The sunlight streaming through his window was brutal. It cut a hot bright light across the sheets where the curtains had been pulled back during last night's activities. Goddammit, his mouth felt like it was stuffed full of cotton balls from the dentist, and his head throbbed every time he blinked his eyes in the harsh glare of the afternoon sun. The .45 that usually rested under the pillow was lodged behind his right shoulder, the hard metal of the hammer digging into the skin there. Beside him a man snored heavily, the dark navy of the sheets slung low over his hips. He was handsome enough. He slept on his stomach, right arm crooked below his head, ginger hair cropped short. The hard angles of his shoulders rippled even as he slept, and Dean considered rolling over and pressing his lips to the freckles that spread across his pale skin but thought better of it. He climbed out of bed careful not to disturb the sleeping man.
Just easier not to create any awkward situations.
What the fuck happened last night?
Outside of his bedroom, the stink of beer and salty sex was strong. The floor was littered with discarded clothing and empty cans. He grimaced, light beer. His scrying glass was still lying out on the coffee table underneath a cardboard box containing a half-eaten cheese pizza. If he or Bobby hadn't made an effort to hide it, the guy sleeping in his bed must be aware of the craft. He knew better to look for a wallet with some identification. True names were where the power was, and no warlock worth his salt was going to carry around a driver's license.
He flipped on the coffee pot and dug in the cabinet for the hangover remedy he'd brewed a week ago, taking out two just in case. Just as the coffee pot was-noisily- finishing its cycle, Dean heard a light whooshing sound behind him like the fluttering of a curtain in an open window. "What in the seven hells is wrong with you, boy?"
"You're in a good mood this morning, Bobby. Wake up on the wrong side of your skull?"
"Oh ha-ha, idjit. You think you're the only person that lives here? I've heard and seen some debase things in my time, boy, but you and your company last night about took the cake."
"As a matter of fact, Bobby, I am the only one who lives here, and I don't see how it's any of your business who I invite over," Dean grumbled, sipping on his scalding coffee. "Or what we do once they get here."
Bobby paced back and forth between the refrigerator and the stove, smiling in that infuriating way that said, I'm a 300 year old spirit without corporeal form, and I know more than you.
"What?" Dean asked. I'm getting real tired of your shit, man.
"So you know who's sleeping in your bed, right? Because I sure as hell do, and the mess you're in, it ain't pretty."
Dean desperately wished that he'd put on pants before leaving his room. He felt so damn exposed standing there in his boxers while Bobby was fully dressed and smirking. The only sounds in the room were the muffled snoring from the bedroom and the soft humming of the wards lining the windows and door frames. It had taken him three weeks after moving in to get a manageable set of wards going, painted in ash and lamb's blood and alkyd paints, and even then, he hadn't been able to entirely quiet the way that they hummed and whispered to one another when the apartment was silent. Dean let out the breath that he didn't know he'd been holding. "No, man, I have no idea who that guy is, and I was kinda banking on him not knowing either."
Bobby laughed, a big noise that caused his form to shimmer in the light of the bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. "Fat chance of that. That's Dennis Subtle, the newest member of the White Council. He stepped in when Dubrot's old witch finally did him in. The Other Realm's buzzing with questions about him, came outta nowhere."
"Awesome. That's awesome." Shitshitshit.
"I suppose it's too much to assume that you've been keeping your head down and minding their Seven Laws?" Dean stared into the dregs of his coffee in response. "I thought as much. You've gotta get him out of here." When Dean didn't move, Bobby made a sweeping gesture with his hand. "Go now, idjit. Before you do anymore damage."
When Dean had cracked open the door to the bedroom, Bobby said, "And stick to mortals for awhile." Then there was another flutter of curtain, and the living room behind him was empty.
Detective Sam Winchester was flooded with cases. They lined the edges of his desk; they spilled out onto the floor. He took them home and piled them in the corner of the living room until even the dog had started to complain about their presence in the house. There was something weird going on in Chicago. Crime had been on a steady rise for the past decade, not wavering, not up then down then up again. No, a steady gradual mountain of weird-ass crimes was growing in the city, and he hadn't the faintest clue where to begin.
Well, that wasn't entirely true.
He suspected it had something to do with Dean's area of expertise. Why else had so many ancient tea pots and sugar chests and dusty old volumes gone missing? Even in the realm of white collar crime, those weren't hot ticket items. The whole thing made his head hurt, and he held his Styrofoam cup of green tea to his temple while he tried to figure out where in this minefield of research he wanted to start today. Last time he'd spoken to Dean on the phone, he'd said, the thief was targeting uncatalogued cursed items. Bobby thought they'd been flying under the radar because they were low energy items. They obviously hadn't killed too many people, or the Council would have seen the red flags. He'd said something else, something about an extraction ceremony.
Sam picked up the phone and dialed his brother's number.
Voicemail. Hey, it's Dean. Do your thing.
"Dean, man, get your ass out of bed and call me back." Sam pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger and then got up and walked to the open door of his office. "Hey, Jess."
"Hmm," she hummed, looking up from the paperwork spread out on her desk.
"You know anything about extraction ceremonies?"
She stared back at him incredulously. One of her blonde curls strayed into her line of sight, and she pushed it back with a huff. "No," she said impatiently. "Unless that's something that you do with a facemask, I'm pretty sure I don't know anything about extraction ceremonies. Did you try calling Dean?"
"Yeah, he didn't pick up."
"What a surprise." She turned back to her work. "The new guy should be here soon. He's weird."
"This whole city's weird, Jess; you're going to have to be a little more specific."
Sam leaned against the door frame and watched her enter numbers into the computer, double-checking them against a file before she said, "I don't think he's used to human interaction. He just stares a lot and says crazy stuff. He told me to watch the bees the first time that I met him, said that the bees would tell me what I wanted to know."
"Did they?" Sam asked with a laugh.
"Hell if I know. I don't want to get close enough to one to find out."
"Well, send him in when he gets here. I'm going to dig through some old case files and see if I can find any patterns."
"Sure thing. I'll ask Steve in Archives if he knows anything. Maybe they had a case like this before Paranormal Investigations was established." Sam headed back into the office, back to the mountain of paperwork, but through the day he kept thinking of that stray curl falling and Jess' delicate hand reaching up to tuck it behind her ear.
