fic: Anyone Who Ever Had a Heart (Supernatural; Dean/Carmen)
Anyone Who Ever Had a Heart
Supernatural; Dean/Carmen; pg-13; 2,115 words; spoilers for "What Is and What Should Never Be"
Dean meets her in the checkout line at Costco, of all places.
Thanks to mousapelli for looking it over. She informs me I can't rate it "G," though I totally would have. Title from Velvet Underground. For netninny, who gave me the idea.
~*~
Anyone Who Ever Had a Heart
Dean sees her, of all places, in the checkout line at Costco. He looks, and looks again, bottom dropping out of his stomach, metal taste of blood and fear in his mouth as he remembers the warehouse, the ropes around his wrists, the seductive warmth of his fantasy world covering up the cold edge of death. But he also remembers the way she smelled--like sleep and some kind of flowery shampoo--and tasted--like toothpaste and laughter.
She catches him staring and gives him a tired smile as she pays for her groceries: a pile of frozen dinners, a huge box of tampons, a case of bottled water, and a giant bag of Cheetos. She's probably used to people looking at her, random guys offering to buy her beer, take her someplace better. If he hadn't dreamed of her, hadn't made her into his djinn-inspired fantasy girlfriend, he'd probably do the same. Now, he just smiles back--it feels tight and sad on his face--and hefts his newly purchased ten pound bag of rock salt onto his shoulder.
He's stowed the salt in the trunk and is ready to climb into the car and drive away when he sees her again, three cars down, struggling to get her keys out with the case of water under one arm and her bag hanging open off her shoulder.
"Hey," he says, slipping a palm under the water, "lemme help you with that."
She smiles again, wary this time, and says, "Thanks." Lets him take the weight of the water while she fishes out her keys.
"Carmen?"
She frowns at that. "No, I'm sorry. You must have me confused with someone else." She opens the passenger side door, puts the bag with the Cheetos and the tampons on the seat, and then tips it forward.
"Yeah, I, I guess I do." He feels like an ass now, more than he generally does around civilians. "You just really look like this girl--"
She doesn't let him finish. "From the El Sol ad. Yeah." She takes the water from him, slides it onto the backseat.
"No," he says before he can stop himself. "I mean, okay, yeah, now that you mention it, but, no. My--" He stops again, because she wasn't his girlfriend, not really. And yet... "She was pretty awesome, and I wish--" The word startles him, stops him. He rubs his chin, starts backing away. "Forget it. Sorry to bother you."
She cocks her head and looks at him, and he recognizes it, has been on the receiving end of it from a lot of women, used it to get away with shit most guys would get called on right away. He doesn't let himself hope though. She isn't Carmen, because Carmen doesn't exist anywhere but in his own fucked up head.
"My name is Olivia," she says, and gives him the wide smile he still sees in his dreams sometimes.
"Hi, Olivia. I'm Dean." He sticks out a hand, and she shakes it. "You, uh, wanna get a drink or something?" He tries to look--not innocent--god, when was the last time he looked innocent?--but non-threatening, his smile hopeful this time instead of sad.
Her mouth curls in a rueful half-grin and she says, "I'm not going to regret this, am I?"
"God, no. I mean, I hope not."
"Okay, Dean." Emphasis on his name, trust she probably shouldn't give, but he'll take, because he's greedy right now, needy in a way he doesn't ever like to think about. "Meet me at the Old Homestead on North Main Street. You know where that is?"
"I'll find it," he says.
"Hang a left out of the parking lot and then a right on North Main. It's a few blocks up. You can't miss it."
"Okay."
He gets back into his car, grips the steering wheel for a long minute, tells himself this is the same as any other drink he's had with any other woman, doesn't mean a thing. It's a pretty good lie. Shame he doesn't believe it.
He flips open his phone, dials Sam. "Hey," he says when his brother answers. "I got the salt. Something's come up, though, and I won't be back right away."
"Dean--"
"Couple hours, Sammy. It'll be fine."
"I hope she's worth it." Sam sounds resigned, and Dean can picture the exasperated look on his face.
"Yeah, me, too."
*
It's easy enough to find the Old Homestead, and when he pulls into the parking lot, she's there, leaning against her blue Honda.
He holds the door open for her, and when they sit down at the bar, the bartender puts two bottles of El Sol down in front of them and says, "Hey, Olivia."
Dean gets the message loud and clear.
"Hey, Tony. Can we get a plate of nachos?"
"So, you're a model," he says, after Tony moves away to put in their order.
"I've done some modeling," she answers, twisting the lime around the rim of her bottle and then pushing it in. "To pay off my loans."
"Loans?"
She looks down, self-deprecating, but proud. "Medical school's not cheap."
"You're a doctor?" He takes a long drink of beer to give himself time to think, time to reconcile fantasy with reality. "Man, smart and beautiful. I should get to the ER more often."
That makes her laugh. "Please don't."
The nachos arrive and they're good, covered in cheese and sour cream and salsa, and he even eats some guacamole because she insists it's good, even if it's green. He listens to her talk about school and modeling and her residency at the hospital.
"This is the first day I've had off in weeks," she says, still nursing her first beer ("I've drunk enough El Sol to last a lifetime, but he gives it to me for free, so I can't complain."). "I actually got to sleep in past five a.m. I woke up and looked at the clock and had that moment of panic, you know? Where you're like, oh, god, I'm gonna be late, and then you realize you don't actually have to go to work, and can sleep for three more hours? That's, like, the best feeling ever."
"Yeah." He hasn't worked a real job in almost ten years, but he remembers that feeling.
"And then I spent most of my day running errands. I had six weeks' worth of laundry to do, no food in the fridge, and my apartment looks like a hurricane blew through."
"I know that feeling," he says, smiling. "Sometimes I just buy new underwear instead of doing the laundry, though."
She leans in close, and he can smell her skin, soap and lotion and warm girl-smell that makes heat pool low in his belly. "Me, too," she confides, laughing, and raises her bottle to clink his in solidarity.
She tells him about sewing up some kid who cracked his skull when he fell off his skateboard, and he says, "Yeah, head wounds bleed like crazy, and all that hair in the way--makes 'em a bitch to stitch up clean."
She blinks. "How--"
Half a dozen lies tumble through his brain, and even he's not sure which one's going to come out when he opens his mouth. "Wanted to be an EMT before I went into the family business." Closer to the truth than he'd expected. "Took a couple courses."
She reaches out, touches his hand. "What's the family business?"
He huffs a small laugh, shakes his head, rubs a hand over his chin. "Pest control." Takes a nacho and shoves it into his mouth before he says anything else.
"You're an exterminator?"
He waits until he's finished chewing and swallowing to say, "That's one way of putting it, yeah."
She laughs, reaches out a thumb to wipe at the corner of his mouth. "You have some salsa--"
He puts his hand around hers, guides her thumb into his mouth, tasting salsa and skin, salt-hot and seductive. Her eyes darken and he can see the tip of her tongue, soft pink between full red lips.
He doesn't let go of her hand. "What do you say we get out of here?"
She takes a sip of beer, swallows, and nods. "Okay." Her voice is husky, and it sends a thrill down his spine.
He realizes when they get out to the parking lot that he has nowhere to take her, and he doesn't think she's the kind of girl who'll climb into the backseat with him for a quick fuck. Maybe he doesn't want her to be that kind of girl. Or maybe he does. He doesn't know, but he swings her against the side of the car, hands loose on her hips so she can get away if she wants, but she doesn't, puts her hands on his shoulders and stands up on her toes to meet his kiss halfway.
She tastes of beer and nachos, and her hair smells clean, like one of those stupid scents they advertise as rain or mountain fresh or whatever, that Sam occasionally buys when he does the shopping and that never actually smell like anything but shampoo.
He slides his mouth up the line of her jaw, nips at the skin beneath her ear, pressing her back against the car, evening air warm against his skin, the sound of cars rushing by on the street a hum in the background.
He's usually pretty good at making sure he doesn't call the girls he fucks by the wrong name--half the time he doesn't catch their names at all. As he kisses Olivia, he whispers her name to himself over and over, replacing the vague fever-dream recollection of Carmen with the real flesh-and-blood girl whose breasts are pressed against chest and whose slick-rough tongue is in his mouth and whose fingers are sliding through his hair.
They make out for a little while, easy and slow, not familiar, but like it maybe could be someday (and he knows better than to think that, but sometimes lately, his defenses slip, and he lets himself wonder), and he's got his hands up under her shirt, fingers spread against the warm, soft skin of her sides and moving up to touch the cool lace of her bra, when the vibration of her phone startles them both.
She sighs and leans back against the car, pulling her Blackberry out. "Shit. Eight car pile-up on the Hutch. Stupid holiday weekend traffic." She shakes her head. "I'm so sorry. Greenwich doesn't have a level one trauma center, so we're gonna get the overflow. I have to go." She cups his cheek, rises on her toes to kiss him again, soft, and without tongue, goodbye this time.
"Can I have your number?" he asks, though he knows he shouldn't--they're leaving as soon as they put down the ghost on the--"Wait, did you say the Hutch? Doesn't that turn into the Merritt Parkway when it crosses into Connecticut?"
"Yes, and, uh, yeah, I guess."
"Shit." He pulls out his phone, punches the number she gives him into his address book, though he knows that, much as he wants to, he'll never call her. Then he grabs her Blackberry and puts himself (first name, last initial only) in hers. "Okay." He takes her face in his hands, presses a hard kiss to her lips, tongue pushing into the heat of her mouth, making it as memorable as he can. They're both breathing heavily and her mouth is red and swollen when he lets her go. "Go," he tells her. "Help people."
"Okay," she says, laughing, touching his face gently one last time before she gets into her car.
He watches her drive away, chest tight and achy.
*
He bangs into the motel room and Sam, slumped over, asleep at the laptop, bolts upright. "What?"
"We were looking in the wrong place," he says when he's done laughing at the red marks on Sam's face, and the way the hair on the left side of his head is sticking up.
"You sure?" Sam asks, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.
Dean scrubs a hand across his face, not sure of anything anymore. But he says, "Yeah. When the Hutch crosses into Connecticut, it becomes the Merritt. Same road, different name. And ghosts have never been great at reading road signs."
"Okay," Sam says, unfolding himself from the chair and grabbing the duffel with the weapons in it. "Let's go."
They're pulling out of the parking lot when Sam says, "Was she worth it?"
Dean glances over, gives a half-smile and a small laugh. "Yeah," he says finally. "She was."
end
~*~
May 5, 2007
~*~
Feedback is adored.
~*~
Supernatural; Dean/Carmen; pg-13; 2,115 words; spoilers for "What Is and What Should Never Be"
Dean meets her in the checkout line at Costco, of all places.
Thanks to mousapelli for looking it over. She informs me I can't rate it "G," though I totally would have. Title from Velvet Underground. For netninny, who gave me the idea.
~*~
Anyone Who Ever Had a Heart
Dean sees her, of all places, in the checkout line at Costco. He looks, and looks again, bottom dropping out of his stomach, metal taste of blood and fear in his mouth as he remembers the warehouse, the ropes around his wrists, the seductive warmth of his fantasy world covering up the cold edge of death. But he also remembers the way she smelled--like sleep and some kind of flowery shampoo--and tasted--like toothpaste and laughter.
She catches him staring and gives him a tired smile as she pays for her groceries: a pile of frozen dinners, a huge box of tampons, a case of bottled water, and a giant bag of Cheetos. She's probably used to people looking at her, random guys offering to buy her beer, take her someplace better. If he hadn't dreamed of her, hadn't made her into his djinn-inspired fantasy girlfriend, he'd probably do the same. Now, he just smiles back--it feels tight and sad on his face--and hefts his newly purchased ten pound bag of rock salt onto his shoulder.
He's stowed the salt in the trunk and is ready to climb into the car and drive away when he sees her again, three cars down, struggling to get her keys out with the case of water under one arm and her bag hanging open off her shoulder.
"Hey," he says, slipping a palm under the water, "lemme help you with that."
She smiles again, wary this time, and says, "Thanks." Lets him take the weight of the water while she fishes out her keys.
"Carmen?"
She frowns at that. "No, I'm sorry. You must have me confused with someone else." She opens the passenger side door, puts the bag with the Cheetos and the tampons on the seat, and then tips it forward.
"Yeah, I, I guess I do." He feels like an ass now, more than he generally does around civilians. "You just really look like this girl--"
She doesn't let him finish. "From the El Sol ad. Yeah." She takes the water from him, slides it onto the backseat.
"No," he says before he can stop himself. "I mean, okay, yeah, now that you mention it, but, no. My--" He stops again, because she wasn't his girlfriend, not really. And yet... "She was pretty awesome, and I wish--" The word startles him, stops him. He rubs his chin, starts backing away. "Forget it. Sorry to bother you."
She cocks her head and looks at him, and he recognizes it, has been on the receiving end of it from a lot of women, used it to get away with shit most guys would get called on right away. He doesn't let himself hope though. She isn't Carmen, because Carmen doesn't exist anywhere but in his own fucked up head.
"My name is Olivia," she says, and gives him the wide smile he still sees in his dreams sometimes.
"Hi, Olivia. I'm Dean." He sticks out a hand, and she shakes it. "You, uh, wanna get a drink or something?" He tries to look--not innocent--god, when was the last time he looked innocent?--but non-threatening, his smile hopeful this time instead of sad.
Her mouth curls in a rueful half-grin and she says, "I'm not going to regret this, am I?"
"God, no. I mean, I hope not."
"Okay, Dean." Emphasis on his name, trust she probably shouldn't give, but he'll take, because he's greedy right now, needy in a way he doesn't ever like to think about. "Meet me at the Old Homestead on North Main Street. You know where that is?"
"I'll find it," he says.
"Hang a left out of the parking lot and then a right on North Main. It's a few blocks up. You can't miss it."
"Okay."
He gets back into his car, grips the steering wheel for a long minute, tells himself this is the same as any other drink he's had with any other woman, doesn't mean a thing. It's a pretty good lie. Shame he doesn't believe it.
He flips open his phone, dials Sam. "Hey," he says when his brother answers. "I got the salt. Something's come up, though, and I won't be back right away."
"Dean--"
"Couple hours, Sammy. It'll be fine."
"I hope she's worth it." Sam sounds resigned, and Dean can picture the exasperated look on his face.
"Yeah, me, too."
*
It's easy enough to find the Old Homestead, and when he pulls into the parking lot, she's there, leaning against her blue Honda.
He holds the door open for her, and when they sit down at the bar, the bartender puts two bottles of El Sol down in front of them and says, "Hey, Olivia."
Dean gets the message loud and clear.
"Hey, Tony. Can we get a plate of nachos?"
"So, you're a model," he says, after Tony moves away to put in their order.
"I've done some modeling," she answers, twisting the lime around the rim of her bottle and then pushing it in. "To pay off my loans."
"Loans?"
She looks down, self-deprecating, but proud. "Medical school's not cheap."
"You're a doctor?" He takes a long drink of beer to give himself time to think, time to reconcile fantasy with reality. "Man, smart and beautiful. I should get to the ER more often."
That makes her laugh. "Please don't."
The nachos arrive and they're good, covered in cheese and sour cream and salsa, and he even eats some guacamole because she insists it's good, even if it's green. He listens to her talk about school and modeling and her residency at the hospital.
"This is the first day I've had off in weeks," she says, still nursing her first beer ("I've drunk enough El Sol to last a lifetime, but he gives it to me for free, so I can't complain."). "I actually got to sleep in past five a.m. I woke up and looked at the clock and had that moment of panic, you know? Where you're like, oh, god, I'm gonna be late, and then you realize you don't actually have to go to work, and can sleep for three more hours? That's, like, the best feeling ever."
"Yeah." He hasn't worked a real job in almost ten years, but he remembers that feeling.
"And then I spent most of my day running errands. I had six weeks' worth of laundry to do, no food in the fridge, and my apartment looks like a hurricane blew through."
"I know that feeling," he says, smiling. "Sometimes I just buy new underwear instead of doing the laundry, though."
She leans in close, and he can smell her skin, soap and lotion and warm girl-smell that makes heat pool low in his belly. "Me, too," she confides, laughing, and raises her bottle to clink his in solidarity.
She tells him about sewing up some kid who cracked his skull when he fell off his skateboard, and he says, "Yeah, head wounds bleed like crazy, and all that hair in the way--makes 'em a bitch to stitch up clean."
She blinks. "How--"
Half a dozen lies tumble through his brain, and even he's not sure which one's going to come out when he opens his mouth. "Wanted to be an EMT before I went into the family business." Closer to the truth than he'd expected. "Took a couple courses."
She reaches out, touches his hand. "What's the family business?"
He huffs a small laugh, shakes his head, rubs a hand over his chin. "Pest control." Takes a nacho and shoves it into his mouth before he says anything else.
"You're an exterminator?"
He waits until he's finished chewing and swallowing to say, "That's one way of putting it, yeah."
She laughs, reaches out a thumb to wipe at the corner of his mouth. "You have some salsa--"
He puts his hand around hers, guides her thumb into his mouth, tasting salsa and skin, salt-hot and seductive. Her eyes darken and he can see the tip of her tongue, soft pink between full red lips.
He doesn't let go of her hand. "What do you say we get out of here?"
She takes a sip of beer, swallows, and nods. "Okay." Her voice is husky, and it sends a thrill down his spine.
He realizes when they get out to the parking lot that he has nowhere to take her, and he doesn't think she's the kind of girl who'll climb into the backseat with him for a quick fuck. Maybe he doesn't want her to be that kind of girl. Or maybe he does. He doesn't know, but he swings her against the side of the car, hands loose on her hips so she can get away if she wants, but she doesn't, puts her hands on his shoulders and stands up on her toes to meet his kiss halfway.
She tastes of beer and nachos, and her hair smells clean, like one of those stupid scents they advertise as rain or mountain fresh or whatever, that Sam occasionally buys when he does the shopping and that never actually smell like anything but shampoo.
He slides his mouth up the line of her jaw, nips at the skin beneath her ear, pressing her back against the car, evening air warm against his skin, the sound of cars rushing by on the street a hum in the background.
He's usually pretty good at making sure he doesn't call the girls he fucks by the wrong name--half the time he doesn't catch their names at all. As he kisses Olivia, he whispers her name to himself over and over, replacing the vague fever-dream recollection of Carmen with the real flesh-and-blood girl whose breasts are pressed against chest and whose slick-rough tongue is in his mouth and whose fingers are sliding through his hair.
They make out for a little while, easy and slow, not familiar, but like it maybe could be someday (and he knows better than to think that, but sometimes lately, his defenses slip, and he lets himself wonder), and he's got his hands up under her shirt, fingers spread against the warm, soft skin of her sides and moving up to touch the cool lace of her bra, when the vibration of her phone startles them both.
She sighs and leans back against the car, pulling her Blackberry out. "Shit. Eight car pile-up on the Hutch. Stupid holiday weekend traffic." She shakes her head. "I'm so sorry. Greenwich doesn't have a level one trauma center, so we're gonna get the overflow. I have to go." She cups his cheek, rises on her toes to kiss him again, soft, and without tongue, goodbye this time.
"Can I have your number?" he asks, though he knows he shouldn't--they're leaving as soon as they put down the ghost on the--"Wait, did you say the Hutch? Doesn't that turn into the Merritt Parkway when it crosses into Connecticut?"
"Yes, and, uh, yeah, I guess."
"Shit." He pulls out his phone, punches the number she gives him into his address book, though he knows that, much as he wants to, he'll never call her. Then he grabs her Blackberry and puts himself (first name, last initial only) in hers. "Okay." He takes her face in his hands, presses a hard kiss to her lips, tongue pushing into the heat of her mouth, making it as memorable as he can. They're both breathing heavily and her mouth is red and swollen when he lets her go. "Go," he tells her. "Help people."
"Okay," she says, laughing, touching his face gently one last time before she gets into her car.
He watches her drive away, chest tight and achy.
*
He bangs into the motel room and Sam, slumped over, asleep at the laptop, bolts upright. "What?"
"We were looking in the wrong place," he says when he's done laughing at the red marks on Sam's face, and the way the hair on the left side of his head is sticking up.
"You sure?" Sam asks, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.
Dean scrubs a hand across his face, not sure of anything anymore. But he says, "Yeah. When the Hutch crosses into Connecticut, it becomes the Merritt. Same road, different name. And ghosts have never been great at reading road signs."
"Okay," Sam says, unfolding himself from the chair and grabbing the duffel with the weapons in it. "Let's go."
They're pulling out of the parking lot when Sam says, "Was she worth it?"
Dean glances over, gives a half-smile and a small laugh. "Yeah," he says finally. "She was."
end
~*~
May 5, 2007
~*~
Feedback is adored.
~*~