summary ˚˖𓍢ִִ໋ years after dean walks away, a chance reunion in a park turns into a very casual, definitely-not-a-date dinner where monster goo, too much cologne, old feelings, and second chances all end up sharing the table.
pairing ˚˖𓍢ִִ໋ dean winchester x reader ( f )
wordcount ˚˖𓍢ִִ໋ 2243 genre ˚˖𓍢ִִ໋ giggling
warnings ˚˖𓍢ִִ໋ mutual pining, unresolved feelings, references to past relationship and heartbreak, awkward flirting, dean being hopelessly down bad, monster gore mentions, nostalgia, slow-burn energy
notes ˚˖𓍢ִ໋ ִ❀໋ tagging @bitchinwallaby @kissesfrommercuryyy because yall asked for a part 2 and here i am providing 😌 ˚˖𓍢ִִ໋ read part 1 ˚˖𓍢ִִ໋ consider supporting my work .ᐟ
dean doesn’t ask you on a date.
that would require calling it a date, which would require admitting that he spent the better part of an hour sitting beside you on a park bench while your daughter built structurally questionable sandcastles and slowly remembered exactly how easy it is to make you laugh. it would require acknowledging the fact that he kept finding reasons not to stand up. another question. another story. one more minute watching you peel the wrapper from a granola bar because your kid insisted she could do it herself until she very suddenly and passionately could not.
so, no. dean does not ask you on a date.
he scratches the back of his neck as your daughter races toward the slide, sand still clinging to the knees of her leggings, and says, “you eaten yet?”
you look at him over the rim of your coffee cup. “it’s four-thirty.”
“yeah, well—i’m planning ahead.”
“planning ahead,” you repeat, with the same amount of belief you gave his big park guy routine.
dean narrows his eyes. “some people appreciate organization.”
“you used to pack one shirt for a three-week hunt.”
“it was a good shirt.”
“i’m pretty sure it had holes in it.”
“ventilation.”
the smile happens before you can stop it. his follows a second later, quieter and a little crooked around the edges, and there it is again—that strange pull low in your chest, too familiar to dismiss and too old to feel this new.
he glances toward your daughter, then back at you. “there’s a place a few blocks over. decent burgers. actual tablecloths. no laminated menus stuck together with syrup.”
“high standards.”
“i’m classy now.”
“you have mustard on your jacket.”
dean looks down immediately. you laugh when he realizes there’s nothing there, and he gives you a deeply unimpressed look that would probably work better if his mouth wasn’t twitching.
“you’re still mean,” he says.
“you liked me mean.”
his eyes catch yours just for a second. long enough to remind you that this hasn’t always been teasing on park benches and careful questions about where you live now. long enough to remember motel mattresses, his hand around your wrist as he tugged you back beneath the sheets, his sleepy voice against your shoulder telling you to stay another five minutes when both of you knew there was nowhere else you wanted to be.
dean clears his throat. “yeah,” he says, quieter. “i did.”
your daughter shrieks happily from the slide. the moment breaks before either of you has to do anything dangerous with it.
“my mom can take her tonight,” you say, trying for casual and getting close enough. “if you still want to… catch up.”
“catch up,” dean agrees quickly. “yeah. exactly. two old friends. food. normal amount of catching up.”
“what would be an abnormal amount?”
“guess we’ll find out.”
you agree to meet dean at the restaurant at seven-thirty. he checks his watch afterward and realizes he has just under three hours to help sam kill whatever has been dragging people into the storm drains beneath the town, shower, find a clean shirt, and pretend he hasn’t spent the last decade occasionally thinking about what your laugh sounds like when you’re trying not to let him know he’s funny.
it should be manageable. it isn’t. the creature takes two iron rounds, a machete, one extremely undignified wrestling match in approximately three inches of sewer water, and a final shot from sam before it stops moving. even then, it manages to rupture something wet and foul-smelling all over dean’s chest on the way down.
dean stands there in the dark tunnel, breathing hard, covered from his hairline to his boots in a greyish slime with the texture of half-set gelatin.
sam lowers the shotgun slowly. “you okay?”
dean looks at him.
sam presses his lips together. he makes it almost three seconds before laughing.
“shut up.”
“you smell terrible.”
“yeah, no kidding, sam.”
dean checks his watch and swears. loudly. with feeling.
the motel shower has the water pressure of an elderly garden hose, but he stays beneath it until his skin turns pink and the water finally stops running an alarming shade of brown. he shampoos his hair twice. then a third time because he catches a faint whiff of sewer monster when he leans closer to the mirror and refuses to risk it.
his cleanest shirt is only slightly wrinkled. his jeans are fine. his boots have survived worse. he stares at his reflection, rubs a hand over his jaw, then reaches for the bottle of aftershave beside the sink.
not enough.
dean opens sam’s toiletry bag.
“touch my stuff and die,” sam calls from the other side of the bathroom door.
“why do you have three different bottles in here?”
“because i know how hygiene works.”
“this one says eau de toilette.”
“put it down.”
“what the hell does that even mean?”
“it means you don’t need half a bottle of it.”
dean uses some anyway. then a little more aftershave. then, on the drive across town, he stops at a gas station and sprays himself once with the tester bottle of cologne locked inside a dusty plastic display beside the register, because dignity is a flexible concept and he’s already running twelve minutes late.
by the time he reaches the restaurant, he smells less like a dead monster and more like an airport duty-free shop. you’re already waiting near the entrance.
for one stupid second, dean forgets every excuse he rehearsed in the car.
you’re not dressed for anything fancy. neither is he. but your hair is loose around your shoulders, and there’s a softness to your mouth when you spot him weaving between the tables that makes his palms damp in a way he’d prefer not to examine too closely. you smile. dean smiles back before he remembers he’s supposed to be annoyed with himself for being late.
“sorry,” he says as he reaches the table. “case ran long.”
your eyes drag over him, taking in the damp hair, the faint nick beside his temple, the clean shirt he has clearly pulled from the bottom of a duffel bag.
then your nose wrinkles. “did you bathe in cologne?”
dean slides into the chair opposite you. “no.”
you raise a very questionable brow at him.
“there was an incident.”
“an incident.”
“monster goo.”
you bite the inside of your cheek. it does nothing. your shoulders start shaking anyway.
“glad my suffering’s funny to you.”
“i’m sorry,” you say, entirely insincere. “i’m trying to be sympathetic. it’s just—”
“i smelled worse before.”
that does it. you laugh into your hand, warm and helpless, and dean stares at you with the beginning of a grin he can’t quite suppress.
“much worse,” he adds, because apparently he’s willing to humiliate himself for the sound of it now.
“i believe you.” you reach across the table without thinking and brush your thumb lightly over the scrape at his temple. the touch lasts barely a second before you pull your hand back. “you okay?”
dean goes still. you used to ask him that after every hunt, usually while patching him up in some motel bathroom with your knees pressed against his and your medical kit spread across the sink. he used to lie. you always knew when he did. sometimes you’d let him anyway. “yeah,” he says. “nothing serious.”
your eyes stay on his face for another moment. “what was it?”
“ugly bastard living beneath the storm drains. sam’s digging through the lore. had these teeth—” dean holds two fingers apart, warming immediately to the story. “seriously, they were huge. and it moved fast. faster than it had any right to move, considering it looked like a melted halloween decoration.”
you listen as he talks, interrupting with questions in the right places, your expression shifting with easy familiarity when he mentions sam nearly losing his footing in the tunnel. by the time the waitress arrives, dean has stopped feeling quite so aware of his own hands. by the time your burgers come, he’s made you laugh twice more and learned that you still steal fries from other people’s his plate without asking.
“you have your own,” he says as your fingers retreat from his side of the table.
“yours looked better.”
“they’re the same fries.”
he pushes his plate slightly closer to the middle anyway.
it should feel stranger than it does. there are years sitting between you, too many of them, full of things neither of you knows how to ask without making the evening heavier than it’s allowed to become. but some habits survive untouched. dean still eats the pickle from your burger because you slide it onto the edge of his plate without asking. you still nudge your knee against his when you laugh too hard. neither of you acknowledges the contact. neither of you moves away.
eventually, he asks about you. not in the easy, polite way people do when they are waiting for their turn to speak. dean wants details. where you work. whether you still hate mornings. how long you have lived in town. whether your mom is nearby. what your daughter’s favorite cartoon is and why she apparently considers apple juice a matter of national importance.
you tell him more than you mean to. about preschool drop-offs and your job and the apartment with the unreliable kitchen faucet your landlord keeps promising to fix. about the way your daughter insists on wearing mismatched socks because matching ones are “too serious”. about your mother taking her tonight and giving you a look so unsubtle it should legally qualify as harassment.
dean laughs at that. “she still hates me?”
“she never hated you.”
“she threatened me with a carving knife.”
“she threatened everyone with a carving knife. it was her favorite knife.”
“comforting.”
“she asked whether you were still handsome.”
dean pauses halfway through reaching for his beer. “what’d you say?”
you pick up a fry, refusing to give him the satisfaction of looking embarrassed. “i told her age had been very cruel to you.”
“wow.”
“tragic, really.”
“and yet here you are.”
“free burger.”
“right.”
his smile lingers afterward. yours does too.
the plates empty. the restaurant grows quieter around you. someone begins stacking chairs upside down on the tables near the window, and you realize with a start that you’ve been sitting there for almost three hours. dean glances toward the closing staff with visible betrayal, as though they’re personally responsible for the fact that the night has to end.
he pays before you can argue properly, but you argue anyway. he ignores you with the smug ease of someone who has always enjoyed irritating you in very specific, carefully cultivated ways.
outside, the air has cooled. your car is parked beneath a streetlamp at the edge of the lot, but neither of you moves toward it immediately. dean stands in front of you with his hands tucked into his jacket pockets, rocking back slightly on his heels. for a man who has faced demons without blinking, he looks strangely uncertain now.
“so,” you say.
“so.”
“this was nice.”
“yeah.” dean looks down, then back at you. “yeah, it was.”
the silence isn’t uncomfortable. it would be easier if he gave you a grin and some teasing line, something familiar enough to hide behind. instead, he watches you with an openness that feels almost accidental, as though the part of him that usually shuts every door has forgotten where the locks are.
“what time do you work tomorrow?” he asks.
you blink. “eight-thirty.”
“i could drive you.”
your eyebrows lift. “dean—”
“or we could get coffee,” he says, too quickly. “before. after. lunch, maybe. doesn’t have to be—” he exhales through his nose, frustrated with his own mouth. “anything. i just thought i could see you again.”
the honesty of it settles between you. slightly awkward. too specific. very dean, even if he looks as though he wishes he could grab the words and shove them back inside his chest.
you should make him work harder for it. maybe you will, eventually. he left once. you remember that too. the motel room door closing. the impala disappearing from the parking lot. the horrible, childish part of you that waited for the sound of the engine returning even after you knew it wouldn’t.
but he’s here now. smelling faintly of too much cologne and looking at you with that small, nervous smile he probably doesn’t realize he’s wearing.
“coffee,” you say. “before work.”
dean’s shoulders loosen. only slightly. “yeah?”
“yeah.”
“i’ll pick you up.”
“seven-thirty.”
“on the dot.”
you laugh softly, pulling your phone from your bag. “you’re a little out of practice.”
“been busy.”
“with sewer monsters?”
“amongst other things.”
you exchange numbers even though some stubborn, embarrassing part of you still remembers his by heart. dean sends himself a message from your phone, then hands it back carefully, his fingers grazing yours.
“i’ll see you tomorrow,” he says.
you nod. “tomorrow.”
he takes one step backward. then another. he looks reluctant to turn away, and it makes your chest ache in a place you thought had learned better.
“dean?”
“yeah?”
“you’ll show, right?”
his expression shifts. the teasing leaves first. what remains is quieter, stripped of every easy escape he has relied on since the moment he saw you wearing your grandmother’s ring.
“i wouldn’t miss it.”
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