On His Own, for reggie11, part 1 of 2
Title: On His Own
Recipient: reggie11
Rating: T
Warnings: Pedophilia, nudity, mild violence
Author's Notes: First, I'd like to apologize to the residents of Springfield, MO. Besides street names, you're probably not going to recognize your city or MSU. So I'm sorry. Second, reggie11 asked for kidnapped Sam. And I don’t think this is what you had in mind, but I really hope you enjoy it anyway.
Word count: approx. 10,800
Summary: Sam really just wanted to play soccer.
Assistant Coach Duane Scott gave Sam the creeps.
Derek didn't believe him: "Dude, he's just the assistant coach. He's friendly because Willis is the Bad Cop."
Dean wasn't helpful: "If he bothers you so much, kick 'im in the nuts."
He couldn't tell Dad. Soccer already came third to hunting and training. If he so much as suggested anything shady was going on, his father would make him quit-at the very least. If previous years were anything to go by, he might also confront Coach Scott, Coach Willis, and the principal before making them move, and all before they'd been in Springfield two months.
No, Sam would handle this on his own.
#
Sam was the last one to arrive in the locker room after the final bell rang. Mrs. Summers, his Language Arts teacher, in her infinite wisdom, had given them a writing assignment at the beginning of the year, charged them with choosing the topic (subject to approval), and chosen today to discuss their topics with them. Winchester being at the end of the alphabet, Sam had been called up last--and been kept late.
"You slacking off there, Winchester?" Coach Scott demanded jocularly. He stood in his usual post by the door, legs braced and arms crossed like the world's lankiest bouncer.
Sam didn't pause or look up, bee-lining for his locker. "No, sir." Coach Willis expected them on the field fifteen minutes after the bell rang for warm-ups. Anyone who arrived after that ran two additional miles after practice. Anyone who arrived more than twenty minutes after the bell wouldn't play in the next game. Anyone who missed three games was off the team.
There were already enough reasons Sam might not get to finish out the season without adding to them himself. He dropped his bags.
"All right, girls." Coach Scott clapped twice. "Two fifty-seven. Let's go!"
Most of the guys jumped up. Carter clapped Sam on the shoulder as he passed. "Hurry up, slick. You've gotta race Danny for Forward."
"In your dreams," Danny replied. He jostled Carter, jumping into him. They fell into Sam, almost knocking him off the bench.
"Dude, walk." Sam pushed them away with his elbow, then tilted his head to get his hair out of his eyes without co-opting his hands from pulling on his shin guards. "At this rate, I'm gonna make it to the field before you."
"You wish."
Nathan was the last one out. He slid toward Sam on the bench, pitched his voice low. "You want me to wait for you?"
Sam could feel Coach Scott's eyes on the back of his neck. He smiled for Nathan. "No, I'm good."
"You sure?"
"You angling for a kiss, Burkhalter?" Coach Scott interjected suddenly, causing Nathan to twitch like he'd been goosed. "Let's go!"
"Trust me," Sam murmured lightly as Nathan reluctantly stood up, "the last thing I want is you puking again." By the look on his face, it wouldn't take an extra two miles to make that happen.
"Shut up."
Sam shoved out of his shorts as quick as he could, uncomfortably aware of Coach Scott pacing away from the door to stand at the end of the row, the better to see him. Because he could totally get in a fight with himself.
Pressing his lips into a thin line, and silently cursing the idiots who’d used the locker room for Fight Club for the millionth time, Sam pulled up his gym shorts, got his shirt switched out for his practice jersey, and started lacing up his cleats.
"Three-oh-two, Winchester."
"Coming." He stomped the first cleat and started on the second.
"I know you don't want to miss out on the next game."
Sam grabbed his duffel without answering, slammed his locker, and jogged for the door. Coach Scott stopped him before he got there, put his hands on either of Sam’s shoulders, and ducked to look into his eyes. "Hey, hey. You all right, Sam? You seem a little out of sorts there."
His eyes darted for the door. The weight of Coach Scott’s hands pressed him into the floor. “I’m late.”
“I’ll clear it with Coach. You’re fine.” Sam nodded, twitched his shoulders. The other man rubbed out in answer, ending so he was cupping Sam’s biceps. “You know that if anyone here, or anyone at home, or wherever, is bothering you, you can tell me, right? Me, or Coach Willis. That’s what we’re here for.”
Sam felt his lips purse despite himself, despite everything, because, seriously? He hadn’t even showed up for school with any bruises and he was still getting the Social Services pre-talk. And from the guy he’d be reporting, if he did take Coach Scott up on his offer. "I'm fine."
Coach Scott studied him, serious and concerned, the warmth of his hands seeping through Sam’s shirt, making him feel claustrophobic. It bunched his muscles and curled the hand clutching his bag into a tight fist. “You sure?”
Sam pressed his lips together. “I’m sure.”
For a moment, Sam feared Coach Scott wasn’t going to let him go. That he was going to sit him down in the supply closet and tie him up, and keep touching him and asking him, over and over, if he was okay, until Sam told him he knew, knew what Duane Scott really was, and then-
Coach Scott squeezed the back of his neck. “All right. Get out there.”
Sam couldn’t help pressing as far away from Coach Scott as he could to squeeze through the door, even though-or probably because-he could feel the man’s eyes on the back of his head, his proximity.
One thing Sam knew for sure: he couldn’t keep doing this.
#
On the field, Derek sidled up to him. “You all right?”
“Fine.”
Soccer, at least, was uncomplicated.
“All right, girls!” Coach Willis announced. “Now that Winchester has joined us, we can get started. Today, we’re going to focus on conditioning. Let’s go!”
Sam didn't have any time to think about Coach Scott once they got started. Stretching gave way to warm-ups (including their first mile run), then to passing drills, dribbling drills, shooting drills, endurance and conditioning exercises. . . . By the time Coach Willis sent them on their final run, Sam was pretty sure he'd never run so much in his life.
Derek sidled up beside him, panting faintly. "You know, I think you might have pissed him off."
"At least you don't have two more miles to run."
“I promise I’ll . . . say nice things at your funeral.”
"He never made us run this much last year," Peter whined.
"You were sick those days," Cory interjected, drifting back to run with them. "It was nice knowing you, Winchester."
"Ha."
"Hey," Matthew chimed in, and drifted closer. "You think Coach was a slave-driver back in the day?"
"Hell, yes," Peter said.
"And what?" Cory demanded. "Scott was his wife?"
There was a beat of silence while everybody pictured that. Sam couldn’t help but twitch. The image of Coach Scott wearing a pinafore and bonnet was going to take a long time to scrub out of his brain.
Then everyone burst out laughing.
"Move it, ladies!" Coach Willis yelled from the middle of the field. Coach Scott stood next to him, going over something on the clipboard-probably field tactics or performance stats or something, but that didn’t stop the uncomfortable, crawling certainty that they were talking about him. Sam jerked his gaze away when the assistant coach looked straight at him. "If you can talk, you can run faster!"
Groans answered him, but Matthew and Cory obediently picked up the pace and the others followed. Sam let himself fall back a bit when they did, holding his speed steady. Whatever Coach said, he still had two more miles to run once everyone else had called it a night.
He was never telling John Winchester his insane training regimen had helped Sam get through soccer practice still breathing.
"All right! Grab some water, Winchester. The rest of you. . . ."
Tuning out Coach Willis (Derek would let him know anything important later), Sam detoured to his duffel, got a sip and a mouthful, and resumed his circuit, swallowing little sips of his water reserve as he went.
It didn't take long for his body to fall back into the rhythm and his mind to start wandering, now that he was the only one on the field. What he needed to do-what he’d already decided to do-was dig a little into the guy’s life, see if there was any empirical evidence that his behavior was off. Because Sam had his own observations, and firmly believed the guy was too hands-y to be strictly friendly, always clapping shoulders or backs or tousling hair and lingering over it that little bit too long, but he was fair enough to admit he didn’t have the best basis for comparison. The majority of his life had been spent always and only around Dad and Dean.
Derek didn't think anything about it was weird-Derek had sisters and crazy uncles, though; he had a tendency to take the weird in stride without even realizing it. Carter had just told him to tell Coach Scott to stop, if it bothered him, and, yeah, that would solve his issue, but it wouldn’t touch the underlying problem. If there was an underlying problem. Dean didn't spend enough (read: any) time with the man to know one way or the other, and Sam wasn't going to suggest he do otherwise. (Sammy might have, but Sam was too old now to go running to his brother with every imagined problem.)
If he had taken the issue to Dean, though, his brother would probably have told him to confront the guy, (or gone to confront him himself, because he still thought his baby brother needed protecting). But his brother had also developed a tendency to burn his bridges without considering the impact that would have when he wasn't immediately leaving town. As far as Sam knew, they were going to be staying in Springfield until Christmas, and possibly longer if the hunting was good.
Dad. . . . Well, Sam was pretty sure Dad would have told Sam to do some research and then confront him, then ignored his own directive and gone off to confront the coach, himself. At least, if the way hunts had been going recently was any indication. It wasn't like Sam had any way to know what his father did on the hunts he wasn't a part of.
"Wrap it up, Winchester!" Coach Willis called suddenly, breaking into Sam's thoughts. The rest of the team, plus Coach Scott, were already gone, the balls and equipment packed up with them. It still couldn’t have been long enough for Sam to have completed two miles. By his count, he'd only the first mile, maybe a quarter-mile over. But Coach Willis was waving him in.
Dude, Dean's voice chided, are you seriously gonna argue this?
"Let's go, Winchester!"
Sam picked the straightest line to his coach and kicked into a sprint. Or, into the fastest run he could manage after two hours tearing around the pitch.
"Pack it in," Coach Willis directed, when he was close.
"Sir?" Apparently, he was.
Amusement creased Coach's face. "Do you always question good things, Winchester?"
Sam swallowed the yes, sir that jumped immediately to the tip of his tongue. Good things didn't usually happen to Winchesters. "No, sir."
"Then get your stuff."
Sam did. He detoured into the locker room long enough to get his backpack, then met Derek out at the buses. The taller boy gave him an once-over, and smirked. "Are you gonna start changing in the bathroom before coming down, now?"
"Shut up."
#
An hour and a half later, his homework done, and fully briefed on the plan for their first game (next Thursday) against the Pershing Generals, Sam climbed off the activity bus at their apartment complex. He stopped at the apartment just long enough to change his clothes and dump his duffel, then he set out for the MSU library. Technically, he could have done what he planned from the comfort of his (and Dean's, when Dad was there) room, but he knew better than to commit perjury on a phone that could be traced back to the Winchesters.
The walk did a lot to work the stiffness out of his legs after sitting on the bus for the better part of an hour, and the quiet (such as it was, in the middle of a busy college campus; he passed at least three dozen people on the way to the library, nodding at the one guy in the hoodie who actually looked at him instead of through him as he went) gave him a chance to work out what he needed to do.
He claimed a computer on the second floor, on the end furthest from the couches, and got to work. He knew Duane Scott had played for the University of Iowa until he blew out his knee, so he started there. It didn’t take long to find the rest.
Duane Scott had been born in Des Moines, Iowa, February 6th, 1964. He’d played forward for the Roosevelt Roughriders before scoring his full ride to UI in 1982. His injury had occurred just two years later, and he’d left Iowa for Grand Rapids, Minnesota in 1985. Then he kind of disappeared until 1988, when he turned up in Temecula, California at the home of the Bobcats. He left in 1990, turning up again in Phoenix, Arizona at North Canyon High School-where, six months into his tenure, he’d been forced to step down, according to the newspaper article he found, on “suspicions of conduct unbecoming.”
Not that those suspicions had interfered with him getting another coaching job in Amarillo, Texas. Or from moving on to Carver Middle in 1993.
Sam jotted down the locations and times, creating a rough timeline. But aside from the newspaper article in Phoenix, Duane Scott didn’t have much of an online presence. And the crimes that turned up in the area newspapers revolved largely around petty crimes: breaking and entering, vandalism, the odd joy ride-all, by and large, the suspected work of bored kids.
Not that there weren’t other crimes, more damning, that might not have made the papers.
The death of Chad Felding, however, did. Sam clicked the link.
AMARILLO, TX-Students at Bonham Middle School were rocked yesterday, when County Officials found the body of Chad Felding on the Tristate Fairgrounds.
“We were just at soccer practice,” teammate and friend, Michael Brown, told reporters. “He said his mom was making lasagna for dinner. He was really excited.”
But Chad never made it home. Officers at the Amarillo PD believe he was picked up somewhere between the school and his home while walking back after practice.
The coroner reports he was held for less than twelve hours, the majority of his many injuries occurring while he was still alive.
To the parents demanding how the police could have let something like this happen, Commissioner Theodore Andrews says only this:
“We are continuing to look into every lead. We will not rest until Chad Felding finds justice."
The date-August 23, 1993-placed the death well after Duane Scott relocated to Springfield. Sam copied out the details, anyway.
The next bit, Sam wished he had Dean’s help for, not because he couldn’t do it-he’d heard Dad make enough of these calls to get the gist, but because Dean’s voice had actually changed and could pass as an older man’s on the phone, whereas people had a tendency to mistake him for a woman. Whatever.
Just over an hour later, Sam knew nuisance complaints for trespassing and peeping toms had spiked during the months Duane Scott had been present in an area, that his move from Grand Rapids had been preceded by a drunken groping of a fifteen year-old boy at a college football game, though the incident was never charged; that a man matching Duane Scott’s description had been spotted in Chubbuck, Idaho trying to pick up a pair of seventh grade boys; that he’d been forced to leave Temecula or face charges of indecency with a minor. Presumably, he’d learned to be more careful after Phoenix because Amarillo only produced the usual cluster of nuisance calls.
Except they continued even after Duane Scott left.
Hesitating over whether to look into the death of Chad Felding-it wasn’t Duane Scott's doing, human murderers weren’t their job, he had no reason to believe the death wasn’t an isolated incident-Sam nevertheless sat back down and ran a search. It took a little while, and he ended up having to search state-by-state since, apparently, the brutal murders of teenage boys didn’t always make national news, especially when they occurred in different states months, even years, apart, but he managed to find eight more.
The victims were all male, all young-ranging from as young as thirteen in Mississippi to seventeen in Kentucky, all on a school sports team, all-Sam grimaced to read-with their genitals mutilated in addition to extensive bruises and other signs of abuse. The interesting thing, Sam saw after mapping the incidents, was that, until Amarillo, the killer had been moving west, in more or less a straight line along I-10. After Amarillo, they moved north and-kind of circled Missouri.
It wasn’t a spiral. But it was more than a little unsettling to connect the points and realize it was an almost perfect circle centered on Springfield.
Coincidence. Not that that stopped his brain from trying to insist Duane Scott was the catalyst.
Pushing away from the computers, Sam went back to the payphone and convinced eight police department adjuncts in eight separate states to fax him the files on the eight murdered boys. Then he staked out the fax.
No two reports had any of the same suspects listed.
All eight coroner reports listed blunt force trauma to the chest, broken bones in the arms and legs, probable taser burns on the torso and genitals, and multiple lacerations. Cause of death was cited as exsanguination.
His father didn’t believe in coincidence, even when it was. He checked it out, even when his youngest son didn't want him to.
There’d be no way to tell if the nuisance calls were the product of Duane Scott or the killer. Or even the work of someone else. Not without catching them in the act.
Tapping his fingers against the files, he wondered if Dean would have any ideas. And suddenly remembered.
Dean.
Jumping up before checking his watch-9:03-Sam hurriedly shoved his notes into his backpack. Dean got off work at nine, but his boss usually let him go a little early so he could get home by nine, instead. Their agreement (his and Dean’s, because Dad wasn’t around to have an opinion most of the time) was that Sam be home when Dean got there.
The only way Sam was beating his brother home tonight was with a time machine.
He slung his backpack over his shoulder, and almost ran over the leather-jacketed jock coming up the stairs. He threw a “sorry” over his shoulder, ignored the “Whatever. Punk,” tossed back at him, and forced his (newly reminded) aching legs back to a walk to cross the library lobby.
“Good night, Sam!” Tiffany called from the circulation desk. Sam managed a smile and a wave and, he was chagrined to realize, was not too distracted to flush at the attention. Damn hormones.
He knew she only liked him in the aww, he’s so cute way every girlfriend Dean had ever had had been nice to him, with maybe a little more personal consideration because she was a sweeter, more helpful sort of girl than Dean ever dated, but it still felt really, really good. And made it extra hard to talk to her without sounding like an idiot.
It was with relief that he pushed through the glass front doors into the cool night air and took a deep breath. The stairs, even only six deep, broken into two sets of three, were less welcome. Why hadn’t he gone out the back? It would’ve been shorter, dropping him on Hammons Parkway, and, as a bonus, would've avoided the steps.
There was a white panel van parked against the curb. It didn’t have a logo on the side, and Sam studied it as he took the stairs. The delivery vans that dropped off donations typically parked further back, by the rear entrance-the lack of stairs made it easier to wheel the boxes in on a dolly. Except for the fact that the rear doors were open, Sam might have thought the delivery guy had parked and run in to ask for directions.
Sam drifted that way, trying to get a look at what was inside the van.
“Hey, kid,” someone called behind him, “you dropped this.”
He turned-
Right into a fist. Pain flared bone-jarringly bright, then was swallowed by darkness.
He never felt his backpack slip off his shoulder or the guy gather him up and dump him in the back of the van.
#
Dean was whistling when he arrived at the apartment. Busboy wasn’t anything special, not even at a Bar and Grill, but tall, shapely, enthusiastically willing Jocelyn could make garbage man appealing if she rode around in the truck with him. So the fact she’d given him a blowjob on his break had certainly helped.
Then he’d opened the door to a black, lightless apartment. Trust Sam to ruin a perfectly good blowjob.
“Sam!” Flipping on the light switch, anyway, in case Sam actually was home and was just signaling the start of the apocalypse by going to bed before nine, Dean took a look around.
The kitchen table, which had been home to Sam’s books practically since they’d moved in, held the same ones that’d been there this morning, neatly stacked to the side. The kid’s duffel was on the couch. Of his backpack, there was no sign. Not in the living room, not in the kitchen, not in either bedroom. And no Sam.
“Dammit, Sam,” Dean groaned. Fetching the kid from the library was one thing when he had the Impala. He never minded driving the Impala. But the last thing he wanted to do after work, after busting his ass on his feet all day, especially when he could have been getting frisky with the lovely Jocelyn, was walk to the fricking campus library.
Slamming out of the apartment, Dean swung into an easy jog, the sooner to give Sam a piece of his mind.
It might not have been so bad if, on occasion, Dean had to fetch his baby brother from the Stake and Shake. Then Sam might have been there with a girl and he could have passed the walk back teasing him about the birds and the bees, but no. No, while in theory Sam could go to any one of about a dozen places after school, in practice he only ever went to the MSU library.
The kid was just lucky it wasn’t a multi-mile trip.
Dean paused just inside the doors. He didn’t usually have to go in-hadn’t had to since he’d helped Sam with some research for Dad the first week or so they’d been here, especially since the punishment for breaking curfew was no soccer for Sammy. But now he needed to, he didn’t know where he should look.
Sam seemed to be interested in everything. At one time or another, he’d come to Dean happily babbling about everything from why it rained to how the government worked to the lottery system to various representations of monsters and the supernatural in literature. He just couldn’t remember anything the shrimp had been especially curious about recently. Except soccer, and that had mostly been requests to kick a ball around with him or let him do the same with Derek.
Top to bottom, he finally decided. Grid search.
There were five people on computers on the first floor, three searching the shelves. The second floor had eight people sitting at tables, five on couches, and three searching the shelves (including two girls he’d have liked to stick around a little to get to know). The third floor boasted sixteen people on computers, between three tables, six searching the shelves, and two making out by the bathrooms. The bathrooms themselves, on all three floors, were empty.
Of those forty-eight people (which was about twice as many as Dean normally saw in any library, ever, just going to show that college kids were crazy), none of them were his geek brother.
Dean was officially ticked. And freaked. But he was going with ticked. If Sam had taken the back way over to Florence and up, just to miss him, he was kicking the kid’s scrawny ass.
“Excuse me,” someone said-someone female. He turned.
She was probably about eighteen, wore her hair in a ponytail, had her button-up buttoned all the way to the top and wore a fashionable scarf around her neck. Her skirt fell below her knees, her hands were folded primly in front of her, and there was nothing but friendly earnestness on her face. So . . . kind of what Dean imagined his brother would look like as a girl. Not that he ever imagined what his brother would look like as a girl.
“I couldn’t help but notice you look upset. Is there something I can help you with?”
Dean could think of a few things, but bitchy little brothers came first. He huffed. “Not unless you can tell me where my brother is. He was supposed to meet me outside.”
She smiled sweetly, and shifted to stand squarely in front of him. “I might be able to. Could you describe him for me?”
“Yeah, sure.” His gaze flickered past her, to where he needed to be so he could keep looking for Sam, checking out the exits in case he was just walking out and Dean had somehow missed him. “He’s not a student here or anything, short, shaggy hair-”
“-darling smile, blue backpack?”
So not what he’d been going to say, but-He blinked.
“His name’s Sam. Right?”
“Yeah.” And Sam had been totally holding out on him, the little rat.
She nodded and smiling brightly, obviously pleased. “He left a little after nine. About nine-oh-five?”
“Alone?”
Her head bobbed again. “Seemed like he was in a hurry.”
He’d better have been, Dean thought, pro forma,not Dean to be Dean.
“It’s not time for you to wake up yet, kid,” someone-not Dean-said, then a cloth closed over his nose and mouth.
Bad.
Panic lapped sluggishly at the back of his mind, wrenched his eyes open. But the face hovering over his was blurry, he couldn't make his eyes focus, and sleep slowly dragged his eyelids back down.
He couldn't breathe, though, and that was bad. Turning his head didn't help--the cloth covering his nose and mouth moved with him. Then an arm slid under his neck, lifted him and held his head steady, but he still couldn't breathe.
His arms were heavy, but he struggled to lift them, to push at the hand over his face. His finger caught on cloth, rouch against his fingerpads, but slipped away again without moving them.
His lungs felt heavy, laboring against something heavier than air, something that smelled sweet and strong and burned at his eyes, made his head swim, made his stomach flip nauseatingly.
“That’s it,” Not Dean crooned.
“No,” Sam said, thought he said, wanted to say, tried to say. “Don’t. Dean. . . .” His eyes rolled up into his head and he couldn’t get them back out.
“Don’t fight it,” he heard, or thought he heard. The Not Dean voice was swirling away, or he was, and even as his body sank, feeling lead-weighted and heavy, his consciousness floated up and up and
Shh. . . .
#
Dean couldn't look at the crime scene photos. Not all the victims had floppy brown hair or hazel eyes (none of them had Sammy's eyes), but most of them had similar builds and it wasn't hard-was frighteningly easy, in fact-to put Sammy in their place, limp and discarded and still, skin discolored and broken and painful-looking. Gone.
His blood thrummed through his veins, itching with the need to move, to do something-to feel like he was doing something, because none of this was helping. No one person appeared on any two suspect lists. The vics had all been snatched from public places, places they were to supposed to be, which meant the creep was stalking them, but that didn't help Dean figure out where he would take Sam after.
How had he not noticed some creep perving on his baby brother?
A couple witnesses reported seeing a white panel van, but they didn't notice the make or model or license plate, claimed there weren't any logos or markings on the van itself, and couldn't say where it had come from or when it had left, nevermind where it had gone.
Not that Dean had the manpower or resources to track a vehicle.
No, if he was going to find Sam (before it was too late had damn well better be understood), it wasn't going to be by identifying the guy, tracking him. He needed to anticipate him.
Though trust his baby brother to sniff out a serial killer no one else had noticed yet.
He shoved the witness statements out of the way, not at all bothered when they collided with the police reports and took out several of the crime scene photos with them. Sam would've bitched about the papers on the floor-Sam's new favorite thing was bitching about everything-but Sam wasn't here. Dean pulled the map closer, clenched his jaw, and didn't pay them any attention.
There was a second, penciled circle partially overlapping the first. It only took a moment's study to figure out what his brother had done: after connecting the points, he'd used a protractor to scribe a perfect circle, Springfield at the center. Dean traced it with a finger. Either their killer was spatially challenged, which-considering how close he'd gotten otherwise-Dean was disinclined to believe, or he had a different reason for choosing those particular locations. Dean could work with that.
The research took too long. The research always took too long, bleeding away seconds he could be using to do something useful, like save his brother. The only saving grace, because there was one, was that he had his answer at the end of it. Or part of it. He knew where to find the rest.
Pulling out his phone, the second time he’d done so since Sam had gone missing, he dialed the first real estate agent he found in the phonebook. "Yeah, hey, I know it's late, but I need to know if there are any abandoned farms in the area."
#
Recipient: reggie11
Rating: T
Warnings: Pedophilia, nudity, mild violence
Author's Notes: First, I'd like to apologize to the residents of Springfield, MO. Besides street names, you're probably not going to recognize your city or MSU. So I'm sorry. Second, reggie11 asked for kidnapped Sam. And I don’t think this is what you had in mind, but I really hope you enjoy it anyway.
Word count: approx. 10,800
Summary: Sam really just wanted to play soccer.
Assistant Coach Duane Scott gave Sam the creeps.
Derek didn't believe him: "Dude, he's just the assistant coach. He's friendly because Willis is the Bad Cop."
Dean wasn't helpful: "If he bothers you so much, kick 'im in the nuts."
He couldn't tell Dad. Soccer already came third to hunting and training. If he so much as suggested anything shady was going on, his father would make him quit-at the very least. If previous years were anything to go by, he might also confront Coach Scott, Coach Willis, and the principal before making them move, and all before they'd been in Springfield two months.
No, Sam would handle this on his own.
#
Sam was the last one to arrive in the locker room after the final bell rang. Mrs. Summers, his Language Arts teacher, in her infinite wisdom, had given them a writing assignment at the beginning of the year, charged them with choosing the topic (subject to approval), and chosen today to discuss their topics with them. Winchester being at the end of the alphabet, Sam had been called up last--and been kept late.
"You slacking off there, Winchester?" Coach Scott demanded jocularly. He stood in his usual post by the door, legs braced and arms crossed like the world's lankiest bouncer.
Sam didn't pause or look up, bee-lining for his locker. "No, sir." Coach Willis expected them on the field fifteen minutes after the bell rang for warm-ups. Anyone who arrived after that ran two additional miles after practice. Anyone who arrived more than twenty minutes after the bell wouldn't play in the next game. Anyone who missed three games was off the team.
There were already enough reasons Sam might not get to finish out the season without adding to them himself. He dropped his bags.
"All right, girls." Coach Scott clapped twice. "Two fifty-seven. Let's go!"
Most of the guys jumped up. Carter clapped Sam on the shoulder as he passed. "Hurry up, slick. You've gotta race Danny for Forward."
"In your dreams," Danny replied. He jostled Carter, jumping into him. They fell into Sam, almost knocking him off the bench.
"Dude, walk." Sam pushed them away with his elbow, then tilted his head to get his hair out of his eyes without co-opting his hands from pulling on his shin guards. "At this rate, I'm gonna make it to the field before you."
"You wish."
Nathan was the last one out. He slid toward Sam on the bench, pitched his voice low. "You want me to wait for you?"
Sam could feel Coach Scott's eyes on the back of his neck. He smiled for Nathan. "No, I'm good."
"You sure?"
"You angling for a kiss, Burkhalter?" Coach Scott interjected suddenly, causing Nathan to twitch like he'd been goosed. "Let's go!"
"Trust me," Sam murmured lightly as Nathan reluctantly stood up, "the last thing I want is you puking again." By the look on his face, it wouldn't take an extra two miles to make that happen.
"Shut up."
Sam shoved out of his shorts as quick as he could, uncomfortably aware of Coach Scott pacing away from the door to stand at the end of the row, the better to see him. Because he could totally get in a fight with himself.
Pressing his lips into a thin line, and silently cursing the idiots who’d used the locker room for Fight Club for the millionth time, Sam pulled up his gym shorts, got his shirt switched out for his practice jersey, and started lacing up his cleats.
"Three-oh-two, Winchester."
"Coming." He stomped the first cleat and started on the second.
"I know you don't want to miss out on the next game."
Sam grabbed his duffel without answering, slammed his locker, and jogged for the door. Coach Scott stopped him before he got there, put his hands on either of Sam’s shoulders, and ducked to look into his eyes. "Hey, hey. You all right, Sam? You seem a little out of sorts there."
His eyes darted for the door. The weight of Coach Scott’s hands pressed him into the floor. “I’m late.”
“I’ll clear it with Coach. You’re fine.” Sam nodded, twitched his shoulders. The other man rubbed out in answer, ending so he was cupping Sam’s biceps. “You know that if anyone here, or anyone at home, or wherever, is bothering you, you can tell me, right? Me, or Coach Willis. That’s what we’re here for.”
Sam felt his lips purse despite himself, despite everything, because, seriously? He hadn’t even showed up for school with any bruises and he was still getting the Social Services pre-talk. And from the guy he’d be reporting, if he did take Coach Scott up on his offer. "I'm fine."
Coach Scott studied him, serious and concerned, the warmth of his hands seeping through Sam’s shirt, making him feel claustrophobic. It bunched his muscles and curled the hand clutching his bag into a tight fist. “You sure?”
Sam pressed his lips together. “I’m sure.”
For a moment, Sam feared Coach Scott wasn’t going to let him go. That he was going to sit him down in the supply closet and tie him up, and keep touching him and asking him, over and over, if he was okay, until Sam told him he knew, knew what Duane Scott really was, and then-
Coach Scott squeezed the back of his neck. “All right. Get out there.”
Sam couldn’t help pressing as far away from Coach Scott as he could to squeeze through the door, even though-or probably because-he could feel the man’s eyes on the back of his head, his proximity.
One thing Sam knew for sure: he couldn’t keep doing this.
#
On the field, Derek sidled up to him. “You all right?”
“Fine.”
Soccer, at least, was uncomplicated.
“All right, girls!” Coach Willis announced. “Now that Winchester has joined us, we can get started. Today, we’re going to focus on conditioning. Let’s go!”
Sam didn't have any time to think about Coach Scott once they got started. Stretching gave way to warm-ups (including their first mile run), then to passing drills, dribbling drills, shooting drills, endurance and conditioning exercises. . . . By the time Coach Willis sent them on their final run, Sam was pretty sure he'd never run so much in his life.
Derek sidled up beside him, panting faintly. "You know, I think you might have pissed him off."
"At least you don't have two more miles to run."
“I promise I’ll . . . say nice things at your funeral.”
"He never made us run this much last year," Peter whined.
"You were sick those days," Cory interjected, drifting back to run with them. "It was nice knowing you, Winchester."
"Ha."
"Hey," Matthew chimed in, and drifted closer. "You think Coach was a slave-driver back in the day?"
"Hell, yes," Peter said.
"And what?" Cory demanded. "Scott was his wife?"
There was a beat of silence while everybody pictured that. Sam couldn’t help but twitch. The image of Coach Scott wearing a pinafore and bonnet was going to take a long time to scrub out of his brain.
Then everyone burst out laughing.
"Move it, ladies!" Coach Willis yelled from the middle of the field. Coach Scott stood next to him, going over something on the clipboard-probably field tactics or performance stats or something, but that didn’t stop the uncomfortable, crawling certainty that they were talking about him. Sam jerked his gaze away when the assistant coach looked straight at him. "If you can talk, you can run faster!"
Groans answered him, but Matthew and Cory obediently picked up the pace and the others followed. Sam let himself fall back a bit when they did, holding his speed steady. Whatever Coach said, he still had two more miles to run once everyone else had called it a night.
He was never telling John Winchester his insane training regimen had helped Sam get through soccer practice still breathing.
"All right! Grab some water, Winchester. The rest of you. . . ."
Tuning out Coach Willis (Derek would let him know anything important later), Sam detoured to his duffel, got a sip and a mouthful, and resumed his circuit, swallowing little sips of his water reserve as he went.
It didn't take long for his body to fall back into the rhythm and his mind to start wandering, now that he was the only one on the field. What he needed to do-what he’d already decided to do-was dig a little into the guy’s life, see if there was any empirical evidence that his behavior was off. Because Sam had his own observations, and firmly believed the guy was too hands-y to be strictly friendly, always clapping shoulders or backs or tousling hair and lingering over it that little bit too long, but he was fair enough to admit he didn’t have the best basis for comparison. The majority of his life had been spent always and only around Dad and Dean.
Derek didn't think anything about it was weird-Derek had sisters and crazy uncles, though; he had a tendency to take the weird in stride without even realizing it. Carter had just told him to tell Coach Scott to stop, if it bothered him, and, yeah, that would solve his issue, but it wouldn’t touch the underlying problem. If there was an underlying problem. Dean didn't spend enough (read: any) time with the man to know one way or the other, and Sam wasn't going to suggest he do otherwise. (Sammy might have, but Sam was too old now to go running to his brother with every imagined problem.)
If he had taken the issue to Dean, though, his brother would probably have told him to confront the guy, (or gone to confront him himself, because he still thought his baby brother needed protecting). But his brother had also developed a tendency to burn his bridges without considering the impact that would have when he wasn't immediately leaving town. As far as Sam knew, they were going to be staying in Springfield until Christmas, and possibly longer if the hunting was good.
Dad. . . . Well, Sam was pretty sure Dad would have told Sam to do some research and then confront him, then ignored his own directive and gone off to confront the coach, himself. At least, if the way hunts had been going recently was any indication. It wasn't like Sam had any way to know what his father did on the hunts he wasn't a part of.
"Wrap it up, Winchester!" Coach Willis called suddenly, breaking into Sam's thoughts. The rest of the team, plus Coach Scott, were already gone, the balls and equipment packed up with them. It still couldn’t have been long enough for Sam to have completed two miles. By his count, he'd only the first mile, maybe a quarter-mile over. But Coach Willis was waving him in.
Dude, Dean's voice chided, are you seriously gonna argue this?
"Let's go, Winchester!"
Sam picked the straightest line to his coach and kicked into a sprint. Or, into the fastest run he could manage after two hours tearing around the pitch.
"Pack it in," Coach Willis directed, when he was close.
"Sir?" Apparently, he was.
Amusement creased Coach's face. "Do you always question good things, Winchester?"
Sam swallowed the yes, sir that jumped immediately to the tip of his tongue. Good things didn't usually happen to Winchesters. "No, sir."
"Then get your stuff."
Sam did. He detoured into the locker room long enough to get his backpack, then met Derek out at the buses. The taller boy gave him an once-over, and smirked. "Are you gonna start changing in the bathroom before coming down, now?"
"Shut up."
#
An hour and a half later, his homework done, and fully briefed on the plan for their first game (next Thursday) against the Pershing Generals, Sam climbed off the activity bus at their apartment complex. He stopped at the apartment just long enough to change his clothes and dump his duffel, then he set out for the MSU library. Technically, he could have done what he planned from the comfort of his (and Dean's, when Dad was there) room, but he knew better than to commit perjury on a phone that could be traced back to the Winchesters.
The walk did a lot to work the stiffness out of his legs after sitting on the bus for the better part of an hour, and the quiet (such as it was, in the middle of a busy college campus; he passed at least three dozen people on the way to the library, nodding at the one guy in the hoodie who actually looked at him instead of through him as he went) gave him a chance to work out what he needed to do.
He claimed a computer on the second floor, on the end furthest from the couches, and got to work. He knew Duane Scott had played for the University of Iowa until he blew out his knee, so he started there. It didn’t take long to find the rest.
Duane Scott had been born in Des Moines, Iowa, February 6th, 1964. He’d played forward for the Roosevelt Roughriders before scoring his full ride to UI in 1982. His injury had occurred just two years later, and he’d left Iowa for Grand Rapids, Minnesota in 1985. Then he kind of disappeared until 1988, when he turned up in Temecula, California at the home of the Bobcats. He left in 1990, turning up again in Phoenix, Arizona at North Canyon High School-where, six months into his tenure, he’d been forced to step down, according to the newspaper article he found, on “suspicions of conduct unbecoming.”
Not that those suspicions had interfered with him getting another coaching job in Amarillo, Texas. Or from moving on to Carver Middle in 1993.
Sam jotted down the locations and times, creating a rough timeline. But aside from the newspaper article in Phoenix, Duane Scott didn’t have much of an online presence. And the crimes that turned up in the area newspapers revolved largely around petty crimes: breaking and entering, vandalism, the odd joy ride-all, by and large, the suspected work of bored kids.
Not that there weren’t other crimes, more damning, that might not have made the papers.
The death of Chad Felding, however, did. Sam clicked the link.
AMARILLO, TX-Students at Bonham Middle School were rocked yesterday, when County Officials found the body of Chad Felding on the Tristate Fairgrounds.
“We were just at soccer practice,” teammate and friend, Michael Brown, told reporters. “He said his mom was making lasagna for dinner. He was really excited.”
But Chad never made it home. Officers at the Amarillo PD believe he was picked up somewhere between the school and his home while walking back after practice.
The coroner reports he was held for less than twelve hours, the majority of his many injuries occurring while he was still alive.
To the parents demanding how the police could have let something like this happen, Commissioner Theodore Andrews says only this:
“We are continuing to look into every lead. We will not rest until Chad Felding finds justice."
The date-August 23, 1993-placed the death well after Duane Scott relocated to Springfield. Sam copied out the details, anyway.
The next bit, Sam wished he had Dean’s help for, not because he couldn’t do it-he’d heard Dad make enough of these calls to get the gist, but because Dean’s voice had actually changed and could pass as an older man’s on the phone, whereas people had a tendency to mistake him for a woman. Whatever.
Just over an hour later, Sam knew nuisance complaints for trespassing and peeping toms had spiked during the months Duane Scott had been present in an area, that his move from Grand Rapids had been preceded by a drunken groping of a fifteen year-old boy at a college football game, though the incident was never charged; that a man matching Duane Scott’s description had been spotted in Chubbuck, Idaho trying to pick up a pair of seventh grade boys; that he’d been forced to leave Temecula or face charges of indecency with a minor. Presumably, he’d learned to be more careful after Phoenix because Amarillo only produced the usual cluster of nuisance calls.
Except they continued even after Duane Scott left.
Hesitating over whether to look into the death of Chad Felding-it wasn’t Duane Scott's doing, human murderers weren’t their job, he had no reason to believe the death wasn’t an isolated incident-Sam nevertheless sat back down and ran a search. It took a little while, and he ended up having to search state-by-state since, apparently, the brutal murders of teenage boys didn’t always make national news, especially when they occurred in different states months, even years, apart, but he managed to find eight more.
The victims were all male, all young-ranging from as young as thirteen in Mississippi to seventeen in Kentucky, all on a school sports team, all-Sam grimaced to read-with their genitals mutilated in addition to extensive bruises and other signs of abuse. The interesting thing, Sam saw after mapping the incidents, was that, until Amarillo, the killer had been moving west, in more or less a straight line along I-10. After Amarillo, they moved north and-kind of circled Missouri.
It wasn’t a spiral. But it was more than a little unsettling to connect the points and realize it was an almost perfect circle centered on Springfield.
Coincidence. Not that that stopped his brain from trying to insist Duane Scott was the catalyst.
Pushing away from the computers, Sam went back to the payphone and convinced eight police department adjuncts in eight separate states to fax him the files on the eight murdered boys. Then he staked out the fax.
No two reports had any of the same suspects listed.
All eight coroner reports listed blunt force trauma to the chest, broken bones in the arms and legs, probable taser burns on the torso and genitals, and multiple lacerations. Cause of death was cited as exsanguination.
His father didn’t believe in coincidence, even when it was. He checked it out, even when his youngest son didn't want him to.
There’d be no way to tell if the nuisance calls were the product of Duane Scott or the killer. Or even the work of someone else. Not without catching them in the act.
Tapping his fingers against the files, he wondered if Dean would have any ideas. And suddenly remembered.
Dean.
Jumping up before checking his watch-9:03-Sam hurriedly shoved his notes into his backpack. Dean got off work at nine, but his boss usually let him go a little early so he could get home by nine, instead. Their agreement (his and Dean’s, because Dad wasn’t around to have an opinion most of the time) was that Sam be home when Dean got there.
The only way Sam was beating his brother home tonight was with a time machine.
He slung his backpack over his shoulder, and almost ran over the leather-jacketed jock coming up the stairs. He threw a “sorry” over his shoulder, ignored the “Whatever. Punk,” tossed back at him, and forced his (newly reminded) aching legs back to a walk to cross the library lobby.
“Good night, Sam!” Tiffany called from the circulation desk. Sam managed a smile and a wave and, he was chagrined to realize, was not too distracted to flush at the attention. Damn hormones.
He knew she only liked him in the aww, he’s so cute way every girlfriend Dean had ever had had been nice to him, with maybe a little more personal consideration because she was a sweeter, more helpful sort of girl than Dean ever dated, but it still felt really, really good. And made it extra hard to talk to her without sounding like an idiot.
It was with relief that he pushed through the glass front doors into the cool night air and took a deep breath. The stairs, even only six deep, broken into two sets of three, were less welcome. Why hadn’t he gone out the back? It would’ve been shorter, dropping him on Hammons Parkway, and, as a bonus, would've avoided the steps.
There was a white panel van parked against the curb. It didn’t have a logo on the side, and Sam studied it as he took the stairs. The delivery vans that dropped off donations typically parked further back, by the rear entrance-the lack of stairs made it easier to wheel the boxes in on a dolly. Except for the fact that the rear doors were open, Sam might have thought the delivery guy had parked and run in to ask for directions.
Sam drifted that way, trying to get a look at what was inside the van.
“Hey, kid,” someone called behind him, “you dropped this.”
He turned-
Right into a fist. Pain flared bone-jarringly bright, then was swallowed by darkness.
He never felt his backpack slip off his shoulder or the guy gather him up and dump him in the back of the van.
#
Dean was whistling when he arrived at the apartment. Busboy wasn’t anything special, not even at a Bar and Grill, but tall, shapely, enthusiastically willing Jocelyn could make garbage man appealing if she rode around in the truck with him. So the fact she’d given him a blowjob on his break had certainly helped.
Then he’d opened the door to a black, lightless apartment. Trust Sam to ruin a perfectly good blowjob.
“Sam!” Flipping on the light switch, anyway, in case Sam actually was home and was just signaling the start of the apocalypse by going to bed before nine, Dean took a look around.
The kitchen table, which had been home to Sam’s books practically since they’d moved in, held the same ones that’d been there this morning, neatly stacked to the side. The kid’s duffel was on the couch. Of his backpack, there was no sign. Not in the living room, not in the kitchen, not in either bedroom. And no Sam.
“Dammit, Sam,” Dean groaned. Fetching the kid from the library was one thing when he had the Impala. He never minded driving the Impala. But the last thing he wanted to do after work, after busting his ass on his feet all day, especially when he could have been getting frisky with the lovely Jocelyn, was walk to the fricking campus library.
Slamming out of the apartment, Dean swung into an easy jog, the sooner to give Sam a piece of his mind.
It might not have been so bad if, on occasion, Dean had to fetch his baby brother from the Stake and Shake. Then Sam might have been there with a girl and he could have passed the walk back teasing him about the birds and the bees, but no. No, while in theory Sam could go to any one of about a dozen places after school, in practice he only ever went to the MSU library.
The kid was just lucky it wasn’t a multi-mile trip.
Dean paused just inside the doors. He didn’t usually have to go in-hadn’t had to since he’d helped Sam with some research for Dad the first week or so they’d been here, especially since the punishment for breaking curfew was no soccer for Sammy. But now he needed to, he didn’t know where he should look.
Sam seemed to be interested in everything. At one time or another, he’d come to Dean happily babbling about everything from why it rained to how the government worked to the lottery system to various representations of monsters and the supernatural in literature. He just couldn’t remember anything the shrimp had been especially curious about recently. Except soccer, and that had mostly been requests to kick a ball around with him or let him do the same with Derek.
Top to bottom, he finally decided. Grid search.
There were five people on computers on the first floor, three searching the shelves. The second floor had eight people sitting at tables, five on couches, and three searching the shelves (including two girls he’d have liked to stick around a little to get to know). The third floor boasted sixteen people on computers, between three tables, six searching the shelves, and two making out by the bathrooms. The bathrooms themselves, on all three floors, were empty.
Of those forty-eight people (which was about twice as many as Dean normally saw in any library, ever, just going to show that college kids were crazy), none of them were his geek brother.
Dean was officially ticked. And freaked. But he was going with ticked. If Sam had taken the back way over to Florence and up, just to miss him, he was kicking the kid’s scrawny ass.
“Excuse me,” someone said-someone female. He turned.
She was probably about eighteen, wore her hair in a ponytail, had her button-up buttoned all the way to the top and wore a fashionable scarf around her neck. Her skirt fell below her knees, her hands were folded primly in front of her, and there was nothing but friendly earnestness on her face. So . . . kind of what Dean imagined his brother would look like as a girl. Not that he ever imagined what his brother would look like as a girl.
“I couldn’t help but notice you look upset. Is there something I can help you with?”
Dean could think of a few things, but bitchy little brothers came first. He huffed. “Not unless you can tell me where my brother is. He was supposed to meet me outside.”
She smiled sweetly, and shifted to stand squarely in front of him. “I might be able to. Could you describe him for me?”
“Yeah, sure.” His gaze flickered past her, to where he needed to be so he could keep looking for Sam, checking out the exits in case he was just walking out and Dean had somehow missed him. “He’s not a student here or anything, short, shaggy hair-”
“-darling smile, blue backpack?”
So not what he’d been going to say, but-He blinked.
“His name’s Sam. Right?”
“Yeah.” And Sam had been totally holding out on him, the little rat.
She nodded and smiling brightly, obviously pleased. “He left a little after nine. About nine-oh-five?”
“Alone?”
Her head bobbed again. “Seemed like he was in a hurry.”
He’d better have been, Dean thought, pro forma,not Dean to be Dean.
“It’s not time for you to wake up yet, kid,” someone-not Dean-said, then a cloth closed over his nose and mouth.
Bad.
Panic lapped sluggishly at the back of his mind, wrenched his eyes open. But the face hovering over his was blurry, he couldn't make his eyes focus, and sleep slowly dragged his eyelids back down.
He couldn't breathe, though, and that was bad. Turning his head didn't help--the cloth covering his nose and mouth moved with him. Then an arm slid under his neck, lifted him and held his head steady, but he still couldn't breathe.
His arms were heavy, but he struggled to lift them, to push at the hand over his face. His finger caught on cloth, rouch against his fingerpads, but slipped away again without moving them.
His lungs felt heavy, laboring against something heavier than air, something that smelled sweet and strong and burned at his eyes, made his head swim, made his stomach flip nauseatingly.
“That’s it,” Not Dean crooned.
“No,” Sam said, thought he said, wanted to say, tried to say. “Don’t. Dean. . . .” His eyes rolled up into his head and he couldn’t get them back out.
“Don’t fight it,” he heard, or thought he heard. The Not Dean voice was swirling away, or he was, and even as his body sank, feeling lead-weighted and heavy, his consciousness floated up and up and
Shh. . . .
#
Dean couldn't look at the crime scene photos. Not all the victims had floppy brown hair or hazel eyes (none of them had Sammy's eyes), but most of them had similar builds and it wasn't hard-was frighteningly easy, in fact-to put Sammy in their place, limp and discarded and still, skin discolored and broken and painful-looking. Gone.
His blood thrummed through his veins, itching with the need to move, to do something-to feel like he was doing something, because none of this was helping. No one person appeared on any two suspect lists. The vics had all been snatched from public places, places they were to supposed to be, which meant the creep was stalking them, but that didn't help Dean figure out where he would take Sam after.
How had he not noticed some creep perving on his baby brother?
A couple witnesses reported seeing a white panel van, but they didn't notice the make or model or license plate, claimed there weren't any logos or markings on the van itself, and couldn't say where it had come from or when it had left, nevermind where it had gone.
Not that Dean had the manpower or resources to track a vehicle.
No, if he was going to find Sam (before it was too late had damn well better be understood), it wasn't going to be by identifying the guy, tracking him. He needed to anticipate him.
Though trust his baby brother to sniff out a serial killer no one else had noticed yet.
He shoved the witness statements out of the way, not at all bothered when they collided with the police reports and took out several of the crime scene photos with them. Sam would've bitched about the papers on the floor-Sam's new favorite thing was bitching about everything-but Sam wasn't here. Dean pulled the map closer, clenched his jaw, and didn't pay them any attention.
There was a second, penciled circle partially overlapping the first. It only took a moment's study to figure out what his brother had done: after connecting the points, he'd used a protractor to scribe a perfect circle, Springfield at the center. Dean traced it with a finger. Either their killer was spatially challenged, which-considering how close he'd gotten otherwise-Dean was disinclined to believe, or he had a different reason for choosing those particular locations. Dean could work with that.
The research took too long. The research always took too long, bleeding away seconds he could be using to do something useful, like save his brother. The only saving grace, because there was one, was that he had his answer at the end of it. Or part of it. He knew where to find the rest.
Pulling out his phone, the second time he’d done so since Sam had gone missing, he dialed the first real estate agent he found in the phonebook. "Yeah, hey, I know it's late, but I need to know if there are any abandoned farms in the area."
#