[A/N: It's been forever since I posted anything on this website, but I'm trying to get back into it. I'm not sure how much things have changed here, but we'll see. This story is also on AO3, same title, same username]
Dean's eyes pressed against the darkness, and the darkness pressed back. He brought his hand up near his face. The screen on the small device he held glowed a soft red, and beyond that there was nothing.
"Is there someone here with me?" Dean's voice bounced against the concrete walls until it fell into the buildup of dirt and dust on the cellar floor and died where it lay. His eyes stayed on the screen.
A low whine, like a moan. Dean pulled in a breath and held it.
"Am I speaking with the spirit of William Duffy?" And again the cellar fell into silence.
Another moan. Dean's EMF detector had leapt up to maximum. It whined as it cycled up and down through several readings. Dean turned his head sharply to the left and stared. "What was that?" he whispered. And the EMF continued to spike and glow and moan.
This was going well, Dean decided. Sam was in the next room if anything went wrong. Not that Dean would let anything go wrong. He was a professional. He was—
A roar flooded into the cellar, dull and mechanical.
"Ah, fuck me," Dean sighed. He dropped his hand to his side. The cellar filled with light and Dean squinted and blinked until his eyes readjusted. "That take was fucking perfect." Sam swung around the doorframe into view as Dean looked at him, accusing.
"Don't look at me like that, I can't control planes flying over," Sam said with a shrug.
"Yeah, well, no more lock-ins near airports." Dean poked and fiddled with his EMF detector. Damn thing wouldn't shut up.
"If you ask me," said Bobby, who had followed Sam and was now poking at the camera tripod setup opposite Dean, "I think you coulda' been just a little less dramatic."
"People like dramatic," Dean responded. "And just remember we've got spooky noises to add in post. I've gotta be reacting to something."
Bobby shook his head. He probably wanted to grumble something along the lines of "kids these days and their disrespecting of elders and their dang telenovela acting," but instead he kept it to himself and returned to where their equipment was set up in the next room.
"You ready to go again?" Sam asked even as Dean was getting himself back to his mark.
"S'long as nothing else is going ruin the shot, sure," Dean said, "I don't want to be here all damn night." Sam gave a nonspecific noise of agreement as he made sure the night vision camera was set to record again. "Make sure you get my good side, Sammy." Sam laughed, punched his brother on the shoulder, and left to join Bobby in the equipment room.
And then it was dark. Dean opened his eyelids as far as they would stretch and felt the blackness against his pupils like a skin. He lifted the device in his hand and looked at the soft red glow...
"...and I'm Sam. We're the Winchesters."
"My brother and I travel across the country to seek out the paranormal."
"We've been to some of the most haunted places in America, armed with only a camera and the truth."
"We contact spirits, gank ghosts, and exorcise your demons. So if you've got evil spirits in your neighborhood, tell 'em the Winchesters are coming."
"Saving people."
"Hunting things."
"The family business." The two finished their speech in unison. A black car drove away down a dirt road in a swirl of dust and the screen faded into black.
"So what do you guys think?" asked Kevin, the intern, replacing the cover over his ipad screen and looking around eagerly. "I took some footage from last season and edited it with the new dialogue."
"Nice," Dean nodded his approval, "The part with the Impala was an excellent touch." Sam rolled his eyes. Dean liked anything that featured his beloved old muscle car.
"Good job," Sam congratulated Kevin, and the boy was happy that his all-nighter hadn't been a waste of some much-needed sleep time.
Kevin Tran, intern, was barely old enough to be the bar that served as current-temporary-show-headquarters. He had only applied to this position on a whim, telling himself that he probably wouldn't even get a reply, and that if he did get a reply, it probably wouldn't be a real job offer, and that if it were a job offer, he probably wouldn't accept. He probably should have instead spent his summer doing something practical, like making copies and coffees for a fortune-500 CEO. But everything had run contrary to his expectations and working alongside some real-life (fake) ghost hunters was even better than any economics major with a side interest in horror films could have ever hoped. He very nearly wanted to ask for a permanent position with the show instead of returning to school in the fall, but he could imagine the sort of vengeful retribution his mother would then rain down upon him for the rest of all eternity.
"I reckon' Crowley will like it even more that last season's open," Bobby speculated, running a hand over his beard to smooth it in an act of well-hidden neuroticism. "I'd be careful about doing all this extra free work for the show. You know how fond 'ol Crowley is of all that 'saving people, hunting things' crap. You watch, he'll snap this bit up, won't pay you a dime."
"Well, I'd be careful about saying his name too many times," Dean warned, the lip of his beer hovering close to his mouth, "You know what they say about the devil. And TV producers." Bobby barked a laugh, Sam smiled, Kevin glowed with the feeling of inclusion, and Dean drained the last of his bottle and signaled the waitress for another. The bar wasn't very active, and she returned quickly, giving Dean a half smile as she left. He winked back at her with one of his own basic-cable-TV-star grins.
With his new drink, Dean raised his hand in a toast. "To Ghost Brothers season two."
"To Ghost Bros!" Sam echoed, and clunked the base of his bottle into Dean's.
"To gullible people and crap TV," Bobby added.
"To reality TV," said Kevin-the-intern.
"Idn't that what I just said?" Bobby shot back. The four of them laughed and drank, letting an easy quiet fall over their conversation.
"So," Kevin swallowed his sip of beer (he'd never much cared for the taste, but he'd adopted a when-in-Rome attitude when it came to the Winchesters. It had been weeks since he'd learned not to shiver and grimace with every swallow—although his tendency to flush bright red after more than one drink was another story altogether), "You guys really don't think there's anything, you know, out there?"
"What, like anything supernatural?" Dean scoffed, "Nah. Sammy here'd be too scared of the dark to do this job if there were." Sam rolled his eyes but otherwise ignored the comment. "Why, do you?"
"Not really. I've seen too many bad movies," Kevin explained simply.
"We've been doing this long enough, and I've never seen anything," Sam reasoned. "Maybe a few weird things, but nothing that can't be explained. I mean, when we were kids, way before we got the show, we were still going around with our dad, cleansing houses of whatever people thought was there." He shrugged. "Dad was a con man. But we'd get a paycheck, and they'd get to sleep better. Made a good name for ourselves, y'know?"
"And now," Dean continued, "We get bigger paychecks and adoring fans." He shrugged, as Sam had, in subconscious mirroring of his younger brother. "At this point I don't think I'd believe in anything supernatural even if it descended on a stripper pole and gave me a lap dance."
"You haven't seen my wife angry," Bobby cut in, "I swear she's possessed sometimes."
"There's nothing supernatural about you leaving the seat up," Sam laughed and leaned back in his chair.
"You don't know that," Bobby joked back, "Maybe I got a haunted lavatory."
"And maybe we can make an episode about it," Dean grinned, "Me and Sam can come exorcise your toilet demon." Bobby cracked a smile but said nothing. Again, the group fell into an easy pattern of companionable silence and occasional banter and talks about where their road would take them next.
"Another day, another seedy motel," Sam sighed, taking a look at their latest sanctuary. Today's theme was pictures of lighthouses and dirty orange carpet and unwashed bedclothes.
"At least the studio pays for it?" Kevin searched for anything positive.
"Would it kill the studio to spring for a Sheraton?" Bobby groaned as he lugged his bag inside.
"I nominate the guy that just spent the last ten hours wedged in a crawlspace to take the first shower," said Dean, pointing towards himself and throwing his duffel onto one of the queen sized beds. "After we send this one off I don't ever want to hear the words 'Plainesville Baptist Church' ever again." He grabbed a change of clothes and ziplock full of shampoos and body washes and razors from his bag and headed towards the tiny bathroom, calling back "See you in twenty" over his shoulder.
Showering was the only time he had to himself while on the road that was completely free of cameras and people who would eventually get on his nerves (yes, even Sam). Still, other than washing away his dust and cobweb outer layer, Dean used this time to think about all the work he'd be doing at their next filming location. He ran through a mental checklist of what they should do at this new place and what they should "prove" based on its backstory and the supplies they'd need and ways to convince Sam that it was his turn to do the grungy work while Dean took on the easy EVP sessions. By the time he'd washed his hair three times (there was no fucking way he was going to let some hitchhiking spider make a nest up there, no sir), he'd worked out most of the important details. He dressed quickly and rejoined his brother and crew feeling more relaxed and optimistic than he had a short while ago. Until he saw their faces.
"Who died?" he asked, rubbing his towel against his hair to dry it. He took a chair at the room's small table beside Kevin, who was busy on his laptop making preliminary show edits. The kid was an impressively hard worker, and even though most of the show came together under the hands of executives (and many other unpaid interns) at a remote studio far from where they filmed, Dean was surprised they'd ever made it through so many episodes without the early editing decisions that Kevin could make. The little guy was good at what he did.
"Crowley called," Bobby said shortly.
"Told you you'd accidentally summon him one of these days," Dean teased.
"Very funny. There's been a change of plans, we're not headed for Michigan anymore."
"What? But we've been talking about going to the Washburn House for months now." There went Dean's planning. "So where're we headed now?"
"Virginia," Sam answered. "Apparently there's some new healer or psychic or something making a big deal of himself out there and Crowley wants—"
"A psychic?" Dean waited for Sam to say that he'd been joking. He hadn't. "Man, I hate psychics... You remember that time we had that old crazy lady on?"
"Missouri Moseley," Kevin supplied, not looking up from his laptop.
"Yeah," said Dean. "Even if she was a fraud, she still gave me the creeps."
Sam rolled his eyes. "You only dislike her because you made a pass at her niece and she whacked your knuckles with a wooden spoon."
Dean looked scandalized. "Sam, I carried around bruises from that for two whole weeks."
"Anyway," Bobby stopped the two brothers before they could escalate to some kind of convoluted pissing contest—yet again—, "Crowley got this guy to agree to be on the show but he's not going to wait. Apparently it took some convincing and they really want this guy. So it looks like we're headed to Virginia."
"Oh joy," Dean said flatly, and then stood, cleared a space for himself, and let his body collapse onto the rickety bed, where he was asleep almost instantly.
"Dude, Sam, get this…" Dean pushed open the door to yet another motel room (this one happened to be deer themed with a subtle hint of stale, musky aftershave) and didn't spare a hello before he started talking at Sam. "Kevin lent me his pad-thing to look up fan reactions to the latest episode, and just listen to this one guy: 'a douchenozzle in a leather jacket with an overcompensating machismo complex' yeah okay, buddy, come say that in front of me and I'll overcompensate your ass."
He could feel Sam's raised eyebrow judging him from across the room. Dean glared back at his brother for a few seconds. "Shut up, Sam," he said after a while, giving up.
It was then that he finally took notice of the stranger who was standing behind Sam, half obscured by the man's large frame. Dean could hardly blame himself for overlooking the guy at first; he was wearing a plain dark grey suit and a blue tie and had a tan overcoat draped over one arm, and overall he projected aura of extreme, unnerving, averageness. But he stared back at Dean with tired-looking eyes that didn't blink nearly as often as they should.
"Who's this?" Dean asked, still looking over the man as he came to stand beside them. "Is he a lawyer? Do we need a lawyer again?"
Sam shook his head. "He's the psychic Crowley called about." Dean shot him a look that clearly said this guy? as the so-called psychic held out a hand towards Dean.
"Castiel," said the man. Dean hadn't expected such a low, gravelly voice to belong to this average-seeming man, and he found himself needing to resist the urge to lower his own voice to match.
"Uh, what?" He'd grabbed the man's hand, but his brain seemed to have stuttered to a halt before he'd remembered that he was supposed to shake it. His hand was warm, pleasantly so. It was an odd thing to think about, Dean realized, but the sensation that seemed to be spreading into Dean's hand and up his arm was hard to ignore. Dean found himself wondering if his hand had really been that cold before, or if this man was just abnormally hot.
"My name," the man clarified, finally blinking as he tilted his head a bit and looked at Dean curiously. "It is Castiel."
"Oh, right," Dean remembered himself, and recovered into a proper handshake. The man— Castiel, didn't seem to have noticed the long pause. "Dean Winchester."
"I am aware," Castiel said simply as they dropped hands.
"You got a last name, Castiel?" Dean asked, trying out the name in his mouth for the first time. Castiel's head gave the tiniest of shakes, but he didn't break eye contact with Dean. It never occurred to Dean that he could be the one to look away first.
"This is the only name I remember," said Castiel.
"You started to say something about an accident," Sam prompted, and Castiel turned away at last. He looked at Sam with mild interest, but did not hold Sam's gaze the way that he had held Dean's.
"Yes," said Castiel. "I was found a short time ago, and Castiel is the only name I have." He paused. "The other two members of your team are going to return soon, and they will have the same questions that you do. Perhaps it would be best to wait so that information does not have to be repeated." Sam and Dean shared a long skeptical look, but agreed that Castiel had a point.
Only a few minutes of awkwardly sitting on the sofa on either side of the silent and stoic Castiel had passed when they heard the scratching of a keycard in the door and Bobby and Kevin entered, laden with plastic bags and smelling of Chinese takeout. They each noticed the new addition to the room immediately. Introductions past, the questions began anew.
"Wait," Kevin stopped Castiel before he could tell his story again. The others looked at him expectantly. "The episode is supposed to be focused on him, right? Well, if we just record this now as an interview, we'll have more the work with later." Dean nodded his approval. Smart kid.
And so they set up two of their daytime cameras and made sure the lighting was okay and decided that the peeling wallpaper behind the couch added some character to Castiel's otherwise dull outer shell (and the pattern wasn't so offensive that they'd get complaints, again). Their whole production would have probably been easier with a larger crew, in theory, but they'd tried that for a few episodes in season one, and it hadn't ended well. Bobby still saved a few evil stares for anyone who got greasy fingerprints on his equipment, and Dean still had a scar on his back from that bar fight.
Castiel was patient and silent as the other men fussed over angles and sounds. It was weird. He didn't even fidget. And once the cameras were set to record, he began speaking in his strange low voice again, telling his story with apparent honesty, but little inflection.
"My name is Castiel," said Castiel, looking into the main camera as he had looked into Dean. "The first thing I remember was a hospital in Petersburg three months ago." Sam and Dean exchanged sideways glances. What was with this guy? Castiel continued without pause. "There may have been some accident that brought me there, but I do not know. I awoke with the name Castiel. I do not know if I was anyone before. They tell me I'm psychic."
Dean watched Castiel, calculating. Either this man was the best con artist he'd ever seen, or he was certifiably crazy. This was all fucking Crowley's fault.
"And, beyond that," Sam prompted, in a clear effort to make his voice come across with neutrality, "When did you start to notice that strange things were happening?"
"Immediately," Castiel answered. He looked to Sam for a few seconds, then to Dean, and then back to the camera lens. "I can hear things; a constant stream of information. And I could see the souls that were trapped in the hospital. I was there for some time." He squinted into the space in front of him, as if seeing some memory they couldn't. Dean wanted to ask if he had been held in a psych ward, but decided to hold his tongue. Before Sam could ask another question, Castiel blinked and resumed. "After I healed a pastor's wife of her severe arthritis pain, the couple gave me a home. I have been providing my aid to others ever since."
Dean added 'religious nutjob' to his mental list of things this guy could be (among other choice words that would never make it to the final edit of a basic cable TV show).
"So what made you agree to come on our show?" Dean asked with a small laugh, genuinely curious, "Cash flow from miracle healing dry up?" Bobby shot him a dark look. They were supposed to be presenting this Castiel guy as a real psychic, not trying to prove that he wasn't. But Dean couldn't resist. The dude's motivations were shady. And now he was doing that thing again with his eyes that made it impossible for Dean to look away.
"I could be well compensated for my services if I so desired," Castiel explained. His voice had a slight sharpness to it now, and that made a chill settle over Dean's shoulders for reasons he couldn't quite grasp. "But I do not." He looked down, finally, at his hands folded in his lap. "I have seen your show. You claim to seek the truth, and yet everything you do is fake." There was a collective uncomfortable shuffle. He wasn't really supposed to know that, at least not until he'd signed nondisclosure contracts.
"Well—" Dean started, but Castiel looked up at him through furrowed eyebrows and the words died behind Dean's tongue.
"Your previous falsehoods are not of import," Castiel all but growled. "You say you seek the truth, and so I am here to show it to you."
