God, the way she undid him.There were no words for it—just a steady, consuming pull he couldn’t shake, no matter how many times he told himself to stop.

Those long, ivory legs he couldn’t stop looking at—legs he imagined coiled around him, strong and silken. Her hands, gentle and small, like they had never had to hold anything heavy or harsh. He thought about them often, what they’d feel like against his chest, his neck, his back. Thought about how her mouth would taste—full and unhurried, like ripe fruit in the middle of summer. And those hips, soft and perfect, he could picture under his palms, anchoring him, grounding him. Drawing him in and refusing to let go.

He would’ve crossed the line already if it weren’t for one simple, immutable truth: she was Cas’s daughter.

Cas. His oldest friend. The man who knew all his worst stories and still called him brother.

They came up to the lake every summer. It was tradition, the kind that stitched itself into the rhythm of their lives without needing to be named. Cas fished, his daughter read. Dean visited sometimes, when he could spare the time. But this year, Cas had invited him with more insistence. “You need a break, man. Come up, sit by the water, drink a beer, don’t think.”

Dean hadn’t realized what he was walking into.

The moment he saw her—standing barefoot on the deck in a loose T-shirt and cut-off shorts, hair in a messy bun, smiling like she hadn’t aged a day since she was sixteen—he felt something sharp and deep crack open inside him.

He tried to ignore it. Pretended it was nothing. But it wasn’t.

She was different now. Still soft, still bright—but with something womanly lingering at the edge of her laugh, her gaze, her casual brushes against his arm when she passed by. He told himself it was in his head. That he was tired. That it was just proximity and too much whiskey at night.

And still—each evening, when she brought him an extra blanket for the couch, her fingertips brushed his hand just long enough to make his chest burn. Each morning, when she padded into the kitchen in oversized socks and made coffee, humming under her breath, he sat at the table like a man punished by his own silence.

While he and Cas sat on the dock in the golden hush of afternoon, rods in hand, talking or pretending to fish, she would appear now and then—smiling, asking if they needed anything, looping her arms around her father’s neck with a tenderness that made Dean’s throat tighten.

She wasn’t doing anything wrong. That was the worst part. She was just… being her. Warm, attentive, thoughtful. She laughed too loudly at her father’s bad jokes, rolled her eyes at Dean with a grin when Cas went off on long tangents, tied her hair up with a pencil when she read and left half-finished cups of tea everywhere. He noticed it all. Every stupid, beautiful thing.And he hated himself for noticing.

That night by the fire, everything felt too quiet. The lake was still, the wind soft as breath. Cas had gone to bed early, leaving them alone with the crackle of the flames and the dark curtain of the trees behind them.

She sat close—closer than she needed to—wrapped in a blanket that had once been Dean’s, her knees drawn to her chest. The glow of the fire danced across her face, casting shadows along her cheekbones, catching in the gold flecks of her eyes. She turned to him every now and then, speaking softly, and he’d nod or murmur a response, pretending to listen when all he could think about was the way the collar of her sweater had slipped just slightly off her shoulder.

He gripped his beer like a lifeline. The glass was slick with condensation, but warm now, forgotten.

He was gone. Fully. Irrevocably. And he didn’t know how he was supposed to come back from it.