A/N: Ok, so this is my first multi-chapter for SPN. I am quite excited by it, and though I vowed to myself that I wouldn't publish any of it until it was finished-it's making very good headway and I am nearly at the halfway point (it's going to be 20 chapters total). So here it is.
A couple notes...
1) Rating. It's T for language, some violence, and some of what I have named "Deannuendoes." However, mostly this fic is pretty clean.
2) OC's. Yes, they are here-and the POVs are shared between Sam, Dean, and my two OFCs. I know that this may be a turn-off for some people, but I stand by the quality of the characters in this work. Yes, there will be some romance-it's the freaking adorable Teen!Chesters, and it's summertime! But by my love of fandoms, I promise that there is not a Mary-Sue in sight here.
3) Other stuff...some headcanon related to my other works ("Habit", "Remedy"-but this is a stand-alone fic).
4) Enjoy! Updates will be swift-I already am working on the ninth chapter. And please, review. All commentary is welcome! I will update faster if I'm hearing comments :)
Emily
It isn't supposed to be this warm yet, because it's only June, but the thermometer reads eighty-five degrees and the local (or at least, nearest- local means thirty-five miles away) thrifty-shopper has sold their last pair of shorts.
Emily hates shorts.
To be more exact, Emily hates her knees, which have always seemed a bit knobby…especially with the way her legs are otherwise kind of awkward and stick-like.
She'd worn her jeans yesterday, in an (ironically conservative) rebellion, but Fahrenheit's decree won the battle and so today, shorts it is.
Rachael, who is eighteen and as frustratingly perfect as older sisters always seem to be, absolutely loves shorts season. But then Rachael's legs are long and slim and curvy and tan in a way that make all the boys' heads turn.
Ewww. Emily knows that fourteen (and-a-triumphant-half) is, apparently, too young to pass judgment on the whole boy thing, but she doesn't really care. For a while know, she's been of one opinion-boys are weird and loud and altogether kind of disgusting. Emily used to like them well enough, a long time ago, when they just caught frogs with you and didn't bring up fairytale kisses of all things and then actually try to kiss you.
She glowers at a stray thread on her detestable shorts, flexes her toes to hear the faint squeak of her new sneakers. That was just Todd. Todd was strange. Or he got to be strange, when his voice changed and his whole body seemed like an ill-fitted suit, all gangly and just hanging on him. Seems like all those awkward growth spurts messed with his mind, 'cause when he was little and chubby and a consummate frog-catcher, he didn't go on about dumb stuff like kissing.
Not that she sees Todd anymore. Not since last year. Not since-
A puff of hot air, too lazy to be called a breeze tickles her neck. She shifts, letting the heaviness of her hair unstick itself from her skin and sway behind her. Her hair is thick, and almost pretty sometimes—brown, with glints of copper when the sun hits it (she likes to call it chestnut)—but today it's a frizzed-out, burr-like mess.
Stupid hair. Stupid heat. Stupid shorts.
And there it is again.
Heck, she doesn't know why, but she'd thought that the one good thing about Oregon was that it would be cooler. Looking on the bright side, so to speak, when Dad had walked out eight months ago for his Barbie colleague and left Mom with more mortgage than she could even pretend to handle.
They got out of D.C. and came up here because Mom grew up in Oregon, and they found a backwoods place that was being foreclosed on by a bank with a name that was longer than the main street of the nearest town. Then they bought it.
And it isn't supposed to be hot in June here.
Emily stands up, because the warped boards of the front-porch steps are uncomfortable, and because sitting still isn't a good idea when she starts thinking about Dad. She knows this. It's too easy to start remembering him, and let his laugh play through her head like snatches from an old song, or think about how his eyes crinkled up when he smiled or how his voice got hard and jagged when he was angry, or worst of all how he used to fold up like one of those stupid little puzzle boxes when he lied. When she lets that happen, when she lets all those broken pieces fall back into the fractured shapes they formed in her old life, she feels like she wants to stop breathing. She feels like she's choking. She feels like she misses him.
And she can't feel that.
The something-that-is-too-lazy-to-be-a-breeze is whispering among the treetops, slipping fingertips under the curving tips of the newly unfurling leaves. Emily glances once over her shoulder at the old house. She's gotten used to it, kind of. The roof is a little saggy and Mom keeps meaning to get a handyman to come around and fix the leak in Rachael's closet, but it's got forest-green shutters against chocolate-colored slat siding, and Emily likes how much it looks like the house of The Three Bears in the dog-eared old book that Dad-that she used to like when she was little.
Emily kicks at a clump of dirt that had, admittedly, been minding its own business. Thinking about kid books and Dad in one afternoon makes her feel pretty lousy, because she knows that she's probably kind of childish for her age...she just finished her freshman year of high-school, for crying out loud!...but she can't really help it. She tries out Rachael's makeup when her sister isn't home and she swears (just a bit) when she bangs her head on the low-hanging shelf over the bathroom sink. But for all that, she doesn't know how the rest of the whole "growing up" thing works.
Being grown-up seems to suck pretty bad, actually. Sure, Rachael is pretty and popular, and is dating a guy she met in her senior class, the football captain, actually...and maybe that's what Emily should want, but she doesn't because she hears sometimes how Dustin and Rachael curse each other out in the flickering glow of the porch light. Rachael comes in tight-shouldered and hard-eyed, those nights, and Emily thinks that she looks like she wants to cry but she doesn't, not ever.
Being grown-up hasn't been too kind to Mom, either. Not since Dad went off with 'That Bitch' as Rachael calls her-calls her much worse when Mom isn't around, frames the terrible words with, "M'sorry, Em, I just...that's what she is. I wish you didn't have to hear my crap, but I gotta tell someone and you know I can't say anything much about it to Mom..."
Emily's pretty sure that Mom stopped smiling after-everything. She laughs more than ever, now, but it's high and brittle and pitchy, like hairline fractures sliding through a plate of glass. Poke it with a finger and it shatters into a million shards.
Emily doesn't want to laugh like Mom, or swear like Rachael does, with perfect hair all rucked up by her perfectly varnished nails.
Emily does miss her Dad, and she shouldn't, because she knows he's a 'Sick, Twisted Bastard' (Rachael again) and Emily thinks that maybe she should have been better about knowing when he lied.
She's always been good at puzzle boxes, after all.
Emily puts her thoughts away and considers the possibility of wading into the pond on the other side of the hedgerow. Maybe she'll even keep her sneakers on, because there's something about feeling water seep in around canvas in rubber that's oddly pleasant. But her sneakers are new, and Mom made a big deal about them, so she'd better leave well enough alone.
Doesn't mean she can't go wading, though.
The water is glittering in the golden light of the late day sun, and Emily raises her hand to shade her eyes. It's blindingly bright, even at four o'clock, casting The Forest on the other side of the pond into near-blackness.
The Forest. When she was eight, Emily thought that capitalizing random words was the coolest thing ever, but she's long since dropped the illusion. However, The Forest is a rather sinister exception- oh, it's pretty and probably completely harmless, but there's something so thick about it that she just can't shake a feeling of foreboding. Of importance. Of the need for capitals.
Good you do most of your talking to yourself, freak, she chides inwardly. Rachael'd never let you hear the end of this.
She squats down at the reeds on the edge of the pond and tugs off her shoes, one after the other. The water is warmer than it was two weeks ago, sure, but it's still refreshing and she lets her feet sink deeper into the malleable mud beneath the surface.
Ahhh...
She lets her eyes flutter shut. Standing there, ankle-deep in the still waters of the pond-if the refreshment could be to her mind as it is to her skin, she'd never have to talk herself out of a worked-up anxiety-fest again.
A reed snaps behind her.
The reflexive jolt of awareness coils tight in her stomach, and she snaps around, loses balance-and plops down to an ignominious seat six inches deep in pond-water.
Crap.
"Hey-I'm really, really sorry," says a voice, and she raises her eyes to meet those of her would-be attacker...or startler...or (is startler even a word?)
It's a boy.
Of course it is.
Emily's temper is about to spike-Rachael's not the only one with anger-control problems, at least not always-but she has to admit, even in the embarrassment of the moment, that this particular boy is...interesting.
He looks to be around her age-much taller, but still with a bit of a baby face and that same slight gangliness to his long limbs that got the hapless Todd in so much trouble. But then again, this boy carries himself with a lot more grace than Todd did-and his face...well, there's an earnestness about it, Emily can see that straight off-and it may still be a kid's face, round and unlined, but the strong jawline and intelligent brow half-hidden under floppy bangs (a shade darker than her hair) match the intriguing, inexplicable something in his brown, hazel-flecked eyes.
Somehow, Emily thinks that this boy won't care much about frogs or kissing. Perhaps there's a third alternative, that she's failed to evaluate.
Problem is, she has no idea what that might be.
He's a mystery all around, then-she has no idea where he came from, what he's doing here, or why she kind of thinks he's...cute.
No no no. Not good. She tries desperately to pull herself together. "Who are you?" she demands, giving him as cold a look as she can when she's sopping wet but still sticky and hot.
The boy reaches out a tentative hand to help her up. It's long-fingered, clever, and doesn't look so young as the rest of him. "We...uh...I just- I guess we're neighbors. I was exploring."
"Oh. Well. You shouldn't startle people." The words kind of fade off a bit as she takes his outstretched hand, 'cause he's really-strong.
"Sorry," he says again, and the corners of his eyes crinkle up a bit, like he's half holding back a smile.
She should probably be mad, but she can't quite bring herself to go all Rachael on him. She doesn't let go of his hand quite yet. Gives it a quick, tight shake. "I'm Emily," she murmurs, and thinks it was supposed to come out louder. Bolder.
He doesn't seem to mind that her voice was almost squeaky. He just smiles for real this time and squeezes her hand. "Sam," he says.
