Standard disclaimer still applies.
A/N: Thanks again for reading, if anyone still is! Posting this as I write was supposed to motivate me, but I think it's caused writer's block instead. Don't worry, though, I hope by the time I get to where I'm stuck, I'll be unstuck. ;)
Until then, more plot thickening.
Sweet Caroline, Chapter 4
Sam's headache lingered despite a decent night's sleep. The flickering fluorescent lighting in the bathroom didn't help as he made a face at his reflection in the mirror. The swelling had been kept to a minimum, but his left eye had turned wonderful shades of blue and black overnight. He probed at it with his pointer and middle fingers, hissing at the expected pain. The cut at the center of it was small, but the skin had split fairly wide. Reapplying one side of a clear butterfly bandage, he pressed the gash back together before he pasted the other half of the strip into place. He lifted his chin to eye the handiwork in better light. He heard the motel door open and shut.
"Got your coffee, Sammy," Dean announced. "How's the shiner?"
"Shiny. And it's Sam." Sam loped out of the bathroom, extricating the coffee cup from Dean's grasp. Dean made a face at the bruise. "It's nothing a pair of sunglasses won't hide. Mostly."
"Still, ouch." Dean sipped his coffee, watching Sam with a strange energetic vibe that made him wary. "You look like you've been in a bar fight. Whatever will people think?"
"If people think we're thugs it'll be because you threatened Will last night. 'Just remember we have weapons,' Dean?"
"No, if people think that it'll be because of your busted-up, ugly mug."
His brother smiled beatifically. Sam rolled his eyes, wincing at the pull the action caused on his bruised cheekbone. Dean stepped closer to peer at the injury.
"Came really close to the eye, though," Dean said, somehow losing most of the smart aleck from his voice. "It won't even leave a scar."
Something Sam couldn't quite read flickered in his brother's eyes. He felt a twinge, spiraling deep inside his gut. He didn't know why, exactly. The more time he spent with Dean, the more Sam started to actually see him. He wondered now about all of his childhood memories, how accurate they could possibly be coming from a confused, isolated and lonely kid. Dean was still the same hero figure Sam remembered him being, but there was depth he didn't quite understand, yet knew he regretted not seeing before.
"Well, thank God for that," he said dryly, trying to get that discomfiting look off Dean's face. "My ugly mug couldn't take it."
Dean snorted, regaining a smug expression. Lifting the butt of his hand until it rested on Sam's forehead, Dean gave him a gentle push back. That was more like it. Sam took a swallow of his drink, nearly choking when he discovered Dean had put more sugar and cream in it than coffee. Yeah. That explained why his brother had kept looking at him like he was a lab experiment. Dean was a serious pain in the ass sometimes. Sam coughed to hide a smile; it wasn't a good idea to feed the bears. Encouraging Dean would prolong his own torture.
"Nice, Dean. Thanks."
"I do what I can, Sammy. I know you like it girly."
"Asshole."
Dean grinned.
"Come on, get your stuff and let's go. We've got time for food before we meet with Professor O'Reilly. My good friend Aimee at the front desk recommended a place. I don't know about you, but I'm starving."
Sam's stomach growled on cue. Coffee wasn't going to cut it for breakfast, especially what his brother had gotten for him. Nodding, he abandoned the cup of sugar-laced coffee on the table, loading the laptop and Dad's journal into his shoulder bag. He trailed after Dean, hastily hanging the Do Not Disturb sign on the door handle as he exited.
The café Dean's good friend Aimee had pointed them to was only a few blocks away, a little hole-in-the-wall dive. It was pretty much like every other restaurant they frequented, maybe a little smaller and more crowded. Mom and Pop places like this somehow fostered an illusion that home cooked meals meant burgers on buttered, fried buns, limp French fries and cracked plates. In a way, Sam supposed, that was true. Until Je…until Stanford, he hadn't had a meal cooked specifically for him that didn't consist of Spaghetti O's, macaroni and cheese or Lucky Charms. If Dean ever had, Sam didn't know about it. It was just one more thing he didn't know about his brother.
Dean led them to a spot at the far wall, all of three short steps. The café was a tiny box, with Formica-topped tables filling one end, a row of booths and a counter with stools filling three quarters of the space. Dean took the chair facing the door, leaving Sam with his back to it and his bad eye to the window.
"Welcome to Don's. Get you boys started with some coffee?" a woman greeted. "You look like you spent the night at The Met, hitting it hard until dawn."
"Please," Sam said, glancing up at the waitress in baggy jeans and stained sweatshirt instead of a uniform. He flipped his cup over for her to pour. "Thank you."
"You bet, hon. It's nice and strong to help with the hangover it looks like you've got," she said with a distracted smile, pointing to the sunglasses he'd put on in the car and hadn't removed. She continued on by rote, "Name's Fran. I'll be back in a few for your orders. I do not recommend the fruit bowl. It's off season for…well, everything."
She wandered away from them without waiting for a response. Sam watched Fran as she grabbed a couple plates from the pass-through window at the far end of the diner counter, delivering them to a table in the corner. The toast was sliced about an inch and a half thick. He wasn't that hungry. Reaching for the sugar packets, Sam caught Dean looking at him with a glint in his eye. He decided he didn't need sugar in his coffee, letting his hand retract to the handle of his coffee cup. Dean seemed disappointed.
"So," Dean said as he studied the laminated menu. "You really didn't see what smacked you around last night? Anything come to you since?"
"No, man. Will was running when I got there. I saw it out of the corner of my eye. It was big. That's about all I got before I went flying." Sam took a sip of the coffee, finding it strong and bitter. He longed for sugar, but tried not to show it. "The bruise could be from crashing into the headstone, so I don't know if the thing was a spirit or something corporeal."
"That's not really helpful."
"I know. Next time I get tossed around like a sack of potatoes I'll be sure to take notes."
Sam shrugged off Dean's glare. With any luck, the professor would point them in the right direction. Even if he didn't, it seemed clear to Sam what had happened was directly related to the cemetery. Local history might cough up something about that. None of the news articles from area papers or the bigger Minneapolis/St. Paul papers mentioned anything odd. If it wasn't prominent in the news, though, whatever it was, it was vague enough not to raise flags. Taking a sip of the too-strong coffee, Sam forgot to school his reaction to the bitter liquid.
"Oh, just load up on the sugar, Nancy," Dean said.
"Shut up, jerk," he said lightly.
Sam took two sugar packets and two creams, stirring them in quickly. Fran came back for their orders just as Dean was mocking him with a raised pinky as he drank his own coffee. Luckily for Sam, she still seemed disinterested in her surroundings and didn't react. Like he needed grief from anyone besides Dean. Forewarned to the portion sizes, Sam stuck to toast only. That earned another snicker from Dean, who ordered the Manly-Man Omelet with extra bacon on the side. Sam would see who was laughing when their food arrived. Dean sometimes seemed like a bottomless pit, but Sam would bet hard cash his brother couldn't finish the meal.
"The camera," Dean said, out of the blue. "Did you have the camera, or did we leave it out there?"
Crap.
"I must have dropped it." Sam raised his eyebrows. "You think it could have caught something?"
"I don't know. Had you turned it off?"
"No, I kept scanning as we started leaving. I can't remember if I lost it before I ran for Will or not, though."
Dean looked at his watch. "Maybe we should split up. I'll get the camera, you talk to O'Reilly."
"Nice. No, I don't think so. You're not worming your way out of the boring stuff this time, Dean."
Fran appeared with heavy plates. Dean looked briefly dismayed to see how much food was on his. Sam enjoyed that a lot. His own toast with a side of congealing grape jelly was enough to feed both of them. Topping off the coffee he'd just sugared up to his taste, Fran did the same for Dean. She smiled and blushed when Dean winked at her. Sam counted to ten really fast in his head.
"Thanks," Sam said to her.
The waitress gave him a bare nod before wandering away. Sometimes Sam felt like chopped liver to Dean's filet mignon. Even though he didn't exactly want to be like Dean in that way, he still felt a spasm of jealousy. He would never admit that, and he hadn't missed that feeling at all while he was at Stanford.
"Seriously, the professor's not going to want to talk to someone who looks like he's been in a bar fight," Sam said. "I'll find the camera and then start researching at the town library while you go talk to him."
"Either way I'm screwed, I guess," Dean said with a sigh, and Sam knew he'd won. "You know, I like it better when we know what we're hunting before we get somewhere. Go in, kill evil things, get out. No endless hours with paper and dust."
"We always have to spend time researching. It's part of the job."
"Yeah, yeah. I know that. I can't help it if I'm not a gigantic geek like you and don't enjoy it."
"Your eggs are getting cold," Sam said, stabbing his butter-laden knife at the heaping pile of yellow on Dean's plate. He couldn't resist egging his brother on. No pun. "Twenty bucks says you don't finish all of that."
"You're on." Dean peered at the condiments on theirs and surrounding tables. "Not without hot sauce, though."
Sam pointed to the bottles of Tabasco on the counter. Sighing, Dean stood and stretched for the nearest one. As his brother doused his omelet with the sauce, Sam couldn't help thinking about heartburn. And as his brother shoveled eggs into his mouth, Sam wondered if twenty dollars might not cover the queasiness produced by watching Dean eat. He averted his eyes, keeping them on his own plate, where it was safe. It was almost like he really did have a hangover. Skipping the jelly entirely, he spread the butter on the lukewarm toast and started munching. They ate in relative silence, notwithstanding Dean's over the top smacking. The rest of the café was filled with quiet chatter and utensils clinking against plates.
Loud, mechanical-sounding voices burst from the kitchen all of a sudden, startling everyone in the dining area. Sam sat up straighter. He recognized the police scanner before the wail of sirens from somewhere nearby confirmed it. Fran looked grim and white as she exited through the narrow kitchen door. Sam exchanged glances with Dean. They both had to be thinking the same thing. Towns like this probably didn't get a lot of cop action outside of speeders or an occasional DUI, definitely not this early in the morning. Dean dropped his fork and stood, taking a few steps toward Fran.
"What's going on?"
"You boys from the school?" Fran asked. Dean nodded. "So you know about that poor girl they found a week back? Well, I think they just found another kid out there."
Putting his half-eaten slice of toast down, Sam pushed back from the table, the legs of his chair squealing against linoleum. It felt like Sam's stomach twisted up into a little ball. They'd left the cemetery just after midnight, certain there wouldn't be another incident. There shouldn't have been. No. Some poor kid was dead because they'd left things unguarded. He reached up, touching the bruise on his face. This was his fault. If he hadn't been hurt, they might have gone back after getting Will home, to learn more about what attacked them. Dean frowned at him.
"A 419?" Dean asked Fran. "You're sure?"
Several low murmurs of shock floated from a few of the other diners. Fran affirmed it with a brief nod, her facial features becoming stark and angular with tired, fearful concern.
"This kind of thing don't happen around here," she said. "It just don't."
She handed Sam their bill with a shaky hand. He stared down at it like he'd never seen such a thing before, stuck in a loop of self-imposed guilt. Dean frowned at him some more, pulling a twenty out of his wallet and handing it to Fran without looking at the total. Sam crazily thought about how he was right about Dean not finishing his food and, seconds later, about how he shouldn't be thinking stupidass crap like that right now. Dean slid into his jacket and started moving for the door. Sam shook himself out of his stupor, following.
"Dude, this wasn't our fault," Dean said the second they pushed through the glass door smudged with greasy fingerprints. "We can't camp out there every night to make sure no one wanders across whatever the hell is doing this. Sam, we don't even know what it is yet."
Somehow Dean knew what he was thinking, even with his eyes covered by sunglasses. Sam nodded as if he agreed, staring in front of him at nothing in particular. He thought Dean was protesting too much. It made Sam feel better and like a selfish bastard to know he wasn't alone in feeling responsible. There wasn't time for the blame game, he knew that. What was done was done, no undoing it through natural means. All they could do now was make sure it didn't happen again. They had to figure this out soon, before anyone else got hurt…or died. There'd be time for guilt in his nightmares.
They were less than a mile from the cemetery. It took only a few minutes to get there, but by the time they did Sam saw a small crowd had gathered. From the looks of it as Dean steered the car by slowly, the cops had managed to block off the cemetery gates. Sam noticed the hub of activity, including EMT, police and gawkers lining up along the fence line, was right around where they'd been last night. In the cool, damp morning, white puffs of vapor floated above the gathering with every exhalation, hovering there like apparitions. The pit in Sam's stomach grew impossibly heavier.
"That doesn't seem good," Dean said as he pulled over half a block away, not quite looking at Sam. "I was kind of hoping for a false alarm."
"Yeah," Sam said, his voice tight. They climbed out of the car. He met Dean's eye for a second before gazing toward the crowd. "Me, too."
No one paid much attention as he and Dean joined the onlookers. A few murmurs flitted through the air, but the overall atmosphere was solemn and hushed. Even with the advantage of height, most of Sam's view was blocked by policemen. What he could see was a small, limp hand. He swallowed. Dean moved a step closer to him, probably unaware he'd even done so. Sometimes, in moments like this, Sam felt as though they hadn't changed from boyhood at all, Dean always protecting him. It made his heart ache even as he felt a twinge of resentment. But, no, this wasn't about them.
"Do you know what happened?" Sam asked of an older, slightly hunched man.
"Besides another senseless death?" The man looked up at him, eyes flashing. "No."
"I heard someone say it's Tyler Hokanson," a woman on the other side of Dean said.
"Who's that?"
"Star wrestler. Third in state in his weight." The woman tutted sadly, shaking her head. "He was a sophomore. So young. His poor family."
"If it was even him," the cranky guy said as he shifted around and craned his neck. "They're definitely bringing someone out of there."
Taller than most of the crowd, Sam was in good position to see what was going on once the cops moved. Two stony-faced EMTs wheeled a gurney with a covered form on it. A slender, silver-haired man in a jacket emblazoned with bold white CORONER on the back walked in front of them. It didn't matter if the victim was a sixteen-year-old star athlete or a seventy-year-old retiree, someone was dead that shouldn't be.
"Maybe now they'll bring someone in that can stop this," the woman said, looking up at Dean as if for confirmation. "Such a shame. The whole town was upset with what happened to the girl. This will tear us apart."
Sam pursed his lips and exchanged a look with Dean. Neither of them had to say anything. The case had just turned more imperative. Sam watched the gurney being rolled through the cemetery until it was loaded into the ambulance and the doors shut, cutting off his view.
Mystery supernatural thingy: 2
Winchesters: 0