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Here's the thing about Dean Di Laurentis: he likes women. He likes the way they laugh and the way they smell and the way they look at him when he says the right thing at the right time, which is often, because he's good at it. He likes sex—likes it the way some people like running or cooking or whatever the fuck normal people do with their free time—and he has never once felt the need to apologize for any of it. It is, maybe, the thing he is most sure of about himself. The one corner of his life that has never required examination.
So, it is genuinely inconvenient that Allie Hayes has made him examine all of it.
“Who is she?”
Dean’s shoulders immediately tense as Garrett comes up beside him, fingers tightening around the bottle of beer in his hands. The guilt comes and goes; Logan’s voice in his ear – his don’t shit where you eat ebbing and flowing as the days go on. It is December now—two months, maybe three (though he is definitely, definitely not counting), and he and Allie spend more time together than not. He’s not sure what that means, what they are, but he is a smart guy and he knows enough to know that it has to mean something. It’s an evolutionary process, he muses. These things are bound to happen. He knows more about her than he knows about himself, he thinks sometimes, and it inevitably scares the shit out of him.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Dean mutters.
Allie’s eyeing them from across Malones; he looks up, and she’s there, smiling, and his heart does something odd inside of his chest. And seriously, when the fuck did this start happening? When did things like butterflies worm themselves into his life? When did he become one of those guys who thought about more than just sex?
It’s starting to make him sick.
“Are you and…?” Garrett trails off, and Dean steels himself, standing up straight. He thinks about lying for half a second. Thinks about stretching the truth just a little bit farther, but despite popular opinion, he is trying to be better about these things. He is trying to be a better man. Allie makes him want to be a better man, and Dean understands how much of a ridiculous thought that is, how so unlike him the very notion is.
He also knows there is absolutely no way of escaping it, so he replies with a curt no and continues avoiding eye contact.
“You’re…” Garrett trails off, eyebrow raised, searching for the right word. “Happy,” he says, an odd smile playing on his lips, and Dean isn’t really sure how to take it—whether it is an accusation or a mere observation. He has never been able to tell with Garrett.
“I’m not allowed to be happy?”
“No. No, I mean, you’re allowed, of course, but you generally aren’t this annoying about it.”
Dean rolls his eyes, tight-lipped. “Don’t you, you know, have actual things to do?”
“Your resistance to the subject is giving you away,” Garrett says, laughter falling between them, but Dean is already up and out of his seat, walking away.
He passes Allie on the way to the bar, and she catches his wrist, just for a second, just long enough that no one would notice unless they were looking. Her fingers are cold from her drink, and her eyebrows lift in a question—you okay?—and he hates that she can read him already, hates even more that it settles something in his chest.
"Later," he says, low enough that only she hears it, and her hand drops away like it was never there.
Dean drives home with the windows down even though it's December and his hands are too cold on the steering wheel. He does this sometimes—lets the air hit him until he can't think about anything except how fucking freezing it is. It's a reset. It usually works.
Tonight it doesn't.
Happy. Garrett had said it like it was a foreign language. And the worst part is Dean can't even argue with it because he'd felt it too—that stupid, involuntary thing his face does whenever Allie is in the room. He used to be better at this. He used to be able to compartmentalize, keep things in their proper boxes: hockey, school, girls, fun. Four boxes. Clean and simple. Allie doesn't stay in her box. She's in all of them now, and he doesn't remember giving her permission.
His phone buzzes on the passenger seat. He doesn't check it until he's parked, engine off, sitting in the driveway of the house for a full minute pretending he has any self-control left.
It's an address. A time. No emoji, no context.
His grin is stupid anyway.
Dean is on his knees between her thighs. Her fingers tangle in his hair, grip his shoulders. He kisses the skin on the inside of her thighs, slides a finger between them. His grin is slow and entirely too pleased with itself when he finds her wet and aching; he licks her, just once, and he loves the way his name falls from her lips, the way she arches into his touch.
There is a place inside him, deep and buried, that thinks he might love her, just a little, but he’s not that guy, and that isn’t what this is—not yet, anyway—so he follows a routine that is as familiar as breathing and buries it.
“People are talking,” he breathes, eyes drifting upwards, watching her. He likes to watch her; it’s quickly becoming one of his most favorite things in the entire world. Her grin is slow, lips twitching upwards beautifully.
“That surprise you?” Allie is breathless, fingers tightening around his shoulders.
He smiles, dips a finger into her, then two and her own curls into his hair. “Not really.”
“Good,” she sighs, and she’s gritting her teeth when she continues, “now that we’ve established that, will you fuck me now?”
Dean is laughing when he hooks her thighs over his shoulders.
And if Garrett asks again tomorrow, the answer will be the same. There is no one. There is nothing. Dean is fine, and this is just sex, and he is not counting the days.