"Is there any coffee left?"
"What?" Sam looked up from the book he'd been reading and stared at her. He checked his watch, then said, "Cass, it's five in the afternoon."
"So that'd be a 'no,' then." Cass dropped her laptop on the coffee table in the library as she crossed to the kitchen, intending to make a fresh pot. Bobby and Dean watched her go with raised eyebrows and amusement, respectively. Sam stood up and followed after her, eyes wide. He looked like he was seriously considering trying to stop her from consuming any more coffee, but Cass shot him a dark look and he backed down, frowning deeply.
"Did you even sleep last night?"
Cass had hardly left her room since she and Sam had finished the salt lines the previous day. She'd selected a cast iron fire poker to carry around with her just in case, but even with that and the security of her salt line, she still jumped at every noise. Sleep was almost impossible, and she'd given up on it after a few fitful hours. She'd instead focused on copying down everything that would be of value to Bobby and the boys in trying to find Lilith, sorting through information to determine what might be of use and what might be too dangerous to divulge.
"I got a few hours," Cass said dismissively. She hit 'start' on the coffee pot and perched on the arm of the couch while the coffee percolated. "You heard from any other hunters yet, Bobby?"
"Not yet." Cass sighed and rubbed her temples. "You're really worried about this." His tone was lightly questioning.
"I know you're all used to this," she said, gesturing vaguely to the piles of lore books surrounding them, "but it's actually totally normal to be afraid of ghosts."
"Come on, ghosts are easy," Dean said lightly. "Hold 'em off with salt and iron, salt and burn the bones. A kid can do it."
Cass couldn't resist a quick glance at Sam at that last comment, and was able to catch his slight wince before he schooled his expression. Cass figured that this was Dean's best attempt at being reassuring, but the thought of Sam and Dean facing down vengeful spirits before they could vote didn't really make her feel any better. But it wouldn't be wise to say so.
"Yeah, well, I'm still adjusting to the idea of ghosts existing at all." Cass shook her head and added, "And these aren't ordinary ghosts. There won't be any bones to burn."
Dean shrugged carelessly. "We got a spell, don't we?"
"What's different about the Witnesses, anyway?" Sam asked, looking from Cass to Bobby. "You said they're more powerful than regular ghosts, but they're still vulnerable to salt and iron, right?"
"Same rules apply," Bobby confirmed. "But they're ghosts who died unnatural deaths, forced to rise against their will by a powerful spell. They won't just be extra powerful—they'll be extra vengeful, too."
"The most dangerous thing," Cass said slowly, "is that they'll be people you knew. People you failed to save. Their anger is personal." She locked eyes with Sam and finished seriously, "And you might be tempted to apologize, or to reason with them, but you can't."
Sam furrowed his brow and drew breath, but before he could speak, one of the phones in the kitchen rang. Cass flinched at the sound, fingers tightening on her fire poker. Bobby rose to answer the phone, and Cass and the boys were quiet as they listened intently to Bobby's end of the conversation.
"Yeah?" A short pause. "You alright?" An even shorter pause. "And the ritual worked?" A much longer pause, and when Bobby spoke again it was in a rushed, forceful tone that suggested he was talking over the caller. "I don't have time to get into that now. I wanna keep this line clear. Just be careful." The phone was replaced on the hook with a plasticky clack.
"Someone did the ritual?" Sam asked Bobby eagerly when he returned to the library. "And it worked?"
"Yeah. Got pretty scratched up, but he'll live."
Cass sighed with relief. She didn't know precisely how many hunters had been killed by the Witnesses the first time around, but she was glad that this was something she'd actually managed to change.
"So, is that it?" asked Dean as Bobby returned to his armchair.
"Hard to say," Bobby said, frowning. "The lore's not exactly clear. If the banishing spell is a one-and-done type deal, then it's over. But it might be that the Witnesses have to be banished in each place they appear."
"In which case, they could still turn up at any time," Sam summarized. "And there's no way to tell either way?"
"If we're lucky, that phone call will be the end of it," Bobby said. "If we're less lucky, we'll get another call from someone else who used the spell, and we'll at least have some warning that the Witnesses will be coming for us, too."
"And if we're unlucky, we'll find out when a ghost tries to gank us," Dean finished. "Great. So, what, we just sit around waiting for the phone to ring or for the ghosts to show up?"
"And in the meantime, keep the salt and iron handy."
"Fun."
Cass cleared her throat. "Well, if you want a way to pass the time… I've finally put together everything I can think of that will help us stop the Apocalypse." Cass nodded towards her laptop. "Everything I know about angels, demons, and archangels—strengths, weaknesses, weapons… plus everything I know on the backgrounds and motivations of the forces of Heaven and Hell."
"And what about all the stuff you're leaving out?" Dean challenged, eyebrow raised.
"None of it would be useful," Cass said, grimacing. She wished it weren't the case, but she'd really left very little out. The problem with her knowledge was that it was a television viewer's knowledge, and there were a lot of crucial details she'd never been shown. "If I'm leaving it out, it's mostly because there's no way to get to something right now, or because I just don't have enough information. Believe me, I'd love to tell you how to cure vampires and werewolves, because I know those cures exist, but I don't have the recipes and there's no way to get in touch with the people who do."
"We'll take what we can get," Bobby said quickly, cutting off any further argument.
"It's a good thirty pages of information, at least," Cass said, reaching for her laptop. "I can send you an encrypted file, or if you have a flash drive—"
"How about you just print it?" Bobby interrupted, amused. "You know, on paper?"
Cass blinked, trying to remember if she'd seen a printer anywhere in Bobby's house. She hadn't. "You've got a printer around here?"
"Follow me."
Bobby headed towards the door to the basement. Cass scooped up her laptop with the hand not holding her fire poker and followed him down the stairs. She had never been down here before, and the show hadn't shown it much, either, except for brief glimpses of a mostly unfinished space in scenes which involved Bobby's panic room. Aside from the fact that it contained a panic room, the basement was quite normal: a little musty and dark, with miscellaneous furniture and paint cans stacked around. There was an old, beaten-up desk not too far from the stairs which housed a computer Cass was pretty sure was pre-Y2K, an old dot matrix printer, and a tangled mass of wires. Cass eyed these last two things with deep skepticism.
"I don't know if this is going to work," she warned, setting the laptop and poker down so she could start sorting through the wires. "But I do know it's going to be a pain." She stopped, looking between the printer and the ancient computer hopefully. "If this old thing's already hooked up to the printer, it'd probably be easier to just send it to you electronically and print it from there."
"Probably," Bobby agreed. "Problem is, it's busted."
"Of course it is." Cass sighed. "I don't suppose you've got a working computer that you already know how to connect to this thing?"
"I've only got the one computer, and you're lookin' at it."
Cass managed to suppress her groan, but just barely. "Okay. Okay. I'm… going to need that coffee if I'm going to give this a shot."
"I'll fetch it. I'm not gonna be much use sorting that mess out, anyway."
Bobby tromped back up the stairs, the old wood creaking under his boots with each step. Cass returned her attention to the hopeless tangle of wires and began trying to unknot them. As she worked she could hear more creaks as Bobby crossed the kitchen toward the coffee pot, and beyond that the low, indistinct sounds of Sam and Dean conversing in the library. With a cry of triumph, Cass yanked a single cord free from the mass, then sighed gustily when she recognized it as an HDMI cable, useless for the current situation. One cord down, fifty to go. Cass began to mutter unkind things under her breath about Luddites and wondered aloud how someone with so little technology in his house managed to acquire so many goddamn cords.
Upstairs, the phone rang. Cass jumped at the noise and stared at the ceiling above her, trying to listen through the floorboards. She could make out Bobby's voice, but not his words. It might just be a routine call to one of his law enforcement phones, but Cass doubted it. Nervously, she pulled her fire poker close again and glanced around to see if Bobby had left any salt lying around down here. None was visible lying around, so she began opening the drawers of the desk. She found, impossibly, even more wires, along with a moldy computer manual and a broken mouse, but the bottom drawer finally revealed a carton of salt that a quick shake revealed was at least halfway full.
Bobby came back down the stairs as Cass was shaking the canister of salt. He was carrying a cup of coffee in one hand and a shotgun in the other, and he nodded in approval when he caught sight of it.
"Another one?"
"Looks like you'll get to see your first ghost after all."
"Yay." Cass took the coffee from Bobby without enthusiasm and immediately set it down so she could use both hands to carefully pour a circle of salt. Bobby pulled up a chair inside the circle and sat with the shotgun ready.
Cass was tempted to take the entire mass of wires and untangle them in Bobby's nice, safe panic room, or else in the more secure salt circle taped down in the library, but they were still so tangled that they'd be difficult to extract from the desk, and she couldn't exactly carry all the wires and her fire poker at the same time.
She briefly thought about giving up on printing her notes altogether, at least until the Witnesses had been dealt with, but despite her fear she couldn't bring herself to suggest it to Bobby. He and the boys were content to go about their business as usual until the ghosts showed up, and Cass was already jumping at every little noise. She didn't think having a reasonable sense of self-preservation made her a coward, but she'd certainly feel like one if she had to look Bobby in the eye and tell him she'd like to put this off because she was too scared of ghosts to untangle some wires in his basement, even behind a ring of salt, armed with iron and with Bobby and his shotgun full of rock salt at her side.
She could do this. She would do this. She took a fortifying sip of coffee and turned back to the mess of wires.
"Is the hunter who called just now okay?"
"Okay enough."
Cass glanced at him with a frown. "Is that gruff hunter-speak for 'They got a few scratches but they'll live', or do you mean 'They're pretty messed up but they're still alive so we're counting it as a win'?"
"...more towards that second one."
"Not reassuring, Bobby."
"You know how stubborn hunters can be," Bobby said, shaking his head. "I tell 'em ghosts are coming and they oughhta be careful, and they bitch at me for telling 'em how to do their jobs. You heard Dean. Deal with enough ghosts, people start to get complacent."
"I will absolutely never be complacent about ghost attacks."
"Good. It's refreshing to work with someone who doesn't have a death wish."
Cass raised an eyebrow and wondered if that comment was directed at either or both of the men upstairs, but chose not to ask. She turned back to untangling.
Cass finished her coffee before it could get cold, and the jolt of caffeine improved her mood some, though it didn't much help her already frayed nerves. Untangling the wires required too much of her focus for active panic, though, so eventually Cass was able to mostly ignore the fact that ghosts might turn up any moment.
She did not notice the cold at first. It was a basement, so it was cooler than the rest of the house despite the summer heat. But it should not have been so cold that her breath misted in the air.
"Uh, Bobby?"
"Don't leave the circle," he ordered. He'd lifted the shotgun into a ready position, and turned to shout up the stairs, "Sam, Dean! Get that fire going!"
There was a loud crash from the floor above, followed almost immediately by the boom of a shotgun. Cass flinched and dropped the cords in favor of the iron fire poker.
Dean's voice carried down the stairs. "We're on it, Bobby!"
Bobby looked to Cass. "Get ready to run."
Cass nodded, determined. She looked to the staircase, and then she had to swallow a scream.
She had forgotten about the little girls. She remembered that Meg and Henriksen, the FBI agent, had been Witnesses, but she'd forgotten about the creepy little girls. As a viewer Cass hadn't paid much attention to them—they hadn't died in the series and their backstory was never explained, so at the time they were little more than an homage to The Shining.
But Cass was definitely paying attention to them now. They were more real than she had expected ghosts to look, more solid. There was nothing transparent about them, and with their pale skin and dirty night gowns and lank hair they looked more like the walking dead than like spirits.
The first little girl spoke, eyes dark. "Are you scared, Bobby?"
The second little girl opened her mouth, but she never got to say whatever creepy message she'd had in mind. With a deafening boom Bobby hit her with a shotgun blast of rock salt, and then quickly shot the first little girl, too. The ghosts dissipated, like they'd never been there in the first place.
Bobby pushed Cass toward the stairs. "Go!"
Cass flew up the stairs two at a time, Bobby following close behind her. At the top of the steps she froze, her fight or flight instinct failing her utterly. In the library, between her and Bobby and the safety of the salt line around the fireplace, stood a familiar figure with short blonde hair. Sam stood facing Meg's ghost, shotgun in hand but not firing. Behind him, Dean was working quickly to build up the fire.
"You killed me," Meg was saying bitterly. "And my little sister, too. She killed herself, you know. After I disappeared for so long, the sight of my broken corpse pushed her over the edge."
Sam looked gutted. "I'm sorry."
"Not sorry enough."
Cass couldn't see Meg's face from the top of the stairs, but the tone of her voice didn't sound promising. She didn't wait to hear more—with a small yelp she chucked her fire poker at Meg's ghost. The iron flew through Meg's head and the spirit vanished as Sam backpedaled to avoid getting an iron poker to the shins. Cass and Bobby rushed across the room and behind the salt line, where Bobby began quickly preparing the already-assembled ingredients for the spell.
"You almost hit me!" Sam looked like he wasn't sure whether he wanted to laugh at Cass or scold her. Cass scooped up the fire poker and pointed it at him accusingly.
"And I'd do it again, too. What did I say about trying to reason with the ghosts?!"
Sam ducked his head, lips twitching. "Sorry."
Ingredients prepared, Bobby began to recite the spell. Outside the salt circle, the vengeful witnesses slowly rematerialized. There were the little girls, and Henriksen, and a curly-haired man Cass couldn't recall the name of. Sam and Dean, who had picked up Bobby's discarded shotgun, dispersed each ghost with a blast of salt as soon as they appeared. And then, finally, there was Meg.
She reappeared in the doorway to the kitchen, out of shotgun range for either of the Winchesters in their current positions. As Dean cursed and crossed to the very edge of the salt line to get a clear shot, Meg locked her shadowed eyes on Cass.
"You'll die, too. You know that, right?" Cass could have handled it if Meg had sounded angry, but she didn't. She sounded almost gentle, and it made Cass's stomach do a nervous somersault. "Everyone they get close to dies."
And then Meg was gone, banished by Dean's shot, and Bobby tossed the ingredients into the fire. The fire flared blue, and for a moment all four of them held their breath. But the ghosts didn't reappear.
Cass let out a shaky breath and sank back onto the couch, finally allowing the fire poker to drop from her trembling hands.
"I'm gonna make some calls," Bobby said, heading towards the kitchen and his battalion of phones. "See if everyone else is alright."
Cass and the boys nodded. A slightly awkward silence fell in the library.
"I'm… gonna get drunk," Cass decided aloud. She got up on wobbly legs to follow Bobby to the kitchen and procure some whiskey. To her surprise, Dean followed, pulling out three glasses from the cabinets. He caught her questioning look as they returned to the library, and he raised his eyebrows at her.
"What, you really think we're gonna let you get hammered alone? After your first hunt?"
He was oddly chipper about it. Cass didn't know if this precisely counted as a hunt, but she wasn't about to argue definitions with Dean. She shrugged, sat back on the couch, and poured herself a generous glass.
Dean took the bottle from her and poured his own glass, then paused to raise an eyebrow at his brother, who was still standing and looked vaguely disapproving.
"Sam?" Dean waved the bottle at him invitingly. "Come on, don't make us drink alone."
Sam sighed and shook his head, but ultimately smiled and sat down on the opposite end of the couch from Cass. "Fine."
Dean grinned and poured a generous portion of whiskey into the third glass and slid it across the coffee table to him. To Cass, Dean lifted his own glass.
"To surviving your first ghost."
"Cheers," Cass said dryly, clinking her glass with Dean's and Sam's in turn before drinking. She grimaced at the taste. It wasn't good, but it would get her drunk, which she very much wanted to be at that moment. "Suppose it's too much to hope it'll be my last."
"You did well," Sam praised sincerely. "Kept your cool better than I did, for a second there."
"I don't know if screaming and chucking a fire poker across the room really counts as 'keeping my cool'," Cass said, raising an eyebrow at him. Sam ducked his head to take a sip, but Cass caught his smirk before it disappeared behind the glass. She chose to pretend she hadn't seen it. "But I also didn't have to face anyone I knew personally. I was half-afraid I'd see Anna, but I suppose the spell to raise the witnesses only works on human souls."
Sam's smirk quickly disappeared. "Anna's death wasn't your fault."
"Wasn't it?" Cass shook her head and voiced the thought that had been in the back of her mind ever since Castiel revealed Anna's fate. "She'd still be alive if I'd never come here. She'd still be living with her parents, blissfully unaware she'd ever been an angel."
"She made her own choice," Sam insisted. "She didn't have to help us."
"We didn't really give her a lot of other options, did we?"
"Alright, alright, enough brooding," Dean interrupted. He leaned forward to top up both of their glasses. "Time for a drinking game."
"Seriously?" Sam looked like he couldn't decide if he wanted to be embarrassed of Dean, or for him.
"What?" Dean's voice grew playfully offended. "Some of us never went to college, okay?"
"That's just you, Dean."
The bickering drew a laugh out of Cass, and both brothers looked at her as she smiled and relaxed back into the couch. "Sure, why not? Maybe if I drink enough I'll forget what I just saw."
"That's the spirit." Dean grinned at her and shot a smug look towards Sam, who rolled his eyes but didn't protest further. "The name of the game is 'Never Have I Ever'."
Sam groaned. Dean cheerfully ignored him. "Since you did go to college, I'm betting you already know the rules. So, l'll start. Never have I ever… gone to college."
"Cheap shot." Cass rolled her eyes, but obediently drank, as did Sam. He shot her a curious look.
"Where did you go to college, anyway? I don't think you mentioned it before."
"Georgetown."
Dean perked up a little. "By the Exorcist steps?"
"Yep." Cass smiled and swirled the whiskey around in her glass, admiring the way it caught the light from the dwindling fire. "I even ran up and down them a few times a week."
"Why?" Dean looked vaguely disgusted, and Cass laughed.
"For exercise."
Dean wrinkled his nose. "Gross."
"Is it my turn?" Sam asked. Cass shrugged and nodded for him to go ahead. Sam smiled mischievously. "Never have I ever worked for the FBI."
"But you pretend you do all the time!" Cass protested.
"Doesn't count," Dean said, smirking. "Drink."
"Fine." Cass obeyed and then said with an exaggerated sniff of disdain, "Never have I ever falsely pretended to be a federal agent." They drank.
"My turn." Dean smiled easily and pronounced, "Never have I ever lived in an apartment."
"This feels unfair," Cass said after both she and Sam drank. "There's too much normal stuff you haven't done."
Dean shrugged. "Just one of the perks of the life, sweetheart. Sam?"
"Never have I ever…" Sam paused, then looked at Cass as he finished, "pretended to be a psych professor."
"Yeah, ha ha," Cass said sarcastically before drinking. "I weigh half as much as you. If you two keep ganging up on me, I'm gonna be smashed in no time."
"Isn't that kind of the point of a drinking game?" Dean asked, eyebrows raised.
"Well, yeah, but not if I get all sloppy when you two are barely tipsy." Realizing it was once again her turn, Cass said, "Never have I ever had a brother."
Dean leaned forward in his chair to clink glasses with a grinning Sam before they both drank. Dean paused to refill everyone's glasses before waggling his eyebrows at Cass and saying, "Never have I ever had sex with a guy."
Cass rolled her eyes, but drank.
"Never have I ever been to a wedding."
Cass looked at Sam in surprise before she drank. "Seriously?"
Sam wasn't looking at her, instead starting disbelievingly at his brother, who was taking a healthy swig. "Whose wedding did you go to?"
"Dunno." Dean shrugged. "I crashed it."
"Of course you did." Sam shook his head at him, and Cass chuckled, then bit her lip as she tried to think of something else that would get both of them to drink. It was getting more difficult to come up with something with each sip of whiskey she took.
"Never have I ever… hmmm…"
"You could just say never have I ever had sex with a chick," Dean suggested, grinning. "I'd drink to that."
Cass shook her head and said playfully, "You don't know me."
"Oh really?" Dean leaned forward, eyes bright. "This I gotta hear."
"The game's 'Never Have I Ever', Winchester, not 'Truth or Dare'. I don't have to spill my guts to you." Cass smiled, and announced, "Never have I ever dug up a grave."
Dean hid his pout behind his glass of whiskey. Sam took a swig as well, then coughed awkwardly and asked Cass, "Did you and Pamela…"
"Nah," Cass denied, then winked at him. "Not yet, anyway. I do have her number…"
She really should give Pamela a call, Cass realized guiltily. They hadn't talked since before Anna saved Dean. There'd be a lot to catch her up on.
"Never have I ever punched Sam in the face." Dean extended his glass toward Cass after this blatantly untrue pronouncement.
"What? Yes, you have!"
"Heard about that, did you?" Cass clinked her glass against Dean's. "Cheers."
"Great, thanks," Sam said sarcastically.
Cass pat his arm condescendingly. "You're quite welcome, Sam."
Over the course of the game, Sam revealed that he had never put Nair in someone's shampoo, called a car 'Baby', gone to prom, or left the country. Cass had never shot a ghost, hustled pool, or committed credit card fraud. Dean had never had a sexy pillow fight—he had been very disappointed to see that Cass didn't drink to that, mumbling about ruining his idea of college—eaten tofu, or played Dungeons and Dragons. He rolled his eyes hard when Cass and Sam clinked glasses over that last one. Cass was still giggling about it when a truly devious idea occurred to her.
"Never have I ever," she said carefully, "Worn women's clothing."
"What?" Sam furrowed his brow at her, confused, then followed her mischievous gaze to his brother. Dean pointed an accusing finger at her, and Cass noted with delight that his ears had turned pink.
"That's cheating."
Cass raised her eyebrows at him. "Is it, Mr. I-never-punched-Sam-in-the-face?"
"Not that." Dean waved a hand dismissively and then went back to pointing accusingly. "You—you know things you shouldn't!"
"Drink," Cass commanded mercilessly. "Or I'll tell Sam exactly why you should be."
"I don't want to know," Sam said emphatically. Dean, glaring at Cass, drank. Cass was laughing so hard she had to set down her glass before she spilled it all over herself.
"I think I should stop," she said when her chuckles had finally subsided. "I feel sufficiently drunk."
"Sufficiently?" Sam repeated, amused.
"You're not really drunk if you're sayin' 'sufficiently'," Dean argued.
Cass sniffed dramatically. "I'll have you know that I am highly articulate when I'm inebriated." She stood from the couch then, and the coltish swaying movements that got her on her feet proved her words. "I'm going to make nachos. You guys want some?"
Sam eyed her swaying form skeptically. "You sure you should be around a hot stove right now?"
"Shut up, Sam," Dean said with a quelling glare. "She's gonna make nachos."
Bobby had retreated upstairs at some point during their game. Cass supposed he'd finished his phone calls and gone to drink whiskey alone in his bedroom in a more dignified manner. Cass flipped on the radio that sat on the window sill next to the coffee maker and smiled, bopping along to the music as she rooted through cupboards for ingredients.
Dean, who along with Sam had followed her into the kitchen, made a low noise of disgust at the music. "Ugh, that's awful."
"Don't touch that dial, Winchester," Cass ordered when he started to cross the room. Dean froze, then whirled to face her in outrage.
"Seriously? It's ABBA!"
"Chef picks the music, mooch shuts his cakehole."
Sam smothered a laugh with a cough, though it wasn't particularly convincing. "Sounds fair to me, Dean."
"Whatever." Dean shook his head, casting disgusted looks at both of them before marching back to the library. "Me and the whiskey will be out here!"
Sam leaned against the kitchen counter, watching as Cass gracelessly preheated the oven and fished out a baking pan.
"You know, it's kinda weird when you quote stuff we never said in front of you," Sam said, clearly thinking of the 'cakehole' comment.
"Yeah, well, it's kinda weird that we fought ghosts earlier."
Sam huffed a laugh. "Fair enough, I guess."
Cass hummed and tapped her foot as she clumsily assembled the nachos on the tray, dumping tortilla chips in a thin layer and then adding beans, cheese, and salsa. "Waterloo," she sang along, voice low but enthusiastic, "I was defeated, you won the war~"
"Here." Cass blinked. Sam had appeared at her elbow, and was pressing a cold glass into her hand. "Drink some water."
Cass smiled, amused at the concern, and obeyed. "Thanks."
Sam was still watching her a little warily, even after she'd drained half the glass. "You okay?"
"I'm fine." Sam looked unconvinced. "Really, Sam. I'm not that drunk. I mean, I am, but—" Cass shook her head and sighed. "I don't know. I think I just needed this. To let go of everything and do the sort of things I would at home." She slid the tray of nachos in the oven and set a timer for ten minutes.
"This is you feeling at home?" Sam asked, eyebrows raised. "Making drunk nachos and singing along to ABBA?"
"Everyone sings along to ABBA," Cass said seriously. "It's just a matter of whether you're man enough to admit it. But, yeah. This is me. 100% authenticity also includes bad dancing, but I'll spare you."
"Hey, don't let me stop you."
It was like Sam's words were a cue to the universe, because the song that followed ABBA's Waterloo was one of Cass's favorites, a song she could rarely resist dancing to even when stone cold sober. Drunk as she was now, she began to bop and sway and shuffle her way over to Sam, who watched her go with a kind of wary amusement until she slid up beside him and bumped his hip with hers. She held her hands out to him encouragingly and waggled her eyebrows.
"Come on, Sam. You asked for it."
"Uh, no," Sam said, backing away from her. "I don't dance."
"Come onnn, Sam!" Cass reached out and grabbed one of his hands, gently pulling him away from the counter. "Pretend it's the prom you never had. Dance awkwardly with me."
Sam shook his head, but allowed himself to be dragged into the middle of the kitchen. Cass, grinning at her success, danced with even more awkward enthusiasm until a twirl sent her drunkenly stumbling. Sam's hands on her shoulders quickly righted her.
"Whoops." Cass laughed at her own near-tumble, and Sam shook his head, taking her hands properly, though his movements were still not so much dancing as they were standing ready to catch her in case she launched herself at the floor again.
"I've got you."
Cass smiled and tried to use their joined hands to lead Sam in her ridiculous dance. Sam, laughing softly, finally allowed it and began to sway along. "You weren't kidding when you said bad dancing."
"Shut up," Cass said immediately, though she wasn't offended in the slightest. "You're one to talk. Two giant left feet, Sam."
"Hey!" Cass didn't know if the offended look on Sam's face came from the dig at his dancing or the dig at his feet, but either way it was hilarious, and she ducked her head to hide her snickers.
The song ended, replaced by something slower and vaguely familiar. The awkward, energetic dance slowed to a quiet shuffle that really wouldn't have been out of place at prom.
"This is nice," Cass sighed. "I can almost forget we fought murder ghosts."
Sam laughed softly. "You get used to it, after a while."
Cass groaned. "But I don't want to get used to it."
Sam's hands tightened around hers. "You don't have to."
Cass looked up, surprised by the fervor in Sam's voice. She found him watching her with an unreadable expression, and Cass was startled to realize that she was close enough to make out the faint gold ring at the center of his eyes. There was a name for that phenomenon, but she couldn't think of it while he was looking at her like that, so she glanced away, her eyes landing on the radio. With a jolt, she realized that the vaguely familiar song they'd been dancing to was a love ballad by Elton John, and that she had drunkenly waltzed into rather dangerous territory. She was feeling very warm, suddenly, and very aware of her hands in Sam's.
"I hope you don't mind, I hope you don't mind that I put down in words," crooned radio Elton John, "how wonderful life is while you're in the world."
Cass bit her lip and stared determinedly past Sam's shoulder. Maybe, if she pretended that she and Sam were not having A Moment, then it would go away—because she might be drunk enough that the idea of rising up on her toes and pulling Sam Winchester into a kiss sounded incredibly appealing, but she was not so drunk as to believe that it would be a good idea.
Sam swallowed and cleared his throat. It took a great deal of effort for Cass to resist looking at him, especially when he spoke her name softly and intently. "Cass—"
A loud beeping cut him off. Cass very nearly leaped away from him, scrambling to turn off the oven timer and get the nachos out of the oven. She felt flushed and hoped that any pinkness in her cheeks could be dismissed as a result of the alcohol.
Dean poked his head into the kitchen hopefully. "Nacho time?"
Cass smiled a strained smile. "Nacho time." She dropped the tray onto the kitchen table and crossed the kitchen, trying to ignore the way Sam had frozen in the middle of the floor when they'd parted and now didn't seem to know what to do to himself. Instead she jabbed at the radio, determined to make it stop playing love songs.
It took a few tries. First the Beatles wanted to hold her hand, followed by Johnny Cash falling into a burning ring of fire, and then Jason Mraz proclaiming 'I'm yours'. When at last she found the familiar strains of Back in Black, she sighed in relief.
"Now that's more like it," Dean said approvingly, uncaring of the tension lingering in the room. Then he scooped a nacho into his mouth and groaned. "Holy shit, these are amazing."
Cass smiled at that and sat down, picking up her own handful of food. The Moment was gone. The best thing to do was ignore that it had happened and eat some food to soak up all the whiskey before she embarrassed herself any further.
Author's Note: Let the pining begin! Also, yes, I'm beginning to play fast and loose with canon, and I'm not sorry. I reject Canon Reality and substitute it with my own!
Also, I intentionally left the irresistibly dancy song ambiguous so y'all can imagine whatever you like, but in my own head it was I Don't Feel Like Dancing by Scissor Sisters.