The first time I'd run across Sam and Dean was in a town in Wisconsin.

It was the fourth or fifth month on my own, apart from any hunters, but I'd had several years of training, so I knew what I was doing. I had been racking up kills of the supernatural, keeping track of them in a leather-bound journal with everything I was learning along the way. A lot of hunters I'd known had done the same, which is how I'd picked up the habit.

This time, I'd spent a week and a half following leads, investigating as a "journalist," and picking apart the case. I'd determined it was a shapeshifter and had tracked it to an abandoned water tower on the edge of the town. It had escaped and I'd pursued it, but by the time I'd caught up, it had already been killed.

Recently, actually. It was dark, but I could see the two men standing over the body, one unusually tall and the other a bit shorter with bowed legs. When they heard me, they'd looked over, quickly hiding their silver knives behind their backs.

Hunters.

Male hunters, no less.

I'd stopped in frustration and tried to suppress the boiling rage I was feeling. I'd spent a week and a half trailing this sorry son of a bitch, and they'd just gone and wasted that precious time.

"Um, hey, our buddy's just really drunk, we're trying to help get him home!" the shorter one calls to me, trying to make up a story to avoid suspicion.

I ground my teeth. "You took my kill!" I turned and sprinted off, because while I'd love to beat the living crap out of an arrogant hunter with his head up his ass, I didn't like the odds of two to one.

"Hey, wait!" one of them called after me, but I'd ignored them and kept going, not stopping until I was back at my car and safe.

The next time I met the two of them was only a week later in southern Illinois. Turned out we'd followed the same case there.

I'd met them as I was interviewing a woman who claimed her long-dead husband had visited her a few nights before. I'd been pretending to be a journalist again; it was much easier to pull off than a government official, and people weren't as likely to question me about it. It meant less access, but less going wrong if someone was suspicious. But those two had barged right into my conversation, dressed in their fancy suits and flashing fake FBI badges, pushing me aside to talk to the woman.

I recognized them. It had been dark and they'd been fairly far away, but they were a pretty distinctive pair. Of course I'd waited until they finished their investigation and then confronted them about it outside the woman's house, in front of their black car that was reminiscent of my own in its nearly-extinct and decades-old style.

I'd almost panicked when they told me who they were. I was ready to get in my car and drive to the opposite end of the country as quickly as I could.

Sam and Dean Winchester.

The men who started and ended the Apocalypse. Befriended an angel and a demon. Both had gone to heaven and hell and back. They were among the best hunters the world had ever seen, able to kill every supernatural being they'd run across: vampires, werewolves, shape shifters, fairies, dragons, demons, angels. Everything.

And Sam Winchester. I'd been explicitly told by every hunter I'd worked with to stay away from him. Anyone who'd seen him hunt in the past year knew he was ruthless, killing without hesitation and accepting any casualties along the way so long as the goal was accomplished.

Still, now that I was here in front of him he seemed nice enough. Sweet, even.

But I'd learned the hard way that first impressions can be misleading.

I'm not sure why I stayed, but I did. They agreed to work with me as long as I wasn't a burden. They didn't work with amateurs, as Dean pointed out. I rolled my eyes at that. Me, an amateur? Yeah, right.

I hated working with other hunters, especially men. But these guys had several decades on me in hunting experience and they'd take this hunt from me too if I didn't work with them.

Despite my sulkiness and lack of trust, we managed to solve the case pretty well together. We didn't say a lot outside of what we had to. I learned Dean liked pie, Sam liked books, and both of them would complain every time Justin Bieber came on the radio. Dean tried flirting with me a few times but got the impression quickly enough that if he continued, his head would end up separated from his body. But really, they weren't nearly as bad or terrifying as the legends made them out to be.

After the case we'd split up again, but somehow we ended up running into each other a few weeks later on another case, since we'd been mostly going around the same area since Wisconsin.

It was sort of nice having company, actually. When they made inside jokes, I understood quite a few of them, sometimes even smiled in spite of myself. They dispelled some of the rumors I'd heard about them ("I have not slept with the Tooth Fairy, I have no idea where that even came from") and confirmed some of the others ("Yeah, Sam, he… had no soul for a while, and, well… he wasn't quite himself").

I tried to remain distant and unattached to them, but the camaraderie between the two of them was strong enough to pull me in and make me feel included, even if there was a lot that I could never understand about them the way they understood each other.

Once I'd overheard them whispering about me.

"Maybe we should split up," Sam had said unsurely. "I don't know if we can really trust her."

"Are you kidding? She's one of the best hunters we've ever worked with," Dean had replied.

I'd smiled to myself. I knew I was good, but it was sort of nice to have the feeling affirmed by two of the best hunters in existence.

After that case, we'd agreed to keep working together.

It was a couple weeks later when Sam had been in my motel room as Dean was out doing reconnaissance and one thing had lead to another and whoops, we slept together. Accidents do happen. Though admittedly, that accident was not a bad one. It said a lot that I had allowed myself to sleep with Sam, given it was the first time in more than a year, ever since that night. I cared about Dean a lot, for sure, but Sam was the one who was my best friend.

Over the next year of me working with them, I'd changed without even noticing. I was friendlier and kinder and much closer to a semblance of my old self, back before I'd had my naivety crushed. I talked about my insecurities with Sam and Dean, which was something I never would have dreamed of doing before. Telling someone all my weaknesses, someone who could very well use them against me, was something I'd grown incredibly wary of.

I'd finally healed from my angry, bitter shell of a person, unwilling to face fears and admit failings, to someone who knew that tears didn't mean I was weak and leaning on someone wasn't the stupidest idea in the world.

I'd finally found a home.