Song Remains the Same

Chapter 26: Insatiable

"The heart wants what it wants."
- Emily Dickinson

Three Days Later
Plainville, Kansas
...Valentine's Day

Agent Wailer—a.k.a. Alex Winchester—shrugged off her blazer and laid it over the chair on top of Sam and Dean's. She wore her typical FBI getup—flat black dress shoes and a pale blue button-up tucked neatly into navy slacks. She'd even made effort on the hair—pulling it into a low bun at the nape of her neck. She glanced up at Agents Marley and Cliff (Dean and Sam). They were rolling up their sleeves because this particular examination was about to get messy. Alex shook her head to herself. It was typical that they would spend Valentine's Day this way.

Usually when they ran their FBI sham, they divided and conquered—Dean always headed it up and took one of the twins with him while the other one checked into other leads or just sat it out. After all, three agents in one place was unnecessary and tended to raise eyebrows. But none of the Winchesters had wanted to miss out on this case. It was weird... even for them. A couple had literally eaten each other to death—leaving very little for the coroner to let them examine, but still. The same night that this apparently ravenous couple had eaten it (Dean's pun, not Alex's), another couple had shot and killed each other in a double suicide. It wasn't clear if the deaths were related or not. Something supernatural was clearly involved, at least on account of the couple who ate each other.

Saint James Medical Center's coroner, a rotund and jovial old white guy, had done what most people did: taken one look at their FBI badges and given the Winchesters free run of the place. He just instructed that they be sure and put the body parts back where they'd found them—which was the refrigerator.

Dean snapped on some latex gloves and then tossed a pair to each sibling. Alex caught hers and yanked them on, then grabbed one of the disposable blue aprons that Sam and Dean were already wearing, donning it as she watched Sam bring over several clear containers of bloody human remains.

He set them down onto the stainless-steel examination table in the middle of the room while Alex pawed through drawers.

"Geez, there's not much left of these people..." Dean looked over the containers and took a seat at the head of the table. He pulled one of the bins over.

Alex sat down across from Sam and set down a handful of tongs then opened the container in front of her. It was entrails. Eugh. She was suddenly rethinking her eagerness to come along to the morgue. She poked through the guts unenthusiastically with tongs and offhandedly wondered where Cas was even as she disturbingly drew comparisons between how similar these guts looked to canned spaghetti. It had been three days since they'd physically seen the angel. She had texted him yesterday, not able to hold herself back anymore. Are you okay? she'd asked. He'd replied about a minute later: Yes. And that had been that. She had almost texted him back about ten times after that but had stopped herself each time. Nothing she thought of writing made sense. And she still kind of got the feeling he was avoiding her.

It was just his mode of operation: appearing unexpectedly, leaving without notice—but now, after seeing him so banged up and weakened, it was hard not to worry about him or demand a status update on his wellbeing. He was a super-powered angel for crying out loud—but the past few days worrying about him was pretty much all she'd done. Well, and replaying the time in the honeymoon suite over in her head a million times. She'd felt close to him there. Safe. Trust was growing more and more. And now there was a noticeable pang in his absence.

She stabbed at the entrails in front of her bleakly. This sucked.

Dean mumbled something to himself beside Alex and she glanced at him darkly. Her oldest brother had been pissing her off royally the past couple of days. His confrontation with Michael in Dad's body had clearly shaken him up—that much was clear to her because he'd been meaner than usual. He'd been drinking more than normal too—and Dean drank a lot point-blank, so... that was just great. He'd been full-on trashed last night and raging about how the music on the radio these days was shit—he'd broken the motel clock by throwing it at the wall, then slurred about how Sam needed to get a damn haircut before he eventually passed out on the floor. Alex thought it might have been funny another time. But not right now. Dean was constantly losing his temper over little things... he'd shouted at Sam the other day when he'd taken too long to decide what he wanted in the drive-thru, then snapped at Alex when she'd accidentally let some lettuce covered in mayonnaise fall out of her sandwich onto the back seat of the Impala. She could tell he felt bad about it afterward, but he never apologized. Just got quiet and stony-faced. Acted like nothing happened.