𝕷𝖊𝖓𝖆

your pisces mercury is everything here. you don’t process things logically—you feel them, intuit them, absorb them. you know things without knowing how you know. and your taurus venus + saturn? that’s where your loyalty sits. heavy, unshakeable, a little stubborn. when you love something—or someone—you don’t let go easily.

you become: someone who helps on hunts sometimes, but mostly someone who creates a place to come back to. not quite a hunter, not quite out of it either. you exist in between. and you make that in-between feel like home.

✧ first meeting + first impression

you meet them outside a motel. you’re smoking, leaning against a railing, looking like you belong in the scene more than they do.

dean’s first impression is immediate attraction—physical, yeah, but also energy. your aries sun + libra rising combo hits him fast. you’re soft-looking but not soft in presence. there’s something grounded, a little guarded, a little don’t mess with me under the surface. and your vibe? vintage, effortless, a little messy in a way that feels real. he’s hooked before he realizes it.

sam’s first impression is quieter. he notices your eyes first—how observant you are, how you take things in before speaking. your pisces mercury reads as depth to him. your stutter when you’re nervous? it doesn’t make you seem weak—it makes you feel honest.

both of them clock the same thing: you’re not pretending to be anything you’re not.

✧ the friendship dynamic

your dynamic with them builds slowly, like something that wasn’t meant to be important but becomes that anyway.

with dean, it’s teasing, tension, shared habits—late nights, cigarettes, quiet moments where neither of you says much but it still feels full. he respects your independence, but also finds himself watching you more than he should, noticing the little things you don’t think anyone sees.

with sam, it’s softer, more introspective. you talk about things that don’t have clean answers—identity, fear, the feeling of being stuck between versions of yourself. your capricorn moon and his capricorn moon create this unspoken understanding: you don’t need to explain everything for him to get it.

and you, lena? you exist with them, not for them. you don’t chase. you don’t force. and somehow, that makes both of them come closer instead.

✧ quirks + fun things

→ dean ends up stealing your cigarettes and denying it every time, even when it’s obvious

→ sam is the only one who notices when your stutter gets worse and subtly shifts the conversation to ease you out of it

→ you cook for them without making a big deal out of it, and it becomes something they quietly look forward to every time

ꔛ. something more,

✧ are you compatible .ᐣ first steps .ᐣ

yes. but not in a simple, easy way.

with dean, it’s fire meeting fire. your aries sun and his sagittarius placements create chemistry, attraction, movement. but your taurus venus clashes with his more freedom-loving way of loving—you want consistency, he struggles with that.

with sam, it’s earth and water grounding. your capricorn moon aligns with his, your taurus venus matches his taurus energy. there’s stability, emotional understanding, something that feels… safe.

who initiates? dean acts first, impulsively. sam takes longer, but when he does, it’s intentional. and you? you hesitate. not because you don’t feel it—but because you’re scared of what happens if it’s real.

✧ the relationship dynamic

being with them feels like being pulled between intensity and stability.

dean brings out your passion, your impulsiveness, the part of you that wants to feel everything all at once. he challenges you, frustrates you, excites you. but he can also trigger your overthinking, your fear of inconsistency, your worry that something good won’t last.

sam, though, meets you in your quieter places. he doesn’t rush you, doesn’t push you to be something you’re not. with him, your taurus venus and capricorn moon feel at ease—you’re allowed to be slow, to take your time, to just be.

but your aries independence doesn’t want to be tied down too tightly. you need space, autonomy, the ability to exist outside of them. and balancing that? that’s where things get complicated.

✧ their favorite n worst version of you

dean’s favorite version of you is when you’re confident, a little reckless, unapologetically yourself—when you laugh loudly, speak your mind, don’t overthink. he loves that version of you. but when you retreat, when your anxiety creeps in and you start doubting everything—including him—it frustrates him, because he doesn’t always know how to reassure you properly.

sam’s favorite version of you is when you’re soft, open, emotionally honest, when you let him in instead of holding everything inside. he values that vulnerability deeply. but when you shut down, when you get stuck in your head and don’t communicate, it worries him more than anything.

✧ fighting, hurting, making up

the hurt here is quiet but heavy.

dean hurts through inconsistency, through pulling away when things get too real. sam hurts through emotional distance, through not always realizing when you need reassurance until it’s already built up.

and you? you hurt through silence. through overthinking. through convincing yourself of things that aren’t actually happening.

emotionally, sam is the most grounded. dean is the most reactive. and you are the one learning how to trust what’s in front of you instead of what you fear might happen.

making up is slow. soft. sometimes awkward. but always sincere.

ꔛ. scenario ⊱ ۫ ׅ ✧ demon meatsuit to being in sam and dean’s lives

it starts with blood in your throat and a voice that isn’t yours.

three years of missing time ends in a motel room with holy water burns seared into your skin, your body barely holding together. dean winchester presses you down while sam winchester finishes the exorcism with a voice that doesn’t shake—until it does.

you don’t remember everything. just flashes. sticky fingers covered in glitter. a child crying. your own laughter—wrong, sharp, cruel—coming out of your mouth. and then silence.

—

they don’t trust you. not at first. not even close.

you see it in dean’s eyes every time he looks at you—this tight, coiled anger that never fully goes away. you wore your face while you hurt people. maybe even killed them. he doesn’t separate that easily. not in the beginning.

sam tries harder. he understands possession, understands that it wasn’t you—but even he watches you too closely, like you might snap back into something else if he blinks at the wrong time.

they keep you around anyway. partly because you know things. demon habits. patterns. weaknesses. partly because they don’t trust you enough to let you out of their sight.

so you stay. you learn.

you sit at the table with sam, pouring over lore, your voice still a little shaky when you read aloud, your fingers tracing lines like if you focus hard enough, you won’t drift back into those missing years. he notices when you go quiet. always does.

dean trains you. not gently. not kindly. but not cruelly, either.

he pushes you, tests you, watches how you react under pressure. you fall. you get back up. again and again. you don’t argue when he’s harsh. that almost bothers him more.

because you don’t think you deserve softness.

it changes slowly. so slow you don’t notice at first.

sam starts leaving books by your side of the table without saying anything. ones he thinks you’ll like. ones that aren’t just about monsters.

dean stops watching you like you’re a threat… and starts watching you like you might break.

the first time you laugh—really laugh, not the hollow thing you’ve been doing—they both look at you like something just shifted. and it did.

you become steady. you remember things. how dean takes his coffee. how sam gets when he’s overwhelmed. you cook sometimes, quietly, like muscle memory from a life that feels like it belonged to someone else.

and somehow, you become the one they come back to. not because they have to. because they want to.

dean falls first. hates it. sam falls slower. accepts it.

and you? you fight it. hard.

because how do you let yourself be loved in a body that remembers what it did?

but they don’t look at you like that anymore. they look at you like you stayed. like you chose to be better. like you’re more than what wore your skin.

and eventually, slowly, painfully— you start to believe them.

ꔛ. overall ゛ with dean ⸝⸝.ᐟ⋆ 8.8 / 10 with sam ⸝⸝.ᐟ⋆ 9.3 / 10

this kind of love? it doesn’t look perfect. it looks like late nights, quiet understanding, messy emotions, and choosing each other anyway.

dean makes you feel alive. sam makes you feel safe.

you’re someone who needs both. the real question isn’t who you’d fall for. it’s who makes you feel like you don’t have to brace yourself waiting for it to fall apart.

I want to thank @kblognar for their amazing help with this fic, for getting my head straight when I went down the rabbit hole and for loving the bbys probably nearly as much as I do. I also want to thank @ambiguous-avery @aniresrene @bettystonewell @jollyreads @aseafullofstars, all of who I have yapped at about this and who have been there to support and help! This was two years in the making and I am ready for this baby to see the world.❤️

You’re curled up in bed, face smushed into the scratchy motel pillow. You’re on your side, facing him, one hand draped over his chest and your knee propped up over his leg. 

He likes the way you look when you’re truly awake - the little frown when you’re trying to work things out, the side-glance you throw Dean when he says something gross - but he likes how you look like this too. Soft and unworried. He could look at you like this forever.

He gives you a gentle nudge with a hand on your hip. “Morning,” he says through a smile.

You hum sleepily and shift a bit closer to him but don’t open your eyes. He can’t help the quiet laugh that runs through him. In his peripherals, he sees Dean leave the room. He scoffs before he goes, but Sam can hear a sort of reluctant amusement laced through it.

“C’mon,” he laughs, hand on your hip giving you a little shake. “Time to get up.”

You moan something unintelligible and begin to nestle in to his side, warmth bleeding from your body onto his. Your leg moves further onto his lap as you lie with your chest on his, face nudging into his neck, nuzzling in and breathing a deep, sleepy sigh. He dips his hand under the hem of your t-shirt, skirting his fingers over the warm, soft skin of your thigh before tightening once again over your hip.

He loves you. So much that it sometimes hurts his chest to think about it. So much that it terrifies him. He can’t think of anything worse than a future where he is not inflicted with the constant struggle of waking you up in the mornings.

He kisses your head, smells your shampoo and tries one more time.

“You’re gonna be so mad at me for not waking you up” he says into your hair. “C’mon, make this easy for me. Please?”

You let out a deep breath into his neck. “Sam, it’s okay,” you say, and even this long after knowing you and loving you, his stomach explodes with the sound of his name on your lips. Your voice is thick with sleep. You’re not quite awake, just speaking nonsense. “It’s okay. Let’s just stay here. It’s okay.”

His chest rumbles with a laugh that makes your body move. You frown and nestle in closer to him, as if that will remove the interference to your dreams.

He decides this is too much for one man to bear. He’s strong enough to fight demons and vampires but he’s not strong enough for this. His arms tighten around you, holding you tighter to his chest, and he lets you melt into him.

It’s okay, you told him. Let’s just stay here, you said, and he thinks he might agree.

He will let you be mad at him later. He will let you pout and remind him that he promised to wake you up early. He knows how to fix it anyway.

He looks down at your face, sleepy and soft, and decides that it's not a bad trade-off. 

Or, more accurately, whatever demon had possessed Sam had shot him. It doesn’t matter. He’s going to give Sam a hell of a beating for it either way.

He realises dimly that he had woken up because of a heavy guitar noise. His ringtone. And he hears a voice - two? - but he can’t summon enough energy to identify what they are saying.

He hopes one of the voices is you. He hopes you know that he’s sorry. 

There is some splashing going on around him but his head is inside a murky cloud. An arm wrap wraps itself around his back and a body buckles under his weight. But the force of it bears heavy on his injured shoulder. That cloud gets thicker and Dean slinks out of consciousness.

He comes to on a rigid wooden chair in the bar. Everything around him is blurred and foggy, but after a few blinks he meets Jo’s concentrated stare. She’s working on his shoulder with a tweezers and a white padded gauze.

“You’re awake,” she says monotonously. She pushes a pill forward and puts a glass of water from the other side of the table in front of him.

“Yeah,” he grunts. He swallows the pill without the water. He begins to straighten up and a sharp blade of pain cuts into his shoulder.

“Sit down,” she demands. “I haven’t got the bullet yet.”

He doesn’t want to listen, but his shoulder is showing no quarter. He’s sure he can feel the dirty steel rattling inside. He’s sweating and shivering - whether from the cold or the pain, he’s not sure.

“Listen,” he grunts. “There’s a girl. She’s in a car parked just down the road from here. Little red convertible. I need you to go get her for me. I have the keys somewhere…”

Jo says your name. Abrupt and matter-of-fact. He frowns at her.

“I spoke to her already. She made her own way out and found you at the dock.”

Suddenly, he feels like laughing. Despite everything. Of course you made your own way out. That’s just like you. 

Oh, you’re going to be so pissed at him.

“Where is she?”

“She’s trying to find out where Sam is. He disabled the GPS on his phone again.”

He nods and feels Jo eyeing him quizzically. He’s sure she will ask who you are to him if he meets her eyes, so he doesn't.

The dim lights in the bar are too bright for his groggy eyes. Jo has one hand steadying his arm and the other picking at the deep wound on his shoulder with the tweezers. Her hands are soft and they feel like a woman’s but not like yours. 

His body is sticky and slow with pain, but after a few minutes the painkiller kicks in. This one is stronger than any of the ones you had been giving him. It makes his arms and legs feel weightless. He doesn’t have very much agency in his body anymore. He can hardly feel Jo prodding away at him or her hands on his skin.

“Oh- sorry.”

You’re standing at the door, frozen still. The right side of your clothes are damp and dirty, which he figures is on account of you dragging him out of the water. You still somehow manage to look put together. You’re looking between himself and Jo. “I’ll wait in the car.”

He very suddenly wants to push Jo away. He has the irrational urge to tell you that it’s not what it looks like  - that there’s nothing between himself and Jo - but he’s not sure why he feels the need. He stiffens up.

“Don’t,” he says, feeling strangely jittery. “Where did you go?”

“I tried to get the operator to turn on the GPS again but he wouldn’t. I’ll try calling again from the car. Hopefully I’ll get onto someone else.”

You smile faintly and turn before he can say much more. 

He stares at the door as Jo continues her work, feeling as though his brain might have exited the room with you. Jo is eyeing him again with puzzlement and maybe a little suspicion, but still doesn’t ask. He’s glad. 

Instead, she asks him about demons; when they lie, when they might tell the truth, how he knew Sam was possessed. He answers them absently, itching the whole time to get up and make a break for the car. He’s mildly concerned that you might take off without him or something if you are really pissed about him ditching you. Or if you think he’s fooling around with Jo.

When Jo finishes bandaging him up, she tries to go with him. He becomes irritated, angry to an irrational extent without knowing why. For whatever reason, the idea of Jo sitting in the backseat of your car, head propped between the two of you, is wretched to him. She would create some kind of barrier that is enough to stop him from saying everything he wants to say. He wants to be alone with you.

She reluctantly throws him the little pill bottle of painkillers on his way out and he feels a twinge of guilt at the dejection on her face, but not enough to change his mind. He leaves with a promise to call her later. He knows that he won’t, even as he says it.

The car is still there. You hadn’t taken off. 

He is nervous, walking up. He hesitates and pulls at the car door to find it locked. He fishes in his jeans, arms still numb and clumsy with the painkillers. He finds the key and clicks the button. A high, chiming sound calls out and he’s able to sit in on the leather. It’s unusually hot which feels nice, being damp to the bone as he is. You had got the seat-warmers going for him.

You’re on the phone.

“I completely get that. It’s just- well, Sam is my husband and he hasn't been home in a few days. I’m getting worried but I’m also… I just need to find him. I need to know where is he and what he’s doing. I’m sure you can understand.”

Now there’s a genuinely unpleasant thought. You and Sam together. Married. He mostly hates how easily he can picture it. How much sense it would make.

He recollects you using the word ‘husband’ earlier that day and how it made him hard. In this context, it makes his mouth taste sour.

“Thank you so much. Truly, I appreciate it. Have a great night.”

You hand him over your phone on the GPS page. Sam’s green dot is back on the map and moving south, just like he had thought.

“He’s going to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. We’ll have to cut through Minneapolis. Traffic shouldn’t be bad once we get there. It’ll be late.”

You nod slowly but you don’t move to start driving. You just stare at him, expression unreadable. He wonders if you’re waiting for an apology. He will happily give it, but he doesn't know where to start. For locking you into the car, for whatever the hell misunderstanding happened in there with Jo, for dragging you into this whole clusterfuck in the first place. If you’d just tell him, he’d get on his knees and beg, bad leg and all.

“Dean, you have my keys.”

“Oh,” he says, fishing clumsily in his pocket. “Right. Sorry. Here.”

You pull out of the avenue and begin to drive - out of the city the way you came. It has become quieter. There are a few speeding cars, a few silhouettes hurrying by, but none of the bustle of a busy city. He’s not even sure what time it is.

He swallows. “I’m sorry.”

You don’t give anything away, eyes on the road. “For?”

“Everything. Locking you into the car, involving you in any of this. I’m so sorry.”

He hates the way his voice cracks - the apology in it. You look sideways at him and he sees now that your face is still soft. “I’m not doing anything that I’m not actively deciding to do, Dean. I’m here because I want to be. There’s nothing you need to feel guilty about.” You pause, lips pursing. “Except locking me into the car. That was real shitty.”

He laughs weakly. “I know.”

“I understand, though. My sister always used to do shit like that to me. I don’t remember that much about my birth parents but I remember her locking me into the room when things got dirty. Probably gave me a complex but she was trying to do what was best for me.”

So that’s the pesky family thing. He pairs it up with your weird insistence on being useful. He holds it up against his memories of you like two pictures he’s trying to compare. It makes sense.

“How’d you get out of the car?” he asks.

“Realised you don’t need the keys to put the top down. I was so mad it took me so long to think of it.”

“You’re crafty.”

You cock an eyebrow. “Not crafty enough to realise you were playing me. Can’t believe I fell for it.” You mimic him, deepening your voice. “‘Gotta get my gun from the trunk. You stay here.’ My ass.”

He laughs again, stronger, and you lapse into silence as you leave the city. 

He tries to get a hold of Bobby for the first time somewhere around Minneapolis. On his fourth attempt, it cuts out mid-ring. He curses furiously and throws his phone into the backseat somewhere. You don’t jump. You’ve become more accustomed to his temper tantrums in recent days. 

“No answer?”

“Sam's there,” he grunts. “He must have cut the line. Just gotta hope Bobby knows better than Jo.”

Your foot squeezes down harder on the accelerator. You always drive just a little bit over the speed limit, but he is honestly surprised that you haven’t been pulled over by a cop with the way you’ve been driving since leaving Jo’s bar.

The car usually smells like your skin - a pleasant, delicate scent. Right now, he can only smell the motor oil and unclean water off his own clothes. His boots are sitting in the backseat and his feet, covered in soggy socks, are up against the leg heater.

“I’m sure Bobby will be fine. You said he’s been doing this for ages, right?”

“Yeah, he’s one of the best. He’s considered a bit of a craftsman in the business. But Sam is real fucking strong. If Bobby doesn’t catch on right away, he’s toast.”

“I’m sure he will. We’re not too far off, anyway. Another hour and we’re there. Maybe I can make it forty minutes.”

You speed up again and he grabs the handle on the roof of the car. There’s a minute of silence that is not entirely comfortable.

“Jo is nice,” you remark with a nonchalance that may be forced.

“She’s alright,” he says.

“So are you guys-”

“No. Definitely not.”

“Okay. But maybe before?”

“No. Never. I don’t see Jo that way. She’s more of a little sister type. I mean, she’s cute and all but too much of a schoolgirl.”

He’s parroting exactly what he had told Sam before with a rush of intense, confused relief. He’s glad of the opportunity to explain. Your mouth twitches into a wry grin and he realises his blunder.

“Not that there’s anything wrong with schoolgirls- I can get down with- Wait, college girls, I mean. College girls are fine. Fair game.”

You laugh, loud and bright, and the knot in his chest loosens. “What about little sisters? You got something against them?”

He sighs, embarrassed. “I meant that she’s like a little sister to me. Kinda annoying like one too.”

“She’s not so bad,” you smile, turning on your indicator while you prepare to pull off at an exit. “I thought she was nice. She cares a lot about you and Sam. You guys close with her?”

“Not really. Met her for the first time about a year ago. Her mom doesn’t want her doing all this but she tagged along on this hunt we were doing. She wasn’t half bad.”

“Why doesn’t she stick with you guys? Wouldn’t that be safer?”

“Sammy and I are a good team. We don’t need nobody else.”

“Oh,” you say, thoughtfully. There’s a brief pause. “Is that why you don’t want me coming-”

“No.”

You breathe a quiet laugh. “Okay.”

“You and Sammy would get on like a house on fire. I know it.” 

You smile shyly. “I think so too.”

He doesn’t want to walk this path again. It’s too dangerous. He needs to get his words in check and his thoughts too.

“There was some weird situation with our dad and Jo’s anyway. They used to work together. I don’t know the details but I don’t think she wants to hang around us very much either.”

You don’t answer him for a moment, lips pursed in something like doubt. “You don’t talk a lot about your dad,” you say eventually. “Only when you need to. Like if you’re telling some story or something.”

“He was a weird guy. Big personality. Hard to explain.”

“You’ve done a pretty good job explaining the other hard-to-explain stuff.”

He almost laughs. You’re right. He has all but forgotten that you were claiming not to believe that the supernatural exists. You might have forgotten too. Despite still not seeing any hard evidence, you haven’t shot him even one doubtful glance whenever he brings up anything about hunting or demons or holy water. 

“Difficult to bring myself to explain,” he amends. 

You give him a tight, sad smile and nod. “That’s okay.”

He looks at you, your face glowing, pretty eyes shining. He sees understanding on your face. Understanding for the fact that he can’t talk about his dad right now, maybe not ever. 

You can’t possibly know all the mental gymnastics he’s been doing in his head - not even Sam does. You have no knowledge of all the memories he’s sifted through, asking himself whether that was really how it happened or if it’s how he wants to remember it. You can’t know about the battle between blind faith in his father and the repressed feelings of guilt for not standing up for Sam who had the bravery to see things a bit clearer. You have no idea how he’s questioned what parts of him are his and what parts were surgically placed there by his dad. Still, you understand.

He’d like to say something to you - to thank you maybe, or apologise or just to come clean about all the longing and tenderness that has been tormenting him for days, even if you already know - but words are difficult things, and he has never been good with them. He can only look at your face and suffer and worship.

You fish out the CD wallet and toss it to him. He catches it before it flies out the open window and flicks through it without questioning you, for fear that you’ll take it back. He finds a Nirvana album and lets the first three tracks play out in silence. He starts to recognise the roads around Bobby’s house at track four, and turns the volume down.

“We’re getting close,” he says, voice low. “I’m not gonna lock you in the car again, but I’m gonna need you to stay outside the house.”

You give him a look he knows well.

“I mean it,” he says. “It’s not safe. Please. If you don’t wanna do it for your own safety then just do it for my peace of mind. I don’t want this to be your first hunt.”

He hates himself immediately for the slip-up. You catch it. Your eyebrows raise. 

This is what hope does. It twists everything around. Makes him say stupid shit like that. ‘Your first hunt’ - like he’s planning on training you up to come on the road. The thought of it might have crossed his brain in unguarded moments of ridiculous reverie, but only in an abstract way. Only in a harmless, notional game of what-if. Now he’s vocalised it, and he’s not sure if he can take it back.

“I told you Sam is strong,” he ploughs on, hoping you’ll let the topic drop. “But he’s also smart. This is a demon with access to Sam’s strength but also to his knowledge about me and about all the ways we’re gonna try hunt it. I need you to stay in the car.”

“I’ll stay behind you. I won’t do or say a thing if you tell me not to. But I want to come in. I need to- I just need to see…”

There’s that desperation again. Another one of those things you can’t bring yourself to explain. When he sees it in your eyes this time, he knows he will fold.

Here is another shiny thing he has tarnished because of some insatiable need that he can’t even name. He will let you join him while he hunts his own brother. Because your eyes are gleaming with a trust that he knows will never recover if he doesn’t and he’s selfish and greedy, so he’ll let you do anything just as long as he never has to watch that trust evaporate. He is suddenly nauseous.

“You can come,” he chokes out.

Your expression hardly changes. “You’re being serious? You’re not gonna go ahead and lock me in again once we get there?”

He shakes his head, feeling as though he could vomit if there was anything at all in his stomach.

“You’re not responsible for me. You know that, right? I meant what I said earlier. I’m making my own choices here.”

He has a lot he would like to say to that, but he says none of it. Instead, he says; “There’s this thing called a devil’s trap. It’s a sigil. Bobby’s got one on the roof over his living room. You get one of the suckers to step under it and they can’t get out. That’s when you gotta do the incantation to exorcise them from the body. Our best hope is that Bobby noticed something off with Sam and has him in the trap now. Otherwise, whatever we’re walking into won’t be pretty.”

You nod with quiet solemnity. He points right to signal the dirt road you need to drive down. You take the turn, driving significantly slower than you had been before.

“It’s never too late to back out,” he says. “Whether it’s now or on the walk into the house or when Sam is beating the crap out of me. Just remember that, yeah?”

“Yeah,” you say. He has the feeling he’s lost you - like you’ve dug some deep hole within yourself and are burrowing further. You’re concentrating on the mission ahead now. That’s fine. He does the same thing himself.

He points to Bobby’s house as you approach and when you pull in and park the car, the two of you climb out silently. You climb out a little faster this time, just in case.

With one hand on the front door handle and the other clasping his gun, he turns to you with his eyebrows raised. You nod. He bursts through the door.

With the situation explained and yourself and Bobby formally introduced, Dean slaps the demon awake. It blinks groggily, looking down at where it is tied to the chair and then up at the sigil on the ceiling, before setting its sights on him. Something sinister is playing behind its eyes. 

It feels wrong to see Sam like this and he’s dimly aware of the fact that this is your first impression of him. He stands up close in an attempt to block you and Sam from each other’s visions.

Sam’s eyes finally lock on to somewhere behind him - you - just as Bobby begins to read the incantation. Sam doesn’t know your face, so the demon has no information to play on. His eyebrows twitch with a sort of animal curiosity and it makes Dean’s skin feel tight and putrid. He feels as though he could get sick again. That terrible, assessing look on his little brother’s face is enough to destroy his sanity, and it’s aimed at you.

Bobby continues to chant, but Sam’s eyes stay locked on you with no signs of letting up. He doesn’t so much as flinch at Bobby’s monotonous recital.

“I learned a few new tricks,” he says, head dropping low until his chin meets his chest, drooping lazily like that of a man hanged. He begins to speak in Latin, low and frenzied. Dean doesn’t recognise a word of it - it’s no incantation he has ever heard - but each syllable is bubbling with a lunacy he has never heard in Sam’s voice.

Abruptly, the fireplace explodes with a flaring scream. The lights begin to flicker and Dean has to, for once, admit that he’s scared.

Not for himself. He’s seen much worse than this and he’s not all that afraid of dying, anyway. He has been on the cusp of it or fallen over that edge one too many times to feel fear over it anymore.

He’s scared for Sam. If the incantation doesn't work - and it looks like it hasn’t - he’s all out of ideas. And maybe that means that Sam will be destined to live out the rest of his life as only a husk of himself - to hand over his body to something that will defile it.

And he’s scared for you. He can’t even bring himself to look at you for fear that the guilt will swallow him whole. The house begins to rumble, as if a stampede were passing by, old dust unsticking from hard-to-reach crevices and falling down over them. He waves a hand, signalling that you should get back. 

Bobby tears up Sam’s sleeve to find a large Q branded in jagged red onto the tanned skin there. The scar is swollen and tender, flesh that looks more like jelly oozing out of the skin.

“It’s a binding link,” Bobby shouts over the thunder of moving furniture and shuffling concrete and wood. “It’s like a lock. He’s locked himself inside Sam’s body.”

“What the hell do we do?” he screams, backing up. He feels your body hit his back and he pushes you further out of the room, still not turning his back. Sam’s head snaps up sharply, black reptilian eyes turned up to the ceiling which immediately cracks, bringing down a cargo of dust and rubble. Sam tears the rope he is bound in. The sigil is broken.

You fly first, slamming into the other room with one clawing wave of Sam’s arm. Bobby goes second - into a bookshelf, where his body slumps limply over a cluster of pages and hardbacks. And then it’s Dean’s turn.

He’s launched into the side of a door, flask of holy water knocking from his grip. His bad shoulder meets the door with a cold stroke of agony, pain flaring through it. He won’t be able to move it tomorrow, but it matters very little to him now. 

He can manage only a thin, forced breath before Sam is on him again. He descends on him like a tornado, raining down punch after punch - slowly, like he’s enjoying it. Blood streams steadily down his nose and creates a sheet over his eyes. He can taste copper in his mouth.

Dean drifts in and out of consciousness rapidly - hands and fingers grasping at the air as if trying to bring himself to harbour. Sam’s mouth - but not Sam - is speaking animatedly about hell and prisons made of bone and flesh. He doesn’t understand much, but he understands enough to know that he’s speaking to Meg.

Meg stretches Sam’s lips into a twisted grin of horror. “Whatever I do to you, it’s nothing compared to what you do to yourself is it?” Sam-Meg asks, digging a thumb firmly into the bullet wound in his shoulder. Dean retches and sobs in agonising pain. “I can see it in your eyes, Dean. You’re worthless. You couldn't save your dad and, deep down, you know that you can’t save your brother. They’d have been better off without you.”

Even though the haze of pain, he stares at Sam’s manic eyes, shining and empty. They are just white and black and green with nothing behind them - meaningless, devoid of any feeling or soul. But still, something wrenches in his chest. 

A strange, ambivalent serenity overcomes him, even as Sam raises his hand for another punch that will surely send him plummeting into unconsciousness. Because he’s seeing the truth of it - the whole picture - for the very first time, in a flash of horror and understanding. All the ways in which he has lost and all the ways in which he has yet to lose.

He doesn’t see how you come up from behind Sam with the poker, but he sees you once you grab the arm that is about to fire another downwards punch. He can only watch with a mixture of awe and terror. Sam tries to spin around with one arid, whistling breath, but you get him with the poker, striking a fresh burn across the fleshy Q on his arm.

Sam’s body jackknifes and convulses. He pulls up to his knees, taut and strangled, with an ear-splitting, rage-fuelled roar, heaving a cloud of black, smoky sludge upwards. It flees into the fire, leaving a limp Sam on the floor.

There is just a second of silence before Sam opens his eyes, frantic and confused, cold sweat coating his hair and forehead.

“Sammy?” Dean manages to grunt.

Sam looks quickly to Dean, then to you and then Bobby, who has started to pull himself up from the ground. He’s breathing heavy and his face is confused and miserable, like he can’t put anything together. He looks back at you and stares for a second longer.

There’s a brief pause. “Did I miss anything?”

Dean surrenders to all his primal urges. He punches Sam square in the face, collapsing into a heap immediately after.

Sam passes out at Bobby’s. Bobby offers a room to yourself and Dean, but he insists that you will find a motel for the night. He wants to get you away from everything, and he wants to take Baby for a spin anyways, now that he has her back.

Silence spins out slowly in the motel. He’s a bit worse for wear. His shoulder hurts like a bitch, but the pain of it is distracting almost wholly from his calf. He is just waiting for the painkillers to start working, which they slowly do. He had thought about showing you all his cassettes the whole drive up here, but he never reached for them.

He coughs. “So what’d you think of him?”

You laugh, soft and low. “He was a real charmer. Must be a family thing.”

He scoffs. “I got more game than him. I’d never throw a pretty lady like you across a room.”

You throw a pillow at him while he settles into the bed, before crawling in beside him, close but not touching. He catches it and props it under his back.

“Is he okay, do you think?” you ask, nestling in.

“He’s okay. I talked to him a little bit while you were with Bobby. I should be checking whether you’re okay, sweetheart. That was a lot.”

You look tired but pretty mellow, all things considered. You’re curled around a pillow, suddenly looking quite small to him - as if you’ve folded in on yourself. But you’re wearing a small, secret smile.

He will miss your body when you’re gone. Not in the carnal sense, though he can’t deny that he wants it in that way too. He will miss studying your hand gripping loosely on the steering wheel and the curve of your spine when you curl up to sleep. The angle of your hip when you turn to talk to him, the bone of your knee he has once or twice touched.

“I dunno why but I pictured you in a jeep or something,” you say, casual and sleepy. “The Impala makes way more sense. So flashy.”

“Don’t change the subject.”

You breathe a quiet laugh, smiling at him. “I’m okay. I’m good, actually.”

He smiles tentatively back. “Yeah?”

“Yeah, I…” You falter, eyes moist. There is a beat where nobody says anything while you look at him hopelessly, trying to pull words from somewhere.

His lips flatten into a straight line. “No.”

“Dean-”

“No. I’m serious.”

“I’m serious too!” You prop yourself up on your knees to face him. “You’re gonna tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about again. But I do.”

“You don’t,” he insists, wanting to feel angry and only feeling tired. He meets your pleading expression with a mask of indifference. He does his best John Winchester - the sort of snarl that would make anyone believe that argument is futile. “You don’t know anything about it.”

“I know enough to know that I wanna come with you,” you say. “You can’t tell me that I don’t know what I’m getting into after today.”

“You don’t know everything there is to know after one hunt-”

“But you could teach me! You could help me like you help Sam.”

He laughs, suddenly. “Fat load of help I am to Sam. You see him tonight?”

“Yes, I did.” Your eyes are wide and angry, but your voice is level. “I saw you lie and hustle your way into a ride across the country for a whole week while badly injured. Saw you take a gunshot from him and never hurt him back. I saw the whole goddamn thing.”

He says nothing for over a minute, staring at you closely. His Adam’s apple quavers. He finds, with some surprise, that he’s trying to find a way out of believing you. Trying to find some sort of loophole so he doesn't have to believe that you see him the way you’re suggesting. 

Because that kind of person is the ideal he had always held himself up against but could somehow never believe that he was meeting. He has felt more like a mortician than a hunter recently, with the way death seems to follow him around like a bad smell. It’s somehow excruciatingly uncomfortable to think of you seeing him the way he has always failed to see himself. 

“I punched him,” he says, quietly. 

You laugh a watery, sniffling chuckle. “I suppose that’s true.”

He looks at you, your face, neck and shoulders. He reaches out to touch your arm and feels the warmth of your skin all the way to his stomach. Your lips part slightly, when he leans forward to capture your lips with his, swallowing your shuddering breath.

He kisses you for the second time like he’s swallowing a poisoned pill, because he is. Your lips are soft and warm and whatever the outcome may be now, he knows he can’t do without you. Whether you go with him or drive all the way back home, he’s done for. If he leaves you here, you’ll slip in between the cracks of his brain and melt into of his dreams and from there you’ll be immobile. Dean never forgets a thing once he’s dreamed it.

He can feel your breasts against his bare chest through your thin white t-shirt while your hands cradle his face. He tugs you onto his lap, one hand slipping up your thigh until it can creep under your t-shirt. You jump when the other grasps tight on your hip.

He looks up at you questioningly.

“Your rings are cold,” you giggle, swiping a thumb along his cheekbone.

He smiles while he jimmies the rings from his fingers and puts them on the bedside locker. His hands meet your skin again and he dives back into you.

He can feel the heat of you spill onto his lap, two legs wrapped jealously around him. Your hips move against him in small, unconscious ways. He has rapidly become hard, and you move your hips again, applying more pressure almost unconsciously.

You’re trembling in his arms - out of excitement or nerves, he’s not sure. His own chest is heaving softly as he gently inches the t-shirt up over your stomach. Your arms reach up above your head delicately. He moves slowly, enjoying the feeling of his own impatience as he gradually slips the fabric over your nipples. And Dean is no blushing virgin, but he sure as hell feels something close to worship when he gets it off you. Just the sight of you like this, perched pretty on his lap in nothing but some pathetic excuse for panties, is enough to make him suffer the rest of his life.

He presses his lips against yours again and this time feels your skin against his own, your nipples peaked and pebbly on his chest, your bare stomach under his fingertips. His hands squeeze your hips once and begin to trail along your warm stomach, nudging a thumb into your underwear.

You make a choked squeaking noise, jolting away from his mouth but moving your body closer. He latches to your neck, kissing and sucking and biting at the thin flesh there. His thumb strokes gently at the skin around your opening. He waits until you release a particularly desperate little gasp to dip his finger in, letting it pad over your clit. He is satisfied to feel a thick wetness coat his thumb - so much of it that it is almost impossible to get any decent friction against your swollen clit. Still, he manages.

“Dean…” you sigh ardently.

“Yes, sweetheart?” he mumbles into your neck, now teeth-bruised and wet with spit.

“Feels good,” you breathe back. He pulls back to look at you for a second and sees your eyes clouded over already, just from a little heavy-petting. His dick twitches hard where it is still pressed against your moving hips.

He has, for the last week, silently considered his desire to be something too vulgar and grimy for you. He is used to feeling desire for sultry women in bars or when looking at porn mags that cast the widest net of human desires by hiring models that are so nondescript they are essentially mannequins. He never feels guilty about that. The subject of his desire has, to him, always seemed about as cheap and dirty as his desire itself.

The desire he has for you is different. It’s fervent and hungry and frankly bordering on obsessive, but you’re good, and he knows you’re good. The idea of tarnishing you by touching you with that desire (an idea that has occurred to him many times in many different ways) has always left him with an overwhelming sense of guilt.

Strangely, he doesn't feel at all guilty right now. He can feel nothing but pleased, watching your mouth part slightly, face pinched in pleasure.

“Already feels good?” he says, trying not to smirk to avoid triggering your pride. He can’t stop his smile, but it does nothing. You just nod absently. He’s going to have so much fun with you.

“But m’not even doing anything, baby,” he says innocently. “Just a little bit of touchin’.”

Embarrassed, you put your face against the side of his neck and he feels your breath there. He laughs. Both hands move to your hips and begin to bounce and rock you there, experimentally. Your breaths shallow out into small, stuttering ones.

“S’okay. You’re just a little worked up. Me too. Wanted to touch on you so bad, but you just wanted to keep this,” He reaches up to softly knead a breast with his right hand. “And this,” He slips his thumb back into your underwear, eliciting a soft keen from you. “To yourself.”

You continue to rock forward, grinding up against him, and he is suddenly sharply aware of two things; the first being that he's in his underwear only and the second being that he hasn’t cleaned the pipes in a few days. He needs to stop you now or he’ll shoot in his pants like some kid. And that’s no good for anyone involved.

Gently, with one arm reaching behind your back, he lowers you onto the bed and pins you there. When he kisses you this time, he feels the cold tip of your nose on his face and is overrun with affection.

He’s is overwhelmed by the feeling of rightness while you giggle your breath into his mouth. He kisses you but it’s oddly clumsy with the smile stretching both of your lips. 

He cards his fingers through the line of fabric stripping across your hips and drags your panties down your legs and over your feet. He continues to kiss you intermittently while he teases your folds. Slow, soft, messy kisses. He dips one finger and then two into the tight, wet heat, slowly, just feeling. You’re soaked. His fingers slide into the tight space easily. He begins to shallowly pump.

“That feel good, angel?” he asks, already knowing it does. You give him an eager, bobble-head nod in response.

He’s bagged more than a few women in his day and he knows when he’s a got a performer on his hands - those trebling, soprano, inflated shrieks that let him know he’s had a poor show and it’s time to wrap it up. 

But your breath is hitching and legs are shaking, almost vibrating, in a way that is impossible to fake. If anything, you seem to be trying to suppress and choke all the noises being pulled out from your chest. That’s fine - he is looking forward to knowing what you sound like when he’s worked you up enough.

You’re a fucking vision under him; eyes glazed, a thin sheen of sweat on your brow and eyes firmly on his. He wants to see you like this every day. That might fill that massive, greedy hole in his chest. Looking at you like this, he doesn’t feel the emptiness. That place that usually feels like an empty vacuum trying to suck up anything it can. And Dean had been in the business of starving it but right now it’s full, bursting at the seams.

He feels good. He feels even better as he slides his underwear off and you stare at the stony solidness of his cock, stiff with blood and rock hard. Your eyes are suddenly very dark. Your finger reaches down low, tracing a line down the thick length of it. Something deep in his stomach jumps and he grabs your hand in his own, pulling it away from his cock.

He doesn’t want to explain to you that it’s not going to be a very impressive performance out of him if you keep doing that, but you smile and kiss him softly, so he figures you understand.

When the tip of his cock kisses your clit, you both make desperate hissing noises. He pushes up briefly, feeling the overwhelming warmth and wetness on his length and letting his stomach flutter in pleasure and excitement.

“You been thinking about this?” he grunts. “Thinkin’ what it would be like for me to slip inside you like this?” He grinds the tip just barely into your opening before sliding it over your clit again. 

You let out a frustrated, embarrassed whine. “Yes, Dean. Just…”

He laughs. “Okay, sweetheart.”

He slides in slowly, groaning at the way you envelope him. It’s a tight fit. He brings one hand down to where you’re connected and begins to rub circles around your clit and your body stutters, hips jutting upwards. He’s gradually able to push in all the way.

He loses his breath. You’re warm and responsive around his cock, walls fluttering. Your pussy twitches, my God it twitches, and he almost busts a load into you right there.

He’s never been one of those sappy schmucks who wants to stare into a chick’s eyes or kiss her silly to get his rocks off, but he has an intense urge to feel close to you. Your eyes are starry and clouded over with pleasure. 

He kisses your nose. He wonders briefly whether that is a weird thing to do in the moment, and tries to make you forget it happened by dragging out and pushing in again, slow and deep. You make a high, strangled noise.

“That’s it,” he breathes, eyes on yours. “Taking me so good. Good fuckin’ girl.”

Your eyes glitter at the praise. It’s a look he’s seen before, when he compliments you or tells you that you made a good call. He saw it when he said you were a damn natural after you swindled that priest. It’s eager and obedient, like only his opinion matters. He thrusts in again slowly, feeling the tight muscle clasp around his cock.

“You’re my girl, right?”

He’s letting his greed - that filthy possessiveness - get to him. He’s letting his mind run amok with ridiculous conjectures. How nice would it be to have just one thing of his own. Just this. Just you.

“Please, Dean,” you wail, as he thumbs your clit. “I’m yours. I was made for you. Oh God, just- please…”

A groan is punched out of his chest. “Fuck, you’re so good, angel.”

It all spills out of him while he draws back and begins to fuck into you - the deep-seated desperation to keep you. Like, if he fucks you just right then he might be able to. And maybe it’s true. He pictures spilling into you, filling you up until he’s spilling out and feels an odd mix of guilt and head-spinning pleasure in the pit of his stomach.

He turns into a damn wimp when you lean up to kiss him, his hips still pushing his cock in and out of you.  “Fuckin’ gorgeous,” he mumbles against your lips. “So goddamned beautiful, y’know that, angel? They should make you illegal.”

“You’re so sappy,” you giggle

You shudder a light laugh into his mouth that is abruptly replaced by a moan of his name when he pushes in again particularly hard. He’s playing a dangerous game, trying to give you as much as he can without busting too soon. But it’s worth the momentary panic to see the whites of your eyes as they roll back. Your hips twitch and grind in desperation. Obscene wet noises are filling the motel room.

“Sue me. I got the hottest chick in the world under me right now. Can’t blame a man for gettin’ a little sappy.”

He’s working you up, fucking you at just the right pressure to bring you to the edge, little ‘uh-uh-uh’s falling from your lips, before pulling back into a slow, deep rhythm that makes you whine and moan and complain. And that’s what he’s out for - that’s fucking music to his ears.

“Dean!” you whine, hips stuttering.

“Yeah?”

You’re shaking around him. He can’t stop kissing you. He’s drunk off the feeling of your moans vibrating through his body, lips crushed together in open-mouthed, wet kisses. You kiss him back, lost in the feeling.

“What is it, hm? What d’you want, baby?” He gives your clit another light rub with his thumb.

You sigh. “Don’t be mean.”

“M’not mean. Could never be mean to you. Promise I’ll treat you so nice. Y’just gotta tell me what you want.”

“Just want you, Dean,” you pant. “Want you to make me…”

His heart swells inconveniently. You just want him. 

“You wanna cum, sweetheart?” he asks, because he knows that, at least, is something he can give you.

You nod, a dumb, blissed-out expression on your face. “Yes, please,” you sigh.

He gives you what you want. Begins to rut up into you hard and fast while you grind downwards in tandem. Pleasure shoots through his stomach and zips up his spine. 

“My perfect girl,” he whispers. “Wanna keep you full of me all the time.”

The way he fucks you is wet and frantic. He reaches a hand down to press lightly down on the bottom of your stomach and you gasp. He feels you tighten around him. He presses down harder until he can feel the pressure of his own hand against his dick.

“That’s it, angel. Good girl. Look at me.”

You do. Your eyes, the irises almost swallowed by black pools of want, meet his own. And you fall apart.

When you cum around him, it’s just fucking sunlight. Your back arches off the bed and he feels your breasts rub against his chest. Deep, almost pained whines escape your lips. He’s not sure he’s seen anything as goddamn beautiful in his entire life. He’s in so much awe that he almost stops short, but catches himself.

He works you through it, thrusting deep, trying and just barely managing to stave off his own orgasm. He gets close but in an endeavour of sheer will, he manages to stave it off until your pussy is quaking around him with weak aftershocks. 

He pictures it, though. He pictures it when he pulls out and groans at the warm, shooting sensation low in his stomach as he jerks himself. He spills his load over your stomach and thighs, savouring the image in front of him while also thinking about it would feel like to let go inside you, watch it drip out…

He collapses onto the bed beside you with no consideration for the masses of body fluids he is bathing in, pulling your trembling frame to his own, your back to his chest and his chin on the top of your head. You laugh quietly when he reaches an exhausted hand over to grab his underwear from the side of the bed and drags it over your stomach and thighs, mopping up some of his mess.

He feels your breaths, the expanding and shrinking of lungs through your back. He lets it lull him, unconsciously matching his breathing to yours. You stay like that for a number of minutes, your head against his shoulder and one of his hands running through your tangled hair. He kisses your temple every so often, or your cheek, or the side of your neck. At some point, you intertwine your fingers with his unoccupied hand. Your breathing is steady and deep.

“You really wanna come with me?” he asks.

He’s not sure how to think about this himself. It’s a terrible idea and he knows that, but somehow it doesn't seem so terrible right now. He allows himself to picture it, not for the first time. Yourself and Sam sharing custody of the front seat. Him taking you on long drives by yourselves, pulling over multiple times to make out. Forcing you to listen to his cassettes and pretending to be annoyed when you add your own ones to his collection. 

He is met with silence. He rubs his thumb over your knuckles, wondering if you’re asleep. When he leans forward, he sees your eyes are open and staring forward.

“I do,” you say. Your voice is tired and soft and cracking. “I do, Dean. But I understand.”

He frowns. “You understand.”

You nod. “I don’t wanna hold you guys back. And I don’t want you to treat me like I’m some sort of… I don’t know. I’d rather go back and live the rest of my life with Adam than be a burden to you.”

When you mention Adam by name, he’s aware of a pang of jealousy and thinks of you with some engagement ring the size of a cue ball and two well-behaved kids in Ralph Lauren polos. He feels sick suddenly. His arms tighten around you.

He clenches his teeth together. “You’re not a burden. But this thing that me and Sammy are in… it’s no joke. It’s too late for me to get out of it now. I’m already twisted. If I could, I would go back and untwist myself and I’d untwist things for Sammy too.”

You lean back and fix him with a stare. “Would you?”

He stares back at you, mouth twitching. For all the betrayal he felt when Sam went to Stanford and all the talk about wanting them to stick together in this life, he would unfurl it all for Sam if he could. He would pull it all apart for him if it meant that he could find happiness. For himself… Well, he’s not so sure. This game is awful, but he doesn't know who he is without it. 

He’s tried self-reflection before and didn’t like the results. All he discovered was swelling, gurgling, bubbling oceans of pain. He could have delved deeper, plumbed the depths of those oceans, but he doesn’t see the use in it. And he doesn’t want to know what’s in there anyhow. He doesn’t want to mine out the pain. If it’s removed, he might just find a big, white nothingness. An empty canvas. Or maybe he’d find something worse.

“I know you think you’re protecting me,” you say, voice tired. “But taking my choice away is not that. It’s something different.”

He blinks and wets his lips. He tries to think of something profound and intelligent to say, but can think of nothing. He can’t decide whether your logic makes sense to him or not, but God, he would like to give in if he could find the courage. Would it be selfish? He thinks so.

You give him a small, gentle smile and press a delicate kiss to his lips. Then you turn around, slumping back into his chest and pulling the duvet over your intertwined bodies.

You both go back to collect Sam from Bobby’s the next day.

You and Bobby must have bonded more than he noticed the previous night, because he greets you with a warmth. Dean leaves you both to chat it up in the kitchen while he fetches Sam from the bedroom.

When he finds him, he’s sitting on the bed, still wearing his clothes from the night before but they are askew and wrinkled. He is staring into the wall.

“Y’good?” Dean asks. 

Sam wets his lips and nods with an almost confused frown. He’d like to ask what that frown is about, but they don’t really do that. Sam would probably tell him it’s nothing, anyway.

“Okay,” he says instead. “Come out to the kitchen. There’s someone- uh,” He shifts on his feet, embarrassed. “Someone I want you to meet.”

Sam raises an eyebrow, small, quizzical smile making its way to his face. He stands up from the bed, his huge frame casting a shadow in the early morning light.

“Hey, um,” Sam says, grabbing Dean’s forearm firmly and solidly. “Thanks.”

Dean smiles, almost laughs. “Be cool, yeah? No embarrassing stories.”

He introduces the two of you and is astounded to find that you are actually pretty shy about it. Nothing like you were when he had first met you. He supposes it makes sense though, after he had talked this kid up for over a week. And there is also the small consideration that you had watched Sam attempt Dean’s murder the night before. 

You give him your name with a sort of embarrassed diffidence that slowly melts the longer you talk. Sam has that effect on people. He can make anyone like him. 

He feels strangely proud, watching the two of you - that pride mingling with an overwhelming affection for the two of you. It makes his stomach feel warm.

He’s equally as happy to introduce you to his dorky little brother as he is to introduce Sam to his… whatever you are. His girl, he had called you last night. Made for him, you had said.

You get on like a house on fire, but he does have to remind Sam of his promise a few times with a gritted out; ‘Be cool, man. Remember?’

“Bobby,” Dean says, when the sun is no longer streaming gently across faces and onto the furniture and is instead casting a glow around the room. “There’s a little red car outside. Y’reckon we could leave it here for a bit?”

You turn to look at Dean while Bobby answers in the affirmative, eyes wide, polite expression frozen on your face.

“You’re coming with us?” Sam asks pleasantly.

You pause for just a second. “Yeah,” you say with a shy grin. “I’m gonna come with you guys for a while.”

Sam smiles. He looks at Dean. “You know where we’re going next?”

Dean thinks for a moment. “North Carolina is nice this time of year.”

You blink once and then smile at Dean. It is a smile so lovely and earth-shattering that he could not, if his whole life depended on it, stop himself from smiling back.

a/n: a big fat thank you to everyone who has followed along and read this far - especially to those of you who took the time to point out all the different parts and lines that resonated with you or that you particularly liked. the super long comments and reblogs of your favourite parts have been insaane to me like i genuinely can't tell you how much it means that someone would care enough about something i've written to do that so from the bottom of my heart thank you!!! i'm ngl this was TOUGH as it's the longest thing i've ever written but it's also the most rewarding thing ever - i'm so deeply in love with these two and their dynamic!! (i may or may not have thought about what happens to them beyond s2 and have a concrete story for them in my head LMAO). thank you thank you thank you everyone who commented or reblogged with your kind words, it genuinely has meant so much 🤍

🏷 series taglist: @juliperezsilveira @logansdollxx @buckfreqky

🏷 everything taglist: @buckysbbydoll @donuelle @angelryex @kombuchaaaaa @dollfaceglow @vip-hs @mollyherondale @taecallsmenoona @gummycluster856 @tw1sters @tellybearryyyy @dollydoll111

🏷 dean taglist: @soullessambs @leyra-giovanni @spaghettiwoes @suckitands33 @buckmybarnes @lostdragonqueen13 @moralgraymatter @love-stucky @sourgummieworm @annoyingrebelsoul @roseblue373 @meowrz1a @spookyysinsanity @bleuatlas @kelseaackles @10ava01 @cvntyvampi @hisbabydollmae @magic-sprinkled-daydreams @hxlaenahalliwell @katiejade @sodavrr @s0ullesslullab1es @girls-alias @marsmaryy @directioner5life @lyannalovesfictionalmen @ashlizabeth @mrrayjay @overly-enthusiastic-cats @blubellwoods

Or, more accurately, whatever demon had possessed Sam had shot him. It doesn’t matter. He’s going to give Sam a hell of a beating for it either way.

He realises dimly that he had woken up because of a heavy guitar noise. His ringtone. And he hears a voice - two? - but he can’t summon enough energy to identify what they are saying.

He hopes one of the voices is you. He hopes you know that he’s sorry. 

There is some splashing going on around him but his head is inside a murky cloud. An arm wrap wraps itself around his back and a body buckles under his weight. But the force of it bears heavy on his injured shoulder. That cloud gets thicker and Dean slinks out of consciousness.

He comes to on a rigid wooden chair in the bar. Everything around him is blurred and foggy, but after a few blinks he meets Jo’s concentrated stare. She’s working on his shoulder with a tweezers and a white padded gauze.

“You’re awake,” she says monotonously. She pushes a pill forward and puts a glass of water from the other side of the table in front of him.

“Yeah,” he grunts. He swallows the pill without the water. He begins to straighten up and a sharp blade of pain cuts into his shoulder.

“Sit down,” she demands. “I haven’t got the bullet yet.”

He doesn’t want to listen, but his shoulder is showing no quarter. He’s sure he can feel the dirty steel rattling inside. He’s sweating and shivering - whether from the cold or the pain, he’s not sure.

“Listen,” he grunts. “There’s a girl. She’s in a car parked just down the road from here. Little red convertible. I need you to go get her for me. I have the keys somewhere…”

Jo says your name. Abrupt and matter-of-fact. He frowns at her.

“I spoke to her already. She made her own way out and found you at the dock.”

Suddenly, he feels like laughing. Despite everything. Of course you made your own way out. That’s just like you. 

Oh, you’re going to be so pissed at him.

“Where is she?”

“She’s trying to find out where Sam is. He disabled the GPS on his phone again.”

He nods and feels Jo eyeing him quizzically. He’s sure she will ask who you are to him if he meets her eyes, so he doesn't.

The dim lights in the bar are too bright for his groggy eyes. Jo has one hand steadying his arm and the other picking at the deep wound on his shoulder with the tweezers. Her hands are soft and they feel like a woman’s but not like yours. 

His body is sticky and slow with pain, but after a few minutes the painkiller kicks in. This one is stronger than any of the ones you had been giving him. It makes his arms and legs feel weightless. He doesn’t have very much agency in his body anymore. He can hardly feel Jo prodding away at him or her hands on his skin.

“Oh- sorry.”

You’re standing at the door, frozen still. The right side of your clothes are damp and dirty, which he figures is on account of you dragging him out of the water. You still somehow manage to look put together. You’re looking between himself and Jo. “I’ll wait in the car.”

He very suddenly wants to push Jo away. He has the irrational urge to tell you that it’s not what it looks like  - that there’s nothing between himself and Jo - but he’s not sure why he feels the need. He stiffens up.

“Don’t,” he says, feeling strangely jittery. “Where did you go?”

“I tried to get the operator to turn on the GPS again but he wouldn’t. I’ll try calling again from the car. Hopefully I’ll get onto someone else.”

You smile faintly and turn before he can say much more. 

He stares at the door as Jo continues her work, feeling as though his brain might have exited the room with you. Jo is eyeing him again with puzzlement and maybe a little suspicion, but still doesn’t ask. He’s glad. 

Instead, she asks him about demons; when they lie, when they might tell the truth, how he knew Sam was possessed. He answers them absently, itching the whole time to get up and make a break for the car. He’s mildly concerned that you might take off without him or something if you are really pissed about him ditching you. Or if you think he’s fooling around with Jo.

When Jo finishes bandaging him up, she tries to go with him. He becomes irritated, angry to an irrational extent without knowing why. For whatever reason, the idea of Jo sitting in the backseat of your car, head propped between the two of you, is wretched to him. She would create some kind of barrier that is enough to stop him from saying everything he wants to say. He wants to be alone with you.

She reluctantly throws him the little pill bottle of painkillers on his way out and he feels a twinge of guilt at the dejection on her face, but not enough to change his mind. He leaves with a promise to call her later. He knows that he won’t, even as he says it.

The car is still there. You hadn’t taken off. 

He is nervous, walking up. He hesitates and pulls at the car door to find it locked. He fishes in his jeans, arms still numb and clumsy with the painkillers. He finds the key and clicks the button. A high, chiming sound calls out and he’s able to sit in on the leather. It’s unusually hot which feels nice, being damp to the bone as he is. You had got the seat-warmers going for him.

You’re on the phone.

“I completely get that. It’s just- well, Sam is my husband and he hasn't been home in a few days. I’m getting worried but I’m also… I just need to find him. I need to know where is he and what he’s doing. I’m sure you can understand.”

Now there’s a genuinely unpleasant thought. You and Sam together. Married. He mostly hates how easily he can picture it. How much sense it would make.

He recollects you using the word ‘husband’ earlier that day and how it made him hard. In this context, it makes his mouth taste sour.

“Thank you so much. Truly, I appreciate it. Have a great night.”

You hand him over your phone on the GPS page. Sam’s green dot is back on the map and moving south, just like he had thought.

“He’s going to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. We’ll have to cut through Minneapolis. Traffic shouldn’t be bad once we get there. It’ll be late.”

You nod slowly but you don’t move to start driving. You just stare at him, expression unreadable. He wonders if you’re waiting for an apology. He will happily give it, but he doesn't know where to start. For locking you into the car, for whatever the hell misunderstanding happened in there with Jo, for dragging you into this whole clusterfuck in the first place. If you’d just tell him, he’d get on his knees and beg, bad leg and all.

“Dean, you have my keys.”

“Oh,” he says, fishing clumsily in his pocket. “Right. Sorry. Here.”

You pull out of the avenue and begin to drive - out of the city the way you came. It has become quieter. There are a few speeding cars, a few silhouettes hurrying by, but none of the bustle of a busy city. He’s not even sure what time it is.

He swallows. “I’m sorry.”

You don’t give anything away, eyes on the road. “For?”

“Everything. Locking you into the car, involving you in any of this. I’m so sorry.”

He hates the way his voice cracks - the apology in it. You look sideways at him and he sees now that your face is still soft. “I’m not doing anything that I’m not actively deciding to do, Dean. I’m here because I want to be. There’s nothing you need to feel guilty about.” You pause, lips pursing. “Except locking me into the car. That was real shitty.”

He laughs weakly. “I know.”

“I understand, though. My sister always used to do shit like that to me. I don’t remember that much about my birth parents but I remember her locking me into the room when things got dirty. Probably gave me a complex but she was trying to do what was best for me.”

So that’s the pesky family thing. He pairs it up with your weird insistence on being useful. He holds it up against his memories of you like two pictures he’s trying to compare. It makes sense.

“How’d you get out of the car?” he asks.

“Realised you don’t need the keys to put the top down. I was so mad it took me so long to think of it.”

“You’re crafty.”

You cock an eyebrow. “Not crafty enough to realise you were playing me. Can’t believe I fell for it.” You mimic him, deepening your voice. “‘Gotta get my gun from the trunk. You stay here.’ My ass.”

He laughs again, stronger, and you lapse into silence as you leave the city. 

He tries to get a hold of Bobby for the first time somewhere around Minneapolis. On his fourth attempt, it cuts out mid-ring. He curses furiously and throws his phone into the backseat somewhere. You don’t jump. You’ve become more accustomed to his temper tantrums in recent days. 

“No answer?”

“Sam's there,” he grunts. “He must have cut the line. Just gotta hope Bobby knows better than Jo.”

Your foot squeezes down harder on the accelerator. You always drive just a little bit over the speed limit, but he is honestly surprised that you haven’t been pulled over by a cop with the way you’ve been driving since leaving Jo’s bar.

The car usually smells like your skin - a pleasant, delicate scent. Right now, he can only smell the motor oil and unclean water off his own clothes. His boots are sitting in the backseat and his feet, covered in soggy socks, are up against the leg heater.

“I’m sure Bobby will be fine. You said he’s been doing this for ages, right?”

“Yeah, he’s one of the best. He’s considered a bit of a craftsman in the business. But Sam is real fucking strong. If Bobby doesn’t catch on right away, he’s toast.”

“I’m sure he will. We’re not too far off, anyway. Another hour and we’re there. Maybe I can make it forty minutes.”

You speed up again and he grabs the handle on the roof of the car. There’s a minute of silence that is not entirely comfortable.

“Jo is nice,” you remark with a nonchalance that may be forced.

“She’s alright,” he says.

“So are you guys-”

“No. Definitely not.”

“Okay. But maybe before?”

“No. Never. I don’t see Jo that way. She’s more of a little sister type. I mean, she’s cute and all but too much of a schoolgirl.”

He’s parroting exactly what he had told Sam before with a rush of intense, confused relief. He’s glad of the opportunity to explain. Your mouth twitches into a wry grin and he realises his blunder.

“Not that there’s anything wrong with schoolgirls- I can get down with- Wait, college girls, I mean. College girls are fine. Fair game.”

You laugh, loud and bright, and the knot in his chest loosens. “What about little sisters? You got something against them?”

He sighs, embarrassed. “I meant that she’s like a little sister to me. Kinda annoying like one too.”

“She’s not so bad,” you smile, turning on your indicator while you prepare to pull off at an exit. “I thought she was nice. She cares a lot about you and Sam. You guys close with her?”

“Not really. Met her for the first time about a year ago. Her mom doesn’t want her doing all this but she tagged along on this hunt we were doing. She wasn’t half bad.”

“Why doesn’t she stick with you guys? Wouldn’t that be safer?”

“Sammy and I are a good team. We don’t need nobody else.”

“Oh,” you say, thoughtfully. There’s a brief pause. “Is that why you don’t want me coming-”

“No.”

You breathe a quiet laugh. “Okay.”

“You and Sammy would get on like a house on fire. I know it.” 

You smile shyly. “I think so too.”

He doesn’t want to walk this path again. It’s too dangerous. He needs to get his words in check and his thoughts too.

“There was some weird situation with our dad and Jo’s anyway. They used to work together. I don’t know the details but I don’t think she wants to hang around us very much either.”

You don’t answer him for a moment, lips pursed in something like doubt. “You don’t talk a lot about your dad,” you say eventually. “Only when you need to. Like if you’re telling some story or something.”

“He was a weird guy. Big personality. Hard to explain.”

“You’ve done a pretty good job explaining the other hard-to-explain stuff.”

He almost laughs. You’re right. He has all but forgotten that you were claiming not to believe that the supernatural exists. You might have forgotten too. Despite still not seeing any hard evidence, you haven’t shot him even one doubtful glance whenever he brings up anything about hunting or demons or holy water. 

“Difficult to bring myself to explain,” he amends. 

You give him a tight, sad smile and nod. “That’s okay.”

He looks at you, your face glowing, pretty eyes shining. He sees understanding on your face. Understanding for the fact that he can’t talk about his dad right now, maybe not ever. 

You can’t possibly know all the mental gymnastics he’s been doing in his head - not even Sam does. You have no knowledge of all the memories he’s sifted through, asking himself whether that was really how it happened or if it’s how he wants to remember it. You can’t know about the battle between blind faith in his father and the repressed feelings of guilt for not standing up for Sam who had the bravery to see things a bit clearer. You have no idea how he’s questioned what parts of him are his and what parts were surgically placed there by his dad. Still, you understand.

He’d like to say something to you - to thank you maybe, or apologise or just to come clean about all the longing and tenderness that has been tormenting him for days, even if you already know - but words are difficult things, and he has never been good with them. He can only look at your face and suffer and worship.

You fish out the CD wallet and toss it to him. He catches it before it flies out the open window and flicks through it without questioning you, for fear that you’ll take it back. He finds a Nirvana album and lets the first three tracks play out in silence. He starts to recognise the roads around Bobby’s house at track four, and turns the volume down.

“We’re getting close,” he says, voice low. “I’m not gonna lock you in the car again, but I’m gonna need you to stay outside the house.”

You give him a look he knows well.

“I mean it,” he says. “It’s not safe. Please. If you don’t wanna do it for your own safety then just do it for my peace of mind. I don’t want this to be your first hunt.”

He hates himself immediately for the slip-up. You catch it. Your eyebrows raise. 

This is what hope does. It twists everything around. Makes him say stupid shit like that. ‘Your first hunt’ - like he’s planning on training you up to come on the road. The thought of it might have crossed his brain in unguarded moments of ridiculous reverie, but only in an abstract way. Only in a harmless, notional game of what-if. Now he’s vocalised it, and he’s not sure if he can take it back.

“I told you Sam is strong,” he ploughs on, hoping you’ll let the topic drop. “But he’s also smart. This is a demon with access to Sam’s strength but also to his knowledge about me and about all the ways we’re gonna try hunt it. I need you to stay in the car.”

“I’ll stay behind you. I won’t do or say a thing if you tell me not to. But I want to come in. I need to- I just need to see…”

There’s that desperation again. Another one of those things you can’t bring yourself to explain. When he sees it in your eyes this time, he knows he will fold.

Here is another shiny thing he has tarnished because of some insatiable need that he can’t even name. He will let you join him while he hunts his own brother. Because your eyes are gleaming with a trust that he knows will never recover if he doesn’t and he’s selfish and greedy, so he’ll let you do anything just as long as he never has to watch that trust evaporate. He is suddenly nauseous.

“You can come,” he chokes out.

Your expression hardly changes. “You’re being serious? You’re not gonna go ahead and lock me in again once we get there?”

He shakes his head, feeling as though he could vomit if there was anything at all in his stomach.

“You’re not responsible for me. You know that, right? I meant what I said earlier. I’m making my own choices here.”

He has a lot he would like to say to that, but he says none of it. Instead, he says; “There’s this thing called a devil’s trap. It’s a sigil. Bobby’s got one on the roof over his living room. You get one of the suckers to step under it and they can’t get out. That’s when you gotta do the incantation to exorcise them from the body. Our best hope is that Bobby noticed something off with Sam and has him in the trap now. Otherwise, whatever we’re walking into won’t be pretty.”

You nod with quiet solemnity. He points right to signal the dirt road you need to drive down. You take the turn, driving significantly slower than you had been before.

“It’s never too late to back out,” he says. “Whether it’s now or on the walk into the house or when Sam is beating the crap out of me. Just remember that, yeah?”

“Yeah,” you say. He has the feeling he’s lost you - like you’ve dug some deep hole within yourself and are burrowing further. You’re concentrating on the mission ahead now. That’s fine. He does the same thing himself.

He points to Bobby’s house as you approach and when you pull in and park the car, the two of you climb out silently. You climb out a little faster this time, just in case.

With one hand on the front door handle and the other clasping his gun, he turns to you with his eyebrows raised. You nod. He bursts through the door.

With the situation explained and yourself and Bobby formally introduced, Dean slaps the demon awake. It blinks groggily, looking down at where it is tied to the chair and then up at the sigil on the ceiling, before setting its sights on him. Something sinister is playing behind its eyes. 

It feels wrong to see Sam like this and he’s dimly aware of the fact that this is your first impression of him. He stands up close in an attempt to block you and Sam from each other’s visions.

Sam’s eyes finally lock on to somewhere behind him - you - just as Bobby begins to read the incantation. Sam doesn’t know your face, so the demon has no information to play on. His eyebrows twitch with a sort of animal curiosity and it makes Dean’s skin feel tight and putrid. He feels as though he could get sick again. That terrible, assessing look on his little brother’s face is enough to destroy his sanity, and it’s aimed at you.

Bobby continues to chant, but Sam’s eyes stay locked on you with no signs of letting up. He doesn’t so much as flinch at Bobby’s monotonous recital.

“I learned a few new tricks,” he says, head dropping low until his chin meets his chest, drooping lazily like that of a man hanged. He begins to speak in Latin, low and frenzied. Dean doesn’t recognise a word of it - it’s no incantation he has ever heard - but each syllable is bubbling with a lunacy he has never heard in Sam’s voice.

Abruptly, the fireplace explodes with a flaring scream. The lights begin to flicker and Dean has to, for once, admit that he’s scared.

Not for himself. He’s seen much worse than this and he’s not all that afraid of dying, anyway. He has been on the cusp of it or fallen over that edge one too many times to feel fear over it anymore.

He’s scared for Sam. If the incantation doesn't work - and it looks like it hasn’t - he’s all out of ideas. And maybe that means that Sam will be destined to live out the rest of his life as only a husk of himself - to hand over his body to something that will defile it.

And he’s scared for you. He can’t even bring himself to look at you for fear that the guilt will swallow him whole. The house begins to rumble, as if a stampede were passing by, old dust unsticking from hard-to-reach crevices and falling down over them. He waves a hand, signalling that you should get back. 

Bobby tears up Sam’s sleeve to find a large Q branded in jagged red onto the tanned skin there. The scar is swollen and tender, flesh that looks more like jelly oozing out of the skin.

“It’s a binding link,” Bobby shouts over the thunder of moving furniture and shuffling concrete and wood. “It’s like a lock. He’s locked himself inside Sam’s body.”

“What the hell do we do?” he screams, backing up. He feels your body hit his back and he pushes you further out of the room, still not turning his back. Sam’s head snaps up sharply, black reptilian eyes turned up to the ceiling which immediately cracks, bringing down a cargo of dust and rubble. Sam tears the rope he is bound in. The sigil is broken.

You fly first, slamming into the other room with one clawing wave of Sam’s arm. Bobby goes second - into a bookshelf, where his body slumps limply over a cluster of pages and hardbacks. And then it’s Dean’s turn.

He’s launched into the side of a door, flask of holy water knocking from his grip. His bad shoulder meets the door with a cold stroke of agony, pain flaring through it. He won’t be able to move it tomorrow, but it matters very little to him now. 

He can manage only a thin, forced breath before Sam is on him again. He descends on him like a tornado, raining down punch after punch - slowly, like he’s enjoying it. Blood streams steadily down his nose and creates a sheet over his eyes. He can taste copper in his mouth.

Dean drifts in and out of consciousness rapidly - hands and fingers grasping at the air as if trying to bring himself to harbour. Sam’s mouth - but not Sam - is speaking animatedly about hell and prisons made of bone and flesh. He doesn’t understand much, but he understands enough to know that he’s speaking to Meg.

Meg stretches Sam’s lips into a twisted grin of horror. “Whatever I do to you, it’s nothing compared to what you do to yourself is it?” Sam-Meg asks, digging a thumb firmly into the bullet wound in his shoulder. Dean retches and sobs in agonising pain. “I can see it in your eyes, Dean. You’re worthless. You couldn't save your dad and, deep down, you know that you can’t save your brother. They’d have been better off without you.”

Even though the haze of pain, he stares at Sam’s manic eyes, shining and empty. They are just white and black and green with nothing behind them - meaningless, devoid of any feeling or soul. But still, something wrenches in his chest. 

A strange, ambivalent serenity overcomes him, even as Sam raises his hand for another punch that will surely send him plummeting into unconsciousness. Because he’s seeing the truth of it - the whole picture - for the very first time, in a flash of horror and understanding. All the ways in which he has lost and all the ways in which he has yet to lose.

He doesn’t see how you come up from behind Sam with the poker, but he sees you once you grab the arm that is about to fire another downwards punch. He can only watch with a mixture of awe and terror. Sam tries to spin around with one arid, whistling breath, but you get him with the poker, striking a fresh burn across the fleshy Q on his arm.

Sam’s body jackknifes and convulses. He pulls up to his knees, taut and strangled, with an ear-splitting, rage-fuelled roar, heaving a cloud of black, smoky sludge upwards. It flees into the fire, leaving a limp Sam on the floor.

There is just a second of silence before Sam opens his eyes, frantic and confused, cold sweat coating his hair and forehead.

“Sammy?” Dean manages to grunt.

Sam looks quickly to Dean, then to you and then Bobby, who has started to pull himself up from the ground. He’s breathing heavy and his face is confused and miserable, like he can’t put anything together. He looks back at you and stares for a second longer.

There’s a brief pause. “Did I miss anything?”

Dean surrenders to all his primal urges. He punches Sam square in the face, collapsing into a heap immediately after.

Sam passes out at Bobby’s. Bobby offers a room to yourself and Dean, but he insists that you will find a motel for the night. He wants to get you away from everything, and he wants to take Baby for a spin anyways, now that he has her back.

Silence spins out slowly in the motel. He’s a bit worse for wear. His shoulder hurts like a bitch, but the pain of it is distracting almost wholly from his calf. He is just waiting for the painkillers to start working, which they slowly do. He had thought about showing you all his cassettes the whole drive up here, but he never reached for them.

He coughs. “So what’d you think of him?”

You laugh, soft and low. “He was a real charmer. Must be a family thing.”

He scoffs. “I got more game than him. I’d never throw a pretty lady like you across a room.”

You throw a pillow at him while he settles into the bed, before crawling in beside him, close but not touching. He catches it and props it under his back.

“Is he okay, do you think?” you ask, nestling in.

“He’s okay. I talked to him a little bit while you were with Bobby. I should be checking whether you’re okay, sweetheart. That was a lot.”

You look tired but pretty mellow, all things considered. You’re curled around a pillow, suddenly looking quite small to him - as if you’ve folded in on yourself. But you’re wearing a small, secret smile.

He will miss your body when you’re gone. Not in the carnal sense, though he can’t deny that he wants it in that way too. He will miss studying your hand gripping loosely on the steering wheel and the curve of your spine when you curl up to sleep. The angle of your hip when you turn to talk to him, the bone of your knee he has once or twice touched.

“I dunno why but I pictured you in a jeep or something,” you say, casual and sleepy. “The Impala makes way more sense. So flashy.”

“Don’t change the subject.”

You breathe a quiet laugh, smiling at him. “I’m okay. I’m good, actually.”

He smiles tentatively back. “Yeah?”

“Yeah, I…” You falter, eyes moist. There is a beat where nobody says anything while you look at him hopelessly, trying to pull words from somewhere.

His lips flatten into a straight line. “No.”

“Dean-”

“No. I’m serious.”

“I’m serious too!” You prop yourself up on your knees to face him. “You’re gonna tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about again. But I do.”

“You don’t,” he insists, wanting to feel angry and only feeling tired. He meets your pleading expression with a mask of indifference. He does his best John Winchester - the sort of snarl that would make anyone believe that argument is futile. “You don’t know anything about it.”

“I know enough to know that I wanna come with you,” you say. “You can’t tell me that I don’t know what I’m getting into after today.”

“You don’t know everything there is to know after one hunt-”

“But you could teach me! You could help me like you help Sam.”

He laughs, suddenly. “Fat load of help I am to Sam. You see him tonight?”

“Yes, I did.” Your eyes are wide and angry, but your voice is level. “I saw you lie and hustle your way into a ride across the country for a whole week while badly injured. Saw you take a gunshot from him and never hurt him back. I saw the whole goddamn thing.”

He says nothing for over a minute, staring at you closely. His Adam’s apple quavers. He finds, with some surprise, that he’s trying to find a way out of believing you. Trying to find some sort of loophole so he doesn't have to believe that you see him the way you’re suggesting. 

Because that kind of person is the ideal he had always held himself up against but could somehow never believe that he was meeting. He has felt more like a mortician than a hunter recently, with the way death seems to follow him around like a bad smell. It’s somehow excruciatingly uncomfortable to think of you seeing him the way he has always failed to see himself. 

“I punched him,” he says, quietly. 

You laugh a watery, sniffling chuckle. “I suppose that’s true.”

He looks at you, your face, neck and shoulders. He reaches out to touch your arm and feels the warmth of your skin all the way to his stomach. Your lips part slightly, when he leans forward to capture your lips with his, swallowing your shuddering breath.

He kisses you for the second time like he’s swallowing a poisoned pill, because he is. Your lips are soft and warm and whatever the outcome may be now, he knows he can’t do without you. Whether you go with him or drive all the way back home, he’s done for. If he leaves you here, you’ll slip in between the cracks of his brain and melt into of his dreams and from there you’ll be immobile. Dean never forgets a thing once he’s dreamed it.

He can feel your breasts against his bare chest through your thin white t-shirt while your hands cradle his face. He tugs you onto his lap, one hand slipping up your thigh until it can creep under your t-shirt. You jump when the other grasps tight on your hip.

He looks up at you questioningly.

“Your rings are cold,” you giggle, swiping a thumb along his cheekbone.

He smiles while he jimmies the rings from his fingers and puts them on the bedside locker. His hands meet your skin again and he dives back into you.

He can feel the heat of you spill onto his lap, two legs wrapped jealously around him. Your hips move against him in small, unconscious ways. He has rapidly become hard, and you move your hips again, applying more pressure almost unconsciously.

You’re trembling in his arms - out of excitement or nerves, he’s not sure. His own chest is heaving softly as he gently inches the t-shirt up over your stomach. Your arms reach up above your head delicately. He moves slowly, enjoying the feeling of his own impatience as he gradually slips the fabric over your nipples. And Dean is no blushing virgin, but he sure as hell feels something close to worship when he gets it off you. Just the sight of you like this, perched pretty on his lap in nothing but some pathetic excuse for panties, is enough to make him suffer the rest of his life.

He presses his lips against yours again and this time feels your skin against his own, your nipples peaked and pebbly on his chest, your bare stomach under his fingertips. His hands squeeze your hips once and begin to trail along your warm stomach, nudging a thumb into your underwear.

You make a choked squeaking noise, jolting away from his mouth but moving your body closer. He latches to your neck, kissing and sucking and biting at the thin flesh there. His thumb strokes gently at the skin around your opening. He waits until you release a particularly desperate little gasp to dip his finger in, letting it pad over your clit. He is satisfied to feel a thick wetness coat his thumb - so much of it that it is almost impossible to get any decent friction against your swollen clit. Still, he manages.

“Dean…” you sigh ardently.

“Yes, sweetheart?” he mumbles into your neck, now teeth-bruised and wet with spit.

“Feels good,” you breathe back. He pulls back to look at you for a second and sees your eyes clouded over already, just from a little heavy-petting. His dick twitches hard where it is still pressed against your moving hips.

He has, for the last week, silently considered his desire to be something too vulgar and grimy for you. He is used to feeling desire for sultry women in bars or when looking at porn mags that cast the widest net of human desires by hiring models that are so nondescript they are essentially mannequins. He never feels guilty about that. The subject of his desire has, to him, always seemed about as cheap and dirty as his desire itself.

The desire he has for you is different. It’s fervent and hungry and frankly bordering on obsessive, but you’re good, and he knows you’re good. The idea of tarnishing you by touching you with that desire (an idea that has occurred to him many times in many different ways) has always left him with an overwhelming sense of guilt.

Strangely, he doesn't feel at all guilty right now. He can feel nothing but pleased, watching your mouth part slightly, face pinched in pleasure.

“Already feels good?” he says, trying not to smirk to avoid triggering your pride. He can’t stop his smile, but it does nothing. You just nod absently. He’s going to have so much fun with you.

“But m’not even doing anything, baby,” he says innocently. “Just a little bit of touchin’.”

Embarrassed, you put your face against the side of his neck and he feels your breath there. He laughs. Both hands move to your hips and begin to bounce and rock you there, experimentally. Your breaths shallow out into small, stuttering ones.

“S’okay. You’re just a little worked up. Me too. Wanted to touch on you so bad, but you just wanted to keep this,” He reaches up to softly knead a breast with his right hand. “And this,” He slips his thumb back into your underwear, eliciting a soft keen from you. “To yourself.”

You continue to rock forward, grinding up against him, and he is suddenly sharply aware of two things; the first being that he's in his underwear only and the second being that he hasn’t cleaned the pipes in a few days. He needs to stop you now or he’ll shoot in his pants like some kid. And that’s no good for anyone involved.

Gently, with one arm reaching behind your back, he lowers you onto the bed and pins you there. When he kisses you this time, he feels the cold tip of your nose on his face and is overrun with affection.

He’s is overwhelmed by the feeling of rightness while you giggle your breath into his mouth. He kisses you but it’s oddly clumsy with the smile stretching both of your lips. 

He cards his fingers through the line of fabric stripping across your hips and drags your panties down your legs and over your feet. He continues to kiss you intermittently while he teases your folds. Slow, soft, messy kisses. He dips one finger and then two into the tight, wet heat, slowly, just feeling. You’re soaked. His fingers slide into the tight space easily. He begins to shallowly pump.

“That feel good, angel?” he asks, already knowing it does. You give him an eager, bobble-head nod in response.

He’s bagged more than a few women in his day and he knows when he’s a got a performer on his hands - those trebling, soprano, inflated shrieks that let him know he’s had a poor show and it’s time to wrap it up. 

But your breath is hitching and legs are shaking, almost vibrating, in a way that is impossible to fake. If anything, you seem to be trying to suppress and choke all the noises being pulled out from your chest. That’s fine - he is looking forward to knowing what you sound like when he’s worked you up enough.

You’re a fucking vision under him; eyes glazed, a thin sheen of sweat on your brow and eyes firmly on his. He wants to see you like this every day. That might fill that massive, greedy hole in his chest. Looking at you like this, he doesn’t feel the emptiness. That place that usually feels like an empty vacuum trying to suck up anything it can. And Dean had been in the business of starving it but right now it’s full, bursting at the seams.

He feels good. He feels even better as he slides his underwear off and you stare at the stony solidness of his cock, stiff with blood and rock hard. Your eyes are suddenly very dark. Your finger reaches down low, tracing a line down the thick length of it. Something deep in his stomach jumps and he grabs your hand in his own, pulling it away from his cock.

He doesn’t want to explain to you that it’s not going to be a very impressive performance out of him if you keep doing that, but you smile and kiss him softly, so he figures you understand.

When the tip of his cock kisses your clit, you both make desperate hissing noises. He pushes up briefly, feeling the overwhelming warmth and wetness on his length and letting his stomach flutter in pleasure and excitement.

“You been thinking about this?” he grunts. “Thinkin’ what it would be like for me to slip inside you like this?” He grinds the tip just barely into your opening before sliding it over your clit again. 

You let out a frustrated, embarrassed whine. “Yes, Dean. Just…”

He laughs. “Okay, sweetheart.”

He slides in slowly, groaning at the way you envelope him. It’s a tight fit. He brings one hand down to where you’re connected and begins to rub circles around your clit and your body stutters, hips jutting upwards. He’s gradually able to push in all the way.

He loses his breath. You’re warm and responsive around his cock, walls fluttering. Your pussy twitches, my God it twitches, and he almost busts a load into you right there.

He’s never been one of those sappy schmucks who wants to stare into a chick’s eyes or kiss her silly to get his rocks off, but he has an intense urge to feel close to you. Your eyes are starry and clouded over with pleasure. 

He kisses your nose. He wonders briefly whether that is a weird thing to do in the moment, and tries to make you forget it happened by dragging out and pushing in again, slow and deep. You make a high, strangled noise.

“That’s it,” he breathes, eyes on yours. “Taking me so good. Good fuckin’ girl.”

Your eyes glitter at the praise. It’s a look he’s seen before, when he compliments you or tells you that you made a good call. He saw it when he said you were a damn natural after you swindled that priest. It’s eager and obedient, like only his opinion matters. He thrusts in again slowly, feeling the tight muscle clasp around his cock.

“You’re my girl, right?”

He’s letting his greed - that filthy possessiveness - get to him. He’s letting his mind run amok with ridiculous conjectures. How nice would it be to have just one thing of his own. Just this. Just you.

“Please, Dean,” you wail, as he thumbs your clit. “I’m yours. I was made for you. Oh God, just- please…”

A groan is punched out of his chest. “Fuck, you’re so good, angel.”

It all spills out of him while he draws back and begins to fuck into you - the deep-seated desperation to keep you. Like, if he fucks you just right then he might be able to. And maybe it’s true. He pictures spilling into you, filling you up until he’s spilling out and feels an odd mix of guilt and head-spinning pleasure in the pit of his stomach.

He turns into a damn wimp when you lean up to kiss him, his hips still pushing his cock in and out of you.  “Fuckin’ gorgeous,” he mumbles against your lips. “So goddamned beautiful, y’know that, angel? They should make you illegal.”

“You’re so sappy,” you giggle

You shudder a light laugh into his mouth that is abruptly replaced by a moan of his name when he pushes in again particularly hard. He’s playing a dangerous game, trying to give you as much as he can without busting too soon. But it’s worth the momentary panic to see the whites of your eyes as they roll back. Your hips twitch and grind in desperation. Obscene wet noises are filling the motel room.

“Sue me. I got the hottest chick in the world under me right now. Can’t blame a man for gettin’ a little sappy.”

He’s working you up, fucking you at just the right pressure to bring you to the edge, little ‘uh-uh-uh’s falling from your lips, before pulling back into a slow, deep rhythm that makes you whine and moan and complain. And that’s what he’s out for - that’s fucking music to his ears.

“Dean!” you whine, hips stuttering.

“Yeah?”

You’re shaking around him. He can’t stop kissing you. He’s drunk off the feeling of your moans vibrating through his body, lips crushed together in open-mouthed, wet kisses. You kiss him back, lost in the feeling.

“What is it, hm? What d’you want, baby?” He gives your clit another light rub with his thumb.

You sigh. “Don’t be mean.”

“M’not mean. Could never be mean to you. Promise I’ll treat you so nice. Y’just gotta tell me what you want.”

“Just want you, Dean,” you pant. “Want you to make me…”

His heart swells inconveniently. You just want him. 

“You wanna cum, sweetheart?” he asks, because he knows that, at least, is something he can give you.

You nod, a dumb, blissed-out expression on your face. “Yes, please,” you sigh.

He gives you what you want. Begins to rut up into you hard and fast while you grind downwards in tandem. Pleasure shoots through his stomach and zips up his spine. 

“My perfect girl,” he whispers. “Wanna keep you full of me all the time.”

The way he fucks you is wet and frantic. He reaches a hand down to press lightly down on the bottom of your stomach and you gasp. He feels you tighten around him. He presses down harder until he can feel the pressure of his own hand against his dick.

“That’s it, angel. Good girl. Look at me.”

You do. Your eyes, the irises almost swallowed by black pools of want, meet his own. And you fall apart.

When you cum around him, it’s just fucking sunlight. Your back arches off the bed and he feels your breasts rub against his chest. Deep, almost pained whines escape your lips. He’s not sure he’s seen anything as goddamn beautiful in his entire life. He’s in so much awe that he almost stops short, but catches himself.

He works you through it, thrusting deep, trying and just barely managing to stave off his own orgasm. He gets close but in an endeavour of sheer will, he manages to stave it off until your pussy is quaking around him with weak aftershocks. 

He pictures it, though. He pictures it when he pulls out and groans at the warm, shooting sensation low in his stomach as he jerks himself. He spills his load over your stomach and thighs, savouring the image in front of him while also thinking about it would feel like to let go inside you, watch it drip out…

He collapses onto the bed beside you with no consideration for the masses of body fluids he is bathing in, pulling your trembling frame to his own, your back to his chest and his chin on the top of your head. You laugh quietly when he reaches an exhausted hand over to grab his underwear from the side of the bed and drags it over your stomach and thighs, mopping up some of his mess.

He feels your breaths, the expanding and shrinking of lungs through your back. He lets it lull him, unconsciously matching his breathing to yours. You stay like that for a number of minutes, your head against his shoulder and one of his hands running through your tangled hair. He kisses your temple every so often, or your cheek, or the side of your neck. At some point, you intertwine your fingers with his unoccupied hand. Your breathing is steady and deep.

“You really wanna come with me?” he asks.

He’s not sure how to think about this himself. It’s a terrible idea and he knows that, but somehow it doesn't seem so terrible right now. He allows himself to picture it, not for the first time. Yourself and Sam sharing custody of the front seat. Him taking you on long drives by yourselves, pulling over multiple times to make out. Forcing you to listen to his cassettes and pretending to be annoyed when you add your own ones to his collection. 

He is met with silence. He rubs his thumb over your knuckles, wondering if you’re asleep. When he leans forward, he sees your eyes are open and staring forward.

“I do,” you say. Your voice is tired and soft and cracking. “I do, Dean. But I understand.”

He frowns. “You understand.”

You nod. “I don’t wanna hold you guys back. And I don’t want you to treat me like I’m some sort of… I don’t know. I’d rather go back and live the rest of my life with Adam than be a burden to you.”

When you mention Adam by name, he’s aware of a pang of jealousy and thinks of you with some engagement ring the size of a cue ball and two well-behaved kids in Ralph Lauren polos. He feels sick suddenly. His arms tighten around you.

He clenches his teeth together. “You’re not a burden. But this thing that me and Sammy are in… it’s no joke. It’s too late for me to get out of it now. I’m already twisted. If I could, I would go back and untwist myself and I’d untwist things for Sammy too.”

You lean back and fix him with a stare. “Would you?”

He stares back at you, mouth twitching. For all the betrayal he felt when Sam went to Stanford and all the talk about wanting them to stick together in this life, he would unfurl it all for Sam if he could. He would pull it all apart for him if it meant that he could find happiness. For himself… Well, he’s not so sure. This game is awful, but he doesn't know who he is without it. 

He’s tried self-reflection before and didn’t like the results. All he discovered was swelling, gurgling, bubbling oceans of pain. He could have delved deeper, plumbed the depths of those oceans, but he doesn’t see the use in it. And he doesn’t want to know what’s in there anyhow. He doesn’t want to mine out the pain. If it’s removed, he might just find a big, white nothingness. An empty canvas. Or maybe he’d find something worse.

“I know you think you’re protecting me,” you say, voice tired. “But taking my choice away is not that. It’s something different.”

He blinks and wets his lips. He tries to think of something profound and intelligent to say, but can think of nothing. He can’t decide whether your logic makes sense to him or not, but God, he would like to give in if he could find the courage. Would it be selfish? He thinks so.

You give him a small, gentle smile and press a delicate kiss to his lips. Then you turn around, slumping back into his chest and pulling the duvet over your intertwined bodies.

You both go back to collect Sam from Bobby’s the next day.

You and Bobby must have bonded more than he noticed the previous night, because he greets you with a warmth. Dean leaves you both to chat it up in the kitchen while he fetches Sam from the bedroom.

When he finds him, he’s sitting on the bed, still wearing his clothes from the night before but they are askew and wrinkled. He is staring into the wall.

“Y’good?” Dean asks. 

Sam wets his lips and nods with an almost confused frown. He’d like to ask what that frown is about, but they don’t really do that. Sam would probably tell him it’s nothing, anyway.

“Okay,” he says instead. “Come out to the kitchen. There’s someone- uh,” He shifts on his feet, embarrassed. “Someone I want you to meet.”

Sam raises an eyebrow, small, quizzical smile making its way to his face. He stands up from the bed, his huge frame casting a shadow in the early morning light.

“Hey, um,” Sam says, grabbing Dean’s forearm firmly and solidly. “Thanks.”

Dean smiles, almost laughs. “Be cool, yeah? No embarrassing stories.”

He introduces the two of you and is astounded to find that you are actually pretty shy about it. Nothing like you were when he had first met you. He supposes it makes sense though, after he had talked this kid up for over a week. And there is also the small consideration that you had watched Sam attempt Dean’s murder the night before. 

You give him your name with a sort of embarrassed diffidence that slowly melts the longer you talk. Sam has that effect on people. He can make anyone like him. 

He feels strangely proud, watching the two of you - that pride mingling with an overwhelming affection for the two of you. It makes his stomach feel warm.

He’s equally as happy to introduce you to his dorky little brother as he is to introduce Sam to his… whatever you are. His girl, he had called you last night. Made for him, you had said.

You get on like a house on fire, but he does have to remind Sam of his promise a few times with a gritted out; ‘Be cool, man. Remember?’

“Bobby,” Dean says, when the sun is no longer streaming gently across faces and onto the furniture and is instead casting a glow around the room. “There’s a little red car outside. Y’reckon we could leave it here for a bit?”

You turn to look at Dean while Bobby answers in the affirmative, eyes wide, polite expression frozen on your face.

“You’re coming with us?” Sam asks pleasantly.

You pause for just a second. “Yeah,” you say with a shy grin. “I’m gonna come with you guys for a while.”

Sam smiles. He looks at Dean. “You know where we’re going next?”

Dean thinks for a moment. “North Carolina is nice this time of year.”

You blink once and then smile at Dean. It is a smile so lovely and earth-shattering that he could not, if his whole life depended on it, stop himself from smiling back.

a/n: a big fat thank you to everyone who has followed along and read this far - especially to those of you who took the time to point out all the different parts and lines that resonated with you or that you particularly liked. the super long comments and reblogs of your favourite parts have been insaane to me like i genuinely can't tell you how much it means that someone would care enough about something i've written to do that so from the bottom of my heart thank you!!! i'm ngl this was TOUGH as it's the longest thing i've ever written but it's also the most rewarding thing ever - i'm so deeply in love with these two and their dynamic!! (i may or may not have thought about what happens to them beyond s2 and have a concrete story for them in my head LMAO). thank you thank you thank you everyone who commented or reblogged with your kind words, it genuinely has meant so much 🤍

🏷 series taglist: @juliperezsilveira @logansdollxx @buckfreqky

🏷 everything taglist: @buckysbbydoll @donuelle @angelryex @kombuchaaaaa @dollfaceglow @vip-hs @mollyherondale @taecallsmenoona @gummycluster856 @tw1sters @tellybearryyyy @dollydoll111

🏷 dean taglist: @soullessambs @leyra-giovanni @spaghettiwoes @suckitands33 @buckmybarnes @lostdragonqueen13 @moralgraymatter @love-stucky @sourgummieworm @annoyingrebelsoul @roseblue373 @meowrz1a @spookyysinsanity @bleuatlas @kelseaackles @10ava01 @cvntyvampi @hisbabydollmae @magic-sprinkled-daydreams @hxlaenahalliwell @katiejade @sodavrr @s0ullesslullab1es @girls-alias @marsmaryy @directioner5life @lyannalovesfictionalmen @ashlizabeth @mrrayjay @overly-enthusiastic-cats @blubellwoods

It’s the first frosty morning there has been for a while. He can see his breath puff out in front of him as soon as he steps outside the door of the motel. The cold attacks his cheeks and knuckles. You let out a shivery burring noise while you close the door behind him.

You hesitate before getting into the car and he feels like some sort of kicked dog all over again. He supposes he shouldn't blame you. He’s aware himself of how all of this looks and sounds. But there’s a less rational side of his brain that is screaming that you should know him better than this.

You’re like some sort of trapped insect in the car, jittery and panicked. He pretends not to notice all the nervous glances you throw his way, but they irk him.

You pass a grey, congested city that could be anywhere in America and cross a bridge into a dirt road bordered by fields. He looks out to the tall, yellowish grass coated in frost and tries to loosen the knot of irritation and restlessness in his stomach.

He hasn’t taken any painkillers today because you have them and he hadn’t wanted to ask, so his calf is pulsing with pain. He wants to fight. It doesn’t even matter what - he’d just like to jam his fist into something. It has been too long without a proper hunt.

“So what’s really happening with Sam?” you ask him quietly.

He looks over at you. You seem absorbed in the road in front of you, rubbing the wheel idly with your thumb. You’re trying to look casual, but your eyes move to the right every so often, as if you’re trying to catch him in your peripherals. 

“If I were to believe your whole story about hunting,” you continue. He doesn’t like the way you say it. Like you’re trying to make a joke out of it just to prove that he absolutely has not gotten the jump on you. “What does that mean for Sam?”

He pauses. “I don’t wanna lie.”

“You’ve been lying this whole damn time. Why stop now?” Your voice is suddenly very cold. 

“I stopped lying to you a few days ago. There was no use in it.”

“And what about all that shit you said about being a scammer?”

“I never said that I did it as a career,” he says, irritated. “I said that’s how I make my money. Which is true. You don’t exactly get a pension plan and healthcare as a hunter.”

“So why do it?” You’re still using that same grating tone - like you’re trying to prove that he can’t trick you into believing him. 

He considers spoofing. Saying something about ‘helping people’. And he wouldn’t be lying - that’s part of it - but you’re annoyingly exacting about this kind of thing. You’d probably scoff.

“I grew up in it. My dad became a hunter after my mom died.”

You glance sideways at him. “And you never tried to get out? You’re never tempted to tell your dad that you’re gonna go do something else?”

“My dad died a few months back,” he says and looks away to avoid seeing whatever pity or shock crosses your face. “But no.”

“Why not?”

He looks back over to you. He notices that you’ve lost that jovial tone, the one that makes it sound like you’re indulging him on some joke that you’re not stupid enough to fall for. You just look slightly uncomfortable.

“Sammy tried to get out. Went to go be a lawyer. I think he could have done it too, ‘cause he really wasn’t built for all this. I always thought about him getting out and being some sort of local historian or doin’ something like you. Not me, though. I think I was built for it.”

“Built for it how?”

He heaves a sigh. “Let it alone, would you?”

He doesn’t expect that to work, but it does. You go very quiet, eyes focused firmly on the road, and he instantly regrets it. He knows you well enough at this point to know this silence will likely last all the way to Duluth. It’s only another couple of days but he doesn’t think he can do it.

“You can’t do this kinda job without gettin’ your hands a bit dirty, yeah? I think that’s what I was built for. Dirty hands. If I wasn’t doin’ this, I’d be out getting my hands dirty somewhere else. At least this way I can make myself useful. Do something that’s not all bad.”

Your frown deepens. “So you never thought about it? Just having a normal life?”

Of course he’s thought about it. He thinks about it often.

It’s funny what happens when he thinks about it. He starts to feel an itching, lacerating guilt until his brain forces him to give it up. Beyond the influence of his dad, it might be why he never reached out to Sam when he was in Stanford. Because he had learned to associate a normal life with something morally wrong and so, in his head at least, Sam was doing something unforgivable.

He knows it’s all backwards. He’s got the whole thing twisted in his head. Other people - people who were raised in normal, five-person families with a mom and dad, three aunts, two uncles and grandparents - might feel guilt for wanting to do what he does. Live on the road, fuck who he wants, drink when he wants, go where he wants. He imagines that his life probably holds some captivating, secret allure for someone else. There’s probably some sorry bastard out there that secretly dreams about hopping in a car without a word to his wife and kids and hightailing it out west.

That’s the same kind of secret fantasy he has for a normal life. He was raised into this. His dad handed off certain responsibilities to him and he’ll be damned if he doesn’t make good on those promises. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t think of it sometimes, though. Forgetting about all those dumb pledges and oaths he made and taking up a 9-5. He’ll never be some sissy in a suit, but he could make a damn good mechanic.

You’ve now made it into the picture he conjures of it. Him cooking you eggs in the morning before you both head out to work. You arriving in wearing some pillowy blouse and a pencil skirt, hair askew and papers spilling out of your arms. He’d chop up some fruit so you don’t get on him about how he’s going to get scurvy. When he gets back from work, you’re already moving around, doing whatever it is that women do in houses. He’d tell you that he has to head out and collect the kids from Sam's house. You’d tell him that it can wait thirty minutes.

It’s nice to him at first. But then that guilt creeps up all over again and it turns unpleasant.

“Yeah,” he says at last, voice gruff. “I’ve thought about it.”

You nod at the road. “You ever kill someone?”

“Yeah.”

“Humans?”

He hesitates. No more lies. “Yeah. Never anyone who wasn’t gonna kill me.”

“Why would any human be trying to kill you?”

“Just like- uh.” He coughs. He’s really taking a leap of faith trying to get you to believe this one. “Demons sometimes take over human bodies. Sometimes we gotta plug the bodies they’re in if they’re gonna get to us. Or there was this blood virus not that long ago. Sent everyone in the town wacky. Had to kill a few people to stop ‘em from cutting us up and infecting us. Just that kinda thing.”

You look faintly nauseous. “Right. Just that kinda thing,” you mumble.

He’s making progress here. You’re still not sold - which he can’t exactly blame you for - but you no longer look like you’re about to throw yourself out the door of the moving vehicle. You’re starting to talk to him like you used to again, too.

You rarely take your eyes off the road for the next couple of hours while you plague him with questions about himself, his job and the supernatural. You stop once for some lunch. You come back with healthy sandwiches again and he stubbornly picks out anything not prepared in a factory. 

He tries not to be annoyed by your million and one questions, but his leg is really fucking sore now and he can make out the outline of the box of painkillers in your back pocket when you lean forward to read a faraway road sign. 

You catch him at one point, raising an eyebrow at him in disbelief. And Dean would not put it past himself to be checking out your ass during such a critical conversation - in fact, it sounds just like him - but he really isn’t this time.

“Uh- not trying to change the subject here, I know this is important. But it’s just… my leg is still completely fucked.”

You gasp quietly, hand lurching behind you to grab the box. “Jesus Christ, I’m sorry. Here you go.”

You chuck it to him and he catches it with ease. He chews up two of the pills without water, flinching at the bitter taste but already feeling better for having taken them. 

You’re giving him a tight, apologetic smile once he’s able to pry the bits of chalky medicine out of his teeth. “Still not any better?”

“Better. Still not good.”

The clouds have thinned and there’s finally a bit of sun to melt the frost. He watches the drops plummet down the car window, over the great slabs of grey concrete of the outside buildings. You fish your sunglasses back out of the holder but only prop them on your head in preparation. 

“If you’re making up this supernatural thing, you’ve really thought it through,” you say finally.

He’s not sure how to respond to that. He’s not making it up, but he’s sure anything he might say to stress the point would have the opposite effect. He stays quiet and stretches out his leg, testing the  level of pain.

The soft case falls onto his lap unexpectedly. When he looks over at you, you’re staring at the road as if you hadn’t just given him the CD wallet for the first time without him having to ask. It comes across as a sort of apology - maybe for not believing his story, even while you’re still actively claiming that you don’t. 

He slots out the 80s pop you have on and slides it back into the plastic covering. He flicks through the pages until he finds something by the Stones. He breathes on the back of the disc, rubs it a little with the bottom of his t-shirt and lets the stereo suck it up.

He regrets his choice as soon as Jagger starts barking roughly through the speakers. He usually likes this record, but it’s giving him a headache right now. Still, a silly sense of pride won’t let him change it. He just turns it down.

He thinks about last night and how it felt to kiss you. He knows he shouldn’t, but he doesn't try to stop himself either. There’s no use. It’s been prodding at his subconscious since it happened - flashes of it jumping into the forefront of his mind at inopportune moments.

The feeling of your soft lips on his, tugging at his upper lip gently, as if you weren’t sure you were allowed. The feeling of your hand carding through the short hairs at the base of his skull, just caressing. Your legs around his waist, your hand on his bare chest. Your sigh against his lips, like you were resigning yourself to him. 

He knows he shouldn't have done that. He knew it even at the time, but he hadn’t even tried to stop himself. He briefly considers whether he regrets it, but finds he doesn’t. He supposes he finds it to have been worth it, even with everything that had transpired since. 

Maybe he would think differently about it if he couldn’t feel you surrendering to him, even now. You believe him, even if you would never admit it. And you have no evidence to prove it or even to make it seem likely - if anything, all signs point to the opposite - so you probably never will admit it until you see it all for yourself.

But you believe him. Even if you don’t believe him about everything, you believe him about the murders. You wouldn’t be in the car right now if you didn’t.

He thinks he can work you over completely. He can get you to yield to him by continuing to tell you the truth, because you have this weird sensor for when he’s being honest. He just needs a couple of hours.

He knows that thinking about Sam won’t help him reach him any faster, but he still feels guilty for how often he has been slipping his mind. 

It hardly helps at all that he’s still checking his location intermittently, nor does it help that you two actually seem to be gaining some ground on him. He still feels it gnawing at him.

He’s not sure how he’s supposed to help it though. When you’re warming up to him, he can’t help but sink into you. He will let you draw him into conversation when he should, by all rights, be sitting in stony silence with his head feeling tender and his chest fuzzy and raw. 

He lets you tell him about your family, go through funny stories about you and your sister from when you were kids. He doesn't have to put on a big show of being interested or amused because you don’t stop for his reactions anyway. You just keep talking. About childhood and college and your part-time job last year and the internship your dad had lined up for you this summer that you’d rather die than take. You even tell him about the weird dream you had the other day, but that one is a little beyond him. He loses track of it when the setting switches from a parachuting adventure to a dentist’s office.

That’s another one of those things he likes about you. You know when to talk and when he needs quiet. Sam doesn't have that talent. He will pester and badger him when his head is already full enough, and let him stew in silence even when he’s desperate for distraction.

You falter half-way through some story about a high school ex-boyfriend and prom to bite back a yawn. He watches your face as you do it. Your eyelids are bloated and inflamed from rubbing.

“Y’tired?” he asks.

“Little bit,” you admit, blinking hard.

“You want me to drive for a bit?”

You frown. “But your leg-”

“I can go for maybe forty-five minutes. Enough for you to get a cat nap. You didn’t sleep at all last night, did you?”

It’s like reminding you of last night sends a veil right back over your face. Your lips press together while you shake your head in the negative.

He shrugs, sensing that you’re hesitating. “Up to you. Just sayin’ I don’t mind doing it for a little bit now I’ve taken my meds.”

You consider for a moment. He worries momentarily that he will feel like a complete fool if you say no or, worse, move on as if he hadn’t said anything, but you eventually pull over to the hard shoulder.

His shoulder brushes yours as you pass each other to switch seats and he feels it all the way to his stomach. When he gets into the seat, he spends some time working out the mechanics and tugging with unnecessary force on the plastic handle to adjust it to his height. You watch him struggle and, with practiced ease, launch your seat backwards with one smooth motion. He hadn’t known the seat was able to do that.

He looks around him, frowning at the automatic gear lever. He decides he will work it out as he goes along. He pulls clumsily off the hard shoulder and rolls onto the road.

You’re watching him. Your eyes are droopy and tired, entire body turned over to face him. You don’t turn away shyly when he looks over at you like you usually do when you’re caught staring. He would give anything he owns to know what you’re thinking.

“Wasting precious time here, sweetheart,” he says. He hates the uncertainty in his voice. “Probably got less than an hour in the tank before this sucker seizes up on me again.”

“You look good driving,” you say sleepily, eyes sagging closed. Your breath deepens almost immediately after, lips parting slightly.

His stomach gives one, strong - almost painful - flutter. Like he’s some chick. He’s embarrassed about it, even though nobody is aware of it but him.

He sneaks glances at you, miserable and a bit delirious. Sunlight is kissing you now, reflecting off your lips and cheeks and the stupid sunglasses still sitting on your head. The day has well and truly warmed up by now and a thin sheet of sweat is forming on your bare legs, folded up to your torso on the seat. Someone should paint you.

Yes, he wants to tell you. Stay here. Stay here and stay just like that, forever.

He’s not sure what this is. He might be losing his head, all without even getting you into the sack.

He makes it an hour before his leg truly refuses to cooperate anymore. He sits in the drivers seat for another twenty minutes before he can work up the will to wake you up with a light shake.

“Dean?” you say drowsily, brows scrunched together. You look at him, confused and bleary-eyed, as innocent as a baby deer.

“Hi, sweetheart,” he says gently. “Leg’s given up.”

You nod, blinking three times in rapid succession. You tug on the plastic handle and your seat props itself up to the correct position again. You sit, completely motionless and staring into nothingness for a few minutes. He waits patiently until you throw open the passenger door and the two of you swap again.

“How long was I out?” you croak, starting up the car and beginning to roll out. The sky has darkened considerably with just the faintest orangey yellow tucked beneath a coat of dark navy. 

Dean had fought through all the rush hour traffic in the first half of your nap. The roads are now quiet again. He pictures a family sitting down for a dinner of spaghetti and meatballs after a long day at work and school. He pictures a family from an old cartoon he used to watch when he does this, the characters now faceless by virtue of his fading memory. He hadn’t grown up around many real families that did stuff like that. 

“Just over an hour, I think.”

You groan. “Why’d you let me sleep that long? Was supposed to be a power nap. Now I’m wiped out.”

He laughs. “You’re too cute to wake up, baby. You try waking yourself up. Bet you couldn’t.”

You go very quiet and he wonders whether he pushed it a bit too far this time. His mind is immediately flooded with images of you in the motel room last night, inching towards the door, and he is convinced that he has screwed up big time. But one look at your face suggests otherwise. 

Your lips are parted very slightly, eyebrows tilted up. You seem embarrassed - maybe a bit surprised - but not unhappy.

You clear your throat. “You never answered my question earlier, you know. About Sam.”

“You asked a lot of questions earlier.”

“What’s going on with him? Right now, I mean.”

He sighs, low and deep. “Just what I told you. He’s gone off the rails a bit. Stole my car and ran off to Duluth.”

You face him with a look - one he knows to be a statement that you’re not impressed. “If everything else you’ve told me is true then there’s more to it than that.”

“There is.”

“What is it?”

“I’m not gonna tell you.”

You frown. “Why not? You told me everything else.”

“Because…” He falters. He considers for just a moment, realising that he’s not too sure himself. “I just- I don’t want you to not like him.”

Your face softens into something fawn-like and open. “Why do you care?”

“I don’t know,” he grunts, voice gravelly. He turns away from you and looks out the window again. It’s too dark to see very much but he watches out for the odd street sign signalling turn-offs for restaurants, motels, service stations, and thinly-disguised brothels, all lit up by the headlights.

“I already like Sam,” you say quietly with a small smile. “I can’t help but like him. With everything you’ve told me.”

He smiles. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. I liked the story about the rabid Rottweiler and the golf cart. Thought it was kinda cute that he wouldn't run it over even though it was trying to get at him. Shows what kinda person he is.”

He laughs at the memory of it. “Oh, yeah. That was a chupacabra.”

Your smile is frozen on your face. It drops very slowly. “What?”

“That wasn’t a Rottweiler. It was a chupacabra.”

“Like the-”

“The vampiric animal.”

“Oh.”

You seem to really think hard about this and he lets you. Watches your face as you frown at the road, lip caught in your teeth like you’re doing up some sums. He finds that he’s not nervous now, though. Just amused

You hesitate. “All those stories you told me. Were they all-”

“I had to get creative. Change some of the details. But they were real.”

“Even the one about the jet ski?”

He groans. “I regret telling you that one. You gotta let it go, dude.”

Your laugh is bubbling and completely hypnotic. “I can’t. Now c’mon. Tell me about what’s going on with Sam.”

He says nothing, keeping still as if that might influence you to let it go. Seconds pass in silence while you wait on an answer that he has no intention of giving.

“Dean.” Your voice is very earnest all of a sudden and lower than he has ever heard it. “I’m putting a lot of faith in you right now. I know I’m asking a lot of questions, but you’re asking a lot from me too.”

Dean sees something strange and uncomfortable and completely wonderful in that moment, as clearly and comprehensively as if he was looking at it through glass. Your perspective.

He’d seen it before but only in the way he sees the perspective of the pool players he’s hustled or the ditsy housewives he’s banged or the cops he’s evaded. He had seen it only to the extent necessary to get what he wants from you. And it’s not just the ride he wants. No, he wants your conversation, your warmth, your comfort.

He’d answered questions only to get access to you and all that comes with you, monitoring your feelings with an emotional thermostat to figure out the minimum he could give you to keep you happy. He’d driven until his calf gave out just so he could see you comfortable and blithe because that’s how he likes seeing you. It’s nothing criminal, but he’s out for himself in this.

But he realises now how much he owes you and it’s for damn sure that it’s more than six hundred dollars. He thinks about how much it must have taken to throw out all your judgement on just a word of some strange man from the FBI’s Most Wanted that supernatural creatures really do exist. More than that, you had agreed without much more than a waver to drive him to Minnesota so he can get to his little brother. There’s nothing in this for you beyond a few bucks that you could easily get off your rich-ass parents if you turned home right now.

“I don’t really know what’s up with Sam. One moment he was fine and the next he just- I don’t know. He snapped. Just like that.”

You look over at him jerkily, seemingly surprised that he had bothered to answer. “Oh. And you haven’t seen him since?”

“I have. He went missing maybe two weeks ago. He calls me out of the blue after about a week from this random ass motel near where I met you. So I go driving to get him. He tells me he blacked out and doesn't remember a thing from the last week. So we go retracing his steps and- well… yeah. He did some bad shit while he was out. I’m talking real bad. Things that are just so unlike Sammy. You’d know if you met him, it’s just not him. We get back to the motel and he starts begging me to plug him. Put him down so he can’t do any more damage. I react how you’d probably expect. Wake up hours later in the motel. Leg’s busted, ribs are bruised and car is gone. I track his phone and he’s on the I-80 East in some town in bum-fuck nowhere. I know he’s going to Duluth because we have another hunter friend staying there and following the pattern he left while he was blacked out last time, I know he must be going to take her out. That’s it. I met you right after that.”

You’re doing the number-crunching frown again. He almost tells you that there’s no use in it - he’s been over the possibilities a million times in his head and has come up with nothing. You’d probably tell him to be quiet though, so he takes the initiative and does it without instruction.

“That’s bizarre…” you mutter, as if everything you’d heard in the last 24 hours hasn’t been absolutely bat-shit insane. 

He has to give it to you. You’ve done a much better job with this whole thing than he had expected. Maybe it’s because you study English Lit and read some crazier stuff or maybe it’s because you still don’t fully believe him, but he’s pretty certain anyone else would have run for the hills by now.

“So he’s possessed? Like those other people you talked about?”

“No,” he says patiently. “Those were demonic possessions. You don’t just snap out of them after a week.”

“Oh.” You say it absently. It’s as if you hardly heard him, still doing the numbers in your head. Dean does them with you. He lets the thought sit there for a moment, churns it over in his head.

He replays last week in his head. Allows himself to picture - for the first time in a long few days - Sam’s clouded face. The way he had begged and pleaded with Dean to put him out of his misery. The immediate turn when he refused.

A breath is struck from him, caught somewhere in his chest. He runs a hand over his exhausted face. “Son of a fucking-”

You jump. “What?”

“You’re right. It’s a goddamned possession.”

“How do you know?”

“I don’t for certain. It adds up though. He didn’t snap out of anything, it was just the demon acting as Sam. I just didn’t know it at the time because…”

Because nothing. He should have known. How didn’t he know?

“Okay. It’s a possession. How do you… exorcise it? That’s what it’s called, right - an exorcism?”

It’s so simple that it comes as a shock. He had expected you to be spooked, or to revert back to that wry mocking tone. He had expected to see that smile again - the one that made it seem like you were just screwing with him by pretending to fall for it.

“It’s complicated. I’m gonna need to stop at a Church somewhere tomorrow before we get into Duluth. And I gotta call a friend.” He stops, hesitates. “I wasn’t sure… I mean, you don’t have to-”

You smile. It shuts him up.

“My husband and I have just moved to the area and we’d like to bless our new home. I wonder if you might have a bottle or two of holy water that we could take with us?”

You look obscenely pretty today. You’re dressed in pale blue with a modest neckline, a cute little headband in your hair. You’re smiley and eager, looking up at the priest with perfect innocence. He’s impressed and a little turned on, for reasons he can’t initially identify. On reflection, he finds with more than a little discomfort that the reason is that you referred to him as a husband. Your husband. He puts it out of his mind immediately.

The place smells like dirty coins. Churches always do, but this one stinks particularly bad. The odour of sharp, bitter copper makes his eyes sting. You seem out of place here - too clean, maybe - but the priest you’re speaking to doesn’t. He has dark, cold eyes that are almost black and dirty fingernails to match. 

He sizes Dean up, pressing together two pale, thick lips that faintly resemble a couple of worms. He’s trying to figure out if the two of you are old enough to be a married couple, Dean reckons. He can see the slow wheel turning in the man’s brain.

Dean is probably just about old enough to be married, but the priest’s eyes stop on you with suspicion. He can almost hear his thoughts.

“We don’t generally give these things out to strangers…” he says slowly.

That doesn’t seem very Christian to Dean, but he doesn’t call it out to the old bastard. He would prefer to see how you handle it.

“Oh,” you say, faint surprise passing over your face. He can’t tell if it’s real or put-on. “I didn’t realise there were any strangers in the house of God. That’s alright. I think we passed another Church nearby.”

“Of course, you’re right,” he says, the two lip-worms on his face pulling upwards at either end. “You won’t be strangers for long, I hope, if you have just moved nearby. I will come back with a bottle.”

You had asked for a bottle or two, but this priests seems like some dirty crook. Dean doesn’t think that cajoling him for another will work. He meets your eyes in silence while the ageing man disappears into the sacristy and reappears with a clouded white bottle with a blue lid.

You put your hand out to take the bottle and the priests stops short. For a moment, he looks at your hand at then back at you, nothing filling the silence except the old, buzzing bulb from above.

“No wedding ring,” he observes with a forced, polite stare.

“We decided not to do wedding rings,” you say with a shy smile at Dean. “Too performative. And we’re trying to be better Christians every day. We do our best to abide by those biblical principles of modesty and simplicity.”

The priests glances once over to Dean and he can do nothing but give him a nervous, squirmy grin, forcing one chuckle that is more of an exhale, out of pure habit.

He passes over the bottle then with a smile. He makes some vague comment about how very respectable that is and how he hopes to see you in the church this Sunday. You give your promises while Dean shuffles you out the door.

“What a stingy old bastard,” you laugh as you sit back into the car. “Acted like I was asking for all the money in the collection box.”

“Yeah well you charmed it out of him anyway. When did you become such a good liar?”

“I’ve always been a good liar. I just haven’t tried it on you yet.”

He somehow doubts that, but he doesn’t want to probe too far into it. You pull out of the parking spot and onto the main road.

He smirks over at you. “So how come I’m your husband but I’m not allowed sleep in the same bed as you? That another one of your biblical principles?”

Your smile drops. It’s replaced by an embarrassed, wry thinning of your lips. “Put a sock in it.”

He laughs, leaning back into his seat with his arms crossed over his chest. “Ah marital bliss.”

You had asked for two beds at the motel last night. He hadn’t been surprised, exactly. He knows you trust him now, almost as much as you did before. But you’re still claiming not to be sold on the supernatural of it all, even if he knows you’re more convinced than you’re letting on.

He supposes the separate beds was a call from your better judgement to keep some level of distance from him for now, almost like you’re proving that you haven't completely lost your head. He’s not sure who you need to prove it to. Yourself, probably. Maybe him too but that’s no use. He can see right through you.

You had watched him hesitantly from your bed while he spoke low on the phone to Bobby, and he had thought that you might have been about to switch up and ask him to stay with you with the way you were twitching and biting the inside of your cheek.

You had asked him if everything was sorted when he got off the phone and turned over on your side as soon as he said yes. He had felt very grumpy getting into his own bed.

He’s trying not to think about how close you are to Minnesota. Sam has been at a motel in Duluth for a few hours and it won’t take you long to get to him now. You’re not too far off. Four hours if the traffic is light.

He will have to say goodbye to you in four hours. He knows this. He will get out of the car once you get to wherever Sam is and you’ll ask to go with him. He will have to convince you that it’s not a good idea. You’ll put up a fight, most likely, but you’ll come around, just like you did after you asked to travel with him and Sam at that diner.

He’s had one serious relationship and a couple of intense flings. But he had known, even getting into them, that they would eventually come to an end. His few months with Cassie, his week with Lisa - they had seemed doomed. He walked into them with the knowledge that they would eventually come to an end, which made it that bit easier when they inevitably did. Or maybe he had doomed them himself with that thought. He’s not sure.

This thing is different, though. He’s not even sure what to call it, but somehow the past week has seemed endless. He had spent days on end in a car with you. Nothing to do except talk. He never did very much talking with other girls he’s been with - it was never that kind of relationship. 

And hope had crawled into the equation somewhere along the way. He can’t say when or where, but at one point it had started to feel like he wouldn't have to say goodbye. And he’s not ready to, but he knows he has to. 

He's scared, he realises quite dumbly, but it’s not even that realisation that shakes him. It’s the realisation that he wants to talk to you about it. That, as soon as the though climbs into his head, he wants to share it with you - to cut himself open so you can see.

I’m scared, he wants to tell you. I’m so damn scared of what has started to sprout here. I’m scared of how long it will take me to forget you and how long it will take me to convince myself that I don’t need you. I doubt I ever will.

But he won’t say that to you. So he just won’t think about it. 

He’ll think about Sam instead. For the millionth time since last night, he will mull over all the moral quandaries and guilt-laden feelings that spring up from having a little brother who you couldn’t even tell was possessed by a demon. He will make himself sick with thoughts of that instead because that’s familiar ground. He’s used to feeling guilty about Sam.

“We had this lake by our house,” you say at some short interval, before he can get very far into his expedition. “My sister used to take a notion and go out swimming in it, fully clothed. She’d come out completely drenched and covered in muck and my mom would always start wailing afterwards about how wild she was and how she doesn’t know where she got that from. Which was funny because my mom never even met our birth parents. But I remember one time Adam was over and we were playing in the garden-” You catch sight of Dean who has started to frown. “Yeah, Adam is the ex. I told you we were family friends. Anyway, he pushed me. I think it was off a swing or something but maybe it wasn’t. And my sister just comes bounding out of the lake like some sort of sea monster, dripping mud with reeds hanging off her. And she just decked him.”

“Adam’s a pussy,” he says, frowning.

You laugh then. “He was probably six years old.”

“Doesn’t matter. Jackass. If I was there, I woulda beat him up for you.”

You smile at the road. “I would like to have known you back then. I think you might have been the kind of kid to shove a worm down my collar or something to get my attention.”

“Bet it woulda worked too. I was adorable. You would’ve had the fattest crush on me.”

“You wish,” you scoff. “I was really headstrong and had an older sister to fight all my battles. I had higher self esteem than that.”

“I would have won you over eventually.”

You chuckle - one brief exhale. “I can believe that.”

“Yeah? You got a crush on me right now?”

“You know I do.”

He almost wishes he hadn’t asked. Your eyes are relaxed lips turned up at the sides. You’re not teasing, not joking. His heart gives one painful lurch and he turns to look out the window, fists pushing down hard on the oiled leather of his seat.

One hour from Duluth, you go completely silent. Twenty minutes from the edge of the town, you start getting twitchy. Tapping your thumb against the steering wheel, adjusting your seat once and then twice and then a third time. You change the CD twice before the second song ends on both records and Dean doesn’t complain about your choice. He takes the last of his painkillers dry.

He checks your phone for a location on Sam - or whoever is currently inhabiting his body - and finds that he’s in some random honky-tonk bar near a docking bay. Something about that makes his stomach squeeze tight. 

It’s likely that Jo has shacked up in that bar, but the fact that Sam is still there is probably a good sign. If she were dead, he would have cleared out quick.

“What’s the plan?” you ask eventually.

“I’ve got the holy water,” he says. “I’ll wing the rest.” He is trying to pull off the nonchalance that usually makes you laugh and call him an idiot, but it’s falling flat. You don’t even crack a smile.

“You can drop me off a block down from the bar,” he amends after one quick look at your face. “And then I want you to drive as far away as you can. I’d tell you to get the hell out of town, but I think you won’t listen to me. So just get a motel on the complete other side of the city. Text me your location, if you want. I’ll come see you when it’s over.”

“I don’t even have your number, Dean.”

That takes him aback momentarily. It reminds him of just how backwards this whole thing has been. He picks up your phone from the centre console and begins to input his number.

“I’m not going away to some motel,” you say, eyes fixed on the dark road in front of you. The city has started to come into view - bright and dreadful in the distance. “I’m coming in with you.”

“Like hell you are.”

“I’ve come this far with you. Why won’t you just let me-”

“You don’t understand.” He can hear the frustration in his own voice, but it doesn’t bother him. He wants you to know about it this time. “This isn’t like sweet talkin’ a priest. This is real. Sam’s possessed and I’m pretty sure he’s doing some real bad shit to another hunter. One who grew up with all this shit and has a bit of experience with it. But she’d never be able to take on Sam because he’s strong and he’s smart and ten times the threat with a demon inside him. So you’re gonna go and drive to the other side of town, just like I said, and text me your location.”

You’re shaking your head before he can even finish. A thin blade of annoyance shoots through him.

“Don’t do that. You can’t just shut me out of this now. I want to help.”

“You have helped and you fucking know it. What the hell do you think you’re doing here with me right now? But you’ve gotta be nuts if you think I’m gonna bring you into that bar. It’s a death trap. There are two possible outcomes of it. One is your death and the other is Sammy’s and I’d much rather neither-”

“Dean.” You’re speaking with increased urgency as you speed into the city. “I’m coming in. You can’t stop me so you may as well just accept it and tell me what the plan is.”

He observes you for a second. He sees the same girl he did in the hours following that vehicle fire. He remembers just how despairing you were that night and the following day - that desperate, overpowering need to be useful. To help. He still doesn’t fully understand it, but he recognises it in some ways. It’s rooted deep. One of those pesky family things, he supposes. He’s not winning this one.

“Okay,” he says and you sigh with a profound relief that surprises him. “You stay behind me. I’m gonna try to talk myself close enough to him to get him with the water which will show for sure whether or not he’s possessed. Might hurt him enough so I can tie him up. If that doesn’t work…” He pauses, sucks on his teeth. “Well, I dunno. Try a fistfight or something. I guess I’ll work it out from there.”

He’s pretty impressed that you look only faintly nervous. You nod solemnly, pulling the car into a dark, gloomy avenue, almost too small for cars. You put the car in park and take a heavy breath.

“You okay?” he asks.

“Yeah, I’m okay. We’re here.”

He nods once. He takes your hand without looking at your face. He traces his thumb along the bumps of your knuckles, pulling the key out of the ignition with his other hand.

“Wait here. I gotta get my gun from the trunk,” he says, squeezing your hand once and letting it go to open the door. When he rises to his feet, he stretches his leg, testing his weight against it. Still some pain, but not so bad with the painkillers.

He unlocks the trunk with the button on the remote, fishes through his duffle for the gun and finds it. He closes the trunk and stares at the remote in his hand for just a second, before pressing the lock button for all doors. 

There’s a muffled noise from inside the car and then a whole commotion. The car jerks with the force of you trying to pry the locked door open. He waits, still standing behind the car for just a second to ensure that there’s no way to unlock it from the inside. He considers coming up to the window, telling you he’s sorry. 

He walks away, towards the bar.

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Adrenaline. Screaming. Bruises. The two of you alone in some ratty motel bathroom while water from the shower collected on the tile floor to drown out the noise.

One minute, you were yelling at him for nearly getting MM killed, the next he had your wrists pinned against cracked tile and you were kissing him hard enough to make his lips hurt. Not that he'd care. After that, it became a pattern. Quick, secretive, never discussed. Quick fucks against walls, in abandoned motels, even in the safehouse late at night when everyone was asleep, a hand slapped over your mouth to muffle any noise from your mouth while he rammed his cock into you.

And soldier boy- who had spent decades fucking his way across America without a second thought, realized one evening in a bar that he hadn't touched another woman in months.

Not because he couldnt.

No- because he didnt want to. Which was fucking ridiculous. He told himself it didnt mean anything when you rested your head on his chest after sex. Didnt mean anything when you absentmindedly played with the chain around his neck while half asleep.

Or on that quiet afternoon. You angered him on a mission, and fuck if he could wait until you're back at the safehouse. He cant. Thats why he has you on some scrappy, dirty floor, fucking you hard in prone-bone. The tip of his thick cock slams into that perfect, spongy spot inside your warm cunt, and you feel like you might cry. With your cheek smushed against the floor, and feet dangling weakly behind you, your hand reaches out, searching for something to hold onto while every harsh thrust inches you a little forward, and your hand finds his. Your eyebrows knit together while his scruff tickles the sensitive skin of your throat, and he quickly pulls out, still holding onto your hand while his warm cum shoots all over your back.

Not even that meant anything-....right?

That afternoon had stayed with Him. Your palm against his, breathing uneven and eyes squeezed shut while he held on so tight he thought me might break your fingers. People who were just fuck-buddies didnt do that. Right? But then the next day you'd barely look at him infront of the others. Like he embarassed you.

The bar is crowded and loud, neon signs reflecting blue and pink against sticky and nasty floors. Ben sits alone in some dusty corner, nursing whiskey while Butcher hustles some idiot at pool. You're sat at the bar waiting for drinks when some guy slides up beside you. Young. Pretty. Smug. Ben watches your face carefully over the rim of his glass, a perfect eyebrow slightly raised. The guy says something that makes you laugh politely, and then- he touches your arm. Soldier boys jaw tightens.

What. The fuck?

...why is he even mad- you're just fuck buddies, but hes still halfway to standing when you shake your head and say something short. Final. He cant hear it but the guy looks annoyed. You glance across the room one time- directly at Ben. Automatically, the guy hitting on you looks over too- but once he catches sight of the massive supe glaring holes through him, he basically evaporates. Right after, you grab your drinks and walk straight back to ben's booth.

"You looked homicidal,"

you smile a little, sliding him a Beer.

"I am homicidal."

At his words you snort softly and scooch into the booth next to him, slightly close like its instinct. Warm. Easy. His arm settled along the back of the booth behind you.

"You could've gone with him,"

he says casually, making your brows furrow. "Why would i do that?" He shrugs, pretending not to care. You stare at him for a second too long before looking away.

And only two nights later, you're back at it. Stubble scratching along your thighs, you moan quietly. He eats you out like a man starving, ridiculously- plump lips wrapping around your clit and sucking on it with a loud slurp.

Jesus Christ, hes a real womanizer. His beefy arms wrap around your thighs, stopping you from squirming with ease- one of your hands tangled in his hair while the other one braces against the sheets.

"....mm-, fuck-"

you whisper breathlessly. He only hums in response. "....mhmm?.."

A floorboard creaks outside.

Both of you freeze.

Then comes footsteps.

Your eyes widen in Panic. "Fuck-" and the doorknob rattles. In one panicked- intrusive reaction, you shove at ben's face with your foot.

Hard.

He stumbles backward with a loud thud into the nightstand. "OW-- Jesus fucking--"

"Shhh!" The door cracked open and inch. "Everything okay?" Hughie asks sleepily. He heard whining. You sit upright instantly, clutching your blanket to your chest while ben crouched besides the bed, rubbing his jaw with murder in his eyes. "Fine!-" you squeak. "I--uh--nightmare,."

Hughie blinks. "....Right. okay." The door shut.

Silence.

Ben slowly looked up at you.

"You kicked me in the fuckin' face." You'd almost be scared of him right now if you werent so caught off guard.

"I panicked-!"

"You panic like a goddamn mule."

You bury your face in your hands. "I'm-...sorry-."

But he barely hears you. Not because of the kick to his face- because all he could think of was how terrified you'd looked at the idea of someone finding out.

Not embarassed.

Terrified. Of him.

Something cold settles in his chest. Colder than it always does.

So he pulls away after that. Subtle at first.

He stops touching you casually. Stops sitting beside you. Stops lingering after missions to trade sarcastic comments while everyone else cleans up.

And you notice.

Of course you notice.

He can tell by the way your eyes track him across rooms now. By the little crease between your brows whenever he brushes past you without stopping.

Still, neither of you say anything.

Until one night, you finally corner him in the kitchen after everyone else went to sleep.

"You're avoiding me."

Ben scoffs, swallowing. Not nervous. Not really. Just....tense. "You're paranoid."

"Bullshit." You hiss.

Making you flinch, he slams the fridge shut harder than necessary. "Maybe i got tired of sneakin' around like your dirty little secret."

Your face falls.

The instant regret hits him like a truck, but he keeps going because hes soldier boy.

"You act like people finding out about us would be the end of the fuckin' world."

"Thats not---"

"You kicked me in the face because hughie touched a doorknob."

"I panicked!"

"Why?" His voice cracks through the Kitchen sharper than intended.

"Why are you so scared of people knowing, huh? Are you so ashamed of me?"

You stare at him like he'd slapped you. Then you laugh once- small and disbelieving.

"Ashamed of you?-"

"Sure looks like it."

"Oh my god." You drag both hands down your face before stepping closer.

"Ben, i'm- scared because this team is already hanging together by threads and if Butcher realizes we're involved he wil absolutely use it against us-"

He says nothing.

You swallow the lump in your throat, shaking your head. "You really thought i was embarassed of you?"

"When people get close to me," he says quietly, "it usually ends badly."

The honesty in that nearly breaks your heart. His expression had gone guarded in a way you rarely saw-- less arrogant, less untouchable. Just...tired.

You step closer slowly, fingers curling in the front of his shirt.

"I turn other men down because i want you," you mumble softly. "I sleep in your bed whenever i can, because i want to. There's no other guy who's hand i hold during sex-..."

His eyes search yours carefully, like he doesent trust what hes hearing.

"And for the record," you add, voice trembling slightly, "if someone had opened that bedroom door while you were eating me out? I would've died of humiliation because they caught me completely in love with you."

Silence.

Absolute silence.

Then ben kissed you.

Not rough this time,- not hungry. Just deep- and wrecked and relieved.

His hands cradle your face like something precious while your arms wrap around his neck.

"You love me..?" He mutters against your mouth like the words still confused him. His rough hands trail up your waist under your shirt.

You laugh shakily. "Unfortunately."

A huff escapes him- almost a laugh.

Then he buries his face in the crook of your shoulder, eyes closed.

"Mh,"

A few soft kisses get pressed against the smooth line of your throat, making you exhale shakily while one of your hands braces on his chest.

Your and ben's heavy breathing fills the room. His hands tug your pants off, and your hands fumble with his sweatpants too. Of course hes not wearing any underwear. Pig. Biting down on your lower lip, you spit into your palm and stroke up and down his length a few times, before he pushes your panties aside and lines up with your pretty cunt.

God, hes missed it.

Once he bottoms out in you, a grunt leaves him and a quiet moan leaves you. Every thrust feels different from the other times- Like you both finally admitted something thats been killing you. Your hands scramble for leverage on the counter and the back of your head hits the cupboard with a deep thrust. If only you could bring yourself to care. Your arms wrap around his neck.

"Nnh- mh-mh-mh-...shit..."

You pant. His hips move faster and faster until he finally throws both of you over the edge, bodys locking up and limbs tangled with eachother. He pulls out of you, his cum leaking out of you with ease.

"....thank you," He mumbles. You smile tiredly.

"...for what?".

".......-fuck, i dont know. Just thank you."

Who knew the soldier boy could get so soft.

I actually kinda like this?? I think 🫣

The pad of your thumb dabs at a smudge of dried crimson on his cheek, and his throat works with a heavy swallow. It's quite difficult to refrain from tipping into the touch. Your touch, soft and sweet, an arrow of carnations. Perfuming up his nose until he's dizzy with it.

"Well, um," you start. "I think so."

He nods as best he can under your hold. "I'll take that."

Quiet, as you shift on your feet, neck craned to keep his eyes on you. A buzzing thrum through his chest and heart, maybe the leftover adrenaline, he feels brave enough to lift a hand and settle his palm light to your side, above the waist hem of your jeans.

"You're good at this," he murmurs and watches the canopy of your lashes crease as you blink, and as you step back to peel a bandage from it's thin sheet.

"Oh, well, I'm just used to it," you reply. Voice so soothing, a clement balm to his soul. "You get banged up a lot, De."

He huffs a laugh and his skin prickles as you lay the bandage over his cut.

"Yeah," he sighs out. "Guess that's true, huh?"

You hum, he's very used to such simple responses from you. His mouth curls like a petal into a fond grin, he can barely feel the pain of the split being tugged up.

"Thanks, angel." His palm pats your waist.

He likes that you're looking at him now, into his eyes again. You're wonderful, and you look just as such. The lighting in here is a little stuffy, so he knows it's only you. Beautiful like the sun and moon all on your own.

"It's no fuss," you say, smiling subtle. "You feel okay?"

"Perfect, sweetheart," he replies, and wishes he could stay in here a bit longer without being obvious.