Lisa worried whenever Sam and Dean let her know what they were venturing off to hunt — she couldn't help it. As she set about handling her baked lasagna, and the tray of cookies that she and Barnes had whipped up earlier, her thoughts weren't so much on the food as they were on wondering when the Hell those infuriating Winchesters were going to give her peace of mind and let her know that they hadn't gone running off a cliff with their angel friend. Maybe Castiel, or whatever his name was, would survive that, and maybe Sam and Dean could just come back, but that wasn't as reassuring a notion as Damien seemed to think it was. He leaned against the nearby counter, munching on an apple while Becky handled the salad and Barnes set the table.
"I mean, all I'm trying to say Lisa is Sam and Dean are… they're Sam. and. Dean." How this passed as logic was entirely beyond Lisa's grasp, and she arched an eyebrow at the goateed man, begging him to pray, illuminate her. "It's like... in terms of hunters. You've got a lot of guys like me and Barnes — especially since the rest of Mister Edlund's books started coming out and telling us about the Apocalypse? Half the fans at the Winchesters R Us forums started mobilizing, or at least trying to put devil's traps and salt lines out there so people can be safe."
"I still think it's just outrageous that Mitchie got arrested for that," Becky piped up, slicing a particularly plump tomato. "Yeah, sure, the cops can go on forever and a day about vandalism or whatever, but she was just trying to protect her neighborhood."
"I don't think it was really the vandalism they were getting upset about?" Barnes offered. He set the places backwards and had since Sam and Dean left him here. Ben always chided him for it, when he wasn't off at a friend's house like he was tonight, pointing out that the correct order of cutlery was not fork, spoon, plate, knife, but of all the eccentricities that had been flung Lisa's way in the past few days, this one was the most tolerable. "I mean, Mitch kind of spray painted one of her town's pretty famous historical sites—"
"In order to keep demons at bay, yeah—"
"I'm just saying, Becky? Like... not everybody's read the books, and not everybody believes Sam and Dean are real... I mean, Dames and I didn't? And we're actually fans of Mister Edlund's books, and it's just... I kind of understand where they were coming from, is all I mean—" Barnes paused, turning whiter than the linoleum beneath his feet and swallowing in some vain attempt to get his heart out of his throat. "N-n-not that, you know, your point of view is less valid or anything, but... most people aren't going to just believe that we were trying to help apparently fictional characters stop the apparently fictional Apocalypse?"
Becky shook her head and rolled her eyes. "Yeah, well, you wrote a Sam/Cas fic. And it was smuttier than any of your Wincest. I mean, come on — I know you haven't seen 'Lucifer Rising' or 'Free to Be You And Me' or even 'On the Head Of A Pin' yet, but come on. It's so obvious that Castiel's true love is Dean, okay?" Maybe other people would've seen some kind of problem with Becky when she got all huffy and indignant like this, but it brought a smile to Lisa's face, at least. "Besides, Sam is kind of straight for everyone who isn't Dean. He and Ruby have had chemistry since she saved him from the Seven Deadlies."
"Did we read the same scene in 'It's The Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester' or didn't we?" Barnes spluttered, and dropped his handful of spoons. They clattered to the floor and he looked so tempted to start flapping his arms and hoping that he'd fly. "I mean... I believe in Wincest too, but Sam was just like, totally hero-worshipping Castiel there, okay? And I know, I know: hero-worshipping doesn't equal having sex or anything, but—"
"What he means to say is," Damien interrupted, through a mouthful of a half-chewed apple. He swallowed. Took another bite, and then concluded: "He lost a Super Bowl bet with one of the guy who used to play Ash in our LARP. They didn't want to put money on the line, and then 'Lazarus Rising' came out, and Tommy was all like, 'Screw you guys, I want to play Cas now, and if Barnes loses, I get to, and he has to write whatever kind of fanfic I tell him to'."
"But you know, it doesn't mean that I don't still ship Sam and Dean." He gave Damien an affectionate, knowing smile. "I just... there was that one time, and I can see where the people who ship it are coming from... but if I want to see Cas with anybody, then I want it to be with Dean. ...Especially since, you know. Actually meeting him. ...Oh my God, you know?"
"Do you think anybody's writing about Dean and Alastair?" Damien mused.
"Oh yeah, totally," Becky agreed sagely. "There's one really great one I read, and it gets Wincesty toward the end, because... it's sort of not-canon once you get to 'On the Head Of A Pin,' especially with how Castiel is suddenly able to kill Alastair, when he totally wasn't in 'Heaven and Hell' and then he had a Winchester threesome, which is just... totally hot, but never going to happen."
Damien nodded, taking another huge bite of apple. "Yeah, because Castiel clearly only had eyes for Dean."
Lisa furrowed her brow and let her smile turn into a frown. Oh, sure, she understood that Dean — the real Dean, not just his representation in Becky's ex's books — had had some kind of relationship with the blue-eyed angel who'd all of a sudden shown up on her doorstep, but the fact of this conversation was that she had to be missing something. And she'd gotten used to these kind of talks coming out of nowhere since the two LARPing fanboys had temporarily moved in. Seeing as they and Becky started going on like this at least once an hour, or so and the talks very rarely got easier to understand, life sort of required growing accustomed to them... but it made Lisa's heart twist around in her chest regardless, listening to the three of them carry on as though Sam and Dean were still just characters in books. They weren't perfect, definitely. And they certainly weren't going to sleep together — Becky had proposed them having a threesome with someone in the middle once, only for Dean to tell her that ugh, they were brothers — but, well... maybe Lisa just didn't understand the appeal of writing stories about people you knew were real.
Granted, she also didn't understand the popping noise that rocketed through the kitchen, or the leggy redhead in the French maid's outfit who shoved Barnes away from the table and started setting it with a spread worthy of Thanksgiving with the extended family (of which Sam and Dean were members), or the sudden advent of the short man with the knifelike smirk and the eyes that glowed like the burning end of a cigarette. But Lisa could only assume that somehow, someway, the Winchesters were going to be involved in this. No one spoke for a few moments, with everyone too shocked to say anything at all... but finally, Becky's face broke out into a broad grin and she shrieked:
"Gabriel!"
"Whoa, whoa, wait just a minute here..." Setting his core on the counter, Damien stood up straight, took two steps toward the little man, and pointed at him. "That is theTrickster! I mean... I like, kind of painstakingly reread 'Mystery Spot' a ton of times, just to make sure that I got all of Dean's lines right, so... I think I remember how Mister Edlund described the guy responsible for that book's plot? And that... I don't know, man, it's like the book just came to life."
Gabriel huffed. "That's because it was written about life, big guy."
"And I kind of think that I know better than you, Dee," Becky pointed out as though she'd just time-traveled to a southern California mall in 1985 and fallen in with a tribe of wild valley girls. Damien rolled his eyes and asked if Becky was just saying that because she was the web-mistress of , which made her sneer, "No! ...I'm just saying it because he's the one who told me I was having Samantha Dee, and I don't know about you, but I think that's something you kind of remember pretty well."
"...I think I'd remember it if Damien turned up pregnant too," Barnes said, looking so hopelessly lost.
"Oh my God, you guys, what did I tell you about the house rules on mpreg?"
Barnes and Damien traded glances, and said in unison: "Don't talk about it?"
This all too easily could have devolved into another round of people trying to out-snark each other, and for all she didn't mind playing the peacemaker most of the time, Lisa was not having that: she thumped both of her hands on either side of her lasagna dish, and snapped, "Okay, that's all fine and whatever, but... you." She pointed to the little man — Gabriel, or the Trickster, or whoever he was — and sighed. "...Who are you and what are you doing in my house?"
"Finally," Gabriel chuckled. "Someone with more than two drops of common sense."
Lisa wrapped her hand around the hilt of her carving knife without thinking of it. The blade was stainless steel, not silver like Sam and Dean wanted her to have... but Barnes had the demon-killing knife. They'd be safe... probably. "That," she replied, "does not answer my question."
An aggrieved sigh came out of Gabriel's lips and he held his hands up in apparent surrender. "Fine, fine — yes, my name is Gabriel. I used to run around playing the Trickster, but the Apocalypse shook my delicate, archangelic ass back up to Paradise and I've been putting up with shit from Castiel ever since, not to mention Zachariah and his hissy fits."
"...Who's Zachariah?" Damien asked. Lisa didn't hesitate in telling him to shut up and let Gabriel talk.
His story took a while to go over, since he seemed more than content to throw in every extraneous detail that came to his mind about how Sam's ass looked in this pair of jeans, or how Sam was being such a good sport about one thing or the other, or something about Sam that was only tangentially related to the part where, apparently, Gabriel had been trying to get Dean and Castiel back together in the middle of demons trying to kill Becky's baby and raise Lucifer, thereby ending the world again. Becky, Barnes, and Damien all loosened up somewhat, as though hearing this explanation of purposes made everything about the archangel's presence make an unfathomable amount of sense, but Lisa's hand never came off the knife. She just tightened her hold on it, glaring at him.
"...So now I'm here," Gabriel concluded, "because those two are being idiots, and I'm out of patience, and you all are going to come and help me get them back together."
Becky squealed in delight, but, wrinkling her nose at the angel, Lisa interrupted: "Are you serious?"
Saying that Gabriel looked stunned would have done a serious disservice to exactly how shocked he seemed. "...Well, yeah, I mean... don't you want Dean and Cas to stop being such difficult pains in the ass?"
"I only met Castiel a few days ago," Lisa pointed out. "And, honestly? What I want has nothing to do with Dean's sex life. We broke up — whoever he wants to sleep with isnone of my business. And it's none of yours either, especially not now — have you noticed that there are bigger things to worry about here? Like, demons trying to kill God's unborn daughter, for example? Or even just that Dean and Castiel are kind of busy right now?"
"Uh, Lisa?" Barnes chimed in, once more sounding as though someone had dropped him into a maze without a map, compass, cell phone, or other means of finding his way out. "Your knuckles are getting really white, and... Maybe you want to relax a little?"
"What I want is for this archangel to explain why he thinks that whether or not Dean and Cas are having sex is more important than my girlfriend's Jesus baby!"
Gabriel had talked his way out of a lot of sticky situations before — he'd hated having to explain to his Father why Abraham had suddenly decided that sending Hagar and Ishmael away, most likely to their deaths, was a good idea, and he'd only barely made it out of clarifying why King Saul had gone mad with his wings intact — but the sheerrage and frustration emanating off of Lisa Braeden made him briefly fear that, maybe, she would find some way to kill him with her kitchen knife. The air crackled, and, unfortunately for all involved, the tension between Lisa and Gabriel provided the perfect window of opportunity for two particularly adventurous demons. The next thing that Gabriel, Lisa, and Becky knew, their knees gave out underneath them. Becky's cellphone slid out of her pocket, but remained unnoticed.
Barnes and Damien were the only ones to see the demons reveal themselves, and both attempted to distance themselves... as much as they could, when they backed into the walls at the opposite ends of the room, anyway. The taller demon smirked, picking Gabriel up by the collar of his jacket. His companion gathered up Becky and Lisa with a similar lack of concern.
"Oh, don't worry, you two," he snarked. "Belial only wants the useful members of your little household."
The demons disappeared as quickly as they'd shown up, but Barnes and Damien stayed silent for a good five minutes, both reeling from the shock of what they'd witnessed. "...We need Sam and Dean," Damien finally announced.
Barnes retrieved Becky's phone from underneath the table. "We need to call Mrs. Burroughs and let her know Ben needs to sleep over for a few days."
"What the Hell are we supposed to tell her, genius? 'Can you please keep Ben for a little while longer, his mom and Becky got kidnapped and now we have to go and save the world from demons'?"
Barnes shrugged. "...We could say something's up with the baby? And then we'll bring over some extra clothes and tell Ben the truth and get on the road... well. Maybe not tell Ben the truth, I mean... he is Dean's kid, and we can't let him come with us, you know? It's like, we'd save the day and then Lisa would kill us anyway."
Damien nodded. He had to admit: for all his boy couldn't remember to keep character half the time, he really was the smart one.