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Emma hadn't paid much attention, that first summer, to the custody deal Sam hammered out to make sure Dean and Cas would be able to take Claire. She hadn't given a fuck, for one thing, and for another, who wanted to think about people fighting to keep Sleeping Beauty when the only fight over Emma had been over not keeping her.
("You're not seriously bringing her with us, Dean!"
"Shut up, Sam."
"Dean--"
"I said shut up, Sam! You think I want this any more than you do?!")
Emma hadn't paid attention, and now it turns out she should have, because it would have kept her from dreaming up all these grand ideas about her and Claire spending the summer with Benny in Carencro or shadowing Jody at the sheriff's office or convincing Cas and Dean to take them to Six Flags. All the things that aren't going to happen, because it turns out part of Claire's custody deal is that every summer until she's eighteen she has to spend with her grandparents on her mom's side, in their old-people community down in Arizona.
Dean says they should make a road trip out of it. All of them drive down in the Impala, see the Grand Canyon before they drop off Claire. Claire says thanks but no thanks. She'd rather take a plane, and that's that; Dean's forced smile sort of falters before he drops it and nods. "Yeah, Claire, whatever you want."
Emma's mad at him for giving up so easily until she overhears him and Cas talking in the kitchen later that night and realizes that Claire's grandparents think Cas is still Claire's dad. They think he's James Novak, not the angel wearing his bones, and Cas doesn't want Claire to have to continue that charade with her mother's parents, doesn't want her to have to deal with them seeing Cas and thinking he's Jimmy and Claire having to pretend that he is, and something hot and fierce and aching sweeps through Emma as she listens to their low voices.
She tiptoes silently out of the dining room and up the stairs to her room. Stares at her open window as she listens to Claire packing on the other side of the wall.
- o -
Claire's flight leaves at ten a.m. Tuesday morning. They all pile into the Impala to take her to the airport, and the drive home afterward is quiet, broken only by the smell and sound of the foil-wrapped hamburgers they stop for on the way home. It's too quiet, and so is the house when they get home, no Claire sitting at the table turning pages in her textbook or at the sink grinding her chewed-up orange peels in the trash disposal or in her room studying to Tchaikovsky because a teacher told them once classical music made things stick better in their brains.
Emma's bedroom feels different at night, knowing there's no one in the dark empty room on the other side of the wall. After a few days she starts to take her laptop into Claire's room and sprawl out on her bed, upside down because Claire hates it when feet are on her pillows. But sending Claire stupid e-mails get boring pretty fast when she's not e-mailing witty insults back.
Stupid old people with no internet.
As soon as she thinks that, Emma feels guilty. Those old people are Claire's blood family, her real family. They have way more claim on Claire than someone who's not even the same species.
- o -
Claire's been gone two weeks when Dean and Cas come into Claire's bedroom one afternoon.
Dean looks at Emma where she's spread out on Claire's teal comforter with her computer. "You movin' in?"
"Go away," Emma says grumpily.
"We have been considering a road trip," Cas says, apropos of nothing.
Emma rolls over. "Fine. Go. See if I care."
"Wow, drama queen much?" Dean flops down onto the bed next to her head. It makes her laptop bounce. Emma grabs it and glares up at him.
"Yeah, yeah, you can put the Doom Stare away, Claire Jr. We meant all of us."
Emma eyes him. "We have school when Claire gets back."
"Uh. I meant all of us, as in the three of us," Dean amends.
Emma looks suspiciously at Cas. He raises an eyebrow back. She returns her eyes to Dean. "Like where?"
"Well, Elizabeth's been asking after you, for one thing," Dean says.
"We shouldn't go without Claire," Emma mumbles into Claire's bedspread.
Dean claps her on the back. "Suck it up, you'll get the backseat to yourself."
"I don't want the backseat," Emma whines, but allows herself to be dragged off the bed.
- o -
She half thinks the whole road trip thing is a plot, since several times Cas suggests stopping for tours of college campuses on their way. It's not really until Dean acts enthusiastic about the suggestions that she gets suspicious. That's when she gets sulky, which is when Cas suggests that when they stop that night for a motel, Emma should get to have her own room rather than be forced to share one with him and Dean. Which starts out cool but then becomes kind of lame because Whose Line Is It Anyway isn't that fun to watch without someone else to help you make fun of it.
She skulks over to Dean and Cas's room hoping they're not making out or worse, but when Cas opens the door to her half-hearted knock, Dean's on the bed in front of the TV guffawing at Colin Mochrie, and Cas has a long-suffering expression.
Emma takes her Styrofoam container of leftover pancakes from the Biggerson's they stopped at for dinner over to the bed with her. She settles down Indian-style next to Dean and they kind of end up conking out there watching a weird Spanish dub of an old Harrison Ford movie, but no one mentions Emma being a needy assbutt, so it's okay.
- o -
"Tell us the truth, Claire," Emma says from the backseat. "Who dresses more like a grandpa, Cas or your granddad?"
Cas casts Emma a baleful look in the rearview mirror.
"Eyes on the road, Cas," Dean intones in a pretty good impression of the voice Cas used on him just half an hour ago. Cas rolls his eyes and returns his gaze to the road as Dean exchanges a grin with Emma.
"I've never seen Cas in suspenders," says Claire's voice over the speaker phone. "Or highwater pants. So I guess my grandfather is winning in that arena."
Dean bursts into laughter. Cas's expression becomes simultaneously more sour and more tolerant. "If suspenders are part of the criteria, perhaps Dean is the one you should be comparing to Claire's grandfather."
Dean shuts up. Emma leans further forward over the front seat. "Dean's worn suspenders?"
"Seatbelt, Emma," Cas and Dean say in unison, and Claire snickers over the phone.
Emma glowers and shoves into the backseat again, putting her seatbelt back on.
"Maybe you guys should consider a car seat for her," Claire says.
"Shut up, Claire."
"Emma," Cas says warningly. It's the be nice to your sister voice he only uses when he's feeling guilty about Claire and trying to make it up to her, and Emma sticks her tongue out at him in the rearview mirror.
"It's okay, Cas," Claire says. Her voice is amused. "That's just how Emma says she misses me."
"I don't," Emma snaps. It comes out angry, more sincere than any of them could have expected, and Dean twists around in his seat, his eyebrows aloft in a what the fuck, Emma?
She scoffs and crosses her arms, slouching down in the backseat and staring resolutely out the window. The back of her neck is burning; it burns hotter when she hears Dean turn the phone off speaker mode and murmur to Claire, "No, no, she's fine, don't worry about it. Just go eat with your family, okay?"
- o -
"You wanna tell me what that was all about?"
"No."
"You sure?"
Emma glares at Dean. She should have pretended to need to go to the bathroom when Cas did. Now she's stuck in the diner booth with a dad who wants to talk about her feelings.
"You jealous she has grandparents or somethin'?" He's messing with the salt shaker, tipping it back and forth as he studies her.
"No," Emma says, because that's not it at all.
Dean watches her a minute longer. Then Cas is coming back to the table, scooting in next to Dean, and he straightens up, letting go of the salt shaker.
- o -
It's not until later that night, when they're driving down the dark interstate on the last few miles to Benny's and Dean's slumped asleep against the passenger window, that it occurs to her what Dean might really have been asking.
"Cas."
He tilts his head toward her.
"Dean's mom and dad," she begins. Then stops. Because it's weird to think of someone taking care of Dean the way he takes care of her and Claire. To imagine someone teaching him how to drive and bullying him into doing his homework and giving him a noogie for not emptying out the lint trap in the dryer again. "What were they like?"
Cas is silent for a long time. Finally, he says, "I don't think I am the one you should be asking that question, Emma."
Emma's quiet. Then: "Do you think they would have liked me?"
Cas is just as quiet for a moment. At last, he says, "They would have been very remiss not to."
Emma looks out the window. Watches a pair of headlights swing past them and vanish, swallowed by the dark curve of the road.
- o -
Benny's waiting on his front porch when they get to Carencro, buttery yellow light spilling out onto the front steps from his screen door. His cabin smells like frangipani and burning dust and a dream Emma had, a lifetime ago, and she falls asleep the moment she climbs into her old hammock on the back porch, lulled by the warm thick air and the rumble of Dean's sleep-roughened voice inside.
- o -
"All I'm sayin' is, y'all're crampin' each others' style."
Dean snorts. "Ha! Like Cas has any style to cramp." He elbows him. "Right, Cas?"
Cas is impressively bed-headed. He takes a sip from his coffee and eyes Dean balefully from over the rim of the mug. His expression is answer enough.
"Why does Cas even bother having sex with you," Emma says through the propped-open kitchen door to the porch. She's still lying on her hammock in her pajamas, one leg stretched out to reach the porch railing so she can push herself back and forth as she balances her laptop on her stomach.
"It's called charity," Cas says. "It's the Christian thing to do."
Benny snorts. Dean makes a ha ha, aren't you so funny bitchface at both of them.
Cas takes another sip of coffee. "It's Emma's choice, in the end. Emma, do you wish to stay here with Benny for a while?"
Emma makes a face at her laptop screen. Partly because of Cas's question but also because her inbox is still stubbornly empty. No replies from Claire. That, more than anything, decides it. She rolls out of her hammock. "Yes."
Dean nearly drops his coffee. "But the Crescent Hotel!"
It's Cas's turn to pull a bitchface. "Dean, we're not hunting on our vacation."
"Our vacation," Dean says. "Which means I get to choose some of what we do, Mr. Let's Visit Hot Springs National Park."
Cas's eyes flash. "You enjoyed that as much as I did, Dean Winchester."
"Ugh, stop," Emma says, holding her hands over her ears. "Nobody wants to talk about that."
Benny makes a disapproving sound. "What'd y'all do, plop her down in front of the TV so you could go have grown-up fun?"
"We let her order pay-per-view," Dean says defensively.
"Yeah," Emma says. "I watched so much porn, it was great."
She gets dirty looks from all three of them. It should make her grin. Instead, she gets this little pang as she glances over to exchange a smirk with Claire and the empty chair at the table reminds her Claire's not there.
- o -
"You sure you're cool with this?" Dean's studying her with his Dad eyebrows , has his sunglasses off and in his hand so he can Laser Gaze her properly. "Doesn't seem like much of a vacation, waitressing all summer."
"Maybe," Emma says. "But I gotta save up for my tattoo somehow."
Dean's eyes roll heavenward. "Cas, come talk to your kid," he shouts, and hauls Emma under his arm in a half nelson to rub his knuckles against her scalp. "She still thinks she's getting a tattoo!"
"I don't see why she shouldn't," Cas says as he comes down the porch steps with Benny, and Emma twists under Dean's arm to shoot him a triumphant smirk.
Dean shoots Cas a dirty look. Then he points at Benny with his free hand. "You. Don't let her get a tattoo."
"I've never let Emma do anything," Benny says, and Emma shoots him a proud look. Dean lets go of her with a frustrated sound and then gets her around the shoulders just to give her a shake, and a squeeze of her opposite arm.
"You be good, kid," he says gruffly, and strides off to the Impala. Benny snorts and follows him.
Cas watches them go, then lets his gaze settle on Emma. Emma's not sure if he's going to hug her or what; she shuffles a little in the grass.
"Claire hides many things from us," he says after a moment, and wow, can you say out of nowhere? "Including, I think, how hard this is for her."
Emma swallows, then scoffs. Because Claire's probably getting shown off to all her grandparents' friends and having her cheeks pinched and being told how pretty she is, how she has her dad's eyes, or whatever. She might even like being in Arizona so much she decides to stay, and Emma won't blame her.
Shouldn't blame her.
Cas doesn't say anything else. Just cups her elbow, for a moment, and gets into the car with Dean.
Benny and Emma watch them drive away. When the gleaming bumper's disappeared beyond the thick trees, Benny looks over at her. "Figured we'd go to Elizabeth's for supper tonight."
Emma nods.
- o -
Being back is great. It's awesome. Aaron and Eric remember her, and Elizabeth's still got Emma's apron hanging in her tiny back office. When she sees Emma she says, "Look at you, I think those eyelashes're even longer than the last time I saw 'em," and squeezes her close before shoving her off to go pick out a pie from the counter for them to eat because if my favorite girl coming back's not a good reason for a party I don't know what is.
"It's like, it's like some kinda purgatory," Emma tells Benny as they walk home in the thick humid night afterward. She read some vampire book in one of her classes this year, and the vamp lived in Louisiana for a while. Maybe he chose it because the bayou doesn't change, slow and thick and liquid, some kind of limbo where everything stays the same, where you can stay for years and years not changing and not realize it because it stays the same with you. Everybody else moving on and getting older but we're always going to be this, aren't we, Benny.
"Cher," Benny says, and Emma blinks, realizes they're sitting on his front step, fireflies glowing on the lawn. "You think you ain't changed?"
Emma prods her tongue against the roof of her mouth, experimentally. It feels kind of thick. "No," she says. Then, "Did Elizabeth let me drink?"
Benny chuckles, creaks to his feet. He disappears, and Emma stares blankly at the fireflies, and then something's being pushed into her hand. She looks down and sees a glass of water. She drinks it. Hands hook under her arms, haul her up by the armpits, and next thing Emma knows she's being tucked in on the couch, Benny's old afghan soft against her chin and ankles.
"Ain't you ever heard watched pots don't boil?" Benny says. Puts a big warm hand on Emma's head. "Longer you keep starin' at yourself tryin' to figure out if anythin's happenin', the longer you're gonna be disappointed."
"Mmm," Emma mumbles.
Benny creaks to his feet and smoothes back her hair, and his sigh's the last thing Emma hears before she's fast asleep.
- o -
Hey, says the message on Emma's phone a few days later. You're not with the parental units?
parental units??? Emma texts after her shift. who even SAYS that
Claire's smirk is present even without an emoticon. I do.
Emma rolls her eyes. And proceeds to spam Claire with pictures of pots from Elizabeth's kitchen.
- o -
In July, the air conditioner breaks.
It doesn't make a huge difference, since most of Elizabeth's customers are regulars who would come in even if the coffee machine broke, but God is it fucking hot. Emma gets used to the feeling of sweat on the back of her neck, and under her boobs and her arms, and even on the strip of skin between the hem of her tank top and her jeans. She's going to have to throw all her tank tops out before Claire sees them and makes fun of the epic sweat rings they've acquired. Even Benny's down to one layer, and seeing him in just a t-shirt without his usual over shirt is like seeing Dean without his hair gelled up--just plain weird.
With the sharp scents of a dozen different people's sweat, and the smell of the hot sun hitting the plastic menus and formica tabletops under the open windows, and the humid air coming in through them and getting blown around by all the table fans Elizabeth's plugged in, all the smells kind of blur and smear together even to Emma's inhuman nose. And that's why she doesn't notice the scent until she's right on top of it, coming up to the chick who just slid into the corner booth to ask what she'd like to order and "Claire?"
Claire tilts her head back to look up at Emma. There's already a smug grin on her face. "I'll take an iced tea," she says, and thwaps the menu into Emma's stomach.
Emma's hand come up automatically to take the menu. She stares at Claire. "What the hell?"
Claire's smirk falters, only slightly. "What, a girl can't visit her sister?"
"Uh, it would be more cost-effective to text her?"
Claire opens her mouth. She seems about to say something, then reconsiders. "Maybe she needed a breath of fresh air."
Emma relaxes, slightly. Motions around the café, with its open windows and whirring fans. "Not much fresh about the air in here."
Claire's smirk returns full force. "Yeah, nice pit stains, by the way."
Emma kicks her in the leg. "You suck--"
"Emma Winchester!"
Emma freezes. Turns around to see Elizabeth giving her a Look from behind the counter. "Did I just see you kick one of my customers?"
Behind the kitchen window, Benny's head swings around. His eyes land on Claire, narrowed, then relax as he sees that it's her. "Relax there, Miss Lizzy," he rumbles. "That's Claire."
Elizabeth does a double-take. "Claire? Well, I'll be! It's about time I met you, girl!"
She comes around the counter, dusting her hands off on her apron. "You know how much I've heard about you?"
"Nothing," Emma says quickly. "Unless Benny's been talking about you."
Elizabeth and Benny both snort. Claire's smirk tugs a little higher on one side. Emma stomps back to the kitchen. Then realizes this gives Elizabeth and Claire free reign to talk about her without her around and stomps back.
"Can I take my break now?"
"Sure you can," Elizabeth says easily, pushing back up out of the booth where she'd sat down across from Claire. "Sit right here, I'll get y'all some pie."
Emma makes a grr face; she'd meant to drag Claire outside and demand again what she was doing here. Claire gives her a brow tilt like she knows exactly what Emma was thinking, and then Elizabeth comes back with not two pies of strawberry rhubarb pie but three, dragging a chair over with her to set next to the booth so she can sit with them. She starts quizzing Claire about her summer, what Arizona's like and all, and Emma's content to just listen, slouching down on her side of the booth with her foot propped on the rung of Elizabeth's chair, getting up every once in a while to go refill their iced teas.
After a while, Elizabeth leaves to go start making some more pies before the evening rush starts, and Emma gets up to start taking orders again. Claire stays in the booth, pulling a book out of the backpack beside her on the bench. She glances up every once in a while to meet Emma's eyes as she moves to and fro between the tables, and to Emma it feels like sliding back into the car seat behind the wheel, or under her covers after a long day, that feeling of bones resettling beneath her skin.
- o -
Benny lets them borrow his truck. It hasn't got air conditioning, either, so they roll down the windows and let the night air in as the big tires barrel over the pebbled dirt road down to the river. It takes Emma three tries to back up so that they can sit in the truck bed and still see the river bank, which has Claire making comments and getting Emma more flustered until Claire says, "Give it here," and scoots over Emma to get into the driver's seat herself. She pushes Emma's leg out of the way with her own, pressing down on the gas and then the brake as she maneuvers the truck into place without letting it sink into the places where the dirt is too soft.
"I could've done it," Emma grumbles.
"By the time we were forty," Claire says, and cranks the door open with a rusty sound. She drops down onto the ground, and Emma follows her, grabbing from the glove box the packet of Pop Rocks she brought along.
Claire shakes out the ratty old beach towels they got from Elizabeth on the bed of Benny's trunk. They smell like the flowery fabric softener Elizabeth uses, just-right-sweet in the dark-clean smell drifting off the river. There's a bite of smoke with it, too, from the firecrackers a bunch of kids are setting off on the other side of the river, low whines and then loud cracks mixing with shouts of excitement and laughter.
"Fourth of July tomorrow," Claire says as they climb into the truck bed. "You guys planning anything?"
Emma pries her shoes off, then peels off her socks. She wiggles her bare toes, watching them in the faint light from the three-quarters moon and its reflection off the river. "Think Dean and Cas were planning to come back," she says after a moment. "Have a barbecue with us or something."
Claire doesn't say anything. For a long time, there's just the sound of crickets and the hisses and whines from firecrackers and poppers landing in the water on the other side of the river, pop pop pop. Emma watches the shadowy figures scrambling around with sparklers in their hands, the reflections of the white-hot sparks bouncing in the dark water, shattering into hundreds of tiny lights every time someone splashes into the river and breaks the still surface.
The truck bed shifts. Emma glances over and sees Claire leaning back on her hands, eyes fixed on the other side of the bank. The sparklers reflect off her dark pupils like sprays of stars, burning and dwindling to nothing again and again. Emma could probably watch it forever, stars burning to life and fading to death in the dark of Claire's eyes.
Claire shifts again. This time to put her head in Emma's lap, lying down with her knees drawn up and her feet braced against the other side of the truck bed. She breathes in, and Emma feels the movement of her lungs, the tension slowly being released from them. And this is what she loves about Carencro, about a place where everything is too slow and too syrupy to be sharp, where it's nothing for her to lift her hand and settle it on Claire's hair. To pull her palm across it, over and over, slowly.
Pop. Pop pop pop.
"Claire, why're you here?"
Claire's eyes are closed. She keeps them closed, as she draws her lip under her teeth and turns over. Turns her face into the denim of Emma's jeans. "My grandparents don't know anything."
Emma doesn't say anything for a minute, waiting for Claire to continue. When she doesn't, she ventures, "That's...bad?"
Claire gives a harsh laugh. It's hot through Emma's jeans. "They saw Cas with Dean at the custody hearing and now they think the reason he left is 'cause he ran out on us. That he'd just been using my mom as a beard."
Emma's hand stills. She's never heard Claire's voice so bitter.
"Nobody knew why he disappeared that first time. I was the only one who saw him leave." Her eyes are as distant as the stars, but her face is twisted with a bitterness Emma knows, a bitterness Emma's felt. Contempt for a younger self who was stupid enough to believe in something.
In someone.
"My mom told me it was because he was sick. She told me we had to pray for him." That sharp laugh slips out again, painful-sounding, like it cuts Claire's throat coming out. "So I did. I told God I'd give Him anything if He'd bring my dad back. And when he came back... I did."
I was Castiel's. Emma remembers Claire's quiet voice and the summer heat, the way her heart had been pounding in her chest.
They're quiet for a long, long time.
"My dad sold himself to free me," Claire says finally. "He gave himself to Cas, and my gran and gramps don't--they're never going to--"
Emma cups her hands around Claire's head. Like she can hold her, like she can rock her like the hammock on Benny's back porch, slow and safe.
"I thought I'd gotten past it," Claire whispers into Emma's leg.
Emma curls her fingers into Claire's hair. Bends forward so her own is hanging over Claire's face. A curtain, what protection she can offer. The sparklers hiss and fizz on the other side of the river. Around them, cicadas begin to buzz. Somewhere a few feet away, something small hops into the water, a quiet splish. Emma leans her head against the side of Benny's truck bed and listens to her sister breathe.
"I missed you," Claire mumbles after a while. She brings a hand up to the Café Carencro apron Emma forgot to take off and hooks her fingers into the pocket.
"How could you not," Emma says, and Claire cracks a smile, her eyes still closed.
"My grandma has this really ugly kettle," she says. "It's supposed to look like a cactus, or something. I was going to steal it and give it to you for Christmas."
"I'm not brave enough to steal any of Elizabeth's pots," Emma says. "But I could try to buy you some marijuana."
Claire snorts laughter into Emma's leg. Emma grins.
After a few minutes of quiet, she whispers, "Claire."
"Mmm."
"You better not be falling asleep."
"Mmm."
"I'm serious, Claire."
Claire doesn't respond. Emma sighs and leans back on her elbows, flexing her knees. Her butt's already going numb.
The lights dart and glow on the other side of the river. Emma watches them ignite, watches them burn out.
Keeps her fingers twined tight in Claire's moonlit hair.
- o -
The next day, Cas and Dean will arrive in Carencro to celebrate Independence Day. Claire will already be gone, on her way back to Arizona because she had told her grandparents she would only be gone a few days.
Emma will be with her, complaining about how this bus is worse than Elizabeth's AC-less café, jeez, do you know how much fucking boob-sweat I have right now, Claire?
"I'll pay you ten bucks to say boob-sweat in front of my gran," Claire says.
Emma squints. "Twenty bucks."
"Fifteen."
"Claire. This awesome mouth saying, boob-sweat," Emma enunciates very deliberately, "is worth at least seventeen dollars."
"Fifteen dollars and I'll buy you a pack of powdered doughnuts at the next rest stop."
"Cheap," says Emma. "Cheap cheap cheap, you're never getting this mouth with those sort of offers."
"Ten dollars and I don't tell Dean you got drunk at Elizabeth's."
Emma's jaw drops.
Claire smirks, tapping her phone against her lips. "Well? What's four letters long and starts with the same letter as drunk and dial?"
Emma clears her throat. Sticks out her hand. "Deal."
- o -
(Claire buys her the pack of doughnuts at the rest stop anyway. Emma thanks her by wiping powdered sugar on Claire's shirt.)