Feather-light kisses are trailed up Katherine's spine, her neck. As Dean kisses at her jaw, she smiles and pushes at his shoulder. "Stop it," she groans, moving her waist away from his tickling fingers.

"Happy birthday." His voice is right in her ear, quiet and low, and it shoots right to her core. Her eyes fly open, a slight smile on her face as she appraises him in the early morning light. Dean reaches over and runs the pad of his thumb along her cheekbone. He watches her eyes squint as she smiles.

"What do you want to do today?" He asks. "We can...swim, run, walk, jog...stay in..." His brow quirks suggestively and she smiles. "Watch some movies...hike?"

"Maybe—"

"Well good, because we're going to the aquarium."

"Whoa, what?" She pushes herself up, staring at Dean with a furrowed brow.

He looks at her with the same expression. "Yeah. I thought you liked penguins? That's what Sam said, anyway."

"I...penguins are fine," Katherine chuckles, resting her chin on her elbow. "I'm just...surprised is all."

Dean shrugs. "We've never been."

She stares for a moment. "Not even when you were kids?" He shakes his head. "Well...had you been to the zoo before Sam's birthday?"

"Once," Dean tells her. "I think he was nine. Dad was gone, so...I took Sam to the zoo."

Katherine smiles a bit and leans down to him, pressing her lips to his cheek. Then she collapses onto her front, her arm wrapped around Dean's waist. "I think I'd like to stay here with you for a little while."

"Hey, I'm flexible," he hums, reaching over her shoulder to rest his hand on the small of her back. He glances down at her. "Why are you laughing?"

"Oh, just something I recall you saying."

"What's that?"

"'Dean Winchester doesn't date.'"

He smiles a little, closing his eyes as he feels his cheeks warm. "I'm willing to make an exception."

"Even if I'm a hunter?"

"Especially," he hums. "No secrets. It's the life."

"But you're not gonna sideline me, are you?" She quietly asks, tilting her head back a bit to look at him. "Because you'll worry about me? You worry about you on hunts. I'll worry about me."

"Of course," Dean says.

"I mean it. The second you try to put me out—"

Dean raises a half-playful, challenging eyebrow. "You'll what?"

Her brow furrows. "Well I won't listen to you, that's for sure."

"You already don't listen to me," he mutters. "But thanks for the head's up."

"Is Sam awake?" She asks. Dean shakes his head. "Well is he asking where you're sneaking off to before the sun rises?"

"Let him," Dean murmurs. Katherine smiles a bit, turning to press her head into his side. "What's your first memory?"

"Like...in general?" He nods, and Katherine lets out a heavy sigh. "Uh...crying because I didn't want to go to preschool."

Dean smiles. "Really?"

"Oh yeah. Hated it."

"I loved preschool." Katherine snorts. "Lots of girls."

"Oh, God," Katherine mutters. "My favorite parts of the day were snack time, lunch time, nap time, and 'go home' time." Dean laughs and she smiles, closing her eyes. He doesn't laugh often enough.

"When did you start skipping grades?" He asks.

"I went to middle school when I was six," she says. "Went through sixth and seventh grade before they decided I was ready for high school, but I had to stay for the full four years even though I was smarter than everyone in that place. I knew it, too."

"So you graduated high school at what...ten?"

"Yup," she nods. "I was taking college-level classes, so I graduated with an AA. Finished up undergrad, went to med school. Finished med school. Now I'm...working with other hunters. I think one of 'em has a crush on me."

"Crush," Dean mutters, a wry smile on his lips. "I never have crushes."

"Oh, come on. You talk about Daisy Duke all the time."

"I loved Catherine Bach. Still don't know what Daisy saw in Enos."

Katherine snorts. "God, you're such a guy. What do they see in her anyway?"

"She was hot."

"You liked her 'cause of her shorts."

Dean hesitates. "All right, maybe." She laughs, tracing her finger along a faint green vein on his arm, down to the crease of his elbow. Then she sits up, his hand falling to her hip, and she crosses her legs. Her thumb slides into the slot beside Dean's and she twists his palm to face the ceiling. He watches as her index finger trails down his bicep and into the crook of his elbow, sending a strange tickling sensation to his throat. She's entirely too preoccupied to notice, her eyes easily trained on the tanned skin of his arm, paler near the forearm. She moves her finger to the medial side of his elbow and follows a curve down his forearm, where his vein forks once just below his wrist, then again not even half an inch further. Dean's other arm moves around her waist to pull her body into his.

"I'm gonna start getting dressed so we can get ahead of the ankle-biting crowd."

"Nooo," he groans. "Just a few minutes. It's still early. Besides, I have something for you. It's kinda stupid." Katherine sits up, watching him reach over the side of the bed and onto the floor, pulling his jacket into his lap.

"I thought there was a 'no presents' rule?" She asks.

"Yeah, well." He shrugs. "We'll implement that next year." He produces a rectangle wrapped in purple paper.

She smiles. "You wrapped this yourself?"

"Don't sound so surprised."

"Sorry," she chuckles. The paper is off soon enough, and her fingers go still when she realizes it looks like a jewelry package. Not a ring box. Longer, thinner. Katherine cautiously lifts her eyes to Dean, and he's grinning.

"Why do you look like the most suspicious person in the world? Open it!" So she does. And she laughs when she sees it's a bottle opener. But then she reads the words on the handle and her chest seizes.

"You earned it," she quietly says.

"Yeah. Like what you told me after I broke into your apartment."

She laughs again, dropping the thing, and turns to hug him, burying her face into his neck. Don't cry, it's stupid. Don'tcrydon'tcrydon'tcry.

"I can't believe I'm actually saying it's sweet that you bought me a bottle opener," she murmurs. Dean laughs, his hands resting on her hips. "Thank you," she says, pressing her lips to his jaw. "Did you have it made?"

"No, actually," he tells her. "I found it. Funny, right?"

"Yeah," Katherine hums. "I, um...I've got something for the both of you, too. Not a birthday present, but..." She pushes herself up and crawls to the end of her bed before lying flat on her stomach and rifling through her bag.

"This is a wonderful view," Dean says, analyzing the way the light catches on the material of her teal pajamas, the swell of her backside. She twists her foot to tap his shin in reprimanding. "Just sayin'." Katherine sits up beside him, legs crossed, and undoes the threads of a small velvet bag. "Are you giving me a hex bag?"

"Shut up," she chuckles, dumping the bag's contents into her palm. "I got you guys a necklace. Since you were both so interested in the ones that I wear." She extends the silver curb link chain to him with a shy smile.

Michael and Christopher, patron saints of travelers and warriors, are stamped on either side of the medal.

"They've always protected me when I needed them most," she says. "Given me comfort. And I know you guys aren't particularly religious, but...it would put my mind to rest knowing that hopefully there's something else looking out for you guys besides each other."

Dean smiles softly, moving his gaze from the dangling dual-sided pendant to Katherine's shy features. Then he leans forward and kisses her forehead before pulling the curb link chain over his neck. It falls about even with the necklace from Sam, from when they were kids. "I'll wear it every day," he tells her. She smiles, lifting the back of his hand to her lips, and slides off of the bed. "Where you goin'?"

"I still want to go to the aquarium," she tells him with a shrug. "We've got penguins to see."

He watches her daily routine of getting dressed—after the jeans and her base white cami are on, that is. She looks for something to layer it with, holding up various henleys and t-shirts. Dean stares at the options she's laid out on the bed before holding up a navy blue henley to her. She smiles and pulls it on over her head.

"That wasn't done so we'd match, was it?" She asks, glancing at his unbuttoned navy shirt.

"Not at all," Dean tells her. They talk through the rest of her routine. Ruffling her hair from the braids, shaking her feathery fringe to hang a bit messily at her brows. The medieval torture device she called an "eyelash curler," the black stick too close to her blue eyeballs. It was her source of humor for the morning, watching his reactions to what she did.

Sam's gift to her was a leather journal, since he noticed she was running low on pages in her old one. She'd been using it since she first started hunting. This one is rustic-looking, brown leather that folds over itself. The closure strap wraps around the book three times, and at the lower-left corner of the top-most brown flap, 'KLD' was stamped. "I didn't know if you had a middle name," Sam said to her, to which she replied that she didn't, because thankfully her mother decided saddling a kid with a double-barrel name was enough.

Again, she functioned as photographer during this trip for the most part. Watching the brothers stare at maps of the aquarium and decide where to go first was the most amusing, next to Dean's hesitation to touch a manta ray in the pool. A few times, Sam stole the camera from Katherine and took pictures of her, or shots that he saw in his own way. She didn't mind—she had several packs of film brought with her.

Sometimes, when Sam wasn't looking, Dean would hold her hand or linger on her waist. He kissed her once, underneath the shark tunnel. Her eyes were wide with childlike happiness as she watched the fish swim, and he couldn't resist.

Of course she took a picture. Off-center, sure, but still documentation of their little secret. Something to look back on.

Sam took plenty of pictures of the two of them, too. When they sat down to eat, for example. Dean sat in the chair beside Katherine. He had his arm over the top of her chair and she was a bit slouched, arms crossed over her chest as she looked at Sam—he caught it mid-conversation. Dean was looking the other way, watching a whale shark brush up against the glass of the café.

After spending the afternoon at the aquarium, they went to see a movie—She's the Man. Dean actually enjoyed it. He groaned at the cheesy lines, which earned him pointed looks from those sitting near the hunters.

But other than that, it was a day well spent. And as all good days are ended, they went to a bar. Sam went home around nine in search of another case.

Sophia called in the middle of a game of pool with Dean. Katherine put her on the phone with him for a minute, and after he stared at her in confusion for a moment, he actually talked to her. He smiled and said "Hi, Sophia. It's Dean."

And when Katherine got the phone back, all Sophia could say was, "He sounds like that and you haven't slept with him yet?" Katherine choked on her drink. Dean said she was nice.

"Can I at least play to win it back?" She asks, leaning against her pool cue. Her lids hang a little bit, and she blinked slower than she usually did, talked slower and a bit higher than she usually did. But she smiled still, looking delicious as usual.

Dean couldn't believe the douche she was playing actually let her place bets on the game. Like, what kind of ass takes advantage of a woman like that? But then again, Katherine is persuasive and probably forced the college-aged guy to play her.

And she wasn't nearly as drunk—or horrible at pool—as she made herself out to be. When he offered her a lesson instead of a game, his hand snaking around her back, she stumbled away from the stranger with a smile and said, "I'm good. You break."

But if this whole hunting thing didn't work out, perhaps she had a chance in Hollywood.

The college guy and his friends were only a bit concerned when Dean wandered over, but he posed himself to be of minimal threat, instead concerned for his little sister's financial state.

"Shut up, Dean. I'm ffffine," she said.

"No, you're not fine, you're drunk." She waved her hand at him and pulled another bill from her back pocket.

"Let's make it five hundred," she sighed.

"Fi—five hundred?" Dean asked.

"Look, man, you can just take her—" said the frat guy.

"No, no, no!" Katherine cried, leaning against the table. "One more game."

"Your break," the blond guy said, glancing down to his drink. Katherine smiled at Dean as she rounded the other side of the table.

Now she leans across it, lining up a little sloppily at first. But Ryan or whatever the hell his name is, is too busy staring at her ass to notice she's lined up perfectly with the cue ball, angled in her usual sweet spot, guaranteed to sink at least one ball on this shot. With one final wink at Dean, she hits the cue ball and sinks two, one in either pocket on the end of the table. She stands up slowly with a long sigh and moves to the white ball.

And then Frat Guy realized what happened.

He'd been hustled.

"I think your lessons helped," Katherine said with a smile, tucking the wad of cash into her back pocket.