peaceonearth | Post Tammy (Astaroth) being killed

Whether he could admit it to himself or not, they had parted on uncertain terms that left an unpleasant feeling stirring in his gut. Dean had almost convinced him it was the right thing to do. But then when he had time to himself, he found his phone in his hand and dialed her number. It was just to check in, or so he told himself.

It was a little on the nose but the diner was called Sammy's Restaurant. Neither of them truly belonged there at this time of night though. The limited customer base was seedy at best. His first instinct was to look to the back of the restaurant as he could assume neither of them wanted to be visible. He sat opposite to her side. His first words almost slipped his mind, wanting to ask her how she beat him here, but he knew to push down such a ridiculous question. "Thank you for meeting me. I guess, I don't have any real reason to have asked you to come other than to see that we're good." He shouldn't have left her to clean up their mess alone.

He orders fries for the table when the waitress comes along but nothing for himself as it's late.

They had parted on uncertain terms, but Ruby had assumed everything would continue on as usual. She was used to doing the dirty work so leaving her to clean up their mess hadn't been something she'd thought much about. She also didn't think too much about why she'd cleaned up their mess. It always gives Ruby a little thrill when Sam goes that extra step and does the 'Sam' thing rather than listen to Dean because, after all, Dean wasn't wrong; the choice to let her clean up their mess hadn't been wrong exactly. It just wasn't the most considerate or most right thing to do. Ruby loves all those little things that Sam does that makes him Sam.

Ruby has a cup of coffee in front of her with cream and sugar just to sort of fit in and make sure the waitress doesn't look at her too long. There are multiple empty packets of sugar stacked up at the end of the table along with little plastic buckets empty of cream. She stirs the coffee with a spoon and listens to Sam. She looks up, eyebrows arching a little. "I don't love being the cleaning lady, but Astroth did create that mess and she's more my problem than she is yours. You two weren't supposed to be there. Remember when I said run far away?"

Ruby doesn't order anything else, sticking with her coffee and assuming the fries are for Sam. "Are you two okay?" Sam and Dean she means.

He hadn't stopped thinking about it. The little bit of acknowledgement that it wasn't as big of a deal as it seemed sitting on his mind helped him to relax in the booth more.

She wasn't drinking the coffee in front of her so he could deduce to some extent that it was for show. The fries would come quickly enough to give her something feasible to play around with, but not right this second. He locks eye contact with her. "I remember, but you couldn't have really thought that I would run away. There were innocent people involved. Somehow you were connected to it." Dean agreed that they should look into it more too.

When the fries do arrive, he pushes the plate towards her and the ketchup bottle. Dean calls him an old man all the time for this but his hard cutoff for dinner is 10 PM. "He's pissed off at you more than me right now, I think. I can understand where he's coming from but I told him you provided us with help before. He'll come around." Sam trusts his instincts. Though he might also be sensing that he might have to push Ruby into the dynamic more and tell/ask Dean to trust him when it comes to accepting Ruby's help.

She would much rather he be relaxed than guilty. It's enough that he's here.

Ruby will drink the coffee eventually, but it's definitely more for show. Ruby sighs and takes a sip of her coffee to stall a little. "Astaroth is the demon that made my deal. She was old. Hundreds of years old when I met her," she pauses a moment "and my ex. That's how I'm involved. She probably knows I'm working with you. She thought she could take that away from me. That's why I didn't want you there."

Her eyebrows shoot up when he pushes the fries her way. She watches him, surprise on her face, for a moment then a smile tugs at both corners of her mouth. For a half second, she can't help the giddy smile that curves her lips as she squirts a generous puddle of ketchup on the edge of the plate and then digs into the fries with glee. She takes a moment to savor the fries, eyes closing before she speaks. "Aren't you having any?" she asks before she addresses his comments. She looks almost as gleeful about pissing off Dean as she does about the fries. "What I hear is that eventually, I'll have to figure out another reason for Dean to get his panties in a wad." She swirls another fry through ketchup. "I'm going to keep helping too. I wasn't always this demon saint of light and not making the world shitty. Besides, it's fun pissing all of Hell off."

Likewise. It means a lot to him that she agreed to meet him in the first place.

He closes his mouth and listens to her. It had been clear at some point during that ordeal that Ruby had a connection with Astaroth but hearing her say ex attached a whole other amount of surprise than what he previously thought it might be -- i.e. mentor. Sam barely manages to hide the distaste for Astaroth behind a flat lined expression. Of course it has nothing to do with Ruby, but it's too late to change what she might think. "I would hardly call that an ex." Just to put that out there. There were other appropriate names for what it sounds like but he figures Ruby doesn't need him to list any. "Okay, so you were involved with her. What made you separate yourself from her?"

He says nothing but her subtle expressions of glee go a long way to stop him second guessing getting her the fries in the first place. It was worth it just to see her reaction. "It's past ten," he shakes his head. "It isn't healthy for my blood sugar to spike while I sleep." He gives her a smile but shakes his head. "Yeah, no. You really shouldn't poke the bear anymore than you already have. Leave it to me." She's said it a few times already but this time it makes him ask. "What made you change? You never did tell me why you're a unicorn that's anti-Hell. Not a real reason, anyway."

Whether Ruby will admit it or not, Sam has a hold on her, and it's not just that he's her best bet at getting free of Hell.

She sees that disgust on Sam's face. Honestly, she's not sure if it's because Ruby stooped that low or because Astaroth is just about the lowest of the low. Ruby lifts one shoulder in a half-shrug. "My taste has improved since then." She doesn't tell Sam that Astaroth was literally the first relationship she'd ever been in. That just seems too sad given his look of disgust. She dips another fry in ketchup as she considers his question. "I didn't get a lot of choice in the matter. It wasn't that sort of relationship." The kind with choices, she means."Astaroth found a new toy and I took the chance to get as far away from her as I could."

Ruby enjoys her little earthly pleasures. She looks up at him with a wry smirk at his comment about his blood sugar. "Oooh, Grandpa. Talk dirty to me," she half giggles. Inevitably, Ruby will end up poking the bear, but for the moment, she's happy to let Sam deal with Dean. Ruby takes a sip of her coffee, makes a face then adds more sugar to it. "I don't exactly know. When a soul goes to Hell, it's tortured, twisted, and manipulated until it becomes a demon. Part of that includes ripping all those human memories out along with every last shred of humanity. It didn't work on me. Obviously, my soul became a demon, but I still remember a little bit of my human life. I still have a couple of warm fuzzy emotions. I don't like torture, and I don't see the point in pain. I'm good at torture, pain, and killing, but I don't take joy in it. Once Astoroth got tired of me, I started hanging out topside more often. I found out I do like fries, bubble baths, and romance novels. Those aren't built into your standard demon model. I heard about Samuel Colt's gun and started looking for the magic behind it. My knife lets me stay topside longer and it makes every demon a lot more scared of me. That means more fries, bubble baths, romance novels, and tall men for me." She winks at him and takes a bite of her fry. "There might be a few other unicorns out there, but we don't advertise it because it gets you tossed in solitary along with a lot of special attention. They like to see if they can work that sort of thing out of you in Hell. Of course, I sort of let the cat out of the bag when I started killing demons and helping Winchesters. Oops."

There's not many still around that would share the atrocities of demons combined with the history of time. Ruby is sharing a dark page to it and he should apologize for the look he gave, but it takes a moment for it to really smooth over. He promised in no uncertain way that he would only listen, after all. There was no judgment of her character. They already had that sort of short conversation before. He understood she wanted to change. He swallows any of the bile he has left for Astorath down. "She can't bother anyone anymore," he assures Ruby.

He can look past her little earthly pleasures (fries) take place at ungodly hours. He shrugs at her calling him grandpa as if it doesn't bother him, but his nose wrinkles. He is aware that Ruby will poke the bear when they do come in contact and Dean will fall for it. If she can give him the time he asked for, he will do his best to buffer out the situation before that happens. There's a real opportunity to do something good by working with Ruby. Her words grow more and more convincing as she talks about it. "The same knife you let me borrow on one occasion," he offers in her favor as well. "Don't blame me if I need a moment to wrap my head around everything you said. It's... a lot. For starters, it wasn't all that long ago that I learned demons used to be people like you or me. All souls that end up in Hell get tortured and twisted. I grew up thinking demons were another species altogether. I had hoped they were at least... But it adds up more than I want to admit." Aka the demon deals for souls. An abundance of people over history were signing themselves up for it. More importantly, Dean signed himself up for it by trading his soul for Sam's revival. Working with Ruby became more appealing than the thoughts that would make him normally rationalize his decisions. Sam looks a little like a deer in the headlights making eye contact with her wink. "So, you have no second thoughts working with us? If I were to ask you directly, help us more. Where would that put us? Or... or where would you like to be?"

There aren't many in her position at least, but if her relationship with Sam is going to go anywhere friendship or otherwise, she refuses to pretend to be something she's not. Yes, she's got an ugly past, but she can't escape it physically or metaphorically. "Hell and earth are better off without her around." Her tone indicates that she's got no love lost for Astaroth.

She sees the way his nose wrinkles and she catalogs it. She'll stick with calling him Puppy since he seems to have accepted it. She meant grandpa as affectionately as she means puppy; besides, she's literally centuries older than him and she knits. It doesn't get much more 'grandma' than that. "It's my secret weapon." She half laughs then snorts, "literally. Sometimes you need the help more than I do. Take all the time you need. I have fries," she says happily and takes several more fries to swirl through the ketchup. "Originally demons were fallen angels. Lucifer," she says his name like it's a dirty word, "figured out that if you take away everything that makes a soul human and add a whole bunch of pain with a dash of horror, you can twist a human soul into a demon. I'm not sure a made demon can ever be as powerful as a fallen angel, but with time they can get close." Yes, Ruby is aware that Dean made a deal. She also knows what Sam hasn't figured out yet: there's no way Dean isn't going to Hell, but there is a way to get him out once he's there.

If the rest of their conversation weren't so serious, that 'deer in the headlights' look would be adorable. "Oh, I've got second thoughts. I could disappear. Find some little picket fence in a little town and live for the next twenty years or so before I have to move again." She bites into a french fry. "Lucky for you, I don't like picket fences or small towns. If you want help, Samuel, all you have to do is ask: I'm yours," she purrs the last two words like they're dirty. "As for where it puts us, where do you want us to be?"

He can't pretend not to acknowledge that she is one of a kind. "That we both can agree on." Astaroth spelled out trouble as a demon and a witch.

To be fair, he would react the same way to 'Grandpa' if it were his brother calling him it. He's as comfortable with her usage of nicknames as he's ever been with anybody. Ruby has grown on him a lot in a short time. His lips form a brief smile but push around indecisively as his thoughts get ahead of him. Time did not seem as if it were on their side as late. He decides to take her advice and take a minute to have a bite of his food.

That minute turns into five and half his plate cleared.

"I don't know what's ahead of us, but I am asking you for your continued support." He wished she would take the conversation completely seriously, but it wouldn't be Ruby if she didn't make it oddly sexual. Is he drawn to that? It's part of what he expects from her. He places his hands out on the table, spread out, flexing his fingers to provide some blood flow and weigh his options and answer. "Well, you're kind of in it now. I wouldn't want you anywhere but close by."

She sees that slip of a smile; she'll take it considering the nature of the conversation. It's also not a bad thing that he's eating. The five minutes of silence is comfortable enough. Ruby doesn't feel like she has to fill that silence. She eats her fries and sips at her coffee.

"I don't know what's ahead either, Sam." She says it seriously and quietly. She wants him to know that she doesn't have all of this figured out but she is trying. "I'll be here though. As long as you want me here." Honestly, she'll probably be close even if he doesn't want her there, stalking and watching. She doesn't share that with him. Sam is taking the conversation seriously enough for both of them. Making things sexual is her way of flirting with Sam. When Sam spreads his hands out on the table, flexing them, Ruby's gaze is drawn to them. She stares at his hands. Almost without thinking about it, her hand falls to Sam's, fingertips tracing lightly along his fingers. She's still staring at his hands when she speaks. "I'll be close then. You've got my number if you want me closer."

It's good that she understands. Fortunately, the silence between them is comfortable enough. At no point does Sam feel that he should sort his thoughts faster than he needs. He starts to recognize how familiar (comfortable?) she feels to him.

He had made up his mind that she's welcome in the picture as long as her actions continue to align with his. He had already told her as much so he doesn't feel the need to repeat it. "I have your number; I'll be in touch." Sure enough, the code in which he was raised by put contact anywhere between twelve and twenty-four hours. Chances are Ruby will find he would prefer to keep his promise to shorter intervals. Sam stops staring at his hands when her fingertips tease the length of his fingers and looks up to her. Whatever she is doing, he has to resist the small urge to fold his fingers to capture hers. He can't forget that they're meeting in secret. He can't shake that nothing they do should be done privately. "Do you need me to help set anything up for you?

Good. She doesn't want to rush him. Ruby knows as well as anyone that processing something takes time as do decisions or changes of attitude and outlook. Those are all things that Sam is working on right now. She doesn't want to rush him (though the sooner he gets with the program, the sooner they're more likely to get Dean out of Hell).

She'll take delight in his quick responses and continued communication. Yes, this started as a way to get Hell off her back, but it's turned into more and she's not even sure she knows what 'more' it's turned into. She's transfixed by his hands, her fingers gliding over his. The spell is broken when h speaks; she looks up, startled. She looks flustered and she pulls her hands away from his but not off the table. If she had a beating heart, she'd be blushing. "I didn't--" she stops because saying I didn't mean to caress your hands sounds ridiculous. "No. I'm okay. I should probably--I should probably get a motel room."

He finds that she has a habit of telling him the hard truths to help him make such decisions sooner. Dean is his biggest priority right now.

He's not sure what this is either. It'll still be some time yet before he wants to place a name to it. She left her number on his palm the second time they met. It's little surprise to him that her attention seems to return to them. Honestly, the smallness of her hands compared to his own stole his attention for a while there. He notes how he startled her and fleetingly thinks it is cute. Her demeanor every other time always seems guarded. He pauses, wondering what she was going to say before cutting off. He would deny it if asked but somehow everything she wants to say seems important. His justification would be that it very well could be important. "Do you have any money for that?" It comes up as a genuine question. However, he had some pocket money that he could give her too.

Believe it or not, Ruby wishes the truths were easier, but she doesn't shy away from it because it's hard. In her experience, those are the truths that most need to be said.

Ruby doesn't mind this not having a name, but she would like to know his thoughts on it. That would make it much easier to decide how he wants her to act around him (though his wanting it wouldn't necessarily make it so). She likes a man with big hands ~~Sam~~. She usually is guarded because she doesn't know how Sam feels about this or her or anything else. If it were important, she would say it (but she doesn't because her own feelings and thoughts on this don't register as important to her; demons don't have feelings or get this blah blah blah). She can't help but look deeply amused and even delighted at his question. "Want to buy me a hotel room, Samuel? I would insist you share it with me if you did. After all, you should get your money's worth," she says in a thoroughly wicked tone of voice. She pauses for just a moment, eyebrow arched up letting him contemplate (and squirm) over the meaning of her words before she laughs. "Don't worry, Puppy. I can handle it."

Fortunately, he is not on the spot to name it. It would only complicate things this early on. He would tell her a good percentage of men have big hands. Half of him believes that she does what she does to make him uncomfortable and the other half of his subconscious recognizes that her sexualizations could hold some truth. He can see how he walked right into that one but her delight doesn't help matters. He pushes his lips into a thin, feigned smile, pulling his hands back from the table completely and resting his palms on his jeans. He can only hide so much. "For once can you take things a little seriously. It would look suspicious if I came anywhere near it." He means Dean would notice, but also strangers thinking he's paying for sex. His hands run over his pants to smooth them out (and for absolutely no other reason). "I don't need anything in return. Only that you stay out of sight."

Yes, she's aware that Dean could notice. She hasn't actually thought about how it might look like he's paying for sex. She wouldn't stoop so low is what she'd tell him if he voiced that. When he pulls his hands back, she reaches out to take another fry, eating it the way she usually does. She's not sure how much she's gotten to Sam or the exact nature of it, but she knows she's gotten to him at least a bit; she's pleased with herself. "I'm taking this very seriously," she assures him with that amused look on her face. "Don't worry, Puppy. Even you won't know I"m there unless you go looking or text me."

He casts a mild disapproving look before checking their surroundings for the umptenth time. That feeling uneasy in his gut about their meetings in public won't stop easily. Thankfully, no one seems to have their eyes on them. His eyes return to her, locked on. It's annoying how she continues to eat fries the same way. He shakes his head for either that or trying to shake her out of his head with her games. "Good." It's all he can really say to her about that. "Don't call me that... I'll text you again soon." He gives a feigned smile. Truth is he needed to hear her say she would be close.

He looks briefly down at the plate of fries. "Is there anything else you'd like before I go?"

By contrast, Ruby is relaxed. She’s not worried about the diner because she checked it out before she sat down. Of course, she’s got relatively little to hide. Most demons know she’s working with the Winchesters and she’s got most of those afraid of her and her knife. She can barely repress her smile when she says “Whatever you want, Daddy.” If he hates Puppy, he’ll hate that even more and she gleefully anticipates his reaction.

She softens a little and shakes her head. “I’m good. Sleep well, Sam.” She stands up. “I’ll walk you to the car.”

It's a good thing he decided to forgo coffee as it would have gone down the wrong pipe when he coughed in response. He shoots her a most sincere 'what did you call me' face. His attention falls right back on her. Her smile helps push his expression to thin out all the more. If she wanted to make him feel uncomfortable, she's done it.

"Don't make me take it all back," he returns once she's already stood up. It's barely a minor threat with any real weight.

He eases with her offer, but stays seated as much as he wishes to go along with it. "I think it will be better to wait here. Leave at different times," he explains. "Goodnight, Ruby." He locks eyes with her.

Oops? She wanted to make him squirm a little, but also remind him that Puppy isn't the worst pet name.

She winks at him, realizing that it's a minor threat.

She pauses, smirks, and leans over to whisper in his ear. "Goodnight, Puppy." It's close enough for her red lipstick to smudge his ear just a bit before she straightens up and saunters out the door to her car.

It is noted. He is more accepting with her use of Puppy this time around.

As best as he tries to ignore her, his hands rests against where her lipstick was laid. There isn't so much of a goodbye to pass his lips, but he watches her (saunter) go.

Post Tammy (Astaroth) being killed

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