"You still seeing things?"

"What?" Sam snapped out of the trance he had been in, tuning back into reality. Grace stood in front of him, eating a handful of trail mix. "Sorry, umm… what?"

"I'll take that as a yes." She sat down across from him, saying, "It's fine if you are. You and Chuck, you're linked now. At least I think that's what it is. There isn't much lore on what happens when you shoot God with a weapon he designed to balance all of the energy in the universe. I've been trying to see about ancient weapons, stuff they had in biblical days that's disappeared now, but I'm not having much luck. I figured I'd check, since Chuck's decided to go all Old Testament on us."

Sam rubbed his eyes. He shut his laptop, thinking about finally making something to eat. "Thanks. I think I've got a case, if you want to come with. Some werewolf attack, it's got to be. Sounds like it, at least. Have you got any more coffee in the fridge?"

"What about the cup in front of you?" she asked, watching him check the fridge first. "Do you want me to knock you out like I do to Dean? I don't think you've had a good night's sleep in at least a week."

"I could say the same about you," Sam smiled, coming back for his half-empty cup. "I can't blame you. Hell, I can't blame any of us. Dean's passed out on the couch, I found you asleep at your desk earlier, and I -"

Dean walked into the kitchen, Sam trailing off. "Did I interrupt the surprise party planning committee?" he grinned, both Grace and Sam giving him weary smiles. "Sorry." He grabbed a beer and left, Grace shaking her head and telling him it was too early in the afternoon to be drinking.

She could deal with it later. When she was sure Dean was gone, she turned back to Sam, saying, "You're seeing things, and not just in your dreams anymore." She sighed, looking into her drink. "Dean's been drinking. For all the talk about fighting, he's not doing much of anything about it. He's telling me we've got to fight, we've got to be strong, but he's not - he's giving up. I can't have you giving up, I can't have you… hiding this from us. From me, at least. We were best friends growing up. I told you everything. If you're seeing something - or someone - specific, you can tell me. If you want help, you just have to ask."

Sam nodded his thanks. "I will. I, I'm sorry, Grace. I just have no idea what it is. I see me killing Dean, Dean killing me, and then there's you… I see so many different things, and I don't understand what any of them mean." He leaned against the kitchen counter, downing the last of his coffee.

"Maybe this case will be good for you. Get you two out of here, clear your heads."

"You're not coming with?"

"I'm just a phone call away. Besides, someone's got to stay here and try to figure out what the hell we're going to do about Chuck. And maybe if you two are out, I can finally get through to Cas. You know he and Dean haven't been playing nice, and he hasn't been answering my voicemails." She stood, headed for the door. "I'm going to see if I can motivate him to get up and out of here."

Grace found Dean in their room, watching old cartoon reruns. "Beer and Cheerios at three in the afternoon? Really?" She climbed into bed beside him as Dean reached for the remote. "Sam found a case. He thinks it's a pretty simple werewolf thing. You should take him, get him out of here for a bit. Maybe that'll help with his visions or whatever they are."

The TV turned off as Dean looked to her. "First of all, I'm not putting the beer in my cereal, so it's perfectly normal. Second, if it's such an easy fix, why don't you send someone else?"

"Like I said," Grace tried to keep her voice neutral, "it would be nice if you got Sam out of the bunker. He's been cooped up here for a while. It'll be an easy hunt, like it was in the old days. You two get some time on the road, some fresh air, all that good stuff."

"We've got good stuff right here," Dean objected, finishing off the last of his beer.

Frowning, Grace decided to bring up what he desperately wanted to avoid talking about. "The drinking is one thing. It's a coping mechanism, blah, blah, blah. But you can't just check out. You've been telling me we have to find a way to fight, a responsible way that won't get us all killed, but you're not doing anything about it." She took his hand, saying, "I gave it a lot of thought. The kids, your mom, all of it. How unfair everything seems. How my entire life… you've done so much to convince me that this is real, that we're real, that even without Chuck, we would've chosen each other. It finally clicked the other day. Do you know how I know it's real?"

Dean raised an eyebrow. "Fine, I'll bite. How?"

"Do you remember the first time you told me you loved me?" Grace smiled.

Dean bit his lip, confessing, "The story we tell people, or the real story?"

"The real story."

The sun had gone down hours before, but they were still parked at their sunset spot along the river. No one ever came along after dark, and most of the time, they would just sit around and talk, looking at the stars. But tonight was different. Tonight they hadn't made it out of the back of the Impala. "I can't believe... this is your first… oh, oh god." Dean gritted his teeth, thinking about sinking them into her shoulder.

"Dean..." She dug her nails into his back, Dean slowing down just enough to give her a sloppy kiss. "Oh my -"

"Gracie, I… fuck, Gracie, I love you. Shit." He couldn't help it. The words that had been bottled up in his brain for so long had just slipped out. His brief moment of panic passed as he realized she probably hadn't heard, instead just drawing him closer, as close as he could possibly get.

As Grace lay on top of him, both of them trying to catch their breath, Dean smiled, running his hand through her hair. "Well?" He pulled his shirt off of the back of the front seat, throwing it over her as she traced the pattern of a scar that ran down his chest.

"Well what?" She smiled at the sight of his freckles in the moonlight that streamed through the car's back window.

"How was it? How ya doing?"

He would never admit it, but she could read the doubt in his eyes. She's always been able to read him well, and this moment of vulnerability made it even easier. "Fantastic." She leaned in to give him a kiss, gentler this time, as his breathing finally began to slow. "I don't think I'm going to be able to walk for a bit, though." Dean smirked, clearly pleased with himself. His expression died as she added, "Can we talk about what you said, though? Did you really mean it, or were you just -"

"I mean it. I love you, Gracie, and I have for a long time. It kind of scares me how much I love you." He stared up at the roof of the car, desperately trying not to see her in his peripheral vision. "I, I wanted tonight to mean something to you, but this isn't - I didn't want to tell you now. Not like this. That wasn't why tonight was supposed to be special."

"Well I'm never going to forget it," Grace told him. "I love you too, Dean."

He sat up abruptly, nearly sending her into the roof. "What?"

It was an image he would never forget, the moonlight shining off of her bare shoulders as she tried to wrap herself in his shirt. The way her lips moved as the words crashed over his ears, something he could barely comprehend. He'd heard the words before, and he would hear them again, the irresponsible utterances of passion and false promises of nights spent with people whose names he would forget by morning. But this was something that he would never forget. This was different. This meant something, something real. Something that had been building between them for much longer than either of them would admit. "I love you."

"Can you… say it again?" he asked, his voice almost inaudible as he reached out for her.

"I love you." She pulled him into a gentle kiss, both of them laying down over the back seat again. As Grace nestled into his arm, Dean stared at the roof of his car, still mildly in shock. "I love you, Dean Winchester."

"Yeah. I don't think either one of us could forget that."

"It's not in the books. I went back and checked."

"So?" Dean shrugged.

"He could've written it in a flashback later on, but it wouldn't change the past. Okay, it could have," Grace admitted, "but you know how he writes. He's not great with detail because he's so excited to skip to the main events. He writes the big stuff and lets us fill in the blanks. He's never going to check in every day, not even with you and Sam. Even if he brought us together, even if he made us fall in love with each other, we chose that, Dean. Every day, we chose that. Every breakfast you've ever made me, every wound of yours I've ever patched up... do you really think Chuck took the time to write out how you practiced making heart-shaped pancakes before Valentine's Day and pawned off all the bad ones on Sam? He wrote the big battles, but he didn't bother with the color of thread I'd use to stitch you back together. That's what matters, all of the little stuff. All of the times you go away and call me at night instead of going home with some random woman from a bar. How I sit up waiting for you instead of going out all the time. We chose each other, and we still do. That's how I know what's real - the heart-shaped pancakes, the times I can hear you singing in the shower, the way you always give me the first slice of pie. It's the little things that Chuck thinks aren't worthy of being written down. The choices we make - not the cosmic ones, but the little ones that make up so much of our lives - those are real. I have to believe that. I love you, and I choose to love you, and maybe it doesn't matter why. It just matters that I do."

Dean was silent for a moment, still processing it all. "I love you too. And you're right. I remember it. The moon - you looked beautiful in the moonlight. I couldn't believe it was real, and when you - I thought I'd hallucinated you saying that. Maybe Chuck wrote it word-for-word," he shrugged. "Maybe he didn't. But you're right. He doesn't fill in the small things, like the way you'd braid your hair that summer, or that pair of earrings I found for you in Albuquerque, or that ice cream place that was shaped like an ice cream cone in Vermont, the one we could never find again. Maybe it doesn't matter if he really made us for each other or not. It matters that we stay. Every one of those little choices matters." He let go of her hand, standing to stretch before grabbing a bag out of the closet.

"Where are you going?"

His reply was still half-hearted, but it was better than nothing. "Sam and I have a werewolf to hunt."