He awakes to the sound of sobbing and feels the slippery splash of tiny drops hitting his face, sliding down his face. He tastes salt and terror when he parts his lips and seconds later, opens his eyes.
Tears are pouring off her face like someone smashed glacial ocean water across her cheekbones and cling to her lashes the way oil clings to water. The silk of her hair, that chocolate velvet streaked with dappled gold, knots and tangles and frames her drenched face.
Dean never was any good with crying women.
"What's wrong? What happened? Are you hurt?" He scrambles to get up, fear clogging his throat, desperation mingling with adrenaline.
Bela cries harder.
His hands fumble along her jaw line, her cheekbones, her lips as he frantically wipes away tears but one blink of her eyes and an avalanche of fresh, salty tears spill out to replace them.
His hands are dripping water like a wet dog, his face is splattered with her fallen tears, and he can't seem to come up with a rational train of thought, the snarling animal in his gut, the one chained down to the pits of Hell, is dying to rip the cause for her tears to bits of blood and bone and wolf them down.
Straight, no chaser.
She leans her head against his chest and the thin cotton clings to him instantly, wet. "Bela," Dean tries again, forcing himself to be gentle. "What is it?"
"It was just a stupid dream," she mumbles against his chest. "I'm so sorry, Dean. It was just a stupid dream."
Oh, thank God.
"Want to talk about it?" Dean tucks her snugly between himself and the comforter on the bed, listening to her pounding pulse.
Her breath hitches. "No."
So he gives her something to sleep better and just holds her till her sobbing settles and her heartbeat returns to normal, until she drifts off.
She wonders why he's still there in the morning and he just nestles her against him, loving the perfect fit of their bodies, blinks at her and says, "Good morning, beautiful."
His fingers trail along her cheek as she sleeps and Dean pauses to relish the feeling of her skin against his callused fingertips. The woman was truly a being from another world, Dean reflected.
Velvet for hair, silk for skin, pillows for lips, apples for cheeks, emeralds for eyes.
He shakes his head before he starts to get sappy.
Bela opens her door to find the two Winchesters, bloody and bruised, standing there. Of course, she thinks in exasperation. Who else would knock at one o'clock in the morning? She takes in their appearance with a tired sigh, having only recently gone to bed herself two hours ago after lifting a black diamond bracelet and necklace set from a local museum. They look like they have gone ten rounds with a brick wall.
"Dean? Sam? Are you alright, what happened?"
She ushers them over the threshold and has to nearly shove them onto her couch, not caring at how the plush white velvet stains with blood. Last she had heard Dean had called her and said they had a hunt nearby, and a day or two after it was over he wanted to take her out. There had definitely been no mention of showing up looking like hell.
"Hunt went a bit, awry..." Dean tries to smile, "you got any bandages, Lugosi?"
Bela nods, wincing as she took in some of the cuts and scrapes across their cheekbones and jaw lines.
"Great, come on, Sammy."
Once she's patched them up, Sam first at Dean's insistence even though he was in worse shape, Bela resigns herself to cooking, seeing as neither of them are in shape to cook for themselves.
A bit self-conscious at her less than stellar cooking, she served omelets, but they were happy with them and ate them up quickly.
"I'll teach you properly later," Dean told her, happily gulping down his third omelet.
They were now in her lounge watching a movie; she had let the boys choose, Dean demanding the latest and last Batman movie the moment he saw it.
It was towards the end and she was curled onto Dean on the couch while Sam occupied the armchair. Every so often Sam would start laughing and dart his gaze between her and Dean and then back to the movie.
Alfred is smiling at Bruce on screen and Sam smothers another laugh. Dean shoots him a distracted glance. "Come on, Sam, gonna share your amusement?"
Sam snickers, "You two are like Batman and Catwoman."
Bela senses Dean's bitchface coming and purrs, "Well then, Sam, darling, I guess that makes you Alfred."
Dean chuckles at Sam's indignant expression and kisses the top of her head.
Bela pins her hair up into a low chignon, fills in her lips with red gloss. Stares at her anxious expression in the mirror.
Goddamn it.
Dean should have been here by now, she frets. Checks her watch again. Glances at the clock hanging on the wall. Bela gazes at herself in the mirror again, taking in every feature.
She pours herself a shot of brandy and gulps it down, unwilling to risk the disappointment already flooding her system. Was it possible that Dean had stood her up, she wonders. Had he merely forgotten? Didn't he care?
Her fingers clench convulsively around the shot glass as another thought hit her. What if he had been killed hunting? Letting out a hiss between her teeth, she does another shot then stares at the glass in her hand.
She hurls it against the wall and it explodes into a thousand shards of shattered glass.
A few seconds pass with Bela staring, shocked with herself, at the shattered glass then a knocking on the door interrupts her.
Plucking up a gun from her kitchen drawer, she flings the door open and comes face to face with Dean.
He offers her a guilty smile and a bouquet of pink and white roses. "Sorry, Lugosi. I got caught up with work and my cell phone ran out batt-"
She flings her arms around his neck and tosses the gun into her living room. "Next time," she mumbles into his shoulder, vaguely aware that she was smearing her eye shadow along his jacket collar. "You give me call, you bastard."
Dean paces around the room, exasperation emanating from every pore. "How the hell does a person date, Sam? Please, tell me. I honestly don't remember how this crap works anymore!"
Sam wisely swallows a chuckle, delighted at how in love his brother is whether he realizes it or not. "Remind you? Wouldn't that imply that you once actually had a healthy relationship?"
"Oh, shut up," Dean snarls, throwing a couch pillow at him. "I don't know why I'm asking you of all people."
"Maybe because Bobby would laugh at you if you asked him?"
"You are being supremely unhelpful," Dean growls. "I've never had an adult relationship before!"
Sam tries to pull himself together before his brother tore him apart. "Well," he begins in what he assumes to be a Dr. Love type of voice, "Dean, you need to make her feel cherished and special."
"What, you want me to hold her hand?"
"For a start."
"Screw you, Sam," Dean manages out of gritted teeth. "I'm going to get her some freaky occult thing. That should be good enough for her."
He slams the door on the way out and Sam lets out a roar of laughter. Who would have thought, he muses in amusement. Dean Winchester and Bela Talbot…
Bela storms out the door, slamming it shut. Dean sinks onto couch, rubbing the heels of his hands into his eyes. He's exhausted and miserable and angry; pretty much every negative emotion in existence.
And it's all her damn fault.
At least, it is the way he figures it. If Bela Talbot was not so utterly perfect for him then he would not be so in love with her. And if he was not so utterly in love with her, it wouldn't hurt this badly when she was angry with him.
His eyes fly open and he freezes when he realizes what he has just thought.
Love? In love?
With Bela Talbot?
Shaking his head, Dean rises off the couch and out the door, intending to follow her and apologize, something he's never done for a girlfriend before. But, he supposes ruefully, she's more than just a girlfriend. When that happened, he was no idea, but it definitely has.
Bela Talbot, he thinks, leaving. God sure has a sense of humor.
"I don't want to talk to you, Dean!"
She spits out the words like his name disgusts her and she turns away, furious with herself for letting her temper get the better of her and horrified by how badly he can hurt her, how much power he has over her.
Bela doesn't like it, not one bit.
Indeed, she hates being vulnerable to someone; why else would she have closed herself off for so long, unwilling to really feel? Love made you vulnerable; getting attached to people hurt. Because when they left, and they inevitably did, it hurt like hell.
And now Dean, whom she swore to herself she would absolutely not, not, not fall in love with has her wrapped around his pinkie and sitting in the palm of his hand and he was going to break her heart if she didn't leave now.
Dean approaches her, eyes wide and pleading. "Bela, I know you're angry. But I also know you're scared."
She forces a laugh, high and unnatural. "You don't scare me, Dean."
"But I do," he counters, stepping closer. "I scare the hell out of you because that's what love is; very, very scary."
She gazes at him, mouth open. "I'm not in love with you, Dean," she lies coldly. "Get over your ego."
"It's not my ego. You love me, Bela," he continues. He makes to take her hand but she flinches and he backs away. "Fine. I won't touch you. But I know you love me."
"I don't-"
"Bela, it's supposed to be scary," Dean tells her, desperation tingeing his voice.
"How do you know?" She's backed up until her back hit the wall and her green eyes are wide. "How the hell do you know, Dean? Have you ever been in love before?"
"I just…damn, Bela, I just do, alright? I love you and I'm pretty scared!"
The words fly out of his mouth before he can stop himself and he watches her in fear as she attempts to close her mouth. Damn, did I ruin it, Dean thinks in horror. Did I scare her away?
"Dean…"
He holds up a hand to stop her from saying anything. "Not a word, Lugosi. Not a word."
"But-"
"I completely screwed this up and I am trying to find a way to do damage control so if you don't mind-"
"I understand."
His head snaps up, eyes narrowing. "Understand what?"
"You're right. I'm scared. I've never been in love before, Dean, I don't want you to break my heart," she starts off slow then continues quickly, building up nerve. Dean, please don't break my heart.
Dean's head cocks to one side, a thousand different tangents of thought running through his mind. "Never been in love before?"
Bela gulps hard then forces herself to make eye contact. "Yes. I mean to say-"
Before she can finish the sentence, he's swung her into his arms and is clutching her to his chest, burying his nose into her honey mane, inhaling her familiar scent. She reaches up to twine her arms around his neck, velvet green eyes shimmering with hope. "We're going to be alright, aren't we, Dean?"
He kisses the top her head, then her lips. "We're going to be just fine, Lugosi," he assures her, refusing to acknowledge the chocking in his throat. "I love you."
She laughs and blinks a way a few tears. "Don't you get sappy on me, Winchester," she purrs, marveling at how happy she feels.
He laughs too and kisses her again. "No chick flick moments," he agrees.
"Who, me? Never."
A/N: The end! Thanks for reading and hopefully you enjoyed reading this. Thanks to my fantastic beta LittleNephilim7 without whom this would never have been finished. Please review, as always. If you had a favorite line or anything, I always love to hear it. And I am always up for suggestions, so if you have one, please leave a review and let me know! :)