Profile

ON PLAYDATES:

JENSEN: MISHA, TELL YOUR KID TO STOP SPRINKLING GLITTER ON MY KID

MISHA: IT’S PART OF WEST’S TRIBAL/FRIENDSHIP RITUAL

WEST: YOU ARE MAGIC NOW!'

JENSEN’S SON: I’M A UNICORN?

WEST: NO! YOU’RE MAGIC!

JENSEN’S SON: YEAH THAT’S WHAT I SAID! I’M A BEAUTIFUL UNICORN!

WEST: MMMBOP DOO BEE DOO WAA PAPAPA DIPOP DOOYA UNGUNGUNG

JENSEN’S SON: *HEADBANGS*

JENSEN: WHAT’S WEST SINGING TO MY KID?

MISHA: THAT’S HIS MATING CALL

JARED’S SON: DAD! WHERE DID THE WORLD GO? IS IT NIGHT TIME?

JARED: TAKE YOUR HEAD OUT OF THE BUCKET!

Summary: Okay, sure, call me paranoid, but I honestly didn’t know how much I trusted these guys. I mean, yeah, I did end up hitching with Tallahassee after knowing him for a full minute and a half, but for God’s sake, the man had a love affair with Twinkies. These guys looked like looked like they killed zombies as an Olympic sport.

We hurdled over the piles of bodies, leaving the convenience store and still-good queso dip behind. The truck was still right where we left it. Mr. Attitude stopped and gave it the stink-eye.

“So. You guys got names?”

“I’m Columbus,” I said, pointing. “That’s Wichita and her sister Little Rock. And Tallahassee.”

His eyes slid over each of us, sardonically nodding. “Uh huh.”

“No need for names,” Tallahassee said coarsely, coming around from the trunk and pumping his rifle. “Only wherever it is you’re headed.”

The two guys exchanged looks. Like, weird looks. Like, we’re-pompous-asses-but-for-a-good-reason looks.

“Well then.” He gestured to himself. “You can call me Lawrence. And him?” He grinned, and fuck all if it didn’t freak me out a little. “You can call him Detroit.” "

Andrea finally turns to him. "It's not," she stops, and really looks at the kid, and Daryl thinks maybe it's the first time she's really seen anyone in a while. "Oh, Glenn, it's not—it's not you. Or Dale, or anyone. It's just, when your hope dies, little by little, you start thinking you would've been better off if it'd never been there in the first place. That's all."

"But it might not always be this way," Glenn says, doggedly sincere. "It could get better, things might even change. I mean, you won't know, really, until you get there, right? That's just it, isn't it? You'll really never know what we'll find. No one does."

So fucking soft, thinks Daryl. There's no edge in Glenn, inside or out, and the kid truly means it when he tells Andrea that things can still turn out for the better. Daryl wants to grab the kid by the shoulders and shake him, wants to ask him where he's been during the last few months while everyone's been slowly and surely losing their shit, because, really, what the fuck.

But even as Daryl fights the urge to shake Glenn until something snaps, he can see Andrea, who now seems more solid and there, and how her eyes soften. "Glenn—"

"Things might still turn out to be all right," the kid insists mulishly. "I mean, can you tell me you're absolutely sure things will always stay like this? Can you tell me that?"

They met in Paris. Which makes it sound more romantic than it ever was, being as Misha was sixteen, wide eyed and hopeful and hungry then, as well, and Sebastian was twenty-two and elegantly bored. It always comes down to food between them, weirdly. Back then it was fries when Misha had been dreaming of escargot, just for the experience, dreaming of the Eiffel Tower and how cultured everyone was going to be, while he was lying his way through airport security as an unaccompanied minor.

Instead he found the poverty line, maybe even sharper than back home, found a McDonald’s (of all things!) and how you needed a card to use the payphone when he tried to call his mom and explain that he’d cleared out his bank account, his pathetic life savings, and run away to Paris.

Sebastian found him sitting in the street outside a filthy hotel that seemed to exclusively house runaways and prostitutes. Sebastian found Misha, who had suddenly realized that not speaking French in France was going to be a big fucking problem, sat down next to him on the sidewalk and offered him a half-eaten bag of fries.

"Are you kidding me?" Dean says. "Most fun I've had this week. We only stopped the Apocalypse last Thursday, I was getting bored."

Dean has a feeling that right now, Sam is smacking an imaginary palm to his forehead.

"Samuel Winchester," the Queen says, calming. Her hairs drifts down gently and she folds her hands over her lap. If Dean closes one eye, the Queen stays in the form with the sparkly tank top. Somehow, this is more threatening than the other two forms. "Clearly, despite your taint, you are the more intelligent of the pair."

Sam shoots him a smug look and Dean refrains from making a face because he is the bigger man, dammit.

"But we are not the Queen of all the fairies. We rule the Summer Court. Our sister rules the Winter Court. She rarely leaves her domain, so you will be required to travel to her location, where she awaits your arrival. Our courts seldom work toward the same ends, but as we have explained, the times are desperate."

C R E D I T S

P r o f i l e R e c s