"Aaaaagh, we're finally here! Hurry up and grab us a room, I have to piss like a racehorse." Dean tossed the wallet with their current card to Sam and hopped out of the driver's seat to stretch out his back. Sam took it with no more than a slight deepening of his resting bitch face, which either meant he was in a better mood or that he was too busy being a broody bastard to simultaneously fulfill his role as annoying little brother. Dean shook his head to himself, wincing as he heard his neck pop. Long car rides were hell on the joints.
He should probably stop using that phrase. It lost its meaning as an expression when you were literally going to hell in less than a year. Some days Dean just wanted to strap his brother safely in the passenger seat and drive them both away from the (again, literal) demons chasing them. He figured that, more than hunting, was what had kept them moving when they were growing up- there was something in the Winchester blood that only settled when they were on the road, all the home and family they'd ever have tucked in one vintage, beautiful car.
"You and me against the rest of the world, Baby," he crooned, patting her frame lovingly. Behind him, a throat cleared. Somehow his little brother could not say a word and STILL sound like a prissy bitch.
"Save it, Sam. Where's the room?" he growled.
"Uh… Just around the corner," Sam responded. "And, uh…" He handed a tiny rainbow flag on a toothpick to Dean, who looked at it uncomprehendingly. "The owner wanted to be sure to wish us a happy Pride weekend."
Dean wrinkled his eyebrows. "He wanted to wish US a happy Pride or he wanted to wish YOU a happy Pride?"
Sam smiled uncomfortably. "He offered to give us a king bed for half the price, in honor of the occasion."
"Son of a bitch! That's it, you need to cut your hair." Dean gestured at Sam with the flag, waving it wildly. "It's the only way people will stop seeing us as a gay couple." Sam raised an eyebrow at him.
"That's not a very Pride weekend attitude," he remarked, deadpan. Dean glowered at him, mimicking back in a high voice.
"That's not a very Pride weekend- shut up and point me to the bathroom, bitch," he ordered.
"Jerk," Sam shot back, tossing him the keycard. Dean plucked it out of the air and booked it for the room. With nothing better to do, Sam grabbed both their duffels from the back seat and carried them into the room after his brother.
There was no mistaking that this was a California motel. The wallpaper and generic pictures tacked to it were beach-themed. There was even a California license plate above each of the twin beds. At least the bedcovers had escaped the beach theme, by virtue of being a timid, watery blue. Sam tossed Dean's duffel on the bed nearest the door and set his own more gently under the window-he always carried the laptop with his stuff. With a sigh, he toed off his shoes to lay flat on the bed for a minute. The mattress seemed to pull out the kinks in his spine, and he was at the level of tired where he could feel his bones dragging with every breath. Whatever. In a minute, Dean would come barreling in from the bathroom and drag him out somewhere to grab a meal. Any…. minute…now…
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Dean splashed his face with water and glanced around the bathroom. It was, all in all, pretty typical motel fare- toilet too close to the sink, which was too close to the shower, and everything was made for someone about a foot shorter. But it had enough towels laid out and the shower curtain didn't have anyone else's hair on it or smell like mold, so to him it looked luxurious. It even had little complimentary shampoos in the tub and they came with a friggin' double action exfoliating/moisturizing body wash. California, man. What it lacked in decent grease food it made up for in bath products.
And, if he was very lucky later this week, frisky bikini babes. Maybe even twins.
Dean gave himself a cocky grin in the mirror just because he could and winked before exiting the room. Those chicks wouldn't know what hit them.
He swaggered into the room, all ready to get Sammy and see if they could find a decent Mexican place nearby, but a light snore stopped him in his tracks before he'd more than passed the threshold.
Nightmares or no nightmares, it had been a while since Sam had been tired enough to wipe out on a motel bed without even taking his jacket off. Sammy'd proudly outgrown naps when he was five (partially due to Dean's complete lack of interest in bedtime stories) and still maintained that only the weak slept when the sun was up. With a feeling of brotherly charity, Dean walked to the window to close the curtain, set the alarm for half an hour and set himself up to clean his favorite pistol. If letting Sam power-nap nows might help his chances of getting the obsessive nerd to take a night off and be a halfway decent wingman when this was all over, then Dean would take that chance. He'd even refrain from teasing the kid too badly about napping like a kindergartner.
While he was waiting, he might even take his own glance at Sam's research for their case.
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He was staring at a mirror and the girl in the reflection was refusing to meet his eyes. At first he got the impression that she was muttering to herself, something he couldn't hear, but then he saw the way she kept looking over her shoulder. The glances softened her face, wrinkled her brows, like she was fondly irritated at whoever was sitting next to her. Finally, he could sort of make out what she was saying.
"-NOT like the last time, I wasn't trying to send real-time images. Memories are easier. I can do them in my sleep!" Her voice was thin, not in the way people are thin, but in the way of fabric worn enough that wind easily goes through it.
Pause, rolled eyes. "They're inlaid, you just let 'em loop! Now shhh! I can't get distracted." She frowned, squeezed her eyes shut and then blinked a few times. Finally, she looked directly at him and whispered, "Showtime."
"Can… You… Hear… Me?" she enunciated, voice pitched like someone trying to project by tightening every muscle from the throat to the lower intestine. It didn't sound thin anymore.
"What's going on?" he asked. Or tried to ask. Every syllable that left his mouth seemed to twist and melt like soft-serve ice-cream from an overheated machine.
"You won't be too good at talking here. It took me ages and I still don't know what I'm doing. We don't have much time, so just nod and shake your head." He raised an eyebrow at that. "Or do that, that works too." The edges of the mirror were blurry, somehow. He reached out to touch, partially to see if his hands could still move. Everything felt slow, stretched… and no matter how he reached, he couldn't touch the mirror directly in front of him.
"Okay, that's good, good effort, now if you could just direct your attention to me for a second…" The girl hadn't stopped staring. She hadn't blinked once. He grudgingly nodded.
"Thanks. Now listen up." The edges of the mirror faded faster, swirling into something that couldn't reflect anything. She widened her eyes; Sam's were starting to water in sympathy.
"There's a monster we need you to kill," she ground out. When she seemed to be waiting for something, Sam nodded. "It's got a place somewhere with an underground compartment." Nod. "It'll be something to do with kids." Nod.
She leaned forward, spitting out the last statement with an unconscious snarl. "You have to kill it with fire." Without waiting for his nod, she lifted a fist filled with blue material and pressed it against the mirror. With barely a glance at the goldenrod letters on its front, Sam knew it was the sweater from the dream.
"This is the key. Remember this," she gritted out, beginning to squint. There was something wrong…. Her face or her eyes or her nose were starting to blank out. He couldn't see what parts were gone exactly, just that she was becoming steadily less face-like. The part of her that still looked somewhat like lips forced out, "Don't… Trust… Family…" and finally melded into the rest of the vagueness, which simply disappeared.
He was staring into a mirror and no one was looking back.