Dean opened the door to his room and shut it quickly, leaning his head against the cold wood.  He fought his face as it twisted into a pitiful scared expression and his breath caught somewhere in between his lungs and his throat in a loud sob.  He hadn’t been able to say Mika’s name out loud for weeks.  Every time her name slipped off his own lips, an invisible force would punch him in the stomach, and his head would race through memories that he tried to repress with alcohol.

Hearing Sam’s voice utter her name was almost worse, as if the universe wouldn’t let him escape the nightmares.  It was almost as if he was meant to suffer.  He hyperventilated for a few moments, his face pressed against the door as he cried, trying to get enough of it out of his system to at least move to his bed, and then he wrenched himself from the door and stepped over to sit on his bed.

Sitting the bottle of whiskey on the bedside table, he unscrewed the top, and brought the bottle to his lips with no glass, taking a long drink as if he was dying of thirst.  He dried his mouth, using the back of his wrist to dry both eyes and took a deep breath.

“You’re okay.  C’mon.  Get it together.”, he grumbled to himself.

[hr]

After a few hours, Dean could vaguely smell food cooking in the kitchen.  Typically, Sam brought him sandwiches and the odd beer to sit outside his bedroom door, but he didn’t usually cook anything.  Dean furrowed his brow as he stood from his bed, contemplating whether or not Sam was trying to form some sort of weird grief intervention, and had planned to butter him up through his stomach.

He carefully stepped back toward the door with a shuddered sigh, and opened it, stepping out into the hallway.  The smell only got stronger as he entered the open space of the hall, and he furrowed his brow even deeper.  Walking out into the office, Dean walked down the steps through the War Room, and didn’t look around.  He just went straight to the kitchen.

When he stepped into the large kitchen, he raised his eyebrows, seeing Lexi standing there, “You’re um…you’re still here.  And you’re…cooking dinner?”

Dean stepped further into the kitchen, and got a better glance at Lexi.  He had just enough alcohol in his system to make him feel a little less guilty for taking in her features, and he realized that the reason he had felt guilty, earlier in the evening, was because she really was attractive.  She carried herself like someone he would at least give time to, and hang out with…and she was wearing his apron.