SPN fic: I am Not Now, Nor Have I Ever Been [Gen with some het, PG-13]
Title: I Am Not Now, Nor Have I Ever Been
Author: dotfic
Rating: PG-13; Gen with puppy-love Het
Word count: ~7,400
Pairings: Dean/OFC, Sam & OFC
Timeframe: Middle School (Sam is in 5th grade, Dean is in 8th)
Disclaimer: None of the Winchesters belong to me, but I keep acting like they do. They belong Eric Kripke and the CW.
Prompt: #40: Attending a new school in March, the boys pretend to be unrelated until June.
A/N: Written for the spn_flashback back-to-school challenge ficathon. Thank you to offbalance for her skilled beta-read, and as always, to sargraf, for the feedback and encouragement.
Story commentary
He thinks it should easy enough to stick to the rules. It's not like it's hunting, which requires alertness and precision.
"We have to take a vow," says Dean, and produces a knife.
But his brother snatches his hand away. "Not with blood."
"Wimp. I'm just going to poke your finger. One little drop."
"No way." Sam shakes his head, shaggy hair flopping.
Dean rolls his eyes. "I swear, I don't know why you're so squeamish. You stitch me and Dad up all the time."
"That's different."
"Fine." Dean doesn't see what's different about it, but he puts the knife down, spits on his palm, and holds out his hand. "Spit vow."
So Sam spits on his palm, too, and they shake on it.
"Now you can't break it." Dean sits at the battered round wooden table in the kitchen of the little house their dad's rented. They've got the windows open, and the March night air helps cut the smoky scent of burnt onions from the dinner Sam botched. "Spit vow's not quite the same as a blood vow, but it's darned close."
"I know."
"Tell me the rules again."
"I know the rules."
Dean rotates his fingers in an impatient circle. "I just want to make sure, so you don't embarrass me."
His brother drops into the chair opposite Dean's, leans his elbow on the table, and ticks the items off on his fingers. "Number one, you never saw me before. Number two, I never saw you before. Number three..."
"No, that's all. We don't know each other." When Sam's face twitches sadly, Dean adds, "Only while we're at school."
Dean doesn't remember now whose idea it was. There was an argument, he can't remember about what, and it turned into a fight, with Dad having to pull them apart.
He looks across the table at Sam, whose head is now bent over a book. Sam never comes out and says it, but he has to be tired of being the freak's little brother, the one they all say carries a switchblade and who maybe shot someone once.
The last school was tough. Some of the boys actually were JD's, and because they thought Dean was weird, or they thought he was after their girlfriends, or they thought he was after their turf, he spent the winter trying to avoid getting jumped.
Worse, they kept trying to beat up Sam, whose only crime was being related to him. Guys like that picked on fifth graders anyway, especially fifth graders who were a little bit chubby and a lot smarter than they were. But they might have left Sam alone if they hadn't hated Dean so much.
For the months of January and February, Dean got hauled into the principal's office so many times for fighting that the last time it happened, when Dad found out he just sighed and said "Again?"
For the months of January and February, his little brother never got hit a single time. Not once.
Dean figures that number can stay at zero with only occasional interventions from him, instead of every other day, if no one knows they're related. Plus, this is a nicer school district.
Of course, the teachers will know.
Unless he can somehow persuade his father than he should be registered as Jimmy Page instead of Dean Winchester.
Sam has butterflies in his stomach at breakfast. They develop when he's halfway through his bowl of Lucky Charms.
He loves Lucky Charms. His favorite part is when the cereal is gone, and all that's left is the multi-colored sweet milk at the bottom. He likes to drink it out of the bowl. But that morning, he doesn't even get that far before he loses his appetite.
"But why not?" Dean never whines, but his voice is coming close to it.
"Because there's no need for us to use false names in this state. You're a Winchester. Be proud of your name." John finishes off a piece of toast, wipes his mouth with a napkin, and pushes back from the table. "You boys ready to go to school?"
"Yes, sir," says Sam.
They all go outside, into the cold spring morning. The trees are fuzzy, as if they're trying to remember how to be trees after Winter.
Before Sam and Dean get into the Impala, Dean gives Sam a nudge. "Don't forget."
"I won't!" It's so annoying. Sometimes Dean acts like Sam doesn't know anything, but he knows plenty.
The butterflies are still there as he climbs into the back seat.
He watches the houses flash by. Some of them look really nice. He puts his hand on his stomach and imagines him, Dad, and Dean living in one of them. That window, there, could be Sam's room, and that could be Dean's.
It was Dean's idea to pretend not to be brothers for the rest of the year. At least, Sam thinks it was. He's not really sure.
They'd been fighting a lot that year. It wasn't just the last school, it was since September, which was three, no four, schools before that--he's almost lost count.
This year is almost the first time ever they've been in the same school. He vaguely remembers Dean being a big kid in elementary school when Sam was in first grade.
The last school was kind of scary. They were there for two months. Sam and Dean had spent more than the usual amount of time together, and not just because Dad was worried one of the ghouls that infested the area might get one of them if they were alone. Sam had tried to keep to himself, to be unobtrusive, but he'd almost gotten beaten up a bunch of times. Dean had always been there to stop it. He became Sam's constant shadow for weeks.
So if Dean was pretending not to be his brother now, did that mean that...no.
He looks at his brother sitting shotgun next to Dad. Dean breaks the rules all the time anyway, and he's never not protected Sam.
The butterflies in his stomach settle a little.
To be truthful, he's kind of curious what it's going to be like. Because he's tired of all the questions. The other kids, especially girls, were always curious. Once they found out that Sam was Dean Winchester's little brother, that's all they talked about. He was never in a school long enough to get to know anyone, to make friends, to be there long enough for anyone to ask him anything about himself.
Maybe it would be different this time. He would be on his own.
Dean would be around, though. The thought comforts him.
The homeroom teacher (who's also his fifth period biology teacher, he sees on his schedule) isn't buying his story that there's been a mistake in registration and his name is Jimmy Page. Ms. Sinclair is a smart cookie.
"Dean Winchester," she says pointedly, making a check mark in the attendance book.
The other kids stare at him curiously. Two girls lean in towards each other across the aisle. One looks at him while the other cups her hand over the other girl's ear and whispers something. He can tell the way they're behaving that they want him to see them talking about him. Dean slouches in his chair like it doesn't matter, like he can't even see them.
All the guys at the new school seem to wear polo shirts and khakis, all the girls nice skirts and cute little tops, nothing expensive, but like they all have a decent clothing allowance. At the last school, despite the problems, Dean blended more--scruffy jeans were all over the place, even though some earned their scruffiness naturally and some had been bought for a ridiculous amount of money.
He knows he sticks out, but these don't look like the kind of kids who go around jumping people in the parking lot after school. They look like they're too busy for that. They probably all belong to a bunch of activities like the school newspaper and play a lot of sports.
It shouldn't take long at all for him to establish a rep.
Another girl sneaks a glance at him and he grins.
Yeah, it's going to be a good semester.
He finishes writing the solution to the problem on the blackboard. The chalk squeaks. There are a few giggles behind him. Sam feels himself flush.
"That's impressive, Sam," says the teacher, a big, friendly bearded guy with a voice like thunder. "We haven't even gotten to that chapter yet."
Turning, Sam sets the chalk down, then goes back to his seat, trying not to notice the curious glances going his way. At least, he thinks they're curious, not resentful. He's used to resentful.
He sits and stares down at his desk. There's not a lot of graffiti on the smooth, shiny surface; just one little doodle is in the lower left hand corner, done in red sharpie marker, a goofy face sticking its tongue out.
He has to do something, quick. Dean would say something snide and make the whole class crack up.
Snide. Sam wracks his brain. Think. Something about how he hates math? Or read the answer on the back of a cereal box? No, that's lame. Think like Dean.
The bell rings. Kids gather up their books, head for the door in little clumps, talking and laughing.
"Hi, I'm Kristy." A girl with long blonde hair stands over his desk along with a short guy with messy red hair and another girl who's chubbier than Sam. "This is Aaron, and that's June. How did you do that?"
"Do what?"
"Know how to do that problem? Was your other school way ahead of us?"
The other school hadn't been very good. Sam can't tell them the truth: that after doing the Latin translations Dad assigned, he'd spent extra homework time working ahead in his textbooks.
Dean had warned him not to let anyone at school know how much he knew.
"Not really," he says.
"Oh. Then I guess you're just real smart." There's no resentment in her tone; she nods emphatically, as if it was so obvious that she should have figured this out sooner. "We're in the math club, maybe you'd like to come to our next meeting?"
He lets out the breath he's holding.
"Yeah. Okay."
It takes only two weeks before it starts.
"You related to that Winchester geek? You know, the boy genius?" It's some random kid in Ms. Sinclair's biology class asking.
And how the hell would an eighth-grader even have heard of a fifth grader, or care? He decides this school is weird, and far too competitive academically.
"Huh?" Dean pulls the pen cap out of his mouth. "No. Never heard of him. Who is he?"
"Kid in the fifth-grade math club." The cute girl who sits in front of Dean turns around. "He's really good. They think they might have a chance at the regional math-a-thon this year."
"Oh, be still my beating heart." Dean pats his palm against his chest a few times and rolls his eyes.
"No, it's a big deal! We always get beat by Elmhurst." The guy shrugs--writing Dean off as a lost cause--and turns back to his biology textbook.
The cute girl looks at Dean for a few ticks of the clock, like she's trying to figure him out, like she's never heard of anyone who didn't care if Pine Hill Middle School made it to the regional math-a-thon or not.
This girl, she doesn't talk a lot, or raise her hand all the time like a brown-noser. When she does talk, she almost always says something that Dean remembers days later.
There's nothing particularly different about how she dresses or how she wears her hair, but there must be something different about her, because when she reaches up and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, the gesture is sharp and clear and colorful.
Maybe he should ask her to help him with the next paper, which, actually, he already wrote last night.
But she doesn't have to know that.
She's already turned around, head bent over her book. He resists the temptation to reach out and tug at one of the light brown tendrils of hair that have escaped her braid to curl against the base of her neck.
Yup. He definitely feels an attack of the stupids coming on.
It only takes two weeks before it starts.
"So are you, like, related to Dean Winchester?" Kristy reaches for another tater tot and pops it into her mouth.
"Who?" says Sam.
Aaron looks up from his history book. "You know, the freaky guy, the one who got into all that trouble at his last school."
"I hear he burned down the gym," June says, almost in a whisper. June always spoke quietly.
"Really?" Sam pokes his straw into his chocolate milk, wonders how a Dean-burned-down-the-gym rumor got started, then realizes the source was probably Dean himself.
"Well, I don't know about that," Kristy says, glancing around the cafeteria as if she might spot Dean. "I just heard he got into fights a lot at his old school." She nods sagely. "He's been to, like, five schools so far this year. Did you hear that yesterday he used a Bunsen burner to toast marshmallows in Biology class?" She giggles. "He gave them out to everyone."
He doesn't like the way she smiles at that. Like she's wishing she was in Dean's Biology class, and he had given her a marshmallow.
Sam had heard about the incident. He could hardly avoid it, it was all anyone was talking about in the halls, or in class before the bell. The teacher had left the room for five minutes, which was more than enough time for his brother.
"So, are you?" Aaron says, without raising his eyes from his book this time.
"Am I what?" Sam has never worked so hard to sound like a doofus.
"Related to the guy."
"No. Never met him in my life." It comes out sharper than he intends. The others glance at him. Even Aaron looks up from studying.
If Kristy suspects anything, he can't tell.
The bell rings. Aaron jumps nervously, grabs his book, and runs off to his test. June gathers up her tray and follows him.
Kristy stands up slowly and gives Sam a smile that spills into her eyes. It's different than the Dean-smile she had used a moment ago. He likes it. "You want to got to the arcade after school today?"
"Uh, I can't." He stands up too and picks up his tray.
"C'mon." As they head towards the trash bins, she nudges his ribs with her elbow. "You can't study all the time."
"It's not that...I have to...help my Dad with something."
Right home after school today, boys. I need your help setting a trap for the ghost in the old Henley place.
"Oh. Okay." She looks disappointed, but not upset.
"Maybe tomorrow?" He says hopefully.
Her face brightens again. "I'm going to hold you to that."
"Now!" Dad and Dean run down the broad staircase, the wisp streaking behind them.
They both leap with matching precision from the last step down into the ring of salt on the checkerboard-patterned floor that has long since lost its shine.
Dad's plan is working fine, not that this is a surprise, Dad's plans are usually pretty good, except when they aren't and it blows up in their faces. But most of the time? Dad's a good planner.
The black wisp of the spirit turns in the musty air of the decaying mansion's grand hallway. Sam stands in the middle of the circle, his head bent over the big leather-bound book he's holding. As he starts to read the incantation, his voice stumbles over the words. Sam's good with Latin, but Romani is something new.
The wisp turns angrily towards Sam, and even though Dean knows it can't cross the circle, he moves closer to the curve of salt, blocking its line of sight to Sam.
"Hey, over here! That's right, ghostie." Dean waves the arm that isn't holding the shotgun loaded with consecrated iron buckshot.
"Dean, watch the feet," Dad barks.
He looks down and sees the toes of his shoes just touching the salt.
Yeah, sure, as if he'd be so stupid as to step outside a ring of salt by accident. But Dean steps back anyway.
The spirit shrieks so loudly that Sam flinches, turning his head, but he can't cover his ears because he's holding the book. Dean hunches his shoulders and Dad holds his free hand over his ear. A gust of wind howls through the grand hall, making the candles flicker.
"Keep reading," Dad orders.
Sam obeys. There's a bright flash of light and then the spirit's gone, leaving a taste of something like sulfur tickling Dean's nostrils.
It was fairly impressive, as far as ghost-bustings go, a real eyeful, like something you'd see in a really high-quality horror movie. It should be enough seeing this kind of thing in real life all the time, but Dean loves the spectacle of it. He watches whatever movies he can get: black-and-white classics with cheesy special effects shown on TV at two a.m., or whatever Wes Craven has come up with this year.
Dean turns on his flashlight and they start cleaning up.
They don't say much to each other beyond short little shots of phrases like "is that all the candles" and "can you hand me that bag?"
Sam says "thank you" with such cold politeness that Dad, crouched on the balls of his feet while he sweeps up the salt with a small hand-broom, pauses what he's doing and stares.
"All right." He slowly gets to his feet. "What are you up to?"
"Up to?" Dean closes the box of candles.
Dad sighs. "You boys have been more polite than a roomful of grannies at a garden party. What happened to--whatever it is you two usually do."
"I have no idea what you're talking about, Dad." Dean goes back to work.
"Right." Dad's voice is so dry it's like the roads in Arizona. "It's unnatural. You're making me nervous."
"Everything's fine," says Sam.
"Is it?"
"Yeah, fine." Dean shrugs.
Dad's eyes narrow and he rubs his chin, which kind of needs a shave, like yesterday. But Dean's not about to point it out to him.
Sam falls into a rhythm. Breakfast with Dad and Dean along with some last-minute studying; Dean walking him to school only staying two blocks behind so no one will see them together; class; lunch with Aaron, June and Kristy; math club after school two afternoons a week as they get ready for the competition. Sam's not that great at math, but he's still decent enough at it that everyone seems to think he's the reason they'll win this year.
The first time he and Kristy go to the arcade, June and Aaron come along too.
The second time, they end up going just the two of them. Sam realizes it's a date when he buys her popcorn and game tokens without thinking about it. It seems natural to do so.
They're comfortably seated inside a mock-car, playing a driving game. Her side is touching his side, which is a new and fascinating experience. The air conditioning stirs her blonde hair so it tickles his nose, which he doesn't mind at all. It's hard to hear much of anything outside the game, with all the engine, traffic, and crashing noises, but Sam's been taught to listen well, so when he hears angry voices nearby, he slides out of his seat.
"Sam?" Kristy follows. "Sam, what are you doing?"
There's a boy from Sam's history class over by the PacMan machines, facing an older boy who looks vaguely familiar. He's a sixth or maybe a seventh grader.
"I said, hand over your tokens."
"No." The smaller boy moves back against the wall.
Mistake, Sam thinks, he should get out in the open where he can move.
"Give them to me, squirt." The taller boy takes a step closer and the fifth grader flinches back.
"Mom gave us both the same amount of money," the fifth grader blurts. "It's not my fault if you spent all of yours already."
Sam's steps falter. The smaller kid looks like he's expecting to get pounded at any second. His eyes squint as he braces for it. Sam's barely aware of Kristy standing at his shoulder, frowning in disapproval, one hand on her hip.
The older boy clamps his hand over the younger boy's shoulder, then curls his other hand into a fist and holds it under his nose. "If you don't want this in your face in two seconds, you'll give me the rest of your tokens. Or I'll tell Mom you refused to share the money she handed to you to divvy up."
It's like Sam is watching someone else's hand closing over the boy's fist, pulling it back. "Back off," Sam says.
The seventh grader's eyebrows shoot up. "What?"
"I said leave him alone."
The older boy wrenches his fist free from Sam's grip. There's a small gap between his front teeth and like his little brother, he has light, sun-bleached hair. He's skinny and muscled, about Sam's height.
Kristy has moved closer, but Sam holds his hand out at her, warning her away.
"Butt out, geek." The boy shoves Sam, who stumbles back.
"You're such a creep, Will." Kristy's tone of off-handed disdain is masterful.
In response, the boy makes a tsk sound of mock-disappointment, then turns back to the small figure huddled against the wall.
"I said..." Sam grabs the bigger boy's wrist, then with a move Dean taught him, twists his arm up and behind his back "Leave. Him. Alone."
The boy yells in pain and bends over with Sam still holding his arm up. Kristy grins and pumps her fist in victory. Sam lets go.
With a resentful stare, the big kid stumbles off to scam tokens some other way.
"Great." The bully's little brother pushes himself off from the wall, the weight of the world making his shoulders sag. "Now he's really going to be pissed off at me."
"I'm sorry," says Sam. "Maybe you should..."
But the kid's wandered off, lost in the crowd of the arcade and the blips and beeps of the games, the throb of the pop music.
He feels a hand light on his shoulder.
"Don't worry about it, Sam," Kristy explains. "Will Hutchinson's a jerk, but he's never actually hit Toby."
"How can he treat his brother like that?" Sam doesn't feel like playing arcade games anymore.
"Like I said, he's a jerk. That was really brave, what you did. Come on, let's go get some ice cream."
It's almost sunset as they leave the arcade and step out into the chilly spring evening. Dean will be there any minute to pick him up, but Sam can't shake the leaden spot in his stomach. It's like sometimes after Dad shoots a ghost, it disperses but isn't really gone yet. There's a scary stillness in the air where things feel too quiet, an electric energy.
Sam thinks he's made an enemy.
Doesn't matter what Dean did, the point is, it was harmless fun. These people need to lighten up, already.
He wonders if Ms. Sinclair will someday learn never ever to leave the room when Dean Winchester is present. Although really, he has a kind of respect for the woman. She hadn't lost her temper, didn't even say anything this time, just glared at him over the top of her half-spectacles and pointed to the door.
So he went to the principal's office for a lecture about responsibility to his own future.
"And don't you want to set a good example for your little brother?" Mr. Peterson folded his hands on his desk.
"Brother?" Dean says innocently.
"I must say, the two of you are so different. Sam is a real academic whiz."
"Sam who?"
"Mr. Winchester," the principal says tiredly, because of course he's dealt with smart-mouthed kids like Dean before, "I have no idea why you would wish to disown your own flesh and blood." He taps the folder. "If you keep this up you could disrupt Sam's good habits."
"That's not likely to happen, Mr. Peterson. Believe me."
A bell rings, muffled because the door is closed. It's stuffy in the office and the fluorescent lights make his head hurt. Dean doesn't plan on working in an office, well, ever.
The principal lets him go with detention and a stern warning never to do it again.
Kids flow past him in the hallway in the wrong direction as he heads for his locker to get the books for his next class. Tall kids, small kids, fat kids, skinny kids, they mostly dress alike in this school. It's a relief in one way to be in a place that's so...calm. The town they're in is pretty, lots of tree-lined streets, and even Dad can afford a nice three bedroom house near the railroad tracks, with a yard.
Across the hallway, he sees a familiar overlong tuft of hair. Sam's walking fast, alone, and--
Sonuvabitch.
Dean stops dead in the middle of the throng of kids.
A black eye. Sam has a black eye.
When did he get a black eye? He most definitely didn't have one at breakfast that morning, or when Dean watched him go in through the school's main doors after that, so it must have happened in the last few hours. Here. Some punk kid who's going to find out what it's like to see Dean Winchester's fist rushing at his face at ninety miles an hour...
"Hey, nerd-boy!" Dean crosses the hall.
He could of course wait and ask about it later but, well, he can't, the knot of anger in his chest won't let him. Wasn't this school supposed to be better, safer? Dean wasn't supposed to have to pull the bullies off his brother at this one.
There's only way to do this without giving the game up and breaking the spit vow.
He grabs Sam's shoulders and pushes him, gently as he can, against the lockers. "Little twerp, I'm gonna knock you into next Tuesday!" he shouts.
A few glances go their way. No one looks inclined to stop and intervene, to save Sam from the scary freaky kid who, Dean heard, maybe blew up his last school, heck if he knew how that rumor got started. Most of them look downright scared. There aren't a lot of things like Dean at Pine Hill Middle School.
Eventually some idiot might snag a teacher, so this has to be quick.
"What happened?" Dean mutters.
"Nothing," says Sam, staring down at his sneakers.
"Sam..."
"I'll tell you tonight. It's okay." He looks up and meets Dean's eyes. "The other guy looks worse. He has a black eye and a broken nose. Please don't do anything to him. Please."
Dean lets go of Sam's shoulders and backs away. His brother vanishes into the crowd of kids.
"Okay, spill. What happened?"
Dean stands in the door of Sam's room, glowering and looming in a way looks a lot like Dad.
"Kristy and I were at the arcade, and..."
"Wait. Who's Kristy? Sam? Are you blushing?" Dean walks over to the bed and gives him a poke in the ribs. "Hey, little bro, you have a girl and you didn't tell me? I want details."
"Shut up," Sam says angrily.
"Fine," says Dean. "Just tell me what happened."
"We were at the arcade and this stupid kid, a seventh grader, was going to beat up his little brother. His own little brother!" Sam folds his arms against the flash of memory anger that surges up in him. "So I stopped him. Now he hates me because I humiliated him. He found me in the boy's bathroom after first period this morning."
"You gave him a black eye and a broken nose?" Dean takes Sam's chin in his fingers, turning his head to check the black eye, just like Dad did earlier, right before dinner.
"I think he lost a few teeth, too," says Sam.
"Atta boy."
"You didn't...you didn't do anything to him, did you?"
"No need, kiddo. You already messed him up enough," Dean says admiringly, and for Sam it's nicer than getting an all 'A' report card.
Alone at last.
Dad's taken Sam to the next town to see a man about a crossbow, so Dean takes the opportunity to invite the cute girl--Joanna--over for a study date. Except he doesn't call it a date, because some girls don't like calling it that until they've made up their mind about you. He expects to get Joanna to make up her mind quick, but he can't rush, either, not with a girl like this.
It works out well, since he doesn't expect Sam and Dad back for hours.
That last incident in biology class was the first time he'd seen Joanna laugh and wow, she was pretty when she laughed. Ms. Sinclair had made them lab partners, which elevated the woman to sainthood in Dean's eyes. After that Dean stopped messing with her class. He figured she'd suffered enough, and truth be told he was getting just a little scared of her. She had a habit of breaking off in the middle of whatever she was saying to snap "and Dean Winchester, if you move one inch I will flunk you on the spot" even though she was facing the blackboard and couldn't possibly see his hands reaching for the beaker he wasn't supposed to touch yet.
"See?" Joanna taps the diagram she drew with a pen. "It's not all that difficult if you think of it this way."
"Uh-huh." He nods seriously and his chair scrapes the kitchen floor as it edges another inch towards hers.
"And...you already know how to do this, don't you?" She puts the pen down, sits back, and folds her arm.
The hell. What is it about the women at this school? Is he that transparent? Joanna's even tougher than Ms. Sinclair.
He sees it, though, in the slight twitch at the corner of her mouth, she's not really mad at him.
It would be a terrible mistake to try to kiss her right then, but it might be worth it.
"You caught me." He leans his arm across his notebook so it brushes along her arm. She doesn't move away. "What's my punishment?"
"Mmmm." She taps her pen on the notebook, tilts her head to one side, pretends to consider. "Something unspeakable."
"Unspeakable?" This sounds intriguing.
Now she is smiling, and he confirms a hypothesis, yes her brown eyes really do darken when she does that. "Something so terrible even you couldn't dream it up."
"I don't know, I can dream up quite a bit." He lets that come out as suggestive as it wants to be, testing the waters.
She moves her head closer to his, or maybe he moves his head closer to hers. Either way, before he knows it he's inches from finding out if her mouth tastes just as sweet as it looks.
A car door slams outside and they jump apart like they've both been yanked.
"Shit," Dean says, forgetting that he decided never to curse in front of Joanna. He's not worried about Dad finding him here alone with a girl--they are studying, after all, and Dean actually asked permission this time. What worries him is that Joanna's going to see...
Sam opens the kitchen screen door first and walks in, Dad right behind him.
His little brother freezes and looks like he might turn and run out again except Dad's between him and the door now, and neither of them can do anything to tip Dad off about their vow, because he would just never understand.
It's not that Dad would be angry that worries Dean.
It's that he'd be hurt.
"Hey, it's the math whiz!" At first Joanna sounds okay, just happy to meet one of the younger kids, but then her voice kind of trails out on the "whiz" and she turns to look at Dean, who feels like everything is in slow-mo. "He's your brother?"
"Uh..." She's going to say something in front of Dad. Dean starts to panic.
"You must be Joanna," Dad says, and holds out his hand for her to shake. He's smiling, turning on the full Winchester charm for her. Normally, Dean would be thrilled by this. Dad could make a good impression when he set his mind to it, and also he wasn't arriving from a hunt smelling of sulfur and blood. "You want some more soda? Something to eat?"
"No, thank you, sir. I have to be getting home."
She's not trying to make an impression on him with that sir; she'd told Dean one day before class started that her grandfather was a Colonel, so it was just instinct. But Dean can see his father's impressed anyway.
She doesn't look at Dean. At all. His stomach feels icy. She gathers up her papers too quickly, slamming her biology book closed.
Joanna walks past Sam, who is still rooted to the spot, and pauses to turn to Dad one more time. "It was nice to meet you, Mr. Winchester."
Dean scrapes back his chair. "Joanna, wait a second..."
It's uncool, but he doesn't care. He runs after her outside, the screen door banging behind him.
"Joanna, wait."
She stops on the sidewalk, hugging her backpack to her chest, standing in the pool of light from a streetlamp. "You lied to me. Why would you lie about a thing like that?"
"It's a long story."
"You lied about not understanding the material, either. I thought that was cute at first. But now it turns out you're lying about important stuff too."
"There's a very good explanation for this."
"Why on earth would you want not to be related to your own brother? He's such a nice little kid."
"I don't want to not be related to him. I just want to pretend not to be." It's on the tip of his tongue to tell her about moving around so much, about how it's his job to protect Sam, about their last school. But if he says any of that, he'll have to tell her about spirits and ghouls and crossbows and Mom.
When he doesn't speak, she turns on her heel and starts walking away along the dark street.
He hurries after her, not quite running, but almost. "Joanna..."
"Stop it. Go away, Dean."
"It's late. I don't care how mad you are at me. If you want me to walk behind you and not even talk, I will, but there's no way I'm letting you walk home alone."
He stays half a block behind her, then stands and waits until she's inside her house, which is a nice one with a big wraparound porch and a turret at the northeast corner.
She never looks back. Not once.
"Is there anything I need to know?"
"No, sir."
"You wouldn't be lying to me, would you?"
The look his father gives him across the kitchen table almost causes Sam to blurt out everything on the spot, to take refuge in the gaze that's stern yet makes him feel safe.
"No, sir," Sam says, trying to hide the shake in his voice, wondering how bad his punishment is going to be when Dad finally finds out about the vow.
Sam goes upstairs and does his homework. When he hears the front door slam, he goes out into the hall to eavesdrop.
"What did you do, Dean?" He hears Dad say warningly.
"Nothing! It was just a misunderstanding."
"Did you apologize to her?"
"Yes, sir."
"You walked her home?"
"Of course." Dean sounds shocked Dad would question it. "Can I go now?"
"Yeah. You can go."
As his brother starts up the stairs, Sam darts into his room.
He's not sure what to do now. He can't go downstairs where Dad is. He probably shouldn't bug Dean right now but Sam has something to say to him.
There's a steady, dark beat of music from behind Dean's door when Sam works up the courage to go knock. When Dean doesn't answer, he opens the door anyway, knowing it could be a death sentence. "Dean, I..."
"It's not your fault, Sam." Dean's lying on the floor on his back, staring up at the ceiling, LP's scattered around him.
"Maybe you can explain it to her."
"I don't think so."
What Sam wants to say is Can we stop now? But he doesn't say it, because he's not sure if Dean wants to be his brother in public again, especially after what just happened.
He leaves the room, closing the door behind him.
Sam goes back to his own room, shuts his door, and sits on his bed. He can't remember the last time Dean insulted him, teased him, or offered to spar. It's been months.
He wants his brother back.
Well, this sucks.
Sam is too cheerful at breakfast, and too polite, sacrificing up the last dribble of milk in the carton for Dean to put on his cereal, and it irritates Dean. Even though Sam's eyes aren't at all puffy, Dean heard the sobs through the wall late last night.
He's still partnered with Joanna in Biology, which is awkward since she's not speaking to him, like, at all. She barely even looks at him in fact. Their fingers brush when he hands her the petri dish and she pulls her hand away from his touch. The petri dish falls, ruining the experiment, so they have to start over.
Dean gets a C on his paper on Huckleberry Finn. He might have done better if he could have talked to Sam about the book. Sam was always reading all kinds of books the school board would never approve for a kid his age, and Dean's pretty sure Sam's read that one more than once.
He spies Sam in the halls, but he doesn't even glance in Dean's direction.
It makes Dean feel like a ghost in his brother's life.
By lunchtime, Dean is ready to find a nice, empty, piece of wall somewhere and bang his head against it repeatedly. It's when he goes out to the vending machine on the cafeteria patio that he remembers: Root Beer.
This all started with Root Beer, back in February. There'd been one left in the fridge, and it's been Dean's favorite drink for a year now. Not the kind that comes in the can, but the kind that could only be bought at a distributor by the crate; glass bottles that had a cap you had to pop with a can opener, letting out a little curl of mist if the bottle was cold enough.
Anyway. Not usually that big a deal, but with all the misery of that last school, he'd really been on edge, and Sam, who knew very well how much Dean liked that kind of Root Beer, drank the last bottle in the fridge.
Dean had yelled at him. Sam had yelled back. And then Dean had shoved Sam and Sam had punched Dean in the stomach and then Dad was pulling them apart.
The early spring sun is warm, beating down on his head as he stares at the lights of the vending machine and the square button for Root Beer, the sucky kind that comes in a can. He braces his hands against the machine, lowers his head, and draws in several deep breaths. He suddenly feels like crying, for chrissakes, right there in front of a quarter of the student body.
"Hey, you mind?"
Without bothering to see who it is that wants to use the vending machine, Dean moves and goes back inside to get on with the rest of his day.
Which is going to suck.
Sam goes to Kristy first, pulling her aside in the hallway as they walk from one class to the next.
"Dean Winchester's my brother."
"Get out!" She smacks him on the arm. "Wait. You're serious? Wow. You guys don't look at all alike. So why'd you lie about it?"
"It's a long story." Sam bends his knee, resting the sole of his sneaker against the wall.
But he explains it to her, leaving out a whole lot because Winchester Rule #1 was that you never told anyone about the hunting unless they were a hunter too, or you were at that very moment saving them from a ghost, werewolf, spook, or demon.
Kristy seems to get it. She doesn't get mad or anything.
"That is so awesome. He must be the best brother ever."
Sam just doesn't understand girls.
"We're going to move again soon," he adds. "In a few weeks. As soon as school is over."
Her lips press into a tight line. Then she smiles broadly. "We're going to have to spend as much time as possible together until then." More uncertainly, she adds, "Will you write to me?"
"Sure," he says.
"I'm going to hold you to that."
Since it went over well with Kristy, Sam uses similar words to tell Joanna, complete with the warning about them moving on soon.
He knows he's doing the cute little kid brother routine just right when Joanna's face softens at Sam's description of Dean rescuing him from getting beaten up at their old school.
A few kids in Joanna's study hall are giving them curious looks. It's not often that an eighth-grade girl is seen talking alone with a fifth-grade boy. Sam's probably going to get in trouble for skipping out on gym, but this is more important.
He doesn't believe in Karmic influences, guardian angels, past lives, the power of prayer, or that life is ever fair.
But Dean Winchester figures he must have done something good once for somebody, somewhere, sometime, because when he walks out of his last class at the end of his Day of Suckage, Joanna's standing there.
It's too much to hope that she's waiting for him, but she is.
"Hi."
"Hi."
He's a few inches taller than she is, so she grabs his shoulders, stands up on tiptoe in her running shoes, and kisses him quick on the mouth.
A few kids let out whoops and whistles.
Joanna pulls away just as quick, before he can really get into it or process what just happened. He can only stare at after her as she shoves through the crowd and vanishes from his sight.
The night before Dean's eighth-grade graduation, they end up alone in the kitchen after dinner. There's no more homework to do, and Dad, for once, isn't hunting, just sacked out on the couch with some research.
The school makes a big ceremony of it, so there's a cap and gown. Dean swore no force on this earth can get him to wear it, but he forgot out thing: his father.
The gown is in its plastic covering, draped over a chair. Dean glares at it like it's a corpse that might rise up and attack them.
"Dean?"
"Yeah?"
"Is the vow over?"
"It's over."
"I didn't like not being your brother," Sam says in a big rush.
In the silence the faucet drips and a truck rumbles and clatters by outside.
"Me neither." There's a pause. "Geek."
"Freak."
"Nerd."
"Delinquent."
"Dork."
Right then, Sam figures out what he's going to get Dean for a graduation gift. He's got enough allowance for it, and it's not that expensive.
He'll just need Dad's help to carry the crate of root beer home.
~END~
Author: dotfic
Rating: PG-13; Gen with puppy-love Het
Word count: ~7,400
Pairings: Dean/OFC, Sam & OFC
Timeframe: Middle School (Sam is in 5th grade, Dean is in 8th)
Disclaimer: None of the Winchesters belong to me, but I keep acting like they do. They belong Eric Kripke and the CW.
Prompt: #40: Attending a new school in March, the boys pretend to be unrelated until June.
A/N: Written for the spn_flashback back-to-school challenge ficathon. Thank you to offbalance for her skilled beta-read, and as always, to sargraf, for the feedback and encouragement.
Story commentary
He thinks it should easy enough to stick to the rules. It's not like it's hunting, which requires alertness and precision.
"We have to take a vow," says Dean, and produces a knife.
But his brother snatches his hand away. "Not with blood."
"Wimp. I'm just going to poke your finger. One little drop."
"No way." Sam shakes his head, shaggy hair flopping.
Dean rolls his eyes. "I swear, I don't know why you're so squeamish. You stitch me and Dad up all the time."
"That's different."
"Fine." Dean doesn't see what's different about it, but he puts the knife down, spits on his palm, and holds out his hand. "Spit vow."
So Sam spits on his palm, too, and they shake on it.
"Now you can't break it." Dean sits at the battered round wooden table in the kitchen of the little house their dad's rented. They've got the windows open, and the March night air helps cut the smoky scent of burnt onions from the dinner Sam botched. "Spit vow's not quite the same as a blood vow, but it's darned close."
"I know."
"Tell me the rules again."
"I know the rules."
Dean rotates his fingers in an impatient circle. "I just want to make sure, so you don't embarrass me."
His brother drops into the chair opposite Dean's, leans his elbow on the table, and ticks the items off on his fingers. "Number one, you never saw me before. Number two, I never saw you before. Number three..."
"No, that's all. We don't know each other." When Sam's face twitches sadly, Dean adds, "Only while we're at school."
Dean doesn't remember now whose idea it was. There was an argument, he can't remember about what, and it turned into a fight, with Dad having to pull them apart.
He looks across the table at Sam, whose head is now bent over a book. Sam never comes out and says it, but he has to be tired of being the freak's little brother, the one they all say carries a switchblade and who maybe shot someone once.
The last school was tough. Some of the boys actually were JD's, and because they thought Dean was weird, or they thought he was after their girlfriends, or they thought he was after their turf, he spent the winter trying to avoid getting jumped.
Worse, they kept trying to beat up Sam, whose only crime was being related to him. Guys like that picked on fifth graders anyway, especially fifth graders who were a little bit chubby and a lot smarter than they were. But they might have left Sam alone if they hadn't hated Dean so much.
For the months of January and February, Dean got hauled into the principal's office so many times for fighting that the last time it happened, when Dad found out he just sighed and said "Again?"
For the months of January and February, his little brother never got hit a single time. Not once.
Dean figures that number can stay at zero with only occasional interventions from him, instead of every other day, if no one knows they're related. Plus, this is a nicer school district.
Of course, the teachers will know.
Unless he can somehow persuade his father than he should be registered as Jimmy Page instead of Dean Winchester.
Sam has butterflies in his stomach at breakfast. They develop when he's halfway through his bowl of Lucky Charms.
He loves Lucky Charms. His favorite part is when the cereal is gone, and all that's left is the multi-colored sweet milk at the bottom. He likes to drink it out of the bowl. But that morning, he doesn't even get that far before he loses his appetite.
"But why not?" Dean never whines, but his voice is coming close to it.
"Because there's no need for us to use false names in this state. You're a Winchester. Be proud of your name." John finishes off a piece of toast, wipes his mouth with a napkin, and pushes back from the table. "You boys ready to go to school?"
"Yes, sir," says Sam.
They all go outside, into the cold spring morning. The trees are fuzzy, as if they're trying to remember how to be trees after Winter.
Before Sam and Dean get into the Impala, Dean gives Sam a nudge. "Don't forget."
"I won't!" It's so annoying. Sometimes Dean acts like Sam doesn't know anything, but he knows plenty.
The butterflies are still there as he climbs into the back seat.
He watches the houses flash by. Some of them look really nice. He puts his hand on his stomach and imagines him, Dad, and Dean living in one of them. That window, there, could be Sam's room, and that could be Dean's.
It was Dean's idea to pretend not to be brothers for the rest of the year. At least, Sam thinks it was. He's not really sure.
They'd been fighting a lot that year. It wasn't just the last school, it was since September, which was three, no four, schools before that--he's almost lost count.
This year is almost the first time ever they've been in the same school. He vaguely remembers Dean being a big kid in elementary school when Sam was in first grade.
The last school was kind of scary. They were there for two months. Sam and Dean had spent more than the usual amount of time together, and not just because Dad was worried one of the ghouls that infested the area might get one of them if they were alone. Sam had tried to keep to himself, to be unobtrusive, but he'd almost gotten beaten up a bunch of times. Dean had always been there to stop it. He became Sam's constant shadow for weeks.
So if Dean was pretending not to be his brother now, did that mean that...no.
He looks at his brother sitting shotgun next to Dad. Dean breaks the rules all the time anyway, and he's never not protected Sam.
The butterflies in his stomach settle a little.
To be truthful, he's kind of curious what it's going to be like. Because he's tired of all the questions. The other kids, especially girls, were always curious. Once they found out that Sam was Dean Winchester's little brother, that's all they talked about. He was never in a school long enough to get to know anyone, to make friends, to be there long enough for anyone to ask him anything about himself.
Maybe it would be different this time. He would be on his own.
Dean would be around, though. The thought comforts him.
The homeroom teacher (who's also his fifth period biology teacher, he sees on his schedule) isn't buying his story that there's been a mistake in registration and his name is Jimmy Page. Ms. Sinclair is a smart cookie.
"Dean Winchester," she says pointedly, making a check mark in the attendance book.
The other kids stare at him curiously. Two girls lean in towards each other across the aisle. One looks at him while the other cups her hand over the other girl's ear and whispers something. He can tell the way they're behaving that they want him to see them talking about him. Dean slouches in his chair like it doesn't matter, like he can't even see them.
All the guys at the new school seem to wear polo shirts and khakis, all the girls nice skirts and cute little tops, nothing expensive, but like they all have a decent clothing allowance. At the last school, despite the problems, Dean blended more--scruffy jeans were all over the place, even though some earned their scruffiness naturally and some had been bought for a ridiculous amount of money.
He knows he sticks out, but these don't look like the kind of kids who go around jumping people in the parking lot after school. They look like they're too busy for that. They probably all belong to a bunch of activities like the school newspaper and play a lot of sports.
It shouldn't take long at all for him to establish a rep.
Another girl sneaks a glance at him and he grins.
Yeah, it's going to be a good semester.
He finishes writing the solution to the problem on the blackboard. The chalk squeaks. There are a few giggles behind him. Sam feels himself flush.
"That's impressive, Sam," says the teacher, a big, friendly bearded guy with a voice like thunder. "We haven't even gotten to that chapter yet."
Turning, Sam sets the chalk down, then goes back to his seat, trying not to notice the curious glances going his way. At least, he thinks they're curious, not resentful. He's used to resentful.
He sits and stares down at his desk. There's not a lot of graffiti on the smooth, shiny surface; just one little doodle is in the lower left hand corner, done in red sharpie marker, a goofy face sticking its tongue out.
He has to do something, quick. Dean would say something snide and make the whole class crack up.
Snide. Sam wracks his brain. Think. Something about how he hates math? Or read the answer on the back of a cereal box? No, that's lame. Think like Dean.
The bell rings. Kids gather up their books, head for the door in little clumps, talking and laughing.
"Hi, I'm Kristy." A girl with long blonde hair stands over his desk along with a short guy with messy red hair and another girl who's chubbier than Sam. "This is Aaron, and that's June. How did you do that?"
"Do what?"
"Know how to do that problem? Was your other school way ahead of us?"
The other school hadn't been very good. Sam can't tell them the truth: that after doing the Latin translations Dad assigned, he'd spent extra homework time working ahead in his textbooks.
Dean had warned him not to let anyone at school know how much he knew.
"Not really," he says.
"Oh. Then I guess you're just real smart." There's no resentment in her tone; she nods emphatically, as if it was so obvious that she should have figured this out sooner. "We're in the math club, maybe you'd like to come to our next meeting?"
He lets out the breath he's holding.
"Yeah. Okay."
It takes only two weeks before it starts.
"You related to that Winchester geek? You know, the boy genius?" It's some random kid in Ms. Sinclair's biology class asking.
And how the hell would an eighth-grader even have heard of a fifth grader, or care? He decides this school is weird, and far too competitive academically.
"Huh?" Dean pulls the pen cap out of his mouth. "No. Never heard of him. Who is he?"
"Kid in the fifth-grade math club." The cute girl who sits in front of Dean turns around. "He's really good. They think they might have a chance at the regional math-a-thon this year."
"Oh, be still my beating heart." Dean pats his palm against his chest a few times and rolls his eyes.
"No, it's a big deal! We always get beat by Elmhurst." The guy shrugs--writing Dean off as a lost cause--and turns back to his biology textbook.
The cute girl looks at Dean for a few ticks of the clock, like she's trying to figure him out, like she's never heard of anyone who didn't care if Pine Hill Middle School made it to the regional math-a-thon or not.
This girl, she doesn't talk a lot, or raise her hand all the time like a brown-noser. When she does talk, she almost always says something that Dean remembers days later.
There's nothing particularly different about how she dresses or how she wears her hair, but there must be something different about her, because when she reaches up and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, the gesture is sharp and clear and colorful.
Maybe he should ask her to help him with the next paper, which, actually, he already wrote last night.
But she doesn't have to know that.
She's already turned around, head bent over her book. He resists the temptation to reach out and tug at one of the light brown tendrils of hair that have escaped her braid to curl against the base of her neck.
Yup. He definitely feels an attack of the stupids coming on.
It only takes two weeks before it starts.
"So are you, like, related to Dean Winchester?" Kristy reaches for another tater tot and pops it into her mouth.
"Who?" says Sam.
Aaron looks up from his history book. "You know, the freaky guy, the one who got into all that trouble at his last school."
"I hear he burned down the gym," June says, almost in a whisper. June always spoke quietly.
"Really?" Sam pokes his straw into his chocolate milk, wonders how a Dean-burned-down-the-gym rumor got started, then realizes the source was probably Dean himself.
"Well, I don't know about that," Kristy says, glancing around the cafeteria as if she might spot Dean. "I just heard he got into fights a lot at his old school." She nods sagely. "He's been to, like, five schools so far this year. Did you hear that yesterday he used a Bunsen burner to toast marshmallows in Biology class?" She giggles. "He gave them out to everyone."
He doesn't like the way she smiles at that. Like she's wishing she was in Dean's Biology class, and he had given her a marshmallow.
Sam had heard about the incident. He could hardly avoid it, it was all anyone was talking about in the halls, or in class before the bell. The teacher had left the room for five minutes, which was more than enough time for his brother.
"So, are you?" Aaron says, without raising his eyes from his book this time.
"Am I what?" Sam has never worked so hard to sound like a doofus.
"Related to the guy."
"No. Never met him in my life." It comes out sharper than he intends. The others glance at him. Even Aaron looks up from studying.
If Kristy suspects anything, he can't tell.
The bell rings. Aaron jumps nervously, grabs his book, and runs off to his test. June gathers up her tray and follows him.
Kristy stands up slowly and gives Sam a smile that spills into her eyes. It's different than the Dean-smile she had used a moment ago. He likes it. "You want to got to the arcade after school today?"
"Uh, I can't." He stands up too and picks up his tray.
"C'mon." As they head towards the trash bins, she nudges his ribs with her elbow. "You can't study all the time."
"It's not that...I have to...help my Dad with something."
Right home after school today, boys. I need your help setting a trap for the ghost in the old Henley place.
"Oh. Okay." She looks disappointed, but not upset.
"Maybe tomorrow?" He says hopefully.
Her face brightens again. "I'm going to hold you to that."
"Now!" Dad and Dean run down the broad staircase, the wisp streaking behind them.
They both leap with matching precision from the last step down into the ring of salt on the checkerboard-patterned floor that has long since lost its shine.
Dad's plan is working fine, not that this is a surprise, Dad's plans are usually pretty good, except when they aren't and it blows up in their faces. But most of the time? Dad's a good planner.
The black wisp of the spirit turns in the musty air of the decaying mansion's grand hallway. Sam stands in the middle of the circle, his head bent over the big leather-bound book he's holding. As he starts to read the incantation, his voice stumbles over the words. Sam's good with Latin, but Romani is something new.
The wisp turns angrily towards Sam, and even though Dean knows it can't cross the circle, he moves closer to the curve of salt, blocking its line of sight to Sam.
"Hey, over here! That's right, ghostie." Dean waves the arm that isn't holding the shotgun loaded with consecrated iron buckshot.
"Dean, watch the feet," Dad barks.
He looks down and sees the toes of his shoes just touching the salt.
Yeah, sure, as if he'd be so stupid as to step outside a ring of salt by accident. But Dean steps back anyway.
The spirit shrieks so loudly that Sam flinches, turning his head, but he can't cover his ears because he's holding the book. Dean hunches his shoulders and Dad holds his free hand over his ear. A gust of wind howls through the grand hall, making the candles flicker.
"Keep reading," Dad orders.
Sam obeys. There's a bright flash of light and then the spirit's gone, leaving a taste of something like sulfur tickling Dean's nostrils.
It was fairly impressive, as far as ghost-bustings go, a real eyeful, like something you'd see in a really high-quality horror movie. It should be enough seeing this kind of thing in real life all the time, but Dean loves the spectacle of it. He watches whatever movies he can get: black-and-white classics with cheesy special effects shown on TV at two a.m., or whatever Wes Craven has come up with this year.
Dean turns on his flashlight and they start cleaning up.
They don't say much to each other beyond short little shots of phrases like "is that all the candles" and "can you hand me that bag?"
Sam says "thank you" with such cold politeness that Dad, crouched on the balls of his feet while he sweeps up the salt with a small hand-broom, pauses what he's doing and stares.
"All right." He slowly gets to his feet. "What are you up to?"
"Up to?" Dean closes the box of candles.
Dad sighs. "You boys have been more polite than a roomful of grannies at a garden party. What happened to--whatever it is you two usually do."
"I have no idea what you're talking about, Dad." Dean goes back to work.
"Right." Dad's voice is so dry it's like the roads in Arizona. "It's unnatural. You're making me nervous."
"Everything's fine," says Sam.
"Is it?"
"Yeah, fine." Dean shrugs.
Dad's eyes narrow and he rubs his chin, which kind of needs a shave, like yesterday. But Dean's not about to point it out to him.
Sam falls into a rhythm. Breakfast with Dad and Dean along with some last-minute studying; Dean walking him to school only staying two blocks behind so no one will see them together; class; lunch with Aaron, June and Kristy; math club after school two afternoons a week as they get ready for the competition. Sam's not that great at math, but he's still decent enough at it that everyone seems to think he's the reason they'll win this year.
The first time he and Kristy go to the arcade, June and Aaron come along too.
The second time, they end up going just the two of them. Sam realizes it's a date when he buys her popcorn and game tokens without thinking about it. It seems natural to do so.
They're comfortably seated inside a mock-car, playing a driving game. Her side is touching his side, which is a new and fascinating experience. The air conditioning stirs her blonde hair so it tickles his nose, which he doesn't mind at all. It's hard to hear much of anything outside the game, with all the engine, traffic, and crashing noises, but Sam's been taught to listen well, so when he hears angry voices nearby, he slides out of his seat.
"Sam?" Kristy follows. "Sam, what are you doing?"
There's a boy from Sam's history class over by the PacMan machines, facing an older boy who looks vaguely familiar. He's a sixth or maybe a seventh grader.
"I said, hand over your tokens."
"No." The smaller boy moves back against the wall.
Mistake, Sam thinks, he should get out in the open where he can move.
"Give them to me, squirt." The taller boy takes a step closer and the fifth grader flinches back.
"Mom gave us both the same amount of money," the fifth grader blurts. "It's not my fault if you spent all of yours already."
Sam's steps falter. The smaller kid looks like he's expecting to get pounded at any second. His eyes squint as he braces for it. Sam's barely aware of Kristy standing at his shoulder, frowning in disapproval, one hand on her hip.
The older boy clamps his hand over the younger boy's shoulder, then curls his other hand into a fist and holds it under his nose. "If you don't want this in your face in two seconds, you'll give me the rest of your tokens. Or I'll tell Mom you refused to share the money she handed to you to divvy up."
It's like Sam is watching someone else's hand closing over the boy's fist, pulling it back. "Back off," Sam says.
The seventh grader's eyebrows shoot up. "What?"
"I said leave him alone."
The older boy wrenches his fist free from Sam's grip. There's a small gap between his front teeth and like his little brother, he has light, sun-bleached hair. He's skinny and muscled, about Sam's height.
Kristy has moved closer, but Sam holds his hand out at her, warning her away.
"Butt out, geek." The boy shoves Sam, who stumbles back.
"You're such a creep, Will." Kristy's tone of off-handed disdain is masterful.
In response, the boy makes a tsk sound of mock-disappointment, then turns back to the small figure huddled against the wall.
"I said..." Sam grabs the bigger boy's wrist, then with a move Dean taught him, twists his arm up and behind his back "Leave. Him. Alone."
The boy yells in pain and bends over with Sam still holding his arm up. Kristy grins and pumps her fist in victory. Sam lets go.
With a resentful stare, the big kid stumbles off to scam tokens some other way.
"Great." The bully's little brother pushes himself off from the wall, the weight of the world making his shoulders sag. "Now he's really going to be pissed off at me."
"I'm sorry," says Sam. "Maybe you should..."
But the kid's wandered off, lost in the crowd of the arcade and the blips and beeps of the games, the throb of the pop music.
He feels a hand light on his shoulder.
"Don't worry about it, Sam," Kristy explains. "Will Hutchinson's a jerk, but he's never actually hit Toby."
"How can he treat his brother like that?" Sam doesn't feel like playing arcade games anymore.
"Like I said, he's a jerk. That was really brave, what you did. Come on, let's go get some ice cream."
It's almost sunset as they leave the arcade and step out into the chilly spring evening. Dean will be there any minute to pick him up, but Sam can't shake the leaden spot in his stomach. It's like sometimes after Dad shoots a ghost, it disperses but isn't really gone yet. There's a scary stillness in the air where things feel too quiet, an electric energy.
Sam thinks he's made an enemy.
Doesn't matter what Dean did, the point is, it was harmless fun. These people need to lighten up, already.
He wonders if Ms. Sinclair will someday learn never ever to leave the room when Dean Winchester is present. Although really, he has a kind of respect for the woman. She hadn't lost her temper, didn't even say anything this time, just glared at him over the top of her half-spectacles and pointed to the door.
So he went to the principal's office for a lecture about responsibility to his own future.
"And don't you want to set a good example for your little brother?" Mr. Peterson folded his hands on his desk.
"Brother?" Dean says innocently.
"I must say, the two of you are so different. Sam is a real academic whiz."
"Sam who?"
"Mr. Winchester," the principal says tiredly, because of course he's dealt with smart-mouthed kids like Dean before, "I have no idea why you would wish to disown your own flesh and blood." He taps the folder. "If you keep this up you could disrupt Sam's good habits."
"That's not likely to happen, Mr. Peterson. Believe me."
A bell rings, muffled because the door is closed. It's stuffy in the office and the fluorescent lights make his head hurt. Dean doesn't plan on working in an office, well, ever.
The principal lets him go with detention and a stern warning never to do it again.
Kids flow past him in the hallway in the wrong direction as he heads for his locker to get the books for his next class. Tall kids, small kids, fat kids, skinny kids, they mostly dress alike in this school. It's a relief in one way to be in a place that's so...calm. The town they're in is pretty, lots of tree-lined streets, and even Dad can afford a nice three bedroom house near the railroad tracks, with a yard.
Across the hallway, he sees a familiar overlong tuft of hair. Sam's walking fast, alone, and--
Sonuvabitch.
Dean stops dead in the middle of the throng of kids.
A black eye. Sam has a black eye.
When did he get a black eye? He most definitely didn't have one at breakfast that morning, or when Dean watched him go in through the school's main doors after that, so it must have happened in the last few hours. Here. Some punk kid who's going to find out what it's like to see Dean Winchester's fist rushing at his face at ninety miles an hour...
"Hey, nerd-boy!" Dean crosses the hall.
He could of course wait and ask about it later but, well, he can't, the knot of anger in his chest won't let him. Wasn't this school supposed to be better, safer? Dean wasn't supposed to have to pull the bullies off his brother at this one.
There's only way to do this without giving the game up and breaking the spit vow.
He grabs Sam's shoulders and pushes him, gently as he can, against the lockers. "Little twerp, I'm gonna knock you into next Tuesday!" he shouts.
A few glances go their way. No one looks inclined to stop and intervene, to save Sam from the scary freaky kid who, Dean heard, maybe blew up his last school, heck if he knew how that rumor got started. Most of them look downright scared. There aren't a lot of things like Dean at Pine Hill Middle School.
Eventually some idiot might snag a teacher, so this has to be quick.
"What happened?" Dean mutters.
"Nothing," says Sam, staring down at his sneakers.
"Sam..."
"I'll tell you tonight. It's okay." He looks up and meets Dean's eyes. "The other guy looks worse. He has a black eye and a broken nose. Please don't do anything to him. Please."
Dean lets go of Sam's shoulders and backs away. His brother vanishes into the crowd of kids.
"Okay, spill. What happened?"
Dean stands in the door of Sam's room, glowering and looming in a way looks a lot like Dad.
"Kristy and I were at the arcade, and..."
"Wait. Who's Kristy? Sam? Are you blushing?" Dean walks over to the bed and gives him a poke in the ribs. "Hey, little bro, you have a girl and you didn't tell me? I want details."
"Shut up," Sam says angrily.
"Fine," says Dean. "Just tell me what happened."
"We were at the arcade and this stupid kid, a seventh grader, was going to beat up his little brother. His own little brother!" Sam folds his arms against the flash of memory anger that surges up in him. "So I stopped him. Now he hates me because I humiliated him. He found me in the boy's bathroom after first period this morning."
"You gave him a black eye and a broken nose?" Dean takes Sam's chin in his fingers, turning his head to check the black eye, just like Dad did earlier, right before dinner.
"I think he lost a few teeth, too," says Sam.
"Atta boy."
"You didn't...you didn't do anything to him, did you?"
"No need, kiddo. You already messed him up enough," Dean says admiringly, and for Sam it's nicer than getting an all 'A' report card.
Alone at last.
Dad's taken Sam to the next town to see a man about a crossbow, so Dean takes the opportunity to invite the cute girl--Joanna--over for a study date. Except he doesn't call it a date, because some girls don't like calling it that until they've made up their mind about you. He expects to get Joanna to make up her mind quick, but he can't rush, either, not with a girl like this.
It works out well, since he doesn't expect Sam and Dad back for hours.
That last incident in biology class was the first time he'd seen Joanna laugh and wow, she was pretty when she laughed. Ms. Sinclair had made them lab partners, which elevated the woman to sainthood in Dean's eyes. After that Dean stopped messing with her class. He figured she'd suffered enough, and truth be told he was getting just a little scared of her. She had a habit of breaking off in the middle of whatever she was saying to snap "and Dean Winchester, if you move one inch I will flunk you on the spot" even though she was facing the blackboard and couldn't possibly see his hands reaching for the beaker he wasn't supposed to touch yet.
"See?" Joanna taps the diagram she drew with a pen. "It's not all that difficult if you think of it this way."
"Uh-huh." He nods seriously and his chair scrapes the kitchen floor as it edges another inch towards hers.
"And...you already know how to do this, don't you?" She puts the pen down, sits back, and folds her arm.
The hell. What is it about the women at this school? Is he that transparent? Joanna's even tougher than Ms. Sinclair.
He sees it, though, in the slight twitch at the corner of her mouth, she's not really mad at him.
It would be a terrible mistake to try to kiss her right then, but it might be worth it.
"You caught me." He leans his arm across his notebook so it brushes along her arm. She doesn't move away. "What's my punishment?"
"Mmmm." She taps her pen on the notebook, tilts her head to one side, pretends to consider. "Something unspeakable."
"Unspeakable?" This sounds intriguing.
Now she is smiling, and he confirms a hypothesis, yes her brown eyes really do darken when she does that. "Something so terrible even you couldn't dream it up."
"I don't know, I can dream up quite a bit." He lets that come out as suggestive as it wants to be, testing the waters.
She moves her head closer to his, or maybe he moves his head closer to hers. Either way, before he knows it he's inches from finding out if her mouth tastes just as sweet as it looks.
A car door slams outside and they jump apart like they've both been yanked.
"Shit," Dean says, forgetting that he decided never to curse in front of Joanna. He's not worried about Dad finding him here alone with a girl--they are studying, after all, and Dean actually asked permission this time. What worries him is that Joanna's going to see...
Sam opens the kitchen screen door first and walks in, Dad right behind him.
His little brother freezes and looks like he might turn and run out again except Dad's between him and the door now, and neither of them can do anything to tip Dad off about their vow, because he would just never understand.
It's not that Dad would be angry that worries Dean.
It's that he'd be hurt.
"Hey, it's the math whiz!" At first Joanna sounds okay, just happy to meet one of the younger kids, but then her voice kind of trails out on the "whiz" and she turns to look at Dean, who feels like everything is in slow-mo. "He's your brother?"
"Uh..." She's going to say something in front of Dad. Dean starts to panic.
"You must be Joanna," Dad says, and holds out his hand for her to shake. He's smiling, turning on the full Winchester charm for her. Normally, Dean would be thrilled by this. Dad could make a good impression when he set his mind to it, and also he wasn't arriving from a hunt smelling of sulfur and blood. "You want some more soda? Something to eat?"
"No, thank you, sir. I have to be getting home."
She's not trying to make an impression on him with that sir; she'd told Dean one day before class started that her grandfather was a Colonel, so it was just instinct. But Dean can see his father's impressed anyway.
She doesn't look at Dean. At all. His stomach feels icy. She gathers up her papers too quickly, slamming her biology book closed.
Joanna walks past Sam, who is still rooted to the spot, and pauses to turn to Dad one more time. "It was nice to meet you, Mr. Winchester."
Dean scrapes back his chair. "Joanna, wait a second..."
It's uncool, but he doesn't care. He runs after her outside, the screen door banging behind him.
"Joanna, wait."
She stops on the sidewalk, hugging her backpack to her chest, standing in the pool of light from a streetlamp. "You lied to me. Why would you lie about a thing like that?"
"It's a long story."
"You lied about not understanding the material, either. I thought that was cute at first. But now it turns out you're lying about important stuff too."
"There's a very good explanation for this."
"Why on earth would you want not to be related to your own brother? He's such a nice little kid."
"I don't want to not be related to him. I just want to pretend not to be." It's on the tip of his tongue to tell her about moving around so much, about how it's his job to protect Sam, about their last school. But if he says any of that, he'll have to tell her about spirits and ghouls and crossbows and Mom.
When he doesn't speak, she turns on her heel and starts walking away along the dark street.
He hurries after her, not quite running, but almost. "Joanna..."
"Stop it. Go away, Dean."
"It's late. I don't care how mad you are at me. If you want me to walk behind you and not even talk, I will, but there's no way I'm letting you walk home alone."
He stays half a block behind her, then stands and waits until she's inside her house, which is a nice one with a big wraparound porch and a turret at the northeast corner.
She never looks back. Not once.
"Is there anything I need to know?"
"No, sir."
"You wouldn't be lying to me, would you?"
The look his father gives him across the kitchen table almost causes Sam to blurt out everything on the spot, to take refuge in the gaze that's stern yet makes him feel safe.
"No, sir," Sam says, trying to hide the shake in his voice, wondering how bad his punishment is going to be when Dad finally finds out about the vow.
Sam goes upstairs and does his homework. When he hears the front door slam, he goes out into the hall to eavesdrop.
"What did you do, Dean?" He hears Dad say warningly.
"Nothing! It was just a misunderstanding."
"Did you apologize to her?"
"Yes, sir."
"You walked her home?"
"Of course." Dean sounds shocked Dad would question it. "Can I go now?"
"Yeah. You can go."
As his brother starts up the stairs, Sam darts into his room.
He's not sure what to do now. He can't go downstairs where Dad is. He probably shouldn't bug Dean right now but Sam has something to say to him.
There's a steady, dark beat of music from behind Dean's door when Sam works up the courage to go knock. When Dean doesn't answer, he opens the door anyway, knowing it could be a death sentence. "Dean, I..."
"It's not your fault, Sam." Dean's lying on the floor on his back, staring up at the ceiling, LP's scattered around him.
"Maybe you can explain it to her."
"I don't think so."
What Sam wants to say is Can we stop now? But he doesn't say it, because he's not sure if Dean wants to be his brother in public again, especially after what just happened.
He leaves the room, closing the door behind him.
Sam goes back to his own room, shuts his door, and sits on his bed. He can't remember the last time Dean insulted him, teased him, or offered to spar. It's been months.
He wants his brother back.
Well, this sucks.
Sam is too cheerful at breakfast, and too polite, sacrificing up the last dribble of milk in the carton for Dean to put on his cereal, and it irritates Dean. Even though Sam's eyes aren't at all puffy, Dean heard the sobs through the wall late last night.
He's still partnered with Joanna in Biology, which is awkward since she's not speaking to him, like, at all. She barely even looks at him in fact. Their fingers brush when he hands her the petri dish and she pulls her hand away from his touch. The petri dish falls, ruining the experiment, so they have to start over.
Dean gets a C on his paper on Huckleberry Finn. He might have done better if he could have talked to Sam about the book. Sam was always reading all kinds of books the school board would never approve for a kid his age, and Dean's pretty sure Sam's read that one more than once.
He spies Sam in the halls, but he doesn't even glance in Dean's direction.
It makes Dean feel like a ghost in his brother's life.
By lunchtime, Dean is ready to find a nice, empty, piece of wall somewhere and bang his head against it repeatedly. It's when he goes out to the vending machine on the cafeteria patio that he remembers: Root Beer.
This all started with Root Beer, back in February. There'd been one left in the fridge, and it's been Dean's favorite drink for a year now. Not the kind that comes in the can, but the kind that could only be bought at a distributor by the crate; glass bottles that had a cap you had to pop with a can opener, letting out a little curl of mist if the bottle was cold enough.
Anyway. Not usually that big a deal, but with all the misery of that last school, he'd really been on edge, and Sam, who knew very well how much Dean liked that kind of Root Beer, drank the last bottle in the fridge.
Dean had yelled at him. Sam had yelled back. And then Dean had shoved Sam and Sam had punched Dean in the stomach and then Dad was pulling them apart.
The early spring sun is warm, beating down on his head as he stares at the lights of the vending machine and the square button for Root Beer, the sucky kind that comes in a can. He braces his hands against the machine, lowers his head, and draws in several deep breaths. He suddenly feels like crying, for chrissakes, right there in front of a quarter of the student body.
"Hey, you mind?"
Without bothering to see who it is that wants to use the vending machine, Dean moves and goes back inside to get on with the rest of his day.
Which is going to suck.
Sam goes to Kristy first, pulling her aside in the hallway as they walk from one class to the next.
"Dean Winchester's my brother."
"Get out!" She smacks him on the arm. "Wait. You're serious? Wow. You guys don't look at all alike. So why'd you lie about it?"
"It's a long story." Sam bends his knee, resting the sole of his sneaker against the wall.
But he explains it to her, leaving out a whole lot because Winchester Rule #1 was that you never told anyone about the hunting unless they were a hunter too, or you were at that very moment saving them from a ghost, werewolf, spook, or demon.
Kristy seems to get it. She doesn't get mad or anything.
"That is so awesome. He must be the best brother ever."
Sam just doesn't understand girls.
"We're going to move again soon," he adds. "In a few weeks. As soon as school is over."
Her lips press into a tight line. Then she smiles broadly. "We're going to have to spend as much time as possible together until then." More uncertainly, she adds, "Will you write to me?"
"Sure," he says.
"I'm going to hold you to that."
Since it went over well with Kristy, Sam uses similar words to tell Joanna, complete with the warning about them moving on soon.
He knows he's doing the cute little kid brother routine just right when Joanna's face softens at Sam's description of Dean rescuing him from getting beaten up at their old school.
A few kids in Joanna's study hall are giving them curious looks. It's not often that an eighth-grade girl is seen talking alone with a fifth-grade boy. Sam's probably going to get in trouble for skipping out on gym, but this is more important.
He doesn't believe in Karmic influences, guardian angels, past lives, the power of prayer, or that life is ever fair.
But Dean Winchester figures he must have done something good once for somebody, somewhere, sometime, because when he walks out of his last class at the end of his Day of Suckage, Joanna's standing there.
It's too much to hope that she's waiting for him, but she is.
"Hi."
"Hi."
He's a few inches taller than she is, so she grabs his shoulders, stands up on tiptoe in her running shoes, and kisses him quick on the mouth.
A few kids let out whoops and whistles.
Joanna pulls away just as quick, before he can really get into it or process what just happened. He can only stare at after her as she shoves through the crowd and vanishes from his sight.
The night before Dean's eighth-grade graduation, they end up alone in the kitchen after dinner. There's no more homework to do, and Dad, for once, isn't hunting, just sacked out on the couch with some research.
The school makes a big ceremony of it, so there's a cap and gown. Dean swore no force on this earth can get him to wear it, but he forgot out thing: his father.
The gown is in its plastic covering, draped over a chair. Dean glares at it like it's a corpse that might rise up and attack them.
"Dean?"
"Yeah?"
"Is the vow over?"
"It's over."
"I didn't like not being your brother," Sam says in a big rush.
In the silence the faucet drips and a truck rumbles and clatters by outside.
"Me neither." There's a pause. "Geek."
"Freak."
"Nerd."
"Delinquent."
"Dork."
Right then, Sam figures out what he's going to get Dean for a graduation gift. He's got enough allowance for it, and it's not that expensive.
He'll just need Dad's help to carry the crate of root beer home.
~END~