Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/7479804.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      F/F
  Fandom:
      Supernatural
  Relationship:
      Annie_"Alex"_Jones/Claire_Novak
  Character:
      Jody_Mills, Dean_Winchester, Claire_Novak, Annie_"Alex"_Jones
  Additional Tags:
      Episode:_s11e12_Don't_You_Forget_About_Me, Teenagers, Denial, Loss_of
      Virginity
  Stats:
      Published: 2016-08-12 Chapters: 1/? Words: 2308
****** you look different by morning's light ******
by guanoo
Summary
     [Coda to 11.12]
     The tenuous peace between them lasts an entire month this time.
Notes
     1. Set about a month after 11x12 -- spoilers for that episode
     2. In my head Alex is 17 and Claire, 19 -- don't actually know how
     old they are in canon
     3. I'm not great at characterization and I've never written these two
     before. Observations/constructive criticism appreciated
     4. [and this, mostly for myself] named after A Certain Slant [though
     i already have a fic named slant, probably for the same reason can't
     remember... there are two books called A Certain Slant of Light, the
     first one I read I can barely remember, except it involved some
     pregnant Jehova's witnesses chick and it literally altered the way i
     thought about the universe when i was in middle school. I tried to
     find it again but I only found the other book which is about sexually
     questionable ghost possession. Titillating, but not awe-inspiring]:
     For bloodandcream... Darling you are my queen. I love your brain and
     your writing and yeah I hope you like this :)
The tenuous peace between them lasts an entire month this time. Claire stops
clogging the shower drain with her blonde knots; Alex stops stealing Claire's
lipstick. Though really, Claire should give it to her, since she never wears it
herself.
She thinks about it—thinks it might be nice. Then again, it would be a Gesture,
and things are awkward enough already.
 
Alex is a punctual person, but she overslept this morning, maybe because Claire
fucked with the circuit breaker last night—what? She has to learn how those
things work if she’s going to be a hunter—and Alex’s alarm clock probably got
reset. Oops.
Claire cracked her eyes open at the sound of Alex pelting down the hallway,
shouting something about no tampons (which, okay, maybe Claire used the last of
them, but the female body is a freaky thing, and with three women in the house…
yeah, there’s a monthly crush for supplies). Not ten minutes later, Alex rushed
back in the other direction, knocking over something heavy that fell to the
floor with a metallic clang (ooh shit, Claire forgot to hide the angel blade
she’d nicked off the giant Winchester… What? Jody “confiscated” her last one!).
Alex cried out in frustration, her shadow stooping outside Claire’s bedroom
door to examine the fallen object.
“Dammit, Claire,” she breathed, her voice carrying that harsh, despairing
undertone which meant she was stressed, working herself up to a crying jag in
some dark corner.
And Claire didn’t feel tired anymore.
She waited until Alex had sniffled and sworn her way out of earshot before
raking fingers through her hair and tipetoing into the hall. It was barely
morning. The kitchen lay empty, crisscrossed by the kind of harsh, chilly
winter sunlight that made Claire shiver with loneliness. On the table lay two
twenty-dollar bills—lunch money for each of them for this week. Claire took
hers and wadded it into her pocket, then took a swig from the coffee sitting on
the counter. Still hot, which meant it was Alex’s, not Jody’s. Jody leaves even
earlier than Alex does.
She felt, rather than heard, Alex’s approach behind her. She turned, leaning
back against the sink and preparing herself for the inevitable berating.
But Alex stood there limply, eyes huge and clear, beautiful in spite of their
red rims. (She’s always pretty; she’s never happy; as though her encounters
with the supernatural have left her... altered, somehow.) She opened her mouth
a couple of times in indecision, then settled for “Hey.”
“Hey,” Claire returned. “Look, I’m sorry about the—”
“Forget it.” Alex crossed her arms over her chest and stared at Claire’s bare
knees. “I’m late. Can I get to the—”
“Yeah."
She watched Alex pack her lunch with another pang of guilt—she knows finances
are tough lately, with Jody’s medical bills and Alex’s shrink, and yet Jody
gives them lunch money every week, which Claire spends on ammo. But Alex
folds hers under the flour jar with the rest of Jody’s emergency bills.
Her fingers worked quickly and precisely, making two PB&J sandwiches and
cutting the crusts off one.
Claire blinked.
Honestly, she’s not a morning person. She stays up late doing research, and
anyway monster attacks are statistically less likely to occur between the hours
of 7am and noon. When she stumbles out of bed around lunchtime to an empty
house and finds a crustless PB&J just waiting for her on a plate in the
fridge—yeah, she thinks it’s Jody’s incessant mothering.
Turns out she was wrong.
As she watched, Alex slid the sandwich onto a plate and turned to put it in the
fridge, then froze, seeing Claire’s eyes. “Jody forgot,” she lied, then hustled
out of the room.
Claire gritted her teeth. Honestly, it’s awkward as shit, now that her and Alex
are being nice to one another. And because she maybe cares a little, Claire has
no right to say anything.
But the sandwich-making has to stop.
She stumbled back down the hallway, feigning sleepiness and trudging right into
Alex. The collision was intentional—Claire knew she was being a dick—but it
didn’t hurt any less when Alex jerked away like she’d been burned.
“’M late,” she muttered, and Claire caught that wounded undertone again.
Despite the steel in Alex's blood, sometimes Claire thinks she might snap in
half.
That was how Claire found herself standing barefoot in the morning dew, holding
the door open for her foster sister. Alex blinked at her, hands full with
backpack and hastily packed lunch and textbook and soccer ball.
Claire. Holding the door. Talk about awkward.
Alex hissed something under her breath.
"Yeah, I didn't catch that."
“Move,” Alex said, louder.
Claire sidestepped. “Just trying to be nice.” She felt a hot pinprick of anger.
Her own behavior was confusing enough without Alex’s fucking sensitive
responses.
Alex turned to look up at her, all pale skin and dark hair and doll-pretty
sorrow, green eyes grey and teary in the morning light. “Well… can you just
not?” she asked brokenly.
“Back at you,” Claire mumbled belatedly as Alex’s bike rushed down the street,
out of sight.
 
Now she’s got the entire day to start feeling pissed.
First off, she isn’t actually working yet, since she has so many assault
charges—Jody has to pull some heavy strings before Claire can even think of
interning at the sheriff’s office.
Second, she missed the boat on college—the registrar gave her a flat “No” and
fucking academic suspension, like that was any sort of punishment.
Claire’s not too broken up about the whole college deal. Bunch of erudite
spooks if you ask her. Dean had laughed when she muttered that under her
breath, cutting mocking eyes at his brother.
And there’s her third reason.
Dean’s gone. She may have nursed a tiny—okay, huge and throbbing and
disgusting, and what do you call a guy like him anyway? DILF?—crush on the
older hunter over the past year. But so what? He’s straightforward, and looks
in her eyes when he talks to her. Isn’t scared of touching her, either.
Anyway, the dude’s easy on the eyes, even if he’s kind of a grandpa.
And yet since his last visit she feels a tiny crumpling that says he’s human.
Something about the way his eyes go all soft over home-cooked meals. People get
misty-eyed over the weirdest shit.
Anyway, he’s not the person she sees in her erotic daydreams anymore. Problem
is, there’s someone there: someone raw, and it hurts because Claire can’t seem
to get a good look at his face.
She’s starting to suspect she’s deliberately closing her eyes.
The fourth and most important reason for her frustration is that she’s slowly
coming to terms with the fact that she isn’t exactly a hunter yet. Of course
she has skills: once the shock from Alex almost getting her throat ripped out
during Claire’s latest—and last—case wore off, Claire realized she was a
natural-born hunter. She also realized there were more noble reasons for
hunting than simply boredom, burning time.
Alex proved that to her. When Claire's lying awake in the early hours of the
morning, trying to drift off, she sees Alex.
Sees her flinching at needles and staying in on Halloween.
Sees her working her ass off in school.
Sees her, the day Claire borrowed Jody’s truck to pick Alex up from soccer
practice. Sees Roy Jennings (all-varsity all-tousled-blonde all-douche) with
his tongue down Alex’s throat. Feels the grip of rage somewhere low, like when
she realized Alex was still a virgin and that sociopathic vamp almost popped
her cherry, like Alex might be moving on a little too fast. “Recovery” and all.
(Shrinks peddle a load of shit… what else is new.)
Sees Alex jerk back when Roy Jennings nips sensually at her neck. (Sees her own
feet hit the pavement.)
Sees the splash of blood from his nose. (Alex beat her to the punch.)
Sees Alex offering herself to a new nest of vamps because she thinks it’ll save
Jody and Claire.
 
Claire thought she was hard like old leather and rusted nails and early
January. Thought family was some kind of soft underbelly that hunters avoided
(or, you know, entered the profession without).
And it is, but she isn’t.
If Alex is willing to make that kind of sacrifice, someone should be there to
make sure she doesn’t have to. Someone strong.
So Claire reels herself in and gets to work. She may be playing a waiting game,
but in the meanwhile, who’s going to train her?
Anyhow, she may have accidentally erased Dean’s number from her phone when she
realized he wasn’t The One.
 
Three dusty volumes and thirty rounds later, Claire’s examining a bullet-ridden
stop sign in the twilight woods of Sioux Falls.
Her aim’s improving.
 
When she runs, there’s nothing on her mind. She knows the land, knows her feet,
and her mind just flies far away.
Only not so far because she’s thinking of the sandwich she didn’t eat for lunch
and how she’s never going to eat fucking PB&J ever again.
See if Alex does shit like that now.
 
Alex is in the shower when she gets back. Jody’s cooking dinner.
Claire bangs on the bathroom door.
“Leave her alone, Claire,” Jody calls from the kitchen. Claire rolls her eyes
and pops the bathroom door open quietly. Once the door snicks safely shut
behind her, she makes a bunch of noise, letting Alex know she’s in there. Alex
doesn’t say anything.
She plops down on the edge of the sink, grazing the shower curtain with her
fingers. “Hey, Al…”
Nothing.
“Alex?”
Silence.
“Alex,” she hisses, edge of alarm in her throat.
“Fuck off.”
The alarm eases. “Good to know you’re alive,” she says flatly.
“What do you want.”
“I’m waiting for the shower, genius.” Claire jiggles her knee when Alex doesn’t
respond, then adds in monotone, “News flash: you take forever.”
After a moment, Alex says, “Do not,” and there’s another note in her voice—if
Claire didn’t know better, she’d think it was something like fondness—and
whatever it is, Claire doesn’t really know how to deal with it, but she knows
she hasto, and soon, so she stays, listening to the splash of water, click of a
conditioner bottle.
She thinks she might harass Alex a little, just to get the conversation
rolling.
“So how's Roy?”
“Shut up.”
Claire scoffs. “Excuse me?” She's the last person to care about someone’s
manners, but after a month of playing nice she’s caught off guard by the sudden
shift. Her mouth gapes open and she can’t even think of a fucking retort,
Christ.
In a breath, the tap squeaks off and the shower curtain’s drawn back, rings
clattering on their pole. Alex stands there dripping and naked and hiding a
little behind her long wet hair. But there is no hesitation in her voice, it
rings bright and cold like the steel in Alex’s blood: “I said shut up.”
Claire snaps a towel off the bar and throws it at her. “You joining a nudist
colony or something? Fuck!”
Alex catches the towel and wraps it around her (pretty) curves, clear eyes
regarding Claire briefly before flicking away.
And now Claire’s really mad at Alex, for her chilly nonchalance when Claire’s
heart is pounding in her ears. “God, warn a person next time!” she snaps,
because Alex doesn’t get to make fucking sandwiches and responsible decisions
and then just flash her tits at random. “It’s fucking nasty! Feel like I’ve
gotta scratch my eyes out,” she sneers, turning her face away.
A sharp rap on the door makes both of them jump. “Claire! What did I tell you!”
Jody sounds pissed.
Claire springs to her feet—getting ready to haul ass out of there in case Jody
and Alex decide to team up against her. Or something. She glances instinctively
at Alex, whose eyes have gone moonlight-wide. Their gazes meet, and Alex looks
vulnerable, strangely wounded despite her metal forgings. Then it’s gone again,
and Claire’s left in the dark.
“Jody it’s fine,” Alex calls, steady. “She isn’t bothering me.”
Claire stares.
“We’re um. Can you leave us alone for a minute?”
“Oh,” Jody’s voice softens through the door, then it grows meaningful in a way
that Claire finds immensely irritating: “Oh. Well then! Dinner’s ready in 10!”
she says, a mite too cheerful, and clears out.
Which leaves Claire and Alex standing half a foot apart, wedged into each
other’s space by the narrowness of the bathroom.
“God, what is upwith you?” Claire whispers, and it’s the first time in her life
she’s genuinely wanted to know the answer to that question.
Alex’s eyes spark again—definitely pain, but it’s weird timing—then she bows
her head, hiding her eyes behind long black hair.
"You're fucking oblivious," she says, voice quiet but damning. 
Claire doesn’t know what the fuck is happening so she decides to force the
issue.
"So what, we live through one ugly massacre, and now you want to be friends?
And I'm supposed to—what, believe that?" she demands, heart drumming wildly,
head a mess with Alex defending her but keeping her at arm's length all the
same.
Alex scoffs. “I’m surprised it lasted this long.”
“Same here,” Claire throws back. Then, coloring her tone with dragging
indifference to disguise the lump in her throat, “Since you hate me and all.”
Alex whirls on her, and she’s surprised to find tears in her eyes. “I have
neverhated you,” she says through her teeth, then wrenches the out of the tiny
room and rushes down the hall to her bedroom, slamming the door.
Claire’s left staring down an empty hallway, wondering what the fuck just
happened.
 
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