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Libby was closing the coffee shop, and annoyed about it. She shared the long shift with Sagan, her messiest, least helpful, most outgoing coworker. Every order he took lasted 20 minutes because he chatted with everybody. “Must be nice” she thought for the millionth time “not to worry if a customer is going to follow you home or stalk you”. She was on her hands and knees wiping up the semi-dried oat milk that Sagan had spilled, ignored, and allowed to spread under the floor mat and counter. All the customers loved Sagan.
A reverberating crash caused Libby to instinctively cover her head and push herself further under the counter. A man came scrambling around the corner and slammed into the floor next to her. She caught a brief look of shock on his face before he launched at her and covered her mouth, barely making it in time to stifle Libby’s scream of alarm. They both cowered, her more than him, as an inhuman bellow echoed outside of the shop doors, rattling them. Slowly the man eased his hand away from her mouth and put a finger to his lips. Libby sat frozen in place.
“You’re closed, right?” The man whispered.
There was something familiar about him, but Libby couldn’t yet place it. Libby nodded. He leaned against the stacks of paper cups under the counter and sighed, looking relieved. They listened carefully, but no more could be heard. Libby’s brain slowly began to re-engage.
“What. The. Fuck.” She whispered angrily.
“You know Frankenstein’s Monster? It’s like that, but made of other monsters instead of people.”
She glared at him for a second.
“You know that doesn’t clarify anything, right? You know that doesn’t make any sense?”
“Ok, but the important thing is that it can’t come in here if it isn’t supposed to be here. That’s our theory anyway.”
“Theory??!” Libby discovered it was possible to yell whisper.
“Don’t worry. My brother has a trap set for it. We just have to hunker down here until he calls and gives us the ‘all clear’. I just need some place to hide that it had never been in. I assumed no one would be here.”
The reference to ‘brother’, and the casual mention of monsters triggered the memory Libby needed. She remembered him.
“You were here last year. You fought those blue things.”
“Oh you saw that huh” He looked at her more closely “Oh hey, you tried to sell me some flowery coffee drink!” He stuck out his hand “Dean”.
“Libby”
“Oh right. I remember you. What are you doing here so late? Don’t you have a boyfriend to go home to or something? No one’s coming to pick you up right? No one else is going to walk in right?”
She rolled her eyes so hard she found herself staring at the ceiling for a moment.
“Girlfriend?” He sounded almost apologetic.
“I don’t really date. It’s not really my thing.”
“What? A pretty girl like you? And a hard worker if I remember. You could have any gender chasing after you!”
She sighed internally. People were always trying to say things like that, thinking they were being nice.
“It’s not that I can’t” she explained as patiently as she could while huddled under the cash register of her second least favorite job “it’s that I don’t want to. I’m not attracted to people. Any people. And I don’t want to be. I’m content to have good friends, people I’m committed to platonically. I don’t want a physical relationship, and I don’t see why I should have to.”
It was a slightly more antagonistic approach than she usually took to explaining herself, but it was honest, and she wanted to put an end to any more suggestion that she might just have a self esteem problem. Which was definitely not the case.
“Huh. Ok. I don’t think I can relate, but if it works for you. You’re happy with friendships. I can see the appeal in that.”
Ok, close enough.
“And what about you. I know you have a brother. Don’t you have any friends you value?”
She absolutely was not going to ask about girlfriends.
“I have some friends. I have a best friend. Someone I guess you could say I’m platonically committed to. We travel together a lot, he helps us out on cases. We’ve saved each other’s lives dozens of times. We’ve even died for each other a couple of times. He’s got essentially all of human knowledge, and divine knowledge for that matter, stored in his head. He’s a serious badass, but goofy, you know? He’s got a way of making me smile when I least expect it.”
Libby stared.
“So, you have a best friend who you travel with, work with, who you would and do die for, who’s strong and smart and funny. How often do you guys hang out?”
“Pretty constantly. He’s helping my brother with the trap now. He kind of lives with us, as much as he lives anywhere. If he’s not off on some mission for Heaven he’s with us. I don’t know what we’d do without him. The last time he died I was useless for weeks. I just didn’t know what to do with myself.”
Libby stared at him. He was leaning back against the cups, sitting in a puddle of oat milk, waiting out a monster, and smiling thinking about this guy. God, Libby thought, compulsory heterosexuality is a mindfuck. The word besotted crept into her head. She wasn’t sure she’d ever applied that word to someone before. Why were people stupider about attraction than anything else in the world?
She was still considering what to say when Dean’s phone rang. A couple quick words and he hung up and stood up.
“It’s dead. Again. We’re free to go.”
He held out a hand and helped Libby to her feet.
“Can we give you a ride home on our way out of town?”