Supernatural fic; Dean/Cassie; PG-13
Title: Life Goes On
Rating: PG-13 (language, mentions of sex)
Characters (Pairing): Dean, Cassie, John (Dean/Cassie)
Word Count: 3,884
Summary: Dean meets, loves, and loses Cassie.
Notes: Preseries. Sam is not present in this fic. This is not a happily ever after love story (obviously, since this is Dean/Cassie and you know how that ends). There is Dean angst.
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When Dean saw her, he immediately started thinking with his downstairs brain.
He was working a job with Dad and was currently holed up in a university library in Ohio trying to get some research done on a woman who’d thrown herself out of a twentieth story window fourteen years ago after stabbing her husband seven times. There had been a string of inexplicable deaths on the same floor and Dad thought it was haunted.
Dean was flipping through an old, nearly falling apart newspaper when he sensed her nearby. He saw her boots first, brown and pointy-toed underneath expensive jeans. He raised his eyes, taking in a pair of long legs, a slim body, and a mane of dark curls. She was, in a word, hot.
He pursed his lips thoughtfully, newspaper forgotten. He was bored. She was sexy. However, she wasn’t some random barmaid that he could seduce over a few drinks. She was using the Xerox machine and was probably a student at the university.
Dean picked up his paper and sauntered over to stand behind her. He peeked over her shoulder and saw that she was copying pages from a book on-
“Heroin?” Dean asked aloud. She turned around and he gave her a winning smile.
“I’m writing a paper on drug trafficking in America,” she responded, meeting his grin without wavering.
“Oh, that’s awesome,” Dean said, and he wanted to smack himself. She was really, really pretty. “I, uh, just noticed the book and was wondering why a girl like you would be reading up on heroin.”
“A girl like me,” she repeated. “And what kind of girl would that be?”
“Well, you don’t look like an addict.” Dean tried smiling again and she just stared. After a moment of awkward silence she turned back to the machine and continued copying pages. Dean pressed his hand to his face briefly and in the process dropped half of his newspaper on the floor.
“Are you researching Janet Wilmington’s suicide?” she asked when she knelt down to help him gather the papers. She was looking at the cover story.
“Yeah, you know about it?” Dean asked, figuring he might be able to deal with the disappointment of not being able to sleep with her if she provided him with some helpful knowledge about the case.
“I was just a kid when it happened, but one of my father’s friends is a journalist, so I know a little more than the average person,” she said, smiling faintly. They both stood and Dean extended a hand.
“I’m Dean.”
“Cassie,” she said, shaking his hand firmly.
“Cassie. I’ll buy you a coffee if you tell me everything you know about crazy old Janet,” Dean suggested. Cassie considered his offer and then nodded with a small shrug.
“Okay.”
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Dean ended up buying them both lunch because their conversation ran into the afternoon. They got into an argument about whether Janet really was crazy or not-Dean said hell yeah, she was nuts for offing her husband and then taking the swan dive herself, but Cassie said that before she’d died, Janet had discovered that her husband had murdered someone ten years before their wedding.
“Yeah, but that doesn’t give her the right to kill him. She’s a murderer herself,” Dean argued. Cassie shook her head.
“I’m not saying she was right in killing her husband, I’m just saying that she wasn’t some crazy old woman who randomly decided to shoot him,” she retorted.
“Sounds crazy to me,” Dean muttered. This chick was hot but they couldn’t seem to find a whole lot of common ground. Still, she was really hot.
Cassie just rolled her eyes.
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The first time Dean slept with Cassie, she was everything he had hoped for and more. She was wild in bed and liked to be in charge-much like how she was normally-and Dean was more than content to hand her the reigns. They did it in her apartment off campus where Dean discovered with no small amount of delight that she had a soft, fluffy, queen-sized bed.
She attacked his mouth when they were done, practically sucking his brain out with her ferocious kisses, but Dean loved feisty women so he couldn’t say he minded. He kissed back and ran his fingers through her hair. They’d known each other for exactly two days, and in those days Dean had learned that Cassie was passionate about everything, never backed down from what she believed in, and already had a number of articles published in the local newspaper. Dean was enthralled. They fought over pretty much everything-except sex-but he figured they could work past that.
Cassie’s lips were moving lower when his phone rang. Dean was tempted to ignore it, but gently pulled Cassie off with a reluctant groan and flipped his cell open. It was John and he needed Dean back at the motel for more research on the hunt.
“Dammit,” Dean muttered, flopping back on the pillow. It was at times like these that he really, really missed Sam doing all the research for him. Cassie looked up.
“What’s wrong?”
“I have to go,” Dean said, dragging himself out of bed. Cassie settled into the warm spot he left behind and watched him dress.
“Where?” she murmured. Dean hesitated, pulling his shirt down over his head.
“It’s a job... thing. My job, me and my dad,” he said, buttoning up his jeans and sitting on the bed to lace his boots.
“You know, Dean, you never told me what you do,” Cassie commented lazily, her dark curls falling across her face. Dean concentrated on his shoes, taking longer than necessary.
“I’ll tell you about it later,” he said, straightening and giving her a smile. “I promise.”
“Okay. Call me?”
“Yeah. I will.”
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The hunt was taking longer than usual. Janet Wilmington’s grave wasn’t mentioned in any of the obituaries they found, and John said they had to stay until they figured out what was causing the local deaths. Dean was glad. He kind of liked Ohio and he really liked Cassie. They’d slept together again and she’d thankfully forgotten to ask about his profession, so Dean didn’t bring it up.
He went to her apartment one day and found her nearly in tears, poring over a paper marked in red. He cautiously asked her what was wrong and she went into a rant about how she had one class that she needed credit for but the professor hated her guts and kept failing her papers.
“This is the third paper he’s failed me on,” she said angrily. “There’s nothing wrong with my work! I’ve gone over it a thousand times, I’ve even showed it to my other professors. He’s such a fucking hack.”
Dean had to hide his smile as he sat down next to her. He didn’t understand why girls took everything so seriously-and, okay, so maybe this was a pretty annoying issue to have, but Cassie was almost crying, and he’d never seen her show weakness in any shape or form in their short but intense acquaintance.
“Hey,” he said. “It’s okay. You can get this sorted out.”
“It just makes me so angry. I put so much work into my writing and this man just tosses it all aside.”
Dean put an arm around her and suddenly felt a pang in his chest.
“You know,” he began softly, staring unseeingly at the desk in front of him. “I have... I have this brother. And Sammy-his name’s Sam-he used to be just like you. Like, really obsessed with school and classes and stuff. And one day when we were younger, he must have been like twelve or thirteen, he came home crying like the biggest wussy you ever saw, because he failed a test. One freaking test. He thought it was the end of the world or something, thought he wasn’t going to pass the class.”
“Was he a straight A student?” Cassie asked. Dean smiled faintly.
“Yeah. He was a geek.”
Cassie gave him a little shove. “I was a straight A student and I remember crying to my dad when I failed a test.”
Dean smirked at her. “You were a geek, too?”
“You’re funny, Dean,” she said sarcastically. “What did you tell your brother?”
“I told him to suck it up and stop crying like a three-year-old. Then I helped him study for his makeup test.” Dean rubbed his thumb across Cassie’s shoulder. He didn’t notice she was looking at him until he glanced down.
“Where’s your brother now?” she asked quietly. Dean blinked and looked away.
“Stanford,” he said.
“Stanford University? Wow,” Cassie said, impressed.
“Yeah,” Dean said, withdrawing his arm and standing up. “We don’t really, uh... see each other that much anymore.”
“Oh,” she said, disappointed that Dean was pulling away, but she didn’t comment on it.
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Dean knew he was in trouble. He was acting like a freaking moron, had been acting like one since the moment he set eyes on Cassie. In the back of his mind he knew he was subconsciously trying to replace the hole that Sam had left. He had fallen for Cassie hard and fast because he’d needed someone to cling to. She was smart like Sam, she had her bitchy moments like Sam. The difference was that he could sleep with her. He knew he was treading dangerous waters. He couldn’t fall in love with her. He didn’t want to love her and leave her. He didn’t want to do that to her.
He didn’t want to do that to himself.
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After another bout of passionate sex-they were really good at that, and it was easier than talking-Cassie pulled Dean back after he’d gotten dressed and was getting ready to leave to go on a hunt with Dad. She tugged him down on the bed so they were sitting, her hands on his face. She kissed him once, gently, and then looked into his eyes, and Dean almost felt like she could see the web of lies that made up his soul.
“Dean,” she said. “Talk to me. You never talk to me.”
“I talk to you all the time,” Dean protested.
“No. You never talk to me about the important things, the things that might be a little harder to say. You shut yourself off from me all the time. I can tell when you want to say something serious, but you always pull away before you say it.”
Dean didn’t know what to say, and he could see the growing disappointment in her brown eyes.
“This isn’t going to work if we go on the same way,” she said. “I don’t know anything about you. You’re sweet and you’re caring and you’re a damn good lay, but I don’t know you, Dean.”
“I kind of have issues with baring my soul to people,” he said jokingly. Cassie sighed.
“Can you be serious?”
“I am being serious.”
“Dean. Listen.” She laid her palm on his cheek and he rested his hand on her knee. “I want more.”
“You want more,” he repeated.
“I want more out of this. If you can’t open up to me, then... we’ve gone as far as we’ll ever go.”
Dean leaned in and pressed his lips to hers, and she linked her arms behind his neck. He pulled her close and kissed her, enjoying the feel of his hands nestled deep in her curly hair. When he broke the kiss he didn’t pull back so he couldn’t see her face. His hands slid down to her hips and she stayed still, her fingers gently brushing the back of his neck.
“Cassie,” he said in a quiet voice. “I want to tell you... things. I do. I just...”
“Then tell me, Dean,” she breathed. She wanted to pull away so that she could see Dean’s face, but at the same time she could feel how tense he was and she suddenly had this insane urge to respect his privacy, something she rarely did in her profession.
Dean let out a soft breath into her hair and closed his eyes. He felt like the floor had dropped from beneath his feet. He was freaking Dean Winchester, for crying out loud, how the hell was this so damn scary? He felt like if he made one wrong move his entire world would come crashing down, like it had the night Sam had left.
“Talk to me, Dean,” Cassie was saying. “Talk to me.”
“I, uh... you’re not going to believe me.”
“Just stop making excuses,” she said, her voice getting desperate. “Dean, I want to make this work, but you’re making it impossible.”
He swallowed and opened his mouth. “I’m a hunter.”
Cassie stiffened slightly in his arms. “What kind of hunter, like, animals?”
“No,” Dean said, and he thought he was doing a pretty damn good job of keeping the anxiety out of his voice because he hadn’t been this nervous in years. “I hunt... spirits.”
She paused. “Spirits?”
“Ghosts, demons... creatures that you never thought existed.”
Cassie was silent for a moment before she let out a nervous laugh. “Okay, Dean. I get that you don’t like opening up to people. But, please, just for once, be serious. I really do care about you.”
“I am being serious.”
She pulled back and stared at him. “Dean.”
“Cassie, I swear. My dad and I... that’s why we’re here. That’s why when we first met I asked you about Janet Wilmington’s suicide. The local deaths recently? We’re here to stop them. That floor is haunted.”
She stood up and walked away from the bed and Dean trailed her with his eyes. This wasn’t going to end well. He had that same feeling of foreboding that he’d had right before Sam and Dad had started screaming at each other.
“You hunt ghosts?”
“Among other things.”
“Dean,” she said, doing that nervous laugh thing again. “Dean, do you realize what you’re telling me?”
“I’m telling you the truth,” Dean said. “I promised I’d tell you what I did. This is what I do.”
“Just, stop!” she yelled. “What the hell is wrong with you? Are you even hearing yourself when you talk?”
“I know it sounds crazy,” he said, standing up. “Cassie, I’m not lying.”
“You’re crazy. You’re nuts. Oh my God.”
Dean crossed the room and went to her, despair weighing heavily on him. It had been a crapshoot to tell her the truth, but he just couldn’t bring himself to lie to her.
“I’m not crazy. I didn’t want to tell you about this-I’ve never told anyone!”
“You obviously don’t even take any of this seriously,” she said vehemently. “If you want to go so badly, just leave.”
“I don’t want to leave.”
“Dean,” she said, and he could see tears shining in her eyes. “Just go. I mean it. Please, just leave. You’re scaring me. I don’t... I don’t even know you.”
“Cassie,” Dean said softly. He could plainly see the fear on her face, fear of him. He killed nightmarish monsters so people like her could be safe and she was scared of him. His insides were churning and he felt like he was going to be sick, but she’d just told him to leave. And for the people he loved, Dean would pretty much take any order like a blind (or stupid) puppy. So he listened to her.
He left.
Outside he contemplated bending over in the bushes and throwing up but he looked at his watch and saw that he was already late for the hunt. Dad would be waiting.
Once inside the Impala, he realized that the reason everything hurt so bad was because he was in love for the first time.
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The hunt didn’t go well. Dean was so distracted that Janet’s spirit got the drop on him and threw him clear across the graveyard where a granite grave marker stopped his fall. He heard Dad’s shotgun go off and then felt him kneeling next to him.
“Dean,” he said. “Dean, what the hell’s the matter with you? Are you all right?”
“’M fine,” Dean muttered, clutching at his shoulder. John helped him to his feet and dragged him back over to the grave, ordering him to stay put and be ready to drop the match. John climbed into the ground and started shoveling the rest of the dirt away. Dean watched and tried to concentrate. He couldn’t remember the last time he wanted a job to just be fucking over. He missed stupid Sam, who was off doing the whole college thing while he got pummeled by the spirit of a crazy woman.
They burned Janet’s bones and when they got back to motel, Dad ordered Dean to put ice on his shoulder. Dean tried to hide his quickly swelling wrist from Dad, but of course he noticed anyway and Dean was forced to wear a sling. He fucking hated the sling.
He flopped down on the bed with two ice packs and idly flipped his phone open and saw that he had a missed call and a voicemail from Cassie.
“Hey, Dean, um... you left one of your shirts here, so... if you want to drop by and get it, uh... you can. All right, then... bye.”
Dean knew he shouldn’t go, that he should just leave it alone. He should forget about his damn shirt, forget about Cassie. John was sitting at the table writing in his journal with a newspaper spread out in front of him. Dean stood up and said he’d be back in a little while.
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Being in Cassie’s apartment was a lot harder than before. She opened the door for him (he wasn’t greeted with a smile) and let him in, pointing to his shirt that was folded up on the bed. He picked it up and stared for a second longer at her bed, his mind flashing back to the blissful moments he’d spent tangled up in her body.
“Cassie,” he began, and she shook her head.
“Don’t,” she said softly, but he pressed on.
“I’m sorry about everything. You don’t have to worry about it anymore, though. I’m leaving.”
She looked up at him with dark eyes. “You’re leaving?”
“Yeah, my dad and I, we’re, uh... heading out soon. Work and all,” he said, shifting uncomfortably. She stared incredulously.
“Fine. Go. You don’t have to explain yourself to me, Dean. If you want out, just go.”
“I never said I wanted out. You’re the one that dumped me on my ass, Cassie.”
“You’re telling me this stupid story-”
“It’s the truth!”
“-just to get out of this relationship!”
“I don’t want to get out of this relationship. You’re the first girl I’ve ever cared about enough to explain why I can’t stay. You just won’t listen!”
“How can I listen to this? I want to make this work, Dean, but I can’t. You know why? Because of you. You’re nuts. You don’t make any sense anymore.”
Dean snapped his mouth shut before he could say anything else. He wanted to make things right with Cassie so badly, even though in the end it wouldn’t make any difference because he had to leave her either way. Besides, he couldn’t really blame her. If he put himself in her shoes he did sound pretty damn crazy, talking about ghosts and demons and hunting.
“All right, fine,” he said. His eyes were hot and a little itchy and it was not because he wanted to cry. “Fine, Cassie.”
“Fine what?”
“I’ll go and you can forget about me. I won’t be back.”
She quieted at this and gave him a long look. After a moment, she asked, “What happened to your arm?”
Dean shook his head and chuckled bitterly. “I walked into a door.”
Cassie didn’t reply and Dean turned around and walked away. He gripped the doorknob for a moment, thought about telling her that he loved her, but instead said goodbye so softly he wasn’t even sure she heard it and then slammed the door behind him.
In the Impala he threw his shirt on the passenger seat and dropped his forehead on the steering wheel, closing his eyes. He fished out his phone and dialed a number familiar to his fingers and put the phone to his ear. Sam wasn’t going to pick up and he knew it, but he really needed to hear his stupid fucking voice so he listened to Sam’s voicemail message.
“Hey, it’s me,” Dean said after the beep. “I just called to... ask how you were and that...” And that this is one of the worst days of my fucking life and I really need to talk to you but you never pick up because you know it’s me. “And that I hope everything’s going okay. You need to get laid. Talk to you later, bitch.”
He snapped his phone shut and stared at Cassie’s apartment until his eyes burned. The door was still shut, the curtains still drawn. She wasn’t coming out.
Dean pulled away and drove back to the motel.
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John was packing up his things, getting ready to come to the aid of some poor man with a possessed daughter. He wanted to wait until Dean got back so he could tell him that he was going solo for this hunt, but if Dean didn’t get back soon John was just going to leave a note.
The door opened at that moment and his oldest son walked in, and John had to stare for a moment. Dean had rejection written all over his face and his eyes were slightly reddish as if he’d thought about crying but didn’t. John hadn’t seen him look like this since Sam had left. He knew it had been hard on Dean, but talking to him had been impossible so John just kept him occupied with hunting and Dean had seemed okay with that.
Dean sat on the bed and adjusted his sling. He looked up at John’s half-packed duffel.
“Going somewhere?” he asked dully. John looked down.
“There’s an exorcism down in Kentucky.”
Dean nodded. “When are we leaving?”
“As soon as you can get packed,” John said reflexively, figuring a solo hunt probably wouldn’t be the best thing after all. Dean got up and started tossing things into his bag.
“You want to stay for the night? We could leave in the morning,” John suggested, watching Dean curse at having to do everything one-handed.
“No. There’s nothing keeping us here,” he said roughly, shouldering his bag and grabbing his keys. “I’ll follow you in the Impala.”
John watched Dean storm outside and heard the familiar creak of the car door. A few minutes later John came out and when he passed Dean’s car he could hear the music playing even with the windows and doors shut. He tapped on Dean’s window with a frown and Dean turned it down slightly.
John climbed into his truck and pulled out of the parking lot into the night. After a moment he saw Dean’s headlights in his rearview mirror and settled in for a long drive.
end.
Rating: PG-13 (language, mentions of sex)
Characters (Pairing): Dean, Cassie, John (Dean/Cassie)
Word Count: 3,884
Summary: Dean meets, loves, and loses Cassie.
Notes: Preseries. Sam is not present in this fic. This is not a happily ever after love story (obviously, since this is Dean/Cassie and you know how that ends). There is Dean angst.
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When Dean saw her, he immediately started thinking with his downstairs brain.
He was working a job with Dad and was currently holed up in a university library in Ohio trying to get some research done on a woman who’d thrown herself out of a twentieth story window fourteen years ago after stabbing her husband seven times. There had been a string of inexplicable deaths on the same floor and Dad thought it was haunted.
Dean was flipping through an old, nearly falling apart newspaper when he sensed her nearby. He saw her boots first, brown and pointy-toed underneath expensive jeans. He raised his eyes, taking in a pair of long legs, a slim body, and a mane of dark curls. She was, in a word, hot.
He pursed his lips thoughtfully, newspaper forgotten. He was bored. She was sexy. However, she wasn’t some random barmaid that he could seduce over a few drinks. She was using the Xerox machine and was probably a student at the university.
Dean picked up his paper and sauntered over to stand behind her. He peeked over her shoulder and saw that she was copying pages from a book on-
“Heroin?” Dean asked aloud. She turned around and he gave her a winning smile.
“I’m writing a paper on drug trafficking in America,” she responded, meeting his grin without wavering.
“Oh, that’s awesome,” Dean said, and he wanted to smack himself. She was really, really pretty. “I, uh, just noticed the book and was wondering why a girl like you would be reading up on heroin.”
“A girl like me,” she repeated. “And what kind of girl would that be?”
“Well, you don’t look like an addict.” Dean tried smiling again and she just stared. After a moment of awkward silence she turned back to the machine and continued copying pages. Dean pressed his hand to his face briefly and in the process dropped half of his newspaper on the floor.
“Are you researching Janet Wilmington’s suicide?” she asked when she knelt down to help him gather the papers. She was looking at the cover story.
“Yeah, you know about it?” Dean asked, figuring he might be able to deal with the disappointment of not being able to sleep with her if she provided him with some helpful knowledge about the case.
“I was just a kid when it happened, but one of my father’s friends is a journalist, so I know a little more than the average person,” she said, smiling faintly. They both stood and Dean extended a hand.
“I’m Dean.”
“Cassie,” she said, shaking his hand firmly.
“Cassie. I’ll buy you a coffee if you tell me everything you know about crazy old Janet,” Dean suggested. Cassie considered his offer and then nodded with a small shrug.
“Okay.”
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Dean ended up buying them both lunch because their conversation ran into the afternoon. They got into an argument about whether Janet really was crazy or not-Dean said hell yeah, she was nuts for offing her husband and then taking the swan dive herself, but Cassie said that before she’d died, Janet had discovered that her husband had murdered someone ten years before their wedding.
“Yeah, but that doesn’t give her the right to kill him. She’s a murderer herself,” Dean argued. Cassie shook her head.
“I’m not saying she was right in killing her husband, I’m just saying that she wasn’t some crazy old woman who randomly decided to shoot him,” she retorted.
“Sounds crazy to me,” Dean muttered. This chick was hot but they couldn’t seem to find a whole lot of common ground. Still, she was really hot.
Cassie just rolled her eyes.
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The first time Dean slept with Cassie, she was everything he had hoped for and more. She was wild in bed and liked to be in charge-much like how she was normally-and Dean was more than content to hand her the reigns. They did it in her apartment off campus where Dean discovered with no small amount of delight that she had a soft, fluffy, queen-sized bed.
She attacked his mouth when they were done, practically sucking his brain out with her ferocious kisses, but Dean loved feisty women so he couldn’t say he minded. He kissed back and ran his fingers through her hair. They’d known each other for exactly two days, and in those days Dean had learned that Cassie was passionate about everything, never backed down from what she believed in, and already had a number of articles published in the local newspaper. Dean was enthralled. They fought over pretty much everything-except sex-but he figured they could work past that.
Cassie’s lips were moving lower when his phone rang. Dean was tempted to ignore it, but gently pulled Cassie off with a reluctant groan and flipped his cell open. It was John and he needed Dean back at the motel for more research on the hunt.
“Dammit,” Dean muttered, flopping back on the pillow. It was at times like these that he really, really missed Sam doing all the research for him. Cassie looked up.
“What’s wrong?”
“I have to go,” Dean said, dragging himself out of bed. Cassie settled into the warm spot he left behind and watched him dress.
“Where?” she murmured. Dean hesitated, pulling his shirt down over his head.
“It’s a job... thing. My job, me and my dad,” he said, buttoning up his jeans and sitting on the bed to lace his boots.
“You know, Dean, you never told me what you do,” Cassie commented lazily, her dark curls falling across her face. Dean concentrated on his shoes, taking longer than necessary.
“I’ll tell you about it later,” he said, straightening and giving her a smile. “I promise.”
“Okay. Call me?”
“Yeah. I will.”
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The hunt was taking longer than usual. Janet Wilmington’s grave wasn’t mentioned in any of the obituaries they found, and John said they had to stay until they figured out what was causing the local deaths. Dean was glad. He kind of liked Ohio and he really liked Cassie. They’d slept together again and she’d thankfully forgotten to ask about his profession, so Dean didn’t bring it up.
He went to her apartment one day and found her nearly in tears, poring over a paper marked in red. He cautiously asked her what was wrong and she went into a rant about how she had one class that she needed credit for but the professor hated her guts and kept failing her papers.
“This is the third paper he’s failed me on,” she said angrily. “There’s nothing wrong with my work! I’ve gone over it a thousand times, I’ve even showed it to my other professors. He’s such a fucking hack.”
Dean had to hide his smile as he sat down next to her. He didn’t understand why girls took everything so seriously-and, okay, so maybe this was a pretty annoying issue to have, but Cassie was almost crying, and he’d never seen her show weakness in any shape or form in their short but intense acquaintance.
“Hey,” he said. “It’s okay. You can get this sorted out.”
“It just makes me so angry. I put so much work into my writing and this man just tosses it all aside.”
Dean put an arm around her and suddenly felt a pang in his chest.
“You know,” he began softly, staring unseeingly at the desk in front of him. “I have... I have this brother. And Sammy-his name’s Sam-he used to be just like you. Like, really obsessed with school and classes and stuff. And one day when we were younger, he must have been like twelve or thirteen, he came home crying like the biggest wussy you ever saw, because he failed a test. One freaking test. He thought it was the end of the world or something, thought he wasn’t going to pass the class.”
“Was he a straight A student?” Cassie asked. Dean smiled faintly.
“Yeah. He was a geek.”
Cassie gave him a little shove. “I was a straight A student and I remember crying to my dad when I failed a test.”
Dean smirked at her. “You were a geek, too?”
“You’re funny, Dean,” she said sarcastically. “What did you tell your brother?”
“I told him to suck it up and stop crying like a three-year-old. Then I helped him study for his makeup test.” Dean rubbed his thumb across Cassie’s shoulder. He didn’t notice she was looking at him until he glanced down.
“Where’s your brother now?” she asked quietly. Dean blinked and looked away.
“Stanford,” he said.
“Stanford University? Wow,” Cassie said, impressed.
“Yeah,” Dean said, withdrawing his arm and standing up. “We don’t really, uh... see each other that much anymore.”
“Oh,” she said, disappointed that Dean was pulling away, but she didn’t comment on it.
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Dean knew he was in trouble. He was acting like a freaking moron, had been acting like one since the moment he set eyes on Cassie. In the back of his mind he knew he was subconsciously trying to replace the hole that Sam had left. He had fallen for Cassie hard and fast because he’d needed someone to cling to. She was smart like Sam, she had her bitchy moments like Sam. The difference was that he could sleep with her. He knew he was treading dangerous waters. He couldn’t fall in love with her. He didn’t want to love her and leave her. He didn’t want to do that to her.
He didn’t want to do that to himself.
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After another bout of passionate sex-they were really good at that, and it was easier than talking-Cassie pulled Dean back after he’d gotten dressed and was getting ready to leave to go on a hunt with Dad. She tugged him down on the bed so they were sitting, her hands on his face. She kissed him once, gently, and then looked into his eyes, and Dean almost felt like she could see the web of lies that made up his soul.
“Dean,” she said. “Talk to me. You never talk to me.”
“I talk to you all the time,” Dean protested.
“No. You never talk to me about the important things, the things that might be a little harder to say. You shut yourself off from me all the time. I can tell when you want to say something serious, but you always pull away before you say it.”
Dean didn’t know what to say, and he could see the growing disappointment in her brown eyes.
“This isn’t going to work if we go on the same way,” she said. “I don’t know anything about you. You’re sweet and you’re caring and you’re a damn good lay, but I don’t know you, Dean.”
“I kind of have issues with baring my soul to people,” he said jokingly. Cassie sighed.
“Can you be serious?”
“I am being serious.”
“Dean. Listen.” She laid her palm on his cheek and he rested his hand on her knee. “I want more.”
“You want more,” he repeated.
“I want more out of this. If you can’t open up to me, then... we’ve gone as far as we’ll ever go.”
Dean leaned in and pressed his lips to hers, and she linked her arms behind his neck. He pulled her close and kissed her, enjoying the feel of his hands nestled deep in her curly hair. When he broke the kiss he didn’t pull back so he couldn’t see her face. His hands slid down to her hips and she stayed still, her fingers gently brushing the back of his neck.
“Cassie,” he said in a quiet voice. “I want to tell you... things. I do. I just...”
“Then tell me, Dean,” she breathed. She wanted to pull away so that she could see Dean’s face, but at the same time she could feel how tense he was and she suddenly had this insane urge to respect his privacy, something she rarely did in her profession.
Dean let out a soft breath into her hair and closed his eyes. He felt like the floor had dropped from beneath his feet. He was freaking Dean Winchester, for crying out loud, how the hell was this so damn scary? He felt like if he made one wrong move his entire world would come crashing down, like it had the night Sam had left.
“Talk to me, Dean,” Cassie was saying. “Talk to me.”
“I, uh... you’re not going to believe me.”
“Just stop making excuses,” she said, her voice getting desperate. “Dean, I want to make this work, but you’re making it impossible.”
He swallowed and opened his mouth. “I’m a hunter.”
Cassie stiffened slightly in his arms. “What kind of hunter, like, animals?”
“No,” Dean said, and he thought he was doing a pretty damn good job of keeping the anxiety out of his voice because he hadn’t been this nervous in years. “I hunt... spirits.”
She paused. “Spirits?”
“Ghosts, demons... creatures that you never thought existed.”
Cassie was silent for a moment before she let out a nervous laugh. “Okay, Dean. I get that you don’t like opening up to people. But, please, just for once, be serious. I really do care about you.”
“I am being serious.”
She pulled back and stared at him. “Dean.”
“Cassie, I swear. My dad and I... that’s why we’re here. That’s why when we first met I asked you about Janet Wilmington’s suicide. The local deaths recently? We’re here to stop them. That floor is haunted.”
She stood up and walked away from the bed and Dean trailed her with his eyes. This wasn’t going to end well. He had that same feeling of foreboding that he’d had right before Sam and Dad had started screaming at each other.
“You hunt ghosts?”
“Among other things.”
“Dean,” she said, doing that nervous laugh thing again. “Dean, do you realize what you’re telling me?”
“I’m telling you the truth,” Dean said. “I promised I’d tell you what I did. This is what I do.”
“Just, stop!” she yelled. “What the hell is wrong with you? Are you even hearing yourself when you talk?”
“I know it sounds crazy,” he said, standing up. “Cassie, I’m not lying.”
“You’re crazy. You’re nuts. Oh my God.”
Dean crossed the room and went to her, despair weighing heavily on him. It had been a crapshoot to tell her the truth, but he just couldn’t bring himself to lie to her.
“I’m not crazy. I didn’t want to tell you about this-I’ve never told anyone!”
“You obviously don’t even take any of this seriously,” she said vehemently. “If you want to go so badly, just leave.”
“I don’t want to leave.”
“Dean,” she said, and he could see tears shining in her eyes. “Just go. I mean it. Please, just leave. You’re scaring me. I don’t... I don’t even know you.”
“Cassie,” Dean said softly. He could plainly see the fear on her face, fear of him. He killed nightmarish monsters so people like her could be safe and she was scared of him. His insides were churning and he felt like he was going to be sick, but she’d just told him to leave. And for the people he loved, Dean would pretty much take any order like a blind (or stupid) puppy. So he listened to her.
He left.
Outside he contemplated bending over in the bushes and throwing up but he looked at his watch and saw that he was already late for the hunt. Dad would be waiting.
Once inside the Impala, he realized that the reason everything hurt so bad was because he was in love for the first time.
--------
The hunt didn’t go well. Dean was so distracted that Janet’s spirit got the drop on him and threw him clear across the graveyard where a granite grave marker stopped his fall. He heard Dad’s shotgun go off and then felt him kneeling next to him.
“Dean,” he said. “Dean, what the hell’s the matter with you? Are you all right?”
“’M fine,” Dean muttered, clutching at his shoulder. John helped him to his feet and dragged him back over to the grave, ordering him to stay put and be ready to drop the match. John climbed into the ground and started shoveling the rest of the dirt away. Dean watched and tried to concentrate. He couldn’t remember the last time he wanted a job to just be fucking over. He missed stupid Sam, who was off doing the whole college thing while he got pummeled by the spirit of a crazy woman.
They burned Janet’s bones and when they got back to motel, Dad ordered Dean to put ice on his shoulder. Dean tried to hide his quickly swelling wrist from Dad, but of course he noticed anyway and Dean was forced to wear a sling. He fucking hated the sling.
He flopped down on the bed with two ice packs and idly flipped his phone open and saw that he had a missed call and a voicemail from Cassie.
“Hey, Dean, um... you left one of your shirts here, so... if you want to drop by and get it, uh... you can. All right, then... bye.”
Dean knew he shouldn’t go, that he should just leave it alone. He should forget about his damn shirt, forget about Cassie. John was sitting at the table writing in his journal with a newspaper spread out in front of him. Dean stood up and said he’d be back in a little while.
--------
Being in Cassie’s apartment was a lot harder than before. She opened the door for him (he wasn’t greeted with a smile) and let him in, pointing to his shirt that was folded up on the bed. He picked it up and stared for a second longer at her bed, his mind flashing back to the blissful moments he’d spent tangled up in her body.
“Cassie,” he began, and she shook her head.
“Don’t,” she said softly, but he pressed on.
“I’m sorry about everything. You don’t have to worry about it anymore, though. I’m leaving.”
She looked up at him with dark eyes. “You’re leaving?”
“Yeah, my dad and I, we’re, uh... heading out soon. Work and all,” he said, shifting uncomfortably. She stared incredulously.
“Fine. Go. You don’t have to explain yourself to me, Dean. If you want out, just go.”
“I never said I wanted out. You’re the one that dumped me on my ass, Cassie.”
“You’re telling me this stupid story-”
“It’s the truth!”
“-just to get out of this relationship!”
“I don’t want to get out of this relationship. You’re the first girl I’ve ever cared about enough to explain why I can’t stay. You just won’t listen!”
“How can I listen to this? I want to make this work, Dean, but I can’t. You know why? Because of you. You’re nuts. You don’t make any sense anymore.”
Dean snapped his mouth shut before he could say anything else. He wanted to make things right with Cassie so badly, even though in the end it wouldn’t make any difference because he had to leave her either way. Besides, he couldn’t really blame her. If he put himself in her shoes he did sound pretty damn crazy, talking about ghosts and demons and hunting.
“All right, fine,” he said. His eyes were hot and a little itchy and it was not because he wanted to cry. “Fine, Cassie.”
“Fine what?”
“I’ll go and you can forget about me. I won’t be back.”
She quieted at this and gave him a long look. After a moment, she asked, “What happened to your arm?”
Dean shook his head and chuckled bitterly. “I walked into a door.”
Cassie didn’t reply and Dean turned around and walked away. He gripped the doorknob for a moment, thought about telling her that he loved her, but instead said goodbye so softly he wasn’t even sure she heard it and then slammed the door behind him.
In the Impala he threw his shirt on the passenger seat and dropped his forehead on the steering wheel, closing his eyes. He fished out his phone and dialed a number familiar to his fingers and put the phone to his ear. Sam wasn’t going to pick up and he knew it, but he really needed to hear his stupid fucking voice so he listened to Sam’s voicemail message.
“Hey, it’s me,” Dean said after the beep. “I just called to... ask how you were and that...” And that this is one of the worst days of my fucking life and I really need to talk to you but you never pick up because you know it’s me. “And that I hope everything’s going okay. You need to get laid. Talk to you later, bitch.”
He snapped his phone shut and stared at Cassie’s apartment until his eyes burned. The door was still shut, the curtains still drawn. She wasn’t coming out.
Dean pulled away and drove back to the motel.
--------
John was packing up his things, getting ready to come to the aid of some poor man with a possessed daughter. He wanted to wait until Dean got back so he could tell him that he was going solo for this hunt, but if Dean didn’t get back soon John was just going to leave a note.
The door opened at that moment and his oldest son walked in, and John had to stare for a moment. Dean had rejection written all over his face and his eyes were slightly reddish as if he’d thought about crying but didn’t. John hadn’t seen him look like this since Sam had left. He knew it had been hard on Dean, but talking to him had been impossible so John just kept him occupied with hunting and Dean had seemed okay with that.
Dean sat on the bed and adjusted his sling. He looked up at John’s half-packed duffel.
“Going somewhere?” he asked dully. John looked down.
“There’s an exorcism down in Kentucky.”
Dean nodded. “When are we leaving?”
“As soon as you can get packed,” John said reflexively, figuring a solo hunt probably wouldn’t be the best thing after all. Dean got up and started tossing things into his bag.
“You want to stay for the night? We could leave in the morning,” John suggested, watching Dean curse at having to do everything one-handed.
“No. There’s nothing keeping us here,” he said roughly, shouldering his bag and grabbing his keys. “I’ll follow you in the Impala.”
John watched Dean storm outside and heard the familiar creak of the car door. A few minutes later John came out and when he passed Dean’s car he could hear the music playing even with the windows and doors shut. He tapped on Dean’s window with a frown and Dean turned it down slightly.
John climbed into his truck and pulled out of the parking lot into the night. After a moment he saw Dean’s headlights in his rearview mirror and settled in for a long drive.
end.