Chapter Text
When he first heard the knock, Dean was pretty sure he was still sleeping; it must have been residual noise from an in-between conscious state of being. He was dreaming, or at least half way dreaming. He had to be. It was bedtime.
Then the knocks got louder, and suddenly they were all out, flat palmed bangs against the crappy hollow wooden door in his sketchy apartment complex. The clock read 3:47am in a blaring red that burned his retinas and he was not in the gotdamn mood.
“Fuck”, he grumbled beneath his breath, “are they serious?” he said to the empty air.
They must have been. Because they kept knocking.
Dean rolled off the bed and onto his feet, bare chest and legs cold from the sudden loss of warmth his bed covers allowed. He regretted leaving immediately, his mind reminding him of the 6am alarm that would be calling him to his back-breaking, boring as hell construction job. The thought gave him just the right amount of resentment mixed in with his exhaustion to cement the grimace on his face.
“This better be good and you better be dying whoever the hell you are!” his voice rasped with sleep, but he yelled anyways. And it was who-ever-the-fucks-fault.
He’d tell them as much.
He was going to.
Really.
Until he opened the door.
“I know it’s 3 in the morning, but I can’t find my cat.”
Dean tried to process all of her all at once, but he was overwhelmed by how good she smelled. Her face looked soft and dewy, the brown hues of her skin complemented even by the dim light in the hallway. And the super hadn’t changed those in months. She wore slippers and baggy plaid pajama pants with a faded t-shirt. Her dark curly hair was pulled up and off her neck, the long strands of her hair falling over her forehead. She was beautiful. Beautiful and distressed, her shiny brown eyes wide and her arms closing in around her, “I’m really sorry—we share a fire escape, and I’ve caught him down here before but your stairs are too narrow for me to climb down. I just wanted to know if I could look and—”
“Slow down”, he said and he needed it, squinting against the light bouncing off her in the hallway, “a cat? You’re bangin’ on my door at 3am for a cat?”
Her worried face turned defensive, a divot forming between her eyebrows, “yeah, I am.”
He put his hands up in defense, “you do know how crazy this is, right?”
“Yeah”, she said, impatient and shivering; she must have been cold, too. Good. “But I wouldn’t do this if it wasn’t important.”
He arched a very tired eye brow at her, racking his hand down his face, and hated himself for what he was about to say, “if I let you look, will you leave?”
She nodded, worrying her bottom lip and he couldn’t stop looking so he stepped to the side to let her in. “the fire escape is this way.”
“Thank you”, she sighed in relief, and the sound passed through him. He elected to ignore it.
While he was ignoring it, they were both reaching for the door, his hand bumping into hers, “sorry, uh—”
“Abbie”, she smiled, soft, and it reminded him of sunrise.
Honestly, he needed to go back to sleep.
“Abbie”, he said, feeling the word in his tired mouth, “here you go.”
He opened the door, and it all happened to fast.
“Icky—”
“Ic— what?”
“Wait…”
“WOAH!”
The cat sprinted into the apartment, black and sleek and holding the biggest dead rat in New York.
And then they were both screaming.
“What the FUCK!”
“Oh no, Icky---gross, oh my God”
And in the midst of the screaming and the crowding; what with Dean flipping on the lights and rushing towards the cat, and Abbie leaning in maybe too quickly to try and get Icky to drop the rat, he did.
He dropped it.
Dean’s cemented on grimace broke into shock and if he wasn’t before, he was fully awake, now, “It’s still alive?!”
The rat started running, the cat started running, and soon, Dean and Abbie were on top of his couch, feet falling between the cushions as they tried to escape the literal rat race.
“Oh my GOD—”
“What is happening…”
“Icky STOP!”
The rat jumped—high—and Abbie held fast to Dean’s arm, while Dean attempted to recoil from it, “Jesus Christ—cat, get the damn thing already!”
“Hey, he’s doing his best”, Abbie shouted.
Both of them looked on like you would a car wreck and could not turn away, “not fast enough.”
That divot between her brows, “So why don’t you get off the couch and do something?”
Dean’s face contorted in confusion, “You ever been toe to toe with a New York rat? Your cat is about to die.”
Abbie jumped down from the couch, narrowly avoiding the scurry and broke for the balcony door.
And the rat made a run for it, too.
“Shit!” Dean ran to grab his broom while Abbie tried to dodge the rat, her black cat on its tail.
As Dean predicted, the rat made a beeline for her, “Abbie!”
She looked up, and caught the broom stick in midair, getting into stance and swinging.
Thwack.
In the quiet that followed, the only thing you could hear over their breathing was the cat’s paws against the glass door.
And she starts laughing.
Dean wants to be mad, he does—but between the absurdity of what he’s just witnessed, the mild awe at her batting skills, and the cat…
He starts laughing, too.
Abbie’s laugh is full bodied, and she holds herself together, this time, with a sense of relief and ease. “I know it’s 3 in the morning—”
“Four”, Dean corrects, looking at the clock on his stove across the way.
Abbie rolls her eyes, locking them onto him, “four—but this is probably the most fun I’ve had all week. I’m sorry it had to happen in your living room.”
Dean nods, the smirk he wears unshakable, “you know what? I’m not.”
She grins, and he’s reminded of sunrise again. This time, though, he doesn’t ignore it, “hey…wanna do this again sometime?”
“This?”, she scoops up her cat, and laughs, “no.” She catches his fallen face, “but we can get coffee in the morning. My treat.”
Dean nods, “I think I can swing that.”
They’re laughs bounce off the empty walls in his apartment, making it all feel less hollow. And he likes the sound of that.