People Need People
K Hanna Korossy
"People need people. We just do. We're social animals." - Sam Winchester, "Optimism"
"So...the necromancer got away?" Castiel asked, just to be clear. He leaned against the gasoline pump—it was still hard to fathom that angels were limited to human transportation now—as he focused on Jack's answer.
"Yeah. I mean, Dean said she won't get away with it—we'll let all the hunters in the area know. But she did." The nephilim managed to sound both excited and disappointed about his first hunt in some time.
"That happens sometimes," Castiel consoled him. "At least you stopped the killings in town."
"Yeah." The slang was Dean's influence, but Castiel didn't mind. "Also...I think she was kind of into me."
"'Into you'?"
"Dean says we'll have The Talk about it. I think he means sex."
If Castiel had been human, he might've choked on air on that one. "Ah. Yes. We should...talk about that. Later."
"Are you heading back now?"
Did he imagine that Jack sounded hopeful? "I am. My meeting was...not productive." That was an understatement. No one wanted to ally against the threat of an otherworldly Michael, even if it meant the destruction of this world. But Jack didn't need to know that now.
"So you just called to...say hi?"
The pump beeped, and Castiel removed the...gas-dispensing device from the car and screwed on the cap. He could've convinced the pump that he'd already paid, but he didn't wish to cheat the station owners of revenue. He waved instead the card Dean had given him—and that Charlie, the original Charlie—had given Dean, over the icon as Dean had shown him, and heard the chime of payment. Wonderful. "Yes," Castiel said into the phone. "I wanted to see how you were doing."
"Tell Mom you'll see him in a few hours," Dean said in the background.
"It's not my mother—it's Castiel." A moment's pause. "Oh. We'll see you in a few hours, Castiel."
"Yes." Castiel discontinued the conversation with an odd reluctance.
He'd already known he'd be seeing Jack and Dean by the evening, so why had he called? He'd never missed any of his brothers and sisters during his long life. Jack was, of course, different, a sort of ward. But Castiel sometimes longed to see the Winchesters when they'd been apart a while, too. It was a strangely human feeling.
Castiel sighed as he sat his vessel into the vehicle's front seat and turned the key. Then again, he was strangely human himself these days.
As he pulled away from the gas station and headed to Kansas, Castiel couldn't seem to mind.
00000
Okay, so she was doing it. Not for the long-run, not necessarily, but at least for now she was taking Sam's advice and staying. With hunting, saving the world, being the heroine, blah, blah, blah.
But not bunking at the bunker like it was some huge flannel-clad sleepover. Celeste had to draw the line somewhere.
So here she was, being Hunter Girl and...renting an apartment. Road life just sucked after a while, and, hey, if the Winchesters could have a home base, so could she. She would never be the collector she'd been in her other life—apocalypse's weren't good for much, but they were excellent at getting you to declutter—but she'd amassed some equipment she used for hunting...and other stuff...and it would be good to have a place to keep them. And, you know, the one Harry Potter robe she had to get.
So she just needed to pick up the couple of things she'd stashed at the bunker, and then she was on her own. Geek girl by day, hunter by… No, that didn't make sense. Hmm, she thought as she parked in an empty slot in the garage, she'd need to work on that tag line—
"Hey!"
Startled, Celeste looked up. Years on a dying world left you with hyperactive senses; there was no way she was going to a club again anytime soon.
But it was just Stevie standing there, backpack slung over her shoulder and something...pea green? smeared across her leather jacket.
"Hey," Celeste responded, slamming her door shut, suddenly nervous.
"Charlie, right?"
Oh, right. This world's Celeste Middleton was known by one of her aliases, Charlie Bradbury. She'd learned the Winchesters actually knew her real name, but they had called her counterpart Charlie, so Charlie she remained. It didn't bother her; she'd been a lot of people over her life. And the fact that sometimes the brothers looked at her like she was dead-Charlie wasn't weird at all.
Anyway, she just smiled and said, "Yup!"
"Coming from a hunt?"
"Sorta. I mean, I stopped to clean up and get some sleep first because there was all this goop, like so much…" Stop rambling, girl! "But yeah. Musca. You?"
"Stevie, actually."
"No, I mean…" The woman's sly smile registered, and surprised Charlie into a returning smile. "Ha. And you were after...Kermit?"
Stevie looked down at her jacket. "It kinda looked like a frog, but not exactly," she answered, ignoring the stains and tossing a rifle over her shoulder like she was some badass hunter girl, which she probably was. Charlie approved.
"Well, mine was shades of Jeff Goldblum Fly Guy, so we should've teamed up."
Stevie's mouth curled into a different sort of smile as her eyebrows rose. "Yeah. We should've." She nodded toward the garage door. "You have breakfast yet?"
"Not today!" Charlie chirped, then could have kicked herself. Somewhere in surviving an apocalypse, she'd forgotten how to talk to people when it wasn't life-or-death.
"Come on, my treat. I wanna hear what a Musca is."
"You really don't," Charlie said, but she went.
Huh. Maybe Sam had right about the needing people thing.
00000
Bobby Singer tried not to wince as the truck jolted over another crack in the road. Mary Campbell—no, Winchester—was a kickass hunter, but a great driver she was not. At least not for chauffeuring someone who'd had surgery two days before.
"You know, you didn't have to come with me," he grumbled yet again as he snugged an arm around his aching chest.
Mary just glanced at him with a half-smile and kept driving.
He was a little rusty in Woman, but he was pretty sure he saw affection, amusement, and exasperation there.
Bobby cleared his throat. "Thanks," he gruffly amended. It was nice having company along. No, having her along. It'd been...too long.
"Why don't you get some rest?" she suggested kindly "It'll be a few more hours still."
"I'm okay." The heavy-duty pills were sitting heavy in his pocket, and maybe at some point he'd give in, especially if the road got any rougher. But years of survivalism made it hard for him to rest.
And the fact was, he kinda owed her. Not only had she saved his hide on that last hunt, but she hadn't pushed him for his past, even after seeing that mockery of his son. She'd shared her history with him, and he'd done just about diddly-squat to return the favor until he'd been forced to.
Bobby squared his jaw. "My wife. Karen. We had almost ten years together before she had Daniel. Had a good life, for a while. Then, when Dan was fifteen, Karen got possessed. We didn't know it then, but it was the run-up to Michael and Lucifer's big showdown, demons and angels everywhere. I had to kill her, and it still didn't stop the thing inside her, not 'til Rufus showed up. He showed me how to get that son of a bitch out so Dan and I could bury her."
There was a stretch of quiet. Then Mary, quietly: "I'm sorry."
"Yeah. Me, too."
"I don't think I'd have survived if I'd had to bury John, too."
"Well, like I said, you made the right choice. But I'm bettin' you're stronger than you think."
Her face softened. "Yeah, maybe." She glanced over at him. "Now, are you gonna take your pills, old man, or do I have to hide them in some peanut butter?"
He growled at her, and she just grinned.
Bobby took the damn pills, washing them down with cold coffee. Then he got as comfortable as he could against the door. He'd glared at Mary when she'd given him a folded up blanket before, but Bobby had to admit, it made a fair pillow. He just wasn't used to being a passenger. Or being in a car again. Or being taken care of.
The radio turned on, static until Mary found a station playing a song he didn't know but that sounded like The Beach Bums. It was actually kinda soothing.
His last drowsy thought was, so was the company.
00000
"A letter?" Jack turned the envelope over. "For me?"
"For you," Dean confirmed. "Picked it up at the post office with the rest of our stuff."
"Huh." He stared at the front, his name, the unfamiliar hand.
Dean sat on the edge of his bed. "You gonna open it?"
"Oh. Yes." It took him a moment, and some help from Dean, to figure out how, but soon he was unfolding the piece of paper. "It's from Harper," he realized. Hearing from the lovesick necromancer was less surprising. "She, uh, she says our 'love' is 'so vivid.' And that she'll have to kill me, but she'll bring me back again so we can be together." Jack blinked. "And it'll be 'perfect.'"
"Oh, yeah, that girl is buckets o' crazy," Dean said, rolling his eyes.
"She'll be too late on the killing me part," Jack pointed out. Sorrow moved back into Dean's face, to Jack's immediate regret. He hadn't meant to be so blunt about it.
"We're not goin' there, all right? I told you, we'll figure something out," Dean said sternly.
"All right," Jack agreed, not necessarily because he did agree, but because it eased Dean's pain. And that, in turn, eased Jack's.
Dean tapped the letter, attempting a smile. "Although, we could always look into the necromancer thing, bring you back if we need to."
Jack played along. "I don't think Sam and Castiel would agree."
"Oh, I don't know, Sam wanted to turn me into Frankenstein back when I was facing the end of my deal."
"Frankenstein's monster," Jack corrected. "Frankenstein was the doctor."
"They weren't really doctors, and they were way off the deep end, too."
Jack looked at him, perplexed.
Dean waved a hand. "Never mind." He thumped his legs in preparation to stand. "So, you want anything? Burger? Soda? Some of Sam's boring books?"
Jack set Harper's letter aside and pushed himself up a little in the bed, trying to ignore how much effort that took. "Actually, I wouldn't mind just talking. If you have time."
Dean gave him a surprised look, but settled back in his chair. "Oh. Yeah, okay. You sure you don't need to rest?"
He didn't tell Dean that he'd be getting plenty of rest soon enough, that this was how he wanted to spend what time he had left, with his family. This was the kind of love that Harper would never understand. And Jack didn't envy her one bit. "I'm fine." He wove his fingers together in his lap to hide the occasional tremor. "Tell me more about what it was like when you were growing up."
Dean thought for a moment, then grinned. "I tell you about the time Sam and I pranked our dad? It was just the one time because we weren't suicidal enough to do that again…"
Jack settled back happily to listen.
00000
"What're you workin' on?"
Sam looked up from the spread of books across his desk. Dean's expression as he stood in the doorway, the forlorn way he'd dug his hands into his pockets, had Sam swallowing the automatic sarcastic reply. "Uh...trying to find anything else about nephilim."
Dean stepped into the light. "Any luck?"
Sam tossed down his pen and washed his hands over his face. "Not really." He glanced past Dean. "How's Jack doing?"
"Sleeping. Being brave, but hurtin'."
Sam nodded.
Dean wandered in further, dropped into the chair that Sam thought of as being Dean's; Sam had woken several times after injuries and crises to find his worried brother sitting in it next to his bed. "We're losing him."
"I know. But he's not gone yet."
Dean's steady gaze said what neither of them would admit out loud, but he just nodded. He glanced idly around Sam's room. "Dude, you have got to decorate this place I mean, it's been, what, six years?"
"Going on seven," Sam said softly. It was officially the longest he'd ever been in one place, and he finally did consider it home. Not that you could tell from his room, but old habits died hard.
"Seven." Dean gave a low whistle. "Dad would be shocked."
Sam almost laughed. "Yeah."
Dean, never one for sitting still, grabbed one of the few things in reach, the old clock on Sam's desk. He turned it in his hands, smoothing fingers over the art deco lines.
"We're gonna get through this," Sam said quietly.
"Yeah, I know we will."
He was pretty sure Dean was thinking they'd find a way to save Jack, but that hadn't been what Sam meant. He didn't push it, though. There'd be time enough for that later.
Besides, Sam's room wasn't on the way to anywhere. Dean had ended up here because he was worried and lonely, and times like that they pretty much just had each other.
And Sam was so grateful for that, whatever happened with Jack.
"You wanna take a look at this one?" he asked, offering Dean a heavy book.
Dean actually looked relieved at having something to do, even if it was research. "Yeah," he said, setting the clock down and taking the book. A minute later, his dirty boots were propped on the edge of Sam's bed as he read.
For once, Sam didn't really care, and he returned to his reading with a bit of fresh hope.
The End