Complicated Monsters {teensybang fic}
Title: Complicated Monsters
Author: smells_corrupt
Artist: serenada_art
Fandom: SPN canon
Pairing(s): Ruby/Sam
Word count: 5,377
Rating: pg-13
Genre: Gen, and romance
Contents: Mentions of sex and bloodplay, brief nudity, Lilith being Lilith, brief mentions of Hell, and Season 4 canon compliance.
Summary: There will be songs written about this someday.
A/N: I wanted to explore the summer between S3 and S4 form Ruby’s POV, because I think that’s a really interesting time for her, for her plan, and for her relationship with Sam. Dean’s still gone and the angels have yet to appear, so for a few months it’s relatively smooth sailing towards springing Lucifer. There are a lot of references to events/characters from S3 and S4, especially I Know What You Did Last Summer. The title comes from a verse of Paradise Lost, discussing Lucifer’s loyal followers. It seemed appropriate for Ruby.
Thanks: I have people to thank! I had a blast doing this, and it’s mostly because of y’all. So much thanks to serenada_art for the amazing art and title card and section separators, and for being so nice and easy to work with, and did I mention the gorgeous art? Everyone please go check it out! Another huge thanks to gryfndor_godess for being a kick-ass beta, and for telling me about the bang, in the first place :D And, last but definitely not least, Thank you to the mods for making a fun and easy bang challenge!
June
It’s odd, Ruby decides when she’s halfway between the hospital that she threatened her way out of and the abandoned house where she knows Sam is staying, to be alone in a borrowed body. She’s grown accustomed to the presence of the host while topside, and the absence of a physical body while down below. She’s grown accustomed to dealing with an influx of memories and impulses, echoes of life that isn’t hers to claim. Information she has to sort into “use” and “discard.” The sort of information that made blending into the human domain just a little bit easier.
After all, before The Gate opened, she’d often gone ages between visits to Earth. She was old and strong, but it still wasn’t always easy to make it past the others. They didn’t understand her, and it made them angry. It made them violent. Honestly, she’d be far more offended by their open disdain, if not for the fact that those qualities they mocked-loyalty, a connection to humanity, the ability to love something or someone besides herself-were the very qualities that drew the attention of Lilith. Lilith, who remembered being human and remembered being saved. Lilith, who loved Lucifer so much she planned to sacrifice herself to bring him back. Lilith had needed a partner, and strange little Ruby with her bizarre attachment to her former humanity, was the only one Lilith could trust.
Nothing Alistair ever did to her, for fun or practice, could take that away.
The things he did to her though… If Ruby had nightmares, Alistair’s rack would be featured more than once.
Ruby is almost certain that he’s the one who now have Dean Winchester. The idea of being tortured by Alistair or his students, straight from humanity, is almost enough to make her feel sorry for Dean. Almost. It’s beyond enough to make her incredibly grateful that Ruby-the-Witch hadn’t been important enough to be broken by anyone other than the demon who owned her soul.
But still, the absence of a second being within the body-her body now and only hers-is weird in ways she wasn’t expecting. She feels something close to naked and it’s…disconcerting. To say the least. Because she may never have forgotten what it felt like to be human, but somewhere along the way, she’d forgotten what it felt like to have a body that was all her own.
She kept the hosts nearly unconscious, of course-they made far too much noise otherwise-but other things were less simply done away with. Thing like muscle memory and cravings. Ruby never would have discovered the glory of French fries, if her last host’s stomach hadn’t contracted with phantom hunger when she walked past a Wendy’s.
Ruby catches a glimpse of her dark hair in the rearview mirror as she turns off the interstate. That was going to take some serious adjusting as well. For as long as she can remember, she’s been choosing hosts by type. Medium height, slight build, blonde. She knows it’s a direct result of her appearance when she was a human, but she doesn’t know if she’s been choosing hosts who are copies of her human body, or exact opposites.
She remembers being human, but she doesn’t remember what she looked like.
**
Twelve miles from her destination, Ruby stops at a Wal-Mart and crosses her fingers that it’s late enough that it will mostly be empty. There are few things worse than the watchful eyes of a small town. Being judged by strangers makes Ruby’s wrists itch, like she’s tied up again and her skin burn with the memory of the flames. It makes her want to teach them all a lesson. She can’t though. Not anymore.
Now that she’s made it back to Sam, it’s more important than ever that she avoid doing anything that could draw unwanted attention. Leaving some artfully arranged corpses in the craft aisle, for example.
Luck seems to be on her side though, because the only people around are the red-eyed kids working the night shift. They barely seem to register that a woman in a t-shirt and scrubs has appeared and that suits Ruby’s needs just fine. She grabs a basket and heads towards the clothes.
In the dressing room, surrounded by piles of clothes that she’d grabbed at random, guessing on her size, Ruby stands naked under the fluorescent and examines her new body.
Shorter than she’s used to, but she already knew that. Curvier, too. She runs her fingers over her rib cage, under her breasts, down across her stomach, to the hollows of her hips, and the tops of her thighs. She studies the bones in her wrists, feels for the pulse point there, and then for the one just beneath her jaw. Her blood thrums steadily under the surface of her skin, and when she stands completely still and concentrates, she can almost feel it everywhere, pumping through her entire being.
Her body.
Not borrowed, not stolen, not this time. This body may have belonged to someone else-some anonymous and unwanted girl who died alone in a hospital-but it’s hers now. Her bones, her skin, her blood.
Her blood.
Someday soon she will draw it herself and she will use it to shape Sam into something new. Something strong enough to raise Lucifer. Sam is the only one who can do it, and she is going to be the one to get him there, the one to ensure that He will be risen.
Her brains, her blood, her boy. Songs will be written for them, someday.
Ruby shivers and turns back to the task at hand.
**
Forty-five minutes (and an irritating round of trial-and-error with the bra selection) later, Ruby waltzes towards the sliding doors, outfitted in jeans, a tank top, and a pair of boots; a medium sized duffel bag-containing a second pair of pants, two packs of cotton underwear, three bras, five shirts, various toiletries and eleven CDs-hanging from her shoulder. It’ll do for now, and eventually she’ll make it back to where she stashed her car, so she can retrieve the other things she’s accumulated living topside. None of her old clothes will fit, but she wouldn’t mind getting her iPod and her jewelry.
“Hey! I didn’t see you pay for anything in there.”
Ruby sighs and turns to face her accuser.
The kid who stops her isn’t even working. She’s leaning up against the building, wearing a leather coat that’s far from seasonally appropriate, and there’s a cigarette dangling from her mouth in what’s probably supposed to be a badass manner.
“Yeah, that’s because I didn’t.”
Little Miss Justice pushes off the wall and saunters forward. She’s about the same size as Ruby, and clearly thinks she’s menacing, despite her obvious youth. It would almost be endearing, if it weren’t so damn irritating.
“I really think you should reconsider.”
The cigarette drops to the asphalt and is ground out under the girl’s heel. She’s right up in Ruby’s space now, and Ruby has had about enough. She’s got places to be, suicide missions to stop.
“I really don’t think I will.”
Her eyes go black. Teenage Vigilante gasps and steps away.
“Wh-who are you?”
Ruby lets her eyes flicker between demonic and human for a moment before answering.
“No one you want to mess with. Now. I’m going to walk away, and you’re not going to try and stop me because that’s the only way I’m letting you walk away. Understand?”
The girl nods and backs up several more steps.
Ruby smiles. “Wait.”
“Yes?”
“Give me your jacket.”
It’s nice, almost definitely real, and her last jacket was ruined and lost when her last body bled out next to Dean Winchester’s.
The girl stares at her, like maybe it’s a trick.
“Don’t make me ask twice.”
The jacket fits perfectly. Ruby rolls her shoulders underneath the leather and grins. She’s going to win the war in this jacket.
July
When Sam comes back for her and burns one of her would-be captors into the floor, she’s relieved.
Those two, they weren’t Lilith’s, which means that someone has finally figured out that The-Traitor-Ruby and Sam Winchester are going after Lilith. She wishes that it were all some elaborate trick to convince Sam that killing Lilith really is worth giving up his control over his power. But it had been very, very real and her life had been very, very much in danger.
So, yeah, her instinctive response is relief.
Until she remembers the way Sam had stormed out earlier, pushing her own damn knife to her throat and leaving her shaken and scared, because this was not in the plan, it was a trap, and Sam wouldn’t even care if she could tell him, because death is what he’s after.
Until she remembers the five minutes she spent on auto-pilot, tearing around the abandoned house to gather their handful of belongings and numerous weapons, tossing things into both of their bags at random, because five minutes was still too long a delay, but they can’t come back to the house, not if there are demons nearby who have clearly figured out where they are hiding. They have to leave, to go somewhere else, anywhere else, and she’d probably forgotten things in her haste but five minutes was all the time she was willing to spare before going after Sam.
Until she remembers the way her knuckles had been white on the steering the entire drive, and that she’d been scared for him as much as she’d been scared for herself and scared of what would happen if all her work was wasted over a trap.
All that comes rushing back, while she’s staring at the scorch marks on the carpet and instead of feeling relieved, she feels angry. Furious. She’s so mad at him she can barely see straight. He’d fucking scared her, and now the bastard has the nerve to stand in front of her and ask her if she’s okay.
She doesn’t answer.
She could have died. He could have died. He’d pressed a blade into her skin and marched off, fully intending to die and ruin everything. Of course she’s not okay.
He follows her out of the house to where both of their cars are waiting, and watches while she throws everything she has in her car into his trunk. She’s riding with him from now on, and until she decides he can be off suicide watch he’s just going to have to deal. Her car is stolen anyway, hotwired in the hospital parking lot. Leaving it here is no great loss.
“Keys.”
“Excuse me?”
“Give me your keys. They knew where we were, and you know there will be more where those came from-probably lurking around the house waiting for us-so we need to get out of here now, and I don’t trust you to not drive us off a bridge or into a tree. And I’m not taking my own car because you are staying in my sight until I decide otherwise. Suicide missions get your private time privileges revoked, are we clear?”
He hands them over, and tries to look contrite.
“Ruby…”
“No. You don’t get to talk. Not right now. You walked straight into a trap, and wouldn’t listen to me, and threatened me with own knife, and I thought you were going to die, and you scared me!”
“I didn’t mean to-“
“Bull. You didn’t care. You were so set on making a martyr of yourself, you weren’t thinking. And it wouldn’t have even mattered! If we’d lost? I’d be on the rack, probably right there next to your brother-who would be so pissed at you right now, I’d look understanding in comparison, by the way-and you would be dead, and Lilith would still be here, and you would have died for absolutely nothing. That’s not martyrdom, or selflessness, that’s fucking suicide, and you know it. So you’re getting in the car and we’re driving until I say we quit, and you aren’t going to talk to me until I say you can. Are we clear?”
It’s a hundred miles before her hands stop shaking.
He’s such an idiot, and he came so close to screwing everything up so badly that all her sacrifices and all her efforts would have been for absolutely nothing, and Lilith will tear her apart if it goes wrong, and she almost lost him to his own stupid thirst for vengeance, and she’s so fucked, because being that concerned about Sam simply because he’s Sam was never part of the plan, and she doesn’t know when he became so vitally important to her outside of her designs for him, but he is, and she is just so incredibly fucked.
She pulls off on the shoulder of the empty back road they’re on and pulls him as close as she can with both their seatbelts in the way, and kisses him too hard and too messy, and it’s the first time they’ve done this without it being a lead-up to something more, and this is certainly some sort of line that they can never cross back over, but she needs to feel him warm and alive under fingers, right now. Screw the future, they’ll figure it out as they go.
“I’m sorry.” He says when she pulls back.
“I’m still mad at you.” She responds.
He shrugs. “I’d be mad at me, too.”
“Damn straight. You can start making it up to me by finding something in that tape collection that’ll keep us awake long enough to get to a motel.”
***
Sam passes out cold before they get to the motel, and barely wakes up long enough to stumble into the room and collapse on the bed. Ruby watches him sleep while she sorts through the mess of their duffels. It took a lot out of him, killing that demon earlier. Saving her life.
She spots one of her knives mixed in with a pile of Sam’s shirts and her extra pair of jeans. She takes it out and runs the point across her palm. It’s time, past time probably, that she slot that last part of the plan into place. It’s the only way to pull off what they need to do, no matter how much she knows he’s going to protest.
She’s been putting it off, trying to find a way to bring it up without scaring him away. But Sam almost died tonight, and she almost went back to Hell, and that close call was exactly the final push she needed to act.
When he wakes up, hours later, she’s propped against the headboard, on top of the blankets and flipping through channels on the TV. The knife is on her nightstand.
“Hey.” He says, rumpled and sleepy and making it hard for to think about much other than the fact that this is the first time they have been together somewhere with a real bed.
“Hi.”
“Still mad?”
“Nah. I mean, you did save my life, and that was pretty cool. I forgot to say thanks for that earlier.”
“Not a problem. Ruby, I really am sorry about going off like that. I didn’t have my head on straight. At all.”
“No shit.”
Her voice is taking on an edge again, but this time it’s all concern and no anger.
“Listen, I want to talk to you about something. I know you used a lot of power, like, all of it, probably, to take that guy out. And you’re getting so much better. I know that. But, Sam, it’s not going to be enough. Not for Lilith.” She pauses. Takes a deep breath. “I know how, though. I know how to help you, how to make you even stronger.”
It takes a long time. A long time. And it ends up being a little more intense than she was expecting, and a lot more emotional, but eventually Sam caves.
When he pulls the blood from her wrist with his lips, Ruby sees stars.
August
Lilith has chosen a redheaded child as her latest body. Unsurprisingly, the flaming hair and pale skin do absolutely nothing to make the effect less creepy.
This one looks to be on the younger end of Lilith’s preferences, too. Carrot-Top barely reaches Ruby’s waist, and Ruby isn’t very tall.
“So,” She starts, as she reaches for door of the diner where Lilith insisted they meet, “remind me again why we couldn’t meet in Pippi Longstocking’s house?”
Lilith looks up and fixes her with unnaturally cold, hazel eyes.
“That location is known to many, and watched by several. We have extremely important business to discuss. I did not wish to be overheard. Unlike you, I still have a reputation to maintain among our brothers and sisters. A reputation I do not wish to lose by being seen with the traitor.”
Without another word, Lilith marches under Ruby’s arm and into the restaurant.
One thing Ruby suspects she’ll never get used to, is the power of the original demon, radiating through a tiny human girl.
The restaurant is crowded, and nicer than the places she and Sam have been patronizing all summer. She catches up to Lilith near the hostess podium, and tries not to flinch when Lilith reaches up and grabs at her hand.
A young woman leans over the top of the hostess stand, and smiles sweetly at Satan’s original creation. Lilith smiles right back, which is when Ruby’s discovers that the child has lost a tooth recently.
The hostess looks up at Ruby. “Just the two of you?”
Ruby nods.
“And would you like a kids menu? It comes with crayons.”
The last part is directed at Lilith, who is still wearing her adorable Jack-o-lantern grin.
“Can I, Mommy?”
Evil bitch.
“Of course, Sweetheart.” Ruby smiles, and plays along.
The hostess grabs their menus and a pack of crayons, and looks around the crowded dining room.
“Table or booth?”
Lilith’s grip tightens to point where Ruby is certain most human hands would shatter, but she doesn’t let her smile slip.
Instead she squeezes back, and looks between Lilith and the young woman with the menus, before saying, “Either is fine, but if you have something kind of, um, out of the way? I wouldn’t ask, but my daughter…she-well she can get a little overexcited and loud. We’re working on it, but y’know how it goes. I wouldn’t want to disrupt your other guests.”
She shrugs in what she hopes is an apologetic manner. It’s hard to tell, with Lilith adding her tiny, claw-like nails to the mix.
The hostess winks, and Ruby relaxes. Somewhat. Who knew kindergarteners had nails like that?
“No problem. Right this way please.”
They’re settled into a corner booth, near the door to the kitchen.
Lilith stays silent, working through the maze on her menu with a blue crayon, while Ruby peruses the menu and orders Coke and a turkey club for herself, and water and fish sticks for Lilith (“She just loves those things! Can’t get enough! Lil, honey watch where you’re swinging your legs, you kicked Mommy.”).
Under the pretense of looking at the completed maze, Ruby leans across the table and mutters,
“Whatever you’re planning, can it please wait until we get our food? I had to drive all night to meet you here, and I’m starving.”
Lilith looks up, and her eyes roll white for a split-second before she smiles again and says “Yes, Mommy.”
Ruby leans back in her chair, salivating at the thought of her sandwich. Lilith starts drawing some sort of runes on her menu. Ancient runes, drawn by a demon, with brightly colored crayons, on a cheery kids menu. There’s something you don’t see everyday.
When their waiter finally starts making his way to their table, Lilith waits until he’s roughly three feet away and then, grinning at Ruby, makes one final line with the green crayon.
And everything in the restaurant freezes, aside from Lilith and Ruby.
“You fucking suck.”
Lilith rolls her eyes. “Relax. You’ll get your precious food. But not until I give you the message I came to give. I’m simply assuring that we are safe. If anyone here is something other than human, they wouldn’t have frozen.”
Ruby shifts in her chair. Whatever it is that Lilith called her for, it has to be big. Any interactions between them are a calculated risk, especially these days.
“Alright. Shoot.”
Lilith’s hand tightens on her crayon, until melted wax drips to the table. Her eyes roll back to white, and her voice is suddenly anything but childlike.
“Dean Winchester is damned. The Righteous Man has broken the first seal. It has begun.”
The words echo across Ruby’s skin, up her spine, through her skull.
It has begun.
It has begun.
Across the table, Lilith is occupied with prying bits of wax from the lines on her hands. As though she hasn’t just changed everything. As though she hasn’t just announced that all they’ve been working towards, all they’ve wanted for so long is finally coming to pass.
“This is for real? It’s started? Dean really broke?”
She just needs to hear the words again. Needs to make sure this is real.
Lilith barely looks up from her fingers. “Dean Winchester broke under Alistair’s torture. He has taken up the tools himself. I hear he’s making a remarkable student.”
Her head snaps up suddenly, her focus zeroing in on Ruby. “Did you think he would not break?”
“I never doubted.”
Although she’d privately thought it might take longer. If anyone were going to be a stubborn ass and make things difficult for the rest of them, it would be Dean.
“Good. I’d hate to think that spending so much time with Sam Winchester had caused any of his unflappable and absurd faith in his brother to rub off on you.”
Ruby chuckles. “Not a chance.”
“Good.” Lilith says, again.
“Speaking of Sam, have you started him on the blood yet? The faster we get this whole thing taken care of, the better.”
One of the many things about Lilith that Ruby will never get used to, is the straightforward way she talks about their plans. Plans that end in her death.
“Yeah, about a month ago. He was already pretty strong, but then there was an, um, incident. Some demons must’ve heard that I’m helping Sam track you down, so they tricked him into thinking he was going after you, and taking care of them drained him almost completely. It was an opportunity, and I took it.”
She doesn’t like remembering that night. The raw fear when she’d realized that Sam wanted to die had been unsettling, but not nearly as much as the desperation she’d barely had to fake when she pushed her blade across her skin and begged him to take it, to get stronger, to never scare her like that again.
“How’d you convince him to drink it?”
Ruby picks at her fingernails. “The truth. That he needed it to get strong enough to kill you. That was all it took.”
Lilith has her tiny chin cradled in her tiny hand. “It’s yours, isn’t it? You’re giving him your blood.”
It isn’t a question.
Ruby stares steadily back at Lilith. “Yes. He won’t drink it from other demons, not when he’s about to pull them out of their bodies and leave a human behind. It was easier this way.”
She doesn’t say that it was her idea to begin with, that she hadn’t even tried to get him to use other demons It had always been her plan to use her own blood.
Her blood to save Sam. Her blood to raise Lucifer.
Lilith shrugs. “Your call, I guess.”
With a wave of her fingers, she unfreezes the restaurant.
Ruby assumes that they’re finished, but while their waiter-Joe, according to his nametag-slides Lilith’s plate onto the table, she turns to Ruby and asks, with all the bright curiosity of a child,
“Mommy? Are you fucking Sam?”
Ruby chokes on her Coke. Joe chokes on nothing. Lilith smiles and calmly eats her fish sticks.
A grown man who has to wear a nametag to work is totally calling Ruby’s parenting skills into question, and Lilith is silently judging her from her the other side of the table, but Ruby can’t find it within herself to care.
The First Seal is broken.
It has begun at last.
September
After nearly a week of nothing, one of Ruby’s contacts finally comes through and when Sam steps into their room with take-out bags in hand she can’t even pretend to conceal her excitement. It’s been nice, staying in one space for more than a day, but she’s beyond ready for some action.
“We got a lead! The demons we’re looking for, they’re in Pontiac.”
Sam goes completely still, and something wounded skitters behind his eyes. The only time she’s seen him react to anything like this, it has involved Dean. Ruby’s heart sinks.
“Sam…”
“That’s, uh, that’s near the place where we--Where Dean’s-“
He sets their dinner on the table and sinks into the chair, his absurdly long body folding up in a way that should be comical, but is actually just sad.
Ruby sighs. “We don’t have to go. Sam, if you’re not ready to go back, we can wait. They’ll move on and we’ll find them again.”
It’s a little unnerving, how much she means the words. How much she wants to shield Sam from the pain of returning to his brother’s final resting place.
Sam shakes his head. “No, it’s fine. I’ll be fine. Besides, I wouldn’t mind, y’know, visiting him.”
Ruby crosses the room to sit on his lap. She should at least attempt to give him some blood tonight, he’ll need it to take care of the demons, but for now she keeps it to herself, opting instead to run her fingers through his hair, and press a gentle kiss to his lips.
“Okay.” She’ll bring up the blood later.
But, ‘later’ turns into ‘when we’re in bed,’ turns into ‘tomorrow.’ Sam spends the night wide-awake and lost in thought, and Ruby spends the night holding as much of him as she can and trying not to think about anything.
**
By the time they get close to town, it’s late afternoon. The demons are supposedly holed up in a diner somewhere, and it would probably be easy to track them down, but Sam hasn’t slept or consumed any blood in at least twenty-four hours, and Ruby’s not exactly feeling up to a big fight, either.
Instead of telling Sam that she knows where to look for the demons, she suggests looking for a motel.
He grunts noncommittally, and she takes it as agreement.
The car falls silent again, until she spots the names of local lodging listed on a sign by the exit.
“Hey, Sam?”
“Yeah?”
“You feel like being fancy and going in for ‘The Astoria’? I bet the décor has to be seen to be believed.”
He glances at her and she raises her eyebrows and smirks.
“I bet if we ask, they’d put us in a room with a heart-shaped bed.”
Sam’s startled laughter fills the car, and Ruby leans back into her seat.
Mission accomplished.
She just won’t dwell on the way ‘make Sam smile’ has replaced ‘make Sam stronger’ as the days mission.
When they pass into the city limits of Pontiac, Illinois, something shifts in the atmosphere. Something that sparks under Ruby’s skin and makes her shiver. It’s almost like the feeling she got when Lilith took her as close as they could get to Lucifer’s Cage.
She turns to ask Sam if he feels it too, but his jaw is clenched, his knuckles are tight on the steering wheel, and Ruby falls silent.
She wonders if, when the Righteous Man spilt blood in Hell, his final resting place became altered in some way. Echoing the power of Lucifer through the first broken Seal.
**
A day later, Sam’s finally gotten some sleep, there’s a partially healed incision marking the inside of Ruby’s thigh, and they’re sinking back into the comfort of routine.
When she swings open the door to their motel room, and is met with Dean Winchester, who is decidedly not the pizza she ordered, she’s nearly knocked flat by the shock. He shouldn’t be here, whole and human. Not when she has it on good authority that he’s most recently been wielding his own blade in Hell to carve into human souls. He broke, she knows he did, and ripped open the First Seal. That kind of damage can’t be undone, yet here he is in their doorway.
And Ruby is-
Ruby is happy. Not for herself, because God knows Dean being around is going to throw some serious kinks into her plan, but for Sam. Sam, who is getting so much stronger, but still wakes up crying for his brother at least once a week. She doesn’t care much for Dean, but one look at him is going to more to put Sam back together than she could ever hope to do on her own.
Besides, the important things haven’t changed. Dean still broke the First Seal, and Sam will still break the last. Lucifer will rise, and they will all be rewarded. Maybe Sam is just getting his reward in advance.
The shower cuts off, and that’s when things get a little chaotic.
Sam appears, and he and Dean are skirmishing, and Bobby Singer is yelling, and Ruby can only stand to the side and try to look confused, like she’s just some girl and not a demon who could clear up the entire identity issue in a hot second if anyone was inclined to ask.
Bobby finally gets through, and the violent portion of the family reunion comes to an end. Sam let’s himself believe, and then he and his brother are holding on to each other, and holding each other up, while she and Bobby hang on the sidelines.
“So are you two, like, together?”
The look on Sam’s face, when she asks, is priceless. But he reads between the lines, as she knew he would, and plays along. This isn’t the time to reveal her identity-or their mission-to Dean.
She dresses quickly, in the first clothes she can find, and hopes Sam has enough sense to keep the rest of her stuff concealed in the bottom of his duffel, until she can get it all back.
Sam doesn’t take his eyes off his brother until Dean ducks into the bathroom. Bobby’s disappeared, to the parking lot to get weapons and books, probably.
Sam finally meets her eyes. They don’t say anything, all too aware of the thin walls that would do little to keep their secrets, but the uncontrollable grin on Sam’s face says everything.
He crosses the minimal space between them in two large strides and before Ruby knows what’s happening, he has her face cradled in his hands and he’s kissing her through happy gasps of laughter.
The hell of it is she’s not doing a thing to fake her answering smile when he pulls back.
He’s so happy, happier than Ruby’s ever seen him, and she wonders, for a moment, if this is what he was like, before. Back when it was just ghosts and monsters, before demons and Hell, and psychic powers.
Before he knew he was special. Chosen.
Someday, he will be happy like this, all the time. Someday he will be rewarded beyond comprehension, as will she. Now, they just have to get there.
They will, she thinks, when the door to their room swings shut between them. It might take a little longer now, with Dean to work around (and whatever sprung him from the Pit, since she’d put good money on that being the source of the power she’s felt humming in the air), but they will get there.
Ruby and her blood and her boy are going to save them all.