Ruby takes to the Winchesters as if she was someone completely new meeting them for the first time. She teases and flirts with Dean, referencing pop culture a mile a minute until she either has him laughing or ready to sock her in the mouth. She flirts with Sam in different ways, quiet flirting that winds up to smouldering glances. She references Star Wars while talking about philosophy and Sam can't help but laugh. She's not his ideal woman, not his perfect match. But she's fun, he thinks, and that's really all he needs.
One morning when Ruby wakes up and wanders into the kitchen to pour herself a bowl of cereal she notices that there are two large duffle bags lying by the front door. The door itself is open, and she can see Dean and Castiel leaning against the side of a black classic, chatting quietly with the boot open.
She's still contemplating the sight when Sam sneaks up behind her. "We're leaving today," he says, startling her.
"Leaving?" Ruby asks. "where are you going?"
"We. We're leaving," he repeats, and she gets it.
"Sam, really, it's been fun. But I've got a life to get back to and everything, so if you're leaving maybe you should just... leave."
"So you can go back to your day job and your parents and your normal life?"
"Yeah," Ruby nods.
"Back to your normal, boring life?" Sam asks again. "Back to a life with rules."
"You have rules," Ruby protests, but the idea of boring suddenly seems a whole lot more confining now that he's said it like that.
"If you come with us, Ruby," Sam says, and his voice is oddly seductive as his eyes flash that strange yellow in the light, "You'll get to do pretty much whatever you want. You'll never be bored. There will be no rules except 'dont get caught'. You'll be in a world," he presses, lifting her just an inch from the ground with his mind and watching her gasp and wriggle in the air, "full of things you've never dreamed of..."
"You...!" She gasps, staring at him.
"I can do more than that," Sam says, smiling at her as he places her back down again.
"Not boring?" Ruby asks eventually. "No consequences?"
"None. If you don't get caught."
"I want to call my parents."
"You can call them when we get to the next city," Sam promises, with very little intention to let her do so, at least not without heavy supervision.
Ruby crosses her arms for a moment of indecision, then ignores her mostly undressed state to hop down the front stairs and into the car, sliding into the back. Sam hauls the last two bags into the boot, then slides into the back with her.
Distractions were so easy to conjure. A bit of sparkle, a bit of flash, and Ruby had completely forgotten that she'd intended to call her parents. The distraction came in the form of a fancy house and a pair of fancy home owners who, with a little prompting, suddenly found themselves prisoners in their own home, tied up in the basement and dosed with the wife's prescription painkillers.
"I could stay here." Dean grins, popping the lock on the alcohol cabinet and helping himself to a bottle of scotch. "Yeah, I'm really liking this place."
"How long can we stay for?" Ruby asks, running her hands over the furniture and stopping to poke at a family portrait.
"A week," Sam answers, coming up behind her. "Maybe a little more." He places large hands on her shoulders and smooths down her arms. "No more than two weeks, in case someone notices the owners are missing." He leans down to place a kiss to her bare shoulder and smiles. "You can pick your own room. I hope you'll pick one close to mine..."
Ruby turns to watch as the younger Winchester walks away. She grins to herself, then twirls on the spot just because she can. The freedom in it is exhilarating; She doesn't give a second thought to the couple locked in their own cellar.
When she stops spinning she sees Castiel looking at her from across the room, face masked with blankness. She hasn't learned how to read his eyes yet to look for what he's feeling, though she knows he does feel and that the brothers must be able to decipher it. They never seem to have any problems knowing exactly what their 'guardian angel' is thinking.
Ruby looks for Dean, because so far she's never seen Castiel far from the elder Winchester, but he seems to have taken his bottle of scotch on a tour of the house and left his angel behind. "What?" Ruby demands, crossing her arms. "What do you want? What are you looking at?"
He shrugs, and she can see that it's a calculated movement, like he has to consciously think about the way his shoulders need to move. "You should be aware," he says finally, "that you're not his first priority."
Ruby is about to ask him what the hell he's on about when she catches on. "Who - Sam? That's stupid. Didn't you just see what he..." She catches on. "Oh. That's not what you mean."
"Dean will always come first."
Ruby looks down at her toes against the carpet, wriggling them against the plush, expensive material. She thinks she might know exactly what he means, that it's not about sex or that kind of sharing. "Hey," she says, looking up just in time to catch him leaving. "Wait!" She catches up to him, leaping over the back of a couch and over a coffee table to do so, almost tripping and falling on her face in the process. She's right in front of him, face to face and looking him right in the eyes when she asks; "But is it worth it?"
Ruby sees something flicker in the depths of his blue eyes. "Well?" she presses. "Is it worth it?"
"If you let go," Castiel tells her calmly.
She's still wondering what the hell he means when he's long gone and she's left standing in the room on her own.
"Let go of what?"
Ruby is disturbed to see him giving her a look that clearly asks if she's really that braindead.
"What? Let go of what?"
She follows him around all day pestering him with questions. She wants two things. The most pressing is initially an answer, but the longer her pestering goes on the more important it seems to get Castiel to crack and do something other than answer with a calm face and passive voice.
She cracks him at exactly four past three in the afternoon, and he cracks her in the jaw with a heavy fist.
"Shut up," he says, deceptively calm despite the blazing blue eyes.
Ruby raises a hand to touch the hurt on her jaw. She realises that it could have been - should have been - a lot worse. She grins. "Cas! You like me!"
He rolls his eyes skyward as if asking for patience. "This is not third grade."
"You could have broken my face and you didn't," Ruby says, flinging her arms around the mostly-impassive man and smacking a kiss against his cheek. "That means you like me."
Castiel pushes her off with a mixture of amusement and annoyance in his eyes (at least, that's what she thinks he's showing). "Next time I wont be so nice."
It takes her three days to figure out that he's totally bluffing when he says that. Ruby can't help but feel like somehow that's an accomplishment.
"Cas hates you."
The drawling voice in her ear belongs to Dean. Ruby turns away from the huge flat screen TV in surprise, cartoon mallets and explosions reflected in her eyes. It's long past midnight, her lips are still bruised and tingling from Sam's goodnight kiss, and there's a late night marathon on the cartoon channel. In the light from the TV, Dean's face is nothing but highlights and shadow, glints of colour in his eyes making him look unreal. As unreal as one of the characters in her cartoon.
"He doesn't hate me," Ruby scoffs, the idea totally ludicrous. She points to the barely-there bruise on her jaw, smiling triumphantly, "he didn't break my jaw. So there."
"Cas hates your guts," Dean chuckles. He balls a hand into a fist and knocks her gently on the jaw, the kind of oddly affectionate gesture a parent might offer to a child. "He wants to slit your throat and play with your blood. Ruby blood."
Ruby shakes her head, ducking away from Dean's hand and crossing her arms firmly over her chest. "That's not true."
The green-eyed brother leans his weight against his forearms on the back of the couch. He's giving her an odd kind of look, part-sympathy, part-condescension. "Yes it is, Ruby-girl."
"Is not."
"Cas wont do much more than clock you one. But if I were you," Dean grins at her, all boyish-sweetness and mischief, "I wouldn't keep teasing him." He pats her shoulder with a heavy hand. "Learn to read his face, chickadee. And quit fucking with my angel."
He leaves then, and Ruby is left sitting alone on the couch with nothing but her show and a pout. She slinks away during the next break, tiptoeing down the hallway until she finds the room Sam has claimed for himself.
The door is unlocked, the inside of the room dark. She stumbles on something hard and vaguely round before making it to the bed. Ruby bites her pouting bottom lip as she climbs over the plush coverlet. "Sam," she whispers, drawing out the middle of his name. "Saaaam..."
"What?" He asks in a groan, half asleep and grumpy.
"Dean says Cas doesn't like me," Ruby tells him, flopping down on the bed beside him.
"So?"
"Is it true?"
"Ruby, go to bed."
"I'm on a bed."
"Go to your bed, or shut up and let me sleep."
"But -"
"Go to bed, Ruby." The order is firm, threatening a proper reaction if she doesn't comply.
Ruby pouts and slides off the bed, knowing Sam isn't going to wake up enough to be anything but grumpy. Instead of complaining she sticks her tongue out at him before she leaves the room, then goes to the kitchen to find some snacks. Two cartoons and a red Popsicle later and she's out like a light on the couch, the tv still casting its glow over her.
In the morning she wakes up to a sweet, slightly floury smell in the air, goosebumps on her arms and legs from the crips morning chill. She looks down at herself and realises that she's still wearing nothing more than a tank top and shorts. Ruby resolves to go looking in the big fancy wardrobe in the master bedroom to see if there's anything pretty - and warmer - for her to wear. But for now the smell of a home cooked breakfast is way too enticing.
Ruby follows her nose to the massive stainless steel and porcelain kitchen.
Sam is there already, reading the morning edition of the paper and absently poking at a plate full of syrup-coated waffles. Dean is nearby with a stack of his own waffles and a jug of maple syrup next to his coffee. She doesn't even notice Castiel until she sits down and he places a white china bowl with two perfect waffles down in front of her.
Ruby tries to catch a glimpse of his expression, only finding it as closed and impossible as ever.
"They're having an antiques fair on the sixteenth," Sam says, obviously not talking to her and not even looking up from the paper. "I thought we could go."
"Pansy." Dean makes the reply with a smirk over the top of his coffee cup. "We're in a house surrounded with fancy ornaments and family heirlooms and you want to go to an antiques fair."
"Think of the fresh-faced debutantes, Dean," Sam folds the paper and sets it aside.
"Think of the stuck up assholes with their ceramics collections. Worcester and Spode." Dean rolls his eyes. "Kiss my ass."
Ruby has no idea what they're talking about and frankly doesn't care, busying herself by pouring a mountain of syrup over her waffles.
"There's a collection of nineteenth century revolvers," Sam counters, and its an argument that seems to make Dean reconsider, "and there are bound to be knives."
"I like knives," Castiel chimes in, an odd look in his eyes.
"Fine." Dean shakes his head, muttering into his coffee; "Fucking outnumbered."
Ruby pushes back her chair, finished with breakfast and bored with listening to the brothers' conversation. The chair legs scrape against the floor. "I'm bored," she announces expectantly.
Sam looks at her then, a small frown on his face. Ruby offers him her very best pout. He smiles at her. She feels a sudden weightlessness as she's lifted half a foot into the air and pushed the length of the kitchen, coming to a stop only inches from the wall. Ruby giggles as she's dropped back to her feet. She takes Sam's hand when it's offered to her.
"Lets find you something fun to do," he says, still smiling at her.
Something fun ends with Sam watching her play dress-ups with the rich woman's wardrobe. Ruby drapes herself in silk dresses that are just a tiny bit too big, adding ostentatious flare from the huge jewellery box on the vanity as well as expensive perfume and powder.
She twirls in a cocktail dress and feather boa, laughing because she hasn't had this much fun with clothes since she was a kid.
"You look good in diamonds," Sam tells her as he does up the clasp on a necklace while she holds her hair out of the way.
Ruby beams at him in the mirror. "They're so sparkly," she sighs happily. "I didn't think they sparkled so much in real life, I thought it was just on TV. Do you think I'm pretty?"
"I think you're very pretty."
"Can I keep the diamonds then?"
"What do you think, Ruby?" Sam asked her, a smile encouraging her to make up her own mind.
"I think I get to keep them," Ruby replies smartly. She turns to grin at him cheekily. The thought that the necklace belongs to someone else doesn't even cross her mind. all she knows is she wants them, and Sam just as good as said she can have them. That's all she needs to know.
In the end she finds a pair of plain black dress pants that fit her well enough that they don't look strange, and a cashmere sweater to go over the grey camisole she finds in a drawer. She leaves her old clothes crumpled on the floor, somehow feeling more grown up than she had the day she moved out into her first apartment.