Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"I don't understand," Dr Suresh says, bent over his computer and frowning. "You show all the signs, but I can't find you in my program."

"Your program?"

He nods absently. "With the help of another person with abilities - abilities much like your own, in fact - I was able to develop a program to locate people with the genetic traits that indicate a possible ability." He clicks a mouse a few times, his frown growing deeper. "But you don't appear on the list, Mr Miller."

"Well - maybe your program missed me?"

The doctor hums under his breath and squats down to open some desk drawers. "I suppose it's possible. If you could give me a blood sample, I might be able to find out."

He swallows, then asks, "How long would that take?"

"A few days at most." Suresh looks up at Max, concern on his face. "Do you have a prior engagement?"

"No, not really. But people might miss me, back home."

"Ah." Realization crosses Suresh's face. "That's true, you did travel quite far for this. Not quite as far as I," he adds, laughing to himself, "but New York City is quite a distance from Michigan."

He shrugs. "Yeah, well... I read your book. I wanted to know if this was me."

"Well," Suresh says, standing up with a small needle and vial in hand. "If you will allow me, we can begin to find out."

Chapter Text

Bela has never particularly liked working in England - too many bad memories, generally - but when she hears rumor of a Hand of Glory kept in a church in Wales, she decides to take a short trip "home". She asks her landlord to look after her cat for a few weeks, finds a plane to Cardiff Airport, and tries to figure out how to say Maes Awyr Caerdydd with the proper accent. In America her accent is a plus, makes her sound mysterious. In Wales, it won't hurt for her to blend in as much as possible.

There are nearly a hundred St Mary's churches in the United Kingdom, and a dozen in Wales alone. But there's one in Cardiff, and that's as good a place to start as any.

That's where things go wrong.

To start off, the church is abandoned. Clearly has been for years, given the layers of dust around. It's been recently disturbed, though, and Bela has the sneaking suspicion someone else has gotten here first.

She's wrong.

There are... things... living in the church. She's never seen anything like them - pale, nearly hairless, with an absurdly alien facial structure. It doesn't resemble anything supernatural she's ever heard of, and she has to wonder if what she's heard about Cardiff is true.

She just as quickly shakes it off - of course not, that's ridiculous - and approaches. Slow, cautious movements. They don't seem particularly carnivorous or anything, and if there really is a Hand of Glory here the money will be well worth the trouble.

There's a hand-sized box sitting in the back of the church - the obvious placement makes her laugh, and one of the things shifts where it lies at her feet. She freezes, and it snuffs, not moving any further. The sound reminds her of horses, vaguely.

She makes it to the back of the church safely enough, but when she touches the box they all go crazy, hissing and growling and charging at her. And, while Bela may be a risk-taker when it comes to some of her jobs, she values her life over the check every time.

And those teeth look risky.

Still, she opens the box and takes a peek, just for curiosity's sake. Running frantically out of the church and down the road, she decides that it's good that it wasn't a Hand of Glory after all. She would have hated to leave one behind.

On to the next church, then.

(She wonders about that metal gauntlet for awhile, though.)

Chapter Text

He leans back on his sunbathing chair on the topmost deck of the cruise ship, basking in the sun. Yes, Crowley thinks, this is much better. No more damp days in that middle-of-America house for him, no sir. He was going back to the cottage after this vacation, to damp days on the South Downs. With Lilith not ordering him to stay in America, and Lucifer dead by hands not his, there's no one around Up Here to notice¹.

Life is good.

Of course, as it always is, for anyone unfortunate enough to be involved in the Apocalypse, this doesn't last.

A large black shadow blocks out his sun. "Crowley," the shadow says gently, and he grunts, waving a hand sluggishly to motion for the shadow-caster to step aside. "My dear, this is hardly the time."

Ah. Aziraphale. He cracks an eye open, grins sleepily up at the angel. Then he focuses a little more, and notices the grim look on his face. Crowley sits up. "What's the trouble, then?" he asks tiredly, and Aziraphale sighs.

"It's on the news," he says, and they wander into the bar. Crowley asks for two glasses of whatever's open² and glances up at the television above the bar.

There is a very large, very deadly tornado passing through Missouri.

"Shit," he says.

"Quite," Aziraphale agrees. "I thought you'd taken care of it?"

"It's those idiots," Crowley realizes. "They've screwed it up somehow."

Angel and demon contemplate this for a moment, drinking heavily. Crowley requests the entire bottle be sent over.

"I suppose," Aziraphale says carefully. "We'll have to leave this to them, then?"

"No," Crowley says. "No, I don't think we can." He sighs. Just when he thought he'd gotten out of it, too.

^{1: And, honestly, no one Down There who cares.
2: It hardly matters; the vintage finds itself changed to a better one in a minute.}

Chapter Text

And Dean said, Let there be pie: and there was pie.
And Dean saw the pie, that it was good: and Dean removed the pie from the plate.

Yes, Dean thinks, it was good. Is good. Will be good forever and ever, amen. The blonde waitress grins at him, and a tilt of his head leaves Dean grinning too. The cut of her dress is just shy of indecent, his favorite style.

Sam, sitting across from Dean with a coffee and his laptop, is not nearly as pleased as he is. He's frowning his quit-fooling-around-Dean frown, and next to him Castiel is frowning his you-are-thinking-blasphemous-thoughts,-Dean frown. Together, the geeks create an air of disapproval that almost makes Dean want to stop eating.

But then the pie sitting on his plate here would just go completely to waste, and that would be such a shame. So Dean digs in, humming happily under his breath. The waitress fills up Sam's coffee, takes Cas's untouched glass of water, and wanders off with a wink at Dean.

Cas has given up on frowning at Dean, which - hey, he's not complaining. But instead he's staring at the chick standing behind the far counter, wearing a cutesy apron - the pie girl, probably. Dean figures Cas is just learning to be a real boy and ogle girls in diners, until Cas starts staring at the guy next to her - the pie guy? the pie girl's boyfriend?

"Cas," he says, and the angel's attention jumps to him. He looks kinda guilty at being caught staring. Dean raises an eyebrow. "Something up with those two?"

Cas frowns, this time more of a figuring-out-a-puzzle frown. "I'm not sure. The man seems to have an unusual affiliation with death, almost like a Reaper. And the woman is undead, which I fear is related."

Dean blinks, and Sam's attention is diverted from his laptop. "Undead?" Sam repeats uncertainly.

"Yes."

"What, like a zombie?" Dean asks. "She gonna snap and try to eat our brains or something?"

Cas frowns again, and Dean can't tell if it's his I-don't-understand-your-references frown or his humans-get-all-the-lore-wrong frown. "She is not a... zombie," he says. And yeah, that caution means it was a reference frown, which leaves Dean smiling to himself. "She is simply undead," Cas continues. "Alive now, when once she was not."

"So, like us?" Dean asks. "Sam and I have died once or twice. Or a hundred times. And you too. Does that make us undead?"

Cas shakes his head. "Demonic deals and Heavenly intervention work differently than Reapers choosing not to take a soul. You will age. She will not."

Dean looks at the chick again. She looks happy, rolling out dough with the guy next to her. "Wonder if she knows that," he says.

"I wonder if he does," Sam says.

Dean shrugs, and goes back to his pie.

For a dead chick, she makes damn good pie.

Chapter Text

samlicker81 has entered the chat room
samlicker81:	hey guys
samndean007:	i'm just saying, i think he's too tall
hodgepodge:	IA!!
hodgepodge:	Hey Becky.
samndean007:	sam's supposed to be huge compared to dean
samndean007:	and this jensen guy is like 6ft or something
samndean007:	hi becky
prncss84:	so?
prncss84:	sam can be 6'5" then
dmxhg4ever:	lol
samlicker81:	hi podge, bond
samndean007:	yeah i guess
prncss84:	it still works
samlicker81:	what are we talking about?
samndean007:	casting for spn movie
samlicker81:	what???
samlicker81:	since when is there gonna be a movie?!
hodgepodge:	Fake movie, sweetie.
prncess84:	lol
samlicker81:	oh
samndean007:	haha, sorry
samlicker81:	i didn't get that
samndean007:	yeah, i meant fan casting
samlicker81:	k
dmxhg4ever:	i still think natalia tena s/b bela
hodgepodge:	Who?
dmxhg4ever:	tonks in hp
samndean007:	she's too old
dmxhg4ever:	shes only 22!
samndean007:	lol really?
hodgepodge:	I thought she was in her thirties.
samndean007:	me too
dmxhg4ever:	shes 22! http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1164730/ see?
samlicker81:	wait, wait
samlicker81:	were you casting sam when i got here?
samlicker81:	that jensen guy?
samndean007:	nah that was dean
samndean007:	jensen ackles http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0010075/
samndean007:	thoughts?
samlicker81:	isn't he that guy on smallville?
hodgepodge:	OMG you watch Smallville?!
samlicker81:	yeah, superman ftw!
hodgepodge:	Right on! And yeah, he was on for 2 seasons.
prncess84:	lol it's kind of on his imdb page
samlicker81:	oh lol, right
samlicker81:	he looks too pretty to be dean
prncess84:	uh what
samlicker81:	uh
samlicker81:	i mean
samndean007:	LOOOOOL
hodgepodge:	I think your Sam bias is showing, Becky...
dmxhg4ever:	lol yeah
samlicker81:	no, i mean dean's really manly
samlicker81:	he shouldn't look like a model
hodgepodge:	Manly men can still be pretty.
prncess84:	how do you think dean gets girls?
prncess84:	it's not his winning personality
samlicker81:	lol guess not
samlicker81:	what about sam?
samndean007:	i think i just found one
prncess84:	omg really?
samndean007:	yeah
samndean007:	his name's jared padalecki
samndean007:	he looks tall enough
samndean007:	and he could probably pull off floppy hair
samlicker81:	don't leave us hanging!!
prncess84:	yeah, link plz!
samndean007:	lol, okay. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0655585/
hodgepodge:	...
samndean007:	no?
dmxhg4ever:	hes definitely tall enough
samlicker81:	OMG HE'S PERFECT
prncess84:	really?
prncess84:	cover art makes sam look more like a fabio type
hodgepodge:	Yeah, but that's just to grab readers.
hodgepodge:	Nobody really looks like Fabio.
prncess84:	except fabio himself, lol
hodgepodge:	LOL, right.
samlicker81:	srsly, how are none of you seeing how AMAZING this guy is???
dmxhg4ever:	not everybodys as big a sam girl as you
prncess84:	*nobody's* as big a sam girl as becky
samndean007:	lol
samndean007:	i guess if becky approves then he's the best sam we could find
samlicker81:	you guys are so mean!
samlicker81:	but yeah, this jared guy is totally my sam now

Chapter Text

"What."

They're like something out of a samurai movie - giant baggy robes and ridiculously long swords and sheaths held in place by cloth belts all. Sam feels he can't be blamed for staring. It's not like they notice, anyway - they're busy staring at Cas, who squirms but doesn't move.

"Reapers in Japan are... different," he explains. Which - no shit, Sam figured that out by himself.

"American?" one with bright orange hair asks in a thick accent. "Ah, no - I mean, English?"

Cas rattles off something in Decidedly Not English, and Sam waves a hand in the air anxiously.

"Forget what he says, stick with English. I don't speak Japanese, damn it," he adds. Dean snorts, but a well-placed frown gets him to admit all the Japanese he knows is bullshit.

The Reapers discuss something among themselves that leaves Cas smiling faintly, which is... concerning. More concerning is when the youngest Reapers there approach them, the four of them together coming up with a semi-coherent question that basically amounts to this: Why does Castiel (who they call a salaryman, which, okay, is a little funny) have wings?

He frowns slightly at them, and then tilts his head and looks.

"These children aren't Reapers," he says carefully. "Just... exceptionally strong psychics." And then he gives them an answer in Japanese that gets the girl ranting excitedly, the tallest one (who might actually be taller than Sam, which is a rare occasion) peering at the space above Cas's shoulders, the redhead boggling, and the guy in glasses looking oddly satisfied.

Nodding at the girl as she continues, Cas turns back to them. "The others speak no English. I believe I can get the answers I need without your assistance. Go back to your hunt." He touches their foreheads, and just like that they're back in the motel.

Dean looks at Sam. "So, are we...?"

"Never talking about that again? Yeah." Sam turns on his computer.

"Right."