Chapter Text
It happens like this: one day there is no one living in the house opposite, and the next there's a big red SOLD sticker plastered on the realtor's sign and a huge, shiny-black car in the driveway. Yuna's a little afraid of the car, actually. It's big and grumbly and sometimes she feels like it's watching her (which is silly, because cars aren't alive, but that's what it feels like all the same).
She likes the house, though. It's got a wrap-around porch with white rails and a swinging bench seat, and it's got a bunch of smallish windows with flower boxes underneath. When she thinks about growing up, she pictures herself living in this house.
Even though she knows it's the greatest house in the world, no one's lived in it since before she was born. She can't remember anyone else in the neighborhood moving in or out of their own homes, actually, like the street had been stuck in stasis the moment she was born.
So it's pretty exciting when her mom grabs her hand and lugs her across the street to greet their new neighbors.
Yuna's prepared to dislike them, because they're living in her house. She was supposed to grow up and become a doctor and live there, right across the street from her mom so they could still have movie night and bake stuff together. It was practical and it was destiny probably and it was hers.
Which is why she glares at the guy who opens the door.
She regrets it right away because he's huge, oh my God. He's taller than her mom and her mom's the tallest person she knows, taller than all the other moms, especially when she's wearing heels. She's wearing heels right now actually, nubby sandal things, and the new neighbor guy is still a head and a half taller than her. He's broad, too, thick in the shoulders and chest.
Yuna looks at him and then back at the car in the driveway and decides, yes, that's the sort of car this guy would drive. They belong together.
She tries to shuffle back a little but her mom won't let her. She's not scared at all, which is something Yuna loves about her. She's not afraid of anything, ever, not spiders or storms or getting hurt or angry people yelling at them. Not only is she the tallest mom but she's the bravest, too.
Except right now though Yuna's wishing her mother wasn't quite so brave, because she's tugging her forward closer to this guy and oh man, she wants to go home.
"I'm Joo-Eun," her mom's saying. "We live across the street in number 10."
"Uh. Hi, June," the guy says. Her mom doesn't correct him, which is surprising, because usually when people screw up her name she tells them right off. She must really like him, Yuna realizes. She couldn't imagine why.
Her mom hands off the platter she'd carried over - cookies, oatmeal - and gives him her best smile. "Welcome to Willow," she says.
"Uh, thanks. Thank you, Sam'll love these. He's my - my brother, Sam. I'm Dean," he adds.
"There's a potluck next Friday - it'd be great to have you join, if you'd like. Get to know the neighbors. And I'd love to meet Sam, too, sometime."
"Yeah, maybe. He likes that kinda sh- stuff. Stuff." He coughs and then drops into a crouch, so suddenly that Yuna's not able to startle back in time. They're eye-to-eye now, his face right up close to hers and huh, freckles. "Hey there," he says. "What's your name?"
"Yuna," she mumbles into her mom's hand.
"Oh, yeah? Cool. I don't think I've ever met anyone called Yuna before."
"No one else?" says Yuna.
"Nope. You're the first and only." He winks at her and as much as she'd wanted to dislike him before, she can't help but giggle a little, smile into her mom's bony wrist.
"Dean," someone wails inside the house. It's a man's voice, charred and crinkled like old wallpaper, dry and sad.
Dean's face ages about ten years, his brow creased with worry, his bright smile gone flat.
"I have to - my brother," he says and straightens up. He's huge and distant again, dark and sad about the eyes. "It was great meeting you. See ya later, Yuna. June."
They say goodbye and he's gone, door shut behind him. Inside the house, distant and tinny as if through the neck of a bottle, they hear him yell, "you okay, Sammy?"
Yuna and her mom wander back across the street hand-in-hand.
"Damn charmer, that one," her mom says, smiling.
Yuna remembers his drawn face and, quietly, privately, disagrees.
The next time Yuna sees Dean he is sitting on the porch swing with a tall, skinny man perched next to him. Dean is reading aloud from a book.
She's actually a little happy to see him because, well, she's curious. She thinks her mom is, too, which is why they've gravitated up Dean's walkway.
"Dean!" her mother calls, and Dean's head swings up.
"Hey! June!" he says. He sounds very tired but he looks happy to see them.
Yuna's mom strides up to him. He starts to stand but she waves him away, pressing one of her fliers into his hands. "For the potluck," she explains.
"Cool, thanks," Dean says. He scrubs at his eyes. "Hey, there, Yuna. How're you doing?"
"Okay," says Yuna.
"Just okay? Shouldn't you be in school?"
"It's summer, Dean," she informs him. Dean is not very smart.
"You sure about that?"
"Mmm-hmm."
"If you say so. This is Sam, by the way," Dean says, waving at the gaunt guy sitting next to him.
"Hi, Sam," her mom says.
Sam just stares.
"He says hi back," Dean tells them, except this has to be a lie, because Sam hasn't moved or even blinked.
"Is he okay?" Yuna asks. ("Yuna!" her mother scolds.)
"He's - I don't know," Dean says, radiating misery. "I don't know."
"Oh, Dean," Yuna's mom says, and rests a slender hand on his shoulder.
He shrinks away from her. "It's okay, really," he says, except it's not okay, and Sam looks very sick. She imagines looking after a brother all alone, cooking for him and changing his sheets and giving him trash cans to barf in, and decides that it'd be really awful. Where's Dean's mom? she wonders. Looking after sick kids is a mom's job - that's what her mom does, anyway - and just because Dean's huge and grown-up looking doesn't mean he doesn't need a mom to look after him.
Her mom won't tell her what's wrong with Sam ("I don't know, baby, don't pry,") so Yuna decides to go to the source and ask Dean outright. She gets her chance the next day when she's pulling her wagon around on her driveway and he comes out to sit on the porch, glass bottle in hand.
She takes the wagon with her because otherwise it might wheel into the street and get hit by a car. He spots her right away and steps down off his porch to go to her before she can get much past his mailbox.
"Uh. Yuna?"
She ignores him and walks right by. The wagon rattles up and down on the bumpy stone walkway.
"Are you okay?" he asks. He's hovering over her, not-quite-touching her with his big, calloused hands.
"I'm fine," she sings. She contemplates dragging her wagon up the steps but decides against it and sits on the bottom one instead. He sits next to her, legs wide and long next to her little tan ones. She squishes the side of her foot up to his.
"You've got big feet."
"Nuh-uh. You just have tiny ones."
She kicks in the dirt. "Does Sam have big feet?"
"Sam has big everything," Dean grunts.
"How come he's sick?"
Dean is quiet for a while. She doodles invisible pictures with her toes: a sun, a smiley face, the letters of the alphabet. She gets to g before Dean says anything.
"Sam's been through some... things. Some real bad things."
"Like what?"
"Like, real bad. Like you shouldn't oughta think about," he says. Yuna tries to picture Real Bad Things and remembers, in order: her friend Hanna breaking her arm falling from the monkeybars, her dog getting hit by a car last year, and - oh. Eric.
"Did someone hit him?" she asks.
"Uh. Yeah, kinda. They hit him a lot, and he couldn't get away."
"Oh. That musta been awful." She thinks about how her mom was because of Eric, limp and sad and scared all the time, and imagines being stuck like that. Not getting away. Would her mom be like Sam if they hadn't made Eric go? Would she be like Sam?
Dean must have caught the flavor of her thoughts because he wraps an arm around her shoulders and squeezes her into his side. He smells like cigarette smoke and dry leaves and old leather. "Don't worry about it, kiddo. It's okay. He's safe now."
But he's still sick. "He'll get better," she says, both for herself and him.
"Yeah. He'll get better."
The next day her mom's friend Ms. Bole comes over and Yuna's not trying to eavesdrop, not really, but she's in the living room and they're talking pretty loud and it's not her fault if she catches on. If they really wanted to keep secrets they should've gone into mom's bedroom and shut the door, but instead they're sitting at the kitchen table where anyone could hear them, so it's actually their fault.
"Poor kid," Ms. Bole is saying. "Not... all there, y'know. But that's what war does, huh?"
"War? You think?"
"I mean, they look like soldiers. I saw the older one go out for a jog yesterday when I was doing yoga, maybe five in the morning - " (here Yuna's mother makes gagging noises) "- in nothing but shorts and a t-shirt and let me tell you - "
There is the sound of newspaper hitting flesh. Ms. Bole yelps.
"You are engaged, Lee."
"It's not a crime to look. He's hot for sure, though - stop hitting me, woman - but the cincher is he's covered in scars. Like, all over. I'd betcha a hundred bucks the brother's the same."
"And you think -?"
"How else?"
"Plenty of jobs can be rough, right? Like - I don't know, construction."
"Yeah, but who comes out of construction like... that?"
Yuna knows. Someone who's been hit, a lot, and kept on getting up anyway. She thinks her mom ought to have caught on, since she's got marks of her own: a little faded starburst on her temple where a book broke her skin, white crooked tissue on her forearms and hands from a beer bottle - but instead she's talking about construction workers and soldiers and farmers instead of getting the actual point.
It's a good feeling, to know something her mom doesn't. She's better friends with Dean than her mom, she realizes with a small thrill. She doesn't think that's ever happened with a grown-up before. Dean trusted her with Sam's story, and she's going to keep it safe for him. She's not telling.
Dean's got his hand resting on Sam's knee as he digs up weeds.
"You planting something?" she says.
"Your momma know where you are?" he says, without turning around.
"Yes, Dean. She's on the porch, see?"
"All right. We're planting daisies," he adds. He doesn't seem very happy about it.
"Sorry," she says, because it seems appropriate.
"We'll get over it, right, Sammy? Sam's a giant girl, you know," he says conspiratorially. "He loves flowers. Flowers and kittens and sparkly tiaras."
"Me too, Sam," she says.
"You two should play together sometime. Dress-up."
"Yeah, okay."
"Hear that, Sammy? If you don't move, Yuna's gonna drag your huge - uh - behind over to her house and play princesses."
She thinks maybe he's making fun of her but then Sam reaches up and takes her hand, all on his own, and wow, he's got big hands. He can wrap his entire hand around hers no problem at all. He's not looking at her but his skin is warm and dry and kind, and she stays there watching Dean garden with her hand tucked in his until the sun's gone pink in the sky.
"You better get back to your mom, kiddo," Dean says finally, turning, and then he sees her hand in Sam's and his mouth falls open just a little.
"It's not that late," she says.
"I - no, it's - huh."
"Sammy, I gotta go now," she tells Sam, and he lets her hand swing free. Dean makes a choked noise. "Can I give him a kiss goodnight?" she asks, because that's what her mom does and it always makes her feel better.
"Uh - yeah, sure, Yuna," Dean says.
She leans over and plants a careful peck on Sam's temple. "You too, Dean," she says, and catches him on the cheek before he can get away. "See you tomorrow," she says, and runs, and doesn't look back.
And then she walks in on him doing magic.
It happens like this: Dean does not come to the potluck. Yuna's mom is not pleased and sends Yuna across the street to drag him out, by his hair if you have to, and get the tall one too. And Yuna goes, primed and ready for some hair-pulling action, and when nobody answers the door at her knock it seems prudent to open it up and wander in.
There's no furniture, she notices right away. Not even a couple chairs. She hopes they have a bed at least. There's an odd smell in the air, not unpleasant but musky and dark, like burnt incense. She passes through the kitchen and it's pretty clean, no dirty dishes hanging around or anything, and then she goes into the living room and there's Dean shirtless and drawing on the floor with red chalk. He's got a bunch of books open next to him on the floor and they've got weird diagrams and stuff, images of plants, bisections of an eye, wings.
"Oh, shit," says Dean. "Uh. I can explain."
Except he doesn't have to, because she sees the hand-shaped scar on his shoulder and the charm and the weird letters, and it all comes together at once.
"You're a superhero," she says. "A wizard superhero."
Dean puts down the chalk. "You got me," he says.
"I knew it. Is Sam a superhero, too? Was it super-bad-guys that hurt him?"
Dean is smiling. "Yeah. Two of 'em. They wanted to blow up the planet, but Sam stopped 'em."
"Wow. Sam's amazing."
"Yeah. He really is."
"Tell him I said thanks. For saving everyone."
"Why don't you tell him yourself?" Dean offers, and she guesses Sam'd been there the entire time, because suddenly he's looming up behind Dean from the dark.
Yuna'd forgotten just how tall he was, hollowed-out and stretched thin like a midday shadow against pavement. He's still pretty pallid but his eyes are bright and kind, alert, and she feels like he's really looking at her for the first time.
"Hi, Sam," she says, nervous. She's seen Sam before and even talked at him a few times but right here and now it feels like they're meeting for the first time, and so she says, "I'm Yuna," just in case he doesn't remember.
"Hey," says Sam, and his voice is not at all what she'd expected. She figured he'd sound like Dean, sorta gruff and short, maybe somehow even deeper because he's such a huge guy, but actually Sam's voice is higher and more nasal than his brother's. It hasn't got any of the good-natured gravel running through it the way Dean's does, either.
She reaches up for Sam's hand, and he gives it to her. She likes how enormous it is, how ridiculous his fingers look against hers. His hands are pretty beat up, she notices, and she wonders if that's one of the side effects of being a superhero. He's got dirt under his nails and his knuckles are worn thick with callouses.
"Thank you for saving the world," she tells him. "I'm sorry you got hurt."
Sam drops to his knees and Yuna's worried - did she hurt him? is he okay? - and then his giant lanky arms are folded around her and she's being smooshed into his chest, and she can feel his eyes are wet against her cheek. She catches Dean's eyes over the top of Sam's head and she's glad to see Dean doesn't look anxious at all, just sorta exasperated and fond and teary all at once, so she figures everyone's okay. She pets a tentative hand through Sam's hair.
"It was worth it," Sam is saying. "It was worth it."
She forgets to ask them to the potluck. Her mom is not happy.
The next day she goes over to Dean's right after breakfast. Her mom insists on going too, probably because of the potluck thing. This is too bad because Yuna really, really would like to talk about superhero stuff with Dean, and Sam, too, if he wants, but she'd already promised herself to keep Dean's secrets, and that includes talking about super powers in front of her mother.
When he opens the door she notices right off there's a brush in his hand, sticky with congealing red paint. He's covered up to his forearms with smears of green and blue and red and orange and he's the happiest she's ever seen him.
"Are you painting?" she asks, trepidation gone in an instant.
"Yeah, we're doing Sam's bedroom," Dean says.
"Can I help?"
"I don't know if -" her mom begins.
"Yeah, c'mon!" Dean says. He looks up at Yuna's mom. "Unless, I mean, you don't want...?"
Her mom runs a critical eye over her daughter. "Go ahead, baby," she sighs.
"Yessss," says Yuna, and darts into the house, Dean and her mother on her heels.
"Upstairs," says Dean, and they go, clamoring up the steps. Yuna gets to the top first - "hang on there, Forrest," Dean teases her - and turn into the room on the left and there's Sam, long tan legs sprawled out in front of him, goofy smile on his face. He's covered in paint. Yuna thought Dean had been bad, but Sam's got paint on his neck and cheeks and ankles. He's got paint in his hair.
"Oh my God, Sam - " her mother says.
"You look really handsome!" Yuna says, and slides in next to him. She grabs a paintbrush out of the plastic water cup they've got set up on the floor for rinsing.
"Yeah?" says Sam.
"Uh-huh," she says. "Like a rainbow."
Sam's grinning huge and glad and he's got a spark in his eyes she can't remember seeing before.
"Huh," her mom says behind them.
"Yeah, I know. I woke up this morning and he was really, just, happy," Dean begins, and then he's speaking in earnest to her mom, but Yuna misses the rest of it, because she's very busy explaining the right colors for a rainbow to Sam.
Yuna's mom is dumping their old coffee table out on the curb. They've got a new one, without crayon marks and chipped edges and wobbly legs.
Yuna doesn't like that they're throwing it away. The table's been in her living room since she was a baby, and she's chewed on it and colored on it and sat on it. Once she hid under it when her mom and Eric were having a fight and Eric started throwing stuff. She and the table have a history together, so it's sensible that she's a little sentimental towards it. Plus it's not even broken or anything, just a little dinged up.
She looks at the coffee table, and then at the big black car in Dean's driveway, and then at the porch where he isn't sitting, and she gets the most brilliant and charitable idea she thinks she's ever had.
"Mom!" she yells, running over. "Mom!"
"Uh-huh?" her mom says.
"Mom. We should give the coffee table to Dean."
"Baby," her mom says, pursing her lips. "I don't think Dean wants our old coffee table."
"'S perfect! Dean doesn't have a coffee table and we have an extra one and moo-ooom - "
"We can't offer him our trash, honey."
"Not trash. I'm gonna ask him," she says, and scurries off. Her mom is somewhere behind her going no, no, Yuna, NO but she gets across the street and up the steps and rings the doorbell and now it's too late because Dean's opening the door.
He peers out, mug of coffee in one hand. He looks scruffier than usual. He's got on one of those white tank tops guys wear and plaid pajama bottoms, and no socks, and his hair is flattened down around his face. "Hng," he says.
"Dean we're throwing out our old coffee table and - " she raises her voice over her mother's - "and we would like to know if you would like to have it -"
Yuna's mom is blushing and stammering. "I'm sorry - it's just she gets these ideas in her head, and - "
"Naw, actually, I'd be glad to take it," Dean says. He looks a little more awake now.
"I told you," Yuna says. Her mom gapes.
Dean looks uncomfortable but he opens up the door a little more, and that's probably good. "I mean, unless you don't want me to take it, June - "
"Uh," says Yuna's mother -
"We could just - we could use, you know. A table. In general."
The embarrassment and wrath has drained from her mother's eyes and now she's looking at Dean like he's a stray kitten. "No, of course - you should've said, if you needed furniture. I've got these friends - "
And now they're talking about her mom's friends and Yuna doesn't care about that stuff so she takes it upon herself to go back across the road, snag the front two legs of the coffee table, and start pulling it across the street. It is not easy going. A car pulls to a stop next to her and honks its horn.
Suddenly strong arms are lifting both her and the coffee table right off the ground.
"Dean, I was doing it," she tells him.
"I saw," he says. He rucks the table underneath his one arm and uses the other one to seat her on his shoulder. He's put her on the one opposite of the peculiar hand-shaped scar he's got on his left. She traces it with a finger and he shivers underneath her.
"Are you retired?" she asks.
"Yuna!" her mom scolds from the porch.
"I don't mind," Dean says. "Naw, not retired. Just resting until Sammy's better."
"So you'll be going back to...?" her mom says, which Yuna thinks is a much ruder and prying-er question than the one she'd asked.
"Yup," says Dean.
Yuna's mom looks put out, because this is not the answer she wanted. "A tour?" she prompts. This is silly even for her mother, because Dean is pretty obviously not, nor has he ever been, a tour guide.
"Something like that," Dean says. "Thank you," he adds. He's rubbing the back of his neck. "For the table. I 'preciate it."
"Any time," her mom says, and smiles.
"I don't want you to go back," she says, later.
Dean blows out a long breath. "I don't got a choice, sweetheart," he says. "There's people that need saving."
"Let someone else do it," she says, because this is the obvious answer.
"There ain't no one else," Dean says. "Not anymore."
She frowns at him, doesn't ask, what happened? "You could teach me," she offers instead.
"No," Dean chokes. "Never. Never ever, you got it?"
"Yeah, okay," she says. She doesn't want to be a superhero anyway, if it means getting hurt like Sam. Speaking of which.
"How's Sam?"
"He's good. Real good. He paints a lot."
"Can I see?"
"You'd have to ask him yourself."
"Where is he? I wanna talk to him."
"Let me see if he's up to it, hang on."
Sam is up to it. He is very much up to it, she notices. He looks well-rested and he's gained a little weight, a little color in his cheeks. His hair is getting very long and she makes sure to tell him, and Dean laughs and teases him ("I told you so!"), and Sam sticks up his middle finger at him. (Yuna copies him after, to see if she can do it. She finds it's actually kinda hard to raise a single finger at a time. Sam goes "no no no no Yuna no" and Dean says "that's my girl" but also not to show her mother, please.)
Every now and then Sam laughs low and cheerful, and she can't help but giggle along with him. She pokes her index fingers into his dimples. The sun is hot and bright and feels good against her skin, comforting, and she thinks it's warming Sam in the same calm way because he's sprawled out in the prickly, dying grass, his legs splayed open and his arms slack. He lies down and doesn't let Yuna sit on his stomach, but he's okay with her hands petting through his hair. They fall asleep in the grass like that.
She doesn't want her mom to worry so she leaves as soon as it starts getting dark. At her front door, there's a white envelope shoved into the crack. She grabs it out and wanders inside. It hasn't got an address, or even a name, but she can feel layers of paper inside. She opens it.
"Baby! I didn't see that you were home," her mom says right next to her ear. Yuna jumps. "Let me just - that's mine," she adds, and tugs the envelope out of Yuna's hands. "You see any more of these, you bring them right to me, okay? Okay," and she's gone, up the hall and into her bedroom with the door shut tight.
"You really like Sam and Dean, huh?" her mom asks her later, doing dishes in the sink.
"Uh-huh," Yuna says. "We're friends."
"They seem like nice guys. But even so, baby, you gotta be careful, okay?"
"Uh-huuuh."
"I'm serious, Yuna. If they ever make you uncomfortable you get out of there and call me right away, okay? And you stay out in the yard where I can see you."
"Yee-eess, mom,"
"You stay outside. If they invite you in, say no."
"I'll say no."
"Promise?"
"Promise."
Her mom stops accompanying her over to the neighbor's house. Yuna thinks partially it was because she was coming to trust them but also because all the strict supervision was cutting into her soap-opera-watching-time.
Yuna is glad to be rid of her mother because this means she can ask superhero questions without breaking her promise. For instance:
"Dean. Can you read people's minds?"
Dean seems to think this is very funny. "Naw, Yuna, sorry. That's more Sam's department."
"Sam can read minds? Sam. What am I thinking about."
Sam looks a little freaked out, which is understandable, because if you can read minds it'd probably be something you wanted to keep under wraps.
"Don't worry, Sam, I won't tell," she says. "Not even my mom."
"You promise?" he says.
"Promise," she agrees.
Sam nods and then scrunches up his face kinda weird. He pinches the bridge of his nose. "You're thinking that... Dean smells funny - "
"Am not!"
"And he's getting fat off your mom's cooking, really fat - "
"I swear Dean that's not what I'm thinking I promise - "
"And he's not even half as cute as he thinks he is, but you're too nice to tell him otherwise - "
"All right, bitch, you asked for it," Dean's growling, and then - oh, wow - he pounces on Sam, and they're scuffling in the grass, and Yuna has to jump back to get her toes out of the way. She is worried for a moment but they're both grinning and laughing like crazy, and Dean lets Sam flip him over and pin his arms behind his back.
"Say uncle, jerk," Sam says.
"Okay, jeez, uncle. Geddoff, bigfoot, you're smothering me here."
They roll apart, still laughing. Dean claps his brother on the shoulder.
They are the goofiest pair of superheroes on the planet, and she loves them.
Yuna isn't worried about Sam anymore.
"It's book club," her mom says. "Don't get underfoot. Go to your room. Yuna! Did you hear me? Stay out of the living room - "
And oh my God, Dean is sitting huge and hulking and out-of-place between two tiny wrinkled little halmoni, who are sipping coffee and speaking a mile a minute. Dean's eyes are flicking back and forth between them as they chatter, cupping his mug like it's a fragile teacup and not a hulking white monstrosity with a bunch of ugly, misshapen tabbies printed on the side. She is only picking out about one word in ten from the halmoni, but they are absolutely talking about how handsome Dean is. She hears them say kyeolhon-a, marriage, more than once.
Also in the room are all the ladies from her mom's church group, a couple aunties, Ms. Bole and Elizabeth-The-Babysitter, and, incongruously, Sam, who is sitting quiet and content in an armchair to the side. He's got a book in his lap and a tiny, secretive smile on his face.
She's surprised he's brought a book, actually. Even she knows that "book club" is code for "sit around and gossip about the neighbors and brag about our children". The halmoni don't even know enough English to get through an entire book anyway. But there's Sam with his book and his smile, oblivious and ready to talk literature.
Dean just looks plain terrified.
"Yuna", he says, relieved. "Are you gonna sit in?"
She shrugs. "Mom'll kick me out soon."
"Oh," he says, disappointed, and isn't that an ego booster.
"Maybe I can stay," Yuna allows.
"Please," Dean says. "I haven't even read the book. I'm just here 'cuz of Sam."
"He looks happy," she says.
"He would, the giant nerdo. He reads for fun."
"My favorite book is Harry Potter," she tells him.
"Oh, no. Now there's two of you."
"Ho-kay!" her mom is saying. She's finished setting up all the little banchan dishes on the coffee table. Some of it looks pretty okay. Her mom didn't cook any of it, of course - it's all Ms. Park's, who loves gochujang with a passion - it's just tradition to leave out fingerfoods for the book club ladies (now +2 jumbo-size men). It's also tradition for most of it to be fermented, spicy vegetables.
Dean is looking at the side-dishes like they're going to bite him. She doesn't blame him.
"There are peanut M&Ms in the side-drawer," she informs him, and gets them out.
"My savior."
"Let's get into it," her mom is saying over her. "Who wants to talk about The Secret History?"
Yuna is impressed. They are actually talking about books. Usually at this point Ms. Bole and Elizabeth-The-Babysitter have wandered off into the kitchen along with the three youngest members of the church group to get drunk, the aunties are badgering her mother about getting a boyfriend, and the elderly ladies are griping about their grandchildren in English that ranges from fluent to nigh-incomprehensible.
But today is different. Today, there is Sam and Dean, and the Unofficial Official Willow Book Club is going to talk about books.
One of the church ladies coughs into her hand. "I, um - the main character. He's very, uh, interesting."
"Except he's not the focus of the book, and I think that's fascinating," Sam says, and everyone swivels to look at him. "He narrates, but I wouldn't call him the 'main character'. The attention is on the other members of the group, he's just a stand-in for the reader."
"He's equally important, though," says someone else, and they're off arguing about books. At book club.
Sam's enthusiasm is catching. Mostly everyone seems to have actually read the book, so they're more than capable to enter the discussion. And they're having fun. There is a lot of scolding and laughter and page-referencing, and dangerous overzealous coffee-mug-gesturing, and Yuna's mom looks contrite but also bemused. Sam has gotten into a passionate argument over the relevance of Grecian symbolism with a middle-aged church lady with a perm and thick reading glasses. Dean is eating M&Ms by the fistful.
Yuna tugs his sleeve. "Dean. Come watch Spongebob."
"Gladly," Dean says, and they do until Sam pokes his head in the door a couple hours later.
"Hey, uh," he says, and Dean's up and at him in a second.
"You good?" Dean asks.
"Yes, Dean," Sam says. "Everyone's leaving, though. Sorry to break up your think-tank."
"Spongebob is meant for adults, too," Dean says. He seems offended. "It's got jokes for - "
"Yeah, sure, it's the Joseph Heller of cartoons. C'mon, dude, I'm hungry. Joo-Eun's given us leftover pie."
"You should've said. Let's go, big guy. Night, Yuna," he adds, and waves at her. She smiles and waves back.
They wander away, Dean's voice fading down the hallway.
"What is this? Is that a phone number? Jesus fucking Christ, dude."
Sam is a regular at book club after.
She's noticed a strange pattern with her mother: as Sam gets better, her mother gets twitchier and twitchier. Also, she's smoking again (the church ladies scold her for this with vigor) which she hasn't done for years. Yuna doesn't mind, though. When she smells the smoke caught in the sofa and the carpet, her brain says, home.
But even though Yuna likes the smell, it still indicates that something's off with her mother. She locks all the doors and windows at night now and makes sure to sweep their curtains shut before she goes to bed, like she's afraid to let the night inside. She has tense, quiet conversations in the kitchen with Ms. Bole that peter off whenever Yuna wanders by, and Yuna finds a pocketknife tucked in her purse (actually, that has been there for a while, but now it's placed in an easy-to-access spot and not sifting around with the lipstick/pens/notes/change slush that builds up in every purse ever, where it used to be).
Yuna's on the alert but she doesn't notice anything out of place. Everyone else seems just fine: the book club ladies (+ 2 men) aren't feuding, Emily from two houses down is being nice to her for a change, Dean is plying her with home-baked goodies (recipes courtesy of her mom) and Sam's getting into watercolors. It's summer and warm and good and sweet and she wants it to last forever.