Work Text:
The Winchesters had been at Kinkos for an hour making a new supply of IDs. When they’d stopped at a liquor store the previous night to get a fifth of fuck-today, the clerk was amused that Sam’s fake ID said he was nineteen. Sold them the whiskey anyway.
“How old are you makin’ yourself?” Dean leaned over his brother like he was peeking at answers on a test.
“I’m twenty-six, Dean.”
“Yeah, but what if people ask you stuff about when you were a kid and you don’t know anything because you were born in ‘83 not ‘76? Quick! ‘70s cartoons pop quiz!”
“No.” Sam continued to patiently cut out passport pictures they’d taken at the drugstore that morning. “I’ll tell them I had an unconventional childhood. It’s not like we blend in now.”
“I put me down as twenty-seven.” Dean smiled proudly and slapped down a freshly laminated California driver’s license.
Without looking at his brother or the license, Sam said, “I don’t think Buffy cares how old you are.”
Snatching the fraudulent paperwork from the table, Dean shoved it in his wallet. “Who said anything about Buffy? Twenty-seven is halfway between the truth and the other truth. I didn’t say anything about Buffy,” he grumbled.
Sam put down the exacto knife so his brother could get the full effect of his eye roll. “I’m not sure if I should be surprised you waited until our second day at her house to makeout with her or just disappointed that you didn’t think through the consequences of your actions.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Don’t act like you don’t know. I walked in on you guys yesterday morning. Plus, all the giggling and the googly eyes. Years, I’ve watched you pick up women. I know all your moves.”
Dean protested with animated hands. “First of all, Sammy, if you think that was making out, it would explain your luck with the ladies. Second, if you knew any of my moves, young padawan, you’d be gettin’ laid a hell of a lot more often. And I don’t giggle! For your information, I have thought it through. Give me some credit, okay?”
Choosing to ignore the latest jabs at his sex life, Sam raised a skeptical eyebrow. “You’ve thought this through? And what? You’re just going to wait to bang her on our last night here?”
“No, damnit! I’m not goin’ to bang her. The women I hook up with ain’t lookin’ for much, so I’ll do. Buffy’s hungry for everything. She’s a card-carryin’ superhero who’s tryin’ to be even more. She has friends, family, roots. We’re only here a couple days – a week tops. She don’t need someone swoopin’ in for the night and disappearin’ on her. She deserves better than me.”
Looking at his brother’s crestfallen face, Sam almost felt bad for chastising him. He’d seen Dean hook up with everyone from doctors to barflies, a movie star to a (fallen) angel. Clearly Buffy was a completely different category in his mind, one that his low self view wouldn’t allow himself to act on, which was a safe thing as far as Sam was concerned.
“Well, that certainly explains all the flirting.”
Dean smiled wistfully. “I can’t help that. She’s too awesome to completely shut down. Hey, what about you and that Anya chick? Huh?”
Sam sighed and plugged his ears with headphones.
“The only thing that seems right is demons? There’s a sentence I hadn’t anticipated saying.” Xander, Buffy and Dawn were sitting in the Summers’ living room. His plan had been to take Dawn to the movies (and secretly get her some new clothes for school), but the story of the Winchesters had so far sidetracked their day.
“Yeah, they found some demons they’d had a few throw downs with, but they said their demons weren’t our normal spiney, stinky garden variety demons. Dean said the demons – and this is totally gross – wear people. Like, you can’t fight them unless they are possessing a human body, and even then there’s only one weapon they know of that can kill them.”
“Tell him the freaky part!” Dawn interjected.
“It gets freakier than being a demon dress? Oh boy! Do tell!” Xander clapped his hands with enthusiasm.
“Sam said the natural demon form they’re familiar with is some kind of black smoke, not the horns and teeth and ugliness we’re used to. When a demon possesses a person, their eyes turn black. Sound like someone we know?”
“Willow! But she was working some dark mojo because of Tara’s death. Wouldn’t a demon have just gone about its demony business no matter what Will was feeling?”
“Don’t know.” Buffy played with the fraying trim on the pillow in her lap. “I didn’t exactly want to ask the self-described ‘demon hunters’ if they thought my witch best friend may have been possessed when she skinned a guy. I need to get a better peek at their ‘To Kill’ list before I let them know anyone who I care about is not one hundred percent human.”
An engine rumbled outside. Buffy peeked out the window and grinned. Soon there was a knock at the door, which the Slayer bounced over to open. In walked two men, one with shaggy hair in a plaid shirt, the other a little scruffy in a faded Led Zeppelin tee. During a morning full of storytelling, Buffy had completely neglected to mention that the Winchesters were so Abercrombie & Fitch adjacent. Xander was certain, however, that this detail had not been missed by his friend.
“Hey, guys! I left all the books in the dining room.”
The one in the t-shirt put his hands up in disgusted protest. “I don’t wanna touch a book for a damn week.”
He moved with a swagger and looked at Buffy like he knew exactly what to say to get in her pants.
The tall one seemed irritated as he sat down at the dining table. “At least we have a lead, Dean.”
Knowing he’d been eclipsed for the moment by the bright new stars, Xander got up to introduce himself. “Hi! I’m Xander, Buffy’s friend. You may have not heard of me at all.”
Dean grinned. “Xander? Buffy? Anya? Do you people know anyone with normal names?”
“Well, my full name is Alexander ‘Officially Intimidated’ Harris. You can call me a complete wuss, but please don’t call me Al.”
To Xander’s surprise, Dean let out a deep, genuine laugh and stuck out a massive hand to shake. “You’re funny, Xander. I’m Dean. That’s my little brother, Sam.”
Gigantic little brother Sam gave a small wave before cracking open a book to study.
“Nice to know that people of the future have an improved taste in comedy. Buff, could I speak with you for a moment?” Xander lead his friend back to the living room. “Which one of these guys are you into?”
“Neither! God! What is it with you people?”
“Methinks the lady doth protest too much.” Xander put his hands on his friend’s small shoulders. “If you are, you are. Sometimes that can’t be helped. But be careful, okay? You said yourself you need to learn more about them.”
Over Buffy’s shoulder, he saw Dean and Dawn whispering. He slid something from his back pocket and gave it to the giddy teen.
“I think I’m going to stay here instead of taking Dawnie out,” said Xander.
Buffy brushed his hands away. “No, take her. I kept her cooped up a couple days ago when they got here. She’s driving me crazy anyway. Go talk about the secret crush you both think I have.”
“You sure?”
“Xander, I can kick their asses.”
“That’s my girl.” He kissed her on the forehead. “Hey, Dawnie! Grab your purse. Signs isn’t going to see itself! What are you eating?”
“Shh! Dean brought me Jolly Ranchers,” Dawn whispered conspiratorially.
Dean leaned in the doorway watching her peer out the window at the car driving away. Buffy Summers, the girl he would not be sleeping with, was equal parts girl next door and Girl Next Door the porno. Sam was nearly right. He’d had every intention of kissing her in the kitchen yesterday morning. The way the sun was spilling through the window, glowing on her golden hair and skin, she looked radiant. Now, leaning over the couch to see out the window, the tight curve of her ass in sinfully low-rise jeans, the black band of her thong peeking just above the waistband, he couldn’t help wondering once again what he was like in bed.
She turned from the window quickly, caught him staring, and smiled knowingly. “Is that six times now?”
“Can’t help starin’ at the prettiest girl around.” He grinned, unashamedly looking her over.
She cocked her head to the side and pouted. “So a prettier girl comes around and you lose interest? Is that how you work?”
Biting his lip and squinting he thought. “Prettier girl? Prettier. Girl. That must be one of those weird creatures we don’t have back home.”
“That was almost smooth,” she teased, a blush on her cheeks.
“So Xander is–?”
“An old friend. You know, one of these days, Dean Winchester, you’re going to have to do more than look,” she said as she brushed her bangs out of her eye revealing a large purplish-black bruise on her hairline.
Dean scowled and crossed the room. “What’s this?” he asked, his hand on her chin turning her head toward the light to get a better look at the injury.
“Your fights always go as planned?” She put a hand on his wrist, prompting him to loosen his grip. She kept her small hand on his, rubbing his palm with her thumb.
“You got in a fight between last night and now?”
“I told you. I patrol. Vampires rise almost every night. After you two left yesterday, I went out. Staked a vamp. Got thrown into a wall. Staked another vamp. I live a life of non-stop glamour.”
No, Buffy wasn’t a hunter. She was a one-girl army.
Holding her chin had turned into caressing her cheek. He wanted to kiss her. Lips parted and leaning into him, clearly she wanted him to. One kiss. One innocent kiss. But then what? The way she was responding to him, she didn’t want one kiss. One kiss. One caress. One long night together, and then he’d be gone? On the road again heading home, adding heartbreak to everything else she was dealing with. He dropped his hand and took a step back, grinning nervously.
“I, uh, gotta go help Sam,” he faltered.
Sam, who normally excelled at research, was completely sick of running this nightmare maze of problems. He stretched and popped his aching neck. Dean sat across the table from him alone. Buffy was nowhere to be seen. Had she even joined them? He’d been listening to music and couldn’t remember. Sam wondered if Dean had already pissed her off.
Enjoying the movement of his muscles, he headed to the kitchen for a glass of water. The dishes from their last few meals were still piled next to the sink. Sam made a mental note that they should buy dinner tonight before they ate Buffy and Dawn out of house and home. Trouble was, their fraudulent credit cards weren’t working, and they hadn’t made new ones. Luckily, Dean had taken some people to the cleaners in poker when they’d first left Sunnydale, but after paying for their one-star room at the Sunnydale Motor Inn last night, cash was low.
He drifted into the living room, not eager to resume his seat at the table. As disorienting as the last week and a half had been, it was relaxing too. They’d been on the run for nearly a year, dodging angels and demons at every turn; and when they weren’t hiding from the armies of Heaven and Hell, they were on the outs with other hunters who blamed them (semi-rightly) for the blood-soaked Apocalypse they’d been newly whisked away from. They barely slept, but last night, Dean had actually taken his shoes off and crawled under the covers when he went to bed, a bit of normalcy Sam hadn’t seen in months. Now he was looking at the smiling family photos of some sort of superhero, and his most pressing problem was stretching his legs.
He wanted to find everyone; he and his brother had lost enough people. If they were stuck in 2002, all the better. Bobby wouldn’t be wheelchair-bound and alone. Maybe they could kill Azazel before he got to their dad, which would stop the whole spiral that had even led to Lucifer’s release. Maybe he could save Jess…
Sam laid down on the couch, his legs spilling over the edge, and soaked in the bliss of this normal-person moment. Papers were strewn all over the coffee table. Curious, he picked one up. It was a second notice for the electric. Another was for water. A third a hospital bill that was about to go to collections. There was also a course list and a list of required items for incoming Sunnydale High freshmen.
“What are you doing?” Buffy snatched the papers from Sam’s hand.
“Sorry, Buffy! I didn’t see you there,” he said sitting up.
“I was upstairs folding laundry. Doesn’t mean you need to get snoopy.”
“I’m so sorry. I wasn’t trying to snoop, I swear. Just sort of in the habit of reading everything in front of me. Are you…budgeting?”
From the dining table, Dean wearily said, “Be careful, Buffy. Sam gets off on math.”
Her scowl softened. “You any good at this?”
“Well, I don’t have a household budget myself, but I can help you balance your income versus your expenditures.”
“I’m not really sure what you just said, but there’s nothing to balance. Right now, money just sort of flies away like a scared pigeon.”
“No job, huh?”
“Nothing I can hold. I was telling Dean about that nightmare, yesterday.”
“We are avoiding the Double Meat Palace, Sam.”
“I was planning on applying at a few places tomorrow.” She wrung her hands and cast her large green eyes to the floor. “Unfortunately, no one is exactly seeking ‘Part-time student with zero job skills who frequently shows up battered and bruised.’”
Sam bit his thumbnail and inspected the pile on the coffee table. Buffy sat next to him on the couch, her head propped up in her hands.
“This is going to sound unrelated,” he began, “but how old were you when your mom passed away?”
“Twenty. Why?”
“Well, she was kinda young, right? Definitely pre-retirement. She paid into social security but never got any of the benefit. You were an adult when she died, but Dawn’s still a minor. So Dawn can collect your mother’s social security benefits until she’s eighteen.”
Buffy covered her mouth. Her eyes watered. “Are you serious?” she asked through her fingers.
“Well, yeah–” and she was hugging him. Sam wrapped his long arms around her tiny frame. Over her shoulder, he noticed Dean scowling at him.
She pulled back, smiling ear-to-ear, and wiped fat tears from her eyes. “Sorry! You just solved some big problems for me, is all.”
Her face turned quizzical, “What do you do for money? Do you just get pick up odd jobs wherever you happen to be busting ghosts?”
“Yes.”
“Gambling.”
Buffy raised her eyebrows at Dean. Out of her line of sight, Sam pursed his lips and shook his head at his brother.
“My brother’s too modest to admit it, but he’s a pretty damn good pool shark. I prefer poker. Gotta have a solid exit strategy though. Bikers get pissed when you clean ‘em out. Short story is our lives sorta skirt what’s legal.”
Much to his surprise, the straight-laced girl who had just gotten emotional over social security simply said, “Huh.”
Desperate to change the subject, Sam asked Dean if he’d found anything.
“Yeah, zombies! Zombies are exactly the same. Dead is walkin’. Wants to snack on some people jerky. BAM! Bullet to the head!” Dean beamed at his brother. “Werewolves are similar, too. Same moon cycle. Same bitey transfer. Same silver bullet kill shot. Only, like the demons, they look less human than what we’re used to.”
Sam and Buffy both walked back toward the dining room. “That’s good, I guess, but how does this help us?”
“That book you were looking at yesterday, the Known Demons one? Azazel, Lilith, Alastair, Crowley? That’s too many familiar douche-bags to be a coincidence. I figure, there’s something about the demons that can sort of crossover between Sunnydale-land and our normal Crazytown. So why not look at some monsters? Maybe somethin’ else is passing through.”
“That’s actually not such a bad idea, Dean.”
“Try not to sound so surprised.”
Without warning, Dawn burst through the front door with two shopping bags and bounded up the stairs.
“Did you go shopping?” Buffy yelled.
“Tags are already cut off! I’m not taking anything back!” Dawn yelled back.
Xander wearily came inside. Buffy turned on him immediately. “Did you take her shopping?”
“She needed clothes for school.”
“Xander, I–”
“Forget about it. And if you’re pissed at me, just remember that I had to spend two hours at the mall with a teenage girl. I have suffered greatly. Here, I brought peace offering dinner.” He handed her and Sam brown bags from Gordo Taco.
Sam removed a burrito, which looked un-gordo in his large hands. “Wow, thanks, Xander.”
Dawn bolted down the stairs, snatched the bag from Buffy’s hand, and sat down to eat.
“Don’t mention it,” Xander said. “So, where are we on Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure?”
While his brother recapped, Dean picked up some of the books scattered around the room. Thinking they wouldn’t need Love Spells or the first four volumes of A History of Slayers as soon as they’d need a clear spot at the table, he carried them to the living room.
“They go on the bookcase, back there,” said Buffy pointing toward the back of the house. Slowly, she followed Dean.
“So that’s it.”
“What’s what?” he asked, keeping his eyes on the bookcase.
“Right now, my entire Scooby Gang is eating Tex-Mex in my dining room. We used to be bigger, more powerful. I had some friends who could command storms with the snap of their fingers. People with a thousand years of knowledge crammed into their heads. Warriors. Champions. We even had a vampire fighting for Team Good Guys. Now it’s just my squeaky little sister, and Xander, all-around nice guy who is not so much with the fighting.”
Dean glanced over at her. She was leaning against a desk, arms crossed, biting her lip and inspecting a spot on the floor. He barely knew her, but he knew she was thinking about losing, dying, about what would happen to her sister. He knew the look.
He hated to ask, but needed to know, “What happened to everyone?”
“Killed, crazy, missing, moved. Pick a poison. I’ve already swallowed it.”
Even though she wasn’t pouting, her sad eyes lent her a desperate, pleading look. She appeared so small and fragile, but he was certain this girl he had a hundred pounds and a head on could throw him across the room if need be. She wasn’t weak; she wanted something from him. He moved closer to her. Try as he might, he couldn’t escape the pull of her gravity.
“What’s that toy? ‘They weeble and they wobble but they don’t fall down.’ That’s me,” she continued. “I get knocked down; I get back up, and I come back swinging, too. Lately, though, life is bruising me more than monsters. I need time to get my bearings. So I’m calling in my favor.”
“How’s that?”
“My roommate Willow is in England right now. Let’s call it a spiritual retreat. She comes back in about five weeks. Hopefully, I’ll be working by then and balancing a couple classes, but I can’t exactly get that ball rolling if I’m spending every night fighting the undead.
“I’d like you and Sam to stay, just for a little while, just until Willow gets back. Normally, I wouldn’t ask someone to put themselves in harms way like this, but you seem bent on killing evil beasties once you leave anyway. I can teach you what I know about what’s here, what’s new to you. A few nights a week, if you and your brother could handle the staking while I study, I’d be grateful. So, what do you say? I know it’s pretty big favor.”
When he’d offered her a favor, he’d expected her to call them long after they’d gone and ask for help fighting a boss fight. Balancing life? That was unexpected and uncharted territory.
“I’ll have to run it by Sam before I say anything.” His rough voice was low and warm, but mostly devoid of flirt. “We don’t stay put too long. Five weeks would be a bit of a lifestyle change for us.”
“I understand. That’s a lot of pool to hustle. Laws to skirt.” She offered him a small smile. “Talk it over with your brother tonight and let me know. If you don’t want to spend a month plus in beautiful Sunnydale, I can’t blame you.”
Five weeks in a town full of monsters wasn’t a stretch. They had more research to do, and they could figure out the money. Five weeks keeping himself away from her kissable mouth and inviting body was another story entirely.
As she headed toward the dinner buzz in the dining room, she turned to look at him over her shoulder and smirked. “Seven.”