FIC; Supernatural, "Big Business" (1/5)
[title] Big Business
[chapter] 1 of 5
[authors] ryuutchi & koala_motchi
[fandom] Supernatural
[pairing] GENFIC, some Sam/Dean hints in later chapters.
[rating]PG-13 for this chapter, rating will go up for later chapters.
[summary] The Winchester brothers notice an odd pattern of demonic possessions cropping up around the Roadhouse. When they go to investigate,it becomes clear that they've bitten off more than they can chew, and Sam makes some new "friends" in the demon-catching business.
[notes] This story was planned and written before the spoilers for "Born Under a Bad Sign" came out. All similarities are strictly coincidental (and totally hilarious). Thanks to jadecanary for the beta-work. The writing is ours, but the characters ain't.
The phone call didn't take more than three or four minutes, but it seemed like a lifetime. Gordon cast sidelong glances at the guard standing nearby between answers, waiting for the bored-looking man to get suspicious, but the man just stroked his baton and passed him a look that said 'get this over with already' without actually saying a word. Gordon rested his hand on the rough concrete wall, focusing his attention on the dingy green phone and purposefully blocking out the bars and locked doors surrounding him. They were too distracting.
“--a Hunter too?” the person on the other end of the phone was saying. “I thought Hunters stuck together.” The voice was dry, crisp and utterly androgynous, hints of a carefully cultivated accent curling around the edges of syllables. “You know our company doesn't specialize in these sorts of matters."
Gordon licked his lips, a quick nervous motion and frowned harder when tongue encountered the still-healing cut on his lower lip. “I know that's not what you specialize in. But he's got more talents than that,” he carefully emphasized the word 'talent'. “Research him. You'll see that he's exactly what I say he is. My usual recommendation stands.” The guard began to frown, standing a little straighter and actively listening in on the conversation.
On the other end of the phone there was a pause, and after a moment's consideration the genderless voice gave Gordon his affirmation. "We'll look into it. You've done good work with us in the past, and we'll remember this recommendation if it proves fruitful." The guard eyeing Gordon arched an eyebrow, looking without approval at the weasel-y looking man on the phone. Gordon, since his arrival not long ago, hadn't managed to earn any points with him by causing trouble with the other prisoners and giving him more to clean up after.
"Hurry it up," the guard barked, irritation in his voice as he looked pointedly from Gordon to the clock on the wall.
The muted voice asked Gordon in polite but scripted tones if there was anything else he'd be interested in reporting, and if he would be available for future transactions in the Midwest.
“I will soon,” Gordon responded, glaring right back at the guard. Idiot who didn't know anything about real criminals. “Don't call me for anything for at least a month.” He hated to acknowledge that he'd got caught, but he was being charged with concealed carry and possession of illegal firearms while the police decided whether or not to charge him with the murder of the demon-boy. He hung up the phone without waiting for a response and turned back to the guard, who nodded his head down the hallway and set his hand with exaggerated menace on his baton again. Gordon bit back an explosive sound if annoyance and let the guard 'escort' him back to the tiny cell he was occupying for the moment.
He was hardly planning to wait around for a sentence to be passed out; the first thing Gordon had done when he got arrested was to call in back up. He'd be out in no time at all. But he wouldn't have to worry about paying little Sammy Winchester back for the insult. Smart as the boy was, the baby demon had this coming. The Agency would take real good care of him, like they did of all the demons Gordon had pointed them towards.
The officer shut the sliding cell door with an overenthusiastic clang, and slid the locking bolt home.
Sam slid down in the Impala's passenger seat, laptop open on his knees. "'Cording to this, something may've just popped up," he said, brows rising with surprise as the webpage auto-updated. He loved when they drove through cities large enough for wireless towers. "Day before yesterday, some kid went Psycho on his girlfriend. Says when he was apprehended, he claimed it wasn't her - that her eyes were completely black, but when the M.E. got her they were baby-blue."
Sam shot Dean a glance out of the corner of his eye, to see if his brother was listening at all or just going on mouthing song lyrics. "It's also only about twenty miles south-east of Ellen's place."
“So we stop at the Roadhouse, and see if Ellen's heard anything interesting.” It was a sucker's bet that she had, and Dean gunned the engine, singing along, badly, to some bad 80s rock band or other that Sam couldn't name. Sam went back to his computer, following a few links and trying to dig up more information on the guy, but not much came up, and soon Dean had driven them out of the city and out of range of the lovely wireless towers. Sam couldn't help pouting at the computer.
It didn't take them more than another few hours to pull into the lot in front of Harvelle's Roadhouse and, once they got inside the door, Ellen already had beers out on the counter for them.
Sam had never bothered to wonder how she always knew when they were coming. Dean would say it was something like maternal instinct, or woman's intuition, or some other kind of bullshit like that. Dean turned on his ever-charming grin and sauntered up to a barstool.
"Hey, Ellen," he purred, showing off a perfect row of wicked-white teeth.
"They ain't on the house, Dean," was her stern response, and immediately Dean dropped his grin. "Gee, thanks," he muttered, and took a long swing off the bottle of PBR. How Sammy and Ash drank the stuff and were happy about it, he'd never know.
Sam ducked into the bathroom before joining Dean at the bar and pulling out his computer. He set it off to the left (nothing worse for a keyboard than beer-spills) before clanking the neck of his beer-bottle against Dean's and taking a swig of his own.
He glanced at his computer and then at Ellen's tight expression. “Ellen, have you heard about anything--” Sam didn't even get the chance to finish his question before Ellen had turned and grabbed a folder from the small shelf next to the multi-hued bottles of alcohol. She lay it out in front of them and the look in her eyes was worried.
“I'm going to trust you boys to take care of this one. I don't want a demon operating this close to the Roadhouse.” She looked Dean straight in the eye and something passed between them, a silent acknowledgment of the responsibility and pain that came from letting the Winchesters get into the path of a demon, any demon. “Ash has been tracking it's progress and it's been body-hopping towards us in the past month.
Dean's mouth twisted, but instead of saying anything, he grabbed for the file with one hand, taking a swig of his beer with the other. Sam got to the file first, though, slamming his hand down onto it and jerking the thin sheaf of papers towards himself.
"Sammy," Dean said, brow knitting.
"Deal with it, commune without words some more or something," Sam said, wagging his beer bottle between Dean and Ellen, flipping the folder open. He didn't catch Ellen's glare, which was probably a good thing, as it alone was believed to have the power to scare good Midwestern boys, demons, and vampires all the way down to hell and back.
Reading through the information Ash had been able to gather, Sam frowned and hunched over the counter in more intense concentration.
"He's got terrible posture," Ellen observed, knowing full well that Sam probably wasn't paying attention to what she was saying. He was just like any other teenager (didn't matter that he was technically out of his teens one bit), always tuning out his authority figures.
"Oh, yeah," Dean said, nodding, "And he's got a lip on him, too. Never listens to a word I say."
"Funny, I've got one like that," Ellen mused.
"Aah, kids these days. Nothin' but trouble."
She shot Dean a dead-on glare, almost smirking behind it as she put her hands on her hips. "I'll say."
Sam glanced up and shoved one of the articles towards Dean. “Enough with the love-fest.” He was still flipping through the odds and ends tucked neatly into the folder, lower lip poking out in concentration. “This is weird. Demons don't usually do serial possession this way. It must be up to something. I think we need to ask the last victim. There are a few things the possessed tend to have in common, and one of those is similar experience right before the possession experience."
"So we know that if the victims had similar experiences, we might be able to track it down.” Dean smiled broadly at his brother and clapped him on the shoulders. “We'll do that tomorrow. Ellen, get my baby brother another beer, would you?"
The older woman just shook her head in wry amusement and left them to their discussion. Neither of them needed an audience, even if Dean did like to grandstand when someone was around.
"Well," Sam said, jerking his chin towards his computer, "the most recent living victim, anyway." The two-day-old dead body that brought them back by the bar probably wouldn't be as much help as someone who could still breathe. He took another swig from his bottle and shut his laptop down. Once the screen went dark, he slid it back into his shoulder-bag and set the bag on the floor. "I'll get addresses tomorrow morning, and we can head out after we get some eggs or something."
Dean gave Sam a little nod, nursing his drink and wondering why the hell Sam would feel it necessary to plan things that intuitive. Unless he still hadn't gotten over the time with the waitress and the digital camera.
Dean figured he probably shouldn't push that one right then, so he clapped a hand on his brother's back.
"Drink up, Sammy. Don't want your second round to get warm, do ya?"
"I can't have too much to drink," Sam protested. "We have to get up in the morning, if we wanna get done what needs doin'."
Dean laughed, a grin lighting up his face when Ellen returned with beers and a pair of shots (always anticipating her customers' needs, she was). Sam looked from his brother to the liquor and sighed. The next morning, he knew, Dean was going to be a handful. And it wouldn't be good for anybody if they had matching hangovers when the alarm went off bright and early.
Well, that had been the plan, anyway.
Bright and early the next morning became sometime after noon. Dean wasn't a morning person unless he had to be, what with the 'running around all night' part of their job. Sam had to some serious ass-kicking to get Dean out of bed by eleven, and by the time they'd gotten into the city it was already lunch and the sun was high and bright enough that the pair could almost pretend that they weren't looking for some bump-in-the-night beast. Sam handed Dean a neatly printed list with three names and addresses, the demon's victims in the order they'd been possessed.
"We should do this chronologically," Sam said, circling their destinations on a map as he spoke. "Which makes Madeline Rice our first stop, since she's most recent... and, uh, still breathing." Sinking back in the passenger seat, Sam set himself to the task of determining appropriate cover-stories for each of the victims they planned to get in touch with. Rice was a single mother whose youngest had moved out of the house some two weeks before her possession.
Sam was figuring they should pose as detectives or beat cops, just going over the facts one more time - in case she remembered anything. When they pulled up the drive there was an SUV covered in college bumper stickers outside the garage.
"Looks promising enough."
Dean snorted and rummaged through the glove compartment until he found their stash of badges and IDs and tossed the appropriate one to his little brother. “Yeah.” It always looked promising at first. But he let his game face slide into place and headed for the door. Sam was always a step or two behind his brother, so Dean didn't even bother to glance over to make sure Sam had an appropriately hangdog expression for the job.
The house was a tidy little Victorian, looking like nothing so much as a gingerbread house, so the boys could be forgiven for being a bit surprised by the appearance of the young boy who opened the door. He couldn't have been more than nineteen, and his hair was dyed a shade of violent green found only on Astroturf. Dean wondered idly how he ever got through metal detectors with the amount of metal adorning his face. “Hello. I'm Officer Ben Wachowski, and this is my partner, Officer Tony Vereen. We're here to ask your mother a few follow up questions. Is she in?” Dean could feel the tension beside him that meant Sam was pulling on his concerned-cop expression, puppy-face number thirty five. Sam, on the other hand, had to toss a glance sideways to make sure Dean wasn't smiling in that insensitive way he had. He was.
The boy's face went from wary to shuttered in nothing flat. “You can't talk to her,” he said without inflection, fingers digging into the doorframe. He stepped forward a little bit, as though to block entrance into the house.
"Hey," Sam said, his voice smooth and rich and sympathetic more than anything else. "We know she's been through a lot, we just wanted to iron out a few more details, and then we promise we'll be out of your hair. Hey, maybe if she's not feeling well today, we can come back later? Or you might be able to help us, if she's talked to you?"
Sam's brows rose on his forehead, and those big green eyes of his shone with a pleading glow. Puppy-face number thirty five was one of his best.
He nudged Dean to one side with his elbow to get him to step back. If they boxed the kid in he might slam the door in their faces. Not that he wouldn't as it was, but sometimes Dean was just too happy to do a little breaking and entering.
The boy looked uncertainly from Sam to Dean and back again, the stony-face expression slowly buckling beneath the weight of Sam's wide and worried eyes and Dean's stern expression. “No, I mean you can't,” he insisted, fingers scrabbling at the doorframe. He wanted to close the door on their faces, but it was clear for anyone to see that he was scared out of his wits. “She's-- mom, I mean, she's, she checked herself into Rosewood three days ago. She kept saying that--.” He cut himself off, trying for a glare that nearly shattered into a million shards of terror and despair.
“Hey, hey,” Sam reached out a hand, not touching the boy, but letting it rest an inch or so away from the kid's shoulder. “We didn't know.” He tried to measure his words, not sure how much information they could actually get out of the kid, but Dean beat him to it.
“Do you mind if we ask you a few questions, then?” Dean leaned in a little, around Sam. His concerned looks usually ended up more smarmy and less sincere, but he still had his badge case out, and the boy's eyes rested on it for a moment before he nodded. He turned to let the 'officers' into the foyer, and Dean smirked up at his brother.
Like the outside of the house, the foyer and living room were neat and clean, with an air of something that might be termed “maternal”, or even “grandmotherly”. “Sorry. I'm still not used to handling mom's stuff. And she's been a little weird since, well, since she went on that weird rampage. I swear, I've seen more cops the past month than I ever have my entire life! I'm Greg Rice, by the way.”
"Sorry we're meeting you under these circumstances," Sam said soothingly, as the three of them found places to sit on various pieces of comfortable, well-used furniture. "Let's just start at the beginning. You were out of town when the rampage happened, is that right?" Sam pulled out a notepad and pen, but still managed to make himself seem approachable.
Dean leaned forward where he sat, resting his elbows on his knees and clasping his hands. "We'll need to know how you heard about it, what you were told, and if you recall hearing anything out of the ordinary from your mother in the days before the incident."
Sam was already scrawling out in big capital letters "ROSEWOOD" - it was a private mental institution not too far away, but appropriately secluded that it'd be difficult to add the stop to their list for the day.
Greg nodded, wrapping his arms around himself defensively. “I was at college when it happened, but Stacey, that's mom's best friend, she called me when mom snapped. Said something about mom having totally black eyes, which is dumb, since mom has brown eyes, but, she called to ask me to come back and find out what was wrong.” He rocked back a little bit in his overstuffed armchair and licked his lips. “I came home,” he paused, self-consciously smoothing out wrinkling on the arm of the chair. “I didn't get back until it was over and she had wrecked up her store. I'm glad she only destroyed her own property-- it sucks, but at least no one's going to sue her or anything. And no one was hurt. I mean, she came close to beating Mona-- that's her assistant-- but she didn't. No one got hurt.” Greg took a deep, shaky breath. “She hasn't been the same since. She kept talking about the 'Agency' and the 'light behind her eyes' or something.”
Dean glanced to one side as Greg spoke, nodding. "Had she ever spoken about anything like that before, that you remember?"
Sam scribbled the keywords down furiously. Agency with a capital A - he'd heard it in the kid's voice - along with a light behind the eyes. "And did Stacey tell you if she said any of those things while her eyes were discolored?" Sam asked, not looking up from his notes.
"Her pupils may have been dilated, it happens occasionally during some types of outbursts," Dean said in a smooth, stern tone that he meant to be reassuring.
Sam's mind was already going. There were very few things that would cause a Demon to babble on about light, and it set his stomach into a tight knot. None of them were good things.
Nodding nervously, Greg said "I guess so. I just know that Stacey said she was saying stuff like that before I got home to. And she kept on saying it. She checked herself into Rosewood because she said she wasn't sure she could keep herself from trying to cut the-- cut the light from behind her eyelids. I don't know." He spread his hands helplessly. "I don't know. I'm still trying to figure out what's going on with my mom. She owned her own business, she had good friends, she was healthy. She had everything going for her." The boy made a choked sound and jerked his arms back in, not looking up at Sam or Dean.
Sam pinned his brother with a glare before the he could let loose one of his stupidly insensitive comments. "Thank you, Greg. I'm sorry to have brought all this up, but you've helped a great deal."
Sighing, Dean pushed himself to his feet. "We won't take any more of your time. C'mon, uh, Tony."
Dean had almost slipped and called his brother by his real name, which was sloppy of him, but that's why it was 'almost'. He was frustrated, and this just didn't add up right. The demon had to have been damaged to do a number like that on Madeline Rice's brain, to leave her with its own issues with light. If she was continuing to see light, that was even more disconcerting. Dean had liked this whole case better when he knew it was just some demon making tracks. But this thing, it wasn't acting like demons normally did.
"Listen, man," Sam said as he stood, moving to shake Greg's hand. "You got somebody you can talk to here in town, or on the phone? Any other relatives to help you with takin' care of the house and your mom?"
Dean rolled his eyes.
"I, uh," Greg began, but Dean elbowed Sam sharply in the ribs.
"Let's let the poor kid get back to dealing with his problems, huh? Come on," Dean interrupted. The 'you pussy' wasn't said, but Sam could hear it hanging in the air. There was just something about the way Dean's mouth formed words that he could let insults like that slip out without actually voicing them, although that might have been the way Dean's lips were twitching with a sardonic smile.
Once Greg had escorted them back out, apologizing that he couldn't be more help all the way, Sam punched Dean in the ribs. "I was just trying to help him," he grumped, and Dean snickered at him. "I was! Guy doesn't have any idea what happened to his mom. He probably needs someone to talk to."
"Doesn't mean you need to be his shrink," Dean snorted, looking back over his shoulder to see Greg watching them go. "Unless you were maybe hoping for a slumber party. With those Lifetime movies and painting each others' toenails or some shit," he snickered.
"Shut up, Dean," Sam grumbled, scowling across the top of the Impala at his brother. "He could be in serious trouble, he's obviously upset."
Sam shook his head, glancing back up at the house and lifting one hand to Greg and giving him a nod. Seemed like a nice kid. Shame he had to be stuck in the middle of this. "You wanna try and hit that mental hospital?"
Sam sulked his way into the passenger seat, kicking one foot up onto the dash and folding his arms over his chest.
The rest of day came and went with little new information presenting itself. The doctors at Rosewood were gracious to the government inspectors who came to check up on Madeline Rice, but she screamed when she saw Sam and didn't even seem to notice Dean. The victim who had come before her, Kelly Hamber, simply shut the door in Dean's face. There was no way into the tiny, one-room apartment and, according to the super, she'd all but locked herself up in there.
Dean groaned and handed Sam a burrito, taking a big bite of his own and leaning against the side of the Impala, free hand absent-mindedly petting its smooth, gleaming curve. "Well, that was a whole lot of nothing. Apparently this demon makes them see a light, and then lock themselves up. What kind of demon does that? Sloppy."
"I know," Sam said, around a mouthful of food. His manners were going downhill at an unnerving rate since he started hunting again. "It's almost as if the Demon is looking for attention, or something. I mean, there wasn't even a fatality until the most recent, and that was self-defense. Accidental on the part of the Demon is what it looks like, but even that doesn't make any sense." Shaking his head, Sam flipped through his notebook. "I mean, this whole thing, the Demon's behavior, the state of the people it leaves, it's like it's... I don't know, we need to sit down with this and Dad's journal and see if we can't find anything there."
Dean nodded, mouth too full of burrito to attempt an intelligible response.
"And this Agency thing, and... " Sam was still shaking his head, uneasy from what they'd learned and what was still baffling them from the visits they'd made that day. "We should go to Ash. Maybe he can run some analysis, find a pattern I can't. I just..." Sam gestured wildly with his dinner in one hand and the notepad in the other. "Why would she scream when she saw me?"
"Maybe she thinks you need a haircut, kiddo."
"Oh, shut up, Shaggy."
"Yeah, whatever, Scooby."
"Look, let's just... ugh. Let's go back to the roadhouse tonight, talk over what we've got so far, and check out our third guy in the morning."
Dean nodded and put the car in drive.
Read chapter two here! Comments & criticism are always welcome and encouraged. Feel free to archive, but please comment to let us know first!
[chapter] 1 of 5
[authors] ryuutchi & koala_motchi
[fandom] Supernatural
[pairing] GENFIC, some Sam/Dean hints in later chapters.
[rating]PG-13 for this chapter, rating will go up for later chapters.
[summary] The Winchester brothers notice an odd pattern of demonic possessions cropping up around the Roadhouse. When they go to investigate,it becomes clear that they've bitten off more than they can chew, and Sam makes some new "friends" in the demon-catching business.
[notes] This story was planned and written before the spoilers for "Born Under a Bad Sign" came out. All similarities are strictly coincidental (and totally hilarious). Thanks to jadecanary for the beta-work. The writing is ours, but the characters ain't.
The phone call didn't take more than three or four minutes, but it seemed like a lifetime. Gordon cast sidelong glances at the guard standing nearby between answers, waiting for the bored-looking man to get suspicious, but the man just stroked his baton and passed him a look that said 'get this over with already' without actually saying a word. Gordon rested his hand on the rough concrete wall, focusing his attention on the dingy green phone and purposefully blocking out the bars and locked doors surrounding him. They were too distracting.
“--a Hunter too?” the person on the other end of the phone was saying. “I thought Hunters stuck together.” The voice was dry, crisp and utterly androgynous, hints of a carefully cultivated accent curling around the edges of syllables. “You know our company doesn't specialize in these sorts of matters."
Gordon licked his lips, a quick nervous motion and frowned harder when tongue encountered the still-healing cut on his lower lip. “I know that's not what you specialize in. But he's got more talents than that,” he carefully emphasized the word 'talent'. “Research him. You'll see that he's exactly what I say he is. My usual recommendation stands.” The guard began to frown, standing a little straighter and actively listening in on the conversation.
On the other end of the phone there was a pause, and after a moment's consideration the genderless voice gave Gordon his affirmation. "We'll look into it. You've done good work with us in the past, and we'll remember this recommendation if it proves fruitful." The guard eyeing Gordon arched an eyebrow, looking without approval at the weasel-y looking man on the phone. Gordon, since his arrival not long ago, hadn't managed to earn any points with him by causing trouble with the other prisoners and giving him more to clean up after.
"Hurry it up," the guard barked, irritation in his voice as he looked pointedly from Gordon to the clock on the wall.
The muted voice asked Gordon in polite but scripted tones if there was anything else he'd be interested in reporting, and if he would be available for future transactions in the Midwest.
“I will soon,” Gordon responded, glaring right back at the guard. Idiot who didn't know anything about real criminals. “Don't call me for anything for at least a month.” He hated to acknowledge that he'd got caught, but he was being charged with concealed carry and possession of illegal firearms while the police decided whether or not to charge him with the murder of the demon-boy. He hung up the phone without waiting for a response and turned back to the guard, who nodded his head down the hallway and set his hand with exaggerated menace on his baton again. Gordon bit back an explosive sound if annoyance and let the guard 'escort' him back to the tiny cell he was occupying for the moment.
He was hardly planning to wait around for a sentence to be passed out; the first thing Gordon had done when he got arrested was to call in back up. He'd be out in no time at all. But he wouldn't have to worry about paying little Sammy Winchester back for the insult. Smart as the boy was, the baby demon had this coming. The Agency would take real good care of him, like they did of all the demons Gordon had pointed them towards.
The officer shut the sliding cell door with an overenthusiastic clang, and slid the locking bolt home.
Sam slid down in the Impala's passenger seat, laptop open on his knees. "'Cording to this, something may've just popped up," he said, brows rising with surprise as the webpage auto-updated. He loved when they drove through cities large enough for wireless towers. "Day before yesterday, some kid went Psycho on his girlfriend. Says when he was apprehended, he claimed it wasn't her - that her eyes were completely black, but when the M.E. got her they were baby-blue."
Sam shot Dean a glance out of the corner of his eye, to see if his brother was listening at all or just going on mouthing song lyrics. "It's also only about twenty miles south-east of Ellen's place."
“So we stop at the Roadhouse, and see if Ellen's heard anything interesting.” It was a sucker's bet that she had, and Dean gunned the engine, singing along, badly, to some bad 80s rock band or other that Sam couldn't name. Sam went back to his computer, following a few links and trying to dig up more information on the guy, but not much came up, and soon Dean had driven them out of the city and out of range of the lovely wireless towers. Sam couldn't help pouting at the computer.
It didn't take them more than another few hours to pull into the lot in front of Harvelle's Roadhouse and, once they got inside the door, Ellen already had beers out on the counter for them.
Sam had never bothered to wonder how she always knew when they were coming. Dean would say it was something like maternal instinct, or woman's intuition, or some other kind of bullshit like that. Dean turned on his ever-charming grin and sauntered up to a barstool.
"Hey, Ellen," he purred, showing off a perfect row of wicked-white teeth.
"They ain't on the house, Dean," was her stern response, and immediately Dean dropped his grin. "Gee, thanks," he muttered, and took a long swing off the bottle of PBR. How Sammy and Ash drank the stuff and were happy about it, he'd never know.
Sam ducked into the bathroom before joining Dean at the bar and pulling out his computer. He set it off to the left (nothing worse for a keyboard than beer-spills) before clanking the neck of his beer-bottle against Dean's and taking a swig of his own.
He glanced at his computer and then at Ellen's tight expression. “Ellen, have you heard about anything--” Sam didn't even get the chance to finish his question before Ellen had turned and grabbed a folder from the small shelf next to the multi-hued bottles of alcohol. She lay it out in front of them and the look in her eyes was worried.
“I'm going to trust you boys to take care of this one. I don't want a demon operating this close to the Roadhouse.” She looked Dean straight in the eye and something passed between them, a silent acknowledgment of the responsibility and pain that came from letting the Winchesters get into the path of a demon, any demon. “Ash has been tracking it's progress and it's been body-hopping towards us in the past month.
Dean's mouth twisted, but instead of saying anything, he grabbed for the file with one hand, taking a swig of his beer with the other. Sam got to the file first, though, slamming his hand down onto it and jerking the thin sheaf of papers towards himself.
"Sammy," Dean said, brow knitting.
"Deal with it, commune without words some more or something," Sam said, wagging his beer bottle between Dean and Ellen, flipping the folder open. He didn't catch Ellen's glare, which was probably a good thing, as it alone was believed to have the power to scare good Midwestern boys, demons, and vampires all the way down to hell and back.
Reading through the information Ash had been able to gather, Sam frowned and hunched over the counter in more intense concentration.
"He's got terrible posture," Ellen observed, knowing full well that Sam probably wasn't paying attention to what she was saying. He was just like any other teenager (didn't matter that he was technically out of his teens one bit), always tuning out his authority figures.
"Oh, yeah," Dean said, nodding, "And he's got a lip on him, too. Never listens to a word I say."
"Funny, I've got one like that," Ellen mused.
"Aah, kids these days. Nothin' but trouble."
She shot Dean a dead-on glare, almost smirking behind it as she put her hands on her hips. "I'll say."
Sam glanced up and shoved one of the articles towards Dean. “Enough with the love-fest.” He was still flipping through the odds and ends tucked neatly into the folder, lower lip poking out in concentration. “This is weird. Demons don't usually do serial possession this way. It must be up to something. I think we need to ask the last victim. There are a few things the possessed tend to have in common, and one of those is similar experience right before the possession experience."
"So we know that if the victims had similar experiences, we might be able to track it down.” Dean smiled broadly at his brother and clapped him on the shoulders. “We'll do that tomorrow. Ellen, get my baby brother another beer, would you?"
The older woman just shook her head in wry amusement and left them to their discussion. Neither of them needed an audience, even if Dean did like to grandstand when someone was around.
"Well," Sam said, jerking his chin towards his computer, "the most recent living victim, anyway." The two-day-old dead body that brought them back by the bar probably wouldn't be as much help as someone who could still breathe. He took another swig from his bottle and shut his laptop down. Once the screen went dark, he slid it back into his shoulder-bag and set the bag on the floor. "I'll get addresses tomorrow morning, and we can head out after we get some eggs or something."
Dean gave Sam a little nod, nursing his drink and wondering why the hell Sam would feel it necessary to plan things that intuitive. Unless he still hadn't gotten over the time with the waitress and the digital camera.
Dean figured he probably shouldn't push that one right then, so he clapped a hand on his brother's back.
"Drink up, Sammy. Don't want your second round to get warm, do ya?"
"I can't have too much to drink," Sam protested. "We have to get up in the morning, if we wanna get done what needs doin'."
Dean laughed, a grin lighting up his face when Ellen returned with beers and a pair of shots (always anticipating her customers' needs, she was). Sam looked from his brother to the liquor and sighed. The next morning, he knew, Dean was going to be a handful. And it wouldn't be good for anybody if they had matching hangovers when the alarm went off bright and early.
Well, that had been the plan, anyway.
Bright and early the next morning became sometime after noon. Dean wasn't a morning person unless he had to be, what with the 'running around all night' part of their job. Sam had to some serious ass-kicking to get Dean out of bed by eleven, and by the time they'd gotten into the city it was already lunch and the sun was high and bright enough that the pair could almost pretend that they weren't looking for some bump-in-the-night beast. Sam handed Dean a neatly printed list with three names and addresses, the demon's victims in the order they'd been possessed.
"We should do this chronologically," Sam said, circling their destinations on a map as he spoke. "Which makes Madeline Rice our first stop, since she's most recent... and, uh, still breathing." Sinking back in the passenger seat, Sam set himself to the task of determining appropriate cover-stories for each of the victims they planned to get in touch with. Rice was a single mother whose youngest had moved out of the house some two weeks before her possession.
Sam was figuring they should pose as detectives or beat cops, just going over the facts one more time - in case she remembered anything. When they pulled up the drive there was an SUV covered in college bumper stickers outside the garage.
"Looks promising enough."
Dean snorted and rummaged through the glove compartment until he found their stash of badges and IDs and tossed the appropriate one to his little brother. “Yeah.” It always looked promising at first. But he let his game face slide into place and headed for the door. Sam was always a step or two behind his brother, so Dean didn't even bother to glance over to make sure Sam had an appropriately hangdog expression for the job.
The house was a tidy little Victorian, looking like nothing so much as a gingerbread house, so the boys could be forgiven for being a bit surprised by the appearance of the young boy who opened the door. He couldn't have been more than nineteen, and his hair was dyed a shade of violent green found only on Astroturf. Dean wondered idly how he ever got through metal detectors with the amount of metal adorning his face. “Hello. I'm Officer Ben Wachowski, and this is my partner, Officer Tony Vereen. We're here to ask your mother a few follow up questions. Is she in?” Dean could feel the tension beside him that meant Sam was pulling on his concerned-cop expression, puppy-face number thirty five. Sam, on the other hand, had to toss a glance sideways to make sure Dean wasn't smiling in that insensitive way he had. He was.
The boy's face went from wary to shuttered in nothing flat. “You can't talk to her,” he said without inflection, fingers digging into the doorframe. He stepped forward a little bit, as though to block entrance into the house.
"Hey," Sam said, his voice smooth and rich and sympathetic more than anything else. "We know she's been through a lot, we just wanted to iron out a few more details, and then we promise we'll be out of your hair. Hey, maybe if she's not feeling well today, we can come back later? Or you might be able to help us, if she's talked to you?"
Sam's brows rose on his forehead, and those big green eyes of his shone with a pleading glow. Puppy-face number thirty five was one of his best.
He nudged Dean to one side with his elbow to get him to step back. If they boxed the kid in he might slam the door in their faces. Not that he wouldn't as it was, but sometimes Dean was just too happy to do a little breaking and entering.
The boy looked uncertainly from Sam to Dean and back again, the stony-face expression slowly buckling beneath the weight of Sam's wide and worried eyes and Dean's stern expression. “No, I mean you can't,” he insisted, fingers scrabbling at the doorframe. He wanted to close the door on their faces, but it was clear for anyone to see that he was scared out of his wits. “She's-- mom, I mean, she's, she checked herself into Rosewood three days ago. She kept saying that--.” He cut himself off, trying for a glare that nearly shattered into a million shards of terror and despair.
“Hey, hey,” Sam reached out a hand, not touching the boy, but letting it rest an inch or so away from the kid's shoulder. “We didn't know.” He tried to measure his words, not sure how much information they could actually get out of the kid, but Dean beat him to it.
“Do you mind if we ask you a few questions, then?” Dean leaned in a little, around Sam. His concerned looks usually ended up more smarmy and less sincere, but he still had his badge case out, and the boy's eyes rested on it for a moment before he nodded. He turned to let the 'officers' into the foyer, and Dean smirked up at his brother.
Like the outside of the house, the foyer and living room were neat and clean, with an air of something that might be termed “maternal”, or even “grandmotherly”. “Sorry. I'm still not used to handling mom's stuff. And she's been a little weird since, well, since she went on that weird rampage. I swear, I've seen more cops the past month than I ever have my entire life! I'm Greg Rice, by the way.”
"Sorry we're meeting you under these circumstances," Sam said soothingly, as the three of them found places to sit on various pieces of comfortable, well-used furniture. "Let's just start at the beginning. You were out of town when the rampage happened, is that right?" Sam pulled out a notepad and pen, but still managed to make himself seem approachable.
Dean leaned forward where he sat, resting his elbows on his knees and clasping his hands. "We'll need to know how you heard about it, what you were told, and if you recall hearing anything out of the ordinary from your mother in the days before the incident."
Sam was already scrawling out in big capital letters "ROSEWOOD" - it was a private mental institution not too far away, but appropriately secluded that it'd be difficult to add the stop to their list for the day.
Greg nodded, wrapping his arms around himself defensively. “I was at college when it happened, but Stacey, that's mom's best friend, she called me when mom snapped. Said something about mom having totally black eyes, which is dumb, since mom has brown eyes, but, she called to ask me to come back and find out what was wrong.” He rocked back a little bit in his overstuffed armchair and licked his lips. “I came home,” he paused, self-consciously smoothing out wrinkling on the arm of the chair. “I didn't get back until it was over and she had wrecked up her store. I'm glad she only destroyed her own property-- it sucks, but at least no one's going to sue her or anything. And no one was hurt. I mean, she came close to beating Mona-- that's her assistant-- but she didn't. No one got hurt.” Greg took a deep, shaky breath. “She hasn't been the same since. She kept talking about the 'Agency' and the 'light behind her eyes' or something.”
Dean glanced to one side as Greg spoke, nodding. "Had she ever spoken about anything like that before, that you remember?"
Sam scribbled the keywords down furiously. Agency with a capital A - he'd heard it in the kid's voice - along with a light behind the eyes. "And did Stacey tell you if she said any of those things while her eyes were discolored?" Sam asked, not looking up from his notes.
"Her pupils may have been dilated, it happens occasionally during some types of outbursts," Dean said in a smooth, stern tone that he meant to be reassuring.
Sam's mind was already going. There were very few things that would cause a Demon to babble on about light, and it set his stomach into a tight knot. None of them were good things.
Nodding nervously, Greg said "I guess so. I just know that Stacey said she was saying stuff like that before I got home to. And she kept on saying it. She checked herself into Rosewood because she said she wasn't sure she could keep herself from trying to cut the-- cut the light from behind her eyelids. I don't know." He spread his hands helplessly. "I don't know. I'm still trying to figure out what's going on with my mom. She owned her own business, she had good friends, she was healthy. She had everything going for her." The boy made a choked sound and jerked his arms back in, not looking up at Sam or Dean.
Sam pinned his brother with a glare before the he could let loose one of his stupidly insensitive comments. "Thank you, Greg. I'm sorry to have brought all this up, but you've helped a great deal."
Sighing, Dean pushed himself to his feet. "We won't take any more of your time. C'mon, uh, Tony."
Dean had almost slipped and called his brother by his real name, which was sloppy of him, but that's why it was 'almost'. He was frustrated, and this just didn't add up right. The demon had to have been damaged to do a number like that on Madeline Rice's brain, to leave her with its own issues with light. If she was continuing to see light, that was even more disconcerting. Dean had liked this whole case better when he knew it was just some demon making tracks. But this thing, it wasn't acting like demons normally did.
"Listen, man," Sam said as he stood, moving to shake Greg's hand. "You got somebody you can talk to here in town, or on the phone? Any other relatives to help you with takin' care of the house and your mom?"
Dean rolled his eyes.
"I, uh," Greg began, but Dean elbowed Sam sharply in the ribs.
"Let's let the poor kid get back to dealing with his problems, huh? Come on," Dean interrupted. The 'you pussy' wasn't said, but Sam could hear it hanging in the air. There was just something about the way Dean's mouth formed words that he could let insults like that slip out without actually voicing them, although that might have been the way Dean's lips were twitching with a sardonic smile.
Once Greg had escorted them back out, apologizing that he couldn't be more help all the way, Sam punched Dean in the ribs. "I was just trying to help him," he grumped, and Dean snickered at him. "I was! Guy doesn't have any idea what happened to his mom. He probably needs someone to talk to."
"Doesn't mean you need to be his shrink," Dean snorted, looking back over his shoulder to see Greg watching them go. "Unless you were maybe hoping for a slumber party. With those Lifetime movies and painting each others' toenails or some shit," he snickered.
"Shut up, Dean," Sam grumbled, scowling across the top of the Impala at his brother. "He could be in serious trouble, he's obviously upset."
Sam shook his head, glancing back up at the house and lifting one hand to Greg and giving him a nod. Seemed like a nice kid. Shame he had to be stuck in the middle of this. "You wanna try and hit that mental hospital?"
Sam sulked his way into the passenger seat, kicking one foot up onto the dash and folding his arms over his chest.
The rest of day came and went with little new information presenting itself. The doctors at Rosewood were gracious to the government inspectors who came to check up on Madeline Rice, but she screamed when she saw Sam and didn't even seem to notice Dean. The victim who had come before her, Kelly Hamber, simply shut the door in Dean's face. There was no way into the tiny, one-room apartment and, according to the super, she'd all but locked herself up in there.
Dean groaned and handed Sam a burrito, taking a big bite of his own and leaning against the side of the Impala, free hand absent-mindedly petting its smooth, gleaming curve. "Well, that was a whole lot of nothing. Apparently this demon makes them see a light, and then lock themselves up. What kind of demon does that? Sloppy."
"I know," Sam said, around a mouthful of food. His manners were going downhill at an unnerving rate since he started hunting again. "It's almost as if the Demon is looking for attention, or something. I mean, there wasn't even a fatality until the most recent, and that was self-defense. Accidental on the part of the Demon is what it looks like, but even that doesn't make any sense." Shaking his head, Sam flipped through his notebook. "I mean, this whole thing, the Demon's behavior, the state of the people it leaves, it's like it's... I don't know, we need to sit down with this and Dad's journal and see if we can't find anything there."
Dean nodded, mouth too full of burrito to attempt an intelligible response.
"And this Agency thing, and... " Sam was still shaking his head, uneasy from what they'd learned and what was still baffling them from the visits they'd made that day. "We should go to Ash. Maybe he can run some analysis, find a pattern I can't. I just..." Sam gestured wildly with his dinner in one hand and the notepad in the other. "Why would she scream when she saw me?"
"Maybe she thinks you need a haircut, kiddo."
"Oh, shut up, Shaggy."
"Yeah, whatever, Scooby."
"Look, let's just... ugh. Let's go back to the roadhouse tonight, talk over what we've got so far, and check out our third guy in the morning."
Dean nodded and put the car in drive.
Read chapter two here! Comments & criticism are always welcome and encouraged. Feel free to archive, but please comment to let us know first!