The Best Policy 1/4
I figured since I said in my Sweet Charity description that you could find examples of my stories here, that I oughta actually, you know, put some of those stories here. So I'm making good on my threat of months back to move the rest of my stories over from ff.net. This isn't new. (And I have not abandoned An Ancient Pitch.)
Title: The Best Policy 1/4
Author: Deanish
Rating: PG13
Length: 1,275 / 5,450 words
Characters/Pairings: Dean/Cassie; Sam/Jess
Summary: Dean told the truth. Sam didn't. Neither will ever make that mistake again.
Chapter 1: Boys Meet Girls
Dean
The first words he said to her were a lie.
"Hi, I’m Dean Winchester, reporter with The Athens News. I was hoping to talk to you about the attack you witnessed last night."
She immediately raised her eyebrows and called him on it.
"Um … No you’re not."
That threw him, and he swallowed and blinked a couple of times to give himself time to think.
"I’m not?" he finally ventured.
"No," she said. "You’re not. In fact, I bet you’ve never even read The Athens News."
Now that just wasn’t true. He’d read it this very morning when his dad handed him a copy of the latest issue over eggs and coffee. Not the whole issue or anything, but he’d read every word of the paper’s account of the bizarre string of animal attacks that had culminated the night before in the death of one Ohio U. coed. The attack that one Cassie Robinson had witnessed.
But he couldn’t exactly explain all that. Instead he said, "I haven’t?"
Her lips pursed in disdain, and she began to turn away. But she was the only lead they had turned up so far, so Dean couldn’t let her do that.
"Wait, wait," he said turning on his most charmingly rueful grin and shrugging self deprecatingly. "What gave it away?"
Either the smile worked or she was the kind of person who liked to show off her superior knowledge, because she gave him a slow once over and began ticking off his mistakes on her fingers.
"Number one, no one calls The Athens News, The Athens News. It’s just the News. Number two, the News has a dress code for its employees - ties, no jeans. And number three, I work there. And I think I’d remember seeing you around."
The ruefulness fell out of his grin at that and she was left with just plain charming. "Oh yeah?" he asked, waggling his eyebrows in his most charmingly leering manner. "Like what you see, huh?"
She rolled her eyes but he detected the slightest suggestion of concealed amusement around the corners of her mouth. And he also detected that those corners looked very kissable, which was another good reason to keep talking to her.
"OK," he said, holding his hands up in surrender. "You caught me. I’m not with the News. I’m not even a real journalist. Hell, I’m hardly a fake journalist."
"So what are you then?" she asked, a hint of reluctant interest in her eyes. Dean wasn’t surprised. Despite what he’d said, he was actually a hell of a fake journalist, and he knew no reporter worth the paper her press credentials were printed on would pass up on that question.
Now if he only had a good answer for it. Honesty, he figured, was probably not the best policy, but a reporter-proof cover story on such short notice might be beyond even his skill level.
"Uh," he said, then decided to go with the least verifiable option. "I came over from Stewart after I read what you said you saw in the paper. It, uh, sounds like something I thought I saw awhile back - something that hurt a friend of mine. And I just wanted to, you know -"
"See if you were crazy?" she finished for him. He almost sighed in relief.
"Yeah, it’s pretty weird," she went on. "But I know what I saw."
She said it so fiercely that even if Dean hadn’t been predisposed to believe just about anything, he’d have believed her.
"You wanna maybe grab some coffee?" he proposed tentatively. "We can, you know, compare stories. Assure ourselves of our sanity."
The stubborn set her jaw had taken on when talking about the attack eased a little.
"Yeah," she said. "I think that’d be nice."
OOO
Sam
The first words he said to her were a lie.
"God, that Degas was brilliant wasn’t it?" she asked rapturously.
It wasn’t, in Sam’s opinion. But she was pretty enough for him to know what the right answer was.
"Oh. Yeah. Wow. Definitely," he affirmed.
She immediately raised her eyebrows and called him on it. "You don’t like Degas?" she asked in somewhat incredulous tones.
He fumbled for a moment, searching for a convincing disavowal, but decided at the last minute that honesty might actually be the best policy in this case - or at least a charming one. He gave an apologetic smile and shrugged.
"I think it’s all the ballerinas?" he postulated tentatively. "I mean - maybe it’s a girl thing?"
She grinned widely at that. "Right," she said. "Because guys have never been able to really appreciate dancers’ bodies."
He spluttered, again trying to come up with an answer, and she took pity on him.
"Jessica," she said, sticking her hand out. "Sophomore, studio art, Cottonwood." It was the standard rundown of rank, major and city of origin that college students across the country spend the first few weeks of every semester repeating on endless loop.
"Sam. Sophomore, philosophy/pre-law and Lubbock," he returned in kind.
"Texas?" she asked, scrunching up her nose. "You don’t have much of an accent."
"Well, that’s where I graduated. But I’d only been there about six months. My family moved around a lot."
"And yet you never made it to Cottonwood. Scandalous oversight by whoever’s in charge of my destiny."
He gaped at her in surprise for a solid three seconds before he caught himself and snapped his mouth shut.
"Um," he said, clearing his throat. "Uh. So. Art major? What are you doing slumming it with us non-majors in art appreciation?"
She smiled knowingly but allowed his clumsy change of subjected. "Dr. Kimmel," she said. "I adore him. He’s brilliant. I’m auditing the class just to hear what he has to say about Degas and Rembrandt and all the other standards."
She gave him a sly look out of the corner of her eye as they walked together toward the door to the classroom. "Besides," she said, "I heard it was a good place to meet guys looking to meet girls."
Sam wondered just how red his face was turning. But he couldn’t help but grin back a little - though he tried to duck his head and hide it.
"Um," he said again - then had to restrain himself from slapping his forehead at the idiocy of it. "So. Um. Where do you go next?"
"I’ve got a break until 2:30. You?"
Technically, Sam was scheduled to spend the next hour and a half in ethical theory. But he was already pretty ethical, right? And did he mention that she was more than pretty enough for him to know the right answer?
"Actually, I was heading over to the Daily Grind," he said, thanking the gods of awkward social situations that he managed to get it out without a single ‘um’ that time. "Want to join me?"
"Oh," she said innocently. "So you’re skipping whatever class you normally have in building 90?"
And Sam was back to gapping and stuttering, which Jessica Moore graciously ignored.
"In that case," she said, "I’d love to join you."
Chapter 2: Winchesters in Love