Work Text:
Tears stung in your eyes. Your right hand released its tight grip on the stirring wheel for a second to wipe them away. Lips were tightly pressed together. Headlights heading your way started to blur together. Rage was ripping through your core.
Dean’s eyes had a spark as they followed you walking around a pool table. You leaned over the edge, elbows resting on the green velvet covering the table, smooth wood gliding through your fingers. His gaze didn’t leave you for a second. He couldn’t help himself but walk over. Last second, he refrained from gliding his hand around your waist. Instead, he leaned against the table next to you.
“Wanna make this interesting sweetheart?”
Electricity ran through you. Even in the dim lit smokey room, the green of his eyes seemed unreal.
“What did you have in mind?”
A grin spread across his face. “If I win, I get to take you home, if you win, I’ll do whatever you want me to.”
“What if I don’t want anything from you? I don’t even know your name.”
“It’s Dean but tonight I can be anything you want.”
“Well, aren’t you damn confident, Dean.”
You took the next exit. As soon as you reached a dirt road in the middle of nowhere, you slammed the breaks, slammed the door shut behind you. You let out a scream. Beside the stars above you, there was no one listening to you. A sob crept up your throat and you forced it back down.
You let your back rest against the car. You took a deep breath. Cold air that smelled like hay and freshly cut grass filled your lungs. It was like breathing for the first time. The next sob just slipped out.
You screamed a second time at the stars and got back in the car.
Strong hands held you against his body. The windows of the Impala were fogged up. It didn’t matter, the parking lot behind the bar was empty as a weak, pale sun came up, reflecting in the tiny droplets running down the glass.
Dean whispered sweet nothings in your ear and just for now you let yourself believe them.
After that he didn’t call. You didn’t either. Dean was a stranger again and you were fine. On a cursed autumn day, you ran into him again, two states over, in line for coffee. There was genuine joy on his face when he recognized you.
“Funny, seeing you here.” It was nice seeing him again. He hadn’t lost bit of his charm in sober daylight.
“I’m here with my brother, we have a job.”
“Didn’t know you had a brother.”
“Oh that didn’t come up when I gave you the best night of your life last time?”
“Get over yourself.”
The map on the passenger seat was hard to read in the dark. Still you could make out the general route you had picked out. With every mile you put between you and him you felt like coming out of a haze.
The next three times you met by chance, you could still lie to yourself and pretend this wasn’t somehow weird, like you were destined to keep running into each other, like you hadn’t started to catch feelings, like this wasn’t important and like you weren’t actively looking for Dean everywhere you went.
“This is weird, right? That we keep running into each other.”
“I’ve seen weird, and this ain’t it, sweetheart.”
“Right. You keep saying stuff like this and I never know what that means.”
“I’m not sure I can tell you. Might make you run for the hills.”
“You don’t think by now maybe it’s destiny?”
Dean tensed up. “I’m not a big fan of destiny.”
“Alright…still we keep deciding to do this. No one forcing us. You never call, I never do and yet here we are.”
“Maybe you’re stalking me.” He grinned, you didn’t.
“Don’t you think I’d know what you do for a living if I’d be stalking you?”
“I mean you’re around the oddest of places and I don’t know what you do for a living either.”
“Difference is I don’t talk about it because there is nothing to talk about, it’s boring. You don’t talk because you don’t want me to know.”
After a while you added: “I don’t need to know. It’s fine. Maybe this is all it is and maybe that’s fine.”
Dean ran his fingers along your face, caressing it. “I don’t know what it is, but it’s not nothing. I just don’t want to have to lie to you, or put you in danger, or hurt you.”
“There you go again, saying weird shit.” This time you grinned, and Dean didn’t.
Just a few hours to go and you’d be free. Your phone kept buzzing on the passenger seat. A quick glance revealed the name on the display. You grabbed it, lowered your window and left it to the mercy of the highway gods. The first sting of regret quickly subsided and was replaced by bitter self-righteousness.
The phone had immediately stopped buzzing as it hit the asphalt.
It finally stopped buzzing as you picked it up from the nightstand. The clock showed something after three in the morning.
“Dean?”
“Hey.”
“Is everything alright? Why are you calling?”
Why indeed. You had already thought about deleting the number. You hadn’t used it, not even once in the thirteen months since you had saved it under ‘dean w’. Neither had Dean W. Not until now.
Immediately, you knew he was drunk.
“I just wanted to call.”
“Right, why?”
“Just wanted to hear your voice. It’s nice hearing a familiar voice…”
“Are you ok?”
“Am now.”
“I’m just not sure what this means?”
“Just means, I’m thinking about you and wanted to tell you.” You could hear he was smiling as he was talking.
“Where are you?” You stared at the dark ceiling trying to picture him.
“Arizona…”
You sat up straight. “Me too, what city?”
“Phoenix.”
For a few seconds you didn’t speak. There was no chance in hell, you were in the same city again.
When you didn’t respond, Dean seemed to have forgotten what you had been talking about.
“I know I said before that this wasn’t nothing and I just wanted to tell you it’s definitely something. And my life has been dark and a lot of bad things happened and right now you seem like the only thing untouched by that and maybe you were right. Maybe for once I can have something good. You are something good. I want you.”
Click.
Your hand had moved faster than your brain and hung up. The adrenaline made your cold hands sweat and tremble. You were at a crossroads. You wanted Dean. The problem was, for the first time you thought that maybe you could love him. Dean W, ethereal, green eyes, good at pool, better in bed, somehow always there, sweet, sarcastic Dean.
It took a whole day for you to gather the courage to tell him. Dean may not have believed in destiny, but you sure did.
The sky behind you was turning grey, like it does, just before the break of dawn.
“Fuck destiny.” You muttered under your breath.
It didn’t even cross your mind for a second that Phoenix was a huge city and you had no idea where Dean was. You drove around for an hour before spotting the Impala. Had you not been so busy going over what you wanted to say to Dean, had you maybe registered what kind of establishment the Impala had been parked in front of. The only thing on your mind was Dean. You wanted to tell him, kiss him – he was slipping the dancer in front of him a hundred dollar note – kill him.
You froze. Like a nightmare the scene unfolded in front of you. Destiny had lead you right here, right now. Before you could decide to fight or flight, Dean turned his head, looking right at you. You couldn’t move. There was no fight, no flight, just freeze. He was right in front of you, talking, different emotions flashing on his face and you didn’t register any of it.
“…thought you hung up because…rejected me…didn’t know…”
“I have to go.” After a hundred years, finally, flight kicked in.
Next thing you sat in your car, driving west. The life you had pictured and built up in the last couple of hours crumbled right in front of you. By the time the sun had set, the shock was long gone. The embarrassment felt palpable. Men like Dean were made to be loved, or to love but never both. Destiny, the biggest traitor of them all had pulled its strings, laughing up its sleeve. You felt naïve for thinking Dean was anything but unattainable. He was larger than life.
By the time the first rays of sunshine came up, you could already see them reflect in the ocean. The moment your bare feet touched the warm sand, calm came over you. The waves of the pacific washed it all away. Dean’s taste was replaced by the salt on your lips and other than a tinge of sadness, there was nothing left.
And all of a sudden he was just dean w again.