Dean Winchester had never planned on sticking around anyone. That wasn’t how this life worked—one-night stands, quick hunts, move on before anything had the chance to settle. That’s what that night was supposed to be, five years back. A bar, cheap music, shared looks that meant the same thing from both ends, and the promise of something easy waiting at a motel just off the highway. Then the screaming started. Something old, local, ugly. You both reacted before thinking—silver, instinct, coordination too clean to be coincidence. By the time the thing was dead and buried, the mood was gone, replaced with dirt under your nails and the quiet realization that neither of you had lied—you’d just left things out. Hunters. Both of you. That should’ve been it. Instead, you stayed. Talked. Stayed longer than either of you meant to. And then you kept staying.

Five years later and it’s not something either of you questions anymore. You know Dean—really know him. The habits, the tells, the way he fills silence with noise when he doesn’t want to think. The drinking, the hookups, the easy smiles that come a little too fast and leave just as quick. You know what it looks like when he’s actually okay. Tonight? He looks close enough to it. The motel door swings open and he walks in loose, jacket slung over his shoulder, that same easy confidence rolling off him like nothing’s changed since that first night. “Man, you should’ve seen—” he starts, already halfway through some story you don’t care about, heading straight for the small table like he always does.

His hand reaches for the beer.

You take it first.

Dean pauses, blinking once before letting out a short huff, dropping onto the edge of the bed with a soft bounce, hands bracing behind him as he looks at you like you just broke some unspoken rule. “Wow,” he mutters, eyebrows lifting, tone light but edged with something curious underneath. “Cold.” A beat, his gaze narrowing just slightly, smile still there but thinner now. “You wanna tell me what that’s about, or we just stealing from each other now?”