"Gah… Shitshitshitshitshit," she chanted somewhat nasally, pinching the end of her nose while scrabbling for a tissue with the other hand. Becks shoved the box nearer and peered at her, lips pressed together.
"You okay?"
Ray clenched the tissue against both nostrils and nodded carefully, breathing through her mouth. "Nthis happends," she forced out, the blocked airway making her tongue sound heavy. Becks plucked out another tissue for her, but Ray moved off her chair to sit on the bathroom counter and lean forward. WIth her head between her knees, she muttered, "I hate blood."
"Might want to stop the possibly brain-damaging experiments, then," Becks suggested, nodding at the mirror. Even knowing what Ray could do, it had been trippy seeing a man take shape in the reflection, just like that. He hadn't seemed entirely with it, but she supposed that was fair for someone who was being contacted through their dreams. "You gonna actually try and meet him," she asked, "or just keep up the Kenobi guidance from afar?"
"I haven't seen Star Wars any more than you have, but I'm pretty sure you just misused that reference." Ray took the tissue away to speak, wincing as she did. "HATE blood," she muttered, replacing the tissue and pressing hard. Then she seemed to recall that Becks had actually been asking a question.
Shifting in her hunched position so she could meet her friend's eyes, Ray shrugged awkwardly. "Don't think it's the best idea to meet up, but if they end up believing the wrong reports, I'm gonna have to step in." There was only a hint of nasal in her voice. "Ah… I think it's done. Come on, I need to get the taste out of my mouth before I hurl."
Becks trailed behind, ignoring the way Harvey growled as they passed him on the way to the kitchen. Ray got out a glass and poured herself a lemonade from the ready-made pitcher, then slumped against the stovetop to drink it. Becks walked from the sink to the counter and back, spinning gracefully with each pass. She paced like someone who had learned dramatic walking from musical theater camp.
"You gonna come with me to volunteering today?" Ray asked. "Some of the kids really miss you."
"Nah, I'm…" Becks spun again and sighed. "That would be a bad idea for so many reasons." Ray nodded and set her drink down with a cool click.
"Okay… But if the hunters show up there I'll need to call and let you know."
"I'll stay by the phone," Becks stated. Ray pulled a face but nodded. She swiped a hand under her nose like she couldn't believe it had stopped bleeding.
"And you'll stay here until I have to leave?" she prodded.
"Well, yeah, unless-" The steady creak of the garage door lifting interjected. "-your brother comes home. Shit."
"We can go back to my room?" Ray offered, but Becks had already whirled her way out of the room, gone without a trace. "Aaaalright." Ray picked her drink up again just as Aaron walked in from the garage, covered in sweat and with traces of mud on his soccer shorts. His shirt blared rainbow tie-dye.
"Hey, Rachel, happy Pride," he greeted her. "Where's your rainbow?"
"Oh, hiding behind some clouds," she answered vaguely. Aaron raised an eyebrow, but let it go.
"If you want to go to the parade, you can tag along with me and some friends for a bit," he offered.
"Yeah, wish I could, but I'm volunteering today. You guys have fun, take pictures!" She drained her glass in a gulp and set it in the sink, avoiding his eyes.
"Yeah, sure," he responded, frowning slightly. Shrugging it off, he headed over to the fridge and pulled it open, scanning the shelves. "Mind if I massacre the pad thai?"
Ray shook her head. "Not hungry, go ahead. I'll just…" She waved to the door that led to the bedrooms, then followed through. "Awkward," she whispered, just out of earshot. Then she sniffed. With a groan, she veered into the bathroom to grab more tissues, pressing them against her nose. "This better be worth it," she muttered, heading into her room to change.
""""""""""""""""""""""
Sam twitched and groaned when Dean's alarm went off. He made a truly pitiable attempt to burrow into his pillow, but Dean was unmoved.
"Wakey, wakey!" He shouted. With a startled "Gah!", Sam scrabbled into a sitting position and blinked hugely at him, breathing fast.
"…How long was I out?" He asked, wiping a hand down his face. Dean glared at him from the room's single table. "What?"
"There's a hunt here, huh?"
Sam closed his eyes. This tone of voice to Dean was like the earthquake that comes before a volcano explodes.
"REALLY, Sam? These articles are ten years old! There is literally no connection between any of them! No one died, no one disappeared for longer than a week, a few sick kids got healthy! Big whoop! And you've doodled something about ice cream in the margins for no apparent reason. What the hell, dude?"
Sam swung his legs over the bed and went to shuffle all the papers together, completely disregarding any sense of order. Dean smacked his hand away and pulled a single sheet out of the stack- a printout of a school website, with a picture of kids in "School Spirit" uniforms. The picture of a little girl in blue was circled in scribbled lines of ink, over and over.
"Man, this is just fucking weird." Dean tapped the picture and squinted up at his brother. "So you'd better get explaining."
Sam's face fell into a familiar half-frown and Dean's gut twisted. His little brother should have learned by now not to make the same damn face every time he tried to lie his way out of a situation.
"It's just… One of my Stanford friends brought it up. This case from when she was a kid. And it seemed like it was starting back up again, so…." Sam widened his eyes innocently.
"Cut the crap. I could care less if it was some chick in your Art History class or a Twihard on an internet forum. There. Is. No. Case. So what if some kids ran away for a bit ten years ago? Sam, they never even found enough evidence to call it a kidnap!"
"We've done cases on less information!" Sam protested. As soon as it was out, he wished he hadn't.
"When?" Dean asked flatly. "You're the one always going on with that knowledge is power crap. Say there is a thing here, a- an abominable ice-cream man. How do we get rid of it?"
"We kill it with fire," Sam said impatiently, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Dean's eyebrows rose. His mouth twitched.
"Dude, you sound like a girl who see a spider in her room and freaks. Seriously? Kill it with fire? You're pulling this out of your ass, aren't you?" Dean's sense of humor, as always, sprung seamlessly from fury.
"Screw you," Sam muttered, sick of the conversation. Dean sobered.
"Give me one good reason we should even think of this as a case. Seriously, Sam. One reason or we're gone." Dean hardened his voice, slipping into the Sergeant tone that had always worked for Dad. Predictably, Sam deflated.
"FINE! Fine… The person I was talking to… she was one of the kids taken. It was definitely a kidnap, and I found the articles about kids getting better… it happened at exactly the same time, Dean. There's no such thing as a coincidence in hunting, remember?" Sam glanced at his brother, who looked unimpressed. He sighed. "She has powers… That good enough?"
"Powers? What, like-" Dean wiggled his fingers in the oddly universal way people tend to wiggle their fingers when they want to reference magic. Sam spent a moment trying to parse the origin of the mime- crystal ball? I'll get you my pretty and your little dog too?- before shaking his head.
"More like… Telepathy? Sorta like Andy near the end," he clarified.
"So we've got a Professor X on our hands. Please tell me she's bald and in a wheelchair, it's the only thing that'll make this better," Dean deadpanned.
"No, I can't remember her face, but she was… young?" Sam shook his head. Trying to think back to the most recent dream was like trying to mentally swim through a pool of mashed potatoes, where his brain was both the swimmer and the potatoes.
"So Jean Grey wants us to kill the ice cream man with fire. And you went to school with her but she's young and faceless." Dean leveled a "what the fuck" look at Sam and shook his head. "Should have given you the don't-talk-to-Internet-strangers speech more often when you were a kid," he concluded. Sam snorted, but didn't try to deny it. Creepy internet stranger was better than the truth. "Our lives, man," Dean lamented. "I swear someone is always screwing with us. Anything else I should know?" The unspoken 'anything else you been keeping from me?' was so loud it could have been shouted.
"Um… No?" Sam hunched his shoulders defensively- an odd pose for a guy taller than six feet. Dean eyed those shoulders and deliberately leaned back in a relaxed pose.
"You're paying for dinner," he informed his cringing brother. "And for every gas stop meal we get on the way to Bobby's… after we finish this case." Sam pouted- there was no grown-up word for the expression on his brother's face- but his shoulders loosened.
"Yeah, sure." Sam picked up the articles and walked over to his duffel, crouching to unzip it. He groped through the haphazardly folded clothes until his fingers met his laptop case.
"And Sam?" Dean's voice caught him red-handed, if unsure what he was guilty of. "If you ever try to keep something like this from me again…" he trailed off meaningfully. Sam grinned down at his duffel, hiding the expression. Vague, unfinished threats were basically hugs of forgiveness in the Winchester family.
One of the scratchy pillows from the beds thwacked him powerfully on the back of the head. "Come on, Sammy! Fajitas and churros ain't gonna eat themselves!"