Wanderers and Stragglers
Kate has known a few wanderers in her lifetime, Clint and his brother for one. People who kept moving, running from something in their head they couldn't get away from or 'trying to find themselves' as if a great revelation was waiting if they could just find the right greasy off-the-highway dinner.
Luckily, Clint was done with that life. he had roots now, Barney not so much but--well, that's Barney isn't it?
So Kate knows not to get attached to these types. She knew better. Except she's attached to the new bartender at her and America's favorite hole in the wall before she realizes what he is, having ignored the nagging voice the back of her head that recognized the familiar light in his eyes, the restlessness in his steps and shakes in his hands.
He's there for three months, long enough that he knows the callouses on her hands from teaching her archery class (but not as intimately as she would like, if she's being honest) but not enough for him to go into his history.
Then he's gone. She's so angry about it, that he doesn't text or call goodbye that she deletes everything related to Dean from her phone and throws herself into both her jobs with a gusto that even as Maria worried.
Dean is gone for the same amount of time that she knew him, and all things considered she's doing a really good job not thinking about him (thank you very much). Except.
~*~
"Guys," Sam slides into the seat beside Sharon Carter at the latest bar of Kate's choosing. She kept moving Friday night drinking and wasn't making the reason known to the group as a whole and the ones who did know were being pretty tightlipped about the whole thing.
"Hm?" Sharon glanced up at him from the overly complex cocktail menu, straight faced as if Sam can't see Meg's hand creeping up her thigh under the table. Considering how excited he is about his day though he decides to ignore it, especially because if history is anything to go by he can write the scene in his head. Sharon, being stubborn and prideful will let Meg drag her into their weekly version of 'Are You Nervous?', a game which Meg will definitely win because there is little Meg won't do in public (the list of establishments they have been kicked out of will attest to this). She will win because Sharon will blush like a tomato while still trying to maintain eye contact with whoever she is speaking to, flushing bright red from her hairline down to her collarbone before hitting Meg's hand away violently under the table, usually hitting her own on said table in the process. Meg will grin like the proverbial cat who caught the canary--except in this instance the canary wanted to be caught, and wore a badge?-- it was a flawed metaphor actually.
Sam suspected Meg was doing decidedly more to her girlfriend than Jo and him ever did in Middle School playing this same game but that was none of his business as long a they were both happy. "We got a new temp in to cover for Karen while her and Jubes are on vacation, and she's amazing." He sighed and America rolled her eyes across from him.
"Let me guess, tall blonde and leggy?" Haha America, haha, he dates three girls in a row that look like Jess and she'll never let it go.
"Where?" Charlie asks, jerking her head up from the programming she's been working on for the better part of the month to look around the bar and America narrows her eyes at her blushing--lady friend? They aren't official. Yet.
Kate just pats his hand. "Don't worry, I understand the value of an excellent temp, tell me about her." Bless Kate Bishop, other than that one time she (accidentally) shot him in the leg with an arrow, she's one of the best friends a guy could ask for. Plus they've never been tempted to sleep together.
"She makes way better coffee than Karen, she has lint rollers on her at all times, and reorganized all of our filing cabinets." Even Sam can admit he is way too excited about their office running smoother. "Even Matt's! All of his paperwork is in braille!" Max has not admitted to knowing how to read Matt's papers, she just continued to eat her cinnabon in a way that should have been office inappropriate but he couldn't call attention to it without looking like he was staring, which, well, he was but that wasn't the point.
Sam grabs a mozzarella stick. "I don't know if she's going to stay the entire time Karen is gone because you know, Karen said it could be a minute and we can't reach them in the whatever mountain range is in Canada, but remember that rattling AC that works only like 40% of the time in the summer, and our window that sounds like a dying cat when you open it, and Matt's falling apart desk?"
"Yes!" Charlie again, glaring at him because she is their unofficial IT person paid with good grace and hugs who has had to endure all of their office malfunctions far too often.
America pats her head, obviously finding Charlie's angry face far more adorable than it was intended, "She reached out to all the people we have helped pro-bono and found people who could fix those things in return for us successfully representing them. So now it's easier for us to help people while not having to have a crisis every day about not having enough money to keep our office running."
Even America appears to appreciate that, ever the practical one, but someone is persistently kicking his leg and he looks up over at Charlie again who is wiggling her eyebrows suggestively while making grandiose gestures at her chest, programming project forgotten. Sam rolls his eyes, "Yes, Charlie she is very easy on the eyes as well."
"Sweet, how are your computers running these days?" Another eyebrow wiggle, and America sighs before elbowing her.
~*~
He's just back one day, standing outside her school like they had some prearranged lunch date in that stupid leather jacket with more stupid bags under his stupid lovely eyes.
Kate does the only thing she can be reasonably expected to do under the circumstances. She punches him.
She wishes she could look back on it and say after that she was very rational and mature (she wasn't). They have sex in his car and then against her door, then in her bed.
He stays for just two months, at a different hole in the wall bar, and leaves the same way again. Kate screams and attacks punching bags and practice dummies when she runs out of sparring partners. It's hard to delete anything from her phone this time because she's already thrown it against the wall.
~*~
They are at a different bar (again) and Kate has hearts in her eyes. "Sam Sam Sam."
Said Winchester pauses in reaching for his shot glass, he has definitely earned this after the weak he has had. He received a random email from Max who has been off radar for two months, saying she was back in town and would come by soon but didn't elaborate on why she hasn't called or texted this entire time. Or why she is emailing him now instead of texting him. He had thought sitting on top of their building eating chips, salsa and queso straight from the crock pot and the tea so sweet it almost gave him cavities would bond them enough for her to tell him goodbye. Max had been so tight-lipped about anything before she showed up he hadn't pressed her, afraid she would startle like the stray cat he and Dean adopted when they were kids, but maybe he should have pushed. Maybe he should have asked her out for a proper dinner, instead of just hitting every food cart in a five block radius (a lot, if you were curious) in an informal weekly outing.
But now she's back, and everything he had been trying to bury for months was back.
"What's new, Kate?"
She's sliding in across from him, hair a mess and reaching for the shot they had ordered for her. "My new temp is better than your temp!" He flinches, involuntarily, but Kate's head is tossed back as she drinks and she doesn't see it.
Sam takes his drink and waves at Logan for another round, he's going to need them. "I doubt that." Her temp didn't wear sweaters five times bigger than her but kept a business suit in her bag, didn't go on thirty minute long angry rants about Tex-Mex and wax poetic about sunsets in the desert even as she said riding the subway was her new hobby.
"No no, she's a gift! She's reorganized all my shit, got me three new jobs since she's been here and found me an only slightly new source of arrows for class! And she makes AMAZING coffee." Kate sighed, of course her temp made good coffee. It was a new trend apparently, talented temps who could make coffee far better than regular employees or their employers.
Karen slid in beside him, shoving him over with her hip. "Are you guys going on about your temps again? You need hobbies."
"Punching villains?" Kate offered, far too hyper for just on shot.
"Questing for Justice?" Bad jokes were infectious, what can he say.
Karen sighed and rolled her eyes. "No like, knitting and fishing."
There was a pause as Laura brought them their next round of shots, before Kate offered, "Fishing for Justice?"
Karen snatched her drink from the tray so fast it almost splashed, "Fuck I need more alcohol to deal with you dorks."
~*~
"Kate?" Sam blinks at his phone blearily in the dark as he untangles from his blankets so he can speak into it somewhat properly, "What is going on?" He can hear muttered ranting and curses on the other line.
He should probably go ahead and get out of bed, "Sam there is an unconscious man in my living room and America is out of town."
Kate sounds very calm but also strained, somehow that isn't helping at all. Sam is now getting out of bed and groping blindly for pants, "What does America being out of town have to do with an unconscious man in your living room?"
More curses, he can hear her pacing, and doesn't dwell on the fact that he has heard her pace on the phone so much he recognizes the sounds of it. "America and I have an agreement, okay, but that's not the point."
He should be more surprised by this than he is.
"The point is it's this guy I may have told you about? Or maybe not, you and I don't really have a sexploits relationship, but anyway, " too early for this, far too early for this, but at least he was able to pull on his pants one handed. "So there was this guy who was a temp bartender? He went away came back and we banged and he went away again and he just came back and crawled through my goddamn window over my bed--"
Sam Winchester needed new friends. "So you beat your sort of one night stand unconscious? At what point did you realize who he was?"
There was a pause long enough for Sam to grab his keys, stuff them in his pockets, slip his flip flops on and lock his door. "You know Sam that's also not the point, when can you be here?"
Sam Winchester really needed new friends, he thought again, as he knocked on Kate's door.
Why was he the second person on Kate's I Beat A Man list? Was it just because he was a lawyer or because he could probably get whoever the unfortunate soul was into his car and away from Kate (possibly to the police station, or the hospital) on his own strength?
That is what was running through his head as he shuffled farther into Kate's house. That is, until he saw who was lying on the floor.
From there it immediately went to: I need new friends. And a new brother.
Sam and Dean get into a fight, and because they are brothers it starts with him not being in contact for going on a year and spirals out of control from there.
They get to Kate, which brings up lovely things like "None of your goddamn business Sammy," like Dean has any right to call him any sort of nickname these days, and Sam's, "You're as flaky and unreliable as dad," which was admittedly a low blow but desperate times call for cruel measures.
It ended, as most things did with them, circling back to their dad. "You're a pushover Sam, letting that unreliable bitch drag you around while you sulk like a stupid dejected puppy." There are fists coming, and Sam is grateful no one else is here to see him being reduced to this. "She's probably a liar with a collection of people like you across the country but you fell for it anyway, that's why dad left. You're a goddamn weak embarrassment."
"Oh yeah? Is that what you're doing? Is that what my friend is to you? Maybe you'd get it if you still had friends or family to give a damn about." Then they tackle each other, with broken noses and fractured ribs to follow.
A regular goddamn Winchester family reunion.
Kate returned from her Cool Down walk (which consisted of walking to the nearest convenience store and staring at the cigarettes, lamenting her lack of such an easily accessible vice at times like these), before finally buying some water and beef Jerky to chew on angrily on her way back.
She could hear a table breaking before she even opened the door, which made her slam it open and reach for the Louisville Slugger she kept on the other side even though in theory she knew exactly who was causing the ruckus.
In theory because she felt like she hardly knew either of them at this point, which was shit because she had known Sam for years since they had tangled at court when he defended a scumbag she caught and he said 'everyone deserved to have a fair chance in court' or some other bullshit.
Dean...she never knew him at all, did she?
It was Dean, apparently, whose fall had broken her table, because he was lying in a heap around broken pieces of wood, his brother standing above him with shoulders and chest heaving, flush with sweat and anger.
"Alright. This shit is ending right the fuck now." Kate swung the bat in her hand with the sort of deftness that came from years of practice before point it at Dean, "You, clean that shit up," she redirected it to Sam, "you, get the first aid kit and some ice." Both of them opened their mouths to protest, and Kate snarled like a dog whose puppies were threatened.
They both shut their mouths and went to do as they were told.