A/N: This is a direct sequel to my fic If They Only Knew. It's not completely vital that you read that one first, but it'll probably feel a bit more complete. Also, these two fics are a collection of a post-series Dean/Bela works.
Enjoy! Review! Send love!
"I don't understand why she's throwing a party. She's not even from America," Dean grumbled as he tied his boot laces more aggressively than needed be.
From his seat across their dingy motel room, Sam responded, "For one, it's not a party. It's a get-together between the three of us. And two, you're only mad because you're also nervous as hell."
At this remark, Dean angrily snapped his head up to glare at his brother. "Why would I be nervous?" He sounded more defensive than anything.
Sam didn't have to deign his brother with a reply—they both knew why Dean would be nervous. It had been almost a year since they had rescued Bela, meaning that it had been almost a year since Dean had started acting awkward and flustered when he was around her. Sure, they did share their usual bickering from time to time, but only until Dean realized that this was a woman whom he deeply, deeply liked and then he cleared his throat and forced himself to look away from her. Bela's smile would then falter but she wouldn't try to push the act of conversing any further, and instead would offer some drinks or maybe snacks or whatever excuse she could think up at the last minute.
And Sam watched it all. The two were pretty ridiculous, he thought. All the signs of their feelings for one another were as bright as a neon billboard in the middle of a pitch black road, but neither of them acted. Sam was pretty sure that Bela was aware of Dean's feelings for her, but he wasn't so sure that his brother was as perceptive. When it came to hunting down supernatural beings, sure, but not when it came to women. Definitely not women.
"Would you get that stupid look off your face? We're gonna be late."
At the sound of his brother's bitching, Sam snatched up his jacket and followed Dean out the motel door.
"Who cares about Fourth of July anyway? If we really wanted to see fireworks, all we had to do was wait until dark and start shooting our guns up in the air," Dean had been complaining the entire drive from their motel—which was roughly twenty minutes away—to Bela's house. They were now walking up the pathway to Bela's door and Dean was still whining like a child, but Sam simply ignored him, trailing behind with his hands in his pockets and his mind anywhere else.
Sam just absently hummed in response, like he had been for the past half-hour.
Of course, he was a little agitated, too. And not because he was nervous or because he hated the Fourth of July or because, and quote, "Bela's not American and shouldn't even be celebrating this stupid holiday in the first place" (Dean had brought this up as a half-assed argument more than a few times), but because he was more or less going to be third-wheeling the entire thing. Being stuck between side-eye glances when the other isn't looking is just as bad as being stuck between actual PDA, and this was a God-proven fact.
Dean made a move to angrily jab the doorbell but paused halfway before, choosing now to turn into the awkward sack of nervousness he usually transformed into when he was around Bela, so Sam sighed and leaned forward, pressing the damned thing himself. A few seconds later they both heard the soft padding of footsteps approaching them from the other side, and then the sound of Bela shooing Peru, her cat, away, before the door yanked open and the boys were both hit by the smell of everything her.
Sam had to hold in his breath as all the scents became overwhelming (they did smell good, it was just a lot to take in), while Dean's face turned a deep shade of red as the vanillas and citruses and spices crammed themselves up his nose and down his throat. Bela smiled at the both of them, although Sam noticed that hers lingered a tad longer on his brother, before she hugged them both at once and ushered them inside.
They had grown familiar with the interior of her house. After she died her apartment in Queens was, as expected, sold to another person, as well as all of her belongings. She had managed to get most of her...sellable artifacts back on her own, but she now kept them in a secret underground room she had built beneath a tool shed in her backyard. Her current home, which was actually a home, was a small, one-story, two-bedroom house situated in the middle of a New York suburb. Very un-Bela-ish, they knew, but she seemed to like it well enough. She also made up for the un-Bela-ish setting with what she had decorated the interior with: many expensive-looking modern furniture with even more hidden safes located around the entire house, and even her handy-dandy Ouija board which she had hung up on the wall above her fireplace.
Yep, the inside screamed "Bela Talbot", for sure.
The three walked over to the kitchen counter and Dean and Sam took a seat, while Bela immediately walked over and opened her oven, swiftly checking whatever contents lay inside. Before Hell, the brothers didn't like Bela enough to get to know her, or at least get to know the things about her that they couldn't read up on in a dossier, so when she invited them over to Thanksgiving the year prior and discovered that she hadn't ordered takeout from the nearest Chinese restaurant but had, in fact, made the meal herself, they were both genuinely surprised to find out she knew how to cook. They were also genuinely satisfied when they were later sitting at the table, bellies uncomfortably full and taste buds delightfully singing.
"Give it about ten more minutes or so, then we can eat," Bela said once she walked over to the other side of the counter across from them, giving them both a cold beer.
"What'd you cook this time?" Dean asked, and even though it came out a little tense, Sam was seriously surprised that he was actually talking to her, let alone looking her directly in the eye.
Did he miss something the last time they were here?
Bela shook her head, smiling mischievously. "Ah, ah. It's a surprise."
"The last time you said that about food, you tried to give me a salad." Dean frowned as he swallowed a gulp of beer. "You're the reason I have trust issues."
Bela laughed and Sam looked between the two, his eyebrows drawn together in confusion. Okay. He really did miss something. The last time they were here, Sam was completely beat and Dean was completely drugged-out on painkillers, and that was around a month ago. There was no way these two had a heart-to-heart about all of their problems in the short amount of time they had stayed over her house to recuperate.
"You alright, Sam? You're awfully quiet."
He looked up to see Bela looking at him and he could've swore that she seemed the slightest bit concerned. He coughed and sent a final suspicious look between her and Dean before raising his eyebrows and sitting upright. "Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. Just hungry. And a little sore."
Bela raised an eyebrow and looked between the two brothers. "What have you been up to?"
"Oh, don't be sick," Dean frowned. "I don't do threesomes."
Sam's face curled up in a disgusted grimace and he turned to look at his brother. "Dude. Gross."
When Dean looked at Bela, she was wearing a half-amused, half-revolted expression of her own.
"My mind wasn't even close to being there," Bela said, sighing as Dean's face turned a deep shade of red. "I was referring to any cases. You both look thoroughly exhausted."
"We are," Sam said, forcing himself to look away and momentarily pretend he didn't know his brother. Dean himself was trying to recover from his moment of embarrassment. "Let's just say, I hate shapeshifters."
Bela shuddered, nodding in agreement. "They're disgusting little things."
Sam frowned. "You've dealt with a shapeshifter before?"
"There was one that wanted to buy something off of me a few years ago; I believe it was a charm that made their retinal flare seem like the usual red-eye a camera produces instead of the flare that typically gives them away. A basic little trinket, but it worked well enough. I just remember that the shifter was entirely odd; acted like a sociopath. Like a serial killer." She shook her head as if to rid herself of the thought.
"Well, he probably was one," piped Dean, having recollected himself. "Damn bastards."
Bela lifted a shoulder in a shrug. "Hm, probably. It was chilling—and with me, that's saying something." She sighed and then they were all quiet for a moment, but then she was back to talking not long after. She was talking some literal nonsense with Sam, and the entire time Dean didn't listen. He just watched her mouth, the way it faintly twitched as it formed around some words and how it softly curved around others. The last time he was at her house, she kissed him with those lips. It was just a simple brush of the lips and she also believed that he was too high to comprehend anything basic, but he remembered. The feeling of her lips on his was forever burned into his brain, no matter how brief the interaction was. She tasted faintly like strawberry lip gloss and black tea and the experience was like eating a full-on meal. It was something extraordinary, to say the very least.
He wondered if he tasted like anything to Bela. Probably like stale beer and just-as-stale pork rinds, more than anything. He didn't care, though. He got to kiss her. She didn't blame him for hell. She liked him just like he liked her. They were living this innocent, grade-school crush fantasy out (with a definite dark twist, no doubt) and he was thoroughly enjoying it, no matter how childish the entire idea seemed.
Meanwhile, as Sam listened to Bela, he was also completely aware of his brother's eyes glued to her profile. His jaw was clenched, but not in agitation; in concentration. His eyes just skittered from her chin to the end of her jaw to her earlobe and to the corner of her eye before he repeated the process all over again. If Sam wasn't supposed to be engaged in a conversation with Bela, he would have smacked his brother back into reality right then and there.
And, on top of all that, Bela was mindful of both of the brothers; how Sam was only partially paying attention to her while the other part was exasperated with his brother, who, on the other hand, was currently playing connect-the-dots with his eyes and the entire left side of her face. She wasn't complaining about Dean, however—being under his gaze made her feel unusually warm, as if the July heat wasn't doing enough for her body temperature. She also wasn't complaining about Sam, because she herself was annoyed with his brother for not doing something bloody reckless and stupid like just kissing her already, but all three of them knew that he wasn't that brave. Yet.
The dinging of the oven forced all three of them out of their current thoughtful states, and Bela cleared her throat and turned to fetch their main course out of the oven. When she turned back around, she was holding a dish, which, in turn, was holding a juicy-looking tri-tip, in her hands, and Dean was practically drooling by the time she walked over to them at the dining table, where he and Sam had relocated during the brief wait.
A few minutes later and they were all engaged in their food; a wealthy amount of tri-tip, potato salad (which, Dean commented, was the only "salad" he'd ever eat), dinner rolls and even some bacon-wrapped corn on the cob she had made specifically for the boys themselves. Dean was making way more groans and satisfied sighs than Sam thought was necessary, but Bela didn't seem to mind. In fact, she seemed content that his brother was enjoying the meal so much, if the way she smiled into her wine glass was any indication enough.
They finished dinner at around six and when Bela pulled out a banana cream pie, Dean all but kissed her. In fact, that moment probably would have been a great time to kiss her. Hell, any moment would have been a great time to kiss her, but he didn't and instead thanked her before helping himself to half of the pie and finishing the thing in nearly five bites total.
When the first wave of fireworks began to sound from outside, the three agreed to relocate to the front yard, where Bela proposed that they lay out a blanket and watch the show from the "front row". Sam was less than enthusiastic at the thought of sharing the blanket with the two stubborn love birds, so at the last minute, right after Dean had joined Bela on the flannel blanket she had laid out, Sam pulled out a chair from the patio and kicked back next to them on the grass, blissfully ignoring the glare of death his brother was sending his way.
Dean forced himself to ease back into steadiness at Bela's side, but without his brother to provide the role of safety raft to his rapidly sinking boat, Dean was nearly panicking. His shoulders were tense and he was trying his best not to touch Bela, lest he wanted to explode like one of the fireworks going off in the middle of the street in front of them. Suddenly Bela shifted even closer to him and he didn't know if she was doing this on purpose or not, but now he had no choice but to lean into her before he was practically lying on his side, so he slowly edged to the left until his upper bicep was barely grazing her shoulder.
Bela did, in fact, do this on purpose, and not because she wanted Dean to touch her, but because the boy looked visibly strained. She felt sorry for him, she really did.
At some point, Sam made some lame excuse of having to use to the bathroom and never returned. Dean silently cursed his brother and promised himself that he would non-fatally shoot him later, and instead forced himself to smile at Bela, who, for some reason, was looking up at him with this odd look in her eye. If he was any less oblivious, he would have realized that she was staring at his lips, willing them to somehow detach themselves from his mouth and kiss her. Was she to do all the bloody work around here?
Apparently she was, because at the sound of a bottle rocket firework shooting up into the sky, Bela muttered "you damned idiot" before curling a small fist into his shirt and pulling him towards her, forcing her lips on his with such impatient enthusiasm that Dean thought he might suffocate. When Bela parted she was panting heavily, her eyebrows pulled together in irritation as she wiped her pink, puffy lips with the back of her hand.
"Don't look at me like that. Someone had to do it, and it definitely wasn't going to be you," she huffed, her accent rolling heavily off of her tongue. She made a move to shrug off the incident as if it was goddamned nothing and turned her attention back on the fireworks, but then Dean caught the other side of her chin with two of his fingers and brought her lips back to his, cupping the side of her face with one hand and using the other to entwine in her russet brown strands. She had one of her own hands pressed up against his chest as if to brace herself, and at some point during the kiss she had half-crawled into his lap so she could better angle her other arm around the back of his neck and pull him closer to her.
When they parted a second time, it was Dean's turn to act like nothing happened and instead continue to watch the fireworks. Bela sat there, dazed, before rolling her eyes and playfully shoving him in the shoulder. He smiled and chuckled and she affectionately frowned before relaxing into Dean's side.
From his seat on the porch, where he had secretly been for the past fifteen minutes since he had to "go to the bathroom", Sam let out an exasperated sigh of relief. "It's about goddamn time!"
Dean jumped and immediately turned to glare at his brother, while Bela tipped her head back in a laugh. "How long have you been there?" he snapped.
"Long enough to witness pigs fly and hell freeze over," Sam said in response.
"Why, you—" Dean shot up and made a move to lunge at his younger brother, but Sam quickly slipped inside and locked the door before he could so much as lay a finger on him.
Bela sighed and affectionately rolled her eyes, watching a fountain of purple and white rain down on the asphalt in the middle of the road. "Boys."