Carribean Calypso - S/D Minibang Part 1
Oct. 29th, 2013 11:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amberdreamsCarribean Calypso
Part One
Sam was trying not to worry, but that seemed to be his default setting these days.
Dean had been subdued since Richie’s death. Not unusual behaviour for someone who was grieving, but Dean’s normal coping strategy was piling on the bluster, getting louder and even more obnoxious to cover up his feelings. This time he was quiet, almost distracted. So much so that he even let Sam fuss over his colourfully bruised ribs without a protest, and never said a word in protest when Sam gratefully accepted Bobby’s invitation to come back to Sioux Falls to recuperate for a while.
After a day or two, Sam began to wonder. Perhaps this was nothing to do with the death of the flamboyant little hunter, even though it would be just like his brother to feel guilty for failing to prevent it. Maybe Dean’s uncharacteristic behaviour was caused by something else that happened in Elizabethville, Ohio.
“What did you do with Casey, Dean? All that time you were trapped down there with that demon, how did you pass the time?”
Sam hadn’t intended for this to come out like an accusation, but somehow his rational brain failed to communicate with his mouth and Dean’s sharp look rather indicated he wasn’t happy with Sam’s demanding attitude.
“Nothing, Sam. What do you think we did? Fucked? Danced a rhumba? Exchanged sad stories about our fucked up childhoods and the death of kings?”
Sam cleared his throat, ignoring his frisson of surprise at Dean quoting Shakespeare. “Well she was hot, Dean. You said so yourself, so…”
Dean looked at him in disbelief. “She was a demon, Sam. I’m not going to get my joystick out and stick it in a black-eyed bitch. She’d probably make it wither and drop off!”
Fortunately for the sake of Sam’s sanity, Bobby chose that moment to interrupt with news of a hunt in South Beach, Miami. Distracted, Dean lit up like a kid who’d been offered free roller coaster rides for life.
“South Beach, Sammy!” Dean threw his hands up in the air and waved them around, looking for all the world like a TV evangelist. Sam wasn’t going to mention it though. Well, not right this minute anyway. He’d store it away for future reference instead. Teasing ammunition was always useful, but for now he was just glad to see Dean’s spark was back.
“Somebody up there likes me after all, dude!”
Sam thought Dean’s grin could have lit a room.
After a week in South Beach and a very simple salt and burn, Sam was less happy about the return of Dean’s spark, and thoroughly tired of that grin. In fact, he was bordering on the brink of snuffing it out with the sheer frustration that was building up inside him. He had made no progress whatsoever in finding a way out of Dean’s deal, and Dean was still pretending that his clock wasn’t ticking.
So when the call came in from another old friend of Dean’s, offering a legitimate alternative to watching Dean ogling bikini clad bathing beauties on the wide sandy beaches of Miami, Sam was so grateful he could have hugged Russell Clark, whoever he was. It was probably a good thing the guy was calling from New York, or he might have suffered a couple of cracked ribs.
Sam took the call while Dean was – otherwise occupied. Again. Having turned down the invitation by the girl to ‘make it a threesome, baby’ - which had been disturbingly enthusiastically backed up by his inebriated brother - Sam found himself shut out of their motel room with nowhere to go but the Impala. Lucky for Sam, South Beach in early October was still pretty balmy, even late at night, so at least he wasn’t going to freeze to death in the car.
Grumbling under his breath, Sam folded himself into the shotgun seat and flipped open his laptop. The tension in his shoulders eased a little when he managed to find an unsecured Wi-Fi network. Within seconds he was absorbed in his research. Dean could protest and be as stupidly stoical as he liked about it, but one way or another, Sam was going to get Dean out of this deal.
He was jerked out of his research fugue by the grunge guitar chords of Smoke on the Water. He nearly threw the offending cell phone out of the Impala’s open window, but thought better of it. Grudgingly, he answered.
Twenty minutes later, Sam had a sketchy outline of the case, and directions to a ‘specialist’ outfitter in New Jersey, where they could pick up some of the supplies they would need for their cover. He’d given the guy their vital statistics, though Russell Clark had been unexpectedly cagey about the details of their cover, just saying that Dean would understand, and that Sam would get the picture when they arrived in New York. Normally Sam would have poked and prodded until he had all of the information, but he was so happy to have a case that would take them away from Miami and keep Dean occupied, he let it slide.
He didn’t even wonder about Dean’s exceptional good mood on the long drive from South Beach to New Jersey, putting it down to post coital bliss – albeit an unusually long lived kind of bliss. That girl must have been something spectacular.
Really, he should have known better. Dean was only ever that happy when he was pranking Sam.
Which was how Sam came to be standing outside on West 39th Street, Manhattan, staring open mouthed at Planet Pepper’s dazzling spangled and multihued window display. It really wasn’t the kind of outfitters he’d had in mind. Dean’s expression was one of unholy glee, the kind Sam had only seen before in association with clowns.
“Come on then, princess. Time to see how you look in a tiara!”
Sam grabbed Dean’s arm and hissed in his brother’s ear. “There must be some mistake. I must have taken the address down wrong. No way can we be doing a case dressed as drag queens!”
Dean’s grin just got wider. “Oh, didn’t Russ tell you? He’s also known as Raquel La Belle. Used to lead a burlesque troupe over at the Little Palace Theatre just off Broadway. He’ll be waiting for us inside. Come on, Priscilla.”
“What? Wait…Dean, you do know Priscilla was the bus, don’t you?”
“Shut up, Sam.”
Stepping inside Planet Pepper was like stepping into another world, one where there was no room for anything mundane, and every shade of every colour but grey. They were greeted by a middle aged but lithe African American guy, who pounced on Dean as if the elder Winchester was a desert oasis and he hadn’t had a drink in a week.
“Dean, darling! You’re as beautiful as ever!” The guy released Dean and held him at arms length. Dean’s blush was adding a nice shade of carmine to the multi-coloured backdrop; luckily it didn’t clash. Russell cocked his head to one side, considering, then made an exaggerated moue of distaste.
“Damn, girl. All that gorgeousness and you still wrap it up in ill-fitting layers. What a shame your fashion sense hasn’t improved any over the years.” The guy glanced over Dean’s shoulder at Sam, clearly finding his wardrobe just as lacking, if the despairing expression was any indicator, before flicking back to Dean. He tugged at Dean’s over-shirt with finger and thumb. “I mean, plaid shirts? The faded rock t shirt might carry a tiny bit of street cred, but the plaid makes you look like a lumberjack.”
“Fuck you, Russ, you never did have any taste in clothes. This is a classic look.”
Russell shook his head in mock despair, and Dean punched his arm with an easy camaraderie that surprised Sam somehow, even though he could see that the two were evidently closer friends than he’d realised. Sam was trying to place Russell’s accent and failing. It was New York alright, but there was a hint of something else in there that Sam couldn’t quite pin down. He’d quizzed Dean during the long drive to Manhattan about the backstory to this mysterious friendship, but had gained nothing much, other than that they’d met on one of Dean’s solo cases in New York, while Sam was at Stanford. But he knew there had to be more to it than that, because Dean was so eerily relaxed in the face of this whole drag queen scene. It was unbelievable. The noisily heterosexual asshole-brother Sam knew should be totally freaking out about this by now, and the fact that Dean wasn’t had Sam on edge far more than he liked to admit.
“Come on upstairs, boys. I can see that Pepper is going to have his work cut out for him, fitting you two up. We are going to have to get you some casual gear as well as the rest, I think. Can’t have you wandering around the ship dressed like this. You’ll stick out like sore thumbs!”
The fitting studio was upstairs, a small but airy room that felt like an artist’s loft, with one wall entirely covered in mirrors, intensifying the light from the high windows.
“Now tell me about this job, Russ. What have you gotten yourself into now, you old Queen?”
“Not a Queen any more, Dean, I’m a manager now. Got my own troupe of entertainers, playing the cruise ships. Which is why I called you in. Something’s been killing my kids. Our ship’s due to sail in two days with the entire Imperial Court of the East Coast on board. All my friends, colleagues, rivals… I don’t want to lose anyone else to this thing, whatever it is.”
“Fair enough. Why do you think it’s our kind of gig, Russ?”
“Could be the fact that their hearts were shrivelled up inside their chests, not a mark on them otherwise. That kind of gave me a clue. And before you ask, yeah, I got hold of the autopsy report for the last one. Raquel la Belle still has a following in the NYPD. Thing is, I think this thing might have been around before the deaths. A couple of my girls were acting strange on our last trip before anyone died, but one was in the middle of hormone treatment so we didn’t think anything of it; you know how they get when they are busy growing lady parts…”
Sam looked around in some trepidation, only half listening while Russell Clark filled Dean in on the case. He’d already gotten most of the case details from Russell on that initial phone call, and right now Sam was wishing he’d asked for more about the whole cross dressing thing. He stared, a little preoccupied with the intimidating selection of bouffant wigs he’d seen on display downstairs, and the even more terrifying array of pointy, shiny, sparkly shoes in the largest sizes Sam had ever seen, filling the cubby holes that lined the wide passage they’d walked through to get to Pepper’s studio. He jumped like a startled gazelle when a voice interrupted from directly behind him.
“Are these my new Queens? Raquel, darling, please say they are!”
Sam turned expecting the owner of the voice to be as flamboyant as the studio’s clients undoubtedly were, only to find a stocky, broad-faced, rather ordinary guy gazing up at him admiringly. He assumed this must be Pepper. He was right.
“Well, look at you. Lord, but you are going to have to wear thigh high boots with those long legs. Shame your hair isn’t a little bit longer or you wouldn’t need a wig.”
Sam flushed bright red while Dean guffawed.
“See? I always told you your hair is too girlie, Sammy!”
“Huh, not girlie enough, it would seem,” Sam retorted, bristling.
Russell stepped forward and took charge.
“Pepper, this pretty loud-mouth is Winnie, and this tall streak is Samilicious. They are joining the cruise with me on Saturday, so we only have a day and a half to get them glammed up from scratch.”
Clark ignored Dean’s squeak of protest at being called Winnie – I’m not a frigging cartoon bear, Russ! – and before Sam could even think about protesting at being called Sami-anything, the two Winchesters were swallowed up in a flurry of activity. Stripped to their boxer briefs they submitted to being poked and prodded and having their every physical attribute assessed and measured. Pepper was very vocal about his disappointment that their time constraint meant no new designs could be aired to make their debuts as drag queens more memorable, something that Sam felt wasn’t so awful. Somehow he thought that it was going to be memorable enough with the seemingly endlessly expanding pile of silks, satins and sequins that Pepper was putting together for them.
“No feathers, man,” Dean was saying, “You know how that shit makes me sneeze.” Russell looked saddened as he put a white floaty contraption straight out of Ginger Roger’s wardrobe, trimmed with masses of fine white down, onto their ‘reject’ pile, while Sam was left wondering exactly what Dean had gotten up to on the case he’d worked at Russell’s theatre.
Then Dean was whisked away into one changing room, while Sam was locked into the other to try on the first of three outfits that Pepper thought were the best fits.
“I want to see you in this one first, darling,” Pepper said, pointing to the one costume that had terrified Sam the most. That figured. It was a dark red vinyl, leather and velvet corset attached to a skirt that was ruffled to hell, short at the front and long at the back. But that wasn’t the part that scared Sam the most. No. It was the thigh high lace up boots that had him sweating.
“Don’t worry, I’ll help you with the lacings. Here,” said Pepper, and Sam managed to flush even redder as he realised he must be telegraphing his discomfort. It was particularly galling as Dean seemed to be taking all this in his stride, almost as if….
Sam sat down heavily as the thought struck him, and stared at the mirror in front of him with unseeing eyes, not even noticing Pepper’s competent hands swiftly untangling the long laces on the red leather boots.
Yeah, it was almost as if Dean had done this before. Holy shit. Dean must have dressed in drag before. His overcompensating, outspokenly macho big brother was a cross dresser. He was always glad to find ammunition for teasing Dean, but this little gem would give him enough material to torment Dean until he was a very old man… The grin that had been growing on Sam’s face vanished as he remembered that Dean was not even going to make it to thirty. Suddenly the thought of teasing Dean about his newly discovered feminine side lost all its lustre.
“Are you alright? You look a bit pale.” Pepper was looking up from tying off the laces with a concerned expression.
“What? Oh, yes, I’m fine.”
“Okay then, up you get and let me get your corset sorted.”
Sam rose and just kept going up and up. He wavered, teetered and nearly over balanced as his feet settled into their new position and adjusted to the unaccustomed heels. He grabbed Pepper’s broad shoulder with an exclamation of surprise. Jesus. How did Jess ever manage to look so elegant in her red Manolos? Sam looked like a newly born foal trying to balance on heels half the height of hers. Pepper gave him a wry smile.
“I take it you’ve never worn a costume like this before then, sugar? This should be interesting…”
Pepper turned Sam around and started pulling the laces tight on the bodice until Sam was sure his creaking ribs were going to snap, then spun him back to check the effect in the full length mirror. Pepper was talking, but Sam was too dazed to really take in what he was saying. He looked shockingly good. The boots, although they were only around 3 inches tall, made his natural height look even more imposing. The corset had given him a waist and simultaneously crushed and pushed up his pectoral muscles so he looked as though he had breasts, albeit small ones.
“…and once we add the padded shorts and some chicken cutlets padding inside the corset to give you a more sexy cleavage, you’ll have curves to die for, Sami. Like I said before, it’s a pity your own hair isn’t longer, but I think both of you are going to need some of my wigs. Then there’s make up, and false eyelashes…So much to do with you girls, I wish I had more time! ”
Sam looked down at the top of Pepper’s head and wondered if it was possible to get vertigo from wearing high heels. He was interrupted by a piercing wolf whistle from behind and suffered his second shock of the day as he looked in the mirror and saw a fantastical figure approaching.
Somehow Russell had found the time to dress Dean up in the whole kit and caboodle – from the long blonde wig to the six-inch stilettos. Dean even had his face made up, and if Sam hadn’t known it was his brother, he’d have been hard pushed to recognise Dean at all. The dress Dean was wearing was an off the shoulder, dark green velvet sheath that hugged contours that shouldn’t have been there, and was split right up the side from hip to ankle, showing off all Dean’s long leg as he walked. Okay, that leg was still a bit too hairy to be mistaken for a female and those shoulders were too broad and muscular, but then female impersonation wasn’t the kind of drag they were aiming for here.
Whatever, Dean looked absolutely fantastic.
Even if the effect was then ruined by Dean opening his mouth and talking.
“Look, Sam, I make a fucking amazing queen! And with these heels on I bet I’m taller than…” Dean’s voice trailed off as he took in the full effect of Sam’s costume. Sam flushed when Dean stopped in his tracks and just stood staring at Sam, with his distractingly shiny reddened mouth hanging open in a most unladylike fashion.
“What?” Sam said, uncomfortable under the scrutiny. “I look ridiculous, right? I feel like a giraffe on roller skates. I should just…” He turned, wobbling in the boots, reaching to cover himself up with the old familiar plaid shirt he’d thrown onto the chair. Then Dean was right there in his space, moving at a speed that shouldn’t have been possible, dressed like that. Their bare shoulders brushed with a flare of heat, and Dean’s hand landed a firm grip on Sam’s wrist, stopping him dead.
“Don’t.”
Both of them froze, Sam suddenly intensely aware of how little clothing was covering either of them, and how warm Dean’s skin was, where it was pressed up against his own. He thought he heard Dean swallow hard in the charged silence before Pepper blessedly interrupted, tapping Dean on the back. The touch broke the tension between them before it became unbearable. Or before Sam did something exceptionally stupid, like kissing his brother on those ridiculous, slicked up, bee-stung lips.
And what the fuck was that all about?
“So ladies, what do we think? I have to find the right wig for Sami here, and beat the hell out of that face…,”
Predictably, Dean jumped right in to defend Sam at that, who was relieved to have something distract him from the lingering ghostly sensation of pressure on his wrist where Dean’s fingers had briefly rested.
“Hey! Nobody’s beating Sam up, least of all you, shorty!”
Both Russell and Pepper dissolved into peals of laughter while Dean stood with his fists clenched and a bewildered expression on his face that was utterly adorable. Not that Sam noticed, of course.
“What’s so funny?” Dean said aggressively.
Gasping for breath through his laughter, Pepper turned to Russell, ignoring Dean’s indignant question.
“Raquel, darling, I thought you said this one had done this before? He ain’t gonna make much of a drag mother for Sami if he can’t speak the language!”
“He was only with us for a couple of weeks, Pepper, give the girl a break.” Russell took pity on Dean and explained, “Beating someone’s face means making it up, Dean, not punching it.”
Dean flushed and glared at Sam, who was opening grinning.
“Yeah, well, I might not have learned all the lingo but at least I can walk in my heels.”
“Are you really going to claim victory because you make a better woman than I do, Dean?”
Sam didn’t bother to hide his amusement at Dean’s discomfiture, earning himself a harassed sounding ‘shut up, bitch’.
Pepper rolled his eyes. “Huh, I can see you two are related. You can both pat yourselves on the back, darlings. Neither of you would be a booger, even if it wasn’t someone with my incredible talent turning you into a couple of pretty heathers.”
Sam shot a glance at Dean and was not surprised to see that his brother was looking just as puzzled as he was.
“Okay.” Sam said. “I can see that we are going to need a crash course in the right patois as well as a few other things, before we set sail on this boatful of queens. Better start with what a booger and a heather is…”
Three hours and what felt like a hundred costume changes later, Sam’s head was buzzing with new words and phrases, and Dean was getting dangerously bored. Never a good thing, especially if the only outlet he had for alleviating that boredom was Sam. Time to return to normal, slide back into the comfort of their scruffy jeans and well-worn plaid. Sam was getting itchy for his laptop and research, and Dean needed some beer and pie to keep him quiet. At least Sam wasn’t wobbling around on his high heels so much now; in fact he thought he could almost manage a bit of a sashay, as long as there was a wall close by to grab.
Even Pepper seemed half satisfied with their progress. “Well hallayloo! I think we are just about there, girls! Winnie looks fabulous as long as she keeps her pretty mouth shut, and if Sami promises to practise walking so she doesn’t look like it’s her first time on the ice, I figure we’ve got ourselves a pair of fierce queens, Russ my darling.”
Finally both Russell and Pepper gave their seal of approval. The Winchester brothers were about as ready as the two experts could make them after such a short introduction to drag queen etiquette and dressing up. Their intimidating selection of dresses, costume jewellery, make up and wigs were all packed up and ready to go.
Leaving with their new wardrobes carefully crammed in two of the biggest pieces of luggage Sam had ever seen proved almost as big a challenge as parking the Impala on a New York street had been. Especially with Russell supervising the cramming. Even though the ex queen was the jolliest person Sam had come across in a very long time, even Russell’s ever-lasting smile grew a little strained. He fussed and clucked when Sam tried to fold something that apparently shouldn’t be folded, and nearly set off the nearest shop alarms in sympathy with his shriek when Dean spilled the second best wig onto the sidewalk whilst fumbling in his pocket for the keys to the Impala.
They had one night in Manhattan before embarking from Cape Liberty Cruise Point the following morning, so Russell had offered his apartment floor to sleep on. As he also had a secure lock up for Dean’s baby, Dean had accepted with alacrity, though Sam was now convinced that Russell’s main motivation in offering was because he was more worried about making sure the Winchesters would fit in with the Imperial Courts of the East Coast Drag Queens, rather than needing the time to fill them in on the case.
Sam resigned himself to a long evening when Dean escaped Russell’s attentions making busy in the small kitchenette. He only had two consolations. First that he might be less at home in the drag costume than Dean, but he was going to sound more credible and had a better chance of understanding what was going on – always an advantage when investigating a new case. Second was the totally awesome chilli that Dean whipped up out of nowhere. He had to admit, his brother was full of surprises lately.
Dean concluded that checking in to a cruise ship was nothing like checking into a motel. Luckily for the Winchesters, Russell’s privileged access as Entertainments Manager gained them a fast track through the registration process, and meant they could get settled into their cabin before the majority of the other passengers arrived. Nearly the full complement of guests was from the Drag Queen community, making Dean snicker a little bit under his breath when he thought about the poor handful of unsuspecting holiday makers who were ‘normal’. They were in for a bit of a shock.
Although the Empress of the Seas was a relatively modest size as far as cruise ships go, she was still a hundred times larger and more imposing than the tacky floating motel Dean had been half expecting. His hunter radar was pinging like crazy. He felt like a submarine diving deeper and deeper to avoid depth charges. He felt more and more claustrophobic as Russell led them down seemingly endless narrow corridors and sets of stairs to reach their cabin. The scarcity of exit options was making him sweat.
“Sorry you have to cram into the basic guest accommodation, boys, but it was the best I could get you at short notice. This cruise has been fully booked for months, so I was lucky to be able to swing you a room at all…”
Dean gulp was audible as he took in the windowless so-called stateroom that would be their home for the next two weeks. Calling it a stateroom was a joke because there was another word that was a lot more accurate, miniscule. He had to give the designer credit for managing to fit the absolute maximum functionality into such a tiny space. Somehow they had crammed two twin beds in there, though the space between them was barely as wide as one of Sam’s giant feet. There was what the brochure optimistically described as a ‘vanity area’, which consisted of a narrow dressing table type contraption with a large mirror surrounded by lights, and behind him was a door which, Russell informed him, led to their ‘en suite’. On inspection this bathroom was only an inch wider than Dean’s shoulders, with just enough room to turn around. Dean’s sense of claustrophobia was not being eased at all here. Another door in the panelled wall turned out to be their closet, which given the huge array of costumes Pepper had pressed upon the two of them, was going to be overflowing before they’d even thought about unpacking their own small duffels.
Russell was grinning at their twin expressions of dismay. He slapped Dean’s back heartily. Or heartlessly, depending how you looked at it.
“If you think this is small, you should see the crew quarters. Believe me, this is luxury. Right. I’ll leave you two lovelies to get settled in, I’ve got work to do. Feel free to explore, get your bearings and then come find me at seven. I’ll introduce you to my company and you can start your investigations. I’ll be backstage in the Theatre – backstage is on Deck Five, so don’t follow the signs as those take you to the seating area. This is Deck Two, in case you lost count.”
With that Russell was gone, leaving the Winchesters to start trying to find the best way to manoeuvre around each other in the confined space. It wasn’t easy. There might have been a lot of swearing.
“Dude! My foot!”
“Dean, get your elbow outta my face…”
“Ow fuck!”
“Okay, okay wait just a goddamn minute…” Dean eventually jumped up onto one of the beds, staking his claim and sat there cross-legged like a freaking pixie while he waited for Sam to finish bumbling around. Yep, two weeks of this was going to be fucking hilarious. He sighed, but silently. He wasn’t an emo princess like Sam, after all.
After they were both unpacked, the discussion turned from irritable bitching to the case.
“You know this ship is kinda like a small town, so I guess we just have to work it in the same way. When all the guests arrive there’ll be over three thousand people on board, including the crew. That’s a lot of potential monster chow.”
“A big crowd for a monster to hide itself in too,” Sam said.
“Yeah.” Then Dean perked up. “But on the bright side, Russell’s troupe has hot dancers, dude.” He waggled his eyebrows suggestively and was rewarded with Sam’s best bitch face of the day. Which, given the way the day had been going, was actually quite an achievement.
“Dean, you are not going to hit on those poor girls. Or any of the passengers either. Though with the way you pulled off the whole drag act, maybe you should be looking at the other side for a change.”
“Hey! Low blow, man. Just because I looked hotter in a dress than you did, there’s no need to get all bitter and twisted about it.”
“In your dreams, dude. What’s the background between you and Russell anyway? You seem close.”
Uh oh, here it came - deflect, deflect!
“He’s a friend, Sam. I do have a few of those, you know.”
“Okay, touchy. If you don’t want to tell me, I’m sure I can find out.”
“Nothing to tell, Sammy. I worked that theatre case for him while you were in Stanford, so I guess he’s grateful I saved some of his colleagues from dying horrible deaths. It was one nasty poltergeist. These things tend to be bonding experiences; surely you covered all that in Psychology 101.”
Dean glanced up at Sam from under lowered lashes, but he couldn’t tell if Sam was buying this or not. He really didn’t want Sam digging too deep. He’d never hear the last of it if little brother found out that Dean had actually slept with Raquel before realising Raquel was actually Russell. Dean was probably more embarrassed about the fact that he’d failed to notice Raquel was really a man, than the fact he’d then gone on to knowingly have sex with Russell several times. So sue him, he’d really liked the guy; and guy or gal, the sex had been stupendous. A good fuck was a good fuck, after all, even though he didn’t usually swing that way.
He was relieved when Sam just nodded and finally changed the subject to something possibly even closer to Dean’s heart than sex – namely food.
“So do you want out of this closet (no pun intended) and go check out the restaurants? There’s dining rooms on Decks Three and Four, and a restaurant and café on Deck Ten, where the swimming pools are.”
Dean was on his feet and scrambling over Sam’s gigantic body to get to the door before Sam could take another breath.
“You bet! How many decks are there on this thing anyway?”
“Ten’s the top deck.”
“Holy crap that’s a lot of stairs…”
“Don’t worry Dean, you won’t get a hernia from too much exercise. There is an elevator.”
“So what are you waiting for? Lead on, MacDuff.”
“You know that’s a misquote, Dean. It should be ‘Lay on, MacDuff, and…’”
Dean let Sam take point so he could grin unchecked behind Sam’s broad back. Listening to Sam bang on about the abuse of Shakespeare was soothing. Normal.
Which was not the word that sprang to mind as they explored the boat.
It’s a ship, Dean; a vessel this size is a ship not a boat…
Yeah, yeah thank you, Fred T Jane…
Around every corner was something spectacular. The range of colours of the wigs alone was dazzling, and Dean had never seen so many sequins in his entire life. He was not going to mention it to Sam, but he was secretly glad he’d allowed his brother to bully him into wearing the casual clothes Russell had insisted they bring in addition to their drag queen costumes. Even in these male model chinos and soft linen shirt he was feeling distinctly under-dressed. There was nowhere to hide his gun, for starters, and, as he’d pointed out loudly and often while getting dressed, he looked like a pimp from Miami Vice. He was carefully ignoring the irony that he’d made more fuss about wearing these dandified guys’ clothes than dressing up as a woman, though he was sure none of this had gone unnoticed by Sam. That boy was too damn sharp sometimes. Sharp enough to cut himself, as Bobby would say.
And then Dean absolutely was not sliding into remembering how insanely sexy Sam had looked wearing those fuck-me boots, because that would just be wrong; so he was exceedingly glad when they bumped into Russell again, who offered to take them back stage to meet some of his performers. That was just the thing Dean needed to distract him from strangely inappropriate thoughts about how good Sam’s legs would look if he waxed them… Sam was so obviously happy to start their investigations that Dean thought they would be safe from anything transvestite-related for a few hours. At least until all the partying started when the boat set sail.
When Dean had worked the case in the Palace theatre back in ’04, most of Russell’s troupe had been drag acts, including Russell himself (or rather Raquel herself). So he’d been expecting a similar make up to the entertainment line up this time too. He was pleasantly surprised to find that the cruise had booked a more mixed group of performers, even though (or perhaps because) the majority of their clients were drag queens. Sam was rolling his eyes in seconds because Dean was in girl-heaven the moment Russell ushered them through the wings. While Sam got to work questioning the best (male) friend of the last victim, Dean set about charming the two (female) lead dancers, who were gorgeous. He wondered if they would be up for a threesome…then remembered the tiny space he had to work with in his cabin and rapidly reined in his imagination. Okay, maybe not a threesome then.
Huh. This was even worse than the usual restrictions of sharing a motel room with Sam. Though perhaps there was somewhere back stage with a bit more room to test out their combined flexibility? He’d be willing to bet that was a glint of interest he saw in the smile of the girl with the fancy tattoo that snaked over her shoulder and disappeared round the region of her small but pert breast. And she was certainly very attractive with her huge dark eyes lined with kohl, and her long dark ringlets. Skinny, like most dancers, but he was sure she’d make up for the lack of cushioning with other skills.
He counted it a success that when they left the performers Sam’s giant brain was stuffed with enough information about the mysterious deaths to keep him occupied all night, while Dean had a hot date backstage after the evening’s show, with the hopefully very bendy Seema Banerji.
Of course Sam wanted to brain dump all that information immediately afterwards, so Dean agreed to discuss the case - provided they could do it over food. When Russell told them all their food was included, and Dean had seen the marvellous variety of restaurants and bars on board, predictably he wanted to sample everything. Sam, equally predictably, was being bitchy about it.
“Dean, we are on this ship for fourteen days, you don’t have to try everything on the menu on the first day, you know?”
Dean just grinned through a mouthful of the most delicious crispy bacon bits. He could barely see Sam over the top of the teetering pile of syrup-covered pancakes on the plate in front of him. Meanwhile Sam was prodding at his bowl of fruit salad with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. Dean felt vindicated. That would teach his little brother to go for the so-called healthy options all the time.
“Dude, if all the food is like this, I’m gonna be in heaven for the next two weeks!”
“You’re going to be bursting out of that slinky number Pepper made you try on, that’s for sure. You’ll end up looking like a fat juicy sausage with all the stuffing squeezing out of the skin.”
Dean stuck out his tongue and grinned again at Sam’s expression of pure disgust. Sometimes it was just too easy to wind his little brother up.
Still grimacing with distaste, Sam summed up the case so far. Dean half-listened in between groans of ecstasy as the flavours of salty bacon mixed with real maple syrup burst on his tongue in ways that should have been illegal. This really was so much better than their usual diner fare. He kinda loved this case already.
“So, Russell called us in after three deaths in total. There were two deaths in his troupe on their cruise before this one, which was from San Francisco to Mexico. The first fatality happened when they were a day out of Cabo San Lucas, so they had to make an early stop at Loreto to offload the body. That was Harry ‘Henrietta’ Schmetter, one of the drag acts, found dead in his cabin an hour before their first night performance. Then the second death was Arnie Jones, the lighting guy, who fell off his rig towards the end of that same voyage; so he was dealt with in San Francisco. Russell managed to get me the two autopsy reports, and they are weird. Definitely our sort of thing.”
“What’d they die of then? Not heart failure and a broken neck, I take it.”
“Nope. There wasn’t a mark on either of them, and Arnie was dead before he hit the ground. But when they were opened up, the coroners found the hearts were atrophied. Dry and shrivelled, like they’d had all the life sucked right out of them.”
“Yup, that’s weird alright.”
Sam tapped his fork against his teeth and Dean found himself staring at Sam’s lips, thinking about how they’d look so much fuller with some pink lipstick on them. Christ. He really needed to get laid. By someone else. Preferably female, without any hard lines or muscles that could remind him of Sam.
“So, we can rule out a lot of the usual suspects – this can’t be werewolves, or vamps.”
Dean nodded.
“Or a rugaru, or shifter. But you said three deaths?”
“Yes. The third is what made Russell think that whatever is causing the deaths is travelling with his company, not tied to the other ship, or any port they’d called into. It happened just two days ago here in New York, so we don’t have any autopsy yet, but I guess from what Russell told me that this is going to be the same thing. Danny Dixie was Russell’s lead male dancer and from what his friend Twix told me, he was a real fitness fanatic, my body’s a temple kinda guy, yet he dropped dead strolling down the street in Manhattan. Twix said he had been behaving a little strangely the day before. He’d even collapsed at rehearsals though he appeared to recover afterwards. Certainly everyone seems to think he’d been fine when he joined the rest of the company for an evening out on the town.”
“Okay, so what do you think we are dealing with here? Some kind of ghost possession?”
“Not sure. There was no talk about black goo, though, so maybe not. I was wondering whether it could be voodoo, or some other kind of curse… I need to do some more research.”
Dean couldn’t help a grimace. Research. Yeah, his favourite thing. On the bright side, it did offer an excuse to spend some more quality time with the dancers, though. This Dixie guy being their colleague and all. He just had to talk to them about the case, right? If there was one thing Dean was good at, it was talking. He made a mental note to chat to Seema about the late Danny Dixie after their liaison tonight. No point in raising the topic of dead guys beforehand and harshing his mellow, after all.
The first night of Russell’s burlesque show was spectacular. Sam was reluctantly impressed by the quality of the dancing and the music, while it was evident that Dean was more than slightly distracted by some of the contortions the lead dancer, Seema Banerji, was making as she writhed around the pole set centre stage. That core strength was impressive, and had Dean not so subtly adjusting himself in his chinos and muttering under his breath about what she might be able to do using those kind of moves in bed.
“Dean! We are not here so you can get your rocks off. We are on a case and you need to stay focused, alright?” Sam said, though he could tell from the faintly glazed look in Dean’s eyes that he was wasting his breath.
So Sam wasn’t surprised when Dean disappeared after the big finale, and that definitely wasn’t a surge of jealousy that rippled through him at the thought of his brother getting naked with some super-flexible slutty dancer. He was just irritated that Dean wasn’t pulling his weight on this investigation, that’s all. He nursed his beer and tried to concentrate on finding out as much as he could about Danny Dixie, while suppressing every thought of the way Dean’s lips had glistened when glossed up, and how dark and sultry Dean’s eyes had looked after the application of eyeliner…
Fortunately for Sam’s peace of mind, he uncovered a treasure-trove of intelligence when he started chatting to the resident beautician and tattoo artist, Culpho. Tapping the small Mexican for information rather than his brother for well, for anything at all, was a much safer way to pass the evening.
And Culpho was a veritable goldmine for gossip. People treated his salon like a confessional, without the inconvenience of signing any divine confidentiality agreement, and it seemed the Mexican was only too happy to share his customers’ deepest, darkest secrets with a stranger. Sam did a mental eye roll, reminding himself not to spill anything even slightly juicy while talking to the guy. He didn’t want his or Dean’s business spread all over the ship, thanks very much.
Filtering out the real gold from the fool’s gold was a challenge, though Sam did glean a few precious nuggets. Like the fact that Seema and Danny had been an item, which was a surprise because he’d gotten the impression from Twix that Danny had been more than just a good friend to the set designer and artist. Of course, it was entirely possible that the deceased dancer had been dallying with both Seema and Twix, which would complicate things slightly. Two-timing relationships were liable to get very messy, very quickly, without the addition of any supernatural elements.
“Yeah, they were real close. We’d all thought it was true love, you know? They’d even gotten matching tattoos. Not from me, though why they didn’t come to me to have it done, I don’t know. It’s crazy to get these things done in ports, there’s no guarantee those local studios are hygienic, eh cachorro?”
Sam raised an eyebrow at being called a puppy by a guy at least a foot shorter than him, but refused to be distracted from his line of questioning.
“She doesn’t seem too cut up about Danny’s death, does she?”
“I know, right? Everyone’s been talking about it. Either she’s a totally hard hearted bitch (that seems to be most people’s personal favourite theory) or she’s in a denial so extreme she’s a negative image of herself, mi corazón.”
“I take it she’s not very popular, then?”
“Like I said, hard hearted bitch. Mind you, she wasn’t always that way, used to be sweet as honey…” Culpho trailed off, his dark eyes taking on a suspiciously tearful glitter. “Danny was besotted with her and now she’s behaving as if he never existed. It’s just not right.”
Sam hoped Dean wasn’t planning to get up close and personal with Seema, though he rather feared the exotic-looking dancer was top of the bill for Dean’s after-show entertainment that evening. He was starting to wonder if she might have been involved in these deaths in some way. Certainly, the lead dancer had been with Russell’s company long enough; she’d joined them two years ago. But if it was her, why would she suddenly start the killings now?
Culpho was too upset after that for Sam to get anything more useful out of him, and Sam had to settle for listening to the soulful vocals of the West Indian singer, Irie Jay, who had stepped into the spotlight while the dance floor was overtaken by slow dances. Seeing all the couples smooching under the scattered shards of light thrown by the disco ball had Sam’s thoughts drifting into dangerous territory again. For once Sam refused to think, to analyse, to unravel what he was feeling. Instead he fled.
Back in their tiny cabin that somehow managed to feel too big without Dean in it, Sam took a long time to fall asleep. But late as it was when he finally succumbed to slumber, his brother hadn’t returned.
In spite of rolling into bed at three am, Dean woke before Sam and took advantage of the fact by taking possession of the tiny bathroom. He left to door open. It served the dual purpose of preventing his claustrophobia and hopefully grossing Sam out when his sleepy brother eventually woke up. It worked on both counts.
Dean watched Sam unfold his long limbs and staggering out of bed intending to slam the door shut. Instead Sam stopped in the doorway, seemingly mesmerised by the sight of Dean’s naked back.
“Just how drunk were you last night, Dean?”
“What? Why?” Dean spat toothpaste noisily into the sink and then shot a grin over his shoulder at Sam’s grimace that he knew would be there. His little brother had been uncharacteristically quiet last night, and had worn a peculiar expression that looked to Dean like a cross between disapproval and pain. He hadn’t been sure what to make of it but he wanted to see it gone this morning. Provoking Sam into straightforward annoyance was more comfortable in its familiarity.
“Have I got lipstick somewhere it shouldn’t be?”
Sam shook his head. “Not exactly. But there is that.” His voice was a mixture of censure and amusement as he prodded Dean in the centre of his naked back. Hard.
“Ow, dude! Careful with the merchandise…” Dean tried to crane his neck to see what Sam was poking. Sam, the bitch, just laughed at his contortions as he twisted himself into a pretzel, all in vain. Finally taking pity on him, Sam dragged Dean out of the tiny cubicle that constituted their ‘en suite’ and plonked him in front of the larger mirror in their equally tiny cabin. The same mirror that Dean had declared made the cabin look like a drag queen’s dressing room because of the lights that framed it. Which of course was actually only a factual statement, given that their cover was drag.
Sam spun Dean around so his back was visible in the glass and prodded the offending area again.
“That!” Sam said.
Dean’s mouth literally dropped open as he took in the fist-sized but perfectly formed tattoo that nestled between his shoulder blades.
“Fuck. I got a tattoo?”
“Looks like.” Sam chuckled. “You don’t even remember the needles? After all the fuss you made when we got our anti possession tats I find that hard to believe!”
“Fuck you, Sammy. That shit hurt!” Dean stared at the offending article with a frown. “What the hell is it anyway?”
“Looks like an Oroboros. Or maybe…” Sam leaned in closer until his breath was tickling Dean’s bare back, raising goosebumps. “Those look like feathers, so it could be Quetzalcoatl.”
“Gesundheit!”
“Very funny, Dean.”
“No really, that’s just peachy. I’ve got ink on my back that looks like a sneeze.”
Sam rolled his eyes again. Dean could see a lecture was coming, but there was no escaping it; their cabin was so cramped that moving around it was like learning how to ballroom dance. Every time one of them wanted to go somewhere, they had to manoeuvre around each other in a complex step sequence, being oh-so-careful not to touch. It was virtually impossible for two guys their size. So far Dean had lost count of the number of times Sam had trodden on his foot, or elbowed him in the ribs, or just brushed his naked chest to Dean’s naked back – which he so wasn’t thinking about. Dean of course was far more graceful and coordinated than his gigantic brother. Even though it was Sammy who’d been strutting his stuff on the dance floor with the “ladies” last night. That wasn’t talent, that was just Sam being freakishly tall, and good looking enough to blind any wannabe dancer to any missteps.
Before Sam could launch into the no doubt very edifying history of the Orob-thingy or the feathered sneeze, Dean had a thought.
“Hang on, Sammy.” He tried to point at the tattoo but his elbow wouldn’t bend that way, so he gave up. “How come it isn’t all red and sore if I had it done just last night?”
“Mmm, good point.” Sam leant in to get another close look, and Dean squirmed at the lack of personal space. Sam’s breath was warm against his skin, and perversely, it made Dean shiver. He could have sworn that he could feel the tattoo squirm as if it too was reacting to Sam’s proximity. Which was just ridiculous. As was the fact that he didn’t know if he was relieved or disappointed when Sam withdrew.
“I think we should go and have a word with Culpho.”
“Culpho? Who’s that?”
“The beautician slash tattoo artist on Deck Nine.”
“Oh great. Just don’t expect me to get a manicure while we’re there.”
Dean got dressed after the obligatory fussing about what he was willing to wear from Pepper’s casual wardrobe. He outright refused to appear in public in the black drainpipe jeans and tight fitting sequinned black wife-beater, shutting Sam up by asking his brother exactly why Sam was so keen to see his ass in those anyway. Finally he settled on a pair of linen pants and a soft cotton shirt that were at least neutral. Grinning at Sam’s annoyed huffing, they made their way to Culpho’s beauty salon. Which was, predictably, heaving with queens. Face packs, make overs (or beat ups, Dean supposed), pedicures and manicures, massages, the list seemed endless. Culpho’s wall calendar was covered in multi-coloured glittery stickers, and his two beauticians were looking frazzled already.
“And it’s only ten AM, darlings!”
The Winchesters had to wait an hour before the small Mexican had time to see them, by which time Dean was climbing the walls with boredom. However, he wasn’t so far gone when Culpho finally came over that he didn’t notice how the little Mexican brightened up when he saw Sam. The flash of anger that accompanied his amusement at seeing how the short guy had to crane his neck to look up at Sam took him by surprise.
Onwards to Part Two
Back to masterpost
Part One
Sam was trying not to worry, but that seemed to be his default setting these days.
Dean had been subdued since Richie’s death. Not unusual behaviour for someone who was grieving, but Dean’s normal coping strategy was piling on the bluster, getting louder and even more obnoxious to cover up his feelings. This time he was quiet, almost distracted. So much so that he even let Sam fuss over his colourfully bruised ribs without a protest, and never said a word in protest when Sam gratefully accepted Bobby’s invitation to come back to Sioux Falls to recuperate for a while.
After a day or two, Sam began to wonder. Perhaps this was nothing to do with the death of the flamboyant little hunter, even though it would be just like his brother to feel guilty for failing to prevent it. Maybe Dean’s uncharacteristic behaviour was caused by something else that happened in Elizabethville, Ohio.
“What did you do with Casey, Dean? All that time you were trapped down there with that demon, how did you pass the time?”
Sam hadn’t intended for this to come out like an accusation, but somehow his rational brain failed to communicate with his mouth and Dean’s sharp look rather indicated he wasn’t happy with Sam’s demanding attitude.
“Nothing, Sam. What do you think we did? Fucked? Danced a rhumba? Exchanged sad stories about our fucked up childhoods and the death of kings?”
Sam cleared his throat, ignoring his frisson of surprise at Dean quoting Shakespeare. “Well she was hot, Dean. You said so yourself, so…”
Dean looked at him in disbelief. “She was a demon, Sam. I’m not going to get my joystick out and stick it in a black-eyed bitch. She’d probably make it wither and drop off!”
Fortunately for the sake of Sam’s sanity, Bobby chose that moment to interrupt with news of a hunt in South Beach, Miami. Distracted, Dean lit up like a kid who’d been offered free roller coaster rides for life.
“South Beach, Sammy!” Dean threw his hands up in the air and waved them around, looking for all the world like a TV evangelist. Sam wasn’t going to mention it though. Well, not right this minute anyway. He’d store it away for future reference instead. Teasing ammunition was always useful, but for now he was just glad to see Dean’s spark was back.
“Somebody up there likes me after all, dude!”
Sam thought Dean’s grin could have lit a room.
After a week in South Beach and a very simple salt and burn, Sam was less happy about the return of Dean’s spark, and thoroughly tired of that grin. In fact, he was bordering on the brink of snuffing it out with the sheer frustration that was building up inside him. He had made no progress whatsoever in finding a way out of Dean’s deal, and Dean was still pretending that his clock wasn’t ticking.
So when the call came in from another old friend of Dean’s, offering a legitimate alternative to watching Dean ogling bikini clad bathing beauties on the wide sandy beaches of Miami, Sam was so grateful he could have hugged Russell Clark, whoever he was. It was probably a good thing the guy was calling from New York, or he might have suffered a couple of cracked ribs.
Sam took the call while Dean was – otherwise occupied. Again. Having turned down the invitation by the girl to ‘make it a threesome, baby’ - which had been disturbingly enthusiastically backed up by his inebriated brother - Sam found himself shut out of their motel room with nowhere to go but the Impala. Lucky for Sam, South Beach in early October was still pretty balmy, even late at night, so at least he wasn’t going to freeze to death in the car.
Grumbling under his breath, Sam folded himself into the shotgun seat and flipped open his laptop. The tension in his shoulders eased a little when he managed to find an unsecured Wi-Fi network. Within seconds he was absorbed in his research. Dean could protest and be as stupidly stoical as he liked about it, but one way or another, Sam was going to get Dean out of this deal.
He was jerked out of his research fugue by the grunge guitar chords of Smoke on the Water. He nearly threw the offending cell phone out of the Impala’s open window, but thought better of it. Grudgingly, he answered.
Twenty minutes later, Sam had a sketchy outline of the case, and directions to a ‘specialist’ outfitter in New Jersey, where they could pick up some of the supplies they would need for their cover. He’d given the guy their vital statistics, though Russell Clark had been unexpectedly cagey about the details of their cover, just saying that Dean would understand, and that Sam would get the picture when they arrived in New York. Normally Sam would have poked and prodded until he had all of the information, but he was so happy to have a case that would take them away from Miami and keep Dean occupied, he let it slide.
He didn’t even wonder about Dean’s exceptional good mood on the long drive from South Beach to New Jersey, putting it down to post coital bliss – albeit an unusually long lived kind of bliss. That girl must have been something spectacular.
Really, he should have known better. Dean was only ever that happy when he was pranking Sam.
Which was how Sam came to be standing outside on West 39th Street, Manhattan, staring open mouthed at Planet Pepper’s dazzling spangled and multihued window display. It really wasn’t the kind of outfitters he’d had in mind. Dean’s expression was one of unholy glee, the kind Sam had only seen before in association with clowns.
“Come on then, princess. Time to see how you look in a tiara!”
Sam grabbed Dean’s arm and hissed in his brother’s ear. “There must be some mistake. I must have taken the address down wrong. No way can we be doing a case dressed as drag queens!”
Dean’s grin just got wider. “Oh, didn’t Russ tell you? He’s also known as Raquel La Belle. Used to lead a burlesque troupe over at the Little Palace Theatre just off Broadway. He’ll be waiting for us inside. Come on, Priscilla.”
“What? Wait…Dean, you do know Priscilla was the bus, don’t you?”
“Shut up, Sam.”
0x0x0x0
Stepping inside Planet Pepper was like stepping into another world, one where there was no room for anything mundane, and every shade of every colour but grey. They were greeted by a middle aged but lithe African American guy, who pounced on Dean as if the elder Winchester was a desert oasis and he hadn’t had a drink in a week.
“Dean, darling! You’re as beautiful as ever!” The guy released Dean and held him at arms length. Dean’s blush was adding a nice shade of carmine to the multi-coloured backdrop; luckily it didn’t clash. Russell cocked his head to one side, considering, then made an exaggerated moue of distaste.
“Damn, girl. All that gorgeousness and you still wrap it up in ill-fitting layers. What a shame your fashion sense hasn’t improved any over the years.” The guy glanced over Dean’s shoulder at Sam, clearly finding his wardrobe just as lacking, if the despairing expression was any indicator, before flicking back to Dean. He tugged at Dean’s over-shirt with finger and thumb. “I mean, plaid shirts? The faded rock t shirt might carry a tiny bit of street cred, but the plaid makes you look like a lumberjack.”
“Fuck you, Russ, you never did have any taste in clothes. This is a classic look.”
Russell shook his head in mock despair, and Dean punched his arm with an easy camaraderie that surprised Sam somehow, even though he could see that the two were evidently closer friends than he’d realised. Sam was trying to place Russell’s accent and failing. It was New York alright, but there was a hint of something else in there that Sam couldn’t quite pin down. He’d quizzed Dean during the long drive to Manhattan about the backstory to this mysterious friendship, but had gained nothing much, other than that they’d met on one of Dean’s solo cases in New York, while Sam was at Stanford. But he knew there had to be more to it than that, because Dean was so eerily relaxed in the face of this whole drag queen scene. It was unbelievable. The noisily heterosexual asshole-brother Sam knew should be totally freaking out about this by now, and the fact that Dean wasn’t had Sam on edge far more than he liked to admit.
“Come on upstairs, boys. I can see that Pepper is going to have his work cut out for him, fitting you two up. We are going to have to get you some casual gear as well as the rest, I think. Can’t have you wandering around the ship dressed like this. You’ll stick out like sore thumbs!”
The fitting studio was upstairs, a small but airy room that felt like an artist’s loft, with one wall entirely covered in mirrors, intensifying the light from the high windows.
“Now tell me about this job, Russ. What have you gotten yourself into now, you old Queen?”
“Not a Queen any more, Dean, I’m a manager now. Got my own troupe of entertainers, playing the cruise ships. Which is why I called you in. Something’s been killing my kids. Our ship’s due to sail in two days with the entire Imperial Court of the East Coast on board. All my friends, colleagues, rivals… I don’t want to lose anyone else to this thing, whatever it is.”
“Fair enough. Why do you think it’s our kind of gig, Russ?”
“Could be the fact that their hearts were shrivelled up inside their chests, not a mark on them otherwise. That kind of gave me a clue. And before you ask, yeah, I got hold of the autopsy report for the last one. Raquel la Belle still has a following in the NYPD. Thing is, I think this thing might have been around before the deaths. A couple of my girls were acting strange on our last trip before anyone died, but one was in the middle of hormone treatment so we didn’t think anything of it; you know how they get when they are busy growing lady parts…”
Sam looked around in some trepidation, only half listening while Russell Clark filled Dean in on the case. He’d already gotten most of the case details from Russell on that initial phone call, and right now Sam was wishing he’d asked for more about the whole cross dressing thing. He stared, a little preoccupied with the intimidating selection of bouffant wigs he’d seen on display downstairs, and the even more terrifying array of pointy, shiny, sparkly shoes in the largest sizes Sam had ever seen, filling the cubby holes that lined the wide passage they’d walked through to get to Pepper’s studio. He jumped like a startled gazelle when a voice interrupted from directly behind him.
“Are these my new Queens? Raquel, darling, please say they are!”
Sam turned expecting the owner of the voice to be as flamboyant as the studio’s clients undoubtedly were, only to find a stocky, broad-faced, rather ordinary guy gazing up at him admiringly. He assumed this must be Pepper. He was right.
“Well, look at you. Lord, but you are going to have to wear thigh high boots with those long legs. Shame your hair isn’t a little bit longer or you wouldn’t need a wig.”
Sam flushed bright red while Dean guffawed.
“See? I always told you your hair is too girlie, Sammy!”
“Huh, not girlie enough, it would seem,” Sam retorted, bristling.
Russell stepped forward and took charge.
“Pepper, this pretty loud-mouth is Winnie, and this tall streak is Samilicious. They are joining the cruise with me on Saturday, so we only have a day and a half to get them glammed up from scratch.”
Clark ignored Dean’s squeak of protest at being called Winnie – I’m not a frigging cartoon bear, Russ! – and before Sam could even think about protesting at being called Sami-anything, the two Winchesters were swallowed up in a flurry of activity. Stripped to their boxer briefs they submitted to being poked and prodded and having their every physical attribute assessed and measured. Pepper was very vocal about his disappointment that their time constraint meant no new designs could be aired to make their debuts as drag queens more memorable, something that Sam felt wasn’t so awful. Somehow he thought that it was going to be memorable enough with the seemingly endlessly expanding pile of silks, satins and sequins that Pepper was putting together for them.
“No feathers, man,” Dean was saying, “You know how that shit makes me sneeze.” Russell looked saddened as he put a white floaty contraption straight out of Ginger Roger’s wardrobe, trimmed with masses of fine white down, onto their ‘reject’ pile, while Sam was left wondering exactly what Dean had gotten up to on the case he’d worked at Russell’s theatre.
Then Dean was whisked away into one changing room, while Sam was locked into the other to try on the first of three outfits that Pepper thought were the best fits.
“I want to see you in this one first, darling,” Pepper said, pointing to the one costume that had terrified Sam the most. That figured. It was a dark red vinyl, leather and velvet corset attached to a skirt that was ruffled to hell, short at the front and long at the back. But that wasn’t the part that scared Sam the most. No. It was the thigh high lace up boots that had him sweating.
“Don’t worry, I’ll help you with the lacings. Here,” said Pepper, and Sam managed to flush even redder as he realised he must be telegraphing his discomfort. It was particularly galling as Dean seemed to be taking all this in his stride, almost as if….
Sam sat down heavily as the thought struck him, and stared at the mirror in front of him with unseeing eyes, not even noticing Pepper’s competent hands swiftly untangling the long laces on the red leather boots.
Yeah, it was almost as if Dean had done this before. Holy shit. Dean must have dressed in drag before. His overcompensating, outspokenly macho big brother was a cross dresser. He was always glad to find ammunition for teasing Dean, but this little gem would give him enough material to torment Dean until he was a very old man… The grin that had been growing on Sam’s face vanished as he remembered that Dean was not even going to make it to thirty. Suddenly the thought of teasing Dean about his newly discovered feminine side lost all its lustre.
“Are you alright? You look a bit pale.” Pepper was looking up from tying off the laces with a concerned expression.
“What? Oh, yes, I’m fine.”
“Okay then, up you get and let me get your corset sorted.”
Sam rose and just kept going up and up. He wavered, teetered and nearly over balanced as his feet settled into their new position and adjusted to the unaccustomed heels. He grabbed Pepper’s broad shoulder with an exclamation of surprise. Jesus. How did Jess ever manage to look so elegant in her red Manolos? Sam looked like a newly born foal trying to balance on heels half the height of hers. Pepper gave him a wry smile.
“I take it you’ve never worn a costume like this before then, sugar? This should be interesting…”
Pepper turned Sam around and started pulling the laces tight on the bodice until Sam was sure his creaking ribs were going to snap, then spun him back to check the effect in the full length mirror. Pepper was talking, but Sam was too dazed to really take in what he was saying. He looked shockingly good. The boots, although they were only around 3 inches tall, made his natural height look even more imposing. The corset had given him a waist and simultaneously crushed and pushed up his pectoral muscles so he looked as though he had breasts, albeit small ones.
“…and once we add the padded shorts and some chicken cutlets padding inside the corset to give you a more sexy cleavage, you’ll have curves to die for, Sami. Like I said before, it’s a pity your own hair isn’t longer, but I think both of you are going to need some of my wigs. Then there’s make up, and false eyelashes…So much to do with you girls, I wish I had more time! ”
Sam looked down at the top of Pepper’s head and wondered if it was possible to get vertigo from wearing high heels. He was interrupted by a piercing wolf whistle from behind and suffered his second shock of the day as he looked in the mirror and saw a fantastical figure approaching.
Somehow Russell had found the time to dress Dean up in the whole kit and caboodle – from the long blonde wig to the six-inch stilettos. Dean even had his face made up, and if Sam hadn’t known it was his brother, he’d have been hard pushed to recognise Dean at all. The dress Dean was wearing was an off the shoulder, dark green velvet sheath that hugged contours that shouldn’t have been there, and was split right up the side from hip to ankle, showing off all Dean’s long leg as he walked. Okay, that leg was still a bit too hairy to be mistaken for a female and those shoulders were too broad and muscular, but then female impersonation wasn’t the kind of drag they were aiming for here.
Whatever, Dean looked absolutely fantastic.
Even if the effect was then ruined by Dean opening his mouth and talking.
“Look, Sam, I make a fucking amazing queen! And with these heels on I bet I’m taller than…” Dean’s voice trailed off as he took in the full effect of Sam’s costume. Sam flushed when Dean stopped in his tracks and just stood staring at Sam, with his distractingly shiny reddened mouth hanging open in a most unladylike fashion.
“What?” Sam said, uncomfortable under the scrutiny. “I look ridiculous, right? I feel like a giraffe on roller skates. I should just…” He turned, wobbling in the boots, reaching to cover himself up with the old familiar plaid shirt he’d thrown onto the chair. Then Dean was right there in his space, moving at a speed that shouldn’t have been possible, dressed like that. Their bare shoulders brushed with a flare of heat, and Dean’s hand landed a firm grip on Sam’s wrist, stopping him dead.
“Don’t.”
Both of them froze, Sam suddenly intensely aware of how little clothing was covering either of them, and how warm Dean’s skin was, where it was pressed up against his own. He thought he heard Dean swallow hard in the charged silence before Pepper blessedly interrupted, tapping Dean on the back. The touch broke the tension between them before it became unbearable. Or before Sam did something exceptionally stupid, like kissing his brother on those ridiculous, slicked up, bee-stung lips.
And what the fuck was that all about?
“So ladies, what do we think? I have to find the right wig for Sami here, and beat the hell out of that face…,”
Predictably, Dean jumped right in to defend Sam at that, who was relieved to have something distract him from the lingering ghostly sensation of pressure on his wrist where Dean’s fingers had briefly rested.
“Hey! Nobody’s beating Sam up, least of all you, shorty!”
Both Russell and Pepper dissolved into peals of laughter while Dean stood with his fists clenched and a bewildered expression on his face that was utterly adorable. Not that Sam noticed, of course.
“What’s so funny?” Dean said aggressively.
Gasping for breath through his laughter, Pepper turned to Russell, ignoring Dean’s indignant question.
“Raquel, darling, I thought you said this one had done this before? He ain’t gonna make much of a drag mother for Sami if he can’t speak the language!”
“He was only with us for a couple of weeks, Pepper, give the girl a break.” Russell took pity on Dean and explained, “Beating someone’s face means making it up, Dean, not punching it.”
Dean flushed and glared at Sam, who was opening grinning.
“Yeah, well, I might not have learned all the lingo but at least I can walk in my heels.”
“Are you really going to claim victory because you make a better woman than I do, Dean?”
Sam didn’t bother to hide his amusement at Dean’s discomfiture, earning himself a harassed sounding ‘shut up, bitch’.
Pepper rolled his eyes. “Huh, I can see you two are related. You can both pat yourselves on the back, darlings. Neither of you would be a booger, even if it wasn’t someone with my incredible talent turning you into a couple of pretty heathers.”
Sam shot a glance at Dean and was not surprised to see that his brother was looking just as puzzled as he was.
“Okay.” Sam said. “I can see that we are going to need a crash course in the right patois as well as a few other things, before we set sail on this boatful of queens. Better start with what a booger and a heather is…”
Three hours and what felt like a hundred costume changes later, Sam’s head was buzzing with new words and phrases, and Dean was getting dangerously bored. Never a good thing, especially if the only outlet he had for alleviating that boredom was Sam. Time to return to normal, slide back into the comfort of their scruffy jeans and well-worn plaid. Sam was getting itchy for his laptop and research, and Dean needed some beer and pie to keep him quiet. At least Sam wasn’t wobbling around on his high heels so much now; in fact he thought he could almost manage a bit of a sashay, as long as there was a wall close by to grab.
Even Pepper seemed half satisfied with their progress. “Well hallayloo! I think we are just about there, girls! Winnie looks fabulous as long as she keeps her pretty mouth shut, and if Sami promises to practise walking so she doesn’t look like it’s her first time on the ice, I figure we’ve got ourselves a pair of fierce queens, Russ my darling.”
Finally both Russell and Pepper gave their seal of approval. The Winchester brothers were about as ready as the two experts could make them after such a short introduction to drag queen etiquette and dressing up. Their intimidating selection of dresses, costume jewellery, make up and wigs were all packed up and ready to go.
Leaving with their new wardrobes carefully crammed in two of the biggest pieces of luggage Sam had ever seen proved almost as big a challenge as parking the Impala on a New York street had been. Especially with Russell supervising the cramming. Even though the ex queen was the jolliest person Sam had come across in a very long time, even Russell’s ever-lasting smile grew a little strained. He fussed and clucked when Sam tried to fold something that apparently shouldn’t be folded, and nearly set off the nearest shop alarms in sympathy with his shriek when Dean spilled the second best wig onto the sidewalk whilst fumbling in his pocket for the keys to the Impala.
They had one night in Manhattan before embarking from Cape Liberty Cruise Point the following morning, so Russell had offered his apartment floor to sleep on. As he also had a secure lock up for Dean’s baby, Dean had accepted with alacrity, though Sam was now convinced that Russell’s main motivation in offering was because he was more worried about making sure the Winchesters would fit in with the Imperial Courts of the East Coast Drag Queens, rather than needing the time to fill them in on the case.
Sam resigned himself to a long evening when Dean escaped Russell’s attentions making busy in the small kitchenette. He only had two consolations. First that he might be less at home in the drag costume than Dean, but he was going to sound more credible and had a better chance of understanding what was going on – always an advantage when investigating a new case. Second was the totally awesome chilli that Dean whipped up out of nowhere. He had to admit, his brother was full of surprises lately.
0x0x0x0
Dean concluded that checking in to a cruise ship was nothing like checking into a motel. Luckily for the Winchesters, Russell’s privileged access as Entertainments Manager gained them a fast track through the registration process, and meant they could get settled into their cabin before the majority of the other passengers arrived. Nearly the full complement of guests was from the Drag Queen community, making Dean snicker a little bit under his breath when he thought about the poor handful of unsuspecting holiday makers who were ‘normal’. They were in for a bit of a shock.
Although the Empress of the Seas was a relatively modest size as far as cruise ships go, she was still a hundred times larger and more imposing than the tacky floating motel Dean had been half expecting. His hunter radar was pinging like crazy. He felt like a submarine diving deeper and deeper to avoid depth charges. He felt more and more claustrophobic as Russell led them down seemingly endless narrow corridors and sets of stairs to reach their cabin. The scarcity of exit options was making him sweat.
“Sorry you have to cram into the basic guest accommodation, boys, but it was the best I could get you at short notice. This cruise has been fully booked for months, so I was lucky to be able to swing you a room at all…”
Dean gulp was audible as he took in the windowless so-called stateroom that would be their home for the next two weeks. Calling it a stateroom was a joke because there was another word that was a lot more accurate, miniscule. He had to give the designer credit for managing to fit the absolute maximum functionality into such a tiny space. Somehow they had crammed two twin beds in there, though the space between them was barely as wide as one of Sam’s giant feet. There was what the brochure optimistically described as a ‘vanity area’, which consisted of a narrow dressing table type contraption with a large mirror surrounded by lights, and behind him was a door which, Russell informed him, led to their ‘en suite’. On inspection this bathroom was only an inch wider than Dean’s shoulders, with just enough room to turn around. Dean’s sense of claustrophobia was not being eased at all here. Another door in the panelled wall turned out to be their closet, which given the huge array of costumes Pepper had pressed upon the two of them, was going to be overflowing before they’d even thought about unpacking their own small duffels.
Russell was grinning at their twin expressions of dismay. He slapped Dean’s back heartily. Or heartlessly, depending how you looked at it.
“If you think this is small, you should see the crew quarters. Believe me, this is luxury. Right. I’ll leave you two lovelies to get settled in, I’ve got work to do. Feel free to explore, get your bearings and then come find me at seven. I’ll introduce you to my company and you can start your investigations. I’ll be backstage in the Theatre – backstage is on Deck Five, so don’t follow the signs as those take you to the seating area. This is Deck Two, in case you lost count.”
With that Russell was gone, leaving the Winchesters to start trying to find the best way to manoeuvre around each other in the confined space. It wasn’t easy. There might have been a lot of swearing.
“Dude! My foot!”
“Dean, get your elbow outta my face…”
“Ow fuck!”
“Okay, okay wait just a goddamn minute…” Dean eventually jumped up onto one of the beds, staking his claim and sat there cross-legged like a freaking pixie while he waited for Sam to finish bumbling around. Yep, two weeks of this was going to be fucking hilarious. He sighed, but silently. He wasn’t an emo princess like Sam, after all.
After they were both unpacked, the discussion turned from irritable bitching to the case.
“You know this ship is kinda like a small town, so I guess we just have to work it in the same way. When all the guests arrive there’ll be over three thousand people on board, including the crew. That’s a lot of potential monster chow.”
“A big crowd for a monster to hide itself in too,” Sam said.
“Yeah.” Then Dean perked up. “But on the bright side, Russell’s troupe has hot dancers, dude.” He waggled his eyebrows suggestively and was rewarded with Sam’s best bitch face of the day. Which, given the way the day had been going, was actually quite an achievement.
“Dean, you are not going to hit on those poor girls. Or any of the passengers either. Though with the way you pulled off the whole drag act, maybe you should be looking at the other side for a change.”
“Hey! Low blow, man. Just because I looked hotter in a dress than you did, there’s no need to get all bitter and twisted about it.”
“In your dreams, dude. What’s the background between you and Russell anyway? You seem close.”
Uh oh, here it came - deflect, deflect!
“He’s a friend, Sam. I do have a few of those, you know.”
“Okay, touchy. If you don’t want to tell me, I’m sure I can find out.”
“Nothing to tell, Sammy. I worked that theatre case for him while you were in Stanford, so I guess he’s grateful I saved some of his colleagues from dying horrible deaths. It was one nasty poltergeist. These things tend to be bonding experiences; surely you covered all that in Psychology 101.”
Dean glanced up at Sam from under lowered lashes, but he couldn’t tell if Sam was buying this or not. He really didn’t want Sam digging too deep. He’d never hear the last of it if little brother found out that Dean had actually slept with Raquel before realising Raquel was actually Russell. Dean was probably more embarrassed about the fact that he’d failed to notice Raquel was really a man, than the fact he’d then gone on to knowingly have sex with Russell several times. So sue him, he’d really liked the guy; and guy or gal, the sex had been stupendous. A good fuck was a good fuck, after all, even though he didn’t usually swing that way.
He was relieved when Sam just nodded and finally changed the subject to something possibly even closer to Dean’s heart than sex – namely food.
“So do you want out of this closet (no pun intended) and go check out the restaurants? There’s dining rooms on Decks Three and Four, and a restaurant and café on Deck Ten, where the swimming pools are.”
Dean was on his feet and scrambling over Sam’s gigantic body to get to the door before Sam could take another breath.
“You bet! How many decks are there on this thing anyway?”
“Ten’s the top deck.”
“Holy crap that’s a lot of stairs…”
“Don’t worry Dean, you won’t get a hernia from too much exercise. There is an elevator.”
“So what are you waiting for? Lead on, MacDuff.”
“You know that’s a misquote, Dean. It should be ‘Lay on, MacDuff, and…’”
Dean let Sam take point so he could grin unchecked behind Sam’s broad back. Listening to Sam bang on about the abuse of Shakespeare was soothing. Normal.
Which was not the word that sprang to mind as they explored the boat.
It’s a ship, Dean; a vessel this size is a ship not a boat…
Yeah, yeah thank you, Fred T Jane…
Around every corner was something spectacular. The range of colours of the wigs alone was dazzling, and Dean had never seen so many sequins in his entire life. He was not going to mention it to Sam, but he was secretly glad he’d allowed his brother to bully him into wearing the casual clothes Russell had insisted they bring in addition to their drag queen costumes. Even in these male model chinos and soft linen shirt he was feeling distinctly under-dressed. There was nowhere to hide his gun, for starters, and, as he’d pointed out loudly and often while getting dressed, he looked like a pimp from Miami Vice. He was carefully ignoring the irony that he’d made more fuss about wearing these dandified guys’ clothes than dressing up as a woman, though he was sure none of this had gone unnoticed by Sam. That boy was too damn sharp sometimes. Sharp enough to cut himself, as Bobby would say.
And then Dean absolutely was not sliding into remembering how insanely sexy Sam had looked wearing those fuck-me boots, because that would just be wrong; so he was exceedingly glad when they bumped into Russell again, who offered to take them back stage to meet some of his performers. That was just the thing Dean needed to distract him from strangely inappropriate thoughts about how good Sam’s legs would look if he waxed them… Sam was so obviously happy to start their investigations that Dean thought they would be safe from anything transvestite-related for a few hours. At least until all the partying started when the boat set sail.
When Dean had worked the case in the Palace theatre back in ’04, most of Russell’s troupe had been drag acts, including Russell himself (or rather Raquel herself). So he’d been expecting a similar make up to the entertainment line up this time too. He was pleasantly surprised to find that the cruise had booked a more mixed group of performers, even though (or perhaps because) the majority of their clients were drag queens. Sam was rolling his eyes in seconds because Dean was in girl-heaven the moment Russell ushered them through the wings. While Sam got to work questioning the best (male) friend of the last victim, Dean set about charming the two (female) lead dancers, who were gorgeous. He wondered if they would be up for a threesome…then remembered the tiny space he had to work with in his cabin and rapidly reined in his imagination. Okay, maybe not a threesome then.
Huh. This was even worse than the usual restrictions of sharing a motel room with Sam. Though perhaps there was somewhere back stage with a bit more room to test out their combined flexibility? He’d be willing to bet that was a glint of interest he saw in the smile of the girl with the fancy tattoo that snaked over her shoulder and disappeared round the region of her small but pert breast. And she was certainly very attractive with her huge dark eyes lined with kohl, and her long dark ringlets. Skinny, like most dancers, but he was sure she’d make up for the lack of cushioning with other skills.
He counted it a success that when they left the performers Sam’s giant brain was stuffed with enough information about the mysterious deaths to keep him occupied all night, while Dean had a hot date backstage after the evening’s show, with the hopefully very bendy Seema Banerji.
0x0x0x0x0
Of course Sam wanted to brain dump all that information immediately afterwards, so Dean agreed to discuss the case - provided they could do it over food. When Russell told them all their food was included, and Dean had seen the marvellous variety of restaurants and bars on board, predictably he wanted to sample everything. Sam, equally predictably, was being bitchy about it.
“Dean, we are on this ship for fourteen days, you don’t have to try everything on the menu on the first day, you know?”
Dean just grinned through a mouthful of the most delicious crispy bacon bits. He could barely see Sam over the top of the teetering pile of syrup-covered pancakes on the plate in front of him. Meanwhile Sam was prodding at his bowl of fruit salad with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. Dean felt vindicated. That would teach his little brother to go for the so-called healthy options all the time.
“Dude, if all the food is like this, I’m gonna be in heaven for the next two weeks!”
“You’re going to be bursting out of that slinky number Pepper made you try on, that’s for sure. You’ll end up looking like a fat juicy sausage with all the stuffing squeezing out of the skin.”
Dean stuck out his tongue and grinned again at Sam’s expression of pure disgust. Sometimes it was just too easy to wind his little brother up.
Still grimacing with distaste, Sam summed up the case so far. Dean half-listened in between groans of ecstasy as the flavours of salty bacon mixed with real maple syrup burst on his tongue in ways that should have been illegal. This really was so much better than their usual diner fare. He kinda loved this case already.
“So, Russell called us in after three deaths in total. There were two deaths in his troupe on their cruise before this one, which was from San Francisco to Mexico. The first fatality happened when they were a day out of Cabo San Lucas, so they had to make an early stop at Loreto to offload the body. That was Harry ‘Henrietta’ Schmetter, one of the drag acts, found dead in his cabin an hour before their first night performance. Then the second death was Arnie Jones, the lighting guy, who fell off his rig towards the end of that same voyage; so he was dealt with in San Francisco. Russell managed to get me the two autopsy reports, and they are weird. Definitely our sort of thing.”
“What’d they die of then? Not heart failure and a broken neck, I take it.”
“Nope. There wasn’t a mark on either of them, and Arnie was dead before he hit the ground. But when they were opened up, the coroners found the hearts were atrophied. Dry and shrivelled, like they’d had all the life sucked right out of them.”
“Yup, that’s weird alright.”
Sam tapped his fork against his teeth and Dean found himself staring at Sam’s lips, thinking about how they’d look so much fuller with some pink lipstick on them. Christ. He really needed to get laid. By someone else. Preferably female, without any hard lines or muscles that could remind him of Sam.
“So, we can rule out a lot of the usual suspects – this can’t be werewolves, or vamps.”
Dean nodded.
“Or a rugaru, or shifter. But you said three deaths?”
“Yes. The third is what made Russell think that whatever is causing the deaths is travelling with his company, not tied to the other ship, or any port they’d called into. It happened just two days ago here in New York, so we don’t have any autopsy yet, but I guess from what Russell told me that this is going to be the same thing. Danny Dixie was Russell’s lead male dancer and from what his friend Twix told me, he was a real fitness fanatic, my body’s a temple kinda guy, yet he dropped dead strolling down the street in Manhattan. Twix said he had been behaving a little strangely the day before. He’d even collapsed at rehearsals though he appeared to recover afterwards. Certainly everyone seems to think he’d been fine when he joined the rest of the company for an evening out on the town.”
“Okay, so what do you think we are dealing with here? Some kind of ghost possession?”
“Not sure. There was no talk about black goo, though, so maybe not. I was wondering whether it could be voodoo, or some other kind of curse… I need to do some more research.”
Dean couldn’t help a grimace. Research. Yeah, his favourite thing. On the bright side, it did offer an excuse to spend some more quality time with the dancers, though. This Dixie guy being their colleague and all. He just had to talk to them about the case, right? If there was one thing Dean was good at, it was talking. He made a mental note to chat to Seema about the late Danny Dixie after their liaison tonight. No point in raising the topic of dead guys beforehand and harshing his mellow, after all.
0x0x0x0x0
The first night of Russell’s burlesque show was spectacular. Sam was reluctantly impressed by the quality of the dancing and the music, while it was evident that Dean was more than slightly distracted by some of the contortions the lead dancer, Seema Banerji, was making as she writhed around the pole set centre stage. That core strength was impressive, and had Dean not so subtly adjusting himself in his chinos and muttering under his breath about what she might be able to do using those kind of moves in bed.
“Dean! We are not here so you can get your rocks off. We are on a case and you need to stay focused, alright?” Sam said, though he could tell from the faintly glazed look in Dean’s eyes that he was wasting his breath.
So Sam wasn’t surprised when Dean disappeared after the big finale, and that definitely wasn’t a surge of jealousy that rippled through him at the thought of his brother getting naked with some super-flexible slutty dancer. He was just irritated that Dean wasn’t pulling his weight on this investigation, that’s all. He nursed his beer and tried to concentrate on finding out as much as he could about Danny Dixie, while suppressing every thought of the way Dean’s lips had glistened when glossed up, and how dark and sultry Dean’s eyes had looked after the application of eyeliner…
Fortunately for Sam’s peace of mind, he uncovered a treasure-trove of intelligence when he started chatting to the resident beautician and tattoo artist, Culpho. Tapping the small Mexican for information rather than his brother for well, for anything at all, was a much safer way to pass the evening.
And Culpho was a veritable goldmine for gossip. People treated his salon like a confessional, without the inconvenience of signing any divine confidentiality agreement, and it seemed the Mexican was only too happy to share his customers’ deepest, darkest secrets with a stranger. Sam did a mental eye roll, reminding himself not to spill anything even slightly juicy while talking to the guy. He didn’t want his or Dean’s business spread all over the ship, thanks very much.
Filtering out the real gold from the fool’s gold was a challenge, though Sam did glean a few precious nuggets. Like the fact that Seema and Danny had been an item, which was a surprise because he’d gotten the impression from Twix that Danny had been more than just a good friend to the set designer and artist. Of course, it was entirely possible that the deceased dancer had been dallying with both Seema and Twix, which would complicate things slightly. Two-timing relationships were liable to get very messy, very quickly, without the addition of any supernatural elements.
“Yeah, they were real close. We’d all thought it was true love, you know? They’d even gotten matching tattoos. Not from me, though why they didn’t come to me to have it done, I don’t know. It’s crazy to get these things done in ports, there’s no guarantee those local studios are hygienic, eh cachorro?”
Sam raised an eyebrow at being called a puppy by a guy at least a foot shorter than him, but refused to be distracted from his line of questioning.
“She doesn’t seem too cut up about Danny’s death, does she?”
“I know, right? Everyone’s been talking about it. Either she’s a totally hard hearted bitch (that seems to be most people’s personal favourite theory) or she’s in a denial so extreme she’s a negative image of herself, mi corazón.”
“I take it she’s not very popular, then?”
“Like I said, hard hearted bitch. Mind you, she wasn’t always that way, used to be sweet as honey…” Culpho trailed off, his dark eyes taking on a suspiciously tearful glitter. “Danny was besotted with her and now she’s behaving as if he never existed. It’s just not right.”
Sam hoped Dean wasn’t planning to get up close and personal with Seema, though he rather feared the exotic-looking dancer was top of the bill for Dean’s after-show entertainment that evening. He was starting to wonder if she might have been involved in these deaths in some way. Certainly, the lead dancer had been with Russell’s company long enough; she’d joined them two years ago. But if it was her, why would she suddenly start the killings now?
Culpho was too upset after that for Sam to get anything more useful out of him, and Sam had to settle for listening to the soulful vocals of the West Indian singer, Irie Jay, who had stepped into the spotlight while the dance floor was overtaken by slow dances. Seeing all the couples smooching under the scattered shards of light thrown by the disco ball had Sam’s thoughts drifting into dangerous territory again. For once Sam refused to think, to analyse, to unravel what he was feeling. Instead he fled.
Back in their tiny cabin that somehow managed to feel too big without Dean in it, Sam took a long time to fall asleep. But late as it was when he finally succumbed to slumber, his brother hadn’t returned.
0x0x0x0x0
In spite of rolling into bed at three am, Dean woke before Sam and took advantage of the fact by taking possession of the tiny bathroom. He left to door open. It served the dual purpose of preventing his claustrophobia and hopefully grossing Sam out when his sleepy brother eventually woke up. It worked on both counts.
Dean watched Sam unfold his long limbs and staggering out of bed intending to slam the door shut. Instead Sam stopped in the doorway, seemingly mesmerised by the sight of Dean’s naked back.
“Just how drunk were you last night, Dean?”
“What? Why?” Dean spat toothpaste noisily into the sink and then shot a grin over his shoulder at Sam’s grimace that he knew would be there. His little brother had been uncharacteristically quiet last night, and had worn a peculiar expression that looked to Dean like a cross between disapproval and pain. He hadn’t been sure what to make of it but he wanted to see it gone this morning. Provoking Sam into straightforward annoyance was more comfortable in its familiarity.
“Have I got lipstick somewhere it shouldn’t be?”
Sam shook his head. “Not exactly. But there is that.” His voice was a mixture of censure and amusement as he prodded Dean in the centre of his naked back. Hard.
“Ow, dude! Careful with the merchandise…” Dean tried to crane his neck to see what Sam was poking. Sam, the bitch, just laughed at his contortions as he twisted himself into a pretzel, all in vain. Finally taking pity on him, Sam dragged Dean out of the tiny cubicle that constituted their ‘en suite’ and plonked him in front of the larger mirror in their equally tiny cabin. The same mirror that Dean had declared made the cabin look like a drag queen’s dressing room because of the lights that framed it. Which of course was actually only a factual statement, given that their cover was drag.
Sam spun Dean around so his back was visible in the glass and prodded the offending area again.
“That!” Sam said.
Dean’s mouth literally dropped open as he took in the fist-sized but perfectly formed tattoo that nestled between his shoulder blades.
“Fuck. I got a tattoo?”
“Looks like.” Sam chuckled. “You don’t even remember the needles? After all the fuss you made when we got our anti possession tats I find that hard to believe!”
“Fuck you, Sammy. That shit hurt!” Dean stared at the offending article with a frown. “What the hell is it anyway?”
“Looks like an Oroboros. Or maybe…” Sam leaned in closer until his breath was tickling Dean’s bare back, raising goosebumps. “Those look like feathers, so it could be Quetzalcoatl.”
“Gesundheit!”
“Very funny, Dean.”
“No really, that’s just peachy. I’ve got ink on my back that looks like a sneeze.”
Sam rolled his eyes again. Dean could see a lecture was coming, but there was no escaping it; their cabin was so cramped that moving around it was like learning how to ballroom dance. Every time one of them wanted to go somewhere, they had to manoeuvre around each other in a complex step sequence, being oh-so-careful not to touch. It was virtually impossible for two guys their size. So far Dean had lost count of the number of times Sam had trodden on his foot, or elbowed him in the ribs, or just brushed his naked chest to Dean’s naked back – which he so wasn’t thinking about. Dean of course was far more graceful and coordinated than his gigantic brother. Even though it was Sammy who’d been strutting his stuff on the dance floor with the “ladies” last night. That wasn’t talent, that was just Sam being freakishly tall, and good looking enough to blind any wannabe dancer to any missteps.
Before Sam could launch into the no doubt very edifying history of the Orob-thingy or the feathered sneeze, Dean had a thought.
“Hang on, Sammy.” He tried to point at the tattoo but his elbow wouldn’t bend that way, so he gave up. “How come it isn’t all red and sore if I had it done just last night?”
“Mmm, good point.” Sam leant in to get another close look, and Dean squirmed at the lack of personal space. Sam’s breath was warm against his skin, and perversely, it made Dean shiver. He could have sworn that he could feel the tattoo squirm as if it too was reacting to Sam’s proximity. Which was just ridiculous. As was the fact that he didn’t know if he was relieved or disappointed when Sam withdrew.
“I think we should go and have a word with Culpho.”
“Culpho? Who’s that?”
“The beautician slash tattoo artist on Deck Nine.”
“Oh great. Just don’t expect me to get a manicure while we’re there.”
Dean got dressed after the obligatory fussing about what he was willing to wear from Pepper’s casual wardrobe. He outright refused to appear in public in the black drainpipe jeans and tight fitting sequinned black wife-beater, shutting Sam up by asking his brother exactly why Sam was so keen to see his ass in those anyway. Finally he settled on a pair of linen pants and a soft cotton shirt that were at least neutral. Grinning at Sam’s annoyed huffing, they made their way to Culpho’s beauty salon. Which was, predictably, heaving with queens. Face packs, make overs (or beat ups, Dean supposed), pedicures and manicures, massages, the list seemed endless. Culpho’s wall calendar was covered in multi-coloured glittery stickers, and his two beauticians were looking frazzled already.
“And it’s only ten AM, darlings!”
The Winchesters had to wait an hour before the small Mexican had time to see them, by which time Dean was climbing the walls with boredom. However, he wasn’t so far gone when Culpho finally came over that he didn’t notice how the little Mexican brightened up when he saw Sam. The flash of anger that accompanied his amusement at seeing how the short guy had to crane his neck to look up at Sam took him by surprise.
0x0x0x0x0
Onwards to Part Two
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