Timeline: A year before the first story will start
“See? What’d I tell ya? It’s perfect.”
Sam frowned, glancing from side to side in the newly-discovered ‘room’ they’d taken for themselves in the wall of one of the flats on Baker Street. It was cozy and dark, some scattered beams of light slipping through cracks in the wall. Sam brushed a hand against that wall, peering out into the flat beyond.
None of the humans that called 221B Baker Street their home were around at the moment, leaving the brothers on their own to check things out. And there was plenty to see.
So many rumors dogged this place that they’d nearly heeded their adopted family’s advice and gone elsewhere. But it was so tempting.
For two brothers, raised to make a difference, the last place they’d want to end up at was a dead end, unable to help anyone. Hell, unable to help themselves.
Dean had heard of the Consulting Detective and his doctor of a flatmate, two men who did what they wanted to do– helping others, whether they saw it that way or not.
It was an irresistible temptation, and once Dean had looked in on the events at the flat, his mind was made up. The chance to hear about cases? Solving murders? Sign him up, he’d take it. Though it might not be hunting monsters with his dad the way he’d thought he’d be doing years back before his curse, it would do.
“I suppose,” Sam said slowly, his voice lowered so any possible humans in the area would never be able to hear him. “It’s not the worst…”
Dean almost glowed at the assessment and jumped straight into his excited rambling, already prepared to make his case.
“If you check out over here, the wall’s nice and weak. We’ll be able to make a door just like at our old place. And back here,” Dean gestured, dragging Sam along with him, “there’s a straight shot to the kitchen counter. Whatever else they keep in there, they have to put food in the cabinets eventually, and that means we’ll be able to snitch it.” He waved over his head. “Old walls, plenty of passages and weak spots, lots of clutter in the main flat so anything we take goes unnoticed…”
Dean paused, and looked at Sam. “It’s perfect,” he reiterated hopefully.
Sam’s mouth thinned to a line as he considered it. “What about the ‘experiments?’ ” he asked quietly.
Dean’s eyes shot towards the kitchen with a slight wince. They both knew all about Sherlock Holmes and his ‘experiments.’ Far too much. Rumors abounded in the walls about the odd body parts Sherlock kept around, even going so far as to keep them in the fridge or microwave. It was right out of a horror movie, if the man got his hands on any people like that.
“We’re not gonna get caught,” Dean affirmed. “We’re some of the best around, and you know it. With your sense and my knack… we can make this work.”
Sam was caught off guard by the sudden pleading in Dean’s eyes. It wasn’t often that Dean tried turning his own puppy eyes on his younger brother, since they rarely worked so well but this time…
Timeline: After moving into 221B Baker Street and before the first story
Sam ran along the tabletop, his pulse thudding in his ears as he went.
Another day, another supply run.
Of course, this time was a little different. With Dean’s odd ability, they’d been able to track down some pencil lead for Sam to use to write with, always a hard-to-find commodity even here, in a flat with belongings strewn haphazardly about and a vast treasure trove of supplies for people Sam and Dean’s size.
It was a bit of a risk, with the humans still in the building, but Sam didn’t want to risk the snapped lead vanishing when one of them cleaned up. He’d been able to find enough scraps of paper to form a haphazard journal, but needed something to write with. His old bit of lead was nearly ground to dust.
Two shards of the tip of a pencil were nestled in his leather satchel, bouncing against his side as he ran. Sam made it to the edge of the table, peering down at the floor to see where Dean was, waiting for him to get down. They couldn’t afford them both out in such an exposed place, so Dean, the weaker climber, stayed on the ground.
Instead of using his hook and thread to climb with, Sam took advantage of the chair that was leaning against the edge of the table. A black jacket was draped overtop the chair, and offered Sam more than enough handholds to get himself to the floor. He cautiously began to pick his way down the fabric, occasionally glancing at his surroundings.
Just then, the stairs between the flat and the one upstairs creaked as John descended from his room, tugging on a jumper as he went. He needed to go to the bank, run to town for a few things, and was considering a stop at the pub later that night for a well-needed drink.
And with Sherlock shut in the bathroom preoccupied with his bioluminescent bacteria cultures, without a case on, John had a rare opportunity to slip away.
John was straightening his short, sandy hair, mussed by his jumper, as he entered the main area of the flat.
Sam stiffened, and Dean didn’t need his signal to know it was time to dive for cover. The older Winchester vanished behind one of the sturdy table legs as the floor shook under his boots, unable to do anything to help Sam out without taking an even greater risk of John spotting them.
With his knack tingling a sharp warning, Sam looked up at the table. It was too far up for him to risk climbing back up and searching for a hiding spot. The floor was too far down to reach in time if John decided to come into the kitchen.
Which left him one option.
Sam let go of the fabric he was clinging too, plummeting straight down into the dark folds of the pocket which yawned open beneath his feet.
John paused at the door when he noticed his coat wasn’t on its usual hook. It wasn’t on his claimed armchair in the living room either, and that’s when he remembered he’d left it in the kitchen. With a sigh, he rounded the corner and approached the table, never spotting the small shadow that ducked behind a table leg, only leaning out slightly to keep an eye on him.
He bent to retrieve his gloves from the pocket first, without even the slightest suspicion that there was someone inside, dodging fingers longer than he was tall.
Which, from the second John’s hand entered the pocket, Sam was.
His first warning was the cold shock that ran down his back from his knack. Sam’s eyes widened in the darkness as he saw a shadow fall over the light that leaked in from the kitchen. Hide. He had to hide better.
In the pocket with him was two black gloves, providing the cushioning for his landing. Without them in the way, Sam would have tumbled all the way to the bottom of the pocket. With John so close, that’s what Sam needed. More distance.
Squirming around the gloves, Sam put them between him and the opening of the pocket. Long fingers reached in, groping around for the gloves that were stuffed inside for safekeeping. Sam spotted them, and his breathing sped up.
Hands!
Memories of his first week cursed came flooding back, and his desperation to escape John’s grasp only grew. Sam twisted around, kicking the gloves further up in the pocket interior while he slid all the way to the bottom. His first experience with hands like that, his shoulder was dislocated. The last thing he wanted to do was relive that, and it was all made worse by the knowledge that John was a doctor, more than qualified to dissect either brother if he got them into his hands. All the experiments around the flat always drove that truth home to them when they were out.
Finding the gloves right away, John’s fingers dove straight down to achieve a secure grip on them. A knuckle brushed against Sam’s jacket, the contact going unnoticed by the human as something else caught his eye.
“Dammit, Sherlock…” muttered the doctor, straightening and placing the gloves on the table.
“I said, keep your cultures off my things!” John strode toward Sherlock’s work table, delicately plucking petri dishes from his laptop, which his flatmate had a habit of commandeering. With a huff, John tucked the computer under his arm and rushed it upstairs to scrub it and lock it in his bedroom before he found anything sprouting on his keyboard.
Sam couldn’t believe his eyes. He remained flattened at the bottom of the pocket, listening to the distant footsteps as they thudded up the stairs of the flat, waiting to be sure that John was actually leaving, even after touching Sam’s jacket, the closest he’d come to a human in years. He’d thought it was all over right then, the hand would shift position, making him tumble into the human’s grasp and sealed into a fist by fingers stronger than his entire body.
Instead, John had pulled away and stalked across the flat yelling at Sherlock, and Sam was wasting his opportunity to escape thinking about it.
Quickly pulling himself to his feet, Sam scaled out of the pocket in record time. Dean was down by the table leg, staying close to cover in case the human came back. He didn’t have Sam’s uncanny knack of knowing when someone was about to come into the room and spot them, leaving him more vulnerable than Sam.
Not that it was doing Sam any good today.
Sam used the thick threads of the jacket to climb down, dropping the last few inches. His arms continued trembling from the close call, shaken. Dean’s arm was on his back to keep him steady the moment he got down, but seconds later they were running across the floor.
It was time to get out of sight for the rest of the day. Their luck had been pushed the the limit enough that week.
Almost in time with his hook falling, Sam stiffened. An icy cold shudder ran up his neck even as the warning tingle started to burn, and the sound of the front door being tampered with almost screamed at him. Never had Mrs. Hudson incited such a strong reaction in his knack, and even Sherlock was dulled down compared to it.
Sam whirled in place. “We’ve gotta go,” he said hurriedly, trying to think of any entrances Dean kept close to the end table. “We’ve–”
He did have psychic visions in the Brothers Apart storyline, back at the beginning, but I’ve chosen to let them fade away in lieu of a different type of ability. So far, each victim of the curse exhibits their own particular knack. Sam can tell when someone’s looking at him, or searching for him. Dean can find whatever he needs. Jacob can lift many times his own weight. These begin at different ages for each character.
For the rest, there is a very specific plot that BA is following that will involve Yellow-eyes, Celeste, and John Winchester, and I can’t say much else or it’ll give away the story. Let’s just say that the demon hasn’t forgotten about Sam, and knows he’s out there.
In fact he does! Just like Sam, Dean and Jacob, the moment he was cursed a part of his mind was unlocked by that same curse! This will be a theme that is touched upon heavily in the as of yet, unnamed twelfth installment of Brothers Apart (the story I am currently agonizing over), and Sean’s ability will be revealed.
Sam’s knack will actually only work on humans – and it won’t work on any human that got cursed by Celeste! So he can’t tell if Dean is looking at him in Brothers Lost, which is a good thing because it also means that Dean can’t screw it up by glancing over at him.
If a human shrinks down by another method, he will still be able to tell if they are watching. It is only humans cursed by the method Celeste uses that are an exception to this rule.
Truthfully, I came up with the ability during Taken. So yes, he does have it, but it didn’t start to show up until then. It’ll be more prominent in the other AUs earlier, but you can see it from Taken and on. In fact in Adventures at Bobby’s, Sam discovers that Dean does not set off his danger sense at all. He can tell that Dean is looking, but he can also tell that the gaze on him is safe.
The visions are from when I first started writing the series, and they’ve been phased out in lieu of Sam’s knack. I found his new ability (and Dean’s, when he’s small), to be more fitting to the series as a whole.
Dean can find whatever he seeks and Sam knows when he is sought.
With one hand locked onto the edge of the pocket, Sam pushed up on the flap. Between the brothers, he would be able to know if anyone was about to look at him. Over time, the ability was growing stronger and the longer he spent around friendly humans, the more he realized it actually differed, depending on the human and the circumstances.
If a person glanced in his general direction, it felt like nothing more than an absent chill across his neck. Goosebumps and the hairs raised, Sam used to brush off the sensation before he knew what it was telling him. Direct eye contact from a friendly humans like Jacob sharpened the impression, putting weight on his neck.
Neutral humans, or people who could be classed as purposely dangerous, gave him a feeling of burning. It hurt, it sent pain down his nerves just like a hot brand pressed against his skin, and it took time to wear off.
This thought stiffened Sam’s back. He wasn’t about to roll over and act like someone’s pet or possession.
“I’m sorry,” Sam said tartly. “You’d rather we stare at you the same as you’ve been doing? I know you can’t take your eyes off us, can you?” The impression of being watched hadn’t left him the entire time. Even when the human looked away, there was the impression that the human wanted to look at him. It made Sam’s skin crawl to the point where he almost wanted to take off his skin and wash it in the clear stream in the Wellwood to scrub off the prickling sensation.
Sam’s mouth turned dry, and he shot a look at Dean. Give it a shot? he mouthed at his brother, having heard nothing of this from anyone. He rubbed the back of his neck in a distracted gesture, trying to brush away the warning tingle of humans watching them.
Dean was almost glowing with hope. He nodded eagerly. “It’s a cleansing spell,” he said in a hushed voice. “Maybe it can cleanse the curse just like the hex. It can’t hurt, right?”
Brothers Apart 