Why Won't You Stay

Chapter 2: Sick and Tired

Summary/ Author's Note: On with part 2, takes place right after Your Ex Lover is Dead. It's a short one but I thought I needed this explanation... it's a little sappy, a little cute and probably the least crazy that I've had Mae and Dean act together. I'm going somewhere with this, I promise!

Sick and Tired

"Oh baby
What you gonna do
Oh baby
What you gonna do
I'm sick and tired
Fooling around with you"

This had been going on for a while now and getting difficult to ignore. If Mae were smart, she would have just turned it off. But then what it if were something important? She eyed her cell phone with a suspicion. Even her favorite Boz Scaggs ringtone was beginning to put her on edge. It was best she not listen to the lyrics. As the phone started up its song and dance, she grabbed it off the table. "What?"

"Jeeze Mae, I was beginning to worry."

Mae frowned as she rested the phone between her shoulder and ear, picking up her gun to clean it. What was Dean playing at, she wondered. Not being at each other's throats did not mean everything was fine again. "There's nothing to worry about."

"Do you think you could at least try to be…?"

"Try to be what?" Mae asked, a little annoyed at this point.

He let out a breath against the microphone. "I don't know. Nice maybe?"

"You want me to be nice?"

"Well… it's been nearly a month. Surly by now you've decided if I'm dead or not. And you haven't given me a call or shot me yet so…" As he trailed off Mae could feel her uneasiness grow.

She pressed her lips together. "I've been busy." This was exactly why she hated talking on the phone, particularly to Dean; she didn't know if her lies were landing.

"Busy?" The word was acrid, he nearly bit it out, and his laugh was just as cutting. "That's the best excuse you can come up with?"

"Excuse me but I'm pretty sure I don't need to come up with excuses that satisfy you. I have a life too Dean. It's not like…" Mae put down the gun she was cleaning and took a breath. It hadn't taken long for Dean to push her buttons and her dropped statement left a long period of silence. "Why are you trying so hard at this Dean?"

"Because I know you."

"You don't, okay? I am someone different, you are someone different. Why pretend otherwise?"

His voice softened and became less harsh "Yeah we're both different but… we're both the same too, the important things are the same."

"And just what do you judge to be important."

She could most certainly envision the smirk on his face as he answered. "I bet you still get weak in the knees when someone sucks on that spot just behind your ear lobe."

Rolling her eyes, she was glad he couldn't see the tiny smile that showed up on her lips. "That is not one of those… important things. That's not the reason you are still trying to… do whatever you're doing, is it?"

"Maybe, maybe not. But it is important for what I have planned next."

She scoffed, picking up the gun to start cleaning it once again. Just as quickly as he could bring her so close to the edge, he could push her back into her comfort zone. Talking with Dean was like playing a game of ping-pong. "You're just so sure I won't say no to you, aren't you?"

"I know you won't say no. You aren't good with no where I'm involved."

She rolled her eyes. "You are really so full of yourself, aren't you?"

"Well you know from personal experience how good that can be, don't you."? It wasn't a question, it was a statement. Mae had a feeling that while he was trying to get a rise out of her, there was more than a little truth in his words.

"Dude…" She shook her head even though she knew that he couldn't see her. Then came the heavy sigh "This is getting old Dean. I'm tired of… of not being able to just talk to you without all the..."

She felt deflated. It wasn't a new feeling. Dealing with Dean brought up so many uncomfortable issues for her, ones she was not ready to handle. And yet… he had this draw for her. Something that she couldn't hide.

"So, you do want to talk to me?" He asked

"You keep calling."

"You don't tend to answer. Why did you this time?"

Truthfully, she enjoyed the banter at some level when she didn't take it personally. She knew she shouldn't. The real question was why did she? She didn't have an answer. "I went to St. Louis. You're not dead. Ignoring you didn't work so it seems to me I only have one option."

"Talking to me is a last resort?"

"Talking to you seems to be a necessary evil."

"It doesn't hafta be."

"I wish it weren't, but you keep making it weird."

"Okay, fair enough."

She nearly did a double take with that one. Dean wasn't an unreasonable man but well, he was Dean and he didn't roll over like that. "So… why did you call this time?"

Dean was silent a while. It was so long that Mae pulled the phone away from her ear to check and see if there were still connected. "I seem to recall you asking me what the important things were."

Mae sighed, knowing there was something more important at hand, an actual reason he had called her, but it lay behind the insinuation and misdirection. Apparently one of those things that would never change, she thought. "Yes, I suppose I did."

"And you didn't like my first answer, did you?"

Fluidly, she went back to cleaning her weapon. It was calming now that the conversation had moved into a relaxed lull. "It wasn't a real answer."

"I don't know about that. I think there are certain… fundamental and physical things about us, as humans that are very important."

Sometimes his voice simply dripped with lust. Bedroom eyes? Hell, Dean had some pretty slick bedroom vocal cords. Mae shook her head. That wasn't what she wanted to think about. "Philosophy though sex, eh?"

"I didn't say that was about sex, I said it was fundamental things. The things you like, the things we like, those are most important."

She wasn't sure where he was headed with this but maybe he was right, maybe she could be 'nice'. At least she could make the effort to be sociable. After all, there were not a lot of people who understood the life. "Okay then."

"But you're right, there's more."

"More?"

"Yeah. Like, I know you still love thunderstorms. You probably still go out in the middle of them like a damn fool. You hate the smell of Vick's vapo-rub. You wouldn't tell anyone, but you love the color pink." That garnered him a laugh. "You used to love strawberry shampoo which is why I love strawberry shampoo, by the way. You don't really like chick flicks, but you love stupid comedies and Sci-Fi. You love French toast with Tabasco."

"Dean…."

"What, you gonna tell me I'm totally off base on all this?"

"No, I just… you remember all this?"

"Of course."

She shook her head. "Impossible."

"C'mon, I'm an observant guy."

"I know you are." She conceded.

"You just thought I'd forget you?"

"I-you don't have a good track record remembering most things about women."

"Women, maybe… not you."

"What makes me different?"

"Hell, if I know. You're a bigger pain in my ass than most?"

The both laughed that time. "If being a pain in the ass were all it took to keep us together…"

"No, you're different because we let ourselves have something real and yeah, part of it was sex but most of it was... friendship, right?"

"It was. But-"

"There's no but on this. I... it's not like we both have an abundance of friends to start throwing them away. And, I guess a big part of it is that we're both hunters. That makes it easier, doesn't it? We don't have to keep that secret."

"You've certainly thought about this a lot."

"I've had the time. Plus...you were right. I was mad at you because I didn't know what happened. I might have still been mad, for a while, had I known but I also would have wanted to help you. And I mean, you were upset, right? When I went along with that half-truth you were willing to use to push me away. When you realized how I felt and though about you."

"Yeah, I did." She said it very softly. He was right. It had upset her when his anger and the vitriol around what he'd felt was a betrayal had come to the surface.

"So, you can say you're busy or ignore me, whatever. But you still care on some level. Maybe you just care about how I see you or maybe you still care about me."

"Well..."

"It's okay. It's not like...Listen, I get it. It's easier in some ways to be like that. But it's harder to live that way."

"I, um, I've...I've spent the past few years doing, wellbeing the job actually."

"Oh, I've never dealt with anyone like that before."

"You're really coming out prepared for this, aren't you Deany."

"I'm just saying it seems stupid for us to keep pushing away."

"I get that. Logically, at least."

"I don't have an end goal here Mae. I don't anything from you except...we both made mistakes over the years and maybe this one we can work at fixing. Whatever that looks like."

"Are you gonna stop hitting on me?"

"Probably not. Unless you really want me to?"

"Be, like, 45 percent less gross."

"Okay."

"Okay?"

"Yeah… so what do you remember about me that you think is important?"

"The unchanging things? Well those are fairly obvious. You'd do almost anything to save anyone if you could and if that person mattered to you, then you would do anything. You can't stand rats because their tails are freakin' creepy. You can fix… almost anything. You'll never really admit…" She trailed off.

"What?" His inquiry was filled with desperation, as if her answer held the key to some mystery.

"You just don't see what other people see about you and so you hide it behind the worst."

"So, you… you just see the worst?"

"No. I've known you too long to be fooled by any of that. I may not like it, but I see if for what it is. And you're actually...kinda sweet. This… this is gettin' a little deep Dean."

He cleared his throat uncomfortably. "Yeah. Listen… I should let you go."

"Wait. That's why you called?"

"I just called to chat. Talk to ya later sweetheart." Mae gave an indignant huff as he chuckled and hung up. This was going to be damned annoying she realized.