Contact 9/36
I figured since I said in my Sweet Charity description that you could find examples of my stories here, that I oughta actually, you know, put some of those stories here. So I'm making good on my threat of months back to move the rest of my stories over from ff.net. This isn't new. (And I have not abandoned An Ancient Pitch.)
Title: Contact 9/36
Author: Deanish
Rating: PG13
Length: 2,200 / 60,700 words
Characters/Pairings: Dean, Sam/Jess (but I'd still say it's more gen than het)
Summary: A 'what might have been.' What if the demon had stayed in hibernation for just a little longer?
Chapter 9
OK. Just a few more strands and …
There.
Free.
Sam resisted the urge to slump to the ground as soon the ropes gave. He’d been having some trouble staying awake for awhile now - might have something to do with whatever hole that blood he could feel trickling down the back of his neck was coming from. But the rope wound around his neck made a nap seem like a poor idea.
And then there was the serial killer running around with his face. That was another good reason not to fall asleep.
‘Aw man,’ he thought. ‘Dean and Dad are going to be so pissed when they find out about this. First I tell them to take their hunts and shove it. Then I go on one by myself. And now? I’ll be lucky if I don’t have to call them for bail before this is over.’
He managed to get the other ropes untied and groaned as he got to his feet. Before the spots had finished clearing from his vision, he was off. He could only think of one place in St. Louis where his face would get the shapeshifter anywhere, and it had taken endless hours to saw through those ropes.
He was terrified that he was already too late.
Sam made short work of finding the nearest manhole cover and climbing out, but he emerged into an unfamiliar neighborhood. He’d been unconscious for a little while after running into the shapeshifter, and he had no idea how far the thing’s lair might have been from where Sam started.
A cab sounded like a good idea, but the thing had taken Sam’s cell phone and wallet along with his jacket. So instead, Sam picked a direction and took off at a run. It took a couple of tries, but eventually he started to recognize things. A couple of hours later, he was standing in front of Becky’s door.
Which was cordoned off with police tape.
Sam felt like someone had hit him in the stomach. “Oh God,” he said. “No, no, no.”
This could not be happening. This … this didn’t belong here. Becky … Becky was part of normal. This didn’t happen in normal. This happened when he was with Dean and Dad. He’d quit that. He’d been done with that.
But this said otherwise.
Dean was right. Statistics be damned, these things just kept happening. Sam hadn’t known what to expect when he left Palo Alto for St. Louis, but he’d known something hadn’t felt right - besides the fact that his friend was in jail for murder. Something about it had just sounded … familiar.
He should have known then that it would end badly.
Sam wasn’t so narcissistic as to believe he was the reason Zack’s fiancée had been killed - he’d been how many hundreds of miles away at the time? But there was no question that he’d made the situation so much worse. He’d walked right into the shapeshifter’s hands and put Becky in danger.
And now look. It didn’t feel like a coincidence.
He should have known better than to think he could help.
Sam swallowed the bile rising in the back of his throat, squared his shoulders and headed for Becky’s house. He had to see it. Face up to what he’d done.
Still, his hand trembled as he reached for the door knob.
It was every bit as horrible as he imagined. Smears of blood broke up what had been pristine white. He followed the trail down the hall to what he knew was Bec’s room, trying not to hyperventilate. It was even worse. A chair surrounded by the remnants of rope and macabre red splatters told the whole horrible story.
Sam allowed himself to slide down the doorjamb, taking the scene in. His gaze landed on a collection of picture frames Becky kept on the nightstand. Front and center was a shot of Becky, Zack, Jess and Sam.
‘Jess,’ he remembered. He was going to have to call her. He was going to have to tell her ... He was going to have to tell her.
He almost lost the battle against the nausea at that thought.
He did lose the battle against the tears.
He dropped his head into his hands and let them flow for a minute, before sniffing and whipping his face.
‘I can’t do this here,’ he thought. ‘I can’t do this now. I have to find the shapeshifter before … before this can get any worse.’
But first he had to call Jessica.
He rose shakily to his feet and made his way carefully back out of the house. There was no point in wiping away his fingerprints, he knew - they would already be everywhere from the first day of his stay … not to mention the shapeshifter’s visit. He was careful to stay in the shadows once outside, however. The police had a tape of Zack at Emily’s apartment. Someone might have seen Sam, as well. And he couldn’t afford to be held up by the police right now.
Sam retraced his steps out of the residential neighborhood and stopped at the first pay phone he saw. It took a few deep breaths before he could punch in the number to the apartment.
When asked if she would accept a collect call from a Sam, Jess gasped.
“Sam! Yes, yes!” And when the operator connected the call, “ Sam! Oh thank God! Are you OK? Where are you? I’ve been frantic.”
Sam’s breath hitched at the sound of relief in her voice. He hadn’t thought about how long it had been since he had talked to Jess. Of course she had been worried. He’d promised to keep her up to date on what was going on.
“Jess, I’m … I’m fine. I’m sorry. It … I … Oh God, Jess,” his voice broke then, sending Jessica over the edge.
“Sam?” she sobbed. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt? Where are you?”
“No, no,” he tried to get control of his voice and reassure his fiancée. “No. Jess, I’m fine. Really,” he doubted the sniff inserted there helped his case, but he plowed on. “But Jess - it’s Becky. She -”
“Sam, it’s OK. I already know. She already called. It’s OK. She … she knows it wasn’t really you. I mean … I don’t … but …” Jess was clearly having trouble putting what she knew of the situation into words. She finally settled on repeating, “She knows.”
Sam froze. All he could do for a second was blink.
“You … she called? She’s not … dead?”
“What? No. No, Sam - why would you …?”
“I … it’s a long story. But … I went back to Becky’s house and there was police tape and … blood. Lot’s of blood. I thought …”
Jess made a distressed but still affirmative noise. “Yeah. She … she’s in the hospital, but she’s OK. She’s going to be OK. Sam, what’s going on? Becky, she … she said that the man who attacked her looked,” sob, “like you.”
“Jess, I swear it wasn’t me. You know that, right?”
Jess let out a tear soaked mmmhmm, and Sam went on.
“But Jess, I don’t have time to explain right now. I have to go find what did attack Bec.”
“Sam!” Jess exclaimed, sounding hysterical. “No! Why would you do that? Just … No! Just let the police do it themselves. I know you want to help, but,” and here she broke into sobs again.
“Jess, I … I don’t think the police can help this time. I know it doesn’t make sense, but you’ve got to trust me, OK?”
“Sam,” she pled.
“Jess …” he reassured.
She sniffed. “What does Dean say?”
Huh?
“Dean? What do you mean?”
Jess got a little more control over her voice. “You,” she cleared her throat. “You’re not with Dean?”
“Um … no …” he didn’t understand. “Why would you …?”
“I called him. I didn’t know what else to … He’s there. He’s there in St. Louis looking for you.”
Sam’s knees almost gave out in relief.
‘Dean’s here. Dean’s here. Dean’s HERE,’ his mind chanted. Dean was here and Bec was OK. Everything was going to be OK.
“Sam?” Jess sounded worried again.
“I’m here Jess. That’s … that’s great news.”
“Listen Jess, I’m at a payphone - I … uh, lost my cell. Can you call Dean and tell him to come get me? I’m at,” Sam looked around trying to figure out where he was. “Uh … the corner of 32nd and Dunlap. Tell him I’ll wait here for him.”
More sniffing. “Yeah. Yeah, OK. I can do that.”
“OK, thanks, Jess. I’ll call you later, OK? I’ll call you as soon as this is over.” Sam got ready to hang up.
“Wait! Wait Sam!”
“Yeah?”
“Be careful? OK?”
He smiled. “I will. I promise.”
“I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
Click.
Sam hung up the phone then looked around for a good place to sit while he waited. He chose some shadows on the more deserted side of the building. He slid down the metal siding into a crouch and dropped his head to his knees, breathing deeply.
‘It’s OK,’ he told himself. ‘Bec’s OK, Dean’s on his way. It’s OK.’
Somehow everything was OK after all. Now all they had to do was find the shapeshifter and kill it and everything would be fixed. It would be like none of this ever happened. And with Dean, he could do it. He knew he could.
The minutes drug on, and Sam began to relax more than he should have. When he was surprised by a hand on his shoulder, he came up fighting.
“Whoa, whoa,” a familiar voice exclaimed. And Sam started breathing again.
“Dean,” he panted. “God man. Why you gotta sneak up like that?”
“Dude, don’t ‘Dean’ me. Why you gotta sleep in convenience store parking lots? Huh?”
But then his voice softened. “You OK?”
“Yeah,” Sam nodded, still trying to catch his breath. “Glad to see you, though.”
“You and me, both, little brother. What happened?”
“It’s a shapeshifter, Dean. He’s … I don’t know … living in the sewer, I guess. I traced him there, but he got the jump on me.”
“A little rusty, huh?”
Sam ignored him. “We’ve got to go down there and find him, Dean. He attacked my friend Becky looking like me. Who knows what he might do next.”
Dean nodded. “Yeah. I know. You’re right. We’ve got to stop him. You got your gun? Silver bullets?”
Sam’s face crumpled into a scowl. “Damn it,” he said. Then sighed. “No. He must have it. Shit.”
Dean took the news in stride, however.
“OK. Well, I’ve got mine - and let me tell you, it was a bitch to smuggle onto that plane. You just stick close. We’ll have to make due.”
Sam nodded, relieved that Dean wasn’t going to insist he stay behind. They headed for the parking lot, but Sam stopped short. The Impala was nowhere in sight.
Something clicked, and he reran the conversation in his head.
“You flew?” he asked in astonishment. “I thought you were scared to fly?” Sam had learned this juicy little tidbit when Dean had come to visit last month. He had tried to convince Dean to fly so that he could stay longer before he had to be in New Orleans, but the man had absolutely refused.
Dean paused and seemed to consider question. “I got over it,” he said carefully, as though testing the answer.
“You got over it?” Sam teased with a grin. “That’s sweet, man. Fearlessly facing the terror of flight for your little brother.
Dean kind of relaxed and gave Sam a weak smile. “Heh. Yeah. That’s it. Big brother to the rescue.”
Sam cocked his head and looked hard at Dean. Something about the statement seemed wrong. But Dean was moving on to a car Sam now recognized as Becky’s, so he shook off the feeling and followed. A few minutes later, Sam was directing him back to the area above the shapeshifter’s lair.
Dean let Sam lead the way down the manhole cover and into the sewer. He stayed just a few steps behind as Sam carefully crept back to the place he’d been tied up. He stopped when he heard grunting in the distance.
“I think he’s down there,” he said to Dean. He slowed his pace even more, trying to make as little noise as possible. As they got nearer he inched forward to peer around the corner.
But what he saw didn’t make sense.
It wasn’t the shapeshifter making the noise. There was someone tied to the same post Sam had been bound to only a few hours ago, obviously doing his best to escape.
And he looked exactly like the man currently standing at Sam’s back.
The man tied to the post realized they were there and looked up.
“Sam!” he cried around the gag in his mouth. And suddenly it all came together.
Sam spun around just in time to be pistol-whipped with his brother’s gun.
Chapter 10
Title: Contact 9/36
Author: Deanish
Rating: PG13
Length: 2,200 / 60,700 words
Characters/Pairings: Dean, Sam/Jess (but I'd still say it's more gen than het)
Summary: A 'what might have been.' What if the demon had stayed in hibernation for just a little longer?
Chapter 9
OK. Just a few more strands and …
There.
Free.
Sam resisted the urge to slump to the ground as soon the ropes gave. He’d been having some trouble staying awake for awhile now - might have something to do with whatever hole that blood he could feel trickling down the back of his neck was coming from. But the rope wound around his neck made a nap seem like a poor idea.
And then there was the serial killer running around with his face. That was another good reason not to fall asleep.
‘Aw man,’ he thought. ‘Dean and Dad are going to be so pissed when they find out about this. First I tell them to take their hunts and shove it. Then I go on one by myself. And now? I’ll be lucky if I don’t have to call them for bail before this is over.’
He managed to get the other ropes untied and groaned as he got to his feet. Before the spots had finished clearing from his vision, he was off. He could only think of one place in St. Louis where his face would get the shapeshifter anywhere, and it had taken endless hours to saw through those ropes.
He was terrified that he was already too late.
Sam made short work of finding the nearest manhole cover and climbing out, but he emerged into an unfamiliar neighborhood. He’d been unconscious for a little while after running into the shapeshifter, and he had no idea how far the thing’s lair might have been from where Sam started.
A cab sounded like a good idea, but the thing had taken Sam’s cell phone and wallet along with his jacket. So instead, Sam picked a direction and took off at a run. It took a couple of tries, but eventually he started to recognize things. A couple of hours later, he was standing in front of Becky’s door.
Which was cordoned off with police tape.
Sam felt like someone had hit him in the stomach. “Oh God,” he said. “No, no, no.”
This could not be happening. This … this didn’t belong here. Becky … Becky was part of normal. This didn’t happen in normal. This happened when he was with Dean and Dad. He’d quit that. He’d been done with that.
But this said otherwise.
Dean was right. Statistics be damned, these things just kept happening. Sam hadn’t known what to expect when he left Palo Alto for St. Louis, but he’d known something hadn’t felt right - besides the fact that his friend was in jail for murder. Something about it had just sounded … familiar.
He should have known then that it would end badly.
Sam wasn’t so narcissistic as to believe he was the reason Zack’s fiancée had been killed - he’d been how many hundreds of miles away at the time? But there was no question that he’d made the situation so much worse. He’d walked right into the shapeshifter’s hands and put Becky in danger.
And now look. It didn’t feel like a coincidence.
He should have known better than to think he could help.
Sam swallowed the bile rising in the back of his throat, squared his shoulders and headed for Becky’s house. He had to see it. Face up to what he’d done.
Still, his hand trembled as he reached for the door knob.
It was every bit as horrible as he imagined. Smears of blood broke up what had been pristine white. He followed the trail down the hall to what he knew was Bec’s room, trying not to hyperventilate. It was even worse. A chair surrounded by the remnants of rope and macabre red splatters told the whole horrible story.
Sam allowed himself to slide down the doorjamb, taking the scene in. His gaze landed on a collection of picture frames Becky kept on the nightstand. Front and center was a shot of Becky, Zack, Jess and Sam.
‘Jess,’ he remembered. He was going to have to call her. He was going to have to tell her ... He was going to have to tell her.
He almost lost the battle against the nausea at that thought.
He did lose the battle against the tears.
He dropped his head into his hands and let them flow for a minute, before sniffing and whipping his face.
‘I can’t do this here,’ he thought. ‘I can’t do this now. I have to find the shapeshifter before … before this can get any worse.’
But first he had to call Jessica.
He rose shakily to his feet and made his way carefully back out of the house. There was no point in wiping away his fingerprints, he knew - they would already be everywhere from the first day of his stay … not to mention the shapeshifter’s visit. He was careful to stay in the shadows once outside, however. The police had a tape of Zack at Emily’s apartment. Someone might have seen Sam, as well. And he couldn’t afford to be held up by the police right now.
Sam retraced his steps out of the residential neighborhood and stopped at the first pay phone he saw. It took a few deep breaths before he could punch in the number to the apartment.
When asked if she would accept a collect call from a Sam, Jess gasped.
“Sam! Yes, yes!” And when the operator connected the call, “ Sam! Oh thank God! Are you OK? Where are you? I’ve been frantic.”
Sam’s breath hitched at the sound of relief in her voice. He hadn’t thought about how long it had been since he had talked to Jess. Of course she had been worried. He’d promised to keep her up to date on what was going on.
“Jess, I’m … I’m fine. I’m sorry. It … I … Oh God, Jess,” his voice broke then, sending Jessica over the edge.
“Sam?” she sobbed. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt? Where are you?”
“No, no,” he tried to get control of his voice and reassure his fiancée. “No. Jess, I’m fine. Really,” he doubted the sniff inserted there helped his case, but he plowed on. “But Jess - it’s Becky. She -”
“Sam, it’s OK. I already know. She already called. It’s OK. She … she knows it wasn’t really you. I mean … I don’t … but …” Jess was clearly having trouble putting what she knew of the situation into words. She finally settled on repeating, “She knows.”
Sam froze. All he could do for a second was blink.
“You … she called? She’s not … dead?”
“What? No. No, Sam - why would you …?”
“I … it’s a long story. But … I went back to Becky’s house and there was police tape and … blood. Lot’s of blood. I thought …”
Jess made a distressed but still affirmative noise. “Yeah. She … she’s in the hospital, but she’s OK. She’s going to be OK. Sam, what’s going on? Becky, she … she said that the man who attacked her looked,” sob, “like you.”
“Jess, I swear it wasn’t me. You know that, right?”
Jess let out a tear soaked mmmhmm, and Sam went on.
“But Jess, I don’t have time to explain right now. I have to go find what did attack Bec.”
“Sam!” Jess exclaimed, sounding hysterical. “No! Why would you do that? Just … No! Just let the police do it themselves. I know you want to help, but,” and here she broke into sobs again.
“Jess, I … I don’t think the police can help this time. I know it doesn’t make sense, but you’ve got to trust me, OK?”
“Sam,” she pled.
“Jess …” he reassured.
She sniffed. “What does Dean say?”
Huh?
“Dean? What do you mean?”
Jess got a little more control over her voice. “You,” she cleared her throat. “You’re not with Dean?”
“Um … no …” he didn’t understand. “Why would you …?”
“I called him. I didn’t know what else to … He’s there. He’s there in St. Louis looking for you.”
Sam’s knees almost gave out in relief.
‘Dean’s here. Dean’s here. Dean’s HERE,’ his mind chanted. Dean was here and Bec was OK. Everything was going to be OK.
“Sam?” Jess sounded worried again.
“I’m here Jess. That’s … that’s great news.”
“Listen Jess, I’m at a payphone - I … uh, lost my cell. Can you call Dean and tell him to come get me? I’m at,” Sam looked around trying to figure out where he was. “Uh … the corner of 32nd and Dunlap. Tell him I’ll wait here for him.”
More sniffing. “Yeah. Yeah, OK. I can do that.”
“OK, thanks, Jess. I’ll call you later, OK? I’ll call you as soon as this is over.” Sam got ready to hang up.
“Wait! Wait Sam!”
“Yeah?”
“Be careful? OK?”
He smiled. “I will. I promise.”
“I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
Click.
Sam hung up the phone then looked around for a good place to sit while he waited. He chose some shadows on the more deserted side of the building. He slid down the metal siding into a crouch and dropped his head to his knees, breathing deeply.
‘It’s OK,’ he told himself. ‘Bec’s OK, Dean’s on his way. It’s OK.’
Somehow everything was OK after all. Now all they had to do was find the shapeshifter and kill it and everything would be fixed. It would be like none of this ever happened. And with Dean, he could do it. He knew he could.
The minutes drug on, and Sam began to relax more than he should have. When he was surprised by a hand on his shoulder, he came up fighting.
“Whoa, whoa,” a familiar voice exclaimed. And Sam started breathing again.
“Dean,” he panted. “God man. Why you gotta sneak up like that?”
“Dude, don’t ‘Dean’ me. Why you gotta sleep in convenience store parking lots? Huh?”
But then his voice softened. “You OK?”
“Yeah,” Sam nodded, still trying to catch his breath. “Glad to see you, though.”
“You and me, both, little brother. What happened?”
“It’s a shapeshifter, Dean. He’s … I don’t know … living in the sewer, I guess. I traced him there, but he got the jump on me.”
“A little rusty, huh?”
Sam ignored him. “We’ve got to go down there and find him, Dean. He attacked my friend Becky looking like me. Who knows what he might do next.”
Dean nodded. “Yeah. I know. You’re right. We’ve got to stop him. You got your gun? Silver bullets?”
Sam’s face crumpled into a scowl. “Damn it,” he said. Then sighed. “No. He must have it. Shit.”
Dean took the news in stride, however.
“OK. Well, I’ve got mine - and let me tell you, it was a bitch to smuggle onto that plane. You just stick close. We’ll have to make due.”
Sam nodded, relieved that Dean wasn’t going to insist he stay behind. They headed for the parking lot, but Sam stopped short. The Impala was nowhere in sight.
Something clicked, and he reran the conversation in his head.
“You flew?” he asked in astonishment. “I thought you were scared to fly?” Sam had learned this juicy little tidbit when Dean had come to visit last month. He had tried to convince Dean to fly so that he could stay longer before he had to be in New Orleans, but the man had absolutely refused.
Dean paused and seemed to consider question. “I got over it,” he said carefully, as though testing the answer.
“You got over it?” Sam teased with a grin. “That’s sweet, man. Fearlessly facing the terror of flight for your little brother.
Dean kind of relaxed and gave Sam a weak smile. “Heh. Yeah. That’s it. Big brother to the rescue.”
Sam cocked his head and looked hard at Dean. Something about the statement seemed wrong. But Dean was moving on to a car Sam now recognized as Becky’s, so he shook off the feeling and followed. A few minutes later, Sam was directing him back to the area above the shapeshifter’s lair.
Dean let Sam lead the way down the manhole cover and into the sewer. He stayed just a few steps behind as Sam carefully crept back to the place he’d been tied up. He stopped when he heard grunting in the distance.
“I think he’s down there,” he said to Dean. He slowed his pace even more, trying to make as little noise as possible. As they got nearer he inched forward to peer around the corner.
But what he saw didn’t make sense.
It wasn’t the shapeshifter making the noise. There was someone tied to the same post Sam had been bound to only a few hours ago, obviously doing his best to escape.
And he looked exactly like the man currently standing at Sam’s back.
The man tied to the post realized they were there and looked up.
“Sam!” he cried around the gag in his mouth. And suddenly it all came together.
Sam spun around just in time to be pistol-whipped with his brother’s gun.
Chapter 10