Movie Clichés and Freaky Green Ghosts (SPN/SV crossover) GEN, PG
Title: Movie Clichés and Freaky Green Ghosts
Author: Brinny
Characters/Pairings: Dean and Sam Winchester, and Chloe Sullivan (she of "Smallville" fame). It's pretty gen, but there's some Dean/Chloe undertones, mostly one-sided.
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 4,575
Notes: Wow, I've been writing this one forever. Finally dusted it off and finished it. It takes place sometime after "Stranger Than Fiction" Pt. 1 and Pt. 2, but you don't need to read those for this to make sense.
Dean groaned. It was four-thirty in the morning and somebody had actually deemed that an appropriate time to be calling his cellphone. He highly disagreed.
The motel room was dark, just neon lights outside the small window, and it took him almost a full minute before he located his discarded jeans lying on the floor. He pulled out a pack of gum, a crumpled up cocktail napkin, and a still-wrapped condom before he found his phone on the nightstand. He really had too much crap in his pockets.
“Yeah?”
“That’s how you greet people? ‘Yeah?’ No wonder panties just drop around you. Or do they burst into flames? I can never quite remember.”
Dean turned the cellphone on its side, ‘Pain in the Ass’ in tiny glowing letters on the call display. “Sullivan.” He grinned a bit. “Hi.”
“Still a little monosyllabic, but I’ll take it.”
He shifted so he was half-propped up by the thin pillows and the headboard. “I’m a very take what you can get guy.”
“So I’ve noticed.”
He yawned. “There a reason for the wake-up call? Or you just miss me?”
“Where are you?”
“In bed.” Dean scratched at his thigh, cradling the phone between his ear and shoulder, and smirked. “But, Sam’s snoring in the one next to me, so we could be entering some pretty kinky sort of voyeurism. Which I’m totally down for, by the way.”
“I’m sure you would be. Now, geographically speaking, where are you?”
“We’re in Yuma.” He yawned again. “Why? Need a bit of testosterone for a job?”
“Yeah, something like that.”
Dean’d gotten to know her well enough to know that she’d punctuated that last sentence with a hefty roll of her eyes.
“Well,” he said. “We just finished some nasty business with a poltergeist here. Suppose if we hit the road, might make it there sometime in the PM tomorrow.” He glanced down at the clock. “Or today. The hell you calling at this time for, anyway?”
“I’ve been tracking down a lead for the past couple of weeks-something shady and corporate and probably Luthor-and while I was doing a bit of old fashion researching, there was some major paranormal radar ping-age. It could be meteor related, but I think it’s giving off some serious ‘Who you gonna call?’ vibes.”
Dean laughed. “How many cups of coffee have you had?”
“Six. But one was a mocha latté. And it doesn’t really count, because Lois made it. And whatever she makes is like coffee in its best coffee disguise.”
“Who’s Lois?” Dean smirked. “You make a few panties drop yourself, Sullivan? That’d explain some things.”
“Like what?”
“Like why I’ve yet to see you naked.”
“Well, Lois is my cousin. So, no. And, gross.”
“Does that mean there’s still a possibility that I’ll get to see you naked?”
“It’s good to know that someone’s still out there keeping that chauvinistic and egocentric male attitude alive. And here I was worried it was dying off. How naïve of me.”
“That’s hitting a little below to the belt, don’t you think?”
“I thought below the belt action is what you were looking for.”
“And she turns it into a comeback. Nice.”
“So, how fast can you get here?”
Dean smiled. The girl was nothing if not impatient.
“See you in ten,” he said.
He clicked his phone off and leaned over to flick on the lamp. Squinting against the bright light, he saw Sam grumble and pull a pillow over his head. Dean pushed at the edge of Sam’s mattress with his foot, rocking the creaky bed back and forth.
“Dean, knock it off.” Sam threw one long arm out from under the blanket and made a grabby gesture.
“What, are you trying to cop a feel? Naughty, Sam. And slightly disturbing.”
Sam sat up, running a tired hand over his face. He always looked about five when he first woke up: messy hair, heavy-lidded eyes, and a patch of drool at the corner of his mouth. “I was trying to turn off the light. It’s freakin’ dark out, man.”
Dean tipped his chin up lightly. “You’re the early bird, Sammy.” He pushed at the bed again. “Want the worm or not?”
Sam wiggled his way back under the blanket. “You’re an asshole.”
Dean shrugged. “Get your stuff, we’re going to Smallville.” He shifted off the bed, still a bit groggy and unsteady on his feet. “We’re getting coffee, and then we’re going to Smallville.”
“Dude,” Sam half-moaned. “Seriously?”
“Coffee and a huge ass stack of pancakes.” He nodded to himself. “Oh, and if you keep whining and I’m gonna make you sit in the backseat.” He grinned and added a quick, “Sasquatch.”
“I swear to God, if she doesn’t sleep with you soon, I’m going to resort to movie clichés and lock you two in a closet or something.”
“Hey, we’re going there for a job, okay?” Dean told him, tossing a duffel bag onto the bed. “And do that closet thing, anyway.”
“Are you kidding me?”
Dean bit his lower lip, thinking it over. “Don’t think it’d work?”
Sam shook his head slowly. “No.”
“Really?” He poked at the duffel. “Well, c’mon, road trip it up!”
Sam groaned and pulled the pillow back over his head.
---
Chloe handed Sam his coffee, three sugars and two cream, and then poured two cups for her and Dean. She took a quick sip, gave Dean his own cup, and then sat down across from them. Dean elbowed Sam for no real reason that she could see and Sam frowned at his brother.
“So, you were interviewing this Donovan guy and a candlestick moved?” Sam asked.
“Not moved,” Chloe corrected. “Bought a one-way plane ticket and flew right off of the table.”
“Gust of wind?” he guessed, head tipped to the side.
“Yeah, outside in a tornado, maybe,” she said and saw him grin into his mug.
“So barring freak weather and what do we have?” Dean asked.
“Well, putting the investigative in investigative reporter, I decided to do some digging.” She sat down and opened up her laptop. “Turns out that before Mr. Donovan owned the property, the Luthors did. Used it to do some experiments on farm animals.”
Dean nodded. “So, pissed off and angry ghost farm animals? Well, that’s new.”
The corners of her mouth pulled into a slight smile. “I wouldn’t get ready to bust any spectral bovine butt just yet.”
She opened up a folder on her desktop, titled ‘L753’, and a then a subfolder filled with digital pictures of an old, red farmhouse.
Sam pointed to the screen. “That the place?”
“Yeah,” she said. “The experiments were done using meteor rocks. Not sure exactly what they were trying to accomplish, but I’m betting it wasn’t too PETA friendly.”
“Yeah, but if there were meteor rocks involved isn’t it probably some strange zap effect?” Dean asked. He waved his hand around a bit. “Like the rock essence soaked into the ground or something? Gave Donovan’s house crazy powers?”
“Sure,” Chloe shrugged and her smile widened. “But, factor in that the lead scientist, one Richard Murdoch, died mysteriously right before the testing was shut down, and I’d say we’ve got a serious case of either or, here.”
“Wall of Weird or a pretty malevolent spirit. Very either or,” Sam agreed. “Think we could get down there to check it out with EMF?”
“In a non-legal, break and enter sort of way?” She quirked an eyebrow. “Yeah, sure.”
Dean smiled. “Well, sweetheart, that’s the only way we know how.” He downed the rest of his coffee and pulled on his coat. “Let’s shag ass, then.”
---
“I’m getting nothing.” Dean turned towards his brother. “What about you? Any freak outs?”
Sam shook his head. “Not so far.”
Dean grabbed Sam’s arm and ran the EMF meter across Sam’s chest and then down his legs. The meter stayed silent, no shrill beeps or flashing lights, and Sam swatted at Dean’s hand. Dean thumped the EMF meter against his palm a few times.
“What are you doing, man?”
Dean shrugged, running it over Sam’s face this time. “Checking to see if it’s broken.”
“On me? You’re checking it on me?”
“Yeah,” Dean said, grinning. “Electromagnetic Freak, uh, Finder.”
Sam smirked. “Dude, that’s two F’s.”
“Shut up.” Dean waved the meter around. “You’re two F’s.”
Sam laughed.
“No, wait.” Dean gave a quick snap of his fingers, his grin getting larger. “You need to be F’ed. Huh?”
“Yeah, your comedic skills are amazing, Dean,” Sam deadpanned. “Wow.”
Dean huffed, swung the EMF meter around the air a few more times and pressed it up against the last wall that he hadn’t checked, and then turned it off. “Alright, well this is a bust.”
“Yeah,” Sam agreed.
“Space rocks it is.”
Sam nodded. “Space rocks it is.”
Dean tucked the meter into his coat pocket just as his phone rang some cock-rock tune that Sam had downloaded. He pulled it out and flipped up his hand at Sam, telling him to wait a second. Sam rolled his eyes.
“Yeah?”
“I thought we discussed this.”
Dean grinned. “Hello, Sullivan. How may I service you?”
Sam snorted.
“Okay, so it’s looking less Wall of Weird and more spirit.”
“What? No, we scanned everything. The house, the barn, the field. Nothing came up with EMF.”
“Well, I’ve got a witness that said she saw something with ghost-like traits hanging around the Donovan farm. Something with ghost-like traits in a very Richard Murdoch shape.”
“Well, your witness is full up on crazy, then,” Dean said. “Unless this thing is somehow undetectable through EMF.”
“Hey, I’m just putting two and two together. And for me, it’s equaling spirit, not four.”
Sam frowned. “Dean, what if it’s not detectable with EMF? The meteors could have altered the magnetic frequency.”
“Ah, crap.” Dean turned towards Sam, bringing the phone away from his ear and covering the mouthpiece with his shoulder. “That possible, you think?”
“Well, I don’t see why not.” Sam cocked his head to the side, right hand gesturing a bit while he thought it out. “The meteor rocks mess with all kinds of stuff, right? Give people strange powers and things? Well, if they can reconstruct parts of the human genetic code to give people abilities, why not the same deal with spirits?”
“Yeah, but spirits are dead, Sam.”
“What if something happened to Murdoch before he died? Changed him, somehow?”
“This just keeps getting better and better.” Dean gave a quick grunt, accompanied by a disbelieving bob of his eyebrows, and brought the phone back up to his mouth. “Things just got seriously jacked up.”
“More so than usual?”
“Yeah, I think so. Sam’s thinking that it could be a spirit, but one that can’t be picked up with EMF. This Murdoch’s turning out to be one evasive bastard.”
“New levels of weird. Okay, we can work with that.”
“Man, you never have a boring day, do you?” Dean asked. “Never like, a non-meteor-rock-damn-this-coffee-is-awesome-I’m-gonna-just-sit-and-people-watch, kind of day?”
“Hey, where’s the fun in that? I’ll take weird and exciting over normal and mundane any day. And you’ve got your own fair share of scary and strange happenings, tiger.”
He grinned. “Look, we’re bonding.”
“Meet me at my place, we’ll compare notes.”
“Sounds like a party.”
“Goodbye, Dean.”
Dean chuckled and closed his phone, stuffing it back into his pocket. Sam lifted his eyebrows, hands stretched out.
“Well?” he asked.
“It’s gonna be a long week, Sam,” Dean said. “Long freakin’ week.”
Sam huffed. “Great.”
---
Sam stared into his cup as Chloe spoke on the phone. She tapped her fingers against her thigh, sighing.
“So what do you think?” Dean asked in a whisper, chin tipped in Chloe’s direction. “Boyfriend?”
Sam’s eyes flicked from his cup to Dean. “Stop trying to eavesdrop.”
“I’m not,” he protested. “Just curious. She seems like the kind to have a boyfriend, right? All nerdy and eager-beaver type?”
“Yeah,” Sam agreed. “Sure.”
Chloe hung up the phone and sighed again. “Things not only just got weirder, they got uglier, too.”
“Yeah, how?” Dean asked.
“Trace Donovan was just attacked in his house.”
Sam’s eyebrows creased into his forehead. “When?”
“About an hour ago. He’s at Smallville Medical Center right now. Being treated for minor injuries.”
“So now Murdoch’s moved on from objects to people? Great.” Dean shook his head lightly. “Can you find out where this guy’s buried?”
Chloe nodded. “Yeah, of course. Might take some digging, though. No pun intended.”
“Think we should go down to the hospital, ask Donovan what he remembers?” Sam suggested. “Could be unrelated.”
Dean snorted. “You really gonna play the coincidence angle, Sammy?”
“Hey, stranger things.” Sam shrugged and stared at his cup again.
“Fine,” Dean said, clapping Sam on the shoulder. “You and me will go down there and play reporter.” He grinned at Chloe. “Ace over here needs some healthy competition, anyway.”
She returned the grin. “I’ll try and remember that next time you need some confidential hacking and your Boy Wonder brother isn’t available.”
Dean laughed. “Dude, she just compared you to the world’s lamest sidekick.”
Both Sam and Chloe gave a near-simultaneous roll of their eyes. Dean countered with an eyeroll of his own.
“Yeah, okay. Let’s go.”
---
Trace Donovan was an older man with a grouchy sort of face and grey, bushy eyebrows that stood out against his dark skin. His arm was in a sling and a square piece of gauze was taped to the side of his forehead, small patch of blood seeping through and he rubbed his fingers near the spot as if trying to literally pull out the words.
He squinted and licked his lips. “Who’d you say you were?”
Sam smiled softly. “Reporters. From The Planet.”
“I’m Joe Tyler,” Dean said with a helpful nod. “And this is Steven, Steven Perry. We just have a couple of quick questions. If you don’t mind.”
“No, no.” Donovan rubbed his head again. “Sure, go right ahead. About time somebody listened to me.”
Sam kept the gentle smile on his face and reached for a notepad from the inside pocket of his jacket. His hand brushed over the tie he wore and he made a quick adjustment, clearing his throat. “So, Mr. Donovan, you said you didn’t see who attacked you?”
“No.” He gave another squint, eyes a bit angry. “No, I told those damn cops who were in here that I did see who did it. They just didn’t believe me. Tax dollars at work, huh? Assholes.”
“Wait,” Sam jotted down, Saw killer. Cops, assholes. “So, who’d you see?”
“Well,” Donovan hedged. “Probably didn’t believe me ‘cause I sound nuts. It was a shadow or something. No person, just the shadow. Like the guy was invisible. Saw the shadow and then got knocked out.”
“Did you notice anything out of the ordinary in the past week? Other shadows? Household items, you know, floating in midair?” Dean asked, hand bobbing up and down, as if to literally show the old man what he meant.
Donovan narrowed his eyes. “You mocking me, kid?”
Dean shook his head, every bit serious. “Nope.”
“Some other reporter girl, a blonde with nice legs, was interviewing me a while back, can’t remember the day. A candlestick fell off the table. And then later a book knocked into a vase. Didn’t think much of it.”
Sam scribbled, Shadows, moving objects. Chloe, nice legs. “Mr. Donovan, did you know a Richard Murdoch?”
Donovan frowned. “Don’t think so. Should I? Doctors said I don’t have amnesia, but what do they know? They’re assholes, too.”
Dean grinned. “Thanks for your time Mr. Donovan.”
“Will my story be in the paper?”
Sam gave an almost apologetic shrug. “Up to our editor. We’ll do our best, though. Feel better.”
---
“Salt and burn?” Chloe asked.
“Salt and burn,” Dean confirmed with a nod.
“Salt and burn,” Sam repeated, half-under his breath.
---
The three of them stalked through the cemetery, boots clunking along the hard ground. Chloe’s coat got caught on a branch and the twig snapped so loud that Sam almost jumped. He flicked his flashlight in her direction.
“Sorry,” she whispered. She untangled herself from the tree and Sam nodded and kept walking.
“What’s with the Nancy Drew get up, anyway?” Dean shone his own flashlight up and down her black trench coat.
Chloe smirked. “It’s cold.”
“Hey, it’s not a bad thing. Nancy was pretty hot for chick that never gave it up to her boyfriend. That Ned must’ve had a serious case of blue balls,” he half-muttered. Dean laughed then, mostly to himself. “See, now that would’ve been a good book: Nancy Drew and the Serious Case of Blue Balls. I’d have read that.”
Chloe rolled her eyes and gave a low snort. “You know a disturbing amount about teen girl detective books, don’t you think?”
“Sammy had a whole pile of ‘em way back when.” Dean shrugged. “Liked to whack off to the book covers.”
“What?” Sam near-screeched. “I did not!”
“Sure you didn’t.”
Sam pressed his lips together in a tight line, frowning. “So, Chloe, you said that Murdoch’s buried behind some stone angel?”
“Yeah,” she nodded. “It’s more near the center of the cemetery.” She lifted her flashlight and smiled as the beam landed on neatly carved wings. “Right about here.”
“Something’s bothering me,” Sam said.
Dean flung his duffel to the ground and pulled out a carton of salt and a half-filled container of lighter fluid.
“It’s okay, Sam. Nobody really cares that you’re a gigantic dork.”
“Yeah, thanks,” Sam said. “But, why is Murdoch’s spirit acting out now?” He nodded at Chloe. “Donovan’s owned the place for how many years?”
“Four, I think,” Chloe answered.
“What’s it matter anyway, Sam? We salt and burn the bones, done. Case closed.”
“Yeah, but if the spirit somehow can’t be picked up with EMF, what makes you think that a routine salt and burn is going to get rid of it?”
Dean shrugged. “What makes you think it won’t?”
Sam returned with a shrug of his own.
“C’mon, Sam,” Dean grinned. “Where’s that Little Engine That Could attitude?”
“See,” Sam said to Chloe, jerking his head towards Dean. “Now that’s the one book he actually has read.”
Dean grunted and handed Sam a shovel. “Shut up and dig.”
---
“So, remind me again why we’re re-checking the Donovan place?” Dean asked. He held out his hand and Sam dug into his pocket, slapping down a lock-picking kit in Dean’s open palm.
Sam’s eyes darted around, quick and nervous. “I have a feeling.”
“Oh,” Dean nodded. “A feeling. Well, that’s just swell, Sammy.”
“No, Dean.” Sam leaned in towards his brother, dropping his voice to a low and tight sort of whisper, “I have a feeling.”
“Oh,” Dean said again. There was a familiar, satisfying click and Dean handed the kit back to Sam and slowly pushed open the door.
Chloe came up behind the two of them, tapping her feet from both impatience and the cold. “Okay, so I did the stealth routine around the barn and out back and didn’t see anything.”
Dean shrugged. “Maybe the salt and burn did work.”
“Yeah,” Sam reluctantly agreed. “Maybe.”
“Sometimes things do-”
There was a whoosh of cold air and all three of them stopped, then slowly walked into the house. Sam and Dean raised their shotguns, brought purely for a ‘just in case’ situation, and Chloe lifted up her flashlight.
Her eyes widened. “Was that… ?”
“Something with ghost-like traits in a very Richard Murdoch shape?” Dean asked. “Yeah, I’m thinking so.”
“See?” Sam hissed.
“Yeah, yeah,” Dean muttered. “See which way he went?”
Chloe and Sam shook their heads.
There was another rush of air and both Dean and Sam shot at the blurry figure. Murdoch’s spirit let out something that sounded incredibly like a mocking laugh and then turned down the hallway, walking out of sight.
“So, salt and anything doesn’t work,” Sam said, holding up his shot gun. “Super.”
Dean gave a weak smirk. “This should be fun.”
---
When they’d finally caught up with Murdoch’s spirit, he choked Sam, threw Dean against a wall and smacked a vase into Chloe’s head. And then locked Dean and Chloe in one of the hall closets.
“You know, when Sam said we should have had a game plan, I’m starting to think we should have listened.” Chloe sighed.
“Well, Sammy’s working on one right now. Kid’s a whiz with a computer,” Dean said.
“It’s been almost an hour.”
“Hey, when I told you to get comfy, you could have listened to that, too.”
Chloe shoved at him and he moved his knee so it wasn’t wedged in between her back and the closet wall.
“Why don’t you just shoot at it?” Chloe asked. She was still pushing at his knee and Dean didn’t know any other way that he could move.
“At what? My leg?”
She made a wild gesture. “The door.”
“You want me to aim in the dark in an enclosed space?” he asked. “Gun safety, sweetheart. It ain’t just a pamphlet.”
Chloe snorted. “You load buck shots filled with rock salt into a sawed-off to shoot at ghosts and you’re giving a lecture on gun safety?”
Dean shrugged.
“I thought you were good at this,” she said.
“Good at being locked in closets?” He smirked, wondering if she could see the quick flash of teeth. “There was this one time in a storeroom with this mop-”
“I was more leaning towards the more ghost hunting thing,” Chloe clarified.
“Everyone has an off day,” Dean told her, shrugging again. “Plus, some of these spirits are stubborn as hell.”
“Sam better find something out soon.” She shifted. “This whole small and cramped spaces thing? So not a good look on me.”
“You go up against all that crap on your Wall of Weird and you’re afraid of a closet? Seriously?”
She lifted an eyebrow. “You ever been buried alive?”
“No.”
“Well, it’s not exactly something you celebrate with party hats and streamers,” she said.
“Okay.” Dean tried to tuck his legs further under his body. He ended up in an almost pretzel position, one foot lodged between the other and the wall. “So, you’ve been buried alive? Covered in dirt and underground, the whole six feet?”
“Kind of phobia inducing, wouldn’t you say?”
”Yeah, sure.” Dean nodded.
They were both quiet for a few minutes, then: “I don’t like rats.”
“You’re scared of rats?” Chloe asked, laugh following after.
“No. I said I don’t like rats.” He pushed the toe of his boot against the closet wall. “Scared of flying,” he muttered lowly, blowing a stuttered sort of breath out from pursed lips.
“Of flying?” she repeated.
Dean whipped his head around. “Hmm?”
Chloe smiled. “Nothing.”
---
“Take one down and pass it around, no more bottles of beer on the wall,” Dean concluded. He sighed.
“Okay, I think we’ve gone through everything in the annoying song catalogue,” Chloe said.
Dean picked at a hole in his jeans, ripping the fabric with the tip of his thumb. “Know any AC/DC?”
Chloe smiled. “Can’t say that I do.”
“Ah, well you’ll need to be educated in the early years, first. We’re talking Bon Scott era. Not that Back In Black isn’t a decent album. Hell, takes nards of steel to come out with an album that badass after your lead singer croaks.” Dean grinned.
“Nards of steel? Fascinating.”
“Okay, see-” Dean’s phone rang. He frowned and pressed ‘answer’. “Gimme good news, Sammy.”
“How about some maybe-sorta-okay news?”
“What do you got?”
“Well, I was trying my hand at some research, seeing if I could crack why Murdoch chose to start up with the haunting now, and those pictures that Chloe had on her laptop? There’s a row of flowers planted in front of the barn.”
“Planning on becoming a gardener, Sam? ‘Cause I’m not getting the connection, here,” Dean said.
Chloe’s eyebrows rose at the word ‘gardener’.
“Those flowers weren’t there when the all those experiments were going down. Or when Murdoch died. Trace Donovan must’ve put them there.”
“So Donovan likes peonies and that makes Murdoch all angry spirit?” Dean asked.
He could hear Sam give a low laugh.
“Not exactly. I’m out by the barn right now, dug up the flowers, and guess what I found?”
Dean snorted. “Dirt?”
“A finger.”
“A finger?” he repeated back.
Chloe’s eyebrows rose even farther up her forehead.
Dean shook his head. “So, I’m guessing it was Murdoch’s?”
“Did you count his fingers before we torched him?”
“He’s not a freakin’ newborn, Sam. I wasn’t checking for ten and ten,” Dean said. “Didn’t occur to me to play count the bones on the guy.”
“Well, it’s disturbed remains. So, at least now we know why he’s back.”
Dean nodded. “Find out a way to waste him, yet?”
“That, I’m still working on.”
“Make it fast,” Dean told him before hung up. He turned towards Chloe, wiggling the phone between his fingers. “So, that was Sam.”
“I figured,” she said.
“It’s gonna be awhile, he’s still working on it.”
Chloe’s mouth curled into a smirk. “So, AC/DC, was it?”
---
Two hours later, and the closet door swung open, bright burst of artificial light flooding the space. There was a shadowed figure, Sam, standing in the doorway. Probably smiling, too.
“You guys okay?” he asked.
Chloe nodded and scrambled to her feet while Dean tried to untangle his. He grunted and finally stood.
“What took you so long, man?”
“Hey, I was out there trying to find something that’d waste that Murdoch dude. Sorry I wasn’t up to Gonzalez level of speedy.”
“So,” Chloe began. She tugged her coat into place. “How’d you do it?”
Sam shrugged. “Meteor rocks.”
Dean lifted his eyebrows. “Come again?”
“Well, I mean, I didn’t know if it’d work, but I figured if the meteor rocks made Murdoch’s spirit impervious to EMF and burning the bones did nothing, maybe the rocks would vanquish the spirit, somehow.”
“That’s pretty far fetched, Sam.”
“Yeah.” Sam grinned. “But it worked.”
“So, what, you just, like, held up a meteor and POOF! No more Murdoch?” Dean asked.
“Well,” Sam shrugged again. “Yeah, pretty much.”
Chloe laughed, teeth snagging on her lower lip as her mouth eased into a smile. “Do you think it’s time to relocate if that’s not the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard?”
Dean wagged his brows. “We’ve got a backseat.”
“Tempting,” she answered with another laugh.
“So, just for future reference, meteor rocks are a pretty good freaky-green-ghost cure all,” Sam said.
Dean gave another quick grunt, but he was smiling. “I friggin’ hate this town.”
---
Dean kept his hands steady on the wheel, watching cornfields turning into nothing and then into trees.
“So, wasn’t a total bust, right?” Sam asked, fiddling with the radio knobs.
Dean swatted at Sam’s hand. “Got the ghost, so I’d say not.”
“And you got locked in a closet with Smallville’s resident Girl Friday.” Sam grinned and shoved a tape into the deck.
“Movie clichés aren’t what they should be, Sammy,” Dean said.
Sam kept grinning. “Ouch. So it didn’t work?”
Dean returned Sam’s grin with a light smirk. “Let’s just say we went from Get It Hot to Shook Me All Night Long.”
Author: Brinny
Characters/Pairings: Dean and Sam Winchester, and Chloe Sullivan (she of "Smallville" fame). It's pretty gen, but there's some Dean/Chloe undertones, mostly one-sided.
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 4,575
Notes: Wow, I've been writing this one forever. Finally dusted it off and finished it. It takes place sometime after "Stranger Than Fiction" Pt. 1 and Pt. 2, but you don't need to read those for this to make sense.
Dean groaned. It was four-thirty in the morning and somebody had actually deemed that an appropriate time to be calling his cellphone. He highly disagreed.
The motel room was dark, just neon lights outside the small window, and it took him almost a full minute before he located his discarded jeans lying on the floor. He pulled out a pack of gum, a crumpled up cocktail napkin, and a still-wrapped condom before he found his phone on the nightstand. He really had too much crap in his pockets.
“Yeah?”
“That’s how you greet people? ‘Yeah?’ No wonder panties just drop around you. Or do they burst into flames? I can never quite remember.”
Dean turned the cellphone on its side, ‘Pain in the Ass’ in tiny glowing letters on the call display. “Sullivan.” He grinned a bit. “Hi.”
“Still a little monosyllabic, but I’ll take it.”
He shifted so he was half-propped up by the thin pillows and the headboard. “I’m a very take what you can get guy.”
“So I’ve noticed.”
He yawned. “There a reason for the wake-up call? Or you just miss me?”
“Where are you?”
“In bed.” Dean scratched at his thigh, cradling the phone between his ear and shoulder, and smirked. “But, Sam’s snoring in the one next to me, so we could be entering some pretty kinky sort of voyeurism. Which I’m totally down for, by the way.”
“I’m sure you would be. Now, geographically speaking, where are you?”
“We’re in Yuma.” He yawned again. “Why? Need a bit of testosterone for a job?”
“Yeah, something like that.”
Dean’d gotten to know her well enough to know that she’d punctuated that last sentence with a hefty roll of her eyes.
“Well,” he said. “We just finished some nasty business with a poltergeist here. Suppose if we hit the road, might make it there sometime in the PM tomorrow.” He glanced down at the clock. “Or today. The hell you calling at this time for, anyway?”
“I’ve been tracking down a lead for the past couple of weeks-something shady and corporate and probably Luthor-and while I was doing a bit of old fashion researching, there was some major paranormal radar ping-age. It could be meteor related, but I think it’s giving off some serious ‘Who you gonna call?’ vibes.”
Dean laughed. “How many cups of coffee have you had?”
“Six. But one was a mocha latté. And it doesn’t really count, because Lois made it. And whatever she makes is like coffee in its best coffee disguise.”
“Who’s Lois?” Dean smirked. “You make a few panties drop yourself, Sullivan? That’d explain some things.”
“Like what?”
“Like why I’ve yet to see you naked.”
“Well, Lois is my cousin. So, no. And, gross.”
“Does that mean there’s still a possibility that I’ll get to see you naked?”
“It’s good to know that someone’s still out there keeping that chauvinistic and egocentric male attitude alive. And here I was worried it was dying off. How naïve of me.”
“That’s hitting a little below to the belt, don’t you think?”
“I thought below the belt action is what you were looking for.”
“And she turns it into a comeback. Nice.”
“So, how fast can you get here?”
Dean smiled. The girl was nothing if not impatient.
“See you in ten,” he said.
He clicked his phone off and leaned over to flick on the lamp. Squinting against the bright light, he saw Sam grumble and pull a pillow over his head. Dean pushed at the edge of Sam’s mattress with his foot, rocking the creaky bed back and forth.
“Dean, knock it off.” Sam threw one long arm out from under the blanket and made a grabby gesture.
“What, are you trying to cop a feel? Naughty, Sam. And slightly disturbing.”
Sam sat up, running a tired hand over his face. He always looked about five when he first woke up: messy hair, heavy-lidded eyes, and a patch of drool at the corner of his mouth. “I was trying to turn off the light. It’s freakin’ dark out, man.”
Dean tipped his chin up lightly. “You’re the early bird, Sammy.” He pushed at the bed again. “Want the worm or not?”
Sam wiggled his way back under the blanket. “You’re an asshole.”
Dean shrugged. “Get your stuff, we’re going to Smallville.” He shifted off the bed, still a bit groggy and unsteady on his feet. “We’re getting coffee, and then we’re going to Smallville.”
“Dude,” Sam half-moaned. “Seriously?”
“Coffee and a huge ass stack of pancakes.” He nodded to himself. “Oh, and if you keep whining and I’m gonna make you sit in the backseat.” He grinned and added a quick, “Sasquatch.”
“I swear to God, if she doesn’t sleep with you soon, I’m going to resort to movie clichés and lock you two in a closet or something.”
“Hey, we’re going there for a job, okay?” Dean told him, tossing a duffel bag onto the bed. “And do that closet thing, anyway.”
“Are you kidding me?”
Dean bit his lower lip, thinking it over. “Don’t think it’d work?”
Sam shook his head slowly. “No.”
“Really?” He poked at the duffel. “Well, c’mon, road trip it up!”
Sam groaned and pulled the pillow back over his head.
---
Chloe handed Sam his coffee, three sugars and two cream, and then poured two cups for her and Dean. She took a quick sip, gave Dean his own cup, and then sat down across from them. Dean elbowed Sam for no real reason that she could see and Sam frowned at his brother.
“So, you were interviewing this Donovan guy and a candlestick moved?” Sam asked.
“Not moved,” Chloe corrected. “Bought a one-way plane ticket and flew right off of the table.”
“Gust of wind?” he guessed, head tipped to the side.
“Yeah, outside in a tornado, maybe,” she said and saw him grin into his mug.
“So barring freak weather and what do we have?” Dean asked.
“Well, putting the investigative in investigative reporter, I decided to do some digging.” She sat down and opened up her laptop. “Turns out that before Mr. Donovan owned the property, the Luthors did. Used it to do some experiments on farm animals.”
Dean nodded. “So, pissed off and angry ghost farm animals? Well, that’s new.”
The corners of her mouth pulled into a slight smile. “I wouldn’t get ready to bust any spectral bovine butt just yet.”
She opened up a folder on her desktop, titled ‘L753’, and a then a subfolder filled with digital pictures of an old, red farmhouse.
Sam pointed to the screen. “That the place?”
“Yeah,” she said. “The experiments were done using meteor rocks. Not sure exactly what they were trying to accomplish, but I’m betting it wasn’t too PETA friendly.”
“Yeah, but if there were meteor rocks involved isn’t it probably some strange zap effect?” Dean asked. He waved his hand around a bit. “Like the rock essence soaked into the ground or something? Gave Donovan’s house crazy powers?”
“Sure,” Chloe shrugged and her smile widened. “But, factor in that the lead scientist, one Richard Murdoch, died mysteriously right before the testing was shut down, and I’d say we’ve got a serious case of either or, here.”
“Wall of Weird or a pretty malevolent spirit. Very either or,” Sam agreed. “Think we could get down there to check it out with EMF?”
“In a non-legal, break and enter sort of way?” She quirked an eyebrow. “Yeah, sure.”
Dean smiled. “Well, sweetheart, that’s the only way we know how.” He downed the rest of his coffee and pulled on his coat. “Let’s shag ass, then.”
---
“I’m getting nothing.” Dean turned towards his brother. “What about you? Any freak outs?”
Sam shook his head. “Not so far.”
Dean grabbed Sam’s arm and ran the EMF meter across Sam’s chest and then down his legs. The meter stayed silent, no shrill beeps or flashing lights, and Sam swatted at Dean’s hand. Dean thumped the EMF meter against his palm a few times.
“What are you doing, man?”
Dean shrugged, running it over Sam’s face this time. “Checking to see if it’s broken.”
“On me? You’re checking it on me?”
“Yeah,” Dean said, grinning. “Electromagnetic Freak, uh, Finder.”
Sam smirked. “Dude, that’s two F’s.”
“Shut up.” Dean waved the meter around. “You’re two F’s.”
Sam laughed.
“No, wait.” Dean gave a quick snap of his fingers, his grin getting larger. “You need to be F’ed. Huh?”
“Yeah, your comedic skills are amazing, Dean,” Sam deadpanned. “Wow.”
Dean huffed, swung the EMF meter around the air a few more times and pressed it up against the last wall that he hadn’t checked, and then turned it off. “Alright, well this is a bust.”
“Yeah,” Sam agreed.
“Space rocks it is.”
Sam nodded. “Space rocks it is.”
Dean tucked the meter into his coat pocket just as his phone rang some cock-rock tune that Sam had downloaded. He pulled it out and flipped up his hand at Sam, telling him to wait a second. Sam rolled his eyes.
“Yeah?”
“I thought we discussed this.”
Dean grinned. “Hello, Sullivan. How may I service you?”
Sam snorted.
“Okay, so it’s looking less Wall of Weird and more spirit.”
“What? No, we scanned everything. The house, the barn, the field. Nothing came up with EMF.”
“Well, I’ve got a witness that said she saw something with ghost-like traits hanging around the Donovan farm. Something with ghost-like traits in a very Richard Murdoch shape.”
“Well, your witness is full up on crazy, then,” Dean said. “Unless this thing is somehow undetectable through EMF.”
“Hey, I’m just putting two and two together. And for me, it’s equaling spirit, not four.”
Sam frowned. “Dean, what if it’s not detectable with EMF? The meteors could have altered the magnetic frequency.”
“Ah, crap.” Dean turned towards Sam, bringing the phone away from his ear and covering the mouthpiece with his shoulder. “That possible, you think?”
“Well, I don’t see why not.” Sam cocked his head to the side, right hand gesturing a bit while he thought it out. “The meteor rocks mess with all kinds of stuff, right? Give people strange powers and things? Well, if they can reconstruct parts of the human genetic code to give people abilities, why not the same deal with spirits?”
“Yeah, but spirits are dead, Sam.”
“What if something happened to Murdoch before he died? Changed him, somehow?”
“This just keeps getting better and better.” Dean gave a quick grunt, accompanied by a disbelieving bob of his eyebrows, and brought the phone back up to his mouth. “Things just got seriously jacked up.”
“More so than usual?”
“Yeah, I think so. Sam’s thinking that it could be a spirit, but one that can’t be picked up with EMF. This Murdoch’s turning out to be one evasive bastard.”
“New levels of weird. Okay, we can work with that.”
“Man, you never have a boring day, do you?” Dean asked. “Never like, a non-meteor-rock-damn-this-coffee-is-awesome-I’m-gonna-just-sit-and-people-watch, kind of day?”
“Hey, where’s the fun in that? I’ll take weird and exciting over normal and mundane any day. And you’ve got your own fair share of scary and strange happenings, tiger.”
He grinned. “Look, we’re bonding.”
“Meet me at my place, we’ll compare notes.”
“Sounds like a party.”
“Goodbye, Dean.”
Dean chuckled and closed his phone, stuffing it back into his pocket. Sam lifted his eyebrows, hands stretched out.
“Well?” he asked.
“It’s gonna be a long week, Sam,” Dean said. “Long freakin’ week.”
Sam huffed. “Great.”
---
Sam stared into his cup as Chloe spoke on the phone. She tapped her fingers against her thigh, sighing.
“So what do you think?” Dean asked in a whisper, chin tipped in Chloe’s direction. “Boyfriend?”
Sam’s eyes flicked from his cup to Dean. “Stop trying to eavesdrop.”
“I’m not,” he protested. “Just curious. She seems like the kind to have a boyfriend, right? All nerdy and eager-beaver type?”
“Yeah,” Sam agreed. “Sure.”
Chloe hung up the phone and sighed again. “Things not only just got weirder, they got uglier, too.”
“Yeah, how?” Dean asked.
“Trace Donovan was just attacked in his house.”
Sam’s eyebrows creased into his forehead. “When?”
“About an hour ago. He’s at Smallville Medical Center right now. Being treated for minor injuries.”
“So now Murdoch’s moved on from objects to people? Great.” Dean shook his head lightly. “Can you find out where this guy’s buried?”
Chloe nodded. “Yeah, of course. Might take some digging, though. No pun intended.”
“Think we should go down to the hospital, ask Donovan what he remembers?” Sam suggested. “Could be unrelated.”
Dean snorted. “You really gonna play the coincidence angle, Sammy?”
“Hey, stranger things.” Sam shrugged and stared at his cup again.
“Fine,” Dean said, clapping Sam on the shoulder. “You and me will go down there and play reporter.” He grinned at Chloe. “Ace over here needs some healthy competition, anyway.”
She returned the grin. “I’ll try and remember that next time you need some confidential hacking and your Boy Wonder brother isn’t available.”
Dean laughed. “Dude, she just compared you to the world’s lamest sidekick.”
Both Sam and Chloe gave a near-simultaneous roll of their eyes. Dean countered with an eyeroll of his own.
“Yeah, okay. Let’s go.”
---
Trace Donovan was an older man with a grouchy sort of face and grey, bushy eyebrows that stood out against his dark skin. His arm was in a sling and a square piece of gauze was taped to the side of his forehead, small patch of blood seeping through and he rubbed his fingers near the spot as if trying to literally pull out the words.
He squinted and licked his lips. “Who’d you say you were?”
Sam smiled softly. “Reporters. From The Planet.”
“I’m Joe Tyler,” Dean said with a helpful nod. “And this is Steven, Steven Perry. We just have a couple of quick questions. If you don’t mind.”
“No, no.” Donovan rubbed his head again. “Sure, go right ahead. About time somebody listened to me.”
Sam kept the gentle smile on his face and reached for a notepad from the inside pocket of his jacket. His hand brushed over the tie he wore and he made a quick adjustment, clearing his throat. “So, Mr. Donovan, you said you didn’t see who attacked you?”
“No.” He gave another squint, eyes a bit angry. “No, I told those damn cops who were in here that I did see who did it. They just didn’t believe me. Tax dollars at work, huh? Assholes.”
“Wait,” Sam jotted down, Saw killer. Cops, assholes. “So, who’d you see?”
“Well,” Donovan hedged. “Probably didn’t believe me ‘cause I sound nuts. It was a shadow or something. No person, just the shadow. Like the guy was invisible. Saw the shadow and then got knocked out.”
“Did you notice anything out of the ordinary in the past week? Other shadows? Household items, you know, floating in midair?” Dean asked, hand bobbing up and down, as if to literally show the old man what he meant.
Donovan narrowed his eyes. “You mocking me, kid?”
Dean shook his head, every bit serious. “Nope.”
“Some other reporter girl, a blonde with nice legs, was interviewing me a while back, can’t remember the day. A candlestick fell off the table. And then later a book knocked into a vase. Didn’t think much of it.”
Sam scribbled, Shadows, moving objects. Chloe, nice legs. “Mr. Donovan, did you know a Richard Murdoch?”
Donovan frowned. “Don’t think so. Should I? Doctors said I don’t have amnesia, but what do they know? They’re assholes, too.”
Dean grinned. “Thanks for your time Mr. Donovan.”
“Will my story be in the paper?”
Sam gave an almost apologetic shrug. “Up to our editor. We’ll do our best, though. Feel better.”
---
“Salt and burn?” Chloe asked.
“Salt and burn,” Dean confirmed with a nod.
“Salt and burn,” Sam repeated, half-under his breath.
---
The three of them stalked through the cemetery, boots clunking along the hard ground. Chloe’s coat got caught on a branch and the twig snapped so loud that Sam almost jumped. He flicked his flashlight in her direction.
“Sorry,” she whispered. She untangled herself from the tree and Sam nodded and kept walking.
“What’s with the Nancy Drew get up, anyway?” Dean shone his own flashlight up and down her black trench coat.
Chloe smirked. “It’s cold.”
“Hey, it’s not a bad thing. Nancy was pretty hot for chick that never gave it up to her boyfriend. That Ned must’ve had a serious case of blue balls,” he half-muttered. Dean laughed then, mostly to himself. “See, now that would’ve been a good book: Nancy Drew and the Serious Case of Blue Balls. I’d have read that.”
Chloe rolled her eyes and gave a low snort. “You know a disturbing amount about teen girl detective books, don’t you think?”
“Sammy had a whole pile of ‘em way back when.” Dean shrugged. “Liked to whack off to the book covers.”
“What?” Sam near-screeched. “I did not!”
“Sure you didn’t.”
Sam pressed his lips together in a tight line, frowning. “So, Chloe, you said that Murdoch’s buried behind some stone angel?”
“Yeah,” she nodded. “It’s more near the center of the cemetery.” She lifted her flashlight and smiled as the beam landed on neatly carved wings. “Right about here.”
“Something’s bothering me,” Sam said.
Dean flung his duffel to the ground and pulled out a carton of salt and a half-filled container of lighter fluid.
“It’s okay, Sam. Nobody really cares that you’re a gigantic dork.”
“Yeah, thanks,” Sam said. “But, why is Murdoch’s spirit acting out now?” He nodded at Chloe. “Donovan’s owned the place for how many years?”
“Four, I think,” Chloe answered.
“What’s it matter anyway, Sam? We salt and burn the bones, done. Case closed.”
“Yeah, but if the spirit somehow can’t be picked up with EMF, what makes you think that a routine salt and burn is going to get rid of it?”
Dean shrugged. “What makes you think it won’t?”
Sam returned with a shrug of his own.
“C’mon, Sam,” Dean grinned. “Where’s that Little Engine That Could attitude?”
“See,” Sam said to Chloe, jerking his head towards Dean. “Now that’s the one book he actually has read.”
Dean grunted and handed Sam a shovel. “Shut up and dig.”
---
“So, remind me again why we’re re-checking the Donovan place?” Dean asked. He held out his hand and Sam dug into his pocket, slapping down a lock-picking kit in Dean’s open palm.
Sam’s eyes darted around, quick and nervous. “I have a feeling.”
“Oh,” Dean nodded. “A feeling. Well, that’s just swell, Sammy.”
“No, Dean.” Sam leaned in towards his brother, dropping his voice to a low and tight sort of whisper, “I have a feeling.”
“Oh,” Dean said again. There was a familiar, satisfying click and Dean handed the kit back to Sam and slowly pushed open the door.
Chloe came up behind the two of them, tapping her feet from both impatience and the cold. “Okay, so I did the stealth routine around the barn and out back and didn’t see anything.”
Dean shrugged. “Maybe the salt and burn did work.”
“Yeah,” Sam reluctantly agreed. “Maybe.”
“Sometimes things do-”
There was a whoosh of cold air and all three of them stopped, then slowly walked into the house. Sam and Dean raised their shotguns, brought purely for a ‘just in case’ situation, and Chloe lifted up her flashlight.
Her eyes widened. “Was that… ?”
“Something with ghost-like traits in a very Richard Murdoch shape?” Dean asked. “Yeah, I’m thinking so.”
“See?” Sam hissed.
“Yeah, yeah,” Dean muttered. “See which way he went?”
Chloe and Sam shook their heads.
There was another rush of air and both Dean and Sam shot at the blurry figure. Murdoch’s spirit let out something that sounded incredibly like a mocking laugh and then turned down the hallway, walking out of sight.
“So, salt and anything doesn’t work,” Sam said, holding up his shot gun. “Super.”
Dean gave a weak smirk. “This should be fun.”
---
When they’d finally caught up with Murdoch’s spirit, he choked Sam, threw Dean against a wall and smacked a vase into Chloe’s head. And then locked Dean and Chloe in one of the hall closets.
“You know, when Sam said we should have had a game plan, I’m starting to think we should have listened.” Chloe sighed.
“Well, Sammy’s working on one right now. Kid’s a whiz with a computer,” Dean said.
“It’s been almost an hour.”
“Hey, when I told you to get comfy, you could have listened to that, too.”
Chloe shoved at him and he moved his knee so it wasn’t wedged in between her back and the closet wall.
“Why don’t you just shoot at it?” Chloe asked. She was still pushing at his knee and Dean didn’t know any other way that he could move.
“At what? My leg?”
She made a wild gesture. “The door.”
“You want me to aim in the dark in an enclosed space?” he asked. “Gun safety, sweetheart. It ain’t just a pamphlet.”
Chloe snorted. “You load buck shots filled with rock salt into a sawed-off to shoot at ghosts and you’re giving a lecture on gun safety?”
Dean shrugged.
“I thought you were good at this,” she said.
“Good at being locked in closets?” He smirked, wondering if she could see the quick flash of teeth. “There was this one time in a storeroom with this mop-”
“I was more leaning towards the more ghost hunting thing,” Chloe clarified.
“Everyone has an off day,” Dean told her, shrugging again. “Plus, some of these spirits are stubborn as hell.”
“Sam better find something out soon.” She shifted. “This whole small and cramped spaces thing? So not a good look on me.”
“You go up against all that crap on your Wall of Weird and you’re afraid of a closet? Seriously?”
She lifted an eyebrow. “You ever been buried alive?”
“No.”
“Well, it’s not exactly something you celebrate with party hats and streamers,” she said.
“Okay.” Dean tried to tuck his legs further under his body. He ended up in an almost pretzel position, one foot lodged between the other and the wall. “So, you’ve been buried alive? Covered in dirt and underground, the whole six feet?”
“Kind of phobia inducing, wouldn’t you say?”
”Yeah, sure.” Dean nodded.
They were both quiet for a few minutes, then: “I don’t like rats.”
“You’re scared of rats?” Chloe asked, laugh following after.
“No. I said I don’t like rats.” He pushed the toe of his boot against the closet wall. “Scared of flying,” he muttered lowly, blowing a stuttered sort of breath out from pursed lips.
“Of flying?” she repeated.
Dean whipped his head around. “Hmm?”
Chloe smiled. “Nothing.”
---
“Take one down and pass it around, no more bottles of beer on the wall,” Dean concluded. He sighed.
“Okay, I think we’ve gone through everything in the annoying song catalogue,” Chloe said.
Dean picked at a hole in his jeans, ripping the fabric with the tip of his thumb. “Know any AC/DC?”
Chloe smiled. “Can’t say that I do.”
“Ah, well you’ll need to be educated in the early years, first. We’re talking Bon Scott era. Not that Back In Black isn’t a decent album. Hell, takes nards of steel to come out with an album that badass after your lead singer croaks.” Dean grinned.
“Nards of steel? Fascinating.”
“Okay, see-” Dean’s phone rang. He frowned and pressed ‘answer’. “Gimme good news, Sammy.”
“How about some maybe-sorta-okay news?”
“What do you got?”
“Well, I was trying my hand at some research, seeing if I could crack why Murdoch chose to start up with the haunting now, and those pictures that Chloe had on her laptop? There’s a row of flowers planted in front of the barn.”
“Planning on becoming a gardener, Sam? ‘Cause I’m not getting the connection, here,” Dean said.
Chloe’s eyebrows rose at the word ‘gardener’.
“Those flowers weren’t there when the all those experiments were going down. Or when Murdoch died. Trace Donovan must’ve put them there.”
“So Donovan likes peonies and that makes Murdoch all angry spirit?” Dean asked.
He could hear Sam give a low laugh.
“Not exactly. I’m out by the barn right now, dug up the flowers, and guess what I found?”
Dean snorted. “Dirt?”
“A finger.”
“A finger?” he repeated back.
Chloe’s eyebrows rose even farther up her forehead.
Dean shook his head. “So, I’m guessing it was Murdoch’s?”
“Did you count his fingers before we torched him?”
“He’s not a freakin’ newborn, Sam. I wasn’t checking for ten and ten,” Dean said. “Didn’t occur to me to play count the bones on the guy.”
“Well, it’s disturbed remains. So, at least now we know why he’s back.”
Dean nodded. “Find out a way to waste him, yet?”
“That, I’m still working on.”
“Make it fast,” Dean told him before hung up. He turned towards Chloe, wiggling the phone between his fingers. “So, that was Sam.”
“I figured,” she said.
“It’s gonna be awhile, he’s still working on it.”
Chloe’s mouth curled into a smirk. “So, AC/DC, was it?”
---
Two hours later, and the closet door swung open, bright burst of artificial light flooding the space. There was a shadowed figure, Sam, standing in the doorway. Probably smiling, too.
“You guys okay?” he asked.
Chloe nodded and scrambled to her feet while Dean tried to untangle his. He grunted and finally stood.
“What took you so long, man?”
“Hey, I was out there trying to find something that’d waste that Murdoch dude. Sorry I wasn’t up to Gonzalez level of speedy.”
“So,” Chloe began. She tugged her coat into place. “How’d you do it?”
Sam shrugged. “Meteor rocks.”
Dean lifted his eyebrows. “Come again?”
“Well, I mean, I didn’t know if it’d work, but I figured if the meteor rocks made Murdoch’s spirit impervious to EMF and burning the bones did nothing, maybe the rocks would vanquish the spirit, somehow.”
“That’s pretty far fetched, Sam.”
“Yeah.” Sam grinned. “But it worked.”
“So, what, you just, like, held up a meteor and POOF! No more Murdoch?” Dean asked.
“Well,” Sam shrugged again. “Yeah, pretty much.”
Chloe laughed, teeth snagging on her lower lip as her mouth eased into a smile. “Do you think it’s time to relocate if that’s not the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard?”
Dean wagged his brows. “We’ve got a backseat.”
“Tempting,” she answered with another laugh.
“So, just for future reference, meteor rocks are a pretty good freaky-green-ghost cure all,” Sam said.
Dean gave another quick grunt, but he was smiling. “I friggin’ hate this town.”
---
Dean kept his hands steady on the wheel, watching cornfields turning into nothing and then into trees.
“So, wasn’t a total bust, right?” Sam asked, fiddling with the radio knobs.
Dean swatted at Sam’s hand. “Got the ghost, so I’d say not.”
“And you got locked in a closet with Smallville’s resident Girl Friday.” Sam grinned and shoved a tape into the deck.
“Movie clichés aren’t what they should be, Sammy,” Dean said.
Sam kept grinning. “Ouch. So it didn’t work?”
Dean returned Sam’s grin with a light smirk. “Let’s just say we went from Get It Hot to Shook Me All Night Long.”