There's a sound like a rush of feathers.. it reminds him of an old barn owl he once saw..
Dean wakes up with a violent start, gasping. He pats his chest and head, feeling for injuries until he realizes he's.. fine. His neck isn't snapped. His legs and back aren't broken. Confused, he looks around to see he's also in bed, lying on top of the covers. What the actual hell?
He turns to frown at the window that's almost closed with only a few inches of moonlight peeking through.
He. Did. Not. Dream that shit. But he would have been dead or at least crippled from a 3rd story fall. Getting up, he walks slowly to the window. Opening just one of them, he sits down on the bench and rests his elbows on the sill. Dean rubs his eyes before closing them and tries to remember.
He banged his head...
Touching the back of his skull, he winces when he finds a sore spot. Then he shivers at the feeling of going over the side. He was plunging downward and must have blacked out or fainted. But.. there's a niggling memory just at the edge of his graying recollection. He remembers blue. An unnatural, bright as hell blue but he doesn't know why. Then there's nothing.
Well he amends, he does recall one other thing. Right before he fell.. he saw an arm. Impossibly high up and crazy but he'd seen it.
He stays there quietly until his head is nodding and finally pushes off the windowseat. He feels a little ridiculous and would be ready to think he dreamed the whole impossible thing, if it wasn't for his throbbing head.
Staring out into the night, Dean whispers, "Thanks."
He walks back to his bed but leaves the window open.
Since that night, Dean doesn't worry about his shadow so much anymore. Sometimes he wakes up with the hanging feeling that someone's just out of his sights but he doesn't worry about it as he did. He lets himself fall back asleep, knowing nothing will be there if he bothers to get up.
At school, he's distracted, drawing pictures of owls and gargoyles with blue pens and scrunching his eyes at it like he's trying to figure out a puzzle. He starts to leave things for his mystery savior on the window ledge at night. Apples, Kit Kats, Cheetos.. nothing is ever touched. Once he thought it took some blueberry pie he left out but it turned out his mom had cleaned it up thinking he'd forgotten it. Maybe it didn't eat. Maybe it wasn't real. Maybe he was a dumbass.
One Saturday, when his mom is driving him and Sammy back from a trip to the mall, they stop at McDonald's. She asks what he wants and he gives his standard Double Cheeseburger with Fries and a Coke. Right as she's about to drive off, he yells, "Wait!" The car rocks with her mashing the brake. "Can I have two cheeseburgers? I want one for later."
She gives him a look over her shoulder.
"C'mon. Please, mom?"
"Alright, honey. But you're eating twice as many green beans tomorrow," she says, smiling sweetly. Groaning dramatically, he sits back in his seat and flicks Sam's hanging baby toy so it moos.
A few hours later, everyone's in bed and the house is quiet. Dean unwraps the burger, still warm from when he nuked it in the microwave fifteen minutes ago, and places it dead center of the window sill. Walking backwards, he gets into bed and after a while of staring at the ceiling, falls asleep.
When the sun comes up and annoying birds start chirping, Dean opens his eyes. He blinks and yawns until he remembers and glances at the window. Bouncing out of bed, he scrambles to the sill and is shocked and thrilled to see.. its gone! After a second, he frowns, ducking his head out the window to check if maybe it fell or something. Rationally, he allows that a bird could have taken it or.. where was the wrapper? How will he know if it was actually taken? He didn't know what he was expecting but it felt less fulfilling that he thought.
His mom shouts up at him that breakfast is ready. He throws on jeans and a tshirt, barely paying attention to what he's doing. When he grabs his watch off the nightstand, he freezes when he sees something drop on the floor. He bends to pick it up. There next to his bed is the McDonald's wrapper, perfectly folded into a neat square.
At school that week, Dean couldn't concentrate if you paid him in pie. It's real. It has to be. It was in his room, standing over him. That thought blows his mind, as well as makes him uneasy. What should he do now? It saved him and took his offering.. should he keep trying to make contact? This was crazy.
"Wow, creepy bat-guy doodles. Are you hitting your teenage emo phase?" Charlie says from over his shoulder before class starts.
"Huh?" He looks back to her smiling face. She gestures at the paper he'd been idly drawing on while they waited for class to start.
"Oh." Dean quickly tucks the paper away. "Nah, just bored."
"Well, if you're going for Batman try less feathers, more cape and nifty utility belt."
He frowns. He hadn't drawn any feathers.. had he? But Charlie's already moved on to bickering with some girl about the virtues of original Star Trek vs Next Generation. The bell rings.
That evening, he's chasing Sam around the house as he squeals in delight. Making exaggerated growling noises, Sam turns and pretends to be the monster this time. Dean puts on his best falsetto and fake screams as the chubby-legged toddler stomps heavily towards him.
When Mary comes to scoop him up for a bath, Sam sniffles and is very close to having a full on melt down.
"C'mon baby, bath time. All good little monsters have to get clean." His mom says as he squirms in her arms.
"No! Mon-ter Dean! Mon-ter Sam!" He pouts, fighting to get loose.
Dean ruffles his hair. "Hey, don't worry buddy, we can play monsters tomorrow. You can be Godzilla and I'll be King Kong, kay?"
Sam stops struggling but still sticks out his bottom lip. "Sam Kong."
"Yeah alright, Sammy, you can be Kong. You're hairy enough." He tugs on a lock of the brown mop his parents let grow out.
Sam giggles and fights with Dean's hand for a few seconds.
His mom mouths "Thank you." And Deans about to run up to his room when his mom says, "Hey can you tell your father I want to talk to him? I think he's outside somewhere."
"Sure."
She carries Sam upstairs and Dean walks through the kitchen out into the backyard. It's dusk and all the insects are humming and singing. His dad isn't anywhere within sight. He's about to turn back inside when he sees the storm cellar to his left with the padlock off. It's always kept locked since as long as they've lived there. His dad said the stairs had rotten wood and were unsafe.
He looks around again. Maybe he's down there?
Dean pulls open the heavy wooden door on the ground and sees a small light far back out of sight. "Hey Dad?".
Nothing.
Looking around again, he calls down again and waits. Well he couldn't not go down there now. Besides he was told to find his dad, Dean reasons.. knowing he wasn't down there before he even placed his weight carefully on the first step.
When he got to the bottom, his eyes widen at several shelves with all kinds of things from books to ugly figurines. Coming close to one, he sees bottles of different herbs, water, powders, one that looked like blood? Was his dad in some kind of cult or something?
"Salt?" He holds up a canister of Morton's Salt.
Putting it down precisely where he found it, he slowly walks towards a cabinet. Opening it, Dean's mouth falls open to see a collection of different types of weapons from shotguns, hand guns, machetes, a freaking sword. He knew his dad hunted deer and stuff but what the hell.. Was he a crazy weapons collector or what?
Dean grabs a sawed off shotgun from a hook, entranced. He stretches out his arm to point it at the wall, squinting his eyes over it like he's aiming and feeling a little badass. He lowers it, pointing it at the floor and reaches for a short blade he thinks is called a Bowie.
Smiling, he whirls around a few times like a ninja, so caught up he doesn't hear footsteps on the stairs.
"Dean!"
He almost jumps out of his skin and barely notices the slice he cut in his upper leg.
"Why the fuck..Do you not have a goddamn braincell in that head of yours? You could have.." He grabs Dean by the scruff of his neck, yanking the gun then knife handle out of his hands roughly. "Don't you ever come down here! You hear me, boy?" He flings Dean towards the stairs but he trips and lands hard against the first step. Dean cries out at the pain from his cut leg and his side at banging against unforgiving wood.
Breathing hard, John closes his eyes and finally walks towards him with palms out. "Look, son.."
He quickly scrambles to his feet and stomps up the stairs. His dad calls after him but he doesn't stop, doesn't hear anything but the blood rushing in his ears.
Dean doesn't remember the trip but he's suddenly sitting on the floor next to bed on the side closest the window. He wishes he could stop but angry tears burn in his eyes, dripping down his cheeks. He fists his fingers in his own hair out of rage and hurt and confusion. He rubs his eyes over and over with the heels of his palms and laughs once at how pathetic he's being. The slice in his leg is stinging, his side is throbbing, he wants to scream but it would only bring his mom. Finally, he folds his arms over his bent knees and buries his face in them sniffing jerkily until he can't anymore.
He's not sure how much time passes, but sleep begins to drag him under.
The wood of his floor creeks from the weight of steps coming towards him. His fucking dad coming to either apologize or yell at him some more.
"Leave me alone!" He says with venom but his dad doesn't move. Dean lifts his head out of his arms to yell up at him to go away.
Then he stops and just stares..
There, only a few feet away from him, is a boy maybe a few years older than him. Mouth a little open, Dean takes in the sleeveless black shirt stretched tight over his muscled torso, silver cuff around his bicep with weird symbols, dark brown pants that look leather and laced up with a black cord, bare feet.
"What.. who the hell are you? What are you doing even doing here?" He asks dumbly, taken back by the surreal appearance of an odd-looking stranger in his room. 3 stories up.
The boy tilts his head. "Why are you crying?" he says in a voice far too deep for his years.
"What? I wasn't crying. I was just.. angry." Dean rubs his face to wipe away any remaining wetness. "Who are you?" Pushing to his feet, he winces at his leg and pats at his pant leg, damp with blood.
The guy takes a step forward. Deans already trapped against the wall so when a hand is reaching towards him, he grabs the wrist on reflex. Dean's about to yell out but then the light hits his eyes just right.
Blue.. so freaking blue, practically sparkling.. With a flash of recognition, Dean realizes he's staring at the same absurdly bright blue from the night he fell. He's seen blue eyes plenty but he's only seen that unearthly shade one other time in his life. Right before he was pretty sure he was about to die.
"You."
Shocked, he lets the hand move closer, wrist still in his tight grip, until two fingers touch his temple. Within a blink, the pain in his ribs subsides and his leg stops hurting.
After a minute of intense staring, Dean self-consciously lets go of the arm and it's taken back.
"It was you, right? I didn't imagine it? You saved me.." He swallows, feeling a bit lost. "Didn't you?"
He gives a small smile but doesn't answer.
It's making Dean nervous, he's only spoken once and that was to ask about him crying of all things.
"What are you… some kind of mutant? Nightcrawler or.. or.. I mean, what the hell?" He puffs out his breath, trying to wrap his head around this insanity. They evaluate each other from too close for Dean's comfort. Not a gargoyle or a bird man or something. Dean wearily watches him for signs of aggression but the boy seems happy to just stand there quietly, flicking his gaze back at the open window every once in a while.
He looks.. wild. With eyes that unnatural color that he was sure he'd dreamt or altered. Dark brown hair sticking up and barefoot. Out of place in his bedroom like a piece of nature.. a wild creature that just wandered in. He gets the ridiculous impulse to shoo him away like a crow that flew in or something.
Maybe he should go find his dad. If this was the thing.. the person that had been creeping outside his window for so long, shouldn't he tell someone? No wait, fuck his dad. He clenches his jaw and the guy in front of him frowns and takes a step backwards.
"No! Wait!" He brings up his hands to try and show he doesn't mean any harm. The boy hesitates but then they both turn towards his door when the sound of someone coming up the stairs can be heard.
He looks back at Dean for a few seconds more before turning and running towards the window. Not breaking stride, he nimbly bounces up the windowseat and pushes off the sill with the next step, diving out the window gracefully.
Dean runs after him and braces his arms on the window frame, but he's gone.
He's still searching the sky when his dad opens the door behind him.
Author's Note: Please let me know what you think. I'm glad there's an interest so far.