Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/388431.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Supernatural
  Relationship:
      Sam/Dean, Sam/OMC
  Additional Tags:
      Pre-Series
  Stats:
      Published: 2012-04-21 Words: 37106
****** Boy Falling Out of the Sky ******
by SylvanWitch
Summary
     It's hard enough getting along in high school when he's always the
     new kid. It's harder when he befriends the most bullied kid on
     campus, finds himself caught up in a case he can't share with his big
     brother, and discovers that he has a crush on the big man on campus.
     Add to that a discovery about his brother that he never expected, and
     it's safe to say that Sam's having the worst semester ever.
Notes
     This was my SPN J2 Big Bang for 2009. I'm slowly migrating all of my
     adult fic here to AO3 and wanted to make sure it made it.
Sam is good at high school.
 
Which is not to say that he likes it or that it likes him, only that he’s gone
to so many in the last three years that he knows their ins and outs, knows
exactly what to expect no matter what kind of school it is.
 
Because people—especially teenagers—are predictable everywhere.
 
And predictably vicious.
 
He doesn’t care that his brown flannel shirt fits right in with the dominant
motif of the big rural Minnesota public high school or that his boots, scuffed
and well-used, look like everybody else’s.
 
Doesn’t care that his broad shoulders attract the attention of not a few girls.
 
Doesn’t care that that attraction raises serious resentment in the guys.
 
He might not even care that a group of said guys have cornered a couple of
pale, dark-haired, hollow-eyed kids under the stairs and are about to give them
physical grief, counting on the relative discretion of location and the recent
ringing of the homeroom bell to keep them from getting caught.
 
He might not care—except that Sam has always been a soft sell for the beat-up
and the bullied, can’t walk by an injustice without attempting to right it,
even if it means getting into trouble on his very first day at Green Bank
Regional High School.
 
Sighing inwardly and putting on his best hunting face, Sam approaches the gang
of five beefy guys making a threatening semi-circle around the pair of skinny
kids.
 
He sees as he gets closer that one of the two has a bad acne problem and the
other must be on drugs—his eyes are glassy, wearing a strangely intense and yet
faraway look that makes Sam shiver a little, in spite of his incipient heroism.
 
As he gets close, he hears the biggest of the bullies say, “Whatsa matter,
Eddy?  Your ‘friend’ havin’ his period today, not feelin’ too good?”
 
“Yeah, Eddy,” adds a second boy, neck fat and red from the back, a heart attack
ten years out.  “Your ‘girlfriend’ on the rag?”
 
Which of the kids is Eddy, Sam can’t make out, since neither of the two boys
looks up or makes eye contact with any of the attackers.
 
Sam considers that this isn’t really his fight, that these two might be able to
defend themselves, that the five guys haven’t yet raised so much as a finger.
 
Still, Sam knows high school.
 
When Fatneck raises a hand, Sam’s there to grab his arm at the elbow and yank
backward, tugging the mountain of meat off balance.
 
“What the fuck?” Says Fatneck eloquently, turning to face him and wresting his
arm out of Sam’s grip.
 
The other four round slowly on Sam and give him varying degrees of the same
pack-like stare he’s seen on ghouls and girls at the mall alike.
 
“Who the fuck are you?” The biggest boy says, the one Sam has already pegged as
the alpha male of this ersatz gang.
 
“Sam Winchester,” he answers, knowing there’s no point in hiding or lying. 
“I’m new,” he adds.
 
There’s a snort of mingled disbelief and mockery.  “You’d haveta be new to piss
us off.  Otherwise, you’d know we’re not the ones you wanna fuck with,
Winchester,” the leader of the pack responds. 
 
“Yeah, we’ll beat the shit outta you and leave you for your mommy to shovel
up,” a third boy adds.
 
Sam’s long ago gotten over the reflex to beat unconscious anyone who brings up
his mother.  He’d have been in jail for life by now if he hadn’t gotten past
that particular adolescent gauntlet.
 
Still, he doesn’t like the kid’s tone.
 
“That’s unlikely,” he asserts pleasantly, as though he’s just offered them
advice on passing calculus. 
 
The two would-be victims, still blocked behind the wall of their assailants,
watch wide-eyed, one of them—the kid with acne—shaking his head a little and
muttering under his breath.
 
A collective glance passes between the five guys then, a look Sam had been
expecting and that telegraphs for him exactly what they plan next.
 
Since he’s learned through hard experience to never let the monster have its
ground, he curtails the gang’s plans by drawing back his fist and punching the
biggest kid squarely between the eyes.
 
It’s not a subtle blow—and not particularly elegant—plus, it makes his knuckles
hurt like a son of a bitch.  But it has the effect of dropping the guy like a
sack of moldy potatoes, and before the air has entirely left the kid’s body on
impact with the ground, his four followers are testing the weight on the backs
of their heels and darting uncertain looks at each other.
 
“Who’s next?” Sam asks, nodding to himself as though they’ve already answered
and gesturing to the two skinny kids that they should probably take this
opportunity to get gone.
 
They ghost by him without so much as a thank you, which might have irritated
Sam even a year ago.  Since then, he’s grown up some and learned a lot about
human failings.  It’s not only monsters that make life suck.
 
“You’re dead!” Fatneck says, safe in the enclave of his buddies, who are taking
turns staring open-mouthed at their leader, who’s groaning and shaking his head
uncertainly, like he’s not quite sure what just happened.
 
Sam doesn’t even grace the guy with a verbal response.  Instead, he gives him
the look he ordinarily reserves for the moment before he kills some evil thing,
a look he’s learned from his father and brother and that is usually effective
in silencing any human protest.
 
It has the expected effect this time, as well.
 
He walks away, pretty sure that he’s just made his life at Green Bank High more
hellish than it was already going to be and equally sure that he doesn’t much
care.
 
Still, it’s going to be a long few weeks until Dad gets back.
 
At lunch that day, Sam sits alone, which is nothing he’s not accustomed to.  He
hears the speculative notes in the voices around him, something he’s also
familiar with.  What he doesn’t know yet is how public opinion is coming down
on him, but he’s not worried.
 
When the time is right, he’ll be made aware.  High school students are tribal,
and they all follow the same primitive rituals, in his considerable experience.
 
Someone will take it upon himself—or, more rarely, herself—to make it clear
just where Sam stands on the chain of command.
 
If it’s near the bottom, it’s only a matter of determining what flavor of freak
he is.
 
As he’s leaving the lunch room to try to find the textbook loan
office—someone’s defaced his current math text with penises, an artistic gift
left by an earlier unfortunate like himself, and he needs a different copy—he
catches movement out of his peripheral.  His free hand heads for his pocket,
where he keeps his knife, even as his head swivels to take in the threat.
 
It’s Eddy, murmuring quietly to his creepy companion.  As soon as he notices
that Sam see him, Eddy turns to walk away, but Sam’s faster and catches up with
him.
 
In a strange parody of the earlier rescue, he traps the boys beneath a set of
stairs.
 
“I’m Sam,” he states for the record, offering his hand.
 
Eddy looks at him like he’s got something up his sleeve, and Sam withdraws the
gesture.
 
“You’re Eddy, right?”
 
He gets a bobbing nod from Eddy but not a sound.
 
“Who’s your friend?”
 
This brings Eddy’s eyes up, and for a second, Sam sees there the briefest flash
of rebellion or anger, quickly quashed by apparent self-preservation.
 
Sam turns to the paler version of Eddy, the kid with the crazy eyes who seems
stoned out of his mind.

“I’m Sam,” he says, and he holds out his hand again.
 
Behind him, Sam hears a burst of snickering, and he turns his head enough to
see a gaggle of girls walking by, staring straight at him.
 
Suddenly, he feels ridiculous with his hand hanging out there, unshaken, in the
air.
 
He puts his hand in his pocket, finding comfort in the coolness of the metal
and the familiar weight of the closed knife against his palm.
 
“Anyway, I just thought I’d introduce myself.”  He lets it hang there for a
long second, expecting something, but Eddy only stares at his sneakers.

The other kid has his eyes fixed on Sam, but he doesn’t say a thing, and Sam
can’t read his expression.
 
Finally, Sam shrugs, hearing Dean’s voice say, “Oooo-kay,” in his head as he
turns to go.
 
“Th-thank you,” he thinks he hears.
 
He stops and turns again to half-face the boys beneath the stairs.
 
“No problem,” he says.  “Take it easy.”
 
“You, too,” Eddy replies.
 
By the end of the day, Sam’s got a pretty good idea of the verdict that Green
Bank High has come to concerning him.
 
“Fag,” he hears as he comes to his locker.  There’s a tall kid, almost his own
height, leaning against the wall two lockers down, giving Sam a look of
challenge from behind mirrored aviator glasses.
 
Sam ignores the word and the kid, avoids making a comment about someone having
seen too many eighties movies, and chooses instead to dump the books he doesn’t
need and slam his locker shut.
 
But as he starts down the hall, heading for the school’s front doors, the tall
kid steps in his way.
 
“We don’t like fags here.”
 
And now there’s the inevitable group gathering, lemmings to the cliff’s edge,
waiting for the plummet.
 
Sam only knows that he won’t be the one going down, and he lets it show on his
face, sizing the other up to decide the best approach to the problem.
 
Something of his experience and calculation must show on his face, because he
sees the second the other boy decides Sam might be too much of a challenge to
take on in public.  Sam knows the boy’s already planning for a way he can get
to Sam without any witnesses.
 
Sam smiles wide, teeth gleaming, but it’s not a friendly smile, not a look
anyone likes to be on the other end of. 
 
Then he very deliberately snakes his tongue out and licks his lips, letting the
smile slide into something suggestive.
 
“You sure you don’t like them?” Sam asks.
 
It’s a cheap play, and one he’d ordinarily avoid, except that he’s got a
feeling about this kid, about the kind of kid who has to go out of his way to
hate on gays. 
 
Plus, if he draws the kid out now, it avoids an ambush later on.
 
“You know what they say about guys who protest too much, right?”  He adds for
good measure, putting a little swagger into his step as he enters the kid’s
personal space.
 
The kid takes a step back, uncertainty entering his voice as he blusters, “Get
away from me, you freak.”
 
Another kid, one of the back-up singers such guys usually come with, chimes
in.  “Yeah, don’t you already have a boyfriend?”
 
This raises a general laugh, by the tone of which Sam is able to gauge his
exact status in the school community.

He nods, mostly to himself, and then shrugs like he’s bored already, using the
same shoulder to brush past the tall kid.
 
The others part like tall grass in a cutting wind—and they murmur just like
that, too, as Sam walks the long hall to the doors.
 
He hears a word here or there, the expected, ubiquitous ones, but makes it to
the doors without any other physical incident.
 
The Impala is a grateful shadow hulking at the curb when he reaches the
exterior stairs, his brother’s music an almost welcoming paean. 
 
“Hey,” he says, sliding into his seat.
 
“Hey,” his brother answers, pulling out deftly into the afternoon traffic. 
“How was your first day?”
 
“Good,” Sam lies, and it’s easy on his lips.  He learned a long time ago never
to tell Dean how things really are.  If his brother had been over-protective
when they’d shared a high school, he’d only gotten exponentially worse when he
couldn’t be there anymore to keep an ear to the ground and an eye on his little
brother.
 
“How was your day?” He asks to deflect any more of Dean’s questions.
 
“Same old, same old,” Dean answers. 
 
“Any word from Dad?”
 
“Nah, but I don’t expect to hear from him unless he needs something,” Dean
observes.  “He’s up in the middle of nowhere hunting werewolves.”
 
There is in Dean’s voice a hint of envy, the barest suggestion that his brother
wishes he were with their father and not carting Sam back from his first day at
the new school.
 
Sam carefully doesn’t say that Dean could be with Dad if he didn’t have three
busted ribs.
 
It shows in the careful way Dean takes the turn onto the street where their
tiny, two-bedroom rental sits,  in the middle of a postage-stamp lawn and
shoved up close between two other nearly identical dwellings.
 
The neighborhood had been built for returning GIs once upon a time, the places
cheaply and hastily erected to house the families expected to come out of that
war.
 
Since then, they’d taken on the seedy but timeless quality of so many other
places Sam’s lived that sometimes he forgets there are more lavish homes to be
had just a few streets up and over.
 
Of course, “lavish” is relative in a town this size.
 
Green Bank, Minnesota, population 3158.
 
Two pizza parlors, five churches, a funeral home, nine bars, and a smattering
of mom-and-pop shops doing their best to hang on in the flagging economy of a
dying mill town.
 
As blink-and-you-miss-it goes, Sam’s seen better and worse.  He can’t get too
excited one way or the other.
 
“Fuck, but it’s cold,” Dean remarks, maneuvering himself with deceptive ease
out of the driver’s seat.  Sam’s had his share of bruised ribs, even cracked
one once, and he knows how it hurts, knows what Dean’s hiding.
 
Knows that his brother has gotten comfortable with Dad’s whiskey while their
father’s gone, working away at the bottle at night to help him sleep, propped
up and drowsy-eyed, on the couch.
 
Says Sam keeps him awake with his muttering and jerking off, but Sam suspects
it’s the other way around—not the jerking off part; that’s a given in either
case—but the muttering.  Dean doesn’t sleep well lately, maybe the injury,
maybe the way he incurred it keeping him awake through the night.
 
Sometimes, Sam awakens in the breathing darkness to hear Dean stumbling around
in the kitchen, opening and closing the fridge door and browsing the cupboards,
as though by some magical combination he can conjure beer and snacks that
weren’t there before.
 
“You comin’ in, or are you gonna stand out here ‘til your balls freeze off?”
 
Sam jerks himself out of recollection and shuts the car door, shoulders his
book bag, heads in behind Dean.
 
The house is cold, kept that way to conserve money, since Dad left a limited
supply and Dean’s not yet quite up to the fight that might come after a good
pool hustle, assuming he can find a willing mark.
 
“Got homework?”
 
Sam rolls his eyes, bites back a customary rejoinder about Dean not being Dad,
and grunts an affirmative, heading for the room they’re supposed to share, if
Dean weren’t not-sleeping on the couch.
 
“Get it done.  I’ll make dinner.”
 
That stops Sam in the narrow hallway that leads to the bedrooms and bathroom at
the back of the house.

“It’s my turn.”  He looks over his shoulder to take in Dean’s face.
 
Dean shrugs like it’s ordinary for him to pick up Sam’s chores.  In fact, it’s
probably a sign of the apocalypse, but Sam decides against saying a word when
he sees in Dean’s face something like desperation, just a fleeting shadow,
there and then gone.
 
“Okay.  Uh, thanks.”
 
Dean waves off Sam’s thanks, and Sam continues on, dumping his bag on the bed
but not bothering to shrug out of his coat, figuring it’s warmer to layer up.
 
Why the hell did Dad pick a job in Minnesota in January? Sam thinks.  Like
there aren’t werewolves in Oklahoma?
 
He finds his calc book and some loose-leaf, heads for the only table in the
house, taking up inconvenient space in the tiny kitchen off the living room.
 
Dean’s in there working on dinner—looks like mac and cheese and Steak’ums—but
he leaves Sam be, letting his brother concentrate on his homework.
 
Math is something Sam’s always been good at, the neat numbers making an
intrinsic sense, providing a stark contrast to the nature of his night life,
which is dominated by abominations that defy nature’s strictest equations.
 
It doesn’t take him long until he’s done and up setting the table, moving
around his brother like they’ve choreographed every move with a familiarity
born of long and ample experience.
 
“You sure nothing happened today at school, Sammy?”
 
Ordinarily, Sam would correct Dean’s use of the diminutive, but his brother
looks tired in the dim illumination of the range light, and he doesn’t want to
piss him off.
 
“School was school, Dean.”  And he tries to sound patient and not at all
annoyed with Dean’s prying.
 
“Okay,” Dean answers, putting his hands up at the edge of the table like he’s
surrendering or pushing himself back.
 
He does that next, carefully, and Sam sees the way his brother’s lips tighten
at the corners and the way his eyes look shadow-bruised when he blinks away a
wince.
 
“Let me get the dishes.”
 
“That wasn’t even a question,” Dean answers, leaving the kitchen.  Seconds
later, Sam is serenaded by the jingle for a used car dealership two towns over.
 
He washes up to the sounds of a Three’s Company rerun, Dean laughing along with
the in-studio audience at all the usual juvenile jokes.
 
If his brother’s laughter is a little restrained, Sam ignores it. 
That night, he dreams of free-fall.  As always, when he strikes the ground, he
comes awake, heart pounding, eyes open and blinking away fear-tears, staring up
at the mottled ceiling glowing indefinitely with the streetlight out the side
window filtered in through the cheap sheet they’d hung for a curtain.
 
It takes him a long time to get to sleep again, but when he does, it’s
blessedly dream-free.
 
The morning routine doesn’t vary, even if it is only his second day at a new
school, and Dean drops him off with the usual warnings, all of which Sam
predictably answers with a verbal shrug.
 
But when he reaches the hallway that leads to his homeroom, Sam has a
disconcerting moment of déjà vu, wondering if he’s been caught in some sort of
weird time-loop.  Because looming under the stairs are five beefy guys.
 
The difference is that they don’t have Eddy and his friend cornered.

They’re waiting for Sam.
 
Alpha Male, who Sam has learned is named Bobby, indicates with an impolite
gesture that Sam is to join them.
 
He smirks and shakes his head, keeps walking, waits for the hands to grab his
jacket collar or shove him between the shoulder blades.
 
But that doesn’t happen.  He glances behind him with surprise to find Bobby and
Fatneck and the other three stooges eyeballing something ahead of Sam.
 
He turns to find Mr. Traymore, the Assistant Principal in charge of student
affairs, standing at Sam’s homeroom door.
 
When he nears, the man says, “Sam Winchester?”
 
Sam nods, feeling a frisson of unease zap through his belly.
 
“Come with me, please.”
 
Traymore’s office has the same cheap, sturdy beige carpet as the outer office;
the desk has the requisite picture of a smiling family—in this case, a brown-
haired wife and two little boys in various stages of dental care.  There’s a
school pennant on one wall—Green Bank Bears, Sam notes—and an array of
impressive diplomas on another.  The window looks out over a courtyard housing
an air conditioning unit, an electrical transformer box, and the cafeteria
ventilation ducts.
 
The room has the pervasive odor of frying things.
 
“Do you know why I asked to speak with you, Sam?”
 
Sam swallows his immediate, smart-ass response, figuring because I have
impressive standardized test scores and am tall enough for volleyballisn’t the
expected answer.
 
“Is this about yesterday?” Sam tries to sound aggrieved, like the last thing he
wanted was trouble on his second day at a new school.  Which is true, as far as
it goes.
“Yes, Sam.  I understand you had an altercation with Bobby Munsy and his
friends.”
 
“Altercation, sir?” 
 
The Winchester guide to deflecting authority involves playing dumb when it’ll
work.
 
“I think you know exactly what I’m talking about, Mr. Winchester.”
 
Since the A.P. has switched to his last name, Sam knows Traymore is smarter
than Sam had hoped.  Time to switch tacks.
 
“Those guys were picking on Eddy and his friend,” Sam explains, skipping the
attempt at innocence and going right for the misunderstood good Samaritan.
 
“Eddy and his friend have that problem a lot, Sam.  But then, you probably
didn’t know that, since you hadn’t been here more than five minutes when
this…situation…occurred.  I’ll tell you what, Sam.  Since you’re new, and I
think you probably didn’t mean any harm, I’m going to let you go with a warning
this time.  Stay away from Bobby Munsy and his friends.  And while you’re at
it, you’d probably do best to avoid Eddy, too.  He has…problems.  Just try to
get along, okay, Sam?  Join a club, maybe take up a sport.  You look like
you’ve got the height for basketball or volleyball.  Find your niche.  Make
friends.  And then you won’t have to visit me in my office again, okay?”
 
Sam nods, taking the advice he’s heard at least a dozen times with the same
reaction he always has.  He won’t be there long enough to make friends, join a
club, or find a team that needs his height. 
 
On his way out, Traymore gives him a guy-like slap on the shoulder and then
calls a girl—dyed black hair, eyebrow piercing, permanent sneer—into his
office.
 
Sam picks up his pass to first period from the secretary and tries not to think
too hard about the way he’s handled things so far. 
 
The day passes in the usual way.  Lunch alone, surrounded by suggestive
expressions and the occasional gesture, last long walk to the front doors
punctuated by remarks from a couple of kids.  Sam notes with mild interest that
the tall kid who accosted him the day before is nowhere to be seen.  But Green
Bank is a big high school, and Sam spends most of his time assessing the
immediate threats, so if the kid didn’t put himself in Sam’s way, he wouldn’t
have necessarily seen him.
 
One thing changes, though.  The Impala is idling at the curb, Sam already
almost down the steps, when he hears a hesitant voice say, “Hey, Sam.”
 
It’s a greeting of sorts, not an invitation to converse, but Sam searches
around to see Eddy and his friend standing at the bottom of the stairs and to
one side, half-hidden by the shrubs that grow up along the railing.
 
“Hey, Eddy,” Sam responds, giving the kid a smile and a nod.  He pauses on the
last step, waits to see if Eddy wants something.
 
But Eddy says nothing, and his friend just fixes Sam with that weird look, so
Sam gives a kind of a wave, more a flip of the hand than anything else, and
resumes his usual pace.
 
Wednesday, Sam has gym class and discovers that he shares it with Eddy and his
friend.  As his luck would have it, Bobby Munsy and Fatneck are also in their
class.
 
Sighing inwardly, Sam changes into his gym clothes, all senses on alert for
possible attacks.
 
Munsy has a fading bruise between his eyes and a murderous expression, which he
levels at Sam as they make their way out to the gym floor.
 
Coach Poronofsky tells them that they’re going to continue their lessons on
soccer, and Sam feels a little thrill of relief and pleasure at the news.
 
Still, he keeps an eye on Munsy as the teams are picked—Sam last, even after
Eddy and his friend and by Munsy’s opposition.
 
The game is played with varying degrees of aptitude.  Sam’s put on fullback,
which suits him, and he makes a couple of pretty spectacular saves that earn
him admiring glances from a couple of the guys.
 
His attention is distracted, though, by Eddy, whose uncoordinated efforts at
offense are seemingly hampered by the way his friend sticks to him.  The guy’s
not playing his position, but Coach P. either hasn’t noticed or is used to this
particular vagary because he says nothing.
 
When Munsy, who is on Eddy’s team, viciously trips the skinny kid and Eddy goes
down in a spill that’s painful to witness, Coach P. only blows his whistle and
calls a foul on Munsy.  While the team is sorting out the return to play, Sam
waits for someone to help Eddy up or the Coach to make sure he’s okay.
 
No one does, not even Eddy’s friend, who stands there, hands limp at his sides,
staring at Eddy, who is slowly pushing himself to his knees.
 
Sam can see from across the court that Eddy’s palms are brush-burned, and he
finally makes a noise of disgust and jogs over to the fallen kid himself.
 
He offers a hand, and Eddy looks up at him with an expression identical to his
friend’s—astonishment mixed with terrified suspicion.
 
“You okay?” Sam asks, hoping Eddy doesn’t leave his hand hanging out there
again.
 
Eddy offers a shaking, pale appendage to Sam, and Sam hauls him upright.
 
There are twin bloody spots on the bony points of each knee, and Sam winces in
sympathy.  “You should get those cleaned out,” he notes, even as Coach blows
the whistle to continue the game.
 
Eddy shrugs.  “I’m okay.”
 
Sam shrugs, too, and jogs back to his place.  In the ten minutes remaining in
the game, he makes another excellent save, but this time, the guys who’d
offered him congratulations before say nothing, don’t even look at him, and Sam
sighs again to himself, knowing he’s blown what little cool he’d managed to
capture.
 
In the locker room, the guy to either side of him makes a point to talk over
him, like he’s not standing there.  When they fall suddenly silent, Sam knows
what he’ll find before he turns around.
 
Munsy and Fatneck—who he’s learned from the game is called Jerry—are standing
at the end of the row of lockers, blocking Sam’s way toward the hallway out of
the room.
 
He could go the long way around, back toward the showers and down another
aisle, but he’s content to let things play out.
 
“Where’s your boyfriend, fag?” Munsy begins.
 
Sam considers the extraordinary cleverness of the big boy and says nothing,
instead taking his bookbag out of the locker and shouldering it.
 
“I’m talking to you,” Munsy continues.  The boy between Sam and Munsy clears
out, and Munsy advances.
 
Sam tops him by a good four inches, and he’s already established that he can
beat Munsy in a fight.  Sam lets his eyes linger deliberately on the evidence
of his physical superiority.
 
Maybe he smirks a little, too, Traymore’s warning all but forgotten.
 
Munsy telegraphs the punch and Sam dodges it easily, straightening up with the
same smirk on his face, clearly unperturbed by the attempt.
 
On the other hand, Munsy is breathing a little hard and turning bright red.
 
He waits, watching Munsy without appearing to be very concerned, and sees in
the other boy’s distracted glance that someone is coming up behind him.
 
The muffled squeak of sneaker sole on tile floor gives him plenty of warning,
and he sidesteps to the other set of lockers just as Jerry charges.
 
There’s a comical moment as Munsy throws his hands up to deflect Jerry’s
forward momentum, and Sam snickers.
 
So do a couple of spectators who’ve stuck around for the post-game show.
 
“Look,” Sam says, his voice reasonable, smile pleasant, like Ted Bundy in a
supermarket parking lot.  “I don’t want any trouble with you, and you don’t
want any with me, either.”  The last he adds with a certainty that experience
has already proven, and he sees in Munsy’s face some recognition of the
implicit threat.  “Why don’t we just agree to keep out of each other’s way?”
 
Sam knows before Munsy says a word that his own have been futile.  Guys like
Munsy live on reputations they’ve built on the pain of others.  Big Bobby Munsy
can’t tolerate a rival—or even an indifferent other—without losing all the
ground he’s gained over the years of bullying and harassment.
 
So when the two boys charge him together, Sam’s expecting that, too, and he
drops his left shoulder and barrels into Jerry, while at the same time
straight-arming Munsy with his right hand.
 
Jerry pinwheels backward, trips over a gym bag, and goes down hard on his ass. 
Munsy spins a half-circle and hits the lockers next to Sam with a resounding
report that reverberates off the metal.
 
“What the hell’s going on in here?” Coach P calls out in warning, taking his
time before rounding the lockers to investigate.  It’s obvious he doesn’t
really want the hassle of breaking up a fight.
 
Sam straightens, glances at Jerry, who’s working on climbing to his feet, face
a dangerous beet red, and then gives Munsy a look, too.
 
“Nothing, Coach,” Sam says, passing Munsy on the way to the corridor that leads
out to the main hall.
 
The bell rings to end the period as Sam makes it to the hall.
 
“You’re dead, Winchester!” he hears.  So does everyone pouring out of the metal
shop across the way.  A couple of them look up, see that it’s him, and nudge
each other meaningfully.
 
Sam keeps his eye roll to himself and starts toward the chem. lab.
 
“Hey,” he hears from behind him, and turns to find Eddy standing just outside
the locker room door.
 
Sam returns to Eddy, notices his shadow seems to have disappeared, and says,
“Where’s your friend?”
 
Eddy’s face changes, closes down, and he mumbles something that might be
“Forget it,” as he turns to go.
 
Sam puts a hand on his elbow.  “Wait!”
 
On his periphery, people pass and nudge and snicker.  He drops Eddy’s arm.
 
“Is your friend okay?”  Sam wonders if maybe Munsy went looking for a less
challenging target after Coach broke up their little scuffle.
 
Maybe it’s the genuine concern in his voice, or perhaps it’s the equal weight
of impatience—Sam’s tired of Eddy’s weird social disorders.  He just wants
information—but Eddy swallows, eyes suddenly wide, face growing even more pale,
a real feat, considering that the kid looks like he lives in a cave as it is.
 
In a very quiet voice that Sam has to strain to hear over the sounds of class
change, Eddy says, “You can see him?”
 
This question startles a bark of laughter from him.  “Well, yeah.  I mean, not
right now.  Where is he?  Does he have a different class than you?” 
 
Eddy’s Adam’s apple bobs painfully as he swallows, apparently completely undone
by this information.
 
“Meet me at 3:00 by the music room,” Eddy whispers, turning and hurrying away
before Sam can even answer.
 
“Ooo-kay,” Sam says to himself in decent imitation of his brother.  “Whatever.”
 
Sam should have known.  He should have guessed from the way that people always
put air quotes around the word “friend” when talking about the kid who hangs
out with Eddy.
 
He should’ve guessed from the strange look in Eddy’s friend’s eyes and the fact
that he’d never heard the guy speak.
 
Or the way people laughed at him for trying to shake Eddy’s friend’s hand that
first day at school.
 
When Sam actually realizes that Eddy’s friend is not real, though, is when Eddy
introduces him to said friend outside the band room that afternoon.
 
“Sam, this is Eli.  Eli, this is Sam Winchester.”
 
Sam holds his hand out a bit uncertainly, sparing a glance around them to see
that they’re alone and not being watched.
 
But Eli doesn’t put his hand out.  He looks at Sam, a piercing look that bores
a hole right through him and leaves cold wind in its wake, and Sam shivers a
little and takes his hand back.
 
“Nice to meet you, Eli,” Sam manages, even as he’s running through a catalogue
of creatures in his head and trying to figure out what this one might be.  A
lot of things can be invisible or move so fast that they seem that
way—wendigos, for one, but no way Eli is a cannibalistic giant; ditto
skinwalkers, same argument applies. 
 
But of all the things that can make themselves invisible, Sam can’t think of
one that would befriend a human kid and not eat him at the earliest
opportunity.
 
The second shiver comes when Sam realizes he might be up against an entirely
new monster.  Not knowing scares Sam more than any monster in his dad’s book.
 
“I knew I wasn’t crazy,” Eddy is saying, and Sam draws his attention back to
the boy.  “I knew Eli was real.  It’s just some giant joke that they all
thought was funny, pretending not to see him when he came to school five years
ago, moved here from up in Pineview.  ‘Crazy Eddy’ and his imaginary friend.”
 
It’s like Eddy hasn’t had a chance to say more than three words to another
person except Eli in all of those five years, for now that Sam’s gotten him
talking, he won’t shut up.

He explains how Eli appeared one October afternoon in the seventh grade, showed
up on the playground during recess and started playing with Eddy, who even
then, Eddy confides, was an outcast, picked on and pushed around by the other
kids.
 
“Eli talks,” Eddy says. “It’s not just in my head.”  This he says like maybe
Sam doubts him, or maybe like he doubts himself, and both Sam and Eddy look at
Eli just then.
 
“Hey,” Eli says.  His voice is rough, like he doesn’t use it much, and a little
low, like he’s older than he looks.  But his lips definitely move and sound
most certainly comes out, and Sam thinks that’s a relief, anyway, since it
reduces the list of creatures Eli could be if the boy can talk like ordinary
people.
 
“Hey,” Sam returns, trying not to swallow too obviously around his heart, which
is stuck in his throat. 
 
Just because Eli isn’t human doesn’t mean he’s a danger, Sam tells himself.
 
Then himself says, Name one time that was true.
Sam swallows again.
 
“So, does, uh…do your parents know about Eli?”
 
Eddy’s face loses a little animation, and Sam feels badly for asking all of a
sudden, like maybe it’s none of his business, or like Eddy’s got some terrible
secret.

Besides the invisible kid only you and he can see?  Sam really hates his inner
voice sometimes.
 
“My dad’s dead.”

“Oh, hey, I’m sorry,” Sam says, and he means it.  He’s imagined having to say
that phrase a lot of times.  And he’s had plenty of practice with his mom, so
he can understand the way Eddy admits it like it’s some kind of mark against
him.
 
Eddy shrugs.  “It was five years ago.”
 
And that catches Sam’s notice.  He’d bet good money—assuming he had any—that
Eli showed up not long after Eddy’s dad died.
 
“My mom doesn’t see Eli.  But, you know, it’s not ‘cause she’s mean to me or
anything.  She’s just…sick is all.”
 
And the pause there before the admission tells Sam more than he wanted to know
about the nature of Eddy’s mom’s illness.

He’s heard that hitching note, the elision people use to hide their shame.
 
Sam spares a look at Eli, just a quick one, because until he knows what Eli is,
he doesn’t want to engage him in prolonged contact of any kind.  He sees in the
creature’s eyes a sorrow he’s seen before—on his father’s face, on cold October
nights when Dad thinks Sam and Dean are asleep and he’s sitting up at the motel
table, paging through the earliest entries in his journal.
 
He feels unaccountably better about Eli when he sees that look.  Whatever the
boy is, he cares about Eddy.
 
Which makes Sam think of something else.

“Hey, Eddy, has Eli ever…helped you out?  You know, when you’re
having…trouble…from the other kids?”
 
Eddy’s head shake is emphatic.  “I don’t want his help.  I don’t want him
getting hurt.  He’s kinda fragile.”
 
Sam gives the strange creature another quick look and considers Eddy’s words.
 
“Has anything…weird…ever happened to the kids that pick on you?”
 
“Weird like how?”
 
Sam boggles for a second.  He has to explain weird to a kid who’s got an
invisible, obviously supernatural friend?

“Like, has anyone ever gotten hurt after pushing you around?  Or maybe had an
accident?”
 
Eddy seems to think that over and then sort of gives a half-shake of his head.

“No, I don’t think so.  Oh, wait!”
 
Sam feels a thrill run through him, low, like a mild ungrounded current.
 
“Andrea Ross got stuck in a desk once right after she got done putting peanut
butter on my seat.  Is that what you mean?”
 
The thrill dissipates with an expelled breath, and Sam shakes his head.  “No,
not really.  Never mind.”
 
Distantly, Sam hears a car horn and realizes what time it is.
 
“Shit!”
 
Eddy starts and takes an involuntary step back.
 
“Sorry,” Sam says, ruefully.  “But my brother’s waiting.  I’ve gotta go.  I’ll
see you tomorrow?”
 
“Ye-ah,” Eddy answers, hesitantly. “Uh—“
 
Sam, who’s already started to walk away, turns around, walking backwards. 
“What?”
 
“You sure you want to hang out with me.  I mean…the other kids won’t like you
very much and—“
 
Sam’s laugh cuts the skinny boy off.  “The other kids already think I’m a
freak.  I don’t mind.”
 
Eddy’s smile is weak but genuine when he says, “And at least you won’t be alone
anymore.”
 
Sam gives a wave at that, already turning, breaking into a jog to get to the
Impala before an impatient Dean parks and comes inside.  That’s the last thing
Sam needs.
 
He considers Eddy’s last words as he bursts through the door and takes the
stairs two at a time. 
 
Sam isn’t alone, not really.  He might not make any friends at Green Bank, but
he’s always got Dean, and sometimes he’s got Dad, too.  Eddy’s got no one but
an unknown creature to keep him company.
 
“What the hell, Sam?  I’ve been waiting for fifteen minutes.”
 
Sam ducks his head a little in apology, says, “Mrs. McGavin asked me to stay
after to pick up the extra credit.”
 
It sounds like something Sam would do, and he’s so grateful Dean accepts his
words that he doesn’t even mind the ribbing Dean gives him about being a big
geek.
 
“You know, you keep overachieving like this, you’re going to make the rest of
us look bad.  We Winchesters have a reputation to maintain.”
 
Sam eyes Dean, who’s driving with his left hand on the wheel, keeping his right
arm close to his body.  He figures Dean’s probably pushed himself too hard
today doing something he shouldn’t be doing with broken ribs. 
 
“And what reputation is that?  For being stubborn, hard-headed miscreants who
live on the fringes of society and avoid authority at all costs?”
 
“Dude, you just described the entire state of Montana.”
 
“Yeah, and a good part of Wyoming, too,” Sam answers, laughing.  It’s funny
because it’s true.
 
But Dean sobers quickly, and just before they reach their street, he says,
“Seriously, Sam, I get that you like school and all, but it’s not like you’re
going to have to use much of what you learn there.  I mean, you’re better off
studying Latin and mythology and shit, you know?  What good’s math or English
going to do you when you’re up against a pissed off poltergeist?”
 
In his head, Sam’s thinking of the way geometry plays into a good game of pool,
and the way Milton had the skinny on Satan long before a lot of the authors of
Uncle Bobby’s books ever got around to even thinking about fallen angels.
 
But he doesn’t say any of that.
 
Instead, he just says, lightly, like it doesn’t mean anything.  “Maybe I want
to do something else.”
 
Sam’s never actually voiced that particular desire before, not to his family,
anyway, and he’s sort of surprised at himself for saying it now.
 
Beside him, Dean laughs, a disbelieving little sound, just a chuff of breath,
and then says, voice laced with derision, “What, you going to go to college,
live in a dorm, date co-eds?”
 
Sam shrugs defensively, says, “Maybe,” with the kind of sullen challenge he
usually reserves for arguing with their father.
 
“Right.” 
 
There’s such a host of scornful, unsaid things in that single syllable that Sam
flinches, looks out the window, says nothing at all as they park in the
driveway, walk up to the door, go inside.
 
He does his homework in his room, never mind that it’s hard to balance books
and notebooks on his lap or hunch over the nightstand for a writing surface.
 
Dean comes to the door after an hour or so, leans against the frame and stares,
saying nothing, until Sam looks up.
 
“What?” He asks, clearly unhappy at being interrupted.
 
“You making dinner, or what?”
Sam tosses his book down hard enough that it bounces on the bedspread and then
knocks against the wall and goes to move past his brother, who doesn’t shift
from his place.
 
Instead of stopping, which is obviously what Dean wants, Sam shoves past him,
knocking him aside with an elbow tucked low to his body, protecting his own
middle.
 
Dean makes a sound and brings a hand up to his side, which is when Sam
remembers that his brother’s hurt.
 
He’s already past Dean, though, already halfway across the living room, and
though his steps falter a little with guilt, he doesn’t turn back, doesn’t
apologize.
 
Dinner is silent, only the ordinary sounds of knife and fork, of poured milk
and passed salt to break the tension.
 
Sam does the dishes without a word, and Dean disappears out the front door,
keys jingling ostentatiously in one hand—his concession to letting Sam know
he’s going somewhere.
 
Another hour of homework and a couple of extra chapters of his U.S. history
book, and Sam’s more or less ready for bed.  Not much point in waiting up,
since he’s not talking to his brother anyway.  Besides, Dean’s probably going
to be drunk when he finally stumbles in sometime around one, just after the
bars close.
 
Sam’s half right.
 
Dean is definitely drunk, but it’s only eleven-thirty by the blue read-out of
his alarm clock when his brother collides with the door jamb with an audible,
“Oof!” and says, “You awake,” in a stage whisper that would’ve woken Sam if he
hadn’t already been brought out of sleep by the sound of the front door
slamming.
 
“What is it, Dean?  I was asleep.” 

He sounds pissy, like a little kid, but he doesn’t care. 
 
“I was talkin’ to these guys at the bar.”
 
“Yeah?”  Sam inflects every ounce of his extreme disinterest into that one
word.
 
“Yeah.”  Dean, apparently, is too stubborn to notice or too drunk to care. 
“And they were tellin’ me about this new kid at the high school.”
 
Sam feels the first stirring of unease in his stomach, like icy fingers making
a fist.
 
“Said he’s been causin’ all kinds of trouble, gettin’ into fights, makin’
friends with the wrong kind of people.”
 
Sam rolls his eyes in the dark, relieved to hear that this is what the town has
to say.  It’s not nearly as bad as he’d expected.
 
“Say he’s gay, too, maybe dating the town freak, Eddy somethin’.”
His relief is short-lived.  He’d already decided that Dean didn’t need to know
about Eddy, if only because his brother can be pretty observant when it comes
to people and downright nosy when it comes to Sam, and he didn’t want Dean
finding out about Eddy’s friend Eli until Sam had had a chance to determine
what, exactly, Eli was.
 
Dean’s habit is to shoot first and never ask questions, but Sam’s not so sure
Eli is a threat to Eddy or anybody else, and he doesn’t want to deprive the
poor kid of his only friend if he doesn’t have to.
 
“Is it true, Sam?  Sammy?”
 
Dean seems to have noticed Sam’s extended failure to respond.  Sam can see him
fumbling for the light switch, and he shields his eyes just before the overhead
light goes on.
 
“Geez, Dean, I’m trying to sleep.  Can’t we have this conversation in the
morning?”
 
But Dean isn’t going to be deterred, as is apparent from the way he takes a
couple of unsteady steps toward Sam’s bed and then drops heavily onto the end
of it, near Sam’s feet.
 
Given that there’s a second bed in the room, Sam finds this odd. 

When Dean drops a heavy, clumsy hand on his shin and pats it awkwardly a couple
of times, Sam’s unease turns to real alarm.  Something is not right here.
 
Sam, already up on his elbows, pulls himself up to sit propped against the
headboard.  Dean’s hand slides from his leg to rest on the bedspread.
 
“Is it true?” 
 
Dean’s not going to give up, and Sam searches his brother’s face for the
acceptable answer.  He’s not sure what question he’s supposed to be answering,
for one thing.  For another, he’s not sure how drunk his brother is.
 
Sam’s seen Dean drink to drive away anger, physical pain, loneliness, and a
host of other ills.  Given their argument of earlier, it could be that his
brother is just waiting for Sam to say the wrong thing so he can vent all of
his frustration and worry on Sam.
 
“Sammy?”
 
Maudlin is not a mood Dean indulges very often, not even when he’s really
drunk.  So the wistful note in Dean’s voice makes Sam take a long look at his
brother.
 
Dean’s eyes are bloodshot, glassy.  The dark circles he’s had since he got hurt
are pronounced by the paleness of his skin.  Sam can see clearly the
constellation of pale freckles on his brother’s shadowed cheeks, even under the
stubble he didn’t bother to shave away today.
 
But behind the physical evidence of Dean’s drinking and his obvious upset,
there’s something deeper lurking, a kind of desperation that Sam can’t name and
doesn’t know the source of.  It’s got something to do with him, he feels sure,
with how he answers whatever question Dean’s actually asking.
 
Sam’s at sea, sails shredded, hold taking on water, and he shakes his head.

“Is what true, Dean?”
 
“You gay, Sammy?”
 
“What?” He coughs out, disbelievingly.  Of all the questions Dean might’ve been
asking him, that’s not the one he expected.
 
Sam’s been to plenty of schools since he started high school, and he knows for
a fact that the gay thing has come up at least three other times.  At least one
of those times was when Dean was still sharing the hallowed halls with Sam.
 
He figured this question had long ago been laid to rest.
 
Certainly, he wasn’t expecting to have to answer it tonight.
 
Classic Winchester rules apply:  When you don’t want to answer the question,
ask a different one.
 
“Why, Dean?  What does it matter?  Some guys you hardly know start talking shit
about me in a bar and you decide to doubt me?”
 
Not only is he deflecting, he’s questioning Dean’s family loyalty, which is a
low blow, Sam knows, but also necessary.  Dean’s too close to a few home truths
for Sam’s comfort.
 
“No, Sammy.  No.  C’mon, I know it’s a bunch of bullshit.  It’s just…I thought
you were doin’ okay at school.  You didn’t tell me you were havin’ trouble.”
 
Sam tries to smile the way Dean used to when he’d charm their father out of
grounding him for some altercation at school.
 
“It’s nothing I can’t handle, Dean.  Besides, I gotta fight my own battles
sometime, right?”
 
Since that’s a common theme in the Winchester war room, Dean nods a little
uncertainly and claps Sam on the leg.
 
“Well, just remember not to get into too much trouble.  We’ve gotta stay here
at least until Dad’s back, and we don’t want anybody tryin’ to call him about
you, right?”
 
“I know the drill, Dean.”
 
“Alright, Sammy.  Alright.”
 
Dean’s fading, exhaustion and drink dragging his eyelids down, so Sam
extricates himself from the blankets, helps Dean off the bed, and gets him out
of his jacket.
 
“C’mon.  Let’s get you to bed.”
 
“’m alright, Sam.  I can do it.”
 
Having said that, Dean just stands in the center of the small room, swaying to
some internal rhythm.
 
Sam drops Dean’s jacket onto the chest at the end of his brother’s bed and
guides Dean to the edge of his mattress.
 
“Let me get your boots.”
 
It’s as he’s kneeling to unlace Dean’s boots—a painful exercise for Dean
himself, and one that Sam’s glad to do—that Dean adds yet another layer of
strange to the night’s already odd events.
 
His brother puts his hand on the back of Sam’s bent head, not pushing or
petting, just resting, heavy and warm, fingers spanning the back of Sam’s
skull.
 
It’s almost like Dean wants to be sure of Sam, to see for himself that his
little brother is right there.
 
Sam hesitates, fingers frozen on Dean’s laces, wondering what he should do or
say.
 
He settles for continuing his work as though nothing’s happened.
 
Dean’s hand moves to the back of Sam’s neck as Sam slides off first one boot
and then the second.  It’s warm and reassuring, for all that it’s also weird,
and Sam feels a heaviness and heat spreading through his belly and chest at the
pressure of Dean’s hand there.
 
Finally, he has no choice but to look up, if only to get out from the bracket
of Dean’s embracing hand and stand up to help Dean under the covers.
 
When he does, he sees something naked on Dean’s face, an expression so open
that Sam can’t believe it, blinks it away to look again, sure he’s getting it
wrong.
 
Dean looks lost and confused, like Sam’s not the person he expected to see
looking up from his knees before him.
 
“Sammy?”
 
Sam decides it’s the drinking, that and Dean’s recent injuries, doing the
talking, for he’s sure that in all their years he has never heard that tone
from his brother’s mouth.
 
Dean sounds like he might cry, like he can’t quite express the anguish he’s
feeling without tears in his throat.
 
“Go to sleep, Dean.  You’re drunk,” he says softly, ducking out from under
Dean’s hand and standing as quickly as he can, putting an encouraging hand
against his brother’s left shoulder and pressing.
 
He doesn’t want to hurt Dean, but he does want him to go to sleep right the
hell now.  Dean’s freaking him out.
 
Dean succumbs to Sam’s insistence, and Sam covers him with the blanket, walks
over to the wall, shuts out the light, and returns to his own bed.
 
He’s almost asleep, the clock reading dead midnight, when he hears, “Sammy?” in
a rough whisper from across the room.
 
“What, Dean?”
 
“I’m sorry.”
 
Sam’s not sure what Dean’s sorry for, but he figures Dean will probably have
forgotten it all by morning anyway, so he says, “It’s okay, Dean.  Go to
sleep.”
 
“Okay.”
 
That night Sam dreams he’s in free-fall, but before he can hit the ground, he
sees Eddy and Eli below him, growing larger as he plunges at terrible speed.
 
He tries to shout out to them, to get them to move, but they do not seem to
hear him.
 
When he slams into them, he hears the strangest keening sound that follows him
into the wide-eyed, heaving-breathed waking he always experiences after such a
dream.
 
The keening turns out to be Led Zeppelin, which is blasting from his alarm
clock radio.
 
In the next bed, Dean groans and mumbles into his pillow.  Sam groans, too, but
shuts off the music and manages to get up.  He thinks about calling in sick and
then remembers that he promised he’d see Eddy again.
 
Plus, he wants to hit the library after school, see what he can find out about
tulpas.  He had a thought that maybe Eli is some sort of strange thought-form,
conjured out of Eddy’s grief at his dad’s death and his mother’s slow decay.
 
He leaves a note for Dean to let him know that he’s going to the town library
after school and hopes that his brother doesn’t remember much of what went on
last night.
 
His day at school is marked by a few changes.
 
First, there’s no greeting party under the stairs, which is refreshing, nor
does he even see Munsy, Jerry, and the stooges in the halls.
 
Second, he doesn’t have gym class.
 
Third, he has two companions at lunch, Eddy and Eli.  When the skinny, acne-
riddled boy joins him, Sam hears the quality of sound in the cafeteria around
them change, speculation and scorn making the sibilant whispers somehow
threatening.
 
Sam ignores it, gives Eddy a little smile of welcome, nods to Eli, who nods
back, and keeps eating his sandwich, keeps reading the worn and yellowed copy
of Huck Finn he discovered he needed for English class only this morning. 
Thankfully, the school library had several copies.  And, of course, Sam has
read it before.
 
Eddy says nothing while they eat, but when Sam balls up his paper bag and
closes his book, the other boy asks, “Do you like it?,” indicating the book
with a jerk of his chin.
 
“Yeah, I do,” Sam answers, considering the cover, which depicts a straw-haired
boy in overalls poling a raft beside a tall black man. “I’ve read it before,”
he adds, though he’s not sure why.
 
“Me, too.  I like reading.  Me and Eli read a lot.”
 
This observation has Sam considering Eddy’s silent companion a little more
closely.  Eli has dark hair almost identical in shade and shape to Eddy’s own,
but his eyes are a pale and piercing grey-blue, where Eddy’s are mud brown and
utterly ordinary.  His skin is clear, very pale, his cheekbones high and eyes
tilted slightly in the frame of his face.  There’s something old-fashioned
about his appearance, which Sam can’t describe but that he feels, nonetheless,
and though the boy is dressed in more or less the usual way—jeans and a
sweatshirt, sneakers—Sam can’t help but feel that Eli is out of place somehow.
 
He snorts inwardly to himself at this brilliant observation.
 
Gee, d’ya think the phantom kid might be out of place?
 
He decides to try something, wondering if it’s a good idea even as he asks,
“So, Eli, where do you live?”
 
Eddy startles a little in his seat across from Sam and darts an alarmed glance
at Eli.  He starts to say something, eyes frantic, when Eli answers.
 
“I live with Eddy.  My parents are dead.”
 
“Oh,” Sam says, feigning surprise.  “I’m sorry to hear that.”
 
Eli’s shrug is eloquent; it suggests that he’s had a long time to get over the
loss of his family.
 
“Do you have any other friends besides Eddy?”
 
Eli shakes his head.  “I like to read,” he says then, like that explains
everything.
 
Sam nods as if this is all perfectly ordinary, to be orphaned and alone in the
world and to be living with some kid he met on a playground, friendship based
on the strength of their mutual love of books.
 
“We should go,” Eddy inserts quietly, hands nervously crushing and then
smoothing out his lunch bag.  Sam watches the pair walk away, watches the way
Eli keeps a step behind and just to one side of Eddy, the way the boy moves out
of the way for approaching people as though those people would bump into him
and not go through him if they were to come into contact.
 
He files it all away to take out and consider in his afternoon classes, which
pass with a minimum of stress and almost no homework.  Sam thinks that Green
Bank is going to be pretty easy as schools go, at least in terms of academic
work.
 
The tall kid in the throwback shades is waiting for Sam when he gets to his
locker at the end of the day, and Sam stifles an audible sigh as he stops a few
paces from the boy, who’s blocking Sam’s locker door.
 
“What do you want?” Sam asks wearily, already sick of this particular scenario.
 
“We know all about you and your freak boyfriend, Winchester.”
 
A passing thought has Sam wondering if this kid has an older brother who maybe
hangs out in a bar downtown.
 
To that end, he asks, “What’s your name?”
 
The unexpected question puts the kid off-balance, which is clear from the way
he hesitates in responding.
 
When he does, it’s with more than the usual bluster Sam’s come to expect of
such types.
 
“Why the fuck should you care?  I’m not going to go out with you, fudgepacker.”
 
The crowd that always gathers at such spectacles snickers in unison at the
rejoinder, like the kid’s a bona fide wit.
 
“Why?” Sam inquires, as if they’re having a perfectly civil conversation, two
guys passing the time, “Do you already have a boyfriend?”
 
If Bobby Munsy is a clumsy fighter, this kid is downright incompetent, and Sam
moves so easily aside at his wide and wild swing that the kid’s own forward
momentum propels him into a locker.
 
Sam’s several feet away, untouched and laughing, when Mr. Traymore breaks
through the crowd of onlookers and says, “Winchester, Bellamy, my office. 
Now!”
 
The only thing that differs about the Assistant Principal’s office this time
around is the appearance of the girl waiting to see him.  This one is blonde
and petite, blue eyes red from crying, one hand twisted in her purse strap.
 
Inside, Sam takes a seat as instructed beside the other kid—Steve Bellamy, as
it turns out—and listens while Traymore talks about responsibility and working
things out without violence and consequences and being grown up.
 
When the administrator is done, he levels a stern look at Sam and says, “I
warned you, Mr. Winchester, about causing trouble on my campus.”
 
Sam nods, saying nothing. 
 
“Nothing to say for yourself?”
 
Sam shrugs.  He could explain that Bellamy started it, called him names, took
the first swing, but he’s already tired of the whole scene, and besides,
Winchesters aren’t rats, no matter what the circumstance might be. 
 
“Fine.  You’ll spend the next five days in detention, starting tomorrow.  If I
have any more trouble with you, I’m going to make your father come to my office
and sit down with us.  Got it?”
 
Sam nods tightly, a little worried now.  Two strikes against him.  What are the
chances he can keep a third from ghosting past him before his dad returns from
his hunt in upper Minnesota?
 
“You can go, Mr. Winchester.  Mr. Bellamy and I have some things to discuss.”
 
Sam takes from Traymore’s tone that Steve Bellamy is a regular fixture in the
A.P.’s office.  He gives the kid a look as he rises from his chair, and Bellamy
returns a very grudging nod, like he’s grateful Sam covered for him.
 
Sam considers that maybe he won’t make that third strike after all.  At least,
it won’t be Bellamy pitching it.
 
The Impala isn’t out front when Sam exits half an hour late, and for a second
he’s concerned that maybe Dean had parked in the student lot and come looking
for him until he remembers that he’d left a note about going to the library.
 
The town library is housed in a converted church, the choir loft an open-air
reading room where the periodicals are kept, rows of books in neat aisles where
the pews once stood on the creaky wooden floor.  Where the altar once held the
place of honor, there is now a circulation desk, behind which is an old woman,
hair done up in the requisite grey bun, wire-framed glasses firmly planted near
the end of her nose and held to her person by a glittering chain.  She’s
wearing a sweater set and reading a paperback novel, which, when she closes it
and puts it carefully down, Sam can see is not the romance he was expecting but
a Louis L’Amour western, complete with a rider on a rearing horse raising a
long gun at some distant, unseen threat.
 
“Can I help you?” She asks, and her voice is younger than her appearance, a
pleasant sound that carries over the silent, breathing space of the church-cum-
library.
 
“I was wondering if you had any books on the supernatural?” 
 
“Hmmm…let me see.  Did you try the card catalogue?”
 
Sam nods.  He did.  No luck.  “Just a couple of books of ghost stories and two
collections of Lovecraft,” he explains.

“Well, now, let me think.  Have you tried the internet?”
 
Sam gives her a startled look and she laughs, catching his surprise.
 
“The computers are over there, in the Lady’s Chapel.”  She nods in the
direction of an alcove to the right of the circulation desk, a space hidden by
a long shelf of reference books.
 
“Thank you,” he says, grateful once again for advances in technology.  He
hadn’t been expecting much of the public library in a town the size of Green
Bank, and the computers are a welcome surprise.  He hadn’t wanted to try the
school’s computer lab for his search, worried about filters and spyware
installed by a suspicious administration, but he figures he’s okay here.
 
Though the connection is slow, Sam is able to surf in peace, no one else
apparently interested in using the library’s three outdated PCs or dot matrix
printer.  Sam sighs at the ratcheting repetition of printing pages and keeps up
his search.
 
When he’s gotten as much as he thinks he can use, he logs off, thanks the
librarian, and heads for the reading loft, grateful to find it unoccupied
except for a white-haired old gentleman in a sweater vest nodding over his
evening paper.
 
Sam loses track of time, then, captivated by explanations of tulpas, egregores,
and shadow people, convinced pretty soon that Eli can be none of those.
 
He moves on to spirit manifestations, wishing not for the first time that he
had access to Dad’s journal, and it’s only when the lights around him brighten
with the encroaching winter’s night outside that he realizes he’s been too long
at it.
 
“Shit,” he mutters to himself, and the old man gives him a disapproving glare,
either because Sam had woken him or because of the word, he’s not sure.

All he is sure of is that Dean’s going to kill him.
 
Green Bank isn’t a big place, but even so, the library is on the opposite end
of town from Belknap Street, where they live, and it takes Sam twenty minutes
to jog home, book-bag banging awkwardly between his shoulder blades as he does.
 
Their house is three from the corner that he takes in a burst of extra speed,
and he can see from there that the driveway is empty.
 
“Shit!” he says, louder this time, making the final push to the front door,
inserting his key with adrenalin-shaking hands, going immediately to the
kitchen table, which has always been the place they leave notes for each other.
 
“Stay put,” the note says, nothing else.  Just the two words in Dean’s
distinctive, angled scrawl.
 
Sam drops into a kitchen chair and just breathes for awhile, trying to both
bring his heart rate down and decide what he should do next.
 
After a few minutes of trying to decipher what tone the two words were written
in, Sam spares a glance around the kitchen.
 
There’s a plate, a fork, a knife, and a cup in the drying rack by the sink,
sure signs that Dean has already eaten dinner.  Sam notices that there’s a
calendar on the refrigerator, the kind with a magnet on the back, cheap paper
pages, and a banner across the top advertising the insurance agency from which
Dean likely swiped it.
 
Sam’s considers the date, and he realizes with a heart-zinging start that it’s
January 20.  Dean’s birthday’s in four days.  He might’ve forgotten.  Such is
the nature of celebrations in their family.  Everyone remembers Sam’s, of
course…at least six months out.  But Dean’s has gone unnoticed at least once in
Sam’s recent memory.  He tells himself he’ll have to do something nice for
Dean.
 
He’s not sure how long he sits there pondering gift ideas—the time function on
the old microwave in one corner of the counter is busted, flashes 8:88
perpetually—but it’s full dark when he hears the growl of the Impala pulling
into the driveway.
 
He doesn’t get up when he hears the front door slam open, just calls out,
“Here!” when Dean barks out, “Sammy?”
 
Dean storms into the kitchen a second later, eyes angry.  “Where the hell have
you been?”
 
“Library, Dean.  I left a note.”
 
“I know you left a note, Sam.  But you’ve been gone for hours.  What the fuck
were you doing at the library since three o’clock?”

Sam could correct Dean’s misconception about Sam’s timetable.  He was in Mr.
Traymore’s office until 3:30, after all, and then it took him time to walk to
and jog home from the library.  But he doesn’t say any of this, only, “I’m
sorry, Dean.”
 
He doesn’t sound especially contrite, but then, he’s not, really.  Dean worries
too much, and Sam’s old enough now to be out at dusk alone.  Besides, he can
take care of himself.
 
Dean sinks into the chair across the table from Sam, runs a hand over his
mouth, and blows out a loud breath.
 
“Christ, Sam, I thought somebody’d jumped you or something.”
 
“What?  Why?”  He lets his voice suggest how ridiculous Dean’s statement
sounds.
 
“Those guys at the bar last night said you were pretty unpopular.  One of ‘em
suggested there might be kids from the school lookin’ to settle the score with
you for some fight you had on Monday.”
 
Now he’s impatient and a little nervous, realizing Dean probably remembers more
of last night than Sam had hoped he would.  His stomach jumps and he starts to
feel a little sick, which he combats by saying,
 
“Jesus, Dean, I can handle myself.  And I think you have too much time on your
hands or something.  Since when do you get all worked up about my reputation at
school?”
 
Dean levels a stern look.  “In a town this size, your reputation is all you’ve
got, Sam.  You know that.”
 
And Sam does.  He does.  He’s grown up in towns just like Green Bank, knows
exactly what makes them tick, what makes people talk.
 
But it’s never been a big deal before that he’s having trouble with some
assholes at school. 
 
Then again…
 
“Wait a minute.  Is this because I got into a fight, Dean, or because you think
I’m gay?”
 
“What?”  Now it’s Dean’s turn to bluster and bluff.  “No!  No.  It’s got
nothing to do with you being…  I mean, you’re not, right?  So it doesn’t
matter.  That doesn’t matter.  I just don’t want you gettin’ into too much
trouble.  Gotta keep a low profile until Dad gets back.”
 
Sam nods, hearing more in Dean’s answer than the actual words, sensing that the
whole subject of Sam’s sexuality makes Dean profoundly uncomfortable.
 
Enough that he’s up out of his seat and asking Sam if he wants some dinner,
almost like he’s forgotten that Sam was late getting home in his haste to find
a more innocuous topic of conversation.
 
“Are you a homophobe, Dean?”
 
It’s unfair of Sam to push his brother, and not very smart, either.  The set of
Dean’s shoulders, the way he’s making a lot of noise opening cupboards and the
fridge door, getting out sandwich fixings, the way he’s saying something about
the pool tables at Earl’s B & G—all of these are sure tells that Dean wants to
forget they’ve been having anything like a serious discussion.
 
Sam knows better than to bait his brother when Dean’s deflecting like this, but
he can’t seem to help himself.  Suddenly, it matters a lot to Sam what his
brother really thinks.
 
Sam expects to hear louder banging, more obnoxious noise to cover his question,
either to give Dean time to think up a snappy comeback or to allow him an out
to ignore the question altogether.
 
So when Dean turns slowly from his place at the counter and leans back against
it, shoves his hands into his jean pockets, and stares down at the floor
between his boots, Sam’s a little surprised.
 
He’s a lot surprised by what Dean says next.
 
“I just think…we’ve already got so many strikes against us, Sam.  Seems like
being gay would be one too many.  I mean…if we had a choice, you know?”
 
Dean’s expression when he looks up at Sam is careful, like he’s not sure of
Sam’s reaction to his words.  And Sam, for his part, isn’t sure how to feel,
either.  He notices that Dean hasn’t really answered his question.  On the
other hand, he’s said way more than Sam ever expected on the subject.
 
Too, he’s used the collective pronoun, “we,” like gayness is a hereditary trait
that runs in the Winchester line.
 
He’s pretty sure Dean isn’t gay—he could exhaust himself naming all the girls
Dean has been with since he was Sam’s age—but Sam appreciates the solidarity.
 
And yet…
 
“Dean, what makes you think I’m gay?”
 
Dean shrugs, doesn’t look at Sam.
 
“Dean?”
 
   1. You’re not—“
 
Sam hears the word Dean leaves out—“normal”—and looks down at the table.
 
It’s true, but it still hurts to not-hear it from his brother.
 
“Just because I’m not a horn-dog like you doesn’t mean I’m gay, Dean.  Maybe
I’m just…quiet about it, or something.”
 
But he’s not.
 
Sam’s not quiet about dating and girls.  He doesn’t secretly lust after the
blonde in his calculus class.  He doesn’t jerk off in the shower to images of
Jessica Alba.
 
He is gay.
 
The discovery of that particular nail in his normal coffin came over the course
of an especially painful three-month stretch in his freshman year.  They were
in Illinois somewhere—Sam refuses to remember the name of the school—and he had
found a niche among the quiet kids who nobody bothers to pick on.
 
One of them, Alex Mendez, went out of his way to help Sam get caught up in
advanced trig, a class he’d tested into but didn’t have much experience with. 
Alex was a shy, quiet, dark-haired, sloe-eyed boy with a killer smile and a
wicked sense of humor that he kept mostly to himself.
 
He used to make Sam laugh until milk came out of his nose.
 
Sometime around the second week of school, Sam realized that he looked forward
to spending time with Alex way more than he should for average guy friends. 
Then he realized that he’d get a warm feeling in his belly when Alex smiled at
something Sam said.
 
After that, lunch became an agonizing gauntlet of opportunities to accidentally
out himself.
 
Gym, which he blessedly didn’t share with Alex, became a shameful exercise in
not looking at the other guys as they got changed.
 
Summer grew into an impossible-to-reach oasis of isolation.  He couldn’t wait
to get on the road with his family, put the town—and especially Alex—behind
him.
 
Since then, Sam had gotten used to being an outcast in yet another way and had
realized that:  (a) he didn’t have to tell anyone he was gay; and (b) it
wouldn’t make him any less popular if people knew, since he was generally
considered a freak anyway.
 
Of course, the one exception to those two rules had to do with his family, to
whom Sam has always belonged, even when he sometimes feels like an outsider. 
 
This secret has never made him feel more alone than right at that moment, with
Dean standing less than six feet away giving Sam a steady, waiting look, like
he already knows what Sam’s going to say.
 
“I am gay.”
 
He says it softly, not because it’s hard to say—though god knows it is, maybe
the hardest thing he’s ever said, ever—not because he’s ashamed—he’s not, can’t
be, not of something he can’t help, can’t change, didn’t choose. 
 
Softly because he hopes maybe Dean won’t hear it, or that he’ll pretend he
hasn’t and they’ll go back to the deflection and gentle deception of daily
life.
 
Dean nods, jaw tightening, and takes in a breath, like he’s just heard
something that requires some adjustment on his part.
 
Sam watches his brother’s face and waits, wondering if things will ever be the
same again.
 
Dean shifts against the counter, pushes himself upright, turns back and resumes
making a sandwich out of white bread and cold cuts.

“You want mustard?”
 
Sam takes in a breath that turns into a nervous laugh.  “Uh…yeah.”
 
Dean nods again.  Clears his throat.  Works quietly with his back to Sam for a
minute.
 
Then, “It’s okay, Sam.  It’s okay that you’re gay.”
 
Sam’s grateful that his brother’s got his back turned, for the tears that come
up suddenly in his eyes require dashing away, and he has to swallow several
times, painfully, to keep from sobbing with relief.
 
By the time Dean delivers him two sandwiches, a pickle, and some chips, he’s
more or less composed, and when Dean slides a glass of milk across the table
and sits down at the other chair, he finds that he can eat without choking and
even smile at his big brother.
 
“So…are you seeing somebody?”
 
Dean tries for casual and almost makes it, too.  Sam can hear the panic in
there, though, the way Dean isn’t sure he’s ready for Sam’s answer.
 
He takes his time chewing the all-at-once tasteless sandwich and shakes his
head, swallows a big gulp of milk, wipes his mouth with a napkin.
 
“No.  No, I’m not.  Popular opinion to the contrary.”
 
“So who’s this Eddy kid, then, that people keep talking about?”
 
“He’s just this guy, this nerd, I guess, who gets picked on a lot.  I sorta
helped him out on Monday, and these other guys weren’t real happy about it.”
 
Dean started nodding halfway through Sam’s explanation, and Sam sees in his
brother’s face a wry recognition.
 
“Sammy, Sammy, Sammy.  Always picking up strays.”
 
Sam forces himself to laugh like that’s exactly what’s going on, thinks to
himself how Eli’s really the stray to be concerned about, not Eddy, and takes
another big bite of the sandwich he doesn’t especially want anymore.  If his
mouth’s full, he can’t answer questions.
 
When the meal’s done, Sam takes care of his plates, gets Dean a beer from the
fridge when he asks, and then makes an excuse about homework he doesn’t
actually have so that he can leave the kitchen before anything else comes up.
 
He almost makes it, too, except for Dean’s, “Sam?” as he gets to the living
room.
 
Sam turns around, takes in the way the dim light of the low bulb over the sink
washes Dean’s color out, darkens the hollows and paints shadows on the planes
of his face.  Dean looks a lot older and more tired than Sam can ever remember
seeing him, and he feels a coldness around his heart to see his brother looking
like that and to know that he must be responsible, at least in part, for
putting the look there.
 
“We’ll keep it between us, right?”
 
Sam knows Dean means Dad, swallows convulsively, almost a reflex when he
imagines his father’s reaction to Sam’s secret, nods gratefully but can’t get a
word out.
 
He actually attempts to get ahead in calc, but the formulae make no sense and
every proof starts to look identical to the last, so he gives up, tosses his
math book aside, rolls on to his stomach, and cradles his chin on his folded
hands.
 
Sam guesses he fell asleep like that, for the next thing he knows, Dean’s
tugging off Sam’s boots in a strange reversal of last night’s events.
 
“I can do it,” he mumbles, trying to sit up.  He’s on his back, shirt rucked up
his ribs and twisted around him. 
 
Dean says, “I got it,” and gives him a gentle shove to keep him down.
 
Sam might say thank you, but he isn’t sure, and the next thing he knows, he’s
free-falling, spread-eagled, through a stormy sky, coming down so fast that
he’s actually out-falling the raindrops.
 
The ground rushes up to meet him, and he has a second to think that he’s going
to drown in thick mud before he remembers that the landing will kill him.
 
He sits up with a gasping start, sweat on his forehead, arms flailing like he’s
trying to dig himself out of a soft, soupy grave.
 
“Hey,” Dean says from the other bed.  Sam, still confused, says, “Dean?”
 
“Who else would it be?”
 
Sam manages to make out the time.  3:22am.
 
“You okay?”  Dean sounds half amused, half concerned.

“Yeah,” Sam says, laying back down and blowing out a gust of relieved breath. 
“Yeah,” he repeats, closing his eyes and trying to stop the sense of vertigo
from making his stomach flip.
 
He listens to Dean’s breathing even out and segue into soft snores, comforted
by his brother’s nearness, even if he is wondering why Dean’s taken to sleeping
in their shared room again.  Sleep eventually steals over him, though, and he
awakens to Bad Company on the alarm clock radio and Dean’s irritated grump from
the other bed.

“Shut off the alarm, buttface.”
 
Sam smirks as he “accidentally” turns it up full volume before shutting it off
and gets a pillow in his face for his trouble.
 
He hasn’t been this happy for a Friday in a long time, and he maintains that
good feeling until he shuts the Impala door and Dean says, “Pick you up at
three.”
 
Which is when he remembers he has detention.  He spins around, taps the window
and then opens the door again, leans down to say, “I have to stay after.  I
have a project to work on with Mindy, my chem. lab partner.  I have to catch
up.  It might be the next few days.”
 
Dean rolls his eyes.  “What time, geek?”
 
“Four-thirty.”
 
Sam actually isn’t sure when detention lets out, but he figures there probably
aren’t too many teachers who’d agree to proctor much later than that, even if
they do get paid.
 
Maybe it’s that Sam’s reputation for holding his own has finally circulated
through the school.  Or maybe it’s that Bobby Munsy’s apparently absent and
Steve Bellamy actually gives him another grudging nod as they pass in the
hallway on the way to homeroom, but the other kids seem to have settled on
ignoring Sam unless he does something interesting.
 
Even the awkward threesome (well, twosome to the rest of the world, Sam
guesses) at their lunch table doesn’t seem to attract as much attention, and
Sam finds himself enjoying his conversation with Eddy about The Catcher in the
Rye, which both of them have read twice and have to read again for English.
 
Eli doesn’t say much, though now and then he laughs at one of Eddy’s keener
observations—for all that the kid’s a social misfit and a little intense, he
does have a sharp mind and remarkable recall—and Sam almost forgets that he’s
not real, not human.
 
Almost.
 
Except that once in awhile, Eli seems to be listening to something Sam can’t
hear, something Eddy isn’t saying, either.  And it’s creepy as hell to watch
the other boy’s attention fix on some internal sound.

Sam almost asks him what he’s listening to, but he thinks better of it.  He
needs to know more before he can hazard making any overt moves on Eli.
 
Detention, Sam discovers, runs from 3:00 to 4:00 in an oddly cramped classroom
at the end of the hallway that leads to the aud.  Once a bandroom, Sam guesses
from the seating arrangement, it’s now mostly used for punitive measures, he
suspects, given the way that there’s absolutely nothing in the room except
blank walls. 
 
Even the clock is gone, nothing but a hole in the plaster bleeding red and
black wires to indicate that it was ever there.
 
Mrs. Jardin, apparently a French teacher, if her affectation of an accent is
any indicator, explains in a bored, seen-it-all voice that there will be no
talking, no sleeping, no studying.  No activity of any kind for one hour. 
Students will sit up, hands on the desk, eyes ahead. 
 
Two minutes in to what is going to be an interminable hour, the door to the
room bangs open and Steve Bellamy saunters in, trademark shades firmly in
place.
 
Sam wonders if teachers just gave up trying to get them away from him.
 
He gives Sam a wry smirk, like the two of them are in on a joke together, and
then takes a seat, pushing his chair back against the floor and shoving the
desk away at the same time to make the most noise possible.
 
Mrs. Jardin says nothing, though Sam sees by the way her lips tighten and her
eyes squinch up at the edges that she’s seen this particular show before.
 
He thinks that he never, ever wants to be a high school teacher.
 
Sam’s done a lot of waiting in his day.  From stakeouts on would-be lairs to
graveyard crouches in the cold, dark night, he’s spent a good part of his life
to this point having to occupy his mind while still being alert to his
surroundings.
 
So while detention is about as dull an activity as he can imagine, he doesn’t
let his imagination linger on it.  Instead, he considers Eli, calling up an
image of the kid in his head and mulling over his qualities of character and
his seemingly ordinary nature.
 
He certainly doesn’t seem like any spirit manifestation Sam’s ever
encountered.  No flickering lights, scratching in the walls, inconvenient
telekinesis, jerky, Japanese-style movement.
 
Nothing at all to indicate that he’s got ectoplasm where his blood should be.
 
He’s got to be missing something.
 
When detention comes to an end, Mrs. Jardin just as grateful to be out of the
stifling silence of the room as the rest of them, judging from how quickly she
departs the area, Steve stops Sam in the hall, waits until the other
unfortunates have passed them, and then says, “Thanks for not ratting me out.”
 
Sam shrugs a shoulder like it’s no big deal. “No problem.”
 
“Traymore’s a jerk.”
 
Sam nods.  He doesn’t really think the AP is so bad, but then, he’s got a lot
to compare him with.  Bellamy probably doesn’t.
 
“Look, just forget what I said about you before, okay?  I can be an ass.”
 
This admission, coming out of the blue as it does and said with something
approaching actual sincerity, surprises Sam, but he recovers quickly enough.
 
“No harm done.  I mean, it’s not like my reputation was ruined, or anything.”
 
Steve laughs.  “True…  So, you wanta hang out or something?”
 
Sam gives the other boy a startled look, catches in his expression something he
can’t quite name, something that makes him feel a little excited and a little
afraid.  Or maybe it’s just the cop shades mirroring his own look back at him.
 
But since he’s a Winchester—and more importantly, since he’s got twenty minutes
to kill and he doesn’t feel like reading any more history—he says, “Yeah,
sure.”
 
Bellamy takes him to a little room off the aud, probably once used to house the
audio system before such technology got smaller and more portable, and offers
him a joint, which he refuses, and a can of pop from a small fridge, which he
accepts.
 
“This is the techies’ room,” Steve explains.  “I used to be on the crew, cut my
own key before I quit.”
 
“Nice deal,” Sam says admiringly.  He appreciates practical larceny, given his
own ample experience with it.
 
They talk about nothing at all, the way most teenagers can, avoiding any of the
more sensitive subjects—like Eddy, Sam’s family, Steve’s bouts of
assholery—until Sam glances at his watch and sees that Dean’s probably waiting.
 
“Gotta go.  Brother’s picking me up.”
 
“Oh, hey, yeah.  He’s got that sweet black car, right?  An Impala?”
 
Sam smiles, used to Dean’s baby getting such adulation.  “Yeah.  It’s our
dad’s, but we get to use it when he’s on a job.”
 
“Cool.  Maybe I can get a ride sometime?”
 
Sam thinks that’s unlikely, but he says, “Sure.”
 
“Cool.  Later.”
 
Dean’s waiting at the curb, as usual, but though his eyes are smiling at Sam,
Sam sees them flick over his shoulder, which makes Sam look, too, to see Steve
standing on the top steps.  Even from this distance, Sam can see the way the
other boy admires the car, the way his mouth is wide in the kind of smile that
speaks of desire.
 
“That Eddy?”
 
Sam rolls his eyes, thinks, Nice try, Dean, says, “Steve Bellamy.  He’s got the
same chem. teacher.”
 
He lets his brother think they’re working on the same labs and hopes he doesn’t
notice the lingering sweet stench of pot on his clothes.
 
Sam is of two minds about weekends.
 
Part of him is always grateful to be out of the crucible of high school, free
to be himself, hang out at home, maybe help Dean with something hunting-
related.
 
But part of him gets bored with two days of nothing to do, nowhere to be, and
despite that Dean keeps him busy with workouts and errands, he still itches to
be doing something else.

He guesses for as much as he sometimes resents their life on the road, he also
misses it, maybe even needs it. 
 
So when Dean gets up from the dinner table on Saturday night and says, “Get
your coat on, Sammy, we’re going out,” Sam doesn’t even ask where they’re
going, though ordinarily he would.
 
“Leave the dishes,” Dean adds, and that should be a red flag for Sam.  But he’s
restless, hasn’t got any homework left to do, and doesn’t feel like sitting
through another spectacularly bad SciFi original.
 
So he slides into the cold Impala, gives Dean a curious glance, and keeps his
questions to himself as they tool the short length of Main Street and head out
to the north of town.
 
Ten minutes later, they pull into the gravel parking lot of a road house, a
rough, barn-board building set hard up against the trees, parking lot
illuminated by two big, buzzing sodium lights, scree of fiddles already audible
even over the last sounds of the Impala’s engine dying out.
 
There’s a line of trucks in front of the place, every one of them with a rifle
rack along the back window, several with naked-girl mudflaps, two sporting the
rebel flag.
 
Sam rolls his eyes to himself—they’re in freakin’ Minnesota; any further north
is Canada, for fuck’s sake—but says nothing, just catches up so he’s close
behind and to one side of his brother when they enter the place.
 
Sam sees the pool tables even through the crush of dancers stomping lines on
the sawdust-strewn floor in front of the raised stage where the band is playing
George Strait and understands almost at once why they’ve come here.
 
Dean can hustle, and Sam can watch his back.
 
“Dean,” he starts, a warning note in his voice apparent even in the raucous din
of drunken “cowboys” in various degrees of debauchery.
 
“Just a friendly game or two, Sam, nothing to worry about.”
 
Sam would call bullshit, but he knows how bored Dean must be, way more restless
than Sam, who at least has school to occupy him.  Plus, they can probably use
the money.  And Monday isDean’s birthday.
 
So he takes up his usual sentinel position, trying to look at the same time
dangerous and unthreatening, a neat trick they’ve honed over the years since
Sam came into his height.
 
Dean clears the table, twice for one diehard loser and a third time for a
second man maybe a little too drunk for the game, and he’s just about to put
his pool cue down when a voice from behind Sam says, “Well, if it isn’t the new
guy!”
 
Sam turns, a ribbon of unease unspooling in his gut, only to find a tall guy
he’s never seen before approaching Dean with his hand out.
 
“Dave, good to see you!”  They exchange the usual gruff remarks, and then Dean
is turning to Sam and saying, “Hey, Dave, I want you to meet my brother, Sam.”
 
“Well, you’re a tall one, aren’t you?” He observes, shaking Sam’s hand firmly. 
“Remind me of my son, Steve.”
 
The penny drops, and Sam has a moment of suspended time, when the infinite
possibilities of every choice in the universe converge on what he says next.
 
Dean saves him the trouble. “Yeah, sure, Sammy knows Steve.  From the high
school.”
 
Dave Bellamy gives Sam a speculative look, and Sam nods.  “We have the same
chem. teacher.”  It’s a lie, but one he has to maintain for Dean’s benefit. 
What’re the chances that Dave Bellamy knows his son’s class schedule, anyway?
 
It takes the older man a second longer to get to the same page Sam’s on, and
Sam uses that second to shoot Dean a death glare.  But Dean is wearing a
calculating expression that Sam has seen on many hunts, and suddenly he
understands what his brother is doing.
 
“Wait a minute…you’re the new kid?  But that can’t be.  I heard that you were—“
 
Granted that people in small towns are often rude behind your back, Sam’s
experience suggests that they’re rarely rude to your face, unless they’re
adolescents, in which case, all bets are off.
 
Dave fumbles for a recovery, which Dean does not provide, and eventually
manages a stiff, “I hope you’re settling in.”
 
He’s gone before Dean can even finish his, “See you later.”
 
“Nice, Dean,” Sam hisses at his brother, getting close enough to smell the beer
on Dean’s breath.  “Is that why you brought me here, really?”
 
Dean laughs.  “Relax, Sammy.  I didn’t know the jerk was gonna be here, but I’m
not missing an opportunity when I see it.”
 
“I don’t need you fighting my battles for me, Dean.  I don’t need him going
home and telling Steve to be nice to me because my big brother is really cool.”
 
Dean rolls his eyes and sets the pool cue down, indicating to a waiting couple
that the table’s all theirs.
 
“Seriously, Sam, you’re blowing this way out of proportion.  I just thought it
might be good for the jerk to see who it is, exactly, that he’s been
badmouthing for the past week, that’s all.  And if it means less trouble for
you at school, what are you bitching about?”
 
Sam concedes—only to himself—that Dean’s probably right on all counts.  But he
says, “Can we go now?” and is irritated with himself when it comes out whiney.
 
Dean forestalls further conversation once in the car by turning up Black
Sabbath until Sam is pretty sure his teeth are rattling loose of their sockets.
 
He says nothing to Dean when they get inside, and to the sounds of a bad horror
movie, he gets ready for bed and climbs under the covers.  He hopes he doesn’t
hear the same shrieking in his dreams.
 
They reach a détente over frozen waffles and instant bacon.  Dean passes Sam
the OJ and calls him a bitch, Sam responds with the expected rejoinder, and
things go on more or less as normal until Dean goes out and comes back with a
Sunday paper.
 
For years, they’ve wrestled over who gets to read the comics first.  Their dad
would always get the paper, always go right to the obits and police blotter,
the less useful parts left for the boys to fight over.
 
And it became routine enough for them to work off the sugar from their morning
cereal by rolling around on one bed or another—and sometimes on the floor—to
see who could get to the funnies first.
 
So when Sam looks up to see Dean standing at the end of the couch, paper in his
hand and eyes on Sam, he expects the usual routine, even mutes the cartoons
he’s been half-watching.
 
Dean doesn’t tease him, though, doesn’t pull the colorful paper from the fat
stack of the Sunday edition, doesn’t make comments calling into question Sam’s
manhood or his fighting skills.

He simply peels the comics free of the heavier classifieds and tosses them on
the couch near Sam’s thigh.
 
This casual change hurts Sam unexpectedly, and he finds himself going through
the possible reasons for Dean’s behavior in his head.
 
Every single explanation seems to stem from the same source, though, namely
that Sam has changed, so this must, too.
 
Sam flips off the television, gets up from the couch, and goes to their room
without so much as glancing at the comics or at his brother.
 
He’s sitting on the bed, staring at his hands and feeling sick—not angry, just
sick, like he’s lost something he’ll never find again and it’s left a hollow
place in his belly.  Dean comes to lean in the doorway like he has a hundred or
a thousand times.
 
He’s got the comics dangling limply in one hand, the other hand jammed in his
jeans pocket.
 
“Sammy—“ He starts, but Sam interrupts him, throat thick, tongue tripping on
the words.
 
“You can’t touch me now, is that it Dean?  Afraid you’ll catch it somehow? Or
are you afraid I might rub off on your leg or something while we wrestle?”
 
Dean chokes on his explosive, “No!” and Sam takes that for an affirmation. 
Dean’s always loudest when he’s lying, Sam knows.
 
But then his brother says, quieter, “No, Sam, it’s not…god, it’s not that. 
Okay?  I just…just give me a little time to get used to it is all.”
 
“I’m the same brother you kneed in the stomach last week to get to Cathy and
Peanuts,” Sam observes, eyes red, voice raw with unshed tears.  He hates that
he sounds so weak.
 
“Bitch, you know I read it for the Calvin and Hobbes classics.”
 
Sam risks a look at Dean’s face.  His brother is trying to smile, trying to
take away the sting of this stupid rejection. 
 
Sam smiles back a little uncertainly.  “You’re a jerk,” he observes mildly, but
there is some hurt in it, too.
 
Dean nods in agreement.  “I am.  But I’m your brother, and you have to put up
with me, jerk or not.”
 
“Lucky me.”
 
The rest of the day passes like their usual downtime Sundays—2:00 old western
on television, 4:00 pizza from the nearest place, a little training as dusk
settles in on their tiny back yard. 
 
Dean can’t spar yet, not with his ribs in their current condition, so they
settle on tossing knives at a cardboard target nailed to the only tree in the
yard.  When that wears thin, Dean quizzes Sam on the Latin rite, interrupting
him with various flying objects, trying to throw him off his place.
 
Sam’s known it by heart since he was twelve, though, and Dean can’t budge him,
not even when he manages to wing Sam in the cheek with a chunk of loose
concrete from the decaying back stoop.
 
Sam stumbles but doesn’t miss the word, finishes the last three lines, and then
brings his hand up to the wound, pulling his fingers away to strain in the
failing twilight to see if the dampness he feels is really blood.
 
Dean’s already beside him, pulling his hand away and staring up, standing too
close to Sam suddenly.
 
“I’m okay, Dean,” he carps, taking a hasty step back and losing his balance on
the weapons duffle at the edge of the driveway.

Dean clutches his arm, pulls him upright, and Sam overcorrects into Dean, who
takes his weight with a swallowed “Oof!”  It had to hurt his ribs to catch Sam
like that.
 
Dean doesn’t release him right away, doesn’t push him back with some comment
about his clumsiness, doesn’t take the opportunity to tease him mercilessly
about it.
 
Instead, he keeps ahold of Sam’s wrist just above his blood-stained fingers and
stares hard into Sam’s face.
 
Sam’s sure that Dean’s looking at the damage, trying to make it out in the
near-dark of the unlit back yard.  And then he’s not so sure anymore as he
hears his brother’s breath hitch a little strangely, feels Dean release his
wrist like it burned him to touch Sam, senses him pulling away even before he
pivots on one foot and makes for the back door, barking over his shoulder,
“Clean up the yard and get in here so I can take care of that.”
 
Mystified, Sam does as his brother says and comes in to find the kitchen
illuminated by an extra lamp from the living room.  On the counter is their
well-used first aid kit. 
 
This is old hat, this patching-up, and Sam sits for Dean’s fingers so close to
his eye, doesn’t move when his brother dabs at the gash with a cotton ball
soaked in alcohol, doesn’t even hiss as the first of two stitches pierce the
delicate flesh of his cheek.
 
Dean ties off the sutures, snips away the extra thread, and puts a gloved hand
to Sam’s chin, turning his face into the light.
 
“It shouldn’t scar much.”
 
Sam nods into Dean’s fingers, and Dean drops his chin and clears his throat,
steps back to the sink to discard the gloves and clean up the kit.
 
“I’m sorry,” he says, back still to Sam, who’s just getting up from the chair,
head a little woozy from the whiskey Dean had insisted he drink.
 
“Oh, hey, it’s okay.”  And it is.  Not the first time he’s gotten hurt during
practice, and he’s sure it won’t be the last, either.  He’s had worse from a
soccer match.
 
“No, I mean, about before, about the comics.  I didn’t mean—“
 
“It’s okay, Dean.”  And it is, too.  Sam’s had the day to think, to put himself
in his brother’s place.  He can’t blame Dean for being freaked out.
 
“No, it’s not.  You’re my brother, Sam.  And that’s what matters.  We’re
family.  Family counts.  Nothing else does.”
 
Sam nods, feeling a suspicious lump swelling his throat closed.  He clears it
and says, “Thanks, Dean,” and sees his brother nod, back still to him.
 
That night, he has a dreamless sleep, disturbed only by the alarm clock radio
blaring the Stones at top volume to announce the start of another school week.
 
Dean’s already up, which is weird—usually Sam has to shag him out of bed to
drive him to school—and it takes Sam a minute to remember it’s his brother’s
birthday.
 
“Happy birthday,” he offers, scrubbing a hand over his hair and yawning widely
as he enters the kitchen.
 
“Yeah, thanks.  Finally legal,” he notes.  “’course, my ID says I’m twenty-
three.”  Dean snorts a little, expressing the irony of it all, and hands Sam a
cup of coffee.
 
“You want to do something special?”  Sam isn’t sure what he means.
 
“Like what, Sammy?  Ice cream at the soda fountain?  Night drive up to Make-Out
Point?”
 
Sam rolls his eyes and suppresses the urge to smack his brother.  It’s too
early in the morning for rough-housing.  Besides, Sam’s in bare feet, and he
knows better than to scuffle with his brother when Dean’s got his boots on
already.
 
“Get your ass in gear, princess, or you’ll be late for school.”
 
And that’s the last that’s mentioned of Dean’s birthday.
 
For a change, Sam gets to school early, and the hallways seems strange, lit by
morning sun pouring in the high windows over the lockers on the outer wall,
kids milling and laughing, telling lies about what they did over the weekend.
 
A wave of stranger sibilance follows Sam as he makes his way to his locker,
whispers considering his own weekend activities, he figures.  But when he
arrives, he realizes there’s another reason people are so interested in him.
 
Looped through the vent slots near the top of his locker is a wire.  Hanging
from it is a rabbit’s foot, bone protruding, blood dried brown and sticky on
its once-white fur.  Painted on the locker itself in red are the words, “Your
out of luck.”
 
Sam doesn’t let his disgust at the display show by so much as a curled lip, but
he does start to laugh, turning to the nearest group of kids eagerly awaiting
his reaction to say, “He can’t spell,” like it’s the funniest thing he’s ever
run across.
 
The kids take a collective half-step back, a receding wave of “watch-out-for-
the-crazy-kid.”
 
Sam unhooks the wire, walks the foot over to the trash can, and pretends to
toss it out.  His deft hands, skilled at so many larcenous things, pocket the
object, however.  He’s seen too many curses to be stupid enough to throw out
evidence of a possible hex.
 
He doesn’t think Bobby Munsy is smart enough to find “witchcraft” in a
dictionary, much less practice it, but if he’s learned nothing else from his
paranoid father it’s that you should never, ever make assumptions when it could
mean your life on the line.
 
The red paint will have to wait until lunch, he guesses, wondering if Traymore
has seen it, wondering what it will mean for him if the AP does.
 
Just as he’s closing his locker, book-bag over his shoulder, Steve approaches,
eyes askance on the graffiti.
 
“Making friends?” he jokes, falling into step beside Sam and bumping him with a
friendly shoulder.
 
Immediately, the tenor of the gossip around him changes, and Sam tries not to
let it show on his face.
 
Steve’s one of the few people Sam knows who can keep pace with him, and it
feels a little weird to have him at his side, where it’s usually only Eddy
skulking meekly along.
 
Or Dean striding like he owns the world.
 
Sam puts that out of his mind.  That and the little shiver that runs down his
back at the thought of Dean walking beside him down these halls.  In his head,
he can imagine the picture they’d make, the Winchester brothers on the hunt for
Munsy.
 
The kid would shit his pants.
 
Sam indulges in a private smirk, which Steve, who’s pretty perspicacious for an
affected, spoiled stoner, catches.

“What’s funny?”
 
Sam shrugs like it’s nothing, really, and diverts his new friend.  “How was
your weekend?”
 
The right question, Sam has found, prevents a lot of prying, and he spends the
next five minutes listening to an improbable tale of…well…tail and woe, in
which Steve narrowly missed being Swiss-cheesed by an angry father’s loaded
bear gun.
 
Sam laughs at the appropriate places and finds himself relaxing a little,
though he’s still alert to trouble.
 
Steve catches him off-guard by asking him what happened to his face, which is
when Sam remembers the stitches.  He’s so used to being banged up that they’re
easy to forget.
 
“Run-in with a low-hanging branch yesterday while cleaning up the yard,” he
answers easily, having already decided with Dean on a suitable cover in case
the school got curious.
 
Steve jokes about Sam’s clutziness and how chicks dig scars until Sam’s brought
up short when he looks ahead to his homeroom to find Eddy waiting nearby, half-
hidden by the water fountain a few lockers from the door.  Eli is two lockers
beyond him, leaning against the wall.

“Oh, hey, I’ll catch you later, right?”
 
Steve says, “Detention,” like it’s a date, and sprints off, only sparing a
second to say, sotto voce, “Freak alert,” and jerk his chin in Eddy’s
direction.
 
“You shouldn’t hang out with him,” is the first thing out of Eddy’s mouth,
which Sam finds a curious statement coming from the school pariah.  “He’s
trouble,” Eddy adds.
 
Given that Steve began last week by calling Sam a fag, Sam can’t say he
entirely disagrees with Eddy’s assessment.  Still, he wonders what particular
abuse Steve has leveled at Eddy.  It had to be something special, given that
Eddy is Green Bank’s front runner for the “Most Likely to End Up on Oprah”
award.
Instead of voicing his feelings, Sam says only, “How was your weekend?”
 
But before Eddy can answer, the warning bell rings, and Eddy startles a little,
like he had forgotten the time.
 
“I need to see you,” Eddy asserts, stuttering a little over the words.  “It’s
important.  Meet me in the third floor bathroom during first.  9:05.”
 
Sam starts to protest that there’s no way Mr. Allebright is going to let him
out of U.S. history, but Eddy’s already hurrying away.
 
Sighing, Sam spends homeroom pondering his options, and when he’s finished with
his quiz on the Progressive Era during first period, he raises his hand, feigns
a headache, and gets a pass to the nurse’s office.  He manages to avert
Allebright’s efforts to have Sarah Edelman accompany him.
 
“I’ve got five minutes,” he’s already saying as he pushes into the room.  It’s
predictably damp, smells vaguely of urinal cakes and missed shots, and he
wrinkles his nose a little, peering under the stall doors until he sees two
familiar pairs of scuffed-up sneakers.
 
No one else is there but them, and Eddy and Eli emerge, eerily pale in the
terminal light scheme of most institutional restrooms.
 
“What is it?” He asks after a few awkward seconds of silence.

The lights buzz overhead.  One of them flickers, and Sam spares it a long
glance, until he’s sure it’s just working on going out, nothing else.
 
Still, he keeps the corner of his eye on Eli.
 
“What happened to your face?” Eddy asks, like he’s just looked at Sam for the
first time.
 
“Branch,” Sam says shortly.  “What did you want?”
 
“Munsy’s got it out for you,” Eddy offers. 
 
“Uh, yeah.  I noticed.”  Sam can’t help the sarcasm.  He did have dead animal
on his locker, after all.
 
But Eddy is already shaking his head, Eli, too, a half-second behind the real
boy in a shadow-like way that makes Sam shiver.
 
“No, there’s something else.”
 
Sam sharpens his look.  “How do you know?”
 
Eddy nods in the direction of his still-silent companion.  “Eli makes a good
spy.”  He says it with real pride, and Sam has to bite back his immediate
response.  I’ll just bet he does.
 
“He says Munsy and his girlfriends are out for blood.  They’ve got something
planned for you.  Like, they’re going to jump you some day after school.”
 
“Anything more specific than that?”  He doesn’t mean to sound nonchalant, but
really, given how much time he spends with his life in legitimate danger, this
all sounds a bit too playground-like for him.
 
“No.  Just that they’re going to get you away from your brother.”
 
Sam tightens his lips a little, not liking the reference to Dean.
 
“But Eli didn’t hear when they’re planning this attack?”  He continues the
apparent protocol of pretending Eli isn’t there at all.
 
“No.  Just—“
 
Eddy’s reticence wears on Sam’s patience.  He already knows everything he ever
wanted to about Teddy Roosevelt, but still…
 
“I’ve gotta get back to class, so—“
 
“Munsy said you’re a fag.  He thinks you’re fucking me.”
 
Sam blinks, trying to shake clear of the words “fag” and “fucking.”  Eddy
doesn’t usually use profanity.
 
In fact, the geek seems rebelliously pleased with himself, and Sam gets it all
of a sudden.
 
“Hey,” he says, more warmly than he’s yet spoken to the other boy today,
“Thanks for letting me know.  I really appreciate you watching my back.”
 
Eddy swells, growing visibly taller as he stands up straight, Eli following
behind in his odd mimicry, and Sam gives them a little smile and a wave as he
leaves the room.
 
The day passes in its usual way, Sam pleased to discover that the kids who
aren’t ignoring him altogether have, at least, stopped whispering about him
loudly enough that he can make out words, and if it weren’t for the words still
painted across his locker and the presence of Mr. Traymore there when he
arrives at the end of the afternoon, Sam would count it a pretty good day,
detention or not.
 
As it turns out, he spends detention being gently prodded by Traymore to reveal
his opinion of the graffiti, his suspicions of who might have put it there, and
his sense of how he fits in at Green Bank, all of which prods he deftly avoids
with years of practice.
 
The poor man is deluded if he thinks Sam Winchester is going to cave under the
pressure of authority.  He’s been grilled harder by better-meaning men than
Traymore, that’s for sure.
 
Not entirely unexpectedly, Steve is waiting around the corner from Traymore’s
office when Sam finally makes his escape.  It’s only four o’clock, and the boy
takes an exaggerated look at his watch and jerks his head twice in the
direction of the tech. room.
 
Sam shrugs and falls in with the other, and they end up repeating Friday’s
post-detention routine.  Sam sipping his soda while Steve sucks on the joint,
glasses discarded on the coffee table, eyes strangely vulnerable without them.
 
They’re sitting side by side on the couch, feet stretched out on the beat-up
coffee table, a respectable distance between them, when Steve rolls his head
sideways and spears Sam with a look.
 
“You ever get laid?”
 
Sam’s been a high school guy a long time, true enough, but he doesn’t get this
question often, mostly because people don’t take the time to talk to him like
this.  It feels strangely good, and he distrusts the feeling instantly.
 
Good things don’t happen to the Winchesters.  Not without a cost.
 
Still, he answers truthfully, wincing inwardly at how it must sound.  “Uh…no.”
 
“Dude.”  Steve draws it out into polysyllables, takes a toke, holds it in,
releasing only thin ribbons of sweet smoke after a long interval of staring at
Sam.
 
Sam’s sitting up straighter, Steve slumped in stoned-out splendor, so when the
other boy reaches for Sam’s mouth, Sam thinks he’s just falling into Sam,
uncoordinated.
 
He reaches up to catch the boy, and Steve misses the mark, skimming Sam’s jaw-
line with his lips.
 
Sam shivers, can’t help it, and closes his fingers around Steve’s upper arms,
not pushing away, but not inviting, either.
 
Up close, Sam can see the red veins in Steve’s eyes, smell the herb souring on
the other’s tongue.  He takes a breath, intending to say something, though he’s
not sure what, and Steve adjusts his trajectory and this time brushes Sam’s
lips.
 
Given that this is the boy who less than a week ago called him a fudgepacker in
the hallway, Sam has a right to be a little confused.  Even with his public
speculation about Steve’s actual inclinations, Sam hadn’t been at all sure.
 
He’s good at reading his brother’s hand signals in the dead of night in a dark
cemetery, of reading his father’s moods by the tilt of his chin and the length
of time it takes him to blink through a thought, but for all that he’s a hunter
honed by years of practice, Sam isn’t very good at reading human beings when it
comes to the softer intentions.
 
He knows what it says about him, and he’s stuck in that momentary ignorance,
wondering, when Steve draws back and says, “Fuck it, guess I was wrong.”
 
“No!” Sam says, because Steve isn’t wrong.  At least, he’s not wrong about Sam
wanting it, liking it.
 
Sam himself isn’t sure what he wants, but he doesn’t want to miss the chance,
either.
 
“I just—you surprised me.  I didn’t think you were—“
 
“I’m not!”  The denial is so quick, so sharp that Sam knows it’s been
practiced, that Steve has prepared himself for every eventuality.
 
It makes Sam a little sad to consider the way the boy must have to hide.  Sam
knows all about hiding things, knows how heavy it is to carry a secret, second
life.
 
That’s probably why he leans down and claims Steve’s lips in another kiss, this
one moving pretty quickly from safe to serious, Steve’s tongue darting out to
lick at Sam’s lips until Sam opens his mouth with a breathless sound and lets
the other boy in.
 
Soon enough, Sam’s reclined at an awkward angle against one arm of the couch
and Steve’s pressing into him, diving into his mouth with sure, long strokes of
his tongue until Sam is panting between explorations and thrusting his hips
upward in tiny, involuntary motions.
 
Things might have gotten out of hand if Sam hadn’t thought of Dean and realized
that his brother was probably waiting.
 
A cold wash of fear dampens his ardor as he imagines Dean stalking the halls in
search of Sam, randomly opening the door to find his brother writhing beneath
Dave Bellamy’s son.
 
He pulls his head back as far as the couch arm will allow, extricates his one
free hand from Steve’s hair, and says, “I’ve gotta go.  My brother’s waiting.”
 
“Fuck your brother,” Steve mumbles hotly against Sam’s neck, following the
suggestion with a nip that makes Sam have to stifle a groan.
 
There are several things Sam might say in response.  An ordinary brother might
suggest his disgust at such a remark, for example.  Or he might protest that
he’d rather fuck Steve.

But the former just isn’t true, a fact Sam chooses not to examine too closely
just then.
 
And the second isn’t likely to get him out of the room more quickly.
 
“Steve,” he says a little more forcefully.  “Let me up.”
 
Steve obliges, though not without some noises about Sam being “such a girl,”
and Sam stands up, smoothes down his shirt, runs a hand through his hair, and
hopes his hard-on has subsided by the time he gets to the curb.
 
“See you tomorrow,” he offers lamely, unsure of what etiquette requires in this
circumstance.  After all, the confession of virginity that had started all of
this wasn’t an exaggeration.  He doesn’t have much experience.
 
“Later,” Steve says, glasses back on his face, hiding his eyes from Sam.  But
he sounds happy, laid back and stoned, and by his posture, sprawled loose-
limbed on the couch, erection rampant against his zippered fly, he seems okay
with Sam’s leavetaking.
 
All the way to the car, Sam feels his lips buzzing and worries that Dean will
be able to tell what he’s been doing.
 
“Lab good?”
 
“Uh, yeah,” he says.
 
Sam breathes a silent sigh of relief when Dean turns up the music and pulls
away from the school without another question about his day.
 
He doesn’t mention the little gift left on his locker, just waits until Dean is
snoring on the couch much later that night to sneak it out of his jacket pocket
and examine it for any signs of supernatural tampering.  Once he’s satisfied
that it’s just a cruel and ugly joke, nothing more, he wraps it in a couple of
tissues and buries it in the bottom of the bathroom garbage, making a mental
note to dump that into the larger kitchen trash can tomorrow.
 
Sam spends Tuesday’s classes thinking about post-detention time in the tech.
room with Steve and class-change passages in the hallway wondering if he’ll see
him. 
 
Realizing that he’s looking for the tall kid, Sam snorts and calls himself a
girl in Dean’s voice, but just considering his brother’s reaction to Sam’s new-
found…what?—boyfriend?  Not really.  Lover?  The word alone makes his stomach
flip nervously.—whatever…considering Dean discovering that Sam’s hooking up
with Steve Bellamy makes Sam a lot less happy, so he tries to put it out of his
mind.
 
Detention is predictable, down to Steve’s grand entrance five minutes after the
bell and Mrs. Jardin’s moue of disdain.
Post-detention doesn’t go as Sam imagined it might, however.  Steve makes the
offer to come back to the tech. room as Sam expects, but once there, he more or
less ignores Sam, chucking him a soda and lighting up his usual joint without a
word.
 
Steve also makes a point of sitting on the sprung recliner that passes for the
room’s only other seating besides the couch.
 
Sam drinks his soda compulsively, mentally scrabbling for anything to say that
doesn’t sound lame or desperate.  He wonders if Steve’s already tired of him
and then feels really pathetic for even thinking about it.
 
Finally, Steve breaks the tension by saying, “Look, I was pretty baked
yesterday, and…”
 
“Oh, hey, no problem,” Sam immediately counters, and he’s pleased that none of
the sinking sensation in his stomach makes its way into his voice.
 
“I’m not gay or anything,” Steve asserts.  “I was just stoned.”
 
Sam isn’t that experienced, it’s true, but he does pay attention in school, and
he’s pretty sure he’d remember the health class where they learned that pot
smoking can cause homosexuality.
 
Still, he lets it go, knowing that Steve has to deal with his secret his own
way.  Besides, it’s not like Sam isn’t used to rejection.  And if he’s being
entirely honest with himself—something he often avoids, since he can be pretty
depressing—there’s a niggling worm of relief working its way through the morass
of his belly and loosening his breathing just a little.
 
“No problem,” Sam asserts.
 
“But you’re gay?”
 
Steve isn’t as stoned as Sam wishes he were, obviously.
 
“Nah, man, I was just going with it, you know?”
 
Steve nods sagely, like this is wisdom eternal, and apparently accepts Sam at
his word.
 
Denial ain’t just a river, Sam thinks, and finishes his soda.
 
“I should go,” he says a few quiet minutes later.  The air in the room is dense
with unsaid things. 
 
Steve blows out a breath and offers a falsely hearty, “Hey, take it easy, man.”
 
“Yeah, you too,” he answers from the door.
 
He’s almost ridiculously grateful to see the Impala idling at the curb.
 
“Anything happen at school today?” Dean asks, too casually.  For a suspicious
moment, Sam wonders what his brother could have heard.  Munsy hadn’t been
around and Sam’s usual lunch with Eddy wasn’t even remarked on by the other
kids.
 
“Sam?”  Dean’s voice is registering some concern when Sam finally shakes
himself free of his worry.

“No, nothing, Dean.  School was…school.”
 
“Okay.”  Dean says it like his little brother might be crazy, but there’s no
hint in his voice that he thinks Sam is lying, and that gives Sam some relief.
 
“Pizza okay?”
 
It’s Tuesday, which isn’t traditionally a night for eating out. 
 
“Late birthday celebration?”
 
Dean makes a dismissive sound.  “Don’t feel like cooking.”
 
“Okay,” Sam says, but he doesn’t entirely buy his brother’s reasons.
 
When they get to the pizza parlor, Sam has a dizzying moment of panic.  Dave
Bellamy is in the kitchen, apparently managing the help.  He can see the tall
man through the window behind the service counter.
 
Sam swallows and tries to think of some way that he can get Dean to go
elsewhere.
 
“Uh, you know what?  I’m not really in the mood for pizza, so—“
 
“Eat or don’t, Sam.  I’m staying.”
 
Dean gives him a significant look, and Sam realizes that Dean knew.  He knew
who managed the pizza place!
 
Of course he did.  He’s Dean, Sam reminds himself, his internal voice in full-
on “DUH!” mode.
 
“Dean,” Sam warns quietly and through clenched teeth.
 
“Don’t be a pussy,” Dean responds, voice equally quiet and just as intense.
 
Sam blows out a resigned, pissy sigh and picks a booth as far from the front as
possible.
 
When they’re halfway through their pizza—which Sam hates to admit is really
good—Dave Bellamy makes a manager’s sweep of the restaurant, stopping at the
few populated tables to ask how things are.
 
He isn’t remiss in visiting theirs, and Sam slaps on a fake smile and tries
really hard not to think of having his tongue down the man’s son’s throat.
 
The blush burns its way up his face.
 
Bellamy asks the rote questions, Dean answers, an edge to his voice that’s
unmistakable.  Sam can’t even look at the man.
 
When the manager leaves, the air several degrees colder than it was when he’d
arrived, Dean kicks Sam under the table hard enough that the blow vibrates up
his leg.
“Ow!” he says, louder than he should.
 
“What the hell is wrong with you?”  Dean asks, voice low and hard.  “You act
like a fucking pussy, like you’ve got something to be ashamed of.  Christ, Sam,
you’re a Winchester.  Would it kill you to remember that?”
 
Sam’s immediate reaction is anger, but it’s quickly tempered with despair. 
There’s no way he can explain to Dean why he’s so uncomfortable around the
elder Bellamy.  Dean wouldn’t get it.  He just wouldn’t.
 
“I just don’t like the guy, okay?”
 
“And you think blushing like a virgin and refusing to look at the man is the
way to tell him that?”
Sam shakes his head, unable to come up with a suitable rejoinder.  Dean’s
right.  Damn it.
 
The rest of the meal is passed in a stilted silence broken only by Dean’s
distracted flirtation with the waitress, which he does almost by instinct. 
 
When she scribbles her number on the take-home box, Sam just rolls his eyes.
 
Once home, he does his calc and chem. homework, does the usual push-ups and
sit-ups required of their life, showers, and hits the hay, glad to be done with
having to try to hide things from Dean.
 
His dreams are full of fragmented images, faces from his past and voices he
can’t place, and he wakes up feeling ill at ease, like he’s forgotten something
he was supposed to remember.
 
Eddy is waiting for Sam again outside of homeroom, but this time Sam’s earlier
and alone, Steve having apparently taken to heart the old warning about
discretion and valor. 
 
“Can we talk to you a minute?”
 
Sam’s tempted to tease Eddy that he’s not sure Eli really cantalk, given the
“boy’s” continued reticence, but when he sees the circles under Eddy’s eyes and
the lines around his mouth, he decides against it.

“Sure,” he says.
 
“I know a place,” the pale boy adds, turning to move away.  Eli glides behind
him, an echo of every movement, and Sam falls in to one side, not quite even
with Eli. 
 
Eddy leads them to the third floor science wing, where there aren’t any
lockers.  The labs and classrooms here aren’t used for homerooms, and except
for a few lovebirds and the occasional teacher, it’s pretty empty.  They stop
outside a door marked “Storage.  School Personnel Only,” and Eddy, after
darting nervous glances to either side, pulls a key from his pocket and unlocks
the door.
 
Once inside with the door closed behind them, Eddy turns on a dim, forty-watt
light bulb that Sam can now see dangling from the ceiling of a narrow room,
perhaps four feet by twelve.  There’s a sharp smell in the air, strong
chemicals, and a stained stationary sink in one corner.

“This is where they keep the chemicals for lab,” Eddy notes, though Sam had
already figured it out.  He eyes the stock with practiced consideration, taking
a casual inventory of all the things he and Dean and their dad could use on the
job.  He might have to swing through here before they leave Green Bank for
good.
 
“How’d you score a key?” Sam asks, like he’s curious and thinks it’s cool,
because he does.
 
Eddy shrugs noncommittally.  “Eli gets stuff.”
 
This sends a narrow ribbon of cold down Sam’s chest and into his belly, and he
looks at Eli, who is looking right back at—or rather, right through—Sam.
 
The ribbon widens to a dense rope of worry, like a noose around his gut.
 
“I think you’re in a lot of danger,” Eddy says without preliminary.  “Eli’s
heard more about Munsy and his guys planning to jump you.  It sounds serious.”
 
It’s occurred to Sam that maybe Eddy is making this whole thing up.  After all,
the kid doesn’t have any other friends.  Maybe he wants Sam’s full attention. 
Since Eli is still an unknown quantity—Sam promises himself a trip to the
library after detention, if he can get Dean to drop him off there and agree to
pick him up later—it’s possible the creature is creating mischief where there
isn’t any.
 
Still, Sam can’t afford to be too suspicious, and Eddy’s eyes are avid on Sam’s
own, watching for his reaction.
 
“What’s he heard?” Sam says, not even bothering to acknowledge the strange
third to their party, knowing Eli won’t answer directly anyway.
 
“Eli says that Munsy and the guys are planning to lure you away from school on
Friday, get you alone somewhere where your brother can’t find you, and then
jump you.”
 
“Does Eli have any idea how they plan to get me away from the school?”
 
Eddy looks at Eli, and Sam follows suit.  They both watch as the other shrugs
and wobbles his head in a shaky negative motion.
 
“Eli said he can try to stop them, though.”
 
This makes Sam’s eyebrows go up, and he can’t quite hide the surprised look on
his face.

Eddy grins a little gloatingly, his eyes alight with something close to
malice.  “He can do stuff, too, you know?”
 
“Stuff?”
 
Eddy gives a one-shouldered shrug.  “You know, like if I asked him to, he could
cause an accident or something.  I could have him drive Munsy and his goons off
the road tomorrow morning.”
 
Sam’s eyes haven’t left Eli’s face, but he’s getting nothing to go on there. 
The other’s eyes are blank, his expression completely neutral.  If he feels
anything about being used in such a way by Eddy, he’s not letting on.
 
“Has Eli ‘done stuff’ for you before?”
 
Eddy shakes his head.  “Nope.  I just found out he could!”
 
Worry tightens its grip on Sam’s belly, and he swallows hard to settle his
stomach.
 
“What do you mean?”  He tries to sound casual, like he’s merely curious.  “What
did Eli do?”
 
“Oh, nothing much.  He just took care of a problem we were having with the
mail.  Sometimes this kid down the block would steal it or take it out and
throw it in a puddle.  Once, he bashed our mailbox with a bat.”
 
Dread grips Sam’s throat, and he tries to clear it before asking, “What did Eli
do to this kid?”
 
“Scared him is all,” Eddy says.
 
“How?”
 
A sly look crosses Eddy’s manic face, and Sam has to hold back a shiver.
 
It’s suddenly occurred to Sam that he has screwed up.  He’s really, really
screwed up.  He mistook Eli for the real threat, and while it’s true that
supernatural creatures don’t generally hang around for kicks and giggles, it’s
not the creature who’s the real danger, Sam suddenly realizes.
 
Eddy’s eyes have the same righteous glaze of the gun-toting whack-job on the
school roof or the sniper in the clock-tower as he and his “friend” exchange a
secretive look.
 
Too many years of bullying have finally gotten to Eddy.  Or maybe Sam’s
friendship was itself the catalyst.  Either way, the bullied has been
emboldened, and he’s out to seek some revenge.
 
Sam’s going to have to disarm the kid of his only real weapon—that is, if he
can figure out what Eli is to begin with, never mind how to get rid of him. 
 
And he’s going to have to skip detention.
 
Sam kind of hates that idea, knows it means more trouble for him, knows, too,
that a little part of him was kind of looking forward to seeing Steve again,
even if things between them are strained.
 
Oh, well.  Duty calls.
 
“So do you want Eli to help you out, or what?”
 
Eddy’s got that strange light in his eyes fixed on Sam’s own, and he’s nodding
a little mechanically, as if urging Sam to say yes.
 
Sam shakes his head and says, “No, no.  That’s okay.  I can handle Munsy. 
Don’t even worry about it.  It’s probably just a rumor anyway.”
 
He doesn’t quite believe that, himself, but he needs to diffuse Eddy’s newfound
enthusiasm for mayhem.
 
“Okay.”  Eddy sounds disappointed.  Eli doesn’t sound like anything, standing
perfectly still and splitting his looks between his friend and Sam, like it’s
some kind of slow-motion tennis match.
 
“But thanks for asking,” he adds.  “See you at lunch?”
 
“Yeah.”  Eddy’s voice is subdued, and he won’t look at Sam. 
 
Sam cracks the door to make sure no one’s looking their way before making a
quick exit.  As he jogs in the direction of his homeroom, Sam feels a mounting
urgency in him to get to the bottom of the Eli mystery.  Eddy’s crossed a
mental line, Sam knows, and he might be the only one who can avert a disaster
in the making.
 
The day passes with predictable slowness.  Sam wonders, not for the first time,
how teachers expect him to pay attention when things a lot more important and
immediate than the First World War and atomic bonding are happening.
 
He supposes it’s because teachers, like the rest of the regular, workaday
world, haven’t got the remotest clue about the world that they actually live
in.  The world Sam sees. 
 
If they tested him on the stamina of werewolves or the likeliest nights on
which to find a woman in white in rural Alabama, he’d be valedictorian inside a
week.
 
Sam gets out of last period a little early, pleading an appointment.  He wants
to avoid any hassle at his locker and any chance of running into Traymore.
 
He’s got an hour and a half before Dean’s supposed to pick him up.  He guesses
he should call him, but their cell phones have been out of service since they
got to Green Bank—either they’re really on the ass end of nowhere, or the
credit card they’re charged to is maxed.  With Dad out of town, there’s no way
to know, and Dean doesn’t want risk tipping off the phone company by calling.
 
Thankfully, there are still plenty of payphones.
 
“Hey, Dean.  Yeah, I have to go to the library after school today instead of
the lab.  Can you pick me up at 6:00 there?”
 
Dean offers the expected response—part teasing about Sam’s geekiness, part
bitching about having to be Sam’s chauffeur, but he agrees in the end.
 
Armed with a different theory about Eli’s origins, Sam asks the librarian—the
same lady who’d helped him the last time, he’s pleased to see—about town
newspapers.
 
She leads him to a dimly lit back room that might have been part of the vestry,
in which there’s a small table and plastic chair squeezed in between floor-to-
ceiling metal shelves full of marked banker’s boxes.
 
“They’re in order of year, most recent on the bottom shelf, less recent on the
next, and so on.  The earliest, from the town’s founding in 1856, are on the
top.  There’s a step stool, but I don’t suppose you’ll need it.”
 
Working on the theory that Eli’s some sort of spirit manifestation, and going
with a gut instinct that he isn’t an “old-fashioned” ghost—that is, that he’d
died sometime in the last couple of decades—Sam starts working his way back
through the papers, cursing the small town libraries and their penchant for
keeping hard copies instead of putting things on the computer.
 
The Green Bank Gazette is a weekly paper, which offers Sam some glimmer of hope
that he’ll get through his task in the time he has, but it’s still slow going. 
He’s made it to the late eighties when he finds it while skimming the obits, a
task he’s so familiar with, he can scan an entire page in under a minute and a
half—Dad’s timed them.
 
Bancowicz, Elijah H.  Died suddenly at home on 3 March at the age of fifteen. 
He is survived by a mother, Marcia.  Memorial service to be held at Eckert and
Banks.  7:00pm tonight. Flowers gratefully declined. 
 
Sam goes back through the last month’s papers more carefully, searching for any
mention of the boy.  He does the same for the next month, finding nothing at
all to indicate how the boy died.

He knows from ample experience that “died suddenly at home” is news-speak for
suicide, which fits with Eli’s lingering presence.
 
What he can’t figure out is how Eli can manifest physically, at least to steal
things like the storage room key.  Obviously, the spirit is otherwise
incorporeal, since he’s invisible to everyone by Eddy.
 
And Sam himself.
 
He purposely avoids thinking too hard about why he, Sam, can see the kid,
chalking it up instead to the general weirdness of his life, and moves on
through a mental checklist of things he knows about spirits.
 
Further investigation (he checks the phonebook that the librarian—Ms.
McCloskey, he discovers—keeps behind the counter) turns up one M. Bancowicz,
who lives three blocks from the library.
 
Sam thanks Ms. McCloskey for her help and hurries out of the library into the
deep blue twilight.  It’s five o’clock.  He can make it to the Bancowicz house,
interview Eli’s mother, and get back to the library before Dean arrives, as
long as he’s quick.
 
Marcia Bancowicz answers the door in a pair of baggy grey sweatpants, loose
grey tee-shirt, and faded man’s blue flannel shirt, sleeves rolled up to her
elbows, revealing liver-spotted, sinewy forearms and hands cramped with
arthritis.
 
Between two knobby joints, she holds a burning cigarette. 
 
The house smells of burnt cabbage and cat litter.

Three felines slink under the couch as she leads him into a dim living room,
yellowed walls once white, he thinks, brown leather couch spewing stuffing at
every corner, where cats’ claws have done their work.
 
“You say you’re on the yearbook up to the high school?”
 
She has a Minnesota accent, long on vowels, and squinches her eyes up tight
like she should be wearing glasses to see clearly.
 
“Yes, Mrs. Bancowicz.  We’re interested in putting together some memorial pages
for this year’s edition.  In going back through past years, we found the
students who had passed away, and we were hoping to do a little article on each
of them with their picture.”
 
She snorts inelegantly and then wipes her cigarette finger across her nose,
narrowly missing setting a stringy gray lock on fire in the process.  Her hair
lies in desultory strands across her face.  It’s far too long for a woman her
age, but then, Sam reflects, she doesn’t seem to care about appearances.
 
“You lot picked a fine time to care about my boy.  Ten years too late.”
 
She’s looking away from Sam, towards a fake mantle nailed over an obviously
unused gas fireplace.  On the mantle, amidst crumpled cigarette boxes and the
detritus of a desperate life, he sees a dusty framed photograph, too hard to
make out in the dim light of the depressing room.
 
“Is that a picture of Elijah?”
 
“Eli,” she says shortly.  “He liked to be called Eli.  Said Elijah was too
bible-like.  Named him after my grand-dad.  He was old country.”
 
Sam nods.  “May I?”
 
A glowing red pointer jabbing at the mantle is the only invitation he gets.
 
Sam holds the photo up to what light there is and sees immediately that he has
the right house. 
 
Eli is smiling, a nervous, uncertain smile.  He’s wearing a checked button-down
shirt, buttoned all the way up, and thick-framed glasses.  His dark hair is
plastered down on his head.
 
“When was this taken?” Sam asks.
 
“That’s his last school picture,” the woman answers.  Something in her voice
shifts, and Sam puts the frame down and returns to his seat.
 
“What happened to Eli, Mrs. Bancowicz?”
 
“You don’t know?”
 
Whatever sorrow he’d thought he’d heard is replaced by sharpness, like the
point of a dagger hidden in a sofa cushion.  He senses there’s a killing anger
hidden just below the surface.
 
He shakes his head.  “I’ve heard rumors, but—“
 
Her bark of laughter startles him.  It’s humorless and hyena-like. 
 
“Sure you have.  That’s all those lousy bastards are good for up to that
school.  Even the teachers talk.  Jip-jip-jip, that’s all they do.”  She makes
a motion with the fingers of her free hand, like a shadow-puppet mouth opening
and closing rapidly.
 
“It’s rumors that killed Eli, all of them talking about him being ‘unnatural.’ 
‘Unnatural!’  He was as much a boy as any of ‘em, but did they give him a
chance?  No, just because his lousy father couldn’t keep his hands off the kids
in youth choir…”
 
She seems to remember that she has an audience then and checks herself, folding
her shoulders in and sinking back into the chair.
 
“He wasn’t his father’s son in that regard,” she says more quietly, not looking
now at Sam but at the picture on the mantle.  “He was a good boy.  He was all I
had.”
 
“I’m very sorry, Mrs. Bancowicz.  Is there anything you want me to put in the
article about Eli?”  He hates himself a lot at the expression that crosses her
face, a sort of minor triumph, like he’s offering her a chance at the
redemption her son never got.
 
She tells him about Eli’s love of reading and how he wrote stories.  For ten
agonizing minutes, she searches through the hutch drawers for some of his
English assignments that she’d kept and then shows them to Sam, who makes the
appropriate noises of approval over the boy’s cramped, handwritten tales.
 
It takes him fifteen minutes to extricate himself from her attention, to make
it to the bottom of the porch stairs—the woman still talking after him, talking
about her dead son—and when he makes it to the corner of her street, he
realizes he’s late for meeting Dean.
 
Dean is out of the car and leaning against the side panel, staring at the doors
of the now-closed library like he can blow them off their hinges if he only
concentrates.
 
Sam is a little winded from his three-block sprint, but he catches his breath
within three words—“I’m so sorry.”
 
“Save it,” Dean says, voice deceptively quiet. 
 
Sam knows that voice means that Dean is in a dangerous mood, and he sinks into
his seat without another word, head bowed, staring hard at the tops of his
boots.
 
“Where were you, Sam?  And don’t you lie to me, little brother.”
 
Sam takes in a quick breath.
 
“I was talking to a woman about her son.  It’s for an assignment for English
class.  We’re supposed to get information about kids who’ve died from Green
Bank.  The best memorials go in the yearbook.  It was only three blocks from
here.  I didn’t think you’d mind.”
 
He’s had a three-block sprint to think up an excuse.  No one can say Sam’s not
quick.
 
Out of the corner of his eye, Sam sees Dean’s hands clench and open, clench and
open, on the steering wheel.
 
When his brother’s jaw tenses and then relaxes and he checks over his shoulder
for oncoming traffic, pulling out, Sam knows he’s okay, he’s in the clear.
 
“Don’t do that again.”
 
Sam nods and adds an, “I won’t,” for good measure.  He keeps his sigh of relief
to himself.
 
Dean acts a little odd when they get home.  Sam catches his brother giving him
longer-than-usual looks, like something about Sam is different and Dean can’t
quite figure it out.
 
Ordinarily, Sam would call his brother out on this behavior, but he figures
he’s caused Dean enough grief.  And besides, being the object of Dean’s special
interest makes him feel warm in ways he probably won’t ever admit.
 
Over dinner, the conversation turns to hunts they’ve had, and Sam finds an
opening to quiz Dean about spirits and ghosts, though he has to tread carefully
to keep Dean from getting suspicious.  Their banter is so comfortable, so
familiar that Sam feels an ache in the region of his heart when he remembers
how much he’s keeping from Dean.
 
He wishes he could just tell Dean the whole sorry tale, starting with Eddy and
Eli and ending with Steve in the tech room, leaving out nothing but maybe the
way Sam feels sometimes when Dean looks at him with a full-on smile, like he’s
doing right now.
 
It’s bad enough I’m a freak.  I don’t need to be the kind of freak even Dean
won’t love.
 
But he can’t.  He can’t risk what Dean might do.  To Eli or to Steve.  Dean’s
got a way of going full-force into every situation, making big holes where
little ones might be more efficient.  Sam doesn’t want to imagine what his
brother might do to a kid like Eddy, who’s already experienced more than his
fair share of hard knocks.
 
No, it’s got to be Sam who takes care of Eli.  If he can even figure out a way
to get rid of the spirit.
 
Mrs. Bancowicz had indicated that Eli was cremated.  Sam hadn’t been able to
work it into conversation how the boy had offed himself, but he imagines the
scene must have been cleaned up, so there shouldn’t be any trace left in the
house.
 
He guesses that there could be a lock of hair or something, but…
 
He shakes out of his contemplation to see Dean giving him a searching look.
 
“Do I have sauce on my chin?”
 
“Dude, you were, like, a million miles away.  Something up with you?”
 
Sam shakes his head.  “No.  I was just…thinking about my English test on
Friday.”
 
Dean snorts.  “Man, sometimes I wonder if you’re really my brother.”
 
The rest of the meal and the evening pass in the usual way, Sam doing homework,
Dean watching television. 
 
He comes into the living room at eleven to tell Dean he’s going to bed and
finds his brother on the floor between the couch and the tv, working his way
gingerly through Marine-style push-ups.
 
“Are you sure you should be doing that?”
 
Dean’s forearms are shaking, and Sam can see the way his brother’s teeth are
gritted against the pain.

“Shut up, Sam.”  Dean’s voice is tight through clenched teeth.
 
“G’night,” he replies, turning tail. 
 
His sleep that night is interrupted only once, by Dean, who groans in his sleep
loud enough to wake Sam.
 
“Dean,” he whispers across the narrow gap between their beds. 
 
“Wha?”
 
“You’re…groaning.”
 
“’kay.”
 
If Dean resumes the noise later on, Sam doesn’t hear it.
 
Thursday morning finds Sam back in the third floor storage closet with Eddy,
whose eyes are eager with untold gossip.

Sam listens to the same things he’s already heard and tries not to express his
impatience that Eddy is wasting his time like this.  Sam had seen Steve
lingering in a recessed doorway a few classrooms down from Sam’s locker, but
he’d only just caught the other boy’s significant look when Eddy had approached
him, clutched his forearm, and urged Sam to follow him.
 
Eli is standing behind Eddy in the usual place, and Sam’s got his eyes on the
shadow boy, so he misses when the tenor of Eddy’s voice changes, when his eyes
shift in their expression, until he’s brought back to the live boy’s look by
the words
 
“…ja go to Eli’s house last night?”
 
“What?”  Sam asks, stalling.
 
“You were at Mrs. Bancowicz’s last night.  Eli doesn’t like that.”
 
Sam spares a glance for the spirit, whose face is blank of expression.  He
doesn’t seem particularly upset.
 
“I’m doing a paper for English class.  Extra credit,” Sam adds hurriedly,
remembering that the lie that works on his brother won’t work on a kid in his
own grade.
 
“Uh-uh.  You were snooping for information on Eli.”
 
“So?”  Sam shifts to the offense, having learned from the best how to deflect
when a conversation goes off the tracks.  “What if I was?  Maybe I’m
interested.  What difference does it make?”
 
“You know.”
 
Eddy’s voice is hard, deep, utterly different from his usual tone, and Sam
drags his eyes away from the spirit, who’s got a strange little smile tugging
at the corners of his bloodless lips.
 
“You know what Eli is.”
 
To say Sam is startled by this sudden upending of what he understood to be true
is to indulge in serious understatement, but of the many lessons he’s learned
in the Winchester School of Hard Knocks, the rolling with the punches one is
probably his best mastered.
 
“Yeah.”  Sam manages to make it sound like talking about spirit manifestations
is second nature, nothing new, ho-hum.  Of course, it is, but Eddy has no way
of knowing that, and Sam’s nonchalance does seem to throw him off.
 
For all that Eddy has blossomed in the last few days, he’s still the uncertain
underdog of every high school prank.
 
“Really?”  Eddy’s voice cracks with more characteristic suspicion.  He thinks
Sam is having a laugh at his expense.
 
“He’s a spirit,” Sam says with confidence.  “He’s haunting you because you were
picked on like he was, and he felt sorry for you.  You’re kindred spirits. 
Except, uh, you’re not.  A spirit, I mean.”
 
Eddy’s quiet, and Sam can see him working through his possible responses. 
 
He settles on panic, Sam sees, at about the same time Eddy shoves him into the
shelving.  Plastic bottles of powdered chemicals rock and teeter.  A couple
fall to the floor with a flat whumping sound, and Sam wonders if people in the
hall are close enough to hear.
 
He didn’t expect the violence from Eddy, but it’s okay.  He stays against the
shelves and brings his hands up, hisses, “What the hell?” and lets his eyes
show a little anger.
 
“I’m—I’m sorry,” Eddy stutters, stepping back like the three feet between them
is enough to keep him from harm.
 
“I didn’t mean—“
 
“Don’t worry about it,” Sam assures him, raising both hands, palms up, in a
universal sign of appeasement. 
 
“It’s—you can’t—Eli’s my friend.”
 
Sam’s eyes flicker to take in the spirit, who is looking at Sam with the
strongest expression Sam’s yet seen on the spirit’s face.  He’s trying to make
it out—is it longing?  Hope? 
 
Eddy makes a frustrated sound, and Sam has to force his attention back to the
boy.
 
“I understand that you like Eli, Eddy.  But Eli’s a spirit.  He doesn’t belong
here.  He—“
 
“He’s my friend.”  Eddy’s voice has risen to a desperate wail, like the words,
repeated in just the right intonation, will keep Eli and Eddy safe from change.
 
“Eddy—“ Sam starts, but he doesn’t get to finish.  At the same time that the
smaller boy flings himself at Sam, hands flailing, apparently intending to hurt
Sam, the door to the storage closet is flung wide, and Sam catches a glimpse of
a startled chem. teacher’s face and the faces of several curious students
before he’s trying to keep Eddy from hurting himself or Sam.
 
Soon enough, Eddy’s been dragged into the hall, Eli ghosting after him in
silence, and Sam has a minute to catch his breath and straighten his shirt
before he, too, is being beckoned to exit the closet.
 
“How’d you get in there?”  One teacher is asking in the perennial note of
accusation that all teachers apparently learn at teacher school.
 
“What’s going on?” 
 
Sam groans inwardly at the familiar voice of Traymore.
 
“Winchester,” Traymore says, his voice managing to convey both disappointment
and resignation, like Sam has fulfilled his worst expectations, and that’s a
state the man is used to.
 
“My office.  Now.”
 
Sighing, Sam moves toward the far stairs, passing through a gauntlet of
whispers and a few less quiet suggestions about what, exactly, he was doing in
the storage closet with “Eddy the freak.”
 
Just before he gets to the stairs, he hears, “Winchester,” and looks up to find
Steve standing there, his eyes, as usual, masked, but his jaw-line tense, lips
thin. 
 
Sam nods at Steve, gives him a cocky half-smile.  “Don’t believe everything you
hear,” he says over his shoulder as he starts down the stairs.  Inside, his
heart is shriveling, and Sam is trying to hold it together, trying to resist
the urge to bolt for the front door and run all the way home.
 
Dean could probably figure out a way to fix all of this, but it’s Sam’s mess. 
He made it, and he’s got to be the one to clean it up.
 
Besides, he’s not sure how he’d explain all the lying he’s been doing, and the
last thing he needs is for Dean to hate him, too.
 
Traymore keeps him through all of first and half of second period, only lets
him go after extracting a promise Sam has no intentions of keeping—“Yeah, I’ll
talk to the counselor on Monday”—and accepting with no protest the extra week
of detention—“Plus a day for what you skipped yesterday.”
 
Far worse than Traymore’s clumsy do-gooding and bad interrogation methods are
the indecent noises that follow Sam down the hallway during every class change.
 
They get worse during lunch, which he eats alone, Eddy and Eli nowhere to be
found. 
 
Munsy, who doesn’t usually share Sam’s lunch period, makes an appearance at his
table to “accidentally” kick his chair and stage-whisper, “Fucking faggot,” in
Sam’s ear, onion breath making him drop what’s left of his sandwich.
 
The big boy is up against Sam’s chair.  He can feel Munsy’s body heat leeching
through his shirt, and he wants to rise up out of his seat, force the kid back
and away, anything but sit in the shadow of his influence and listen to the
poison spilling from his greasy lips.
 
Instead, though, Sam fixes his eyes on an indefinite spot on a column halfway
across the room, looking over the heads of all the curious people, all the
sneering ones, the few sympathetic students who hide their fear by whispering
to the people around them.
 
Munsy continues his tirade, voice just loud enough to be clear in a one-table
radius all around but not audible to the lunch monitors at each corner and by
the doors.
 
Sam’s able to tune out the worst of the words, able to focus on his breathing
and heart-rate, putting his training to a use his father could never have
anticipated, pretending that he’s somewhere else, sitting patient in the dark,
waiting for a more obvious monster.
 
That he finds in his other life an escape from the ordinary is an irony too
bitter for Sam, and when he can take no more, he does stand, forcing the other
back.
 
Munsy shoves the chair into the back of Sam’s legs, but Sam had expected it,
sidesteps swiftly and spins to face the boy.
 
The cafeteria falls unnaturally silent.
 
On his peripheral, Sam sees the lunch monitors moving in, and he drops his
hands as though he’s not going to fight, making his posture as innocuous as
possible even as his eyes take on the flat, empty stare he wears when he’s
about to kill something evil and ugly.
 
He can feel an unpleasant smile carving lines in his face, can see in Munsy’s
eyes some unnamed recognition of Sam’s threat, the other boy’s lizard brain
warning him even as he continues to say things, softer now as the adults
approach but no less awful for being said in an intimate voice.
 
Sam says nothing still, just lets his face express his true intentions, and
when the monitors finally arrive, time having attenuated like in a slow-motion
movie scene, Sam’s face has slid into impassivity and Munsy has fallen silent.
 
“Problem?” One of the female teachers asks.
 
Sam shakes his head.  “No,” he says, gathering his lunch bag, balling it up,
tossing it in a perfect arc at the nearest receptacle.
 
Munsy just snorts and raises his hand to make a “shooting” gesture at Sam,
exaggerated wink making his intentions clear.
 
The rest of the day is better, if only because Sam doesn’t see Munsy again. 
He’s grateful it’s not a gym day.
 
He half expects the kid to be lurking at his locker, but the big boy and his
cohort are nowhere to be found, and Sam makes it to detention without incident.
 
Surprisingly, though Sam’s a few minutes early, Steve is already there, having
apparently foregone his usual dramatic entrance in favor of shooting Sam a nod
and mouthing the words “Wait for me,” to which Sam gives his own nod.
 
Detention takes the usual eternity, but Sam is rewarded for his patient waiting
when he exits the room to find Steve waiting just down the way and around the
corner, out of sight of the other rejects who spend their afternoons in
detention.
 
Obviously, the other boy doesn’t want to be seen with Sam, which hurts his
feelings some, but he tries to shrug it off, put himself in the other boy’s
shoes.  Steve has to stay in Green Bank, after all.  And he’s got Dave for a
father, so it can’t be easy.
 
They enter the tech room as usual, but unlike the other times, Steve doesn’t
offer him a soda or break out a joint for himself.  Instead, he sinks onto the
sofa and indicates with a pat of his hand that Sam should join him there.
 
Sam does, leaving a reasonable space between them, and Steve snorts.
 
“Little late for modesty, don’t you think?”
 
Sam gives him a sharp look.  “What’s that supposed to mean?”
 
Steve shrugs and doesn’t look at Sam as he adds, “You and Eddy made it pretty
clear this morning.”
 
Sam twists around, puts a knee up on the couch so that he’s facing Steve’s
profile.  The other boy still won’t turn his head or take Sam in.
 
“I told you not to believe what you hear.  We weren’t doing anything.”
 
“Riiiight.”
 
Exasperated and exhausted by the day’s general crappiness, Sam snaps, “You
really think I’d make out with that freak?”
 
He regrets his word choice almost at once.  He’s not usually the one to call
names, having been on the receiving end of them so often.
 
But it gets Steve looking at him, anyway.  “You weren’t making out with Eddy in
the chem. closet?”
 
“No,” Sam says firmly, giving Steve the full force of his gaze.
 
“Okay,” Steve says softly, and there’s something of relief in his voice.  He
drops his glasses onto the table, then, sits up and turns to face Sam,
mirroring him with his opposite knee on the cushion between them.
 
Sam’s not expecting Steve to reach out and cup the back of his head, to pull
him in for a searing, wet kiss that leaves him breathless and almost
immediately hard.
 
Maybe because he wasn’t prepared for it, he doesn’t know what to do about it
except go with it, and soon enough he’s pressing Steve back into the couch,
throwing a leg over his thighs and kissing him with serious intent, tongue
thrusting into the other boy’s mouth, hands almost bruising on his shoulders,
jean-clad pelvis grinding down on Steve’s own obvious arousal.
 
Steve’s got his hands up under Sam’s shirt and tee-shirt, is running his nails
along the line of Sam’s ribs, and Sam is just sliding his own hands down to the
hem of Steve’s Marley tee-shirt when Steve makes a startled noise and bucks
under Sam.
 
Assuming that the other boy is merely eager to be undressed, Sam keeps going.
 
Only when Steve wrenches his mouth free a scant hair’s breadth to say, “Sam,”
in a fearful voice does Sam realize that someone else is in the room.
 
His back is to the door, and the time it takes him to swivel his head around
feels a lot longer than it probably is.
 
Besides, he already knows what to expect, has a sense of him without having to
look, so his lips are already saying, “Dean,” in a pleading voice before he
sees his big brother standing there, one hand on the door handle, the other
clenched in a fist against his thigh, face paler than usual and eyes
telegraphing betrayal.
 
“Dean,” he says again, but Dean cuts him off.
 
“Get to the car, Sam.”
 
“Dean—“ he tries again.
 
“Get. to. the. car.”
 
“Dean, no.”
 
“Sam.”  Dean’s voice suggests he’s on the very razor’s edge of his control. 
But—
 
“I’m not leaving you here alone with Steve.”
 
Sam didn’t think his brother could look more hurt, but it’s there, a momentary
flash of something cutting his brother deep, and then Dean’s face is implacable
again.
 
“Get up,” Dean says, and this time he’s addressing the boy who has been all
this time stock still beneath Sam, like silence and stillness will keep him
from being eaten by the predator that’s got him in its sights.
 
Sam shifts off of Steve and stands, straightening his shirts and not looking at
Dean.  Steve pulls his tee-shirt straight and stands, too, shifting his weight
from foot to foot uncertainly, glancing toward his discarded glasses, obviously
unsure if reaching for them will set Dean off.

“Go,” Dean says, stepping aside just enough to leave room for the other boy to
go. 
 
Still, Steve hesitates.
 
“Go,” Dean repeats, brooking no argument, and Steve does, abandoning his shades
and stuttering a little in his step as he has to pass so close to the elder
Winchester.
 
Dean’s free hand darts out and catches Steve at the joint of his near elbow,
and the boy lets out a little involuntary sound.
 
“You tell anyone about this and it’ll be the last thing that tongue of yours
ever does.  Got it?”
 
Steve nods convulsively, swallowing hard like he might be sick.
 
Dean releases him with a tight nod, and Sam hears Steve’s running feet receding
as Dean turns to give Sam the full weight of his regard.
 
“It’s not what it looks like,” Sam says, trying to forestall the explosion.
 
“It looked like you were tongue-fucking Dave Bellamy’s kid,” Dean observes, and
his tone is too regular, his voice far too steady.
 
Sam winces at his brother’s word-choice, but it’s not like he can really afford
to act delicate.
 
“Well, yeah, but—“
 
“Jesus, Sam, what the hell is wrong with you?  What were you thinking, huh?”
 
“I wasn’t thinkingat all, Dean.  I was doing what teenagers do.  God, how many
times did you get caught in the janitor’s closet with some girl?”
 
Sam’s got a point, one that Dean might have conceded to, except that in those
cases, Dean hadn’t lied to Sam about his behavior.  In fact, Dean had usually
been eager to share the details while Sam kept exclaiming how he didn’t want to
know.
 
“What else aren’t you telling me?”
 
And there, back in the broken part of Dean’s voice, Sam hears the heart of this
problem.  Sam lied to Dean—a lot, actually—and that’s not something the
Winchester brothers typically do.
 
“I—“ He starts.  Dean pins him with a look, waiting, something maybe like hope
at the edges of his eyes.  He wants Sam to say something to make this okay.  To
make them okay.
 
But Sam can’t.  He can’t tell Dean about Munsy and his boys, about Eddy and
Eli, about Steve’s little game of give and take-away.  He’s got to take
responsibility some time, got to grow up and be a man.  How many times had Dad
said that to Sam in the last six months alone?
 
No, Sam can’t share any of this with Dean.  And he wants to, more than
anything.  Wants to erase the pain Dean’s trying to hide, wants to get in the
car and out of Green Bank and put it all behind them.
 
Instead, he says, “I’m sorry,” and watches a wall go down in Dean’s gaze.
 
The walk to the car, parked around back, the drive home, dinner, all of it is
spent in a tense silence, air taut with questions Dean wants to ask and Sam
wants to answer, if only to reverse what’s been done.
 
He goes to bed early, seeing no reason to stay up, and wakens in the middle of
the night to a warm weight at his shoulder, shaking him.
 
“Sam.”
 
He opens his eyes to find Dean’s less than a foot from his, eyes worried.
 
“You okay?” Dean asks, removing his hand but not backing away.  He’s bent over
the bed, and Sam can see that he’s in boxers and tee-shirt, apparently having
been to bed.
 
“What time is it?”
 
“You were having a nightmare,” Dean says, ignoring Sam’s question.
 
Sam tilts his head to see that it’s just two a.m.
 
He takes a deep breath and tries to shake away his exhaustion enough to figure
out what’s happening.
 
“I don’t remember,” he says truthfully, feeling the last vestiges of an image
dissipate like so much smoke.
 
“It sounded pretty bad,” Dean adds, turning to sit at the edge of Sam’s bed.
 
Which is out of the ordinary and alerts Sam that something’s not right.  This
isn’t just about Sam having a bad dream, which isn’t exactly an unusual event.
 
Sam is surprised to feel the weight of Dean’s hand on his leg, warm even
through the heavy bedspread and blankets.  He leans up on his elbows to get a
better look at his brother’s face, which is cast into shadows by a light coming
in from the hallway.
 
“Dean, what is it?” He asks, and he’s concerned now, really, because he can
feel a fine tremor in Dean’s hand, can see the silhouette of Dean’s strong
shoulders shuddering.
 
Dean shakes his head, and Sam wants to turn on the bedside lamp, to see his
brother’s face clearly.
 
“Dean, you’re scaring me,” Sam says, reaching up to brace his hand on his
brother’s shoulder.
 
Dean makes a sound, then, like he’s been wounded, and Sam almost releases his
hold, except that Dean’s weight gets heavier, and Sam finds himself being
pushed back into the bed as Dean collapses against him.
 
“Dean!” he cries out, really afraid now that Dean’s somehow been hurt, his mind
conjuring up indistinct images built of fragments of stories he’s heard, of
burning figures on the ceiling, of demons that hunt the hunters.
 
Dean is shaking against Sam, his face buried in the joining of Sam’s neck and
shoulder, and it takes Sam a second to recognize the heat there and wetness, to
know that his brother is crying.
 
“Dean,” he says, more softly.  “What is it, man?  Tell me.  Please.”
 
Dean pushes himself up and away from Sam, hands to either side of his head so
he can feel where the pillow is pressed down by Dean’s weight.
 
Inches apart, Dean pauses, and Sam can just make out the anguish in his
brother’s face.
 
“Is it Dad?  Did something happen to Dad?”  Cold dread fills his belly and
sucks the breath from him as he considers how only that could make Dean look so
lost.
 
But Dean shakes his head.
 
“Then what is it, Dean?  C’mon, man, you’re scaring the shit out of me here.”
 
“Do you love him?”
 
Dean’s voice is so wrecked that it takes Sam a second to put his words together
and then another second to figure out that Dean’s not talking about Dad.
 
“No,” he says finally, wonderment in his voice, because this is not at all what
he’d been expecting.  Is Dean freaking out because he has proof positive that
Sam’s gay?  Is that it?
 
Dean’s eyes close and he releases the tiniest of breaths, and Sam understands
suddenly that Dean is relieved.
 
“Dean, what’s this about?” he asks again, voice stronger.  He needs to know.
 
“I can’t—“ Dean says, and his voice sounds like he’s being strangled, like the
life is being taken from him by some huge and looming thing.
 
“Tell me,” Sam says, softer, putting the love he always has for his brother
into his voice.
 
“I’ve tried, Sam.  I swear I’ve tried.  You’ve got to believe me.”
 
“I do,” Sam answers immediately, though he has no idea what Dean’s tried or
not.  What he does know is that he has absolute faith in Dean, and whatever is
driving him now, they’ll figure it out.
 
“Okay,” Dean says, like maybe Sam has agreed to a request, or like Dean’s heard
in Sam’s voice the shadow of his younger brother’s belief in him.
 
“I love you,” Dean says, and Sam feels the dread spike into terror.  Oh, god. 
Is Dean leaving him?  Is he dying? 
 
“Dean—“ He starts, but his words are stopped by the gentle press of Dean’s dry,
warm lips against his own.
 
Still, Sam doesn’t understand. 
 
As the kiss continues, though, it begins to dawn on Sam that this isn’t a
brotherly sort of goodbye.  This isn’t Dean kissing away the pain of some
greater betrayal he’s about to uncover.
 
The gentlest brush of Dean’s hand against Sam’s cheek gives him his second
reckoning of the night.
 
This kiss is about love, alright.
 
It’s just not the sort Sam was expecting.
 
He has a moment of clarity, like he’s watching himself from the ceiling,
looking down on the two of them there on the narrow bed.
 
He sees his brother, the man he’s known his whole life, the one who’s cared for
him through every kind of hurt, the one who’s been Sam’s home no matter where
they’ve been.
 
He sees himself, utterly open, vulnerable, trapped between the trust he feels
and the fear that comes from outside of them both.
 
But the world as it exists for everyone else has never been the world that the
Winchesters live in.
 
As soon as he thinks it, he’s back in his body, smelling his brother’s scent,
feeling the stubble on Dean’s chin against the smooth skin of his own, feeling
the callused fingers that have guided his hands on hilts and handles his whole
life, feeling the heat of his brother and the way his lips are asking a
question Dean could never, ever put into words.
 
Sam sighs his mouth open beneath his brother and answers him.
 
What happens after his surrender Sam remembers only as a series of sensations
and sounds. 
 
First, Dean’s surprised noise as Sam lets his tongue explore Dean’s lower lip.
 
Then, the heat of Dean’s hands now both holding Sam’s face, cupping his jaw to
control the kiss, to draw Sam up into him.
 
Dean’s weight as he presses Sam down and stretches his length along his
brother’s, still kissing him, still cupping his face so that the pressure is
almost but not quite too hard to breathe against.
 
Dean’s sigh as he finally, finally lets Sam’s panting mouth go to leave a line
of tiny, nipping kisses along Sam’s jaw, and then his growl as he noses aside
the loose neck of Sam’s shirt so that he can fasten his teeth on Sam’s collar
bone and worry it with his tongue, too.
 
Sam’s own gasp as the sensation arrows to his groin.
 
The pressure of Dean’s knee between his thighs as his brother sits up to remove
his own shirt and then Sam’s, to peel the covers down enough to bare him to the
waist and then stretch out once more.
 
The furnace heat of Dean’s naked skin against his own.
 
The feeling of their bellies jumping in time to each other’s bolder touches.
 
He loses time somewhere between Dean working his way down his centerline,
stopping to dip his tongue into the hollow of Sam’s sensitive navel, drawing a
gasping laugh from him and then a begging sound as the sensation ceases, and
the moment when Dean has pulled away the blankets altogether and then paused,
kneeling between Sam’s spraddled legs, fingers curled beneath the waistband of
his boxers, eyes on Sam, asking.
 
Sam says yes without a word, and Dean slides the boxers down, standing only
long enough to pull them off altogether and step out of his own.
 
Then Dean is back, his weight making the mattress dip, the promise of it, the
safe feeling of Dean pressing him down making tears start at the corner of his
eyes, tears that fall freely when Dean begins to rub his hard length against
Sam’s, eyes never leaving Sam’s, until Sam has to close them against the
brightness he sees there, against the love in Dean’s eyes and the overwhelming
sensation of their joining, the silky slide of flesh, hard and smooth and
right, the breaking rhythm of his brother’s voice chanting Sam’s name, the
building heat low in his belly and the way he arches into Dean and Dean says,
“Yeah, Sammy, c’mon, c’mon.”
 
And then he’s bursting apart, every atom of him flying away to scatter across
the darkness, sparking bright behind his eyes like his soul is a thousand
thousand stars.
 
And Dean is there with him, too, of course, right with him, where he always has
been and is and will be, shouting Sam’s name, echoing across the splintering
sky behind Sam’s eyes, and then lapping across his belly in a warm wave.
 
It’s after that Sam knows he’ll most remember, though, the way Dean rolls off
of him and by the weight of him forces Sam back towards the wall, taking always
the position of protection between Sam and the door, then reaches around at the
foot of the bed to find a tee shirt—whose, Sam can’t care—and wipe them both
clean, and then, discarding the damp shirt, pulling the blankets up and over
them and dropping a heavy arm across Sam’s still naked waist.
 
The alarm wakes him, and he has an impression from Dean’s muffled noises
against the pillow they’re barely sharing, that it’s been shouting radio
chatter at them for some time.
 
He struggles to rise against the pressure of Dean’s arm, still draped across
him, to reach over Dean and shut off the radio.
 
Silence descends and a recognition of their mutual nudity.
 
“You gonna freak?” Dean asks, half to Sam, half to himself.
 
“No,” Sam says, meaning it.  “No,” he reiterates, looking down at Dean’s
profile.
 
Dean rolls onto his back and shoves Sam toward the wall with his hip, and Sam
makes a noise and moves to give him room, watching his big brother’s face
carefully as he goes through the stages of worry and fear, finally settling on
wonder, which sticks.
 
Sam gives him a goofy grin and drops his head for a long kiss that tastes of
unbrushed teeth.
 
“Dude, gross,” Dean grouses, but not like he really means it.
 
Sam hazards a glance at the clock and then groans.  “I’m gonna be late if I
don’t get up right now.”
 
Dean’s eyebrows go up.  “You’re going to school?”
 
“Have to.  Damage control.”
 
If Dean is hurt, he hides it pretty quickly, but Sam is faster and catches on. 
“Hey,” he says, touching his brother’s face.  “I’d stay if I could.  You know
that, right?  But I have to make sure Steve isn’t going to freak out and make
things worse at school.  Besides, it’s Friday.  We’ll have the whole weekend.”
 
Sam hates that he’s leaving out a couple of important other reasons—like, I
have to lay a spirit to rest and prevent some rednecks from killing me—but he
figures after today, he’ll be in the clear and Dean will never need to know
about any of it.
 
Dean’s face brightens at the reminder that the weekend is nearly here, and he
reaches over to slap Sam’s hip through the blankets.  “Get your ass in gear. 
And grab a shower.  You smell like sex.”
 
Sam’s eyes darken at the reminder, and Dean’s face changes, too.  Just before
they’re about to make Sam a lot later, he says, “No,” and prods Dean to get him
out of bed so he can get up himself.
 
All the way to school, Dean can’t keep his eyes on the road, which Sam notices
with a self-satisfied smirk.  Of course, every time he catches his brother
giving him thatlook, he feels heat in his belly, and he hopes he can get his
hard-on to subside before he has to walk into school with it.
 
For a second when he comes into the school, he has the crazy thought that
everyone knows what he did last night with his brother.  There are groups
standing around their lockers, and they all pause as he walks past to whisper
and point. 
 
He waits for the flush of shame to redden his cheeks, and when it doesn’t come,
he squares his shoulders and stands up even straighter, letting the feeling of
loving his brother spread out through him, projecting to everyone looking at
him, whispering about him, that he’s better than whatever it is they think they
know.
 
This feeling isn’t abated in the least when he arrives at his locker to find
Steve Bellamy blocking it, backed up by six or seven guys that Sam vaguely
recognizes as maybe being on some sports team.  Anyway, they’re wearing
matching letter jackets and identical expressions of cool disdain.
 
Sam favors Steve with an inquiring but indifferent look, like he hadn’t spent
time yesterday afternoon riding his hard-on on the tech room sofa.
 
In point of fact, that little indiscretion feels to Sam like it happened to
someone else about a million years ago.  Between then and now Sam has become
something more than the sum of his parts; he’s become finally what he’s always
been:  Dean’s.
 
“You’re a pillow-biter,” Steve begins without preliminary.  “And we don’t like
your kind around here.”
 
Sam looks for signs of irony in Steve’s face and, finding none, feels a sinking
sensation in his stomach.  He’d thought maybe they’d gotten beyond this sort of
subterfuge.
 
Sam opens his mouth to respond, and he sees it, the merest hint, there and then
gone in the shifting of the other boy’s weight—Steve’s afraid of what Sam will
say, afraid that Sam’s going to out him.
 
This is a pre-emptive strike.
 
Sam nods to no one in particular and gives Steve his shoulder, opening his
locker and putting it between him and the phalanx of vaguely threatening boys.
 
He gathers his books, closes his locker, and says, quietly, “People are what
they are.”  He’s looking directly at Steve.  “No one should have to be ashamed
of that.  I’m not.  Get over it.”
 
And then he walks away, giving the gaping group a wide berth so that he can get
to his homeroom in time for the bell.
 
Eddy surprises him by showing up at the lunch table.  But he doesn’t sit down,
and Eli is nowhere to be found.  Sam considers asking but then thinks better of
it.
 
“You aren’t going to take Eli away from me,” the other boy says, hunching over
Sam a little in a way that’s a little reminiscent of Munsy’s attack of the day
before.  Except that Eddy smells of tuna fish and isn’t nearly so tall.
 
Sam turns a little in his seat, using his knees to force a space between them. 
He looks up at Eddy’s pained expression, takes in the way his paleness
accentuates the angry red acne scarring his cheeks.  The boy is on the edge,
Sam can see, and it could be Sam’s words that push him over.  Still, he has to
make it clear somehow that Eli isn’t supposed to be here, that he isn’t good
for Eddy.
 
“Eli doesn’t belong here,” Sam says quietly, trying to make meaningful eye
contact with Eddy, whose eyes are darting around the room with paranoid
distraction.  “He needs to move on to the next world.”
 
The jury’s been out for Sam for awhile now about what the “next world” might
be, or even if there is one.  But he hardly thinks this is the time for
theological indecision.  He has to get Eddy to see what he’s saying.
 
“Look, I know that Eli’s your friend, but—“
 
“He’s my only friend,” Eddy emphasizes, taking a jittery half-step toward Sam
like he might be thinking of trying to hurt him again.
 
“I know that,” Sam says, trying for sympathetic and hoping he doesn’t sound
like he pities the kid.  He kind of does, but that’s not going to help
anything.  “But he doesn’t belong here.”
 
“He stays as long as I want him to,” Eddy insists, which, Sam notes absently,
is a strange way to put it.
 
“Then I think you need to learn to let go.”  He means well, and he says it in
as unthreatening a voice as he can, but by the way Eddy’s shoulders tense and
his eyes narrow, Sam realizes he’s said more than he meant to, more than he
even understands.
 
“Stay away from us!” Eddy hisses, dodging back an odd step or two and then
jogging away, right past the monitor on the door who yells at him about running
in the cafeteria.
 
“Lover’s spat?” He hears, just before the arrival of Munsy and his bunch of
thugs.
 
Sam rolls his eyes and stands up before the guy can get any closer, clears his
lunch stuff with one hand and shoulders his backpack with the other.  He
ignores them even as they try to maneuver him into staying, cutting quickly
between them and breezing out the door without looking back, not even as Munsy
shouts, “Run while you can, Winchester!”
 
“Whatever,” he mutters to himself, turning toward the stairs that lead to the
second floor and the library.  Munsy’s not likely to go there, Sam’s sure, and
besides, the school librarian is a harridan of wide repute.  No one messes
around on her territory, not even someone as stupid and self-sabotaging as
Munsy has proven to be.
 
Friday afternoon classes are usually a little squirrelly, Sam has noticed,
neither the teachers nor the students having especial stamina to stick out the
last few hours before the weekend, so he doesn’t learn much, except in English,
where he rocks his Huck Finn essay test.  He sighs a little over the last
sentence, realizing that he might very well not be there to get the grade.  Dad
could be home as soon as Monday.
 
He spends the rest of that period wondering how he and Dean are going to get
around Dad.  No way they can tell him, obviously, but Sam’s not sure how
they’ll hide it, either.  Of course, Dean’s probably chewing over that problem
right now, too, Sam reflects, and he feels warm at the idea of Dean thinking of
Sam the way Sam is thinking of him.
 
Too warm, actually.  He shifts a notebook onto his lap and starts reading the
grammar posters taped over the blackboard until he can remove it without
embarrassing himself.
 
Detention is sort of anticlimactic, insofar as Steve doesn’t show, and Sam
wonders if he’s going to have a greeting party when he goes to his locker on
the way out of school.
 
But he has the hallway to himself as he wends his way there, and he’s starting
to think he might be free and clear for the weekend—a thought that makes him
smile in a way that he’s glad no one’s around to see—when a piece of paper
flutters out of his locker from where it had been shoved into the vent at the
top.
 
In cramped, stilted print on paper torn unevenly from a wirebound notebook, as
if in some haste, he reads, “Meet me at the graveyard.  I’ve changed my mind. 
Eddy.”
 
Sam glances at his watch and considers that Dean’s going to be there in twenty
minutes.  The graveyard’s only a few blocks east, though, and Sam knows he can
make it if he hurries.  He can at least meet Eddy and figure out what they’re
going to do.  The salt and lighter fluid he always carries might not be enough
in this case, and anyway, he still isn’t sure which part of Eli’s corporeal
self has been left behind.
 
Putting both arms through his backpack, Sam sprints down the hall, out the
doors, and takes the front steps three at a time, hitting the pavement in a
comfortable, long-legged pace that he can and has kept up for miles.
 
The cemetery is less than five minutes at Sam’s speed, and he makes it there
before he’s really sweating at all.
 
Fifteen minutes ‘til he has to meet Dean.
 
He searches Green Bank Cemetery for signs of life, the late afternoon sun
behind him making long shadows of monuments and stones.  It’s hard to see, but
he thinks he catches movement in the western corner, and he heads that way at a
brisk jog, backpack banging against his lower back with every stride.
 
He sees Eddy near a mausoleum that reads “Benedict” in stark letters and raises
a hand.
 
“Hey,” he calls out, announcing his presence.
 
Eddy spins and then stands there until Sam’s three feet away and closing.
 
“You can’t have Eli,” he says, and Sam stops, confused.
 
“But your note said—“
 
“I’m—I’m sorry.  But you can’t have Eli.  He’s my friend.”
 
He feels the blow seconds after he senses movement, so his arm is up to take
the brunt of it and the branch misses his head, though a sharp, broken bit
catches his cheek near his eye and he hisses and blinks away the pain-tears
that come unbidden.
 
Matching scars, he has time to think, even as he’s dropping into a crouch and
putting a tree at his back so no one can sneak up on him.
 
Unfortunately, his position has him staring directly into the sun where it’s
perched on the horizon, and all he can see are black blobs of movement between
tears and squinting.  It’s enough to keep him ahead of the attack—barely—but
not for long.  He slides around the tree until the sun’s to his left.
 
That’s when Munsy comes into focus, him and Fatneck and the rest, all armed
with various implements apparently scavenged for the occasion—two tree
branches, a chunk of concrete that looks strangely similar to the top of a
Celtic cross, what might be the brass urn from a gravestone, and a broken clay
pot.
 
Eddy is nowhere in sight.
 
“Gee, and I didn’t get you anything,” Sam quips, trying to buy himself time to
clear the black sun-spots from his compromised vision.
 
No such luck.
 
Munsy moves in while another boy ducks out of sight behind Sam, and he knows
he’s about to be flanked.  He dodges across a narrow space, leaping a low stone
cross, and slams his back against a mausoleum, sliding along it until he’s got
the middle of the long wall at his back.  They can’t come at him from behind
this way, and he’ll at least have them all more or less in view.
 
The sun is to his right now, sinking fast, and he has a moment to wonder if
twilight will be better or worse for him.  Since everyone already has his
position, he guesses it really doesn’t matter.
 
He can’t fight all five of them, but luckily, they’ve seen one too many martial
arts films, because they first try to rush him one at a time.
 
Fatneck goes first, raising the hunk of concrete over his head like he’s going
to bash Sam’s brains in, which might work if he wasn’t telegraphing his
intentions and leaving his gut open for attack.
 
Sam plants a solid kick in the kid’s big belly, feels the air rush out of him,
dodges the concrete as it’s flung involuntarily from the kid’s outstretched
arms.
 
The kid can’t catch himself in that position, and he goes down hard, chin
catching on the edge of grave marker set almost—but not quite—flush with the
grass.
 
Out for the count.
 
Munsy seems content to let the others wear Sam down.  He stands to the right
egging them on, calling Sam every kind of name and urging them not to be
pussies.
 
His second attacker has a branch, and he swings it hard from the shoulders like
a ball-player.  Sam can’t catch it, so he dodges aside, letting the brunt of
the blow strike the concrete, which wrings a cry from the guy holding it.
 
Sam grabs it before the guy can pull it back, arms probably stinging from the
hard surface blow, and yanks his attacker toward him, off-balance.  When the
guy’s momentum has him staggering forward, Sam slams the branch back at him,
catching him just below the ribs and bringing him to his knees.
 
He’s able to wrench the branch away from him then, and he flips it neatly,
catching the fat end and turning in mid-snatch to strike the kid a ringing blow
to his shoulder.
 
The guy wheezes out a sound that might’ve been a scream, except he still can’t
take in any air, and clutches his injured arm, falling over on his side,
obviously out of the fight.
 
The third one throws the brass urn and catches Sam in the collar bone.
 
It’s a good throw, and the object is heavy.  Though the kid was probably aiming
for his head, the blow does damage, causing Sam to grunt and drop the stick. 
His right arm is numb, a tingling wash running from his collarbone to his
fingertips signaling some kind of nerve damage.  He can’t quite make a fist,
and he sure as hell can’t raise the arm.
 
The only good thing about it is the urn, which has fallen with a solid sound
between his staggered feet.
 
He picks it up in his left hand, with which he’s had plenty of practice
throwing things like knives, and eyes the pitcher carefully.
 
The guy gets the idea and starts to back away. 
 
It’s a stand off of a sort, so long as they keep thinking individually. 
Unfortunately, Munsy figures out the weak point in his own plan and says, “Get
him!” at the same time he starts his rush, stick raised.
 
Sam grabs the narrow end of the urn, feeling the thin brass pedestal digging
into his palm as he brings it up to wield it like a clumsy shield.

He catches the stick as it comes down, feels the blow through his arm, hears
the ringing sound as the urn wings out of his hand and strikes a nearby
headstone.
 
Munsy is bringing the stick around for a second strike when the kid with the
pot comes in from the other side, raising it overhand to shatter it over Sam’s
head.
 
Catching the motion out of the corner of his eye, he deflects a portion of it
with his shoulder, but a piece of it catches him solidly on the ear, which
hurts like a son of a bitch and brings a dullness to his vision that he tries
to breathe through as he staggers away three, four, five steps and ducks around
the far end of the mausoleum.
 
His shoulder is sending out a steady, penetrating throb, his ear likewise
stinging in counterpoint, and that whole side of him, ear, neck, and shoulder,
aches.  He shakes his head, regrets it when the world swims dizzingly, and
strains to hear the sounds of ambush over the blood roaring in his injured ear.
 
It’s darker back here, no sunlight to pierce the canopy of evergreens, and he
narrows his eyes, searching the ground for a branch or stone or any kind of
weapon.  Three against one might not be a problem if he could use both hands,
but right now, he’s in trouble and he knows it.
 
Sam hears the scuff of a boot against gravel and looks to his left in time to
see Munsy rounding the corner.  He scans to his right and finds the boy who’d
carried the pot now brandishing the brass urn.
 
He takes three steps away from the mausoleum, trees to either side of him maybe
four feet each way, hoping the third kid can’t get behind him without him
seeing but not wanting to be up against a wall, limiting his movement.
 
Given that he can only fight with his left hand, he’s going to need to use his
legs, and when Munsy gets close enough, overconfident because of the branch’s
length, Sam feints a duck and then comes out of it with a kick that out-reaches
the stick and sends Munsy stumbling back. He caroms off a tree, staggers into a
half-turn, and then trips over a stone and goes down on his hands and knees.
 
The second kid has apparently been slowed up by watching his leader get felled
because Sam has time to watch the kid wind up with the urn, and he sidesteps
the throw easily.
 
Unfortunately for Sam, that puts him into the bear hug of the third boy, who
had come in through the trees.
 
“Got him,” the kid says just as Sam tosses his head back hard into his chin,
and the kid yelps and loosens his grip.

Sam’s got to give him credit, though, he doesn’t let go, so Sam tries for the
instep with his booted heel.
 
The kid is wearing boots, too, though, so this move is less effective, and
Sam’s left thrashing and throwing his weight around, trying to put the kid off
balance so he can get free, when Munsy makes a clumsy swing that nevertheless
clips Sam in the jaw.
 
His teeth slam together hard, and he bites his tongue.  Tears come up in his
eyes immediately and he breathes hard through his nose, trying to martial the
pain before it gets on top of him.  A second blow strikes him in the cheek
where it’s already been opened up by the branch, and he feels the skin split
further and hisses out the pain.
 
The kid holding him tightens his grip, taking advantage of the way Sam has lost
air, and Sam finds it hard to take in more than wheezing sips of breath.
 
A third punch lands low on his jaw near his ear and he feels the sliding pop as
his jaw dislocates.
 
The pain, thankfully, is dulled by the creeping darkness narrowing his field of
vision like a round lens blinking shut.
 
He has time to think, Dean’s going to kill me, before the shutter’s final blink
blanks the world out altogether.
 
“Sam.”
 
He thinks he hears a familiar voice, thinks he might slur the word, “Dean?”
 
And then he’s awake, and he wishes he weren’t because everything hurts—face,
shoulder, neck.  Breathing.
 
It’s dark, and he wonders if he’s been beaten blind, until he hears Dean say,
“Open your eyes, Sam.  C’mon, Sam, please.  Open your eyes.  Look at me.”
 
Sam manages to slit one open—the one that’s not swollen shut over his ravaged
cheek—and a vaguely Dean-shaped figure swims into hazy focus.
 
“Can you hear me?  Sam?  Talk to me, man.”
 
But Sam can’t talk.  When he tries to speak, his jaw joint grinds glass into
his skull, and he moans—or thinks he moans, he loses time again.
 
When he comes to a second time, Dean’s cradling him against his knees, one
strong hand on his chin.
 
“This is going to hurt,” is the only warning Sam has, and then shrieking agony
streaks across his face with the sickening clicking sound of his jaw being
realigned.
 
Mercifully, darkness takes him a third time.
 
“You hurt anywhere I can’t see?” Dean’s saying when Sam recognizes his
surroundings again.

He’s cold, starting to shiver with it, and Dean gathers him close, dropping his
cheek against the top of Sam’s head for just a second, breathing something into
Sam’s hair that might be endearments or could be curses for all that Sam can
tell.
 
“Can you stand if you lean on me?”
 
Sam mumbles around his thick, throbbing tongue and swollen jaw, and Dean takes
it for an assent, lifts him as gently as he can by the armpits, slings an arm
around his strong shoulders.
 
“Car’s that way,” Dean says, moving carefully, step by agonizing step, out of
the dark shadow of the mausoleum and into an early evening lit by an almost
full moon hanging low and swollen in the grey sky.
 
Sam can just make out the Impala, which crouches like a mythical monster on the
narrow cemetery road, and he feels exposed on the long walk to it, even with
Dean at his side.

He tries to ask about Munsy and his crew, and Dean says, “Don’t worry.  I took
care of ‘em,” so Sam guesses he was making himself understood.
 
The hearing on the sore side of his face is muffled, as through cotton batting,
and he worries that he might have real damage, but he doesn’t want the
questions a trip to the hospital would bring, doesn’t want Dad to know what’s
been going on if there’s any way to avoid it.  Maxing out their only credit
card on an emergency room visit would definitely do it.
 
“No hospital,” he manages, and Dean says, “I know,” but there’s a tight pain in
his voice that makes Sam feel guilty as hell for worrying his brother.
 
“’m alright,” Sam says, and Dean says, “Shut up, bitch,” with affection and
sorrow and love.
 
Once home and inside, Dean lowers Sam carefully to the couch and makes several
quick, efficient trips to load the end table with first aid kit, warm water,
old towels, a better light, and several promising bottles of medicine.
 
“No meds until I’m sure you don’t have a concussion,” Dean says, shining a
penlight in Sam’s eyes, which makes him hiss and jerk away.  The motion brings
a wave of dizziness and after it a roiling mess of nausea that has him
blanching and reaching for Dean.
 
Dean’s seen enough of this to know what Sam needs and gets the wastebasket
under his chin just before he brings up what feels like an aquarium’s-worth of
bitter brown bile.
 
Blood mingles with the sick, and the stench of it washes over Sam in a stinking
cloud that has him heaving out another mouthful of thick, stringy puke.
 
He groans, feeling needles piercing his skull and trying to poke their way out
through his eyes.
 
Dean helps him sit back against the couch arm, props a pillow under him, and
runs a hand carefully, gently over Sam’s forehead.
 
“You’re going to be okay, Sam.”
 
It sounds like he’s talking to himself.
 
Dean works over Sam steadily for a solid hour, cleaning every cut and abrasion,
searching with prodding fingers and apologies for broken bones or any other
more serious damage.  He worries for a long minute over the cheekbone, making
Sam cry embarrassed tears at the pain of it, and finally places a butterfly
kiss on Sam’s eyebrow above his swollen eye before turning to the business of
closing the wound.
 
When Dean is satisfied that Sam will live, though Sam himself is uncertain of
the outcome and thinks maybe he’d rather not, all things considered, he cleans
up the mess with mechanical, jerky motions that tell Sam how upset his brother
really is.
 
“I’m okay, Dean,” he says, though it’s less convincing since he’s still
slurring badly.
 
“Bullshit.  They would’ve beaten you to death if I hadn’t stopped them.”
 
Dean’s standing half-turned away, hands full of bloody towels.
 
Sam can see the way his shoulders heave up and down with every breath, knows
his brother is close to losing it.
 
“But you did.  Stop them.”  It hurts, every word hurts, but Sam needs Dean to
know that he’s fine.
 
Dean nods, jaw tensing, and heads to the kitchen to discard the garbage.
 
When he comes back, Sam says, “How did you know to come to the cemetery?”
 
At least, he sort of says it.  Dean seems to understand.
 
“I was waiting at the school when this weird, skinny kid ran up to the car and
told me you needed help and were at the cemetery.  I got there as fast as I
could.”
 
Sam closes his good eye and considers.  Eddy must have had second thoughts
after he saw Munsy and his guys show up, must’ve known Dean would be at the
school.
 
“I’m sorry I wasn’t faster.”
 
Sam opens his eye and tries to communicate whatever part of “don’t be an idiot”
his beat-up face can say.  “Don’t be an idiot,” he says, just to be clear.
 
“What happened to Munsy and his guys?”  His words sound more and more like
they’re being filtered through wet sand, and he can feel the pull of his one
good eye to close.
 
“I’ll tell you tomorrow.  You need sleep.  You want to try the bedroom, or do
you want to stay here?”
 
Sam considers his options for a second and wakes up to bright sunlight
filtering through the living room curtains.
 
“Hey,” Dean says softly, like Sam might have a hangover.

Or the worst headache ever, which is true.
 
Sam groans and Dean hands him two fat white pills and a half glass of water.
 
“Can you swallow those?”
 
Sam doesn’t nod—that would hurt too fucking much—just takes the pills on his
tongue and drinks enough water to wash them down.
 
It hurts to swallow.  It hurts to exhale.  It hurts to blink.
 
Sighing, he puts his head back on the pillow.

“Sleep some more, Sammy, it’s early yet.”
 
Sam does as he’s told.
 
When he wakes up again, the quality of light in the room suggests that it’s
afternoon.  Dean’s sitting in the armchair watching an old movie on mute, and
Sam watches his brother for a long while.  The sun is catching Dean on his
right cheek, highlighting the down of his face and gilding his eyebrows and
eyelashes.  Every freckle stands out in golden relief against his pale skin,
and Sam sighs to see how beautiful his brother is.
 
Dean turns at the sound and smiles, and Sam has trouble breathing, not because
he’s hurt but because it hurts to have all that love fall on him at one time.
 
“Hey,” Dean murmurs, dropping the remote and coming over to kneel beside the
couch.
 
He runs the back of his hand gently down Sam’s uninjured cheek.
 
“How’re you feeling?”
 
It’s a dumb but required question, and Sam merely rolls his one good eye in
response.
 
“Want to try to eat some soup?”
 
He doesn’t.  He doesn’t want to put anything on his painful tongue or try to
swallow past his swollen jaw, but he knows he has to eat something.
 
“I can’t give you any more meds on an empty stomach.”
 
Sam nods a fraction of an inch, and Dean rises gracefully and goes to get the
soup.
 
He’s feeding Sam one lukewarm teaspoon at a time when there’s a knock at the
door that startles Dean into spilling soup on Sam’s chin.  He wipes it off with
a napkin and then gives Sam a look of concern before getting up, setting the
soup down on the end table, and pulling his gun from the small of his back.
 
There’s no peephole in the door, no fanlights, either, so Dean has to crack it
an inch to see who’s there.
 
“Who’re you?” he asks, none too friendly, and Sam hears a barely audible
response.
 
“He’s sick,” Dean says to the obvious inquiry after Sam.
 
More muttering.
 
Then Dean’s opening the door enough to let Eddy in, and Sam widens his one good
eye to see the boy.
 
He should be pissed—ispissed—for the way the kid betrayed him.  But Eddy did,
after all, have a change of heart, and he guesses he wouldn’t be alive at all
if it weren’t for him going to get Dean the way he did.
 
And, too, it’s pretty ballsy coming to Sam’s house like this.
 
Eddy shuffles into the room, practically scuffing his shoes on the carpet.  He
gives Sam a quick look, pales even more at the sight of Sam’s battered face,
and then drops his eyes to take in the tops of his sneakers.
 
“Well?” Dean barks, his tone suggesting that it’d better be good.

“I came to say I’m so-sorry,” Eddy stammers.  “I didn’t mean for you to-to-to
get hu-hurt.”
 
The kid sounds like he’s on the edge of tears, but that doesn’t do much to
mitigate Sam’s anger.
 
“What did you think Munsy was going to do?  You knew he was out to get me.  You
set me up.”  It takes him a long time to get these sentences out clearly past
his tongue and jaw, and Eddy’s eyes widen incrementally with every challenging
word.
 
Dean moves in behind Eddy, blocking his path to the door, and says from over
his shoulder.  “This the kid that sicced those guys on you?”
 
Sam nods.
 
Dean brings one hand down hard on Eddy’s shoulder like a vise grip.
 
“No!” Eddy cries.  “I didn’t—didn’t mean…!  I just didn’t want you to take Eli
away.  That’s all.  But you did anyway, didn’t you?”
 
And even in the midst of his obvious danger, Eddy is defiant, shooting a glare
at Sam and twisting out from under Dean’s grip.  He doesn’t try to get away,
just stands there breathing hard, eyes level on Sam, face flushed now with
anger.
 
“Who the hell is Eli?  What’s he talking about, Sam?”
 
Sam gives Dean an imploring look, though he’s not sure one eye can really
convey that expression, and says, “I didn’t take Eli, Eddy.”
 
Eddy snorts.  “I don’t believe you.”  And he sounds like a little kid whose
parents have just told him that the dog ran away, when in fact it died under
the wheels of a passing truck.
 
“It’s true.  If Eli’s gone, I didn’t do it.”
 
“Is Eli the kid who came to tell me about the cemetery?”  Dean asks, looking
from Eddy to Sam and back to Eddy, clearly confused.
 
Sam shakes his head and says, “No,” even as Eddy says, “Yeah, I guess,”
sullenly.
 
Then it all makes sense, breaking over Sam with a painful clarity that makes
him have to close his eyes for a second to get his head together.
 
“Eli saved me,” he says.
 
Eddy nods, face mulish with anger.  “He was my friend first.  You took him, and
I want him back.”
 
Sam says, almost sadly, “I don’t have Eli, Eddy.  Eli must have left on his
own.”
 
“Who the fuck is Eli?” Dean barks, losing patience with them both.
 
“Eli was my friend,” Eddy says, which doesn’t help at all.
 
“Eli was a spirit,” Sam adds immediately.
 
“You had an imaginary friend?”  Dean’s amusement is evident, as is his anger,
at least to Sam, who’s used to seeing it. 
 
Eddy shrugs.  “He was real to me.”
 
“And you saw him, too?” Dean asks, giving Sam a look.
 
Sam simply nods.
 
“You were gonna lay him?” 
 
Eddy looks startled and then vaguely disgusted, but before he can say anything,
Sam explains, “Yes, I was going to lay him to rest,” emphasizing the last two
words.
 
“He stayed for me,” Eddy insists, and Sam remembers the boy saying something
similar the day before.
 
“You mean—“
 
“The spirit was stuck here because of you,” Dean finishes, nodding.  “Makes
sense.  I’ve heard of something like that, once, in Aspen, I think.  Dad worked
the case in ’92 or ’93.”
 
Sam doesn’t remember, but then, he’d only had a year or two then to get used to
the idea that his father was a monster hunter, so he’s to be forgiven for
selective memory loss.
 
“But Eli died five years before he showed up at the playground.”
 
Eddy shrugs and Dean looks thoughtful.
 
“Huh,” he says, finally.  “Well, whatever.  Seems like Eli didn’t want to be
your friend anymore, Eddy.  Guess when you throw in with the bullies that’s
what you get.”
 
It’s true and it’s cruel, the way truth often is, and Eddy shrinks a little and
drops his head, shoulders starting to shake.  Sam can see that the kid’s an
inch away from losing it.
 
“Time to go,” Dean says, and it’s not a suggestion.  Eddy makes his way to the
door without looking at Sam or saying anything else, and when he leaves, Sam
sighs out a long breath, feeling suddenly very, very tired.
 
Dean lingers by the door, back to Sam, for a minute or two, and Sam knows by
the delay that his brother is trying to tamp down his anger so he doesn’t
unleash it on Sam in his current condition.
 
Sam says, “Dean, I’m sorry.  I wanted to tell you, but—“
 
“But what, you couldn’t trust me?  Afraid I’d break up your little buddies?”
 
Dean’s right, which makes his words that much more pointed.  Sam closes his eye
for a second and then opens it again, letting Dean see all of his regret on his
face.
 
Of course, his face is painted with a palette of regret, so it’s not hard.
 
“I just—.  I wanted to do it on my own, Dean.  At first, I didn’t think Eli was
even any danger.”  Dean snorts his disbelief at this naïve notion, but he
doesn’t interrupt.
 
“And then, once I’d figured it out, I thought I’d made a mess and it was my job
to clean it up.  I didn’t think it was anything I couldn’t handle.  I fucked
up.”
 
And he had.  From the beginning, Sam had failed to see the real threat in Eddy,
took the kid for granted because he was a geek, didn’t recognize the danger
until it was far too late for any of them.
 
“Yeah, well, everybody does that, Sam.  But I thought Winchesters fucked up
together, you know?”
 
Sam looks up quickly at Dean, wondering if there’s more to that statement than
just the current circumstances, wondering if that’s regret he hears in Dean’s
voice, regret for what they’d done the other night, what they’d become
together.
 
“Are you saying—?” He begins, unsure of how to finish the sentence.
 
He doesn’t have to, though, since there’s obviously something on what’s left of
his face to tell Dean what Sam’s thinking.
 
“No, Sam.  Not that.  In a world of fucked up things, that’s one thing that’s
gotta be right.  Right?”
 
He asks the question like he already knows the answer, but Sam hears the doubt
like low-lying fog that covers his brother’s fear.
 
“It’s right,” Sam says softly, smiling. 
 
Dean winces.  “Stop that,” he says.  “You’re making my face hurt.”  But as if
to soften his words, he kneels again by the couch and brushes his lips across
Sam’s forehead, across the lid of his one good eye, and then down to the un-
bruised corner of his lip.
 
“I love you,” Dean breathes against a patch of unblemished skin on Sam’s neck.
 
“I love you, too,” he murmurs into Dean’s ear.
 
He falls asleep with his brother’s lips against his throat and the late
afternoon sun painting them both in gold.
 
 
*****
 
The bad thing about werewolves is that they’re only that way for three nights,
and if you miss ‘em, you’ve got two choices:  kill ‘em while they’re still
human or wait another month.
 
The good thing about John Winchester is that he rarely misses once he’s on the
trail of a pack.
 
What’s bad for the werewolves, however, is also bad for Sam.
 
Sunday morning, he’s too sore to move off the couch, despite Dean’s constant,
patient care of his younger brother.
 
Sam had had the idea that he’d walk into school looking like road-kill tomorrow
morning and take care of the rumors of his death, which have been so greatly
exaggerated, in fact, that Dean opens the door a few minutes past eleven to
find a primly dressed Mrs. McCloskey holding a tuna casserole and a condolence
card.

“I didn’t know where to send flowers, dear.  Are you having it at Eckert and
Banks or somewhere out of town?”
 
Before Dean can formulate a reasonable response that doesn’t include the words,
“What the fuck are you talking about?” the old woman’s eyes stray past him
toward the living room, where she spies Sam propped against the sofa arm
working his ginger way through a bowl of really runny oatmeal.
 
She takes in a breath, but Sam has to hand it to her, she doesn’t make any
other indication of surprise.
 
Instead, she pats Dean’s near hand—occupied with holding the casserole, still
warm from the oven—and says, “You boys can use it, I’m sure.  I’ll take care of
the rumor mill,” and then makes her way back to her car at the brisk pace of a
much younger woman.
 
Dean closes the door, puts the dish in the fridge, and flips the card onto
Sam’s lap.
 
He reads aloud the woman’s tiny, bird-like script with amusement.
 
“I’m sorry for the loss of your brother, who was a good boy and a better
library patron.  I’m sorry, too, that I didn’t get to know you two better.”
 
Dean smiles, genuine and wide.  “Well, I’ll be damned.”
 
Sam answers with their usual, “Probably.”
 
“So, you ready to tell me what happened after I was knocked out?”
 
Dean’s shoulders tense, but he gives no other indication of what the memory of
finding Sam slumped bloody in the hands of three attackers does to him.  Then
he launches into a terse tale of what happened next.
 
Of the five boys, only three were still standing.  The one who’d fallen and
struck his chin was still out of it and the other, the one Sam hand nailed with
the branch, had a fractured radius and was sitting up against a footstone,
moaning and clutching his arm to his chest.
 
When Dean approached, Munsy had stopped pummeling Sam’s face to say, “What the
fuck—“  which is as far as he’d gotten before Dean opened up with the sawed-
off.

“Salt rounds,” Dean explains with a grave degree of regret in his voice.  “Both
barrels.  Right in the chest.”
 
Sam doesn’t wince, first because it would hurt too much and second because he
has no sympathy at all for the bully.
 
“The other two?”
 
Dean laughs.  “Ran into each other, fell down, hit their heads.  Man, you
should’ve seen it!  It was like something out of the Stooges!  Didn’t knock ‘em
out, but it put ‘em down, anyway.”
 
Sam tries to stifle a laugh that isn’t worth the pain, but he manages to convey
that he shares Dean’s glee.
 
“What do you think they told people had happened?”
 
Dean shrugs.  “Besides that you’re dead?  Pussies probably claimed it was a
serial killer on a rampage or something.”
 
Sam nods carefully.
 
For a lot of that afternoon and into the early evening, Sam lies with his back
to Dean’s chest, one of Dean’s legs hanging off the couch, foot on the floor,
and the other leg tucked tight in against the couch back, parallel to Sam’s
two.  It should be uncomfortable, but the heat of his brother against his back
and the reassuring rumble of Dean’s voice in his chest when he talks sends Sam
into a half-awake state that softens the sharpest angles of his pain.
 
Dean rouses him as twilight is descending to have some more soup and take two
more big white pills.
 
He’s always been a pretty fast healer, and he’s pleased to see light coming in
through the swollen eye.  Dean assures him he looks like the shambling undead
when he makes his very careful, excruciatingly slow way to the bathroom.
 
“Dude, there’s no way you’re going to school tomorrow,” Dean says at about
seven, waking Sam from a drooling sleep against Dean’s chest.
 
Sam mutters an indistinct curse and slips back to sleep even as Dean slides out
from under him and settles him more fully into place on the couch.
 
Sam awakens once in the darkest part of the night to see Dean sitting on the
floor, back to the couch, head on his chest, obviously out like a light.  After
that, he doesn’t waken again until he hears, “What the hell happened here?”
 
Dean’s already scrambling to his feet by the time their father gets the front
door closed.
 
Sam’s got his one good eye wide open, the other at half-mast, and he’s trying
to smile in the least ghastly way he can manage.
 
From the look on Dad’s face, he’s not buying it.
 
“What happened?” He repeats, and there’s a hardness there that brooks no lying.
 
Sam knows part of it is his Dad’s worry coming through, but it still makes his
stomach clench with mingled shame and anger.  He suddenly wants Dean to tell
their father anything but the truth.
 
“It’s under control, Dad,” Dean starts.
 
“I want to hear it from Sam, Dean,” Dad interrupts, holding up a hand and
dropping his duffle onto the arm chair.
 
He crouches by the couch and starts a damage assessment even as he says,
“Well?”
 
Sam looks up, past their dad, whose eyes are probing Sam’s bruised collarbone,
visible at the loose neck of his tee-shirt, to see Dean give him a smile
entirely inappropriate to the situation.
 
It’s a smile that says Sam should remember who he belongs to, that he’s Dean’s,
and Dean is his, and together they can get through anything.
 
He returns the smile as best he can and then lets his eyes fix on his father’s
face.
 
Then he begins to tell the whole story from the beginning.
 
Dad’s already gearing up to go take care of Eli when Sam gets to the part about
the spirit being gone of his own accord.
 
“Well, maybe that’s true, but this Eddy kid must have some kind of power.  He’s
got to be put in check,” John is saying, already going through his duffle,
sorting the werewolf kit from the rest of it, planning his next step even as
his fingers winnow out the silver chaff and number the bottles of holy water he
always keeps on hand.
 
“Dad, I think that’s something Sam should do,” Dean says.
 
Sam’s grateful eyes fall on his brother, who has been silent through most of
this, adding only his part in Sam’s rescue near the end.
 
“Oh you do, huh?”  Dad’s voice is challenging, but not particularly loud.
 
“It’s his case,” Dean notes, holding his father’s look.
 
After a long minute, John nods, mostly to himself, and gathers up the duffle. 
“I’ve gotta get this stuff stowed and clean my guns.  You need anything?”
 
He says this to Sam almost as an afterthought, already halfway down the hallway
to the bedroom.
 
“I’m good,” Sam says.
 
And he is.
 
Dean brushes a hand across the top of Sam’s head as he follows their dad to
offer his help.
 
*****
 
It’s Thursday when Sam is strong enough to walk from the Impala to the front
doors of Green Bank Regional High School.  The morning bell is fifteen minutes
off, and the hallways are teeming with teenagers.
 
Sam sees the skinny, dark-haired kid with bad acne backed in under the stairs
and surrounded by a group of students as he’s making his slow but determined
way to his locker to clean it out.  They’re leaving tomorrow, assuming there
isn’t a job to take care of right there in town.
 
Sam pauses by the gathered group and realizes that Eddy is speaking to a petite
blonde girl in a varsity letter jacket who’s flanked by two guys also wearing
them.
 
Other kids, ranged behind them in rough half-circles, are asking questions
about what happened at the cemetery, and Eddy is answering, his eyes alight
with an eagerness to share the tale.
 
Just as he’s coming to the climactic part where the “killer” leaped from behind
a “tomb” brandishing an “axe,” Eddy sees that he has a new audience member, and
his eyes go comically wide.
 
His stuttered stop has all heads turning toward Sam.
 
There’s a collective gasp and then a whisper runs among them like wind in the
tall grass.
 
Sam knows what he looks like, knows the way his left eye is still a little
lazy, the way his cheek is red and raised from the stitches, the way his jaw
sports bruises that rainbow out in ripples along his neck.
 
The kids clear an aisle from Sam to Eddy like they’re expecting some kind of
Old West showdown.
 
Sam says, “Hey, Eddy, can I talk to you a minute?”
 
And Eddy, darting a nervous glance at their many witnesses, nods, swallows, and
walks toward him.
 
The fickle crowd, obviously most interested in the next big thing, follows them
with greedy glances, expecting some kind of serious violence.
 
But Sam doesn’t hit Eddy.  Instead, he says, “I’ve gotta get my stuff from my
locker.”
 
“You’re leaving?”
 
“Yeah.  My dad’s got a job in another state.”
 
“Oh.”
 
Sam would swear he hears regret in Eddy’s voice.
 
“Hey, Eddy,” Sam says as he’s working the combination on his lock.  “You have
any more visits from Eli?”
 
“N-no.”  Sam sees nothing on the other boy’s face but bitterness.
 
“And you haven’t met anymore friends like Eli, have you?”
 
John’s working theory is that Eddy can call and trap spirits in this plane.
 
“No.”  Now, the boy’s voice is more sullen than bitter.
 
“So are these your new friends?” Sam asks, though he knows better.
 
Apparently, Eddy does, too.  “They’ll get bored of me once they’re sick of
hearing the same story again and again.”
 
“What about Munsy and his crew?”
 
Eddy shrugs one shoulder and tries to hide a smirk.  “Someone said Munsy is
afraid to come to school.  Something about a serial killer.”  Eddy makes a
noise to indicate his derision.
 
“You going to be okay?”
 
Eddy gives him his eyes then, and for the first time, Sam sees in them the man
Eddy might some day become.  He holds back a shiver.
 
“Don’t pretend you care, Winchester.  Just get out of Green Bank.”
 
Sam draws himself up to his full height, despite the pang it causes in his
still sore collar bone, and says, “If we have to come back here for you, Eddy,
you won’t get off so easily.  Remember that.”
 
Eddy shrinks at Sam’s words and darts his eyes away, like he’s already
considering escape routes.
 
“Don’t make me come back here, Eddy.”  Sam figures it bears reiteration.
 
Eddy nods but says nothing else.
 
Sam is silent, too, as he closes his locker, spins the lock, and walks away. 
He has one last stop at the main office to drop off his textbooks and he’s
almost home free when he hears, “Hey, Winchester.”
 
He stops, three steps to the glass doors, another six to freedom.  He can see
Dean leaning against the Impala, which he’s got idling at the curb, can see Dad
behind him in the truck, just in case there’s trouble.
 
He could just keep going, get free of this place, climb inside his brother’s
car, back into their real life, and just go.
 
Sam turns around.
 
Steve Bellamy is alone this time, the homeroom bell having cleared the halls
while Sam was in the main office asking to have his transcripts forwarded to
Bellington, Wisconsin.
 
“Steve,” Sam says.
 
The boy closes the space between them, stops less than an arm’s length away,
well within Sam’s personal space.
 
He doesn’t reach out to touch Sam, though, and with his glasses on, Sam can’t
tell what Steve really wants.
 
Maybe that’s always the problem.
 
Steve brings his right hand up away from his side, like he wants to reach for
Sam, but it stops there suddenly as Steve’s gaze catches on something over
Sam’s shoulder.
 
In the twin mirrors of Steve’s shades, Sam sees Dean straighten away from the
Impala and start walking toward them.
 
Sam smiles, love full on his face, he’s sure, to see Dean coming toward him to
take him away, and he doesn’t care that Steve sees the love there and thinks
it's for him, for Steve, not for Dean, Sam’s brother, who Sam loves with
everything he has.
 
“Goodbye, Steve,” he says, giving the boy his back and walking out the doors,
leaving Steve and Green Bank behind him as he meets his brother.
 
“Everything okay?” Dean asks as Sam closes the distance between them.
 
Sam gives him a wide smile, wishing he could kiss Dean and show him just how
good he feels.
 
“It will be,” he promises, and Dean’s smile softens like he knows what Sam
means.
 
“It will be,” he says again, brushing Dean’s shoulder as they fall in side by
side.
 
*****FIN*****
 
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