A/N Happy New Year folks. I decided to stay in and not stay up till midnight because I'm thirty-two and staying up past ten pm most days is torturous. Also my sweet cat child likes to remind me of bedtime and who am I to tell her no when my reward for listening is bed?
Also if any of ya'll have joint problems, get that viral pregnancy pillow. I'm not kidding. Changed my damn life.
Anyway, may we all have a safe and happy 2025, and we'll self medicate with protective Dean Winchester when necessary.
Which is always, because I'm always down for protective Dean Winchester no matter what but that's beside the point.
Empty soup bowls and beer bottles littered the kitchen table and Juliet slumped down in her seat with a fresh bottle in her hand. They'd convinced her. They weren't burglars. No burglar was gonna spin that batshit of a story just to get her trust. Plus, they knew more about obscure demon mythology than she did, including all the eclectic stuff she'd read about. It wasn't like she'd bought most of her books from Barnes and Noble, they weren't exactly main stream or still in print.
"Okay, so you're saying this thing seems like a demon but isn't a demon? But it's also not any of the other weird sleep creepers you've heard about?" She clarified.
Sam started collecting the empty bottles and dumping them in the recycling. "Well, we're not really sure about the demon thing. We just know all the anti demon stuff we've tried didn't work. Neither did salt or iron which means it's not a spirit."
"Unless that spirit is seriously and I mean seriously pissed off and stronger than anything we've seen before." Dean added. "Plus vengeful spirits tend to work…well, faster than this thing. More of a get in, gank you, and get out sort of MO."
The beer was honestly the only thing keeping her from freaking out and a part of her still wasn't buying it. Sure, she could give them a chance to prove themselves, but she wasn't sure she'd believe it in her soul until something more concrete happened.
A gust of wind knocked leaves and pine cones onto the roof, only adding to the overall spooky vibe of the evening. She really needed to get a dog or something when this was all over. "So how did you get rid of it last time?"
Sam sat back down and popped open another bottle. "Banishment spell, Bobby was able to dig it up. It was pretty obscure but it seemed to work, at least for a while."
"Okay…so we do it again." It seemed pretty obvious to her. She'd let them do some woo woo spell shit and either it would work and she'd be safe, or it wouldn't and she'd know they were full of shit.
"We can try." Sam continued. "But it clearly didn't stick. We thought if we erased your memories of it that it would help keep you hidden but clearly it's dead set on attaching itself to you."
"Why would erasing my memories help hide me?"
Dean had been grumpy as soon as they'd gotten onto the subject of the last time they'd met, and the tone kept up as he helped explain. "If we banished it and wiped your memory so you didn't know anything about it, you'd have less of a chance of psychically connecting to it somehow. We never really figured out how it attached to you, but given it showed itself in your dreams, there's likely some connection there. Besides…wasn't like there was much good to remember in those few months. We all figured not remembering was a blessing in disguise."
"Well given what I've seen so far, it sounds like we were probably right on that part. Never really was a horror movie fan myself."
Jules got up, needing to move and take a second to break from Dean's watchfulness. He shifted in his chair uncomfortably every now and then, kept looking her way with varying degrees of concern, and always seemed to be clenching his jaw when he thought she wasn't looking. The man was dealing with some shit, that was for sure. She wondered what had happened between the two of them to make him that way.
Well, she could venture a guess. If she was nightmare stricken and suffering, she could imagine a few things he could've done to make her feel…better. That could make anyone feel awkward. It wasn't every day you showed up at an old fling's house, but it wasn't like she remembered anything so that should've helped, right? Then again, she didn't really know Sam either, maybe just Sam knowing something had happened was enough to make Dean self weird part was she didn't get the impression Dean was a man who felt self conscious about his flings, quite the opposite actually.
Not that it mattered, whatever she'd done in the past was in the past. If he brought it up then she'd go from there but otherwise, as far as she was concerned, they were starting fresh.
Sam jumped up when she started transferring the leftovers to save them. "Here, I'll get it, you did all the cooking."
"And you're here to save me from some weird nightmare demon." She argued.
"Ah, let him help. He likes it." Dean smirked, taking a swig of his beer. "Come on, why don't you show me around and fill me in on all the weird quirks the house has so we know if something's off."
She relinquished the pot and led Dean out of the kitchen, feeling like it had been less of an offer to help and more of an excuse to split them up. "Well, you've seen the electrical panel in the creepy basement so that's one. Draft comes down the chimney even with the flue closed which is just awesome." She said sarcastically, leading him past the living room and up the stairs, pausing on certain steps to enunciate their creakiness. "I mean it's an old house, everything is or has been broken at some point in its life. Hell, the upstairs windows are so old I have to stuff plastic bags in the gaps around the frames in the winter or it just leaches warmth."
On the landing he looked around at the four doors, three bedrooms and a bathroom straight from the fifties at the end of the hall. "Which room is yours?"
"You don't waste any time, do you?" She teased, surprised to see him squirm a little as she opened up the last door on the right. Oh well, he could squirm a little because she was squirming when he walked into her mess of a bedroom. The rest of the house she'd kept up but if anywhere reflected her sleep troubles it was her bedroom. "Sorry about the mess."
Unable to fully leave it alone, she hurriedly slid the bottle of sleeping pills into her nightstand drawer as he picked up the book she'd been reading last night from the window seat. "Light reading?"
Pinning him with a look she crossed her arms. "Well two guys broke into my house last night so I wasn't really in the mood to be unconscious."
"Front door was unlocked, plus we thought something, you know, bump in the night was happening."
"It wasn't unlocked, but whatever." She argued. "I suppose I should be grateful, didn't really expect those books to have any truth to them beyond the veiled socio-economics of the middle ages."
He rolled his eyes and shook his head as he put the book back, but it brought a smile to his lips. "Well, memory loss hasn't changed you much. Still running around talking and researching like Sam."
"I'll take that as a compliment." A particularly strong gust scraped a branch against one of the windows and she jumped, her heart running a marathon in a matter of seconds. "Jesus Christ."
Dean came up to her and put his hands on her arms. "Hey, just take a breath. This thing's never been able to do anything to you when you weren't dreaming. As long as you're awake you're safe, okay?"
She nodded nervously and cracked a joke to lighten her mood. "Right. I'll just stay awake forever and we'll be golden."
"Exactly." He chuckled.
Her face fell just as quickly as she'd put it on and she knew she had to ask some of the hard questions. The nitty gritty, worst case scenario, stuff that would on its own make her lose sleep. "Dean…Last time…How bad did it get?"
He frowned and pursed his lips, hesitating to say anything. "Bad." He said finally, in a strained tone.
"I got that part, how bad." His reaction to the question was nerve wracking but backing off now would just make her imagine horrible possibilities and she had a feeling that was not the best way to go into this mess.
"If we hadn't…" He took a deep breath. "If that spell hadn't worked I'm not sure how much more you could've taken before it killed you."
That was the first time they'd put actual death on the table and she was more than rattled. Hands on her hips she began to pace, taking deep breaths and talking herself down.
"That's why if there was even a chance this thing was back, we had to make sure you were okay."
"Why me?" She snapped.
"We don't know. We dug into your history, your childhood, and we found nothing. Maybe…maybe if we knew it would help but there's always the possibility that there is no reason. Sometimes it's just random."
"Right, so I just picked up a soul sucking…whatever at random while in college." Juliet rambled. "And then I just happened to run into you two who just happen to know about this stuff."
"Jules, honey, you've already passed out once today, no need to make it twice."
Stubbornly she stopped and plopped down on the window seat. "This is bullshit."
With a sigh he sat down next to her, hesitantly putting his arm around her shoulder. "I agree, this is bullshit."
She closed her eyes, pressing them tightly shut so he wouldn't catch how she felt like she was about to cry. His comforting her wasn't helping her battle much but she seemed to be getting a handle on it. If this was true, if this was all happening, she needed to at least go into it with her shit together…well, as much as she could manage anyway.