I'm doing a public service and being nice to Dean in this one...or mean...no, perhaps just a little bit mean given the teen angst...ugh, I don't even know anymore!
Mandy, The boys being boys and messing around with each other is just such a cute visual to me, so I had to write it in, glad you liked it and are back for this crazy little ride again!
Wolfgirl2013, So, you're voting good guy? Duly noted. Not giving anything away but be sure to let me know if your decision stays the same or changes after this! Nice to have you back for this btw!
Sodapop25, Don't you worry, this story has plenty left to come. Not quite as long as the mammoth last story, but this has lots of chapters too, so lots to sink your teeth into (I hope).
LHisawesome4ever, Aww, I'm super happy to be a tiny part of getting anyone writing again. Hope it's working out, it really is the best pastime (when it goes right that is!) Keep me updated!
Ohana1337, Haha, always happy to be at your service breaking hearts *salutes* reporting for duty! I love your optimism on the guy...no, really I do! Super happy to see you back for this ride!
SkittlezLvr79, Ooooh, nice guesses, but I couldn't possibly say more about the guy… just yet! Yeah, Dean trying to help Roman but not helping. Totally Dean. So pumped you're back for this btw!
HannonsPen, Click that seatbelt in, because you're right about Dean's poor crazy world! Mama Reigns is back and she's even better in this one too! Happy you're tuning in for round two of this!
Stingerette1975, Haha, Roman isn't so sure of Carmella and Roman either, so I wouldn't worry on that front! So pleased you're back for this second go around too! As for the guy? Well...
Skovko, Yeah, Dean's ideas on matchmaking aren't that polished, but at least he's trying to do right by his big bro. Like he said, Roman's too much of a catch to be without a special lady!
xXBalorBabeXx, Your hunch about him sticking around might just be right...okay, it's right. But I'm going to keep quiet on whether he's good or bad for another couple of chapters yet!
BankonReigns87, Aww, thank you! I hope re-reading the first one again didn't make the shine come off and got you in the mood for this one. Hopefully it will be just as good as the last!
Rebel8954, Nice guesses, but I can confirm or deny nothing about him being a cameo or a brand new guy. You'll just have to keep reading (see, I've hooked you, now I'm reeling you in!)
Okay, maybe time for a new cameo perhaps?
Two.
It's kind of funny really – sort of poetic or some crap like it – that not three days after Dean bags on his brother for not having a girlfriend, he falls in love himself. Or maybe not love since he doesn't know what that feels like but he certainly gets hit with something pretty damn hard.
He's sitting on the window seat in Mama and Papa Reigns' house and waiting to be called to get something to eat. It's a Friday which is his and Roman's night go round there and have a meal just the four of them without sisters and kids and which also means that a big roast chicken is cooking with lots of potatoes.
Which always tastes like bliss.
Yet even the prospect of his favorite dinner seems to pale in comparison when he sets eyes on the girl, who is towing a chunky looking bulldog along the sidewalk and jerking to a halt whenever it pulls on the leash.
Her hair is blonde and short and sort of choppy, not long and pulled back like girls usually wear and she's dressed in ripped jeans and an oversized sweatshirt that makes her look sporty and sort of weirdly laid-back. As the dog halts again to pee on Mama Reigns' rose bush, the girl rolls her eyes and begins to tap her foot and Dean can see her lips moving in frustration and longs to her what her voice sounds like.
His heart is sort of thudding against his ribcage and it sends up a thick wash of blood into his ears. It's similar in some ways to when his father used to hit him but is warmer and exciting and doesn't hold the same fear. His palms sweat too and he swipes them off absently down the baggy sides of his own denim threads and he is so busy staring and gaping at the prettiness that he doesn't even register his name being said,
"Dean?"
He jolts as Papa Reigns drops a hand down and it startles a few sheets of paper from his lap, which contain some rough doodles for one his latest business brainwaves but had swiftly been forgotten when he'd laid eyes on her.
"Huh – what?"
The family patriarch frowns down at him, but out of concern instead of anything else and although that has taken a while to get used to, Dean loves seeing it,
"Are you okay son?"
"I'm – uh – yep."
He answers too quickly and the brows of the older man draw in at once, not buying the reply for so much as a second and using the instincts that have made him the city's fifth richest man.
"You sure?"
"Uh, yeah, let's go into the kitchen."
In terms of convincing acting the performance is not his best and as Dean stands up several pencils clatter earthwards, but it doesn't really matter just so long as the reason for his sudden flush of awkwardness remains unfound out. Because although he is grateful for the comfort of the Reigns' house, he's still a teenage boy and so he doesn't want the fuss, although unfortunately – possibly owing to said instincts or else having raised three rambunctious daughters and a son – Papa Reigns simply follows the trajectory and ducks to look out of the window.
"Uh huh."
Dean's cheeks burn.
Crap.
"I uh – ,"
"She's very pretty, do you know her?"
He shakes his head awkwardly,
"No."
"She seems to like your car."
"What?"
More pencils tumble floor-bound as Dean slings around keenly and presses his hot hands against the glass. Sure enough the blonde is gazing over at his mustang and tipping her head to get an even better look, on top of which she's biting her lip down like she's covetous or else potentially madly in love.
Dean sort of tingles.
Ugh, not now.
"Perhaps you should go out there and talk to her about it."
The teenager gapes in horror,
"Huh? N-no."
"Why not?"
Papa Reigns is staring back at him evenly and in response Dean's feels his chest starting to pull. It isn't going to happen. No way can he go out there and strike up a conversation with a pretty girl like that –
A girl who probably comes from a super nice family that wouldn't dream of their letting their kid hang around with some street trash. Because even though Mama and Papa Reigns make him belong there, not even they can truly change what he is. Besides which he would almost undoubtedly get tongue-tied and end up talking gibberish or insulting her instead and so frankly it seems easier to sort of dream about her and pretend that they would be the perfect match safely in his head. The real world traditionally hasn't been too kind to him.
He doesn't want to reach for anything he shouldn't have.
The pretty blonde continues to gaze at the mustang and then the bulldog pulls her sharply again and she moves on, following the paunchy little canine along the flowerbed and flicking her hair.
Dean swallows.
Oh god.
"Looks like she's leaving, last chance to go out and break the ice son."
The teenager shakes his head almost wildly, the answer sort of puffed out like he's deflating,
"I can't – ,"
"Can't what?"
Roman's voice cuts in through the panic and in response to it Dean mildly bites back a groan. Usually the warm deep tones are a comfort and help calm him down when's twitchy or amped up. Only now they promise the same sort of scrutiny currently being offered by the grinning patriarch, who Dean can only hope doesn't spill on what's happening and land him right in the –
"Our boy's got a crush."
Great.
Why not tell the whole damn family in the round robin letter that Mama Reigns likes to send and maybe throw in a line or two about the rash he'd had and which the doctor had described absently as mild chafing? Because seriously he loves his newfound family and never, never wants to let them go ever again, but sharing his every waking moment and troubles with them is still kind of weird and not natural to him. Which is likely a by-product of having lived with his real dad where any sort of sentence was answered with a fist and which had gradually encouraged him that silence was safer.
It's been a long road trying to forget all that again.
"What?"
Roman blinks and quirks his head a little and his mouth turns up into a tiny half-smile, tempered as well by vague apprehension and no doubt thinking back to a few days before.
Carmella.
Dean rolls his eyes a bit at that thought because he's still kind of smarting from Roman having turned her down. Not that he thought she'd been perfect for his brother but even as a hook-up evidently he'd run wide and his attempts to give something back and be try to be helpful had pretty much shrivelled up with it and died.
Roman needs a girl though –
Dean has decided.
He's too much of a teddy to not to have a lady in his life and the fact that he hasn't gone out himself to try to find one is as much of a question as it is a surprise and something that Dean had thought he could rectify, although based on that attempt he's had his first strike.
Outside the girl has sort of stalled by the flower bed and is trying to drag the chubby bulldog back off only he's grinding in his heels as he tramples through the peonies and her look of sheer embarrassment is pretty damn cute.
Roman grins – in relief Dean figures – then the eyes swing back as he whistles,
"Nice uce."
Dean wants the ground to swallow him entirely and drops his head into his hands with a grumble.
"Ugh, stop."
Both men beside him are beaming like idiots and the teen can only pray the girl doesn't look up, because if she does she'll find them all staring like weirdos and with him there flushed like a ripened beetroot.
Could the situation get any damn worse?
"Dinner's ready – what in the world are you boys looking at?"
Dean folds back against the window with a thud and even lets loose a gruff little mumble as his embarrassment reaches every member of the house.
Mama Reigns is standing still wearing an apron, although she is halfway through the process of shrugging it off and her hair is ever so slightly dishevelled from where she's been cooking both ably and lovingly hard. Swiping the back of her hand across her forehead and leaving a tiny little sweep of floury dust, she crosses towards them with a frown of confusion and cups Dean's face gently,
"Baby are you alright?"
He leans into the touch and it briefly quells the blushing although Papa Reigns turns and tugs his wife's rolled up sleeve, pointing out of the window with a chuckle as he manoeuvres her closer,
"Why don't you take a look and see?"
As his sort of adopted mom peers out beyond the casement, Dean steels himself for a womanly squeal or a burst of sudden feminine excitement which he knows he will have to both accept and fend away.
Instead however, she merely blinks cautiously,
"Hasn't her family just moved in three doors down?"
Dean startles.
"She's a neighbor?"
Is that a good or a bad thing?
Mama Reigns nods and then very lightly frowns, as if she doesn't quite get what exactly is happening, although they all see the moment she finally works it out and hear it too since it happens mid-sentence,
"They moved in a few days ago, maybe or two or three – oh."
Dean winces in expectation but is both startled and grateful when the wash of elation doesn't fully seem to come and when he looks up Mama Reigns is gazing at him, all cool and collected.
She briskly claps her hands,
"Right come on everyone, dinner's getting colder and I'm not reheating, so butts on seats now."
Papa Reigns and Roman are almost hauled from the window and then chivvied to the table with propelling little pats, which take the heat away from Dean's beaming red cheek bones and make him love her more if that's possible at all.
Right before she steps off, she pauses very briefly to brush a caring hand through the scruff of his hair and then leans in so the others won't hear her, while throwing in a wink.
"I'll do some recon on her."
Dean isn't sure what recon is exactly but at the same time he trusts that she won't do him wrong and so nods his acceptance and then breathes a little sigh out as she turns and leaves him to gather his thoughts.
Glancing from the window one last time at the blonde girl reveals her ripped jeans just striding out of view and he tilts his head a little and smiles like a puppy –
At which point he suddenly notices the truck.
It is sitting parked up across the road looking battered, which makes it stand out like a beacon at once, since most of the cars in the neighborhood are foreign and new and expensive which the dented black ride is not. There's a man behind the wheel who is staring through the window, with one arm braced casually over the rim and the jowly and untidily bearded face is unmoving as it peers across at the distance.
Seemingly at him.
Something lurches in Dean's chest almost on instinct because the look is not a friendly one and feels obtrusive somehow, although he's not fully sure the guy can see through the glazing.
It feels like it though –
It feels like they've made contact and in response to the weirdness Dean frowns then shifts away, sliding across the cushions and back down onto the carpet as a waft of roast chicken drifts in across the room, joined by the clattering of crockery and glasses as across the hall food is dished out onto plates. He steps towards it and almost instantly he does it there is the fire of an engine somewhere outside, followed a second later by the whistle of rubber and then a bright flash as the truck's windshield catches the light. When Dean peers back out, both the bulky man and vehicle are seemingly completely removed from the street which makes him blow out a little grunt of reassurance because he hadn't liked the thought of the guy scoping out the Reigns' house.
Although maybe it was just a funny sort of coincidence?
Maybe the guy was just dropping something off and gazing around at all the wealth that was about him. Hell, Dean could plenty understand that and had even done the same exact thing on his first time there and seen the buildings on the street, which were beautiful and white, not to mention wholesome and palatial.
It was hard not to stare.
Yep.
That was all it had been.
"Dean honey?"
At the sound of Mama Reigns calling, he turns from the window and pads off to take his seat, barely even giving the staring eyes another moment –
Although later he'll wish he had done just that.
Teenage love, isn't it beautiful?! Also awkward...yeah, mostly awkward!
So, staring guy is back again and now he's at the house. The mystery deepens (or at least I hope it does, that was the intention anyway!)