Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural, I don't own Reaper.

Notes: Supernatural/Reaper Crossover. It helps to have seen Supernatural's Bad Day at Black Rock and have caught an episode of Reaper.

Thanks to marasmorgue for the beta!

The Devil's Box

Sam trips right over the damn thing as they're walking down the power tools aisle of the Work Bench. Dean turns to find his brother sprawled gracelessly on the concrete floor.

"Seriously, Sam? You're like a baby deer or something. Learn to walk."

Sam picks himself up and dusts off. "There's a box," he says defensively.

There is a box, sitting right in the middle of the power tool aisle. It's about a foot square, made of very weathered wood and accented with two angry looking cast-iron demon heads.

They both stand over it, arms crossed, wearing matching frowns. It looks like it contains a fetish or two.

"Well great, Sam, good find."

"Maybe it's just a normal box?" Sam looks doubtful at his own optimism. He taps the box tentatively with his left foot and jumps back when it rattles and oozes smoke from the crack around the lid.

"Still a little gun-shy around fetishes, Sammy?" Dean smirks.

Sam sighs. "What should we do with it?"

Dean considers the box for a moment. "Open it?"

"What!?"

Dean doesn't answer, but he gestures with his head a bit, the universal "there's someone standing right behind you" move. Sam turns to see a cute brunette wearing a blue Work Bench apron standing a few feet away, giving them both a funny look.

"Can I help you find something?" she asks.

"Nope, just leaving with our box," says Dean cheerfully, and he picks up the box. "We'll open it in the parking lot," he whispers to Sam. Sam shoots him a disapproving look and they head for the nearest exit.

They are just through the sliding exit door when another employee trots up behind them.

"Hey! Uh, guys."

They ignore him and keep walking, but he catches up and grabs Dean by the shoulder.

"Hands off, buddy," Dean snaps and he spins to face him. The employee is a scrawny, younger guy and he seems appropriately intimidated by the two annoyed men staring back at him.

"Um, that's my box," he says timidly.

"This box?" Dean asks.

"Yeah."

The brothers size him up. The guy doesn't look like the evil-fetish possessing type, but you can never tell.

"I don't think so," says Sam.

"Yeah, I dropped it in the store…. somewhere. Thanks for finding it." The employee smiles hopefully and reaches to take the box from Dean.

"Now that's strange," says Dean, "'cause we brought this box here with us."

The guy seems doubtful and looks rather desperately from Dean to Sam. "Yep," Sam says evenly. "Had it for years."

This trips him up even more. "Wh-why'd you bring it here, then?"

"We're trying to build a matching set," Dean says. "But you don't have any aged teak, so we're gonna go look at the Home Depot instead. See ya."

They turn to go and the guy acts like he wants to follow, but a supervisor snaps at him and he retreats back inside the sliding doors.

--------

Back in the motel room, Dean spends the next two hours doing everything he can think of to open the box. First he just tries the latch, but it remains stubbornly in place. He goes out to the car and rummages through it until he finds some WD-40, but the latch stays stuck. He goes back out to the car for the tool chest, and tries to wedge the box open with a flathead screwdriver, but that fails too, so he grabs the hammer and attacks the latch, the iron hinges, and finally the whole wooden box until he is slightly out of breath and scowling fiercely.

Sam looks up from the book he's reading. "Maybe it's protected?" he offers.

Dean gives him an annoyed look. "Really? You think?" Then he rifles through his duffle bag for the journal and spends the next forty-five minutes scrawling anti-possession symbols on the box and saying Latin at it in increasingly irritated tones.

Sam is sitting on one of the beds, cleaning a sawed-off shotgun. "You need to stop obsessing over this, Dean," he says. "We have an actual job in this town."

"I'm not obsessing, Sam. I have to get the box open so I can destroy what's inside it before some annoying British chick shows up and tries to steal it."

Sam suppresses a smile. "Just call Bobby."

"Man, Bobby's gonna think we can't do anything by ourselves."

Dean sits in silence for several more seconds, scowling at the box as it sits on the motel room's wobbly kitchenette table. Then he huffs out an annoyed breath and gets up to find his cell phone. He stops abruptly when he sees a movement at the window through a crack in the curtains.

"Dude, I think someone is peeping at us."

When Sam looks their peeping Tom's eyes get real wide and he bolts. Dean shoves the curtains aside to watch the man's retreat. "Oh, it's totally that scrawny little guy from The Work Bench," he says. He's got some big guy with him too."

"Let's go see what they want," Sam says.

-------

The little guy hops some shrubs and ducks down an alley, only to find himself cornered by Dean at a dead-end.

Dean levels his gun at the guy. "Why were you watching us? You get off on peeping into motel rooms?"

"Whoa, whoa!" The kid flinches away from the gun and holds his hand in front of himself. "Easy. I just want my box back, okay? Then I'll leave you guys to whatever criminal or non-criminal thing you're doing."

"That is an evil box, kid. You don't want what's inside of it."

The guy laughs uneasily. "Look, I don't have a choice here."

"Yeah? Why's that."

"It's for work."

"What kind of work? That isn't a toolbox."

Sam's caught the bigger guy, and he drags him down the alley by his collar. The guy's jabbering on about reasons Sam should not kill him. Sam rolls his eyes at Dean. "He says he's an innocent bystander."

The little guy looks over at the big one, who looks like he wants to cry. "Look, he's not really a part of this. You can let him go."

Dean cocks his gun and takes a step closer to the smaller man. "What kind of work?" he repeats.

"Man, just tell him, I really don't want to get shot," the big guy says.

The little guy looks around nervously, like he's worried someone else might be watching. "I'm a Reaper," he says.

"A Reaper?" Dean's eyebrows raise and he looks over at Sam, who shakes his head a little and shrugs.

"They're like, um, a dog catcher, but for souls."

"Yeah, we know what they are," Sam says with a half-smile.

This seems to surprise the guy. "Wait, seriously?" He looks from one brother to the other.

"You think this guy's one?" Dean asks Sam.

They both eye him critically.

"Maybe?" says Sam.

The man tries to make himself look taller. "I'm new," he says.

"Really? You can't tell," says Dean. His eyes narrow. "You're not here to do any reaping on us, are you?"

"Not unless you've been leaving pieces of partially cooked human remains around the tri-county area."

"Well I haven't. Have you, Sam?"

"Nope."

"Then you guys are good," the guy says and smiles weakly.

"Ok," says Sam, willing for the moment to give him the benefit of the doubt. "If you're a Reaper, what's in the box?"

"I'm not sure yet. But it's how I catch them. A…a vessel to trap the soul."

The guy clearly expects Sam and Dean to call him crazy. But Dean just looks thoughtful and lowers his gun. "So you can open that box?" he asks.

"Yeah."

"Well damn, now I'm just curious."

--------

The four of them walk back to the motel room and gather around the box on the tiny table. When the reaper turns the latch the box pops open obediently, releasing a plume of gray smoke.

"Stupid freaking box," Dean says.

"Is that…a waffle iron?" Sam asks.

"Yeah, it's always random crap. The boss has a weird sense of humor."

The big guy picks up the waffle iron and opens and closes it like the jaws of a monster, complete with roaring sound effects. "You're going to have to like, Foreman his face or something, man," he says to his friend.

The reaper ignores him. He looks at his watch as if just noticing the time. "Well this has been great but we should get going," he says. "I sort of have a deadline for catching an evil soul and sending it back to hell before it kills and cooks some more people, so…."

"You guys need any help with that?" Sam asks. "It's kind of our thing too."

"Sam," Dean snaps, "don't offer to help the weirdoes."

"No, no, no, that's OK," the reaper says hastily, and gestures at his friend, "I've got Sock to help me." They all look at Sock, who is still playing with the iron.

"I kinda feel like waffles," Sock says. "You guys want to go to IHOP?"

The reaper visibly deflates but says, "Seriously, we'll be okay."

"Your funeral, buddy, " says Dean.

--------

They escort the reaper and his friend to a little green Prius, which looks both pathetically small and way more fuel-efficient than the glossy black Impala parked next to it.

Dean gives the Prius a look of disdain before turning to face the Reaper. "Good luck catching your guy," he says.

"Sammy gets 'em every time," Sock says confidently, and he affectionately punches his friend in the arm.

"Ha! Hear that, Sam?" Dean grins at his brother. "Your Sam's better than my Sam," he tells Sock.

Dean's Sam chooses to ignore this. "How'd a guy like you end up a Reaper, anyway?" he asks as the other Sam get inside his under-whelming car.

"Parents made a deal with the devil."

Sam snorts, and shakes his head a little in disbelief. "That's always a good idea."

The reaper shrugs. "My dad was sick. See you guys around." The Prius's doors slam shut and the car hums to life.

"People do crazy shit for their families, huh Sammy?" says Dean as they watch the car drive off.

"Yeah," says Sam.

"You really think that guy's gonna catch anything with a waffle iron?"

Sam laughs. "Stranger things have happened," he says.

A/N: I'm much more of a Supernatural fan than a Reaper one, but I got this little plot bunny in my head right after Bad Day at Black Rock and it wouldn't stop bugging me until I wrote it. Please let me know what you think!