This is a disclaimer.
AN: Title from that nursery rhyme you sing whenever you see a magpie. Or more. VAGUE SPOILERS for 4.01
Four for a boy
The first time you see the boy, it's just gone seven one bright Monday morning, somewhere in Massachusetts. He's about eleven, thin and tanned with bright blue eyes and a mop of blond hair. You're at a gas station; Sam's inside, paying, and you're leaning against the Impala gulping down coffee like it's water. You weren't really looking at anything, just gazing straight ahead of yourself like a look alone could drill a hole through the wall of that house opposite, not that you'd want to even if you could, and the boy wanders into your line of vision.
He's balancing along the edge of the curb on the other side of the road, skinny arms outstretched to either side, whistling some pop song or other. It seems this tune was brutally murdered, Detective, by repeated and excessive blows to what little tatters of dignity it had. No song, no matter how terrible, deserves that fate, Doctor. We will make sure that justice is done by condemning the criminal to a lifetime of music lessons.
His jeans are patched at both knees, and he's left his heavy coat on despite the warm sunlight flooding the street. He looks up once and catches your eye, grins at you. You raise your coffee cup in a silent toast to him, just because.
"Don't step on any cracks," you call over.
"I never do," he calls back, cheerful. "I'm better than that."
You laugh, surprised at his cheek and self-assurance, and then Sam's at your side, saying, "Dean?" and when you look back at the boy, he's gone.
"There was a kid," you shrug. Sam gets this fondly amused look, and you get the urge to pinch him and put salt in his coffee or something equally childish and annoying.
"Aww," he says.
"Car," you say, kinda uncomfortable. "Now."
The next time you see him, it's three days and two states later. You're waiting in line in a coffee-shop, behind and in front of a guy about your own age, both in expensive suits and highly polished shoes. Probably on their way to the station to get the train into work in the city, and there he is, shoes scuffing on the pavement as he slouches past the floor-to-ceiling window. At first you're not sure it's the same kid, and you jump when the barista calls out to you, but by the time you're back in the car, you're positive.
"Sam, you see a kid come past?"
Sam's slouched so low in the passenger seat he's nearly on the floor, practically breaks his neck looking up at you.
"A kid?" he says blankly. "No. She's not scratched, is she?"
"No..." you say slowly, not even noticing the way he's so tired he calls the Impala 'she'.
Yet. Later that day he totally denies it, obviously, but it's too late, you're completely vindicated and completely gleeful about it, and Sammy's still an uptight little jerk with no appreciation for the finer things in life, like strawberry milkshake topped up with toothpaste. You obviously did something wrong somewhere when you were bringing him up.
On the other hand, it might have been Dad's fault, you suppose.
Then it's another week of nothing, so that you're almost convinced it was all... well, nothing. You make sure you're up and outside somewhere that early every morning, but he doesn't show – possibly because Sam, always the early riser in the family, is always with you.
Well, what are you gonna say? Hey, Sammy. I need you to take off for a while so this ghost kid I think might be stalking us can contact me?
Cause that wouldn't sound crazy at all. First angels and now ghost-boys stalking them... there's only so much even Sam can take; sooner or later you're gonna sound a little bit crazy, you figure.
Oh God, maybe the two are connected. You got pulled out of Hell by an angel, right, and now you, like, attract drifting ghosts or something, because you have never been haunted by anyone before and certainly not by a little kid, and surely there's a movie about this starring Nicholas Cage out there somewhere.
The first video store you come across, you go in and check. The clerk, a kid in braces with too-long straight brown hair and a blouse that looks like it was her mother's back in the seventies gives you a number of very strange looks and insists on talking to you in this slow, patient voice like you're an idiot or a drug addict or Russian, and that doesn't help your peace of mind at all.
Dammit, why didn't Cas tell you about the side effects of this raising-from-perdition shit? You think about summoning him to ask (and chew him out), but somehow you know he'd just get this weird look, all puzzled and absent and aloof, and bugger off without really answering you.
How you know that is not something you like to speculate on.
So yeah. You do a lot of that early-rising stuff, but that's inevitable anyway, what with the terrifying nightmares that Sammy still hasn't noticed you even have, and you're not sure why that annoys you so much when you're the one that's going to ridiculous sleep-on-the-bathroom-floor lengths to hide them from him in the first place but ANYWAY.
Ghost Kid.
So you're alone in the parking lot one morning, hunting through the trunk for your favourite t-shirt (it's in here somewhere, it's gotta be, please don't let me have left it someplace) when he just... appears. One minute you're completely alone, and the next, there's whistling behind you.
You jump and spin round.
He grins up at you.
"Made you look," he says. Up close, he's grubbier than you thought, dirt streaked on his face and arms and his hair, too, is pretty grimy. There's a handsome bruise around his right eye. He's still wearing that heavy coat, and now you desperately don't want him to take it off.
"Hey, kid. I was startin' to think you'd left for good."
He looks sad now. "No. I can't. I tried, though."
"It's OK. What's your name?"
"Dave. Dave Nicholson."
"Dave. That's a good name. I'm Dean."
"I know. I heard you talkin' to your brother."
"Oh, you did, huh? Why won't you talk to Sam?"
Dave shrugs a bit, looking embarrassed now. "He's kinda – he scares me. A bit. He looks right through people."
You're completely taken aback at that. "Um. He does?" But then, after a minute, rather thoughtfully, "He kinda does, doesn't he." It's not an encouraging thought.
Dave scuffs his feet again, looking away. You crouch in front of him, so that you're the one looking up at him. "Hey. Dave. It's OK. I get it."
He catches your eye, gives a grin. "They're weird anyway."
"Little brothers? Totally. Probably got imported from another planet."
He laughs, teeth bright in his dirty face, and it takes some effort on your part not to wince when you realise three of them are broken.
"Where you from, Dave?"
"Quincy. Massachusetts. My Mom owns a diner, and Dad works in a big bank. We were supposed to be barbecueing next Saturday, last one before it really gets cold out, you know? But I... I don't think we will be, will we?"
Something wraps a hand around your throat and starts to squeeze. "No, kid," you say softly. "I don't think you will."
Dave sighs hugely. "No. It feels... I think maybe that was a long time ago. You know?"
You just nod. You wanna reach out to him somehow, squeeze his shoulder – Hell, hug him – but you know there's no point trying.
"Why me?" you ask at last.
He knows what you mean. "I liked you. You came in the graveyard and you did it for Sally McArthur. I don't wanna be her. Like, ever. I liked you."
Sally McArthur. She'd been haunting a lane outside of Quincy since the eighties, killing young men who fit the description of her rapist, who'd left her in the grass to die of exposure and a head wound. You and Sam burned her bones the evening before that morning at the gas station when you first saw Dave.
"You were haunting the graveyard?" It's a totally inappropriate thing to say, but he grins, wicked and mischievous.
"I like it there," he says. "It's creepy and old... I go through it on my way to school, and I try and remember all the names and dates of the people I walk past."
Suddenly, everything starts to make sense.
"When does school start?"
Dave shrugs. "Half-past-seven," he says.
You glance at your watch; it's nearly twenty past.
"Well, Dave Nicholson," you say quietly. "I'll see what I can do."
"That'd be great," he says, all of a sudden very polite, very formal. "Thank you very much. By the way, your shirt's right there, under the books."
You look away in surprise, and when you turn back to him, he's gone again. Sammy's standing at the door to the motel room, scrubbing a hand through his damp hair.
"Dude, I'm goin' for coffee," he calls over. "You want some?"
"Yeah," you manage. "Yeah, please."
Dave disappeared in the early nineties, you discover. He left for school around seven one morning, and just... never arrived. They found his body in a ditch not far from the graveyard, and buried him there, according to his mother's wishes. His brother Jerry had been five at the time.
They caught his killer some months later, in New Hampshire. ID'd him thanks to fibres found on Dave's jacket and the blood under his nails.
Sam gets back while you're still staring at the newspaper photo of Dave and his family outside his Mom's diner, obviously taken in happier days. Jerry's a baby, and Dave is grinning hugely, standing in front of his Dad, who has his hands on his son's shoulders, heavy, warm, reassuring, protecting.
"We gotta head back to Massachusetts," you say quietly.
Sam stops and stares at you. Then he puts the coffee and the box of doughnuts down and comes to stand behind you, reads the article in silence.
"I thought I heard you talking to someone earlier," is all he says.
Dave shows you round the graveyard in high delight, forgetting that you've already been there once before. He recites a few dozen headstones off by heart, and tells you all about old Mrs. Craven, buried under that tree over there, who used to live next-door-but-one and who was completely insane on a good day, apparently, and then he stops in front of his own headstone and frowns at it.
"David Nicholson, beloved son and brother," he murmurs, starts to shift his weight from foot to foot. "Could you – I mean – I –"
"I don't think you wanna see this, kid," you tell him gently. "Why don't you go play for a bit?"
He looks up at you, wide-eyed. "I don't wanna miss anything," he says, sounding alone and afraid and very, very young.
"You won't," you tell him. "I promise."