Fic: "Edge of the Ocean" (Dean/Veronica) R
"Edge of the Ocean"
Sequel to "Everybody’s Gotta Learn Sometimes"
By halfway2home
Disclaimer: I don’t own “Supernatural” or “Veronica Mars.” Eric Kripke and Rob Thomas would be your guys. The title comes from a song of the same name by Ivy.
Word Count: 3804
Rating: R mostly for language and some content.
Pairing: Veronica/Dean (from Supernatural)
Setting/Spoilers: Future fic. 2x22 for VM, 2x01 for SPN.
Summary: Dean goes to California. Or: How to tell your girlfriend you’re a demon hunter.
Author’s Note: Thanks to rubykatewriting for the beta!
I. Everbody's Gotta Learn Sometimes
II.
A month after she leaves, Dean finally checks out of the motel, but he doesn’t go to California.
No, he goes to Bobby’s. Bobby lets him stay in a spare room in the back, sleep on an uncomfortable, too small bed, and eat more chili than he’s ever wanted. But none of that matters because he’s hunting again and it feels damn good. Every kill no longer reminds him of the one that went horribly wrong.
Bobby asks him one day what brought about this change.
Dean shrugs. “What’s it always about?”
Bobby looks at him for a second and then smiles slowly. “What’s her name? And more importantly, where is she?”
“California,” he answers simply.
“Well, what the hell are you still doing here?” Bobby replies, shoving his shoulder.
Dean looks down at the beer in front of him. “I can’t bring her into this,” he says softly. “It’s not safe. It’s not even fucking sane.”
“Why don’t you let her decide that?”
He can’t even imagine how he would begin to explain his life to her. What if he told her the truth and she thought he was crazy? Worse yet, what if he told her and she believed him and one day, she got hurt or worse because of it? What if she ended up like his mother or Jessica? No, this was the best thing for everyone. They’d go their separate ways and with enough time, he hoped (please), they’d forget about each other.
And then it hits him. If he follows this plan, he’s already lost her. He’s lost her without even trying and life’s too short for this crap and it’s definitely too long to spend it alone.
---
Dean hasn’t driven this far West since he picked up Sam at Stanford.
In Arizona, the heat becomes too much and he thinks that the Impala might finally give out from having the air-conditioning on full blast.
His hands slip on the steering wheel for the third time in the last thirty minutes and he’d like to blame it on the heat, but he’d be lying. Every once and a while, he reaches into his jacket pocket and fingers the small slip of paper that he’s been carrying around for months.
He drives from Bobby’s without stopping, except for food and bathroom breaks and that spirit (not an alien) in New Mexico, until he reaches the Arizona-California border and realizes he has no idea where to go.
He reaches into his pocket, pulling out the piece of paper and his cell phone. His fingers slide over the buttons slowly, pausing before he pushes the ‘Talk’ button.
“Hello,” she answers. Dean doesn’t know what he expected, but it certainly wasn’t an inability to speak. “Hello?”
“Hey, it’s Dean,” he finally breathes out, stepping out of his car. Air. He needs air.
“Dean.” She sounds surprised, but he can’t tell if it’s a good thing or not. “How are you?”
“I’m good. I’m in California, technically,” he says, looking down at where his feet are straddling the border. “I was hoping I could see you, if you still wanted…”
“Yeah,” she replies, and he exhales finally because her voice sounds happy. “Come by my work.”
He scribbles her work address next to her phone number and smiles as he passes the “Welcome to California” sign.
---
“Shit! God dammit!” he swears, staring up at the Mars Investigations sign. A woman looks at him suspiciously out of the corner of her eye as she passes by him.
Veronica works for a private investigator and Dean… He has secrets.
“That’s just fucking perfect,” he mutters to himself. His cell phone rings and he grabs it hastily. “Yeah?”
“I can hear you, you know.”
It’s her. “Shit.”
She laughs. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I just hit my knee against the door,” he lies.
“Smooth,” she replies sarcastically. “So, are you going to come up or what?”
Every step up to Mars Investigations feels like walking towards everything he’s ever wanted and to his demise all at the same time. He wonders how much she already knows. He never gave her his last name, but there are ways to track people down. But she wouldn’t have invited him to visit her if she knew about his past, right?
“Hey,” she says, smiling at him warmly when he enters the office and he decides right then that there’s no way that she knows.
“So you work for a private investigator.” He gestures at the door that says, “Keith Mars, P.I.”
She nods. “Yeah, my dad.”
“Your dad?” he repeats, swallowing nervously. Jesus.
“It’s sort of a family business.” He knows a thing or two about those, but he doesn’t say so. “Give me a minute and we can get out of here.”
He nods as she begins packing up her stuff, sliding her laptop into her messenger bag. “You do this often?”
“Not as much when I’m in school. But since I took off last semester to…” she trails off, looking up at him briefly, and he nods in understanding. “I’ve got one more semester to go in the fall,” she explains. “So I’m helping out until then.”
Something tells him she’d do this forever if she could. After all, he knows all about family businesses and they’re in your blood, whether you like it or not.
---
When she asks him where he’s staying, he says the cheapest motel in town. She informs him that would be The Camelot and that there’s no way that he’s staying there.
That’s how he ends up at her apartment, walking around nervously while he scans the photographs on the wall. There’s one of her and a guy (Logan, he thinks), his arms wrapped around her waist, and the both of them are smiling like the camera only knows half their secret.
“Do you want anything to eat or drink?” she asks from the kitchen.
He shakes his head before realizing that she can’t see him. “I’m good, thanks.”
“Here are some pillows and a blanket for the couch,” she says, dropping them onto the small couch that looks even more uncomfortable than Bobby’s spare bed. “I know it’s been a long drive.”
He nods wordlessly and the silence stretches between them.
“I thought about you, you know,” she says finally.
“Yeah?” he asks, a little surprised.
She nods, smiling slightly. “I kept kicking myself in the ass for not getting your phone number or at least your last name. That’s very unlike me.”
“So…are you happy to see me then?” he asks hesitantly.
She smiles at him and it’s crooked and beautiful. He’s about to smile back when she crosses the room and wraps her arms around his neck, pressing her lips against his. She’s so tiny; he grips her hips, pulling her up a little.
“What do you think?” she asks, pulling away.
“I think I’m not sleeping on the couch.”
She swats him playfully before leading him to the bedroom.
---
“I can’t believe you’ve never seen the ocean.”
“Well, we don’t exactly have many of those in the Midwest,” he replies.
She looks at him curiously. “Do you even know how to swim?”
“Yeah.”
“Really?” she asks disbelievingly.
“We do have lakes, you know. And pools.”
His dad taught him how to swim one summer at a lake before everything went to shit. Afterwards, it became another part of his training, his new life. Sink or swim.
“Oh, how advanced of you,” she replies jokingly.
He glances at her in the passenger seat as he drives. The wind has let her ponytail loose, strands of hair whipping at her face.
“Turn here and park,” she says.
They stop in an empty lot overlooking the beach and when Dean looks straight ahead, there’s nothing but blue as far as the eye can see. It’s endless and suddenly he wonders if Sam ever got to see the ocean before he died. He’s not sure what Sam did or didn’t do at Stanford.
He slams his fist against the steering wheel and Veronica whips her head around to look at him. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he says, shaking his head furiously.
“Dean…”
“Come on,” he says, opening the car door. “Let’s check out the water.”
He trudges behind her in the sand and she tells him it might help if he took off his boots. He’s still got his leather jacket on and she laughs, pushing it off his shoulders. He’s never felt more out of place.
Then she takes his hand in hers and drags him to the edge of the water, small waves flowing over his toes and receding back. They come and go just like everything else in life.
There’s sand on the bottoms of their feet when they get back in the car and it’s getting everywhere, but it doesn’t matter.
She pulls him into the backseat, smiling mischievously and he’s not sure what he did to get so lucky.
Lucky in the backseat of the Impala.
He grins against her collarbone, his tongue sweeping over the soft skin. She moans softly as she moves underneath him, wrapping her whole body around him. He can hear the ocean when she comes.
He thinks it may be the most perfect moment he’s ever had in the Impala.
---
“I told my dad about you today,” she says over dinner.
He looks up at her from his forkful of pasta. “Oh yeah?”
“He’s a little concerned about the age difference.”
“Older guys know more tricks,” he replies, winking at her.
She rolls her eyes. “I think he forgets that I’m twenty-three years old sometimes.”
Dean studies her face for a moment. She has the youthful appearance and body (God, that body) of a twenty-three year-old, but something in her eyes reads twenty-three going on forty. He thinks that he must look sixty.
“He wants us to come over for dinner this Friday,” she continues.
“Friday? Doesn’t he know Friday is...you know?” He grins broadly.
“Friday,” she answers with firmness. “And I suggest that if you want to continue doing you know what on Friday, you don’t make any sexual innuendos during dinner. Also, you should know that my dad carries a gun and he considers protecting my chastity his greatest responsibility.”
Dean has at least ten guns in the trunk of his Impala, but he doesn’t think that’s going to earn him any brownie points in this situation.
“You mean your non-existent chastity?” he says, smirking.
“Exactly. Denial’s not just a river in Egypt.”
Friday comes faster than he’d like and suddenly he’s going to meet the family, even if it is just Veronica’s dad, over Italian (it’s always Italian with this girl, which is a hundred times better than Bobby’s chili, but man is he going to die of a heart attack). Dean’s never gotten to this stage before; he’s never gotten to a lot of the things he’s done or felt with Veronica.
He’s seen a lot of scary demons in his time, but Keith Mars’ fiercely protective and suspicious expression (something like, “So you’re the guy who’s been staying with my daughter and sleeping in the same bed as her.”) when he opens the front door is definitely in his top ten scary moments.
“So Dean, what do you do for a living?” Keith asks over dinner. Dean can practically hear the unspoken words: When you’re not having sex with my daughter?
Well, sir, I kill things that are almost as scary as you.
He puts on his best bullshit face and prays to God that he still has some mojo. “My family moved around a lot, so I just picked up whatever jobs I could get.”
But Keith presses on. “Like what?”
“Um, I was pretty good at fixing cars.” It’s not a complete lie. He never did it as a job, but it’s true.
“Dean drives a ’67 Chevy Impala,” Veronica chimes in, squeezing his knee reassuringly under the table.
“Really? That’s quite an old car,” Keith replies.
“Yeah, it was my dad’s. I restored it a couple of years ago after an accident.”
“Was your dad in the military? Is that why you moved so --”
“Excuse me, I need to use the restroom,” he says abruptly, leaving the table. He can feel their eyes on him as he rushes into the hallway of the Mars’ apartment, looking desperately for the bathroom. When he finally finds it after a detour into what he guesses must be Veronica’s old bedroom, he splashes some water on his face and stares into the mirror over the sink.
It’s all going to come undone. Keith’s going to realize he’s lying or Veronica’s going to find out. He’s going to slip under the pressure. He’s going to give himself an ulcer worrying. He wonders briefly if it’s worth it.
Back in the hallway, he can hear Veronica and her dad talking. He stands back and listens.
“Veronica, are you sure it’s safe? How much do you really know about him?” Keith asks concernedly. “Do you even know his last name?”
“It’s…” she wavers when she realizes she doesn’t know. “I know enough.”
“I just don’t want to see you get hurt, Veronica.”
“Dad, after Logan died, I…” she trails off, her voice breaking. “Dean’s the best thing that could have happened to me at the time.” She pauses briefly and he wishes that he could see her face. “He’s still the best thing.”
He’s got his answer.
“I just worry about you,” Keith says, his voice soft and warm.
“I know, but you don’t need to. I can take care of myself. Besides, it’ll just give you frown lines.”
---
Sometimes, he just stares at the picture of her and Logan on the wall when he’s home alone. He’s not sure what he hopes to find in the framed photograph. Dean knows he can’t be Logan, he doesn’t want to be, but he can’t help wondering what Logan had. He can’t help being jealous of the guy who got to be with Veronica for so long and then he realizes how crazy it is to be jealous of a dead guy. He stares at Veronica’s smiling face and he wonders what she was like back then because he knows you can’t lose someone and not change. He’s already changed three times in his life.
One day, he rolls over to find the other side of the bed empty, so he trudges into the living room sleepily to find her taking down the photograph.
“You don’t have to do that because I’m here,” he says, sitting down on the couch.
She looks up, slightly startled by his voice before relaxing. “I’m not. I’m just ready.”
“Oh,” is all he can think of to say.
She crawls into his lap, looking at him thoughtfully, and he wraps his arms around her waist. “Tell me about your family, Dean.”
“My dad would have liked you,” he says, smiling to himself. It slips out before he even realizes what he’s saying. “You little smart ass, firecracker.”
She laughs softly before stopping abruptly. “Would have?”
He swallows thickly. “He passed away a while back.”
She lays her head against his chest in a silent apology. “What about your mom?”
“Let’s not talk about my sad past,” he replies, brushing her hair back.
She stiffens against him, frowning slightly. “Dean, do you realize I don’t even know your last name? Why don’t you talk -- ”
Her words are effectively cut off as he kisses her soundly.
---
He can tell she’s pissed the minute she comes home. But he doesn’t know better because he’s still new and learning, so he smiles broadly and says, “Want to get those kinks out in the bedroom?”
She glares at him over her shoulder, her eyes like daggers, and slams her car keys down on the kitchen counter.
“Okay, a simple, ‘No,’ would have done the trick,” he mutters.
She turns around so that she is looking straight at him and he can tell that the next words out of her mouth are not going to be good. “I ran your plates today.”
Fuck.
“You’re supposed to be dead,” she says angrily. “Care to explain, Dean? If that’s even your real name.”
“Someone who looks like Dean Winchester is dead,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck, “but the real Dean Winchester is not. I’m very much alive.”
She shakes her head. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“My life’s not normal, Veronica,” he replies softly.
“Neither is mine,” she bites back.
“No, mine’s really not normal.” Like spirits and ghosts and demons not normal. Like a demon that killed my whole family not normal.
“So what? Is that some kind of excuse to kill a man and take over his identity?”
He stands up abruptly, crossing the room to where she is standing, arms crossed defiantly over her chest. “I never killed a man, I swear. You have to trust me, Veronica.”
She smirks like he’s just asked her to do the most ridiculous thing. Normally, he’d react the same way because he’s seen too much in his life. Apparently, so has she.
“Kind of hard to trust a dead man,” she replies bitingly.
“Veronica…” He reaches out, placing his hands on her arms. He doesn’t miss the way she flinches at his touch or the fear in her eyes. He can’t believe she’s scared of him. She pushes at him, trying to break out of his grasp but he pulls her closer. “I’d never hurt you. I could never,” the words tumble out of his mouth like running water as she struggles against him. “You have to believe me, Veronica. Please. I lo…” She looks up at him, eyes wide, her chest heaving. “I love you.”
He’s never admitted that to a girl before. Also on his list of things he’d never admit: he’s afraid that she won’t say it back, so he kisses her, hard, before she can say anything at all. The force of his kiss pushes her back until she’s pressed up against the kitchen counter. His hands move to her hips, pinning her between the counter and his body, as their teeth break against each other. It’s messy and desperate and a little wrong.
He lifts her up onto the counter, sliding between her legs, and she tugs at the hem of his shirt, fingers clawing at the skin underneath. He presses against her, his hands sliding underneath her skirt, over her bare thighs.
“Oh God,” she moans softly, running her fingers through his hair.
“I’m really Dean, I swear,” he says as he kisses his way up the inside of her thigh.
She grips his head, pulling him up to her. When she kisses him, she bites his lip. “I don’t care what your name is right now.”
She leans forward until her chest is pressed up against his, until she slips off the counter, landing in his arms. Her legs wrap around his waist, grinding against him as she attempts to gain leverage.
“Jesus Christ,” he mutters.
“Bedroom,” she whispers hoarsely against his ear. “Let’s get those kinks out.”
This girl is going to be the end of him.
---
They lay on their backs side by side, staring at the ceiling. It’s so quiet, he can hear his blood rushing through his veins. Her hand is so close; he wants to reach out and touch her.
“You don’t tell me things,” she says suddenly.
“I know,” he replies quietly. She sighs, wrapping the sheet around her body as she begins to get up. He grabs her arm quickly, pulling her back down to the bed. He’s come too far to lose her now. “I lied to you. My brother didn’t die in an accident.”
“I know. It’s not that you’re a bad liar.” She smiles to herself. “You’re actually pretty good. But I’m better at being able to see through peoples’ lies.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?” he asks surprised.
“I figured you’d tell me the truth about that when you were ready.” She moves back further into the bed, leaning against the headboard, and he shifts so he is sitting beside her, their arms brushing against each other. Her hair is framing her face wildly and her skin is still flushed and moist. “I know what it’s like to keep things to yourself.”
Dean nods before stating simply, “Something killed him.”
“You mean someone,” she corrects.
“No.” He looks straight into her eyes. “Something.”
“Dean…” she says in this voice that says, “Don’t be silly. Those things don’t exist,” the same voice everyone uses right before the demon/spirit/whatever attacks them, so he tells her the truth. He tells her about his mom and the demon and his dad and Sam. He tells her everything and with each confession, it feels like another weight is being lifted off his shoulders. When he’s done, she brushes her hand over his. It feels good.
“I told you my life wasn’t normal,” he says with a half-hearted smile.
“I stopped wanting normal a long time ago.”
His looks at her disbelievingly and once again wonders what he did to get so lucky. “You don’t think I’m crazy?”
“I’ve seen some pretty bad things in my life. I wish they’d been demons. It would have been more comforting.”
He pulls her against him, wrapping his arm around her bare shoulders. “Veronica, this type of stuff…it doesn’t go away. It’s always going to be a part of me, of who I am and what I do.” She nods against his shoulder, her warm breath gliding over his skin. “But I’m not going anywhere, if that’s okay with you.”
She leans across his chest, the sheet tangling between them, and plants a soft kiss against the corner of his mouth. “It’s okay with me.”
There’s always going to be more demons out there and there’s always going to be a hole in his life where Sam used to be. But he’s going to take this moment to enjoy the early morning sun streaming in through the bedroom window and the girl curled up in his arms.
Dean thinks Sam would approve.
End
III. Chosen Family
IV. Hospice
Sequel to "Everybody’s Gotta Learn Sometimes"
By halfway2home
Disclaimer: I don’t own “Supernatural” or “Veronica Mars.” Eric Kripke and Rob Thomas would be your guys. The title comes from a song of the same name by Ivy.
Word Count: 3804
Rating: R mostly for language and some content.
Pairing: Veronica/Dean (from Supernatural)
Setting/Spoilers: Future fic. 2x22 for VM, 2x01 for SPN.
Summary: Dean goes to California. Or: How to tell your girlfriend you’re a demon hunter.
Author’s Note: Thanks to rubykatewriting for the beta!
I. Everbody's Gotta Learn Sometimes
II.
A month after she leaves, Dean finally checks out of the motel, but he doesn’t go to California.
No, he goes to Bobby’s. Bobby lets him stay in a spare room in the back, sleep on an uncomfortable, too small bed, and eat more chili than he’s ever wanted. But none of that matters because he’s hunting again and it feels damn good. Every kill no longer reminds him of the one that went horribly wrong.
Bobby asks him one day what brought about this change.
Dean shrugs. “What’s it always about?”
Bobby looks at him for a second and then smiles slowly. “What’s her name? And more importantly, where is she?”
“California,” he answers simply.
“Well, what the hell are you still doing here?” Bobby replies, shoving his shoulder.
Dean looks down at the beer in front of him. “I can’t bring her into this,” he says softly. “It’s not safe. It’s not even fucking sane.”
“Why don’t you let her decide that?”
He can’t even imagine how he would begin to explain his life to her. What if he told her the truth and she thought he was crazy? Worse yet, what if he told her and she believed him and one day, she got hurt or worse because of it? What if she ended up like his mother or Jessica? No, this was the best thing for everyone. They’d go their separate ways and with enough time, he hoped (please), they’d forget about each other.
And then it hits him. If he follows this plan, he’s already lost her. He’s lost her without even trying and life’s too short for this crap and it’s definitely too long to spend it alone.
---
Dean hasn’t driven this far West since he picked up Sam at Stanford.
In Arizona, the heat becomes too much and he thinks that the Impala might finally give out from having the air-conditioning on full blast.
His hands slip on the steering wheel for the third time in the last thirty minutes and he’d like to blame it on the heat, but he’d be lying. Every once and a while, he reaches into his jacket pocket and fingers the small slip of paper that he’s been carrying around for months.
He drives from Bobby’s without stopping, except for food and bathroom breaks and that spirit (not an alien) in New Mexico, until he reaches the Arizona-California border and realizes he has no idea where to go.
He reaches into his pocket, pulling out the piece of paper and his cell phone. His fingers slide over the buttons slowly, pausing before he pushes the ‘Talk’ button.
“Hello,” she answers. Dean doesn’t know what he expected, but it certainly wasn’t an inability to speak. “Hello?”
“Hey, it’s Dean,” he finally breathes out, stepping out of his car. Air. He needs air.
“Dean.” She sounds surprised, but he can’t tell if it’s a good thing or not. “How are you?”
“I’m good. I’m in California, technically,” he says, looking down at where his feet are straddling the border. “I was hoping I could see you, if you still wanted…”
“Yeah,” she replies, and he exhales finally because her voice sounds happy. “Come by my work.”
He scribbles her work address next to her phone number and smiles as he passes the “Welcome to California” sign.
---
“Shit! God dammit!” he swears, staring up at the Mars Investigations sign. A woman looks at him suspiciously out of the corner of her eye as she passes by him.
Veronica works for a private investigator and Dean… He has secrets.
“That’s just fucking perfect,” he mutters to himself. His cell phone rings and he grabs it hastily. “Yeah?”
“I can hear you, you know.”
It’s her. “Shit.”
She laughs. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I just hit my knee against the door,” he lies.
“Smooth,” she replies sarcastically. “So, are you going to come up or what?”
Every step up to Mars Investigations feels like walking towards everything he’s ever wanted and to his demise all at the same time. He wonders how much she already knows. He never gave her his last name, but there are ways to track people down. But she wouldn’t have invited him to visit her if she knew about his past, right?
“Hey,” she says, smiling at him warmly when he enters the office and he decides right then that there’s no way that she knows.
“So you work for a private investigator.” He gestures at the door that says, “Keith Mars, P.I.”
She nods. “Yeah, my dad.”
“Your dad?” he repeats, swallowing nervously. Jesus.
“It’s sort of a family business.” He knows a thing or two about those, but he doesn’t say so. “Give me a minute and we can get out of here.”
He nods as she begins packing up her stuff, sliding her laptop into her messenger bag. “You do this often?”
“Not as much when I’m in school. But since I took off last semester to…” she trails off, looking up at him briefly, and he nods in understanding. “I’ve got one more semester to go in the fall,” she explains. “So I’m helping out until then.”
Something tells him she’d do this forever if she could. After all, he knows all about family businesses and they’re in your blood, whether you like it or not.
---
When she asks him where he’s staying, he says the cheapest motel in town. She informs him that would be The Camelot and that there’s no way that he’s staying there.
That’s how he ends up at her apartment, walking around nervously while he scans the photographs on the wall. There’s one of her and a guy (Logan, he thinks), his arms wrapped around her waist, and the both of them are smiling like the camera only knows half their secret.
“Do you want anything to eat or drink?” she asks from the kitchen.
He shakes his head before realizing that she can’t see him. “I’m good, thanks.”
“Here are some pillows and a blanket for the couch,” she says, dropping them onto the small couch that looks even more uncomfortable than Bobby’s spare bed. “I know it’s been a long drive.”
He nods wordlessly and the silence stretches between them.
“I thought about you, you know,” she says finally.
“Yeah?” he asks, a little surprised.
She nods, smiling slightly. “I kept kicking myself in the ass for not getting your phone number or at least your last name. That’s very unlike me.”
“So…are you happy to see me then?” he asks hesitantly.
She smiles at him and it’s crooked and beautiful. He’s about to smile back when she crosses the room and wraps her arms around his neck, pressing her lips against his. She’s so tiny; he grips her hips, pulling her up a little.
“What do you think?” she asks, pulling away.
“I think I’m not sleeping on the couch.”
She swats him playfully before leading him to the bedroom.
---
“I can’t believe you’ve never seen the ocean.”
“Well, we don’t exactly have many of those in the Midwest,” he replies.
She looks at him curiously. “Do you even know how to swim?”
“Yeah.”
“Really?” she asks disbelievingly.
“We do have lakes, you know. And pools.”
His dad taught him how to swim one summer at a lake before everything went to shit. Afterwards, it became another part of his training, his new life. Sink or swim.
“Oh, how advanced of you,” she replies jokingly.
He glances at her in the passenger seat as he drives. The wind has let her ponytail loose, strands of hair whipping at her face.
“Turn here and park,” she says.
They stop in an empty lot overlooking the beach and when Dean looks straight ahead, there’s nothing but blue as far as the eye can see. It’s endless and suddenly he wonders if Sam ever got to see the ocean before he died. He’s not sure what Sam did or didn’t do at Stanford.
He slams his fist against the steering wheel and Veronica whips her head around to look at him. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he says, shaking his head furiously.
“Dean…”
“Come on,” he says, opening the car door. “Let’s check out the water.”
He trudges behind her in the sand and she tells him it might help if he took off his boots. He’s still got his leather jacket on and she laughs, pushing it off his shoulders. He’s never felt more out of place.
Then she takes his hand in hers and drags him to the edge of the water, small waves flowing over his toes and receding back. They come and go just like everything else in life.
There’s sand on the bottoms of their feet when they get back in the car and it’s getting everywhere, but it doesn’t matter.
She pulls him into the backseat, smiling mischievously and he’s not sure what he did to get so lucky.
Lucky in the backseat of the Impala.
He grins against her collarbone, his tongue sweeping over the soft skin. She moans softly as she moves underneath him, wrapping her whole body around him. He can hear the ocean when she comes.
He thinks it may be the most perfect moment he’s ever had in the Impala.
---
“I told my dad about you today,” she says over dinner.
He looks up at her from his forkful of pasta. “Oh yeah?”
“He’s a little concerned about the age difference.”
“Older guys know more tricks,” he replies, winking at her.
She rolls her eyes. “I think he forgets that I’m twenty-three years old sometimes.”
Dean studies her face for a moment. She has the youthful appearance and body (God, that body) of a twenty-three year-old, but something in her eyes reads twenty-three going on forty. He thinks that he must look sixty.
“He wants us to come over for dinner this Friday,” she continues.
“Friday? Doesn’t he know Friday is...you know?” He grins broadly.
“Friday,” she answers with firmness. “And I suggest that if you want to continue doing you know what on Friday, you don’t make any sexual innuendos during dinner. Also, you should know that my dad carries a gun and he considers protecting my chastity his greatest responsibility.”
Dean has at least ten guns in the trunk of his Impala, but he doesn’t think that’s going to earn him any brownie points in this situation.
“You mean your non-existent chastity?” he says, smirking.
“Exactly. Denial’s not just a river in Egypt.”
Friday comes faster than he’d like and suddenly he’s going to meet the family, even if it is just Veronica’s dad, over Italian (it’s always Italian with this girl, which is a hundred times better than Bobby’s chili, but man is he going to die of a heart attack). Dean’s never gotten to this stage before; he’s never gotten to a lot of the things he’s done or felt with Veronica.
He’s seen a lot of scary demons in his time, but Keith Mars’ fiercely protective and suspicious expression (something like, “So you’re the guy who’s been staying with my daughter and sleeping in the same bed as her.”) when he opens the front door is definitely in his top ten scary moments.
“So Dean, what do you do for a living?” Keith asks over dinner. Dean can practically hear the unspoken words: When you’re not having sex with my daughter?
Well, sir, I kill things that are almost as scary as you.
He puts on his best bullshit face and prays to God that he still has some mojo. “My family moved around a lot, so I just picked up whatever jobs I could get.”
But Keith presses on. “Like what?”
“Um, I was pretty good at fixing cars.” It’s not a complete lie. He never did it as a job, but it’s true.
“Dean drives a ’67 Chevy Impala,” Veronica chimes in, squeezing his knee reassuringly under the table.
“Really? That’s quite an old car,” Keith replies.
“Yeah, it was my dad’s. I restored it a couple of years ago after an accident.”
“Was your dad in the military? Is that why you moved so --”
“Excuse me, I need to use the restroom,” he says abruptly, leaving the table. He can feel their eyes on him as he rushes into the hallway of the Mars’ apartment, looking desperately for the bathroom. When he finally finds it after a detour into what he guesses must be Veronica’s old bedroom, he splashes some water on his face and stares into the mirror over the sink.
It’s all going to come undone. Keith’s going to realize he’s lying or Veronica’s going to find out. He’s going to slip under the pressure. He’s going to give himself an ulcer worrying. He wonders briefly if it’s worth it.
Back in the hallway, he can hear Veronica and her dad talking. He stands back and listens.
“Veronica, are you sure it’s safe? How much do you really know about him?” Keith asks concernedly. “Do you even know his last name?”
“It’s…” she wavers when she realizes she doesn’t know. “I know enough.”
“I just don’t want to see you get hurt, Veronica.”
“Dad, after Logan died, I…” she trails off, her voice breaking. “Dean’s the best thing that could have happened to me at the time.” She pauses briefly and he wishes that he could see her face. “He’s still the best thing.”
He’s got his answer.
“I just worry about you,” Keith says, his voice soft and warm.
“I know, but you don’t need to. I can take care of myself. Besides, it’ll just give you frown lines.”
---
Sometimes, he just stares at the picture of her and Logan on the wall when he’s home alone. He’s not sure what he hopes to find in the framed photograph. Dean knows he can’t be Logan, he doesn’t want to be, but he can’t help wondering what Logan had. He can’t help being jealous of the guy who got to be with Veronica for so long and then he realizes how crazy it is to be jealous of a dead guy. He stares at Veronica’s smiling face and he wonders what she was like back then because he knows you can’t lose someone and not change. He’s already changed three times in his life.
One day, he rolls over to find the other side of the bed empty, so he trudges into the living room sleepily to find her taking down the photograph.
“You don’t have to do that because I’m here,” he says, sitting down on the couch.
She looks up, slightly startled by his voice before relaxing. “I’m not. I’m just ready.”
“Oh,” is all he can think of to say.
She crawls into his lap, looking at him thoughtfully, and he wraps his arms around her waist. “Tell me about your family, Dean.”
“My dad would have liked you,” he says, smiling to himself. It slips out before he even realizes what he’s saying. “You little smart ass, firecracker.”
She laughs softly before stopping abruptly. “Would have?”
He swallows thickly. “He passed away a while back.”
She lays her head against his chest in a silent apology. “What about your mom?”
“Let’s not talk about my sad past,” he replies, brushing her hair back.
She stiffens against him, frowning slightly. “Dean, do you realize I don’t even know your last name? Why don’t you talk -- ”
Her words are effectively cut off as he kisses her soundly.
---
He can tell she’s pissed the minute she comes home. But he doesn’t know better because he’s still new and learning, so he smiles broadly and says, “Want to get those kinks out in the bedroom?”
She glares at him over her shoulder, her eyes like daggers, and slams her car keys down on the kitchen counter.
“Okay, a simple, ‘No,’ would have done the trick,” he mutters.
She turns around so that she is looking straight at him and he can tell that the next words out of her mouth are not going to be good. “I ran your plates today.”
Fuck.
“You’re supposed to be dead,” she says angrily. “Care to explain, Dean? If that’s even your real name.”
“Someone who looks like Dean Winchester is dead,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck, “but the real Dean Winchester is not. I’m very much alive.”
She shakes her head. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“My life’s not normal, Veronica,” he replies softly.
“Neither is mine,” she bites back.
“No, mine’s really not normal.” Like spirits and ghosts and demons not normal. Like a demon that killed my whole family not normal.
“So what? Is that some kind of excuse to kill a man and take over his identity?”
He stands up abruptly, crossing the room to where she is standing, arms crossed defiantly over her chest. “I never killed a man, I swear. You have to trust me, Veronica.”
She smirks like he’s just asked her to do the most ridiculous thing. Normally, he’d react the same way because he’s seen too much in his life. Apparently, so has she.
“Kind of hard to trust a dead man,” she replies bitingly.
“Veronica…” He reaches out, placing his hands on her arms. He doesn’t miss the way she flinches at his touch or the fear in her eyes. He can’t believe she’s scared of him. She pushes at him, trying to break out of his grasp but he pulls her closer. “I’d never hurt you. I could never,” the words tumble out of his mouth like running water as she struggles against him. “You have to believe me, Veronica. Please. I lo…” She looks up at him, eyes wide, her chest heaving. “I love you.”
He’s never admitted that to a girl before. Also on his list of things he’d never admit: he’s afraid that she won’t say it back, so he kisses her, hard, before she can say anything at all. The force of his kiss pushes her back until she’s pressed up against the kitchen counter. His hands move to her hips, pinning her between the counter and his body, as their teeth break against each other. It’s messy and desperate and a little wrong.
He lifts her up onto the counter, sliding between her legs, and she tugs at the hem of his shirt, fingers clawing at the skin underneath. He presses against her, his hands sliding underneath her skirt, over her bare thighs.
“Oh God,” she moans softly, running her fingers through his hair.
“I’m really Dean, I swear,” he says as he kisses his way up the inside of her thigh.
She grips his head, pulling him up to her. When she kisses him, she bites his lip. “I don’t care what your name is right now.”
She leans forward until her chest is pressed up against his, until she slips off the counter, landing in his arms. Her legs wrap around his waist, grinding against him as she attempts to gain leverage.
“Jesus Christ,” he mutters.
“Bedroom,” she whispers hoarsely against his ear. “Let’s get those kinks out.”
This girl is going to be the end of him.
---
They lay on their backs side by side, staring at the ceiling. It’s so quiet, he can hear his blood rushing through his veins. Her hand is so close; he wants to reach out and touch her.
“You don’t tell me things,” she says suddenly.
“I know,” he replies quietly. She sighs, wrapping the sheet around her body as she begins to get up. He grabs her arm quickly, pulling her back down to the bed. He’s come too far to lose her now. “I lied to you. My brother didn’t die in an accident.”
“I know. It’s not that you’re a bad liar.” She smiles to herself. “You’re actually pretty good. But I’m better at being able to see through peoples’ lies.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?” he asks surprised.
“I figured you’d tell me the truth about that when you were ready.” She moves back further into the bed, leaning against the headboard, and he shifts so he is sitting beside her, their arms brushing against each other. Her hair is framing her face wildly and her skin is still flushed and moist. “I know what it’s like to keep things to yourself.”
Dean nods before stating simply, “Something killed him.”
“You mean someone,” she corrects.
“No.” He looks straight into her eyes. “Something.”
“Dean…” she says in this voice that says, “Don’t be silly. Those things don’t exist,” the same voice everyone uses right before the demon/spirit/whatever attacks them, so he tells her the truth. He tells her about his mom and the demon and his dad and Sam. He tells her everything and with each confession, it feels like another weight is being lifted off his shoulders. When he’s done, she brushes her hand over his. It feels good.
“I told you my life wasn’t normal,” he says with a half-hearted smile.
“I stopped wanting normal a long time ago.”
His looks at her disbelievingly and once again wonders what he did to get so lucky. “You don’t think I’m crazy?”
“I’ve seen some pretty bad things in my life. I wish they’d been demons. It would have been more comforting.”
He pulls her against him, wrapping his arm around her bare shoulders. “Veronica, this type of stuff…it doesn’t go away. It’s always going to be a part of me, of who I am and what I do.” She nods against his shoulder, her warm breath gliding over his skin. “But I’m not going anywhere, if that’s okay with you.”
She leans across his chest, the sheet tangling between them, and plants a soft kiss against the corner of his mouth. “It’s okay with me.”
There’s always going to be more demons out there and there’s always going to be a hole in his life where Sam used to be. But he’s going to take this moment to enjoy the early morning sun streaming in through the bedroom window and the girl curled up in his arms.
Dean thinks Sam would approve.
End
III. Chosen Family
IV. Hospice