Two

Hours later, the two brothers were sitting in a small restaurant a few miles from the motel. Morning sunlight crawled through the windows, warming Dean's skin and hurting his eyes. He gingerly sipped a mug of blistering hot black coffee in an attempt to quell the headache that was ripping his skull apart at the sutures. There was a deep purple lump on the side of his head where he had fallen against the nightstand, and his eyes were pinched and rimmed in black circles. Throughout the shared breakfast, he muttered angry phrases to his coffee and the back of Sam's computer.

Sam had placed the laptop on the table in front of him, barely touching the eggs and sausage he had ordered. The waitress had not even refilled his cup of orange juice—in stark contrast to Dean's three coffee refills. Dean briefly wondered why the kitchen staff just didn't bring the entire pot out to him after that.

The two men had said nothing to the other since the previous night, and when Sam broke the silence, Dean was genuinely surprised. He knew Sam would be the first one to talk, but he was amazed Sam had grown the balls to talk so early.

"Look, Dean, about last night."

"Yeah?"

"I know…" Sam paused to clear his throat and started again, this time sounding more confident. "I know you're going to think I'm crazy—"

"Already do," Dean interrupted, picking up a piece of bacon with his fingers and ripping off the end with his teeth. "Any other brilliant developments, Spock?" He was tired and hurting, and it was Sam's fault. The hangover wasn't Sam's fault, but the screaming in the middle of the night, which caused him to not only wake up, but fall out of bed, was Sam's fault, so he directed his anger towards Sam. Blaming the hot girls who bought him drinks at the bar wasn't going to do any good now that they were long gone.

"You remember how I told you about the dream last night?"

"You had a dream last night?"

"Yes," Sam replied, sounding slightly irritated.

"Really?" Dean took a long drink of his coffee. The temperature was slightly cooler so that he didn't scald the tip of his tongue right off. The caffeinated drink did taste faintly bitter, however, and Dean figured they were probably getting to the bottom of the pot he had been drinking all morning. "Was this before or after the redhead? Because after that, I don't remember too much." He forced a grin, reminiscent of his drunken kisses and confused groping, exhaling strong coffee breath in Sam's direction.

"After," Sam sighed, and he picked up his fork to eat something. He paused, then reconsidered and put the fork back down with a soft clink on the blue china dish. "I had a really bad dream last night, and I think it might be more than 'just a dream.' There's also this man who's been following me around."

"Huh."

"I know you don't care, and you're pissed because of last night—"

"You are smart enough for college after all."

"—but for once, just listen to me, okay?" Sam had raised his voice, something unusual for him, and Dean actually looked up from his own food. There was a pause, as Sam began to feel embarrassed for nearly yelling in the small, nearly empty, restaurant like that, and he diverted his eyes back to the laptop.

"Well you gonna tell me this dream or not? Your food's getting cold. So start yappin' or else I'm going to eat it, dude." Dean didn't like to see Sam get so unstrung. Just wasn't in his nature, as the passive, brooding younger brother. Not that Dean was too concerned with his younger brother's emotional state too much. After all, Sam had lived such a cozy life in college, while he was out running around and hunting with Dad.

Sam should be expected to hurt a little bit; Dean had done it all his life.

"I saw this guy a few times yesterday, too. I didn't think anything too much of it until later that night. He was also in my dream, and that's when I realized that he wasn't human, yet he wasn't a spirit."

"A human body inhabited by a spirit?" Dean suggested. He wasn't going to apologize for his behavior earlier, but he decided the best way to move on was to pretend as if he hadn't acted like a complete ass to Sam. The waitress came to check on the boys again with a smile. She was an older lady, too old for Dean's preferences, but she nodded and smiled as if her customers always talked about bodies being inhabited by spirits. Dean watched her face blanch as she moved away from their table and closer to her normal customers, who discussed fishing trips and clothes shopping.

"No, no, he wasn't flesh, well not in the human sense, at all. But, like with ghosts, we can usually tell with them, y'know? In the dream, I got, for the first time just how, I don't know, powerful and evil he is."

"The two most overused words in our job," Dean smiled faintly, running a finger along the inside corner of his mouth. "Dammit, Sammy, we need a new vocabulary list."

"You really need to stop calling me that."

"What? 'Dammit'?"

"You know what I mean."

"Do I? I think you may have to clarify."

"I'm not even going to argue about this with you."

"Right, of course, anything you say, Sammy."

Sam sighed. "Anyway, in the dream, this guy told me that he could make us a deal. He didn't say what for and what about, just that when he came to us, he knew that we wouldn't be able to refuse. Either way, it would cost us something that we didn't want to readily pay."

"Then we refuse. Simple as that. We refuse and blast his ghostly ass out of this world."

"I don't think we'll be able to. He seems so much more intelligent than anything we've ever dealt with before. He's purposefully playing games with me, showing himself and then disappearing before I get to close…In the dream, he was showing me this other…place. I don't know where it was or if it's even real. There were a lot of people screaming and crying there, and we were there with him and these people."

Dean waited after Sam finished the last sentence, believing that there might be more to the story. "That's it?" he asked incredulously. "Doesn't sound like something to piss your pants over. My God, my brother's such a prick."

Sam pursed his lips in anger and slight embarrassment, and for a quick moment, Dean was satisfied that he'd gotten through Sam's rigid outer core for an emotional response—even if it was a negative one. Sam was far too lax and nonchalant for Dean's liking the majority of the time. Although this kept them safe, Dean didn't want to admit it.

Sam shook his head, disagreeing with Dean's comment. "It wasn't so simple. This guy, Dean, I really think he's after us and wants us."

"Uh-huh," Dean said dubiously, looking outside the window. The Impala was one of the few cars sitting in the parking lot at the awkward time between the breakfast and lunch rush at the restaurant, but it gave them privacy, which Sam needed and Dean—for once—wanted. Especially with Sam talking about nonsense. He sighed and turned back to Sam after a moment of thinking. "So, from what I'm understanding, there's something 'powerful and evil' after us that wants to bargain with us, and you're the special chosen one he's shown himself to?"

"Yeah, pretty much."

"What kind of deal exactly are we talkin'? One night Cinderella, become a princess deal? Or have a sex change operation, stay a princess forever deal?"

"I don't know. I couldn't understand him. Something that he could give us exactly what we wanted."

Dean raised an eyebrow. "Look, Sam, I know you've had 'wild prediction dreams' before," he said, waving his hands about over-dramatically, "but this just doesn't make any sense."

"I know, I know…that's why I'm so worried. It's like nothing we've ever encountered. I think…I really think this one's going to get the better of us…But still, Dean, you have to admit, him showing up all the time is a bit abnormal."

"Maybe. Or, we can say that you were drinking too much last night."

"Dean…"

"Right, bad assumption. You're going to make a recovering alcoholic a very good boy toy some day, Sammy, y'know? Let's say, though, there is a guy after you and that he is real—in whatever sense—and he wants something. What are we supposed to do about it?"

Sam sighed. "Wait, I guess."

"Exactly, unless you've already started to do research on your precious little computer over there."

"You know me too well."

Dean shook his head as the waitress approached the table to hand them their bill. She gave a fake smile towards the two boys, and a wish that she hoped they had enjoyed their meals. Dean looked at her, realizing that even with the age difference, she might not be a bad lay, and then laughed in the back of his throat at his own little ways. He pulled out a wad of cash after glancing at the bill, slid the total over to Sam, who removed his wallet to pay his half. Just as Dean had started to thumb through his mess of cash, a distinctly male voice, rich and luminous, with an undistinguishable European accent spoke: "Hello, gentlemen."

Dean dropped his money and whipped to his left where a man casually sat next to him. The man was dressed in a formal black business suit with a white undershirt trimmed in gold cufflinks and silk black tie. He wore a neatly trimmed goatee around his mouth, and the black hair on his head was short and glistening. Intertwining his fingers on the table made the numerous thick gold bands encrusted with glittering gems on the man's fingers visible. As he smiled at the two boys, his teeth were noticed to be as white as his shirt, and the grin was deep and dark.

"Not talking this morning, are we?" the man said, glancing from Dean, who had pressed himself up against the opposite wall, furthest away from the man in his seat, to Sam across the table. "Ah, well, I would have assumed as such. A pity, too." He smiled at Dean with that secretive smile, and he reached out and stroked Dean's cheek with the back of his fingers. His touch was as warm as any flesh and blood man's. "I had heard you were quite the talker, after all."

Dean instantly regretted he didn't carry any weapons on him for times like this. His guns loaded with silver bullets and rock salt, holy water, and anything else he might have wanted were sitting right outside the window—behind a panel of tall glass. A nerve began twitching under his cheek, and he glanced over to Sam, who had gone completely pale. Sam looked as if he was going to vomit, seeing what must have been the man in his dream come to life.

The man gave a close-lipped smile, then raised his eyebrows in the direction of Dean's half empty coffee mug and nodded curtly. "Getting low there, aren't you? Care for a refill?"

"You're not real," Dean answered. "We're not afraid of you, so get the hell out of here."

The man gave an exaggerated frown. "Now that's not very polite, is it?" He paused, watching Dean carefully crawl out of his skin. "Very well then. Black coffee it is." He picked up the mug in one hand, placed his opposite hand on the top of the mug, waited a moment and then handed a full steaming cup of coffee back to Dean. "Go on, drink it," he urged. "Slightly stronger than what they serve here, but it'll wake you up, I can guarantee that."

The man now turned his attention to Sam, who would have ran out of the restaurant were it not for Dean being trapped by the man. "And your laptop. Fascinating little invention by you humans, isn't it? Positively delightful, really. Not that I'm in need of one, but let's see that anyway." With a gesture of his long pale fingers, the laptop slid slowly across the table to the man, who narrowed his dark eyes at the screen. "Recording your encounters with 'this man' and your dream, too? Ah, it must have been a very interesting dream. I think you left a couple parts out, though. Here, let me fill them in for you." Another small twitch of his fingers and the few sentences on Sam's meager document expanded swiftly into paragraphs. The man smiled that same proud, tight-lipped smile and slid the laptop back over to Sam without touching the machine. "There, read it, I think you'll find it most satisfactory."

There was a pause as Sam read it, then glimpsed at Dean, who was reaching inside his pocket for his car keys. Dean never took his eyes off the man, who was watching Dean at the same time, but Sam knew what Dean was thinking without eye contact. Both of the boys tensed their muscles to the greatest that they could, prepared to run like they never had. It was wrong to turn his back on the ghost, Dean knew, but this was a special case, after all, because he had no weapons to hold out in front of him.

Immediately, without any obvious signs, Sam flew to his feet and dashed down the aisle between the restaurant booths. Dean, with some difficultly, leaped onto the table, smashing the plates and coffee cups under his large boots, and hurled himself off the slab before starting after Sam.

"Run, dammit, run!" Dean bellowed as Sam glanced behind him to Dean. There was sweat dripping down the valley between Dean's shoulder blades, and his breath caught in his throat as he gasped for air. He realized with a sudden horror that it wasn't lack of exercise that was slowing his breathing, but the wrenching fear that Sammy had been right after all, and Dean didn't want to wait to see what would happen.

Sam burst out the restaurant entrance, cracking the glass in his hurry as the door slammed up against the opposite wall, and they both made a mad dash for the car. Just as Dean had placed his hand on the door handle, the vehicle disappeared beneath his fingers like air. "What the hell!" Dean wailed. "My car!"

In the doorway of the restaurant with its screaming customers fleeing the building, the mysterious man walked slowly, his hands clasped behind his back. As he exited the restaurant, the structure began to fade away, and the people dropped to the ground, turning to dust, which left the boys and the man standing in the middle of a vastly empty field. Slowly, the man walked towards them, head slightly bent, and black shoes glistening under a sun Dean could not see. Just as the man was not less than a couple yards away, Dean and Sam shot away again, not knowing where to run, but knowing that running was better than facing this…thing without any weapons. They hadn't gotten more than a few steps away, when they were suddenly jerked back as if someone had grabbed onto the edge of their coats.

Sam screamed, trying to fight the invisible force pulling him backwards, and Dean began to shake himself out of his coat, only to discover that he was literally stuck inside the fabric. They were then roughly thrown onto the ground, where the man loomed above them, hands still clasped behind his back, never having physically touched the two brothers. There was an angry scowl on his face, and Dean silently thought, Oh shit, he killed my car, now he's after me.

"You've upset me very much," the man said slowly, articulating each word carefully in that full opulent voice of his. "And I'm very tired of your petty little games. You cannot destroy me, and you cannot run from me, so I believe, boys," he continued, forcing a smile that no longer was the least bit friendly, "you have no choice but to listen to me."