Fic: Fire of Unknown Origin, gen, R
Title: Fire of Unknown Origin
Author: britomart_is
Rating/Category: Gen, R for the scaries.
Word Count: 3,575
Warnings/Spoilers: Spoilers only if you've never watched the show and wonder what becomes of that nice Mary woman. AU pre-series.
Notes: Written for spn_boc. geminigrl11 saved me with a last-minute beta, and helped this story turn into what it wanted to be.
***
Sam didn't understand what he'd done wrong. The other kindergartners stared at him, and Miss Kendall crumpled the paper in her hand as she cried. The colorful crayon of Sam's drawing peeked out from her fist-a red bird in the sky, a yellow house with white trim. The classroom blurred as Sam's eyes began to water and his breath hitched in his chest. Miss Kendall fell back into the chair behind her desk, unfolding the picture and staring at it. The bulletin board behind her was decorated by green paper frogs.
"What did you do?" Paul Wallach asked from the next table over. Paul's eyes were wide and sympathetic, softening the impact of the stern, disapproving gazes coming from the other kids at the table. Sam's stomach churned with shame and he snuck a quick glance up at his much-adored and pretty young teacher. She was looking at him, and he dropped his eyes quickly.
"I didn't mean to. I just wanted to make her a drawing." The pitch of Sam's voice rose as his throat tightened. His nose started to drip.
At the front of the class, Miss Kendall had composed herself. She spoke over the murmurs of Sam's classmates. "Everyone, start finishing up your drawings. We're going to take a break and read before we do math. Okay?"
She walked to Sam's table, the drawing in her hand.
"Hey, Sam. Come on with me, I need to talk to you for a minute." Miss Kendall led the way to the door.
In the deserted hallway, she sat on the wooden bench by the coat hooks. Sam stood beside her uncertainly, shifting from foot to foot. Smoothing out the creases, Miss Kendall handed him the picture he'd proudly presented to her minutes before.
"Sam, I need to know why you drew this."
Sam looked closely at the crayon sketch held tightly in his hands, searching it for something horrible and hurtful. A yellow house sat, slightly crooked, under the sun and red bird that decorated the blank paper of the sky. In the front yard, a swing hung from the branches of a leafy tree. Next to the broadly smiling stick figure topped with Miss Kendall's curls, a small boy was scribbled on top of a red tricycle. At the edge of the paper, a blue truck intruded on the scene.
"I just wanted to make you a drawing," Sam said. He itched to run away down the hall and pull Dean from the fourth grade classroom. Dean would take him home and explain. He knew he must have done something pretty awful, but Dean still wouldn't be mad at him.
"Why did you draw this, Sam? How did you know to draw this? Have you seen my house before? Did someone-why would you draw this?" Anger was beginning to rasp in her voice, already deep in her throat from her crying jag.
"I don't know! It's just a drawing! I'm sorry! I thought it looked happy! It wasn't supposed to be bad." Sam backed away, edging across the hall. Tears threatened again. "It's just a picture, I'm really sorry!"
Miss Kendall's face softened and she stood up from the bench, reaching for his hand.
"I know, honey, don't cry, okay? I know you didn't mean to." She crouched at his level, stroking his knuckles calmingly with a thumb. "I'm not upset with you, I'm really not. You didn't do anything wrong, okay Sam?"
Sam nodded tentatively, chin tight with his determination not to cry.
When Miss Kendall pushed the classroom door open, Sam's classmates stared openly as he walked, eyes on the floor, to the reading corner. Sam dropped the paper into a trashcan before settling down with a picture book, too confused and humiliated to focus on the pages in front of him.
When he looked up, Miss Kendall turned her eyes away quickly.
Less than a year later, Sam listened with only mild attention as Mark Harvey dramatically recounted to the kids on the playground how his neighbor Tommy Kendall rode his tricycle out into the street in front of a truck, right there in their very neighborhood, right there on Mark's very street, only three years before. Wham, bang, and there wasn't much left of Tommy for them to bury.
Sam's mind was far away from the half-remembered details of that one bad day in kindergarten, so he lost interest and went to play on the monkey bars.
Still, when the Winchesters moved away in the middle of Sam's second-grade year, he was just a little relieved that he wouldn't have to live under the weight of Miss Kendall's stare on his back.
***
The year Sam was eight, Dean sat him down and told him Dad's story-what really happened that night. The nightmares started the same week.
The dreams were so real-and they were always the same. The imagined furnishings of a nursery he'd never seen. Light and shadows from the window. Heavy drops of warm and wet falling from above. Splayed limbs. A face he'd seen only in pictures, pale and strained and terrified, and then fire-everywhere. He could feel the heat scorching him but couldn't move, couldn't get away, wrapped in blankets like a straitjacket.
Every time he woke up thrashing, Sam reminded himself that his brain was just making it up to fill in the details of something he couldn't possibly remember. Dean was always there when Sam woke up, reminding him where he was; telling him it was just a nightmare.
Dean told him the nightmares would go away someday, and Sam said nothing, not sure how to explain. That he'd never met his mother, and if the dreams went away, he'd never get to see her again.
Sometimes Sam wondered why his subconscious threw in the one detail that wasn't from Dean's story-the dark figure standing over him, looking down at him from the shadows. Somehow, the dark man wasn't scary. Sam knew the figure was there to protect him.
He told Dad about it once. "I think maybe it's you."
Dad just stared at him and said nothing for a long time, until Sam gave up and left the room.
Days later, over breakfast, Dad asked him if he was still having that dream.
Sam thought about the way Dad had looked at him, and he said no.
***
The growth spurt part was awesome-looking down at Dean would so never get old-but the rest of puberty just sucked. After Sam's thirteenth birthday, it all just went downhill.
There was the underfunded small-town middle school, the exams he could pass in his sleep, the teachers just trying to make it to their next cigarette break, the bullshit posturing of the guys, talking to girls, failing to talk to girls, being the new guy in thrift-store clothes, zits and greasy hair, his voice cracking, a school dance where he might actually be expected to dance, hard-ons at breakfast, hard-ons in math class, hard-ons at the school dance where it turned out he really couldn't dance-
Oh, and also, Sam was pretty sure that he was disrupting electric and magnetic fields.
It didn't even occur to Sam that he was to blame-why would it?-until his math class started using graphing software and had to meet in the computer lab one day.
Late to class, Sam tried to hurry inconspicuously to the free computer at the far end of the classroom. Fortunately, when the computers began to lose power, one after another, no one was paying any attention to one late student. Sam stopped, turning to look behind him at the line of dead machines. He looked ahead at the busily humming computers functioning perfectly well in front of him.
Creeped out, he continued down the row. His unease grew as each computer he passed went dark. He sat down at the one free machine and stared at his reflection in the suddenly dark and empty screen.
On the other side of the classroom, the computers farthest from him began to hum as they spontaneously rebooted.
Sam, never one to believe in coincidence, decided that this explained a lot about the electrical problems at home.
For all their alertness to the supernatural, it seemed Dad and Dean weren't connecting the dots, so in that at least, Sam was lucky.
For sure, when they moved into their rundown new apartment and the lights started flickering, Dad went over every inch of the place with the EMF. But when the other appliances all started shorting out as well, he cautiously conceded that the apartment just had shitty wiring.
Sam learned to time it so that he never had to walk directly past any appliance that was turned on, at least not when Dad and Dean could see the way the television would fill with static for just a second, or how the radio would quickly cycle through stations until he stepped away.
At school, he started cutting class whenever they worked in the computer lab. His grades dropped. Dean asked him if he had a girl. Sam told him to shut up, and breathed a little easier when Dean smirked and took it as a confirmation.
When Sam's stress started showing, circles growing darker beneath his eyes, his Life Skills teacher Ms. Bates gave him a copy of a book entitled, Help! What's Happening to My Body?
The book didn't have anything to say about girls and hard-ons that Dean hadn't explained already, at great length and in graphic detail. Needless to say, it also didn't answer Sam's more pressing questions about what was happening to his body.
***
By the time Sam was old enough to drive the Impala (not that Dean would ever let him), the nightmares were few and far between. His skin cleared up. His hormones calmed down.
Sam never learned to control this whatever it was that he seemed to be cursed with, but he learned to hide it. One day, around the time his voice dropped, it just went away.
Sam still didn't have answers, but at least he could change the channel without blowing the power for their entire block.
***
It was as he began applying to colleges, surreptitiously dropping thick envelopes in the mail in between raging fights with Dad, that Sam started setting fires.
It wasn't intentional. Sam wasn't a freakin' psychopath. But he wasn't delusional enough to think that the fires were random chance, either. Wherever Sam went, weird shit happened, even when his family wasn't intentionally hunting it down.
He knew he was doing it, he just didn't know how. And he didn't know how to control it.
Sam wondered exactly how quickly his father would hunt down a pyrokinetic, if he knew they existed.
The first few times it was just smoke. Sam's textbooks became frequent victims, especially calculus, for some reason.
His first real fire was actually on a hunt. Pretty routine, as these things went, just a restless spirit scaring the crap out of the patrons of a supermarket, of all things. It should have been easy, but the salt and burn wasn't quite getting to the burn part fast enough-blood was dripping down Dean's face from a head wound, and he'd lost his lighter, and the matches kept blowing out.
It honestly hadn't occurred to Sam to try to do it himself. As his panic built, it just happened-Dean was still fumbling with matches when the flames shot out of the grave, sending him scrambling back away from it.
Even though it had officially saved their asses, Sam couldn't welcome his latest ability. Was it even an ability if he couldn't choose when it manifested? Didn't matter.
Every time Dad talked about finding the thing that killed Mom, Sam felt a little shaky.
He didn't feel evil. But did evil things ever?
When the fires first began, Sam had the dream about Mom again, just once. It was different this time. John stood over his crib, staring down at him with that horrible look-the one Sam got when he talked about his dreams, when he made drawings for his teacher. Sam hated that look. He cried and fussed. The flames consumed Mom, and Dad turned and ran from the room. He left Sam to burn in his baby blankets.
The day after the Impala's engine started shooting flames, Dean swearing up a storm, Sam mailed his Stanford application, the last of the bunch.
The burns on Dean's hands healed quickly.
***
Even inside, Sam could see his breath clouding in the darkness. The solitary space heater worked through the night, but couldn't stand up against the Minnesota winter. The cabin groaned, beams shifting.
Sam burrowed further under the covers, belly warm and full of tomato soup. He wrapped up tight in the blankets stolen from his dad and Dean's beds. No reason to let warmth go to waste while they were off scouting.
Sam's heavily casted right arm weighed on his stomach. He kept the other tucked behind his head under the pillow, fingertips brushing the opened envelope there. Bet it never gets this cold in Palo Alto.
The wind sounded like voices howling through the cracks of the cabin. Sam ignored it intently, not thinking about the Wendigo prowling out there with his family while he was laid up with his damned arm.
Sam huffed and shifted, trying to stop shivering long enough to drift off, letting the anxiety ease away from his neck and shoulders.
He knew he was asleep when he felt the first warm drop hitting his face, horribly familiar and equally unwelcome. Sam kept his dream-eyes tightly closed, willing the nightmare to dissipate. Why now, of all times, would he start dreaming about Mom again?
The next drop of blood hit him squarely between the eyes. Sam resigned himself to what he knew came next, and opened his eyes.
He was still for a long moment, stunned. When the next drops pattered on his face, they broke him from his paralyzed trance.
Dean's eyes were still aware and focused, looking right at Sam as he bled out from the slash across his middle. Sam fought furiously with the blankets swaddling him. He strained to reach Dean, to pull him down before-
The flames curled around Dean almost delicately at first, before spreading and enveloping him, billowing across the ceiling-not the nursery this time, but a drab motel ceiling just feet away. The fire licked towards Sam. He shook, choking on the smoke and the smell, cringing away when the flames caught hold of his sheets, dancing up the bed, growing and devouring.
Things ashy and sticky and horrifying rained down on Sam.
Just once, before the smoke stopped his breath entirely, he screamed Dean's name.
The scream pushed from Sam's straining lungs carried him into wakefulness. Cold air slammed into him, warring with phantom heat.
He could only see the memory of Dean burning, couldn't even see the dark and empty ceiling of the cabin. Heart pounding, ears ringing, Sam thought he could feel the fire burning in his veins.
He meant to scream again. What came out felt like a scream, but bypassed sound entirely. When the not-scream pushed out of him, Sam thought he could feel his nerve endings burning.
The violent ignition of the roof shook the house, the initial flames directly above Sam. His eyes watered and stung as the billow of heat washed over him, close enough to hurt.
Sam coughed on the acrid smell of his own singed hair. Flat on his back, he wasted a frantic moment searching the ceiling before remembering he was alone in the cabin.
It was a nightmare. Itwasn'trealitwasn'treal. Dean.
Sam tripped, ankles caught in the sheets, as he fell out of bed. The floorboards were still cold beneath his feet. As Sam pushed through the door, a smoldering roof beam crashed down just behind, showering him with embers. He stumbled and fell out into the snow in nothing but pajama pants.
Sam crawled far back into the trees. He found shelter under the widespread branches of a pine and pressed his back against it, cradling his casted arm, knees pulled up close. Sam gaped at the conflagration swiftly consuming the cabin.
Dazed, he tried to remember what he'd unpacked and what he'd left in the trunk of the car. Dean's gonna be pissed. Left that girl's phone number on the bedside table.
Already beginning to shiver, Sam wished he knew the time. He bit his lip and willed Dad and Dean to get back early.
Fatigue overwhelmed him almost instantly. As his head dropped slowly toward his chest, Sam knew that he had to stay awake. The fire raged on, but the cold wrapped around him like a blanket.
Sam was pulled from dreamless oblivion by screeching tires and slamming doors. He opened bleary eyes to see the car pulled up ahead, right next to the still-burning house. Dad. Dean.
"Dean," he croaked inaudibly.
"Sam!" Dean's voice sounded terrible. Sam, still hazy with sleep and cold, was sure Dean must be injured.
Instead of looking over at Sam under the tree, Dean stood close, far too close to the fire, straining to see the wreckage of the cabin's interior. "Sam!"
"Sam!" Sam swung his gaze to his father, and saw him trying to start up the crumbling front stairs, arms in front of his face guarding him from the intense heat.
Sam's brain woke up quickly.
"I'm here!" Sam forced himself onto unsteady legs, toes numb in the snow. "Dean! Dad! I'm over here!"
Competing with the roar of fire and creaking wood, Sam's hoarse shouts didn't carry until he was right behind his brother. Dean spun, wide-eyed, just in time to catch Sam as he fell.
Sam couldn't help trying to burrow into Dean's body heat, shamelessly pressing in under his jacket, legs shaking as Dean's arms wrapped under his own, holding him up.
"Hey, Dean."
"Jesus, Sammy." The words were quiet, but Dean's voice was a deep rumble in his chest, loud in Sam's ear. Sam stumbled as Dean hauled him to his feet, turning. "Dad! Dad! He's here!"
Sam couldn't find the energy to look up, but moments later a light slap had him opening his eyes to John's furrowed brow. He leaned back against Dean, boneless, as John wordlessly checked him over.
"Jesus Christ, Sam." Sam struggled when John began to pull him away from Dean's body heat, stilling in shock when John's arm hooked under his knees, pulling him up and heading toward the car.
Sam tried to imagine what they must look like, Dad cradling his six-foot-four frame, and laughed a little hysterically, laugh quickly turning into coughing. He became vaguely aware that it hurt to breathe.
He must have lost track of his surroundings a little, because Dean was already inside and reaching out for him when John lowered him to the back seat of the Impala. Someone wrapped a blanket around his shoulders.
Already a little clearer-headed, Sam tried to sit up from where he slumped against Dean. Dean smacked his knee.
"Lie the fuck down, Sam."
The driver's-side door slammed. Everything was quiet for a moment. Sam's eyes drifted up to the scene outside the window. Smoke filled the clearing, lit up by the orange and pink glow of the fire, illuminating the highest tips of the old-growth trees.
"What was it?" John's voice broke the silence.
"Huh?" Sam's voice cracked. Everything tasted like smoke.
John faced front, eyes on Sam in the rearview mirror. "Did you see what did this?"
Sam remembered the feeling of fire in his veins.
"I think the space heater tipped over." He met John's eyes as he lied.
Dean's face was in his nightmares for the rest of the week. Every time he woke with a scream on his lips, Sam squeezed his eyes shut until his heart slowed to a regular beat, until he remembered where he was, getting his bearings, hearing Dean snoring safely in the next bed.
One night Dean shook him awake from the nightmare. The first thing Sam saw was Dean's concerned face hovering above him. Sam barely made it to the bathroom before he threw up.
Sam's life narrowed. He was waiting, just waiting for the night when he'd wake up and the nightmare would be real. Every time it wasn't, it felt like a temporary reprieve.
Dean barely let Sam leave the room to go to the bathroom alone all week. Dad was up all night, writing in the journal, keeping watch. Sam wasn't sure if he slept at all. The more they hovered, the clearer it became that they saw Sam as the beleaguered victim targeted by some incomprehensible evil, the sicker he felt.
Sam had to provoke a screaming fight with Dad to get a moment to slip away from the smothering protectiveness.
He found a payphone outside a gas station and dialed the number from memory.
Sam explained about the fire, and the acceptance packet that burned with the rest of it. The admissions counselor welcomed Sam to the Stanford class of 2006.
Years later, Sam would stand in an alley in Palo Alto and tell his brother the truth-a little part of it, at least.
"No, not normal." Never was. "Safe." From me.
Author: britomart_is
Rating/Category: Gen, R for the scaries.
Word Count: 3,575
Warnings/Spoilers: Spoilers only if you've never watched the show and wonder what becomes of that nice Mary woman. AU pre-series.
Notes: Written for spn_boc. geminigrl11 saved me with a last-minute beta, and helped this story turn into what it wanted to be.
***
Sam didn't understand what he'd done wrong. The other kindergartners stared at him, and Miss Kendall crumpled the paper in her hand as she cried. The colorful crayon of Sam's drawing peeked out from her fist-a red bird in the sky, a yellow house with white trim. The classroom blurred as Sam's eyes began to water and his breath hitched in his chest. Miss Kendall fell back into the chair behind her desk, unfolding the picture and staring at it. The bulletin board behind her was decorated by green paper frogs.
"What did you do?" Paul Wallach asked from the next table over. Paul's eyes were wide and sympathetic, softening the impact of the stern, disapproving gazes coming from the other kids at the table. Sam's stomach churned with shame and he snuck a quick glance up at his much-adored and pretty young teacher. She was looking at him, and he dropped his eyes quickly.
"I didn't mean to. I just wanted to make her a drawing." The pitch of Sam's voice rose as his throat tightened. His nose started to drip.
At the front of the class, Miss Kendall had composed herself. She spoke over the murmurs of Sam's classmates. "Everyone, start finishing up your drawings. We're going to take a break and read before we do math. Okay?"
She walked to Sam's table, the drawing in her hand.
"Hey, Sam. Come on with me, I need to talk to you for a minute." Miss Kendall led the way to the door.
In the deserted hallway, she sat on the wooden bench by the coat hooks. Sam stood beside her uncertainly, shifting from foot to foot. Smoothing out the creases, Miss Kendall handed him the picture he'd proudly presented to her minutes before.
"Sam, I need to know why you drew this."
Sam looked closely at the crayon sketch held tightly in his hands, searching it for something horrible and hurtful. A yellow house sat, slightly crooked, under the sun and red bird that decorated the blank paper of the sky. In the front yard, a swing hung from the branches of a leafy tree. Next to the broadly smiling stick figure topped with Miss Kendall's curls, a small boy was scribbled on top of a red tricycle. At the edge of the paper, a blue truck intruded on the scene.
"I just wanted to make you a drawing," Sam said. He itched to run away down the hall and pull Dean from the fourth grade classroom. Dean would take him home and explain. He knew he must have done something pretty awful, but Dean still wouldn't be mad at him.
"Why did you draw this, Sam? How did you know to draw this? Have you seen my house before? Did someone-why would you draw this?" Anger was beginning to rasp in her voice, already deep in her throat from her crying jag.
"I don't know! It's just a drawing! I'm sorry! I thought it looked happy! It wasn't supposed to be bad." Sam backed away, edging across the hall. Tears threatened again. "It's just a picture, I'm really sorry!"
Miss Kendall's face softened and she stood up from the bench, reaching for his hand.
"I know, honey, don't cry, okay? I know you didn't mean to." She crouched at his level, stroking his knuckles calmingly with a thumb. "I'm not upset with you, I'm really not. You didn't do anything wrong, okay Sam?"
Sam nodded tentatively, chin tight with his determination not to cry.
When Miss Kendall pushed the classroom door open, Sam's classmates stared openly as he walked, eyes on the floor, to the reading corner. Sam dropped the paper into a trashcan before settling down with a picture book, too confused and humiliated to focus on the pages in front of him.
When he looked up, Miss Kendall turned her eyes away quickly.
Less than a year later, Sam listened with only mild attention as Mark Harvey dramatically recounted to the kids on the playground how his neighbor Tommy Kendall rode his tricycle out into the street in front of a truck, right there in their very neighborhood, right there on Mark's very street, only three years before. Wham, bang, and there wasn't much left of Tommy for them to bury.
Sam's mind was far away from the half-remembered details of that one bad day in kindergarten, so he lost interest and went to play on the monkey bars.
Still, when the Winchesters moved away in the middle of Sam's second-grade year, he was just a little relieved that he wouldn't have to live under the weight of Miss Kendall's stare on his back.
***
The year Sam was eight, Dean sat him down and told him Dad's story-what really happened that night. The nightmares started the same week.
The dreams were so real-and they were always the same. The imagined furnishings of a nursery he'd never seen. Light and shadows from the window. Heavy drops of warm and wet falling from above. Splayed limbs. A face he'd seen only in pictures, pale and strained and terrified, and then fire-everywhere. He could feel the heat scorching him but couldn't move, couldn't get away, wrapped in blankets like a straitjacket.
Every time he woke up thrashing, Sam reminded himself that his brain was just making it up to fill in the details of something he couldn't possibly remember. Dean was always there when Sam woke up, reminding him where he was; telling him it was just a nightmare.
Dean told him the nightmares would go away someday, and Sam said nothing, not sure how to explain. That he'd never met his mother, and if the dreams went away, he'd never get to see her again.
Sometimes Sam wondered why his subconscious threw in the one detail that wasn't from Dean's story-the dark figure standing over him, looking down at him from the shadows. Somehow, the dark man wasn't scary. Sam knew the figure was there to protect him.
He told Dad about it once. "I think maybe it's you."
Dad just stared at him and said nothing for a long time, until Sam gave up and left the room.
Days later, over breakfast, Dad asked him if he was still having that dream.
Sam thought about the way Dad had looked at him, and he said no.
***
The growth spurt part was awesome-looking down at Dean would so never get old-but the rest of puberty just sucked. After Sam's thirteenth birthday, it all just went downhill.
There was the underfunded small-town middle school, the exams he could pass in his sleep, the teachers just trying to make it to their next cigarette break, the bullshit posturing of the guys, talking to girls, failing to talk to girls, being the new guy in thrift-store clothes, zits and greasy hair, his voice cracking, a school dance where he might actually be expected to dance, hard-ons at breakfast, hard-ons in math class, hard-ons at the school dance where it turned out he really couldn't dance-
Oh, and also, Sam was pretty sure that he was disrupting electric and magnetic fields.
It didn't even occur to Sam that he was to blame-why would it?-until his math class started using graphing software and had to meet in the computer lab one day.
Late to class, Sam tried to hurry inconspicuously to the free computer at the far end of the classroom. Fortunately, when the computers began to lose power, one after another, no one was paying any attention to one late student. Sam stopped, turning to look behind him at the line of dead machines. He looked ahead at the busily humming computers functioning perfectly well in front of him.
Creeped out, he continued down the row. His unease grew as each computer he passed went dark. He sat down at the one free machine and stared at his reflection in the suddenly dark and empty screen.
On the other side of the classroom, the computers farthest from him began to hum as they spontaneously rebooted.
Sam, never one to believe in coincidence, decided that this explained a lot about the electrical problems at home.
For all their alertness to the supernatural, it seemed Dad and Dean weren't connecting the dots, so in that at least, Sam was lucky.
For sure, when they moved into their rundown new apartment and the lights started flickering, Dad went over every inch of the place with the EMF. But when the other appliances all started shorting out as well, he cautiously conceded that the apartment just had shitty wiring.
Sam learned to time it so that he never had to walk directly past any appliance that was turned on, at least not when Dad and Dean could see the way the television would fill with static for just a second, or how the radio would quickly cycle through stations until he stepped away.
At school, he started cutting class whenever they worked in the computer lab. His grades dropped. Dean asked him if he had a girl. Sam told him to shut up, and breathed a little easier when Dean smirked and took it as a confirmation.
When Sam's stress started showing, circles growing darker beneath his eyes, his Life Skills teacher Ms. Bates gave him a copy of a book entitled, Help! What's Happening to My Body?
The book didn't have anything to say about girls and hard-ons that Dean hadn't explained already, at great length and in graphic detail. Needless to say, it also didn't answer Sam's more pressing questions about what was happening to his body.
***
By the time Sam was old enough to drive the Impala (not that Dean would ever let him), the nightmares were few and far between. His skin cleared up. His hormones calmed down.
Sam never learned to control this whatever it was that he seemed to be cursed with, but he learned to hide it. One day, around the time his voice dropped, it just went away.
Sam still didn't have answers, but at least he could change the channel without blowing the power for their entire block.
***
It was as he began applying to colleges, surreptitiously dropping thick envelopes in the mail in between raging fights with Dad, that Sam started setting fires.
It wasn't intentional. Sam wasn't a freakin' psychopath. But he wasn't delusional enough to think that the fires were random chance, either. Wherever Sam went, weird shit happened, even when his family wasn't intentionally hunting it down.
He knew he was doing it, he just didn't know how. And he didn't know how to control it.
Sam wondered exactly how quickly his father would hunt down a pyrokinetic, if he knew they existed.
The first few times it was just smoke. Sam's textbooks became frequent victims, especially calculus, for some reason.
His first real fire was actually on a hunt. Pretty routine, as these things went, just a restless spirit scaring the crap out of the patrons of a supermarket, of all things. It should have been easy, but the salt and burn wasn't quite getting to the burn part fast enough-blood was dripping down Dean's face from a head wound, and he'd lost his lighter, and the matches kept blowing out.
It honestly hadn't occurred to Sam to try to do it himself. As his panic built, it just happened-Dean was still fumbling with matches when the flames shot out of the grave, sending him scrambling back away from it.
Even though it had officially saved their asses, Sam couldn't welcome his latest ability. Was it even an ability if he couldn't choose when it manifested? Didn't matter.
Every time Dad talked about finding the thing that killed Mom, Sam felt a little shaky.
He didn't feel evil. But did evil things ever?
When the fires first began, Sam had the dream about Mom again, just once. It was different this time. John stood over his crib, staring down at him with that horrible look-the one Sam got when he talked about his dreams, when he made drawings for his teacher. Sam hated that look. He cried and fussed. The flames consumed Mom, and Dad turned and ran from the room. He left Sam to burn in his baby blankets.
The day after the Impala's engine started shooting flames, Dean swearing up a storm, Sam mailed his Stanford application, the last of the bunch.
The burns on Dean's hands healed quickly.
***
Even inside, Sam could see his breath clouding in the darkness. The solitary space heater worked through the night, but couldn't stand up against the Minnesota winter. The cabin groaned, beams shifting.
Sam burrowed further under the covers, belly warm and full of tomato soup. He wrapped up tight in the blankets stolen from his dad and Dean's beds. No reason to let warmth go to waste while they were off scouting.
Sam's heavily casted right arm weighed on his stomach. He kept the other tucked behind his head under the pillow, fingertips brushing the opened envelope there. Bet it never gets this cold in Palo Alto.
The wind sounded like voices howling through the cracks of the cabin. Sam ignored it intently, not thinking about the Wendigo prowling out there with his family while he was laid up with his damned arm.
Sam huffed and shifted, trying to stop shivering long enough to drift off, letting the anxiety ease away from his neck and shoulders.
He knew he was asleep when he felt the first warm drop hitting his face, horribly familiar and equally unwelcome. Sam kept his dream-eyes tightly closed, willing the nightmare to dissipate. Why now, of all times, would he start dreaming about Mom again?
The next drop of blood hit him squarely between the eyes. Sam resigned himself to what he knew came next, and opened his eyes.
He was still for a long moment, stunned. When the next drops pattered on his face, they broke him from his paralyzed trance.
Dean's eyes were still aware and focused, looking right at Sam as he bled out from the slash across his middle. Sam fought furiously with the blankets swaddling him. He strained to reach Dean, to pull him down before-
The flames curled around Dean almost delicately at first, before spreading and enveloping him, billowing across the ceiling-not the nursery this time, but a drab motel ceiling just feet away. The fire licked towards Sam. He shook, choking on the smoke and the smell, cringing away when the flames caught hold of his sheets, dancing up the bed, growing and devouring.
Things ashy and sticky and horrifying rained down on Sam.
Just once, before the smoke stopped his breath entirely, he screamed Dean's name.
The scream pushed from Sam's straining lungs carried him into wakefulness. Cold air slammed into him, warring with phantom heat.
He could only see the memory of Dean burning, couldn't even see the dark and empty ceiling of the cabin. Heart pounding, ears ringing, Sam thought he could feel the fire burning in his veins.
He meant to scream again. What came out felt like a scream, but bypassed sound entirely. When the not-scream pushed out of him, Sam thought he could feel his nerve endings burning.
The violent ignition of the roof shook the house, the initial flames directly above Sam. His eyes watered and stung as the billow of heat washed over him, close enough to hurt.
Sam coughed on the acrid smell of his own singed hair. Flat on his back, he wasted a frantic moment searching the ceiling before remembering he was alone in the cabin.
It was a nightmare. Itwasn'trealitwasn'treal. Dean.
Sam tripped, ankles caught in the sheets, as he fell out of bed. The floorboards were still cold beneath his feet. As Sam pushed through the door, a smoldering roof beam crashed down just behind, showering him with embers. He stumbled and fell out into the snow in nothing but pajama pants.
Sam crawled far back into the trees. He found shelter under the widespread branches of a pine and pressed his back against it, cradling his casted arm, knees pulled up close. Sam gaped at the conflagration swiftly consuming the cabin.
Dazed, he tried to remember what he'd unpacked and what he'd left in the trunk of the car. Dean's gonna be pissed. Left that girl's phone number on the bedside table.
Already beginning to shiver, Sam wished he knew the time. He bit his lip and willed Dad and Dean to get back early.
Fatigue overwhelmed him almost instantly. As his head dropped slowly toward his chest, Sam knew that he had to stay awake. The fire raged on, but the cold wrapped around him like a blanket.
Sam was pulled from dreamless oblivion by screeching tires and slamming doors. He opened bleary eyes to see the car pulled up ahead, right next to the still-burning house. Dad. Dean.
"Dean," he croaked inaudibly.
"Sam!" Dean's voice sounded terrible. Sam, still hazy with sleep and cold, was sure Dean must be injured.
Instead of looking over at Sam under the tree, Dean stood close, far too close to the fire, straining to see the wreckage of the cabin's interior. "Sam!"
"Sam!" Sam swung his gaze to his father, and saw him trying to start up the crumbling front stairs, arms in front of his face guarding him from the intense heat.
Sam's brain woke up quickly.
"I'm here!" Sam forced himself onto unsteady legs, toes numb in the snow. "Dean! Dad! I'm over here!"
Competing with the roar of fire and creaking wood, Sam's hoarse shouts didn't carry until he was right behind his brother. Dean spun, wide-eyed, just in time to catch Sam as he fell.
Sam couldn't help trying to burrow into Dean's body heat, shamelessly pressing in under his jacket, legs shaking as Dean's arms wrapped under his own, holding him up.
"Hey, Dean."
"Jesus, Sammy." The words were quiet, but Dean's voice was a deep rumble in his chest, loud in Sam's ear. Sam stumbled as Dean hauled him to his feet, turning. "Dad! Dad! He's here!"
Sam couldn't find the energy to look up, but moments later a light slap had him opening his eyes to John's furrowed brow. He leaned back against Dean, boneless, as John wordlessly checked him over.
"Jesus Christ, Sam." Sam struggled when John began to pull him away from Dean's body heat, stilling in shock when John's arm hooked under his knees, pulling him up and heading toward the car.
Sam tried to imagine what they must look like, Dad cradling his six-foot-four frame, and laughed a little hysterically, laugh quickly turning into coughing. He became vaguely aware that it hurt to breathe.
He must have lost track of his surroundings a little, because Dean was already inside and reaching out for him when John lowered him to the back seat of the Impala. Someone wrapped a blanket around his shoulders.
Already a little clearer-headed, Sam tried to sit up from where he slumped against Dean. Dean smacked his knee.
"Lie the fuck down, Sam."
The driver's-side door slammed. Everything was quiet for a moment. Sam's eyes drifted up to the scene outside the window. Smoke filled the clearing, lit up by the orange and pink glow of the fire, illuminating the highest tips of the old-growth trees.
"What was it?" John's voice broke the silence.
"Huh?" Sam's voice cracked. Everything tasted like smoke.
John faced front, eyes on Sam in the rearview mirror. "Did you see what did this?"
Sam remembered the feeling of fire in his veins.
"I think the space heater tipped over." He met John's eyes as he lied.
Dean's face was in his nightmares for the rest of the week. Every time he woke with a scream on his lips, Sam squeezed his eyes shut until his heart slowed to a regular beat, until he remembered where he was, getting his bearings, hearing Dean snoring safely in the next bed.
One night Dean shook him awake from the nightmare. The first thing Sam saw was Dean's concerned face hovering above him. Sam barely made it to the bathroom before he threw up.
Sam's life narrowed. He was waiting, just waiting for the night when he'd wake up and the nightmare would be real. Every time it wasn't, it felt like a temporary reprieve.
Dean barely let Sam leave the room to go to the bathroom alone all week. Dad was up all night, writing in the journal, keeping watch. Sam wasn't sure if he slept at all. The more they hovered, the clearer it became that they saw Sam as the beleaguered victim targeted by some incomprehensible evil, the sicker he felt.
Sam had to provoke a screaming fight with Dad to get a moment to slip away from the smothering protectiveness.
He found a payphone outside a gas station and dialed the number from memory.
Sam explained about the fire, and the acceptance packet that burned with the rest of it. The admissions counselor welcomed Sam to the Stanford class of 2006.
Years later, Sam would stand in an alley in Palo Alto and tell his brother the truth-a little part of it, at least.
"No, not normal." Never was. "Safe." From me.