a match into water // v.f.

"Alright, that's the last of it boys. Grab your gear and let's head home!"

The moving team that had currently been occupying that apartment's lobby space stopped what they were doing. They all seemed a bit too relieved at hearing the words 'head home' and gladly set down the last of the cardboard boxes before walking out the door. In the midst of all that, a smaller body stood confused at the sight of all the uniform-clad men leaving, but before they could all leave, the bob of white hair ran through the sea of movers and up to the man who had originally called out the orders to leave.

"Hey, hang on!" Dean cried out, the small girl finally pushing through the last of the movers. "Where are you going? There's still a few boxes left that haven't been brought up stairs yet-"

"Look lady," the head of the movers sighed, turning around and lazily eyeing the white haired specimen in front of him, "you only paid us for an hour of our time, and that hour is up. We have other customers to get to besides you, so if you don't mind..."

"Oh I mind alright!" she fumed, pushing back a few strands of hair that escaped the small pony tail sticking up on the top of her head. "I paid you for an hour and you've only been here for half of that time!"

The mover sighed and rolled his dull, almost dead looking eyes. "Our contract said 2PM to 3-"

"And you showed up at 2:30!" Dean threw her hands up in frustration, clearly annoyed at having to have this conversation. "Look, there's only a few boxes left inside, and I'm sure it's not going to take that long, so would you please just help me bring them upstairs?" Dean was practically pleading at this point, which she would later argue to be quite the pathetic move on her part, but for the time being, she was tired, still sore from the long bus ride she got off of yesterday, and wasn't in the mood to try and move the last dozen boxes up to the 15th floor of her new apartment building.

Admittedly, the man in front of her showed Dean a smidge of pity at the thought of having to leave her to move the rest of the boxes, but then he thought about the money he was going to be paid for the next job he and his co-workers were going to, and then didn't feel so bad about having to leave. "Sorry Lady, but we've got another gig to head to." Then, with one last shrug, the mover turned and followed the last of his co-workers to their truck, leaving Dean to sit there and glare daggers into the back of his balding skull.

Dean spent a few moments watching them go, pouting slightly as the truck disappeared into the rest of San Diego and left her with some Grade A abandonment issues. Then she shook her head, deciding that those boxes left inside the lobby weren't going to move themselves, and that even though it was going to be pain in the ass, she might as well start now while the sun was still shining.

The moment she set foot back inside the apartment complex, her body let out an involuntary groan. There really weren't that many boxes to move, it just wasn't something that could have been done in one trip. Also, if Dean were really being honest with herself, she was kind of a lazy person, and all she wanted to do was plop down onto her brand new sofa that the movers actually did move upstairs and take nap for the next twenty years. However, she knew that a nap would get her nowhere, and she really didn't want to risk losing any of her belongings, so with a heavy sigh, and a small kick to the nearest box she could find, Dean began to gather up the boxes to start moving them upstairs.

As soon as she picked up the first couple of boxes, a small ding sounded in the air and signaled the arrival of the elevator opening downstairs. Dean took this as a sign that the elevator gods had found favor in her and she quickly called out to whoever was there to take advantage of the situation.

"Hey! Hold the door!" Dean cried, scrambling over to the door and trying not to drop her stack of boxes or trip over her own two feet. The person there had graciously held open the door for her and Dean let out a sigh of relief as soon as she made it inside the elevator without any disasters happening. "Thanks," she breathed, placing the boxes down on the floor a little ungracefully and wiping her hands on her calves. "You have no idea how much this helps me out."

"I can imagine," the man who held open the door spoke, causing Dean to look away from her boxes momentarily. "Are you moving in upstairs or just bringing in stuff from storage?"

"Moving in," Dean confirmed with a small nod, motioning for him to hold the door for another second as she ran out to grab another box to bring up. "I already had a bunch of the bigger stuff moved up earlier, but right now it's just the boxes I have to bring up."

"Oh, so you're the one who owns the couch those guys were bringing up earlier," he remarked almost thoughtfully. "Man, I hope your couch is alright, I'm pretty sure I saw them drop that couch a good twenty times before they even got it into the actual aparment."

Dean snorted in amusement, rolling her eyes and adding on, "I'm not even surprised, they actually just bailed on me right now, so-"

The man let out a small gasp. "No way! Isn't that against some sort of policy they have or something?"

To have a policy, they need to have some damn morals first, she thought grumpily to herself before shrugging and saying, "I guess not. I gave them money for an hour of work and they were only here for half an hour of it."

"Man, that sucks," he admits, his brown hair swishing around his shoulders while he shook his head.

"Tell me about it." Dean sighed and shook her head as well, the same loose, white locks falling in front of her face at the sudden movement. "But hey, you're not the one who hired them, so it's all good neighbor-dude."

An amused smirk found it's way onto the strangers face, Dean would have been a fool to miss the corners of his lips turn up at her words, and it almost looked like he wanted to comment on something, but he decided against it and just kept to surpressing the smile threatening to spread across his face. Before Dean could ask what was so funny about her last statement, the man's face lit up for a moment before he was bolting out of the elevator. Dean, of course, was highly confused at his actions, but she reached out to hold open the elevator open, assuming that he still wanted to climb back aboard the steel box.

"Yo, where's the fire?" Dean questioned, a single eyebrow raised as he watched the man's actions curiously. He didn't bother replying to her question at first, only going over to her small pile of boxes left in the lobby and picking a few of them up with ease.

"I'm just helping out," he told me, flashing a smile and shrugging like it was no big deal. "Y'know, from one neighbor-dude to another."

Dean was going to protest against this guy she had just met helping her move the rest of her stuff upstairs, but she found herself to be too busy laughing at his words instead. "Thanks," she finally got out once her laughter had died down a bit, "but you really don't have to be doing this-"

"Pfft, it's fine." The man waved her off, bringing in the last box into the elevator with the doors closing behind him. "Besides, I don't really have anything else to do at the moment, and I just couldn't leave you here to move all of that by yourself."

Again, Dean wanted to protest, but she also didn't want to seem ungrateful either, so she shut her mouth and nodded her thanks instead. The man nodded back in response, picking up on her gratitude, and without even asking what floor she was on, pressed the circular button labelled 15 before standing back and waiting for the elevator to rise. The 15th floor just so happened to be the floor that Dean needed to get too, and while it was nice not having to explain what floor level she lived on, she was awfully curious as to how the man in the elevator knew.

"How'd you know what floor I needed to go to?" Dean asked, repeating her internal thoughts.

The corners of the man's lips quirked up in a small smile for a brief second before he turned and faced the questioning girl in front of him. "Well I didn't just pass by the movers with your couch by chance," he spoke, a slight humorous tone in his voice, "I actually live on the same floor as you do."

For some reason that Dean couldn't explain, hearing that the man who was sent by the elevator gods themselves lived on the same floor as her brought a smile to her face. She later reasoned that it just felt nice to know at least one of her new neighbors/floormates, but there was still an underlying reason she couldn't figure out as to why the news made her so happy. "Really?" Dean asked, wanting to smack herself the instant that rhetorical question came tumbling out of her mouth, so she tried to recover with a lame addition of "Well, I guess 'neighbor-dude' is actually quite fitting for you now..."

A light, joyous laugh came from the man standing next to her, highly amused with how she stumbled across her words and had gotten so flustered so easily once she'd found out the two of them lived on the same floor. He noticed the girl got even more so flustered at hearing his laughter, so before he could turn his new neighbor's face another shade of pink, he tacked on to the end of his laughs "I do have a name, you know."

Flustered or not, Dean always had a string of witty comments availble at her disposal, and this time was no exception. "And it's not 'neighbor-dude'?" she asked innocently.

The man didn't even chuckle, he just rolled his eyes a little and silently admired at how quickly she was able to turn the conversation back around. "No, my name's actually Vic," he told her, a bit of smile creeping onto his face as he quickly added, "but 'neighbor-dude' isn't that far off from it, to be fair."

This time, Dean was the one who chuckled, shaking her head as she replied, "Yeah, I was only off by a syllable or two. No big deal."

The elevator door opened at this time, and both Vic and Dean began unloading the boxes from the elevator, making sure all of them were out before the elevator closed and they began bringing them to the open apartment belonging to Dean.

"So which one of these places is yours?" Dean questioned, glancing over the boxes she had and barely being able to see the top of Vic's snapback.

"411," came his reply, accompanied by the soft shuffling of his stack of cardboard boxes. "It's right across from yours actually-"

Dean couldn't help the laugh that bubbled up inside of her. "You're kidding?"

"Nope, I'm being dead serious." Even though he knew she couldn't really see it, Vic still turned his head over his shoulder and gave her a grin.

"Awesome," Dean chuckled, shaking her head and following her neighbor into her apartment. "So does this mean you're going to start stalking me now?" she teased.

Vic laughed a bit, carefully setting down the boxes on the hardwood floor and dusting off his hands on the front of his skinny jeans. "Only on Tuesdays," he commented, playfully winking at the white haired girl next to him and coaxing another beautiful laugh out of her.

"I'll start marking the calendar then," she retorted, rolling her eyes and going back out into the hall to collect the last couple of boxes chilling by the elevator."

Although he didn't have to, Vic followed Dean out of the apartment, almost resembling a lost puppy in a way. He wanted to keep this conversation going, and that was when he realized that only one of them had revealed their names to one another. "I never did catch your name by the way," he piped up, offering to grab a box for the white haired girl just to have her polietly decline. "I mean, it would be nice to know the name of the pretty girl living right across the hall..."

I bet he says that to all the women who move in here, she thought to herself, but nevertheless, Vic's comment brought forth a rosy color to her pale, freckled covered cheeks. "Trust me," she began, shifting the weight of the boxes in her arms, "if you knew my name, you wouldn't think I was so pretty."

The comment she made struck Vic in a way he couldn't describe. It almost...dare he say hurt? to hear those words, and how they almost had a bittersweet tone as they rung in his ears. He shook his head of the thoughts swirling around in his mind and went to ask for the name again. "I'm sure that's not true," he told her. "A name doesn't define a person's beauty, or their worth for that matter."

Dean stayed silent for a moment, not sure how to respond to that. She knew her name didn't define her, but she'd always felt self conscious about having to introduce herself to new people. Not many people took her name in a kindly matter, and she almost didn't want to risk Vic doing the same. However, after the silence had passed and she crossed into the threshold of her new home, she let out a small sigh and mumbled, "My name is Dean."

Vic, still following the smaller girl, almost thought he misheard his new neighbor's name, but with the way her jaw set at the extended silence, he knew he had heard her correctly. "Isn't Dean-"

"A boy's name?" Dean finished, the bitter tone in her voice loud and clear. "Yeah, typically it is. I know it's weird, but-"

"Actually," Vic cut in, a slow spreading smile on his face, "it kind of fits." And it really did, although at the time, he wasn't for sure why it was so fitting to the girl he just met in the elevator, but it did, and he thought nothing less of his new neighbor either.

Dean, admittedly, was surprised at the reaction to her name, but busied herself with setting down the last of her boxes and wiping off her hands instead of delving deep into her thoughts. "Well, uh, thanks again for helping me out," she said, looking over at Vic with a genuine half smile.

Vic nodded his response, adding, "Anytime, and if you ever need anything, don't hesitate to come knocking at my door." A thought crossed his mind and he quickly added, "Do you have a phone?"

"Yeah," she admitted, pulling out the older smartphone from the waistband of her shorts, "why-" Vic instantly grabbed the phone from her hands and, thanks to the lack of a security system on her phone, opened up the messaging app and sent off a small message to his number.

"There," he said, handing back her phone just as his own went off with a notification of new message, "now you also have my number to contact me if you need to."

Dean was partially oblivious to the fact that Vic had honestly just wanted to give his number to the pretty girl moving in next to him so he could have her number, but was still grateful of the kind gesture being set in place with him. "Thank you," she replied with a kind smile, placing her phone down on the counter next to her. "I seriously might come by for your help sometime, I don't really know my way around San Diego."

An idea was suddenly hatched into Vic's mind at those words, but he wasn't going to impose on Dean too much, so he just nodded and began to make his exit, not wanting to overstay his welcome either. "Well, if you ever need a tour guide, you know who to call."

"That I do," Dean admitted, a soft chuckle falling from her lips as she walked with Vic to the front door of her apartment. Leaning against the doorframe, she watched him go for a moment before she crossed her arms and called out, "I'll see you around, neighbor."

A soft chuckle of his own bubbled up in the back of Vic's throat, the brown haired man turning around and admiring the sly grin spread across her features before calling out a few parting words of his own.

"You too, neighbor-dude."

Notes

And there you have it! This is chapter one of the rewrite! I'm sure all of the original readers have noticed how the story is no longer written in Dean's POV, and that's because I've decided I'm going to try and make a shift towards the third person instead. You'll still be able to get an insight into the minds of all the characters, especially Dean's, and with the story being told in this POV, I feel like it's going to both flow better and give off the desired affect I want for this story.

Hopefully you all are liking what I have so far! Leave any comments you wish to below, and hopefully I'll see you soon with a new update!