Fork in the Road

Summary: A ghost is killing golfers, forcing Sam and Dean to pose as caddies... Post It's a Terrible Life

Thanks for the lovely reviews. Today, Sam and Dean have to head back to the course. A caddy's work is never done...

Chapter Three

Sam awoke to the sound of the motel room door closing. He opened one eye and saw that Dean's bed was empty, but that was quickly followed by the realization that he wasn't alone. Dean must have been coming in instead of going out. It wasn't completely unusual. Dean's sleeping patterns tended toward the erratic since he'd come back.

"Dude, you gonna sleep all day?"

Sam felt something bounce off his head. He turned over to see Dean had tossed the phone book at him. He groaned and stretched, then promptly threw the phone book back at his brother. "Why are you up so early?"

"I was at the country club," Dean said, and Sam could hardly miss that he was smiling from ear to ear in an almost embarrassed way.

"You went to the lake?" Sam sat up, alarmed. "By yourself? Why?"

Dean's eyes widened. "Calm down. You were up late researching so I thought I'd let you sleep. I was playing a round before the course opened."

"You were… You were golfing?" Sam asked, afraid he was still asleep.

Dean just shrugged. "I met this great old guy named Arnie. He gave me some good pointers."

"He gave you some…" Sam rubbed a hand over his face, trying to wake up. "Dean, are you all right?"

"What? I can't use a little stress relief?" Dean frowned. "Dude, I got to go out and hit things with a stick for a couple of hours and no one told me I was a sociopath. It made for a nice change, ok?"

Sam just shook his head. "Whatever… You find out anything new?"

"I found out Arnie could hand my ass to me no matter how many games or how many years we played, but other than that? Not so much…"

Sam huffed out a light laugh. "Ghost didn't show?"

"Oh, right." Dean snapped his fingers. "You know, there was that bloated zombie guy shambling around the 17th. Forgot to mention that earlier."

"It's too early to pretend you're funny."

Dean smirked. "It's never too early to bring the funny."

Sam snorted and scooted to the side of the bed. "So, I looked at the names on the list last night. As far as I can tell, they've got almost nothing in common except the country club."

"And that they're dead. Or at least gave it the old college try."

"That, too." Sam sighed.

"So, we've got nothing."

"Pretty much."

"But Arnie says I'm a natural." Dean grinned broadly. "So I got that goin' for me. Which is nice."

Sam rolled his eyes, but couldn't help a smile from peeking at the corners of his mouth. "Dude, enough with the Caddyshack quotes."

Dean's smile broadened. "Can't help it. It's a Cinderella story. Outta nowhere..." Sam just raised an eyebrow but offered no other reaction, and Dean cleared his throat in the awkward silence. "Come on, man. Get up. We've been assigned to a couple of businessmen in half an hour."

Dean sighed for what felt like the hundredth time. These two businessmen were kicking his ass.

One of them was just lousy. He couldn't hit the hole if he was standing right over it and they told him he could drop the ball in. At least he knew it and was just enjoying himself. The other guy wasn't half bad, but he wasn't half good either. Dean didn't know much, but he knew enough to see that the guy kept picking the wrong clubs, and he almost always hit off to the right. It was frustrating just to watch the two suck so badly.

Tom and Ed were crazy, but at least they could play. It might take them an extra stroke to get to the hole, but they got there without looking like a couple of jackasses that didn't know one end of the club from another.

"I kept telling them, they were trying to flog a dead horse," said Kevin, aka the guy who wouldn't know the right club from his own ass. "They were trying to sell in a closed market. Until they found an open market to develop the new line, they weren't gonna get anywhere. But does anyone listen to me?"

With every fiber of his being, Dean wished he didn't have to listen to this pompous jerk. The guy ran his mouth nonstop and apparently thought he was Warren Buffett and Donald Trump combined. All the businessman mumbo jumbo he'd been spouting since the second they stepped on the course was making Dean crazy.

Dean hated what he'd been like for those weeks as Dean Smith, Sales and Marketing Exec Extraordinaire. He'd been a company man in every sense possible, working from dawn to dusk, living and breathing the business. He'd cared about paperwork. He'd had custom suits and the newest electronic gadgets and meetings about their new company "paradigm." If he ever heard that word again, he and Marigold were going to have another meeting with whoever said it.

Dean was still pissed that, yet again, he'd been taken to live in some alternate reality and they hadn't even had the decency to let him keep his favorite sawed-off shotgun. He got to keep Jo in his dream family, but not Marigold? That was just wrong. Or maybe that was the point. Sneaky angels.

In any case, Dean was kind of hoping "Wrong Club" Kevin would manage to come up with the magic word before the end of his round. The jerk had managed to come up with every other business-type buzz word and Dean was aching to acquaint him with some rock salt.

The problem, Dean admitted, was that another part of him missed being that big shot executive. In some ways it hadn't been totally different. There were goals that had to be met, and he'd charmed, cajoled, or demanded with everything he had until he got the job done. He hadn't been able to use a shotgun, but for a few weeks, he'd been… liberated.

Dean had been in control again. He had things to do and he got them done. Things had never gotten out of hand. He'd been on top of the situation and the worst disaster that had snuck up was a missing bit of paperwork or the delivery service sent the wrong sandwich for his lunch. Not until people had started dying had he felt like he couldn't handle whatever came his way.

He'd had a family, imaginary though they might have been, a family that was proud of how well he was doing in the big city, instead of watching him warily to see if he was going to have a breakdown or worse, thinking that he required looking after because he was too broken, too weak to help get the job done.

For a few weeks, Dean had been able to dream. Every night, he'd happily gone to bed early and slept the sleep of the innocent. For a few weeks, Dean had been free from hell. No memories, no flashbacks, no seals, no crushing guilt, no fear.

Sure there had been that tiny, little niggling thought that there was something missing, but Dean had the feeling that smarmy angel who'd orchestrated the whole thing had purposely left a chink in his armor for his old life to sneak in. He'd certainly left a big one for Sam so he could get the ball rolling and drag Dean, albeit willingly, back into hunting.

Just for a while, there hadn't been any seals, no demons, no mission or any other weight the universe could manage to balance on his shoulders. There hadn't been the never ending worry about whatever crap Sam had gotten himself into that was so bad he couldn't tell Dean about it. Dean had told him about his last ten years in hell. He'd told him he broke the first seal. He'd admitted it all. What could be worse than that that Sam couldn't tell him about?

"Dean?"

Dean's eyes snapped up to see that Sam was watching him worriedly. "Wrong Club" Kevin was looking at him funny, too. "Hey. Your buddy gonna hyperventilate some more or can we move on to the next hole?"

Sam gave the jerk a glare that was possibly one of the reasons for global warming and the guy backed off. "Dean?"

"Guess we better move before we get fired, huh?" Dean said, working hard to control his expression.

So what? So life was hard and his vacation was over. So he had a mission. Somebody had to do it, whether the job was too hard or not.

Dean hurried forward, took the putter from Kevin, retrieved the ball and placed the pin back in the cup. By the time he turned, Kevin and his buddy were already headed for the cart, but Sam was still just standing there staring at him. Dean ignored him and headed for the cart. They were about to walk up on the 17th hole, and he needed his game face. After a moment, Sam shook his head and followed.

"Wrong Club" Kevin's buddy teed off first and managed a decent enough shot, catching the rough on the edge of the fairway closest to the lake, but outside the tree line. Proving once again that if the Winchesters didn't have bad luck, they'd have no luck at all, Kevin sliced the ball just like he'd been doing since they started, only this one was a doozy and went right into the trees within just a few yards of the water.

Kevin immediately started swearing and vowing up and down that his club must be defective. Dean tuned him out as they headed down the cart path, and continued to ignore his ranting as he walked toward the lake to look for the ball. Sam headed off with the other guy to check out his next shot, while Kevin followed Dean into the trees.

"Over here," Dean called, once he'd found the ball. He stood with his back to the fairway so that he could keep an eye on the water as well as his golfer.

Another round of swearing followed as soon as Kevin got a look at where his ball had landed. It wasn't too different from where Tom had ended up the day before. If Kevin were capable of a brilliant shot, he might get through the trees, but he and Dean both knew, he was nowhere near capable of a shot like that. The best he could do was try to pitch out into the fairway and go from there.

Dean knew he was in trouble when Kevin looked up, the word "shifty" practically tattooed on his forehead. He looked toward his buddy standing out in the fairway making sure he wasn't watching, then bent over to grab the ball.

"Don't do it," Dean warned.

"If you know what's good for you, you'll keep your mouth shut," Kevin hissed.

"See the thing is, I've never been good at either of those things." Dean felt himself turn cold, heading into that place inside him where he sized up an enemy. "I hate cheaters."

"You're paid to carry the clubs," Kevin said, his eyes narrowing. "That's it. So shut it." He shot another look toward his buddy, who was still setting up his own shot, then bent over again, grabbed the ball and tossed it toward the fairway where it was still inside the tree line, but he'd have a clear shot.

"Ya know," Dean said, "I don't give a crap about a tip. I do care that you're a cheating bastard. You also suck at the game. Just in general."

"Shut up and give me my three iron," the man snapped.

Dean gritted his teeth. "One, you need a five iron, not that you're gonna get anywhere near the hole. Two, I'm thinkin'... no. You're on your own. I'm going back to the clubhouse. You can haul your own bag since you can't be bothered to play a fair game."

"You will do what you're paid to do and you will keep your mouth shut."

"Is there a problem?" Sam came through the trees, a hulking, glowering figure as he approached. Kevin's buddy followed behind him warily.

"Yeah," Dean said. "Kevin, here, cheated. He picked his ball up from over here and threw it over there."

"Dean," Sam said, turning his frown on him.

"What?" Dean demanded, wincing that he sounded a little too close to a petulant five year old. "He cheated!"

Sam came to stand in front of him and dropped his voice. "Does it really matter? We're trying to do a job here, man. Who gives a crap?"

"But he cheated," Dean insisted. He chose to ignore that the vast majority of their lives were spent lying and stealing, cheating and conning. That was for survival. This was a game. He and Sam didn't get much chance to just mess around, but he didn't cheat. A game was a game and there were rules. If anything, he let Sam win every once in a while. The kid needed to feel he was doing well.

"So what?" Sam demanded.

"You don't care?" Dean could feel a headache forming. He stared up at his brother, saw the same face that he'd known for years, and wondered how things had managed to get so far out of whack.

There was a time when Sam would have been the one ticked at the guy for cheating and Dean would have been the one telling him to let it go. Sam was the upstanding citizen and Dean was the one who'd do anything to finish the job. But now... constantly fighting with Sam, worrying about how they got the job done as much as if they got the job done... Sam wandering farther and farther from everything their dad had taught him, and everything they'd always held dear, the rules of what made them the good guys and the monsters the bad guys...

The fact that Sam didn't care that this guy was cheating was breaking Dean's heart.

Dean wasn't sure when he'd first known something was wrong. Maybe when he had to talk Sam out of sacrificing a virgin to save themselves. But maybe it had started even earlier than that. Sam had started lying to him almost as soon as he knew about Dean's deal. Sam thought he had to do it to save him. Dean hadn't wanted him messing with the deal, so Sam had lied, and then he'd gotten more desperate and he'd kept lying and he'd gotten more desperate in his attempts to find a way to save Dean. Sam had gotten better and better at keeping things from him until Dean had managed to miss that Sam was sneaking out with that bitch, Ruby, and using his powers. Yeah, Dean had taken a forty year vacation in between, but that was no excuse. Dean had given his brother the initial push and Sam hadn't just backed off. He'd backed up and fallen over a cliff.

"So you don't care about the rules now?" Dean asked quietly. "Don't care how the game's played?"

"Dean," Sam answered through clenched teeth. "We have bigger things to worry about right now than causing trouble with this guy."

"So we're supposed to let the bad guys walk as long as it's not a big deal?" Dean replied, his voice dropping even lower to almost a growl. "Maybe we bend the rules as long as it gets us where we want to go?"

Sam shifted on his feet, his hands coming up, held out as if to ward Dean off, or at least the conversation. "Can we not do this now? We're on a job."

"I know," Dean stated coldly. "And I care about how the job gets done. I've got enough bad mojo going on in my life. I don't need it getting any worse over something this stupid."

"Dean, this is a game."

"And when it's not a game?" Dean asked, his anger fading into weariness, the sudden weight on his shoulders making him want to sit down right where he was and not move again. "When does it matter, Sam? Where's the line? Do you even know anymore?"

"Dean, he's cheating at golf. That's kinda low on the list of the crap I care about at this point."

"Or maybe you've thrown the rule book out all together," Dean remarked grimly.

Sam bristled, looking like he was about to blow a gasket. "Dean, you have no idea-"

"Exactly, Sam. I don't have any idea. Not even Cas can tell me what you've been up to." That was what scared Dean so badly. He just didn't know. Sam was up to something that had given him the juice to take down Alistair without so much as a howdy. Worse, Sam was hiding it from him, and lying about it. This wasn't just bad. This was Godzilla-in-Tokyo bad.

"Dean."

"Whatever, Sam. Let's go."

"Dean," Sam said more forcefully, and Dean looked up, his gaze immediately following where Sam was looking.

The ghost was at the edge of the lake, just walking back in and disappearing. Dean's eyes flew back to the golfers who were now standing out on the fairway, apparently arguing. Dean hurried toward them with Sam at his side. Neither of the men looked like they'd seen the ghost, rather Kevin just looked like he wished he'd never decided to play golf today.

The two men stopped talking as they came out of the trees. "Are you two idiots ready to go now?" Kevin demanded.

Dean started forward, but Sam stopped him with an arm across his chest. "Yeah, we're ready."

"Then get me my three iron."

"You mean your five," Dean offered innocently. He could feel the tension in his muscles radiating up his neck, intensifying his already throbbing headache.

"I meant what I said," the man snapped angrily. "You think you know better than I do? You're just a caddy, and a crappy one at that."

"Dude, I could beat you with nothing but a sand wedge and a putter."

"Dean, don't-"

"Shut up, Sam."

Kevin's buddy was now actively chuckling and it was making the guy even madder, and even more embarrassed. "You're on, smart ass. Tomorrow morning, 10 A.M."

Dean just raised an eyebrow. "Fine. I'll be there." He got the club out and handed it to the guy. When the man held out his hand to take it, Dean saw it. Sam made a noise and Dean knew he'd seen it, too.

Dean didn't let the club go and he got a good look at the red marks on Kevin's hands. They rested right where a golfer gripped the club. Kevin ripped the club out of Dean's grip and stalked over to his ball. He didn't look like he was having a heart attack, although at the moment, Dean was starting to doubt how quickly he wanted to clear up this mess.

Sam walked up to stand beside Dean. "He's marked," Sam observed unnecessarily. "He's next."

Dean watched as Kevin settled into his stance and struck the ball, hitting it into a bunker to the back and right of the green. "Yeah." He pursed his lips and watched Kevin furiously slam his club into the ground over and over. "He sucks, too."

More soon...