A tough will counts. So does desire.
So does a rich soft wanting...

Tell him time as a stuff can be wasted.

- "A Father to His Son" by Carl Sandburg

OoOoOoO

Tara looked up from her sketchpad, the laughter of the brothers rolling over her like sunshine. The boys (or, men, rather) sat at the round kitchen table, hands straddling cups of coffee, while she sat across the room in a chair, sketching the scene Dean reached up, scratching at his jaw as his eyes flicked over to her. As always, her stomach gave a little jump at the smirk that pulled on his full lips. He winked at her and turned his attention back to Tara's sister, Bethany, as she told the latest gossip in the hunting community as she washed dishes. Tara looked back to the pad.

Three years ago, Tara had been closing up the bar where she worked when a man came staggering in, bloody and incoherent from a fever brought on by a basilisk's bite. Tara took him to the home she shared with Bethany, nursed him back to health, and had been shocked to learn she'd saved the life of Dean Winchester. A day later, a very worried Sam sat on their living room couch, listening as Tara and Bethany explained Dean wasn't going to be able to do much of anything for a few months. Basilisk poison was very corrosive.

Over the next weeks, Tara and Dean grew close, eventually becoming lovers when he regained his strength. His being a hunter wasn't oft-putting or worrying. Tara and Bethany had been saved from a Rawhead when they were little. The snarling mesh of hog bone and muscle shattered their delusions about a safe world, where you don't need to fear the dark.

All grown up, they often helped hunters that blew through town and kept tabs on some of them, in thanks to that hunter that saved them long ago. After they met Garth, he started sending people their way for help, supplies, and sometimes a place to crash. They even started to keep a 'hunter's cemetery'. The ashes of hunters given proper burials, with headstones and everything. In fact, it was through Garth that they managed to find Sam, who had split from his brother for reasons neither of them liked to talk about. Three years later, and Tara still didn't have the full story.

But Dean's close brush with death seemed to help them get pass whatever the problem had been. When he climbed into his Impala and drove away, whole and healthy, Tara never expected to see him again. Hunters were like that. It was easier, not to be too attached. Seeing death and loss in other people's lives was bad enough, after all. No sense in seeing it in the lives of those you really cared about.

Then, as she hustled drinks a few weeks later, she looked up and there he was, smiling at her as he leaned against the bar. He spent the night and left in the morning. It became a thing. He and Sam would come through whenever they were near and for holidays. The closest thing to a relationship either of them had had in a long while. Neither of them tried to define it. Tara didn't want to push him. Dating (or whatever it was they were doing) Dean Winchester felt like wrangling a wild mustang. Push too hard and he'd run for the horizon. And sometimes, listening to him when he'd had too much to drink, she wondered if she was the only thing that kept him from sailing over the edge.

"Hey."

Dean's gravelly voice jerked her back into the moment. She looked up from the sketch of Sam and Dean at the table. Dean stood over her, a soft smile on his face.

"Hey yourself," she said.

"New project?" He pushed against the corner of the pad to look at it. "Looks good."

"I'm going to make a painting of it. You two don't laugh like that often. I wanted to commemorate the moment."

He nodded, looking at the sketch. In it, Dean's head was thrown back in a full laugh while Sam's was tilted down, as if laughing at his coffee. "I've had a good week," he said, looking at her.

She closed the pad and stood. "Yeah?"

"Yeah." Dean slipped a hand around her waist, gathering her to himself. "I'll tell you about it when we get back."

Tara smiled. "After the vampires?"

"Garth said Billy and his crew were still hung up in Arizona."

She wrapped her arms around his neck. "Well. Hurry back because I want to hear what made this week so good."

"Sure thing, babe." He leaned down and kissed her. Tara sighed, opening her mouth to him. He smelled like leather, gun powder, and engine oil, with spice and musk underneath. Dean's smell. No one smelled like him.

Then, he stepped away, said his goodbyes to Bethany, and was gone. Sam must have slipped out already.

Bethany snickered as she turned back to the dishes.

"What?" asked Tara.

"Nothing."

"No, Beth, what?" She walked over to the table and set the sketchpad onto it. Her mind was already working out how she would do it. Maybe in oils.

"I think Dean has something on his mind."

She crossed her arms. "It's Dean. He always has something on his mind."

Bethany pulled the plug, sending the dirty dishwater gurgling down the drain. Snatching up a towel, she wiped her hands as she turned to her sister, leaning against the counter behind her. "He's been coming by a lot more lately than he has in the past couple of years."

"There's been a lot of work in the area."

"Sure."

Tara frowned. "What?"

"Well..." She gave a one-shouldered shrug. "Dean, and Sam for that matter, isn't getting any younger. Maybe he's thinking about settling down. Maybe he's come to a decision and that's why he's in such a good mood."

Tara grinned. "No. If there's anyone who's allergic to settling down, it's Dean Winchester."

"Okay." But a small, knowing smile still pulled at Bethany's mouth.

Picking up the pad again, Tara walked out, heading off to bed. Though, the idea that Dean could be wanting to settle down stuck with her, and it took her a while before she could drop off to sleep. Of course, she never could sleep well, when she knew Dean was on a job.

OoOoOoO

"You're serious," said Sam.

"Yep." Dean handed him a machete and clipped his own to his belt. Slamming the trunk closed, he locked it and pocketed the keys. "Sammy, neither one of us is getting younger. I've just crested forty and you aren't that far behind. I don't want to keep doing this for the rest of my life."

"I thought you said once that this was your life. Hell, you've busted my balls often enough when I said I wanted out." Sam straightened a little and looked at him. "This is because of what happened in Peoria."

Dean scowled and started to walk away. Stopping, though, he turned back to his brother. "This has been on my mind for a while now, Sammy. But, yeah, Peoria shoved me over the edge. I'm..." He swallowed. "Sorry I busted your balls, Sam, all those times you wanted to get out. I really am. But... I'm tired of leaving her behind, man. I just... I just can't do it anymore. Any of it. All my life, I've been on the road, eating crappy diner food and sleeping in a different motel every other night."

"And saving lives."

"And letting down a shit ton of others. We save a few, Sammy, but there's a bigger pile that didn't get saved. I'm tired of it, man. And it's not like I'm going to be all the way. Just...semi-retired or whatever. Doing what Beth and Tara do. They do a lot of good. Maybe we can...I don't know. Buy out the bar where she's working and run it like Ellen and Jo ran theirs, back in the day. A hunter's hangout."

Sam clenched his jaws a little and nodded, eyes flicking away before looking back at his brother. "So, I guess I just go on alone?"

"No. That old farmhouse of theirs is pretty big. There's room. I mean, if you wanted to stay."

"She might not say yes."

He shrugged. "I've never let 'might' stop me before." He sighed and fell silent for a moment. "Are we done with this chick flick moment? 'Cuz there's a nest that needs ganking and I'm starting to feel nauseous."

Sam chuckled. "Sure thing." He balanced the machete's blade on his shoulder. "Hate to make you throw up on the job. Again."

"I have never thrown up on the job." They started to walk down the road toward the old warehouse.

"Oh, so that's not what happened in Reno?"

"Shut up."

OoOoOoO

A soft knocking woke Tara. She blinked, feeling the gritty feeling in her eyes that came from only three hours or less of sleep. Her nightlight cast shadows over the room. Dean's duffel made a lumpy shadow by the door, where he left it before going on the hunt. Glancing over her shoulder, she found the other side of the bed empty. The knocking came again, this time accompanied by Beth calling her name.

"What is it?" she asked, sitting up.

"Need you to come downstairs," Bethany called through the door. "It's important. Hunting business."

"Be right there." She looked at her alarm clock. It was only an hour before dawn. Hunting business at this time usually meant someone needing a bullet, knife, or bite wound closed up. Throwing off her covers, she got out of bed and yanked on the clothes she discarded earlier.

Nerves made a painful knot in her gut. But, if it was about Dean or Sam, Bethany would have said so. And it wasn't that surprising, him not being back yet. They probably had to burn down whatever shack the vampires were squatting in.

Tara came down the stairs, stopping at the bottom. The living room lights were on and Garth stood by the coffee table. Bethany sat on the couch and some hunter Tara didn't know stood by the window, looking out. Garth held his cowboy hat in his hands, a solemn cast to his face. The years hadn't been kind to Garth, though he still managed to be quirky and lovable most days.

She walked into the living room, looking around. No bleeding hunter. No weeping victim. The knot in her gut tightened. "What's up?"

Garth cleared his throat. "You know Sam and Dean went hunting vamps. Um." He looked up at her. "They didn't make it, Tara. Vampires took them down. I'm really sorry."

And the world stopped.