The house they move into across the street is dishevelled to say the least. It's been empty since long before she moved to this area. The entire wooden frame of the porch lists dangerously to the left. The garage roof collapsed two years ago and the wreckage sits inside it still, bundled messily under flaps of weather worn blue tarp. The lawn is overgrown and the driveway is cracked, weeds poking through haphazardly.
Within a few days the grass is cut and there are curtains up at the windows. Trash bags piled high at the curbside ready for collection. She's seen the two boys working on the roof. The porch is obviously a lost cause.
People say it's a bad neighbourhood but she's never had any trouble; maybe because she has nothing worth stealing, but she likes to think it's not as run down as everyone makes out. It just has a bad reputation.
Lucy decides to make a lasagna and take it over to them as a welcome gift. That's what neighbours do, right? Everyone else on the block keeps to themselves but you'll never build a community like that.
The teenager answers the door with the younger boy peeking from behind him when she knocks on Sunday morning before she's about to head out to church. He smiles politely, calls her ma'am and she beams inside, knowing she made the right choice. The father, John as she soon finds out when he introduces them all, appears from somewhere in the back with a wet dish towel over his shoulder. He waves her indoors out of the autumn heat. It's still bare boards underfoot and sparse furniture but she can smell bleach and the air con is working. It's obvious they've been making good progress getting the property up to scratch.
"I just didn't want you to think it was an unfriendly place to live, and I figured you probably haven't had time to cook with all the work you're doing to fix the place up," she explains. John smiles, the mirror image of his son.
Dean takes the dish from her, making a soft hungry sound as he peers underneath the foil.
"How long have you and your husband lived here?" John asks and the question makes her spine go ridgid. She's never had to explain before. Everyone in town just knew. Nobody ever asks about it.
Even the nosy ladies from the church book club never asked. They just gave her warm, fake, sympathetic smiles that made her feel like rolling her eyes.
Widowed at twenty three. How tragic. She feels the condescending pity coming off people in waves, even now, they still whisper.
"Oh, it's just me now," she says, her face warming up. She glances down the diamond ring on her finger. "My husband, Mark, he was in the military. An aircraft went down and the Army said he was missing… missing presumed dead. It's been three years now," she stammers. She doesn't want to seem evasive or rude but she doesn't want to bring the tone down either. He just asked her a perfectly reasonable and polite question, she doesn't need to go spilling her guts.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to pry," John says with his sandpaper voice, the room a vacuum of silence otherwise, three pairs of intense eyes all focused on her.
"No, please. I shouldn't still wear the ring, I don't know why I still do," she twists the rings furiously and John holds up a dirty left hand, the yellow gold band of his own wedding ring stark against his stained skin.
"The boys' mother has been gone for twelve years and I still wear mine," he says with a shrug and she feels a sweeping relief that they have something in common. She finds a deep, strange comfort in his easy reassurance.
Dean brings the empty dish back to her the next day after she gets home from work, the glass squeaky clean. He stands in her doorway, grinning that grin that runs in his family, exactly eye to eye with her. She guesses he's fifteen or sixteen. Still childish and girlish in his face but with a solid, strong jaw. So pretty. His eyelashes are mesmerising.
"You guys finished it already?" she laughs. It was big. She used three types of cheese. It would have lasted her a week, easily.
"It was so good," he says, voice lilting with satisfaction. "We're always happy to take food off your hands, just FYI."
It's like she's known them for years already. She smiles to herself for the rest of the night, pleased to have someone to cook for again. She pulls on her glasses and pores through her old cooking journals from the dusty box under her bed, flips through her scrapbooks looking for ideas for the most filling dishes. They're growing boys afterall.
John works hard and he's away from home a lot. She hasn't asked what he does, since they've never offered the information. She suspects it might be something illegal which is all the more reason not to ask. She makes sure to buy extra groceries during those weeks when he's away though. Dean is happy enough to live on take-out pizza and burgers but Sam at least always seems to appreciate it when she drops them off a vegetable casserole or a basket of fruit.
Honestly, she doesn't know how Dean doesn't have scurvy.
In the new year, John comes home from a business trip in a looming black truck and Dean inherits their family car (for his sixteenth birthday she finds out later). He's out under the hood or under the chassis every evening. Within a month he's fitted a new grill at the front, new rims. She gets used to hearing the engine as part of her own weekday morning routine, ticking and growling smoothly as it heats up for their school run, a comforting backdrop while she waits for her coffee to percolate.
()
She's woken late one Friday night by blaring sirens. Blue and red lights strobe through her living room blinds as she groggily pulls on her robe. She squints through her glasses trying to see from her window but the view isn't good. In the street there's a crowd of her neighbours. Dean wraps an arm around her shoulder as she steps up beside him and they huddle together to watch as the paramedics take Mr Richardson on a stretcher into the back of an ambulance. The cops ask everyone to stand back.
"It was a home invasion. He got hit over the head with a hammer, there's blood everywhere," one of the older men from the other end of the block says into the crowd, his breath fogging. It's freezing. She can feel the cold leaching from the icy tarmac through the thin soles of her slippers.
"The cops said it was probably someone known to him; they went right for the safe, knew exactly where to look," another chips in.
Sam's shaggy head pops into view at Dean's other side, she listens to Dean hiss at him that he told him to stay in the house and Sam hiss back that he's not a baby.
The ambulance slips away slowly with no urgency which can only mean one of two things… As soon as the thought crosses her mind there's a wail from inside the house. Mrs Richardson appears backlit in the doorway, an officer on each side of her. They help her to a cruiser, carrying her bag for her as the sobs wrack her body, piercing the air.
The crowd disperses in sombre silence and Lucy turns to the boys, a lump in her throat.
"You guys want some hot chocolate?"
Sam takes his mug and sits down on the living room floor, starts listening to the old vinyl records on the old headphones. He studies the art work and information on the back of the sleeves with a concentration she's never seen. Dean sits on her kitchen counter and asks if she has any whiskey to put in his instead of marshmallows. They decline her offer for them to use her phone to call their father. They seem remarkably unshaken considering a man was just killed in a violent robbery two houses away from theirs.
"You can both stay here if you want, until your father gets home. There's a cot in the garage and the couch -"
"We're good, really," Dean insists. "Are you okay, being here alone?"
She didn't feel frightened until he said it. Until he reminded her she's gonna be alone here as soon as they leave with a hammer wielding lunatic on the loose.
"Oh, of course. I'm fine," she lies, wondering whether she should drive to her mom's for a few days until the police catch whoever did it. Dean hops down from the counter. He's taller than her now by at least six inches. Shoulders broad under his thin t-shirt, taking up all the space in her peripheral.
"Ms. Lacey, do you own a gun?" he asks, his voice purring so low she feels it in her solar plexus.
Mark did leave one of his guns behind, insisting she have one in the house if he was going to be away travelling all the time. She hasn't touched it since the day he showed her how to use it. He tried to help shoot beer cans off the back fence but she couldn't hit a single one.
Dean kneels on her carpeted floor in front of the closet door, carefully uncovers the pistol in her shoebox. She hovers in the doorway, feeling awkward that he's seeing the inside of her bedroom. She has some underwear drying on a hanger over the bathtub in her ensuite and feels her neck heat up with anxiety at the thought of him seeing it. She slips along the wall and closes the bathroom door quietly.
"A Colt nineteen-eleven," he whistles, impressed. "It's a good gun. Reliable. Why don't we go for a drive tomorrow and get you re-acquainted with it." He handles the weapon like he knows it; sliding it easily from hand to hand, popping it apart to inspect it and slipping it back together with such a masculine elegance that it gives her butterflies.
()
They drive out to the furthest reaches of farmland, an hour out. Dean knows where to go, saying they've used the abandoned spot for target practice before. He asks her to show him what she can do and she empties what's left in the clip, fires three shots that are humiliatingly off balance. She hits nothing she aimed for, not even close. Birds scatter angrily from the trees in the distance and Dean rubs his forehead like he's trying to solve the Sunday crossword puzzle.
He reloads and his shots shatter five out of six bottles lined up along an old brick wall in quick succession. With his seventh shot, he goes back to the one he missed and hits it dead centre. The gun works fine then, still. She can't try to say the sights are off like she had all those years ago with Mark.
"So you've got seven rounds with this; when you need to reload, you just drop the clip out, like so." Dean ejects the cartridge like he's been using the gun his whole life. Pulls a fresh magazine out of his back pocket and taps it back in with a solid click. "It's a forty five so it's got a kick. You gotta brace yourself but don't lock your elbows," he instructs, handing the gun to her. It's very heavy and now hot too from Dean's grip. It's too big for her.
"Stand with your feet apart, you'll need to be ready for the recoil. Just let your body absorb it," he goes on, slotting in behind her, gently kicking her ankles to guide her into position. Her heart ricochets in her chest, throat tightening, as he blankets her arms with his, long enough that his hands cover hers around the gun with no problem, showing her how to properly hold it.
"Now take a deep breath, take aim, start to squeeze the trigger," he says, his voice tickling her ear. She can't aim. She can't even see straight. His whole body is pressed against her back, the heat radiating through their clothes. Her nose twitches as her glasses slip down a little. Flustered doesn't even begin to cover it.
"Go for it," he whispers. His hands drop to her hips and hold on tightly and it's so distracting she fires without even really knowing what she was aiming for, the ear splitting pop and the kickback making her stumble even with Dean's hands holding her steady.
"Again," he orders immediately right into her ear and she straightens, concentrates this time, loosens her shoulder. Her second try doesn't hit the bottle either, but it only misses by inches, chipping the stone below.
"Close enough," Dean laughs and he swats her on the ass as he steps around her to take the gun. "You'll do fine at close range," he smirks.
Her hands and ears ring from the recoil but she grins proudly. The adrenaline must make her a little bold because as they walk back through the field to his car she thinks about the mind meltingly close proximity and how there was absolutely no need for it. She gets goosebumps everywhere, zinging across the surface of her skin.
Sam trails behind them, eating an apple, his nose in a book as usual, completely unphased and uninterested.
She can still feel Dean's sharp handprint on her butt cheek.
"Were you kind of hitting on me a little bit back there?" she asks tentatively, trying to keep her voice even, trying to keep a grip on whatever authority she has by virtue of just being older.
"Yeah... So?" Dean juts his chin at her like a challenge and she feels her mouth drop open at his audacity. He's handsome enough that she understands where the confidence comes from but he can have any girl he wants his own age, surely. Why on earth would he want to hit on her?
"Dean!" She's scandalised. "You're seventeen," she admonishes him just above a whisper, glancing back to check Sam's still out of earshot. Did she do something to lead him on? Probably constantly gazing at him doesn't help. Watching him work on the car, watching him jog in the mornings, watching him greedily eat the food she makes him with his fingers. Even the way he drinks when he's thirsty fascinates her; he gulps down water like it's nectar from the Gods. The sounds he makes.
Maybe she's been over friendly. Over obvious.
"Is that your only problem with it?" Dean asks mildly with a sly tilt to his lips, like it's something he could blow right over. Like rules don't apply to him.
It leaves her speechless, the realisation dawning on her that, well, yes. That is her only problem with it. He starts talking about the gun again as they reach the car, lecturing her while her mind drifts.
"Move it out of the closet and put it somewhere safe but within arms reach. You don't have to keep it loaded but make sure you have a loaded mag ready to go, too -" he rambles and she watches his mouth move, her breath catching every time his pink tongue sweeps out to wet his plump bottom lip.
She's getting ready for her date when she hears the rap on the door, holding an earring up at each earlobe to her reflection in the mirror. One dangly, one stud.
Dean's on the porch when she checks the peephole and she unclasps the security chain, waves him inside out of the cold quickly. There's a crisp bite to the air already; it's definitely gonna snow soon.
He follows her down the hall to the kitchen and she turns around just in time to catch him gawking at her ass. Her cheeks heat up under her layer of make up instantly. Maybe the outfit is too tight. It's probably too slutty for a first date.
"You goin' somewhere?" Dean asks, unashamedly taking stock, eyes roving the shape of her body and making her wish she had something to cover up with.
"I have a date," she tells him and his gaze snaps to her face, lips pursing in consideration, eyes twinkling in that way that makes her skin crawl with nervousness.
"With who?" he asks immediately.
"Um. Kevin Moriarty, he works at your -"
"The P.E. teacher?" Dean interrupts, brows drawn down in swift disapproval. "Isn't he a little old for you?"
Her face is really on fire, stuck in her kitchen with nowhere to run, Dean looming in the doorway and blocking her exit. He's gotten taller again; he'll be topping six feet soon.
"Did you need something, Dean?" She has to change the subject before she loses her nerve and calls to cancel... For the third time... Mr Moriarty is nothing if not persistent, she'll give him that.
"Ah. Yeah. I need a favour. We're taking a little trip to South Dakota. Gonna be gone for two, three weeks tops, and we're just taking one car to save on gas but I'm not thrilled at the idea of leaving the Impala exposed on our driveway. The bad weather's coming in and there's been like ten burnouts in this shitty neighbourhood in the last month… Anyway, I was kinda hoping you'd let me park her in your garage?" His voice lilts up at the end, tone wheedling.
He's right. Another car was burnt out on the road outside the basketball courts this morning, a Camaro or something else old and classic like Dean's, it was still smoldering when she passed on her way to work.
"Well, sure. There's a lot of junk in there though, you've seen it. I don't know if your car'll fit."
"I'll make room. And I'll put everything back where I found it afterwards when we get back if you want, scout's honour," he promises, flicking out the most disingenuous salute she's ever seen.
"When do you leave?" She starts edging towards him, hoping he'll get the hint so she doesn't have to squeeze passed. Her skin prickles at the thought of brushing against him in this tight dress but Kevin is gonna turn up early, she just knows it, he seems a punctual type and she doesn't even have her pantyhose on yet.
"Monday," Dean says sheepishly, and of course he doesn't move, just turns his body as she tries to scoot around him, her tits dragging straight over his chest. For goodness sake, she cringes internally, nipples tingling ridiculously with the sensation. He's gonna know she's not wearing a bra. Her whole body feels ablaze, at melting point, she's going to need to reapply her deodorant. He follows her back down the hall and she can feel his eyes all over her again as she bends to find the spare keys in the drawer of the side table.
"You better make a start then. Here's the fob for the garage door, and you'll need to move my car off the drive too, so here're the keys for that."
He takes the keys with an absent nod, rough fingers catching hers and she pulls her hand away like she's been scalded. He's staring right at her chest, not even trying to hide it, and she pointedly clears her throat, crosses her arms obviously. He breaks into a grin then, palm going to the back of his neck, managing charming and guileless at the same time.
"Sorry. I just… I didn't realise you even had a…" He gestures to her, up and down.
"A body?" she guesses sarcastically, and he laughs then, and her goddamn knees go weak.
"A dress," he corrects, eyebrow arching appreciatively, expression sparking with mischief.
"Ha ha," she deadpans as she reaches for the door handle. "Get out. You need to get to work if you want that space cleared by Monday."
"Oh, look. Your date's here," Dean says as he steps out, throwing a hand up in an enthusiastic wave to Kevin whose truck is idling at the end of the driveway, kicking out clouds of steam into the bitter night air. She groans, feeling half dressed and now late, pushing on Dean's solid back to get him over the threshold. He laughs again, an immovable object against the heels of her hands.
"Seriously though, thank you for this," he says, turning to wave with her keys in his hand. "Enjoy yourself tonight. You look fantastic," he says seriously, pausing for a moment to give her a final once over before he jogs down the porch steps.
She takes a second to gather herself against the closed front door after he leaves, heart pounding from the compliment. From the ravenous look on his face.
"God, Lucy, don't be so pathetic" she chastises herself out loud, rushing back to her bedroom to finish getting dressed.
()
It's been years since she's been hungover and she does not miss it. Her skull throbs as she takes a shower. She tips her head back and lets the water fill her dry mouth, over and over, trying not to sway too much under the stream, remembering why she doesn't drink.
She had been home from the date by eleven, and only half drunk, but had decided it was a good idea to drown her sorrows by drinking an entire bottle of Merlot alone in her living room and well... then she'd been all the way drunk.
Kevin was a jerk. Forward. Arrogant. Impolite to the wait staff. Handsy, too. Constantly touching her lower back while they were standing and constantly edging his hand up her thigh while they were seated. Maybe it was her own fault. Maybe she gave the wrong impression with the tight dress and the lipstick?
She trudges into the kitchen wrapped in her robe and slippers and scowls at the stained red rings on her counter top. The empty wine glass and bottle sitting out tauntingly like a serial killer's calling cards.
There's movement in the garage, startling, but then she remembers, realises the sound is just the shush of boxes being pushed along the concrete floor. She empties a full packet of bacon into the grill and goes to pull her duvet off the bed to make a nest on the couch. No way is she going to church.
Dean knocks on the front door fifteen minutes later and she just yells at him to come in. Manners are out the window today. He's just in time for bacon like he has a sixth sense.
"Date was a bust, huh?" he says knowingly, kicking his feet up onto her coffee table. She watches some crud from the tread of his boots fall on to her TV guide and can't even be bothered to stop him. She hands him the bowl of bacon, back and forth it goes.
"We didn't have much in common," she says. It would be in bad taste to talk crap about one of Dean's teachers to him, she thinks. He might be a great teacher even if he is a sucky date. She doesn't want to go on any more dates, ever. Really, she just wants to rescue a cat from the shelter and devote all of her free time to it but she knows people will probably make fun of her if she does.
"Moriarty is such an asshole. You can do better. Way better," Dean tells her like an afterthought, crunching on his bacon strip with his eyes transfixed on Sandra Dee signing her heart out on the TV. She feels the backs of her eyes start to prickle, gets a mild sense of apprehension that she might just burst into tears.
"Are you all good in the garage? Does your car fit?" she asks briskly to change the subject, blinking rapidly, mortified.
"Like a glove," Dean says smugly. He tilts a grin at her and then stretches out obscenely to dig her keys out of his jeans pocket; his hips lifting off the couch. She whips the line of her vision away from the strip of stomach he nonchalantly exposes.
He hands them to her with his own keys as well and asks his next request reverently. He speaks evenly with hypnotic eye contact like he's giving important instructions.
"If we aren't back in two weeks I need you to start her up, run the engine for a little while, so the battery doesn't die. I don't want her to seize up."
"Of course," she nods and Dean seems to sag with relief.
"By the way I changed the spark plugs in your car and topped up the oil," he says, eyes back on the TV. "How the hell were you driving around in that thing?"
"Oh. You didn't have to do that. Thank you." And she's blushing again for no reason. The fact that he's been under her car's hood, just fixing things, it makes her thighs clench together. She stares at his big hands. The motor oil stains in his cuticles. The scraped knuckles. They're so capable. So rugged.
After he leaves, she marks the date on the calendar stuck to her fridge so she doesn't forget. Two weeks. She lies in bed later sweaty and unsatisfied, touching herself guiltily. Her tried and tested Danny Zuko in the backseat of his fifties hot rod fantasy is just not doing it for her this time. She thinks about Dean's big, strong hands again, his rough fingers fucking her, his knuckles all wet with her and she comes hard and sudden, a shock to her system.
"You pervert," she mutters to herself, flipping the pillow to the cold side.
()
They're not back after two weeks, or three. She talks herself down from several wild and dangerous possible scenarios that could have feasibly kept them gone for so long as the weeks keep passing. She tends to the car like she promised. She doesn't dare try to drive it anywhere (no way would she get it parked again in the tight space in the garage) but she runs the engine like clockwork, like Dean asked.
()
They're gone for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and New Year. Lucy goes to stay with her mom for a week over the holidays but drives back to check on her house every couple of days just in case. Her brother asks what she did to the food this year and has second helpings of everything. His wife chastises him about the calories and then after a glass of chardonnay she turns her attention to Lucy, like always.
"Let me do something with your hair," she says, plucking her claw like nails through Lucy's ponytail. "You're so pretty underneath all those frumpy outfits, you know. You should let people see it!"
Lucy smiles, thanks her for the offer and the compliment. Later, in the bathroom mirror she takes off her glasses and lets her hair down and examines her outfit critically, ready to internally defend herself, but then... A cardigan over a sweater is probably overkill, she agrees.
()
At the six weeks mark the engine makes a low, screeching whine when she starts the ignition, the whole frame judders a little and she apologises out loud, tries to soothe the car like she would a wild animal. She stares for a long time out of her living room window at the dark, empty house opposite, with its abandoned, crooked porch and she worries her bottom lip in her teeth.
What if they just don't come back?
()
Kevin keeps calling. Sometimes he sounds drunk and leaves long meandering messages on her answering machine. Sometimes he calls while she's home and she let's it ring, knowing. She smiles at him in church but never stops to chat. She deletes his messages, doesn't return the calls, hoping he'll gently get the hint.
()
She bites the bullet and visits the shelter on her Saturday off at week eight. There's a litter of kittens that have just arrived. Nine weeks old and ready to go, their tiny screams like a chorus of bells in her ears. They're adorable. She holds them one by one as the clerk talks her through the adoption process.
An orange cat stares at her from a cage in the corner; it's bright yellow eyes and long white whiskers full of malice. The information tag on the cage says that her name is Carrot. She's around ten years old.
"Ah, Carrot is what we call a lifer. She's been up for adoption for three years. Nobody wants an older cat, plus she's pretty bad tempered. One lady took her once but brought her back after a week because she wouldn't integrate with the other cats in the household," the clerk says and Lucy half listens, staring at this miserable, angry cat with a wriggling kitten clicking holes in her shirt.
"Why was she put up for adoption? What happened to her previous owner?" she asks.
"Oh. The old lady passed away and the family couldn't take the cat. Sad really."
Lucy feels her chin tremble a little. This cat's been living in a cage, alone, for three years.
"I'll take her," she declares.
()
She makes a cherry pie with crunchy pastry for Dean's birthday, just in case. She decorates the top with roasted pomegranate seeds and powdered sugar but it just sits in the fridge as the days pass until Sunday when she takes it to church to donate to the bake sale instead of throwing it in the trash.
While she's having coffee with the girls in the church refectory, half listening to their less than appetising kid illness stories, she overhears one of Mark's highschool friends talking about her.
He takes a big bite of her pie, pastry flakes missing his paper plate and drifting down to stick to his tie. He pulls an obscene face, eyes rolling heavenward.
"That ass and she can cook like this, too? No wonder Lacey put a ring on it as soon as she was legal… Man. What a goddamn waste, huh?"
His friends murmur, chuckle in agreement. She glares at him from across the room, cup halfway to her mouth, paralyzed with an internal anger, wishing she could have poisoned the pie.
"Oh Lucy, we've missed your contributions to the bake sale! Does this mean you're going to start cooking for us again?" Sister Margaret asks excitedly as she's on her way out.
She wants to say that she will definitely not be baking for the church bake sale ever again since some people have no respect… but she actually says she'll think about it. Maybe, if she's not too busy. Sister Margaret nods kindly, understanding as always.
()
Carrot settles in like she owns the place. She'll only eat the expensive, on brand, cat food and she kicks the litter out of her tray and all over the kitchen floor every single morning and honestly, Lucy is kind of enslaved by her. She gives in to the cat's every whim and otherwise stays out of her way and is reassured by her friends that that is everything cat ownership really entails.
()
On the Friday of week twelve she bakes two dozen Belgian chocolate chip and mint cookies from scratch for Shelly Wilkinson's retirement party in the office. Her co-workers marvel at the flavour and texture, repeating over and over that they didn't know she could bake. She accepts the praise modestly but grins with satisfaction all the way home in the car, side-eying the picked clean tupperware on the passenger seat next to her, already planning her next recipe.
As she pulls up to the house she gasps out loud, her stomach doing a somersault.
The truck is back.
She parks the car neatly in the driveway and gathers her things calmly, walks to her house without looking back, her entire body buzzing under the surface with a woozy excitement.
It's only a minute, just long enough for her to drop her things and take her coat off, before there's a knock on the door and she knows who it is before she even looks. She recognizes the knock.
"It's been three months!" is the first thing that pops out of her mouth as soon as she scrambles the door open. With a hundred things she wants to say and ask, the words tumble out of her. "Are you okay? What on earth happened?"
Dean looks stressed. He has cuts, grazes, along one side of his face, across his temple and into his hairline. "I'm fine, look, is the car -"
"She's right where you left her," Lucy reassures instantly and he tips his face to the sky for a moment in what looks like a silent prayer. "I ran the engine every two weeks like you said but there was kind of a whining noise -" she cuts herself off as he takes two steps, over the threshold and into her space, closing the distance between them. "Dean, what -"
And then his lips are pressed against hers, there and gone in a long, shocking moment of frozen time. They're softer than they look. He kicks her front door shut behind him, his eager palms sliding around her waist beneath her blazer.
"Thank you," he breathes, inches away, his pupils blown. Her adrenaline spikes, heart racing in her chest, she walks backwards trying to escape but he advances like a predator, countering every step.
"You're welcome," she says as her back hits the wall and he presses even closer again, his nose skimming down her throat and inhaling deeply like he's trying to breathe in her scent, his teeth digging in with a startling nip at the juncture of her neck and shoulder.
She feels herself just give between her legs involuntarily, a hot sliding surge for him that makes her want to cry.
His hands slip over her tits and with a deep groan he starts pulling on her blouse, untucking it from her skirt as his mouth continues a descent, scorching kisses over her collarbone and then he's down on his knees, squeezing his scratchy face into the delicate skin of her cleavage.
She's so lightheaded she thinks she's about to pass out. Each of her senses overfilled with him; his smell and taste, all the space in her mind taken up by him. She tugs on his hair a little, not knowing if she wants him to stop or keep going. Not knowing her own name.
"God, I've jerked off thinking about this so many times," Dean half moans, the calluses on his fingers catching on the material of her skirt. "You're wearing those goddamn stockings aren't you?"
"I… yes. What do you - Dean, I don't -"
She's dressed business casual, the same way she dresses every day for work, she has no idea what's so special about her stockings.
He kisses her again then, surging upwards to crash his mouth into hers and she's so confused, so swept up in it, hears herself make a shamefully desperate sound when his tongue nudges in and touches her own. His hands inch down and grab her ass with an unyielding grip and he groans again, taps his forehead against hers.
"You want me to fuck you right here or you wanna go to your bedroom?" he asks, more of an ultimatum than a question, his words in a low vibrating timbre that's new and unsettling, dirtier than anything she's ever heard. She blinks, breathing hard, trying to think through the fog of undiluted want suddenly pulsing through her body. Every confident sweep of his hands or mouth awakens sensations that she forgot she was able to have.
What the hell is she doing?
()
In her bedroom Dean takes off his overshirt and t-shirt in almost one motion and she stares up at him. She sits on her bed with her knees pressed together to try to take the edge off the throbbing between her legs. Her trembling fingers go to the buttons on her wrecked blouse, vaguely remembering the rules for these encounters but the more naked he gets, the more self conscious she does. He's gorgeous, obviously; those big shoulders, biceps that he has no business having at his age. There's purpling bruises along the line of his ribs on one side that give her a momentary pause before she reaches up to take off her glasses.
"Mm, leave'em on," Dean says, pulling her hand away. "Leave the stockings on too," he says and she nods automatically. He really seems to have thought about this and the realisation leaves her shell-shocked. She stands up to reluctantly unzip her skirt and he takes over again, kissing her scrupulously, tugging the skirt roughly down over her hips, making fast work of getting them both undressed, fingers spidering up her back to pop her bra before she's had a chance to catch up.
When his bare skin touches hers she has to break away to suck in air. His chest rubs against her, warm, smooth skin against skin, his cock jutting perilously against her stomach and she floods again. It's been so long. She doesn't know what she's doing; she just follows his lead like a stumbling virgin, going wherever he puts her.
Dean presses her against the mattress, kneeling between her legs to slide her panties off, careful not to pull on her stockings. He hooks a hand behind her knee, pushes her leg up and looks her dead in the eye as he lines himself up. He's generously endowed, gorgeous there like everywhere else, and it makes her petrified. She has to squeeze her eyes closed at the sensation of him pushing inside, breaching, has to reach up and grab his arms, has to pull him closer to anchor herself.
The way he moves inside her is forceful but measured; long, firm strokes, finding the place that makes her eyes pop open in awe with each pass. She bites her lip hard, trying not to whimper, her nails scoring down his back without meaning to.
"You gonna come?" Dean grits out, hips moving faster, pressure building and building. She can't answer, too breathless, too full, but she hears herself gasp, feels herself nod. Feels her body tightening impossibly, wringing around him. Dean makes the softest, most broken sound into her ear.
"God, you're so fuckin' hot," he moans, his body stuttering as she feels him come inside her, pulsing, slammed in deep to the hilt. Her orgasm rips through her, rippling intensely and lasting ridiculously; sweeping back over her again and again as she clings to Dean for dear life.
()
She drifts back to herself weakly like she's had an outer body experience. Her sense of propriety starts to kick back in and she feels the sudden sobering need to cover up and clean up.
"Uh uh," Dean throws a heavy arm over her middle, flattening her as she tries to sit up. "Don't even think about getting dressed. I'm gonna go check on the car and when I get back we're doing that again," he tells her from the side of his mouth, his face smashed into her pillow.
Lucy gazes at her ceiling, thighs and stomach quivering, muscles that have been unused for so long all vibrating and twitching with heat and aftershocks.
"Oh… Okay," she agrees, finally pulling her now lopsided glasses off. She has one stocking still clinging to her ankle and no idea where the other one is. Probably better if she doesn't stand up; she's not sure can walk just yet anyway.
The snarl of the Impala's engine shakes her bedside lamp, the whole house reverberating, and faintly she hears Dean let out a whoop like a war cry. He keeps his promise, afterwards, flopping back into bed with a satisfied grin, hands going straight under the sheets to plunder her body parts again, finding an easy space for himself on top of her.
The second time is less frenzied and she learns that Dean's communicative in ways she didn't know men could be; asking her what she wants, what she likes, asking her if what he's doing is making her feel good, telling her how much it turns him on - all of it making her so embarrassed. She hides her face and tries to answer him with her body instead but even her shaky nods and one word affirmations seem to drive him on; his pleasure so focused and dependent on her pleasure, the attention makes her feel like she's going to implode.
She leaves him in bed while she takes a shower, sore twinges everywhere, her body mottled with sinful marks, and then she starts cooking quietly because she knows he's going to have an appetite when he wakes up. She paws through the pantry and decides she can throw together a tomato, roasted red pepper and ricotta soup without too much fuss. She has crusty bread and real butter in the fridge. It's not the most sophisticated meal but it'll do.
Around half an hour into it another determined knock on the front door makes her jump. Her heart sinks when she sees John Winchester through her peephole. He looks as banged up as Dean, bruises ringing his left eye. She glances at herself in the hall mirror; the thin robe and wet hair, lips a little swollen and a mauve mouth print on her collar bone… He's going to take one look at her and just know that she's… had sex with his son. His teenage son.
She has a fleeting fantasy of just not opening the door but he would probably kick it down.
"John," she says, smiling probably a little manically, death grip on the lapel of her robe to keep it closed tightly up to her chin. "How are you?"
"Can't complain," he says in his ever charming gruff. His smile is frighteningly disarming; it's obvious where his sons get it from. "Dean's here, right? I need to talk to him, it's kinda urgent." Straight to the point as always. She nods, says she'll get Dean, offers for him to come in and wait inside but he politely declines.
She slips into the bedroom, anxiety starting to elevate her heart rate again, making her chew her lip. Dean's face is soft, peaceful. It's almost a shame to wake him.
"Come back to bed," he mumbles, hand waving over the side, trying to grab her without opening his eyes when she strokes his hair, says his name a couple of times.
"Your father is here. He says he needs to speak to you. Now." She tries to channel some of John's assertiveness into her voice and it works. Dean sits up like he's animatronic, instantly obeying the command, he pulls his boxers on lazily when she hands them to him but doesn't bother with the jeans or t-shirt.
She starts silently hoping that none of the neighbours are watching as he goes to greet his father at the door in just his underwear, leaving absolutely no doubt at all about what they might have been doing.
She catches sight of the scratches down his back and feels her jaw drop open; appalled at herself.
They talk in hushed tones at first, but as the tone gets angrier they both get louder. Lucy deliberately makes noise in the kitchen with the pot lid and bowls, not wanting them to think she's trying to eavesdrop, but it's impossible not to hear.
"I'm heading back out tonight to finish the job. Bobby's gonna meet me at the border. You're gonna stay here and take care of things. Make the rent. Make sure Sam gets to school and catches up on every hour of studying he's missed, and when it gets to spring break you're both gonna pack up and come join me. Is any of that not clear, Dean?"
"This is bullshit, Dad! How are -"
"Do I make myself clear, Dean?"
"Sam's not -"
"I'm not gonna ask you again, son."
"Fine. Yes sir. We'll see you in the spring."
"Good. Now put some goddamn clothes on. Don't you think the curtain twitchers have enough to say about her already without you ruining this poor woman's reputation as well? You want everyone to know she's slummin' it with you?"
Dean snorts a laugh at that. She hears the door close and barely has a moment to process that people still talk about her? before he wanders into the kitchen scratching through his hair, rubbing his tired eyes. Completely beautiful. She is definitely not the one slumming it.
"Is everything okay?" she asks, only taking small glances at him. The image he makes: tall and muscular, practically naked in her kitchen and not caring, it just physically does something to her. It makes her whole body go hot. He peers into the simmering pot on the stove hungrily.
Carrot watches him from her perch on top of the fridge like a gargoyle, overseeing them curiously.
"It'll be ready in five minutes," she chuckles when Dean looks at her with starving puppy dog eyes. He never does answer the question but it's not her business or her place to pry so she doesn't push it. "There's tons. Will you take some for Sam?" she asks and he grumbles something about Sam being a brat then smacks her hard on the ass as he slips passed to go and get dressed.
()
Much later, she waits until he's almost asleep. Turns away from him in bed so she doesn't have to make any eye contact.
"What do people say about me?" she whispers.
"Nothing bad," Dean says, his arm banding around her waist from behind, tucking them more closely together. "They said your family used to own a restaurant downtown, in the Italian quarter, and that your father was well respected but kind of involved with some gang violence in that area. They said he was killed in a shootout with the cops when you were still a junior…" He pauses then, maybe waiting for a correction from her but there isn't one.
"They said you graduated top of your class and then got married right out of highschool and took over the business. Your mom retired early and you turned it around on your own. They said it was award winning, tables fully booked every night, food critics giving it five star reviews… and then one day you just closed the doors with no explanation, moved out here to the rough side of town and kinda keep to yourself now, ever since…"
She takes a slow, shaky breath. The summarised version of her life story doesn't sound so bad when told in concise, uncomplicated sentences.
"Did they get any of that wrong?" Dean asks on a yawn, his breath tickling through her hair.
"Not really." She shakes her head. "After Mark was killed I just didn't see the point… I just didn't love it anymore. I didn't love anything. I didn't want to be around people. Anyone. I was just so tired..."
Dean listens silently, lets her speak and seems like he's waiting for more words but she starts to feel sick with the memory, the weight of those thoughts creating a downward drag in her mind.
"Anyway. That was a long time ago. I'm fine now. Everything's fine," she says, hoping to shift the sour feeling in her gut from being suddenly plunged into an awkward intimate predicament. So they're sleeping together now, that doesn't mean Dean's needs to be burdened with her sad stories. She's sure that's not what he signed up for. He has enough problems of his own for someone his age.
"Right," Dean hums, sounding amused. He pushes a knee between hers, settling in further with a soft squeeze of her breast that he has casually cupped in his palm.
The answering machine erupts with garbled noise in the living room, barely decipherable through the closed doors.
"Is that…? He's still calling you?" Dean asks, exasperated. She feels him stretch his neck, straining to hear.
"He'll stop eventually if I keep ignoring him," she says, fakely optimistic.
They're still just neighbours. Nothing changes once the weekend is over and they get back to the routine they had before. Nothing apart from the almost daily thrilling demand and need for desperate sex.
Dean gets a job at an auto-repair center, recycling decommissioned Greyhound buses for eight hours a day. His name badge says 'John Entwhistle' and when she asks about it he just smirks and says he had to be over twenty one to even fill out the application. He catches on pretty quickly that when he shows up covered in grease and oil, sweaty and dirty under his coveralls, that it drives her crazy in a good way.
They fuck furatively in the hallway, on the kitchen counter, over the side of the couch; four, five minutes all they need after a whole day of anticipation. Dean's ripped two pairs of her panties already, his impatience when he yanks on them making her yelp. He has her get in the shower with him afterwards and stands loosely with his chin dropped against his chest while she soapily massages his tired traps, washes the iron dust and other vehicle debris out of his hair.
The first time he goes down on her is right there in the shower. She tries to tell him not to, embarrassed for them both at first. She was never able to get all the way from that when Mark did it and she doesn't think Dean's old enough to have had much practise but he's insistent, moans into her ear that he wants to taste her, and then he's down on his knees with her thigh over his shoulder.
Whatever he lacks in experience he certainly makes up for in enthusiasm. Her back slips against the tiles as she comes exposively, both fists knotted in his hair, her jaw gaping in shock. She looks down, astounded, as his oral movements ease into a slow grind, and sees that his cock is hard again. He looks up at her, red tongue still delivering rough licks like he can't get enough. He starts to stroke himself and her overly sensitive body reacts, twitching against his mouth, making them both groan.
Carrot watches them passively from a sunlit spot on the counter next to the sink, scowling with boredom.
()
They fall into a routine of grocery shopping together on Sundays. Dean picks her up from church, his car idling like a beast in the small parking lot, breaching the peace. On the weeks Sam comes along he always gets out of the passenger seat to open the back door for her when she approaches and she blushes every time at his easy chivalry, knowing the whole congregation is probably watching and gossiping. She never looks back to check.
They split up usually in the store, weaving around one another playfully if they happen to cross paths.
"Do you put that crap in the food you make us?" Dean asks, eyeing the mostly green contents of her cart warily. Sam snorts, hair flicking out of his eyes. There are no vegetables in their cart. It's mostly frozen pizza, turkey shapes, beef jerky, beer, sugary cereal and full fat milk.
"Sometimes," Lucy admits.
"I feel so cheated," Dean says sourly, his face the picture of betrayal. He turns and heads for the chips aisle. Sam shrugs at her apologetically, lopes off after his brother; almost as tall as Dean now. It must be the growth hormones in all the processed food they eat.
She leaves them to load the groceries into the car when they're finished (Dean has a strict system) while she puts the carts away and just as she gets back Kevin Moriarty is pulling into the space next to them. He pops out of his truck like a Jack-In-The-Box toy and before she can even greet him he grabs her upper arm, turns her body one hundred and eighty degrees to face him.
"So it's true? You're dating this teenage boy?" Kevin demands, his expression hurt, upset. Deranged, her brain supplies.
She shakes her arm, tugs away, and he releases his grip suddenly, making her stumble a step. "This kid was on my high school varsity wrestling team just last year. There's a ten year age difference here; do you think that's appropriate? I mean, have you lost your mind?"
Eleven years, actually, not that she's going to correct him. She glances at Dean who's paused at the gaping mouth of his trunk, eyebrows raised in surprise. Sam steps out of their open passenger door with a deep frown.
"I… Well. We aren't…It's not... dating -" she starts, a knot already forming in her stomach, tying her tongue. She's never been good in a confrontation; has spent most of her life avoiding moments like this at all costs.
"You oughta be ashamed of yourself," Kevin hisses, pointing a stern finger at her like a curse.
"Dude, you're pushin' fifty. You got twenty years on her but you still keep houndin' her for a date even though she's obviously not fuckin' interested so what does that make you, huh?" Dean slams the trunk closed. "Back the hell off."
Kevin's eyes go narrow, angry, and she feels a sense of bile rising fear.
"Let's go, please," she implores Dean as she reaches for the car door, heart thundering as he and Kevin eyeball one another, a menacing tension in the air.
"Dean," Sam says in a clipped, warning tone she's never heard him use before. It seems to work, she sees Dean's jaw unclench. He twirls his keys on his finger as he moves around to the driver's side, shooting Kevin one last appraising look, smirking cruelly as he drops into the car.
Kevin just stands there in the parking lot, a foreboding figure just watching them as they drive away.
She feels ill all the way home, hands shaking and airway constricting. She nods when Sam asks if she's okay, smiles numbly when Dean's eyes flick to hers in the rearview mirror. Everything's fine, she tells herself mentally, jerkily rolling down the window to let in some cold air. Everything's fine, she inwardly chants, trying to push away from the surging tidal wave of dread that's trying to drown her. Everything's fine.
It's just a small panic attack.
She puts the groceries away mechanically, feeds the cat, then goes to throw up a couple of times, and then she feels a little better. She changes out of her church clothes and in to her pyjamas, unbraids her hair. She hears the front door open and close as she's swishing mouthwash around in her mouth for the second time. The TV comes on moments later as Dean makes himself at home.
There's a bottle of Scotch on the coffee table and two short glasses. Dean fills each one with a perfect inch like he's just graduated from bartending college, hands one to her as she sits down beside him on the couch.
"Sam's got a date," he tells her, leaning back with his knees spread wide, whiskey tumbler looking casual in his grip, taking up more than his share of space like always. "Chick must be vision impaired."
She laughs unexpectedly and he grins at her, a bewitching grin. The one that got her into this mess in the first place. He takes a sip of his Scotch, watching her intently.
"Where did you get this?" she asks, the scent of the amber liquid making her nostrils burn. He's underage, her mind supplies helpfully. Now she's plying a minor with alcohol, to add to the long list of her immoral infractions.
"John Entwhistle's credit card," Dean says with a devious shrug. "He's twenty three."
Rules mean little to him. He and his family just seem to humour what's deemed acceptable and what isn't. They look at people (like her) who abide by the law with a perplexed amusement, like they know some profound secret that everyone else doesn't.
She takes stock of Dean; he's still boyish in some ways but he's made it obvious to her in a thousand others that he's older than his years. He keeps it lighthearted on the outside but then there are moments when his voice will change, his eyes will go ice cold, and she feels it emanating from him, an unquiet danger thrumming below his surface.
Like tonight in the parking lot. Bizarrely, instinctually, she hadn't been scared of Kevin, she had been scared for him.
"C'mere," Dean breathes, putting down his glass. He grabs her waist, lifting and maneuvering her exactly where he decides she needs to go and she doesn't resist at all.
She finds herself sitting astride his lap, trying not to spill what's in her glass. He pulls her ass in, fitting them together more snugly, the hard line of him in his jeans grazing her crotch. Hard already before they've even really touched; he always is and even just that makes her clench up ridiculously, her body yearning for him.
He looks up at her with a raptorial gleam in his eye and begins undoing the buttons on her pyjama shirt from the bottom up, his knuckles brushing against the skin he exposes maddeningly, making her inhales sharp. The decade of years between them means nothing here. Dean's always in control, taking exactly what he wants, somehow always just knowing exactly what they both need.
He pushes the material apart like curtains when he's done, baring her, and she has to close her eyes against his intense inspection, his expression hungry as he looks her over. She feels his thumbs trace the shape of the underside of her breasts agonisingly slowly, feels the pulse between her legs get heavy, insistent.
When his tongue slides over her nipple her whole body jerks, wound so tightly, needing a firmer touch and he responds like he's psychic, starts sucking her nipple, pushes his hips up and pulls the cradle of her hips down, creates the most amazing friction for her to ride against. She forgets feeling unwell altogether.
()
Later, she lies on top of him on the couch, rocked gently by each of his breaths, ear to his chest listening to the steady beat inside. She decides that if this is only until the Spring she's fine with that. She doesn't care if people talk. They're both single, consenting adults and it's just a harmless fling. He'll leave with his brother and she'll miss the animation they've brought, the feeling of connection… Definitely the sex... But that feeling will fade and things will go back to normal.
People will forget and find something new to gnaw each other's ears about, and everything will go back to the way it was before. She's sure of it.
So they keep grocery shopping together. They keep having fraught after-work sex in different rooms of the house. They have movie nights with buttery popcorn, homemade katsu steak-fries or chilli nachos, and beer.
Dean always picks the film since she isn't well versed in cinema, declaring it an education. It's usually some gory horror that she has to watch from underneath a blanket. Nine times out of ten she begs him to turn off halfway through, her heart jack-hammering, stress levels sky-rocketing at the tense, drawn out scenes. Dean revels in it, he laughs at her discomfort. How anyone can enjoy being terrified is beyond her.
She gets through 'Seven' by concentrating on Brad Pitt's jawline and piercing blue eyes, and then makes Dean come with her while she locks the house up, checks all the windows. He laughs again out loud when she makes him stand in the bathroom with her while she pees. She's jittery for hours afterwards, she lies awake in bed hearing every creak in the house, traumatised.
"Hey," Dean murmurs sleepily, starting slow, cushiony kisses on the back of her neck, only half awake. "Relax," he whispers. "It was just a movie. I didn't mean to scare you."
"I'm fine," she says, far from it. She shifts back into the crescent of his body, letting him form a protective cocoon around her of arms and sheets.
Next time he lets her pick the movie. She chooses, 'Babe, Pig in The City' and even that's a little dicey in parts. Dean acts put upon, telling her she owes him a blow job for making him sit through a kid movie, but she can tell he gets invested in it, ignoring her hand on his inner thigh until the end credits roll.
She doesn't really know how to give a blow job, so Dean talks her through it, his instructions intimate but clear. His praise when she gets it right makes her squirm, feeling like she needs to touch herself. She takes instructions very well.
()
As far as goodbyes go, it's a happy one. As happy as any goodbye can really be. After Dean leaves to finally pack she spends the rest of the evening before making them road food and wrapping it meticulously; homemade meatball subs (with spicy marinara sauce to dip in), toasted mini cheese, mushroom and tomato quiches, granola bars for Sam, jerky for Dean.
In the morning, she brews a fresh pot of the nice Colombian coffee that makes Dean rise out of bed in the morning like Frankenstein's monster when the smell drifts in to him. She fills a thermos for them as they pack the car and throw the last of their gear in the trunk.
She watches from the end of her driveway. Sam takes the paper bag of food from her gratefully, puts it in the car and then comes back for the thermos. He hesitates, and then leans down to give her a hug, his long arms squeezing her tightly. She holds on for probably too long, bites her tongue to hold back the tears, just nods when he says goodbye, hoping he understands that she doesn't trust herself to try to speak.
Dean does one final circuit of their house, checking, before he finally locks their front door, crouches to slip the key under a loose board underneath their worn doormat then jogs down their lopsided porch steps for the final time. She takes a load bearing breath as he heads right for her, determined to keep a lid on it.
"Drive safe," she says cheerily as he steps into ear shot. "Give my regards to your father."
He chuckles like she's told him a joke, seeing through her completely. His hands go underneath her cardigan, snaking around her and she lets herself melt into his all encompassing embrace, just for a moment, one last sensory overload. Her eyes burn, throat aching to bursting point.
He kisses the top of her head and she tips her chin up, their mouths slotting together like magnets. Normally she wouldn't dream of making out with anyone in the street, but it's the last time they'll get to do it and he kisses her exactly like that; thorough and unreserved, impassioned but a little sad at the same time. Lots of tongue.
He smiles at her as he pulls back.
"Take care of yourself, okay," he orders, and squeezes her ass when she nods like a reward for her giving the right answer; he gives it a firm smack before he turns to walk away.
"You too," she calls after him, voice shaky, an octave too high, on the verge of breaking. He drops into the driver's seat, let's the ignition roar to life, throws her a wink, a heart shattering grin. Then they're gone.
Epilogue
(A.N. If you're interested in what becomes of Lucy post Winchesters, this is it. Be warned, she doesn't get a happy ending. Though arguably, it is a peaceful one. This epilogue contains potentially distressing themes and descriptions.)
Everything's fine, for a while. Kevin never calls again. He won't even look at her in church and it makes her smirk sometimes.
One of the girls invites her to try a hot yoga class with them and asks half way through, while they're all in downward facing dog with sweat dripping from their noses, what the deal was with Lucy and that hot mechanic kid.
"Spill the beans, Luce, is it true you were banging him?" Angela Fratelli says, her voice from in front somewhere, muffled by the position.
"Angela! Don't be so rude!" Karen Barker defends immediately from somewhere behind. "No, seriously though, Lucy, did you? Because he was just about the hottest goddamn thing I've ever seen in my life," she continues, voice gluttonous, and the whole class erupts into strained laughter, causing a couple of collapses.
"Hold it! Concentrate, ladies!" the instructor calls out. "Breathe in and hold it!"
Lucy smiles to herself, arms starting to shake, hamstrings on fire.
()
She gets called in to her manager's office as she's leaving one Friday afternoon. He calls her name across the length of the floor, over everyone's heads, beckons her back to his office with two wagging fingers. She feels sick immediately, wondering if she's done something wrong, as he asks her to sit down and closes the door, trapping her inside.
"I know you're on your way home for the day, I won't keep you too long," he says, moving around to sit himself down. He strokes his moustache ominously, regarding her, then pulls out a small stack of paperwork, lets it clap on to the desk between them. "This is our new contract for the Firetree account. They liked how efficient you were when you took over from Marsha while she was on maternity leave. They've asked for you specifically to manage the new contract for them."
"Oh," she says dumbly, heart racing. "Well, I…"
"I know what you're gonna say." He holds up his hand to stop her. Impressive, she thinks, since she didn't even know what she was going to say. "Obviously this contract is very valuable, and it's a bigger book this time, which is why if you agree to be account manager, it'll come with a fifteen percent raise, effective immediately."
When she tells her mom about the promotion on the phone that night, her mom says she should move to a nicer neighborhood and be closer to the rest of the family. Lucy looks around at her compact home. It has some problems but she doesn't feel unsafe. She's liked it here. Money has never been the issue.
When the weather gets warmer she shells out to have the guttering and side roof repaired, much to her mother's distaste. She tells herself it's an investment. She wants the house to be in decent condition, attractive to potential buyers, and really she feels like she owes it some TLC for sheltering her for all these years, away from prying eyes.
()
Carrot gets sick the following spring. She stops eating her food, becomes even more lethargic and hot tempered than usual. Clearly she's tired and in pain. The vet takes blood samples and is skeptical about the age the shelter had provided.
"Looking at her teeth, I'd say she's at least fifteen," the vet says in a conversational tone, turning one of Carrot's ears inside out to shine her penlight inside.
They call Lucy back a week later when she's on her lunch break and tell her the bad news. Medication might help for a while, though it's expensive, and she's still only going to get worse. The vet sagely suggests that the kindest thing to do might be to put the cat to sleep. They tell her to take some time to think about it, which she does.
It becomes obvious quite quickly what she has to do.
Putting the cat to sleep is a mercy.
()
She writes an extensive to-do list that keeps her busy for a couple of weeks. She boxes old clothes and donates them to Goodwill. She makes three trips to the city dump, emptying out the garage and kitchen. She sells some of her appliances at the pawn shop, along with all of her jewellery, and donates the cash to the animal shelter.
The vet clinic calls her and asks what she'd like them to do with Carrot's ashes and she has no idea. They say they'll keep them for her for two weeks to give her some time to decide, before they dispose of them. She settles the bill right there on the phone, thanks them for everything.
She buys four white plastic shower curtains and two rolls of duct tape and on the way back from the store, she mails her insurance and funeral plan information and copies of the house deeds to her brother's address. It's snail mail. It might take a week, maybe longer, to get there. Ideal.
She tries to liner the whole bathroom with the plastic sheets, taping them up against the walls surrounding the tub, taping them down to the floor, edge to edge with no gaps. She Saran wraps all the faucets until they're totally covered, wraps the sink and medicine cabinet until everything is sealed up. It will be an easy clean up, she hopes, surveying her handy work proudly.
She leaves her purse out on her bare mattress, having stripped the sheets already. Makes sure her wallet is open next to it with her driver's license clearly visible.
She climbs into the empty bathtub, hands full with her phone and her Colt Nineteen-Eleven. As she holds the gun it seems heavier than it ever was, almost needing two hands. She remembers Dean's voice in her head, you'll do fine at close range, and smiles sadly, knowing this isn't what he meant. He would be mortified, if he knew.
She places the muzzle under her chin, presses upwards tightly into the hollow of her lower jaw. Her mom's gonna be mad that they can't have an open casket, but it doesn't matter.
Mentally she goes through her checklist one last time and is satisfied that she hasn't forgotten anything. Just two things left to do. She dials nine one one and waits patiently for an operator to pick up and ask what her emergency is.
"I'd like to report a gunshot," she says confidently. She reels off her name and address when asked, makes sure they have it right, and then ends the call, drops the phone. She feels a sense of serenity, like a weight she's been carrying all her life has been lifted finally off her shoulders. She feels elated at the thought that she will at last be able to stop trying to live and just rest.
She squeezes the trigger quickly, her two index fingers depressing it. The only pain she feels is in her ears; the incredible, searing volume of the blast.
"Look where we are," Dean says, chin pointing out of the windshield at the sign up ahead. Sam looks up sleepily from the passenger seat, eyebrows raising in recognition. "Wanna swing by and see our old house?" Dean asks, already decided.
"You mean swing by and see if Ms. Lacey will make you a lasagna," Sam huffs, laughing when Dean groans hungrily at the memory.
"Man, we never ate as good as when we lived here. She was so goddamn hot," Dean laments, cruising them off a still familiar exit ramp. Sam rolls his eyes but doesn't argue. He knows Dean's obsession with food came before his obsession with sex, but he thinks Ms Lacey is where the two became intertwined in Dean's pleasure spectrum. Ever since, Dean was automatically attracted to women who he associated with food, who brought him food, women who smelled like food, women who advertised food. Sam smirks as they weave through the familiar city streets.
The porch of their old house, by some miracle, is still standing. Listing even more precariously to the left, but hanging on. The house looks like it hasn't been lived in since they left. Dean would bet that if he lifted the mat and the old loose board he would find the front door key still exactly where he hid it.
Ms. Lacey's house looks mostly the same but it's definitely not her who answers the door when they knock.
"Can I help you?" the guy snaps, peering at them like he already knows they're gonna be a nuisance. He's balding, has a beer gut, and Dean thinks surely she didn't settle for this.
"Hi, sorry, we're looking for Lucy Lacey? We used to live here, right across the street actually," Sam explains, pointing to their old house. The guy's demeanour changes, the defensiveness leaving him.
"Oh. You didn't hear?" he says, uncomfortable, not making eye contact with them. "She's dead. She killed herself."
It's not often with their life, doing their line of work, that something leaves them speechless.
"Shit," Dean breathes.
"Yeah," the guy agrees with a helpless shrug. A lady joins him in the doorway, a diapered toddler on her hip, peering at them curiously.
"When did this happen?" Sam asks.
"Would have been ninety eight? The year before we moved in, right?" he turns to his lady friend for confirmation, who nods.
"The year after we left," Sam says quietly, mostly to Dean. "Do you happen to know where she's buried?" He doesn't even really mean to ask, he just follows up automatically.
She was cremated. He thanks them for their help, apologises again, asks them if they like living here, which they do.
"We've loved it here, the neighbourhood's nice and quiet," the lady says. She waves from the porch as they leave, the toddler copying her, his tiny arm flapping.
"I never realised she was sick. Was she depressed? Like was she on meds?" Sam asks as they drop into the car. Dean shakes his head.
"No. Nothing like that. The only things in her medicine cabinet were birth control and aspirin… And I never even saw her take an aspirin. She was fine. I mean she was a little nervous all the time, but not like… not like suicidal," he says, angry. "How could I have missed something like that?"
"Hey, wait a second. First of all, you're not a psychiatrist, Dean, you were just a kid when we lived here. And secondly, for all we know something might have happened after we left. Something might have changed… Do you want me to call the local PD and pull the file? I mean there's nothing supernatural here I don't think but… If you want to check it out, we can?"
Dean changes into his fed threads in a Burger King bathroom on the way to the police station after losing rock, paper, scissors. Thankfully, they have the file waiting for him at the front desk, ready to pick up.
"I remember that case; we went to the same church. She always seemed so… Calm and happy," the deputy says as she hands over the folder. "She was a sweetheart. Real sad. Just shows you never really know what's going on in someone's head." Dean nods, wanting to leave, her words giving him chills.
Sam examines the case notes and police reports in the car by flashlight, his expression becoming more and more aggrieved.
"It's weird," he says. "Not our kinda weird. I mean it's clear she killed herself; there's no evidence anyone else was involved, but… She planned it meticulously. It's kind of unsettling."
Dean grunts in response, staring out of his window, not wanting to accidentally catch a glimpse of the evidence photos.
"So two officers arrived at the address twelve minutes after she placed an emergency call reporting hearing a gunshot. The front door was ajar, and inside there was a note stuck to the hallway wall." Sam shuffles the papers, finds the copy of the note in flowing, curling handwriting: 'I'm in the bathroom. Down the hall, last door on the right. I am truly sorry for what you're about to see. Please forgive me'.
"They entered the bathroom after confirming the rest of the house was clear, followed protocal yadda yadda… Where they found the subject in the empty bathtub, fully clothed, freshly deceased by a single gunshot wound under the mandible. First aid not administered as subject was obviously DOA. Handgun discovered and recovered on scene. Ballistics matched. Licensed to Mark Lacey, late husband of the deceased, Colt Nineteen-Eleven, model -"
"Son of a bitch," Dean curses, furious. Sam waits for a second, keeps going when Dean doesn't say anything else.
"Coroner confirmed time of death to be congruent with the time the call was placed. No foul play. No mention of any mental health issues in her medical history, barely any medical history at all. The house had been emptied of most of her belongings; local charities confirmed several instances of donations in the weeks leading up to the date of death. ID left out in plain sight so she was identifiable immediately. The bathroom had been, uh. Prepared… Everything covered in plastic, suspected to have been in consideration of mess, to prevent staining from blood spray or cranial contents. Note in the hallway confirmed to be her handwriting. Ruled suicide. Case closed."
They both sit in silence for a minute, digesting it.
"I guess some people are really good at just letting you see what they want you to see and hiding the rest," Sam says, thinking out loud, wishing they'd never decided to detour here more for Dean's sake than his. "It's gotta be exhausting. Imagine the energy it must take to pretend to be happy all time. Maybe it's kind of a mercy."
"I guess," Dean mumbles unhappily, pointing his keys back towards the ignition.