SPN FIC - The Box (Part 1 of 6)
The story began here.
Summer 2000. John, the boys, and Bobby are in a small Connecticut coastal town investigating signs of demon activity. Or John and Bobby are, at least. Dean's delivering pizza (with a side order of Dean) and Sam has taken a job doing yard work for a young couple with a big, rambling house on a bluff overlooking the ocean. A nice way to spend the summer, right? Um ... not so much.
CHARACTERS: Sam (age 17), Dean (age 21), John, Bobby, various OCs
GENRE: Gen
RATING: PG for language and some pondering about sexin'
SPOILERS: None
LENGTH: Remains to be seen; Prologue and 6 parts (this part is 4772 words)
THE BOX
By Carol Davis
One
"DEAN!"
The roar, coming from so close by, startled Sam into dropping the sneaker he'd been about to pull onto his foot - and it scared the hell out of the mouse who went streaking across the bedroom floor into the relative safety of the closet.
Bobby Singer, standing in the hallway in front of the bathroom door, in full view of where Sam was sitting on the edge of his bed, fixed Sam with a frustrated glare and demanded, "What in the name of Sam Hill is he doing in there?"
The fact that Dean hadn't responded to Bobby's fussing seemed to indicate that Dean was either unconscious or was…well, otherwise occupied. Either way, Sam had no desire whatsoever to investigate.
"I dunno," Sam said.
Sputtering, Bobby seized the bathroom doorknob and gave it a good solid shake. "Dean!" he roared.
"Dude," Dean's voice protested from inside.
The lock clicked and the door moved inward, pulling Bobby along with it until he let go of the knob.
"What are you doing?" Bobby demanded.
"Getting ready for work."
Dean never would have responded to Dad that way, Sam thought; the door would have been open a microsecond after Dad's first "Need to get in there." But Bobby - well, people in general might think of Bobby as crabby and immovable and completely lacking a warm, fuzzy side, and to an extent they might be right. But almost fifteen years of knowing Bobby had taught Dean exactly which buttons he could push, and how hard he could push them. He also knew Bobby wouldn't rat him out. Which wasn't exactly fair to Bobby. It was, however, very Dean.
As if he knew exactly what Sam was thinking, Dean tossed a nod to his brother. "Sorry," he told Bobby.
Bobby and Sam both took a long look at him, head to toe. Dean was wearing nothing different from what he'd worn every day since they (the three of them, and Dad) had dropped anchor here almost two weeks ago: jeans, his favorite boots, gray t-shirt, a flannel button-up in deference to the cool, showery weather of the past couple of days. The only difference Sam could see was that the entire ensemble was stain-free and unwrinkled. "You're delivering pizza," Bobby growled. "You're not addressing a joint session of Congress."
"I'm making a good impression."
"A good impression on who?"
"The community," Dean said.
"Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Get out of the bathroom."
With a final snort of disgust, Bobby elbowed Dean out of the way and, once inside, gave the door a good, solid, knob-rattling slam to underline his point. Completely undisturbed by the dismissal, Dean meandered into the bedroom he shared with Sam and peered at himself in the mirror over the dresser. "Dude gets all bent out of shape when he needs to piss," he commented. "Would've been out in a minute."
"You were in there for like half an hour," Sam pointed out, reaching for his fallen sneaker.
"Like I said. Trying to put my best foot forward."
"For who?"
"Did you not hear me? You were sitting right there."
"You want to impress the community."
"Damn straight."
"That would be the female part of the community?"
Dean half-turned and smirked at Sam. "Can I help it if I deliver a little customer service with the pepperoni? It's good for repeat business, Sammy. You gotta go with what works. And I haven't heard any complaints. Besides that, the tips are impressive."
Sam had to give him that. Well, he didn't have to, but Dean pointed the tip thing out at least three times a day. That made the point a little difficult to ignore.
"You want a ride?" Dean offered.
"Gonna ride my bike."
"What, and look like Andy Rooney?"
Sam interrupted his sneaker-tying to grimace at his brother. Figuring out what Dean meant took a moment. "Do you mean Andy Hardy?"
"Rooney, Hardy, whatever."
"Andy Rooney is that old guy on 60 Minutes."
"Is he? Oh. Well, hell," Dean said as he fussed with his hair, keeping an eye on Sam via the mirror as he did so. "Yeah, I guess I meant Hardy. If that's the one in the old movies who did all that weird, lame shit."
"There's nothing wrong with riding a bike."
"There is if you ever want to get laid in this lifetime, baby bro."
"And I'd get laid by riding around in a car with you?" Before Dean could answer, Sam got up from the bed and shouldered past him out to the hallway, then tried to ignore the fact that Dean was trailing him to the kitchen, barely two steps behind. When Sam opened the fridge to take out the sandwiches he'd put together a little while ago, Dean reached past him to seize a can of soda, popped the tab off and took a long, noisy drink as Sam put his sandwiches into a paper bag with a couple of pieces of fruit and some energy bars.
"How long you figuring on being over there?" Dean asked, and belched.
"Until I finish."
"Finish what? I thought you were just gonna mow the grass."
"And prune."
That prompted a shrill, wheezy giggle from Dean. "Prune? Dad told you you could get a job, and you're gonna prune."
"I'm doing yard work," Sam blurted. "Could you get off me?"
"He's gonna prune," Dean chortled.
"And you're delivering pizzas so you can have sex."
"So missing the point, bitch."
Irked, Sam clutched his paper bag to his chest in a way he realized a little too late probably made him look like someone's blue-haired grandmother, defending her purse from a mugger. "God, I hate you," he sputtered. "Why can't you leave me alone?"
Dean took another sip of his soda. "You're too easy a target, man."
"Yeah? Fuck you."
"Back atcha. So, you want a ride, or not?"
"No," Sam grunted.
~~~~~~~~~~
Twenty minutes later, Dean pulled the Impala to a stop at the end of Peter and Larkin Hobbs' driveway and sat pondering what he could see of their property with the car's engine providing a noisy, throbbing accompaniment. "So," he said to Sam. "They're loaded, huh?"
"I don't know," Sam sighed. "I didn't ask for a financial statement."
"House like that, right on the water? That had to cost some serious dinero."
"I guess so."
Sam got out of the car, sack of lunch in hand, and headed for the path leading around the side of the house. He'd only gone a few steps when, to his dismay, Dean turned off the car and followed him. Figuring that even looking at his brother would prompt the same result as feeding a stray dog, Sam kept walking. When he reached the small, brown clapboard building the Hobbses called "the tool shed," he pulled out the key Peter Hobbs had given him and opened the padlock that secured the shed's double doors.
"Maaaan," Dean said from behind him. "Would you look at that view."
Sam didn't need to look; he'd familiarized himself with the property the first day he'd worked here and had admired it for as long as he dared every day since then. As Dean had no doubt noticed, the Hobbses' rambling, 19th century home sat on a gently rising slope about a hundred feet from a bluff overlooking the ocean. The house, from at least twenty of its many windows, had an uninterrupted view of the water, which was more than likely why the Hobbses had bought it, and had then decided to invest some more serious dinero into renovations and landscaping. The house and the grounds surrounding it were stunning. Which was a girly word, yeah, Sam conceded, but he was unable to think of a better one. Maybe the Hobbses were used to living that way by now, but being able to look out a window in your own house and see the Atlantic Ocean rolling off toward the horizon, every day of your life?
Yeah, that was pretty stunning. And for a reason he couldn't pin down, it made Sam think the Hobbses were loaded in ways that had nothing to do with money.
"They nice people, or what?" Dean asked.
"Uh-huh," Sam said as he swung the shed doors wide to provide enough clearance for the ride-around lawn mower.
"How come they don't have a regular gardener? You know, somebody who actually knows what he's doing."
"I know how to mow the lawn."
"They don't have a gardener?"
"He's in the hospital. He fell. Or something."
"Off what?"
"Aren't you late?"
"For what?"
"For your job."
Dean took another long look at the property, jingling his keys in his palm. Sam had known him more than long enough to see that for what it was: a way to stall, to pretend he was making his own decision to leave - one that Sam's weary exasperation had nothing to do with. Without actually answering the question, when he'd finished his very drawn-out admiration of the Atlantic, Dean shrugged jauntily and thumped Sam on the shoulder. "Prune your ass off, dude," he announced. "Gonna go spread some joy and good will around the community."
Sam didn't bother to watch him leave.
~~~~~~~~~~
In contrast to a lot of the paperwork the Winchesters had provided to various people over the years, none of the letters of recommendation Sam had given to Peter Hobbs were fake. Some of them were a little old, yeah, but they were all genuine, each one written by someone who could vouch for Sam Winchester as an honest, industrious worker who could be counted on to finish a job properly, on time, and who took pride in what he did.
He and Dad and Dean had moved so many times that Sam could barely remember some of the people who had written those letters, and he suspected they might have a somewhat dim memory of him by this point, as well. But he had gone through the small collection of references enough times to commit the letters themselves to very clear memory. It made him feel good, knowing that they existed. Thinking that even if those people no longer remembered him, no longer worried about his welfare, they had cared about him at some point in his past.
He - and his future - had mattered to them.
That wasn't to say no one cared about him now. But Dad and Dean, and Bobby too, had their own way of looking at things. None of them had gone past high school. Dad had owned his own business back in Lawrence (okay, co-owned it), and Bobby had a business at his place in South Dakota, but advanced education seemed to be something…well, unnecessary, as far as they were concerned. Dean had barely made it through high school - not because he lacked intelligence, but because he simply didn't care.
"Care about what?" he'd asked when Sam posed the question.
"About having a better life."
Dean had frowned at that. Turned away a little, then went back to cleaning the array of weapons he'd laid out on the kitchen table. "Nothing wrong with the life I got," he'd mumbled, and would say nothing more.
So that was Dean.
But Sam? Wanted something more. Not a big house overlooking the ocean, necessarily (at least, not right away), but…something.
With his outer shirt sleeves rolled down and buttoned into place, and heavy leather gloves protecting his hands, he hauled and whacked and fought to the death with the blackberry thicket at the southern edge of the Hobbses' property. He'd had an easier time dealing with that poltergeist a few weeks back, and of course Dad and Dean thought getting rid of anything supernatural was a far more worthwhile use of time than clearing away wild undergrowth on property they didn't even own, but when he had finally finished, when the blackberry bramble had been gathered up and dragged to the place Peter Hobbs had designated and the newly blackberry-less section of the property looked neat and reasonably attractive, Sam felt a thousand times more satisfied than he had that night back in Bayonne, after the poltergeist had been sent packing.
Someday, he thought, fumbling a gloved hand through his sweat-damp, sticky hair, trying to shove it back out of his face, scowling when it flopped immediately back down over his eyes. Someday I'm gonna have…
"Nice job, Sam," a voice said from behind him, and he turned to find Peter Hobbs standing a few yards away, briefcase in hand, suit jacket slung over his shoulder.
"Thanks," Sam said with a tired sigh.
"And you're still in one piece. I'm impressed."
One piece, yes, but definitely the worse for wear. His arms and torso were pretty well scratched up in spite of the two shirts, he'd taken a good poke in the eye from a twig he spotted a little too late, and he was drenched with sweat from head to toe. He answered Peter's comment with a small, noncommittal shrug and pulled off one of the gloves so he could make another attempt at pushing his hair away from his face.
"Look like you could use a drink," Peter observed.
He was in his mid-thirties, Sam figured; according to his business card he was an attorney at a well-known local firm, one with offices in a nice, modern building on the main drag in town. He was a couple of inches shorter than Sam, fit and trim - probably thanks to the home gym that occupied one of those rooms with the breathtaking view of the ocean and which was visible from the patio on the side of the house. He had dark hair that was rarely out of place, a ready smile, and a bone-crushing handshake.
The answer to the question Dean had posed a few hours ago was yes: as far as Sam could tell, Peter Hobbs was a genuinely nice guy, easygoing, quick to laugh. And generous: the money he was paying Sam to do this fill-in yard work while the Hobbses' regular gardener recuperated from his fall (Had Peter said where the guy had fallen, and why? Sam couldn't remember) was a lot more than Sam had anticipated, given that Sam was only seventeen and had no professional experience under his belt, just a number of summers mowing lawns and doing minor clean-up work.
He was a good boss, Sam thought.
A damn good boss. In short, somebody Sam felt like going the extra mile for, even if it meant being ripped to shreds by blackberry thorns.
"Found a picture in a magazine," Peter said, moving past Sam for a closer look at the results of Sam's day's work. "Little outdoor sitting area. I figured if we cleared away all this stuff" - he gestured - "there'd be a view of the water. Put in some benches, or chairs, or whatever, and it'd be a nice place to sit and read."
"Okay."
"Assuming I could actually get Lark to come out here and do that."
"Clear brush?" Sam said.
"Sit."
"Oh."
Peter moved around a little, looking for the best view, Sam supposed. Kicked at some of the low-growing plants with the toe of an expensive-looking shoe. "I married a Type A," he said with a little snort. "Loved her from the second I laid eyes on her, but good suffering God, the woman doesn't know how to relax."
"Oh," Sam said again.
"So I'm trying the 'If you build it, she will come' philosophy."
"With benches."
"And rosebushes." Peter made a couple of slow turns, like a dog staking out a place to sleep, then stopped and grinned at Sam. They made quite a mismatched pair: Peter in his crisp pinstriped shirt, dark slacks and polished shoes, and Sam in holey, frayed jeans, sweat-stained tee and button-down, and well-scuffed sneakers. What Peter thought of all that - or if he was thinking something else entirely - Sam couldn't tell, but Peter huffed out a laugh, then offered, "Want to take a break? We've got some iced tea in the fridge."
"Sure," Sam said. "Okay."
A couple of minutes later Peter, minus his briefcase and jacket and tie, shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows, brought two glasses of tea out to the patio on the ocean side of the house and waved Sam into a chair. Once they were settled Peter handed over one of the glasses, then took a long drink of his tea and heaved a contented sigh. He was quiet for a minute, looking out over the water toward the horizon. Then he turned to Sam and smiled as if contemplating the water had lifted his spirits enormously.
"It's nice here," Sam told him.
"Thank you. Although -" Peter chuckled. "Yeah, I'm gonna sit here and take credit for the Atlantic Ocean."
"It's a nice house."
"Can't really take credit for that either. All I did was sign checks."
Unable to come up with a reply, Sam offered his boss a self-conscious shrug. Peter seemed lost for a way to continue the conversation too, so they settled for drinking their tea in silence, Sam grimacing at the tickle of the sweat that continued to run down his back in spite of the cool breeze coming in off the water.
"Mario's not doing well," Peter said after a minute.
"Your gardener?"
Peter nodded. "Messed up his leg pretty bad. Doc wants him to stay off of it for, I don't know, another month, maybe six weeks, at least."
"I'm sorry."
"So the question is," Peter said, looking at Sam over the lip of his glass, "how interested are you in keeping this going?"
He didn't need to elaborate. Their initial agreement had been for Sam to mow the lawn and do a little weeding and trimming for a week or two, until the regular guy - Mario - could get back to work. The blackberry pulling had been an add-on. Now, it seemed, there were going to be a lot more add-ons.
"I don't know how long we're gonna be here," Sam admitted. "We move around a lot."
"For however long you're here, then."
"That's -" Sam said.
Six weeks would fill up the rest of the summer. Would keep him outdoors, within sight of the ocean, breathing fresh air, enjoying the sun.
Would keep him away from Dad and Bobby and Dean.
"Yeah," he told Peter.
"Same rate we agreed on?" Peter suggested. "With a little extra for anything that goes above and beyond."
"Sure. Okay."
"You weren't by any chance planning on a career in landscaping, were you?"
"Um," Sam said. "No. I don't think so."
Peter seemed to ponder that for a moment, then shrugged, and grinned as if he'd suddenly found something funny.
"What?" Sam asked.
"Mowed lawns myself, as a kid. And it turned into this."
"It did?"
"Eventually."
"That's -" Sam said, and paused. "You must've mowed a lot of lawns."
"Not a lot," Peter replied. "But they were big mothers."
That came abruptly enough, and was delivered deadpan enough, that Sam spit tea out past the knees of his jeans, onto the carefully laid tiles of the patio. He coughed and sputtered for the best part of a minute, trying not to drop the glass, and finally recovered his equilibrium, though by that time his eyes were watering and his nose had started to run.
"Maybe I should get back to work," Sam suggested, and coughed again.
"Getting kind of late," Peter said, with a glance at his watch. "Why don't you throw the tools back in the shed and knock off for the day. Start fresh tomorrow."
Nodding, Sam set his half-empty glass down on the table between their two chairs and got to his feet, again very much aware of the contrast between his jeans and faded shirt and Peter's obviously expensive clothing. I could have that, he thought fleetingly. Have this. A house like this. Someday.
He got as far as the edge of the patio, and stood there shuffling his feet, thinking of Dean, head bent over his collection of weapons and cleaning rags and brushes and oil. Thought of the number of miles he and Dean and Dad had logged in the past sixteen years, and the number they were likely to log in the next sixteen.
Or sixty.
He was a year behind in school because of all the moving - his grades hadn't done enough to counter-balance that, for all he tried - and still had two years of high school ahead of him. After that? Well, there'd be nothing tying the Winchesters down. No reason to stay anywhere once a job was done. No reason to make friends, think of anywhere as home. Forget about having a house like Peter and Larkin Hobbs did; there'd be no home of any kind. Just the road.
He thought of Dean, and his refusal to say anything negative about Dad's choice of careers. His refusal to say anything about his own hopes and dreams.
"Mr. Hobbs?" Sam said.
Peter looked at him, nearly-empty glass of iced tea in hand.
"We're helpin' people, Sammy," Dean had told him so many times, Sam figured he might as well have it put on the front of a t-shirt so he could save his breath.
The thing was…you could help people in ways that had nothing to do with killing things in the middle of the night.
"Thank you," Sam said.
"You're welcome," Peter replied.
Thank you somehow didn't seem like enough, but what else he should say, what other way he could express what he was feeling, Sam had no idea. He stood there awkwardly for a minute, then did an about-face and went hustling back toward the gardening equipment he'd left lying at the far end of Peter Hobbs' yard.
~~~~~~~~~~
Dinner was same old, same old.
Hell, dinner was always same old, same old, whether or not it included Bobby, or any of the other hunters who were tolerant enough to share a table with John Winchester. The pizza boxes had been pushed to one side to make room for a spread of papers, notes, maps, old books, Dad's journal. Sam's plate and cup of soda had been slowly but steadily nudged into a distant corner, and both Dad and Bobby seemed to have lost track of the fact that Sam himself was still in the room with them.
"Talked to a couple more people in town," Bobby said.
Dad prompted, "And?"
"Same thing. Interference with the TV, radio, phones. Weird noises coming from the power lines. Flickering lights."
"No natural explanation."
"Sunspots."
Dad looked up from scribbling in his journal, a deep crease settling between his brows. "That come from you, or them?"
"There's sunspots. Look it up."
"Son of a bitch, Singer, you think this is funny?"
Yup. Same old, same old.
"Yeah, I think it's funny," Bobby said. "I think it's so goddamn hilarious I've spent the last twenty years of my life chasing these sons of bitches around the country when I could be sitting in a goddamn lawn chair, drinking a beer and watching the grass grow. I think it's so damn funny I could rupture myself laughing. The locals think it's sunspots. One of 'em saw something on the motherloving Internet and that's what they're goin' with. You want me to tell 'em different? Let's just drive around and tell 'em there's demon activity croppin' up in three surrounding counties."
"Sunspots didn't kill those cows."
"JESUS, John," Bobby sputtered, and pushed up from his chair. "We gonna go round and round about this?"
"We've been here for eight days, and all we know is that there's static on the phones?"
"Sometimes," Bobby said. "You WAIT."
"Yeah, right," Sam murmured, head down.
"You got something you need to say?" Dad barked, fixing Sam with the gaze Sam sometimes thought could, with very few minor modifications, be converted into a laser death ray that would take out entire towns, like something out of War of the Worlds.
"No, sir," Sam replied.
Dean wouldn't be back for hours; he'd stopped by the house long enough to drop off a couple of pizzas, but had gone almost immediately back out to resume delivering…well, whatever was on a menu whose specifics Sam was almost afraid to ponder. That left Sam alone. With the Winchester-Singer Comedy Troupe.
Songs, dances, and snappy patter.
Same old, same old.
"That guy couldn't tell you anything?" Sam muttered. "The one you were going to talk to this morning?"
"Useless," Bobby complained.
Dad scowled at him, then said, "Eat your dinner."
Whether he meant Sam or Bobby wasn't clear. Maybe he meant both of them, although Bobby was several years older than Dad and was perfectly capable of deciding whether, and when, and how much, he should eat. When Dad didn't elaborate, and Bobby didn't object, Sam reached out for another slice of pizza, happy to find it still warm. He had to give that to Dean: he'd talked himself into a job at the best pizza place in town, one that provided a considerable discount on all purchases to its employees - "purchases" in this case being dinner, almost every night.
Dub Wilson, the owner of the pizza joint, was pretty much an idiot, Sam figured - for hiring Dean in the first place, and for providing dinner for Dean's family at a steep discount five or six nights a week. Sam had never met the man, had only seen him from a distance a couple of times, but he'd decided several days ago that Wilson was the type of guy who, out of the kindness of his heart, tried to spread genuine goodwill (not the kind Dean was marketing) all over the place, only to get taken advantage of for his troubles.
But until he realized that that was happening, he was likely to go on providing dinner for Dean's family, practically free of charge.
"Sam's right," Bobby said after a minute, even though Sam hadn't actually suggested anything. "We oughta go back. See if we can convince that jackass that it's in his best interest to let us in. He's still our best bet. History he's had, he's likely to have noticed something."
Dad stared a hole into the wall, not even bothering to look at Bobby. "Not tonight."
"Thought you were the one who was fed up with waiting."
"And if we get in? Then what?"
They went on talking that way, the way they always did, just this side of full-out arguing, with Sam barely listening to any of it. There was no reason for him to listen to all the whats and wherefores of the case, anyway, he decided as he silently chewed on his slice of pizza; if they had something for him to do later on, it would likely be simple and easily outlined. Carry this. Watch the door. Help your brother.
He could tell Dad about his conversation with Peter, he thought - tell him that Peter Hobbs had worked his way up from mowing lawns to a job at a respected law firm - and beyond a shadow of a doubt he'd be greeted with the same blank, unblinking stare Dad had unleashed every single time Sam had brought up the subject of college since his first day of high school. Before that, Dad had tolerated the occasional mention of higher education, maybe because he thought Sam was just flapping his lips, like Dean had done when he was a kid, talking about becoming a Formula One driver. Lately, though, the subject of college got a "Not now, Sam." Or a scowl. Or an abrupt changing of the subject.
Of course it would mean nothing that Peter Hobbs had done what he'd done. Who was Peter Hobbs, after all? A stranger in a long, broken line of strangers whose opinion was about as important to Dad as The Collected Wisdom of Willard Scott.
No, Sam thought - weather mattered to Dad. Mattered a lot more than it ought to. Why he spent so much time worrying about storm patterns and electrical disturbances and random animal deaths, Sam didn't have a clue, and couldn't bring himself to look for one. Not giving a shit worked both ways, he figured.
"Gonna go sit outside," he muttered, gathering up his pizza on its paper plate, a napkin, and his can of soda.
He was on his feet, aiming for the door, when Dad said, "Sam."
Sam stopped. Waited.
"Put the trash out," Dad said.
Sam didn't answer him.
Chapter 2…
Summer 2000. John, the boys, and Bobby are in a small Connecticut coastal town investigating signs of demon activity. Or John and Bobby are, at least. Dean's delivering pizza (with a side order of Dean) and Sam has taken a job doing yard work for a young couple with a big, rambling house on a bluff overlooking the ocean. A nice way to spend the summer, right? Um ... not so much.
CHARACTERS: Sam (age 17), Dean (age 21), John, Bobby, various OCs
GENRE: Gen
RATING: PG for language and some pondering about sexin'
SPOILERS: None
LENGTH: Remains to be seen; Prologue and 6 parts (this part is 4772 words)
THE BOX
By Carol Davis
One
"DEAN!"
The roar, coming from so close by, startled Sam into dropping the sneaker he'd been about to pull onto his foot - and it scared the hell out of the mouse who went streaking across the bedroom floor into the relative safety of the closet.
Bobby Singer, standing in the hallway in front of the bathroom door, in full view of where Sam was sitting on the edge of his bed, fixed Sam with a frustrated glare and demanded, "What in the name of Sam Hill is he doing in there?"
The fact that Dean hadn't responded to Bobby's fussing seemed to indicate that Dean was either unconscious or was…well, otherwise occupied. Either way, Sam had no desire whatsoever to investigate.
"I dunno," Sam said.
Sputtering, Bobby seized the bathroom doorknob and gave it a good solid shake. "Dean!" he roared.
"Dude," Dean's voice protested from inside.
The lock clicked and the door moved inward, pulling Bobby along with it until he let go of the knob.
"What are you doing?" Bobby demanded.
"Getting ready for work."
Dean never would have responded to Dad that way, Sam thought; the door would have been open a microsecond after Dad's first "Need to get in there." But Bobby - well, people in general might think of Bobby as crabby and immovable and completely lacking a warm, fuzzy side, and to an extent they might be right. But almost fifteen years of knowing Bobby had taught Dean exactly which buttons he could push, and how hard he could push them. He also knew Bobby wouldn't rat him out. Which wasn't exactly fair to Bobby. It was, however, very Dean.
As if he knew exactly what Sam was thinking, Dean tossed a nod to his brother. "Sorry," he told Bobby.
Bobby and Sam both took a long look at him, head to toe. Dean was wearing nothing different from what he'd worn every day since they (the three of them, and Dad) had dropped anchor here almost two weeks ago: jeans, his favorite boots, gray t-shirt, a flannel button-up in deference to the cool, showery weather of the past couple of days. The only difference Sam could see was that the entire ensemble was stain-free and unwrinkled. "You're delivering pizza," Bobby growled. "You're not addressing a joint session of Congress."
"I'm making a good impression."
"A good impression on who?"
"The community," Dean said.
"Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Get out of the bathroom."
With a final snort of disgust, Bobby elbowed Dean out of the way and, once inside, gave the door a good, solid, knob-rattling slam to underline his point. Completely undisturbed by the dismissal, Dean meandered into the bedroom he shared with Sam and peered at himself in the mirror over the dresser. "Dude gets all bent out of shape when he needs to piss," he commented. "Would've been out in a minute."
"You were in there for like half an hour," Sam pointed out, reaching for his fallen sneaker.
"Like I said. Trying to put my best foot forward."
"For who?"
"Did you not hear me? You were sitting right there."
"You want to impress the community."
"Damn straight."
"That would be the female part of the community?"
Dean half-turned and smirked at Sam. "Can I help it if I deliver a little customer service with the pepperoni? It's good for repeat business, Sammy. You gotta go with what works. And I haven't heard any complaints. Besides that, the tips are impressive."
Sam had to give him that. Well, he didn't have to, but Dean pointed the tip thing out at least three times a day. That made the point a little difficult to ignore.
"You want a ride?" Dean offered.
"Gonna ride my bike."
"What, and look like Andy Rooney?"
Sam interrupted his sneaker-tying to grimace at his brother. Figuring out what Dean meant took a moment. "Do you mean Andy Hardy?"
"Rooney, Hardy, whatever."
"Andy Rooney is that old guy on 60 Minutes."
"Is he? Oh. Well, hell," Dean said as he fussed with his hair, keeping an eye on Sam via the mirror as he did so. "Yeah, I guess I meant Hardy. If that's the one in the old movies who did all that weird, lame shit."
"There's nothing wrong with riding a bike."
"There is if you ever want to get laid in this lifetime, baby bro."
"And I'd get laid by riding around in a car with you?" Before Dean could answer, Sam got up from the bed and shouldered past him out to the hallway, then tried to ignore the fact that Dean was trailing him to the kitchen, barely two steps behind. When Sam opened the fridge to take out the sandwiches he'd put together a little while ago, Dean reached past him to seize a can of soda, popped the tab off and took a long, noisy drink as Sam put his sandwiches into a paper bag with a couple of pieces of fruit and some energy bars.
"How long you figuring on being over there?" Dean asked, and belched.
"Until I finish."
"Finish what? I thought you were just gonna mow the grass."
"And prune."
That prompted a shrill, wheezy giggle from Dean. "Prune? Dad told you you could get a job, and you're gonna prune."
"I'm doing yard work," Sam blurted. "Could you get off me?"
"He's gonna prune," Dean chortled.
"And you're delivering pizzas so you can have sex."
"So missing the point, bitch."
Irked, Sam clutched his paper bag to his chest in a way he realized a little too late probably made him look like someone's blue-haired grandmother, defending her purse from a mugger. "God, I hate you," he sputtered. "Why can't you leave me alone?"
Dean took another sip of his soda. "You're too easy a target, man."
"Yeah? Fuck you."
"Back atcha. So, you want a ride, or not?"
"No," Sam grunted.
~~~~~~~~~~
Twenty minutes later, Dean pulled the Impala to a stop at the end of Peter and Larkin Hobbs' driveway and sat pondering what he could see of their property with the car's engine providing a noisy, throbbing accompaniment. "So," he said to Sam. "They're loaded, huh?"
"I don't know," Sam sighed. "I didn't ask for a financial statement."
"House like that, right on the water? That had to cost some serious dinero."
"I guess so."
Sam got out of the car, sack of lunch in hand, and headed for the path leading around the side of the house. He'd only gone a few steps when, to his dismay, Dean turned off the car and followed him. Figuring that even looking at his brother would prompt the same result as feeding a stray dog, Sam kept walking. When he reached the small, brown clapboard building the Hobbses called "the tool shed," he pulled out the key Peter Hobbs had given him and opened the padlock that secured the shed's double doors.
"Maaaan," Dean said from behind him. "Would you look at that view."
Sam didn't need to look; he'd familiarized himself with the property the first day he'd worked here and had admired it for as long as he dared every day since then. As Dean had no doubt noticed, the Hobbses' rambling, 19th century home sat on a gently rising slope about a hundred feet from a bluff overlooking the ocean. The house, from at least twenty of its many windows, had an uninterrupted view of the water, which was more than likely why the Hobbses had bought it, and had then decided to invest some more serious dinero into renovations and landscaping. The house and the grounds surrounding it were stunning. Which was a girly word, yeah, Sam conceded, but he was unable to think of a better one. Maybe the Hobbses were used to living that way by now, but being able to look out a window in your own house and see the Atlantic Ocean rolling off toward the horizon, every day of your life?
Yeah, that was pretty stunning. And for a reason he couldn't pin down, it made Sam think the Hobbses were loaded in ways that had nothing to do with money.
"They nice people, or what?" Dean asked.
"Uh-huh," Sam said as he swung the shed doors wide to provide enough clearance for the ride-around lawn mower.
"How come they don't have a regular gardener? You know, somebody who actually knows what he's doing."
"I know how to mow the lawn."
"They don't have a gardener?"
"He's in the hospital. He fell. Or something."
"Off what?"
"Aren't you late?"
"For what?"
"For your job."
Dean took another long look at the property, jingling his keys in his palm. Sam had known him more than long enough to see that for what it was: a way to stall, to pretend he was making his own decision to leave - one that Sam's weary exasperation had nothing to do with. Without actually answering the question, when he'd finished his very drawn-out admiration of the Atlantic, Dean shrugged jauntily and thumped Sam on the shoulder. "Prune your ass off, dude," he announced. "Gonna go spread some joy and good will around the community."
Sam didn't bother to watch him leave.
~~~~~~~~~~
In contrast to a lot of the paperwork the Winchesters had provided to various people over the years, none of the letters of recommendation Sam had given to Peter Hobbs were fake. Some of them were a little old, yeah, but they were all genuine, each one written by someone who could vouch for Sam Winchester as an honest, industrious worker who could be counted on to finish a job properly, on time, and who took pride in what he did.
He and Dad and Dean had moved so many times that Sam could barely remember some of the people who had written those letters, and he suspected they might have a somewhat dim memory of him by this point, as well. But he had gone through the small collection of references enough times to commit the letters themselves to very clear memory. It made him feel good, knowing that they existed. Thinking that even if those people no longer remembered him, no longer worried about his welfare, they had cared about him at some point in his past.
He - and his future - had mattered to them.
That wasn't to say no one cared about him now. But Dad and Dean, and Bobby too, had their own way of looking at things. None of them had gone past high school. Dad had owned his own business back in Lawrence (okay, co-owned it), and Bobby had a business at his place in South Dakota, but advanced education seemed to be something…well, unnecessary, as far as they were concerned. Dean had barely made it through high school - not because he lacked intelligence, but because he simply didn't care.
"Care about what?" he'd asked when Sam posed the question.
"About having a better life."
Dean had frowned at that. Turned away a little, then went back to cleaning the array of weapons he'd laid out on the kitchen table. "Nothing wrong with the life I got," he'd mumbled, and would say nothing more.
So that was Dean.
But Sam? Wanted something more. Not a big house overlooking the ocean, necessarily (at least, not right away), but…something.
With his outer shirt sleeves rolled down and buttoned into place, and heavy leather gloves protecting his hands, he hauled and whacked and fought to the death with the blackberry thicket at the southern edge of the Hobbses' property. He'd had an easier time dealing with that poltergeist a few weeks back, and of course Dad and Dean thought getting rid of anything supernatural was a far more worthwhile use of time than clearing away wild undergrowth on property they didn't even own, but when he had finally finished, when the blackberry bramble had been gathered up and dragged to the place Peter Hobbs had designated and the newly blackberry-less section of the property looked neat and reasonably attractive, Sam felt a thousand times more satisfied than he had that night back in Bayonne, after the poltergeist had been sent packing.
Someday, he thought, fumbling a gloved hand through his sweat-damp, sticky hair, trying to shove it back out of his face, scowling when it flopped immediately back down over his eyes. Someday I'm gonna have…
"Nice job, Sam," a voice said from behind him, and he turned to find Peter Hobbs standing a few yards away, briefcase in hand, suit jacket slung over his shoulder.
"Thanks," Sam said with a tired sigh.
"And you're still in one piece. I'm impressed."
One piece, yes, but definitely the worse for wear. His arms and torso were pretty well scratched up in spite of the two shirts, he'd taken a good poke in the eye from a twig he spotted a little too late, and he was drenched with sweat from head to toe. He answered Peter's comment with a small, noncommittal shrug and pulled off one of the gloves so he could make another attempt at pushing his hair away from his face.
"Look like you could use a drink," Peter observed.
He was in his mid-thirties, Sam figured; according to his business card he was an attorney at a well-known local firm, one with offices in a nice, modern building on the main drag in town. He was a couple of inches shorter than Sam, fit and trim - probably thanks to the home gym that occupied one of those rooms with the breathtaking view of the ocean and which was visible from the patio on the side of the house. He had dark hair that was rarely out of place, a ready smile, and a bone-crushing handshake.
The answer to the question Dean had posed a few hours ago was yes: as far as Sam could tell, Peter Hobbs was a genuinely nice guy, easygoing, quick to laugh. And generous: the money he was paying Sam to do this fill-in yard work while the Hobbses' regular gardener recuperated from his fall (Had Peter said where the guy had fallen, and why? Sam couldn't remember) was a lot more than Sam had anticipated, given that Sam was only seventeen and had no professional experience under his belt, just a number of summers mowing lawns and doing minor clean-up work.
He was a good boss, Sam thought.
A damn good boss. In short, somebody Sam felt like going the extra mile for, even if it meant being ripped to shreds by blackberry thorns.
"Found a picture in a magazine," Peter said, moving past Sam for a closer look at the results of Sam's day's work. "Little outdoor sitting area. I figured if we cleared away all this stuff" - he gestured - "there'd be a view of the water. Put in some benches, or chairs, or whatever, and it'd be a nice place to sit and read."
"Okay."
"Assuming I could actually get Lark to come out here and do that."
"Clear brush?" Sam said.
"Sit."
"Oh."
Peter moved around a little, looking for the best view, Sam supposed. Kicked at some of the low-growing plants with the toe of an expensive-looking shoe. "I married a Type A," he said with a little snort. "Loved her from the second I laid eyes on her, but good suffering God, the woman doesn't know how to relax."
"Oh," Sam said again.
"So I'm trying the 'If you build it, she will come' philosophy."
"With benches."
"And rosebushes." Peter made a couple of slow turns, like a dog staking out a place to sleep, then stopped and grinned at Sam. They made quite a mismatched pair: Peter in his crisp pinstriped shirt, dark slacks and polished shoes, and Sam in holey, frayed jeans, sweat-stained tee and button-down, and well-scuffed sneakers. What Peter thought of all that - or if he was thinking something else entirely - Sam couldn't tell, but Peter huffed out a laugh, then offered, "Want to take a break? We've got some iced tea in the fridge."
"Sure," Sam said. "Okay."
A couple of minutes later Peter, minus his briefcase and jacket and tie, shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows, brought two glasses of tea out to the patio on the ocean side of the house and waved Sam into a chair. Once they were settled Peter handed over one of the glasses, then took a long drink of his tea and heaved a contented sigh. He was quiet for a minute, looking out over the water toward the horizon. Then he turned to Sam and smiled as if contemplating the water had lifted his spirits enormously.
"It's nice here," Sam told him.
"Thank you. Although -" Peter chuckled. "Yeah, I'm gonna sit here and take credit for the Atlantic Ocean."
"It's a nice house."
"Can't really take credit for that either. All I did was sign checks."
Unable to come up with a reply, Sam offered his boss a self-conscious shrug. Peter seemed lost for a way to continue the conversation too, so they settled for drinking their tea in silence, Sam grimacing at the tickle of the sweat that continued to run down his back in spite of the cool breeze coming in off the water.
"Mario's not doing well," Peter said after a minute.
"Your gardener?"
Peter nodded. "Messed up his leg pretty bad. Doc wants him to stay off of it for, I don't know, another month, maybe six weeks, at least."
"I'm sorry."
"So the question is," Peter said, looking at Sam over the lip of his glass, "how interested are you in keeping this going?"
He didn't need to elaborate. Their initial agreement had been for Sam to mow the lawn and do a little weeding and trimming for a week or two, until the regular guy - Mario - could get back to work. The blackberry pulling had been an add-on. Now, it seemed, there were going to be a lot more add-ons.
"I don't know how long we're gonna be here," Sam admitted. "We move around a lot."
"For however long you're here, then."
"That's -" Sam said.
Six weeks would fill up the rest of the summer. Would keep him outdoors, within sight of the ocean, breathing fresh air, enjoying the sun.
Would keep him away from Dad and Bobby and Dean.
"Yeah," he told Peter.
"Same rate we agreed on?" Peter suggested. "With a little extra for anything that goes above and beyond."
"Sure. Okay."
"You weren't by any chance planning on a career in landscaping, were you?"
"Um," Sam said. "No. I don't think so."
Peter seemed to ponder that for a moment, then shrugged, and grinned as if he'd suddenly found something funny.
"What?" Sam asked.
"Mowed lawns myself, as a kid. And it turned into this."
"It did?"
"Eventually."
"That's -" Sam said, and paused. "You must've mowed a lot of lawns."
"Not a lot," Peter replied. "But they were big mothers."
That came abruptly enough, and was delivered deadpan enough, that Sam spit tea out past the knees of his jeans, onto the carefully laid tiles of the patio. He coughed and sputtered for the best part of a minute, trying not to drop the glass, and finally recovered his equilibrium, though by that time his eyes were watering and his nose had started to run.
"Maybe I should get back to work," Sam suggested, and coughed again.
"Getting kind of late," Peter said, with a glance at his watch. "Why don't you throw the tools back in the shed and knock off for the day. Start fresh tomorrow."
Nodding, Sam set his half-empty glass down on the table between their two chairs and got to his feet, again very much aware of the contrast between his jeans and faded shirt and Peter's obviously expensive clothing. I could have that, he thought fleetingly. Have this. A house like this. Someday.
He got as far as the edge of the patio, and stood there shuffling his feet, thinking of Dean, head bent over his collection of weapons and cleaning rags and brushes and oil. Thought of the number of miles he and Dean and Dad had logged in the past sixteen years, and the number they were likely to log in the next sixteen.
Or sixty.
He was a year behind in school because of all the moving - his grades hadn't done enough to counter-balance that, for all he tried - and still had two years of high school ahead of him. After that? Well, there'd be nothing tying the Winchesters down. No reason to stay anywhere once a job was done. No reason to make friends, think of anywhere as home. Forget about having a house like Peter and Larkin Hobbs did; there'd be no home of any kind. Just the road.
He thought of Dean, and his refusal to say anything negative about Dad's choice of careers. His refusal to say anything about his own hopes and dreams.
"Mr. Hobbs?" Sam said.
Peter looked at him, nearly-empty glass of iced tea in hand.
"We're helpin' people, Sammy," Dean had told him so many times, Sam figured he might as well have it put on the front of a t-shirt so he could save his breath.
The thing was…you could help people in ways that had nothing to do with killing things in the middle of the night.
"Thank you," Sam said.
"You're welcome," Peter replied.
Thank you somehow didn't seem like enough, but what else he should say, what other way he could express what he was feeling, Sam had no idea. He stood there awkwardly for a minute, then did an about-face and went hustling back toward the gardening equipment he'd left lying at the far end of Peter Hobbs' yard.
~~~~~~~~~~
Dinner was same old, same old.
Hell, dinner was always same old, same old, whether or not it included Bobby, or any of the other hunters who were tolerant enough to share a table with John Winchester. The pizza boxes had been pushed to one side to make room for a spread of papers, notes, maps, old books, Dad's journal. Sam's plate and cup of soda had been slowly but steadily nudged into a distant corner, and both Dad and Bobby seemed to have lost track of the fact that Sam himself was still in the room with them.
"Talked to a couple more people in town," Bobby said.
Dad prompted, "And?"
"Same thing. Interference with the TV, radio, phones. Weird noises coming from the power lines. Flickering lights."
"No natural explanation."
"Sunspots."
Dad looked up from scribbling in his journal, a deep crease settling between his brows. "That come from you, or them?"
"There's sunspots. Look it up."
"Son of a bitch, Singer, you think this is funny?"
Yup. Same old, same old.
"Yeah, I think it's funny," Bobby said. "I think it's so goddamn hilarious I've spent the last twenty years of my life chasing these sons of bitches around the country when I could be sitting in a goddamn lawn chair, drinking a beer and watching the grass grow. I think it's so damn funny I could rupture myself laughing. The locals think it's sunspots. One of 'em saw something on the motherloving Internet and that's what they're goin' with. You want me to tell 'em different? Let's just drive around and tell 'em there's demon activity croppin' up in three surrounding counties."
"Sunspots didn't kill those cows."
"JESUS, John," Bobby sputtered, and pushed up from his chair. "We gonna go round and round about this?"
"We've been here for eight days, and all we know is that there's static on the phones?"
"Sometimes," Bobby said. "You WAIT."
"Yeah, right," Sam murmured, head down.
"You got something you need to say?" Dad barked, fixing Sam with the gaze Sam sometimes thought could, with very few minor modifications, be converted into a laser death ray that would take out entire towns, like something out of War of the Worlds.
"No, sir," Sam replied.
Dean wouldn't be back for hours; he'd stopped by the house long enough to drop off a couple of pizzas, but had gone almost immediately back out to resume delivering…well, whatever was on a menu whose specifics Sam was almost afraid to ponder. That left Sam alone. With the Winchester-Singer Comedy Troupe.
Songs, dances, and snappy patter.
Same old, same old.
"That guy couldn't tell you anything?" Sam muttered. "The one you were going to talk to this morning?"
"Useless," Bobby complained.
Dad scowled at him, then said, "Eat your dinner."
Whether he meant Sam or Bobby wasn't clear. Maybe he meant both of them, although Bobby was several years older than Dad and was perfectly capable of deciding whether, and when, and how much, he should eat. When Dad didn't elaborate, and Bobby didn't object, Sam reached out for another slice of pizza, happy to find it still warm. He had to give that to Dean: he'd talked himself into a job at the best pizza place in town, one that provided a considerable discount on all purchases to its employees - "purchases" in this case being dinner, almost every night.
Dub Wilson, the owner of the pizza joint, was pretty much an idiot, Sam figured - for hiring Dean in the first place, and for providing dinner for Dean's family at a steep discount five or six nights a week. Sam had never met the man, had only seen him from a distance a couple of times, but he'd decided several days ago that Wilson was the type of guy who, out of the kindness of his heart, tried to spread genuine goodwill (not the kind Dean was marketing) all over the place, only to get taken advantage of for his troubles.
But until he realized that that was happening, he was likely to go on providing dinner for Dean's family, practically free of charge.
"Sam's right," Bobby said after a minute, even though Sam hadn't actually suggested anything. "We oughta go back. See if we can convince that jackass that it's in his best interest to let us in. He's still our best bet. History he's had, he's likely to have noticed something."
Dad stared a hole into the wall, not even bothering to look at Bobby. "Not tonight."
"Thought you were the one who was fed up with waiting."
"And if we get in? Then what?"
They went on talking that way, the way they always did, just this side of full-out arguing, with Sam barely listening to any of it. There was no reason for him to listen to all the whats and wherefores of the case, anyway, he decided as he silently chewed on his slice of pizza; if they had something for him to do later on, it would likely be simple and easily outlined. Carry this. Watch the door. Help your brother.
He could tell Dad about his conversation with Peter, he thought - tell him that Peter Hobbs had worked his way up from mowing lawns to a job at a respected law firm - and beyond a shadow of a doubt he'd be greeted with the same blank, unblinking stare Dad had unleashed every single time Sam had brought up the subject of college since his first day of high school. Before that, Dad had tolerated the occasional mention of higher education, maybe because he thought Sam was just flapping his lips, like Dean had done when he was a kid, talking about becoming a Formula One driver. Lately, though, the subject of college got a "Not now, Sam." Or a scowl. Or an abrupt changing of the subject.
Of course it would mean nothing that Peter Hobbs had done what he'd done. Who was Peter Hobbs, after all? A stranger in a long, broken line of strangers whose opinion was about as important to Dad as The Collected Wisdom of Willard Scott.
No, Sam thought - weather mattered to Dad. Mattered a lot more than it ought to. Why he spent so much time worrying about storm patterns and electrical disturbances and random animal deaths, Sam didn't have a clue, and couldn't bring himself to look for one. Not giving a shit worked both ways, he figured.
"Gonna go sit outside," he muttered, gathering up his pizza on its paper plate, a napkin, and his can of soda.
He was on his feet, aiming for the door, when Dad said, "Sam."
Sam stopped. Waited.
"Put the trash out," Dad said.
Sam didn't answer him.
Chapter 2…