There is a bit of a situation in the Winchester-Anderson apartment.

Quinn loves bacon. Bacon splatters when it cooks. Quinn is terrified of splattering bacon, which means it's cooked less often than she would like, and neither of them were paying for a meal plan this year because they're not on campus. 

Sam is also a terrible cook. He can make Hamburger Helper...boil some noodles...microwave some macaroni and cheese...and that's his skill set. So having him cook bacon was out of the question. They'd had this conversation many times before, you see. 

And then one morning, he woke up and smelled bacon. 

Bleary-eyed, Sam walks out of their bedroom and towards the sounds of Mötley Crüe. He has to stare for a few seconds to figure out exactly what's going on.

Quinn is standing before a smoking stove with the air vent on high power. Oven mitts are on either hand. In her left is a wide pan lid, and in the right is a pair of tongs. Two pans are going on the stove—one full of frozen hash browns, and the other containing three pieces of cooking bacon.

"Quinn?" Nothing. "Quinn." Her head whips around.

She's wearing a fiberglass welding helmet.

He descends into rough bouts of laughter. "What...the hell...are you doing?" He cries around his laughs.

"Making bacon!" It's a muffled cry from behind her makeshift personal protective equipment. Sam grins, wandering around the bar to join her. "Stay back, Sammy—the grease is angry." He laughs again, winding his arms around her waist, and nuzzles into her neck.

"You smell like metal," he says.

"I know how you just love the smell of metal in the morning."

His nose scrapes along the edge of the mask, and he winces. "So over the top."

"Well I'm doing this out of an abundance of extreme caution—"

"I can see that."

"—because how much would you like it if a grease fire started and it sprayed up into my pretty face? You would break up with me and I'd be looking for someone who is willing to date, and eventually marry-slash-reproduce-with someone whose face is not what it once was. Face transplants are expensive, you know, and it's a very legitimate fear that people will only love me because of my face."

"I would love you even if you had a third eye."

"Funny you should say." Quinn flips the face mask up. "I do." He rolls his eyes. "And so do you. And everyone, really. It's just a matter of how in tune you are with it."

"I thought hippies don't eat meat."

She points the tongs at him. "Those are vegetarians." She flips the mask back down and goes back to her sizzling pan. "Look! I'm not getting popped!"

"So you're going to wear a welding mask and oven mitts every time you cook bacon?"

"Yes!" It's muffled behind the mask and drowned out by the hot oil.

Sam stares at the side of her head. "Where did you even get a welding mask?"

"Kelly!"

"Ooooof course you did," he sighs, running his hand down her back.

"You want some?"

"Please. You want eggs?"

"You read my mind."

He tends to the hash browns while she finishes up the bacon. Breakfast is eaten on the sofa, Vince Neil having since been silenced, and they look around the walls and see what can go where. She has a mark running around the front of her forehead from the adjustable band inside the helmet. 

"We should get a dog and have someone paint it," Quinn hums.

Sam frowns. "Paint the dog?"

"Yeah. Paint a picture of the dog. We can hang it right there." She points with her foot above the television. Sam laughs.

"Absolutely not."

"Why? C'mon, it'll be great. You can even pick the dog!"

"Why would we pay someone to paint a picture of our hypothetical dog?" he asks, turning his head to look at her. Quinn chews thoughtfully.

"Because Queen Elizabeth has paintings of her corgis," she replies.

"We're hardly the royal family."

"We're the royal family of apartment twenty-three," Quinn chirps with a raised eyebrow. "Something needs to go above the TV. It's a blank wall."

"I'm not saying we can't put anything above the TV," Sam says. "I'm saying I refuse to put a painting of a dog we don't have above the TV."

Quinn always had a way of getting what she wanted.

They got a puppy the next week. By Thanksgiving, they had a portrait of a white and tan Goberian named Tucker hanging above their television. Claire found him one night when they were supposed to be studying. Quinn picked him up right after her architecture class let out, and when Sam came home from class, Quinn was on the floor with the floppy-eared dog and making kissy noises at him. 

It might have been three days before Tucker made his first jailbreak. The window above the bench seat pushes out instead of lifting up, which Tucker made quick note of. Sam found him on the fire escape as he was headed to class.

So he was Tucker Houdini Winchester. Tucker for short.

Quinn still has that dog. He's still long and short—to Sam—and his fur is the same color it was then, still long by the ears. His eyes are still dark and squinted and they have that mischievous glint to them, especially when he pants.

"I'd say that was a successful birthday party," Dean chirps from the sofa. 

"Thanks, grill master," Quinn says, tying her hair up with a sigh. "Can I get you boys a beer?"

"Please."

She pours herself a glass of wine and makes back into the living room. Dean found something to occupy himself in a room somewhere that wasn't the living room. He took Tucker with him.

"You still have that painting of Tucker?" Sam asks.

Quinn smiles. "Yeah, it's hanging up in Hannah's room."

"She's a lot like you."

"Yeah, well, she's more like you," Quinn murmurs. "Super smart, loves to read...her teacher says she's at a fifth grade level, but I think she's about to bust onto the middle school scene." She sits on the sofa beside him with a sigh. "Do you feel as weird as I do?"

"Yeah," Sam admits. He thinks he feels more weird than she does. "Just wondering how different everything would be if I'd picked up when you called." Quinn chuckles wryly, once, with a soft nod. 

"I hated you for a long time," she quietly admits, and Sam turns to look at her. "Because...I didn't understand how you could tell me..." She rubs her mouth and stays quiet for a few moments as she tries to organize her thoughts. "I was pinned to the ceiling the same way your mom was, by the same thing that killed her, and you said that I was safer without you around." She doesn't look at him. "After you left, I was terrified, and then I found out that I was pregnant..." Quinn heaves out a short sigh. "Look, it doesn't matter anymore. It was a long time ago."

"It does matter," Sam disagrees. "You have every right in the world to be angry with me."

They're quiet for a few minutes. Anxiety settles in the pit of his stomach. Say something.

Slowly, her hazel eyes shift from the floor to the side of his face. 

In some ways, he still looks the same. He still has the kind eyes she fell in love with and the dimples when he smiles...but of course, it's been years. They both have similarities of their past selves, a few lines here and there...

"I don't know what kind of haircut I pictured you having when we were older," Quinn admits. Sam looks to her with a slight smile. "I'd be very curious to see what it looks like when we're fifty. Tell me, do you blow-dry it?"

"No."

She quirks an eyebrow at him. "Smoothing serum?"

He cracks a smile and looks away from her. 

"Are you just gonna be floppy-haired your whole life?" Sam chuckles. "Like Jeff Bridges? Sam Elliott, perhaps...or Gandalf?" He laughs now, and she smiles. "What a sight that would be." She crosses her ankles up on the coffee table. "How come you didn't tell me about monsters then?" Quinn quietly asks. "You told me demons and ghosts were real, which I already knew."

Sam grins, already knowing where she's going with this. "Our apartment wasn't haunted."

"It sure as shit was."

"No, Quinn," he chuckles. "I promise it wasn't. I'm a professional."

"Professional what, liar?"

A sad smile tugs at his lips. "Yeah, I guess."

"I didn't mean how it came out," she quietly promises.

"It's true though." Sam shrugs. "Fake badges, fake names..." He slowly nods. "I don't know, I just...I knew I had to leave and I didn't want you any more freaked than you already were...I didn't want you to be afraid that one of those things would come after you, too...ghosts and demons, you could handle..."

"But not werewolves."

"I was trying to protect you the only way I knew how to," Sam sighs. "Tell you what you needed to know and get out of there so you stayed alive. And after Eleanor died..." Quinn waits. "I came to see you." She stares at him. 

Sam remembers how torn he was. Dean needed him after Eleanor died, but he had to make sure Quinn was safe. That the yellow-eyed demon hadn't tucked tail and went after her again. He was hiding in the back garden, close to the fence, staring up at her window. He only saw Quinn. For hours, he only saw Quinn.

"If I had seen Hannah, I would've come right to the door," Sam murmurs. "You have to know that."

Quinn slowly shakes her head. "So you were the peeping Tom Loretta told us about."

"Huh?"

"Loretta, the neighbor," she nods her head to the side. "She said she saw a guy sneaking out of our patio but it didn't look like he'd taken anything."

A frown twists at Sam's face, wrinkles his forehead. "Loretta's so fuckin' nosey."

"Right?" Quinn chirps. "I could've had a boy over." Sam smiles a little.

"Do you have a boy?"

Stupid way of asking.

"Todd, an officer at my station," she sighs. "He's met Hannah when she's been at the station with me, but she doesn't...know I'm dating him."

"For how long?"

"Few months," Quinn shrugs noncommittally. "You dating anyone?" She asked it too quickly as she brought her wine glass up to her lips again.

"No. But I have."

"Yeah?"

Sam nods. "Few years ago. Her name was Amelia. We lived in Texas."

"Together?"

"Yeah."

"Hmm."

Sam quickly changes the subject. "We killed it." Quinn's eyebrows knit together, and her gaze sweeps to him. "Dean and I, we killed the demon." Quinn is quiet for a few moments, and Sam just prattles on. "Its name was Azazel, and...it had this whole 'plan' for me...and the kids who were like me."

"What does that mean?"

"Other kids whose mothers had died in their nursery when they were six months old," Sam tells her. "We all had these psychic powers, and Azazel pitted us all against each other like some fight-to-the-death thing to lead his demon army and then Jake stabbed me—"

"Sam," Quinn barks out, and his eyes snap to her. "Breathe. Repeat. Slowly." Her phone rings on the table. "Shit." She sets her glass down and bounds for it. "Anderson." Sam sets his bottle down, getting to his feet and waiting. She rolls her lips into her mouth as she listens. "Yeah. Set up a perimeter, I'll be there in half an hour." She sets her phone down and looks to Sam as she moves for the stairs. "There was another murder."

And so it seemed the past seven years would have to be put on hold.