Dean/Carmen - Once Upon a Dream

[iluvroadrunner6]

Fandom: Supernatural
Title: Once Upon a Dream
Author iluvroadrunner6
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Dean Winchester/Carmen Porter, mentions of Sam Winchester/Jessica Moore
Warnings: N/A
Summary: Five times Dean nearly blew up the kitchen (or an appliance related to it) and one time he didn’t.
Author’s Notes: Written for ficwriter1966 for the spn_hetexchange. The first two sections are Wish!Dean. Everything after that is operating on the idea that instead of going back to the real world at the end of “What is and What Never Should Be,” he stayed. There’s a bit of peripheral angst, which I apologize for, but I think I managed to keep it mostly fluffy.
Disclaimer: I don’t own. They belong to Kripke. I’m just borrowing and will put everything back where I found it.



i.

This was all Sam’s fault.

Really. Completely the fault of Sam. He was the one who turned the gas up too high on the grill when Dean was trying to light it, and he was the reason why Dean was now sans eyebrows, his favorite shirt had caught on fire, and he was now sitting on the ER, licking his wounds (metaphorically, otherwise that’s just gross) and glaring in his brother’s direction every five minutes. Sam, however, was taking the opportunity to look far too amused and Dean didn’t like it.

He didn’t like it at all

“When we get out of here? You are so dead.”

“Oh, come on, man,” Sam smirked. “You were asking for it.”

“I was asking for it? I was asking for this? I have no friggin’ eyebrows!”

Sam just shrugged as he leaned back in his chair, the damn smirk still on his face. Dean knew that this was most likely payback for something that he did or Sam thought he did, and if this was still about that prom bitch, someone—namely Sam—was going to get punched in the face.

But for right now, he was just mourning the loss of his eyebrows and … checking out the fantastic ass that just happened to back her way into the room. She was pulling in a silver cart behind her, carrying a batch of medical supplies that were probably needed to fix whatever it was that his brother had done to him. Dean could just catch out of the corner of his eye the way his brother was rolling his eyes at Dean’s ogling of the nurse’s ass.

And when she turned around—she was still just as impressive.

“Hi,” she said with a small smile. “I’m Nurse Porter, and I’ll be your triage nurse today.”

“I feel better already,” Dean replied, flashing her the usual winning Dean Winchester smile. “I’m Dean.”

Nurse Porter looked him over for a moment, before smirking a bit. “I bet those eyebrows really do wonders for you, don’t they?”

Sam was laughing so hard he couldn’t breathe.

Dean still wanted to kill him.

ii.

Carmen should have never left Dean alone in her kitchen.

Not that she had known that the kitchen would have had this exact reaction to the presence of her somewhat-boyfriend, but still—leaving them alone was a bad idea.

Dean’s apartment was being fumigated. They weren’t anywhere close to living together yet, but he was spending practically every night there anyway, it made sense to just cohabitate for the however many days required. Besides, Dean had to work, she had her shifts at the hospital—it wasn’t like they saw each other all the time anyway.

It was nice, having him there. Things got fixed when they needed to be, she didn’t have to wait for the repairman and miss work, there was always someone with take-out waiting for her when she got home—at least, until the last night of Dean’s stay where he tried to make her dinner as a thank you for putting him up and—well, for lack of a better explanation, her kitchen exploded.

When she came home to the smell of smoke, she had panicked. She had panicked right up until the point where she rushed into the kitchen and saw Dean, looking a little flustered and trying to fan the smoke coming from her stove out the window.

“Hey, sweetheart,” he said with a bit of a half-grin, which she was starting to recognize as Dean’s apology grin. “How’s it goin’?”

“Dean.”

“Yeah?”

“What’d you do to my kitchen?”

“I was making dinner?”

“Making dinner.”

“Yes, and as I was doing so, it seemed that your stove decided it didn’t like what I was cooking and attack me.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Swear to God.”

She sighed, before heading over to the sink and tossing a sponge at him. “You clean it up. I’ll order the pizza.”

Dean caught the sponge as it hit his shoulder, before smirking back at her. “It’s the thought that counts?”

“Tell that to my stove, Winchester.”

iii.

Dean was convinced that Carmen’s stove was possessed.

He had done pretty much everything but throw holy water on it and it still wouldn’t do what he wanted it to do. All she had told him to do was put the leftover soup his mom had made in a pot and place it on the stove to simmer, and then sit back and let it cook. A monkey could do it. A monkey could do it while eating a friggin’ banana.

Dean couldn’t seem to do it without blowing shit up.

Granted, he didn’t have unlimited experience with stoves. The best he usually got were the below-average motel stoves and those took a book of matches and being ready to jump away at a moment’s notice in order to light. This, however, all it should have taken was a flick of the wrist and he nearly walked away with second degree burns.

As he said—damn thing’s possessed.

Never mind the fact that he still wasn’t entirely sure what he was doing here. He knew where he was and what he was doing, but he couldn’t just bring himself to care anymore. There was something missing in the world back home, something that wasn’t missing here and while he could take the easy way out and say that it was his mother, or Jessica, or Carmen, or the fact that for once in a long time he could look at Sam and see that he was actually happy. It was filling all the voids, and while he knew that most of it was the djinn, trying to keep him here, keep him as something to feed on—he couldn’t say he cared. His number had been called up a long time ago.

He came running out of the kitchen, away from the demon stove, as Carmen was coming in from work. She looked up at him, before shaking her head slightly and looking at him with a bit of an amused smirk. “I thought you managed to work things out with my stove?”

He glanced over at her, almost confused before he realized that she was referencing something that he couldn’t remember—from the him before. He flashed her an easy smile, before shrugging it off. “Guess we still have a few differences of opinion.”

“Uh-huh,” she sighed, before moving closer and wrapping her arms around his neck. “Did it take it personally?”

“Extremely,” he murmured as she kissed him softly. “It took it very, very personally.”

“Well, how ‘bout I make it up to you,” she murmured as she started to back him towards the bedroom. “And then see if I could mediate this problem between the two of you.”

Dean groaned softly into the kiss when his back hit the door, and pulled away enough so that he could lift her up and get her to wrap her legs around his waist. “Sweetheart, you read my mind.”

At the end of the day—this place wasn’t so bad.

iv.

She knew there was something different about Dean.

It happened sometime around his mother’s birthday. After that it was as though something had snapped inside of him, and he became someone else. Someone who was still Dean, but just a few degrees to the left of what he used to be. It was odd, and he wasn’t the man she fell in love with, but he was close enough that she didn’t really care. Besides the changes weren’t all bad things. He was a little sweeter, a little more of a home body—the old Dean seemed to be always itching to roam, but not this one. More often than not he was home and that meant more to her than anything else did. That didn’t mean there weren’t a few things he missed, however. She really was starting to miss the cooking.

It wasn’t that the old Dean was a master chef or cooked food that made her toes curl, but he could at least make a grilled cheese without burning it to a charcoal crisp. It seemed that with that small switchover, he couldn’t manage anything in a kitchen past spaghetti-o’s. And she was really starting to get sick of the spaghetti-o’s.

That thought, however, was the furthest thing from her mind at the moment. It was the weekend, they both had the day off, and she was planning on enjoying it to the best of her ability. She was stretched out on her stomach in bed, hands buried beneath the pillows, and had no intention of moving until she felt the soft press of his hands against her back.

“Mmmm,” she sighed with a smile. “Morning.”

“Morning,” he whispered, pressing a kiss between her shoulder blades. She sucked in a slow breath at that one and caught the scent of something interesting in the air.

“Is that pancakes?”

“Yeah,” he said with a grin, brushing kisses across her shoulder. “Figured that we had the time—I could try my hand at making breakfast in bed.”

“And the kitchen didn’t try and kill you?” she teased, rolling over to face him and looking at the tray with pancakes, fresh fruit and coffee. “I’m impressed.”

“Well, I think I’ve finally beaten it into submission.”

“Oh really?” she smirked, reaching for one of the strawberries. “So I’ll walk in there, and I’ll find it sparkling and shiny?”

He paused a bit, leaning in to kiss her for a moment before pulling back with a sigh. “Why don’t you just—hold off on going into the kitchen for today?”

She laughed before wrapping one arm around his neck while the other fed him the strawberry. “Well, at least it’s a step in the right direction.”

v.

He still couldn’t believe that he was here.

This was something that he never thought he was going to have—a wedding, a life, a chance at a family. It was mindblowing. And he didn’t want it to stop. Even if in the back of his mind he knew it would someday because none of this was real. This was all just a place in his head that he was escaping to while a monster slowly killed him.

Comforting? Not so much. But was he happy? Yeah. He was ecstatic.

Now he was on his honeymoon, which granted wasn’t any farther than their bedroom, but they didn’t have to go anywhere, and he was going to take advantage of it. He was in the kitchen, working on the coffee machine, before he felt her come up behind him and wrap her arms around his waist.

“No coffee. Come back to bed.”

He smirked at that, leaning back into her a bit. “I’m gonna need coffee if you want to take me back to bed. You’re wearing me out, woman.”

“No exploding appliances,” she said with a bit of a laugh, pressing a kiss to his shoulder. “I’ll make the coffee. You just go back to bed and look pretty.”

He laughed himself, before turning around to kiss her gently. “Now I see. You just married me because I’m pretty.”

“You got me,” she teased, her lips brushing his. “I’m a sucker for that ass.”

He grinned as his hand slipped down, hooking under her legs and lifting her up so that his legs could wrap around her waist. “Guess that’s alright, considering the feeling’s mutual.” They were brought to a stop when both of them stumbled into the wall and he just pressed her up against it, happy to keep them there for the time being. She pulled him into a soft kiss, long and gentle, before pulling away and brushing a kiss to his nose.

“I love you, Dean.”

“I love you too.”

vi.

She had to say that now? Now she was officially impressed.

Considering how amazingly huge she was at the moment, it took a lot to bring about that change in mood. She should have known better than to expect that this baby would actually be born on time. He or she is a Winchester after all. Winchesters were never, ever on time. Especially Dean. Add to the fact that this was their first wedding anniversary, and on an event that was supposed to make her feel happy and sexy she felt like a beached whale, and Carmen had not been a happy camper.

Then Dean finally did the impossible and conquered her kitchen.

She came out after her afternoon nap to find candles lit, the table set, and something entirely too good-smelling to have been made by her husband sitting on the dining room table. Dean was standing at the kitchen sink, cleaning up the dishes, and she paused where she was standing with one hand on her stomach, just surveying the scene in front of her.

“Did you cook this?”

He glanced back at her with a grin, before nodding. “Yup. Figured I’d surprise you.”

“And it’s actually edible?”

Dean flashed her a bit of a look at that, before moving over to the table and pulling out her chair. “Why don’t you sit down and see for yourself?”

She watched him for a moment, before easing herself down gently into her chair, shifting a bit until she was comfortable. She then waited while Dean fixed her a plate. Then, she took a slow, careful bite, and her taste buds died and went to heaven. That was far too good to have been made by Dean. “Who are you, and what have you done with my husband?”

Dean just laughed. “My mom helped. But I did most of the actual work myself.”

“Dean,” she said as she chewed around a few more bites. “You didn’t have to do all this.”

“It’s our anniversary,” he said softly. “I know you wouldn’t be up for dressing up and going out, because when I suggested it, you looked like you wanted to take my head off with your steak knife. But—I still wanted to do something nice.”

She swallowed, took a sip of the water he put in front of her, before reaching for his hand and kissing the back of it. “You are too good to me.”

“You deserve it,” he replied, brushing a kiss to her forehead, before heading back into the kitchen. “I’m gonna finish cleaning up, and I’ll be back to eat.”

She nodded, turning back to her plate and continuing to wolf her food down like there was no tomorrow. She didn’t even realize that Dean hadn’t sat back down again quite yet until there was a slight twinge in her stomach. She paused in the eating, placing a hand to her stomach and breathed through it, but she knew what that had to be.

“Oh no.”

“Carmen?”

The twinge faded after a moment, and she waited for another five, before shaking her head and holding up a hand. “Sorry. Something about that felt a little—” Then there it was again, this time a little stronger, almost as though some muscles deep inside her were trying to clamp down on something. “Oh no.”

“Is it the food?” Dean asked hesitantly.

“No.”

“Carm, you don’t have to spare my feelings,” Dean replied as he made his way closer. “If the food’s no good—”

“No, Dean—definitely not the food. Baby, Dean. It’s the baby.”

He snapped to attention in about two seconds. “I’ll call the doctor and grab the bag. You go to the car.”

Carmen nodded, as she started to push herself to her feet and make her way towards the front door. She was pretty sure that this was the longest night of her life, but as far as she was concerned, it was probably going to be one of the happiest too.

Winchesters were habitually late, but better late than never.