A/N Will I keep the momentum up? Do I fully know what I'm doing? I have no answers. But here we are. I'm staycationing until the new year so we may get lucky, or I may binge watch Criminal Minds and SVU and get nothing done. I'm at the mercy of my body's batteries and they're fickle beasts.
Remember, I'm just here to live vicariously through Juliet's future Dean snuggles.
Well and to finally get the plot bunnies out of my head but mostly the self indulgent stuff.
She was coming to by the time Sam came back, even if she was still so pale she was almost translucent. Dean was mad as hell. Worried as hell. And what made him even more angry, he was unequivocally thrilled to see her again despite the circumstances.
He sat himself on the edge of the coffee table next to her. "Jules?"
She fumbled, flailing a little as she tried to sit up.
"Woah, take it easy sweetheart." He grabbed her arms to steady her and froze when she grabbed at his. It was like three years hadn't been anything but the blink of an eye as he felt the warmth of her grip through his sleeves. "Just breathe for a minute, okay?" They both just needed to breathe.
"What the fuck is happening?" She said lethargically.
Sam set a glass of water on the table next to Dean. "You passed out."
Looking far more steady now, she let go of him and he followed suit, remembering he should probably be a little less familiar with her until…well until she needed him to be less familiar.
"I got that part." She quipped, pulling her legs up and leaning against the back of the couch with her hands in her lap. "Explain yourselves. The truth this time or I really will call the sheriff on you."
Sam sighed and sat down on the opposite end of the couch. "Well, long story short, three years ago while you were at college you started having nightmares. At first they weren't much, but they got worse until you'd exhausted every doctor and psychologist you could afford to see. You said the psychic was the only one who seemed to know what was going on with you. We met you not long after that."
"You were screaming bloody murder in the motel room next to us from one of those nightmares." Dean added, still remembering the night perfectly. "Said we wouldn't understand but you didn't know then that crazy is our bread and butter."
"It took us almost two months to make any headway. All we could figure out was something seemed to have latched onto you."
The crazy finally got to her and she interrupted. "What kind of 'something' are you talking about here?"
Dean nodded to her bookshelf. "You've been reading those demonology books, what do you think? Whatever it is, it goes bump in the night, that's for sure."
"I think demons are myths and you two are nuts."
"Has it taken you to the ruins yet? In your dreams?" Dean asked. He knew he'd hit a nerve when she froze and that same old fear hit her eyes. "What about the bear? Can you still feel its teeth even after you wake up?"
"How the fuck do you know that?" She asked in a small voice.
"Because you told me." He took a chance and put his hand on her knee, feeling her shaking. She was buying into it now, which would make their job a whole lot easier, but the look on her face damn near broke his heart. "Listen, Jules, I know you're scared-"
"I wasn't until you both showed up!" She pushed herself to her feet and backed away from them. "You're both nuts! The dreams, they're…they're just from stress, not some stupid mythological thing stuck on me like a leach!"
"Then how do I know what you're dreaming about, huh?" Dean asked, standing but not moving any closer to her. God, she wasn't supposed to be afraid of them, he hated that she was. "How would I know if you hadn't told me?"
"Good guess." She spat, sounding like she didn't even believe herself.
Dean pursed his lips and looked back at Sam, then to her again. "Sam, give us a minute?"
Juliet had to admit to herself that they were making more sense than anything, but the whole story was so ridiculous how could any of it be true? But if they were right…
Sam left the room and Dean looked at her with an expression that said he, at the very least, believed everything he was saying. As far as he was concerned, he was telling her the truth. Either he was crazy, or he was right.
"The figure always looks different, but it feels the same. After a while you've had the same nightmare so many times you know what's coming but that only makes it worse. And it seems like each time it's harder to wake up and a part of you is gone when you finally do. You don't have insomnia because you can't sleep, you don't sleep because you're too afraid to."
She reached behind her and found her desk chair, sinking into it with shaky legs. It was like he'd read her mind, been there with her…If they were right, he had been before.
"Your favorite song is November Rain, which honestly is just depressing but you'll defend it every time despite the fact that you should like Led Zeppelin more than Guns N' Roses." He cracked a smile and shook his head. "You also hate lima beans more than anybody I've ever met."
"Well lima beans taste like ass." She defended, leaning into his brief subject change to lighten the mood. But that didn't stop the gravity of the situation from coloring the air around them. "So you know some things and some vague well guessed specifics of my nightmares. It's not proof."
She needed proof. Enough proof that she wouldn't second guess it all. If they were, admittedly strange grifters, she'd catch them up sooner or later. If they weren't…she wasn't ready to send them off without some answers.
Dean seemed hesitant and his eyebrows drew together apologetically. A decision was rolling around in his head, that much was obvious. But she didn't want sugar coated platitudes to convince her, she'd need the hard truths. That was the only way forward.
She waited as he came over to her, laid his hand gently on her shoulder, and leaned in until his lips were right by her ear. He spoke low, like he was telling a secret, and each word was truer than the last. He knew it all.
The icy grip on her wrists.
The scrape of stone and grit over her skin.
The cold, stinging slice of metal into flesh.
And how it all ended before she woke, gasping for air in her bed.
"H-how…" One word was all she could manage, and even that was shaky.
He knelt beside her and brushed his thumb over her cheek. "Because you told me, Jules."
She hadn't spoken it, hadn't written it down. It wasn't in anything she'd read or seen. But he knew what had happened and that was the only explanation she could think of.
"And listen," He went on. "I don't know why it's back, and I don't know what we're gonna do about it yet, but I'm not gonna let you face it alone, you hear me?"
She nodded, no clue what else to do as she blinked back the burn in her eyes. "Yeah. I hear you." Getting up she awkwardly adjusted her shirt and jumped when the obnoxious dryer buzzer went off. "I should uh…grab that before they wrinkle."
Now, in a strange turn of events she was retreating into the creepy basement, going so far as to shut the door behind her as she clomped down the stairs to the far side of the room. The damp, cold air filled her lungs as she popped open the dryer and chucked everything on top of it, remembering the basket to be upstairs, still by the front door.
She tossed damp towels and shirts and stray socks into the dryer with her lip stuck between her teeth.
"Evil nightmares." She mocked. "Hot heroic looking burglars showing up to 'save you'. Hot, heroic burglar who might as well have been in your own head to see it himself." Slamming the lid down on the washer she paused. "Fuck."
Juliet was either in or out, there wasn't much of an inbetween. So for now, she was in. She turned the knob on the dryer and the lights flickered. Her spine tingled and the basement became just that again, not her refuge, but her childhood fear.
She still felt shaky, and stumbled as she tried to go two steps at a time. Sam and Dean were in the kitchen when she burst through the door and kicked it closed behind her.
"You okay?" Sam asked.
"Yeah." She said, covering up that she felt out of breath. "Just hate that basement."
Weaving around them in the small space she started pulling pots and pans out of the cupboards. "Here's how this is gonna go." A soup pot hit the burner grate with a clang and she dug a box of chicken stock out of the cupboard. "We're gonna have dinner, and you're going to tell me how you ended up knowing all this stuff and where we go from here."