Bobby Singer’s House, Sioux Falls Forest – 1998

The silence was nearly absolute, broken only by the distant caw of a crow and the occasional creak of the old wooden house. Sunlight filtered lazily through the dusty curtains, casting golden beams across the worn floorboards. The air smelled of old paper, gun oil, and stale coffee.

Sam was sitting on the battered couch in the living room, a thick demonology book open on his lap, but his eyes were no longer reading. The tip of his pencil rested against his chin, forgotten. His gaze followed—without him even realizing—the figure moving across the room.

Cherry.

She was exploring the overflowing bookshelves with restless curiosity, dragging her fingers along the weathered spines of Bobby’s books, mumbling quietly to herself. She wore a flannel shirt far too old and large to have ever been hers—probably Dean’s—and a pair of worn jeans. Her blonde hair was tied up messily in a loose bun, with a few strands escaping to frame her face.

Sam swallowed hard.

He knew he should be studying. He knew that if Bobby were there, he’d be giving him hell for “drooling over the girl like some dumb teenager.” But in that moment, Sam wasn’t the studious one, the hunter-in-training, the boy living in the shadow of his father’s bad decisions. He was just a 16-year-old kid, looking at the girl he’d always loved, too afraid to say it out loud.

Cherry pulled an old book with a worn cover from the shelf. Blowing the dust off a little too forcefully, she coughed and laughed at the same time, turning to Sam with a playful sparkle in her blue eyes.