BYE LOVERS

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Mary waits until everyone is out of the room before rounding on him again. “John.”

Something in her tone makes him feel twenty again, caught playing the fool and the last one to know it. “What?”

“We need to talk about Dean.”

The old fear comes fast, and John goes hard around it on instinct, already bracing for whatever needs handling.

“What happened.”

“Nothing happened. I just—” She lowers her voice. “You need to stop teasing him about... Castiel.”

He frowns. He’s been giving them shit about it for weeks, one of the few things that’s started to feel easy between them, like maybe he’s finally found his footing in this strange version of his family.

“Why?”

“Because we’re not supposed to point it out.”

“Point what out?” He knows damn well what she means. The look she gives him says she knows he knows, too, but he keeps his face blank on principle.

“John.”

“What?”

“Don’t.”

He gives it another second before letting the act drop. “Fine. That. Didn’t realize we were supposed to ignore it.”

Her voice drops to a hiss. “Could you say it a little louder?”

“They’re gone.”

“That’s not the point.”

“Then what is?”

“Dean doesn't want us to know.”

He stares at her. “You’re kidding.”

“I wish.” Her expression hardens. “He does this thing whenever I’m around. Flirts with women, tries to get Cas to flirt with women. Puts on a whole show for my benefit.” Her jaw sets. “He doesn’t want me to know.”

“Did you try talking to him?”

She gives him a flat look. “About the thing he’s going out of his way to make sure I don’t know?”

He sighs. “Right. Forgot who I was talking to. So you’d rather go with don’t ask, don’t tell.”

Her eyes flash, and he feels the old thrill of it, the one that always makes him want to push when he knows damn well he should quit. (That part of her hasn’t changed. He’s just starting to better understand what sets her off.)

“Better than what you do.”

“Which is?”

“Insult them.”

He falters. “I’m not insulting them. I’m giving them shit.” That’s the whole point. You give people shit about the things that are normal, the things nobody has to tiptoe around. “Teasing.”

“Teasing.”

Something in the way she says it puts him on guard. “Yeah. The doghouse thing. The couch thing.” He starts counting them off. “Last week I told Cas if he kept disappearing without calling, Dean was gonna put a tracking collar on him. But Dean knows that I know. That’s… that’s what makes it funny.”

She closes her eyes. “Apparently he thinks you’re making jokes.”

“I am making jokes.”

“John.”

“I mean, I thought we were all laughing about the same thing. And—” He gropes for something else in his defense. “Cas thought they were funny.”

“Cas doesn’t understand half of them!”

“Well. He understands ‘doghouse’ now.”

She rubs her forehead and sighs. “Given your history with Dean, he can’t take ribbing like that. Not from you.”

Okay. That stings. Apparently a guy can turn over a new leaf and still get beaten over the head with the old one.

“Or me,” she continues, and the miserable set of her mouth takes some of the fight out of him, “which is why he’s going through all this trouble to hide it.”

“See, I’m not sure I believe that. Dean’s not subtle.”

“I know he’s not.”

“Cas isn’t subtle either.”

“I know. That’s not the point.”

“So here’s a crazy thought.” He gives her an innocent look. “We could ask them. You know, instead of keeping secrets about the secrets we think they’re keeping.”

He knows he’s gone too far when she clams up instead of biting back. His mind starts an automatic countdown to the moment she turns on her heel and storms out in an icy wall of silence.

And he could leave it there.

In fact, every instinct he has for self-preservation tells him he should. Instead, he makes the catastrophic decision to keep talking: “Look, maybe you can pretend Dean doesn’t know that you know, but he definitely knows that I know.”

She turns her head toward him with terrifying slowness. “…Why?”

He drops his gaze to the table and traces a thumb along one of the gouges in the wood. Somebody got sloppy with a knife. Deep cut, too. He wonders who.

“John.”

“It's not important.”

“Why does Dean know that you know.”

Cat’s out now. Also, the cat is dead.

“Walked in on them doing what?”

John raises his eyebrows, and understanding moves across Mary’s face. Color floods her cheeks, and she buries her face in her hands. “Oh, my God.”

“In my defense, I knocked.”

“Clearly not loud enough!”

“Hey, it was an accident. I didn’t know they’d be—”

“I don’t need details,” she cuts in tightly, her blue eyes peering at him through the gaps between her fingers. “What happened when they saw you?”

“What was I supposed to do?”

“I don’t know. Leave?”

“I did leave.”

“Immediately?”

He hesitates, and her hands come down so fast he knows he’s picked the wrong answer.

“John.”

“We had a lead.”

It sounds weak now. At the time, he’d been proud of it. He’d spent weeks feeling like an amateur among hunters who made more than a decade of experience look like none at all. Then he’d found something useful. A real lead, on his own, and for five minutes he’d felt like he knew what he was doing again.

Unfortunately, those five minutes had included opening that door.

“You walked in on them and started talking about a case?”

“We did have a lead!”

And he’d just walked in on something he would’ve happily clawed his own eyes out to avoid, and the case had been right there: urgent, impersonal, safe.

Any reasonable man would’ve panic-babbled.

She sighs. “What exactly did you say to them?”

He has to think about it.

Most of those thirty seconds survive only as a mortified blur: his mouth going ninety-to-nothing about the case while the soldier in him steered his body on autopilot. He remembers spotting Cas’s button-down on the floor, bending to swipe it up, and tossing it in his direction without breaking stride.

“I tossed Cas his shirt and told them to get it together.”

“You tossed Cas his shirt.”