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Title: The Five Times Blaise Zabini Met Dean Winchester
Author: Evandar (yamievandar / hikarievandar)
Fandom: Harry Potter/Supernatural
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Romance
Warnings: Minor spoilers for HBP, DH and Supernatural seasons 1-5, crossover, swearing
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or Supernatural and I am making no profit from this story.
Summary: When Blaise decided to go travelling across America, the last thing he expected was Dean Winchester.
AN: This was too long to put in one post, so here's the second half.
Part 1
4.
There were times when Blaise hated his life.
He’d visited England, gone to see Daphne and Theo in their happy, settled, married life. It had been awkward until he’d told them that he couldn’t stop thinking about a Hunter. They’d told him to get over himself. They were living in suspicion and hatred and prejudice just because of Theo’s father and the colours on their school ties; he was living it up on a distant continent with a sexy man who he could – if he wanted to – convince that he was innocent of any and all crimes (which he was) and that he could even be helpful (“it’s not like we weren’t taught how to kill werewolves and vampires and expel ghosts and demons while we were still in school, anyway – and besides, with magic you’d probably be able to make their lives a lot easier”).
They’d also told him that it would do him good to get laid for once.
So he’d gone back to America, eager to escape his mother’s latest engagement and slightly less eager to chance running into Dean. He’d reclaimed his car from the secluded woodland in Maine he’d left it in (it had spent its time stalking small animals through the trees) and headed in some vague direction and ended up in a small town in Colorado. River Pass, Colorado, to be exact.
His car had then proceeded – quite promptly – to break down. How it managed that, exactly, Blaise wasn’t sure. It was running off magic rather than Muggle technology and he knew that with his magic still powering it that it should have kept running. The car disagreed.
It was time like these that Blaise almost wished that he was on even the passing acquaintance list of the Weasley family. The enchanted Ford Anglier…Angler…the enchanted car that Weasley and Potter had crashed onto the grounds at the start of second year was legendary. Sitting in the basement of a church, surrounded by weeping Muggles and frustrated Hunters, he would have loved to have had a chance to pick Arthur Weasley’s brain and find out from the expert where he had gone wrong.
But the presence of the Hunters was giving him something more vital to worry about than his car’s idiosyncrasies. Namely, his continued existence. Sure, the salt lining the doorway and the devil traps in the corridors wouldn’t actually do anything to him, but there was still the risk of being discovered, and the shotguns they were toting would do a hell of a lot of damage.
He wanted to focus on keeping his head down and avoiding the attentions of the others. It was just unfortunate that one of those Hunters was Dean.
“I knew I’d find you here,” Dean told him, sitting down next to him and putting his gun on the table. “I saw your car on the way in.”
Blaise scowled. “It broke down,” he said.
“Seriously? Want me to take a look at it when we get out of here?” Dean asked.
Blaise looked up at him. “I’ll be fine,” he said.
“Hey, I know my stuff,” Dean said, “and it wouldn’t be a problem. I could’ve been a mechanic if –“
“If things had been different,” Blaise finished for him.
Dean grinned, but he still looked slightly sad. “Yeah,” he said.
“Thanks,” Blaise said after a moment. “But I’ll manage, really. It’s just going through a troublesome stage.”
Dean raised an eyebrow. “It’s a car, not a toddler,” he said.
Blaise shrugged. “You’d be amazed,” he said drily.
He’d filled a notebook with arithmancy equations and runic charts and blueprints for arrays. So far, all he could say for certain was that they were overloading the car’s machinery with magic to the point where it had to adapt to keep working in the way that he needed it to.
Well, he could also say that he probably should have started out with something a little less complicated, but…
“I visited home,” he said suddenly. He wasn’t entirely sure why he was telling Dean that.
“How’d it go?” Dean asked.
“It was exactly the same,” he said. “All of the reasons why I left are still there. Nothing’s changed, including my inability to deal with them.” Most of them. He’d tossed out the libido suppressant. It wasn’t really working anyway. “So I came back. There’s nothing really there for me anymore.”
“So you’re settling in the States?” Dean asked. He sounded pleased, oddly enough.
“Yeah,” Blaise said. He grinned. “I figured I’d risk running into you some more.”
The way Dean smiled made his heart skip a beat.
Things got difficult again after that. Sam and Dean went out for supplies and Sam got himself kidnapped. Then there was the task of explaining demons to the civilians they shared the basement with. But explaining demons opened up a can of worms that no one wanted to touch: such as everything else that Muggles didn’t believe existed.
“It’s impossible!” a young, muscular man said. He was holding the gun like he’d used one before, which wasn’t really all that reassuring. But Blaise was paranoid, so who was he to judge?
“Think about it,” Dean said. “You’ve seen their eyes.”
“There’s got to be some sort of condition that could do that, though. Like a disease in the water. The river ran red a few days ago.”
Blaise sighed. Things weren’t going well, and the young man had more support than Dean. He drew his wand and inspected it carefully. Ash and the heartstring of a Romanian Longhorn, well polished, whippy and excellent for enchantments. It was too bad that if he used it, he would probably get shot.
“Bollocks to it,” he muttered. He dredged up what little Gryffindor recklessness he possessed and levelled it at the man. “Silencio.”
That got him – and everyone else – to shut up.
“Magic is real, demons are real, so are werewolves and vampires and ghosts and all other sorts of crazy shit,” he said. “Hell, unicorns.”
Dean was eyeing his wand in suspicion. He raised his gun and pointed it at him, though he didn’t look like he was going to shoot. The other Hunter, a woman called Ellen, pointed her own gun at him too. “Blaise, you’re…”
“A wizard,” Blaise said smoothly. “And I was born this way, thank you. There were no deals with demons or baby eating or whatever the hell else you’re thinking of.”
They boggled at him.
“A wizard,” Ellen repeated.
“Unicorns?” Dean asked.
“Studied them in school,” Blaise said quietly. “Fifth year. Along with creepy death horses and tree sprites.”
“So when you say your car’s like a toddler…” Dean trailed off looking queasy.
Blaise wrinkled his nose. “Ew,” he said. “Magic and electricity don’t mix well, is what I meant. The spells it runs on make it do weird things at times. Like chase squirrels or randomly tune in to Cthulu’s Greatest Hits. Or develop rattlesnakes in the engine. Things like that. So when I said it broke down, what I really meant is that it threw a snit fit and decided not to move.”
“You couldn’t just drive it?”
“Guys, enough with the car talk,” Ellen interrupted. “Now what did you do to him.”
She pointed at the man Blaise had silenced. He was mouthing something – probably obscenities – with an incredulous expression on his face.
“Silencing charm,” Blaise said. “I thought a practical demonstration would get the point across a bit better.”
Dean shrugged. Apparently he couldn’t think of an argument to that. Ellen could. “Take it off,” she demanded.
“Finite Incantatem,” Blaise said. He kept his tone of voice casual, almost blasé, and the way Ellen’s expression darkened made him smirk.
She reminded him slightly of Millicent Bulstrode. Not appearance-wise, since Milli was ugly as sin and Ellen was moderately attractive; it was the domineering, mother-hennish attitude that did it. That and the penchant for violence.
“- the fuck was that?” the man who had been silenced asked.
“Magic, you dumb fuck,” Dean said. “Different from any magic I’ve seen before, though.”
“That’s because I was born with it,” Blaise said. “The stuff demons hand out is dangerous, yeah, but inferior. It needs a more specific focus and there’s less range in what it can do. I’m just a human with a talent that’s slightly weirder than most. Oh, and an education that left’s me completely unprepared for anything even resembling reality, but that’s not really got anything to do with being a wizard.”
Dean sniggered. Then his expression turned serious again. It was like watching a switch being flicked. He could laugh and joke as much as the next guy, but the transformation into a Hunter was instantaneous. Blaise had seen it several times among other Slytherin students, mostly those who had family loyalties and legacies to uphold.
“So,” Dean said. “Mr Wizard. Have you ever heard of anything like this before? The demonic activity in this town?”
“No,” Blaise admitted. “But then, I’m British. There’s less demonic activity over in England than there is here. I’m not sure why, exactly, but –“ he shrugged. “There’s fewer people like me too, just a few isolated colonies. There’s probably a correlation there somewhere.
“That said, though, I was taught enough demonology to know that this is way, way out of character. Demons don’t usually congregate in groups, and when they do there’s usually a great deal more destruction. They egg each other on, I suppose. Anyway, apart from bullet holes, none of the buildings in the area are damaged, but with so many demons hanging around so openly, it’s weird.”
“So something’s causing them to act strangely,” Dean surmised. He turned to the priest. “Hey, padre, you got a Bible in here?”
Blaise watched as, when the Bible was handed over, Dean flipped straight to the back. He leaned in curiously, peering over his shoulder.
“I thought Revelations was about the Apocalypse,” he murmured softly.
Dean winced. “Well, about that…”
Blaise stared at him in disbelief as Dean smiled up at him sheepishly. “Sammy and I may have, purely by accident, released Lucifer and started the end of the world?”
“Of course,” Blaise choked out. Of course, he would be attracted to the Muggle world’s version of Potter. It was like Dean was a magnet for rampant, supernatural-styled chaos.
But he was giving Blaise puppy eyes that were slowly turning his insides to goo.
“Oh, fuck it,” Blaise said. “It was bound to happen one day. So, any ideas?”
“Yeah,” Dean said, looking serious once again. “War.”
“Glorious,” Blaise replied. He rested his chin on Dean’s shoulder. “Is your life always this fun?”
Once they knew what they were really supposed to be fighting, it was all over surprisingly quickly. The Muggle civilians they’d shared the basement with had been more of a hindrance than any sort of help – they’d been tricked by War into thinking that they were demons too and had first thrown them out, and then tried to fight their way out of the town. They’d failed. A few of them had died. War, whether magical, Muggle, or personified, was a bitch.
“He had good taste in cars, though,” Blaise said absently. Dean was walking him to his own, while Sam watched – brooding – with Ellen and Jo.
“Like you,” Dean said. “Same make, same model –“ he caught sight of the blank look on Blaise’s face, and grinned broadly. “You have no idea what I’m talking about do you?”
“Not in the slightest,” Blaise admitted. He smiled. “We’re a pretty secular people. Most people like me are only vaguely aware that cars actually exist.”
“Why?” Dean asked. “Why close yourselves off? It’s not like anything else bothers to. Not that you’re a thing, or anything. I’m going to shut up now.”
Blaise laughed at him. “It’s because of Hunters,” he said. “Because normal people would want to either dissect us or have us provide magical solutions to their problems. Because some wizards think that we’re superior, and that people without magic are little more than animals. Because our magic doesn’t react well to your technology – as evidenced by my car. Pick a reason. Hell, pick all of them. Everyone has their own.”
They’d found his car. It sat by the side of the road, looking perfectly innocent. Blaise glared at it suspiciously and drew his wand. Something had happened to it. He just knew it.
“Why don’t you just learn to drive?” Dean asked.
“There’s a hole in the engine I can put my fist through, and it’s missing some other parts that are probably vital. I got it from a scrap yard. Without magic, it wouldn’t run at all.”
He opened the bonnet. The runes and arrays he’d etched into the metal surfaces of the hood and the engine stared back at him. They were shimmering pleasantly with magic. The kitten that had once been the radiator mewed up at him plaintively.
“What the…”
“This is the second time,” Blaise said, lifting the kitten out. It batted playfully at his hair. “The last time, it was snakes and I was driving and they got cooked.” He looked down at the cat, frowned, and then peered back at the engine. “I think my car’s coming to life,” he said dubiously. “Piece by piece and in the form of cute animals.”
He opened the passenger side door and dumped the kitten on the seat. Shutting it safely inside – and wondering what on earth he was going to do with it – he turned back to Dean only to find him standing right behind him. He was very, very close.
Blaise leaned back against the car. “Um, yes?” he said. He couldn’t stop his breath from hitching.
“I like you,” Dean said bluntly. He hesitated, and then smiled slightly. “I’m usually a lot better at chatting people up, but you’re either terminally oblivious or not interested, so I thought I’d come out and say it.”
“Terrified, actually,” Blaise said. “I don’t deal well with attraction.”
“And I was hoping,” Dean continued, not skipping a beat, “that you might feel like overlooking the whole fear of attraction or whatever and maybe, after this whole Apocalypse thing is over, want to…give it a go? ‘Cause I’d love that. But if you don’t, then that’s okay too.”
“After the Apocalypse?” Blaise asked.
“Well we are trying to stop it,” Dean said. “I just…don’t want to do anything now and get you involved when you shouldn’t have to be.”
“I can fight,” Blaise told him. “I’m not some delicate little –“
“I know,” Dean said. “Just humour me with this.” He leaned in, and rested his forehead against Blaise’s. Blaise inhaled slowly. Dean smelled of sweat and musk and dust – not that brilliant of a combination, but it was oddly reassuring.
He raised his hands, and wrapped his arms around Dean’s shoulders. He liked this. “You don’t mind me being magical, Mr Hunter?”
“You don’t hurt or kill or curse people for fun?” Dean asked.
“No,” Blaise said. “Never have.”
“You don’t eat babies?”
“I prefer cheeseburgers,” Blaise replied. He grinned. “And pie.”
Dean laughed softly. “Then we’re cool,” he said.
“Dean?” Blaise said softly. “Try to hurry up with stopping the end of the world.”
“Is that a yes?”
“Yes.”
Dean’s lips were surprisingly soft and warm. Blaise tightened his grip on his shoulders and leaned into the contact. It was chaste. Soft. It was nothing like how Blaise had imagined kissing Dean to be, but he liked it. A lot.
“How do I contact you?” Dean asked when he pulled away.
Blaise smiled up at him. “We can just run into each other again,” he said. “It seems to happen a lot, anyway.”
Dean laughed. “Right.”
5.
He sat at the diner counter, reading the paper. A slice of half-eaten blueberry pie sat in front of him, and the waitress was more than willing to top up his coffee in exchange for him letting her ogle him. He was more interested in the paper. He’d spent months tracking odd occurrences all over the country, and they’d finally let up. Part of him wished that he had given Dean a way to contact him – he didn’t even know if he was alive – but he hadn’t, and there was no way to go back and change that. Even time-turners couldn’t go back that far.
He sipped his coffee and was about to reach for his fork when –
“How’s the pie?”
He dropped the paper and turned sharply. Dean was standing behind him, his hands tucked into his jeans pockets and a grin on his face. Sam was behind him, shaking his head with a grin on his face.
“I…” Blaise said. “It was great before I dropped my newspaper in it.” He shrugged. “How was the end of the world?”
“Anticlimactic,” Dean replied. “The car?”
“Sentient.”
“God, will you two just get on with it?” Sam butted in.
Dean glared at him over his shoulder. “Go and…do something else. Like research or jacking off or anything.”
Sam backed away, raising his hands and laughing. He went to sit down at one of the tables by the window and pulled out some sort of Muggle thing. He unfolded it and started staring at it.
“Can I get you another slice of pie?” Dean asked.
Blaise shifted to lean against the counter. “Sure,” he said.
Dean grinned and dropped into the chair next to him, signalling the waitress without looking. “I was wondering,” he said, “what you were thinking of doing. Still road tripping, or what?”
“I haven’t really thought about it,” he said.
“’Cause Sammy’s going back to college,” Dean continued. “Law school. So I’m in the market for a new hunting buddy, and I was thinking that – if it wasn’t too weird for you – you would like to join me?”
Blaise took another sip of coffee as he pretended to think. He’d known immediately what his answer would be, before Dean had even finished the question.
“Alright,” he said. “I’d like that.”
Dean’s grin turned his stomach to liquid, and he knew he’d made the right choice.
Author: Evandar (yamievandar / hikarievandar)
Fandom: Harry Potter/Supernatural
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Romance
Warnings: Minor spoilers for HBP, DH and Supernatural seasons 1-5, crossover, swearing
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or Supernatural and I am making no profit from this story.
Summary: When Blaise decided to go travelling across America, the last thing he expected was Dean Winchester.
AN: This was too long to put in one post, so here's the second half.
Part 1
4.
There were times when Blaise hated his life.
He’d visited England, gone to see Daphne and Theo in their happy, settled, married life. It had been awkward until he’d told them that he couldn’t stop thinking about a Hunter. They’d told him to get over himself. They were living in suspicion and hatred and prejudice just because of Theo’s father and the colours on their school ties; he was living it up on a distant continent with a sexy man who he could – if he wanted to – convince that he was innocent of any and all crimes (which he was) and that he could even be helpful (“it’s not like we weren’t taught how to kill werewolves and vampires and expel ghosts and demons while we were still in school, anyway – and besides, with magic you’d probably be able to make their lives a lot easier”).
They’d also told him that it would do him good to get laid for once.
So he’d gone back to America, eager to escape his mother’s latest engagement and slightly less eager to chance running into Dean. He’d reclaimed his car from the secluded woodland in Maine he’d left it in (it had spent its time stalking small animals through the trees) and headed in some vague direction and ended up in a small town in Colorado. River Pass, Colorado, to be exact.
His car had then proceeded – quite promptly – to break down. How it managed that, exactly, Blaise wasn’t sure. It was running off magic rather than Muggle technology and he knew that with his magic still powering it that it should have kept running. The car disagreed.
It was time like these that Blaise almost wished that he was on even the passing acquaintance list of the Weasley family. The enchanted Ford Anglier…Angler…the enchanted car that Weasley and Potter had crashed onto the grounds at the start of second year was legendary. Sitting in the basement of a church, surrounded by weeping Muggles and frustrated Hunters, he would have loved to have had a chance to pick Arthur Weasley’s brain and find out from the expert where he had gone wrong.
But the presence of the Hunters was giving him something more vital to worry about than his car’s idiosyncrasies. Namely, his continued existence. Sure, the salt lining the doorway and the devil traps in the corridors wouldn’t actually do anything to him, but there was still the risk of being discovered, and the shotguns they were toting would do a hell of a lot of damage.
He wanted to focus on keeping his head down and avoiding the attentions of the others. It was just unfortunate that one of those Hunters was Dean.
“I knew I’d find you here,” Dean told him, sitting down next to him and putting his gun on the table. “I saw your car on the way in.”
Blaise scowled. “It broke down,” he said.
“Seriously? Want me to take a look at it when we get out of here?” Dean asked.
Blaise looked up at him. “I’ll be fine,” he said.
“Hey, I know my stuff,” Dean said, “and it wouldn’t be a problem. I could’ve been a mechanic if –“
“If things had been different,” Blaise finished for him.
Dean grinned, but he still looked slightly sad. “Yeah,” he said.
“Thanks,” Blaise said after a moment. “But I’ll manage, really. It’s just going through a troublesome stage.”
Dean raised an eyebrow. “It’s a car, not a toddler,” he said.
Blaise shrugged. “You’d be amazed,” he said drily.
He’d filled a notebook with arithmancy equations and runic charts and blueprints for arrays. So far, all he could say for certain was that they were overloading the car’s machinery with magic to the point where it had to adapt to keep working in the way that he needed it to.
Well, he could also say that he probably should have started out with something a little less complicated, but…
“I visited home,” he said suddenly. He wasn’t entirely sure why he was telling Dean that.
“How’d it go?” Dean asked.
“It was exactly the same,” he said. “All of the reasons why I left are still there. Nothing’s changed, including my inability to deal with them.” Most of them. He’d tossed out the libido suppressant. It wasn’t really working anyway. “So I came back. There’s nothing really there for me anymore.”
“So you’re settling in the States?” Dean asked. He sounded pleased, oddly enough.
“Yeah,” Blaise said. He grinned. “I figured I’d risk running into you some more.”
The way Dean smiled made his heart skip a beat.
Things got difficult again after that. Sam and Dean went out for supplies and Sam got himself kidnapped. Then there was the task of explaining demons to the civilians they shared the basement with. But explaining demons opened up a can of worms that no one wanted to touch: such as everything else that Muggles didn’t believe existed.
“It’s impossible!” a young, muscular man said. He was holding the gun like he’d used one before, which wasn’t really all that reassuring. But Blaise was paranoid, so who was he to judge?
“Think about it,” Dean said. “You’ve seen their eyes.”
“There’s got to be some sort of condition that could do that, though. Like a disease in the water. The river ran red a few days ago.”
Blaise sighed. Things weren’t going well, and the young man had more support than Dean. He drew his wand and inspected it carefully. Ash and the heartstring of a Romanian Longhorn, well polished, whippy and excellent for enchantments. It was too bad that if he used it, he would probably get shot.
“Bollocks to it,” he muttered. He dredged up what little Gryffindor recklessness he possessed and levelled it at the man. “Silencio.”
That got him – and everyone else – to shut up.
“Magic is real, demons are real, so are werewolves and vampires and ghosts and all other sorts of crazy shit,” he said. “Hell, unicorns.”
Dean was eyeing his wand in suspicion. He raised his gun and pointed it at him, though he didn’t look like he was going to shoot. The other Hunter, a woman called Ellen, pointed her own gun at him too. “Blaise, you’re…”
“A wizard,” Blaise said smoothly. “And I was born this way, thank you. There were no deals with demons or baby eating or whatever the hell else you’re thinking of.”
They boggled at him.
“A wizard,” Ellen repeated.
“Unicorns?” Dean asked.
“Studied them in school,” Blaise said quietly. “Fifth year. Along with creepy death horses and tree sprites.”
“So when you say your car’s like a toddler…” Dean trailed off looking queasy.
Blaise wrinkled his nose. “Ew,” he said. “Magic and electricity don’t mix well, is what I meant. The spells it runs on make it do weird things at times. Like chase squirrels or randomly tune in to Cthulu’s Greatest Hits. Or develop rattlesnakes in the engine. Things like that. So when I said it broke down, what I really meant is that it threw a snit fit and decided not to move.”
“You couldn’t just drive it?”
“Guys, enough with the car talk,” Ellen interrupted. “Now what did you do to him.”
She pointed at the man Blaise had silenced. He was mouthing something – probably obscenities – with an incredulous expression on his face.
“Silencing charm,” Blaise said. “I thought a practical demonstration would get the point across a bit better.”
Dean shrugged. Apparently he couldn’t think of an argument to that. Ellen could. “Take it off,” she demanded.
“Finite Incantatem,” Blaise said. He kept his tone of voice casual, almost blasé, and the way Ellen’s expression darkened made him smirk.
She reminded him slightly of Millicent Bulstrode. Not appearance-wise, since Milli was ugly as sin and Ellen was moderately attractive; it was the domineering, mother-hennish attitude that did it. That and the penchant for violence.
“- the fuck was that?” the man who had been silenced asked.
“Magic, you dumb fuck,” Dean said. “Different from any magic I’ve seen before, though.”
“That’s because I was born with it,” Blaise said. “The stuff demons hand out is dangerous, yeah, but inferior. It needs a more specific focus and there’s less range in what it can do. I’m just a human with a talent that’s slightly weirder than most. Oh, and an education that left’s me completely unprepared for anything even resembling reality, but that’s not really got anything to do with being a wizard.”
Dean sniggered. Then his expression turned serious again. It was like watching a switch being flicked. He could laugh and joke as much as the next guy, but the transformation into a Hunter was instantaneous. Blaise had seen it several times among other Slytherin students, mostly those who had family loyalties and legacies to uphold.
“So,” Dean said. “Mr Wizard. Have you ever heard of anything like this before? The demonic activity in this town?”
“No,” Blaise admitted. “But then, I’m British. There’s less demonic activity over in England than there is here. I’m not sure why, exactly, but –“ he shrugged. “There’s fewer people like me too, just a few isolated colonies. There’s probably a correlation there somewhere.
“That said, though, I was taught enough demonology to know that this is way, way out of character. Demons don’t usually congregate in groups, and when they do there’s usually a great deal more destruction. They egg each other on, I suppose. Anyway, apart from bullet holes, none of the buildings in the area are damaged, but with so many demons hanging around so openly, it’s weird.”
“So something’s causing them to act strangely,” Dean surmised. He turned to the priest. “Hey, padre, you got a Bible in here?”
Blaise watched as, when the Bible was handed over, Dean flipped straight to the back. He leaned in curiously, peering over his shoulder.
“I thought Revelations was about the Apocalypse,” he murmured softly.
Dean winced. “Well, about that…”
Blaise stared at him in disbelief as Dean smiled up at him sheepishly. “Sammy and I may have, purely by accident, released Lucifer and started the end of the world?”
“Of course,” Blaise choked out. Of course, he would be attracted to the Muggle world’s version of Potter. It was like Dean was a magnet for rampant, supernatural-styled chaos.
But he was giving Blaise puppy eyes that were slowly turning his insides to goo.
“Oh, fuck it,” Blaise said. “It was bound to happen one day. So, any ideas?”
“Yeah,” Dean said, looking serious once again. “War.”
“Glorious,” Blaise replied. He rested his chin on Dean’s shoulder. “Is your life always this fun?”
Once they knew what they were really supposed to be fighting, it was all over surprisingly quickly. The Muggle civilians they’d shared the basement with had been more of a hindrance than any sort of help – they’d been tricked by War into thinking that they were demons too and had first thrown them out, and then tried to fight their way out of the town. They’d failed. A few of them had died. War, whether magical, Muggle, or personified, was a bitch.
“He had good taste in cars, though,” Blaise said absently. Dean was walking him to his own, while Sam watched – brooding – with Ellen and Jo.
“Like you,” Dean said. “Same make, same model –“ he caught sight of the blank look on Blaise’s face, and grinned broadly. “You have no idea what I’m talking about do you?”
“Not in the slightest,” Blaise admitted. He smiled. “We’re a pretty secular people. Most people like me are only vaguely aware that cars actually exist.”
“Why?” Dean asked. “Why close yourselves off? It’s not like anything else bothers to. Not that you’re a thing, or anything. I’m going to shut up now.”
Blaise laughed at him. “It’s because of Hunters,” he said. “Because normal people would want to either dissect us or have us provide magical solutions to their problems. Because some wizards think that we’re superior, and that people without magic are little more than animals. Because our magic doesn’t react well to your technology – as evidenced by my car. Pick a reason. Hell, pick all of them. Everyone has their own.”
They’d found his car. It sat by the side of the road, looking perfectly innocent. Blaise glared at it suspiciously and drew his wand. Something had happened to it. He just knew it.
“Why don’t you just learn to drive?” Dean asked.
“There’s a hole in the engine I can put my fist through, and it’s missing some other parts that are probably vital. I got it from a scrap yard. Without magic, it wouldn’t run at all.”
He opened the bonnet. The runes and arrays he’d etched into the metal surfaces of the hood and the engine stared back at him. They were shimmering pleasantly with magic. The kitten that had once been the radiator mewed up at him plaintively.
“What the…”
“This is the second time,” Blaise said, lifting the kitten out. It batted playfully at his hair. “The last time, it was snakes and I was driving and they got cooked.” He looked down at the cat, frowned, and then peered back at the engine. “I think my car’s coming to life,” he said dubiously. “Piece by piece and in the form of cute animals.”
He opened the passenger side door and dumped the kitten on the seat. Shutting it safely inside – and wondering what on earth he was going to do with it – he turned back to Dean only to find him standing right behind him. He was very, very close.
Blaise leaned back against the car. “Um, yes?” he said. He couldn’t stop his breath from hitching.
“I like you,” Dean said bluntly. He hesitated, and then smiled slightly. “I’m usually a lot better at chatting people up, but you’re either terminally oblivious or not interested, so I thought I’d come out and say it.”
“Terrified, actually,” Blaise said. “I don’t deal well with attraction.”
“And I was hoping,” Dean continued, not skipping a beat, “that you might feel like overlooking the whole fear of attraction or whatever and maybe, after this whole Apocalypse thing is over, want to…give it a go? ‘Cause I’d love that. But if you don’t, then that’s okay too.”
“After the Apocalypse?” Blaise asked.
“Well we are trying to stop it,” Dean said. “I just…don’t want to do anything now and get you involved when you shouldn’t have to be.”
“I can fight,” Blaise told him. “I’m not some delicate little –“
“I know,” Dean said. “Just humour me with this.” He leaned in, and rested his forehead against Blaise’s. Blaise inhaled slowly. Dean smelled of sweat and musk and dust – not that brilliant of a combination, but it was oddly reassuring.
He raised his hands, and wrapped his arms around Dean’s shoulders. He liked this. “You don’t mind me being magical, Mr Hunter?”
“You don’t hurt or kill or curse people for fun?” Dean asked.
“No,” Blaise said. “Never have.”
“You don’t eat babies?”
“I prefer cheeseburgers,” Blaise replied. He grinned. “And pie.”
Dean laughed softly. “Then we’re cool,” he said.
“Dean?” Blaise said softly. “Try to hurry up with stopping the end of the world.”
“Is that a yes?”
“Yes.”
Dean’s lips were surprisingly soft and warm. Blaise tightened his grip on his shoulders and leaned into the contact. It was chaste. Soft. It was nothing like how Blaise had imagined kissing Dean to be, but he liked it. A lot.
“How do I contact you?” Dean asked when he pulled away.
Blaise smiled up at him. “We can just run into each other again,” he said. “It seems to happen a lot, anyway.”
Dean laughed. “Right.”
5.
He sat at the diner counter, reading the paper. A slice of half-eaten blueberry pie sat in front of him, and the waitress was more than willing to top up his coffee in exchange for him letting her ogle him. He was more interested in the paper. He’d spent months tracking odd occurrences all over the country, and they’d finally let up. Part of him wished that he had given Dean a way to contact him – he didn’t even know if he was alive – but he hadn’t, and there was no way to go back and change that. Even time-turners couldn’t go back that far.
He sipped his coffee and was about to reach for his fork when –
“How’s the pie?”
He dropped the paper and turned sharply. Dean was standing behind him, his hands tucked into his jeans pockets and a grin on his face. Sam was behind him, shaking his head with a grin on his face.
“I…” Blaise said. “It was great before I dropped my newspaper in it.” He shrugged. “How was the end of the world?”
“Anticlimactic,” Dean replied. “The car?”
“Sentient.”
“God, will you two just get on with it?” Sam butted in.
Dean glared at him over his shoulder. “Go and…do something else. Like research or jacking off or anything.”
Sam backed away, raising his hands and laughing. He went to sit down at one of the tables by the window and pulled out some sort of Muggle thing. He unfolded it and started staring at it.
“Can I get you another slice of pie?” Dean asked.
Blaise shifted to lean against the counter. “Sure,” he said.
Dean grinned and dropped into the chair next to him, signalling the waitress without looking. “I was wondering,” he said, “what you were thinking of doing. Still road tripping, or what?”
“I haven’t really thought about it,” he said.
“’Cause Sammy’s going back to college,” Dean continued. “Law school. So I’m in the market for a new hunting buddy, and I was thinking that – if it wasn’t too weird for you – you would like to join me?”
Blaise took another sip of coffee as he pretended to think. He’d known immediately what his answer would be, before Dean had even finished the question.
“Alright,” he said. “I’d like that.”
Dean’s grin turned his stomach to liquid, and he knew he’d made the right choice.
