Work Text:
Sam: When I told Dad I was scared of the thing in my closet, he gave me a .45.
Dean: Well what was he supposed to do?
Sam: I was 9-years-old! He was supposed to say 'Don’t be afraid of the dark.'
(Supernatural S1E1)
--*--
There’s something in his closet.
Ordinarily just the thought of believing something so – so - babyish as that would set Sam’s teeth on edge. He’s the shortest – smallest- youngest – scrawniest in practically every aspect of his life. Nobody cares what he has to say, no one listens to him about anything. He’s just that strange new kid in the Salvation Army clothes (second hand from Dean at that). Or Dean Winchester’s kid brother who somehow missed the cool gene along with the height. He’s pretty used to it. Not like it’s any better at home, if Dad’s not there ignoring Sam’s very existence with a consolatory pat on the shoulder or ruffle of his hair aren’t you the cutest, now sit down and let me talk to your brother then Dean’s right there bossing him around like he’s some little know nothing baby.
That’s just the way it is no matter how much he tries to fight it. Which doesn’t mean he has to give them ammunition and actually act like the baby everybody thinks he is. In fact, the last year he’s pretty much done everything in his power to make sure he’s the exact opposite.
He does his homework even when doesn’t have homework because they’re moving again. He brushes his teeth. He picks out his own clothes. He walks himself home from school (with Dean tagging along behind nonchalantly like the world’s youngest secret force bodyguard). Dad’s never cared about bedtimes unless it was go to bed I’m in the middle of something and you’re distracting me or if it’s Dean and he and Dad are heading out to do something adult and mysterious and without Sam so Sam gave himself a bedtime. And he follows it. He’s responsible, he’s dependable, he’s practically grown up. He’s freakin’ more mature than Dean like all the time.
So, yes, ordinarily he’d sooner wet himself in public (while doing the hokey pokey during lunch period) than let such a classically little kid thought exist in the same universe as him.
Except. There’s something in his closet. He thinks it’s a monster. And it’s been almost a year since he’s known they’re real.
Monsters that is. Not closets.
It comes out after the house gets silent. Slowly. In the dim glow of light from the half-open bathroom door, Sam can make out fur. Everywhere. Neon orange like that one time Dad had a job in Nevada, just outside of Las Vegas and him and Dean could see the bright blinding Vegas lights from their little one room trailer in that horrible orange even when their eyes were squeezed shut.
Also?
He’s pretty sure…
He’s pretty sure it’s dressed as a clown.
Sam can’t be positive about that though, it might just be the lighting and the fact clowns have heretofore been just about the scariest things he could fathom. Which for the record is his preschool teacher Ms. Candice’s fault – who takes a classroom full of four year olds on a field trip to Cirque du Soleil anyway?
Every night since they moved into this stupid house as soon as everyone’s asleep (Sam knows this for a fact because the first two nights Dad didn’t sleep at all and it didn’t come) creaaaaaak goes the door to his closet and out it comes, toe nails scraping against hardwood, its shadow dancing along the walls.
Sam doesn’t scream. He doesn’t cry. He gets out of his bed and scuttles down the hall where Dean’s sleeping and climbs in with his brother.
Dean’s warm and there and doesn’t ask any questions just scoots over enough for Sam not to fall out and then promptly drops back off to sleep.
The monster never follows. Every night for the last five nights. It’s getting embarrassing.
Especially since this is the first time in Sam’s life that he can ever remember having his own room. Normally it’s all three of them – him and Dean and Dad - sharing a motel room with Dad in the bed closest to the door and him and Dean bunked up in the other, or it’s Dad with a room all to himself even though he’ll probably hardly use it that’s off limits to Sam (but not Dean and no that doesn’t make Sam bitter at all thankyou– it’s not like Dean’s all that much older than him anyway) in some tiny rental and Dean and Sam splitting the one other bedroom like they always do. This time though there’re staying in town for the rest of the school year and Dad’s got them more space ‘cause Dean’s suddenly all I’m thirteen years old, Dad, practically a man, I can’t keep sharing with Sammy! And for once Dad didn’t argue three bedrooms were a waste of money.
Anyway, point is, it’s unfortunate there’s a monster in his closet for many reasons. Not the least of which the fact it might eat him. But heading the pack? The fact he’s going to have to tell somebody.
--*--
Sam wakes safe and uneaten in Dean’s empty bed, all the covers wrapped around him like usual. He yawns big and pads out to the kitchen still in his pajamas. The house is pretty quiet, Dad’s already left for his mystery job that Sam’s still supposed to pretend he thinks is sales.
Dean starts in immediately, one eyebrow raised and his mouth doing that knowing smirk thing Sam’s learned to ignore.
“So, Sammy, strange thing happened. I woke up an icicle. Again. When I’d gone to sleep perfectly toasty and warm in my own bed. Alone, I should mention. Except not so very alone this morning. Still sticking with ‘whoops looks like I’ve been sleepwalking, Dean.’?”
“Yeah. I guess it’s just the stress of being in an unfamiliar place,” Sam mutters over his bowl of trunk and travel-worn Lucky Charms. There’re not so magically delicious three months old but you wouldn’t know it from how Dean’s shoveling them down. They’ve got to stop transporting their food from place to place like this. Would it kill them to go to a local grocery store while it’s still local and not as an afterthought while on their way across the country?
With a clank Sam drops his spoon decidedly. Purplish milk splashes onto the table.
“Okay. No. I’m not sleep walking,” he confesses.
“Oh?” The smirk’s still there. The stupid jerk couldn’t even pretend like he’s surprised.
“No. There’s this…I mean, I think there’s…” Sam feels all his nearly a pre-teen cred just evaporating in front of his eyes but it’s this or getting eaten. “There’s a monster dressed as a clown in my closet and it keeps coming out and I think it wants to eat me although, of course, I’ve never stuck around long enough to be positive but what else it could possibly want I can’t fathom so I’m thinking eat me – Why else would it be dressed as a CLOWN—“
Dean’s face does a complicated twist of expressions that Sam knows means concern is fighting an equally intense conflicting desire to either mock him about still being scared of clowns or for using the word ‘fathom’ in a sentence.
Concern wins out. It always does. Sam’s big brother is a jerk but he’s still Sam’s big brother, after all.
Relief is instantaneous. Well, up until Dean says: “We’re telling Dad.”
Christ. He should have just let it eat him.
--*--
Dad’s response, of course, freakin’ of course, is to give him a .45 and then they’re moving again. So much for staying for the full school year. Dean teaches him how to shoot it as punishment for spilling Dad’s secret in the first place. Which again, so not bitter that Dean got to know and Sam had to go snooping. Dean’s too enthusiastic about the teaching for Sam to believe he really thinks it’s a punishment. And Dad’s too smug-proud when Dean’s correcting Sam’s stance for the millionth time for Sam to believe that Dad believes that it’s actually a punishment.
Four towns over (close enough for Dad to disappear and finish up whatever job he’d been working on in the first place but far enough away whatever was in Sam’s closet – that Dad never found – was unlikely to catch up to them) with the motel door safely locked and the steady snores of his brother loud in his ears…Sam can’t help but wonder if it was all his imagination.
There’s a creak of a door and Sam’s heart is slamming in his throat and he’s scrambling out of the bed in a panic, tears stinging in his eyes, white-noise screaming his ears deaf
It’s back.
It’s back, oh God it’s back and it’s going to rip his flesh from his body and –
An arm wraps around his waist and hauls him back into bed.
“It’s okay, Sammy. It’s just the neighbors,” is breathed into his ear and slices through his terror. “I’m right here, go to sleep.”
Sam is almost a pre-teen, he’s been responsible and mature and all grown up for almost a year. He won’t admit it but he snuggles safe in his brother’s arms and does as he’s told.
--*--
Monsters Inc is shutting down for the night, quotas met and paperwork turned in. George Sanderson is scrubbing white paint out of his fur absently and stashing the giant red rubber nose and yellow curly wig in his locker, giant oversized clown shoes with the toe missing so his claws can stretch comfortably still on his feet. Another fruitless night.
His assistant, Charlie, is already stripped down and ready to leave but lingers in the doorway waiting on him. “Heya, George. Why so glum? You’ll get him next time.”
George nods dejectedly. “I know. Every monster has that one kid, I know. It’s just nine year old boy, scared of clowns and the dark. How hard is that? That’s a classic right there.”
He shoves his locker door shut and flicks off the light as he leaves, Charlie right behind him.
“There are extenuating circumstances. No one blames you for that. You should see the monster that got Dean Winchester back in ’89, I don’t think his horns have ever grown back in right.”
“From the stress?”
“From the bullet holes.”
George shakes his head. “What is the world coming to these days?”
“Lot more dangerous out there than our fathers' time, that’s for sure.”
George sighs and remembers saner times when stinging glow urchins were his only problem. Those were the days.
Fin