Some super indirect references to 4x19 "Jump the Shark" and 7x11 "Adventures in Babysitting," but there are no real spoilers because it's preseries. The story is split into three perspectives, separated by all those fun headings, and it's actually not as angsty and terribly sad as most of my stories tend to be. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: don't own 'em.
September 29th
September 29, 2004. PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA.
It's Wednesday, but for what feels like the first time in three years, Sam Winchester's not going to spend the night studying. Jess insisted, and frankly, Sam had to agree. His GPA is solid, job applications already sent out, and he could use a few beers and a few hours with some long-lost friends he's been neglecting. Sam shrugs into one of his nicer button-up shirts, one of the ones he knows Jess likes, and sprays a little cologne on for good measure.
Jess shuffles through the door of the apartment they share a few seconds later, weighed down by at least six grocery bags overflowing with bagels and spinach and a few microwaveable meals that Sam had mentioned liking at some point. Sam watches her attempt to blow a strand of unruly, blonde hair off her face and snorts, striding over to help her a second later. Even frazzled and sticky with the California heat, she looks beautiful.
September 29, 2004. WINDOM, MINNESOTA.
He digs through yet another moving box, tossing aside old art projects from when he was a little kid and shoes that don't fit him anymore after his latest growth spurt. He doesn't get why mom keeps all this stuff, even though she told him he would understand when he got older.
But he is older now.
He's fourteen today, and he still doesn't get it. Plus, all these boxes make it hard to find the one thing he's looking f...oh! Found it. Adam Milligan pulls the old baseball mitt out from under an envelope he knows is filled with his yearbook pictures from every single year and dusts it off a little bit. Mom made him pick between soccer and baseball last year because the seasons overlapped and he'd be going into high school the following year and getting really busy, and after a long argument and a lot of yelling, Adam had chosen soccer. And he loved it, of course, but seeing his old mitt all dusty and unused gave him a pinching feeling in his stomach. Oh well. At least tonight he might finally get some use out of it.
Tonight, he's going to the game.
September 29 2004. NOWHERE, SOUTH (maybe North?) CAROLINA
Something creaks and scrapes below him, but it's not the floorboards he's walking on. He's more careful than to make a sound. The house is old and probably makes a lot of noises like the one he just heard, but Dean Winchester's been listening hard as he treads lightly through the moldy, long-abandoned kitchen, and he's pretty sure this particular noise was different. This sounded like wood scraping across concrete. Like a chair sliding just a few inches along the floor. Basement, then.
It must be in the basement.
September 29, 2004. PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA.
"We're gonna be late because of your little shopping spree," Sam jokes as he sets the grocery bags on the counter and gives Jess a light kiss on the lips.
Jess sighs dramatically. "You know, when you're hungover as all hell tomorrow, you're going to be so grateful there's greasy food in this house."
She sticks her tongue out and then turns back to the groceries, sorting them into categories based on where they belong before she'll put them all away in their proper place.
"Okay, well how about I take care of all this while you get ready, Little Miss 'I Think of Everything.'"
"Yeah, yeah, alright," Jess concedes, setting a carton of eggs lightly on the counter and sauntering off to take a look at her closet. If Sam knows her (which he does), she'll stand there for a good ten minutes without moving while she searches for the perfect outfit. Canvassing, she likes to call it. I'm canvassing my options.
He supposes he's just lucky that with all that canvassing she does, she still picked him out from all the others.
September 29, 2004. WINDOM, MINNESOTA.
He's here. He's here. He's here.
Adam can hear the rumble of Dad's big, black car from his room, and he rushes down the stairs and throws open the door to greet him, falling face-first into his father's sturdy, leather jacket. Dad laughs, low and rumbly and deep in his stomach as he reaches down to pat the top of Adam's head.
"Growing your hair out," John Winchester mutters, but it doesn't sound like a question. It's almost as though he didn't mean to say it aloud. He takes a step back so that he can see how the long locks of Adam's brown hair have begun to curl past his ears, and his lips tighten a little bit.
"You like it?" Adam asks eagerly, not registering the extra second it takes for John's features to smooth back out into a smile.
"Course I do." John gives Adam an extra pat on the shoulder and then glances up at Adam's mom, who has appeared behind her son in the hallway.
"Come on in, John," she says, opening the door wider and guiding him into the house. Adam follows after, practically bouncing at his father's heels. John looks back at him.
"You ready to go watch a little baseball tonight, kiddo?"
September 29 2004. NOWHERE, SOUTH (I think it's North?) CAROLINA
He was wrong. Not about the basement part. That part was dead-on. The Vetala he's hunting is definitely in the basement. And he was right about that noise too. It was the sound of the latest victim's chair as he struggled to escape the ropes holding him down, not daring to waste his dwindling energy on anything as pointless as screaming anymore.
No, the part Dean was wrong about has more to do with the fact that instead of one Vetala, there are two of them.
And now they know he's here.
September 29, 2004. PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA.
Sam doesn't notice he's dropped the eggs until the entire carton bounces off his shoe.
"Sam? Sam, what happened?" Jess asks, rushing back into the kitchen with one long, silver earring dangling from her left lobe and the other caught between her fingers. She sees the eggs and freezes because this is Sam and for as long as she's known him, she knows that Sam doesn't drop things. Ever.
"What's wrong?" she asks, immediately coming to stand beside him, being sure to avoid the mess of yolk that has splattered across the tiles. Sam's nose scrunches and he wipes a hand down his face, shaking his head.
"I don't know," he says. "I don't know."
"You feeling okay, are you dizzy?" Jess presses, holding a hand to his forehead, examining him the way his mother never got to. Sam is distracted, and he's not looking at her when he answers.
"No I'm...I'm fine. I'm just..."
"What?"
Sam shakes his head. "It was just a feeling. Just for a second." Shakes his head again and clears the foggy aftertaste of somethingwrong somethingwrong. And then, more to himself than Jess:
"I'm okay. Everything's okay."
September 29, 2004. WINDOM, MINNESOTA.
CRACK.
The ball explodes off the bat, and there's this part of John that thinks: looks like a double, but there's this other, more instinctive part of him that jerks away from the sound as though he's the one who's been hit. The feeling only lasts for a moment, but John has learned to trust those instincts, and he is immediately on edge.
"Hey Dad, did you see that!?" Adam asks, jumping up and down as the Braves' batter rounds second, only to retreat back to the base. Double, John registers.
"Yeah buddy, I did. Nice hit, huh?" John says aloud, but his eyes are roaming the stadium, searching for something, anything out of place. John squints and adjusts his baseball hat. There doesn't seem to be any sign of a threat, but there was something. Something off or weird or wrong. He thinks he knows this, so he doesn't fully relax.
It's just this feeling.
September 29 2004. SOMEWHERE, NORTH (maybe South?) CAROLINA
This is bad. This is so bad.
He used to have these dreams, not long after he was old enough to know that there were other monsters out there besides the ugly, towering flames that stole Mom away from them.
Nightmares.
The nightmares were all different, all depending on which evil thing his Dad was hunting that week, but he remembers having this one about a hoard of vampires tearing at his throat, ripping through flesh and all the way to bone and not stopping, even as he felt the thick sludge of his own blood pooling onto the floor, drowning him.
This is different than that, but the general idea is the same.
Oh god. This is so bad.
He's on the ground and they're both on him, one holding his arms down while the other feeds from his neck, her tongue flickering up along the edge of his jaw to catch the droplets of blood that escape from the hole she's made with her teeth. He can feel his body weakening with each passing, agonizing second, and he knows this is their venom taking effect.
He knows he doesn't have long.
September 29, 2004. PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA.
The world is fuzzy and that's pretty much how Sam prefers it at the moment. It's that sticky feeling, that drunken blur of faces and blinking lights and little flashes of memories that don't feel real, but somehow seem more colorful than usual. He lets himself be led, dragged along by the hand that holds his, her fingers long and thin and familiar as they stumble along together.
And they must have found their way back to their apartment now because Jess is closing the door with a bang and then she's snickering loudly while she attempts to unstrap her sandals. Missing the catch yet again, she leans on him for balance. But he's not ready for the added weight, so they start to tilt. Finely tuned instincts still somewhat intact, Sam manages to guide them the few feet to the couch before they collapse onto it, side by side and laughing.
September 29, 2004. WINDOM, MINNESOTA.
Everything is in sharp focus now, and it pisses John off because this was supposed to be a lazy day at a baseball game with his son, but ever since that feeling back at the game, he's had a hard time shutting down those "overdrive systems" he acquired back in the war and had to reinstall after...when hunting became his life.
Adam's bouncing around in the backseat, a different kind of adrenaline leftover from the game pushing against his lanky limbs. He's smiling and he's happy, and that pulls a small twitch of upward motion from John's lips as he drives.
"Can we turn it up?" Adams says suddenly and John's small smile becomes a laugh because it's some upbeat pop song on the Top 50 chart and John turns it up with the thought that maybe he didn't screw this kid up as much as the other two. There's a twinge of ugliness in that thought, a burrowing claw of guilt, but Adam starts nodding along and then he's belting out the words so John laughs again and he keeps driving.
September 29 2004. NOWHERE, (definitely) NORTH CAROLINA
The world is fuzzy and it's a terrible sign and he's floating but there's pain and there's so much of it and he feels the sludge of his blood, the thick ooze of it sliding and tickling and painpainpain as he claws blindly at the thing on top of him, the other one lapping up the red stuff still spilling from his throat. Something connects, he thinks, can't see through closed eyes, but thinks so because he hears a shriek and he feels his nails dig in deep, so he puts as much force behind the swipe as he can and the shrieking gets louder so he does it again. Fighting dirty, but he doesn't care.
Dean opens his eyes now and sees blood that isn't his, spilling from the eye of the taller Vetala who's pushing her weight against him. And then suddenly she isn't anymore.
It takes Dean a few seconds and a few blinks in between before he can piece it together, before his eyes catch the vacated chair and the rolling body of the man with the hole in his neck who isn't tied down anymore, who has flung himself into the fight. Dean watches as the man's body twists and reaches and comes up with the knife that slams into the Vetala's chest a moment later and Dean is about to say "twist it, you have to twist it," but his air is gone, all gone and the man does it anyway and Dean realizes he's another hunter caught just as off-guard by the two monsters, not one thing.
Two monsters. Not over yet.
The second one has torn her teeth away from Dean's neck because her partner, maybe her sister, is dead and she knows it now and she's using Dean's chest to push herself off the ground as she wipes at her bloodied lips and sneers at the other hunter, also making his way back to his feet.
Dean tries to do the same but he's dizzy and blood is slipping through his teeth just as often as his breaths, so he wraps shaking fingers around the gaping hole at his throat and tries to hold on.
September 29, 2004. PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA.
Sam slides his hand along the smooth curve of her neck and places a soft kiss against her forehead.
"We're still on the couch," Jessica grins and her voice is soft and lazy like the California weather.
"Mhmm," Sam mumbles into her hair.
"We should get up," she says.
"Mhmm."
Neither of them moves, except for a few seconds later when Sam turns to kiss Jess full on the mouth.
September 29, 2004. WINDOM, MINNESOTA.
John is driving again, but Adam isn't with him so it's not the same and he's afraid to admit that he likes this kind of driving better. Call in from a buddy over in Utah who needs help and so he's off just as soon as Adam is tucked against his mother's side with a swift goodbye and a promise to visit again soon.
He'll try to visit again soon.
September 29 2004. WILMINGTON (he remembers now for sure), NORTH CAROLINA
Wilmington.
That's it. That's the name of the town he's in. Hadn't remembered until now, but he supposes it's something to focus on besides the dragging, aching pull of dead limbs being forced to move, move, move. He's doing his best, he really is, but the hunter next to him pulling him along is still carrying most of his weight. The blood has stopped flowing and Dean remembers a knife cutting through the sleeve of his shirt and then skin exposed, cool breeze as cloth was pushed against his neck. Staunched but not yet fixed, still leaking.
"T...thank you," he says and it tastes like failure against his tongue because he is supposed to be doing the saving but his eyes, they're so heavy and his mouth is so slick with red that he doesn't think the words even come out all the way.
He coughs and keeps walking. Finally they reach the car, not Dean's car but this other hunter's ( Dean realizes he doesn't even know the name of his savior) and Dean is shoved into the passenger seat and then they're moving again.
"Try to stay awake, okay?" says the stranger. He slaps Dean on the shoulder, and Dean forces his blurry eyes open.
"S'ry."
"Don't apologize. Just uh...talk to me," the hunter says, voice low. "Tell me about yourself."
Dean snorts and adjusts the hand over his throat. "Name's Dean," he says.
"Okay, Dean," the hunter replies. "What's your story?"
Dean snorts again because my god it's a long one, stranger and because suddenly all he can think about are the people who fill up almost the entirety of that story of his. Their faces float in the space between his eyelashes, and Dean can't help wondering what his dad and little brother are doing at this very moment.
He hopes they're having a better night than his.
Let me know what you think if you have time. Thanks for tuning in!