"How do you feel?"

Dean lamely shrugs, staring down at the toes of his boots. "Maybe like I shouldn't have downed four of those burgers." Then, knowing she wasn't going to accept that as an answer, looks at Katherine with a sigh. "No, I'm not feeling demon-y. But...that's why I came to find you first."

"That maybe if there was something there, I'd find it?" Dean nods. "Well before I go summoning demons and cutting their all their red tape, we need to talk to Sam. If he made a deal, it would be faster to find out that way." 

Russell nudges her hand with a cold, wet nose. Do you think it's a good idea to run head-first into this?

No, but what other choice do I have?

There's silence from him, but a mental grumbling of agreement as he laid down on the rug. Dean came to her for help, the same way she would come to him for help. 

"What's this guy's name?" Dean asks, nodding to the brown shepherd with a semblance of a smile.

Well, she couldn't very well give him Russell's name. But with only that name removed from the potential list of thousands, Russell—for the life of him—couldn't understand what compelled her to answer with Rob.

Dean raises an eyebrow at her. "Rob," he repeats.

She doubles down. "Like Rob Zombie."

Russell audibly groans, a high-pitched yawn, and throws himself onto the carpet, paws reaching up to cover his eyes, and Dean is laughing. 

Rob Zombie? Russell asks. Seriously?

I'm so sorry.

"Seriously?" Dean asks. "Why would you name him that?"

Katherine shrugs. "Uh...first thing that popped into my head." Not a lie. "Sometimes he's Rob, sometimes he's Rob Zombie, sometimes he's Robert."

Katherine, stop talking, Russell groans. 

"What a name," Dean hums, shaking his head, and sips at the beer Katherine cracked open for him. She didn't grab one for herself. "So two dogs and three cats, huh?"

"I just have the one dog," Katherine says. "The Cat Distribution Society got a hold of Pat last week, and he brought these guys in." She gestures to the family of cats huddled in the hide Patrick brought home. 

Dean sighs, settling back into the sofa, quietly taking in the environment around him. His eyes settle on the coffee table, and he chews on his lower lip as he takes in one of the photographs there. "Who're they?" It was a delicate enough question, and maybe it was genuine curiosity, but...

How the fuck did he see that? Russell grumbles, jumping up onto the sofa between her and Dean.

He's an observant little shit is how, Katherine replies, fingers instinctually moving to pet him. It's so strange, even just imagining it's Russell's actual hair. She only pet him once before, and they were both cracking up at how weird it all was. 

She's wearing her Braves ball cap, standing between Jackson and Russell in the backyard on the night of his birthday party. The fire is a dull glow in the background, and besides a few people close enough to be illuminated from the camera flash, there's nothing descriptive about their environment.

Patrick, when he got back from his backpacking excursion, cut himself out of a photo and taped himself to this picture, closest to Russell, and stuck it back in the frame. "That's, uh...that's Pat's brother on the left..." Brief hesitation on her end is met with agreement on his. "His name's Russell. And that's his buddy Jackson. They played college baseball together."

Dean chuckles. "You sure do have a thing for athletes."

"I guess so." Katherine smiles a little. "Russell's the one who found me in that creek in March, just over there." She gestures vaguely to the area behind the TV. "He and Jake. He brought me to the hospital."

"Saved your life," Dean muses. Katherine nods. "That why you came back here? After...everything?"

She sighs, tilting her head a little. She's navigating dangerous waters, and she doesn't want it to seem like she's thinking too long about something, because then he'd suspect she's lying about something. Which she totally is, but he can't know that. 

"Not really," she says. "I didn't know anything about him when I left the hospital. But I found myself here, working a gig for the reservation just a little ways south...drove until I found myself here."

"Winchester, Wyoming," Dean hums.

Katherine shakes her head. "Ironic, isn't it?"

"Of all the tiny one-post-office towns." Dean takes another drink. "Where's Russell?"

She purses her lips. "Out of town." Silence hangs between the two for just a moment. "I think you'd like him. He and Pat were hunters, once upon a time. They've both retired, for the most part."

There's a question burning on his tongue. She knows it. But he won't ask. He just stares at her, resting his temple in his palm. He just stares, and she might still be struggling to come to terms with the fact that he's here, breathing. 

"Would you consider sleeping here tonight before driving all the way back to Bobby's?" Katherine asks.  

"Why don't you stay until I find Sam?" Dean suggests. "You're sick. You should sleep in your own bed."

"Because then we're taking two vehicles, and that's stupid."

"But what about when you're ready to come home to Russell?" He quietly asks. 

Katherine's heart thumps in her throat. Truly, she doesn't know what to say, how to answer it. That was the furthest thing fro her mind."We can talk about that later," she murmurs. 

Dean sighs, rolling his lips into his mouth. "Kat, the last two times I came to find you at your house...you've left a good life, and some bad things happened after. I get if you can't come with me this time. Whatever the reason."

"I'm coming with you," she insists. "You'd drop everything to help me."

Dean chews on the inside of his cheek, then tilts his bottle at her right arm, then her face. "What happened to you?" He quietly asks. 

Katherine sucks in a deep breath that aches in her ribs, quelling the nausea that comes with thinking of her bones snapping. "I don't...want to talk about that."

The landline starts to ring, which it almost never does. Russell lifts his head in that direction, ears perked, before he follows Katherine to the kitchen.

You sure play the velcro dog to a tee, she humorously muses, in spite of the anxiety swirling in her belly. So many people know so little...and she's worried about how it could all affect Russell when they do inevitably find out. 

I'm nothing if not authentic, he replies.

Dean watches curiously, until he feels pressure on his boot. He looks down and grimaces. 

Two kittens, one black and white and the other gray and white, are sat on his boots and pawing at his jeans.

He sighs at them. "I'm allergic to you," he pronounces. 

"Hello?" Katherine answers.

Bobby coughs on the other end. "Don't you know how to answer a damn phone anymore?"

"Hi, Bobby," she drawls. Dean looks over at her, then pushes himself up from the sofa. Ambling over to her, he's careful where he puts his feet so he doesn't trample the little fuzzbutts following him. "Don't you know how to say hello when someone answers the damn phone?"

"I've been calling your cell for an hour, dammit."

"Well why didn't you try this phone before then?"

Bobby sighs loudly into the phone. "Are you with Dean?"

Katherine watches him lean against the countertop, his eyebrows raised. A hundred thoughts and emotions race through her...mostly pertaining to the fact that he's alive. And, now that Dean's planted that seed...that she's with Russell. 

"Yeah," she answers. "Thanks for the heads up, Bobby. Poor Dean about got a knife to the throat."

Dean scoffs, but can't help the inner recoil he feels at watching her break so easily. How different she was from the hunter he left behind four months ago. Everything she endured...alone. And she's still here.

They beat him to death in front of her...

"I say again," Bobby huffs. "You don't answer your phone."

Katherine tilts her head to the side. "In my defense, it's broken," she admits. "I need a new one."

Bobby groans. "Kid, you're killin' me."

"Well Bobby, it fell in a fuckin' puddle on the ranch, and then a cow trampled it, so I really don't know what you want from me!"

"This is not why I called," Bobby growls. "What ranch?"

She frowns. "That's beside the point."

"I'll own up to this—I didn't give Dean a phone before he peeled outta here to get to you. So I need to talk to Dean."

Katherine puts the phone on speaker, looking pointedly at Dean.

"You got any Benadryl or somethin?" He grumbles. "I feel a sneeze coming on." She holds the phone out to him, almost with an attitude, and he takes it.

"Yeah, Bobby."

Dean watches her eyes search the countertops.

"I found Sam. He's in Pontiac."

The three exposed fingers of Katherine's right hand wrap around a bottle that looks like olive oil. 

"Pontiac," Dean hums, raising an eyebrow as he looks to Katherine. "How convenient."

With knitted eyebrows, staring down at the bottle of olive oil, Katherine asks, "What's convenient about Pontiac?"

Bobby is quiet for a moment. "Kid, are you back on the smokes?" 

She rolls her eyes. "I have the flu, Bobby. Jesus."

Amusement floats in her direction from Russell. 

"Pontiac's where I was buried," Dean reminds her. 

She raises an eyebrow at him. "So if Sam's there, then that has to mean he made a deal." The idea weighs her down like iron shackles.

"He'd better hope not," Dean mutters. "Or I'm gonna kill 'em myself."

"But if he did bring you back, then why wouldn't he have been there when you came up?" Katherine asks.

Dean frowns for a moment, chewing his cheek as he thinks. "Bobby, are you with him?"

"No, kid. Tracked him from my living room."

"All right. I'm headed towards you."

"Dean, you've been driving all day," Bobby protests. "Sleep tonight. Come tomorrow morning, and we'll go get Sam together."

Dean looks at Katherine, and she nods. 

He can use the shower, Russell says, moving for the bedroom. I'll...tidy up a little.

Not that anything was messy, but...if Russell was supposed to be out of town, his stuff couldn't be all over the place. 

Dean extends the phone back to Katherine. "Why are you holding olive oil?" He asks. With her left hand, she jerks the bottle at him, and a spray of wet hits his neck and t-shirt. Dean blinks down at himself. "Why did you throw olive oil at me?"

"It's holy water," she says, screwing the cap back on. 

Russell barks out a laugh. Literally.

Dean presses his lips together, slowly nodding. "Creative hiding space."

"Thank you, I thought of it myself."

"Ever thought it was real olive oil and accidentally use it while you're cooking?"

Katherine shakes her head, looking down at the green bottle. "No, because we put the olive oil in that." She points to a glass oil bottle with a gold stopper, filled with greenish-yellow liquid.

Dean can't help but laugh. 

While he uses the shower, Katherine carries a silent conversation with Russell as she makes the sofa comfortable for him. A couple of pillows, some blankets, a bottle of water. 

Pat pokes his head out from his bedroom, dark blond hair glistening with shower water. "Where's the resurrected ex-boyfriend?" He asks. Russell lets out a yelp of shock and reprimand, canine features looking just as dismayed as he feels. Patrick blinks at him and says, "That is still so freaky."

"Tell me about it," Katherine grumbles. "Dean is in the shower."

Pat leans against the doorframe with a curious expression. "So you guys are thinking demon."

She shrugs. "I don't know what else it can be. Do you know of something that could bust him out of Hell?"

Pat shrugs himself, shaking his head. "I'm at a loss. Angels, though." He clicks his tongue at her. "Angels would be my bet."

Katherine frowns. "Pat, no one's seen an angel before."

"Doesn't mean they don't exist," he childishly retorts. "Anyway, that would...be my guess. Like I said. If demons exist, why wouldn't angels?"

"You're not wrong," she murmurs. 

"So does he have any extra clothes?" Patrick asks. Katherine shrugs. "I'll, uh...bring some out for him."

Her heart melts a little, and Patrick can see it in the softening of her features. "That's very kind of you," she says. 

Pat nods his head to his brother. "How long's this gonna be a thing?"

"Dunno," Katherine replies, congestion seeping into her left nostril. "We have yet to discuss that."

Slowly, Pat nods. Leaving his bedroom door open, he moves for his dresser. "So how do we know he isn't going to kill us while we sleep?" 

Katherine sighs at him. "Well...Bobby ran through all the tests with him, firstly. And he handled silver when he first go there. And I just gave him a little baptism."

Patrick laughs. "Finally got to use your olive oil bottle, huh?"

Katherine leans against the doorframe with a smile. "It was fun," she says. After a few moments, her smile fades. "Pat...I don't know how long I'm going to be gone."

"That's okay," he sighs, moving towards her, and sets some clothes in her left hand. "And I know that means Russell's going, too. I'm okay with that, too. He has his life to live."

She stares at him, lips pursed. "I don't think I'll ever understand the two of you."

Pat smiles a little, resting his hands on her shoulders, and kisses her forehead. "Just promise you're going to be here for all the holidays."

Like he wasn't expecting them to come back for a while. 

"I promise," she murmurs. "I miss white Christmases."

"I'm sure." He pats her on the back and drops his arms with a sigh. "Now go wipe your nose."

She laughs. Throws her head back and laughs.

Russell had never been so happy to see it before.