Sam and Dean were having trouble.
"What do you mean, there's no room?"
The motel clerk cleared his throat in agitation. Dean was staring at him, hard.
"Um. We have no free rooms, sir."
Dean stared at him some more.
"I'm sorry, sir."
"The sign outside says 'vacancies'," Sam pointed out.
The clerk looked out of the window at the sign, then back at the brothers.
"Uh. I forgot to turn it off. We're full."
"There's a maid over there cleaning a room out."
The clerk opened his mouth and shut it again.
"Yes. Yes, there is."
Sam frowned in annoyance. "So the room is empty?"
The clerk nodded minutely, trying to avoid Dean's eyes.
"So can we have a room?"
"Um. No."
Sam threw his hands up in confusion.
"Why not?"
The clerk shuffled his feet.
"We have a policy of not renting rooms to couples of the same gender," he said finally.
"You…have a policy?" Dean asked quietly.
The clerk looked at Sam.
"I'm sorry. I'd lose my job."
Sam gestured at Dean, then himself.
"We're brothers," he said, "not a couple."
The clerk was shaking his head. "I'm sorry, I can't rent you a room."
"We're not a couple!" Sam's voice was getting louder.
"Sam, forget it," Dean said, still eyeballing the clerk.
Sam wasn't prepared to leave it there, though.
"What's your name?" Sam asked the clerk.
"Paul," said the clerk.
"Look, Paul, I'm not…we're brothers. Really."
Paul looked at them for a moment.
"You don't look like brothers."
"But we do look like a couple? That's what you're saying?"
Paul looked around for a way out of the conversation.
"Look. I'm really sorry. But I can't rent you a room; I would get fired. And you would get kicked out of the room, and you wouldn't get a refund."
Sam gave up and walked out of the office without another word.
Dean gave Paul the clerk one last eyeball.
"A policy," he said in disgust, and followed Sam out to the parking lot.
Outside in the sunshine, Sam was just about fit to burst.
"What kind of place is this?" he asked the world at large.
Dean kept his mouth shut.
"Stupid hick town," Sam went on. "Dumb-ass rules for no good reason, what kind of…" He tailed off when he saw Dean's face.
"What?"
Dean wiped his hand over his mouth. "Nothing."
"Are you laughing at me?"
Dean thought about it.
"Yeah."
"Dean-"
"You know what, Sam? It doesn't matter, okay? We're not going to stay here, so what. We'll find somewhere else."
"Another motel?"
"Sure, why not?"
Sam flung his arms wide. "We're not exactly spoilt for choice out here, Dean."
Dean looked around. Sam had a point.
"You have a point," he conceded.
They stood there for a while, faces to the warm sun, thinking.
"You hungry?" Dean asked, presently.
"Yeah."
They started back up the road to the main part of town.
"What is this place called, anyway?"
"Butt-hole?" Dean guessed.
Sam sniggered despite himself.
They carried on walking, kicking up a fair amount of dust as they went.
"Do we really look like a couple?"
"Apparently."
They walked on in their dust cloud.
"What's up with that?" Sam asked.
Dean shrugged.
"It's probably your hair," he said.
"What?"
"I said, it's probably – "
"Yeah, I heard you!" Sam said crossly. "What do you mean, it's my hair?"
"Nothing, never mind."
"How can it be my hair?"
Dean said nothing at all.
"Ass," Sam said.
Dean smiled to himself.
"It's probably your jacket," Sam went on.
"Hey! Leave the jacket out of this!"
"Who wears leather nowadays? No one."
Dean bristled. "Who says 'nowadays', nowadays?"
They managed another three steps before they started laughing, and they laughed all the rest of the way back to town.
They headed straight for the diner they had seen earlier. The town had woken up now and there were a number of people on the street. As they proceeded through the town, they drew a lot of stares.
"Are they staring at your hair or my jacket?" Dean murmured.
Sam was feeling a little uneasy.
"I don't like this, Dean."
"Ah, calm down. What's going to happen?"
Sam stopped in his tracks. "Seriously? Seriously? If that's not tempting fate…"
Dean wheeled around and said, "Come on, dude, I need some breakfast. We can worry about fate getting us when I've had some pancakes."
When they got to the diner, they saw that it was clean and cheerful, and there was a pleasant looking middle-aged lady behind the counter. Sam and Dean pushed open the door and found an empty booth. Dean fished a menu out of the stand and found the pancakes. Opposite him, Sam caught the waitress' eye.
"Mornin', boys," she said. Sam read her nametag; it said 'Marlene'.
"Morning," Sam replied brightly.
"Coffee?"
Marlene turned over the coffee cups that were already on the table and filled them up.
"Get you any breakfast?"
"Pancakes, please. Lots of pancakes." Dean stuck the menu back in the stand.
Marlene bustled away, and within a few short minutes was back with two huge stacks of pancakes, plus syrup.
Dean settled back in the booth seat and examined his plate with a sigh of satisfaction.
"Ah, pancakes," he said. "The king of breakfast foods." He set to work.
Sam sipped at his coffee and was just about to start on his pancakes when he felt someone looking at him. He set his cup down and twisted subtly in his seat. He saw the cops in the booth in the corner of the diner. One of them was looking directly at him. The other one was writing something down in his notebook.
Sam had to force himself to turn back around slowly.
"Dean," he whispered. "Cops."
Dean looked up and past Sam to where the cops were, munching all the while.
"They're not arresting us," he said. "Ignore them. Besides, we're dead."
Sam blinked rapidly.
"They're giving us the eyeball," he hissed, "like everyone else in this town. And we might be dead, but our fingerprints are still in the system, so I think we should avoid getting arrested for no good reason in Hickville, okay?"
Dean rolled his eyes at this, but didn't disagree.
"We'd better finish eating," Dean said, between mouthfuls. "Look weird if we don't."
Sam saw the sense in this, so he started to eat his pancakes.
He got about three pancakes in before the cops came over.
"Good morning, gentlemen."
Sam looked up. Both the cops were standing there, one by each seat, blocking both Sam and Dean into the booth.
The cop nearest Sam said, "Are you vacationing here?"
Sam shook his head. "Just passing through."
"Where are you headed?"
"Phoenix."
The cop scratched his nose.
"If you're passing through, why were you up at the motel this morning?"
Man, Sam thought.
"Our car needed an oil change, some other stuff. We've been driving a while."
Dean added, "The car needed a rest. So did we."
The cop bobbed his head noncommittally. "You didn't get any rooms up there?"
"Ah, no." Sam looked at Dean, still working his way down the stack of pancakes.
"Why's that?" The cop next to Sam was asking all the questions. The cop near Dean wasn't talking. Just watching.
"The clerk didn't give us a room."
"Why's that?"
No way around it, Sam thought. He cleared his throat.
"He thought we were a couple."
The cop nodded.
"They do have a policy."
Sam said nothing. Dean stopped eating.
Sam braced himself, thinking, don't do something stupid, Dean…and then found himself doing something that, on balance, was really pretty dumb.
*
Patten looked at the map appraisingly, hands in the pockets of his jeans. He felt the heat of Michelle's gaze in the back of his neck.
"Are we sure about this?" Patten asked, without taking his eyes off the map.
"Do you want a percentage?"
He turned around and nodded once.
"Ninety per cent." Michelle swung slightly in her chair, shoes discarded under the desk. Her feet were bare and didn't touch the floor. Patten tried not to look at them. He shifted his attention to Agent Weiss instead.
"Would they recognise you, Amanda?" Patten asked.
Weiss leaned on the edge of her desk. "Probably not. They only saw me once, during the arrest, for about thirty seconds. It was dark. They were distracted. And I would be in disguise anyway."
"And you, Dan? Would they recognise you?"
"Yes," Agent Lee said, muffled somewhat by the bagel he was eating. "At least, Sam would. And they tend not to go for guys, as such."
Patten knew this to be true. He knew Lee wouldn't work as bait anymore than he himself would. He knew it was unreasonable of him to think that Michelle would be less good at the job than he would. He knew that both she and Amanda were stellar field agents and were more than capable of staying safe during an op like this. Still…he was worried.
"You're worried." Weiss looked at him steadily. Michelle looked at Weiss.
"Yes."
"Smart," Weiss said.
"We just don't know, do we? We don't really know what they'll do."
Lee finished his bagel and wiped his hands on a paper napkin. "No. But we can make an educated guess based on the things that we do know." He threw the napkin in the trash and glanced at Michelle.
Rosen took this as her cue. "We do know that they are in Arizona. We know that they said they were heading to Phoenix, and they had no reason to lie. We know it's been two months since the massacre, and that means they're about ready to do it again." She took a breath. "It's a risk, Joe. But us not risking it could cost lives. You know that. You're the one who said it in the first place. Have you changed your mind?"
Patten shook his head slowly.
"Then what's going on?"
Patten looked down at his hands. "The last time these guys were trapped, they destroyed a building and killed twelve people to get away. Twelve people. The escalation worries me. If they realise that you are FBI…I am worried about what'll happen."
Rosen smiled gently. "Good," she said, still smiling. "Me too."
Patten avoided looking directly at her. "I'd feel happier if I was doing it myself, I guess that's what it is."
Unseen by either Patten or Rosen, the profilers exchanged a meaningful glance, hiding smiles of their own