Title: His Peculiar Tendencies
Summary: Anya 'Annie' Withburne had long ago promised Jess that her boyfriends are off limits, but she loves mysteries and Sam Winchester is full of them. Outside POV, Mostly Stanford Era
Disclaimer: If I owned Supernatural Dean would be female because the show doesn't have enough (*coughAnycough*) female leads who don't die... Is Dean male? Yeah, I don't own Supernatural.
Beginning Author's Note: I had this idea after reading an outside POV fic and liking it. I try really hard to keep the characters in character, tell me if I totally messed up.
So I will warn you that I am not very familiar with the Supernatural fandom or even the show in general.
Without further ado! Please enjoy!
I would like to thank chenkitty456 and ArkAngel1179 for betaing! They are wonderful! You should totally check out their fics!
His Peculiar Tendencies
Ever since Anya 'Annie' Withburne is old enough to read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, she is fascinated by mysteries. She likes solving them, researching them, and discovering hidden truths.
During her and her best friend Jessica Moore's freshmen year of high school, Annie decides that it is in Jess's best interest that Annie investigate her boyfriend. He disappears far too often to be normal. It is found that he is not, in fact, cheating on Jess but has converted to worshiping pagan deities (people still do that?) and the ensuing mess could be avoided if only Jess had listened to Annie and dumped him. Jess makes Annie swear that her future boyfriends are absolutely off limits. Six years later it takes Annie all of her self control not to pepper Sam Winchester with questions. There is something about him that makes her want to pull out her hair in frustration.
There is something about him, she knows as soon as Jess introduces them. Sam Winchester is an enigma and she would love very much to investigate. Anya, called Annie by almost everyone (her mother refuses the nickname), a short woman, slightly busty with largish hips, loves mysteries, but he is Jess's boyfriend and off limits.
"So you're Annie, Jess is always talking about you."
"All good things I hope?"
Most people don't notice, or they choose to ignore, his abnormalities, but Annie had always made an effort to look closely, though not to closely, at Jess's boyfriends. For her friend's sake of course. It is obvious, to her at least, that they are in love and Jess is happy so she tries to ignore Sam's strangeness. He is very odd though, and Annie can't believe that Jess doesn't notice. They say love blinds and Annie is inclined to believe it.
The first thing she notices about him is that when Sam enters a room, he surveys his surroundings, mapping out exits and sitting facing the door, if he sits at all. She notices it because her father does the same thing because of his time in the military before he had busted his hip and been honorable discharged. When asked her father says that the habit comes from years of mental training. Annie finds it a strange trait for a fellow student to have and would love nothing more than to ask questions. Some say she has no social skills and she is inclined to agree, but she values her friendship with Jess and lets it be.
The second oddity of Sam's is actually told to her by Jess when they get together for their weekly movie and popcorn night on Jess's insanely comfortable couch; Sam Winchester is obsessed with salt. Not in the way that one would expect but that, and she quotes, "He buys it in bulk and spreads it in random places around his dorm, I'm surprised his roommate hasn't murdered him!"
After the argument between Sam and Jess that starts when they move in together, Annie affectionately dubs it "The Salt War", Jess finally stops trying to clean it up. Some of the strange places that Jess finds salt in results in Annie wondering whether Sam is insane or just having fun messing with his girlfriend. Annie wants very much to ask questions but settles for discreetly consulting Google on the uses of salt in religion and myth.
The first time she visits Sam's dorm with Jess she can't help but notice his collection of books. Along with the normal text books and novels are old books. Though written in what looks to be Latin, which she haven't even attempted to learn, they seem to be about the mythical creatures. They look well used, and along with the salt, Annie comes the conclusion that Samuel Winchester is superstitious, which she thinks is strange because he had always seemed very down-to-earth.
During the middle of her Junior year, after much begging, she convinces Jess and Sam to come drinking with her. "Come on Jess, it'll be fun! Bring Sam and I'll bring Nick and we can get shit-faced drunk!"
Nick, her boyfriend at the time, has to cancel at the last minute so it ends up being just herself, Jess and Sam. By the end of the night she and Jess are so inebriated that she doesn't know if Sam rescuing her from a drunk frat boy trying to get into her pants, and somehow manages to get ahold of a gun, is a crazy alcohol induced hallucination or if it actually happens. If Jess remembers anything she doesn't say anything but the novelty that Sam carries a knife, of all things, keeps the incident (or hallucination, she reminds herself) at the front of her mind.
About a week later, when she can't take it anymore, she confronts Sam after class (they have an advanced trigonometry class together). He insists it hadn't been real gun and when asked about the knife he mentions the amount of alcohol she and Jess had ingested.
Annie doesn't know whether she believes him and comes to the conclusion that Sam Winchester has something to hide. She almost asks Jess about it but decides that Jess either doesn't know her boyfriend's super secret ninja skills, or knows and won't tell her anything about it. She is leaning toward the former because she doesn't think that Jess would get involved with anyone dangerous.
When Jess invites her to Sam and her shared apartment for movie night she doesn't know what she's expecting, but the totally normal living space is not it. She then reminds herself that Jess also lives there and wouldn't allow anything too strange. She had been to Sam's dorm and it had been relatively normal as well but she had attributed it to his roommate.
Annie does notice the salt though, if only because she's looking, its not out in the open but it is there. In corners, in lines along the wall, on the windowsill and on the ledge above the door. She notices a symbol lightly drawn on the underside of the door frame and casually copies it down into her ever present mini notebook. It looks as if someone had tried to scrub it off but failed. Sam is gone, Jess says, with his brother, and they spend the night drinking, eating popcorn, and watching crappy movies. In the morning, when she has to get up early to visit her parents, she regrets the amount of cheap beer she had drunk.
Annie is friends with Jessica Moore for almost twenty years when Jess dies. She is visiting her parents in North Carolina for the week doesn't find out until she gets back to Stanford. Turns out she's one of the last people to see Jess, who had burned alive only twelve hours after Annie had left.
The fact that Sam disappears almost a week after sets off all of Annie's alarm bells and after spending the next month grieving, she decided that since the police had ruled it an accident and she most definitely doesn't agree, it's up to her to get to the bottom of her best friends murder. She finds it very strange that Sam's mother had died in the same way Jess had. She cashes in every favor anyone has ever owed her as she chases after the elusive Sam Winchester across America. Research eventually takes her to a bar in central Nebraska.
It's a strange place and she takes in her surroundings warily as the feeling that she doesn't belong increases.
"I hear you're looking for the Winchesters." The man to her left says, as she sits down at the bar and she wonders how the hell he knows who she is.
The statement, it is not a question, and the fact that at least two of the men sitting at the bar are looking at her with looks that clearly state they know who she is causes her to revisit the idea that Sam is involved in some type of underground government, or criminal, organization. She, not for the first time, wonders what exactly she's gotten herself into. She takes a deep breath and pulls out an, albeit forged, private investigators license.
"I'm a private investigator looking into the death of Sam Winchester's girlfriend Jessica Moore. Do you know where he is?" She often finds getting straight to the point helps with information gathering, and though sometimes subtlety is needed, now is not one of those times.
The middle aged woman tending to the bar looks up and Annie think that she is going to say something but she makes a mumbled excuse and flees to the room behind the bar.
The man grins with crooked teeth and she wonders how these men know Sam, because they don't look like the kind of people that he would hang out with. Then again what does she really know about him? Only the stuff she noticed during the time he was at Stanford and the things, few and far between, she has found out while trying to find him. She knows next to nothing about his life before or after Stanford. These people have a distinct military feel about them and Annie is reminded that Sam's father had been a Marine.
"It's best to just give up now little girl," the man speaks condescendingly and she grits her teeth, "Sam and Dean Winchester won't be found unless they want to be." He smiles at her with crooked yellow teeth and she notices, for the first time that he has a large scar stretching from the middle of his forehead and over his left eye which is cloudy and unseeing. He catches her gaze and grins at her widened eyes. "They won't be fooled by a fake PI license either."
Yep! Definitely a clandestine government operation. She hadn't been planning on using it, after all Sam knows her, but still... She stares at the man blatantly, and officially freaked out she moves to leave bu is stopped and flinches when he lays a hand on her arm.
"You best be careful, this is no life for a girl like you."
Annie looks at him again and notices that he could've been a rather handsome man but he has a hardened look. She doesn't know why, but would bet that Sam is involved in the same thing. She jerks away and with what little dignity remains, walks to the door, the man's voice echoing in her head "No life for a girl like you." Life? What was that supposed to mean?
"They drive a 1967 Chevrolet Impala." Another man calls out just as she reaches the door. It's not much information, but it's better than nothing.
She looks back one last time and notices the gun in man's belt and a bulge in his pant leg that indicates a knife of some sort. Annie looks around the bar and notices, the first time, the salt along the walls as she'd seen in Jess and Sam's apartment.
Annie leaves the bar with the sinking feeling that she is in way over head and she can't help but think that the water is rising so fast it's only a matter of time before she drowns. The next day she ignores her roommates strange looks as she places salt lines around the dorm and tries to ignore the empty space in her life that Jess left behind.
Ending Author's Note: Yay! Finished!
So in my head I have that there is an ongoing joke among the hunter community about the girl who's searching for the Winchesters but, along with being relatively innocent, has pretty much no idea about anything supernatural.
Like I said I'm not very familiar with the show, I don't know if the Winchesters are actually that well known. The bar was supposed to be The Roadhouse. If its super far from canon, tell me nicely and I'll try to change it.
I'm currently typing a oneshot from Jess's POV (Summary: The five places Jess finds salt in Sam's living space and the one place she finds a bloody pentagram..) and I might write another with Annie (she is only mentioned in the one with Jess). Maybe she'll actually find the Winchesters? If I do write another one I'll probably have Annie die though. If I don't I feel like she'll become a Mary Sue.
Tell me what you think. Did you like Annie or should she die?
Thanks for reading! Please comment!