A/N: Continued thanks to everyone who's following along! Also a reminder that this has been alpha-read by LdyAnne and edited by Meg. There may be lingering typos, but hopefully nothing too, too awful.

Last time, Dean and Sam were getting some much needed R&R, after a job well done. Shall we see what they're up to now?

Sweet Caroline
Chapter 14

Sam awakened with a gasp, pulling out of sleep with a familiar sense of panic. His lungs felt as if a great weight was pushing down on them, physical effects of a dream he couldn't quite remember. He was used to waking suddenly from a dream, but this time he didn't think it had been the recurring image of Jessica pinned to the ceiling. His lungs burned as he tried to gather in oxygen, and rein in the panic. His heart pounded so fast he could almost hear it. He lifted his head, scanning his surroundings quickly. The room was flooded with late-morning light, overly bright from the sun reflecting off fresh snow. At the foot of his bed a figure stood, its features shadowed by backlighting. His uneasiness increased.

"Someone's at the door," it said.

It took him a moment to recognize the voice. Dean. Not…that thing from last night. Sam let his head fall back. Pounding came from the other side of the thin motel door, in sync with his heartbeat.

"Then maybe you should answer it." Sam rolled gingerly to look at the clock on the nightstand. Crap, it was already almost noon. "Why'd you let me sleep so long?"

Dean snorted, as if that was a stupid question.

Sam guessed it was. He felt like he could sleep for another four hours, a rare sensation for him. Most of the time sleep brought too many subconscious things to light for him to ever truly welcome it.

"I didn't let you do anything, dude, I just woke up."

"Oh," Sam said.

That should worry him. He tended to get up before Dean, but that didn't mean his brother ever slept until midday unless there was something wrong with him. Sam squinted at Dean, his vision blurring grayish and almost fluid like an oil slick. He blinked the illusion away, sitting up. He started stretching his limbs while Dean tugged on his clothes, grabbed the knife from under his pillow and walked to the door. More muscles than Sam knew he had were sore. He was finally in good hunting shape again, but there were certain muscle groups that were always sore after a supernatural skirmish. He took a mental tally on his condition, as he tried to brush the cobwebs of sleep aside.

The wound tract in his right shoulder felt tight, but Sam could tell the mending process was already working to knit skin and flesh back together. Accompanying that was a dull, throbbing ache. Once he got something to numb the pain, he'd feel okay. He already felt better than last night, from what he could remember. Movement was just going to be impeded a little for a couple days, but the sling helped keep the shoulder jostling to a minimum. He glanced over at Dean, who was cautiously eyeing the door. If they were going to have company, Sam would like to put some…oh, he'd slept fully dressed. That was good.

"Yeah?" Dean called, keeping the door closed.

"It's Deputy Graham," came the muffled response.

Shooting a dark look at Sam, Dean muttered under his breath and hid the blade away before he opened the door. The deputy tromped in, carrying snow and a blast of cold air with him.

Sam had a vague inkling he and Dean had intended to skip town before getting in deeper with local law enforcement. That was their usual routine. Having Deputy Graham show up at their motel wasn't a good sign. He supposed that was his fault. His shoulder twinged in agreement; if he hadn't needed sewing up, they could have been in a different state by now. Sliding to the edge of the bed and then standing up carefully, Sam assessed Graham's rumpled clothes and bloodshot eyes. He was still in uniform. The guy looked like he hadn't gotten any sleep.

"Who are you guys, really?" Graham said, his words like gunfire.

Sam started to reply, cut off before he could utter a word.

"I know you're not FBI, so don't even try to give me that crap."

"We…"Sam said.

"No, no. You might think I'm just some small town rube, but I'm not an idiot. Government agents don't drive around a friggin' classic muscle car. They sure as hell don't shack up in the same crappy local motel room when there's a branch hotel available. There's no one at the Minneapolis FBI division office that can verify an Agent Morrison or Krieger exists. I want to know what's going on." Graham paced, breathing heavily and filled with nervous energy.

Sam experienced slight déjà vu of his conversation with Iris, which seemed about a billion years ago now. They were screwed. He gauged the distance between him and the door, not that he could make a fast getaway if his life depended on it, which in a way it just might. Dean threw him a look, but his brother's face was so bruised Sam couldn't tell what he was trying to say.

"There must have been some mix-up in paperwork, Deputy Graham. A simple misunderstanding, that's all. We did just recently transfer from Detroit," Dean said. Holding his hands up, Dean approached the guy the way he would a wampus cat, cautious but very ready to either fight or run.

"Bullshit," Graham shouted. "I knew there was something up when your partner or whoever he is suggested the town just get over it. Two deaths in the same place within a week and the FBI wants to brush it off? Oh, I don't think so. And then you just happened to be out at the cemetery last night when something else obviously went down?"

Bruise or no bruise, there was no room to misinterpret Dean's expression at Graham's last tirade. His brother looked at him for help he didn't feel capable of giving. His brain was too foggy from sleep and soreness and something else nudging at his mind. Sam shrugged with one shoulder, the motion pulling at his injured right. He winced, unconsciously reaching up to press against it. The pain was increasing the longer he was awake, but still tolerable at a dull throb.

"I want you to tell me who you are, what you're doing in Morris and what you have to do with people dying."

It slowly occurred to Sam that there was more to Graham's confrontation than met the eye. Just part of it was his inability to figure out why it was just Graham and not the whole sheriff's department, for example. He and Dean had been busted impersonating federal agents. They should be in handcuffs by now, and this conversation wouldn't be happening in a motel room.

"Why don't you sit down?" Dean said with deceptive calm.

"Why don't I…"

"Look, maybe you should tell us how you've reached this brilliant deduction of yours. Sit."

Dean was more forceful, and Sam recognized the distraction technique. If they could get the deputy to talk about something else, get him off the track he was currently on, maybe they'd have time to work around this mess. Sam knew he could use it. His head was spinning just a little. He watched Graham pale as he looked at Dean's stained clothes and stern expression, before perching on the edge of the TV stand. Sometimes a softer approach worked, but then again sometimes it took a hard edge and brusqueness that only Dean could ever deliver consistently, especially now.

"Sam, you should sit, too. You look like you're going to keel over."

Out of the blue he had an image of Gwen standing over him, looming and large. It made him anxious. Closing his eyes, he envisioned Caroline Sellke's headless statue above him instead of Gwen. The face-shaped translucence where the head used to be looked down at him sadly. He didn't recall the face bit from before, his brain only now adding that detail. He couldn't be sure if it had really happened or if it was his imagination. He didn't usually hallucinate during a gig. Or have flashbacks.

"I…" Sam started to say, but he didn't know how to finish. Somehow Dean was right next to him with a glass of water and a sample packet of pills the doctor had sent him off with, and it startled him.

"Take a pill, Sam. Don't argue with me," Dean said, putting the glass and bottle on the bedside table. He leaned close, speaking in hushed tones. "And don't go all spacey on me, either. I need your help dealing with this doofus. Okay?"

Sam nodded, sitting. He took the pills gratefully, ignoring the water in favor of taking them dry. Across the room, Graham watched them, angry expression still on his face, but simultaneously, interest. He was probably reassessing based on whatever new information he had. Whatever the motivation, Sam felt like a bug in a jar. He shifted to get more comfortable, trying to ignore the additional strain on his shoulder. The way he caught Dean giving him another sidelong, worried look told him he failed on that count. He shook his head, nodding toward Graham.

"First, I'm going to make some coffee," Dean announced, clapping his hands together. "Seeing as we just woke up and all."

"If that's supposed to make me feel bad, it doesn't," Graham snapped, "I was up all night. I haven't slept in nearly thirty-six hours, actually, so while you're at it, make enough for me, too."

The maker was a motel standard two-cupper, and couldn't make enough crappy coffee for any one of them alone, if the way Sam felt was any indication. Dean said something under his breath, glowering at Graham who glowered right back. Sam still couldn't figure out why the guy hadn't hauled them into custody.

"Screw the coffee," Dean said finally. "It looks like you're too smart for us. You want the truth?"

"That is what I came here for."

"Dean, I don't think…," Sam said, recognizing the stubborn set to Dean's jaw.

"Okay, then here it is." Dean spat out, ignoring Sam. He ran a hand through his disheveled hair. "You're right; we're not feds. We brothers. We're also hunters, but we don't hunt deer or any other kind of wild game. No, what we hunt is evil. Demons, monsters, things that go bump in the night. You with me?"

Graham nodded dazedly, then shook his head in confusion. Perfectly natural.

"We troll for news stories that might be our kind of gig. Don't ask us how we can tell something's not a natural occurrence, we just can. We heard about the first death and it didn't seem right, a young girl dying like that. We came to Morris to figure out what was going on." Dean emphasized his words with hand gestures and serious glaring. "Well, it turned out to be a vengeful spirit was bound to a statue. Yes, that smashed statue out in the cemetery. There was no repair crew out there. We did that, because it was what we needed to do to get rid of the spirit before it killed anyone else. Let me know if you need me to repeat that."

As Dean rattled it all off, Graham's expression grew more and more dumbfounded. By the time Dean was done, the deputy looked at them as if he and Dean had grown second heads. It wouldn't have been Sam's choice to blurt it all out like that, but given the circumstances coming up with another cover story wasn't possible. He knew what kind of reaction the truth was guaranteed to bring. Judging from Graham's open-mouthed stare, Sam was right about that. However, it was way too late to spin it into a more readily believable story now.

Sometimes a hard edge and brusqueness needed a sugar coating.

"You see, sometimes when people die violently their spirits are so traumatized they can't move on," Sam said, keeping his voice soft to counterbalance Dean's abrupt delivery. "We think that's what happened in this case. And those spirits don't belong here anymore. Sometimes we, me and Dean and others like us, have to give them a little push out of our world."

If, that was, a little push meant salt, lighter fluid and lots of fire. Or a good swing of a sledgehammer or two. Whatever it took. Sam had a sudden memory of the statue coming at him, headless and one-armed. It had looked like something was there, like the statue itself was more of an exoskeleton than a binding agent. He furrowed his eyebrows.

Graham blinked, and looked contemplative. For a long minute, the room was silent. The deputy twitched a few times, toying with his hand-held radio as if he planned on doing what he should have done to start with – call in backup and haul the Winchesters into custody.

"So, let me get this straight. You were out there putting an evil spirit to rest," Graham said at last, incredulous but also serious. "What were the girls really doing out there?"

"Getting in the way," Dean said. "It went south fast. Vengeful spirits don't tend to like what we do to them."

"Uh. Why was this the first anyone's heard of it?"

"Trust us, Deputy, it's a really long, boring story," Sam said. "I'm not sure you need or want to hear it."

Graham looked more confused, but then he started to smile. Not the expected reaction.

"I knew it. I knew there was something weird, like really weird, going on around here," Graham said. "I wasn't sure before, but after all the crazy stuff last night, I knew those kids couldn't have died from natural causes. There really is something out there."

"Let me guess. You were a big X-Files fan," Dean said dryly.

"Well, yeah." Graham shot Dean a wild look, starting to pace again. "But only for the first four or five years. After that it started getting unrealistic."

Dean mouthed, "Unrealistic?"

"Yeah, you know, about aliens and stuff. I liked it when there were more monster-of-the-week stories, not just alien conspiracies."

"Oh," Sam said. Speaking of unrealistic, he felt as if the conversation had just turned as surreal as a Salvador Dali painting. Graham was almost bouncing with excitement, for crying out loud. "Right."

"I just never thought something like this could happen in real life, you know? I didn't not believe, but…well, after all the crazy stuff, it all makes sense now."

Sam had initially thought the deputy's curiosity would be a problem, but it might actually be an advantage now. He glanced at Dean, who looked at him oddly but then nodded. Graham knew the truth and was apparently more enthused about it than freaked, so he might let them go. Time was still a factor; if Graham had figured them out, the sheriff couldn't be far behind.

"So you understand for us to do our job, sometimes we have to insert ourselves into local investigations," Sam said carefully, knowing what a profiler would do with that information. "But now that you know the truth, what're you going to do?"

"What do you mean?"

"About us, Deputy," Dean said. "I gotta be honest – if we hadn't been knocked around last night, we'd already be out of here."

Getting back to his feet, Sam felt the effects of the pain medication right away. He felt sluggish, dull and heavy. He wasn't surprised when Dean immediately moved across the room to stand closer to him. Dean's concern was more welcome than irritating, sometimes. Sam wouldn't faceplant right there or anything, but he shouldn't have taken the pills without something in his stomach. As if sharing his thoughts, Dean grabbed a protein bar from their stash of ready-to-eat food and handed it to him.

"The spirit's gone now?"

"Yes," Dean said.

"You're sure?" Graham said, regaining his befuddled expression.

"Yes. I don't know how to be clearer about that. It was tied to the statue. The statue's gone, therefore so's the spirit."

"But what about…"

Sam's brain kicked in.

A dark shape above him, face ghostly and sad. Heavy. Heaviness on his legs, his stomach, his chest. Breath squeezing from his lungs. Sudden release, gray haze floating away and shaking all over.

"Sam, hey."

A rough voice called to him. A gentle shake on the shoulder brought pain, and awareness.

"Sam, I told you not to get all spacey on me."

Sam opened his eyes, finding himself sitting on the bed again. Dean was crouched right in front of him, a hand firmly on his good shoulder. Graham was behind Dean, white and with a fearful expression.

"Dean," Sam said with a gasping breath, as if he'd really just been suffocating again. "I think we have a problem."