Work Text:
Brad liked to tease her about her fear of the dark. “Come on, babe. I know you’re a badass. But you have to admit it’s kind of funny.”
From his perspective, probably—but she only manages a smile when he laughs. He wouldn’t believe her if she told him what was really out there. After all, she hadn’t.
So, she kisses him, and curls into his back, and only after his breaths even out with sleep does she sneak her laptop off the bedside table. If only she had the privilege others did—of checking up on their exes by typing “Dean Winchester” into a search bar on Facebook. Instead, she has to search local news stories from across the country, looking for what doesn’t fit—for brief mentions of federal agents with names that came off worn-out cassette tapes.
Still, it doesn’t take her long. She’s a reporter—and damn good at her job.
There, in the periphery of a photo, are familiar broad shoulders, angled towards a man in a trench coat. She’s seen this second man with him often and sometimes wonders what his story was—how he fits into the hunter life that she had refused to become a long-term part of. But then her eyes drift to Dean again.
She wonders if this is cheating—taking this much interest in a not-even-boyfriend of two weeks—but she isn’t doing it hoping to reconnect. With a new disaster in the world seemingly every week, she just needs to know that he’s out there—balancing the scales a bit.
The day she found a report that said he’d died, her heart had squeezed like clay. But then, two months later, she found him again—face reflected on a storefront window of a town that had seen three mysterious deaths of teenagers in the last week.
He seems to be taking on fewer cases now—and she wonders if a Dean Winchester in his forties has a house somewhere—if he goes grocery shopping and gets more than four hours of sleep at night. If he gets those four hours of sleep next to someone…
A yawn sneaks up on her—and she takes that as her cue to quit sleuthing for the night. As she tucks herself further under the covers, Brad automatically wraps around her, and she smiles—this time a genuine one.
/////
He’s here. Wearing plaid under a green canvas jacket. And while he looks good, she misses when he wore leather.
His outfit suggests he isn’t here playing Special Agent. She probably wouldn’t blow his cover by going over to him at the bar and saying ‘hi.’ But she can’t help watching a little more.
He smiles and places his order with the pretty bartender, smirking at the way that she obviously checks him out, but not returning it. Interesting. But it has been almost twenty years. She can’t expect to know what he’s like now when she never really had an idea who he was then.
Eventually, he’s joined by the tall drink of water that is his brother. He seems to finally have grown into his size—no longer trying to make his presence small from inside his body. Cassie decides she likes the long hair.
She’s glad to see them together like this. When Dean came into her life the first time, he didn’t say much about his brother. But she knew how to read between the lines. Could tell that even when Sam wasn’t a part of his life, he was a big part of him—of Dean—that he wouldn’t share with anyone else.
Sam suddenly stands up. He shouts “Cas!” over the clang of beer bottles and the whispers of flirting—and she startles a little bit in her seat. But no, Sam is looking in the other direction, towards the door—and she spots a man she’s only ever seen before in pictures.
He is still in a suit and coat—which might be part of the reason he looks out of place—but there is an energy about him that makes her think he'd always stand out no matter what he's wearing. And if that electricity didn’t get him noticed, the blue of his eyes surely would—because, woah, those are something.
This Cas—which, coincidence?—pulls up the stool next to Dean. The hunter quickly gestures for him to take off his coat and, with apparent impatience for how slowly he is dressing himself down, takes it upon himself to loosen his tie. Cas smiles almost guiltily at this little touch—and suddenly, Cassie gets the tingly feeling that comes from finally figuring out what’s missing from her articles.
Her friend, Alyssa, finally comes back from her trip to the bathroom, which, by the look of her, took a detour by way of something cute. “Ooh, who ya checking out?” she asks, following Cassie’s gaze while twirling her drink with a cocktail straw. She raises her eyebrows appreciatively. “This place has some good pickings tonight. Want me to play wing woman?”
But Cassie is already shaking her head.
Because as the trio of men grab their drinks and claim a pool table for themselves, she watches Dean watch Cas. Watches Sam snort a laugh at something the two of them are talking about so that beer about comes out of his nose. And she doesn’t need to know who—or what—Cas is to know who he is to Dean. The matching rings on their left hands just prove it.
Suddenly, Dean looks up. His green eyes scan the room, flickering over where she and Alyssa sit, and she holds her breath, waiting.
She remembers their last goodbye. He’d said, “I’ll see ya, Cassie…I will,” with so much conviction that she knew he believed it—just as she had been equally convinced that the two of them weren't meant to be. To prove her point, his eyes pass over her to the clock on the wall without pause--and her heart unclenches slowly.
“You’re not still thinking about Brad, are you?” Alyssa chides, touching her on the shoulder with red-stained nails. “You can’t keep living in the past, you know.”
Cassie reaches for her martini and drinks deeply. “You’re absolutely right.”