tendency @tendencyblue - Tumblr Blog

Final Days of Eden

For @deanwbigbang

Art by @ncdover1285, who was awesome to work with! | Art post is here

Summary: Dean’s got a great girl he’s in love with, and he’s managing to split his days between working at a mechanic’s shop and hunting while still having plenty of time for Cassie. He could definitely see spending the rest of his life like this (if only he could stop feeling so guilty about the lies he has to tell her).

Thanks to bexgowen for betaing!

11k words | rated T | read on AO3

Dean parks a block away from the abandoned Morse house. He's far enough from the college that a lot of the houses on this street probably have families living in them, with the possibility of nosy retirees and nannies and housewives that that comes with. But hopefully some of the houses have students staying in them with enough people coming and going that the Impala will blend right in, just one more car in a busy college town.

It would be easier if he'd come here at night, but that's not the way his life works these days. So he's just got to act like he belongs here, and hopefully no busybodies will poke their nose out a window and then call the cops, because Dean would rather not have to simultaneously run from the cops, destroy the ghost, and probably save the cops from the ghost too. Time was when he would have enjoyed a bit of excitement like that, but Athens is a small enough town that he'd have to skip town completely if that happened, and he doesn't feel like leaving any time soon.

He could get used to the life he has right now, honestly. Spend half his week in a windowless library reading room researching hunts, the other half fixing college kids' cars at the mechanic's shop down by the river, and slip away on afternoons and weekends when there's a hunt in the area he needs to take care of. Hunting is a bit more complicated when he has to sneak around and avoid looking like he's been up to anything out of the ordinary, but that's completely worth it because of the one other piece of his life that he's somehow already gotten completely used to, and that's going home every night to share a meal and a bed with his girl. Cassie hasn't officially asked him to move in yet, but he hasn't slept at the motel in over a week so maybe they're just going to kind of skip right over that step.

Dad used to be a mechanic, back before—well, just before, that's all. Was this how it felt for him when Dean was little, going contentedly to work every day because you know what kind of happiness is waiting for you when you come home? And then you go to work the next day and do the same thing again, over and over for the rest of your life or maybe just until your wife gets murdered on the nursery ceiling because nothing good lasts forever.

But nothing like that is going to happen to Cassie. Mom's death was just a coincidence, wrong place wrong time. Dad's never been sure exactly why whatever it was went after her, but they haven't seen any sign of the thing in all the years that have passed since then, so Dean has to figure the chances it would come after someone else he cares about are pretty infinitesimal. They could have it all, Dean really feels like they could: keep working part time and hunting part time, maybe move back to Missouri with Cassie since she keeps talking about wanting to work at the paper she interned at in high school. And just one (massive) secret in the midst of it all, that Cassie can never find out because she'd never understand.

One secret is okay, right? Like, chances are Cassie's keeping at least one secret from him herself, even if it's nowhere near as big as Dean's secret, because, like, everybody has secrets. And he'll tell her everything else, he absolutely will—even about Mom dying, and about how Sammy left and he probably isn't coming back ever, and Dad's gone more and more these days so Dean is all on his own...except he isn't anymore, because he's got Cassie, and he can't lose her no matter what, can't risk pushing her away by telling her who he really is and why he's never belonged in a place like this.

Dean brushes tears out of his eyes that he doesn't remember shedding, and grabs a shotgun out of the trunk of his car. What Cassie doesn't know won't hurt her. Just break in, burn the ghost, and be home in time for dinner. Easy-peasy.

He walks down the sidewalk, holding the shotgun at his side as discreet as he can. This is the second solo hunt he's done since Dad left town a week ago Sunday, and if he's lucky, it'll be as quick of a salt and burn as the first one. The hunter's journal he's been working his way through in the library is almost a century old, but it takes more than mere time to make ghosts, and other things that go bump in the night, go away. At least Grafton, the hunter, had dealt with a lot of them, but he clearly hadn't gotten them all. This house has had several near accidents in the decades after that, before it was finally abandoned. Dean checks the locks on the front door and finds them badly rusted, which is more evidence for his assumption that nobody's been here to deal with the ghost in the years since then. He heads around the side and finds a back door where his break-in attempt will be more likely to go unnoticed. Not only is it out of sight of the road but there's some overgrown rose bushes to hide him from the neighbors, which is good because the pins in the lock refuse to move smoothly and he ends up kneeling on the rotting porch alternating between oiling the lock and raking the pins with a half-diamond pick to see if he can get them to shake loose.

His phone rings right as he finally gets the door open, rock music blaring loudly in the stillness as he scrambles to grab it, and thank goodness he's breaking into an empty house so there's nobody here to catch him before he's even gotten started. He flips the phone open at the same time that he pulls the door shut, keeping his flashlight aimed low so it won't reflect off the parts of the windows where the curtains have rotted through and he might be seen from outside. "Hey sweetheart," he says into the phone, and readies his shotgun even though there's no way in hell he's going to fire a gun while he's on the phone with his civilian girl. (If necessary he can just hang up real fast, he supposes, already running through scenarios in his head. Tell her it was a bad connection or something.)

"How's your day going?" Cassie asks, and Dean tries to remember what he told her he was doing today.

Not the library, definitely, because there would have been the risk she'd drop by—not to check up on him out of distrust, but because she thinks he's worth going out of her way just to come give him a peck on the cheek and say something encouraging about his research. So he must have told her he'd picked up an extra shift at work: right, that sounds vaguely familiar. "Not bad," he says. "We're not as busy as Roger thought we'd be; he's just had me rebuilding the engine on the Camaro all morning." Lying to civilian witnesses has never made his heart pound like this. Is this what guilt feels like? But he's only lying to her for her own good, to keep her safe. There's no need to feel guilty.

The living room is full of dusty, half-busted furniture. Looks like more than one group of bored, drunk college students has broken in here over the years for a lark. There must be a broken window on the other side of the house, because they certainly didn't get in through either of the locked doors. "Professor Enkel let my special topics class go half an hour early so I already finished my reading for lit," Cassie says. "So now I'm eating lunch and I'm bored, thought I'd see if you were busy."

"Yeah, I'm having lunch too," Dean says. The wood flooring creaks as he treads carefully, testing his weight on each board before completing each step, just in case. He doesn't trust this place, it smells like mold and decay. Maybe the body is even in the building. Grafton's journal had said that he burned the body, but it's pretty easy to swap out a body between death and burial if nobody's paying attention. "I've already been on break for more than half an hour though so I shouldn't talk long," he adds, covering the hallway with his shotgun as he steps past it into the kitchen. "You know Roger's not a stickler for that sort of thing but I want to keep my reputation as a good employee, you know? In case we stay in Athens after you graduate." Half the cupboards are missing their doors and the other half are swinging open on rusted hinges, and there's broken dishes all over the floor and the counter that might be the result of drunk frat boys or they might be from the ghost, and he really didn't mean to let the word "we" slip out but he's been thinking of his life in terms of "we" and "us" more and more lately, and he's not sure how Cassie feels about being half of a "we" but he hopes she doesn't hate it.

"What would you think of coming back to Missouri with me?" Cassie asks, so she at least mostly doesn't hate it. "I bet my dad would give you a job at his car lot. Since you're such a model employee and all."

"I dunno, I've grown pretty fond of Ohio these past few months," Dean says. "There'd have to be some pretty awesome girls in Missouri to get me to go all that way. Do you know of any girls there who might make it worth my while?"

"Dean," Cassie says, and Dean can practically hear her rolling her eyes. "But seriously, you don't mind meeting my parents already, do you? They'll be coming out for graduation, so even if you don't come back to Missouri you'll still have a chance to meet them. If you want to, of course."

"Hey, you already met my dad when we'd been dating for less than a week, so I don't think I'd have a leg to stand on if I didn't want to meet 'em," Dean says. He opens the fridge but the rotting smell that pours out of it is enough for him to wrinkle his nose and slam it back closed—just years-old food, nothing dead, thankfully; they have completely different odors and he's certainly smelled enough of them both in his lifetime to know.

"I don't think waving at someone across a parking lot really counts as meeting them," Cassie says. She's humming a bit under her breath, so she must not be eating her lunch in the library while studying like she too often does. Maybe she's out on the quad, with the sunshine bouncing off of her gorgeous curls.

"You got your internship today?" Dean asks, crossing his fingers that he's remembering correctly. Girls like it when you remember the little details of their lives like that. More specifically, Cassie likes it when he remembers things about her, and when did he switch from worrying about attracting girls in general to worrying about holding on to Cassie in particular? Sometimes it almost hurts, how much he wants to stay with Cassie and have her in his life forever and ever, and he realizes he's stopped moving through the house because he can't talk on the phone and hunt and worry about his romantic future all at the same time, and Dad would say that hunting comes first, but Dean's an adult now and Dad's left him here to run this research-project-with-bonus-hunts the way he sees fit, and maybe that means putting the girl first once in a while.

Cassie is saying something about her internship (because Dean guessed right—he is so awesome at the whole boyfriend thing) and the ceiling is creaking in that way that might just mean an old house or it could mean a ghost is about to show up, and if Dad knew Dean was on the phone with a civilian in the middle of a hunt he'd be furious (but Dad's not here). "Oh, and Norma texted me and asked if I can stay till five thirty instead of four," Cassie adds. "I know I said I'd make dinner tonight, but it's going to have to be a little late—"

"I'll do it," Dean says quickly. "Roger will be fine if I leave whenever, like I said, we're not busy." There's a slightly louder creak from above, and he spins around quickly, gun tracking towards the entrance to the kitchen, but there's nothing, still nothing, and he lets himself relax marginally though he keeps his finger on the trigger. "If you want, we can trade and you can cook on whatever my next day was supposed to be."

"Friday."

"Yeah, Friday. Or we don't change anything and I just cook today because I'm less busy than you and that's what couples do, right? We work as a team?" It's hard to be as good a team as you can be when one of them spends all his time lying and the other one has no idea (at least, he sure hopes Cassie has no idea). But Dean's kind of a newcomer to the whole concept of having a normal life, so this is about as good as he can do right now.

"If you're sure you don't mind," Cassie says, but he can hear the relief in her voice and he can't help but smile in response.

"Of course I don't—" Dean says, and that's when the ghost shows up.

It must have come through the wall, because Dean was looking right at the entrance to the kitchen and he definitely didn't see a thing before he was flying through the air and bouncing off of the front of the refrigerator. There's not a lot of iron in most kitchens but there ought to be salt, and Dean dives all the way across the small room in one inelegant flailing motion to grab the matching beat-up salt and pepper shakers he can just barely see in one of the door-less cupboards. He doesn't bother figuring out which one's which but just shakes them both in the ghost's general direction. A little pepper won't hurt anybody (as long as he's careful not to breathe any of it).

"Dean? Dean!" Cassie's voice is tinny and distant, and Dean has absolutely no idea where his phone ended up but his flashlight is easy to spot so he grabs that first before rummaging through the detritus on the floor for his shiny (well, probably not any more) new phone. He only bought it two weeks ago, and if it broke when he dropped it he's pretty sure that will be a new record for shortest time a phone has lasted him. "Dean!" At least if the call is still connected, it can't be completely destroyed. As much as he likes the convenience of modern flip phones, the old flat candy-bar-shaped ones had a lot less moving (and breakable) pieces.

There it is, half under the stove. Dean sets the flashlight on the counter and, shotgun at the ready, grabs the phone with the same hand that still holds the salt and pepper shakers. "Hey hon," he says quickly. "One of the lifts malfunctioned, gonna have to go help out with that. I'll have dinner ready for you when you get home at five thirty."

"Five forty-five," Cassie says. "I don't get off work till five thirty."

"Okay, five forty-five," Dean says. "It'll be hot and ready for you. Love you. Bye." He flips the phone shut (which is one point in favor of flip phones, they're so easy to hang up) and he's just in time because the ghost is coming at him again, and he doesn't have to settle for the salt shaker this time because he's off the phone now and there's nobody to hear the blast of the shotgun as he lets the ghost have it with both barrels. He drops the phone into his pocket and grabs two more shells off of his belt in the same motion. He cracks open the action of the shotgun to reload but the ghost has recovered way too fast and it's already back in his face and his hands are too full to fling salt at it this time and the next thing he knows, he's flying through the air again.

Something jabs painfully into his side—he really should have closed all the cupboard doors as soon as he came in here—and then his head bounces off of something hard and unforgiving and he falls to the floor. His last thought as his head swims into something resembling unconsciousness is that at least he got off the phone with Cassie in time. Because obviously that's the most important thing when he's in imminent danger of getting killed by a ghost: being glad that at least his girlfriend will never have a clue what happened to him.

Maybe he lies there unconscious for a bit, or maybe the adrenaline from realizing that Cassie's going to be terribly worried pulls him back to his feet right away. He's not entirely sure, because his head is spinning and time feels merely theoretical, and full of infinite possibilities. And the ghost is probably going to come back, and he needs to find his gun and get up, but he really just wants to lie there and stare at the ceiling. There's a water spot that's shaped kind of like a dog, and he smothers a giggle. Sammy liked dogs. If Sammy were here now, Dean probably wouldn't be bleeding like a stuck pig. And why is he bleeding, anyway?

If Dad knew he'd let a ghost get the jump on him, he'd be furious. But Dad isn't here any more than Sammy is. Dean's all alone. Just him, his shotgun, his civilian girlfriend all the way across town, and a really pissed-off ghost.

Dean clutches his head, which doesn't seem to be bleeding though it's certainly hurting bad enough, and drags himself to his knees. He's got to keep going. Got to get the job done, no matter what. There was a fireplace in the living room, he saw it on the way in. Hopefully nobody's watching this house closely enough to get suspicious as soon as smoke starts coming out of the chimney, because he'd prefer to keep "burn the whole house down and run" relegated to a mere backup option.

Grafton's journal, which is the only source of information Dean's found on the ghost besides a few vague newspaper articles, said that he thought the husband of the family—a professor at the university and great-grandfather of the last owner before the house was finally abandoned—was most likely the source of the haunting. But Grafton must never have gotten a good look at the thing, because Dean's pretty sure men back in those days didn't go in for waist-length hair and long nightgown sort of dresses, which as far as Dean could tell (in the moments before his head collided with the fridge) is what the ghost chick was wearing. So the wife then? Or maybe one of the daughters? Whoever it is, Grafton burned the whole family plot at the cemetery and it's been ages since they lived here so there really shouldn't be anything tying her to the house anymore. Maybe a family heirloom?

Dean's eyes have adjusted enough to the half-light in the house that he abandons his flashlight as he crawls back toward the living room, shotgun in one hand, half-empty salt shaker in the other (he's finally figured out which one was the pepper and leaves it on the kitchen floor: with all the broken dishes already there, nobody's going to realize it's a newer addition). The ghost has backed off; maybe she just didn't like him talking on the phone. Jealous, or something. Well, if she wants to get to know Dean she's going to have to be a lot sweeter, because he's never had a thing for crazy murder-suiciding dead women. (Besides, he's taken now, so sorry weirdo chick, you're out of luck.)

His side aches like hell where he bounced off of the open cabinet door, and as he looks down he realizes he's been leaving a small trail of red smeared on the floor between here and the kitchen. Oh right, it's bleeding, how did he manage to forget that. Probably because his head bounced off of the fridge at the same time and it's still spinning every time he moves, which feels like another reason that Dad should never have okayed him to go off and hunt all by himself. But Dad was doing this sort of thing all by himself most of the time until Dean got old enough to tag along, so if Dean is going to measure up like he's always told Dad he can, then he'd better get his act together and complete this hunt.

Telling himself that doesn't make his head hurt any less, though. He takes a break mid-crawl to rub his eyes hard with the back of one hand, but the living room still looks just as blurry as it did before. But he's almost to the fireplace, and there's iron there, and pokers and ghosts are both big enough that you don't really need fine motor control or clear vision to swing the one at the other.

There's a half-burnt log in the fireplace but no tinder or kindling. With time still of the essence since the ghost could turn up at any moment, anything halfway flammable will do: there's a bookcase on the wall a yard away from the fireplace and so Dean grabs a book and starts ripping out pages. As much as he'd like to do this job neatly and without too much damage, all bets are off when you're bleeding and all alone and haven't even made a single dent in the ghost yet.

And here she is, coming for him again, but this time Dean's got a poker, which has a lot more range than the little salt shaker had, and doesn't need reloading like his shotgun. She dissipates as he swings, reappears across the room, dives at him again, and gets dissipated a second time for her trouble. Poker still clutched in one hand, trying not to make any more large sudden movements than he has to because his side already hurts bad enough, Dean tosses a few more pages in the fireplace, follows them with the remains of the book for good measure, and throws his lighter in to top it off. He just hopes he's on the right track with the living room, because he really doesn't want to have to burn the whole house down. That would be so embarrassing for Cassie, to have her boyfriend get arrested for arson and run out of town. And there's no way she'd believe him about supernatural things if the first time he mentioned them was as an excuse for a crime.

No, if he's going to tell Cassie about hunting, he's going to have to go ahead and bring it up out of the blue, and not wait until life circumstances force him to. It's just, he really doesn't know how she's going to take it, and he doesn't know how Dad's going to react when Dean tells him that he broke the rules and told his girl, and all in all he really shouldn't tell her; it would just be so much easier if he doesn't tell her anything (but he's so tired of lying).

A log this thick would really do better with some sticks or wood shavings or something more than just paper, but that's all he's got and thankfully the fire is starting to catch so he won't have to waste any more time ripping up books. He glances around the room, searching for anything that looks like it might have been in the family for a century or close to it. (Hopefully something that's also flammable, though at the moment he thinks he'd be quite happy to toss even something fireproof in the fireplace just to see what might happen. It feels kind of nice, destroying things like this. It's the simplest and cleanest part of the whole process. Much more fun than research, definitely. (Though research is more enjoyable these days than it has any right to be, because half the time Cassie's there.)

There are some knickknacks on the mantelpiece, so he tosses those in first with one quick sweep, and heads back to the bookcase. Most of the books look old enough to have been in the family since the murder-suicide, but for now Dean's just focused on a few random decorative objects that are still sitting on the shelf in front of them: they look old enough, so into the fire they go. (He really, really hopes the ghost isn't anchored to one of the books because he would have to burn those a few at a time and he'd be likely to take a few more hits from the ghost before he managed to burn the right needle in this particular haystack.)

The ghost is back, but Dean's got his poker ready. He swings, she dissolves into mist and reappears across the room:, he gets ready for a second swing—but then there's flames shooting up from her as she dissolves into nothingness, so she must have been anchored to one of the knickknacks after all. With the long hair and the white dress, for a moment before the fire completely takes her, she almost looks like Mom. But the very idea that he had that thought at all sickens Dean, and he pushes it out of his head. This woman is nothing like Mom. Besides, the hunt is over now so why bother to give her any more thought? He needs to hurry up and get home so he can cook Cassie the dinner she deserves. And he's got to get out of here before someone notices smoke coming from the chimney. He kicks the remaining embers and half-burned rubble apart and only leans a little bit on the mantelpiece while he does so, even though his head still aches like hell. He doesn't think he'll bother to wait for it to fully burn out: the house is abandoned and worthless (though at least no longer haunted), it can take its chances on not burning down.

He hides his shotgun under his jacket as he walks back to his car. He's moving slower than he'd like, and his side is screaming at him louder and louder with every step, but as long as he focuses very carefully on walking evenly, he's able to keep from limping. He feels as beat up as he usually does after a big hunt, even though this was supposed to be just a little milk run. (Speaking of milk runs, that reminds him that he used up the last of Cassie's milk on his cornflakes this morning and he'd been planning on buying more on his way home. Obviously that won't be happening now, so he'll have to remember to warn her when she gets home that it's gone and that he'll get some in the morning. Or maybe later tonight. Although half the time Cassie has scrambled eggs and toast and orange juice for breakfast, so she probably won't mind going without milk for one day. God, he sounds so domestic.)

He doesn't think his actions have attracted any attention yet. The shotgun must have been audible, but it would have been difficult for anyone to figure out which direction the sound was coming from, at least until a few minutes ago when smoke started coming from the chimney of a house everyone knows is abandoned. But even so, he wants to clear out as quickly as possible: he takes the time to put the shotgun back under the false bottom in the trunk because that's just being smart, but he doesn't take the time to check how bad he's bleeding. It's not enough to make him feel sick or to soak through his jacket (his t-shirt might be a different matter but if so he'll be happier not knowing until he has time to deal with it). It's fine. He presses his arm to his side anyway as he gets in the car and starts her up.

Cassie's apartment is a cute little place near the university, off campus but close enough that even though she owns a car, she walks pretty much everywhere. It's a bit too cottage-y for Dean's taste, with flowers lining walkways that lead to the different apartments. Her parents are well-off enough that they paid for her to have an apartment all to herself, thinking that would help her have a private place to study. As it happens, she does almost all her studying over at the Alden Library and spends most of her apartment time getting cozy with her boyfriend, which might not be quite what her parents had in mind, but hey, Dean's keeping their daughter fed and looked after and very happy as far as he can tell, so he figures they can't complain. (There's always that flash of guilt, that Cassie wouldn't be so happy if she knew he was lying about such a major part of his life, but she's always been understanding when he's shied away from talking about himself in the past. So hopefully if—when?—he tells her about supernatural things, she'll understand why he couldn't tell her all this right away.)

There's a parking spot right in front of Cassie's place, which is good because his side has stiffened up a bit now that he's not moving as much, and he really doesn't feel like walking further than he has to. Especially since he doesn't dare let the neighbors notice him limping. They all know him by sight now and they'd be sure to ask awkward questions about how he hurt himself.

But even if he escapes those questions, he's sure to get asked what happened by someone else. For one thing, there's no way Cassie won't notice whatever gash he's acquired. Which he should probably check on, and stop kidding himself that it's not as bad as it feels. Steeling himself, he opens the car door and pulls himself to his feet. Every step feels like it's stabbing straight up from his feet to his ribcage; he's pretty sure nothing's broken, but ghost chick sure did more of a number on him than any of his previous solo hunts while he's been in Athens.

He locks the front door of the apartment behind him, and for good measure kicks the little rubber doorstop under it that Cassie puts in place every night for extra security. (It used to be that she wouldn't put it in place until he left, but now it's a given that she wants him to stay, and that silly little piece of rubber feels like belonging, that he's not a guest here but a part of her home.) He doesn't expect Cassie back for another hour, but just in case something changed at her internship and she got sent home at her usual time, this will give him a minute to clean up and make the apartment look less like a murder scene. He's not sure she'll buy it if he claims that he just forgot what he was doing and put the stopper in place too early, but at least she's unlikely to guess the exact "because I just burned a century-old knickknack and banished the ghost that was tethered to it but not till she threw me into a fridge" explanation.

In the bathroom, he finally lets himself take off his jacket and look over the damage. There's a jagged, slightly bloody rip in the side of the jacket, and maybe he'll sew it up later or maybe he'll just get a new one, he doesn't want to decide right now. He dumps it on the floor and follows it with his t-shirt, which is definitely a lost cause: there's not as much blood on it as he'd feared there might be, but it's got a tear half as long as the one in his jacket, and it might be simple enough to stitch up but he doesn't care about this shirt enough to make the effort. Besides, he's got a more immediate problem at hand, because there's blood smeared all over his side and he's not sure if it's still bleeding or not.

He grabs the darkest-colored washcloth from the cute little basket on the counter (where they're all rolled up neatly with the hand towels and a little sachet of potpourri Cassie says her aunt gave her) and starts rinsing away the blood. It takes a few passes (and he really should have warmed the water up, but he didn't want to wait and as nice as this apartment is, the hot water heater is kind of pitiful) but eventually he manages to clear away the clotted and dried blood and confirm that the cut's barely the length of his fingertip, nothing that will need stitches though there's a couple of splinters in it. He digs under the sink to grab the tweezers out of the first aid kit Cassie keeps there. He hopes she hasn't noticed how frequently he uses it. He's managed to conceal all of his hunting injuries from her before, though this is the first time he's had one draw blood since he's been in Athens and he might not be able to hide it this time. It's small enough he can just say he bumped into something. Though from the way his side feels, he's liable to wake up all black and blue tomorrow morning, so whatever lie he tells will have to account for that.

He sterilizes the tweezers with a lighter and gets to work on the splinters. It's an awkward angle and would be much easier with help, but he's all on his own, and even if Cassie were here he wouldn't want to worry her. He's had way worse: this is nothing. What he really needs to be worrying about is what he's going to make for dinner, because Cassie's due home in less than an hour and he told her he'd have it hot when she arrived so that doesn't leave him time to bake anything, or to go shopping. Especially since before she gets here, he's also going to need to have the first aid kit all disinfected and stored away, and get rid of that t-shirt somewhere discreet.

The first splinter comes out without too much trouble; he doesn't even notice any pain from it beyond the way his side is already throbbing. He's done this sort of first aid enough that he barely needs to pay attention to what he's doing, and his mind moves to dinner. Cassie keeps an assortment of pasta and rice in one of the kitchen cabinets so he has plenty of options, although he quickly decides against rice because it takes more time to cook than he has left. He feels like mac and cheese, even from scratch, is just a bit too childish no matter how much Cassie tells him she doesn't mind it. But they've got cream (he knows this because he stole a tiny bit of it to top off his cereal after he used up the milk), and cream means alfredo. Well, as long as you've also got butter, and a block of parmesan too, which is another one of those things that Dean never knew people just kept on hand in their kitchens until he started dating a girl who is a bit of a nerd about more things than just her schoolwork—okay, to be honest, he didn't even know it came in blocks, he'd never really considered that it didn't just magically appear in a shaker can without going through any other form that cheese came in. Anyway, Cassie's kitchen is the sort that has all those things sitting around, which means Dean can make alfredo for her, and alfredo is definitely not childish. He bites his lip, trying to keep his hand steady as the second splinter is embedded a bit too far under the skin and he can't seem to get a grip on it. When it finally slides loose, it takes a bit of the surrounding skin along with it but Dean doesn't really care because he just wants to get it over with.

Cassie was brought up to think that something isn't a full meal unless you've got at least a protein, a veggie, and a carb on the table. As much as Dean could care less about the green side of things he does like having multiple components to dinner, and the way you can actually make a plate look nice and varied like when you're eating out at a diner, instead of just a drab pile of a single type of food like back when he was always cooking dinner for himself and Sammy on a single burner in a motel. Cooking for Cassie feels so much more satisfying, because when he puts her plate in front of her he knows it's something that he can be proud of, and she always has such a gorgeous smile when she sees what he's made. (Sammy was always happy too, but Dean never felt like his cooking really deserved the excitement back then.)

Dean's spent so much more of his life destroying things than he has creating them, and it feels nice to have a change. The tweezers' grip on his last splinter slips, and he clenches his teeth. So, the carb is taken care of—pasta and alfredo sauce—but he still needs to figure out the other two elements. Also a dessert, which Cassie insists is an optional extra but after the first time Dean saw her eyes light up when he set something rich and chocolatey in front of her, he told himself that dessert is definitely not optional. The splinter finally slides free and he can't suppress a little yelp as the pain is sharper than he expected. But at least it's done now. Another wipe with the washcloth, a dab of the fancy nerdy antibiotic ointment that Cassie probably doesn't realize is already half gone, a big band-aid, a couple of tylenol, and that's all there is to it. The damage done by the ghost's kitchen cabinets can now be forgotten, and Dean can focus on some much more appealing kitchen cabinets: the ones containing tonight's dinner.

He chooses his protein and veggie by sticking his head in the fridge and grabbing the first thing he sees of each: broccoli and chicken breasts, which both sound like they'd go fine with alfredo. He really ought to have preheated the oven as soon as he got here, but he hadn't wanted to risk getting blood on anything and there's nothing he can do about it now. He throws the chicken in a pan, drizzles a bit of oil on top, and sticks it in the oven right away. Even if it's not quite done by the time Cassie gets home, he's not too worried. There's no reason they would need to eat right at 5:45, and he knows a lot of enjoyable ways to kill a few minutes with Cassie—though most of the best ones work better when you don't have to be ready to jump up any second when the kitchen timer goes off.

His side still hurts whenever he isn't standing completely still, but it's settled down to more of a dull ache that's not too hard to deal with. He presses his arm to his side just to take the edge off as he hurries around the apartment returning it to normal: doorstop goes back against the wall again, jacket and t-shirt get buried in his duffle until he can dispose of them, first aid kit gets stowed back under the bathroom sink. He puts a couple of pots of water on to boil for the pasta and the broccoli, then has to pause again to clutch at his side. He's going to have to try harder, there's no way he'll be able to keep this from Cassie if things keep going at this rate. Leaning heavily against the counter, he flips through the Betty Crocker cookbook that Cassie got that time they went to a used bookstore on a date. (Dean has never had that much fun in a bookstore before.) He wants to make something with chocolate in it, because it's getting near the end of the school quarter and Cassie says that coffee and chocolate are the only things keeping her going. And considering she hates the taste of coffee, saying she only drinks it for the caffeine (and would much rather have tea), that narrows his options still further. Fortunately, there's a lot of things you can do with chocolate. Unfortunately, most of those take more time than Dean's got. Pudding doesn't take long—he shoves the cookbook aside when he notices the pasta water boiling so that he can grab a bag of linguini from the cabinet and dump it in the pot. But yeah, pudding. He really should have gone to buy milk this morning before he'd headed over to the Morse house. He only needs half of the cream for the alfredo sauce, so maybe he can substitute cream for milk in the pudding recipe and it will just make it extra rich? And then he can just buy another carton at the same time that he's buying the milk tomorrow. He's running out of time and he doesn't have any other ideas, so he'll just have to try it and see if it works.

He whisks the pudding ingredients together on the stovetop and starts chopping the broccoli, then the garlic for the alfredo while the broccoli cooks. Cassie hasn't texted him, so he assumes she'll be home at the time she'd said, a bit after half past five, and at this rate he doesn't think everything will quite be ready in time because he's moving too slowly. Every motion only hurts a little bit but it all adds up and he wishes he'd suggested that they have dinner late today because he really wants to sit down and rest right now. On the other hand, at the moment if he sat down he's not sure whether he'd be able to convince himself to get back up. As the pain in his side fades a little bit, all the other bumps and bruises are making themselves known and honestly this is the worst part of hunting: that he can't just compartmentalize it into one part of his day but it expands into the rest of his life, and it's going to make his date with his girlfriend less fun because he'll be having to hide how much pain he's in.

And the Morse ghost hadn't even hurt anyone in a couple decades to the best of his knowledge, so even though he knows it's worth it, he still wishes that maybe he'd postponed this particular hunt a little longer.

The timer goes off for the pudding, and it doesn't look awful so hopefully the cream worked okay. He hurries to split it into two bowls and stick it in the back of the fridge so Cassie won't know it's there and he can surprise her with it later. The pasta timer goes off while he's still carefully crouched down rearranging things on the bottom shelf of the fridge, and unfortunately pasta is the most time-sensitive part of the meal and can't be ignored. He jumps up and heads for the stove, and for a second his head swims like it did back at the abandoned house, but he tells himself it's fine and after a few seconds it clears a bit. He really doesn't need a concussion on top of everything else, so he's just going to have to hope that it doesn't get worse. He doesn't have time to have a concussion, he tells himself sternly as he drains the pasta. It's nothing, just a bit of dizziness. He's dealt with dizziness before and he'll do it again. Cassie doesn't need to know. Cassie doesn't need to worry.

He goes through the list in his head and ignores the way it throbs as he's trying to think. Pudding is done, pasta is done, chicken and broccoli are cooking, that leaves just the alfredo sauce. If he can have that done by the time Cassie gets home, then she won't have any reason to suspect that he hasn't been here for hours relaxing and planning dinner instead of throwing it together at the last minute. Which is just simpler all around, because then she won't ask questions that he can't tell her the true answer to, and if she doesn't ask those sorts of questions then he can take a break from lying to her. He grabs the parmesan and starts grating it. Sure, moving his arm that much will only make his side hurt more, but maybe a bit more pain will make him think a bit less clearly, and he can stop thinking about how much he hates lying to Cassie. It doesn't help, though: he can picture the look on her face perfectly—a little surprised, a lot hurt—if she found out how many of the things he's told her are actually lies.

He whisks the cream and butter together in a saucepan and thinks about Grafton's journal, over in Alden Library in the rare books room. He'll probably go over there tomorrow and spend a quiet day doing research, combing through the journal to see if Grafton had other incomplete hunts that he needs to follow up on. Reading wouldn't usually be Dean's preferred way of whiling away the hours, but with the impressive collection of bruises he's accumulated today, sitting down all day sounds like a nice change of pace. And after all, he doesn't have any more hunts lined up so he'll need to do more research before he can hunt more anyway.

And the nicest thing about going to the library is that he doesn't need to lie to Cassie about what he's doing. Sure, the whole thing is founded on a lie (she thinks he's writing a book on turn of the century immigrants to Ohio, as opposed to just researching the work of one particular immigrant for his own purposes) but as long as she doesn't ask him any specific questions about how his book is going at the moment, then they can just enjoy the camaraderie of how much time they've both spent in that little reading room, sitting next to each other in companionable silence as they each work on their own projects.

Cassie's key clicks in the lock, and usually he tries to meet her at the door with a kiss to welcome her home because he loves the way it makes her smile, but he's just added the parmesan to the sauce and he doesn't know what will happen if he stops whisking it before it's melted but he suspects it wouldn't be pretty. So he just turns to face her (which conveniently angles his injured side towards the counter where she can't bump up against it accidently) and smiles but doesn't stop whisking, and she comes right over to him. They're like magnets, the two of them. Always drawn to each other since that first day in the library reading room, and after more than a month Dean's still not used to how much turning to each other just feels right any more than he's used to the way he immediately started thinking of this cute little girly apartment as "home", but he's pretty sure he's happier than he's been in years.

"Smells good," Cassie murmurs, and kisses his neck. "What did you make me?"

"Mm, you know," Dean says. "Sugar and spice and everything nice."

"Mmmmm," Cassie says, and he can just feel her breath on his ear as she leans against his back, head cradled in the crook of his neck. Her arms slide around his waist and he maybe winces a tiny bit when she brushes against the cut but he's facing away from her so she doesn't see his reaction and it's fine. "Want me to set the table?"

"If you like," Dean says. "Or if you'd rather sit down and let me wait on you hand and foot, we can do that too. You've had a long day and I've got this."

She kisses his neck again and she's so perfect: he can't believe this is his life now. "I'm sure you've had a long day too," Cassie says. "I'll get the table, you get the food."

Dean grins. "Your wish is my command." He plates up the pasta with broccoli on the side, and ladles some alfredo sauce on top. The chicken is almost done baking, and Cassie is humming as she sets the table right behind him. It's some pop song because he hasn't quite converted her to liking his music yet, but she sounds as pretty as she looks so he can't really bring himself to care about her questionable tastes in music.

"So how was your day, hon?" Cassie asks, and there it is: his least favorite question. (Why couldn't she have just kept humming? Even getting a Kelly Clarkson song stuck in his head would be better than having to lie to Cassie when she's smiling so brightly.)

"Oh, you know," Dean says. "A bit of excitement with the lift but it turned out it wasn't broken, there was just a miscommunication about who was supposed to lock the control box so the new guy turned it on when he wasn't supposed to. But it didn't have a car on it at the time and nobody was too close to it, so other than Roger yelling at the poor kid for like half an hour it all blew over. Back to the grindstone. What about you?"

"I'm still just filing papers and typing things," Cassie says. "I'm going to give it another week before I ask Norma again if I can shadow one of the reporters. That smells great, are you just waiting on something in the oven?"

"Yeah. Sorry, I got home from work in plenty of time but I sat down to channel surf for a few minutes and lost track of when I needed to put the chicken in the oven." The lies flow so easily, once he gets going. He didn't even have to say that; he could have just told her the chicken was still in the oven and she wouldn't have asked why.

Cassie is smiling, because of course she believes everything he just said—why wouldn't she? "Don't worry about it," she says. "I don't mind. So how was the Camaro? I hope the Impala didn't mind too badly that you spent the whole day hanging out with another car."

Actually the Impala has no reason to be jealous because he spent more time with her today than any other car, and he ought to feel good that he's treating his car right but it's just another reminder of how he isn't treating his girl right and she doesn't even know it. "Uh, pretty boring, actually," he says because she's sitting there waiting for an answer, and she's got that inquisitive reporter look in her eyes that means she's really curious to hear the answer, because she likes knowing things and likes knowing him. (Except for how she doesn't really know him at all, and he needs to fix that.) He braces himself for a follow-up question that's sure to cut right through the web of lies he's spun so far and to need even more lies to tape his story back together, but to his relief the timer for the chicken finally goes off, and he abandons the conversation to hurry over to the oven. The chicken is a breath of fresh air: he's not lying to it, he's not lying about it, it's just sitting there in the pan and he can serve it onto their plates guilt-free.

There's just one piece of chicken for each of them and it shouldn't take long to serve it up but he takes his time anyway, hoping the lull will make it easier to redirect the conversation. He puts the chicken on top of the pasta, then moves it more off to the side, back on top when he decides that doesn't look quite right after all, rummages in Cassie's spice cupboard for parsley flakes and shakes a bit on as a garnish. Cassie sits patiently at the table through all of this; he can feel her eyes on his back and he doesn't get a sense of danger from it like he does when he's out on a hunt and an enemy's watching him, but it's still kind of itchy, not as relaxed as their first weeks together. And he's pretty sure that's all his fault, because she's sitting over there happily looking forward to eating the dinner he made for her, while he's over here lying to her about everything but the chicken.

"So, what's next on your research project?" he asks as he turns around, carrying their plates over to the table. Cassie can talk about research for hours, and she rarely cuts herself short now she knows he's willing to listen to her talk about it (because the way her eyes light up when she gets excited about something is one of the most beautiful things he's ever seen) so that ought to be enough to get them most of the way through dinner without too many more lies. He takes a bite of pasta, smiles at his girlfriend, and settles in to hear what she has to say about the history of news reporting in 19th century Ohio.

The broccoli is just a little bit softer than he'd like it (not that he's ever particularly liked broccoli, at any level of doneness), but the chicken is just right and the alfredo sauce turned out great, maybe the best he's ever made. He never would have thought stories about newspapers that went out of business before his dad were born would be interesting, but Cassie spins up a tale about the two rival papers in town and how they'd poached reporters from each other, and by the time he's eating his last bite of pasta he's pretty sure that somebody ought to make a movie out of this stuff, and he's opening his mouth to tell Cassie that when she abruptly cuts herself off. "Dean! What happened to your head?"

"My head?" He hasn't even thought about it since she got home, but now that she mentions it, he supposes it still aches a bit.

"You're hurt!" Cassie reaches out and gently brushes her thumb over his left temple, along his hairline. "I'm sorry, I didn't realize! What happened? Are you okay?"

Last time he looked at himself in a mirror was probably around an hour ago, when he was in the bathroom patching up his side, and he hadn't noticed any marks on his head then. It must be starting to bruise, and if his head is bruised his side probably is too so he needs to make sure whatever lie he tells takes that into account. "Wasn't looking where I was going," he says. "Ran into a door. It doesn't hurt though. I wasn't even thinking about it until you mentioned it."

"Are you sure? How fast were you walking? Do you think you could have a concussion? If there's even a chance you have a concussion, we should take you to the ER and get you checked out." She strokes her fingers ever so gently down the side of his face again, and it feels so good that he doesn't even notice the pain.

"I don't think it's bad enough to give me a concussion," he says. "Really, I didn't even realize it hurt until you said something." He's had worse, lots worse. He's not used to being fussed over for any sort of injury, much less something that's just a few bumps and bruises, but her hand is so gentle and he thinks maybe he doesn't mind her fussing. Is this a girl thing, or a civilian thing, or just a Cassie thing? Dad would laugh at her overreaction and remind Dean that he needs to take it like a man, but her hand on his cheek and in his hair feels so good that Dean doesn't want to tell her to stop. He wonders how Mom would have reacted to something like this if she'd lived, whether she would have agreed with Dad or maybe she would have fussed over him just like Cassie is. He likes to think Mom would have been a lot like Cassie is: sweet and smart and kind and caring, the kind of person who's going to worry about his random bruise even though it would be more convenient for both of them if she overlooked it.

"You're not seeing spots or anything, are you? Or ringing in your ears?"

Dean shakes his head, which maybe makes his headache come back a bit too much but it's nothing to worry about. "I'm fine. Look, if I'm not feeling a hundred percent in the morning, I'll go get it checked out then. I promise." (This is probably another lie, but if it really really hurts he'll go to the hospital, he really will, so it's almost like he's telling the truth.)

"Good," Cassie says. She leans over and kisses him on the forehead, right next to the hurt place, and when he focuses on the velvety feeling of her lips against his skin, his pain fades into the distance and he's once again scarcely aware that he's hurt at all.

Of course there's one thing that will make this kiss even better, and so Dean tips his head up until he's captured Cassie's lips with his own. Her hand slides down his cheek, caressing. Her hands are small but perfect, warm against his face, and really, does it get any better than this? He's still making a difference and saving people's lives with hunting, but he's also making a life of his own, and he really wouldn't mind staying here in Athens forever, without changing a thing.

He leans further into the kiss, but it seems like only a few seconds before Cassie pulls away. "You should rest, since you're hurt," she says, and pats his hand. "I've got the dishes."

"You sure?" Now that she mentions it, he is feeling pretty beat, so he doesn't immediately jump up to insist on helping as she heads into the kitchen. He does stack up their plates and utensils in a tidy little pile for Cassie to take, because he's always hated doing nothing.

Cassie wanders back from the kitchen and takes her MP3 player out of its dock, scrolling idly through it. "Yeah, I'm sure. Besides, even if you weren't hurt, I owe you for doing all the cooking. Ella or Billie?"

"Your choice," Dean says, handing her the stack of plates on her way back into the kitchen. Maybe she just feels like listening to jazz; maybe she'd rather listen to one of her pop-bopper favorites that won American Idol or whatever, but she's making a concession to his tastes. Either way, it's kind of nice. It feels really homey, just sitting here with the music playing and behind him the clank of plates and pans in the sink.

The tea kettle whistles, and the clanking stops for a minute and then starts back up again. Dean's glad he's not trying to move too much because now that he doesn't have anything to take his mind off things, his side is really starting to ache again. And his head. And now he doesn't have Cassie's sweet lips brushing over his skin to distract him from the fact that the ghost really did a number on him and he's not going to be able to hide what he's getting up to from Cassie much longer.

Cassie sets a cup of tea down next to him without a word, and kisses him on the top of the head as she goes back to the dishes. Tea has never really been Dean's thing, but when Cassie makes it, it's not just a cup of weird brackish liquid, it's a tangible sign of love and care and good stuff like that. Which doesn't exactly make it taste better, but it's enough to get Dean to take a few sips. Besides, it gives him something to do besides sit here and listen to the music and think about Cassie.

Not that the bitter tea could ever really be enough to take his mind off of her. She's humming along as Ella Fitzgerald sings, and she sounds so happy, and why shouldn't she be? She's almost done with her college degree, and she's got a great research project and good job prospects, and she's got a boyfriend who makes her happy—a boyfriend who she trusts, and that's the part that hurts. Because he's been lying to her all day, and smart as his girl is, she hasn't got a clue. He's just that good of a liar, and in his line of work that's always been a skill that he's proud of, but right now it feels even more bitter to him than the aftertaste of black tea in his mouth. He can't keep doing this. This is the girl he wants to spend his life with, and if they're going to do that, they're going to have to do it right. He's got to tell her who he really is. He's never done that before with a girl, but then, Cassie isn't just any girl. He's tired of lying. It's time to come clean.

Cassie is back in the dining room, flinging her arms around him from behind. "Dishes are all done," she says. "Got any ideas what we should do next?"

Dean's heart is pounding like he's about to go toe-to-toe with a dozen ghosts all at once. "Cassie, I—" He has to tell her, he has to. Dad's going to be horrified when he finds out, but she needs to know. She trusts him too much to—to—

"Yes?" Her eyes are so big and brown when she smiles. What are they going to look like in a minute, after he tells her that nothing he said was true? That when she was telling him all about her day because he cares about her enough to want to know those details, in return he fed her a made-up tale because he didn't trust her?

She's still smiling at him, her fingers trailing back and forth along his neck, and he just can't bear to tear this moment apart. He wonders if she'll cry: he's never seen her cry before and he doesn't want to, knows too badly how much it's hurt in the past to see her hurt. "I—" he says again. "I made you a surprise." He goes to the fridge and kneels down, pulls the pudding off of the bottom shelf. "I know you like chocolate and all..."

He turns once more to the table, pudding bowls in his hands, and her eyes are all lit up just like he knew they would be. She's so gorgeous. She's so perfect. She's his.

He sits down at the table, and Cassie runs to get two spoons. He takes a spoonful of pudding, but instead of eating it himself, he holds the spoon out, and Cassie lets him slide it between her lips. "Mmm, perfect," she says, and her tongue flicks over her lower lip to get the last little bit of chocolate. "Thank you."

This isn't the right time to tell her. It can't be. Tomorrow, he'll sit her down and the lies won't be quite so fresh and he'll explain the whole thing, and then the last stumbling block will be gone and they can move forward towards a life together. They're so obviously meant to be, and he's sure Cassie knows that just as well as he does, and she won't let a few lies and a slightly unusual job get in her way. (She won't, won't she?)

Cassie's holding her own spoon out in turn, and he opens his mouth and lets her feed him a bite of smooth rich chocolate, and it's delicious, but it's not even half as perfect as the look of love in her eyes as she smiles at him.

He's had a long hard day, and he has a right to relax for once and just enjoy himself. He's got a pretty girl snuggled up next to him, and an evening with nothing to do but enjoy each other's company, and it's a good time to focus on enjoying the moment.

He feeds Cassie another bite of pudding, and laughs together with her when his hand slips and a bit of the pudding ends up on the tip of her nose. "I love you," he whispers, and kisses the chocolate away. He'll tell her tomorrow, and then they can get started on living happily ever after. It's going to be fine.

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