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“You met who now?”
Jody shifts her weight back and forth as she switches the phone to her left hand so she can better dry the dish Alex hands her with her right. Claire looks up from the cookie sheet she’s currently drying, a question in her eyes. Jody holds up a finger and nods at the telephone.
“You’ve got to be pulling my leg. You’re pulling my leg, right?”
Alex stops washing her dish, and Claire keeps drying the same portion of the cookie sheet over and over again. It’s not Jody’s oh no face, so it doesn’t look like anybody they know is dead.
“Sounds like a story that would be better told in person. Do you want to—no, yeah, I think the girls would be okay with that.” She lowers the phone from her ear for a moment. “Alex. You’re not working this Friday, are you?”
Alex shakes her head.
“Yeah, we should be good.”
“You never asked me if I was busy!” Claire protests.
Alex shoots her a smirk over Jody’s shoulder, which she ignores. Instead, she drops the cookie sheet on Jody’s island and resorts to crossing her arms. Jody doesn’t seem to notice.
“Well, it was good to hear from you, Dean. See you Friday.”
Claire considers inventing something going on in her life on Friday just to prove Jody wrong about her lack of a social life and/or job, but in the end, she winds up sitting shotgun in the truck anyway (after nearly breaking Alex’s arm in a thumb war to see who could sit there).
“They live in a what?” Patience demands, setting down the AP Calculus BC prep book down between her and Alex.
Despite the fact that she’s probably not going to get the college education she’d been gunning for all these years, she still insisted on studying for the test in a few weeks. Claire thought she was crazy. Jody just kept buying her prep books.
“Underground bunker,” Alex says, smiling.
She’d been far more—well, patient—with Patience than Claire had been able to be so far when it came to explaining the things Claire now saw as commonplace.
“Um. Why?”
Jody shrugs. “It’s fortified. And both of them are dead, legally speaking, so buying a house isn’t exactly an option.”
To her credit, Patience nods and goes back to her integrals. Alex leans over so the two can continue their miniature lesson. Claire at least waits to turn around before she rolls her eyes. Alex loves pretending they’re normal.
“Here we are,” Jody says after a few more minutes of driving.
“That looks super sketchy,” Patience says, but she gets out of the car anyway.
Jody goes to knock on the door, leaving Claire to grab the angel food cake that Jody had made before they left. By the time she catches up, the three men are standing in the doorway, welcoming them in.
“Donna beat you by a half hour,” Dean says, standing aside so the women can get in.
Claire sizes Castiel up. They’ve been texting on and off for a couple years now, but it’s been a while since she’s seen him in person. He looks pretty much the same—is that a new trench coat?–but then, she’s not sure what she expected.
“You look older,” Castiel notes.
Claire shoots him a grin. “You too, old man.”
To her surprise, Patience chooses to cling to her side rather than Alex’s as they make their way downstairs. Donna is sitting at the table, but she gets up when they all show up.
“We met Scooby Doo,” Dean says, and launches into a recounting of their adventure in TV land.
Their second, if Sam’s disgruntled chiming in is to believed. Which, okay. Claire has been in this hunting business since she was in pigtails, but even she has to admit that it’s pretty weird to hear that particular story.
Eventually, they make their way into the kitchen, where Dean already has dinner laid out. Sam takes an interest in Patience’s calculus and Jody and Donna dive into an animated conversation with Dean about the finer points of the Scooby case. That leaves Cas and Claire sitting awkwardly across from each other. Claire takes to scrolling through her phone.
“Hey, Cas. D’you mind getting the movie queued up?” Dean asks, bumping Castiel’s shoulder.
He shakes his head. “Of course not. Claire?”
She follows Cas into the last room she would have ever expected to see in the bunker.
“Oh, seriously? What is this, Friends?” Claire crosses her arms as she walks into the room. “What does he want us to do, set up folding chairs?”
Cas steps sideways, but not quickly enough to hide the handful of folding chairs leaning against the wall. Claire pinches her nose.
“Okay, no. If he wants to have a family dinner, he needs a family space. Do you still have that ugly truck?”
He looks as if he wants to defend it, but quickly decides to hold his tongue. Instead, both he and Claire make their way out to the garage.
“I don’t see what you’re—”
“We’re getting Dean a gift. Shut up and drive.”
Honestly. What sort of macho BS would lead a man planning to have a movie night in his brand new—had Cas called it the ‘Dean Cave?’ Really?—TV room to buy two freaking recliners instead of a couch?
“So. Syria?”
She’d spent about an hour stressing out about that particular text until Jody had caught wind of her worry and reassured her that, of all people, an angel would probably be fine there.
Castiel nods. “It’s a beautiful place. The little of it that is still standing, anyway. And beautiful people, too.”
Claire can’t help a small smile. Of course Castiel would be the one to notice those sorts of things. It was part of what allowed her to like him—hell, maybe even love him a little, and wouldn’t Jody be proud to know she was admitting something like that?—even when he had her father’s face.
“Here we are,” Castiel says dubiously as they pull up outside the furniture store.
Despite the fact that it’s 6:56 and the places closes at seven, Claire barges inside, Castiel on her heels. The spotty teen standing near the door looks as if he wants to hit them both over the head with lamp dressing the fake living room next to them.
“How fast can you move a couch, buddy?” Claire asks.
They make a decision incredibly quickly. Claire has been on enough shopping trips with Alex to know that she has to keep her eyes on the prize and drag Cas away from the other options.
“I think that would look good,” Castiel says of a plaid couch.
“They’ve gotten into your brain.”
Eventually, they settle on a plain black leather couch. Claire hands over the credit card that Jody gave her for emergencies and together with the teenager, they drag the couch out to the truck and make their way back.
Claire shoots Alex and—okay, fine—Patience a text, so they meet them in the garage. It only takes them about ten minutes to maneuver it in several pieces into the ‘Dean Cave.’ By the time Dean and the rest of the group enter the room, they have it set up.
“Huh,” Dean says, looking the room over.
Without another word, he flops down on the couch.
They all fit perfectly. Claire grabs the remote and turns on the TV. Mission accomplished.