PRAYER WARRIOR {ruby}

[dean]

New York had some damn good cheeseburgers. Damn good food in general, really, especially for someone with the taste buds of Dean Winchester. He didn't want any of that fancy crap. All he needed was a beer and a bacon cheeseburger to get him through the day. Maybe some apple pie. That was just what he was having at a small diner. It'd been a normal day. Well, normal for Dean. There was a ghost haunting some old abandoned place nearby. Easy enough to deal with. He just had to salt the place and burn the remains. Done and done.

Taking a drink from his beer, Dean looked around the diner. Everything was normal. That was kind of a relief, actually. Sure, he'd taking hunting over a normal life any day but sometimes it was nice to just relax. Not that it was perfect, though. Dean hadn't seen or heard anything of his brother for months now. But if Lucifer got him the Apocalypse would already be done with. But damn, it was tough not having Sam around. Sure, he had Cas to help him with some stuff, but angels... Angels weren't the most reliable guys around. Always teleporting around.

Dean looked across the table. Of course, nobody there. That was usually where Sam would sit. They'd usually be talking about a case or trying to solve the latest apocalypse-causing threat. That was depressing to think about. Dean shifted his gaze to the window. As usual, there were people walking around and seeing what there was to see. Dean had already seen most of it, having been to New York more times than he could count. The whole place had way too many people to not have a billion demons and monsters running around.

What Dean really needed was something big to do. Sure, he had to stop Lucifer and find Sam but... There was no real progress with that for the last couple of months he'd been trying. Even with Cas' help that hadn't done anything too significant. Dean laid back in his seat and took another drink from his beer. It sure was weird not having some crap thrown at you every other day.

[Ruby]

In the time she'd spent in New York, Ruby had picked up some very interesting things on the demonic grapevine - seriously, the big apple was a crazy place, especially these days. But in her not-so-humble opinion, as 'interesting' as the collective insanity of the city was, very few aspects of it actually warranted any attention or investigation. She had better things to do than humor every human that came around crying about something or other going bump in the night. Sure, she was still killing demons - but that was because there still actually people around dumb enough to trust her, to believe that she was actually a pretty swell gal and not an unholy menace from hell. Had to keep up the act, after all. She was pretty sure Lucifer could really care less about a few more demons being offed in order to keep up appearances - that, and it was really annoying when they got in her way.

But what most certainly had caught her attention was the latest 'spooky' ghost story - not because of the ghost itself, but because some hunter had apparently taken care of it. It'd sent the local supernatural community abuzz, having a hunter in the city, and Ruby...really couldn't say the news pleased her. So she'd looked into it - done a bit of interrogating, a bit of tracking, and what had she found? Freakin' Dean Winchester, staying right here in this goddamned city. Of course. She would've had fun dealing with Sammy, hell, she would have even taken the stonefaced angel - but Dean was really not someone Ruby enjoyed dealing with. It might've had something to do with his continual habit of calling her a bitch. Or, just a possibility, maybe it was the fact that he'd stabbed her with her own knife. Either way, it was definitely time for some payback.

She was going to go for the taunting first. Dean didn't exactly have a mellow temper, and there was nothing that would brighten her day more than getting him nice and angry at her - especially in a public place, with other people around, when he couldn't exactly just get up and perform an exorcism then and there. So she'd followed him - she'd been following him for a good portion of the day now, actually - until he'd chosen to stop by a little diner for a bite to eat. Predictable. Ruby had rolled her eyes, although...somewhere inside her, something about seeing Dean again had almost unnerved her. It had taken her awhile to place exactly why that was: he was alone. The only time she'd known the Winchesters to ever split up was when she'd went and driven a wedge between them herself - and she certainly hadn't done anything this time. And with Lucifer actively looking for Sam, well...Sam being MIA wasn't exactly good.

Well. Maybe she'd be able to get a few answers out of Dean while she was at it.

Slipping quietly into the diner, Ruby paused, eyeing Dean's table for a moment. The moment she'd walked in, the lights had flickered briefly - an inevitable side-effect of her 'cuddly demonic presence', but...no one had really seemed to notice. Hey, the place was old. Smirking, she sauntered on over to Dean, and as casually as if they were old friends, slid into the booth across from him. "Gosh, Dean, why didn't you tell me you were in town?" she asked with mock-concern, smirking all the while. "I would've cleared my schedule. I mean, it's like you don't even want to catch up."