At the Corner of Yesterday [Bobby/Zee]

[Zee Kerrick]

[zee]She didn't call ahead, Zee never did. In truth, she barely made a conscious decision about when it was time to go to Bobby's. She'd be on the road, always just after finishing a job and before she'd decided on the next one, and she'd find herself passing one of the routes to Sioux Falls and make that turn instead of going straight. Zee wasn't a philosophical person, she didn't sit around examining her own motivations. And so she truly believed that it was pure whim that took her to Bobby's when she went, she'd never even noticed that she turned up at the salvage yard every three months like clockwork, to within a week on either side, nor that since Paul had died she'd managed to be in Sioux Falls for both Christmas and her birthday.

And so Zee honestly thought that it might be a surprise or something when she turned the Challenger in on the dirt access road and drove through the gates of the salvage yard. She parked right out in front of the house and hopped out of the car dressed in one of those 'barely counted as clothes' outfits of hers and shoving her sunglasses up into her hair as she grabbed a couple of shopping bags out of the backseat and clumped up the steps toward the house.

"Bobby!" It was a weird sort of politeness, letting him know who was coming long before she got to the front door. "Lemme in, I brought groceries and a copy of Der Hexenhammer with three extra chapters I've never seen before!" Not that she could read German, but Bobby did and she always kept her eye out for new texts for his library. After all, he kept God knows how many hunters alive with the contents of his library, the least anybody could do was bring him texts they found.

Zee waited at the front door, bouncing a little on the toes of her combat boots. Since she was, as mentioned earlier, not terribly self-aware sometimes, she didn't acknowledge the tight, happy knot in her chest as she waited for him to let her in for being what it actually was.[/zee]

[bobby]

Bobby's choice earlier that day to wash a set of clothes and his favorite trucker cap, comb his hair, and be standing near the door at precisely the time a female voice sounded from the drive, had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he knew exactly when Zee tended to show up on his doorstep.

"I told ya to stop doin' that." He huffed, there was a gravel in his voice as he pulled the door open. "I'm a grown man for Christ's sake. I can do my own shoppin'." But even as he said it he took the bags from her hands, picking through one and finding his favorite potato chips as he led her back toward the kitchen.

He kept his gaze elsewhere, moving the conversation along to prevent any chance for an overly emotional greeting. "Now, you said somethin' about extra chapters?" He sat the bags down on the counter, not bothering to put them away, something he rarely did by the looks of his kitchen. There were empty bags dotting along every available surface.

He finally made eye contact with the girl, and he softened just slightly in the eyes, extending one arm to tuck her in securely in an awkward but comfortable side-hug. "It's good to see you're doin' alright, kid." He looked her up and down, and re-evaluated his statement. "But I think you forgot to get dressed this mornin."

[Zee Kerrick]

[zee]"You say that," she set the rest of her stuff down on the table and moved into the hug, almost as awkward with it as Bobby was but a bit more emphatic. Random hookups were fun and all, but sometimes there's nothing in the world you need more than you need a hug. And so she kept hold of him for a second longer and finished her thought. "You say it, but every time I come there's nothing in your fridge but steaks, ice, beer and a bottle of ketchup."

She kissed his cheek just above the line of the beard and let go of him, moving through the kitchen and gathering trash. She wouldn't scrub the place or anything, but she couldn't cook without some clear surface. "I'm frying chicken tonight," she informed him. "And it's hot out. The a/c in the Challenger's getting tetchy at me."

Once she'd cleared off the counter she went back over to her bag and pulled out a carefully-wrapped brown paper package which she handed over to Bobby. "I took out a small-time warlock in Georgia, he didn't have much of a library but I packed it up in salt and pages from a couple Gideons and sent it off media mail, it should get here in a week or two. But this one was different. I've never heard of the Malleus Maleficarum having anything but those three sections but this one's got six. I don't read German, though." Her Latin was decent but this wasn't one of the translated editions. "Seemed like I oughta bring it in quicker." Sure, right, that's why she was here. You betcha.[/zee]

[bobby]

Bobby warmed at the embrace, refusing to let it show in even the smallest of ways, but he could count on one hand the amount of people he'd be willing to offer a hug to and was always glad to be in the company of any of them.

It was easy to forget that Zee was just a kid, the too dark makeup, too blunt bangs, too tight clothes, being too skilled and too mouthy to be seen as anything other than the capable hunter she forced you to accept her as. Not until you had your arm wrapped around her. The tiny frame and a softness that belonged nowhere near the world she was living in, his world.

"A man can live just fine on that list of items. Got your meat, grains, and vegetables." Because barley and tomatoes still counted even when they were processed beyond recognition. Definitely. "But you know I won't object to your cookin', so long as you don't object to me addin' in some more defense mechanisms to the car." Discrete seals and symbols to keep the monsters at bay, holy water in the wiper fluid, some other little tricks he'd picked up over the years that she'd always insisted weren't necessary. "Half the monsters out there could eat you in one bite, kid."

Another handful of chips and he was snagging the volume and flipping through the pages until he came across the fourth chapter. "Well I'll be damned." He didn't look up from the book, and likely wouldn't until someone pried it from his hands, "and you said this warlock was small time? Wonder where along the line he came across this. It's gotta be the only copy. First edition, maybe. Text could have gotten shorted in translation." You'd have thought it was Christmas morning with the way his eyes were sparkling. "I always knew there was a reason you're my favorite."

[Zee Kerrick]

[zee]"Gosh," Zee said, flat and with the amusement all there in the tug of one side of her mouth, that and the affection as she looked over her shoulder at him. "Don't be making my life safer or anything, Bobby. And maybe they could, but I'd give them horrible indigestion." It was as far as she was able to concede anything to logic or sense. Zee had to believe that good skills and good weaponry were enough to keep her on an even footing with the monsters. Some part of her, some deep-down sensible part, knew it wasn't so but she was no less driven than any other hunter and so she kept going.

She smiled when he immediately lost himself in the book. "Knew I was right to bring it here," she said smugly. She grabbed him a fresh beer and set it next to him, then got to unpacking the groceries she'd brought and setting up to marinate the chicken in well-spiced buttermilk. She'd bought eight chickens' worth of cut up fryers, both because they'd been on a good sale and because she figured she could cook up all of it and then freeze what they didn't eat so that maybe he'd have something to break up the steak and ketchup.

Zee waited until the first time Bobby emerged from the book, which had given her time to get all the chicken going and slice up cucumbers for fresh pickles, plus start strawberries macerating for shortcake. She wasn't a great cook, but everybody got tired of fast food and sandwiches eventually and so she'd learned some basic American dishes. The kind of food, not that she admitted it to herself, that her mother used to cook.

When he finally looked up, Zee smiled at him. "Good stuff in there? My German is horrible, but even I know what 'dämon' means. Please tell me there's some good demon stuff in there?"[/zee]

[bobby]

"Der Hexenhammer's mostly about witchcraft and Devil worship, so there's bound to be somethin' interesting in these last chapters, some reason Hell's groupies made sure to keep 'em a secret."

A grumble here, a snort there, a nod, a grimace, and finally, "well I'll be damned." He lifted his face from the book and said, "found somethin' useful already. Dean, John Winchester's boy? He's workin' a case out in Andover. Somethin's tearin' hearts from chests out there. He called me yesterday when he couldn't think of anything that pulls that off without rippin' the rest of the body apart in the process."

A beat, turning his nose up and taking in the aromas of an actual meal being cooked in his kitchen, scents that were so foreign to him now he'd nearly forgotten the way a woman cooking changed the entire air of a home.

Clearing his throat, he got back to what he'd been saying before the food had distracted him, "up til now I hadn't a damn thing to tell him. But right here," he made his way over to her, turning the book to show a large, spider-like creature with a few paragraphs below it, "it talks about creatures summoned and controlled by witches to do their bidding. This one just so happens to steal hearts, the.. Grimslaw." He looked up at her, curious, "you ever heard of such a thing, kiddo?"

[Zee Kerrick]

[zee]"Sure, I know Dean." The slight flattening in her voice wasn't actually for Dean, who she got along with just fine, but for Sam. She'd been running away from what happened with him for weeks now, and she wasn't at all sure she was done running. She'd scared herself that night, and to a lesser extent Sam had scared her too. The way they'd come at one another, the ferocity and the despair and the feeling of finally. All of it was terrifying. Though not as terrifying as the reminder that had come up on her phone last week and the nothing that had happened since. She hadn't put in a new NuvaRing, the website said she shouldn't, but she hadn't peed on a stick either. That right there was even scarier than her own emotions and if she could have found a way to flee her own biochemistry she would have given it a good solid try.

She kept working on putting together the dredge and egg wash, keeping a vague eye on the candy thermometer she'd stuck in the big pan of oil (Zee watched a fair bit of Food Network while she was on the road) as she said, "Never heard of a Grimslaw. Or--" she frowned down at the mixture of flour and cornstarch she was mixing with a fork. "No, grimclaw is a bat-monster in World of Warcraft. Stupid realistic-sounding names. I got nothing. So what are they?"[/zee]