Title: Stray
Fandom: Pan Am
Author: Alidiabin
Words: 794
Disclaimer: I own nothing
Warnings/Spoilers/Rating: none || Up to 1x14 || G
Parings: Dean/Colette.
Summary: Dean comes home to find Colette has brought home another stray.
Stray
Dean was tired. No tired was an understatement, he was exhausted. He had just flown back for the orient and wanted nothing better than to crawl into bed. The flight had been long and the trip boring. The trip had been boring because he had nobody to explore with. Part of the deal with him being reinstated as a Pan Am pilot was that Colette had been moved to a different crew, as the company had found out about their relationship. That meant no more flying together. It also meant that they saw each other far less than they would both like.
It was also the reason that Dean was driving not to his own apartment, but to Colette's. She was due to fly out to Athens that evening and he wanted to spend a few short hours with her. Being of separate crews caused a strain in their relationship.
He arrived at her apartment and slid the key from his pocket. They each had keys to one another's apartments, in order to surprise each other. Dean could recall many times when he had come home, mere hours after she had left to find Tarte Tartin and a love note on his kitchen counter.
Colette's small yet cosy apartment was in its usual pre-flight disarray. Colette's sky blue uniform was draped over the couch still in its dry cleaning bag. The various scarves and shoes that a stewardess needed for any trip were lined up next to it. The record player in the corner blasted out some fast paced French-song that he assumed was one of her favourites, because she played it so often. Colette was nowhere to be found.
"Colette," he called as he moved toward her bedroom. The bedroom was a total mess. Discarded clothes lay across the wooden floor boards and make up was across the dresser. There was no sign of Colette, and a tiny part of Dean worried about her.
He sat down on her bed, placing his hand on what felt like a fur hat. He felt a prick of his skin. The fur hat had bitten him. Dean then noticed that the black fur hat had claws, eyes and teeth. The fur hat was not hat, it was a cat. He went away for three days and Colette acquired a cat, he worried what she would acquire if he went away for longer.
"Hello," Colette called as she glided into her apartment. Dean remembered he had left her front door open, which would have frightened her when she arrived home.
"Colette," Dean called as she moved into the bedroom, holding a pair of stockings.
"My last pair ripped," she declared answering the unasked question about where she had been, "Hopefully, Ms. Havemyer won't mind the colour."
"Your fur hat bit me," Dean responded stifling a yawn. Colette's eyebrows raised and she opened her mouth to say something, but then Dean pointed to the sleeping cat.
"If Marcel bit you," Colette declared, "It would have been because you woke him up."
"You named it," Dean muttered.
"Don't people name their pets?" Colette responded as she sat on the bed and stroked the sleeping cat.
"I go away for three days and you get a pet," Dean cried. As much as he loved her selflessness and how caring she was, she lacked practicality. How was she supposed to look after a cat that needed feeding twice a day, when she was gallivanting across the globe.
"He was on my fire escape trying to shelter from the rain," Colette responded, "I let him in."
"You picked up another stray," Dean shouted. As soon as he did he regretted it. He watched as her face fell.
"I am kicking this stray out," she responded angrily as she pulled him up from her bed and pushed him toward the door, with a force that surprised him.
"I didn't mean it like that," he cried, very much regretting his words. "But seriously Colette, how are you supposed to look after him when you're hardly here?"
"Celia from next door will earn two dollars a week for feeding him while I am away," Colette responded. Her next door neighbours included a single mother and a little girl of about six, who Colette adored and looked after when her mother pulled double shifts at the diner she worked at.
"I'm sorry," he whispered. He felt silly for doubting her; she was not a child of course she had planned how she would look after the animal with her job.
"I know you are," Colette replied as he wrapped his arms around her and placed a soft kiss on his lips.
They made use of the few hours they had before she was off to Athens.