Supernatural Reverse-Bang Fill- "Take Two" (3/5)
Art Prompt Title: Untitled
Art link: Art Masterlist
Prompt Number: 1016
Artist: Farfadine
Fic Title: Take Two
Author: crazybeagle
Fandom/Genre: Supernatural Humor/Angst/Hurt-comfort
Pairing(s): Gen, none (Characters: Castiel, Ruby, Dean, Sam, Bobby)
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 13,750
Warnings: Language, allusions to torture and violence, psychological trauma
Summary: AU of 7.02. The Leviathans and the souls destroyed each other. But Dean, Sam, and Bobby know that things are never that simple. They know it for a fact when they find two dark-haired children, one wearing face of a former friend and one wearing the face of a former enemy, lying on the panic room floor....
Take Two
Chapter 3
A day and a half later and they were still at a loss as to what to do with their…acquisitions. First thing was first, though, Bobby dug up what turned out to be a few rituals to perform on Ruby. One was fairly straightforward and had only required raiding a couple closets, a spice rack, and a local butcher shop to acquire the ingredients, a spell that Bobby was familiar enough with from a few past cases, but only ever against enemies who he'd been able to reason with rather than been forced to kill-a spell that imposed a lifelong ban on the use of witchcraft. They'd done it to her while she'd been asleep the following night and she'd woken up utterly furious, the look in her eye promising imminent death to everyone in the immediate vicinity.
At that point, they'd had to resort to just letting her sit on Bobby's couch and seethe, her knees pulled up to her chest under another one of Dean's giant t-shirts, glaring at the television as though it had personally offended her. They hadn't tied her up again-Bobby had hid all the weapons in the house-but that didn't mean that they weren't watching her like a hawk.
Or Cas, for that matter. He was sitting on the couch as far from Ruby as possible, his hair wet from a shower, also in a tee paired with an enormous pair of boxers, his scrawny legs crossed and his eyes focused dully on the television-some old World War II documentary-as well. He'd barely said a word to anybody all day.
Though it wasn't like they'd talked to him all that much, either.
Dean and Bobby had both pulled up chairs in the living room, beers in hand, for lookout duty. Wasn't like they had anything better to do. Another earlier inspection of the panic room revealed that it was, in fact, empty, and either the Leviathans really were truly dead or had somehow escaped. Either way, for the time being, there wasn't all that much to be done except sit tight, wait for the pizza they'd ordered to arrive, and make that the backstabbing ex-megalomaniac-nuclear-soul-warhead-angel and the ex-evil-demon-bitch didn't get the drop on them.
And Sam was doing the dishes. They could hear water running and pots and pans clattering and shifting from the kitchen. He hadn't spoken much either, just assured Dean and Bobby he was "fine now, really," and fixed them coffee with breakfast before spending the entire day puttering around the kitchen, randomly cleaning and fixing things-unclogging the drain, replacing a few burnt-out light bulbs, organizing random papers and documents sitting on the countertops, and scrubbing every surface within an inch of its life. God knew the place could use it, but this was anything but an indication that Sam was okay…this was Sam distracting himself.
Because if last night's conversation, after Dean had come to find him sitting folded in on himself on the edge of one of the guest bedroom beds, was anything to go by-It's him, Dean. Lucifer. I'm seeing him.-then this was all anything but okay. To the point where Sam couldn't tell if he was still in the cage or not….
He didn't like to think about it.
Every time he'd come to try to check on Sam, keep him company, or offer to help him clean, Sam had just gotten flustered and began dropping things. So he'd eventually left him alone. Not that Dean was overly thrilled about Sam scrubbing pots and pans after the…coping mechanism…that Dean had taught him yesterday, driving his thumb hard into Sam's cut hand and dripping blood onto the worn quilt on the bed to bring Sam back, here, with him. But Sam had just found a pair of rubber gloves under the sink, stretched them on carefully over the wad of gauze wrapped around his hand, expression practically daring Dean to try and stop him.
Dean hadn't.
At any rate, he was probably better off alone than he was hanging out with these two.
And speaking of these two….
What the hell were they supposed to do with them, anyway?
Dean hadn't entirely ruled out killing them, but as Bobby had pointed out, as understanding as Sheriff Mills generally was about Bobby's…career, the bodies of two children probably wouldn't be something she'd take kindly to having to explain away down at the station.
And, as Ruby pointed out, "You don't really wanna kill me, do you? Because you know where I'll go. And you know I'll just claw my way right back out again. As a demon. And a pissed one at that."
"But ain't that what you want?" Bobby narrowed his eyes at her. "You got no power otherwise."
She sighed, as though she couldn't quite believe what idiots they were and was wearied by it, running her tiny fingers through knotted hair. "If I go to back to Hell, who do you think's gonna be waiting for me? Who would just love to punish me big-time for having helped Lucifer? I know your buddy Meg was scared enough of him. Because we both worked for the old boss."
"You mean Crowley."
"No shit. So yeah. Don't wanna die just yet."
"Well then why stay here?" Dean demanded. "Can't be for the top-rated hospitality."
"Because," she said, twirling a strand of hair in her finger, "Unfortunately for me, you three are the best protection I got against Crowley now. If he finds out I'm alive, he'll kick my ass, then he'll kill me, and then he'll kick my ass some more. And when I do make it back as a demon again, believe me, I'll be good and pissed."
"So that's why you've been playing nice," Bobby said. "We've got leverage."
She looked annoyed. "That's why I haven't slit your throats, yes. And besides…wouldn't you rather keep an eye on me yourselves as long as I'm stuck here? Rehabilitate me or some shit like that?"
"Alright," Bobby growled. "You've made your point."
"But you put a toe outta line and we're handing you straight over to Crowley with a bow on top," Dean added. "You got that?"
"Whatever."
"And what about you?" Dean had added to Cas. "You haven't given us a good reason why we shouldn't kill you."
"I don't have one," Cas said simply. His eyes locked with Dean's.
Dean snorted dismissively, took a long swig of his beer. But the underriding question, they both knew, was Could you bring yourself to do it?
And they both knew the answer to that.
The doorbell rang. "Yes," Ruby said, hopping up from the couch, bouncing up and down on her toes on the ratty carpet. "I swear if it's not the delivery guy, I am gonna kill someone…"
Their decision made, it wasn't long before Bobby came to the realization of how ill-equipped he really was to have two children living with him. It was the same whenever John had dropped Dean and Sam off with him as young kids, but at least then, they'd always brought their own luggage with them, and Dean had always been good about making sure Bobby knew when they needed something Bobby didn't have. It had always made him grin when he'd found things like baby shampoo or spaghetti-o's or once, a Batman comic book added in sloppy handwriting to the bottom of the grocery list on his fridge.
But if Bobby didn't do something soon, there really was a possibility that CPS could come knocking on the door. They didn't have real clothes, or even something as simple as toothbrushes, and Bobby's kitchen was not stocked to support the appetites of two kids. Ruby raided Bobby's junk food stash mercilessly, much to his irritation, a shit-eating grin on her face every time she popped a Dorito or an M&M in her mouth while she flipped the channels at an irritatingly fast pace on the TV. Even Cas seemed to have a hearty enough appetite, though for those first few days, he only ever ate at mealtimes, preferring to spend most of his time wandering for hours on end outside in the salvage yard, a few layers of socks on his feet and an old, holey hoodie that didn't fit Sam anymore draped over him like a robe. He never spoke much.
What was funny? Forging all their paperwork had been the easy part. Cas and Ruby Smith, ages seven and five, cousins, son and daughter of Sam and Dean Smith, brothers, one divorced and one a single parent, all four recently come to live with their loving uncle at Singer Salvage Yard. A friggin' happy family.
Nobody had been thrilled with this arrangement, but it wasn't like they could come up with any better alternative. And at least they had the documents. Bobby had to pull a few favors, here it was, bulletproof: birth certificates, insurance, and documentation that they were homeschooling students.
While Bobby was handling the forgery end of things, Dean and Sam headed out to the Target a county over, to grab everything else they could possibly need, a wad of cash that Bobby wouldn't tell them how he'd acquired in hand to pay for it all. Getting Sam out of the house seemed to have been the right decision-he looked calmer and more put together than he had been the past few days, with something as mundane as pushing a grocery cart under fluorescent lighting alongside a bunch of harried-looking, ordinary people working wonders to take his mind away from Hell. However, he was sort of at a loss as to what sorts of things they should be buying. Dean, fortunately, was more talented in this department, having lived with a "normal" kid in a "normal" house for a year. And as much as it sucked to be thinking about Ben while he was doing this, it wasn't like it wasn't useful now.
Baby shampoo, toothbrushes and toothpaste, two cheap camping cots because there weren't any beds to be spared, pillows and blankets (Barbie themed for Ruby, Toy Story for Cas, which they both got a bit of a kick out of), a stash of childrens' medicines, enough macaroni and cheese to feed an army, and a ludicrous amount of junk food and juice boxes later, and all that was left to buy was clothing.
For Cas it wasn't much of a problem-when he and Sam were kids, John had mostly left him in charge of picking out clothes for the both of them when it was needed, and he remembered the clerks at Goodwill giggling at him while he perused the racks like a man on a mission searching for the right sizes and weren't stained, holey, or worn-out, while Sam wandered over to the toy section and played, bored, waiting for Dean to come over and dump a ton of things for him to try on into his arms. Bottom line was, Dean was pretty much the king of guestimating clothing sizes in this area, if he did say so himself. They wound up with a couple pairs of jeans, some plain t-shirts that came in different colors all rolled up in one package, socks, boxers, sneakers. Dean held up one pair of jeans, shook them out, and eyed them critically, before shrugging and tossing them into the cart. "If they don't fit right, he can just deal," he said. Sam couldn't have agreed more.
It was a bit more of a problem for Ruby. The first issue they encountered was the fact that, given they had never had the occasion to do so before, they didn't notice until they got some uncomfortably long stares from a handful of moms exactly how creepy it looked when two men wandered through the girls' clothing section. It wasn't until some chick in sweats in her late twenties, balancing a toddler who looked just like her with a mop of gold curls and a pair of sparkly mary-janes on one hip, tapped Dean on the shoulder and demanded, "Excuse me, but what the hell is your problem?" while he was staring, utterly baffled, at a sea of bright color, sequins and glitter hanging from one wall.
"What?" Dean said absently. She cleared her throat impatiently, and he finally looked up from the hypnotically terrifying mass of frilly clothing to the woman and back.
"It's for his daughter," Sam said quickly.
The woman raised unnecessarily penciled eyebrows at him. "Really."
"Yeah. His daughter, uh, my niece. Ruby. She's five."
Sam nodded, earnestly, and Dean just let him talk, finally putting two and two together and feeling a little revolted at the conclusions this woman had obviously drawn.
But Sam was good. Scratch that, Sam was really good. Within three minutes he'd woven some heart-wrenching tale of how Dean's house, which he apparently shared with his loving wife and daughter, had burned to the ground, destroying all of their possessions, and now his little girl just needed some new clothes because she had none of her own. And it was Dean's wife-named Katie, apparently-who usually did the clothes shopping for Ruby, but she was hospitalized for smoke inhalation, and Ruby was back with her, unwilling to leave her bedside. And Dean, apparently too bereaved to explain any of this properly himself, needed some help with the shopping. For emotional support and whatnot. Dean did his best to play along; look bereaved and all. The whole time Sam spoke, he had his puppy dog eyes going full force, and any onlooker would surely find it a mortal sin if the woman for a second doubted the sincerity of his words. Sure enough, by the time he'd finished the story, the woman had tears in her eyes.
And in another ten minutes, with the woman's help and watery-eyed sympathy, they had everything they needed: three sets of play clothes, and one flouncy, tulle-skirted dress that looked like a Disney movie had thrown up on it, all in violently bright colors that Ruby was sure to hate, but that they were pretty sure would fit. It was perfect.
The trip was a success, at least until they were nearing the checkout line. Sam didn't say anything, but he could see it in the way that Sam's eyes were scanning the aisles and darting around furtively that he was starting to have a hard time keeping it together. His fingers were digging into the bandage on his palm, and Dean had to make sure he didn't touch any of the clothes during check-out or he'd have gotten blood on them. While the cashier rung them up, and glanced at Sam a few times with concern, Dean handed him a five told him to go grab himself a cup of coffee from the Starbucks counter near the entrance.
When Dean found him again, with a full grocery cart in tow, Sam was sitting at a table, staring at the empty space directly across from him, and muttering. "I'm not a liar," he was saying. "I'm not. You're not real. Go away."
He started and looked up, embarrassed, when Dean cleared his throat. "You ready to go?"
He nodded, a bit too rapidly. "Yeah."
Neither of them mentioned it again.
"Booster shots?" Ruby's eyebrows shot up. "Are you freaking kidding me?"
She was lounging on the couch the next morning, her hair a disastrous network of rat's nests, dressed in Sam's old greyhound shirt that God-knows-why they kept, since it was at least two sizes too small now and kicking her feet over the edge of the bed. She was shoveling Captain Crunch into her mouth, MTV blaring on in the background.
"Hey, you wanna pass as normal, you gotta take everything that goes along with it," Bobby said. "And childhood diseases ain't fun, or so I hear."
Ruby made a gagging sound. Cas, fully dressed in a white t-shirt, jeans, and socks that looked far too immaculate to belong to a seven-year-old, was sprawled out on the floor with an old 1000-piece puzzle he'd found in Bobby's closet, just nodded.
"Plus," Dean said, "It'll be a surefire way to see if your munchkin asses are really human or not."
"Go get cleaned up," Bobby groused. "And brush that hair. This place might be a sty, but that don't mean the doctor has to know it."
Ruby shot him a look full of contempt, but pushed herself up off the couch. She was so short that she actually had to halfway shimmy down the edge of the couch like it was a playground slide. "Right," she muttered. "Because I care sooo much what my pediatrician thinks of you…"
"The clothes are in one of the guest bedrooms," Bobby called at her retreating back. "Target bag. And wash your damn face!"
TBC here.
Previous chapter here.
Art link: Art Masterlist
Prompt Number: 1016
Artist: Farfadine
Fic Title: Take Two
Author: crazybeagle
Fandom/Genre: Supernatural Humor/Angst/Hurt-comfort
Pairing(s): Gen, none (Characters: Castiel, Ruby, Dean, Sam, Bobby)
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 13,750
Warnings: Language, allusions to torture and violence, psychological trauma
Summary: AU of 7.02. The Leviathans and the souls destroyed each other. But Dean, Sam, and Bobby know that things are never that simple. They know it for a fact when they find two dark-haired children, one wearing face of a former friend and one wearing the face of a former enemy, lying on the panic room floor....
Take Two
Chapter 3
A day and a half later and they were still at a loss as to what to do with their…acquisitions. First thing was first, though, Bobby dug up what turned out to be a few rituals to perform on Ruby. One was fairly straightforward and had only required raiding a couple closets, a spice rack, and a local butcher shop to acquire the ingredients, a spell that Bobby was familiar enough with from a few past cases, but only ever against enemies who he'd been able to reason with rather than been forced to kill-a spell that imposed a lifelong ban on the use of witchcraft. They'd done it to her while she'd been asleep the following night and she'd woken up utterly furious, the look in her eye promising imminent death to everyone in the immediate vicinity.
At that point, they'd had to resort to just letting her sit on Bobby's couch and seethe, her knees pulled up to her chest under another one of Dean's giant t-shirts, glaring at the television as though it had personally offended her. They hadn't tied her up again-Bobby had hid all the weapons in the house-but that didn't mean that they weren't watching her like a hawk.
Or Cas, for that matter. He was sitting on the couch as far from Ruby as possible, his hair wet from a shower, also in a tee paired with an enormous pair of boxers, his scrawny legs crossed and his eyes focused dully on the television-some old World War II documentary-as well. He'd barely said a word to anybody all day.
Though it wasn't like they'd talked to him all that much, either.
Dean and Bobby had both pulled up chairs in the living room, beers in hand, for lookout duty. Wasn't like they had anything better to do. Another earlier inspection of the panic room revealed that it was, in fact, empty, and either the Leviathans really were truly dead or had somehow escaped. Either way, for the time being, there wasn't all that much to be done except sit tight, wait for the pizza they'd ordered to arrive, and make that the backstabbing ex-megalomaniac-nuclear-soul-warhead-angel and the ex-evil-demon-bitch didn't get the drop on them.
And Sam was doing the dishes. They could hear water running and pots and pans clattering and shifting from the kitchen. He hadn't spoken much either, just assured Dean and Bobby he was "fine now, really," and fixed them coffee with breakfast before spending the entire day puttering around the kitchen, randomly cleaning and fixing things-unclogging the drain, replacing a few burnt-out light bulbs, organizing random papers and documents sitting on the countertops, and scrubbing every surface within an inch of its life. God knew the place could use it, but this was anything but an indication that Sam was okay…this was Sam distracting himself.
Because if last night's conversation, after Dean had come to find him sitting folded in on himself on the edge of one of the guest bedroom beds, was anything to go by-It's him, Dean. Lucifer. I'm seeing him.-then this was all anything but okay. To the point where Sam couldn't tell if he was still in the cage or not….
He didn't like to think about it.
Every time he'd come to try to check on Sam, keep him company, or offer to help him clean, Sam had just gotten flustered and began dropping things. So he'd eventually left him alone. Not that Dean was overly thrilled about Sam scrubbing pots and pans after the…coping mechanism…that Dean had taught him yesterday, driving his thumb hard into Sam's cut hand and dripping blood onto the worn quilt on the bed to bring Sam back, here, with him. But Sam had just found a pair of rubber gloves under the sink, stretched them on carefully over the wad of gauze wrapped around his hand, expression practically daring Dean to try and stop him.
Dean hadn't.
At any rate, he was probably better off alone than he was hanging out with these two.
And speaking of these two….
What the hell were they supposed to do with them, anyway?
Dean hadn't entirely ruled out killing them, but as Bobby had pointed out, as understanding as Sheriff Mills generally was about Bobby's…career, the bodies of two children probably wouldn't be something she'd take kindly to having to explain away down at the station.
And, as Ruby pointed out, "You don't really wanna kill me, do you? Because you know where I'll go. And you know I'll just claw my way right back out again. As a demon. And a pissed one at that."
"But ain't that what you want?" Bobby narrowed his eyes at her. "You got no power otherwise."
She sighed, as though she couldn't quite believe what idiots they were and was wearied by it, running her tiny fingers through knotted hair. "If I go to back to Hell, who do you think's gonna be waiting for me? Who would just love to punish me big-time for having helped Lucifer? I know your buddy Meg was scared enough of him. Because we both worked for the old boss."
"You mean Crowley."
"No shit. So yeah. Don't wanna die just yet."
"Well then why stay here?" Dean demanded. "Can't be for the top-rated hospitality."
"Because," she said, twirling a strand of hair in her finger, "Unfortunately for me, you three are the best protection I got against Crowley now. If he finds out I'm alive, he'll kick my ass, then he'll kill me, and then he'll kick my ass some more. And when I do make it back as a demon again, believe me, I'll be good and pissed."
"So that's why you've been playing nice," Bobby said. "We've got leverage."
She looked annoyed. "That's why I haven't slit your throats, yes. And besides…wouldn't you rather keep an eye on me yourselves as long as I'm stuck here? Rehabilitate me or some shit like that?"
"Alright," Bobby growled. "You've made your point."
"But you put a toe outta line and we're handing you straight over to Crowley with a bow on top," Dean added. "You got that?"
"Whatever."
"And what about you?" Dean had added to Cas. "You haven't given us a good reason why we shouldn't kill you."
"I don't have one," Cas said simply. His eyes locked with Dean's.
Dean snorted dismissively, took a long swig of his beer. But the underriding question, they both knew, was Could you bring yourself to do it?
And they both knew the answer to that.
The doorbell rang. "Yes," Ruby said, hopping up from the couch, bouncing up and down on her toes on the ratty carpet. "I swear if it's not the delivery guy, I am gonna kill someone…"
Their decision made, it wasn't long before Bobby came to the realization of how ill-equipped he really was to have two children living with him. It was the same whenever John had dropped Dean and Sam off with him as young kids, but at least then, they'd always brought their own luggage with them, and Dean had always been good about making sure Bobby knew when they needed something Bobby didn't have. It had always made him grin when he'd found things like baby shampoo or spaghetti-o's or once, a Batman comic book added in sloppy handwriting to the bottom of the grocery list on his fridge.
But if Bobby didn't do something soon, there really was a possibility that CPS could come knocking on the door. They didn't have real clothes, or even something as simple as toothbrushes, and Bobby's kitchen was not stocked to support the appetites of two kids. Ruby raided Bobby's junk food stash mercilessly, much to his irritation, a shit-eating grin on her face every time she popped a Dorito or an M&M in her mouth while she flipped the channels at an irritatingly fast pace on the TV. Even Cas seemed to have a hearty enough appetite, though for those first few days, he only ever ate at mealtimes, preferring to spend most of his time wandering for hours on end outside in the salvage yard, a few layers of socks on his feet and an old, holey hoodie that didn't fit Sam anymore draped over him like a robe. He never spoke much.
What was funny? Forging all their paperwork had been the easy part. Cas and Ruby Smith, ages seven and five, cousins, son and daughter of Sam and Dean Smith, brothers, one divorced and one a single parent, all four recently come to live with their loving uncle at Singer Salvage Yard. A friggin' happy family.
Nobody had been thrilled with this arrangement, but it wasn't like they could come up with any better alternative. And at least they had the documents. Bobby had to pull a few favors, here it was, bulletproof: birth certificates, insurance, and documentation that they were homeschooling students.
While Bobby was handling the forgery end of things, Dean and Sam headed out to the Target a county over, to grab everything else they could possibly need, a wad of cash that Bobby wouldn't tell them how he'd acquired in hand to pay for it all. Getting Sam out of the house seemed to have been the right decision-he looked calmer and more put together than he had been the past few days, with something as mundane as pushing a grocery cart under fluorescent lighting alongside a bunch of harried-looking, ordinary people working wonders to take his mind away from Hell. However, he was sort of at a loss as to what sorts of things they should be buying. Dean, fortunately, was more talented in this department, having lived with a "normal" kid in a "normal" house for a year. And as much as it sucked to be thinking about Ben while he was doing this, it wasn't like it wasn't useful now.
Baby shampoo, toothbrushes and toothpaste, two cheap camping cots because there weren't any beds to be spared, pillows and blankets (Barbie themed for Ruby, Toy Story for Cas, which they both got a bit of a kick out of), a stash of childrens' medicines, enough macaroni and cheese to feed an army, and a ludicrous amount of junk food and juice boxes later, and all that was left to buy was clothing.
For Cas it wasn't much of a problem-when he and Sam were kids, John had mostly left him in charge of picking out clothes for the both of them when it was needed, and he remembered the clerks at Goodwill giggling at him while he perused the racks like a man on a mission searching for the right sizes and weren't stained, holey, or worn-out, while Sam wandered over to the toy section and played, bored, waiting for Dean to come over and dump a ton of things for him to try on into his arms. Bottom line was, Dean was pretty much the king of guestimating clothing sizes in this area, if he did say so himself. They wound up with a couple pairs of jeans, some plain t-shirts that came in different colors all rolled up in one package, socks, boxers, sneakers. Dean held up one pair of jeans, shook them out, and eyed them critically, before shrugging and tossing them into the cart. "If they don't fit right, he can just deal," he said. Sam couldn't have agreed more.
It was a bit more of a problem for Ruby. The first issue they encountered was the fact that, given they had never had the occasion to do so before, they didn't notice until they got some uncomfortably long stares from a handful of moms exactly how creepy it looked when two men wandered through the girls' clothing section. It wasn't until some chick in sweats in her late twenties, balancing a toddler who looked just like her with a mop of gold curls and a pair of sparkly mary-janes on one hip, tapped Dean on the shoulder and demanded, "Excuse me, but what the hell is your problem?" while he was staring, utterly baffled, at a sea of bright color, sequins and glitter hanging from one wall.
"What?" Dean said absently. She cleared her throat impatiently, and he finally looked up from the hypnotically terrifying mass of frilly clothing to the woman and back.
"It's for his daughter," Sam said quickly.
The woman raised unnecessarily penciled eyebrows at him. "Really."
"Yeah. His daughter, uh, my niece. Ruby. She's five."
Sam nodded, earnestly, and Dean just let him talk, finally putting two and two together and feeling a little revolted at the conclusions this woman had obviously drawn.
But Sam was good. Scratch that, Sam was really good. Within three minutes he'd woven some heart-wrenching tale of how Dean's house, which he apparently shared with his loving wife and daughter, had burned to the ground, destroying all of their possessions, and now his little girl just needed some new clothes because she had none of her own. And it was Dean's wife-named Katie, apparently-who usually did the clothes shopping for Ruby, but she was hospitalized for smoke inhalation, and Ruby was back with her, unwilling to leave her bedside. And Dean, apparently too bereaved to explain any of this properly himself, needed some help with the shopping. For emotional support and whatnot. Dean did his best to play along; look bereaved and all. The whole time Sam spoke, he had his puppy dog eyes going full force, and any onlooker would surely find it a mortal sin if the woman for a second doubted the sincerity of his words. Sure enough, by the time he'd finished the story, the woman had tears in her eyes.
And in another ten minutes, with the woman's help and watery-eyed sympathy, they had everything they needed: three sets of play clothes, and one flouncy, tulle-skirted dress that looked like a Disney movie had thrown up on it, all in violently bright colors that Ruby was sure to hate, but that they were pretty sure would fit. It was perfect.
The trip was a success, at least until they were nearing the checkout line. Sam didn't say anything, but he could see it in the way that Sam's eyes were scanning the aisles and darting around furtively that he was starting to have a hard time keeping it together. His fingers were digging into the bandage on his palm, and Dean had to make sure he didn't touch any of the clothes during check-out or he'd have gotten blood on them. While the cashier rung them up, and glanced at Sam a few times with concern, Dean handed him a five told him to go grab himself a cup of coffee from the Starbucks counter near the entrance.
When Dean found him again, with a full grocery cart in tow, Sam was sitting at a table, staring at the empty space directly across from him, and muttering. "I'm not a liar," he was saying. "I'm not. You're not real. Go away."
He started and looked up, embarrassed, when Dean cleared his throat. "You ready to go?"
He nodded, a bit too rapidly. "Yeah."
Neither of them mentioned it again.
"Booster shots?" Ruby's eyebrows shot up. "Are you freaking kidding me?"
She was lounging on the couch the next morning, her hair a disastrous network of rat's nests, dressed in Sam's old greyhound shirt that God-knows-why they kept, since it was at least two sizes too small now and kicking her feet over the edge of the bed. She was shoveling Captain Crunch into her mouth, MTV blaring on in the background.
"Hey, you wanna pass as normal, you gotta take everything that goes along with it," Bobby said. "And childhood diseases ain't fun, or so I hear."
Ruby made a gagging sound. Cas, fully dressed in a white t-shirt, jeans, and socks that looked far too immaculate to belong to a seven-year-old, was sprawled out on the floor with an old 1000-piece puzzle he'd found in Bobby's closet, just nodded.
"Plus," Dean said, "It'll be a surefire way to see if your munchkin asses are really human or not."
"Go get cleaned up," Bobby groused. "And brush that hair. This place might be a sty, but that don't mean the doctor has to know it."
Ruby shot him a look full of contempt, but pushed herself up off the couch. She was so short that she actually had to halfway shimmy down the edge of the couch like it was a playground slide. "Right," she muttered. "Because I care sooo much what my pediatrician thinks of you…"
"The clothes are in one of the guest bedrooms," Bobby called at her retreating back. "Target bag. And wash your damn face!"
TBC here.
Previous chapter here.