Supernatural: Next Generation

( Takes place before the trio gets on the road at the end of 17.2 )

( Takes place in 16.1, when Jesse and Ben go to the Laundry Room )

( Takes place in 16.1, when Claire and Jesse are in the guest room )

( Somewhere between Chackbay and Arlington )

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

( Takes place in 1x13.1, as Claire and Jesse comfort Ben )

( Cut from 1x13.1, when Ben comes back from his stakeout )

( Cut from 1x12, after Ben and Jesse fight )

( Cut from 1x10, when Ben, Claire, and Jesse recover from the hunt )

Claire was at church, much like every Sunday since they had started traveling together. Outside of his daily showers, it was the only time that Ben was separate from her. Since Jesse’s joining them, however, even that had changed. To be completely truthful, Ben didn’t really mind. He’d been hunting mostly lone for the past seven years; it felt good to have company again. He didn’t feel the need to fill every single hour with hunting down monsters and his father when he had them there.

The only problem was that Jesse was still green to everything. Claire had taken up teaching him how to defend himself without his powers, and since he was supposed to be injured Ben opted to take up the more “geeky” of the options: monster facts and hunter knowledge basics. Of course, that job came with at least two dilemmas: first, that his patience was thin when he was frustrated; second, that Jesse was not the bookish type by a long shot. Ben was half-tempted to get Claire to pick up that part of the training as well, seeing as it would be more challenging to Jesse to defend himself and to try recalling hunting trivia at the same time, but pride held him back.

“What do you do to banish a ghost?” Ben asked without looking up from his notebook.

“Burn the b’nes.” Jesse’s answer came out a bit muffled because he was currently balancing a pen between his nose and upper lip.

It wasn’t that Jesse didn’t appreciate Ben’s effort, or that he didn’t understand the importance of what he was learning. There was just so much he could take in a day. He’d never had to be attentive in school in the first place, so it was hard to start now.

“What do you do before you burn them?” Ben asked, looking up with a slight frown on his mouth.

“S’lt,” he said, his eyes crossed in concentration. That was an easy thing. Salt took out most things, including him.

Ben flipped through a few pages of his notebook. “Of these three things, what works to disable a vamp: holy water, dead man’s blood, or garlic?”

Jesse hesitated a moment. “Dead ma--fuck.” He caught the pen as it tumbled then leaned back for another try. “Blood.”

“Dead mafuck blood?” Ben asked, his lips twisting in a small smirk. “Is that your final answer?”

Jesse snatched the pen away with a grin. “Dead man’s blood, asshole.”

“Don’t make me hit you with a yard stick, boy,” Ben said in his best old-granny voice, the flipped a few more pages.

“List three creatures affected by iron.”

Leaning forward on his knees, Jesse thought. “Demons.” Easy. “Ghosts.” Probably. And.... “Vampires?”

“Wrong,” the younger man answered. “One more try.”

With a huff, Jesse leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling. If it was one of those stupid complicated things he’d never heard of before, he wasn’t going to remember. “Witches?”

“Legend,” Ben said. “Witches can be as normal and apple-pie as the chick at Taco Bell. Faeries.” He looked down at his book again, trying to find something a bit harder to go from. He could have him work on his Holy Water Latin, but Ben had a feeling Jesse would stop cooperating if he did. He was honestly surprised the other man had lasted this long without wanting a smoke break.

“What’s the easiest way to tell someone is a skinwalker?”

“Stab them with a silver knife,” Jesse said, his hand swiping the air.

“A less dangerous way to check if someone’s a skinwalker,” Ben rephrased, smirking a little. “We can’t just go stabbing people.”

“Maybe you can’t,” Jesse said, before running his hands over his face. Right. Skinwalkers. “Well if someone you know is acting funny, you can try stabbing them.”

“Retinal flare in a camera,” Ben informed him, frowning just a little. “It’s a safer bet, and it saves a bail-out from jail for first-degree assault.”

“Right. I’ll just make sure and take a camera everywhere if I think a skinwalker’s around,” Jesse said, facing Ben in a slouch. “It’ll never see me coming.”

“You can check in a camera phone as well, dumbass,” Ben answered, grabbing a post-it note, balling it up, and throwing it at Jesse, who batted it away. “If it’s people killing people, it’s not our business. Creatures, spirits, and demons only. We can’t go stabbing people.” He looked down again at the open notebook in his lap.

Jesse wanted to snark at that, but it wasn’t worth the effort. Besides, he didn’t disagree. “Yeah, can’t save everyone. Just gotta be ready at all times.” He said the words blandly enough, as though parroting them from somewhere. ( So Ben didn’t see it coming until Jesse was up and tackling him out of his chair. )

Having their own resident magician certainly came with its advantages, but Claire had made her discomfort with the notion of just getting everything out of thin air very clear. Her issue wasn’t that it didn’t seem natural (which it didn’t), or the implied moral dilemma that came with getting everything from nothing. Claire wasn’t thrilled with the uncertainty that it provided. It’s not that she didn’t trust Jesse’s powers--she just didn’t trust their stability. Call it an instinctive hunch.

Which is why, when she started his crash coarse in Hunting 101 (as he put it) three days ago, she strictly forbade him from using his nifty tricks in order to advance. He had to learn the hard way, which--by the last three days of painful progress had shown--Jesse wasn’t used to, but at least the knowledge would stay with him forever. Claire was confident, and more comfortable with that.

“Okay, one more time...” she warned while tightening her pony tail. The hotel gym was tiny, but deserted, and the vinyl mats on the floor and walls did well for keeping Jesse from bruising to bad. “Strength doesn’t matter if you grab in the right place,” a lesson she’d shown him several times over as she taught him how to defend himself from the speedy attacks common with most supernatural creatures. He had yet to come out on top.

“Yeah, yeah, you just like making me breathless and sweaty,” he said, definitely both by that point. Apparently a nest of vampires was cake compared to the compact blond. He was having more fun than he would ever admit to, though. Claire was quick and fought back against his verbal jabs as easily as his physical ones. She’d been a bit harder when they got started. After being pinned a few times, he’d harmlessly grinded up against her and gotten a right hook for his efforts.

( He kept his flirting to talking after that, mostly, and she seemed to have warmed up, or at least gotten used to it. )

He may have said he’d been convinced, but the longer Ben sat in the lobby while Jesse went on schmoozing the staff looking for information, the more anxious and paranoid he became. Every moment he was there he felt more and more guilty knowing that he was there while Claire was asleep in their main room, completely unaware of what they were doing. How would she react if she knew? What would she think about what he was about to do?

Jesse’s confidence was enough to make him feel incredibly inadequate. The front desk clerk was all but falling over herself flirting with him. He looked more relaxed and in his element than Ben had seen him in four days. And there he was with broken ribs, sitting in a lounge chair alone, sipping from his hip flask while he waited for Jesse to secure them a room for the ‘transaction’ to take place in. Madison wasn’t too far from the resort, only a twenty minute drive, but it felt like he was in another world.

What am I doing here? he asked himself for the hundredth time, taking another deep pull and staring upward at the ceiling.

“Stop looking like a man who’s about to go to the chair,” Jesse chided as he came over, flicking Ben’s ear. “C’mon, we got our room and the ladies’ll be up soon.”

Ben grunted painfully as he forced himself up to standing again, following after Jesse. It was only when they were in the elevator that Jesse’s words finally caught up to him.

“Wait, one room?” he asked, his voice going a little high in spite of himself. He tried again. ( “Y’mean we’re gonna be in the same room?” )

The water is hot, but not hot enough. Beneath a cone of steam and soothingly forceful jets of the resort shower, Claire pushes her fingers through her hair from her brow. Thick, heavy and hot with the water, the curls cling to her fingers and shoulders and chest. It rinses away tensions and thoughts, but not all of them. Not the ones she wanted gone in the first place.

( Temptation had never been so strong. )

Claire didn’t like loose ends, and the tall order passed out on the second hotel bed was one of the biggest she’d had to deal with in a long time. Her eyes wandered over the worn photographs between her fingers--the only things they’d been able to find in the guy’s wallet. No ID, no credit cards or even cash. Just some worn pictures depicting a child--obviously himself--and a few unknown adults.

“You’re saying the crowd just...obeyed him?” She looked up at Ben from her heavy lean on the side of the table. She heard the sound of him spitting in the sink, then a brief on-and-off from the faucet before he came back into view again.

( Never saw anything like it. )

It had taken a lot of contemplation, but after the second day Ben finally decided it was time to sell his car. It was the next obvious choice, really. The cash he’d got out of the poker tournament with had been enough to cover the rest of the hotel charges and food, but following Claire or vise versa would be a waste of gas, and both of them were well aware how much gas cost those days.

And he wanted to get her into a clinic to check her vitals, just to make sure she wasn’t getting an infection from his shoddy stichwork. The last thing he could handle right then was dealing with the guilt of her getting hit with a huge fever. Once the trunk was cleaned and they’d had a decent night’s rest, Ben went back to the hotel to pack up his stuff and agreed to meet her at the nearby dealership.

It was definitely true; the second day was always the worst. Last night, the pain from her wound maintained a low roar in her entire bloodstream, managed by the liquid fire in Ben’s flask. In the morning, at least the discomfort was centralized, but it’d also intensified--condensed like a freaking plasma star on the side of her leg. Claire ate a handful of Tylenol for breakfast and packed after Ben headed back to his hotel. The anti-inflammatory medicine did its job, though she was forced into a longer conversation with Rev. Kingsley when she limped up to his office to say her ‘thank yous’ and ‘goodbyes.’ Every other step tingled and pinched, and sliding a new pair of jeans over the wound was a lot less fun than she anticipated, but true to her word, she and the red GTO pulled into the dealership parking lot within five minutes of their meeting time.

She found Ben already in the office talking with the dealer, midway through the paperwork and looking a little worse for wear. The dealer was midway through a pitch to try and get him to trade it in for a newer car, but Ben was already shaking his head even though he didn’t interrupt the man.

“...good value, given its mileage. You kept her in good shape. You’ll get a decent trade for it.”

“No thanks, man. Cash is fine by me.”

Claire carefully eased herself into the tweed-looking chair beside Ben, and handed him one of the extra large Dunkin’ Donuts coffees she carried which he took with a grateful smile. He looked like he was having a childhood pet put to sleep. She couldn’t help but feel bad--a little sympathy never hurt anybody.

“All right, man, if that’s what you want. Lemme double-check the books real quick’n see.”

Ben muttered a quiet ‘thanks’ before taking a deep drink from his coffee, then looked sideways at Claire. The dealer blinked behind his screen, taking a breath.

“How’s 28,000 sound?”

( Ben very nearly spat out his coffee. “What, dollars?” )

***
Ben seriously thought about sending the money back to his mother. Having a paper trail wasn’t a good thing in his line of work, to be frank. Then he had a genius idea: loading up gift cards. It took the better half of the day, but by the end of it he had a stack of gift cards almost as thick as a playing deck. It made his brain hurt a little.

They’d gone to the clinic to have Claire’s leg looked at as well, just to be safe. The doctor had frowned a little at them, saying that regular thread wasn’t exactly the most sanitary way to handle that kind of wound. Within the hour Claire’s leg was restitched and she was given a prescription for antibiotics and vicodin once Ben explained that they were traveling sales reps and were going to be on the road again for a few more days before heading ‘home.’

Knowing that it was back to the grindstone the following day, Ben decided to find the nicest hotel in town and check them in. Someplace that had room service and pay-per-view, and maybe a really nice bathtub. It was just a case now of did they share one room, or get two with some sort of joiner. He’d never been in those kinds of hotels before, but surely they had to exist. He’d seen them on TV.

( “Not sure I even /want/ to get used to this...” )

***
Funny how room for dessert mysteriously appears with the smell of cherries and dark, rich chocolate, even after stuffing herself mercilessly for the last forty minutes. The piece of chocolate cake in front of Claire was slowly disappearing, bite by bite between the pain-killer and Lite Beer mix of giggles and snickers. The phrase ‘fat and happy’ flashed through her mind about ten minutes prior. Now, Claire found herself overcompensating for nearly ten years of an almost monk-like existence, grinning stupidly at the bright smile and sharp hazel eyes across from her.

( “I /really/ thought you were gonna hurl on his shoes...” )

***
It was nearing 4AM by the time they finished Return of the Jedi. Ben refused to watch the prequels on grounds that they were shit and Hayden Christensen was a terrible actor, so they’d premised the three movies by watching Ghostbusters and Caddyshack. Needless to say, Ben thought Bill Murray was a god among insects.

It was the second time Ben had ever seen Claire drunk, and in all honesty he kind of liked drunk Claire. Drunk Claire smiled and giggled a lot more than Sober Claire did in the small amount of time that he knew her, and she had this look about her that he found himself enjoying immensely. Her hair would tangle around her too-red cheeks and her amazingly clear blue eyes would get glassy and when she smiled, he felt it in his groin.

“You okay over there, Chuckles?” he asked her once she’d settled down on her bed again. “Good for one more?”

By that point, Claire had made herself lazily comfortable without any regard for how one was supposed to lay on a bed. She was half-curled on her side with a thick pillow loosely clutched to her chest--the majority of her hair sprawled off the side of the bed, twitching for the floor each time she moved. She shifted, peering at him from across the space between the two beds. Like most of the sentences she managed to start in the last hour, this one started with a delicately scoffed laugh.

“One more beer or one more movie?” Her cheeks were apple’d and Claire’s abs actually hurt from laughing--but she didn’t even feel the gash in her leg anymore. Honestly, Claire probably couldn’t feel her legs in general by that point.

“We might be out of beers,” he said, half the words coming out as a grunt as he leaned sideways over the gap between his bed and the table between them to check. Sure enough, the twelve pack was empty and the sodas still remained untouched. “Yep. Out. So another movie? Or somethin’ else?” ( She exaggeratedly arched one brow at him, even squinting one eye to close, then snorted comically at herself. )