SPN Fic - Sam and Dean Do Barnes & Noble, or Why You Should Judge a Book By Its Cover (gen, PG-13)
Title: Sam and Dean Do Barnes & Noble, or Why You Should Judge a Book By Its Cover
Pairing: Gen
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Strange things are happening in a nearby Barnes & Noble, so Sam and Dean investigate.
Notes: This is all indysaur 's fault, first for pointing out how hilarious the idea of Sam and Dean in a Barnes & Noble was, and then for poking me to write fic about it. What can I say? I'm easily suggestible and desperate to avoid my thesis.
Disclaimer: I don't own the Winchesters or the Barnes & Noble franchise. I suppose I'm responsible for the awfulness of the title and the ridiculousness of the plot, but I'm going to blame it on a lack of sleep.
"You're kidding me, right?"
"You got a better idea?"
"I've got a million better ideas," Dean says. "Even getting a Brazilian wax would be a better idea, just because it does not involve spending ten hours of my life in a bookstore."
"They're just books, Dean," Sam says, closing the laptop. "They won't bite. And no one is going to force you to read."
"Exactly. So I'll spend the entire time bored out of my mind."
"I'm not exactly thrilled about it either," Sam starts to say, but Dean cuts him off with a disbelieving huff.
"Yeah, right. Thousands of books and nothing to do but read? It's like a geek nirvana."
And yeah, okay, he's not totally wrong. The only reading material Sam's had lately is Dad's journal and one of Bobby's books on demonic symbology he found in the trunk, and neither are exactly pleasure reads. And even though the time he spent in the library at Stanford was usually devoted to writing hellish papers or pulling all-nighters studying for exams, he does sort of miss it. Not cramming for a test, but the feeling of being surrounded by books, by so much knowledge and history.
But he's not letting his personal feelings get in the way of the case - this is the best plan they have. They'd wasted a kelpie in a nearby lake the other night, and after showering to get sand and seaweed out of sensitive places, Dean had flipped on the TV. Sam had tuned it out, looking for their next job on the laptop, but among the mindless noise he caught a word that made him motion to Dean to turn the volume up. It was a local news broadcast, and the reporter was interviewing a young woman about a supposed ghost in a Barnes & Noble. According to the woman, the lights had started flickering the night before, just after closing, and a wind had started up in the store, sending books flying off the shelves. The only injuries were a few bruises and papercuts, "but a thesaurus nearly put Jason's eye out," the woman told the reporter earnestly.
They spent the next morning doing research, but everything came up clean - the building, the land, even the stores surrounding it. The only thing remotely possible was that the previous inhabitants of the land might be pissed to find a chain bookstore on their former home, but since the acres had belonged to a pig farm, it didn't seem very likely. So Sam had suggested they go to the store, talk to the employees, and, if need be, stake it out.
"Look, if nothing happens all day, we can go straight to a bar afterwards," Sam promises. "You can kill off any brain cells that might have absorbed a hint of knowledge. I'll buy."
The offer doesn't make Dean any more enthusiastic about spending all day in a bookstore, but it gets them into the car and on the road.
* * *
At the store, they find the woman who was interviewed on the news. Her name is Lindsey, she's a manager, and she answers all Dean's questions politely without taking her eyes off Sam. Dean keeps pressing her, but again they come up with nothing - no weird occurrences, no disgruntled employees, nothing. They thank Lindsay for her help. "Let me know if you need help finding anything!" she calls after them.
"Yeah, I bet she's got a couple recommendations for you," Dean mutters.
"Jealous?"
"I'm really not," Dean says. "Sitting around discussing existential angst in postmodern poetry is really not my idea of a good time. I'd rather just eat the peach."
Sam isn't sure what to be more disturbed by, that Dean knows and can paraphrase T.S. Eliot, or that he can make even a line of poetry sound dirty.
Dean pulls the EMF meter out of his jacket and switches it on, keeping it tucked near his side as they walk the perimeter of the store. They take a wandering path through the interior after that, winding through aisles and around displays, but not so much as a blink comes up. After one more circuit, Dean sighs and shuts it off. "Stakeout time?"
They split up, and Sam finds himself in the store's extensive self-help section. He's not really looking for anything in particular, since he doesn't think any of his problems fall into the neat categories labeled on the shelves. Weight loss and less stress and a better sex life sound nice, but they won't prevent a demonic destiny, so until Barnes & Noble branches out and adds an Occult department, Sam's pretty much out of luck. He does flip through a few books, though, since he's got time and all. He's considering cleansing his chakras, doing a little meditation, redirecting his chi, and maybe even taking a healing journey in his mind - finding his inner sanctuary couldn't hurt - when Dean comes up behind him and says, "Sammy, what did I tell you? Yoga is never the answer."
Sam closes the book with a sigh, turning around to face his brother. "Bored already?"
"Completely."
"Let me guess - you already looked at everything on cars and guns."
"At least what I was reading was useful for our job," Dean retorts. "Not some lame yuppie toe-touching."
Sam's on the verge of arguing that yoga is not lame, it promotes spiritual healing, and if anyone could stand to work on their karma, it's them - but he's pretty sure he's too tall and inflexible to do any of the poses anyway, so he lets it go. "Come on," he says instead, pushing Dean toward a pair of armchairs chairs in the corner.
"What are we doing?" Dean asks.
"I'm going to read," Sam says. "You can...I don't know, people-watch or take a nap or something."
"I'm not going to take a nap on a stakeout, Sam," Dean says disapprovingly, but he consents to people-watching.
Sam congratulates himself on an excellent idea and settles down to read, but after a minute he hears Dean laugh softly and whisper, "Eleven o'clock, Sammy."
Sam looks up to find a curvy brunette bending down to reach a book on the bottom shelf, her miniskirt living up to its name and completely failing to cover her ass. "When I said people-watching, Dean, I didn't mean checking out girls."
"It's the same thing," Dean says. "Whatever, you're just - " But at that moment a redhead with a lowcut shirt and impressive assets strolls by, and Dean doesn't bother to finish his thought, following after her like she's got him on a leash.
He comes back a few minutes later, and grins as he shows Sam her number written on a scrap of paper. It's tucked inside a paperback with a half-naked couple clutching each other on the cover, which Dean proudly tells Sam the woman recommended.
"You should read one of these," Dean says when Sam looks less than impressed. "You can pick up a lot of great tips."
One of Jess's friends at Stanford had been addicted to romance novels of the same sort, and Sam and Jess had paged through one once, reading bits aloud in fake voices and cracking up until they couldn't take it anymore. "Right," Sam says, "because they're so realistic. There's probably twenty pages of plot in the whole thing, and the rest is just over-the-top porn."
"Exactly," Dean says. "Dude, chicks write these for other chicks. It's like a bible of what women find hot."
Sam still can't agree, remembering passages devoted to bronze, burnished chests and milky, heaving bosoms that had been more hilarious than hot, but he shrugs and goes back to his book.
Dean takes this as a challenge and starts reading sex scenes aloud, complete with falsetto and orgasmic noises. Sam ignores him at first, but after the third time Alexandros's throbbing member comes near Francesca's "woman's secrets," whatever the fuck that's supposed to mean, Sam makes him stop before the entire store gets an unwanted sex education. There are children around, after all, and they shouldn't be learning that a power outage stopping the elevator is an excuse to have animalistic sex with your coworker, even if you're both secretly in love but too stupid to know it.
Dean shuts up for a while, but it's not long before he becomes completely absorbed in the book and starts yelling at the characters. "Come on, lady, you can't let him treat you like that. You're the mother of his illegitimate twins, for god's sake. Stand up to him!" A few minutes later, it's "What, you're a Greek billionaire tycoon but you can't afford some manners? Give me a break." And near the end of the book, Dean says, "Of course he loves you, you idiot. That whole thing about getting married because he has "needs" and you wanted money was just because he's emotionally unavailable and you're too insecure. Stop having sex all over the place and just talk to each other!"
"Okay, I'm officially weirded out," Sam says conversationally. "So I'm going to go get some coffee and pretend like I don't know you for a while."
"Bring me back a latte, bitch," Dean says without looking up.
* * *
It takes Sam twenty minutes to get the coffee, thanks to a hyperactive barista who slapped the drinks down so fast that the bewildered patrons couldn't keep track of what was whose, and when he comes back Dean's not where he left him.
Normally this wouldn't be a problem, but this particular Barnes & Noble happens to be connected to a mall, and Sam learned early on in life that Dean can never be allowed to wander shopping malls unsupervised, especially when there's a food court to entice him.
But being ridiculously tall is actually an advantage in a store where he can see over the shelves, and Sam spots a familiar head in the children's section a few minutes later. Dean is sprawled on a beanbag, another book in hand, and Sam feels a grin spread over his face as he takes in the lightning bolt font on the cover.
"What're you reading?"
Dean jolts in surprise, shoving the book behind him, then goes for an unconcerned shrug. "Nothing. Some kid told me it was his favorite book, so I was checking it out, that's all."
"Any good?" Sam asks, handing him the latte and keeping a straight face by sheer willpower alone.
"It was okay," Dean replies nonchalantly. "You know, if you're into that kind of fantasy stuff - magic wands and spells and evil wizards. You'd probably like it."
Sam's not about to pass up an opportunity like this, not with so much mocking potential handed to him neatly wrapped, but before he can say anything the lights start to flicker.
A murmur goes up among the patrons as people look up from browsing and chatting. An employee starts to make an announcement, urging the customers to leave the store in an orderly fashion and not panic, or whatever the employee handbook advises for random supernatural occurrences, but his voice is soon drowned out by the rising wind. It starts out as just a stiff breeze, flipping magazine covers and fluttering pages, but it quickly intensifies into a swirling gale.
Panicked shoppers are starting to scream as small objects take flight, and Dean yells "Get down! Everybody take cover!" but his voice is barely audible over the howling wind. Sam grabs Dean and they duck around the edges of bookshelves, keeping low, trying to reach the center of the store where the storm seems worst. They make it halfway there, ducking flying objects and batting loose papers out of their eyes, before an entire shelf of cookbooks comes at their heads and they have to dive behind a table to avoid being brained.
Dean pulls the EMF meter out of his pocket from the ground, showing it to Sam - now it's lit up like a Christmas tree, every light glowing. Dean says something totally inaudible over the rushing wind, but Sam can imagine what it is, given what's going through his head right now - stupid goddamn spirits, why can't they ever just work through their anger in a constructive way? Well, all right, Dean's version probably contains a bit more invective and less helpful suggestions than that, but still, same difference.
Sam starts to get up, hoping the spirit will manifest so they can get some idea of what the hell it wants, but a group of calendars in attack formation come flying straight at his jugular, and he barely drops in time, feeling their edges slice through the air just above his head. Okay, time for a new plan. He crawls to the table Dean is huddled under and grabs his brother by the collar, dragging them both down an aisle to the information desk. They take cover behind the sturdy wood, trying to catch their breath as books smack into walls with alarming force around them. Dean makes one last attempt to see the spirit, but he ducks down again after less than a second, and before his head is even below the counter a set of books on tape are shattering against the wall behind them. After that, it's pretty clear that their only options are to take cover and wait this one out.
It doesn't take long, surprisingly. Maybe the spirit could only maintain the wind for so long, or maybe she just had a short attention span; either way, the wind starts to die down a few minutes later, tapering off to a light breeze within seconds. When the roaring in his ears subsides enough to allow speech, Sam calls, "Dean?"
A head pokes up from under a pile of Janet Evanovich books, and neon paperbacks cascade off Dean's shoulders as he sits up. "Yep, fine. You?"
Sam's got what looks like most of the classics section on his lap, but he shoves aside a layer of Austen and gets to his knees. "Fine."
Dean smirks at him suddenly, and Sam looks down at himself automatically, but sees nothing. "What?"
"Just your hair," Dean says, waving a hand at it. "That's a great look for you."
Sam rakes a hand through it, expecting a wind-tousled mess, but comes up with a handful of Lord of the Rings bookmarks instead. Dean doesn't stop laughing even after Sam chucks The Picture of Dorian Grey at his head.
They climb over the counter to survey the damage. Most of the customers are all right, thankfully, only bumps and bruises to show for their trauma, although one guy's got a divot in his forehead where a pen came flying at top speed. Lindsey shows up, looking a bit bedraggled, and starts herding people out of the store.
Sam and Dean take the opportunity to search the place once more, but other than the wreckage of several hundred books, there's nothing to find. There is an area that was clearly hit harder than the rest, a set of bare shelves and books spread around them in a wide radius, like a tornado touched down, and that's where Lindsey finds them. "Hey, you guys have to leave, too. We're closing the store."
"Yeah, okay," Dean says. "But first I've got a question for you. What section is this?"
Lindsey blinks, but answers, "The bargain section. Stuff that's marked down to a lower price, the dollar table, all that." She bends to pick up a splayed hardcover, cradling the broken spine in her hands as if she can heal it.
"Uh huh," Dean says, circling the shelves. "And was this where the worst damage was last time, too?"
"Yeah," Lindsey says. "How did you - "
"Just a hunch," Sam answers for his brother. "Lindsey, is there anything in the store that - wait a minute." A tiny paperback catches his eye, wedged into the corner on the bottom of a shelf. It's a book of poetry by a Lurlene Finkenbinder, with a picture of a truly ugly cat on the cover. "Do you know anything about this book?"
Lindsey frowns at it. "That's so weird. I've never seen that book before this week - we don't even stock it, never have. But it was the only book left on the shelf after the last windstorm, too."
Dean takes the book and makes a face, though Sam can't tell if it's at the cat, the woman's name, or the fact that it's poetry. "If you don't stock it, where did it come from?"
"Probably a customer special-ordered it, and then never picked it up," Lindsey says, taking the book from Dean. "I don't blame them - it's an entire book of poetry about this woman's sexually confused cat. It's seriously weird. I found it stuffed behind another book last week, so I marked it a dollar and put it over here."
"Do cats even have sexualities?" Dean wonders.
"I don't know," Lindsey says. "I only read a few poems. When I got to the haiku about how the cat was lusting after its brother, I had to stop." She hands it back to Dean, who gives the cat on the cover a raised eyebrow.
"You marked it down last week?" Sam clarifies. "A few days before the first windstorm?"
"Yeah. Come to think of it," Lindsay says thoughtfully, tilting her head, "that's almost exactly when the lights flickered for the first time, too."
Dean looks at the book, then Sam, eyebrows raised. Sam shrugs. It's something to go on, at least.
"Lindsey, this might sound weird," Dean begins. "But if we can use your Internet for five minutes, we might be able to solve your problem."
* * *
It's more like ten minutes, but Lindsey doesn't mind. She peers over Sam's shoulder as he searches the Web and listens attentively to his explanation of spiritual remains. Lurlene Finkenbinder is ten years dead, according to the first hit on Sam's google search, but she lived in Tennessee, which makes it unlikely she's buried anywhere nearby. Luckily, Finkenbinder is an unusual enough name that there's only one listing in her hometown, and a quick check of a white pages site yields a number.
Dean wanders a few feet away as he dials, and Lindsey takes the opportunity to slide her chair closer to Sam's. "So this is what you guys do, huh?"
"It's kind of a hobby," Sam lies, clicking on another website. "You know, just something we do in our spare time. For fun."
"Wow," Lindsey says. "How'd you get started? Because my job gets really boring sometimes, and I'd love a new hobby."
Sam pretends to be engrossed in the page he's reading, but at that moment an ad for a dating site pops up in lurid color. Awkward.
Thankfully, Dean returns to the table a second later. "Dead end," he reports, and Lindsey snorts at the pun, then covers her mouth.
"Where's she buried?" Sam asks, but Dean shrugs.
"Dude, it's anybody's best guess where the old gal is now. They scattered her ashes to the wind after the funeral, so she could be in the jet stream for all we know."
"But she's cremated," Sam points out. "So something else must be keeping her here."
"I asked about any possessions she was particularly fond of, but her husband said the only thing she loved was that cat," Dean replies.
"You don't think...?"
"No, the cat died before she did. I checked."
"So what, then?" Sam asks, completely frustrated. "It can't be the book, she probably never even touched that. Are you sure she didn't - "
"Actually," Lindsey pipes up, "The book might make sense."
At their questioning looks, she elaborated, "You know, in a sort of Shakespearian way where the poems are a part of herself that lives on forever. Ink as blood, all that."
Dean looks just as surprised as Sam does that they've never heard of that, but it does make a weird amount of sense. More than the cat, anyway. Dean shrugs. "Salt and burn?"
* * *
They go outside to do it, both because the store is filled with flammable debris and because Lindsey says she can't bear to watch. It's the lamest salt-and-burn they've ever done, kneeling on the sidewalk in the sunlight, but a slight breeze does come up, ruffling Sam's hair as they watch the edges of the book brown and curl, and that's better than nothing. They salt the ashes again for good measure, then dump them in the trash.
Lindsey thanks them with a handful of gift cards she dug up, and promises they'll get the preferred member discount for the rest of their lives. She asks for Sam's email to register them for another rewards program, but the blush across her cheeks suggests an ulterior motive. Sam writes it down anyway, telling Lindsey to let them know if anything else happens. Dean smirks and adds "Or if you need any tips on your new hobby. Sam here's a great tutor," slinging an arm around his shoulders. Sam elbows Dean, but gives Lindsey a half-hearted nod as they leave.
As soon as they're out the doors, Dean turns his face up to the sun and sighs happily. "Ah, fresh air. Fresh, book-free air."
"Whatever," Sam says, heading for the car. "You read more than me in there. And stop acting like such a book-phobe. Being illiterate is neither manly nor tough."
"I disagree," Dean says. "For reference, see every pro wrestler since...ever."
Sam rolls his eyes, but doesn't argue.
"And besides," Dean goes on, "I think I have a right to be afraid of books now. You promised they wouldn't hurt me, you liar."
"I also promised to take you out for a beer," Sam reminds him. "And your whining is making me want to take it back."
Dean shuts up, shoving Sam to make him walk faster.
They climb into the Impala. Sam pretends not to notice the box set of Harry Potter novels Dean shoves under the front seat.
Pairing: Gen
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Strange things are happening in a nearby Barnes & Noble, so Sam and Dean investigate.
Notes: This is all indysaur 's fault, first for pointing out how hilarious the idea of Sam and Dean in a Barnes & Noble was, and then for poking me to write fic about it. What can I say? I'm easily suggestible and desperate to avoid my thesis.
Disclaimer: I don't own the Winchesters or the Barnes & Noble franchise. I suppose I'm responsible for the awfulness of the title and the ridiculousness of the plot, but I'm going to blame it on a lack of sleep.
"You're kidding me, right?"
"You got a better idea?"
"I've got a million better ideas," Dean says. "Even getting a Brazilian wax would be a better idea, just because it does not involve spending ten hours of my life in a bookstore."
"They're just books, Dean," Sam says, closing the laptop. "They won't bite. And no one is going to force you to read."
"Exactly. So I'll spend the entire time bored out of my mind."
"I'm not exactly thrilled about it either," Sam starts to say, but Dean cuts him off with a disbelieving huff.
"Yeah, right. Thousands of books and nothing to do but read? It's like a geek nirvana."
And yeah, okay, he's not totally wrong. The only reading material Sam's had lately is Dad's journal and one of Bobby's books on demonic symbology he found in the trunk, and neither are exactly pleasure reads. And even though the time he spent in the library at Stanford was usually devoted to writing hellish papers or pulling all-nighters studying for exams, he does sort of miss it. Not cramming for a test, but the feeling of being surrounded by books, by so much knowledge and history.
But he's not letting his personal feelings get in the way of the case - this is the best plan they have. They'd wasted a kelpie in a nearby lake the other night, and after showering to get sand and seaweed out of sensitive places, Dean had flipped on the TV. Sam had tuned it out, looking for their next job on the laptop, but among the mindless noise he caught a word that made him motion to Dean to turn the volume up. It was a local news broadcast, and the reporter was interviewing a young woman about a supposed ghost in a Barnes & Noble. According to the woman, the lights had started flickering the night before, just after closing, and a wind had started up in the store, sending books flying off the shelves. The only injuries were a few bruises and papercuts, "but a thesaurus nearly put Jason's eye out," the woman told the reporter earnestly.
They spent the next morning doing research, but everything came up clean - the building, the land, even the stores surrounding it. The only thing remotely possible was that the previous inhabitants of the land might be pissed to find a chain bookstore on their former home, but since the acres had belonged to a pig farm, it didn't seem very likely. So Sam had suggested they go to the store, talk to the employees, and, if need be, stake it out.
"Look, if nothing happens all day, we can go straight to a bar afterwards," Sam promises. "You can kill off any brain cells that might have absorbed a hint of knowledge. I'll buy."
The offer doesn't make Dean any more enthusiastic about spending all day in a bookstore, but it gets them into the car and on the road.
* * *
At the store, they find the woman who was interviewed on the news. Her name is Lindsey, she's a manager, and she answers all Dean's questions politely without taking her eyes off Sam. Dean keeps pressing her, but again they come up with nothing - no weird occurrences, no disgruntled employees, nothing. They thank Lindsay for her help. "Let me know if you need help finding anything!" she calls after them.
"Yeah, I bet she's got a couple recommendations for you," Dean mutters.
"Jealous?"
"I'm really not," Dean says. "Sitting around discussing existential angst in postmodern poetry is really not my idea of a good time. I'd rather just eat the peach."
Sam isn't sure what to be more disturbed by, that Dean knows and can paraphrase T.S. Eliot, or that he can make even a line of poetry sound dirty.
Dean pulls the EMF meter out of his jacket and switches it on, keeping it tucked near his side as they walk the perimeter of the store. They take a wandering path through the interior after that, winding through aisles and around displays, but not so much as a blink comes up. After one more circuit, Dean sighs and shuts it off. "Stakeout time?"
They split up, and Sam finds himself in the store's extensive self-help section. He's not really looking for anything in particular, since he doesn't think any of his problems fall into the neat categories labeled on the shelves. Weight loss and less stress and a better sex life sound nice, but they won't prevent a demonic destiny, so until Barnes & Noble branches out and adds an Occult department, Sam's pretty much out of luck. He does flip through a few books, though, since he's got time and all. He's considering cleansing his chakras, doing a little meditation, redirecting his chi, and maybe even taking a healing journey in his mind - finding his inner sanctuary couldn't hurt - when Dean comes up behind him and says, "Sammy, what did I tell you? Yoga is never the answer."
Sam closes the book with a sigh, turning around to face his brother. "Bored already?"
"Completely."
"Let me guess - you already looked at everything on cars and guns."
"At least what I was reading was useful for our job," Dean retorts. "Not some lame yuppie toe-touching."
Sam's on the verge of arguing that yoga is not lame, it promotes spiritual healing, and if anyone could stand to work on their karma, it's them - but he's pretty sure he's too tall and inflexible to do any of the poses anyway, so he lets it go. "Come on," he says instead, pushing Dean toward a pair of armchairs chairs in the corner.
"What are we doing?" Dean asks.
"I'm going to read," Sam says. "You can...I don't know, people-watch or take a nap or something."
"I'm not going to take a nap on a stakeout, Sam," Dean says disapprovingly, but he consents to people-watching.
Sam congratulates himself on an excellent idea and settles down to read, but after a minute he hears Dean laugh softly and whisper, "Eleven o'clock, Sammy."
Sam looks up to find a curvy brunette bending down to reach a book on the bottom shelf, her miniskirt living up to its name and completely failing to cover her ass. "When I said people-watching, Dean, I didn't mean checking out girls."
"It's the same thing," Dean says. "Whatever, you're just - " But at that moment a redhead with a lowcut shirt and impressive assets strolls by, and Dean doesn't bother to finish his thought, following after her like she's got him on a leash.
He comes back a few minutes later, and grins as he shows Sam her number written on a scrap of paper. It's tucked inside a paperback with a half-naked couple clutching each other on the cover, which Dean proudly tells Sam the woman recommended.
"You should read one of these," Dean says when Sam looks less than impressed. "You can pick up a lot of great tips."
One of Jess's friends at Stanford had been addicted to romance novels of the same sort, and Sam and Jess had paged through one once, reading bits aloud in fake voices and cracking up until they couldn't take it anymore. "Right," Sam says, "because they're so realistic. There's probably twenty pages of plot in the whole thing, and the rest is just over-the-top porn."
"Exactly," Dean says. "Dude, chicks write these for other chicks. It's like a bible of what women find hot."
Sam still can't agree, remembering passages devoted to bronze, burnished chests and milky, heaving bosoms that had been more hilarious than hot, but he shrugs and goes back to his book.
Dean takes this as a challenge and starts reading sex scenes aloud, complete with falsetto and orgasmic noises. Sam ignores him at first, but after the third time Alexandros's throbbing member comes near Francesca's "woman's secrets," whatever the fuck that's supposed to mean, Sam makes him stop before the entire store gets an unwanted sex education. There are children around, after all, and they shouldn't be learning that a power outage stopping the elevator is an excuse to have animalistic sex with your coworker, even if you're both secretly in love but too stupid to know it.
Dean shuts up for a while, but it's not long before he becomes completely absorbed in the book and starts yelling at the characters. "Come on, lady, you can't let him treat you like that. You're the mother of his illegitimate twins, for god's sake. Stand up to him!" A few minutes later, it's "What, you're a Greek billionaire tycoon but you can't afford some manners? Give me a break." And near the end of the book, Dean says, "Of course he loves you, you idiot. That whole thing about getting married because he has "needs" and you wanted money was just because he's emotionally unavailable and you're too insecure. Stop having sex all over the place and just talk to each other!"
"Okay, I'm officially weirded out," Sam says conversationally. "So I'm going to go get some coffee and pretend like I don't know you for a while."
"Bring me back a latte, bitch," Dean says without looking up.
* * *
It takes Sam twenty minutes to get the coffee, thanks to a hyperactive barista who slapped the drinks down so fast that the bewildered patrons couldn't keep track of what was whose, and when he comes back Dean's not where he left him.
Normally this wouldn't be a problem, but this particular Barnes & Noble happens to be connected to a mall, and Sam learned early on in life that Dean can never be allowed to wander shopping malls unsupervised, especially when there's a food court to entice him.
But being ridiculously tall is actually an advantage in a store where he can see over the shelves, and Sam spots a familiar head in the children's section a few minutes later. Dean is sprawled on a beanbag, another book in hand, and Sam feels a grin spread over his face as he takes in the lightning bolt font on the cover.
"What're you reading?"
Dean jolts in surprise, shoving the book behind him, then goes for an unconcerned shrug. "Nothing. Some kid told me it was his favorite book, so I was checking it out, that's all."
"Any good?" Sam asks, handing him the latte and keeping a straight face by sheer willpower alone.
"It was okay," Dean replies nonchalantly. "You know, if you're into that kind of fantasy stuff - magic wands and spells and evil wizards. You'd probably like it."
Sam's not about to pass up an opportunity like this, not with so much mocking potential handed to him neatly wrapped, but before he can say anything the lights start to flicker.
A murmur goes up among the patrons as people look up from browsing and chatting. An employee starts to make an announcement, urging the customers to leave the store in an orderly fashion and not panic, or whatever the employee handbook advises for random supernatural occurrences, but his voice is soon drowned out by the rising wind. It starts out as just a stiff breeze, flipping magazine covers and fluttering pages, but it quickly intensifies into a swirling gale.
Panicked shoppers are starting to scream as small objects take flight, and Dean yells "Get down! Everybody take cover!" but his voice is barely audible over the howling wind. Sam grabs Dean and they duck around the edges of bookshelves, keeping low, trying to reach the center of the store where the storm seems worst. They make it halfway there, ducking flying objects and batting loose papers out of their eyes, before an entire shelf of cookbooks comes at their heads and they have to dive behind a table to avoid being brained.
Dean pulls the EMF meter out of his pocket from the ground, showing it to Sam - now it's lit up like a Christmas tree, every light glowing. Dean says something totally inaudible over the rushing wind, but Sam can imagine what it is, given what's going through his head right now - stupid goddamn spirits, why can't they ever just work through their anger in a constructive way? Well, all right, Dean's version probably contains a bit more invective and less helpful suggestions than that, but still, same difference.
Sam starts to get up, hoping the spirit will manifest so they can get some idea of what the hell it wants, but a group of calendars in attack formation come flying straight at his jugular, and he barely drops in time, feeling their edges slice through the air just above his head. Okay, time for a new plan. He crawls to the table Dean is huddled under and grabs his brother by the collar, dragging them both down an aisle to the information desk. They take cover behind the sturdy wood, trying to catch their breath as books smack into walls with alarming force around them. Dean makes one last attempt to see the spirit, but he ducks down again after less than a second, and before his head is even below the counter a set of books on tape are shattering against the wall behind them. After that, it's pretty clear that their only options are to take cover and wait this one out.
It doesn't take long, surprisingly. Maybe the spirit could only maintain the wind for so long, or maybe she just had a short attention span; either way, the wind starts to die down a few minutes later, tapering off to a light breeze within seconds. When the roaring in his ears subsides enough to allow speech, Sam calls, "Dean?"
A head pokes up from under a pile of Janet Evanovich books, and neon paperbacks cascade off Dean's shoulders as he sits up. "Yep, fine. You?"
Sam's got what looks like most of the classics section on his lap, but he shoves aside a layer of Austen and gets to his knees. "Fine."
Dean smirks at him suddenly, and Sam looks down at himself automatically, but sees nothing. "What?"
"Just your hair," Dean says, waving a hand at it. "That's a great look for you."
Sam rakes a hand through it, expecting a wind-tousled mess, but comes up with a handful of Lord of the Rings bookmarks instead. Dean doesn't stop laughing even after Sam chucks The Picture of Dorian Grey at his head.
They climb over the counter to survey the damage. Most of the customers are all right, thankfully, only bumps and bruises to show for their trauma, although one guy's got a divot in his forehead where a pen came flying at top speed. Lindsey shows up, looking a bit bedraggled, and starts herding people out of the store.
Sam and Dean take the opportunity to search the place once more, but other than the wreckage of several hundred books, there's nothing to find. There is an area that was clearly hit harder than the rest, a set of bare shelves and books spread around them in a wide radius, like a tornado touched down, and that's where Lindsey finds them. "Hey, you guys have to leave, too. We're closing the store."
"Yeah, okay," Dean says. "But first I've got a question for you. What section is this?"
Lindsey blinks, but answers, "The bargain section. Stuff that's marked down to a lower price, the dollar table, all that." She bends to pick up a splayed hardcover, cradling the broken spine in her hands as if she can heal it.
"Uh huh," Dean says, circling the shelves. "And was this where the worst damage was last time, too?"
"Yeah," Lindsey says. "How did you - "
"Just a hunch," Sam answers for his brother. "Lindsey, is there anything in the store that - wait a minute." A tiny paperback catches his eye, wedged into the corner on the bottom of a shelf. It's a book of poetry by a Lurlene Finkenbinder, with a picture of a truly ugly cat on the cover. "Do you know anything about this book?"
Lindsey frowns at it. "That's so weird. I've never seen that book before this week - we don't even stock it, never have. But it was the only book left on the shelf after the last windstorm, too."
Dean takes the book and makes a face, though Sam can't tell if it's at the cat, the woman's name, or the fact that it's poetry. "If you don't stock it, where did it come from?"
"Probably a customer special-ordered it, and then never picked it up," Lindsey says, taking the book from Dean. "I don't blame them - it's an entire book of poetry about this woman's sexually confused cat. It's seriously weird. I found it stuffed behind another book last week, so I marked it a dollar and put it over here."
"Do cats even have sexualities?" Dean wonders.
"I don't know," Lindsey says. "I only read a few poems. When I got to the haiku about how the cat was lusting after its brother, I had to stop." She hands it back to Dean, who gives the cat on the cover a raised eyebrow.
"You marked it down last week?" Sam clarifies. "A few days before the first windstorm?"
"Yeah. Come to think of it," Lindsay says thoughtfully, tilting her head, "that's almost exactly when the lights flickered for the first time, too."
Dean looks at the book, then Sam, eyebrows raised. Sam shrugs. It's something to go on, at least.
"Lindsey, this might sound weird," Dean begins. "But if we can use your Internet for five minutes, we might be able to solve your problem."
* * *
It's more like ten minutes, but Lindsey doesn't mind. She peers over Sam's shoulder as he searches the Web and listens attentively to his explanation of spiritual remains. Lurlene Finkenbinder is ten years dead, according to the first hit on Sam's google search, but she lived in Tennessee, which makes it unlikely she's buried anywhere nearby. Luckily, Finkenbinder is an unusual enough name that there's only one listing in her hometown, and a quick check of a white pages site yields a number.
Dean wanders a few feet away as he dials, and Lindsey takes the opportunity to slide her chair closer to Sam's. "So this is what you guys do, huh?"
"It's kind of a hobby," Sam lies, clicking on another website. "You know, just something we do in our spare time. For fun."
"Wow," Lindsey says. "How'd you get started? Because my job gets really boring sometimes, and I'd love a new hobby."
Sam pretends to be engrossed in the page he's reading, but at that moment an ad for a dating site pops up in lurid color. Awkward.
Thankfully, Dean returns to the table a second later. "Dead end," he reports, and Lindsey snorts at the pun, then covers her mouth.
"Where's she buried?" Sam asks, but Dean shrugs.
"Dude, it's anybody's best guess where the old gal is now. They scattered her ashes to the wind after the funeral, so she could be in the jet stream for all we know."
"But she's cremated," Sam points out. "So something else must be keeping her here."
"I asked about any possessions she was particularly fond of, but her husband said the only thing she loved was that cat," Dean replies.
"You don't think...?"
"No, the cat died before she did. I checked."
"So what, then?" Sam asks, completely frustrated. "It can't be the book, she probably never even touched that. Are you sure she didn't - "
"Actually," Lindsey pipes up, "The book might make sense."
At their questioning looks, she elaborated, "You know, in a sort of Shakespearian way where the poems are a part of herself that lives on forever. Ink as blood, all that."
Dean looks just as surprised as Sam does that they've never heard of that, but it does make a weird amount of sense. More than the cat, anyway. Dean shrugs. "Salt and burn?"
* * *
They go outside to do it, both because the store is filled with flammable debris and because Lindsey says she can't bear to watch. It's the lamest salt-and-burn they've ever done, kneeling on the sidewalk in the sunlight, but a slight breeze does come up, ruffling Sam's hair as they watch the edges of the book brown and curl, and that's better than nothing. They salt the ashes again for good measure, then dump them in the trash.
Lindsey thanks them with a handful of gift cards she dug up, and promises they'll get the preferred member discount for the rest of their lives. She asks for Sam's email to register them for another rewards program, but the blush across her cheeks suggests an ulterior motive. Sam writes it down anyway, telling Lindsey to let them know if anything else happens. Dean smirks and adds "Or if you need any tips on your new hobby. Sam here's a great tutor," slinging an arm around his shoulders. Sam elbows Dean, but gives Lindsey a half-hearted nod as they leave.
As soon as they're out the doors, Dean turns his face up to the sun and sighs happily. "Ah, fresh air. Fresh, book-free air."
"Whatever," Sam says, heading for the car. "You read more than me in there. And stop acting like such a book-phobe. Being illiterate is neither manly nor tough."
"I disagree," Dean says. "For reference, see every pro wrestler since...ever."
Sam rolls his eyes, but doesn't argue.
"And besides," Dean goes on, "I think I have a right to be afraid of books now. You promised they wouldn't hurt me, you liar."
"I also promised to take you out for a beer," Sam reminds him. "And your whining is making me want to take it back."
Dean shuts up, shoving Sam to make him walk faster.
They climb into the Impala. Sam pretends not to notice the box set of Harry Potter novels Dean shoves under the front seat.