0-0-
That there, that's not me
I go where I please
I walk through walls
I float down the Liffey
How To Disappear Completely, Radiohead.
He was screaming. A voice, that ripped up through his throat, smashed through his lips, entered the air in knives of pure terrible sound. But—hewasn't screaming, there was something inside him, wailing out from deep into his bones and out of his mouth and exploding in a cloud of black smoke. Something evil and wincing, something that dug claws in and rippedon its way out from inside of him.
Sam felt his eyes roll back and stumbled inwards on himself. He was aware of emptiness. Of control. "Sammy?" a worried voice and heavy footsteps, and he collapsed onto his knees in a painful thud, was caught by warm hands, fallen against a warm weight. "D'n," he mumbled against his brother's chest, and succumbed to darkness.
-0-0-0
He woke in the backseat of the Impala.
As trained, Sam categorized; fractured wrist, bruised ribs, mouth of heavy fluff he couldn't gulp around, throat grazed and painful, bruised knees and worse elbows, shredded knuckles where the demon had punched too hard with his body. The hunt came back in a painful smash of black eyes and screams that weren't his. He'd been possessed by a goddamned demon and he hurt. Like. Hell.
"Sammy? You awake?"
"Yeah," Sam grunted, pulling himself up to lean against the window. He looked forwards, where Dean was sitting shotgun as customary and Dad was driving. Dad looked back at him, didn't even smile and went back to the road. Heart-warming.
"Feeling okay?"
"Well, considering," Sam nodded. He was suddenly excruciatingly hungry, and couldn't help a groan. "Can I have something to eat?"
Dean tossed him a sandwich. "Just hold on, we can get something more when we arrive."
"Arrive? Arrive where?" he enquired around a mouthful of stale bread that just tasted worse with his mouth of heavy fluff.
"Kent, Washington."
"Yeah?" Sam leaned forwards, regretted it as various injuries screamed, and leaned back. "Can I go to school again?"
"Yes," said their father. "You and Dean are going to Stonebridge High. We're going to wait until you're a bit older until you go on any more dangerous hunts."
Sam tried to cover his smile, but Dean caught it and made a face. Sam rolled his eyes and grinned.
A hollowness inside where once a demon resided flared painfully, and Sam gulped, closed his eyes and went back to sleep.
-0-0
A stumbling into a rundown motel in the middle of town. The pain from his knees was so much worse when he was standing, but Sam managed to get up the stairs when he was leaning with his good arm on Dean. It was a margin nicer than any other motels they usually stayed in, with three whole beds and clean pillows and sheets on all of them, and Sam collapsed onto one and watched Dean and Dad bring up their few bags. "Go to sleep, Sammy." Dean said with a fond grin when he saw Sam still up, and pushed him gently into bed and covered him with the sheet like he used to do when Sam was younger.
Sam fell asleep.
-0-0
He didn't wake up to a beating; that was later. He woke screaming, screaming with an inhuman screech, black smoke wafting out excruciatingly slowly. The demon dug tighter inside of him as it was ripped slowly away and whispered carefully inside his ears, next to his heartbeat, that he was broken.
And then it went.
And then Sam was falling apart, skin flaying to pieces, muscles disintegrating, veins shrivelling out into strings that crumbled into ash, until there was nothing but a still heart where once a boy lay—
Dean shook him awake, frantic, desperate, and Dad was nowhere to be found. He buried his face into Dean's shoulder and gritted his teeth and tried not to cry until he fell asleep again.
0-0-
Now the beating woke him up. He was half awake when the door slammed open, and Dad stumbled in, and Dean rushed out of bed, and the shouting was blurred to his muffled ears.
He blinked open blurry eyes and twitched heavy limbs and woke up completely.
Dean and Dad, standing in the middle of the room, facing each other, Dad towering and screaming with drunken movements that showed he'd gone to a bar, again, and it wasn't Dad's fault it was stress and rage and love and Sam shouldn't hate him for it but sometimes it was really, really hard—Sam gulped and tried to hide his face in the pillow, and Dad—
"You fucking stupid bastard, you got Sammy possessed, that's all on youand now you ain't never coming on hunts till I can fucking trust you again—"
"I'm sorry, Dad," came Dean's voice, cool, calm, steady. "I'm sorry."
"You don't get to apologise." Dad snarled, and punched Dean in the chest. Sam couldn't help but stare as Dean, Dean who had protected him and loved him and was his amazing big brother, Dean crumpled like a rag doll with strings cut. He watched as Dad advanced (not Dad, this creature who had possessedDad) and kicked the crumpled rag doll, which didn't make a noise, just jerked slightly. And Dad kicked again. And again. And again.
Sam didn't know how long it lasted, the thuds on flesh that were terrifyingly familiar, a routine re enacted time and time again. He couldn't help the hot tears that dribbled down the face, or the pathetic helplessness that overwhelmed him until he passed out again, into a shuddering, half awake sleep.
-0-0
"Up, Sammy." Dad said gruffly, pulling back his sheets and opening the curtains wide. Dean was in the bathroom if the sound of the shower was indicating anything. "Okay. I've already told Dean this, but this is what's happening; I got a hunt with Gordon up north, and it's gonna take about two weeks. I've left cash for groceries and school supplies. Phone for emergencies. You boys start school later today."
"School?" Sam enquired, mumbling. "Stone... Stone High?"
"Stonebridge High." Dad corrected.
"Gonna stay there for a long time?"
"Yes."
"'Kay," Sam said sleepily, and turned his head back into his pillow.
"I said up!" Dad shouted, and his fist came hard down on Sam's right shoulder. Sam yelped and scrambled back, half falling out of the bed and Dad stared at him hard. "Be good, and listen to Dean." he said finally, then moved to pick up his bag and the keys, and left with a slam of the motel door.
Sam took a deep breath. He didn't hate his father, he told himself.
He tried to pretend he wasn't lying.
-0-0
"You okay, Sammy?" Dean asked, drying his hair with a towel, legs up on the bed and shirt falling down to show a torso of black and blue and green.
"I woke up," Sam mumbled, collapsing on the bed next to Dean. "I saw Dad beating you."
"Hey, shh," Dean pulled him into a quick hug and Sam realised he was crying. "It's okay."
"I had a nightmare, Dean." Sam said, leaning into the warm, safe weight of his brother. "I don't—I don't want—"
"Hey, calm down. It's fine. Everything's fine. He didn't hurt you, did he?"
"He punched my shoulder when you were in the shower." Sam said. His fractured left arm was in a cast so he shrugged down his t shirt to show Dean the bruise. Dean let out a heavy breath and tried to smile at him.
"You definitely got an impressive set of injuries to show the girls, huh, Sammy?"
"Is that all you think about?" Sam tried to snark, backhanding his leftover tears.
"Um, no. I think about loads of different things. Girls, boys, oral, anal—"
"Ew, Dean!" Sam shouted, clapping his hands over his ears. "TMI, jeez!"
"Who even says TMI anymore?" Dean asked, amused.
"People who are cool. So obviously you'd know nothing about it."
"Ooh, that hurt, Sammy. Right there. Agonising." Dean clasped a hand over his heart and Sam scowled.
"Jerk."
"Bitch."
0-0-0
"Dean."
"Mm..."
"You just stepped on my foot!"
"You shoved me, bitch."
"That was on accident, jerk!"
"Still."
"Still what?"
"Still shouldn't have shoved me."
"Agh!"
"Ow! What was that for?"
"Payback!"
"For what?"
"Stepping on my foot!"
"You can't have payback for payback, dude."
"Stepping on my foot was not payback! You can't payback an accident!"
"Says who?"
"Says everyone!"
"I bet if you asked any random stranger they wouldn't agree."
"Yeah, they would."
"Go on then."
"No, you have to."
"Why do I have to?"
"Because you were the one that bet that any random stranger wouldn't agree. So now you have to back up that claim."
"No, you're the one protesting my claim. So now you have to go and prove it isn't true."
"I'm not going to do that and you know it, jerk."
"Sammy, can you please just stop arguing. I've had a real long day and you're just making it worse."
"You're a guilt tripping lying idiot son of a bitch."
"Sammy."
"What?"
"You can't use 'son of a bitch' against your own brother."
"Oh my god I hate you."
"Bitch."
"Jerk."
0-0-0
School.
Stonebridge High was two squat buildings joined by a field with a track running round it. The school was a half an hour walk away from where they lived, which meant they had to wake up at half six to get ready, check the salt lines and have breakfast before actually starting the walk. And apparently it rained every single day there because Dean and Sam entered school dripping wet and the weather forecast gave a dismal estimation of tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, and well shit they were going to have to invest in raincoats, even if that did cost half their grocery money.
The receptionist was a woman in her late twenties with a tight dress and bronze curls, who looked up through fake eyelashes at them and pushed over two timetables and told them to ask around for directions to their first class.
Wonderful.
"You good?" Dean asked, when the bell went and the congealed mixes of students transformed into streams of fast moving legs and stuck out elbows.
"Yup," Sam nodded, pulling the straps of his backpack up with his left arm hanging awkwardly in front of him. "I've got IT first."
"Alright, have fun." Dean ruffled his hair. "Meet outside the school gates after school, alright? If I'm not there, phone me."
"'Kay."
"You've got lunch, right? I did buy you a sandwich, didn't I?"
"Yes." Sam rolled his eyes. "We have to go. Come on, Dean."
"Alright. Well. Don't bang your cast, okay?"
"Okay,"
"You only have a week till it comes off—"
"Really?"
"What? Oh, yeah... the demon possessing you made it heal faster. Dad thinks. I don't know. And... if anyone asks... say you fell off your bike."
"Okay, byeDean," Sam told him, now really exasperated. Dean smirked at him and then turned to survey the crowds and snag a pretty brunette towards him. He said something to her in a low voice and showed his timetable. She blushed and grinned and they walked off together while Sam leaned against the wall and rolled his eyes.
Um. Well. Room 48 was probably... somewhere... upstairs? And it was presumably a computer lab?
"Hi." A boy stopped in front of him, cocked a hip, grinned. Sam scanned; slicked hair, bright eyes, slim frame, around Sam's age. "I'm Gabriel Novak. You're new, right?"
"How'd you know that?" Sam asked.
"I know everyone in this school." Gabriel dismissed. "And I don't know you, so you must be new. Heh that rhymed. Anyway. Your name is..."
"Sam Winchester." Sam smiled. "And I don't 'spose you know where room 48 is..."
"Hey, we have the same classes!" Gabriel grinned. He had somehow snatched the timetable from Sam's hands and pulled his own out, comparing the two with them held next to each other. "It's like fate decided we were to be best friends."
Sam raised his eyebrows but couldn't help smiling. "Best friends? I got the distinct feeling you are my long lost sibling."
"I have nine siblings, seven of whom I loathe with all my being." Gabriel deadpanned. "What we have is more profound than that."
"Nine," Sam whistled. "...wow."
"Tell me about it!" Gabriel grabbed Sam's good wrist and started threading them expertly through the school corridors and bulky human obstacles, pausing to exchange high fives or back slaps or smiles with a number of random students. "Now, see, we have Mr Whitehall first, who is the most obnoxious IT teacher you will ever come across in your long and prosperous career at Stonebridge High, but thankfully is also half blind and will not notice if I swap beautiful but airheaded Amelia Stewart for beautiful but freakishly tall you."
"...okay, then. But what if I don't want to sit next to you?"
"I'm not sure who gave you the illusion you had a choice."
Sam laughed and conceded.
Gabriel steered him past the school library and down a sharp left, the former of which Sam noted for future reference. "You can also probably sneak in without having to do the new kid speech. Unless you like the new kid speech. Do you like the new kid speech?"
"I hatethe new kid speech." Sam declared vehemently.
"I knew we were alike souls!"
"...because we both dislike the new kid speech? Have you ever had to do the new kid speech?"
Gabriel looked contrite. They turned left and started walking up a set of wooden stairs. "Well. No. But I dislike it on your behalf." They arrived in front of room 48, which was indeed a computer lab, and Gabriel bit his lip. "...we may be late. I'm sorry, sasquatch, you're going to have to do the new kid speech."
"Sasquatch?" Sam called after his new friend as Gabriel swung into the room. He followed after and closed the door, rolling his eyes.
"Sorry sir I had to guide the new kid I'm really sorry, it's just that he's injured so we had to take a bit longer—"
"That's fine, Gabriel," said the teacher. Sam stood awkwardly, trying to avoid looking at his new class, and stared instead at the shoes of his teacher. "Go and sit down. And you—must be Sam, correct?"
"Yeah." Sam mumbled.
He was nota sasquatch.
"Would you like to tell the class a bit about yourself?"
"Sure," Sam breathed out and turned to face his class, who thankfully seemed to be engrossed more in the obvious wonders of their monitors then the new kid in front of him. "Uh, I just moved here from LA, with my brother... who also goes here. And, I dislike bike riding, a phenomenon that happened after I fractured my arm." That got a few chuckles. Mr... Whitehead, was it? Mr Whitehead directed him to a seat near the back of the classroom, and started droning on about something that had happened last lesson while Sam looked around for Gabriel and thought on the fact about he very distinctly did not resemble a sasquatch.
In any way, form, or shape.
Or height.
Gabriel was talking low and fast to a pretty girl he was sitting next to at the back of the computers, hands moving wide and expressively. He clasped them together and looked up at her with a pout. Sam saw rather than heard her breathy little laugh as she tossed her hair, scooped up her handbag and made her way over to Sam.
"Are we swapping or what, new kid?" she asked with perfect raised eyebrows. Sam picked up his own bag and snatched a glance towards Mr Whitehead, who was engrossed in his flickering PowerPoint, and made his way over to Gabriel. "I'm not a sasquatch." He told his friend, who looked delighted.
"Sasquatch! We have a nickname!"
"Asshole," Sam scowled, turning on his own monitor. Gabriel was on Google so he clicked on the icon and waited while it loaded up, excruciatingly slowly.
"So," Gabriel leaned forwards on one arm to face him fully. "You got the broken arm from falling off a bike?"
"Fractured," Sam corrected. "And yeah."
"How long till the cast comes off?"
"A week. About." Gabriel looked vaguely satisfied and turned to his monitor. "Wait, what exactly does Mr Whitehead want us to do?"
"Whitehall." Gabriel corrected. "We have to look at different websites and do a PowerPoint on their characteristics." He typed something into the top bar and pressed enter, waiting while it loaded. The page flickered and then popped up a security warning that the site was blocked. Gabriel scowled at it. "Stupid tight ass restrictive school—"
"What are you trying to get on?" Sam asked, leaning over.
"4chan." Gabriel looked pleased with himself.
"What? Seriously? Ew. That's—seriously?"
"Yup." Gabriel nodded. "It's a very important piece of the internet, so I should include it if I want to provide a proper comprehensive description of different sites."
"Who the hell said it was an important piece of the internet?"
"Urban dictionary."
"I'm not going to grace that with a response."
They sat, working, for a few minutes.
"Did you say you had a brother?"
"Yeah, Dean. Three years older than me."
"Huh, he's in the same year as one of my brothers. Castiel."
"Is that one of the seven you hate or the two you don't?"
Gabriel grinned. "Cas? No, he's awesome. I love Cas. He speaks weirdly and has no idea how to act with human beings and won't wear anything without this trench coat, but he's awesome."
"Sounds about as weird as you." Sam mused, nodding along. Gabriel shoved him lightly on the shoulder, and Sam almost fell of his chair as he groaned in pain, squeezing his eyes shut as the already painful bruise inflamed into agony.
"Sasquatch?" Gabriel asked, worried. "What happened? Are you okay?"
Sam gritted his teeth and tried to nod. He tried to suck in air and started choking instead, and curled into himself in pain until it stopped. "I'm good," he breathed out finally, looking round to see if anyone was staring—they weren't. "Just—I hurt my shoulder, when I fell off. My bike. As well. Just a bruise, it's fine."
Gabriel frowned and Sam could see the calculations going on in his mind—if the fractured arm was going to be healed in a week, that meant it happened around five weeks ago, and if the bruised shoulder had happened at the same time it should have been healed by now.
Gabriel looked to meet Sam's eyes and he looked away.
They spent another awkward few minutes in silence, Sam typing slowly with only one hand, the quiet wave of classmates' chatter washing over them. Gabriel evidently couldn't last that long.
"Tell me about your brother. Dean, right?"
"Yah. Um. Well, he's awesome. Most of the time. He's a complete womanizer and loves cars, and he's pretty much the best big brother you could ask for."
"Sounds cool." There was something strange in Gabriel's smile. Sam stared, trying to discern it—there was something off,just beneath the surface, something unearthly and discordant. "Maybe he and Cas will be friends."
"Maybe," Sam hummed, and shook his head at himself. He had been possessed for a week, which was sure to do freaky things to his head. He was just seeing things.
-0-0-0
They had art third, which everyone else spent completing sculptures which Gabriel had finished and the art teacher had told Sam he shouldn't start, so the two sat at the back of the class and chatted while they doodled on Sam's physics textbook. Gabriel had decided that the second hand book was so rundown they were officially allowed to draw on it all and not worry about the moral side of desecrating books, and since Sam agreed with this statement they were currently drawing a stack of stickmen who were trying to climb up the title page to reach the top. Gabriel finished the heads and Sam started on little pinpricked eyes.
...they weren't amazing at drawing.
"So. LA?"
"Yup." Sam nodded, and searched for a red pen to start on bow ties.
"What was it like?"
Sam shrugged. He didn't actually remember much of LA; they'd stopped there for a few weeks last year, but the ID Dad had used to enrol them here had last been used at LA so they needed to pretend they were from there. "Loud. Noisy."
"Were you born there?"
Sam laughed. "No. We only stayed there a little while, actually. Before that we were in... ah, I think it was Oregon, actually. Near here. We stayed there for a couple of months."
"So you move a lot?" Gabriel was leaning forwards, gaze intense. Sam looked up and frowned slightly before swapping for a black pen to draw top hats.
"You could say that."
"How long do you think you're going to stay here?"
Sam grinned wide. "A long time. My dad wants to settle here for a bit, I think."
"Cool." Gabriel grinned back and picked up Sam's red pen to give each stickman in the lopsided tower exaggerated lips.
"Hey, that looks weird." Sam scowled, scribbling out the lips.
"Yeah? Well I didn't complain about your freaky top hats."
"You did notjust insult my top hats."
Gabriel raised his eyebrows. "They are abominable, deficient, fallacious, erroneous, sub standard, atrocious. They make my eyes implode, they bring horror to a casual viewer, they are horrific and scarring and hideous—"
"Show off." Sam scowled. "What did you do, memorize the thesaurus?"
"I'm just naturally that clever."
"Jerk."
"Whatever," Gabriel returned, and Sam realised with a slight start he wasn't talking to Dean.
0-0-0
At lunch, it turned out Gabriel was right with his earlier musing that maybe Dean and Castiel would be friends. From what Gabriel had told Sam, their two older brothers had seemed like complete opposites but when they walked into the canteen and there, in the left back corner, on a table alone, was Dean, talking to a boy with stunningly vibrant blue eyes and short cropped hair, which Sam recognised as Castiel only through his bulky trench coat.
It was one... big... trench coat.
Gabriel smirked at the new development and Sam introduced Dean, who grunted hello as they sat down. He was absorbed in his pie, which Sam had no idea where he had gotten from—what the hell was he thinking. Dean always had pie. Stupid little things like being in a school that didn't have pie wouldn't stop him.
"Cas," Gabriel asked curiously. "Where are your friends?"
"Around," Cas said mysteriously. Gabriel rolled his eyes.
"So how are you liking Stonebridge High so far, Sam?" Cas asked politely. Sam shifted and pulled his lunch out of his bag, which was a bacon and cheese sandwich.
"It's pretty good," Sam nodded along. Gabriel smirked and took a bite of his own wrap. "I mean. The same as most schools. 'Part from Gabriel."
"What, you've never before been to a school that housed such a magnificent specimen of a human being?" Gabriel laughed. Sam rolled his eyes.
"No, I've never been a school where I've had such an annoying kid latch onto me so fast."
"Me latch onto you? You mean you latched onto me."
"No, it was definitely you latching onto me." Sam told him, amused. "There's no shame in loving me, Gabriel. Most of the world has fallen to my charms."
Gabriel scowled while Dean and Cas laughed. Sam bit into his sandwich and scowled. It was stale.
"Dean, why'd you buy me a stale sandwich?" he grumbled.
"It was reduced." Dean shrugged. "I'm eating stale pie. Suck it up."
"Wait," Gabriel interrupted. "You couldn't fork out a few extra dollars for a fresh sandwich?"
There was a short, awkward silence. "No," Dean answered. Sam gulped and looked around, settling on staring that the ceiling and admiring the way that certain patches of beige blended not so seamlessly into the general whitewash.
"How did you break your arm, Sam?" Castiel asked, breaking the silence.
"It's not broken, it's just fractured. I fell down off my bike." Sam answered back easily. "It's all Dean's freaking fault for making me ride the bike."
"I didn't make you," Dean rolled his eyes, falling easily into the lie. "You wantedto."
"Because you refused to walk!"
"Well, you should've just stayed home."
Dean smiled, Sam scowled, Cas laughed slowly, and Gabriel had old eyes in a young face and a way of staring that felt like he knew they were lying.
He successfully from there steered the conversation into safer areas, and then he and Gabriel left to check out the library, and then the bell went for music. An hour of banging drums one handed, tuneless and clueless, and finally physics, in which Gabriel and Sam sat at the back and chewed gum and tried to see who could lick their nose. Physics finished and Sam waved goodbye, left with Dean, walked back to their motel room. Sam watched reruns of Friends and talked lazily on the phone to Gabriel while Dean went out to see if anyone was hiring—they weren't—and splashed on Pot Noodles and when Dean came home Dad called.
He told them about the nest he and Gordon were hunting, and Sam wished him luck, and Dean had a long conversation on the best way to fight a vampire. And Dean went very quiet, and Dad said something like he was sorry,
(sorry doesn't heal bruises)
and Dean put it on speaker and Dad told them both he loved them, and call if they had any troubles.
Dean rewrapped Sam's ribs and Sam woke up at midnight, screaming.
But it was an okay day.