6139/The Librarian: It's Always in the Fine Print

The Librarian: It's Always in the Fine Print
Date of Scene:	08 January 2019
Location:	Unknown
Synopsis:	Willow shows her findings to Sam with regards to the hunt for the Librarian's items. Sam proposes a road trip. Little do they know...
Cast of Characters:	Willow Rosenberg, Sam Winchester
Tinyplot:	The Librarian

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Willow Rosenberg has posed:
It seemed like a forever and a day where they were getting no further ahead on finding anything more about the book or the remaining items needed to keep whatever horror it was Sam's angel expected to happen should they all manage to be brought together in the same spot by the wrong people, when Willow suddenly had a breakthrough.

Or so she said. She wasn't /exactly/ sure, but she had an inkling. Enough of one to invite Sam over for pizza. Which she shamelessly asked him to bring.

Wut? She's broke. You would too.

Sam Winchester has posed:
Sam had been doing his own digging, but admittedly he'd been distracted by the prospect of returning to law school, he had an opportunity to start up at Columbia he was considering, plus, there had been a vampire taking advantage of the whole sleep thing that had to be put down, so, yeah, distractions.

However, when Willow called, he came, pizza, pop, and okay a couple of beers in hand.

Making his now familiar way to the door of Willow and Buffy's appartment he knocks, juggling food and drinks as he does, to get a hand free for the knocking.

Willow Rosenberg has posed:
Willow had already had a heads up from the desk downstairs (she asked for one. It's all good!), so she'd been listening for his arrival at the door. And as Sam knocks - or attempts to - she throws the door open for him. "Oh! Wow. You really did bring pizza." She wasn't sure he would, and she wasn't entirely sure how serious she'd been in asking him to bring it along. Not that she's complaining... "And beer." Eyes widening as she contemplates whether or not this is a good thing, or a bad thing, and whether or not she'll have one.

"Just bring the stuff in and throw it on the coffee table. We can eat and talk?"

Closing and locking the door behind him.

Sam Winchester has posed:
"Hey, Will," Sam says behind the pile of drinks on the pizza box. "And yeah I brought it you asked, it was on the way, it all worked out."

He knew how she was about money so, he's happy to leave it at that and sneak inside. Depositing everything on the coffee table while adding. "There's also pop. Didn't know what you like so I brought a few to choose from."

Shifting things around to unbury the pizza box he asks, "So, what's up?"

Willow Rosenberg has posed:
Willow's smile is a luminous thing as he settles in her livingroom. "I'm not too picky about pop. Coke or the like is good." She hesitates, then, canting her head, asks, "Can I try a beer?"

Because safety of her own home and all that, and Buffy was out, and.. oh, all the reasons.

She takes up a perch on their couch, sitting cross-legged and reaching for the pizza box to grab a slice, because regardless of what she's having as a beverage, pizza is a go.

Her laptop is sitting nearby. As expected.

Sam Winchester has posed:
Sam grins, "Beer?" he asks even as he grabs a bottle out of the bag. He'd imagined he'd be the only one of them drinking so he'd grabbed a couple of singles from the store under his place on the way here along with the pop. He passes the beer to Willow. "Adventurous tonight, huh?" he asks, the jibe is lightly given.

He takes the other beer and a slice of pizza to the couch and chows down. "Sorry, I haven't been in touch, busy couple of weeks."

Willow Rosenberg has posed:
"Adventurous," Willow agrees. "I like that." Taking the beer in one hand and the slice in the other, sitting cross-legged and looking nothing more like a pixie at the end of the couch. "That's okay. We had finals. Well, we were supposed to have finals. That whole Black Sleep thing postponed a lot of stuff. Things have been deferred. Which was okay, I got to do some more research on our problem."

Sam Winchester has posed:
Sam grins, "Adventurous it is then," he says cracking his beer and reaching one of his long arms across the couch to clink beers with Willow.

"And yeah, that sleep thing, it's knocked out a lot of people. Heck even the guy who runs the store below me is out. We just grab what we need and leave money on the counter..." thankfully looters in Hell's Kitchen weren't really a thing due to the whole 'Devil' situation.

"Anyhow, did you find anything good? I checked on my end but this may be a little too high end for my contacts. Ancient books and stuff like that is out of their depth."

Willow Rosenberg has posed:
Willow's bottle is clinked to Sam's and she grins, taking a daring sip of the stuff and trying not to make a face as an immediate reaction. "Well, here's the thing," she goes on to explain when he asks about her 'findings'. "I'm not entirely sure if what I found is what we're looking for, but I found something?"

"And I thought folks were coming out of the sleep now? Your guy is still out? Wow. He must have it bad."

Sam Winchester has posed:
The attempt to hold back that flinch is noted and Sam chuckles, "You'll get there," he says. "Hang with me and Cas you'll be use to it in no time, our place looks like a recycling depot with all the empties... which sounds worse than it is."

Then he focuses on business while chewing pizza.

"You found a thing, that may not be our thing?" he asks having fully gone over to Scooby speak.

"And yeah, he's taking his time getting back to things, guess it sort of scared him," he says with understanding. "I mean it is sort of freaky even to people like us, got to be really bad for people who don't believe in any of this stuff."

Willow Rosenberg has posed:
Willow gives in and lets that face be made, because beer. And yeah, she's not used to it. "Like a recycling depot? Why don't you take the empties back? And oh gosh, how much do you drink anyway." Sam now regarded as even more suspicious than before as another of his shenangigans are revealed.

She doesn't dwell on it, though. "It could be our thing? It's a thing," she agrees. "Just I'm not sure whose thing. But it keeps coming up so it must be something."

Which explains nothing at all unless you speak Scoob, in which case Willow's searches keep coming up with an odd result that on it's face looks like it isn't relevant, but since it keeps coming up, must be relevant despite that.

It's simple, really.

Sam Winchester has posed:
"Hey don't look at me like that, most of it's Cas," Sam protests which was true enough. "And we don't return them mostly because we're busy saving the world." Or Cas and Sam get into arguments about who's turn it is and nobody wants to budge, dealer's choice.

"Is it bad that I understood that?" Sam says with a shake of his head. "Okay, so what's the thing that keeps coming up?" he asks shfiting over anticipating that the laptop was going to be involved in any explanations that followed.

Willow Rosenberg has posed:
"Busy saving the world," Willow teases. "Too busy to take out the trash."

When he asks about understanding that, Willow can only grin and shrug. "Maybe it's bad, but it works doesn't it? And, okay. I'll show you."

Beer and pizza are set aside and she pulls over the laptop, showing Sam several open tabs. "See, here's the thing. When I started looking for answers, I kept running across these oddball classified pages. I couldnt figure it out. Just one or two here and there, but there was no connection. It's only been the last week or so that that's all I'm getting. So, I've been trying to narrow it down into what it is that they all have in common."

She points to several things. "I have a couple of things I can see, but they don't all make sense. All of them have an obituary. All of them have realty ads. And all of them show this one auction house that does estate sales."

Sam Winchester has posed:
Sam shifts his pizza aside but brings his beer as he shifts over to take a look at Willow's screen.

"Yeah," he smiles about the trash thing. "Priorities."

He lets the rest go to focus on what she'd found. "So, all the ads involve a death, some property and this same auction house?" he asks seeing if he had a grip on things. "What's the name of the auction house?"

Willow Rosenberg has posed:
Willow gives a small little nod of head. "Yeah. Always. Well, okay, at first it was two of the three, but that's the best I've come up with so far. I'm thinking we follow the trail? I mean, didn't your friend say these things want to be together?"

She frowns.

"No, wait. That was the weird lady who said that. The cult one, right? I'm thinking they're getting close to one another, and maybe - well, we've got the cloth, right? So maybe it wants us to find it. But it has to work with what its got."

And what its got right now is the way Willow scries, which as things happen, isn't too shabby a way to get their attention. In ages past it might have taken months or years for the items to work themselves close enough to grab someone's attention. Unfortunately, it usually was the wrong someone's attention. Which meant Willow and Sam were likely in for a bit of a battle.

Sam Winchester has posed:
"Yeah we definitely follow the trail," Sam said. "That's as close to a lead as we've got right now and we need to figure out where it leads," he says before taking a big sip of beer and nodding. "Definitely the cult lady," he confirms before settling back and listening.

"Yeah, that makes sense, it can't exactly send us an email but it can throw up flares for us to find," he nods to the other bit, that they might not be the only one's tracking those flares to their points of origin. "Where are our flares coming from anyhow? In the city?"

Willow Rosenberg has posed:
"In the city? No. Some little town outside. Estate sale. On Sunday."

She shows him the ad that's shown up in three of the searches. Though it looks like two auction houses are running the show. "Peter Skillen. Aged 93. Died in his sleep. Looks like he's been predeceased by his wife and all his kids but a son who's 67 and living in a retirement home." She shrugs. "Probably wants the money to live off of."

Sam Winchester has posed:
Sam nods, "What's the name of the town?" he asks, pulling out his phone to pull up a map and see how far away it is.

He looks past the phone to look at the screen. This sort of thing was really his bread and butter, odd little mysteries with a touch of the supernatural about them. "We should go check on the sale and talk to the son. Anything you found giving off an idea of what we're looking for?" he asks.

Willow Rosenberg has posed:
Willow gives him the name, and sits back to have another sip of her beer, still mak,king faces at it, really not sure she likes it or not. "I have no clue what we're looking for. A book? The candlesticks? What were the other things again?"

She ran the list through her head. Really any of the things could be there. Any of them. All of them. None of them. She was good at the scrying, it just wasn't being that precise this time.

Sam Winchester has posed:
Sam punches it in and looks at the screen of his phone. "Yeah, not that far, we could get there and back in a day if we wanted," he says already wishing Dean had left Baby behind, the Cricket was good for city driving, but it wasn't fit for road trips, but then, beggars, choosers right? "I think we basically settled on the parts of the book being in just about anything, but, we can bring the altar cloth, maybe it's mojo will lead us to the rest."

"So, when do we want to make the trip up there and see what's up?"

Willow Rosenberg has posed:
"When?" Willow squeaks. "You mean, like us?"

She looks over at her laptop, then tries to peek at what he's got on his phone. "You have a car, right? I guess we could go check the sale out. We might want to check if we need to reserve a bid number or something. Some of those sales you need a number to look at the stuff."

They were /usually/ free - usually, but not always.

Sam Winchester has posed:
Sam nods, "Yeah, who else is going to check this out?" he asks.

"And yes, I've got a car, and I can find out about the bid number, I'm actually really good at stuff like this, I can handle the set up if you can handle the magic when we get there," he says before snapping a quick picture of her with her phone, explaining: "In case we need ID."

Willow Rosenberg has posed:
Willow flushes a faint pink. It looks terrible against the red of her hair and the smattering of resident freckles she sports on just such occassions. "Well, I don't know. You have that angel friend of yours. And those other people. Maybe you wanted to invite them. I mean, I'm not really all that good in a fight," she lies.

Okay, it's not a full on lie. She's done her part when push came to shove, but with Buffy around there really wasn't ever a whole lot *for* Willow to do. And truth be told, she was suddenly nervous about the thought of picking up and hiking off with Sam, and without her Beste. It felt a little like cheating on any number of fronts.

Sam Winchester has posed:
Sam grins at the flushing of Willow's cheeks. "Cas is pretty horrible at the whole sussing things out deal," he observes, saving the picture. "People tend to take note when someone walks up to them all gruff like and demands to see 'the art', then scoffs at the idea of buying any of it," he says. Sam could see it now, 'buy? The world is hanging in the balance, this is more important than money'. "No it's better if the two of us do it," Sam says with a nod. "And I am not looking for a fight, if we leave tomorrow we should be able to get what we need and get back before anyone else shows up." And if they didn't get their first there was one place the Cricket stacked up with Baby: it's armoury.

"Anyhow, what do you say? Pack up and head out tomorrow morning?"

Willow Rosenberg has posed:
A giggle escapes Willow (who is still blushing) at Sam's description of Castiel doing the sluething thing. "He's really that bad? Oh gosh. You probably prefer if he doesn't come along for things."

That they're not looking for a fight goes a long way to making Willow relax, but as soon as he says 'pack' she stiffens up again. "Pack? Like for a trip? Like how long a trip? Like what am I going to need. And.. oh gosh. I mean, okay, exams were deferred for a couple weeks, but if it's longer than a day or two, I have to bring my books.. and.." Willow stops and worries at her lower lip, then admits, "I can't afford a road trip. I mean, I can pack some sandwiches, but if you mean like overnight or something.."

Oh the joys of being a poor student.

Sam Winchester has posed:
"Pretty much," Sam says of Castiel. "Don't get me wrong, Cas is great, when you need to know something about magic, or demons, or if you need someone smited, he's still working on the whole human interaction thing." He shakes his head, smiling fondly. "Remind me to tell you some stories on the road."

"Yeah, should probably be a one nighter, but I always like to pack for a couple of extra just in case," Sam says missing how Willow stiffens and so he rattles on like nothing's wrong. "Sometimes things take longer than planned," usually because of some sort of monster, but Sam leaves that part out. "And sandwiches would be good, but I can handle the accomodations, a friend of mine has a bit of a hunter's slush fund we can dip into because it's work related, think of it as an expense account." Most of that was true, Bobby did have funds available to help out hunters, but Sam rarely used it his dad had taught him and Dean how to work the system well enough to handle hotel bills without breaking the bank. Not that the Winchesters ever used banks.

Willow Rosenberg has posed:
Willow continues to worry at her lower lip, and ponder the things that Sam is saying, doing the mental arithmetic and considering just how she feels about it all. She can make sandwiches to get them through a couple days. Like a day there, and a day back. Heck, she could probably make them some cookies. There actually was some apples in the fridge. It wouldn't be exciting, but it would get them through.. pack her physics book and her maths one. She could read those while Sam did the driving. Throw some clothes into a backpack.. along with some sage and other ritual items she might need (just in case..)

She still wasn't sure how she felt about this whole 'with a boy' thing. Or the it was the same boy she'd been trying to throw at Buffy. Or that she was doing this sort of behind Buffy's back - but then again, her Beste was off and busy and it would only be overnight, right? Right?

"I guess..??"

Sam Winchester has posed:
Sam finishes his beer and nods, "Great," he says as he rises from the couch. "I should probably get going then, but I'll come 'round for seven if that works, and we'll head out. Trust me it's going to be fun."

Obviously Sam had no such worries, he his head was already deep in the case.

Willow Rosenberg has posed:
"Seven... A.M.?" Again, Willow squeaks out the question. "Uh.. okay, I guess?"

Which means she needs to get cracking on things.. like now. So many things to prepare, plus an extra bit of scrying or two to make sure they're on the right track, and to see if she can divine if there are going to be any problems. And, oh! the cookies need baking, and wait.. has she got sage? Where'd she put the sage...

Sam might get the impression he's lost Willow at this point, and yes, the pickup time is acceptable. She's already packing in her mind like he's not still sitting here.