Days and Counting
Title: Days and Counting
Summary: From a prompt by khakigrrl at the latest ohsam comment-fic meme which read: Teenchesters, Gen, post-7.04. What with Dean going with Dad on more hunts and Sam having to keep their absence and their work a secret, Sam's getting more lonely and disconnected.
Characters: Sam, brief appearances by Dean and John, OCs
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 5,775
Disclaimer: It still all belongs to the CW
Warnings: No major warnings
Neurotic Author's Note #1: I love this prompt, and I am vaguely worried I didn't do it justice. I kind of wanted to write a quiet little fic in which nothing happens and everything happens, but I'm not sure I succeeded.
Neurotic Author's Note #2: I am a little obsessed with how teen!Sam developed all those weird OCD coping mechanisms we see later on in the show. Oops?
Neurotic Author's Note #3: Unbeta'd, read at your own risk.
"You're sure it's not a skin walker." Dad's voice sounds tinny on the new cell phone he just acquired. Or maybe it's just the payphone Sam is at that has crappy reception, it's sort of hard to tell.
"Yeah."
"What?"
Automatically Sam stands up straighter. "I mean, I'm sure, sir. It's a Church Grim -they don't leave their designated church grounds. Uh, the place used to be a church, but it burned down fifteen years ago, according to the records we found." By 'we' Sam means himself, but it won't do to remind his father of that.
"Okay," Dad accepts the verdict without question, which is about as close to 'good job' as he ever gets around to saying. Some days, Sam lives with the wild hope that eventually he'll do something well enough to earn himself something approximating approval, but most of the time he knows not to hold his breath. That ship sailed years ago when he skipped out on crossbow practice in favour of soccer that one time. Dad might have forgiven him for that one, eventually, but he never forgot the transgression. "Silver bullets work?"
"Yeah, same as a Black Dog or a skin walker," Sam twists the silver cord of the phone around his fingers, stops when the movement makes the phone go staticky.
"Right. Keep your head down, I'll be in touch."
It takes Sam a few seconds to realize that Dad has hung up. He stares at the dull keypad in front of him, exhales slowly as he places the phone back on the cradle. "Bye, Dad. Say hi to Dean for me," he tells the phone, securely on the hook.
He lets himself back into the motel room Dad rented out for the month. There's only the one king-sized bed in here, because Dad has been taking Dean with him more and more often on the hunts. Sam only has to share the bed a few days out of the month these days, which is fine by him, because he's grown five inches over the past few months, and trying to sleep next to Dean is an exercise in getting elbowed every five minutes and told to shove over and quit hogging the sheets. Right now, though, the bed is all his. He could even leave it unmade if he wanted -it's not like Dad is here to check his hospital corners or anything. Not that Dad cares about his hospital corners, but whatever. Sam likes making his bed. He likes having the room tidy. Dean always leaves his crap lying around, dirty clothes and empty pizza boxes and Dad never says a word to him about it anyway.
Sam glances at the TV at the foot of the bed, ignores it in favour of carefully emptying out his school bag and sorting out his old papers and notes. He has no idea where they'll be in the curriculum at the new school, but he'll find out tomorrow, he supposes. He just likes to start fresh as much as possible, keep his notes in order. There's nothing good on TV on Sunday nights, anyway, not unless the motel has cable, which it doesn't. The motels that you pay for by the week generally don't. He throws out the old papers, glances quickly at the red 'A' circled at the top of his last book report along with his old teacher's comment ('Excellent! A thoughtful piece on Salinger's work. You have a keen insight into Holden's sense of alienation. I am looking forward to seeing more of your work!'), folds the report neatly into quarters and drops it in the trash alongside the others.
If Dean were here he'd insist they watch some stupid movie or other, or find some new way to annoy Sam, or take him out for a sandwich at the diner. Or, even more likely, Dad would decide that there was still time for training before sunset, even if it's already pitch-black outside. Sam isn't allowed to object at those times, because even if it's actually long past sunset, the sun is still shining if Dad says it is. Dean will back him up, every single time, even if he's just tripped three times over stuff he can't see in the dark. Sam scowls at the empty spot on the bed where Dean would be sprawled, long-limbed and barefoot and taking up all the available space, probably munching on a bag of Cheetos and getting orange powder all over Sam's side of the bed, just to be an annoying prick.
Sam strips to his boxers, pulls a t-shirt over his head, folds his clothes and tucks them back into his duffle bag and places it by the door. He checks the salt lines again, but they're intact, just the way he left them when he came in through the door. He hasn't disturbed the lines once in the past three days. The longest he's managed without kicking a line by accident has been sixteen days, but he's trying for a record, maybe thirty days straight. Not that Dad would notice. He hasn't decided if Dean kicking the lines out of shape breaks his streak or not. He's leaning towards not. He brushes his teeth, stares at himself in the mirror and wonders if this is the year he'll have to start shaving. The only good thing about hopping from school to school is that he won't get teased in the locker room for being a 'late bloomer,' as one gym teacher put it.
The bed is freezing when he slides under the sheets and curls into a ball. He keeps to his own side of the bed, but pulls all the covers over himself on principle. He sets the alarm on the digital clock in the room and spends the next hour staring at the red digits clicking away steadily, wondering if they'll call tonight, or maybe tomorrow, to tell him if they made it out okay.
In the morning Sam gets up just after six and goes to the local diner, lining up with the truck drivers and construction workers just starting their day, and orders a coffee and two muffins to go, ignoring the cashier's friendly comment about whether or not he's too young to be drinking coffee ("It'll stunt your growth, kid!"). He clips the pager Dad bought him to his belt, and doesn't hope it'll go off. School is a half-hour run, but that's part of Dad's plan anyway, to make sure he trains before and after school even if Dad isn't there to watch him do it. He doesn't want to get there drenched in sweat his first day, not in front of all his classmates, so he leaves early, sneaks into the locker room to take a shower long before anyone else arrives. By the time he gets to the registrar's office his t-shirt and sweatpants are tucked away in his locker and he's clean and neatly dressed, his hair dry and his face and hands scrubbed.
"Here you go, honey," the registrar hands him his schedule and points to a pile of books on her desk. "You need help finding your first class? I can arrange for one of the hall monitors to escort you."
He shakes his head. "I can manage, thank you."
All schools sort of look alike, after a while. Same institutional yellow and green paint on the walls, same grey lockers, same locks on the lockers. Same types of kids, day in and day out. The cool kids, the jocks, the cheerleaders, and the losers, the nerds and geeks and just plain outcasts, and then everyone in-between. Sam looks at his schedule, memorizes the numbers of the classrooms, and takes about five minutes to figure out the layout of the school and how the doors are numbered. By the time he's got that sorted out in his head, the first bell has rung.
Coming to a new school demands a performance, the same old song and dance. He's used to it by now, but he doesn't enjoy it anymore than he ever has. Dean at least always liked the opportunity for new conquests. A girl in every port. He hoists his schoolbag over his shoulder, heavy now with his new books, and heads down the corridor. There were a few too many books to fit into the bag, and it's getting a little threadbare anyway, so he hangs onto the heaviest of the books, holding them against his chest like a shield. The teacher looks up as he walks in, the other kids already settling into their seats and gazing at him curiously. The new kid is always a source of interest. Sam knows the drill.
The teacher seems to get it, but it doesn't change anything. He gets up to stand next to Sam. "Good morning, class. As you can no doubt see, we have a new addition to our ranks. Do you prefer Samuel or Sam?"
"I like Sam better," Sam says quietly.
"Sam, then. I hope you'll all make him feel welcome. I don't doubt that all of you here have, at one point or another, been the new kid in school, so you know what it's like. Do the school proud, would you?" he says, then sighs when there's no visible response to his exhortation. "Is there anything about yourself that you'd like to share, Sam?"
Sam shakes his head. "No, sir. Thanks anyway."
"Okay, then. Why don't you go take a seat at that free desk over there next to Randy Miller, all right?"
"Yes, sir."
He's already expecting the foot that comes almost out of nowhere, stuck out from under a desk as he walks by. He could have dodged it easily, skipped over it, something, but that would mean drawing more attention to himself. There's no violating Dad's cardinal rule: keep your head down and your nose clean. Any attention at all could mean child services coming down on them, and that would spell disaster. They've already had more run-ins with CPS than they'd like, and none of them have been pleasant. More than a few times they've ended up having to hightail it out of town, and once they even had to leave a hunt unfinished. Dad had punished them both for that blunder, even though it had really been Sam's fault. Sam had tried to explain it to him, but Dad was implacable: Dean was responsible for Sam, so if Sam got into trouble, Dean got into trouble.
The trick here is to make it look good. So he lets himself trip over the foot, but he keeps his grip on his books and fakes a stumble forward while all the kids in his class laugh at him. The heat that rushes to his cheeks at that isn't faked in the slightest, though, and he ignores the teacher's well-intentioned query about whether he's all right.
"Good reflexes, dork," the owner of the foot taunts him as he slides dejectedly into his seat.
Sam usually likes history, but he can't bring himself to pay attention today. He's already covered this module twice this year, and it's not exactly riveting. The teacher calls on him twice when it's obvious he's been staring out the window, but after he answers both questions correctly the teacher obviously decides to leave well enough alone. Someone slips him a note while the teacher is scribbling dates on the blackboard. It's written in the loopy, bubbly script of a girl.
'Where are you from?'
He glances around in time to see two girls -a blonde and a brunette- dissolve into giggles when he looks their way. He shrugs, balls up the note, and gets a scowl in return from both of them for rejecting their obvious offer of friendship. Or maybe something else, it's hard to tell with girls. From the looks of it they're best friends, part of the ordinary crowd. They probably don't have too many other friends outside of each other, but often enough that's all that's needed in high school.
Someone from the back of the class throws an eraser at his head. It bounces off the back of his neck and lands on the floor. He ignores it, but he knows a second one is coming -there's always a second one. This time, he turns just enough to lift a hand and catch the projectile mid-air, and catches the thrower too, mouth open in shock. He lifts one shoulder and mouths: 'It's mine now.' He finds he almost enjoys the look of utter fury on the boy's face when he pockets both erasers. One less school supply he'll have to buy for himself. He kind of hopes someone will throw a protractor at him -his last one broke.
At lunch time the guy who threw the eraser corners him by the lockers, along with the guy who tried to trip him in class. Sam drops his backpack on the floor and tries to look cowed. He doesn't think it works. Dean would want him to beat these guys up. Hell, if Dean were here he'd beat the guys up and that would be the end of it: no one messes with Dean Winchester's kid brother, that's the rule. Except Dean isn't in school anymore and Sam isn't Dean Winchester's kid brother anymore. He's just the new kid, a nobody with a name people are going to forget less than a week after Dad hauls them away again. Dean would want him to beat these guys up, and Dad would tell him to keep his head down, and the two are sort of mutually exclusive except how they're not.
"Do we have to do this?" he asks quietly. "How about we just admit you're a lot bigger than me and leave it at that?" It's not strictly speaking true anymore, though. Sam has grown a lot since last year, and he doesn't think these guys have that much of an advantage over him anymore.
The bigger of the two sneers at him. "You want to roll over and show your belly, that's fine by me. You're going to pay for the privilege, though. Give me whatever money you've got. That's the amount you're going to pay me every day so I let you keep coming to school without getting pounded."
Sam shakes his head. "No."
The other boy laughs incredulously. "No?"
"I don't want to fight you, but I will, and I'll win. I'm giving you an out, here," he says reasonably, even as he feels his blood starting to simmer a little, just under the surface. Keep your head down and your nose clean, Dad's voice reminds him, and he kind of wants to tell Dad to shove it, except for how he's never had the guts to go up against Dad like that and he probably never well.
It goes about how you'd expect. The two guys think they can take him, easy, so they try, and they fail. It takes him less than a minute to take them down with a couple of really vicious blows, and then he steps back quickly and picks up his backpack.
"I told you so," he says. "Now get up before a teacher finds us and we all get detention for fighting!"
For the first time that day they seem to agree with him. The small crowd that gathered to watch the fight disperses a little dejectedly, disappointed that they won't be getting the show they were hoping for. A small kid Sam recognizes as being in his class comes up to him, eyes shining.
"That was really awesome!" he says, and Sam can already see the hero worship starting in his eyes, and all he can think is that the last time he fought a bully and won, he had to leave the nice kid behind and never talk to him again. Barry Cook taught him that it's stupid to want friends in this life.
"Whatever." He turns on his heel, goes into the cafeteria to find himself a secluded table.
The kid, predictably enough, follows him. "No, seriously, can you teach me to do that? Those guys were way bigger than you, and you totally took them down."
"Look, I'm not a charity," Sam snaps, and the kid backs up a step like Sam maybe just threatened to hit him instead. He sighs. "I'm not going to be here long enough to teach you, anyway. Don't get your hopes up."
"Can I at least sit here?"
Sam shrugs. "Suit yourself."
The kid tells him his name is Mickey, which goes a long way to explaining why he gets picked on. That and the fact that he's scrawny. He even wears a pocket protector. Sam bets that if he's not a mathlete now, he was at some point. Sometimes Sam misses being a mathlete, when he lets himself think about it at all. At least if Mickey sits at the same table with him, he won't get hassled at lunch time while Sam is still around. Sam eats the peanut butter sandwich he made for himself for lunch, drinks all the water in his canteen, and ignores the fleeting looks that Mickey gives him. Mickey's paper-bagging it too, but he has a rice salad and a banana and a fruit cup and a granola bar and a baggie full of tiny cut-up carrots to go along with his ham and cheese sandwich. His lunch looks like his mother packed it for him, but Sam isn't going to ask if that's the case, because he really doesn't want to know the answer.
"You want to ride home on the bus together?" Mickey asks, and Sam shakes his head.
"I'm not on the bus route. I'll walk, but thanks anyway."
"Okay." Mickey seems genuinely disappointed, and not just because he's lost a potential bodyguard.
Sam runs home from school, extra books clutched in his arms so they won't tear his bag. He arrives winded and sweaty, and can almost hear Dad's disapproving tone as he steps through the door. "Five miles shouldn't take the wind out of you like that. I should up your training."
He doesn't bother to point out that it was five miles with an extra forty pounds of books. Dad wouldn't listen anyway. He pulls out his agenda, checks his homework, forges Dad's signature at the bottom, so that the teachers think Dad actually gives a shit about his assignments. The salt lines are secure. He does his push-ups and reads the first chapter of The Grapes of Wrath, does all his sit-ups and all the math problems in the workbook his teacher gave him so he could 'catch up' on all the stuff he's missed so far. He doesn't bother with history, he's already aced two tests on the subject they're covering, he doesn't see the need to rehash it.
He boils water in the kettle, makes himself a cup of instant soup and puts one of the microwaveable dinners in to heat, because there's only a microwave, a hot plate and a coffee pot in the motel room. They brought the electric kettle with them, because it's easy enough to transport and comes in handy when they need water boiled in a hurry. Sometimes they get a place with a kitchenette, and sometimes they even manage to get an apartment or an old house, but a lot of the time he ends up making soup in the motel-supplied coffee pot and calling it good.
He checks the salt lines one last time, changes out of his clothes, brushes his teeth. He sets the alarm, puts the pager to recharge and crawls into bed once he's sure his bag is packed for tomorrow. The digital clock glows in the darkness, but the phone doesn't ring.
Mickey tries to stick with him for a good two days before even he gives up. Sam doesn't bother answering any of the questions or taunts or any other attempt to get his attention, and the other kids soon lose interest. There's no entertainment to be had from someone who just won't respond. They label him 'weirdo' and leave it at that, confident that Sam is now squared away as far as the universe is concerned. He's just a weirdo, and that's all there is to it.
On Friday night he shoves all his dirty clothes and some of Dad's and Dean's into their laundry bag and hauls it down the street to the laundromat. He carefully counts out the requisite number of quarters, painstakingly measures out the right kind amount of detergent and dumps it into the tray before starting up the machine. He pulls out 'The Grapes of Wrath' and sits in front of the machine, kicking his heels against the legs of his chair while he waits.
"Odd time to be doing laundry," an older guy says to him, taking a seat three chairs over. No one ever sits right next to each other unless they can help it, Sam has seen it. He likes that about people, that everyone seems to want their space. "Young fella like you, seems to me you should be out with your friends." The guy's dressed in a ratty old suit with a ratty old hat, his shoes scuffed. He looks like a guy who used to be a sharp dresser thirty years ago but doesn't have the disposable income anymore.
Sam shrugs and fiddles with his pager. "Don't have any friends. Besides, Friday night is the best time to do laundry. No one else here. If these places were open at three AM, I'd come then. Bound to be deserted, no one hogging the machines." It's the longest he's spoken aloud all week.
"You do have a point," the man concedes. "Where are your folks?"
"Home. Laundry's my chore."
"And they let you go out on Friday night to do it?"
"Better'n doing drugs."
"Guess so."
They don't talk after that. Sam goes back to his book, the guy goes back to watching the spin cycle. The machines here are the old kind, where you can watch your laundry spin round and round in the little window, dirty soapy water sloshing around and getting the glass all grimy. Sam hasn't liked Steinbeck since he read 'Of Mice and Men.' Sometimes he thinks that Dad and Dean spent the first eight years of Sam's life telling him about the rabbits, and the thought makes his stomach clench and his mouth taste sour.
He takes the laundry back to the motel long after the old guy has taken his stuff and gone home. Maybe to his wife, or maybe he just lives alone in an apartment full of fading memories. Sam folds up the laundry and puts it away in his duffle bag, puts the stuff that belongs to Dad and Dean in the bags they left behind. The salt lines are still intact, there's no message light blinking on the motel phone. He gets undressed, brushes his teeth, curls up under the sheets.
Saturday he goes for a run, all on his own. Dad likes to put him and Dean through his paces, but Dean isn't here to spar with, so he just runs. He likes running, even though he thought he'd hate it forever. It's the one time Dad and Dean can't keep up with him when he doesn't want them to. He's growing, still growing even now, he might even be taller than Dean when he stops. There was a time when that thought alone would have made him happy -Dean's always been taller, but now they're almost of a height, and Dean likes to tease him about accidentally slipping through the cracks in the floor, now that he's so skinny. The only good Sam sees in being tall now is that it lets him run faster. He runs until his lungs burn, until his muscles stop hurting and just go numb, staggers back through the motel door three hours later and barely remembers to lock it before throwing himself into the shower and standing there under the spray until the water turns cold. The salt line is still intact.
He finishes reading 'The Grapes of Wrath,' checks the due date on the book report and wonders if it's even worth writing. They'll probably be gone by the time he has to turn it in. If he turns it in early, he probably won't get the grade for it anyway. He switches on the TV and finds himself staring at the last couple of hours of Saturday morning cartoons. He switches it off a few minutes later, because he never watches those without Dean anyway, it hasn't really been his thing for years. Dean likes to buy really sugary cereal every so often and sit and watch whatever newest cartoon is on and complain that the cartoons aren't as awesome as when they were kids. That's usually just before Dad comes to pound on the door and demand to know whether they've finished their training or field-stripping the weapons or sharpening the knives. To Sam's knowledge, Dean's answer to Dad has never been anything other than 'Yessir.' The TV stays silent.
Sam starts writing his book report. He checks the school's curriculum, spends an hour or so figuring out which chapters and modules he's missed in which class, taking notes and working out a system to get caught up before the tests next week. It's nearly the end of the semester, which means final exams and papers will all be due. He's pretty sure he can get the teachers to go easy on him because he's new, but that won't get him the grades he wants. Dad and Dean took almost all the weapons with them when they left, which means there's that much less for him to do. He makes himself another peanut butter sandwich for lunch and cuts up an apple into quarters, checks the money that Dad left him, and wonders if he might not have time to pick up a job while he's here. Not a paper route, because they always want kids to have bicycles, but maybe at the mall at a hot dog stand or something.
He does all the exercises in the math modules he thinks he missed, double-checks his answers, realizes that he's got no one to tell him if they're right or wrong until Monday. By the time he's done with that and 'The Grapes of Wrath,' though, the day is pretty much over. He changes, brushes his teeth, checks the salt lines. The phone still hasn't rung, but it's not the first time. They're just caught up in the case, and Dad will get pissed off if Sam calls and wastes his cell phone minutes ("You think I print money in the back of the car when you're not looking, Sam?"). So he leaves the phone where it is, curls up and goes to sleep.
On Sunday he treats himself to the special at the local diner. They've got all-you-can-eat pancakes for three dollars, he sees no reason not to take advantage. He drinks as many cups of coffee as the waitress will serve him, and writes down a list of dates he needs to have memorised by the next history test. He knows a lot of them already, but it never hurts to go over it. They're doing human anatomy in biology class. Dad wants him to go over all the black dog lore again, make sure he's up to snuff in case they need him for something else. The pager hasn't gone off, though, which means there's no emergency. They might call tonight, it's been a week since Dad called for the information on the Church Grimms.
He spends the afternoon at the local library. He finishes his book report because he has nothing better to do, cleans up his notes on all the black dog lore he can find. Every instance of black dogs that he can find, any mention at all. It's a depressingly short list, for hours of works. By the time he's done it's getting dark, his eyes hurt and his nose itches from the dust. He packs up his papers, puts all his notes in a folder, makes sure none of his homework and his 'extracurricular' work get accidentally mixed up, heads back to the motel. He drops his bag by the door, checks his salt lines, doesn't bother with dinner before going to bed.
One of his teachers tries to take an interest in him. There's always one. Sometimes he thinks of Mr. Wyatt, and that's the only reason he still does his homework, still works hard on his tests, on his exams. He's got a 4.0 GPA even though he switches schools on average every four and a half weeks, and that's only because, every now and then, he allows himself to hope that maybe there might be more to life than waiting by a phone, than checking salt lines, than waiting every day for the call that will tell him that his father or his brother is dead, that no one is coming back for him. More to life than simply expecting to die.
He doesn't bother learning this teacher's name. She seems nice enough, tells him that he has a lot of talent, and tries to recruit him for the drama club. The track and field coach wants him too, once he sees how fast Sam can run. Sam just shrugs, ducks his head, tells them both quietly thanks but no thanks. The coach backs off, the teacher doesn't. She asks if everything's okay at home, gets all quiet and sympathetic and it's obvious she thinks that Sam is hiding some terrible secret, like he's being abused or Dad's an alcoholic or they live in squalor or something. He brushes her off, doesn't even bother thinking about how she'd react if she really knew what the secret was, if she knew what was really out there. Dean would smirk at her, come up with a smart-assed remark, but Sam doesn't see the point.
On Saturday Sam goes back to the library, but he's at loose ends now. The research is done, his papers are written. The pager is quiet, the phone's been silent. The library doesn't have much by way of lore, either, the way most small-town libraries don't. Sometimes Sam catches an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer when the motels they stay in have cable, and he always laughs at the idea that this crappy high-school library mysteriously has all these books on lore. Even if the librarian has connections, it would take years to collect all those books, and in Sam's experience, people with rare books on lore don't part with them easily. He wishes it were that easy, sometimes.
He walks back to the motel, takes another shower, checks the salt lines. It's too early to go to bed even by his standards, but he doesn't feel like going out again, doesn't feel like getting more of a head start on his homework, even though he should. When Dad and Dean come back, he won't have as much time for schoolwork, he should take advantage of the downtime as much as he can. He sits cross-legged on his bed, toying with the knife Dad always insists he carry when he's not at school, until the familiar rumble of a car engine catches his attention in the parking lot. He gets up, tosses the knife aside, pulls open the door and goes out to help.
Dean is limping badly, the right leg of his jeans covered in crusted blood. "Hey, Sammy!" he grins.
Sam takes another step forward, only to have Dad toss his duffle bag at him. He catches it, nods once, then spins on his heel and goes to take it inside, clamping his teeth down on the inside of his cheeks as hard as he can. He swallows hard, puts down the bag, goes back out to help finish unloading the car. Dean hobbles past him, dragging his own bag, and by the time Sam gets back inside he's stripped off his bloody jeans and is making a half-assed attempt to clean up what looks like a really horrific gash on his calf. Sam drops the equipment by the door, fetches the first-aid kit from the bathroom, drops to a crouch by Dean's chair.
"Your hands are filthy, you'll get it infected."
"Aw, did I insult your professionalism, Nurse Sammy?"
Sam wipes at the cut none too gently with an alcohol swab and feels strangely vindicated when Dean hisses in pain. Behind him he can hear Dad unpacking the gear from the trip. He doesn't say anything, so Sam keeps cleaning the gash. It's not deep enough to need stitches, but he pulls out the box of steri-strips so it won't scar too badly. Not that Dean would mind if it did -he has this weird delusion that all women get really turned on by scars.
"D'you get it?"
"Hell, yeah," Dean's grin grows even wider. "There were three of them, but we took 'em down like it was nothing. You shoulda been there, Sammy."
Sam catches his bottom lip in his teeth as he applies another ster-strip to Dean's leg. "Like it was nothing, huh?"
Dean tilts his head to the side. "The last one had a bit of fight in her, but we got her anyway. So, how many As did you get, dork? You spend the whole week doing math homework?"
Sam shakes his head. "Wrote a book report, too."
His brother reaches over to ruffle his hair, and Sam makes himself hold still for it, allows himself a small smile. "Attaboy. Next time, I'll save one for you."
"Right."
"Sam, if you're done, there's stuff still needs unloading from the car," Dad says from the doorway.
"Coming."
"What?"
"I'm coming, sir."
Sam heads back to where Dad is taking the last few armfuls of stuff out of the car. As he steps over the threshold he looks down to see a brand-new scuff mark there, scattering the grains of salt over the threadbare motel carpet. He doesn't know if he's the one who broke the line or if it was Dad or Dean when they were unloading the car. He shrugs and tells himself it doesn't matter.
Tonight he'll lay the lines back down properly, start over again fresh.
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Summary: From a prompt by khakigrrl at the latest ohsam comment-fic meme which read: Teenchesters, Gen, post-7.04. What with Dean going with Dad on more hunts and Sam having to keep their absence and their work a secret, Sam's getting more lonely and disconnected.
Characters: Sam, brief appearances by Dean and John, OCs
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 5,775
Disclaimer: It still all belongs to the CW
Warnings: No major warnings
Neurotic Author's Note #1: I love this prompt, and I am vaguely worried I didn't do it justice. I kind of wanted to write a quiet little fic in which nothing happens and everything happens, but I'm not sure I succeeded.
Neurotic Author's Note #2: I am a little obsessed with how teen!Sam developed all those weird OCD coping mechanisms we see later on in the show. Oops?
Neurotic Author's Note #3: Unbeta'd, read at your own risk.
"You're sure it's not a skin walker." Dad's voice sounds tinny on the new cell phone he just acquired. Or maybe it's just the payphone Sam is at that has crappy reception, it's sort of hard to tell.
"Yeah."
"What?"
Automatically Sam stands up straighter. "I mean, I'm sure, sir. It's a Church Grim -they don't leave their designated church grounds. Uh, the place used to be a church, but it burned down fifteen years ago, according to the records we found." By 'we' Sam means himself, but it won't do to remind his father of that.
"Okay," Dad accepts the verdict without question, which is about as close to 'good job' as he ever gets around to saying. Some days, Sam lives with the wild hope that eventually he'll do something well enough to earn himself something approximating approval, but most of the time he knows not to hold his breath. That ship sailed years ago when he skipped out on crossbow practice in favour of soccer that one time. Dad might have forgiven him for that one, eventually, but he never forgot the transgression. "Silver bullets work?"
"Yeah, same as a Black Dog or a skin walker," Sam twists the silver cord of the phone around his fingers, stops when the movement makes the phone go staticky.
"Right. Keep your head down, I'll be in touch."
It takes Sam a few seconds to realize that Dad has hung up. He stares at the dull keypad in front of him, exhales slowly as he places the phone back on the cradle. "Bye, Dad. Say hi to Dean for me," he tells the phone, securely on the hook.
He lets himself back into the motel room Dad rented out for the month. There's only the one king-sized bed in here, because Dad has been taking Dean with him more and more often on the hunts. Sam only has to share the bed a few days out of the month these days, which is fine by him, because he's grown five inches over the past few months, and trying to sleep next to Dean is an exercise in getting elbowed every five minutes and told to shove over and quit hogging the sheets. Right now, though, the bed is all his. He could even leave it unmade if he wanted -it's not like Dad is here to check his hospital corners or anything. Not that Dad cares about his hospital corners, but whatever. Sam likes making his bed. He likes having the room tidy. Dean always leaves his crap lying around, dirty clothes and empty pizza boxes and Dad never says a word to him about it anyway.
Sam glances at the TV at the foot of the bed, ignores it in favour of carefully emptying out his school bag and sorting out his old papers and notes. He has no idea where they'll be in the curriculum at the new school, but he'll find out tomorrow, he supposes. He just likes to start fresh as much as possible, keep his notes in order. There's nothing good on TV on Sunday nights, anyway, not unless the motel has cable, which it doesn't. The motels that you pay for by the week generally don't. He throws out the old papers, glances quickly at the red 'A' circled at the top of his last book report along with his old teacher's comment ('Excellent! A thoughtful piece on Salinger's work. You have a keen insight into Holden's sense of alienation. I am looking forward to seeing more of your work!'), folds the report neatly into quarters and drops it in the trash alongside the others.
If Dean were here he'd insist they watch some stupid movie or other, or find some new way to annoy Sam, or take him out for a sandwich at the diner. Or, even more likely, Dad would decide that there was still time for training before sunset, even if it's already pitch-black outside. Sam isn't allowed to object at those times, because even if it's actually long past sunset, the sun is still shining if Dad says it is. Dean will back him up, every single time, even if he's just tripped three times over stuff he can't see in the dark. Sam scowls at the empty spot on the bed where Dean would be sprawled, long-limbed and barefoot and taking up all the available space, probably munching on a bag of Cheetos and getting orange powder all over Sam's side of the bed, just to be an annoying prick.
Sam strips to his boxers, pulls a t-shirt over his head, folds his clothes and tucks them back into his duffle bag and places it by the door. He checks the salt lines again, but they're intact, just the way he left them when he came in through the door. He hasn't disturbed the lines once in the past three days. The longest he's managed without kicking a line by accident has been sixteen days, but he's trying for a record, maybe thirty days straight. Not that Dad would notice. He hasn't decided if Dean kicking the lines out of shape breaks his streak or not. He's leaning towards not. He brushes his teeth, stares at himself in the mirror and wonders if this is the year he'll have to start shaving. The only good thing about hopping from school to school is that he won't get teased in the locker room for being a 'late bloomer,' as one gym teacher put it.
The bed is freezing when he slides under the sheets and curls into a ball. He keeps to his own side of the bed, but pulls all the covers over himself on principle. He sets the alarm on the digital clock in the room and spends the next hour staring at the red digits clicking away steadily, wondering if they'll call tonight, or maybe tomorrow, to tell him if they made it out okay.
In the morning Sam gets up just after six and goes to the local diner, lining up with the truck drivers and construction workers just starting their day, and orders a coffee and two muffins to go, ignoring the cashier's friendly comment about whether or not he's too young to be drinking coffee ("It'll stunt your growth, kid!"). He clips the pager Dad bought him to his belt, and doesn't hope it'll go off. School is a half-hour run, but that's part of Dad's plan anyway, to make sure he trains before and after school even if Dad isn't there to watch him do it. He doesn't want to get there drenched in sweat his first day, not in front of all his classmates, so he leaves early, sneaks into the locker room to take a shower long before anyone else arrives. By the time he gets to the registrar's office his t-shirt and sweatpants are tucked away in his locker and he's clean and neatly dressed, his hair dry and his face and hands scrubbed.
"Here you go, honey," the registrar hands him his schedule and points to a pile of books on her desk. "You need help finding your first class? I can arrange for one of the hall monitors to escort you."
He shakes his head. "I can manage, thank you."
All schools sort of look alike, after a while. Same institutional yellow and green paint on the walls, same grey lockers, same locks on the lockers. Same types of kids, day in and day out. The cool kids, the jocks, the cheerleaders, and the losers, the nerds and geeks and just plain outcasts, and then everyone in-between. Sam looks at his schedule, memorizes the numbers of the classrooms, and takes about five minutes to figure out the layout of the school and how the doors are numbered. By the time he's got that sorted out in his head, the first bell has rung.
Coming to a new school demands a performance, the same old song and dance. He's used to it by now, but he doesn't enjoy it anymore than he ever has. Dean at least always liked the opportunity for new conquests. A girl in every port. He hoists his schoolbag over his shoulder, heavy now with his new books, and heads down the corridor. There were a few too many books to fit into the bag, and it's getting a little threadbare anyway, so he hangs onto the heaviest of the books, holding them against his chest like a shield. The teacher looks up as he walks in, the other kids already settling into their seats and gazing at him curiously. The new kid is always a source of interest. Sam knows the drill.
The teacher seems to get it, but it doesn't change anything. He gets up to stand next to Sam. "Good morning, class. As you can no doubt see, we have a new addition to our ranks. Do you prefer Samuel or Sam?"
"I like Sam better," Sam says quietly.
"Sam, then. I hope you'll all make him feel welcome. I don't doubt that all of you here have, at one point or another, been the new kid in school, so you know what it's like. Do the school proud, would you?" he says, then sighs when there's no visible response to his exhortation. "Is there anything about yourself that you'd like to share, Sam?"
Sam shakes his head. "No, sir. Thanks anyway."
"Okay, then. Why don't you go take a seat at that free desk over there next to Randy Miller, all right?"
"Yes, sir."
He's already expecting the foot that comes almost out of nowhere, stuck out from under a desk as he walks by. He could have dodged it easily, skipped over it, something, but that would mean drawing more attention to himself. There's no violating Dad's cardinal rule: keep your head down and your nose clean. Any attention at all could mean child services coming down on them, and that would spell disaster. They've already had more run-ins with CPS than they'd like, and none of them have been pleasant. More than a few times they've ended up having to hightail it out of town, and once they even had to leave a hunt unfinished. Dad had punished them both for that blunder, even though it had really been Sam's fault. Sam had tried to explain it to him, but Dad was implacable: Dean was responsible for Sam, so if Sam got into trouble, Dean got into trouble.
The trick here is to make it look good. So he lets himself trip over the foot, but he keeps his grip on his books and fakes a stumble forward while all the kids in his class laugh at him. The heat that rushes to his cheeks at that isn't faked in the slightest, though, and he ignores the teacher's well-intentioned query about whether he's all right.
"Good reflexes, dork," the owner of the foot taunts him as he slides dejectedly into his seat.
Sam usually likes history, but he can't bring himself to pay attention today. He's already covered this module twice this year, and it's not exactly riveting. The teacher calls on him twice when it's obvious he's been staring out the window, but after he answers both questions correctly the teacher obviously decides to leave well enough alone. Someone slips him a note while the teacher is scribbling dates on the blackboard. It's written in the loopy, bubbly script of a girl.
'Where are you from?'
He glances around in time to see two girls -a blonde and a brunette- dissolve into giggles when he looks their way. He shrugs, balls up the note, and gets a scowl in return from both of them for rejecting their obvious offer of friendship. Or maybe something else, it's hard to tell with girls. From the looks of it they're best friends, part of the ordinary crowd. They probably don't have too many other friends outside of each other, but often enough that's all that's needed in high school.
Someone from the back of the class throws an eraser at his head. It bounces off the back of his neck and lands on the floor. He ignores it, but he knows a second one is coming -there's always a second one. This time, he turns just enough to lift a hand and catch the projectile mid-air, and catches the thrower too, mouth open in shock. He lifts one shoulder and mouths: 'It's mine now.' He finds he almost enjoys the look of utter fury on the boy's face when he pockets both erasers. One less school supply he'll have to buy for himself. He kind of hopes someone will throw a protractor at him -his last one broke.
At lunch time the guy who threw the eraser corners him by the lockers, along with the guy who tried to trip him in class. Sam drops his backpack on the floor and tries to look cowed. He doesn't think it works. Dean would want him to beat these guys up. Hell, if Dean were here he'd beat the guys up and that would be the end of it: no one messes with Dean Winchester's kid brother, that's the rule. Except Dean isn't in school anymore and Sam isn't Dean Winchester's kid brother anymore. He's just the new kid, a nobody with a name people are going to forget less than a week after Dad hauls them away again. Dean would want him to beat these guys up, and Dad would tell him to keep his head down, and the two are sort of mutually exclusive except how they're not.
"Do we have to do this?" he asks quietly. "How about we just admit you're a lot bigger than me and leave it at that?" It's not strictly speaking true anymore, though. Sam has grown a lot since last year, and he doesn't think these guys have that much of an advantage over him anymore.
The bigger of the two sneers at him. "You want to roll over and show your belly, that's fine by me. You're going to pay for the privilege, though. Give me whatever money you've got. That's the amount you're going to pay me every day so I let you keep coming to school without getting pounded."
Sam shakes his head. "No."
The other boy laughs incredulously. "No?"
"I don't want to fight you, but I will, and I'll win. I'm giving you an out, here," he says reasonably, even as he feels his blood starting to simmer a little, just under the surface. Keep your head down and your nose clean, Dad's voice reminds him, and he kind of wants to tell Dad to shove it, except for how he's never had the guts to go up against Dad like that and he probably never well.
It goes about how you'd expect. The two guys think they can take him, easy, so they try, and they fail. It takes him less than a minute to take them down with a couple of really vicious blows, and then he steps back quickly and picks up his backpack.
"I told you so," he says. "Now get up before a teacher finds us and we all get detention for fighting!"
For the first time that day they seem to agree with him. The small crowd that gathered to watch the fight disperses a little dejectedly, disappointed that they won't be getting the show they were hoping for. A small kid Sam recognizes as being in his class comes up to him, eyes shining.
"That was really awesome!" he says, and Sam can already see the hero worship starting in his eyes, and all he can think is that the last time he fought a bully and won, he had to leave the nice kid behind and never talk to him again. Barry Cook taught him that it's stupid to want friends in this life.
"Whatever." He turns on his heel, goes into the cafeteria to find himself a secluded table.
The kid, predictably enough, follows him. "No, seriously, can you teach me to do that? Those guys were way bigger than you, and you totally took them down."
"Look, I'm not a charity," Sam snaps, and the kid backs up a step like Sam maybe just threatened to hit him instead. He sighs. "I'm not going to be here long enough to teach you, anyway. Don't get your hopes up."
"Can I at least sit here?"
Sam shrugs. "Suit yourself."
The kid tells him his name is Mickey, which goes a long way to explaining why he gets picked on. That and the fact that he's scrawny. He even wears a pocket protector. Sam bets that if he's not a mathlete now, he was at some point. Sometimes Sam misses being a mathlete, when he lets himself think about it at all. At least if Mickey sits at the same table with him, he won't get hassled at lunch time while Sam is still around. Sam eats the peanut butter sandwich he made for himself for lunch, drinks all the water in his canteen, and ignores the fleeting looks that Mickey gives him. Mickey's paper-bagging it too, but he has a rice salad and a banana and a fruit cup and a granola bar and a baggie full of tiny cut-up carrots to go along with his ham and cheese sandwich. His lunch looks like his mother packed it for him, but Sam isn't going to ask if that's the case, because he really doesn't want to know the answer.
"You want to ride home on the bus together?" Mickey asks, and Sam shakes his head.
"I'm not on the bus route. I'll walk, but thanks anyway."
"Okay." Mickey seems genuinely disappointed, and not just because he's lost a potential bodyguard.
Sam runs home from school, extra books clutched in his arms so they won't tear his bag. He arrives winded and sweaty, and can almost hear Dad's disapproving tone as he steps through the door. "Five miles shouldn't take the wind out of you like that. I should up your training."
He doesn't bother to point out that it was five miles with an extra forty pounds of books. Dad wouldn't listen anyway. He pulls out his agenda, checks his homework, forges Dad's signature at the bottom, so that the teachers think Dad actually gives a shit about his assignments. The salt lines are secure. He does his push-ups and reads the first chapter of The Grapes of Wrath, does all his sit-ups and all the math problems in the workbook his teacher gave him so he could 'catch up' on all the stuff he's missed so far. He doesn't bother with history, he's already aced two tests on the subject they're covering, he doesn't see the need to rehash it.
He boils water in the kettle, makes himself a cup of instant soup and puts one of the microwaveable dinners in to heat, because there's only a microwave, a hot plate and a coffee pot in the motel room. They brought the electric kettle with them, because it's easy enough to transport and comes in handy when they need water boiled in a hurry. Sometimes they get a place with a kitchenette, and sometimes they even manage to get an apartment or an old house, but a lot of the time he ends up making soup in the motel-supplied coffee pot and calling it good.
He checks the salt lines one last time, changes out of his clothes, brushes his teeth. He sets the alarm, puts the pager to recharge and crawls into bed once he's sure his bag is packed for tomorrow. The digital clock glows in the darkness, but the phone doesn't ring.
Mickey tries to stick with him for a good two days before even he gives up. Sam doesn't bother answering any of the questions or taunts or any other attempt to get his attention, and the other kids soon lose interest. There's no entertainment to be had from someone who just won't respond. They label him 'weirdo' and leave it at that, confident that Sam is now squared away as far as the universe is concerned. He's just a weirdo, and that's all there is to it.
On Friday night he shoves all his dirty clothes and some of Dad's and Dean's into their laundry bag and hauls it down the street to the laundromat. He carefully counts out the requisite number of quarters, painstakingly measures out the right kind amount of detergent and dumps it into the tray before starting up the machine. He pulls out 'The Grapes of Wrath' and sits in front of the machine, kicking his heels against the legs of his chair while he waits.
"Odd time to be doing laundry," an older guy says to him, taking a seat three chairs over. No one ever sits right next to each other unless they can help it, Sam has seen it. He likes that about people, that everyone seems to want their space. "Young fella like you, seems to me you should be out with your friends." The guy's dressed in a ratty old suit with a ratty old hat, his shoes scuffed. He looks like a guy who used to be a sharp dresser thirty years ago but doesn't have the disposable income anymore.
Sam shrugs and fiddles with his pager. "Don't have any friends. Besides, Friday night is the best time to do laundry. No one else here. If these places were open at three AM, I'd come then. Bound to be deserted, no one hogging the machines." It's the longest he's spoken aloud all week.
"You do have a point," the man concedes. "Where are your folks?"
"Home. Laundry's my chore."
"And they let you go out on Friday night to do it?"
"Better'n doing drugs."
"Guess so."
They don't talk after that. Sam goes back to his book, the guy goes back to watching the spin cycle. The machines here are the old kind, where you can watch your laundry spin round and round in the little window, dirty soapy water sloshing around and getting the glass all grimy. Sam hasn't liked Steinbeck since he read 'Of Mice and Men.' Sometimes he thinks that Dad and Dean spent the first eight years of Sam's life telling him about the rabbits, and the thought makes his stomach clench and his mouth taste sour.
He takes the laundry back to the motel long after the old guy has taken his stuff and gone home. Maybe to his wife, or maybe he just lives alone in an apartment full of fading memories. Sam folds up the laundry and puts it away in his duffle bag, puts the stuff that belongs to Dad and Dean in the bags they left behind. The salt lines are still intact, there's no message light blinking on the motel phone. He gets undressed, brushes his teeth, curls up under the sheets.
Saturday he goes for a run, all on his own. Dad likes to put him and Dean through his paces, but Dean isn't here to spar with, so he just runs. He likes running, even though he thought he'd hate it forever. It's the one time Dad and Dean can't keep up with him when he doesn't want them to. He's growing, still growing even now, he might even be taller than Dean when he stops. There was a time when that thought alone would have made him happy -Dean's always been taller, but now they're almost of a height, and Dean likes to tease him about accidentally slipping through the cracks in the floor, now that he's so skinny. The only good Sam sees in being tall now is that it lets him run faster. He runs until his lungs burn, until his muscles stop hurting and just go numb, staggers back through the motel door three hours later and barely remembers to lock it before throwing himself into the shower and standing there under the spray until the water turns cold. The salt line is still intact.
He finishes reading 'The Grapes of Wrath,' checks the due date on the book report and wonders if it's even worth writing. They'll probably be gone by the time he has to turn it in. If he turns it in early, he probably won't get the grade for it anyway. He switches on the TV and finds himself staring at the last couple of hours of Saturday morning cartoons. He switches it off a few minutes later, because he never watches those without Dean anyway, it hasn't really been his thing for years. Dean likes to buy really sugary cereal every so often and sit and watch whatever newest cartoon is on and complain that the cartoons aren't as awesome as when they were kids. That's usually just before Dad comes to pound on the door and demand to know whether they've finished their training or field-stripping the weapons or sharpening the knives. To Sam's knowledge, Dean's answer to Dad has never been anything other than 'Yessir.' The TV stays silent.
Sam starts writing his book report. He checks the school's curriculum, spends an hour or so figuring out which chapters and modules he's missed in which class, taking notes and working out a system to get caught up before the tests next week. It's nearly the end of the semester, which means final exams and papers will all be due. He's pretty sure he can get the teachers to go easy on him because he's new, but that won't get him the grades he wants. Dad and Dean took almost all the weapons with them when they left, which means there's that much less for him to do. He makes himself another peanut butter sandwich for lunch and cuts up an apple into quarters, checks the money that Dad left him, and wonders if he might not have time to pick up a job while he's here. Not a paper route, because they always want kids to have bicycles, but maybe at the mall at a hot dog stand or something.
He does all the exercises in the math modules he thinks he missed, double-checks his answers, realizes that he's got no one to tell him if they're right or wrong until Monday. By the time he's done with that and 'The Grapes of Wrath,' though, the day is pretty much over. He changes, brushes his teeth, checks the salt lines. The phone still hasn't rung, but it's not the first time. They're just caught up in the case, and Dad will get pissed off if Sam calls and wastes his cell phone minutes ("You think I print money in the back of the car when you're not looking, Sam?"). So he leaves the phone where it is, curls up and goes to sleep.
On Sunday he treats himself to the special at the local diner. They've got all-you-can-eat pancakes for three dollars, he sees no reason not to take advantage. He drinks as many cups of coffee as the waitress will serve him, and writes down a list of dates he needs to have memorised by the next history test. He knows a lot of them already, but it never hurts to go over it. They're doing human anatomy in biology class. Dad wants him to go over all the black dog lore again, make sure he's up to snuff in case they need him for something else. The pager hasn't gone off, though, which means there's no emergency. They might call tonight, it's been a week since Dad called for the information on the Church Grimms.
He spends the afternoon at the local library. He finishes his book report because he has nothing better to do, cleans up his notes on all the black dog lore he can find. Every instance of black dogs that he can find, any mention at all. It's a depressingly short list, for hours of works. By the time he's done it's getting dark, his eyes hurt and his nose itches from the dust. He packs up his papers, puts all his notes in a folder, makes sure none of his homework and his 'extracurricular' work get accidentally mixed up, heads back to the motel. He drops his bag by the door, checks his salt lines, doesn't bother with dinner before going to bed.
One of his teachers tries to take an interest in him. There's always one. Sometimes he thinks of Mr. Wyatt, and that's the only reason he still does his homework, still works hard on his tests, on his exams. He's got a 4.0 GPA even though he switches schools on average every four and a half weeks, and that's only because, every now and then, he allows himself to hope that maybe there might be more to life than waiting by a phone, than checking salt lines, than waiting every day for the call that will tell him that his father or his brother is dead, that no one is coming back for him. More to life than simply expecting to die.
He doesn't bother learning this teacher's name. She seems nice enough, tells him that he has a lot of talent, and tries to recruit him for the drama club. The track and field coach wants him too, once he sees how fast Sam can run. Sam just shrugs, ducks his head, tells them both quietly thanks but no thanks. The coach backs off, the teacher doesn't. She asks if everything's okay at home, gets all quiet and sympathetic and it's obvious she thinks that Sam is hiding some terrible secret, like he's being abused or Dad's an alcoholic or they live in squalor or something. He brushes her off, doesn't even bother thinking about how she'd react if she really knew what the secret was, if she knew what was really out there. Dean would smirk at her, come up with a smart-assed remark, but Sam doesn't see the point.
On Saturday Sam goes back to the library, but he's at loose ends now. The research is done, his papers are written. The pager is quiet, the phone's been silent. The library doesn't have much by way of lore, either, the way most small-town libraries don't. Sometimes Sam catches an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer when the motels they stay in have cable, and he always laughs at the idea that this crappy high-school library mysteriously has all these books on lore. Even if the librarian has connections, it would take years to collect all those books, and in Sam's experience, people with rare books on lore don't part with them easily. He wishes it were that easy, sometimes.
He walks back to the motel, takes another shower, checks the salt lines. It's too early to go to bed even by his standards, but he doesn't feel like going out again, doesn't feel like getting more of a head start on his homework, even though he should. When Dad and Dean come back, he won't have as much time for schoolwork, he should take advantage of the downtime as much as he can. He sits cross-legged on his bed, toying with the knife Dad always insists he carry when he's not at school, until the familiar rumble of a car engine catches his attention in the parking lot. He gets up, tosses the knife aside, pulls open the door and goes out to help.
Dean is limping badly, the right leg of his jeans covered in crusted blood. "Hey, Sammy!" he grins.
Sam takes another step forward, only to have Dad toss his duffle bag at him. He catches it, nods once, then spins on his heel and goes to take it inside, clamping his teeth down on the inside of his cheeks as hard as he can. He swallows hard, puts down the bag, goes back out to help finish unloading the car. Dean hobbles past him, dragging his own bag, and by the time Sam gets back inside he's stripped off his bloody jeans and is making a half-assed attempt to clean up what looks like a really horrific gash on his calf. Sam drops the equipment by the door, fetches the first-aid kit from the bathroom, drops to a crouch by Dean's chair.
"Your hands are filthy, you'll get it infected."
"Aw, did I insult your professionalism, Nurse Sammy?"
Sam wipes at the cut none too gently with an alcohol swab and feels strangely vindicated when Dean hisses in pain. Behind him he can hear Dad unpacking the gear from the trip. He doesn't say anything, so Sam keeps cleaning the gash. It's not deep enough to need stitches, but he pulls out the box of steri-strips so it won't scar too badly. Not that Dean would mind if it did -he has this weird delusion that all women get really turned on by scars.
"D'you get it?"
"Hell, yeah," Dean's grin grows even wider. "There were three of them, but we took 'em down like it was nothing. You shoulda been there, Sammy."
Sam catches his bottom lip in his teeth as he applies another ster-strip to Dean's leg. "Like it was nothing, huh?"
Dean tilts his head to the side. "The last one had a bit of fight in her, but we got her anyway. So, how many As did you get, dork? You spend the whole week doing math homework?"
Sam shakes his head. "Wrote a book report, too."
His brother reaches over to ruffle his hair, and Sam makes himself hold still for it, allows himself a small smile. "Attaboy. Next time, I'll save one for you."
"Right."
"Sam, if you're done, there's stuff still needs unloading from the car," Dad says from the doorway.
"Coming."
"What?"
"I'm coming, sir."
Sam heads back to where Dad is taking the last few armfuls of stuff out of the car. As he steps over the threshold he looks down to see a brand-new scuff mark there, scattering the grains of salt over the threadbare motel carpet. He doesn't know if he's the one who broke the line or if it was Dad or Dean when they were unloading the car. He shrugs and tells himself it doesn't matter.
Tonight he'll lay the lines back down properly, start over again fresh.
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