“We’ve got work to do!”
In Dean’s opinion, the best way to get over shit was to just keep moving.
Keep on keepin’ on.
The Rolling Stones don’t gather moss.
Whatever.
The point was that Dean couldn’t go back in time and keep Sam from being possessed or keep those men from being killed. What Dean could do was hype Sammy up, get him interested in something that wasn’t the obituaries of those men.
“Rise and shine, Sammy!” Dean threw open Sam’s curtains, which were just a blanket, and made his brother groan and bury his head under his pillow. “Time to get up, lazy ass. We’ve got work to do!”
“No, we don’t,” Sam grumbled. He was grumpy in the morning, always had been.
“Sure we do.” Dean snuck up beside Sam’s bed and carefully grabbed the edge of the pillow and a slack part of his blanket tightly before yanking them both away in one go. Dean smirked at Sam’s messy hair, the hateful glare that just looked pathetic.
“C’mon,” Dean said. “We’ve got a case.”
Because Sammy never could sleep with a mystery on his mind, Dean struck up a whistled rendition of the ghostbusters theme song on his way to make sure baby brother two was ready for phase two:
Guilt Sam into taking a bullshit case.
Harry was already awake with coffee ready. Dean told him to figure out how to work the machine so the smell would help drag Sam to the land of the living, but of course the kid was drinking some for himself.
“Bobby said to tell you if you, I’m only saying what he said, but that if you bitch about me having coffee then you shouldn’t have let me get a tattoo,” Harry said when Dean spotted the oversized mug in his hands.
“You tell Bobby that you don’t need his help to be a smartass,” Dean warned Harry. It was a warning that rolled off Harry’s back like everything Dean said to him did lately.
All Dean had to do to get the Sam treatment from Harry was rescue the kid from a storage unit. If he knew it was so easy he might have had a demon kidnap him weeks ago. At the rate demons were popping in Dean’s life lately, it probably would have been real easy.
Harry had been up Dean’s ass the last week. When Dean wanted to fuck around in the garage and see what kinda furniture he could make with Bobby’s scrap wood, Harry was offering to help. Dean decided to balance Baby’s wheels, Harry wanted to learn how to do it.
It wasn’t bad, Dean kinda liked having the kid follow him around asking to learn shit. It was just that Dean doubted he’d be doing it if Sam wasn’t having an emo spiral of guilt he didn’t need to be carrying.
As if Sam, the gentle freaking giant, would ever hurt a person on purpose. It was stupid and Dean was over it.
There was too much weird shit going on in their lives for Sam to check out on Dean and so Dean had to pull a Sam and do research. He got lucky when he found that some teacher died at a university in Illinois.
It sounded like a suicide and a few students blogging about an old ghost story, but it was enough for Dean to call it a case. And if Dean failed in convincing Sam to take it, Harry wouldn’t.
Sam lumbered in the kitchen and tested the sturdiness of the dining table chairs Dean built by dropping in one full force.
“Why do we have a case?” Sam asked while Harry subtly pushed a cup of coffee in front of him.
“Bobby asked if we’d check it out,” Dean said. He had eggos in the toaster and stacked them up as they popped out.
Having his own kitchen was awesome.
Dean loved Denny’s Grand Slam as much as anyone, but food made by him in an actual kitchen just tasted better.
“I told him no,” Dean told Sam with a pointed look at Harry.
“And I said I need something interesting to write about for my homework,” Harry said. Dean nodded when Sam couldn’t see, that was exactly the spot to hit on Sam.
Education. Sam couldn’t deprive their brother of an educational experience.
“You snuck yourself in a new country, survived a plane crash, hunted a psychic, hunted hellhounds, and were kidnapped by a demon.” Sam listed everything off with ticks of his fingers while he gave Harry his most bitchy look. “You can’t write about any of that?”
“I could, but a ghost hunt would be more interesting,” Harry said, giving bitch-face right back at Sam. “If you don’t want to help, I’m sure Dean and I can handle it.”
Dean bit his lip when he heard Sam sigh.
Having a second brother to back him up even he needed it was also awesome.
“Where are we going?” Sam asked when Dean brought waffles to the table.
“You’ll like this, Sam,” Dean promised. “We’re headed to SIU, School of Law.”
Sam went from bitchy to suspicious, but a suspicious Sam was a hundred times less annoying than a moping Sam.
As soon as they finished eating, they set off.
Dean kinda liked being back on the road, even for a bullshit case. Sam in the passenger seat, reading the thin info Dean collected. Harry in the backseat, writing something in a notebook. The radio was on, the road was smooth.
Yeah, it felt pretty damn good, actually. No demons pulling any shit, no wizards to bother them, just Dean, his brothers, and the open road.
“Dude, this looks like a suicide,” Sam eventually said, waving the papers in his hand. “The guy jumped from a window?”
“Tenured professor? In a haunted building?” Dean asked. He clicked his tongue. “Bobby thinks it’s a haunting.”
That was a bullshit lie, but it didn’t matter. They’d get to Illinois, poke around, find out it was bullshit. Then Sam could go to the bar with his fellow geeks, get excited about something, and the mope fest would be over.
Sam had a tendency to just fixate on shit. If Dean wanted to end the fixation with the dead hunters, he had to find him something new to fixate on. Hence, the yuppie law school.
“When this turns out to be just a suicide, I’m going to say I told you so,” Sam said.
Dean glanced up in the mirror and caught Harry’s eye. Harry grinned, knowing just like Dean did that the two of them had their own case within the case.
“You do that, Sammy,” Dean said.
The drive wasn’t bad, only seven hours, but Dean still snagged a motel room when they got to town. It gave Dean and Sam a chance to get changed in their fed suits and gave them an excuse to stay the night.
Sam rolled his eyes, but Dean heard him explaining how a standard salt and burn worked to Harry while Dean changed. Harry was offended for the ghosts, because the kid was taught that ghosts were perfectly normal things to share meals with apparently.
After thirty minutes of listening to the same station from Harry, Dean gave in. They had just pulled up at the college and Dean slammed his car in park before turning to point at Harry.
“Alright, you know what?” Dean frowned, Harry didn’t look worried.
Why should he? He even went to parties with ghosts. Because wizard school didn’t care at all for kids’s safety, oh no, it was all death parties and freaking basilisks in bathrooms.
“If we find a ghost that is tossing people out windows, I better not hear a peep about salting their bones,” Dean warned him, mostly just screwing with him.
“You have you add an ‘or’ so I know if I want to risk making a peep,” Harry told him, deadpan.
“Or - or…” Dean looked at the notebook Harry had been writing in. “Or you can’t write anymore.”
“I can’t finish my letter to a reporter to get the story you leaked about my mum corrected?” Harry raised a mocking eyebrow. “That’s what you’d ground me from?”
“I… you…” Dean sputtered and smacked Sam in the chest. “Your karma, not mine,” Dean told Sam, who had always been a pain in the ass. “You’re in charge of punishments.”
“Oh, no. You wouldn’t let me sign the papers, you punish him,” Sam said, freaking laughing about it. “And he’s your karma, not mine.”
“Dude, I was the good kid!” Dean said, quickly climbing out of the car to make that the final say.
Sam climbed out too though, because Dean knew he couldn’t stand for him to have the final word even in a joking argument.
“You snuck out, all the time!” Sam cried. “You brought chicks to the motels.”
Yeah, Dean did.
“You stole the car.”
Dean did that too.
“And you were an alcoholic by seventeen.”
“Hey.” Dean pointed at Sam when the line had been crossed. “I was drinking a beer a night at sixteen, thank you.”
“You’re impossible,” Sam sighed.
Dean was, but no more so than Sam.
The three of them sniffed around the faculty building where the victim was found. There wasn’t much to see, aside from when Dean spotted Sam slipping an admissions brochure in his suit pocket.
Dean automatically looked to Harry to share a wink, the same way he automatically looked for Sam when a dirty joke went over Harry’s head, but Harry was distracted by a group of students sitting on the ground.
Dean didn’t see anything special about them, it was some douche in flip flops with a guitar, a goth chick with a harmonica, and a pretty blonde who was humming along to the melody. They seemed like standard college idiots, but Harry watched them like they were aliens who touched down on Earth.
“Is University really easy?” Harry asked skeptically, still watching them.
“It’s a lot of work,” Sam said. He finally caught what Harry looked at and Dean felt a tightness in his chest loosen when he heard Sam laugh.
When Sam laughed, really laughed, he would bend over at the waist some and his eyes would crinkle and his All-American dimples would flash. In almost all of Dean’s best memories, Sam had been laughing.
Sam just hadn’t laughed lately, not since Meg took him for a ride and left Sam all twisted up in the aftermath. He was laughing then though, because Dean was a damn good brother and knew what Sam needed when he was in a funk.
And Harry helped some, Dean supposed.
“Those are probably liberal art students,” Sam told Harry when he controlled his laughter down to just one wide smile. “When you go to college, just avoid those kids, okay? They were always the ones throwing the loudest parties and passing shrooms like water.”
Damn. Maybe Dean should have gone to college. If nothing else, a party with shrooms sounded awesome.
When they went back inside to try and find a witness to interview, Dean pocketed his own admissions brochure. Dean wouldn’t do something that involved too much reading, not like Sam. But Dean had a GED… and a lot of shops might want someone with some sort of automotive degree.
It was stupid, Dean would probably end up burning the brochure just so Sam never saw it.
It didn’t take long to find someone who worked in the building and knew about the professor who died.
There was a janitor who worked nights, who was just coming on shift when the boys found him in an employee locker room. The man was probably a few years older than Dean with slicked back light brown hair and an easy-going grin on his face while he filled a mop bucket with soapy water.
Dean liked him immediately, if only because he was singing AC/DC while he worked. Dean tapped him on the shoulder, catching his attention, and nodded cordially when the man dramatically jumped in the air and slushed water on his boots.
“I might as well go home,” he groaned, grinning when he saw he had an audience of three. He wiggled a wet boot out and tsk’d. “Who can work in wet socks?”
“I’ve had nightmares like that,” Harry said seriously. “I have to run but my socks are wet and feel disgusting.”
“So you’ll be my witness when I tell my boss this was an emergency call off,” the janitor nodded. “Perfect.” He offered Harry a hand first. “Just for that - I’m Gabe.”
Dean flipped his badge out for the janitor then, spotting an easy opening. The sooner they admitted the case was a bust, the sooner that Sam could get to geeking out over something not-demonic.
“I’m Detective Coverdale,” Dean said. “This my partner, Detective Marsden.”
“Cool, like Whitesnake.” Gabe leaned on his mop and grinned at Harry. “Let me guess, That makes you Detective in Training Dowle?”
“This is my son, Harry,” Dean said hastily. Not a lot of people picked up on the pattern to the fake names Dean gave. With Sam probably being hunted by hunters and Dean considered a dead serial killer, it might be safer to mix them up in the future.
“Well, how can I help you boys?” Gabe asked. “You here about that professor?”
“We are.” Sam pulled out his notebook and clicked a pen. “What can you tell us about him?”
“Not much to tell.” The janitor pulled a sucker from the pocket on his grey jumpsuit and peeled the wrapped off before popping it in his mouth. He dug back in his pocket again and pulled out another one, offering it to Harry.
“Thanks,” Harry said, like they lived in a world where he should accept candy from strangers.
Christ.
“The guy was kind of a dick,” Gabe explained in a slight drawl. “Always walking around thinking he was some big shot because he wrote a book. Pft, even I could write a book. I’m just surprised his big head fit through the window to jump.”
“Were you working the night he died?” Dean asked.
“Sure was.” Gabe smiled lazily. “I saw him go upstairs with a lovely young lady, one who was not his wife if you get my hint, and then I found his body when I left. Whoooo, splat.”
Dean snorted quietly. “What time did his guest leave?”
“Hmm…” Gabe shrugged. “I’m not sure I remember even seeing her leave.”
Sam asked to see the office and the janitor led them up to the fourth floor where the guy took a nosedive from. Random chick aside, Dean felt good about it being a suicide.
Dude probably cheated on his wife, got caught by someone. The chick left, the dude jumped. It was a cowards way out of a scandal, but not their kinda case.
“If you gents need me I’ll be napping in a broom closet,” Gabe said cheerfully after letting them in the office. “Lock up behind you, will ya?”
“Being a janitor seems like an easy job,” Harry commented once they were alone. He held up the sucker the dude gave him. “Just hand out candy and mop up dead bodies? I could do that.”
“You’re not becoming a janitor,” Dean scoffed. He pulled his EMF reader from his jacket pocket and tilted his head for Harry to get closer to see how it worked. “This reads for ghost residue.”
“Dude, no.” Sam snatched the EMF reader and began tuning the dials. “Harry, this measures the intensity and frequency of electromagnetic radiation in the environment.”
“That’s basically what I said,” Dean said, just to rattle Sam up.
“No, no, it’s not.”
“Whatever,” Dean said quietly, going off to do his due diligence in checking out the victim while Sam gave his geek-tech speech to Harry.
There wasn’t much to see in the office. The professor seemed like a douche, he had his own book on his shelf and when Dean flipped it open he saw the dude even autographed it.
“Jesus, no wonder that janitor was surprised his head fit out the window.” Dean put the book back and leaned against the shelf to watch Sam get nada on the EMF reader. Harry was sitting in the desk chair, shamelessly digging through the desk.
“I’ve got nothing,” Sam eventually said, sliding the antenna of the reader back in the silver machine and pocketing it. “I told you this was a bust.”
“Or was it?” Harry had been ducked down, yanking on one of the drawers of the desk, and Dean laughed out loud when Harry popped up with a clip full of cash.
“I mean… if he’s dead and we’re investigating his death, it’s like now we’re getting paid for it, right?” Harry said as he tossed the cash to Dean.
“Damn right,” Dean agreed. Dean whistled when he counted the bills, eight hundred even. “Looks like drinks are on the professor tonight.”
That… damn.
That was suspicious, actually.
Why would a dude jump out a window if he had plenty of hush money in his desk for anyone who might have busted him getting off with a student?
“We should interview the students, try and see if there’s any truth to their legends about a ghost,” Sam said. “And, no, Dean, we cannot tell the bartender that Harry’s the shortest man alive.”
“Oi! I’m not that short!” Harry cried indignantly. “I…” Harry trailed off and Dean watched as his eyes lit up with something that Dean was sure he wouldn’t like. “If I can get in the bar without the bartender noticing, can I have one drink?” he asked Sam with the most innocent puppy-dog face.
“If you can get in a bar without having Dean do it for you, I’ll buy you a drink,” Sam said confidently with his hand out to Harry. “No using your wand either.”
“Fine.”
Dean didn’t know what the kid was planning, but Dean was betting there was a plan there because Harry looked damn smug as he shook Sam’s hand.
And when Harry found Sam in the packed bar a few hours later, Dean lost his shit when Harry politely asked for a margarita.
“How?!” Sam’s eyes were buggy and he whipped his head around to make sure nobody spotted the fourteen year old leaning against the pool table like he belonged there.
“Magic,” Harry said with a shit-eating smile. “A deal’s a deal, right?”
“You cheated!” Sam cried.
Sam was a sore loser, always had been.
“The fact that I’m not being arrested right now proves I didn’t,” Harry grinned.
Sam sputtered, he turned a little red, but he finally agreed that a deal was a deal.
“Get me another beer!” Dean yelled at Sam as he stormed through the crowd, headed toward the bar.
“You didn’t use magic, did you?” Dean asked as he clapped Harry’s shoulder and passed him the pool stick Sam abandoned. Harry could take Sam’s turn and they could all screw around until the kid eventually got them booted. Sam had already talked to a couple of the college kids, more geeking out about classes than any real research (which was the entire point of the ‘case’ so Dean didn’t mind).
If Sam wanted to mingle with the other college kids in the bar, Dean could entertain himself just fine.
“I didn’t use my wand, like we agreed,” Harry said. He stuck his tongue between his teeth to line up his shot and nearly made it.
“You use Sirius as a distraction?” Dean asked, already stepping up for his turn.
“Nope.” Harry grinned to himself about whatever he pulled to get in the bar. “I can’t tell you in case you want to make a bet later about places you think I can’t get to.”
Fair enough, Dean couldn’t fault that logic. If Harry wasn’t doing anything to get hurt, and the kid looked too amused to have been hurt for even a second, then Dean could let him keep his little secret.
Dean had the table nearly cleaned up by the time Sam made it back to them with drinks.
“Don’t get caught,” Sam said grumpily when he gave Harry the pinkest frozen drink Dean had ever seen.
Sam might have paid up and ordered Harry a margarita, but Dean would bet Baby that Sam made it a virgin drink.
“I’m going to try and find out more about that professor before Dean Junior gets us booted,” Sam told Dean, his eyes wandering to a group of guys his age.
Unless Sammy decided to double his odds of getting laid by chasing tail and skirt alike, Dean figured the group of polo-wearing, IPA-sipping dudes were the university versions of Sam Winchester. Sam probably wanted to ask a few standard questions about the case and then get his geek on with his people.
“Go get em, tiger,” Dean said with an obvious wink that made Sam scowl.
“Grow up,” Sam muttered.
“I think your plan’s working,” Harry commented when Sam was out of hearing range. Harry missed his next shot and all that was left was for Dean to call it and sink the eight ball.
“I told you he just needed something new to distract him,” Dean said. He pointed the pool stick at a pocket. When he made the shot, he checked Harry over quickly.
The kid was young, yeah, but he was a Winchester and that meant he looked like a natural in the bar. Harry had on a black t-shirt, a… Dean tilted his head at the blue checkered flannel Harry wore. Was that his? It didn’t matter, it looked good on Harry, a bit baggy, but good. Dean just didn’t know when the kid went pilfering through his closet.
“Let’s see.” Dean tossed his stick on the table then ruffled Harry’s hair around, making it even messier than before but in a way that worked for him. “There you go,” Dean grinned. “Now you’re ready.”
“Ready?” Harry looked nervous all of a sudden, which meant his instincts were excellent. “Ready for what?”
“It’s time to learn the most important lesson I can teach you.” Dean laid his arm around Harry’s shoulders and let his eyes search the bar, finding a good mark. There were a few chicks that caught Dean’s eye and smiled, perfectly willing, but Dean wanted someone that would make him work for it. Dean didn’t want someone who would actually try taking his kid brother home and making him a man, but someone who would humor him some and boost Harry’s confidence.
There was a chick at a tall corner table, just Harry’s type too, Dean figured. She had long brown curls, sexy black glasses, and her face was hidden in a book.
“Alright, listen, you’re shooting for the moon here,” Dean told Harry as he began steering him toward the table where the chick sat. A few people paused when they noticed Harry clearly wasn’t meant to be there, but if there was one thing that could be counted on it was that drunk college kids didn’t care about anything.
“Dean, she’s - you’re not serious,” Harry hissed and blushed hard when he realized where Dean was headed. “She’s not going to want bothered!”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Dean assured him. “See how she’s sitting? One leg stretched out? She’s just shy and hiding it behind her book. So here’s the plan…”
Harry wasn’t going to go home with some college girl; Dean just wanted both of his brothers to chill and end the night on a good note. If it meant Dean wasn’t going to take anyone out of the bar himself, well, that was just the kind of sacrifice he had to make as the oldest brother.
“Hey, sweetheart.” Dean propped an elbow on the table where the chick sat. He leaned in too close, let his eyes linger on her chest a moment too long. “You wanna get out of here?”
“Uh… no.” The girl pushed her glasses up and looked at Dean as if he were a slug. “Thanks anyway for the super romantic offer.”
“You want romance? I can do romance,” Dean smirked. “So, what? You want flowers or some shit? Poems about your…” Dean was pushing it when he looked at her chest again. “Eyes?”
“Ew! Go away!” The girl scowled hard at Dean. If Dean was actually trying, it might be a different story, but he was just giving his little brother a chance to see how entertaining an evening of flirting with pretty women could be.
“Hey, I’m just—”
“Hey!” Harry dove in just as they rehearsed and then pushed Dean a hell of a lot harder than they rehearsed.
“She said she’s not interested,” Harry snapped at Dean. “Take a hunt.”
The kid wasn’t exactly nailing his lines, but he had the spirit! He also had a blush redder than any ripe tomato, but it was dark enough that the chick might not notice.
“Woah, calm down, Junior,” Dean scoffed, holding his hands up harmlessly. “What are you? Her baby brother?”
“I’m someone who can listen when a lady says no,” Harry said. “Why don’t you piss off, mate?”
Ooh, Harry was pulling out the accent, it was a slick move. Dean made a show of rolling his eyes and stalking off, just to chill behind a wall so he could eavesdrop.
“I’m Harry,” he heard Harry say. He sounded a little shy, but he was doing better than Sam the first time Dean tried to teach him how to flirt.
“Natalie,” the chick replied. “Aren’t you a little young to be here?”
“Would you believe me if I told you I used magic to get inside?”
‘Natalie’ laughed and Dean raised his beer in a silent toast.
With both brothers distracted for a while, Dean made his way back to the second love of his life… the pool table.
And when Dean saw Harry getting escorted to the door by a waitress not much later, Dean laughed without thinking about it and followed the kid out the door.