Chapter 53: Angel On Her Shoulder
The next morning, Sophie was feeling a lot better. She still was plagued by that uncomfortable feeling that she wasn't alone in her own mind, but it was a sensation that was becoming a little bit more familiar to her, and she had faith that soon enough it would be normal for her.
So she got up, feeling refreshed but still a little amazed that the night before, she'd actually been in Heaven. Trying not to think too much about it, she quickly went to her closet and pulled out her favorite pair of jeans and a light blue sleeveless blouse. She threw them on, went into her bathroom to toss her hair up into a ponytail and brush some mascara over her lashes, and then pulled on the white Converse she had thrown lazily into the corner behind her bed. Then she quickly grabbed the backpack she had packed the night before and made her way to the kitchen.
Sam was in there, in the process of making coffee. He looked up as she walked in. "Morning," he said. "How're you feeling?"
"Like a high school junior," she said brightly. "And like I no longer have the angel plague."
Her uncle grinned. "Good to hear," he said. "So, what's on the agenda for my favorite high schooler? What classes are you taking?"
"Favorite high schooler? I'm honored," Sophie laughed. Then she pursed her lips together, trying to reccall her class schedule. "I think I've got... Calc II, physics, European history, Advanced Latin II, American lit, journalism, and some dumb photography class I have to take to fulfill my elective requirement."
Sam grinned. "Who knows, maybe you'll like it?"
"Not a chance," Sophie grumbled. "I don't want to take pictures. I want to read and write. That's why I'm taking two English classes."
"It's good to step outside your comfort zone every now and then," Sam said, grabbing the coffee pot and pouring some into a mug for himself before passing it to Sophie.
She gave him a look as she grabbed her favorite chipped mug from the cabinet and filled it to the brim with coffee. "I have stepped more out of my comfort zone in the last year than anybody has ever stepped out of their comfort zone ever," she said matter-of-factly.
"Touché," Sam admitted, eyeing her brew. "Maybe you want to cram a little less coffee into that mug?"
"Maybe you want try rephrasing that sentence so it doesn't sound as idiotic as I think it did."
He snorted. "Fine. But the amount of caffeine you drink is going to stunt your growth."
"Not a chance," Sophie said. "My mom was five foot eight and my dad is six foot one. And you're a giant. I've got another two or three inches left to go at the very least, just based off genetics."
Sam just shook his head. "You are not allowed to pull a Dean move and just skate through your life on the fact that you happened to win a genetic lottery."
Sophie shrugged. "Kind of a blessing and a curse, isn't it though? Being a Winchester?"
Sam gave a low laugh, the kind that echoed with years of memories. "You got that right," he muttered.
She sighed, taking a long drink of her coffee and looking at her phone for the time. "How is Dean not awake right now?" she asked. "It's seven twenty."
"He's awake," Sam said. "But he's with Cas and Eremiel, figuring out how to pass him off as a human high school student. They're getting his papers and stuff figured out."
At the mention of Eremiel, Sophie felt a nervous churning in her stomach. "Oh."
Sam looked at her curiously. "How're you feeling about this whole thing?"
"Fine." He raised an eyebrow, and she tried again. "I mean, it's weird. And Eremiel is…."
"The angel version of Dean?" Sam offered.
She nodded. "That is the perfect way to put it. He's so infuriating, and any time he's in the room I feel like going at his throat, and then he'll say something to show that he's actually pretty serious, and…I don't know, it's just weird."
Sam grinned. "Well, luckily, you just have to deal with him at school."
"I guess," she sighed. She decided against telling him about that weird, constant feeling she had that she wasn't ever alone, that someone was perpetually there with her. That she truly had a little angel on her shoulder. It wasn't exactly something she could explain very well, anyway, so there was no need to worry Sam about it.
She glanced at her phone again and groaned, downing as much of the coffee as she could before grabbing a travel mug out of the cabinet and dumping the remainder of her cup into it, and then topping it off with fresh coffee from the pot. "I need to head over there now so I can set up my locker and renew my parking pass and stuff. See you after school?"
"Yep," he said, grabbing his coffee mug and his newspaper. She could see a couple articles on it had been circled, and she had the feeling it wouldn't be long before he and Dean left for another case. "Have a good time."
She shifted the strap of her backpack and grinned at him. "Thanks."
She turned to go, and then she heard Sam add, "And Sophie?"
Her head turned to look back over her shoulder. "Yeah?"
Sam just grinned at her. "If Eremiel gives you any trouble, just let me know. I can probably take care of it without an angel blade, like Dean would."
She laughed. "Will do. See ya later!"
And with that, she slid out of the kitchen and made her way to her car.
There was fifteen minutes before the first class of her junior year. Sophie had organized her locker just as she'd liked it, renewed her parking pass, and had even managed to sign up for cross country tryouts. So she did what any sixteen-year-old girl with fifteen spare minutes would do.
She made out with her boyfriend in the parking lot.
She'd made the decision to call Jack her boyfriend in an instant. She'd been walking back out to her car to put her parking pass sticker on her front windshield when she saw Jack doing the same for his car across the parking lot. And she thought about everything crazy and insane that she'd been through in the last week, and suddenly, she just knew.
So she walked up to him, a look of determination on her face. "Hey! Jack!" she called out as she neared his car.
He looked up at her voice, smiling when he saw her, and then his smile waned when he saw the focus on her face. "What's up, S?"
She stood in front of him, arms crossed. "I want to be your girlfriend."
Jack looked shocked. "Huh?"
"I want to be your girlfriend," she repeated. "I want you to be my boyfriend. I want to put a label on this. And maybe that's needy or whatever but I don't care, I just want—"
And then he'd grabbed her arms, which unwound from around herself and immediately wrapped around him, and he pushed her against the driver's side door of his car, and they kissed.
They were in plain sight. They were probably being annoying. They were the epitome of the couple Sophie usually hated, the kind that didn't care about anyone else's comfort level. But in that moment, she couldn't care less. All she cared about was the fact that Jack's hands were in her hair, and that was possibly the sexiest feeling she had ever experienced in her short, relatively romance-less sixteen years. All she could feel was Jack's mouth on hers and the cool metal of the car she was being pushed back onto.
She was a teenager. She was making out with her boyfriend in the parking lot of their high school. This was the most human, normal thing she could possibly be doing.
And that's when she heard the engine.
It was a deep rumble that seemed to shake the very air around her, and she could feel the thrumming in her heart. At first she thought it was the excitement from kissing Jack; after all, kissing him made her feel a million different things all at once, and certainly a vibrating excitement had to be one of them. But then the rumbling grew louder, and then she heard people whispering. So many people in the parking lot were whispering that it was actually audible over the sound of the engine. And so finally, Jack and Sophie broke apart to see what the commotion was.
And there, pulled up right next to Jack's car, was a guy on a motorcycle.
He wore jeans that looked almost too perfect on him and a hunter green Henley shirt, along with worker boots. A backpack was swinging from one of the handlebars, and a flask was tucked into a pocket on the side of the vehicle. The guy sitting on the bike still had his dark helmet on, but it was obvious he was looking directly at them.
Jack was the first to speak, and he was peeved. "Why don't you go stare at some other couple and leave me and my girlfriend alone," he snapped. "We're sort of in the middle of something."
With that, the biker lifted his hands up to remove his helmet. And when he did, Sophie knew that she should've known.
Eremiel looked at her, eyes alit with amusement. She tried not to notice that his shirt really seemed to bring out the green in his green-gray eyes. "Girlfriend?" he asked lightly, a grin playing at his lips. "Well, that's a development."
Sophie had no idea what to say to him in front of Jack, so she just looked back at her boyfriend, mouth open, speechless. Jack, having recognized the boy in front of him and now reaching the point of anger, glared at him. "I take it you go here now."
"You take it correctly," Eremiel said. He knocked the kickstand down, offering Jack a smooth grin. "I didn't get to meet you properly the last time I bumped into you. I'm Remy. Remy Angel."
If it was possible to choke and roll your eyes at the same time, Sophie achieved it. "You've got to be kidding me," she breathed, but Jack didn't seem to hear. He was too busy glaring.
"Jack," he said shortly. "Now if you'll excuse us, we were kind of busy."
"Yeah, I can see that," he said, looking at Sophie and grinning at her. She shifted her gaze away from him. "Well, I'm sure I'll see you around. Bye Jack. Sophie."
And then he hopped on his bike, kicked up the kickstand, and made his way to an open parking spot.
Jack turned to her, and she'd never seen him look so annoyed. "Why does he have to be coming here? New people never come to Lebanon, and when they do, they're usually much less obnoxious than him."
Sophie shook her head. "Don't worry about him. He's just trying to get under your skin."
"But why?" Jack asked. "All I ever did was walk into the same bookshop as him. And I mean, not that you're not totally worth fighting over, but it can't be because of you, because he doesn't even know you."
It suddenly struck Sophie that Jack had no clue. She hadn't told him a single thing about her whole guardian angel situation, or about how the only reason Remy had entered their lives was because of her. She wasn't sure how to tell him either, especially when he was this riled up.
"Who cares," she finally said. "Just don't let him win. Now c'mon, boyfriend, class starts in five."
Sam, Dean, and Cas hadn't been messing around, which Sophie soon discovered when she found out Eremiel was in every single one of her classes.
She thought that maybe it was just a coincidence that he was in her first two classes, because a lot of juniors were in physics and American lit. And she hadn't minded that, because she'd been able to sit far enough away from him to pretend that maybe he didn't exist. But when he showed up in her Advanced Latin II class, which had a total of five students enrolled in it, she figured it out. Not to mention it was difficult to not sit close to him in a class that had the number of students she could literally count off on one hand.
The Latin teacher, Dr. Krantz, walked in just as the bell rang. "Salve, class," he said cheerfully as he walked in. "Welcome to another year of Latin!"
The three other kids in the class, all seniors that had been in Sophie's class the year before, completely ignored Dr. Krantz and were studying Eremiel. The whispers had been following him all day long. It was impossible for Sophie to ignore the girls fawning over him, gushing over his eyes and his muscles and his motorcycle. If she was being honest, she couldn't blame them. Regardless of his attractiveness, he just oozed out-of-town badass, and she could see why him turning up at school would cause a bit of a ruckus.
But just because she understood it didn't mean she had to like it.
Dr. Krantz made his way to the front of the class, adjusting his glasses and clasping his thin hands together in front of his chest. "Now, we seem to be quite a small group this year, which I love—more time to cultivate each of your minds individually. Now, if we could go around and introduce ourselves just so we can all get to know each other, that would be great. Mr. Davis, how about we start with you?"
A senior boy named Roy Davis sat up and began to quickly introduce himself, and then the two senior girls in the class, Kendra and Becky, did the same, all while flicking their eyes back and forth between Dr. Krantz and Eremiel. Then it was Sophie's turn to introduce herself, and she quickly said, "I'm Sophie. I'm a junior. I'm on student government and I'm thinking of running track and cross country this year."
"You forgot your fun fact," Dr. Krantz prodded.
Sophie resisted the urge to roll her eyes. "Um…." I'm the daughter of a man who regularly hunts monsters, stopped the apocalypse, and is best friends with an angel. Also, my soul is connected to the soul of a guardian angel. Oh, and recently, I took a quick trip to Heaven to cure my angelic illness, but don't worry, I don't think I'm contagious. "I know how to sing the alphabet backwards."
She saw the corner of Eremiel's lips twitch upward at that, but she tried not to notice.
"Fascinating, fascinating. And how about our newest addition to the Buffalo family?" Dr. Krantz asked, looking at Eremiel.
He leaned back in his chair, that same old classic grin on his face. "I'm Remy Angel. I just moved here from San Francisco. I, too, am thinking of running track and cross country this year. And my fun fact…." He trailed, glancing at Sophie for half a second before looking back to Dr. Krantz and saying the next sentence in the most dead serious voice she imagined he could muster. "I'm terrified of flying."
Sophie again had to fight the urge to roll her eyes.
"A very common phobia, Mr. Angel," Dr. Krantz said, nodding. "Well, now that we're all familiar with each other, this year in Latin…."
Sophie found it incredibly difficult to focus on everything Dr. Krantz said in class that day, in between her own rambling thoughts and Kendra and Becky whispering back and forth to each other as they snuck glances at Remy.
No, Eremiel. Sophie shook her head. She had to separate the hot teenager she saw at school from the angel she was tethered to. She had to remind herself that Remy was actually thousands of years old most likely, and not human, and just generally so far removed from reality that she would never have allowed him into her daily life if her safety hadn't been contingent upon it. He was Eremiel. An angel. Not Remy. Remy wasn't real. Remy was a mask that Eremiel wore so that he could blend in with teenaged humans.
She tried to hammer that into her mind as she stared with glazed eyes at the Latin words Dr. Krantz was writing on the board, and when the bell rang signaling the end of class, she quickly grabbed her backpack and dashed out the door.
To no avail, however. Eremiel stopped her before she could get two feet away from the door. "Sophia," he started.
"Okay, first of all," she said as she turned towards him, grabbing the straps of her backpack so that her hands had an outlet for her annoyance, "I don't like being called Sophia. It's Sophie."
"Well, I don't like being called Eremiel, but you are determined to keep calling me it anyway," he said, looking down at her with an almost curious look on his face.
"That's because the only reason you have another name is because your real name sounds too heavenly," she snapped.
He cocked his head to the side, his eyes still filled with that curiosity. "No, actually, I've always preferred Remy. For the last few hundred years, at least. I like human names more than angel ones. Just like I tend to like humans more than angels."
Sophie was quiet for a moment. "Fine. Remy it is then."
"Thanks," he said with a grin. "Sophie."
She nodded. "Well, I take it you're in all my classes. And apparently joining track?"
"Just being thorough," he said with a wink.
Sophie scowled. "This is ridiculous. I know that you can sense everything about me from wherever you are. Why do you need to be in the same room as me?"
"It's not exactly a necessity, I guess. But I can't sense everything about you," he reasoned. "It's not like I can read your mind. I just…your heart beats in tune with me. When your soul brightens, so does mine, and when it dims, I can feel the darkness. When you're in pain, I'm in pain. It's why I knew when you were sick after our binding ritual. It's a unique sensation. But I would never claim to know everything about you, Sophie Winchester." She was speechless, and was about to try and force something out of her mouth when he added, "Although I will say, that whole bit about you knowing the alphabet backwards…that was a surprising piece of information. Really, I knew I was signing on for some serious stuff when I agreed to be your guardian angel, but that..."
Reluctantly, she grinned. "Well, I couldn't give them my real fun fact," she said.
"And what would that be?" Remy asked.
She gave him a look. "Wouldn't you love to know? Now come on, we're going to be late for this dumb photography class."
And with that, she turned around and walked away, knowing full well that Remy trailed right behind her.
At lunch, Sophie sat at her usual table with Harry, Jamie, and Jack. It had been a while since they had all been together like this, since Harry had been touring colleges all summer and Sophie had been off killing monsters with Sam and Dean. Jack and Jamie had stayed back, working their respective jobs, Jack at Busboys and Brew and Jamie at a little clothing boutique called Pink Aphrodite.
But now they were all back together, and they were chatting and catching up and mostly ignoring their lunches, when out of the corner of her eye she saw Remy enter the lunchroom.
She watched, trying to divide her attention between him and Jamie's story about a particularly unruly customer she'd faced over the summer, staring as Remy went through the cafeteria line, picking up an apple and a sandwich. The scene was so bizarre to her, an angel going through a high school cafeteria line, waiting his turn in between the school stoner and the captain of the girls' volleyball team. Speaking of the latter, the girl kept looking back at him, looking up at him from underneath her dark lashes, and Sophie was baffled. If any of these people knew what Remy was, they'd be running away from him screaming. Instead, he was being ogled like some sort of specimen.
"Hello, Sophie? Are you listening?"
She reverted her attention back to Jamie. "Yeah, of course. You said the customer tried to pay you for the hundred dollar dress in nickels."
Jamie sighed. "I said that five minutes ago."
"Oh," Sophie said, looking ashamed. "I'm sorry, I'm just zoning out today."
Jack was looking at her oddly, and she knew he was worried about her. She had to admit, she hadn't exactly been honest with him about everything, and not just the whole Remy thing. She kept most of the details of her hunting trip with Sam and Dean to a bare minimum, and she hadn't told him anything about the run in with the vampires or the whole deal with her favorite demon Taylor. She didn't want to freak him out more than he likely already had been. But it was clear he knew there was much more going on than she was telling him, and while he hadn't pushed her, the concern was clear as day on his face.
She felt horrible. The only upside to Jack knowing about the monsters of the world was that she had someone to talk to about it all, and now she was hiding stuff from him. And now he was her boyfriend.
She was less than five hours into her very first relationship and she was already the worst girlfriend ever.
It took a bit of effort, but she tried to focus in on the conversation they were having. She was vaguely aware of Remy being ushered over to sit at a table exclusively reserved for the prettiest volleyball players and the hottest jocks, and she tried to ignore the unsettled feeling it brought to her stomach. She tore her eyes away from him, took a long drink from her water bottle, and spent a lot of her energy concentrating on what Harry was saying about Princeton, which seemed to have been his favorite school that he'd visited.
"Princeton," she said, trying to engage herself. "That's a tough one."
"I know," Harry said. "But, I mean, I got a 1550 on my SATs and a 4.6 GPA. I play football and I'm on Mu Alpha Theta, so I'm both an athlete and a mathlete. I work a crappy job mowing lawns on weekends and volunteer every other week at this dumb wildlife center, but admissions officers eat that kind of stuff up." He took a bite of his sandwich thoughtfully, chewing and swallowing deliberately. "Plus, I'm half black, and that is the collegiate golden ticket."
Sophie grinned. "I tracked down the father that never knew I existed after my mom died," she put in. "I think that is the collegiate golden ticket. Everyone loves a sob story."
"Well, I'm a white male with married parents that both get a stable income," Jack said proudly. "So basically that means I'm screwed."
Jamie pushed her brother's shoulder lightly. "No, c'mon, we totally have an edge. We're both one of eleven siblings, one of whom is a world famous author. That's the kind of hook a school just can't resist."
Jack pretended to wipe sweat off of his forehead. "Well that's fortunate, God forbid any of us actually work hard enough to earn our way into a good university."
"No, Sophie and Harry actually deserve it," Jamie noted, tucking her sandy hair behind her ear. It had gotten longer over the summer, Sophie noticed, and a little bit lighter, likely due to a few beach trips she'd made. "You and I, dear brother, are not so intellectually inclined."
"Oh please," Sophie said, rolling her eyes. "You two are both ridiculously smart. It's just hard to compare when you have Mr. Ivy League over here rambling on about Princeton and Harvard and Yale like they're his back up colleges or something."
Harry just lifted his hands. "Sue me."
"Hey Sophie, where are you thinking of applying?" Jamie asked, turning towards me. "I mean, you have more time to decide than Harry since he's a senior, but it's close to time to start thinking about it."
"Um…," Sophie started, stumped. "I…I don't know. I guess I haven't really thought about it."
"Well, you should," Jamie said. "You're super smart. You could probably get in anywhere if you tried hard enough.
Sophie shrugged. "Well, I still have another year before I have to start applying, so the pressure isn't exactly on right now."
"But you've gotta have some sort of idea," Jack prodded, and Sophie looked over at him, surprised. Jack had never been the one to be grilling her about her future. "Because you've got to have certain things to put on applications if you want to apply anywhere really rigorous, like part time jobs and service projects and extracurriculars. Those are the kinds of things you need to think about now."
Sophie just gave him a look. "Okay. Well, no need to jump down my throat. It's not like you've been taking a bunch of steps to perfect your applications."
"Yeah, well you're going to end up somewhere great," he said quickly. "I just want to make sure you get there. You know, fly the coop."
Sophie looked down at the sandwich she'd barely touched. "I didn't realize it was so important to you that I leave," she grumbled.
Jamie and Harry looked uncomfortable, and Jack seemed to realize that maybe he had misspoken. "I didn't mean that, S," he said, trying to recover. "I just…I know you're attached to your home here and to your family, and—"
"That's sort of the purpose of a home and family, Jack, isn't it?" she asked, trying not to sound too biting. "To be attached to them?" Before he could answer, Sophie just shook her head. "Never mind. Listen, I'm going to go, I want to show up early to my history class so I can get to know the teacher a little bit. I'll see you guys later."
With that she stood up, slung her backpack onto her shoulder, and grabbed her tray. As she started walking away, she could hear Jamie scolding Jack. "What the hell was that about, you idiot?" her friend's voice rang out.
Sophie dumped her tray and made her way out of the cafeteria, feeling tears prick at her eyes. She sniffed once, making her way to her locker. She didn't want anyone to see her cry, especially on the first day of school.
"Sophie!"
She groaned, turning around to see Jack following her out. "Not really feeling like talking right now, Jack," she said, turning back around to continue towards her locker.
She heard him jog to catch up to her, only stopping once he was facing her. "Sophie, I'm sorry. I was acting like a dick in there."
"Yeah, you were," she replied, looking up at him in annoyance. "What was that even about?"
"I just…," Jack started, looking uncomfortable and rubbing the back of his neck with his hand. Then he let out a breath and looked down at Sophie. "Look, S, I'm worried about you. You've been so quiet about your summer, and kind of closed off about the whole…crazy part of your life. And I mean I get that, but I just can't help but think that something over the summer just kind of…clicked."
"Clicked?" Sophie repeated, not knowing where on earth he was going with this. "What do you mean?"
"I don't know, I just…I figured that somewhere over the course of the summer you decided that you wanted to be a hunter," he said quickly. "And I just…I really don't want you to want that, S. I know I should let you what you want, but I just can't do that when what you want has probably the highest mortality rate of any job in the world."
At that, Sophie couldn't help but smile, feeling a little relieved. "Wait, really? That's what you were nervous about?"
Jack looked at her in exasperation. "I mean, yeah! I never know what to think when it comes to you, S, you honestly drive me up a wall and it's just—"
Sophie took a step forward and kissed him right on his over-talkative mouth, and he was so surprised he didn't even kiss her back. She stepped back, grinning at him. "Jack, I don't want to be a hunter. I never will."
His eyes widened. "Really?"
"Really," she laughed. "If my summer taught me anything, it's that being a hunter is the last thing I want to be."
He looked relieved. "I just…you've been acting so different recently, and I thought that—"
"A lot has happened," she said, her green eyes lifting to meet his dark blue ones. "And…and I've kept some stuff from you." A lot of stuff. "And I'll tell you everything, Jack, I will. Just…just not yet."
He looked at her contemplatively, searching her eyes for the truth, which he seemed to find. "Okay. I trust you, S."
She grinned. "Okay, good." Then she laughed. "I bet you feel like an idiot for the show you just put on back there. Jamie and Harry probably think you're an asshole."
"What's new?" Jack said, waving her comment away. He took a step forward and wrapped his arms around Sophie's waist, pulling her a little closer to him, and her favorite effortless grin made an appearance on his face. "So, S, does this mean we're still boyfriend and girlfriend?" he asked playfully.
She pretended to consider his offer with seriousness and deliberation. "Well…I mean…I guess you did apologize in a very gentlemanly manner…."
And before she could say anything else, they were kissing again.
I know this was a long one, friends, so thanks for sticking it out. Exciting stuff coming up! Thanks as always for reading and reviewing, wonderful people!
To answer a few of the most frequently asked questions I get about this story:
- I do have plans for Crowley to make an appearance. He won't play a large role, but he will come up at a VERY important time in the story, so that should be fun (it always is when he's involved). Also, I don't have any current plans for Charlie to make an appearance, but that could always change depending on my whims... I have this story outlined till the end, but sometimes I get little bursts of inspiration and I include more people than I thought I would, and I love Charlie. So we'll see.
- I don't have any particular actress or person that I picture in my mind's eye as Sophie. That being said, if I had to pick someone, I feel like a good representation would be a combination of Katherine McNamara and Jane Levy. But still, I never created Sophie with a person in mind to look like her... I just created her as I saw her in my head. So if neither of those two actresses satisfy how you imagine her, don't worry about it, because they're not exactly as I picture her either.
- I do not have a tumblr or any other sort of page dedicated to this story off of this website. To be honest, tumblr overwhelms me.
- I have VERY TINY SEEDLING ideas for a POTENTIAL sequel. That isn't a promise. Once I finish this story, we'll see how I'm feeling about it. Right now, I'm just excited to continue writing Sophie's journey with Dean and Sam as it is. So just stay tuned in terms of sequels (I also have a potential Dean/OC story in the works, so we'll see where the Supernatural winds blow).
And that's all folks. Until Saturday! ~ Lacey :)
