[h3] Dean Winchester[/h3]

Dean sighed, feeling completely irrational as Mika explained that she didn’t see Anna as a threat, and also thought that Anna was just worried about his reactions to her existence.  He had to admit that he had been cold to her, and that he had essentially threatened her behind her back, without even feeling her out, first.  It was something that was starting to nag at his stomach a bit, “Yeah.  I guess you’re right.  I’ll um…I’ll have a talk with her when we finish here.  I’ll just…talk to her.”

As Mika stepped back up to him, he placed his phone back into his pocket and sighed, staring cross eyed down at her finger as she tapped it on his nose.  He shook his head and tilted it to the side with a smirk, “Since when are you all work?  Once upon a time, you would have played fun before work.  One bed.  Time to ourselves.  Eh?”

He leaned in and pressed a soft kiss to her lips, before pulling back, “Besides, all options are taken care of.  I just sent Sam a text, after receiving a weird one from Cason.  We’re gonna take the house, since it’s just hitting up the wife and shouldn’t be too much trouble.  Sam and Nat can take the school, and Cason and Esme are apparently in one piece.  They got stopped by that demon army, we might have failed to mention to them.  At least he said something about demons.  They’re on their way here.”

“But Esme’s out of commission…”, he started again, staring at the ceiling to make sure he had remembered everything.  He then turned his eyes back to hers with a smile, “Just like the old days.  Partners…”

[h3] Anna [/h3]

Annabeth nodded with a small smile at Sam’s reassurance.  Mika did seem like the type to leave things alone, even if she felt the need to talk about them with Dean.  If she was concerned, Anna felt like maybe she could be friends with Mika, and maybe Dean would come around too.  She nodded once again, and stepped closer to Sam as he brought up the night they met.

Mika was the one who wanted to let her go, and wanted Sam to make his own decisions.  Shew as the one who had talked Dean down, when Sam couldn’t.  Taking a deep breath, she glanced over at Natalia and matched her smile.  She felt safe around Nat, as she seemed to also be a good adversary to Dean, if it was needed.  They got along but she could see that Nat would be formidable at holding Dean’s emotions at bay, if he was going to hurt someone.

“I have noticed that she smiles at me sometimes.  So, I guess that’s a start, along with the free ride.”, she quipped back at Nat, her shoulders loosening up the more she thought about things being okay.  When Nat suggested they go back to their room and relax, she couldn’t help smile and let a small chuckle through her nose, still a bit surprised that Dean had let her and Sam have a private room.  She turned to Sam, as Nat stepped away from him, reaching her arm out to brush against Nat’s, and then dropped her hand to lace fingers with Sam.

“So, um…we’re bunkmates.  I was a little too tired the other night to notice, but you better not snore.”, she teased him, as she pulled him toward their room.  She slipped the key into the lock and opened the door, pulling him inside.  Tossing her bag on the ground, she looked around the room and raised her eyebrows, “And only one bed?”

[h3] Duke[/h3]

Duke lowered his eyes to scan Esme’s face, as she placed his hat back onto his head.  His face broke into a bright smile and he leaned his cheek against the top of her head as she laid her head back down against his shoulder.  After a few moments, he saw her face tilt back to look at him again, and he met her gaze as they made it almost to his truck.

At her use of his old nickname, his heart fluttered in his chest, and his smile widened.  He shrugged his shoulders at her question, glancing up at the truck as they approached and he answered, “Everywhere, really.  I go where I’m needed.  I take care of problems, track down hunters that use way too many aliases, and mostly, I just hunt when I find weird things that have absolutely nothing to do with demons.  I’ve been trying not to go down that road again, yet here I am.”

“But from the sound of it, you missed me a little bit.”, he chuckled, tightening her elbow around her back as he pulled his hand away from her, to open the passenger door of his truck.  Swinging it open a bit more, he stepped forward and gently sat her on the seat, careful with her thigh.  As he sat her down, he brought a hand up to brush her hair away from her face, smoothing it behind her ears on both sides, before running his fingers gently over the deep bruise that had formed over her eye, “Let’s get you back to the motel, so I can clean you up.  Sound good?”

He smiled, staring at her for a moment, as he scanned her eyes.  He then stepped back quickly, as if snapping himself out of a memory, and pulled the seatbelt across her body, clicking it into place, and putting the strap behind her body, so he didn’t hurt her injured shoulder.

Walking around to the drivers door, he opened it and brought the old truck to life with a loud roar, peeling out of the gravel parking lot.