Love to all my reviewers floaty hearts, there's a huge research thing at the bottom, so I'll leave you to your reading.
Sam and Dean leapt to their feet and watched their father.
Missouri turned towards Cait. "Hon, why don't we go and figure out where we want to eat tonight? It'll be my treat."
Cait looked like she was going to refuse, but the other woman shot her a pointed look and she nodded. She followed Missouri from the room, her eyes meeting Dean's right before she walked out of sight.
John waited until he heard the sound of their footsteps overhead. And then he spoke, deceptively soft.
"Missouri called me yesterday." He said, taking a step towards the couch they'd been sitting on. "Said that one of my boys had knocked up some poor girl she knew."
Dean shifted his weight from foot to foot nervously. He faked a smile. "I'm sure she didn't put exactly like that..."
John cut off him off with a slice of his hand. "I knew immediately it wasn't Sam, he's not that stupid." He enunciated clearly, glaring at Dean. "What were you thinking? You're no longer a kid Dean, you shouldn't be making mistakes like this!"
Dean was staring down at his boots while John chewed him out. Sam didn't know what to do, and was feeling useless. All three were snapped out of their actions when the sound of a female voice came from behind John.
"Enough." Cait said finally, just loud enough to be heard over John's rumbling voice.
He turned around to look at her. She was wearing old faded jeans and an olive drab tee with a faded dark red cross with the words 'Mash 4077th' written across it. In flat white and green sneakers, with her hair loose around her shoulders, she looked more like a kid than anything else.
"With all due respect sir, you're lying far more responsibility for this situation on Dean than is rightfully his. Half of it is firmly on me." She looked at him unflinchingly.
John was surprised and more than a little impressed by her courage at standing up to him. He didn't show anything on his face, but did shoot a look at Dean and Sam. They were frozen in shock, their eyes locked on Cait.
"I don't think I ever caught your name." John asked calmly.
"Caitlyn Statham." She held out a hand for him to shake.
He shook it, a strange look on his face. "Statham, that's an unusual name. I used to know a man named Jake Statham when I was still in the Corps."
She froze. "Jake Statham? I knew a Jake Statham, but he wasn't a jarhead."
John raised an eyebrow at the term. "Jake wasn't a jarhead, he was a squid." He told her, testing the range of her military vocabulary.
Her eyes widened. "Big ex-bodybuilder guy? Made horrible puns and so charming that he could sell ice-cubes to Inuits?"
"Sounds like Jake, is he a relative of yours?" John asked her, smiling, unaware of the stares of his sons.
"Jake was my dad." She said sadly.
Before anyone could respond, Missouri swept down the stairs with all the grace of a queen. "Ooh sweetie," She told Cait. "Before we get into any heavy issues, we should go out and get something to eat." She said, addressing everyone in the room.
They all nodded. Dean spoke up, "That restaurant you talked about, La Parrillia, where is it?"
Cait smiled at the thought of Dean remembering her craving for a chimichanga.
Missouri hid a smile. "I'll go in Cait's car, you three will follow. In case you get lost, it's at 814 Massachusetts street."
Cait pulled her Charger into the parking lot of the La Parrillia restaurant. The impala pulled into the space beside her. John's raised, black, 1964 Dodge stepside truck pulled into the space on the other side of Cait's white muscle car.
Missouri went off to talk to Sam as they all headed for the restaurant's main door. Dean and Cait ended up walking in front of everyone else, but they didn't say anything to eachother. John followed last, watching the other four observantly.
When they got to the front doors Cait reached for them first, but a man exited before she could open them herself. He was somewhere in his late twenties. Tall with dark hair and blue eyes, he was rather striking. He held the door open for Cait and shot her a stunning smile.
Cait smiled back, just being friendly, and thanked him. Dean shot the man a glare so fierce that the other man quickly backed off. Sam, Missouri and John shared amused looks and did their best to hide smiles.
They were seated almost immediately, and their waitress was seemed to enjoy fawning over Dean. Cait rolled her eyes at the other woman's antics, but was content to search her menu rather than glare at her. Surprisingly, Dean immediately dove into his menu as well, he barely even noticed the blue-eyed blonde.
The blonde frowned prettily, then switched her attentions to Sam. He turned red at being the new object of her flirting and she quickly gave up. She took their drink orders patiently, shrugging off the lack of attention easily.
Missouri ordered Brazilian lemonade, telling them all that it was a specialty of the restaurant. Cait had excitedly ordered horchata, a Mexican rice drink. And the three Winchester men, Dean, Sam and John, each had a Pepsi, A Sprite and a Budweiser respectively.
Sam spoke up after a minute. "You seem to be really excited about all the food and drink you've come into contact with." Then he realized that what he said could be taken the wrong way and stammered out a correction. "I...I mean..."
Cait smiled and waved off his apology. "Don't worry Sam, I know what you meant. If you'd spent two and a half months unable to keep most anything down, you'd be excited about food too. It really gave me an appreciation for the ability to eat anything I wanted without running to the bathroom to empty my stomach."
Even though Cait's statement hadn't been bitter or accusatory, Dean still shifted slightly in seat in discomfort. Not noticing Dean's reaction to Cait's revelation, John spoke up. "Mary was the same way. I spent the first ten weeks of both her pregnancies trying to find something she could tolerate."
Sam and Dean looked at their dad, surprised. They hadn't ever heard him talk about their mother without it being about her death. And even then it'd been rare for him to talk about Mary at all.
After a few minutes of talking, the waitress came by the table with their drinks. Missouri nodded after drinking a sip of her lemonade. Cait flashed everyone a wide smile after she took a drink of her horchata.
Dean shot her a curious look at her overly pleased expression. But he didn't say anything, just smiled back at her when she turned towards him and they shared a glance.
Dean woke when he heard the slight creak of the hinges on the door to his room. He slowly sat up, sliding his hand under his pillow to grip the massive hunting knife beneath it. He heard the door close and saw the outline of a figure in the dark. He'd just pulled it out when the light flicked on.
He blinked in confusion when he saw Cait standing in the dim illumination of the overhead light. She smiled shyly at him, and then raised an eyebrow when she saw the knife in his hand.
"Easy boy." She said slowly, raising her hands in a mock surrender. "I come in peace."
Dean grinned, embarrassed. He put the knife on the bedside table, he didn't really want her to see that he slept with it under his pillow.
"To what do I owe the pleasure?" He asked, slipping into his 'charming mode' as Sam liked to call it.
She smiled widely. "Two Mike's Hard Lemonades and a lonely birthday."
He put his hand over his heart and groaned. "Ouch!"
She bit her lip to stop from laughing. "Actually I came here to talk, something tells me we won't be getting much alone time with Missouri, your dad and your brother all in the house."
He nodded and moved to get out of the bed, but he remembered that he was wearing only a pair of boxers. So he decided to stay put. It was a little difficult to have a serious talk (he mentally groaned) when you were half-naked in a room with a woman you'd slept with before.
"You're dad kept me busy for two hours telling me some of my father's exploits he'd watched while they had served together." She rolled her eyes. "My father was a bit of a partyer back in the day, and since he was in the Navy he was able to party on several continents."
Dean smiled. "Sounds like a fun guy."
"He was." She said sadly, turning towards the window. "Dean, I just wanted to tell you again that I don't expect anything from you. It wasn't as if we planned this..."
Dean climbed out of the bed, ignoring his mostly-nude state, and walked over to her. He grabbed her shoulders and turned her towards him.
"Cait," He said quietly. "You don't need to keep saying that. You're not alone in this. I don't know how much of a help I will be, but I'm not going to leave you to deal with all this by yourself."
She smiled slightly up at him, and a tear fell down her cheek silently. "This whole thing scares the hell out of me Dean. I mean I know what to do when a poltergeist is attacking the home of a family with teenagers, but a baby?"
He wiped away the droplet of moisture on her skin with his thumb as he cupped her face in his hands. "We'll deal with it all; the evil after you, my dad who seems to have decided that you're under his protection now, and our daughter."
Her eyes filled with even more moisture. "You don't understand Dean, this baby is all the family I have now. My mom died when I was born. My dad, my brother James, my sister-in-law Kelly and my niece Sonya, they're all gone now."
Dean remembered his reoccurring nightmare. The little girl in his dream, the woman, she was...
Cait kissed him. The kiss was fierce and desperate, as if she was trying to get all her frustration out. Dean forgot about what he'd been thinking about, all his thoughts now centered just on Cait and how crazy she was driving him.
Please review.
For the research conscious:
'Jarhead' is now a familiar term for a Marine, because of the way their hats make them look. If you are not a Marine, do not call one this name, it is considered an insult. It's okay for ex-Marines (although they do say 'once a Marine, always a Marine' and that the only ex-marine is Lee Harvey Oswald...for obvious reasons).
A 'Squid' is a similar term, but this time meaning Navy. The different services in the U.S. Military rib eachother a lot, calling eachother names and the like...but it is more like sibling rivalry, they actually have a lot of respect for eachother. Just don't try to tell them that, they'll deny it.
Also...Marine batallions are transported by Navy ships, so they sometimes form friendships and sometimesrivalries.
La Parrillia Restaurant is an actual place, and is actually located at 814 Massachusetts St. I have no affiliation to this restaurant, nor have I ever been there. If you own that restaurant and are for some reason reading this, please don't sue me, my recruiter would not be pleased with me.
John's truck, I got the information off of Wikipedia(dot)com. They have a lot of infoabout the show.
La Parrillia Restaurant actually does serve Brazilian Lemonade and Horchata. I looked it up on their menu online. If you are a blue-eyed blonde waitress at the restaurant in question, I apologize for any insult you may take, but it is just a coincidence. But to be fair, I purposely made her polite and not skanky, I didn't want to offend anyone at the resaurant. Oh, I don't know if they serve Budweiser, I just assumed.
I do not own Mike's Hard Lemonade and really have nothing more to do with them.
And finally, the insertion of Cait's military brat past. I used my own plus my father's as a reference point. Her father is roughly based on mine, at least in generalities. I wanted some realism and they always say 'write what you know.' I apologize to anyone who believes she is a 'Mary Sue' or whatever, but I just wanted her to have a past I can write about fairly confidently.
Ciao to all. And free DVDs of Dean's best lines are available by the door in the Clubhouse. They're next to the photos of Jensen Ackles without a shirt.
