Outsider fic! Get this!
Har har! Three months later, Pepper has finally written more outsider!fic. Supernatural Gen, for your viewing pleasure.
Title: Little Shop of Horrors
Rating: Teen for implied violence
Characters: Dean, Sam, John, OMC - Gen.
Disclaimer: Don’t own, don’t want because I’m too mellow to run an operation like that.
Author’s Notes & Warnings: Teen!chesters. Implied violence, dark subject matter, general Winchester unpleasantness. Outsider-POV, part of the outsider!verse
Thank you, Heather, for pointing out all the idiotic mistakes I really should have been able to spot on my own. Love ya, dahling.
Word Count: ~2,500
Summary: Dean gets a summer job. His new boss has troubles of his own.
July, 1994.
***
The Winchester boy first showed up on a Tuesday, hunched into himself, eyeing the water marks on the walls. Jackson knew who he was, of course. The town wasn’t tiny, but it was small enough that the arrival of the hard-eyed, tight-lipped man and his two boys hadn’t gone unnoticed, and you couldn’t run any kind of business - let alone a grocery store, no matter how small it was - without always being up to par with the latest gossip.
He’d known of the boy even before he squeezed himself through the front door, the rusty bell above it croaking out a feeble warning.
“Hi,” he said, shrugging in his leather jacket like he hadn’t quite gotten used to it, looking suave but feeling awkward.
“Dean Winchester.”
He grinned a little bit and picked at a hole in his jeans before flattening his palm against the fabric.
“I’m looking for a job?”
He didn’t sound too sure about it, like he’d much rather be off somewhere else, and who could blame him.
When asked why, he shrugged, fumbling with his sleeve a little, folding it back so his hands were more than a hint of fingers.
“We need money, my brother and my dad and me.”
There was more, of course, he looked way too desperate and didn’t even flinch when Jackson told him about the grueling hours. He almost looked relieved, and Jackson was soft on his headstrong days.
Dean was on the payroll.
***
Having Dean around was nice. He was quick and efficient at his job, didn’t whine about short breaks and long hours and if he didn’t know something, he usually figured it out for himself. But what Jackson liked most about him, was that he didn’t ask questions. No stilted small-talk, no awkward prying. No Why do you have this store? Are you happy here? Why aren’t you married?
Dean said enough that the customers didn’t think he was rude, but whatever else he commented on in the store was short and to the point.
Dean was probably the only reason Jackson didn’t lose his mind that month.
***
He was jerked into consciousness by the shrill blaring of his alarm, dried blood caking his hands, chin and throat. He stumbled into the bathroom, his pale reflection making him dry heave, and scrubbed his skin until it was raw, small red drops forming where he had broken the skin.
He jumped at every creak and groan of the floorboards, expecting at every turn to be grabbed by heavily armed forces and hauled away. He hardly dared to stick his head into the store to tell the Winchester boy he was going to be on his own today.
Dean paused in the middle of placing canned tomatoes on the shelf - Jackson couldn’t look at the cans, red, so red.
“Are you all right, sir?” the boy asked with a concerned frown.
“Fine,” Jackson mumbled.
Dean narrowed his brows a little further as Jackson stared at the dusty floor, but then his face cleared and he grinned.
“Partied too hard last night, huh?”
Jackson closed the door hastily and managed to make it to the bathroom before he started to retch.
***
Four days later, the Winchester boy was stacking Mrs. Norman’s dozens of cans of cat food into a bag, Jackson safely hidden away between the shelves, when the old lady leaned across the register and asked, “Did you hear what happened to Laura Cordon? Mr. Cordon’s daughter?”
Dean shook his head as he punched in a few numbers.
“No, what happened?” he asked politely, “That will be 17 dollars and 29 cents.”
Mrs. Norman fished for her wallet, but instead of opening it, she leaned forward even more. Jackson couldn’t breathe, but he managed not to make a sound.
“You know that she went missing a few days ago, yes? Well they found her by the river this morning, all clawed up. They say an animal did it.”
She handed Dean a twenty-dollar-bill and took her bag.
“Even tore out her heart, they say. Keep the change, dearie.”
***
The other Winchester boy came bolting in on a Wednesday afternoon when Jackson was dusting off the lower shelves, cowering between the pickles and the old cereal with a wet rag where he could see the door but not even Dean could spot him. The younger boy looked little like his brother: darker hair and darker eyes and some baby fat around his middle, but he had the same torn denim and battered shoes and the Black Sabbath shirt he was wearing had the distinctive look of a hand-me-down.
He came to a skidding stop in front of the register and Dean who was suddenly more awake and more alert than he had been all morning.
“Sammy?” he said, rounding the counter and lightly running his hands over the kid’s shoulders, “What’s wrong? Where’s Dad?”
Sammy took a step back, a small pout forming on his face as he stared up at Dean like his brother was just supposed to know these things. Jackson couldn’t help but wonder if Dean usually did, or if that was just sibling adoration gone wrong.
“Dad’s an idiot,” Sammy said defiantly.
Dean shook his head and sighed quietly. His brother stared up at him expectantly.
“You don’t mean that, Sammy,” Dean soothed. He sounded exhausted, more than he ever did after several hours in the shop.
“Yes, I do!”
Sammy plopped down on a meticulously stacked row of canned peaches. Jackson cringed, but after one endless moment it was clear the tower would hold. The boy didn’t seem to notice that he had just escaped disaster, his face dark as he crossed his stubby arms in front his chest.
“He’s an idiot, and I hate him.”
His brother gripped his shoulder, so tightly it had to hurt, and Sam winced a little. Jackson echoed it where he kneeled. He’d seen Dean lift up crates of water bottles like they were nothing; he’d seen the muscles hidden underneath that freckled skin.
“You don’t mean that,” Dean repeated, more forcefully this time. “Does he know where you are?”
Sammy hung his head, then shook it. Dean sighed again and reached for the phone.
***
The boy dialed three times before the phone was finally answered, and Dean shot Sammy a warning look.
“Dad,” he said, “Yes, sir, he’s here.”
Sammy picked at his jeans, daring a careful glance at Dean from underneath his lashes, but faced with Dean’s stony expression, he quickly went back to staring at his feet. Jackson held his breath; he hadn’t known polite, quiet Dean could look so stern.
“Yes, sir,” Dean said, “Bye.”
He hung up and pointed a finger at Sam.
“You stay right there, you got that?”
Sam nodded, looking like he was about to cry, but Dean squared his shoulder and purposefully turned back to the bookkeeping. Jackson dusted off the same piece of shelf he had been cleaning for the past fifteen minutes. He knew he ought to get up, let the boys know he was there, but he didn’t. Just didn’t.
The hands of the clock moved slowly and with every tick, Dean’s muscles seemed to tense a little more; Sam seemed to grow a little smaller until he sat on the boxes in a miserable little lump. His lips almost quivered, but Dean refused to look at him, punching numbers into the calculator aggressively.
Jackson nearly jumped out of his skin when the door finally slammed open, rattling the boxes of lemonade and making both boys flinch, and John Winchester stood in the shop.
Jackson cowered a little lower because the man looked like he could wring Jackson’s neck easy, and like he really wanted to wring somebody’s neck right now. He was just glad the snapped, almost shouted “Sam!” wasn’t directed at him. The man’s face was as red as Sammy’s was white. He took a step forward, one hand reaching for his youngest. Sam scuffled backwards, tripping over his shoelaces in his haste to get away, crashing backwards into the shelf with flailing arms and hitting the floor in a rain of cans and packages.
Maybe somewhere else there would have been a shocked silence, but with this family, things only seemed to happen faster. Sam sat up with a small sob, hand pressed to the back of his head. Dean lounged forward but stopped when his father got there first, crouching down next to his younger son. He made to touch him but the boy, crying in earnest now, scuttled away from him.
Dean stood fidgeting as the man sighed, sat down and lifted a stiff Sammy up and into his lap. Jackson ducked a little lower, taking care to stay out of sight.
“Let me see,” Winchester said and Sam reluctantly pulled his hand away to allow him to part the strands of hair. The man checked him over with careful fingers, pulling back when Sam winced. He pushed his t-shirt up and ran his hand over the bare skin of his back, giving him a light all-clear pat when no injuries could be found. Mr. Winchester glanced up, gave Dean a slight nod, and turned back to his youngest.
“This will never happen again, do you understand me?” he said, voice harsh and unyielding despite Sammy’s unhappily quivering lips. “I can’t have you running away like that, Sammy. Not now, okay? You know what’s happening here.”
Sammy hung his head and nodded, though he looked like he’d rather not know.
His father took his chin firmly between two fingers, tilted it upwards so the boy was forced to meet his eyes. Jackson edged away quietly, very quietly. He knew for sure that he never wanted to see that look aimed at him.
“From now on, you’re either with Dean or you’re with me, is that clear?”
Sam swallowed and drew a shuddering breath as he leaned a little away from his father.
“Yes, sir,” he whispered, turning large, pleading eyes on Dean. Dean let out a small sigh, but he nodded in the kid’s direction as if to say, ”Don’t worry, I’ll figure something out.”
***
Dean closed the office door behind him carefully, sighed quietly, and flopped down in the only other chair in the room. He pressed his palms together and leaned forward, fixing Jackson with a stare.
“I need you to give Sammy a job.”
He was still a little pale, quivering with tension underneath the detached tilt of his head, and Jackson knew he was sold.
***
Jackson burned the blood-soaked pajamas and sheets in the backyard under a pile of leaves.
Sleepwalking wasn’t a crime, it wasn’t.
***
The problem was, even though business was okay, he couldn’t really afford two employees. Dean shrugged it off even though Jackson could see the way he clenched and unclenched his hands.
“You can give him half of my pay, I don’t care,” he had said.
Jackson didn’t want to. Dean was good at what he did and cutting his pay in half wasn’t fair, wasn’t fair at all. But he couldn’t pay them both in full, and after he found Sam reading Moby Dick in the store room, sprawled out on the boxes he was supposed to be unpacking, there wasn’t really a lot he could do.
***
Tears of pain clouded Jackson’s vision as he made his way out of bed, hand clutched over his shoulder. Peeling his shirt away from the sticky skin, he gnawed at his lip and fought hard not to scream. Someone had cut him. Slit his shoulder open in a gash almost to the bone. He sponged off the drying blood with a wet cloth. Creeping into the shop for a roll of first aid-tape wasn’t hard, it was too early for Dean to be there, and with a towel pressed against his shoulder under his robe, no passer-bys would suspect anything.
Jackson locked the apartment door and the bathroom door before he sat down on the toilet seat and closed the wound with butterfly stitches and shaky fingers.
He was just a shop owner. What had he ever done to anybody?
***
He was stacking canned tuna into one of the top shelves when a sharp burst of pain made him hiss and drop what he was holding. He pulled back his sweater to inspect the bandage. It was red; a deep, dark, blotchy red that made his stomach turn. He’d have to change it again. Maybe he should put in stitches, but he didn’t know how without letting anyone in on it.
Maybe-
“Holy shit!”
Jackson spun around, backing away from Dean’s wide eyes, the boy’s mouth a perfect ‘o’.
“What the hell happened to you?”
Dean stepped forward and Jackson stepped back, pulling his sweater back in place and shaking out his sleeve.
“I’m fine,” he said, not daring to meet the boy’s eyes, “It was just an accident, I’m fine. It’ll be fine.”
***
Jackson was taking a break, hidden from sight between a shelf and a closet back at the employees’ restroom, when Dean pulled his brother into the dark hallway and turned to face him.
“I’m serious, Sammy,” he said, bent forward a little so they were eye-to-eye, “I’m sure.”
“But why?”
Sammy’s whiny tone was instantly muffled by Dean’s hand on his mouth. Jackson clamped his fingers over his own mouth so they wouldn’t hear him breathing.
“Sammy,” the boy whispered, “You have to go home. Go home and tell Dad.”
Sammy’s lips pressed into a thin, uncertain line, but at his brother’s urgent “Please, Sammy”, he turned and ran.
***
Jackson snapped his eyes open to darkness. His shirt was damp, his skin sticky. He didn’t know where he was, but he recognized that smell, dark and heavy all around him. Blood. Blood on his shirt, on his skin, bubbling from his mouth. It took so much strength to lift his head, but he could recognize his store, boxes and shelves dimly illuminated from the lonely streetlamp outside. He gasped. His head felt heavy but his chest burned, and the blood everywhere was making him nauseous.
It took him a moment to realize the heavy thumping was footsteps, and when he managed to focus, there was someone towering above him. His heartbeat quickened, sending more blood into the already soaked fabric of his shirt. He groaned, gasped.
When Jackson finally recognized him, he didn’t know why he hadn’t done it sooner. Dean Winchester’s father, broad and tall and dangerous, staring down at him. A boot nudged him in the side and he groaned in pain. The distant light reflected in the silver barrel of the gun trained at his chest.
There was a small sound from his left. More people. It took him another moment, his eyes didn’t quite do as he wanted anymore, but then he could make out Dean, leather jacket and all, and that smaller form behind him had to be Sammy.
God, yes. Dean Winchester, good kid. Would run get someone.
“Dean,” Jackson gasped, blood running down his cheek, “H-help me…”
Sammy glanced up at his brother. Jackson couldn’t see Dean’s expression, but then the boy moved, and oh God, he had a gun of his own. He lifted it, letting it rest over his shoulder, his other arm shielding Sammy, and then he downright grinned, teeth gleaming viciously as he cocked his head.
“Sorry,” he smirked, and Jackson couldn’t help but sob as the boy carefully aimed the gun straight at Jackson’s heart. “I don’t make deals with evil.”
***
Yes? No? Maybe?
Title: Little Shop of Horrors
Rating: Teen for implied violence
Characters: Dean, Sam, John, OMC - Gen.
Disclaimer: Don’t own, don’t want because I’m too mellow to run an operation like that.
Author’s Notes & Warnings: Teen!chesters. Implied violence, dark subject matter, general Winchester unpleasantness. Outsider-POV, part of the outsider!verse
Thank you, Heather, for pointing out all the idiotic mistakes I really should have been able to spot on my own. Love ya, dahling.
Word Count: ~2,500
Summary: Dean gets a summer job. His new boss has troubles of his own.
July, 1994.
***
The Winchester boy first showed up on a Tuesday, hunched into himself, eyeing the water marks on the walls. Jackson knew who he was, of course. The town wasn’t tiny, but it was small enough that the arrival of the hard-eyed, tight-lipped man and his two boys hadn’t gone unnoticed, and you couldn’t run any kind of business - let alone a grocery store, no matter how small it was - without always being up to par with the latest gossip.
He’d known of the boy even before he squeezed himself through the front door, the rusty bell above it croaking out a feeble warning.
“Hi,” he said, shrugging in his leather jacket like he hadn’t quite gotten used to it, looking suave but feeling awkward.
“Dean Winchester.”
He grinned a little bit and picked at a hole in his jeans before flattening his palm against the fabric.
“I’m looking for a job?”
He didn’t sound too sure about it, like he’d much rather be off somewhere else, and who could blame him.
When asked why, he shrugged, fumbling with his sleeve a little, folding it back so his hands were more than a hint of fingers.
“We need money, my brother and my dad and me.”
There was more, of course, he looked way too desperate and didn’t even flinch when Jackson told him about the grueling hours. He almost looked relieved, and Jackson was soft on his headstrong days.
Dean was on the payroll.
***
Having Dean around was nice. He was quick and efficient at his job, didn’t whine about short breaks and long hours and if he didn’t know something, he usually figured it out for himself. But what Jackson liked most about him, was that he didn’t ask questions. No stilted small-talk, no awkward prying. No Why do you have this store? Are you happy here? Why aren’t you married?
Dean said enough that the customers didn’t think he was rude, but whatever else he commented on in the store was short and to the point.
Dean was probably the only reason Jackson didn’t lose his mind that month.
***
He was jerked into consciousness by the shrill blaring of his alarm, dried blood caking his hands, chin and throat. He stumbled into the bathroom, his pale reflection making him dry heave, and scrubbed his skin until it was raw, small red drops forming where he had broken the skin.
He jumped at every creak and groan of the floorboards, expecting at every turn to be grabbed by heavily armed forces and hauled away. He hardly dared to stick his head into the store to tell the Winchester boy he was going to be on his own today.
Dean paused in the middle of placing canned tomatoes on the shelf - Jackson couldn’t look at the cans, red, so red.
“Are you all right, sir?” the boy asked with a concerned frown.
“Fine,” Jackson mumbled.
Dean narrowed his brows a little further as Jackson stared at the dusty floor, but then his face cleared and he grinned.
“Partied too hard last night, huh?”
Jackson closed the door hastily and managed to make it to the bathroom before he started to retch.
***
Four days later, the Winchester boy was stacking Mrs. Norman’s dozens of cans of cat food into a bag, Jackson safely hidden away between the shelves, when the old lady leaned across the register and asked, “Did you hear what happened to Laura Cordon? Mr. Cordon’s daughter?”
Dean shook his head as he punched in a few numbers.
“No, what happened?” he asked politely, “That will be 17 dollars and 29 cents.”
Mrs. Norman fished for her wallet, but instead of opening it, she leaned forward even more. Jackson couldn’t breathe, but he managed not to make a sound.
“You know that she went missing a few days ago, yes? Well they found her by the river this morning, all clawed up. They say an animal did it.”
She handed Dean a twenty-dollar-bill and took her bag.
“Even tore out her heart, they say. Keep the change, dearie.”
***
The other Winchester boy came bolting in on a Wednesday afternoon when Jackson was dusting off the lower shelves, cowering between the pickles and the old cereal with a wet rag where he could see the door but not even Dean could spot him. The younger boy looked little like his brother: darker hair and darker eyes and some baby fat around his middle, but he had the same torn denim and battered shoes and the Black Sabbath shirt he was wearing had the distinctive look of a hand-me-down.
He came to a skidding stop in front of the register and Dean who was suddenly more awake and more alert than he had been all morning.
“Sammy?” he said, rounding the counter and lightly running his hands over the kid’s shoulders, “What’s wrong? Where’s Dad?”
Sammy took a step back, a small pout forming on his face as he stared up at Dean like his brother was just supposed to know these things. Jackson couldn’t help but wonder if Dean usually did, or if that was just sibling adoration gone wrong.
“Dad’s an idiot,” Sammy said defiantly.
Dean shook his head and sighed quietly. His brother stared up at him expectantly.
“You don’t mean that, Sammy,” Dean soothed. He sounded exhausted, more than he ever did after several hours in the shop.
“Yes, I do!”
Sammy plopped down on a meticulously stacked row of canned peaches. Jackson cringed, but after one endless moment it was clear the tower would hold. The boy didn’t seem to notice that he had just escaped disaster, his face dark as he crossed his stubby arms in front his chest.
“He’s an idiot, and I hate him.”
His brother gripped his shoulder, so tightly it had to hurt, and Sam winced a little. Jackson echoed it where he kneeled. He’d seen Dean lift up crates of water bottles like they were nothing; he’d seen the muscles hidden underneath that freckled skin.
“You don’t mean that,” Dean repeated, more forcefully this time. “Does he know where you are?”
Sammy hung his head, then shook it. Dean sighed again and reached for the phone.
***
The boy dialed three times before the phone was finally answered, and Dean shot Sammy a warning look.
“Dad,” he said, “Yes, sir, he’s here.”
Sammy picked at his jeans, daring a careful glance at Dean from underneath his lashes, but faced with Dean’s stony expression, he quickly went back to staring at his feet. Jackson held his breath; he hadn’t known polite, quiet Dean could look so stern.
“Yes, sir,” Dean said, “Bye.”
He hung up and pointed a finger at Sam.
“You stay right there, you got that?”
Sam nodded, looking like he was about to cry, but Dean squared his shoulder and purposefully turned back to the bookkeeping. Jackson dusted off the same piece of shelf he had been cleaning for the past fifteen minutes. He knew he ought to get up, let the boys know he was there, but he didn’t. Just didn’t.
The hands of the clock moved slowly and with every tick, Dean’s muscles seemed to tense a little more; Sam seemed to grow a little smaller until he sat on the boxes in a miserable little lump. His lips almost quivered, but Dean refused to look at him, punching numbers into the calculator aggressively.
Jackson nearly jumped out of his skin when the door finally slammed open, rattling the boxes of lemonade and making both boys flinch, and John Winchester stood in the shop.
Jackson cowered a little lower because the man looked like he could wring Jackson’s neck easy, and like he really wanted to wring somebody’s neck right now. He was just glad the snapped, almost shouted “Sam!” wasn’t directed at him. The man’s face was as red as Sammy’s was white. He took a step forward, one hand reaching for his youngest. Sam scuffled backwards, tripping over his shoelaces in his haste to get away, crashing backwards into the shelf with flailing arms and hitting the floor in a rain of cans and packages.
Maybe somewhere else there would have been a shocked silence, but with this family, things only seemed to happen faster. Sam sat up with a small sob, hand pressed to the back of his head. Dean lounged forward but stopped when his father got there first, crouching down next to his younger son. He made to touch him but the boy, crying in earnest now, scuttled away from him.
Dean stood fidgeting as the man sighed, sat down and lifted a stiff Sammy up and into his lap. Jackson ducked a little lower, taking care to stay out of sight.
“Let me see,” Winchester said and Sam reluctantly pulled his hand away to allow him to part the strands of hair. The man checked him over with careful fingers, pulling back when Sam winced. He pushed his t-shirt up and ran his hand over the bare skin of his back, giving him a light all-clear pat when no injuries could be found. Mr. Winchester glanced up, gave Dean a slight nod, and turned back to his youngest.
“This will never happen again, do you understand me?” he said, voice harsh and unyielding despite Sammy’s unhappily quivering lips. “I can’t have you running away like that, Sammy. Not now, okay? You know what’s happening here.”
Sammy hung his head and nodded, though he looked like he’d rather not know.
His father took his chin firmly between two fingers, tilted it upwards so the boy was forced to meet his eyes. Jackson edged away quietly, very quietly. He knew for sure that he never wanted to see that look aimed at him.
“From now on, you’re either with Dean or you’re with me, is that clear?”
Sam swallowed and drew a shuddering breath as he leaned a little away from his father.
“Yes, sir,” he whispered, turning large, pleading eyes on Dean. Dean let out a small sigh, but he nodded in the kid’s direction as if to say, ”Don’t worry, I’ll figure something out.”
***
Dean closed the office door behind him carefully, sighed quietly, and flopped down in the only other chair in the room. He pressed his palms together and leaned forward, fixing Jackson with a stare.
“I need you to give Sammy a job.”
He was still a little pale, quivering with tension underneath the detached tilt of his head, and Jackson knew he was sold.
***
Jackson burned the blood-soaked pajamas and sheets in the backyard under a pile of leaves.
Sleepwalking wasn’t a crime, it wasn’t.
***
The problem was, even though business was okay, he couldn’t really afford two employees. Dean shrugged it off even though Jackson could see the way he clenched and unclenched his hands.
“You can give him half of my pay, I don’t care,” he had said.
Jackson didn’t want to. Dean was good at what he did and cutting his pay in half wasn’t fair, wasn’t fair at all. But he couldn’t pay them both in full, and after he found Sam reading Moby Dick in the store room, sprawled out on the boxes he was supposed to be unpacking, there wasn’t really a lot he could do.
***
Tears of pain clouded Jackson’s vision as he made his way out of bed, hand clutched over his shoulder. Peeling his shirt away from the sticky skin, he gnawed at his lip and fought hard not to scream. Someone had cut him. Slit his shoulder open in a gash almost to the bone. He sponged off the drying blood with a wet cloth. Creeping into the shop for a roll of first aid-tape wasn’t hard, it was too early for Dean to be there, and with a towel pressed against his shoulder under his robe, no passer-bys would suspect anything.
Jackson locked the apartment door and the bathroom door before he sat down on the toilet seat and closed the wound with butterfly stitches and shaky fingers.
He was just a shop owner. What had he ever done to anybody?
***
He was stacking canned tuna into one of the top shelves when a sharp burst of pain made him hiss and drop what he was holding. He pulled back his sweater to inspect the bandage. It was red; a deep, dark, blotchy red that made his stomach turn. He’d have to change it again. Maybe he should put in stitches, but he didn’t know how without letting anyone in on it.
Maybe-
“Holy shit!”
Jackson spun around, backing away from Dean’s wide eyes, the boy’s mouth a perfect ‘o’.
“What the hell happened to you?”
Dean stepped forward and Jackson stepped back, pulling his sweater back in place and shaking out his sleeve.
“I’m fine,” he said, not daring to meet the boy’s eyes, “It was just an accident, I’m fine. It’ll be fine.”
***
Jackson was taking a break, hidden from sight between a shelf and a closet back at the employees’ restroom, when Dean pulled his brother into the dark hallway and turned to face him.
“I’m serious, Sammy,” he said, bent forward a little so they were eye-to-eye, “I’m sure.”
“But why?”
Sammy’s whiny tone was instantly muffled by Dean’s hand on his mouth. Jackson clamped his fingers over his own mouth so they wouldn’t hear him breathing.
“Sammy,” the boy whispered, “You have to go home. Go home and tell Dad.”
Sammy’s lips pressed into a thin, uncertain line, but at his brother’s urgent “Please, Sammy”, he turned and ran.
***
Jackson snapped his eyes open to darkness. His shirt was damp, his skin sticky. He didn’t know where he was, but he recognized that smell, dark and heavy all around him. Blood. Blood on his shirt, on his skin, bubbling from his mouth. It took so much strength to lift his head, but he could recognize his store, boxes and shelves dimly illuminated from the lonely streetlamp outside. He gasped. His head felt heavy but his chest burned, and the blood everywhere was making him nauseous.
It took him a moment to realize the heavy thumping was footsteps, and when he managed to focus, there was someone towering above him. His heartbeat quickened, sending more blood into the already soaked fabric of his shirt. He groaned, gasped.
When Jackson finally recognized him, he didn’t know why he hadn’t done it sooner. Dean Winchester’s father, broad and tall and dangerous, staring down at him. A boot nudged him in the side and he groaned in pain. The distant light reflected in the silver barrel of the gun trained at his chest.
There was a small sound from his left. More people. It took him another moment, his eyes didn’t quite do as he wanted anymore, but then he could make out Dean, leather jacket and all, and that smaller form behind him had to be Sammy.
God, yes. Dean Winchester, good kid. Would run get someone.
“Dean,” Jackson gasped, blood running down his cheek, “H-help me…”
Sammy glanced up at his brother. Jackson couldn’t see Dean’s expression, but then the boy moved, and oh God, he had a gun of his own. He lifted it, letting it rest over his shoulder, his other arm shielding Sammy, and then he downright grinned, teeth gleaming viciously as he cocked his head.
“Sorry,” he smirked, and Jackson couldn’t help but sob as the boy carefully aimed the gun straight at Jackson’s heart. “I don’t make deals with evil.”
***
Yes? No? Maybe?