Life, swiftly, sickly prone to change
Life as it had been known suddenly changed for Carson and Braxton. As in that moment, when Geraldine had split ties with them for the two dumpster divers, they realized they had one thing in common. Their sudden hatred for the Winchester brothers was more than the hate they felt for each other. Suddenly, they found themselves plotting and scheming and spending their days together.
"One of them is going to get with her, you know..."Braxton growled a few days later at lunchtime when Dean, Sam, and Geraldine casually offered to help the lunch ladies "take out the garbage." They filled the bottom of a trash can that Dean had soaped and scrubbed on his way in here with a couple of meals' worth of food for both brothers.
"Yeah, and it will most likely be that sappy, soppy, dew-eyed nerd Sam...God! I hate him! I would cut him if I could get away with it..."Carson hissed. The look of Sam smiling bashfully at Geraldine was enough to make him crush a soda can and spray its contents on a kid sitting nearby who howled in protest.
"Patience, brother...There's a better way to get revenge on Sam Winchester than slitting his throat..."Braxton's voice slid cool into the room, yet sizzled with hate, like a popsicle sliding off its foundations in the wake of summer's wrath.
"How so?" Carson put his fingertips together, delighted.
"Well, think about it like this...They're starving to death, right? Let's make sure they starve to death...all the way...Slowly and in the most freaking pain that is possible. We'll make it damn near impossible for them to collect food here...And think of it...Geraldine will watch them wither away and lose what little shred of virility she might have thought they had..."Braxton felt sick like table wine as he smiled. His stomach flopped with excitement at the thought of crushing the life out of Sam slowly, surely...
"For Sam, it will be worst of all, because his brother? What a loser, right? He was practically shoveling his half of the food onto Sam's plate that time we saw them in the alley...He'll starve first...He'll die before he lets Sam go hungry...Sam will watch the life drain out of Dean's eyes and then when Dean's dried up and blown away like the bean pod he is...Then, my brother, Geraldine's new boo will get what he deserves for making it where neither of us could have her..." Braxton flicked a fork with relish.
Carson smiled.
"How would we do it?"
They both looked over.
"We start by making it where the school has to have a huge haul of its garbage protocols...We leave something funky in there, something that will spoil the food where they can't eat it...where the health department will make the little lunch ladies sack up any spare suppers they might have..." Braxton looked at Carson and felt the wicked plans bubbling in his eyes.
"That warehouse on 9th street...has lots of rats that are always turning up dead...seriously, I'm pretty sure something creepy is going out that way...They always have their guts ripped out..."Carson said slowly, smile getting wider and wider...
The two boys got up to go and exact their evil plan unaware that they were heading into a great bit of trouble for themselves. Youth is vain and cruel and fleeting. They were set to destroy the other brothers their mirror image and would destroy themselves.
Sam and Dean were oblivious. They, of course, knew what went bump in the night and were quite accustomed to finding their way about the dark. Never did they think to seek for evil in the halls of a high school lunchroom_for hate in the heart of jaded teenage lovers boys... It was a seed, small and out of sight, but a seed of none other than the grapes of wrath, and the vine twisted serpent-like beneath their feet and slithered ready to reach up and strike out and sink its fangs into the wine of sweet charity from the cup Geraldine had extended.
"This was a great idea...you're pretty amazing..." Sam smiled, shyly as the bell rang and the kids in the hall went to PE.
"No one should go hungry, no one should be alone..."Geraldine smiled. Something in his eyes was innocent...and softly, morning rain, she was falling in love with Sam Winchester. She didn't know he would have to die for it, that for her to fall in love came with a thorny price. But as she walked away to PE, and he to split the trash can feast with his brother in the park where they now lived, Geraldine was in that early stage of crushing where she had no idea she had the potential to love him yet, it was all too new, tea buds before they open.
The ends, thereof, were the ways of death. Dean didn't know why but when he watched Geraldine and Sam talking he felt a sudden twinge of anxiousness for their Dad to come back before things changed around here. In Dean's experience, change moved under the surface and sank its teeth before one ever saw the strike.