Castiel still hadn't returned to the motel by the time Sam returned and cleaned up. Dean wanted Sam to stay and rest after a long night, but Sam was insistent that they get Melody back to her normal life and find Castiel. But neither brother had any idea where to start looking. The guy had no grace, no money and apparently a dead cell phone. Their only thought was that maybe he had gone back to the movie set. Yeah, Dean thought, he could see Cas thinking that he still had a 'job' and hoped that he would find him screwing in light bulbs or something. He actually smiled at the image of Cas, the angel, putting in a light bulb and standing back to say 'let there be light.'
Once they arrived back on the set, Melody gave Dean a huge hug and thanked him for everything, even offering to help try to find Cas, but Dean was pretty sure it was best if she was out of the picture so he let her turn around and head back to her dressing room to get ready for the day's rehearsals.
"Hey, you, big guy!" Someone was hollering over to them.
Sam and Dean both turned towards the voice, "You, with the long hair," said a short greying man who looked like he was in charge. Sam raised his eyebrows and pointed a finger at his chest. "Yeah, you. Come here, we need you."
Sam and Dean walked cautiously towards the man who told Sam, "One of our leads hasn't shown up yet and we've got to get this blocking together this morning. You're about the same size as Lance. Can you just stand in on this scene? Just for blocking, camera angles, and lighting."
Sam looked over at his brother with a helpless look on his face. Not this again! They last time they had been forced into acting it was quite the disaster. "You've gotta be kidding me," said Dean, "you are hunter pretending to be a crew member, pretending to be yourself, as a hunter, on a movie about you as a hunter, based on books about us hunting! Freaking supernatural inception!"
A woman with a headset on her head came over and grabbed Sam by the shoulder and began shoving him towards the set.
"Go get 'em, Sammy," Dean laughed, thrilled that he didn't have to be a part of the acting this time around.
The woman led Sam to a set which was a warehouse with an actor tied to a chair in the middle of a Devi's Trap, and a dark-haired actress standing next to him. She handed him a piece of paper and lined him up against some pieces of tape that had been stuck to the floor opposite the man in the chair.
Sam took in the scene. Oh no! The last thing he ever wanted to do was relive the moment when Dean found out he was using his powers. He looked over to his brother and could see the memory was a raw wound for him as well as Dean scowled at the scene in front of him.
"OK, start at the top," yelled the man who was obviously in charge. Sam assumed he must be the director.
The actress playing Ruby waked over to him and grabbed the paper from him, turned it over so that it was upright and pointed to where he should begin with his lines. "You don't have to move around much," she said, "just read the lines. They just want to get the markers down."
Sam gulped and nodded, eyes wide as she stepped back onto her piece of tape and smiled at him. He looked down at the paper where she had pointed and groaned, "Where's Lilith?"
"Kiss my ass!" spat the actor tied to the chair.
"I'd watch myself if I were you." Sam read the words on the page and felt his stomach turn at the real life memories that it brought back. The paper had a little icon that he didn't understand until fake Ruby hissed at him to move over to her side. God, he hated this acting stuff.
"Why?" said the demon actor, "Because you're Sam Winchester, Mr. Big Hero? And yet here you are, slutting around with some demon. Real hero!"
Sam rocked nervously back and forth on his feet as he tried to remember how this went back when he and Dean had gotten stuck in that parallel universe. Don't look at the camera, look anywhere but the camera. Act natural. Act natural. Just as Sam was about to tell the director to shove it and walk away, everyone froze as they heard a blood curdling scream.
Sam and Dean both sprang to action, racing towards the sound. It was a woman, standing outside of the makeup trailer crying, "He's dead! It's Lance, he's dead!"
The Winchesters looked at each other and at the same time said, "Lance?"
Sam was the first one to get to the door of the trailer and he winced at the sight in front of him. Lance was splayed out over one of the chairs with his head back at an odd angle. But the gruesome part was that he wasn't wearing a shirt (as usual) and his torso was covered in angry red burns that were blistered and bleeding.
Dean was right behind him, "What the hell, Sam? I thought you burned her bones!"
"We did. We must have missed something, something with her DNA on it."
"Damn it! She died almost 30 years ago. How the hell are we going to find it?"
"Maybe it wasn't her. What if there is another spirit?" Sam turned around and ran his fingers through his hair, trying to go over all of the evidence that Cas had found in his mind.
The director and several other people who looked important had now arrived at the makeup trailer and were arguing amongst themselves about the tragedy.
"Damn, we've lost four actors already on this movie. What do we have to do to keep our cast?" The director was talking to a tall bald man in a suit who Sam assumed was probably a producer.
"OK, maybe we can work this to our advantage. Spooky occurrences on the set of new horror film?" He looked over to a woman who was standing next to him with a notepad and a pen and expression of horror on her face. "Get an anonymous tip to the top rags. This may give us some much needed publicity."
The assistant nodded and replied sheepishly, "Um… do you think… maybe we should call the police… first?"
"Right, right, of course! Go ahead and call them first. But make sure you get that tip to the tabloids." The man turned back to the director and asked, "So who's your backup? Is this going to put us over budget?"
Dean had heard enough. He turned to Sam, "If this thing isn't gone, we need to get to Melody. She could still be in danger. Come on, we need a new plan."
Just then Dean's phone rang and he saw that it was Charlie. He answered, putting her on speaker phone for he and Sam to both hear.
"Oh my God," she screamed, "is it true what happened to Lance?"
Dean looked incredulously at Sam, "Charlie, how the hell do you even know about that? It happened like five minutes ago?!"
"News travels fast in the SPN family."
"The what?" Dean asked.
"Supernatural fandom," she answered casually. "So it's true? He's dead? What happened?"
Sam responded, "We aren't sure. All the rest of the victims were burned in one place but left alive. Lance was burned all over and he's dead. It's different from the spirit's normal MO."
"Oh, that's terrible. According to all the blogs, he and Nick had incredible chemistry, almost like, Wincest levels - oh" Charlie caught herself as soon as she realized what she had said.
Dean was losing patience, "What are you talking about? What's Wincest?"
"Oh, God. Sorry. It's the name that the Sam slash Dean fans use for-"
"Stop right there, Charlie," Dean grumbled, "we know about that and really want to just forget that it exists."
Charlie hummed her agreement and mumbled, "Yeah, Destiel has a way better chance of becoming canon."
"What was that?"
"Oh, you heard that? It's… the uh, Dean and Castiel slash. It's kind of taken over the SPN fandom."
Dean groaned, how was it that everyone seemed to have figured out this… thing… between him and Cas long before the two of them?
Sam noticed his brother's reaction and took over the conversation, "Listen, Charlie, we burned the corpse last night but the spirit seems to still be around. Were you able to come up with anything more on your side?"
"Nothing new, but I will dig a little deeper. Hey guys, be careful. This spirit seems tricky."
"Got it. Thanks, Charlie."
As the brothers turned to head to Melody's trailer, Ed, Harry came running up to them with Maggie, Ed's sister, along as well. Sam asked, "What are you still doing here?"
"We had to come back to get our stuff. We had left some of our equipment in a locker. We just heard about Lance. I thought once the body was burned the spirit would be gone?" Ed questioned the brothers.
Sam answered him, "Yeah, that's normally how it works. There is either some of her DNA left somewhere around here that we weren't aware of or we burned the wrong body."
Ed groaned, "No way! I threw out my back for nothing?!"
Maggie looked appalled, "Ewww, you desecrated a grave for nothing."
Ed turned to Harry and Maggie, "You know what this means? We still have a chance to get it on film. Get the cameras ready!"
Dean questioned Ed, "Hey, easy there, Spielberg. This thing's still very dangerous. When you and Cas were at the library, did you find any other violent deaths on record?"
Ed looked down, embarrassed, "I don't know. I wasn't with Castiel when he found that stuff. I was working the computers while he went off with the hot librarian… that couldn't keep her eyes off of him," Ed grumbled, rather bitterly.
"What?!"
"Yeah, all Castiel had to do was flirt with that girl and she was more than willing to help out." Ed knew he was exaggerating about the flirting part, but he was still pretty pissed off that the angel was able to get the information they needed when he had failed so miserably and that librarian was really cute.
"Flirt? Cas?" OK, Dean had seen that girl from yesterday flirting with Cas, but he was pretty sure that his friend had no idea how to flirt back.
Sam smirked and snorted a laugh, "Didn't know he had it in him."
Dean stayed suspiciously silent and Sam had to turn his face and bite cheek to keep from audibly laughing at the look on his brother's face.
As they headed towards Melody's dressing room, the group passed through a makeshift corridor with multiple doors on either side. Dean guessed this was for a hotel scene but something at the end of the hall had him stop in his tracks. Cas was sitting on a bench next to an exhausted looking Nick and he had his arm around the actor's shoulder. Sam slowly looked at Dean, keeping wisely quiet about the situation.
Dean stomped up to the two men, "What the hell, Cas?"
Both men looked up at Dean who noticed that Nick looked like he was crying. His voice shaky and panicked when he managed, "I saw her… but she's dead. How can it be her?"
"You saw the ghost?"
"I saw my girlfriend!" Nick cried. "M-Meghan died over a year ago! How can she be here?!"
"Woah, hold on a second. The spirit we ganked died thirty years ago. Are you telling me the spirit here is actually your girlfriend?"
Castiel chimed in, "I believe we were mistaken about Betty Lange being the vengeful spirit. It seems that this ghost is here because of Nick. She burned the first actress' eyes after she was watching a shirtless scene with Nick in it. The second actress was burned on the mouth when she had kissed Nick after rehearsals. And the third actress was burned on her hands after she and Nick had been…" Castiel squirmed nervously.
"Second base, OK? We had just had a bit of a grope before she was hurt!" Nick admitted as he bent over and groaned into his hands.
"OK," said Dean, "The spirit is jealous of the actresses playing your love interest in the movie because you were fooling around with them. So what about Lance?"
Nick looked up at him and shrugged his shoulders sheepishly.
"Aw, come on! Lance too?"
"What?! Have you seen that guy? He's freaking hot!" Nick said defensively.
Sam sighed, "So, why the change in MO? Why did she kill this time?"
"I guess jealousy? Lance and I went… a lot further than second base. He's the only one I actually had sex with."
"Well, there's a first," quipped Dean, "Someone has sex with Sam and he dies."
Sam huffed and looked at Dean with a bitch face that could probably kill and pointedly ignored the smirk on Dean's face to ask the actor, "Nick, how did she die?"
"She died in a house fire," he said before putting his face in his hands and letting out a soft sob.
While Sam was talking to Nick, Dean looked at Cas, who was still sitting there with his arm around the handsome actor. This guy was obviously a man whore and here was Cas, sitting with the entire length of his body pressed against the guy with his arm slung around him. And how did they even know each other? Dean suddenly felt a sick twist of jealousy to his gut. He had an insane urge to walk over and physically separate the two men. Luckily, Sam's voice pulled him out of his thoughts.
"I'm sorry," said Sam with as much sympathy as he could, "the only way to stop her is to burn her remains. Can you tell us where she is buried?"
"There are no remains. There was nothing left after our house burned to the ground."
Perfect, thought Dean. Of course there are no remains! When was the last time they had a simple salt and burn go right?! "There's got to be something. Do you have anything with her DNA?"
"I have a locket with her hair, its back in my dressing room."
"That's it," said Sam, "come on, we need to burn it to stop her."
Nick slumped over and put his face into his hands. "I can't believe this. I loved her, she would never hurt anyone. How can this be happening?" he asked Castiel.
Castiel gave his shoulder a little pat, "Sometimes when a person dies in a violent way, their spirit doesn't move on. But the longer the spirit is without a body and a soul, the more it becomes distorted. It stops thinking like a human with a soul and can only feel the pain and loss of its current state. It isn't really Meghan any more. If we burn her remains, we will release her spirit. She will no longer be bound to this earth and in pain." Nick nodded at Castiel and said that he would get the locket.
Dean watched this interaction with interest. Cas was surprisingly good at this and Dean would probably commend the guy for his work on this case if he weren't too busy fuming over how chummy these two seemed to be. What the hell? Why was he acting all jealous with Cas? Well, just in the last two days he has seen that Katie girl give Cas her number, heard about the flirting with the librarian, and now watched Nick huddled way too close to Cas. Shit! Was there anyone who didn't want to get in the angel's pants?
And why did it matter to him? Cas was a grown man, and pretty much human now, too. Shouldn't he be able to get a little action? The problem was there was something niggling at the back of his mind that said that if Cas was going to be with anyone it should be him. He was the one with whom the angel had a profound bond, right? He knew it was kind of rotten of him to want Cas for himself though he was too chicken shit to do anything about it. Damn it! What if it's too late? What if he was too blind about his and Cas' feelings and he had missed his chance with Cas, who seemed to be getting along a little too well with the actor, who Dean had to admit was pretty damn hot.
When Dean couldn't hold back an longer, he stepped forward and grabbed Cas by the elbow growling through his teeth that he needed to talk to him… in private. Castiel just nodded and followed Dean over to the side, leaving Sam to deal with Nick and the three stunned Ghostfacers.
"What the hell's going on, Cas? What are you doing with your arm around Nick?"
"He was upset by his encounter with the spirit of his girlfriend. I have seen Sam put an arm around victims to console them and thought that was an appropriate action to take given the scenario. He seemed comforted by it."
"And you just took off last night without a word and today I find you BFF with some guy?"
Castiel tilted his head and squinted at Dean as if trying to analyze the hunter's thoughts. "Dean, you were kissing Melody. I thought it best to… give you privacy."
Dean sighed, "Cas, I wasn't…" but he didn't know how to continue. He was kissing Melody, but how was he supposed to explain how wrong it felt?
"I chose to follow your example so I went to a bar where I drank large quantities of whisky and met Nick."
"Wait, you got drunk and met him at the bar last night? Shit! Cas, did you spend the night with him?"
"Yes," said Castiel matter-of-factly.
Dean was struck dumb. He had to wrap his head around the idea that Cas (his Cas) went home with another guy last night. Shit! He had blown it. He had ignored his feelings for his friend for too long and now Cas went out and found someone else. And did it have to be the actor who was playing him of all people?! This guy obviously didn't care about any of the people he had been screwing around with – several actresses and Lance too. Cas deserved so much more. Cas deserved someone who wanted just him and wanted to stay with him and take care of him. Dean realized that he wanted to be that person for Cas.
He looked at the angel who was standing in front of him, head tilted and damn blue eyes wide as he waited for Dean to respond. And yeah, he realized, he did love Castiel. OK, this was it. He decided to bite the bullet and just tell Cas that he wanted him. He was Dean freaking Winchester. He had been to hell & purgatory, stopped the apocalypse, and faced a thousand monsters bigger and badder than most people could imagine. Certainly he had the balls to just take the one step forward that would close the gap between him and Cas.
But because the universe seemed to have a vendetta against him, at that moment, the temperature dropped and Dean could see his breath and hear the shrieks of the terrified Ghostfacers behind him.