Season 2, Episode 4: Wicked Garden

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The sun was setting as Dean looked over the fence into Morgan Magenta's backyard next door.  

There was a gap between two of the fence panels just large enough to slip through.  Dean was about to do just that, but a thought stopped him.  

I'm thirty-nine years old, he thought.  Did he really need to go through the teenage rebellion phase at this point in his life?  He had to admit, part of Morgan's appeal was that his father disapproved of her.  

But, Dean rationalized,  his dad was freaked out because he believed Morgan was a witch.  That was an accusation he had to investigate further.   He eased through the gap in the fence.

Morgan's side of the fence looked normal to Dean.  He was no botanist, but the plants in her garden beds looked like they ought to for early spring, as far as he could tell.  There was none of the lush, jungle-like overgrowth John Winchester had described to back up his suspicions of their next-door neighbor.

It didn't take him any longer than a minute to discover Morgan herself, barefoot and on her knees in the dirt, tending her garden.  

"Oh, hello, Dean.  Lovely evening, isn't it?"

"Hi, Morgan.  Hope you don't mind, I saw you out here and thought I'd take you up on your offer to drop by," Dean little-white-lied.

"Oh, of course, you're no bother at all,"  Morgan said, turning back to her flower bed.   

Dean waited a beat, but the budding plants seemed to occupy her full interest.

'No bother'?  That didn't sound anything like the blatant booty call she'd issued when she'd visited the A-frame.  Dean blinked, wondering if she'd had second thoughts, or if he'd somehow misinterpreted her interest.

"Er, nice flowers you've got there.  Hope there won't be a late frost,"  he said, making an attempt to segue into small talk.  

"You didn't come here for superficial chit-chat, though, did you?"  Morgan stood to face him with a throaty chuckle.  "That would be disappointing."

"I did hope you had something more... intimate in mind,"  Dean said, turning on his most charming smile.  She was messing with him, he realized, but it felt like part of the flirtation instead of anything petty or malicious. 

Morgan smiled right back.  "I thought I'd been sufficiently blunt when I told you I wanted to get to know you."

"Know me... in the biblical sense?" 

She made a little tut-tut noise with her tongue, sidling closer to smooth his shirt down over the muscle of his chest.  

"That sounds like drudgery.  Prudish and repressed... Is that really how you like it?

Dean mentally cursed himself for the poor word choice.  Of course a Wiccan wouldn't be too impressed by biblical terminology.  Not that he was overly impressed by it either, Dean thought.  The Winchesters had been entangled for generations with angels and demons, prophets and prophecies... Drudgery was a good word for it, he thought dryly.  He took Morgan's hand in his, looking down at her through his lowered eyelashes.  

"Believe me, I'm about as far from prudish as you can get."

The look she gave Dean back was a mirror image of his, all flirty fluttering of lashes and heated promise.  "That's good to know.  Come sit with me,"  she urged.  

"Admit it, though, Dean, you may not be prudish, but you are at least a little repressed,"  Morgan said with another seductive chuckle.

Repressed?  You have no idea, Dean thought as he joined Morgan on a garden bench.  Out loud he said, "I'm working on changing that."

She scooted close to him.  "Let me make this crystal clear:"  Morgan purred.  "I want us to get to know one another in the most uninhibited...carnal...pagan way possible.  Are we in agreement?"  Her flirting tone suddenly became serious.  

"Consent is very important to me."

"I appreciate that,"  Dean said sincerely.  More than you could ever guess,  he thought.  "But..."

"I sensed a 'but',"  Morgan spoke up when Dean hesitated.  "Do elaborate."

She was so clearly, genuinely sympathetic that Dean felt comfortable enough to be frank.  

"I've always traveled a lot.  In my line of work, it's a requirement,"  he told her.  "So, a lot of one-night stands, you know?  You meet someone, feel that mutual spark, you indulge, and then it's adios.  But now I plan on sticking around, and you, you're literally the girl next door."

"You're concerned I might make things awkward."  Morgan nodded, understanding.

Dean gestured, indicating the world outside the boundary of her garden.  

"I've noticed this is a real tight-knit little neighborhood."   Feeling at ease in Morgan's company, he broadened the gesture, spreading his arms wide in the classic 'yawn and stretch' strategy, ending with an arm wrapped around her shoulders.

Morgan snuggled against his side with a smirk that let him know his less-than-subtle move hadn't gone unnoticed.  She let out another quiet chuckle at his diplomatic description of Wanek Way.  

"That's one way of putting it.   Don't worry, Dean.  I don't want things to be awkward, either.  Men have a terrible habit of falling in love with me.  So tedious,"  she pouted.  "I don't like clingy."

"I know, right?" Dean agreed with the excitement of meeting a kindred soul.  

He didn't think her complaint was over-dramatic.  He didn't think Morgan was being conceited.  As much as he teased his brother, Sam, about Sam's supposed lack of good looks, Dean wasn't conceited about his attractiveness to the opposite sex, either.  Hell, women turned him down at least as often as they accepted his advances.  Women he was attracted to, that is.  

Women--and more than a few men--in general, though?  Far too many were attracted to him.  Dean had had a lifetime of being the object of others' uninvited desire, even before he'd hit puberty.  

"I'm no clinging vine,"  he assured Morgan.

"Good.  Then meet me in my bower.  Try not to be too late,"  Morgan challenged.  

They'd both moved in close,  so close Dean almost expected a parting kiss...

...But Morgan just rose smoothly to her feet and walked away.  Dean watched her go, admiring the sway of her hips.  It didn't seem like much of a challenge to find this 'bower' of hers.  

Gamble Acres had aged into a working-class subdivision, its A-frame architecture dated, many of its homes less than perfectly maintained,  but it had obviously been an upscale neighborhood in its prime.  Each lot comprised at least an acre, with spacious lawns separating each house, but still.  How hard could it be to find a garden feature on an acre of land?

Moments later, Dean had to revise his assessment.  Morgan had disappeared in the twilight.  The realization gave him a thrill.  His interest was piqued, and not just in anticipation of sex.

"Bobby owes Dad an apology,"  he breathed to himself as he ventured deeper into the foliage.  The air was significantly warmer and carried the perfume of dozens of flower varieties, all in full bloom.  Magic was at work here:  Morgan was definitely a witch.  The masses of flowers practically screamed the truth.  Dean remembered what she'd said about consent.  She was making sure he understood exactly what he was getting involved in, here.  

The thought made him stop for a minute to consider.  Dean hated witches as a general rule.   But Morgan seemed different.  Nothing about her struck Dean as evil, and he figured he, of all people, ought to be able to recognize evil.   Morgan could be dangerous, he thought, but somehow that just added to her appeal.  

She had disappeared, but not without a trace.  John Winchester had taught his sons woodcraft.  The skills came in handy in a magical landscape more like a wild jungle than a cultivated garden.

Dean found his heart beating faster in anticipation as he tracked Morgan.  This was literally a hunt, and he was enjoying it.  

The garden was dark, no warm yellow of electric lights, or cool cancerous blue of television screens shining through the windows of neighboring houses, although they should have been.  Dean didn't mind.  He was still more at home here in the dark than back there in suburbia.  He slipped stealthily between bushes and around vines, but somehow, a vine managed to catch on his sleeve...  

...He stopped and took hold of it to pull it off of him, but it held on tight.  

He tugged on it again but it just wound more tenaciously around his arm.  

"Jeez, talk about a clinging vine,"  Dean muttered.   This was turning into a struggle.

Dean drew out a knife, one of several hidden weapons he habitually carried.  He wasn't liking how the plant was managing to get handsy with him.  

"Hey, how'd you like a good pruning?"  he threatened.  

Even as he said it, he reconsidered.  Morgan wouldn't take kindly to him hacking into her precious plants.  

"Thinking too much with the big brain,"  Dean chastised himself.  

He shrugged out of his shirt, leaving it hanging on the vine, which settled down and went back to just hanging around like a normal plant.  

"Okay, okay, I can take a hint,"  he grumbled at it.  Dean stripped off his t-shirt and crouched to untie his boots.  

A soft breeze seemed to caress his skin as he padded barefoot to the edge of a clearing no bigger than a king-size mattress.  

"Morgan,"  he greeted the witch lounging there on the grass, and took satisfaction at seeing her eyes widen in surprise.  

"Dean!  You are a man of action, aren't you?"

Dean sank down beside her on the lush grass.  

"And you are...Bewitching."

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