𝐃𝐎𝐍𝐎𝐕𝐀𝐍

𝐅𝐈𝐅𝐓𝐘

"Charles, didn't your mother ever tell you not to pick things up from strange parking lots?"

"The rule obviously does not apply to a penny that is face up."

He holds the oblong coppery thing up with a grin. Katherine matches it with a grimace.

"Well dear, I think you need to go back to elementary school." She rocks onto her toes and plucks the dirty coin from his fingers. "This is obviously not a penny."

Charlie frowns. "It obviously is. It's copper."

"Colored," she corrects. "Copper-colored. This is way too oblong to be a penny. And you can't even see what's on the front, it's so caked with gunk." Katherine's frown deepens, and she offers it back to Charlie. "So you really don't know if it was heads."

Charlie pockets the penny and continues along the sidewalk with Katherine.

This is undoubtedly an old city just outside Siloam Springs...the architecture is evident of that. Walk a little bit that way and you're in Oklahoma.

"What if it got ran over?" Charlie asks.

She laughs. "With what, a cement truck roller?" Charlie raises his eyebrows, questioning. "I don't know what they're called."

"Not 'cement truck roller'."

"Thanks." She bumps her hip into his. Easily, his arm drapes across her shoulder. "It's got to have 'roller' in it though, right?"

"Absolutely."

"Then I can't think of anything else."

Through their walk to the diner on the other side of the town center, the two discussed possible names for that particular construction vehicle. Katherine suggested "cement roller truck," to which Charlie replied rearranging the words doesn't change their meaning in this case. He was very quick to add on that last bit. Katherine wouldn't let him hear the end of it, even as they slid into the booth that already held the towering Winchester brothers.

Sam looks radiant, tanning skin glowing as he reaches across the table to shake hands with Charlie. Dean looks less warm, but friendly none the less. Katherine tries not to dwell on his presence for too long. It was hard, though. All Sam wanted to do was talk to Charlie, bless him.

As she glanced between the two, Katherine quickly figured out why.

Charlie's normal. A tether to the simplified world of regular people. He works in construction, for crying out loud. Sam always had a fascination for the terribly boring and mundane, which is every day for Charlie. Floor plans. Blue prints. Nail guns. Manage idiots. Early mornings, late nights, sleep, repeat.

There has never been anything Sam wanted more than to be normal. Maybe he's just found his new best friend...and Dean's worst enemy.

"You should come work with us," Charlie said. "If you ever want to quit killing totally weird things out of storybooks."

Katherine felt hot and cold all at once, and she thought of something quick. "Will someone please tell Charlie this is not a penny?" She digs into her boyfriend's pants pockets to unearth the ruddy thing, and she smacks it on the table.

Sam stares at it. "Charlie, what kind of pennies do you have in Florida?"

Katherine crosses her arms and sits back in the booth, a brow raised at Charlie. "He picked it up in the parking lot down the street and insisted it's a flattened penny."

"It's definitely not a penny," Sam hums, picking up the crusted thing.

"I'm gonna take a leak," Dean sighs, pushing himself from the booth. Katherine feels him walk around her back, like a magnet, and watched him approach the bathroom from the corner of her eye. She bobs her foot for a moment before coming back to reality, shaking her head, and listens to what Sam is saying. Already off the topic of the not-penny, Charlie is shoving it back into his pocket.