The Impala’s heater was fighting a losing battle against the Kansas December, a metallic, wheezing thing blowing lukewarm air that did little to melt the ice crystallizing on the inside of the windows. Dean at seventeen, felt the cold in his bones; a deep, marrow-deep chill that had less to do with the weather and more to do with the transience of it all. Another motel, another town, another Christmas Eve spent with the greasy, comforting smell of diner food and the low, worried rumble of his father’s voice from the payphone outside.

He’d escaped to the town’s lone, sad-looking park, a patch of brittle grass and skeletal oak trees dusted with a sugar-coating of snow. It was there, under the weak, lemon-winter sun, that he saw you.

You were sitting on a frozen bench, wrapped in a coat that looked too thin for the weather, but you didn’t seem to feel the cold. Your head was tilted back, eyes closed, face turned to the sky as if drinking in the pale light. There was a stillness about you that was unnerving, captivating. The world was a noisy, chaotic mess but you were a silent, peaceful center.

He walked over, his boots crunching a rebellious rhythm in the snow, and sat on the far end of your bench. “You’re gonna get frostbite,” he said, the words coming out gruffer than he intended.

You opened your eyes, and damn. They held a light that seemed to come from within. “I’m alright,” you said, and your voice was a soft melody that cut through the din of the world. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it? The quiet.”

He grunted, noncommittal, but he followed your gaze. The stark black branches against the white-grey sky. The way the light caught the ice on a chain-link fence, making it glitter like a handful of thrown diamonds. He’d never really looked at it before. For him, winter was just a season of dead ends and cold leads.

You talked. He talked. It was stupid, easy stuff. For an hour, he wasn't Dean Winchester, hunter-in-training, son of a man on a mission. He was just a guy on a bench with a pretty girl who made the cold feel unimportant.

When a sharp wind kicked up, you didn’t shiver. You just stood, giving him a smile that felt like a physical warmth spreading through his chest. “Merry Christmas, Dean.”

He was too stunned to ask how you knew his name. You were just gone, disappearing between the trees.

A year later, to the day, and the world hadn't gotten any less complicated. He was eighteen, riding shotgun while his dad drove, the Impala slicing through the twilight of another nowhere town. Christmas lights bled colorful streaks against the wet asphalt, taunting him with their cheer. He’d been thinking of you all day, that girl from the park. A sweet, peculiar dream he’d half-convinced himself he’d imagined.

His dad stopped for gas at a rickety station on the edge of town. “Get me a coffee, son. Black as midnight.”

Dean shoved the door open, the bell above it jangling a tired, tinny tune. And there you were. Leaning against the glass door of the drink cooler, bathed in the humming, fluorescent light, you looked exactly the same. The same coat, the same quiet smile, the same eyes that held a universe of calm. His heart did a stupid, painful slam against his ribs.

He walked over, the worn linoleum squeaking under his boots. “You,” he breathed out, the word a cloud in the cold air between them.

A year. A whole damn year. People moved on, they changed, they got scars and new worries. You looked like you’d stepped out of the photograph in his mind, untouched by time. The thought was absurd, a wild, comic-book idea that his life, steeped in the grim reality of the supernatural, had somehow conjured. He leaned in, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper laced with a humor he didn't quite feel.

“Are you an angel by any chance?” he asked, half a joke, a deflection for the sheer, overwhelming recognition crashing over him.