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"Oh. Oh, shit.” Sam pushes back from the table. Or tries to, succeeding only in pushing the entire table away and unsettling a stack of hotel brochures. “… Shit.” Dean looks up when Sam sighs and starts picking the brochures off the floor.
“What’d you find?” Sam pauses on one of the brochures. On closer inspection, it’s the one from the latest body drop, [hotel name]. Dean’s pretty sure it’s also the one that had the cute little mint bowl at the front desk.
“I’m not sure-“ Sam starts, still staring at the brochure. “But I think I might’ve found the connection between the vics.” He places it back on the stack, settled again on the flimsy table.
“Dude, awesome. Lay it on me, whaddya got?” Dean leans back in his chair, taking great delight in closing the dust collection of a book he’d been perusing for info on local history. So far, he’d found nothing of note, besides a guy, Matthews, arrested for public indecency in [year], and Leslie Robins, arrested 14 times for public nudity. Good for her.
“You’re not gonna like what it means for our undercover situation,” Sam warns, distractedly shuffling the file of witness statements they’d gotten from the cops earlier. Dean scoffs, but comes to look over Sam’s shoulder for the case details.
“What does that mean, what’d you find?” Dean reaches for the statement given by a friend of the first vic. “And what undercover situation, thought we were just going in as feds for this one?” Sam heaves a sigh, one would would personally describe as incredibly dramatic.
“Dean, we were talking about this earlier, at [earlier mentioned hotel]? About how the way this thing attacks, we’d have to be in on the ground floor just to get a look at it? And how we were gonna check in at the next hotel in line, so it would go after us instead of whatever civilian- or were you too distracted by the stupid mint bowl?” Dean, who had definitely been distracted by the mint bowl (they were the nice kind, with the chocolate, and he’d resolved to steal as many as he could, without being noticed in case they had to interview the lady at the front desk again), shoved at Sam’s shoulder and grabs at another witness statement, hoping to suddenly grasp whatever connection Sam’d apparently made.
“C’mon, Sammy, I was totally listening. Check in at the hotel, case the joint, swipe the fluffy towels-“ Sam reaches over his shoulder to flick at Dean, but he’s unsuccessfully hiding a smile, so Dean counts it as a win. “Tell me, what’s the connection? Cause as far as I can tell, these guys were completely unconnected. The business douche-“
“Oh my god Dean, just going on a business trip doesn’t make someone a douche-“
“Hotel was too nice, you’re telling me anyone below the rank of douche could get the company to pay for it, when there’s a crappy joint like this one right nearby?” Dean gestures at their motel room, making note of the water stains he swears have grown in the few days they’ve been here, and the carpet in a colour he would swear he hasn’t seen since he was regularly changing diapers. Sam rolls his eyes.
“Never mind. Dude, they’re unrelated, except for the part where they were all guys, getting a hotel room with another guy. That’s the connection, Dean, they’re all gay.” Sam makes a sweeping gesture towards the mess of papers now obscuring his laptop. Dean blinks.
“You’re telling me we got a case of Casper the fucking homophobe? Seriously?” Sam blinks.
“I mean, yeah, that’s probably it. We just have to-“
“Wait, business douche had that partner, yeah, and the one guy’s wife definitely thought he was cheating, but we don’t know who with-“
“The pool boy.”
“The- seriously? That’s cheesy, even for me. How’d you figure that one?”
“Did you seriously not clock him? I thought he’d burn a hole through your jacket, he was staring so hard! Plus, I asked him when you were with the maid who found the body. He said it’d been going on about a month before, y’know.”
“Damn. Never mix business and pleasure.”
“Are you- talking about the pool boy?”
“It’s a legitimate business, Sammy! ‘Sides, he clearly hadn’t had the guy at his place of work before, or else he woulda been dead long before now.” Sam nods, conceding the point, so Dean goes on. “So I get two of them, but what about the other two guys? They both checked in alone, right?”
Sam shuffles the papers spread out in front of him until he finds what he’s looking for, the witness statement from the desk clerk. “Yeah, I was wondering about that. But I reread the statement here, and see, she saws she saw a guy running away from the first scene? And the cops figured that had to be the culprit, but now I’m thinking, maybe it was the guy’s date.” Sam twists in his chair to look up at Dean. “Then, the fourth guy, Hobbs, I managed to track down his family, back in [state]. Looks like they thought he was on a business trip, too. But then, his bank account-“ Sam turns back to his computer, opening it to the guy’s account, however the hell he got that open. Dean smiles, shaking his head a little in awe while Sam’s distracted with his screen. “Shows a big cash withdrawal just a few days ago, right before he checked into the hotel. And get this, on his search history? Gay bars in this area. So I figure, he paid for everything up here in cash, up to and including whoever he brought back to the hotel two days ago.”
Dean whistles low. “Damn.” He pats Sam’s shoulder in a complimentary fashion because I can’t think of how else to describe that action, and pushes up from where he’d been leaning over Sam’s chair. “Wait, so if we’re pretty sure the thing is just some old fuck trying to hate crime from beyond the grave, where do we go from here? You were talking about undercover, do we just go in like reverse Birdcage?”
“What?”
“Dude. Robin Williams? He plays this club owner and Nathan Lane is- never mind. I mean, we gotta go in and, ah, Gay Deceivers our way into the place so Casper catches the drift, and tries to- wait, if we know it’s a ghost why do we have to go in? Don’t we just have to look through, like, town history or whatever for whoever stands out as most likely to butt into the bedroom?”
“Dean, this town’s like two hundred years old, I don’t think there’ll just be one guy. Besides, you were looking through the town history, did you seriously find anyone that stands out as our guy?” Dean decides that as much as he personally thinks Leslie Robins stood out (proudly, 14 times), she’s probably not the kind of notable historical figure Sam wants to hear about.
“Okay, fine. Then how are we supposed to figure out who to torch?”
“Well,” Sam stretches in his chair, then stands to get a beer from the fridge, taking off his already loosened tie, dropping it with the jacket for his fed costume. “I figure, we gotta go in as bait, so we can see the thing, and go from there.”
“What, are you gonna stop it in the middle of trying to murder us, and ask for its name and address? Oh, yeah, before you rip us apart, would you mind pointing us to your grave- jeez, Sam, how exactly do you think this is gonna go?” Dean runs a hand through his hair.
“Obviously not. But, I have noticed, it only seems to go after one of the two men in the room, so I figure, we can see it, then whichever one of us it doesn’t go after can hit it so we both get out.” [that sentence feels so poorly written]. Sam brushes the hair out of his face, and takes a swig of his beer. Dean grunts, but really doesn’t have a better plan.
“Fine, whatever. So, how are we gonna play it?”
“What?”
“I mean, what’s our cover?”
“Uh-“ Sam looks down at his beer, and at his laptop like it’ll start advising him. Then he looks back at Dean, who’s since collapsed roughly onto one of the beds. “I hadn’t really thought we needed one? I mean, enough people usually just assume we’re gay anyways?” Dean blinks at the ceiling, then sits up to stare at his brother.
“Dude.” Sam raises his hands defensively. “You’re hinging the case on people being idiots?” Dean reconsiders. “Wait, that might work. But we should still have a cover, just in case our guy doesn’t have a malfunctioning gaydar, or whatever.”