Fic: Cinders and Salamanders
Title: Cinders and Salamanders
Author: brightly_lit
Rating: PG, not even any cursing! ... although some talk about sex
Genre: gen, casefic
Characters: Dean, Sam, OFC
Word Count: ~3,500
Summary: The girl Dean spends a romantic evening with kicks him out at midnight, Cinderella-style. When he and Sam go back the next day to check out a haunting in the area, there's no sign of the girl, only an old woman by the same name .... This one is a little bit sad, a little bit funny, kind of an outsider POV from the POV of the Winchesters.
“She was hot,” Dean said with a whistle, shaking his head as he jimmied the lock on what was to be their new squat. “Hot with two t’s. HOTT. Can you hear the difference?”
“Nope; still sounds like one ‘t,’” said Sam, looking around, ostensibly keeping an eye out to make sure no one saw them breaking into the house, but it was more than that; he never liked hearing about Dean’s encounters.
Not like Dean cared. “And she had these really red lips,” he said, gesturing to his mouth. “Like really red, full .... Chicks never wear their lipstick like that except in old videos. Or porn.”
“Uh-huh. Look, maybe we should try the back.”
“I’ve almost got it. And damn, her figure.” Dean whistled again.
“Here, let me try. I’m not sure your mind is really on the job.” Sam shouldered his way in and took over.
Dean obliged, staring longingly at the three-story house next door. “And she lives right next door,” he said gustily. Sam’s discomfort eventually penetrated his lusty haze. Dean started and cleared his throat. “Uh, so yeah, when I was leaving, I saw this place, checked it out, and I knew we’d found our squat until we kill this ghost. All the sightings have been right around here. Maybe it’s even haunting the squat, which would make it easy, although, you know, sucky for us, to be living with a ghost.” He chuckled. “Maybe that’s why these people decided to up and move out.”
Sam finally got the door open. They came in and looked around. Dusty and empty, but way nicer than most of the places they’d squatted. Sam set down his backpack and unfurled his sleeping roll. Meanwhile, Dean gazed out the window at the house next door. “And she was kinda dirty, too,” he snickered, “really wild. Man.” He shook his head in awe, remembering. “And now, here we are, for who knows how long.” The joy in his voice was unmistakable.
“I’m trying to figure out why you think sleeping with the girl who lives next to our squat would be a good idea,” said Sam. “In fact, I’m trying to figure out why you think squatting next to someone we’ve met is a good idea. You don’t think she’ll wonder why we suddenly moved in next door? She might know the owners and know they haven’t actually sold the place yet.”
“There she is!” Dean said suddenly as someone emerged from the house. “Wait. That’s not her. Must be her grandmother or something.” Sam got up to have a look. They watched the old woman puttering around her yard. Dean returned to the subject. “Well, Sammy, I guess we just won’t have as many cookouts in the backyard as you--”
The old woman next door screamed, and Sam and Dean leaped into action. They ran out the still-unlocked front door and quickly found their way into her yard, where she was standing over a birdbath under some bushes, pointing with a horrified expression. “What is it?” Dean demanded. Maybe she’d just found the remains they were looking for and their job would be over before it even started.
“A salamander!” she cried. “There’s a salamander in the birdbath again!”
Sam and Dean stopped short, then awkwardly tried to hide the salt and crowbar they’d come with. Good thing they hadn’t had time to grab the shotgun. Sam sighed. They glanced at each other. They might have done rock-paper-scissors if someone else hadn’t been there. Instead, they traded expressions, and still somehow Sam came out on top. Dean made a face and hunkered down next to the birdbath. Sure enough, a salamander sat in there, looking quite happy with its hiding spot. “Come on, buddy,” Dean grunted, lifted it out and put it in the bushes, where it scuttled away. He got up and nodded to the old woman. “You all right?” he asked gruffly.
“I don’t understand why they get in there!” she complained.
“Well, it’s some of the only water around here, and they like water. It’s shallow enough for them to stand in.”
“I know, but it’s dirty; I haven’t had time to clean it out!” she fretted. Sure enough, it was filled with last year’s leaves still. Sam looked amused, kind of charmed. She looked them over, then looked at the house where they were squatting. “Did you come from the Mannings’ place? Oh, are you the new owners?”
“We’re just doing some work on it before they sell it,” Sam explained smoothly, “and we’re staying there while we do; it’s easier than driving back and forth from a hotel. We’re from out of town.”
“Specialists. Artisans, really,” Dean went on, ignoring Sam’s ‘you’re taking it too far’ look. Sam must have forgotten Dean had a reason to want to impress this woman. “Old house like this, you know, they wanted to be sure they got someone who knew what they were doing.”
Her eyes got huge. “Artis- ... oh, well, then, would you have a look at my house? The crown moulding is cracking in the second floor guest bedroom ....”
Just like that, they’d gotten roped into spending the afternoon pretending they knew a lot about construction and trying to fix her crown moulding, which fortunately wasn’t hard to do once they were able to pick up something similar at Home Depot and replace it. Sam had the patience for hammering it in place with tiny nails like the ones it had originally been affixed with; Dean would have nail-gunned the hell out of it if Sam hadn’t insisted they do it right. “This house has to be at least a hundred years old,” Sam hissed as they heard her humming to herself downstairs in the kitchen. “We’re not going to ruin her house just because you were stupid enough to convince her we know what we’re doing.”
“In with the grandma, in with the granddaughter,” Dean shot back unapologetically. “And, she loves us already,” he said with a sly grin.
“Here you are!” she said, and they both jumped; she made it all the way up those creaky stairs and down the hallway without making a sound.
Dean’s face relaxed into bliss as he saw what she’d come with: a tray full of fresh-baked cookies and milk. “Oh, I love you!” he cried as he grabbed a handful and a glass of milk, nodding gratitude at her ... and just like that, he saw it, that same look he’d seen in the eyes of dozens of other women: desire. He took the opportunity to nod a silent ‘how you doin’?’ at her, and watched her blush and her eyes sparkle.
“Well, I’ll just leave these here, then,” she said, flustered, found a dusty piece of furniture to set the tray on, and scurried out.
Dean laughed to himself, turning to find Sam staring at him with disapproval. “What?”
“You planning on tapping that?” Sam said expectantly. “’Cos if you aren’t, maybe you shouldn’t be such a tease.”
“Nothing wrong with flirting with a chick of any age,” Dean informed him unapologetically. “But no; it’s bad form to do two different chicks in the same family within the same time frame.”
Sam couldn’t help but laugh as he turned back to his delicate work. “Guess you would know.”
She popped back in about an hour later, having recovered her composure. “I’ve got dinner on.” Sam tried to protest, but she insisted. “You’ve been here all afternoon working on my house; it’s the least I can do, since I can’t pay you.”
“We aren’t doing it for money--” Dean began, about to use this as a way of broaching the subject of her granddaughter, but she only patted him on the cheek and said, “I know; you boys are a godsend,” and left again.
Dean sat glumly for a little while before perking up. Free home cooked dinner. It wasn’t sex, but some days, it was literally just as good.
Obviously able to tell what had been bumming him out, Sam murmured, “No sign of the granddaughter. You sure this was the house?”
“I’m sure, but maybe she doesn’t live here; maybe she just comes over a lot ...?”
“To have sex with strangers in her grandma’s house? Nice,” Sam said.
Dean wished he could deny this, but actually, Laura had seemed like the kind of girl who would do exactly that. “She was a bad girl,” he said, getting kind of dreamy again, “but not like the ones I’ve met before, you know? She was ... classier than that. Classy, and dirty, and bad.”
“Yeah, you keep saying that,” Sam noted irritably. “It’s just, after a night like that, I wouldn’t have expected you back so early.”
“Yeah, that was kind of weird,” Dean mumbled. “It was like Cinderella; she saw it was almost midnight and she freaked out and was like, ‘You have to go’ and she kicked me out.”
“Ohhh,” Sam said, like he suddenly got it. “She left you ... you know, ‘wanting more’; that’s why you’re so obsessed with her.”
Dean grinned unconcernedly. “Nope. No, Sammy, I left quite satisfied, thank you very much. Just ... more would have been nice. More would have been great. I just wonder why she did that.”
“Because her grandmother was coming home, probably,” Sam said logically.
“Grandma? Out ’til midnight? Maybe ...,” Dean said dubiously. That sweet old lady, out past midnight? He couldn’t picture it.
Dinner was the awesomest thing Dean had eaten in years. He couldn’t help the way he was grunting and moaning as he exclaimed over how good it was. Sam was also really happy with it. She seemed most flattered.
“I just realized, we never got your name,” Sam said politely as they ate in her dusty, cavernous dining room. The table was huge, and they all ate together at one corner.
“Oh, I’m Laura,” she said, blushing again. So she thought Sam was cute, too.
“Just like your granddaughter,” Dean said, startled, before he could stop himself.
She looked surprised, then uncertain. “Yes,” she said. “How’d you know about that? Do you ... know her?”
“We’ve met,” Dean said quickly. “In fact, that’s how I found out about the ... job next door.”
She still looked confused. Sam expertly changed the subject before she could follow up on it. “We’ve heard some weird stories about this neighborhood, though,” he said with a conspiratorial grin. “People say lights go off and on in houses where no one lives, and that they see movement behind the curtains, but there’s no one there, and when they go inside to check it out, objects have been moved, but there aren’t any footprints in the dust. They also say things disappear from the occupied houses--food, and tools, stuff like that. They say it happens in lots of houses in this area. Have you ... seen anything ... like that?”
She frowned, considering. “No ...,” she said at last. “No, I haven’t, but that’s not really my job; I leave that kind of thing to my husband. I mostly just keep house.”
“Oh?” said Dean, suddenly nervous. “Where’s your husband?”
“On a business trip,” she said distantly.
“When will he be back?” Sam asked urgently, at the same time Dean said, “And he’s the one who pays attention to the stuff that’s going on in the neighborhood? Like ... who’s living next door?”
“Soon,” she said, nodding firmly and staring at her plate, but her expression seemed off; she had this faraway look in her eyes.
“Like, a few days?” Sam pressed gently. “Or ... sooner?”
“A few days,” she said, but now she seemed kind of mad, and she got up and stalked into the kitchen.
Sam and Dean glanced at each other. Sam looked confused, but Dean wasn’t. “He’s gettin’ some on the side,” he whispered, and Sam was enlightened.
She returned with more potatoes, having recovered her good humor. Dean helpfully tried to change the subject, but abruptly she herself brought up her husband. “He made me who I am today, you know,” she said, some of that disconnectedness coming back into her expression. “He took me away from ....” She lowered her voice to a whisper and confided, “I used to be kind of a bad girl, you know.” Dean waggled his eyebrows, leaning in for more details. Even Sam was listening intently; he loved history and crap like that. “Riding around in convertibles with strange men, drinking, dancing .... I even posed for ... certain photographs .... But--but I didn’t do that more than once or twice; I wasn’t interested in ....” She drifted off again. “And then I met Virgil, and he took me away from all that. Now I’m a mother and a grandmother and a good wife, that’s what I am, and that’s what I want to be, that’s all I want to be,” she said firmly ... and unconvincingly. “Virgil is everything to me. When he’s away, I just ... I just don’t know what to do with myself. Here!” she said eagerly, and jumped up. “I’ll get out pictures, so you can see him.”
When she was out of the room, Sam and Dean looked at each other. “More goin’ on in grandma than I expected,” Dean muttered.
Then she was back--just like before, not having creaked the floors at all. She must know this old house and all its creaks so well she could do that. She set three thick old-fashioned photo albums on the table and opened the first. “Here we are when we met.”
“Holy crap, you look exactly like your granddaughter,” Dean blurted out. Exactly, down to the full red lips.
She was smiling as she pointed at the photographs. Sure enough, they looked really happy together. She turned another page, then quickly turned to the one after, embarrassed. “Wait, what was that?” Dean said. “Go back.”
“No, that was one of those ... photos I told you about ...,” she murmured.
“I wanna see,” Dean said, turning the full force of his most flirtatious smile on her. She didn’t stand a chance. She turned the page back to the picture. “I don’t know why you’re so embarrassed,” Dean told her. “You’re fully clothed and everything.”
“You call that fully clothed?” she bantered, pretending to be cross with him. “You can see every inch of my legs!”
Sam carefully turned the album to himself so he could see the photo. It looked like one of those pinup-girl pictures guys had in World War II. He turned it back to face her, smiling distantly at her, but he no longer seemed interested in the conversation as Dean and Laura playfully flirted and told stories from their pasts all evening. When they finally left and went back to their squat, Dean sighed gustily. “Guess she really loves her husband. Too bad; she’s a cool old chick. And did you see that photo? HOTT.”
“Yeah,” Sam said, that cool, distant look still on his face.
“What, you got a problem with me flirting with an old chick?” Dean demanded. “Because she didn’t. She liked it. Likes me. You heard her; she was a bad girl, and it wasn’t too hard to tell that’s still in ’er. I mean, she loves her husband and everything, but I don’t think she got it all out of her system.”
“Neither do I,” Sam said, “and I’m guessing that’s why she held on.”
“Held on to what?” Dean barked. “What’re you talking about?”
“Held onto life, onto this world, Dean. Both Lauras: the one tonight, and the one you met last night. She’s a ghost.”
Dean paced wildly around the dining room of their squat. “Are you telling me I had sex with a freakin’ ghost?!” he demanded, and shuddered. “But, Sam, she was touching me, it was real!”
Sam shrugged. “In order to be able to move things around, cook, take care of that place ... it would take an incredible amount of focus, of feeling. My guess is the focus is her husband, maybe fed by guilt over the part of herself she never could quite leave behind, the bad girl. She’s ... she’s waiting for him to come home.”
“Well, he’d better hurry up,” Dean growled, and Sam laughed.
“You really don’t know? I guess you don’t know that much about history.”
“Except the Old West,” Dean retorted.
Sam snorted. “Dude, you were so wrong about everything about the Old West. Those pictures ... they met in the forties, I’m guessing. Her husband’s been dead for a long time, I’m pretty sure. And so has she.”
“So where’s she keeping the remains?” Dean demanded. Sam was quiet. “What?” said Dean.
“I don’t want to salt and burn Laura,” Sam sighed.
“Well, me either, but what else can we ....”
“Molly,” they both said at the same time.
“She was willing to go on her own,” Sam said, hope plainly rising, “and if Laura knows that’s where her husband--her soulmate--is, that he’s waiting for her in heaven, maybe she’ll be willing ....”
“Awesome,” said Dean. “But, uh ... before we break the news to her, maybe we should go over there tomorrow first thing, see if we can get breakfast, maybe some doughnuts ...?”
Sam stared at Dean, shaking his head, then finally grinned. “I keep expecting there to be a line with you, but there just never is one.”
“Come on!” Dean complained. “She likes cooking and stuff! Is it so wrong to let her have a little more fun before she has to go?”
“You are so selfless,” said Sam, taking off his boots and settling down on his bedroll.
“Hey, I’m the one who solved the case--I mean, basically, right? I found the ghost without even realizing ....”
Sam smirked evilly.
“Stop it! I didn’t know she was a ghost! How was I supposed to know?!”
“Well, some people get to know someone before they ... you know. If you don’t ... I guess it’s a hazard of casual sex.”
“It is not!” Dean said insistently--okay, kind of hysterically. “It is not a hazard of casual sex that you might end up doing it with a GHOST! God, Sam!”
“Could be an Amazon, I guess,” Sam shrugged. Sam had the upper hand now, and he wasn’t letting it go. It was at least an hour before they finally settled down, shut up, and went to bed.
Dean kicked around the backyard after removing another salamander from the birdbath. “This place looks like crap,” he said. It did, too, all run down. If he’d paid closer attention that first night, he might have noticed it didn’t look like anyone lived there, but he’d had other things on his mind. Then, by the time he and Sam came back the next day, Dean’s footprints were already in the dust. He’d just thought it was the kind of big old house that had gotten to be too much for one old lady to keep up with.
“Can’t believe she actually has a granddaughter named Laura,” he said. Who, incidentally, didn’t look a thing like the young Laura Dean had had a night to remember with, which they’d discovered when they found the rest of the labeled family photos in the photo albums. They’d done a lot of poking around the house after they told her, looking for remains, but they never found any. Fortunately, they didn’t need to. Dean couldn’t shake the memory of the look in her eyes after they explained to Laura that she was a ghost and she needed to move on: this light came on, like everything finally made sense, and she said, “I knew he’d never leave me waiting.” She looked so, so happy; Dean had almost never seen someone look so happy. She looked up, eyes shining bright, seeing something they couldn’t see, and she was gone.
“Wish all our jobs were this easy,” Sam muttered, sad, too, though trying not to show it. Why were they sad, when Laura wasn’t sad at all, and never would be again? He and Sam had been given that option, but they couldn’t bring themselves to take it, not when there were still other people fighting and suffering down here on Earth.
“I guess she really was like Cinderella,” Dean said quietly. “She found her prince, and he lifted her up out of what her life was like before. Out of her crap life, into something better,” he said, toeing a rotting pile of leaves under a low hedge. “Why’d she kick me out at midnight, though?”
“She probably felt herself turning back into who she really is,” Sam suggested. “Who knows. It’s like she was two people; maybe she couldn’t control which one she was and when.”
“That would suck, feeling like two people,” said Dean, declining to mention that he kind of knew the feeling. “Hope she’s at peace now.” They stood around, trying to think of something else that needed to be done, but there wasn’t anything for it but to collect their stuff and move on, back to their crap lives stuck in the muck. They’d be cleaning ashes out of the fireplace for the rest of their lives. No princesses would ever come and take them away from all this.
~ The End ~
Notes:
- I guess I just can't resist a melancholy ending sometimes. It seems so ... appropriate for our boys. <3
- Originally I intended for this to be outsider POV from Laura's perspective, but since they're deciphering things about her, that became no longer feasible. Still, I feel like it retains a little bit of that feeling, outsider POV of Laura from Sam and Dean's perspective, and their perceptions of how she sees them, as well.
Author: brightly_lit
Rating: PG, not even any cursing! ... although some talk about sex
Genre: gen, casefic
Characters: Dean, Sam, OFC
Word Count: ~3,500
Summary: The girl Dean spends a romantic evening with kicks him out at midnight, Cinderella-style. When he and Sam go back the next day to check out a haunting in the area, there's no sign of the girl, only an old woman by the same name .... This one is a little bit sad, a little bit funny, kind of an outsider POV from the POV of the Winchesters.
“She was hot,” Dean said with a whistle, shaking his head as he jimmied the lock on what was to be their new squat. “Hot with two t’s. HOTT. Can you hear the difference?”
“Nope; still sounds like one ‘t,’” said Sam, looking around, ostensibly keeping an eye out to make sure no one saw them breaking into the house, but it was more than that; he never liked hearing about Dean’s encounters.
Not like Dean cared. “And she had these really red lips,” he said, gesturing to his mouth. “Like really red, full .... Chicks never wear their lipstick like that except in old videos. Or porn.”
“Uh-huh. Look, maybe we should try the back.”
“I’ve almost got it. And damn, her figure.” Dean whistled again.
“Here, let me try. I’m not sure your mind is really on the job.” Sam shouldered his way in and took over.
Dean obliged, staring longingly at the three-story house next door. “And she lives right next door,” he said gustily. Sam’s discomfort eventually penetrated his lusty haze. Dean started and cleared his throat. “Uh, so yeah, when I was leaving, I saw this place, checked it out, and I knew we’d found our squat until we kill this ghost. All the sightings have been right around here. Maybe it’s even haunting the squat, which would make it easy, although, you know, sucky for us, to be living with a ghost.” He chuckled. “Maybe that’s why these people decided to up and move out.”
Sam finally got the door open. They came in and looked around. Dusty and empty, but way nicer than most of the places they’d squatted. Sam set down his backpack and unfurled his sleeping roll. Meanwhile, Dean gazed out the window at the house next door. “And she was kinda dirty, too,” he snickered, “really wild. Man.” He shook his head in awe, remembering. “And now, here we are, for who knows how long.” The joy in his voice was unmistakable.
“I’m trying to figure out why you think sleeping with the girl who lives next to our squat would be a good idea,” said Sam. “In fact, I’m trying to figure out why you think squatting next to someone we’ve met is a good idea. You don’t think she’ll wonder why we suddenly moved in next door? She might know the owners and know they haven’t actually sold the place yet.”
“There she is!” Dean said suddenly as someone emerged from the house. “Wait. That’s not her. Must be her grandmother or something.” Sam got up to have a look. They watched the old woman puttering around her yard. Dean returned to the subject. “Well, Sammy, I guess we just won’t have as many cookouts in the backyard as you--”
The old woman next door screamed, and Sam and Dean leaped into action. They ran out the still-unlocked front door and quickly found their way into her yard, where she was standing over a birdbath under some bushes, pointing with a horrified expression. “What is it?” Dean demanded. Maybe she’d just found the remains they were looking for and their job would be over before it even started.
“A salamander!” she cried. “There’s a salamander in the birdbath again!”
Sam and Dean stopped short, then awkwardly tried to hide the salt and crowbar they’d come with. Good thing they hadn’t had time to grab the shotgun. Sam sighed. They glanced at each other. They might have done rock-paper-scissors if someone else hadn’t been there. Instead, they traded expressions, and still somehow Sam came out on top. Dean made a face and hunkered down next to the birdbath. Sure enough, a salamander sat in there, looking quite happy with its hiding spot. “Come on, buddy,” Dean grunted, lifted it out and put it in the bushes, where it scuttled away. He got up and nodded to the old woman. “You all right?” he asked gruffly.
“I don’t understand why they get in there!” she complained.
“Well, it’s some of the only water around here, and they like water. It’s shallow enough for them to stand in.”
“I know, but it’s dirty; I haven’t had time to clean it out!” she fretted. Sure enough, it was filled with last year’s leaves still. Sam looked amused, kind of charmed. She looked them over, then looked at the house where they were squatting. “Did you come from the Mannings’ place? Oh, are you the new owners?”
“We’re just doing some work on it before they sell it,” Sam explained smoothly, “and we’re staying there while we do; it’s easier than driving back and forth from a hotel. We’re from out of town.”
“Specialists. Artisans, really,” Dean went on, ignoring Sam’s ‘you’re taking it too far’ look. Sam must have forgotten Dean had a reason to want to impress this woman. “Old house like this, you know, they wanted to be sure they got someone who knew what they were doing.”
Her eyes got huge. “Artis- ... oh, well, then, would you have a look at my house? The crown moulding is cracking in the second floor guest bedroom ....”
Just like that, they’d gotten roped into spending the afternoon pretending they knew a lot about construction and trying to fix her crown moulding, which fortunately wasn’t hard to do once they were able to pick up something similar at Home Depot and replace it. Sam had the patience for hammering it in place with tiny nails like the ones it had originally been affixed with; Dean would have nail-gunned the hell out of it if Sam hadn’t insisted they do it right. “This house has to be at least a hundred years old,” Sam hissed as they heard her humming to herself downstairs in the kitchen. “We’re not going to ruin her house just because you were stupid enough to convince her we know what we’re doing.”
“In with the grandma, in with the granddaughter,” Dean shot back unapologetically. “And, she loves us already,” he said with a sly grin.
“Here you are!” she said, and they both jumped; she made it all the way up those creaky stairs and down the hallway without making a sound.
Dean’s face relaxed into bliss as he saw what she’d come with: a tray full of fresh-baked cookies and milk. “Oh, I love you!” he cried as he grabbed a handful and a glass of milk, nodding gratitude at her ... and just like that, he saw it, that same look he’d seen in the eyes of dozens of other women: desire. He took the opportunity to nod a silent ‘how you doin’?’ at her, and watched her blush and her eyes sparkle.
“Well, I’ll just leave these here, then,” she said, flustered, found a dusty piece of furniture to set the tray on, and scurried out.
Dean laughed to himself, turning to find Sam staring at him with disapproval. “What?”
“You planning on tapping that?” Sam said expectantly. “’Cos if you aren’t, maybe you shouldn’t be such a tease.”
“Nothing wrong with flirting with a chick of any age,” Dean informed him unapologetically. “But no; it’s bad form to do two different chicks in the same family within the same time frame.”
Sam couldn’t help but laugh as he turned back to his delicate work. “Guess you would know.”
She popped back in about an hour later, having recovered her composure. “I’ve got dinner on.” Sam tried to protest, but she insisted. “You’ve been here all afternoon working on my house; it’s the least I can do, since I can’t pay you.”
“We aren’t doing it for money--” Dean began, about to use this as a way of broaching the subject of her granddaughter, but she only patted him on the cheek and said, “I know; you boys are a godsend,” and left again.
Dean sat glumly for a little while before perking up. Free home cooked dinner. It wasn’t sex, but some days, it was literally just as good.
Obviously able to tell what had been bumming him out, Sam murmured, “No sign of the granddaughter. You sure this was the house?”
“I’m sure, but maybe she doesn’t live here; maybe she just comes over a lot ...?”
“To have sex with strangers in her grandma’s house? Nice,” Sam said.
Dean wished he could deny this, but actually, Laura had seemed like the kind of girl who would do exactly that. “She was a bad girl,” he said, getting kind of dreamy again, “but not like the ones I’ve met before, you know? She was ... classier than that. Classy, and dirty, and bad.”
“Yeah, you keep saying that,” Sam noted irritably. “It’s just, after a night like that, I wouldn’t have expected you back so early.”
“Yeah, that was kind of weird,” Dean mumbled. “It was like Cinderella; she saw it was almost midnight and she freaked out and was like, ‘You have to go’ and she kicked me out.”
“Ohhh,” Sam said, like he suddenly got it. “She left you ... you know, ‘wanting more’; that’s why you’re so obsessed with her.”
Dean grinned unconcernedly. “Nope. No, Sammy, I left quite satisfied, thank you very much. Just ... more would have been nice. More would have been great. I just wonder why she did that.”
“Because her grandmother was coming home, probably,” Sam said logically.
“Grandma? Out ’til midnight? Maybe ...,” Dean said dubiously. That sweet old lady, out past midnight? He couldn’t picture it.
Dinner was the awesomest thing Dean had eaten in years. He couldn’t help the way he was grunting and moaning as he exclaimed over how good it was. Sam was also really happy with it. She seemed most flattered.
“I just realized, we never got your name,” Sam said politely as they ate in her dusty, cavernous dining room. The table was huge, and they all ate together at one corner.
“Oh, I’m Laura,” she said, blushing again. So she thought Sam was cute, too.
“Just like your granddaughter,” Dean said, startled, before he could stop himself.
She looked surprised, then uncertain. “Yes,” she said. “How’d you know about that? Do you ... know her?”
“We’ve met,” Dean said quickly. “In fact, that’s how I found out about the ... job next door.”
She still looked confused. Sam expertly changed the subject before she could follow up on it. “We’ve heard some weird stories about this neighborhood, though,” he said with a conspiratorial grin. “People say lights go off and on in houses where no one lives, and that they see movement behind the curtains, but there’s no one there, and when they go inside to check it out, objects have been moved, but there aren’t any footprints in the dust. They also say things disappear from the occupied houses--food, and tools, stuff like that. They say it happens in lots of houses in this area. Have you ... seen anything ... like that?”
She frowned, considering. “No ...,” she said at last. “No, I haven’t, but that’s not really my job; I leave that kind of thing to my husband. I mostly just keep house.”
“Oh?” said Dean, suddenly nervous. “Where’s your husband?”
“On a business trip,” she said distantly.
“When will he be back?” Sam asked urgently, at the same time Dean said, “And he’s the one who pays attention to the stuff that’s going on in the neighborhood? Like ... who’s living next door?”
“Soon,” she said, nodding firmly and staring at her plate, but her expression seemed off; she had this faraway look in her eyes.
“Like, a few days?” Sam pressed gently. “Or ... sooner?”
“A few days,” she said, but now she seemed kind of mad, and she got up and stalked into the kitchen.
Sam and Dean glanced at each other. Sam looked confused, but Dean wasn’t. “He’s gettin’ some on the side,” he whispered, and Sam was enlightened.
She returned with more potatoes, having recovered her good humor. Dean helpfully tried to change the subject, but abruptly she herself brought up her husband. “He made me who I am today, you know,” she said, some of that disconnectedness coming back into her expression. “He took me away from ....” She lowered her voice to a whisper and confided, “I used to be kind of a bad girl, you know.” Dean waggled his eyebrows, leaning in for more details. Even Sam was listening intently; he loved history and crap like that. “Riding around in convertibles with strange men, drinking, dancing .... I even posed for ... certain photographs .... But--but I didn’t do that more than once or twice; I wasn’t interested in ....” She drifted off again. “And then I met Virgil, and he took me away from all that. Now I’m a mother and a grandmother and a good wife, that’s what I am, and that’s what I want to be, that’s all I want to be,” she said firmly ... and unconvincingly. “Virgil is everything to me. When he’s away, I just ... I just don’t know what to do with myself. Here!” she said eagerly, and jumped up. “I’ll get out pictures, so you can see him.”
When she was out of the room, Sam and Dean looked at each other. “More goin’ on in grandma than I expected,” Dean muttered.
Then she was back--just like before, not having creaked the floors at all. She must know this old house and all its creaks so well she could do that. She set three thick old-fashioned photo albums on the table and opened the first. “Here we are when we met.”
“Holy crap, you look exactly like your granddaughter,” Dean blurted out. Exactly, down to the full red lips.
She was smiling as she pointed at the photographs. Sure enough, they looked really happy together. She turned another page, then quickly turned to the one after, embarrassed. “Wait, what was that?” Dean said. “Go back.”
“No, that was one of those ... photos I told you about ...,” she murmured.
“I wanna see,” Dean said, turning the full force of his most flirtatious smile on her. She didn’t stand a chance. She turned the page back to the picture. “I don’t know why you’re so embarrassed,” Dean told her. “You’re fully clothed and everything.”
“You call that fully clothed?” she bantered, pretending to be cross with him. “You can see every inch of my legs!”
Sam carefully turned the album to himself so he could see the photo. It looked like one of those pinup-girl pictures guys had in World War II. He turned it back to face her, smiling distantly at her, but he no longer seemed interested in the conversation as Dean and Laura playfully flirted and told stories from their pasts all evening. When they finally left and went back to their squat, Dean sighed gustily. “Guess she really loves her husband. Too bad; she’s a cool old chick. And did you see that photo? HOTT.”
“Yeah,” Sam said, that cool, distant look still on his face.
“What, you got a problem with me flirting with an old chick?” Dean demanded. “Because she didn’t. She liked it. Likes me. You heard her; she was a bad girl, and it wasn’t too hard to tell that’s still in ’er. I mean, she loves her husband and everything, but I don’t think she got it all out of her system.”
“Neither do I,” Sam said, “and I’m guessing that’s why she held on.”
“Held on to what?” Dean barked. “What’re you talking about?”
“Held onto life, onto this world, Dean. Both Lauras: the one tonight, and the one you met last night. She’s a ghost.”
Dean paced wildly around the dining room of their squat. “Are you telling me I had sex with a freakin’ ghost?!” he demanded, and shuddered. “But, Sam, she was touching me, it was real!”
Sam shrugged. “In order to be able to move things around, cook, take care of that place ... it would take an incredible amount of focus, of feeling. My guess is the focus is her husband, maybe fed by guilt over the part of herself she never could quite leave behind, the bad girl. She’s ... she’s waiting for him to come home.”
“Well, he’d better hurry up,” Dean growled, and Sam laughed.
“You really don’t know? I guess you don’t know that much about history.”
“Except the Old West,” Dean retorted.
Sam snorted. “Dude, you were so wrong about everything about the Old West. Those pictures ... they met in the forties, I’m guessing. Her husband’s been dead for a long time, I’m pretty sure. And so has she.”
“So where’s she keeping the remains?” Dean demanded. Sam was quiet. “What?” said Dean.
“I don’t want to salt and burn Laura,” Sam sighed.
“Well, me either, but what else can we ....”
“Molly,” they both said at the same time.
“She was willing to go on her own,” Sam said, hope plainly rising, “and if Laura knows that’s where her husband--her soulmate--is, that he’s waiting for her in heaven, maybe she’ll be willing ....”
“Awesome,” said Dean. “But, uh ... before we break the news to her, maybe we should go over there tomorrow first thing, see if we can get breakfast, maybe some doughnuts ...?”
Sam stared at Dean, shaking his head, then finally grinned. “I keep expecting there to be a line with you, but there just never is one.”
“Come on!” Dean complained. “She likes cooking and stuff! Is it so wrong to let her have a little more fun before she has to go?”
“You are so selfless,” said Sam, taking off his boots and settling down on his bedroll.
“Hey, I’m the one who solved the case--I mean, basically, right? I found the ghost without even realizing ....”
Sam smirked evilly.
“Stop it! I didn’t know she was a ghost! How was I supposed to know?!”
“Well, some people get to know someone before they ... you know. If you don’t ... I guess it’s a hazard of casual sex.”
“It is not!” Dean said insistently--okay, kind of hysterically. “It is not a hazard of casual sex that you might end up doing it with a GHOST! God, Sam!”
“Could be an Amazon, I guess,” Sam shrugged. Sam had the upper hand now, and he wasn’t letting it go. It was at least an hour before they finally settled down, shut up, and went to bed.
Dean kicked around the backyard after removing another salamander from the birdbath. “This place looks like crap,” he said. It did, too, all run down. If he’d paid closer attention that first night, he might have noticed it didn’t look like anyone lived there, but he’d had other things on his mind. Then, by the time he and Sam came back the next day, Dean’s footprints were already in the dust. He’d just thought it was the kind of big old house that had gotten to be too much for one old lady to keep up with.
“Can’t believe she actually has a granddaughter named Laura,” he said. Who, incidentally, didn’t look a thing like the young Laura Dean had had a night to remember with, which they’d discovered when they found the rest of the labeled family photos in the photo albums. They’d done a lot of poking around the house after they told her, looking for remains, but they never found any. Fortunately, they didn’t need to. Dean couldn’t shake the memory of the look in her eyes after they explained to Laura that she was a ghost and she needed to move on: this light came on, like everything finally made sense, and she said, “I knew he’d never leave me waiting.” She looked so, so happy; Dean had almost never seen someone look so happy. She looked up, eyes shining bright, seeing something they couldn’t see, and she was gone.
“Wish all our jobs were this easy,” Sam muttered, sad, too, though trying not to show it. Why were they sad, when Laura wasn’t sad at all, and never would be again? He and Sam had been given that option, but they couldn’t bring themselves to take it, not when there were still other people fighting and suffering down here on Earth.
“I guess she really was like Cinderella,” Dean said quietly. “She found her prince, and he lifted her up out of what her life was like before. Out of her crap life, into something better,” he said, toeing a rotting pile of leaves under a low hedge. “Why’d she kick me out at midnight, though?”
“She probably felt herself turning back into who she really is,” Sam suggested. “Who knows. It’s like she was two people; maybe she couldn’t control which one she was and when.”
“That would suck, feeling like two people,” said Dean, declining to mention that he kind of knew the feeling. “Hope she’s at peace now.” They stood around, trying to think of something else that needed to be done, but there wasn’t anything for it but to collect their stuff and move on, back to their crap lives stuck in the muck. They’d be cleaning ashes out of the fireplace for the rest of their lives. No princesses would ever come and take them away from all this.
~ The End ~
Notes:
- I guess I just can't resist a melancholy ending sometimes. It seems so ... appropriate for our boys. <3
- Originally I intended for this to be outsider POV from Laura's perspective, but since they're deciphering things about her, that became no longer feasible. Still, I feel like it retains a little bit of that feeling, outsider POV of Laura from Sam and Dean's perspective, and their perceptions of how she sees them, as well.