Hey there!

Well, this will probably be my last update before Oct. 31, when my little faceclaim thingy is up. It occurred to me yesterday that I didn't tell you what the person who's faceclaim I picked will win.

The person who submits the faceclaim that I pick, will get to inspire a character in this story.I'll take a name, physical description, personality, and any other minor details from the winning faceclaim-er, and they will make a little cameo in this story!

Well, maybe that will be an intensive for a few more faceclaims. :) Also, I know a bunch of you just put a suggestion in a review, so, I guess I'll be accepting those too. But really, just ask for my email! That way, I can give you the next two chapters!

Well, that's it. Enjoy!

~Christianne

Nikki POV

Hours passed.

Sam and Madison were talking on the couch, Dean and I were playing poker behind them.

"Flush." I said flatly, putting my cards down. "Jack through seven."

Dean laughed once, tossing his own cards down. "How do I know that you aren't using something witchy?" he asked, pulling out his wallet to give me the fifty bucks I won.

I just gave him a flat look and took the money, stuffing it in my pocket.

"So, I read about these bodies in-" Dean started.

"Don't." I said, leaning back onto the sofa I was sitting on. "Just…Don't. I'm still mad at you."

Dean just nodded a little and sat in the chair next to me.

Sam and Dean were standing with Madison at the window, I stayed behind and played with the ends of my braid.

"Does-Does this mean it worked?" Madison asked hopefully.

"Yeah," Sam said, nodding a little. "I think so."

Madison sighed in relief. "Oh, God, thank you." She said, smiling as she pulled Sam into a hug. "Thank you so much!" She said into his chest.

I stood up and straightened my jacket, looking away when Sam hugged her back, resting his chin carefully on the top of her head. Dean cleared his throat awkwardly, making them break apart.

"You too, Dean, Nikki. Thank you." Madison said, smiling widely.

"Ah, don't mention it." Dean said, shaking his head a little. I just stuck my hands in my pockets and shrugged, a small smile on my face.

We all stood in awkward silence. "Yeah." Dean sighed a moment later. I had to keep looking away from the matching 'We need alone time' looks.

"I…Forgot my, uh, my phone…in the car." I mumbled, quickly leaving Madison's place.

I jogged outside and had to lean on the railing of the stairs. I had both my arms wrapped around my stomach as I took deep, choking breaths in and tried to keep from crying.

Why didn't this end?

Omniscient POV

Dean left Madison's apartment a few minutes after Nikki. He stopped at the last step, confused that he didn't see the brunette sitting shotgun in the Impala. He looked up and down the street for a little bit before he noticed an old resist stuck under one of the wiper blades. Pulling it out, he read the neat, black loopy writing on the back.

Gonna make a stop before I head back to the motel. Won't be long. ~N

Dean groaned and shoved the wrinkled paper into his pocket. He got in the car, and on the drive back to the motel, he called Nikki. As expected, she didn't answer. She said she was gonna go back to the motel, but Dean didn't believe her.

So, like any mildly paranoid friend would, he drove around, checking constantly to make sure his phone was on and charged.

It was a good three or four hours later that Dean stopped the Impala on the side of the road. He needed to move around a little. As much as he wanted to find Nikki, he was going stir crazy.

The sound of glass breaking got his attention. Dean looked over the edge of the metal guard along the side of the highway, down the hill, on a beach covered in washed up trash and garbage. There was a figure with dark hair, wearing a gray shirt standing by a large fallen tree. Dean watched as they threw something, and a smashed followed.

Dean chuckled to himself as he swung his legs over the low metal guard and started down the hill.

"Hey Nikki." Dean called as he walked over the garbage-filled sand towards the brunette. "Next time you go off on your own, leave a better note." He said once he was only a few feet behind her.

Nikki just shrugged, tossing her head back as she finished a beer.

"Or at least answer your phone." Dean added, shrugging. Nikki didn't say anything, just wound her arm back and threw the bottle (with accuracy that surprised Dean) at the side of a washed up boat, making a hole in the rotted side.

"Nice arm." Dean said, standing next to Nikki, who had already uncapped another beer. She took a long drink and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

"I haven't had sex in two years." Nikki announced in a matter-oh-fact tone, looking at Dean like they were talking about the weather.

Dean's eyebrows shot up. "You…Uh…W-What?" Dean stumbled over the words, unsure how to respond to something like that.

"Well, I've known you guys for, like, a year, right?" Nikki asked, falling back lazily to lean on the fallen tree. "And, before that, I'd broken up with Percy for almost a year. So, two years."

Dean was still a little stunned at how transparent she was being. "And…You're telling me this…Why?" He asked carefully.

"Well, you're kinda my best friend." Nikki said, shrugging a little. Dean was trying to figure out how much Nikki had had to drink; she wasn't stumbling, and her words weren't really slurring, but damnit if she didn't have any inhibitions left.

"Really?" Dean asked doubtfully, taking the last beer out of the cardboard six-pack container on the fallen tree next to Nikki.

"Yup." She said, popping the 'p' at the end and looking at him with a wide grin. "I don't exactly have a lot'a options for the 'best friend' slot, so, congratulations! You got it!" she said loudly, throwing her arms up in the air, sloshing a little bit of her beer on her arm. She started giggling when she notice it running down her wrist. "I mean, you're nice enough, most of the time, and, you're kinda funny…sometimes." Nikki shrugged as she finished.

"I thought you and Sam were BFFs. Braiding each other's hair 'n crap like that." Dean asked, more than a little confused.

"It's hard to be BFFs with someone who you wanna bang like a screen door in a hurricane." Nikki said casually, finishing her beer and throwing it at the boat. Dean's face was screwed up into a mildly disgusted expression.

"Well that's an image that's never gonna leave my mind." Dean groaned, scrubbing a hand down his face.

"I think that's why I'm so bitchy sometimes." Nikki said, taking another swig of her beer.

"Hm?" Dean asked, he'd been trying to think about anything else to get rid of 'like a screen door in a hurricane.'

"I haven't gotten any in two years, I think that's why I'm so bitchy sometimes." Nik clarified, then held up one finger, signaling Dean to wait. She tossed her head back and drank the last half of her beer in one gulp. Once she'd emptied the bottle, she wound her arm back and hurled it at the boat again, making it through the hole she'd made with the other bottle.

"OH!" she yelled triumphantly, throwing a fist in the air. "God I have good aim!" she added, slouching on the tree. Dean just chuckled once, shaking his head. Nikki seemed like a different person when she was tipsy.

"How long have you gone?" She asked, walking a few feet behind Dean to a cardboard box he hadn't noticed and pulled out another six pack and a bottle of whisky.

"Without sex?" Dean asked, then shrugged. "I dunno, a month, maybe three?" he guessed.

"Lucky bastard." Nikki hissed, dropping the new six-pack on the fallen tree and opening the whisky. Dean, feeling a little smug at the comment, smirked and shrugged.

"You know what a normal girl would do in my situation?" Nikki asked Dean, struggling to open the whisky bottle. "Go to a bar, get tipsy and have a good time with a good looking guy in the back of his car. Wanna know why I'm not doin' that right now?" Nikki asked.

Dean took the whisky from her hands, before she desided to bang it against the tree to open it. "I'm gonna regret this…" he mumbled to himself as he easily opened the bottle. "Why?" he asked, louder, and handed the open whisky to the brunette.

"'Cause I'd be thinkin' about the teeny-tiny possibility that Sam might have a thing for me and I don't wanna hurt him." Nikki said, pausing only to take a long swig from the bottle. She wiped some of the amber liquid off her chin with her sleeve, and let out a cynical laugh. "How messed up is that? I used to make fun of girls who acted like this!"

"Where'd you get the money for this?" Dean asked a few minutes later, gesturing towards the whisky Nikki was drinking straight from the bottle and the beers.

"I got money." Nikki answered simply, shoving the whisky at Dean and grabbing another beer. They stood in silence as they drank their beers and stared at the water a few hundred feet from them.

"Dean, am I pretty?" Nikki asked innocently, looking at Dean with those big hazel eyes that had gotten a few motel rooms at places that claimed 'no vacancy.'

The question actually made Dean a little uncomfortable. He shrugged a little and bought time by taking a drink of his own beer. "Uh, yeah, Nik. You're pretty." He said eventually, almost like he was talking to a kid.

"N-ohhh!" Nik pouted, her lower lip even jutted out. Dean got a little worried when her shouldered fell and her head hung by her chest. Did he make her cry? Crying women (who weren't crying about a monster or something) were not his thing. Drunk crying women—Not a chance in Hell.

"Sam said I was cute." Nikki said, her voice was quieter and lacked the happy conviction she'd had before. She sniffed once before looking up at Dean.

"Cute is what you call little kids and puppies and kittens. Cute is what sixth graders call each other. The only way a grown-ass-man can get away with calling a grown-ass-woman cute, is when they're already together and one'a them does something dorky and the other one thinks it's cute." She snapped, back to the slightly louder than usual voice as she grabbed the whisky again.

"C'mon, don't read into it." Dean said, shrugging out of his leather jacket and tossed it next to Nikki's on the far end of the tree; it was California, and it was hot.

"Yes read into it!" Nikki snapped, taking the bottle away from her lips for a moment. "When guys say shit like that, in the middle of another conversation, its stuff that they mean." Nikki argued.

"Hey, comin' from a guy, I can tell you that isn't true." Dean told her firmly.

"Right, right…So, if it's supernatural, you don't always pull the trigger." Nikki snapped sarcastically.

Dean closed his eyes and let out a frustrated sigh. "You're not gonna let that go, are you?" He asked lowly.

"This is my life, Dean! Yeah, it's kinda full'a demons, monsters and other things that go bump in the night and it kind'a sucks, but-but I can do something about it!" Nikki said, slamming the whisky back down on the tree before grabbing another beer. "I-I mean, I can save other people from having their family burned on the ceiling! I have this-this power inside me that can help people, Dean!"

"I know!" Dean said sharply, cutting her off. Nikki seemed surprised at his sudden harsh yell, and seemed to shrink back a little. Dean sighed, gently taking the beer from her hands and opening it for her.

If he was gonna have this conversation, Nik better not remember it tomorrow.

"I know, Nik, ok? I know all you wanna do is save people." Dean said in a calmer tone. He took the final swig of his beer and put the empty bottle between them on the tree, then grabbed another. "I mean, you don't do it in the conventional way," he reasoned, watching Nikki pitch his bottle into the same hole the other two went through.

"We don't think of you like a witch, you know?" he asked her. Nikki looked at him doubtfully and with a raised eyebrow. "You were never a witch to us Nik. Just…Just a good person that was doing good with a bad thing."

"But that's the thing!" Nikki explained loudly, slamming the beer down and grabbing the half-empty whisky bottle.

Dean was getting a little concerned now; he was on his second beer and only had one drink of whisky. Nikki was half-smashed when he got there, she'd drank four beers since he'd been here and half a bottle of whisky. Nikki was a little on the short side and didn't have much meat on her bones; how much could she drink before getting…alcohol poisoning?—or something?

"It's not a bad thing, Dean!" Nikki insisted. "I-I can feel it inside me, it's not bad!" she emphasized the words by holding her hands (and beer) to her chest. "Whatever the demon tells me, whatever Sam feels, Hell, whatever I say or feel, I know I'm not bad."

Dean looked down at his beer, where his thumb nail was scratching at the label. "That-That's good." He said eventually.

Nikki's hands dropped by her side, defeated. "You don't believe me." She said, shocked. Dean looked up at her, trying to keep his face a mask of indifference, but even kinda-drunk, Nikki could see disbelief in his green eyes.

She sighed and leaned on the log, facing the boat behind Dean. "You know…" Nikki trailed off, her voice quiet and had a vulnerability in it that Dean had never heard before. "Chris is dead."

Dean almost choked on his beer. "What? I though you said he was in Afghanistan or something!"

Nikki nodded a little. "He was…Been MIA since the day Greg and Olivia died. That long…He-He's dead." Nikki said softly.

Dean carefully put a hand on her shoulder. "I'm sorry." He said honestly. Nikki shrugged his hand off her shoulder. "Is that why you left a few weeks ago?" Nikki nodded. "The duffle bag?" Another nod. "Car?" Nod. "Necklace?" Nod.

They lapsed back into silence, just drinking their beers and the occasional stronger shot of whisky.

"You know, I think he's got a thing for you." Dean said randomly, not looking at Nik. "Sam, I mean." He added.

"Really?" Nikki chuckled cynically. "What gave you that idea? When he doubled over at the idea of us being together, or when he gave us the boot so he could knock boots the wolf-girl?"

Dean shrugged, thinking of a few other things; when he'd stroked her hair while she was unconscious after the Gordon ordeal, then he'd held her and murmured in her ear after he'd performed CPR at the pool in Connecticut, how when she had left for the Chris thing, he checked his phone every five minutes like a lovesick teenage girl, and other little things like that.

"Just a feeling." Dean lied. "Uh…wolf-girl, though, I think that's another point towards him having a thing for you, though." Nikki just raised her eyebrows at him, shocked.

He rolled his eyes. "Look, both'a you got dark hair, dark eyes and don't take crap." He explained, shrugging. Nikki threw another bottle at the boat, it went through the hole, like all the others.

"He thinks of me like the little sister you boys never had." Nikki said lowly, taking her next beer.

"What makes you think that?" Dean asked, surprised.

"When…Meg possessed him…she told me that he thought that." She explained slowly.

"Demons lie all the time." Dean said quickly.

"Yeah, I know." Nikki said quietly. "But…that was true. I could tell." She looked up at Dean with a wry smile. "Wicca instinct, you know?"

Nikki sighed again and took a drink of whisky. "I need to let it go." She said in a soft, sad tone. "Don't I?" Nik asked, looking over at Dean.

"I-I mean…" she trailed off, laughing humorlessly. "I-I've tried, Dean." She continued, her voice softer, almost like she was gonna cry. "I've tried to keep it to myself and just let it run its course…but that's not gonna happen. It's like the longer I let it be the harder it gets, you know?" Dean still didn't say anything.

Actually, Dean thought Nikki would be good for Sam. She wasn't uptight and got him to loosen up a little bit. At the same time, Dean was pretty sure that Nik would have gone off the deep end with all the Wiccan stuff a long time ago without his brother.

Nikki let out a long sigh and leaned her entire upper torso over the tree and took another swig of whisky, finishing the bottle; something Dean himself could commend. She seemed to weigh the bottle in her hand briefly before hurling towards the boat with an angry grunt. It broke through the rotten hull, making a new hole.

"You know, one'a my great-great-something-or-others…She fell in love with one of the Native America men they had hired as guides." Nikki said lazily, letting herself fall against the tree again. "She told her father about it and he threatened to disown her. She didn't care, though. Then he threatened to kill the guide, his family, his friends, basically annihilate his tribe. Wanna know what she did?" She asked, looking up from where her face was pressed against the bark of the dead tree.

"What?" Dean asked, indulging her.

"She got her books and blessed herbs and made herself a fall-out-of-love-cocktail." Nikki mumbled, her eyes closing. She let out a lazy sigh. "That lady was on to something."

After a few seconds of no movement, Dean sighed, and tossed his nearly empty beer bottle off to the side and picked up Nikki, who was passed out cold, up in his arms and headed back to the Impala.