CHAPTER 53
Katie's POV
We walked through the bunker past the study and viewing room, all the way down to the area where the workout room was. Then we turned up a hallway to the left that Maggie and I hadn't been in before. Finally, we stopped in front of a door. Sam and Dean exchanged significant glances, and they were both grinning from ear to ear.
Then Dean turned to Maggie and took her by the shoulders. "Before we let you see what we've been up to, I just want to say that when we left it earlier, the room wasn't complete. Just so you know."
Maggie and I looked at each other and we both nodded. "Okay," she said.
"So close your eyes now," said Dean.
"You too," said Sam, smiling down at me.
We closed our eyes and heard the door open. I felt Sam's hands on my shoulders from behind me, guiding me through the door, and I heard the door close. I felt Maggie close by my side. Both guys said "Open your eyes," at the same time.
What I saw when I opened my eyes brought tears to them. If I had sat down and thought of every possibility that might have greeted me in this room, I would never have come anywhere close to imagining what I was actually seeing here. If I thought the surprise and shock I felt when we first saw the boys was amazing, that paled in comparison to this.
"You did all this yourselves?" I asked tremulously.
"With Garth's help, yeah, and even Cas got recruited for some of it," said Sam.
"I thought you said it wasn't completed," said Maggie. "What else could you possibly still need?" she asked.
"You," said Dean. "We still needed you." And then he kissed her.
Dean's POV
I was excited and nervous, and feeling a whole lot of emotions that were entirely new to me. I now understood the term 'Butterflies in my stomach' because I was having them big time. I used to think that was just chick flick nonsense. But I'm watching the face of the woman I now loved more than life itself light up with pure joy and amazement, I'm seeing the look in her eyes, and watching the emotions that are showing in her face as she's looking around the room, and I'm finally getting those butterflies that everyone talks about.
In fact I was going through a lot of pure physical sensations I'd never actually experienced before. Like my legs feeling like rubber so bad I thought maybe they wouldn't keep holding me up. Sudden chills that seemed to hit me right in the middle of my spine. I get it now. I finally see why there's all the fuss about romance. It's heady stuff. No drugs or booze needed. A week ago I would have said all this crap was just silly. Embarrassing even. But I was just being a jerk, thinking like that. Now things are different. And all I wanted to do at this moment was make this night the best one of her life.
Maggie's POV
I was speechless. When Dean said what he said it really knocked me for a loop. It was a good thing he was holding onto me, or I might have just melted right into the ground. After the initial impact of the room as a whole, Katie and I both started looking around and taking in the individual things they had done to create this atmosphere.
The room was a fairly large one, and they had totally remodeled it to look like a park in Paris at night. All the walls were papered with scenic murals. Three of them had scenes that looked like more of the park, so you felt like it was actually larger than it was. The fourth wall, one of the narrower ones, was papered with a scene of a Parisian street, It even had the Eiffel Tower in the background.
The room was fairly dark, but light was provided by old-fashioned looking lanterns hanging from brackets on all four walls. The ceiling was painted a very dark blue, and lights were twinkling on it like stars. In one corner of the room a moon, also giving out light, was suspended somehow from the ceiling.
In the corners of the room, and in a couple of other places as well there were small patches of, well, garden, I guess. They were laid with real sod, surrounded with a border of rocks, and they had trees in large pots sitting in the middle of them. The trees were only about three or four feet tall now. But when they grew taller the effect would be even more stunning. In both ends of the room there were wooden park benches, the kind you see in paintings a lot. They were set jauntily at a slight angle to the walls.
But the absolute heart stopping wonder they had somehow created was the waterfall and brook. In the center of one of the longer sides of the room there was one of those artificial waterfalls flowing over a pile of rocks. The water fell into a trough they had build across the floor, again at a slight angle to the walls, The water was bound by low cement walls and flowed over rocks scattered throughout the brook. I couldn't tell where the water was going. It looked like it was flowing right through the wall on the other side.
To get across the brook, they had build a wooden bridge, like an archway with wooden guardrails on the side. The total effect was simply magnificent. Almost too much to believe, but here it was. When I had looked around the room and taken in everything I looked again at Dean. His eyes were sparkling mischievously, and he was grinning from ear to ear. The look he was giving me seemed to be saying, "Well, what do you think? Did we do good? We did didn't we?"
I looked over at Maggie, who was pretty much looking as stunned as I was feeling, and then back at Dean. He put out his arm again, like he had at the car and said, "My dear, would you care for a walk in the park?"
I put my arm through his and said, "Why certainly, sir," and off we went across the bridge to the other side.
Katie's POV
I watched Maggie and Dean cross over the wooden bridge. She stopped in the middle of the bridge and looked more closely at the waterfall, and then turned to look at the other side. Then Dean pointed to the bottom of the wall where the water seemed to be disappearing and kept pointing around the walls until he got to the waterfall, Then I saw the cleverly camouflaged pipe that ran around that side of the room, delivering the water back to the falls again.
I looked at Sam, and he suddenly appeared to me almost boyish, waiting apparently for a response from me. "I can't believe you did this? How did you even think of it?"
"Shall we sit down?" Sam said, and again with the arm held out for me, he led me to the bench on this side of the 'park.'
"It was a collaborative effort," he said. "We all threw out ideas, and it just grew."
"But why? What even possessed you to begin such a thing?"
"Well, it started that day Dean asked me to teach him how to be romantic."
I looked across the park at Dean and Maggie. "Well," I said, "I'd say you did an awesome job at that."
His face lit up even more than it had been doing, if that were even possible. He looked over at Dean and I swear he was looking like a proud papa. He nodded and said "Yeah," he said, "by Jove, I think he's got it." I laughed at the 'My Fair Lady' reference, but I had to agree. Maggie was glowing. From time to time her laughter reached us, and for some reason I felt a kind of kinship with Sam on a different level than we had before. And suddenly it hit me. We both were more concerned with how our siblings were doing, than we were for ourselves.
"Garth helped a lot too," he said. "He's married now, you know, and while we worked on this he told us a lot about what he's learned. About what being a husband meant, about what he's learned about women." He looked in my eyes then and said, "Dean wasn't the only one who learned a few things through all this."
I looked around the room again, shook my head, and kind of chuckled. "I think you guys are crazy to do this. In my wildest dreams I couldn't have imagined this, and believe me, I can imagine a lot of things." I reached up and touched his face. "My Sammy," I said, as I lightly caressed his face. "My wonderful, crazy, awesome Sammy. Words cannot begin to express how much I love you. How much your love means to me."
Sam's POV
As Katie was caressing my face and telling me how much she loved me, all I could think about was how very worth it all the work had been. I mean, we worked our goddamn asses off to get all this ready a full day before we wanted to. But seeing the light in her eyes, the sheer delight in her face, that made it all worth it.
A twinge of fear also hit me, at the thought that this all could be taken away from us in a heartbeat, at the whim of some powerful entity we didn't even know. In a way, that made what I had with Katie all the more precious. Not for an instant did I allow myself to take all this for granted. Every moment I had with her was a cherished blessing. I wished I actually believed in a benevolent God like I did when I was a kid. It would have felt good to be able to thank someone for making this all happen.
I took her in my arms, and kissed her sweet, sweet lips, and told myself for the millionth time that she had to be my reward for everything I had gone through; all the pain and suffering, surviving Hell, saving an unknowing and ungrateful world several times, all of that was worth having gone through, if Katie was my reward.
Dean's POV
I looked across the room and watched Sam with Katie. I was happy for him, I really was. God knew he deserved some happiness. "So," I said, "now that the initial surprise has had a chance to wear off, what do you think?" I asked Maggie, waving my hand out at the room.
"I think you guys are nuts," she said. "But I love it." She turned to me, her face practically glowing with happiness. "But why? Whatever made you do all this?"
"Short answer," I said. "You did."
"And the longer answer," She asked.
I leaned down with my arms on my thighs and looked away from her for a moment. All these new found emotions I was feeling were getting in the way of talking. "Maggie, you have to understand. I never expected anything like this to happen to me. I've never felt this way about anyone before. Yes, I have loved other women, or maybe only one other really. But not like this. Not like I feel with you." I looked at her then. "And not like I feel about you."
"So, suddenly, out of the blue, it became important to me to be special for you, to be different with you." I laughed a little. "Do you remember that night I asked you if I was romantic enough, and you said you didn't care?"
"Yes," she said. I could tell she was listening intently to what I had to say. That was one of the things that I loved about her.
"Well, the thing is, I did care. I suddenly wanted you to think of me as being romantic. Seems silly huh?"
"No, not silly at all, Dean. In fact, it's very loving of you to feel that way, and it makes me feel so totally special. I've loved before too. I was married once. But like you, it wasn't at all the same."
I nodded. "I get you. But I'm scared, Maggie, I'm so scared."
"Shhh, we aren't thinking of that stuff tonight, remember? This is our night, this one night when we are allowing ourselves to be happy, to be together and share our love, without fear, or guilt. Just us. Because we love each other."
"See why I love you," I said, and I took her in my arms and held her and kissed her, until I saw the signal from Sam."
Sam's POV
"So," I asked Katie. "Are you hungry? It's time for dinner." The puzzled look on her face tickled me.
"Dinner? Are you hungry?"
"I am," I said, "but that's irrelevant. We have dinner reservations."
"What? What do you mean dinner reservations?" I had to laugh to myself, because I was pretty sure she's thinking along the lines of sandwiches in the kitchen.
Dean and Maggie had joined us, and I stood up and took her hand to help her up. "We are dining at the famous Parisian restaurant tonight, 'Le Café Garth.'"
I loved watching the girls look at each other and try to figure out what was going on. This was so much fun. Too bad there could only be one time that this would be such a novelty for them. I held out my arm and Katie slipped her arm through. "Shall we go?" I asked cheerily.
To be continued…...
THANK YOU for reading. Tell me what you think of the date so far. I hope I'm giving you some nice Sam and Dean fantasies. :)
