WHO: Hannah and Bren WHERE: Bren’s apartment WHEN: Backdated to Monday evening, November 9th, after Hannah speaks to David about the gossip blog WHAT: Hannah is freaking out a little, so she goes to Bren.
Hannah felt numb. It wasn’t because of the cold, though it was chilly out. No, Hannah supposed she was in shock. That was the best way to describe her state of being, anyway, like a person in shock. Only her injury, so to speak, was more psychological than physical. There probably wasn’t psychological precedent for the state of one’s mind directly after finding out that you had been dead, and the only reason you weren’t was because the person you were closest to had made a deal with a demon to bring you back. David’s soul was on the chopping block, and for what? So that she was alive? Her life wasn’t worth hell for her brother, and it was that that was weighing on her the heaviest.
She didn’t remember going to the MTN, or the walk from the MTN to Bren’s apartment building. Somehow she’d ended up there, like her feet had automatically known where she needed to go. She couldn’t go home right then; home was where David was, and she needed some time away to deal with the guilt and process what this meant for them. Seeing him, being around her brother, it just clouded her judgment with emotions. She needed to deal with that before they could talk again, and with two demons still out there looking for her and David, anywhere they knew about wasn’t safe. But Bren’s--they didn’t know about there. And surprisingly, she needed his company.
She stood staring up at the building as the rain poured down as she tried to sift through the mud that was her thoughts right then, each one darker than the other and threatening to pull her under if she dwelled too long. She didn’t know what she was going to tell him, if anything at all, but eventually it got to be too cold to stand out there in the Autumn shower. She made her way inside, and eventually down the hallway to his apartment door, trailing wet footprints behind her. The longer she stood there, the more water dripped from her damp clothes and hair, leaving a puddle around her on the floor. Finally, she lifted a hand to knock, waiting in apprehension for him to answer the door.
“I think I died,” She blurted out as soon as it opened. No greeting, no smooth and easy transition into the rough discussion, just straight to the point, and she immediately looked shocked that the words had escaped at all.
Company wasn’t something that Bren got often. Sometimes Tori would turn up out of nowhere, and Hannah and David knew his address even if they didn’t really drop by, just in case anything ever happened, but mostly Bren and whoever he was living with at the time (this one had stuck around a while, which was good because he really hated having to break new ones in on the craziness that was hanging around with him) were on their own. Actually, mostly Bren was on his own, because his roommate usually managed to find alternate places to sleep when any kind of supernatural shenanigans started up, which was… a lot more often, now that he was friends with David and Hannah and something (frenemies?) with Tori. Yeah, actually, Bren didn’t see this roommate lasting much longer, either.
When the knock on the door came, that meant that Bren knew, out of three people, who it was likely to be. He was kind of expecting Tori, though why he didn’t know. He never knew why she turned up, though, he just kind of humored her because if she was being dramatic on his couch while her rat of a dog wandered around then she wasn’t out there killing someone. Answering the door for Tori was just doing his part to save lives.
It wasn’t Tori, though, which wasn’t a complaint. He had no problems with Hannah turning up at his door, not at all, even if she looked… kind of like a wet cat, actually, along with that fading bruise on her cheek from the demon attack she’d mentioned. It looked worse than he expected it to, even a week later, and he thought again about whether it was worth trying to do something about it even if it was definitely going to be healing naturally. Really, she just looked like she was having a real hell of a day, and he was already opening the door wider before she opened her mouth and dropped what felt like an actual bomb on him.
For a second, it was as terrifying as if he was getting a call to tell him that she was actually dead, a moment of blind panic because he hadn’t seen it. He was too close to Hannah to see it, to see anything that involved her. This was what happened when Ash, when Bren, let themselves get close to someone. They died, because Bren couldn’t see what was going to happen in time to protect them. But… Hannah was fine. Ish. Hannah was alive, at least, and standing in front of him, which meant that if she had died, someone had…
Swallowing, he stepped aside. “Wanna come in?”
She’d noticed the nervous swallow, the one that suggested that Bren had put some of the pieces together. Maybe not all of them, but some of them, and Hannah wasn’t sure when she’d become that hyper aware of the small details that made up Bren, but she had. It wasn’t comforting that he was nervous, not when he was usually the cocky one, but she nodded anyway. The kind of a nod that was barely there, as if her body was afraid of moving. But she had to get out of the hallway before they could talk anymore; it wouldn’t do to have anybody overhear them talking about demons and murder, or even deals and hell. People would start to think that Bren ran with a satanic cult or something.
She slipped past him into the privacy of his home, hugging herself against the chill. This...this was outside Hannah’s ability to process. She and David, they’d faced demons and monsters, she read about horrible things in her research, but this wasn’t just that. This was actual death. Actual hell. And if Sam hadn’t been able to save Dean from the pit, there was no way in hell that Hannah was going to be able to save David. From there, it was just a snowball effect into Lucifer, into Leviathan, and purgatory, and knights of hell, and the mark of cain. Just thinking about it made her itch, and she fidgeted, suddenly very uncomfortable in her own skin.
“So um.” She swallowed, shifting her weight as she looked at him. It felt like she was choking on her words, and she had to look up and away from him as her eyes filled with moisture that didn’t fall. “I kind’ve need your help, because I don’t know what to do, you know? About the whole thing. Because I can’t let David go to hell for...for me. That just. It can’t happen. I.” She stopped and sucked in a deep breath.
“He should’ve left me dead, Bren. He shouldn’t have--not like this.”
Bren closed the door behind her, but he didn’t look away from it, at first. He couldn’t look at her, not and still think, because… Hannah was his friend. Hannah was one of the first real friends Bren could ever remember having, even if there was a lot that he still needed to tell her about exactly who, and what, he and Ash were. He’d never been more glad that Hannah didn’t know what they were, or what they could do, than he was right then, because… because Bren could have brought her back. If Bren had known that she was dead, Bren could have brought her back without David doing whatever it was that was going to send him to hell.
Bren could have. He wouldn’t have.
Just because you could, didn’t mean you should. If he’d been less close to Hannah, if he’d been able to look into Hannah’s future and see, for sure, that nothing was going to be destroyed, that she hadn’t had to die right then so that the world would stay balanced, he could have brought her back without a pang of conscience. Since he couldn’t, he wouldn’t know what effect it would have on the world. He still didn’t know what kind of effect it was going to have, if David had doomed everyone and everything by finding a way to bring Hannah back from death. He didn’t know. He didn’t care. He couldn’t have brought Hannah back himself, not knowing if it was his actions that were going to destroy everything, but…
“I’m glad he didn’t.” Bren didn’t think about it until after he’d done it, didn’t remember that he didn’t like physical affection, that touching people was something that was reserved for kids that hadn’t hit puberty, kids who were so young and innocent that touching them wouldn’t bother him. He turned, his own eyes shining a little too brightly in the overhead light, and moved toward her to wrap his arms around her, tightly, burying his face against her hair. “I’m glad he didn’t leave you.”
His voice was muffled, but that didn’t matter, as close as his face was to Hannah’s ear. It would start bothering him, eventually, Ash’s problems with anything but the most casual touch driving him to move away, but for the moment Bren would rather have her close. “We won’t let him go to hell, okay? I’ll help you.” He didn’t know how, not right then, but he was a god. He’d figure it out.
Hannah hadn’t realized just how much she’d needed that hug from Bren until she was engulfed in it, pressed against him and warm despite the fact that she still looked like she’d decided to take a dip in the local pool completely clothed. She clung to him tightly, her face buried in his shirt. It was comforting, even though this wasn’t a line she had crossed with Bren before. They were friends. Actually, he was probably her only friend, especially if professors didn’t count, and she’d never been more grateful to have him in her life than she was right then.
“But he should’ve,” Her voice was muffled, drowned out by his chest, and she was thankful for that because it was cracking with emotion. She wasn’t used to feeling like this, to having her raw emotions exposed to the world--even if the world was just Bren right then. She was shaking, and not because she had died. Surprisingly, out of all of it, the fact that she had actually died bothered Hannah the least out of the whole thing. At some point since she’d gotten Sam, since the threats and the weird shit had started, Hannah had resigned herself to the fact that this was a very real possibility. That one day she and David would go on a hunt and she wouldn’t come back.
“This is how it always starts. With death, and deals, and then the next thing you know Lucifer’s around, and David’s got that stupid mark.” She held onto Bren tighter, squeezing her eyes shut to hold back the flood that was threatening to release. She needed to count to ten before she started to panic again; she could already feel her heartbeat accelerating. “We need to get him out of the deal before he goes to hell, because if we get him out after he goes to hell, it could break seals, and then we’ve got the apocalypse and...fuck.” She pulled back from him, her hands tangling in her hair so that she could tug. She needed to breathe.
“I should… I’m going to go kill Finley. That’s what I’ll do. I...yeah. Right now.”
“Whoah.” Bren hadn’t ever met this Finley guy, but he’d heard about him before. He’d heard enough to know that he probably never wanted to meet him, since going by what Hannah said, he was a real dick, and it probably wouldn’t be any great loss if she did kill him. That wasn’t Bren’s problem with the whole idea, obviously. The fact that Hannah wasn’t exactly… he didn’t want to say in her right mind, even if that was probably true. She’d earned a little going off the deep end, since she’d learned that she’d probably been dead. Not in the right state of mind to actually be able to take on a demon, that was a little better, especially if this Finley guy was any stronger than a regular demon. The impression that Bren had gotten was that he was.
Bren knew that Hannah was a hunter. He’d seen her hunt, seen her fight. He had nothing but respect for Hannah’s ability to kick ass, if she really put her mind to it, but right then… right then she looked tiny, and fragile, and something thumped painfully in his chest at the idea of her actually going out there and putting herself into danger again, when he just realized how close he could get to actually losing her, to losing his friend. He reached out and gripped her wrists, gently enough that she could pull away if she really wanted to, but just enough to hold on to her, somehow, to make sure that she didn’t run off without at least thinking about it. “I’m pretty sure that’s not a great idea, right now.”
If it would have been a great idea, ever. At least, not without some kind of backup. Bren guessed that he was supposed to be that backup, since she’d gone to him.
Thing was, Bren didn’t know nearly enough about the kind of deals that you made with demons, in Hannah and David’s source. He knew about how they worked in Ash’s, not that Bren could exactly make a bargain with the demon broker, himself. Not that he would—Jaden was a scary motherfucker, and if his reincarnate was around, Bren didn’t want to know about it. Not the point. The point was that Bren didn’t know how these deals worked, and Hannah wasn’t thinking clearly enough to remember if killing this Finley guy would even work, or if the deal would just go on without him there. Until he knew, he figured he shouldn’t tag along while Hannah went off half-cocked with no solid plan for how she was even going to kill the demon.
He had a feeling that logic wasn’t exactly going to impress her, right then. “Seriously, Han, you’re soaked. Do you really want to go back out in that? Hunt in that?” That was a more pressing concern, and something that might make a little more sense than whether or not killing Finley would actually work. “Let me get you something of mine to change into, okay? You can get in something dry, I’ll make coffee, we can talk about it.” That sounded good, right? He wasn’t saying no, just… not right then.
It probably wasn’t a good idea. Deep down, Hannah knew that even if she did succeed in killing Finley--and that was a big if--it wouldn’t change David’s deal. There was always another demon waiting to snatch up the contracts from the shadows, and for all she knew there was some clause that David hadn’t told her about that nullified the contract if Finley died. David would go to hell, she’d die again, and the world wouldn’t be fair. She knew that. She also knew that if a demon like Tali, in a girl who was inept enough to allow herself to get tackled by a human, could kill her with a punch, there was no way she’d be able to take Finley on by herself and live to tell the tale.
The real problem was that she didn’t care. David had made a deal to bring her back to life. She shouldn’t have even been existing to stand there in front of Bren spewing half-baked schemes that would only end in her death. But she was, because David had made a deal, and if she died trying to get him out of it--well, didn’t that just make the balance of nature all balanced again? It wasn’t a real loss. Not when every second was time she shouldn’t have had.
Still, when Bren held her wrists, it grounded her. She was still itching to do something, to save her brother, but she had a tether to reality. She couldn’t save David with a knife and an exorcism; she needed to do research. She needed to fix this by being tricky, and wiggling around the details of the contract. All things she knew she couldn’t do right then with her mind spinning in a million directions at once. Her arms hung limp in his grasp, not even attempting to break free, and slowly she nodded at him. Dry clothes, and coffee. That was, at least, a good start.
“Okay,” She whispered, her voice small and unsure. Despite her size, Hannah had never felt tiny before. Sure, people teased her about her height, especially in comparison to Sam, but she’d never actually felt small until now. Now she felt like she could slip through the cracks of the earth if she just turned the wrong way. “Okay, we can talk. And coffee. Coffee could be good.” And coffee could keep her awake to go through the books back home.
Bren almost sighed in relief, but yeah, that probably would be kind of a jerk move. It wasn’t like Hannah was actually overreacting, or being crazy about anything. Yeah, killing the demon that had worked out a deal with her brother probably seemed like a perfectly logical thing, when you were upset like that. Just because you made a decision while you were emotional, it didn’t mean that it was a crazy decision. He was glad she wasn’t going to charge off to go after a demon that night, obviously, but… he didn’t want to be insulting about it.
“Okay. I’ll… go get you some clothes.” Not that anything Bren owned had a chance of staying on her. Maybe he could have just used god powers to make her clothes dry, or created her something new in the right size out of thin air, but it didn’t cross his mind, right then. He was going to go find something in his meager selection of clothes that might have some small chance of fitting her, even though she was a foot shorter than him. “You can dry off and get changed while I make the coffee. Sound good?”
Even if it didn’t, that was probably their best bet. Bren hated leaving her there, but he at least didn’t close the door between them when he went to his bedroom and started digging through his drawer of clothes. It was okay if the t-shirt was oversized, it was finding pants that weren’t going to fall right off of her that was going to be the problem. Finally, he managed to dig up some gym shorts from the bottom of the stack from a really short-lived period where he’d had a fitness nut roommate who’d insisted on waking him up every morning to go jogging. They were elastic-waisted, and Bren was still pretty sure they wouldn’t fit, but… with a quick glance to make sure that Hannah couldn’t see what he was doing, he remade the tops of them to be draw-string, instead of just elastic. There, she’d be able to tighten them enough that they’d work. They might not be comfortable, but they’d work.
Bren gathered the shorts and a shirt up into his arms and stepped back out, holding them out to her. “Here, this’ll work. I don’t actually have a dryer, but we can hang yours up on the shower curtain or something.” They should dry, especially if he talked her into crashing on the couch overnight instead of running off again in the rain. “Go ahead, I’ll get the coffee.” It wasn’t much, but it was what Bren had to offer, right then.
Hannah nodded. There was a lot of nodding, and headshaking, and just plain standing awkwardly that night. For somebody who’d always had a problem shutting up, she was suddenly finding it very hard to find words for anything. Any time she thought that it would be appropriate to have a normal conversation, to just say ‘hi’ or ‘how are you’ to Bren, the words got stuck in the pit of her stomach and twisted into thoughts of hellfire and death. So she stayed quiet, standing and waiting for Bren to return with clothes. She hadn’t noticed him using his powers to change the pants to drawstring, though she probably wouldn’t have even if he’d done it out in the open. Hannah was definitely in Hannah world that night.
She took the clothes graciously, hesitating before she went into the bathroom. The thought had briefly crossed her mind while he was in the other room that she could just leave and go take on Finley herself while he was busy searching for clothes, that it was stupid for her to involve Bren in the first place. Bren was her best friend, her only friend, and the track record for Winchesters wasn’t good when it came to friends. Clearly, if she had died and a deal had been made, they were destined to follow the trail left behind by the two brothers that was littered with bodies. But she hadn’t, and instead she went into the bathroom to get changed.
The changing part hadn’t taken long. Hannah had peeled out of her wet clothes easily, shivering now that the initial shock of being wet in the first place was wearing off. She pulled Bren’s clothes on quickly, tying the string as tightly as possible, before laying her own clothes carefully over the side of the tub. She was swimming in his clothes, unsurprisingly so. Considering the stark contrast between them, Bren as tall as he was and Hannah comically tiny, it was amazing that the shorts didn’t fall off her completely. As it was, they were more like pants than shorts on her. At least she wasn’t going anywhere just yet.
She slipped out of the bathroom, her hands resting in front of her stomach as she played nervously with the cuticles on her fingers. In his oversized clothes she felt uncomfortable, even more so, but she was likely to have felt uncomfortable that night regardless. She was uncomfortable with simply existing, as though she were trespassing in the land of the living. She paused in the doorway, staring over at Bren, and swallowed--or attempted to, with how dry her mouth felt.
“Please don’t tell David about any of this,” She whispered. “I don’t want him to think that--” She shrugged. That what? She was going crazy? That maybe she hadn’t come back 100% herself? That she wasn’t grateful? She didn’t know. She just knew that she didn’t want him to know.
Bren’s coffee maker was old and unreliable. He could have remade that just as easily as he’d fixed the pants so that Hannah could pull them tight enough to keep them on, but that seemed like cheating. Ash had never gotten to have that normal human experience, and there wasn’t much that was more normal than having kitchen appliances that you had to fight with. He’d finally gotten the plug jiggled just right, and the carafe at the perfect angle so that it would drip, when Hannah stepped back out of the bathroom. It kept him from staring at her, at least.
“I won’t tell him.” Maybe Bren should have told David. Maybe that should have been the first thing he did once Hannah stepped into the bathroom, texted David and let him know that Hannah was there, that she was safe, but she wasn’t okay. He probably would have wanted to know.
Telling him wouldn’t have helped anything. Not right then, not when Hannah was still right there. For now… for now, Bren would just keep an eye on her. Make sure that she was okay, that she didn’t go anywhere until she was calm enough that he knew she was going to be safe. No matter what, Hannah didn’t need to be alone, right then. He thought David would probably understand that it was more important for Bren to give Hannah a place that was safe, a place where she wasn’t alone, than it was to let him know where that place was.
Drip by drip, the coffee started darkening the bottom of the carafe. Bren wasn’t sure if he could look at Hannah right then, not without needing to touch her, again, to make sure that she was really there, and really safe. It was just that Hannah was a friend. Bren hadn’t done friends in a long time. Since his mom had died, maybe, not real friends anyway. Ash, he’d had some. More, as the years went on and Artemis had made more Dark-Hunters. They’d never gotten close enough for him to really trust them, any of them, with all the details of his past. He’d gone to great lengths to cover up the literal torture of his childhood in Greece, before he’d met someone that he could trust with that side of himself. It made sense, that Bren just didn’t remember what friendship was supposed to be like. How it felt like your guts were being ripped out when you thought of something happening to them. Sure, it wasn’t like that with David, but he and David had gotten off to a… rocky start. Not that Bren blamed David for it, anyone would have been freaked out by that. It wasn’t like that with Tori, either, not that he was completely sure you could call what they were doing friendship; there was that secondhand guilt over Nick, and the bond of being the only two who knew exactly what Ash and Nick’s world was like, but nothing like the gut deep panic that he felt when he thought about the fact that, for a while, Hannah had been dead.
It was even more awkward to just not look at her at all, though. Bren tried to be casual about it, turning slowly and only halfway, like he needed to keep watching the coffee brew. Actually, he did. Sometimes it needed another jiggle part of the way through the process. “I. I don’t actually have any good coffee. It’s just what was cheap.” He usually dropped by some local place for a cup to take with him while he was out patrolling for… whatever. Not that he thought that he needed to tell Hannah about his coffee. He just didn’t have anything else to say except ‘I might have torn the world apart if you were dead’ and that was a little creepy.
How long had she stared awkwardly at him before she’d finally spoken up? Probably longer than was socially appropriate, and Hannah was grateful that the coffee maker had kept his attention while she’d gathered her thoughts. She’d needed to ask him not to tell David, but it wasn’t something that was a pressing issue, immediately necessary. It was more that there was an awkward silence, one that was up to her to break since there was a chance he hadn’t known she’d come out yet, and… And she didn’t know how to human, was the real issue. She didn’t feel human.
“I’m not picky,” She whispered, taking a couple of tentative steps further into the room. Her right hand slid up her arm to grip at her elbow, goosebumps rubbing against her fingers along the way. She was sure the apartment wasn’t cold. It was just her. There was something wrong with her. Oh god, was there something wrong with her? If she was dead, and brought back by a demon, did that taint her? Her brow furrowed at the horrific thought, and she moved closer to where Bren was standing as though that would make a difference. Standing near somebody who hadn’t been affected by this, it would somehow change her back by osmosis, right? Yeah. Like anything was that easy for the Winchesters. The more likely scenario was that she’d taint him, too. Once again the idea of running went through her mind like a giant marquee. Run. Flee. Control the Winchester blast zone.
No, coffee was the least of her worries right then. She probably wouldn’t even taste it, if she could even keep it down. And even if she could and did, it wasn’t like she drank exquisite coffee on the regular. She was a college student, poor like they tended to be, and usually drank what was served in the dining hall. Or, used to. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do about school, if anything. A semester off, at least. She’d have to tell her professors, and probably back out of her independent study. It was just necessary.
She was right next to him by then, leaning forward on the counter with her forearms to prop her up, arm gently brushing against him by accident in the process. She needed the constant touch to feel grounded in reality. She was alive. She wasn’t dead. She actually still existed.
“What if I came back wrong?” She whispered, unaware that she’d actually asked the question out loud. “Different, and not all me?”
It wasn’t… a bad question. Sometimes, Bren knew, when people were dead, they didn’t come back right. There was something off. Most of the time, though, the only thing that was wrong was in their brains, that they weren’t able to handle what had happened. He didn’t want to talk to Hannah about how he knew it, though, about what the Dark-Hunters were. There were names he could tell her, stories… but that wasn’t going to make her feel better, and there were more people who came back just fine, and who were exactly the same as they had been before they died. Well. Almost. Hannah hadn’t come back with her soul in the keeping of a bitch goddess, so she was great, there. The people that Ash had brought back, they’d been fine. He’d been careful.
Most people, they probably would have reassured her without even thinking that it wasn’t true, just to try to make her feel better. Bren wasn’t most people. Maybe that was part of the reason that Hannah had come to him, even if she hadn’t been thinking about it. He turned, then, looked at her fully. If she hadn’t come back right… Bren would be able to tell. He thought.
He looked her over, closely, stared down into her eyes. All he saw there was Hannah. All he felt there was Hannah, and maybe he couldn’t (or wouldn’t) read her mind like he might have with someone else’s, even her worries still felt like… Hannah. Just Hannah. “You didn’t come back wrong. You came back… right. Just right.” As long as she was breathing, Bren would have been happy with however she’d come back, but that wasn’t what Hannah wanted to hear, right then.
As the coffee dripped, each drop hitting the surface of the liquid with a plop, Bren reached out and put a hand on Hannah’s shoulder, holding her steady. “You aren’t a demon. You aren’t missing your soul. I could tell.” He didn’t know if she believed him. It was true, but she still didn’t know what he was. What he could do. It still wasn’t time to tell her. She did know that he could do… things… though. Maybe that would be enough to make her believe him. If not… if not, he’d just keep telling her until she did. No matter how long that took.
There was a laugh. Not a full one, Hannah wasn’t in a space to burst into a fit of giggles no matter how relieved his words made her feel. But there was a laugh, and Hannah covered her face with her hands as she let the relief wash over her. There wasn’t proof, of course, Bren could easily be telling her that just to make her feel better. But that wasn’t how Bren was, and Hannah knew that. If something had been wrong, if she hadn’t come back whole or with something riding her, he would have told her so they could find a way to fix it. He wouldn’t leave her like that.
Hannah slid her hands off of her face, her eyes glistening again, so that she could rest a hand on the hand that was on her shoulder. She squeezed it gently and let it there, taking a moment to look at him. She didn’t think she studied him ever when they were just hanging out or doing jobs, she didn’t pay extra attention to him--did she?--but somehow… Somehow Hannah knew exactly how he was supposed to look. How his hair lay, the facial expression he should have been using around her instead of this one of concern. So maybe she didn’t know for sure that she was 100% pure Hannah, but she was willing to live with that ignorance for right then, to stand in the comfort of her...friend. Things weren’t perfect, far from it, and she would save David. But this here? This was okay. Being with Bren was okay.
She slid his hand carefully off of her shoulder, clasping it between both of her hands like a lifeline. Her intention was to hug him again, this time out of gratitude rather than him calming her down from a terrified spiral. Really, she just needed a lot of hugs, or so she told herself. One more couldn’t hurt, not when she was still feeling on edge. So that was her intention; steal another hug, hold on for a bit, and give him space.
Instead, she caught his eye, and a second later found herself pushing up onto toes in order to reach, and pressed her mouth against his.
The physical contact with Hannah kept being weirdly okay. Yes, weirdly. He didn’t mind her hand on his, he didn’t mind the way she clasped his hand between hers. Hannah was safe, somehow, safe in a way that even Ash was okay with. Bren wouldn’t have minded hugging her again, was honestly really okay with the idea of maybe taking their coffee to the couch, sitting with a friendly arm around her shoulders. It sounded… good. Actually. It was a way to keep her close, a way to keep her safe. If she was right there with him, he could make sure nothing hurt her, or took her away from them again. Sure, he wasn’t infallible, but he thought he had a pretty good chance.
He didn’t realize what she was actually doing until her lips touched his, and he froze, stuck between pushing her away and maybe… maybe kissing back, a little. It was even weirder to realize that he didn’t hate the idea—he’d definitely kissed before. He’d done more than kissing, initiated it, but that had been before Ash. As much as Ash tried not to let his own issues with sex creep into Bren’s life, it was impossible when they were that close, when anything that triggered Ash would ignite that instinctive panic in him, too. He’d tried hooking up, a couple of times since he’d gotten Ash, but even something as simple as kissing got… complicated, when Ash was involved, and Ash would always be involved. He’d apologized, but Bren had found himself strangely not caring about it. Not really missing it.
Kissing Hannah, though, that was nice. He trusted Hannah. Because he trusted Hannah, Ash trusted Hannah. She wasn’t going to hurt them. She wasn’t going to stab them in the back. He liked Hannah, liked her as a friend. Liked her as more? Maybe.
That was why he couldn’t kiss back. Not like this, not when she was only doing it because she needed comfort. He swallowed again, braced his hand gently on her shoulder and pulled her away. It wasn’t hard, with the size difference. With the strength difference, on top of that. He’d never hurt her, but there was no denying that a god was stronger than a mortal… and there was another reason not to. Not right then. Not until she knew. He pushed her away, carefully, but he didn’t let go. “Hannah… I… I like you. I like you a lot. But I don’t think that this is the right time for you to decide if you want to kiss me. Not when you’re upset.” He didn’t want her to think he was rejecting her. That was the last thing he wanted. “When you’re feeling better, when… when you aren’t just trying to feel like you again, and if you still want to kiss me, then… then we’ll talk about it, okay? But I want to be your friend tonight, and I want to be your friend in the morning when you’re less freaked out, and I don’t know if kissing you tonight would keep that from happening.”
Hannah wanted to reassure him that this wouldn’t change their friendship, that they could still be friends in the morning even if they kissed, but she couldn’t make that promise. When she wasn’t even confident that she’d be her in the morning, it wasn’t possible to make promises about anything. She couldn’t blame him for being weary about it, and she nodded--barely--to acknowledge that she’d heard him. She didn’t want it to be weird for him. Really, she didn’t want any of...this. Well, maybe some of it. She didn’t hate kissing him, and she didn’t hate being close to Bren, but she hated the why.
“I’m sorry,” She apologized, taking a step back and once again hugging her arms to her chest. It wasn’t a pose that lasted long, not with how fidgety she was, but she figured that after that weirdness he probably needed space. She was a wrecking ball on a crash course with everything, anyway. She’d already ruined David’s life. Maybe it was best that this didn’t go further, especially if it meant the eventuality that she’d ruin Bren’s life, too. “That was stupid. I’m really sorry.”
Hannah ran her hand through her hair, where it got tangled in wet knots so she gave up and pulled her hand back to her side. Her gaze found the clock--it was late. Way late. She shouldn’t have even still been there at this time, and suddenly she felt a whole new level of imposing. Frowning, she looked back at him. “I should go home…” But she didn’t want to go home, and it was clear by the way she was still frozen in her stance that she didn’t want to leave. Home meant the bunker, and David, and probably spiraling all over again. But she couldn’t just assume she could stay here.
Maybe a motel. With...the zero dollars she brought with her when she’d left. Not her most thought-out action.
That hadn’t gone the way Bren had meant for it to at all. “What? No, no it wasn’t stupid.” Unless she was already regretting it, which he guessed was possible. He was the guy with weird powers and a crappy apartment, he wasn’t exactly the best bet, as far as romantic partners went. He was lucky to be in the friend zone, instead of the thing we should probably kill zone. “It wasn’t stupid. Okay? I’m flattered. Really, a lot.” Hannah was smart, bossy, human in all the ways that really mattered, and absolutely wonderful. She was everything that Ash had loved about his wife, just in a tinier and way less Greek package.
“Don’t leave.” It might have sounded like an order, but it was definitely more of a plea. Bren didn’t want her going out there, alone, upset. She wouldn’t have her guard up. Even if she was fine, he wouldn’t be able to stop worrying about her, even once he knew for a fact that she was home safe. He couldn’t see what would happen if she walked out the door, and that would make him nervous, for a while. Maybe for the rest of her life, which was going to be shorter than his anyway.
Bren didn’t quite reach out to touch her again. She was probably embarrassed. Not that she needed to be, but he could read her body language, at least a little. She was embarrassed, and him reaching out to her again probably wouldn’t help with that. He kept his hands to himself, awkwardly.
Maybe, if he didn’t make things awkward that way, she’d let him talk her into staying. “You should stay here, for the night. You can take my bed, I’ll sleep on the couch.” If he slept at all. He might be staying up, reading about deals with demons and what you could do to get someone out of them. “Please, Hannah? Just stick around for the night.” Maybe he’d feel better about her leaving, once the sun was out.