Sounds just like something he would do! Drive the knife in a little deeper on his year-old prank, remind Sherlock that nothing he did could protect his shoes from the wrath of Dean!
There’s always a risk with Oscar prompts that I’ll end up thinking about Brothers Together Oscar. The little sweetie needs to be checked up on from time to time.
Oscar wished humans didn’t come to his motel to have their fights, but he was used to it by now. The loud, sharp sound of voices so much more powerful than his wavered in the stale air within the walls and the air ducts. Raw emotion that could overwhelm him like a tide ensured that he knew exactly where they were just from the sheer volume. Most of the time, it ended with a door slamming.
He sighed as he wandered his route through the motel. In the vents and the walls, under the floorboards and above the ceiling, Oscar had a routine that he kept to every day. Knowing the schedule and when to nab a stray trinket or dropped piece of food was his entire livelihood.
Today was a good day as far as that was concerned. His bag was comfortably heavy with the spoils of his search for food, and there was even a raisin he was looking forward to eating later. He’d also found a half-emptied packet of tissues underneath a dresser. He carried that under one arm, unsure of what he’d even use it for but glad for the find.
It just figured that a lover’s quarrel would erupt while he was on his way home.
Their voices were raised when he was still in the ceiling of the next room, picking his way over pipes and ceiling tiles or balancing on support boards. They crescendoed as he wriggled into an opening in an air duct, one of his shortcuts on the way home. The usual Why would you do this? and That’s not what I mean! reverberated through his cloth-wrapped feet.
He paused while sidling past the vent opening into their room. The ceiling vent gave him a view of the table below, and the foot of one of the beds. From the looks of things, a woman sat there while a man paced back and forth.
“What the hell were you thinking?!” the man thundered, and Oscar flinched. For a moment, he froze as fear of that voice crept over him. He couldn’t help it.
“Don’t talk to me like that! Don’t! You never just listen to me, you never do!” the woman wailed back. Her voice was closer to breaking. The shrillness hurt Oscar’s ears.
“Listen, honey, I’m sorry, I really am, but you’re the one who keeps screwing up!” the man snapped back.
Oscar frowned. Y’know, that’s not what an apology sounds like … While the man continued berating the woman, he could swear she started to sob quietly. The raised voice had finally beaten down her defenses.
Oscar couldn’t blame her.
He realized that he’d lingered too long when the man finally stormed to the door of the motel. Light and air flooded in from outside for a moment, and then the door slammed so hard that Oscar almost lost his footing.
He was left stunned while the woman below wept.
Oscar shifted his feet. He should be going. He never liked being privy to what the humans thought were private conversations. Even if they yelled them for anyone to hear, it wasn’t his argument to weigh in on. It wasn’t even his world.
He crossed the vent at last, but then paused when he heard a forlorn, shaky sigh from below. From the new angle, he could see the woman sitting at the edge of the bed, face buried in her hands. She sniffled, and Oscar sighed. The poor girl had been left on her own. Maybe not for good, like Oscar had, but he knew that isolating feeling. Familiar surroundings became warped and inescapable.
He was going through the motions before he could stop to consider it. The packet of tissues, thanks to being half full, fit through the slats of the vent. The plastic rustled so loudly in his ears, and he heard a gasp below as it emerged on the other side.
Once it was pushed enough through to fall to the table below, Oscar turned and bolted. He couldn’t wait around to see how the woman reacted to the sudden appearance of something to dry her eyes. It was too risky. If she found him, he could be trapped.
But she needed something to dry her eyes more than Oscar did. He had his food from the day, and that was the important part.
“Dean! Wait!” Sam shouted. He pointed down next to the leg of the dresser. “That should work.”
That happened to be a peeling piece of the old wallpaper that covered the walls of the room. Under the curling corner at the bottom, instead of drywall, there was a blackness that almost seemed darker than night.
It does sound adorable, but I have a few ideas of my own for Brothers Saved! This wouldn’t fit into my plans. Sam’s fight with John is already planned out, and it’s not going to all go down the same way this time because the circumstances are changed. Sam’s not fighting for his independence this time, he’s fighting for Dean’s. The older brother he looks up to, the person who taught him about hunting long before John considered it.
Domestic AUs are not my cup of tea. I encourage if anyone wants to write this out to go for it, but I’m here for action, adventure, horror, suspense. Feels and stress and angst. @neonthebright could tell you how antsy I get when the fluff scenes start to go on for chapters, because I’m itching to get back to the action. So this kind of thing will be in short supply over here.
We even have ideas thought up for Brothers Saved in multiple AUs, so it may get split into different AUs in the future.
As it is, I have given a lot of thought to Sam, Dean and John’s relationship, for better or worse, and as this probably won’t be finished for posting for some time, I’ll give you a peek:
Sam glared at John, breathing hard. He’d come home this afternoon from the store to find John back without warning from a case, talking fast and explaining exactly what he needed from Sam, where they needed to go, and how important it was that they get ready and stop dragging your damn heels.
All this was well and fine, about what the eighteen-year-old expected. Never mind that Sam was a few weeks from graduation, and they needed to study for an exam. Dean would want in on a hunt anytime he got the chance.
And then the real fight began.
John shot back that Dean needed to stay behind. He would just hold them back at his size. He went so far as to say he’d already explained such to Dean, they had no use for his ‘attempts to act normal’ getting in the way of a hunt.
“I can’t believe you said that to him!”
“Of course I said it to him! Someone has to tell him these things!”
“Dean knows what he’s doing,” Sam growled out. “You would know that if you ever bothered with him!” His voice rose higher with each word until he was shouting.
John was right in his face, spitting back. By all rights, they should have come to blows. “He needs to respect his limitations, Sam! All it takes is one second with your guard down, and he’ll be dead! ”
By the time he saw light again, Oscar’s tears had stopped once more. The human opened his hand and let Oscar roll harshly onto a new surface, where he lay exhausted for an extra second. The metal was cool to the touch.
“Just a mark for this one,” the gruff human announced. That led Oscar to notice the other human in the room.
“Got it,” they said. It was a much meeker human, but they were no less terrifying. Oscar could only see their back so far as they fiddled with something opposite where he lay. He brushed at his eyes with the heel of his hand. Even curiosity was a foreign emotion now. All he knew was fear and resignation.
The room was fairly small, by human standards. Oscar sat on a metal workbench that took up most of one wall. The man who’d carried him in leaned against the frame of an archway leading out one way, a bored look on his face. Another archway led out directly across the room, a trek of several minutes for Oscar but barely two strides for a human.
He didn’t have his climbing hook or his bag, not since Noriko took it away. Oscar didn’t even entertain the notion of trying to climb down. He had nowhere to go.
There was a lamp illuminating where he sat, but Oscar frowned at the human who had his back turned, working away at something on another workbench. There was a faint orange glow over there.
When they turned, they held a long metal rod in one gloved hand. Oscar’s eyes widened and he tried to scoot backwards on the table as the other human’s eyes fell on him. It only took them a few steps to saunter over, smirking down at him.
“Lord, he’s a little one. He’ll barely fit,” they mused. The human’s free hand left their side and descended towards Oscar’s cowering form, and he squeaked in terror. The hand might have blocked the sight of the tool they held in their other hand, but it couldn’t erase the memory of the heat haze coming off of it.
“N-no, please!” Oscar begged, but a finger and thumb pinched around him. He pushed at them, but they turned him over as if he hadn’t moved at all. He squirmed and kicked the best he could, but he was no match.
The human had done this before. Their hand settled over him, their heavy thumb pressing his legs down into the cold metal table. Other fingertips pinned his upper arms down, and his elbows didn’t have a good angle to try and push them away. Oscar’s face was pressed into the table and he could only see the human out of the corner of his eye. A fingertip shoved the hem of his shirt up and the cold air chilled his back like a hundred little needles.
There was a movement of glowing red in the corner of his eye. Warmth replaced the cold.
And then agonizing heat and pain replaced everything. Oscar screamed.
His voice was thready and broken, and he swore his skin sizzled as that hot metal made contact. His mind, in a panic, could only focus on the pain and the contact of the metal on his skin. It didn’t even last a second, and yet he felt like several minutes went by before there was nothing touching him but the table beneath him.
“What the hell?” the gruff human said. Oscar didn’t even flinch. He lay there, suddenly more exhausted than he’d ever been in his life, with his head pounding and his back stinging in the open air.
“I … The rod cooled off,” the smaller human stammered. Their voice was muffled by the throb of pain in Oscar’s head and on his back. “Must … must not have heated it up enough.”
“Well, now his mark’ll be uneven unless you’re more careful,“ the gruff human warned. “We can just hope Carson don’t notice. Just take care of it.”
“Right,” the other human said.
Oscar could hear more metal clattering behind him. He wanted to push himself up and at least try to crawl to safety. Instead, his muscles did nothing but quiver after all the strain. He blinked a few tears away and they fell onto the table. Even hearing those footsteps cross back toward him couldn’t convince his body to run.
The hand returned, pinning him down like before. Oscar finally struggled, but he was even weaker than before. This time, when the radiant heat reached him, it was like it clawed right into the first burn before the red-hot metal actually touched him. His scream pitched upwards. It was too much.
Another eternity with that hot metal against his skin went by. Then, just as the human removed it and cool air swarmed over it, Oscar lost consciousness again.
Visiting the village of Wellwood had become something Jacob looked forward to with every opportunity that arose. Long weekends off school or extra time off from his odd jobs almost guaranteed he would make the drive back to the forest that no one else seemed to realized contained a secret. Far beyond the campgrounds and the fence, Jacob made his way towards the idyllic village tucked away in the heart of the woods.
Out there surrounded by the green and gold of the canopy and the earthy tones of the tree trunks and the ground under his boots, Jacob felt the stress falling away. Out here, the most he had to worry about was stepping on slick mud and losing his footing.
You BREAK the rules, Bowman, not just bend them! a voice piped up in his memory, sweet and colored with a laugh. Rischa, his young cousin, would surely scold him for a week once he got out of this one.
Brothers Apart 