𝐃𝐎𝐍𝐎𝐕𝐀𝐍

𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐄𝐓𝐘-𝐅𝐈𝐕𝐄

Katherine chews on her lower lip, watching Dean mill around their motel room in nothing but a pair of jeans. His hair is wet, sparkling with water that didn't get absorbed by his towel.

She quickly lowers her eyes to the newspaper so he doesn't catch her looking. The cloud of steam that rolled out of the bathroom drew her eyes up again, though.

She sniffs heavily. "Did you..." Katherine sniffs again. "Did you use my body wash?"

"Oh." Dean smiles a little stupidly. "Yeah, Sam and I are out."

"Did you use my loofah?"

Dean frowns. "No."

Five days since the police station, and there was a weird magneticism between them, but not in the way of pulling them together. Pushing them apart, static field between them, always on opposite sides of the room. Every brush of a limb was like electricity.

Katherine needed to go home. She needed to get laid. That's all this is. The aching in her belly, the wanton desire...it's all hormones. 

For christ's sake, a human being playing a game of pool shouldn't be attractive, but it was. She watched him lean down, all of his amulets dangling from his neck, fingers spread out against the green velvet of the table. Flexed bicep, the vascularity of it, the tight forearm. Images, thoughts she shouldn't have, burned through her mind like wildfire, and she stared at the pool table and thought about it all night long. 

It's not like being in a motel room with the two granted any kind of privacy. They knew every move of each other, heard every mutter under the breath, so it's not like she could go work something out in the bathroom.

So she's chewing her lip and digging her fingernails into her palm and trying to not look at him, but it's so fucking impossible.

It's especially sick that she's now watching him during hunts.

Get a grip.

He's dying—

You're a despiciable human being.

"Whatcha lookin at?" Dean asks, moving between their beds. He pulls a black t-shirt over his head, abdomen contracting. Her nostrils flare, and she looks away from him again.

"Weather," she squeaks. 

He frowns at her, hedgehog hair and all. "Weather?" He repeats. 

"Mhm." She rolls her lips into her mouth, unwilling to look away from the paper. He sits at the side of the bed with her, and she holds her breath. Like a feral fucking animal in heat, because that's what she is. 

Jesus.

Dean's green eyes move from her face to the drawn curtains. "It's raining...you don't need a newspaper for that."

"Um...no," she agrees. "But I'm looking at patterns."

Dean slowly blinks at her. "In...the newspaper."

"Mhm."

"Kit, they don't publish weather patterns in newspapers."

Dilated blue eyes turn onto Dean. Her chest rises and falls a little heavier, shallower breaths. Her nostrils are ever so slightly flared.

Dean blinks once and leans away from Katherine ever so slightly. "What...what are you looking for?"

"Patterns," she lamely replies, and turns her eyes back to the paper.

She wasn't expecting an overnight stop in Ohio to turn into anything, but...it did.

"How did you already find a case?" Sam asks. "We just got here last night."

Katherine blinks as Sam tightens his tie in the mirror. "I was looking at the weather," she croaks. "Then I saw an obit. Banker commited suicide the other day."

"And?" Sam shrugs. 

"And he was having electrical problems for, like, a week before that. Phones going haywire, lights turning on and off, fax machine going berserk. who has a fax machine anymore these days anyway? Anyway, I did some sniffing around, smells like a spirit." She keeps her eyes far from Dean. 

Sam turns to her with a frown. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, why?"

Katherine clears her throat. "She chugged some tea earlier," Dean volunteers, shrugging on his blazer. "I think it was the caffeinated kind."

Sam frowns at her. "Why not just drink a coffee like a normal American?"

"Why don't you mind your own business?" Katherine retorts, nudging her glasses up her nose, and closes her laptop. 

Dean barks out a dry laugh. "Good one."

"What, is this not ringing your bell?" Katherine asks, looking to Sam with a raised brow. "At all?"

"Well...Kat, we're...on a case."

Dean frowns. "Whose?"

"Yours," Sam retorts. "Trying to stop you from dying in three months?"

Dean purses his lips and nods. "Right. Yeah, coulda fooled me."

"Well what the hell else have we been doing the past week than find ways out of your deal?"

"Chase our tails," Dean mutters. "Between you and me, Katherine and Bobby, and any of these spirits and grimoires they're consulting, any professors and witch, soothsayer, and two-bit Carny act in the lower forty-eight. Nobody knows squat! And I'd say if a demonoligist can't find anything—" He jabs a finger in Katherine's direction. "—That's pretty much open and close. We can't find Bela, we can't find the Colt, so until we actually find something, I'd like to do my job."

"Well we haven't tried—"

"Yeah, we have," Katherine chirps. 

Sam glowers at her. "You don't know what I was going to say."

"I do so. I've tried everything." Katherine clears her throat.

"You're not helping," Sam accuses. "And you're acting weird."

"I—" Katherine purses her lips. 

"We can summon Ruby."

"Ha, no." Katherine holds up a shaky finger. "No, no we can't."

"Why? She said she knows—"

"Sheee doesn't," Katherine sings through a forced smile.

"How do you know?"

"Because she told me." Katherine clears her throat and rocks onto her toes. "Sheeee told me. When we hunted down that coven up north." She smacks her palms together. 

"What?" The brothers chorus.

She blinks. "I—well I was going to the vending machine, and she did her annoying Ruby thing and just popped up when no one asked her to and um...really exploited a sensitive subject and told me, flat out, that no one can save Dean. Amongst other things."

"What other things?" Dean asks.

She looks down at her palm and itches it. "Some not-important things."

"Liar," he accuses.

Those dilated blue eyes fly up to his. "Nothing I didn't already know."

"And you just somehow neglected to mention this?" Sam asks.

Katherine shrugs. "What was there to mention, Sam?" She whispers. 

"We don't just keep secrets from each other," Sam bites. 

"It's not a secret," Katherine scoffs. "It's...it's a nonissue, because I don't care what that black-eyed bitch thinks, and neither should you, so." She nods and raps her knuckles on the kitchen table. "Go ahead, summon Ruby. I'll go talk to the widower."

Katherine was gone for a greater part of the morning and early afternoon, and Dean felt stranded without his car. He was just about to nod off out of boredom when Katherine made a heart attack-worthy entrance.

"It's been happening all over town," Katherine says, bursting through the front door. "The same phone number has been calling people all over town and the number's from, like, a hundred years ago when we still used switchboards to call people! And it's a different loved one every time! It's an aunt, an uncle, a mom or dad, but they're all dead—"

Sam frowns at her, picking his head up from the table. "Did you have another caffeinated drink?"

Katherine blinks, shaking her head. "No, why?"

Dean lets out a chuckle, looking languid as he's strewn out on the bed. His arms are extended over his head and hang off the side of the bed. His t-shirt rides up a couple of inches from the waistband of his jeans.

Katherine frowns, looking away from Dean. "Yeah, well, I've been digging." She shrugs out of her blazer and plops down at the kitchen table in front of Sam with a legal pad full of notes. "The most recent incident was three days ago—that banker who committed suicide—but the weird number in the call log was 'SHA33.'" Dean rolls to his feet with a frown. "So I went to someone at the phone company—disgusting environment, by the way—and had them trace it, and that number's been calling people all over the place for about a week and a half now. So I went and talked to Mrs. Godfrey—the widow of the banker—and she said the phone was ripped from the wall and nobody knows why, but she did say one night she heard him keep saying the name 'Laura.'"

"Laura?" Dean asks, hovering in the kitchen, then holds up the coffee pot. "You want coffee?" Sam exhales through his nose rather heavily. "Don't answer that. You don't need it."

Katherine shakes her head. "Hmm-mm. So, she said she thought her husband was having an affair or something, but when she picked up the phone to listen to him talk, there was no one on the other end! So he was talking to himself—or so she thinks—but maybe a spirit named Laura was talking to him!"

Sam frowns and shrugs. "So why'd he kill himself?"

"Beats me," Katherine scoffs. "So there was no sulfur noted at the crime scene, I didn't find any EMF..." She scratches her head, frowning. "So the last time that SHA33 number called was about ten minutes before Mr. Godfrey killed himself."

Dean glances between the two. "So what now?"

"Now we find out who the hell Laura was." Katherine purses her lips, sitting up, and gathers her jacket and car keys. "Library."

Sam gawks at her. "You just sat down."

"You wanna roll with the big guns, Sammy, you gotta be on your toes," she hums, grinning as she starts for the door. "So let's go."

"Don't you want to change?" He asks. Katherine stops and looks down at her suit.

"Oh." She sets her glasses down on the table, kicks her shoes off, and jogs for her bag before hauling it into the bathroom.

Sam looks to Dean with raised eyebrows, grabbing a tartan button-down. "What?" Dean asks.

"Was she durgged or something?"

"Or something," Dean agrees. "She's cracked the hell out."

Katherine stumbles from the bathroom and trips over the metal divider as Dean moves for the ottoman with his jacket on it. He grabs her by the elbows, steadying her with a frown. 

"Jeez, Kat," he mutters. She squirms a little bit and tosses her bag onto the bed and scoops up the impala's keys. "Hey," he says, snapping his fingers, and she stops. "You're not driving."

"I'm—"

"No."

She sighs and throws the keys to him. She grabs her glasses, opens the door, and heads out into the rain. 

The local library is fifteen minutes away. They scoured the local high school's yearbook—Mr. Godfrey was fifty-two, so he was born in '56, which means he would've been the class of '74. Death records, property records, published articles of deaths of anyone named Laura.

Sam found the yearbook with Oliver and Laura—they were high school sweethearts, even featured together on the couples page.

Then Katherine found her obituary. "So Oliver and Laura were hit by a drunk driver head-on...Oliver walked away and she didn't," she hums.

"So what?" Dean hums. "Dead flame calls to chat?"

"But she was cremated, so she should've passed on," Katherine says.

"So why is she still here?" Sam asks.

Katherine snaps her fingers. "Exactly."

"No, I was—I was asking."

"Oh. Oh, I don't know," Katherine scoffs. "So, uh...I went to the address of the latest call—" She points to a phone record. "And there was a girl there, a teenager—said she'd been talking to her dead father for four days, but the mom hadn't heard anything strange or the telltale signs, like static or voices. No flickering lights or anything. But, uh..." She clicks her pen a few times. "Oh! Uh...I visited an eighty-four year old woman who was having phone sex with her husband."

Dean grimaces. "What?"

"Gross," Sam whispers.

"Yeah. He, uh...he died in Korea, so. That's the spooky part about it." Katherine rubs her chin with a frown. 

"That...has completely rocked my understanding of the word 'necrophilia'," Dean mutters. His phone starts ringing on the bedside table, and he crosses the room to pick it up. 

"I can't believe you did all of this without us," Sam says. "Are you avoiding me?"

Katherine looks up at him with wide eyes. "Why would I be avoiding Dean?"

Sam frowns at her. "No...me."

"Oh." She laughs a little. "N-no, I'm not avoiding anyone."

"Hello?" Dean answers. He hears the sound of his name in the static on the other end. His stomach drops, because he definitely recognizes the voice. "Hello?"

"Dean, is that you?" His father asks. 

"Dad?"

Sam and Katherine turn on their heels, eyes wide. 

"Dad?" Dean asks again, then looks to his phone, but the call drops. Dean looks over at the two with an ashen face. 

"Dad?" Sam asks.

Dean calls the number back, but no one answers. 

"Hello?" Sam asks.

"I'm kind of freaking out here, man," Dean says, annoyance flaring his nostrils.

"Well what did it sound like?" Sam presses. 

Dean levels a gaze at his brother. "Like Oprah." Sam throws his hands up. "It was Dad, he sounded like Dad, what do you think?"

"Well what did he say?" Katherine asks.

"My name," Dean replies. "Then the call dropped."

"Why would he even call in the first place?" Sam wonders.

"I don't know, man, why are ghosts calling anyone in this town?" Dean groans. He sits down on the edge of the bed and puts his head in his hands. "This is...a lot of information to process at one time, and I think I need to be put in a sensory deprivation tank."

"You know, that's not a half-bad idea," Katherine says, clicking her pen. Sam takes it from her and slams it on the table.

"You need to chill out," he pronounces. 

"No, I meant like other people are hearing from their loved ones," Katherine says. "Why can't you?"

Sam frowns. "What?"

"What?" She defensively asks.

"You're confusing me."

"You're confusing me!"

"What do I do if he calls back?" Dean asks, suddenly panicked. "What do I say? What do I say?" Dean runs his hands over his head several times in frustration.

"Hello," Sam suggests.

Dean turns his glare to him. "Hello?" He repeats, entirely unconvinced. Sam shrugs. "That's what you come back with? Hello?" He pushes himself off of the bed and stares out of the window. 

Katherine looks away from him and takes her glasses off. "I think I need a nap," she whispers, and moves for the bathroom. Sam frowns.

"In the bathroom?"

"I—I need to shower, Sam," she defends. 

Dean was gone in the ten minutes it took her to cool off. Even with him not in the same room as her, Katherine couldn't even try to nap. So she went for a run and took another shower. That took up about an hour of her time. Sam was still clacking away at his computer when she was done with shower number two.

"Find anything?" Katherine asks.

"Nope," he sighs, closing his computer, and rubs his face. "I'm getting a headache."

Katherine rolls her head back and sighs. "We could...go get something to eat?"

Sam lifts his head. "I could eat."

"What, a pecan salad?" Katherine scoffs, getting to her feet. 

"I don't know how you stay so fit eating what you do and running as infrequently as you do," Sam says.

"I have the metabolism of a fourteen year old boy, that's why," she mutters, shoving her feet into her shoes. "We should probably get some snacks, too. We haven't had any in a while."

"Like what?"

"Well, the staples," she replies. "Bread, peanut butter...stuff that doesn't need to be refrigerated." 

✕

Dean bursts through the door and whips it shut behind him. Sam is hunched over his computer on the sofa, Katherine is on her belly on her bed with her own computer. 

"Find anything?" Dean asks, tossing his keys onto the table, and shrugs out of his jacket.

"Bread," Katherine says. He frowns at her.

"We went to the grocery store," Sam sighs. He's been finishing her thoughts for the past three hours in their sparse conversations between research.

"I meant...anything useful."

"In three hours of looking," Sam sighs. "We have found no reason why anything supernatural would be going on in this town."

"Wow," Dean chirps. "You'd think Stanford and Yale educations and a high school hookup rate of 0.0 would produce better results than that."

"I would hope I didn't hook up with anyone in hgh school," Katherine chrips.

Dean snaps his fingers and points at her. "That was directed at Sam." He starts to shrug out of his jacket. Katherine was cursed with great peripheral vision once her general vision was corrected, and unfortunately, she saw everything. Including how he undid his belt with one hand.

Dean frowns. "Why'd you go to the grocery store?" He asks. "We're on a case."

"Because we have no food, and I was hungry," she says. 

Dean glances to the kitchen. "Well what'd you get?"

"Bread, peanut butter, jelly, some trail mix..." Katherine purses her lips, not looking away from her computer screen. "Kettle chips, because those are great."

"Those are great," Dean agrees.

"Mandarin oranges," Katherine continues. "Pancake mix...need I go on?"

Dean stares at her. "So there's no reason for us to go out somewhere."

"Very little reason," she agrees, kicking her feet up in the air. Dean watches her socked feet alternate kick before he turns to raid the cupboards.

"Oooh, honey," he murmurs.

"Please don't eat all of that, it's the good local stuff," Katherine begs. 

"It helps with allergies, right?" Dean asks, fishing a plastic fork out of the bag, and undoes the screwtop mason jar lid.

"Yes," Sam slowly replies.

Dean scoops a whole mouthful of honey and pollen at the top into his mouth.

"Dude," Sam scoffs. "Come on."

"My eyes itch," Dean defends, setting the honey down. "You losers have been looking in the wrong places for three whole hours."

"And what are the right places, Dean?" Sam sighs.

"Motel pamphlet rack," Dean chirps. He swings by the table and flicks a pamphlet at Sam before plopping down beside Katherine. She blinks a couple of times, the rest of her body completely still. "Milan, Ohio is the birthplace of Thomas Edison."

Katherine sits up on her elbows. "Phone guy," she says.

"Phone guy," Dean echoes around his mouthful of honey. "Read that pamphlet, Sammy," he says, leaning back on his elbows, and turns to look at Katherine. Her eyse are glued to her computer. "You can stop looking at whatever you're looking at," he says. "I found the problem."

Katherine doesn't look at him still. "Mhm."

"Oh, you're kidding," Sam laughs, slapping the pamphlet down. "A spirit phone?"

Katherine looks over her shoulder at him. "Oh, you're kidding."

Dean frowns and turns his palms to the ceiling. "What the hell am I, chopped liver?"

The museum is modest, run out of the home Thomas Edison lived in from the age of twenty until his death. Everything is restored, the overly joyful tour guide said, a wide smile plastered onto her fair features.

"—and here we have one of the museum's most unique and treasured possessions," Dana says, smiling as she turns around to face the onslaught of guests in this tour. "Thomas Edison's 'spirit phone'." Katherine notices her use of finger quotes as she enters the room in front of Sam and Dean. "Did you know that Mr. Edison, while being one of America's most beloved inventors, was also a devout 'occultist'?"

"What's with the quotey fingers?" Dean asks, his chest bumping into the bcak of Katherine's shoulder as he leans down to whisper in her ear. He sees a smile tug at her mouth. "Hey, how's your shoulder doing?"

"Huh? Oh...fine."

"He spent years working on this, his final invention, which he was convinced could be used to 'communicate' with the 'dead'. Pretty spooky, huh? And we're walking! We are walking. We're walking...and we're not touching that." Dean ventures forward first while Sam lingers closer to Katherine as she sweeps the spirit phone for any EMF readings.

"Nothing," Katherine mutters, she and Sam catching up to Dean.

"What are you thinking?" Dean asks.

"Honestly?" Sam hums. "Looks like a pile of junk to me."

Katherine sighs. "It was worth checking out," she murmurs, staring at the old thing. 

"It's not even plugged in," Dean mutters.

Katherine blinks at him. "Um...I don't think it works like that."

Dean's eyes widen. "Maybe it's like an old radio tower or somethin'. Spewing dead frequencies all over town. I mean, the caller ID was from almost a hundred years ago, and it kind of fits in with the timeline with that thing."

"But why start working now?" Sam asks.

"I don't know," Dean mutters. "But as long as the moldies are calling the freshies around here, it's the best explanation we got." Dean rocks onto his toes. "So maybe it really is Dad."

With nothing else left to do, the hunters went back to their motel room.