Chapter 21

Walking down to the car, I felt light-headed and not-quite-there. There was still a very faint ringing in my ears, probably from having air pushed into them when the room exploded. I was resisting the impulse to touch my mouth, my lips feeling both hypersensitive and a little swollen, a tangible reminder of what had just happened.

Dean's arm was around my shoulders and there was a warmth on that side of my body, where our ribs and hips grazed as we walked. Sam was walking beside him, and for the moment, at least, it felt like I did belong here. Right here. And I thought, nothing's going to take this away.

Well, challenge to the powers that be, or what?

"So it didn't kill him," Dean was saying to Sam. "Just – what? – put him to sleep for a couple of hundred years?"

"Yeah, Bobby couldn't find a way to kill to him, figured it was our best shot." Sam looked up and behind us to the building. "You think Jo's at peace now?"

Shaking his head, Dean shrugged. "She was at peace before. She didn't have that revenge thing going on, I don't even know how he could force her to do it."

The car had an interesting marbled effect, red and white dust coating most of the glossy black surfaces and Dean stopped and mumbled something under his breath.

"We'll find a car wash on the way out of town," I told him soothingly and he grumbled something else sub-audibly before reaching out to open the passenger door. I caught a glimpse of Sam's eyebrows shooting up as we both realised I'd been promoted to riding shotgun, and I stepped back, shaking my head.

"I'll take the back seat," I told him, feeling cold where his warmth had been. "I'm dying for sleep."

He looked at me for a moment, then turned away, leaving the door open for Sam and walking around to the driver's side. Opening the rear door, I slid in and settled myself. It wasn't a lie, the back seat accommodated me very well and it was a twelve-hour drive back to Sioux Falls, bypassing Chicago. I figured it would give me time to catch up on my sleep and time to think about what had happened without distracting anyone else.

The engine rumbled into life and I stretched out on the seat, tucking my coat under my head as a makeshift pillow, my thoughts drifting. Sam had waited patiently for us for a minute or two and then had started fidgeting and I'd started feeling uncomfortable with an audience. Dean had been quite thorough in making sure I didn't have any injuries, causing more huffs and sighs from his brother, and we hadn't had a chance to say anything to each other after that.

I must have dozed off in the middle of those memories, because the houses were gone when I opened my eyes a bit later, and the seams of the concrete road made a regular beat under the softly playing music on the car's stereo.

"You want stop somewhere for the rest of the night, Dean?"

Sam's voice was low, and I could barely hear Dean's grunt of assent. I closed my eyes again, all the steady noises lulling me back to a soporific state. There was a faint creak of leather and half-asleep I played a game with myself, imagining the cause of the sounds I could hear. Sam turning, I thought, to see if I was asleep. I was too pleasantly dozy to be surprised when his next question to his brother seemed to prove me right.

"So, what happened back there?" he asked.

Dean's voice was a bit louder when he answered. "I – uh – I don't know," he said, his voice a little puzzled. "Jo showed up and things got kind of fuzzy, I remember her talking, Terry as well, but I can't remember what they said."

"Bobby thought that Osiris' judgement had side-effects," Sam told him quietly. "Made the vics more susceptible to the guilt they already felt."

"That'd explain Warren's suicidal bolt," Dean agreed. He was silent for a few moments then the sound of leather creaking came again. Shifting in his seat, I thought, feeling quite pleased with myself.

"When I, uh, came to, Terry, uh, was kissing me," he admitted, his discomfort plain in his voice. I wondered sleepily if that was from having to talk about it with Sam, or something else. There was a snort from the other side.

"No one but you would get woken from a spell with a kiss." Sam said, his amusement obvious in his voice.

"Yeah, laugh it up," Dean retorted, but without any heat to it. "It broke through the, uh, whatever-it-was that had a hold on me. I smelled the gas, whole room was full of it by then, and Jo must've lit the match as we went through the doorway 'cause we got pushed hard."

"All the way down the hall," Sam said, as if to confirm it. "And how I found you guys?"

"Ah," Dean hedged, a slight trace of nervousness running neck and neck with the discomfort now. "Ladies choice."

"She asked you to kiss her again?" Sam's voice rose about half an octave.

"Well, not in so many words…"

"In any words?"

"Did you see her struggling?"

"No," Sam said, a faint chuckle following the word. "No, she looked pretty happy."

"Mmm."

"So did you," Sam added, a question somehow in the three words.

"When do I turn down a kiss if it's offered?"

"That's it then? That's all it was? Opportunity and what? Tension release?"

The silence stretched out and I found myself losing my pleasant dreamy state as I strained to hear something – anything – from the front seat.

"I don't know," Dean said finally, and the doubt in his voice made my stomach drop. "Maybe it's not such a good idea to, uh, drag her into our life any deeper."

Sam's exhale was loud and, I thought, exasperated. "Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I think – I think – she's already in it about as deep as she can get, Dean."

There was another silence and another sigh. "Look, I get that you're probably nervous about –"

"I'm not nervous," Dean interrupted sharply.

I heard Sam's inhale. "Okay, not nervous, then, uh, maybe…um…cautious…then, but Terry's already –"

My entire body froze into immovability as Sam cut himself off just in time.

"Already what?" Dean asked.

"Uh, well, um, she's already in danger, on Crowley's list," Sam covered the near-miss as best as he could. I wondered how much more revealing it would be if I sat up and hit him in the back of the head for that slip. "So, uh, it's not going to make much difference, that is, to her, um, safety."

For a long moment, Dean didn't answer, then he cleared his throat. "You know what happened to Lisa and Ben," he said. "And me going to see them, when I was turned, that could've turned out a lot worse."

"Dean, don't start convincing your–"

I couldn't take any more of the conversation and I sat up, pushing a hand through my hair to catch their attention. I could practically hear them reviewing the last couple of minutes of what they'd said in their heads as they tried to figure out what I might've overheard.

"Are you driving straight through?" I asked Dean, and I could hear the edge to my voice, as much as I'd tried to soften it, make it sound half-asleep and casual and not hurting at all.

"Uh," Sam hedged, looking at Dean.

"No." Dean kept his eyes on the road as he answered. "No, we'll find someplace to crash, do the rest in the morning."

"Good," I said, shifting over to the door and leaning against it. "I'm starving."

I looked down at my watch. My feeling of belonging had lasted all of three hours.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

Dean turned off at Coldwater, stopping first at an all-night chicken place where we picked up some very questionable hot food, then driving to the Red Roof Motel, a hundred yards down the same road. The Vacancy sign was still lit, the 'y' flashing intermittently in the dark, and they had a room. I didn't argue about it, turning for the bathroom as soon as Sam closed the door behind us. I was covered in dust, which was itchy, and I smelled like a backyard barbecue gone wrong, and I wanted a shower even more than I wanted food. Since I had no personal belongings at all, I grabbed one of the spare sheets from the closet on my way, figuring it would keep me covered.

The water was great but I kept the shower short, watching the slurry of dissolved brick and plaster dust swirling down the drain as I washed my hair clean. I didn't know what to think about what I'd overheard in the car. Did it mean that nothing had changed for Dean, when for me, pretty much everything had? Was he trying to protect me, or himself? Or was he going to write it all off as something that had happened in the heat of the moment that didn't belong in his world?

Figuring that, at the very least, I'd better wash my panties and t-shirt for the next day, I scrubbed them both with the motel's soap and rinsed them, hanging them over the rail. The room was warm and I thought they'd be reasonably dry by morning. I turned off the taps and stepped out, drying myself off quickly, my thoughts looping back to the earlier questions. I didn't know. That seems dumb, especially when I thought that if it'd happened on the show I probably would've known. But I just didn't. Maybe that was because it'd become too important to me. Maybe it was because I couldn't trust the memories I had. Maybe it was because wanting it so much, it was too easy to believe that I'd gotten it wrong.

When I got out, the room smelled of fried chicken and I tucked my Romanesque attire more tightly into place and walked over to the table, sitting down and pulling my share of the over-cooked, grease-laden, unidentifiable pieces of poultry toward me.

We ate in silence and I lost my appetite about halfway through the modest serving I'd ordered, getting up and stuffing the leftover chicken, wrappings, boxes and drink cups into the plastic bag they'd come in as Sam pulled his laptop out and turned it on.

I didn't hear Dean come up behind me as I tried to stuff the trash into the tiny little can the motel had provided, the plastic crackling so much I couldn't hear anything else above it.

"Terry," he said, his hand touching my shoulder. I jumped, of course, that light touch sending what felt like a high-voltage bolt of electricity through my skin. Pulling away and stepping back, I pushed the trash can back into the cupboard with my foot.

"Yeah?"

"You okay?" he asked, voice pitched low enough that Sam couldn't overhear him.

I looked up at him and forced my face to adopt a look of surprise. "Fine."

"Look, I –"

"I'm tired," I added abruptly, cutting him off. I didn't want to have this conversation in whispers with Sam sitting five feet away, his hunched up shoulders showing that he was trying his best not to listen. I wasn't entirely sure I wanted to have the conversation at all, to be honest, especially not if it was going to use phrases like 'for the best' and 'not you, it's me'…all those horrible clichés that seem to sprout like weeds when things aren't right.

He moved aside as I took a step forward and I was careful to gather up the trailing ends of my sheet, thus ensuring that at least once I would not ignominiously trip in front of him and end up on the floor at his feet.

He didn't try to say anything else, or stop me, as I walked away, and my relief was somewhat tinged by a moment's regret at that, probably because it made it seem more likely that whatever passion and emotion there'd been in that kiss, it'd mostly been from my end.

I know what you're thinking – what a bitch to not let him get out whatever it was he wanted to say, right? – and I'd probably agree except for a couple of small things. One, guys who want to have a conversation with you when there're other people around are usually doing it to avoid a scene. Two, I already told you what happens when I get a sympathetic let-down – waterworks – and that was definitely not how I wanted to finish the evening – night – whatever. Either one on their own would have set my alarm bells going, both together…if he wanted to say something, he could do it when we got back to Bobby's place, where I'd have the option of retreating to my bedroom and spending a month or two in there in privacy.

So, there you have it. I don't expect other people to understand the peculiarities of my mind, but that's the reason Dean got a cold shoulder on this occasion.

The room had two queen beds and a long sofa, taking up most of the centre of the room. A couple of very small armchairs rounded out the seating and the ubiquitous small table had four chairs parked around it, one of which was occupied by Sam, who was still hunched over the laptop as I walked past him and got a blanket and a pillow from the closet. It was a matter of seconds to throw the blanket over the back of the sofa and set the pillow at the end furthest from them and I stretched out, rolling onto my shoulder and facing the back and closed my eyes.

The overhead light went out a minute later, just the bathroom light left on and a small lamp in the kitchen. Once again playing 'what can I hear', I tracked Dean to the bathroom and heard the shower going on. Closer, the tap-tap of the keys of the laptop told me Sam was staying out of it.

Back to normal, I thought tiredly. Then I remembered my laundry.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

It was not a nice drive back to South Dakota.

I didn't want to talk. Dean didn't want to talk. Sam tried to engage both of us in fits of conversation from time to time but eventually he gave up and Dean pushed in a tape and turned up the volume and that was how most of the trip went. It took eight hours and I had a pounding headache by the time we pulled in through the Singer Auto Yard gates. Served me right, I won't argue with that.

It was early afternoon and I figured that the best way to deal with all of it was to have a proper shower, get into something comfortable and try and sleep off the tension headache. Bobby looked relieved when he saw Dean, and Lauren looked relieved when she saw Sam, and I figured I wasn't going to be missed.

It did occur to me as I got to the bathroom and started undressing that half my meagre wardrobe had been blown up. I needed to figure out a way to make a living myself, even if it was taking a job down at the local Gas'n'Sip on the outskirts of town, just to have enough cash to be able to get clothes and personal items without having to hit up Bobby for those kinds of purchases. I mean, even the shampoo I used was different to whatever the three men used and it wasn't like I could switch over because my hair was fussy and didn't like any other shampoo. Those little expenses add up.

Mindful of those thoughts, I was pretty sparing with the darned shampoo, but managed to get clean and the headache had receded quite a long way by the time I was dressed again, this time in actual clean clothing.

The bedroom was an oasis of peace and familiarity and I pulled the door closed, breathing it all in, and feeling the tensions of the last couple of days beginning to dissolve in its protective spell. I hadn't even felt this way about my apartment and I'd lived there for six years, but there was something about this place that was just very soothing.

The knock on the door was not soothing and I looked around, wondering if there was anywhere I could hide that no one would think of to look. A futile and specious thought if ever there was one.

Opening it, I looked up at Dean.

"We need to talk."

With a bare minimum of grace, I stepped back and waved my hand in a silent invitation to enter. He stepped in, stopping just past the door and watching me close it.

"I'm sorry."

I blinked at him. It was the first time I'd heard those two words come out of his mouth without stammering, excuses or a string of disconnected words emerging first. A memory intruded and I bit my lip when I recalled him saying it to Cassie. Angrily. It wasn't a helpful memory and I shoved it aside.

"For what?"

He gave me a narrowed look then exhaled sharply. "I'm trying to make sure you're safe."

I lifted an eyebrow at him. "Where could I possibly be more safe than here?"

"You know what I mean," he said, his brows drawing together in a scowl.

"No." I told him stubbornly, folding my arms across my chest. "I don't."

"People –" he started and then stopped, his gaze dropping to the floor. "People don't have a real good survival rate around me."

"Oh," I said curtly. "I see. You've made an executive decision to protect me – whether I want it or not."

See now, that was kind of bitchy, but I didn't want to let him off easy. I wanted to know, for certain, where we both stood. And, oh yeah…I was pissed at him for taking this way out.

His head snapped up and he stared at me. "You know what happened to Lisa, Terry, and Crowley has a hate-on for you personally."

"I know that Lisa and Ben were unaware that anything could come for them because you were trying to 'protect them'," I pointed out sweetly. "And I know that Crowley used them to force you to do something," I added. "Not exactly the same situation, is it?"

"It's worse!"

"You think the leverage against you doesn't exist if you pretend it doesn't?" I asked him disbelievingly.

"It's a helluva lot better if no one else knows it!" he said, and then looked away as he realised that he'd let something out, something that maybe he hadn't wanted to.

"Guess you'd have preferred to spend the night…smelling the roses," I snapped at him. I didn't even realise that was still bothering me until it came out.

"Wha–?" He looked confused for about a half-a-second then the memory came back. "I thought you wanted Sam!" he snapped back and I was pretty sure he hadn't wanted that to come out, at least not the way it did, either.

Painfully aware that I'd just complicated the entire conversation by a factor of about eleven, it dawned on me that I didn't have a case for my accusation anyway.

We probably both had enough ammunition to keep it up for a while, but it suddenly occurred to me that what I was doing was trying to argue him into changing his mind. My heart gave a little double-thump as I looked away to hide the heat rising up my neck. I mean, how sad a case do you have to be to want something that someone was telling you they didn't? I gave up right then.

"Alright," I said, reaching back to open the door. "You're sorry. Thanks."

"What?" he asked, a bit suspiciously, his anger disappearing as fast as mine had.

"I get it," I said, looking at the hall outside the room, Sam's words coming back. "Tension reliever. Nothing in it. Not interested, yada yada. Goodnight."

"That's not what I said –"

"It's what you meant," I said, looking back at him with an elaborately casual shrug. "I understand."

"No. You don't," he said, biting out each word as he walked toward me. He grabbed the edge of the door and pushed it shut. "I am trying to do the right thing here, trying to make sure you don't get hurt because –"

"Because - what?"

His gaze cut to one side, obviously not wanting to go into that.

"Because you don't want the responsibility on you if I did?" I hazarded a guess.

He scowled at me. "That's not –"

In real life, he's fast. Really fast. A lot faster than I'd realised and he was up close and personal, his arms around me, pulling me tightly against him, his mouth over mine before I'd even registered that he'd moved. This kiss was different, edged with anger and filled with some raw emotion, some wordless need that I recognised in myself. It wasn't rushed and it wasn't all over the place, but it was wild, reaching in and touching something that I'd never felt before, never even imagined before. I couldn't get my breath and I was shaking when he broke it.

Looking down at me, his eyes were dark as they searched mine. I guess mine were too, I know my mouth was open, half from arousal, half in shock at the sudden cessation of what we'd been doing. I hadn't wanted him to stop.

He let go of me and took a half-step back. "That tell you anything about what I want?"

"It doesn't tell me why you seemed totally okay walking out of the hotel and now you want to pretend that wasn't you," I said, looking at the gap between us.

He licked his lips, and looked at the door. "You know, better than anyone else, that I've never been good for the people I've let get close, Terry."

"I don't recall asking for references."

It surprised him enough for one side of his mouth to lift a little.

"You can't be more scared of this than I am," I told him, my throat closing up as that admission came out. Relationships aren't supposed to be this hard. They're supposed to be fun, starting out at least. As I looked at him, it came to me that with this man, that would never be the case. I don't mean it would all be doom and gloom, but I had to take into account what he'd been through. What he still had to get through. His memories were no better than Sam's. And I was scared. I was scared by how much I already felt. How much it was all going to hurt if it went wrong…or if he didn't want to take the risk.

"I'm not–" He drew in a deep breath, looking at the floor. "You think it's worth the odds against?"

I wasn't a hundred percent sure what he meant by that, but I hoped he wasn't talking about Crowley or monsters or his life. I hoped he was talking about something else.

"You don't?"

"It wasn't the last time," he muttered, as painfully honest as I could ever imagine him being. He was talking about Cassie, I thought. Trusting her and having that trust thrown back at him.

I don't know if you've ever felt that tension with another person, that sense of walking the high wire and risking falling at any second, with the wrong word, or the wrong move, or even the wrong look. I hadn't, not really, not like this, before. I guess the closest I'd gotten was my self-delusional state about Daniel, but even that wore off in a relatively short amount of time.

I was having a bit of difficulty in getting the air in and out of my lungs, looking at him, wondering what he was afraid of, knowing that if I said the wrong thing, or he did, it would be all over before it'd begun.

"The door's open," I told him, finally. "It's up to you."

Ultimatums aren't a very good way of doing anything. But it wasn't an ultimatum, I hoped, not really. Just an invitation to make up his mind about what he wanted and how much he wanted it. At least, that's what I was aiming for.

I was holding my breath and it was starting to hurt when he looked at the door and back to me.

"You sure?" he asked, and I could see his pulse, fluttering at the base of his throat, just above the line of his t-shirt.

"No," I said, the word expelled on a shuddery outburst of stale air. "But yes. Are you?"

"No." He looked at the door again. "But yeah," he repeated, shaking his head as he took that step closer.

I've kissed a lot of guys, had a lot of flings…in my job there wasn't much time for anything but flings, really. I'd never met anyone who kissed the way he did, each time so radically different from the others, as if it was a kind of language for him. Maybe it was. It was slow…and filled with a tenderness that I could hardly credit from this man, this time. The wildness had gone, that unfamiliar and aching longing, but…it was still there, reined back and held in and so freaking arousing to feel it behind his control that my heart rate accelerated to marathon time and a surge of heat zapped through from my toes upward and I felt myself get – well, you get the picture, I'm sure.

If you've seen the show, you'll know that Dean's the slow burn, and Sam's the wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am, all muscle and energy. I'd wondered briefly if that was accurate in this world, or if the writers (mostly male, by the way) had let Jensen make the final decisions on how Dean made love to the occasional partners he had over the seasons. It seemed like a bit of both. For all I knew the actors had been channelling the characters as much as the writers had.

Backing us both toward the bed, what he was doing taking up almost every bit of my attention, I was vaguely relieved that neither of us was wearing our boots. Nothing says unmitigated passion like fumbling with excessive lengths of boot laces and double-knotting them in shaky-handed haste. I hit the bed with the back of my legs and let myself fall and he followed as smoothly as if he'd done it a million times before – heh, which I guess he probably had.

I couldn't tell you the details of such trivial miscellanea like removal of clothing or where I was or what he did. He took his time and he seemed to focus on every single second, unhurried, as if there was all the time in the world to spend on every sensation, every touch, every taste.

Not being a kiss-and-tell girl myself – well, yeah, alright, I kiss and tell, but you're not getting anything more than that out me, even under torture. If you've ever had a partner who not only knew what they doing in the bedroom but loved doing it, you'll already have a good idea of how it went. If not…my condolences…and I wouldn't be able to do it justice in mere words!

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

I woke to the unfamiliar sound of someone else breathing close by, the unfamiliar warmth of someone lying next to me and a slow, steady heart beat under my cheek.

I don't know if he'd been asleep and woken, or if he hadn't been sleeping, but he noticed I was awake instantly.

"You okay?"

Better than okay, the thought sprang into my mind, but I've learned it's better not to stroke the ego too much on short acquaintance.

"Mmmm-hmmm." I lifted my head to look at him. "Were you sleeping?"

He made a slight face, visible in the diffused glow from the clock radio on the nightstand. "For awhile."

"Nightmares?"

There was a short silence, then he said, "Not tonight. But I don't sleep for long stretches anymore."

"And you wake up at the slightest change anyway, don't you?"

"Downside of the life," he said wryly.

"Why 'Ramble On'?"

"What?"

"It's one of your favourite songs, isn't it?" I moved up the bed a little, rolling onto my elbow.

"Yeah, but…what made you ask?" he asked, tilting a little one side as well.

"Well, you're not really a romantic, and I can't see you being a fan of the Lord of the Rings, and it's really more of a ballad than a rock song, so…?"

He closed his eyes for a moment. "It's what we did," he said. "We always left."

That was true, I guessed. Ramblin' on for most of his life.

"And who says I'm not romantic?" he asked a moment later, one eye half-opening.

"You do," I said. "No chick-flick moments, isn't that the disclaimer?"

"Huh, that crap they fill chick-flicks with isn't romantic, it's the sentimental bullshit that women think they like because that's all they've been told the last however-many years by Hollywood," he said, his lip curled up in disdain.

"Oh." I smiled at the fact he'd obviously put some thought into this, as unlikely as that seemed. "So what makes real romance?"

"Well," he said, stretching out and resting his head against hand, his free hand running over my hip. "If Crowley doesn't kill you in the next few months, I guess you might find out."

"Is that how long it's going to take for you to think of something?"

"Nah, you just got a long probationary period."

"Not fair," I said, sighing a little as the light touch slid up my side. "Why?"

"Because it took a helluva lot more effort than I'd usually put in to get here," he said, leaning toward me and stopping the conversation.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

In Bobby's kitchen, filled with sunshine and the smell of coffee, Sam took one look at me and knew it all.

"Sleep well?" he asked his brother with an innocent air as Dean walked past him to pour himself a coffee.

"Yeah, very," Dean answered glibly over his shoulder.

I sat down at the dining table and looked at Bobby, catching his surprised look when Dean put a cup in front of me as he sat down in the next chair.

"Thought the place would be wall-to-wall books by now," he commented blandly to the older hunter.

"Still in the truck," Bobby said. "We only beat you back by half a day."

"Anything on the Purgatory native blood?" Sam asked, throwing another look at his brother as he buttered his toast.

"Nope," Bobby told him. "Nuthin' on Crowley neither."

"That's good, right?"

"Good, and bad," Lauren said, coming into the dining room. "If he's gone into hiding, we won't be able to keep track of what he's doing."

She sat next to Sam, and I saw Bobby's gaze slide sideways to them, scratching the ruff of auburn beard that covered his jaw thoughtfully.

"Sam said you got another set of scars, Therese," he said, looking back at me. "Before we get started, Lauren should take a look, make sure there's no problems."

"No need," Dean said blithely, finishing his coffee and getting up. "They're fine."

I looked into coffee cup at the silence that followed his remark, feeling the flush creeping up my neck.

"Uh, well…good," Bobby managed to get out after a moment, pushing back his chair and getting up as well. Sam's snort was soft and I looked up to see Lauren smiling at me.

"So, boxes of books…?" I said, gulping down the remains of my hot coffee and ignoring the scalding sensation on my tongue.

Bobby nodded. "There's a store-room behind the living room, we'll turn it into a library."

I remembered his comments when we'd found Samuel Campbell's library, half-admiring, half-wistful as he'd looked around at the hidden place. He was dying to have the time to excavate more room under the house and replicate the set-up.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

The books filled the room and overflowed into the living room and the hallway. Sam and Bobby started building makeshift floor-to-ceiling shelving to accommodate the library as Lauren unpacked the boxes and went through them, and Dean grabbed my arm and pulled me out of the living room, telling Bobby that we'd do a supply run.

"Supply run?" I asked him curiously as we escaped down the porch steps and got into the Impala.

"Sure, why not?" he said, starting the car. "Beer, food…whatever."

"I should make a list –"

"Nah, we'll know when we get there."

Famous last words. I realised after about twenty minutes of wandering around the grocery store, Dean pushing a shopping cart behind me, that he'd just wanted to get out of the house, do something ordinary for a change.

Looking at the mound of stuff he'd pulled off the shelves and chucked into the cart, I slowed down to match his pace. "You don't do this very often, do you?"

He laughed, and I looked at him in surprise. He had a nice laugh, kind of restrained but lighting his eyes to a brighter green.

"Nope," he confirmed, the laughter fading to a smile. The smile was a bonus and I found myself smiling back.

"Do we need six boxes of Cheerios?" I asked, looking over the cart. "Or three kinds of cheese-in-a-can?"

"Never know," he said, adroitly manoeuvring the cart around a road-block in the dairy aisle as if it was the Impala. "We should check out the video store."

"Are you – are you embracing normality or something?" I looked at him as he stopped to contemplate a display of pickles. "You don't like pickles."

"True," he acknowledged, pushing the cart forward again. "I don't know, maybe. It's not going to be around for long, so why not?"

Why not was a good question. Why not have a couple of days of at least spending time in the one place, watching a bit more tv than usual or cooking a meal instead of eating take-out burgers? I pulled out four of the six boxes of Cheerios, leaving them on a shelf while he was looking somewhere else and focussed on shopping for food that was easy to prepare, tasted good and was moderately healthy. To be honest, that last chicken bucket meal had put me off fast food for the foreseeable future.

"I thought you did all this…mundane stuff…with Lisa?" I asked, after we'd trawled up and down another two aisles.

He didn't answer and I looked back at him, wondering if I'd gone too far. He didn't look mad, or upset.

"Sorry – I didn't mean –" I started to apologise and he shook his head.

"It's okay," he said. "Sam was gone, and I wasn't – it wasn't exactly normal, most of the time."

I looked away and he caught my hand, his fingers closing around mine.

"I tried to fit in," he continued, his voice lower. "I mean who needs a douche bag who doesn't even pull his weight, right?" He didn't wait for an answer to that. "It got easier to lie to her about…everything."

"Why did you?"

He shrugged, a humourless smile tugging at his mouth. "When you convince yourself you want something bad, and it doesn't turn out the way you thought it was going to, it's kind of hard to admit to it," he answered. "For years, after the changelings, I thought of what she'd said to me, and wondered what it'd be like. I didn't really know about the day-to-day stuff, you know?"

"Like changing the light-bulbs? Taking out the trash? Worrying about the bills?" I offered lightly and he nodded, the tension in him lessening a bit.

"Groceries, diaper runs, PTA meetings, talking to Sid –"

"Friday night football? Summer barbecues? Watching Ben play in Little League?"

"Cleaning the gutters, cooking, income tax returns."

"Hmmm, raking the leaves, pruning the hedges, mowing the lawn –?"

"I liked mowing the lawn."

"You liked living there."

He caught his lip between his teeth, his gaze dropping for a long moment, the light-heartedness gone. "I put everything except one shotgun, one bottle of holy water and one bag of salt in the car, and I covered her up," he said quietly, moving the cart aside as a hassled-looking woman came up behind us. "I didn't look at her, or what was in the trunk for nearly a year."

He rubbed the heel of his hand over his forehead. "Most of who I was went into her as well. What was left…it wasn't really me. And I couldn't tell her what I'd done."

"You were afraid to? Afraid she'd stop loving you?" I asked him, as gently as I could. I still didn't understand how she could've loved him without knowing him.

He shrugged again, his expression uncomfortable. "She said it was the best year of her life," he said. "How the hell could that be?"

"What you gave was enough, I guess."

He looked at the cart. "Let's go."

We reached the check-out and waited for the large woman in front of us to get through her towering cart of groceries, three little kids laughing as they ran around her legs, under the guidance rails and in and out of the other shoppers. The woman let out a major-league sneeze, and Dean backed up the cart a couple of feet, nose wrinkling up.

I snorted softly at his reaction. "This is the normal world," I whispered to him.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

When we got back, staggering inside with loads of bags in our arms, Bobby let out a soft whistle.

"How many you planning on feeding?"

"Just being prepared," Dean said from behind three bags, finding his way to the kitchen through some other sense than sight.

I unpacked and he went back to the car for the rest. Bobby sidled up to me as I rearranged his cupboards.

"You okay with this?" he asked, watching me stack the beers in the fridge.

I finished and crumpled the bag in my hand. "I'm okay with seeing him smile," I told him. "Yeah."

He grunted some indecipherable response and turned away. I knew what he meant. He'd known Dean a lot longer than I had, had seen him grow up, had memories of him that I didn't know about.

We spent the afternoon reading. And by reading, I mean, poring over dozens of dull, dry, dense academic books about relative mythology, anthropological theses on cultural distinctions in end-of-the-world legends and numerous other similarly exciting topics, searching for any clues about the way people had once thought the different realms of Heaven, Hell and Purgatory could've interacted. Or anything about people getting plucked from their own world and deposited into another. Or anything about the tablets called the Word. There were a lot of things we needed to know.

Not one laugh, the whole time.

It was well after dark when I looked up and heard my stomach growling. I closed the book I was reading, having found out a lot of semi-useless information on the comparative mythology of Hell between the Church's texts in the Dark Ages and the writings of philosophers and poets in the period of Enlightment, but nothing that actually stated anything pertinent to the demons, the leadership thereof or how the place might be organised. I couldn't think of a good reason for Dr Visyak to have kept these darned books in the first place.

Getting up from the sofa, I walked into the kitchen and opened the fridge, deciding that we could all use a hit of red meat. Dean had bought several family packs of steak, and I lit the broiler, searched through the lower shelves for salad ingredients and starting assembling everything into some kind of meal, letting my thoughts wander as my hands did nearly everything automatically.

I hadn't really noticed it on the show, except, I considered belatedly, in the montage of his missing year, but Dean was actually a pretty tactile kind of guy. Even immersed in the most boring volumes ever to come off a printing press, he'd stayed close, his thigh along mine on the sofa, his hand occasionally reaching out, as if to check I was still there. I guess there really hadn't been much occasion to see it on the show, but I was finding it both reassuring and endearing here.

When the steaks were almost ready, the smells drifting from the kitchen brought everyone in and Bobby was last, still carrying a book, his eyes glued to the page as he found his place and sat down without looking.

Dean looked across the table at him. "What?"

"Dunno yet," Bobby mumbled, reading fast as the smell of his dinner wafted under his nose. "I might…might…have a lead on that tablet Crowley was so hot for."

He closed the book abruptly and set it beside his plate, looking from Dean to Sam. "Gawd, I'm hungry."

Dean's brows instantly drew together, Sam's forehead wrinkling up as they stared at him cutting a piece of meat.

"What!"

"C'mon, Bobby –"

"Eat first," Bobby said through his mouthful.

Even Lauren looked disgruntled as she turned her attention back to her plate. As for me, I wasn't all that keen to find out more about anything that'd had the demon practically rabid or that an angel didn't want to talk about. Call me chicken.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~