Just a random idea I've been playing with. Might or might not continue…

I'm a broke-ass junior in college; I don't own sh*t.

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Jess rose an unimpressed eyebrow at the two man-babies sprawled out in the motel room before her - well, woman-baby in Cassie's case. Gabe was eating that weird scandinavian candy he liked; the one Cas would complain about constantly and secretly burry in her adopted dad's junk yard when nobody was looking her way. His little sister, meanwhile, was blaring some version of Ode to Joy, thick tome securely propped in her lap. The room's tension was more palpable than Chuck's fear when Bobby chased him off with a shotgun twelve years ago.

"Alright, chuckle heads; I drove all the way from a kelpie up in Maine, so this better be good." She knew she sounded calloused, but she blamed her upbringing and the loss of the love of her life. Besides, Cassie and Gabe both needed a good slap to the face from the looks of things.

"Thanks for coming," Cas sighed, shooting one of the only other women she could confide in a grateful smile. "I'm getting a little tired of all the testosterone and ah… down stairs brains."

Gabe snorted, rolled onto his side, and eyed the blonde hunter in dull amusement. "My sympathies for having to deal first with Matt and now with my hormonal baby sister. I think she's on her period." He winked and Cassie scoffed while chucking her pillow at him.

Jess slumped into an open chair and rubbed her face tiredly. "Look, I hauled ass all the way here, so I want a cold beer - not that sugary shit Mr. Diabetes likes - and I want the whole story… You do know what it is, right? Bobby just called and say you two needed help ASAP."

The siblings looked at eachother sheepishly.

"No. We've been too busy bickering to pin it down any further than 'not ghost'," Gabe told her, cowed by Jess' intimidating gaze. Damn, was Bobby teaching her all his tricks?

Cassie pressed a cold beer into her hands, which Jess quickly popped open and chugged half of. After pulling her hair into a messy bun and finishing off a bag of jelly beans Gabe had left sprawled on the table, she looked expectantly at the Shirley's. "You numbskulls ever thought the thing might be trying to keep you distracted with petty arguments?"

"Slashing Gladys's tires is not a petty argument," Cassie harrumphed, shooting baggers at her older brother.

"Relax, Man Coat, I didn't touch the pimpmobile," Gabe said with an eyeroll, tossing his empty candy bag just short of the trash to purposely bother his sister. "What I wanna know is where you put my Turisas CD."

The dark-haired woman went red in the face. "What make you think I touched your Finnish Euro Metal. I can barely stand new music, let alone something as grating as an electric violin."

Gabe scrambled across his bed and flopped onto his sister's - right in her startled face. A finger was aggressively waggled in her face. "You take that back! Battle Metal is the best thing on this planet besides Sabaton's viking songs."

She shoved her heavy brother off of her, Jess completely forgotten in the background. "At least Sabaton has interesting lyric - all Turisas does is wail and shred and make my ear bleed! And don't even get me started on that stupid Rasputin song-"

"Guys! Cut it out; we have a hunt to solve here, and bickering isn't going to solve a thing." Jess was fed up with all the petty sibling fighting. "Story. Now."

And so they told her everything: the suicide-by-ghost professor, the… probed frat boy, and the sewer gator's midnight snack. Their entire story was filled with descriptions and summaries meant to get on the other Shirley's nerves, which only further cemented Jess' conclusion.

She stretched her kinked back with one of the best pops she'd ever heard and rose to her feet so she could stare down the shorter hunters, frustrated glare firmly in place. "Sounds like you found a trickster - and promptly fell for one of it's tricks. The damn things love mischief like nothing else, and have a sick sense of justice when it comes to the high and mighty. Explains why you two have been at each other's throats all week."

Gabe and Cas looked at their respective sibling with wide eyes, realising that they had been total assbutts for no apparent reason. Could someone pit them against each other so easily? All the trickster had done was mess with Gladys, freeze and steal a laptop, and hid away Gabe's extensive collection of euro metal. Where they really that hot-headed?

Cassie's big blue eyes welled up with unshed tears as she guiltily looked at her older brother. "I-I'm sorry, Gabriel. I shouldn't have jumped the gun on you."

Gabe ruffled her wild, messy hair, kind smile planted on his face. "S'okay, lil sis; you're not the only one to blame."

"Right!" Jess said with false cheeriness. "You mentioned the janitor was at ground zero for all the incidents - sounds like a good place to start. You two idiots have to run distraction while I snoop around his things."

"You're starting to sound like a stalker," Gabe commented, shit-eating grin firmly place. He was quick to apologize, however, when Jess raised a threatening fist in his general direction.

Cassie rolled her eyes, pulling her brother to his feet and shoving him towards the bright green door. Now wasn't the time for jokes; they had a hunt.

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"What are you looking for?"

Hazel doe eyes and an innocent smile peered at her as Jess valiantly tried to open the janitor's locker. He was tall - so friggin' tall - and chiseled, but not muscle-bound like most meatheads tended to be, with shaggy brown hair and this gleam.

Oh yeah. He's trouble alright.

"I'm John. Why ya tryin' to get in my coworker's locker?" He was just so friggin' adorable.

"Ass hole took my sister's spare set of keys on his last visit and she doesn't want to pay to change the locks - not that I blame her. Everyone has a right to privacy." Not a bad story for being made up on the spot.

"Oh. Well, I know Dean's combination, if you'd like."

She nodded, flashing the janitor a grateful smile. He reminded her of Brady, before - No. Now's not the time to be thinking about him. Besides, she had a cute college kid who was most likely working to pay tuition falling all over himself to help her. She definitely wasn't complaining about the last part.

John's grin could light up a room as he swiftly moved forward to enter in the trickster's combination. "Kudos to you for trying to make things right; sometimes you have to do what you think is right a damn the consequences, ya know? Like, if we didn't take things into our own hands, things would never be set right."

Jess was a little weirded out, seeing as that was the major reason she got into hunting and dropped college, much to her parents' dismay. She was actually quite happy to see she had found another kindred spirit - and a cute one at that.

The locker opened with a slight whine by a pleased-looking John.

"Thanks," she told him, hand resting lightly on his broad shoulder as she peeked inside. John blushed out of the corner of her eye, happy little smile playing across his face.

"No prob… Hey, I never caught you name."

"Jessica Moore."

"John Wesson." He winced and sighed embarrassedly. "But I already told you that."

He was just so adorable that she couldn't stop the awkward side-hug she gave the tall janitor, which was returned shortly after. But really, it didn't feel strange in the slightest; it felt right and perfect and like finally coming home for the first time in ages. Jess didn't ever want to separated, but she had a trickster to hunt, so she reluctantly let go with a odd little cough. John looked disappointed, but quickly covered it up, thrusting out his hand for a shake.

"Until next time, Jess."

Something light and happy tingled through her when they connected, but Jess played it off as overactive hormones. After all, John was just some random janitor that she decided looked enough like a puppy to warrant a quick hug… right? He pulled her in close so his magic, sincere eye could lay her bare.

"Look out for yourself and your sister, yeah? Don't lose that heart and conscience, either. You don't know how important it will be in the coming times."

She nodded, stunned, and let the strange man slip from the room, allowing her continue the search for Trickster evidence in 'Dean's' locker.

.

It was until after the trickster tried to bargain with them, kill them, and ended up a bloody sack of flesh with minty eyes staring dead ahead that Jess thought back to the mysterious encounter of John Wesson. She smiled lazily was the luke-warm water spat down on her, rubbing her wrist where his feather-light fingers grazed skin in their hand shake. What surprised the hunter, however, was the intricate scrawl of bronzy lines that formed a looping L on her inner wrist, shining like fire when the light caught it.

Jess snorted, but could bring herself to be mad that Loki had posed as some gentle giant and left his sigil upon her. The honest, caring look 'John' held couldn't be faked by the best actor out there - he was pure in a refreshing and exhilarating way. And if she hoped deep, deep, down that Loki escaped somehow?

Well, Jess would've punched whoever suggested that before softly rubbing at the leather cuff she used to hide that elegant mark an honest, sweet guy gave her while helping her hunt himself down.