Written for the Het Big Bang. I've always wanted to write a Lisa/Dean story since they are my favorite couple. However despite having many AU ideas for them during or around season 6 my muse decided this story was much better. Also containts some Anna/Dean and some minor Jessica/Sam.A big thank you to deathmallow for having been my last minute a thank you to nanoks for having been the artist, will link to the beautiful artwork once this goes life. Also thanks to jesterlady for having made artwork for this story.

I obviously don't own Supernatural or the characters. If I did trust me it would not be that good of a show.


There are times Dean thinks about the aspect of storytelling; like who would take the time to tell their story and if there was anybody out there that cared about the story at all. Dean figures that nobody would care about the story – unless they knew the person whose story they were telling – and really nobody would bother to tell it, unless they were sure there was somebody that wanted to hear it.(And maybe there would be people interested in the story, Dean thinks, probably all those stupid and insane fans of Chuck's books. They would want to hear the story, he figures, or maybe they wouldn't, maybe they wouldn't care; it's bound to matter little since nobody is finding out anyway.)

The point really, if there is a point at all, is that with every telling the story will change, shift into something else. With every different narrator it would change even more, the perspective would be shifted, different things would be matter. What one narrator would consider to be the most important part of the story, the changing point or the moment to end it, might not mean anything to another at all.

And where, Dean wonders, would the story begin? Where would it end?

Chuck – the prophet, the writer, the annoying idiot who shared his story with the entire world without asking – began with that break-in, the day Dean want to Stanford to tell Sam their dad had gone missing. He ended the tale – despite their explicit demands for him to write no more and if he ever gets his hands on that stupid prophet he'll kill him or at least he'll make sure he won't write another word – with Sam falling into hell and Dean driving away from Bobby. Chuck isn't even telling this part of the story, he barely even acknowledged it, he didn't consider this important. After all to him, to the world, what happened after the apocalypse doesn't really matter, it never would, he supposes that's something that only matters to him (and Lisa and Ben, he supposes, maybe Bobby and perhaps, on a good day, Castiel as well.) After all the original tale, the way the story was meant to go, the way the story was supposed to unfold – decided on millions of years ago by God and his angels who didn't care about the humans whose lives they'd be destroying – was with him and Sam saying yes and the fight would end with his brother's dead and the world's destruction, a happy ending all around. So really who would have ever cared what came after that? Nobody that's who.

Sam, were he to tell the tale – not that he could – would start with the day he left them to go to Stanford, a new beginning. Or maybe, maybe he wouldn't, maybe he'd consider that to be another story. Maybe he'd start with the moment Jessica died and tell it from there, or maybe he'd begin with his death and Dean's deal and really who even cares.

Sometimes, if he thinks about it, he considers the possibility that Cas would begin this story in hell, where he grabbed his soul and dragged him out. Or maybe he wouldn't, maybe he'd begin the story in that beautiful room where Dean convinced him to rebel, after all that sounds like the logical part for the story to begin. But mostly, mostly Dean thinks Cas wouldn't begin the story at all, wouldn't consider it to be a separate tale – him and hell and Sam and the apocalypse – just another chapter in his long life, an important chapter – of this he is sure – but just a chapter.

Lisa would begin with Ben, of this he is sure, she would begin their story not in the bar where they met but in the moment her beautiful little boy was placed in her arms. That would be the beginning to her, the most important factor. She'd remember him, of course she would, and he would always, always be a part of her story, but he would never be the focus. He thinks that logical, Ben is her son after all.

Dean, were he to tell anyone the story – not that he thinks anyone, besides maybe Bobby and Sam, would care – wouldn't start the story with her either, and for the longest part she wouldn't really be the focus. He supposes he doesn't actually have to tell most of the story, Chuck took care of that – and someday he's going to break his arms to make sure he never writes a word again – but maybe someday he'll want to (besides Lisa's part isn't acknowledged, the story starts after he met her and ends before he went back to her.) He would start in a random hotel, in a random town somewhere in America the name of which he can't recall – and he's sure, positive even, that he could find it somewhere in his father's notes but he can't be bothered to look it up – and it begins with a request, a begging almost, to allow him to go out into the world and spread his wings.

That is how the story begins.

At least for him.


It was supposed to be a simple ghost hunt.

All they had to do, really, was drive into town, find the right grave and torch the bones, it was that simple. There was no research involved at all, no need for anything but the torching – after all there had actually been another hunter there before them but he'd had to leave in the middle of the hunt for personal reasons Dean can't recall and in all honesty he probably never cared to know either – just in and out. He should have known really, should have realized that there was no way things could ever be that easy, no way the Winchesters would be allowed an easy hunt. Later, many, many years later, when he thinks about this hunt he'll come to the conclusion that it really wasn't that bad of a hunt, not really – there would be many worse hunts – and, in retrospect, it was actually one of the more simple hunts. After all, in the end, the only real problems they had was a slightly more vicious ghost that they thought it was and the fact that he twisted his ankle, but at the time it had seemed like the end of the world.

In truth he had been on the verge of exploding for weeks if not for months.

He's still not entirely sure when or why it began, or really what it was all about. Or actually he does know, somewhat, he's just never really spend any time analyzing it. He'd wanted to get away, he remembers this, be somewhere on his own, see the world, do things without his little brother tagging along or his father looking over his shoulder. It's not that he resented them, not at all, nor that he didn't want to spend time with them. It was just that he was 20 and he spend every waking moment with them and it was just getting to be too much. In reality it had been too much ever since he'd left high school and suddenly there was barely anyone else to talk too – and it's not like he didn't meet other interesting people, it's just that usually, with the exception of girls, when he met those people his brother or his dad or both were always there. It was just getting to be too much, too much pressure, too much of everything and he just wanted it to stop. He hadn't done anything about it – and really that was the problem he should have addressed the problem when it first arose but he was a teenager and he just didn't want to analyze his feelings, if he did it would turn out to be too much like a chick-flick moment. And the resentment, the anger and everything else he had been feeling had just been building up until he could no longer control it.

The ghost hunt and his twisted ankle were simply the last straw.

He needed to get away.

That's when he'd asked his father, in that motel room with an icepack on his ankle, if he could go out into the world on his own for once. He just needed a few days to get better, four days at the most, just a road trip, him on his own for once. His father hadn't answered, just looked at him for a few moments and then announced that they had another hunt for tomorrow but they would discuss this later. Dean had known, in that moment, that the matter was really dismissed for him and perhaps – if he hadn't spent months keeping his feelings inside – he would have just let it go. But the anger was burning and the resentment growing and he just couldn't. That night, in that random motel room in that small town with the 'easy' ghost had been the first time he had blown up at his father, the first – and really only time – that he had gone explicitly against his father's orders, which was definitely a novelty. It had shocked his father into silence – and later into a screaming match – and his brother had stared at him for hours after that but like he said he'd had enough.

The next day they'd driven to their next hunt – their original hunt – in silence.

Sometimes Dean thinks his father hoped he'd forget eventually, that screaming out all his emotions would be enough to let it go. But it wasn't, because they were still together and he still felt like he needed to get away. For the whole hunt – and the thing is he can't remember what hunt this was, mostly because he spend the entire hunt doing research because of his hurt ankle and probably because Sam thought it would be better if he and dad didn't spend time together until they'd calmed down and really that was bizarre. Mostly it was Sam and dad who had fights and he was the one trying to calm everybody down. It was almost like they'd somehow ended up in an alternate universe for a few days. He'd spend his day doing research and, once he was done finding all he needed to, he'd started researching trips and towns in the neighborhood and things he could visit that were just a day away. He'd thought about just leaving then, getting the keys to the impala and driving away and calling back after four days to ask where his father was. But really he was afraid, he was afraid of leaving his brother behind just to have something happen, he was afraid that his father would get so angry if he just left that he would never find them again, or never be allowed to be alone again (and if that happened all of this would eventually build up again.)

That night, while their father went off to do something – though Dean can't recall what it was – Sam had asked him where he wanted to go, if he had an actual destination in mind or if he just wanted to drive. And Dean had talked, he remembers this, he'd told Sam about the things he'd researched and the things he wanted to see, and the fact that what he really wanted was to get into the car, be alone and just drive. He didn't really care, he'd said, about where he'd end up, just as long as it was somewhere. Sam had told him he should do it, if it meant so much to him, that he should do something that made him happy for once. (Later, after Sam leaves for college, he wonders if he had been thinking about leaving in that moment, if it had been watching Dean drive away that had proven to him that there was a way to get what one wanted and still come back. And Dean had understood Sam when he wanted to go to Stanford, he'd supported him but there was a part that had been jealous because Dean hadn't expected Sam to come back but Sam had never considered that Dean might not want to come back. He'd just assumed that his big brother would drive away and come back after four days, the alternative hadn't even occurred to him. Or maybe it had and he just hadn't wanted to think about it.)

The next afternoon – after they returned from their second day of hunting – his father handed him the keys to the impala and told him to return in exactly four days.

To this day Dean has no idea what Sam said to his father to convince him.

(And he wonders if his father thought about this at all while he was having his fight with Sam over Stanford and he wonders if Sam's words – whatever they were – resonated in his head. He thinks his father would have let Sam go if he'd just wanted some freedom and a trip after all he'd let Dean go. But Sam wanted so much more and Dean never told him – though he's not sure if that means he never knew – that he too had wanted so much more. But he'd had a brother to take care of and a father who needed him and a demon to hunt.)

He'd taken the keys and hugged his brother goodbye and left before his father changed his mind.

His brother had laughed and asked for a souvenir – anything he'd said, just as long as you bought it on your trip – and he'd waved and said 'I'll see you on Monday.' (Dean had never had the heart to tell him that he'd considered, thought, about never coming back, about just driving away and not turning around. About doing something else even though it meant letting go of avenging his mother - and there is a part of him that wonders if his mother would want him to let go, that she might want him to simply be happy.)

He'd driven away then that Thursday afternoon, the radio blasting, the windows down, on the hottest day – well probably not the hottest but he has kind of always remembered it this way – of August.

He'd been happy, he'd been free.

That Friday he'd just driven around and savored the feeling of being somewhere without having to hunt anything. He hadn't really seen anything important but that hadn't been the point not really. The point had been to be somewhere else, to have fun, to have freedom.

That Friday he'd gone to a bar and he'd met Lisa.

That is where their story begins (even though it had already started.)


Lisa remembers very clearly the night it all began, their story, she remembers it all.

She met him in the old bar she used to frequent in that time with her girlfriends – back when the only thing that really mattered was yoga and boys, bad boys. It was an old bar that had been there forever – and it's still there, she drove past it once and it was there, just as old and battered as it was back then, exactly the same, though she didn't enter. It would never be considered a beautiful place –actually it was pretty much a dump – and she can't quite remember why she ever decided to start going to a bar like that in the first place.

(Actually she can but she doesn't like to think about it, the first time she entered she was younger – too young not that anybody cared to find out – and she'd had a boyfriend who cheated on her with three different girls, one of them her best friend, and then had the balls to blame her when she confronted him about it. He'd hit her too, in his anger, though only once and she never saw him again after that. )

Despite that unfortunate incident – that she never thinks about and definitely never talks about it – she kept frequenting the bar and though it never would be her favorite place in the world she liked it enough. (That and the boys with leather jackets and bikes and a bad boy attitude.) In the beginning, she thinks, it was probably just payback, a way to show him – Steven his name was – that she didn't need him but she kept going even after he stopped frequenting the bar. The bar itself wasn't very big and it definitely wasn't well-lit and the bar stools were so old Lisa swore that one day they'd break under her but despite all that there was something about it that just kept drawing her in.

Perhaps it was the boys (probably.)

The first time she saw him was on a Friday night and he was playing pool at the old pool table – the table that seems even older then the damn bar stools – his jacket hung over a chair behind him. He seemed calm and free, like he didn't have a car in the world, like playing pool – and winning, he was definitely winning - with some random guys in badly lit bar was all he wanted from life. And who knows maybe it really was. The other guy – and his friend – didn't seem to be too happy about the fact that they were losing and briefly she wonders how much money they bet, not that it matters. He was good-looking – alright hot – and he definitely seemed like her kind of guy and she spend a while watching them, contemplating whether she should walk over or wait until he saw her and came over to her. He turned then, suddenly, and caught her looking at him and maybe, maybe she should have turned away, it might have been the smart thing to do. But she didn't – and she's really glad she didn't – and she might have turned red, not that anyone would notice at least those damn lights would be good for something, and he'd smiled at her – and really that damn smile was all it took – and he'd help up his glass and she couldn't help but smile back.

He'd gone back to his game but really she had expected nothing else – she suspected there was money involved – and she'd watched as he won the game and collected his winnings.

And really a part of her had expected him to come to her and buy her a drink and then take her out but he didn't. He stayed where he was, which she thinks was somewhat logical because he did seem to be playing pool to win money and if he left he forfeited his place, but still. He did however move his jacket of his chair and threw it on the pool table and he clearly did it to tell her she could come if she wanted to like he knew that she would and of course he was right. She'd ordered another drink first however – she could make him wait a little – and then she walked over. He looked kind up close, still the bad boy type but the one who treated you right – who laughed and who backed off when you said no and who drove you home and bough you dinner. He was her kind of man, scars, leather jacket maybe a bike but she sensed he was the kind of guy that would never hurt her.

"Hey, you play pool?"

"Not really, never saw the point. I'd really rather bet my money on something I can control."

"There's no need to bed money, we could just play."

"Truthfully I've never really learned."

"I could teach you."

Up close his smile was even more overpowering then it was from across the room.

"I'm Lisa."

"Nice to meet you Lisa. I'm Dean."


The first time he kisses her they're outside standing next to his car.

Truthfully he hadn't intended to meet her; he hadn't intended to meet anyone – though he'd considered the possibility of hooking up with a random girl but she wasn't random – but the moment he saw her he knew she was different. There was something about her, something that drew him to her and he thought – briefly – that she was the kind of girl he could spend the rest of his life with. (You know in another world where he wasn't a hunter and expected back home on Monday. Or maybe in a world where he decides to stay here and never return, not that he's actually going to do that because he pretty much knows he has to go back – his brother needs him – but it's nice to consider it for a second.) She gets in his car and really he thinks she might have always belonged there.

Here's a truth: once he walks through her door he knows his trip is over.

He's not seeing anything else, he's not driving away but he doesn't need to. He's calmer know, he has his freedom and the only thing he thinks he lacked before this was her. Her house was small, simple, but beautifully decorated. There was yoga stuff everywhere – and he remembers her telling him she was a yoga instructor and though he's never been interested in that sort of thing for her he will be. (As it turns out later yoga makes a person incredibly flexible which makes his weekend that much better.)

Her sheets are blue, not that he really notices, and it is the best night of his life.

He's glad he'd turned left because though he hasn't known her for long he finds it strange he hasn't known her forever.

Which is probably a very chick-flick moment.


Somehow, and she's not entirely sure how, he'd found everything he needed in the kitchen to make her a wonderful breakfast in bed.

(He'd asked first though if he could use her kitchen and she kind of loved him for it – not love love but you know just love – that he was considerate enough to ask her.)

"Morning. Where did you learn to cook?"

"Well you should really be advised my cooking skills are limited to breakfast and take-out."

"Seriously."

"I am being serious, I've been making breakfast for my little brother for as long as I can remember and eating in diners and ordering pizza for the rest of the meals. "

"You have a brother?"

"Yes Sam. You?"

"Sister. Joyce."

"So when are you expected back home?"

"Ah so you did listen to me when I told you I was on a trip."

"Yes."

"On Monday afternoon. Although I did promise my brother I'd get him something and I should a picture somewhere vaguely recognizable."

"Leaving me already?"

"Not unless you're kicking me out, I'd like to stay here for a while. I was hoping you'd help me."

"Good and I will. But not now. Later."

She leans up to kiss him and pulls him back down on top of her.


That afternoon they run around all crazy through the town she grew up in.

People they met, people they past, must have thought they were crazy or crazy in love. For the record, for the story, for the world, he wasn't in love in that moment. He liked her, definitely, and he might have loved her just a little and he could imagine a future with her (and he considered actually staying he won't deny that part.) But he doesn't think he was really in love yet, that would have taken more time. But she was fun and she liked to laugh and she had a million stories to tell (and she was damn flexible, must be all that yoga.) He could imagine the whole future with her, a whole life (and he never tells his brother, or his father, but he thought then that he could have gotten his GED and maybe studied something in college and perhaps gotten married and everything else. Later, when his brother leaves for Stanford, he'll think about this and wonder why he didn't just do it. But by then time had passed and he thinks Lisa had probably forgotten about him by then and he couldn't just leave his dad. But that was later. In this moment, with Lisa by his side and have their picture taken in crazy poses, he'd just considered it.)

He can't even remember what he bought Sam but he knows his brother kept it whatever the hell it was.

He'd shown him one of the pictures Lisa had taken of him.

(The others were somewhere in his duffel bag with all his other personal effects.)

There was a picture of him and Lisa together by a fountain laughing though he can't remember at what and another of them kissing by that same fountain that he kept in his wallet. He never told his father about her, hell he barely told his brother what he did that weekend – his father seemed intent on forgetting it and Sam had been busy with other things like the beginning of a new school year. Sometimes he wishes he had told his father just so that he'd known that Dean had actually found somebody he could be happy with.

He wonders what the man would have done with that information.

He's not sure what he's doing with it.

Before he left he'd considered leaving her his number but decided against it. He was a hunter that was who his father needed him to be; the chances of seeing her again were slim. He didn't want to keep her hopes up.

Still no matter what happened in the future he'd remember that weekend as one of the happiest in his life.


Monday came too soon.

The best weekend of her life with the Dean, that's how she'll later tell the story. This is what she doesn't tell them, the feeling of sort of falling in love. The idea of trying to convince him to stay but not doing it because she was afraid he didn't want to stay (and besides the way he talked about his brother she figured he probably would want to go back to him.) The feeling of missing something later and after this she'd only gone back to the bar once and met another guy (which is why she's not sure who Ben's father is.)

She thought about asking for his number but decided against it.

She did however give him hers – wrote it one the back of one of the pictures they printed out – maybe someday he'd call her or visit her. Maybe one day he'd show up at her door again and she'd smile and they'd be happy together.

She'd watched him leave quite suddenly and she'd smiled.

(It had hurt a little and she'd wished he'd stayed longer. That is the part she doesn't really tell her friends.)