#ceo!deanxreader

[imagining-supernatural]

As It Seems: Chapter 9

Table of Contents

Según Parece: Lista De Contenidos

Summary: Dean remembers some things from the other timeline

Word Count: 2832

Warnings: slight implied smut, drug talk, depression talk, similar to the rest of the series

Beta’d By: @kclaire1 Girl, I love you!!

PREVIOUS CHAPTER

~Dean’s POV~

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I yelled at the woman who had, literally, just jumped in front of the werewolf that had been trying to kill me for the past ten minutes.

“Saving your ass, apparently. Don’t worry. I’m not expecting any thanks.”

“Thanks? You nearly got yourself killed.”

A strange expression flickered across her face… disappointment? But it was gone in an instant and I was too fired up to linger on it. “I know what I’m doing, jerkwad.”

Jerkwad? What was this, seventh grade?

“Stay out of my way next time,” I spat out before grabbing my silver knife that had skidded halfway across the room sometime during my fight with the wolf.

“Next time? Don’t worry, buddy. I don’t make the same mistake twice, and apparently saving your ungrateful ass is a mistake.” She pushed past me in a flurry of anger and I totally did not watch her ass as she walked away.

What?

I was a guy, after all.

*****

“Do you know what today is?” Y/N swung her half-empty bottle of beer around, her fingers lightly gripping the cool, glass neck. I just grunted and shrugged, finishing off my own bottle. “Today marks the one year anniversary of the time you almost died and I saved you for the first time.”

“Ah.” I remembered that day well. “You were so snotty. I hated you right off the bat.”

“Yet you still got me out of that sticky situation two weeks later.”

I chuckled at the memory. “Man, you were a horrible hunter. Good at killing things, but not so good at researching the hard things to kill.”

“In my defense, I don’t think even you would have figured out that it was an ancient Malaysian spirit that we were hunting if it hadn’t been for Sam.”

Okay. She might have had a point there. But I wasn’t about to let her off the hook that easily. "At least I didn’t think it was just a normal ghost. I knew that it was, at least, some weird, special, crazy ghost.”

“God, I hated you so much.” Y/N laughed freely, something that she had been doing a lot more lately. The first few months I knew her, she kept everything close to her chest. Emotions, thoughts, intentions… There were dozens of thick, brick walls surrounding her, keeping her isolated from the world.

I don’t know how, but those walls had fallen down in the last few weeks. And I liked what was behind them. So much more than I should have.

But I didn’t care.

I didn’t care that her laugh made me feel a little more hopeful. I didn’t care that I could practically feel the raining storm cloud hovering over her head when she was mad. I didn’t care that Sam teased me about how I stopped flirting with women at bars recently. I didn’t care that a single smile from Y/N could turn even my worst day into something that was bearable.

I didn’t care that she was making me into some stupid fool over her.

I didn’t care about the consequences, because for once in my life things felt… good.

“Hey Dean?” Her soft voice broke through my thoughts and I hummed in reply. “I’m really glad you don’t have that giant stick up your ass anymore.”

Yeah.

So was I.

*****

It was a rough hunt. We were too late. Sure, the monster was dead. But so were the kids. The impala was silent on the ride back to the motel. Up front, Sam and I were dealing with the failure as we always did: trying to get past it as quickly as possible. But I could tell that Y/N wasn’t having as much luck as we were. Maybe it was because she hadn’t been hunting as long as we had. But something told me that telling her “It gets easier” would not be welcome.

As soon as I parked, she was out of the car and halfway to her room. Sam jerked his head towards her retreating form and I nodded soberly. Sam could be alone right now. I knew he could handle it. I wasn’t too sure about Y/N though.

She didn’t answer when I knocked on her door.

“C’mon, sweetheart. I know you’re in there. Open the door.”

Silence.

I knocked again. “I’m not going anywhere. So unless you want me to freeze right outside your door, you better let me in.”

“I’m fine.” Finally. A response. A lie, but still a response.

“Yeah, and I’m the Queen of Shiba. C’mon, Y/N/N. We don’t have to talk. I’m just not going to let you be alone right now.”

“I don’t remember the last time I let anyone tell me what to do,” came her annoyed response as the door swung open and she glared at me. Annoyance was good. I could work with that.

Pushing past her, I didn’t give her the chance to shut the door in my face. “Tough luck. I hope you stashed some beer in that mini-fridge because it’s a hell of a lot easier to get through nights like these when you’re not completely sober.”

“You’re annoying, you know that?”

“If by annoying you mean insanely sexy and funny then yes, I know that.”

And that managed to wrangle a soft laugh from her. Satisfied that she would recover from the failed hunt, I tossed her a bottle of beer and we sat side-by-side on the bed and watched horrible, midnight television.

I’m not sure how it happened, but sometime later, the bedside table held our empty beer bottles, the floor was littered with our clothes, and Y/N’s body was tangled with mine.

*****

She tiptoed into my room, softly closing the door behind her. For months now, we’d been slowly moving towards this.

It started out with a few tipsy nights of distraction sex. After a particularly difficult hunt, or when something personal came up that we just wanted to forget, we would find ourselves between the sheets of the nearest hotel room. Then we would end up together in the bunker on nights when Sam left on a solo hunt, or out on some Ghandi, Pray, Eat, Love soul-searching trip. Nights like that eventually morphed into sneaking around when Sam was home, just so we could draw on the comfort of sharing a bed. It wasn’t even about sex anymore, and I had no idea how it happened.

But I liked it.

“Hey, baby,” I greeted sleepily, opening my arms for her. She fit right against me like two cogs in a machine. “Gave up on research?”

“Never started. I just flipped through books so Sam wouldn’t feel alone.”

That made me chuckle. It was a reminder of the first few weeks after we met. “How in the world did you survive without us?”

She drew in a sharp breath and tensed up. What had I said?

“Dean, I—I wasn’t. Living, I mean. I, uh, I wasn’t in the best place…”

The strain and trauma in her voice cut me to the core. I shifted onto my side and cupped her cheek with my hand, turning her face up to mine. “Listen, you don’t have to tell me anything that you don’t want to. The past is in the past.”

“I know.” She wasn’t very convincing. “But I want to. I don’t… I don’t want to have the weight of this secret anymore.”

And slowly and softly, she unwound the suffocating rope of mystery around her past. The accident that took her parents. Her subsequent addiction to drugs and the escalation. The pregnancy that forced her to clean up her act for a few months. Her post-partum depression that drove her back to the hard drugs that most people stay away from. And the cold slap in the face of reality when she realized that her baby girl wasn’t breathing.

My heart forgot how to beat. How she managed to go through all of that and still fight every day was beyond me.

*****

“I’m not talking about this with you, Sam,” Y/N’s annoyed voice pulled me towards the kitchen. Sam and Y/N nearly always got along. It was kind of freaky how they never fought. Of course, sometimes they got annoyed with each other and when that happened, it was always fun to watch.

“So I’m right?”

I rounded the corner just in time to see Sam sit back, arms crossed over his chest, and a smug grin cover his face.

“No, and even if you were, it’s none of your business.”

He laughed softly. “Defensive. I’m just waiting for you to stick your tongue out at me and tell me to get lost.”

“This isn’t a 90s sitcom. It’s my life. Emphasis on the my.”

“What’s going on?” I needed some backstory in order to enjoy this encounter more. And some popcorn. That would be good too.

“Y/N hasn’t been sleeping in her own room lately. I think she’s been sneaking out to see her secret boyfriend.” Sam narrowed his eyes at her, and that was normally when I knew it would get good. He was completely focused.

Which usually meant that the truth was about to come out.

“Secret boyfriend, huh?” I asked, hoping I could keep the nervous edge out of my voice. We hadn’t discussed it, but both of us seemed to intuitively feel like what was happening between us should stay between us. If Sam knew, then all of the sudden, everything would become more real.

Boyfriend.

Was that me? Was I her boyfriend? Was she my girlfriend?

“I don’t—” She cut herself off when her eyes met mine. I knew that she was mirroring my own thoughts.

What were we? Friends, yes. Hunting partners, obviously. Lovers? The word made me cringe. Dating? Exclusive? Well, I hadn’t slept with anyone else since that first night and I don’t think she had either.

“You don’t what? Have a boyfriend?” Sam prompted when her silence grew into a minute. “If you can’t even finish that sentence, then obviously you do.”

And just like that, Sam had the Define The Relationship talk for us. I sat back in my chair, out of breath suddenly for some reason. “Yeah, Y/N. Sounds like you have a boyfriend.”

*****

“It’s a stupid idea, right?” I wasn’t really asking for Sam’s opinion by that point. I was more asking just to keep talking so I wouldn’t dwell too much on the subject at hand. It’s funny how you can just talk forever about something, but not really think about it at all. “Yeah. Really stupid. I should just forget about it.”

“I don’t think it’s a st—“

“Y/N’s gonna think it’s really stupid. Just forget I said anything.”

Sam laughed, which startled me. What was funny about this situation?

“Dude, she’s going to think it’s stupid. Yeah. But she also thinks you’re pretty stupid, and she’s still with you so… For some reason she actually likes the stupid stuff you do.”

“But we’re both hunters. It’s gonna end bloody. Best to just keep things as they are.” The more I thought about the reasons this wouldn’t work, the more reasons I could come up with. “Besides, she doesn’t even wear jewelry.”

With a shrug, Sam ordered another beer. “She likes necklaces. She told me that once. Just doesn’t have reason to wear any.”

“I can’t get her a necklace.”

“Why? ‘Cause it’s not traditional?” Sam challenged. “You just said that you’re both hunters. Do you really think Y/N’s gonna want anything traditional? It doesn’t have to be a ring, and you don’t have to go through the whole I Do thing. I don’t think you actually can, since we’ve been declared legally dead about ten times now and if you tried to actually get a marriage license then the FBI and who knows who else would be hot on our tails. Again.”

“Exactly. What’s the point? Besides, we have this crap with the Titans to worry about.”

I couldn’t believe I was actually talking about marrying someone. Out of everything I’d expected in this life, marriage wasn’t even on the list. I’d barely known Y/N for two years. It was only a few months since we’d slipped up in front of Sam and he found out about us, which happened about a week after he made us realize that we were dating.

I was crazy. That was it. This idea was crazy.

“The point,” Sam cut in with a meaningful look, “Is that you’re trying hard to talk yourself out of this. Harder than I’ve seen you try about anything. But somehow, you’re still thinking about it. I think that’s a pretty big indicator that maybe you should start thinking of the reasons this could work.”

Not the advice I was looking for. And it was past time to change the subject. “What’s she doing now?”

Sam gave me a long, flat glare that told me he knew exactly what I was doing, but after a moment he gave in and looked over my shoulder at where Y/N was hustling some poor bastard at pool. I’d learned long ago that I needed to have my back to her when she was doing her thing.

Let’s just say that jealousy was definitely something I should work on.

“He’s all over her, but this is the third game, so she’s about to completely smoke him.”

“Nah. She has one more. When we came in, she was just starting the first game and she was playing for drinks, not cash. She’s still hustlin’ ‘im.”

I was good at hustling pool. And Sam wasn’t too bad either. But Y/N? She put both of us to shame. Unfortunately for me, she had to make the guy believe he could take her home and that meant that I had to watch some other guy put his hands all over my girl.

It was easier to just not watch. As long as I didn’t see it, I could focus on the fact that she would be sharing my bed every night. I trusted her and she could handle herself.

“Well, while you try to figure out what kind of necklace Y/N would like, I’m going to try my luck with that brunette over there.” Sam nodded towards the other end of the bar, and I followed his eyes to a hot brunette in business casual. She looked like the smart, corporate type. So, she basically looked like Sam’s type.

“We’ve gotta leave in fifteen to meet Crowley.”

Sam just shrugged. “We’re in town for another week or so.”

No sooner had Sam disappeared than a woman came up and took his spot. She turned her sultry smile on me. “Hey there, handsome.”

I just nodded once politely and turned back to my glass of whiskey. Apparently she thought I was a challenge, because she leaned forward until the front of her shirt gaped and I would have gotten a front row seat to her cleavage if I had been interested.

But I wasn’t.

Because my girl was a few yards away, using that same move to scam some idiot.

“Haven’t seen you around before. Why don’t you buy a girl a drink and you can tell me a little about yourself.”

Her fingers had been lightly trailing up my arm, but I shook them off. “I’m already buying another girl drinks tonight. You’ll have better luck with someone else.”

“Oh really? Then why haven’t I seen you with anyone except that other man you came in with? She must not be too smart if she lets a guy like you be alone in a place like this.”

“She’s right here,” Y/N’s annoyed voice came from behind me just before I felt her arms snake around my shoulders and her cheek right by mine. “And she trusts him to not fall for some skank’s slutty routine.”

“Excuse me?”

Cat fight? Was I about to see Y/N get into a jealous cat fight with another woman over me? I knew I should step in and cool the situation down, but God Y/N’s jealousy was so hot.

“You heard me, bitch. You can try to get into his pants all you want tonight, but he’s going to be in my bed.”

“You have no idea who you’re dealing with,” the other woman snarled.

“You’re right,” Y/N agreed easily. “I don’t. And I never will because we’re leaving.”

Aww. No cat fight? “We are?”

“It’s almost midnight, baby. We’ve got that meeting with your brother and your douche of a demon friend.”

Damn it. Y/N was right. As much as I wanted to see her deck that other woman and defend my honor, it would have to wait. Crowley was going to be waiting for us in our hotel room with an update on his part of the plan.

Working with Crowley.

It made my skin crawl.

NEXT CHAPTER

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[imagining-supernatural]

As It Seems: Chapter 15

Table of Contents

Según Parece: Lista De Contenidos

Summary: Sam comes and mediates between you, Dean, and Crowley while you discuss theories about what's going on

Word Count: 3041

Warnings: None

Beta’s by: @kclaire1 who is amazing for weathering all of my weird spazzy freaked-out emails about writers block and general life craziness!

PREVIOUS CHAPTER

~~Reader’s POV~~

“Hey,” Sam nodded at us when he sat down next to Crowley.

After I’d hung up with Addy, we’d called Sam and had him meet us at a diner in town. Dean set Crowley’s nose as well as he could and we ignored his complaints the entire way to the diner.

“Finally.” Crowley’s voice was much more nasally than normal, which would have been funny if he hadn’t just threatened my niece’s life. “The level-headed one arrives.”

“What happened to your nose?”

“I broke it,” I answered.

Sam just raised an eyebrow and looked between the three of us. “Looks like you should have called me sooner.”

“Honestly, I should have done worse.”

Even the memory of it made my anger bubble up again. I didn’t care that we were in a very public diner. If Crowley said a single thing about my niece, I would deck him again right in the middle of his bruised face.

The waitress came over just then to take our orders. I saw the way she eyed Dean, but before my anger could turn to jealousy, Dean leaned over and put his arm around me. With his lips at my ear, he whispered, “You’ll get another chance to beat the hell out of him later, babe. Let’s just let Sam do the talking and enjoy the food, okay?”

“No promises.” Turning my head, I caught his eyes that were inches from mine and I smiled a little. “But I’ll try.”

“Good,” he grinned and kissed me quickly before turning his attention to the menu and waitress, who had the decency to back down and treat all four of us as I assumed she would treat any other group of customers. It was a much different experience than that bitch at the bar in the other timeline.

We all ordered, Crowley bitching about how it was going to hurt to chew, then she left and Sam got right down to business.

“So, what’s going on? How did we get sent to another timeline?”

“Crowley said something about witches or angels or maybe a Titan and he vetoed our Djinn suggestion,” Dean supplied. “But he doesn’t have anything solid.”

“Excuse you, Winchester. If your girlfriend hadn’t punched me, I would have told you about the time wraith that seems to be the most promising explanation.”

“Time wraith?” I nearly laughed. “Like in The Flash?”

“The Flash?” Crowley asked, and Dean looked confused as well. On Dean it was endearing. On Crowley, the confusion just made me want to punch him again.

“Yeah. The show on the CW? Dude runs so fast that he can go backwards or forwards in time and if he changes things too much then the time wraiths come after him to try to kill him and even out the balance of the universe or something.” Neither one seemed to know what I was talking about, but Sam was on the same page as me. We had similar interests in the other timeline, so it made sense that we would share interests here too. “It’s a good show.”

“Yeah,” Sam agreed. “But it’s a show. Fiction. Time wraiths aren’t real, Crowley.”

“Well, neither are demons in this timeline, yet here I am.”

“Human. Here you are human.”

“If you’re human here, does that mean that Cas is here too somewhere? Human?” I asked.

“I don’t think so. He wasn’t in that hotel room with us.” Honestly, if I heard Crowley’s nasally British accent throw down another one of our ideas, I was going to completely lose it. But Sam and Dean were shaking their heads too, so I supposed Crowley had some weight behind his words this time. “Though his meatsuit probably is. What was his name? Johnny?”

“Jimmy Novak.”

“Ah, yes.” The theatricality behind everything Crowley did was really testing my nerves. “Good ol’ Jimmy. See, for some reason, the supernatural isn’t real here, or at least not quite as big of a deal. So if Feathers never had a reason to come down to earth, he never needed to inhabit a meatsuit. If Castiel exists over here, he’s probably still up in heaven with a robe and a harp.”

“Claire. Her dad is Jimmy. How’d she end up with Jody if there’s no Cas in this timeline?” We were getting off track, but I couldn’t help my curiosity with this line of questioning. “And Alex. Vampires aren’t real here. She couldn’t have gotten caught up with a nest.”

“Claire’s dad took off a few years ago and her mom kinda got lost, so Claire went down a bad road. I found her on one of my missions and took her to Jody,” Dean explained. “As for Alex, vampire nests aren’t real, but cults still are. A few years ago the team found a cult that was trying to overturn Nebraska’s entire state government. Alex’s cult.”

Trying to figure out how things worked out between the two timelines was really starting to mess with my head. Well, not starting to mess with my head. More like continuing to mess with my head. If I came out of this with even one shred of my sanity intact, I would consider that a win.

“Can we get back to the subject at hand?” Crowley broke in impatiently. “Getting us back to our proper timeline?”

Dean must have felt how tense I got at his words because he tightened his hold around my shoulder. “Dude, we’re not going back.”

“Speaking of going back,” I said, looking at Dean. “We probably need to get back to the office soon. Your company can handle a few days without you there, but it needs me to keep running so…”

“We’ll see what everyone thinks. But you’re probably right. Ash can hook up something to get any messages you got on your phone until we get back to your place and—”

“Would you two shut up!” Crowley exclaimed. “We have bigger problems at hand than some pitiful business. We have an entire world waiting for us to save it from the freaking Titans.”

“If we shut up and let you talk about your stupid time wraiths, will you leave us alone?” I asked, knowing that the answer was no.

Crowley, however, took that as an opportunity to begin talking.

“I’d only heard of time wraiths back in the other timeline, so I know that they’re real and not some figment of someone’s imagination over here. They’re supposedly like reapers in the sense that they aren’t really evil or good, but they just do their job.”

“And their job is…” Dean prompted.

“To keep the balance of time,” Sam said slowly, forehead creased as he tried to remember something. “I think I read about them during a case a few years ago. It’s coming back to me now. They kind of keep watch over the world or something like that. I didn’t really understand.”

Crowley nodded. “Time wraiths are the reason that the angels always wiped the minds of the people you saw when they sent you zooming around to the past and future. If they hadn’t, then the wraiths would have come for them as well as everyone in the past who remembered.”

Dean sat forward, forearms resting on edge of the table. He was getting into this, and it scared me. This was a puzzle and Dean wanted to solve it, which I understood. I wanted to figure this out too. I was just scared that in the process, he would figure out how to get back to the other timeline and he would want to go. And if I was the key, how could I say no to something the Winchesters wanted? How could I be that selfish?

“So when Henry came to 2013, if we had sent him back in time like he wanted, would that have caught the time wraiths’ attention?”

Sam nodded shallowly. “I think so. It makes sense, anyway. Whenever I’ve thought of time travel, going forward in time didn’t seem too disruptive because the future isn’t written yet. But when you go back in time and change things—”

“Like Balthazar with the Titanic.”

“But we dealt with one of the Fates then, not a time wraith,” Sam pointed out, looking over at Crowley. “What if this isn’t a time wraith?”

“I’m fairly certain it is a time wraith. The Fates deal with death and mortality. In the case of the Titanic disaster, the Fate just wanted everyone who should be dead to be dead. She couldn’t change the past and fix what Balthazar did.” Crowley was looking straight at me, almost like he was trying to silently communicate with me. What the hell did he want me to get from his words? Something about changing the past? What’s should be dead should—

Addy.

“Listen, Crowley. If you want to have a snowballs chance of convincing me to change my mind and help you, then you have got to stop threatening Addy. If you don’t change your tune soon, then I will keep you here just out of spite.”

The waitress came back with our food but I’d suddenly lost my appetite. Spite wasn’t a good enough reason to make these kinds of decisions. Sure, spite was a good motivator for things like losing weight or going to a good school. Things to prove other people wrong. But using spite as a tool when the entire balance of the world was a stake? The entire balance of two worlds, even?

Spite and selfishness. What was that saying? Sugar and spice and everything nice. That’s what little girls are made of? Well I was made of spite and selfishness and everything bad.

I was the worst person to have this weight on my shoulders. I wasn’t the hero that Sam and Dean were. I didn’t know how to sacrifice what I wanted for the good of the world.

*****

Self-reflection sucked. Trying to divine my true motivations and needs only served to take me on a highlight reel of all of my mistakes in life. Well, lives. Both of them. I’d shut myself away in the bedroom as soon as we got to Bobby’s to try and figure my shit out, but all that came out was tears.

The door opened and I quickly turned my face away, wiping at the moisture on my cheeks.

“Hey, I brought you some food since you didn’t really eat much at breakfast,” Sam said, closing the door behind him. I couldn’t see him, but I could practically hear the gears turning in his head as he tried to figure out why I was sitting in the dark. The darkness was better for introspection and self-loathing.

“I’m not hungry.” The excuse was meaningless, I knew. Sam was going to press until he figured out what was going on with me whether I wanted him to or not.

He set the plate of cheese and crackers down on the bed and came to sit next to me on the couch. “Are you doing okay? Obviously not. You’re crying.”

“Sam, please just…” I turned away from him again, rubbing at my eyes and trying to will myself into a numb, emotionless state. Unfortunately, I hadn’t quite mastered that skill in this timeline. “Just leave me alone.”

And of course he didn’t listen. Instead, he stretched his arm across the back of the couch and turned his full attention to me. “Leaving you alone would me that I would have to go back out there and be dragged into Kevin and Ash’s argument about personal hygiene. I’d much rather be here with you.”

Well, you shouldn’t. “Kevin probably needs you more than I do.”

“What’s wrong?” There it was. Sam getting sick of me trying to beat around the bush.

“No offense Sam, but you can’t help me right now. I need to figure my own shit out and anything I say while I try to do that will make you feel like you have to defend me because I’m gonna say stuff about how I’m a horrible person and you’ll try to convince me that I’m not but you can’t see how selfish I’ve always been and you’ll say that maybe I don’t see just how amazing I am but I’ll know that it’s a lie and you’ll try to convince me that you’re telling the truth but I won’t believe you and this whole conversation just won’t end well.” I took a shallow breath after my blabbered run-on sentence. “It won’t get anywhere. It’s a waste of your time. You’re better off convincing Ash that he should invest in some conditioner and use deodorant more than once a month.”

“Sounds like you’ve already had that conversation for us. Saved us the trouble of talking,” he said lightly, reaching over me to pull the lever for the footrest. I was too tired to protest as he wrapped his arm around my shoulder and drew my legs over his. His affection just served to make me feel worse. Here I was, griping about how this shit storm affected me, when I hadn’t even asked how he was handling things. I was the worst friend in the history of friends.

“Sam, I—”

“Shh, no talking, remember?”

“I was going to ask how you were doing.”

He shifted until both of his legs were propped up on the leg rest and he was comfortably lounging back into the cushions with me curled up next to him. “Better than you, obviously. But it’s hard. I’m completely different over here than I am over there.”

“Do you like this version of you better than the other timeline version?”

There was silence as he considered my question. For me, there was no hesitation. The Y/N in this timeline was miles better than the Y/N in the other timeline. I could recite a list of reasons why from today until eternity. All I had to do was figure out how to shut up the other Y/N and push her into a deep dark closet somewhere so I could resume my better life over here.

“I’m not sure. Everything is so different I can’t really compare them. Me. Compare me.”

“Your parents are alive over here. You have an actual job. I don’t know much more about your life in this timeline, but based on everything I know about my life and Dean’s life, I have to assume that your life is lightyears better over here.”

Once again, there was silence. This happened a lot when I had deep conversations with Sam. It was how you knew that it was a good conversation that had actual substance. Silences meant thought.

“I’m going to ask you a question, okay?”

“Was that your question?”

He chuckled. “No. This is: Do you think the version of me in the other timeline is bad compared to the me in this timeline?”

“Absolutely not.” Once again, there was no hesitation. I pulled away from where my head was on his shoulder to look at him with eyebrows drawn together. “Why would you think that? Sam, you were amazing in the other timeline. You had bad shit happen to you, but you still came through strong. And this timeline isn’t nearly as bad, but from what I’ve heard from Dean and your parents, you’re still so strong and selfless.”

And he just looked at me meaningfully. What was it that he wanted me to—

“No,” I groaned. “Sam, it’s not the same. The me in that timeline—”

“Was just as great and amazing and strong as I was in that timeline.”

“Sam, you don’t—”

He covered my mouth with his hand. “I don’t know why you’re being so hard on yourself. Actually, I do. I was the same way. It took me a long time to figure out that I had to stop blaming myself for every mistake I made. But I got there eventually.”

He slowly removed his hand as if testing to see if I would start belittling myself again, but something held me back. Maybe I just knew that he wasn’t done yet, and he wouldn’t rest until he’d said his share.

“And I know it’s hard right now especially with everything that was just dumped on you, but I want you to remember that I think you’re one of the best people in the world. And I only knew you in the other timeline.”

“Sam—”

“One more thing. Whenever you think about how horrible you think you are, I want you to think of what Addy would say to that.”

My mouth snapped shut. There was nothing I could say to that.

If Addy had even the tiniest inkling of what I’d been thinking of myself the last few days, she would take my hand in her little one and pull me towards her room. She would insist that we build a blanket fort together. Then she would grab my brother’s tablet and we would lay in a cloud of pillows and blankets and choose a movie to watch. And while the movie was loading, she would take my face in her hands and tell me as seriously as she could muster that I was a princess, just like her. There would be no way that I wouldn’t be able to believe her with her beautiful eyes boring into mine.

“You play dirty, Sam,” I muttered.

“I know. And now, you’re going to go to sleep because I’m pretty sure you didn’t sleep much last night and I know that you didn’t sleep the night before—”

“You don’t have to mother me,” once again, I muttered.

“I’m not. I’m using you. If you fall asleep on me, then I have to stay here so I don’t wake you up. And if I happen to fall asleep too, then no one can get mad at me for skipping out on a few hours of research and personal hygiene dos and don’ts. After all, I’m just being a good friend.”

A soft, genuine burst of laughter escaped my lips and I felt my mood lighten a little. I supposed I could use a nap.

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[imagining-supernatural]

As It Seems: Chapter 12

Table of Contents

Según Parece: Lista De Contenidos

Summary: There’s some more yelling and arguing then Sam gets fed up and gets right down to the middle of it all

Word Count: 2690

Warning: none

Beta’d by: @kclaire1

PREVIOUS CHAPTER

~Dean’s POV~

“I heard this was where the party was!” The front door banged open and in walked Ash, mullet and all.

Jo perked up from where she, Y/N, and Alex had been talking on the couch in the living room. “’Bout time you came around and showed that sorry excuse you call a face, you slacker.”

“Jo, when you got the hair, you don’t need nothin’ else.” Ash flicked some of his long hair over his shoulder and hefted his bag. “Now where do I set up? Ellen made it sound like y’all desperately need my genius.”

“Kev and Charlie are upstairs. Dean, why don’t you show him?” Jo threw a very pointed look my way. I shrugged off the wall and pointed at myself, confirming what she’d said. She just nodded, then jerked her head towards the stairs. Apparently she caught onto my act of pretending I wasn’t hovering around Y/N.

I think I liked it better when Jo still threw a cold shoulder towards Y/N because of her crush on me. This new friendship didn’t bode well.

Whatever.

“C’mon Ash. I’ll show you ‘round.”

As soon as I introduced Ash to Charlie and Kevin, they jumped right into the technical talk that bored me to death. I considered heading back downstairs and lurking around Y/N, but figured that probably wouldn’t get me anywhere. So I pulled up a chair and pretended to be engrossed in whatever the hell the three geniuses in the room were doing.

What was so bad about focusing on the good things in life? Throw the bad stuff away and just let the good stay. That was a lesson my mom had taught me time and time again.

Well, in this timeline anyway.

And if mom was here right now, she would sure as hell tell me that what I had with Y/N was one of the best things I’d ever had. She’d be thrilled that I found a woman I was actually serious about. And, boy, was I serious about Y/N.

“That’s how it’s done!” Ash yelled victoriously, pushing away from his mess of a laptop and raising his arms in the air.

Kevin flinched away with a distasteful grimace on his face. “Dude. Deodorant.”

“Amigo, you can either have me wearing pants, or me wearing deodorant. You can’t have both.” Good ol’ Ash. Never giving a shit about what people thought about him.

Why couldn’t Y/N take a page from his book? Ash accepted himself the way he was. Why couldn’t she accept us as we were?

“What’d you do?” I asked, anxious to get out of my thoughts for a minute.

“Your friend here is a genius,” Charlie said to me. “And that’s coming from me, so that’s saying a lot.” I had such humble friends.

“I dug deep into the files on the USB and found the IP addresses of every piece of code that was created. If someone created part of the code that was on this drive, I know where they were.”

Charlie took over the explanation. “Then I made a tracking program. Any device that accesses that IP address will lead us to another piece of the puzzle.”

“If any of these fugly bastards raises their heads, we’ll know.”

Demon tracker. Yellow-Eyes.

I quickly pushed that memory away. In this timeline, Ash didn’t need to track demons. He only tracked corrupt people. In this timeline, he didn’t die in a fire at the Roadhouse. None of that mattered.

“We’ve got a hit already,” Kevin announced, pulling one of the laptops closer to him. “Over by New York. Looks like a Carson Carlisle just sent an email to a…”

He trailed off and Charlie tapped at her keyboard for a minute before picking up the sentence. “Carson sent an email to Howard Hutton.”

“Carson Carlisle?” Y/N’s voice behind me was like a livewire touched my spinal cord. How had I not heard or felt her come in?

“Yeah,” Charlie looked up at her. “You know him?”

Y/N laughed humorously and avoided my eyes. “You might say that. I dated him for about a year. If you need me to call him or anything, I can do that. We ended on good terms. Still friends.”

Y/N dated that Carlisle character? He was in the elite tiers of the Manhattan social life. I’d only met him a few times, but he seemed like a total douche. “You dated that idiot?”

She just sent me a flat look before turning her attention back toward the resident geniuses in the room. “I can’t imagine Carson being tied up in this, but I mean, it’s not completely out of character.”

“Who’re you?” Ash asked, eyeing Y/N.

“Oh, that’s Y/N,” Charlie introduced with a mischievous grin. “She’s Dean’s personal assistant and they like to argue in the shower.”

“Oh my God, Charlie,” I groaned. That was not how I liked introducing Y/N to people.

“Anyway, back to Carson,” Y/N pointedly redirected the conversation. “According to Jo, you’re kind of a genius, Ash. Do you think it would help if I got in touch with him? Poked around a little?”

I didn’t even give Ash a chance to respond before I exclaimed, “Absolutely not!”

“And why not?”

She’d been looking for any reason to be mad at me. I knew that much. And I’d been trying hard not to give her one. But this was something that I couldn’t back down on. “Because you’re not a part of this. I’m not dragging you into this.”

“You literally kidnapped me and dragged me into this. Besides, you know I can handle myself.”

Her meaningful look reminded me of all the times she’d saved my ass in the other timeline. So yeah, I knew that Y/N from the other timeline could handle herself. But the Y/N here? She kept insisting that the two timelines should be kept separate, yet here she goes, throwing herself into both just to get what she wants.

“Can I talk to you for a minute? Alone?” I snapped through clenched teeth.

Apparently she wasn’t expecting my anger, because she let me pull her down the hallway and to our room without a fight. Sam was on the bed with his laptop, but I decided that he could hear this argument.

“What the hell, Dean? I just want to help!”

“Well, you can’t handle it,” I said bluntly, knowing that that would absolutely infuriate her.

She crossed her arms and opened her mouth a few times before any sound came out. “Excuse me?”

“You can’t have it both ways, Y/N. Here, you’re an assistant. A good assistant. Best I’ve had. But you can’t handle espionage. You haven’t been trained to fight over here.”

“But you know I can fight. I’ve saved your ass so many times—”

“Yeah. In the other timeline. And you’ve been very insistent that we keep the two completely separate. So what is it, Y/N? Because you can’t have it both ways. You can’t just keep playing around with this whenever it suits you.”

“You’re twisting my words around, Dean!”

Coming from the person who kept twisting the circumstances around to work to her advantage, I supposed that was a compliment. “I’m telling you exactly what you told me earlier.”

“No, you’re not!”

“Guys,” Sam broke in, almost bored. It was as if this argument wasn’t even bothering him. “Keep it down or go to the panic room. Thin walls.”

Fire flickered in Y/N’s eyes, but she continued in a low whisper. “You know what, Dean? I’m sick of these arguments. I’m so fucking done with you not listening to me—”

“Maybe if you didn’t just think about yourself—”

“I quit.” That shut me up. She couldn’t be talking about— “I’m not giving you the courtesy of a resignation letter or two weeks’ notice. I’m no longer your assistant. You’re no longer my boss. You can’t tell me what I can and can’t do.”

“Don’t do this—”

“Everyone’s been saying that Ash is the genius, so I’m going to go out there and I’m going to help. If he thinks that we can use my friendship with Carson, then I’m going to damn well use my friendship with Carson and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”

She slammed the door on her way out, leaving me completely dumbfounded. What the hell just happened?

“Well,” Sam said shortly. He definitely wasn’t bored now. “Didn’t see that one coming.”

A few steps backwards was all it took for my legs to hit the foot of the bed and I fell down, sitting in silence and staring at the door.

After a few minutes of my broodiness, Sam sighed heavily, set his laptop aside, and scooted up to sit next to me. “Alright, man. You and Y/N have got to figure this thing out. Crowley’s going to come asking around soon and the three of us have to be united. You can’t be fighting like this. What did you two talk about this morning?”

The reminder of our conversation in the shower made me groan and hide my face in my hands. She’d kissed me back like I was oxygen and she couldn’t get enough. In this timeline, I’d never been kissed that like by anyone. I knew that she could feel the connection between us.

But she shut me down so quickly I nearly got whiplash.

“She just kept saying that we’re different people over here and we shouldn’t bring things from the other timeline into this one. Then she turns around and tries to use her skills from the other timeline to get on the team. You can’t tell me that she’s not twisting everything around for her own benefit.”

Sam was quiet for entirely too long. I looked over at him with narrowed eyes.

“Maybe she is. But you are too.”

I groaned. “C’mon, dude. Not you too.”

“Look, I’m trying to deal with all this shit too, man. But I don’t have the added confusion of having a relationship like you and Y/N to deal with. As far as I’m concerned, I have it easy. Sure, I did some really bad things over there and I’m trying to come to terms with those, but in both timelines, you’re my brother. I’d do anything for you. That much hasn’t changed. And in this timeline, I only met Y/N a few days ago, so I don’t have to figure out what the hell we are between the two timelines.”

“And this is supposed to help me how?”

“Help you?” Sam shook his head with a humorless chuckle. “We’re all in the same boat. The only way we can help each other is if we actually talk instead of arguing about the holes that have been blown in the boat.”

How poetic.

And very unhelpful.

“Yeah, tell that to Y/N. She’s the one who stormed outta here.”

Something about my words made Sam tilt his head and get that look that warned me that he was up to something.

“Sam…”

“Gimme a second, Dean.” And without further ado, Sam stood and left the room. I waited about five minutes before giving up and leaving the room myself. This wasn’t a big house. If Sammy wanted to talk things out, he would be able to find me.

It was half an hour before Sam reappeared and told me to go to the panic room. I made some quip about a surprise party, but reluctantly followed his directions. Not five minutes later, Sam, Y/N, and Bobby came down the stairs. Y/N hesitated when she saw I was already there, but Sam gave her a little push and said, “Just go in, already.”

Once the three of us were in the panic room, Sam nodded to Bobby who stayed on the outside and closed the door. I was confused up until I heard the lock engage.

From the outside.

Sam had just locked us in.

“Sam, what the hell?”

“You two, sit down over there.” Sam pointed to the far wall. I raised my eyebrow at him, but complied, sitting down on the floor. Y/N heard the command in his voice and did the same, keeping a good two feet between us. “Look, this thing that happened to us? It’s huge. We can’t just brush it off. So we are going to stay in this room until we work things out. All three of us have to be on the same page before I call Bobby and tell him to unlock that door.”

“Fuck you, Sam,” Y/N spat, taking me completely by surprise. In this timeline, she rarely cursed. And in the other one, she’d never once spoken to Sam with that much anger. “I didn’t even want you two to take the damn drug. I shouldn’t be here. I was doing just fine before you two assholes butted in—”

“We butted in? Sweetheart, you woke Sam up. You asked for this.”

“Then I changed my mind. Besides, I never gave you the option. You just took it.”

“Like how you butted your way into the team? You just can’t wait to get in touch with Carson, can you? Hoping for a little backslide into Ex-Land, huh?”

“Wow, Dean. Way to sound like a bitchy, jealous, teenage ball of hormones.”

“GUYS!” Sam yelled, silencing us, but not making us stop glaring at each other. When he saw that he at least had enough of our attention that we would listen, he took a deep breath.

“I’m not calling Bobby until we’ve worked this out. I don’t care how long it takes, or how uncomfortable we get. We are going to talk things out. We are going to tell the truth. The WHOLE truth. Even the things that we never said in the other timeline. You two are going to get over yourselves and ‘fess up about whatever the hell is making you both so crazy about whether you have a relationship here or not so that we can move onto how to handle Crowley.”

At that last sentence, Y/N’s eyes went wide with fear and she finally looked away from me.

What was that about? What hadn’t she told me? Something about our relationship in the other timeline really scared her. I was a little scared at just how intensely I loved her other there, but her fear stemmed from somewhere else. I could see it in her eyes.

“What is it, Y/N?” I asked softly. The overwhelming angry tension in the room gave way to a nervous kind of tension when she refused to look at either me or Sam. “C’mon, baby. You can tell me. I know you still trust me.”

She didn’t say anything for a long minute, and both Sam and I gave her that space to think. Telling the truth was hard. And whatever she had to tell me was obviously much more difficult than just a normal confession.

After a minute or two she shook her head and started to stand. “No. I can’t do this. Sam, call Bobby—”

“Sit back down,” Sam commanded, but his voice was softer this time. Still though, Y/N couldn’t fight the firm tone and she reluctantly sank back down next to me. “Dean, maybe you should go first.”

Oh shit. With the spotlight on me, it was suddenly really frightening to just lay it all out there. I’d rather face a dozen demons with only a Taser. But if telling the whole truth could smooth things over between me and Y/N and get her to open up then…

“That night at the bar, before we went to meet with Crowley, I was talking to Sam about an idea I had. It was a pretty stupid idea, considering everything, but once I had the thought, it just wouldn’t leave me alone.” I turned my whole body to face her and gently coaxed her face towards mine with a soft touch on her cheek. It wasn’t until she locked her eyes on mine that I continued. “Y/N, I was going to ask you to marry me.”

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[imagining-supernatural]

As It Seems: Chapter 10

Table of Contents

Según Parece: Lista De Contenidos

Summary: Sam and Dean wake up from their memories of the other timeline

Word Count: 2357

Warnings: None in this part

Beta’d By: @kclaire1

PREVIOUS CHAPTER

~Dean’s POV~

It was just like waking up, but about seventeen times harder. I could’ve sworn that my head was going to split in two from all of the new memories and an entirely different lifetime that was squished in there right next to my life here.

I understood now.

There wasn’t a seed of doubt within me that Crowley was lying about the other timeline. Who knew the day would come that I would actually believe a word that guy said?

But Y/N was right. What I felt for her was too real to be fake.

Y/N.

Opening my eyes, I immediately sought her out, but she wasn’t cuffed to the fence anymore. Panic at what Crowley had done with her nearly overtook me. Luckily for him, I was still too lethargic and weighed down with memories that I couldn’t move fast enough to hit him.

“Dean’s the first to wake. Should’ve guessed. Don’t worry about Y/N. She’s back at the house. She didn’t think it was a good idea for her to be around when you woke up.” Well, one thing was the same between timelines. In both, I wanted to punch Crowley in his stupid British face every time he spoke. It didn’t matter that we were on the same team on the other side, for the time being. There was just too much bad blood for me to completely trust the guy.

“Alone?” I hadn’t forgotten her threat about going back to drugs.

“Yes,” he said sarcastically. “Because I’m a complete idiot. I sent Ralph there to watch her, then the sheriff came out and shooed him away. She’s under the annoying, watchful eye of Jody.”

Jody. Good. Didn’t negate the worry that I had for her, but focusing on other things was a little easier.

Like Sam. Who, after a glance his way, was still in dreamland, but appeared unharmed.

“What the hell did you give us?”

Crowley settled back on his camp chair—camp chair? When did he get that? “Just a little something to jumpstart some wires in your brain. After I met Y/N in your office, I remembered everything. She’s special, for some reason. Nothing happened when I’ve met with you before, but as soon as she told me that I would have to wait, BOOM! Everything came rushing in.”

I already knew that Y/N was special.

“Then why did it take whatever was in those vials for the three of us to remember?”

“My theory is that I reacted differently to whatever the hell happened to send us to this timeline than you guys did because I’m a demon. Plus, I like my life better over there. The whole demonic powers and stuff. You guys, however, seem to appreciate the life in this timeline better. I’m not a therapist, but I would guess your brains were fighting against the memories.”

The memories of my mother burning on the ceiling? The memories of my dad sacrificing himself for me? Of Sam dying in my arms? The memories of Hell? Of my brother losing his soul? Of all the things I did as a demon?

I hated when Crowley made sense.

“What is in the vials?”

“I’m glad you asked, Dean.” And that brought out a groan from me. I hated his stupid explanations. “After Y/N sparked my own memories, I brainstormed ways to make the three of you remember. It took a few hours, but I finally went to a neuro science and cognitive psychologist and they told me of a serum they were working on that would help unlock latent memories and expand brain function. I had them fine-tune a few things, then came out here, looking for Y/N—“

He was cut off by my fist. In his face. Again.

And it felt just as damn good as it had the first time.

“That was for using Y/N as a guinea pig.”

“We are on the same side, Dean!”

I honestly don’t know why he was making such a big deal out of a few punches. He’d had worse. And it wasn’t like he was going to get any sympathy from present company.

“You might want to have a conversation with her before you keep defending her. She seems pretty set on staying away from you.”

Now, them’s fightin’ words.

Apparently Crowley’s henchmen thought so too, because I found myself being held back by the two oversized idiots. As much as I tried fighting against them, I just couldn’t. That stupid drug had sapped my strength and whatever strength I had gotten back had been used to punch Crowley.

Since I couldn’t fight with my fists, I would have to settle for words. “You don’t know anything about her.”

Sam chose that moment to begin waking up, but it didn’t exactly diffuse any tension.

How dare Crowley say anything about Y/N? About our relationship? He had no idea! I’d been thinking about fucking marrying her in the other timeline, and struggling to keep my attraction to her under wraps in this timeline. And I knew that these feelings weren’t just one sided.

“Wha—Dean?” Alarm filled Sam’s eyes when he saw how I was being restrained. Crowley nodded at his two idiots and they released me. “What’s happening?”

“Crowley’s being a dick, as usual. Let’s cut to the chase. Now that we remember, what do you want from us?”

“Your brains, you moron. We have to get back to the other timeline, and the two of you are the best shot we have.”

Sam slowly sat up, rubbing his head. “I know I’m late to the party, so if you’ve already gone over this, then just fill me in, but why us? Jody’s alive in the other timeline too. Claire, Alex… Give ‘em the drug too and we can figure it out faster.”

“I don’t think it will work on them.”

“Oh great,” I groaned. “Another one of Crowley’s insane theories.”

He tossed a dirty glare my way, but I really couldn’t give a shit.

“What’s the last thing both of you remember?”

Sam’s forehead scrunched up and I looked up at the stars while I thought back.

“The bar,” Sam said. “Dean and I were talking while Y/N hustled that guy.” Sam slid his wide eyes to me as he remembered the conversation we’d been having, but I quickly shook my head. Crowley definitely didn’t need to know about that. “Then the three of us went back to the hotel to meet with you.”

“Dean?” Crowley asked.

I just nodded in confirmation. “Same here.”

“Me too. And that’s what Y/N said as well. So whatever happened, it was in that hotel room with the four of us.”

Have I mentioned how much I hated when Crowley made sense?

“I don’t know about you, but my brain feels kind of overwhelmed right now,” Sam grumbled. “I need a solid four hours of sleep and a truckload of caffeine.”

And I need some time with Y/N to figure out where her head is. Something I thought, but would never say in front of Crowley or his henchmen.

“Besides, we’ve still got this whole bank tech thing to worry about in this timeline.” Y/N was pretty adamant about staying in this timeline, and I wasn’t sure if I could handle leaving her. I knew just how much the death of her daughter cut her open, and to have her back here? Even just as her niece? Well, it was a second chance that Y/N would have never even hoped for in the other timeline.

I couldn’t take that away from her.

Besides, mom and dad were alive over here. Bobby. Kevin. Benny. Ellen. Here, I had an entire family.

Over there, it was just the three of us.

Sure, the world’s situation was a bit more dire, what with the Titans and all. But eventually it was going to have to learn to live without the Winchesters. We weren’t immortal. So why not let it fend for itself now? Hadn’t we done enough?

“I’m not letting you two just walk away!” Crowley’s voice did that squeaky thing it always did when he started losing control of a situation.

“We’ll think about it, Crowley,” I said as I helped Sam up. I don’t know about him, but my muscles forgot how to work correctly.

Well, except for the arm that punched Crowley. Those muscles worked beautifully.

“Yeah,” Sam agreed. “We’ll talk it over with Y/N. After we sleep for a while and let our brains get used to having two completely different lives inside.”

“Humans,” Crowley scoffed.

I didn’t point out that here, he was human too. Instead, Sam and I hobbled back along the road towards the house. While we walked, I caught him up on everything Crowley had said. I’m sure that once Y/N got involved, we would get a lot more information. After all, she had been with Crowley for six hours. We’d barely been with him for an hour.

Y/N.

Her volatile state of mind. Her threat of escaping back to drugs. Sure, Jody was watching her, but that didn’t mean I worried any less about her. The closer we got to the house, the faster I walked.

And the sooner I was met with Jody’s glare. Y/N was curled up next to her on the couch, sleeping with her head on a pillow in Jody’s lap. Jody was softly running her fingers through Y/N’s hair, much like my mom used to do when I got upset. Her careful touch was at war with the sharp way she was watching me.

This wasn’t Jody. This was Mama Bear.

“Boy, I don’t know what you did to this girl, but you’ve got some explaining to do.”

“What happened? What did she say?” I sank down on the floor in front of her and pulled the blanket that was around her waist until it covered her from toes to neck. There was nothing that could keep me away from Y/N at the moment. Not even Jody’s terrifying, motherly glare.

“She was cussing you out pretty good. Both of you.” Now Sam had to share in Jody’s glare as well. Sam, however, shrank back under the weight of her eyes. Wimp. “Something about you ruining everything and being too stubborn to see reason. This poor thing is exhausted—she didn’t even last two minutes once I got her to lay down before she passed out—and you two had her tramping around at all hours of the night. I thought your mama taught you better!”

She did. In this timeline.

“To be fair, Y/N woke us up. She was the one who started this whole thing tonight,” I whispered, unable to tear my eyes from her face. So many memories. So many feelings. I understood the look Y/N gave me when she first saw me after getting her memories back.

It was like seeing a familiar face for the very first time.

I couldn’t let her go. I couldn’t lose her. I don’t know why she didn’t want me to remember how I felt—feel about her, but I wasn’t about to let her get away from me. She could push against me all she wanted, but I wasn’t going to loosen my hold.

If she wanted to stay in this timeline, then I was all too glad to comply. I had a pretty sweet gig. I loved my job, loved working with my team, loved monthly dinners with my parents and Sam. Remembering the other timeline served to make me appreciate everything that much more. Here, I’d only gone to jail when I snuck in to talk to one of the inmates and get some intel from him. Here, I bought Mother’s and Father’s Day cards every year. Here, I helped Sam with his relationship problems, not devil problems.

I liked who I was here.

“Y/N woke me up,” Sam pointed out, drawing me out of my thoughts. “You followed and eavesdropped.”

Jody’s sharp gaze sliced into me, but I refused to look away from Y/N. I wasn’t about to apologize for pushing my way into that conversation. She should have included me in the first place. “Way to throw me under the bus, dude.”

When it became clear I wasn’t going to say anything else to explain myself, Jody sighed heavily. “Dean, it’s obvious that you have some very real feelings for this girl. And I know from experience that no one gets that mad at someone unless they have feelings for them too. I just want you to take a step back and look at the situation. Make sure you aren’t taking advantage of Y/N when she’s weak and vulnerable. She’s just been dragged out of her life and into your crazy secret, world-saving, alter ego world. Slow down and take it easy.”

“I’ve tried to take it slow,” I muttered, thinking back to my hesitancy when Y/N and I started getting emotionally involved over there. I thought about the past few months with her as my assistant and how I tried pushing away feelings. “I didn’t get very far.”

“Dean Winchester—“

“Look, Jody. I love you and I respect your opinions. You know that. But this thing with me and Y/N? It’s… complicated.”

“That’s an understatement,” Sam scoffed, drawing Jody’s attention. He rushed to clarify himself. “Jodes, he’s right. Him and Y/N? They’re a good thing.”

“You’re a good man, Dean. But I’m warning you: if you hurt this precious Y/N who didn’t ask to be dragged into this, then I will skin you alive.”

“Noted.” I wasn’t going to hurt her. I would never hurt her. “Now, I’m going to pick her up and take her back to bed. Are you going to bite my hands off?”

She rolled her eyes and lifted her hands from Y/N’s head. It was a clear signal for me to take her. “You behave yourself.”

Just until I could get her alone and convince her that us being together was a good thing in any timeline.

But once I convinced her of that, all bets were off.

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[imagining-supernatural]

As It Seems: Chapter 8

Table of Contents

Según Parece: Lista De Contenidos

Summary: The three of you meet up with Crowley and you keep trying to talk the Winchesters out of taking the drug

Word Count: 2880

Warnings: Drug mentions. Threat of overdose.

Beta’d By: @kclaire1​. I don’t know how I would do this without you!

PREVIOUS CHAPTER

~Reader’s POV~

“You got both of them to come! That’s great,” Crowley greeted jovially.

In the next second, Dean’s fist not-so-jovially connected with the side of Crowley’s face.

“What was that for?” Crowley’s voice squeaked up an octave as he grabbed at his nose that was already bleeding. At least it didn’t look broken. Here, Crowley couldn’t just snap his fingers and mend his bones.

Neither I nor Sam moved, but Crowley’s goons started menacingly towards Dean. Crowley, however, waved them back. It was probably just a show of good faith, trying to get Dean to let down his guard a little. Whatever it was, I was glad. I knew that Dean could handle himself, but didn’t like watching him do it.

“That was for pointing a gun at Y/N.”

Dammit. Those feelings from the other timeline came rushing in at the sight of Dean standing up for me like this. But I didn’t have any room for them. I was a different person here than I was there. And so was Dean. That made all of these weird feelings of love null and void. All that I had room for here was a normal crush on my hot boss.

But I was quickly learning that normal wasn’t really in the cards for me anymore.

If I was this confused, then just imagine what would happen when Dean remembered how he felt over there too. All of those overwhelming emotions between us couldn’t be good.

“That’s why you came here, Squirrel? To punch me?”

Dean crossed his arms and nodded towards the briefcase that was on the ground beside Crowley. “I also came for that.”

“You’re not getting it,” I said quietly, but as firmly as I could muster.

Dean just rolled his eyes at me. “We’ve already been over this, Y/N.”

“Yes, darling. If the Winchester wants to remember, then who are you to stand in his way?” Crowley pitched in, still holding his face and looking like a wounded puppy. Dean clearly didn’t like Crowley backing him up, because he took another swing at him. Somehow I knew that was coming, because I reacted quickly enough to grab Dean’s arm and pull him to the side.

“That’s why he’s not taking the drug. Crowley, you really think he’s going to be able to control his anger with all those memories when he can barely control it now?”

Crowley inclined his head and narrowed his eyes knowingly towards me. “Is it his anger that you’re really worried about, or the flip side of the coin?”

At my words, Dean jerked his arm out of my grip and raised an eyebrow at me. “What’s he talking about, Y/N?”

Yeah, I wasn’t about to touch that topic. Maybe the one I brought up…

“Nothing, Dean. But… But I just don’t think you know what you’re signing up for.”

“Because you won’t tell me.”

Would that do the trick? Give him and Sam a little taste of their lives in the other timeline to convince them they didn’t want to know the rest? Well, it was worth a shot.

“You already know that your parents are dead over there. And I told you that half the people in that house are dead too. What you don’t know is how they died. You don’t know how badly that messed you up. So many of them sacrificed themselves for you.” And Kevin…

Crowley jumped in, cutting me off. “Why are you telling them these things when they can just take the drug and remember it all?”

I didn’t look away from the brothers. “Because knowing and remembering are two completely different things. If you take that drug, you’re opening yourselves up to an entire world of hurt. Over here, you were raised right. Your mother gave you emotional support. Your dad played catch with you and joked around. You went to high school dances and stayed on the same high school wrestling team for all four years. You had summer jobs and both of you graduated college.

“Over here, you’re both whole. You know how to deal with your problems. Over there? Your mom died and your dad raised you like soldiers. Over there, you deal with your problems by burying them in gallons of alcohol. If you take that drug, you’re just going to let in an entire world of pain that you have no idea how to deal with because you never dealt with it over there.”

“Is that what happened to you when you took the drug?” Sam asked, getting right to the middle of what I didn’t want to discuss. “You have these problems that you never dealt with?”

“Yes.” Blunt honesty. That was all that I had left. “I managed to stay away from drugs after my daughter died, but I just traded one addiction for another—hunting. Killing things—and now I don’t know how to cope. I don’t want you two to go through this too.”

Dean had been staring off into the distance, eyebrows drawn together in intense thought for the last half of my speech. Still not looking at me, he spoke. “It’s not your decision to make, Y/N.”

“I know.” But how I wished it was. I couldn’t make their decisions for them. But I was still in charge of my own future. And if I couldn’t convince the Winchesters, then maybe I could flip Crowley. “Crowley, if you give them the drug, then I won’t do whatever it is you want me to. Not a chance.”

“You’ve made it pretty clear that you won’t be doing it either way. At least this way, the Winchesters have a chance at convincing you.”

Why was I having such bad luck with arguments tonight? It was like I was the only one who could see clearly. No one believed me that I knew what was best. They were only thinking of themselves and—

I needed them to think about something other than themselves. They needed to realize just how far I was willing to go to keep them safe. They needed to see the reality of the situation. It was a fundamental part of myself to hide just how bad I was hurting. I didn’t ever want to stir someone’s sympathies on my behalf.

But if that was what it took, then maybe it was time I really show them how I was handling everything. Or not handling everything.

Maybe that would convince them that they didn’t want the drug.

“In the car, earlier, you told me: once an addict, always an addict.” Hopefully this was an ace up my sleeve, and not just a bunch of brightly colored handkerchiefs tied together in an endless rope. “Well, if you give them that drug, then I can guarantee you that I will go out and find the real stuff for myself. Pick up right where I left off. You need me, for some reason. That means that you probably need me sober, clean, and capable of making my own decisions. You need me alive.”

“Y/N, what are you—“

I cut Dean off in favor of continuing my pseudo negotiation, but mostly ultimatum, with Crowley. “After everything I’ve remembered today, after everything I’ve done, and how I haven’t worked through any of my issues because I was such a repressor in the other timeline, do you really think I have the willpower to stop once I get that high again?”

When I’d injected myself with the needle earlier, I could have sworn my body remembered every single time I’d shot up in the other timeline. It had prepared itself for the release that it knew was coming. I wasn’t in withdrawal, or even in danger of relapsing, but I could feel it on the edge. I knew that it would only take one time for me to completely fall in.

“I’m barely holding on. If you give them the drug and make them remember all of the horrible things they’ve done, you know that I’m going to blame myself and there ain’t nothing you can do to convince me otherwise.”

“Y/N,” Dean tried to get my attention again, but I wasn’t done.

“Once an addict, always an addict, right Crowley? You gave me the keys to the car to drive myself right off the edge of the cliff. It’s only fair that I do the same for you.”

To clarify my last sentence, I held out my arm as if offering him my blood. My human blood. I hadn’t forgotten his addiction, and judging by the way his eyes latched right onto my veins, neither had he. Sure, I was being a bit dramatic, but any situation with Crowley warranted a little drama.

“You can feel it, can’t you? You want it. It wouldn’t take much. And once you had a taste, you wouldn’t be able to stop.” His eyes slowly wandered up to mine and I delivered my ultimatum. “So tell me, Crowley. Are you willing to risk my life on the off chance that the Winchesters will agree with you, then be able to convince me to kill Addy again just so we can go back to that horrible timeline? You give them that drug, and we all lose.”

It was just like in the movies where there is complete silence after the character delivers their last line and does a mic drop. All eyes on me. Only the cool midnight breeze to prove that everything hadn’t frozen.

“Damn,” Sam whispered. “Now I see why you hired her as your assistant, Dean.”

I kept my eyes on Crowley. He was the supplier. If he gave in, then I wouldn’t have to worry if I’d convinced the Winchesters. No drug, no problem.

Crowley finally inclined his head and took a step back. I was just starting to relax when he nodded at his two goons and they both surged forward. I struggled against their hold, but it proved useless when I was handcuffed to the chain-link fence in the next moment. Both Sam and Dean had rushed forward to tear the men off of me, but they stopped when the goons stepped back of their own free will.

“What are you doing, Crowley?” Anxiety coated my words and I pulled against the cool metal of the cuff, completely disregarding the pain it caused my wrist.

“Taking your power away from you. You can’t go find anything to OD on if you can’t leave. Now the boys can make their own decisions without the guilt-trip you just took them on.”

He looked all too pleased with himself as he turned back to the Winchesters and opened the briefcase where three vials were nestled in a nest of dramatic black velvet. Two were full of the purple liquid that I’d injected myself a few hours earlier. One was smaller, but had a much darker, almost black liquid filling it.

“Well, boys? What’ll it be?”

~Dean’s POV~

What’ll it be? I could barely figure out what just happened. The ramifications of Y/N’s speech. How deep her feelings went on this issue. I thought I knew her pretty well, but in the past twenty-four hours I realized just how wrong I was.

Well, I knew the Y/N that didn’t believe the fairytale that Crowley fed her. Or, I guess, the nightmare. Would she really run off to find something to overdose on if Sam and I took this drug? Or was that just bluster and manipulation?

And if Y/N was changed that much from taking this drug and having these memories, what would happen to me? Assuming I believed, of course.

And I didn’t.

But if I did, then what kind of a person was I? Raised like a soldier, alcoholic, used to people I love dying… And what had Y/N meant when she said that I didn’t know how my friends and family died? Was there a reason that was significant? Even with our team here, we all understood that we might need to sacrifice ourselves for the greater good. Why was it such a big deal over there?

And Sam? My little brother. I couldn’t imagine him drinking away the pain. He would never survive a soldier’s life. He was just too good and there was no way he could be that different in the other timeline.

I didn’t believe, but I was curious.

“Dean,” Sam said, drawing my attention to him. When I looked over, he just raised his eyebrow, silently asking what I was thinking. I responded by tilting my head and pursing my lips to let him know that I had no idea, but I was thinking about it. Sam widened his eyes and bobbed his head to the side in understanding, on the same page.

“I hate when they do that,” Crowley said amicably to Y/N, as if they were friends. I had no idea what it was about the guy, but every time he moved, I had the nearly uncontrollable urge to punch him.

Y/N just ignored him. “Dean, I’m begging you.”

And there it was. The way she said my name. It was different than the way she said it the entire year she’d worked for me. It was more familiar. There were layers to that one single word. I had to know why. “I’m sorry, Y/N.”

She squeezed her eyes shut in defeat and let her head fall back against the chain-link fence with a rattle.

“Good, good,” Crowley said, carefully taking the two vials with the same liquid out “I knew you boys would make the right decision.”

It felt so wrong that the right decision was something that Crowley wanted and that Y/N was fighting against.

But this was. I had to do this. If there was a completely different version of me, then I deserved to know.

“Here you boys go, don’t drop it. This stuff was not cheap.” Honestly, by that point, everything out of Crowley’s mouth sounded like the teacher in Peanuts. Wah, Wah, Wah. I’d made my decision and I just wanted him to shut up.

He handed me the vial and I stared at the small amount of mystery liquid inside. This was what had confused Y/N so much. This tiny little thing. And here I was, getting ready to follow in her footsteps.

“You’ll wanna sit down before you shoot up,” Y/N said in a flat voice. “Or lay down.”

“What?” Sam seemed as confused by her helpfulness as I was.

She seemed annoyed by our reactions. “What? I don’t want you to, but since you are, I don’t want you to fall down and hit your head when you pass out.”

“Pass out?”

“Yeah. It’ll feel like you’re starting to get high and things will start to look wacky and a little 70s psychedelic, but after a minute or two of that, you’ll pass out and feel like you’re dreaming or hallucinating. It feels like, well, an entire lifetime. But apparently I was only out for, like, twenty minutes.”

Knowing what to expect made this easier. I still hated the look of betrayal on Y/N’s face, but this was something I had to do. “Well, Y/N? Last chance to stop us.”

I prided myself on being able to read her expressions and microexpressions and body language, but the way she held herself when her eyes locked with mine just then… I had absolutely no idea what was going through her head. This wasn’t my Y/N.

Finally she sighed and looked away. “Just keep in mind that these are two separate timelines. Whatever you remember from the other one doesn’t have any bearing on this one. We don’t have to bring things over. Just like Vegas, what happened over there, can stay over there.”

What was she trying to hide? Was I really such a horrible person?

“Just like you let your daughter’s death stay over there?” Crowley challenged with an air of arrogance.

This time, Sam had to hold me back. “Dean, let’s just get this over with.”

It wasn’t the first time I’d done drugs, but I always stayed away from the hardcore stuff that went right into my bloodstream. Sam as well. So we had to rely on Crowley explaining what to do all while feeling the heavy weight of Y/N’s eyes on me. She pitched in every once in a while with her two cents, and it surprised me how much she knew about… well… all of this. And that was enough to almost make me back out. The Y/N that I knew wouldn’t have a clue about any of this. She wouldn’t have tips about the right way to stick a needle in your arm so it didn’t hurt as bad later. Or how to find the right vein on the first try. Or to double check that the needle was clean because you can never trust the person giving it to you.

But the Y/N that came out of the other timeline knew these things. And she knew them well. It made me ache for her, just wondering what kind of a life she believed she had led.

“Last chance,” she whispered once we were finished preparing ourselves.

I locked eyes with her and strengthened my resolve. “See you on the other side, sweetheart.”

NEXT CHAPTER

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