The Fires in Their Eyes
Chapter 3
It was 2:30am and Dad wasn't back yet. Dean could tell because the truck wasn't parked outside the room. He unlocked the door and walked in, already loosening his thrift store tie.
"Not bad," he murmured, remembering Neal's words and half-laughing to himself.
He'd been all right to drive, but he could feel the alcohol still in his system from the way the tie slipped through his fingers a little too smoothly, and by the way the floor met his feet faster than he thought it should.
He pulled the napkin out of his coat, placing it on the bedside table, before he shrugged it off. He changed into a t-shirt, jeans and his brown leather jacket, took a swig of Dad's "secret" handle of Jack and left the room again.
Dean walked up the stairs to the room labeled 220, hesitating only a second before knocking on the door.
There was a thump, giggle, and a kind of scuffling noise in quick succession before Neal answered. And Dean was presented with the full power of the con-man's brilliant smile.
"We're staying in the same motel," Dean said by way of greeting.
"What an amazing coincidence," Neal replied, like it wasn't one at all. Dean couldn't imagine a way that the guy could have planned his involvement in all of this, so he chalked his new friend's answer up to good humor and alcohol.
"Still celebrating?" He asked catching the eye of a skinny brunette, clad only in a t-shirt and panties, holding a half empty bottle of champagne. "I'm not interrupting, am I?" She smiled at him.
"No, no, no," Neal insisted, pulling Dean inside by the arm. "Come hang out with us."
The girl climbed back on the bed and was sitting with her feet tucked under her, taking a long drink from the bottle. Neal, in rumpled shirtsleeves and no tie, flopped down next to her, wiggling around until his head fit comfortably in her lap. His movements, though drunkenly off-kilter, were fluid and surprisingly economical; it was only a few seconds before he turned his face toward Dean and said, "This is Kate. She's fantastic."
Dean was sure Neal thought so. The look in the guy's eyes was one of absolute admiration. This girl could do no wrong. Dean decided to reserve judgment for now.
Kate smiled and waved the bottle a little in greeting.
Dean smirked. "Is your nick name Fantastic? Or do you prefer Kate?"
Neal laughed, pulling her free hand to his lips. "I told you."
Kate's eyes were caught by Neal's and the two seemed to be having a silent conversation. Then she looked back up at Dean with a wicked twinkle in her eye.
He kept his voice light, "What's he been telling you about me?"
"Nothing bad," she replied. "I love your coat. He didn't tell me about that." She was tangling her fingers in Neal's hair. Neal's eyes closed, soaking in the sensation. And Dean suddenly felt as though he really were interrupting something. He also felt a knot of jealousy tighten in his chest.
"You could take it off," she continued. "Stay a while."
"I don't even know what I'm doing here," he said mostly to himself, but he couldn't look away from them. He knew he was still there because he didn't want to be alone.
Neal opened his eyes and said, "You want to have some fun with us. You think we're interesting. And there's not enough fun in your life."
Maybe that was half-true, but it was more perceptive than Dean was about himself most of the time. "Why do you think you know so much about me?" He asked.
"We're con artists, Dean. Thieves. We know people. We know you."
Dean didn't reply. He knew enough about the con to get information out of people, but he had never tried to get anyone to trust him enough to take their money. He knew it took skill and smarts. But he was sure these two didn't know shit about his life, about the world he lived in.
He put his hands in his pockets. "You don't know as much as you think you do."
Neal lifted his head, slipping an arm across Kate's lap to prop himself up by his hand. He looked at Dean with clear eyes and a serious expression that said, believe me. His mouth added, "Then tell us about it."
Dean didn't think he was ready to do either.
"So you guys are con artists. Am I being conned now? Am I going to wake up robbed and naked or something? Cuz let me tell you, all I have are four fraudulent credit cards each with a 3,000 dollar limit, which I'm guessing is a little under your pay grade, the numbers of three chicks in that bar and a couple of bucks in my wallet. Oh," he smiled, aggressively, "and a gun in my belt and a knife in my boot. Just so we're all on the same page."
"Dean," Neal said slowly, moving to sit up. He wavered slightly and Kate scooted closer to steady him. "This is not a con. We're not going to rob you. I don't celebrate half million dollar deals with pointless maliciousness. Do you think I would enjoy that? That I'm capable of that?" His expression was the image of sincerity.
"With a face like yours, I'm sure I don't know what you're capable of," Dean replied seriously. But he was convinced Neal wasn't lying about their intentions. Not so much the half million. "I don't know what you want from me."
Neal shrugged, falling back against Kate, who was looking a little bored. "You think we're interesting, we think you're interesting too. Talk to us. Tell us about hunting ghosts. We'll tell you about the deal we made." Neal wheedled, like the information was some kind of bribe. "Maybe then you'll believe me about the money."
Neal smiled when Dean opened his mouth to deny it, and then shut it with a snap. He was just going to have to get used to how well this guy could read him.
"You're a flippin' show off," Dean said and shrugged off his coat. He slipped the gun into one of the pockets and laid it on the table. He wasn't tired and Dad wasn't back yet. He might as well.
"Awesome," Neal said, paused and then frowned, "A gun and a knife?" He seemed genuinely confused.
"So?"
"What do you need them for?"
Dean shrugged. "It's a dangerous world out there, dude. The only reason I told you about them was because I wanted to let you know, I'm not an easy mark." He didn't say that he had five or six more of both guns and knives stowed in the Impala's trunk. Or that he knew he could break most of the furniture in the room into serviceable weapons, if he had to.
Neal shook his head with a little half smile, as if he didn't believe him, as if Dean was some misguided yahoo who was who felt the need to tote around his weapons to make his place in the world, or at least secure what small corner of it he thought was his own.
Dean thought about the mobster leaving the bar and the six shots he split with Neal Caffrey, who didn't see the need to carry a gun. If that guy didn't want to give Neal his supposedly promised half mil, a pretty smile wasn't going to stop him from putting a bullet in the con man's head.
Neal could read a second hand suit like a book, and talk and flash his teeth to probably anything or anyone he wanted, but seemed to have little conception of or regard for the dangers involved in his line of work.
Dean couldn't decide if it was naïveté or an extra helping of ego on Neal's part. But somehow, it made him seem more human.
Maybe, if he told them a little about hunting, it would show Neal there can be danger anywhere, and not the kind you could talk your way out of.
Then Dean thought a little more about danger.
Here he was, even with all the weapons skills Dad had taught him and all the knowledge of a life on the road and on the hunt, Dean was walking into the hotel room of two admitted con artists, criminals. He was taking off his jacket to stay and have a drink.
He didn't know what was in that champagne. He didn't know anything about these people, really. He'd just let Neal charm him there.
Dean felt like Neal was telling the truth and had been telling the truth all along. He didn't know if it was the right thing to do, but it felt right. Maybe this was his version of walking into a meeting with the Russian mob unarmed.
If he was wrong, he'd deal with it. For now, Dean moved to sit in the chair in the corner.
But Neal patted the bed next to them, "Don't be silly, Dean. We can make room."
Dean was reminded of Stevie Keller's sleepover birthday party when they'd spent a winter in South Dakota, near Bobby's place. All the boys had piled on Stevie's bed and talked twelve year old shit until one in the morning. It was one of the few times Dean had felt normal, even though he'd still had to hold things back.
He slipped off his boots, letting the knife in its sheath fall into the heel, and leaving them at the end of the bed. He sat down and slowly leaned forward, taking the champagne bottle from Kate.
The couple scooted back against the creaky headboard, entwining casually in each other's arms. Kate leaned on Neal's raised knee, his arm resting on hers, their legs tangled together, like they didn't even think about it.
Neal reached lazily for the bottle and Dean took another drink before passing it to him. His smile was just as lazy as his movements and he seemed to take extraordinary pleasure in just being drunk. Dean imagined that in a position such as Neal's, with a fed on his tail, he rarely got a chance to cut loose.
"I guess you're in no state to con anyone, Blue-eyes." The nick-name slipped out of Dean's mouth before his better judgment could hold it back.
Neal's grin spread and he winked at Dean, but it was Kate who answered, "That's why we had you work Peter."
"Your fed?" Dean asked, pulling his legs up so he was sitting Indian-style. "He must looove chasing you guys."
Kate put a hand to her boyfriend's cheek and patted it, saying playfully, "We think he has a secret hard on for Neal."
Dean's eyesbrows shot up. "Not for you?"
She smiled proudly. "Neal's the focus of the investigation. I'm just an accomplice. I don't even think they had my photo until a few months ago."
Neal's hand was moving lightly up and down Kate's bare leg as he said, "She's not his type." And Kate rolled her eyes, like it was a running joke between them.
"How do you know that?"
The con-man's blue eyes sparkled, "I've seen a picture of his wife."
Dean snorted and snatched the bottle back, deciding they were just fucking around.
Neal let it go easily and asked, with an eager tone to his voice, "Tell us about hunting ghosts."
Dean shook his head. "I still can't believe you'd just…believe me."
Neal tilted his head. "Why would you lie?" He asked.
"I-I didn't," Dean sputtered.
Neal smiled, slouching in Kate's arms so he could stretch out his foot to give Dean's knee a little push. "I know," he replied. "I believed you. So, tell us about it."
So Dean did. He told them about the case they were working on that day. How he and Dad put on suits and told people they were agents or officers or whatever they needed to be. How they left town when a job was done, because usually there were some suspicious police or questioning family members. How they never stuck around long enough to be remembered well.
Neal's expression was unreadable when he asked, "How long have you been…hunting with your Dad?"
Dean hesitated. "Oh, for forever…I don't know." He didn't think for a second that they would be fooled by his lie. But he hoped they would understand this was the one thing he didn't want to reveal. "I started helping when I was in high school. Man," he smiled, remembering. "I was so gung ho about it then, it was kind of sad."
When Dean paused to take a drink, Kate asked, "I guess you're a little less enthused about it lately?"
He grimaced and said, "I used to think it was the greatest thing in the world you could do. Helping people, who didn't know the first thing about helping themselves. And I don't care about all the moving around. I'm used to it. I love it. But I guess I'm just a little tired." He shook his head. He thought about Sam's anger and hurt. And what Dad said. "I don't know," he finished lamely.
Neal took the bottle from Dean with a small smile, took a drink, and handed the bottle to Kate before he asked, "What about finding the ghosts? Do you have those cool looking electronic gizmos?"
Dean laughed. "Naw, man. That shit's for amateurs."
"What do you use then?"
"Just your wits mostly," he answered, and Neal smiled, like a private hunch had just been proven right. "We do research, we try and figure out what the ghost wants, what the best way to find it is. And we use whatever weapons we can find." He leaned forward a little, warming to the subject. "They don't like iron. If you don't have anything else on hand, hitting them with a pipe or a crow bar will disappear them pretty quick. But it'll really only make them more mad when they come back."
Dean started to smile. His audience was wide-eyed, completely credulous. He never thought he'd be able to talk about the job with anyone who wasn't involved in his kind of life. It was refreshing, exhilarating even. "A shotgun loaded with rock salt will fuck up a ghost pretty bad. That won't get rid of it though, it just weakens them. To get it completely gone, you, ah, have to salt and burn the remains." That was the part people usually had trouble with.
"What do you mean, 'salt and burn'?" Neal asked, brows furrowed.
"You toss some salt on the body, or whatever's left, and then pour lighter fluid on it. If you don't have time to do that, you just set it on fire without any fluid. And you let it burn to nothing. The ghost is usually gone as soon as you light it up though. And I mean gone for good."
Kate's eyes were wide and Dean prepared himself for a cry of disgust or outrage. Instead she cried, "That's awesome!"
Dean grinned at her, glad she agreed with him, and looked at Neal, who only smiled wanly.
Kate scoffed and gave him a little shove, saying, "You cannot deny that that is awesome, Neal…just because you don't like guns."
Neal glanced at her, a flash of anger or annoyance in his eyes, like she'd just told a big secret. Kate rolled her eyes and pulled out of his arms. She drank the rest of the champagne in two big gulps and set the bottle on the floor, an emphasis on her movements like it was one big stuck-out tongue at him.
Dean said nothing. He'd been raised with guns. He liked them a lot. And they sure as hell came in handy on the job. But he knew the kind of reasons some people didn't like them. Unless you had a bad experience, you usually didn't have an opinion.
"It just seems like a violent way for someone to…go," Neal said to Dean, like he had to explain himself. "Shot with rock salt and then burned?"
"You have to understand," Dean answered, "About the job. These ghosts…they're not really people anymore. Something happened to stop them from…moving on, I guess." He'd always been uncomfortable talking about this sort of stuff. "If they've become powerful enough to influence the living world, they've got some serious anger and hate behind them. Most of them are crazy and violent. They disrupt people's lives. If it goes on too long, people get hurt. We…Dad and I and Sam…we stop them from doing that."
He didn't realize his slip until he caught their change in expression.
"Who's Sam?" Neal asked.
"He's my kid brother," Dean replied curtly, trying to make it clear he didn't want to talk about it.
"A family business," Kate said, smiling. None of them were at their sharpest. The empty bottle was the evidence.
Dean grimaced, and mentally scrambled to think of a way to both explain himself and stop the conversation where it was. But Neal spoke first, "He's not travelling with you anymore. You would have mentioned him before, otherwise."
Dean's jaw tightened before he answered. "No, he's not. He's in college. Stanford, actually, on scholarship. He's a smart guy. Like you." He hoped that would be that.
Neal cocked his head, still questioning. "You're not happy about that? It's a big accomplishment."
"I was over the moon!" Dean cried, and that terrible familiar feeling of guilt rose up inside him.
They froze at the ferocity of his reaction. Neal actually reached for him, in some sort of apologetic reflex. But Dean jumped off the bed, needing to move, to get away from that feeling, away from the expressions on their faces.
There was an awkward pause before Neal asked, "So it was your Dad who wasn't?"
Dean whirled on Neal, ready to demand why he cared so fucking much, but stopped when he saw the expression on the con man's face. It was painfully exposed, like an old wound torn open. Dean could barely imagine refusing to answer that pain, because it was just like his own.
He thought about Dad, coming down on Sam for abandoning the mission. Dean had never realized before just how important it was to the old man, tracking down the Yellow-Eyed Demon. He had always thought of hunting as a profession and some jobs just took up your whole life. If Sammy didn't want to do it, that was fine with Dean. But lately Dad seemed to see hunting only as a means to an end, as a way to gather information about the ultimate quarry, his ultimate revenge. And he wanted his sons, both of them, along for the ride. No matter what the fallout afterwards, no matter what the cost.
"No," Dean replied flatly. "He was not happy about it. Sam went anyway." And now Sammy wasn't going to come back. Not for Christmas, not for summer, maybe not ever. They weren't really a family anymore.
Kate was looking at him with pity on her face and Neal's expression was now carefully blank, as if he'd had to close off that pain Dean had glimpsed, cauterize it.
Dean didn't know what to do. He felt like the words had just been wrung out of him like a wet towel. He felt weirdly empty, but realized he had barely said anything at all. He backed up against the table, reaching blindly behind him for his jacket. He just wanted to get out, go to bed, shrug it all off until it didn't bother him anymore.
Kate untangled herself from a still and expressionless Neal and scrambled over the bed, taking two fast steps to reach Dean before he could turn towards the door. She crashed into him with enough force to bruise his tender ribs and wrapped her arms around his waist.
Dean looked mournfully in the direction of his escape, but he didn't pull away. He returned the embrace, thinking about how long it had been since someone had hugged him for comfort, to offer comfort.
He remembered Sam's farewell hug, it had been desperate and tear-filled, saying goodbye by holding on like he would never let go. Except that he had finally, and he hadn't looked back.
Kate raised one hand and lightly traced his jaw line with a long slender finger. When she reached his chin she took it between her thumb and forefinger and drew his face down to meet her eyes. "Where do you think you're going, Kid?"
"I…" he hesitated. "I don't know. It's just…" Dean couldn't explain this feeling to them. He just needed to get out of there. Get away.
"It's your first instinct," Neal said quietly, tonelessly. He slowly turned his gaze on Dean. It was like the fire in his eyes had been banked, but was slowly heating up again. It was like he was coming back from somewhere far away. "This kind of life…it makes you want to run away from everything. It's habit."
Dean looked away and Kate stiffened in his arms, turning to look at her boyfriend. Dean didn't see what kind of glare she shot him, but it didn't stop Neal from continuing.
"It's just like you said, Dean. You and your family leave the people you save before any negative consequences can catch up with you. You were raised to run away."
Dean scowled, feeling the same way he had always felt every time a teacher or a neighbor had criticized his Dad's way of raising them. "Shut up," he ground out. "My dad brought us up the way he thought was best. And you sure seem to know a lot about it, Mister Wanted-by-the-FBI. What else have you been running from?"
Neal grimaced, though Dean thought it might have started as an attempt at a smile. "Touché," he replied. His eyes went distant and he licked his lips in a nervous sort of way, like it was a habit he'd broken a long time ago, before he spoke again, "Sometimes you have to run away to be free."
Dean wanted to call the fucker a hypocrite, but he thought of Sam and didn't say anything. He remembered Sam walking away, not looking back. He pulled away from Kate, but she grabbed his wrist when he tried to turn towards the door.
"Dean, if you leave now you won't be free," she said in a hard voice. "You'll just be alone again."
Dean shut his eyes in defeat and felt that rising tide of guilt and anger recede and sink low into his stomach. He knew that she was right, so he laid his jacket back down on the table. She raised herself up on her toes, pressing a kiss to his forehead and threading her fingers through his. She pulled him gently back to the bed.
The expression in her eyes was full of a soft affection, maybe something like a kinship. They walked the couple steps to stand at the foot of the bed and looked at Neal.
His blue-eyes were over-bright, haunted and Kate went to him, letting go of Dean. She kissed him on the cheek and she murmured, "It's okay, baby," and rubbed his back, like she knew exactly what was going through his head.
When Neal met Dean's eyes, he knew that Neal had someone who'd put him on this path. Someone who'd made him a criminal, like Dean had been made a hunter. They both understood you have to be taught the con, and how to con yourself into believing it was what you wanted all along.
Neal was looking at Dean like he was trying to bottle something back up that hadn't been let out in a while, piercing him with this gaze that wasn't really an accusation, but somehow made him feel like it was.
Dean felt compelled to speak. "I'm sorry," he said. "I guess you hit a nerve."
Neal swallowed and blinked any trace of the past from his expression. "Likewise," he returned, smiling ruefully.
When Kate took Dean's left hand drawing him onto the bed, Neal took his right. Dean hesitated, feeling uncertain about this strange courtship of him that these two were undertaking. He wasn't sure where it would lead, how far he wanted to go in just one night.
But Neal passed his fingers lightly over Dean's trigger-finger calluses, the barely-healed scrapes he had gotten along with those bruises. The con-man looked into Dean's eyes and tightened his grip into a solid handshake. Dean moved forward and the couple backed up together, as if performing some strange dance.
Dean paused again with one knee on the end of the bed, one foot on the floor. "I don't want to talk about the past anymore," he said quietly.
Neal smiled, now all comfort and reassurance, as his other hand moved to Dean's elbow in a smooth gesture that was somehow welcoming and unassuming. "That's fine," he replied, glancing warmly at Kate. "We can talk for a while."
He let them pull him all the way onto the bed, rumpling the blankets as he moved across them. Neal handed him a pillow and he settled between them at the head of the bed, stretching his legs out and crossing his feet in front of him.
Neal laid back and propped himself up again by his elbow, facing Dean. He began talking about living in Italy the previous summer.
He didn't talk about jobs, only what living there was like, the apartment, the city, the food. Kate, sitting back against the headboard, began to braid and unbraid thin strands of her hair, interjecting details every once in a while.
Dean watched her deft fingers move as the dark brown strands twined around them and listened to Neal weave his little anecdotes and details together.
The bed was weirdly big for this particular brand of crappy motel and there was room enough for all three of them, without an uncomfortable amount of spooning. But that wasn't to say that they didn't touch at all. Neal's feet would brush against Dean's as he spoke animatedly about something and their elbows knocked together from time to time. One of Kate's knees was resting on Dean's thigh and her face was about a foot away from the top of his head. When she laughed, his hair moved with the force of the air.
"And the espresso at the café below us was phenomenal," Neal was saying. "But not as great as this hole in the wall we found in Florence."
"You mean the hole in the wall in Venice, Neal," Kate corrected. "Florence was the underground jazz club you loved so much."
Neal smiled. "Right, right. And that was across the street from your gelateria."
"From what?" Dean asked.
Kate sat up, pulled her legs underneath her, leaned forward and grabbed Dean's arm, eyes wide. "You've never had gelato?" The tone of her voice contained the seriousness of a murder investigation.
"I've never been out of the country," he replied, still confused.
She pounced on him, bouncing with emphasis. "That doesn't mean you can't have had gelato! There's gelato everywhere, Dean. There's an awesome place in…in Cleveland, even!"
Dean felt Neal shaking beside him and he turned to see that he had his face buried in the pillow and was silently laughing.
Kate was still bouncing on him. "Neal," she whined, "we have to get Dean some gelato! Like yesterday!"
"I'll get right on that," Neal said muffled, still laughing into his pillow.
Dean winced, his bruised ribs still sore. "I still don't know what it is."
Neal lifted his head. "It's Italian ice cream. It's made differently somehow to make it super smooth or something. It's also Kate's favorite thing in the world."
His smile faltered when he saw Dean wince again and move his arms to try and protect his ribs. "What's wrong?" Neal asked and leaned forward to push the girl off Dean.
"What?" She said, looking back and forth between the two of them.
"It's no big deal," Dean cried. "Seriously—ow!"
Neal had poked him kind of hard in his side.
"Is he hurt?" Kate asked with concern in her voice. She reached for his shirt.
Dean tried to bat her hand away, saying, "He's fine!"
Suddenly Neal seized his arms, pulling them behind him, not terribly smoothly, but effectively enough for Kate to pull Dean's shirt up, exposing the spackled pattern of brown and purple bruises.
Dean sagged back against Neal, defeated. His body was tired from the tension of putting up even that much of a fight; his ribs were already aching.
"What happened?" Neal asked, speaking low into his ear.
He grimaced and pulled away from Neal's equally slackened hold. Dean twisted around to face him, answering with a hard stare. "I fell down some stairs on our last job. It's just a couple bruised ribs. Totally not a big deal, at all."
Kate's cool fingers, were gently probing the discolored skin. "Didn't you wrap them up?" She looked up at him from her inspection and he fought back a smile, reminding himself that he wanted to convey his discomfort with their misplaced concern.
"It's really not that bad."
She frowned, obviously disagreeing with him.
"It's a hazardous job," he defended himself to her, "And I'm taking it easy, by the way. I would be on a hunt with Dad if he hadn't told me to take the night off."
Dean turned back to Neal. "I wouldn't have been at the bar tonight if he hadn't insisted," he said.
Neal smiled. "I'm glad he did."
Kate wrapped her arms around Dean's neck, pulling herself next to him and kissing his cheek softly. "Me too," she whispered.
Dean let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. He didn't ask them why. He knew it would be the wrong thing to do; it would ruin all of this. But it didn't stop him from wondering. He didn't get what these two thought they were getting out of spending their night dealing with his problems.
Kate moved her bare legs completely into Dean's lap and pressed herself closer to him, resting her lips on his shoulder, like one long kiss. Neal got up from the bed, ran a hand lightly through Dean's hair and walked to the bathroom.
Dean saw him stop in the open doorway. "Don't think about it too much," he said. "Your face will stick that way." He closed the door with the ghost of a smile on his lips and Dean laughed softly.
He tried to keep between the bounds of propriety, which was admittedly usually pretty hard for him, as he settled Kate more comfortably on his thighs. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been with a girl like this.
It wasn't a sexual thing. It was intimate, comfortable. And Dean suddenly became terrified that he would never have it again after that night.
Something tightened in his chest again, but it wasn't jealousy. Maybe it was panic, or loss. Kate must have felt it hit him, because she whispered, "It must be so lonely," and threaded her fingers through the short hair at the back of his head.
He only pulled her closer in response.
The bathroom door opened, the light switched off and Neal emerged. He had lost most of his clothes and was now wearing only a white undershirt and a pair of boxers.
"What're you doing?" Dean couldn't quite keep the strangled tone out of his voice.
"Can't have a sleepover without your PJs," he said simply.
Kate smiled from his lap. "You're gonna have to lose those jeans."
Dean turned back to Neal. "You're surprisingly okay with this situation," he said, motioning to the girl sitting on him.
Neal just smiled knowingly, the expression a match for his girl. "She never strays far."
Kate slipped off Dean, and walked past Neal and around to the foot of the bed. Her movements were loose with alcohol, even though they had all stopped drinking long ago. She looked at Neal and said accusingly, "You were the one who brought him home." Then addressed Dean, "Unzip, please." She indicated his pants.
Usually game for removing his pants in most situations, he obliged as Neal replied, "He followed me."
Dean took issue at that and said, "I wouldn't have even begun to know where to go if you hadn't left me the napkin." He grunted when Kate pulled his jeans off by the feet. She winked at him and tossed them in the corner.
She fixed him with a strange look and asked, "How old are you, Dean?"
"Twenty-two," he answered carefully.
"Have you ever been in a threesome?"
Dean's eyes went wide and he glanced uncertainly at Neal, who was still standing next to the bed, betraying no emotion on his face.
"No," he said honestly.
Kate showed him that wicked smile he had seen when he first came into their room. "Well, that's too bad, Kid. We're going to have to rain check that experience, cuz I'm too tired to fuck either of you beautiful boys, let alone both of you at once."
Dean laughed and tried to kick her as soon as he realized her little game. "Oh man," he said, "You really had me going for a second."
"You should have seen your face," she said between giggles as she neatly avoided him. Neal came around to the foot of the bed and caught her in his arms. "Did you see his face?" She asked him.
"I saw," Neal said. "You totally got him." And he kissed her soundly on the mouth.
Dean fought the urge to whistle as he watched them, lips moving, hands roaming. Then he fought the urge to look away as one of Kate's legs began to wrap around Neal's waist. Neal's hands came around her tightly and lifted her off the ground.
But Dean saw Neal grin into the kiss and was able to narrowly avoid being hit by a giggling Kate when he tossed her unceremoniously onto the mattress. "It's time for bed." Neal reminded them, "We've all got to hit the road tomorrow."
Kate was sitting up, bright-eyed and smiling, by the time Neal made his way back to his side of the bed. She leaned over Dean and kissed Neal again, softly this time, and they broke away quickly and lay down almost simultaneously on either side of him.
As he lay between them, Dean felt like he had caught a fleeting glimpse of something magically unattainable. Some perfect relationship that only happens in movies or dreams. For him anyway.
He had seen something he could never have. Something he'd only just realized he might actually want.
A half-asleep Kate turned towards him, in some kind of search for a comfortable position, and curled her body around his, sighing into his shoulder. Dean looked over at Neal, whose eyes were open.
Blue-eyes said, "We don't do this with just anyone, Dean. We always like meeting new people. Sometimes we take them to bed. We like to go with the flow…see what happens. But this has never happened before. I just wanted you to know."
Dean swallowed. "What did happen?" He wasn't really sure. Where did the night leave them?
"You reminded me of things I didn't know I needed to be reminded of." Neal replied, the veiled words guarding strong feelings, buried memories. "We're not that different, you know?"
The edge of uncertainty in his voice pulled at Dean and he lifted a hand to grasp Neal's. "I know," he said.
Neal leaned forward, pressing his forehead against Dean's and shutting his eyes tightly. "I don't think I said thank you. For what you did earlier," he whispered. "Thanks."
"You're welcome," Dean said. And after a moment asked, "What happens tomorrow?"
Neal smiled. "We go our separate ways, of course. Did you expect anything else?"
"No." Though he felt strange about it, like it wasn't quite enough. But enough of what, he wasn't sure.
"We won't forget," Neal reassured him, a tired sigh in his voice.
"Neither will I," he replied.
TBC...
