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“I have to ask, Dean.” Ketch wiped the sweat from digging off his brow. “Why Abilene, of all places, to call me from?”
“Abilene’s where we were when we caught a case big enough for us to need backup,” Dean snarked, watching as Ketch and Sam dug out the grave. He’d offered to help, but Sam told him to stay up and watch Mick’s back as Mick readied a spell to purify the ground in the cemetery. Mick was ready to go, but wanted to wait until this corpse was salted and burned, as having an active ghost tied to the cemetery would prevent its effectiveness. Damned useful spell, though, purifying the ground so that no one buried here ever again could rise as a ghost.
Ketch paused in his digging, staring up at Dean. “You expect me to believe that Sam and Dean Winchester, the hunting team responsible for killing the actual devil, stopping God’s sister, taking out the Leviathans… couldn’t handle two ghosts without backup? And that your mother, your angel, your sheriff friends and their girls were all busy?”
“Shut up.” Dean glared at Sam, who was snickering. “Most of them actually are busy, Donna’s got her day job, Jody, Cas, and the girls are in Hawaii celebrating Claire finishing an associate’s degree, and Mom… well…” Dean decided that Ketch didn’t need to know exactly why they’d called these two before calling Mary. No reason to go into the argument over the possibility of working with them, not when he and Sam had so obviously changed their minds.
“That still leaves why you were calling for backup in the first place,” Mick pointed out, leaning against the back of his 4-Runner with a smug smile and his arms crossed. “If you’d known about the purification ritual, I might believe you called us in for that, but as it is, this case was straightforward. Ascertain that it is, in fact, a ghost, figure out who the ghosts are and where they’re buried or what they’re tied to, salt and burn what needs salting and burning. Even if there had been two graves instead of one, I’m sure the two of you could have managed without us just fine.”
Sam’s damn snickering got even worse at that. “Gotta admit, Dean, he’s got us there. Told you they weren’t stupid enough to not see through your excuse.”
“You’re supposed to be on my side, Sam!” Dean hissed.
“And you’re not supposed to be an idiot who thinks other people are even bigger idiots.” Sam threw out a couple more shovelfuls of dirt and then turned to Ketch. “So my brother wouldn’t give me an answer. Maybe you will. What’s so significant about Abilene for the two of you? I was gearing up for a much bigger argument about taking this case over a less solid in Florida, but as soon as I said ‘twenty minutes from Abilene’ Dean was not only on the case, he was on the phone calling you in as backup.”
Dean gritted his teeth as Ketch’s face split open in a grin. He very nearly slapped the man as he said, “I suspect Dean was hoping it was the ghost of a cashier murdered in a gas station about twenty years ago, or the person who was witness to that murder so got shot himself. In which case, he could make me face the consequences of my actions.”
Sam’s confusion, Dean expected and was prepared for. Mick’s, not so much. “Your year in America, you shot people in Abilene and left a witness?”
“I told you about that, Mick.” Ketch glanced over at Dean. “The boy I was going to roadtrip with but realized I could never go through with killing at the end of it, so I abandoned him in a motel? There’s a reason I never would tell anyone his name. It was Dean. Didn’t realize at the time what he’d turn out to be, just thought he was another hunter in the grand American tradition. We always knew the old man had designs on taking over for the American Men of Letters since they weren’t doing their jobs properly anymore. By the time it became clear that Dean was special, more than just a hunter, it was a bit too late to come forward and confess.”
“I see.” Mick straightened up, smirk disappearing a bit as he looked Dean over, eyes narrowing as he turned back to Ketch. “And you insisted we drop everything and head out this way because he’s still special to you?”
“Oh, don’t give me that. You haven’t shut up about Sam since we got the call, and no, it was not friendly concern for a victim of Toni Bevell, so don’t even try.” Ketch “accidentally” tossed a shovel of dirt onto Mick’s shoes. “I’m not the only one in this relationship crushing on a Winchester.”
“Wait, what?” Dean looked between them. That Ketch was still interested in him was a welcome surprise, that Mick apparently had a thing for Sam was less so but hardly something he could argue with, but that Ketch and Mick were involved… “Didn’t you tell me Mick was your cousin?”
“I probably did, if he came up,” Ketch admitted with a shrug. “Surprised you remember, even more surprised you’re confused by that, given who you are.”
“The hell is that supposed to mean?” Dean snapped. These guys had supposedly done a fuckton of research on them. Sure, the rumors were always out there, but that they’d believe it without substantiation was kind of infuriating.
Sam coughed, ears red as he ducked his head and pointedly avoided Dean’s gaze. “It means they know about the thing in Moses Lake, Dean. Toni had fun with that.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake, that was so not that.” Cursed artifact, fuck or die, they found out just a little too late to find a way around it. Things had been awkward for a couple days, but they both agreed that there was no way they were giving whoever laid the curse the satisfaction of messing up their relationship as brothers. “You guys seriously believe that shit?”
“Well, no, but you’d understand better than most how circumstances can lead to those lines being crossed,” Mick said. “Toni wanted to upset Sam, of course. What Ketch probably should have said, though, is that we’re not cousins. It’s just an easy way to refer to our comrades from the Men of Letters when we don’t want to go into details about how we know them.”
“I see.” Dean stared Mick down and then turned to look at Sam. “Okay, let’s hear it.”
“You told Dad he ditched you, but you never said why. Murdering civilians? Really?”
“Bit of a wakeup call to us both that we had very different styles,” Dean admitted. “Dad probably had him sussed all along but didn’t want to say anything to me without hard proof because I wouldn’t have listened, and even then, I knew that he hadn’t completely faked everything about it or he’d have just killed me. Now I know why he didn’t, and it’s been a long damn time, sure, but weren’t we just talking about finding someone in the life? We’ve got our differences, but these two, they’re in the life.”
“They’re also together, Dean, and Mick, you seem like a pretty cool guy, but I’m not looking to be a homewrecker,” Sam said. “Seriously, Dean? Thought ‘in a relationship’ was one of the lines you wouldn’t cross.”
Ketch cleared his throat. “In a committed, closed relationship, perhaps, but Mick and I aren’t closed. Normally we wouldn’t be quite this… flagrant… about that in front of each other, but it’s the two of you, probably be worse if we didn’t.”
“And then there’s the whole Toni mess,” Mick added. “Sam, if you can’t forgive us for that, I would not blame you a bit. If it helps, I pulled some strings, and hopefully this will make it up to you a bit. The Old Man ordered a hit on Magda Peterson. I got it cancelled.”
“That… actually does help a lot.” Sam’s shovel hit the coffin they were digging up. “Let’s get the reason we’re in this graveyard taken care of, all of it, and then figure this out after I’ve had a chance to sleep on it?”
“Of course.” Mick turned back to his spellwork, preparing to defend it in case the ghost decided to attack, while Sam and Ketch got the coffin open and climbed out of the hole. Thankfully, the ghost was either busy or just didn’t care, as it left them alone while they poured the salt and gasoline. Dean was given the honor of dropping the lighter on it, watching everything go up in flames with a smile on his face.