Dean had a hard time believing that the ghost was gone.

It wasn't unheard of that a spirit could be talked down, but it was incredibly rare. Then again, if anything was going to take down this one, it would have to be words. There was no way to burn all of the remains or physically restrain it.

But the spirit didn't reappear, and the EMF detectors read nothing more than background. Apparently, Lex had said the right thing. They were out of the woods.

Lex and Dean went down to the arcade; it had been less than a half an hour since Lex had left it. Sam and Clark sat side by side in a flight simulator, shooting down enemy planes with their controllers and laughing.

Dean went to stand beside Sam, who barely looked up before asking, "Did you get it?"

"Yeah, burned the remains." Dean breathed in to say more, but he decided against it. They'd already lost enough of their vacation dealing with this; Sam didn't need to know everything. "Piece of cake."

"Awesome," Sam said, and on the screen, a ship in front of his exploded. "Whoo! Take that!"

Dean and Lex exchanged a glance.

After a few more arcade games, Lex followed his brothers back to the suite. They all changed into swim trunks, and they spent the majority of the rest of the day at the beach. Part of Lex wanted to encourage the guys to try more of the activities, but they all needed some time to wind down, and really, he didn't think anything could beat the prospect of laying on the sand listening to the waves for rest of the afternoon and evening.

Clark sat beside Lex for a few minutes while Sam and Dean raced in the water. "If I tell you something," Clark said, "can you not tell the other guys?"

"Sure."

"I miss my parents."

"You're lucky," Lex said without hesitation.

"How am I lucky?"

Lex shook his head and looked down, smiling to himself. "I'd kill to have a dad I missed when I wasn't with him, Clark."

"Do you miss your mom?"

He looked up at Clark. "Every day."

"Oh." Clark traced a line in the sand. "My mom really loves you, you know."

"I know. I love her, too."

Clark let his breath out, leaning back on his hands. "I want to build a sand castle. Isn't that so stupid? That's, like, baby stuff."

"Nah. I bet if you started one, Sam would join you."

"Really?"

"Yeah, he's a nerd."

Clark laughed. "I'm gonna get closer to the water."

"I'll be here."

With that, Clark got up and walked down to the shore.

Dean tried hard to forget about the stupid bet he'd made about the tattoo. At Dean's request, Lex had set up the appointment with the tattoo artist, but he'd set it up for the end of the week instead of the beginning. Dean asked him to change it—he really wanted to get it over with—but Lex said he should wait. Better to spend the week nervous than sore, he insisted, and better to wait on a time when they could get in with no one else around. Dean disagreed, but Lex was allowed to call the shots for this one.

The tattoo parlor gave Dean the creeps. It was clean enough, though the walls were littered with photos of tattooed skin. It was the chairs and beds that bothered him—they looked like they belonged in a dentist or doctor's office. He felt like he was going in for surgery or something.

"Don't tell me you're scared of needles and heights," Lex said as they stepped inside.

Dean didn't say anything. He wasn't exactly scared of needles, but he didn't like them, either, and getting a tattoo meant getting stabbed with one over and over and over again. On the plus side, it looked like the parlor was empty, save two artists, who seemed to be getting the ink ready. It looked like Lex had held up his promise for a private appointment.

But . . . two artists.

"Hey," Dean said, "thought we were going for something small."

"It'll be small," Lex said.

"You need two artists?"

"No. The second one's for me," Lex said.

Dean raised his eyebrows.

Lex took off his shirt and lay facedown on one of the beds. "Whenever you're ready."

Dean might have laughed, if he weren't so nervous. "Not gonna let me see the design?"

"You'll like it. Trust me," Lex said as the artist swabbed at the back of his shoulder with an antiseptic wipe. "I'm getting the same one. Well, almost. Quit stalling."

Dean took a deep breath, pulled off his t-shirt, and lay on the bed, the smooth leather cool against his chest. He swallowed hard as the artist sat down, he tensed up when the alcohol swab cleaned his shoulder blade, and he wanted to cringe when the needle went in for the first time, but Lex wasn't so much as making a face, so Dean forced himself to keep his reactions to himself.

But the pain grew by the moment; the needle seemed to be going back over the same skin, and it just kept getting more tender. "How long's this supposed to take?" Dean said through clenched teeth.

"Couple of hours," Lex said. His jaw was tensed, but only barely.

"Hours?"

"You gonna whine about it?"

Dean groaned and resigned himself to the pain. It grew steadily for ten or fifteen minutes, but after that he seemed to be getting used to it—it really wasn't bad at all anymore.

They didn't talk any more. Dean wasn't sure what to say while the artists were listening in, and besides, he had to focus on not reacting in the moments when the needle dragged over a sensitive spot. It felt like it was dragging on for hours and hours, but it still caught him by surprise when the artist handed him a mirror.

The skin was red, and deeply sore, but he could make out the design on his shoulder blade. It was a dagger. An exact replica of the one they'd used on the Djinn that first summer, and on the ghost this week.

He glanced over at Lex's. He had the same dagger in the same place, but one edge was green instead of gray. "Meteor rock?" Dean asked.

"Yeah. Well, no actual meteor rock in the ink, but that's the idea."

"In yours but not mine?"

"You haven't been affected by them."

Dean blinked.

Lex smiled wryly. "I was there, the day of the meteor shower. I was out in a cornfield when the first meteors hit, and this, ah, tidal wave came at me. Next thing I knew, I was waking up in the hospital. Completely bald."

"Wow," Dean said. Lex had once told Dean to ask sometime how he'd lost his hair, but it had never mattered enough to Dean to ask. "So if I ever get infected, I'll get the green stripe?"

Lex gave him a light punch to his good shoulder. "Don't even joke about that," he said, and he picked up his t-shirt.

The last—and hottest—day of the week brought the four of them out to the beach again to swim. Clark had enjoyed everything they'd tried so far. Hiking and exploring were always fun, archery was an interesting new challenge, and sailing was like kind of like flying without having to worry about heights. But he thought he actually like the swimming the most, and since Lex and Dean had been stupid and run off to the tattoo parlor that morning, they were too sore to be up for much of anything else, anyway.

They all brought some surfboards out into the water and floated around. Dean said the ocean was cold, but it didn't really bother Clark. Lex was lying on his back on a surfboard with his eyes closed, and Sam and Dean were in the middle of a splash fight that the ocean was winning—waves kept catching them off guard and getting salt water in their mouths. Clark figured it was the perfect time to sneak away and do what he'd wanted to do earlier in the week.

Taking one more glance over at the other guys to make sure they weren't looking, he dove under the water, pried his eyes open, and swam as fast as he could, out to where he'd seen the dolphins.

The pod was still there—or maybe it was a different pod, that was actually more likely—dipping in and out of the water, racing along. There had to have been hundreds of them—little fins cut through the water and dolphin's noses poked out as far as the eye could see. Clark had worried they might be afraid of him and try to swim away, or even attack him, but he made his way into the pod and swam along with them, leaping out of the water in sync with one, then another, then another. They didn't seem to mind—they almost seemed to be laughing. A few of them huddled up close to him, swimming under him then leaping over him when he dove down.

Clark himself laughed under water and got a throat full of salt. He stopped and treaded water, coughing, watching the dolphins pass by him.

One dolphin near the back of the pod hung back as Clark hacked out the last of his coughs, nudging his arm with its nose. "I'm fine," he said. "Go!"

It swam off, and the pod was gone.

Clark grinned.

Sam tried to hold onto every moment of the trip. He never wanted it to end, but it all went by so fast. Lex offered again to set him up with that zip line tour, but Sam decided against it. He was having too much fun with the other guys.

On the last night of the week, the four of them sat out beside a rocky cliff, watching the stars. Clark brought a blanket and pillow with him and fell asleep before it was even fully dark—it never ceased to amaze Sam how he could have so much physical endurance but then conk out from mental exhaustion—but the rest of them stayed awake long past midnight. Lex had brought out a telescope, and he taught Sam how to use it and how to find different stars and planets. That was something Sam had always wished his dad would do with him.

As he packed up the next morning, he realized his clothes smelled like the ocean, and there was sand in his shoes that had spilled into his bag, and he was noticeably tanned. His dad was almost definitely going to figure out what had happened.

But Sam didn't care. Dean had been right. Whatever happened with their dad when they got back, even if he figured out where they'd been . . . this time with his friends had been worth it.