Archive of Our Own ^beta

"We hit traffic," Dean says. "The kid was crowning when we got to the restaurant."

Chris is still laughing. "No, no, I mean, how the hell did you get covered in mustard?"

"She was in the back room. There was this huge bowl up on a rack that we didn't see. Halfway through, it tipped, got all over me and Anna."

Chris's grin is brilliant and open, and it punches Dean's gut and twists his lungs at the same time. He likes women, loves them, except this fucking hotshot of an ER doc makes him feel like a goddamn teenaged girl, and he's in his thirties and been to hell and come back and killed evil shit that this guy's never even heard of, and why does he have to be standing here with mustard all over himself right now?

"Sometime," Chris says with his relaxed Charleston vowels, "I'll tell you about the incident with the ranch dressing."

Dean raises his eyebrows.

"It's ignominous," Chris says, and for a moment he sounds bizarrely like Sam. "But very entertaining. Do you have plans tonight?"

Dean blinks. He's coated practically head to toe with Grey Poupon, and any nominal hold he might have had over this conversation has completely escaped him. He's EMS; he can stay calm in hurricanes, childbirths, gang fights; he still puts down demons on his days off; what the hell is wrong with him?

It's like when he first met Cassie, he thinks, and then he thinks: Oh fuck me.

"No?" Dean answers. "Uh, no plans."

"I'll be able to leave when Porter comes on in an hour." And this time it's Chris Nicholson—Charleston elite, Harvard Med, the star of University Hospital's trauma center—who hesitates. "Have—uh, have dinner with me. At Sienna. And I'll tell you the ranch dressing story and you can laugh."

"I don't think they're going to let me in looking like this."

"I meant, uh, go home and shower. And I'll pick you up. You know. Properly." He blushes, and Dean wants to put his hand on Chris's cheek, feel the blood-heat under his palm.

Dean starts to grin and, mustard and all, he crosses his arms and leans back on his heels. "I'll pick you up," he says, and maybe his lungs are still a little twisty like he's a girl meeting a rock star, but whatever. "We'll take my car."