I Don't Bite [Dean Winchester x Reader] Book 2

Coin Toss

Content Warning: suggestive content -- fade to gray smut, because I'm a coward.

I leaned against Bobby's kitchen counter, a cold beer in hand and Ruby at my side. Her nails drummed rhythmically against the lacquered edge of the butcher block countertops. My fingertips curled around the hard edge of the counter each time her mindless tapping ceased and resumed.

Sam laid a map out on the small dining table at one edge of the kitchen, situated neatly beneath the numerous phones that lined the walls. He pointed toward a spot to the left edge of the map. I leaned to the side as Dean and Anna squeezed in to get a better look at what he was gesturing toward. "Union, Kentucky. In '85, there was an empty field outside of town. Six months later, there was a full-grown oak. They say it looks a century old at least."

"The grace. Where it hit, it could have done something like that, easy," Anna chimed breathily, her voice elevated in disbelief. "Pure creation."

I furrowed my brows. Creation? All I had seen from the angels so far was destruction...

I felt a nudge against my right arm. I cocked my head to the side slightly and eyed Ruby out of the corner of my eye. She rested one elbow on the counter, angled her body toward me, and leaned her weight against the cold surface. Her lips were drawn in a thin line, lacking the characteristic snark she hid behind.

"What's got you so pensive?" she asked quietly, her voice barely carried over the debating voices of Anna and the Winchesters. My scowl deepened as I adjusted my body to face the trio again. I crossed my arms over my chest, my shoulders stiff and slumped.

Could she possibly know anything about Mai-coh's agenda? Samhain clearly had, but, well, Ruby was no centuries-old, world-ending, maniacal witch- supposedly. Realistically, we didn't know anything about her beyond what she was willing to tell us.

"What do you think about monsters?"

She lifted a singular neatly manicured brow. She stared at me for a moment longer before clicking her tongue and looking back at the trio as they formulated a plan. None of them seemed to mind that Ruby and I hung back – this wasn't a discussion that involved the damned, evidently.

"Cut from the same cloth," she finally replied. I narrowed my eyes and waited for her to elaborate. "I mean, they hate you just as much as they hate me, right? Maybe more," she continued with a dry laugh. "There's gotta be some sort of common ground there."

"Common ground..."

"Yeah." Ruby sighed dramatically and sidled closer to me, her shoulder pressed to mine. I leaned away slightly as she moved conspiratorially toward me. "Look, we – demons – don't hate you guys. You're trying to make a living, just like us."

"By killing people."

"Yep. But that's how we were designed. Ravenous, bloodthirsty beasts. What's the harm in doing what we were created to do? Everyone else gets to do it, so why can't we?"

I paused. "Is that the same thinking you've been feeding him?" I nodded in Sam's direction. Ruby's eyes followed my motion and landed on the younger Winchester. "You know, to get him to use his psychic powers?"

"Sam has a gift."

"One that requires him to drink blood," I growled with a glare in her direction. "It hurts him. And he's... he's different." Quicker to anger. More violent. Distrustful. Although, he hadn't trusted me fully in quite a while. Not with my regularly fluctuating self-control.

"He's stronger," she debated. I clamped my jaw shut as I watched Sam loom over the map. Sure, he seemed more sure of himself, but at what cost? Ruby exhaled a bitter sigh beside me. "Look, I get it, he's like your kid brother and you want to protect him. But Sam is an adult and a hunter. He has a gift, and he has every right to learn how to use it. He's not different, he's just stronger," she uttered, enunciating each slowly drawled word. "Have you considered that him treating you differently has nothing to do with him, and everything to do with you?"