“So, I get that this isn’t...y’know, anything you’re doing on purpose,” Because Faraday likes Dean. That much should be obvious, at least. Even to Sam. 

The sun sets on Beltane, and everything is in chaos. 

There’s a bonfire crackling in the distance, the Impala’s front end mangled where it was slammed into a massive tree. Dean’s got broken glass in his hair, dusted across his eyelashes, dug into the meat of his palm. 

Faraday is a force beside him, fists clenched white knuckled. But he’s not a force of nature. He’s a force of Detroit steel and American ingenuity, and Dean swears he can hear the rumble of the Impala’s engine just beneath the sound of the fae’s breathing. 

The end is nigh. 

Faraday’s grandmother sweeps across the field, gnarled trees bowing in passing as she moves towards them, inhuman in pace and in sight, pale as the moon that hasn’t risen yet. 

Dean yells protect Sam! because he’s slumped in the passenger seat, blood trickling from his temple and seatbelt still in place. 

Maybe it’s guilt, maybe it’s some frayed remnant of the obligation between them, but Faraday is gone between one blink and the next, pulling Sam from the wreckage. 

It’s all Dean needs to know. He whispers a prayer to Cas under his breath, goodbye and apology in equal measure, and he throws himself at the Queen of the Fae with everything he’s got. 

Each time he lunges at her, she bats him away like he’s something insignificant. But Dean gets back up. He snarls insults and digs in. Bleeding. Exhausted. Unstoppable. 

Why do you fight for him? Her voice is the tinkle of fine crystal, the gentlest whisper of bells against the breeze. 

Dean spits blood, and stands. Again. “Because I want to.”

He hears the magic before he sees it. Radio static, the space on the dial between one station and the next. The Fae Queen stumbles. Faraday’s eyes are headlight yellow in the growing darkness. 

She clenches a hand into a fist, and Faraday convulses. But he doesn’t scream. He doesn’t fall. There’s a conversation going on, ancient and indecipherable to his ears.

Dean doesn’t care. He’s got his shot. 

The Fae Queen is so caught up in trying to make Faraday bend to her will (literally, and metaphorically) that she doesn’t pay any attention to Dean. Why would she? He’s less than an ant to her, useless, pointless. 

Except he’s got one hell of a point, a consecrated iron dagger that he brings down into her neck with everything he’s got. She screams, and blood spurts hot against his hands. 

A flick of her wrist has him slamming into the side of the Impala, slumping. 

The Fae Queen dies with an unholy sound, and the unnatural silence around them gives way to the sounds of crickets and night birds, and even the Impala’s engine trying to tick.

That’s his baby, a fighter to the end.

Faraday’s eyes are back to normal by the time he kneels in front of Dean. But he’s sickly pale and slick with sweat, practically out on his feet. Sam’s safe. Dean’s sigh of relief is audible. 

“Look. This isn’t let or lien bullshit. I’m asking you.” He reaches up, the hand covering the slow oozing wound on his stomach curling around Faraday’s neck, staining it with his blood. “Keep an eye on them for me, will you? Cas and Sam and Stiles. They need someone to annoy ‘em. And keep them from doing something stupid.”

There’s an argument, but Dean can’t hear much of it. His ears roar with rushing blood, and his vision is darkening at the edges. 

He pulls Faraday in close, pressing closed lips to the fairy’s forehead. Dean’s never been great at goodbyes. 

“Keep the knife.”

Faraday has been an anomaly since the day he was brought into the fold. One of the few that Goody washed his hands off. He knows a time bomb when he sees one, and irony notwithstanding, the Irish boy is a few seconds from midnight. 

(Maybe he sees a bit of himself in that funhouse mirror. Too much to think about.)

Goodnight raises his glass in salute, taking a careful sip. 

It starts with hearing an odd call over the police radio in Minnesota. The dispatch tells them that a hispanic male was trespassing on private property. By the time the responding officer gets back on the radio, it’s to tell her that there was no sign of trespassing, and that ‘the lady of the house was hitting the sauce’ telling him about rattling windows and knives thrown across the room.

Dean waits until morning to put on the state trooper uniform and get a statement from the lady in the house.

She’s definitely drunk at 10 in the morning, but she repeats all the signs of a poltergeist. Flying knives and forks, rattling windows, pictures hurled from the wall.

(If that’s not enough, the EMF lights up like Christmas when he points it at the attic door.)

He tells her that he’s going upstairs to ‘take a look around’.

Dean barely clears the ladder before the mirror comes flying at his head. In broad daylight, he almost misses the outline of a man standing in front of the attic mirror, face contorted in rage and fists clenched at his sides.

He doesn’t miss the attic door slamming shut and the woman’s screams.

“Come on, man. Be original. You’re not even scary.” It’s the wrong thing to say, because the spirit coalesces into a fuller outline of a man, the same Hispanic man the police radio talked about. “You’re like Paranormal Activity level scary. Not even the original Poltergeist.”

The walls around him are rattling, like he’s trapped inside of a rapidly beating heart. Dust and insulation rain down on his head. Dean reaches for the gun holstered at his side just in time for a cable wire to snap free from the wall and wrap tight around his throat.

The reflection of the feeling is evident in the way she lashes Clyde’s ropings around. Or, the pinch of her brow. The purse of her mouth. Clyde rumbles nervously, alternating his back hooves, and Emma eases up, soothing him with a hand to his soft muzzle.

But the expression in her gut, that boiling-bubble, doesn’t dissipate. 

Finally, it erupts, and it’s fast like a bolt of lightning come from the heavens.

“I do care,” And she snaps it, so sharp she’s afraid her teeth would cut him wide open and send his guts sprawling. Emma chews her lip in and in and then suddenly there’s copper that isn’t coin. Her fists clench and she draws Clyde’s ropes to a tight line. He neighs, finally, tossing his head up to try and get away from the tension. She lets him, and finally turns to Faraday - to Josh. 

(She’d never call him the name right-out, knows he don’t like it but the easiest way to be bitter is to pretend she said the name out loud, and not to herself, in her head.)

“I care so much that I can’t even keep my head straight, Faraday.” She gestures, arms wide to her sides, and it’s to everything. Not anything specific. Fuck, she’s just making the movements because if she kept her arms at her side she’d feel dull, stir-crazy. “And believe me, I’m so -” The feeling she’s experiencing, that gut roil wrench, that gloomy atmosphere – she knows what it is, with such finality that she wants to holler him into the ground until he understands – “so disappointed.”

The word leaves her and it feels like the world quiets down for them. Faraday’s face twitches, and there’s a moment where she can see the waking plains trembling and changing, and then it’s gone. Whatever had crossed his face did so in a timely manner to evade watchful owl eyes.

They couldn’t duck hers out.

“But you’re human.” These words are softer, and kinder. They pave new paths to his heart with hope, quick to do so before he can brush her away with a complicated act of how something doesn’t effect him. “And what good is being mad at you when you know you’ve made the mistake? You’re allowed to do those things because something learning has to be done in the hardest ways, just as I’m allowed to feel the way I do about those things you do.” Her shoulders soften, and that disappointment lifts its head and debates itself - considers the shape of Faraday himself. And then, it slinks away to curl up in the corner of her heart, won out by a stronger affection. 

Evidently, Faraday’s obsession with explosions is not limited to those caused by dynamite. Billy rolls his eyes, and refrains from pointing out what happened the last time they brought explosions into the mix. Not to mention the fact that, were he to aim for their current enemies’ eyes, it would all be too fast to really appreciate it.

But the leader of this stupid gang is still mouthing off, and Billy is losing his patience.

“짜증나.” He mutters, and foregoes the knife for his hairpin, leaning up just long enough to throw it, fast as a rattlesnake, only to fall back beside Faraday. The man’s voice cuts off, and his gun clutters to the ground.

       “Wh——Lawrence, your eye!” It’s as good a distraction as any, and Billy is armed with a blade in each hand once again as he glances at Faraday.