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“Come to bed,” She says.
Dean thinks that’s funny- and maybe she does too since she’s wearing her sweetest smile- because he’s already asleep.
Dean starts writing the letters long before he starts having the dreams.
It begins after the racist monster truck case that brought Dean back to Cassie Robinson. The first woman he loved and lost. He suggested that this goodbye might not be as permanent as their last and Cassie said that she was a realist and that she didn’t see much hope for them. Dean told her he’d see her again, and when she nodded her head disbelievingly, he said it again, meaning it.
He vowed to himself that he would, he’d return to her. That he’d make it happen because when you meet someone like Cassie Robinson you don’t let go. You hold on tight and you come back.
Writing letters to her was his way of making sure he’d follow through on his promise. He never sent them, that was the point. He wrote things he wanted her to know, but for him to share them he’d have to physically bring them to her. It was an insurance policy of sorts.
Dean wrote about all kinds of things. The cases he and Sam worked, leaving out most of the gore and playing up the heroics, even though he knew Cassie would see right through the latter. He peppered his notes with jokes he knew she’d love, jokes he knew she’d roll her eyes at and jokes he knew would make her huff in annoyance.
He put effort in the letters he wrote. Dean went as far as researching some writing tips just to impress the journalist.
In rare moments of vulnerability, Dean wrote things he could never really talk about. Not even with Sam. Maybe especially not with Sam. He didn’t think he was keeping what he was doing a secret, but he only ever wrote the letters when his brother wasn’t around.
He poured honesty he didn’t even know he possessed onto pages upon pages. He wrote about how desperate he was to find his father, even though he played it like he was on board with the arbitrary cases John would send their way. He wrote about how afraid he really was of Sam’s visions. About what they might mean for his brother. About what he could become.
He wrote all of this for Cassie to read but then months went by and his dad died and the yellow eyed demon came back for Sammy and Dean sold his soul.
Dean wrote about all of that too. Wrote about having a year to live. Wrote about his fear of dying. Wrote about the nightmares where hellhounds drag him to hell. Wrote about being afraid of what he might become there.
But Dean wasn’t writing to Cassie anymore. Maybe he hadn’t been for a while. He definitely stopped beginning the letters with her name. He’d grown up since he selfishly went and got Sam from school, since they worked the Racist Truck case, and he wasn’t deluded enough to think returning to Cassie was an option anymore. That it ever really was.
“I don’t have any siblings,” She tells him as they rock on a porch swing. “I can’t imagine giving up so much for someone.”
“It’s my job. He's my responsibility.”
“It’s amazing that you believe that.” She leans into his side more and allows him to hold her. It makes him feel good, she’d learned. She doesn’t think it’s half bad either.
Dean went to see Lisa Braeden, as part of his Dying Wishes Tour. She told him he could stick around after the changelings that took her son were dealt with, but Dean couldn’t. Dean was dying. Dean had a timer counting down the minutes before his eternal vacation in the pit began.
He fed her some line about having work to do because he couldn’t tell her any of that. He could pretend to, though. Which is how he began addressing the letters to her. Not explicitly, of course, but in his mind, she was who he was writing to.
That’s when the dreams began. They were like snippets of the life he could have had with Lisa. Dreams of watching Ben at baseball, going to the movies as a family, cooking together. They were dumb things too like fixing the knob to a closet door, brushing his teeth while Lisa stood beside him brushing her teeth. They were good dreams. They were the version of his life where he could be happy.
Then, Dean died.
There wasn’t enough reprieve from the agony, in hell, for him to mentally form even the outlines of his letters, not that he had anything to say. Dear honey, today I was skinned. ps: It’s more tingly than being burned alive but the aftertaste isn’t quite as pungent.
When Dean started doing the torturing, he couldn’t bear thinking of the screwed up life he’d lived topside, let alone the apple pie one with the Braedens he had liked imagining for himself. It was as if he’d mar it just by having it on his mind because of how sick he was. How twisted his soul had become.
Then, Dean was gripped tight and raised from perdition.
Dean Winchester is saved. The announcement had been clear as bells in the ears of all angels.
“The things I did…” Dean trails off. He’d been telling her about his time in Hell. “I liked it.” He tells her shaking his head in repulsion. “I’d have turned into them.”
“You’re telling this like you expect me to judge you.”
Dean twists them so that her back is longer to his chest where he’s sitting against the trunk of a tree in the field they often ended up in. “Don’t you?”
He sounds so broken despite it being years since he got back from Hell.
“I don’t,” She says.
Dean nods and pulls her against him again. They settle together and the trees surrounding them part to reveal the horizon and the sun disappearing behind it.
After returning to the living, Dean found the letters still hidden away in one of his duffles, amongst the things that Sam just couldn’t bring himself to part with. Dean became smarter with where he hid them, after that.
They were a mismatched bunch. Sometimes Dean had written them on motel stationery, sometimes on regular lined or printer paper. Sometimes he’d scratched out a few phrases on the back of postcards, sometimes on a small stack of post-its. Whatever he had on hand. Never on a napkin, though. He refused to be so cliche.
So, he continued. Writing to Lisa. Dreaming of Lisa too, in between nightmares from hell (figurative and literal ones). Life carried on.
He found out angels were dicks. Seals popped left and right. He learned he had a half-brother. He realised Adam died before he’d even met him. Sam became a demon-blood junkie. Lucifer rose. The apocalypse began. The final battle was averted. Sam was in a cage with Lucifer and Michael. And Dean... Dean did something he never thought he would. He returned to Lisa.
The first weeks, he was a mess and that was putting it lightly. He was falling apart and simultaneously tearing the world to shreds trying to find a way to bring Sam back. Drinking, obsessing, the usual suspects. Until... Until he wasn’t anymore. Until he settled into his life with Lisa and Ben, a life he’d dreamt of, because it’s what Sam wanted for him but mostly he did it because Dean would have gone mad sticking to the path he was on. He’d have driven himself insane trying to rescue the brother he’d failed to keep safe.
Dean stopped having the dreams, which made sense because he was living the life. He was teaching Ben about cars, having barbecues, kissing a beautiful woman every night.
What Dean didn’t stop was writing the letters. That was stranger because he had Lisa right there to talk to. He never did, though. He could never be as honest with her in person as he was with her in writing. It made even less sense that he never showed her the letters. Not the old ones he’d written over the years and not the new ones he now wrote on her pretty card paper, in Baby. Only ever in Baby.
Then Sam returned. Without a soul. Dean did his best, he really did. He tried to hold on because when you meet someone like Lisa Braeden you don’t let go. Regular rules don’t apply to Dean, though.
He continued with the letters even as the hits kept coming. Each new apocalypse, each new End Of The World, bigger and badder than the last. Still, Dean wrote to Lisa. Even after he’d had her memories erased. The dreams started back up again too. They were mostly moments from the life he’d shared with her.
At first, he thought he was lucky that he got to relive them in his sleep, but it didn’t take too long for the memories to taunt him. Haunt him, even awake. They were doing more harm than good.
Over time, the woman in his dreams lost the features that made Lisa look like herself. She morphed into someone else, someone fabricated by Dean’s subconscious. Someone less painful to spend imaginary time with.
It was sometime during the Leviathan fiasco, that he started addressing the letters to her instead.
He was in Rufus’ cabin in Montana, dozing off on the ugly red couch there.
In his dream he was somewhere entirely different, however, standing in line in some coffee shop. He’d been here before. Done this before. A lot of his dreams, when they weren’t nightmares, began like this.
The woman in front of him, up next in line, sidestepped closer to the glass casing.
“You can go ahead in front of me.” She told him, like she always told him, not bothering to glance his way. “I’m still making up my mind.” She continued in a very serious tone, as though this decision was of the utmost importance.
Dean chuckled like he did the first time and the last time he was here. “What are your top contenders?” He asked, bending slightly to nudge her shoulder with his amicably.
“Trying to pick between the muffins.” She sighed like she’d been burdened with the task.
“Cranberries, hands down.” He assured her.
It’s what he always recommended, with a sure nod, and it always made the woman scowl.
Finally looking up at him with an odd sort of accusatory look in her eyes, she said, “Absolutely not. If anything it’s between blueberry and chocolate chip.”
Dean rolled his eyes. “How pedestrian,” He teased.
The woman threw her head back and laughed, somehow managing to nod a little in agreement at the same time. “It’s a shame.” She smirked when she quieted down.
“What is?” He asked, even though he already knew; she always answered the same way.
“You’re very good looking, but even in dreams I can’t be with someone who has such a poor muffin ranking system.”
She winked and headed towards the door, a drink and paper pastry bag in hand. Dean followed, an unordered coffee warm against his palm. He got ahead of her and walked backwards the rest of the way to the exit.
“You think you could make an exception if I tell you all about my hierarchy for pie?”
“You gonna impress me?” She asked, an edge of challenge in her tone.
“Tell me your name and I’ll do more than that,” Dean promised, like he always did, just as they got to the door.
He opened it for her and she winked at him as she stepped through. He was right behind her but they never ended up on the street the shop was on. This is where the dreams took a different turn every time.
Suddenly they were in a lowly lit room. Dean would call it a dance studio, if the mirror-lined wall was anything to go by. They were sitting cross-legged on the floor, knees brushing, digging into their respective, perpetually half-eaten, burgers.
The woman pressed her lips together, trying to keep from laughing and sputtering out food. “So the husband was a witch too and they were having marital problems?”
“Sam and I had to play Dr. Phil to keep them from tearing the town apart.” Dean laughed, shaking his head a little, recalling the last case they’d worked and questioning just what was his life exactly. “It was a good hunt, well, simple enough.” He sounded more morose just then, the lightheartedness long gone.
“No progress with the Levithins?” She assumed, sucking soda through the straw of her soft drink.
“Leviathans.” Dean corrected with a sad smile. “Cas is still dead.”
Their burgers and drinks disappeared and she moved to sit in his lap, her legs curling around him so their chests were pressed together. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and placed her cheek to his. “Tell me about him.” She whispered.
So Dean did. He began with how he met the angel, continued with all they’d done together, for each other. The sacrifices they’d made. He choked a bit on the part where Castiel deceived him, betrayed him, to work with Crowley, to get the souls out of purgatory. On the part where Cas broke the wall in Sam’s head.
Then he woke up. But Dean wasn’t done. He had more to say, more to tell her about Cas. He wanted to explain that Cas had been doing his best, doing what he had thought was right. He had been learning, still, how to do things without being told what to do. Learning to be more than a soldier that followed orders. Learning the burden of free will. So Dean wrote it down for her. He put it all on paper as if she’d one day read it. All the letters that followed were addressed to her after that.
As far as coping mechanisms go, Dean thought it was one of his better ones.
So it went. He’d dream about her, always in that coffee shop first, then somewhere else: the dance studio, a field, inside Baby, Rufus’ cabin. His favourite was the kitchen of a quaint little suburban house.
He’d dream about her and he’d write to her what he hadn’t gotten around to telling her in sleep.
She’d talk his ear off too. She’d share all about her intricate life and Dean had to applaud himself for creating a complete person in his mind and not some depthless stereotype he might have been prone to.
Bobby died. They killed Dick. Dean landed in purgatory, where the letters were halted, understandably, but the dreams weren’t.
The first time they landed in purgatory after stepping out of the coffee shop the woman’s eyes widened more than Dean had ever seen. He’d been dreaming of her for a while too, so he’d seen his fair share of wide eyes on her expressive face.
“I thought this was a dream?” She asked quietly, almost to herself.
“It is,” Dean replied, shifting nervously, as he watched her observe the woods. He had this odd desire to clean up somehow. Like he had let her into his messy apartment and he wanted to start hiding the unwashed plates and dirty laundry. Dean never had an apartment of his own but he thinks he’d keep it clean.
Something about the air here… “We’re in a forest straight out of a horror flick.” She countered, twisting her torso to look at him. “Looks more like a nightmare.”
Dean’s eyes locked onto the dirt beneath his feet, shamefully. Even the woman he invented for himself, to be with outside of the life he lives, couldn’t help but call him out on how wrecked his world was. He resisted the urge to tell her that it wasn’t so bad, to defend something adjacent to hell.
“I wonder if it has some sort of significance. You know, like how if you’re on top of a mountain in your dream it means you feel like you’ve achieved something in real life.”
Dean considered it for a moment then shrugged. “This is just where I live now. Ding dong the wicked Dick is dead but I was brought here with him.”
She glanced around again. “ This is the purgatory you told me about? I thought it’d be more...fire-y.”
“No, that’s Hell.” Dean corrected.
“Oh right, forgot that I put that in your backstory.”
“My what?”
“So wait, something might jump out at us?” She wondered without seeming afraid.
Dean shook his head but moved closer to her anyway, wrapping his arms around her from behind, half protectively and half for shared comfort. “Might look like a nightmare, but this is still a dream. Safe here.” Dean laughed at himself for worrying about a dream girl he didn’t even have a name for. “Not that you can die anyway.”
“Yeah, people say that if you die in your sleep you die in real life, but it’s hard to buy into considering how ridiculous it sounds.”
Dean hummed, curving his back to place his chin on her shoulder. “Even with the things I’ve told you are hidden in the shadows?”
She laughed quietly, tilting her head back to rest it against his shoulder. “It’s a little different, I’d say.”
Dean hummed again. They stood there for a while, a dream-while so who knows how long it was really.
“I’m sorry you’re stuck here.” She whispered eventually. “I don’t know how to do something about it. I’ve tried before. Tried to make your problems go away but I don’t know how.”
Dean pressed his lips against her neck. It wasn’t really a kiss, just a sought-after intimacy. When his lips moved against her skin while he spoke, goosebumps pebbled. “You do enough. I think you’ve kept me sane.”
She shook her head, only minutely not wanting to shrug him away or, god forbid, off of her. “I’ve put you in situations where you’d be expected to lose it. I don’t know why I do that.”
Dean laughed, loud and boisterous enough to warrant her turning in his arms to face him.
“What?”
“I just figured out where you get that irrational guilt from.”
“Wouldn’t call it irrational...maybe that’s the irrational part.” She shook her head confusedly. “Where from?” She focused again.
“Me.” He offered her a sad smile.
She only replied with a curious look.
When Dean gets out of purgatory his first letter is all about Sam. About how Dean felt abandoned. About how he hated himself for resenting Sam.
“So you’re out?” She asked him during his first dream-inducing sleep since he got back.
“Yeah.” He grinned at her but it didn’t quite reach his eyes.
“Did the Benny thing not work?”
Dean shook his head. “It’s Cas. I... I couldn’t pull him through.”
She gave him a soft look, hopping off of the kitchen counter to move closer to him. “I’m sorry.”
Dean nodded jerkily. “Do you need anything done around the house? C-can I-”
“Shh.” She soothed as Dean’s body trembled. “Sit, yeah?”
Then, they were sitting on a park bench, of all things. They watched children play and Dean wondered if Sam could have had this if Dean hadn’t returned at all.
“Think we can take one home?” She asked him, a mischievous twinkle in her eyes.
Dean laughed. “You want to kidnap a child?”
She raised a brow at him. “Look around, Dean.”
Dean did just that and realised for the first time that there were no adults around.
“I think they’re ripe for the taking. Kids are part of the fantasy, after all.”
“Yeah, yeah they are.”
And then kids were part of their fantasy, because they weren’t sitting on a bench anymore but at the kitchen table. She was calling up the stairs for someone to wash up and Dean heard socked feet pad rapidly against the hardwood floors, behind him.
“I already did, mommy.” A high voice said.
Dean didn’t dare look back. Instead, his gaze fixed on the woman’s face. Her features softened as she looked longingly at the child. Their child.
The kid surged forward with a giggle, revealing herself to be a blond six-year-old girl. She climbed onto her seat and gave Dean a toothy grin. Dean tried not to be reminded of his mom.
“We’re making pie after dinner, right Dad?”
Dean kind of wanted to cry.
The first time she made an appearance in a wet dream of his, they were both momentarily startled. They had walked out of the coffee shop only to land in a bed, naked and buried under a red sheet. Oh God, they had both muttered when they realised their bed was heart shaped.
“I didn’t think I was capable of something so tacky.” She sighed.
Dean shot her sheepish look. “Sorry.” He had the decency to look a little embarrassed, at least. “Do you... not want to?” It was strange to ask for consent considering he made her up, but it didn’t feel right any other way.
“Fuck, course I do.” She nodded enthusiastically not bothering with bashfulness. “On three?”
On three, it was. They counted then lifted the gaudy sheet and appraised each other, each nodding approvingly. Then they were chuckling at the ridiculousness of it all and then it became a nervous sort of laughter. A lull of silence. Then lips were crashing. Hands brushing down skin, tangled in hair, everywhere. It was all very disjointed, like most dreams. One second they were in one position doing one thing and the next they were in another. Then, back again. In a way, all the things were happening all at once.
His mouth was on hers, tongue licking into her mouth, sliding against her teeth, but his mouth was also between her legs, tongue tasting her, entering her. His tongue was circling her clit but it was also tracing the shell of her ear. His hands, his hands, they were everywhere, all the time. Groping and grabbing and pitching in all the ways that made everything feel better, stronger, more .
They were building so fast, but they were also in an odd standstill because while everything was happening, while he was buried inside her, thrusting into her from above, while she straddled him, riding him, while everything was happening, they were also just lying there, in each other’s arms. It was tender and sweet and post-orgasmic bliss but also pre-orgasmic bliss.
Then they were coming and then Dean was waking.
So it went. Dean’s dreams were mostly of her. Sometimes they had a kid, sometimes they had a gaggle of them. Once they had a dog and he told her never again. It was their first argument.
His letters were to her, now hidden away in his room in the bunker. She liked the bunker but mostly she loved that he had it. She told him she’d just gotten a promotion, so that might be why he’d found the bunker. He told her congratulations but that he doubted she had anything to do with him being a legacy.
All the while, life carried on.
Sam started doing the trials to close the gates of hell. The angels fell. Dean took on the Mark of Cain, took on Abaddon. Took on Metatron, and lost. He became a demon, Sam cured him, life went on. They released the darkness, the sun almost died, God almost died, Amara was stopped.
The letters puttered to a halt at times, like when he was a demon, like when the mark overwhelmed him, but they always picked back up. The dreams were constant, however. It never mattered how darkened his soul became, if he slept, in his dreams he could escape because she was there.
He didn’t always dream of her. Sometimes he had nightmares or dreamless sleep, but when he did see her it was a wave of calm washing over him. It was normalcy and contentedness and all the things he could never have out in the real world. It was the perfect relationship. Admittedly, it was hard to screw things up with a figment of his imagination.
It didn’t feel like she was artificial, though. She called him out on his shit. She didn’t bend to his will like he’d suspect something he created would. She seemed to have her own things going on too. As if, when Dean was awake she was still living her life in his dream world.
Driving down the highway towards some case Sam had picked up on for them, Dean wondered for a brief moment what his brother could be dreaming of as he slept peacefully in the passenger seat. Had Sam created an entire universe he could withdraw into to get away from their lives, too?
That’s really what Dean had done. He and...she... They built a world together. Adding rooms to that house they often ended up in, simply by willing them into existence. Going on walks, on drives. Attending fake parent-teacher meetings at the fake school of their fake kids only to mock the other fake parents. Pretending to interrogate their son’s prom date.
“Do we not think our son can handle himself?” Dean had asked her jokingly.
“We’re the type of parents that won’t succumb gender norms.” She’d answered simply and he’d ‘ ah’ ed in acceptance.
She’d shown him the cubicle she used to work at and the office she worked in now. She broke down the coworker dynamics for him making up an actual case board for visual aid. Coloured yarn and all. She told him how dissatisfied she was with what she did for a living. How lonely she’d ended up in life. How that hadn’t even been on her list of worries until it became too late.
Dean didn’t understand why he couldn’t have made her happy when he made her up. Maybe she needed to reflect him. Maybe it was some Freudian shit. Maybe even in his fantasy world, the only way someone could want him was if they were a little broken too.
It had been years since that first time he dreamt of her, Dean thought, pulling up to a cafe. He’d get coffees before heading over to the morgue and waking Sam.
Just how strange was is that he’d sort of been in a relationship with a part of his subconscious? Should he be worried or should he be grateful his non-alcoholism hadn’t escalated to NON-alcoholism (lots of denial) since he’d found an alternate way to cope? Should he just take the good since he got so little of it in life? Naturally, it’d be in a dream. Good things rarely happened to him and his brother. God forbid that when they do it’s in real life.
Dean sighed and stepped into the shop, leaving Sam to catch a couple more Zs.
“You can go ahead.” The woman in front of him in the line told him, chuckling to herself as she looked at the different pastries on display.
Dean was momentarily startled by the eery similarity of the situation. “What are your top contenders?” He asked, humouring himself.
“It’s all about the scones,” She said very seriously like she had secret intel on the matter.
“Cranberries, hands down.” He assured her, just like he assured her, in his dreams.
She finally turned to him with a surprised look in her eyes.
Huh. It was her . Dean was sleeping. Absentmindedly, he hoped he hadn’t nodded off at the wheel.
“That’s...euh... No. Blueberries.” She looked away and stepped up to the counter to put in her order.
Dean rolled his eyes. “How pedestrian.” He teased.
The woman threw her head back and laughed, like his words chased away any nervousness she might have been feeling. “It’s a shame.” She smirked over her shoulder when she quieted down.
“What is?” He asked, even though he already knew; she always answered the same way. He mouthed the word ‘black’ to the barista and held up two fingers.
“You’re very good looking, but even in dreams I can’t be with someone who has such a poor scone ranking system.” She winked, leaning against the counter where they were to wait for their orders.
“You think you could make an exception if I tell you all about my hierarchy for pie?” Dean asked once he’d paid.
“You gonna impress me?” She said, an edge of challenge in her tone.
“Tell me your name and I’ll do more than that,” Dean promised like he always did.
She opened her mouth to tell him just that when the barista beat her to it, announcing her drink and name and then Dean’s.
“Huh,” Dean said unintelligently. He’d never actually found out her name before. “We’re straying from the script.” He followed her to the exit, two coffees warming his palms.
“I guess so. Maybe we’re feeling adventurous.”
They arrived at the door and by habit she waited for him to open it for her. He glanced down at his occupied hands and shot her a sheepish look. She laughed quietly, pulling the door open for them to step through and winking at him playfully.
This is where the dreams took a different turn every time but for the first time they ended up on the same street where the cafe was. It was one of those areas with independent shops and boutiques. The kind of road that made the small city they were in seem like a small town.
The pair looked around, then shared a confused look, until Dean spotted Baby a few stores down, where he’d parked her.
“Wanna go for a ride?” He suggested.
“Sure.” She agreed, biting into her scone hungrily; she never got to eat the muffin before. “What a great idea, darling.” She intoned dramatically, hooking an arm around his and only spitting a few crumbs.
Dean rolled his eyes at her theatrics. They knew it was all make-believe and she liked to make a mockery of it once in awhile. “I’m just glad you stopped calling me hubby.”
“Honestly, that weirded me out too. It sounds too sweet for- There’s a stranger in your car.”
Dean’s head snapped towards the impala to look through the passenger door he’d just opened, his hunter instincts kicking in. He sighed in relief. “That’s just my brother,” He assured as he watched Sam roused from his own sleep. Talk about inception.
“Another first.” She frowned for a moment then smiled brightly, unhooking her arm from Dean’s to stick her hand down for Sam to shake.
Sam who’d barely pried his eyes open only to find his brother and a lady peering down at him from the open impala door.
“Dean,” Sam murmured, rubbing a palm against a bleary eye. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know, man. You’re the one crashing my dream.” Dean whined. He whined. He allowed it because it wasn’t like real-Sam would ever hear it and lord it over him.
“Your dream?” Sam heard the woman question at the same time as him. Differently though. He’d said, “Your dream ?” She said, “ Your dream?”
“Yes.” Dean deadpanned, bored and ready to speed things along. The expressions on the two faces made him second guess himself, though. “Yes?”
“This is my dream,” She corrected him.
“What?” The brothers spoke in unison.
There was a long moment where the three of them eyed each other, assessing one another. Sam took the time to collect his bearings as well and step out of the car. Once he did, he broke the silence. “Alright, Dean, what are we dealing with? A witch? Did you get whammied or something?”
“What? No, dude, this is my regular-life dream, monsters don’t come here.”
“Dean... You’re not dreaming.”
“Listen to your brother, Dean. I’m the one who’s asleep.”
“What, no, shut up. You’re not real.” Dean shut her down quickly to focus on his brother. What if he wasn’t regular-asleep? What if this was some rogue djinn and Sam is here to help him get out?
“That’s rude. I made you.” She countered.
Dean sighed exasperatedly and turned to face her. “Remember when we went fake camping and you kept trying to tell me I was starting the fire wrong.”
“ Yes. ” She knew what he was talking about because he never let her forget it.
“Then what happened?”
“You started the fire.” She mumbled. “Look, it’s a little ridiculous, even for us, for this,” She threw her arms up at the world around them. “To light a fire by rubbing two sticks together. I’ve only ever seen that in cartoons, it’s not-”
“What did we agree on after that?”
“That you wouldn’t say you know something if you didn’t.”
Sam watched as his brother discussed with the woman events that couldn’t possibly have ever occurred, like they were old friends, like they were a bickering couple.
“So when I tell you that I’m sleep-”
She didn’t hesitate to interrupt him. “You done being mildly condescending? This is my dream. I’m not going to let you, like, I don’t know, commandeer it.”
“ Listen, my car, my brother,” He started, pointing at each thing with one coffee clutching hand. Sam took the beverage away before it went sloshing everywhere, through the small mouth hole. Sam also started gulping it down, for the sake of his sanity. “My bunker, my-”
“My office, my field, my studio.”
“ What? You only have those things because I made them up for you.” Dean shot back gruffly, missing how Sam took the second coffee to chug that too. “I’ve probably been to those places and their images have been stored in my subconscious. I gave you that office. I gave you that promotion. I gave you a studio because I always thought it’d be hot to be with a dancer.”
“A dancer? What? It’s where I volunteer to teach karate to kids and women. And I earned that promotion you son of a bitch. Besides! You want to talk about made up? You think you fight ghosts. You think you met God. ”
“Shhhh!” Sam finally spoke up. “You guys are causing a scene and drawing attention we don’t need.”
“Who cares, we’re in my dream.” Both Dean and the woman shouted at Sam. “It’s my dream.” They repeated, in each other’s faces.
“No. It’s not. Neither of you is dreaming, or asleep. Neither of you- Christ. Neither of you created the other. Dean, is this a prank? Because we said we wouldn’t do that anymore and I’m a little worried and a lot unsure if I should gank her.”
Instinctively, Dean stepped between her and his brother. “Definitely not killing her, Sammy.”
“I agree.” She piped up from behind Dean’s shoulder.
“Not that it matters,” Dean threw behind him. “Since you’re not real.”
“Oh piss off.”
Sam sighed and pinched the skin of Dean’s forearm.
“Ow! What was that for?”
“Dude. You. Are. Not. Dreaming. Look around, we’re in a very real city, working a very real case, with very real people’s very real lives at stake.”
Dean shook his head. “No, Sam, you don’t understand. This isn’t the first time I dream of her.”
Sam grunted and threw his hands up in defeat, spilling some of the coffee he had left.
“Dean.” Her small voice squeaked from behind him.
“Yes, dear ?” He mocked.
“Whether this is my dream or yours, it’s definitely mine, but for argument’s sake, we both agree that there shouldn’t be people with black eyes right?”
“What?” Dean whipped around and spotted the dozen or so demons occupying different positions on the street amongst civilians. They were hiding in plain sight and it wasn’t like the brothers could attack them in broad daylight in front of the entirety of the crowded area. “Okay, in the car, in the car.”
Dean ushered her into the front seat after his brother and slid in last, tossing Sam his keys to drive. The impala drove off just as a few of the demons moved in towards the trio.
“What the hell was that!” She half screeched half laughed.
“You hit it right on the nose there with your word choice. A little taste of hell,” Dean mumbled, checking the side-view mirror to see if they were being followed.
“God, why haven’t I had you bring your work into our world before?” She asked Dean. “This is exhilarating.”
“No, it’s not!” Sam yelled. “This is dangerous stuff, lady.”
“You can’t die in your sleep, Sam.” She explained to him nonchalantly.
Sam turned into a vacant lot and brought the car to an abrupt stop. “You’re not sleeping!” He whipped out a knife and cut slits into the woman’s forearm and then Dean’s. “Does that feel awake enough for you?”
Dean barely flinched but she definitely winced at the pain, sighing afterwards.
“I hurt myself when we were putting shelves in the laundry room, remember that, Dean?”
“Yeah. Watch, Sam. We’ll heal right up.”
They each stared at their cuts. When after long moments, their skin didn’t knit back together like it had before, like it was supposed to, their gazes lifted to lock on one another.
“I’m awake,” She breathed.
“I’m awake,” Dean echoed.
“Yes, thank you that’s what I’ve been saying.”
They ignored Sam and just continued to stare at each other. A long silence stretched and even Sam caught on enough to keep quiet. When it kept going long after that still, he proposed to give them some privacy and jetted out of the impala. Sam didn’t want to touch that mess with a ten-foot pole.
“It’s all real,” She finally said. “Your life, purgatory, you really had to... you’ve really lived through... You...”
Dean didn’t know what to say. What was there to say? He’d been having a fake relationship with a fake woman he thought he’d created, he’d thought he’d tailored to his preferences, and it turned out it was real. She was real. And she was here. And she...
“You’re not a dancer?” He questioned, furrowing his brows but unable to mask his smug smirk.
“Shut up, asshat,” She said, punching him in the shoulder.
“We’re definitely still not getting a dog.”
“No way.” She shook her head vehemently. “That conversation isn’t over. I only agreed to table it because I thought, I thought...”
“That you’d made me up.”
“Yeah. I thought...” She breathed deeply, unable to tear her eyes away from his. “ Dean. You never told me your name before.”
“You never told me yours.”
“I never thought it mattered.”
“Because we weren’t...” He searched for the words.
“Because we weren’t.” She repeated. “We just weren’t. You were an escape, Dean, you weren’t a real person, I wouldn’t have... Well, I don’t know, maybe I would have. I don’t know. Isn’t this crazy? Isn’t this insane? You’re the supernatural expert, is this something you’ve seen before? What would you even call this? Dream-sharing? Oh God, the supernatural is real. Ghouls and ghosts and- Oh God, God is real. Oh man, you’ve seen me naked and I didn’t even bother working my angles. Oh man, I told you what happened with Steven Wong under the bleachers in tenth grade. I haven’t told that to anyone. I-”
“Hey, hey, sweetheart breathe. You’re gonna run out of oxygen and then I won’t be able to kiss you just like this.”
And then he kissed her just like that. It was nothing like in their dreams. There were no jump cuts, it was a continuous flow of time and it was perfect. It was lips pressed together for the sake of being pressed together and it felt like safety for the both of them. It felt familiar and new and it felt like everything they’d been waiting for. Everything they’d spent the past years growing between them was coming to a head. It might only have been his lips touching her but Dean felt his entire body flare up with heat and a wild sensation of want.
His hands cupped her face gently as he made the kiss last, he’d have it last his entire lifetime if he could. He’d have it never end. This could go on forever and he’d be more than okay with it.
“Wait.” Dean pulled away suddenly. “There’s something I want to give you.”
“Eh, I wasn’t expecting to meet my fake dream lover-and-pal-io so I didn’t get you anything.”
“I wrote you something.” Dean continued agitatedly, ignoring her statement. “Some things, actually.” He started fidgeting and looking around, like the letters might pop up on the dash even though he knew they were all tucked away in a tin box in his dresser back at the bunker. “I’ve- Shit. I’ve been waiting for years, I-”
Dean met her eyes again and the urgency left him. Maybe the letters didn’t matter, just then. He wrote them so someone could know him and she... She already did. The woman in his dreams. The woman of his dreams. It’s two ways of saying the same thing, maybe.