Supernatural: Next Generation

( Cut from 1x11, when Ben is out interviewing )

- THEN -

NOW

The hotel room was quiet, mid-afternoon sun filtering though the curtains. Things were a bit scattered and there wasn’t a surface in the place where something hadn’t been knocked over or mussed up, but there wasn’t any rush in cleaning. Sprawled together on the bed, Jesse and Claire were naked and napping, one sheet mostly covering Claire. One hand halfheartedly dangling close to the nightstand, jutted out from under the pillow and her hair, the other pulled a bit on Jesse’s arm, using him as a veritable blanket in her sleep.

The peaceful image was shattered the instant the door opened. Ben had driven twenty miles over the speed limit in an attempt to get home faster. He’d had half a mind to call, but figured that it would be begging for a ticket if he did. He was quite surprised he wasn’t pulled over in fact, but the thought was fleeting; there was only room for one thought in his brain at that moment.

Unfortunately, the same could be said for Claire--in the moment the sudden and unexpected intrusion ripped her out of the short, but deep sleep, her brain clicked over to self-preservation, and her hand went for the pistol stashed against the side of the mattress. One instant, she was staring down the sight at the chest of the intruder--the next, she finally let out a breath and nearly melted when she saw who it was.

“For fuck’s sake, Ben...” She flipped the safety back on and collapsed back on the bed.

Jesse hardly had his eyes open by the time Claire was up with the gun, and he sat up as she collapsed back. “Wha’s going on?” he mumbled, rubbing his eye with the heel of his hand before looking around. “Oh, you’re back.”

It felt like all his thoughts had slammed into a wall in his head. For a moment Ben stared at the both of them and sputtered, then physically shook his head to clear it.

( “Please tell me you didn’t delete that text message from earlier.” )

***

Besides the proverbial sword hanging over her head, the last two days hadn’t been too terrible, as far as her experience with curses went anyway. Waking up the day after discovering the chain-text was responsible was terrifying, given the unknowns. Then she tried to speak--or she did speak, but apparently in a language that wasn’t English, despite what she could hear in her own ears and see on the pads of paper she tried to write on--but the result was always the same worried and confused faces on both the boys. They had heard the rumor of ‘gibberish’ being spoken by the afflicted, but besides utter frustration and crippling communication, at least it didn’t hurt.

The next day brought her native language back, but also the same fear of the unknown--of what would happen to her. They all found out after the fifth time she tripped on absolutely nothing, whether it was in the hotel room, on the way to the car, or anywhere else. Every fifteen steps or so, no matter how careful or cautious she was, Claire’s feet rebelled and spilled her to her knees, her hands, hips, elbows, and anything else that shot out to break her fall. By that night, she was bloody and bruised. She spent a lot of the night staring at the ceiling. The what comes next thought was always harder to banish at night.

Yet somehow, she managed to fall asleep--only to be ripped back into consciousness less than an hour later, when the clock flipped to midnight. With crackling pops, an arc of blue static bridged between her body and the multiple points of contact she shared with both Ben and Jesse, jarring her awake with a pained gasp.

Ben awoke with a jolt -- literally -- and a bit back yelp of pain. “Fuck! Jesus Christ, what the--”

Jesse jerked back from her, and right off the bed, landing with a crash. “What-- Shit, what’s happening?” he said, scrambling to his feet and turning in a circle to try to find what attacked them.

But nothing was attacking them--nothing more than a wide-eyed Claire, tense and poised on her knees on the bed, breathing like a frightened rabbit. Ben stared in bleary eyed confusion at her, trying to rub at least six different spots at once. Was this another damn curse in the works?

“Claire, are you--” he started, reaching out to touch her shoulder. Another static shock leaped up his arm and he withdrew hard, wincing, while Claire twitched back with a yelp of her own. “Fuck.” He turned his eyes heavenward and threw his hand out to his side. ( “Really? *Really?*” )

***

Kat was having a horrible time not killing everyone in the room right about then.

Playing at substitute teacher was proving to be a lot harder of a disguise than she thought, especially given that she’d chosen an actual class where actual learning took place and not something like art or music. Kat did not play an instrument, and could not do artistic things. In all truth, she knew absolutely nothing about Contemporary American Government either, but fortunately the teacher had a PowerPoint presentation. All she really needed to do was click the button and read it aloud.

If only it were that simple.

Kat was starting to wonder if her own daughter was as mischievous as these awful children were. She went to private school because Gavin had a well-paying job to make up for the fact that she was moreorless a drifter. Public school kids were monsters in designer labels. There was not enough rock salt and iron to handle it, though; not without spending time behind bars.

( “If I hear one more whisper or see one more note passed, you’re all going to Principal Myer’s office.” )

***

The boys were already leaning on the GTO when Claire made it out to the school parking lot. The look in their eyes was conflicted, but not hopeless--or maybe she was just projecting that part. Claire dug the post-it out of her pocket as she approached, squinting into the glare of the sun.

“Got something?” Jesse said, moving to meet her but keeping a safe distance. He never thought his heart would hammer so hard just over seeing a little scrap of paper.

“Another number,” Claire sighed tiredly, rubbing her eye with the back of her gloved hand. “And a name... Rayne Peterson.”

Ben frowned thoughtfully. “My kid brought her name up, too. Can’t be a coincidence.”

“You got her address? You need me to go in and get her address?” Jesse said quickly, nodding at the school.

“We can get her address in thirty seconds on the laptop--better idea than pushing luck with the admin.” In other words, Claire didn’t like the idea of going back in the school. In the time crunch, she’d been a bit...brisk with Sasha, and she couldn’t jeopardize Kat’s position, just in case. Claire very carefully handed the number to Ben, watching them both. “What’d your kid say?”

Ben pressed his lips into a thin line and swallowed, running his hand over the back of his neck. “That she was dating Robbie secretly and something about a rumor that she was pregnant,” he said in a low voice. “Was being the operative.” Claire paled, and felt herself get a little sick.

Jesse stared at him. ( When the fuck did we drop into an episode of /Rivalry High/? )

***

Trying to sleep on the GTO’s front benchseat might not have been so bad, if Jesse didn’t have to share it with Ben. He’d thought it would be pretty easy considering they slept pretty tangled with each other most nights, but clearly the bed made all the difference. Trying to make a pillow out of the door and his jacket, he stared out into the mostly dark campground. He could spot a campfire from where they’d parked, but he wasn’t surprised. The place was packed when they finally got there. Finding Rayne and her family before nightfall turned out to be impossible and they had to get a spot just so they could stay there. Since a couple of guys tromping through the woods looking for a teenage girl probably would set off a few alarms, they voted to get some rest and search in the morning.

It had been a very optimistic thought. The minutes were ticking away at a snail’s pace. Jesse wished he had a clock somewhere. It felt like it had been the whole night already but he had a feeling it was still early.

Sheer exhaustion had forced Claire to wrap herself in a blanket in the back seat and succumb to sleep, rather than wait out the clock to see what was in store for her after it switched over midnight. It had been surprisingly easy, but it hadn’t been long. For two, maybe two and a half hours, she’d been silent and still across the seat. She didn’t even hear the delicate alarm on her phone beep beep beep from under her jacket on the floor.

But she did wake up. Not with a jolt, like last night, but with a rolling roar of sensation that hit her consciousness like a tsunami. Heat, first just at an uncomfortable level but escalating quickly to a searing, chemical burn everywhere the blanket touched her. Claire’s eyes opened, instinct zeroed in on the feeling as she shot upright on the seat, and shoved the blanket off her shoulders--but her legs were suddenly on fire as well--reddening and sizzling the back of her thighs under the hem of her shorts. Barely two seconds had passed from peace to hellfire--and gasping, Claire started to kick against the seat.

Ben had barely fallen asleep -- the GTO was much less comfortable than his car had once been -- when suddenly he was awake again, fear sending his pulse off at a gallop. He shot up in his seat and turned around rapidly in alarm.

( “What’s wrong? What’s happening?” he pressed, Jesse jerking around at his voice. )

As Jesse said, the search went smoothly. There was an initial bump each time they woke the tent or RV up, but a quick word from Jesse found them complacent and quick to answer that no girl named Rayne was there. Jesse’s requests got terser and terser as he went on, but no one complained.

Finally they hit an RV where a girl wearing far too much make-up for the middle of the night in the middle of the woods was sitting outside.

“You Rayne?” Jesse snapped.

“Yeah,” the girl answered before really thinking about it. Her sour expression remained as thick as the make-up on her face. Obviously, she wasn’t exactly thrilled about the family camping trip, by the distance between her and her picnic-table perch, and the family Winnebago. Her eyes switched back and forth between the two. “Who th’fuck’er you?”

Ben frowned. “We know what you did, Rayne. With the chain texts. And we want you to make them stop.”

A clearer what-the-fuck expression would never be found. Rayne’s green eyes lost their focus for half a second, then widened before she got a hold of her usual, cynical self. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said with a little less conviction than she had hoped. She looked away from them to put a cigarette between her lips and light it up.

In two short steps, Jesse snatched the cigarette away and grabbed her arm. Rayne stiffened and shrieked, trying to pull away. “You will tell us what you did and you undo it all! People have fucking died and that stops now!”

“Who the fuck are you?!” she croaked out.

Ben grabbed his forearm in return, pulling it back.

“Jess,” he said firmly, a warning in his voice.

Gritting his teeth, Jesse let go of her though he didn’t pull away. “Spill, brat. While you can.”

“If you don’t stop it, we will stop you,” Ben said flatly. “So we’re asking you to lift it, and we’re only asking once.”

New-found fear mixed with the confusion in the girl’s eyes--lost on just how she’d supposedly been tracked by two complete fucking strangers.

“I--I don’t know. I don’t know how to stop it...”

Ben fought the urge to groan. Great. An amateur, he thought bitterly. ( “So you cast a spell without knowing how to start it. Great. Awesome job, Silver Ravenwolf.” )

****

The sun hadn’t quite made it over the horizon yet, though the gray morning was slowly fading the night sky. Claire had slept the entire drive back to Burlington and the hotel, but the boys had only been out since they returned around four in the morning. She was still exhausted, but the plan was to leave before check-out in a few hours, and Claire had something to take care of yet.

Three knocks on Kat’s hotel room door accompanied the sounds of morning birds and the occasional truck down the road. She leaned against the jamb, long arms folded tiredly across her middle. It took a few moments before the door finally opened. Kat stood on the other side, her hair a frazzled mess and sleep in her eyes. Before Claire could even get a word out she opened the door further, silently inviting her in.

Claire wound through the open door, then nudged it shut behind her--a habitual and somewhat jovial look sent around the room. Not that she expected anyone else there. Even if Kat had taken some poor idiot back with her, he would’ve been kicked out long before dawn.

Kat moved toward the small kitchen on automatic, her hands going through the motions of starting up a pot of coffee.

“Just like old times, eh?” she muttered in a sleep-graveled voice. Claire smirked.

“‘Cept I distinctly remember always being the one making coffee.” She settled against the dresser, her hands curled on it’s edge by her hips.

“Figured I’d be nice, just this once.” Kat paused when the work was done, turning around to rest against the countertop, the edge of it making indents in the heels of her hands. Even when tired, her eyes were intent and sharp like a hawk’s. “You okay, kiddo?”

Again with the ‘kiddo’. Despite her lingering hatred for that pet-name, Claire looked at the older huntress, smiling faintly. “Can’t complain,” she replied, then scooted to actually sit on the dresser top. There may’ve been plenty she could complain about, but to little use. Plus, whenever something did slip out, Kat was always quick to knock it down. Put a lot of things in perspective. “We’re heading out in a couple hours.”

( “Don’t tell me you woke me up just to tell me g’bye.” )

Hunched over the hotel table, Jesse’s nose was inches from Claire’s laptop screen. Ever since they’d reached Burlington, they’d been focused on R&R: rest and research. Normally Jesse let Ben and Claire take care of the research part, but there wasn’t a whole lot he could do in the middle of the night. And sleep, well, he’d gotten maybe ten hours in the last week.

So focused on the screen, he didn’t notice when the first rays of dawn started peeking through the curtains, or when there was a shift of bodies on the bed behind him. The hand on his shoulder, though, that he noticed.

He nearly jumped out of his chair. “Fuck, don’t do that!”

Claire smirked in clear, but tired amusement. “Fine, I won’t touch you,” she teased, and started to slink toward her bag.

“I’m fine with touching, only when I’m expecting it,” he said, straightening and cracking his back. “Or when I’m naked. Then you’re allowed to touch me by surprise.”

“Ditto.” She snickered over her shoulder--which was feeling much better now. Her hair caught in the ribbed tank top as she pried it over her head, then dropped it in the pile of laundry that needed to be done that day.

“Find anything interesting?” she asked, digging out the new package of disposable razors from the Target bag. Sleep was still burning in her eyes, and a shower sounded good.

Rubbing his face, Jesse shook his head. “I don’t know. You guys know this shit better than me. Researching demon zombies is still outta my league.”

“They weren’t zombies, man,” Ben muttered from his side of the bed, his face still pressed partway into a pillow and one leg hanging off the end. “Zombies don’t bleed.”

“Take a break then,” Claire breathed tiredly, turning to face them both and lean on the dresser. “How’bout we go out for breakfast?”

“Sounds good to me.” Jesse stretched as he stood, walking over to the bed. “‘Course we gotta convince the human mattress to get up.” He punctuated the sentence by sitting on Ben’s back. All the air in Ben’s lungs wumphed out of him and he flailed. Claire chuckled, sipping at a stale Diet Pepsi bottle.

( '“Get offa me!” )

***

They were on their third cups of coffee, but still hadn’t found much information on any sort of history of “demon zombies” as Jesse had so dubbed them. Since that was a relative dead end, Ben decided to go off of the one thing they did know:

“How long do you think he’s been collecting?” Ben asked, his gaze lifting from the laptop sitting on the table. Claire shook her head lightly, adding another cream to her fresh cup of joe.

“God only knows.” Unfortunately it was a turn of phrase that wasn’t true. The demon knew--the one who had a particular fondness for Jesse. She looked up at him briefly, then back to her coffee. There were others that knew too--but they were equally as inaccessible. Like the white-eyed demon that’d taken Ben.

“That scarring looked old, and it takes a while to brainwash people to that extreme. I also don’t think we saw the whole iceberg.” She churned the brew with a spoon and brought it up for a sip.

Jesse’s expression sagged. “What are we talking? Months? A year?”

“At least months,” Ben said, frowning as he took Claire’s words to thought. “But... maybe more like years. Vessels are rare. They follow very direct bloodlines.”

“And so they should be after both of you,” Jesse said, scowling. “But he said they didn’t need Ben any more. That he was ruined or something.”

“He can’t be possessed anymore,” Claire answered quietly, indulging in a particularly long drink of coffee. Her mouth had gone a little dry. A lot of that cellar-room conversation she had missed--either by absence or by pain--but she didn’t say the logic that followed the sharp memory of those silent slaves trying to rip her from the both of them. She didn’t need to be possessed.

Ben’s expression grew tense from the memory, but he pushed it back. “Well unless we have some way of tracing back the lines, this is just another dead end.” His brows furrowed. ( “Kadiel would know, wouldn’t he?” )

***

Being that it was the transition point between first period lunch and class, the halls of Rock Point High School were teeming with teenagers. Some of them were in little clumps hiding out in archways and stairwells, while others moved with more purpose on their way to and from. Occasionally a teenage girl would look in their direction as Claire and Jesse walked down the hall toward the admission desk, either in intrigue or genuine interest. When they got to the door, a young man who’d been watching on the other side of it all but leapt up to his feet to open it, flashing what he must have assumed was a dazzling smile at Claire.

Memories flooded the back of her subconscious with just the smell of the place--pencil lead, coffee, and the odd-but-heady mix of perfume, cologne, and body odor. Claire had to force the small grateful smile at the ‘polite’ teenager, but it faded as soon as she and Jesse were alone in the office lobby.

“I hate high schools,” she said under her breath, digging the Press-ID with her recent picture out from the messenger bag on her hip.

Jesse brushed his hand against hers, one eye on the office in case anyone came in. ( “Why? Too many boys chasing after your hot tail?” )

***

“So you two were friends with Katie and Gail?”

Claire and Jesse stood at the thirty-yard line of the football field behind the school, opposite two Rock Point cheerleaders they’d snagged from practice. The two girls who’d been struck by lightning had been on the squad, according to the online year-book.

The brunette -- Missy -- nodded, looking genuinely grief-stricken at having to be forced to talk about her dead friends. “Basically since, like, preschool.”

“Yeah,” Kristen added, tugging on the end of her long blond ponytail over and over with her hands. “Our moms all went to school together, too. Second generation BFFs, y’know?”

“It’s so awful, what happened.”

“Totally awful.”

“That must be really hard on you,” Jesse said, brows knit in sympathy. “It sounds like you were really close. How were Katie and Gail before it happened? Their usual selves?”

Missy and Kristen shared a look, then Missy chewed her lip. Kristen spoke up, since it was obvious Missy didn’t want to talk about it.

“Well, I mean, not really. It’s weird. First Katie was the one spazzing out, then Gail started to. We couldn’t even practice for four days because they kept ruining routine.”

The words ‘spazzing out’ definitely caught Claire’s attention. Her head canted delicately, brows pinched in the middle in concerned curiosity. “Were they upset about something?”

Missy shook her head again. “I mean, no more than normal, I guess.”

“It’s weird. They were talking, like... jibberish language, right? Writing it, too.”

“Mr. Foges got so pissed off that he sent Katie to the Principal’s office.”

Kristen’s eyes started welling up with tears. “Gail didn’t even come to school the day Katie died. We didn’t find out she died too until the next day. It was so awful.”

Missy threw an arm around her and hugged her close. “I can’t even imagine how Robbie’s handling it.”

Setting a gentle hand on her back, Jesse waited a moment before asking, “Who is Robbie? Katie’s boyfriend?”

Missy nodded. ( “He saw her die. He was practically standing right next to her.” )

***

Ben rubbed his eyes blearily as he combed through the yearbook. Fortunately, there were only two potential Robbies in the same year as the reported deaths. It definitely made the interview process a lot simpler. Added bonus, it was his turn to go run out in costume, and with the facial scruff he was sporting, he was definitely looking the part of a grizzled cop.

“So she said she was calling? Or that she was coming by?” Ben asked after a moment, writing the addresses to the two houses on a sheet of paper to take with him and cross-referencing them with google maps.

“Calling,” Claire answered, her mouth full of Pad Thai with extra mushrooms from down the street.

Happily sitting back and eating on the bed instead of taking on any research. “Oh she’ll come by. They always come by,” he said with a grin before forking a piece of chicken. Claire shot him a sarcastic smirk.

“Does she even know where we’re staying?” Ben asked, sounding a little confused. Once he finished writing down directions, he started stripping out of his clothes, standing up to moving to his duffelbag and drawing Jesse’s gaze. Claire snorted, her smirk turning up to a full fledged grin, which turned to Jesse.

“Yeah, explain that one, mate,” she ribbed Jesse lovingly, still chewing a piece of rubbery chicken. Her attention split when her phone started to buzz on the nightstand.

“Oh, they always find a way,” Jesse said, a little bit of the flippancy tempered. Strange how just a bit of naked skin could seem so enticing. Shifting his take-out container on his lap, he tried to focus on Claire. “That her now?”

“Text message,” she replied, quirking her brows at the unknown number on the screen. Her expression turned a little more sour. “A stupid chain text.” Claire knew she shouldn’t have put her number in the hands of teenage girls. She tossed the phone lightly toward Jesse; it hit his thigh and settled on the bed.

Jesse snorted. “People still do that?” he said, picking up the phone. “‘You have been cursed, exclamation point, exclamation point. Send this to twenty people or suffer the Curse of Babel, little red smiley face with horns.’ Hey now, that’s just an ignorant stereotype.” With a grin, he tossed the phone back at Claire.

Ben had been midway through pulling on a new shirt, but immediately burst into laughter. His hair went every which-way once his head appeared through the neckhole. “Kids’ll be kids.”

Claire smirked at both of them and plucked the phone up from the bed. A quick swipe of her thumb deleted the nuisance. Ben settled on the end of the bed, pulling off his jeans and switching them out with trousers.

“So okay, I should only be gone two hours, three tops,” he said, standing and belting up. He grabbed his hairbrush ran it through his hair a few times before he tossed it back into the bag. That done, he grabbed his better tie and looped it around his neck, starting to knot it.

“Guess Claire and I will have to find a way to pass the time without you...” Jesse said wistfully. Claire snickered mildly, already on her feet from the side of the bed. A second later, she was toe to toe with Ben, wordlessly taking on the task of tying his tie.

“Keep your head low,” she muttered low, tightened the Windsor, and kissed the tip of his nose. He smiled in response. “I don’t want Kat throttling me.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Ben replied smartly, then leaned in and kissed her soundly on the lips. He grabbed up his wallet from where it rested on the nightstand, as well as his favorite gun -- which he tucked into his side holster -- before heading over to where Jesse was still sitting.

“Don’t tire her out too much,” he told the other man with a faint smirk, then pressed his mouth to Jesse’s as well. He tugged his bottom lip between his teeth as he broke it, then gave him a wink before heading out the door.

***

The headache wasn’t as bad today, but eyestrain wasn’t going to help. Staring at the lines of a social news feed next to the swirl of a music player with little to no light squeezing through the curtains was a sure-fire way of making sure his focus stayed in one spot. The hot feeling behind his eyes was a low tum, rather than the roar it’d been last night.

It wouldn’t take long for Robbie to work on that, but the light touch on his shoulder tore his attention away from the laptop screen. A vacant look turned up to the image of his mother, mouthing something below the bass in his ear-buds. He popped one out with a hooked finger.

( “There’s a detective wanting to talk to you.” )

TO BE CONTINUED...