Chapter Text
St. Louis, Missouri
The Olin library at Washington University in St. Louis looked, to Dean, not unlike most other libraries he and Sam had ever found themselves in. In other words, he didn’t get what had Sam practically vibrating with excitement over it. Then again, that was typical geek-boy-wonder Sam, and after what had happened in San Francisco two weeks ago, Dean was just happy Sam was starting to get back to his normal self.
“So, who are we talking to again?” he asked as they passed through the glass doors. They were investigating a resurgence of ghost sightings—and one disappearance—around the infamous Lemp brewery, and Sam had set up a meeting with a local folklore expert, or something.
Sam didn’t answer, but strode to the circulation desk and greeted the clearly hungover coed who was snapping bubblegum and staring at the computer screen. “Hi,” he said. “I’m Sam Harrison. My brother and I have an appointment with…” he glanced at the post-it he’d dug out of his pocket. “Y/N Y/L/N.”
She barely glanced up and pointed to the stairs. “Research librarians are on the third floor. Make a left when you get up there.”
“Thanks.”
Dean followed Sam the way she’d directed. “If I’d known all college chicks were so pleasant, I would’ve quit hunting and gone with you to Stanford.”
Sam rolled his eyes. “If you’d been accepted, sure.”
Dean made a noise of feigned offense.
The third-floor desk was manned by a tousle-haired kid in glasses. He was ignoring the textbook in front of him to talk to the woman leaning on the counter. She straightened and turned around as they approached.
“You must be Sam and Dean,” she said, and held out her hand. “I’m Y/N. Come on back and I’ll show you what I’ve dug up for you so far.”
They each shook her hand and followed her through the stacks. She was decidedly not the crotchety tweed-wearing cliché Dean had come to expect. Y/N couldn’t have been older than he was, wearing jeans and an overlarge sweater, long hair swept up into a kind of loose twist. He didn’t miss the quick scan Sam gave her, either, and gave his brother a play nudge and waggled his eyebrows.
“Stop it,” Sam hissed. Dean chuckled.
The office was small but cheery, crammed full of bookshelves and knick-knacks, a few family photos. There was a plant on the window that had seen better days; it was wilting in the winter rays that peeked through the blinds. Despite the room’s clutter, the desk itself was neat, folders and papers stacked in orderly piles, and Y/N indicated for them to sit as she placed a stack of books in front of them, then sat down herself.
“So, your email said you were looking into local urban legends. So I’m guessing you want to know specifically about the Lemp brewery haunting.”
Sam blinked. “What gave it away?”
“That’s what everyone wants to know about.”
“Do you get a lot of people researching this stuff?”
She shrugged. “Kind of. One of the English professors here has his students do a research project on St. Louis folklore, and someone always chooses the Lemp family.”
“And you’re the resident expert?” Dean wondered.
She snorted. “Ha, no. But after helping so many undergrads with their research, I got pretty interested in it, so I’m working on a Master’s in folklore now. So now they just send all the folklore, mythology, and anthropology people my way by default.”
“What do you do with a degree in folklore?” Dean blurted, and Sam kicked him behind the desk.
But Y/N laughed. “Hell if I know! But I work for the university, so it’s free, and I figured—”
“—why not?” Sam finished for her. She smiled.
“Anyway,” she said, shuffling the papers in front of her. “That’s my excuse. You’re obviously not students, so what brings you here?”
Sam cleared his throat. “My brother and I are writers. We’re actually traveling the country, working on a book about famous U.S. hauntings.”
She raised her eyebrows in genuine interest. “That’s cool,” she said, giving them an appreciative nod. “So, you travel the country chasing ghost stories….have you ever actually seen a ghost?”
She played if off like a joke, just the obvious small talk, but beneath that Dean caught the tones of an honest, eager curiosity. Judging by the startled look on Sam’s face, he had, too.
Just as Dean was beginning to respond with a laugh and a negative, Sam leaned forward, a smirk teasing the corners of his lips. “Actually,” he said. “We’ve seen plenty.”
For a split second her eyes widened and she leaned toward him, but she crossed her arms and sat back in her chair. “You’re kidding.”
Sam grinned. “Yeah.”
She rolled her eyes, but she was smiling. “Anyway,” she said, “The Lemp hauntings. Like I said, people are a little obsessed. The Lemps kept getting hit with one tragedy after another…”
She slid an article toward them and launched into a detailed narrative about the cursed Lemp family and the litany of sightings and legends surrounding them. Dean sat back and let Sam do most of the talking, only chiming in when questions occurred to him or something wasn’t quite clear. But he was more focused on the interaction happening in front of him: the way Sam leaned over the desk. The way Y/N did not lean away. The absolutely geekiness sprouting out of both of them. Her casual glances. Sam’s smile, which was coming out more in this thirty-minute conversation than it had in two weeks.
Sam had been rightfully moping around since Madison, and Dean had let him. He’d submitted to silence in the car, in motels, to a few days of complete lack of anything and then Sam’s total nosedive back into hunting. But he knew Sam was still grieving; he knew it from the distant gazes, the nightmares, the avoidance of anything werewolf or gun related when possible. Dean had been determined the past few days to pull Sam out of it, keep him focused, help him move on...maybe what he needed was one good night with a normal girl. This one certainly seemed like she might be into him. But despite the looks Dean tried to send his brother, Sam was either really good at ignoring him, or completely uninterested.
An hour later, armed with more information than they really needed (but Dean wasn’t about to cut this beautiful conversation short), and a few scans from some of the library’s texts, Y/N walked them back to the front desk.
“I hope that was helpful,” she said.
“It was great,” Sam said, grinning. “Thanks a lot.”
“My pleasure,” she said. “I actually dug up a few books I can use for my own research, so it helped me out, too.”
Ask for her number, Sam , Dean thought, but his brother was oblivious. He shook her hand and turned to leave.
Dean figured he’d have to take matters into his own hands. “Actually,” he said. “Could we get your card, or something? In case we have any more questions.”
She laughed. “Sure.” She reached over the counter and grabbed a card from a stand holding an assortment of them, then took a pen and scrawled a number on the back. “That’s my university email and phone on the front, which is the best way to reach me, but that’s my personal cell number just in case.”
“Awesome.”
Once they were back in the car, Dean passed the card to Sam. “Here you go, lover boy.”
Sam almost looked offended. “Dean, really?”
“What? You two were makin’ eyes at each other the whole time we were in there. Don’t tell me you weren’t feeling it.”
Sam looked down at the card in his hand and sighed. “I can’t.”
“Aw, come on, Sammy—”
“I said I can’t!” he snapped, and Dean almost recoiled at the venom in his voice. Sam swallowed and blinked, then turned away. He crumpled the card and threw it on the floor of the Impala. “Just let it go, alright?”
Dean didn’t say anything for the rest of the drive to the motel. Sam clearly wasn’t receptive to the idea of moving on, and Dean wasn’t going to force it. So they focused on the job, and he tried to ignore the obvious fact that Sam, despite his bravado, wasn’t okay.
“Dude, give it a break. Easy Rider is on.”
They were holed up in a motel just outside of Columbus. The case in St. Louis had been an uncomplicated haunting, the first relatively straightforward hunt they’d had in awhile. The most difficult part had been finding the real information among all of the urban legend. Sam had pegged it as a Tulpa from the beginning, but it was hardly that—just a family of vengeful spirits who’d been waiting too long for someone to put them out of their misery.
They’d wrapped the job in three days and driven straight to the next one, a nest of vamps that had been a pain in the ass and taken another three days to clear out, and were now getting some Dean-mandated R&R. Except Sam was determined to keep researching. Since losing Madison, he’d been even more set on finding the yellow-eyed demon, as if by avenging one lover’s death, he’d absolve himself of the loss of the other’s.
Sam didn’t even look up, just kept scrolling through webpages, his face washed bright from the screen. “You’ve seen that like two hundred times.”
“And it just keeps getting better!” He was stretched out on the bed closest to the door, shoes kicked off and beer in hand. “Come on, Sam. Live a little.”
Sam gave a heavy sigh and shut the laptop. “Fine,” he said. “But—”
His phone lit up and buzzed loudly from the table. He picked it up and squinted at the caller ID.
“Who is it?” Dean asked from across the room.
“Dunno,” Sam replied. He answered. “This is Sam.”
Sam’s brows furrowed, then recognition dawned on his features. “Oh, Y/N, hey, how are you?”
Dean raised his eyebrows. It had been almost a week since their meeting, and having been shut down so insistently by Sam, Dean had put her completely out of his mind. He was just as surprised as Sam to hear from her.
“Yeah, sure. What do you need to know?”
The serious tone in Sam’s voice stopped Dean halfway to waggling his eyebrows at his brother. He turned down the TV and mouthed What’s up?, but Sam shook his head, listening intently. A strange look crossed his face, something between concern and curiosity. It was a look Sam wore a lot when they were working a case, when he’d caught on to some tidbit a victim had mentioned and was coaxing more details out of them. Dean sat up.
“Is this just about research?”
A pause, then Sam straightened in his chair, his frame rigid. Dean instinctively threw his legs over the side of the bed, ready to jump to his feet. “Are you still there!?”
Her response eased some of the tension in Sam’s shoulders, but he was far from relaxed. “Okay. Stay where you are. We’re a few states away, but we can be there in the morning.”
Dean was perched on the edge of the bed, following Sam with his eyes, trying to piece together the situation. “It’s okay, it’s...kinda what we do. Just stay out of the house, and make sure anyone else does, too. If you text me the address, we can meet you there tomorrow. Say...nine?”
Sam switched the phone to his other ear. “Yeah, no problem. See you tomorrow.”
He hung up the phone and turned to Dean.
“That was Y/N, from the library. Her place is haunted.”
“You’ve gotta be kidding me.”
“Wish I was,” Sam said. “She just wanted to know if we had any tips, but—”
“But we’re the real Ghostbusters, right.” He grinned as Sam rolled his eyes. “Well, at least she’s safe. No one else in the house?”
“Just her,” Sam said.
“Hey, you know what that means—” he started, but a look from Sam silenced him. “Okay. Look, it’ll take six hours to get there. We should try to get some sleep.”
Y/N lived on a residential street less than five miles from the library. It was an older neighborhood whose large, brick houses had been converted into two unit townhouses. They parked outside of Y/N’s just before nine a.m. the next morning. As soon as they got out, the door of a silver Civic opened, and she stepped out and approached them.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey yourself,” Dean said, opening the Impala’s trunk. Y/N’s eyes widened when she saw the arsenal.
“I guess you guys aren’t writers.”
“Not writers,” Sam confirmed, tacking on a sheepish laugh. “We uh, well…”
“Don’t tell me you’re ghost hunters.”
The brothers exchanged a look. “Yeah, basically,” Sam said with a shrug. He was watching her closely for the usual signs of disbelief, doubts of their sanity, frustration...but she just crossed her arms. “That’s why you called us, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know why I called you,” she admitted. “I just didn’t know who else would believe me.”
“So, you wanna show us what’s up?” Dean said, shutting the trunk and tossing a bag over his shoulder.
She led them through the front door, then up a narrow staircase which opened into a spacious living room. She stood aside for them to pass through. Dean took the sawed-off from the bag and passed it to Sam, who checked the barrel for rounds and then snapped it shut.
“Salt rounds,” he explained. “Salt repels spirits.”
“That’s what a lot of folklore says...What do you do, just pack it into a shotgun shell?”
“Pretty much,” he said, passing her a crowbar from Dean. “Hold that, just in case.” She stared at it like she wasn’t sure what to do with it, then turned her attention back to them. She was studying them carefully, both inquisitive and wary, like they were potentially dangerous research subjects.
The whine of the EMF pulled Sam out of this thoughts. “Yahtzee,” Dean said, moving forward in the house.
Sam followed him through the combination living and dining room and into the kitchen. A box of pasta was toppled over on the counter, rotini noodles scattered on the floor beside a cast iron skillet. A pot of water sat on the stove.
“I kinda left in a hurry,” Y/N said, standing in the doorway.
“This is where you saw it?” Sam asked, eyes scanning the room. The EMF was at full power, droning unceasingly, and his skin was itching in anticipation, expecting a spirit to show at at any second.
“Yeah.” He noticed she wasn’t coming in. “Right by the stove. I was getting the skillet and I stood up and it was right there.”
“What did it look like?”
She thought about it. “I didn’t get a good look before it disappeared. I think it was wearing a suit.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Do you guys mind if I go back outside? Not to be a wuss, but I’m a little spooked.”
Sam felt a stab of guilt for even bringing her up with them. “Of course not.”
“We probably have all we need here, anyway,” Dean said, but she’d already turned around the corner and out of their line of sight. A few moments later, they heard her scream.
They almost knocked into each other dashing out of the kitchen. They rounded the corner into the living room just in time to see the spirit (tall, male, suit, middle-aged, Sam catalogued) sweep toward Y/N. Sam had raised the shotgun to fire when Y/N swung the crowbar through the ghost and it dissipated with a howl.
She stood frozen, arms twisted behind her like she’d just hit a homerun, and turned to look at them as if to say, See? That’s the ghost . I’m not crazy, and then dropped the crowbar on the floor and went down the stairs.
“Dude,” Dean said, bending to pick up the crowbar. “She’s kind of a badass.”
When they emerged into the yard, weapons hidden away in the duffel bag, she was leaning against her car, watching the house, shoulders hunched around her ears. She was a little pale, Sam thought. He stopped in front of her as Dean went to put the gear back in the Impala. “So, you saw the ghost,” she said. “Now what?”
“We research, figure out who he is, find out where he’s buried, and then salt and burn his bones.”
“You make it sound so simple.”
“It should be.” She had such an honest curiosity about the whole thing that it surprised him. “You’re taking this really well.”
“Maybe I’m in shock,” she reasoned. Then she shrugged. “Honestly? I always sort of half-believed in ghosts. Not that I’m happy I’m right, but…”
Dean came back from the Impala. “You’ve got a place to stay for a few days?” he asked. “Just in case this takes a little longer.”
She nodded, then pushed off from the car. “You guys want help with research? It’s kind of what I do.”
She gave Sam a playful look when she said it, echoing his words from the night before, and it warmed him unexpectedly. “We don’t usually have people volunteering to help with this stuff,” he said.
“I’m curious,” she explained. “And it’s my house, so I have some ownership in this.”
Sam wanted to protest, didn’t want some innocent civilian getting hurt on his watch, knew they could handle the whole case on their own, but Dean had other ideas. “Sure,” he said. “But breakfast, first.”
They drove separately, Sam and Dean following Y/N as she led them to what she claimed was “One of the best breakfast joints in the city.”
“I like her,” Dean said. “She’s got spunk.”
Sam was silent.
“What’s up with you?”
He shook his head. “It’s just weird. She’s a librarian we got set up with to figure out the Lemp case, and then a week later she’s got a haunting and she thinks to call us? Kind of weird, don’t you think?”
“Meh,” Dean said. “What isn’t weird with us? Sometimes a spade is just a spade, Sammy. And she’s a cute spade.”
Sam rolled his eyes.
Y/N sat across from them at Courtesy Diner, which looked about as classic diner as you could get in 2007, eating an omelette with a side of fruit that was closer to Sam’s usual fare than the pancakes Dean was devouring. Sam observed her over the top of his coffee mug as he took a drink, watching the way she ate around the melon but went right for the strawberries. She caught his gaze and he cleared his throat. “So,” he said. “The ghost showed up last night?”
She finished chewing and swallowed. “That’s the first time I saw it. But the night before, the office light kept turning on and off on its own. I guess it could’ve been there then, but I left and stayed with a friend. Freaked me out.”
“Did you notice anything else strange before that?” Dean said.
“Strange like…?”
“Cold spots, stuff out of place, other light issues...stuff like that.”
“Maybe? It was cold, but when my landlord got someone out to check the heater, nothing was wrong with it. Could a ghost explain that?”
“It could. When did that start?” Sam asked.
“A day or two after I met with you guys...so just under a week ago.”
They exchanged a glance.
“What, does that mean anything?”
“Not really,” Sam said. “But it’s just weird.”
She stared at him, deadpan. “Weirder than you two being ghostbusters? Or ghosts being real?”
“Good point,” Sam conceded. “Anyway, it shouldn’t take much more than looking into the history of your place, the property it’s on, to figure out who’s haunting it and take care of him.”
“The public library might be a better resource for that,” Y/N said.
“Or, I can just find it online,” Sam said.
She raised her eyebrows. “Hacking?”
He grinned. “Only for good,” he said.
They went to the library anyway, and Y/N pulled files related to housing in the area dating back one hundred years. While she and Dean pored over those, Sam worked away at the laptop, digging through government databases and residential records, then cross-referencing them with death certificates and obituaries.
He was working more slowly than he normally would, and he knew it, stealing glances over the screen at Y/N, her hair twisted behind her head, a pencil tapping between her fingers as she bent over development plots and old newsprint. She puzzled him; people didn’t often end up working cases with them, even just for research. She hadn’t spent much time in denial about the spirit, either, just reached out to the only people she thought could help her. Maybe she thought she owed them.
“Think this is something?” she said, sliding a document across the table to him. Dean had gone to “stretch his legs”—they were three hours in and nearing his threshold for inactivity.
Sam scanned it. The townhouse had been rented from 1962-1965 by a James Richings, a bachelor who’d worked at the bottleworks factory. His lease ended when he’d suddenly died at 47 years old.
“Bottleworks…” Sam pondered. “As in the Lemp bottleworks? The brewery?”
She nodded. “I think so. It could be Anheuser, or Schlafly, but the location makes me think Lemp.”
“So it’s possible he was connected to the hauntings there, too.”
She nodded again.
Sam set the paper down and went back to the laptop, searched for news from January 1965 until he found what he was looking for. “Get this—James Richings died by suicide after he was laid off.”
She wrinkled her nose. “In my unit?”
Sam scanned the page again. “No. Jumped off a bridge, apparently.”
“Then why is he still hanging around my place? Why’d he just show up? Is that normal?”
Sam wondered the same thing. It wasn’t unheard of for spirits to only haunt places sporadically, but usually there was something that instigated it. “Whatever it is, we burn the bones, the ghost is gone.”
It only took a few careful searches to find Richings’s gravesite, and by then Dean had returned with three coffees. “Find anything?” he asked.
“Everything,” Y/N said. “No thanks to you.”
Sam snorted, closed his laptop, and stood up. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.”
By the time they left the library, it was late afternoon, and they decided to get a room for the night and wait it out until dark before heading to the cemetery. At Y/N’s recommendation, they followed her back to the Moonrise and checked out a room there.
Dean passed Sam a key card and adjusted the bag on his shoulder. “I say we order some take out and rest up until tonight.”
Sam nodded his agreement, then turned to Y/N as Dean headed off down the hall. “We’ll call you once it’s done. You should be able to go back home tomorrow.”
“Awesome,” she said. “Do you guys need anything else from me?”
“I don’t think so,” Sam said. “It should be pretty cut and dry from here.”
She began walking with him down the hall. She stopped at the stairs. “Well, if you think of something, let me know. I have some reading I need to get done, but I’ll be around.”
It occurred to Sam that, if they bagged this case tonight, this might be the last time he saw her, and his disappointment surprised him. He choked that feeling down as soon as it rose to the surface, and instead shifted his weight toward the direction Dean had gone.
“I will,” was all he said.
Just after midnight, Sam was shoulders-deep in grave dirt while Dean held the flashlight beam steady and kept watch. They’d just switched off, and Sam let out a sigh of relief when the shovel hit the top of the coffin with a satisfying thud. He tossed the shovel out of the grave, dusted dirt off the lid, and pulled it open. He climbed out, and Dean sprinkled the bones liberally with salt and lighter fluid, then dropped a match into the open coffin.
They stood, keeping watch over the flames and feeling the heat on their faces. “Two salt ‘n burns and one vamp nest in a week,” Dean said. “I could get used to easy cases like this.”
Sam was silent. Where Dean saw easy cases, reminiscent of the “good old days” before demons and physic powers, Sam saw distractions from what they were ultimately after. He didn’t regret saving the people involved. He relished a job well-done, evil put to rest, having something to do other than research and wait, but he was itching to put an end to the chase of the last year and half, to finally get revenge for their mother, their father, for Jess.
Dean must’ve read something of that in his silence, because he said, “You know, it isn’t always gonna be like this for you.”
Sam looked up at him. “What?”
“We put Yellow Eyes to bed, you can do what you want. Go back to school. Settle down. Get a girl.”
Sam narrowed his eyes. Initiating this kind of talk was out-of-character for his brother, and Sam wasn’t clueless enough to think that Dean was pulling it out of his ass. No, he’d been chewing on this for awhile. Sam hadn’t missed the concerned glances, the way Dean had always seemed to be right there when he’d torn awake from a nightmare, how he’d kept them busy, on the move, how he’d ceded to Sam’s suggestions without a fuss the past two weeks. And he hadn’t missed Dean’s movements today, his conveniently leaving Sam with Y/N, finding ways to draw the two of them into conversation together.
Sam let out a heavy sigh. “Maybe someday,” he admitted. The flames were burning low, and he began shoveling dirt back into the grave, dousing the fire. Dean hesitated; Sam thought he’d say more, but he didn’t push it, just picked up the second shovel and helped Sam scoop dirt.
It was almost two a.m. when they made it back to the hotel. Dean called first shower and Sam picked up his phone, debating whether to call Y/N or wait until morning.
He compromised by sending her a text saying that the job was done, and she’d be good to go home the next day. As an afterthought, he wished her good luck on her research.
Despite getting to sleep at such a late hour, Sam was awake by eight the next morning while Dean continued snoring. He pulled on a t-shirt and his shoes and went down to breakfast, thinking he’d eat and then bring something up for Dean, who would probably sleep past the time it ended.
He was absorbed in the paper, sipping a cup of coffee when movement across from him caught his eye. He looked up to see Y/N standing at the table with a plate of food in her hand.
“Mind if I sit?”
“Not at all.” He folded the paper and set it aside. She sat down and poured a packet of creamer into her coffee. “You get my message?”
She nodded. “Yeah. Thank you.” She said it with sincerity, meeting his eyes. “I’m not really sure how to repay you guys.”
Sam shook his head. “You don’t have to. Like I said...it’s—”
“—kinda what you do.” She smiled. She was dressed for work, he figured, wearing a dark blouse and a sweater. Her hair was down today, too, cascading around her shoulders. He blinked and turned his attention to his food before she could catch him staring. “So now do you guys just...leave town and find another ghost to hunt?”
“That’s basically it, yeah,” Sam said. “Wherever the job takes us.”
“How exactly does someone get into this kind of job, anyway?”
He let out a breathy laugh. “Uh, it’s kind of a long story.”
She shrugged, took a bite of her yogurt. “Do you like it?”
The question gave him pause. He’d never been asked that before, not directly, and he wasn’t sure what to answer. If he’d been asked growing up, or even a year ago, he would’ve said no, he hated it, he would do anything to get out of it. But now he couldn’t see a reality where he wasn’t hunting with Dean, and he didn’t see the point of imagining one.
But he didn’t say that. What he said was, “It has its moments, I guess.”
She held his gaze longer than felt natural, then broke away to take another bite of food.
He was desperate to fill the silence. “How long have you worked at the library?”
She seemed pleased with the change in subject. “I started last summer,” she said. “Right after I graduated from Ann Arbor.”
“Do you like it?”
“I do,” she said, and smiled. “But it has its moments.”
He smiled back at her. She checked her watch. “Speaking of, my shift starts in half an hour. I should go.” She set her silverware on the plate, but otherwise made no move to leave. “Hey, so, all this ghost stuff...I’m sure it’s not as interesting to you, but I’m doing that degree in folklore, so I wondered if, maybe, I could keep your number, give you guys a call if I have any questions…?”
She was so unsure if the question was even appropriate that Sam had to laugh. At the same time, a sort of chill wrapped its way around his insides, a warning. He felt his defenses go up against this new stranger’s attempt to insert herself, no matter how remotely, into their lives, into the hunting world.
But there was, too, a spark of hope, the chance at a longer connection. “Sure,” he found himself saying.
She grinned. “Thanks, Sam. You probably won’t hear from me too much if at all, but just in case.”
He wanted to hear from her, but he knew it was better if he didn’t, so he kept himself from telling her so.
She stood to leave and he followed suit. “Anyway,” she said. “Thanks again. I don’t know what I would’ve done.”
“It’s nothing,” Sam said. “If you ever need anything, just call.”
“Hopefully it’s just for research, and no more ghosts.”
“Hopefully.”
She turned with a wave, put her dishes in the bin, and was out the door. Sam watched her go until she was beyond his sight, then sat down and finished his own meal before taking a stack of pastries up to the room.
Dean was still asleep when he got back, and he was still asleep an hour before checkout time. Sam had spent most of the morning looking for cases, but nothing had jumped out at him, and for the first time in awhile he wasn’t feeling the itch to move. He was tired. He wanted to settle for a bit, not think about jobs, just take a break.
He went down and reserved the room for another night. If Dean had a problem with it, they could always leave, but he sensed Dean would appreciate a day off, too. Who knew when the last time they’d had one had been.
Dean was sitting up in bed when Sam walked back into the room. He looked blearily at his phone, then at Sam. “I missed breakfast. Why didn’t you wake me up?”
Sam shrugged. “There’s some muffins and stuff on the table.” At that, Dean got out of bed and shuffled to turn on the coffee pot, grabbing a muffin on the way. “Hey, I got the room for another night. I figured we could use a break.”
Dean turned around, giving Sam a look of surprise. “Damn right we could,” he said. “You’ve been dragging us all over for weeks.”
“Yeah, well, I’m tired. What do you wanna do?”
It turned out that what Dean wanted to do was sample as much of St. Louis cuisine as he could. They got lunch on The Hill, ordering toasted ravioli and gooey butter cake and ate until they were stuffed. They caught a showing of Smokin’ Aces after, then went out for beers and pork steaks down the street from the Moonrise. Neither one of them brought up hunting the whole day.
They’d been back in the hotel for a few hours when Dean came out of the bathroom, hair freshly groomed and said, “I’m goin’ out. You coming with me?”
Sam looked up from his spot on the bed, where’d he’d been reading an article from The New Yorker . “I’m good.”
“You know,” Dean said. “You could always give Y/N a call.”
Sam looked back to the article. “Come on, Dean.”
“No, you come on. Seriously. She seemed like she was into you. Why not?”
Sam didn’t look at him. “You know why.”
Dean let out a frustrated breath. “You can’t dwell on that forever, Sammy.”
Sam said nothing. With a huff, Dean grabbed his coat and keys and was out the door.
Truth was, Sam did want to call her. But he also knew it was fruitless. He wasn’t okay, didn’t know when or if he would be okay, and he knew there probably wasn’t an end to this where someone didn’t end up bloody. No. Better to forget about it, hope she never called and they all forgot about each other.
Hope was as far as he got.