Author's Note: Just a baby one-shot, but they didn't have much to say. Points if you know what the name of the chapter means. :)
The rain was beating down around them, far too acidic for safety, but the switch was across an open swath, taunting them from underneath the safety of another cave mouth.
"I'm gonna make a run for it," Martha announced.
Dean grabbed her by the elbow. "No way," he said, sounding shocked. "You nuts? You'll bake!"
"Acid doesn't bake," Martha replied.
"Then you'll melt, whatever," Dean snapped, his scowl clearly communicating his displeasure. "No way am I letting you go."
Martha took a step back, and Dean just extended his reach so he could keep his hand on her arm. "Two things," Martha said. "First. We have to get to that switch or the Doctor and Sam won't be able to get the TARDIS back online. If they don't do that then we're stuck on this planet forever. Second. You don't get to tell me what to do."
Dean groaned, rolling his eyes. "Martha, come on—"
"No, Dean," she said, "you come on. We've got one shot, and the rain's not gonna stop. It won't kill me before I get there."
"Then I'll go," he said, and his grip on her became her grip on him as he took a step towards the mouth of the cave.
"I'm faster," she argued. "I'll have a better shot at getting across."
"I'm fast," Dean returned.
"I know more about alien technology and I'm likelier to figure out how to disable the field," Martha said, and her voice sounded like checkmate.
"I'm not letting you," Dean said again.
"Well, I'm not asking your permission," Martha retorted.
And then Dean was gone from her, but not toward the switch, toward the wall where he slammed his fist against the rock so hard that Martha winced. "Martha, I swear to God, I've never met anybody so freaking difficult in my life," he growled, gravel entering his voice in frustration and fear and hurt.
And Martha came back with, "Anybody who didn't have the same last name as you, anyway."
Dean's surprised laughter echoed around the cave, filling Martha with a pleased warmth that almost counteracted the chill of the air around them. He came back to her, then, his hands on her elbows and his eyes off to the side. "I don't want you to go out there," he said softly.
"I don't especially want to, either," Martha said, "but somebody's got to and that somebody is me. You do this all the time, Dean. Let somebody else do it, just once."
"You don't want something to patch up for me when we get home?" he asked, and he was trying so hard to sound casual, jovial, but it only sounded desperate.
So she ran a hand through his hair, like she had so many times when she was checking for fever or concussion, and she smiled. "Maybe you'll have to take care of me when we get home," she replied.
"Sammy'll tell you, I'm a lousy nurse," Dean said, putting his hand over hers in his hair. "I'm crap with stitches and I'm mean when I pop a dislocated joint back in place."
"Mean's the only way to handle dislocated joints," Martha said. "And stitches are hard when your hands are so big. You need dainty girl hands for good stitches."
"Which is why I should go flip the switch so you can stitch me up when it's done," he said while his thumb moved over her hand. She wondered if he even realized he was doing it, because the smirk on his face didn't change.
Martha shook her head, biting back a laugh. "You know, anti-inflammatories and field sutures aren't exactly my idea of an ideal date," she said, her voice flippant, but when Dean's expression shifted from joking to stunned she faltered. "Dean?"
"Date?" he echoed, and he sounded so much like a floundering twelve-year-old just discovering girls for the first time that if he hadn't looked so fragile, so close to breaking, Martha would have laughed.
Martha's hand fell from his hair to his face, and her other hand joined it, cupping his face between them and tilting it down to look at her. "Date," she confirmed. "It's what happens when two people like each other. And I know we've been a bit busy running for our lives to really have time to catch a movie and dinner, but maybe when we get back home, we can find the time."
His eyes were large and round and just awfully green as they searched her face, like he was trying to memorize it just in case. "You'd like that?" he asked.
"Wouldn't you?" Martha asked back, suddenly hesitant.
He reached up and put the side of a finger under her chin, tipping her head at to get a better view of her, looking lost. So she tried again. "Dean? Would you?"
The finger under her chin shifted into a trembling palm against her cheek, and he just nodded wordlessly.
Martha smiled, feeling her face shift under his hand, and saw him tremulously imitate her smile. She slid her hands behind his ears and, acting on nothing but instinct, not allowing herself to think beforehand, she pulled him down into a kiss.
The acid rain pelted the ground behind them, and the thunder of an alien atmosphere shook them, but for just a moment, there was nothing else in the world but each other.
The kiss was rash, chaste, and over quickly, but it left both of them breathless as teenagers. When they pulled away almost in tandem, they stared with wide eyes at one another for a long moment.
Martha broke the silence. "I should go flip that switch," she said, still catching her breath.
"Yeah," Dean said, a clear sign of how out of it he was.
"And then we'll go home," she continued.
"And try that again," Dean offered, and Martha grinned drunkenly.
"I'm all right with that," she said, and started off towards the mouth of the cave.
She stopped when she felt Dean's fingers close around her wrist, and she turned with every intent to argue, but he just took his jacket off and laid it over her head. "Don't you die on me," he said, and a catch in his voice belied his flippant tone. "Not after that."
"No plans on it," Martha replied, holding the jacket over her. "I've got to see if you're as lousy a nurse as you say you are."
"It's a date," Dean said.
"A date," Martha echoed, smiling.
She ran off into the acid rain and Dean forced himself to watch her, no matter what.
And when they were all aboard the TARDIS together, having saved the day once again, Dean knelt by Martha in the infirmary, carefully tending to her burns, few and far between though they were. (She was fast, as she'd said, and his jacket had taken the brunt of it.)
As he ran a gentle finger over a spot on her cheekbone, she smiled up at him, tired but invigorated as always after an adventure. "You're not half bad at this, Winchester," she said.
He snorted, dipping his hand back into the tub of ointment.
When he looked back up to apply it to her nose, he saw her gazing at him in a tender, sort of hazy way. "Told you I wouldn't die," she said. "I promised."
"We do have a date, after all," Dean replied softly as he painted the bridge of her nose.
"I can't wait," she said, and when her smile wrinkled her nose under his finger, he thought everything might be okay for once.