Summary: Dean finally meets a woman who excepts him for who he is. Dean/OC.
Disclaimer: Of course I don't own Dean Winchester (or Sammy, or Bobby), because if I did I would be humping him. I'm not, by the way. Supernatural (c) Eric Kripke. "American Love" is the production of Andrew McMahon and the band Jack's Mannequin. It is from their CD The Glass Passenger. (Lyrics appear in bold.)
Author's Note: Review, please?
I. American Love
You see I got this American Love
A brand new planet in my solar system
I kiss her neck but I just can't look her in the eye
You leave for college at the turn of autumn
I spent the winter diving to the bottom
I kiss your neck but I just can't look you in the eye
yeaaahh
"Dean, did you hear what I just said?" She questioned as she glanced over at him from her spot on the bed. Her tangled mess of curls splayed over her right shoulder as she turned and she couldn't help but to notice the fact that he wasn't even looking at her. There he was, lying beside her in the bed they had shared for almost a year (or as often as his 'line of work' would allow during that year) and he couldn't even bare to look at her.
It wasn't that he didn't care about her, hell he would even go so far as to say that he loved her, but he couldn't bare the news she had just given him. What had suddenly given her the urge to go back to school and pursue her Masters of the Fine Arts degree? He rolled over, wrapping an arm around her naked middle and then pressed her body to his as he kissed her neck gently, "I heard you."
"I leave this autumn," She replied, glancing down at him.
"Why?" He replied sounding rather muffled with his face pressed closely to her neck.
"I told you, Dean, I'm going back to school."
The shear annoyance in her voice made him grimace. Still, he pursued his inquisition of the young woman's feelings and thoughts, "But why are you going back to school, and don't say to learn. That much is obvious."
"Do you really want to know?" She asked, still peering down at him with skepticism that he didn't see.
"I wouldn't ask if I didn't want to know, so just tell me."
"Antoinette," She replied, simply enough.
Instantly a pang of guilt ran through the thirty-something's mind and body. Antoinette was a French woman who he had met while hunting down a vampire nest in Seattle. Dean was in the wrong place at the wrong time, you could say. Or you could say that he was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Women he genuinely liked always, well, went away. Cassie had accused him of being crazy when he told her the truth about his work, Anna had gotten her grace back, and now, Ross was going to college states away where he almost never had work. Still, he hadn't known that at the time and he wasn't even drunk enough to claim that he hadn't really known better.
Word had probably gotten back to Ross by Sam or Bobby, and he couldn't really blame them. Rosaline, or Ross as he called her, was too good for him. Her heart was too big, and being as such, she would forgive him for almost everything. Almost, being the key word, and cheating being the one exception.
Now, he could do one of two things. He could take the coward's way out and accuse her of things he knew she'd never do, or he could admit his fault and try to convince her to stay with him.
Big hearts big hearts
Big hearts are for breaking
(big hearts are for breaking)
Whoaa oh
Big hearts big hearts
Big hearts are for breaking
Ross had been everything to him. She had nursed him back to health after a particularly gruesome battle with a demon; had sewn up more than several wounds after she found him half-dead on the side of the road. She even offered that he stay with her until he healed properly.
"You can even have the bed," She had offered him as he sat pitifully in the seat next to her.
He glanced up at her with his eyebrows raised in a way that she would grow to love, and then smirked, "Will you be in it with me?"
She rolled her eyes, "Easy there, tiger. I doubt you can stand up without me helping you, let alone have sex."
He simply smiled in return.
Needless to say, that didn't last long. But, it was the sex that kept Dean coming back. Something had him hooked to her; slowly, she became the addiction that he couldn't live without. He couldn't wrap his head around that fact, and maybe that was the reason that Antoinette had come into his arms so easily that night at the bar. He didn't trust his feelings for Ross, nor did he trust her feelings for him.
It wasn't until he realized that she was crying that the fact might have been that her heart was simply too big. She was too willing to accept him for the way he was, with the possible consequences of loving him being all but completely disregarded from her mind. She hadn't cared that investing her love in him was surely a heart-break waiting to happen. That's what made her so desirable.
You see I got this critical conscience
A brand new black hole in the solar system
I dig my grave but I just cant stand to step inside
Maybe the fact was that Dean did make mistakes. Okay, so he obviously knew that he wasn't God. He had been to Hell, had seen Angels (or Angel-possessed Humans), and he knew that he wasn't even close to being divine or eternally damned. But he had been so sure that her feelings for him weren't real. Maybe he had been misjudging the situation; after all, Dean was fairly new to this "love" thing.
"Sammy," Dean said, looking over at his brother from the driver's side of his precious Impala as they worked their way to another hunt.
"What Dean?" Sammy asked, not even bothering to glance over at his older brother from the book in his lap.
Dean paused, not sure of what to say or how to say it, and then pondered Sam's responses. Some of them were highly amusing, some pitiful, but this was something Dean needed Sam's opinion about, and so, "Do you think I could have been wrong?"
"Dean, you're wrong a lot of the time," Sam replied, a smile creeping over his features as he continued reading his book.
Dean scoffed.
"You're going to have to be more specific."
"About Ross."
"Ross? What about her?"
"Wrong about her not really loving me."
"You don't think she really loves you?" Sam asked, finally lifting his eyes from the book and looking over at his brother in the most incredulous way he could manage.
Dean shook his head, "I don't know. I didn't think she did, but then-"
"Then what?" Sam asked, skeptically. He could only imagine the countless remarks Dean could have made to Ross that would have made him look like a complete and utter ass-wipe.
"She was crying."
"About?"
"You remember that French girl?"
Sam's eye twitched in disgust as he held back the vomit, "Unfortunat-- oh no, you didn't."
"I did."
"As Bobby would say, you're an idjit."
Dean glared at his baby brother as they arrived at their destination. Several library trips and a visit to the graveyard later ended up with Dean staring down into the grave he had just dug. He knew he need to salt and burn the bones, but he could help but think of it as a metaphor for the relationship he had just ruined. Begrudgingly, however, he threw salt on the bones and a lit match on top of it. He watched as the skeleton turned to ash as the casket blazed on.
And when they find out they'll sound every siren
Break the door down to find the baby crying
You thought I knew Its just not right to tell a lie
"Boy, are you stupid?" Bobby chastised, "Ross was the best thing you've had for a long time. Did your father and I teach you nothing?" He continued grumbling about Dean's stupidity for several more minutes. It wasn't the longest lecture he had ever sat through, but it was growing alarmingly close before his cell phone interrupted Bobby's train of thought.
"Are you gonna get that?"
Dean pulled the phone from his pocket and looked at the caller ID with utmost surprise. His moss colored eyes brightened as he flipped it open.
"Hello?"
The all too present eagerness in his voice was off putting. That was the only thing that he could think of when Ross slammed her end shut, simultaneously smashing his dreams to smithereens. He grunted in response, slowly clamped his own phone shut.
Bobby and Sam sat staring at him.
"What?"
"Boy, you had better go after her!" Bobby urged, and that was the only push that Dean needed.
He made it to California in a record time of 12 hours from Bobby's house in South Dakota. With Bobby and Sammy's help, he found out where she was living in California and was rushing up the stairs to her apartment on adrenaline alone. When he got to the door he paused, breathing heavily as he listened. He heard sirens rushing past the building, and faintly, he heard crying from the inside of the building. He heard John Cusack's voice softly echoing from the back of the apartment, and could imagine her, her wavy hair billowing down her shoulders in soft waves, baggy sweats covering her legs and one of his old t-shirts draped over her leaner body, eyeliner likely running down her tanned face with her eyes trained on the TV as she watched her favorite actor propose a relationship to some actress or another. He could imagine all of this and for this reason, he didn't even bother knocking.
He burst through her apartment door with the intensity of an L.A. SWAT officer and rushed to the back of the apartment where she was very much as he depicted. Her long hair was frazzled, knotted in places even. There were rings of mascara dripping down her face, tainting it. There were a pair of short black shorts covering very little of her legs instead of the sweatpants he had imagined, and his t-shirt had turned into one of his old flannels that Bobby had given him, but all else seemed to coincide with his premonition. The movie was Must Love Dogs and, indeed, John Cusack was trying to convince Diane Lane that he was the guy for her. Dean snapped back to reality as the woman in front of him slowly took the metal spoon from her mouth, simultaneously raising an eyebrow.
There was silence for a few minutes that was only briefly interrupted by the sounds of the movie before she paused it with the remote.
"I love you." He told you, "I'm sorry I've never told you that."
She blinked, shuffling through her mind all the reasons why he was really there, "Dean, I dont know if you're aware of this or not, but when someone loves another person, they don't typically cheat on them."
Dean smiled the way he knew she had always loved, "I'm new at this, so I didn't actually know that I was 'cheating' on you. I deserve another chance."
And Ross knew that he did.
Big hearts big hearts
Big hearts are for breaking
(big hearts are for breaking)
Whoaa oh
Big hearts big hearts
Big hearts are for breaking
Ross reemerged, her face still moist and red from scrubbing off the excess make-up. By Dean's count, it took five minutes for her to wash the make-up from her face. Quite honestly, Dean thought that this was the most beautiful he had ever seen her. He didn't know if it was because of the natural glow of her skin after washing it, or if it was just the fact that he hadn't seen her in so long. Or if this was some side-effect of the feelings he had for her. Still, he had to know. Did she feel the same way about him?
The bathroom door was directly across from the bed which he was sitting on. He stared at her seriously for a moment and took in all the things he knew he never attempted to before. She was fairly small, both short and thin, and while she was busty (after all, that's how Dean liked his women!), she wasn't exactly Pam Anderson either. But, he had already known all that. What he didn't notice were the small things. Things like, when she smiled she only had one dimple. She ran her hands back through her hair when she was nervous, and gnawed at her nails in an unpleasant way when she was extremely anxious.
She took her coffee with a lot of milk and ate as healthy as her random cravings would allow. Her right knee had muscle spasms at the weirdest times, and she hugged tightest when she knew that the person she was hugging was happy. There were a billion other things about her, and as much as they mattered, Dean couldn't help but not care.
He paused, staring up at her.
"Do you feel the same way about me?"
She looked at him as if he had just said something ridiculous.
"What?"
"Are you fucking kidding me?"
"No?"
"You are an idiot, you know that?"
Dean couldn't help it, he cracked a smile.
"Oh, God, you are an idiot," She remarked.
"Come here," He replied.
And now there's no turning back
In the face of the sweat we share
There's nowhere to run
You're so unprepared
It's a new heart attack
Brand new bricks on my back
Don't say a word they might find us there
Slowly, curiously, Ross took slow steps toward the man who had obviously been on some kind of drug while he had been with her every other time previous to this. How could he not tell how much she cared for him? Besides the fact that it was Dean and Dean, as many people had noticed, could be dense. Very dense indeed.
But that was all behind them. The immature stage of the relationship was over, and they were both moving forward. Ross was afraid of what that meant for them. She knew, as much as any girl did, that guys like Dean don't stick around forever. Eventually they move on, and she was unprepared for that, she always would be. Even if she could somehow prepare herself for the days to come, it would still break her heart when he left for good. Any fool could see that.
Before long, she was standing with her bare knees touching his and he was reaching out, attempting to pull her to him. She fell onto him, and he in turn fell back on to the bed. She squeaked out in surprise causing a chuckle from both of them, breaking the somber mood that had once filled the atmosphere of her dank apartment bedroom, but doing nothing to appease the sexual tension that remained (as it almost always did) between them. That might always remain between them.
They did the only thing they could to fill that void.
They ripped each other's clothes off and hand sweaty, mind-blowing sex. As Rosaline and Dean laid there, still breathing heavily long after the heat of ecstasy had finally left them, his cell phone began to ring from the pocket in the pants that lay long discarded across the room on the floor. She looked up at him expectantly; her face against his bare chest; arm draped around his abs. It was too perfect; he didn't want it to end.
The phone continued to ring for several minutes and after several tries, and Ross continued staring at Dean expecting him to roll out of bed and answer the phone.
"Maybe, if we're quiet, they'll leave us alone. They'll never find us here."
"I'm sorry, love, but it just doesn't work that way." She replied, her fingers tracing circles on his skin that felt so insanely good that Dean never wanted to leave his spot next to her. Eventually, he would have to, but why did it have to be so soon?
Begrudgingly, he rolled from the bed and got to the annoyance. He was prepared to tell anyone who was on the other line (Bobby or Sammy alike) to fuck themselves, when he snapped the phone open and made his way back to bed. She wrapped her arms around him again, which made him feel like he could never leave, as Bobby began talking a million miles a minute. From what Dean caught of the conversation (he was far too busy imagining Ross naked, even though he didn't need to), he knew it was urgent and he knew he would have to leave soon.
"I'll see you tomorrow afternoon then?" Bobby asked.
And Dean knew that he would have to leave in the morning, "Yeah."
You see I got this American love
A hidden planet in my solar system
Keep your eyes shut I just cant stand to say goodbye
Dean awoke the next morning before the sun even thought about coming up, and looked down at the sleeping brunette. He knew, no matter where he was (Heaven, Hell, California, Ohio, or Kansas) he would always have her. He had to be back in South Dakota in less than 20 hours, but he couldn't bring himself to go. She was his secret, his American love, and he wasn't ready to give that up just yet.
An hour or so passed as he lay there watching her sleep, and contemplating all the ways he could stay. In the end, he knew he had to go but he could come back. More importantly, he would be back. As gently as he could, he removed himself from her arms but he failed not to wake her up. Her brown eyes popped open, questioningly as they searched for him. She wrapped an arm around him again cuddling into him pleasantly.
"D'you have to go?" She muttered, ramming many of her words together. She stared up at him again with an incredible amount of innocence in her eyes (even though he knew she was anything but).
"Close your eyes," He whispered as she let go of him. He kissed her forehead, "I don't want to have to say goodbye."