| The Other Son: Chapter One |
[May. 19th, 2007|12:15 pm] |
Title: The Other Son
Author: ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) revenant_scribe
Chapter One: FREAK
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: R
Warnings: wincest, semi-spoilers for 1.18 'Something Wicked'.
A/N: AU. This is difficult to summarize fully without also spoiling fully.
Summary: A vision incites Sam to leave his father's side and head to Fitchburg. Without any clear notion as to what he is hunting, and no supernatural signs in the town of any kind as far as he can tell, Sam begins with what little he does know. But it doesn't take long before Sam begins to wonder if there might just be more than one mystery to be uncovered.
[Link to: MASTER POST]
“Where are you?”
“Dad,” Sam said. He’d been expecting the call, had actually assumed it would come earlier, before he’d gotten so close to his destination, but that didn’t make speaking with his father any easier. He gripped the phone in his hand, watched as Fitchburg welcomed him proudly with a bright sign that declared its population (2,051). Sam ignored the sign, his fingers tensing on the steering wheel until the knuckles turned white; with conscious effort, he relaxed his grip.
“Sam?”
“I’m just entering Fitchburg.”
“Fitchburg,” John paused. “There’s nothing happening in Fitchburg.”
John said it with the sort of authority Sam had gotten used to hearing, and he defied it with an ease he had cultivated over years of being kept under his father’s sharp eye. “Yes, there is.”
“What is it?”
“…I’m not exactly sure.” Outside the window various pieces of landscape sent prickles through him, jogged vague senses of memory. Sam had never been to Fitchburg before.
“You don’t even know what… did you have a …” John’s tone changed, it grew deeper and his words clearer as he pieced together what must have instigated his son’s latest show of disobedience. “Sam. … don’t you do this.”
It had been a long time since that tone of voice had worked to keep Sam in check: not since he’d been out hunting on his own for over two years. He was twenty-one and more than capable of making his own choices. “I can’t just ignore it Dad.”
“I want you to stop this. I have a job. People are getting hurt. Turn the car around, Sam.”
Sam had reached the heart of the small town, restaurants and shops and a play park drifting passed his windows as he drove down what must have been the main street. It was as good a spot as any to get out and get a feel for the place. Fitchburg was not as small as Sam had been expecting it to be, but it was in no way a large town and there weren’t many people cluttering the streets despite the sun being out and the sky hanging blue and cloudless. “This is where I’m supposed to be.”
“Where you need to be is over in Indiana where there is an actual case, actual reports coming in about people ending-up in the hospital. Do you have any idea what you’re walking into there?”
“No, I don’t,” Sam admitted. The Impala sat idling at the side of the road, and Sam still kept his fingers around the wheel as if having control of the car meant having control of the conversation. It didn’t matter how many times he had the conversation with his father, each time felt new and dangerous.
“I don’t want you over there by yourself, at the mercy of …”
“Of what?” Sam asked. “Of what, dad? You trust your instincts all the time!”
“That’s different.”
“How so? You want me to pretend these visions aren’t a part of me, but I can’t. I’ve tried. Believe me, I’d like nothing more than to be just like anyone else, but I’m not. Right now, everything in me is saying that this is where I need to be.”
“Sammy …”
“I’ll call you when I figure out what’s going on.” Sam ended the call and dropped the phone on the seat beside him. He was hungry and he needed to get a feel for the town, figure-out what had drawn him there.
Sam had spent most of his life learning how to blend-in and look as if he belonged no matter how awkward and out-of-place he felt. Some towns sent shivers up his spine, prickles of unease like he was being watched or weighed. It was a kind of disquiet that went beyond the usual nerves he had about a hunt, years of entering haunted houses expecting something to jump screaming from the dark shadows and rarely, if ever, being disappointed. Fitchburg, however, was not one of those places. Instead, as Sam stepped-out of the car into the warm summer air it felt like being wrapped in a blanket. Standing at the side of the road, he allowed his eyes to fall closed as he rolled his shoulders and attempted to stretch out after so much time spent on the road.
Sam’s car was a ’67 Chevy Impala that had been his dad’s for the longest time, and that Sam had inherited by rights when he’d finally gotten around to getting his license, making it official that he could drive, although he’d been driving it long before that. Sam loved and hated that car.
It was impossible not to have a certain amount of respect for her; she was after all a sight to behold, and Sam was aware that he had more memories tied up in that car than he did anywhere else. She was solid and sleek and made no secret of her raw power, and he was always aware that he and the Impala didn’t quite look as if they belonged together. The Impala was bold statements and alluring power and visible and impossible to ignore. Sam might have been 6’4’’ of solid muscle but he masked all of that with careful layering, hunched shoulders and beguiling smiles. He liked to conceal his strength, walking around like a stork that might be blown over in a stiff breeze because he had learned it paid to be underestimated.
Still, even with the juxtaposition between man and vehicle, Sam got a friendly smile from an older woman stepping out of a deli across the street, and when she’d finished stuffing her purchases into a large wicker-woven purse she strode across the street, still grinning. “New to town?”
“Passing through,” Sam said, “looking for some place to eat, and somewhere to stay.”
“I’m Sheila.” She thrust forward a hand that Sam shook. He was always caught off-guard by small-town friendliness however many times he’d encountered it. Her grip was firm despite her small hands, and her smile was wide.
“Sam.”
“Pleasure.” She hitched her bag up on her shoulder. “As far as food goes you have a fair selection, but that deli,” she indicated the store she’d just come from, “cheap and fresh. Burt’s the best in town,” she whispered conspiratorially, and then wiggled her fingers drawing Sam’s attention to the ring on her finger. “I might be biased.”
Sam laughed and her welcoming grin grew wider. “As far as a place to stay, there’s a few B&B’s.” His look must have let her know what he thought of that. Bed and Breakfasts were always comfortable and pleasant, but they offered restricted privacy, which was never good in Sam’s line of work, and they also cost more. “But, something tells me you’d prefer the motel – 2400 Court Motel – which incidentally is also its address. Just down there,” she indicated a street that branched to the right, behind the large school he was parked in front of.
“Thanks a lot.”
“Not a problem. It doesn’t take long to get oriented in a town like this, but every little bit helps. I’ve got to run. Have to swing by my mum’s before dinner. Nice to meet you!” She waved as she headed away.
Sam chose Burt’s deli, hoping Sheila’s fiancé would be as talkative and friendly as Sheila had been, and also that Burt had some idea of what might have drawn Sam to Fitchburg in the first place. As it was, though Burt was indeed both talkative and friendly and was also more than willing to help, he had absolutely no insight into anything remotely peculiar occurring in or around town. By the time Sam left the deli, filled-up both with a delicious roast beef sandwich and more local gossip than he could tolerate after such a long drive and an argument with his own father, he was no closer to understanding his vision than when he had first set-out as a result of it.
…………………………………….
2400 Court Motel was fairly large and surprisingly busy, for a town like Fitchburg, Sam supposed. He’d long since forgotten what a comfortable bed felt like – if he’d ever known – but the bed that his room had to offer was at least less lumpy than most, and thankfully there was no telling dip in the center of the mattress.
Regardless of how peaceful the town appeared, Sam’s training would not allow him to rest long before completing the appropriate protections. The smell of salt had meant safety to Sam since the age of three, where the habit of laying lines of it by doors and windows had begun to shift from merely a quirk and a tradition to an awareness of an attached purpose. Usually that was as far as Sam went, but he was on his own in an unfamiliar town, hunting something that he knew nothing about, and for all Sam knew salt wasn’t enough. He pulled his chalk pencil from his bag and set about marking protection sigils just in case, hung a talisman by the door, and only then did he allow himself to collapse onto the bed, savouring the quiet.
It didn’t last. “Bobby?” Sam asked as he flipped open his ringing phone.
“Did I wake ya?”
“No,” Sam lied, rubbing his eyes and sitting up. “My dad didn’t make you call, did he?”
Bobby’s low laugh crackled over the line. “He went by the Road House. Ellen made me call you. The way she was talking, it almost sounded like you up and joined the circus.”
Sam laughed. “Hardly. I just drove out to Fitchburg.”
“You got yourself a hunt?”
“Not exactly,” Sam said. There was a silence over the line, which meant that Bobby was waiting for him to elaborate but wasn’t going to push. “I just – I had to come here.”
“Ah,” Bobby said, and there was a dawning understanding in his voice. “Chasing a vision. No wonder your daddy’s got himself tied in knots.”
“He’s not coming out here, is he?”
“Not yet.” There was a pause. “Sam. I know it frustrates you, the way your daddy is, but you’ve got to understand … what with what happened …” Bobby trailed off and the silence hung between them, thick and tense, even over the phone.
“I know, Bobby,” Sam said, his voice rough. “That’s the only reason why I haven’t up and left.”
“Seems to me that is exactly what you’ve done.”
“This is different. He wants me to ignore what I see, and when we do follow the visions he takes so many damned precautions that, more often than not, we’re there after most of the damage has been done. Suddenly, all my instincts are suspect, like I’m purposely, stupidly, running headlong into a trap. It’s like he thinks I’m a complete idiot.”
“No. He just wants you to be safe.”
“There is no safe, Bobby,” Sam argued. “These visions, they’re a part of me. The things I see … it’s been so damn hard to let it go. I’ve tried.”
“Wanna tell me what’s changed?”
“I dunno,” Sam sighed. “It was a dream that I kept having, again and again, every night. Then I nearly drove off the road when it happened in the middle of the day when I was wide-awake, and it felt different. Every vision I’ve ever had, I never felt compelled. I mean I’ve maybe wanted to save someone from getting hurt, or wanted to help or something, but this was like, I was desperate. I couldn’t breathe. All I could think was that I somehow had to get here and stop it, and it was so strong I couldn’t think straight, not until the vision finally ran its course.”
“You tell you’re daddy about that?”
“I tried to. You know dad.”
“Of course I know John. Why’d you think I threatened to blast him with a buck shot if I saw him again?” The comment wasn’t entirely joking. Bobby had threatened exactly that – and at the time, had meant it – but he’d always been willing to help Sam out, and that meant a tentative truce with John Winchester, if only because the man was Sam’s father. It was a cautious peace but Sam had learned to take what he could get.
“What did you see?”
“That’s the thing. I didn’t see any creature, not a demon, not anything, just random shots, y’know? Like the sign for Fitchburg; certain buildings, hardwood floors and a rocket-ship bedspread. A man’s hand with a silver ring – and then this guy – young, couldn’t have been much older than me. He was just lying there like he was sleeping, but it looked unnatural.”
“That’s not much to go on.”
“Yeah, you’re not kidding. I’ve spoken with about a dozen different people and none of them know of anything odd around here. Not even so much as a supposedly haunted house or a creepy story.”
“You checked out the landmarks you saw?”
“Nothing much, really, just the library and some street corner on the edge of town. I mean, the bed spread suggests a kid, but I went by the school and everything seemed normal.”
“Well, you know what I’d suggest?”
“What?”
“Go find some teenagers. They know all the gossip and are always more than eager to dish it out. You need to find some kind of lead. Even if Fitchburg’s small, it’s still big enough that you can’t stand in the middle of Main Street until you spot that kid you saw in your vision. Even if you did, what are the chances he’d actually know anything?”
“Thanks, Bobby.”
“Not that it was much help. But listen, you be careful. Those visions of yours have gotten you into enough trouble already. You keep in touch, I want to know what in the hell it is you’re huntin’.”
“You and me both. Bye, Bobby.” He flipped the phone closed and tossed it back onto the nightstand, flopping backwards onto the bed and trying to think of the best course of action. In his experience, Bobby had a point, whether they were reliable sources or not, teenagers, especially the ones in small towns like this one, always knew some sort of story that they were more than willing to share. He checked his watch, enough time for a nap and a quick dinner, and then he’d go out and try to find where the kids in a place like this hung out.
……………………………..
“Mrs. Falco – the chemistry teacher – total alien,” Rich said.
“Really.” Sam tried to contain a smirk.
“I saw her scales.”
“She was wearing alligator-skin boots,” Tony said, knocking Rich’s shoulder.
Rich rolled his eyes dramatically and shook his head. “Scales on her arms.”
“Well, thanks for your help.” Sam stood from the table, refusing to be disheartened. Whatever it was that he had witnessed in his vision obviously hadn’t started yet, which meant that Sam could stop it. Still, it was frustrating to be hunting blind.
Sam went-up to the counter where a kid with oily blond hair slicked back beneath a white paper hat greeted him blandly, “Pete’s Burgers. What can I get ya?”
“Two cartons of milk,” Sam requested, pulling his cash from his pocket. He was anticipating an early start and not looking forward to black coffee.
The kid nodded and retrieved Sam’s order, dropping both cartons onto the counter but not reaching for the money. “You’ve been asking around, about weird things, right?”
The kid wouldn’t quite meet his eyes, kept looking down at the counter, then out at the seats of the restaurants. Sam tensed his jaw and nodded. “Yeah, I have. You know something?”
“Not me,” the kid hastened to say. “But if you’re looking for something weird, you should speak to The Freak.”
Sam almost winced at the term. He’d been applying it to himself for a while, had heard it applied to him as well, by other hunters who were suspicious about the Winchester men and their uncanny success with whatever they hunted. Most hunters specialized over time, some tracking vampires, others paying more attention to ghouls, but most with one type of supernatural entity on which they were the an authority. Sam and his father never did, they’d never had to. Part of that had been Sam’s visions, but most of it was just because they were that good. “Freak?”
“You think I’m an asshole for saying it,” the kid said, finally meeting Sam’s eyes directly. “Well, you’ll be sayin’ it too if you spend even five minutes with him.”
“Does he have a name? Or an address?”
“He works up at The Wyvern. He’s the bartender there.”
Sam handed over the money for the milk and the kid slid the cartons forward. “Thanks.”
……………………………………
It was getting late but Sam kept driving around the damned streets, following various people’s directions in the hopes of stumbling upon The Wyvern. He wasn’t exactly sure what he’d been expecting but it wasn’t the two story log building with the large red and gold sign. The place was tasteful if a bit rustic from the exterior, and when Sam pushed open the blue swinging door he discovered that this was true of the interior as well.
The Wyvern was part restaurant and part bar. It was casual and comfortable; apparently it was a good place to relax. Sam bypassed the restaurant area, mostly empty at this time of night, and entered the bar. If the burger joint had been the place to go to find teenagers, the Wyvern was the place to find everyone else. A group of twenty-somethings were occupying a corner booth, their laughter filling the quiet pub as they played some variation of a drinking game. Some older men were seated by the bar nursing pints but looking more content than anything else. No one was really trying to drown their sorrows; it looked like a place to be social more than anything else.
There was only one person tending bar, and Sam had a moment of quiet relief. It wasn’t as if he could pull someone aside and ask which person in the bar was The Freak. He slid onto a stool attempting to relax and blend, fishing in his jacket pocket to make sure he had the money to accommodate any drinking he might do. “What can I get ya?”
“Um…” Sam said, still absorbed in searching out where his money clip was, usually he kept it in his left inside pocket. “Just a beer.”
“No preference?”
His fingers skittered over the familiar fold of cash, confident that he could afford the expense. Sam looked up and met the eyes of the man that the kid at the burger place had assured him was a freak, and held his breath. “It’s you,” he said, somewhat startled to find himself looking into the exact face he had seen in his vision, although in his vision the guy’s eyes had been closed and Sam hadn’t experienced the full hazel gaze.
The bartender raised his eyebrows. “Uh,” Sam said. “Sorry. No, just…whatever’s on tap.” He watched as the man moved away, black dress pants hanging perfectly off a well-built frame. He wore his white shirt with the top-button open allowing a sinful peak at his throat where a black leather cord hung, and the sleeves rolled-up to just below the elbow. Sam chewed his lip and then dragged his eyes away hastily when the bartender turned back carrying Sam’s drink. He slid the pint across the bar with a cocky grin, plucking the money from Sam’s fist and made quick change before he moved away toward a black-haired woman with blue eyes who was leaning forward, flapping her hands like she was making shadow puppets of birds in flight.
Sam nursed his drink, watching inconspicuously as the girl spoke with the bartender, the very good looking bartender who was both the man in Sam’s vision and, apparently, The Freak. He couldn’t help but notice that despite the relaxed atmosphere in the bar no one was really talking with the man, which was strange, because in all the small-town bars Sam had been to there was always at least one chatty customer. Then again, if the man had earned himself a nickname like ‘Freak’, maybe the regulars tolerated the bartender but also maybe feared him, although it didn’t look like that woman was afraid.
It wasn’t jealousy, not really. Sam might have been bi-sexual, but he also knew that not every attractive guy he saw and wanted was necessarily gay, or bi, or available. He assured himself that this was likely a very good thing. Maybe the bartender and that woman had a kid, and that was what that bedspread had been all about. If that were the case, then all Sam had to do was keep an eye on the kid and make sure his or her attractive father didn’t step in the way of something dark and nasty in a futile attempt at protection. Simple. Easy.
“Yeah, right,” Sam muttered as he finished the last of his pint. He dropped a twenty on the counter and made his way out of the bar.
………………………………..
At around three o’clock in the morning the bartender, whose name Sam had yet to actually garner, left the Wyvern along with the same young woman who had been talking with him earlier. She started a beat-up green Civic as the bartender slid into the passenger seat and slammed his door shut. The car sat for a moment, the headlights of the vehicle illuminating the side of the log building before it finally revved in reverse and, rather quickly, drove out of the parking lot.
Sam found himself hesitating, recalling hazel eyes that seemed to spark with a strange kind of knowing. It had made him feel electrified and cautious, but as he watched the headlights of the Civic becoming smaller as it gained distance, Sam convinced himself that he was perhaps reading too much into the exchange, there was no way that the bartender could know anything about Sam. He started the Impala and brought her quickly out onto the road.
With the streets as empty as they were, it was a simple thing to follow close enough to see where they were headed, but far enough back to be nothing more than a distant set of headlights. Sam followed the car down several winding side-streets and then into a residential area with trees overhanging the road.
The Civic pulled to the curb by a little blue house with dark blue shutters and the bartender slid out of the passenger seat, throwing a casual wave over his shoulder as he climbed the steps. Sam pulled to a stop a ways down the street, watching and wondering how to proceed.
END CHAPTER >>
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