Title: Reader's Special: Second Edition - One Shot Reward Fic Collection
Author: Disasteriffic Kaz
Info: A collection of 1 Shot Reward Fics for Prompters of my Reader's Special: Second Edition. Features many seasons, hurt/limp/awesome/caring!Sam/Dean/John/Bobby See each chapter for specific info for each 1 shot reward fic.
Author's Note: The Reader's Special: Second Edition went as brilliantly as the first! Prompters of the story were offered a One Shot Reward story of their choice. These are they. None of the chapters contained in this Fic are connected. Each one is a stand-alone one shot per the Prompters request. Thank you to all of you who prompted the Reader's Special! You were fantastic as always!
Chapter Info: For emebalia - season 2, Stanford friend(s), outsider POV
A/N: Set post 2x12 "Nightshifter" It's short, I know but it wrote itself that way. Lol I hope it's alright anyway.
Do please Review once you've read. :D Every comment and vote of support helps keep me writing. Not to mention if I've pooched anything, someone can always tell me. :P
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Joel sat in front of the television in mute shock. His jaw hung open, his eyes wide as he stared at the news report. "No way." He said finally, softly. "No freakin' way!" On the screen was a picture of his once good friend, Sam Winchester. Beside it a picture of the brother he'd only rarely heard of and the report…He grabbed up his DVR remote and rewound it, needing to see it again. The news reporter gave solemn words to a bank robbery that had ended in death and mayhem with Sam and his brother as the masterminds. He couldn't believe it no matter how many images they showed from inside the bank.
"This is impossible." He remembered Sam from their days at college, at Stanford. He had always been so…so genuine; calm, quiet, easy to laugh and quick to defend his friends. "Gotta be a mistake." He muttered as they said his name. Sam Winchester. "Oh god." Joel sat back with a thump. "This can't be real." He thought back to the day of the fire, the day Jess had died and sighed. No one had seen Sam after that. He'd just vanished for months. Joel had heard through the friend grapevine that Becky had seen him in the last year but apparently she was talking much about it, only saying Sam and his brother had saved her. He knew Becky's brother had been in some sort of trouble and recalled suddenly seeing something about Dean Winchester dying and he looked back up the screen, confused. He shook his head. He must be remembering it wrong.
"Damn, Sam. What'd you get into?" Joel asked the screen and froze it on the image of Sam toting a shotgun inside the bank with his brother beside him. Sam had always been quiet about his family, painfully quiet. Sometimes he'd see Sam pick up a salt shaker in a restaurant and just stare it with this sad look on his face. Every time he'd ask Sam would laugh and set it down and say nothing more. He wondered then if perhaps his brother weren't the real criminal in the family; maybe Sam had somehow been sucked into a murderous life.
Joel grabbed his phone off the table and opened it, quickly finding the number he still had for Sam. He dialed it quickly. He couldn't stand not knowing. If Sam needed help…the phone rang and rang and went to voicemail. He faltered for a second on whether to leave a message and then just closed it. It wasn't the kind of thing he wanted to ask in a stupid message. He just couldn't understand. He glared at Sam's image on the screen. Sam had always been the most…vanilla of all their friends. The guy wouldn't hurt a fly. Hell, Joel had seen him laughing at Jess more than once as he carefully carried a spider out of their apartment. He snorted and shook his head. The Sam he knew wouldn't be robbing banks and killing people.
"No way." The Sam he knew stood up for right, almost to a fault. He frowned then and remembered another time. They had been in a bar, they and some other friends, drinking. Three scruffy bikers had tried to start trouble with them. One of them had shoved Joel back into the bar and Sam…Sam had stopped them. His quiet, harmless friend had stepped forward and with a few well-placed kicks and some moves that looked almost military, Sam had taken all three down in less than a minute. Sam had ushered them all out of the bar to avoid more trouble and shrugged as they pounced on him, saying he'd just gotten lucky, that the men had only been surprised. Joel hadn't believed him then and even less so now.
There was another time when Joel had snuck into Sam's dorm room. It was finals week and Sam had been studying all the hours of the day and night. Joel had wanted to shock him out of it, make him have a little fun and had snuck in. He'd jumped on the bed, scaring Sam awake and then found himself on the floor with Sam on top of him, a scary long knife at his throat and a look on his face that had chilled him to the bone. Sam had immediately fallen back, helped Joel up and fallen over himself apologizing as he tucked the blade back under his pillow. Sam had told him that he'd once been jumped in a motel and even then, Joel had felt there was more to the story but he hadn't pressed the issue. He'd been too busy feeling the fool for scaring the guy that badly. Besides, sharing was not something Sam ever did with anyone except Jess.
Joel tried Sam's phone again and again it went to voice mail as he flipped it closed. He ran a hand through his hair and over his face, finally admitting to himself that there was a lot he didn't know about Sam; a lot that no one had ever known about him. The more he thought about it, the more realized the sheer magnitude of things he didn't know about his friend. Joel rewound and watched the newscast again only now he wondered. Maybe Sam was so secretive about his life before college because he had been a part of that life. Maybe he had come to Stanford to get away from it, from the crime and try to have a normal life. He'd certainly worked hard to appear normal. Perhaps he had been a bank robber at his brother's side but he'd sure had no money to start with; that much Joel remembered. When Sam had first started college he'd spent many weeks subsisting on Ramen Noodles and little else so if he had been robbing banks, he sure hadn't brought any of the money with him.
Sam must have wanted 'normal'. Joel sighed sadly; normal until the fire, until Jess had died and then his brother had come and taken him away. That much he knew from some of the onlookers the night of the fire. So he'd escaped to college and Jess' death had driven him back into it. He felt a sudden anger flare for the brother he knew nothing about and he glared angrily at Dean's image on the screen beside Sam.
"Just couldn't leave him out of it could you?" Joel asked softly. He wanted to find them and give a good solid punch to the older brother who'd pulled Sam back into it. It scared him to think that someday soon he might see a news report declaring Sam dead, killed in some ridiculous shoot out in a bank. He stood and paced back and forth in front of the television, looking at it occasionally, glaring away at others.
Joel held up his phone and tried Sam's number again with anger bubbling in his throat. This time he would leave a message and try to set the guy right, make him call back. Somehow he would find Sam and talk sense to him. He got out of that life once he could do it again. Jess would like that, he thought. He listened to the ringing, ready to let loose his tirade when, to his surprise a voice answered. Sam.
"Hello?" Sam voice was gruff, sounded tired. Joel listened and all the anger he'd been stewing bled away leaving him empty. "Hello? Who's there?"
Joel lowered his phone and stared it, suddenly unsure what he could say to Sam…or even if he should.
"Look if someone's there…I don't know, Dean. No one's talking."
Joel gasped softly and flipped the phone closed quickly. His brother was with him and Joel couldn't think of anything to say that wouldn't get him on the wrong side of the older brother, the criminal, the bank robber and murderer. He tossed the phone onto the couch and stared it. Sam hadn't sounded like he needed help. He hadn't sounded lost or any of the other things Joel had thought he would. Sam had sounded…at home and completely different. The inflection in his tone had been one Joel had never heard and it made him shiver and think again of the incident in the bar and the night in his dorm room. He looked over to the image of Sam on the television.
Joel realized suddenly that you never really know someone and Sam had taken extra care to make sure no one, not even his friends, really knew him at all. Joel picked up his beer and took a long drink. He decided he didn't want to know anymore. He no longer wanted to know what the story was or if Sam had turned to a life of crime by his own choice or not. Joel turned off the television and sighed a little in relief as Sam's image vanished. He decided he'd rather remember Sam the way he was. Sometimes not knowing was better he told himself and headed back to go to bed. He passed a picture hanging on the wall; a picture of him and Sam with their arms thrown around a laughing Jess and didn't look at it as he went. "Don't get dead, Sam." Joel said softly and turned off the light as he left, leaving the picture alone to darkness.
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The End.
