Sam was sitting on the edge of the table, staring at the beer in his hand with an indecipherable expression on his face.
"I know. It was stupid, but I guess I just didn't know how to deal, so I did something drastic, something that I thought would help, but all I was really doing was burying myself in a hole."
Dani kept her eyes off Sam as she talked. She'd kept her eyes from his as she filled him in on what her life had been like for the past few months. When he asked and made it clear that he wouldn't let her get out of talking about it, she decided to bite the bullet and tell him how pathetic she had really been.
"I understand wanting to take a break from hunting. Sometimes it's helpful to recharge your batteries."
"It wasn't a break, Sam. I gave up and just decided that everything, saving people, hunting monsters, wasn't as important as me sorting through my own problems." She understood Sam's reasoning behind taking breaks, but that wasn't what she was doing when she decided that nobody else mattered but her. "Which wouldn't have been so bad if I had actually tried to get over them, but I didn't. I just relied on alcohol to get me through to the next day, just so I could wake up, hungover and sick to my stomach, and then start the whole process over again."
Sam sighed and she saw a frown cover his face from the corner of her eye. "I didn't realize how bad things had gotten."
"All because I wanted to throw myself a pity party, but," she said, hoping to turn the conversation into a more hopeful one, "those days are over. I'm done doing that to myself. I don't like that version of me. She was weak and felt alone and I never want to feel like that again, so I'm done pitying myself. I just want my old life back. I want to hunt, I want to have people who I can talk to, you know?"
Sam nodded before a smirk pulled at his mouth. "Like Chris?"
She glared at him, but couldn't hide the small smile that played on her face. "Not exactly."
Sam smiled and sat down in the chair next to hers. "Seriously though. I want you to know that I'm happy that you realized that you are strong enough to get over whatever was eating you up."
Dani shook her head. He couldn't have been that naive, right?
"What was eating me up was you, Sam. After we broke up, that's when I went down that path and it's not like I'm blaming you, because I'm not, but I just..." she sighed, crossing her arms over her chest. "I just wanted you to know the truth. The whole truth."
"You stopped hunting because of me?" he asked and she wanted to smack him.
"No, I quit hunting because I was an immature, whiny brat who couldn't deal with her emotions."
Sam frowned. "I'm really sorry."
"You have nothing to feel sorry for Sam. You did what you had to do; there's no shame in that."
"But I hurt you."
"Yeah, but sometimes that happens, you know? Sometimes life hurts, but I'll get better. I'm not the first girl to get dumped, and I won't be the last either. I'll get past it."
"I hope so," he told her, before taking another drink of his beer.
Dani cleared her throat and shook her head as she found her eyes lingering on the way Sam's adam's apple bobbed as drank down his beer. She looked down to her hands and sighed.
"I'm glad I came and picked you up," Sam told her and she couldn't help but to agree with him. "Even though I didn't give you a lot of options."
She smiled. "We both know how stubborn I can be, Sam. If I didn't want to come along, I never would have left with you. Plus you needed help with Dean. I couldn't turn my back on something as important as that."
"That's true, I guess. I'm still glad you came with me."
"Me too." she told him, quietly.
"Really?"
"Yeah, I kinda missed this."
"Missed what, exactly?" Sam asked and leaned closer, but not as close as she would have liked.
"Being in the bunker," she told him, biting her bottom lip. "Distracting you while you are working a case." She smirked.
Sam sent her a matching smirk. "You were always good at distractions."
"Of course. Sometimes distractions are needed in order to clear your mind."
Sam nodded. "Like right now." She agreed. "It's good to see you back in the bunker. After you left that night, at that motel, I thought you'd never be back here. I'm happy I was wrong, because honestly I've been going out of my mind here all by myself."
She gave him a sympathetic look. "I bet. That sounds awful."
"The worst part is that I couldn't watch Game of Thrones all that much, not that it would have kept my attention anyway."
She nodded and rolled her eyes. Sam and his love of shows that she didn't understand.
"Just so you know, I was only partially listening to you early when you were trying to catch me up to where you are."
"Why just partially?" he questioned.
She froze up, forgetting for just a moment that Sam wasn't aware of how much she hated that show.
"Um, well..." She shrugged. "I never really liked that show."
Sam's eyes widened as he looked her in the eyes. "You don't?"
She shook her head. "Sorry."
"Why didn't ever tell me?"
"Because you liked it and it was part of my job as your girlfriend to suffer in silence, which wasn't all that horrible, so don't feel bad."
"You lied to me?"
"No, I just withheld information from you."
Sam's lips formed a smile and she smiled back, feeling good that she could make him feel just a little bit less lousy.
"Anything else that you withheld from me?" he asked, narrowing his eyes in on her.
She bit her bottom lip and pretended to think real hard. "Remember how I couldn't fall asleep unless the TV was on all night?" Sam nodded, urging her to continue. "That was a lie, the truth is that you snore a lot in your sleep, so sometimes I would turn on the TV, just to drown out the very loud noise."
He sat up straight in the chair. "Wow." He chuckled.
"Yeah, sorry, but I gotta say, I don't miss your snoring at all, Sam." She looked at him, a little worried that he would take her joke to heart, like she was saying that she didn't miss him, but she saw him smile and knew that he hadn't.
"Sorry to be such a pain in your ass."
She shrugged. "You made up for it."
"Really, how so?"
"Breakfast in bed was always enough to make me forgot that just hours earlier, I wanted to smother you with a pillow."
He laughed and grabbed the deck of card, idling shuffling them. "That's good to know, I guess, but was my cooking skills the only good thing about me?"
She wanted to scoff at him, but she didn't. "No, in fact, you were good at quite a few things," she told him, not meeting his eyes, because she knew the implication in her words and it almost made her want to cringe at how awkward she had made things between them.
"Yeah, so were you," he told her, not even trying to pretend that he wasn't looking right at her. She felt her cheeks burn and cleared her throat and shaking her head a little.
"So anything you withheld from me?" she asked, knowing that while their conversation was anything, but riveting, she knew that it was helping to distract him.
"You sure you wanna pull on that thread?"
"Sure. Fire away."
"I always hated," he stopped making eye contact with her, "the scent of your shampoo."
"Really?" she giggled. That wasn't so bad. "What's wrong with it?"
"Too fruity. It was like I was sleeping next to a human-sized pineapple."
She smiled and nodded her head. "Okay, well, is that all or is there more?"
"Unlike me, you aren't a great cook."
"That is not news to me, but you always ate the food that I made for you and told me it was amazing."
"I lied." He shrugged with a smile, making her giggle again.
"Wow." She shook her head. "Should have said something."
"I was just doing my job as your boyfriend, but I almost told you several times that your spaghetti and meatballs were undercooked. And you should also know that Dean hated your apple and pecan pies, but never said anything because I would bribe him."
It was silent for a few moments, before they both began to laugh and although the laughter didn't last for long, it still made Dani feel better than she had in months.
"Well I promise never to cook you guys food ever again."
"And I promise that we won't be disappointed," Sam said, dealing out cards.
"What game are we playing?"
"Go Fish, duh."
She bit the inside of her cheek and tried to keep her expression neutral, but it wasn't easy, especially when Sam knew that Go Fish was the card game they we were playing when she and Sam shared their first kiss.
Dani played a few hands, before Sam got up and stretched, pulling his phone from his pocket. "I should get back down there."
She nodded shuffling the cards. "It's the last one, right?"
"Yeah, but I just want to get down there and try and talk to him again. See if the injections are actually working on him. I'll be back once it's done though." He turned to leave, but stopped. "FYI, Cas could be showing up at any minute."
Dani found herself smiling. She'd missed Cas a lot.
"I haven't seen him in so long. How is he?"
"Not great, but he's strong. You know Cas, he'll pull through," he told her with a smile, but she wasn't sure if Sam was trying to convince her of it or himself.
"Good," she said, with a nod, not wanting to keep Sam from the job that awaited him.
He gave her one last smile before leaving the room, but going in another direction, not near the dungeon. She wondered where he was going, but she quickly figured it didn't matter. What did matter was that she was proud of herself for the first time in a while.
She smiled, proud of herself that she was able to have a real conversation with Sam. She'd forgotten that she didn't need to worry about sharing things with Sam, because he wasn't the type to judge her and she should've known that the only person who could judge her the most was herself, certainly not Sam.
While waiting for Sam to return, she decided to try and clean up as much as she could. Sam had apparently been trying to find every single thing he could in order to find Dean, because books were laid all over the other table in the room, along with some glasses. She couldn't blame him. Alcohol did take the edge off.
She gathered the books and walked around, trying to figure where their correct spot was, but she couldn't figure out the system Sam used for organizing all the books they inherited from the Men of Letters, so she decided to just place them in a neat pile on a small table next to one of the bookshelves. Sam would figure out where they went later.
She gathered the many glasses and made her way towards the kitchen. Once inside she began doing the dishes, the whole time planning out what she was going to do once Dean was cured and his normal, human self again.
She was just finishing up her last glass, when she heard footsteps headed towards her. She figured it was Sam, so she turned around the glass still in her hand. She hoped he'd be back with good news.
But Sam wasn't the one who had approached her; it wasn't even Cas. Her eyes widened and her breath caught in her throat when her eyes landed on his bright green ones.
I know this was a short chapter, but it needed to be. The next one will be a little longer. Let me know what you think!