Chapter Text
Curled into a ball, Sam listened impatiently to the voices that echoed above him.
They had stumbled onto a case up by the Great Lakes one morning that had both of their spidey senses tingling. A man was found dead in his home while his wife was out. All doors locked, the alarm system armed and fully functional. The oddest part was his heart had stopped without warning (he was only 40). In the subsequent autopsy that had been run on the body, the doctors had found, of all things, a cupid’s arrow pin in his heart.
Like it had simply materialized there by magic.
Needless to say, the authorities were baffled. Dean was betting on a witch, and Sam wasn’t about to bet against him.
Which was why he was curled up into a ball, safely tucked in Dean’s hand and waiting for an opportunity to get out and search for the hexbag while Dean smooth-talked his way into the house.
He couldn’t help but squirm a little in place, trying to find a comfortable position as Dean walked into the house at last. The huge fingers cupped around his body flexed open a little at his struggles, giving him space.
Even as he gratefully shifted to a more comfortable position in the increasingly hot and enclosed area, one of the fingers he was leaning against twitched in what he recognized as Morse Code.
Bitch.
Smirking, Sam pounded out his own shorthand into the fingers with sharp punches, telling Dean off.
Jerk.
Dean may have been a little slower to pick up Morse Code than Sam, but they were both able to use it fluently now, giving them a huge leg up in cases where Sam had to stay out of sight. Once Dean had picked it up, he’d excitedly delved into a shorthand code they could use for quick communications, and, of course, being a smartass even with gestures.
Sam gave the finger a kick for good measure and settled back down to listen to the humans above talk.
"Has your husband been acting... differently the last few weeks?" Dean asked the woman once introductions were over. He had to hide the grin on his face from Sam's impatient squirms and occasional kicks that became words when he was paying attention. It was getting easier to recognize the words with only half a mind, and eventually Dean wanted to know by instinct what Sam was saying in there.
The woman shook her head. "No, not at all." Her lip trembled. "He was just..."
The watering eyes were Dean's cue. He leaned forward to comfort her, and slipped his hand out of his pocket after a quick tap of warning for Sam. The kid was primed and ready, and the second Dean casually swung his arm close to the ground, Sam was running.
Their lives were weird.
As Sam ran to get under cover, Dean expertly kept the woman from noticing with a warm smile and a touch against her shoulder. "Tissue?" he asked, plucking one from the coffee table.
She nodded numbly, taking it without question and blowing her nose.
"It feels like he was here just yesterday..." she mumbled. "It hasn't really sunk in yet. And the autopsy..."
Dean nodded. This was what he'd been waiting for. "Yeah...?" he prompted her, twirling a finger and trying to not look eager.
"It came back so strange! " she blurted. "Some story about finding something in his heart! " she turned appealing eyes to Dean. "How can something like that even happen?! "
During the onslaught of words, Sam slipped around the entrance to the kitchen.
The kitchen was as standard a kitchen as Sam had ever seen.
The center of the room was dominated by a large island. He could see several stools sitting on the side facing the door, stretching far over his head. The sheer height of the kitchen island would be a stretch if he needed to climb, but with it suspended in the air, far from any wall, Sam had no interest. It would be putting himself out in the open for all to see.
As he came around the counter, dashing to search out an entrance to the walls, he noticed that the stove was new. Often in older homes, the appliances would be old and worn like the rest of the house. Instead, the tiles under his boots shone white and the wood of the counters was unscuffed. There was very little sign of wear or use.
Gleaming, immaculate. Sam found it very odd. There was no sign of this family having a large amount of wealth, so he didn’t know where they would have come by the money needed for renovations like this. Especially not so recent.
Sound came from the other room. Sound that was getting closer. Sam dashed behind the island the second before the woman and Dean entered the room, their footsteps rumbling beneath Sam’s feet even over the tile flooring.
There was a small indent near the bottom of the counter that Sam hugged close to. It wasn’t wide enough to fully hide under, but it gave him a small bit of cover from the humans. One friendly, one unknown. Sam couldn’t predict how the woman Dean was interviewing would react to him.
The two giants continued talking overhead, but Sam was unable to concentrate enough on what Dean was saying to hear where they were with the case so far. All of this would be pointless if he couldn’t get into the walls and start searching for that hexbag!
When the woman’s sharp heels walked around the counter closer to the stove, Sam edged around the corner, to the side where Dean was standing. Biting his lip, Sam sent Dean a brief, pleading look to see if he had spotted the smaller man’s predicament.
Dean’s senses were as sharp as ever, and Sam felt the touch of a familiar gaze on his back. When he glanced at Dean, he saw his older brother was lifting his head to meet the woman’s eyes after looking Sam’s way, trying to disguise the movement as an idle gesture.
“Can you show me where he was?” Dean asked, a smooth recovery.
Sam’s bunched shoulders relaxed as he heard the woman answer in an affirmative. The click of her heels headed in a direction away from the island Sam was using as cover, and after a moment where he felt Dean’s gaze once more, the well-worn boots followed. Each step rumbled under Sam’s feet, plodding after the more refined sound of the woman’s heels hitting the floor.
With them both out of the kitchen, and Dean ready to keep her away to give him time, Sam knew his chance had come. He dashed over to the walls, starting to scan the area to find any weakness.
Though a few places showed signs of something else living in the home with the humans, Sam doubted it was borrowers. His people wouldn’t leave the imprint of teeth gnawing on an upturned corner of wallpaper, as though testing it for food before giving up on the tasteless surface.
Rats were possible, so Sam put a hand on the hilt of his knife, reassured by the familiar wooden surface. The neighborhood they were in seemed too upscale for cockroaches, but they were a distant possibility. Mice were more likely but also fairly harmless, keeping to themselves. He doubted ants would make it this far into a pristine human home, though again, nothing was impossible.
Look at me, worrying about normal dangers, Sam thought in amusement. It felt like years since he’d concerned himself with such things. Having Dean around was making him soft in more than one way. His human brother wouldn’t be concerned about such dangers the same way as Sam. At most, such things would be mild inconveniences instead of possible threats.
The entrance Sam finally did find was tucked under the sink, nearly invisible with the pipes hanging down from the countertop ceiling above. He briefly paused, stabbing the mousetrap set next to the opening with an extra paperclip to set it off with a snap! Once that was taken care of, there was enough space between the pipes and the walls for Sam to slip in, vanishing into the walls as though he had never existed.
Darkness was a comfort. Like greeting a long-lost friend, Sam allowed himself a moment to bask in the enclosed, thick air. Closing his eyes to blink away the last of the glare from the sunny room he’d left behind, he opened them and was able to see. Sam’s eyes had larger pupils now, adjusted for life inside the walls and helping him adapt to his new environment.
The curse had given him more than one advantage over a human when it came to places like this.
Stepping inside, Sam was cautious with where he placed his boots. As he’d discovered, there were other inhabitants in these walls. Droppings that resembled raisins were clumped near the entrance, and he had to pick his way over, avoiding getting any of it on his boots. If Dean found out he was tracking mouse poop into his hands ( or even worse-- the Impala), he’d never hear the end of it.
The density of droppings fell as he gained some distance from the entrance, and Sam was able to quicken his pace. He could hear the sound of the woman and Dean talking in the distance, both of them in the room where the man of the house had died. If Sam recalled correctly, it had been in the study. He would have to search the walls of that room, which meant he had to get there, first.
Easier said than done. Sam took the direction of the walls that aimed towards Dean’s voice, as best he could tell, and set out.
After a short time of walking, Sam heard Dean and the woman leaving the room and walking past his place in the walls. He estimated that he must be nearly to his destination, based on how long he felt the footsteps coming his direction, before passing him and going to the kitchen again. From there, all he would need to do was concern himself with investigating the walls as fully as possible, and Dean would stall as much as possible.
The sound of scratching came from behind Sam, and he whirled around, every instinct on edge. He assumed there were mice here, but all it would take to stop him in his tracks was one big rat having a bad day, and he wasn’t going to be caught off guard.
There was nothing there, in the darkness behind him.
Sam waited a long moment, his breaths coming quick and short as he breathed in the stifled air of the walls. Every sense was turned towards possible threats, listening for anything out of place. Now, the rumble of the human voices a room over was only a distraction, keeping him from being able to make out ever detail in the walls.
When nothing more happened, a minute after freezing, Sam allowed himself to partially relax, and return to his journey.
His knife remained clenched in hand.
For a time, his journey continued on eventlessly, but it wasn’t meant to last.
The second time the sound came, it was accompanied by snuffles, and Sam froze. This time, he didn’t whirl around for fear of startling away whatever it was that was following him. Each heartbeat felt like an age of the sun as he waited, pounding in his ears as he strained to make out what it could be.
What he felt wasn’t the sharp bite of needle-thin teeth against his neck, but the gentle brush of a whisker against his empty hand. Sam’s shoulders nearly sagged as he realized just who had found him, and a smile found its way to his face.
Spreading his fingers to allow them to catch his scent, Sam turned around to find several hesitant mice following in his footsteps. The one that had come the closest squeaked at the others, and then they all surged to him, surrounding him in a sea of fur.