"There's no way," Sam smiles while he denies her bold statement she just made. "Just… no way."

She puts down her glass of red wine on the small table and gives him a slack jawed look of shock across to him for not believing her. "It's true!"

"Nope," Sam laughs out.

"I lie not, Sam. It's totally true."

"You're such a nerd!" Sam belts a chuckle as he takes the white linen napkin off of his lap and places it onto the table cover with a red and white checkered tablecloth. "I can't believe it!"

Blushing, Rina rolls her eyes. "Well, believe it. I was so obsessed with Magic the Gathering that it's shameful now. I played seriously for years."

"Oh my God," Sam barely gets out, holding his stomach as it aches a little. Rina a Magic fan!? No fucking way. "I never would have ever thought it."

"I created the first Magic club in my middle school," she continues to easily admit to him. "It's still going last I checked."

"Wow," Sam sighs as he takes a deep breath when his laughter subsides. "You must have blown those poor dorks' minds."

"Why?" Rina laughs in question.

"Because look at you!" he says while gesturing to her physical appearance. "You look like that! You are not their normal kinda girl."

"Please. I looked nothing like this when I was a kid! Sam, I was so unaware of anything about myself back then. Huge glasses, frizzy hair, big buck teeth… I was a hot mess!"

"You're the ugly duckling?"

"Did you just call me ugly?" she asks with narrowed eyes.

"Nope," Sam smiles back. "I called you the beautiful swan."

"Ok, you redeemed yourself," she laughs a bit with his answer.

"You… wow, you're so not the type to love stuff like Magic to me," Sam says, still shocked with what she's told him.

"Oh boy, I'm a total nerd at heart," she reassures. "It's terrible."

"Alright then, what else is there nerdy about you?" Sam asks while taking a sip from his own wine glass. He's never been a wine drinker but Rina ordered them a bottle at the small, casual Italian place he found locally on his phone and assured him it was good as she knew the specific vintage. He wasn't going to argue and if he was being honest, he liked it well enough.

"Well, I am totally in love with the Harry Potter book series," she tells him right away.

"So was Jess," Sam says before even really think about what he's saying. "Oh, um, Jess… is my old college girlfriend."

"And she never got you to read them?" Rina asks with shock.

"No."

"She must have tried though," she says with sheer confidence.

"She did," Sam smiles, remembering how hard Jess tried to get him into the whole world of Hogwarts.

"I knew it!" Rina exclaims with utter happiness. "No adult reads those books without trying to get everyone they know to read them too. They're so good and so addicting and I always needed people to talk about them with. I read the first one in two days' time."

"Those books are huge!"

"I know! But I couldn't put it down! I even skipped studying for a chem test to finish it up."

"Did you fail!?"

"By my standards, yes," Rina rolls her eyes with another sip of wine. "Got a B."

"So you were a good student other than when a new Harry Potter book came out?" Sam surmises as he watches her tuck her hair behind her ear with shyness.

"Yeah, I was good," she grins coyly.

"How good?" Sam pries, feeling there's more to it and she's being modest.

"Well, I was salutatorian of my high school," she says to him, catching the look on his face. He's totally impressed. "And I got a full ride to the University of Michigan."

"What?" Sam asks with pleasant shock.

"And Chapel Hill."

"Both!? That's great!"

"It's not too bad," she tries to be modest.

"Where did you end up going?"

And this is where she pauses. Taking a large sip of her wine to kill the rest of the glass, she then reaches for the bottle on the table. "None of them."

As she pours a second hefty glass, Sam lets the idea settle in for a moment.

"You didn't go to either of those schools?" he finally asks once he grasps everything fully.

"Nope."

"You know I'm going to ask why."

"Of course," she tells him, another large gulp of wine following. "I couldn't."

"Why not?"

"My family needed me."

Inhaling sharply with her comment, Sam just pauses as his heart beats rapidly. Did she really just say that?

"I know I made the wrong decision," she starts. "It's true and I know that I made the biggest mistake of my life by skipping college. You don't have to say it."

"Wasn't going to," Sam tells her as he shockingly understands her all too well.

"Yes you were! Everyone always does!" she says exasperatedly. "But I just couldn't leave them. My family is old fashioned gypsy. You stick with the beliefs and you stay in the family business. I just… couldn't leave. Didn't have the heart or strength to."

This is surreal. Totally surreal. He's hearing his life with a different decision.

"This is… crazy," he shakes his head. "Rina, this is my story exactly. Well, I made a different choice but still."

The sincere surprise on his face makes her curious. "What do you mean?"

"I got a full ride to Stanford and I was pressured not to go by my family," he explains to her. "Hunting is the family business. My Dad was so pissed when he found out I got in. He wanted me to stay with him and Dean to find the thing that killed mom and we blew up in this huge fight. I know that if it wasn't for Dean, Dad would have kicked my ass over it."

"But at least Dean must have been excited for you," Rina wonders. "He's your best friend. That must have made him so proud."

"He was happy and he wasn't," Sam says, the guilt of the whole scenario being felt with the mention of his brother. "Of course he was proud. I mean… Dean's one of the biggest reasons I got into Stanford. He always made sure I did my school work when I was little and taped my good grades to the motel walls when we didn't have refrigerators. Hell, he even took over most of Dad's chores for us on most days to make sure I had time for all my homework when I was older and had all AP classes."

"He's a good brother," Rina smiles with the way Sam talks about him.

"He is… but he wasn't when I left. As much as Dean wanted to be proud, it was also a really big shock. I didn't tell them until the moment I left for school out of fear and all through the fight with Dad Dean kept trying to get us to stop. I don't remember what he was yelling over us but I just remember his face. It was… so scared and hurt. We only ever had each other our whole lives and I was leaving. To him it wasn't just about improving myself. It was about me ditching him. And the way I actually left was… regrettable."

"What did you do wrong?" Rina wonders, completely wrapped up in what he tells her. He's strong for doing what he did, which is something she just couldn't be back then.

"After the fight with Dad I was in a… rage," Sam continues. "I went to my room in this old small house dad had rented for the month and packed up what little I owned on the spot. Dean followed me and stood in the doorway, just glaring at me while I shoved all my stuff in a couple duffels. I remember asking him to say something instead of just stand there and instead he only looked at me with this weird face I'd never seen on him before." That expression will never leave his memory as he recalls it once more. "He looked so damn hurt and desperate. He thought I was being selfish by breaking up our family for what I wanted. He saw this as me abandoning him, leaving him with just Dad."

Sam gulps down the rest of his glass before continuing.

"I told him it wasn't about him and he just rolled his eyes at me. I even told him that I was doing this because of him, that this was something he helped make happen for me. He then… Dean told me he was proud of me. He's told me that before a million times but that time… was different. He meant it more or something. Then in the next breath he asked me not to go. You know, I've never seen him so damn conflicted in my life."

"Well I can tell you from experience that you made the right choice," Rina chimes in, giving her reassurance where she can. "I regret not having the guts to leave like you did."

"Yeah, well, you'd also have to deal with having your family hate you," Sam returns.

"They didn't hate you, Sam."

"They did," Sam confirms. "I didn't talk to Dean for four years, the whole time I was at Stanford. He didn't call and I just didn't have the nerve to either. I knew I didn't want to talk to Dad after the fight since he ended it with telling me never to come back once I left. And I listened. But Dean…" He sighs and rolls his eyes. "I had to pick getting out of hunting and losing my brother for what I assumed was life or staying with Dean and hating the life I led. That right there was the most impossible decision I ever had to make."

"But even if life pulled you right back into hunting anyways, in the end you got your brother back and you got to have four good years away from it all to find out who you are." She looks for the upside through it all just to keep Sam in some kind of positive frame of mind. "That has to mean something to you."

"Yeah," Sam huffs a small smile. "And it's true. There's no getting out, I know that now. But Dean will always be there for me. I know that now too. He'll always support me."

"Trust me when I tell you that it's a rare and beautiful thing to have your family with you and love you like that. I have a sister who I barely know," Rina tells him. "We never really got along well and once we were older and mature enough to enjoy the other's company… she had her own life and I had mine. She got bold and went to college, which is the equivalent of disowning our kin much like it was for you. It's a shame too because I actually like the person she turned out to be. I would love to have her be my best friend like Dean is yours. You're lucky."

"Yeah," Sam agrees. He is pretty lucky in some aspects of life, he'll admit it. "You could always call her."

"I don't know…" Rina looks down at her glass.

"Hey," Sam calls to her and she looks back up to him. "You've helped me so much. Let me help you. Call her. It will be worth it. She's you're family and I have a feeling she'd love hearing from you."

Rina picks up the wine bottle and pours what's left of it into Sam's now empty glass and changes the subject. "So you know about my nerdiness. What about you? You seem like a closet nerd yourself."

"Do I?" Sam smiles as he's happy for the lighter mood and he's fairly sure she will at least try and call her sister with his suggestion.

"Definitely," she giggles a little. "What's your guilty pleasure nerd thing?"

"Um, I've read the Lord of the Rings book trilogy about ten times all the way through," Sam admits with a grimace.

"Uh!" Rina sighs with utter love. "Best damn series ever written! Ah, besides Harry Potter, of course."

"I know!" Sam smiles out and picks up his glass, ready to speak nerd to the woman across the table from him that the more he finds out about the more he finds himself not ready to ever leave her again.

"Dean?" Lizzy calls out in the dark, dank basement halls of the general hospital. They knew the wraith was working out of Baptist Memorial and for what they'd been able to ascertain in just one day's time it liked to lurk near the morgue where the least amount of traffic occurred.

They'd gotten separated while trying to find the thing and the plan was to meet back in the morgue to check it out together. However, she's been waiting for him for far too long for her comfort. She now just hopes that he's ok and just caught up by hospital workers and not their monster.

She takes out her phone to call him when she hears the footsteps coming. Hiding quickly around a corner, she presses her back into the wall while pocketing her phone again. Tight grip on the silver knife in her hand she sighs with relief when a doctor walks right past her and into the office at the end of the hall. She shakes her head when the door shuts and starts her trek back down the hall to find Dean when something pulls her backwards by the shoulders.

"A hunter," a male voice coos in her ear once she's caught with the wraith's arm around her neck in a head lock. He grabs the wrist of the hand holding her only fatal weapon. "You people are so damaged that it looks like I'm going to eat well tonight."

"Fuck you," Lizzy struggles out as the arm around her throat tightens. Once she says a quick, silent prayer that male wraiths have the same equipment as human men, she stomps on top of his foot as hard as she can manage before ducking under the headlock. She quickly turns, her wrist still in the wraiths hard grasp, and aims a swift, powerful kick right between its legs. It doubles over in instant pain immediately and she stows away this newly learned information for possible later use.

Lizzy yanks back her arm and twirls the sliver knife in her hand until it's gripped tightly, dagger side down. She steps forward swiftly, knife raised, when she's surprisingly tackled into the nearest wall when the wraith rushes her with a shoulder into her stomach. She hits it hard, her head thudding into the cement.

"Ah!" she groans with pain before she's flipped around. With a forearm pressed into the back of her neck and the body of the wraith forced against her, she's pinned. He then grasps hard onto her wrist once more and smashes it into the hard wall several times in a row, forcing her to drop the weapon.

"Well, this has been fun," the wraith speaks into her ear as he raises his now free arm into her view. With her cheek pressed against the cold concrete, Lizzy panics a bit as she watches the spike extend from its wrist. "But I'm hungry and you smell like a head case. It's dinner time."

Breathing hard with her increased heart rate, she swallows hard and tries to fight back, pushing away from the wall with all her might, but the wraith is much stronger than her.

As she waits for the pain to start as she never gives in fully and keeps fighting, Lizzy's shocked when instead she gets a loud shout of horror in her ear instead blinding pain on her skull. Soon after the creature slips to the floor and she's freed from her pinned position. She turns around to see Dean standing behind her, now bloodied silver knife in hand as he looks down at the heaped body on the floor.

"About God damned time!" she shouts at him, her adrenaline now forcing her high fear level to morph into anger. "I was almost brain-sucked!"

"Saved your ass didn't I?" he asks her while holding his hands out to the sides and shrugging.

"Yeah, right after I pretty much kissed it goodbye! Fuck! What took you so fucking long!? I was a goner!"

Dean crouches low to hold the point of the wraith's spike and breaks it off, effectively making the body look like that of a regular human. He then pockets the appendage and looks up at her with annoyance. "You done?"

"You're an asshole!" she shouts through her still flying anger and anxiety. "And yeah, I'm fucking done."

"Good," Dean answers while wiping the blood off his silver knife on the wraith's white doctor's coat. "Because we have to jet."

They both start heading down the hallway and towards the back entrance of the hospital where the car is parked. After a few minutes of speed walking and carefully peeking around corners before heading down corridors, Lizzy's remorse starts to get to her.

"You're not an asshole," Lizzy quietly tells him while following close behind.

"I know," he smirks easily, knowing she never really meant it.

"And you did save my ass," she adds as they reach the exit.

"I know that too," he grins at her with a little eyebrow lift as he holds open the exit door for her.

"Great," she complains while walking through, reading his expression for exactly what it is. "You're gonna tell me I owe you now, aren't you?"

"Damn straight," Dean confirms as he pulls out his keys and unlocks the driver's side. This has become their ongoing game. If one saves the other from a close call then the saver is owed big time by the savee. The debt is usually owed in sexual favors that the saver requests. It always makes life more interesting and really, it was an excuse to have some fun sex for them.

"Fucking awesome," Lizzy bites back acridly as she drops into the passenger side and looks across the seat at him. "What'll it be this time?"

"Hmm, I don't know," Dean says as he starts to think it over while driving away from the hospital as fast as he can.

"Not the usual!?" she asks with surprise.

"You gonna miraculously say yes to the usual this time?" Dean peers at her quickly, the hope on his face clear as day.

"No," she laughs. "I'm just so used to you immediately trying for some back door lovin' every time I owe you. Without fail you ask every fucking time."

"Maybe I've learned that the answer never changes so I'm starting to give up," he tells her. "Though maybe I should go the other way. Maybe if I ask too often you'll just eventually give in and say yes out of sheer annoyance."

"Oh you should totally try that," Lizzy falsely encourages with sarcasm. "I'm not at all hard headed or stubborn."

"Such a pain in my ass," he tells her though the affection in his voice gives him away.

"And I'm sorry baby but I am certainly not looking for a pain in my ass… literally." She laughs hard at this.

He rolls his eyes at her lame comment. "Or maybe I'll just slip up one time…" he tells her, reaching a hand across the car to slip under her and grab her ass. "You know, just go in for the kill and… oops, wrong hole…"

"You're seriously gross!" Lizzy swats away his hand.

"And you're a fucking prude," Dean complains as he returns his hand to the wheel.

"Please! You know how untrue that is!"

"Then prove it," Dean tries one last time.

She just stares at him for a beat before shouting, "You're fucking hopeless!"

Dean laughs at her for that one, loving when he can get the better of her and get her all worked up.

"You know I bet Rina would let Sam fuck her ass," Dean says through the absurdity of the thought.

"You really think that's what happening right now?" Lizzy laughs out, knowing Rina is most likely not the type to do such a thing.

"For Sam's sake I hope so," Dean comments as he drives towards their motel.

"Well, sorry for you Hot Shot. Guess you shouldn't have been so blessed with the heat your packing," Lizzy explains her refusals. "It's a little intimidating."

"I'll get you give in," he confidently says to her. "You'll see."

"Oh will I?" Lizzy laughs at his confidence.

"Mark my words, L. Someday it'll happen," Dean assures her. "Mark my words."