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Liv is tired and wet and probably has a bruise the size of Texas across her ribs from being flung against a wall by a ghoul when, on top of it all, her car decides to break down.
Great, she thinks. Just what she needed. She's probably miles away from any civilisation and seeing as it's very much a dark and stormy night, she doesn't expect another car to pass her in the next couple of hours. Great, she thinks again and unlocks her phone, hesitating a few minutes before dialing a number that is saved as Hunters Hotline.
"Hello?" a voice says at the other end of the line after a few rings.
"Hi, this is Liv from earlier today, the one who took care of the Ghoul?"
"Oh, yeah, I remember." She wonders who she's talking to there - all she knows is that it's someone who keeps an eye on which hunters are where and delegates cases accordingly. Rumor has it that one of the Winchester brothers set the line up, but Liv isn't sure if those rumors are credible. After all, if she is to believe even half of the gossip that gets tossed around hunter bars, the Winchester are way too important to have a phone hotline set up for other, less important hunters on top of everything.
"Did you run into any problems?" The person on the phone asks.
"Well, kind of..." She feels childish now, calling because of a broken-down car. "My car just broke down and I'm stuck in the middle of nowhere. Was wondering if there's any hunters nearby who could maybe pick me up or something." She adds her approximate location according to her phone's GPS and the woman hums. She can hear typing, then,
"Oh, great news! You're near Cas and Dean's place, should be fifteen minutes by foot, max. I'll send you their coordinates and text them that someone's coming."
Liv hesitates. The names sound awfully familiar, but she can't quite place them and doesn't want to ask, either. She probably just heard them in some gossip round, nothing to worry about.
The person on the phone continues, "alright, I texted you their details. They'll expect you when you arrive. And don't be intimidated, they can be a bit weird but under it all, they're big softies."
Liv exhales. Seems like the day isn't a complete disaster after all. "Thank you..."
"Charlie," they say.
"Thank you, Charlie."
"No problem, kid." With that, the line goes silent, and Liv grabs her leather jacket and a flashlight, checks that her favourite handgun is savely tucked into the back of her jeans and heads out into the night.
Thankfully, the driveway to the house isn't all that far down the road and the driveway itself is only a few hundred meters. Still, by the time she arrives at the porch of what looks like an old, recently renovated farmhouse, she's soaked to the bone. Great.
Hesitantely, she knocks on the door.
There are voices coming from inside, then, after a few moments, the door opens to reveal a man with dark tousled hair and a yellow flannel. He squints, tilts his head. "You must be Liv."
"Yeah, uh, hi." Liv tries to smile in a friendly way, but she's sure she probably looks more like a shivering mess in her wet clothes. "My car broke down a couple of minutes away from here, I talked to Charlie and she said to come by?"
There is clanging somewhere in the house behind the door and Liv tries to ignore the growl her empty stomach gives at the smell of something baked with apples that wafts towards the door. She catches a glimpse of the interior - bright and warm, a hallway filled with boots and piles of books and a few potted plants, doors leading to lit up rooms and a staircase leading, presumably, to the top floor. Someone shouts, "Is that Jack?" and then there's another man, blond and taller than the first man, also wearing the typical hunter flannel.
He, too, stops in her tracks when he sees her, close enough to the first man for their arms to touch.
"You the one Charlie called about?" he asks, voice gruff.
"Her car broke down," the first man says.
Man number two frowns. "Shit weather to get stranded." He pointedly looks out into the rain. Liv looks down at her soaked converse. The man speaks again, "You got anywhere urgent to be tonight?"
Liv shakes her head. "I was gonna crash at some motel."
Man number two frowns. "Yeah, no. How about you stay for dinner and crash in the guest room?"
"Oh, you don't have to -"
"Yeah, no, don't worry about it. We're expecting company either way, you burst right into our Sunday dinner plans. The more, the merrier." He grins, and somehow, Liv feels better immediately. "I'm Dean. This is Cas." He nods his head at the other man, who smiles and gives a dorky wave. The gears turn in Liv's head, but she still can't place the names and faces with a specific story.
"Come in, Liv," Cas says - whatever kind of name that is Liv doesn't know. She does come in, shutting the door behind her gently. Her wet converse squeak on the wooden floorboard and she winces.
"That won't do," Dean says, and then he shouts, "Hey kid!"
Somewhere above them, she can hear steps, and then a young woman around her age tramples down the stairs. "Is that Jack?" she shouts as she almost runs into the men, barely caught from slipping and falling to the floor by Dean grabbing her arm. Liv is impressed by his reflexes for a second, then the other woman says, "Huh?"
"This is Liv," Cas says. "Her car broke down, she's staying here tonight. Charlie called about her earlier."
The woman smiles. "Hi. I'm Claire."
"Alright, enough time standing around," Dean says. "I got stew on the stove and you -" he pointedly looks at Cas, who grumbles under his breath, "- got a table to set. Can you lend Liv some clothes while hers dry, kiddo?"
"I'm not a kiddo anymore, Dean," Claire says, but she nods. "Come with me, we'll get you dry and warm soon enough."
Dean and Cas disappear into what Liv assumes is the kitchen while she takes off her shoes and follows Claire upstairs. There are more houseplants, and more piles of books, and hunters gear scattered around everywhere - a gun on a side table, old-looking books with runes on them, something that looks like a katana casually leaned against a wall.
Claire shoots Liv an apologetic look. "It's really messy, I know. They don't really clean up their shit unless there's visitors, and we didn't expect you."
"I thought you were expecting visitors for dinner tonight? And also, do you not live here?"
Claire laughs as she leads Liv into a cluttered room filled with clothes all over the floor. "Yeah, but Sam and Eileen and Jack are family, they don't count. And I'm only here every now and then, it's not really my responsibility to clean the house - don't tell Dean I said that, though, he'll end up giving me chores or some shit like that." She starts digging through the clothes and tosses Liv a shirt, then a pair of worn-out jeans and a big hoodie, followed by a fluffy towel. "Here you go. I'm gonna give you privacy to change, just come downstairs once you're finished."
With that, Claire shuts the door and Liv is alone. She changes quickly, hangs her clothes over the heater in the corner in hope that they'll have dried enough after dinner that she can put the on again without them sticking to her skin. Thankfully, her short hair is towel-dried in a couple of seconds.
She has a quick look around the room and spots no less than three guns, most of them half-assembled, probably left there in the middle of being cleaned. On the bedside table is a picture frame with a photograph of Cas, Dean, Claire and another young man, grinning into the camera next to a sign that proclaims 'God is real'. Once more, she wonders what kind of hunter-family she landed in tonight.
As she walks downstairs, she notices that the walls of the hallway are full of picture frames, showing off photos of Cas, Dean, Claire and a few other reoccurring people. One or two faces she recognises from hunter bars, the rest are just as mysterious to her as the owners of the house. A selfie of Claire with rainbows painted on her cheeks, clearly at a Pride event, makes Liv smile. Sonthe usual hunter-typical homophobia won't be present tonight. There are a few artsy prints hung on the wall, a poster for a horror movie she hasn't heard of and another one with information about honey bees, of all things. When she enters the room that she saw Cas and Dean disappear into earlier she finds that it is a dining room space with a long dinner table bordering to a kitchen. There are even more house plants - someone in this house must really have a green thumb.
Dean is wearing an apron and bustling around the kitchen and Cas and Claire are in the process of setting the table. Cas looks up when she comes in and smiles and for some reason, she immediately feels calmer than she has all day. "Liv!" he exclaims. "Are you feeling better?"
Liv nods and is about to answer when the doorbell rings. There's a flurry of movement, Cas and Claire brushing past her in a rush, and by the time she has entered back into the hallway, the door is flung open and Cas and Claire are huddling around a young man. Liv recognises him from the picture in Claire's room.
From the kitchen, Dean shouts, "Hey Jack, come here, I can't leave the stove right now!"
The young man - Jack - squints at Liv just as Cas did earlier. He does look remarkably like Cas and Liv wonders if -
"Hi, I'm Jack," he says, raising his hand in a dorky wave.
"Jack, this is Liv," Cas says. "She's a hunter who got stranded and is staying here tonight."
Liv waves back at Jack with a grin.
"Jack, I swear to God -" Dean's voice comes from the kitchen and everyone except for Liv cracks up.
"Really, Dean, you swear to God?" Claire shouts back, but Jack has walked past Liv and entered the kitchen where Dean pulls him close, hugging him tighter than seems entirely comfortable.
"You good?" Liv hears him ask, his voice gruff but also softer than just before.
Jack's answer is muffled into Dean's shoulder, but soon they pull back and Dean grins.
"Alright, you assholes, it would be great if you could finish setting the table sometime this year -"
But there's another ring, and Claire, who's still in the hallway, turns to open the door again, revealing a comically tall guy and a rather small woman on the other side.
"Sam! Eileen!" She exclaims.
There's a round of hugs with Liv standing awkwardly on the sidelines. Then, Cas explains her situation to the newcomers and the tall man (they're all tall, but this one is just ridiculously so) turns to her with a grin.
"Hi Liv, I'm Sam Winchester." He extends his hand and Liv shakes it on autopilot, her entire brain shut down entirely.
This is Sam Winchester? Then that must mean - Her brain whirrs to connect the dots, to connect the stories of the epic Winchester brothers and their Angel Castiel to this lanky guy with a lazy grin and the Cas and Dean she met tonight. No way they are actually - She looks as they all interact, Sam going over to hug what is clearly his brother, Cas and Eileen signing to each other at a crazy fast speed, Claire and Jack giggling about something on Claire's phone, and she looks at the rug at the front door that just slid to the side a bit to reveal a hidden pentagram drawn on the floor, the gun resting next to the door on the table next to a set of keys, the broad shoulders of Dean under his flannel and the chaloused hands of Sam when she shook it and she realises that maybe, these people actually are exactly who she thinks.
Either way, she can't spend too much time freaking out about it because Dean is calling everyone to the table, proclaiming that his stew is ready and that they better sit down now or else there's no food tonight.
During dinner, Liv stays mostly quiet while everyone else launches into one conversation topic after the next, speaking over each other, talking about a hunt Claire just came back from, a film Jack saw, something about a bunker which Liv has no desire to find out what it means. All of them sign as they speak, some clearly more fluently than others. It's warm and cozy and Liv has half a mind to put down all the badass stories she's heard of the Winchesters and Co. and their World Saving Antics as exagerations and lies, if it weren't for the casual way they seem to talk about things that Liv has never even heard of - throwing around stories about Angels and Lucifer and God like they are featured in every normal dinner conversation.
"So how did your last hunt go? You took care of that ghoul a few towns over, right?" Eileen asks her.
Liv flusters and apologises for not knowing more ASL than 'Thank You' but Cas interrupts her,
"Don't worry, I'll translate."
Liv tells them about the Ghoul and how she got rid of him and Dean whistles, impressed. "You did that by yourself? Not bad!"
Liv hopes her blush isn't too visible.
After dinner is finished, they move to the sofas with plates of delicious apple pie and glasses of Whiskey for those who want them. At one point, Dean asks,
"You gonna stay here tonight, Jack?"
"Yeah," Jack replies with a grin. "But only if there's Krunch Cookie Crunch in the morning."
Dean's face lights up as his smile widens. "You betcha there's Cookie Crunch."
By the time Sam and Eileen head out to return to the bunker (which Liv still doesn't really want to know about), Liv has suppressed several yawns. Everyone goes to say goodbye by the door and Liv hangs back in the kitchen, loading the dishwasher.
Dean comes in a few minutes later.
"Hey kid, stop that. I'll do the rest. You head to bed." He calls out for Cas without turning to the door and within a few moments, Cas appears at his side, his arm casually sliding around Dean's waist.
Dean turns his head, then, to smile at Cas, his eyes crinkling. "Can you show Liv to the guestroom? I'll finish cleaning up here."
Liv's eyebrows rise when Cas sways forward just a bit, pecking Dean on the lips.
Then, he pulls away and turns back to Liv. "Alright, let's go."
By the time Liv is lying in bed in borrowed pyjamas from Claire, she's too tired to ponder much about the day's events. It's not every day you find out that two of the most famous hunters are queer, is the last thought going through her head before asleep with a smile on her face.