Jackson Hole, needless to say, went unexplored. Russell figured it wasn't going anywhere any time soon, and they could come back later. Besides, Katherine didn't pack any damn hiking boots. 

It hurt him beyond what he thought possible to think about that. She didn't pack any hiking boots.

If she'd succeeded, in her own twisted way, what was he going to do? She must have family who would wonder, but they're almost a second thought for him.

What was he going to do?

Not that their current physical states wouldn't be any kind of hinderance. Russell white-knuckled the steering wheel the whole drive back to Winchester. Ibuprofen wasn't even touching the wound in his side. His jaw ached from having his teeth mashed together for several hours.

Katherine couldn't get a word out of her thick throat. She sat on the far edge of the cab, right up against the door, and with nothing to do and anxiety gnawing at her insides, she stared out the window.

The closest thing to a mountain Florida ever got was the local landfill.

They sat on the sofa and started clacking away at their laptop keyboards without saying so much as a word. The feeling was strange, slightly noticed by both parties. The feeling of holding your hand near your ear...the closeness of it.

It was somewhat comforting. 

"All of this lore says familiars are spirits." Russell pokes his own arm. "I'm pretty damn fleshy."

Katherine grunts. "Kind of. I mean...spirits can inhabit bodies."

He slowly blinks in consideration. "Yeah, but I know I'm me. Ya know?"

"What, you weren't blessed with any..." Katherine snaps her fingers a few times. "Supernatural knowledge? No, uh...familiar manual?"

"Not that I know of," Russell hums. "I mean...I know as much as the next hunter about witches, but I don't know anything that I shouldn't know. You know?"

This conversation would be damn funny if it wasn't under these pretenses. 

"You haven't had a meltdown yet," Katherine murmurs.

Russell sighs a little, sinking into the sofa, and gingerly folds his fingers on his belly. "I don't know what good that would do." His brown eyes meet hers, and it fills her chest with warmth, the kind that makes you heavy and sleepy and safe. 

It had always been that way with Russell, initial annoyance aside.

It makes her panic, because she knows what it is, but it's also something else. She can't afford either of those things. She shouldn't even be thinking about something like that.

"How do you do that?" Katherine whispers, definitely in awe.

"Do what?" He asks, equally as soft.

"You've lost your shit one time this whole..." She shakes her head. "You just keep it all buttoned in so nicely."

"It's...kind of hard to process something if your head is empty."

She nods, pulling at the hem of his tshirt she's still wearing. Of course, there weren't any shorts underneath. She didn't pack for that.

"That's shock," Katherine murmurs.

Russell rubs his stubbly jaw. "Why do you think familiar, out of all the things that are out there? Things we don't know about? I mean, you didn't even ask if I was adopted."

She levels a look at him. "I know you're not adopted."

Russell raises a mildly humored, challenging brow. "How do you know that?"

"Because I do."

"Oh, so you know everything?"

"No, but I know that." He can't help but smile a little. "And I know my family comes from a long line of witches." Russell's face quickly drops, and dark eyes meet hers. He stares at her for a moment before blinking. 

"Your family...are witches?" His hand moves to close his laptop.

"On my dad's side. The Irish side." Katherine rests her laptop on the coffee table and tucks her legs to her body while turning to face him. Russell also discards his computer and turns his body to face her. His arms would normall come up beind his head, but they're comfortably tucked at his side, almost like they're holding him together.

Katherine's eyes flit to his side, the one that's puffy with all of the bandages underneath his t-shirt. "I never...well, until recent events, never cast a spell. My dad never did, to my knowledge, and he's always told me his sister wanted out of the whole thing...but my grandmother practiced. I don't know if she still does, if she's even still alive..." She shrugs. 

"You always knew that?" Russell inquires.

She shrugs again, bobbing her head. "Pretty much."

"If your family is full of witches, how come y'all are hunters?"

Katherine rolls her lips into her mouth. "You know, I never liked your questions," she flatly replies. Russell cracks a smile, but still waits for his answer. "Demons, a long, long time ago. One of them tricked an ancestor, as the story goes, and...well, we just never stopped getting revenge, I guess." Her voice drops off into a whisper.

"So...if I were to cast a spell, would I get a familiar?" Russell asks. "I mean, how does this whole thing work? Is it literally one spell and you're a witch?"

Katherine shrugs. "I don't know. I don't think so. I mean, familiars are incredibly rare, and I would imagine the natural witches get first dibs."

Russell grins a little. "You called dibs on me," he lightly teases. 

It was supposed to be funny, but it leveled Katherine. Tears sprung to her eyes and her lips pressed together and she had to look anywhere else but his handsome face. 

It isn't fair to him. She's a mess, a horrible excuse of a human, who's done too many bad things to deserve someone like him. Another Charlie.

Too good.

Russell watches her face go from soft and vulnerable to hard and cold. Compartmentalized. It makes him panic for a moment.

"Someone called dibs on you for me, that's for sure," she manages to say. "So we're in agreement that you're mine."

"I'm yours," he says, too quickly.

"My familiar," she corrects.

"That too," Russell hums. 

She ignores him, but his words warm her cold body. "I mean, we would need an expert to verify, right?" Katherine wonders. 

"I would say we're experts." 

"We're not witch experts, Russell," Katherine sighs. 

"Well..." Russell sighs, too, sitting up and resting his elbows on his knees. "Why don't you call your aunt and your gramma up?" He drawls. 

She blinks at him. "Oh, yeah, let me just call them up." Katherine rolls her eyes after she mocks him, and pushes up from the sofa. 

He grins her way. "You're mean as shit, Katherine Louise."

She's staring at him with this glowing, lovely face, and he'd love to just marvel at it all day long. There's an odd sadness in there, too, something he can't quite understand. He's pretty happy, given the circumstances. Why isn't she?

"You don't seem all right," he murmurs, still trying to hold onto his smile. Trying to get her to smile. Feel better, feel better.

"You seem too all right."

Kiss me, kiss me.

His heart hammers and his mouth dries up. "Uh...well." Russell looks down at his palms, slowly rubbing them together. "I figure as long as I'm with you, it'll be all right."

"How do you figure that?" Katherine whispers.

He shakes his head, because he really doesn't know. He just know he could never imagine a life without her. Against all logic, he just couldn't. So for him, the words were true. "I dunno, it's just a feelin'."

"It'll buff," she lightly muses. Russell smiles a little and nods.

"It'll buff," he agrees. 

Katherine glances to the clock on the stove and looks back at him. "Take your antibiotic. I'll start on dinner."

"Can we just order a pizza?" He sighs. "I could really go for pizza and beer."

"Here I was, trying to be nice for you," Katherine grumbles. 

Russell perks up. "You can be nice."

She holds her hands up, backtracking towards the phone on the cradle. "No, no. You've chosen unwisely, Russell Taylor, and you must reap the consequences."

He can only beam at her. 

It was annoying and terrifying, how quickly his mindset changed. Sure, most of his thoughts were consumed by Katherine anyway, but it seems like after her near-self-sacrifice, it's just turned up to a thousand. Intensified. When he closes his eyes, he can feel where she is in the room, almost like he's actually seeing it. 

Katherine sits down on the sofa right beside him, much to his pleasure. She looks down at her fingernails, hesitant to meet his eyes.

"Whatcha thinkin' about?" He whispers. 

"How scary this all is," she returns, equally as soft. 

Russell purses his lips. "'S not all that bad," he murmurs. "It'll probably be worse in the morning, once the shock has worn off."

"I'm not talking about the witchy familiar thing," Katherine says. Finally, her blue eyes turn up to his, and he feels like he's falling. He feels like crying, because that's what she looks like. Scared, teary-eyed, panicked. 

"What..." Russell swallows. "What are you talking about?"

Her lip quivers. "I, uh..." Katherine looks down again. His hands start to shake, and his stomach turns. It's nerves, right? "All summer, it's just this feeling I can't shake. You're the most selfless person I've ever met, and you kept putting up with me...you didn't even know me. You still don't."

"I do," Russell murmurs. 

She shakes her head. "I'm not a good person."

Russell's eyes scan over her profile. "It's not all roses over here either, sweetheart," he softly says. Katherine scoffs.

"I can't imagine you've done anything half as bad as what I have." Katherine sniffs. "And I feel so selfish, because I know I shouldn't hope that you love me, too, but I do, and I've been denying it all summer, but I just can't anymore—"

Russell's face is one of complete shock. "What?"

"—I don't know what I'd do if something like that ever happened to you—"

"Something like what?" He asks. A rare case of not thinking before he spoke. 

"Like Charlie," she answers. "Or Dean." Her face is so pale and she seems so physically ill, it mirrors the nausea Russell feels in his stomach.

"Who's Dean?" Russell asks. His eyes are low, glued to the rug, and his mouth barely opens. I'm gonna throw up.

Katherine's eyes fill with tears, and she puts her head in her hands and sighs a shaky breath. After a few moments, she sits up again, and Russell is looking paler than before. 

Paula said she was pregnant...

If she knows loss like he has...well, it's all the cause for mourning, bereavement so profound she couldn't speak about it. Hell, it took him this long to even breathe Anna's name. 

"What a loaded question," Katherine finally says. "Uh..." Her mouth forms the first letter of his name, but she breathes out again. "Dean...was a hunter. Family friend, in a way. We met when we were kids, and crossed paths again a couple years ago when his dad went missing." Russell's eyes lock on her face as she talks about Dean. First, she started with facts about him. A hunter, kind of a shithead, but loyal to the letter. Her fiercest protector. She even starts talking about his mannerisms and his sayings, how he'd pick all of Sam's pepperoni and sausage off of his pizza and put it on his own.

There are so many different kinds of love, so many facets of grief. The sun has gone down, and Katherine talked the whole time they ate pizza. Russell didn't say a word. It was nice to watch her talk about someone she loved. The way her face lit up, the way her eyes softened. But those same eyes filled with tears and hardened when she said she was pregnant, and it wasn't by her husband. She choked on those words.

It was shame she felt, because she couldn't do one fucking thing right by Charlie Taylor.

Her eyes didn't meet his.

"I should've just left him alone," Katherine whispers. 

Russell swallows thickly and looks to the coffee table. Empty beer bottles refract warm lamp light. His head is swimming with words he can't make out, and his stomach is full of grief that doesn't belong to him. 

"You two are a lot alike," she continues. "You're both too good to me...have some of the same weird humor...you're both very soft."

"Not like Dean," Russell murmurs.

If it's at all possible, her stomach sinks more, and her jaw slackens. "I...I didn't mean it like that," Katherine whispers. 

"No, I know." He shakes his head and rolls his tongue over his teeth. "I'm sorry all that happened to you."

Happened to you. Not happened because of you. It makes her heart break even more, impossibly. 

"I struggle a lot with God, you know," he says, looking down at his palms. "If he exists...why does so much bad shit happen to good people?"

Katherine's lip quivers again, and it's all she can do to keep from crying as she shrugs. "I never knew how to answer that," she whispers. 

"Still went to church, though," Russell mumbles. "Every Sunday. Momma would turn over in her grave if she could see how her boys turned out." He gives Katherine a sad, hollow smile. "My dad sucked, ya know. Always came down hard on me, said I was too soft, but Patrick was always there to be the buffer."

"You really look up to him, don't you?" Katherine hums.

Russell, with a fond smile, nods. "He's my best friend in the whole world."

"My dad sucked, too," Katherine says. "But I didn't get a buffer."