Disclaimer: Supernatural and all its characters belong to The CW and Eric Kripke.
Suggested Songs:
- "Both Sides Now" by Joni Mitchell
Chapter Twenty-One: Part One
Blowing out a long breath, Melissa sniffed and wiped at her cheeks as she pulled off her headphones and let them sit around her neck. It wasn't just that Pamela was dead or that the apocalypse was getting nearer everyday, it was that she felt like she was losing a part of herself. She didn't spend enough time remembering. The night was pitch black and stormy, odd for March, but it looked like Spring was coming early. They'd just finished up a salt and burn in Delaware and no one was too bloodied. A few bruises here and there, but it was to be expected. Her mind was swimming with faces of the past that night, for no particular reason. And so, she pulled out her trusty mixtapes and went on a little trip down memory lane. Songs she hadn't listened to in years. A tape she had initially worried had disintegrated from age.
She cleared her throat, trying to calm her noisy nerves, looking around the mostly dark room. It was a mixture of Stevie Nicks, Joni Mitchell, and Grateful Dead; and it always got to her.
"What are you doing?" Dean asked huskily from beside her, naked save for his boxers and his necklace. His eyes were still shut when she looked over and his voice was muffled as his face was half-squashed in the pillow.
"Nothing," she said, swallowing hastily and continuing to wipe at her cheeks. "Go back to sleep."
"Not likely," he smirked sleepily, cracking his green eyes open. "Are you crying?"
She put her cassette player and headphones on the rickety nightstand next to her, laying back down beside him on the lumpy motel mattress. "I'm not crying...really…"
"What is it then?" he insisted, draping a warm arm over her waist as they faced each other.
"I just haven't heard those songs in a long time," she told him sleepily. He could feel her breath on his face. After a moment, she closed her eyes and smiled. "I used to live above a tattoo shop, you know."
"What?" he blurted out, slowly waking up.
"Yeah, I was an apprentice...kind of," she explained slowly, a blush creeping onto your cheeks.
Dean raised his eyebrows in surprise. "Look at you."
Not meeting his eyes, she smiled wider. "I have something to show you," she said softly, leaving the bed and going over to her duffel. Narrowing his eyes in confusion, Dean switched the lamp on his nightstand on and sat up against the headboard, arms crossed over his bare chest.
"What is it, Missy?" he asked expectantly as she rifled through her duffel.
"Patience is a virtue, Dean," she replied with a smirk. He rolled his eyes.
"Not at two in the morning."
"Aha!" she cried proudly, pulling out a smallish metal box and taking her place back next to him in bed. Her eyes were bleary with sleep as she took her glasses off her nightstand and donned them. Without another word, she grabbed a stack of photos from the slightly rusty box and handed them over to Dean, who had been sat watching with furrowed brows.
He squinted at them for a moment, trying to get his bearings, then his eyes widened and he cracked a grin. "Oh my god. Is that you?"
Melissa nodded and rested her sleepy head on his shoulder to look them over with him. "Yeah."
"You're so cute!" he said with glee. In the photo, she must have been no more than four or five. She was giving a big grin, standing alone in the middle of a dance studio. A vision in pink, she had on a leotard, ballet shoes, the works. Her dark hair was short and thinner than it was now, and her young face was clear.
"I don't know," she shrugged, her eyes alight with nostalgia. "My teeth were fucked up. Actually, my teeth are still weird. I never got braces."
His small smile as he gazed at mini-Melissa was odd, almost proud? She couldn't tell. "Your teeth are fine," he said absently. Then he looked over at her more earnestly, "Does this mean you like to dance?"
Her cheeks burned almost crimson instantly, but again she only shrugged. "A long time ago."
"How have I known you for this long and you never told me that?"
"I don't know!" she said in her defense with a small laugh. "It never came up."
He looked over at her with mock suspicion for a moment, but said nothing more. Dean continued to flip through the worn collection of polaroids, before another one caught his eye. Melissa was again dressed in her ballet getup, but it must have been a few years later. She looked six or seven. Next to her, a tall woman had a hand on her shoulder.
"That's her, isn't it?" he asked softly.
Melissa, beginning to doze, snapped her eyes open and gave a little smile at the picture. "My mom? Yeah, that's her."
"What was her name?" he eyed the woman in the photo. It was only then that Dean realized he'd never asked Melissa this question, and immediately felt bad about it. The woman was beautiful. Her black hair was curly and went past her shoulders. Her skin was tanned, and her brown eyes lively. Truthfully, she and Melissa looked almost nothing alike, save for the slender face and youthful features. But especially the smile. They both had those smiles that were big and genuine. Carefree, almost.
"Eileen," Melissa replied. There was a beat of silence before she spoke again. "I don't know if you can tell, but I didn't get any of her Cuban genes. May dad was Polish...got most of my looks from him. Except the hair."
"No, actually...I can see the resemblance," he told her. The more he looked at it, the more he saw they shared the same special sort of beauty. "Really, Missy, I think you look just like her."
She chuckled tiredly. "Then you might need glasses too."
He said nothing else, stopping for a moment to kiss her hair before he passed the picture to the back of the stack.
There were a few more, and going through them Dean began to notice they were in chronological order. The next one he stopped to really eye was hazier, taken in front of a ramshackle white house. It seemed the whole family was there. It was Melissa's father that caught Dean's interest. Melissa was the only one who had his pale skin and light eyes. But nobody seemed to have caught the blond genes.
"What are everyone else's names?" he asked. He sighed a little to himself. She knew pretty much everything about his family, but he'd never had the balls to really ask her about hers. Though he doubted she would have answered. She needed her own time. It felt so intimate, seeing the photos for the first time. The things Melissa kept locked away in her heart and her head.
"Well, oldest to youngest, my brothers were Danny, Tommy, and Ricky. My dad's name was Rob. This was I think only a couple months before everything. And that's them."
"Hm," he hummed in response, studying their faces a little. There was a slight edge in her voice, so he moved past it.
The last two pictures were stuck together with something that Dean hoped was soda, and he had to bite back an audible gasp when he saw them.
"What. The. Hell," he said a little louder, his grin spreading. Melissa perked up a little and as she focused in on them she laughed.
"You never told me you used to dress like a Sex Pistols groupie!" he beamed at her. The first one showed her on someone's lap. Dean assumed this was Allen. He was smiling widely at the camera, brown eyes creased at the edges and dark hair falling a little in his face. Melissa was kissing his cheek.
What Dean didn't expect was for her hair to be cropped to her chin, with safety pins stuck where her earrings should have gone. She had on a plaid shirt, a leather skirt, and some fishnets. He couldn't tell for sure, but he thought he saw black lipstick to match the heavy shadow on her eyes as well.
"Shut up," she said happily. "We were punk. We were cultured."
"That's one word for it," he snorted. His face softened a little looking at it more. He sighed in a melancholy way. "You looked...so happy."
She had to work to keep a frown of her face and her voice light. "It just wasn't meant to be, Dean. And I think you know I wasn't really happy."
He gave her an apologetic amile and studied the photo one last time. Behind the teenage couple, smoke billowed from an ashtray, and clothes were strewn around what looked like a very dingy apartment. Melissa looked positively lethargic, and he saw the sunkenness in Allen's face. She was right. The photo looked like a moment of happiness, not a lifetime. He flipped past it.
The last photo of the stack was different. It showed Melissa from the side, hunched over a long table that Dean for a moment thought had a dead body resting on it. But when he saw the tattoo gun in her hand, everything made a hell of a lot more sense. There was a crease between her brows in concentration and her tongue stuck out just a touch between her lips.
"Damn," he said, impressed. "You weren't kiddin' about the apprentice thing, huh?"
But when he looked down at her, he saw her breathing had slowed and her face was relaxed. Smirking a little, he put the photos down on the table next to him, hoping some memories may have eased her mind.
. . .
Broken out in a cold sweat, Dean shot up with a gasp, shifting Melissa at his side. His dream had been fine, fishing alone on a cool, misty pier, before Castiel showed up. All he said what that there was something that needed to be said, in a place even more private than Dean's own head. And then Dean was given an address.
Melissa cleared her throat groggily from his side. "What is it?"
He didn't bother looking back at her, his eyes wild. "We got somewhere to be."
Author's Note: I know this is late and short, but I've been dealing with a whole hell of a lot lately. I'm really hoping things slow down soon so I can start posting more. Thanks for sticking with me, though!
Special thanks goes to Purplestan, Ladysunshine6, and LoveFiction2018 for your reviews! Thank you so much and I'm so flattered that y'all review so regularly!
I hope everyone enjoyed this chapter and I'll do my best to get another up soon!
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