When Y/N groggily woke up she felt strange. She laid there for a while with her eyes closed trying to figure out why she felt like her head was about to explode. Then she remembered last night's drunken events. She groaned inside, remembering how she'd left with that attractive agent. She peeked a look at the side next to her on the bed only to find it empty. For some reason, it made her feel some sense of regret knowing he'd left before she even woke up. There wasn't even a note. It was just a one night stand and this was usually how those things went down. She knew that, and yet she couldn't help but feel sad about how it all ended – without even a proper goodbye.
She pulled herself out of bed and got ready for another day of work. She closed the front door behind her, only to turn around and almost bump into Clarke. "Oh hey, you startled me."
"I'm sorry, Y/N," he apologized, except he didn't look that sorry. He looked strange, as if he had some grudge against her. Had she unknowingly offended him in some way? "So, I saw the agent leave this morning," he said in a matter of fact manner. A blush crept up her cheeks. "Ah, so he stayed the night."
She mustered up a weak smile, "That's none of your business, Clark. Anyway did you want anything?"
"Not really," he told her. "I just came to see you. I'll catch up with you later."
What a weird man? She thought to herself as she watched him walk away. It was then that he noticed the huge scratch on Clark's forearm. A scratch that seemed to have been caused by some huge animal. Have you noticed anything strange around the neighborhood? Agent Taggart's voice echoed in her mind. Well, strange like weird noises in the night. Maybe animal sounds? She made a mental note to call the agents and tell them about this after school, just in case it helped them with the case. It was a very random strange thing to mention but after all, it was something exactly like that that they had wanted her to keep an eye out for, right?
Dean leaned back in his car and watched the neighbor, Clark something or the other, talk to Y/N. He took a sip of his coffee and observed her walk away in the direction of the school. She didn't notice him sit in the Impala, just watching her.
When the phone rang, he picked it up instantly. "Any leads?" he asked Sam. They really needed something to direct this case in the right path – the path to their furry little killer.
"Not really," Sam said, and Dean could imagine him tiredly leaning back against the chair with the laptop in front of him. "But I ran the two names you asked me to. Something came up in the system."
The moment Dean had run out of Y/N's house that morning, he'd gotten thinking. It didn't make sense that she would have his name tattooed on her chest when the name on his was not hers. As far as he knew, that was not how this soul mate business worked. So he had asked Sam to run both Y/N's full name and the name Rachel Benson together against the system to see what he could find. "And?" Dean prompted, impatient to know the result.
"I think Rachel Benson was what her birth parents named her. When The Y/L/N family adopted her, they named her Y/N," Sam paused letting that information sink in. "Does this mean what I think it means?"
"Yeah," Dean muttered. Then in a sudden moment of frustration, he banged his fist on the steering wheel. "She's my soul mate, Sammy."
"You make it sound like the worst thing in the world," Sam observed.
"Isn't it though?" Dean mumbled. Then in an effort to redirect Sam's thoughts as well as his own, he said, "I have a gut feeling about this neighbor, Clark something guy. You should tail him."
"Alright. And what are you going to do?"
Dean cleared his throat. "I'm going to talk to Y/N. Got to go." He cut the line.
It was late when she left the school that day. Choir practice had run later than it should have and it was getting dark already. On the way home, as she walked, Y/N decided to call Agent Taggart. After a few rings, he picked up. "Hello, Agent Taggart? It's me, Y/N Y/L/N. You asked me to call you if I thought of something weird."
"Yes, Y/N," he spoke. "What's wrong?"
"I don't know. It could be nothing but this morning when my neighbor Clark came to speak to me, I noticed this scratch on his neck. It didn't look like any animal scratch I've ever seen. It definitely wasn't Mrs. Hozane's Chihuahua." She waited for him to say something. When he didn't, she said, "I just thought you should know, that's all."
"Y/N, is Clark new to town?"
She took a couple of moments to think about it. He'd come to take care of his grandmother, Beatrice, right after she got ill, and that was just about the time that she move here. "I suppose you could say that. He moved around the same time I did."
"Alright, that is helpful, Y/N. Thank you."
Y/N knew he was about to hang up. "Agent, wait," she said. She knew she shouldn't be doing this but she just had to know. "Is Agent Rosewood there?" There was a brief pause on the other side of the line, but before he could answer, Y/N came in view of her front door. "Actually you know what? Never mind. Good luck with your case, agent," she said and hung up.
Then she looked up into the eyes of the man waiting for her at her doorstep. "Hey there, Agent Rosewood. Fancy running into you here," she said hoping he could sense the bitter sarcasm dripping from her words.
"Can I come in?" he asked, and after a brief debate within herself, she let him in.
They found their way to her kitchen. She motioned for him to sit, but he didn't. "Y/N, there's something I need to tell you."
"And what would that be?" She folded her arms in front of her defensively. "If you're going to offer me an explanation as to why you snuck out in the morning, don't bother. What we had was a one night stand," she said, even though it hurt her to say so. "You owe me no explanations."
"My real name is Dean Winchester." There he said it. He laid the truth out there for her to do whatever she pleased with it. "I'm not really an FBI agent. I'm Dean Winchester," he repeated, waiting for her to say something.
In a frantic move that surprised Dean, she reached for his shirt and lifted it up far enough to see his tattoo. "No, you're not. If you were, the name on you would be Y/N Y/L/N, not Rachel Benson." The thoughts running through her head scared her. Why would he lie to her and say that he was Dean Winchester if he wasn't? If he truly was Dean Winchester, why did he have another woman's name on his chest where hers should be? Could fate truly be that cruel?
"You were adopted, Y/N," he said as an explanation.
She already knew that. This was not exactly news to her. When she'd turned twelve, her adopted parents, whom she has always thought of as her real parents, had told her the truth. They'd told her that her birth mother had died during childbirth. She never knew more than that.
"Rachel Benson was the name your birthmother gave you on the original birth records of the hospital you were born from. You are Rachel Benson," he told her.
She simply stared at him. Here it was, the moment she'd been waiting her whole life for. Here he was, the man she'd hoped to meet her whole life. It was happening right now, and for the life of her, Y/N couldn't figure out what to say. "So you are my soul mate?"
"You sound disappointed," he smiled grimly.
"No! Nothing like that," Y/N started to say, but a loud crash from the front of the house interrupted her.
Dean automatically reached for his gun. "Stay here," he instructed her, and moved forward stealthily to check out where the noise had come from.
He stepped light on his feet, trying to make out shapes in the dark. Night had fallen to complete darkness while he had been talking to Y/N in the kitchen. He'd almost cleared the rooms on his way to the front door when he heard a blood curdling scream. His heart racing in his chest, with only one thought in mind, he rushed back to the kitchen. Please, God, don't let her be dead. Not her too.
He burst in, cocked and ready to shoot. The growling menace of a werewolf was hovering over her with his claws ready to strike into her heart. Dean shot him, three clean silver bullets to the heart. It fell on top of Y/N, making her scream even more.
Dean rushed to her side, and pushed the monster's body off her. "I got you. Don't worry, baby, I got you," he hushed wrapping his arms around her. She was shaking in his embrace. "Shh…I got you, Y/N," he repeated.
Dean sat with Y/N on the floor in the middle of the living room. He'd gotten her cleaned up and wrapped in a blanket. They simply sat there looking at each other. He'd told her everything there was to know – about what he did, who he was, and of all the things he hunted. She was yet to react.
"Are you going to say something? Anything?" he asked her.
Y/N watched the man that sat cross-legged in front of her, his long legs uncomfortably settled on the floor. He'd told her some incredible stories. If she hadn't been attacked by that thing tonight, she never would have even dared to believe those tales. Yet, she had been attacked, and that could only mean one thing. Everything he'd just told her was the truth. Her soul mate, Dean Winchester, hunted monsters for a living. What the hell?
The rumble of the Impala outside interrupted the conversation they were not having. Dean stood up. "Sammy's back," he said and stepped out to open the door and let Sam in. That was another thing to take in. Agent Taggart was actually Sam Winchester, Dean's brother – also a monster hunter. "Did you take care of it?" Dean asked Sam, referring to what he did to dispose the werewolf's body.
"Yeah," Sam said briefly glancing at Y/N sitting quietly on the living room floor, watching them. "How is she doing?"
"How do you think?" Dean muttered. "Screw this soul mate crap, Sam. Look at her! I haven't been in her life for two days and she's already had a close encounter with death. This was just what I feared. I don't want to get her killed," he said in whisper, running a hand through his hair.
"Dean," Sam laid a hand on his shoulder. "You're the reason she's alive. He would have come for her whether you were here or not. You kept her safe. Thank God you were here."
"I doubt she feels the same way," Dean sighed. "What am I supposed to do now? Take her with me?"
The slight shuffling noise behind them made them both turn back. Y/N stood there, still wrapped up in a blanket, with the edges dragging on the floor. Dean couldn't resist a smile. She was just adorable.
"Take me with you, Dean," she solemnly told him, gazing into his eyes.
"You don't know what you're asking of me, Y/N," Dean said, stepping closer. Neither of them noticed when Sam quietly left them alone. "This life," Dean continued. "It's not easy. It brings me, and everyone I love, closer to death. You don't want this."
She hesitantly reached up to cup his face in her palm, while the other still clutched to her blanket. "I want you, Dean Winchester," she declared. Then dropping her blanket, she stepped even closer to lay one gentle kiss on his lips. Dean simply stared at her, his heart beating against his chest. "I want you," she continued. "Whatever your life is like, no matter how dangerous it is, I didn't wait my whole life to lose you after finally finding you. I want you."
"You'll have to leave your old life behind," he pointed out to her.
"I don't care," she told him.
"You'd be risking your life by just deciding to be with me," he reminded her.
"I still don't care," she replied.
"You'd be –" Dean began, but she silenced him with another kiss.
"Whatever excuse you're going to bring up, I don't care, Dean Winchester. I'm coming with you."
It took Y/N just a week to settle into the bunker. By the end of it, she was already unpacked, and all her belongings lay mingled with Dean's things in his room.
"You unpacked pretty fast," Dean remarked looking around the place, taking note of Y/N books on his desk, and her comforter on his bed. Her toothbrush rested next to his in the bathroom, and her clothes hung right next to his plaid shirts. He liked seeing the physical evidence of her being entwined in his life. It brought him a sense of completion that he couldn't explain. "Considering your usual tendencies live out of cardboard boxes, this must be a record."
Y/N knew exactly what he was referring to. She'd been living in that house for three months without even unpacking, but upon moving into the bunker, she had unpacked, making herself at home within the matter of days. In the end that's exactly what it came down to. "Well," she began. "That house never felt like home."
"And the bunker, this little hole in the wall, does?" he quipped.
"Dean," she said, kissing him. "I know this sounds incredibly cheesy, but…home is wherever you are."
He pulled back. "Gross. I've told you, Y/N. No chick flick moments."
She laughed, and the sound embraced Dean like the warmth of the sun after the gloomiest of days. "Shut up and kiss me, Winchester," she commanded, and he did. He shut up and kissed her.
"I love you, Y/N," he mumbled against her lips. It was getting easier day by day to say it without feeling the panic rise within him.
"I love you too," she replied. "Forever and always."
Dean smiled leaning in for another kiss. He'd always wondered what the big deal was about finding your soul mate. He'd seen the tragedy of losing one but he'd never known the good things. Upon finding Y/N, and being in love with her, he finally knew. It was a feeling like no other. The feeling of finally finding completion in ways you never thought you were incomplete. It was his heaven. She was his heaven on earth, and he knew he'd give his life to protect her.
