"All right, hold still," said Meg, "you'll be fine. Just hold still."

"It's a date," Sam said. "Like, a date. I don't know…I don't…"

Meg just looked at him, trying to adjust his tie. "Sammy, a date is with two people. This is a lunch with friends. What are you, twelve? Suck it up and act like you're an adult. Stop whining."

"But I…this is Amelia. Meg, I like this girl." Meg wasn't looking, she was trying to make sure he looked impeccable (it was a 'lunch with friends', she had tried telling him, not that he listened or anything, so there he was, dressing up for the occasion in his Fed suit because he didn't have anything else and he was too fidgety to tie his tie so Meg had to do it), but she was sure he had on the slightly exasperated, completely adorable puppy-dog look on his face that pleaded for her to understand him. "It's got to be…"

"Perfect?" Meg said dryly. "Dumbo, shut up or you'll trip over your shoelaces. Does lil' Sammy have a crush?"

"Shut up," he said in mock-seriousness, and Meg rolled her eyes, stepping back to try to see if he looked 'perfect' for his 'lunch with friends'.

And then it struck Sam, and he sobered up a bit.

Meg was replacing Dean.

"Sammy?" came Meg's voice. "Hello, earth to Sam. You look fine. What's got your panties in a twist?"

"Just…nothing," Sam said, rather breathlessly, trying to get it out of his head. Nothing would replace Dean, Dean was gone, Dean was not coming back, he was dead or something and Meg was not replacing Dean. She just happened to have the same devil-may-care attitude about her that merely resembled Dean's, and she was most definitely not Ruby.

Ruby was possibly the only other person that had replaced Dean in Sam's life.

Jessica didn't count.

Did he have a serious girl problem or what?

"And, for the fourth time, you're done, we've got like fifteen minutes to get there, are you just going to stand there and make me drive Dean's Impala and go on my own?"

Dean's Impala; nothing would ever change. Couldn't ever change.

"No, no, I'm coming," Sam said, fishing around on his motel drawer for his car keys.

"Already got them, Sammy," Meg said, and Sam uttered a 'thanks', took them from her, and started out the door.

As they got into the Impala, he said, "You're not going to change clothes or anything? Your hair, I swear, is still wet."

Meg smirked in a distinctly Meg-ish way. "I think we're past first impressions, Sammy. I don't have to impress your girlfriend at the moment. …You going to start the car or what?'

"Oh, right," Sam said, as if an afterthought, and started the Impala.

Meg sighed. Crush or no crush, Sam would be Sam.

They entered the diner, and Amelia waved at them from a window booth. They sauntered over, Sam looking like a Fed (his badge was probably in his inside pocket in case of an emergency) and Meg looking like she'd just gotten out of the shower and had forgotten to comb her hair.

"You look…fancy," Amelia said to Sam, eyeing him thoroughly.

"And you look nice," Sam said, smiling at Amelia, who had dressed up but obviously not to the degree in which Sam had. Meg gave a warm smirk at Amelia and motioned with her eyes to Sam, saying very clearly, you two obviously like each other.

Amelia slightly blushed. Sammy goes for the modest ones, doesn't he? Meg chided to herself.

After they'd ordered Meg found that Amelia had a talent of directing the conversation in non-awkward ways (or maybe it was just because the two were obviously infatuated with each other and would always hop to responding to what the other would say). "So, the dog," she started out saying. "Is she doing well?"

"You see her every other day," chuckled Sam. "I think you've got a pretty good idea how she's doing."

"Yes," Amelia rolled her eyes, smiling, (and good lord how they acted like shy teenagers around each other), "but you're around her more often. She likes you, right?"

"Um, yeah," Sam smiled, and motioned to Meg, "but she seems to really like her."

"Good with animals?" Amelia asked Meg.

"No, not really," Meg admitted, "but he just sort of latched onto me and wouldn't let go."

"What's her name?" Amelia asked, and Sam opened his mouth to say We didn't name her yet but Meg beat him to it.

"He's not really familiar with dogs and good names for them, so he hasn't yet," Meg entered into the conversation in more of a gushy tone than she would have preferred (she had a reputation to uphold as knife-wielding gun-slinging badass demon, after all—or did that get tossed out the window when she became Permanent Dog Pillow?), "and we were actually wondering if you had a good name for her."

"Oh," Amelia said, looking rather slightly confused at the question, "I-I sort of always thought she looked like a Dodger, to be honest."

"Isn't that a dude's name?" Sam asked.

"I had a female dog named Damascus once," Meg recalled, and Amelia sent her a look of amusement and Sam did as well, slightly under-shadowed with the almost unnoticed revelation that it was a hellhound; "yes, like the city. She was as girly as they come."

"Never knew you were the dog type, especially the girly dog type," Sam said, and in his expressions said, Seriously? A girly hellhound?

"Well, my—my ex, I suppose he is, always used to curl her hair before taking her out," Meg said.

"Your ex?" Amelia pounced on the information, grinning like a housewife in a gossip group, and Meg averted her eyes. Sam was slightly grinning, leaning back in his seat, because obviously this was one of those girly moments when one of them shares past memoirs with the others in a rather discreet way, half-hoping-but-not-really to have them not eagerly try to rip it apart, which of course they do. He would never understand the feminine mind or train of thinking.

Especially if it was Meg.

And…was Meg becoming a chick? This was something Dean would always bring up, if Meg ever dared to be like this around him, which brought up a good point—what was Meg doing? She was a demon, by definition she was not human, and yet she was acting not only human but normal.

It was possible that Meg was barefaced lying when she mentioned about not needed to impress Amelia for Sam's sake.

It was the weirdest friendship Sam had ever seen, and probably one of the only ones he could—possibly—keep.

"Yeah," Meg got a far-away look in her eyes, as if trying to nostalgically recall some memories of a past love, when Sam knew that she was trying to not scowl or curse or blink black or sniff around for the umpteenth time to try to detect his minions' whereabouts in front of Amelia.

"I need a name, age, description, details!" Amelia almost crowed, and the food was delivered to their booth. It wasn't much of a distraction from her new goal: dissect my boyfriend/crush's friend.

"Well, he's yea tall and I…" Meg caught sight of Sam grinning ear-to-ear into his burger and immediately switched into the abrupt, dead-set, shrewd Meg that she always was. "I think we're going too far into a chick-flick moment as I can stand."

Amelia slightly pouted but started poking around her pasta.

Sam never was good at starting conversations but he said, "So, um…Dodger? Damascus? What did we decide on?"

"Danny's another good 'D' name," Meg said.

"Or Daphne," Amelia shrugged.

"Or just Dog," considered Sam. Meg and Amelia just exchanged looks, and simultaneously sighed and rolled their eyes. Men, they seemed to telepathically say.

(Later Sam would tell Meg she really had turned into a chick because of her time on Earth. Meg would then proceed to tell Sam a detailed gory story about how she grew to power in Hell while cussing him out and looking completely undignified and unlike the person she had been in the diner—good first (or second) impressions, Sam reaffirmed in his mind, but from that point on he always eyed Meg when she said things like she wasn't the real Meg or was missing part of her, the mellow part that she had showed while being with Amelia and sharing chick moments.)

"So," Amelia tried to restart some semblance of a talk, looking at them rather expectantly, "how did you two meet?" She said it in the same way someone would ask a couple how they met. Both of them did a double take and Sam spoke up first.

"Well," he said, unsure of how to lie about this on the spot (especially if Meg naturally had to add made-up details to the story), so he basically stuck to the truth as much as he could. "It was about seven years ago, and I was running away."

"From…" prompted Meg, remembering the centuries ago for her, back when she had a different meat suit. She liked that one better, but the one she was currently wearing could give a mean death glare.

"My brother," Sam said, voice catching on the last word. Meg almost winced in sympathy, not that she was sympathetic or anything—I didn't like Dean Winchester to begin with. She could have gone as far as to saying that she didn't really like any of the Winchesters—Daddy Winchester especially, because he was the chief part of the plan Gank Azazel And His Crew (which just happened to be her; she had a horrible life, she really did)—but Sam was beginning to grow on her.

Maybe it was just the dog.

Maybe she was being too much of a chick.

Hello, runaway demon, she tried to tell herself, tried to swallow down the lump in her throat that tasted of free will gone sour. Sam was continuing on his little narrative.

"He, ah—you know what? I don't even remember what we were arguing about then," Sam said, giving Meg a sideways glance and chewing on his lower lip. "I just finally had enough and got out of the car and turned around in the opposite direction with my backpack. Hitchhiker for a week, I was."

"And then you met me," Meg smiled. She turned to Amelia and fake-whispered; "He couldn't take his eyes off me for months."

Sam gave her a bitchface, cleared his throat and continued rather lamely, since there really wasn't much more of the story to tell. "And then we went our separate ways—I went back to Dean quickly, of course, and she just sort of left. But we met again."

"More romantic that way," Amelia smiled, leaning back in her chair.

"We weren't together," Sam said quickly, looking absolutely adorable with the harried, pleading expression on his face (completely infatuated, Meg thought smugly, and he can't take his eyes off her—if he spent the night at her place, did that mean that Meg could take the Impala out for a lone drive? It had always been a secret desire to drive that wonderful car one time or another—focus, Meg). "Not like that at all."

"Mm-hmm," Amelia smiled, "sure."

Meg looked mock offended as well. "Sammy, I can't believe you implied that about—about us! I…I just…"

For a demon bitch, Sam thought, she did pull off the so-pious-I'm-almost-a-nun act well. She was born demon, wasn't she? Then how did she act so human? (He was going to go on the assumption that demons didn't usually act like this.)

Within seconds, the other two were in quiet fits of laughter at Meg acting funny but not in her normal way, because she wasn't acting like a bitch. She was acting nice.

And the two were so accepting it almost made her heart break (good job, Meg, don't get involved with Sammy Winchester, or it'll end up killing you).

That would have to be when the three demons entered the restaurant, wouldn't it? As quickly as they did, Meg's head snapped to them and she scowled, gripping the demon knife in her belt and feeling the demons' gazes land on her. She gave them a death glare in response (not quite sure how Amelia would take her flipping the bird at them—Sam did pick the modest ones usually, didn't he?) and turned back to look at Sam, several shades paler than normal.

He noticed her agitation more than usual and his face was crestfallen as he looked past her shoulder to the three men that had their eyes trained on her, though not black at the moment. "Do you…" His throat felt dry. This was going to end spectacularly.

"No, don't bother yourself," Meg said, because Sam was already halfway up.

"What's going on?" Amelia asked, looking between the two of them, lost.

"I've got to go, I'm sorry," Meg repeated once or twice. "Sammy, I'll just take the Impala's keys and go on my own. I'll be back within the hour to pick you up, okay?"

"You sure you don't need any help?" Sam asked. There's three against one, was his unspoken question. Begging. Pleading. Did he care about her survival and safety this much? What had this Amelia done to him, exactly? Meg didn't brush off the concern like she would have a month ago.

There's only one knife, she shrugged to him, and I've got it. "No, I'll be fine. I swear I won't get any dents on the Impala—sorry I've got to leave, Amelia, been nice talking to you but I've really got to go—Sam, I need the keys."

Sam took one long look at her before giving her the keys. "One hour?" he said in a measured tone.

Meg rolled her eyes. One hour or I'll assume you're dead and have taken the Impala with you was the gist of what he'd not said. "Yes, I'll be on time. Sorry I've got to leave, can you like save the food I didn't eat for me later? Thanks and…you kids have fun on your date, now."

She left to Sam's remarks about how it 'wasn't a date' with a smile on her face, though she was gripping her demon knife tightly and motioning for the demons to bring the fight they had with her outside where they could handle it like civilized monsters.

They were Crowley's minions, obviously, and they were just a scouting team to see where she was or else there would be hundreds more, and she could take out a scouting team. She was Azazel's daughter, after all.

And get back in time for the end of Sam's date, she told herself. If I don't, then bad things will happen.