Disclaimer: I don't own anything Supernatural, except for the characters you haven't heard of and my storylines.
Dean stared at the door as if he could see her through it, as if he was watching her leave him behind.
And it felt as if it was yesterday that he'd seen her last. And every single memory that involved her flooded back in as if someone had cracked a dam open, and he was the unsuspecting town below it.
*
John shook his head in disapproval, a disapproval that was counteracted by the smile he couldn't stop from breaking on to his face.
Maryla was spinning around on the pole, acting like she actually was a pole dancer at the club he and Dean had gone to to find the witnesses of the recent murders.
Dean was gawking at her like she'd grown wings. Not unexpected, seeing as it was the first time he had met the eighteen year old. And she'd had him eating out of her hand in five minutes, no worries, no fuss, just Dean, pretty much in a ball at her Converse clad feet. If he could've, he probably would have gift wrapped himself too. Right now, he was looking a little rueful that he hadn't been able to.
John knew a little better. He knew Maryla's mother. She'd been a close friend of Mary's. Hence the name. Asia, which was her name, had been a firecracker, but even she was nothing compared to Maryla, who was more of a chew-it-up-then-spit-the-fire-out kind of girl. Asia had phoned her when Maryla had decided on her trek across America before going to university. The girl was absurdly intelligent. Despite the current outfit. She'd agreed to help him with this interview when they met up because the witness was currently afraid of men. But she'd had to look the part. The heels she was wearing right now could be classified as concealed weapons if she got arrested.
And she knew how to pole dance. Which was why his eldest son was unable to remove his gaze from her spinning body.
Dean stared at her as she lowered herself to the stage, twisting around the pole as she went. It was like he'd walk in to his own personal fantasy. Or the girl had been tailor made to fit his taste. She was wearing a Led Zeppelin t-shirt, and a pair of shorts that were denim, and barely there. She had crazily curly dark brown hair, and her eyes glittered orange as she playfully made her dance just for him. The only thing that could have made it better would have been if the music had been something a little more to his taste.
She slid off the stage, dropping in to his lap, making him jump.
"You should learn to control your drool." she joked, poking his cheek.
"I am not drooling." he insisted. She glanced at where John was standing, and then leaned in close.
"Maybe not. But I'm sure I know a few tricks that could make you." she whispered in a voice so low, he couldn't tell if he'd imagined her saying it.
A split second later, and she was out of his lap, stalking towards the witness, all jokes and pole dancing left behind, in the chair where Dean was sitting, staring after her.
*
Dean snapped out of it, but couldn't stop himself from thinking about it. He went out to sit in his baby. She'd spent the rest of the year following them about, and being such a help, they wouldn't have given her up for the world. He'd never felt such a desire for someone.
He shook his head. Desire was actually the wrong word in this case. If anyone else asked him he'd say desire, but if Maryla asked him, even though she knew the answer, desperation would have been the right word.
He'd met her, and immediately wanted her. Not the same way it worked with all the girls he'd been with since. He'd felt a physical ache for her from the moment he'd seen her. For those orange eyes that couldn't be natural. For the perfect size two waist. For the legs. For the hair that he just wanted to wrap around his hands. And most especially for the mind inside that body. It was insane, he knew. He'd only just met her, and he wanted her to like him. Because he wasn't sure that she would.
He, Dean Winchester, was afraid that a girl wouldn't approve of him.
And she'd taken her own damn time letting him know that she did. The teasing and the flirting aside. It took almost a whole year for him to find out if she approved. And man, had it been worth the wait.
He looked at himself in the rear view mirror. God. It still was worth the wait. Maryla Savage owned a part of him that nobody else could touch. Nobody else had ever even come close. It was kind of why he'd become the way he was. The boozing, the women. After she'd died he felt like nothing was left for him. At least, not in the romance side of life. The girl he'd met that day had taken him hostage and robbed the Bank of Dean of himself, of the ideas of a white picket fence life, of the normal future he couldn't help but wish for.
They'd buried her, Dean, Bobby, John and Sam. Dean had heard his father make the phone call to Maryla's mother. Heard what Asia had screamed at him across the phone. Screaming obscenities at Dean. Obscenities he knew he deserved.
It was his fault she'd died.
*
It took Dean and the blonde in his bed a full five minutes to realize that someone was watching them. Dean turned and saw those hazel eyes for the first time since he'd met her. They looked so different to her normal eyes, he almost didn't recognize her.
She threw the pie she'd bought for him at the bed, and turned and walked away. There was a clinking sound, and he saw a silver ring spinning round on the floor where she'd been standing. And he felt like punching himself.
He kicked the blonde out, and went to try and find her, but when that failed, he went back to the motel room to wait.
John came in, a sad look in his eyes.
"What did you do to her?" he asked, taking in the pie on the floor, and the messed up sheets on his son's bed. It was more of a rhetorical question.
"Where is she?" Dean asked, standing up from the bed he'd been perched on nervously.
"She got herself another room. She said she doesn't want to be anywhere near you, and I don't blame her." John held up an arm to stop his son from leaving the room.
"I have to talk to her!" they were interrupted by John's phone ringing.
He answered, and after a brief conversation, hung up, still holding Dean in the room.
"We have a lead. We need to go now. I'll go get Maryla. You start the car." John ordered. Dean never disobeyed Daddy.
When they got to the warehouse the Yellow Eyed Demon had been rumoured to be around, Maryla got out of the car as wordlessly as she had gotten in to it. They split up in three directions to try and surround the place.
Ten minutes later, John and Dean ran in to each other, and a further ten minutes later they'd found her.
She was laying on the floor, so relaxed, you'd have thought that she'd been knocked out. Dean certainly did.
He knelt down next to her, and tried to wake her up. When he rolled her over he saw the blood. That's when he noticed she wasn't breathing.
"Dean? She OK?" his father asked, as he looked up at him for a second. Then Dean freaked. He started trying CPR, telling his dad to call 911.
He'd cracked three of her ribs trying to revive her, the doctors later told him. He must have really loved her. "We'll get whoever did this to her." the police assured him.
He hadn't been able to do anything for the next few days. Sam and Bobby had been called. Bobby had bought the dress. Sam tried to get Dean to talk. Nothing worked.
The only thing he did do was let Sam take him to a hospital to get his hand put in a cast after he'd found Dean punching the wall repeatedly.
The day of the funeral, he'd been ready to start punching with his left hand. He was sat in the motel room by himself when he noticed the silver ring, discarded on the floor, it was laying against the wall now. He went over and picked it up, spinning it in his fingers. Something written on the inside caught his eye.
He could barely read the tiny letters. 'Life is ours, we live it our way'. He stared at the tiny words, wondering what she'd meant by them. The funeral passed as a blur. The only thing he did remember was that 'Nothing Else Matters' was playing on the radio as he drove from the church.
*
He spun the ring on his right ring finger, still not remembering a conscious decision to wear it on that hand. All Dean knew now was that somehow, she was back. And that somehow he was going to make everything right between them.