[shotgun--rider]

Stay With Me

A @destielsecretsanta2020 gift for @princess-aleera

Summary: For the first time in his life, Dean has the opportunity for a real Christmas with his family. And it would be perfect, if Cas hadn’t decided to bail on him again. OR: Dean and Cas finally use their words. 

Warnings: Dean’s cripplingly low self-esteem, Cas undervaluing himself...you know, the usual.

A/N: Did I anxiously rewrite half of this on Christmas Eve? Yes. Do I have any confidence whatsoever left in the quality of this fic? No! Nevertheless, merry Christmas to my lovely giftee and I hope you enjoy this dumb fluffy little thing!

By now, Dean should have really known better than to have any kind of expectations for Christmas. He hasn’t had anything less than a shitty holiday since Mary was alive, and then he’d been too young to remember it. The weeks leading up to the 25th in his childhood were marked out by shoplifting cheap gifts for Sam (usually practical stuff, like flannels and socks) and trying to convince John that they didn’t need to work a job on Christmas day. He’d managed to walk out with a paper-wrapped ham once, but cooking it in a motel room didn’t exactly turn out and Sammy got mac and cheese for Christmas dinner. Again. 

Even when they got older, it still wasn’t much of a big deal. They’d toss badly-wrapped gifts at each other in the Impala, still the same kind of practical things as always. Once, Sam bought them dumb Santa hats from the Gas-n-Sip and they drove down the interstate wearing them for a couple dozen miles before Dean got fed up and chucked it into the backseat. 

So, yeah, Christmas sucked ass. And usually Dean didn’t give it much thought, because it wasn’t like he had a lot of fond memories to miss. But this year...sue him, this year he’d thought it might be different. Jack had cheerfully requested a Christmas tree with such enthusiasm that they had caved and set one up in the library, and after Sam had spearheaded the decorating with Eileen, Dean had to admit it looked surprisingly festive. And once there was a tree, it seemed only right to put some effort into the gifts, so he painstakingly picked something out for each member of his little family. (It was paid for with a fake credit card, but it was the thought that counted.) And with several more YouTube tutorials than he would ever admit to a living soul, they were neatly wrapped under the tree, too. 

It was shaping up to be something like a real Christmas, and he was starting to look forward to making new stupid traditions and watching the look on Sam’s face when he opened his gifts. 

But Dean Winchester doesn’t get nice things. So even though there’s an ache in his gut he’s trying to ignore as he bends to fish Cas’s gift back out from under the tree, he’s not really surprised. Hurt, maybe. Pissed, definitely. But surprised? No, it only makes sense that the angel bailed on them on Christmas Eve, popping off to who the hell knows where and ignoring his phone the way he too often does. 

This is what always happens, Dean reasons, shoulders a little hunched as he starts back toward his room. He’s an angel, of course he has better places to be than spending Christmas with a pair of boring human hunters. What does Dean have to offer him anyway? The gift in his hands is shitty, he’s demanded way more from the guy than he can ever repay, and he already knows he’s not good enough for Cas. So he’ll just quietly put the gift back and play the whole thing off if anybody asks. 

He’s almost made it to his bedroom when he passes Eileen, the woman giving him a friendly smile that fades into a curious look when her gaze falls on the slightly unevenly wrapped box in his hands. She signs something that he doesn’t quite get, and Dean kicks himself again for being such a fuckup that he can’t even learn ASL right. 

Eileen doesn’t seem to mind, asking her question again verbally and signing along to help him. “Does Cas get his present privately?” She punctuates with a little eyebrow wiggle, always trying to tease him about the angel. 

Dean huffs, shaking his head. He manages the sign for no before speaking the rest. “Nah, Cas, uh, Cas isn’t coming to Christmas.” He rubs the back of his neck awkwardly. 

Eileen’s face scrunches. “What do you mean, he’s not coming? He was so excited--what did you do?”

“Nothing!” Dean says defensively, a private panic starting in his head at the thought that maybe he did, maybe he hurt Cas and he didn’t realize it. Or maybe Cas knew and left to save him the embarrassment. “He just said he had somewhere to be,”

“Did you talk to him about it?”

“He won’t answer his phone,” Dean says a little petulantly. He’s tried calling him about a dozen times at this point, and Cas has to have turned the damn thing off, because he doesn’t even get to the stupid endearing voicemail recording. 

His brother’s girlfriend just gives him a look and folds her hands into a sign he knows immediately. Pray. “He’ll listen,”

Not for the first time, Dean wonders if Eileen is massively misinterpreting his relationship with Cas. Or at least, how much of a shit Cas gives about him. “Look, Eileen, I don’t think--” 

Dean. She makes his name sign sharp and gently scolding. “Just talk to him,”

“Yeah, maybe,” he mumbles. He doesn’t bother to voice the but what if he still doesn’t answer. 

He leaves Eileen with an attempt at looking nonchalant and makes it the rest of the way to his bedroom, flopping down on the memory foam mattress and staring at the ceiling. He’s positioned to one side as always, avoiding sprawling in the middle even though he would be well within his rights. Sam would probably spout some psychology bullshit about subconsciously saving the other half for someone. Yeah, right. 

So maybe he’s a little more bitter about this than he thought. Squeezing his eyes shut, he huffs out a breath, half prepared to just pray to Cas so he can shout at him childishly. “Hey, uh, Cas? Listen, buddy--”

There’s an almost immediate flutter of wings and by the time Dean’s scrambling to sit halfway up, Cas is standing by the foot of the bed uncertainly, more rumpled than usual and his expression pained. “Hello, Dean,”

“Cas, what the hell?” Dean bursts out before he’s even fully decided to say the words. 

“Dean,” Cas fixes his blue eyes on Dean’s face. “I think I may have made a mistake,”

“Really? What gave you that idea?” Dean shoots back sarcastically. “I mean, what the fuck, Cas? I get that you have obligations and better places to be, but goddammit, you have to stop leaving m--leaving without an explanation!” Vaguely, Dean realizes that he’s not totally in control of this conversation anymore, but he’s been sitting on this for a long time. “It’s Christmas, man,” he goes on weakly. “I know this is kinda your first one but you’re supposed to be with your family,”

“I know,” Cas rushes to agree, his face still flickering with distress. “But I could feel your longing after I left, and your prayer--” the angel slumps slightly in his too-big trench coat. “Dean, I don’t understand.”

“First of all, I was not longing. And b, what don’t you get? It’s not rocket science, Cas,” 

“I left so that you could be with your family,” Cas explains, as if he’s not uttering the most insane thing Dean’s ever heard in his life. “But now you’re upset--I’m sorry, Dean,”

“Cas, what the fuck?” Dean says again, momentarily lost for words as he blinks at his best friend. “How do you not---you are family,”

Cas’s blue eyes blink a few times hopefully, before he seems to resign himself. “I try to be of use to you and Sam--”

“That has nothing to do with--” Dean stops. Oh, Cas. “Do...do you think we keep you around because you’re an angel?”

Cas tilts his head. “Well...yes,”

“Cas,” Dean says weakly. God, he wants to punch himself in the face for letting him think this way. “Look, Sam’s plenty useful, doing the research by myself would seriously suck ass. But he’s my brother either way. Family’s not--it’s not about being fucking useful.” 

“Am I your brother, Dean?”

“Yes!” Dean bursts out, too loudly, kicking himself as his mouth continues without permission. “Yeah, I mean--yeah,” he trails off, not remotely willing to try explaining why that might not be the correct label after all. “You’re family, Cas.”

It’s probably just wishful thinking, but Cas looks almost disappointed. “Oh. I see. Thank you, Dean. I will--” a short pause, “I will stay for Christmas,”

“Great,” is all that comes out of Dean’s mouth in reply. “Yeah, that’s great.” 

He wants to tell him that wasn’t actually what I wanted to say and I kinda think I might be in love with you and I want you to stay with me but the shadow of John Winchester and the fear of rejection keeps the words tightly coiled inside. Besides, they don’t do this. They don’t say things out loud, they never have. And--most of the time--that works. 

So Dean swallows and smiles tightly and shoves away his newly-realized I love yous, turning around instead to find where he’d tossed Cas’s gift on the floor beside the bed. “You, uh, wanna put this back out--”

“Dean,” 

Something in Cas’s voice has him straightening up immediately, and when he turns around the angel is looking at him with an expression he’s never seen before and--are those tears? 

“Dean, I can hear you,”

Dean’s stomach sinks like a fear-filled lead balloon, but he asks anyway. “You can hear me what?”

“Sometimes,” Cas says quietly, “if you think something with enough intention, it can be heard like a prayer,”

Dean clears his throat roughly, bracing himself for Cas to explain gently how he has no interest in a man like Dean. “So, uh,” he trails off. Cas is still just looking at him with brimming eyes, which narrow suddenly. 

“You are a good and righteous and wonderful man, Dean Winchester,” he says firmly, standing there so close and yet just out of Dean’s reach. 

Dean gives a sheepish look. “Heard that bit too, huh?”

“Dean,” Cas says again, gently, waiting. Waiting so that Dean can go first. 

And suddenly, with the knowledge that Cas already knows what he’s been trying to say, it’s infinitely less terrifying. “I--I love you, Cas,” he says hoarsely, surprising himself with how, after all this time, the words aren’t really that hard. “And you’re my best friend, and you’re family, and I don’t give a shit if you’ve got angel powers or whatever, and--” I need you please stay with me still gets stuck in his throat, the most dangerous out of all of those words, but Cas must hear it anyway, or be able to tell what he’s getting at, because he’s suddenly wrapped up in the angel’s embrace, the slightly shorter man warm and solid and thoroughly clinging to him. 

He’d make a crack about chick flick moments, but he really doesn’t have a leg to stand on because he’s clinging to Cas just as tightly, gripping fistfuls of his trench coat and trying to reassure himself that this is real. This is real. 

“I rebelled for you,” Cas is saying quietly into his shoulder. “I loved you from the minute I saw your soul for the first time.” And then he moves to meet Dean’s eyes, his own still looking a little watery, and finishes, “And I need you too,” 

And Dean’s never kissed a man before, but after a confession like that is as good a time as any to bury the last of his father’s old words about fairies and manliness. 

It’s clumsy at first, and not really fireworks and magic like chick flick romances like to claim, but it sends warm relief through his entire body. Dean shivers just slightly, pulling Cas closer as their mouths slowly explore, cautiously at first and then bolder, heat lacing the kiss. But more than anything, it feels like something he has been missing for so long that he stopped noticing has finally fitted back into place, and it’s overwhelming. But, Dean thinks as he helps toss Cas’s coat on the floor, so, so worth it. 

***

The first real Winchester family Christmas is nothing short of chaotic, from the first moment that Dean and Cas finally emerge from their definitely-not-cuddling nest of blankets. Sam takes one look at them in the hallway and grins immediately, shaking his head with a loud “finally!” that has Dean scowling and demanding to know how long Sam has been paying attention to them. (The answer is far longer than Dean wants to think about)

They unwrap gifts on the floor of the library, indulging Jack’s inquisitive questions and periodically balling up wrapping to throw at each other. Sam’s hair is slowly collecting bows off the wrapping as Dean gets bored, though he eventually gives up when he has to choose between reaching Sam’s head and continuing to inch closer into Cas’s side. 

For a moment, he wonders about the last Christmas when Mary was alive, and what she would say if she could see her sons and their hodgepodge celebration now. He doesn’t really mind, though, that he can’t remember it. This is all the holiday family memories he didn’t know he needed.

[shotgun--rider]

Rumor

A Jensen x Reader oneshot

Y/N’s never considered how many suspiciously snuggly photos there are of her and her best friend. Then they all come out in a Buzzfeed article, published just in time for everyone to grill her during her solo panel. Now what?

Word Count: 4000

Warnings: Really dumb fluff, everyone’s anxious, Jared and Briana are sick of everyone’s shit

A/N: This is dumb and fluffy and dangerously song-fic territory but it showed up and demanded to be written so here you go. I have no idea if this is actually any good. Enjoy?

---------* ---------

You were the epitome of normal, growing up. You had decent grades, run-of-the-mill hobbies, and an average high school cashier job. You could hop on your bike (and later, borrow your parents’ car) and take yourself to the coffee shop, or to a friend’s, and the only people that  would look twice at you were drivers checking to make sure the kid on the bike didn’t steer into traffic. 

You didn’t win any “most likely to” awards in the yearbook, your college major was undecided for an embarrassing length of time, and your 300-odd Instagram followers were comprised of friends and some polite acquaintances from welcome week. And you didn’t mind. You were perfectly happy to go through your day-to-day without turning heads and making waves. 

That was all before you’d answered an open casting call on a whim, strapped for cash and mostly there because a sparkly website proclaiming “50 Easy Side Hustles!” had suggested spending your weekends as an extra if you lived in a big filming city. Before your three-episode contract in a show you’d never bothered to watch turned into a series regular.

Now, you’re pretty much guaranteed to have your face splashed across the internet every time you stick a toe off the end of your L.A. property line. Even if the paparazzi aren’t there to get you in Page Six with some wildly exaggerated nonsense, a fan somewhere will snap a blurry photo and upload it somewhere for people to shout about you in the comments section. You’ve never gotten used to being tagged in edits of your own face, or watching your follower count creep steadily upwards. You’re just… you. You’ve always been just the normal, average girl from a nothing-special hometown.  

Even after your third year running on Supernatural, you still forget. You still make it all the way to the end of the block before you remember that the person shouting your name is the bodyguard you accidentally abandoned two errands ago. You still get confused when the restaurant wait staff stares at you, still get annoyed calls from your publicist begging you to at least try to appear in fewer coffee shop paparazzi pictures looking like a disgruntled zombie who’s never seen a hairbrush. (Sue you, you can’t be expected to be functional before a cup of coffee.)

You’re a brilliant actress, an unexpected fan-favorite, relatable to everyone in your autograph line...and you’re kind of a terrible celebrity. Unlike certain child models turned actors straight at 18 you may know, this isn’t a world you were trained in. Which is probably why it doesn’t even occur to you that being caught frequently in the company of your best friend might look like something until you’re staring at your own name in a headline on your phone screen, in line at Starbucks before your first panel of the con weekend. 

Y/N L/N’s Secret Relationship With Co-Star Jensen Ackles, howls the bold-printed headline, and you blink stupidly at the letters, uncomprehending, until you realize that someone’s trying to get your attention. “Sorry, what?”

The barista looks impatient, suppressing an eyeroll and starting her spiel before cutting off halfway with a squeak. “Oh, my god, you’re her! I’m sorry, I’m just… you’re literally my favorite!” She’s blushing and stuttering and has a near-death grip on the empty coffee cup she was preparing to write your name on. 

“Oh,” you reply, forcing the fog of confusion from your brain and slapping on a smile. “Hi, you caught me.”

“Can I...um…” the girl reaches into her back pocket and sheepishly produces her cell phone, complete with a flaming pentagram case. “Um, selfie?”

You smile indulgently, leaning over the counter. The fans are one of the best parts, really, and it’s never a hardship to make someone smile. (That is, when they’re not selling rumors and lies to the tabloids, you think grumpily.)

The barista girl pulls back with a wide smile and a full-face blush, and keeps glancing shyly up at you while she punches in your usual order, plus the second coffee Jensen texted you this morning to beg for. “So I guess Jensen’s around here too, then, right?” she asks perkily, taking your card. 

“Uh...sorry, what?”

She shrugs like it’s obvious. “Since you flew in together,”

You blink rapidly, feeling stupid. You’re obviously missing the punchline somewhere. “We, uh...didn’t. I mean...I flew out of L.A.,” you say cautiously. Your home city is already public knowledge, as is the fact that Jensen lives in Austin, and you can’t imagine she doesn’t know this. 

Her eyes pop wide with curiosity. “Wait, so you’re not staying with him?”

This conversation is too much for your poor, jetlagged, coffeeless brain. “No?” you try weakly, so far past confused at this point that you might actually be getting a headache. “Why would I…” 

Not that Jensen’s Austin house isn’t lovely, and not that you’d object to staying there, and not that you haven’t stayed there plenty of times before, but you’re pretty sure you’re still missing the point. 

The barista lunges forward over the counter, leaning in to ask in a hushed voice, “Did you guys break up?”

An emphatic “No!” leaves your mouth so loudly that the old man in line behind you starts grumbling. “No, you don’t--” 

“Get a move on,” Old Man grouches in the background. “I don’t care who you are,”

“Oh, good,” the girl cuts you off with a relieved grin. “You guys are so cute, you know? I mean, I kinda figured you had to have something going on, but actually seeing it--it’s going to be so much cuter if Dean and Sierra ever kiss now, oh my god--”

She devolves into a squeal, and the we’re not actually dating dies on your tongue. You have better things to do this morning than correct the misinformation of one teenage barista, so you end up just shaking your head and taking the two cups of coffee wearily. “Right, well, I’ve gotta go, so--” you duck around the old man and beeline for the door before anyone can say anything else. Oh, god, your publicist is so going to kill you. 

***

Jared and Jensen are both in the green room when you make it back to the convention hotel, and you groan softly as you walk into the room. Once Jared hears about your so-called relationship, you’re never going to hear the end of it. Then again, better he hear it from you than find it in the tabloids. May as well bite the bullet now before it comes up in a Q&A. 

“Hey,” you slide up to Jensen’s elbow, holding out the requested coffee cup as a preemptive truce. “So, we’re apparently dating now,” 

Jensen snorts, shaking his head and swapping the coffee cup into his other hand so he can wrap his arm around your shoulders in greeting. “Yeah, I saw that.”

“I think I may have given a barista the impression we’ve had a tumultuous breakup,” you say ruefully, tilting your head up to look at him in apology. “Sorry,”

Jensen’s green eyes are dancing, though, and he throws back his head and laughs, still keeping you tucked close enough that you can feel his whole body shake. “Of course you did, sweetheart,”

It’s pretty much the reaction you expected from Jensen, who’s so used to your antics at this point that he just gives you a fond smile and moves on to damage control. Jared, on the other hand, is...not commenting, and suspicion cuts short your quiet enjoyment of being hugged against Jensen. It took the boys a while to feel comfortable messing with you when you first got on set, but after they figured out you gave as good as you got, they’d never yet missed an opportunity to tease and prank you. 

You squint at Jared warily. “Why aren’t you reacting?”

Jared’s lips immediately start twitching, but he makes a valiant attempt at a mock-concerned face. “Oh shit, sorry. Here, tell me again and I’ll pretend like I’m surprised this time,”

Unwilling to bother unwinding yourself from under Jensen’s arm, you extend a childish foot in the direction of Jared’s shins, scowling at him. He dodges easily, laughing, and tosses out, “Someone should really tell Buzzfeed they’re reporting really old news,”

“Shut up and drink your damn coffee, Padalecki,” you shoot back without any real venom.

“Oh, you mean my hotel coffee? The coffee I got stuck with because you only buy Starbucks for Jensen?”

Jensen straightens up proudly, no doubt making a face at Jared over the top of your head. “Y/N just likes me better. That’s why she’s my best friend.”

You roll your eyes, ducking under Jensen’s arm and a few steps away. “You both suck,” you deadpan, resisting an internal wince at the friendzone. “Now shut up and let me drink my coffee, I have to be on stage in fifteen minutes,” 

And God, but your head is way too scrambled for a panel right now. Fifteen minutes is nowhere close to enough time to get your shit together, and you’re going to have to somehow walk out there and not let everyone know. 

You take a seat halfway across the room, watching Jared and Jensen still standing there, heads bowed together, arguing quietly about something. Jensen’s starting to wear an annoyed expression and he still manages to look beautiful and goddamnit this is how you got in trouble in the first place. 

You scroll listlessly through your phone, a headache beginning behind your eyes, and freeze when you realize that you left the damn article open. The headline photo is a picture of you and Jensen on a sidewalk in L.A., caught mid-conversation with Jensen’s hand on your back and a stupid, dopey look on your face while you stare up at him like he hung the moon. Fuck, you’re an idiot. 

A hasty scroll through the rest of the article reveals more of the same, and you could kick yourself for making your dumb crush so obvious. The photo captions are practically mocking you, labelled with things like “an intimate evening for Ackles and L/N” and, under a picture of the two of you at a beach, “We might be a little mad that the two most attractive people are together”. 

Well, at least now you know what every single question at your panel is going to be about. And somehow you have to figure out how to play this off like it’s nothing. Of course I don’t have a crush the size of a mid-sized whale on Jensen, hahaha, that’s such a hilarious idea! 

Your only saving grace is that clearly, Jensen doesn’t think anything of it. It’s nothing more than a brief joke to him and Jared, and as much as that should bring you relief, it still stings to know that he’s obviously never bothered to think of you that way. And why would he? For all Buzzfeed’s nonsense about you making an attractive couple, Jensen Ackles miles above your league. 

You’re pulled out of your thoughts by Misha sitting down next to you, an easy smile on his face as he nudges your shoulder with his own. “So, welcome to the club,”

Typically, you and Misha are pretty close friends, but your patience is too short this morning for any of his shit. “What club?” you shoot back grumpily. 

“People who the internet have declared in love with Jensen Ackles,” Misha returns, grinning like it’s obvious. 

“Ha, ha. See, except when that happens to you, people think it’s funny,”

“It is funny,”

“Not for me!” you explode, belatedly wincing at your harsh tone. “You and Jensen fuck around on stage and that works for you. If I don’t get my shit together in the next five minutes, I’m getting my name dragged through stupid tabloids and laughed straight off the show because I couldn’t keep my goddamn stupid pathetic crush under control!”

“Hey,” Misha waits until you meet his blue eyes. “That’s not going to happen. Okay? It’s not,”

“Misha--”

“Y/N,” Misha returns firmly. “It’s going to be okay. Jensen would never let anything happen to you. And you don’t have to answer anything you don’t want to.”

You sigh softly, nodding. Rationally, you know he’s right. But mostly, as much as you’re worked up about the panel, your fear is that Jensen is going to be the one laughing at you, and you don’t know how to explain that. “Yeah,” you say dully, just as a convention worker comes forward to collect you. 

“If it’s really going to shit, I’ll come distract everyone,”

“Somehow, I think that would be worse,” you shoot back over your shoulder as you start walking to the stage. Breathe, Y/N. You’re fine. 

You wait for the introductions to finish and take your place on the stage, a slightly breathy laugh escaping into the mic as you look out at the crowd. That is a lot of eyes watching your every move. And they’re on your side, you remind yourself. It’s the fans who’ve been tireless supporters of you and your character, this whole time. 

“Hey, guys,” you clear your throat. “What’s up?”

You chatter for a while about whatever you can think of, telling an edited version of the grumpy Starbucks man this morning and rambling a little about Jared’s latest on-set antics. All too quickly, though, you run out of things to say, leaving you with no choice but to ask for questions. 

At first, to your great relief, they’re pretty tame. You spend a solid few minutes breaking down Sierra’s latest character arc, and the time she’s spending hunting on her own. You do get a few questions about whether she and Dean could get together when she gets back with the brothers, but as long as it stays firmly in the realm of your characters, you’re not worried. 

“And what’s your name?” You ask gently, trying to reassure the nervous young woman at the microphone. 

“Uh, Y/N…”

“I love that name!” you wink at her, rearranging yourself in the chair to be more comfortable. “What do you want to know, Y/N?”

“Uh,” she stutters, her face blushing pink. “You’re my favorite actress, and, I, um,”

“That’s very sweet,” you interject, nodding to encourage her. 

“I just, uh, really want good things for you, and I just wanted to ask if, um, areyoureallydatingJensen?” she spits out all in one breath. “Cause you deserve him,”

You blink, shifting in your seat. You’d arrived at the elephant in the room. Damn. 

“Uh,” escapes your mouth as you frantically try to construct a diplomatic sentence. “No, actually, no, we’re not.” I wish. “The, um, the article was a surprise to us too!” You added a little shrug in as punctuation, trying to play it off. 

“But you guys look so cute together!” Other Y/N exclaims. “He looks at you like--” she cuts off, biting her lip so hard you can see the white from the stage. “Nevermind. Sorry.” 

“No worries,” you assure her casually, like you’re not dying to know what she was going to say. “Next question?”

The next one up is another young woman, this time much bolder in her question. “But if you were given the opportunity, would you date Jensen Ackles?” 

God, Chuck, literally anyone please kill me. “I don’t know how to answer this without getting in trouble,” you finally laugh nervously. “This is a dangerous question,”

The audience all laughs loudly, some of them throwing out comments and suggestions. “In the interests of not getting killed in my bed tonight,” you say lightly when they’ve quieted. “I’m going to skip that question,”

There’s really no saving you, though. After that first question, it’s like a dam has broken and everyone wants to know about your relationship with Jensen. What do you think of his house in Austin and does he cook for you and what do you do between takes and where’s your favorite place to go together. Someone even asks if you’re hooking up even if you’re not dating, which you’re positive turns your face completely purple before you get through redirecting that fan. 

An hour later, you stagger off the stage mentally exhausted and thoroughly grumpy. 

“Ouch,” Briana sympathizes, sliding up beside you as you grab a water bottle in the green room. 

“Can’t wait for my dumb red face to trend on Tumblr,” you mutter, wondering darkly if you could just jump out one of the windows. 

Briana laughs like she knows something you don’t, and rubs a hand over your back soothingly. “Come on, let’s get you out of your head before your photos,”

The two of you end up on a walk a few blocks from the convention hotel, fresh coffees in hand and Briana chattering away while you nod along. It’s not that you’re tuning her out, exactly, you’re just...overwhelmed. You do, however, notice when she stops talking. 

“Are you listening to me?” she looks at you sharply.

“Sorry, B,” you mumble. “Got distracted. What?”

Briana shakes her head with loving exasperation. “I asked what you’re wearing to karaoke tonight,”

“I’m probably not going to--” you start.

“Oh, no you don’t. You can’t leave me there alone,” Briana interrupts, folding her arms across her chest. 

“What do you mean, alone? Kim and Rich and literally everyone will be there,”

“You are not allowed to skip karaoke.” Briana says firmly, and you suddenly know how her daughter must feel when she’s misbehaved. “Besides, Jensen’s singing with Louden Swain beforehand. Don’t you want to see it?”

“Fine. But I’m wearing this,” you gesture to your plain black top and jeans. To be honest, you’re not sure if you actually do want to see Jensen perform, or bother with the rest of karaoke night. Mostly you just want to crawl into bed and put the covers over your head and pretend that you haven’t been making a fool of yourself all morning, but Briana is a force of nature when she wants something. 

She smiles excitedly at your acquiescence, pulling out her phone for a moment to type something before you start heading back. 

You nudge her teasingly with your elbow. “Your phone more exciting than me?”

Briana just slides it away hastily before you can read more than Jared’s name over her shoulder. “Just taking care of something.”

There’s something she’s not telling you, but you don’t feel like digging right now. You’re just focusing on getting to the end of this convention without spilling all your secrets and looking like an idiot. 

By the time you’re sitting down in the seats for Louden Swain’s set, your face is indeed all over Tumblr. (You always deny having the stupid app, but sometimes a girl’s gotta know what people are saying about her and her hot costars.) There’s comments full of stupid speculation that you’re hiding your relationship, including a whole thread about how you’re clearly hiding your secret threesome with Jensen and Misha. Great. 

“Uh, okay,” a familiar voice snaps you out of your thoughts. Jensen’s on stage in front of the microphone, holding his guitar. “This was not part of my original plan, so...if this goes badly, it’s all Jared and Briana’s fault.”

The crowd laughs good-naturedly as your gaze snaps immediately to Briana. Infuriatingly, your friend just shrugs. 

“This is a cover of a song neither of us wrote,” Jensen continues, gesturing between himself and Louden Swain behind him. “But I thought it could be fitting,”

He’s nervous, you realize, watching the way he’s fiddling with his guitar strap while he talks. But you have no idea what he’s doing. And you have no idea why he didn’t tell you. The two of you always know what stupid thing the other person is planning, especially stunts in front of the fans. But clearly not this time. With a sinking sense of dread, you wonder if maybe he does hate you a little bit after today, and that article. Maybe that’s why he’s not talking to you. You swallow hard against the sting in your throat, and Jensen starts playing. 

The opening chords are definitely from a country song you vaguely recognize from the radio, and you wonder why this is Jensen’s choice over one of his own songs. 

“Girl, you know I've known you forever / How many nights we hung out together,”

Across the room, Briana has an enormous smile on her face.

“My boys are laughing and tap me on the shoulder / Making a motion like, ‘Could y'all get any closer?’” He punctuates the words with a little scowl in Jared’s direction. 

“There's a rumor going 'round about me and you / Stirring up our little town the last week or two / So tell me why we even trying to deny this feeling / I feel it, don't you feel it too? / There's a rumor going 'round, and 'round, and 'round / What d'you say we make it true?”

There are a lot of people suddenly making noise around you as they come to the same realization that you are, but you’re frozen in your seat. The rumor is you. He’s talking about you. Jensen’s singing for you. And you should be elated but your mind is stuck on a loop of what the fuck there’s no way this is real. 

You don’t even realize that the song is over until everyone is clapping and you’re still stuck staring with embarrassingly wide eyes, Jensen up on stage with an embarrassed dusting of red across his face and a slowly deflating expression. 

“Hey,” Jared’s elbow digs hard into your ribs suddenly. “Please do something. I can’t take any more of him like this,”

“What--oh--shit!” spills out of your mouth as you stand hastily, your phone tumbling off your lap. “I’m just gonna--”

By some miracle, you make it through the crush of people and around to the backstage area, your heart racing unevenly in your chest. You have no idea what you’re supposed to say, or if Jensen will be there, or if you’re even interpreting this right. Maybe it’s all just wishful thinking. No, Jared wouldn’t have encouraged you if that were true. Would he?

You’re so lost in your thoughts that you end up plowing straight into Jensen’s chest, his arm sliding automatically around your waist as you wobble off balance. “Shit, I’m sorry!”

He steadies you, green eyes searching your face with a flicker of vulnerability. “Hey,”

“Hey,” you whisper back. You have no idea what happens now.

With his free hand, Jensen rubs the back of his neck awkwardly. “Look, if that was too much--”

“No!” you shake your head quickly. “I’m sorry, I was just...processing. I...it was really sweet, Jen,”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” you confirm. “I just… me? Are you sure?”

“Why not you?” Jensen’s face wrinkles in confusion. He moves both hands to your waist, the warmth of his skin bleeding through your thin shirt as he tugs you closer. “Y/N,” 

There’s something in you screaming that you might not get to do this again, that he’s going to come to his senses, that the whole thing is a dream, and before you can second guess yourself you launch yourself up onto your tiptoes and kiss him. 

Your arms go around his neck while Jensen wraps you up tighter against his chest and it’s not fireworks, or earth shattering, or anything so dramatic. His mouth moving against yours just feels like home and love and of course. Of course you were going to get here, of course it was going to be like this. 

Jensen lifts you off your feet for a moment before breaking the kiss, and he looks just breathless and flushed enough that you’re equal parts proud and turned on. 

“Of course it’s you,” he murmurs, one hand under your chin to tilt your head up to him. “Of course I love you. You’re my best friend.”

------

Something ate my taglist! If you want to be tagged, please message me!

[shotgun--rider]

After the End

 A Dean x Reader Short

Years later, Sam and Y/N meet at a bar.

Word count: 780

Warnings: Major character death, angst

A/N: I’m sorry I promise the next thing I post is gonna have all the fluff okay?

The bar is smoky and a little less than a quarter full, patrons trickling out as it gets closer to last call. You’re pretty sure it’s never been full, never made much money, but you always make a point to stop in the run-down dive whenever you drive through the city. The whiskey is cheap and a little subpar, the bartop permanently a little sticky, but it has some inexplicable charm that reminds you of the imagined pictures Dean used to paint you of the bar he’d own if he ever quit hunting. You both knew it would never happen, but it was fun to dream. 

You’re sitting there, playing with the rim of your whiskey glass more than drinking out of it, when he sits down next to you. And somehow, it’s not much of a surprise. You’ve always known it would be the work of a few minutes for him to find your credit card history, or track your phone. And you’ve also always known that he’d never do that, never ask you to come back, unless it was important.

You watch him signal the bartender for a beer he doesn’t touch, studying him in the few seconds while he’s looking away. Hair a little longer, face a little greyer, a new scar running across his forearm. But mostly he looks old and tired in a way you’ve never seen before, and the realization settles heavy inside you without him having to explain. 

You throw back the whiskey in one burning gulp, not sure if you need the liquid courage or just need something to do with your hands. “He’s gone, isn’t he?” It’s not a question. 

Sam draws an aimless squiggling line through condensation on the bar top, nods shortly. “Four months ago. Wendigo.”

You breathe. Let the words settle. Unbidden, an image of Dean flashes through your mind, head thrown back laughing in the bunker kitchen with a beer in his hand, green eyes dancing. He’s gone. The confirmation stings like a blow, but not in the way you’d have expected. You lost him years ago already. 

“I’m so sorry, Sam,” you say finally, turning on the bar stool to face him more fully. 

Sam shrugs listlessly, turning sad eyes on you. “I should have been there, Y/N, I shouldn’t have let him go alone...I could have saved him,”

Something bittersweet rushes up in your chest, and you shake your head, reaching out with a gentle, comforting squeeze to Sam’s knee. “I don’t think you could have, Sammy,” Dean’s nickname for his brother falls out of your mouth, and Sam blinks damp eyes as you continue. “I don’t think anyone could, really.” You raise one shoulder in a half-shrug. “I know I couldn’t,”

Sam’s brow furrows, and he shoots you a quizzical look. “Is that why you left?”

The smile on your face is humorless. “‘Be careful when trying to fix a broken person, you might cut yourself on their shattered pieces’,” you quote wryly. “You know I loved your brother, Sam, but the only thing he ever knew how to do was throw himself at things trying to save everyone but himself, and nobody in the world could have saved him from those demons.” You take a breath before continuing quietly, “Castiel did everything he could, you know, but I think part of him never really came back from hell. From losing Mary, and you god knows how many times, and the Mark, and Chuck…” you trail off with a shake of your head. You could be here all night if you committed to listing all of Dean’s traumas. 

Sam stays quiet, blinking rapidly while tears cling to his eyelashes. And you know there’s nothing more to say here. You stand, boots hitting the ground startlingly loud in the quiet, and pull Sam against you in a brief, hard hug. “He’s not hurting anymore, Sammy,” you whisper into his hair, your throat closing up. “And he loved you so much. He was so proud of you.” Clearing your throat, you step back with one last squeeze to Sam’s shoulder. “Give my love to Eileen, okay?”

The bar fades into the background as you hit the highway, and you already know it’s the last time you’ll come back here. You drive with the windows down and let the wind tear through your hair, keenly aware of the warm metal resting on your chest where a silver amulet and the spare key to a vintage Chevy sit on a chain around your neck. If the wind also takes care of drying a few tears on your cheeks, well, that’s no one’s business but your own.

[shotgun--rider]

I miss my dumb British boys

[shotgun--rider]

One Digit Off

A Jared x Reader Oneshot

After a hard day at work, Y/N just wants some peace and quiet. Instead, an accidental phone call might just change the whole evening. 

Word Count: 2300

Warnings: Brief discussion of suicide attempt (not a main character), bad t-shirt puns, cat Rowena, useless fluff

*Reader gender/pronouns: any

A/N: Some silly apology fluff because I’ve been a useless rat about posting. 

The couch in your living room was an overstuffed monstrosity that liked to consume anyone that sat on it, slowly but surely. It had been a thrift-store purchase in college years ago that somehow left anyone who sat on it pulled so far into the cushions that there was almost no leverage to stand back up. Nevertheless, it made the perfect place to hide at the end of a long week. 

After the exhausting and entirely depressing shift you’d had at work, you wanted nothing more than to give in and let the couch eat you. You were wearing your favorite old, worn novelty t-shirt, the completely stupid one that read ‘SQUIRRELS JUST WANNA HAVE FUN’, and an equally embarrassing pair of shorts with tie-dyed handprints on your butt. Armed with a plate of haphazard snacks, you settled in on the hungry hippo couch, laying sprawled sideways and accepting your fate. You’d already taken a shower and jammed your hair behind a messy bandana, solidifying your look of “disaster got run over by a truck”. It was classy. 

You just wanted to get cozy, watch some TV that you knew well enough not to have to think about anymore, and try to forget the sounds of a hysterical ten year old in your headset, screaming that Mommy was killing herself. 

Working as a 911 dispatcher meant that you heard people in the worst moments of their lives all the time, and most of the time, they hung up without you ever hearing the ending. You were trained to talk down panicked callers, to get the most important information out of them in the quickest and safest way possible, to keep everyone calm and everyone alive until the first responders got there. And you were good at what you did, good at compartmentalizing what you listened to so that it didn’t follow you home, so that it didn’t distract you. And most of the time that worked. 

You blew out your breath and refocused on the TV, having put on one of your old favorite Supernatural episodes as a distraction. Your black cat was huddled up kneading her paws on your feet, the couch was slowly swallowing you between the cushions and the backrest, and the hollowness in your chest eased bit by bit as you listened to Sam and Dean bicker. 

On the coffee table in front of you, just past your snack plate and out of reach, your phone lit up, buzzing with a FaceTime call. You lifted your head halfheartedly to peer at the screen, unable to make out the caller at the angle you were at. It didn’t matter anyway; you weren’t in the mood to talk to anyone. Besides, it wasn’t like you really had anyone in your contacts who would be especially put out if you waited until tomorrow to talk to them. Your friends were all very casual people. 

Stuffing a ranch-dipped cucumber slice into your mouth while you were sitting up, you proceeded to flop back down onto the couch, earning a death look from Rowena for moving your feet. 

“Yeah, yeah,” you muttered to the cat. “You’re the one sitting on my feet, you know what you signed up for,”

And now you were talking to your cat. Great. This was probably the sort of thing that kept you perpetually single, you reflected absently. There weren’t a lot of people out there in the market for a put-crazy-cat-ladies-to-shame introvert who worked weird hours and was more awkward than entertaining. Not that it mattered, though. You weren’t really relationship material in general, you’d found, and after realizing how many boyfriends you just seemed to inevitably disappoint, you’d decided you were fine being single. 

Ten minutes later, just as Sam was losing his shoe down a storm drain, your phone buzzed again. There was no contact photo coming up, which probably meant it was a wrong number, and you ignored it once more. Until it rang again, and again, followed by a flurry of pinging text messages. 

Cursing to yourself as you fought your way upright (dislodging Rowena, who hissed at you), you flailed for the phone, not bothering to read the texts as you picked it up. If a wrong number was going to call you that many times, they either had an emergency or really needed to be set straight. Pushing your bandana higher off of your forehead carelessly, you swiped to answer the FaceTime call, setting it on the couch next to you without even looking at the video loading on the screen as you fumbled to pause the TV. “God, what!” you snapped in the vague direction of your phone. “Stop hissing at me, cat,” you added irritably for Rowena’s benefit. 

There was a long pause, and then a man’s voice. “Um,” he said inelegantly. “I’m sorry?”

Rowena prowled over to the phone, then, batting at it with one paw and nosing the screen inquisitively. “Rowena, you menace!” You reached over, trying to pry the phone out from where she was currently sitting on half of it, sighing heavily. 

“Hey, look, I think you called the wrong number, and I’m really sorry my cat’s sitting on you right now--” you started, just barely able to make out the bottom half of a man’s torso in a loose gray shirt from underneath Rowena’s black fur. 

A laugh, then, “No, it’s a cute cat. Well, as far as I can tell,” 

Your phone’s speaker was muffled by Rowena’s tail, but there was something about that voice that almost sounded familiar. “Jesus Christ, Ro, let me apologize to this guy properly,” you huffed, failing once more to pull your phone free when she batted her paws at you defensively, claws out. 

“Wait, your cat’s name is Rowena?”

“Uh, yeah,” you frowned, trying to figure out why hearing your cat’s name in a stranger’s voice bothered you so much. “Yeah, I--Rowena give me the phone!” you snapped suddenly, making a dive between her paws. Finally, your cat relinquished the phone, fixing you with an Oscar-worthy dramatic look of anger befitting her namesake before flouncing off the couch. “Damn cat,” you grumbled, finally lifting the phone to get a look at who’d been calling you. At least being virtually sat on by a cat meant he got a little payback for harassing you with calls for the past half hour. 

As soon as you brought the phone up to your face, you froze, your slow blinking the only proof that the screen hadn’t just frozen up on you. “Uh.”

He was several years older than the one currently paused on your TV, wearing a black beanie and looking mostly ready for bed, but no, that was definitely Jared freaking Padalecki staring back at you. And you were wearing a squirrel shirt and had a rat’s nest for hair. Clearly, the universe had just built this entire day to laugh at you, because what the fuck. 

He was smiling at you, eyes crinkled up at the corners and looking unfairly put together compared to your gremlin-impersonation in the corner screen. “So, are the squirrels having fun?”

“What--oh!” you looked down at your shirt, embarrassment flooding through you, and decided on the spot to go with it. It wasn’t like this could get any weirder. “They were,” you returned, “until somebody called them six times in twenty minutes,”

Jared’s expression turned sheepish. “Yeah...sorry about that. My buddy got a new phone number and I obviously saved it wrong. I wouldn’t have bothered you if I didn’t think it was just Jensen ignoring me,”

A slightly incredulous sounding laugh burst from your lips, and you shifted on the couch, still trying to wrap your head around the fact that you were casually carrying on a conversation with Jared Padalecki. After your cat had sat on him. “You didn’t bother me that much,” you conceded. “Sorry I snapped at you. Rough day.” 

“Oh yeah?” Jared tucked one arm behind his head, shifting around but never taking his eyes away from your face. “Wanna talk about it?”

“Um,” you faltered, tucking a loose strand of hair behind your ear. You didn’t need to spill your guts to a random wrong number who also happened to be one of your favorite actors. What you did need to do was get out of this with some decency, hang up the phone, and forget about it.

“You don’t have to,” Jared was saying softly, his forehead pinched like he was concerned about you. (Which was laughable).

“No…” you shook your head, wrinkling your nose. “I don’t know, I just...isn’t this weird?”

“What do you mean?”

“Uh, talking to a stranger because of a misdial?”

Jared pouted, his eyes turning dangerously puppy-looking. “And here I thought you liked me,” 

“Wishful thinking, Padalecki,” you shot back without thinking, only realizing after the words were already out that you’d just confirmed that you knew who he was. 

Meanwhile, Jared’s eyes had lit up triumphantly. “If you know who I am, then you’re not talking to a total stranger,” he pointed out, smiling easily at you. 

He didn’t seem like he minded, but that did little to put you at ease. Pinching the bridge of your nose to stave off a stress headache, you sighed. “I’m sorry, that’s got to be so awkward, I--”

“What? No,” Jared just looked genuinely confused. “You’ve got a cat named Rowena, I kind of figured you’d know who I was,” 

You groaned, covering your entire face with your hand now as embarrassment burned through your cheeks. “You probably think I’m some crazed wild fan, naming my cat after a character,”

“I don’t,” Jared reassured you firmly. “I think you’re funny, and I like the squirrel shirt,”

You peeked out from between your fingers. Jared Padalecki liked your dumb squirrel shirt. “You’re just saying that,”

He laughed, shaking his head. “No, I’m not! This is the best thing to happen to me all week,”

“You must have had a pretty lame week,” you observed sarcastically, leaning toward your phone to better examine your own image in the corner. “I look like a gremlin,”

“You do not!” Jared was laughing at you now, shaking his head emphatically. “You look cute,”

“I look--and feel--like I crawled out of a trash can, but thank you,” you deadpanned, a yawn distracting you from Jared’s further counterargument. You heard the smile in his voice before you opened your eyes to see it, and something caught in your chest at his soft expression. 

“Tired?” he asked gently, shifting onto his stomach on the screen, face propped up on a pillow to look at you. Vaguely, in the back of your mind, that surrealness of being on a FaceTime call with Jared Padalecki was still there, but mostly, it just felt unbelievably normal. 

“Twelve hour shift,” you confirmed with a nod, one hand moving beside you to lazily pet Rowena, who had apparently decided to forgive you. At the look of puzzlement on Jared’s face, you elaborated, “I’m a 911 dispatcher,”

“So when you say you had a rough day…” Jared’s face cleared in understanding, his expression patient. “You don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want,” he reminded you softly, falling silent after that as if just content to watch your gremlin face on his screen. (Which would be ridiculous).

Your mind flickered back to the sound of the panicked girl on your headset, and you sighed. “No, it’s fine. I, uh, picked up a call from a girl today. Moriah. She was ten. She, uh, she found her mom in the bathtub with a knife,”

Jared sucked in a breath. “I’m so sorry you had to listen to that. Did she...uh, is she okay?”

Your mouth twisted wryly. “That’s the thing. Everybody hangs up as soon as the ambulance gets there. I hope so, though. Kid said she had vitals,”

Jared was shaking his head at you. “And you do that every day,”

“I mean, not every day, it depends on shifts. But yeah.” you shrugged. “I try to help,”

“That’s incredible. You’re incredible.” he murmured softly. 

Squirming at the praise, you scowled playfully at him. “You don’t even know me,”

“I’m not taking it back,”

“Yeah, okay,” you feigned annoyance like there wasn’t a blush all over your face. Then you winced, suddenly noting the little red battery symbol on top of your screen. “Crap, my phone’s gonna die,”

That seemed to shake Jared out of just staring vaguely at the phone screen, and you watched him sit up cross legged on his bed, still with that same heart-stopping smile. “Yeah, we should both probably go to bed anyway,”

You sighed with a nod, strangely reluctant to hang up. “I’m still sorry Rowena sat on you,”

Jared laughed, throwing back his head. “I’m not,” he told you brightly. “You probably woulda hung up on me if she hadn’t. Tell her she’s a good cat,”

“I will not, it’ll make her head bigger,” you retorted easily. “Goodnight, Jared,”

Jared touched his fingers briefly to his lips, covering the camera with them a second later. “Goodnight,” he whispered, ending the call before you had any time to process what that meant. 

It only took a few minutes for your phone to buzz with a new text, and you opened it with a laugh, scrolling briefly back through Jared’s pestering of “Jensen” before focusing on what he’d sent you this time. 

So since you turned out not to be Jensen, I need a name for my contacts

Are you sure you’re keeping my contact? You shot back, smirking at your phone screen.

Yes??? Jared sent back carefully, and you could almost imagine his hesitantly sheepish expression. 

Jensen 2. Not-Jensen. Crazy cat lady. 

He sent back a sad emoji. C’mon. 

Y/N L/N

Goodnight, Y/N. 

You tossed your phone back onto the coffee table, falling back into the couch with what was probably a vaguely stunned expression on your face. Jared freaking Padalecki. You fell asleep with a little smile still playing on your lips. 

[shotgun--rider]

Friendly reminder that Meg Masters is the absolute love of my life and always will be

[shotgun--rider]

Fake It Till You Make It - Four

A Sam x Reader Series

PART FOUR

Y/N knows it’s a bad idea to try telling her family that she’s dating Sam Winchester. But it’s just for the week of her sister’s wedding, and it’s all fake anyway. What could go wrong?

Word Count: 3500

Warnings: plus size! Reader, fatphobic comments and self esteem issues, Y/N’s family are demons, gratuitous Meg pep talks because I love her and I’m sorry

A/N: Sorry for taking forever, being a depressed squid took more of my time than planned. Also sorry for any pain this part may cause, I promise to fix it next time. 

Sam and your father returned from golfing the following afternoon relatively unscathed. A few jokes were made about a lawyer not knowing how to golf, but they were surprisingly good natured, considering your family’s penchant for throwing passive-aggressive barbs around. Sam just took it in stride, the same way he had with everything that had been thrown at both of you this week, with a smile and a nod and a hand on whatever part of you was within reach. 

You, on the other hand, were in freefall. You’d known on some level even back at Dean’s dinner table that it wasn’t a particularly great plan for you to bring Sam to your sister’s wedding, but you hadn’t anticipated the reality of playing this charade. He was everything you’d ever wanted, even earning the approval of the only family members that mattered (even if Meg did still like flirting with him) and none of it was real. Kissing him had only made it all worse, and Sam’s subsequent apology for blindsiding you that evening didn’t come close to making anything better. 

Now, the two of you were curled up in one lounge chair at Ruby’s behest, and you were pretty sure that this was some personal hell devised by the devil to torture you. You weren’t entirely sure why Ruby had felt that a pre-wedding family bonfire was necessary on her last night as an unmarried woman, but she’d insisted, so here you both were. 

Gramma Lilith, who was quickly becoming the primary villain here, had started fawning over the two of you the instant you made your appearance on the back lawn, somehow strong-arming you into sharing a seat and insisting that Sam could keep you warm. (Your arguments ranged from the overall midsummer heat to the fact that you were literally sitting in front of a fire, but you didn’t bother voicing them.)

Your first thought was to try to get through this as professionally as possible (if professional was even a word that could be applied to this shitshow) but the expensive chairs circling Aunt Abaddon’s fire pit were designed at too far of a reclined angle for you not to be basically laying on top of Sam. You tried your hand weakly at looking as relaxed as Ruby, sprawled nearby across her fiance, but internally, your heart was racing, muscles tensed like you wanted to run. 

“Okay?” Sam murmured into the top of your head, one hand tracing absent designs over your arm. 

“Peachy,” you grumbled back, sarcasm bleeding into your voice in spite of yourself. You were tucked mostly between him and the arm of the lounge chair, but there was still enough of your weight on him to make you decidedly uncomfortable. You gotta lose some of that weight before you try sitting on me, Dick had said to you once, all bright white teeth and supposedly innocent teasing. 

You tried in vain to keep your stupid fat thighs from touching him, like you could convince them to condense into a smaller space through sheer force of will. Of course, the laws of physics weren’t on your side, and all you succeeded in doing was wriggling around like a particularly uncomfortable worm, earning yourself a weird look from Meg over the fire and an awkward throat-clearing from Sam.

“Y/N,” he started, sounding vaguely strained. “Can you, um, not--”

“What about you two?” Meg said suddenly, loudly, knocking both of you out of your own awkward world. She was looking at you expectantly, and, you realized with a sinking stomach, so was most of the rest of your family. 

“Sorry, what?” 

Meg rolled her eyes. “What was your first date like?” she enunciated every word with exaggerated emphasis, shaking her head at you.

“Yes,” your mother chimed in, leaning forward with interest. “We’d love to hear what you did to make...this...happen,”

It was on the tip of your tongue to just give up and blurt out, we’ve never had one. Sam must have been able to feel the tension vibrating through you, though, and pulled you to settle back against him, taking over answering the question. 

“I met her through my brother,” he said easily, and you could vaguely feel him winding some of your hair up around his finger. “I came over one afternoon and there she was, asking his boyfriend if their bees could smell fear,” 

You flushed at the memory. Yeah, you’d agreed to use the real story of how you met, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t embarrassing. Poor Cas had had to spend a solid half hour convincing you that the bees weren’t going to attack you that day. 

“She had on this pink sundress, and I heard her laughing, and I just thought...she was beautiful. Took me forever to do anything about it, though,” Sam went on, and that was all true too, the dress you’d been wearing and the fit of laughter you and Cas had broken into when Sam first showed up in the backyard. You hadn’t expected him to remember that much detail, though, and it did something strange to your insides to listen to it. 

“I took her to the diner on 5th Street,” Sam admitted, still playing with your hair. “I was too afraid of screwing up to come up with something more original.” He sounded so adorably hesitant, even now, that your head was popping up before you could think about it, could remember that he was just weaving a story.

“Hey, I liked it fine,” you protested, and it hit you like a sudden gut punch that there was something to remember. Because the first time Sam took you anywhere was to the 5th Street diner that was halfway between your place and Dean’s. You’d only done it to plan something for Dean’s birthday last year, and of course it wasn’t a real date, but the two of you really had been there. 

Sam’s only limit in this conversation was the world of his own imagination. If he wanted to, he could have told everyone that he’d taken you skydiving in New Zealand for your first date, and yet here he was, using memories from your real life with a dopey smile on his face. 

“Sickening,” Meg was saying dryly, a smirk on her lips to take the sting out of it. “Hey, Y/N, when you marry him, can I wear jeans?” If there was anything you should have been deflecting, it was that, squashing thoughts of marriage from the group’s mind before anyone latched onto it, but all you said was, “I’ll think about it,”

That was apparently enough to satisfy Meg, and the conversation moved on to other things that thankfully weren’t focused on you and Sam. You sighed heavily, and Sam slid one big palm over your hair, tucking your head down to rest against his chest. It was comfortable, and you were too tired in the flickering firelight to keep worrying, and you let yourself melt against him, absorbing his warmth as your eyes fluttered shut. Sam never let up on combing his hands through your hair, lulling you into a half-conscious state that barely registers anything beyond overlapping voices and the pop of the bonfire and Sam. 

It occurred to you suddenly, as you drifted somewhere between awareness and spaced-out calm, that it had been a very long time since someone had just held you. None of your family had ever been particularly tactile, save for the required gestures and whatever new tactic your mother was using to disguise her fussing. Dean and Cas and Charlie always gave you a hug when they saw you, but they were quick, always moving on to something else. And you’d never once had a boyfriend that held you for anything more than sex. 

“Hey,” Sam murmured lowly against the top of your head. “Still with me, darlin’?”

You blinked sleepily, raising your head to peer up at him, and he gave a low chuckle that you felt more than heard, smiling gently at you. 

“It’s late. Unless you wanna sleep out here?” he raised an eyebrow at you teasingly, shifting underneath you to sit up a bit more. 

A quick glance around showed that you were the only ones left outside, somehow, and the fire was nothing more than a handful of faintly glowing coals in the bottom of the pit. “How did we...where did everyone--” you tried, brain still not quite online enough to process how you’d somehow slept through everyone getting up and leaving. Knowing your family, they wouldn’t have been quiet about it. 

“I didn’t want to move you,” Sam shrugged sheepishly. “You seemed like you needed it,”

“Oh, yeah, I was probably drooling all over you,” you scoffed, rolling your eyes up into your skull. 

“S’fine,” Sam looked a little hesitant, a little awkward, but mostly he looked strangely content, and for just a moment, you could convince yourself that this was your real life, that you and Sam could do this whenever you wanted, that you could always be this close. 

“So I get to see you in a fancy dress tomorrow, huh?” Sam nudged you lightly, smiling. 

You huffed. “Don’t remind me, it’s ugly. It’s all...clingy,” you wrinkled your nose. 

“You make most things look good,” Sam promised, like it was the obvious thing to say and didn’t send your stomach flipping around rebelliously. 

“That’s very nice of you to say,” you said with mock sweetness before scowling at him, “and also a blatant lie.”

“Is not,” Sam looked affronted, and you were struck with a sudden desire to kiss the pout off of his soft lips. Damn it, Y/N, don’t you dare go there, you snapped at yourself instantly. 

“God, I can’t wait for this week to be over,” you groaned out instead, trying to pull the conversation onto safer ground. You flashed him a cheerful smile, your words more a reminder to yourself than to him when you tack on teasingly, “You’re almost off the hook, boyfriend,” Of course, because the universe hated you and took great pleasure in reminding you, it took very little to send everything sliding downhill from there. 

Sam’s answering smile didn’t reach his eyes, and he shifted slightly in the chair, as if he was debating something. “Y/N, I--”

“We’re so close to not having to spend every waking moment together,” you chirped, like an idiot, and, still sitting inches away from the man you had to remember you could not have, you watched hurt and something darker flash across his expression. 

Sam clenched his jaw, taking a breath in like he was going to say something, and then, for the second time in as many days, slammed his lips into yours without any warning. 

Conscious thought turned into static as you surrendered to the onslaught of his mouth moving over yours, sending a bolt of electricity flying through your entire body. If Sam’s kiss on the driveway was tinged with desperation, this one was worse. As cliche as you knew it sounded, Sam kissed you like a starving man, hands sliding across your back to pull you impossibly closer as he devoured your mouth, swallowing your meep of surprise and sliding his tongue against yours.

Sam shifted beneath you in the chair, abruptly bringing you into contact with the noticeable bulge in his well-worn jeans, and it was more instinct than anything else that had you grinding down against him, pulling a choked sound out of his throat that only encouraged you. There was a heady thrill in knowing that it was you doing this, Sam doing more in five minutes to make you feel desirable than anyone else ever had, and the slide of your bodies felt strangely inevitable, like it was the matching other half to the sensation that had been stuck in your chest since you turned off the freeway in Sam’s car a week ago. 

You wondered for a split second if his touch would still be able to set you on fire the same way if he hadn’t spent days smiling at you, talking you up, defending you, and the harsh reminder of why you were even here at all hit you like ice water. You scrambled to your feet so quickly that you narrowly missed kneeing Sam in the crotch, and then you were backing away, your hands flying uselessly around your face to push your hair back and somehow wipe the blush off your cheeks. 

You couldn’t do this. You were supposed to know better. And you weren’t going to let Sam Winchester break your heart, even unintentionally, because you didn’t know if you could survive that. 

“What are you doing?” you hissed out, straightening your clothes hastily.

Sam scrambled to sit up in the reclined lounge chair, confusion painted across his face and his chest still heaving with ragged breaths that should not have been affecting you the way they were. “W-what?”

You threw your hands up, impatience and anger rising up to protect you from the weight of your fear. “There’s nobody watching us, Sam. There’s no point in faking it,”

“Faking it,” Sam echoed flatly, hazel eyes flicking over you rapidly like he was trying so hard to understand. It might have been a little heartbreaking if you weren’t too preoccupied with guarding yours. 

“Yeah,” you went on, digging yourself further because you never knew when to stop. “Look, I know we’ve been putting on a show but you can’t just--” you trailed off limply, not even trying anymore to label the storm of emotions in your ribcage. “People like us don’t do this for real,” Guys like you don’t look at girls like me. 

“Huh. Well I’m glad I could help you with your show,” Sam spat out coldly, and you froze at the tone. You’d heard it once before, when Sam had once taken apart Castiel’s asshat older brother over immigration politics, and Luke had yet to show his face since. Charlie called it the I went to Stanford law now let me tell you all the reasons this argument is over voice. And you’d never once thought it would be directed at you. 

“Sam, I--”

He was already gone, a rapidly shrinking shadow disappearing into the house on long legs you couldn’t hope to catch up with. Fuck. 

You spent the night before Ruby’s wedding staring at the ceiling, hands folded across your chest and so still you could probably have passed for a medieval tomb effigy. Beside you in the dark, Sam’s breaths were too shallow, too even to pass for sleep, but neither of you said a word. He’d already had the lights off by the time you convinced your leaden legs to carry you back into the house and up the stairs, and you’d just changed into pajamas like a robot and laid down in defeat. You didn’t sleep. 

Sam had no day-of obligations, so you left him in bed when the sun finally rose, swallowing against the sick pit in your stomach and making your way to Ruby’s bedroom, where there was already enough shrieking to compound the headache drilling through your skull. For the first time, though, you actually felt grateful for your sister and her antics--the storm of chaos she was whipping up and her endless, high-pitched demands left you with no brain space to think about your monumental fuck-up the night before. 

You jammed a pin into your hair impatiently, cursing when the ends slipped out of your fingers for the hundredth time, and bit down hard on your red-painted lip. The maid of honor didn’t get to throw a tantrum on the wedding day. 

“Well don’t you look like cold shit,” Meg commented dryly, her head popping up in the mirror over your shoulder. She was already dressed, wearing the gray bridesmaid dress fair better than you were going to, and she snapped her fingers impatiently. “Gimme,”

You put the card of hair pins into her hand wordlessly, fighting the irrational sting of tears in your eyes when she coiled your hair up easily, looking for just a second like she was your little cousin again, soaking wet on the bathroom floor and laughing. 

“Is Ruby getting to you?” she murmured, a calculating look on her face as she studied you in the mirror, trying to crack your shitty mood. “You’re almost done, you know.”

“Yeah, no, I know,” you said hollowly. 

Meg cocked her head, reaching around you for a bottle of hairspray. “Okay, not Ruby. Which is shocking, by the way. So what gives?”

“Nothing,”

“Wow. You’re usually better at bullshitting than this.” She arched a brow. “Tell you what. I can cover you for five minutes, go find your boy. Can’t have you moping your way down the aisle, Ruby’ll kill you if you ruin the photos.”

“Sam can’t do anything,” you returned flatly, leaning forward mechanically toward the mirror to examine your slightly-wobbly eyeliner. 

“Sure he can. Boy’s so in love with you it’s nauseating,” Meg countered cheerfully, making a face at you. 

“He’s not,”

Meg scrunched up her face at those words, frowning as she pulled up the bodice of her dress. “What’d you do, have a fight or something? Jesus, just kiss and make up,”

“It’s fake,” you blurted out before you could stop yourself, and once you’d started, it took very little for the whole story to come pouring out to the one person that might listen. “It’s fake, the whole thing’s fake, he’s...he’s just Dean’s brother, we wanted to get my mom off my back--” You took a shuddering breath, wincing at how stupidly hysterical the whole thing made you sound.

“Bullshit,” Meg declared solidly, grabbing the eyeliner pen out of your hand impatiently. “Give me that, you’re doing a shit job.”

You surrendered to the gale force that was your cousin, letting her manhandle your head into her preferred position and shutting your eyes obediently while she drew a neat line across your eyelid. “No, Meg, it’s--”

“It’s bullshit,” she repeated, holding up a hand to stop you as you reopened your eyes to protest. “No, I don’t care what you’re gonna say. Maybe it was fake for you, but there’s no way in hell anybody could fake the way he looks at you. That boy is so gone on you it’s not even funny. He’s your unicorn, and I’m kinda jealous, so whatever you did,” she narrowed her eyes. “Fix it.”

“Meg, you don’t understand--”

“Yeah, you’re damn right I don’t understand.” She cut you off, crossing her arms and somehow managing to look just as intimidating in a bridesmaid’s dress as she did in a black leather jacket. “This family is a shitshow. I know it, you know it, everybody knows it. So why are you still listening to them?”

“I don’t--” you started weakly.

“Just because you’re not a size two and marrying into the Roman Enterprises fortune doesn’t mean anything, Y/N. You don’t not deserve him, or whatever, so get your fucking head on straight.” Meg rolled her eyes, gesturing to the dress hanging next to you in a clear sign that her warm fuzzy conversation capacity had been reached. “Get dressed.”

It took you a long time to obey, staring at yourself in the little mirror station that Aunt Abaddon had had set up for everyone in the bridal party to get ready. As you zipped up the clingy gray dress, Meg’s blunt words bouncing around in your head, your eyes catalogued every curve, every flaw you’d had memorized and hated by the time you were thirteen. It was just something you lived with, a low hum in the back of your conscious that reminded you not to pose the wrong way for photos and to stay away from bikinis and to adjust the way your clothes fit when you sat down. 

Except Sam had never once made you feel that you had to. Sam made you feel like a person before a body, somehow convinced you that the words your family had been hurling at you for years were lies, and when he called you beautiful you wanted to believe him. And as Meg’s words echoed in your head once more, you wondered if maybe, just maybe, she was right about some of it. 

You pinched your lips into a wry smile in the mirror, giving yourself one last cursory onceover before you resolutely turned away to go see if Ruby was ready. Your job today was to be a maid of honor. And anything else, no matter what Meg thought she knew...you knew it was already too late. 

tags: @vicmc624​ @thebookisbtr​ @alicedopey​ @still-a-demon-very-ineffable​

[shotgun--rider]

Love Your Neighbor - One

A Dean x Reader Series

PART ONE

Y/N just wants her neighbor to find some sense of decency and shut the hell up. Her so-called brilliant plan gets messy, though, when it turns out that Dean Winchester is actually kind of perfect, and maybe taking her friends’ advice wasn’t the best move after all.

Word Count: 2900

Warnings: Allusions to sex, Dean Winchester is a fanboy

Dean Winchester isn’t a bad guy. As far as you can tell, actually, he seems to be a perfectly normal, average, unassuming guy. You’ve shared a few elevators and gotten your mail at the same time, waved politely on your way to take out the trash, and your beater car lives next door to his pristine ‘67 Impala in the underground parking ramp. Considering that the neighbors in your last apartment almost blew up the building making meth, living next to a harmless, pie-eating contractor sounded like heaven when you signed the lease. 

There’s just one little problem. And, strictly speaking, it’s none of your business if Dean Winchester also likes banging everything with legs in a twenty mile radius. More power to him, really. It’s just that the walls are cripplingly thin in this building, and while you’re happy your neighbor has a thriving sex life, you’d rather not be forced to listen to it every single night. 

Laying flat out on your bed, clad in the least amount of clothing you can pull off while still being decent, you grit your teeth. It’s a scorching night in July and the A/C in your unit has given up the ghost, leaving you to sprawl out sweating, hoping in vain for a cool breeze from the fire escape. And somehow, in spite of the fact that moving two feet has you wanting to pant like a dog with heat stroke, Dean Winchester has found the motivation to work up a whole other kind of sweat on the other side of your wall. Loudly. 

The apartment you’re renting is a pretty cheap one, and you knew what you’d signed up for when you signed the lease. It works for your purposes, and it’s not like you have loads of spare cash lying around anyway. The issue with the tiny one-bedroom is that it only accommodates your stuff in one possible layout, and yes, that does in fact mean that your bed is directly on the wall you share with Dean. In fact, you’re pretty sure your apartments are mirror images of one another, which is only an issue when he’s railing Lisa two feet from your head and banging the headboard on your shared wall. 

‘Lisa’ has been around for almost a month now, which as far as you’re aware is a new record for Dean, and she moans like a porn star that’s trying too hard. It can’t possibly be natural, you’ve decided, because sure, sex is good, but nobody in real life is having sex that’s that good. And sure, you’ll concede that Dean is an incredibly attractive guy, from what you’ve seen of him, but you’ve learned the hard way many times that that doesn’t automatically make them good in bed. Which means Lisa is just being obnoxiously dramatic. 

You thump your head in frustration against your pillow, contemplating pulling it over your ears as a new round of moaning starts up. God, how does anyone have sex for that long, anyway? 

“Yes, Dean, harder...right there… oh, fuck, yeah, yes, yes, yes!” She subsides into unintelligible screaming, punctuated with the occasional lower-pitched groan and the shuffle-shuffle-bang of the bed frame against the wall. 

“Oh my god, yeah, I’m gonna come, please make me come,” 

Cursing under your breath, you sit up, adjusting the spaghetti straps of your tank top as they try to slide down your shoulder. “Nobody says that shit,” you grumble aloud, shuffling in defeat off of your bed and out to sit on the fire escape. 

It’s not any cooler out here, and you can still vaguely hear Dean and Lisa getting it on, but at least your bed is no longer vibrating. Leaning forward on the iron railing, you pull out your phone and send a vomiting emoji to your best friend. There’s no context needed; she’s heard you complain enough times to know exactly what’s usually happening between the hours of ten p.m. and midnight in your building. 

Kinda impressed with this dude tbh, Meg replies back instantly. I wish I got off that much. 

You answer her with an eye roll. The point is I don’t want to hear it

Just tell him to shut the fuck up. Or kill him. You know like a bazillion ways

Once, when you’d only been living there for a handful of weeks, you’d thrown a shoe at the wall between you in a fit of ill-handled rage. You’d followed that up with taking off your other shoe and repeatedly thumping the wall with the heel, just in case they thought the original noise had been an accident. 

The resulting blissful silence had only lasted for about a minute, after which it was followed by a bout of laughter, and then more enthusiastic sex. No, Dean Winchester was evidently not the type of person to back down after being told to shut the fuck up, and you’d never quite managed to get the courage to just attack him about his sex life in front of the downstairs mailboxes. 

That doesn’t mean, however, that you haven’t been thinking up subtler ways to deal with the issue.  And now, because living on the fire escape until October doesn't actually sound like a pleasant experience, you might just have the perfect excuse. 

The ‘67 Chevy that lives in the parking space next to yours gets periodically replaced with a slightly rusty old pickup, the words Winchester Contracting emblazoned on the doors. And it’s not like you haven’t seen Dean sporting paint-stained jeans and a bag of tools before. He’s clearly the obvious, convenient choice to ask about the A/C. And if you happen to interrupt his bang-fest while complaining about the heat, well, that’s just two birds with one stone. 

You don’t bother with shoes for the short walk down the thinly-carpeted hall, only realizing once you’re standing in front of his door that you’re not really dressed for this. That could only work in your favor, though, right? Maybe a barely-clothed girl showing up would send Lisa into a jealous rage and she would leave on the spot, rendering Dean mercifully single and silent. And maybe you just need to solve this so you can get some god damned sleep, you thought wryly.

Before you can change your mind, you knock sharply on the door of apartment 914, rocking back on your heels as you wait, straining your ears for any noise from within. For a moment, there’s silence, and then a tell-tale, high pitched squeal. Nope, they’re definitely still shamelessly boinking, as your old roommate Donna would have announced cheerfully. 

At this point, it’s just getting a little ridiculous. Clenching your jaw in anger, you raise your fist to pound on the door again, harder this time. You have a book deadline in two weeks, no A/C, and you just want some fucking peace and quiet. Clearly, the universe has just chosen to laugh at you instead. 

Resisting the urge to hiss aloud in irritation, you pound on the door once more, this time hearing soft voices from inside. There’s shuffling, a muffled yelp, some slightly uneven footsteps, and then the door swings open to reveal Dean Winchester, irritated, half dressed, and making no attempt to hide what he’s been up to. 

“What?” he snaps out, all green eyes and sex hair and bare chest, which somehow manages to short-circuit your very angry brain, leaving you stuttering in his doorway. Seriously, though, knowing you have an attractive neighbor and seeing him in nothing but a pair of sweats are two different things.

“Uh,” you mentally shake yourself. You didn’t come here to drool over him, you’re here to solve a problem. “Listen, I’m really sorry to bother you,” you start. You’re not really all that sorry, but you need the time to try to organize your thoughts. 

“Oh, are you?” Dean returns grumpily, crossing his arms over his chest and Jesus but that’s a lot of tanned skin and biceps right in front of your face. 

“Yeah,” you falter, “I just was wondering if you could maybe help me?” You were laying it on a bit thick now, but who could really blame you? “The A/C quit on me and I know you have that construction business…”

“Dean? Who is it?” That would be Lisa, evidently, coming to the doorway in a bathrobe and, unsurprisingly, looking stunningly beautiful. She blinks at you over his shoulder, pushing dark hair out of her face and giving you an uncertain smile as she looks over your tank top and skimpy sleep shorts.  

“Oh I’m sorry,” you somehow manage to keep the sarcasm out of your voice. “I didn’t mean to interrupt anything,”

“You’re not,” Dean says, and, behind him, Lisa raises affronted eyebrows. Maybe there is trouble in paradise. Filing that information away for later, you shift on your feet, pushing some of your still-slightly-sweaty hair off of your forehead. Dean seems to jolt at the motion, glancing back into his apartment and opening the door wider. “Right, yeah,” he runs a hand through his hair, doing nothing to quiet the wild spikes. “You said A/C? Lemme just…” 

Dean disappears behind the half open door, one bare foot still holding it in place, and you can hear him moving something around, saying something in a low voice to Lisa, who audibly huffs back like she’s annoyed. When the rest of his body reappears, he’s got a black Metallica shirt most of the way on (a shame, really), and he’s carrying a slim black canvas bag of tools. 

“--probably not gonna take long,” he’s saying to Lisa over his shoulder, and it occurs to you suddenly that this plan requires you to bring Dean inside your apartment. Which makes sense, obviously, given that you actually do need the air conditioning fixed, and as long as he’s doing that he’s not banging his girlfriend, but you’re kind of awkward at the best of times and this is probably going to require conversation. Picture everyone naked, Donna would say, but somehow, having seen him shirtless really, really doesn’t help. 

Resigned to your fate, you shuffle back to your own apartment with Dean following, and you wince at the blast of hot air greeting you as soon as you swing open the door. Compared to the hallway, it’s like stepping into a particularly miserable sauna, and Dean huffs a surprised noise behind you. “Damn, you weren’t kidding, were you?”

You show him over to the sad little A/C unit wordlessly, hopping up on your kitchen table and crossing your arms as you watch him squint at it. “Thank you,” falls from your lips belatedly, and you have to remember that for all your irritation with him, Dean Winchester is still, fundamentally, the kind of man who apparently lets his neighbors interrupt sex so he can fix their broken appliances in the middle of the night. “I know it’s really late…”

“S’fine,” Dean shrugs, neatly pulling off the cover to the air conditioning and going after something inside with a tool you couldn’t have named if your life depended on it. “This way you won’t have to sleep on the fire escape.” He smiles at you over his shoulder, those green eyes bright, and your retort about sleeping on the fire escape anyway because of him gets lost somewhere in transit. Not for the first time, you wonder if this is really the brightest idea you’ve had. 

“Still,” you say instead, “you probably don’t want to come home from work and do more work,”

“It’s really not a big deal, Y/N,” Dean glances back at you. “It’s Y/N, right?”

“Yeah,” you confirm with a little shake of your head. “What’d you do, read my mail?”

“No,” Dean says quickly, followed by a slightly sheepish, “Maybe. Look, the mailroom’s tiny,”

He’s not wrong, and since you initially collected his name from the moans through your bedroom wall, you’re not sure you’re in a position to talk. When you look back at him, Dean’s wearing a slightly hesitant, definitely-not-adorable look on his face, and you laugh softly, watching him break out into a relieved smile in return. And damn it, he wasn’t supposed to be funny. It’s far easier to vilify someone who’s only kindness has been holding the elevator doors a few times, because plenty of colossal douchebags still have surface-level manners. 

But now your A/C is humming contentedly, working overtime to compensate for its lapse, and you have your loud-ass neighbor to thank for it. Your funny, smiling, half-dressed-at-midnight neighbor who’s currently giving you a great view of his ass in sweatpants as he bends over to grab his tools. Fuck. 

“Thank you,” you get out when your brain gets back online, and you hope it was a brief enough lapse that he didn’t notice. “I might actually make my deadline now that I’m not dying,”

Dean raises an eyebrow at you, shifting to lean back on the wall. “Deadline for what?”

“I’m a writer,” you explain, shaking your head ruefully. “Which is why I live in a crackerbox apartment with shitty air in the first place,”

Dean’s green eyes perk up in interest, and that was hardly the reaction you were expecting. “Oh yeah? What d’you write?”

You uncross your arms and slide off the kitchen table, crossing the living room to pull a black-and-red hardcover out of your hanging bookshelf. “Murder books,” you deadpan, watching for a reaction as you flash him the cover, featuring a man’s limp hand lying in a pool of blood. There’s kind of a small part of you that’s hoping you’ll scare him out of your apartment, because now you’re not really sure how to get rid of him. 

Surprising you as usual, Dean’s mouth drops open shamelessly instead. He gapes at you like a very handsome fish for a few moments before his tongue darts out to wet his lip and then he’s tripping over himself, talking almost too rapidly for you to follow. “No freakin’ way! I didn’t...I mean, you’re Y/F/I L/N. You never have a picture on the jacket--” Dean trails off, a flush rising in his cheeks as he collects himself, only serving to make the freckles dashed across his face more obvious. It’s kind of, maybe, just a little bit cute. “I’ve read them all,” he blurts out, stuck somewhere between shy and kind of proud. “They’re...this is awesome,”

You can’t help but laugh a little, surprised but pleased with the reaction. Your books do fairly well, garnering a moderate amount of attention and the occasional creepy fan message, but Dean’s enthusiasm is...pure. He’s standing in your living room with wide eyes and an embarrassed blush creeping its way down under the collar of his t-shirt, and damn it you were supposed to be mad at him. 

“I’ll sign copies for you as a thank you for the A/C,” comes out of your traitorous mouth instead. “If you want,” 

Dean lights up like a little kid at Christmas, warmth spreading in your chest at his reaction. “That would be awesome. I mean, yeah. Yes, please. Thanks,” He says roughly. Dean swings the compact tool bag awkwardly, rocking back on his heels for a moment, and then he looks hastily back at your little air conditioner. “Well, that’s done, so…”

“Right,” you return quickly, suddenly painfully aware that it’s past midnight as you turn in the direction of the door. “I really do appreciate it, Dean. Bring me whatever you want me to sign sometime, okay?”

He’s still got that terribly endearing, vaguely-stunned expression on his face when you lock the door behind him. 

The air’s had a chance to start working while you were talking with Dean, and you end up spread like a starfish on your bed after he leaves, reveling in the cooling air and the blessed silence. It’s the best sleep you’ve had in months. 

Of course, because the universe and everything in it hates you with a mad passion, the reprieve only lasts two days. You’re sitting cross legged on your floor, scowling at your laptop and your misbehaving chapter, still cringing at the latest biting deadline reminder from your agent, when a soft whimper catches your attention. 

For a moment, you’re prepared to dismiss it, hoping for the first and only time in your life that your apartment has rats. Kinky rats. “Fuck yeah, oh my god, want your cock so bad!”

You flop on your back on the floor helplessly, pressing the heels of your palms into your eyes like that’s somehow going to make a difference. There’s a large part of you that just wants to shout through the wall that nobody in real life says shit like that when they’re having sex, but it probably wouldn’t do any good. “You have got to be kidding me,” you whisper aloud. 

Then again, you weren’t sure what you were expecting. Getting Dean to fix your air conditioning hadn’t actually involved addressing his stupidly loud sexcapades. Because, of course, the thought of bringing that up to him made you want to crawl in a hole and die of embarrassment. 

Defeated, you grabbed for your phone and pulled up your text conversation with Meg.

I need your help. 

[shotgun--rider]

Fake It Till You Make It - Three

A Sam x Reader Series

PART THREE

Y/N knows it’s a bad idea to try telling her family that she’s dating Sam Winchester. But it’s just for the week of her sister’s wedding, and it’s all fake anyway. What could go wrong?

Word Count: 3900

Warnings: plus size! Reader, fatphobic & diet comments, Y/N’s family are demons, allusions to drug use, cuddly Sam

A/N: We’re getting somewhere! Also, Tom the baker is based on a grocery store cashier from my childhood. She was about seventy and would always tell my mom she remembered when my mom was pregnant with me, and then comment that I was growing so fast and when was I getting married. The kicker was that my mom didn’t start shopping at that grocery store until after I was born. Shout out to Rosie.

In the cold light of day, waking up on the bedroom floor with a Sam Winchester-shaped octopus wrapped around you was a lot more panic-inducing than you’d expected. Then again, you’d somehow gone from one fairly innocent arm slung across your waist to being wrapped up and tucked against his chest, legs tangled up and Sam’s face mostly pressed into your neck.  

You wondered briefly if he had enough room to breathe, immediately snapping at yourself that that was hardly the most pressing issue here. Your very fake boyfriend was using you as a human teddy bear and you had no idea how to escape, not without waking him. And waking Sam was very much not an option right now. As long as you somehow got out of this without his knowledge, you wouldn’t have to wade through the awkwardness or hear him try to politely tell you it meant nothing. You wouldn’t have to see the look on his face when he realized he’d snuggled himself up to--well, to someone like you. You’d heard it all before, of course, but hearing it from Sam would be infinitely worse.

Cursing silently to yourself, you glanced down at Sam to ascertain how deeply he seemed to be sleeping, your entire body tensing when you were met with one sleepy hazel eye already blinking at you. “Hi,” Sam mumbled into your hair, like this was completely normal.

“Hi,” you managed to squeak back, kicking yourself for not moving when you’d woken up in the middle of the night. This was what you got for thinking with the part of your brain that seemed to exist purely to drool over Sam friggin Winchester. 

He seemed to suddenly notice how stiffly you were holding yourself, and raised his head to look at you, looking entirely non-threatening and far too sweet with his fluffed-up hair and the crease of the sheet you’d been sleeping on pressed into his cheek. “Are you okay?”

“Uh-huh,” you returned dumbly, caught somewhere between get out get away run away now and continuing to stare at his face. “I don’t know, could you just...um...let...go?” you fumbled through, looking pointedly down at his arms banded around your stomach. 

Sam looked like he was still half asleep, following your gaze in confusion for a moment before hastily pulling his arms away from you. “Sorry,”

You were scrambling up the second he let go, beating a hasty retreat to the bathroom without sparing a look for the man still sprawled out on the floor, scolding yourself for your idiocy the whole way. You went through getting ready almost angrily, berating yourself for getting into a situation that taunted you with what you couldn’t have and embarrassed you in the process. Still with the toothbrush clamped in your mouth, you grabbed your phone and shot off a text to Charlie: Who TF thought this was a good idea????

Her response was almost immediate. Good morning to you too. 

You: Char I’m serious. Should have just brought you and said I was a flaming lesbian.

Charlie: Except for that you’re still totally into Sam

You: Not. Helping. 

Charlie: You could always just tell him that. 

You didn’t bother giving her a response, rolling your eyes in the mirror and putting your phone back down. Charlie had always been that way, relentlessly urging you to go for whatever it was, eternally confident that it would work out in your favor. Experience had told you it usually didn’t. And you didn’t even need past experience to know how “fat girl asks out the hot guy” ended.

Giving yourself one last look in the mirror, you steeled yourself to walk back out of the bathroom. The best option, of course, was just to ignore the morning’s situation, which you imagined Sam would be equally on board with. After all, it had to be at least a little awkward for him too, waking up curled around someone he thought of as basically family. Or at least that was what you were telling yourself. 

Sam was already dressed when you reentered the bedroom, and you spared a second to firmly remind yourself that nothing productive would come out of you staring at his ass in a pair of jeans. He spun as soon as he heard the door open, a faint blush of color still on his cheeks. “Hey, Y/N, I--”

“So I need to go pick up a cake today,” you blurted before he could finish, “and flowers. Is it cool if we use your car?”

Sam stared at you uncomprehendingly for a long moment, his eyebrows furrowing up. “What? I didn’t--yeah. Okay. Do you want me to come?”

Somehow you’d made him look like a kicked puppy and this was not the morning you’d been aiming for. “Unless you’d rather stay here,” you arched an eyebrow dryly, trying for humor. “Get stared at by my family like a zoo animal,”

Sam’s smile didn’t reach his eyes, but he just shrugged. “I’ll come if you want,”

“Okay,” you returned briskly, using the excuse of grabbing your wallet to break up the sudden tension in the room and give you something to do. 

The two of you made it downstairs without any major incidents, hastily skirting past the room where your Aunt Abaddon could be heard shrieking angrily, and you exhaled in relief when you finally made it out to where Sam’s car was parked on the driveway. He immediately went around to the passenger’s side, while you paused in front of the grill. “You don’t want to drive?”

He shrugged easily. “You know the area better than I do,”

Somehow, driving his car felt like more of an intrusion than it had when you were just driving up to the estate, but you sighed and climbed behind the wheel, wondering for the millionth time why anybody had ever thought this was a good idea. Just get over it, Y/N. You forced yourself to smile at Sam. “Florist first? So the cake doesn’t start melting?”

He still had a little bit of the kicked-puppy expression, but he nodded easily, turning to something on his phone while you pulled out of the drive. Way to go, Y/N. Is there anything you can’t fuck up?

The pickup from the florist went off without a hitch, and soon Sam’s backseat was stuffed full of sweet-smelling bouquets wiggling cheerfully with the movement of the car. Say what you would about Ruby, but she did know how to pick a good color scheme. 

More pressing than the flowers, though, was the fact that Sam hadn’t said a word to you so far beyond what was necessary to load the bouquets without crushing them. You could feel his eyes on you when you were looking at the road, but he’d stayed silent for the entire drive to the bakery Ruby had ordered from. 

You’d half expected to leave him in the car, but he followed you inside dutifully, standing a few steps off to the side while you gave Ruby’s name to the girl at the counter. 

“Y/N!”

You winced, turning to greet the baker with a hopefully-genuine smile. He was a friend of your mother’s more than anyone, but he’d always been polite to you, if terribly pushy. “Hi, Tom. I’m just here for Ruby’s cakes,”

The big man looked over your shoulder with a wiggling eyebrow. “And when am I going to make yours, hmm?”

You stared at him, uncomprehending. “Sorry, make my what?”

“Your wedding cake!” he went on cheerfully. “This young man’s yours, isn’t he?”

“Uh,” you turned hastily to look at Sam, who reached for your hand with a swift, reassuring smile. 

“Yes,” Sam answered for you, and you briefly considered the merits of stepping on his foot. You didn’t need to sell this lie to everyone in the tri-state area, for god’s sake. On the other hand, that would mean letting go of his hand, which you really didn’t want to do. 

“I thought so!” Tom announced triumphantly. “What’s your name, son?”

Sam dropped your hand to reach over the glass display case and shake Tom’s. “Sam Winchester, sir,”

You blinked at the scene unfolding in front of you, wondering if it would be more or less painful to watch a train wreck in action. Of all people, of course you had to run into nosy old Tom. The conversation went on over your head for a few more minutes, with Sam explaining his law career briefly and then doing a lot of nodding and smiling and casually touching you while Tom went rambling on about seeing you as a small child with your mother. 

You weren’t even sure what story he was telling, and given the fact that you only came up to Aunt Abaddon’s a few times a year at best, it was entirely possible he was mixing you up with some other mother and child. More than likely, in fact, since you found it hard to believe your mother would have ever taken you somewhere with a lot of calories and sugar. 

“You’d better take good care of her, now.”

Sam’s hand slid to hover at your lower back. “Of course.”

You cleared your throat roughly, looking up at Tom. “So, uh, the cake?”

“Yes, yes, of course! Now, you just let your man there take care of this,” Tom slid three enormous boxes toward Sam, “and I’ll get you rung out,”

That would normally be a job for the cashier girl, but no one really ever bothered arguing with Tom. Handing over the car keys to Sam with an apologetic wince, you trailed over to the register, digging out your card in advance in the hope of making this fast.

“I like him,” Tom announced, pulling up the order sheet on a clipboard. He peered at you over the glasses on the end of his nose, studying you. “Why do you look awkward?”

“Uh,” you stuttered eloquently. “Well it’s just that Sam and I, we’re kind of...I mean it hasn’t been all that long, I just--” It’s fake. You wanted to scream. The whole thing is fake and he’s just being nice and I know that and I still want to keep him. Like, forever.

Tom’s eyebrow arched as he slid your card through the reader. “But you do know he’s in love with you, don’t you?”

You swallowed hard. “Oh, I don’t think--I mean, no?”

The old baker frowned, taking his time wrapping the receipt up around your card. “That’s how he looks at you.”

“O...kay,” you chirped out cheerfully. “Thanks Tom, bye Tom,” You scurried out the front door of the shop before he could yell anything else after you, breathing a sigh of relief that was immediately cut off in your chest at the sight of Sam, busy sliding flowers around in the backseat to make room for the cakes. That’s how he looks at you.

As if he’d somehow heard your thoughts, Sam paused in his wedding-themed backseat Tetris puzzle, looking up over the top of the car door at you and lighting up with the brightest smile you thought you’d ever seen on his face. Your heart clenched at the sight of him, and you wondered suddenly what the hell you were going to do when the wedding was over. God, I am so screwed.

“Sorry about Tom,” you said aloud instead, automatically taking one of the boxes out of Sam’s hand while he wrestled the plant he’d been supporting with his hip. “And sorry there’s so much crap in your car.”

Sam just chuckled, fitting the last of the cakes inside and carefully closing the door, lest he behead any of the bouquets. “It’s not a big deal, Y/N,”

“I still feel bad,” You weren’t sure if you were apologizing for commandeering his car or for everything else you’d messed up.

“Well, don’t,” Sam said stoutly, and that was that. He watched you get back into the driver’s seat, your hands on the wheel and a pout on your face. “What?”

Your nose wrinkled, your foot steady on the brake even though you knew you should be driving back. “I just realized how much I don’t want to go back,” you confessed. “I’m just whining, I know…”

Sam reached out, laying his hand on your shoulder easily. “Switch with me,” he said suddenly, making you blink.

“What?”

“Switch with me,” he repeated, his hand vacating your shoulder to hit the button releasing your seatbelt. “Let me drive,”

You had no idea where he was going with this, but you got out of the car anyway, doing some imitation of a two-person Chinese fire drill in Tom’s parking lot. While you settled yourself into the passenger seat, sparing a nervous glance for the flowers in the backseat, Sam pulled out of the lot, looked both ways, and promptly turned down the road leading directly away from your estate. “Sam,” you hissed out. “What are you doing?”

“Not taking you home?”

“Sam, if the cakes melt Ruby will kill me,”

“Well, they’re not ice cream cakes,” Sam said reasonably, reaching for the A/C dial. “There.”

“I haven’t been so concerned about anything since I babysat small children,” you said wryly. “God, I hope nothing dies,”

“They’re cut flowers, Y/N, they’re already dying,” Sam deadpanned, taking another arbitrary turn that put you even further from Abaddon’s. 

You tilted your head at him, a laugh escaping you in spite of yourself. “Have you always been like this and I just didn’t notice?”

“You just listen to Dean talking about me,”

That was probably true, you reflected. Dean’s narrative of his brother, while undoubtedly very loving, boiled down to “nerd, lawyer, smart, goes for runs and doesn’t like bacon” most of the time. You didn’t answer immediately, just studying Sam while he drove fairly aimlessly, somehow leaving you lighter than you’d felt all day. “Seriously, though. Where are we going?”

Sam bit his lip briefly, turning to look at you with his forehead wrinkled in concern. “I don’t...know. I might be lost,”

You burst out laughing in the passenger seat, jerking forward so hard that the seatbelt’s automatic stop kicked in, holding you dangling against the belt while tears ran down your face. Sam pulled over on the shoulder, his eyes crinkled up as he watched you laughing at him, and when you finally straightened up and wiped your eyes, he was smiling fondly at you. “Why did I let you drive?” you asked dryly, before turning over your shoulder and glancing back down the road. “Okay, turn around and turn left at the first intersection,”

Sam followed your directions without question, and if you’d have been a bit bolder--and hadn’t had Ruby’s bridal bouquet in the backseat--you might have kept directing him straight to the interstate. As it was, you led him to the little park a few miles behind your aunt’s property, pointing out the window to the creek that was visible from the road. 

“Meg fell in when we were kids,” you narrated, smiling vaguely at the memory. “I was twelve, it was Easter, and we got this brilliant idea to sneak away from dinner and go run to the creek. She just kind of tipped over,” you giggled softly as you recalled the day. “It was an early Easter that year, too, so of course the water was freezing.”

You shook your head. “Then she convinced me that Uncle Az was going to kill her for getting wet, so we snuck her upstairs to steal Abaddon’s hair dryer. We thought we could somehow dry her clothes, I don’t know. Anyway, my aunt found us, sitting on her bathroom floor in a puddle of creek water. That was the only time I’ve ever seen her laugh. She always liked Meg more,”

Sam had listened to you with rapt attention, and now he tilted his head in the direction of the park and its little creek. “Show me?”

You couldn’t deny the little rush of happiness up in your chest at the question, and you made a face at him over the top of the car as you both scrambled out. “If you get me wet I really will kill you, Sam Winchester.”

“Noted,” He jogged around the car, hopping over the curb to catch up with you, and stuck close to your side as you both walked through the grass. For a moment, you almost reached out to grab his hand, reminding yourself at the last second that you didn’t need to. No one was watching. You didn’t need to play the charade. And that was all it was, you reminded yourself firmly. 

You reached the little creek a few minutes later, Sam sitting down on a boulder while you peeked down the sloped bank into the water. “Is that your favorite memory?” he asked after a moment. 

“Probably, yeah,” you shrugged, trying to make it casual. “Most of the rest of them I was either getting blamed for something Ruby did or told to go on a diet.”

Sam frowned at you, reaching his hand out to you. You took it hesitantly, letting him pull you closer to his boulder without really knowing what he was trying to accomplish. “You shouldn’t have had to deal with that, Y/N,” he said seriously, tugging on your hand gently again as you realized he was trying to get you to sit down with him. 

“Don’t Sam, I’m too heavy,”

“You’re not,” Sam said firmly, pulling your hand just hard enough to unbalance you. You fell with a squeak, landing easily across his legs, and to your immense relief, nobody died. “See?” he smiled at you. 

“Okay, you’ve proved your point, Mr. Lawyer,” you feigned a grumpy expression, trying not to give any attention to the butterflies that had decided to take up residence somewhere in your stomach. 

“Good,” Sam murmured. He leaned his head briefly on your shoulder, and for just that moment, it felt like you were in your own little bubble, and everything was perfect. And then your phone rang. 

“Y/N where the fuck are you? Did they fuck up the order or something?”

“No,” you said hastily. “No,  everything’s fine. They’re all safe and sound in Sam’s backseat.” God, you really did sound like you were talking about children. Beside you, Sam was stifling a laugh and you elbowed his chest lightly.

“Okay so then where are you? Gramma wants to see the flowers,” Ruby snapped impatiently. “I figured you’d be able to get this done for me, Y/N.”

“Coming,” you sighed out, and Sam squeezed your free hand reassuringly. “We’re coming.”

“Did you stop for car sex? That’s gross.”

“No, Ruby,” you glanced at Sam. “We did not stop for car sex.”

Sam snorted, loud enough that Ruby definitely heard him. Figuring you’d gotten the necessary communication over with, you opted to just hang up before she could start shrieking again. 

“That would be our cue,” you said wryly, hopping up off of Sam’s lap. Your foot came down on a half-buried rock as you shifted to standing, your ankle rolling sideways and your balance faltering. 

Sam’s arms came around your waist just as you were pinwheeling your arms, preparing to take a dive into the creek. You yelped, hearing a reassuring laugh from Sam as he pulled you away from the edge of the creek bank. “I’ve got you. You did tell me not to let you get wet.”

Your adrenaline rush had melted into a fit of giggles, and you let Sam hang on to you on flat ground while you laughed, totally at ease. And right there you decided that even if it was going to suck when the wedding was over, at least you would have had this week. You followed Sam back to the car still laughing, and he didn’t let go of your hand. 

Gramma Lilith was on the driveway when you finally pulled up, hands on her hips, white skirt billowing in the wind, and possibly more botox in her lips than the last time you’d seen her. “Took you long enough!” she was shouting before either of you had gotten a car door open. Not that it mattered; you could hear her shrill voice anyway. 

You and Sam both hastened to the backseat, pulling out bouquets and potted flowers in an attempt to placate her. It only served to bring Ruby outside to stand beside her grandmother, both of them snipping at you while simultaneously complimenting Ruby’s choices. It made your head ache just listening to the two of them. 

“Ruby, the cakes should go in the fridge,” you tried, holding the boxes out to her in the hope that it might motivate her to actually do something instead of watching you. 

“So what are you waiting for?” your sister asked instead. You sighed, trekking into the house with the cake boxes and sliding them into the fridge, thanking the heavens for small mercies that there was enough room without having to also play Tetris with the food. 

You got back out onto the driveway just in time to hear your grandmother turn her attention to Sam. “Are you where my salad went, boy?” she asked shrewdly, hands on her hips. 

Sam froze, halfway out of the backseat with a pile of flowers in his arms. “Well,”

“Gramma,” you hurried to interrupt, but she wasn’t having it. 

“I don’t care,” she went on, still looking at the moose-in-the-headlights. “But I do appreciate straight answers.”

Sam swallowed and straightened up, arms still full of purple flowers. “Yes ma’am. I was...hungry.”

You had been valiantly biting your lip through the entire exchange, but between his awkward reply and the look on your grandmother’s face, you burst out into a fit of giggles, diving into the backseat hastily to cover it up with more flowers. 

Lilith humphed, her eyes flitting between you and Sam. “You don’t deserve someone like her,” your grandmother informed him, having evidently decided he was alright. And all of you knew that she meant it in that Sam deserved better than you, but he just smiled and caught up to you in front of the car. 

“I know,” he said, and then he leaned down and captured your lips in a kiss, crushing the flowers between you as he wrapped an arm around your waist. It was surprisingly heady, tinged with desperation as Sam devoured your lips, tongue sliding and teeth clashing once in his haste. You were drunk on it, on him, reaching your free hand up to tangle in his hair as you rose up onto your tiptoes, trying to fight the height difference, your audience completely forgotten. No one had ever kissed you like that before. 

And then Sam was pulling back, eyes almost black as he stared at you but somehow keeping his composure as he moved to finish taking the flowers into the house like he hadn’t just kissed you senseless. 

Ruby and Lilith looked equally stunned at the display, and somewhere in the back of your brain, you remembered that that was why he’d done it, that it was all part of a show and that if you were a real couple, you’d have kissed plenty of times already. But as you stood speechless in the driveway, all you could really think about was him. There was no way you’d survive this wedding.

-

tags: @vicmc624​,  @thebookisbtr​, @alicedopey​

[shotgun--rider]

Daylight

 A Dean x Reader oneshot

Dean finds a letter addressed to him from Y/N, and finds a lot more in her honest words than he was expecting. 

Word count: 4100

Warnings: Brief mentions of blood, extraordinarily fluffy smut, Dean panics a lot

*Female reader, she/her pronouns used in Dean’s POV

A/N: This wouldn’t leave me alone, so here it is, and boy is it aggressively sweeter and softer than intended.

Dean tears open drawers with panicked abandon, hearing the crashing sounds of Sam doing the same to the other side of Y/N’s bedroom. There’s no time to worry about sending her research notes flying, about the haphazard pile of her underwear when he dumps her drawers on the floor. It has to be here. It has to be. 

“Dean, there’s nothing here!”

A glance over his shoulder shows Sammy’s eyes wide with the same terror that’s eating up his chest, her room looking like the aftermath of a hurricane and nothing to show for it.

“Damn it, keep looking!”

The image of Y/N doubled over the bathroom sink, choking up blood, is burned into his brain, and the knowledge that Cas is staying with her is the only thing keeping him here, instead of at her side. 

“Who the hell even got in here with a hex bag?” Sam demands, one of his arms snaking under the mattress desperately. 

“I don’t know, okay? We’ll figure it out later. After we save Y/N.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve got nothing.” Sam’s hands fly up to his hair for a moment, turning a slow circle as his eyes rake the bedroom for anything they haven’t been through yet. “Dean, there’s nothing here.”

“There has to be,” Dean retorts shortly, running his hand along the upper shelf of the closet. He flat-out refuses to consider any other option in front of Sam, but his brain isn’t getting the message. It’s entirely too easy to picture her sprawled out on the tile of the bunker bathroom, blood staining her mouth with her E/C eyes staring up at nothing. And it’s not like he’s lacking in material for inspiration, having seen her in all manner of near-dead positions on hunts before, giving him a heart attack every damn time. 

But Cas has always been there to heal her, to brush his fingers against her forehead and melt away every life-threatening wound. And this time is infinitely more terrifying, because even an angel can’t just undo witches’ spells. Dean swallows hard, turning to attack the bedside table even though Sam had already dumped out the little drawer. 

“Dean!”

Dean’s head snaps up, almost tripping over himself trying to get to the doorway. “Cas? Cas, is she--”

The angel is suddenly in front of him, holding the familiar looking small brown bag. “It was in the library,” he says simply, catching it on fire with a simple flick of his hand.  His hand lands on Dean’s shoulder, then, smiling with a gentle look in his blue eyes. “She’s fine, Dean.”

Relief first, and then the familiar ache of guilt. There wouldn’t have ever been anyone coming for her if he hadn’t been the one to let her start hunting in the first place. Wordlessly, he throws his best attempt at a smile in Cas’s direction, turning back into Y/N’s bedroom. 

“Go check on her,” he tells Sam roughly, an unidentifiable catch in his throat. Y/N certainly doesn’t need him hovering around at the end of a mess he hadn’t even managed to fix. “I’m gonna clean up.”

Sam stares at him like he’d grown a second head. “You’re gonna...clean up?” he echoes. 

“What?” Dean shrugs, trying his best for an air of nonchalance. 

Sam just shakes his head, apparently giving up on his brother’s weirdness and following Cas back in the direction of the bunker’s bathroom. 

Dean clears his throat roughly, in a vain attempt to get rid of the lump that seems stuck there, and sighs. The bedroom is a complete mess, and, truthfully, cleaning it is the last thing he's interested in. Still, in the moment, it feels like a safer option than facing Y/N, so he bends forward, gathering up some of the scattered papers he’d knocked out of the closet. 

There’s a sheet of notebook paper on top of the haphazard stack when he taps it against the edge of the desk, trying to get them in some semblance of order. It’s folded in half, off-center, and would have been completely unobtrusive but for the scrawl of his name on the front, in her familiar handwriting. 

Dean pauses, setting the stack down on the desk and lifting the sheet slowly, glancing once over his shoulder out of habit before unfolding it. His face scrunches up in surprised confusion almost immediately, smoothing out into something that matches the gut-punch feeling in his chest as he continues reading. 

Dean,

I know you don’t want to hear this, but I needed to get it out of my head and put it down somewhere. I don’t know why I’m explaining this to you, anyway. It’s not like you’re going to read this. 

You break my heart, Dean Winchester. (I can hear you laughing, telling me to stop being dramatic. “It’s not a chick flick, Y/N.” Shut up.) You are strong and kind and selfless in so many ways, and you put yourself last to save everybody else and you always find some way to take the blame. But it’s not your fault, Dean. It’s not. You’re good enough, as you are, and the fact that you can’t see you the way we do breaks my heart. 

Everyone around you loves you so much, Dean--me, Sam, Cas, you’ve even grown on Meg. And you don’t have to save the world. I know experience would beg to differ, but I promise, you don’t. Not at your own expense and not by yourself, and it’s okay if the only person you can save right now is you. 

It’s okay to choose yourself. It’s okay to want someone else to choose you. And I promise you that you won’t hurt them, Dean. Seriously. You won’t. 

I hope you find something that makes you happy. And I hope I get to be there to see it. 

Love,

Y/N

Further down, the writing is  slanted and rushed, a desperate addition, an afterthought, maybe a prayer. 

Hold on. Hold on. Hold on.

Let it go, Dean. There’s still daylight here, let it go. 

----

You’re in the kitchen when Dean walks in, in search of a sandwich and trying in vain to fend off Cas. “There you are,” you smile brightly at him. “I thought my closet might have swallowed you. Sam said you were cleaning up, I don’t know what possessed you to even try--” You cut yourself off, annoyance creeping onto your features as you reach up to knock Cas’s fingers away from your forehead for what has to be the fourth or fifth time. “Cas, I’m fine. But I am hungry. So move,”

The angel fixes you with a concerned look in his blue eyes. “I just want to be sure--”

“Cas,” you stare hard at him, unblinking. “Go do some research or something before you drive me crazy,” 

He leaves in a flutter of wings with an expression of mixed confusion and frustration as he vanishes, and you sigh, calling a half-sarcastic, “I love you!” to the empty room before turning your attention to Dean. 

“So, to be clear, the closet did not eat you,”

Dean’s mouth twists like he’s trying to smile but it’s gotten stuck somewhere. “Nah,” he says, his voice an octave lower than you were expecting. “Are you okay?”

You shrug, letting out a quiet victory squeak when you finally find where someone has jammed the loaf of bread, all the way in the back of the fridge. “Cas burned the hex bag, I’m good.” And to you, that’s all it is. You’ve been hunting for years; a little hex bag encounter is far from the worst that’s happened to you. And once you caught your breath and wiped the blood off of your lips, it was done. 

“I wonder if there’s a hidden health benefit to puking blood,” you muse absently, debating between mayo and mustard. “Like, they say crying is actually good for your skin, so…” 

Dean is staring at you with a pained expression, and you trail off, blinking at him. “What’s up with you?”

“You almost died, Y/N,” his voice still sounds rougher than usual. 

“Yeah.” You smile at him in a way that you hope is reassuring. “Kinda. But I didn’t. This is a typical Tuesday for us, Dean, what are you...” You let the question hang in the air, unfinished, as you study his face. “Oh, and don’t go thinking it’s somehow your fault. I know you,”

“Yeah, I...kinda got that,”

“What?” 

Dean’s hand reaches into the pocket of his jeans (which, incidentally, do amazing things for his ass) and then he’s pulling out a folded up piece of lined notebook paper and oh. Oh, damn.

His tongue slides out to wet his bottom lip nervously, and you have to make an effort not to watch like a hypnotized creep, and then he flashes you that smile that he sometimes tries on the diner waitresses. The one that says I’m trying to be confident but I’m actually awkward as all hell right now. “It, uh, had my name on it,” he says after a beat, offering it to you like he thinks you’re going to want it back.

Well, it was always for him anyway. Even if part of you wanted to shrivel up and die in embarrassment now that you knew he knew. “You can keep it, Dean. It’s for you.”

He sets it down on the table anyway, leaning one hip next to it and blinking like a deer in the headlights. “Y/N, I--”

You clear your throat. “I hope it wasn’t too awful. I don’t really remember what I wrote.” That’s kind of a lie, especially when it comes to the later two additions, but oh well. 

“No, it-it was good,” Dean’s hand twitches like he’s about to reach toward you, and he curls it into a fist instead. “When did you…”

The question trails off but you know what he’s asking. Blowing out a breath, you abandon your half-made sandwich and reach for the paper on the table instead, unfolding it and sliding closer to Dean. “I wrote this the night after the case at Sonny’s,” you tell him quietly. “I was so damn mad---you were a kid, Dean, you didn’t--” you shake your head, refocusing your thoughts. “I had all these thoughts running around my head and I knew I was going to end up screaming them all at you in the middle of the library one day if I didn’t put them somewhere. I didn’t ever expect you to actually read it.”

 You suck in a breath of surprise as Dean moves to stand behind you, one arm sliding around your waist. It’s entirely unexpected and sends a shiver at the contact running though your entire body, but somehow it feels natural. It’s as if some barrier between the two of you has broken with this letter, and you can’t find it in yourself to mind. By the time his chin finds its way to the top of your head, peeking down at the letter with you, you’ve relaxed into his hold, the solid warmth of him at your back. 

You tap the sheet of paper with one short fingernail, over the words you’d scrawled on repeat, echoing the prayer in your head. Hold on. “That’s from when we were looking for you. Demon you.” You can joke about it now, sort of, so you smirk, wishing you could see his face. “Your little summer of love with Crowley?”

Dean huffs petulantly and tightens his arms around you, and you can picture his pink lips turning into a pout. “It was not,”

“Uh huh, whatever you say,” 

Dean stays silent for a moment, absorbing the information and continuing to hang onto you, and then poses one last question. “What’s the daylight thing from?”

That one’s never going to be funny, and you exhale. “The Mark, after Charlie...you wouldn’t talk to any of us and I just wanted you to know it wasn’t all darkness, you know?”

Dean shudders on a breath behind you, and suddenly you need to see his face. He lets you turn around in his arms, now with the kitchen table against your back, and some bolder part of you slides your hands up to link behind his neck. His green eyes are shining with not-quite-tears as he looks at you, biting off words before he can start speaking. Finally, he settles on familiar ground. Teasing. “So I break your heart, huh?”

You smirk back at him. “Only when you’re stupid.”

He pouts, adorably, and you resist the urge to kiss it off of his face. “When you don’t accept that you deserve good things,” you clarify, leaning closer because Dean is like a goddamn magnet and what are you doing. “That’s just not correct.” The words are spoken a hair’s breadth from his lips, your breath ghosting over them, and Dean closes the gap a heartbeat later.

It’s a hesitant press of his lips on yours, feeling you out like he’s not entirely sure he’s going to be welcome here, and it still feels like being lit up on fire. You’re fully aware that five seconds of kissing this man has turned you into a goddamned cliche, but as you push up on your toes to kiss him back harder, you can’t bring yourself to care. 

Your enthusiasm is all the encouragement Dean needs, and you squeak against his lips as his hands find your hips to boost you up onto the tabletop, parting your legs for him to stand between them as his hand comes back up to tangle into your hair. His other slides up your thigh, thumb grazing over the inside seam of your jeans, and you shiver in spite of yourself. 

Finally breaking away to breathe, Dean moves down to press open mouthed kisses in a trail down your neck, pulling a gasp out of you. “Dean,” you murmur, your fingers raking through his short hair. “Dean,”

“Yeah, sweetheart?” The words are more a vibration against your skin than anything spoken aloud.

“I don’t--mmmh--want to be having sex on the counter when your brother walks in,”

Dean pulls back to look at you, all messy hair and blown pupils, and even though it’s what you wanted, you can’t help but already miss his touch. “Good point,” he rasps out, and before you have any time to react, slides his hands under your thighs to lift you off of the table and into his arms 

“Don’t drop me,” you manage, your ankles locking automatically around his back and your hands tight on his shoulders. “Please,”

Dean chuckles, low, and catches your mouth in a messy kiss that leaves you breathless. “Wouldn’t dare,”

Somehow, you both make it to the door with the gold 11 on it without running into any walls or any of the bunker’s other occupants, which is no small miracle, all things considered. Dean wrestles the door open with his other hand still supporting your weight, dropping you onto the mattress with a hungry look that says he’s going to claim every inch of you. 

You reach your hands out to him impatiently, wanting him closer, wanting to touch. You’re certainly not complaining about the view, but you’ve been looking at him for years. An annoyed noise comes out of your throat when he doesn’t immediately comply, instead smiling down at you with an expression that’s no less passionate, but somehow more gentle than a few moments before. 

Dean comes to sit on the edge of the bed, his hand tracing an aimless path up your ankle and calf, apparently ignoring the sizeable bulge in his own jeans. “Shh, sweetheart. Let me take care of you.”

He pulls you to sit up and peels you out of your clothes almost reverently, discarding them across his bedroom floor until you’re left in just the plain underwear you’d put on that morning, and you can hear his breath catch when he looks at you. 

Every other guy you’d ever slept with got both of you naked like it was a speed competition, treating the whole thing as purely physical. Which you supposed it was, given that every other guy you’d slept with had been briefly vetted over the course of a few beers and then picked up out of whatever bar you were in that night. Hunter-style hookups. No strings attached.

But Dean is looking at you like you’re something otherworldly, and while you’re not sure you deserve it, it brings a warm feeling to your chest that has nothing to do with the sensation of him licking his way over your breasts and down to the line of your underwear. He pauses there, his fingertips sliding just under the waistband, and looks up at you with those reverent green eyes for permission. 

“Dean, just hurry up,” you tell him, impatience running through your voice. You’re already flushed and panting, probably looking like a complete wreck spread out over his sheets, and he hasn’t even done anything yet. 

Then suddenly his tongue is licking a stripe directly over your cunt without any warning and an involuntary cry escapes you at the sensation. So much for not scarring anyone else in the bunker, you think wryly, and then all rational thought flees your brain as Dean slides a finger inside you, busying his tongue with rapid little flicks over your clit. “Oh god, Dean, fuck,” 

Your hand flies down to clutch at his head as he slides a second finger in to join the first, just enough sense left to remind yourself not to mindlessly suffocate him against your cunt. The sensation is overwhelming and still somehow not enough, keeping you right on the edge without sending you over, and underneath it all there’s still an undercurrent of gentleness that takes your breath away in a whole other way. “I can’t--please, I--” you pant out, no longer sure if you’re even making sense. 

Dean hums softly, the vibration running through you, and your hips buck up involuntarily in search of more friction. His mouth moves to suck your clit between his lips, his fingers curling inside you at the same time, and you fly apart with a shout, your head falling back and your entire body tensing through what has to be the best orgasm you’ve ever had. Not that you’re going to tell him that.

“Jesus, Dean,” you breathe out when you can see straight again. “Just...Jesus.” 

Dean chuckles softly, his lips and chin still glistening with your wetness, and he seems perfectly content in spite of narrowly surviving being squeezed to death between your thighs. A few more of your brain cells come back online, and suddenly you’re staring at him in puzzlement. “Why are you still dressed?”

He takes that as his cue to climb off of the bed and strip, and all of those damn layers end up making it a teasing show for you even if that wasn’t his goal. Dean shrugs out of the flannel first, then strips off the shirt underneath and unbuckles his belt. By the time he’s left standing in just his boxers, you’re unashamedly two seconds from drooling and he’s painfully too far away from you. 

Dean drops the boxers before coming back to kneel over you, his cock rock hard against his stomach. You’d never thought about a man’s junk as “beautiful” before, but it’s the word that comes to mind as you reach out to wrap your hand around him, thumb swiping over the tip and watching him shudder in response. Instead of letting you continue, though, he pulls your hand away, lacing his fingers in both of yours and resting your linked hands above your head as he leans forward to kiss you. 

It’s sweet, unexpected but perfect, and when he finally slides inside you, leaving you both gasping at the feeling, it seems dangerously close to making love. Dean gives you a moment to adjust to the size of him filling you up, only moving after your hips have rocked up into him, urging him on. 

Somehow you’d thought that being carried through the bunker, all tangled tongues and occasionally teeth, had set the stage for something wild. Or maybe that was just you projecting your assumptions of what Dean would be like in bed. And you had no doubt he could be, but this was...soft. Slow, no matter how much you tried to urge him faster, and you lost yourself in the slide of his cock, the rhythm of his body against you, the feeling of his hands holding onto yours.

He was watching you with an expression that was half lust and half love, the slow roll of his hips hitting just right inside you, and a low groan rips out of his throat when you tighten your walls around him. “Come for me, baby,”

Dean releases one of your hands to slip between your bodies, his thumb flicking over your clit in time with a sharper snap of his hips, and it shatters you. The slow build has you flying apart screaming, clinging to Dean like he’s the only thing left holding you together as your orgasm breaks over you in waves. 

He follows you over the edge a few moments later, falling forward to press his lips to yours with an expression of pure, blissed-out pleasure on his face. For a while, neither of you move, lost in the moment and not quite capable of higher brain function. 

Eventually, Dean pulls back to look at you with a goofy grin on his lips, pulling a startled laugh out of you at the expression, and you clean up and rearrange yourselves smiling like a pair of fools, which, you suppose, you kind of are. 

Afterward, you lay curled into Dean’s side, legs tangled together and your hand resting over his heart and his anti-possession tattoo while his fingertips trace random patterns over your hip. He’s the first one to break the silence, tilting his head to look at you with warm green eyes. He’s close enough that you could probably count the freckles dashed across his face, but he’s distracting you with words instead. “You make me happy,” he says, voice low, and you’re suddenly reminded of the last wish you wrote in that letter.

“Good,” you say stoutly, warmth ballooning in your chest at the words. Dean already looks awkward and slightly red at the little confession, though, and you’re not going to drag more emotions out of him. You lean up briefly, planting a quick little peck on his lips, and snuggle back down against him, just existing in your own little world for a brief, precious moment. 

----

Dean wakes up alone. Instinctive panic is choking him as he scrambles up, his still half-asleep mind wondering automatically if she’s safe, if something has gotten to her. 

Closer inspection of his bedroom floor would have shown him that wherever she was, she was wandering around without any of her clothes, and thus probably hadn’t gotten that far, but Dean doesn’t bother thinking that through. He shoves his legs into a pair of sweats that are slung over the back of the desk chair, almost falling flat in his rush, and bursts out into the hallway. 

His green eyes are wild and his hair is still styled with the aftermath of sex and sleep, and Sam’s startled reaction to seeing him tear his way into the war room shouldn’t come as a surprise. 

“Morning,” Sam says dryly, looking over his brother from head to toe. “Dean--what?”

“Have you seen Y/N?” Dean gets out through the panic that’s suddenly thick in his chest. 

“She’s outside,” Sam gestures up the bunker stairs to the door, shrugging in a way that suggests that all of this is completely casual. “Dude, what--”

Dean’s already gone, up the bunker stairs and out the door still shirtless and barefoot, and there she is. All of the knots in his stomach are washed away in an instant, looking at her on the bunker’s concrete front step. She’s safe. She’s okay. 

She’s just wearing his flannel, the material drowning her hands and falling to her thighs, and she’s barefoot too. She turns at the sound of him opening the door, coffee mug in hand, and her eyes light up when they land on him. “Look, Dean,” she says with a sunny smile, and he can breathe again. Y/N tilts her head to the sky, hair stirring in the breeze against her borrowed flannel collar, and she’s looking at the peach and purple sunrise painting the sky when she speaks. “Daylight.”

He’s looking at her. 

[shotgun--rider]

Always On My Mind

A Jarevieve x Reader Oneshot

Y/N knows Jared and Gen have been hiding something, and she’s pretty sure they’re just trying to figure out how to break up with her. After all, she’s just the relationship’s third wheel.

Word Count: 6300

Warnings: Angst, poor communication skills, the Ackles being so done with this situation

A/N: It kind of grew into a monster and I’m not sure how it turned out but I’m just throwing this one out into the void. PS communicate in your relationships, folks. 

You thought you knew heartbreak when you were twelve, and caught your middle school crush kissing some other girl out by the buses after school. You had been devastated, because everything was a big deal in seventh grade, and had gone home in tears to your mother, who kissed the top of your head and made brownies and promised you that everything would be okay. 

You thought the world was going to end at fifteen, in the back of your first real boyfriend’s car, pulling your shorts back on with tears in your eyes after the lackluster loss of your virginity and subsequent breakup. Your older brother put his fist through the dining room wall when he heard about it, and somehow that made you feel better. You retained the low-burning anger at that kid for the rest of high school, but you were okay. 

Then you were eighteen, your heart in your throat outside the loud, neon club you’d snuck into with your best friend, leaning on the brick wall and trying to process. That was the first time you kissed a girl, and the ensuing sexuality panic took a while to work though, but at the end of it, you were still okay. 

Life as you’d known it did end when you were twenty five, and you decided to leave not just the state but the country to get away from your ex-fiance and the girl he’d been fucking in your bed. You packed up your photography business and hopped on the first plane to Vancouver, and when an old woman in the seat next to you told you to stop crying, you choked out, “I’m okay.”

In all of those moments it had never really felt like a lie, because even if you weren’t okay, you were going to get there. It was future-focused thinking, or something like that. Or maybe it was just that none of those experiences had really, actually broken your heart. 

And now here you were two years later, telling the biggest lie you had maybe ever uttered in your life to the innocent, beautiful little girl that looked up to you. 

“Don’t cry, Y/N/N,” Odette said anxiously, her hands on your knee and her own lip wobbling dangerously as she looked up at you with wide eyes. You blinked at her words, suddenly registering the wetness on your cheeks, and took a shaky breath as you reached out and pulled her into your arms. 

“I’m okay,” you whispered into her hair, hugging her tighter. “Don’t you worry about me.” You weren’t, and you weren’t sure you ever would be again, but you were hardly up to the task of explaining to a three year old that her parents didn’t love you anymore. 

Odette squirmed in your grasp until she was facing you, apparently unwilling to drop the subject. “But, Y/N/N, you’re sad.” 

You reached up quickly to swipe away your tears, putting a smile on your face for her. It wasn’t quite as hard as you thought it would be to ignore the ache in your chest; she always had a way of making you feel better. “I promise I’m okay, O.” you reassured her. “I was just a little bit sad, and I’m not anymore,” Lie. 

Her brow wrinkled adorably. “Do you want me to get Daddy?” she ventured, taking her favorite person’s tears very seriously. 

Alarm flashed through you at that, and you hugged her a little tighter, as if she might escape and actually try to get Jared. You were pretty sure you’d break down completely if you saw his face right now. “No, baby, I think your Daddy’s busy. Your hug made me feel better, I promise. Why don’t you go find your brothers?”

You watched Odette run out of the room with a leaden feeling of numbness caught in your chest, leaning back on your palms on the bed that didn’t used to be yours. You’d occupied the guest bedroom just once in two years, and it was when you’d had such a wrecking ball of a flu that you’d been practically dead for a week. It had been a miracle that the attempt to quarantine yourself even worked, because Gen and Jared had been in the room to hover every five minutes whenever they could. 

Now, you’d spent the last three nights alone in here, and nobody had said a word except Shep, who’d looked at you in abject confusion when you emerged from the wrong bedroom in the morning. Because apparently a six year old cared more than either of your partners.

You shook your head bitterly, willing yourself not to start crying again. Part of you wanted to believe there was an explanation. But the bigger part of you knew that if there was an explanation, it would have been offered already. The bigger part of you knew that this was just the end of something that had always been temporary.

After all, it was Jared and Gen who were married, who were the kids’ parents, who were older and had been together longer. Maybe they’d loved you once, or maybe you’d just been a novelty. In any case, they weren’t bothering to keep up the charade any longer. 

You’d realized about a month ago that there was something they weren’t telling you, when Jared had almost bitten his own tongue off during dinner one night to stop himself from saying something--the man was terrible at secrets. Gen had kicked him under the table and both of them had worn nervous, guilty expressions that became a regularity in the house after that. Their conversations stopped when you walked into the room, they slipped off on dates and left you as a glorified babysitter--not that you’d ever really been able to go out in public with them anyway. In the beginning, you’d understood that you couldn’t come right out to the world with your relationship, and you were okay with that. You just hadn’t expected to feel so much like their dirty little secret. 

And as you began to pull away, you watched Gen and Jared seemingly seamlessly close the gap, curling into each other without you and acting like the perfect little family, with you on the outside looking in. 

You didn’t belong there anymore, and they weren’t even going to fight for you. They weren’t even going to give you the decency of a formal breakup, either, apparently, just let you drift away like so much discarded waste. 

You’d come up here to pack a bag, before Odette had run after you. And you hadn’t had the heart to tell her, and now you were just sitting there, the duffel still folded up empty in the closet and your heart breaking in your chest.

You still remembered the first time you met Jared, when you had picked up a photoshoot gig mostly by accident for a TV show you’d never bothered to watch, and he’d made your heart stop the first time he smiled at you. And then you’d met Gen, and it was like the sun lived in her eyes when she laughed. And you never wanted to stop making her laugh. It had been months of complicated and guilty and terrifying before all of you had finally figured out that Gen and Jared had both liked you, and you remembered thinking that it was like some inexplicable missing part of you finally made sense. 

And the kids had loved you from the start. The kids, who you’d never expected to love so hard, who weren’t at fault for any of this, who were going to break your heart all over again when you left them. But neither could you stand to stay where you knew you weren’t wanted. 

With a resolute sigh that felt dragged out of your soul, you stood, walking determinedly to go get that duffel bag, and practically slammed into Gen around the doorframe. 

She reached out to you immediately, her hand closing around your upper arm and a worried expression on her face. “Hey, are you okay?”

You tensed under her touch, pulling out of her grip even though you knew it was a little bit petty. “I’m fine,” you said tightly, hoping your eyes weren’t still red. 

Gen had a hurt look on her face, and her hand fell uselessly to her side. “O said something about you being upset. Y/N, you can tell me if something’s bothering you. Or--or Jared. I--” she trailed off, eyes searching your face.  

Not for the first time, you cursed the blunt honesty of three year olds. “I said I was fine,” It had come out as more of a growl than you’d originally intended, but now you were getting angry. Blowing out your breath and trying to ignore the tightness in your chest, you brushed past her impatiently, continuing down the hallway.

“Well you’re obviously not!” Gen’s voice raised to a half-shout, stopping you in your tracks as she threw her hands up. “Y/N, baby, please,” 

You risked a look at her, turning around to find her eyes swimming with tears. In any other situation you would have had your arms around her in a heartbeat, holding her while she cried and kissing the tears away. In any other situation, Jared would inevitably have found the both of you, wrapping the two of you up together in his hold, and whatever it was would suddenly seem much less insurmountable with the three of you together. 

As it was, you were angry. Angry, and brokenhearted, and so done with being yanked around. “My god, Gen, stop pretending like you care!” you burst out, rolling your eyes half in frustration and half to stave off your own tears. 

Gen suddenly looked very small standing in the middle of the hallway, her bottom lip anxiously trapped between her teeth. She was wearing one of the outfits she usually gardened in, you realized randomly, and why was this so hard. “Why are you saying this?” she finally whispered, and you felt the last bit of your heart shatter. “Y/N, where did this come from?”

“Come on,” you scoffed nonetheless. “You both forgot about me like a month ago, and you’re going to do this now?” You crossed your arms protectively over your chest, wincing internally at the sound of Jared’s feet thundering hastily up the stairs a few seconds before his head appeared, panicked, evidently drawn by the shouting. 

“What is going on?” He looked between the both of you, caught on the top step like he wasn’t sure which one of you to go to first. 

Gen opened her mouth to answer and broke off immediately with a sob into her hand, and Jared was immediately at her side, an arm drawing her protectively into his chest as he looked at you with a raised eyebrow. “Y/N, what is happening?” He glanced briefly down at his sobbing wife. “What did you do?”

Of course this whole thing would be your fault. You were the interloper in this relationship, after all. It didn’t matter that there was a gaping hole in your chest at the sight of the two of them together, you literally six feet away and figuratively so much further. Apparently you still had to be the one to do this, because everyone else was hellbent on dragging it out. You pinched the bridge of your nose, feeling vaguely sick. “Look, all of my relationships come with deadlines eventually,” You’d hoped to be wrong this time, but some part of you had always known that. Nobody ever really stayed with you. Why should this time be any different? “Here we are, what are you going to do?”

“I love you,” Jared said, almost inaudibly, and god but that felt like a sucker punch. Clearing his throat, he went on, louder, “We both do,”

“No,” you corrected hollowly. “You only loved me sometimes.” The rest of the time, you were the babysitter, their dirty secret, vaguely passed off as a friend of Gen’s if you went somewhere with them. 

Jared’s mouth was hanging open, his entire face wearing an expression of shocked hurt. “Y/N, babe, we--”

Gen swiped impatiently under her eyes, halfway between crying and glaring at you. “Well, I’m so sorry we didn’t live up to expectations,” she bit out, her expression turning cold. “It was hard for us, too, you know.”

“Gen,” Jared murmured, but you were already moving.

“Sorry I was such an inconvenience,” you spat back. Forget packing a bag, you just had to get out of here. You turned your shoulders sideways to slide past the two of them, dodging Jared’s hand as he reached out, and half-ran down the stairs, nearly tripping Shep in your haste. 

“Sorry, hon,” you murmured. “I’m just--I’m really sorry.” It was an overkill apology for bumping him, and Shep stared up at you with a look that said he had no idea what in the world you were doing. Which was fair, because you didn’t either. 

You bent swiftly and planted a kiss on the top of his head, tears blurring your vision, and then you swiped your car keys out of the entry and, shoving your feet hastily into a pair of shoes, shut the door behind you. You didn’t stop until you were driving halfway down the street, the silence ringing in your ears as you realized that, once again, nobody had really bothered to stop you. 

You had been in the car for maybe fifteen minutes when it started raining. You were driving aimlessly, unable to even begin to think about a destination. There was nowhere to go. Your entire life was in the house that had already disappeared from your rearview mirror, and you weren’t exactly in the mood to drive across the entire country just to admit to your  conservative parents that your relationship with two people had blown up in your face. 

Memories played in your head as you took another random right turn, and you stopped trying to fight the tears. Jared, fumbling awkwardly as he tried to work out how to ask you to dinner for that very first time. A random morning with Gen, her head thrown back in laughter at something neither of you could remember. The first time Tom had run up and hugged you, falling over himself in his excitement to tell you about something that had happened at school. Falling asleep on the couch with Gen and Odette snuggled between you, and the picture Jared took of it later. The way Jared could wrap you up in his arms and make you feel completely, totally safe, and loved, and whole. 

A sob escaped your throat, and you blinked tears out of your eyes impatiently so you could see the road. Not that it did much good; the rain was coming down in sheets now, your windshield wipers useless at their highest setting and thunder cracking overhead. You couldn’t see more than five feet in front of you, and you could feel your tires doing a lot more slipping-on-water than actually grabbing the road. It was the worst storm you’d seen in a while and you knew you had to stop driving; you may have been upset but that didn’t mean it was time to be stupid.

A flash of lightning illuminated the sign of an unfamiliar church, and you swung abruptly into the parking lot, your heart in your throat as the car slid dangerously for a few feet before straightening, and you put it in park in the empty lot. You didn’t know if you were even close to being in an actual parking space, and it didn’t matter.

It was pouring harder than any storm in recent memory, and you had no idea where you even were. You hadn’t paid any attention to the roads you were driving, and you hadn’t recognized the name of the church as anything remotely local. A quick glance at the phone in your back pocket showed that it was completely dead, and of course your charger was still at the house. Hollow and defeated, you turned the car off completely and pulled your legs up, knees braced on the steering wheel, buried your head in your hands, and cried. 

Eventually, the rain calmed down a bit, and your tears ran out. You had no idea how long you’d been sitting there--it felt like hours--and you weren’t sure you even cared. Still, sitting cramped up in your car wasn’t doing you any favors, and you were eventually going to have to get out of this parking lot. You’d left pretty much everything back at the house, but the back of your phone case had a sleeve with your license and a couple of cards in it. Turning on the car showed you a half tank of gas, and now you just needed a destination. It was going to suck without having any of your things, but you couldn’t even begin to contemplate going back for them. You’d have to get them shipped later. Maybe, if you were feeling particularly wimpy, you could even try begging the Ackles to pick them up for you. 

Then again, Jensen was Jared’s friend first, and that probably wouldn’t go over too well. Sighing again, you leaned your head down on the steering wheel, trying not to think about everything you were losing. That wouldn’t do you any good now. 

A knock on your window jolted you suddenly upright, and you fumbled for the button to roll down your window enough to speak, immediately wincing as cold rain blew into your car. 

“Hi,” Danneel said simply, soaked in spite of the umbrella she was valiantly holding over her head. “Can I come in?”

“Uh--I--yeah,” you stuttered out, concern for your friend overriding the panic you felt at anyone seeing you right now.

Danneel ran hastily around to the passenger’s side, letting herself in with a rush of water and wincing as she peeled strands of soaked red hair off of her face. “Sorry for getting your car wet,”

“No, it’s fine,” you said automatically, still staring in shock at the last person you’d ever expected to see. “Just, uh, what--how did you even find me?” you fumbled out. 

Danneel had a warm smile on her face that almost made you start tearing up again. “Do you remember when we got lost trying to get to the airport?” she asked instead, making you snort at the memory. You’d both missed the flight and spent seven extra hours sitting in the airport waiting for the next one, which, in the end, had marked the start of your friendship. “You were picking streets randomly and you turned right every single time. You always do that,”

You looked at her incredulously. “So, what, you took every right turn between Austin and here?” 

Danneel shrugged. “It was mostly luck. That, and the car that was parked across three lanes in a Catholic church parking lot was a dead giveaway.” She stayed silent for a moment, watching you, and then asked softly, “So, are you gonna tell me what happened?”

You shrugged listlessly, looking away from her. “We just broke up, Dee. It’s done,” you whispered dully. “They’re done with me.”

Danneel looked at you sideways. “Y/N, have you even looked at your phone?”

You shrugged noncommittally. “It’s dead,”

Danneel rolled her eyes, immediately reaching into the little purse she’d brought with her. “Here, we have the same phone, right?” She was holding a flat, rectangular portable phone charger. “Turn your phone on and check your messages, and then we’ll talk,”

You did as she directed, not even sure what you were expecting to see as you watched your phone’s logo spin while the battery came back to life. In any case, it certainly wasn’t this. 

Your phone’s lock screen finally appeared with a banner of fifty-six missed calls, and enough combined text messages that the app lagged trying to open them. It was pointless to try to read through every one, so you scrolled hastily, skimming, with your heart lodged somewhere painfully out of order in your chest. 

Jared: Y/N please answer the phone (3:23pm)

Jared: Tell me where you are? (3:25pm)

Jared: Just let us know you’re safe (3:31pm)

Jared: I love you (3:31pm)

Jared: Y/N? (3:40pm)

Gen: Babe we’re not mad (3:44pm)

Gen: I promise (3:44pm)

Gen: Please call me back (3:50pm)

Jared: Please come home (3:56pm)

Gen: Where are you? (4:01pm)

Jared: Don’t leave (4:12pm)

Gen: Y/N just come home and we’ll talk (4:14pm)

Gen: Please tell me you’re not driving in this (4:20pm)

Gen: I promise we’ll figure everything out just come home (4:21pm)

Gen: I love you so much I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you more (4:45pm)

Gen: You’re not an inconvenience (4:50pm)

Gen: Just tell me you’re ok (5:13pm)

Jared: Y/N you shouldn’t be out in this (5:22pm)

Gen: Where are you (5:31pm)

Gen: Y/N please (5:57pm)

Gen: You’re scaring me (6:03pm)

Gen: Y/N answer your phone (6:30pm)

Gen: Where are you???? (7:02pm)

Jensen: Y/N what is happening (7:30pm)

Jensen: Jared is freaking out (7:32pm)

Danneel: What is going on? (7:33pm)

Danneel: Where are you (7:34pm)

Danneel: I can’t fix it if you don’t tell me what happened (7: 52pm)

Jensen: Gen says you broke up with them (8:07pm)

Jensen: Did you actually break up with them (8:19pm)

Jensen: Where are you (8:41pm)

Jensen: Can you let one of us know you’re alive (9:02pm)

Jensen: You better not be in a ditch Y/N I swear (9:05pm)

Danneel: Call me? (9:17pm)

Danneel: Look up (9:48pm)

Danneel: Okay guess I’m getting wet hold on (9:49pm)

You finally raised your head from your phone, looking at Danneel with tears swimming in your eyes for the millionth time. “I don’t--” you started.

Danneel reached over, squeezing your hand in hers. “They love you so much, Y/N. I still don’t know what happened, exactly, but they both love you so much.”

“I don’t fit, Dee!” you finally burst out, your voice higher-pitched from tears. “I never did, I don’t know why anybody thought it was ever a good idea--” you sucked in a shuddering breath. “They’re already a family, Dee, they don’t need me. I didn’t mean to make a big deal out of it, but...maybe it’s better if I just bow out quietly, you know?”

Danneel shook her head fiercely, no room for doubt left in her expression. “No, Y/N. No. Not unless that’s what you want. But if you think they just want you to get out of the way…” she shook her head again. “You need to go home and talk to them, sweetie.”

“Dee, I can’t,” you whispered. And what were you even supposed to say now? ‘Hey, sorry I caused a huge scene, hope you still like me’? Even if Danneel was right, and Gen and Jared didn’t completely hate you before, they would now.

“Yes, you can,” Danneel returned firmly, squeezing your hand. “Come on, I’ll drive you. We can get your car later.”

You didn’t have the energy to argue with her about it, grabbing your phone and wearily following her through the rain and into the passenger seat of the car she’d parked a few spaces away, both of you on the unpleasant side of damp when you got inside. 

The drive back to your house was mostly silent, exhaustion dragging at you and Danneel leaving you alone. A glance at your phone showed a time edging closer to midnight, and you winced briefly, thinking about all of the sleep that nobody was getting. Because of you. You’d made a big deal out of this whole mess, and this entire thing was your fault. You thumped your head back against the seat, prompting a concerned glance from Danneel. 

“You okay?”

You blew out your breath. “I should have left quietly, Dee,”

She fixed you with a sharp look before returning her focus to the road. At the last moment, though, she seemed to change her mind, and the only thing she said was a soft, “It’ll be okay,”

Your stomach was thoroughly tangled up in anxious knots by the time Danneel pulled to a stop in your driveway, and even though you knew this was the part where you were supposed to get out of the car, your legs felt like lead. Somehow, seeing all of the lights on in the middle of the night just made the guilt worse, and that was before you noticed Jared’s silhouette in the doorway. Arms crossed, his face too shadowed to make out, he seemed more impassively angry than anything neighboring relieved. 

You swallowed hard. As nice as it was for Dee to make the effort, this was only going to end one way. You arched a brow at her in bitter sarcasm. “Call you in ten minutes to go get my car?”

Danneel shook her head immediately, seeing your feeble joke for what it was. “They’re not going to throw you out.”

You made a noise of disbelief in the back of your throat. “Yeah, well, I’d throw me out. Thanks for the ride.” Not wanting to hear any more of her hopeful promises, you opened the door without another word and climbed out into the rain, feeling unbearably small standing in the middle of the driveway while Danneel’s tail lights faded down the street. 

That was about all the delaying you could manage, and you did want to get out of the rain, so, feeling vaguely stuck between throwing up and passing out, you shuffled up to the house to face Jared and Gen. 

Jared held the door open for you wordlessly, letting you into the house to slowly drip a damp puddle on the front rug. Up close, he looked shockingly older than he had been...had it only been eight hours ago? You watched him clench his hand into a fist at his side, but he said nothing, and didn’t reach toward you.

You swallowed hard and focused on kicking off your wet shoes, only looking up at the aborted squeaking noise Gen made as she rounded into the hallway in a rush and then stopped short, wearing the same wrecked look as her husband. So neither of them knew what to do with you, and that made three of you. 

“Y/N,” Jared finally started, voice low, at the same time as Gen choked out, “Baby,”

And you knew exactly how much of a coward you were being, but you couldn’t let them finish, couldn’t stay to hear them tell you exactly how done with you they were. Feeling numb, you held up a hand. “I’m tired, I’m wet, can we do this tomorrow?” Your feet were already moving toward the stairs before you’d finished, and you didn’t realize until your heart was breaking all over again at the top of the staircase that some part of you had wanted them to protest.

Your wet clothes were methodically stripped off and left in a pile in the guest bathroom, and you briefly eyed the shower before deciding you were too tired and empty to sustain anything more than lying down and pretending the world didn’t exist. You cursed yourself for forgetting to bring dry clothes with you, before you came to the conclusion that you didn’t have the emotional capacity to care about that either. 

You opened the door back into the guest bedroom, flinching immediately in surprise as you were met with the twin stares of your partners, lined up on the edge of the guest bed like children waiting to be scolded. “Jesus!” you blurted out, something just barely easing in your chest when Jared’s mouth twitched infinitesimally at your outburst. “Okay, I guess I needed clothes after all,” you went on wryly, looking a little lost as you realized there wasn’t anything in the room for you. 

Jared immediately shrugged off the flannel shirt he was wearing, tossing it to you before you could change your mind--not that you would. You wrapped yourself up in it gratefully, letting yourself imagine for a heartbeat that the warmth and familiar smell was a real hug. 

Then, you buttoned the last button and looked up, squaring your shoulders like you were preparing to take a blow. In a way, you were, it just wouldn’t be a physical one. “So…”

That was all it took for Gen to crack, her head bowing forward as a sob shuddered through her. “I’m so sorry,” she got out, and you watched Jared reach out to squeeze her hand. Once again, you were standing apart while they were together, and you didn’t know what to do about any of this but you could fix that much. 

You crossed the handful of steps between you and the bed, your arms going on autopilot to wrap around your girlfriend, one hand coming up to cradle the back of her head while Gen cried into you. 

Jared’s hands went around your waist, pulling you sideways and guiding you down to sit between them, Gen still attached to your left side. You felt Jared’s quivering lips press against your skin as he leaned into you, keeping you thoroughly squished between them, and something else fitted back into place inside you. 

Still, there was more of a mess between you now than could be fixed with hugs, and you couldn’t help but stay tensed up between the two of them, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Jared cleared his throat after a few moments, but he didn’t move away from you. 

“Y/N, do we make you feel...second best?” he got out after a pause. 

Your knee jerk reaction was to deny it, to put them at ease. But wasn’t that how this whole thing had gotten started? You only love me sometimes, you’d said. “No! Yes...maybe sometimes. I don’t know.” You leaned harder against Gen, taking comfort from the closeness, and took a shuddering breath. It wasn’t like you could make it any worse. “I just...I knew there was something you weren’t telling me, and everybody seemed to function so much better without me there. I don’t know why I’m here,” a tear finally made its way down your cheek. “You’re already a family, you never needed me. I’ve just been the dirty secret. I figured I’d just sleep somewhere else, go quietly...let you have your space.”

“Baby, no,” Gen sounded horrified, lifting her head so she could look into your face. “We don’t--I didn’t--we were trying to give you space because we were afraid you didn’t want to stay with us,”

Jared pulled you in tighter, practically curled around your smaller frame at this point. “I love you,” he whispered into the top of your hair. “Both of you. You’re just as much a part of me as Gen is. Y/N, you are our family.” His hand on your chin turned you to meet his eyes, swimming with unshed tears. “Tell us how to fix it, Y/N. I don’t know how to do this without you,”

Those words, compared with the expression on Jared’s face, broke you completely, and you lurched forward into his chest with a sob. He caught you easily, and you felt him pull Gen in behind you. “I’m sorry,” you mumbled into the fabric of his t-shirt. “I should have said something, I should have--”

“We all should have said something,” Gen’s voice was muffled in your hair, but she sounded lighter. “So. You are not our dirty secret, and we are not ashamed of you, and I love you,” she squeezed her arms around your ribs to drive home the point. “So much, baby.” Gen paused, having some sort of silent conversation with Jared over your head, and then went on, “You were right though. We were...kind of lying to you. Very badly, apparently.”

Jared shifted, gently peeling you away from him and depositing you back into the safety of Gen’s hold as he moved to get off the bed. Panic seized you irrationally and you reached out toward him, some garbled noise that was meant to be no wait choking out of your throat.

Gen shushed you gently, lightly kissing her way across your shoulder, bared by Jared’s shirt falling off of your smaller body. “Just wait,” she murmured. She seemed infinitely calmer, now that the worst of “talking about it” seemed to be over, but you still felt a low hum of guilt in your chest. This was your doing, your overreaction, your fault still. 

Your girlfriend seemed to know what you were thinking, and leaned her forehead against yours with a soft smile. “We’re okay, babe,” She kissed you slow and easy, a soft promise of love that still tasted like salty tears, and then pulled away with a smile at Jared in the doorway. 

Then she, too, got off the bed, leaving you suddenly cold and trying not to worry. You told yourself that if they were going to break up with you, they would have done it by now. Still, your hands fidgeted anxiously, picking at the blue polish you’d let Odette put on a few days ago. Gen’s hand slid into Jared’s, and they both turned to face you with vaguely deer-in-the-headlights expressions. You swallowed hard.

“This wasn’t the original plan--” Jared started, looking to his wife for support. “But I think it makes more sense now anyway,”

“We meant what we said to you, Y/N, you mean everything to us,” Gen picked up the thread, smiling at you. “So about a month ago, Jared and I realized we were thinking the same thing,”

“And asked you to watch the kids so we could go out and argue about what you’d like--”

Gen scowled briefly up at her husband. “We weren’t arguing,”

“Fine, we had a lot of polite discussions,” Jared’s eyes still looked tired and red-rimmed but they were shining, looking at you, and you had no idea anymore where any of this was going. 

“And we weren’t very good about hiding our secret,” Gen bit her lip guiltily. “So we’re very sorry for scaring you, Y/N,”

“But we don’t want you to leave. And we want to be able to show you off. We love you probably almost as much as the kids do--”

Gen squeezed his hand, cutting him off. “So what we are actually trying to figure out how to say is, um--”

“Now that everybody knows no one is trying to break up with anyone--”

A hysterical laugh ripped out of your throat, and you watched your partners awkwardly ping-ponging sentence fragments around with mounting confusion. “Yes?” you prompted cautiously, wondering if it would help one of them get to the point.

Jared and Gen shared a glance, and then both of them sank down to one knee, slightly out of sync. You hadn’t noticed Jared keeping one hand behind him until he pulled out a little black velvet box, and then you clapped a hand over your mouth in pure, unfiltered shock. 

“We want you to marry us,” Gen said with a hopeful little smile, and Jared thumbed the box open to show you not one, but three rings nestled inside. 

“I know we can’t do it for real, but we picked these out for all of us,” Jared was watching you nervously, and you realized with a jolt that you were still staring in shock, that you hadn’t given an answer yet. 

“Yes! Yes--I’m sorry, I spaced--yes!” you burst out, sliding off of the edge of the mattress in a rush to fall against both of them, Jared hastily raising the hand still holding the rings out of your way. 

“Yeah?” Gen whispered hopefully, cupping your face in her hands as she kissed you before you could answer. You nodded, returning her kiss until Jared’s gentle fingertips on your arm had you pulling away to launch yourself in his direction instead.

You spent a long while with the three of you in a slightly chaotic tangle on the floor before Jared pulled the rings out and finally offered two of the bands out to you and Gen. They were different, you realized, delicate diamond designs that suited each of you, and a smile crept over your lips as you imagined your partners having a “polite discussion” over the style in the jewelry store. 

Your girlfriend--fiancee?--immediately slipped the wedding band she already had off of her finger, reaching for the one in Jared’s outstretched hand, and you blinked. “Wait, I--you should--”

Gen shrugged and shook her head, already reading your thoughts before you could verbalize them. “I’ll keep it,” she promised you, “but this is only half.” She gestured to the new rings, to all three of you. “I want to wear my promise to both of you.”

“I love you,” Jared said thickly as he helped slide the ring onto your finger, drawing both you and Gen into an embrace. “Now please don’t ever leave without talking to us again,”

You laughed softly into his shoulder, the last shattered bit inside you falling back into place. “Promise,”

And in the morning, for the fourth day in a row, you woke up under the blankets in the guest bedroom. This time, though, Gen was tucked against you, the length of her entire body pressed against yours, and she was breathing softly against your neck with one of her hands curled over your ribcage. Jared had commandeered your other side, one leg thrown over yours and wrapped around you so that he could sleep with his head pillowed on your chest, his hand on top of Gen’s. 

You smiled briefly before closing your eyes again, raising your own hand to cover theirs, the ring on your finger glinting in the dawn light.

[shotgun--rider]

Fake It Till You Make It - Two

A Sam x Reader Series

PART TWO

Y/N knows it’s a bad idea to try telling her family that she’s dating Sam Winchester. But it’s just for the week of her sister’s wedding, and it’s all fake anyway. What could go wrong?

Word Count: 4100

Warnings: plus size! Reader, fatphobic, & diet comments, Y/N’s family are demons, allusions to drug use

A/N: Significantly more fluffity fluff than I intended this part to have. So enjoy it!

Aunt Abaddon’s garden, like the rest of the house, was oversized and vaguely vintage-designed and expertly manicured by underpaid grounds staff. It was less of a garden and more of a courtyard-esque mingling space, really, and it was currently filled with all of the people you would have been perfectly content to never see again. 

Involuntarily, your hand tightened around Sam’s, and he responded immediately with a reassuring swipe of his thumb over the inside of your wrist. You tugged nervously at your sundress with your free hand for a moment, trying to scope out the least disastrous location to aim for, and winced as your mother immediately came barrelling toward you. 

You dropped Sam’s hand just in time to catch her as she squeezed you (too hard) in an over-the-top hug, squealing in your ear at some kind of bat-radio frequency. “Oh, thank god you’re here. We were beginning to worry, weren’t we, honey?” She beckoned to your father, who sidled up with an awkward grimace and an untouched glass of something very pink in his hand. 

Her hands came up to frame your face, squeezing your cheeks, and she tilted her head critically. “You look...pale. Doesn’t she look pale?” Her eyes rolled impatiently. “You’re not sticking to the keto, are you?”

You exhaled heavily, pulling your face back out of her grip and suddenly feeling very small. “No, Mom.” You had a whole speech you’d delivered many times to other people about how diet culture was all bullshit anyway, but your mother always had a way of making you feel like your words would be wasted if you bothered to speak. 

“How many times do I have to tell you, Y/N? Your life could be so much better--you could look like Ruby, you know, if you put a little effort in. She’s tiny, and now she’s getting married.”

“That’s because she survived on crack in college, Mom,”

Your mother rolled her eyes, waving it off. “Well everybody has to have something,”

Your mouth tightened into a thin line, her words needling into you the way they always did. “Okay, Mom,” you said tiredly. “Whatever you say,”

She hmmed at you like she didn’t believe you, but let go and turned her attention over your shoulder. “Who is this?” Her eyebrows were making an escape toward her hairline and you couldn’t deny that it was a little bit satisfying watching her tilt her head up trying to look at Sam. 

“Mom, this is my boyfriend, Sam.” The lie came out smoother than it had the last time you tried it, but the words still felt like they wanted to stick in your throat.

“Mrs. L/N,” Sam extended his hand toward her, but she didn’t take it.

“Y/N, how did this happen?” she asked dismissively, waving at Sam on the word ‘this’ like he was something inanimate. 

Sam offered her a polite laugh, his hand coming to slide around your waist and tug you into his side, warm through the thin material of your dress. “Uh, the usual way?”

Your mother sniffed, crossing her arms as she looked between the two of you. “The house is all her aunt’s, you know; Y/N doesn’t have money.”

Right. Because the only way you could bring home a good-looking boyfriend (or any boyfriend at all, apparently) was if he was looking for money. You cleared your throat, your hands twisting together anxiously. “He’s a lawyer, Mom, he doesn’t need money,”

You weren’t actually sure if Sam had all that much money, given that Dean was always talking about all the pro bono cases he took on, but it would hopefully shut your mother up.

“A lawyer? But--”

“Yes,” Sam cut in roughly, “and I consider myself very lucky to be with her.” He dropped a kiss to the top of your hair, selling your relationship with more ease than you’d expected, and you focused on reminding yourself that was what it was--two friends selling a lie. 

Your mother sputtered indignantly, unable to come up with any further response, and you took the opportunity to slide off to the side, aiming for the shock of blonde hair you were fairly certain belonged to your most tolerable cousin, Meg. To your surprise, Sam followed without letting go of your waist, though you weren’t really sure what you had expected. You were trying to look like a couple, after all. You just had to remember not to get used to it.

“Sup?” Meg half-slurred when you reached her, immediately holding out a glass of what was probably very alcoholic punch. You took it from her hastily, mostly to keep her from spilling it on herself, and sighed. 

“It’s barely three o’clock, Meg,”

“That’s almost five,” she returned cheerfully. “You didn’t think I was gonna do this shit show sober, did you?”

“I don’t blame you,” you mumbled, cautiously sniffing the glass. It smelled overpoweringly of alcohol, and you figured someone--possibly Meg--had spiked it well beyond the original content.

“So, who’s the hottie?” Her eyes sparkled as she looked up at Sam. “And where do I get one?”

Sam could tell she was harmless, and he laughed easier this time, letting the most-of-the-way-drunk woman tease him. It was kind of sweet to watch, if in a mildly alarming way. Meg had been your only solace growing up, but she’d lived too far away to be more than a buffer at big family gatherings. Still, you knew how she could be, and you weren’t too confident in leaving him alone with her. 

Unfortunately, it didn’t look like you were going to have much choice. A claw-like hand was suddenly digging into your upper arm, and you turned to meet your sister’s cold eyes. “You need to come with me,” she announced, leaving you barely enough time to set the glass you’d been holding down on a table before she was physically hauling you out of the conversation. Sam shot you a slightly concerned glance, but Meg immediately demanded his attention back, and you allowed your surprisingly strong sister to pull you back toward the house.

“What do you want, Ruby?”

The expression on her face was equal parts annoyed and vindictive. “You missed the fitting for your dress. I figured I had better make you do this now,” she sighed, “in case we have to alter it again. Not like you seem to care,” she muttered. 

“Ruby, I already told you I couldn’t get off work--”

“Whatever,” she cut you off. “It’s whatever. I just thought maybe my maid of honor would put in a little effort, you know?”

You gritted your teeth in silence, knowing nothing you could say would change her mind. Everything in Ruby’s life that went wrong, from the time she was a child, was always someone else’s fault. Somehow, neither of your parents had thought to correct that assumption before she grew up and took it into the world with her, but, given the way your entire family was, it shouldn’t have surprised you. 

Following her reluctantly into a sitting room on the second floor, you watched Ruby sift through a standing rack of silvery-gray dresses. None of them were particularly flattering, and you had no doubt that whatever she’d picked for you would be especially ugly, in her passive-aggressive way. It wasn’t like you’d expected a pretty bridesmaid’s dress, because, really, weren’t ugly dresses the stereotype anyway? Still, it was the same kind of thing she’d done to you since you were kids, and it left a sour taste in your mouth. 

Ruby handed you a mass of slippery fabric, and you held it up hesitantly, a cautious sensation of relief in your chest as you realized that it didn’t seem overtly horrible at first glance. 

“Hurry up,” your sister was waving at you, “put it on!”

You huffed, walking behind the conveniently located changing screen with a still-nervous pit in your stomach. You hated trying on clothes, from the time you were a teenager shopping with your mother, and she’d made comments about how the clothes you’d picked would look better in a smaller size. Even now, shopping alone, it was still frustrating and embarrassing to look in the changing room mirror and realize that you looked nothing like what you’d hoped you would when you were picking items off the rack. 

“I’m not wearing the right bra for this,” you warned Ruby, noting that the dress had a plunging back. 

“I figured, it’s whatever for now,” she said carelessly, then, “So how long have you and Sam been together? He’s new, right?”

“Three months,” you returned automatically, recalling the date you’d agreed on in the car as you shimmied your hips into the slinky fabric. It was a bit too clingy for your tastes, but that was what you’d packed extra shapewear for. 

“Huh,” Ruby mused from somewhere beyond the changing screen. You could hear her feet pacing softly, and you didn’t have to see her to know she had her hands on her hips and a smirk on her lips. “That’s like a new record for you. What’d you do, anyway?”

“Do what?” you grunted, twisting your arms behind you like the world’s most painful pretzel trying to grab the zipper. 

“Keep his attention. I mean, come on, Y/N, he’s gorgeous,”

“Why do you care?” you shot back. “You’re getting married,”

You could almost hear Ruby’s too-casual shrug. “I was just curious. I know he’s not staying for the sex. Dick said you never fucked him,”

“You talked about me?” you practically shrieked. It wasn’t enough that your bitchy, entitled sister was marrying your god awful ex, they had to bring you back into it too?

“Duh,” Ruby giggled. “Wait, are you still a virgin? I mean, it wouldn’t surprise me--”

Finally wrestling the zipper into submission, you lifted the hem above your bare feet and stormed out from behind the changing screen. “No,” you snapped out. “Do you like it or not?”

“God, Y/N, I was just kidding,” Ruby rolled her eyes. “You need to calm down. And, yeah, the dress is fine. Just try not to eat anything before Saturday,”

You just stared at her, the brief anger flaming through your chest dying as hurt welled up instead. “Every time,” you whispered. “You do this every time,”

“Oh, quit being so sensitive.” Ruby waved you off. “Hey, remember you’re picking up the cake and the flowers tomorrow, right?”

“Yeah, no problem,” you returned hollowly, watching her bounce out into the hallway, leaving you standing there in an ugly bridesmaid dress, defeated expertly in the way she always knew how. 

And you had promised yourself that you weren’t going to let them make you cry, but your eyes were stinging and your chest felt tight. For what felt like the millionth time, you wondered what it would take for any one of them to actually act like they cared about you. 

You stripped off the dress mechanically, hanging it carefully back up to avoid Ruby throwing a fit, noticing as you did that every other dress on the rack was tailored to accommodate tiny women with tiny waists. The rest of the bridesmaids were Ruby’s crowd of friends, and you knew you were only part of this because it would have looked bad to not include her sister. 

Blowing out your breath, you put your own clothes back on and shook your head. This was a standard day in your house. Last Thanksgiving had definitely been worse. So why are you still letting them get to you? You snapped at yourself. Get over it, Y/N.

You knew that you should be going back outside to Ruby’s little pre-wedding garden party to rescue Sam, who was probably in well over his head by now, but you couldn’t stomach the thought of dealing with any more of it right now. Before you could change your mind, your feet were pointing toward the third floor staircase, and you were making a beeline for your bedroom. 

“There she is!”

You stopped in your tracks at the sound of his voice, swearing a blue streak inside your head. What on earth had you done in your life to deserve this kind of brutal cosmic karma, anyway? Turning slowly, you let out a resigned sigh. “Dick,”

Your stupid ex-boyfriend was smiling with all of his perfect white teeth, hands slid into the pockets of a pair of very nice dress slacks as he meandered down the hallway toward you. “It’s been a long time, Y/N,”

“Best two years of my life,” you confirmed with a nod, well past the point of being nice, even if you knew your entire family would inevitably end up hearing about you sassing the groom. 

He laughed as though you’d just told the funniest joke. “Charming as ever, dearest. You know, I still have a few days before I’m married. What do you say?”

“Ruby would kill you,” you tried, taking a step backward. 

Dick arched an arrogant brow. “Hardly, I’m sure she’d encourage it.”

“Thanks but no thanks,” you said flatly, your skin crawling at the mere thought of him. “Please go somewhere far away from me now,”

“It’s a public hallway,”

“Just leave me alone,” you sighed, turning away resolutely to resume marching toward the stairs. 

“Alright, alright!” Dick muttered. “Damn, I’m glad I chose the other one,”

His words shouldn’t have mattered, but they cut into you anyway. You slammed your bedroom door behind you with tears welling up in your eyes, kicking your shoes off across the room and marching to the bathroom halfway between misery and rage. See? Even slimy Dick fucking Roman doesn’t want you. 

You stared down your reflection in the bathroom mirror, all anxious bitten lips and red, teary eyes. You looked, in your personal opinion, a little bit deranged, and huffed out a breath, trying to control yourself before you went into full-blown ugly sobbing. That would just make you look like a mess for dinner. 

You weren’t sure how long you’d just been leaning on the sink, staring blankly at the outdated gold faucet, when you heard the door in the bedroom open. You swallowed hard, thankful you’d shut the bathroom door behind you, and debated between silently trying to pretend you weren’t there at all and just shouting for Ruby to get lost. 

“Y/N?” 

No, that was Sam’s voice, and that sent a whole new wave of panic through your body. This wasn’t Sam’s mess to clean up, this was so not what he had signed up for, hell, he’d barely signed up at all. What was any halfway decent person supposed to say when Dean and Charlie started ganging up on them?

A soft tap sounded on the bathroom door, and your voice came out slightly strangled as you bargained for time. “Yeah, be out in a sec!” You swiped your hands under your eyes hastily, blinking in the mirror like that was somehow supposed to make you look less emotionally flattened. 

Sam, evidently, wasn’t buying it. “Y/N, can I come in?”

Your emotions had been all over the place for the past week in the anxiety of having to come here and deal with this, and, apparently, just the sound of Sam’s concerned voice was enough to have tears welling up in your eyes again. Damn it. You pressed your quivering lips together, staring up at the ceiling like that was going to convince the tears to drain back into your eyeballs. 

The bathroom door opened behind you, and you opened your mouth on a gasping breath to say something just as you felt Sam wrap his arms around you from behind, pulling you back against him carefully without choking your neck against his forearms. The contact and gentle support broke the last thread on your tenuous control and you let your head fall forward as a sob wracked your body.

“Whoa, hey, what happened?” Sam sounded surprised at your sudden reaction, but he didn’t let go, just tucked you more firmly into his embrace and held on as your body shook with the sudden pain you hadn’t even acknowledged in your chest until now. “I got you,” he whispered just above your hair. “I got you, Y/N,”

You followed pure instinct, wiggling around in the circle of his arms until you could bury your face in his chest instead, and Sam let you, automatically adjusting to make sure you stayed tucked against him. He was warm and solid and safe, and he felt like home in a way you’d never experienced before, a physical barrier between you and the world. 

That thought jarred you out of your mini-breakdown, because you couldn’t afford to think like that. This wasn’t a rom-com and just because you had a stupid crush on Sam before this whole thing started didn’t mean you could let it go to your head. You pulled back from him slightly, wincing as you noticed the damp spot you’d left on his shirt. Your nose wrinkled, and you grimaced as you ducked out of his arms to grab several of the Kleenex on the back of the toilet tank. “Sorry,”

Sam had that look of adorably genuine puzzlement on his face again as he watched you blow your nose, unfazed like he couldn’t figure out why you were saying what you were saying.

You gestured vaguely with one hand at yourself, at the bathroom. “This shouldn’t be your problem, Sam,”

“Y/N,” he frowned, catching you in the web of those hazel eyes that somehow never failed to take your breath away. “I’m right where I want to be. I told you I had your back, remember?”

You rolled your eyes, shaking your head wearily as embarrassment and frustration began to sink in. “This is so stupid,” you whispered turning your body away from him more than you really needed to toss the tissue from your crumpled fist into the trash can. 

“If it makes you upset, it’s not stupid, Y/N,” Sam argued softly. “You don’t deserve that from people,”

You paused at that, staring at him awkwardly as you tried to come up with a response. Finally, you settled on the truth. “I’m pretty sure no one has ever said that to me,”

“I’ll say it more often,” Sam reached out to you, his hand landing on your upper arm to gently pull you out of the bathroom. The sun was starting to set through the big west-facing window, and you let yourself fall back onto the bed with a groan as you remembered that the night wasn’t over yet. 

Sam walked over to peer down at you on the mattress, standing over you with an expression on his face that almost made you burst out laughing. “What?”

“Dinner,” you huffed, throwing an arm over your eyes for a brief moment. “I forgot they were going to expect us for dinner,”

“Do you want to go?” Sam raised an eyebrow, and you almost shot into a sitting position at the question. 

“What? No. Why are you even asking me?”

Sam shrugged, sitting down next to you easily and lacing his fingers together in his lap. “If you don’t want to go, then let’s not go,”

Turning to look at him with a smirk, you propped your head up on one hand. “Sam Winchester, are you suggesting we play hooky?”

His face split into a wide grin, his eyes dancing as if to say why not? “I’ll tell them I missed my girlfriend, and we can stay up here and leave them all downstairs to be jealous of our functional relationship,”

“Our functional relationship that’s so functional it’s fake?” You were laughing up at him now, and Sam Winchester was going down in your book as the only other person besides Charlie who could completely change your mood in under five minutes. 

Sam pouted at you, some of the light dimming from his face. “Exactly,” he cleared his throat.

“There is one flaw in this plan, though,”

Sam turned, flopping down on his stomach on the mattress beside you and making you bounce slightly. “Hm?”

You batted your eyelashes exaggeratedly at him, making your best puppy face. “I’m hungry.”

Which was how you found yourself creeping down the stairs in your bare feet with your hand in Sam’s even though nobody was watching, on a mission to raid the fridge. “I didn’t know you had it in you, Mr. Big-shot Lawyer,” you teased, peering briefly down the hallway to check that it was empty before continuing.

Sam shot you a mock-hurt look. “I’m in human rights law!”

You stifled a fit of giggles, cursing yourself for turning into a girlish idiot around him. “If Aunt Abi catches me down here, she will actually kill me,” you said instead, your voice conversationally sarcastic. 

“I think she’s still fighting with your uncle,” Sam shrugged, following you into the thankfully empty kitchen. “What do you want?”

“Ooh, did Uncle Fergus show up high again? And there should be a bunch of crap in there, just grab whatever.”

Sam blinked at you, holding open the fridge. “Why do you sound happy about that?”

You opened the pantry, lifting out a bag of chips. “Because, a, unlike my sister, he doesn’t try to force other people into drug abuse, and b, the fact that everyone hates him more than me is probably the only reason I’m still alive. Oh, grab the brownies!” you added, peering around him into the fridge. 

Sam just shook his head at you, studying you with an expression you weren’t sure how to identify. 

“What? I like brownies,”

He shook his head, hair sliding into his face with the motion, and pulled out both the pan of brownies and a bowl of tossed salad. “Nothing. I’ve just, uh, never met anyone like you before.”

“What, surprisingly well-adjusted?” you asked sarcastically. 

Sam held your gaze over the dishes in his hands. “I was going to say strong,”

You swallowed, glancing down, not sure how to answer. “Okay. Uh, we should probably get out of here. This is enough,”

Thankfully, he let it go, leading the way back upstairs and smiling at the way you burst out laughing as soon as the door was closed and locked behind you. Then, you watched him pull a spare bed sheet out of the bathroom and throw it down on the floor, sitting cross-legged and waiting for you to join him. “Dean used to do this for me,” he said quietly, sticking a fork into the salad bowl. “Sometimes Dad would leave us in motel rooms and Dean would try to make it like a picnic.” He winced. “Couldn’t cook, though. He was eight.”

You laughed softly, reaching out with a fork to pull a mouthful of lettuce from the other side of the salad bowl, your eyes soft as you looked at him. “Tell me more,”

You let Sam keep talking while you both munched on snacks and sprawled out on the floor, listening to the random stories of his childhood and, occasionally, something from law school. His voice was soothing, and you hadn’t realized you were tired until you were suddenly blinking back awake, the room pitch-dark and the thin carpet making your spine complain. 

Still half-asleep and fuzzy headed, you started to sit up, reaching for your phone, and noticed suddenly that something was holding you down. Your thumb grazed the home button, lighting up your phone’s screen enough to see, and you blinked in surprise as you realized that Sam was asleep beside you with his arm slung over your waist. 

A small smile crept on your lips as you studied his sleeping face in the dim blue light, completely at peace. Waking him seemed like a crime you weren’t willing to commit, and if part of you was unwilling to make him let go of you, well, who would ever know? You turned slightly, pillowing your head on one arm, and let your phone turn itself back off as you felt Sam try to pull you closer to him. Your decision made, you told your spine to shove its complaining. You could totally manage one night on the floor. 

--

tags: @vicmc624​,  @thebookisbtr​

[shotgun--rider]

Fake It Till You Make It - One

A Sam x Reader Series

PART ONE

Y/N knows it’s a bad idea to try telling her family that she’s dating Sam Winchester. But it’s just for the week of her sister’s wedding, and it’s all fake anyway. What could go wrong?

Word Count: 3600

Warnings: plus size! Reader, background Destiel for a hot sec, fatphobic comments, Y/N’s family are demons

A/N: Has this trope probably been done five million times? Yes. Am I about to do it again? Yes. 

Your cellphone rang and you grimaced, rolling your eyes as you took in Dean’s all-too-amused expression. Your best friend may have thought your situation was the funniest thing he’d ever heard, but that didn’t mean you were of the same opinion. 

“What?” you snapped out, not bothering to read the caller ID. Who else would be calling you for the fifth time in as many hours?

“Well that’s not a very nice way to greet your mother.”

Here you went again, the same thing over and over. You pinched the bridge of your nose and sighed. “What do you want now, Mom?”

Bent over something under Baby’s hood, Dean snorted, shamelessly listening to your half of the conversation. He could probably hear your mother too, you thought wryly. The woman was certainly loud enough. 

“Well, listen, honey,” your mother began. “I was just talking to Jimmy...you remember Jimmy? From down the street, you used to--”

“Yes, Mom, I remember Jimmy.” you said tiredly. “Why do we care about Jimmy?” Please don’t say what I think you’re going to say. 

“For the wedding! I just asked, and Jimmy agreed to come with you.”

You let out an alarmed noise before you could stop yourself. “Mom, no.” you said firmly, with an undercurrent of panic at the thought of being trailed around by awkward Jimmy for a week. “I know it’s hard to imagine,” you drawled sarcastically, “but the vows will still be successful if I’m there without a plus one. Not like I’m the one getting married, you know.”

Still focused on the Impala, Dean’s shoulders were shaking with suppressed laughter. You seized the apple core you’d been munching on earlier and chucked it at him, feeling marginally better when it bounced off of his back. 

“Y/N L/N! You should be a little more grateful. Besides, have you even thought about how it’s going to look to Dick if you show up alone?”

“I don’t care,” you said automatically. “He’s a dick, pun absolutely intended.”

“He’s marrying your sister.”

“At least it’s not me.” 

“That miserable attitude is exactly why you’re going to die alone, young lady,” your mother snipped. “You could at least make an effort. Maybe if you just lost some weight--”

“Yeah, okay Mom.” You hung up the phone before she could get another word in, immediately flopping back onto Dean’s front lawn in defeat. “If I ever get married, it’s going to be in Vegas with Elvis, and nobody is going to know about it.” Not that you would. Given your complete inability to keep a boyfriend for longer than two months and your habit of getting hung up on guys who were completely out of your league, marriage, or a relationship of any kind didn’t seem to be in the cards. 

“Who’s Jimmy?” Dean’s green eyes were sparkling with mischief, and you let out a groan, smoothing out the skirt of your sundress as you sat back up to answer him. 

“Straight-laced, awkward, kind of greasy. Went to high school with me.” You wrinkled your nose. “My mother is really scraping the bottom of the barrel. She’d throw a fit if I actually tried to bring him home. But apparently Jimmy is a better temporary solution than being single while my sister marries my ex.” You trailed off into silence, your hand pulling absently at a few strands of grass in your best friend’s front lawn. “Maybe I should just rent a boyfriend to shut her up. That’s a thing, right? Like a non-sexual escort.”

“If you’re going to the trouble, you should also get the sex,” Dean returned, still smirking at you as he wiped grease off his hands. “Or you could take me. I would make the best fake boyfriend. And I’m free if you feed me.”

You rolled your eyes at him, laughing at the mental image. “My mom knows you have a boyfriend,” you sighed. “Which, believe me, is a great source of sadness to her every single day.”

Dean laughed loudly, both of you glancing toward the house as the screen door swung open. “Maybe we broke up,”

“Well, she still doesn’t understand the concept of bisexuality, so as far as she’s concerned, you’d still be gay.” You rolled your eyes, long since over your mother’s narrow-minded opinions.

“Who’s gay?” Castiel inquired vaguely, making his way over to the flowerbeds. 

“Dean is,” you pointed out helpfully, prompting a wide-eyed stare from Cas. 

“Really? Dean, you should have told me!”

When you’d first met Dean’s new boyfriend, he’d been stiff and absolutely useless at sarcasm. It was always nice to see yours and Dean’s combined efforts working.

“D’you want me to ask Sammy?”

You were still laughing at Cas’s antics, and snapped your head back to Dean so fast that you were positive something popped in your neck. “W-what?”

 “I can ask Sam if he’s free that week,” Dean repeated, looking at you like he thought you were stupid. “If you want,”

You blinked, irrational panic running through you at the thought of Dean’s younger, perfect, brother. 

“It’ll shut your mom up,” Dean went on, oblivious. “Sammy wouldn’t mind.”

“Dean, I barely ever see Sam,” you protested after an awkward pause. A fact that was quite devastating, actually, not that you’d ever admit to your hopeless crush on the younger Winchester. 

Your best friend and his boyfriend shared a look. “That’s because he’s a hopeless do-gooder on top of being a hotshot lawyer,” Dean said fondly. “But I bet we could talk him out of taking a bunch of free cases for a week,”

Walking into your sister’s wedding with Sam Winchester on your arm sounded like a disaster waiting to happen. On the other hand, it would shut your mother up. She’d been vocal in her fears of you dying alone since you’d been barely out of college, sending you links to weight-loss workout videos and advertising her fixer-upper daughter to single men in the grocery store for years. Sam’s presence might even serve to stave off comments about your weight, which seemed to be the family’s second-favorite discussion topic any time they were together. 

Still, that meant pretending Sam Winchester was your boyfriend for a week, which just seemed like some masochistic form of self inflicted torture. Besides, if even you knew Sam would never go for a girl like you, how in the world were you supposed to sell it to your nosy, skeptical family?

“I was mostly kidding about the whole fake boyfriend thing, Dean,” you said wearily, not wanting to devote any more thought to the idea. 

Dean shrugged easily, sharing one more pointed look with Cas before refocusing on you. “Fair enough. You’re still staying for dinner, though, right?”

You’d have to be crazy to turn down one of Dean’s steaks. “Obviously.”

“Great,” he returned brightly. “I think Charlie’s coming.”

--

You were going to kill Dean. And Cas too, potentially, though it was entirely possible that he’d genuinely just been too preoccupied with his backyard beehive to remember the full extent of his boyfriend’s dinner plans. Because, apparently, “Charlie’s coming” actually meant, “Charlie and also Sam are coming.” 

It only took about five minutes for Dean to bring up your mother’s nonsense, prompting you to consider just face planting into the mashed potatoes in embarrassment while Charlie burst out laughing. She thought the whole thing was unbelievably hilarious, and had immediately offered herself up as a fake date. The offer was well meant, you knew, but you were only trying to get your mother to shut up, not disown you for bringing home a girlfriend.  

“I don’t need a date,” you finally huffed out, irritated with the whole thing. “I’m perfectly capable of showing up by myself. It’s not like anyone’s going to have anything to say about it that I haven’t already heard.” It was true. Your mother, and you sister and all of your aunts and uncles, for that matter, had been making the same jabs at your weight and relationship status for the past decade. You were used to it by now. 

“Doesn’t mean you should have to hear it,” Charlie shrugged. “If we’re too gay for your mother, get somebody else.”

“I tried to tell her Sammy would do it,” Dean put in unhelpfully, elbowing his brother, who had been silent up until this point. You contemplated kicking him under the table. 

“Poor Sam does not need to be subjected to my family for no good reason,” you said firmly, hoping that would be the end of it.

Sam was studying you across the table. “Or you could just ask me,” he said finally, and you felt your face heat up as you realized you’d basically been speaking for him. 

“Yes!” Charlie burst out before you could come up with a reply. “Sam doesn’t mind, do you, Sam?”

Too late, you realized Charlie was the real villain in all of this. Your old roommate, after all, was the one who knew about your little crush. You wondered if it was worth running the risk of trying to kick her under the table without hitting Cas, who thus far had remained off of your hit list. 

Sam cleared his throat roughly, looking between you, Charlie, and his plate. “No, I don’t--I mean, I don’t think Y/N really--”

“No, I do,” you blurted out, scrunching up your face immediately after the words left your lips. I do? I do? Since when? And what was it about Sam fucking Winchester that always made you act like a complete idiot? 

Dean was smirking at you across the table, and you idly wondered what would happen if you tried egging Baby. 

“Oh,” Sam brought you back out of your thoughts, looking hesitantly pleased. “Well, I just wrapped my latest case up, so I don’t mind coming up with you for that week. If you want.”

“Are you sure?” you bit your lip. There were a lot of emotions vying for your attention, but the dominating one was concern for Sam’s wellbeing. He had no idea what he was trying to agree to. 

Sam sighed, staring you down with those hazel eyes. “Y/N, you’re basically family. Of course I’m sure. You just worry about the maid of honor stuff, and I’ll watch your back. Okay?”

This was a significantly softer ending to dinner than you’d expected, but you couldn’t deny the warm feeling that rushed up inside you at his words. I’ll watch your back. Pretty much no one in your life had ever done anything of the sort, until you met Charlie, and, through her, the Winchesters. You’d known Dean for months before you finally met Sam, and of course he was perfect. 

It was easy with Dean, since he’d been the big brother you’d never had from day one. Sure, he wasn’t bad looking (seriously those boys won some kind of genetic lottery, you swore) but it just wasn’t like that. And then Sam had shown up and he was six and a half feet of walking perfection. 

And now he was smiling reassuringly at you across the dinner table, having just agreed to pose as your completely fake boyfriend in front of your god awful family. Well, at least you’d be able to pinpoint the exact moment your life went completely sideways, if you ever had to look back.

-- 

Two anxiety-filled weeks later found you in Sam’s car, because subjecting his long legs to your tiny vehicle for a seven hour drive just seemed like cruel and unusual punishment. You were driving at his insistence, and Sam was in the passenger seat with a legal pad on his legs like he thought he was going to take notes.

“Sam,” you whined out, “is this really necessary? Can’t we just... you know, lie?” Since the whole thing is a big fat giant lie anyway. 

Sam raised an eyebrow at you, and it just wasn’t fair how sexy that made him look. “Y/N, you’re the one that kept trying to warn me about getting cross examined by your mother,”

“Such a lawyer,” you huffed. “Okay, fine, you’re right. Let’s write our fake love story,” You batted your eyelashes at him exaggeratedly, punching a surprised laugh out of Sam. He watched your antics in amusement for a moment, and then refocused, absently playing with a pen in his long fingers. 

“Okay, how did we meet?”

You cocked your head to one side. “My mom knows who you are,” you explained. “Vaguely, but she knows you’re Dean’s brother. We can just tell them how we actually met and stuff,”

Sam smirked at you. “You tell your mother about me?”

You made a face at him, smacking his arm as the heat of embarrassment suffused your entire body. “Just in passing, don’t go getting a big head. Well,” you made a show of studying him, “a bigger head,”

He looked affronted, running a hand briefly through his hair. “Okay, fine, we met because of Dean. Where did I take you on our first date?”

“Why did you have to take me out? What if I took you out?” You were mostly arguing for the sake of arguing, trying to keep yourself from thinking too hard as you imagined a fake life with Sam that had never happened and never would. He thought of you as family, he’d said as much, and you had to remember that. 

“Because I had been waiting forever to ask you out, and I had all the good date ideas saved up,” Sam answered immediately.

“O-okay,” you said hesitantly, jarred by the conviction in his statement. But that was the point, wasn’t it? You were trying to sell it, and Sam was obviously a good actor. And unfairly attractive. And kind. And...and oh god. Your fingers gripped the steering wheel harder as you thought about the unexpected trial he hadn’t signed up for. “Sam, can you golf?”

He shrugged. “I know how it’s supposed to work. I’m just...not that good at actually getting the balls in the holes.”

If Dean were here, he would have taken that opportunity to make a lewd joke. As it was, you just winced. “My dad is going to force you to go golfing,” you explained tiredly. “I should have thought of that, I’m sorry, I--”

“It’s no big deal, Y/N,” Sam assured you easily. “I don’t mind. Besides, I want to meet your dad,”

You blinked at him, almost missing a turn in the process. “You actually want to meet my family? Sam, they’re terrible. Well, my dad’s probably the least awful of the bunch. Mostly he just hides. But Ruby will definitely try hitting on you, even though she’s supposed to be getting married, and Dick will try hitting on everything with legs, which is just gross, and Gramma Lilith is gonna give you the speech about how you could do so much better, and my Uncle Az is going to start Googling you and making weird threats, probably…” you trailed off in a huff. “It could be worse, I guess. At least if Uncle Fergus shows up everybody’ll start yelling at him instead. One can hope. He’s pretty harmless,” you shrugged, “if sometimes high. And my mother will probably just stick to the usual fat girl comments, so…”

Sam’s quiet laughter at your descriptions trailed off. “Y/N, you know there’s nothing wrong with you, right?”

You just shrugged again, deflecting. “Oh, come on, Sam, you don’t have to pretend like you think I’m a size two or something,”

“I’m...not,” Sam sounded genuinely confused, and you risked a glance over at him in the passenger seat. Oddly enough, he didn’t look like he was lying. Huh. “I think you’re beautiful.”

You didn’t want to have to pretend not to be affected by that, and this was maybe the first time in your life you’d actually been grateful to see the turnoff for your family’s old estate. “Here we go,” you narrated a little shakily. “It’s a big house,” you warned, still smiling a little at the way Sam’s eyes widened. 

It had been a given that the wedding would take place at your Aunt Abaddon’s old estate house, which no one was quite sure how she’d acquired and which no one questioned. The only fun of the house was watching people’s reactions on the rare occasion that you brought someone here. 

“I’ll get the bags,” Sam said vacantly, still staring at the house, and you chuckled softly, getting out of the car in a rush. You couldn’t explain it, but it felt important that you got to your family before Sam did, to put yourself between them, though at this point you weren’t quite sure who was being shielded from whom. 

You smoothed down the little sundress you’d decided to wear, grabbing your small duffel out of the backseat and hastily going up the front walk, Sam still rummaging in the trunk.

“Y/N!” Ruby opened the front door to meet you, her smile already insincere and condescending. “You’re late. We thought you weren’t coming.” She glanced behind you briefly, then smirked. “And you’re alone. I mean I figured you wouldn’t actually find a plus one, but you know you’re gonna owe me for the meal--”

“Got everything?” 

Oh thank god for Sam Winchester. You smiled tightly at your older sister, glancing briefly at your shoulder to reassure yourself that Sam was there. He was, holding a bag in each hand and a pleasant smile on his face. It was totally his false courtroom smile, but Ruby didn’t have to know that. “Ruby, this is...my boyfriend. Sam.”

Ruby blinked long eyelashes at him, processing. You figured she was torn between insulting you and flirting with him, and, as expected, the flirting won out. “Hi, Sam,” she purred. “I can’t wait to get to know you a little better,”

“Right,” Sam said flatly. “Well, I can’t wait to put these bags down, so…”

Something in Ruby’s expression soured as she looked at him, and her hand fell away from the doorframe as she stepped back, letting you both into the house. You lost no time in ducking past her, Sam right behind you. 

“There’s rooms on the second floor,” Ruby said quietly, then, “I’m up there too, just in case you get bored...”

“Great,” Sam returned, and he shifted both of the bags into one hand to put a hand on your back as you walked toward the staircase. You shivered at the touch, exhaling the frustration that was already tensing your shoulders, and started up the stairs. God, it hadn’t even been five minutes. How were you supposed to get through a whole week of this?

Sam’s warm breath on your ear startled you, and he whispered, “So, third floor?”

You turned to catch him with a mischievous spark in his hazel eyes, and nodded quickly, a little smile pulling up the corners of your mouth as you started toward the second staircase with a new energy in your step. 

“Hurry your fat ass, Y/N!” you heard Ruby shriek from somewhere below. “Everyone’s already out in the garden,”

You blew out your breath, hastily swinging open the first door you saw. The room was mercifully unoccupied, with a queen bed in the middle of the room and not much in the way of decoration. Your Aunt Abaddon had always been pretty minimalist. 

Sam shut the door behind you both, setting the bags down in a line at the foot of the bed.

“I can sleep on the floor,” you said quickly, figuring that it was best to get that out of the way as quickly as possible. “I’m the one that got you into this, so--”

He turned to face you with a quizzical expression. “Why would you...Y/N, you didn’t get me into anything. I said I wanted to be here. If you’re not comfortable, I’ll sleep on the floor,”

“No,” you sighed out, defeated. “Ruby’ll probably try barging in here anyway. I don’t think she believes you’re dating someone like me. We’re adults,” you went on with more confidence than you felt, “we can share,”

Sam’s brow furrowed adorably. Stop that. “Someone like you?” He moved to stand in front of you, one hand sliding very gently along your upper arm. “She doesn’t think I’d go for someone that’s funny and clever and really pretty?”

Something in your chest eased at his words, and, before your malfunctioning brain could stop you, you leaned forward to rest your forehead against his solid chest. “Thanks. She’s a bitch,” you mumbled into his shirt.

Sam’s hand migrated to gently rub over your back. “I’m beginning to get that impression,”

You stood there for a few more moments, letting yourself breathe within the safety of Sam’s arms, and then you straightened up and shook yourself. “Alright, boyfriend, ready to go meet the rest of the firing squad?”

He smiled down at you. “Whatever you say, honey bunch.”

You grimaced, but it got a laugh out of you, which you supposed had been his goal. “Absolutely not.”

“Cutie pie? Boo bear?”

“Stop it,” you threw a mock glare over your shoulder, opening the bedroom door. 

“Okay, darlin’,” Sam murmured, and somehow that one sat better than all the rest. “I’ve got your back, remember?”

You smiled back at him, letting him slide his hand in yours for the show, and you braced yourself to head back downstairs and deal with the full force of your family. 

[shotgun--rider]

Starving

A Dean x Reader oneshot

Y/N comes from a big, unconventional hunter family, and Dean doesn’t know what to do with her habit of casual physical touch. He’s also not prepared to handle her driving his car. 

Word Count: 4115

Warnings: Touchstarved!Dean, aggressive fluffy snuggles, smut

*Female reader

A/N: CONSENT IS SEXY PEOPLE USE IT. Also, for the purposes of this fic the Impala has a manual transmission. I know she pretty much isn’t but sometimes when fics announce themselves fully formed and slightly confused in my head they come with oddly specific stipulations like Baby being manual. 

Aunt Danielle already had six boys when you came to live with her, and the youngest of them was seven years older than you. Your earliest memories involved cousin Joe dangling you upside down, tickling you until you shrieked for mercy, and then popping you up onto his shoulders to carry you downstairs when your aunt yelled for everyone to shut up and come eat dinner. 

Your aunt gave the best hugs, and that was a fact you’d decided in childhood that had never really gone away, even as an adult. She was warm and loving and had been successfully hugging your problems away since the tender age of four. Incidentally, offering hugs was still your go-to method of problem solving for everyone around you, and you had her to thank for it. 

You grew up trying to fit seven people onto a too-small sofa for Saturday night movie night. (It always ended with someone’s foot jammed in someone else’s side and a lot of complaining.) You spent years with the only car in the family being an old two-door pickup, so anyone that was too slow to call shotgun piled into the truck bed to get wherever you were going. (Which only really sucked when it was cold out.) You grew up as the recipient of piggyback rides and, occasionally, getting hauled out of the bathroom in a fireman’s hold if you took too long on your hair as a teenager. 

Somehow, it had never occured to you that that wasn’t everyone’s experience. In your mind, coming to live with the Winchesters was just an extension of the kind of life you’d always had, even though part of you always knew your little hunter family was an exception, not the rule.

The first time it happened, you’d been occupying a guest room in the bunker for maybe two weeks. The living arrangement was still temporary then, Sam and Dean treating you kindly enough but clearly not yet trusting. You’d swung through the kitchen while Dean was making dinner, just trying to grab a bottle of water, and, in some combined habit from your high school waitressing days and your aunt’s crowded kitchen, laid a hand on his back as you slid past. “Behind you,” you’d murmured, the touch only lingering for the split second you needed to cross over to the fridge. 

It was long enough to feel every single muscle in his body tense up like you were holding a gun barrel to the middle of his spine instead of your palm. But it wasn’t your place to comment, not really, so you just fished a bottle out of the fridge silently and went back to the library, reminding yourself that this was a man you barely knew, and would never have known if it weren’t for an especially pesky werewolf pack. 

A month later found the three of you celebrating after a miserably complicated hunt finally finished, arguing over who got to choose the movie. You’d smacked the cap off of your beer on a table edge on the way in and settled yourself in between the still-bickering brothers on the sofa with a roll of your eyes. “Someone better decide in the next ten seconds,” you huffed out with no real annoyance, not even sparing a thought for the fact that the entire right side of your body was pressed against Dean’s. 

His argument in favor of Die Hard was abruptly cut off with a shiver and an almost indiscernible noise in the back of his throat, and he’d avoided the weird look you shot him while Sam triumphantly jumped up to put his preferred pick into the old DVD player. It was maybe the first time in your entire life you’d watched a movie with few enough people to all fit on the couch (even though Sam ends up on the floor after the first twenty minutes) and it felt weird. 

Without thinking, you’d shifted your body into the space Sam vacated and pivoted your legs to land your feet over Dean’s lap, wincing internally when he immediately stiffened, his free hand hovering hesitantly in mid-air for an awkward length of time before he finally set it down, barely touching, over your ankles. Your thoughts had drifted to what his hands, calloused and warm, would feel like on other parts of your body before you snapped at yourself to end the train of thought. Dean obviously wasn’t comfortable around you, and you were going to have to remember that. Even if he was pretty much just unfairly perfect.

That proved to be easier said than done. As you settled into life at the bunker over the next few months, you had plenty of reminders after the fact, when you’d already made the seasoned hunter jump and flinch away from you, but you rarely caught yourself before you reached out to touch him. And getting to know him better really wasn’t helping your case. He was smart, surprisingly gentle, good at watching your back and making you laugh. He loved his car and his brother and a good slice of apple pie almost as much as you thought you could easily love him, and you, evidently, scared the shit out of him. 

You could almost picture your aunt’s face if you told her. I live with a really hot guy and I keep spooking him and I don’t know why. She would have thrown back her head and laughed in her loud, brash way, and then she would have fixed you with a sharp look and asked, well, did you ask him about it?

Staring blankly through the windshield in front of you, you blew out an exasperated breath. Because that conversation would go over so well. 

“Hey,” Dean’s voice cut through your thoughts, studying you with those green eyes. “Still with me?”

Your forehead scrunched together as you looked at him, watching him watch you bite your lip. “Dean, I don’t want to do this. What if I break her?”

He flashed you a grin. “If you break Baby? Start running,”

You huffed, rolling your eyes. “Dean, I’m serious!”

He looked affronted. “So am I. But you’re not going to break her.” Dean reached over, dangling the keys impatiently in front of you until you caved and pulled them out of his hands, trying to quell the nerves in your stomach. “Come on, you need to learn to handle her before you’re trying to figure it out with one of us trying not to get blood all over the backseat.”

You’d been behind the wheel of dozens of cars. You’d spent plenty of time criss-crossing states, though perhaps not nearly as much as Sam and Dean did, and you knew you were a decently competent driver. 

But you’d never driven a manual before. And you’d never tried practicing on a beloved car with said car’s owner watching you the entire time. Said car’s owner who you were possibly harboring the world’s most unbelievable crush on. Who flinched away from you on the regular. 

No, no reason to be nervous at all. Gritting your teeth, you put the key in the ignition, hearing the familiar purr of Baby’s engine come to life beneath your hands. You glanced at Dean, looking perfectly unbothered in the passenger’s seat. “Now what?”

“Press the clutch all the way down. Shift into first, now go easy on the accelerator,”

You got halfway through his instructions before the car made a noise of protest and you instinctively yanked your hands off the wheel, biting your lip again. “Oh, god, okay, I’m sorry, I–” you were rambling and you knew it, not sure if you were apologizing to Dean or to the Impala. 

Beside you, Dean chuckled softly and slid closer on the bench seat, glancing down at your foot on the clutch. “Just let up on the clutch a little slower this time,”

This time, you felt it catch, and Dean guided you through accelerating the car without stalling it. You exhaled, leaning forward just slightly without losing your careful control of the car. “I would rather go ten rounds with a rugaru than ever do that again,” you offered up conversationally, pretending you weren’t desperately white-knuckling Baby’s steering wheel.

To your surprise, Dean let out a loud laugh beside you, and you cursed the stupid driving lesson again for not letting you turn to look at him. In any other car, you would have, but taking your eyes off the road while driving the Impala seemed too big of a risk. 

That didn’t, however, stop Dean from watching you. He walked you through shifting into third gear without taking his eyes off you, and you could feel his green gaze boring holes into the side of your head while you executed a turn onto the next backroad, wincing at the slight grind you were still making every time you tried to get into second and back to third.

“Relax,” Dean said softly. “Stop strangling the wheel, you’re fine.”

You were most certainly not fine, riding some strange mixture of anxiety, adrenaline, and arousal as the sound of the car’s engine and Dean’s low voice warred for your attention. Still, over the next half-hour of aimless driving, you were starting to feel a little less intimidated by sitting in the driver’s seat. 

“Turn left up here,”

You promptly maneuvered the car into the right-hand turn lane, getting around the corner before Dean’s laughter interrupted you. “The other left, Y/N,”

Without thinking, you reached over to punch his arm. “Shut up, jerk, I’m trying,”

As usual, Dean stiffened under your touch, pulling away from you on the bench seat, and you huffed a breath of annoyance at yourself. “Sorry,”

You could feel Dean’s look of surprise, but your eyes stayed resolutely on the road. You passed one mile marker, then the next, the mood in the car suddenly more tense than it was when you were stalling the engine and grinding gears. 

“Do I make you uncomfortable?” you blurted out suddenly, wincing as your voice came out louder than intended. You were back to gripping the steering wheel until your hands turned white. 

“What?” Dean was silent for a moment after that outburst, like he was trying to process. “Do you–Y/N, what the fuck are you talking about?”

That was hardly the response you were expecting from him and you blinked, easing the Impala to a stop on the side of the completely empty road before turning to look at him, one hand braced on the steering wheel and one on the back of the seat. “I just…” you fumbled, looking anywhere but his eyes and that wasn’t helping because that just left you staring at his mouth and you needed to focus. “You jump every time I touch you, Dean,” you finally said softly. “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, I’m working on–”

“You don’t,” Dean cut you off, looking equal parts bewildered and hesitant. His hand came up to run through his short hair before landing in his lap where he stared down, not looking at you. “‘M just not used to it,” he mumbled after a pause. 

Something in your heart broke at the admission, at the idea that he was missing something that had been so fundamental to you for your entire life. “Dean…”

“It’s fine, Y/N,” he said roughly, still avoiding your gaze. 

“No, it’s not!” you surprised even yourself with the sharpness in your tone, and Dean’s head finally snapped up to look at you, meeting your eyes with green pools that looked almost on the verge of tears. “You deserve to be hugged and touched and loved as much as anyone else,”

You bit your lip, wondering if you were about to go too far. “Can I give you a hug?”

Dean scoffed, clearly not as unaffected as he pretended to be, but held his arm out for you to slide under. “Sure, whatever,”

You slid across the bench seat until you were tucked up next to him, turning your body into his chest as you wrapped your arms around him and laid your head on his shoulder. For the first time since getting into the Impala, you felt the tension drain out of your spine, and you shifted slightly, feeling the solid warmth of his body and the soft flannel he was wearing against your cheek. 

And then you realized he was shaking. Cautiously, you lifted your head, not quite letting him go as you opened your eyes to look at his face, scrunched up like he was in pain. It occurs to you that this is so far from any kind of the manly-slap-on-the-back hugs you’ve seen him exchange with his brother, and even those are few and far between. You were probably completely overwhelming him. “Too much?”

Dean shook his head once, his arm tightening just slightly around you, and you smiled softly at him, tucking yourself back into his side as best you could in the front seat of the car. “Okay,” you whispered, somehow afraid to break the moment if you spoke too loud. “Okay.”

One of your hands slid up to card through his short hair absently, your head still resting against his shoulder, and Dean melted. Every bone in his body seemed to simultaneously give up the fight, falling into you with a quiet noise in the back of his throat that somehow broke your heart and turned you on at the same time. 

At no point in this little driving lesson–hell, at no point since meeting him–did you imagine you would end up with your arms full of Dean Winchester, but you sure as hell weren’t complaining. You were caught halfway between realizing you felt completely safe for the first time since leaving your aunt’s house, and trying to focus on him. Somewhere in the middle of it, Dean had turned his face into your neck, lips hovering over the curve where your neck met your shoulder, and you shivered involuntarily. 

Dean froze, raising his head cautiously to search your face with those green eyes. “You good?” he asked in a low voice. 

“Yeah,” you whispered back, hand playing absently with the collar of his flannel and your eyes flicking between his lips and the freckles on his face. You had no way of explaining why this, a hug in a car pulled on the side of the road, was so much more intimate than anything you’d ever experienced before, it just was. Maybe it was because it was him. Maybe it was always just him.

You could see the same thing reflected in Dean’s expression, and when his eyes darkened and his hands shifted to your waist, you just went along with it, letting him lift you easily onto his lap with a little squeak leaving your lips. 

He smiled, pulling you tighter against him, and when his lips were suddenly on yours you weren’t even sure who moved first. Dean kissed you like he was starving, swallowing your gasp of surprise and tracing his tongue against yours, one hand tangling itself up in your hair. It was electric, stealing your breath and sending warmth pooling low in your belly, and you were completely unprepared for how completely it was taking you over. Your senses had narrowed to just him, his hand on your back trying to pull you closer, the heat of his mouth, his shirt clenched in your hands.

Finally, needing to breath, you pulled back, pushing your hair reflexively out of your face. “Not that I’m complaining,” you laughed softly, “but where did that come from?” You’d seen Dean pick up women in bars like it was nothing before. And you weren’t sure you could be that to him. Not now.

Dean practically growled, his hands tightening on your hips. “Are you kidding me? You driving my car was the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen,”

You smirked at him, surveying his face, all blown pupils and flushed skin. “Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Dean replied easily, his lips returning to your neck. “Helps that I’ve wanted to do this forever,” he muttered against your skin, pressing kisses to your shoulder. One of his hands slid from your hip to inch its way up your shirt, fingertips grazing your lower back and lighting you up at the touch. You shifted your weight on his lap, rocking forward against the bulge in his jeans and making him hiss. “You should have said something,”

“Sweetheart,” Dean started, pausing with wide eyes as your hands went to his belt. He watched for a moment, transfixed, before his brain caught up and he caught your hands in his, stopping you. 

Your eyes shot up to meet his, worrying your lip again as you watched him, wondering if you’d gone too far. But Dean was still looking at you with unrestrained desire written all over his face. “Get in the backseat,”

He didn’t have to ask you twice. You opened the passenger door with one last graze of your lips on his, almost tumbling off of his lap as you climbed out of the confined space, Dean on your heels. You pulled your shirt off before climbing into Baby’s backseat, smirking at the noise he made behind you. You’d never get tired of knowing the effect you could have on him. 

Settled back on the seat, Dean slid in after you, thankfully still with the presence of mind to shut the door behind him before he resumed devouring you, trailing his mouth from your lips down to your chest, teeth just grazing your breasts through the fabric before his hand snaked around to your back to unclasp your bra. You paused to let him pull the straps off of your arms before you went to work on his clothes, pushing the flannel impatiently off of his shoulders and letting out a frustrated whine when, in your current position, all you succeeded in doing was bunching it up around his biceps. Dean had you wound up too tight already and neither of you were even naked yet. 

He moved away from you just long enough to rip off the exasperating number of layers he was wearing, throwing them somewhere onto Baby’s floor. Settling back over you, Dean’s hands traced a burning path up your torso, thumbs just brushing over your nipples and sending a bolt of heat straight to your core. “You’re gorgeous, baby girl,”

You felt a flush of warmth at the compliment, not sure if you’d use the same words to describe yourself but too caught up to bother arguing. “Dean, hurry up,” you returned impatiently, lifting your hips toward him in search of friction. Your hands slid over his broad shoulders and down his back, feeling muscles ripple beneath your touch and watching the way his face changed at the contact. 

His hand slid down to deftly undo the button on your jeans, working the material off your hips as you pushed yourself up off of the leather seat to help him. His belt went next, and, with a bit of backseat gymnastics, Dean was sitting back on his heels above you with his pair of black boxers the only scrap of clothing left between you. 

You swallowed hard at the impressive tent in those boxers, rearranging yourself on the seat until you could slide your fingers into the waistband, looking up at his lust-blown eyes for confirmation. God, you just wanted to touch him, all of him, but you still wouldn’t do anything without his permission. 

Dean’s hand caught the side of your face, dragging you toward him for a messy kiss. Taking that as a yes, you pulled away after a moment with a breathy smile (and really, where had that come from) and pulled his boxers down far enough that his cock sprang free, bouncing against his stomach dark red and leaking. 

You wrapped your hand around him, thumb swiping experimentally over the tip and earning a low groan from Dean in response. “Wanna taste you,” you murmured, not waiting for a response before swallowing down as much of him as you could. He felt bigger in your mouth than you expected, the first blowjob you’d given that could probably actually choke you if you weren’t careful, but you weren’t about to let that stop you. Your hand covered whatever you couldn’t fit in your mouth, hollowing your cheeks as you moved over him faster, trying to wring as many of those little noises out of his throat as you could. 

“Shit, sweetheart,” he breathed, which only spurred you on. You’d never really found that much enjoyment in giving blowjobs before, seeing them more as a favor to your partner, but there was something about this, about Dean, that had you practically dripping onto Baby’s leather seat. You snaked one hand between your legs to touch yourself, desperately in search of any kind of contact, and moaned around your mouthful of Dean’s cock as you circled your clit. 

“Fuck, baby, stop,” Dean guided you off of his cock hastily, crashing his lips into yours for a heartbeat while his hands held tightly to your hips. Then, he carefully laid you back down on the seat, shifting until he was braced above you on his forearms with the tip of his cock just brushing your entrance. 

Desperate and past the point of caring, you bucked your hips up, almost crying in relief when Dean finally slid into you, one inch at a time. You threw your head back against the Impala’s door at the sensation, your mouth falling open in a silent gasp as he finally filled you, holding completely still for a moment to let you adjust.

“Shit, Y/N, you feel so good,” he groaned into your neck, mouthing little kisses there as he went. 

You’d never felt anything like this. No one had ever come close to this, and it wasn’t just that he was reaching places inside you that you hadn’t even known existed. You rocked your hips up, silently begging him to move, and Dean took the hint with a look of such adoration that it took your breath away. 

You sank into an easy rhythm there in Baby’s backseat, your teeth sinking into your lip as you tried to muffle the sounds caught in your chest. Dean’s soft lips moved over yours, coaxing your lip free before shooting you a heated gaze. “Let me hear you,”

His voice was deeper than you’d heard it before, the sound sending a rush of heat to your core, and you clenched your walls around him as he slid over your g-spot, a low wine tearing from your throat that didn’t sound remotely like your own voice. “Dean, god, fuck,”

 The pace of his thrusts sped up, one hand coming down to rub your clit in slow circles with the calloused pad of his thumb. “Come for me, Y/N,”

He was fucking you hard now, his every thrust slamming into your g-spot and a look on his flushed face that you wanted to commit to memory. He groaned roughly as your walls tightened around him, one sharp flick of your clit sending you over the edge into a wave of oblivion. Your vision went white, mouth open in a strangled scream, and you clung to Dean to hold you together as he shattered you perfectly. 

Vaguely, you registered Dean following you over the edge with a growl, and you both laid there in a tangle of limbs in Baby’s backseat, your skin sticking unpleasantly to the leather under your back but both of you unwilling to move. 

“So,” you said finally, “do all of your driving lessons go like that?”

Dean raised his head from where he’d been resting on your chest, opening one eye to stare at you with a scowl. “Only other person I taught to drive was Sammy,”

A laugh bubbled out of your throat, and you slid your fingers through his now-messy hair, a warmth caught in your chest as he arched into your touch, hugging his arms around your waist. “So does that make me special?”

He pressed a half-formed kiss to the skin above your left breast. “Maybe,”

“I still don’t want to drive home,” you said flatly, your eyes sparkling.

Still huddled against you, Dean barked a laugh. “Fine,” he raised an eyebrow. “I can get us there faster anyway,”

So Dean drove on the way back, Metallica on the radio, half of your clothes still in the backseat, with one hand on the wheel and the other in yours. 

[shotgun--rider]

Displacement

A Dean x Reader oneshot 

Y/N gets into a tight spot on a hunt and Dean handles it about as well as you’d expect. 

Word Count: 2660

Warnings: Dean (briefly) being a dick, your average grab bag of monster killing violence, Dean Winchester’s emotional awkwardness special 

A/N: Yeah, quarantine really got me on the Supernatural fic train. Sorry?

Y/N grunted with the effort of shoving a headless vampire corpse away from her, turning as quickly as she could to fend off the one creeping up behind. He snarled, lunging forward, but she was faster, dispatching him in much the same way with a swift swing of her machete. 

Pausing for a heartbeat to take a breath, she surveyed the carnage around the empty space. From the outside, it looked as if the building had once been a factory or a warehouse. Inside, it had been stripped and re-organized by the largest nest of vamps that either Y/N or the Winchesters had ever seen. Across the cracked concrete floor, she could see Sam wrestling two of the creatures at once, blood streaked across him that she could only hope wasn’t his.

Briefly, Y/N contemplated running over to help him, her thoughts cut abruptly short as she was slammed bodily into the nearest wall. She gasped involuntarily, lungs working to take a breath against the force of the impact. The weapon in her blood-slicked hand went flying, and she watched it skitter across the floor, just out of reach. Shit. 

Towering over her, one hand compressing her throat, an intimidatingly large vampire snarled down. Y/N’s vision was already filling with black spots all too rapidly with her airway being crushed, and even if she’d been at full strength, the vamp was built like a brick shithouse. Her weak struggles seemed to have no effect on the larger man. 

Come on, Y/N, she growled at herself. She’d gotten herself out of worse situations before. Mustering all of her remaining strength, she hooked her foot around the back of his knee, yanking roughly and sending both of them crashing to the ground. He let go of her throat instinctively to catch himself on the concrete, and she coughed desperately, her head spinning with the fresh rush of oxygen. 

Quickly, she scrambled forward on hands and knees across the gritty floor, reaching out for the discarded machete. Her fingertips were inches from it when a hand landed roughly on her ankle, dragging her backward with fingernails digging into her skin. A strangled cry escaped her lips, equal parts frustration and fear. A quick glance through the hair falling over her face told her that Sam and Dean were clear on the other side of the warehouse, preoccupied and unaware of her plight. Even if she screamed, they’d never get to her in time. 

Damn it, come on, she snapped internally. She was a fucking hunter and this was not how she was going to die. Meanwhile, the vamp had forcibly flipped her onto her back, snarling at her with a distinctly predatory glint in his eye. Blindly, her hand shot above her head, scrambling around for the feeling of the machete she knew was somewhere nearby. 

Then, everything was happening too fast to process. The vampire lunged forward, pinning Y/N to the ground with his full body weight just as her hand finally, finally closed around the machete’s grip. Adrenaline singing through her veins, her arm swung with the machete just as a separate shout echoed through the empty space. 

Just before her blade reached his neck, the vamp’s head went flying, leaving Y/N pinned to the concrete by the dead weight of a corpse that was rapidly bleeding out all over her chest. 

She looked up to meet Dean’s green gaze, his face scowling with a fury she couldn’t remember ever seeing before. “Seriously?” she huffed, gesturing to the body she was still struggling under. The smile pulling up the corners of her lips died instantly when that fury didn’t fade. 

“Why didn’t you ask for backup?” he practically spat at her, kicking the body to the side with one boot. 

Y/N scrambled up hastily, grimacing at the feeling of warm blood soaking into her clothes. “I was a little busy. Besides,” she glanced at him almost defiantly. “I had it handled.” And she had, in the end. She’d gotten her weapon back, she’d been ready to kill the creature herself. Dean didn’t need to know how much of a battle had ensued earlier. 

He scoffed, turning away from her. “Oh, yeah. That looked handled.” Ignoring her protesting shout, he stomped off, making his way to the entrance of the warehouse.

And they were right back to normal. Y/N sighed, shaking her head and following his retreating figure back toward Sam. Dean was probably the best person she knew, and one of the only people she’d bothered to open up to after losing her sister. Lately, though, he’d pulled away more and more, treating her more like a frustrating child than one of his best friends, and it was killing her a little bit every time. Of course he would get tired of her eventually, she’d figured as much. She just hadn’t ever really thought of what she would do when that actually happened. 

Well, looks like it’s time to figure that out, she thought bitterly. It didn’t really help matters that she’d been a tiny bit in love with him from the first moment they’d literally collided working the same case. Maybe more than a little, but it wasn’t like it mattered anyway. Dean didn’t do attachments, and he certainly didn’t go for girls like her. And now, it seemed, he was done with her platonically as well. 

“Whoa, Y/N, are you okay?” Sam’s eyes widened as he took in her bloody appearance, and she offered her best smile to the friendlier Winchester, shaking herself out of thoughts that weren’t important.

“It’s not mine,” she assured him quickly, ignoring the irritated huff as Dean brushed past both of them to load his weapons back into the Impala’s trunk. Not for the first time, she wondered what she’d done to make him hate her so much. 

Sam seemed oblivious to the tension, cheerfully hopping in the backseat and leaving shotgun for Y/N, which was, incidentally, the last place she wanted to be. In her experience, it was always better to just avoid Dean until he got his head on straight, which wasn’t going to happen if she was sitting two feet away from him for the next seven hours. 

Wordlessly, she turned her back on the boys and changed into a spare t-shirt, not wanting to risk further ire by bloodying Baby’s front seat. It was an ill-fitted AC/DC shirt that Dean kept in the trunk for emergencies, but she’d rather wear that than stew in vamp blood all the way back to the bunker. And it wasn’t like that was the first time she’d stolen either of the brothers’ clothes. 

She got in the car reluctantly after that, trying to focus on how much her legs appreciated sitting down as opposed to the grouch in the driver’s seat. She lasted barely a half hour of Dean’s green eyes flicking repeatedly between her and the road before she was reaching out to shut off the radio, resisting the urge to slam her hand on the dash. It wasn’t Baby’s fault that her owner was behaving like an idiot. 

“Okay, what is your problem?” Y/N demanded, wincing as Sam’s eyes startled open in the rearview mirror. “Sorry, Sam.”

Dean huffed a sarcastic laugh, focusing on the empty highway stretched out in front of them. “My problem? It’s not my problem if you keep trying to get yourself killed.”

“You sure seem to think it is,” she shot back. “A vamp tackled me, so what? I would have ganked him just fine if you hadn’t decided to rush in and play hero.”

A muscle shifted in Dean’s jaw, but he didn’t reply. 

“Do you think I can’t take care of myself or something?” she persisted, irritation running through her veins. “Dean, I hunted on my own for years before I ever met the two of you and I was fine.”

“Yeah, doing what? Simple salt and burns?” Dean rolled his eyes. “We deal with more than ghosts, Y/N, and every damn time I turn around you’re covered in blood.”

Simple salt and burns. Dean knew she’d jumped straight into the deep end of hunting from the start, chasing the demons that killed her little sister. There had been no journal, no Bobby, no connections, and everything she knew was learned through some seriously risky trial and error. He was the only one who knew how bad it had been. She forced herself to look out Baby’s window, blinking back the sudden stinging in her eyes. 

“I don’t have time to keep looking after you because you’re too stupid to remember to look over your shoulder.”

A humorless laugh escaped her, and she shook her head in disbelief. “I may as well get out of your hair then, right? Wouldn’t want to take up too much of your precious time,”

“Dean,” Sam started from the backseat, at the same time as Dean finally turned to look at her, guilt flickering on his face. 

“Y/N,” he started, as if trying to figure out how to walk back the argument he’d let go too far. 

“Whatever, Dean,” she cut him off, not willing to hear whatever excuse he was probably going to offer. “No point in staying where I’m not wanted. I was always better on my own, anyway.”

That much was just a blatant lie, but at this point she’d say just about anything to just end the stupid argument. Tears stung at her eyes again, and she glared resolutely out the window at the highway.  

The rest of the ride back to the bunker was painfully silent, broken only by the argument the boys seemed to be having while they waited for Y/N to get out of the gas station bathroom they’d stopped at halfway. Both of them fell immediately silent when she approached, but it made her feel marginally better to see that Sam was also getting growled at. 

It took every ounce of her willpower to keep from breaking down crying in the car, and when they finally arrived back at the bunker, she walked to her bedroom without a word. Behind her, Sam was arguing with Dean again, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. 

Y/N locked the bedroom door behind her, but now that she was finally free to cry in peace, the tears wouldn’t come. She was tired, and empty, and she just wanted to crawl into bed and sleep until the ache in her chest stopped trying to rip her apart. 

Instead, she pulled the suitcase out from under her bed and started methodically packing. So this was it, then. She was going to leave and no one was going to stop her and she was going to be alone again. It always ended up that way, eventually, and she didn’t understand why it hurt so much more this time. 

The doorknob rattled, and then someone was hammering insistently on the door. Y/N sighed, not even having to ask who was on the other side. “Go away, Dean.” Maybe it was a childish response, but she didn’t think she could take seeing him. Not now. Was it too much to ask of him to let her go quietly? 

“C’mon, Y/N, let me in!” he persisted. 

She said nothing, resolving to ignore him while she stuffed another flannel into her suitcase. She was pretty sure it had originally belonged to one of the brothers, but they wouldn’t miss it. And she had to take something with her. 

The lock clicked behind her, and suddenly Dean swung the door open, a familiar set of tools in his hand. 

Her mouth hung open. “Did you just break into my bedroom?”

He had the grace to look sheepish. “Maybe?”

“Dean, what the fuck,” Y/N sighed out, having absolutely no other response to give. She turned back toward her closet, her fingers itching for something to do. 

“You’re really gonna leave?”

“Yeah.” She shrugged, pushing down a wave of emotion. “It doesn’t matter, Dean. Just forget it,” she went on, trying to get ahead of whatever half-assed apology Sam had probably forced him in here with. 

He crossed his arms and then his ankles, leaning back on the wall opposite her as he helplessly watched her pack up her life with them. “You’re not...unwanted,” he said awkwardly after a pause. “I didn’t mean any of it, Y/N, I shouldn’t have said--”

“So why did you?” she cut him off. That was the part she still didn’t understand, what had prompted this whole mess to begin with. “Why the hell do you hate me so much?”

His eyes widened almost comically, and in another situation, she might have laughed. “Damn it, Y/N, I don’t hate you.”

“So what, then?” She went back to rolling up a pair of her ripped jeans, stuffing them into a corner of the suitcase. 

He didn’t reply at first, and she waited. Knowing him as she did, she knew that a conversation like this was probably the last thing he wanted to be doing. 

“You scared the shit out of me, okay?” Dean burst out finally, staring at her with a haunted look in his green eyes. “I thought I was gonna have to watch you die, and I still don’t know how to tell you--” he trailed off, looking unbelievably uncomfortable. 

Y/N’s nose wrinkled up. “Tell me what?” She had never considered herself a particularly intimidating person outside of killing monsters, especially not to someone like Dean. 

“That I l-love you.”

Her heart leapt in her chest like the little traitorous worm that it was, but she knew he didn’t mean it like that. Still, that didn’t explain why he was saying it to her now. She cocked her head at him, her eyes tracing over the constellations of freckles on his face. “Yeah, I love you guys too, you know that.”

Dean huffed, looking somewhere between nervous and amused. “No, Y/N, I--” he ran a hand through his hair. “Look, I’m sorry for being such an ass, Y/N, I--” he stopped again. 

“Dean,” she cut in gently, trying to remind herself that she was still mad. “Just spit it out,” This was officially the weirdest conversation she’d ever had with the older Winchester, and watching him struggle was kind of painful. 

“Fuck it,” he said suddenly, and then he was off the wall and coming toward her, catching her with one arm around her back as she stumbled over a forgotten shoe in her surprise. 

His other hand came up to tilt her face up to him, lips crashing against hers. For a moment, Y/N’s brain short circuited completely, because Dean was kissing her and none of the day’s events had remotely suggested this as a possible outcome.

She caught up to the situation with a jolt, wrapping her arms around his neck before he could think she was rejecting him, and sank into the kiss, quickly losing the battle against keeping track of everything she was feeling. Her hands gripped the flannel he was wearing and for the first time in her life, she understood what it meant to lose yourself in someone else. Her heart was racing, and all she could think was that after every night and every bar that he took someone else home, every hunt that nearly killed one of them, every fight, he was here, now, with her, and he felt like home. 

She smiled against his lips, her eyes opening to see his green ones sparkling as he pulled back just enough to speak, still holding her against him. “Still leaving?”

She smacked the back of his head lightly, smiling back. “Call me stupid again and I’ll kick your ass, Winchester,” she warned, trying and failing to summon a glare. 

“I think I can live with that,” he whispered back against her lips.