SPN FIC - A Nightmare Before Christmas
Happy birthday,
ravenrants ! Thanks for the inspiration and the giggles and the beta-ing, and for your friendship. You rock. Just for you, have Christmas 2003, at Stanford.
Characters: Sam, Dean, Luis (Sam and Jess's friend from the Pilot), OFC
Pairings: none
Rating: PG, for language
Length: 3,769 words
Spoilers: none
Disclaimer: Kripke, the Master of the Universe, owns the boys. I just move them around.
Shaking his head, Luis grabbed his backpack and headed for the door. “Forget the swans-a-swimming. What you want at the end of the song is her showing up in a fur coat with nothing underneath it.”
“Which would indicate she’s not a PETA supporter.”
“You’re giving this too much thought,” Luis said as he went out.
A Nightmare Before Christmas
By Carol Davis
“What’s this?” Sam asked, turning the small package over in his hands. It was wrapped in candy-cane paper and had a candy cane taped to the front. The tag said simply, SAM.
“Dunno,” Luis said without looking up from his note-taking. “It was hanging off the doorknob when I got back.”
“It’s not from you?”
Luis raised an eyebrow.
“Right,” Sam acknowledged.
Since they’d only been roommates for a couple of months, and neither of them had a lot of disposable cash, they’d agreed back before Thanksgiving not to bother with exchanging Christmas gifts. Which was not to say that either one of them would actually stick to that promise - but the 12th of December was a little early to start breaking it.
“Maybe you got yourself a secret Santa,” Luis offered.
“Secret Santa?”
“My sister does that every year. It’s kind of a chick thing. They all put names in a hat. You pick a name, and then you leave that person something every day for a week. End of the week, everybody ‘fesses up.”
“But I didn’t agree to do anything like that.”
“Like I said, it’s a chick thing. Maybe they all pick some guy they like.”
Sam sat down on the edge of his bed, still holding the package. It was definitely a mystery - his name was written in block print, so he’d have a tough time matching handwriting. Not that he had handwriting samples from every girl at Stanford. There were two or three girls who’d acted like they might be interested in him - starting up conversations in the hallway, “accidentally” bumping into him on the quad, things like that - but he couldn’t guess which one might be interested enough to start buying him gifts.
“Should I open it?” he asked.
“Yeah, I think they do.”
“They?”
“The girls. My sister.”
“Oh.” Sam hung his head a little, chagrined. “I’m not normally this dense.”
“Jury’s out on that,” Luis said, and returned to his notes. Or pretended to return to his notes; he had one eye on Sam.
The gift was a pair of word-search puzzle books, the $.99 kind, available at any bookstore, mini-mart or newsstand.
“I like these,” Sam mused.
“Told you, man. They’re not from me. But it fits. The presents are supposed to be stocking-stuffer type things. I think that’s it: you’ve got yourself a Secret Santa. Now you’ve just got to figure out who she is.”
“She won’t tell me at the end of the week?”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
“It’s your sister,” Sam said dryly.
“Yeah,” Luis snorted. “In your dreams, pal.”
Sam opened the door the next morning to find a manila envelope leaning against the doorframe. Inside was another package wrapped in the candy-cane paper, with another candy cane taped to the front. Luis had already left for class, so Sam took the package inside and unwrapped it without an audience.
The gift this time was three pairs of tube socks.
“Maybe she’s seen your laundry,” Luis said when he got back. “Although your laundry’d be enough to convince her to transfer the hell out of here. You could donate a couple of those t-shirts to the science department. Or CDC. Thought I saw one of ‘em crawl out of your closet on its own the other day.”
“You done?” Sam asked.
Luis just grinned at him.
The following day’s gift was a bakery bag - not wrapped, but with candy cane attached - containing half a dozen chocolate chip cookies.
“That kills the ‘number’ idea,” Sam said.
“Number idea?”
“You know, like the song. ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas.’ Two puzzle books, three pairs of socks. I thought maybe the first package went missing or something.”
“And if she was going by the song, that’d help you figure out who she is?”
“Maybe.”
Shaking his head, Luis grabbed his backpack and headed for the door. “Forget the swans-a-swimming. What you want at the end of the song is her showing up in a fur coat with nothing underneath it.”
“Which would indicate she’s not a PETA supporter.”
“You’re giving this too much thought,” Luis said as he went out.
The next day, Sam opened his gift to find a single silver dollar.
Luis was impressed. “A hundred years old, and in good shape. I bet it’s worth some money.”
“I thought these were supposed to be stocking stuffers.”
“So…maybe not that much money. But more than a buck.”
Sam went out to the quad determined to track down his anonymous Santa. He sat through a whole day’s worth of classes paying more attention to the students around him than to his professors. He should, he figured, look open and approachable. Friendly. In good pre-holiday spirits. That would encourage the mystery girl to come forward, if she happened to be shy.
“It’s not Patty Deveraux, is it?” Luis asked.
“If you were asking me for the person most likely to send one of the Sopranos after me, I’d say yeah, Patty Deveraux,” Sam groaned. “For gifts? I don’t think so.”
“What about that redhead at the bookstore?”
“Taken.”
On the fifth day, Sam received two free passes to Bad Santa.
“Weird,” Luis said. “Definitely not a chick movie. Unless she’s a Billy Bob fan.”
Since the passes were only good for that night, and his chances of figuring out Santa’s identity before midnight were remote, Sam and Luis took in an 11:00 show.
And came back to the dorm after midnight to find another package. This one contained a paperback copy of Stephen King’s From a Buick 8. “She blew it on that one,” Luis grinned. “You hate Stephen King.”
“Nah,” Sam said. “I just…he gets it all wrong.”
Luis raised a brow.
“Never mind,” Sam told him.
He didn’t receive day 7’s package until late in the evening. He spent most of the day explaining to campus security and his faculty advisor that no, he was not harassing women on campus, that he had only intended to be friendly. In the spirit of the season.
Day 7’s gift was a BART pass.
“Crap,” Luis said, once again impressed. “Those things are like sixty bucks.”
Frowning, Sam put the little card on his desk with the other gifts, beneath the miniature tree Luis had insisted on depositing there.
The next morning, Sam was slumped deep in a seat in the library, being as inconspicuous as someone 6’4” could hope to be, when another someone pulled out the chair next to his and sat down. He got enough of a glimpse in his peripheral vision to know the newcomer was female, and therefore someone he ought not to try being friendly to.
“Hi,” she said. “Sam, right?”
“Right,” he muttered.
“Another few days and we’re out of here. I can’t wait. I’ve still got a ton of shopping to do.”
Sam flicked a glance at her and mumbled, “Yeah.”
“I don’t mean to interrupt your studying. I just wanted to ask, did you catch the title of that book Dr. Hoskins recommended? The guy next to me kept trying to talk to me, and I didn’t get it. And I always feel like a doofus telling a professor, ‘oh, jeez, I wasn’t paying attention.’ You know?”
He did.
Still not quite looking at her, he wrote down the title and author she needed and held out the slip of paper.
“I’m Laurie,” she said. “I’m sorry. That was dumb, just sitting down and talking to you like you know me. How would you know me?”
Hey, Santa, Sam wanted to say.
“I’m Sam,” he said instead.
“Yeah. I…kind of knew that. Thanks. I’ll let you finish your studying.”
She was gone before he could think of a non-harassing way to stop her. But he had enough of a clear visual shot across the library to watch her go. She was kind of cute. Blonde. Had a soft little voice that made her sound too young to be at Stanford. So maybe she was one of those prodigy kids.
That’d be perfect. If she was like…fourteen. Security could get him for stalking a minor.
Luis was waiting for him back at the dorm. That day’s package was sitting on Sam’s bed. “I think she lost track of the meaning of ‘stocking stuffer,’” Luis observed.
Underneath the candy-cane paper was a coffee table book: America from the Air. It was a massive thing, almost two hundred pages of color pictures of all fifty states, taken from planes and helicopters and balloons and heaven knew what else. Sam had done enough browsing in bookstores to know a book like that could go for fifty dollars or more - but this one wasn’t new. It was scuffed around the edges, and some of the pages were dog-eared, which made it somewhat of a tacky gift, but at least she hadn’t paid a lot of money for it.
No…she hadn’t paid anything for it at all. In several places Sam found the faint remnants of rubber stamping. PROPERTY OF PALO ALTO PUBLIC LIBRARY.
Great.
His jailbait Secret Santa was a thief.
“They have book sales,” Luis suggested. “Maybe she picked it up at one of those.”
“Yeah,” Sam said, unconvinced.
“You figure she shoplifted all that other stuff? Maybe swiped the BART card from somebody’s wallet?”
Sam groaned loudly and dropped back onto his bed, one arm flung over his eyes.
“What’re you gonna say to her?” Luis asked.
“Please don’t show up here in a fur coat and nothing else?”
“Yeah,” Luis said. “That’d be good.”
He twitched all the way through Dr. Hoskins’ final, knowing Laurie was on the other side of the room. He glanced her way a couple of times - any more than that would have gotten him snagged for trying to cheat, which… Disciplinary committee? Expulsion? Yeah, his faculty advisor would love that. He had the distinct feeling that even being in the same lecture hall as Laurie was lining him up for another “I’m surprised at your actions, Sam” speech.
For no reason he could pin down, he lingered outside the lecture hall after the exam until Laurie wandered up to him.
Okay, so she wasn’t fourteen. She was every day of sixteen.
“I got the book,” she told him breathlessly. “I’m gonna read it over break.”
“Great,” Sam said.
“How do you think you did? On the final.”
I’m hoping everything I wrote was in English, Sam thought. “Okay. I guess. Um…listen…”
She looked up at him brightly. Eagerly.
I think you’re a nice little shoplifter. But could you pick somebody else to give your loot to? Preferably somebody in another state?
“Hope you have a nice Christmas,” he told her.
“Oh. Well…sure. You too.”
And she scooted away.
Luis was headed home for the holidays. He loaded up a couple of suitcases as he spun out another chapter in the “Trust me, you don’t want to come anywhere near my family” saga, this one involving someone named Tía Denise, José Feliciano, and a rendition of “Feliz Navidad” that had resulted in the summoning of three firetrucks, the paramedics, and eleven police officers.
“You gonna be okay?” he asked Sam as he jammed an extra pair of sneakers into his bag.
“I’m good.”
“You’re still apartment-sitting.”
“Unless you know something I don’t.”
“The question is, does Mini-Santa the Happy Shoplifter know where you’re gonna be. That would worry me.”
It worried Sam a great deal. The library book had been gift #8, which seemed to point to a continuation of the package drops right through Christmas. However, at 2:00, when both Sam and Luis were ready to lock the door and head out, the day’s package hadn’t yet arrived. So, he decided, maybe Laurie’s version of the Secret Santa week was eight days.
Maybe she couldn’t count.
The apartment, which belonged to a TA spending the holidays at home in Arizona, was a twenty-minute walk from campus. Sam covered the first few blocks convinced that he was being tailed, but every time he swung around, there was no one there.
More specifically, there was no Laurie there.
So maybe he was being paranoid. And crazy. Maybe she had gotten each of the gifts legitimately, and had only chosen him to give them to because she thought he was interesting. Or cute. Or something. Maybe his being older, and a college guy, and a lot taller than she was, really set off a lot of fireworks for her. Either way, he made sure all the doors and windows of the apartment were locked once he was inside. And for the first time in a long time he wondered if laying salt lines would be a good idea.
He ventured out long enough to pick up some groceries at the small market a couple of blocks from the apartment, then locked himself in again and pulled down all the window shades before he turned on the TV and sat down to eat some dinner.
He dozed off in the chair, woke up a couple of hours later feeling ridiculous, and went to bed.
When he got up in the morning he found a package with a candy cane taped to the front lying on the chair he’d been sitting in. Inside was a Victoria’s Secret 2004 calendar.
He wanted very badly to call the police.
And possibly several ambulances, José Feliciano, and Luis’s Tía Denise.
The trouble was, he had spent about ninety percent of his life learning how to avoid the police, and, sweet-faced teenage shoplifters aside, this did not seem like a good time to start reversing that process.
Since each previous gift had arrived between midnight and midnight of the day in question, he assumed the calendar had been left on his chair no later than 11:59. Therefore, gift #10 would show up sometime during the next 16 hours.
It was amazing how long 16 hours could be.
He made it all the way to dinnertime before he convinced himself that he was being an idiot. And a wuss. She was just a girl, and a small one at that. She was unlikely to be armed. She was unlikely to be dangerous.
But she had broken into the apartment.
He checked every window, every door. All right, the only door. He looked for secret passageways and trap doors and loose floorboards. The entire time, he told himself he was reaching levels of insanity never before achieved by a member of the human race. And at the same time, he began to wonder if Laurie was a member of the human race. She could, after all, be any one of a dozen kinds of supernatural being. Which was no more comforting than her being a starry-eyed teenager shoplifter, but still.
He was pacing the apartment when he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror hanging over the couch.
Oh yeah.
Off the deep end you have gone, he thought.
At sundown, when the day’s gift had not yet appeared, he unlocked two of the windows, turned off all the lights, and sat on the floor next to the TV, deep enough in shadow that he couldn’t be seen from either of the unlocked windows.
A little past ten one of the windows slid almost soundlessly up in its track.
Sam thumbed the switch on the big flashlight he’d had propped against one knee and aimed the beam at his Secret Santa.
“The fuck, Sammy,” said his brother.
Words completely escaped him for a good ten seconds. Then he sputtered, “Dean?”
“It’s not the Tooth Fairy. You wanna not shine that in my eyes? Jeez.”
Lost in a battering flood of emotion, Sam pushed himself up off the floor and turned on a lamp. Dean, holding a small package wrapped in the candy-cane paper with a candy cane taped to the front, grinned at him.
Anyone else would have been embarrassed. Or chagrined. Or something.
Dean was just…Dean.
“What are you doing here?” Sam demanded.
Dean held out the package.
“You mean you’ve…all this time…you broke into my apartment?”
“Your apartment?” Dean asked mildly.
“Never mind. What are you doing here? How long have you - what, have you been following me around for a week? Or - are you stalking me?”
“Dude, calm down. I was just having some fun.”
“By breaking and entering.”
“Sammy.”
The chiding note in Dean’s voice did nothing to prompt Sam to throw out the welcome mat. Nor did the way Dean stood there with his arms folded, silently watching as Sam paced circles around the TA’s knockoff Oriental carpet. After a couple of minutes, when Sam hadn’t stopped pacing, Dean sat down on the couch and put his feet up on the TA’s coffee table.
Sam stopped then and glared. “Is Dad here?”
“No.”
“Does he know you’re here?”
“Not exactly.”
“And what does that mean?”
“It means not exactly. He knows I’m in California. So’s he,” Dean shrugged. “He’s in Tahoe. Something about a water spirit. He’s in a crap-ass mood, so I took off. Told him I’d be back in a few days.”
“You’ve been off on your own for nine days? And Dad didn’t -“
“Drove back a couple times.”
“A couple?”
“Okay, six. The hell, Sammy. It’s Christmas.”
“Dean -“ Lost for something to say, Sam sank down onto the chair where he’d found the calendar and dropped his head into his hands. “I really don’t -“ he said after a minute, then cut himself off. “I don’t know what you think you’re accomplishing.”
Dean held out the package, and when Sam didn’t reach for it, set it down on the coffee table.
“I’m serious,” Sam told him heavily. “Dad told me not to come back. And I’m not going to.”
“He was upset, Sam.”
“Upset? Because I want to do something decent with my life?”
That prodded a wound that would probably never heal. Sam knew right where the words would land, knew what effect they’d have, and waited for that to happen. Watched his brother’s face shift as he struggled to hold back an explosion.
“We help people,” Dean said softly.
“Fine. If you want to do that, then do it. But I want more.”
“He -“ Dean hesitated. “It kills him, Sammy.”
“Maybe he should have thought of that before he told me never to come back. Maybe he ought to find a way to understand that I am not him. And neither are you.”
Dean put his feet back on the floor. “Yeah. Well. Maybe I should go.” He stood up, looked at the window he’d come in through, then began to move toward the door. “It ain’t all about you, Sam. Maybe he goes at things wrong sometimes, but he’s Dad.”
“That stopped working for me a long time ago, Dean.”
“Whatever.”
The sound of the outside door closing downstairs, with Dean on the other side, made Sam grind his eyes closed. He sat there on the TA’s chair for a minute, every inch of him wound up in anger, trying to be glad his brother was gone. Out of his life for another…God, a year, two years, ten years. Relegated again to a life only in Sam’s memory, part of something that Sam had tried his damnedest to think of as not real. Not valuable. Put behind him and left there.
When he opened his eyes, the little package wrapped in candy-cane paper seemed to mock him.
He found Dean sitting silently in his car, halfway down the block. Both front windows were rolled down and Dean seemed to be drifting in the mild night air.
“What?” he said when Sam approached the car.
“I can’t -“ Sam began.
“You explained yourself really well, Sam. Don’t need to do it again.”
Sam shoved a hand through his hair in frustration. Sound swirled around him: traffic, a dog barking, loud voices coming from someone’s TV, all somewhat muffled by the fog that had rolled in off the ocean a couple of hours before.
“I’m trying -“ he said helplessly.
“Yeah, Sam. I get it.”
Dean turned the key in the ignition and the car rumbled to life. Grimacing, Sam put his hand down on the sill of the open window.
“I want something more, Dean,” he said. It was all he could think of to say.
“I know. I get it.”
“Please.”
Dean stared straight ahead, into the fog that lay ahead of the car, both hands resting on the steering wheel.
“I won’t bother you again,” he said finally.
Then he shifted the car into gear. When the car began to move, Sam had no choice but to take his hand away.
“Merry Christmas, Sam,” Dean said.
Sam stood there on the curb, watching, until the Impala had disappeared into the fog.
By the time he reached the top of the stairs and put out a hand to open the door of the TA’s apartment, tears were dripping off his face onto one of the shirts Luis had said made him worthy of investigation by the CDC. A sob broke out of him as he pushed the door closed behind him, shutting himself up alone in the apartment.
It was what he wanted. Stanford. An education. Friends like Luis. Friends who knew nothing about Dad and Dean and what had happened to the mother Sam had no memory of at all.
It was what he wanted.
He sank down onto the couch and sobbed into his hands for almost an hour. When there was nothing left in him to mourn, he groped his way into the kitchen and fumblingly ran himself a drink of water.
Blew his nose on a paper towel.
It wasn’t Christmas yet - not for another few days. But that made no difference.
None at all.
He stood in the kitchen for a while, leaning heavily against the edge of the sink, until he began to feel cold.
So…bed. Sleep. Things would look better in the morning. He could walk back to campus. Remind himself why he’d come here, why he would stay.
He’d be fine.
Because this was what he wanted.
He blew his nose again, crumpled the paper towel and dropped it into the trash. Walked back into the living room.
And saw, sitting on the coffee table in place of the little package Dean had brought, a laptop computer. Not new. Slightly battered, with a bunch of Goth decals stuck to it.
With a candy cane taped to the lid.
And a tag, marked simply
SAM.
ravenrants ! Thanks for the inspiration and the giggles and the beta-ing, and for your friendship. You rock. Just for you, have Christmas 2003, at Stanford.
Characters: Sam, Dean, Luis (Sam and Jess's friend from the Pilot), OFC
Pairings: none
Rating: PG, for language
Length: 3,769 words
Spoilers: none
Disclaimer: Kripke, the Master of the Universe, owns the boys. I just move them around.
Shaking his head, Luis grabbed his backpack and headed for the door. “Forget the swans-a-swimming. What you want at the end of the song is her showing up in a fur coat with nothing underneath it.”
“Which would indicate she’s not a PETA supporter.”
“You’re giving this too much thought,” Luis said as he went out.
A Nightmare Before Christmas
By Carol Davis
“What’s this?” Sam asked, turning the small package over in his hands. It was wrapped in candy-cane paper and had a candy cane taped to the front. The tag said simply, SAM.
“Dunno,” Luis said without looking up from his note-taking. “It was hanging off the doorknob when I got back.”
“It’s not from you?”
Luis raised an eyebrow.
“Right,” Sam acknowledged.
Since they’d only been roommates for a couple of months, and neither of them had a lot of disposable cash, they’d agreed back before Thanksgiving not to bother with exchanging Christmas gifts. Which was not to say that either one of them would actually stick to that promise - but the 12th of December was a little early to start breaking it.
“Maybe you got yourself a secret Santa,” Luis offered.
“Secret Santa?”
“My sister does that every year. It’s kind of a chick thing. They all put names in a hat. You pick a name, and then you leave that person something every day for a week. End of the week, everybody ‘fesses up.”
“But I didn’t agree to do anything like that.”
“Like I said, it’s a chick thing. Maybe they all pick some guy they like.”
Sam sat down on the edge of his bed, still holding the package. It was definitely a mystery - his name was written in block print, so he’d have a tough time matching handwriting. Not that he had handwriting samples from every girl at Stanford. There were two or three girls who’d acted like they might be interested in him - starting up conversations in the hallway, “accidentally” bumping into him on the quad, things like that - but he couldn’t guess which one might be interested enough to start buying him gifts.
“Should I open it?” he asked.
“Yeah, I think they do.”
“They?”
“The girls. My sister.”
“Oh.” Sam hung his head a little, chagrined. “I’m not normally this dense.”
“Jury’s out on that,” Luis said, and returned to his notes. Or pretended to return to his notes; he had one eye on Sam.
The gift was a pair of word-search puzzle books, the $.99 kind, available at any bookstore, mini-mart or newsstand.
“I like these,” Sam mused.
“Told you, man. They’re not from me. But it fits. The presents are supposed to be stocking-stuffer type things. I think that’s it: you’ve got yourself a Secret Santa. Now you’ve just got to figure out who she is.”
“She won’t tell me at the end of the week?”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
“It’s your sister,” Sam said dryly.
“Yeah,” Luis snorted. “In your dreams, pal.”
Sam opened the door the next morning to find a manila envelope leaning against the doorframe. Inside was another package wrapped in the candy-cane paper, with another candy cane taped to the front. Luis had already left for class, so Sam took the package inside and unwrapped it without an audience.
The gift this time was three pairs of tube socks.
“Maybe she’s seen your laundry,” Luis said when he got back. “Although your laundry’d be enough to convince her to transfer the hell out of here. You could donate a couple of those t-shirts to the science department. Or CDC. Thought I saw one of ‘em crawl out of your closet on its own the other day.”
“You done?” Sam asked.
Luis just grinned at him.
The following day’s gift was a bakery bag - not wrapped, but with candy cane attached - containing half a dozen chocolate chip cookies.
“That kills the ‘number’ idea,” Sam said.
“Number idea?”
“You know, like the song. ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas.’ Two puzzle books, three pairs of socks. I thought maybe the first package went missing or something.”
“And if she was going by the song, that’d help you figure out who she is?”
“Maybe.”
Shaking his head, Luis grabbed his backpack and headed for the door. “Forget the swans-a-swimming. What you want at the end of the song is her showing up in a fur coat with nothing underneath it.”
“Which would indicate she’s not a PETA supporter.”
“You’re giving this too much thought,” Luis said as he went out.
The next day, Sam opened his gift to find a single silver dollar.
Luis was impressed. “A hundred years old, and in good shape. I bet it’s worth some money.”
“I thought these were supposed to be stocking stuffers.”
“So…maybe not that much money. But more than a buck.”
Sam went out to the quad determined to track down his anonymous Santa. He sat through a whole day’s worth of classes paying more attention to the students around him than to his professors. He should, he figured, look open and approachable. Friendly. In good pre-holiday spirits. That would encourage the mystery girl to come forward, if she happened to be shy.
“It’s not Patty Deveraux, is it?” Luis asked.
“If you were asking me for the person most likely to send one of the Sopranos after me, I’d say yeah, Patty Deveraux,” Sam groaned. “For gifts? I don’t think so.”
“What about that redhead at the bookstore?”
“Taken.”
On the fifth day, Sam received two free passes to Bad Santa.
“Weird,” Luis said. “Definitely not a chick movie. Unless she’s a Billy Bob fan.”
Since the passes were only good for that night, and his chances of figuring out Santa’s identity before midnight were remote, Sam and Luis took in an 11:00 show.
And came back to the dorm after midnight to find another package. This one contained a paperback copy of Stephen King’s From a Buick 8. “She blew it on that one,” Luis grinned. “You hate Stephen King.”
“Nah,” Sam said. “I just…he gets it all wrong.”
Luis raised a brow.
“Never mind,” Sam told him.
He didn’t receive day 7’s package until late in the evening. He spent most of the day explaining to campus security and his faculty advisor that no, he was not harassing women on campus, that he had only intended to be friendly. In the spirit of the season.
Day 7’s gift was a BART pass.
“Crap,” Luis said, once again impressed. “Those things are like sixty bucks.”
Frowning, Sam put the little card on his desk with the other gifts, beneath the miniature tree Luis had insisted on depositing there.
The next morning, Sam was slumped deep in a seat in the library, being as inconspicuous as someone 6’4” could hope to be, when another someone pulled out the chair next to his and sat down. He got enough of a glimpse in his peripheral vision to know the newcomer was female, and therefore someone he ought not to try being friendly to.
“Hi,” she said. “Sam, right?”
“Right,” he muttered.
“Another few days and we’re out of here. I can’t wait. I’ve still got a ton of shopping to do.”
Sam flicked a glance at her and mumbled, “Yeah.”
“I don’t mean to interrupt your studying. I just wanted to ask, did you catch the title of that book Dr. Hoskins recommended? The guy next to me kept trying to talk to me, and I didn’t get it. And I always feel like a doofus telling a professor, ‘oh, jeez, I wasn’t paying attention.’ You know?”
He did.
Still not quite looking at her, he wrote down the title and author she needed and held out the slip of paper.
“I’m Laurie,” she said. “I’m sorry. That was dumb, just sitting down and talking to you like you know me. How would you know me?”
Hey, Santa, Sam wanted to say.
“I’m Sam,” he said instead.
“Yeah. I…kind of knew that. Thanks. I’ll let you finish your studying.”
She was gone before he could think of a non-harassing way to stop her. But he had enough of a clear visual shot across the library to watch her go. She was kind of cute. Blonde. Had a soft little voice that made her sound too young to be at Stanford. So maybe she was one of those prodigy kids.
That’d be perfect. If she was like…fourteen. Security could get him for stalking a minor.
Luis was waiting for him back at the dorm. That day’s package was sitting on Sam’s bed. “I think she lost track of the meaning of ‘stocking stuffer,’” Luis observed.
Underneath the candy-cane paper was a coffee table book: America from the Air. It was a massive thing, almost two hundred pages of color pictures of all fifty states, taken from planes and helicopters and balloons and heaven knew what else. Sam had done enough browsing in bookstores to know a book like that could go for fifty dollars or more - but this one wasn’t new. It was scuffed around the edges, and some of the pages were dog-eared, which made it somewhat of a tacky gift, but at least she hadn’t paid a lot of money for it.
No…she hadn’t paid anything for it at all. In several places Sam found the faint remnants of rubber stamping. PROPERTY OF PALO ALTO PUBLIC LIBRARY.
Great.
His jailbait Secret Santa was a thief.
“They have book sales,” Luis suggested. “Maybe she picked it up at one of those.”
“Yeah,” Sam said, unconvinced.
“You figure she shoplifted all that other stuff? Maybe swiped the BART card from somebody’s wallet?”
Sam groaned loudly and dropped back onto his bed, one arm flung over his eyes.
“What’re you gonna say to her?” Luis asked.
“Please don’t show up here in a fur coat and nothing else?”
“Yeah,” Luis said. “That’d be good.”
He twitched all the way through Dr. Hoskins’ final, knowing Laurie was on the other side of the room. He glanced her way a couple of times - any more than that would have gotten him snagged for trying to cheat, which… Disciplinary committee? Expulsion? Yeah, his faculty advisor would love that. He had the distinct feeling that even being in the same lecture hall as Laurie was lining him up for another “I’m surprised at your actions, Sam” speech.
For no reason he could pin down, he lingered outside the lecture hall after the exam until Laurie wandered up to him.
Okay, so she wasn’t fourteen. She was every day of sixteen.
“I got the book,” she told him breathlessly. “I’m gonna read it over break.”
“Great,” Sam said.
“How do you think you did? On the final.”
I’m hoping everything I wrote was in English, Sam thought. “Okay. I guess. Um…listen…”
She looked up at him brightly. Eagerly.
I think you’re a nice little shoplifter. But could you pick somebody else to give your loot to? Preferably somebody in another state?
“Hope you have a nice Christmas,” he told her.
“Oh. Well…sure. You too.”
And she scooted away.
Luis was headed home for the holidays. He loaded up a couple of suitcases as he spun out another chapter in the “Trust me, you don’t want to come anywhere near my family” saga, this one involving someone named Tía Denise, José Feliciano, and a rendition of “Feliz Navidad” that had resulted in the summoning of three firetrucks, the paramedics, and eleven police officers.
“You gonna be okay?” he asked Sam as he jammed an extra pair of sneakers into his bag.
“I’m good.”
“You’re still apartment-sitting.”
“Unless you know something I don’t.”
“The question is, does Mini-Santa the Happy Shoplifter know where you’re gonna be. That would worry me.”
It worried Sam a great deal. The library book had been gift #8, which seemed to point to a continuation of the package drops right through Christmas. However, at 2:00, when both Sam and Luis were ready to lock the door and head out, the day’s package hadn’t yet arrived. So, he decided, maybe Laurie’s version of the Secret Santa week was eight days.
Maybe she couldn’t count.
The apartment, which belonged to a TA spending the holidays at home in Arizona, was a twenty-minute walk from campus. Sam covered the first few blocks convinced that he was being tailed, but every time he swung around, there was no one there.
More specifically, there was no Laurie there.
So maybe he was being paranoid. And crazy. Maybe she had gotten each of the gifts legitimately, and had only chosen him to give them to because she thought he was interesting. Or cute. Or something. Maybe his being older, and a college guy, and a lot taller than she was, really set off a lot of fireworks for her. Either way, he made sure all the doors and windows of the apartment were locked once he was inside. And for the first time in a long time he wondered if laying salt lines would be a good idea.
He ventured out long enough to pick up some groceries at the small market a couple of blocks from the apartment, then locked himself in again and pulled down all the window shades before he turned on the TV and sat down to eat some dinner.
He dozed off in the chair, woke up a couple of hours later feeling ridiculous, and went to bed.
When he got up in the morning he found a package with a candy cane taped to the front lying on the chair he’d been sitting in. Inside was a Victoria’s Secret 2004 calendar.
He wanted very badly to call the police.
And possibly several ambulances, José Feliciano, and Luis’s Tía Denise.
The trouble was, he had spent about ninety percent of his life learning how to avoid the police, and, sweet-faced teenage shoplifters aside, this did not seem like a good time to start reversing that process.
Since each previous gift had arrived between midnight and midnight of the day in question, he assumed the calendar had been left on his chair no later than 11:59. Therefore, gift #10 would show up sometime during the next 16 hours.
It was amazing how long 16 hours could be.
He made it all the way to dinnertime before he convinced himself that he was being an idiot. And a wuss. She was just a girl, and a small one at that. She was unlikely to be armed. She was unlikely to be dangerous.
But she had broken into the apartment.
He checked every window, every door. All right, the only door. He looked for secret passageways and trap doors and loose floorboards. The entire time, he told himself he was reaching levels of insanity never before achieved by a member of the human race. And at the same time, he began to wonder if Laurie was a member of the human race. She could, after all, be any one of a dozen kinds of supernatural being. Which was no more comforting than her being a starry-eyed teenager shoplifter, but still.
He was pacing the apartment when he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror hanging over the couch.
Oh yeah.
Off the deep end you have gone, he thought.
At sundown, when the day’s gift had not yet appeared, he unlocked two of the windows, turned off all the lights, and sat on the floor next to the TV, deep enough in shadow that he couldn’t be seen from either of the unlocked windows.
A little past ten one of the windows slid almost soundlessly up in its track.
Sam thumbed the switch on the big flashlight he’d had propped against one knee and aimed the beam at his Secret Santa.
“The fuck, Sammy,” said his brother.
Words completely escaped him for a good ten seconds. Then he sputtered, “Dean?”
“It’s not the Tooth Fairy. You wanna not shine that in my eyes? Jeez.”
Lost in a battering flood of emotion, Sam pushed himself up off the floor and turned on a lamp. Dean, holding a small package wrapped in the candy-cane paper with a candy cane taped to the front, grinned at him.
Anyone else would have been embarrassed. Or chagrined. Or something.
Dean was just…Dean.
“What are you doing here?” Sam demanded.
Dean held out the package.
“You mean you’ve…all this time…you broke into my apartment?”
“Your apartment?” Dean asked mildly.
“Never mind. What are you doing here? How long have you - what, have you been following me around for a week? Or - are you stalking me?”
“Dude, calm down. I was just having some fun.”
“By breaking and entering.”
“Sammy.”
The chiding note in Dean’s voice did nothing to prompt Sam to throw out the welcome mat. Nor did the way Dean stood there with his arms folded, silently watching as Sam paced circles around the TA’s knockoff Oriental carpet. After a couple of minutes, when Sam hadn’t stopped pacing, Dean sat down on the couch and put his feet up on the TA’s coffee table.
Sam stopped then and glared. “Is Dad here?”
“No.”
“Does he know you’re here?”
“Not exactly.”
“And what does that mean?”
“It means not exactly. He knows I’m in California. So’s he,” Dean shrugged. “He’s in Tahoe. Something about a water spirit. He’s in a crap-ass mood, so I took off. Told him I’d be back in a few days.”
“You’ve been off on your own for nine days? And Dad didn’t -“
“Drove back a couple times.”
“A couple?”
“Okay, six. The hell, Sammy. It’s Christmas.”
“Dean -“ Lost for something to say, Sam sank down onto the chair where he’d found the calendar and dropped his head into his hands. “I really don’t -“ he said after a minute, then cut himself off. “I don’t know what you think you’re accomplishing.”
Dean held out the package, and when Sam didn’t reach for it, set it down on the coffee table.
“I’m serious,” Sam told him heavily. “Dad told me not to come back. And I’m not going to.”
“He was upset, Sam.”
“Upset? Because I want to do something decent with my life?”
That prodded a wound that would probably never heal. Sam knew right where the words would land, knew what effect they’d have, and waited for that to happen. Watched his brother’s face shift as he struggled to hold back an explosion.
“We help people,” Dean said softly.
“Fine. If you want to do that, then do it. But I want more.”
“He -“ Dean hesitated. “It kills him, Sammy.”
“Maybe he should have thought of that before he told me never to come back. Maybe he ought to find a way to understand that I am not him. And neither are you.”
Dean put his feet back on the floor. “Yeah. Well. Maybe I should go.” He stood up, looked at the window he’d come in through, then began to move toward the door. “It ain’t all about you, Sam. Maybe he goes at things wrong sometimes, but he’s Dad.”
“That stopped working for me a long time ago, Dean.”
“Whatever.”
The sound of the outside door closing downstairs, with Dean on the other side, made Sam grind his eyes closed. He sat there on the TA’s chair for a minute, every inch of him wound up in anger, trying to be glad his brother was gone. Out of his life for another…God, a year, two years, ten years. Relegated again to a life only in Sam’s memory, part of something that Sam had tried his damnedest to think of as not real. Not valuable. Put behind him and left there.
When he opened his eyes, the little package wrapped in candy-cane paper seemed to mock him.
He found Dean sitting silently in his car, halfway down the block. Both front windows were rolled down and Dean seemed to be drifting in the mild night air.
“What?” he said when Sam approached the car.
“I can’t -“ Sam began.
“You explained yourself really well, Sam. Don’t need to do it again.”
Sam shoved a hand through his hair in frustration. Sound swirled around him: traffic, a dog barking, loud voices coming from someone’s TV, all somewhat muffled by the fog that had rolled in off the ocean a couple of hours before.
“I’m trying -“ he said helplessly.
“Yeah, Sam. I get it.”
Dean turned the key in the ignition and the car rumbled to life. Grimacing, Sam put his hand down on the sill of the open window.
“I want something more, Dean,” he said. It was all he could think of to say.
“I know. I get it.”
“Please.”
Dean stared straight ahead, into the fog that lay ahead of the car, both hands resting on the steering wheel.
“I won’t bother you again,” he said finally.
Then he shifted the car into gear. When the car began to move, Sam had no choice but to take his hand away.
“Merry Christmas, Sam,” Dean said.
Sam stood there on the curb, watching, until the Impala had disappeared into the fog.
By the time he reached the top of the stairs and put out a hand to open the door of the TA’s apartment, tears were dripping off his face onto one of the shirts Luis had said made him worthy of investigation by the CDC. A sob broke out of him as he pushed the door closed behind him, shutting himself up alone in the apartment.
It was what he wanted. Stanford. An education. Friends like Luis. Friends who knew nothing about Dad and Dean and what had happened to the mother Sam had no memory of at all.
It was what he wanted.
He sank down onto the couch and sobbed into his hands for almost an hour. When there was nothing left in him to mourn, he groped his way into the kitchen and fumblingly ran himself a drink of water.
Blew his nose on a paper towel.
It wasn’t Christmas yet - not for another few days. But that made no difference.
None at all.
He stood in the kitchen for a while, leaning heavily against the edge of the sink, until he began to feel cold.
So…bed. Sleep. Things would look better in the morning. He could walk back to campus. Remind himself why he’d come here, why he would stay.
He’d be fine.
Because this was what he wanted.
He blew his nose again, crumpled the paper towel and dropped it into the trash. Walked back into the living room.
And saw, sitting on the coffee table in place of the little package Dean had brought, a laptop computer. Not new. Slightly battered, with a bunch of Goth decals stuck to it.
With a candy cane taped to the lid.
And a tag, marked simply
SAM.