, and when she retorts, "Sometime this week?" he does laugh.

He sucks her nipple into his mouth, and this time it's her entire body that pushes up against his. "Oh," she breathes, and he teases her with his tongue, feels her fingers dig into his back again, make a fist in his hair. He uses fingers on one, lips and tongue on the other, changing sides when her gasps become cries. In other circumstances he might move his hand down, touch between her thighs where she must be slick and hot, make her come against his fingers and coat him with her wetness, mark him with her essence (make her forget what that asshole did, says a voice in the back of his mind, let her know that a man's hands can mean pleasure and love, not pain and violence—but of course she'll never forget, no matter what he does, and that's what he hates the most). And, God, he wants to, wants to know what she'll feel like, smell like, sound like—but that's for later, not for tonight.

He starts to pull away, but she gasps, "No, Sam, don't stop, please," and maybe there's a man on Earth who could say no to that, but that man is not him. He uses his tongue, a little bit of suction, just the slightest hint of teeth, and this time she cries out, full and rich, her body a bow against his, and did she just...?

Oh my God, she did.

He curls around her, alongside her, gathering her into him, and it's her lazy acquiescence—her languor when he kisses her, the pliability of her body—more than anything else that tells him he was right.

Well, that was a first. Okay, not that—he knows his way around the female body, thank you—but it's never happened in...quite this way.

He is not going to congratulate himself. He is not. Only Neanderthals do that.

Well, maybe he'll congratulate himself a little bit. He can be a Cro-Magnon for a while.

"I'm sorry," she yawns into his sternum.

"For what?"

"I'm all sleepy."

"It's alright. Go to sleep."

"Are you sure?"

"Positive." He turns her gently, putting her back to his chest, carefully since it's probably best that she not feel how hard he is right now. Whatever. He's not the first guy to fall asleep with a case of blue balls, and unless the apocalypse occurs within the next three minutes, it's highly unlikely that he'll be the last.

"Will you stay?"

He kisses the back of her neck. "Wouldn't dream of being anywhere else."