Fic Commentary: little rattle stilt
Below the cut is commentary for my Supernatural pre-series gen story, little rattle stilt, at the request of several people.
My commentary is in red.
This story first began not as something that I had plotted into something solidly structured, but more as just an exploration of an idea - that idea being, "there should be a story where Sam gets taken away by the CPS and Dean and John have to rescue him" (in fact, I called it 'the CPS story' right up until the last minute before posting). The idea alone kind of tickled me - I like to explore the mundane/muggle things that John comes up against as a parent, not just the supernatural. The more I thought on the idea after that, the more it kind of stabbed me in the heart - because if nothing else, the Winchesters are protective of each other, so if anything tried to take his babies away from him, John would destroy downtown Tokyo. As well as freaking out, in his special John Winchester Way.
Anyway, at first it took me quite a while to figure out whose POV I wanted to do it from. I knew the strength of it would be in the dramatic irony, so Dean and John's were low on the list. Dean would have all his delicious guilt, but the point of it being a muggle threat would be lost. An emotional John is very difficult to write; much easier to show than to tell, so it's very hard to write from his POV. I toyed with the idea of making it from the POV of a teacher, but found myself unexcited by the prospect, especially as I don't feel like my original characters are very strong. So young!Sammy it was.
I posted the story as a mathom (i.e. the Hobbit tradition of giving away presents on one's own birthday. I attempt to write up a bunch of them every year) in November, but started writing it months beforehand. To be honest, I found the 6-year-old voice difficult, and felt that I couldn't sustain it for very long. I think this is somewhat due to my style of writing, which tends to rely upon convoluted description. I found myself with a dilemma - especially with emotional stories, I try to resort to conveying the feeling with the tone of the description in the story - but in this case, the vocab style I tend to use in these cases didn't feel like it matched that of a 6 year old. So it was difficult finding the voice when it got to a certain point. And difficult, even, to convey the nuances and subtle shifts in his anguish as time went on - while still remaining in the descriptive range of a 6 year old!
This stalled the story for a few months, before I polished it off a week or two before my birthday. I felt, to a degree, that the voice of the first third of the story didn’t match the rest all that well, and tried to edit out some of the ‘childishness’ of the earlier part because I couldn’t sustain it for the rest. I didn’t do that many edits in it, though.
I was boggled by how successful it’s been. It’s one of those stories that didn’t have a lot of work, planning or intellect go into it, and yet the volume of feedback has been huge due to the emotional manipulation it pulls.
little rattle stilt
Supernatural; Sammy, pre-series (circa 1988-9), PG. by angstslashhope.
'little rattle stilt' refers to the etymological roots of the name 'rumplestiltskin'. It took me forever to figure out what to call the story. I have a fondness for fairy tales, and adopting fairy tale tropes and plots for stories I write. This doesn't adopt fairy tale plot that much, but for me the story is so much about its dramatic irony as well - that we know that it's NOT Sam's fault, and that Dean & John aren't going to be mad at him so much as terrified, and knowing that (even if Sammy doesn't) makes the story more poignant in addition to Sammy's own woe. In other words, Rumplestiltskin because of the theme of a parent bargaining and losing a child/baby. But 'little rattle stilt' because the etymology also because of the poltergeist/ghost/goblin associations to that name (because hello, Supernatural). But also in a very basic sense - "little rattle stilt". (A stilt is a post or pole providing support for a structure.) - Sammy perceives himself here as that loose support in the structure of their family secret. This is why I kept it in lower case, to underline the descriptive nature of 'little rattle stilt' rather than the noun-age.
At recess, Billy Parker bets him a quarter that he can’t swing across the monkey bars in under thirty seconds. Billy starts Sam’s starting-block countdown too quickly, tricking him with the slow, “One…” then way to fast on the “Twothreego!”
He takes a swinging start, feeling the wrench in his shoulders, the ache of the muscles in his upper arms and wrists, and grips hard. His legs work with the heave-reach of his arms, kicking and bending a little as he swings back and forth. He uses the weight of his body to swing forward and land on the top step of the ladder when he reaches the end, and Billy stops his count on “Twenty-two.”
Sammy’s breathless, arms still above his head to maintain his balance on the top rung, hands gripping the top curve of the bars. He feels cold air against his tummy, his back; and then remembers, dropping his arms quickly to yank his shirt and sweater back down over his skin from where they’d ridden up. He teeters on the rung, leans decisively a little further forward and lands his feet solidly in the woodchip.
All these details - wrenching shoulders on the monkey bars, woodchip underfoot in the play ground - are recollections of my own childhood.
The bell sounds. The boys around him drop from the equipment, start to walk or run back toward the school house. Sammy rubs his hands together, numb from the cold metal of the bars, limbs still shaking a little in exertion and the quick-sudden alarm. When he looks up, one of the teachers - Miss Bouverie - is standing by the painted-on hopscotch, looking over at him, not at the girls crowding around her. Sammy drops his head like he hasn’t seen her, doesn’t lift it again until he gets inside.
Billy still owes Sammy a quarter, and Sammy can’t stop thinking about it. Makes himself think about it. He can’t concentrate on reading, on copying and spelling the words Mrs Hamerson’s written on the board in curly white chalk, so he thinks about the quarter Billy owes him for making it across the monkey bars in less than thirty seconds.
When Mrs Hamerson pairs them off to test each other’s spelling, Sammy ends up with Stephanie White, who huffs and stamps her foot when Sam stops mid-way through orange. Miss Bouverie’s slipped in through the doorway, Mrs Hamerson’s talking to her where they stand just inside it. Sammy’s heart leaps and pounds and he can’t hear what Stephanie’s saying but he can hear Dad’s voice, clear as anything, saying soft and sure, “You don’t show anyone, okay Sammy? This is really important, son. You think you can do that for me?” and Dean’s voice, as they walked to school, “If they see, make something up. Say you fell off the porch, or you borrowed my skateboard or something, okay?”
Miss Bouverie and Mrs Hamerson don’t even look over at him, though, and his arms and legs are left feeling cold and shaky after Miss Bouverie leaves the room again, and it’s time for him to test Stephanie, now. Billy will have to give him the quarter at lunch time. Sammy will remind him about the bet then.
A surge of relief pushes through him when the lunch bell rings, and he shoves his pencils back into his desk as quickly as he can, but just before he gets to the door Mrs Hamerson says, “Sam? Could I speak with you for a minute?”
Dean told him. Dean told him what to say if this happens, but it doesn’t stop Sammy’s tummy from twisting a little like he’s gonna be sick, doesn’t stop his hands from getting all sweaty. Mrs Hamerson crouches down on front of him, and Sammy leans back a little, making himself stand as still as he can and not step away. He doesn’t look up.
“Sam,” Mrs Hamerson says. “Is everything OK?”
Sam swallows, thinks very carefully. Dean told him. Dad told him. Dad told him not to let anyone see; and it didn’t matter, really, because when Sammy had his bath Dean would look at the bruises at the bottom of Sammy’s ribs and make noises like they were really cool and colorful. It didn’t matter if no one else saw. No one else could see, because Dad said so. Dad said bad things would happen if anyone else but he or Dean saw them.
Sammy nods quickly.
I’m sure it must seem to be random, but I’m generally very particular about whether I use ‘Sam’ or ‘Sammy’. In this story Sammy (almost) always considers himself a ‘Sammy’; that’s what he’s known as by his family - what defines him. All the other players call him ‘Sam’, though, and he doesn’t correct them.
There’s a knock at the door and then Miss Bouverie comes in, and the Principal, too. His name is Mr Grenlen, the other kids say it’s Mr Gremlin, and Sammy laughs with them but never says it himself. His arms break out in goosebumps and he swallows again. He wishes he hadn’t gone on the monkey bars, wish he’d been more careful, like Dad had told him.
“Hey there, Sam,” Mr Grenlen says, and Miss Bouverie smiles at him. She has a nice smile. Miss Bouverie is young, younger than Dad, and Mrs Hamerson is really, really old, older than Dad. Her hair even has some white in it. “Miss Bouverie told me that you looked like you had a sore tummy, today. Is your tummy sore?”
Sam shakes his head wordlessly. It isn’t sore, only when he touches the bruises, or thinks about how Dad’s voice sounded when he shouted, when the poltergeist picked Sammy up with its invisible hands and dropped him on the coffee table. But Dean had told him to lie, and his head jerks a little. Maybe he shouldn’t tell them that. Maybe he should tell them that it does hurt a little.
“It looked pretty sore,” Miss Bouverie says, softly, and now she’s crouching as well. Sammy shifts his feet a little. He can hear the other kids outside, already shouting and shrieking, some of the girls screaming. Usually the same teacher watches lunch and recess; he wonders who’s out there now, if Miss Bouverie’s in here. “Did you hurt yourself?” Her voice is very soft, now.
Sammy hesitates, then shakes his head again. He wishes Dean were here. “I fell,” he says. “I… I fell off the porch. And I landed on a rock.”
“A rock, huh?” Mr Grenlen’s voice sounds funny, like that voice that grownups put on when they’re talking to kids. Dad never talks to Sammy with that stupid grownup voice, Dad talks to Sammy like he talks to Dean. “That must have hurt.”
Sammy pauses before nodding again, doesn’t offer any more words. There’s a hard lump in his throat, and he feels his face get hot. He just wants to get out of the classroom, wants them to stop looking at him. He wants to go home, and doesn’t want to go home; doesn’t want Dad to know that he let them find out, and that bad things are going to happen now.
“Sam,” Mrs Hamerson’s voice is gentle, more gentle than he’s heard it in class, even when Chrissie Ellerson got that paper cut that bled all over her notebook and couldn’t stop crying. “You don’t have to be afraid of us. You don’t have to be afraid. It’s okay to tell us the truth.”
I felt really uncomfortable about this whole scene - I was kind of at a loss as to how to write it. I didn’t want to make it too dramatic, but didn’t really have a point of reference as to what exactly would be said in situations like this, what protocol was for dealing with these situations in schools - let alone at that time (1988)! Timing is something I always try to be conscious of in pre-series fic; the level of political correctness, popular culture, slang etc. It jumps out to me when I read these kinds of ‘errors’ in other fic, but I do feel a bit uncertain about it all because I’m not personally familiar with American culture (in that era or otherwise).
Sammy panics. Dad tells him and Dean tells him that there’s nothing worse than telling people the truth, that he can’t tell anyone the truth, ever. Make something up, Dean always says, and Sammy feels his eyes get hot, like when he needs to cry, and Dean always seems to know it and stop it in time. He wants Dean. Dean would know what to say. “I was just playing,” Sammy says haltingly. “And I fell. I didn’t mean to.” He dips his head further. He can’t look at them; if they see him, they’ll know. They’ll know he’s lying. He just wants to go home. “I didn’t mean to.”
The teachers look at each other, and then Miss Bouverie looks back to Sammy. “Hey,” she says. “Hey, it’s okay, Sam. It wasn’t your fault. You must be hungry. You wanna go to lunch, now?” Sam nods fiercely, sniffs hard. “Okay, how about I walk you there?”
She holds his hand as they walk there, and Sammy’s sure she can feel how sweaty it is. When they get to the little room where all the first graders’ bags are hanging on the fat, round hooks, she lets go and Sammy goes to his bag. It’s a battered khaki duffle, used to be Dean’s before it got too small for all his school books. Miss Bouverie sits on the low bench, still looking at him as he pulls out his lunch bag. There’s a peanut butter sandwich in there that Dad made him this morning; the thought of it makes Sammy’s tummy hurt. He just wants Miss Bouverie to go away. He wants Billy to give him his quarter. He wants Dean.
“You know, Sam,” she says, after Sammy’s lifted his bag back onto the hook that has a sticker with his name stuck over it. His name’s a different color to everyone else’s; it’s because he came in later than them, and Mrs Hamerson hadn’t been able to find her green pen again. “It’s okay if you’re afraid. But you don’t need to be afraid of me, okay?” Sammy doesn’t answer, clutches brown paper in his hands. “But it’s not OK if someone’s hurting you.” She pauses, Sam doesn’t look up. “Is someone hurting you, Sam?”
Sam shakes his head again. He messed up, and now bad things are happening. He wishes he could go back to recess, tell Billy to take the dare instead, even though Sammy doesn’t have any quarters to spare. Dad gave him one last week and he spent it on candy, sherbet that he and Dean shared, powder-cherry and bitter-lemon flavors.
It’s funny, as I’m reading this again… the spell check is picking up on all the US spelling as incorrect. It’s something that a beta pointed out to me in Widdershins, I think, that if I’m being consistent with culture in everything else… might as well be with the spelling/grammar as well. I hadn’t thought a lot about syntax contributing to the cultural construction of a story, before.
Sammy looks out the broad, thick-glassed window that lets all the light into the little room, and sees Dean, climbing on the bigger equipment with all the bigger kids, getting to the top of the castle and stopping, looking around, looking over to the smaller play equipment. He’s still for a moment, then he swings ‘round the fireman pole and to the ground before running to the ladder again.
The lump in Sammy’s throat makes him choke, and suddenly his eyes are wet, chest shaking and hitching and he can’t stop it. The brown paper of his lunch bag is rough and crinkly against his face, but he can’t open his fists. “Hey, it’s okay,” Miss Bouverie says. Her hand is soft on his shoulder, not heavy like Dad’s is, and she draws Sammy toward her, her arm sliding around his shoulder. “Everything’s going to be okay, now.”
The last time he was in Mr Grenlen’s office was when Dad brought he and Dean into the school to enroll them. Mr Grenlen had shaken Sammy’s hand then, and Dad’s hand and Dean’s hand, and told Sammy all about Mrs Hamerson and the other kids in his class and how they’d be really happy to have Sammy come and be at school with them.
Mr Grenlen isn’t in the office this time. There’s a comfy armchair in the corner that Sammy’s feet only poke over the edge of when he sits back in it, keeping still and quiet as he stares out the open door. Miss Bouverie’s standing just there, turning her head to smile at him every so often, and Mr Grenlen’s there too, with another lady and a man who’d come and asked Sammy more questions, the same kind of questions the teachers had asked him in the classroom but again and again ‘til Sammy got more worried, and had told them he’d been playing on Dean’s skateboard when he fell off. Maybe they checked, and knew there was no porch on the apartment block he and Dean and Dad are staying in now. Dean said to make things up.
The home bell hasn’t rung when Mrs Hamerson comes into Mr Grenlen’s office carrying Sammy’s bag. Sammy feels like he’s gonna cry again, but swallows a lot of times instead. Mrs Hamerson smiles at him.
“I want…” Sammy says. “Dean. My brother, Dean.” It’s nearly home time. Maybe Dean can come out of class early, come and see Sammy, come and fix everything, stop the bad things from happening.
“Dean’s going to be fine, honey,” Mrs Hamerson says, and Sammy frowns. Usually only diner waitresses call him honey, then give Dean and him more pie. “You’ll see him soon, I promise.”
Dad always taught him to sit still and listen, that he’d learn more from that when grownups were around. Dad also taught him to be polite, that it wasn’t very nice to talk back to people, that you’re more likely to get your way if you’re nice to them instead of rude and loud. So he sits still and quiet. He doesn’t want to make any more bad things happen.
The final bell hasn’t rung yet and the halls are empty when Miss Bouverie holds his hand again and leads him through it, the new lady and man walking behind them. Sammy digs in his heels when they get to the front steps of the school and he sees the front yard clear and empty, shiny blue car parked at the end of the path. The lump’s in his throat again, and his peanut butter sandwich swirling around in his tummy. Dad told him never to get into anyone else’s car, never go anywhere with strangers. Dad told him that when he was at school he had to trust his teachers, do what they said.
Sammy can’t speak properly, feels his stupid nose get all blocked and his eyes all hot again. “No,” he says, and Miss Bouverie doesn’t let go of his hand when he tries to pull his away, just tightens her grip. “No, I want Dean.” Sometimes Dean talked back to teachers, but he hardly ever got in trouble. Dean would be able to stop the bad things from happening. Sammy gasps, his chest going all tight and jerky again. “No. Dean.”
It always sits wrongly with me when I read pre-series stories that promote Dean’s importance to Sam over John’s… though, that’s not the best way to describe it. I don’t like it when stories portray John as absent in Sam’s heart as well as his life. In my personal pre-series!Sammy canon, Sam is babied (one way or another) pretty much until he starts to resent it as a teenager. This story very much works on that premise, of where Sammy sits within the family, and I firmly believe that Sam would long for John as much as, if not more than, he would want Dean at this point.
At this particular point in the story, it was my intention that he’s fighting for and wanting Dean because he’s so close (and yet so far…) - at the same school, just outside the window, within sight - and yet unreachable by Sam.
“It’s okay, Sam,” Miss Bouverie says, and the other lady takes his other hand, and his feet barely touch the steps as they quickly step down them. It hurts more than it did when he was on the monkey bars, the tightness in his shoulders making it feel like his arms are breaking away from his body, even as he knows that he’s gripping and heaving harder than they’re holding him, soft lady-hands firm but gentle.
He’s not afraid. He’s angry. Dad always told him it was better to be angry than afraid. Dad told him he only had to be afraid of the things Dad couldn’t kill, and Dean laughed and said that was nothing.
Oh, the irony. Ahem.
Sammy’s never slept on a fold-out sofa before, though he’s slept on ordinary sofa cushions plenty of times. The mattress dips in the middle, like it’s pouring all of him down into the centre of it, and the blankets smell funny, smell wrong. Miss Bouverie looks strange, her face all colored wrong and too pale, her eyes weird. Her hair is braided back loosely away from her face, the tail of it tucked over her shoulder. She’s wearing a loose nightgown, and Sammy can’t look at her.
Sam’s panic/anxiety behaviour and responses in this are example of how I try to form my writing - take a personal experience and describe it as it comes, as opposed to how I think it comes. If that makes sense. The sickening helplessness of youth is a wealth of sensations I remember well.
“It’s okay,” she says, sitting on the very edge of the sofa bed, her hand resting on the blanket. “Things will be better in the morning, okay? This is just for tonight, then you’ll have your own room, your own things…”
“I want my dad.” It comes out as a whisper, he couldn’t make it more if he tried; his throat all tight and scratchy like something’s stuck in it. She’s been on the phone for half the evening while he sat on the sofa in front of the TV, volume loud enough that he could only hear a few words. Knew she was talking about him, and about Dad and Dean.
Maybe she was talking to them. Telling them what he said. Dean had told him to make things up, but Dad had said… had said never to talk about it. He hadn’t told the truth. But he wasn’t home, was here instead. Maybe they weren’t coming to get him.
“Oh sweetie,” Miss Bouverie says, and she moves her hand, goes to touch his face then draws it back again with a frown when Sammy jerks away. “It’ll all be better in the morning, you’ll see.”
She turns the lights off but the curtains in the living room are only thin, and the light from the street makes the room bright and blue. Sammy hears her walk into her bedroom, hears her light-switch flick, and then there’s quiet.
From this point to the end of this section - I posted this in a ‘works in progress’ post a time (or two?). I am fond of it, that night-panic where the ordinary is made strange and the veil between you and everything else is much thinner.
A car drives past on the street outside, slow whoosh and he keeps very still, holding his breath so he can hear it properly until it fades into the distance. He jumps when there’s a sudden sound; Miss Bouverie’s fridge, clicking and grinding and he can hear her pickle jars tinkling against each other inside it. The sofa bed bounces a little at his sudden movement, then stills.
His heart’s kicking around in his chest like a rabbit trying to escape, thumping with its big feet. The blanket smells wrong, the room’s too quiet, and he thinks about the noise of Dad’s pen scratching against the page in his journal. Write some more, Dad, Dean would say to Sammy, whisper in Sammy’s ear when they were laying together in a bed in a motel somewhere, strange mattress and lumpy pillows keeping Sammy awake. Dean’s voice would be soft, only loud enough for Sammy to hear, not for Dad. I’m trying to sleep. That’s what you used to say, when you were little.
I am still little, Sammy would say, and feel Dean laugh hot and wet against the side of Sammy’s neck, Dean’s arm tighten a little where it would cross over Sammy’s chest. The light would be soft, lamp on the small motel desk the only one turned on and shining down onto Dad’s page. The sound of Dean breathing heavy then snoring in one ear, Dad moving quietly around the room in the other.
Will Dean be able to go to sleep without him?
The noises are all wrong. Another car moves down the street. At least it sounds like a car; an odd screeching grumble to it when it passes close by and shadows dart and skitter across the room. Sammy can’t move, just feel the uncomfortable prickle of the blanket at his chin, feel the sweat worming between his toes. Another car, and then when it’s silent he jerks up the blankets and ducks under them before he can lose his nerve, heart racing even faster, now, and his own breathing is louder and closer than before but it’s not the same. He clenches his teeth hard and shakes, his chest hurting when it heaves and jerks, his eyes and nose all stuffed up and tears hot against his hands.
He’s already awake when Miss Bouverie comes out into the living room in the morning, and she’s already dressed. The sofa bed rocks and dips when she sits on the edge of it again, and he holds still while she pushes his hair back from his face, smoothes the touch over his head.
“You wanna watch some TV, Sam?” she says, then stands before he can answer, flicks on the set, hands him the remote. Dad never lets him watch cartoons before school, makes him sit with Dean to eat breakfast while Dad reads a newspaper or writes in his journal. “Hungry?” she asks, and the thought of it makes his tummy twist. He keeps his mouth shut tight, afraid he’s gonna puke. He shakes his head.
He watches a lot of cartoons. Though he can’t pay attention. He feels like he hasn’t slept at all, or like he’s been sleeping for ages and ages, like in a fairy tale; he’s woken up and everything’s changed, the whole world, while he’s still the same. His tummy hurts, and his back, and his fingers feel cold and stiff around the remote. The colours and shapes bounce around on the TV and he can’t even focus on them.
It’s a long time before Miss Bouverie comes out again, mouth tilted a little sadly. Though she smiles when Sammy looks at her. "We don’t have to go to school today,” she says, sitting on the bed again, and the thing that was twisting in his tummy is snapping like the metal wires on Dad’s tow lead.
Dean would be at school. Sammy could have seen him, talked to him, told him that Sammy wasn’t hiding, didn’t want to leave without him. He wonders how long Dean had waited for him before going home last night, wondered if he waited at all. Wondered if Dean was mad at him for messing things up, for running away. Dad would be mad at him.
“We’re going to meet some new people instead,” Miss Bouverie says. “Some people that you can stay with. That you’ll be safe with.”
Safe means Dad in the front seat and Dean in the back with him. Means helping Dad by making sure the salt line is even in front of the doors and windows.
Miss Bouverie reaches for the remote, slides it out of his fist and shuts the TV off. “Sam,” she says. “You remember Julia, and Matthew from yesterday?” He remembers the dark blue car, being lifted and swung down the steps at the school. Miss Bouverie shifts a little, ends up closer to him. She speaks very softly, so the pounding in his chest is almost louder than her voice. “They went to see your Dad, to get you some clean clothes and some more of your things.”
Sam looks up at her. Daddy, he thinks, and he wants Dad, and the want is thick in his throat like he’s swallowed something without chewing, too fast.
Miss Bouverie puts her hand on his shoulder. “Sam, your Dad wasn’t there. No one was there, the apartment was empty. Do you… Did you move house?”
Sam can’t speak. He shakes his head.
Miss Bouverie looks down for a moment, then looks back up at him. Her face is sad. “Do you know where he might have gone? Where he took… Where he took your brother?”
No. No. He shakes his head again.
“Well, that’s okay,” she squeezes his shoulder and smiles again. “Angela and Nathan will be here soon. They’ve got a couple of boys as well, I’m sure you’ll fit into some of their clothes.”
Yes, this is the Petrellis (of Heroes fame). As I said above, I don’t feel that original characters are my forte, so try to throw in referential characters where I can. I wasn’t able to find out the name of Mr Petrelli Snr, so went with the theory that Nathan was Nathan Jnr. I think, when I wrote this, only about 5 episodes of Heroes had aired. I had to think up so many damn names for this thing, was happy to go with the Petrellis on this one.
The house is big, bigger than any Sammy’s ever been in before, and he has his own room. It’s too big, the bed too high, and too narrow. Big enough for one person, and his arms barely reach either side of it when he lies on his back and stretches out. It feels strange, just doing that. He wants to keep his arms close to his body, his chin tucked down, knees up.
The first night, he doesn’t sleep until the room starts getting light from the sun again, and his knees and hips and shoulders ache from being curled so tight. The other boys, Peter and Nathan, go to school during the day so the house is quiet, but at dinner time it’s loud, both of them talking, handing plates across the table, Angela laughing. The food is always hot, and Sammy can have as much of it as he wants, any of it that he wants, but he’s never hungry.
On the third night, while Angela’s helping clean up Nathan’s spilt milk, Sammy slides the salt shaker into the pocket of Peter’s hand-me-down, baggy jeans. Before he goes to bed that night, after his bath, he shakes it out in front of the door. The shaker’s only small, so he has to push the scattered grains of it into a thin, unbroken line. Then he drags the rug to sit on top of it. The window’s not that wide, luckily, and he carefully pours more salt out into the groove of the window sill. Then he climbs into bed, the almost-empty shaker warm in his fist.
Safe.
He dreams that Dad and Dean come to get him, to take him home again. They’re standing just outside the window, looking everywhere for him. He goes to it, calls for them, pounds on the glass, but they don’t see him, don’t hear him. He wants to go out to them, tries, but he can’t cross the salt line.
On Saturday, Peter and Nathan don’t have to go to school. They’re both a little older than Sammy, and like to play forts in the back yard. Sammy misses Dean and it feels like someone’s elbowed him in the tummy; Nathan isn’t as nice, doesn’t want to let Sammy play with him and Peter.
“You’re not real,” he tells Sammy, shouting from the top of the fort. “You’re not a real boy.”
Later, Peter comes to dig with Sammy in the sandpit. “He didn’t mean it,” Peter says, sounding a little sad. He pushes his hair out of his eyes. Nathan isn’t even nice to Peter, sometimes, but Peter doesn’t seem to mind. Dad would give Dean a hiding for doing and saying some of the things that Nathan does and says to Peter. Sammy presses his lips tight. “Do you miss your real family?”
Sammy doesn’t answer. Can’t answer. He still wants them, so hard it makes his chest hurt and his words choke up in his throat.
Peter hesitates. “Do you have a real family?”
On Sunday night, after Sammy’s hopped into bed, Angela knocks on his door then comes in. “Sam,” she says, and sits on the edge of the bed, smoothing the covers. Sammy pulls his knees up to his chest, Peter’s old pajamas too long, unrolling down under his heels. “I’m not mad,” Angela says, but she’s not looking up at him, just staring at the covers. Sammy tightens his arms around his legs. “I can’t find the salt shaker.”
She looks up at him then, not looking away.
He lied before. Lied and made everything broken, made Dad and Dean go away. But he can’t tell her the truth now, can’t make things worse. He doesn’t know where they might take him next. He doesn’t want to be not real.
He shakes his head. Angela takes a deep breath. “I’m not angry, Sam,” she says. “But I need the salt shaker. And I found…” she pauses briefly. “I found where you spilt it. And covered it up with the rug.” Panic hammers through Sammy’s chest. “Is that why you took it? You didn’t want me to know you spilt it?”
Sammy shakes his head again, wordless, stricken.
“You know you’re starting a new school tomorrow, sweetheart,” she says, patting his arm a little. “You need to know that… That it’s not okay to take other people’s things. You have your own things, now.” She looks around the room, still too-big, mostly bare, some notepads and pencils on the night stand, Sammy’s clothes on the chair. “Okay?”
You took me, Sammy wants to say, feels it burn in his throat like he’s screaming it, like when he’s screaming at Dad because Dad isn’t being fair. You took my Dad away. He nods, looking down. Angela gives one last pat on his arm, turning the light off before closing the door quietly behind her.
I am lame. I come back and re-read stories of mine with relative frequency, but I always only read this one from this point on.
Sammy’s used to the noises of the house now. Used to the sound of the pipes as Angela fills the bath tub, used to hearing Nathan and Peter bicker down the hall, and the sound of their doors closing. Used to the hum-shush of the heat coming on, and the cars on the street. Used to it enough that his body goes boneless under the covers, like he’s been twisted and wrung out, arms and legs and chest feeling hollow, eyes hot. His breathing is loud in the dark space and his mouth tastes salty.
He doesn’t know how long he’s been asleep for when his eyes fly open suddenly. There’s the noise again, faint screech-screeching. His heart swells and stutters in his chest, so much that he can’t breath for a moment. The salt. The line was broken, Angela swept it up…
screech-screech-screech and he has to, has to be brave, like Dad always tells him to, like Dean always is. He pulls the covers down from over his head, holds his breath. screech-screech. Again. He looks around the room, but can’t see anything moving. Slowly, carefully, he sits, drawing his knees up.
The light from the window is enough that he can see all the shapes of the room, even if the corners are still hidden in shadow, but there’s still nothing moving even as the screech sounds again and then he recognizes it, recognizes the sound, glass, and looks to the window, curtains half-open.
There’s a figure standing there. Not big, not looming. One hand raised, fingers scratching at the glass, and Sammy bites the edge of the blanket to stifle the cry that leaps into his throat. The hand moves, cups between the face and the glass and Sammy’s out of bed and there in an instant. Dean.
His fingers shake on the latch, but as soon as it’s open wide enough Dean slithers in through the gap, landing on the floor at Sammy’s feet and then Sammy’s on the floor with him. His fingers grip tight in the front of Dean’s sweater, the wool scratching against his hot face. Dean’s arms squeeze round his back so tight that Sammy can barely breathe for a few moments, and Dean presses his lips to Sammy’s temple quick and hard before holding him at arm’s length again. Sammy can’t make himself let go of Dean’s sweater, and Dean’s teeth gleam briefly in the half-light when he smiles. “Come on,” he whispers. “Let’s get out of here.”
He barely notices the shock of the cold air when he climbs out before Dean, too-loose pajamas tangling his feet and sliding low on his hips, but instead of landing in the shrubby plants there’s something grabbing hold of him suddenly, big hands wrapping round his waist and helping him through, not letting him touch the ground and then he’s wrapped in the familiar smell of Dad’s jacket, Dad’s flannel shirt soft and warm against his face and neck, Dad’s huge arms going right ‘round him and holding, hard.
“Daddy,” Sammy says, doesn’t even mean to, but it’s choked enough that it’s not too loud anyway, barely more than a strangled whisper. His arms go around Dad’s neck, legs around Dad’s waist, and Dad’s chest heaves quickly against him, Dad’s face against the side of Sammy’s neck, breathing deep.
“Sammy,” Dad says just as soft. “Baby boy.”
Most everyone picks out the Sam-and-Dean reunion as their favourite bit ever ( Audz certainly did *g*), but for me this story is more about John and Sam. Or, it’s about a couple of things: Sam’s emotional response - his anguish at being separated and his sense of guilt; and the fact that the separation itself is misguided, and it’s a threat/situation that John can’t deal with in his ordinary way. Anyway, my point is, I was somewhat unsure about this part above, didn’t want to push it over into unnecessary schmoop (though, um, the rest of it is unnecessary angst…), but really wanted to convey that John would have been in as much terrified agony as Sammy while they were separated.
Dad carries Sammy across the lawn, he and Dean moving quick, low, Sammy’s face still buried against Dad’s shoulder. They move in the shadows of the sidewalk, and the car waits for them, shining black on its own under a dud streetlight. Dad unwraps an arm from around Sammy to dig in his pocket, hand the keys to Dean.
The interior light comes on when Dean opens the back door, a warm yellow glow, and Dad lets Sammy down. The pavement is cold under Sammy’s bare feet, his hand hot with Dad’s still closed around it. Dean climbs in, and Dad guides Sammy forward, his other hand cupping the back of Sammy’s head.
D’oh. Probably should be ‘dome light’. Bloody Australianisms.
“Here,” Dean says, leaning against the far door. There’re blankets and cushions covering the expanse of seat between them. “We made you a bed, in case you were tired.”
This is another thing which, in hindsight, is lifted from my own childhood. When I was a wee lass, one of the most comforting things ever was making a nest out of my blankets and toys and cushions and curling up in it all. I had the image/idea of Dean and John building a blanket nest for Sammy in the back seat early on, and had to negotiate around the story a bit as to how to slot it in without making it too schmoopy (um, where is this aversion to schmoop coming from? Pre-series schmoop is pretty much my MO, dammit!).
Sammy clambers in, and Dean wraps blankets and arms around him. The blankets smell like motel, familiar strong detergent and faint must, and Dean smells like Dean. Dad shuts the door behind them and the light goes out and it’s dark; the sounds of Sammy’s heart pounding and Dean’s breathing so loud. “Here,” Dean says again, loosening one arm briefly to reach for something, then tuck it in between blankets and Sammy’s chest. Sammy grips it automatically, feels the familiar soft fur and cool glass eyes.
“Mister Bun,” he whispers, and just like that the tears start coming from his eyes, hot and fast and soaked up quick by the fur.
Yep, it’s Mister Bun, that’s my name, that name again is Mister Bun Mister Bun. Yes, the irony has struck me that the quintessential and original Mister Bun story happens to be the only vaguely Wincesty one, which means all the gen people who read the preseries Bun stories probably haven’t read it…
“Yeah,” Dean says. “He missed you, but I took care of him for you.”
The light flashes on briefly again as Dad climbs in the front and pulls the door closed behind him, then he glances over his shoulder at them before leaning forward, reaching for the ignition. Sammy closes his eyes as the car starts, rumbling under him and shaking them all softly. Dean’s arms tighten a little as they start moving, steadying. Home.
I’m wary of being repetitive of all those stories that labour the point of “home is where the car is”, but couldn’t really think of a better way to end it, and it’s as much about being all together again as it is being in the car.
I’m actually working on a coda to this - I wanted to write more about this situation, namely from John’s POV, and what would happen after (though I did toy with writing about the moment where John’s waiting, hiding in the Petrelli yard while Dean goes off to climb through the window). Where would he go? What would his mood be like? How would he treat the boys? Etc. I’ve started it at the point where this pretty much leaves off, John stopping the car again several gazillion hours and miles later. I started it for _audrey, but it’s possibly a bit belated now as she’s into bandom more than spn at the moment! I will confess that Eloise-bright’s recent birthday has spurred me onto taking another look at it again ;)
Okay, so that wasn’t so bad. Boy, I am wordy.
Next up I think I'll do Field of Mars, and then attempt to tackle the behemoth of Widdershins.
Then someone has requested I do one of my John/Dean stories OR Socktacular, so I'll have to see what I'm up for at that point *g*
If there's one in particular you want, drop your request in here.
My commentary is in red.
This story first began not as something that I had plotted into something solidly structured, but more as just an exploration of an idea - that idea being, "there should be a story where Sam gets taken away by the CPS and Dean and John have to rescue him" (in fact, I called it 'the CPS story' right up until the last minute before posting). The idea alone kind of tickled me - I like to explore the mundane/muggle things that John comes up against as a parent, not just the supernatural. The more I thought on the idea after that, the more it kind of stabbed me in the heart - because if nothing else, the Winchesters are protective of each other, so if anything tried to take his babies away from him, John would destroy downtown Tokyo. As well as freaking out, in his special John Winchester Way.
Anyway, at first it took me quite a while to figure out whose POV I wanted to do it from. I knew the strength of it would be in the dramatic irony, so Dean and John's were low on the list. Dean would have all his delicious guilt, but the point of it being a muggle threat would be lost. An emotional John is very difficult to write; much easier to show than to tell, so it's very hard to write from his POV. I toyed with the idea of making it from the POV of a teacher, but found myself unexcited by the prospect, especially as I don't feel like my original characters are very strong. So young!Sammy it was.
I posted the story as a mathom (i.e. the Hobbit tradition of giving away presents on one's own birthday. I attempt to write up a bunch of them every year) in November, but started writing it months beforehand. To be honest, I found the 6-year-old voice difficult, and felt that I couldn't sustain it for very long. I think this is somewhat due to my style of writing, which tends to rely upon convoluted description. I found myself with a dilemma - especially with emotional stories, I try to resort to conveying the feeling with the tone of the description in the story - but in this case, the vocab style I tend to use in these cases didn't feel like it matched that of a 6 year old. So it was difficult finding the voice when it got to a certain point. And difficult, even, to convey the nuances and subtle shifts in his anguish as time went on - while still remaining in the descriptive range of a 6 year old!
This stalled the story for a few months, before I polished it off a week or two before my birthday. I felt, to a degree, that the voice of the first third of the story didn’t match the rest all that well, and tried to edit out some of the ‘childishness’ of the earlier part because I couldn’t sustain it for the rest. I didn’t do that many edits in it, though.
I was boggled by how successful it’s been. It’s one of those stories that didn’t have a lot of work, planning or intellect go into it, and yet the volume of feedback has been huge due to the emotional manipulation it pulls.
little rattle stilt
Supernatural; Sammy, pre-series (circa 1988-9), PG. by angstslashhope.
'little rattle stilt' refers to the etymological roots of the name 'rumplestiltskin'. It took me forever to figure out what to call the story. I have a fondness for fairy tales, and adopting fairy tale tropes and plots for stories I write. This doesn't adopt fairy tale plot that much, but for me the story is so much about its dramatic irony as well - that we know that it's NOT Sam's fault, and that Dean & John aren't going to be mad at him so much as terrified, and knowing that (even if Sammy doesn't) makes the story more poignant in addition to Sammy's own woe. In other words, Rumplestiltskin because of the theme of a parent bargaining and losing a child/baby. But 'little rattle stilt' because the etymology also because of the poltergeist/ghost/goblin associations to that name (because hello, Supernatural). But also in a very basic sense - "little rattle stilt". (A stilt is a post or pole providing support for a structure.) - Sammy perceives himself here as that loose support in the structure of their family secret. This is why I kept it in lower case, to underline the descriptive nature of 'little rattle stilt' rather than the noun-age.
At recess, Billy Parker bets him a quarter that he can’t swing across the monkey bars in under thirty seconds. Billy starts Sam’s starting-block countdown too quickly, tricking him with the slow, “One…” then way to fast on the “Twothreego!”
He takes a swinging start, feeling the wrench in his shoulders, the ache of the muscles in his upper arms and wrists, and grips hard. His legs work with the heave-reach of his arms, kicking and bending a little as he swings back and forth. He uses the weight of his body to swing forward and land on the top step of the ladder when he reaches the end, and Billy stops his count on “Twenty-two.”
Sammy’s breathless, arms still above his head to maintain his balance on the top rung, hands gripping the top curve of the bars. He feels cold air against his tummy, his back; and then remembers, dropping his arms quickly to yank his shirt and sweater back down over his skin from where they’d ridden up. He teeters on the rung, leans decisively a little further forward and lands his feet solidly in the woodchip.
All these details - wrenching shoulders on the monkey bars, woodchip underfoot in the play ground - are recollections of my own childhood.
The bell sounds. The boys around him drop from the equipment, start to walk or run back toward the school house. Sammy rubs his hands together, numb from the cold metal of the bars, limbs still shaking a little in exertion and the quick-sudden alarm. When he looks up, one of the teachers - Miss Bouverie - is standing by the painted-on hopscotch, looking over at him, not at the girls crowding around her. Sammy drops his head like he hasn’t seen her, doesn’t lift it again until he gets inside.
Billy still owes Sammy a quarter, and Sammy can’t stop thinking about it. Makes himself think about it. He can’t concentrate on reading, on copying and spelling the words Mrs Hamerson’s written on the board in curly white chalk, so he thinks about the quarter Billy owes him for making it across the monkey bars in less than thirty seconds.
When Mrs Hamerson pairs them off to test each other’s spelling, Sammy ends up with Stephanie White, who huffs and stamps her foot when Sam stops mid-way through orange. Miss Bouverie’s slipped in through the doorway, Mrs Hamerson’s talking to her where they stand just inside it. Sammy’s heart leaps and pounds and he can’t hear what Stephanie’s saying but he can hear Dad’s voice, clear as anything, saying soft and sure, “You don’t show anyone, okay Sammy? This is really important, son. You think you can do that for me?” and Dean’s voice, as they walked to school, “If they see, make something up. Say you fell off the porch, or you borrowed my skateboard or something, okay?”
Miss Bouverie and Mrs Hamerson don’t even look over at him, though, and his arms and legs are left feeling cold and shaky after Miss Bouverie leaves the room again, and it’s time for him to test Stephanie, now. Billy will have to give him the quarter at lunch time. Sammy will remind him about the bet then.
A surge of relief pushes through him when the lunch bell rings, and he shoves his pencils back into his desk as quickly as he can, but just before he gets to the door Mrs Hamerson says, “Sam? Could I speak with you for a minute?”
Dean told him. Dean told him what to say if this happens, but it doesn’t stop Sammy’s tummy from twisting a little like he’s gonna be sick, doesn’t stop his hands from getting all sweaty. Mrs Hamerson crouches down on front of him, and Sammy leans back a little, making himself stand as still as he can and not step away. He doesn’t look up.
“Sam,” Mrs Hamerson says. “Is everything OK?”
Sam swallows, thinks very carefully. Dean told him. Dad told him. Dad told him not to let anyone see; and it didn’t matter, really, because when Sammy had his bath Dean would look at the bruises at the bottom of Sammy’s ribs and make noises like they were really cool and colorful. It didn’t matter if no one else saw. No one else could see, because Dad said so. Dad said bad things would happen if anyone else but he or Dean saw them.
Sammy nods quickly.
I’m sure it must seem to be random, but I’m generally very particular about whether I use ‘Sam’ or ‘Sammy’. In this story Sammy (almost) always considers himself a ‘Sammy’; that’s what he’s known as by his family - what defines him. All the other players call him ‘Sam’, though, and he doesn’t correct them.
There’s a knock at the door and then Miss Bouverie comes in, and the Principal, too. His name is Mr Grenlen, the other kids say it’s Mr Gremlin, and Sammy laughs with them but never says it himself. His arms break out in goosebumps and he swallows again. He wishes he hadn’t gone on the monkey bars, wish he’d been more careful, like Dad had told him.
“Hey there, Sam,” Mr Grenlen says, and Miss Bouverie smiles at him. She has a nice smile. Miss Bouverie is young, younger than Dad, and Mrs Hamerson is really, really old, older than Dad. Her hair even has some white in it. “Miss Bouverie told me that you looked like you had a sore tummy, today. Is your tummy sore?”
Sam shakes his head wordlessly. It isn’t sore, only when he touches the bruises, or thinks about how Dad’s voice sounded when he shouted, when the poltergeist picked Sammy up with its invisible hands and dropped him on the coffee table. But Dean had told him to lie, and his head jerks a little. Maybe he shouldn’t tell them that. Maybe he should tell them that it does hurt a little.
“It looked pretty sore,” Miss Bouverie says, softly, and now she’s crouching as well. Sammy shifts his feet a little. He can hear the other kids outside, already shouting and shrieking, some of the girls screaming. Usually the same teacher watches lunch and recess; he wonders who’s out there now, if Miss Bouverie’s in here. “Did you hurt yourself?” Her voice is very soft, now.
Sammy hesitates, then shakes his head again. He wishes Dean were here. “I fell,” he says. “I… I fell off the porch. And I landed on a rock.”
“A rock, huh?” Mr Grenlen’s voice sounds funny, like that voice that grownups put on when they’re talking to kids. Dad never talks to Sammy with that stupid grownup voice, Dad talks to Sammy like he talks to Dean. “That must have hurt.”
Sammy pauses before nodding again, doesn’t offer any more words. There’s a hard lump in his throat, and he feels his face get hot. He just wants to get out of the classroom, wants them to stop looking at him. He wants to go home, and doesn’t want to go home; doesn’t want Dad to know that he let them find out, and that bad things are going to happen now.
“Sam,” Mrs Hamerson’s voice is gentle, more gentle than he’s heard it in class, even when Chrissie Ellerson got that paper cut that bled all over her notebook and couldn’t stop crying. “You don’t have to be afraid of us. You don’t have to be afraid. It’s okay to tell us the truth.”
I felt really uncomfortable about this whole scene - I was kind of at a loss as to how to write it. I didn’t want to make it too dramatic, but didn’t really have a point of reference as to what exactly would be said in situations like this, what protocol was for dealing with these situations in schools - let alone at that time (1988)! Timing is something I always try to be conscious of in pre-series fic; the level of political correctness, popular culture, slang etc. It jumps out to me when I read these kinds of ‘errors’ in other fic, but I do feel a bit uncertain about it all because I’m not personally familiar with American culture (in that era or otherwise).
Sammy panics. Dad tells him and Dean tells him that there’s nothing worse than telling people the truth, that he can’t tell anyone the truth, ever. Make something up, Dean always says, and Sammy feels his eyes get hot, like when he needs to cry, and Dean always seems to know it and stop it in time. He wants Dean. Dean would know what to say. “I was just playing,” Sammy says haltingly. “And I fell. I didn’t mean to.” He dips his head further. He can’t look at them; if they see him, they’ll know. They’ll know he’s lying. He just wants to go home. “I didn’t mean to.”
The teachers look at each other, and then Miss Bouverie looks back to Sammy. “Hey,” she says. “Hey, it’s okay, Sam. It wasn’t your fault. You must be hungry. You wanna go to lunch, now?” Sam nods fiercely, sniffs hard. “Okay, how about I walk you there?”
She holds his hand as they walk there, and Sammy’s sure she can feel how sweaty it is. When they get to the little room where all the first graders’ bags are hanging on the fat, round hooks, she lets go and Sammy goes to his bag. It’s a battered khaki duffle, used to be Dean’s before it got too small for all his school books. Miss Bouverie sits on the low bench, still looking at him as he pulls out his lunch bag. There’s a peanut butter sandwich in there that Dad made him this morning; the thought of it makes Sammy’s tummy hurt. He just wants Miss Bouverie to go away. He wants Billy to give him his quarter. He wants Dean.
“You know, Sam,” she says, after Sammy’s lifted his bag back onto the hook that has a sticker with his name stuck over it. His name’s a different color to everyone else’s; it’s because he came in later than them, and Mrs Hamerson hadn’t been able to find her green pen again. “It’s okay if you’re afraid. But you don’t need to be afraid of me, okay?” Sammy doesn’t answer, clutches brown paper in his hands. “But it’s not OK if someone’s hurting you.” She pauses, Sam doesn’t look up. “Is someone hurting you, Sam?”
Sam shakes his head again. He messed up, and now bad things are happening. He wishes he could go back to recess, tell Billy to take the dare instead, even though Sammy doesn’t have any quarters to spare. Dad gave him one last week and he spent it on candy, sherbet that he and Dean shared, powder-cherry and bitter-lemon flavors.
It’s funny, as I’m reading this again… the spell check is picking up on all the US spelling as incorrect. It’s something that a beta pointed out to me in Widdershins, I think, that if I’m being consistent with culture in everything else… might as well be with the spelling/grammar as well. I hadn’t thought a lot about syntax contributing to the cultural construction of a story, before.
Sammy looks out the broad, thick-glassed window that lets all the light into the little room, and sees Dean, climbing on the bigger equipment with all the bigger kids, getting to the top of the castle and stopping, looking around, looking over to the smaller play equipment. He’s still for a moment, then he swings ‘round the fireman pole and to the ground before running to the ladder again.
The lump in Sammy’s throat makes him choke, and suddenly his eyes are wet, chest shaking and hitching and he can’t stop it. The brown paper of his lunch bag is rough and crinkly against his face, but he can’t open his fists. “Hey, it’s okay,” Miss Bouverie says. Her hand is soft on his shoulder, not heavy like Dad’s is, and she draws Sammy toward her, her arm sliding around his shoulder. “Everything’s going to be okay, now.”
The last time he was in Mr Grenlen’s office was when Dad brought he and Dean into the school to enroll them. Mr Grenlen had shaken Sammy’s hand then, and Dad’s hand and Dean’s hand, and told Sammy all about Mrs Hamerson and the other kids in his class and how they’d be really happy to have Sammy come and be at school with them.
Mr Grenlen isn’t in the office this time. There’s a comfy armchair in the corner that Sammy’s feet only poke over the edge of when he sits back in it, keeping still and quiet as he stares out the open door. Miss Bouverie’s standing just there, turning her head to smile at him every so often, and Mr Grenlen’s there too, with another lady and a man who’d come and asked Sammy more questions, the same kind of questions the teachers had asked him in the classroom but again and again ‘til Sammy got more worried, and had told them he’d been playing on Dean’s skateboard when he fell off. Maybe they checked, and knew there was no porch on the apartment block he and Dean and Dad are staying in now. Dean said to make things up.
The home bell hasn’t rung when Mrs Hamerson comes into Mr Grenlen’s office carrying Sammy’s bag. Sammy feels like he’s gonna cry again, but swallows a lot of times instead. Mrs Hamerson smiles at him.
“I want…” Sammy says. “Dean. My brother, Dean.” It’s nearly home time. Maybe Dean can come out of class early, come and see Sammy, come and fix everything, stop the bad things from happening.
“Dean’s going to be fine, honey,” Mrs Hamerson says, and Sammy frowns. Usually only diner waitresses call him honey, then give Dean and him more pie. “You’ll see him soon, I promise.”
Dad always taught him to sit still and listen, that he’d learn more from that when grownups were around. Dad also taught him to be polite, that it wasn’t very nice to talk back to people, that you’re more likely to get your way if you’re nice to them instead of rude and loud. So he sits still and quiet. He doesn’t want to make any more bad things happen.
The final bell hasn’t rung yet and the halls are empty when Miss Bouverie holds his hand again and leads him through it, the new lady and man walking behind them. Sammy digs in his heels when they get to the front steps of the school and he sees the front yard clear and empty, shiny blue car parked at the end of the path. The lump’s in his throat again, and his peanut butter sandwich swirling around in his tummy. Dad told him never to get into anyone else’s car, never go anywhere with strangers. Dad told him that when he was at school he had to trust his teachers, do what they said.
Sammy can’t speak properly, feels his stupid nose get all blocked and his eyes all hot again. “No,” he says, and Miss Bouverie doesn’t let go of his hand when he tries to pull his away, just tightens her grip. “No, I want Dean.” Sometimes Dean talked back to teachers, but he hardly ever got in trouble. Dean would be able to stop the bad things from happening. Sammy gasps, his chest going all tight and jerky again. “No. Dean.”
It always sits wrongly with me when I read pre-series stories that promote Dean’s importance to Sam over John’s… though, that’s not the best way to describe it. I don’t like it when stories portray John as absent in Sam’s heart as well as his life. In my personal pre-series!Sammy canon, Sam is babied (one way or another) pretty much until he starts to resent it as a teenager. This story very much works on that premise, of where Sammy sits within the family, and I firmly believe that Sam would long for John as much as, if not more than, he would want Dean at this point.
At this particular point in the story, it was my intention that he’s fighting for and wanting Dean because he’s so close (and yet so far…) - at the same school, just outside the window, within sight - and yet unreachable by Sam.
“It’s okay, Sam,” Miss Bouverie says, and the other lady takes his other hand, and his feet barely touch the steps as they quickly step down them. It hurts more than it did when he was on the monkey bars, the tightness in his shoulders making it feel like his arms are breaking away from his body, even as he knows that he’s gripping and heaving harder than they’re holding him, soft lady-hands firm but gentle.
He’s not afraid. He’s angry. Dad always told him it was better to be angry than afraid. Dad told him he only had to be afraid of the things Dad couldn’t kill, and Dean laughed and said that was nothing.
Oh, the irony. Ahem.
Sammy’s never slept on a fold-out sofa before, though he’s slept on ordinary sofa cushions plenty of times. The mattress dips in the middle, like it’s pouring all of him down into the centre of it, and the blankets smell funny, smell wrong. Miss Bouverie looks strange, her face all colored wrong and too pale, her eyes weird. Her hair is braided back loosely away from her face, the tail of it tucked over her shoulder. She’s wearing a loose nightgown, and Sammy can’t look at her.
Sam’s panic/anxiety behaviour and responses in this are example of how I try to form my writing - take a personal experience and describe it as it comes, as opposed to how I think it comes. If that makes sense. The sickening helplessness of youth is a wealth of sensations I remember well.
“It’s okay,” she says, sitting on the very edge of the sofa bed, her hand resting on the blanket. “Things will be better in the morning, okay? This is just for tonight, then you’ll have your own room, your own things…”
“I want my dad.” It comes out as a whisper, he couldn’t make it more if he tried; his throat all tight and scratchy like something’s stuck in it. She’s been on the phone for half the evening while he sat on the sofa in front of the TV, volume loud enough that he could only hear a few words. Knew she was talking about him, and about Dad and Dean.
Maybe she was talking to them. Telling them what he said. Dean had told him to make things up, but Dad had said… had said never to talk about it. He hadn’t told the truth. But he wasn’t home, was here instead. Maybe they weren’t coming to get him.
“Oh sweetie,” Miss Bouverie says, and she moves her hand, goes to touch his face then draws it back again with a frown when Sammy jerks away. “It’ll all be better in the morning, you’ll see.”
She turns the lights off but the curtains in the living room are only thin, and the light from the street makes the room bright and blue. Sammy hears her walk into her bedroom, hears her light-switch flick, and then there’s quiet.
From this point to the end of this section - I posted this in a ‘works in progress’ post a time (or two?). I am fond of it, that night-panic where the ordinary is made strange and the veil between you and everything else is much thinner.
A car drives past on the street outside, slow whoosh and he keeps very still, holding his breath so he can hear it properly until it fades into the distance. He jumps when there’s a sudden sound; Miss Bouverie’s fridge, clicking and grinding and he can hear her pickle jars tinkling against each other inside it. The sofa bed bounces a little at his sudden movement, then stills.
His heart’s kicking around in his chest like a rabbit trying to escape, thumping with its big feet. The blanket smells wrong, the room’s too quiet, and he thinks about the noise of Dad’s pen scratching against the page in his journal. Write some more, Dad, Dean would say to Sammy, whisper in Sammy’s ear when they were laying together in a bed in a motel somewhere, strange mattress and lumpy pillows keeping Sammy awake. Dean’s voice would be soft, only loud enough for Sammy to hear, not for Dad. I’m trying to sleep. That’s what you used to say, when you were little.
I am still little, Sammy would say, and feel Dean laugh hot and wet against the side of Sammy’s neck, Dean’s arm tighten a little where it would cross over Sammy’s chest. The light would be soft, lamp on the small motel desk the only one turned on and shining down onto Dad’s page. The sound of Dean breathing heavy then snoring in one ear, Dad moving quietly around the room in the other.
Will Dean be able to go to sleep without him?
The noises are all wrong. Another car moves down the street. At least it sounds like a car; an odd screeching grumble to it when it passes close by and shadows dart and skitter across the room. Sammy can’t move, just feel the uncomfortable prickle of the blanket at his chin, feel the sweat worming between his toes. Another car, and then when it’s silent he jerks up the blankets and ducks under them before he can lose his nerve, heart racing even faster, now, and his own breathing is louder and closer than before but it’s not the same. He clenches his teeth hard and shakes, his chest hurting when it heaves and jerks, his eyes and nose all stuffed up and tears hot against his hands.
He’s already awake when Miss Bouverie comes out into the living room in the morning, and she’s already dressed. The sofa bed rocks and dips when she sits on the edge of it again, and he holds still while she pushes his hair back from his face, smoothes the touch over his head.
“You wanna watch some TV, Sam?” she says, then stands before he can answer, flicks on the set, hands him the remote. Dad never lets him watch cartoons before school, makes him sit with Dean to eat breakfast while Dad reads a newspaper or writes in his journal. “Hungry?” she asks, and the thought of it makes his tummy twist. He keeps his mouth shut tight, afraid he’s gonna puke. He shakes his head.
He watches a lot of cartoons. Though he can’t pay attention. He feels like he hasn’t slept at all, or like he’s been sleeping for ages and ages, like in a fairy tale; he’s woken up and everything’s changed, the whole world, while he’s still the same. His tummy hurts, and his back, and his fingers feel cold and stiff around the remote. The colours and shapes bounce around on the TV and he can’t even focus on them.
It’s a long time before Miss Bouverie comes out again, mouth tilted a little sadly. Though she smiles when Sammy looks at her. "We don’t have to go to school today,” she says, sitting on the bed again, and the thing that was twisting in his tummy is snapping like the metal wires on Dad’s tow lead.
Dean would be at school. Sammy could have seen him, talked to him, told him that Sammy wasn’t hiding, didn’t want to leave without him. He wonders how long Dean had waited for him before going home last night, wondered if he waited at all. Wondered if Dean was mad at him for messing things up, for running away. Dad would be mad at him.
“We’re going to meet some new people instead,” Miss Bouverie says. “Some people that you can stay with. That you’ll be safe with.”
Safe means Dad in the front seat and Dean in the back with him. Means helping Dad by making sure the salt line is even in front of the doors and windows.
Miss Bouverie reaches for the remote, slides it out of his fist and shuts the TV off. “Sam,” she says. “You remember Julia, and Matthew from yesterday?” He remembers the dark blue car, being lifted and swung down the steps at the school. Miss Bouverie shifts a little, ends up closer to him. She speaks very softly, so the pounding in his chest is almost louder than her voice. “They went to see your Dad, to get you some clean clothes and some more of your things.”
Sam looks up at her. Daddy, he thinks, and he wants Dad, and the want is thick in his throat like he’s swallowed something without chewing, too fast.
Miss Bouverie puts her hand on his shoulder. “Sam, your Dad wasn’t there. No one was there, the apartment was empty. Do you… Did you move house?”
Sam can’t speak. He shakes his head.
Miss Bouverie looks down for a moment, then looks back up at him. Her face is sad. “Do you know where he might have gone? Where he took… Where he took your brother?”
No. No. He shakes his head again.
“Well, that’s okay,” she squeezes his shoulder and smiles again. “Angela and Nathan will be here soon. They’ve got a couple of boys as well, I’m sure you’ll fit into some of their clothes.”
Yes, this is the Petrellis (of Heroes fame). As I said above, I don’t feel that original characters are my forte, so try to throw in referential characters where I can. I wasn’t able to find out the name of Mr Petrelli Snr, so went with the theory that Nathan was Nathan Jnr. I think, when I wrote this, only about 5 episodes of Heroes had aired. I had to think up so many damn names for this thing, was happy to go with the Petrellis on this one.
The house is big, bigger than any Sammy’s ever been in before, and he has his own room. It’s too big, the bed too high, and too narrow. Big enough for one person, and his arms barely reach either side of it when he lies on his back and stretches out. It feels strange, just doing that. He wants to keep his arms close to his body, his chin tucked down, knees up.
The first night, he doesn’t sleep until the room starts getting light from the sun again, and his knees and hips and shoulders ache from being curled so tight. The other boys, Peter and Nathan, go to school during the day so the house is quiet, but at dinner time it’s loud, both of them talking, handing plates across the table, Angela laughing. The food is always hot, and Sammy can have as much of it as he wants, any of it that he wants, but he’s never hungry.
On the third night, while Angela’s helping clean up Nathan’s spilt milk, Sammy slides the salt shaker into the pocket of Peter’s hand-me-down, baggy jeans. Before he goes to bed that night, after his bath, he shakes it out in front of the door. The shaker’s only small, so he has to push the scattered grains of it into a thin, unbroken line. Then he drags the rug to sit on top of it. The window’s not that wide, luckily, and he carefully pours more salt out into the groove of the window sill. Then he climbs into bed, the almost-empty shaker warm in his fist.
Safe.
He dreams that Dad and Dean come to get him, to take him home again. They’re standing just outside the window, looking everywhere for him. He goes to it, calls for them, pounds on the glass, but they don’t see him, don’t hear him. He wants to go out to them, tries, but he can’t cross the salt line.
On Saturday, Peter and Nathan don’t have to go to school. They’re both a little older than Sammy, and like to play forts in the back yard. Sammy misses Dean and it feels like someone’s elbowed him in the tummy; Nathan isn’t as nice, doesn’t want to let Sammy play with him and Peter.
“You’re not real,” he tells Sammy, shouting from the top of the fort. “You’re not a real boy.”
Later, Peter comes to dig with Sammy in the sandpit. “He didn’t mean it,” Peter says, sounding a little sad. He pushes his hair out of his eyes. Nathan isn’t even nice to Peter, sometimes, but Peter doesn’t seem to mind. Dad would give Dean a hiding for doing and saying some of the things that Nathan does and says to Peter. Sammy presses his lips tight. “Do you miss your real family?”
Sammy doesn’t answer. Can’t answer. He still wants them, so hard it makes his chest hurt and his words choke up in his throat.
Peter hesitates. “Do you have a real family?”
On Sunday night, after Sammy’s hopped into bed, Angela knocks on his door then comes in. “Sam,” she says, and sits on the edge of the bed, smoothing the covers. Sammy pulls his knees up to his chest, Peter’s old pajamas too long, unrolling down under his heels. “I’m not mad,” Angela says, but she’s not looking up at him, just staring at the covers. Sammy tightens his arms around his legs. “I can’t find the salt shaker.”
She looks up at him then, not looking away.
He lied before. Lied and made everything broken, made Dad and Dean go away. But he can’t tell her the truth now, can’t make things worse. He doesn’t know where they might take him next. He doesn’t want to be not real.
He shakes his head. Angela takes a deep breath. “I’m not angry, Sam,” she says. “But I need the salt shaker. And I found…” she pauses briefly. “I found where you spilt it. And covered it up with the rug.” Panic hammers through Sammy’s chest. “Is that why you took it? You didn’t want me to know you spilt it?”
Sammy shakes his head again, wordless, stricken.
“You know you’re starting a new school tomorrow, sweetheart,” she says, patting his arm a little. “You need to know that… That it’s not okay to take other people’s things. You have your own things, now.” She looks around the room, still too-big, mostly bare, some notepads and pencils on the night stand, Sammy’s clothes on the chair. “Okay?”
You took me, Sammy wants to say, feels it burn in his throat like he’s screaming it, like when he’s screaming at Dad because Dad isn’t being fair. You took my Dad away. He nods, looking down. Angela gives one last pat on his arm, turning the light off before closing the door quietly behind her.
I am lame. I come back and re-read stories of mine with relative frequency, but I always only read this one from this point on.
Sammy’s used to the noises of the house now. Used to the sound of the pipes as Angela fills the bath tub, used to hearing Nathan and Peter bicker down the hall, and the sound of their doors closing. Used to the hum-shush of the heat coming on, and the cars on the street. Used to it enough that his body goes boneless under the covers, like he’s been twisted and wrung out, arms and legs and chest feeling hollow, eyes hot. His breathing is loud in the dark space and his mouth tastes salty.
He doesn’t know how long he’s been asleep for when his eyes fly open suddenly. There’s the noise again, faint screech-screeching. His heart swells and stutters in his chest, so much that he can’t breath for a moment. The salt. The line was broken, Angela swept it up…
screech-screech-screech and he has to, has to be brave, like Dad always tells him to, like Dean always is. He pulls the covers down from over his head, holds his breath. screech-screech. Again. He looks around the room, but can’t see anything moving. Slowly, carefully, he sits, drawing his knees up.
The light from the window is enough that he can see all the shapes of the room, even if the corners are still hidden in shadow, but there’s still nothing moving even as the screech sounds again and then he recognizes it, recognizes the sound, glass, and looks to the window, curtains half-open.
There’s a figure standing there. Not big, not looming. One hand raised, fingers scratching at the glass, and Sammy bites the edge of the blanket to stifle the cry that leaps into his throat. The hand moves, cups between the face and the glass and Sammy’s out of bed and there in an instant. Dean.
His fingers shake on the latch, but as soon as it’s open wide enough Dean slithers in through the gap, landing on the floor at Sammy’s feet and then Sammy’s on the floor with him. His fingers grip tight in the front of Dean’s sweater, the wool scratching against his hot face. Dean’s arms squeeze round his back so tight that Sammy can barely breathe for a few moments, and Dean presses his lips to Sammy’s temple quick and hard before holding him at arm’s length again. Sammy can’t make himself let go of Dean’s sweater, and Dean’s teeth gleam briefly in the half-light when he smiles. “Come on,” he whispers. “Let’s get out of here.”
He barely notices the shock of the cold air when he climbs out before Dean, too-loose pajamas tangling his feet and sliding low on his hips, but instead of landing in the shrubby plants there’s something grabbing hold of him suddenly, big hands wrapping round his waist and helping him through, not letting him touch the ground and then he’s wrapped in the familiar smell of Dad’s jacket, Dad’s flannel shirt soft and warm against his face and neck, Dad’s huge arms going right ‘round him and holding, hard.
“Daddy,” Sammy says, doesn’t even mean to, but it’s choked enough that it’s not too loud anyway, barely more than a strangled whisper. His arms go around Dad’s neck, legs around Dad’s waist, and Dad’s chest heaves quickly against him, Dad’s face against the side of Sammy’s neck, breathing deep.
“Sammy,” Dad says just as soft. “Baby boy.”
Most everyone picks out the Sam-and-Dean reunion as their favourite bit ever ( Audz certainly did *g*), but for me this story is more about John and Sam. Or, it’s about a couple of things: Sam’s emotional response - his anguish at being separated and his sense of guilt; and the fact that the separation itself is misguided, and it’s a threat/situation that John can’t deal with in his ordinary way. Anyway, my point is, I was somewhat unsure about this part above, didn’t want to push it over into unnecessary schmoop (though, um, the rest of it is unnecessary angst…), but really wanted to convey that John would have been in as much terrified agony as Sammy while they were separated.
Dad carries Sammy across the lawn, he and Dean moving quick, low, Sammy’s face still buried against Dad’s shoulder. They move in the shadows of the sidewalk, and the car waits for them, shining black on its own under a dud streetlight. Dad unwraps an arm from around Sammy to dig in his pocket, hand the keys to Dean.
The interior light comes on when Dean opens the back door, a warm yellow glow, and Dad lets Sammy down. The pavement is cold under Sammy’s bare feet, his hand hot with Dad’s still closed around it. Dean climbs in, and Dad guides Sammy forward, his other hand cupping the back of Sammy’s head.
D’oh. Probably should be ‘dome light’. Bloody Australianisms.
“Here,” Dean says, leaning against the far door. There’re blankets and cushions covering the expanse of seat between them. “We made you a bed, in case you were tired.”
This is another thing which, in hindsight, is lifted from my own childhood. When I was a wee lass, one of the most comforting things ever was making a nest out of my blankets and toys and cushions and curling up in it all. I had the image/idea of Dean and John building a blanket nest for Sammy in the back seat early on, and had to negotiate around the story a bit as to how to slot it in without making it too schmoopy (um, where is this aversion to schmoop coming from? Pre-series schmoop is pretty much my MO, dammit!).
Sammy clambers in, and Dean wraps blankets and arms around him. The blankets smell like motel, familiar strong detergent and faint must, and Dean smells like Dean. Dad shuts the door behind them and the light goes out and it’s dark; the sounds of Sammy’s heart pounding and Dean’s breathing so loud. “Here,” Dean says again, loosening one arm briefly to reach for something, then tuck it in between blankets and Sammy’s chest. Sammy grips it automatically, feels the familiar soft fur and cool glass eyes.
“Mister Bun,” he whispers, and just like that the tears start coming from his eyes, hot and fast and soaked up quick by the fur.
Yep, it’s Mister Bun, that’s my name, that name again is Mister Bun Mister Bun. Yes, the irony has struck me that the quintessential and original Mister Bun story happens to be the only vaguely Wincesty one, which means all the gen people who read the preseries Bun stories probably haven’t read it…
“Yeah,” Dean says. “He missed you, but I took care of him for you.”
The light flashes on briefly again as Dad climbs in the front and pulls the door closed behind him, then he glances over his shoulder at them before leaning forward, reaching for the ignition. Sammy closes his eyes as the car starts, rumbling under him and shaking them all softly. Dean’s arms tighten a little as they start moving, steadying. Home.
I’m wary of being repetitive of all those stories that labour the point of “home is where the car is”, but couldn’t really think of a better way to end it, and it’s as much about being all together again as it is being in the car.
I’m actually working on a coda to this - I wanted to write more about this situation, namely from John’s POV, and what would happen after (though I did toy with writing about the moment where John’s waiting, hiding in the Petrelli yard while Dean goes off to climb through the window). Where would he go? What would his mood be like? How would he treat the boys? Etc. I’ve started it at the point where this pretty much leaves off, John stopping the car again several gazillion hours and miles later. I started it for _audrey, but it’s possibly a bit belated now as she’s into bandom more than spn at the moment! I will confess that Eloise-bright’s recent birthday has spurred me onto taking another look at it again ;)
Okay, so that wasn’t so bad. Boy, I am wordy.
Next up I think I'll do Field of Mars, and then attempt to tackle the behemoth of Widdershins.
Then someone has requested I do one of my John/Dean stories OR Socktacular, so I'll have to see what I'm up for at that point *g*
If there's one in particular you want, drop your request in here.