Chapter Text
Bobby returned from Lincoln in the late afternoon, dead tired. Lou met him at the door, eyes bright with relief, and he wished he could have found it in himself to smile at her before hauling himself to his room to sleep off the trauma of the last few days.
The next morning, to his distaste, found him chained to his desk with phone calls. There were, understandably, more demon attacks than ever, and hunters all over the country were panicking and calling him up to find out just what the hell was going on.
Lou crept into the room just after noon with a plate in her hand, which she offered to him silently. He took it with a nod of thanks, occupied with the shrill sound of a hunter in New York state asking why there had been four possessions in one town over the course of only a few days.
Lou took a seat on the little couch under the window, appearing to wait patiently for him to hang up.
“You need something?” Bobby asked, stirring the lasagna around on his plate with his fork for a moment.
“Can I, um, read?” she asked, voice squeaking slightly. She cleared her throat, and looked at the floor. “These books, I mean. They’re, they, uh. They look interesting.”
Bobby glanced at his library, stacks and stacks of organized chaos that had taken over his house over the past few decades. “If you want,” he said. “That’s what they’re for, I guess.”
Lou smiled, cheeks pink (a healthier color than the sallow, jaundiced look than she’d been sporting for the last week) and got up to peruse the stacks silently, fingers ghosting over the books’ spines thoughtfully.
“Is all of this stuff real?” she asked finally.
Bobby bit back the sarcastic “what do you think?” that came to his lips, and gave her an actual answer instead. “Some of it. Some of it’s just crap and superstition. Gotta do some digging when you need information sometimes.”
Lou nodded thoughtfully, and carefully extricated a particularly old leatherbound book that had once had the title stamped across the cover in gold leaf. She flipped through it, brow furrowing.
“Is this in Latin?” she asked finally.
“Probably,” Bobby said. “A lot of lore is, especially for spells.”
A wistful look crossed her face. “I always wanted to learn Latin,” she said softly. “I was going to take it in college.”
Bobby’s heart ached, but he didn’t say anything. Lou didn’t either for a moment, before she sighed. “I managed to get enough money for one semester,” she said, “since I wasn’t…staying on campus...” She said that slowly, like she was choosing her words carefully. “I figured if I worked hard enough I’d be able to get another semester after that.”
She put the book back on the stack, biting her lip. “But I—“ she stopped, and her voice got very, very quiet. “It was too hard. Too expensive.”
The ache in his heart grew, but before he could bring himself to say something, Lou sniffed loudly and wiped her eyes. “Fuck it. I’m here now.” She gave him a watery smile. “Do you, um, speak Latin?”
Bobby nodded, speechless. Christ, was she ever a Winchester, burying pain like a corpse in her own chest.
“Could you teach me? I learn fast, I promise.”
Bobby went to answer her, then paused. “Why?”
Lou shrugged. “It’s something to do. And I’ve always wanted to learn.”
He was quiet for another minute before he finally nodded. “I think I’ve got some notes around here somewhere,” he said. “I’ll see if I can find them.”
Lou beamed at him, and Bobby couldn’t help but smile back.
After so many years of dealing with Dean’s disregard for books, Lou’s passion for them was refreshing. It became routine for her to pad down the stairs every morning around ten and then eventually into his office, two cups of coffee in hand and a book tucked under her arm. Even on mornings that Bobby was busy with cases, she settled onto the couch with the Latin texts and studied them quietly, mouthing some of the words and grinning to herself when she thought he wasn’t looking.
Latin turned out to be one thing of many that Lou found fascinating. Bobby watched as book after book of obscure myth disappeared and reappeared a week later, scraps of paper peeking out from between the pages. Lou took to carrying a notebook around with her and scribbling in it whenever she seemed to find something interesting.
It was a little like watching Sam research for a case, save for the expression of rapt enthusiasm on Lou’s face. Slowly, Bobby stopped worrying about her so much. Stopped trying to figure out why she was so interested in the books he kept in his study.
It didn’t look like she was trying to become a hunter.
Just a kid.