After showering and changing, Sophia sat on the bed, brushing out her hair, waiting for Dean to finish up in the bathroom. Her hand paused mid-brush stroke, and she acted on the sudden urge to pull out her phone and scroll through pictures.

She stopped at one from Christmas of her freshman year. Her and her dad sitting in front of their Christmas tree. He already knew he was sick at that point, but hadn't told her. She was already spotting major red flags in Graham, but hadn't told him. They both looked happy.

Sophia sucked in a breath as a tidal wave of emotion hit her like a tsunami. What she had told Sandy about how she had spent the past decade of holiday seasons was true—they were all over the place. But to Sophia, most of them hadn't really felt like holidays, just normal days with an extra present or two. But now here she was, feeling for the first time like she got to spend this time of year with family.

"Alright, so I'm exhausted."

Sophia quickly turned away and wiped her eyes as Dean came back in, but there was no fooling him.

"Hey, what's wrong?"

Sophia let out a watery laugh and shook her head. "Honestly, nothing," she promised him.

He sat down on the bed facing her. "Soph."

"Dean." She took his hand. "Really," she told him. "Just, God your mom is so great."

His face split into a grin. "I told you everything would be fine."

"I guess it's just been a long time since I've had a Christmas like this."

Dean nodded slowly. "I hope talking about your dad wasn't too much."

"No, not at all. I like to remember those things about him. In some ways, I was, I was actually thinking about my mom."

Dean hesitated and then slowly nodded. "You don't talk about her."

Instead of elaborating, Sophia climbed into bed, crawling under the covers and watching Dean as he joined her. "There's not a lot to talk about."

"I know you said there wasn't much to miss, since she left when you were so young," Dean ventured. "But you never said if you tried to find her. Or if you wanted to."

They lay on their sides, face to face, Dean's hand slowly running along her arm. "I wish I could say I never did," Sophia admitted. "You know? Like, in some ways saying that I wanted to find her makes me feel like I'm saying my dad wasn't enough. I know that's not the case, but it still doesn't feel great."

He nodded.

"Recently, no, I haven't had the urge. But when I was a junior or senior in high school, I thought a lot about it, tried a couple of websites to try and track her down."

"What happened?"

Sophia bit her lip. She had never told anyone what had happened, not her dad, not Raina, not Graham. Especially not Graham. "I found her." The words felt foreign on her tongue as she finally let the admission free after so many years.

Dean couldn't hide his surprise. "You did?"

"Apparently, she lives in New Mexico. Or at least, she did as of my senior year in high school."

"And did you ever..."

"No." Sophia shook her head. "I think when I started looking, I was expecting not to find her, almost hoping that she had just disappeared without a trace and I could let the mystery of what happened continue. But then there she was, a real human being with her own life and her own story, and for whatever reason, she didn't want me in that story."

"Soph," Dean said, gently stroking her face with his thumb.

She leaned into his touch. "I guess I just didn't want to spend any more time hunting someone down who didn't want me. Trust me, I had never had such a great appreciation for my dad as I did at that moment. So I just shut everything down and never looked back." She gave a small shrug. "Maybe one day I'll change my mind. But right now, I guess I'm just good where I am."

"Can I venture a guess and say that Dr. Alvarez has heard a lot about this?"

Sophia laughed. "A lot of it. But not about how I found her. I never told anyone that, before."
Dean's eyes widened slightly, but he didn't comment.

"So it means a lot," Sophia finished, "that your mom is so welcoming. It's not exactly a familiar experience, but it feels really nice."

Dean's hand cupped the back of her neck and he pressed his lips against hers. "I want you to feel like we can be a family, Sophia," he whispered. "I want you to be my family."

Sophia's smile curved against Dean's skin, but then she froze. "Dean," she said, pulling away to look him in the eye, "if you pull out a ring tomorrow, we're going to need to have a serious conversation about your communication skills."

Dean laughed. "No need to worry, no surprise proposals are coming your way. But I'd be lying if I said that I haven't thought about when that day might come."

When, not if. The word choice was not lost on Sophia. "I may have had a few of those thoughts myself."

Dean's eyes lit up and then he pressed his forehead against hers.

"Dean?" Sophia had her eyes closed, her hand lightly tracing the bare skin exposed between his t-shirt and sweatpants.

"Hmm?"

She opened her eyes and leaned back. "What happened with your dad?"

He didn't look surprised at her question, but was silent for a moment. Sophia gave him the time to process whether or not he wanted to answer the question or not.

"He died before I was born," he finally said. "Hit and run. My mom was seven months pregnant."

"That's horrible."

"Yeah." But there was more to the story, Sophia could see it in his face. "My mom doesn't talk about him much. When I was little and I would ask about him, I thought she just shut down because she was sad. But as I got older," he swallowed hard, "I started getting the sense that he didn't treat her right."

Sophia stilled.

"She never told me anything outright. I don't think she wanted to be responsible for creating that type of image of him for me. But there were some things she let slip, telling me that I was a better person than my dad ever was, snapping at one of the idiots saying that I needed a male figure in my life, and telling them that she wouldn't want me learning anything from my dad. But there was one night in particular," he paused, "one night in particular where she had a couple of friends over, and I was supposed to be asleep. But I was hungry and snuck downstairs, I was probably thirteen or so, and they were talking about him so I stopped and eavesdropped. I could see my mom's face, and her expression, I don't know, it almost looked like she was in pain, and I knew that her thinking about him wasn't a good thing. She wasn't thinking about someone who she loved and then lost. She was thinking of someone who had purposely caused her pain." Dean took a deep breath. "And then I saw that same expression on your face when you first told me about him."

"Jesus," Sophia breathed, her hand gripping his side.

"I don't know what happened, and I'm not sure I even want to ask. But it wasn't good. Ever since then, I've just tried my best to be better."

"You're the best person I know, Dean," Sophia said automatically. "You're just, you're everything."

His eyes searched her face. "God, I'm glad we met."

"Me too."

Dean met her mouth with his once again, this time sliding his tongue against her lips and into her mouth. Sophia wrapped her arms around him, pulling him close, hooking one leg around him so their bodies joined. At this point, she had memorized the feeling of his lips and her tongue knew every inch of his mouth, but she never tired of it. If anything, as she fell in love with him more and more each day, every kiss, every touch, excited her more.

They both froze as they heard footsteps outside of the door. "Do you think she knows what we're doing in here?" Dean whispered.

Sophia suppressed her laugh. "She definitely knows what we're doing in here," she whispered back. "What? You never brought a girl back here in high school?"

"Never when my mom was home."

Sophia chuckled. "So you never had to master the art of sneaking around?" She slid her tongue back inside his mouth and could feel him holding back a moan as she kissed him. "Never laid here, half listening to make sure she's not coming but the fact that you're a horny ass teenager making it hard to pay attention to anything other than her hand sliding up your shirt?"

Sophia's hand followed her words and she grinded her hips into Dean's, slow, rhythmic movements that put pressure in all the right places. His breathing grew labored as he struggled to control himself. "So that's what we'd be doing if we were teenagers?" he panted.

"I wouldn't be able to resist you." Sophia gave him another hard kiss. "But I'm also very respectable, so we'd stay at second base."

"Second base, huh?" Dean asked, amusement glimmering in his eyes. "So that means I can do this?" His hands snaked up her shirt and cupped her breast. Now it was Sophia's turn to hold in her moan, biting her lip and arching herself into his palm as he rolled her nipple between his fingers.

"Above the belt touching and dry humping," she said in a whispered laugh. "Hotter than I thought it would be."

Dean kissed her hard and grabbed the leg that she still had wrapped around him, pulling her closer to him so he could rub himself against her. The friction of the clothing between Sophia's legs was almost too much to bear. "How the fuck could it not be hot? It's you and me, baby."

She didn't reply, and they got lost in each other, making out, feeling each other up, and rolling their hips together, acting like horny teenagers and enjoying every minute of it. The difference was that with teenagers, everything was awkward, too much spit and fumbling hands. But Sophia and Dean knew each other, they knew what the other liked, how to drive the other crazy. Adding the restriction of not being able to touch each other where they both wanted to be touched just made everything hotter.

"And that probably means we should stop," Sophia gasped as she felt Dean's erection dig into her stomach. "Given how much of you I can feel against me right now."

Dean rested his forehead against hers, and then with a groan, pulled away. "Yeah," he said. "As much as I want to fuck you right now, I would feel too weird about doing it on Christmas Eve with my mom twenty yards away."

Sophia chuckled. "Yeah, me too. But," she leaned forward so her mouth was millimeters from Dean's ear, "all this means is that when we get home tomorrow night, we'll have a lot of pent-up energy. And we usually do pretty good when that happens."

"Ah, fuck." Dean grabbed her waist but then spun her around so her back was to him. "I need to go to sleep before I throw all caution out the window." He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close, but far enough away so that his arousal stayed a safe distance from Sophia's ass.

Sophia laughed again and then curled up into him. "I love you."

His lips brushed against her neck. "I love you, Sophia."