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She hasn't seen Dean Winchester in almost ten years when she turns into the canned food aisle in an Indiana grocery store and sees him standing next to a display of beans, a shopping basket in one hand and a can in the other.
She thinks he looks much more than a decade older, and not because he's out of shape or going gray or any less handsome than he was at twenty-five or twenty-seven. He just looks...tired. She's not certain that's the right word, but it's the only thing she can think of that makes sense.
"Cassie?" It sounds like he can't quite believe it. "What – what are you doing here?"
"I live here." Technically, she lives in the next town over, where she's teaching journalism classes at the community college. "What are you doing here?"
"I...live here too?"
"Huh."
"Yeah."
The silence is heavy and awkward and she's not often speechless but she doesn't have any idea what to say, so she decides on escape.
"So I guess I'll...see you around, Dean."
She's turned around to make a break for it but doesn't make it to the end of the aisle before she hears Dean blurt out "Hey, Cassie." She looks back and Dean's still holding the can of beans in one hand and the basket in the other. He looks profoundly uncomfortable.
"Do you want to, uh...catch up sometime? Not – I mean, I'm sure you've got someone, not like that, just–" He makes an aimless gesture with the can of beans. "–just talk?"
His expression's hopeful and unsure, smiling through the awkwardness. For a minute, just a minute, she sees the boy she met in Ohio so many years ago, who had a grin that could outshine the sun and was a lot smarter than he looked and smiled against her mouth when he kissed her.
It's not hard to answer.
"Sure."
---
Dean comes home from the store, opens his phone and dials Sam's number without even looking at the keypad while he's opening the fridge to put the beer away.
Sam answers halfway through the second ring. Yeah?"
"I saw Cassie today." It's the first thing he blurts out and it ends up sounding much more panicky than Dean really intended it to. He winces because he swears he can hear the smile that he knows is spreading across Sam's face now, the smug little bastard.
"Yeah?" Too happy. Sam sounds much too happy about this. "And? How is she?"
"I don't know, man. I saw her at the grocery store. I was buying fucking beans and I turned around and she was just...there."
"Did you talk to her, genius? Or did you just stand there and stare like a twelve-year-old girl?"
"Of course I talked to her, asshat. We're gonna...you know, catch up. Tomorrow."
"And by catch up, you mean..."
"Catch up. Converse. Talk, braintrust."
"You do that, Dean. Good luck with the talking." If he could see Sam's face at the moment Dean's fairly sure he'd punch him just to get rid of the smirk that he can hear getting bigger and bigger.
"Hey, how much longer you gonna be gone?" He cracks open a beer and wanders over to the couch, kicks his shoes off and settles in. "I'm lonely. A guy has needs, you know. I'm starting to feel like the poor neglected wife here, staying at home going grocery shopping while you're out bringing home the bacon."
"You're the one who skipped out on the hunt because of a birthday party, Mr. Mom."
"Shut up. Ben's not turnin' sixteen every day, you know. Plus, it was a fucking awesome party, man, there was a shit ton of cake and barbecue. You totally missed out."
"I'm sure I really missed out on the truly life-changing experience of watching a dozen teenagers try to throw each other into the pool for three hours. Besides, we know you really skipped out 'cause you're getting old, man. You're crawlin' on up towards forty in the next couple years, y'know."
"Yeah, yeah, shut up. I'll have you know that I am still a fine-ass spring chicken, here." He pauses, leans back on the couch and looks up at the crack in their living room ceiling. "Hey, Sam?"
"Yeah?"
"You ever think that maybe we're getting too old for this?"
Sam takes a minute to answer. "Sometimes. But not yet."
It's the same answer he gets every time, but it's taking Sam longer and longer to give it.
"Hurry your ass up and burn the corpse, bitch, or the beer's gonna be all gone when you get home."
---
She tells Dean to meet her at a coffee shop in the next town over. She's never been there and he's never been there. It seems safe. No memories, no expectations. She doesn't know what she wants from this just yet.
He's five minutes late, and he pulls up in the same hulking black car she recognizes from all those years ago. It's older than both of them and yet somehow still as sleek and polished as the first day she saw it. parked outside the college library in Ohio.
They make small talk. It's awkward, stunted, at least at first. Where they've been, what they've been doing. Mostly, it's her talking - because she's fairly sure that Dean's account of what he's been doing for the last ten years or so is not really typical coffeehouse conversation - about her work, about moving from Missouri to Indiana after her mother died, leaving the paper and going back to school and getting into teaching instead, because jobs at a real paper are so hard to find these days.
He asks whether she's with anyone, and she laughs into her coffee.
"Got married. Got divorced, too. No kids, at least." She takes a sip of the coffee. It's bitter and weak, the kind of bad coffee that leaves a nasty aftertaste in your mouth for hours afterwards.
"I'm sorry." He looks uncomfortable, and it sounds like he genuinely means it.
She curls her hand around the cup, lets the warmth seep through the paper and into her fingers. "Yeah. I'm sorry too."
The sentence hangs in the air for a few minutes. "You?" she asks. "Not so much with the wife and kids, I'm guessing?"
He laughs halfheartedly. "No. Not with the girl, at least. There's a kid, but it's...kinda complicated."
Cassie raises her eyebrows at Dean in what she knows is one of her more withering questioning expressions. "Complicated how?"
"Would you believe me if I said that he wasn't mine, but...he might as well be?"
"I've believed crazier things that you've said." She says it without any malice.
As she thought, most of his story is heavily edited. He lives with Sam in a house they rent outside of Cicero. They work construction, and Dean does a little repair work on the side. They both still do what Dean calls "our thing", when they hear about something close enough to manage.
The talking gets easier after that, and she has two cups of the awful, awful coffee before she realizes that they've been there for two hours.
"Hey Dean."
"Yeah?"
"We should do this again sometime."
"Okay."
"And by sometime I mean tomorrow night, so I hope you're not doing anything else."
He looks just a tiny bit steamrollered, but he recovers quickly and says "yeah, sure, I'm not busy."
When they're finished, she walks with him out to the parking lot and presses him up against his car, holds his face in her hands and kisses him. He tastes like bitter coffee but he kisses just like she remembers, and they linger there for a while.
---
When he gets back to the house he texts Sam.
have a date with cassie tomorrow night
also where did u put the electric bill
His phone chirps with Sam's reply a few minutes later.
It's next to the toaster, right where I always put it
Wear your little black dress tomorrow night, it makes your boobs look fantastic
Dean texts back bite me, bitch but he's laughing anyways.
---
She hasn't been on a date in four years. It's been a year since the divorce was finalized and she hasn't gone out with anyone since. With anyone else she'd probably dress up, wear earrings and maybe something vaguely shimmery. With Dean, that just seems silly, for some reason.
They have a casual dinner and the awkwardness from the day before has faded. The space that ten years has put between them seems less expansive the longer they talk, the more they fall into old patterns, the easier it is for him to rile her up and for her to put him down.
Somehow the night ends with them in her bed, her head on Dean's chest while he cards his fingers through her hair. It's pretty much what she expected to happen.
He surprises her by speaking first, afterwards.
"So...what are we doing, exactly? Is this a for-old-times-sake kinda thing, glad to see you again, the sex was just as good as it ever was, but bye now? Or are we...doing this?"
She sits up and looks at him, and there's definitely a little bit of hurt in his eyes and his voice. He's not as good at hiding it as he used to be.
Then again, he'd never been as good at hiding it as he thought he was.
"I can't think of an excuse not to." Not this time.
"Well, if we're going to do...this, then there's some stuff you need to know. The stuff I working with ten years ago? Absolutely nothing compared to this. Like, it's some seriously crazy shit, Cassie."
She settles back down, lays her head on Dean's chest again. "Like the entire year of earthquakes, swine flu, tsunamis and mass suicides? That kind of crazy shit?"
She means to be lighthearted even though she's pretty sure she's right, but Dean looks absolutely serious. The hand running through her hair stills and she twists up, looks up at him from where she's laying nestled into his side.
"Yeah. That kind of stuff."
She knows that there's a decision he's asking her to make here. It takes a minute to make it, but when she does she's sure.
"Tell me about it."
---
He and Sam are at Lisa's for a barbecue in July – just the four of them, some burgers and beers on a muggy Saturday afternoon, because they actually do this sort of thing now. It's blazing hot outside and he's opted to escape inside where's there's air-conditioning, sitting at Lisa's kitchen island with a beer and watching Sam and Ben chase Ben's enormous German shepherd around in the yard.
Lisa comes in to get something out of the fridge, and while she's rummaging around in it he starts talking before he even realizes he's decided to.
"So I'm kinda seeing someone."
"Oh really?" Lisa raises her eyebrows and smiles at him, and he's irrationally annoyed that everyone seems to be so damn happy about this. She closes the fridge and comes to lean over the island, rests her elbows on the countertop. "What kind of someone?"
Dean isn't sure how this happened. He is definitely not an expert on dating, but he's reasonably sure that most people are not this friendly with their exes. But Lisa – him and Lisa – they're not what they were but somehow they're friends still. It's partly because of Ben, who isn't his son but is as close as he thinks he'll ever get to having a kid, who adores him and who Dean adores right back. But it's also partly because this just works somehow, works better when things aren't mixed up with sex and expectations.
Lisa was there when nobody else was, and even though she's not the only person around anymore she's still important. She's still there, and he's still grateful.
"A girl I used to know. We met back when she was in college, when Sam was at school. I guess, technically, she's the only girl I've ever dated besides you. If a month counts as dating."
"Hey." Lisa reaches over and grabs one of his hands, laces their fingers together. She grabs his gaze and holds it, gives him that look, the one that goes straight through him. "The important part is that you're happy. You happy?"
He manages a nod, and she squeezes his hand, gives him a soft smile.
"Good."
---
Cassie's not really sure where this is going.
And really, she's kind of sick and fucking tired of plans and long-term goals and grand aspirations. When she was twenty-four and a wide-eyed, fresh-faced journalism student she had long-term goals. Finish school, go home, work at the paper, do wonderfully at the paper, become editor of the paper, change the world. Obviously, there had been some undefined space between the fifth and sixth steps, there.
Now she's pushing thirty-six and she has a divorce and a mortgage and a teaching job and a boyfriend who hunts werewolves on the weekends. Who is a stubborn bastard and is more often than not clueless about what she calls "real life" and he calls "civilian life." Who still wakes up sweating in the middle of the night because he's been to hell.
Who was almost definitely one of the first people she was really in love with and who she really did think was going to be in her future and who somehow, some way, actually is.
So she's got no plans. They didn't work out for her so well last time. She's not sure where this is going, and for the first time in her life, she's really okay with that.
---
He can't really help comparing Lisa and Cassie, sometimes. He's only really had the two relationships, so he thinks maybe he gets a free pass to think about it.
Lisa was there for him. Lisa is still there for him, if he needs her, because against it all they're friends.
But Cassie is the girl who makes him trip over his feet just looking at her like he's a stupid teenager with a crush. Cassie is the girl he met in the Ohio State library well over a decade ago, now, bundled up in an Ohio State sweatshirt and sitting right in front of the stack where the book he'd needed was. Cassie is the girl who dragged him to the closest bar and got him into a rousing, drunken argument about what exactly truth was supposed to be, who never cared one way or the other that he was a drifter or only had a GED or was actually living out of his car. Cassie is the girl who he didn't realize he'd fallen for until it was way, way too late.
Cassie is the girl who slammed a door in his face at eleven-thirty at night, and Cassie is the girl he tried to forget when he drove through four states in seven days and picked up a different girl every night, trying to erase the memory of dark skin and a brilliant smile and hair that curled around his fingers when he ran his hands through it.
Cassie is the person he hasn't thought about for years until she's there, and real, and now he can't stop thinking about her and wondering how he ever really stopped.
It's weird. He doesn't really know what he's doing, even less so than when he was with Lisa. At least then he had the excuse of Sam being gone. But Sam's around this time – God, is Sam around, and he gets along with Cassie, and is always giving Dean these knowing smiles or some shit like that, like he's so damn happy for him and Dean is just sick of it, okay? It's not fair.
But he kinda is. Happy, you know.
It doesn't seem fair that he gets this many chances – at life and now, what, at love? That sounds like the tagline for a chick flick (not that he's seen any, so he obviously wouldn't know).
But it's sort of true, and it's sort of cheesy, and he's going to take his chances this time, because he doesn't have any excuses.