Chapter 4: A Helping Hand

417 East Coral Drive was nearly identical to the other homes on its block. When Dean had gotten it for him and Sammy he hadn't thought too much about the home itself, beyond it being low-maintenance and in a good neighborhood. All the homes were the same off-white-the realtor has insisted on calling it 'ecru', whatever the hell that meant-stucco with tiny green lawns and single car garages. Really the only thing that made their house unique in the slightest was Sammy's decision to put in a garden out front. The kid ate like a rabbit, but Dean hadn't fussed about the garden beyond occasionally ribbing his brother on how his diet was the things his food should have been eating, to which Sam had so graciously responded by replacing Dean's ground beef with tofu patties.

It was early October. Sam was doing well in his introductory courses (thanks in part to his experience with the topics they were covering while he had been in high school), and Dean was finally getting some peace at work-the calls had stopped on his work number thanks to Bobby, and had decreased to only be during the day and early evening at home. So when Dean saw the battered blue Ford pickup rounding the corner he assumed it was just a landscaper that one of the neighbors had hired. The DiMartinos are constantly spraying their lawn; it makes sense that Frank finally hired someone to professionally do it.

When that same pickup stopped in front of their house, however, he began to doubt it.

"Hey Dean, some truck's out front." Sam called from the living room, peering through the curtains at the parked vehicle.

"I see it…" He replied moving toward the front door while holding the bat he kept by the entry. As he motioned for Sammy to move away from the window, Dean peered out at the truck. It's not Bobby, and I don't know anyone around here with a Michigan plate, so who the hell is it? As if in answer to his thoughts the door opened and a man limped out, holding a hand to his bleeding forehead. He was wearing a flannel shirt-notably torn on the left shoulder-and a pair of jeans along with a pair of combat boots. His hair was matted with dried blood and his glasses were crooked as he glanced at the paper he held before moving toward the door. Dean knew the look-even if he didn't know the man-he was a hunter, and from the looks of it his last hunt hadn't ended well.

Sam had managed to put the pieces together as well, "Dean, I think that's a hunter. He looks pretty messed up."

"Yeah." Dean stated, hand firmly on the door.

"Maybe we should help him out and let him in?" Sam asked, watching the man limp toward their door.

Before Dean could respond there was a knock on the door. Dean quickly weighed his options in his mind. I either open the door and let this random guy in-a hunter who I don't know and who could have brought god-knows-what with him, and be forced to tend to his wounds… Or I kick him to the curb, have Sam hate me-and feel like a piece of shit-while our neighbors wonder what the weird bloody guy was all about. Dean sighed as he opened the door, causing Sam to crack a slight smile at his brother's hospitality.

The hunter was a head shorter than Dean, and looked up at the man in the grey button down as he opened the door. "I have a feeling I have the wrong address, but are you Dean?"

Dean sighed as he replied, "Yes, now get in." He motioned for the man to enter. "Sit down at the dining table, we'll get you cleaned up in a minute-it's the only room with linoleum instead of carpet."Dean glanced at the blood that had already flecked onto the carpet and made a mental note that when this was all over he should consider having the carpet replaced with tile.

The man complied and sat down at the Ikea table as Dean muttered to himself and got the first aid kit out of the bathroom. Within a half-hour the wounds were stitched and cleaned, and the man appeared in much better shape. With the matter of tending to the injured completed Dean addressed the question he and Sam had both been wondering, "How did you get our address?"

The man blinked as he took a sip of the water Sam had brought out. The younger Winchester had been nursemaid during the operation, and despite Dean's attempts to shoo him away had continued to linger. "Someone at the Roadhouse told me about you guys. Said you were the only decent place in Florida if shit hit the fan."

Dean scowled to himself for a half-second before realizing he shouldn't make the guy feel any worse about himself, "Any idea who told you?"

"No clue."

"Great…" Dean muttered.

"I can go if you aren't okay with me being here." The man commented, noticing Dean's tone.

"No, at least stay the night, we want to make sure everything holds alright." Sam commented, quickly shooting Dean a pair of puppy eyes. The elder brother reluctantly agreed via nod as Sam smiled. "The couch is a fold-out. You can bring your stuff in and get changed; dinner should be in an hour."

**SPN**

Paul turned out to be an okay guy, after Dean stopped shooting daggers at him every few seconds. Over dinner he explained why it was that he'd managed to get himself a head wound.

"I took a case in some back-water town. A woman moved into a house and suddenly she started feeling like she was watched. There were random spots that were always cold, she saw shadows in the corner of her vision, occasionally things would randomly go missing to reappear in completely different places. Pretty obvious it was a ghost, and given that it hadn't tried hurting her I figured it would be a pretty easy salt and burn at the cemetery. Only problem was, there were no records of any deaths in the house-even on the property." He paused to serve himself another scoop of rice.

"Anyway, the house wasn't new, it was at least a century old-I think 1870s-but all the previous owners had either died in hospitals or had moved when they were young. So, I thought, maybe it was a native. Indian ghosts exist, and often native tribes were forced to move and their gravesites were lost to time and built over. I did some digging and there was a native tribe that had once lived in the area, so I figured I'd use a standard cleansing ritual, send the spirit to the 'other side'. Only, turns out it wasn't a native's spirit-all that did was piss off everything that was in there… After nearly getting decapitated by a flying lamp I fled the house and ended up on my ass looking at the crawl space. I saw something and it turns out that the previous owner had been some sort of serial killer. There were at least a dozen bodies in there. I was in the middle of pulling out the bones to salt and burn them when all the victims appeared and decided it would be a good idea to go after me because I looked a bit like the guy who'd killed them." He pointed at the gash that Dean had earlier stitched.

"This was because one of them launched a garden spade at my face, I barely avoided it taking out my eye. In the end they're all salted and burned, but I ended up with worse than I could manage on my own, so I came to you guys-it was only a forty minute drive."

Dean nodded, "Well, I'm glad we could help. I know hospitals ask a lot of questions with stuff like this."

After dinner Paul crashed on the sofa while Sam and Dean talked in the backyard. The fence gave enough privacy that as long as the two whispered the neighbors wouldn't notice.

"So?" Sam asked.

"So what?" Dean retorted, taking a sip of his beer.

Sam rolled his eyes and put on a patented bitchface, "So we helped him and nothing bad happened. I saw he actually offered to give us a couple bucks for dinner and you refused him."

Dean frowned, while Sam was cleaning up Paul had tried to give him a twenty, which he had refused on principle. "Look, we're helping one guy this one time. It's not going to be a regular thing."

"Just like the calls?" Sam asked, "Which you happen to have an entire compendium stowed in your desk to look at and a notebook at your office to reference?"

"That's different. They got the message and it's not crazy like it was at first. This is not that. I'm fine with helping this once, but we can't just have random people showing up all the time and expecting help. I can give information fine-we both got that drilled into our heads. But I can't work full-time and be around to tend to the needy, and with you at school you can't either."

Sam looked at the back fence as he sighed, "I guess you're right… but it did feel nice to help someone."

"Yeah, I guess it did." Dean cracked a small smile as he watched the sun begin to set over the rows of homes beyond the horizon.