Sam and Dean blinked. Glanced at each other with twin expressions of shock that were quickly masked with nonchalance and pretend authority. Blinked some more. Dean finally did something. He cleared his throat and asked, "Do you mind if we come in?"
Sam glanced behind her, into the depths of the old house. "Uh..." Footsteps pattered down the stairs and another girl appeared, clad only in an oversize t-shirt that clung to her damp body. Her hair was twisted back in a towel, but without the towel turban she was a few inches shorter than her sister, with huge green eyes and a sprinkling of freckles across her nose. "Sami, shut the door! You're letting all the cold air in!" Without even noticing the Winchester boys, the new girl turned the corner and was gone from view again.
Before the boys could ask, Sam said, "My sister, Deanna. She just got out of the shower." She sounded a bit embarrassed by her sister's behaviour.
Exchanging significant glances again, Sam and Dean decided to at least tell her part of the truth. Well, eventually. Turning their backs to the girl, Sam said, "Should we tell her?" Dean just held out his hands for rock, paper, scissors. Sam rolled his eyes, but complied with his brother's childish ways. Once Sam had won with rock ("Always with the scissors, Dean." He could resist getting in a jibe.) they turned back to the door to see Sam leaning against the door casually, as if she saw this sort of thing all the time.
"My sister and I do that all the time," she said. Looking to Sam, she whispered conspiratorially, "Does he always pick scissors too?"
Dean scratched his jaw like he did when he was embarrassed. "Okay, look-"
"Dean." Sam gave him a look and his brother quieted. "Sam...this is gonna be kind of weird."
"My whole life is dealing with the 'weird'," the girl replied, making air quotes around the word "weird".
Sam swallowed. "Uh, yeah. You wanted to know our real names, right?" He barely waited for Sam's nod of assent before moving on. "My name is Sam. This is my brother Dean." Dean gave a little wave and a sarcastic smile. "We're the Winchesters."
Sam inhaled sharply. "You'd better come inside."
She held the door open for them and led them to the living room, where Deanna was brushing out her wet hair. When she saw the brothers, she leaned back on her hands in an unconsciously sexual pose. "Damn," she said. "You boys are hot."
"Deanna!" Sam said reprovingly.
Her sister shrugged. "What? It's true."
The brother had trouble concealing their grins. Perhaps now was not the time to be laughing, but they had had similar conversations themselves. It brought them back to the reality of the situation, thinking about how similar they were.
"Deanna," Sam said. "This is Sam and Dean Winchester."
Deanna sat up straight. "Oh." She paused. "Um, well, sorry." She mouthed Awkward at her sister with wide eyes, making Sam glare and roll her eyes.
The boys sat down on the couch across from the two girls. Sam sat down next to her sister. Dean decided they should figure out how similar their lives were.
"So, do you girls have parents?" was the first thing he asked. Sam nearly elbowed him for that, but thought better of it once he understood what his brother was doing.
Sam and Deanna glanced at each other. Deanna was the one who spoke. "Our dad, Mark, is long gone. Mom...never told us what happened. I was only four, and Sam was six months old." Sam nodded. The other Sam looked at Dean. Deanna continued. "Our mom went on a hunting trip a few days ago. We heard from her when she was in Oklahoma, but since then nothing. We've even called-" Sam nudged her sister and she went quiet. Sam glanced up at the brothers from under her bangs, which were in her eyes.
Sam started speaking to the girls, putting pieces together in his head. "That's pretty much the same thing that happened to us! I mean, our mom died when we were young and our dad is the one missing, but-"
"Sam," Dean said warningly. Sam disregarded the warning and plowed on.
"Our ages, our family, our lives down to the smallest detail are the same! Even for us that's crazy," Sam finished.
The sisters nodded, leaning back into the couch a bit, seeming relieved. This confession from Sam seemed to make the girl Sam trust the brothers a bit more. The fact that they already knew everything made her sure she didn't have much to hide. She didn't trust them completely. At least, not yet. They had to earn that trust.
The next thing brought up was the name problem. As Dean pointed out, they couldn't just say "Sam" because there were two of them. They also had the same nickname, which was unfortunate. They eventually decided that they would call the girl Sam Sami, and though Dean rejected the idea at first he agreed that it would be simpler and Sami was more of a girlie name anyway. Sam rolled his eyes at that, as it was Dean's nickname for him, but let it slide.
"So...what do we do now?" Deanna asked. She had started fidgeting, tapping her fingers on her leg to one of her favourite songs. She liked to keep moving, and when she glanced at Dean and saw him doing the same they both tucked their fingers under their arms to stop.
"We should probably keep investigating the case that we're here for. It can't be a coincidence that we met you two here, on a case," Sam said. Sami nodded.
"Wait," said Dean, holding out a hand. "Neither of you is a witch, right?"
Sami and Deanna glanced at each other and then shook their heads. "Um, no. We're hunters like you, remember?" Deanna replied.
"Well, great. Back to the beginning." Dean pushed off his knees and stood up in frustration.
"You just met yourself with boobs and that's what you're choosing to focus on?" Deanna exclaimed. Sam and Dean looked at her strangely. "What?" she said, shrinking into herself a little. Sami just smirked, reclining on the couch. She had been on the verge of saying something similar, so she couldn't talk.
"That's...an interesting way to put things," Sam said for both him and his brother. Dean was mouthing "me with boobs" to himself and scrutinising Deanna. Her smirk grew wider and she arched her back, forcing the anatomy in question into greater focus. Dean's ears turned red and he looked away.
"Um...so, anyway, maybe you can help us. You do live here, correct?" Sam asked. Deanna stopped making seductive faces at Dean and pursed her lips at Sam, thinking.
Sami looked at her sister and answered herself. "I've had theories about a local coven, probably just a few Wiccan girls who picked up the wrong book and decided to experiment. But we don't technically live here, no. We've been here for the past few days, but..."
"This is where we went after I picked up brainiac here from Oxford," Deanna interrupted. Sami whacked her on the arm. "What?" Deanna said. "You were all for telling anything with ears that you were going to Oxford when you got in-"
"I had to choose between a normal life and hunting, Deanna. I was happy that something awesome and normal had finally happened to me," Sami insisted. Sam and Dean both noticed that she did have a trace of a British accent, likely from spending four years at college abroad.
"Sounds familiar," Dean put in with a significant look at Sam. Sam pretended not to see it and focused on the girls. They had continued arguing, but Sam got the feeling that they were going over an old disagreement again, something that came up over and over but never really got anywhere. To say he knew the feeling would be an understatement.
"Guys," he said gently once they had mostly stopped. "Maybe we should try and focus."
"All I was saying was-" Sami started.
"She'll sway you to her side and you'll never believe another word I say!" Deanna cautioned.
"I wasn't going to say anything like that!" Sami responded. "Seriously, all I was going to say was that this is where Mom told us to go. She sent us the coordinates for this old dump right after she left for her hunting trip without Deanna."
"And after she'd been gone for a few days, no contact with me or Bobbi-" Deanna began.
"Wait, Bobby? As in Bobby Singer?" Dean asked, shocked.
"Yeah, Roberta Singer," Deanna responded. "Can I finish now? Geez."
"They've got their own Bobby, too," Dean said. He threw up his hands. "This is getting ridiculous."
"Dean, sit down. Let her finish," Sam said, though privately he agreed. He nodded to Deanna to go on.
"No contact from her with me or Bobbi, so I go get Sami here just before fall term starts and she gets these coordinates. We book it out here, find this dump, and camped out. It's got surprisingly good water pressure, though," Deanna finished.
"Awesome," Dean said, finally grinning. He looked like he was going to ask a question, perhaps about the state of the plumbing, but thought better of it as Sam asked something else.
"Sami, did you have a boyfriend at Oxford? Maybe named...Jesse?" he said. He tried not to flinch when he said that, but thought to himself, It's not Jess. Maybe Sami didn't go through exactly the same thing you did. The college is already different. You don't know-
"Yeah, I did," she said, surprised. "I mean, I was going to stay on for graduate school, but family was ultimately more important. I left with Deanna and Jesse and I have sort of stayed in touch. He's seeing someone else now," Sami said. She didn't seem too broken up about having to leave him, and Sam was sure that he'd be able to tell if what had happened to Jess had happened to her boyfriend.
Thinking about Jess got Sam thinking about his birthday, or, more accurately, what had happened when he was exactly six months old. "How did your mom get into hunting?" Sam asked. Dean looked a little confused for a moment at the subject jump, but stayed quiet and let Sam ask as many questions as he wanted.
"Dad got possessed when Sami was six months old. Mom eventually killed him, and we've been moving around ever since. Bit like Bobbi's story, isn't it?" Deanna replied, looking to Sami.
"Yeah, yeah it is, except Bobbi had to kill her husband-"
"But that's exactly what Mom did-"
"Oh, right."
Sam had gone silent through this entire exchange. His mind was whirring so fast that Dean could practically see smoke coming out of his ears. Before, the girls had said they didn't know what happened, but they were obviously lying earlier.
Dean turned to them now and started questioning about the case. "So there is a group of Wiccans here? I thought Wiccans generally worked alone, or with one mentor."
Sami shrugged. "They usually do, but here...I don't know what it is. I think they might have been friends and then all converted together or something, I know one of them used to be very Christian."
Deanna reclined, sinking into the cushions, and started picking at her nails. She should have noticed the girls, but she rarely left the house, so there was very little chance for her to observe. "How do you know all this anyway?" Deanna asked. Everyone just stared at her. "What? I just meant that we haven't been here that long and I've been concentrating on doing something to find Mom."
"Yes, that's all very well and good, but someone sent us these coordinates not just to stay out of trouble. Mom used to do that too, remember? To send us cases." Sami shrugged again, glaring at her sister. "I dunno, maybe I thought I should start investigating, especially now that someone's died and they found her gutted like a fish."
Deanna sat up. "I didn't even know about that! When did they find her?"
"Just this morning. I wired a radio to the police frequency." Sami moved away uneasily, scared Deanna would whack her or something.
Deanna just folded her arms and pouted. "You said I always got to do that."
"Deanna, don't be a child. Sam, Dean, I assume that's what you're here about?" Sami said. The boys nodded.
"All right then. We've got some work to do," Sami said, standing.
And…commercial break! In case you haven't figured it out yet, I am trying to write this as close to an actual episode as possible, with the short pre-title card scene and then this is the first segment. Sorry this was like a total exposition dump, but it had to be done. Hope you're enjoying it thus far. Second on the list for my Anniversary Update Binge! :)