Dean’s been making lists.

Dean’s been making lists so he can cross things off.

And he’s been doing it, without even much realizing, since he told Sam the truth about what their dad had whispered in his ear.

One: Save Sam, no matter what. Check.

Since he shut the door on Jo back in Duluth.

Two: End whatever this thing is with Jo before she gets hurt—really hurt. Check.

Since he caught a glimpse of his life as it might have been.

Three: Stop wishing for “perfect”—or even “good”—because it doesn’t exist. Check.

Since he fulfilled his father’s vendetta.

Four and Five: Kill the Yellow-Eyed Sonofabitch. And maybe see if you can get Dad out of hell.

Check. Check.

So those were pretty much the biggies. The Top Five Greatest Hits of 2007. But Dean’s discovered that once you get into the habit of making lists, it’s hard to stop. The efficiency of them is alluring. They’re direct, with measurable outcomes. There’s no grey area. Either you can check it off or you can’t. Like little orders you give to yourself. And if there’s one thing Dean knows he’s good at, it’s following orders.

Lists are also a different way of telling time, which currently appeals to Dean. He’ll drive himself insane if he ticks away the days and hours and minutes and seconds that just keep slipping by like water poured through a sieve. But lists break things down into objectives: a beginning, a middle, an end. Time isn’t at play—only outcomes. And Dean’s a results man.

***

He doesn’t want Sam to know about his lists, at least not yet. He figures his too-smart-for-his-britches brother will figure it out eventually. But until then, Dean does what he can to hide his missions, however mundane they might seem to an outside observer.

First off, he doesn’t actually write them down, at least not in the traditional list-making sense. Instead, he finds something that stands for his objective—a red rock for his desire to finally see the Grand Canyon; a 1978 penny that steers them on toward Vegas; a rubber band to remind him to get laid as often as possible. Then he shoves it deep into the pockets of his pants so whenever his fingers brush against an item, he knows he still has work to do.

When it’s time to check something off his list, he slides his hand into his pocket, gives the talisman a little squeeze, and quietly tosses it out the window of the Impala while he drives and Sam sleeps.

He’s decided he’s not going to chuck the rubber band until the bitter end.

Since May, he’s scattered the litter of his dreams across more than 3,000 miles of empty roads and midnight highways.

***

He’s run into a problem, though, with his latest item: a guitar pick he swiped off a stage during their latest hunt.

Turns out Ozzie Osbourne wasn’t the only “demonic” thing on tour with OzzFest when it swung through Albuquerque. One of the opening acts didn’t quite realize their new, “bitchin’” backup singer was actually a siren who’d found the perfect venue to lure metal-heads to their lyrical death. After Sam and Dean had been personally thanked by Sharon for saving the tour—something Dean hadn’t even known was on his list, but he’d been happy to check it off—he’d seen the pick resting on an amp and pocketed it without pause.

Now, at the motel and ready to move on to the next goose chase Sam’s cooked up to save Dean (an endeavor Dean will sabotage on the off-chance it might actually work), Dean’s stretched out on the double bed farthest from the door and rolling the pick across his knuckles while Sam showers.

For the first time since Dean started his lists, he thinks he’s found something he might not be able to check off.

He sneaks onto Sam’s laptop—still a touchy subject after the Trickster, despite their mid-getaway apologies—and does a quick search of Nebraska obits. He grinds his teeth as he scrolls through the Rs, knowing that the six-month window she had is some 13 months expired. He comes up gratefully empty and switches his course to find a phone number. It pops up sweetly and he calls under a telemarketing pretense.

“Who? I’m sorry, you’ve got the wrong number.”

He hangs up; tries another possibility; one eye on the bathroom door.

“Sorry, dear, their family moved, oh, I suppose it’d be about a year ago now. Do I know where? Well, sure… Wait, who’d you say you were again? A nephew? Wouldn’t you know where your own aunt lives? Who is this?”

This time he’s the one who gets hung up on and his agitation is building. He hears the pipes squeal on the other side of the bathroom door as Sam turns the water off.

He scrambles with what little info he’s gleaned and gets as far as Omaha before he has to shut down.

When Sam comes out of the bathroom, steam roiling behind him, Dean’s the picture of casual, back on the bed and flicking the pick with a fingernail.

“You’re up,” Sam announces, rummaging through his duffle for a clean pair of boxers.

When Dean sheds his clothes on the yellowed linoleum, he’s careful to place the pick dead-center on the lid of the toilet seat. The gold “Fender Medium” gleams against the shiny, tortoise-shell plastic of the pick, itself contrasting starkly with the dull ivory of the toilet. While he showers, he peaks out from behind the curtain every few minutes, just be make sure it’s still there.

***

He decides as they’re pulling onto 380 toward Roswell—“Let’s find us a hot Katherine Heigel-alien, Sammy!”—that he doesn’t really have the luxury of stealth on this one. His lead is cold, and he knows he has to come just a little bit clean with Sam or else abandon the guitar pick. And that’s not an option, unless she’s six-feet under or dust. He asks Sam for help while staring straight ahead over the steering wheel; tries to play it off light and easy, but his voice doesn’t really do ‘airy’ convincingly.

“Why do you want to find her?”

“Come on, Sammy…”

“Tell me why you want to find her and I’ll help you.”

“Have I told you lately what a little bitch you can be?”

“Dean.”

“Sam.”

“Dean!”

“Dude, you gonna make me beg?”

Sam doesn’t make him beg; ultimately doesn’t even make him explain. For one thing, Dean figures Sam already knows why he wants to find her even if he hasn’t clued in to Dean’s list-making yet. And more than that, Sam probably doesn’t want to think about what Dean’s explanation would mean. Sam’s all forward momentum these days, dragging Dean along with him, ignorant of the fact that for the first time in since 1983 Dean feels like he can finally stop charging toward some distant spot on the horizon. After all, what’s the point? Anything new will just make it hurt all the more when the time comes. And that’s going to hurt enough as it is.

No, Dean’s more interested in looking back these days. It’s a new thing for him.

“She’s not dead,” Sam tells Dean as they both squat on too-small chairs in a public library in the middle of the desert. Dean drops his head for a second, relief rippling over his skin. “She’s in Jacksonville.”

“Florida?”

Sam nods.

“What the hell’s she doing in Jacksonville?”

Sam doesn’t answer right away, and when he does, his voice has a tricky edge to it. “That’s where they keep one of the branches of the Mayo Clinic.”

***

Dean drives as much of the way as he can—he drives all the time now since Cold Oak—but even he has to admit he can’t pull 23 straight hours. And getting to her is more important than clocking time behind the wheel of his first love. So he gives it up to Sam in Pensacola and spends the last five hours slumped in the passenger seat pretending to sleep while actually trying to work out what exactly he’s supposed to do when he finds her.

At 6 the next morning they check into a dive called the Sea Esta Inn that’s no where near the ocean and Sam promises he’ll just close his eyes for 15 minutes, but he’s out in less than 15 seconds and Dean’s content to let him sleep. He slips out the door armed with an address and a lot of nerve.

He passes St. Luke’s Hospital first; tries to imagine her within its sterile brick walls, but keeps coming up with a very different sight—her standing in a muddy field beneath an umbrella as gray as the sky behind her. It’s even harder to place her when he turns off Beach Boulevard and into an indistinct condo community with speed bumps every 20 yards. He pulls into a parking spot marked Visitor and stares up at the balcony belonging to apartment 2016 E.

He rubs the pick between his fingers and thinks of the promise he made.

“I’m gonna pray for you.”

***

“Dean?”

“Layla,” he breathes, like he never stopped praying.

***

He sits at her kitchen table and studies the way she moves quietly through the rooms; turning off the TV, getting him a cup of coffee. He knows it’s really the carpeting that’s muting her steps, but frankly, there’s more to it than that. She’s treading carefully around him; around why he’s here; around life itself, maybe. Like if she makes too much noise the universe will notice she’s still alive and finally cross her off its own To Do list. Dean feels a little ill when he realizes that’s no different from what he’s come to do.

When she asks him that exact question, he chokes some lies.

“Sam and I...we...um...were in Nebraska again. Thought we’d look you up. But we heard you’d moved and...thought we’d...” He stumbles over words he’d only half-rehearsed in the car. He yearns for a fake badge to flash along with his smile. It dawns on him that this is the first time he’s returned to the scene of a ‘save ‘em and leave ‘em.’

Of course, he didn’t save Layla. Not at all.

She’s raising an eyebrow so high it disappears beneath her blond bangs. Her hair’s shorter than when he saw her last. Chin-length and unruly. Like she hacked it all off and it’s only now starting to fall into some kind of hairstyle, choppy and more funky than he thinks suits her.

Or maybe she didn’t cut it. Maybe she lost it.

As though she notices his scrutiny, she passes a hand through her hair. It’s not as shiny as he remembers it.

“We just got into town,” he finishes, using the only true fact about the story and knowing he’s explained nothing at all.

She tilts her head, clearly not believing him but not calling him on it just yet. He tries not to notice the dark circles under her eyes, so he glances down her body. But that’s a mistake, too. Still in pajamas at this early hour—her legs and arms look thin jutting from the soft shorts and small t-shirt. She’s lost the curves that once had made him glibly announce God’s mysterious ways. She doesn’t look like she’s on death’s door, which is what he’d expected for someone given only a few months to live a year-and-a-half ago. But she doesn’t look altogether healthy, either. Not even a Florida tan on her previously pale skin can mask that something’s simply wrong.

“So, how are you doi—”

“Why are you here, Dean?”

***

When he couldn’t give her a satisfactory answer—couldn’t even form the words—she’d sighed deeply and asked him to wait there while she made a call. At first he’d panicked, wondering if she’d caught wind of his renegade status and was about to place a call to her local PD. Instead, she’d apologized profusely over the phone to a woman named Sheryl, made an excuse of an old family friend dropping in, and then promised to pick up where they left off tomorrow. Then she’d turned to Dean, said she was going to change her clothes, and disappeared into her bedroom. She’d emerged wearing long green shorts and a simple white t-shirt, an oversized purse in hand.

“Can you drive?” she’d asked.

Now, Dean steals glances at her as she directs him through the pine tree-lined sprawl of east Jacksonville. She doesn’t say anything other than “turn left” and “turn right” and he doesn’t have the nerve to push for more. He does risk turning on the tape deck and winces when Big Star cuts right into a croon on “Thirteen”—a song he generally fast-forwards when Sam is in the car, but indulges in when he’s alone, like he’d been this morning.

“I like this song,” Layla says suddenly, so instead of reaching to switch tapes, he lets it play out.

Since she’s broken the silence, Dean clears his throat and goes for a benign beginning. “So, where are we headed?”

There’s a pause and then, “I have something I need to take care of, and then I thought we could go to the beach.”

“Oh...see, I’m not really the ‘Baywatch’ type,” he grimaces, then rethinks. “Well, actually, I’m exactly the ‘Baywatch’ type, but only in theory…not in practice. Well, in practice, too…but…just not…on the beach.” He’s babbling so he scrambles for a definitive ‘no.’ “I don’t do the beach.”

“Hmm.”

That’s all she says. Big Star wonders, “Won’t you tell me what you’re thinking of?” and Dean doesn’t have a clue how to interpret, let alone argue against, “Hmm,” so he swallows hard and keeps driving.

***

She tells him to stay in the car when they pull up in front of St. Catherine’s Hospice, a peaceful, sprawling one-story facility that almost makes Dean grateful he won’t have to die of old age and illness.

“I’ll need 15, maybe 20 minutes,” she tells him through the open passenger window. “You’ll wait?”

“Yeah, sure,” he agrees quickly, his stomach clenching from unfamiliarity coupled with a proximity to the dying. He’s relieved she doesn’t ask him to come inside because he has no fucking idea what’s going on. But as she walks away, he sees she’s left her huge purse on the floorboard, so he trusts that she’ll back.

It’s nearly 8:30 and people are starting to pull into the parking spaces around him. Nurses in scrubs. Mothers or fathers dragging children in their wake. Some cheerily carrying books and baskets, others empty-handed and heavy-hearted. He debates moving the car somewhere less conspicuous, but worries Layla will come out right as he’s doing so and think he’s trying to bail on her. Instead, Dean slumps deep in his seat, fishes out the guitar pick and tries not to attract too much attention.

He doesn’t realize he’s fallen asleep until the creak of passenger door being opened rattles him awake.

“Sorry that took so long,” Layla’s saying as she slides into the seat. She doesn’t mention if she saw him sleeping and he tries to shake off the fog quickly. He pulls his sleeve back to look at his watch and sees she’s been gone for more than an hour.

“Is everything okay?” he asks, passing his hand over his face to clear the last cobwebs.

She nods before she starts to speak, “Everything’s fine.” She’s frustratingly vague, but has a right to be since Dean was no more forthcoming. “Let’s go back the way we came.”

Dean hesitates; wants to press. But instead turns the key in the ignition and retraces their route until Layla takes over and begins directing them down a different road.

***

They make one final stop at a 7-11 where she invites Dean in with her this time, encourages him to grab some food for the road as she does the same, and then pays for it all before he can even get his wallet out. He carries their supplies out to the car: bottled water, Salt-n-Vinegar chips, a handful of granola bars, a dented Red Delicious and three oranges.

Back on the road, Layla’s rummaging through his cassettes and the wind is fanning her hair so that she has to keep tucking strands of it behind her ears, only to have it escape again. She finally tips her sunglasses onto the top of her head, then smiles at Dean when her makeshift headband works. When she squints into the sun, she has crow’s feet at her eyes. Dean gives her an amused smirk and the discomfort between them eases a little.

“I thought we were going to the beach?” he wonders out loud when she points him west.

“We are,” she says, and holds a cassette aloft. “Does this have ‘Black Water’ on it?”

“Uh, yeah.” And then, because he’s started to get the idea that if he doesn’t ask her something directly, she’ll keep sidestepping him all day. “Layla?”

“Yes?” She switches out the cassettes and the Doobie Brothers launch right into “Song to See You Through” as Dean merges onto 9A at Layla’s instruction. She punches the fast-forward button.

“Are you still dying?”

He sees her finger hesitate on the button, and then switch to push play, but it’s not where she wants it so she tries again; gets it right. The wind-chimes tinkle through the Impala’s speakers as Layla leans into the door, props her elbow up on the window ledge and rests her head against the bend of her inner arm.

“Yes.”

“And I ain’t got no worries ‘cause I aint in no hurry at all,” sings them across the water.

***

“Shit,” Dean curses sharply, making Layla jump. “Shit!”

“What’s wrong?” Her voice is raised with surprise. They’ve been heading back east on Heckscher Drive, monumental beach homes dominating the view along the inlet, and they haven’t spoken since the bridge. Her arms fly out to brace herself as Dean yanks the steering wheel to the right and pulls them off the road onto the sandy shoulder. “Dean?”

He hardly hears her; just begins fumbling around his seat, feeling between the cracks, doubling over to drag his fingers along the floor mat.

Logically, he knows it has to be in the car. But wait, no. It could have fallen into his lap while he slept and then dropped onto the asphalt outside the 7-11. It could be anywhere, he thinks.

“Dean, what are you looking for,” Layla asks, scanning the car without knowing what she’s hunting for.

He doesn’t want to say it out loud because then she might ask why he cares so much. So he shakes his head like he’s annoyed and keeps up his frantic search. Cars shoot by them and their horns wails. She cranes her neck to look out the rear window and sees they’re only half-way off the road.

“Can I help?”

Dean shoots her a confused look, then shakes his head again. “No, just...” and an idea dawns on him. “Sit up real quick, will ya?”

Awkwardly, because of the seatbelt across her hips, she arches up off the seat and makes a squeaky sound when Dean’s hand shoots beneath her and pats the seat.

He exhales audibly as his fingers close around the guitar pick, then tries to mask his relief with a strained, “Got it.” He holds out his fist to show her he was successful without really showing her, and with a slightly manic grin, starts the car back up. The pick is hot in his hand from the heat of her ass and the sun-warmed leather of his seats. He shoves it back into his pocket.

“Sorry ‘bout that,” and he steers the car back on the road.

***

Sam calls just as they pass the last mini-mansion. They cross over a sandbar and then there’s nothing but scrub forest and ocean.

“Hey, Sam.” Dean gives Layla an it’s-just-my-pain-in-the-ass-little-brother face and then tries to keep his side of the chit-chat short, sweet and cryptic. “Yeah, Layla and I, we’re just catching up.”

“Dean, what the hell?” Sam starts in on him.

“Sam says, ‘Hi,’” Dean tells Layla, who gives the phone a small wave then turns back to the window.

Sam’s on a tear. “I wake up, you’re gone, the Impala’s gone...”

“Yeah, I know the feeling,” Dean says broadly. “Alrighty, Sam, you take care of that hangover and I’ll see you back the place tonight, okay? M’kay.”

“Hangover? What the? Damnit, Dean—!”

Dean flips his phone shut and turns to Layla. “Sammy. Always gettin’ into trouble.”

“I’m sure,” she says with a cattish smile. “So you want to tell me what’s up with that guitar pick?”

Dean’s hands slide a little on the steering wheel. He recovers quickly, but badly. “Wanna tell me why we stopped at a hospice?”

She sits up straight, and he can feel her bristle. “Care to tell me why you’ve done nothing but lie to me since you knocked on my door?”

Dean’s about to bite back but stops himself before he says something he’ll really regret. Instead, he clams up and offers a petulant, “No.” He can’t tell her what he doesn’t know himself.

***