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“That will be four rooms then,” the motel manager states.
Dean turns around and notices he can see Cas and Mary through the window, leaning against the Impala. He hears Sam object, ”We only need two doubles, we don’t need four,” and faces back to the reception desk.
“Those are the rules, one room per person, one person per room.”
Before Sam can make a bigger fuss about it, Dean says, “We take ’m all,” and hands over one of his fake credit cards. In return, he receives four labeled keys. Rooms 1 through 4, huh. ”So we’re the first guests today.” On top of this attempt at wit Dean throws in a wink, but going on the manager’s blank expression he is completely immune to Dean’s charms. “Well, thank you for your excellent service.” Still no hint of any emotion whatsoever, all Dean gets is a perfunctory “enjoy your stay” before the manager retreats to the office behind the reception desk.
“Do you think he’s a robo-puppet-man?”
“Dean, not everyone is willing to be charmed by you. And why did you just take four rooms?”
“Sam, we probably need the manager’s help later, no need to provoke him before we really have to. Besides, he charges less for those four rooms than we usually pay for two.”
By now Sam and Dean have reached the car. Mary must have overheard the last part of their conversation. “So I have my own room? Neat,” she says and takes the key labeled 1. Dean offers key number 2 to Sam, who takes it without further comment and follows Mary to the row of identical doors on the other side of the parking lot.
Cas gets the key to room 3. “I don’t need my own room, you know I don’t sleep. I want to stay with you and watch tv.”
“Yeah, sure you don’t want to watch me sleep?”
“That too.”
Dean smiles. “Well, nobody forces you to stay in your room, and you know where I’ll be.” He strides to the door with the 4 on it, opens it and halts on the threshold. “There might be a tv watching problem,” he says when Cas bumps into him.
“Why, is there no tv?” Cas hooks his chin over Dean’s shoulder. “We might have a room sharing problem as well, the bed is very small and there’s no chair.”
The only piece of furniture besides the bed is a tiny nightstand. There’s not even a corny painting on the wall. The room resembles a monk’s cell, that must be why it’s so cheap. Dean crosses the room to inspect what’s behind the door in the opposite wall. “At least the bathroom has a shower, hope the water’s hot.” When he turns back to the room Cas is sitting on the bed and Sam and Mary are looking in from the doorway.
“Our rooms are identical,” Mary says. “No space to discuss the case with the four of us. I think we passed a diner on the way here.”
“I could eat.” Dean perks up at the thought of food. “Anyone else up for burgers?” Cas raises his hand.
Mary found the new case by accident. They’ve come to the area to hunt a nest of vampires. Driving through town Mary noticed a "missing" poster taped to a lamp post. The missing person was last seen near the Sleep Well Motel and that seemed as good a place to stay the night as any.
Between ordering and the arrival of their food Sam puts his laptop on the table and discovers that the Sleep Well opened three weeks ago and that the last known whereabouts of two more missing persons are that exact same motel. But Sam can’t find any clue to what happened to these people. They decide to go back to the motel after dinner. Tomorrow morning, fresh and rested, Mary and Dean start working on the new case while Cas and Sam go after the vampires.
The bed is too narrow and short for two men with an average height of 6 feet to rest on comfortably. When Dean starts to fall asleep after reciprocal blowjobs, Cas moves to room 3 wearing Dean’s shirt and taking Dean’s laptop.
Dean wakes up from Cas shaking him. He grips Cas's arm and tries to pull him down. “Hey, ’sgood you’re here, was dreaming about ye, wanna -”
“Dean, you have to get up, something strange happened.”
This makes Dean sit upright. “Wait, what?”
“I heard someone calling my name from my bathroom. When I went inside the bathroom door closed by itself. I found nothing out of the ordinary in there but when I wanted to go back to my room the door opened to this room.”
“So your bathroom turned into my bathroom? Lemme put on some clothes.”
After going through bathroom doors in rooms 3 and 4 a few times, they gather that the passage Cas took was a one time deal. When Cas starts to doubt the call came from his bathroom, they check room 2. Sam isn’t in his room. Nor is Mary in hers. But their keys are and the beds look slept in.
“The car is still here, so no nocturnal food run.”
“They could have walked.”
“Cas, nobody walks three miles for a snack in the middle of the night. Or any other time. Besides, they wouldn’t leave their keys behind, you can’t get back in the room without.”
“We just did.”
“Well yeah, but using a key is way quicker than picking the lock, as you may have noticed. You know what, let’s go for a ride, see if we can find them.” Dean needs to do something.
Cas seems to notice his unrest. He embraces Dean, kisses him near his left ear and says, “We will find them. Shouldn’t we check the rest of the motel first?”
“Yeah you’re probably right.”
All the rooms are empty, just like the office, cleaning supplies closet, boiler room and tool shed. When they cross the parking lot for the third time they find the manager. He's opening the left front door of the Impala.
It only takes tying him to one of the office chairs and carrying out the holy water, salt and silver tests to make the manager talk. He’s human, his name is Pete, they’re not supposed to be here, he was going to move the car to a hidden lot with the car keys he found in one of the rooms. The spare set Sam uses. After a bit of prodding by Dean and a lot of scowling by Cas, Pete adds that they should have disappeared in their sleep, just like Mary and Sam and every other guest of the Sleep Well Motel. Pete has no idea where all these people are now. When Dean asks him if he noticed anything weird, Pete huffs. “Besides people vanishing at night you mean? Well, all the room keys are exactly the same.” Finally, Pete starts to look nervous. This is all he knows, swear to god and any other deity you can think of.
Although Dean doesn’t believe him, he refrains from using more forceful methods of questioning, feeling drained enough as it is. He needs coffee and maybe a bacon-infused breakfast. Cas drives them to the diner where they had dinner last night. Pete stays behind, still tied to the chair. “We deal with you later,” Dean promises him.
“I knew something was up with that Pete guy. I wonder if no one ever had a sleepless night in that motel. Well, except for you. Cas, what are we gonna do now? I got nothing.” Dean pokes what’s left of his bacon and pancakes with his fork.
“I think I know what we’re dealing with. Do you know what a Dream Eater is?”
“Like a Soul Eater? Me and Sammy hunted two of those a while ago.”
“They operate in similar ways. Dream Eaters feed on their victims’ dreams. They keep them asleep in a place outside of the dimensions we’re in now.”
“What about those identical keys Pete mentioned, that’s a weird bit of info. And why are we still in this dimension? These dimensions I mean.” Dean waves his arm around to indicate the room they’re in.
“The keys are identical because the motel rooms are identical. They’re actually the same room. What you perceive as individual rooms are three-dimensional representations of one multi-dimensional room.”
“You mean it’s a multi-dee space divided into three-dee parts? Like a pie divided into pieces?”
“That’s a rather insufficient analogy, Dean. If you really want to know I could draw you a diagram, but it involves complicated math.”
“Yeah yeah, never mind, I believe you.”
“In my true angel form I could perceive that multi-dimensional space completely at a glance. But my eyes now…” Cas’s face shows a complex range of emotions, from sadness to something close to contentment. “I don’t think I want to leave this vessel anymore.”
Dean swallows. Nowadays he sees Cas as human, be it with some additional perks like healing powers. He’d rather not think about Cas leaving his vessel. Or Cas leaving him. Dean takes Cas’s hand. “I’m very attached to this human form you’re in. Please never change.”
“You don’t have to worry, my grace, or what’s left of it, seems ingrained in this body now.”
They stare at each other for a long moment, until their waitress interrupts asking if they want a coffee refill. Dean lets go of Cas’s hand and nods to her. More caffeine is a requisite for solving this case.
“Let’s go back to the missing people and why we’re not among them.”
“You said you were dreaming of me when I woke you?”
“Eh, I did?”
“My grace must have messed with the transdimensional affairs of the Dream Eater. You dreamt of me and that’s why, instead of being taken by the Dream Eater, you pulled me to your room.”
“Lucky me, I rather have you in my bed than some monster.”
“Do you want to solve this case and find your mother and your brother? Then please stop distracting me.”
“You still have to explain how the motel rooms are connected to the Dream Eater.”
“The original multi-dimensional room is where it keeps its food sources.”
“So how do we get there, how do we find this thing?”
“Through a dream of course.”
“Huh? How does that work?”
“Remember when I visited your dream?”
“Beautiful lake, nice and quiet, fishing on that pier, how could I forget. But man, I can’t… Wait, I think there’s African dream root in the trunk of the car. And we know two people who are dreaming right now. I hope.”
They find some hairs on Sam’s pillow and a used hairbrush in Mary’s bathroom. Dean wants to enter Sam’s dream first, he’s not ready to see what Mary dreams about. Sitting next to Cas on the bed in room 3, Dean examines the hair he is about to mix into the murky dream root potion.
“Hope they clean this dump properly and this hair really is Sam’s.”
“The color and length match his, it will work.”
“Can you still hop into a dream on your own steam or do you need this too?” Dean raises the glass with the dream root potion to Cas.
“That does not look very palatable, I’m glad I don’t need it.”
“Okay, let’s do this.” Dean chugs back the contents of the glass. “Blergh, this stuff always tastes like…” He falls asleep the moment Cas touches his forehead.
Dean wakes up lying on a bright green lawn in front of a sky blue house surrounded by a snow-white picket fence with Cas standing next to him. Cas pulls him up and together they walk towards the house, but before they reach it a dog comes racing around the corner, followed by Sam calling “Bones, leave the visitors alone!” Sam stops running when he sees Cas and Dean, the dog leaping around them. “Guys, what are you doing here?” A woman with dark curly hair emerges from the house. “Jess and I didn’t expect you until Christmas, you’re three months early!” When the woman reaches Sam, he puts his arm around her shoulder. She doesn’t look very eager to meet them, despite the smile plastered on her face. “Cas, meet Jess. Dean, you already met my fiancée.”
Dean frowns, that’s definitely not Jess. “Cas, that’s her, I mean it! That’s the Dream Eater!” Cas reaches out to it. Before Dean can do anything, not-Jess dashes off. Stupid, stupid, he should have played along, he doesn’t know how to kill the Dream Eater. Hell, he didn’t expect it was so easy to find, this was supposed to be just a reconnaissance trip. Dean goes after not-Jess anyway, the dog barking behind him while Sam yells something unintelligible. When not-Jess jumps over the picket fence, everything whites out, gravity loses its grip for a while. The brightness turns dark and Dean wakes up again, leaning against a dazed-looking Cas.
“Dean, I was unable to smite the Dream Eater, my grace-” Cas is interrupted by a loud thump next door, followed by swearing and groaning.
They find Sam lying on the floor, covering his face with his hands.
Mary is still gone.
“Why did the Dream Eater leave you two alone?”
Dean looks fondly at Cas. “Because I have my own multi-dimensional ray of light.” He gets one of Cas’s radiant smiles in return.
Cas turns to Sam. “I think it was the combined effect of Dean’s dream and my grace.”
“Dean’s dream? What did… no, I don’t wanna know. Cas, please tell me everything you guys found out. How did you know we’re dealing with a Dream Eater?”
“I once encountered one while visiting a dream. Saving the dreamer’s life was not part of my assignment so I let it go. I followed the orders of my superiors without questioning them.”
“Cas, it’s not your fault angels are dicks.”
“But Dean, the thought of killing the Dream Eater didn’t even cross my mind. I could have… I don’t know how many people…”
“Well, you’re different now, you’re not a dick anymore. But I’m glad you still have one.” This seems to do the intended job of distracting Cas from his distress. Dean can count on Sam to get back to the case. After a “Dean, stop being gross” of course.
Sam tells them he remembers every detail of his dream. It all felt real, but now he’s awake he recognizes the fiction for what it is. Not-Jess apparently looked like Amelia, Sam’s other “escape from the hunting life” girlfriend, someone Dean never met in real life. There’s a sadness underlying Sam’s story and Dean shoves down the feeling of loss it evokes. He has more important things to do, like saving Mary. Their current place of gathering is the motel office, where Pete is still tied to a chair. Pete has reverted to his robo-puppet-man state, appearing completely indifferent to what’s going on around him. Sam brought his laptop along and with Cas’s help, he manages to find a way to kill a Dream Eater. Something with a wooden stick and symbols drawn in blood, the usual, could have thought of it himself. Dean suddenly feels very tired.
Sam has even more questions. “How can you be sure we’ll find it in Mom’s dream?”
“The Jess in your dream was a representative of the Dream Eater, not the Dream Eater itself. It has an extension of itself in every dream it feeds on,” Cas replies.
That sounds familiar. “Like the room you mean?” Dean says, “Every dream contains a part of the original thing?”
“Yes, exactly like the room. By using the stake to kill the representative its death extends to the Dream Eater itself.”
“Awesome. How do we get that stake inside a dream?”
“It’s not possible to physically take the stake, you need to conjure up a dream version of it,” Cas says.
“I have some experience with stuff like that,” Sam says. “Dean, remember dream-walking stoner Jeremy?”
Dean scowls at Sam. “Alas that long forgotten memory has recently popped up again. Cas, does this mean we don’t even have to make the stake? Nobody has to bleed for it?” That’s new.
Cas tilts his head with a look of surprise. “I didn’t think of that alternative. I guess it depends on Sam. Do you need the real object to make a mental image of it?”
Sam doesn’t.
Dean enters Mary’s dream reluctantly, even though he stepped into Sam’s without any restraint. As if he’s more entitled to invade his little brother’s privacy than his mother’s. That Mary’s dream resembles one of Dean’s earliest memories is very unsettling. It’s a warm, sunny afternoon, they’re in a kitchen that smells of apple pie and Mary is singing “Hey Jude” somewhere in the house. When Samuel Campbell enters the kitchen with a “honey I’m home” and Mary replies with “Hi John, I’m upstairs”, they know they found the Dream Eater.
Killing the Dream Eater proves to be rather uneventful. It’s three to one and the kitchen only has three doors. From its behavior in Sam's dream, they know the Dream Eater doesn't have much power within the confines of a dream space and can't teleport out of it. The moment they realize Samuel is the Dream Eater, Sam visualizes the stake already in its chest, he doesn't even have to go through the act of staking. As they say, piece of cake.
Afterwards they find Mary in room 1 and five very confused people in five different motel rooms. Fortunately, Pete didn't give room number 1 to every first customer of the day. Mary is unharmed. The other survivors suffer from dehydration and malnourishment so Dean and Cas get them to a local hospital. Sam informs the police, anonymously, about a man tied to a chair in the office of “that weird motel, you know, where all those people disappeared.” Like Sam says to Cas and Dean, “Let the cops figure out what to do with Pete, and good luck at that, they only knew about three of the missing people. I told them where all five are now.”
“It really felt like home. Everything I miss was there, John, you as a little boy, baby Sam. Everything was right.” Mary stares at the ground, Dean can’t see her face. He refrains from telling her that her dream-husband looked like her father. Instead, he says, “Do you… wanna... talk about it?”
“Not really. But thanks for asking.” Mary walks away without looking at him.
Dean wraps his arms around Cas in a tight hug. “I’m so glad I got you and you look like you.”
“I’m happy to be with you. And you too are beautiful, Dean.”
Dean can think of no other response than kissing Cas.
“Hey guys,” Sam shouts, leaning against the car, “me and Mom wanna get out of here.”
While walking to the car Dean wonders, “Who had this stupid idea of setting up a dream factory anyway? I mean, eventually, someone was going to notice the place was shady.”
“Do you want to stay and find out?” Cas asks.
“Nah, let’s just go. We still have to slay some vampires.”