"Dean?"

Bela paused in her kitchen, placing the duffel and her luggage on top of the counter. She glanced at the refrigerator, rolled her eyes when she saw that the door wasn't all the way closed, and then stopped to listen for any noise that indicated that the elder Winchester brother was still around.

The sound of a low purr drew Bela down the hall and into her study, where she found Dean bent down on both knees, his stomach pressed up against the seat of one of her plush armchairs and his fingers massaging at her cat's neck.

"Honestly," Bela muttered under her breath, shaking her head. "Your brother's soul is trapped inside of a bottle and you have nothing better to do than play with my cat?"

Dean ignored her jab, instead shooting her a weak glare over his shoulder before cocking his head to the side and glancing at her cat's tag dangling from his collar.

"Peruggia," he read, slightly amused. "My guess is Vincenzo Peruggia? The guy that stole the Mona Lisa?"

A smirk slowly crossed Bela's face and she shrugged. "I just call him Peru, but essentially, yeah."

Dean gave the lazy Siamese one last scratch before standing up and stretching. Bela rolled her eyes at him but decided that she had better things to do than comment on his pure ridiculousness, such as heading down to the Impala and catching up on a few more hours of rest. The less she had to deal with Dean, the better. Even though her going with him was her idea, she wasn't very fond of it nonetheless. She was fond of the money that came with the drum, however; and she wasn't about to give that away to Dean Winchester for a simple measly, and, frankly, borderline pathetic, "please".

"So, Jane Austen, you ready to hit the road? Or can you not function without your tea and biscuits?" he grinned, taking his car keys out of his pocket and jingling them at his side.

"Funny. You should have your own stand-up routine," she drawled sarcastically, turning around and walking back down the hall.

Dean followed. "It was my second career choice. You know, just in case hunting wasn't really my thing."

"Oh, but stand-up comedy pays better, does it not? Fewer meals out of Midwestern gas stations and more people who appreciate what you do." She paused, put on her best annoy-Dean-Winchester smirk, and turned around to look at him. "But the traveling is all the same, isn't it?"

Dean childishly mocked her, mumbling her words in a goofy voice under his breath.

A few minutes later they were standing in front of the Impala, with Dean carelessly throwing her cream-colored suitcase into the back of the car and (thank god, the man had at least some sense in him) gently placing the duffel bag underneath the passenger's seat.

Once Dean got inside the car and began to put the key in the ignition, he noticed Bela squirming uncomfortably out of the corner of his eye. She was trying to fix her skirt around her thighs and the nylons that she was wearing were causing her to slide around on the smooth leather seats of the car. After what seemed like an immense struggle to get comfortable, she finally gave up, draped one of her legs over the other, and let out an annoyed sigh.

Dean rolled his eyes and shoved the key in to the ignition.

"God, I'm gonna regret this."

The Impala was uncomfortable and, for the life of her, she could not see how Sam and Dean Winchester managed to practically live out of the incessant car.

It was stuffy and, what she figured to be out of pure spite, Dean refused to let her roll down her window. To add on to that, the air conditioning was busted and had been since nineteen eighty-nine, and somehow the thought to fix the damn thing never crossed Dean's mind.

Also, there weren't any headrests. If she tried to lean back, her head flopped around and her neck threatened to break with every turn or bump the car took, making sleeping impossible unless she leaned against the car door and pressed the side of her face into the window.

To top it all off, Dean found her discomfort to be funny. At first he was a little annoyed by her, which was only to her satisfaction. She liked annoying him. It was a necessity of their relationship, whatever their relationship was. But once she started to become the source of his humor, her cheeks began to burn and she was no longer basking in the victories of pissing Dean Winchester off. She was just flat out uncomfortable.

After a while, she sat up and sighed frustratingly.

"Not up to your usual standards, sweetheart?" Dean chuckled, glancing at her out of the corner of his eye.

She smoothed a hand through her hair. "Frankly, I don't think it's up to anyone's standards." She paused. "Except for yours, which are incredibly low, I might add."

"I work with what I have," he smiled.

Bela brought up a finger to massage one of her temples. "I can clearly see that."

They drove in silence for a while. Bela noticed that he had placed Sam's bottle inside of one of the cup holders on the dashboard, the face engraved on it frowning back at her. She wondered if Dean purposely placed the thing turned towards her so that the creepy little face stared at her the entire ride. It certainly didn't seem out of his character.

She soon became very tired of Dean's mullet-music and reached over to turn the dial down. If they had to be in the car together, they may as well talk, even if that meant that most of their conversations would consist of traded insults and bickering like they were a married couple.

Dean glared at her hand as it turned down the volume. "What do you think you're doing? Don't ever touch a man's music, woman."

She narrowed her eyes at him, but ignored him nonetheless. "What did Bobby tell you about Aliyev?"

He shrugged, having recovered from the recent crack in his pride. "He didn't know much. I don't think anyone really does."

"Great," Bela sighed. "So you're pretty much going out on a limb?"

"I've pretty much already made that clear, but yeah," he answered, slightly impatiently. After a brief pause he spoke again, and this time in a voice that was much softer. "It's the only…semi-solid lead that I have on this. The drum seemed legit. The mythology was right. It was too promising to pass up."

Besides, there was nothing else to pass it up on, Bela thought to herself, figuring that right then wasn't the time to start bickering again. She wasn't daft. She knew that Dean was really worried about his brother; that he was only keeping up with her squabbling because it kept his mind off of his brother's potentially doomed fate.

Bela didn't say anything further, instead opting to try and make herself comfortable again. She found a semi-decent spot leaning against the door, with her shoulder crooked somewhere between the door and her seat and her head balancing on the door frame. Light was just beginning to form outside, so she guessed that the time was hitting somewhere between five and six o'clock in the morning. Had they been driving for that long already?

Thoughtlessly, her eyes drifted to Dean's side of the car, where she studied his profile. His jaw was set and his thumb kept drumming against the steering wheel, but not out of agitation; out of anxiety. She was good at reading people, and right now "scared" was written all over Dean's face.

She sighed softly, returning her eyes to the window. She felt sorry for him, she really did. Sam was all he had left. She knew what it was like to live life alone, without any friends or lovers, for that matter. Her parents were gone, but she didn't feel sore about that. Not at all. She just regretted that she never bothered to make any friends. The only companion she had was Peru, her cat, whom she loved, yes, but talking to a cat wasn't all that satisfying. Also, a cat didn't really give her any sexual release which, she somewhat hated to admit, a girl needed from time to time.

She looked over at Dean again. Despite the fact that he disliked her, she actually considered him somewhat of a friend. She didn't exactly hate him, or dislike him really; she found him amusing. He was easy to bother yet he also posed to be a challenge to her own witty character. He balanced her out. She liked to think that she balanced him out, too.

In her mind, she shrugged to herself. She and Dean Winchester were more alike than either of them thought, although Bela had a firmer grasp on the concept than her male companion did whatsoever. Or maybe he did realize it but refused to accept it simply out of his distaste for her. It seemed like something he'd do.

After all, he wasn't stupid, just stubborn.