SPN FIC - Change of Ownership

Mar 27, 2012 13:39

I've seen some pondering here and there about what would happen if John's storage unit (from Bad Day at Black Rock) went into arrears and fell into the hands of the crew from Storage Wars.  This isn't that, exactly, but ... there's an auction, and the boys don't hear about it until it's too late.  Or is it?

The small man was bombarded with glances, some of them sideward, some of them full on.  This was the last auction of the day, and so far he had said nothing.  Had made no bid, had indicated no interest.

CHARACTERS:  Sam, Dean, OCs
GENRE:  Gen, Outsider POV
RATING:  PG
SPOILERS:  Tiny tidbit from 7.16
LENGTH:  2568 words

CHANGE OF OWNERSHIP
By Carol Davis

The small man dressed carefully, as was his habit.  Lightweight, dark wool suit with a pinstripe so fine it was nearly invisible.  Crisp, pale gray shirt.  Silk tie with a delicate pattern in navy and gray.  Immaculate, freshly shined Ferragamos.

If his clothing was not in the same condition when he returned to this house (tomorrow, perhaps, or the day after), no harm done.

He had more.

"Sir?" Harrison said quietly, as the small man stood considering himself in the mirror.

"I'm ready," the small man told him.

~~~~~~~~

He expected to find a milling throng in the lobby of the building - Black Rock Moving and Storage, according to the massive sign out front - and he was not disappointed.  Though perhaps "disappointed" wasn't the right word.  "Surprised" might be better.  Or "bemused."  In any event, he stood off to one side while Harrison registered them as participants and gave proof that they'd brought what they needed.

Nineteen sets of eyes watched Harrison's every move.

A large man with a number of tattoos.  A balding man in an off-the-rack suit.  (Sears, perhaps, or J.C. Penney.)  Three men in jeans and workaday jackets.  A young couple, she with the kind of hard eyes that said she made the decisions for the two of them.  A middle-aged, red-faced woman in a pea coat.

Their expressions said the small man was not one of them, nor was Harrison.

Harrison came back with a photocopied list of what was available that day, a sheet of pale blue paper that offered little more detail than what Harrison had found on the Internet.  No matter; detail was of little use at this point.  The small man knew what his goal was.  Knew, too, the goals of the motley crowd that surrounded him.  Their dislike of him was nothing personal.  For some of them, what happened in this building on this particular morning would be business, nothing more.  For a few, though, the need to win was on a more animal level.

They needed to make a profit - each member of this group of frowning, suspicious people.

The small man did not.

He and Harrison walked at the rear of the group as the auctioneer led them up and down poorly lit, narrow hallways.  Their distance did nothing to endear them to their fellows; if anything, it increased the amount of murmuring that took place both before and after each individual auction.  If they'd given the matter any real thought, they would have realized he had no interest in piles of lawn furniture and old clothing; in rusting refrigerators and sacks of silver dollars.  Battered dining-room sets, motorcycles, totem poles, Barbie dolls in their original packaging.  A stuffed raccoon.  Car parts.

The bidding was fierce.

He and Harrison took no part in it.

After the fourth unit had been bickered over and sold, the tattooed man peered down and said, "Never seen you around before."

"Astute observation," the small man replied.

Clearly, the man with the tattoos thought he had been insulted.  His brow furrowed and the fingers of his right hand twitched themselves into a fist.

Harrison raised an eyebrow, but the small man shook his head.

"MOVIN ON!" the auctioneer barked.

A little before eleven o'clock, the group had relocated outside the door to the final unit being offered for sale that day.  The largest one, the one farthest removed from any hallway likely to see much day-to-day traffic.  Its metal door showed the same amount of wear and tear as every other door in the place.  From the outside, there was nothing of particular appeal about this particular unit - but when the auctioneer rolled the big door out of the way, a hum of interest rose among the crowd.

Perhaps it was the odd symbol painted on the floor just beyond the threshold that they found intriguing.

Perhaps it was the sheer size of the unit - a warren of little rooms, spreading well out of sight.  It was dark in there.  Dark, and dusty.

"Gonna open at one hundred dollars," the auctioneer said.

"Three," someone called out.

Four.  Four-fifty.  Seven.  Eight and a quarter.  Twelve hundred.

The small man was bombarded with glances, some of them sideward, some of them full on.  This was the last auction of the day, and so far he had said nothing.  Had made no bid, had indicated no interest.

The bidding rose rapidly to thirty-one hundred dollars, then began to peter out.

There were, the small man knew, one or two in the crowd who would hold back.  Pretend they had reached their limit.  Then, when another of their company assumed he (or she) had secured the winning bid, they would pounce.  One man in particular seemed fond of that maneuver, to the great displeasure of the others.

This time, the small man pounced.  In a low, very measured tone, his gaze fixed on the auctioneer, he said, "Twenty-five thousand dollars."

"The fuck," said the man with the tattoos.  "What the serious FUCK."

~~~~~~~~

The others tried their best (as he had known they would) to ascertain what it was he'd bought, after all the paperwork had been completed, and Harrison had taken up a position to the left of the open doorway.  The woman in the pea coat came first, but she did nothing beyond walking purposefully past the unit half a dozen times.

Two of the men in jeans lingered for a while, peering into the gloom and muttering to each other.

The man in the ill-fitting Sears suit tried to bluster his way inside; not until Harrison flicked his own jacket, revealing a glimpse of the sidearm holstered beneath it and making his position and his lack of humor perfectly plain, did the man retreat.

He was like a coyote sniffing after a rabbit, though.

Once.  Twice.  Three times, he came back.

Harrison pursued him to the end of the hall and said something that made the small man smile.

"That was a bit over the top," he said when Harrison returned alone.

"Did the job," Harrison shrugged.

By late afternoon the looky-loos had stopped coming.  They had their own concerns, the small man assumed: sorting through their heaps and stacks and boxes of other people's abandoned belongings, deciding what to keep and what to haul to the row of Dumpsters out back.  Without the distraction of the curious (they were like children, the small man thought, or cats), he and Harrison were free to roam through the little warren of rooms, mentally cataloguing what they found.

It had taken years, the small man knew, for John Winchester to assemble all of this, to relocate it all here, to a big, rambling building on the outskirts of Buffalo.

Harrison sighed.

When the small man looked up at him, he elaborated, "If he'd've said yes, we could've had this taken care of a long time ago."

"Water under the bridge," the small man said.

Then they heard the footsteps.  The clatter of boots, accompanied by an almost musical chanting of expletives, a breathless, frustrated and near-frantic Shitshitsonofabitchinggoddamnshit we shouldaknowngoddamnnitALL.

"Can I help you, gentlemen?" the small man asked when they arrived at the doorway.

"SHIT," the shorter of the two new arrivals bleated.  "We shoulda - damn it all to SHIT."

"Dean," said the other one.

The shorter one - Dean - rearranged his expression into something approximating a smile, though his brow remained furrowed and he had adopted a fighter's stance of sorts, as if he had anticipated needing to beat someone to the ground and the sight of the two people occupying the storage unit had not discouraged him from that belief.

"We -" he attempted, but whatever he had intended to say gave way to another heartfelt, "SHIT."

The other one sighed.

From the look of it, neither one of them had had a good night's sleep - or a chance to bathe - in some time.  They were unshaven, their clothing rumpled and stained.  Where they'd driven here from, the small man couldn't imagine, but clearly, it had been a considerable distance.  A minute of silence went by, then, as if his battery had been drained well past the critical point, Dean sank down onto the nearest suitable object, a battered wooden packing crate, and made a chair out of it.  His back curled and he propped his elbows on his knees.  Buried his face in his hands.

"Who -?" he said to the floor.

"Sir," the other one said.  "We - I'm sorry.  We had no idea the rent hadn't been paid.  We had some trouble with the - with the phone."

"Shit," Dean said to his boots.

"It's been taken care of," the small man told them.

The other one (Sam, the small man recalled; this would be Sam) looked as mournful as if someone had stolen his dog.  He worried the palm of one hand with the heel of the other, grinding them together in a way that looked painful, and took a minute to shepherd his thoughts.  "Sir," he said again.  "This was - our father owned this place.  Well, rented it.  All these things were his.  And there's -"

"Sentimental value?" the small man guessed.

"Yes.  That.  A lot of that.  He died.  A few years ago.  He died.  And we -"

"We'll buy it back," Dean blurted, his head rising as if someone were pulling it upward on a string.  "How much d'you pay for it?  Eight, nine hundred bucks?  A thousand?  We'll cover it."

Harrison and the small man exchanged glances.

"These things aren't antiques," Sam insisted.  "They're not worth anything."

"Bela!" Dean shrilled.

Sam looked down at him.

"He's another Bela frigging TALBOT.  'Unique objects for a select clientele.'  Son of a BITCH."

The small man had the distinct impression that if he were to push Dean off the packing crate onto the floor, Dean would simply lie there, unable to muster the energy - or the ambition - to get up.  How Sam had managed to remain standing, the small man couldn't guess.  Sheer determination, he supposed.  Or inertia.

"I met Miss Talbot some time ago," the small man said.  "It's unfortunate, what became of her.  But we weren't associated with one another."

"Mister -" Sam said.

Nodding, the small man made his way deeper into the nest of rooms and returned with something he'd found during his first loop around the unit.  "Sentimental value," he said to Sam.  "Of course.  I understand."

A child's soccer trophy, bearing the date 1996.

"We'll pay you," Sam said as he wrapped his hands around it.

"Not necessary."

"Sir, please."

"I paid twenty-five thousand dollars for this unit.  Swept the competition off the board."

Both Sam and Dean blanched a little at that.

"Sir…" Sam said.

"We can't," Dean said into his hands.  "We friggin' can't.  Friggin' place was supposed to be paid for -"

"In perpetuity?" the small man guessed.

Sam frowned at that.  He was holding the soccer trophy as if it were fragile; in a way, the small man guessed, it truly was.  As was Sam himself at this point.  He was extremely tall (several inches taller than his brother) and was probably, normally, strong - but something had taken a terrible toll on him.  He was pale, his face shadowed and drawn.  The sight of him would have given even John Winchester pause.

"There are things here -" Sam began.

"I understand."

"Things that shouldn't -"

"Sam," the small man said.

That made Dean swivel around like he'd been yanked.  The years hadn't changed anything, the small man thought; Dean was as protective of his brother as he'd been at six, when Sam was two.  When John Winchester had come to Spring Hill with questions, with a very old gold medallion in his hands.

"This isn't a safe place," the small man said.

"Safe enough," Dean muttered.

"There are safer places.  Much safer.  And more well-defended."

Dean settled for scowling at that.  Sam seemed to be trying to think it through, chasing after conclusions that were as elusive as butterflies.

The small man glanced at Harrison, and saw on Harrison's face the same swath of regret he felt in his own heart.  Refuge, sanctuary - it would have been an easy enough thing to offer these young men, and it would cost the small man practically nothing.

Or everything.

"I offered," he said.  "A long time ago.  But John insisted on doing things his own way."

"You knew my father?" Sam whispered.

"To some degree."

"And this - you knew about this place?"

"It took me some time to find it.  Your brother is right - it was safe enough.  In spite of Miss Talbot.  In spite of everything.  That's not true any more.  So I cut off the funding - the payments in perpetuity.  And I bought it outright.  These things are my responsibility now."

"The hell they are," Dean said.

"Please.  Take what you like."

Sam looked down at the trophy in his hands.  Looked past the small man into the depths of the storage unit.  It took him a long while to ask, "What will you do with it?  All this.  There's dangerous stuff here."

"There's 'dangerous stuff' in a variety of places, Sam."

"We have more.  We - cursed objects."

"With you?"

"In a - no.  We stashed them."

The small man drew in a breath.  Smelled dust and old leather and gunpowder, and the sharp tang of perspiration.

Dry rot.

Pain and loss.

"Tell Harrison where they are," he instructed Sam.  "We'll have it taken care of."

"But -"

"You can't handle everything.  The two of you.  You know that.  Your brother knows that.  Your father knew that, as much as he refused to admit it."  Smiling, though there was no amusement behind it - it was a gesture of kindness, nothing more - the small man slipped a slim leather wallet from his pocket and turned over to Sam Winchester a sheaf of hundred-dollar bills and a business card.  "When it's over," he said softly, "and you need a place to rest, call me."

John Winchester's boys did nothing but blink at him.

"Perhaps," the small man said, nodding at the soccer trophy Sam held so gently, "you'd like me to take care of that for you, as well."

Sam surrendered it slowly, as if it were alive.  And beloved.

"Tell Harrison what you need," the small man said.  "And godspeed to you."

~~~~~~~~

The Bentley offered them a smooth, nearly silent ride home.

His suit, shirt, tie, his Ferragamos - all were undamaged.  Good as new, save for a little dust.  Harrison accepted each item from him as he took it off, surrounded by the peace and tranquility of his bedroom, and lay it all aside for a good brushing before its return to the closet.

"You think they'll call?" Harrison asked as he handed over a soft silk robe.

"Their father didn't."

They stood looking out the window together, at the roll of dusk-shadowed lawn.  At the splash of fading color at the horizon.  At a flock of geese, flying in V-formation toward the lake a mile away.  The birds were honking, the small man supposed, though he couldn't hear them.

"Stubborn son of a bitch," Harrison said mildly.

"That he was."

"And those two boys?"

The small man looked up at his lifelong friend and smiled.  "I think they'll call," he said.  "Out of curiosity, if nothing more.  Someday."

"You're on," Harrison replied.

*  *  *  *  *

dean, harrison, the small man, sam, season 7, outsider pov

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