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Curled up on their bed together, Mary’s blonde hair was mussed and her blue eyes were shining as she gazed at John’s face, John’s hands resting on her round and growing belly.“What are we going to name him?” John whispered, moving forward to press a chaste kiss on his wife’s nose, then her chin, then her lips.“Him?” Mary laughed. “Who says our baby’s a boy?”“Little Johnny Jr.,” John cooed, stroking up and down Mary’s stomach. He felt her skin jump as the infant inside kicked.“That’s so terrible, even the baby tried to kick some sense into you,” Mary said with a snort. “Johnny Jr., over my dead body.”“What, then?” he asked, nosing his way into the side of her neck, just under her ear. She leaned her head away to give him further access, and he laughed into the delicate skin there. “Jack? Jim? José?”“I’m not naming our child after your ‘drinking buddies,’” chastised Mary. “And besides, we still don’t know if it’s a boy. She could be a girl.”“Yeah, yeah. Do you have any ideas you’d like to share, then?”Mary’s hand joined his on her stomach, resting gently over his knuckles, cool and soft and smooth where his mechanic’s hands were warm and callused and rough. “I thought…” she bit her lip and a furrow appeared between her eyebrows. “I thought we could name him, or her, for my parents.”There was a silence between them shared for a while, a depth of loss and loneliness as they both remembered their parents. John hadn’t known his mother, had barely known his father, while Mary… She’d lost hers just as she’d decided to leave, chosen to escape to a new life with the man she loved. He knew that she regretted it, felt remorse that the last time she’d ever seen her mother or father she’d left without a goodbye and without the intention of ever returning. She’d wanted to abandon them, but still, they were her parents.“Samuel,” he whispered to the solid mound of flesh underneath both of their hands. The silence was broken as she smirked slightly and shook her head, rolling her eyes with fondness and sadness and pinched the top of his hand.“And Deanna, if it’s a girl,” she reminded.It was a girl.The first time John held Deanna in his arms, he cried.He hadn’t been expecting to love his child so much, so suddenly. It was unnerving, how someone he hadn’t known longer than a moment could suddenly consume so much of his heart. But she did. His daughter. Deanna.Deanna grew up as John’s sweetheart, his princess, Daddy’s little girl. She was always special to him, his little angel with her big, green eyes and blonde hair and that cute little cleft in her chin that she’d inherited from him, although everything else about her face was distinctly Mary’s. When work was hard, John always had Deanna’s smile and hug and shriek of “Daddy!” to look forward to the moment he entered the front door.John and Mary’s marriage was strained, of course, after the baby was born, but when Deanna was three, more complications arose. Mary was pregnant, again, and so John had to log extra hours at the garage to raise money for their second baby. And Deanna had started going to playgroups, and she was becoming difficult to handle once they had brought her back home.After Deanna started playgroup, she began to be apt to disagree and whine when Mary tried to clothe her in a dress or skirt, but it didn’t get to be a very big problem until after Mary brought her home from an event at the public library that she’d taken Deanna to with the children from her playgroup and their mothers. John wasn’t the one who dressed his daughter in the mornings – he wasn’t the best at color-coding, and besides, he was a man, and girly clothes weren’t his forte – but after that day at the library, it began that over breakfast Mary would worriedly pull him aside and tell him about how Deanna had tried to escape wearing a dress because “Dresses are for girls.” John usually shrugged over his coffee and commented that Deanna was probably just a bit of a tomboy, and Mary would look doubtfully back at their daughter. One day, when Mary tried to fit Deanna into her purple velveteen dress with the pink flower on the front, Deanna had thrown her first tantrum. It wasn’t her last.“I don’t wanna wear a dress!” Deanna screamed. “I hate it! The boys don’t wear dresses!”“You’re not a boy, sweetheart,” Mary tried to soothe her, pulling her little arms aside as Deanna continued to battle against the offending clothing item.“I am too!” Deanna wailed, her face scrunched up and red, tears dripping down her cheeks. John watched aghast from the entrance to his daughter’s bedroom, seeing the twisted frustration on his baby’s face and the tired upset on his wife’s. “I think this began when she started playing with Daniel,” Mary said, disheveled, pushing back her messy bangs after Kate had come by to pick Deanna up for Playgroup. “I don’t know what’s going on with her. Daniel’s a good boy, he’s not a bad influence. I’ve talked about it with Kate, she says he never puts up a fight about his clothes.”“She hasn’t really been around other kids before, either,” John offered, putting a comforting arm around his wife’s waist. “She’s used to staying home with you every day, and you can be a bit overprotective. She’s just adjusting to being away from you for a few hours, interacting with other adults and children. More freedom.”Mary pulled away. “What, like staying home with me was some kind of prison? Is that how you feel, John?” she asked angrily. “Is that why you log so much overtime at the garage? For more ‘freedom?’”John raised his eyebrows in confusion. “No, that’s not what I meant, I…”Mary shook off his hand and took a step away, raising a finger. “Freedom from what, exactly? I do all the cooking, the cleaning, taking care of our daughter…” Her voice broke slightly. “So what is it, John? Freedom from me?”He raised his hands in objection, but Mary didn’t let him speak.“Just leave it,” she sighed, frustrated, turning away. “You know what? You can dress Deanna from now on.”John was upset, and irritated at Mary’s irrational anger, and he retreated to the kitchen to pull a beer from the fridge. Leaning back against the counter, he took a deep pull. He worked hard for his family, worked overtime and during holidays to put money in the bank and food on the table. Mary’s job as a mother could be demanding, but when their second child came along it was the money from his overtime they’d need, not a clean house or the knowledge of how to use a fucking turkey baster.But he did start waking Deanna in the morning to pick out her clothes.“You don’t like any of these?” he asked her, holding up Deanna’s dresses. Deanna shook her head stubbornly. “But this one is your favorite color. Blue, like Cookie Monster, remember?”Deanna’s bottom lip trembled. “Don’t make me wear them, Daddy, please! Don’t make me look like a girl!”John heard something in Deanna’s voice, something that he couldn’t ignore. She didn’t sound like a bratty child throwing a tantrum. She sounded like if John made her do it, made her wear those dresses, it would hurt her.Bending down, he held out an arm for her, and she buried her face in the side of his shirt. “It’s alright, sweetie, you don’t have to wear any dresses if you don’t want to.”“I don’t wanna,” Deanna whispered into John’s shirt. “I don’t wanna, Daddy. Don’t make me.”“Sure thing, Princess, sure,” John said softly, running his fingers through her hair.He took Deanna shopping that weekend to pick out clothes. He didn’t miss the way her eyes followed the boy’s clothes section as they walked past it, and she ended up picking out some green shorts and plain white T-shirts, and even a few button-up overshirts, “like Daddy’s.” In the next few months, as he gave Deanna more and more freedom in picking out her clothes in an effort to reduce his own stress and prevent tantrums at home, her clothes leaned more and more towards the boyish side of the clothing spectrum. Her favorite set of pajamas were blue plaid, a hand-me-down from Daniel, and she wore them almost every night.Mary was five months pregnant when they told Deanna that she was going to be a big sister.“That means you’re gonna have a little brother or sister soon, Deanna,” John told her, crouching down to look her right in the eyes. “You’re going to have to be a big girl and protect them, just like Mommy and I protect you.”Deanna’s eyes were wide in awe, and she nodded.When Mary was seven months along, John got around to making it out to buy some new toys for the coming baby. They would be reusing Deanna’s old newborn onesies at first, and then they’d buy some more once the baby was there and they knew if it was a boy or a girl. Not wanting to arrive back home with a bag full of new toys and none for Deanna, John walked through the boys’ section to pick out a new Hot Wheel.Since Mary had gotten big, John had started picking up more chores around the house in his free time, and had found that Deanna never played with the dolls and dress-up clothes that Mary’s friends and relatives gifted to her. Deanna preferred cars, so that was what John had started getting her. He always felt a flush of pride that Deanna admired her daddy’s job so much. Maybe one day, when she was old enough, he’d buy her a cute little Volkswagen Beetle-bug and teach her a little bit of the upkeep, enough so she wouldn’t ever have to ask for help changing a tire or have to call for a tow.John taught Deanna how to play catch one day during Mary’s ninth month, while his wife was inside relaxing with a glass of cold lemonade in bed.“Raise your glove a bit, Deanna,” John instructed, showing her what he meant with his own. “Now, bend your knees a little, spread your feet apart. That’s right, Princess, you got it. Now, I’m going to throw you this ball real slow, and try to catch it in the glove, alright?”Deanna nodded, brow furrowed in determination. John slowly tossed the children’s baseball in a high, soft arc, and Deanna tracked it with her eyes, took a step back, and reached.The ball hit the glove and bounced back out, falling to land in the grass with a soft sound.“Crap!” she cursed, and John laughed.“Language, Deanna,” he chided. “And don’t worry, that was your first time. Here, pick it up, see if you can throw it back to me.”Deanna managed that pretty fine, although John had to step forward a bit and lower his arm to catch the ball.“Good one, Sweetheart! Okay, the ball’s coming back for you now, ready?”Deanna nodded and readied her form.“Here it goes!” John said, sending the baseball sailing through the air in an arc towards her. Deanna stumbled a bit, raising her glove, and caught the ball above her head.“Right on, Champ!” John called, and Deanna lowered her glove, a smile stretched bright across her face.“I did it!” she yelled, jumping up and down, her blonde curls bouncing, and threw the ball back at John with enough energy to send it sailing over his head.When they went back inside two hours later, Deanna punched the baseball back into her glove repeatedly before turning back to her dad. “Can you call me Champ all the time?”John felt something sink in his stomach as he looked down at his baby girl. “Sure thing, baby,” he said, feeling shaky, although he wasn’t sure why.She was silent for a moment, punching the ball back into her glove. Then she looked up at him through her long eyelashes. “Daniel’s dad calls him Tiger. Like the big cat. And Sport, too, sometimes. He taught him how to play football.”“Is that right?” John asked, before shuffling his daughter into the bathroom for her bath.Deanna found the scissors two days before Mary was due and cut off her pigtails in front of the bathroom mirror. Mary, round and heavy with her pregnancy, had to take her to the barber to get the messy cut fixed. When the two returned home, Deanna’s hair was in a short and boyish bowl-cut, her cheeks rounding into a smile when she caught sight of her daddy. John ruffled her soft hair and kissed Mary’s cheek.Mary went into labor on May first, and on May second, John was holding his baby boy, his first son, in his arms. This time, he cried without surprise.Three days later, when Mary was able to return home, they introduced Deanna to her little brother. She was strangely quiet.When John had told his daughter that her baby sibling was coming, she had been bouncing around the house. Now, Deanna seemed to drag her feet along the carpet as she walked, constantly shooting strangely furtive glances at Mary as she cooed, “Who’s my good baby boy?” to Samuel, rocking him in her arms. Deanna glared at the truck-patterned blanket that John and Mary used to coddle Sammy with when he cried, and she scowled at the toys they’d given him, the soft blue and green toys and the patterned infant jumpers.“Why is Sammy my brother?” Deanna asked John on the second day. Sammy didn’t cry very much – Deanna hadn’t, either, not for the first two weeks, and John was appreciating the current peace in anticipation. In the relative quiet and the warm afterglow of childbirth, he and Mary weren’t yet drained with fatigue and John was feeling good. He frowned at Deanna then, though, putting down the knife that he was using to spread peanut butter on her sandwich.“Why, Princess? Don’t you love your little brother?”Deanna seemed to wince at John’s words, and John didn’t understand why.“But why is he my brother? Why isn’t he my sister?”Oh, John thought, Deanna wanted a sister. He was reminded of before Deanna was born, when he’d hoped for a boy to toss around the pigskin with, to show how cars worked and to sit with as John gave him his first beer. But he loved his daughter. He’d had his visions for her shift sideways within moments of being handed the screeching pink bundle of wrinkled skin, shift from games of catch and cheering at school baseball tournaments to kissing rosy pink cheeks and watching child ballet performances and seeing her off to her first school dance with a group of giggling friends or, perhaps, a shy young boy who would blush at the sight of his golden-haired daughter in her dress. But that was what keeping an infant’s gender a surprise until birth could be, sometimes: unfulfilled expectations, disappointment.“Because he’s a boy, Deanna,” John finally answered. Deanna’s eyes were wide as she looked up at him, and she looked so lost, so confused.“But why?” she asked, and John didn’t know how to answer her question, because the pit in his stomach told him that it was so much more complicated than her two words were able to convey. The look in his daughter’s eyes disturbed him. She looked so… tormented. His beautiful four-year-old looked like she was suffering.The next day, Deanna watched Mary change Sam’s diaper for the first time. She crouched next to her mother, wearing blue overalls and a green T-shirt with a dinosaur on it that John had bought her while Mary was in the hospital. Deanna stared as Mary removed the soiled diaper and cleaned Sammy up with a moist towel.“What’s that?” she asked, pointing between Sam’s legs.“That’s Sam’s penis,” Mary told her patiently.“What’s a penis?”“It’s his private part,” said Mary. “Just like how you have a vagina.”“Why does Sammy have a penis?”John had put down his newspaper. The sinking feeling in his stomach had returned.“Because Sammy’s a boy, and boys have penises.”Deanna watched silently as Mary finished cleaning Sam and dressed him in a new diaper.“Why does Sammy already have his penis?” Deanna finally asked as Mary started buttoning up Sam’s onesie. Mary looked down at her daughter, the furrow between her brows showing her confusion.“He was born with it,” she said, the tone at the end of her statement sounding more like a question.Deanna’s face was pale, her freckles standing out starkly on her cheeks. “When am I gonna get my penis?” she asked. John’s stomach churned. Mary had gone pale, as pale as Deanna.“Girls don’t get penises,” she told Deanna.Deanna’s eyes flooded with tears. "Why do I have to be a girl?" she asked, and neither Mary nor John had anything to say. But for the first time in months, finally, they both understood what was wrong with their daughter.They talked about it together, alone, in their bedroom, with their children asleep in each of their rooms. They talked about it for hours. Then they kept talking about it, every night, for the rest of two weeks, except for when Sam’s crying interrupted them.They decided to wait. Deanna was only four. Maybe it was just a phase. Maybe if they let her buy clothes and toys from the boys’ section, she’d be content, she’d grow out of it. But if, when she turned five, she hadn’t grown out of it, they’d get her a psychiatrist.That never happened, though, because Mary died and John put six-month-old Sam in Deanna’s arms and told her to run.The first week, before John took the kids away from Lawrence, they stayed in a motel room and Mary’s friends brought gifts, tidings, dinners in plastic-wrapped dishes, trying to help them get along when they had lost everything. The food went bad quickly, left out on the counter. John could not muster the effort to put the meals into the fridge, even though the small motel refrigerator wouldn’t have been big enough to hold all of them if he tried. Sam wouldn’t stop crying for the first day, despite Deanna trying her best to soothe his wails, until nearly twenty-eight hours after the fire when John remembered that Sam needed to eat and rushed to the grocery store to buy a new bottle and powder formula.He hated himself a little bit as he cradled his starving baby, Sammy’s mouth silenced as it clamped around the rubber nipple, too hungry to care that it didn’t belong to his mother. After Sam settled, John handed him over to Deanna, his tiny body, half the size of Deanna’s, somehow making her look smaller.“Look after your brother, Deanna, I’ll be back soon,” he told her, and her big eyes followed him out the door. He waited outside of the closed room for a minute, waiting to hear his daughter call for him to come back inside, but she didn’t make a sound.There was a psychic woman named Missouri in town who beckoned him into her home with open arms. She was slim but curvy and wore her hair in a round afro, and she was someone that he might have found attractive if he hadn’t had that wedding ring on his left hand and the smell of smoke still filling his nose. Moments after laying eyes on her he found himself with her arms wrapped around his shoulders and a soothing voice in his ear saying she was sorry for his loss.“You want to know what killed your Mary,” Missouri Mosely said in a voice that sounded like it was used to being loud but knew its way around softness. “Take me to where it happened.”At the scorched remains of his house, Missouri told him about the evil that had taken his wife. “I don’t know any more than the darkness I feel, John Winchester. Your wife is gone and an evil took her away, that’s all I can say. I’m not all-powerful. If you want to learn more, the only thing I can do is point you in the right direction.” John nodded, grief-stricken and overcome with emotion. He wasn’t insane, hadn’t dreamed up his wife pinned and bleeding on the ceiling; something evil had destroyed their family. He felt as validated as he was horrified.“I have to know,” he said, choking on tears. Missouri held up both hands and clasped them on either side of his face.“But first, John, listen here. You have children to think about. You have two beautiful little boys waiting for you to come back to them. If you turn away from this, you could learn to move past it, raise them up normal, raise them up good. Folks that go down the road you’re headed, John, they don’t get that. You understand?”“Just tell me where to go,” was all he could manage, and Missouri sighed before reaching into her pocket and pulling out a tiny notebook and a pencil. She wrote an address down and tore it out, handing it to him. He stared at it, clutched it in his hands. Blue Earth, Minnesota. That was far.“You think good and hard about the route you want to take, John Winchester. You think about your boys. You think about Samuel and Deanna before you go doing anything rash.” Her eyes were hard for a moment, unforgiving in their awareness. “There’s evil in this world, and chasing it ain’t gonna bring you any joy.”He thought about it for the next six days, thought about the trill of fear he felt deep in his chest when he thought about real evil, thought about the danger that must come with hunting down something that could pin his wife to the ceiling without using rope and burn down a house without lighting a match. The Marine in him was unsettled, and his hands constantly shook for most of the day. The only times it stopped was when he could escape the dull confines of the motel room and lose himself in a drink.Sam was just a baby, and Deanna, she hadn’t spoken a word to him yet since the fire. Could John really uproot his children and cart them off to Minnesota to chase monsters? It sounded ridiculous. It sounded like the worst choice a father could make. But the thought of staying in Lawrence had his feet itching to run.In the end, he didn’t decide one way or another; the decision was made for him when Mike showed up at his motel room door, wringing his hands and face spattered with apology. “You haven’t been to the garage and I get that, of course I do, but you haven’t made any money and George at the bar says he sees you there more often than not, but Kate has come by with clothes for Sam and Deanna a few times and she says she’s never seen a ‘sitter. I didn’t know what else to do, John.”He’d called CPS.John had lost his wife and he wasn’t about to lose his children. So once Mike had driven off, John threw all of their meager belongings into a battered second-hand duffel and packed Deanna and Sammy into the backseat of the car. That was it, then. They were going to Blue Earth.A straight drive to there out of Lawrence was seven hours. Sam’s car-seat was still strapped in the back, but the baby was so upset to be in the car that after an hour, Deanna lifted him out of the seat and cradled him in her lap. She bounced him and rubbed his tummy and pressed her closed mouth to his forehead as he wailed, but made no noises herself.John pulled up to a rest station halfway through the drive to take the kids into the bathroom. He took them into the handicapped stall so he wouldn’t have to worry about any truckers hassling his daughter while he was indisposed, and spread a blanket on the dirty floor to lay Sammy out on and change his diaper while Deanna used the toilet. When Sammy and Deanna were both done, he handed the baby to Deanna to hold while he took his own turn.“Sorry about the long drive, Champ,” he said, managing to keep his voice light even as he felt his own chest seizing with the stress of being homeless and broke. “But you’re being a real trooper, and we’re already halfway there now.” She didn’t say anything in response, but nodded.Another hour in, after listening to Sammy wail his hunger into the stuffy car, John made a stop at a grocery store. He left the children in the car for just a few minutes as he bought some soft baby food in little glass jars. It was about the time he and Mary had discussed to start feeding Sam real food, and anyway, there was no way to warm up a bottle on the road. He perched Sam up on the car’s hood and spent another hour trying to scoop pureed banana into his unwilling mouth before handing him back to his big sister. John instructed Deanna to pat the baby on the back until he told her to stop. Deanna complied silently, and uttered not a word of complaint or disgust when the baby finally coughed spit-up down the front of her shirt.When John finally pulled up to the address Missouri had sent him to, he found he was parked in front of a church. He checked the little piece of paper in his hand twice, making sure it matched the address over the small brick building, and yeah, he was in the right place. It was a Thursday in the late evening, and there were no other cars in the gravel lot outside of the church, and John was tired and Deanna was blinking sleepily from the backseat as Sammy nodded off in her arms. But he ushered Deanna out of the car and took Sammy into his own arms before walking determinedly towards the wooden church doors, his daughter crunching through the gravel at his side, her hand clutching the hem of his shirt and her face as solemn as ever.John’s fist made a loud noise on the door, and he could hear the knock echo throughout the inside of the church. He knocked for a solid thirty seconds before pausing to wait, and after a minute he had raised his hand to start knocking again when the door opened and he was faced with a pastor, whose face wasn’t terribly aged but was marred with wrinkles nonetheless, and whose eyebrows were furrowed in concern. The man took in the travelers standing at his door: the messy and unshaven man holding a sleeping infant and the young girl with wide eyes and a mouth that remained firmly closed.“Are you folks alright?” he asked, voice just as concerned as his eyebrows, and soft and worn as his skin.“My name is John Winchester. A woman named Missouri Moseley sent me to this address. I’m trying to find the evil spirit that killed my wife.”John met the man’s gaze head-on, and the two maintained eye-contact until the pastor nodded.“Alright,” he said, stepping aside to allow John and Deanna to step into the warm church. “My name is Jim Murphy. I can help.”John and Jim talked deep into the night, and Deanna nodded off holding Sammy on a pew. “I have a lot to teach you, and it will take time,” Jim told John several hours later. “I know a place where you can work in town while you’re staying here. Why don’t you take your children to find a place to sleep, and come by again tomorrow.”He found a motel and set Deanna and Sammy up for the night on one of the double beds before heading back out to a bar for a beer. John drank until he was comfortably numb and then ordered a burger to take home. He ate half of it in the car on the way, dripping grease into his lap and leaving slippery fingerprints on the wheel, and then finished all but some vegetable scraps and the leftover bun at the little rickety table in the motel kitchen. Before falling into bed, he stood over his sleeping children, Deanna curled up next to her brother, just as silent as when she was awake. He felt a knot in his throat and bent over to kiss both of their foreheads, then slumped fully clothed into the bed next to theirs.Ten minutes later, he was roused from his drunken stupor by the sound of tiny feet thumping to the floor and padding lightly across the room. There was a tiny clatter as he heard one of the wooden chairs pulled out from the table, and he raised his head in confusion to see. Deanna was lifting herself into the chair, kneeling on it, and pulling the paper bag of John’s dinner scraps towards her. She used her fingers to bring the soggy bread and limp lettuce to her mouth, eating them with a hunger that sent John’s stomach spiraling into his feet.In an instant, John realized that in all of the time since Mary died, he’d never once prepared a meal for Deanna.There had been those meals that women had brought to their motel room, food that John had left out to rot as he fed his own hunger with alcohol and barfood. He’d gotten the powdered formula for Sammy, but he’d never once gone out to bring his daughter back a take-out meal. How had she eaten? Had she been feeding herself with cold, congealed lasagna and moldy meatloaf all this time? How had he not once thought to feed his child?John sat up swiftly, swinging his legs over the side of the bed and lowering his feet to the floor with a noise that had Deanna jumping half a foot into the air and turning to him with wide, frightened eyes, a floppy tomato clutched in her tiny hand. Tears burned as John lurched up from the bed and towards his daughter, who dropped the dinner scraps and clambered down from the chair to stand at attention in front of him.Deanna’s mouth opened and closed several times, never managing to get a word out until she simply mouthed a fearful “I’m sorry,” breathing it into the room so that John inhaled it into his own chest, filling his body with guilt and pain to nearly match the loss of his wife. He dropped to his knees and they ached at the hardness of the linoleum floor, but he ignored it and wrapped his arms around Deanna, pulling her close and burying his face in her blonde hair.But he couldn’t find words, and before he even felt her raise her own arms to wrap around his neck, he was up and back out the door and unlocking the Impala with shaky hands. He drove the three blocks to the nearest McDonald’s and ordered a Happy Meal at the drive-thru window.“What kind of toy would you like?” the voice from the speaker inquired, and John thought for only a moment before he was asking for a Hot Wheel.When he returned to the motel, he found Deanna sitting dejectedly at the table. She looked up in surprise, and John realized with another pang of guilt that she hadn’t thought he was coming back tonight. As gently as he could, John walked over to the table and pulled out the second chair, sitting across from her and handing over the warm McDonald’s bag. Her eyes widened as she opened it, and she pulled out a hot burger. John’s stomach hurt as he watched her swallow the saliva that had quickly flooded her mouth, and she looked up at him for permission, taking a big bite after he nodded.Deanna’s eyes fluttered closed as she tasted the burger, and after a second of chewing let out an involuntary moan of pleasure. It was the first sound he’d heard from his daughter’s mouth in over a week, and John couldn’t prevent the single tear from falling down his cheek, but he did wipe it away before she could see.After she finished the burger, Deanna reached back into the bag to rummage for the fries, and pulled her hands back holding both the paper sheath of fries and the Hot Wheels toy. It was a shiny red Stutz Blackhawk. The paint glimmered in the dim light of the bedside lamp, and she smiled widely and looked back up at her dad, eyes brimming with gratitude and joy. John weakly smiled back. When Deanna held out the paper sheath to offer him some of her fries, he declined, not wanting to take food from his child and feeling too sick to his stomach to have eaten anything anyway. He promised himself, as he watched her finish the first hot meal she’d had in days, that he’d never neglect his kid like that again.John stayed in Blue Earth, learning from Jim, for almost a year. While Jim took care of Deanna and Sam, John worked at a small local diner, bussing tables and washing dishes and serving during rush hours. He brought home free meals for Deanna and always made sure that she had enough baby food to feed Sammy with. In his free time after shifts, he was at Pastor Jim’s church, taking in everything the man had to teach.The pastor had a whole secret room full of weapons. Most of them John knew how to use from military training, but there were some things that he’d never seen except in stuff like Kung-Fu movies. Jim taught him about monsters and the signs to know to track them, he taught John about silver and consecrated iron, and about how to make holy water. John learned a lot about monsters from Jim.While John was training and doing research, during the times when he didn’t need Jim explaining anymore, the pastor was left to play with the kids. He doted on Deanna, thought she was absolutely precious, and bought her white and yellow dresses to wear to Sunday mass. Deanna had started speaking softly once more, but didn’t object to being once again clothed in skirts, and John was too distracted to remember why she would.About six months into John’s stay in Blue Earth, Jim introduced him to Abram Johnson. Jim called him a hunter, and without needing the term clarified, John knew what it meant, and he knew that a hunter was what he was going to be.Abe traveled the country in a beat-up truck with his son Caleb, killing monsters and banishing spirits. He was an Army vet and a weapons dealer, had a home-base out in Nebraska, and traded primarily with other hunters. John and he became buddies fast, and Deanna quickly became infatuated with sixteen year old Caleb.Deanna had recovered most of her voice by then, though she was quiet around strangers and rarely spoke to anyone except John, Sammy, and Pastor Jim. She followed along after Caleb like an awed little duckling, though, watching him attentively with bright eyes and adoration. The young man indulged in Deanna’s crush, and maybe gloated in it a little. He was constantly preening under Deanna’s observation, and taught the now-five-year-old how to throw darts, much to her delight. When she showed John how she could hit the bull’s-eye, John had never seen her prouder.One afternoon, Abe, Jim and John were reclining on Jim’s porch, watching Caleb and Deanna playing out in the grass. Sammy was in his high-chair, eating Cheerios. Caleb was practicing his aim with a shotgun, aiming the bullets at empty beer bottles propped up on blocks of wood. Deanna followed him around, mimicking his swagger. Just the day before, she’d asked John if she could get cowboy-boots like Caleb’s. They weren’t practical, he’d told her, and she had sulked for the better part of two hours.Deanna stayed out in the field to throw rocks at the remaining bottles when Caleb came striding up to the men at the porch, and the guys all grinned at him. Caleb picked up a beer of his own and popped the cap off on the edge of the table, downing a gulp with a smug smile.“She sure likes you, huh, boy?” Abe asked, and Caleb shrugged casually.“Well, sure, what’s not to like about all this?” he smirked, gesturing up and down his slim frame.Abe nodded. “You prepared for waiting thirteen years ‘til she’s legal?” he asked, and Caleb sputtered, choking on a mouthful of beer as the men all laughed.“Jesus, Pop,” muttered Caleb, running the back of his hand across his mouth and blushing, glancing towards John. “I swear, sir, it’s not like that, she ain’t even ten…”John chuckled and nodded, lightly slapping the wooden arm of his chair. “Don’t worry about it, kid, I get it. It’s real hard to say no to those eyes lookin’ up to you like that. You soak it right up until she gets old enough to realize she could do a lot better.”The men all laughed again at Caleb’s expense as the boy pouted, and John tried to ignore the discomfort filling his belly. Deanna’s hair had grown out from the short haircut she’d been so happy about, and most of the clothes she owned now were dresses given to her by Jim. She never fought wearing them anymore, but John still saw the resignation in her eyes every time she put one on, and he’d been remembering the late-night conversations with Mary they’d had before she died. He hadn’t really forgotten, no matter how much he hoped that he could. No matter how much he tried.And then one day, as John was reading at Jim’s dinner table, Deanna walked up and stood next to his chair until he turned to look at her.“Am I cursed?” she asked in that shy, quiet way she’d taken to. John stared.“What do you mean?” he asked, although he really knew what she meant, he’d just been trying very hard not to think about it.“Is that why no one thinks I’m a boy?” she continued, making John’s gut ache familiarly. “Did a monster put a spell on me, like the ones Pastor Jim and Caleb hunt? Did it make me have a girl’s body?”John could barely manage a “No” before sending her on her way.But later that night, when Deanna was dressed in a set of tattered plaid pajamas, the same set she’d been wearing the night of the fire, she caught John’s attention as John passed her on his way to the motel’s bathroom. “Dad,” she said, “Can you give me a haircut like the Marines?”There was a slight hesitation before he said “Sure thing, Champ,” memories of Deanna’s long blonde braids flashing through his mind. “Come on, let’s do it now.”As Deanna’s blonde hair fell into the sink, she looked at herself in the mirror, smiling. Her smile reminded John of Mary, and the lump in his throat made it hurt to swallow. Without the hair framing her face, without her bangs, the roundness of her cheeks was more obvious, and her eyes looked even larger. But strangely, the shortness made her look more boyish than anything had before, and John could see in the mirror that Deanna had noticed as well. She gazed at her own reflection and made faces, and then grinned with her teeth showing and turned her head from side to side to see the way the hair was almost completely shorn at the nape and by her ears.“Daddy,” Deanna spoke up after she had admired herself in the mirror fully. “Have... Have you ever heard of the name Dean? It’s spelled like my name, but it’s a boy name.”John heard himself say, “Yes.”Deanna looked down into the sink, where locks of her hair lay, limp and lifeless. Her eyes darted up to meet John’s in the mirror before turning back down. “I… I like the name Dean. Do you think maybe I look like a Dean?”John connected gazes with his child through the mirror. He was reminded of the day he brought Sam home from the hospital, of the pain and confusion in his daughter’s expression when her parents called Sammy her little brother, their baby boy.He put his hands on Deanna’s shoulders. “I think Dean’s a great name,” he said.“Can you start calling me Dean?” Deanna asked. There was a hint of fear in her eyes, and John felt ashamed that he had helped put it there, that he had taken so long to start listening.“Of course I will,” John said, and swallowed, struggling to force the next word out through his lips, knowing that this was finally it, and everything would change, “Son.”Deanna grinned up at him, delight rounding her cheeks and raising her thin brows, wonder brightening her– no, his eyes. John turned h-him around so he could wrap his arms around his child and hold him close. Deanna’s– no, Dean’s little arms came up around John’s neck and squeezed him tightly, and John didn’t let go.John held his son in his arms for the first time, his baby boy, his firstborn, and he cried, though he didn’t let Deanna – Dean – feel the hitching of his breaths and had wiped his cheeks clean of tears before he pulled away.John neglected to visit Jim for a week after that night, taking the time to learn how to think of his daughter – his son, in a different way, learning how to disconnect the word “girl” from his child, and taking Dean and Sammy to a Walmart an hour away to buy Dean a whole new wardrobe. John hadn’t seen Dean so happy in a very, very long time, since long before Mary died, and it only made him further realize that this was the right thing to do. This was what was going to make his kid happy. And seeing the same smile on Dean’s face and hearing the same laugh from Dean’s mouth that had belonged to three-year-old-Deanna, back before the first time she ever cried that “boys don’t wear dresses,” let him know that calling Dean a boy and buying him clothes from the boys’ section didn’t make him a different kid than he’d ever been.John wasn’t losing a daughter or gaining a son. John still had the same kid he’d always had since Dean’d first come wailing out of Mary’s womb. But now, his kid smiled with real joy and didn’t feel forced to put on his clothes in the morning, and when John took the kids to a diner and their waitress called Dean “Young man,” Dean beamed and puffed out his chest and ordered his own meal in a loud voice, speaking to his first stranger since he’d gotten to know Pastor Jim and Abe and Caleb.John spoke to Jim in private before taking Dean and Sammy back to the church or the man’s house. He couldn’t explain as well as he would like, stumbling over words and anxious as he was. John knew about transsexuals, but all he knew about them were bulky men stuffing themselves into sequined dresses and making their voices a higher pitch. Dean wasn’t like that, he wasn’t a crossdresser or a fucking tranny, he was only five years old for fuck’s sake. He was just… He was just Dean.“This isn’t… It isn’t all of a sudden, Jim,” John said as Jim stared down at his own dinner table in silent contemplation. "I ain't doing this on a whim or nothin’. Dean’s been… My kid’s been like this for a couple years. Mary and I, we were talking about taking him to a therapist, before she died. Dean was, he was real upset for a long while, used to throw tantrums if we tried to make him wear dresses, and kept asking why everyone thought he was a girl. Last week, he asked me…” John swallowed back his emotion and took a deep breath. “He asked me if his body was cursed, Jim. If some monster had cursed him with the wrong body. After the fire, you know, he stopped talking, so I kind of… let myself forget about it all until last week. But yeah. This isn’t a sudden thing. I just wanted you to know that.”Jim was silent for several minutes as John sweated in anticipation of his friend’s response. Finally, the pastor folded his hands on the tabletop and looked up.“I can’t say I understand what you’re doing,” he said, “Or agree, exactly. I am a man of the Bible, John, despite my hobbies outside of the church. But… I know that you are a man who loves his children, and I trust that you would never try to hurt Deanna. I can’t tell you how to raise your children, and I think you know better than I what makes them happy. I’ll do as you ask and call Deanna by her new name. Who knows; perhaps in the future, I will start to understand.”When John brought his children to the house the following day, Dean hung back a bit in the doorway until Jim smiled and welcomed him with a “Good morning, Dean.” Dean grinned and rushed forward in his tennis shoes and green T-shirt, and John could tell that Jim was somewhat shocked at how different the new clothes and close-cropped haircut made Dean look. John thought to himself, people forget a lot that kids don’t much look like boys or girls one way or the other, except for their hair and outfits.The next time Abe and Caleb dropped by to visit, John intervened before they entered Jim’s home to tell them in low tones about how Deanna was Dean now. John could quickly tell that Abe wasn’t nearly as immediately accommodating as Jim had been, though the man didn’t vocalize his discomfort. Caleb frowned and looked mildly confused.“You’re not saying Deanna’s a…” he stopped mid-sentence, looking like he thought better of the word he was about to say, whatever it was. “So, she wants to be a boy now? You telling me we can’t get married when she grows up?”John glared at the young man through narrowed eyes. “You’re eleven years older, boy. That was never gonna happen in the first place.”“Right, right,” Caleb laughed before entering the house, and that was that. The sight of Caleb was met by a cheer from Dean, who immediately started the typical routine and danced around the young man, begging Caleb to teach him how to throw knives with the new target out back.“Sure thing, li’l dude, but only if you can beat me there.” And then the two of them were racing through the house and out the back door, Caleb visibly letting Dean get ahead of him as they ran across the grass. John relaxed a little bit, although Abe still stood next to him in silence. Only three months after that, John finally felt ready to hunt monsters, for real. He bid Jim goodbye and, with a duffel full of weapons safely concealed in a newly-constructed hidden compartment in the trunk, drove to Indiana for his first job.After taking care of the ghost, after digging up his first grave and burning his first body, after smelling the smoke and burning flesh in the air and nearly collapsing from a panic attack at the memory of Mary’s death, he returned to their new motel room, covered in dirt and hands burning with oozing blisters. He stood in the doorway for just a moment, looking through the darkness at his kids in their bed, and promised himself that the horror of burning a body was never something his kids would have to experience.Then in the months that followed, in the days upon days of tracking monsters and digging up corpses and firing off rounds of iron into their incorporeal forms, he sat next to smoldering graves and acknowledged that he’d never promised himself to never teach his kids how to shoot.So when Dean turned six, John put a gun in his hands, and when Dean’s bottom lip trembled and his hands shook, he told him to “Man up. You’re going to have to protect your brother, Dean.” Though he sniffled and was reluctant to ready his stance, Dean nodded. And when he fired at the target John had set up, he hit it dead-on despite the fact that the kickback made him stumble backward.John cheered and clapped Dean on the shoulder once his kid had stumbled to his feet. “Atta boy, Ace,” he complimented, and through the pain Dean smiled. “Try again.”Dean was a natural, so John didn’t feel guilty for teaching his six-year-old how to fire a gun. It wasn’t like he was burning bodies.John entered Dean into kindergarten that year, and it was the first time he realized that The Dean Thing was going to be an issue. Prior to that, John hadn’t associated with anyone besides Jim and Abe who knew about Dean. He hadn’t considered the fact that putting Dean back into the normal population could be difficult or dangerous. But to register Dean for classes he had to hand over a copy of Dean’s birth certificate, which meant handing over Dean’s given name and the little letter ‘F’ indicating his sex. He didn’t know what he could do about it. Should he tell the school about Dean? But they’d call CPS just as fast as Mike had back in Lawrence if they thought John was raising his kid up as… As one of those. And John wasn’t doing anything to Dean, he was just letting Dean be himself, and yes, maybe “transgendered” was the word for it but his six-year-old didn’t need a label like that, and he didn’t need some amateur elementary-school shrink analyzing his little boy’s brain.So he told Dean that he was sorry, but Dean needed to pretend to be a girl while he was at school.“Why?” Dean asked him, and John set two heavy hands on his son’s shoulders and stared him straight in the eyes.“Because not everybody is going to understand about you being a boy. And if people find out, they’re gonna get scared. And they’ll call CPS, and they’ll have you taken away from me and put some place where people will make you wear dresses and grow your hair out again. Do you want that, Dean?”With wide eyes, Dean shook his head, face going pale.“Okay then,” John nodded. “You gotta pretend to be a girl. Just at school, bud. When you’re home, you don’t have to pretend.”And it worked. It worked for a month. Dean went to kindergarten during the day and John found a babysitter for Sammy if he had to work. Dean allowed his teacher and classmates to call him Deanna, and when John picked him up in the Impala he smiled as his dad asked him “How was school today, Champ?”But John slowly noticed Dean growing quieter, noticed that he seemed to be more withdrawn and began smiling less and less as the month drew on. And one day, after three and a half weeks of kindergarten, when John realized at the dinner table that night that it had been four hours since school let out and he hadn’t heard Dean speak a single word, he felt his chest tighten and his throat ache and decided that enough was enough. So he pulled Dean out and drove his kids down to Nebraska to meet up with Abe, and didn’t enroll Dean again until he had a newly forged birth certificate proclaiming Dean’s full name to be just that, and his sex as male.When Dean came home from his first day at the new school, he smiled and told John that he’d made a new friend. “His name is Jacob and he thought my Hot Wheel was awesome,” he recounted, setting the Stutz Blackhawk carefully down on the motel’s rickety bedside table.As the years passed and Dean grew older, John found himself more and more likely to leave the caring of Sam to the boy’s big brother. Dean was responsible and capable and he could fire a gun to defend himself, and as John hunted more monsters and grew closer to finding the evil that killed his wife, he found it more necessary to leave his boys by themselves for a little while.At first, it would just be for a day. It would be on a Saturday, so Dean didn’t have to miss any school, and John would set out peanut butter and jelly and bread for Dean to make sandwiches for himself, and some Cheerios and soft fruit to cut up for Sammy. John would leave that morning and come back that night.But then one Saturday, John drove to the next city for the library, to do research, only to discover through his studies that he’d have to chase down the beast that night if he didn’t want it to skip town before he got to it. So, he rushed home at four in the morning on Sunday after a tiring fight, worried about his boys, only to find them sleeping peacefully in their bed.So Dean could handle a full day and a night, John sighed in relief. He could leave Dean alone with Sam for twenty four hours every week without being worried.Then after several months, a day would stretch into a day and a half, and then to two, and before Sammy turned five John was picking Dean up from kindergarten on Fridays only to drop him off with Sam at their motel and leave them alone until Monday morning. When Sam was finally five and could start kindergarten, John could stay gone longer (just a little bit longer) because Dean could walk Sammy to school and pick him up afterwards, and John no longer had to be home on the weekdays.Sometimes John felt guilty. Sometimes he lay awake at night and thought about his kids, all alone several hours away, and wondered what Mary would have thought of him. But then he would find a new hunt and save a new person. John was saving lives, and that was more important than making sure his kids had someone to tuck them in every night.Sam had been young enough when Deanna became Dean that he never remembered having a big sister. John still had a few pictures, though, that had been in the glove compartment of the Impala and had survived the fire. He’d given one of them to Dean to keep, the one taken after Sammy was already born and Dean had his short hair. The other few he kept in his wallet and suitcase, and by the time Sam was five they were well-worn from the little guy’s fingerprints. In one of them, Dean was in a dress, his hair tied up in pigtails. So Sam knew that the big brother he knew who wore jeans and T-shirts and could shoot a pistol almost as good as his daddy, who wore his hair cropped short and made fun of Sam when he picked out a pink shirt, hadn’t always looked like that.John wasn’t the best father, he knew that. He left his boys in ratty motel rooms for days at a time, alone. He taught his eldest how to shoot a gun before he ever taught him how to ride a bike. But he liked to think he raised his sons to be comfortable in themselves. He liked to think he raised Sammy better than he and Mary had raised Dean.The first time Sammy had asked about why his and Dean’s private parts looked different while they were having their bath, John had answered “Boys usually have penises, Sammy, but sometimes, they have vaginas, like your brother.”“Does that make Dean special?” Sam had asked, and Dean had grinned and splashed him.“Of course it does, squirt,” Dean confirmed. “Awesome, actually.”Sammy pouted. “I wanna be special,” he complained. John saw Dean’s grin waver a bit.“Nah, you don’t, Sammy,” Dean told him. “Being special’s not that great.”John let Sammy pour the cup of water over his own head to rinse out the shampoo that night, and when the boys got out of the bath to dry, he didn’t miss the way Dean eyed himself in the mirror.John researched “transgendered”, once. He left the boys in the hotel room and spent the day in front of the blue light of a library computer screen. He probably should have done more than he did, done research on therapy and dysphoria and things he could do to help his child, but it was too hard. “Mental illness” and “electroshock” and “conversion therapy” glared at him like little black demons from the screen, and when John came across statistics… it was too much. Police harassment, physical and sexual abuse committed by law enforcement and health care professionals? Attaching all of that to his boy, his child, was draining. He felt physically ill. Fifty percent of transgender men and women experience sexual assault in their lifetimes, often more than once. The life expectancy of a transgender person is estimated at thirty years. Due to exterior circumstances, like hate crimes and suicide and STDs and fucking doctors not giving enough of a shit to provide them with proper care when they showed up in an ER.So even as Dean was growing older, even as John knew he would one day be old enough to fit the image of what a transgendered person was in John’s head, he didn’t like to think about Dean like that. It made it clinical. It made it psychological. To John, it made his kid into a slur that felt uncomfortably familiar on his own tongue. It made him into a term that was often surrounded by others such as rape and abuse and murder, one that John didn’t like hearing.The life of a hunter was fraught with danger and death. Hunters don’t live very long; hunters die young. John knew this. John also knew that he would protect his son. No one was ever going to lay a hand on his boy, and Dean would live past thirty. When Sam was old enough, John started training him with Dean. They sparred together, usually in empty fields where John could drive them in the Impala. They’d make an afternoon of it, usually, pack a lunch in paper bags and practice their aim on the beer bottles John had collected that week afterwards. Then, when night had fallen, they’d sprawl out in the grass, shirtless and sweaty, and John would point out constellations.One of their homes was a motel in the town of Chesterfield, Indiana. It was a small town, and the last documented crime was a vandalized park bench two years prior. John felt safe leaving his boys alone for four days as he drove to pick up some new texts.When John got home on the fifth afternoon, the motel room was empty. John wasn’t worried; the half-finished sandwiches on the table indicated that his kids hadn’t been out for very long. He went on a walk, figuring they had gone out to let of some steam at the park, and he could surprise them.He found Sam and Dean caught up in a game of soccer with some local boys, Sammy running haphazardly around after the ball, although the older boys never let him take it. As he watched, Dean stole the ball from under the feet of a boy five inches taller than him and darted to the side, kicking the ball around other players all the way to the other end of the field before slamming it into the goal with a strong kick. John put his hands at his hips, smiling proudly as Dean turned around and cheered, putting his arms in the air, and Sam screamed in excitement.He heard some laughter, and turned to see a group of a few teenage boys watching the game. At first, John figured they must be looking after their own little brothers, but then he saw that each of their gazes were fixed on Dean, following him as he grinned and raced after the ball again, the goalie having thrown it back onto the field. John frowned.It struck him suddenly what the boys were looking at, and a dark pit of something furious and frightened formed in his stomach. Dean was eleven, and he was playing shirtless, just like he always did at home, and John hadn’t noticed it before, hadn’t really looked, but his nipples were puffy, the flesh around them looking slightly swollen. John recalled the term “breast buds” from the puberty books he’d read after Dean was born Deanna, and the frustration and anger and guilt he felt when he realized that he hadn’t even thought about puberty for Dean since his kid was about four made him feel sick.“Dean! Sam!” he called, and his boys turned to look at him.“Dad!” they called, running towards him excitedly. He wrapped them both in a hug, mindful of the teenage boys, who were still watching them.“Good to see you, boys,” he said, putting a slight emphasis on boys. “How about we head home? Put your shirt on, Dean.”John went to the public library that night and looked up articles on female puberty. Using the basic computer skills he’d had to learn in the process of looking up new hunts, he copied and pasted the ones he found most useful into a word document and then spent the next two hours studiously searching for feminine terms and pronouns and switching them to masculine. After several rereads, when he was sure there were no terms unaccounted for, he printed out the pages he’d found and stacked them neatly before stapling them at the top.This was good. This was for the best. It’s not like Dean would have preferred John told him this stuff to his face. That would just embarrass both of them. No girl wants to hear that kind of thing from their dad, and Dean wasn’t a girl, but it was similar. Yes, it was all for the best.When he handed the packet to Dean later that night, Dean stared at it inquisitively before paling a little, his eyes darting back up to stare at his father. John reached out and clapped him on the shoulder somewhat awkwardly before moving on towards the motel’s table, where the books of lore he’d been shifting through last night were still open to marked pages.Behind him, Sam was jumping up and down to see what John had given his brother, gabbing and asking questions until Dean shoved him aside onto the bed.“Boys, play nicely,” John said from his seat at the table.“What did you give Dean, Dad?” Sam asked. “He won’t let me see!”“It’s just a book on puberty. You’ll learn about it when it’s your turn.”He could hear Dean blow a raspberry at his brother and rolled his eyes at the empty kitchen in front of him. There were a few minutes of blessed silence as Sam left his brother alone. “Dean, do you have armpit hair yet?” Sam finally whispered to him, trying to be unobtrusive. He heard Dean laugh.“Yeah, you wanna see?” There was a protest and struggle as Dean pushed Sam’s face under his arm, and Sam gagged and dramatically wailed about the smell and the sweat.John laughed to himself.Two months later, John brought home a sports bra for Dean, and Dean held it in his hands and stared at it silently, blankly, eyes wide and lips tight.“Son…” was the only thing he could manage before Dean left him with the sports bra in his hands and shut himself in the bathroom. John found himself standing outside, his forehead leaning against the door, listening to Dean’s shaky breaths and knowing that his son was looking at himself in the mirror and criticizing every feature. “You don’t ever have to wear it, Dean, if you don’t want to. Especially not at home. I’m not gonna make you start covering up in front of me and Sam. I just thought you should have it, just in case. You’re getting older, Dean. You’re growing up.”He’d spent an hour in the Walmart store, in the girls’ section, staring at the lines of bras, worrying about buying one and what it would mean and how Dean would take it. But it was practical. Dean ran a lot, did a lot of physical activity, and it was fine maybe when the boys were just roughhousing, or just now when his breasts were still only developing, but one day they’d be bigger and Dean would need support on hunts. So he’d picked the most neutral color he could find.Dean did start wearing it, some months after John first gave it to him, to training, and with baggy T-shirts and flannels and sometimes sweatshirts when he left the house. He always took it off the second he got home, though, went straight to the bathroom and pretended like he was just taking off his over-shirts. At home, in their motel room, where it was just him and John and Sammy, Dean didn’t worry about people noticing something was different about him. He wasn’t afraid of that at home. So John figured he’d done something right.That didn’t mean Dean didn’t have body-image issues, though. It didn’t matter how comfortable Dean was around Sam and John, how carelessly he did his training shirtless right alongside his brother, even when his breasts had started to develop in full. None of that mattered, when every day John caught Dean staring at his reflection in the mirror, in the window, in the fucking toaster, with something close to hatred in his eyes. Dean hated his waist, his hips, his thighs. He hated how he had to work twice as hard as the other boys in his schools to get muscles in his arms, how if he let himself eat too much, he’d start getting curves.“It’s not healthy, John,” Bobby Singer told him during one of their visits as they watched Dean do his morning work-out. Singer was a bastard and a nosy asshole, but he was one of the only people outside of John and Sam who knew about Dean. Missouri was one, though Sam and Dean had never met her. She often commented on what fine young men they were growing up to be, undoubtedly getting her information from straight inside John’s head. Pastor Jim, Abe, and Caleb were the other three, and while Abe kept his mouth shut and Caleb continued to humor Dean’s kid-like admiration of him, Jim always seemed to have a bit of difficulty separating the quiet, innocent, pretty Deanna he’d showered with presents from the Dean who cursed like a sailor and wanted to be a gun-slingin’ hunter when he grew up. Bobby, on the other hand, was downright supportive. John could tell that the man had always had a soft spot for Dean, could tell by the softness that would ease the wrinkles around Singer’s eyes whenever he looked at the boy, and it was why he kept bringing them back.“Not healthy? The boy’s just exercising,” John said, defensively. Dean was on the ground, doing push-ups with a frown, counting under his breath.“Oh come off it, John, that’s not just exercise. If he just wanted to keep in shape, he’d have stopped an hour ago. Winchester, your boy’s working himself into the ground. He’ll hurt himself, he keeps at it like this.”“I don’t think my son’s work-out routine is any of your business,” John muttered, raising his beer to his mouth and taking a pull.“I make it my business when I watch him work off twice as many calories as he eats in a day. He’s not just working himself to the bone, he’s starving himself.”John felt cold, watching Dean rise from the ground and start right up into a jog around the yard.“John,” Bobby said softly, turning to face him. “I’ve done a bit of research since, you know, since I found out, and boys like Dean, they’re more likely to develop eating disorders.”John clenched his hand around his bottle. “You saying my son is anorexic, Singer? You’ve seen him, he cleans out the damn refrigerator when he’s in the mood.”“I’m saying, you idjit, that your boy has problems with the way he looks, and he’s trying to fix it by losing fat and packing on muscle. His body ain’t built that way, John, and you know it. He’s not doing nothing but hurting himself. You should talk to him.”John did try. He could never quite get out the words. He already watched his boy hate his reflection, watched him look wary when he bumped into strangers, watched him bundle himself in baggy clothes when he went to school, never comfortable wearing less than two layers outside of whatever they were calling home at the time. He knew it was selfish, but he couldn’t sit down and force his son to admit to all of his insecurities, all of his fears, when he knew it would be so painful to hear it.Instead, John tried to make sure Dean ate more whenever he was home, and dropped comments here and there. Told him to go find a burger or some fries whenever he saw him with a piece of fruit or putting together a salad. He hoped it was enough.John returned from a reconnaissance mission one day to find Sam waiting for him in the motel parking lot. He looked determined and thoughtful, and smiled back at John in a way that seemed far too mature for a nine-year-old.“Hey, Sammy,” he greeted his son, and Sam responded eagerly that he’d been doing research. John had to laugh at the thought of his youngest, not even ten, combing through county records and news clippings and poring over heavy texts. He’d been learning some lore, but only basic things, the kinds of things that contributed to training and built the inner encyclopedia of supernatural knowledge that John knew his boys needed if they were going to be able to defend themselves and one day help him save lives.“Is that right?” he joked. “I thought that was my job?”“Not on a case,” Sam replied earnestly. “I found out what’s wrong with Dean. I mean, not what’s wrong, nothing’s wrong, but that’s the point! There’s a word for it! It’s called transgender!”John felt a trill in his chest, but refrained from looking around the parking lot that he knew was empty. He remembered the nights spent sleepless on his own, researching the term, neck cracking as he strained to squint at dim and fuzzy computer screens, pulse racing at the thought of all the terrible things that could happen to Dean, that happened to people like that. But he hadn’t heard the word aloud since it had been whispered to him from between Mary’s lips, while they lay together in the dark and warmth of their bedroom and talked about their daughter’s future.He gazed down at his boy’s wide-eyed face and answered “Yeah, Sam, it is.”John considered the weight of the word, of the stigma it carried, of how it seemed to instantly separate whoever it was applied to as different. Dean was his boy, his son, his child. He didn’t need to be called anything else.“What?” Sam asked.John got down slowly onto his knee to better look into his son’s eye, to keep his attention, to make sure that he listened and understood. “That’s what they call people like your brother.”Watching his son carefully, he saw a fire in Sam’s eyes, a strength in his expression. He felt suddenly almost small in the face of his son’s conviction as he jutted his chin out and stared into his father’s eyes.“We have to protect Dean,” said Sam. “There are people who would want to hurt him.”He reached forward to clasp his son’s shoulders gently, but maintained eye-contact, making sure that Sam knew he was serious. This was important. This was one of the most important things he could ever teach his youngest son.“That’s right, Sam,” he said softly. “People like your brother, they can get into a lot of trouble out there. Just like I’ve always told you, Sam. We keep your brother’s secret. We keep your brother safe.”John let Dean lead on his first hunt when he was thirteen. It was simple, a haunted house and a restless spirit that had killed a cat and injured its owner. Just to get Dean started out.Dean was a natural, eager, energized, and prepared from all the nights of reading John’s journal and looking through his books on his own. Dean put down the salt and wrapped his fingers around an iron fire-poker, and when the ghost appeared to them, he stood firm as John interrogated it as to where its body was buried, and when John was done, he swept his iron weapon through the spirit’s flickering figure and sent it elsewhere.They dug up the corpse together in the house’s backyard, and John let Dean light the match and drop it into the hole in the ground. Any echoes of the promise he’d made to himself when Dean was still a little kid were quiet in John’s head and easily ignored, even when Dean retched as he picked up his first scent of a burning corpse.When they were finished, he took Dean out for burgers, and watched him as Dean animatedly recounted the experience and expressed his excitement for the next hunt.“Can we kill something cooler next, Dad? Like a revenant?”John laughed. “Not something like that quite yet, Dean. But I’ve been tracking something that looks like a poltergeist upstate. You can help me out with that one next.”Dean smiled at him through a mouthful of beef and bacon, and John grinned back.His son was good at hunting, brave and focused, strong and smart. There were a few times that John couldn’t have finished the hunt without Dean’s ideas or quick draw, and Dean had gathered a few injuries by the time he was fourteen: some scars, a crooked finger, bruised ribs. But nothing serious.Then, while they were hunting a black dog through a Connecticut wood, John failed his boy.He’d hurried into the hunt, he knew that. Any hunter could see from the victim’s wounds that the monster was a black dog. It had killed two people in nine days, and John had easily tracked it to some woods near a small town in northern Connecticut. It had seemed so easy, just some silver shells in a few sawed-offs, aim and shoot.John brought Sam along, his first hunt. He was younger than Dean had been, but Dean understood; he had both John and Dean to watch out for him, so it was safer now than it had been for Dean his first time.John instructed Sam to stay at his sides at all times. He told Dean to break off, just a hundred feet or so, cover more ground. “Keep your eyes peeled and your ears out, son.” Dean nodded.The hunt was quick. The black dog came to them forty minutes in, snarling in the shadows, just outside of the circle of light cast by Sam’s flashlight.“Holy crap,” Sam breathed, watching the glowing eyes as the monster paced from side to side.“That’s right, Sam,” John said. “These things are big. But unlike other monsters, all we need is to give them a few good shots to the chest. Watch closely, Sam, and stay behind me.”John turned the safety off of his gun and raised his arms to point his sawed-off at the monster lurking in the dark.There was a low growl, and Sam jumped slightly, and then the black dog was charging towards them like a smear of ink through the dim light. Sam squealed, but John’s gun rang out, two shots echoing through the night; a fair bit fewer than it usually took to take down a full-grown black dog, but John’s aim must have been stellar. When Sam peeked out from behind John’s back, the black dog was lying dead on the grassy floor.“Dad?” he heard Dean call from the woods off to their right.“We got it, Dean!” John called back, grinning, flipping the safety back on and tucking his gun into his belt. “Wanna go check out the body before it dissipates, Sammy?”John should have noticed how small the black dog looked. Should have noticed that the dead thing in front of him couldn’t possibly be full-grown, couldn’t have done the damage he’d seen in the crime photos of half-eaten bodies. But he didn’t realize it, not until it was too late and he heard barking and the lone shot and his son’s screams.“DEAN!” John shouted, immediately leaping away from the dead pup, damn fucking baby black dog, and towards the sound of its mother tearing apart his eldest son.He could hear Sam’s feet thudding along the ground behind him, but he didn’t stop to check. His baby was crying, screaming in pain, and John hadn’t heard Dean let his voice get that high in years, not even when he’d been pinned by a fallen bookcase by that poltergeist…He found Dean sprawled in the grass, his gun on the ground out of his reach, fighting to push a gigantic black dog off of him, bloody hands scrabbling weakly at snapping jaws as he sobbed in pain and fear. John pulled his gun out of his belt, getting it caught for a moment on the loop, and fumbled with the safety for far too long before firing his remaining silver rounds into the dog’s back. Six, seven, eight shots. It fell dead on top of Dean, who cried out again as John raced forwards to push the dead monster off of his child.Sammy was crying behind him, hanging back from his sobbing brother and the blood splattered in the grass.“Dean,” John sobbed dryly, falling to his knees at his son’s side, immediately taking off his shirt to press against Dean’s wounds. His hands were steady with the need to keep his son breathing. “Sam, call an ambulance! Right now!”The dog had fucked up Dean’s chest. John hadn’t seen too much in the dark and the terror, but the fear and adrenaline sharpening his eyesight had had him now noticing ribs showing through red blood, tattered strips of flesh hanging from Dean’s chest like ribbons, and chunks of dark meat and yellow fat scattered about them like discarded table scraps.Dean’s face was pale and spattered with blood. It had soaked through his torn-up shirt and was spreading down to his pants.“Dad,” Dean gasped, his voice high. John almost started crying at the sound of Dean’s voice, pitched high, un-controlled, naked. “Daddy, ‘m sorry… S’rry, I…” Tears were streaming down his face, cutting streaks through the blood on his cheeks.“Ssh, Dean, it’s okay, you’re alright,” John whispered to Dean, over and over again, a mantra, a spell. Dean will live past thirty. He will live past thirty. He kept pressure on Dean’s wounds, feeling blood seeping through the cloth onto his hands. He repeated the words, even after Dean’s eyes had rolled back into his head and he had fallen unconscious, body occasionally spasming, as though something invisible was plucking at the strings of his nervous system every few moments.John had to remind himself how much blood a person had to lose to bleed out. It was a lot, he knew. Far more than Dean had lost so far, he thought, but it was dark and it really was so much. He told himself that Dean had passed out from the pain, he told himself again and again it couldn’t be from blood loss, because if that was the case, there was no way Dean would survive this. It was the pain. He’d passed out from the pain. He wasn’t going to die.By the time the ambulance came, the bodies of the black dogs had melted into shadow. The paramedics rushed into the trees, guided by Sam who was still crying, and lifted Dean quickly onto a stretcher to be carried away and tucked into the back of the bright, noisy vehicle. John followed until the door closed behind Dean. They couldn’t take John with them in the ambulance. Dean’s condition was too critical.“You can meet us at the hospital, sir,” the police officer that had accompanied the medical team told him. “Your child is in good hands.”John watched the ambulance disappear down the country road, his vision suddenly cloudy. He looked down at his shaking hands, slippery and red with his son’s blood. He doubled over and vomited into the grass.“Dad!” shouted Sam. “We have to go! We have to get to the hospital! We have to get to Dean!”John didn’t remember getting into the Impala. He didn’t remember starting the car and pulling out to follow the flashing lights and siren that indicated the location of his son. What he did remember of the drive was the feel of blood drying between the wheel and his palms, Sam’s sobs, and the tears blurring his eyes as he chased the ambulance.He entered the emergency room with a bang, throwing the doors open against the walls and pushing past a line of waiting patients to yell at the man behind the front desk. He couldn’t recall what he had said, but by the end of it, he knew that there were tears on his cheeks.“Sir, you need to calm down. I don’t know where your son is, but he’s in good hands. Someone will be in to get you soon, I’m sure…”At that moment, a paramedic walked into the emergency room. He looked pale, but his expression was controlled.“Sir? You can follow me.”John immediately left the line of patients, all of whom stared after him and Sam with curiosity, sympathy, and some irritation.The paramedic led him through white hallways, past patients in wheelchairs and with IVs trailing on metal poles behind them as they walked.“Can I have your name, sir?”“John O’Mally,” John told him the name on his insurance card, mouth dry.“What is your daughter’s name?” the paramedic asked, and for a moment John was confused, they must have the wrong guy, until he realized that they had to have cut away Dean’s clothes in the ambulance, and to the world outside of their family, when naked, Dean looked like a girl.“Dean,” he said, his voice cracking.“Mr. O’Mally, we were able to put pressure on Dean’s wounds and slow the bleeding during the ride to the hospital. We had to give her eight units of blood en route. She was in shock when we moved her into surgery. Our team of surgeons are excellent, Dean is in good hands.” How many times had John been told that in the past thirty minutes? None of their goddamn hands mattered if they couldn’t save his son. “Dean is on life support, and we’ve given her blood, but we would like to see if either you or your son is a match. Dean will need more, and it will be much easier and faster if she can get it from you.”“Okay,” Sam said. “You can give him as much as you need.”The paramedic’s expression flickered a bit at Sam’s use of pronouns, but he said nothing.“I want you to do anything to keep Dean alive. If I have to give you all of my blood for that, I will,” John growled.“Alright, Mr. O’Mally. If you and your son could follow me.”Sam ended up having Dean’s blood type. John did not.He held Sam’s hand as the bags attached to his arm slowly filled with blood, feeling helpless and small. Somewhere, his son was lying, unconscious, mortally wounded, possibly dying, and he could do nothing but hold his other son’s hand as he provided Dean’s lifeline. There was nothing he could do but wait.Dean’s surgery took seven hours. By the end of it, both Sam and John were pale and withdrawn, sitting in uncomfortable waiting-room chairs, heads in hands, eyes staring at the ground. John had washed the blood off of his hands and arms, but there was red dried under his fingernails and brown stains in his clothes, and the sight of Dean, crying and mangled and in pain, flashed behind his eyelids every time he blinked.Eventually, a doctor came out to speak with them.“Mr. O’Mally?” the man asked, and John stood immediately, hands shaking.“Is Dean okay?” he asked. The doctor hesitated, and John’s stomach sank into his feet. Sam stared at the doctor with wide eyes, the whites showing all around his irises.“If I may speak with you in private, Mr. O’Mally.”John scoffed, raising his hand to run down his face. “I’ve been waiting here for seven fucking hours. Now you want me to, what, follow you into your office where you can sit behind a big desk to look impressive and distinguished when you tell me you ‘did all you could?’” He dropped his hand to his side. “Just tell me if my kid is alive,” he finished, his voice breaking.The doctor nodded. “Dean is alive, Mr. O’Mally, but I’d like to discuss the surgery with you.”John let out a long breath and turned towards Sam, who seemed to share his feeling of elation.“Dean’s okay,” Sam said, and the both of them laughed aloud even as tears began falling down their cheeks. “He’s okay.”John and Sam ended up in Dr. Larson’s office, sitting in front of the man’s desk as his eyes continued flicking uncomfortably towards Sam, who he’d insisted wait in the hallway despite John’s steadfast decision that Sam be present for the discussion.“We started surgery within four minutes of Dean’s admittance to Baystate Medical Center. Our first action was getting her on life support, and giving her the blood she had lost in the accident. Then, we had to stop the bleeding and repair the damage done to her upper torso. Her heart stopped at three separate intervals during surgery, but we were able to recover her within two minutes each time, so there is minimal risk of brain damage due to oxygen deprivation.”Sam’s face paled drastically. “Dean died?”“Technically, yes,” Larson gently answered. Then he turned back towards John. “Was it a large animal that caused the injury?”John nodded. “We… I couldn’t tell what it was, if it was a bear or a wolf or what.”The doctor nodded. “Alright. Well, the wounds seem to be more concurrent with a wolf attack. At any rate, the animal severely damaged Dean’s chest.” Dr. Larson slid an X-ray onto the desk, and John saw a white and black image of a ribcage. Two of Dean’s ribs were visibly broken. “From Dean’s wounds, we can estimate the course of the attack. First, the jaws of the animal closed around Dean’s right shoulder as it knocked her to the ground. Then, on top of her, it bit first her left breast, partially severing its attachment to her ventral thorax, her chest.” Larson’s eyes flickered to Sam, then back to John. “Its jaws then enclosed around Dean’s right breast, before pulling, completely removing it and tearing the tendons of her mid and lower ventral thorax away from her ribcage, causing a degloving avulsion. Usually, these are lethal when located on the head or torso, but Dean is a fighter.” The doctor paused and attempted what appeared to be an encouraging smile. “The animal then again bit her left breast, severing it almost completely, before closing its jaw around her third and fourth right ribs and fracturing both.”John felt the need to vomit yet again. Sam’s face had drained completely of blood, but had taken on a greenish tint. Larson’s face softened sympathetically, although John didn’t care.“Luckily, none of Dean’s internal organs were severely damaged, other than some internal bleeding around her lungs, which we have taken care of. We had to remove some flesh from Dean’s inner thigh for split-thickness grafts, and a portion from her abdomen for a full-thickness graft, to recover the flesh loss. Otherwise, we were able to use the remaining flesh during reconstruction.” The doctor took a deep, quiet breath. “Your daughter’s breast tissue was unsalvageable. The fat of her breasts as well as the mammary glands were either completely removed in the attack, or too severely damaged to be repaired. I’m sorry.”The man then sighed and glanced down at his desk to straighten a paper. “There is an option not covered by your insurance plan. With your permission, my team could restore the shape of Dean’s breasts with augmentation surgery before she wakes up from anesthesia. If that is something you’d like to consider, I can go over the financial aspect…”“No,” John gasped out through the bile rising in his throat. Was the doctor really asking John if he would consider allowing the surgeons to reopen Dean after the surgery he’d already gone through, to insert silicone bags under his child’s skin? The thought of signing off on the doctors giving his son breast implants was emotionally repugnant. He couldn’t imagine any parent allowing it to happen to their daughter, let alone their son… It seemed so invasive, so repellent, so perversely manipulative… “No. No, no…” John shook himself free from his stuttering stupor. “That’s not happening.” He heard Sam let out a shuddery breath.The doctor nodded. “I understand.”“How long will it take for hi- for Dean to recover?” he asked, voice gravelly.“Dean needs to remain on life support for twenty-four hours,” Larson said. “Animal attack wounds can be much more dangerous than others, because the danger of infection lengthens operation time and makes disinfection vital. Dean looks lucky; there aren’t any signs of developing infection from outside bacteria. While there still is, of course, a risk of her catching infection in the hospital, you should be very pleased that she escaped any passed on by the wolf.”Black dogs were almost incorporeal; mutts comprised of animated shadow that could come into contact with prey at their will, but could only be touched by silver. John had hoped that it meant that they couldn’t possibly carry the diseases that one could probably find on most wild animals, or on other creatures like werewolves or wendigos, but it was an immense relief to hear his hypothesis confirmed.“Once we are sure that she is stable and the risk of infection has lowered, we can move her out of the ICU. We are looking at anywhere from four weeks to two months of hospital care.”“And for Dean to wake up?”Dr. Larson lowered his gaze to his hands, folded in front of him on the desk.“For that, we can’t be sure. Your daughter’s trauma was severe. We will stop her medically-induced sedation in the next day or so. When she wakes up is up to her, although for a few days at least, her consciousness will be spotty at best. She might not be aware of her surroundings, or only be able to remain awake for minutes at a time.”“When can we see h-her?” John stuttered roughly. Sam shot him a look with wide eyes that struck him to the heart.“Dean needs to be alone for twelve hours. You’ll be able to visit her room during visiting hours tomorrow.”John nodded and stood, gritting his teeth. “Thank you, Dr. Larson.” Sam stood up and followed John out of the office.When John and Sam were alone, Sam turned on his father.“Why are you letting them call Dean a girl?” he asked, eyes burning but glazed with stress and fear. John sighed, feeling the weight of the world on his shoulders.“Sam, you don’t understand…”“No, I do. I understand that Dean’s gonna be sitting in this hospital for weeks listening to everyone call him a girl.”“Sam,” John snapped, his face growing hot. “I don’t need you questioning my actions.”“Well, nobody else is going to! The doctors don’t know better, and Dean does everything you say! Dean’s gonna sit there and take it while you let everyone think he’s a girl, just because you’re too embarrassed to tell people that your son is transg–”“Be quiet, Sam!” John shouted, and an orderly walking past the end of the empty hall faltered for a moment before continuing. John leaned down and gripped Sam by his shoulders, holding him tightly and staring him straight in the eyes. “Listen, Sam,” he hissed as Sam glared back at him hatefully. “Nobody can know, you got that? I’m not embarrassed of Dean. Dean’s my son and a damn fine hunter.”“Soldier, you mean,” Sam muttered. John shook him a bit.“I’m not playing games, son! You and I both know what your brother is, and we don’t look at him any different. Well, other people out there do. Remember when you told me we had to keep Dean safe?”Something hardened in Sam’s expression. He nodded.“Well, the truth is that there are people who would want to do your brother harm, just for being different. You know that already. But there’s other people out there who would do harm to him indirectly. They can do that by not treating him right.”“You mean, if the doctors knew about Dean, they might not give him good medical attention?” Sam asked, the anger in his face now directed elsewhere.“That’s right, Sam. People like your brother, they die all the time, because doctors don’t think they’re worth their care. So we gotta pretend. To keep Dean safe.”And there was still the other fear, the hidden one, that if the doctors found out that John had raised Dean as a boy they’d consider it child abuse and investigate, that they’d take Dean away to a foster family or group home where they’d call him Deanna and send him to conversion therapy and break him down until there was nothing left.Sam was silent, and eventually John straightened and patted down his pockets. The memory of Dean’s blood coating his hands had escaped him for a few minutes, but it came back then, itching at the backs of his eyes.“We have to go back to the motel now, Sam. Dean’s alright for now. We’ll come back tomorrow morning.”“But what if he wakes up?” Sam asked quietly.“You heard the doctor. Dean’s gonna be sleeping for a long time yet, and we have to make sure our stuff is secure. Tomorrow, we’ll check out and pack up and find a new motel closer to the hospital. It’s a good thing it’s summer vacation and we don’t have to get the schools involved.”They drove home in silence. Without Dean to crank up Led Zeppelin, no one bothered to turn on the radio. When they got home, the two of them fell into separate beds, fully clothed.John didn’t sleep that night. Neither did Sam, not until the early morning at least. But neither of them said a word.Dean didn’t wake up for thirty-seven hours, long past when they took him off sedation. The doctors told them it was normal, that Dean’s brain was resting after living through such a traumatic injury. He wasn’t in a coma, just taking his time. He’ll wake up, they said. Only they called him “she.”The first time Dean regained consciousness, it was only for three minutes. He was foggy and confused from the pain meds. John grabbed his hand, and Dean frowned at him and mumbled an incoherent sentence before drifting off to sleep again.Sammy had been getting a snack from the vending machine two floors down, and when he returned to find the doctor checking Dean’s vitals and realized he’d missed Dean’s brief moment of consciousness, he got so upset he refused to leave his brother’s hospital room again. He didn’t want Dean to wake up again and not have Sam there to comfort him.Unfortunately, Sam’s presence in the room during Dean’s next bout of consciousness didn’t seem to help anything. Dean was so heavy with the pain meds that it was obvious he wasn’t aware of his surroundings. He blinked a lot and very slowly, turning his head back and forth and murmuring about cleaning their koi pond and feeding the fish.“We don’t have a koi pond, Dean!” Sam tried to tell him, eyes wide and face pale, looking between Dean’s glazed-over eyes and the doctor standing beside the bed.“Dean is under heavy medication right now,” the doctor comforted. “It’s normal for her to have mild delusions, even hallucinations. Don’t worry, once she has healed enough to be put on more mild pain medication, she will be back to normal.”More than once, John had to drag Sam aside into the hallway to quietly order him to cool it. Sam tended to get red-in-the-face angry whenever he heard the doctors or nurses calling Dean a girl. It got especially bad when Dean finally was able to be awake and unhindered by meds, lucid and weary and looking more and more withdrawn with every “your daughter” and “your sister.” Not that John didn’t hate it too, but John knew what he was doing and why it was important, and Dean understood, didn’t Sam get that? Dean knew that it was necessary, took it all on with a tight-lipped smile and bad jokes. Sam, he was different, hot-headed, couldn’t let it go. Sometimes he’d be glaring daggers so sharp at the nurses, that the room would fill with such palpable tension that they’d excuse themselves.“Sam, you can’t do that!” John growled, and Sam turned his gaze, daggers now directed at his father.“Just because I can’t say anything doesn’t mean I have to just sit here and watch,” Sam snapped back. John gritted his teeth.“Those nurses don’t have any idea why you’re angry.”“Well maybe if someone wasn’t so scared to tell them that…”“You know we can’t, Sam! I’ve told you that! Dean knows it! Don’t you, Dean?”“Don’t defend him, Dean, you don’t have to do everything he says!”“Dean does what I say because he knows I’m right.”“No, he does what you say because you brainwashed him into your perfect soldier!”“Sam, you are one smart-assed comment away from being sent to the waiting room!”“You can’t do that! Dean, tell him you don’t want me to leave.”“Don’t bring Dean into this. This has nothing to do with him, this is about you not following orders.”“Dean!”John turned to his eldest, whose head was turned away, eyes half closed and lips pressed thin.“I’m tired,” he said, softly. Sam glanced quickly between Dean and John before crossing his arms and falling into the chair on his side of Dean’s bed.“Alright, Dean,” John said softly, dragging a hand down his face. “Go to sleep, son.” He clapped his palm down on Dean’s knee and squeezed it comfortingly. Dean tightened his jaw in a slight grimace and closed his eyes.It was eleven days into Dean’s hospitalization before John was in the room during Dean’s change of bandaging. Usually, the doctors had him and Sam leave due to the risk of infection and for privacy, but Dean had apparently passed that point and John stood a bit away from Dean’s side and watched as the team of three nurses carefully propped him up in the bed, one holding him gently upright while another used hands clad in surgical gloves to unwind the rolled bandages and carefully remove surgical tape and gauze pads.Dean’s chest was flat, completely so, which came as more of a shock to John than it should have been. He’d known. The doctor had told them. Dean’s breasts had been “unsalvageable,” the tissue completely removed. Any leftover scraps had been used to stitch closed the degloving avulsion. Still. John had only before that point seen his boy wrapped in layers of bandages and clad in a hospital gown and then, usually, covered with several blankets. Now, he was staring at Dean’s naked chest.John was used to seeing his sons shirtless. Both of them. They trained that way in the summer, when it was too hot for anything else. He wasn’t about to confine his eldest to T-shirts or sports bras in the July heat down south just because he happened to be built different than John or Sam, and Dean had never been shy about stripping down to his running shorts when the summer sun was beating down too hard and sweat shone on his forehead. John knew what Dean looked like shirtless, and this wasn’t it.The scars twisted and puckered the flesh of his chest, and his nipples looked uneven, off-kilter, strange. Small and unbalanced and maybe even bruised, dark and red and purple like small pools of blood were sitting just underneath the skin there. John sucked in a gasp of breath, feeling as though he had been kicked in the gut. Dean looked up at him before turning his face away, eyes downcast and grimacing as the nurses cleaned and redressed his stitches before wrapping his chest once more in bandages and laying him carefully back onto the bed.One of the nurses looked up towards John and gave him a small smile, trying to communicate something with her warm, brown eyes.“There you are, sweetheart,” she told Dean, pulling Dean’s blanket back up to his chin and briefly running her hand over his forehead, brushing aside bangs that had grown out a little too long. Dean’s eyes drifted closed. “All done.” As the nurses packed up and left the room, the one who had spoken to Dean paused next to John.“She’s going to be alright,” she whispered. “These days, plenty of girls and women live with mastectomies. She’s going to be fine.”The nurse left, and John didn’t bother to say anything in reply. Because John wasn’t worried about his daughter growing up without breasts. He was worried about his son losing body parts, body parts that had been torn away from him in the most painful, gruesome way imaginable. He was worried about the empty look in Dean’s eyes, the apparent shame in his expression when he turned away from his father, the way he hunched his shoulders to hide his altered, scarred, mutilated chest in a way that seemed so much more insecure and hesitant than ever before.John had always hated seeing shame on his son’s face. He thought – he’d hoped – that the way he’d raised Dean, his son would never look that way because it was John looking at him.But he couldn’t do anything about that, just like he couldn’t do anything about the doctors calling Dean his daughter right in front of his boy, or the nurses calling Dean “young lady” as they helped him to the bathroom or gave him his food.It was necessary. Dean knew it was necessary. He had to know it was necessary.He tried to counteract the damage the words were doing to Dean by clapping him on the shoulder, by telling him to “man up” and “suck it up, son,” but there was still that aching in his stomach and the dead in Dean’s eyes hadn’t gone away.Thirteen days into Dean’s hospitalization, they left. It was past the point of worry over infection, the doctor had told him. The stitches were soluble, they would be gone in their own time, and besides, John knew how to do patch-up work in case of Dean pulling one or two. Dean had been eating solid food for days, and he was off his IV. Besides, John’s insurance card wasn’t going to hold up for another week. They had to get out of there. So, despite Sam’s protests and anger-filled words and glares, John signed Dean out AMA and left a false home-address, for when CPS tried to come knocking.He took the boys to Bobby Singer’s. Wordlessly, the old hunter set Dean up in the room that he’d stayed in ever since John first dropped his boys off at his door. Sam stayed with him. And when Bobby sat across from John at his kitchen table, expressionless as John nursed a beer, John just laughed slightly and shook his head. “Dean’s fucked up,” he said, and tears slid down his rugged cheeks. Bobby just nodded. “It’s my fault.” Bobby nodded again.John left the boys in Sioux Falls with Singer for the summer, went on solo hunts for a while. Dean had to heal up, and he and Sam could stand to learn some lore from Bobby. Singer might be a bastard, but he was the best damn master of supernatural lore in the country, and he’d look after the boys to boot.It took Dean pretty much all of two months before John felt comfortable giving him the okay to spar again. His chest was still tender, but the stitches were gone and the bruises under the scars had faded from black and blue to purple and red. He’d lost a lot of muscle mass, and so wasn’t eating as much as he should have been.“Boy doesn’t want to gain weight,” Bobby told him during one of his breaks in-between hunts. “He’s gonna starve himself until you let him exercise, John.”And so John took him and Sam sparring, and hated himself a little bit more every time Dean winced or faltered, but when he caught his boy admiring his silhouette in a thin white T-shirt, smiling at his reflection in the mirror for the first time in about three years, John had trouble swallowing his emotions and thought that maybe some type of good had come out of the whole thing.Even if after that, Dean stopped taking his shirt off during workouts. Even if, no matter how hot it was, even if it was the middle of August down in Arizona or a sweltering day in the New Mexico sun, Dean kept himself covered with at least a threadbare tank-top.Sam noticed the change almost before John did.“Aren’t you hot, Dean?” he asked, and Dean just shook his head, doubled over with his hands on his knees and breathing hard after a ten-mile run.“Nah, Sammy, I’m fine,” he heaved, shirt soaked through with sweat. He dragged the hem of his shirt up to wipe sweat off his forehead, and Sam and John caught a flash of purple scars before it was dropped again.Dean’s breasts hadn’t been very big. They’d never gotten him measured because Dean had never shown any desire to, but John thought that he had probably taken after Mary in yet another respect, and his wife had been on the small-to-medium side, at least before she got pregnant. So they hadn’t been big, but they had been breasts, and boys typically didn’t have those, so Dean had been a freak. Now, Dean didn’t have breasts anymore, but he had twisted scars and lopsided nipples, so he was a whole different kind of freak. Seeing his son unafraid to go to school or out to the park with nothing but a V-neck T-shirt on was refreshing, gave John a soaring feeling in his gut, but seeing his boy too insecure to take off his workout tank-top in front of just Sammy and him, that was hard. John never knew which he would have preferred.But Dean healed. And they left Bobby’s for another nondescript motel in another podunk town where he could leave his boys while he worked on another case.When Dean turned sixteen, John took him to the local DMV to get his driver’s license. Dean and John both gritted their teeth through the process as they waited in line for five hours so that a few bored government workers could look between Dean and his paperwork and take the picture for the ID. Dean, who had his hands stuffed into the pocket of his jacket for most of the process, looked suitably unimpressed. No one really spoke at all, so no one commented on the disparity between Dean’s physical presentation and the name and sex listed on his birth certificate (his real birth certificate), but Dean definitely wasn’t very excited to be handed the fresh, legal ID after the whole ordeal was over.But there was no complaining, and Dean sat agreeably in the passenger side of the Impala after tucking the license into his wallet, and John smiled slightly during the drive back to the trailer they’d been living in for the past four months in anticipation of giving Dean his real birthday present.When they’d gotten back to the trailer, Dean made his way to the battered armchair that sat in the crammed living space and sat down heavily, letting out a breath and stretching.“Man, those places give me the creeps…” he started, and stopped suddenly as John dropped the gift into his lap. Dean picked up the little plastic rectangle in confusion at first, then turned it over to see what was printed across the front and his eyes widened.“Dad,” Dean gasped, examining the thumbnail picture of his smirking visage in the top corner. Dean Winchester, it read, preceding a false address. Male, 5’10”, 140 lbs, GRN eyes. “Awesome!”“If you ever get pulled over by the cops, you’ll want to use the real one,” John told him seriously. “But for everything else, this’ll do just fine.” Plus, this way, John could slightly modify Dean’s birth date – he’d bumped him up to a baby-faced nineteen, so Dean could get into bars and start learning how to hustle.“It’s great, Dad, thanks!” His boy’s voice was thick with gratitude that made John’s chest swell with warmth.“Wanna take the Impala for a spin, now that you’re ‘legal’?” John asked, a smile quirking up the corners of his mouth.“Yeah!” Dean said, and when he looked up at his father, his eyes were bright and sparkling.Half a year later, John was alone in the dingy apartment he’d rented for a few months, searching through the boys’ bags for a book he couldn’t find in his own. As he was looking through Dean’s, he came across a brightly-colored cardboard box, crushed a bit under a pile of dirty clothes right in the furthest possible cranny of Dean’s duffle. It was obviously an attempt to hide it.John pulled it out and stared at it for several long moments. He found himself sinking down onto the bed behind him, elbows on his knees as he stared at the box. His vision blurred somewhere between the words regular and heavy, and he wondered why he’d never seen his son buying tampons, and when he’d started. Dean was almost seventeen. It could have been going on for years, and he’d never noticed.He let his head fall and felt the cool, worn surface of the cardboard on his forehead. If he didn’t leave his boys alone so often for days, weeks at a time. If he didn’t have monsters to hunt, people to save. If he didn’t have Mary’s death hanging over his shoulders, her terror and pain and loss to avenge. If he didn’t have a yellow-eyed demon lurking out there for him to kill.But he did.He put the box back where he had found it, carefully covered it back up with Dean’s clothes, and never mentioned it.Dean was still seventeen the day that John got the call and rushed to the school, angry and irritated, to find Dean sitting, slumped, in a chair in the principal’s office. Dean’s lip was split, his eyes rimmed with purple bruises and he kept wiping blood away as it started to drip out of his nose with an already stained knuckle. He was staring blankly at the floor in front of him with eyes glazed over. The neck of his shirt looked stretched and crumpled, like someone had had their fist tangled in it and pulled. There was bruising around his wrists and upper arm.The principal, who was sitting behind the desk, gestured for John to take a seat. John sat next to Dean, whose eyes flicked up to him before reverting back to the floor.“Mr. Winchester,” the principal, a Mr. Curtis, started. “Were you aware that your… child, had been using the boys’ restroom during Dean’s entire duration at our school?”John didn’t look at Dean, his stomach growing cold. “Of course.”“Then you must be aware of Dean’s… condition,” Curtis continued. John frowned.“His condition,” he stated. He turned to look at Dean. He’d been called in because of a fight. He’d been angry. Dean knew better than to start stuff like that, knew better than to get into the kind of trouble that would have the school asking after him, drawing attention to him. But this, this didn’t sound like Dean getting into some stupid argument, brawl. Had some kids found out? Had someone attacked his son?“What happened to my son?” he asked, an edge of anger and worry tinting his voice.“Well, Dean’s been using the boys’ restroom against the rules for the better part of two months,” said Curtis. John bristled, his face heating.“What does that have anything to do with my boy bleeding?” John snapped, and Dean and the principal both flinched. Mr. Curtis turned to Dean, who withdrew a bit more into the back of his chair.“Why don’t you tell your father what happened, Dean.”Dean swallowed. He didn’t look up when he spoke, but he scowled ferociously. “A bunch of dickweeds in the bathroom thought it’d be funny to pin me to the wall and prove my ‘manhood.’”The principal pursed his lips at the obscenity. “That’s not quite how I would put it, but yes, Mr. Winchester. Some young men were understandably curious as to why Dean has, apparently, never used a urinal. When they considered the possibilities, they became uncomfortable and sought to ensure that their concerns had no merit. It is unfortunate that they acted themselves without first bringing their concerns to an adult, but your child’s perversion has now been brought to light as a result.”Dean’s jaw tensed, and John swallowed the knot that formed at the principal’s words. Perversion. He had called Dean a pervert.“What did they do, Dean?” was all John said, his voice not belying the terror and anger he felt in his chest. Dean ardently avoided looking into his eyes, jiggling his knee up and down, his forefinger scratching absently at the denim clothing his thigh. He shrugged.“Just… you know. Played Keep Away with my socks.” Dean finally looked up at John, his left eye fierce and angry, though his right had started to swell shut. “I didn’t just let them do anything, Dad, I fought back, I swear.”John reached out, lay his hand over Dean’s, over the bruises on his wrist, and smiled through the knot in his throat and the tears pricking at his eyes. “It’s okay, Dean, you did good.”“No, Mr. Winchester, Dean didn’t. Your… child… attacked six of our students, one of whom had to go to the hospital with a broken nose. Dean lied to the school and used the boys’ restroom against the rules, endangering the safety and privacy of our students. We’re here to discuss suspension.”John froze, turning his head to stare at the man, face blank. Dean felt him tense as John’s hand tightened on his wrist.“Are you telling me that my son was harassed, beaten, and… And assaulted by six of your students and you’re punishing him?”“Your child initiated the fight. Dean’s facial bruising is a result of self-defense, and the defender in question will be given a week of detention.”“And what about the sick bastards who put hands on my son?” John asked, furious, withdrawing his hand from Dean’s arm and straightening, swelling his chest. “Are you not punishing them?”“Dean broke the rules by using the boys’ bathroom, and boys will be boys, you can’t expect…”John stood in one move, his chair slamming over onto the floor behind him. The principal jumped in his seat, his hands flying down to the desk.“Are you telling me that those boys won’t be punished for assault because, what, my son is a pervert?” John shouted. “Are you honestly telling me that you think Dean deserved it?”Dean flinched. John’s face was red, his hands shaking, fingers clenched into fists. Curtis looked unnerved, opening his mouth, probably to ask him to calm down or to say some other bullshit about how his boy deserved to be attacked for going to the fucking bathroom.“Don’t you say a fucking thing, I will not permit you to say another fucking word in front of my son. You listen to me, you bastard!” John jabbed his finger towards the principal, spit flying out of his mouth with the force of his rage. “My boy doesn’t deserve to be attacked just for being who he is. He didn’t do anything to deserve it. You hear that, Dean?” Dean was looking up at him, and John saw a tear slip down Dean’s cheek against his will. Dean quickly wiped it away. “Not a fucking thing. Come on, Dean! Let’s go pick up Sam.”He was shaking with anger as they left. Dean was quiet and limping slightly, which only served to further kindle John’s rage. They drove in silence for several minutes, heading over to the middle school. John felt anger swelling in his throat, anger at the principal, at the fucking kids who’d thought it was okay to lay hands on his boy, at the whole fucking world for forcing Dean to hide who he was for fear of retribution, anger at…“You have to be more careful, Dean!” John finally snapped, making Dean flinch in the passenger seat. “You can’t let that happen again!”“I was just going to the bathroom, sir,” Dean said, and John’s vision tinted red at the image of Dean shoved against a grimy bathroom wall, of him struggling as a group of six boys held him and forced his pants around his knees, of them laughing, throwing around Dean’s socks as Dean tried to escape grabbing hands. His eyes went to Dean’s lap for a second, long enough to see that Dean wasn’t packing anymore.“Then you wait until the bathroom’s empty, and if it isn’t, you hold it, you hear me? You fucking hold it all day if you have to.”“Yes, sir.”“Now we’re gonna have to move schools again. You understand that, don’t you, Dean? The hunt’s still here. The library’s still here. Now we’ve gotta move towns and schools and I’m gonna have to fucking commute every day just to smoke a fucking spirit. This place here was supposed to set us up for the rest of the year. I was gonna be able to stick around for longer. The library’s stocked full of lore, I wouldn’t have had to travel far for research. You get that, Dean?”“Yes, sir,” Dean whispered.“And Sam’s gonna be pissed off. He liked this school.”“I’ll tell him it was my fault, sir.”“You do that, Dean,” John growled, absentminded, visions of six pairs of hand grabbing at his boy flickering behind his eyelids every time he blinked. It was almost worse than the memories he still had of Dean lying on the forest floor in the dark, crying, with bloody bone glinting through the red on his chest.“Don’t worry, Dad, I’ll get Sam to go along. He’ll listen to me.”John didn’t answer.Sam threw a snit the second he was in the car with John and Dean. Dean tried to calm him down, but Sam barely noticed Dean’s bruises and bloody nose. He was too furious with his dad to see much of anything but John’s apparent lack of care for Sam’s education.The day ended in ruins. Sam locked himself in his bedroom. Dean locked himself in the bathroom, and a minute later, the shower was running. John took one look at the empty living room and turned around, leaving the apartment to find the nearest bar.He returned home late that night, dizzy and heavy with alcohol. The lights were off, but Dean was sitting at the kitchen table, and stood as John entered through the front door.“What’re you doin’ up?” John asked as Dean walked quickly over to help him take off his jacket, tugging the car keys gently out of his clenched fist and tucking them into his own pocket, and leading John over to the couch.“Waitin’ for you,” Dean said, laying John back on the lumpy couch cushions and starting to untie his boots, pulling them off his clumsy feet one by one. “Sort of figured you wouldn’t be in any shape to get yourself to bed when you got home.”John peered at the digital clock next to the TV. It was two in the morning.“S’mmy?” John asked.“He’s been asleep for a while,” Dean told him. “Did all his homework for the next three days in a final act of rebellion, I think.”Sighing, John allowed himself to relax back into the couch.“You want any water, Dad?” Dean asked, kneeling on the floor next to John’s stomach.John peered through the darkness into his son’s eyes, a glint of off-white in the gloam. He reached forward and grabbed Dean’s wrist, pulling his son closer to his face until he could make out Dean’s irises.“Dean,” he said gruffly, urgently. “Those boys, today. They tried…”“I didn’t let them, sir,” Dean responded immediately. “I promise. I didn’t let them touch me.”John shook his head, then winced as it ached. “Dean,” he moaned. “Has anyone else ever… Has anyone else ever tried to… To touch you, like that, have they ever…”Fifty percent, echoed the statistic in his head. Fifty percent. Often more than once. And with the places they’d been… The people his boys had been around, growing up…Dean moved, turned his face a little. His expression was suddenly cloaked in shadow.“No, sir,” he said. “Never.”John let go of Dean’s wrist, noticing how his fingers had fit over the bruises left there earlier. He sank into the lumpy, uncomfortable cushions and closed his eyes.God help him, he knew his boy was lying.“Go to bed,” he muttered, feeling such self-loathing at that moment he could barely speak. He heard Dean stay for a moment before straightening, setting John’s boots down at the foot of the couch, and retreating to his and Sam’s bedroom.Thirty, John thought brokenly. Dean will live past thirty. And he let that mantra repeat over and over again in his head until he finally drifted to restless sleep. He came home a day late from the next hunt to find Dean and Sam playing catch in the small park behind their new motel. The park was a little thing, basically just browning grass and a couple sparse trees, but the boys were laughing. Sam threw the football energetically, sending it in a wobbly corkscrew that Dean had to run to catch. Dean leaped into the air to grab the ball and tug it into his chest, then turned with a cheer, raising his right arm and fisting the air. “Good one, geek-boy!” he yelled, before sending the football soaring seamlessly back to Sam, who scrambled to grab it with two clumsy hands. Dean put his hands on his hips and watched Sam with an expression of unbridled pride and joy, mouth open in a crooked grin, eyes wide and sparkling, just a smudge of his faded bruises on either side of his nose. Sam was laughing and grinning back, face lit up.John watched them wordlessly and entered the motel room without greeting them, not wanting to wreck the moment with his presence. He wanted those smiles to stay on his boys’ faces as long as possible.Sam was fourteen the day John took him on a hunt without Dean. Sam didn’t want to, and Dean didn’t want him to either, and it might have been the first time in years that Dean talked back to John not just once, but two times.“He’s too young. I can take care of both of you,” Dean begged, standing straight, fists clenched at his sides.“You were younger than me when you went with Dad alone the first time,” Sam pointed out. Dean shot him a glare.“I thought you didn’t even want to go?” he snapped, and Sam turned red.“I don’t! I’m just saying! I’m not a baby, Dean. I can take care of myself.”“But…”“Sam’s coming, Dean, and you’re staying here, and that’s final!” John said.“Dad,” Dean started, looking betrayed.“Sam needs practice, and you need to study. You won’t be graduating at this rate unless you buckle down, boy. That’s an order.”Dean fumed and stalked over to the kitchen table, where he sat angrily in front of his schoolbooks and scrubbed his fingers through his short hair. “Yes, sir.”Sam gritted his teeth and scowled at John, but John just shoved past Sam to grab his jacket.“Come on, Sam.”They were on the road for thirty minutes before Sam asked what the hunt even was.“A haunted clinic,” John told him.“A clinic? Like a health center?” Sam asked skeptically.Taking a deep breath, John controlled his expression. “Southwest Texas. A doctor worked there, Adams. Not the open-minded type. When his boss started giving out hormone treatments, he went nuts. Took a gun to a couple of his patients, then blew his own brains out. But his spirit’s sticking around. In the years after, Dr. Trewett, the guy who runs the joint, has got a lot more patients looking for hormone replacement therapy. But since eighteen days ago, the third anniversary of Adams’ death, they’re being picked off. Once a week.”Sam was silent for a few more minutes.“Hormone replacement therapy. Like, for transgender people?”John clenched his fingers around the wheel. “Seems like this Dr. Adams had it out for people like that. He’s already killed two more besides the three he killed while he was alive. A fifteen year old girl and a twenty year old boy.”“Is this why you wouldn’t let Dean come?” Sam asked. “Because you thought maybe the spirit might go after him, too?”John didn’t answer and made a hard turn onto a stretch of gravel road.“Hormone replacement therapy,” Sam whispered, like he was testing the words out.There were twenty more minutes of silence before Sam spoke up again.“I think Dean’s always kind of wanted to grow a beard. He… He looks at his chin in the mirror sometimes, like he’s hoping. You know. That he’ll just start growing facial hair.” Sam was staring straight ahead through the windshield.John hummed in the back of his throat and said nothing.They drove through the day and night and reached the clinic the following afternoon. Sam had taken a turn driving sometime during the night to let John get a few hours of sleep.Adams had been cremated, so there had to be something in the clinic keeping him there. John did his typical FBI routine. The doctors seemed surprised that the FBI was showing in an interest in the deaths of their patients, and it rekindled the flame in John’s stomach. The police hadn’t cared enough to spare more than a vague glance at the autopsies and a brief investigation before concluding that it had been overdoses. Suicide amongst those kinds of people were common, they said. They didn’t care that Julie May had been overjoyed to start on estrogen, that her parents said they hadn’t seen her smile so much in years. They didn’t care that Andrew Kidderson had a girlfriend who tearfully told John that she’d found a ring hidden in their closet, that she knew he was going to propose to her.The police didn’t know, of course, what cold spots in a heated room indicated, or what it meant when lights flickered with no apparent electrical cause. Then again, they hadn’t cared to wonder why a kid would overdose by mixing high amounts of dangerous drugs in with their testosterone injection or estrogen pills. Hadn’t cared to think that maybe, someone was poisoning their medication intentionally.The police hadn’t cared because to them, the lives of people like Julie and Andrew – like Dean – were worth nothing.It fueled John’s anger and determination quicker than any intoxicated asshole in a bar-fight ever could.They researched. Sam talked to some of the patients. John talked to Dr. Trewett, who was the man providing the hormone treatments. He was the one who had called John, had been directed through from Caleb to Bobby and finally to him.“Please,” Trewett begged, “Help my patients. I can’t have any more die. Please.”They thought that maybe, at first, there was some kind of medical equipment left from Adams. There were none, all the tools were Trewett’s. Then they supposed maybe there were files or a pair of glasses or something, some kind of unfinished business, something tying his spirit to the clinic that had to be hidden around somewhere. Still, their hands came up empty.Sam was the one who cracked it, finally. “Dad, the police reports say that the gun was a Smith and Wesson, model 686. That’s a seven-round pistol, shot until the barrel was empty. But they only recovered six bullets.”“And the one Adams used to blow himself away, passed right on through the back of his skull, didn’t it?” They looked at each other knowingly. “Must have hit the ceiling behind him, huh?” John said.They entered the clinic that night after closing hours to look for the seventh bullet. They found it buried in the ceiling, a small, discrete hole in the far corner of the room, hidden in shadows. Sam stood on a chair to dig it out, already getting tall for his age. John kept watch with a box of salt in one hand and an iron rod in the other.In a shower of plaster, Sam pulled the small bullet out of the ceiling, and at the same moment, Adams appeared in the room. Before he could shower the spirit with salt or run it through with the iron, John was flung aside, salt scattering over the floor and the rod knocked out of his hand. Sam stumbled, almost falling off his perch, bullet clenched tightly in one hand and the bowl of salt and lighter fluid they were going to use to burn it with in the other.Adams went towards Sam, dark eyes glinting, lab coat bloodstained.“Sam!” John cried, lunging towards the iron rod, grabbing it and hurling it towards the spirit in time to dissipate it before it reached his son.“Dad!” Sam gasped, rushing towards him, holding out the bowl and with a clatter, emptying the stained bullet into it. John pulled out his lighter and fumbled with it a few times, watching the end spark over and over again…The spirit of Adams was back, walking towards them, but finally there was the familiar noise of flame catching, and John dropped the lighter into the bowl, sending the contents up in flames.“That was for my son and all the kids you murdered, you sick son of a bitch!” John yelled as the spirit of Dr. Adams went up in flames.Sam and John sat in silence, breaths heaving.The next day, they told Dr. Trewett that Adams was taken care of.“Your patients are safe,” John said, and Trewett let out a long breath of relief.“Thank god,” he murmured. “How can I possibly repay you?”John looked him in the eyes. “My son,” he said, “My other son, he’s like your patients. But we don’t have the money for hormones. And we don’t stay in any place for longer than a couple months.”He heard Sam suck in a breath, but didn’t turn to look. He kept his eyes trained on Trewett, who looked at him in understanding.“So that’s why…” the doctor breathed, then apparently thought better of finishing his sentence. “Alright. That’s no problem. Robert Singer, the man who gave me your number. He told me a little about what you and your family does. You travel the country, hunting these monsters, saving people like my patients. Your son, how old is he?”“Eighteen,” Sam supplied. “He wants… He wants to look like a man.”Dr. Trewett nodded. “With the things your family sacrifices? Your son deserves what I can give him, out of all people. You two, you saved my patients’ lives. And I bet you and your other son has saved a lot more. I’ll give you what you need. And I’ll write him prescriptions, put you in contact with people who can get him what he needs, wherever in the country you go.”John nodded curtly, but Sam could barely contain his excitement.“What is your son’s name?” Trewett asked.“Dean,” Sam and John both answered.“Well, Dean will need to come in to my office. I have to give him a physical, and discuss the effects of treatment with him. Usually, hormone treatment requires a psychological evaluation, regular meetings with a gender therapist… but I believe, given the circumstances, we can make an exception.”Sam sat in the back of the Impala on the way home, lying sideways on the bench seat with his knees up in front of him. He’d asked for John’s cell phone the second they pulled out of the clinic parking lot, wanted to call Dean to give him the news.“It’s the coolest place, Dean,” John could hear him saying. “There’re other transgender kids there, too, and they’re getting these treatments, and the doctor said he’d give you them for free.” There was a moment of silence as Sam waited for an answer. “Dean?” More silence. “Hormone replacement therapy. You know. I told you about it once.” Sam’s smiling expression was steadily falling. “You get it like an injection, I think.” He scowled slightly. “No, Dean, it’s free. No strings attached. We saved his patients, he’s just doing us a favor.” Sam’s hazel eyes flickered to John and back, and John looked away from the rearview mirror, where he’d been watching Sam. “God, Dean, it was Dad’s idea. He’s the one who asked.” Sam’s lips pursed. “But Dean…”“Give me the phone, Sam,” John ordered, stretching his hand out into the backseat and gesturing. Sam glared at the offending limb before nodding.“Dad wants to talk to you,” he said, before handing John the phone.“Dean?” John said, pulling the cellphone to his ear. “You there?”“Yessir,” he heard Dean respond softly.“You know what Sam’s talkin’ about?”A moment of silence. “Some doctor you helped said he’d give me some kind of treatment. Some kind of, uh, hormone treatment.”“This stuff, it’ll make you change, son. I’ve looked into it. I think it’d do you good.”Dean was quiet for another long moment. “I don’t wanna owe anybody nothin’,” he finally said.“And you won’t, because this is the doctor owing me something, owing us something.” Dean didn’t say anything in response. “Dean, you don’t gotta go through with this treatment if you don’t want to. But you will come with us back to the clinic, and you will sit down and listen to this doctor tell you all about what it can do, and you will make a decision only after you have thought about it damn hard. You hear me, boy?”“Yes, sir,” Dean muttered. John hung up and tossed the cellphone into the backseat.Sam was quiet for a minute before speaking up. “I thought he’d be excited,” he said glumly.“You know your brother, Sam. Damn headstrong. He’ll come around.”Dean was sitting on the couch with his head hung and elbows on his knees when John and Sam entered the apartment. He stood immediately, expression tight.“Dad,” he nodded. “I thought about it and I ain’t doin’ it.”“Sam, go wait in your room,” John said before Sam could object. “Dean, outside, now.”Sam stalked into his room with a scowl, shooting a concerned look back at Dean before slamming the door. Dean was staring intently at the floor as he followed John silently out the front door and into the dingy parking lot. John took a few long strides before turning around, near the rear of the Impala. Dean stood next to the hood, one hand absently trailing over the dusty black paint, the other stuffed in his jeans pocket.“Why?” was the only thing John said, voice full of grit and gravel. There was a tightness in his throat, looking at Dean and the way he was so avidly avoiding John’s gaze. Soft jaw, big eyes, strong nose, short hair. Tall, skinny. Muscles tight on his upper arms and thighs. Shoulders a little narrow, hips a little wide. Standing straight with feet apart, shoulders squared. Expression veiled, posture defensive. “Why?”Dean’s jaw worked for a moment, he swallowed, glanced around. “Sam showed me some stuff about it before. It ain’t a one-off thing. I start that, I gotta keep taking it for the rest of my life. Can’t stop, not ever. Where are we supposed to get it, huh? When we’re on the hunt?”“The doctor, Trewett, he’ll set us up so we have contacts wherever we go. And we can get it in bulk if we got to.”“Then people will know our names, Dad!” Dean exclaimed, pulling his hand out of his pocket and gesturing in a wide sweep. “We can’t do that! You always said, we can’t afford a whole bunch of people knowing our names. A bunch of doctors, all over the country, knowing who we are?”“They’re good people,” John said. “They want to help people like you.”“We can’t trust that. We can’t trust anyone,” said Dean, shaking his head. His gaze focused on the asphalt. “We can trust family, no one else.”“You can trust me, and I’ll trust them,” John said shortly. “Dean, this stuff, it’ll make you… It’ll make you a man.” Dean’s eyes shot up from the ground and hit him with an intensity that made his heart falter.“I can exercise more,” Dean said lowly. “I don’t gotta take hormones to get stronger. I can increase my regimen, practice more, longer. I’ll get better, Dad, I promise, if that’s what you want.”John’s heart squeezed tight in his chest. He shook his head and took a step towards his son. “This isn’t about what I want, Dean, this is about what you want.” Dean looked confused, eyes nervously flickering anywhere but John’s face. “Look at me, boy, that’s an order!” John barked, and finally Dean’s green eyes connected with his own. John shook his head in agitation, bewilderment. “For god’s sake, Dean, you’ve been my son for thirteen years now! That’s not gonna change, whether or not you decide to take this treatment. But dammit, Dean, I see the way you look at yourself in the mirror. You’re not happy like this! And this, this treatment, these hormones? They could change that. Change you.” I just want to see you feel comfortable in your own skin.Dean closed his hands into his fists, and John could see the turmoil in his head, the war of emotions flashing in his eyes.Then he nodded.Dean was nervous when they walked into Trewett’s clinic, his eyes darting all over the place and hunched slightly, as if he was trying to distract attention away from himself.“Allie!” Sam called, waving at a pretty blonde who was sitting in one of the waiting room seats. She smiled at Sam.“She’s transgender too,” Sam whispered to Dean, who shot a small smile that looked more like a grimace in her direction and refused to look further. John ignored it and walked up to the receptionist.“Tell Dr. Trewett that John Winchester is here with his sons,” he told her, and turned back to his boys as she rolled her eyes at his abrupt tone and discourtesy and picked up her phone.The girl called Allie was called back into the doctor's office, and Sam waved goodbye to the girl with a smile. She smiled back and waved with dainty hands, nails painted pink.John noticed Dean watching her leave out of the corner of his eyes, brows furrowed in curiosity. His gaze drifted down to her butt then back up to her hair, blush coloring his cheeks slightly.“She don’t look like a dude,” he whispered to Sam, who frowned in confusion.“Well, she’s not a dude,” he whispered back, frowning at Dean.“I just mean, she doesn’t look like… you know.”“That’s what the hormones do.” Dean was still staring at Allie’s back as she left, and Sam was looking at him with some kind of new realization. “Dean,” he said, sounding distressed, “You…”“Dean Winchester?" a nurse standing in the doorway to the back rooms called. John stood, pulled Dean up with him, and the nurse saw them and smiled. "Come on in,” she said, beckoning them forward, and John walked ahead through the open door. He motioned for Sam to stay seated in the waiting room, and Dean followed him down the skinny clinic halls to Trewett’s office.Dean was sat at the padded medical table, legs dangling awkwardly and obviously not knowing what to do with his hands. John sat in the armed chair beside it. They waited a few minutes before Dr. Trewett entered, smiling and holding a stack of papers. He greeted John warmly, then made eye-contact with Dean and put the papers down on the counter, smiling widely and holding out his hand.“Hi, you must be Dean. I’m Dr. Trewett.”Dean nodded and returned the handshake nervously.“I need to give you a brief medical examination and ask you some personal questions. Is that alright?”Dean shifted. “I’m not sure… I mean, I don’t know if…”“It's alright, Dean," John eased him with a hand on his knee. "Before you start, can you just... Can you talk to us a little bit about the, uh, the hormones? About what they do?”Dean twisted his mouth and gave a shrug, then a nod. Trewett nodded and leaned back onto the counter.“Of course. Well, you can sort of consider it as a second puberty.”A faltering grin spread on Dean’s face. “Not lookin’ forward to going through that again.”Trewett smiled and nodded. “Yes, it can be daunting, especially at your age when you've just about finished your first one. And testosterone will not reverse the effects of an estrogen-dominant puberty, not exactly. But this ‘second puberty’ that the testosterone causes will take your body through all the changes of a young adult male. In the course of a few months on testosterone, your voice will naturally lower. Your shoulders may broaden and your facial features will become more angular. You will grow coarser hair on your legs, arms, abdomen, and face. You will find it easier to build muscle mass, and your metabolism may speed up. In short, your features will become more masculine.”Dean swallowed. He shifted in the seat and smiled crookedly. “Is that all?” he asked sardonically.“No, that is not all,” Trewett amended. “But you might prefer we discuss some of the other effects in private. Your father can go wait with your brother while we finish the discussion and conduct the medical exam.”Still nervous, Dean hesitated, but seemed to agree. He looked sideways at John, an unspoken plea."If that's what you want, Dean. I can go wait with Sam. But you listen to the doctor, listen to everything he has to say."Dean nodded, and Trewett smiled. “Alright then. Mr. Winchester, if you’d excuse the two of us?”John hesitated for a second before standing, clapping Dean awkwardly on the back, and exiting the room. He wanted to hear more about this treatment was going to do to Dean’s body, but he did admit that there were some things the doctor might need to discuss that would be... uncomfortable to listen to.When Sam saw John again so soon, he straightened with concern, looking for Dean over his shoulder. When he saw John was alone, he sagged back into his seat in relief. John re-took the empty seat beside him. They were mostly quiet while they were sitting together in the waiting room, but after several minutes, Sam spoke up.“He’s gonna say yes,” he said simply.“He is,” John agreed.He did.“I hate needles,” Dean complained the first time he administered his injection. 'Testosterone Cypionate', the small bottle in his hands read. The syringe looked almost too medical to be in the hands of a young man whose normal remedy for an injury was a fifth of whiskey, a sewing needle heated over a lighter, and a roll of dental floss.“Come on, Dean, don’t be a baby,” Sam cajoled. Dean screwed up his face and stabbed the needle into his thigh with vigor. “Dude!” Sam gasped as Dean pressed down on the plunger with his thumb, grimacing and finally withdrawing the hypodermic needle with a hiss escaping from between clenched teeth. “You didn’t have to do it that hard!”John was shocked how quickly it seemed that Dean grew into a man.His voice was the first thing that changed. It started to crack after a few weeks of the hormones. The first time it happened, Dean stopped talking in the middle of his sentence, swallowing, and Sam laughed because Dean had ribbed Sam so hard when Sam’s voice had first started changing. It just kept getting lower after that, until John wasn’t sure how much of it Dean was controlling anymore.Dean started packing on muscle easier, his arms getting thicker, his abs more defined. He started eating more, too, gained some weight, and John noticed it and encouraged the welcome change.After about two months, John caught Dean standing in front of the mirror with the hem of his shirt pulled up, admiring the trail of dark hair growing under his navel.His jaw got more angular, his silhouette more masculine. At five months was when John noticed Dean’s Adam’s apple bobbing as he chewed his hamburger, and he felt like crying. Dean noticed him staring and grinned through his mouthful, and John smiled back slightly as Sam complained, “Gross, Dean!”Somehow, it all made John more confident in leaving his boys alone when he went on solo hunts. He wasn’t sure quite what that meant about how he’d felt about Dean before his body had started changing. When John let himself think about it, he realized that he no longer was scared that at any moment someone might discover that his son wasn’t quite fully male. With the testosterone, Dean had shed off his baby fat and his face was distinctly masculine in its prettiness, and the worry that had lingered at the forefront of his thoughts for the majority of Dean’s teenage years, faded to the back of John’s mind.During the second quarter of Dean’s senior year, John left Sam in Dean’s capable hands. Abe had called John for the first time in two years after they'd reconnected at a hunter's funeral gathering with Dean and Caleb, told John he had a hunt in the mountains. That it would probably take about a month, and that John was the only person he trusted to have his back.It would be the longest John had left the boys alone during the school year in several years, and the few times John had been absent for longer than two weeks he’d either left Sam and Dean with Jim or Singer, or, when Dean had gotten old enough that John felt he could take care of Sam during all that time, at least within a couple hour’s driving distance of one of the two men. But Dean was eighteen now, he was an adult, and John felt he could do it.So he sat the kids down and told them what was going to happen, made sure they knew that John would be away from a phone and there would be no contact for at least a month.“I will either be back in thirty days, or I will call you in thirty days to tell you how much longer the hunt will take,” John said. He didn’t talk about what the boys should do if he didn’t call or get back in time. They knew the drill. When they’d been younger, it was hightail it to Jim’s. Now, Dean was old enough to become Sam’s legal guardian, if the need ever came.John knew he should probably tell Dean that by no means was he to come looking for John if John disappeared. But he knew his boy wouldn’t listen if it came down to that. So John would just have to make sure to make it out of the mountains whole and well.The hunt was one of the worst John had ever been on. They were frigid cold and uncomfortable and hungry at all times as him and Abe scoured the mountains for signs of the monster that had been taking out explorers up and down the Rockies for the past several years.At first, they thought it was black dogs. The pattern certainly seemed to point to animal attacks. But then they started finding bits of fur and, a few times, broken teeth at the sites of the attacks, and since black dogs can’t leave pieces of themselves behind, they started leaning towards cursed animals.But they were wrong. There was a wanna-be pro-animal rights sorcerer possessing animal spirits for the purpose of mauling hunters, and John and Abe were almost too late to stop him from killing another.They did stop him. But not before a fox had clamped its jaw around Abe’s neck, and not before a wolf with glazed-over eyes had leapt at John to bury its teeth in his shoulder. So the man lay on the floor of the campground, blood bubbling up between his lips from the two bullets in his stomach, Abe lay on his back gurgling after the possessed fox had darted off into the trees – possibly the magic had already departed the smaller animal – and John, too, was collapsed sprawled on the hard ground, the wolf still gnawing at his shoulder. John stared straight up at the white sky as his vision slowly blackened, not able to think about anything except for Dean at fourteen, laying in a similar position as a black dog tore at his chest.It was dark and cold for a long time. John came back to awareness very slowly, shaken awake by his own shivers. He finally opened his eyes to the chill and consciously sucked in a lungful of the thin air, punctuated by a gasp of pain as a dull ache pierced through the numbness of his shoulder.His whole body was stiff and numb and he didn’t want to move. He wanted to lie there and stare at the sky.But then he remembered why he was there. He remembered the wolf attack and then, quite suddenly, remembered his children. Sam, who was still just a boy, and Dean, who would come out here looking if John didn’t return home. Pulling together every ounce of motivation John had, he rolled swiftly onto his side and lifted himself to his knees. He expected to see blood drip into the grass beneath him, but it seemed that the wolf hadn’t punctured his brachial artery and, in fact, the wound had already clotted. But he raised his right hand to the wounded left shoulder and realized that in this temperature, and depending on how long John had been there lying unconscious in the elements, the clotting could have been caused by his sluggish, chilled blood, and that frostbite was a real danger. He had to make it to help. There was a ranger station just a few miles down the mountain, he had to make it to…As he swung around, his eyes fell on the prone, dead form of Abe, blood dried brown all around him, eyes staring wide and blankly straight ahead.John tried to swallow but his throat was dry.Caleb was a grown man now and hunted on his own but undoubtedly would be grief-stricken to hear that his father was dead. His thoughts turned to Bill Harvelle, a goddamned good hunter like Abe who had died too soon. That was two friends, good hunters, heroes, dead nearly by John’s hands.His mind flickered then to his sons and John forced his eyes away from Abe’s body and set them through the trees down the mountain. He had to make it to the ranger station. He had to make it to medical aid. He couldn’t die up here and leave his children fatherless like Caleb and Jo were. Sam and Dean needed him to focus and make it out of this hunt alive.So he stumbled through the trees, over branches and rocks, through miles of woods, dazed from the pain and halfway to delusional from the cold. He forced his feet to continue to pick up, one after the other, through hours of trekking. When he finally felt warm air and heard the sound of creaking hardwood under his feet, he collapsed to his knees, vision fading once again, and hoped he had reached his goal and this wasn’t just a sick sort of hallucination. If the latter were true, he’d soon be dead. And then who would be there to make sure Dean lived past thirty?John dreamed of blonde hair and sweet blue eyes. John dreamed of smooth hands tracing over his cheeks, of a warm smile pressing a gentle kiss to his forehead. He dreamed of soft breasts pressed against him, of sweet breath ghosting across his forehead.He woke up in a white hospital room on the thin mattress of a hospital bed. It wasn’t altogether unexpected for him, but it did take him a few moments to realize why he was where he was, and how he’d come to be there. By the time he had recalled the sorcery in the mountains and the fact that Abe was dead, he was pressing the button for the nurse on-call and demanding a phone so he could call his boys.Dial, let it ring twice, hang up, dial again. That’s how they’d know it was him.“Dad!” Dean exclaimed when he picked up the phone. “Where are you? What happened? Are you okay?”“The hunt just… It’s just taking a little longer than I thought, and it took me a while to get back to a phone. Lost track of time. Just wanted to let you know it will take a while longer, hold up the fort, okay? I’ll call you again in a month if I can’t get back by then.”Dean sounded apprehensive. “But Dad, you’re already four days later than you said you’d be, and…”“And nothing, a job’s a job and I have to finish it. Take care of Sam.” John hung up.The nurse had left the room for the first half of the conversation, but wandered back in to check on his IV towards the end.“You seem to be doing well so far, Mr. Smithson,” she said as she took stock of the fluid in his drip. “Was that your son on the phone?”John wasn’t a fool, and he could see the slight purse of her lips. He shook his head.“My nephew. He’s twenty-five and he watches my house and the dog when I’m off on hunting trips.”“And the reason you didn’t tell him where you were...?”“He’d just worry about me for no good reason,” John said, forcing some light-heartedness into his tone and rolling his eyes. The nurse’s expression seemed to soften.“I wouldn’t say for no reason, you had a pretty serious run-in with a wolf up in those mountains. But it is true that you’ll recover soon and I suppose there’s no need for undue worry if you don’t think it’s needed.”John nodded and reclined as she excused herself to fetch a doctor to check over him better. He’d have to figure out how to pay for this medical care, have to figure out if they’d found the bodies of Abe and the sorcerer, and if they hadn’t, he’d have to figure out how to get back to them and burn the corpses before getting back to Sam and Dean.But at least Dean wouldn’t be wearing himself out with worry. John could figure everything else out within the month.Five days in the hospital turned to eleven, his stay lengthened by an infection that started showing symptoms on day three. When John was finally released, immediately he set about planning out how he would return to the mountains. He had to find Abe and the sorcerer’s bodies and take care of them, before the mountainside could become haunted once again.It took another three days to hike up the mountainside and relocate the corpses. He salted and torched the sorcerer’s bones, but took his time setting up a funeral pyre for Abe. He stood back and watched as it lit up the night, stayed as it burned down to embers, inhaled the scent of smoldering corpse and rehearsed what he would tell Caleb. Afterwards, he spent an additional two and a half days searching for the sorcerer’s home so that he could destroy any dark items that he might have stored there.In total, it took sixty-one days for John to get back to where Dean and Sam were staying. He arrived at the apartment a bit after noon, and spent the next four hours reclining on the tattered couch of what they were supposed to call a living room, nursing his shoulder which was mostly healed, but still ached a little. A little after four, the front door opened and Sam walked in. He stood at the doorstep and kicked dirt off his sneakers against the frame, and didn’t look up to see his father until he had set his backpack down on the dinner table. Which was also in the living room.“Hello, Sam,” greeted John, straightening his back though it twinged a bit.“So now you decide to come home,” Sam acknowledged coolly. He crossed his arms against his chest.“Did you have an after school meeting?”His son nodded. “Debate Club.”“Where’s Dean?”Something indeterminate flashed in Sam’s expression.“He works until five.” His voice was flat. John frowned.“Works? What about school?”“I’m gonna do my homework. He’ll be back in a little while, you can ask him then.”Sam snatched up his backpack and disappeared into the apartment’s single bedroom. From the few notebooks that were stacked neatly on the dinner table, John could tell Sam normally did his work there, and was sacrificing a large workspace so as to not have to be around him. He sighed and slumped back into the couch, and turned on the television. Most of the channels were grainy or static, but he found one that played college sports.True to Sam’s words, Dean entered the apartment at fifteen after five. He saw John immediately and straightened up from removing his boots.“Dad! When did you get back?”“Sam tells me you’ve been working.” Dean’s expression tightened a bit.“How did the hunt go? You haven’t called for a month!”“Dean, why are you working?”His eldest walked over to the table where he deposited a dented metal thermos and a canvas apron that John hadn’t noticed he’d been holding. Turning back towards John, he rubbed the palms of his hands on his jeans and raised an eyebrow.“Why do you think?”He turned away again and headed towards the bathroom, where he shut the door hard enough that John could sense some kind of aggravation behind the intent.“Dean,” he called wearily. There was no answer. He walked towards the bathroom and set a heavy palm against the closed door. “Dean.” Still no sound from his son. He frowned and turned the knob. The lock on this bathroom was broken.“Hey!” Dean objected. He was standing with his foot up on the closed toilet seat, his jeans around his ankles, but thankfully his shorts up.“Dean, you’ve got to talk to me.” He was thankful for a moment that he hadn’t walked in on his son trying to go to the bathroom. Instead, Dean was cleaning a spot on his outer thigh for his injection. The bottle of T was in one hand, the needle in his other.“Couldn’t wait until I had my friggin’ pants up?” he muttered, turning back to the items in his hand.“Why are you working, Dean? What about school?”Dean shot John a glare. “You’ve been gone for two months, Dad, and you gave us enough money for barely three weeks. What did you think was gonna happen?”John’s gut felt heavy.“What happened?”“We started having to ration the money by week two. I started looking for a part-time job for after school after three weeks. But nobody wanted some stupid teenager to work four hours a night. I thought we could last until you got here, but then you called. So…” he shrugged. “I dropped out so I could get a job.”John blinked. He couldn’t speak. He watched wordlessly as Dean carefully inserted the hypodermic needle into his thigh, pressed his thumb on the plunger to inject the hormones. When Dean disposed of the materials and pulled up his pants, he walked past John out of the bathroom. John moved slightly to let him pass.Dean knocked on the bedroom door before opening it and sticking his head in. “Yo, Sammy. You hook up with Amber yet?” He ducked his head slightly to avoid a thrown wad of used socks. “Good talk, man.”“Shut up, Dean!” Sam yelled as Dean shut the door, but John could hear the reluctant humor in his youngest son’s voice, just like he could see the smirk on Dean’s face that slipped away when he turned back towards his father.“Relax, Dad,” Dean finally said as he passed John on his way to the living room. “This was bound to happen sooner or later. I’m not like Sammy. You’ve said it yourself; I just ain’t got school smarts.” John winced. “Anyway, you got no right to do anything about it now. It was your fault, but it was my choice. And now, we can both work and hunt and research together.”Dean started getting ingredients out of the cupboard to prepare pasta. “Besides, it’s not like I was gonna go to college anyway. I’m a hunter. What was I gonna do with a few extra months of high school?” He glanced towards John, who still stood in the hallway, feeling swamped with guilt. “Relax, Dad, Sam made me sign up for the GED test next week. I’m not gonna be a total loser.”He wanted to do something, say something. John had been foolish to think that if he didn’t tell Dean that he’d been injured, Dean wouldn’t have anything to worry about. Obviously, John had been wrong.But Dean was right. It was John’s fault and he had no right to object. So he shut his mouth and ignored Sam’s glares throughout dinner, and nodded goodbye as Dean left for the hardware store he was employed at the following morning.So Dean was a high school dropout. It didn’t mean John wasn’t proud of him. Dean was deep into nineteen when John taught him how to shave. During the whole occasion, Dean couldn’t stop grinning, all through applying the shaving cream and using his first flimsy, two-dollar disposable gas-station razor. He came out the other end with quite a few nicks, but he almost seemed pleased as he tore bits of toilet paper off the role to cover them with like he’d always seen his dad do.John watched his boy wash the stubble out of the razor, then lean forward to inspect his freshly-shaven, pinkish jaw with a wide, toothy smile. He raised his hands to rub his cheeks, making the bloody bits of toilet paper move around a bit, and turned his shining eyes to his dad, his smile getting even wider if possible.“Guess I’m a real man now!” he said, holding up the razor in his hand and waggling it slightly with a laugh. “But you know, I think I kinda like the rugged look. Maybe I’ll let it grow out.”John drank in the sight of Dean’s broadened shoulders, his muscular upper arms, his squared jaw, his Adam’s apple, the light in his eyes, and felt content.When Sam turned sixteen, Dean was the one to teach him how to shave, while John hung back watching from the room, a smile on his face. Sam was taller than Dean by about an inch at that point, with Dean standing comfortably at a solid six feet with what John knew was to be about another inch or so to come, but Sam was still gawky and lanky and listened to Dean’s instructions with a rapt attention. He finished the ordeal with no nicks to speak of, a little less overzealous than Dean had been his first time. Dean shoved a damp washcloth in his face to wipe off the remnants of the shaving cream and clapped Sam on the back with a word of praise, and Sam smiled at him and Dean grinned back. John wouldn’t have traded that moment for anything.After Sam left, after John told him not to come back, Dean stopped smiling like that. Without Sam around, John found it hard to care.Sometimes he’d get a hunt that gave him the excuse to swing by and check on his youngest. He’d sit in the shadows on a bench underneath some tree and just watch Sam cross the quad between classes, jaw clenched, thinking about Mary and Deanna and their broken family, and Sam tearing it just that little bit more asunder.Dean was waiting for him back at the motel a state away, and he would wait there, quietly, until John came home. Dean was always waiting for him, and Sam was always running away.It was just edging on halfway through Sam’s first year at Stanford when Dean got sick. One day when he woke up, he just seemed a little off, pale and haggard-looking.“You alright, son?” John asked, concerned by the bags and shadows under Dean’s eyes, and the way his stomach seemed to be hurting him.“Fine, Dad,” Dean groaned. “I’ll be fine.”“We can’t have you being sick in the Impala,” John told him, raising an eyebrow. Dean shook his head.“Not that kind of stomach ache,” he winced, and John shrugged, because he knew Dean well enough to know that there was no way he’d lie about that if it was going to risk his baby’s interior.Four hours into the drive on the way to the next hunt, Dean was white as a sheet and casually whispered that he thought maybe he should go to a doctor. Dean had held gaping wounds closed with bare hands before, guts practically spilling out of a gash in his stomach or blood pouring from a slash in the shoulder, and claimed that he’d be fine with a few stitches. So John figured that meant his son was dying.He ignored Dean’s weak objections as he burned rubber on the way to the nearest emergency room, focusing on the road but sparing occasional glances at Dean’s pain-filled expression. He parked haphazardly in a handicapped spot and slammed the driver’s side door as he leaped across the hood to get Dean out of the passenger’s side. When Dean was standing on shaky legs, John saw a small pool of red on the bench’s vinyl where he had been sitting, and spun Dean around frantically to find the seat of his pants wet through with blood.“Dammit, Dean!” he exclaimed as Dean’s head lolled. Dean’s periods had stopped after he started on the hormone replacement therapy, and even before that, the few times he’d caught Dean cursing and scrubbing at the crotch of his jeans in the bathroom, John knew it had never been this much. This was too much. This was far too much blood.“Fffuhhck,” Dean slurred, trying to bend over back into the car, reaching out a hand to wipe at the red stain. “Ssuh… S’rry, Baby,” he managed before John had pulled him back up, wrapping his arm under Dean’s shoulders.“C’mon, Dean, leave it,” he hissed through gritted teeth as Dean feebly tried to pull away.Without bothering to shut the door, he dragged Dean into the emergency room with the fragmented growls and barks of imaginary black dogs ringing in his ears and pushed past the line of people complaining of bloody fingers or broken arms. “My son is dying!” he yelled at the receptionist, and in a flurry of movement Dean was being rushed onto a rolling gurney, where they cut away his pants and underwear right there in the middle of the hallway as his weak hands attempted to bat theirs away. They looked up at John with unreadable expressions, Dean’s own face dazedly confused and humiliated, eyes feverish and glassy as they flitted around, unfocused.For an instant, the same fear that sat heavy like lead in his gut throughout Dean’s childhood reared its ugly head. He was back in that hospital and Dean was fourteen years old and John had to choose between his kid’s emotions and his safety. But Dean was an adult now, he was twenty-three, and no doctor could have him taken away by CPS because John had raised him up wrong.“He was born female,” John said through gritted teeth.“Has there been forced penetration?” asked a nurse.It took a moment for John’s brain to catch up to the question, and then he felt sick, his stomach turning at the thought of what the man was asking him. Asking if his son had had some… Some object forced inside him long enough, thick enough, sharp or blunt or brutal enough, to make him bleed like this. The imagery was sickening.“No,” he said, voice breaking with emotion and fear. “No, he just… His stomach was hurting, and then he got pale a bit ago, and when I got him out of the car he was bleeding like this…”“How long has he been taking the hormones?” one of the doctors asked.“Almost five years.”There was a lot of medical talk and then John was left in the hallway as Dean was rolled into an operating room.One emergency hysterectomy later, and John was sitting at the side of Dean’s hospital bed, chin cradled in his thumbs as he watched Dean’s pale face and closed, bruised eyes. There were no complications in surgery. Dean would be fine. Short one uterus and two ovaries, just like he was short two breasts. But fine.Dean was awake a day later, and aware enough to understand what the surgery had been and why. Hemorrhaging, pain, unknown causes. It sounded to John like they hadn't really bothered to find the root cause; Dean being a man and having those parts seemed to be reason enough for them to declare it "medical complications caused by the hormone treatment" and clean their hands of it. John wasn't so sure, but Dean was alive, and he didn't look too upset to be missing what the surgeon had taken out of him. He wouldn’t have to stop taking testosterone, anyway; that was what Dean cared about.Dean grinned sloppily at John once the doctors had left the two of them alone. “Now I can tell Sam that chick-flick moments will make him grow ovaries without sounding like a hypocrite.”But Dean tried to call Sam a few times during his week-long stay at the hospital. John kept track, expression carefully masked, wary, every time Dean left a message that always started “Hey, Sammy,” with a smile that grew steadily more forced every time.John gave Dean the Impala officially when he was twenty-four, although it had been his in every other sense of the word for years. Dean had always adored the car, cared for it, washed and waxed it when he had the change to spare. John bought a used truck from Singer’s salvage yard, and told Dean that it would be better to split off, cover more hunts that way, keep in touch. They’d meet up every few weeks for recaps, he told him. Do research together. Plan out the next hunts. Then repeat.He watched Dean’s figure getting smaller in the rear-view mirror, but he was already too far away to make out the expression in his eyes. John figured it was probably betrayal. He swallowed his guilt and told himself it was for the best. Dean was a grown man.The last hunt they took as a team, Dean recommended, and Dean cracked. They salted and burned the bones, then went out drinking. Dean hooked up with some petite blonde in the bar’s bathroom, and John drank until he felt comfortably numb. Then they retreated to their hotel room.John woke up early the next morning. He packed his journal and clothes, a few of his books into his duffel. Packed the rest of his weapons into another and left it on his single bed. He looked over at Dean, who was sleeping on the bed closest to the door, one hand shoved under his pillow, holding onto his silver knife. His face was slack and peaceful. There was heavy stubble on his cheeks; he hadn’t shaved in half a week. His hair was disheveled and a little longer than usual. John figured he’d probably be trimming it soon.He took off his heavy leather jacket and folded it, leaving it on top of the duffel of weapons, and left. The growl of his truck’s engine underneath him wasn’t anything close to the Impala’s rumble, and he looked back once at the sleek black muscle car parked in front of Dean’s room before disappearing into the dusk of the freeway.He hunted by himself. He hunted the demon. He cried sometimes, at night, alone. Sam had demon blood in him and he didn’t know what to do. So he just did what he always did; he drank and he wallowed in regret and he saved peoples’ lives.He opened his eyes and he was in Lawrence, Kansas. For the first time in years.John was sitting on a bench in the middle of the town’s park. It wasn’t an impressive one, a few scattered trees, dry grass yellowed in some patches, a few basketball hoops and a tennis court. There was a playground for the kids. He stared at it, remembering Dean clambering over the rusted bars when he was young as three. Swinging from the monkey-bars without caring about his skirt, and jumping off some of the lower platforms in a shower of mulch with a big smile on his face, looking to John and Mary for praise. He used to play The Ground is Lava on that playground with his playgroup.John wondered when he’d stopped separating Dean from Deanna in his head, when all of his memories of his daughter had just become Dean, just his son, whom John used to call Princess when he was little.“John!” he heard faintly from his left, but wasn’t roused from his memories until the voice called again, “John Winchester!”He lifted his head and turned to see a man and a woman, holding hands, walking towards him. The man’s hand was raised in greeting. He was well-built, with the kind of chubbiness that came from being well-fed and not from lack of exercise. There was a slight paunch to his stomach, but John could see muscles in his upper arms that meant the man worked out. The woman he was walking next to had more weight to her, not an unattractive kind of plumpness, but a noticeable one all the same. She had short brown hair and eyes with wrinkles at the corners.“Mike,” John greeted in recognition. “Kate. Wow, it’s been a while, huh?”“Years! About fifteen now, I think it has to be!” Mike agreed as they drew within six feet of him, the couple finally coming to a stop. Mike removed his hand from his wife’s grasp and held it out to John, who stood heavily to shake it. Kate then drew him into a quick hug. He felt her ample bosom press against his chest and felt an unwanted heat in his belly. It had simply been too long since he’d last been touched by a woman.“What brings you back in town? You’re not moving back here, are you?” Kate asked, and John shook his head.“I’m just passing through. Was on my way to a job further up north and thought I’d check out the old stomping grounds.”“Well, you came at a great time. We had a storm front blow through here, rain for days. There were lightning storms up further northeast, I think. But now, the sun’s shining!”John returned Mike’s friendly smile. A silence fell between the three of them, filled with the awkwardness of old memories with a bit of tension seeping in to fill the cracks. It was the tension that came from coming face-to-face with people you used to be friends with, but enough time had passed between last talking that even rummaging for small talk can be difficult and you’ve kind of forgotten what exactly made you friends with them in the first place.The last time John had seen Mike or Kate, it had been when Mike confessed to calling CPS.“So,” Mike finally said, huffing out a slightly forced laugh of congeniality, “What about your kids? Deanna has to be, what, twenty-five now?”“Twenty-six,” John corrected. There was a discomfort in his stomach; he hadn’t talked to Dean in several months. But at the same time, a strange feeling of smugness swelled in his chest at the thought that these people had no idea what they were talking about. They had no idea who Dean had become, had no idea how to picture him in their head. Whatever they were imagining, they were wrong, and for the first time, John found that idea funny.“And that would make Sam twenty-two? What are those two up to?” Kate asked.John felt his smile flicker with humor. “Well, Sam’s off at college. Stanford.”Mike whistled. “Who would’ve known that little bugger would end up having brains.”“What about Deanna?” inquired Kate. “She’s at the right age to be settling down, right?” She smiled and laughed to herself. “You know, I always thought her and Daniel would have made a good couple, if you three had stuck around. She was always following him around during playgroups. Mary and I used to think she had kind of a crush on him.”He couldn’t help himself. John tilted his head back in a full-bellied laugh.“Deanna actually goes by Dean, now,” he informed Kate, who looked mildly put-out by John’s reaction, “And sorry to disappoint, but Daniel really isn’t Dean’s type.”“Ah, well, he’s grown up a lot since you left,” Kate pointed out obviously. She stuck her hand into her purse and rummaged for a second before pulling out a camera-phone and thumbing at the buttons for a moment. John leaned towards her slightly when she held out the phone to him, a small, grainy picture gracing the tiny screen. He peered at it closely.A brown-haired boy with brown eyes and a wide smile, wearing a yellow polo shirt and clean-pressed shorts, one hand tucked into his pocket and the other arm draped across the shoulders of a woman whose entire left side, including her face, was cut out of the photo. The kid looked like just the kind of douchebag yuppie that Dean enjoyed mocking when he could spare the energy.John shook his head and chuckled. “No offense, Kate, but Daniel really isn’t Dean’s type.”Kate pouted slightly as she took back her phone, and Mike tried to remedy the situation by wrapping his arm around her waist and fumbling for a new topic of conversation.“So, Dean. That’s an interesting nickname for a young lady, huh?”Nodding amicably, John agreed. “Yeah, that sure would be an interesting nickname for a young lady. Suits Dean pretty well, though. Here…” His fist shoved into his pocket as he rummaged for his wallet. Tugging out the battered leather trifold, he opened it and tugged out a slightly worn photograph from the pocket. “Dean’s changed a lot since we left, too.”Kate held out her hand for the photograph, her expression expectant. Mike craned his neck a bit to look at it over her shoulder.John watched Kate’s eyebrows furrow as she finally took in the contents of the photo. Her eyes darted back up to John and her left pointer finger tapped the picture uncertainly.“This is Samuel, right? And…”“That’s Dean,” John nodded. He winked. “Maybe not quite Daniel’s type, either, huh?”Mike and Kate stared at the picture in silence for long enough that the high John had been feeling was shriveling slightly. The shock and confusion in their expressions wasn’t as satisfying as his long-kindled resentment had thought it would be.“I don’t understand,” Kate finally said quietly. “This is Deanna? She has facial hair.”John nodded and leaned his weight on one foot, feeling suddenly uncomfortable with having used Dean’s picture like that, for shock value. For using Dean like that. “Dean’s a boy. A man.”His eyes honed in on Kate’s, which were filling with tears as she raised a trembling hand to her lips. “What have you done to her?” she whispered. “What have you done to Mary’s baby girl?”A cold stone settled low in John’s gut. So that was how it was. If Mary had lived, if they had taken Dean to a psychiatrist here in Lawrence and let Dean grow up here, these were friends they would have lost. Mary’s closest friends.Good fucking riddance.He reached out and took the picture back from between Kate’s lax fingers. Mike and Kate were both staring at him with something akin to horror blooming on their faces. John steeled his own expression and straightened his shoulders.“You know what? I don’t give a fuck what you think, because if people like you had their way, my boy would be dead right now. So take your judgement somewhere else.”He turned on his heels and walked away, back towards his truck where it sat in the far corner of the parking lot. Kate and Mike didn’t follow him.John glanced down at his hand, where his fingers were tight on the photograph of Dean and Sam. Both of them were leaning back against the hood of the Impala; Dean with a beer in his hand and Sammy with an awkward smile on his face, still gangly at just turning eighteen. He thought about Dean’s smile and Sam’s anger and studiously didn’t think about Mike or Kate that night as he hustled pool in a bar two cities over, not even when he drank himself into a stupor and fell into bed that night fully clothed.He kept track of his boys, called hunting contacts and asked around to see how they were doing. He knew they’d be fine without him, he knew it, but he worried anyway.When Sam called to tell him that Dean was sick, that the doctors said there was nothing they could do, John’s heart skipped fast, tripping over itself with fear. But then Sam said that he didn’t care, that he’d find a way to save his brother. And John heard the conviction in his voice, and even as his pledge, Dean will live past thirty, echoed in his head, he put his faith in his youngest and concentrated on finding the evil son of a bitch that had murdered his wife. He was going to kill the demon and he was going to save Sam.Dean lived. John breathed out the breath that it’d felt like he’d held since Sam’s phone-call.The last few months of the hunt, of catching up on the demon and reuniting with his boys, felt like nothing. Felt like moments. He might have tried to hold on to them longer, valued them more, if he knew they were going to be his last.When the demon entered him, he felt nothing at first. Then he felt cold. And he felt hot. All at once, he was burning with hellfire and freezing with darkness, like half of his body was burning to charcoal and the other half was bathed in the coldest of shadow. There were black clouds in his head and he couldn’t control his own limbs.He was conscious for his rescue. He wanted to warn his children, but he couldn’t speak.When Dean raised the Colt on him, he felt content. He was proud. He thought Dean would pull the trigger. Dean didn’t.John could feel what the demon was doing to Dean, could feel Dean’s tendons pop and tear under invisible fingers, and in his mind’s eye could see that night twelve years ago, Dean’s ribcage bared to the cold air by snapping jaws. The demon’s shadows thrust tiny fingers between Dean’s ribs, prodding at his lungs, at his heart.When Sam shot John, he was happy.When Sam failed to take the final shot, the killing shot, he felt hope flood out of him like the demon’s smoke through his mouth.He woke up in the hospital and Dean was in a coma and Dean was lying weak on a hospital bed and Dean was dying. Every memory he had of his son, every little thing Dean had ever done, every smile and pat of reassurance and determined grit of his teeth, it all flickered in John’s brain and there was nothing else he would have, nothing else he could have done since the day he swore that Dean would live past thirty. Not since the day that he’d first held his son in his arms. Not since the day he’d looked into baby Deanna’s eyes and swore that he’d keep his child safe, happy.So he made the deal. The demon smiled at him with its vile, evil, yellow eyes, and John felt something deep beneath his feet calling to him as the demon disappeared.He was proud of his sons. He was proud of Sam’s hotheaded refusal to listen to him, and he was proud of Dean, standing tall as he waded through the shit that was a hunter’s life.He said goodbye to Sam the only way he knew how.Then he said goodbye to Dean. He looked into his son’s eyes, saw years and years of struggle and pain reflected in them. He had many to go, John knew that. And after this, John wouldn’t be able to look after him, wouldn’t be able to be the one making sure that Dean stayed alive. He hoped Sam would.He didn’t have to worry about Sam, because he knew Dean would handle that.“Don’t be scared, Dean,” he told him. Don’t be scared. Then he leaned forward and whispered in his son’s ear. Sam’s in trouble, son. And if you can’t save him, you’re gonna have to kill him. He set the Colt on the table and wished that Mary was alive to see the fine young men that her Samuel and Deanna had grown to be.When the world disappeared beneath him and he was swallowed by red, he really was content.Sometimes, over the years of hunting and sparring, of hustling pool and running credit card scams, of making fake IDs and impersonating officials, of watching his boys get hurt and bleed, of watching Dean hate his reflection and hide his body, of driving hours to find somewhere that would fill Dean’s prescription… Sometimes, he had wondered to himself what it would have been like to have a daughter.But he had never wished for it.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Sam never had a sister. He always just had Dean.Dean was Sam’s big brother. That’s what Dad said. “You listen to your brother, Sam. If he tells you to do something, you do it.” Sam listened to his dad, because Dean told him that Dad knew everything and he was always right, and Dean was really smart and Sam trusted him. It was like a circle. Trust Dad. Listen to your brother.Sam didn’t know what his mom looked like until he was three, and he saw Dean looking at that picture that he liked to take out of Dad’s bag whenever Dad was on a business trip.“Wha’s that?” he asked, scrambling up onto the bed beside his big brother. Dean moved over a bit for him, and turned to show him the photograph in his hand. His expression was kind of closed off. Sam didn’t always know why Dean was upset, but he could always tell when he was.“It’s a picture of Mom,” Dean told him.Sam examined the picture.“Who’s that?” he asked, pointing to the little girl with the pigtails and the blue dress that the smiling woman was holding. Dean swallowed and shrugged a bit.“That’s me,” he said.Sam laughed, not understanding. “You’re not a girl!”“Well,” Dean said, licking his lips, “When I was little, people used to think I was.”“Why?”Dean took the picture back and ran over to tuck it back into Dad’s bag.“I dunno, Sammy. Want to watch some TV?”As a three-year-old, Sam was easily distractible, and with the photograph out of sight and the prospect of a cartoon, the topic was put aside. But not forgotten.So Sam knew that when Dean was little, people used to mistake him for a girl and make him wear dresses, even Mom and Dad. Sam guessed he could see how that could happen, because sometimes Sam accidentally thought a boy was a girl if the boy had long hair, so he could understand how someone could make that mistake with Dean, since Dean’s hair had been so long back then.It didn’t occur to him to ask about why his and Dean’s private parts looked different until he was five. When Dad told him the reason, it made him kind of jealous, that Dean was special like that. Dean was big and strong, and he could shoot a gun really really well, and Dad sometimes talked about work with him, and also he had blond hair like Mom. Sam wanted to be just like him, but Dad wouldn’t let him practice with the guns and Dean said he wasn’t old enough to talk about work. Sam sometimes looked out the window at night and wished on the first star he could see that he’d get a vagina, too, so he could be special like Dean, because he figured that’s what made Dad like him more than he liked Sam. Every morning he checked in his underwear, but he still just had a penis.The way Dad talked about it, Sam grew up thinking for a while that whatever private parts you had didn’t have anything to do with whether or not you were a boy or a girl. It was kind of like how Dean had green eyes and Sam’s were hazel, but that had nothing to do with the fact that they were boys. It took several years for him to learn that most people didn’t think that way, because the only people he was ever really around for a long time were Dean and Dad, and then there was Pastor Jim and Uncle Bobby and sometimes Abe and Caleb, and they didn’t ever talk about private parts with him, really.Then, on his first day of school he had asked all his new friends whether they had a vagina or a penis, and Franklin had told the teacher and she put him in time out, although he didn’t understand what for and she wouldn’t even explain it to him. How was he supposed to be good if she wouldn’t tell him what he’d done that was bad? Sam had to sit alone at a table with nothing to do during playtime, pouting, and then after class Miss Chapman pulled his dad aside when he came to pick Sam up. Dad got angry at Sam, and again, Sam didn’t have any idea why. Dad was quiet during the whole drive home, and Sam looked at Dad’s angry red face from the backseat while Dean sat in the passenger side and stared out the window.“You can’t talk about that kind of stuff in public, Sam,” Dad told him when they got back to the apartment. He was standing on the front step; Dean had already passed him, but Sam was lagging, dragging his feet in the gravel. Dad wasn’t yelling, but his voice almost sounded like it was, because he was that angry. “That’s not the kind of thing you just ask people.”“I just wanted to see if any of them were special like Dean!” Sam whined. Dad whirled around and Sam stumbled a step back, frightened of the anger and intensity in his eyes.“You don’t ever tell anyone about Dean, you hear me?” Dad ordered. Dean was watching the exchange with wide eyes from the open apartment door.“W-why?” Sam choked, hiccoughing slightly.“Because it’s dangerous, Sam, and no one outside this family can ever know. You understand, Sammy? Do you want to get your brother killed?” He shook Sam’s shoulders slightly, scaring Sam into silence. Killed? Dean would be killed if Sam told anyone that he was special? “Answer me, boy!” Sam nodded, even though he was frightened and confused and no one was explaining anything to him, and he kind of felt like one of those bobble-heads that Caleb kept on the dashboard of his truck. Dad squeezed his shoulders tightly and then let go, straightening and storming past Dean into the apartment and over to the fridge to grab a bottle of his grown-up apple juice. He disappeared into the bedroom, leaving Sam alone with Dean in the living room.Sam started crying, and raised his hands to his eyes to scrub away the tears, feeling like a baby. He sniffed, and then felt a smaller pair of hands than Dad’s come to rest on his shoulders, steering him gently into the apartment and to the dusty couch.“Come on, Sammy,” Dean said, and sat down next to him on the flattened cushions.“I don’t understand,” Sam sobbed. “Why is it a secret? He never told me that before. He can’t get mad at me when he never told me!”Dean was silent for a little while, breathing calmly and stroking a hand up and down Sam’s back in a gesture of comfort.“He’s trying his best, Sammy,” he finally said, sounding very grown-up and wearing one of Dad or Pastor Jim’s serious faces.“I still don’t get it. Why can’t we…”“Because!” said Dean shortly, before sighing. “The truth is, Sammy, I’m not… I’m not special. I’m just… different.”“Pastor Jim says different is special,” Sam pointed out, and his brother smiled a little bit.“Yeah, but that’s for other people. See, the thing is, Sammy, most boys, they don’t look like me.”“Dad said most boys have penises,” Sam acknowledged, and Dean nodded a little.“All boys have penises,” Dean corrected. Sam looked confused and opened his mouth to protest, because Dean was a boy and he didn’t, but Dean cut him off. “See, I have… Well, it’s sort of like a birth defect. And I was born with girl parts, even though I’m not a girl. That’s why people used to think I was a girl when I was little. Because I have a girl body.”“So it’s not normal?” Sam asked, and Dean shook his head.“And Dad tries really hard to make me feel normal, because he feels bad about not being able to tell that I was a boy before. So he doesn’t like talking about it very much.”Sam thought that that sounded wrong, because Pastor Jim always said that talking about hard things made them better. But Sam didn’t say anything about it, because Dean’s eyes looked very wide then, like an owl’s, and Sam thought they looked wise like an owl too, but also kind of sad.“Why does it have to be a secret?” Sam whispered.“Because there are people who think that even though I’m a boy,” Dean breathed, “That since I have girl parts, I should live like a girl. And if they found out, they could call CPS and have me taken away.”Dad and Dean talked about CPS a lot. Sam didn’t know what it was, but he knew that it was bad and dangerous and that it would catch them if they made a mistake. Kind of like Santa Claus, except for evil and real.“And make you wear dresses and play with dolls?”Dean laughed, but he didn’t sound like he’d thought it was funny. “Yeah.”“Oh.” Sam shut his mouth and thought about it for a while. “I don’t want you to go.”“I don’t want to go either,” Dean said, wrapping his arms around Sam and squeezing him tight. “So you gotta keep the secret, ‘kay?”Sam nodded, and that was that.Dean taught Sam how to play catch when Sam was seven. Sam found a baseball in the parking lot of their motel, and was throwing it to himself on the bed when Dean suggested they go out back and he could teach Sam how to catch like a man.It was harder than Sam thought it would be. He thought that was probably because they didn’t have gloves like they had on TV. The first time Dean hurled the ball, Sam didn’t even try to catch it, just put his arms in front of his face and let the ball soar past him and collide with the brick wall.“Come on, Sammy! You can do better than that!” Dean called, and Sam scrambled to pick up the ball and throw it back. Dean caught it over his head with one hand, wincing at the sting but grinning. Sam figured if Dean could do it one-handed, he could do it with two.It became a competition, trying to see who could outdo the other’s previous catch. By the end of it, they both had scraped up knees and elbows and their palms were stinging. Dean had a bruise on his cheek from a ball he’d missed, and Sam’s chin was skinned because he hadn’t caught himself when he fell down for fear of letting go of the ball. They were both smiling widely when they walked back into the motel and fell backwards onto their bed with a chorus of laughter, and Dean tossed the ball back to Sam. Sam missed the catch and it landed on his nose. He cried because he couldn’t help it, and Dean helped get him toilet paper to clean up the blood.Sam was still seven when Dad gave Dean the puberty book. It wasn’t a book, really, just a packet of papers that had been printed out from some old printer that smudged the words and left them faded in some sections. He kept asking Dean to let him read it, but Dean wouldn’t let him, even though Sam thought he kind of deserved to know what puberty was like since he’d be doing it too, someday. But Dad didn’t make Dean tell him and Dean kept the papers out of Sam’s reach, so he had to wait until night-time when they were both asleep to sneak away and read them with a flashlight in the bathroom.But apparently the puberty book only talked about vagina-puberty. Ever since Dean told Sam about how he had a birth defect, he’d imagined it like Dean had girl outsides, but boy insides. But from what Sam could interpret from the contents of the packet, Dean actually had girl insides too. His nipples were puffy because he was gonna grow boobs like Sam’s teachers, and one day, he was gonna get a menstrual cycle, which meant he was going to bleed right out of his vagina. Sam wondered foolishly if you had to use Band-aids for that until he reached a part where it talked about tampons and sanitary napkins. He’d seen those at Walmart before.Sam went to bed that night kind of glad that he didn’t have girl parts, because bleeding all the time didn’t sound like fun. He didn’t even like it when he got a bloody nose.Sam was eight when he found Dad’s journal and read it and suddenly the salt they laid on the windowsills and at the doors and the runes that Dean sketched in the margins of his notes during school and the gun training and sparring all made sense.He confronted Dean, and Dean told him everything, and instead of feeling relief or terror or anything like that, he just felt like he finally understood. Sam knew he should be scared. There were real monsters out there, and they lived in the dark and came out at night to feast on the flesh of little boys. His mother didn’t die in a car crash, she was killed by a demon, and Dad wasn’t a traveling salesman, he was a monster hunter. The salt that Dean taught him how to lay before he could even remember wasn’t a game, and his brother had been protecting him from more than just burglars and creeps and CPS all his life.Dean was the one who told Dad about Sam finding out. Dad yelled at Dean for a long time, and Sam was glad that Dad wasn’t mad at him but felt guilty because he knew that it wasn’t really Dean’s fault. By the time Dad went and got Sam from the bathroom where he’d sent him, his face was ruddy with anger and his jaw was clenched.“Out,” Dad said, gesturing, and Sam scurried over to sit next to Dean, who was on the bed, looking tense and shaky. Dad followed him and stood in front of them both, hands crossed in front of his chest, face stony. Sam and Dean said nothing, waiting.Dad finally sighed. “I didn’t want you to find out about this so young, Sam,” he said, sounding jaded and fatigued. Dean lowered his head, his chin almost touching his chest. “But now that you know, I guess the only thing I can do is teach you to protect yourself.”Dean’s head shot up. “He’s too young,” he said, but Dad shut him up with a cold look.“There’s no helping that now, is there, Dean?”They stared at each other for a long time, and Sam looked on in silence, biting his lip, and thinking silently how unfair it was that Dad was so mad at Dean when Sam was the one who had snuck Dad’s journal out of his bag before he left and read it in secret.“It’s not Dean’s fault,” Sam whispered, but Dad didn’t break eye contact.“Dean’s the big brother here, and he’s the man of the house when I’m gone. If he’s going to take care of you, I expect him to act like a man, and that means that whatever you do under his supervision is his responsibility.” His voice grew suddenly steely. “And I don’t think I need to remind him of what can happen if he shirks his responsibility.”Dean looked so sick with shame that he might throw up and cry all at once, and Sam tried to put a hand on his, but he shrugged it off.Sam nodded like he understood what Dad had said, but he didn’t, and he still didn’t see how it was Dean’s fault, and besides, Dean wasn’t even a teenager yet, he was still twelve, so he couldn’t possibly be a man. Dad was being stupid, but it wasn’t like Sam could tell him that to his face. He’d wait until it was just Dean and him alone in their room, and Sam would apologize and complain that Dad was a stupid-head and dumb, and Dean would probably tell Sam not to talk about Dad like that but might smile a little bit anyway.“I already spar with you guys anyway,” Sam spoke up. “And I’m good at memorizing things. I could probably memorize all those runes and everything really fast. So it’s not a big deal.”“It is a big deal, Sammy!” Dean said, sounding distressed. “It’s not a game! There are monsters out there, and I was supposed to protect you..!”He broke off guiltily and clenched his hands into fists on the blankets.“Yeah, but since I didn’t know about it, I couldn’t protect you,” Sam pointed out. “Now I know and you and Dad can teach me how to kill monsters and ghosts and stuff and I can protect you, too. I’m not gonna ever let anything hurt you, okay, Dean?”He jutted out his chin defiantly, and both Dean and Dad shared the same expression, the one that said Sammy, you’re the baby of the family. You don’t protect us, we protect you. Sam didn’t care if he was the little brother, Dean wasn’t a man yet and since he wasn’t grown up, it meant that even though Dean took care of Sam, Dean still needed someone to take care of him, too, sometimes. So now that Sam knew the truth, he could do that. He could take care of Dean. He could be grown up sometimes and take care of his big brother. He could learn about monsters and knives and guns and runes and salt and everything and he would protect Dean and make sure that no monster could ever touch him.One day, Sam was waiting in front of the school for Dean to come and walk him home. There were three sixth graders who were talking really loud, and two of them were calling the third one a sissy because he was too chicken to ask the girl in his class out on a date.“Dude, you can’t pussy out now, you’ll grow a freaking vagina,” one of them laughed, and the guy they were making fun of scowled and kicked at the ground. Sam just frowned in irritation. Sometimes people could be really dumb.“Why?” Sam asked the boys defiantly, trying to be rebellious and intellectual. He jutted his chin out and settled a cool glare on them. The three boys turned to look at the third grader who seemed to be staring daggers through them and raised their eyebrows.“What?” the one with red hair asked. Sam steeled his gaze.“Why would he grow a vagina?” It felt weird to say the word out loud in public, but Sam powered through it and didn’t let it show on his face.The boys looked between each other, smirking like they knew something that Sam didn’t, even though Sam was the one who knew more than they did.“’Cause he’s a friggin’ wimp, that’s why, and wimps grow vaginas,” said one of the brown-haired ones, the one with a gap between his front teeth. “That’s not true,” said Sam, trying to put all of his disdain for the sixth graders’ ignorance into his tone. “You can’t just ‘grow’ a vagina.”“Yeah you can, if you’re a wimp,” laughed the redhead.“No, you can’t,” Sam said, with a tone of voice that said ‘are you stupid?’ The boys stopped laughing and looked at Sam like he was a silly little boy, which he wasn’t, he knew about monsters and magic and they didn’t even know that your private parts didn’t determine whether or not you were a wuss.“Kid, it’s just a stupid joke,” the gap-toothed one told him, trying to settle him down.“It doesn’t make any sense!” retaliated Sam.“Vaginas make you wimpy,” explained the third boy with a stupid laugh, and Sam hated him, he hated him with all his might. He scowled and felt his face burn with anger and irritation.Clenching his hands into fists, he objected. “They do not!” Why couldn’t they understand that?The boys all laughed at his outburst, which made Sam even madder. “Do too!” the ginger crowed.“They don’t!” Sam snapped.“Methinks he does protest too much,” said one of them with a stupid accent. “Maybe you have a vagina!”Sam could practically feel himself shaking with rage. “I don’t!”“You do so!”“I don’t!” His face was hot and he felt a curl of embarrassment in his stomach. He didn’t.“Haha, he does,” jeered the gap-toothed boy.Caught up in the heat of his anger and his mortification at the situation, Sam didn’t even pause to think before he was retaliating, “I do not, I swear! But my brother’s not a wimp, he’s really brave and strong and he does!”He froze, feeling his eyes widen and the blood rush away from his cheeks at the realization of what he had just said. He wasn’t supposed to tell people. It was a secret. They could take his big brother away.The boys were all laughing like they thought it was a joke, but then they saw his expression and they faltered, one by one.“I, I was joking,” Sam whispered, horrified, hoping that maybe the boys hadn’t really heard what he said. The sixth graders exchanged glances and looked back at Sam.“Your brother?” the redhead asked curiously, a smile dancing at the edge of his lips and a tone of incredulity in his voice.“No,” Sam said, shaking his head and turning away from them. “Never mind, you’re all stupid-head jerk-faces anyway!”He walked away hurriedly, clutching the straps of his backpack with trembling hands. Maybe the boys would forget what he said and nothing would happen and Dad wouldn’t get angry at him and they wouldn’t have to move again.“Sammy!” he heard, and looked up to see Dean smiling and waving at him, hopping down the school’s steps and holding his tattered old messenger bag in one fist. It was really just a backpack, but it only had one strap ‘cause the other one fell off when Dean was doing tricks off a tree.Dean skidded to a stop next to him and grinned. “Ready to go?” Then he looked closer at Sam’s face and frowned. “Are you okay? You look kinda sick. You got a headache?”“I’m fine,” Sam said weakly. “I’m just tired.”Dean peered at him in concern for a second longer before nodded. “Okay, if you’re sure. Come on, we can go by the 7-11 on the way back and get some candy. I have money left over from lunch.”He started walking, smiling, unaware that just a minute ago, Sam had betrayed him. Sam felt sick to his stomach. He didn’t want candy.Glancing behind him as he followed Dean, he saw the three sixth graders staring after them in curiosity. One of them opened his mouth and seemed like he was about to shout something after them, but the other two grabbed him and turned him away. They started whispering to each other, and Sam quickly turned his head back and ran a few paces to catch up with his brother.The next day, when Sam walked down the school steps, Dad was waiting for him outside of the Impala, looking angry.“Get in, Sam,” he ordered, and Sam scrambled quickly into the backseat. Dean was already sitting in front, leaning against the window and staring out it at the front of the school, frowning slightly. Dad got in the driver seat and slammed the door before peeling out of the parking spot and heading back to the motel.The drive was silent, and Sam could feel Dad’s anger. Dean was quiet too, he didn’t even ask if he could turn music on, so Sam figured the thing Dad was mad at was Dean. When they got home, Sam hurried into the motel so he could go into the bedroom and shut the door before there was a fight. He hated it when Dad yelled. It was always scary.He could hear Dean walk quietly through the front door, and then Dad with his heavy boots, and the door made a bang as Dad closed it, hard.“Dammit, Dean!” Dad said. “You can’t just go beating up sixth graders for no reason!”“Dad,” Dean said quietly, and Sam started getting a guilty stomach ache, thinking that maybe it was the same sixth graders who Sam had talked to yesterday.“No, Dean, you listen here. That boy was younger than you are, and smaller, too. He didn’t have half your training.”“I just punched him once,” Dean objected sullenly.“I don’t care! You shouldn’t have punched him at all! You can’t do that, Dean. You go beating up any more kids, people are gonna start asking questions. They might bring CPS in on this. Is that what you want?”“No, sir.”“Good. So what do you do next time some snot-nosed kid wants to pick a fight?”“That’s not what it was like!”“Oh yeah? Then what was it like?”Dean didn’t say anything, just took a breath.“That’s what I thought.”“You don’t understand, Dad, he was…”“I don’t give a damn what he was doing! It doesn’t matter! What matters is that he was younger than you and a few inches smaller, and you know better than that. How much shorter than you was he?”Sam heard Dean’s sneaker-clad shoes scuff at the floor. “I dunno. An inch or two.”“And was he stronger than you?”“No, sir.”“That’s right. Do you think he could have done any damage?”There was a pause. “… I…” Dean sounded hesitant.“Damage, Dean, you think he could have bruised you? Given you a shiner? A bloody nose? With those skinny arms and three-fourths your weight?”“No, sir.” There was shame in Dean’s tone.“Damn right, boy. So what do you do next time that happens?” Dean was obstinately silent. “What do you do, Dean?”Dean answered moodily. “Don’t fight back.”“That’s right.”There was a minute of silence, and Sam sighed, glad that the fight was over and Dad really hadn’t yelled all that much. Then, he heard the noise of Dad walking over a few paces.“You know this is for your own good, right, Dean?” he heard him ask.“Yeah,” Dean answered, but it sounded kind of weak and shaky. He heard Dad ruffle Dean’s hair and stand up.“Alright. How about a burger tonight, Champ?”Later that night, after it got dark out, Sam heard Dean puking in the bathroom. He must have eaten too much hamburger.The next day, Sam waited for almost a whole hour for Dean to come out of the school. By the time Dean emerged from the front double-doors, Sam was sitting at the bottom of the stairs, doing his homework from his math class. Everyone else was gone, and there were only a couple cars in the parking lot.“About time!” Sam said, forcing himself to act annoyed even though he had somewhat enjoyed doing his homework outside. He closed his math book with a satisfying clap. “I’ve been waiting forever!”Dean didn’t say anything in response, just walked quickly away down the sidewalk with his messenger bag almost dragging on the ground beside him.“Hey!” Sam protested, quickly stuffing his book and paper and pencil into his backpack and trying to zip it up as he ran after Dean. “Dean, wait up!” He slipped the straps onto his shoulders as he ran, and finally caught up to his brother, even though he couldn’t really even slow down then because Dean was walking so fast. “What’s your problem?” he asked, looking up at Dean’s face.He faltered when he caught sight of his brother’s eyes. They were wide, frightened things, wild and unfocused, lined with shadow and set in a ghostly pale face. His freckles stood out starkly against skin as white as paper.“Dean?” Sam whispered, almost tripping over his feet as he skittered to a stop, staring up at Dean’s face in trepidation.Dean stopped after a moment and turned to look at him, his eyes finding focus on Sam’s face. He saw something flicker in his big brother’s expression, a ghost of a shadow flitting across his eyes, and then Dean smiled.“What’s up, squirt?”“Are you okay?” Sam asked, and Dean took a little while before nodding quickly.“Yeah, Sammy, I’m fine,” he said, scrubbing his hand over his face and grinning at Sam a little too widely. “Come on, let’s go.”“Why did you take so long?” Sam asked, following, though this time his question wasn’t accusatory.Dean didn’t answer for so long, Sam thought maybe he hadn’t heard the question. Then, “I had to get something from the locker room,” he finally said, and his stride hitched slightly as he hiked his messenger bag up on his shoulder. “Come on, Sam, hurry up! I’m hungry!” He sped his steps up a bit until Sam was jogging again, slightly, to keep up.Dean talked all the rest of the way home, grinning and laughing at stupid jokes, jumping up on the short cinderblock walls that lined parts of the sidewalk and balancing, arms spread out at his sides. Sam fell behind after a little bit, not feeling up to trying to keep up with a Dean who seemed to be moving as though he were trying to put as much distance as he possibly could between himself and something Sam couldn’t fathom. Through the grins and the snorted laughter, the jibes at Sam’s cowardice for not following Dean up onto the ledges he was jumping off of, there was still some tightness in Sam’s chest, a sense of unease in the face of Dean’s mania. The door hit the wall with a bang when Dean threw it open and almost skipped inside, throwing his bag onto the messy bed strewn with candy wrappers from the other afternoon. He seemed to be practically vibrating, and shook out his hands, exchanging his weight from foot to foot and turning back around to face Sam, who was watching him from the doorway. Dean grinned, and Sam could see white all around his irises.“Dude, I’m going stir-crazy! Come on, let’s go out back and I can show you some moves!”“I have homework,” Sam said, even though he had finished almost all of it while he was waiting for Dean to come out. Rolling his eyes, Dean made a flippant gesture with both of his hands.“Come on, nerd, that can wait. Besides, you’re in fourth grade. What could you possibly have to work on besides, like, coloring pages and connect-the-dots?”“Fractions and multiplication,” Sam informed him sullenly, “And an essay. I have to write three pages.” But Dean was already moving towards him and pulling his worn backpack out of his hands, tossing it onto the bed next to his half-open messenger bag.“I can’t hear you, dude! That sound is too loud!” He spoke with his voice raised a bit, as if he were talking over something, though the motel room was silent except for the buzzing of the rusty fridge.“What sound?” asked Sam, irritated, the unease he had felt during the walk home slipping away at Dean’s actions, and the memory of Dean’s frightened eyes all but disappeared.“Can’t you hear it?” Dean furrowed his eyebrows and cocking his head slightly, looking off to the right as if listening intently. “That sound… Yeah, there it is again. It’s the sound of the world telling you to stop being such a geek and have a bit of fun!”“Hey!” Sam objected, but Dean just laughed and ran out the open motel door, shouting behind him for Sam to follow. He hurried after Dean, slipping slightly on the gravel in the parking lot as he rounded the bend around to the back of the motel, where there was a wide empty lot full of scrub and dirt, with a few trees and discarded branches.It wasn’t pretty, but it was good enough for sparring. Dean stopped in the middle of the lot and turned around to face Sam, his face alight with a smile, spreading his feet and bracing himself slightly, raising his hands in a loosely-held defensive pose and bouncing on his heels. He raised his eyebrows and gestured with an open hand for Sam to attack.Sam hesitated for a moment before setting his own feet shoulder-width apart and advancing, hands clenched into tight fists and jaw set.He took a swing, throwing his fist up towards Dean’s chin, which Dean brushed gently away, turning to the side and sending his arm in an arc that ended in a soft thump on Sam’s back that sent him stumbling forward.“Remember, Sam, don’t make a fist until you’re a couple inches away from contact,” Dean said as Sam turned around and tried for another punch, which Dean caught and returned with a solid tap on Sam’s right shoulder that knocked him off-balance. “It takes less energy on your part, and it’ll hurt the guy more. Especially if you let it bounce back. It’s all about momentum.”Sam shook out his arms and unclenched his hands, starting to feel adrenaline rushing through his limbs, a smile rising on his face at Dean’s encouraging nod and wink as his brother once again settled to wait for the next attack, arms up in front of him and fingers relaxed.Skipping forward, he threw a hit open-handed at Dean’s upper arm, folding his hand into a fist last-minute like Dean had said, but it didn’t land: Dean grabbed his wrist and used Sam’s own momentum to pull him forward, right off his feet, until he had fallen in a heap on the dusty ground with a grunt.He pushed himself up, pebbles digging into his palms, and smiled up at Dean, who was grinning, hands on his knees a few feet away. “Like I said, Sammy,” he laughed, “It’s all about momentum.”Sam pushed himself to his feet and started bouncing on his heels like Dean, feeling elated with energy, the sun just starting to set and the sky cast pinkish.“Remember not to fold your thumb inside you fist,” Dean noted, as they both started circling the other. “That’s a good way to break it.”“I know that, Dean!” Sam complained, his grin not falling. “Come on, stop going easy on me! I can kick your ass!”Dean threw his head back in a full-bellied laugh and shook out his shoulders, the sun casting an orange tint on the side of his face in the fading light. “Mouthy for an eight-year-old, aren’t ya? Alright then, come on!”They went at each other in a series of hits and dodges. Dean’s were fluid, easy, though slightly gawky with his growing teenage limbs as he brushed off Sam’s punches and returned them softly, a little slowly, making sure that Sam could see them coming and narrating how to dodge or deflect them. Sam’s moves were clumsier, awkward, though steadily growing more confident. He could feel the blood pumping in his arms, hear it rushing in his ears, and could almost swear that he was getting stronger and faster and better as time wore onward. He was connecting on some of his hits, and dodging more of Dean’s, and the encouraging smile on Dean’s face and the flicker of excitement in Dean’s eyes cheered him on.Finally, as Dean came in for a punch at Sam’s shoulder, Sam ducked under his arm and popped back up, hand already flying through the air at Dean’s torso. It was almost in slow motion, and Sam folded his fingers into a fist only a second away from impact, making sure his thumb was on the outside, and he let his fist thwack solidly on the soft flesh of Dean’s chest and bounce back slightly. Dean let out a whoosh of breath and a choked laugh, withdrawing from the fight, raising his arms up to his breastbone and sucking in a breath, looking down at Sam with an open-mouthed smile.“Ow, man!” he said, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “Right in the chest!”“Sorry!” Sam said cheekily, smirking in delight at his success and breathing heavily, letting his arms relax at his sides. He could feel sweat dripping off his forehead and reached up to brush his bangs away from his eyebrows.“Yeah, I’ll bet,” Dean wheezed, putting one hand down to brace himself on his knee, while the other remained pressed against his breast as he gulped in breaths. They both stood still for several long moment, just breathing deeply and acknowledging their tiredness.Dean straightened before Sam did, and Sam watched him from his slightly doubled-over position. He turned his face to the side, so Sam could see the strong bridge of his nose in profile, his hair almost appearing to glow in the light of the sun setting behind the building behind him. The look in Dean’s eyes was faraway, and for a moment, with the halo of sunlight surrounding him and blinding Sam from a clear view of his face, Sam thought he saw a flicker of something dark in the clench of Dean’s jaw and the arc of his eyebrows. Then, it was gone. Dean turned back to him and smiled.“You good, Sammy?”Sam nodded and straightened fully, and Dean gestured back towards the hotel room with his chin.“You were awesome. Go back in and do your homework, geek. I’m gonna train some more.”Searchingly, Sam examined Dean’s face, but his expression betrayed none of the darkness that Sam had thought he’d seen only a second ago. And he did still have most of an essay to write.“Okay,” he conceded, and turned around to walk around the corner and go back in through the motel room door.It was darker in the room than it had been when they left, since the sun had almost set. It smelled mustier now than it had before, and the buzzing of the fridge seemed louder. It was probably just the echo in his ears, the absence of familiar noises, of Dean’s voice and the crunch of gravel and grass under his feet, the soft sounds of fists connecting, the grunts of exertion and the heavy breathing of exercise. Sam turned on the light and went over to his backpack to get out his folder where his half-written essay was sheathed.As he sat on the bed, feeling the flat mattress bowing underneath him, Sam found the images of Dean’s frightened eyes and his wide-grinning mania from the walk home resurfacing. He had never seen Dean like that before. He had been smiling too widely, laughing too hard. It hadn’t seemed happy. It had seemed… Sam didn’t know. He had no idea what it meant.As Sam got older, he was to realize that that was how Dean acted when he was terrified. Manic, reckless, spontaneous. But that insight had yet to come.He put his folder aside and went to the window that looked out behind the motel and into the empty lot. Using his fingers to pry apart two of the blinds, Sam peered into the quickly diminishing sunlight. The lot was tinged gold with the last dregs of sunlight, and Dean was doing the routine Dad had taught him, his moves practiced and deliberate, defensive and offensive, punching at empty air and raising forearms to block invisible blows.Dean went on like that for several minutes, his steps carrying him in a wide arc, until finally he raised his leg in a roundhouse and slipped in the gravel with his other foot. Sam winced as Dean’s foot shot out from under him and he fell on his right arm with a shout that Sam couldn’t hear, but could imagine from the way Dean’s mouth opened and his eyebrows tensed in a grimace as he hit the dirt.His brother lay there for a moment before slowly pushing himself into a sitting position, one hand coming up to rub what had to be a bruise forming on his injured shoulder, and then down to dab at the blood that was welling up on his scraped elbow. After another moment of nursing his injuries, Dean stood and kicked out at the gravel, sending it flying in a shower of pebbles and dust. Then, Sam saw his eyes connect with something lying on the ground a few feet away, and Dean took a few steps before bending to pick a large, dry branch up from a thicket of tall grass. It was as thick as his upper arm and as long as Sam’s leg, and he held it in both hands like an axe handle or a baseball bat, just staring at it.Suddenly, Dean turned around and ran towards one of the sparse trees and swung the branch at its trunk with a yell. Sam jumped, almost swearing he could feel the vibration of the force of his hit. The branch rebounded, and it was obviously painful if Dean’s gritted teeth and quaking arms were anything to go by. Then he swung the branch again. And again. And again. His shoulders were as tense as rocks, the knots of the muscles in his back visible through the back of his T-shirt, which was slowly soaking through with sweat, clinging to his skin and darkening with both the damp and the twilight. His arms were like coiled springs, his biceps tight and flexing with each strike. With a final heavy blow, the branch splintered, spraying dust and bits of wood in all directions, and Dean fell, his momentum continuing to carry his body through the swing with nothing to stop it. He landed hard on his forearm and one hand, and lay there for a second before struggling to push himself back to his feet. His shoulders were shaking, but it wasn’t until he gave up in his attempt to lift himself with weak arms and simply twisted his torso, falling back against the tree, that Sam realized that it was because Dean was crying.The sheer agony in Dean’s expression, the twist of his eyebrows and the anguish in the clench of his jaw as he sobbed brokenly into the empty air around him, made Sam step back in shock and horror. Dean disappeared from Sam’s sight as the gap he had opened in the blinds snapped closed, but Sam could still see the look in his eyes and the streaks of tears down his face. He had never seen his brother look like that before. He had never seen his brother show that kind of weakness. Dean was always so strong. Sam was the one who cried, he was the baby, the one who acted like a little girl whenever they had to move or Dad wanted to take Dean on another hunt and Sam was scared that his big brother was going to get hurt. Dean never did that. He wasn’t like that.Should he go out and comfort his brother? Should he call Dad? Sam didn’t know. He didn’t know how to make whatever had happened okay again.So he didn’t do anything. He pulled out his essay and finished writing it. He poured himself cereal for dinner and ate it at the table while watching TV. He brushed his teeth and went to the bathroom and crawled into bed and lay awake for a long time before falling asleep.He couldn’t remember Dean coming back inside, but he did wake up in the middle of the night because Dean was being sick in the bathroom again.When he woke up the next morning, Dean was making him breakfast and he grinned at him from the motel’s kitchen counter, and Sam smiled back and figured that everything would be okay, because Dean always made sure that Sam was okay and part of that was making sure that Dean stayed okay, too. Dean would take care of himself, and he would tell Sam something was wrong, if he needed to.Sam liked it when they stayed with Uncle Bobby. Bobby didn’t give them chores – at least, not bad ones, like cleaning out the guns or polishing the silver blades or running laps or anything like that. Technically, Sam still had his normal workout routine that Dad gave him, but it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as when it was just Sam and Dean and Dad in some run-down motel and Dad gave him laps for pretty much any mistake he ever made. Dean liked to exercise, he did it as much as he could, but Sam hated it. At the very least, he hated it when Dad made him do it, so he refrained, when possible.Uncle Bobby took them to do fun things, sometimes, too. Once he found some old baseball gloves in his attic and gave them to Dean and Sam, and they could play catch without leaving their palms stinging and red afterwards. He also taught them a bit of tracking. He took them out to hunt a couple times, for venison, but even Dean couldn’t bring himself to fire at the wide-eyed doe standing stalk-still in the trees in front of them, and they ended up eating leftovers that night. Uncle Bobby was the one who taught Sam how to bait a hook, and Sam caught his first fish with Uncle Bobby at his side to catch it in the net.Uncle Bobby started teaching the brothers lore as soon as it was known that Sam had found out about the things that go bump in the night. Of course, it had been at Sam’s insistence, but Uncle Bobby was a good teacher, knew his stuff.And they always ate well at Uncle Bobby’s. He always made sure there was food in his fridge when the boys were over, like heads of lettuce and apples and spaghetti and tomato sauce that came out of a jar instead of a can, even though Sam was almost positive that when they weren’t there, the only things Uncle Bobby housed in his kitchen were canned goods and beer.Usually, especially when Dad was off on really long hunts, the only food Sam ate for ages and ages was cereal and peanut butter and Chef Boyardee. Sometimes, he couldn’t even have milk in his cereal because Dean always forgot to buy more because he didn’t care, he didn’t ever drink milk and he ate his cereal dry anyway. Very rarely, he’d take a few dollar bills out of their safety fund and take Sam to a fast food dive, but that was usually to break up the monotony of ravioli at every meal. At the fast food places, Dean would spring to get Sam a salad with his chicken, and Dean would eat a burger. He liked burgers, which was lucky because the burger was the cheapest option on basically every menu.At Uncle Bobby’s, Sam could eat salad, too, or chicken, or fruit, and they never ever ate peanut butter at lunch.Sam’s favorite thing was when, after a long afternoon run, they’d return to Uncle Bobby’s porch, breathing heavily, sweaty and shirtless, and Uncle Bobby would drop a heavy, ripe watermelon on the wooden floorboards with a thunk and cut it into thick pieces. They’d grab slices in both hands and basically bury their faces in the juicy purple flesh until watermelon juice was dripping down their chins onto their chests. Usually, after they’d finished almost the whole thing, Dean would grab Sam under one arm to start a wrestling match. With uproarious laughter, Dean would ruffle Sam’s shaggy brown hair with the knuckles of one hand, the other arm still holding Sam in a headlock so his cheek was pressed up against Dean’s side, despite all of Sam’s struggle.“Gross, Dean!” Sam would laugh, sweat and sticky juice smearing on his face and hair from Dean’s armpit tickling his ear, and the soft fat of Dean’s breasts pressed up against his cheek. “Come on, man, get your chest out of my face!”And they’d roll around in the grass behind Uncle Bobby’s salvage yard with whoops and jeers until Uncle Bobby called them in for dinner.Which was why Sam always hated it when Dad decided to stay with them at Uncle Bobby’s for a couple of days. Everything about Uncle Bobby’s place that Sam loved so much would have to be put on hold. He’d go back to having to clean the weapons and running laps around the yard if he made a mistake. No playing catch or trying to fish from the old dock set out on the lake a few miles from Singer Salvage. Just sparring and maneuver-training. Sometimes Dad would even make him do some target practice, although more often than not, it was Dean practicing with the guns. Dean was an excellent shot, but apparently hitting every bottle in one go still necessitated an hour of practice a day.They’d been at Uncle Bobby’s for the first three weeks of August, and Dad had been around for the past four days. It hadn’t been going as bad as Sam thought it usually did. He and Dean had had to clean the weapons, sure, but so far they hadn’t been made to run any laps or do extra training. In fact, Dad seemed abnormally silent and pensive, always looking pinched and almost always with a beer clenched in one hand. He was constantly avoiding Uncle Bobby – but that wasn’t new, he never tried to hide the slight antagonism between the two men, even if most of the time they were cordial and sometimes even friendly, hunting buddies – and staring into space towards Dean during his workouts.Sam was sitting at Uncle Bobby’s kitchen table, looking through a book on lore – he’d finished his homework – and Dad was standing up against the counter, nursing a beer and looking out the dusty window to the backyard where Dean was finishing up his exercise routine.When Dean finally came in, he was breathing heavy and wiping his forehead on the hem of his shirt. He nodded a greeting at both Dad and Sam and went immediately over to grab a glass from the cupboard, filling it with lukewarm water from the tap before tossing it back. He let out a sigh of satisfaction and turned around to take his cup and sit at the table across from Sam.“You hungry, Dean?” Dad asked from his position at the counter. Dean shrugged, turning to look at him.“Not really,” he dismissed.“You just ran eight miles. Get something to eat,” was Dad’s response, his tone no-nonsense, and Sam scowled as Dean immediately hopped to follow Dad’s order. It was dumb. Sure, Dad had a point, but Dean didn’t have to jump to it and stand at attention like a goddamn Marine.Dean opened the fridge and bent down, sticking his head in and looking around, sorting through the items contained within, before finally emerging with a pear in one hand and a jar of peanut butter in the other. Dean and Sam really rarely ever got fruit unless they were at Bobby’s, and especially not pears. You couldn’t buy those in bulk, not like with oranges or bananas, so they were too expensive at the grocery store.Dean hadn’t made it two steps to the counter to grab the loaf of bread before Dad stopped him in his tracks again. “None of that girly food, Dean. There’s leftover barbeque in there, have some of that.”There was no movement for a moment as Dean stood there, fingers clenching uncertainly around the piece of fruit in his hands and the glass jar. Then, he turned and opened the refrigerator in one fluid movement, tossing the pear back into its plastic drawer and peanut butter onto a shelf, and exchanging them for the Styrofoam container of ribs. He slid it onto the dinner table and sat heavily in the chair across from Sam’s seat, immediately sprawling, legs spread wide and shoulders slouching as he popped the tab on the container of take-out and pulled out a chunk of ribs to eat cold.Sam went back to reading, rolling his eyes at Dean and still irritated at his father. Dean ate the ribs as messily as possible, smacking his lips and sucking sauce off his fingers with a pop every time he was finished tearing meat from bone. He burped periodically, much to Sam’s chagrin, and was basically just as obnoxious as one could possibly be while eating. When he was done, he closed the container with a final loud belch and wiped his hands off on his T-shirt before patting his full stomach a couple times and grinning toothily at Sam, who was wrinkling his nose at his brother’s behavior. Dean reached down and scratched his groin like someone would scratch their balls, even though he didn’t even put socks in his underwear while he was exercising because that was just plain uncomfortable.“Aww, come on, Sammy,” Dean drawled. “Don’t be such a girl.”That was when the weight of Dad’s earlier statement hit him, and Sam’s eyes instantly flew to his dad, who was looking approvingly at Dean. Sam then looked back to Dean, who he had just realized had been acting pretty much as sloppy and indifferent and masculine as possible; he looked at the way Dean’s shoulders were hunched to disguise the curve of his breasts under his loose shirt, and at the way his legs were splayed to imitate Dad’s or Uncle Bobby’s whenever they relaxed on the couch with a beer after a long hunt.Girly food, Dad had said, and however he’d intended it, whatever his enunciation had been, Sam knew that those had been the only words that had held any importance to Dean. He had taken them to heart. He’d switched out fruit for meat, and he had eaten it in the least girly way possible. In the most manly way possible.Sam was so mad at his dad, he could feel his hands shaking. But Sam wasn’t about to bring attention to it, not in front of Dean. That didn’t stop him from finding offense in every one of Dad’s statements that night, though, and by the time Sam went to bed, he’d talked back at Dad three separate occasions until Dad has finally snapped, yelled, and punished him with the promise that Sam would be coming with him on the next hunt.They packed up and left Uncle Bobby’s the next day, and the resigned disappointment on Dean’s face as the Impala carried them away and Singer Salvage gradually disappeared from view made Sam almost wish that he’d just sucked it up and bit his tongue.But he was only nine and his guilt transitioned smoothly into further ammunition for anger at his father. He was moody and silent for most of the car ride, as was Dad, despite several attempts on Dean’s part to start a conversation or bridge some gap between his dad and younger brother.They stopped off at a diner for dinner that night, and Sam got chicken fingers with apples on the side instead of French fries. Dean got a bacon double burger with American cheese, extra onions, hold the tomato.Sam offered Dean an apple slice during dinner, which Dean refused, choosing to focus on his side of fries instead. They drove through the night but parked near morning so Dad could take a break, and when Sam woke up with his neck sore and drool spilling onto the vinyl seat, he looked out the window to find Dean doing sit-ups in the tall grass on the side of the road, already starting out on his morning workout. Sam wasn’t sure why it made his stomach hurt to watch, but it did.Sam didn't really remember when Dean started coming out of the bathroom in the morning with a bulge in the front of his pants. He didn't ever comment on it, and Dad didn’t really either, except for the very first time it happened when he'd looked up from his morning coffee, raised an eyebrow at his eldest, and said “That’s a bit much, Dean,” before returning to poring through the paper. Dean had retreated back into the bathroom and returned a few minutes later with a bulge of a more reasonable size. It became normal after that; Sam hardly noticed it.It was an exceptionally hot day in late August when the air conditioning in the Impala broke, and Dad decided that they were gonna be wasting no time stopping to fix it. Air conditioning wasn’t necessary, he told them. Stopping whatever’s been picking off forty-five-year-old women in Tucson, Arizona was.Thirty minutes into the tragedy, Sam and Dean were slouched in the back of the car in sweaty T-shirts, having peeled off all other layers. Dean’s normally spiked-up hair was stuck flat to his scalp, and Sam’s bangs were clinging wetly to his forehead. Sam let out a long moan of suffering and lay his forehead against the window, hoping that maybe the glass would help cool him down. He withdrew his head quickly when it was hot to the touch.“Dad,” Sam whined, lengthening the word until it was almost four syllables. “Can we please stop and at least get something to drink?”Dean was using his hand to lift the front of his shirt away from his chest and then back down, back and forth, the breeze of it making him sigh at the slight relief.“Just roll down your window, Sammy,” Dean mumbled, but Sam shook his head and pouted, picking at something sticky on the seat next to him.“No, then the wind does that billowy thing that hurts my ears.”“Then how about you just shut up?”“Hey! Jerk!”“Bitch.”“Dad!”“You boys be quiet,” John snapped, not taking his eyes off the road. There was sweat dripping from the beard he’d been cultivating recently. “We’re going for at least another couple hours. When we stop for dinner I’ll take a look.”“Why can’t you just pull over and do that now?”Dad didn’t justify Sam with an answer, so Sam crossed his arms over his chest and slouched further down in his seat. He hated the way the backs of his thighs were slick on the vinyl, and he hated the feel of sweat dripping down the little crease between his legs and his balls, and he hated the way his bangs kept falling in his eyes, and most of all he hated Dad for not stopping because Sam just knew that everything could be fixed if they just pulled over for like, twenty minutes.Sam sulked for another forty minutes, dwelling on moodiness and frustration and discomfort. He could feel pressure starting to build in his bladder, and they were still miles and miles away from a rest stop.Then, he perked up. Maybe if Sam told Dad he had to pee, Dad would pull over and then figure that since they were stopped anyway, he might as well fix the air conditioning! It was as good an idea as anything, and honestly, at that point Sam would have gladly accepted extra chores if it just meant they could spend the rest of the drive at a pleasant temperature.“Dad, I have to go to the bathroom,” Sam said.“Hold it,” was Dad’s response. Sam scowled.“I can’t,” he said, even though he really could, if he had to. “I’ve had to pee for a while and I’ve held it as long as I can.”“Just hold it, Sam,” snapped Dad, himself feeling grouchy as an effect of the heated confinement of the Impala.“I tried,” Sam said, feeling angry tears prick at the corner of his eyes, because even though he didn’t really have to pee, Dad didn’t know that and he was still being a jerk.“We have to make good time. Whatever’s killing those women is gonna get another one tomorrow night.”“Stopping to pee doesn’t take more than five minutes!”“That’s five minutes we can’t afford to lose.”Sam gaped at the back of Dad’s head. What was Dad’s problem? Five minutes weren’t going to make a difference, and besides, they had hours and hours before they had to do anything, and Dad had already done some research and was pretty sure it was a bogeyman, and Sam and Dean had stayed up four hours the previous night molding iron rounds.“You’re just being mean! I’m gonna wet my pants!”“Hold it, Sam, that’s an order!”“You can’t just order me not to pee! Once you get to a certain point it’s an autonomic bodily function!”Sam knew Dad hated it when he used big words, and he felt a distinct pleasure at the clench in Dad’s jaw he could see through the rearview mirror.“Sam,” Dad started in, probably ready to tear Sam a new one, but Dean interrupted him.“Come on, Dad,” Dean spoke up from his slumped-down position. “I could take a piss, too. We’ve been driving for four hours.”For a second, Sam thought Dad was going to ignore Dean and just keep on driving, but then Dad let out a loud, frustrated sigh and turned the steering wheel, smoothly pulling over into the gravel on the side of the country road. Sam felt a flicker of anger and irritation that Dad had listened to Dean but not him, but it was quickly quelled by his feeling of success as he opened his door and slid out of the parked car.Dad and Dean stepped out, too, and Dad followed Sam down a bit to stand and unzip in front of the short, barbed-wire fence that separated them from a sprawling field of grain. Dean went further, stepped carefully over the fence and walked a bit into the tall, swaying blades of grass so he could pull down his pants and squat.The argument between him and Dad had distracted Sam so much from the goal of the whole thing that Sam didn’t even remember about the air conditioning until the three of them were all back in the car and Dad was already pulling away. Sam groaned loudly and slid down his seat again.“Oh, be quiet, Sammy,” Dean groaned back. His shirt was so slicked through with sweat that Sam could see his nipples through it. Sam looked down at his own chest and found that he could see his nipples as well, his T-shirt clinging to every tiny contour of his torso. He half-heartedly pulled the fabric away from his chest, but the second he let go it just thwacked back down and stuck to him wetly, like a wet fruit roll-up.“It’s too hot,” Sam said quietly, and Dean turned his head so he was looking at Sam through heavy-lidded eyes.“Tell me something I don’t know.”Sam made a long, drawn-out, squeaky, complainy noise in the back of his throat as he slid as far down as the driver’s seat in front of him would allow. Dean sighed and rolled his eyes, pushing himself further up until he was sitting relatively straight, though hunched over.“Hey, Sammy, I ever tell you about the time Dad took out a werewolf with nothing but a three-foot piece of rope and a silver butter knife?”Sam perked up a bit. He always liked listening to stories about Dad and Dean’s hunts, because Sam wasn’t allowed to do any of it yet, except for help clean weapons and mold bullets. Plus, Dean was a pretty good storyteller.Dad’s eyes flicked back to look at them as Dean started an animated rendition of Dad’s heroic tale, and he smiled a bit, his eyes softening. Sam watched Dean’s grin and theatric hand movements, and jumped in surprise and was suitably awed at all the right parts. When the story had finished, Dean transitioned right on into another tale, easily stringing Sam along with suspense and intrigue and weaving in tidbits of information and advice – slash with a knife, don’t stab, because it could get stuck in the creature; always count the rounds as you fire them so you’re never caught without ammo by surprise; if you’re trying to hide from a monster that relies heavily on scent, never curl up in one place, always keep on the move and try to confuse it by retracing and crossing your old steps – so that by the time Dad had pulled up to a gas station a couple hours later, Sam had all but forgotten the heat and his sweat.“Alright, boys,” Dad said after he parked, twisting around to face them. “I’m gonna sit here for a while, take a look and try to see if I can’t fix the A/C. You can go on in and pick out your dinner.” He held out two crumpled five-dollar bills, which Dean took with a nod.Sam was already out of the car and halfway to the gas mart’s doors by the time Dean had one foot on the pavement, and was inside, breathing in the sweet breeze of indoor cooling before Dean had reached the sidewalk. By the time Dean had made it into the shop, Sam was studiously looking over every food item in the aisles, trying to decide what he wanted to eat.“Don’t you wanna get a drink?” Dean asked, coming up next to him. Sam shook his head.“Not until I pick out my snack,” he told his brother, “Or it won’t stay cool for long enough.”Dean nodded in agreement and looked over the rows of snack food with Sam. He grinned and pulled a bag of Funyuns off its hook and held it up next to his face, shaking it a bit so it rattled.“Can’t forget your vegetables, Sammy!” he laughed. Sam rolled his eyes and moved on.“Those aren’t vegetables, Dean,” he said in the most patronizing voice a nine-year-old could possibly muster. Dean just snorted and tucked the bag under his arm.A few minutes into their search, Sam became aware that Dean was growing tense beside him, his shoulders rising towards his ears and hunching forward, his face growing a little stony as he looked over the stacks of candy boxes and Hostess snacks. His eyebrows were furrowing and his jaw was working furiously, his eyes fixed on the colorfully branded labels in front of him.Sam looked around for the source of his brother’s unease and found that at the end of the aisle was a trio of older boys, and Sam couldn’t really tell how old they were but they were older than Dean, older by a bit. At first, he just thought that maybe Dean didn’t like the way they were looking at them, the tone of their laughter as they muttered amongst themselves. Then, he realized that they had been talking, words directed towards Dean, although Sam hadn’t noticed before, so focused had he been on the prospect of returning to the car with snacks and drinks and having air conditioning waiting for him.“Hey sweetheart,” the tallest one of the boys called lowly, dark bangs hanging over one eyebrow and a congenial smile lifting both corners of his mouth. “C’mon, don’t be shy. Let’s see those cute little tits you’re hiding.”Dean ardently avoided looking towards the boys, focusing instead on apparently reading the nutrition information on a packet of salted peanuts.“Oh come on, baby, don’t be like that,” murmured the second one, another brunet, with a wispy moustache sitting on his upper lip.Sam looked at Dean, who was only wearing his sweat-damp white T-shirt. They’d hurried into the gas station so fast, and it had been so hot outside, that Dean hadn’t thought to put his flannel or jacket back on. He was just standing there, frozen, shoulders hunched defensively and facing the wall of the aisle, as though he was afraid to turn away, as though the wall was protecting him in some way, as though if he just stayed there and remained still and silent then no one could see him and the boys would just disappear.“You come in with your shirt all wet through like that, and nothing on underneath, you’re just showing off,” intoned the final boy, a sandy blond with hard blue eyes and a smile that Sam thought looked like a fissure cut in granite. “You can’t just tease us like that, honey, even if you’re a dyke.”Sam did not like the tone of his voice and he did not like the leer in his grin and he did not like the way he was looking at Dean like Dean wasn’t even a person, like he was just another snack on the wall and he wanted to take him down and tear him open and chew him up until there was nothing left.“Don’t talk to my brother like that,” Sam heard himself stay, his voice as low and steely as he could manage. “He’s not teasing anyone. Just leave us alone.”“Sammy,” Dean said, and suddenly his eyes were alert, his expression cutting and intense. “Shut up.” Sam was affronted, he hated it when Dean told him to shut up.“He?” asked the blond.Dean put his hand on Sam’s shoulder and forcibly pushed him back behind him, and Sam’s gaze narrowed on how Dean’s pupils were dilated and how his freckles were standing out on his cheeks. But Dean steeled his expression and clenched his jaw and Sam saw the Dean that came out when he had a gun in his hands and was doing target practice, or when Dad was teaching him how to throw knives.“Dean,” Sam said, but Dean’s eyes looked so concentrated, so determined, that Sam took another couple steps back.Dean turned around to face the boys, his fists clenched around the snacks that Sam and he had picked out.“Fuck off,” Dean said, just as the one with the stubble looked between Dean’s chest and groin and mouthed What the fuck? at his friends. Sam realized that they were confused that Dean had breasts but that he also had a bulge in the front of his track shorts, and he felt a strike of fear, remembering every time Dad had ever told him that No one can know, they could take Dean away.“What the fuck is that?” asked one of the brunets, and the blond chuckled darkly and snorted in disdain.“It’s a fucking tranny, that’s what,” he said. Sam didn’t know what it was, exactly, about the boys’ words that struck him so deeply, but his face felt hot and his stomach turned. The way they talked, it was like they were talking about Dean like he wasn’t a person, like whatever a “tranny” was, it wasn’t human. They said that and it like his brother was something repulsive, like crud on your shoe, or an insect after you’ve smashed it with your hand and wished you hadn’t because now you had bug guts smeared on you. Sam thought if anyone ever talked about him like that, he might cry. Hearing someone talk about his big brother like that, he thought he still might cry.But Dean sucked in a breath and straightened his back, squaring his shoulders, not hiding. He reminded Sam of the time he was at a park that had a lake, and there were geese. Sam had tried to pet the baby ones, but a big one had straightened its neck and spread its wings wide and hissed at him, and he’d run away and it had chased after him, big and puffed up and terrifying. Dean was gearing up like that now, making himself big and intimidating and readying to fight. Sam felt safe at the sight. Dean was going to protect him. Dean wouldn’t let anything happen to him, no matter what things the boys said.“Yeah, maybe. And you know what else I am?” Dean said, his voice solid and unwavering. He lifted his right hand up to his waist and pulled his shirt out of the way a bit, enough to show what was tucked in the waistband of his shorts. Sam’s eyes widened at the sight of the gun handle; he’d never seen Dean carry a weapon outside of training, and he wondered if Dean had been doing that for a while, and when Dad had lent him a pistol. “A really good shot.” He smirked. “So how about you mind your own business and fuck off?”The boy with the dark bangs looked warily at the gun that Dean’s hand was hovering over. The blond curled a lip and scoffed.“Whatever. You’re just lucky your kid brother’s here, you little bitch, or I’d straighten you out right here in the aisle,” he spat, and Dean’s eyebrows twitched and his chin trembled in a way that only Sam could see, but his stance remained solid and his legs unfaltering. The other two boys apparently agreed with whatever it was the blond had meant by what he’d said, and they turned away from them, leaving the aisle.Dean didn’t move, and neither did Sam, until they heard the tinkle that signified the mart’s door opening and closing. Sam let out a long breath, relieved at the ease of tension, happy that he didn’t have to see the look in the boys’ eyes or the malice in their smiles anymore.Sam followed his brother as Dean quickly turned around to pick out some snacks, then walk over to the fridges in the back and grab six water bottles. Sam’s eyes stuck on the lines of soda for only a moment, before trailing after Dean as he headed towards the counter.The man behind the counter stared at the two of them with an undefinable expression as he rang up the prices of what Dean had picked out. Dean’s hands were shaking as he handed out the bills that Dad had given him, and the man wordlessly returned the due change. Dean left, and Sam muttered a “thank you” in his stead.They scurried back to the car, neither of them mentioning how fast they walked, or how it felt like they were running away from something. Sam kept looking around for the boys from before, but if they were still around, he couldn’t see them.Sam opened the back door on Dean’s side and climbed in, crawling along the bench to his spot and slouching down. Dean tossed the plastic bag of snacks and water into the middle of the bench and got in too, slamming the door with probably a bit more force than necessary, which wasn’t like him because he always took care of the Impala. He reached down and picked up his flannel from the Impala’s floor, pulling it immediately over his shoulders. They both let out a breath at the same time, and then jumped when Dad stuck his head in the driver’s side window to check on them.“You boys alright?” he asked, and the two of them nodded. Dad looked them over, and Sam knew he was taking in how pale and shaky the two of them looked. His eyes lingered on Dean, on the long sleeves he was wearing in the sweltering heat, even as sweat began to bead on his forehead again after leaving the cool interior of the gas mart. But he nodded curtly, not commenting. “I’ve almost fixed the A/C. We’ll drive straight on to Tucson in ten.”The boys nodded at him, and Dad retreated back to the car’s interior.Sam turned to Dean, who was looking cautiously out the window and buttoning the front of his flannel.“Dean,” Sam whispered. “What’s a tranny?”Dean’s fingers faltered on the buttons, but he continued after a moment and turned, not to look at Sam, but to open the plastic bag and pull out a package of Zebra Cakes.“I dunno,” he finally said, after he’d opened it and peeled the top layer of icing off the cake. “They just call me that, sometimes.”Sam didn’t know who “they” was, but it meant that Dean had been called names like that more than once. He watched Dean bite the remaining layers of icing away from the cake before prying the layers of cake apart and licking up the cream filling. Sticking his hand in the bag, Sam found himself his own package, unwrapped it, and very pointedly bit into the whole cake at once. Dean snorted and shook his head.“You never did know how to eat these things right,” he said, and Sam scowled.“You’re the one who’s eating it wrong.”“I think you’ll find that any sane person will disagree with you.”“Eating things piece by piece is dumb. They wouldn’t have made it together if it wasn’t supposed to be eaten together.”“Dude, you’re buying into the system. The system is wrong.”“Dean, you take the Oreos apart and eat the icing before the cookies!”“So does everyone else on the planet, geek.”“How does that make any sense? There’s no point in eating the cookie without the icing! That’s like… Like… chocolate-flavored cardboard or something! How is that supposed to taste good?”“It just does, okay? I wouldn’t expect a little kid like you to understand.”“I’m not a little kid! Anyway, that doesn’t have anything to do with this!”“When you’re grown-up, you’ll get it.”“Jerk.”“Bitch.” Dean grinned at him and started taking apart his second Zebra Cake. Sam rolled his eyes and scoffed, still working on his first. He kicked his feet up and propped them on the seat in front of him. They finished their Little Debbie snacks in silence.What the boys from the gas mart had said, the names they’d called Dean, echoed in Sam’s head, bouncing around in his skull, no meanings attached to them except his understanding that they were mean and malicious and crude and that their intent had been to hurt. He also knew that if Dean had been called those names multiple times, then they had to mean something specific. Something specific to Dean himself.They’d called him a dyke and they’d called him a tranny. At his next school, during lunch on his first day, Sam got a pass to go to the library and use the computer.A “dike” was a geological formation of rock, and Sam really didn’t understand how that had anything to do with his brother, but a “dyke” was a slur for a lesbian. Dean wasn’t a lesbian, Dean was a boy, and Sam clicked angrily back to the Google homepage to search “tranny.”“Tranny” was a slur for a transgender man or woman. So Sam looked up what transgender was. As he read, it felt like the library around him was fading away.He sat in front of that computer for what seemed to be both moments and hours, reading through pages and pages about transgender and what it was and what it meant and everything in-between. He read through the information on the website of the American Psychiatric Association, and he read through blog posts and newspaper articles and looked through pictures of women with masculine faces and young men wearing tank-tops that gave them artificially flat chests. He read personal stories about little girls who were born with penises and started wearing dresses and being called “she” before they were six years old, but also about women who pretended to be men almost their whole lives before finally growing out their hair and throwing away their masculine clothes and changing their names.This was what Dean was. Dean was transgender.Sam’s eyes flitted across the computer screen, his chest expanding in wonder and excitement. Dean didn’t have a birth defect, he wasn’t weird or different, he wasn’t cursed, and he wasn’t alone.Then, Sam found an obituary.He read through a page of statistics that made his stomach drop. He read through an online forum of black text that was just line after line of hatred and abuse that made his whole body heat up and his eyes burn. Sam closed the tab before he could read anymore, before he could see one more person’s typed paragraph explaining that Dean, that Sam’s big brother, deserved unspeakable pain. His heart was beating in his chest, tattooing a rhythm of horror and fear. This was worse than anything Dad had ever hinted could happen to Dean if Sam betrayed his secret. This was worse than anything Sam could have possibly imagined.The library was small and the bookshelves were barely four feet high. They were designed so that children could reach every book. Sam stared at the colorful spines for a long moment, breathing deeply, thinking of nothing.Then, calmly, he found the information he had read from the American Psychiatric Association, and the pages of articles on transgender, and he printed them out from the library’s single inkjet printer. Sam waited in front of it, counting the pages, and when they were all done he gathered them and put them in an empty, battered folder, and placed them inside his backpack.That night, he showed Dean the pages he’d printed.“You’re not weird, Dean,” he said earnestly as he watched his older brother doubtfully look at the pages of slightly smeared and faded black print. “You’re transgender. It means your gender doesn’t match the sex you were assigned at birth.”“What’s that supposed to mean?” Dean asked. “Gender is sex. They’re the same thing.”Sam shook his head earnestly. “No! Not all the time. Well, lots of people use them interchangeably. Gender is like, if you’re a boy or a girl. Your biological sex is if you’re male or female. Gender is your brain, and sex is your, your genitalia.”Dean pulled a face a snorted. “That’s such a gross word, dude.”“It’s scientific! Your sexual organs, okay? So, you’re, um, you’re female, like you have female anatomy, but you’re a boy. You’re a transgender boy.”“What about you?” asked Dean. “You’re a frickin’ girl when it comes to cleaning and homework and stuff. Does that mean you’re trans-whatsit?” He sneered, but Sam just frowned in upset.“Dean, that’s not the same thing and you know it!”There was silence between them. Dean’s grin had fallen, and instead he looked withdrawn and uncertain.“So, what?” he finally asked. “You’re saying something got mixed up in the womb and I ended up with the wrong brain?”“The wrong body, Dean. If you had a different brain, you’d be a different person.” Then he backtracked. “And not wrong, anyway, you’re not wrong, you’re just… It’s not like that. Here,” he said, holding out the stack of papers again for Dean to take, pages of information and definitions and terms. “I got you a bunch of information. There’s lots of transgender people, Dean, like you, you’re not alone. And there’s words for things you do, too, I mean, when you put… When you put socks in your underwear, that’s called ‘packing,’ and…”“Packing?” Dean asked. “Like with guns?” He smirked slightly. “Like, I’m double-packing?” He folded each hand into a finger-gun and then made gunshot noises with his mouth, then crudely set one of them in his lap and made like he was shooting a bullet out of his crotch.“Gross, Dean!” Sam protested, and Dean grinned. “Anyway, yeah.” He held out the stack of papers in both hands, and Dean took them. “You should read all of that. I even got you the stuff from the DSM.”“The DS-what?” Dean asked, even though Sam knew he’d heard the last letter, but Sam understood what he meant.“The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.”Like watching a melting sheet of ice slip off of a gutter, Sam saw the slightly cautious animation that had been burgeoning in Dean’s expression fall. “Oh.”Quickly understanding what had caused the change in his brother’s mood, Sam tried to backtrack. “I mean, it’s not like you… You’re not, I mean…”“Whatever,” said Dean detachedly, turning away with the printed pages clutched tightly in both hands. “I’m gonna go take a dump.” He disappeared into the bathroom, the lock clicking behind him.Sam stared at the bathroom door despairingly, feeling deflated and spent. The adrenaline from telling Dean originally was quickly falling away to be replaced by dark worry and the echoes of the things he’d read, the bad things, the things about people wanting to hurt his brother for no other reason than that he didn’t have the private parts they thought he ought to. The things about girls and boys being beaten, and raped, and killed, just because they were different, just because they were like Dean.He lifted the heels of his hands up to rub at his eyes, swallowing back tears and hoping that Dean would understand, that when he finished reading those papers he’d know what Sam meant. At least he’d know he wasn’t cursed. At least he’d know he wasn’t a freak. At least he’d know he wasn’t alone.Taking a deep breath, he dropped his shoulders and straightened. The important thing now was to tell Dad. Dad had known that it was dangerous for people to know about Dean, but he hadn’t known just how dangerous. He hadn’t known that there was a word for what Dean was, and that it was a word that some people hated and mocked. He had to tell Dad that they had to protect Dean.When he heard the rumble of the Impala from outside later, Sam rushed to intercept his dad outside the door.“Hey, Sammy,” Dad greeted with a smile, dimples furrowing the scruff of his beard. Sam smiled back, showing off his own, trying to find the enthusiasm he’d had earlier amidst the melancholy of upsetting his brother and the dark shadow of faceless strangers who would like very much to see Dean hurt.“Dad! I did some research today!” he said, running up to him and staring up at his face. Dad put his hands on his hips and looked down with a tired chuckle.“Is that right? I thought that was my job?”Sam shook his head. “Not on a case. I found out what’s wrong with Dean. I mean, not what’s wrong, nothing’s wrong, but that’s the point! There’s a word for it! It’s called transgender!”He gazed wide-eyed up at his dad, expecting something like the excitement and interest that had been blooming in Dean before Sam had gone and wrecked it. But instead, what he saw was a slightly furrowed brow, a strange flicker in deep brown eyes, and one corner of his mouth pulled up in what could be considered a smile.“Yeah, Sam, it is.”Sam stood there, feeling everything – even the guilt and fear for his brother – dissipate until he was left feeling empty and light. The sounds around him dimmed like there was cotton in his ears. His vision narrowed in on his dad’s face, on his dark stubble and the crinkles at the corners of his eyes, on the perplexed and bemused expression.“What?” Sam asked, hearing his voice like it had come from someone else. Detached.His dad got down on one knee so he could look into Sam’s face at eye-level. He raised one eyebrow. “That’s what they call people like your brother.”People like his brother?Dad had… He had known? All this time?How long? For a little while? For a long while? For Dean’s whole life?It didn’t matter how long. What mattered was that Dean hadn’t know what was wrong, why he was different, hadn’t known if he’d been cursed or anything, hadn’t known why people called him names like tranny, hadn’t even known what the word meant, and Dad had never told him.He felt something warm spreading through his chest, something like understanding, maybe even like relief. He felt like his eyes were open, like the top layer of his eyes had peeled away and he was looking at his father in a brand new light. He’d always hated the workouts, the senseless drills used for punishing stupid mistakes. He’d hated his dad leaving them in motel rooms for days on end, or dropping them off at someone’s house to be babysat like luggage, but he’d understood it. His dad was a traveling salesman. Then a hunter.But he’d still held to his heart what Dean always told him; Dad’s doing his best, Dad’s amazing, Dad’s a hero. He’d listened to Dean’s tales of Dad’s adventures, his heroics. He hadn’t held the same hero-worship for the man as his older brother, but he’d respected and admired him nonetheless. But now?He looked up at his father and saw a tired widow, the empty figure of a man who valued revenge more than a stable home and stable income and held the memory of a dead woman higher than anything else, not his own wellbeing, not the wellbeing of his children. He saw a man who had known exactly what his son was, and instead of telling him, of shining a light in the dark, had uncaringly left him to flounder and wonder and suffer in confusion and silence and solitude.At that moment the way he saw his father shifted to the left. His dad was strong. He was intelligent. He fought monsters and he saved people. But he wasn’t a hero.“We have to protect Dean,” said Sam. “There are people who would want to hurt him.”John reached forward to clasp his hands on Sam’s shoulders and nod seriously, a slight smile ruefully crinkling the corner of one eye.“That’s right, Sam,” he said softly. “People like your brother, they can get into a lot of trouble out there. Just like I’ve always told you, Sam. We keep your brother’s secret. We keep your brother safe.”God. Did he even hear what he was saying? People like your brother? The man couldn’t even say the word aloud.Sam followed his father into the motel room with his jaw clenched, staring up at the back of John’s head with penetrating thoughtfulness. He sat down on his and Dean’s bed silently. The room was empty.“Where’s your brother?” John asked, and Sam nodded towards the bathroom door. Dean was still in there, with all of the information Sam had given him. “He been in there for a while?”“Yeah,” Sam nodded. His father shook his head and chuckled, settling down at the motel room’s table with a beer.It was a long time yet until Dean came back out, the papers held rolled-up in one hand. He walked straight over to tuck them into his duffel. His eyes were shining and his cheeks tinged red.“You didn’t even flush the toilet,” Sam pointed out, and Dean shrugged. Chuckling again, John just shook his head.“You leave your brother alone, Sam. Sometimes you just gotta take some time by yourself, huh, Deano?” He winked conspiratorially at Dean, for what reason, Sam didn’t know. Dean just smirked and lifted his shoulders in a shrug.But he crawled under the covers beside Sam, who was lying back with his history book spread out on the blankets in front of him.“Dean?” Sam whispered, but Dean didn’t even look at him.John might be able to protect them from some things, but he couldn’t protect them from his own shortcomings. Well, Sam would just protect Dean from them instead.What he couldn’t protect Dean from was monsters.He couldn’t protect him from monsters with black eyes like gaping holes in their skulls and yellow, slathering teeth that tore at flesh like tearing off chunks of soft, rotting fruit.He couldn’t even try.Instead of racing forward with a silver blade clutched in two fists, ready to stab into the black dog between its heaving ribs, Sam’s legs remained still, rubbery and leaden. Instead of lifting his pistol and aiming down the sight to fire silver bullets into the beast’s roiling back, Sam’s hands remained slack and numb, hanging limply by his sides.And then, instead of helping his dad push the corpse of the massive black dog off of Dean’s body and putting pressure on Dean’s wounds to hold his brother together, like someone attempting to keep a leaking stuffed-animal from bursting further at the seams, all Sam could do was stare with wide eyes at the blood pooling in the grass, spreading across Dean’s pants, spattered on Dean’s face, painting his father’s arms red, and bubbling further from under Dean’s bared ribs.He couldn’t protect Dean from that. All he could do was watch.But he could call the police. He could call an ambulance. He could make his fingers dial 911.He could pretend that hearing his big brother sound like a girl and scream like a girl and cry like a girl didn’t scare him so much that he misdialed two times before managing to get the right numbers in the right order.He could even pretend that he was aware and alert, yell at his dad, climb into the passenger seat of the Impala and track the lights of the ambulance ahead of them all the way to the hospital, even though he blinked after having spent four hours sitting in a plastic waiting-room chair and realized that he didn’t remember anything that had happened after dialing 911, not even leading the paramedics through the woods to his brother. He’d had his blood drawn in a kind of haze, watched the bags fill up with red and found some kind of comfort that a bit of him would be inside Dean, making him better. But the color also reminded him of Dean’s blood sprayed across the dark forest floor and it frightened him.When the doctor told them about Dean’s injuries, Sam had to four times swallow down vomit that was crawling its way up his throat. Once from remembering the blood, the gristle, the scattered pieces of Dean strewn about in the grass. Once from imagining the pain, feeling it like a phantom in his own chest, hard and heavy and undoubtedly nowhere close to what Dean had suffered.Once when the doctor offered to give Dean breast implants.And once when his father called Dean “her.”He hadn’t noticed the doctor saying it before then, had been too focused on the medical terms and sympathetic pain to recognize the pronouns, hadn’t even fully grasped the meaning behind the offered breast surgery, but when John’s voice cracked on it, on the wrong one, Sam realized what had been going on. He knew in that same instant that if his father was saying it too, it meant that he’d made a decision to follow along. It meant that he wasn’t going to tell the doctor that he’d been mistaken. It meant that while they were at the hospital, Dad wanted Dean to pretend to be a girl.It made him sick to his stomach and angry but hours later when he was lying awake in the hotel room that Dad had got them, much nicer than usual because he’d found the closest one to the hospital, he could barely remember what he’d said to fight John’s bullshit, except that he’d conceded and he’d lost. What he could remember was the fear in his father’s face when he’d admitted that he was afraid that if the doctors learned that Dean was transgender, they’d commit malpractice or turn him out onto the streets or something. Privately, Sam thought it was a stupid fear. Doctors couldn’t do that.Secretly, though, he was scared of it as well.Sam didn’t remember falling asleep that night, but the next morning he woke up from a dream about going to visiting hours only to find that the information on Dean’s patient chart just read “TRANSGENDER,” and that Dean started bleeding terribly out of his nose and mouth and eyes and chest and Sam was shouting and pressing the red call button but all the nurses were ignoring him.His dad was sitting up in the hotel’s chair when Sam started awake, with his elbows on his knees, staring at his hands. Sam wondered if he was remembering what Dean’s blood felt like, and suddenly, he was filled with a surge of anger. It was Dad's fault that Dean was hurt, it was his father’s fault that Dean could have died, might still die. His dad and his stupid obsession with hunting monsters. If they hadn’t been on that hunt, Dean wouldn’t be lying in the hospital right now. If they didn’t hunt, Dean would have never been hurt like that, wouldn’t have all the scars he did have. If they didn’t hunt, they wouldn’t constantly have to move around all the time, and Sam wouldn’t have to suffer through military training, and Dean wouldn’t have to sleep with a knife under his bed or walk around with a gun tucked into his waistband.It was at that moment that he decided that he wasn’t going to live like this, not forever. He didn’t want to follow in Dad’s footsteps, he didn’t want to constantly live in fear and danger. Sam wanted normal. He wanted a normal father and a normal brother and to live in a normal house and go to school and make normal friends.But he couldn’t have that, he could never have that, and the next best thing was to separate himself from all the not-normal in his life one day.It didn’t occur to him, then, what his silent decision meant. He didn’t even mull it over much, not while he had better things to do. Like, entertain a heavily medicated (and therefore much more easily susceptible) Dean with detailed accounts of all of the astounding fictional things that their hotel had – a swimming pool with a real water slide, an eleven-story spiral staircase, gold-plated toilet seats, and an entire room filled with nothing but free candy – and glaring at the nurses whenever they came in to talk to Dean in sweet, crooning, condescending tones. He glared at his father, too, for allowing them to.Except for when he was arguing with Dad, Sam pretended not to notice when the nurses called Dean “young lady,” for the sake of lessening Dean’s embarrassment, but he did refuse to answer them whenever they asked anything about his “big sister.”When John checked Dean out of the hospital early and took them to Uncle Bobby’s, Sam occupied himself with making sure Dean didn’t tear his stitches, and helping him around the house and entertain him as well as he could.It took Dean a long time to get better, because the black dog, it really fucked him up. That’s what Dad had said. Dean was fucked up.But, Sam helped, and brought him water and a leather belt to bite down on when the pain was too much because Dean refused to take his prescription, and cut him up apples and bananas and oranges into a bowl for him to eat, even though Dean complained every single time and said that fruit salad was too girly. Sam knew he secretly liked it, though, so he kept making more.And eventually, Dean did get better, and he could sit up by himself and get out of bed and eventually even play outside with Sam. It was the middle of summer after all, and Sam knew how much Dean had hated being stuck inside when Sam got to run around in Bobby’s back yard.Sam had caught him a cicada one day, a really big, really cool live one, and held it careful in both hands to bring it up to Dean’s room and show him. The insect had buzzed out of Sam’s palms when he parted his fingers and flew right into Dean’s face. Dean had yelled and batted it away with frantic, open palms, before grabbing Sam’s wrist in both hands and twisting hard enough to give him an Indian burn that bruised for two days. Sam had only cried a little.The summer wore on, and the memories of the black dog and Dean’s injuries and the time at the hospital became faded enough that, eventually, the summer was even enjoyable.Dean was laying sprawled out in the grass, his chest rising and falling with every breath, staring up at the sky. His hair had gotten longer by a few inches over the couple months at Uncle Bobby’s, shining more gold at the ends than the dark-blond of his roots. He huffed out a breath directed up at his forehead, blowing aside a few stray strands of bangs.Sam raced across the grass barefoot, watching out for stray bits of glass or twisted scraps of old car, as was common to find in the grass around Singer Salvage – he’d already had to get a tetanus shot two years prior.“Uncle Bobby bought popsicles!” he said when he’d skidded to a stop beside his brother. He had a strawberry one in his left hand and a grape one in his right. The grape one was already dripping onto his wrist. “I got you a purple one.”Dean grinned up at him, squinting because the sun was high in the sky, and reached up a hand, making grabby-motions with his fingers. Sam deposited the popsicle-stick into Dean’s grasp and then plopped down on the grown next to him, sticking his own, red popsicle into his mouth and slurping up the melted outer layer.Right hand resting flat against his chest, Dean licked a long line from a dripped trail of purple juice on his thumb all the way up to the top of the popsicle. Sam looked at Dean’s chest, at the flatness of it. The last time Sam remembered Dean without his boobs, Sam was only like seven years old or something. Whenever they shared a bed – which was when Dad stayed in the room with them, or when they had to get a single room instead of their usual double – Sam often woke up in the early hours of the morning with Dean’s arm wrapped protectively around him and his cheek pressed up against Dean’s chest, even though before falling asleep Dean always made sure Sam knew that he wasn’t allowed to get onto his side of the bed or take more than his fair share of blankets. It felt comforting and warm and soft. Making sure Dean wasn’t about to wake up, he’d snuggle in closer to the warmth of his brother’s embrace and close his eyes again and some part of him would wonder if that was how it felt to be held by a mother, if that was how it would have felt to be held by his mother. It wasn’t something he’d ever tell Dean, because he could imagine the insecurity and dispassion on Dean’s face if he ever did, but it was a curiosity that he held close in the small, insignificant part of his brain that yearned for a woman he had never known.“Do you… Do you miss them?” he asked as the summer wind ruffled his hair. “Or are you happy they’re gone?”Dean’s expression was carefully blank, his smile gone. He slurped at his popsicle, his lips tinting purple.“Dudes ain’t supposed to have tits, Sammy,” said Dean, staring at his popsicle and licking up more juice as it dripped down his arm. Sam hated that word, tits. It always made him think of dirty gas marts and boys with cold eyes and leers.“You were,” Sam said. “You’re a dude and it was in your DNA.”“You know what I mean.”Sam realized that his own popsicle had been steadily dripping onto his leg. He quickly licked it.“You don’t have to be happy about it just because you feel like you’re supposed to,” he told Dean. “You can feel whatever you want.”Dean snorted. “Fuck, Sammy, you don’t get it, and you’re never going to. Acting all deep doesn’t mean you understand anything.” There was a bite to his tone, and it kind of hurt. Sam winced.“I just mean…”“I don’t look like a girl anymore,” interrupted Dean. “So that’s a win in my book.” A pause and a lick. “I’m happy. I mean, I... It was... I wish it hadn’t happened that way.”Sam lowered his popsicle. Dean took a bite out of his.“I don’t think you looked like a girl,” Sam said softly. “You looked like a boy. You looked like, you know, yourself. Just Dean.” To Sam, Dean hadn’t looked like a boy in spite of his breasts; he’d just looked like a boy, breasts and all. Dean hadn’t thought that, though.Dean huffed out a laugh and pushed himself up with an elbow until he was sitting, raising his wrist to rub under his eye and getting purple juice on his cheek. “No chick-flick moments, dude. Let’s finish these and then throw the ball around.”“Dad says you’re not supposed to strain yourself. It’s only been, like, a month and a half or something since you got out of the hospital. You’re not supposed to raise your arms that high.”“Come on, midget, I can toss a baseball without spewing blood and meaty bits all over the place. You’re such a girl.”Sam bit his lower lip and looked down at the grass. A fly crawled up his leg and he watched it rub its front legs together.“Okay,” he finally said, and went back to his popsicle.“You look like you’ve been drinking blood,” Dean laughed, referring to Sam’s red-stained teeth after they were done with their snack and were heading back to Bobby’s back porch for their baseball gloves.“Yeah, well you look like you’re wearing purple lipstick,” retorted Sam.Dean ran his tongue over his lips and grinned. “Let’s just see who wins the game, huh?”“You can’t win at catch, Dean, it’s not a competition.”“That’s what you say, but I’m the one who’s gonna be beating your ass into next week.”“You don’t make any sense.”“Tell that to the ball.”When they started school that year, after the summer break was over and John had taken them away from Bobby’s and down to Nebraska, Sam got to go to school on the legitimate First Day of School for the first time, like, ever. He had a new shirt, too, that he’d picked out at Walmart, so it didn’t have holes or weird stains on it, and he had one and a half dollars in his pocket for lunch, all in quarters except for two dimes and a nickel. They jingled against each other when he walked and made him feel excited.Plus, Sam was going into sixth grade. That meant he was going into middle school, which was almost high school, which was what Dean was in. So Sam was pretty much a teenager, and he was going to be in school with the big kids, and Dean’s high school was all the way on the other side of town and started earlier than Sam’s, so Sam got to walk to and from school by himself. Basically, he was an adult now. Soon, he’d be in high school, and he’d get a girlfriend with a shy smile and kiss her on the lips. This was where everything was going to change!They stayed at that school for a year and a half. It was nice while it lasted.Sam was twelve when, in the middle of his history class, he was called down to the main office. The whole class Ooh-ed, and Jeremy Anderson asked him what he’d done, but Sam just put his notebook back into his backpack, zipped it up, and collected the worksheet that Ms. Simpson was holding out to him before exiting.When he entered the office, it was to find Dean waiting for him, his hands shoved into his jacket pockets, looking a little pale and shaky. Instantly, Sam’s stomach roiled and his throat tightened at the thought that something might be wrong. Had Dad gotten hurt on a hunt?“What’s wrong?” His voice sounded thin, his hands tight on the straps of his backpack. Dean, however, smiled crookedly and raised his eyebrows.“Did you forget your dentist appointment again, Sammy?”Sam didn’t have a dentist appointment, they never went to one, not unless one of them got a bad cavity or chipped a tooth. He wanted to object, but he couldn’t exactly do that in front of the receptionist, and Dean’s eyes were pleading Don’t push, not right now. So he just nodded and shrugged and tried to look suitably sheepish under the receptionist’s suspicious gaze.Dean left the office, using his shoulder to push open the doors rather than withdrawing his hands from his pockets. Sam followed him to where the Impala sat in the parking lot, watching Dean’s boots kick away clods of dirt, watching his hair ruffle slightly in the cool breeze. Dean walked around to the driver’s seat and Sam opened the passenger door and slid inside, staring at Dean’s face after both of their doors had been closed and Dean was pulling out of the parking lot.Dean drove in silence, the only sound between them being Metallica blasting from the Impala’s crackly speakers. Dean’s eyes were trained on the road in front of him, never flickering over to Sam. In the silence, Sam observed his brother. The way his hair looked ruffled and unkempt, as if he’d had his fingers in it, grabbing and twisting. He’d left the house that day in a V-neck black shirt and a worn flannel, his jacket stuffed into his backpack just in case, because the weather was supposed to be mild. Now, the flannel was tied around his waist, the two knotted arms of it hanging between his legs and off the front bench. Sam’s eyes moved up to his hands, which were gripped so tight around the steering wheel that they were almost white. His eyes widened slightly as he saw that Dean’s knuckles were battered and bleeding, and that that was the reason why Dean was wearing his jacket; so he could hide his hands in the pockets. His brother had punched a wall. Maybe even more than once.His own hands twitched and he sucked his bottom lip between his teeth for a moment, looking back to Dean’s face. He hadn’t noticed before, but Dean’s eyes were slightly red-rimmed, and his cheeks were a bit blotchy.“What’s wrong, Dean?” Sam asked in the space between songs, and Dean sort of tensed before relaxing again, his tongue coming out to wet his lips. He spun the wheel suddenly, and Sam put out a hand to brace himself against the bench beside him as they turned into the parking lot of the local Walmart. The car pulled into a space, the furthest possible one from the exit, although the lot was nearly empty. Sam was starting to feel nervous again. “Dean?”Dean turned the key in the ignition and the sound of the Impala’s rumbling engine was silenced. After a moment, he turned slightly towards Sam and attempted a half-hearted grin. His right hand raised to scratch his temple, his knuckles glistening slightly from the blood wetting them.“Uh, I…” He stopped and started again several times before sucking in a quick, steadying breath and shrugging slightly. “I got my, uh, my period today.” His voice was controlled and he gave Sam one of those stupid flickering half-smiles that meant that he wasn’t alright.Sam’s eyes focused on Dean’s, but he felt cold. There was a sinking feeling in his gut.“It’s nothin’, really,” Dean went on, his tongue running again over his lips, and he bit the lower one for a moment. “I mean, it’s not like I don’t know how to wash blood out of clothes. Been doing that for years.” He let out a humorless laugh.Sam’s eyes went back down to the flannel tied around Dean’s waist and swallowed, although his mouth was suddenly dry.“But I, uh, you know…” Dean made a vague gesture with his hands. “I need, um…” He jerked his chin towards the Walmart.Dean was sixteen. It had been almost two whole years since the black dog attack, since Dean’s chest had become flat, and he’d been packing for years before that. He always controlled his voice, too, made it lower to the point where Sam didn’t really even know what Dean’s ‘real’ voice sounded like. Dean wasn’t really girly or anything, and… And Sam sometimes forgot that his brother had a uterus and ovaries and all the parts that related to them. It was all so abstract, all of these organs housed in Dean’s abdomen that Sam didn’t have, organs that Sam had never fully grasped the concept of.Sam looked down at his hands. He hadn’t even thought about Dean one day getting a period for years, had ignored the possibility, maybe even tried to imagine that since Dean was already so old, he would just never get one. Guilt spread in his belly, familiar and aching.“I’m sorry, Sammy,” Dean rasped, “But I just… I can’t go in there, okay? They’ll… I feel like they’ll just know, like they’ll look at me and just… And this town ain’t friendly, Sammy, I can’t…” His voice cracked a few times, going higher, and each time it happened an expression of pain flickered in the curves of his eyebrows.“It’s okay,” Sam soothed, reaching out his hand to lay on Dean’s arm. Dean bit the inside of his cheeks and nodded, looking away. “Don’t worry, Dean. I’ll buy them for you. You wait here.”Dean shifted sideways onto his hip and stuffed his hand into the back pocket of his jeans to pull out his tattered wallet, flipping it open to take out a worn-soft twenty-dollar bill and handing it to Sam. Sam took it and opened the car door before pausing, hesitating, and turning back towards his brother.“Dean,” he said carefully, “Do you… Do you want napkins or t-tampons?”Dean didn’t reply, his hand going up to clench in his hair for a second. Sam waited in silence for him to answer.“Th-the second one,” Dean finally muttered. Sam nodded and climbed out of the car.He looked through the windshield at Dean as he walked around the front of the car. His brother’s hands were back on the steering wheel, his forehead on it too, shoulders drawn up almost to his ears.Sam’s legs felt stiff and robotic as he walked across the parking lot to the Walmart’s automatic doors. The gust of cool air that hit him smelled of cleaning chemicals and candy. Sam didn’t look at the man behind the counter as he walked into the store, although he heard his greeting.The signs indicating the contents of the aisle passed by until Sam reached Feminine Care. He gritted his teeth at the word, at that stupid label, and allowed his feet to turn him, to carry him a few steps in.There were bright and colorful products lining the shelves of the aisle, different brands, different styles and different sizes or something. Sam didn’t have any idea what he was doing. And how many did Dean need? How long did a period even last? A day? A week? And how many tampons would Dean need per day? Would he need just one, or would he need two, or three, or five…He could feel his breaths speeding up as he started to panic, but he thought of Dean back in the car, probably panicking also, definitely feeling horrible. Sam doubted Dean knew anything about that stuff either. And Sam wasn’t the one who had to actually live it. He could be strong for Dean.He gritted his jaw and pulled down a box, reading the back of it. What was an applicator? Did Dean want one? There were plastic ones and cardboard ones. Sam winced at the thought of trying to put plastic or cardboard up inside his body. He decided to get Dean ones without.It seemed practical to get Dean all of the different sizes, just in case, because he didn’t know which size would fit so Dean should probably try out all of them. Sam finally decided on a box that advertised Light, Regular, and Heavy with ten of each one. He took it and walked up to the front of the store to hand it over to the cashier.The man wearing the vest behind the counter raised his eyebrows at Sam’s purchase and smiled. “Your sister sent you on a grocery run, huh?” he asked good-naturedly. Sam tensed his jaw and said nothing, silently taking the change and the receipt and the plastic bag with the box inside and left.He hurried across the parking lot and opened the passenger door with a yank, sliding into the seat quickly. Dean didn’t move much, just raised his head and turned it to look down at the Walmart bag that Sam had set on the bench next to him.“Thanks,” he muttered, and Sam nodded. Dean reached forward and pulled open the bag slightly to see the box inside it. His lips tightened. “Sam, okay if we keep this, uh, between us?”Sam knew what he meant. Don’t tell Dad. “Alright.”Dean nodded, more to himself than to Sam, and pushed the bag away as he turned the keys and the Impala rumbled to life.“So,” Dean said, his voice immediately back to normal, although the casual tone was forced. “I didn’t yank you away from your precious class-time early for no reason. What d’ya say we go catch that new horror flick? We can sneak in.” Sam looked at Dean’s stiff smile and then ahead of him at the empty parking lot and shrugged.“Yeah,” he said. “That would be cool.”Dean bought them popcorn and soda with the change from the twenty, and the horror movie ended up being pretty fun, even if it was dumb. By the end of it, Dean had Sam muffling laughter as a result of the commentary he whispered in Sam’s ear throughout the movie’s duration, and they were both smiling and full when they left the theater. When they clambered back into the car and both of their eyes stuck on the plastic bag in the middle of the bench, neither mentioned it, and although Sam’s stomach was hurting and Dean’s smile looked a little fixed, they joked all the way home, where Dean disappeared into the bathroom with his duffel and the Walgreens bag for an hour and Sam sat on his bed to start on homework.A year later, Sam was thirteen and Dean was being a jerk. He was contrary and irate, petulant and whiny. Sam was fed up with his brother lying on the bed and snapping at every little thing, ordering Sam to stop clicking his pen or to quit having his pencil make that squeaky noise as he struggled to answer his worksheet in complete sentences.“And maybe next time lay off the after-school Taco Bell, because that fucking reeks.”Blushing furiously, Sam gripped his pencil tighter and muttered under his breath as he finished his paragraph with an irritated flourish, “Must be that time of the month.”There was a squeal of bedsprings as Dean sat up, suddenly tense and flushed and a lot more fucking pissed than he had been before.“The fuck did you just say, bitch?” he growled, his eyes flashing. “I’m not a fucking girl!”Sam rolled his eyes dramatically and turned towards his big brother, raising one eyebrow scathingly, and retorted with as much sarcasm as he could muster, “No, you just bleed out of your vagina on a monthly basis.”Even if he was freaking angry as hell about it and still thought mutinously that Dean could stand to accept that sometimes his irritability was irrational and potentially affected by cyclical hormone shifts, he thought later that he probably deserved the bloody nose that Dean gave him.Sam only called Dean “Deanna” in teasing once, because the wild anger in Dean’s eyes when he yelled at Sam for it was so terrifying it set Sam’s heart racing and formed a heavy lump in his throat. So Sam never did that again, even if he never did understand why Dean got so butthurt about it when he called Sam “Samantha” all the time.For Sam’s fourteenth birthday, Dean took him out to an amusement park with the handful of cash he’d gotten from hustling pool over the past month. They rode roller coasters all day, and for dinner they got candy corn and towering ice cream cones, and then Sam threw up in the grass next to the merry-go-round.Dean loved polishing his gun. It was his first one, his own. Yeah, he’d made his first sawed-off in sixth grade and had been using John’s pistols for years, but he’d never actually owned one before.John had given it to him on his eighteenth birthday, handed it over across the dinner table of their motel, unwrapped – Of course it was, Sam had thought bitterly – and light glinting dully off the engraved slide.“Forty-five caliber?” Dean had asked, taking the offered weapon with a reverence that Sam didn’t think he’d ever understand, his eyes wide in awe and a smile playing at the corners of his lips. “Single-action, semi-automatic…” he’d murmured, turning the pistol over in his hands and examining every detail, running his fingers along the engravings and stroking the ivory grips. His eyes widened slightly. “M1911. Dad, is this..?”Dean had looked up at John in what seemed to be shock and wonderment, and John had smiled and nodded.“That pistol saved my life more than a couple times on the field,” he had told Dean. “You use it right, take care of it, I guarantee it’ll be doing so again. Just, in someone else’s hands.” He’d winked at Dean and Dean had beamed.Sam had thought a bit darkly that John could have stood to buy Dean a brand new gun for his fucking eighteenth birthday instead of just giving him another hand-me-down like always. He couldn’t pick out a single one of Dean’s possessions that hadn’t previously belonged to their dad.But Dean had loved it, had spent the whole rest of the evening polishing it until the tarnish and grime was gone and it shone like a goddamn glassy sea at sunset, and spent almost every night since then doing the same. Dean was meticulous, practically obsessive. It annoyed Sam to no end, too, the amount of care that Dean put into taking care of that pistol. It was second only to the care he put into taking care of the Impala, and that was Dean’s baby, so it was a big deal. He’d take the gun apart, make sure every single mechanism was clean and fluid and hadn’t gotten sticky since twenty-four hours ago, sometimes twelve, then put it all back together and run the polishing cloth from his kit up and down the length of it in a way that Sam was pretty sure could be considered pornographic.“Alright, Dean,” Sam said one night, finally fed up with watching Dean put more time and effort into polishing an already spotless gun than into the history essay or math homework that Sam knew he had. “We get it. You want cock. You can put down your fucking phallic symbol now.”Dean froze with the gun in his hands, and John’s eyes raised to Sam from the newspaper he was looking through, his gaze steely. In an instant, Sam realized exactly what he’d just said and bit the inside of his cheek, hard and anxious, looking back at Dean to see what he’d say, if he’d say anything. The whole room felt frozen in silence.Then, Dean grinned. “At least mine is bigger ‘n yours,” he smirked, raising the eight-and-a-quarter inch long pistol, and nodded towards Sam’s lap with a raised eyebrow. Sam blushed.“I’m still growing,” he protested, and Dean just laughed and shook his head.“Not another five inches anytime soon, bud.”“I might!” It took him another second. “Hey! How do you even know…”“Dude, you keep a ruler by your bed and every morning when you wake up…”“Okay, okay!” Sam stopped him hurriedly and then furrowed his eyebrows. “But even so…”“Come on, Sammy, you make little markings, it’s pathetic.”He crossed his arms over his middle and pouted, the heat in his cheeks burning his face. “Whatever.”Dean chuckled. “I’m just saying, you try to get into some macho pissing contest with me, you’re always gonna lose, ‘cause bitch, I can always switch up for somethin’ bigger and you’re stuck right there.”“That’s not fair,” lamented Sam, and Dean shrugged and went back to polishing his gun.“You’re the one who called it, I’m just playing along.” He looked up at Sam from his work and cocked an eyebrow. “What, you wanna take it back now?”Sam closed his mouth and blew out his cheeks. There was no way he could do that, not when Dean was fucking right and he knew it.“Jerk,” Sam muttered. Dean just popped out the magazine to check it before sliding it back in.“Bitch,” Dean retorted cheerfully. Sam didn’t mind the attitude, much, but when he saw his dad snort to himself in mirth, he had a sudden, disturbing urge to punch John Winchester in the mouth.Sam looked quickly down at his hands. One of them was twitching, he stilled it with the other. It was just hormones and shit. Probably happened to everyone.Well, not everyone. He didn’t think it had happened to Dean, Dean didn’t really punch too many people. He stabbed monsters, but it wasn’t quite the same thing as wanting to see your dad’s mouth smashed in, feel his teeth crumble and bite into your knuckles.Maybe it was a testosterone thing.Sam could pretend it was just a testosterone thing, until Dean got his testosterone. Then he couldn’t anymore, not when Dean still rolled over belly-up at Dad’s every command.So it wasn’t the hormones. It was the life. The hunter’s life. If Sam got out, it would stop, he was sure of it.Sam had a favorite teacher his junior year of high school. He was only in that town for five months, but hers was the address he used for his college applications, and when they sent the acceptance letters, she called him to let him know. She helped him fill out his paperwork, and she helped him apply for housing. She helped him a lot, and he was always grateful for her.Dean wasn’t grateful. Neither was John. But who the fuck cared. Sam was out.Sam could see the irony in going into pre-law, what with him having spent basically his whole life being carted around by a father who repeatedly committed breaking and entering, burglary, credit and insurance fraud, and grave desecration. Especially since he’d participated in some of those crimes himself.He’d like to say that despite his less-than-moral upbringing, Sam just had a strong sense of right and wrong and the brain to put that to good use. He’d even like to say that he had a passion to make the world a better place for the unfortunate and outcast, the down-trodden and overlooked, those that were systematically made into second-class citizens due to race, sexual orientation, or gender. It would make sense. He’d spent the majority of his life watching his brother forced to hide his body just so he’d be treated as an equal.But really, the truth of it was probably about control. Control, which he’d never had, growing up. Being constantly pulled from state to state, sometimes unable to leave a motel room for days at a time or hang out with friends when he wanted, left him with a big gaping need for autonomy. Being a lawyer would give him that. Not only that, but power over others. He would have the power to hold someone’s fate in his hands, and abstractly, not in an “if I don’t have the right weapon for this creature you’ll probably die” kind of way. It was as exhilarating as it was terrifying.Just as being in college, away from his brother and John for the first time, was as exhilarating as it was terrifying. Every person who glanced his way on the street – every boy who sized him up or girl who smiled at him – could be a monster, only now, instead of following them into an alley to pull a silver blade on them or skipping town and rushing off to hide in some god-forsaken motel in the middle of nowhere, he could just ignore it and go on his way. He didn’t have to constantly be on his toes. He didn’t have to hide knives in his boots or stuff a pistol into the waistband of his pants whenever he went out. He wasn’t responsible for saving people anymore. He did keep a silver knife on him at all times, a short, stocky pocket-knife that he could fold up and stick in a pocket or stuff into his backpack, but it wasn’t because Dean had been on his ass about being prepared or because he was worried John was going to order him to turn out his pockets and punish him with extra training if he didn’t have a weapon on him. And that was the point. It was Sam’s choice.In his sophomore debate class, they were given an assignment. They had to argue one side of a controversial issue with the other student who was given the opposing side of the debate.If they had been allowed to pick which side they were on, that probably would have been easier. Well, yeah, it would have been easier. Sam might have picked universal health care, which he could have built a solid defense for, and it would have mattered to him because god would it have helped his family some on hunts if they could have gone to an ER instead of using dental floss and old sewing needles in a motel bathroom to fix up their injuries.But that wasn’t how it worked, because that wasn’t always how being a lawyer worked. Sometimes you had to take cases you didn’t want. Sometimes you had to defend people you knew were guilty.Still, Sam felt that it had to be some cosmic joke that the little slip of paper he picked out of the professor’s box had to be something so close to home. “Abortion should not be legal excepting extreme medical situations.” Which sent his mind spinning back to Dean.Sam left the class wondering how he would ever be able to argue a side that made him literally sick to his stomach. He was so distracted that he almost didn’t notice Brady, and was only aware of the guy when he grabbed Sam by the shoulder.Sam spun slightly, raising his hands into a loose defensive position, and Brady laughed out a “Whoa” and held up his hands.“Dude, just wanted to let you know that me and Rob and them are planning a research session at the library tomorrow for the project. I’ve got to study for Stats tonight, but we’re meeting there at four, yeah? Put our heads together and help each other pick out resources. If you’re like Rob and me you got a shit topic that you have neither motivation nor personal belief to actually back up.”Sam grinned ruefully and rubbed at the back of his head where his hair felt hot and a little damp. “Yeah, thanks man, that sounds great. I have a class until four-thirty, but I’ll be there. I could use the help.”Brady snapped and made two pointed finger-guns in Sam’s direction as he backed away, grinning crookedly and showing lots of teeth. “Awesome, Winchester! Later, dude!”Brady turned around to walk towards a different building. Sam continued on towards the student Union to shove a quick study session in between classes.He arrived to Brady’s research session the next day forty-five minutes late. Brady, Rob, Luis, Zach, April, and a girl with blonde hair that Sam didn’t know were sitting together at one of the study tables. There were books spread across the surface, papers scattered, and bulky notebooks opened to pages with lines and lines of scribbled notes.“Sammy-boy!” Brady called, gesturing Sam over to sit in an open seat at the head of the table, between Brady and the blonde.“Yeah, don’t call me that,” Sam said, grinning and sliding into the wooden chair and dropping his notebooks onto the empty space on the tabletop in front of him.Laughing, Brady clapped his back open-palmed. “Yeah, Yeah, Sam, I know.” He turned to the rest of the table and put a hand up to the side of his mouth, pretending to shut Sam out of the conversation. “Don’t call him Sammy, he gets touchy.”The blonde girl laughed. “I’ll keep that in mind.”Sam leaned forward a bit and flashed his dimples, the ones he had taught himself to use to distract women either from his phony ID or, currently, from the shyness that was tightening his stomach. She was very pretty, and he was instantly struck by her warm smile, her heavy-lidded eyes, and the cute mole between her eyebrows that decorated her forehead like a bindi.“So, you know what to call me. What do I call you?”“Oh yeah!” Brady exclaimed. “Sam, this is Jessica. She’s taking the same course, but she’s in a different lecture session. I ran into her at office hours last week.”Jessica held out her hand and Sam took it, holding it gently in his large and callused palm, feeling the softness of her fingertips and knuckles before shaking warmly.“Call me Jess,” she smiled.“Jess it is,” Sam said, smiling back.“Alright,” Zach said, cracking his knuckles. “Now that we’ve got introductions sorted out, let’s get back to the books. What’s your topic, Sam?”“I’m supposed to argue to make abortion illegal except in extreme medical situations,” Sam said through a slightly tight jaw. He rolled his eyes. “I’m having a little trouble with that.”“Not to worry, man,” Luis said, dragging a heavy text over to him from a few feet away and rifling through its contents. “My parents were way into the whole protesting Planned Parenthood and everything, I’ve heard every argument.”Rob, who was sitting with his back straight, shrugged stiffly. “And if you need any extra help, I’m actually in favor of that action myself.”April let out a shocked gasp and clutched her chest sarcastically with her hand. “What? You mean I’m not sitting at a table entirely made up of radical college liberals? The university life has failed me.”Jess laughed and exclaimed, “If you were looking for the liberal experience, you probably shouldn’t have chosen a school made up mostly of the wealthy elite.” Rob smiled somewhat ruefully and April laughed in agreement. Sam allowed his posture to relax. Sure, he was the lone full-rider here from a home history of being generally broke and homeless, but his friends were alright.“What about you guys?” Sam asked curiously about their projects, leaning forward to peer at the essays and journals that his friends were looking at.“I got the death penalty,” said Zach. “Abolishing it, that is.”April picked her slip of paper from underneath a heavy book. “I’m supposed to argue that prostitution should remain illegal. Easy peasy.”Jess turned towards Sam and playfully cocked her head, raising her eyebrows as if to share a mutual This is a dumb assignment, “And I am required to argue the legalization of marijuana for medicinal purposes.”“Which is a topic that is just wasted on her,” Brady said, throwing his arms out in protest. “I mean, she doesn’t even smoke! She’s never even taken one hit!”“I never felt the need to, Brady,” Jess said seriously. “I prefer to get high on life.” Her mouth twitched as she tried to hide a smile.“Are you seeing this?” Brady turned to hiss at Sam, looking as though Jess’s assigned topic was a personal affront to his character. “She doesn’t deserve to handle the delicate topic of medicinal marijuana.”Sam laughed, “Sure, Brady.” Jess rolled her eyes.“Moving on,” interrupted Luis, “I’m supposed to tackle the revolutionary topic of lowering the drinking age.”“Now that’s a topic I could get behind,” Brady sighed, leaning back in his chair and holding his own slip of paper out in front of him, staring at it with a pout. “Even Rob got a good one. Legalizing gay marriage. Which is, well, he doesn’t really find it personally appealing, but at least it’ll be easy. Me? I’m supposed to somehow convince people that it’s A-okay for a transgendered person to use whichever gender-specific restroom they damn well please. Which? Gross.”Brady faux-shivered, and Sam felt himself heating up, could hear his blood pumping thickly in his ears. He swallowed, mouth suddenly dry.There was a murmur of assent from Rob, while April, Zach, and Luis shrugged uncomfortably. Jess pursed her lips and frowned tersely down at her notes.“It’s not ‘transgendered,’” Sam heard himself say fuzzily, like there was wax blocking up his ears. “The term is transgender.” Adjective, not adverb. Adding the -ed implied that something had happened to alter them, to make them transgender, rather than just being born that way. It was like calling a non-white person “colored.” It implied that Dean had something wrong with his brain, or that he was cursed or otherwise not right. That there was something that could be changed back or fixed, somehow. He paused and swallowed, something in his throat clicking. “Man, woman, transgender man, transgender woman…”He saw Jess turn to look at him in his periphery, but he was looking at Brady, who was grinning at him and waving his paper. “Then I guess Professor Philpott isn’t very politically correct, huh? Says here, and I quote…” He pulled the paper flat open and read in the droning, vaguely British-accented voice of their debate professor, “’Transgendered men and women should have the right to use their preferred gendered bathrooms.’ How’d you know that anyway, Sam?”Sam shrugged uncomfortably. Because my brother is transgender, he heard himself saying in his mind.Instead, he said, “I read a lot.”“And I mean, I dunno, personally…” April spoke up, then took a deep breath. “Personally, I don’t think it’s any of my business if a man wants to dress up and act like a woman, but I’d feel uncomfortable if he was in the same bathroom with me, you know?”“Well, yeah,” Brady agreed, putting his hands down on the table, palms up. “And dude, seriously though. I mean, like, if you’re a lesbo, you’re a fucking lesbo, you can’t just turn into a man and call yourself straight.”Sam was silent. He felt very hot underneath his Stanford sweatshirt, and he could tell that his armpits were sweating more than usual, a feat in and of itself because Sam was a sweaty guy. His hands clenched slightly around his notebooks, and he found himself clenching his jaw hard, his teeth grinding together in an uncomfortable way, the powdery squeaking sound echoing inside his head.He should say something. He should open his mouth and tell April and Brady that they were wrong, that they didn’t know what they were talking about. He should tell his friends about his childhood and his brother and make them understand, make that quietly assenting expression on Rob’s face disappear, make Zach and Luis stop shrugging in silent permissiveness.He should. He really should. He should stand up for his brother.But.It could have been fear, remnants of his dad constantly telling him not to ever let anyone know about Dean’s secret, about Dean’s body. It was hard, so hard to go against his father, even now that he had committed the ultimate betrayal and left John and Dean alone while he moved on to greener pastures and the potential for a normal life.It could have been that he was worried, that he was thinking about Dean, that if Dean ever did come to visit him here at college he wouldn’t want all of Sam’s friends to know that there was a sock rolled up in his underwear and pockmarks from testosterone injections on his thigh.But it was probably, secretly, ashamedly, though he would never admit it to himself, the fact that he was normal now, he had normal friends and was attending a university to get a normal degree, and he didn’t want… He didn’t want to draw attention to how fucking abnormal his family was. He didn’t want to be that, here.So he kept silent, nervous and sweaty and fingers twitching and an objection held firmly inside his closed mouth.Then, Jess spoke.“Brady, can you tell me what it feels like to be a boy?”Every face at the table turned towards her, Sam’s included. Brady shrugged.“Um, I dunno?” he said at first, his voice a little hesitant. Then he seemed to gain confidence as he continued. “Well, masculine for one. Manly for another.” He jokingly flexed his arms and winked in Jess’s direction. Jess looked both unfazed and unamused.“Okay,” Jess nodded. “So, imagine feeling masculine the way you do and manly the way you feel, and then looking down every day and seeing that you have a vagina instead of a penis. That’s how a transgender guy feels. He’s not a lesbian with internalized homophobia, he’s a man born with the wrong genitalia.” She turned towards April and said kindly, “And a transgender woman isn’t a man who ‘dresses up and acts like’ a woman, she’s a woman who was born with a male body. Imagine if you were born with a penis. How awful would it be to be a woman forced to use the men’s restroom, just because other women were uncomfortable that you didn’t share the same private parts?”Rob seemed to be avidly avoiding looking at Jess, but Luis and Zach were both leaning forward a bit and April looked suitably chastised. Brady leaned back in his seat and looked doubtfully down at his slip of paper.“Yeah, I guess,” he said, sounding dubious.Sam couldn’t take his eyes away from Jess. Everything he had found appealing about her seemed to be exacerbated, from the kindness in her eyes to the radiance of her rosy cheeks. She turned to him, her face still set and her mouth serious and unsmiling, though not unkind. He quickly turned away, focusing instead on the book that Luis was handing him across the table, opened to a useful essay. He leaned forward to look at a section that Luis pointed out for him, feeling Jess’s eyes prickling the back of his neck.Despite his yearning for a normal life, for college and friends and a job, he had never actively imagined finding a girlfriend to be with long-term. Maybe a few of the typical college hook-ups. Sam had never really been one for one-night stands, not like Dean, but he didn’t think he would have minded casual dating or friends-with-benefits. Now, however, his thoughts were turning to images of how Jess would look while they were making love, flushed and smiling and eyes shining and hair plastered to her forehead and tangled slightly from being pressed into the blankets behind her. The direction in which his brain was taking him was both surprising and humiliating, and Sam found himself crossing his legs under the table and pulling his chair forward as close as he could, ensuring that no one could see the sizeable bulge in his pants.Appalled at his thoughts, Sam blushed and ducked whenever Jess attempted to involve him in a conversation. However, despite his greatest efforts to remain both discrete and slightly apathetic (“It’s called ‘playing hard to get,’ Sammy, and it works every time” Dean’s voice echoed in his head), he left the study session that night with Jess’s number, written on a scrap of paper and punctuated with her name and a tiny heart, clutched tight in a fist deep in the pocket of his sweatshirt.He programmed it into his own phone that night with blush heavily covering his cheeks, glad that he didn’t have a roommate like Brady, who would have surely ribbed him endlessly for how fucking girly he was acting (Dean certainly would have). After Jess’s number was in his cell, he went to his contact list and scrolled down, preparing himself mentally to text her a quick Hey, its Sam, just so she had his number, too, only to find himself hovering over her name for a long and silent while.Dean’s number was programmed into Sam’s phone under the name “Jerk.” Alphabetically, it stood to reason that it would be right there, right above Jess’s. Sam’s thumb seemed to be stuck to his enter key, unable to either continue on to text Jess’s number or escape from the contact menu altogether. He hadn’t talked to Dean in a while. In months.
And whose fault is that?
Last time he’d seen Dean, it was the first semester of his sophomore year. Back then, Dean had made a habit of texting him a few words every few weeks, to make sure he was doing alright, to make sure he wasn’t lying in a ditch somewhere drained of blood. Sam usually sent a terse reply, ‘cause otherwise he knew Dean would freak out and he didn’t want him coming up and bursting into his dorm room, guns a’blazing.It hadn’t worked though, because he was out with some classmates at the bars one night and there Dean was.
“This seat taken?” Sam hadn’t recognized the voice at first; it was a lot lower, lower than Sam’s even, though it had never been that way before.
Everyone at the table looked up to see the attractive, cocksure older man in confusion and, for some, a bit of annoyance. The annoyance came mostly from the boys, while many of the girls seemed amused or intrigued.
“And you are..?” asked Brandon, leaning back slightly in his sticky wooden chair and spreading his legs. Sam watched Dean smirk as he recognized the common sign of a threatened male attempting to assert some dominance. At the same time, Sam felt an unnerving combination of anger, panic, and poignant longing for the brotherly banter he and Dean used to share so easily, every day.
“Dean,” Sam said, the unsettlement obvious in his voice. His friends all turned to look at him.
“So,” Dean continued, “This seat taken?” He pulled out the chair in question without waiting for an answer and sat down, reaching a hand out to Brandon to shake. Brandon took the offer with uncertainty.
“Dean?” Brandon asked, looking between Sam and the handsome stranger.
“Winchester,” Dean nodded. “Dean Winchester.”
The rest of that evening had been spent with equal amounts of hilarity and tension. Dean had always been skilled with charisma, as long as Sam could remember. He’d charmed the girls with flattery and humor, and then had warmed up to the chagrined boys by teaching them how to play pool. Not well enough to take home the profit at the end of the night, but enough to carry that skill on and maybe win the following weekend against someone who wasn’t Dean.All the while, Sam had been waiting for the pin to drop, waiting for Dean’s smile and camaraderie to shift to an accusatory cold shoulder. When it hadn’t happened, instead of relaxing, Sam had only gotten more wound up, more frustrated.
Dean didn’t have the right to pretend like nothing was wrong when he’d let John chase Sam out that door.
“What are you doing, Dean, if you’re not here to tear me a new one?” Sam confronted him later, after his classmates had dispersed and it was just him and Dean, standing in the grass outside his dorm room in the dark. “Here to check up on me? Make sure I’m following all of Dad’s old rules? Salting the windows in my room, carrying a flask of holy water wherever I go? I’m out of that life, Dean, I’m not doing that shit anymore.”
Dean shrugged, his hands tucked into the pockets of his canvas jacket, and gave Sam his best ‘Who, me?’ look that he’d been perfecting since the sixth grade.“What, Sam, a guy can’t visit his little brother at college without having some ulterior motive?” Sam bristled at the roll of Dean’s eyes at the word college, at the way his voice stretched around the syllables, mocking it like it was some big joke.
“So if you didn’t come to check up on me, what’s the real reason, huh?”
Dean chuckled and pushed lightly at Sam’s chest, getting him to back off slightly. “Come on, Sam. You know why. I’m here to see if you’re done playing normal.”
Sam felt heat crawling up the back of his neck, rising to his ears and making his cheeks go ruddy.
“I’m not done, Dean. This is my life now. Can’t you just let it go?”
And out comes the truth.
“Come on, Sam! You know this is never gonna last! I figured, just let you play for a bit, get it out of your system.”
Sam turned away, took a few steps towards the entrance of the building, shaking his head in disbelief. Dean couldn’t help himself. He couldn’t just be a normal guy. Couldn’t just be a normal brother and visit the campus and shoot the shit with Sam’s college buddies like a regular guy. Sam felt vindicated that he hadn’t let himself hope it could be true.
“Dad didn’t mean it, you know,” Dean called at his back. “If you came back, he’d let you. You don’t have to stay here.”
Sam stopped. He looked up at the cloudy sky. He turned and looked back at Dean, who looked so pathetically earnest that Sam could laugh.
“Well I mean it when I say that this is my life, Dean, and if you can’t make yourself be normal for just one goddamned night to be a part of it, then I don’t need you in it.”
Dean looked like he’d been slapped, his self-righteousness melting into offense.
“You don’t mean that.”
“I do. If you’re not willing to accept that, then after you leave, don’t come back.”
Sam finally turned his back on his older brother and walked silently into his dorm building. Dean didn’t call after him, didn’t beg him to come back, didn’t do anything to keep Sam from walking away. Just like last time.
Dean was just like John.
Sam clicked and entered Dean’s contact menu, but passed over the “call” option and edited the contact name from Jerk to a simple “Dean,” moving the info to the top of the list, right between Carl and Dennis, two friends from freshman year who he hadn’t contacted in months. It was safe.He scrolled back down and texted Jess. She responded a few minutes later with a winking face using a semicolon and a parenthesis, which had Sam grinning like an idiot and throwing his arm across his eyes. She’d texted him right back, hadn’t left him hanging. That meant she liked him too, right?Or maybe it meant that she just wanted to be friends. Just friends.No, no, he assured himself. There had been mutual attraction. She’d laughed at his joke about the penguin at the bar, even though he knew it was just about the dumbest thing ever. She’d even brushed his hand a couple times when looking over notes with him, and did that thing that girls do, with their hair, when they’re flirting. He was sure of it.And when Sam bought a new phone a year later, he didn’t tell his dad or brother his new number.Jess quickly became part of their usual group. She was funny and clever and kind, and she always chose to sit next to Sam. On a Wednesday, he asked her to sit with him in the dining hall during lunch. Jess declined and asked instead if he would sit with her at a restaurant for dinner. With a smile on his face, he accepted, and one date later, they shared their first kiss.None of Sam’s friends had been there the one night that Dean had come to campus, and so none of them knew anything about Sam’s family. Jess knew more than his friends, but only by a small amount. By four facts, if he were to get specific about it: she knew that he had grown up without a mother (but she didn’t know why); she knew that he had an older brother; she knew that his brother’s name was Dean; and she knew that he had grown up poor.Jess knew all of this from what she’d gathered over nearly two years of dating the man she was in love with, from snippets of thoughts said in passing, from whispered conversations held in a bed on top of damp sheets, from things he’d gasped through tears after waking up from nightmares to find himself being rocked in her embrace.“How can you stand it?” he asked her one night, as she brushed his sweaty bangs away from his face. “You don’t know me. You don’t know anything about me. How can you stand being with someone like that?”She smiled at him with a tenderness that made his heart ache and bent his head forward so that she could press her lips against his forehead.“I don’t need to know your past to know who you are, Sam Winchester.” He let out a shuddering breath and pressed one large palm to her breast, directly over her heart. She let him feel her heartbeat in silence for a few moments before continuing. “I know what it’s like to want to forget things, Sam. You don’t know everything about my past, either. Knowing that, can you still stand being with me?”Sam closed his eyes and tucked his head under Jess’s chin. “Of course. Of course, I...” He trailed off as she ran her fingers through his hair, comforting him gently, a wordless assurance that he didn’t have to say anything more. He pressed his cheek against her soft chest, sucking in a shaky breath, sense memory sending him flashing back to when he was a child, his brother’s warm breasts pressed against him as they curled against each other in a dusty motel bed.“I will be here as long as we love each other,” Jess finished simply. Sam believed her.When her blood dripped onto his face, when he opened his eyes to find her pinned to the ceiling, when the scent of her burning flesh filled his lungs and was somehow different than that of all of the other bodies he’d ever burned in his life, he wasn’t surprised. He was heartbroken, devastated, tormented. But he wasn’t surprised.Dean was right. Sam was never normal. He’d just been playing normal until the next demon came to bite him in the ass.For a while, Sam hated Dean for that. And he took a sick pleasure in it, too.Because Dean wasn’t educated. He was a high-school dropout. He was crude and unsophisticated, and people sneered at him in town when they saw him pass by with his holey jeans and his scuffed-up boots and his dusty leather jacket – a cast-off from John, probably discarded to Dean rather than simply thrown out in the trash to save their father the effort. He joked and laughed with the blue-collar workmen in the bars like he belonged there with them.Dean could probably fit right in on the main floor of a factory if he ever decided to do a bit of honest labor, but he likely wouldn’t even be able to hold that down for long before he skipped one shift too many in exchange for a few cheap beers.Sam was... He was cultured and... And enlightened. When they had found and killed the demon, he would return to law school and graduate with honors. He’d find a position at a firm somewhere, where he’d wear fine tailored suits and receive nothing but respect from the businessmen who worked around him. He’d be... away from all of this, this monstrousness in a way that Dean never could be.At the very least, that was what he told himself, as a comfort in the night in the dark when his mind turned to what poison was flowing through his veins. He made himself remember this when he felt red creeping in the corners of his vision, or darkness clawing at the edges of his mind.When Sam himself was feeling particularly freakish, he reminded himself of the ways in which Dean could never be normal, of how there were parts of Dean's body missing that he would never be able to find, whereas Sam was whole; though these thoughts were gruesome in and of themselves and only made Sam feel more monstrous once he had recovered his decent state of mind.There were things that he said, words that tasted bitter coming out of his mouth, that were sharp and that made Dean wince; and yet Sam continued to say them because it felt so nice to remind himself that he was better.And Dean was a rock. Sam could throw pebbles at him, but they wouldn’t chip him, he wouldn’t crack.Dean couldn’t crack.But he could get worn, he could be made smaller. He could sell his soul. And he could die.Sam had had family and friends come and go. He’d learned not to trust people, not to wish for permanence, after moving so much and switching so many schools, after making and losing friends, after Stanford and Jess and Dad and everything. He’d learned not to care for things, because everything goes, eventually. He could never just feel content, could never sit back and relax somewhere and feel at home. There was only one thing he could always rely on, only one single steady, trustworthy constant in his life.He had always just had Dean.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Bobby would never have met Dean or Sam if John had mentioned he had kids. He would never have invited John to stay in his spare room while they worked together on the hunt that Jim had tuned them both in on.Bobby lived pretty far out from Sioux Falls proper, and even farther from the nearest motel. But as much as he hated commuting to meet up with a hunter he was working with, he hated even more the idea of fighting side-by-side with someone who’d gotten less than the bare minimum of sleep. So, he usually offered his house to the hunters he worked with; at least the ones he or Jim knew well enough to trust not to rob him in his sleep. But he didn’t like kids - or at least, didn’t like being around them - not since his dad, and not since Karen. He thought John probably knew that, and that’s probably why the man hadn’t brought it up before accepting the invitation. Not even a polite “I got two boys, does the invitation still stand?” Sure, Bobby probably would have revoked it, but he would have appreciated John’s honesty enough to make the commute himself. Maybe even gotten his own room in town, if he needed. At a different motel, where he wouldn’t have to run into John’s rugrats.As it went, John didn’t say anything. So Bobby did meet them. Opened the door with a beer in hand, prepared to put a face to the deep voice he’d been hearing over the phone, and saw two little pairs of eyes staring up at him from in front of John’s denim-clad legs. One hazel, one green.“Can we come in?” John asked, and Bobby could tell by the look in his eyes that he knew what he’d done. He stared down at the children, small and tousle-haired. He felt… nervous, a bit. Maybe even scared. But he could also hear Karen's voice in his ear. He knew she'd have fallen in love at first sight. She wouldn't have let them leave, let alone turned them away.Oh, well. Couldn’t blame John for wanting to save the money on the motel room. Maybe the kids would be well-behaved and stay out of the way.“Be my guest,” he finally replied, gruffly, stepping aside. He watched the two boys appraisingly as they stepped over the doorway and into the house. The little one, with soft, floppy hair down past his ears, could have been anywhere between two and eight. Bobby didn’t really know how age looked on kids. The boy was looking up and around, taking in the art hanging on the walls and the light fixtures hanging in the hall and the big rug just visible through the door to the living room. He looked curious and cautious, maybe even optimistic. Bobby saw him turn his head up towards his big brother, tug on the older boy’s sleeve until he bent over to put his ear to the little one’s mouth.“It’s big!” he said loudly into his big brother's ear, loud enough to make the older kid jerk his head away in annoyance.“Sure, bigger’n a motel room,” Bobby agreed wryly. John didn’t have the decency to look embarrassed. The older boy, short-cropped blond hair and freckles standing out across the bridge of his nose, looked up at Bobby suspiciously.“This is Sam and Dean,” John introduced them, putting his hand in his boys’ hair to indicate which was which. “Dean just turned eight. Sam’s three.”“I’m four soon,” Sam corrected.“Still three for now.” John smiled.“Well,” Bobby said, unsure how he was supposed to talk to children. Karen had known how to talk to kids; she’d had that instinct, and none of the same fears Bobby had of getting it wrong. She would have swept them into the kitchen to make sugar cookies, and later, when she and Bobby were in bed together, she’d have whispered Don’t they make you want boys of your own? “I’m Robert. You can call me Bobby, I guess. It’s good to meet ya.”John hitched his duffel over his shoulder and shuffled his kids around Bobby into the hallway. “Where’s the room?”“There’s only one spare bed, and it’s a twin,” Bobby told him, then he remembered, “I think I got a cot up in the attic. I could set it up in the living room for one of the boys, and the other can sleep on the couch…”“The boys will sleep in the bedroom,” John said firmly. Bobby had only been thinking of why a grown man might need a bit of privacy, but at John’s expression he realized why John would prefer that his kids have a door that locks in a strange man’s house. Karen would have already known that, would never have offered the other way. “I can take the couch. If you can find the cot, I’ll set it up in the bedroom for them.”“Can I have the bed?” Sam asked hopefully, and Bobby saw Dean scowl.“Dean’s bigger, so he gets to sleep on the bed,” John told him, and Dean’s scowl turned into an approving smirk.Bobby had a hard time falling asleep that night, knowing that two little kids were sleeping just down the hall.John was easier to work with than a lot of the other hunters he’d teamed up with in the past. Or maybe Bobby just liked him better. After just a few days working the case as a team, Bobby even thought that they might become friends, a novelty that Bobby hadn't found in any of his hunting buddies, other than Rufus.Bobby hadn’t known what to think one day when John had handed Dean a .22 while he and Bobby were doing target practice, but he was suitably impressed when the kid hit every bottle John set up for him. John smiled approvingly and clapped Dean on his slender back, and Bobby didn’t miss Dean looking sideways at him to see what he was thinking.“Better than most hunters I’ve worked with,” he admitted, and Dean grinned.“Dad says I could probably kill a werewolf or something if I hunted one,” he said pridefully. “‘Cause I’m such a good shot. Only I don’t have much practice with moving targets. But I bet I could, if it was like a baby or something.”Taken aback, Bobby found himself at a loss for words. He looked up and made eye contact with John, the question obvious in his expression.John put his hand on Dean’s shoulder. “Dean knows. Sammy’s still in the dark, though, and we’re planning on keeping it that way.” Dean nodded.“Sammy’s too young.”Bobby thought better of saying, You look pretty young, yourself, kid. Instead, he said, “Well, let’s hope we don’t run into any baby werewolves this week, huh?”At first, the boys stayed mostly out of his way, like Bobby had hoped. John let Dean take care of little Sam, for the most part: the kid helped his little brother get changed in the mornings, reminded him to wash his hands before eating, and made sure he finished his vegetables. Dean seemed happy enough to do it, and even though he sometimes got annoyed at little Sam’s endless questions and grabbing fingers, Bobby could tell the kid loved his little brother.While Sam was taking his afternoon naps, John let Dean sit with him and Bobby in the library while they researched the hunt. Bobby worried at first that the kid would be a distraction - hell, Bobby couldn’t have been that still and quiet in a room with two adults talking shop when he was that age - but Dean was well disciplined. He observed Bobby when he made his phone calls to local government and newspapers, asking his questions with his fake identities, and helped John sort through the endless old newspaper clippings he’d collected from the library with a skill that denoted familiarity. Dean did speak up, sometimes, with smart questions about the clues they were piecing together. John answered them patiently and honestly, even when the answers were gruesome, things that Bobby knew Karen would have balked at telling to an eight-year-old.When Dean helped them clean the guns, it was a well-practiced affair. Bobby could tell that John had gone over every part of every gun’s anatomy with Dean, front and back. Dean knew how to hold every one of them, how to take them apart, how to clean them. They had a system when they did the chore together; John picked one up for himself, handed one over to Dean, and then they both deftly checked that the cartridge was empty before settling into the task with practiced ease. Bobby still didn't know how he felt about Dean's skill with so many weapons at his ripe young age, but it was hard for him to judge. His pa had taken him turkey shooting when he was seven.Then again, that was just with a turkey shooter. Bobby hadn’t held a pistol until he was fourteen.Bobby had just stepped away into the kitchen, wondering what Karen would've cooked up for the kids for dinner. So he wasn’t watching when the gun went off, but the gunshot made the cabinets shake.He was already running back towards the living room when John yelled Dean's name. At the sound of it, Bobby felt a fist close around his heart and his mouth go dry, imagining rounding the corner and finding that little boy on the floor, blood spilling out onto the rug. Karen would've never forgiven him for letting a child handle guns like that on his property, even if it was someone else's child; Bobby didn't know if he'd be able to forgive himself. But when he rounded the corner, he was relieved to see Dean still sitting upright in his chair, eyes wide and alert and uninjured, though visibly shaken. He was staring straight at his dad, who was kneeling in front of him with the boy's upper arms gripped tight in the man's rough hands."Are you hurt?" John asked, using his grip to maneuver Dean in his chair and inspect him for signs of injury. Dean looked down at his feet where they dangled, legs still too short for his toes to even brush the ground. After seeing that his toes were all still attached, he looked back up at John and shook his head. Satisfied that his son wasn’t shot, John’s tone shifted as he grabbed the pistol Dean was holding out of the boy’s hands. He glared at Dean and and then checked for the cartridge, finding it missing. Bobby could see it sitting on the tabletop next to them.“What were you thinking, Dean?” John yelled, the sound surprising and unexpected, causing Dean to jump in his seat. “I know you’re not this stupid. You never clean a loaded gun!” Bobby, who had braced himself in the doorway to let his heart slow down its hammering as soon as he’d seen that everyone was okay, raised his eyebrows at the tone. Dean wasn’t his kid, but if he’d been Karen’s, she would have taken him into her arms and stroked his hair while whispering sweet, calming words into his ears.“It wasn’t loaded! I took out the cartridge!”“Oh, yeah? This bullet hole come from an unloaded gun?” John pointed at the ground between Dean’s feet, where Bobby assumed a hole had been shot through the hardwood floor. At least there wasn’t anything of much value in the basement. He’d have to go down and check the gas pipes, though, in a minute. “You always have to check the chamber, too. You know that, Dean, that’s amateur shit. Are you an amateur?”Scowling and pale, Dean shook his head.“Listen, John,” Bobby started, not sure what he was going to say but feeling the need to defend the kid. John didn’t give him the chance, though, casting him a glare over his shoulder that could’ve banished a vengeful spirit.“I’m talking to my son.” He turned back around to Dean, whose eyes had darted up to meet Bobby’s for only a moment. “If you’re not an amateur, you’re careless. Or sloppy. Or both. Look at what you did to Bobby’s floor, Dean. That could have gone right through your foot, and then what? You think I can trust a careless slob with a gimp foot to watch my back? To watch Sam?”Bobby’s fingers tightened on the door frame as he watched how the words hit Dean, made him shrink back into the chair, made him look ashamed.“You’re gonna pay Bobby back for the damage you did to his house. I’m sure he’s got work you can do around the yard. And I’m doubling your chores, but you can’t touch the guns. Not until I’ve decided I can trust you with them again.”“Aw, come on, John, it was an accident. I'm just glad no one got hurt,” Bobby said, trying to keep his voice light, but John held up his hand to cut him off.“I don’t need your input on how I discipline my boy, Singer. Dean needs to learn his lesson. He’ll do your work for you, whatever you give him, until the hunt’s over and it’s time to leave. Understood?”“Yes, sir,” Dean replied sullenly.“Singer?”“Alright, then.”John stood and motioned Dean to get out of his chair. “Go to your room. I’ll finish dealing with you later.” His voice was laden with disappointment. Dean didn’t meet Bobby’s eyes as he walked past him into the hallway. Bobby stood there, staring at John, who was staring right back, challenging Bobby’s judgment, waiting for him to make another protest. Bobby didn’t say anything, though, just turned back around and went into the kitchen. He didn’t like that, the way John had talked to Dean. But Bobby wasn’t the boy’s father, didn’t know the first thing about disciplining kids. And it’s not like he learned anything good from his own dad. At least John didn’t beat the kid. If he ever saw John raise a hand against those boys, Bobby wouldn’t hesitate to blow him full of buckshot.John barely looked at Dean for the rest of the week, and didn’t speak to him other than to give him chores. Bobby gave him light work, tasked him with helping Bobby out in the kitchen, handing him tools while he worked in the salvage yard. It was awkward at first, uncomfortable. Bobby didn’t really know the kid, didn’t know what to say to him. Bobby wanted to reassure him that his dad didn’t mean any harm, that Bobby knew the gunshot was an accident and didn’t blame Dean for it. But he didn’t want to contradict the boy’s father. Eventually, after a few days of that, Dean started warming up to him, and Bobby warmed up to Dean, too. The kid got chatty. Bragged about his dad’s car, told Bobby he was going to learn how to fix it up when he got older. Told stories about John’s hunts as though he’d been there. Bobby could tell the boy idolized the man, whether or not John was ignoring him.By the end of the Winchesters’ stay, Bobby had come to enjoy spending time with the boys. Little Sam was inquisitive and sweet, and Dean was hardworking, energetic, and goofy. He liked watching Bobby fix up cars, and liked it even better when Bobby showed him how to do some of it. Bobby just liked making the kid smile, a kind of relaxed smile that was different from the one he gave his father or his little brother. Like Bobby lifted the weight of the world off him, just a little bit.When the hunt had finished, and John had loaded the bags into their gleaming Impala, Bobby walked the kids to the car. Before climbing into the back seat, Sam wrapped his arms around Bobby’s legs. “Thanks, Bobby!” the boy exclaimed. Bobby bent over awkwardly to return the hug.“Of course,” he said, petting Sam’s hair stiltedly. Then he turned to look at Dean, who was hesitating, looking between Bobby and John, who still wouldn’t spare the kid a glance. When Sam pulled away to climb into the car, Dean took a half-step towards Bobby, and Bobby opened his arms, just in case, just an invitation. Dean smiled, that smile that warmed Bobby’s heart to see, and hugged Bobby, too.Bobby felt the boy’s little fingers around his shoulders, his little heartbeat against Bobby’s chest. There was a knot in his throat when he pulled away, and he was surprised to find his eyes stinging.“Thanks, Bobby. We really liked it here,” Dean said, quiet enough that John wouldn’t really be able to make it out.“You can call me Uncle Bobby,” Bobby told him, then Sam, “Both of you.” He wasn’t sure what possessed him to say it; he’d only known the boys a couple weeks, and John was barely more than a coworker, yet. But it felt right. “And you’re all welcome back. Any time. You hear?”As he watched that black car disappear down the dirt road, Bobby wondered if they’d really come back sometime, if he’d really see them again. He hoped so. Look at you, Bob, he heard Karen whisper in his ear. I told you you’d be good at this. And so the Winchesters came and went, stopping by every few months. Sometimes for a night or two, sometimes for a hunt. It got a lot easier to talk to the kids, easier to play with them, even. Bobby stopped needing to listen for Karen’s whispers to tell him what to do when Sam asked him endless questions about his library, or when Dean begged to help him with the cars he was working on. The boy had gotten a taste for the work, after that first visit. Bobby wondered if he even remembered it had been his punishment.Bobby had a soft spot for Dean; he saw the way Dean took care of Sam. Took care of John. While the kids were at Singer Salvage, Bobby liked to take care of Dean, just a little. Just as much as he could. It was two years later, while Dean was packing up the weapons like John had ordered him to, and John was busy putting together the file for the current hunt of the week, that a gunshot was heard from the side yard. The sound was so familiar, and immediately it sent Bobby’s mind reeling back to that first visit. But this time, with Dean in the living room and John and Bobby in the library, only little Sam was unaccounted for.Dean and John rushed out the front door with Bobby hot on their heels, and after a brief search they found Sam, looking shocked, hands over his ears and one of the small handguns in the dirt at his feet.“Sam!” John yelled, stalking forward and falling to his knee so he could grab Sam by his shoulders. “What the hell happened?”“I was being careful!” Sam cried defensively. “I just wanted to play cowboy. You let Dean play with the guns all the time, I just wanted to try. I know it’s dangerous but I thought there wasn’t any bullets in it, but I was being extra careful so I pointed it at the ground, just in case.” His eyelashes were damp with startled tears, and his lower lip was trembling in a pout as he cowered in the face of his father’s anger and fear.“I don’t play with the guns, Sammy, guns aren't for playing with!” Dean shouted at him, visibly shaken, freckles standing out dark on his whitened face. John reached down to Sam’s feet and picked up the handgun, deftly opening the cylinder and emptying two additional bullets out onto the ground. He stared at the gun in his hand, a tiny little thing, a revolver that could only carry five rounds. Almost kid-size, enticing for someone with small hands.Slowly, John turned his head, his eyes sliding over until they made contact with Dean, who was trembling like a leaf until he saw his dad’s expression and every muscle went stiff. Bobby could feel the air between them change.“This was in the pile, Dean. With the stuff you were packing up. I saw it.”Dean, frozen in place, said nothing.“How’d Sam get his hands on a loaded gun with you right there? Weren’t you supposed to be watching him?”“I don’t know. I didn’t see him take it.”“I can’t trust you with a simple chore? I can’t trust you to keep a loaded gun out of your brother’s hands?”Dean made a noise of protest, his eyebrows upturned as he closed his hands into fists. “That’s not fair! He must’ve sneaked it out from under my nose! I can’t do chores and watch him at the same time!”John slipped the revolver into his inner pocket before straightening onto his feet, sweeping Sam around in front of him with his hands again on Sam’s shoulders, only this time, protective. Like he was guarding him from the frightened ten-year-old with shaking hands standing five feet away. Sam still looked scared, wide-eyed and pale, but it seemed he could tell that the brunt of his father’s emotion had changed targets and he’d started to relax a bit, relieved.“You know better than to keep a loaded gun within your brother’s reach. I shouldn’t have to tell you these things! It doesn’t matter what you’re doing, your brother’s safety is always your priority! How am I supposed to trust you when something like this happens, Dean?”“Now, just a minute, John,” Bobby finally spoke up at the stricken expression on Dean’s face. Man keeps a full armory’s worth of weapons in his duffel and he hasn’t taught the youngest basic gun safety, but it’s the ten-year-old’s fault when something bad happens? But John sent Bobby an angry glare that cut him short.“Don’t you tell me how to parent my sons!” John yelled, jabbing his finger towards Bobby with vitriol. He started ushering Sam back towards the house, Sam allowing it with reluctance. Dean made to follow, but John brushed him aside with a hand as big as Dean’s face and sent Dean stumbling backward. “Dad?” Dean asked, voice quiet, shaking.“I can’t even look at you right now,” John said, face turned away towards the shrubs that grew underneath the kitchen window. “You stay out here until I’ve decided what to do with you.”And with that, John took Sam back into the big house, leaving Dean standing there, quiet, ashamed.“Dean,” Bobby started, softly, taking a hesitant step towards the young boy he’d started thinking of a bit like family. Dean bowed his head and took a step back, away from Bobby, away from the house. He raised his forearm up and scrubbed at his eyes with the back of his wrist. “Your daddy’s wrong. You know that, right?”Bobby wasn’t even sure Dean heard him.“I’m sorry, Uncle Bobby, I gotta go,” he said voice tight and choked, and then he turned and ran away. Where to, Bobby wasn’t sure. Probably to find an old muscle car to hide in while he waited for his dad to come out later and tell him that it was alright for him to come inside, if John even bothered. Bobby didn’t try to follow.Dean learned a lesson that day, one that John probably didn’t even realize he’d taught him. It was the second part of the lesson he'd started not all that long ago when Dean, freshly eight, had accidentally fired the .22 into Bobby's living room floor. Remembering the look on Dean's face, Bobby feared the lesson would follow the boy to his grave. That, or lead him to it.
When Dean did something wrong, it was Dean’s fault. But when Sam did something wrong, it was Dean’s fault, too.
Bobby realized something himself as he stood there in the yard, gazing after where Dean had disappeared into the dust and scrap metal. He felt responsible for that boy, in a way he hadn’t felt for anyone since Karen. He wanted that boy kept safe; him and his little brother, but Dean especially. Dean needed it a little more.A couple months later, the Winchesters were six weeks gone and Bobby was celebrating his birthday at a hunter’s dive bar while he was on the road, headed home from a hunt. He liked stopping at hunters’ hangouts, mostly because he could get a bite to eat and a drink when he was too tired to change his bloody clothes and too far away from a shower to clean the grave dirt and ashes off his skin, and no one would bat an eye. Sometimes, like that night in particular, he also ran into a familiar face or two.Bobby didn’t recognize them at first; it’d been six years, probably, since he’d seen them last, and Caleb had only been fifteen or so then. He was a lot older and taller now; he’d let his brown hair grow out, and was sporting generous stubble. Bobby would have walked right by him and been none the wiser, but Abe looked just the same as the last time Bobby’d seen him.Bobby didn’t mind the company when Caleb invited themselves over to his table. He bought them all a round, and they talked sports, a bit of politics, and Caleb told a funny story about a recent run-in with a local Sheriff. Abe bought a round, and they began to reminisce about the old days, hunts they’d been on together. Caleb bought them shots, and then another round of beer, and by then a few hours had passed and they started recounting the tales of their most recent hunts. That was probably how the topic of John Winchester came up. Bobby didn’t remember saying the name, but he remembered Caleb’s reaction.“Winchester? John Winchester? You work with him?”Bobby raised his eyebrows, looking between Caleb and Abe. "You know John Winchester?"“Sure we do! We used to work cases with him, back when he got started. Met him through Pastor Jim.”Abe nodded, leaned back, scratched at his beard as he looked up at the dingy ceiling in recollection. "Haven't seen 'im in a little while. Like Caleb said, spent a few months huntin’ with him way back when he was just cuttin’ his teeth in the life. Him 'n those kids. The boy was just a baby when I met him, and the little girl was maybe five or six."Bobby frowned. "The little girl?"Caleb looked suddenly uncomfortable. "Dad," he intoned lowly, avoiding Bobby’s eyes as he looked around the table. Abe made a gesture as if to brush aside Caleb's protest. "Yeah, yeah. John can make his demands of me when he's here. When he's not around, I call 'er what she is.""John doesn't have a girl," Bobby said slowly, confused, wondering if they were talking about the same John Winchester. It wasn't a common name, and it would probably be remarkable for there to be two hunters, unrelated, that shared it, but Bobby saw strange things happen all the time. "I've met his kids. I know them well. They stay at my place when John's around. He's got two boys."Abe scoffed around the neck of his bottle "Yeah, so he claims," and Caleb buried his face in his hands like he wanted to keep his father from talking but knew there was nothing to be done. Bobby, laughing in confusion and bewilderment, asked "What the hell are you trying to say?""He's got a little boy, and a girl that thinks she's a boy and has John wrapped around her little finger, foolin’ everyone else to get them to play along with her little game.""Shut the fuck up, Dad. You know you can't fuckin’ just tell people this stuff," Caleb hissed, raising his head, eyes darting nervously between Bobby and Abe and even the rest of the bar."Why can't I? John's not around to get pissy. It's a free country, I can say the truth if I want to, boy.""It's not the truth. You know that's not how it is with Dean."Bobby still didn't know what the hell Abe was trying to say. Not how what was with Dean? Abe was drunk, and Bobby would have half a mind to discount this whole conversation as intoxicated ramblings if it weren't that Caleb clearly understood what his father was getting at. "Oh I know, do I? Well, here's what I know: John'll get that tranny kid of his killed on a hunt someday, and you can bet no mortician is gonna be callin’ 'er a 'he' when he sees her body laid out on his table."Caleb slammed his own beer bottle down on the wooden table so hard that Bobby could feel it shake the floor. "That’s fuckin’ sick, you know that?" He stood, wiped his hand across his mouth, and then quickly walked away out the swinging front door of the bar, hands already struggling into his jeans pockets to pull out a lighter and a pack of cigs. Bobby sat, frozen for a moment, mulling Abe's words around in his mind in an effort to comprehend them. Then, he stood abruptly, the wooden chair screeching as it shot out behind him, and followed Caleb into the dark.Caleb was leaning against the wall outside the bar, one knee up with the sole of his steel-toe cowboy boot pressed flat against the wood panels. He'd managed to light a cigarette and was letting it hang at his side. When Bobby walked over to him, he turned his head and lifted the cigarette to his mouth. The bright orange ember lit up, casting shadows across his still-young face as he deeply inhaled. He watched Bobby warily as he came to a stop."Sorry about that in there.""You say it like I even know what ‘that’ was. What was that? I'm still trying to wrap my head around it. Not quite sure I understand."Caleb just shook his head as he blew a few smoke rings into the humid night. He chuckled, forced, trying to ease the tension. "Winchester's oldest. Dean. Sh- uh, he's one of them… you know. What my dad said.”Bobby kept his expression carefully blank as he repeated Abe’s words again, in his mind. The flippant, disgusted tone he’d said them in.“It's not a big deal,” Caleb continued. “Not too hard to just call 'im what he wants to be called. My dad, he’ll do it when John Winchester's around, ‘cause he doesn’t want to get into a fistfight, but… Uh, well, you saw back there."Bobby thought of Dean, then, with that eager way he watched Bobby in the salvage yard, the way he'd smile when Bobby patted his back and laugh when Bobby told one of the old jokes he'd wracked his brain trying to remember the punchlines for. He thought of the way Dean looked so young, sometimes, the way kids do when you see someone treat them like an adult and it makes their innocence stand out. Bobby was responsible for that kid. A look like Dean had, that grown-up-too-fast look, Bobby knew he'd be in danger 'round some of the men John met at work. Or hell, 'round some of the men they ran into at the truck stops and motels. And that was only if he was a regular boy like Bobby'd thought until moments ago.Over the past few years, he'd probably had Dean staying under his roof a cumulative five months or so, maybe more. Eating his food, sleeping on his sheets, playing in his yard. Calling him "Uncle", begging to be taught the tricks of the trade, making Bobby smile and, along with little Sam, making Bobby feel happy again for the first time since Karen. Bobby had never known this about Dean until tonight, never even suspected it.Caleb tapped his hand against his thigh, ash tumbling from the end of his cigarette onto the leg of his boot-cut jeans."He's not 'fooling' anyone, you know? It's really how he feels. You can tell. I mean, I wasn't sure at first, but you really can. My dad just doesn't want to see it.""How many other people has your daddy run his mouth to about this?" Bobby asked. Caleb shrugged. "Honestly? I don't know. John Winchester doesn't come up too much in conversation. He's still pretty new, and isn't much of a team player, you know what I mean. Doesn't have enough friends yet. I haven't heard Dad go off like that to someone else before tonight, and I'm with him most of the time. But I can't say for sure."Bobby nodded. "Alright. Listen, kid, you keep your nose clean, alright? I need to have a little talk with your daddy before I take off."Caleb watched Bobby walk back into the bar in silence, raising the cigarette once more to his lips. Bobby knew Caleb couldn't do what Bobby was about to, or maybe wouldn't was a better word. Bobby understood it. Not every man had the strength to pull a weapon on his own father.With self-assured grace, Bobby approached Abe, who was slumped over at the same table with his hands wrapped around his bottle. Abe looked up at Bobby just as Bobby was reaching out his hand to grab a fistful of Abe's collar and throw him bodily out of his seat, pinning him against the wall with one forearm across his chest and the other hand unsheathing his shiny silver hunting knife to rest it's edge against Abe's throat."Listen, Johnson. I know John Winchester doesn't have much weight to his name in our circles yet," Bobby growled, as some of the bar patrons at the neighboring tables nervously scurried away from the confrontation, while others just sat, observing with curiosity or indifference. "But I do. I got a lot of friends, and I hear a lot of things. And I swear to god, if I hear anyone else repeating this rumor about that boy Dean, even a whisper or an implication, no matter who says it, I'm holding you personally responsible. And if that ever happens, I will hunt you down and sink this knife so deep into the back of your skull it'll shatter your teeth on the way out the other side." He glared into Abe's eyes, pressed the knife closer, feeling the blade bob with Abe's throat as the man swallowed nervously. "Do we have an understanding?"A pause. Then, reluctantly, Abe nodded. Bobby eased up, lowering both arms and the knife. Blood welled up on Abe's neck where the blade had been pressed, and a couple drops trickled down into his wrinkled collar. "Good. I'll be seeing you around."Bobby drove back to Sioux Falls that night. He didn’t see any other cars on the road, which was lucky; he was normally pretty good about not driving under the influence. When he stumbled into the old house and made his way towards his bedroom, he stopped first, outside of the spare room that the Winchester boys stayed in when they were around. He’d bought another bed, after the second time they’d visited. The room was pretty bare, except the baseball card resting on the windowsill that Bobby had found when he had most recently remade the bed that Dean slept in. Not for the first time, Bobby wished he had a photo of those boys. Maybe he’d dig Karen’s old Polaroid camera out of the attic, next time.Bobby knew he oughta tell John about what happened, what Bobby knew now. But he was worried if he did, John would never bring Sam and Dean back around to his place again. So Bobby waited, until the next time John called him up about a hunt and showed up on his doorstep three days later with the boys in tow.They spent the day relaxing; Bobby played catch with Dean in the backyard while Sam tried to teach himself a card trick with the deck Bobby had given him for his birthday three months ago, the cards already worn and grubby. When the sun was high and hot, Bobby let Sam and Dean turn on the makeshift sprinkler he’d fabricated last year out of old pipes and hose connectors so they could run ‘round shirtless in the water and cool off. They played like that while he got venison burgers out of the basement freezer to thaw and set up the old grill.It was a nice day; even John looked happy and relaxed, kicked back with a beer and a couple of burgers, seated in one of Bobby’s ratty old lawn chairs, shooting the shit with Bobby while they watched the boys gallivant around catching lightning bugs after the sun had set. He let Sam stay up past the boy’s usual bedtime, and when Sam and Dean were finally sent off to shower and bed, they were both too happily worn out to protest.Bobby hadn’t intended to have the conversation on that first night, but the day had gone so well, and John was in such a good mood, he didn’t think there’d ever be a better time.They stayed in the backyard, sitting a few feet apart in matching lawn chairs, watching the coals in the grill glow as they slowly cooled. They talked amicably, about everything and nothing, until finally there was a long enough lull in the conversation that it felt like as good a time as any.“Listen, John, I got something I need to tell you,” Bobby said, tapping his fingers on the wooden arm of his chair. John was sharp, he could tell the conversation had turned, and he didn’t say anything, just waited in silence for Bobby to spit it out. “I ran into some old hunting buddies ‘bout a month ago. Got to talking, come to find out you were a mutual acquaintance. Abe Johnson and his boy, Caleb. You remember them?”Bobby could see the way John’s grip on his bottle became carefully relaxed.“Sure do,” John said, lifting it to take a drink in a way that was almost too casual. “What’d y’all talk about?”“Well,” Bobby started, reaching up to scratch at his hairline underneath his baseball cap. “I guess I’ll just come out and say it. Abe ran his mouth, let slip some stuff about Dean.” He paused, ran his tongue across his dry lips. “I don’t feel good telling you, John, but he said some nasty stuff about your boy. And then Caleb sort of cleared up the rest for me.”John’s grip on his bottle finally tightened, belying his tension. He was quiet for a long moment, but this time, it was Bobby's turn to wait to hear what he had to say.“Nasty stuff, huh?” John said, his voice resigned, maybe disappointed. “Didn’t know he felt that way.”“I know I don’t need to tell you this, John, but it’s not a good idea for a rumor like that to spread around. Wouldn’t be safe for Dean. You know that already, it’s why you never told me.” John nodded, staring at the ground in front of his feet, thumb running up and down the peeling label of his beer. “But you should know, I took care of it. I’m not too worried about Caleb; the kid’s alright, and he stuck up for your boy. And Abe… well, I took care of him. He won’t be running his mouth about Dean to anyone else, or he’ll have to answer to me.”John looked up at that, turned and met Bobby’s eyes appraisingly.“I swear to you, John. Dean’s safe with me. I’d never let anyone lay a hand on your boy, not while I’m around.” His eyes drifted down, settling on John’s hand around the bottle. “Not anyone.”The following morning, Bobby woke up early, like he’d promised John, to drive the hour and a half west and meet up with another hunter that was delivering some new fake IDs for the two of them. When he returned, John was hunched over the table in the library, reading up on some lore, and Sam was playing in the front yard.“Where’s Dean?” Bobby asked John, tossing John’s papers onto the table in front of him. John spared a glance before looking back down at his book.“Haven’t seen him since breakfast.”Bobby stood there, waiting to see if John had anything else to say about his missing eldest, but John just continued quietly reading, brow furrowed. “Alright, then. I have some work to do out in the yard. I’ll join you later in the afternoon.”John nodded, and Bobby went out to the front yard, stopping in front of Sam where the six-year-old was playing with some of the toys Bobby’d picked up at the Salvation Army in town.“Hi, Uncle Bobby!” Sam said, grinning up at him from the hard-packed dirt. “Hey, kid. You seen your brother around?” At the question, Sam’s face fell a bit, and he twisted up his mouth in a frown.“I think he’s hiding.”“Hiding? What the hell’s he hiding from?”Sam shrugged, sitting up onto his heels. “I dunno, he’s kinda upset I guess. Dad told us when we woke up, about how you know Dean’s secret now. He told us it was okay, you weren’t gonna tell anyone.” Sam let out a little sigh, made a childlike imitation of a ‘but what can you do?’ gesture. “But Dean got upset anyway.”Bobby heaved a shaky breath, trying to hide from Sam the way his words had hit him. He looked around the yard, at the dust and the shrubs and the beat up fence that led to the salvage, as though he’d see Dean just crouching down somewhere, easy to find. Trembling hands reached up, sweeping his baseball cap off his head and brushing back his hair. Why was Dean upset? Didn’t he believe his dad? He wasn’t… He couldn’t be scared of Bobby, could he?“Okay,” Bobby said. His voice sounded weak and far away in his own ears. “Okay, well, if you see him, why don’t you tell him…” He didn’t know how to finish the sentence. “I’m going to work in the salvage yard. He can come join me, if he wants.”“Okay,” Sam agreed, and returned to the toys while Bobby walked towards the fence, headed towards the workshop where he was fixing up a motorcycle.Bobby was distracted while he worked that morning, so much so that changing out the starter was taking him over an hour. He kept grabbing the wrong tools, fat thumbing the wires, and fumbling with the bolts, and after his third time getting up for the replacement and realizing it was the wrong one, he cursed and threw his socket wrench against the tin wall.It fell with a clatter, knocking over a box of loose lock washers, and Bobby heard a little sound as they spilled across the ground. He straightened immediately, about to rush over to the source of the noise, but thought better of it; he didn’t want to spook the kid.So Bobby stood up slowly, and made his way towards the big metal tool cabinet with the double doors and the broken latch, which was standing a few feet away from where the socket wrench had landed. Once he got there, he lowered himself to the ground in front of it, and leaned back against the left side door. The right door was ajar, just an inch or two. It was dark inside, and almost quiet, but this close, Bobby could hear a little movement.“That you in there, Dean?” Bobby asked, voice as gentle as he could make it. He heard a child-size shoe squeak as the boy’s foot shifted on the metal floor.“Yeah,” Dean reluctantly replied after a long moment of silence.So this was where Dean had run off to. Hidden inside the tool cabinet, the same one he’d used to hide in when he was a little younger and played Hide and Seek with Sam and Bobby. He must’ve known Bobby would have been in here, working on something that morning like he usually did. He’d wanted to hide from Bobby, maybe, but he’d wanted to be near him, too.“Thought you said you were too old for Hide and Seek last time y’all came around.”Dean didn’t reply that time. After waiting for a while, Bobby sighed.“So your daddy told you, huh? About what I know.”“Yeah.”“And he told you it’s okay, right? That I’m not gonna tell anyone, and you’re always safe here, right?”“Yeah.”“So then why are you hidin’ in my tool cabinet, son?”Dean shifted, and Bobby could almost hear him thinking about what he wanted to say.“I didn’t want you to look at me.”“Why wouldn’t you want me to look at you?”Bobby heard Dean make a shuddery inhale, and when he finally talked, it was like a dam had broken. “I really liked it here. We have fun every time we come. It’s not like it is in the motels, or at Pastor Jim’s. You treat me normal, just like anyone else. Dad said it was okay you know, but everyone who knows treats me weird. Everyone except for Dad and Sammy.”The dejection in Dean’s voice pained him. He could hear Dean fiddling with a tool or something, tapping it against his leg. “Who d’you mean, everyone?” he asked.“Just Pastor Jim and Abe and Caleb, I guess,” Dean answered. “Dad and Sammy don’t even notice, ‘cause they act normal to them.” Bobby could hear the kid tapping the tool on the metal cabinet floor, now. “Caleb’s okay, I guess, but he treats me different than Sammy. I'm not stupid, I can tell. And Pastor Jim, it’s like he doesn’t even wanna… Like looking at me makes him sad or something. And Dad’s friend Abe, he’s… He’s mean to me, when Dad’s not around.” Dean's voice got quiet at the end, tapered off after mentioning Abe's name. Bobby didn't want to know what kind of 'mean' it was that that grown man felt justified in being to a little boy, but from his encounter at the bar, he thought he had an idea. He didn't think he'd be sharing drinks with Abe Johnson again, not that he'd had the inclination to since the incident.“Well, Abe and Pastor Jim are idjits. I’m not. You think I’d do that? You think I’d look at you different? Is that why you didn’t want me to see you?”“Yeah.”Bobby turned, looked into the dark inside the cabinet through the crack in the door, where he could only just make out Dean’s bowed head and blond hair.“Dean, I swear to you. I won’t look at you, or treat you any different. Now, why don’t you come on out of my cabinet, and I can prove it to you.”Dean and Bobby were both silent as Dean mulled it over. It seemed finally that Dean concluded that he couldn’t stay in the cabinet forever, and he’d have to face Bobby anyway, soon. Bobby heard the tool clatter as Dean put it back in the rusty bucket he’d grabbed it out of, and then, slowly, the ajar cabinet door swung open. Bobby saw Dean’s narrowed, uncertain eyes before the light came in enough to highlight the rest of the boy’s face. Bobby met them without any fear of his own, those familiar green eyes that felt a little bit like home. Bobby often thought of them these days, and another pair, hazel, while he worked on cars or researched for hunts, wondering when would be the next time he saw them again. Always hoping it’d be soon.Dean’s face was as familiar to Bobby as those green eyes. His mouth, his ears, his straight nose, the freckles scattered across his pale cheeks, his expressive eyebrows. Bobby supposed to someone else maybe Dean’s face would look different, now, after finding out what Bobby had. Maybe they’d look differently at the softness of his cheeks and the bow of his lips and the way he held his slender shoulders and see something other than a hard-headed little boy.Not Bobby, though. ‘Cause he knew Dean better than most people. Dean still looked the same to him.Dean searched Bobby's face for any sign of the kind of look he'd been hiding from. Bobby knew in his bones the kid wasn't gonna find it. He'd never find it, and nobody else would, neither, no matter how long or hard they looked."Satisfied?" Bobby asked, after Dean had had his long, hard look. He braced himself against the cabinet and heaved himself up on the floor, stretched his tired back with a groan and then pulled open the cabinet door the rest of the way. "Why don't you get out of there and come make yourself useful. Y'ever worked on a Harley before?"Dean untangled his ten-year-old limbs, still childlike but promising future growth, and all but tumbled out of the cabinet onto his hands and knees before jumping to his feet. He scowled up at Bobby without any venom; there was relief in his expression. "If you tell Dad or Sammy I was hiding in there like a little bitch, I'll kick your ass," he said, with all the false bravado a child could muster.Bobby chuckled. "You sure got balls, kid, making threats like that when you can still fit into my tool cabinet."Dean laughed, a startled sound, and looked up at Bobby, and he didn't smile, not exactly, but Bobby could still see that a weight had lifted from his too-strong little shoulders.As the years passed, Dean and Sam got older. John stopped bringing them around near as often; he had started to get to know more hunters, make more connections, and had more people to team up with on hunts if he needed. Didn’t always want to make the trek to South Dakota when he could meet up with someone closer to his neck of the woods. Seemed to not particularly like the way Bobby treated them when they were around, either, letting them be kids instead of hunters. But they did still come, and they seemed a couple inches taller every time Bobby saw them.Bobby did his supernatural research, and he did some other research, too. About transsexuals. All he'd ever known about previously were the ones who called themselves ladies. Bobby'd never met one, though he'd seen them in the cities once or twice, turning tricks on the shadier streets. If one had ever crossed his path, Bobby would have been respectful, he's almost sure of it; but he's not sure he would have seen them, exactly, for the way they were. But they were like Dean. Bobby supposed, if they were like that, they didn't just call themselves ladies, they were ladies. Researching, he couldn't find much, at least not much that was altogether useful. It was pretty academic, dry, and sometimes difficult to get through. It didn't help him understand Dean any better. Bobby had known, understood who Dean was as a person before he'd found all this shit out. Learning statistics and probabilities didn't make Dean's issues with food much clearer than it was by just knowing that Dean wanted to be strong for his dad, for the hunt, and was harder on himself than pretty much any other young boy Bobby had ever met. And anything psychiatrists wrote in their academic papers and bullshit diagnostic manuals about what someone like Dean might want out of their body or their future was almost useless on the face of it; of course Dean would have male role models, of course he'd be interested in masculine hobbies, of course he'd want to grow up to look like a man, of course he'd act like a boy, he was a boy. Bobby didn't need to have wasted his time on pages of technical research to learn that Dean was just like any other boy on the planet.He did find some things useful, though. He hadn't known about hormone therapies, before. He'd known about surgeries - he'd read about one in the paper, once, a long time ago. Or rather, his father had, aloud, in an incredulous and maybe disgusted voice. So he'd known about that, at least for the woman ones. But he hadn't known there were hormone therapies that could change your body like that, out there, and there were ones for the men, too. He sat on that knowledge for a while, thinking about Dean putting on a swagger and a fake mustache and pretending to be the Sundance Kid while he acted out his favorite scenes from the film. Finally, one night, Bobby drank enough whiskey not to worry about John thinking he was overstepping, and sent the information his way. Just so John would know, too. It was useful information, it could come in handy.One day in early February of 1992, Bobby’s TV show was interrupted by energetic knocking at his front door. He hadn’t been expecting guests, especially not after business hours in the middle of a winter snowfall, so he picked up his shotgun and a flask of holy water on his way to answer.“Who is it?” Bobby asked gruffly through the door.“David Hasselhoff!” a familiar voice answered back.Bobby threw open the door to see Dean Winchester, grinning a crooked grin, standing alone on his front porch. Shotgun still cocked, he looked Dean up and down. At fourteen, Dean was still shorter than Bobby was, but much too big to fit inside his old tool cabinet anymore. The kid was wearing his beat-up pair of work boots, and both them and his jeans - all the way from the hems up to the knees - were soaked through with snowmelt from the road. His quilted canvas jacket was zipped up over several layers of flannel, and his battered duffel bag was slung over his shoulder. He’d pulled his hand away from the door when Bobby’d opened it, and was now rubbing his bare hands together, trying to get the blood to flow. He was shivering, but trying not to show it. A dusting of fat snowflakes were melting on his shoulders and hair.Bobby leaned out, looking around the porch and past Dean into the yard, looking for some signs of the boy’s father or brother, or even the Impala. But the rest of the yard was empty.“Aw, come on, Uncle Bobby, ain’t you gonna invite me in? Or are you gonna point that thing at me all day?”Lowering his shotgun, Bobby reached into his pocket for the flask and pulled it out, flinging the holy water with a deft splash across Dean’s face.“Didn’t your daddy ever teach you it’s rude to show up unannounced?” Bobby asked as Dean sputtered and reached up to wipe the water out of his eyes. He stepped aside, giving Dean room to enter.“What the hell, are you trying to give me frostbite?” asked Dean as he stumbled half-blind over the threshold. Then, with the hint of a youthful pout, “Sorry, I didn’t think you’d mind.”“Not that I mind the visit, kid, but I could’ve been anywhere. What would you have done if you’d showed up and I was out of town? Freeze to death on my front porch?”“Like I couldn’t’ve broken in if I really needed to.”“I booby trap the house when I’m out. But I guess bleedin’ to death in the hall is more respectable than freezin’ to death on the porch.”Bobby shut the door, and Dean frowned and tucked his hands under his armpits, hunching up his shoulders against the chill that was still making him shiver. Bobby sighed, reached over to squeeze Dean’s shoulder, ruffle his hair. Dean ducked his head, but Bobby could feel him lean into the touch. “Come on, kid, you know you’re always welcome. I’m just saying, pick up the phone first next time.” He closed the door and turned the bolt. “Now, what the hell are you doin’ here? Where’s John and your brother?” Worry suddenly struck Bobby, cold in his chest. “Are they alright? Are you alright?”Dean shrugged, eyes still down-turned. “Yeah, Dad and Sammy are fine. Dad’s on a hunt somewhere in Missouri, and Sammy’s in Fort Dodge with Caleb. And I uh, I just thought, you know, it’s been a long time. Maybe I’d come pay you a visit, cheer you up a little.”Bobby squeezed Dean’s shoulder again, assessing his defensive posture. With a final pat, he let Dean go and stepped away towards the kitchen. He didn’t think Dean was lying to him, but he knew the boy wasn’t being fully honest.“Why don’t you get out of those wet boots and put them by the fire. And change out of those clothes, I don’t want you catchin’ cold on my watch. I’ll get you some hot chocolate and somethin’ to eat, and then you can give me some answers.”A short while later, Dean was sitting in front of the fireplace clad in dry jeans, a pair of Bobby’s thick wool socks, and swimming in Bobby’s old fisherman sweater (the only sweater that Karen had ever knitted for him, because she hadn't liked the hobby like she'd thought she would; he hadn't worn it in what felt like a lifetime). Dean was happily chowing down on reheated lasagna and stale hot chocolate while he told Bobby about his trip. He’d scrounged up his change for the two-hour bus ticket from Fort Dodge to Sioux City, Iowa, where he’d hitched a ride with a friendly trucker - Bobby seemingly succeeded at hiding his heart attack at the thought of the fourteen-year-old locked in a truck with some stranger - that had taken Dean most of the way to Sioux Falls. Then, Dean had walked forty minutes in the falling snow to Singer Salvage, his duffel on his back.“I always wanted to hitchhike,” Dean said with his mouth full. A bit of noodle sprayed out of his mouth and landed on his hand, and he licked it off. “But it wasn’t all the movies crack it up to be. The guy didn’t even play any music, just listened to golf on the radio. Golf. But hey, at least he didn’t go all Leatherface on me.” He grinned up at Bobby, who was watching him from his chair, arms crossed, unimpressed.“Does your daddy know you’re here?” Bobby asked, and Dean’s face fell. He swallowed and stabbed at the lasagna. “He doesn’t, does he? What d’you think he’d say if he knew you’d left Sam all alone?”“Sammy’s not alone, he’s with Caleb. He’s fine. And I’m not his fucking dad, why do I always have to be the one looking after him?” He was bent over, back tense, suddenly angry; voice rising like he wanted to yell. Then, suddenly, he deflated. He looked over at Bobby, and whatever frustration had overwhelmed him a moment ago, and even whatever forced swagger had helped him paste the grin on his face when he’d showed up at Bobby’s door, was gone. In its place was a tired expression. “Sorry, Uncle Bobby. I didn’t mean that.”Bobby cleared his throat, shook his head. “Naw, don’t worry about it, kid. I get it.”Dean curled his hands around his mug and stared into the crackling fire. “You’re not gonna tell my dad, are you?”“What do you think he’s gonna do, if he finds out you’re gone and I never told him you’d dropped by my place?” John’d tear up half the midwest looking for his eldest, and then tear Bobby a new one once he found out Bobby had known where he was the whole time.Dean shook his head. “Dad just left on his hunt, he’s not gonna be back for at least a week, and I was only planning on stayin’ a couple of days! Dad won’t ever know I’m gone, I swear!”“What about Sam and Caleb? Won’t they notice? Call your dad?”“They think I’m doing research at the motel. The room only has one bed, and Sammy wanted his own and Caleb promised to teach him how to throw knives, that’s why he wanted to stay with him. I just have to call once a day to touch base, they won’t find out. I promise, Uncle Bobby, please let me stay.”Dean’s eyes were wide and pleading. Bobby saw something in his face. He didn’t know what Dean was running away from, this time, but something told him Dean needed this. He needed to be here with Bobby, right now. And there was a selfish part of Bobby that felt glad, noticing that; his boy needed him.“Alright, y'idjit. You can stay. But just for tomorrow; then the day after, I'm driving you back to Fort Dodge.""You don't have to do that," Dean muttered, still obstinate in his relief, the tip of his nose pressed against the side of his mug. "I got here fine on my own."But Bobby just waved him off. "You kidding? Maybe you'd get back just fine, but I'd be left here worryin' sick that you'd ended up buried in a snowbank on the side of the road somewhere. I'll be doin' myself a favor."After Dean finished his meal (if you could call it that), he went and got the sheets and blankets out of the linen closet and made the same twin bed he'd always slept on since his first stay six years ago. Bobby got to work putting out the glowing embers of the dying fire. He checked Dean's boots, which had been set just a foot away from the fireplace to dry; they were still damp, but no longer soaked. They'd likely be fine by morning.Come morning, Bobby opened the door to Dean’s room and hit the sleeping teen with a bundle of his own dry boots and some snow clothes that Bobby had dug up from the back of his closet. The kid awoke with a startled yell, shooting halfway up with a hand scrambling fruitlessly under his pillow for a knife that he’d obviously forgotten to put there.“Come on, get up and put those on.”Dean squinted at the pale curtains hanging over the window and tried to rub the sleep out of his eyes. “It’s not even light out!”“What, did you think you were gonna run away from home and just get to sleep in and laze around all day? Get those clothes on. We’ve got a long day ahead of us.”Bemused, Dean heaved himself up until he was sitting, the blankets falling away to pool at his hips. He started sorting through the bundle of clothes Bobby had hit him with, tossing his boots onto the floor beside his bed. The knit shirt he had worn to sleep had undoubtedly been John's, once, if the size of it was any indication; the neck of the shirt hung off Dean's smaller frame, gaping open in front of him, and Bobby suddenly, inadvertently noticed that the kid’s chest had grown a fair bit since last time he’d been tousling shirtless with his little brother in Bobby’s yard. Bobby quickly averted his eyes, trying not to let on to Dean that he’d seen or reacted to anything. He’d like to forget about it, pretend he'd never seen it even to himself, but he couldn't help but wonder how Dean felt. It didn't take a genius to know what Dean dreamed of looking like when he grew up; all the movie stars that he looked up to, and the way he modeled himself after his own father to the best of his limited ability (because Dean wasn't anything like John, and Bobby didn't think that was such a bad thing). Dean didn't ever bring up his situation to Bobby, and Bobby followed his lead in pretending that it didn't exist. But Dean wouldn't be able to pretend forever - the world wasn't kind enough to give him that leisure - and the discomfort Bobby felt, ruminating on whether his threat to Abe Johnson would be enough to keep Dean safe as his body changed, was a dull and unpleasant ache in Bobby's chest.“I’ll be in the kitchen. Meet me there in ten. Ten minutes, boy, I’m warning you.”“Yeah, yeah, alright.”Bobby was just finishing putting together their packs when, eight minutes later, Dean entered the kitchen looking petulant in the clothes Bobby’d given him to wear. Bobby made an effort not to crack a smile: Dean was bundled up in slightly too-big snow-pants and Karen’s old, purple down trench coat. Not exactly his usual style.“Yuk it up, Uncle Bobby. Is this some sort of joke? What do I need to be wearing this shit for?”“Because we’re going on a hike, and I don’t want you getting hypothermia on my watch. So humor me.”“I look like Grimace. I’m just waiting for Ronald McDonald to pull up in his friggin’ McSplorer.”“Are you wearing the long underwear?”“Yes, I’m wearing the friggin’ long underwear! So are we going, or what?”Bobby had already started the truck to get the heat going; they threw their packs behind the seats and headed northwest. Bobby let Dean choose the radio station. It had stopped snowing sometime during the night, leaving a smooth, unblemished layer across the landscape. It was quiet. The scenery passed by outside the truck windows, the snow turning slowly from grey to white as the sun rose.Dean looked around, curious, when Bobby finally pulled to the side of the road and parked the truck. They were surrounded by trees and snow. Dean, who had removed the purple trench coat during the drive since the heater was on, pulled it back over his shoulders as he stepped down out of the truck, fumbling to pull the zipper closed with a shiver. “Here,” Bobby said, tossing him a pair of mittens and a knit wool cap as he lugged out the packed bags. “Don’t wanna get frostbite. And take this.” He gently threw one of the two packs at Dean, who deftly caught it against his chest.“Where are we?” Dean asked, staring up and around at the tall, snow-laden trees as he swung the backpack over his shoulder. “And what are we doing here?”“We’re a bit northeast of the Crow Creek Reservation. And we’re going on a hike. So make sure you got your boots laced and follow me.” Bobby reached into the trunk and pulled out the long, zippered tarp bag he'd stored in it that morning and threw the strap over his shoulder on top of his backpack."What's in there?" asked Dean, still not ready to accept that Bobby had planned this whole outing to be a surprise. Bobby shook his head and smiled. "You'll see soon enough, kid."Bobby led Dean along the familiar route. There wasn’t a marked path, but he knew the way intimately; Bobby had been coming here for a long time. He placed his feet carefully, making his way easily over the tangle of tree roots and fallen branches under the snow, while Dean slipped and stumbled close behind him. The snow made the hike longer than it usually was the rest of the year, but that was fine; the weather was part of the reason Bobby had wanted to bring Dean here today.When they finally stepped down the short bank and the clearing came into view, Bobby could hear Dean’s gasp. It was like out of a picture book: the large, flat lake, lined with smooth boulders and surrounded by white-covered trees older than Bobby’s great-grandpa. In the summer, the water was a swimming hole, clear and tranquil, the surrounding trees lush and green and perfect shade for keeping out the heat. In the winter months, like now, the bank was carpeted in white and the lake was frozen solid.Bobby smiled as Dean gazed around the lake with wide eyes, his wool hat pulled down over his ears and his nose turning red. "There's a thermos in your bag, it's got hot coffee in it. Got you a couple sandwiches wrapped up in there, too. Time for breakfast, kid."They laid out a tarp that Bobby had folded up in his bag over the snow by the lakeside to sit on. Dean started in on one of the sandwiches immediately, choosing the ham and cheese, and chasing it down with the steaming coffee."How'd you find this place, Uncle Bobby?" he asked, still in awe of the picturesque serenity surrounding him."I was in high school." At Dean's expression, Bobby chuckled. "Yeah, I was young once, too. And an athlete, if you can believe it. I was on the baseball and hockey teams from, oh, sixth grade 'til I left high school. And I had a good buddy back then, Chayton Howe; we were on the hockey team together. His family lived on the rez, but the government had taken him away to live with a white aunt in Sioux Falls. Not a blood relative; I think she had married his late uncle, maybe. Chayton didn't talk about her, much."Dean was listening with rapt attention while he chewed his sandwich. It felt good, talking about these memories; happy ones, the kind he didn't make much of these days."Chayton was the one who showed me this place. He didn't have a car, or any spending money for the bus. My mom used to let me take the old pickup truck on the weekends, and I would use it to drive Chayton back to Crow Creek so he could visit his parents. No one was supposed to know about it, so I always told my mom I was going fishing, or doing an odd job in the next town over. I'd drop him off, give them a few hours while I found something to do in the towns nearby. Sometimes they'd invite me to stay for dinner when I went to pick him back up."Some days, instead of visiting his family, he just wanted to be outdoors, here. We went hiking together. We tracked deer, picked chokecherries for him to take home to his ma. I don't remember the first time he brought me here, or what time of year it was. We came here so often, the days all just sort of blended together. But in the winter months, we used to bring our skates here to practice."This was the first time he'd spoken of Chayton aloud in years, despite that he was probably the best friend he'd ever had other than Rufus. Bobby wasn't sure he'd ever even talked to Karen about him. He'd lost contact with Chayton after dropping out of high school - lost contact with near everyone he'd ever known, for a while - and never saw him around town again after that. Chayton had always said he'd find a way back to Crow Creek one day, but Bobby'd looked him up a few years back in the county records, and it turned out he went to college somewhere north. In the back of his mind, he still thought maybe they'd run into each other again at the lake, older and greyer, and still friends."My mom always wanted grandkids. I guess you probably noticed I never gave her any. But when I was younger, I always thought if I had a son one day, on the hockey team, I'd take him here to practice."He reached out and patted Dean's booted ankle, gave him a smile and a wink. "Now, I know you're not on the hockey team. But I figured, you can always learn."A part of Bobby didn't want to look at Dean's face after saying that; Dean had a father, one that he loved and idolized, and Bobby'd just all but told him he thought of Dean as his son, too. Dean might not like it, it might make him uncomfortable. But he pushed past his nerves and looked at Dean, who was gazing intently at him. Dean met Bobby's eyes without flinching; Bobby wasn't sure exactly what he saw there, but it wasn't protestation. It was something more vulnerable, more raw, and it was heavy. Bobby couldn't look away, so Dean did first, rubbed his cold nose with a sniffle as he looked out at the frozen lake, and then back at Bobby with a smile. "We're playing hockey?" he asked."That we are," Bobby nodded, patting the zippered tarp bag next to him, where two battered hockey sticks were stored. "As soon as you finish your breakfast."Bobby helped Dean locate the old ice skates he'd tucked into the bottom of Dean's bag, and demonstrated with his own pair how to strap them to his boots. They were the old kind, the kind Bobby had learned on in his youth, two parallel blades of metal with a tangle of straps that Bobby'd repaired countless times. As soon as Dean was confident that they were on tight, he heaved himself up onto his feet in the snow and held out his arms to get used to the feeling. He looked nervous, balancing on his newly-bladed boots and looking out at the flat expanse of ice. "We can't fall through, right?" he asked."The water's only a few feet deep, it's frozen solid this time of year. Relax, Dean, don't think about it too much.""What about the hockey stick?" He turned back towards Bobby, reaching out his hand to take a stick the same way he would reach out to take a gun from his dad."Let's get you on the ice first, I don’t think you're ready to skate and hold a stick at the same time."Dean was not a natural. Despite his athleticism and combat skills, his balance on the ice left much to be desired. Bobby couldn’t help but laugh as he tried to guide Dean around the perimeter of the lake, the kid flailing all the way. It took a few hours before Dean could navigate unassisted and stay upright, but he did it, and there was a peculiar, gentle sort of pride Bobby felt, deep in his gut, as he watched Dean slowly wobble his way around the lake with his arms out at his sides.“Check it out, Uncle Bobby!” he crowed, turning his head to look back at Bobby over his shoulder, “I’m a natural!” Promptly, his legs shot out from under him and he fell into a convenient snow drift.After lunch, Bobby thought it was time to try using the sticks. He showed Dean how to hold them properly on solid ground before gliding back onto the ice himself. He was older and out of practice, but the scrape of his skates on the ice and the sweep of his hockey stick was still familiar. The hockey stick put Dean further off balance, but he quickly reoriented himself with the skills he’d developed over the morning, and by the time Bobby gave him a beat-up puck to sweep across the ice, he was still unsteady but he didn’t come close to falling.The sun got high and then started to get low again while they played. They both warmed up from the exercise, enough to take off their jackets. Bobby didn’t know when was the last time he’d laughed that much, got that winded; Dean, too, was beaming and carefree in his snow-pants, dripping sweat down his forehead.“The sun’s going down soon,” Bobby told him; the trees were casting long shadows across the lake, the snow starting to look more blue than white. “We oughtta start heading back, kid.”They were standing maybe fifteen feet away from each other on the ice, and Dean had just managed to hit the puck past Bobby to the far side of the lake. His shoulders rose and fell as he breathed heavily, bent over with the hockey stick held tight in his mittened hands and braced against his knees. Dean had always been expressive; even when he was trying not to show his emotions, they were broadcast off him by the curve of his brows and the tightness of his jaw, the way he held himself, the green of his eyes. The look he had, then, as he gazed at Bobby, was gleaming, so bright it near hurt to look at. His open-mouthed grin, his cold-reddened nose dripping snot onto his full upper lip, the light in his eyes, the gentle curves of his beautiful face; he was looking at Bobby like he’d hung the moon. I’m responsible for this kid, Bobby thought, not for the first time and not for the last. I’m responsible for him. He felt it, a burning ache in his chest. He wanted to cry. “Okay,” Dean finally agreed, straightening, wiping his nose on his sleeve. “But you’re only saying that because I finally got one past you.”“If it helps you sleep tonight, kid, I’m okay with you telling yourself that.”They took off their skates and packed up their bags and made the trek back to the truck. As Bobby drove them home, Dean leaned his forehead against the cool glass of the window. Bobby heard him let out a contented sigh.“Today was awesome.” Bobby glanced over and saw Dean’s eyes drift shut, and Bobby let him fall asleep to the sound of the classic rock playing quietly over the radio.He drove Dean back to Fort Dodge the next day, bought him a greasy breakfast on the way there. As he watched Dean get smaller in this rear-view mirror, waving from outside his motel room, Bobby hoped that whatever Dean had been looking for that weekend at Bobby’s house, he’d been able to give it to him.Bobby didn't need to wait too long to see Dean again, because only a few months later, after spring had melted the snow and summer had cleared the sky, John showed up at his door with his kids in tow; Dean sporting circles black as bruises under his eyes, freckles looking painted onto his gaunt and pallid face, and bandages wrapped tight around his flat chest.John's shoulders were heavy with shame, and Sam's were heavy with anger, and Dean's were just plain heavy. Just walking from the Impala parked in the yard to the spare bedroom tired Dean out, and he lay down to sleep mere minutes after Bobby let the Winchesters in the door. Sam and John made no move to follow him; Sam stared at the floor with his arms crossed, and John turned back around to unload the rest of their bags from the car.So Bobby went in after Dean with a glass of water and a few extra pillows from Bobby’s own bed, in case the kid wanted to be propped up. When he went in, Dean was on the bed already, with his eyes drifting closed.“Hey, Uncle Bobby,” he whispered, as Bobby brought the pillows over and put the glass down on the rickety bedside table.“How you doin’, kid?” Bobby asked. “Need something to drink?”Dean shook his head, a tiny movement. His hair had grown out a bit - he’d obviously been due for a cut before he’d landed in the hospital, and hadn’t had one since - and the dark blond hair on his forehead was damp with sweat."’M hot,” Dean said. “Dad made me take th’ pills even though I said I didn’ wan’em. Don’ like how they make me feel.” Dean was lying on top of the blankets, still dressed in blue jeans and a plaid overshirt that was buttoned up halfway, letting his bandages peek through. “That’s alright, kid. Here, sit up. Let’s get you out of those clothes. That’s why you’re hot.”He helped Dean sit up a bit, propped several pillows under his shoulders; Dean screwed up his face in a wince, but didn’t make a noise. With a tenderness Bobby hadn’t known he was capable of, Bobby undid the buttons of Dean’s overshirt and helped pull it back off his shoulders before he slowly eased each arm out of the long sleeves. Underneath, he was only wearing gauze wrapped in ace bandages.Dean was barefoot and wearing hospital-issued slides, and Bobby pulled those off for him while he let Dean try to undo his jeans button by himself first. But the boy’s fingers were clumsy and weak, and he gave up shortly. He looked up at Bobby and gave him a tired nod of permission, and Bobby undid his jeans for him, too, and finished undressing Dean until he was left in his boxer briefs.“Here, son, you really oughtta have something to drink.” He held the glass up, and Dean relented, allowing Bobby to help him take a few sips. “I’m gonna go get you a sheet and some ice. Sit tight.” He patted Dean’s ankle and gave it a squeeze. John still hadn’t come back in from the car when Bobby went to the kitchen, and Sam was gone, too. Bobby grabbed a few empty ice packs from under the sink and filled them with ice from the downstairs freezer, then stopped by the linen closet on the way back to the spare bedroom to grab a sheet for Dean to use as a blanket instead of the heavier ones he was laying on top of.Dean was limp on the bed when Bobby reentered, looking deep asleep, but when Bobby threw the sheet over him he opened his eyes slowly.“This’ll help,” Bobby told him, assisting Dean in tucking an ice pack under each arm and putting the last one on his bandaged chest. “Feel better?”A tired nod; Dean looked at Bobby with unfocused, heavy-lidded eyes.“Dad and Sammy keep lookin’ at me like I’m gonna break down and cry like a li'l girl.” Dean’s voice was tired, a little higher than it usually was with his chest too weak to really control it. “Like what happened was the… The worst thing in the world.”Bobby licked his lips, uncertain of how to respond. Dean was high on pain meds and half asleep, and John hadn’t given Bobby all the details of the black dog attack, but Bobby knew enough about black dogs to know that Dean was unspeakably lucky to be alive. When John had called him to tell him what had happened, Bobby had nearly collapsed onto the library table with the force of the emotions that had overtaken him - the fear for Dean combined with the relief that he had survived and anger that John had allowed it to happen.With a sigh, Dean allowed his eyes to drift closed. “It hurt like hell,” he whispered, “Don’ get me wrong. But it was always goin’ t’hurt, wasn’t it?” His voice continued to taper off, but his eyes flickered open again, for just a moment, meeting Bobby’s uncertain gaze. “However it happened, it was gonna hurt…”“I guess so,” Bobby agreed, and Dean nodded, lifted one hand to press flat against his chest. His lips flickered into a small smile.“Yeah.”Bobby cleared his throat. “You need anythin’ else, before I leave?”“Socks.”Bobby raised his eyebrows. “Socks?” He turned to the dresser, opened the drawer and found a pair of clean ones that Dean had left on one of his previous visits. The kids usually left an outfit or two in the dresser, in case they had to drop by in a hurry with no change of clothes. He brought the socks over to Dean, who held out his hand. It trembled, pale, nails grown out too long, blue veins standing out on his forearm. “Do you want me to put them on for you?”Dean just shook his head, kept his hand outstretched despite the effort Bobby could see it was taking.Ah. Bobby thought he understood.The house was quiet for the rest of the afternoon. John brought some food into the spare room for Dean at dinner time, helped him eat it while Bobby and Sam ate at the table."Can the boys stay here a while? While Dean heals up?" John asked him that night, after Sam had gone to bed as well."You know you don't even have to ask." His voice was flat. Judgmental. He wasn't doing John any favors; he did it for those boys. With a sigh, Bobby filled a glass with whiskey and slammed it on the table in front of John's face. "Drink up, you dumb fuck. You'll need it."Sam and Dean stayed with Bobby for a few months. For the first couple of weeks, Dean could barely do more than get out of bed and make his way to either the bathroom or the kitchen table. He couldn't raise his elbows more than a couple inches without his face twisting up in agony, which was fine because the doctor had instructed him not to do that, anyway, before he'd been discharged.If only Dean wasn’t a hard-headed, stubborn fool who hated having anyone else do anything for him. Despite telling Dean to come get him if he needed anything in the kitchen, even if he had to wake him up to do so, Bobby had caught Dean twice hissing in a pained grimace, struggling to lift a glass down from the cupboard to pour himself some water from the tap. After the second time, Bobby kept some clean dishes and glasses on the countertop, and Dean’s favorite snacks on the most accessible shelves of the fridge and pantry. He didn’t say a word about it, and neither did Dean; if there’d been some sort of conversation, Dean wouldn’t have accepted being coddled.John left. Dean got better.Bobby took care to keep the boys well-fed. Sam enjoyed having what amounted to a real summer vacation: playing in the yard, sometimes going fishing with Bobby while Dean slept; then, playing with Dean, once Dean got well enough for light exercise and could lift up his arms enough to play gentle games of catch.Sam told Dean to go easy on him and not throw it too hard, since Sam was out of practice, and Sam would throw the ball back just as softly. Dean knew that Sam was just trying to make Dean go easy on himself, but he let him do it, just like he let Bobby put the dishes on the counter.When the summer was drawing to a close, Dean was better. After he was given the green light to start training again, he started eating more and putting back on the weight he’d lost in the hospital. The dark circles had faded from under his eyes, he could move around almost as easy as he had before, and his wounds had healed enough that he didn’t need any gauze.One night, just a few days before John would come to collect his boys and take them away from him again, Bobby heard off-tune humming from the bathroom. It was a warm night, and the windows were open, letting the sounds of cicadas drift inside to fill the house with their comforting song. Bobby had stepped into the hall with a sweating beer in hand and saw the bathroom door half-open. Light was spilling out and Dean was inside, standing in front of the mirror, humming Metallica under his breath while he brushed his teeth, shirtless.He spat toothpaste into the sink and rinsed his mouth, and grinned at his reflection. Bobby watched him turn his body, twist his shoulders, flex his arms. The scars on his chest were a patchwork, still mostly purple and a little pink. The kind of scars Bobby was used to seeing on seasoned hunters with years of experience and life under their belts, even if they were a bit more surgical than most, having been closed up with a tighter, neater stitch than dental floss and sewing needles could offer. But Bobby could tell Dean wasn’t looking at the scars, not exactly; he was looking at his chest, at the shape of it. And he looked… satisfied.Bobby remembered the winter morning just a few months before, accidentally catching a glimpse of Dean through the neck of his baggy shirt. He had wondered how Dean felt about it, then. But he didn’t have to wonder how Dean felt now; he could see it, clear as day.“Lookin’ good, kid,” Bobby spoke up, and Dean turned his head away from the mirror with a start. “But you still can’t hold a tune.”Dean just grinned.John didn’t bring the boys around again for a long time after that. Bobby thought it was probably shame that kept him away. Sure, Bobby'd been a useful babysitter when John wasn't around, but the man didn't want to face someone who knew what he'd let happen to his oldest son.Bobby thought about picking up the phone to call Sam or Dean a few times, just to check in. But his own nerves and insecurities held him back. He didn't know what to say, how to talk to them, how to carry a conversation. It was one thing to spend quality time with them in person; he could teach them and play with them and just spend time in the same room in companionable silence. Over the phone, conversation could be awkward, stilted, uncertain. Kids didn't want to spend time talking to an old man, even if he was their "uncle". If they wanted to talk, they'd call him. And he'd always answer. A few years passed; the boys came to stay for a weekend or two. Dean wasn't so much a little kid anymore, he was growing tall, he'd be as tall as Bobby one day. Maybe taller. And Sam, he would definitely be taller.One night, Bobby answered one of his phones to hear Caleb Johnson greeting him from the other side of the line."Bobby Singer? It's Caleb. Been a while.""Sure has." Bobby hadn't spoken to Abe again since that night nearly a decade ago, though he'd kept his ear to the ground to make sure the man kept his word. "What do you want?""There's a hunt. My dad, he passed it up. Doesn't want anythin' to do with it. I, uh, wouldn't mind takin' it myself, but I actually… I wondered if you could pass it along to John Winchester. I think he'd like to take it."Bobby raised his eyebrows and kicked back in his seat, his curiosity piqued."Oh yeah? What's the monster of the week? Something really special?""Not exactly. It's a basic haunt. It's not the hunt, exactly, that I think John would be interested in. It's the people being haunted. It's, ah, it's a medical office. That issues prescriptions to, uh, to transsexuals."Bobby's feet fell back to the floor with a thud. "I see.""Yeah." Bobby could actually hear Caleb scratching his goatee through the phone. "Like I said, I could take it myself. But it occurred to me, maybe John might be able to do a little quid pro quo on this one. For, you know." He coughed uncomfortably."Right." Bobby thought of the last time he'd seen Dean over one of the few weekends he'd had in the past few years. He was - what, eighteen now? - and he'd only just turned that the last time Bobby'd seen him. He'd been worried, once, that growing up wouldn't be good to Dean; that the unavoidable passage of time would strip from him the ability to have people see him for who he was. But Dean was tall, square, and butch enough, despite his pretty features, to pass as a teenage boy to the people who didn't know he was a man now. Despite that good grace, Bobby knew Dean didn't want to look like a kid the rest of his life. "Alright, Caleb. Give me the details and I'll pass them on."John sounded reluctant when he answered Bobby's call, but he did answer it, as Bobby had known he would. He always did, because no matter how little John wanted to feel someone else's judgment - it was too close to allowing himself to feel his own - he knew that when Bobby called, it was important.When Bobby relayed Caleb's information on the hunt, on the doctor who was seeking help and what he might be able to do for Dean, John was quiet. Bobby wondered how often John had thought about this since years ago, when Bobby had first told him about hormone therapies."This is good intel, Singer. Thank you."That was all John said before hanging up, but Bobby felt hopeful when he went to sleep that night.Near on three years went by, but it felt a lot shorter, before the next time Bobby got a phone call from one of John Winchester's many burner phones. But it wasn't John's voice that greeted him; it was a voice that Bobby had never heard before."Who is this?" Bobby asked, mustering enough vinegar into his tone to curdle milk. The strange voice chuckled, and its deep, resonant laugh was both familiar and unfamiliar all at once. "Patrick Swayze," the voice replied."Dean? ""The one and only."Dumbstruck, Bobby braced himself against his phone wall with one hand. He could hear it now, the tone and inflection that so clearly belonged to John's eldest son, the gruff way Dean pitched it lower to sound more like his dad. Bobby felt his eyes growing misty, an achy feeling spreading through his chest as he wondered what Dean looked like, now, if that's how his voice sounded."You couldn't've picked up the damn phone sometime in the last two years so I had a little warning before you called up sounding like James Earl Jones?""I dunno, Uncle Bobby, I didn't think you'd miss all the voice cracks every two minutes.""I missed you, kid."There was silence on the other line. When Dean spoke up again, there was a tremor in his voice, nearly imperceptible, but there."Yeah, I missed you too.""So, what'd you need?""I just… You haven't heard from Sammy recently, have you?""No, seems like one thing you two have in common is being unable to pick up a phone. Why?"Dean was silent for a few moments, the pause making Bobby nervous."It's nothing," he finally managed, in the type of way that sounded like a lie. "He's just been acting weird lately, like more of a bitch than usual, and I just thought… I don't know what I thought. Maybe… Sorry. Never mind. It's nothing. Seeya soon, Uncle Bobby.""Now, just hold it there a minute, son," Bobby started, but then there was a click and suddenly he was just talking to a dial tone. Bobby stared at the phone in disbelief. He tried to redial, but Dean didn't pick up. He didn't bother trying another phone; if Dean didn't want to answer, he wouldn't.Sam wouldn't answer his phone, either, which was par for the course. When he tried to call John, it went straight to voicemail, a sign that either John's phone was broken or the man was working somewhere with no reception. He left John a message that he ought to check on his boys, because something was going on and Bobby didn't like the feeling in his gut.John returned Bobby's call five days later to ask, voice deceptively calm, if he could bring the boys by for a few nights on the way to a hunt. He showed up on the doorstep twenty hours later with two angry boys in tow."Well howdy," Bobby greeted them sarcastically, "Aren't your happy, smiling faces just a sight for sore eyes."Sam, thin as a beanpole and tall - taller than even John, now - was sporting his signature scowl, ardently looking off and away, avoiding eye contact with his dad, brother, or Bobby. Dean had his hands shoved into his pockets and was glaring at the floor in front of his feet, a furrow between his eyebrows and lips pressed thin. John was the only who would make eye contact with Bobby, but he didn't look happy about it. "Can it, Singer, we're not in the mood." He put a big hand on both his boys' backs and pushed them through the doorway. He didn't bother to step in after them to see them get settled. "You keep an eye on these idiots until I get back. That one, especially." He jutted his chin at Sam, who let out a huff and rolled his eyes in anger."Back off, Dad.""You watch your tone with me, boy.""What the hell is going on here?" Bobby interrupted the impending argument, looking between the three Winchesters with exasperation. "I agreed to let the boys stay a while, I didn't say anything about playing intermediary for a pissy game of face-off.""Just keep them here. I'll be back in a few days."John turned around and stalked back to his car, anger still obvious with every fall of his foot against the gravel. Sam shoved past Bobby and Dean, hitching his bag tighter over his shoulder."You still have that cot in the basement, Uncle Bobby? I think I want my own room while I'm here. I'll set it up in the library."Clearly not about to get anything resembling a polite conversation from the youngest Winchester, Bobby waved his hand in surrender."Be my guest."Without another word, Sam stomped away towards the basement, leaving Bobby standing in quiet bewilderment next to Dean.Dean was still frowning at the ground when Bobby turned to face him, his own bag digging into his shoulder and his hands still shoved in his pockets. The young man made no movement when he heard the familiar rumble of the Impala's motor turning over, though Bobby could see the way his muscles tensed as they listened to the car driving away."Dean? Is there something I oughtta know?" Bobby asked.Dean shrugged. "Can it wait? I've been stuck in a car for almost a day with Balboa and Creed there. Rocky I Balboa and Creed, not Rocky III. I just wanna get some sleep."Bobby sighed, removed his cap and smoothed his hair down. "Alright. Alright, that's fine."Dean made to step away towards the boys' room, but Bobby held out a hand, planting it firmly against the front of his left shoulder, stopping him in his tracks."Whoa there, Dean. Let me get a good look at you, first."Dean's surprise at Bobby's request seemed to distract him from his anger; he finally looked up from the floor and made eye contact with Bobby, lips parted slightly.Without his slumped shoulders and down-turned head, Bobby noticed that Dean was finally taller than him, now. His chest under Bobby's palm was flat and firm, and when Bobby moved his hand to gently grip Dean's upper arm, he could feel the muscles underneath Dean's jacket flex in response, tight and strong.Dean's shoulders had broadened somewhat. He was still slender, but hard and strong in some of the places where Bobby remembered that he used to be soft.He was only twenty-one, still; he'd be filling out, soon. Bobby could tell, could feel the promise of it under his hand.Dean's face, angled just-slightly down to meet Bobby's gaze, was the same as Bobby remembered it; the same in the way that the faces of people you loved always were.His cheekbones were high, the hollows of his cheeks more defined, his jawline sharp and strong. Dean's green eyes were so familiar, hard and bright above the freckles that he’d never grown out of.Bobby reached up and patted Dean's cheek, feeling stubble rasp against his callused hand, and Dean's eyelashes fluttered as his eyes darted down and away from Bobby's, his Adam's apple bobbing in his throat with a nervous swallow."Take a picture, it'll last longer."There was forced humor in his tone, his lips turning up on one side into a familiar flickering half-smile, but Dean's cheeks were reddening."You look good, son," Bobby told him, so much love and pride in his voice he could taste it coming out of his mouth. Lookin' good, kid, he'd said seven years ago to a fourteen-year-old Dean flexing in the bathroom mirror.Dean finally tugged a hand out of his pocket and reached up to rub the back of his head, flustered."Yeah, well." He coughed, and Bobby pulled his hand away and stepped back, clearing his throat as well, feeling suddenly embarrassed."Go on, get to bed. We'll have that talk in the morning."Bobby was already up when Dean came into the kitchen the following morning, nursing a steaming cup of joe with a dash of something strong in it to give it flavor.He observed Dean walk over to pour himself a cup, dressed in his boots, jeans, and a threadbare T-shirt. Dean's hair was soft and rumpled. The morning sun was shining in through the window, casting a warm, yellow glow across his face."Where'd you get the shiners?" Bobby asked him.There was a smear of black bruising under both of Dean's eyes, the left one slightly swollen, and a mottled, red and purple bruise high on his left cheekbone. Bobby hadn't noticed it last night in the dark and the tension."Vengeful spirit in Arizona managed to nail me in the face with a friggin' paper weight." He tiredly ran his fingers through his messy hair. "Those things are hefty, people shouldn't just leave them lying around where any ol' ghost can use them as a blunt weapon."Bobby forced out a chuckle. "Where's your brother?"Dean grimaced over his chipped coffee mug. "Sammy's got himself locked in your library. I hope you didn't have any research plans today.""Yeah, and what the hell's goin' on with you boys? It's not like I haven't seen you all going at each other's throats before, but not like this. I don't think any of you so much as looked at each other when you three showed up at my doorstep last night."Dean's grimace did not fade, and a frown joined it, darkening his face. He was silent, but Bobby saw his eyes dart up and over towards the entrance to the kitchen, as if expecting Sam to walk through into the room.Bobby sighed. “Come on, boy. I’ve got an old Volkswagen out in the yard needs work.” Maybe a little privacy would relax Dean, loosen his tongue.Dean followed Bobby dutifully out of the house and into the salvage yard, leaving his coffee mug on the counter. When they reached the Volkswagen that Bobby had been talking about, instead of picking up his tools, Bobby turned and leaned against the hood of the vehicle, arms crossed, and raised an eyebrow at Dean.“Alright, you better start talkin’ now. I don’t like feeling uninformed in my own home. What is going on with you all?”Dean’s posture was defensive and angry all at once. He shifted his weight onto his left foot, then his right, and looked around the crowded salvage to avoid making eye-contact with Bobby.“Yeah, yeah.”He sucked in a breath, tucked his chin down against his left shoulder for a moment like he did when he was steeling himself, and kicked at a bit of gravel."Dad's pissed at Sam because he ran away, and he's pissed at me because I let it happen. And Sammy's pissed at both of us for finding him."If Bobby had been expecting Dean to say anything, it hadn’t been that."Sam ran away? Ran away to where?""Flagstaff," said Dean bitterly. "We were staying at a motel in Winona while Dad worked a case in the mountains nearby. I was working on this vengeful spirit in town while Sammy was at school. And then I come home one day, get dinner all ready for him like usual, only he never shows.”Bobby could hear Dean getting heated, getting worked up as his tale continued.“I waited for him. Waited a couple hours, before I tried to call. He’s been such a bitch lately, y’know, about not wanting to be treated like a kid anymore, I didn’t want to act all ‘mother hen’ and give him another reason to yell at me. But then I tried to call, and of course he didn’t pick up. So I went back out and looked for him, went around the high school, the local teenage haunts. I fucking stayed out all night, Bobby.”Dean ran the back of his shaking hand across his mouth. His voice had risen significantly, almost to the point of yelling. His thin T-shirt and the morning sun lighting up his hair made him look soft, even with the bruises on his face, but Bobby knew the tremor in his wrist was from anger.“That first night, I thought, maybe he ditched me for a high school party, got himself wasted and passed out someplace.” His voice was more controlled, quieter now. “But he didn’t come back to the motel in the morning, and I went to his school and asked at the front office and he wasn’t there, either. I must have traveled every square foot of that fuckin’ town twice over, I didn’t sleep, I didn’t eat…”“How long ago was this, son?” Dean had called Bobby asking about Sam, what, six days ago?Dean shrugged, turned his eyes to the sky as he counted the days in his head.“Two weeks. Fourteen fucking days.”“Damn.” Bobby shook his head. “Damn it, Dean, you should’ve called me earlier. Or your dad. Actually asked for help.”Dean’s shrug was a jerky, violent motion.“I was out of my mind, Bobby. I couldn’t think straight. I thought… I thought he was taken by something, thought he might’ve been dead or bleeding out somewhere. I was just trying to find him. Couldn’t reach Dad, he told me he wouldn’t have a phone on him for the hunt. Then I finally called you, and… I dunno. And then Dad came home, and we did find him, and he was just… just playing house someplace, perfectly fine.”He stared down at his hands, which were still shaky.“I don’t wanna talk about this anymore, Uncle Bobby. I don’t need another fuckin’ rehash. I lived it for two weeks, and then I got the fucking earful from Dad and Sam on the way over. Now you know what happened, can we just drop it?”His expression was suddenly so tired, and his voice so desperate, that Bobby didn’t have the heart to push.“Alright,” he said. “Alright. We can just work, alright? Give Sam some alone time in there to cool off.”Dean nodded, and ran his hand down over his face, fingers passing over the black bruises under his eyes with a wince.“Thanks.”They worked on the car together quietly throughout the rest of the day, stopping only to get water and food. They didn’t see Sam exit the library, but the dirty dishes he’d left in the kitchen were evidence that he’d eaten.The next day passed in much the same way. But the day after that, Sam came out to join them for breakfast.He ate silently, moodily, but it was an improvement. Bobby could see the change in Dean’s demeanor at their first Sam sighting in two days; could see Dean push something down and put on a mask. His heavy shoulders and tired anger were gone after that. Dean seemed back to his normal self, talking loudly and poking fun and generally trying to pull Sam out of his shell.By the end of the week, things were better. Sam still clearly harbored some amount of resentment towards Dean, but he was talking to him again. They ate all their meals together. Sometimes, Sam joined Dean and Bobby in the yard, sitting near them and reading one of Bobby’s books while they worked. He was even smiling reluctantly at Dean’s jokes on the evening that Bobby got the call from John that he was coming back the next day, though learning that his dad would be picking them up shortly straightened his face real quick.That night, after they had all gone to bed - Sam was still in the library, taking advantage of not having to share a motel room - Bobby heard a crash of metal in the yard.He was used to raccoons messing around and knocking things over, sometimes, but whatever it was sounded bigger than that. So, he picked up his shotgun and went to make sure that no monsters, demons, or delinquent teenagers had broken into his salvage.What he found was Dean, slumped over with a bottle of jack in one hand, holding himself upright against a wooden shelf rack with the other, surrounded by a scatter of hubcaps that had spilled from a toppled crate.“Balls,” Bobby muttered under his breath.Yeah, Dean was of age, and Bobby thought it was likely he’d started drinking years ago, but Bobby’d never been around him in this state to know what kind of a drunk he’d be dealing with. From where he was standing, the bottle in Dean’s hand looked near empty.He lowered the shotgun and walked over to the inebriated young man.“Dean,” he said gently, announcing his presence, “What’s goin’ on out here?”Dean’s forehead was pressed against his forearm where he was bracing himself on the shelf. He kept it there, seeming unable to lift it, but turned his face to peer at Bobby through the darkness.“Uncle Bobby? What’re you doin’?” Dean asked, voice slurred.“Come out to check on all the noise. What are you doing?”He stepped over the hubcaps and slipped the bottle easily out of Dean’s lax fingers, and shook it to find that there was only a finger or two left. Bobby would have been concerned about alcohol poisoning, but he knew this particular bottle hadn’t been totally full when Dean had started on it: he wouldn’t die, but he’d have a hell of a hangover in the morning.“We’re goin’ back tomorrow,” Dean moaned, dropping his face back towards the ground. “Dad’s comin’ and takin’ us back.”“That’s right.” Bobby set the bottle on one of the wood shelves and put his arms around Dean’s shoulders, cautious, hoping the young man wasn’t about to get belligerent.Luckily, Dean seemed amenable to whatever Bobby wanted from him; Bobby got him straightened up, mostly, letting the kid lean heavily into Bobby’s side as he pulled Dean away from the shelf and guided him over the hubcaps.“Sammy’s gonna leave me, Bobby,” Dean muttered into the dark as Bobby started to lead him back towards the house. “He hasn’ said anythin’ yet. But I know he’s gonna leave.”“Now, now, I’m sure that’s not true,” Bobby comforted, awkwardly. He wasn’t sure of any such thing.“He is. I know it. Always… It’s always jus’ been a matter of time.”To Bobby’s horror, he heard Dean choke out a sob, and turned his head to see tears dripping down the young man’s face.“I been there for him. I been there for him, his whole life. I stayed for him. An’ now Sammy’s gonna leave me, an’ I’ll be alone.”Thirteen years of knowing Dean, and Bobby had never seen him cry like this.Bobby wasn’t good around crying men. He had no idea what to say.He thanked his lucky stars that Dean certainly wouldn’t remember any of this in the morning.“Alright, son.” He patted Dean’s back awkwardly as he continued to lead him towards the house. “It’s alright. Let’s get you to bed.”In the boys’ room, Bobby lowered Dean until he was able to fall gracelessly onto his still-rumpled sheets. He’d stopped crying by then, which Bobby was grateful for, but his cheeks were still wet and his eyebrows turned up with either his misery or a headache.Bobby undid the laces on his boots and tugged them off, but left Dean otherwise clothed. He could sleep off his liquor in denim like Bobby had countless times before.He did leave a bucket on the floor next to the bed, though, in case Dean woke up and needed to hurl, and made sure Dean was lying on his side before exiting the room.The next morning, Dean stumbled into the kitchen just before noon, long after Bobby and Sam had finished breakfast, squinting at the light coming in from the window and holding his head. They’d both heard him being sick in the bathroom for about thirty minutes prior to his entrance.“Got you this,” Bobby told him, pushing a greasy fast food bag across the table. “Best cure for a hangover.”“I can’t believe you got wasted last night,” Sam called out from the living room where he was nearly finished with the book he’d been reading. “Dad’s gonna ream you out.”“Ugh,” Dean groaned as he pulled open the paper bag to pull out one of the breakfast sandwiches Bobby had gotten for him. “I just hope he does it quietly.”He made a face at the cold sandwich, but took a big bite anyway. After he swallowed, he seemed to perk up a little. He turned and looked towards Bobby.“Sorry, Bobby. Memory’s black. I hope I didn’t do anything too stupid last night.”Bobby thought for a second, of the words Dean had said and the way he had cried.“Naw,” he replied, waving his hand. “Nothin’ too stupid.”John arrived just a couple hours later. Bobby had been worried, but the hunt and the time away seemed to have cooled off John at least as much as it’d cooled off Sam. There wasn’t any shouting, at least, when John came in to greet them, and they all made eye contact with each other.It seemed like it was going to be as uneventful a departure as any other of the countless times that John Winchester had picked up his children from a stay at Bobby’s house.That was before Bobby overheard the conversation between John and Dean.He’d been retrieving some lore books that John had politely asked to borrow from the library, trying to keep the mood light. He always told himself he’d be happy to have his space back, every time the Winchesters were about to leave, but he also knew that once they’d gone he’d just be sitting around missing the boys for at least a week.At least the general mood as they left that day was significantly less angry than the one they’d arrived with.John wasn’t in the living room or the kitchen once he’d located all the books, and when Bobby peered out of the window into the yard, he only saw Sam loading his bag into the trunk of the Impala. That was when he heard soft voices from the boys’ room, and went over to open the door.Bobby wasn’t sure what stopped him from announcing himself when he got there; the door was already ajar, and Bobby could see John and Dean inside, standing close together, John’s hand on Dean’s shoulder.John was speaking lowly, and Bobby realized he’d been quiet enough that neither of them had heard him approach. He could have pushed the door the rest of the way open and interrupted their conversation, or he could have turned around and waited for them to come out to give John his books.Instead, he stayed silent, watching them through the gap in the door.“Sam says you got drunk last night. You know you’re not supposed to drink around your brother.”“I know, Dad. Sorry. It won’t happen again.”John nodded, squeezing Dean’s shoulder.“I get it, Dean. I know you’ve had a rough couple weeks. But drinking isn’t just going to make all that go away.”“No, sir.”“You’ve got a lot to make up for. You’ll start by circling back to finish that hunt in Winona while Sam and I set up shop in Utah. After you’re done with that, you’ll be doing research for about the next ten years. Think you can handle that?”“Yes, sir.”John smiled, a tired smile. “Look at me, Dean.”Dean raised his head, looked up at John. John lifted his right hand and put it against the side of Dean’s face.He used it as leverage to turn Dean's face to the side, inspecting the fading bruise on his left cheek. It was more green and yellow than purple now, at the stage of healing where it kind of looked worse than it had a week ago.“You know I’d never have… You know I’ll never do that again, Dean, right?”And it hit Bobby all at once - so quick there wasn’t even a moment of confusion, just the explosion of realization - and a sound like a rushing train clouded his head and filled his ears just as Dean replied, “Of course,” and John patted Dean’s jaw, laying his hand on Dean with the same touch Bobby had put on the boy a week ago, when he'd seen Dean’s face for the first time in years, and John’s touch was deceptively gentle even though Bobby knew now, knew now that Dean’s bruise had come from John’s fist and not some fucking ghost, not some fucking paper weight…Bobby knocked open the bedroom door, startling both John and Dean, who turned to look at him with widened eyes."Bastard," Bobby growled at John, fists clenched, his whole body tight with rage. "Out. Get out of my house, Winchester.""Uncle Bobby?" Dean asked in bewilderment, but Bobby ignored him as he saw John still there, unmoving, standing too close to Dean for Bobby's comfort. He stalked forward, grabbed a fistful of John's shirt, and shouted in John's face. "OUT! Don't make me get my shotgun!"John seemed to decide that listening to Bobby was the best thing to do in that moment, and it broke him out of his surprised stillness.John and Dean left the room hurriedly, Dean pausing to grab the strap of his duffel bag, and as Bobby caught sight of Dean's bruised face again as the young man glanced back towards him, Bobby decided that getting out his shotgun wouldn't be such a bad idea after all.Later that evening, after Bobby had chased John into the Impala with his shotgun loaded - even firing off a couple rounds at the chrome bumper as it sped away - Bobby's head cleared enough to regret what he'd done.In his blind fury, he'd imagined getting John Winchester out of his house and never having to lay eyes on the man again. His anger hadn't let himself consider that Dean and Sam would be leaving with the man.He knew that would be the last he'd see of John Winchester for a good, long while. He hoped it wouldn't be the last time he saw Winchester's boys.As it turned out, he would see them again, though the next time wouldn’t be for another five years. But he never stopped thinking about them, and he did do something for Dean, in the meantime.He'd been learning up on witchcraft, practicing with some of the less dangerous stuff; nothing that could get you or anyone else killed for casting it. In a dusty leather spellbook he'd bought off Rufus, Bobby found a glamour spell. The spell was meant to be for little things; writing and print, mostly. A spell to make people read what you wanted them to read. A high-schooler might use a weak version to make their parents see different grades on their report card, or a con man might use it to make a target see different text on the contract they signed.Bobby knew exactly what he'd use it on.He sourced the ingredients from the best suppliers he knew, calling in favors so cost wouldn't be spared. A hunter contact he had in Brazil; a gardener in Nebraska who used charmed soil; he even pulled some strings with a friend to get a dealer/thief called Bela Talbot a good deal on an amulet in exchange for a single-use spell magnifying talisman. Bobby wanted a strong glamour, as strong as he could make it. One that would outlast him and anyone else who mattered.Bobby cast the spell on Dean - or, more precisely, on Dean Winchester's birth certificate, medical records, and pretty much any other relevant legal documentation.Luckily, with the life they’d lived, there wasn’t too much of it to mess with. The glamour would cause anyone reading them to see "Dean" as his first name and "Male" as his sex.It wasn't foolproof; glamours like that were strong, but would only work on people who had never seen the documents before and didn't know the truth about Dean. But it was better than most other things, and Bobby knew it could come in handy one day, with all the twists and hurdles of a hunter's life.Two years later, when Dean was a wanted fugitive with his face plastered over the news thanks to a shifter in St. Louis, come in handy it did. Bobby raised a glass to his TV, toasting the police sketch on his screen."At least they got your name right," Bobby said wryly to the not-quite-Dean pencil sketch. "You would've hated it if they printed the wrong name on those posters."Bobby would've hated it, too. He'd gone this long not knowing whatever the hell John had used to call Dean, and he wasn't planning on ever learning.When Bobby found out about the car accident, about Dean's coma that the man might never wake up from, he felt numb. He felt cold. He felt the weight of the world on his shoulders.And when he found out what John had done to bring his boy back, to give Dean another chance at life, Bobby couldn't help but think Good. That maybe John Winchester had finally done something truly right by his boys.But then he found out about Azazel's plan for Sam and what John's last words to Dean had been, and he wondered if maybe John hadn't just been running away again, hadn't just brought Dean back to life so John could foist responsibility for taking care of Sam onto Dean for the long haul.And later, standing in the salvage yard with Dean in front of him - Dean, who had sold his soul to Hell to save his little brother, who only had one year left to live - Bobby couldn't help but think of a little boy with self-loathing green eyes. A little boy running away to hide in the salvage yard from his father's disappointment and the echoes of the gunshot little Sammy had fired into the dirt.A little boy with all the weight of his father's and brother's responsibilities piled on top of his own.Bobby's hand was on Dean's cheek, feeling the rasp of stubble against his callused palm, pressing desperately against the warmth of him, of this man he'd come to think of as his family, as his son.Dean was so young, still.In another life, John Winchester might have mentioned he had kids before they started that first job together, leading Bobby to revoke his invitation to stay at his place.In another life, Bobby might not have met Sam and Dean until they were much older; might not have known their faces as well as he knew his wife's, might never have made them breakfast or demanded that they clean their room. He might never have given them old baseball gloves and taught them how to fish or played Hide and Seek with them in the salvage yard or sat up late at night watching Clint Eastwood films with Dean while Sam nodded off with a book at the table.In that other life, Dean wouldn't have fired a bullet into Bobby's living room floor, and Sam wouldn't have shot one into the ground in his yard.Bobby wondered if that other life would have had the same ending; if it would have led Dean Winchester down the same road to Singer Salvage with a resurrected brother, a damned soul and one year left to live.Bobby couldn't fool himself.The world had never been kind to Dean Winchester, not even before a demon had driven his father to vengeance; not from the moment he'd been born.At least in this life, Dean had one more person who loved him.
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At three years old, Dean hadn't known what his life had in store for him. He'd just known that he wanted to be just like his dad when he grew up.Dean always knew he was a boy, inasmuch as he always knew that he was himself. He just didn’t quite understand that being called a “boy” or a “girl” was significant in terms of the way people understood you, and treated you, and thought about you, until he was three and his mommy started arranging for him to play with Daniel and Andy and Josephine and Grace. Daniel was Dean’s best friend. Dean really liked the way Daniel’s mommy let him dress, because he had shirts with cars and Ninja Turtles on them and Dean thought those things were cool, and also because he wore a lot of shorts. But Dean’s mommy liked to put him in dresses and skirts and stuff and those were easier to scrape your knees in and also people seemed to care more about getting dresses dirty than about getting pants dirty. He whined a little bit whenever Mommy made him wear a skirt, because flowers and stuff were okay but he liked dinosaurs and Power Rangers better, but Mommy always made him wear it anyway. Mommy cared a lot about what he wore, and whether it was appropriate or in-a-ppropriate or dirty. He couldn’t wear the same thing twice before it got washed, which meant he wasn’t allowed to wear his favorite T-shirt as much as he wanted, which was really sad because it was the only thing he felt really good in. And every time she found something stuffed in his underwear, she made him take it out. “Why do you keep doing that?” she asked him once, kinda curiously, when she pulled a little soft, patterned toy egg that he’d gotten in his Easter basket out of his underwear. He hadn’t really known how to answer her. It was just that he felt more comfortable like that. His underwear felt kinda empty with nothing else in it. “You really can’t do this, Deanna. It’s gross. You’re getting your toys dirty.” But Dean didn’t care if his toys got dirty if it made him feel better.Even if Dean’s clothes weren’t as cool as Daniel’s, they liked to play cars together, and Daniel let Dean have the firetruck and Dean let Daniel have the police car, and they just clicked like that. They liked to do all the same things, like pull up grass and kick rocks and play in the dirt. Only, they were treated different. It took Dean a little bit to realize. Missus Kate was Daniel’s mommy and she let them all play in the mud together - except for Grace because she didn’t like getting dirty - and they had a lot of fun and afterwards Daniel’s daddy Mike used the hose to wash them off and they got to play in the water for a while. But then when Dean went to play at playgroup at Grace’s house the next day, when he wanted to play in the mud again Missus Judith wouldn’t let him. She said it wasn’t ladylike and made him play with dumb dolls with Grace and Josephine. He waited for Daniel so they could whine together, but when he looked behind him as Missus Judith led him back into the house, Daniel and Andy were playing in the mud and Grace’s daddy was watching them. “Daniel and Andy are playing in the mud,” Dean pointed out, curving some of the harder consonant sounds a bit because he couldn’t speak like grown-ups yet. Mommy said he was still learning and Daddy said he thought it was cute. “Daniel and Andy are letting off some steam,” Missus Judith agreed, and Dean wasn’t exactly sure what that meant.“I wanna let off steam, too,” said Dean, but Missus Judith pursed her lips and made wrinkles on her forehead and told him “Deanna, girls don’t do that kind of thing,” and pushed him to sit with Grace and Josephine and play House or Tea-Party or something.Well, Dean knew very well that Josephine liked playing in the mud, too, so it seemed a little like Missus Judith was being unreasonable (his mommy taught him that word; he’d heard her telling Daddy that a lot lately). He started using it in his head to talk about Missus Judith, only he never said it out loud because she’d probably yell at him and tell him girls didn’t do that kind of thing.After that time, though, Dean started noticing a lot more about the difference between “girls” and “boys”, which he hadn’t paid very much attention to before that. He’d never really tried to find a connection before, but when he started looking out for one, he realized that girls were the ones who grew up to have breasts, and boys were the ones who grew up to have hair on their faces. Which was a very odd discovery to make, because everyone that he knew called him a girl but he was absolutely positive that he was going to grow up to look just like his daddy, and Daddy was one of the boys: he had hair on his face and he didn’t have any breasts at all. Dean figured it was probably a mistake. It must be pretty hard to tell which ones were the boys and which were the girls before they grew facial hair or breasts, so he guessed it wasn’t really that big a deal. People would figure it out eventually, and then Missus Judith would feel so stupid and let him play in the mud with Daniel and Andy. One day, Mommy and Missus Kate and Missus Judith, and also Missus Sarah, who was Josephine and Andy’s mommy, took them all to the public library for an Occasion. A man was coming to the library who wrote books, and he was gonna read one of his books aloud for them and then they were going to play some games. Dean was excited because Mommy told him there were going to be snacks and he and Daniel were gonna put as many cookies in their pockets as they could and then run away to eat them in their special spot in the kids’ books section where there was a giant bean bag. Dean sat next to Daniel on the carpet and Andy and Josephine and Grace sat in front of them in the big group of a lot of other kids who were from different playgroups, maybe. The man who was reading his book sat in a big wooden chair that was painted red with different alphabet letters and he had a nice voice and Dean liked the book well enough. Halfway through it, a boy sitting next to Daniel started poking Grace’s back and tugging her hair. She kept whispering at him to stop it, but he wouldn’t, and Dean was almost gonna punch him right in the face but then Grace got louder and the Book Man stopped reading and smiled at them.“Now, now,” he said, sounding jolly like Santa did at the mall, “Settle down. It’s hard for everyone to hear me when you’re talking.” Grace quieted at the attention and looked at the floor, blushing. The boy behind her giggled. The Book Man winked at her. “You know, when a boy teases you like that, it means he likes you.”Dean thought that sounded stupid, but the adults all laughed and smiled so he guessed it was probably true. There was a chorus of high-pitched giggles from the other kids before the man started reading again, and the boy poked Grace again a couple times, but Grace didn’t say anything even though Dean could tell she kinda wanted to. After the book was over, the Book Man put it down and smiled. “Now, I want you to get into two groups. Boys on this side, girls on this side,” he gestured. Dean stood up and walked with Daniel over to the boy side, and sat down between him and Andy. He was smiling because they were going to play activities and then next was the cookies, but suddenly he realized that Book Man was looking at him with a smile like he wanted to laugh and Mommy was motioning for him to stand. Dean looked around in confusion. “Wanna go join the girls, little lady?” Book Man asked him, and Dean didn’t, he didn’t wanna join the girls, he wanted to stay with Daniel and the other boys. Dean shook his head, and Book Man did laugh, then. “Looks like this young lady’s trying to get a head start,” he said with a wink, and the parents tittered and Dean was confused but he was also embarrassed because Book Man was making fun of him. He could tell, even though he didn’t understand what the man had meant. “How about you go on over to the girls’ side,” Book Man said again, and finally Dean looked towards his mommy, who nodded. He bit his lip and stood up and walked across the rug, and he knew that every single person in the room was watching him do it but he didn’t want to look to make sure because he also knew that they were all smiling like they wanted to laugh and he didn’t want to see that on their faces. He sat next to Josephine, because they weren’t best friends like him and Daniel were but he knew her better than Grace, probably, and also she was cool. The Book Man started the activities by asking them all to take turns telling the room what they wanted to be when they grew up. Dean didn’t have to think about his at all because he already knew, and he already knew what Daniel wanted to be. He smiled when Daniel told Book Man “Policeman,” because Dean was right, and then after the boys it was the girls’ turns and the girl next to Josephine said “Nurse,” and then Josephine said “Teacher,” and then it was Dean’s turn and he said “Fireman” proudly. He was gonna grow up to help people. Whenever he drove by the firehouse with Daddy, Daddy always said that firemen were just about the bravest people in the whole world, even braver than the Marines, and Dean wanted to grow up to be brave like that and to save people like that. Book Man laughed at him. He laughed and then he said, “That’s gonna be tough, huh? Maybe you’ll change your mind in a few years.” He hadn’t said that for anybody else. Daniel had said policeman and Book Man hadn’t said it would be tough. One of the other boys said “Superman” and Book Man hadn’t even laughed at him, and even though Dean knew for a fact that the boy wasn’t going to grow up to be Superman because Superman wasn’t even real, no one had told him that he might change his mind later. Why did he laugh at Dean? Why would it be hard for Dean? Why should Dean change his mind?Dean felt like crying, only he didn’t really know why, because the Book Man hadn’t bullied him or called him mean names or anything but Dean still felt like he was being picked on. He didn’t feel like playing anymore and even when they started on to different activities, Dean didn’t really try hard to participate, and when it was time for snacks Dean wasn’t hungry. But he still stole cookies with Daniel, and they still ran away to the big bean bag, and they still sat down on it together to eat. “Why’d he make me sit with the girls?” asked Dean, and Daniel shrugged his shoulders.“'Cause you’re wearing a dress,” he told Dean matter-of-factly. Dean stared at Daniel in confusion. “Mommy picked it out for me.”Daniel ate a cookie. “Boys don’t wear dresses.” He held out a cookie to Dean, a chocolate chip one, and Dean ate it even though his stomach hurt. He got crumbs on the front of his dress, the one with the sunflowers on it that Mommy said was her favorite. He suddenly wanted to take it off. But he was in the middle of the library and that was impolite. Dean wanted to be a Good Boy like the ones Mommy said made the best sons and husbands, to make her proud. He’d never really thought about the clothes he wore before, but after that - after what Daniel said - he didn’t like dresses anymore. Boys don’t wear dresses. When Mommy tried to make him put one on to go to the park, he shook his head and told her so. She laughed and said “That’s right,” and tried to put it over his head anyway.Dean let her because he was so shocked, so shocked that she did that; laughed at him and ignored him like that. “I don’t want to wear a dress,” he said after she had smoothed the skirt down against his legs.“Tough love, Tinker Bell,” she said, and led him out of his bedroom and down to breakfast. Two days later she wanted him to wear a dress again, and he was very well-mannered and spoke while rounding as few of his consonant sounds as possible, “I don’t want to wear a dress, please,” and reminded her that “Boys don’t wear dresses.” But she didn’t stop pulling the fabric over his head and he went to playgroup that day wearing a pink dress with little ruffles at the bottom and he felt so sick and quiet and kind of a little bit invisible that he didn’t really even play with Daniel all day.After that, when he realized that talking with his Inside Voice and being polite like a Good Boy didn’t make Mommy listen to him, he started throwing tantrums. He cried and yelled and used everything he could think of to make her listen to him even though it was embarrassing to act out like that. He screamed out his frustration that it was taking everyone so long to realize that he wasn’t a girl like they all seemed to think. He cried and screamed, and sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t. Dean was at the park for a Saturday playgroup - with only Daniel and Grace because Josephine and Andy were visiting their grandma - and Dean was playing in the rocks with Daniel when he saw just about the most prettiest girl in the world. She had brown hair all the way down to her elbows and it was tied in two braids, with blue ribbons in bows at the end. Mommy sometimes did Dean’s hair in braids, but this girl, her hair looked a lot prettier than Dean’s ever did. Dean never ever liked what he looked like in the mirror because he was so ugly, but the girl’s hair was thick and shiny and perfect, and her eyes were very brown. He wanted to talk to her and to ask her if she wanted to find cool rocks with him and Daniel, but he was very shy because she was so pretty and Dean had never seen her at the park before. He thought about giving her the prettiest pebble he’d found, the one that was pinkish and sort of see-through, so he picked it up and held it tight in his hand and walked over to her to say hello. She was standing between the swings and the playground like she didn’t know which one she wanted to play on, and when she saw him coming towards her she smiled and looked at him.“Hi!” she said when he was right in front of her. He opened his mouth to reply, but froze. She was a lot prettier up close, and she had freckles on her nose, like Dean did, but they looked nicer on her. Like ice-cream sprinkles. He wanted to give her the pebble, but he felt stiff and frozen and unbearably uncertain all of the sudden. What could he possibly say? I like you, he thought, You’re really pretty.In a haze of frenzied confusion, he remembered what the Book Man had said about the boy who kept poking Grace, and how he’d heard the same thing a few other times, especially on the playground – “When a boy teases you like that, he likes you” – and in a state of panic, he reached out and grabbed one of her braids and pulled on it.After doing it, he felt really mean and he wondered why boys were supposed to do that, and then everything got worse because she started crying.In a flurry of movement, a woman rushed in to scoop the girl up into her arms at the same time that Dean’s mommy came and grabbed him by the arm to tug him away. “Deanna!” Mommy yelled. “What’s gotten into you? We don’t pull people’s hair!” “But! But she was so pretty!” Dean said breathlessly, rushed because he was in such a hurry to explain himself and Mommy looked so upset.“That’s no reason to hurt anyone! We don’t bully people, Deanna, not for any reason. I thought I’d raised you better than that!”And that? That was just unfair. Dean gazed up at his mommy with wide, shiny eyes and felt so filled up with confusion and the injustice of it all that he could throw up, he really could. How come when that other boy pulled Grace’s hair it was okay because it meant he liked her, but when Dean did the exact same thing then he got in trouble? It didn’t make any sense. It didn’t make any sense at all. So Dean squeezed his eyes shut and started bawling, and Mommy picked him up and carried him back to where she was sitting with Missus Kate and made him sit in the sandbox by himself until he could be a Good Girl. “I don’t wanna be a Good Girl!” Dean shouted for the whole world to hear. Everyone heard, but no one really listened. He didn’t want to be good anymore. He didn’t want to try to be polite. He didn’t want to wait. What he wanted was to stop wearing dresses. What he wanted was to be able to play in the dirt with Daniel and Andy whenever they were at Missus Judith’s house. What he wanted was for Mommy to stop calling him Tinker Bell, because he thought Tinker Bell was pretty but Peter Pan was way cooler and he’d always thought it would be kinda nice to kiss Wendy. What he wanted was for Daddy to call him Champ and Tiger and maybe even Sport like Daniel’s daddy called him, instead of Princess, because Dean wasn’t a princess and he didn’t ever want to be one; he wanted to be a knight or even maybe a dragon.What he wanted was for everybody to finally listen to what he was trying to tell them.“I don’t wanna wear a dress!” Dean screamed, as loud as he could, trying to make his mommy listen. “I hate it! The boys don’t wear dresses!” He thought if he screamed loud enough, she’d realize that what he was saying was important.Mommy pulled his arms out of the way as Dean tried to push his head out of the dress. “You’re not a boy, Sweetheart,” she said, and Dean felt like she’d slapped him. His eyes teared up behind the fabric of the dress.“I am too!” he protested weakly as she forced it on. His struggle had abated a bit. Mommy hadn’t listened to him. Dean felt like the whole world was deciding it for him, and it was so confusing, so heartbreaking, because everyone else he knew seemed like they were the right one: boy or girl. Why was he the only one that people were mistaken about? Why was he the only one who no one cared to look closer at, to check to see if maybe they were wrong? He felt tears in his eyes and wondered what it would be like once he finally grew up and got facial hair like Daddy. He would show everyone then.Dean scrunched up his face and howled again because he didn’t want to show everyone then; he wanted everyone to know now. After that, Mommy stopped getting Dean dressed in the mornings. Daddy did instead, and Daddy didn’t make Dean wear dresses if he didn’t want to. Daddy even bought him dinosaur toys and cars like Daniel had. He even bought Dean a shiny red fire truck. It was like a miracle, except they all still called him a girl.A while later, Dean was playing with his fire truck on the ground in the living room. Mommy was sitting on the couch, reading one of her books. She’d been resting a lot lately, and her tummy had gotten bigger, but she was still the most beautiful mommy in the world. A lot more beautiful than Missus Judith.“I still wanna be a fireman when I grow up,” Dean said, because he suddenly wanted her to know that. She looked up at him in surprise. He gazed at her. “I didn’t change my mind. I still wanna be a fireman like I said.”Her eyes were kind of sad and glistened for a moment, but then she blinked and it went away.“Alright, Deanna,” Mommy nodded. “Keep playing with your toys.”Mommy had started getting pretty fat when her and Daddy sat Dean down and told him that he was going to be a big sister soon. Mommy was growing a new baby in her belly and that’s why she was so big. Dean got real excited for the new baby, because he’d be a big sister and look out for the baby like you were supposed to in the movies. He’d be really cool and wear sunglasses and take his little baby brother or sister to school and beat up bullies and stuff. It would be awesome.Except Mommy was fighting with Daddy a lot, and sometimes Daddy went away for a few days, even though Dean didn’t know why because he didn’t even go out of town he just slept at a motel and called to ask Mommy about how the baby was doing. Mommy was sad a lot during those times, so Dean made sure to take care of her when Daddy was gone and he couldn’t. It was good practice for being a big sister. Only, when he thought about it, he kind of wanted to be a big brother. He wanted to be like Michael from E.T., and be really cool and play baseball like the people Daddy watched on the TV and be tall and protect his little brother or sister. So he found Mommy’s big pair of scissors and went into the bathroom and cut off his pigtails. None of the big brothers from the movies had pigtails.When Mommy found him, she got really upset and took away the scissors and grabbed him like she was gonna shake him, but she only turned him around and felt him all over and checked his hands. “Don’t you ever use these scissors when I’m not here, Deanna!” she shouted, putting her hands on his cheeks and kind of smushing them together. “It’s dangerous! You could have hurt yourself!” Then she pulled him close to hug him, only it was uncomfortable because her big belly where the baby was growing was pushing at him. She took him to the barber shop after, and the barber fixed his hair so it didn’t look all lopsided like it had because he hadn’t cut it very perfectly, but when Dean went home and looked in the mirror he smiled in awe because he looked more like Daniel than he ever had before. Maybe soon, people would realize he was a boy, too. Maybe soon, Mommy and Daddy would really listen to him.Then the baby came. Mommy took the baby home.His name was Sammy.He was a boy.Dean was so frustrated. Dean was frustrated all the time. He’d tried so hard to get his Mommy and Daddy to listen to him, he’d shouted and cried and done everything he could.And then this baby showed up. This… This little tiny wrinkly little thing. And he wasn’t even like the size of Dean’s legs, he wasn’t even that tall. He couldn’t even talk or roll over. But he didn’t have to say anything - he didn’t have to shout or cry or do anything - and Mommy and Daddy called him a boy. Dean didn’t remember being a baby. He’d kind of figured, once he realized about the whole boy/girl thing, that parents waited a little while until the babies were grown up a little bit to decide if they were boys or girls. It made sense. How were you supposed to tell when they were so small and they didn’t even talk? That, that didn’t make any sense. That meant that… That his mommy and daddy had picked for him when he couldn’t even say anything about it. Mommy and Daddy wouldn’t do that. Even if they didn’t listen to him now, they wouldn’t… But he couldn’t figure it out. He couldn’t figure out why Sammy was already a boy but everyone in the whole wide world thought that Dean was a girl.“Why is Sammy my brother?” he asked Daddy a whole day after Sammy had been brought home. Mommy and Daddy had been too busy the first day to talk to Dean. Dean had been quiet in his room and he’d played quietly with his fire truck like a Good Boy. But no one cared about that.His daddy frowned a little bit and stopped making Dean his peanut-butter sandwich. “Why, Princess?” he asked, and Dean found himself flinching at the nickname that used to make him feel very loved. Now, it just made him feel silent and invisible. “Don’t you love your little brother?”No one listened to him. No one listened to the questions he was asking.“But why is he my brother? Why isn’t he my sister?”It shouldn’t be so complicated, Dean thought, except for that he couldn’t figure it out, he just couldn’t; not even though he’d spent the whole day thinking about it.“Because he’s a boy, Deanna,” Daddy told him, but that wasn’t an answer, that wasn’t an answer.“But why?” Dean begged, feeling so lost and alone. He was so little and all he wanted was for someone to really answer him. All he wanted was for Daddy to understand him and pick him up and hug him tight and then let him fall asleep in the big-bed with him and Mommy, like he used to when Dean was little.But Daddy didn’t answer him. He just finished making the sandwich, and Dean ate it silently at the dinner table with his feet hanging off the chair. Sammy started crying in the next room and Daddy went to help Mommy. He left Dean alone.Sammy peed and pooped in a diaper, like Dean used to when he was a baby. It was gross and smelly, but if Dean was going to be a big brother then he thought he should probably learn how to change Sammy’s diaper, just in case. Even though he was still mad at Sammy for being a boy, it wasn’t really Sammy’s fault. Sammy was just a little baby; he couldn’t even talk. The next day when Mommy had to change Sammy’s diaper on the living room floor, Dean went to watch. He sat next to Mommy and watched as she undid the little paper tabs and peeled open the diaper. He wrinkled his nose because it smelled bad, but that wasn’t Sammy’s fault. Besides, Mommy was already cleaning up Sammy’s butt with a wipe.Dean narrowed his eyes and leaned forward, noticing that Sammy had something between his legs that Dean didn’t have. There was a strange feeling in his stomach, a strange pang of longing that mixed with his confusion. It felt like he recognized it, even though he’d never seen it before. It made him think of the little soft toys he still put in his underwear at night, in secret so that his mommy wouldn’t find out he was still being gross. He asked Mommy what it was.“That’s Sam’s penis,” Mommy told him, and Dean had never heard that word before. “What’s a penis?” Mommy smiled patiently and explained. Dean hadn’t known there were other kinds of private parts than what he had. “Why does Sammy have a penis?” he asked, curious and also strangely afraid.“Because Sammy’s a boy, and boys have penises,” Mommy said gently.It was like it had suddenly started raining icy buckets, and Dean felt cold all over. His throat felt tight. His eyes were stinging. This was it. This was the reason. This was the answer that no one had ever given him to the questions he’d been asking. This was… This was why Sammy was a boy even though he couldn’t even talk to tell anyone. This was why everyone called Dean a girl. And Dean realized that no matter what he did - no matter how loudly he yelled or how much he cried - no one would ever listen to him. And he was so tired.He wanted to hate little Sammy for it but he couldn’t. He couldn’t, not when he loved little Sammy more than anything else in the world. It wasn’t Sammy’s fault; he was so small, he was just a little baby. He was innocent, and when Dean whispered to him “I’m your big brother,” after making sure that no one else could hear, he gazed at Dean with his big eyes and made a little noise in response and Dean felt like Sammy really believed him.Mommy and Daddy didn’t really let Dean hold Sammy, because Dean was still pretty small himself and Sammy was fragile. When they let Dean hold him, it was always while he was sitting down on the couch or in the big armchair, with pillows propped up all around him and one of his parents standing right beside him “in case something happens”. He would hold Sammy so carefully and gently run his fingers through the delicate little hairs on his soft, sweet-smelling head, and marvel at how light and important Sammy felt.Sammy was still light as a feather and important-feeling when he was six months old and Dean got to hold him while standing up for the first time, which was also the first time he got to hold him unmonitored, which was after he saw Mommy pinned to the ceiling on fire and he ran outside with his brother as fast as he could. Sammy’s hair was soft against his cheek while Dean held him close and looked back up at their big house with the smoke billowing out of the windows, willing his parents to step out of the front door and come take him and Sammy into their arms and hold them both like they were both babies until the morning came.But Mommy never came out the front door. And Daddy didn’t take him into his arms that night.Truthfully, Dean didn’t remember very much of what happened for a long time after that. Except for being very very hungry, and making sure that Sammy wasn't hungry, and how every time he wanted to speak it felt like his throat closed up and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t make a sound. No, Dean didn’t remember very much from that time, but he remembered what he learned: that the most important thing was Sammy. He’d never forget it.Days passed by like the scenery on the other side of the car window, intangible and undifferentiated. Dad took them to meet a nice man named Pastor Jim, and they started spending a lot of time with him. Pastor Jim had kind eyes and spoke softly and he liked Dean best when Dean wasn’t acting like himself. Pastor Jim liked to dress him in lace. Dean knew no one would listen to him if he said he didn’t like that.Through Pastor Jim, Dad made a new friend named Abe Johnson. Abe was kind of scary because his hands were rough and always dirty and his fingernails were thick and yellow with crescent-moons of black caked under the ends, and because he never talked to Dean directly but would just stare at him. Abe would just stare at him with his callous, pale-blue eyes, no matter how uncomfortable Dean looked. Like Dean was just some thing there for him to look at and his feelings didn’t matter. Being stared at but never talked to made Dean feel small and uncertain. He never really knew what he was supposed to be doing when he was around Dad’s friend Abe.Dean would have hated every moment that Dad’s friend Abe was in town except for that Abe had a son, too. His son’s name was Caleb, and Dean liked Caleb. Caleb was sixteen and he was tall and probably the most handsome boy that Dean had ever seen and he could throw knives and hit a target from twenty feet away. He wore cowboy boots and sawtooth shirts with pearl snaps, and watching him get stubble on his chin made Dean’s chest ache terribly. Dean wanted to be around him all the time and he wanted him to think that Dean was real cool, too. He wanted to be just like Caleb; he wanted to talk like that and walk like that and look that cool while reading a battered old paperback book under the big walnut tree.Sometimes, Caleb read aloud to Dean chapters from the books that he nicked from the gas stations or pulled from dumpsters behind the library or found forgotten on park benches. Dean’s favorite was On the Road, because Caleb showed him how Dean Moriarty’s name was spelled just like Deanna, minus the extra letters.Dean wondered if Dad would call him that if he asked him to. He wondered if Dad would cut his hair short if he asked him to. It had been a long time since Dean had asked, and he’d been very good. Very polite. He helped Dad all the time by sweeping the floor and changing Sammy’s diapers and feeding Sammy when he was hungry, and he checked every morning and every night to make sure the salt on the windows and at the doors was a clean, unbroken line. Maybe if Dean asked Dad again, then maybe this time Dad would say yes.Dean thought he’d probably remember the feeling of Dad’s arms around him when he agreed to call him by his real name - when he put his hand on the back of Dean's head and he could feel it so easily through his short hair, when he called Dean “Son” - for forever and ever.Dean hadn’t known life could be like this one day. Going to school on the weekdays, hearing everyone call him by his real name and not being chastised when he lined up with the other boys before going out to recess. The teacher, pointing him out to his dad after school let out, “Your son is over there.” Driving home, him and Sammy in the backseat with Sammy bugging him, sucking on Cheerios and kicking his car seat and calling him “Dean!” When Dad had to go hunting, leaving him and Sammy behind and trusting Dean to be the grown-up because he was “the big brother.”This was the life a younger version of him had thought he would have until those hopes were dashed, but now he was having it anyway. Dad had given it to him.It wasn’t all chucks and daisies. He still had nightmares of monsters breaking into his bedroom and eating his guts out, or eating Dad or Sammy’s guts out (which was always worse). He still dreamed about Mom burning up and smoke filling up his own lungs as he called her name. Dean sometimes had daydreams of his mom walking in through the door and smiling down at him with glowing hair and calling him by his name, and telling him what a handsome boy he was growing up to be and what a good big brother he was. They were stupid little fantasies, just fantasies that she was there and that she knew he was her son the same way Dad did now. That she loved him the same as she always had; better, even. And he forgot about all the times she’d made him wear things that he didn’t want to and all the times she didn’t really listen to him, because none of that mattered. He knew she’d listen to him now, if she was still here. He knew it in his bones. If he asked Dad, he knew he’d agree; that he’d tell Dean “Of course, there’s no question. She loved you so much. You're her son.” He never did ask Dad, though, because what if he was wrong?Dean was heating up three packs of macaroni ‘n’ cheese in a saucepan one night while Dad unlaced his boots at the kitchen table and Sammy was napping in the bedroom. Dad had once told Dean that when he made macaroni it tasted just like it did when Mom used to make it, so Dean liked to make macaroni especially on the days when Dad came home with blood on his clothes and dust in his hair and deep, world-weary shadows in the furrows of his brow. Dad set his heavy boots next to the spindly table leg beside his spindly chair and then set his heavy elbows on the tabletop and let his heavy forehead rest in his big, rough hands.“What did you hunt this time, Dad?” Dean asked quietly, after he paused his stirring to get his dad a plastic cup of water from the sputtering sink. Dad was quiet for a long moment, his back rising and falling gently with his deep breaths.“Possession,” he said finally, quietly, lifting up his head to rub his eyes, just for something to do with his hands. “Phantom possession. Do you know what that means? Did Pastor Jim ever tell you about that?”“No. Are phantoms like ghosts?”“Yes, that's right. Usually they just haunt a place, or a thing. They’ve been dead for so long, they don’t really remember ever having been alive. They’re angry, or vengeful, and they just want other people to hurt like they do. But sometimes they’re just… confused. They’re confused, they don’t know what they’re doing, don’t really remember who they used to be, and they don’t remember dying. The only thing they remember is what they used to care about.” He heaved a big, tired sigh. “They can climb inside someone’s body - inside their mind - as easy as you climb into the backseat of the Impala. They might not even know they’ve done it. They might not even remember that they used to be someone else and they’re taking up some innocent person’s life. That’s what possession is.”Dean put some of the macaroni, steaming, into a bowl and put it between Dad’s elbows under his down-turned face. Dad turned to look at him, and his eyes softened. He smiled, but it was sad.“This one was a mother. She died two years ago. She didn’t remember dying, didn’t really remember anything at all except that she loved her kids. She possessed the step-mother. Took the kids away, to have them all to herself. Left the step-mother’s own baby alone in the house while the dad was on a work trip. Almost starved it to death.” He tore his gaze away from Dean’s, stared straight ahead at the closed door behind which Sammy was sleeping. “I don’t think she did that on purpose. I don’t think she was trying to hurt anyone. Just wanted to see her own kids again.”Dean swallowed, feeling suddenly apprehensive. He thought about his own mom, burning up in Sammy’s nursery. His mom wouldn’t do that, not even by accident. She wouldn’t hurt anyone.“How’d you beat it?”“I found her with the kids locked up in a bedroom… in the old house they used to live in, back before the mom died. Like I said, I don’t think she did it on purpose. I don’t think she knew what she was doing. I just had to show her, make her remember. Had to show her that her kids were okay without her. Make her understand that she had to let go.”“That’s it?” Dean asked, skeptical and yet also awed. A confusing pit had formed in his stomach.Dad nodded. “Like I said. She just didn’t know what she was doing. Didn’t know letting go was an option. Didn’t realize she was in someone else’s body, taking over someone else’s life. Just had to make her realize.”Dad finally took a bite of the macaroni, and the taste made him smile and reach out and put a big, warm hand on Dean’s arm and squeeze it gently. Dean stood on his tip-toes and leaned his head against Dad’s shoulder, and pressed his lips against Dad’s cheek.“It’s okay, Dad. It’s gonna be okay.”That night, Dean couldn’t fall asleep. He lay in bed, muscles tense, eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling. He couldn’t stop imagining what it had felt like for the phantom, to be in someone else’s body taking up someone else’s life. Had it felt confusing? Had it been uncomfortable? Had the shape felt wrong, somehow? What had she thought, when people looked at her and saw someone that wasn’t quite who she thought they should have seen? When they had called her by a name that wasn’t quite the one she had been expecting?He wondered if it felt like he’d felt, back before Dad had hugged him and called him Dean.How long had Dean felt like this? Like… himself, like a boy? Dean couldn’t remember when it had started. He thought it had always been like that, but what if it hadn’t? If he’d always felt this way for as long as he could remember, then how long was that? Everyone had always told him he was wrong, back then. The other parents in the playgroup and the teachers at school and his mom and his dad. They’d told him he was wrong when he wanted to be on the boys’ team; when he didn’t want to wear dresses. It didn’t make sense for everyone else to be wrong. So many people, so many grown-ups told him he was wrong. His parents had told him he was wrong. That many people… And Dean was only a kid. Why would all those people be wrong? It made more sense for Dean to be.Dean couldn’t stop thinking about the phantom woman, possessing another person’s body without even knowing it. What if that’s me? Dean let himself think, terrified, as he stared at the ceiling. What if I’m a phantom too? A little dead boy who didn’t remember dying and who’d found a little girl with the best mom and dad that the world had ever seen, who’d slipped into her mind and body the same way Dean slipped into the backseat of the Impala. A little dead boy who was taking the life of an innocent little girl, just because he wanted her parents and her baby brother for himself. No, Dean told himself, No, this is my life, they’re my family, MINE. But isn’t that what a phantom would think?He’d asked his dad, once, if he’d been cursed. That was before Dad had realized that Dean was his son. Dad had told him no, that Dean wasn’t cursed. But remembering that didn’t make him feel any better, because being possessed wasn’t the same as being cursed. And Dad probably hadn’t even known about phantom possession back then; didn’t know it was a possibility.Dean didn’t say anything to anyone about this niggling fear that had taken root in his mind. He went to school like usual, only he barely said anything to anyone. He could feel a familiar tightness in his throat, and the pit in his stomach refused to go away. It made it hard to eat, but he moved his food around on his plate. It was easy to keep Dad from noticing when Dean scooped the leftovers into the pot to keep in the fridge for Sammy to eat for breakfast the next day like he usually did. He couldn’t let Dad notice that he wasn’t sleeping and that he wasn’t eating, because if Dad asked Dean what was wrong he didn’t know what he’d do, what he would say, what would he do? Because what if he told Dad what he feared? What if when he told Dad, he saw Dad’s eyes widen and an expression cross his face like surprise and realization? And what if he had to watch as Dad’s gaze changed from recognition to something else entirely and then he had to be strong while Dad realized he was a monster? What if he had to be strong and be brave while Dad got rid of him so he could have his baby girl back? Dean didn’t dare look up from his shaking hands when his classmates asked him questions or the teacher told them to line up for recess. He didn’t dare meet his dad’s eyes when he came to pick Dean up from school and asked him what they needed from the grocery store. He couldn’t even meet little Sammy’s eyes when Dean helped him get dressed after their baths and it felt impossible to smile when they played silly games, but he did it; he forced himself to do it. Every moment felt like one moment closer to the façade crumbling away and his dad realizing that Dean was a usurper - a possessor - taking up space in their family that should be filled by some other child, some girl that Dean didn’t know.The feeling ate away at him. It gnawed at his stomach, poisoned his sleep, and made him angry and scared until one night, he felt Sammy snuggle into his side and was struck by the realization that if he kept on this way - let this fear and uncertainty fester inside him - then he might turn vengeful, and he might turn violent, and he might really become a monster that Dad had to hunt.He thought about his dad’s face, his tired face; sad and solemn and a little bit understanding as he’d recounted making the dead mother let go. Dad’s face looked very different when he talked about smoking vengeful ghosts. When he talked about those spirits, he looked satisfied. Proud. He was happy they were gone; there was no sympathy for them.Dean didn’t want Dad to look happy when he talked about smoking him. He didn’t want to hurt Sammy, either.So he pulled away from Sammy, gently extricating his pajama shirt from his brother’s little fingers, and slipped out of the bed. He wanted to touch his dad’s arm; wanted to get one last hug. One last hug, just one more, just to remember how good it felt to be Dad’s son. But he didn’t want to wake Dad up.He quietly opened the door to the bedroom and shut it just as gently behind him. When he stepped out of the motel room door, the sky was dark but the gravel parking lot reflected the light from the moon and there were stars sparkling in the sky. The air was cool and there was a breeze. The Impala was parked in the middle of the lot, black and shiny; crouched like a big, friendly animal. Dean stepped over to it, gravel biting into the bare soles of his feet. He touched the smooth blackness on the door, the glowing silver of the grill. “I’ll miss you, too,” he whispered to it.The Impala was silent. The hood was warm, still. It felt alive. Dean went over and tested the passenger door; it was unlocked, and he crawled up onto the bench and lay down on it. He lay there feeling the supple vinyl under his cheek, breathing deeply and smelling Dad’s smell and his and Sammy’s, too, and maybe even Mom’s. Just a little.If he was a ghost possessing this body then this was the right thing to do, wasn’t it? Wouldn’t Dad be happier if he had his daughter back, the one that he’d thought Dean was for so long? Wouldn’t Sammy be happier, after he got older, if he had a big sister instead of a messed up big brother who he had to keep secrets for? Kids shouldn’t have to keep secrets, and Sammy was just a little kid.It wouldn’t be so bad. He’d had Dad and Sammy for a long time; for as long as he could remember. They’d made him happy. That was good enough. If this really was some other girl's body, it was time to give her a chance.Dean closed his eyes and felt tears drip from his eyelashes down onto the bench seat. He felt safe here; it felt like home. He imagined what it would feel like, to burn up in a flash of blue light. Maybe it would be warm. Maybe he’d even get to see Mom again, after. Even if he wasn’t really her son, even if he’d really been a little lost ghost boy this whole time. Maybe she’d let him be her son, anyway. She was the only mom he’d ever known.“It’s okay,” he whispered into the bench, breath hitching. “It’s okay, I’ll be okay. I’ll miss them but I’ll be okay. I can… I can go away now.” He made himself take a deep breath and let the exhale melt him into the vinyl seat. There was a moment of pure stillness. This is what letting go feels like. But he didn’t burn up in a flash of light. He didn’t remember a past life, or see someone else’s mother welcoming him to a warm place. Dean didn’t disappear, and Deanna Winchester didn’t wake up in her father’s car.It was just Dean, alone in the dark, looking up through the window at grey clouds and a silver moon.He was so relieved that he cried himself to sleep right there in the front seat of the Impala and slept for the first time in days. It was the sound of the front door of the car opening with a franticness that awoke him the following morning, and he startled up to see his dad’s face, expression melting from concern to relief, as he bent through the open door and saw Dean lying across the front bench.“Dean!” Dad said forcefully, and Dean could tell that he wanted to be angry but was too relieved to feel anything else. “I was looking everywhere for you! What in the hell are you doing out here?”Dean sat up and threw himself forward to wrap his arms around behind Dad’s head and hold on as tightly as he could. “I’m sorry, Dad,” he whispered into the side of his dad’s neck. He felt Dad’s stubble scrape comfortingly against his cheek, warm while his fingers were tangled and tight in Dad’s shirt. Dad pulled back out of the doorway to stand up straight, but Dean clung fast to him, and he felt himself get dragged out of the car and his dad’s strong arms came up under his legs and behind his shoulders to hold him close. He didn’t try to put Dean down, even though he was a big kid now who took care of Sammy and could sharpen the knives and lay out the salt. He just held Dean there, firm and gentle, and Dean could feel his whole body shaking with the relief that had allowed him to fall asleep last night. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you worried.”“It’s okay, Dean,” Dad told him. His voice rumbled deep in his chest, so deep that Dean could feel it shaking his own belly where it was pressed up against his dad’s body. He felt like Dad could tell that something had happened last night because he didn’t yell at Dean for scaring him. I was looking everywhere for you. This was Dean’s body. It always had been. And Dad was Dean’s dad, and if he ever disappeared, Dad would look everywhere for him.Dad turned with Dean still in his arms and sat on the front seat with the door open with his legs sticking out the side and his feet in the gravel. He held Dean on his lap there for a long time, letting Dean lean his head on his dad’s big chest and close his eyes and listen to his dad’s heartbeat, to his breathing.“You’re getting pretty big now, Dean,” Dad said eventually, breathing the words softly into Dean’s hair. “You’re six years old. Too grown up for things like this; sneaking out at night to hide in the car.” Ashamed, Dean curled his fingers tighter in Dad’s shirt and felt his bottom lip stick out in a pout. “You wanna act your age, right, Dean?” Dean nodded against Dad’s chest. “Good. I’ve been thinking about something for a few days. I think you’re big enough to learn how to defend Sammy. And yourself. What do you think?”He loosened his arms around Dean and let him lean back in his lap with his hands braced against the top of Dad’s belly and look up to meet his dark eyes. Dad didn’t look disappointed in him, but Dean was worried that he would if he gave him the wrong answer.“Yeah, I think so.”Dad smiled, and Dean smiled back. He had felt so happy and safe just a little bit ago, when Dad had picked Dean up and he’d held him like he hadn’t wanted to let him go. Now, Dean was starting to feel embarrassed for what he’d done last night. For thinking he’d been a ghost. Dad would have noticed it if he was, Dad wasn’t stupid. If Dean’d told Dad what he’d been afraid of then he would probably have laughed. He was glad that Dad couldn’t tell he’d been crying; that he’d been acting like a baby. Dad was right, Dean wasn’t a little kid anymore. He was six years old.That afternoon, Dad paid the lady at the front desk to look after Sammy while he took Dean on a drive. He let Dean sit in the passenger seat and even pick out the cassette to listen to. They stopped alongside a dirt road next to a wide-open expanse of yellow field and then Dad had Dean help him set up some empty bottles on top of the fence posts that surrounded it. Then they walked back towards the car, until Dad felt like they were far enough away, and he had Dean stand in the dirt and wait for him to get something from the trunk.Dad came back with a gun in his hands. Dean’s eyes widened when he saw it, realizing that the bottles on the fence were like when Caleb set up pop bottles and tin cans and stuff in Pastor Jim’s yard for target practice. He’d always asked Caleb if he’d let him have a turn every time Caleb did shooting practice behind the church, but Caleb had always said no because Dean was too little. Did Dad really think he was big enough, now?Dad got down on his knees next to Dean and held out the gun. “I’m gonna teach you how to use this, Dean, okay? We’re just gonna do target practice right now. But I want you to learn everything. How to be safe with guns, and how to take care of them. I’m not gonna be around all the time, and I want you to be prepared. You understand, Dean?”Dean nodded, still wide-eyed. The gun in Dad’s hands was intimidating. He saw what guns could do in the movies; they could hurt people. He didn’t want to hurt anybody. When Dad took his hands and forced his fingers closed around the gun’s handle and guided Dean’s posture and showed him how to look down the sight, Dean couldn’t help the tremble in his bottom lip. The gun was smooth and hard and cold. When Dad let go of his arms, the weight of the gun made his hands drop slightly, and they started to shake.“Go on, Dean. Aim at the first bottle, there.”Dean stared across the stretch of field at the first fence post. The bottle on it was green. He tried to straighten his arms and steady his grip. The gun felt very big in his hands, or maybe his hands felt very little. His heart, pounding in his chest, seemed loud. He hoped that Dad wouldn’t find out how nervous he was.Dean darted his eyes around the field, suddenly terrified that a bunny-rabbit or a bird or even a kitty-cat would come along and get in front of the target just as he pulled the trigger. What if he hurt something? What if he killed something? He didn't want to kill anything!Dad spoke up again, still kneeling beside him. He sounded a little different now; a little impatient, a little disappointed. “Man up. You’re going to have to protect your brother, Dean.” Man up, man up, man up. Pressing his lips together into a flat line, Dean straightened his arms and forced his hands to stop shaking; forced himself to ignore that the weight of the gun was making his arms hurt. He nodded. He didn’t want to hurt anything but he didn’t want anything to hurt Sammy, either. And he wanted to make his dad happy.Staring down the sight like his dad had just told him - like he’d watched Caleb do - Dean instinctually closed his left eye, adjusted his aim, and tightened his finger on the trigger.He was used to the noise; he’d spent enough time at Caleb’s knees during his shooting practice that it didn’t really bother him. But the way the gun seemed to come alive in his hand and push him backwards was a surprise. His hands flew back towards his face but he tightened his arms before he could whack himself in the nose, and he lost his footing and nearly stumbled backwards except for Dad’s hand catching him at his lower back.“Atta boy, Ace!” Dad said, clapping him on the back as soon as he’d regained his balance, and Dean looked back up towards the fence to see that the bottle had vanished and that little pieces of green glass were now scattered around in the yellow grass. Dean lowered the gun and turned to look at his dad, a proud smile alighting his face when he saw Dad’s grin. “Look at that! You got it on the first shot! You think you can hit the rest of them?”Dad’s hand was so warm and his smile so big that it made Dean feel like he’d really done something really right. The tightness in his chest eased up and his stomach felt better.“Yeah, I’ll do it! I bet I can!”“Then what are you waiting for?” Dad squeezed his shoulder and pointed towards the next bottle. “Try again.” Dean raised the gun back up in front of his chest, this time much more steady, and bit his lip as he again squeezed his left eye closed to center the bottle in his sight. He strengthened the position of his legs and tightened his elbows. He wouldn’t stumble again.This time, he didn’t get surprised by the kickback and he was able to watch as the bottle exploded when it got hit by the bullet. At his dad’s encouragement, Dean went on to shoot the rest of them, hitting them all dead-on. Each burst of shattered glass earned him a word of encouragement from Dad - and in turn a burst of elation and pride in his own chest - until all of the bottles were gone and he turned to look at his dad with a big smile. Dad was smiling, too, and he took the gun from Dean’s hands and put it on the ground before grabbing Dean under his arms and lifting him into the air and spinning him around like he hadn’t done since before Mom died.“You’re a natural, Deano!” Dad laughed, and Dean laughed too. Dad hadn’t looked at him like this - like he was the only thing in the world - since before he could remember. Dad looked like he wasn’t even thinking of the monsters in the dark, like he wasn’t even thinking about when Mom burned up on the ceiling, like he wasn’t even thinking about Sammy. He just looked like he was thinking about Dean being a natural. Dean would shoot a gazillion bottles if it meant that Dad looked at him like that even one more time!Dad took him to get McDonald’s on the way back to the motel room and he even let Dean order a milkshake, and Dean was grinning the whole time because Dad was, too.“I’ll start training you on the other guns, too,” Dad told him once they’d gotten back to the motel and picked Sammy up from the front desk lady. “You’ll start learning how to take care of them and clean them with me. And gun safety, that’s important. If I’m gonna trust you to handle guns then I need to know that you’re gonna use them safely, especially around Sam. You think you can handle that, Champ?”“Yessir!” Dean’s answer was exuberant and some chewed-up hamburger flew out of his mouth onto the wrapper on the table in front of him, and Dean felt pleased that it made Dad laugh.It didn’t take too long for Dean to learn gun safety, because he knew it was important and he really put his mind to it. Dad made him practice first thing every day after he got home from kindergarten. He made sure that Dean knew how to hold a gun right - “Never put your finger on the trigger unless you’re ready to shoot, always be aware of where you’re pointing it, never point it in any direction you don’t want it to go off in” - and how to clean them. Dean wanted to do it right and to do everything just the way that Dad told him to so that Dad would look at him like he’d looked at him in the field; like how he looked at Sammy. But sometimes it seemed like the better he did, the less Dad paid attention to him.Dean got his own shotgun for defending Sammy when Dad had to be away for a little while, and a little silver knife, too, for monsters that could only be killed by silver. Dean had started to learn about more monsters and about how to kill them. His dad sometimes gave him pop quizzes while Sammy was asleep or in another room, and Dean wanted to make sure he always gave the right answers so that he wouldn’t have to see Dad’s frustration or disappointment when he got something wrong.“You know not to talk about this stuff around Sammy, right, Dean?” Dad asked him once. He was sitting on the rim of the bathtub in the bathroom, directing Dean on how to wash and disinfect the bleeding gash on his forearm while Dean knelt on the closed toilet. The smell of blood was overwhelming - worse than even when he got a bloody nose - and made him want to puke. “I don’t want him knowing about all of this. The monsters, the ghosts. He deserves to be a kid for as long as we can give him.”It was hard for Dean to talk during times like this, when his heart was pounding in his chest and his hands were shaking and slippery with his dad’s red red blood. He knew that the feel and the smell and the color of it would be in his dreams that night, but he had gotten good at keeping quiet and he almost never wet the bed anymore. Dad didn’t need to have told him not to talk about this stuff around Sammy; Dean already knew not to do that. Sammy didn’t deserve to have nightmares like he did. Sammy didn’t deserve to know what this much blood smelled like.Things started to change when Sammy started getting older. Dad was there when Sammy took his first steps, which were from the floor next to the TV right into Dean’s open arms. And then as soon as Sammy could really move around on his own, he was moving everywhere, turning over every nook and cranny in their little motel room or apartment or trailer house. Dean knew it wasn’t Sammy’s fault; it was boring being shut up someplace with only one or two rooms - Dean knew that firsthand - and his little brother didn’t even have school on the weekdays to entertain him. It was all he could do to keep the shotgun locked up in his duffel bag with a bike lock he’d found on a rack outside his school with the key still in it, and to remind Sammy over and over again not to break the salt lines on the windowsills. He couldn’t trust Sammy to remember so he had to check on them every hour, anyway.Whenever they moved to a new place, the first thing Dean and Sam did after Dad left to go work was to play a game that Dean had invented. It didn’t have a name, but Sam would always practically vibrate with anticipation while Dad went around getting his things together, shooting furtively excited glances towards Dean until the door finally closed behind their dad’s back and Dean gave him The Look and they both knew exactly what to do. With eager determination, they went around their new living quarters to turn over every cushion, look under every piece of furniture, and open every cupboard and drawer to find anything left by the last people who’d stayed there. Every time one of them found something better than trash or dust bunnies (or, gag, dead bugs or mice), they’d hold their discovery aloft with an excited whoop before depositing it onto the kitchen table. After they’d combed over every nook and cranny in the place, they’d sit next to each other at the table and sort through their findings together.Sometimes, they found leftover snacks, canned food, or condiments in the cupboards. That was always exciting, especially when it was something they usually didn’t have the money to buy or something neither of them had tried before. Less often, they found toiletries in the bathroom; like half-used tubes of toothpaste or rolls of floss. Even more rare but valuable was when they found medicine - usually single-dose packets of ibuprofen or acetaminophen, but sometimes partly-used bottles of pills or cough syrup - that Dean would carefully store in the med kit. Once in a while they found loose pills in the bathroom drawers or on the floor, and they collected those as well. If Dean recognized them, he put them with the others of the same kind. There were some that were unfamiliar to him, though; strange colors or shapes or unfamiliar symbols stamped into them. The smart thing to do would be to throw them away, so that’s what he told Sammy he did, but the truth was that he snuck them into a crumpled up Ziploc bag tucked into a sock and zipped into the inside pocket of his duffel because maybe he’d recognize them one day and they’d be useful.The best thing they could find was money. They could usually scrape up almost a dollar or even two in change from the couch cushions and the far corners of kitchen drawers. At one memorable apartment, Dean had pulled three whole ten-dollar bills from between the springs of one of the old mattresses where they had been tucked through a tear in the cover and blessedly forgotten, and then he and Sam had jumped around the room with the bills held aloft in their hands cheering at their wealth until they were out of breath. Dean had another Ziploc bag and another sock - the other half of the one he stored the mystery pills in - that he kept their scavenged money in, along with anything Dean ever found in the street or sidewalk. Sam was sworn to secrecy never to tell Dad about their special stash. Dean needed that money in case of an emergency, and he knew if Dad knew about it, it would disappear. Sammy didn’t really need much cajoling to keep his lips shut, because a secret between just him and Dean was so special and exciting; but, to sweeten the deal anyway, Dean always counted out five cents for each of them, mostly in pennies but sometimes a shiny nickel, to walk to a penny store and buy candy to eat before Dad came home.By the time that Sammy was a little older and Dad started going on longer hunting trips on the weekends, Dean had probably figured out a hundred-and-one different ways to make macaroni and cheese. He’d add in ketchup for spice, or canned tuna or cut up hot dogs for some extra texture and protein. On Sammy’s birthday once Dean even tried mixing in marshmallow fluff, and it actually turned out to be pretty good. Sammy liked it, anyway, and ate it with a big grin after blowing out the half-burnt candles that Dean had stuck in the sticky, marbled white-and-yellow noodle-y concoction (the same candles that Dean had re-used for every birthday for the last couple years, plucked from a classmate’s birthday cake and carefully kept wrapped in napkins in one of the pockets of Dean’s duffel). Dean had used some of his emergency money to buy a modest assortment of candy - Nerds and Smarties and M&Ms - for Sammy to mix into his bowl however he liked.But then Dad showed up the next morning with a present wrapped up in newspaper for Sammy, and when he tried to eat the leftovers from the fridge he made a face and told Dean off for ruining perfectly good food.“You used to make it just like your mom did,” he said flatly while he dumped the rest of the leftovers into the trash before Dean could stop him. Dean, with a lump in his throat the size of a jawbreaker, looked at his dad, who was looking down into the trash bin instead of anywhere near him. It was Sammy’s birthday treat, he wanted to say. And also, Sammy and I don't wanna eat the same thing every single day. And even, I like to be creative sometimes. He just wanted to explain himself in some way that would make his dad understand how hard it was to plan all their meals when the budget was only two-fifty on a good day. Mom had been so good at it; Dean knew that because Mom had been good at everything. Dean tried to be as good as her, but it was hard. “I can still make it like that for you,” he said instead. “Are you hungry? We still have some in the box. I can make it just like that, Dad, just for you. Just like Mom did.”Dad seemed to soften a bit at that. He turned to meet Dean’s eyes, finally, and smiled slightly and reached out to put a big hand on Dean’s shoulder. He looked Dean up and down, like he was sizing him up. Dean was ready for him to say yes - he would turn around right then and go make Dad macaroni if he asked - but instead his dad patted his shoulder and shook his head.“Don’t bother. Growing boys need to eat more than just macaroni every night, y’know, Dean.” He chuckled and said it like a joke, but it felt like a reprimand. “I’ll go pick up something for all of us; pizza, maybe. Make up for missing Sam’s birthday.”Dad took a long time to come home with the pizza that night, and when he did he was stumbling around and speaking funny like when he drank too much out of his "hard stuff" bottles that Dean and Sam weren’t allowed to touch. And the pizza was cold and half-eaten. Dad fell asleep on the couch while Dean heated up the pizza for him and Sam in the microwave, and then Dean took off Dad’s boots for him and covered him with a blanket.Dad still did hunts with Abe and Caleb sometimes, and left them at Pastor Jim’s house for a week every once in a while. It wasn’t like it had been before. Pastor Jim didn’t look at Dean in the same way that he used to, and Dean knew that it was because of him being a boy. Not like it was that hard to figure out. He even sat Dean next to him in the pews once, in front of the statue of the Virgin Mary, and told Dean that God would forgive him of his transgressions if he ever decided to step back onto the path that He’d laid out for him.“I know you feel like this is the right thing to do for you right now, Dean. But I just want to assure you that you don’t have to feel trapped on this path forever. You will always be able to change your mind, no matter how old you get, and no matter how far you travel down this road. The Lord will always welcome you with loving arms.”Dean had just grit his teeth together and scowled while his face heated up and his eyes prickled. It wasn’t fair that Pastor Jim was still so nice to him and took such good care of him and Sammy when they stayed over, because it made it so confusing when he treated Dean like that. He’d look at Dean sometimes with eyes filled with some deep sadness, like he really cared about him, and it made Dean feel guilty for feeling so bad when he was around.Caleb was different. Dean still liked being around Caleb because he still looked cool in his cowboy boots and it made Dean feel giddy when he grinned at him and because he let Dean shoot bottles with him, now that he knew how to use guns. He even taught him how to throw knives.He also showed Dean cowboy movies. One time Caleb sat him down to watch The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, and Dean loved it so much that he quoted it for hours and Caleb agreed to play Cowboys with him. He even played Tuco and let Dean be Blondie, and Dean guessed he did a really good job because Caleb started calling him 'Blondie' sometimes as a nickname after that.So Caleb was better, and it was nice to spend time with him, still. But things felt weird sometimes, too, like… Like Caleb thought that he and Dean were playing pretend. Like 'Dean' was a nickname just as much as Blondie was.At least it wasn’t as bad as being around Dad's friend Abe. Abe was still kind of scary, just like he’d been before, and after Dean started being Dean he got mean, too. Dean didn’t like being in the same room as him if his dad wasn’t there, because Abe said awful things to him when Dad wasn’t around.“Get the little tranny outta my chair, boy,” Abe had said once to Caleb. Caleb and Dean had been watching a spaghetti western on the TV, with Caleb sprawled out on the couch and Dean curled up in the big armchair. Dad had been out picking up supplies, and Sammy had been playing in the garage.Dean, who didn’t know what a tranny was but knew by then that Abe was talking about him when he said it, had shot up out of the chair and around to the back of the couch where he could hide behind both it and Caleb. He’d plucked at the hem of his shirt nervously, chin tucked down to his chest, looking up at Abe through his eyelashes with uncertainty. Caleb had pushed himself up to a sitting position and looked back at Dean warily over his shoulder.“C’mon, Dad. You don’t gotta call 'er- call ‘im that. He’s just a kid.”“I’ll call ‘er whatever I want in my own goddamn house.”Caleb had grimaced, had reached up to run his fingers through the hair on the back of his head and rub the back of his neck. “Y’know, if John found out…”“The tranny’ll keep ‘er mouth shut if she knows what’s good for her. Right, girl?” Abe had met Dean’s eyes right then with his own, which were pale and emotionless. His words were always so mean, but he never looked mad, just like he was stating a fact. It made it worse, somehow. It made Dean feel ashamed. It was worse than when Abe had never talked to him at all.Abe hadn’t had to say anything to Caleb to keep his son’s mouth shut. Caleb never really spoke up to defend Dean, and he never said anything to Dean’s dad. It was okay; Dean understood. Abe was Caleb’s dad, and he had to mind his father.And Dean, Dean never said anything either. Because he knew that if he did then his Dad would get angry - angry at Abe - and then they might have a fight and they might not hunt together anymore. If Dad didn’t have Abe to hunt with sometimes, then he might go fight a monster alone and get hurt. Dean didn’t want that; he never wanted that.It was a relief, like an answer to a prayer, when Dad brought them to stay with Uncle Bobby for the first time. It was scary at first, being in a strange house with a stranger, but it also felt new and exciting. And Uncle Bobby didn’t know about Dean’s body so he didn’t treat Dean any differently than he treated Sam and he didn’t look at Dean weird or tell him he could change his mind or call him names.He even liked Dean. Most of the new people they met, like babysitters and teachers and diner waitresses, liked Sammy better because Sam was little and smiley and cute. Dean was pretty ugly, he wasn’t cute and all innocent and bright-eyed and sweet like his little brother was. So Dean was used to grown-ups doting on Sam, patting his head and giving him toys to play with or candy to suck on while Dean kept an eye on him.Uncle Bobby, though, was different. He paid at least as much attention to Dean as he did to Sam; maybe even more since he let Dean help him in the workshop. And after that first visit, Uncle Bobby’s place became like a home base. Dad brought them there and left them there way more often than anywhere else. Dean loved Uncle Bobby and he missed him when they were away, and he even thought that maybe Uncle Bobby missed them, too.One day, though, two years after meeting Uncle Bobby for the first time, Dad woke Dean and Sammy up in their bedroom with a serious look on his face. He sat on the edge of Sam's bed and rested his hand on Sam's leg, squeezing it gently. Dean and Sam looked at each other nervously."What is it, Dad?" Dean asked, voice tight. "Is everything okay?"Dad ran his hand down his face and scratched at his beard with a sigh. "Yeah, Dean, everything's fine. Nothin' to worry about, I just gotta tell you both something."They nodded and waited quietly for their dad to find the words."Uncle Bobby knows, Dean. About you.""About me?" Dean asked, wide-eyed and feeling small. Was Dad really saying what Dean thought he was?"About Dean's secret?" Sam whispered. Dad nodded, and Dean felt his hands start to go all clammy and shaky. His mouth went dry."How’d he… How? How’d he find out?" Dean asked, wracking his brain for any hint he might've given. Any careless slip-up. A horrible, sickening fear filled him; had Uncle Bobby just guessed? Had he just been able to tell? Was it so obvious that Dean wasn’t born right that he'd figured it out just by looking at him?There was a long moment of silence while Dad seemed to be gathering his thoughts, weighing his response. It almost seemed like he was trying to come up with an answer, but he was probably just figuring out how he wanted to say it."I told him," Dad finally said.Dean felt like he'd been slapped. Betrayal curled up from his stomach like tiny, gripping vines.“You told him?”Dad hesitated, but then nodded, firm. “I told him. But it’s special circumstances, you understand? You still gotta keep quiet about this, Sammy. Uncle Bobby’s the only one who gets to know.”Sam was nodding, but Dean was staring at his bedspread, twisting his sheets up in his hands.“Uncle Bobby’s not gonna call CPS or nothin’?” Sam asked, concerned. Dad shook his head confidently.“Uncle Bobby’s gonna keep Dean’s secret, too. He’s not gonna tell anyone. He’s safe, okay?” Sam nodded, but Dean didn’t move or say anything. He could feel his dad’s eyes on him, expecting an answer.“Dean?” Dad prompted. There was a familiar edge to his tone. “That’s a question, boy.”Dean chewed on his cheek and wondered if he was strong enough to tear through the sheets with his bare hands. He frowned, feeling something hot in his chest. After a moment, Dean could hear his dad start to open his mouth to reprimand him and the feeling in Dean’s chest exploded to interrupt it.“Why’d you tell him, Dad? Why’d you have to tell him? He didn’t have to know!”“Dean,” Dad tried to answer him, but Dean didn’t let him finish.“It’s supposed to be a fucking secret!”Sam let out a gasp at Dean’s use of a bad word in front of their father, and Dad’s expression was dark when Dean looked up at him.“You know better than to talk to me like that.”“I don’t care!” Dean snapped, and he released his grip on the sheets so that he could launch himself to his feet and run out the bedroom door. He didn’t know where he was planning on running to, but that didn’t matter because his dad was fast. Dad caught up to him at the end of the hallway; Dean was abruptly stopped and tugged backwards when a big hand grabbed him tight around his upper arm.“Get offa me!” he yelled, struggling to pull his arm away, but Dad didn’t relinquish his grip. He just got down at eye level with Dean, leveling him with a hard glare and keeping his arm in a vice grip that would’ve dislocated his shoulder if he kept trying to wriggle out of it.“Quiet,” Dad ordered, not leaving any room for argument. Dean forced himself to still, forced himself to clench his jaw and try to even his breathing. “You’re acting like a brat. You think you know better than me, Dean? Think you’re smarter than your old man? Maybe next hunt I take you on I should let you call the shots since you think you’re hot shit.”Dean glared into his dad’s eyes, feeling his whole body trembling with anger except for his arm where Dad’s hand was squeezing too tightly around it to allow any movement. Dad gave his arm a shake, and his body jerked in response to ease the strain on his shoulder.“Huh, Dean? Since you know so much better than me about how to keep you and Sam safe, maybe we can bring Sam, too. Since you’re so fucking smart, he won’t be in any danger, right?” Dad was giving him all of his attention, but this wasn’t how he wanted it. “As long as you’re in charge, he’ll be fine, no matter how many monsters try to get him, right?”Dad glared at him and he scowled back. Dean clenched his free hand into a fist, and his dad’s eyes darted down to it and then back up to his face with a look that said Try it, and you lose that hand.“So what d’you say, Dean? I can march back in there and tell Sam all about monsters. Then I can take you both on the hunt with me instead of Uncle Bobby. We’ll even let Sammy have his own gun. As long as you’re there calling the shots, Sam won’t be in any danger, right?”Furious tears filled Dean’s eyes, threatening to fall, and he felt his lower lip tremble uncontrollably. Dad wasn’t being fair. Sammy was only six. He was too little to know about monsters or fire a gun. Dean shook his head, swallowing down the knot in his throat.Dad shook his arm again, sending a few tears rolling down his heated cheeks. The grip was starting to really hurt and making Dean’s fingers go numb. “Use your words, Dean.”“No,” Dean said, the word coming out as barely more than a whisper. He cleared his throat and tried again. “No, sir. I don’t want Sammy goin’ on a hunt. I don’t think I know better ‘n you.”“Alright.” Dad searched his expression for another few seconds before he let go of his arm, allowing him to finally step back and reach up with his other hand to rub at where a bruise felt like it was forming. “Pull yourself together, Dean, you’re too old for crying fits.”Dean sniffled and rubbed his tears away with his unhurt arm, taking a deep breath to steel himself and quash the quivering, swelling feeling in his throat. Dad let him get control of himself, almost looking like he was taking the opportunity to come up with what he was going to say to Dean next.“You want me to answer the question you asked before you threw your tantrum? You wanna know why I decided to tell Uncle Bobby?”Dad still sounded irate. He was talking to Dean like he was stupid. He shrugged, but Dad just glared at him silently until he finally answered verbally.“I guess. I mean, yes, sir.”The corners of his dad’s mouth tightened slightly, but he let Dean’s sullen tone slide. Dad sighed. He glanced back over his shoulder as though making sure that Sam hadn’t poked his head out of their room, but Dean knew that his little brother didn’t like to put himself in the line of fire when Dad was angry. He might be pressing his ear against the door trying to eavesdrop, but he wouldn’t be able to hear anything from all the way over there.“The thing is, Dean,” Dad said, voice still colored with anger but softer now and more careful, like he was choosing his words to avoid touching on something sensitive. “You’re getting older, and you’re almost a teenager now. You understand what that means, right?”Dean hesitated before shaking his head, not knowing what being a teenager had to do with anything. Dad settled one hand on his knee and dragged the other across his mouth. He nodded, almost to himself. His visible discomfort was making Dean nervous. Dean continued to rub at his sore arm.“What you look like now, Dean, you’re not going to look like this forever. Your body is going to start changing in a few years.”When his eyes met Dean’s again, they looked regretful. Like he knew what he said was gonna hurt, but Dean had forced his hand. Dean felt like he was standing at the edge of a gaping chasm; he didn’t want Dad to finish what he was saying.“You understand what I’m trying to say here, kiddo? You’re gonna start lookin’ a certain type of way, soon, when you’re a little older. Uncle Bobby was going to find out eventually. Thought it was better to get it over with now, in case it didn’t go well.”Dean felt like throwing up. He didn’t want to think about what his dad was implying; he wanted to push those thoughts away so that maybe they wouldn’t come true. But Dean knew. He knew. In case it didn’t go well, Dad had said. In case Uncle Bobby got mad, maybe. In case he didn’t think that what Dad was doing - letting Dean be Dean - was okay. In case he tried to call CPS or something else even worse.But Dean didn’t think that Uncle Bobby would do that; Uncle Bobby liked him, he was sure of that. He was family. And Uncle Bobby was kind. He wouldn’t try to get Dean taken away, and it hadn’t even occurred to him to be scared of that.What Dean was afraid of was the change. The change in how Uncle Bobby treated him; looked at him. The fear had always been there since after the first time they’d stayed at Uncle Bobby’s place; a tiny thing, mostly quiet, wiggling in the dark corners of Dean’s mind. Would Uncle Bobby talk to me the same if he knew? a little voice would whisper to him while the two of them hung out in the workshop, Dean standing up on the old crate Uncle Bobby pulled over for him to let him see easily under the hood of the car they were working on. Would he treat me the same? He had never wanted to find out, but now, he didn’t have a choice. Uncle Bobby knew, and the next time that Dean saw him - saw the way he looked at him - the change would be there. Whatever it was.“Does that answer your question, Dean?” he heard his dad ask him.“Yes, sir.” He didn’t feel angry anymore, he just felt cold.“Alright.” Dad patted his shoulder and then rubbed his hand up and down his sore arm for a moment as though in apology, and then stood up. “Go get dressed with Sam, and get ready for breakfast.”Dean got dressed. Sam tried to ask him what he and Dad had said in the hallway and if Dad was still mad and why was Dean acting so upset even though Dad said it was okay that Uncle Bobby knew. Stubbornly, Dean refused to say anything in response and ran down to the kitchen ahead of him. He stared at the meager selection of breakfast cereal that was set out on the counter and then decided that he wasn’t hungry and ran out the front door and down the steps into the hard packed dirt of the yard.“Dean!” he heard Sam calling after him indignantly from back inside the house, but Dean didn’t slow down. He ran towards the fence and the maze of old cars behind it, and without even thinking about it he ran to the workshop.There was a motorcycle up on Uncle Bobby’s table and familiar tools and various machine parts that Dean could almost recognize strewn about. A familiar clutter. Maybe he’d wait here until Uncle Bobby came out, and he’d see Dean in there and it would remind him of all the times that Dean had helped him out in the workshop over the last couple of years and he’d see that Dean was still the same and that he really was a boy, he really hadn’t been lying about it.Craving a safe place and feeling like a baby but not even caring, Dean opened the crooked door of Uncle Bobby’s tool cabinet and crawled into the little space in there that he’d made for himself years ago. The feel of the metal underneath and around him felt comforting, and so did the dark. He wrapped his arms around himself and leaned against the back of the cabinet, resolving to leave soon - just as soon as he was ready - before Uncle Bobby came and found him like that.But Dean couldn’t do it. No matter how long he waited, he didn’t feel ready. Not even when he heard Uncle Bobby’s heavy steps approaching, not even when Uncle Bobby came in and started working on the motorcycle. Dean listened, and breathed, and tried to convince himself to stop being a baby and come out, but by then it felt like he’d waited too long.He would have stayed in there just listening to Uncle Bobby working for as long as it took and come out only after Uncle Bobby had left, but the sound of something crashing against the wall and the clatter of things spilling startled him so much he let out a noise and gave himself away.Every inch of Dean tensed and trembled as he heard Uncle Bobby’s steps approach the cabinet and waited for the moment that the door would be thrown open and Dean would be confronted with Uncle Bobby’s look and the way that things had changed. But Uncle Bobby just sat down, only inches away from Dean on the other side of the doors, and the way he talked to him through the metal cabinet… it sounded the same. The same as before.“Dean, I swear to you. I won’t look at you, or treat you any different,” Uncle Bobby told him, sounding honest. Dean kinda believed him.Uncle Bobby always paid attention to Dean, and the attention he paid was warm and kind. Dean didn’t really get that from Dad… Not that Dad was disappointed in him or mad at him all the time or anything, because he wasn't. It was just that Dad was so busy hunting and saving people, and missing Mom; so when he was home with Sam and Dean, he was tired a lot and he had things on his mind. Sam was the baby so it made sense for Dad to give all his attention to him. Not like Dean didn’t know that; he gave all of his attention to Sam, too.With Uncle Bobby, though, Dean never even had to do anything to get his attention. He could even just be doing nothing - just standing there by his side and watching him make omelets at the stove - and Uncle Bobby would look down at him and smile like he was doing something right, just by being there. When Dean helped Uncle Bobby in his workshop, just asking him a question - not even answering a question right, but asking one of his own - made Uncle Bobby's eyes go soft as he looked at him. He'd answer; not flippantly or absent-mindedly, but gladly. Sometimes the tone of his voice made him feel like Uncle Bobby was proud of him just for thinking of the question to ask. And when Uncle Bobby showed him how to do something, he'd watch Dean do it like he was paying attention to him and not just whether or not he was doing it right. Working with Uncle Bobby like that made Dean feel like he was shining.Dean used to think that Uncle Bobby treated him that way because he didn’t know him well enough yet. Didn’t know how badly Dean could fuck up sometimes, and how he needed a firm hand to make sure he did things right. But Uncle Bobby hadn’t even changed the way he’d looked at Dean after the time that his carelessness almost got Sam shot in the side yard. Maybe Uncle Bobby did know him well enough. Maybe he already knew how Dean needed someone to be tough on him so that he wouldn’t mess up, but thought that he could leave that to somebody else. Instead, he always smiled at Dean and looked at him with soft eyes and made him feel like he liked having Dean around.Even now, even after finding out about him being born wrong, Uncle Bobby was looking at him the same way that he always had. Dean was with him in the workshop and Uncle Bobby was happy he was there. It hadn’t changed at all.He brought Dean over to show him how the motorcycle worked, and wanted him to be the one to connect the wires for the starter because he knew Dean could do it, and not once did Dean have to wonder Would he treat me the same if he knew? because Uncle Bobby did know, now. Dean had his answer; he didn’t have to ask the question anymore. So maybe it had all worked out. Maybe Dad did know better than him.The first time that Dad left Sam and Dean alone for longer than a day or two was after Sam started school, and then he started doing it a lot after that. Depending on the city they were living in, Dean could wait with Sam at the bus stop or walk him to school in the mornings and then pick him up again on the way home. Dad usually tried to find towns to stay in where Dean and Sam could go to the same school or where their schools were next to each other. Sometimes, if Dad was planning to stay somewhere for longer than a month, they rented a trailer park or an apartment instead of staying in a motel room, but they ended up in a lot more motels than rentals.For the motels, Dean learned how to make it seem like Dad was still coming home every day by going up to the front desk occasionally with questions “from his dad”. He didn’t think they believed him sometimes, but it gave them an excuse to look the other way. As long as they were paying for the room, the front desk didn’t care whether or not two children had been left alone for a few days, or a week. Or a week and a half.It was maybe the fifth time that Dad went on a hunt and left them alone that Dean learned the hard way that he couldn’t always count on Dad’s word for his budgeting.That hunt, Dad told them that he’d be back in five days and left Dean a small roll of cash - later, after Dad was gone, Dean counted sixty-eight dollars - to pay for the motel room and groceries. The motel was $12.15 a night, and spread over five days, that left only $7.25 for the whole school week for Dean to spend on food for him and Sam.On the first day, they ate stale Lucky Charms for breakfast. Sam took the rest of the milk. Dean traded the manager at the front desk of the motel five dollar bills for two rolls of nickels and four quarters, and counted out forty-five cents for both him and Sam to buy school lunch.Taking Sam to school in that town was easy because kindergarten through fifth grade was all in the same building. Dean would have sat next to Sam for lunch, but the younger grades ate at a different time. Dean wrote on his desk during the afternoon lessons, preoccupied with doing the math to figure out what groceries to buy after school while he was walking Sam home. For dinners, he could buy a couple cans of Spaghettios and some sandwich stuff. But when he counted up the prices he’d memorized, it was over four dollars for everything. Add up the cost of the school lunches and everything together was almost nine dollars, but Dad had only left them with seven.Frowning in concentration and ignoring the lesson, Dean rearranged and erased the numbers he’d scrawled on his desk. If he took off the Spaghettios, it would only be about three dollars for bread, peanut butter, a pack of baloney and Kraft singles. But lunch would still bring them up to $7.40, and he hadn’t even thought about breakfast yet. At least there was still a little more cereal in the box; Sammy could eat that tomorrow, and Dean would figure it out.By the time the end of the day rolled around, Dean was feeling a little less stressed out because he’d found out that the school served free breakfast; they just had to go to school thirty minutes early every day. He could get the stuff for sandwiches and take twenty-five cents out of the emergency fund that he still kept hidden in his duffel, and they’d be fine.And they would have been fine if Dad had come back in five days like he’d said. But he didn’t.When Dean didn’t go to the front desk to pay by ten o’clock on Saturday morning, the manager came and knocked on their door.“My dad had to go run an errand but he’s gonna be back soon with the money,” he told the manager, who stared down at him like he knew Dean was bullshitting.“I’ll give you until three,” the man told him, looking behind him into the room momentarily to see Sam eating the last of the peanut butter out of the jar in front of the TV. “If I don’t get the money by three, you’ll have to pack your bags and leave.”Dean made Sam a sandwich for lunch with the end pieces of the bread and the one remaining slice of cheese. Sam was disappointed, but he didn't say anything because sometimes sandwiches were only end pieces and one cheese slice and Sam already knew that.Dean sat on the bed while Sam watched cartoons, a position that let him look out the window to keep an eye out for the Impala while being right next to the phone in case Dad tried to call them. He wished that Dad had called at some point during the week to give him a phone number so he could call Dad himself. Although… if Dad was on the road driving back to the motel, Dean supposed that he wouldn't be able to call him anyway.Dean waited, stomach growling, holding out hope until five minutes before the manager’s deadline. But Dad didn’t come home.Biting his lip, Dean rummaged in his bag for the emergency fund and counted it out quickly. He still had the three ten-dollar bills that they’d found in the mattress a long time ago, and a little over seven dollars in change. When he took out the $12.15 for the motel room, that only left him with $25.11. Dean wanted to believe that it would be enough, because it would be if Dad came home that night - or even the next day - but there was no way to be sure.The motel manager took Dean’s money with a pointed look at the clock hanging on the wall that showed that it was only a minute to three. “I guess your dad came and went while I wasn’t looking, huh, kid?” the man asked, and it wasn’t the kind of question that needed an answer. “That was a favor I just did you, understand? The last one. Your ‘dad’ needs to pay by ten o’ clock tomorrow morning, same as always, or I’m gonna have to call the cops on you for squatting.”Dean just nodded and went back to their room.“Can we go play outside?” Sam asked him, the empty peanut butter container discarded on the floor with the spoon hanging out of it.“In a minute, Sammy. I gotta do something first.”“But I’m bored,” whined Sam, sprawling out on the floor. Dean felt irritation flare in his chest.“Can’t you just leave me alone for a minute?” he snapped. “Finish your cartoon and give me a friggin’ break. I just gotta do one thing and then we can go outside.”Sam pouted and sat up. Dean went and picked up one of his notebooks and pencils from his school bag and opened it up on the bed.“Promise?” Sam asked him, hesitantly.“Yeah, I promise, okay? So leave me alone, just for a minute.”Dean did the math. $25.11 would only pay for two more days at the motel and leave him eighty-one cents for food. A box of macaroni was only forty cents and there were three servings in it, so he could buy two boxes. But that would run out for him and Sammy before dinner tomorrow, and if Dad wasn’t home by then… Okay, Dean thought to himself, But I don’t gotta eat a whole box. I can skip a couple meals for one measly day. His empty stomach growled, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten yet today, either. It didn’t matter. He could skip a few meals for two measly days. And maybe Dad would be home by tomorrow night, anyway.He’d buy two boxes of macaroni and make two servings for him and Sam to eat for dinner that night. And tomorrow if Dad wasn’t back then Dean would pay the motel manager and Sam could have macaroni again for breakfast and lunch and then Dean would join him for dinner. He’d have just enough money left over to pay for the motel before school on Monday, and then they could have the free breakfast. He wouldn’t have any money left to give Sam for lunch, but Dean could save his breakfast and give it to Sam like a bag lunch, and then… And then they’d have nothing left for dinner and Sam would go hungry, and he’d have no more money for the motel, but… But maybe he could find something else to pay for the motel room with, if it came to that.Game plan set, Dean made one final move and stretched the curly cord on the motel phone into the bathroom to call Uncle Bobby from where Sam couldn’t hear him. If Dad really didn’t come home by Tuesday morning and they got kicked out of the motel room, then maybe Uncle Bobby could come and pick them up and take them back to Sioux Falls.Dean hadn’t realized how much he’d been hoping to hear Uncle Bobby’s voice, but when the phone went to voicemail he felt such a crushing weight pile onto him he almost started crying. He turned away from the crack in the door before he started talking to make super sure that Sam wouldn’t hear him. He didn’t want Sam to be scared like he was.“Hey, Uncle Bobby,” he spoke lowly into the phone. “It’s Dean. Um, I was just calling because… Dad’s on a hunt, and me and Sammy are okay right now, but… Can you just call me back as soon as you get this? Please, Uncle Bobby?” Dean told him the name of the motel and what city they were in and then rattled off the phone number for their room. Then, not knowing what else to say, he hung up.Dean stared at the phone in his hands for a second, watching the numbers on the plastic buttons swim in and out of focus. Willing it to start ringing in his hands.Sam was excited when Dean finally came back out and told him to put his shoes on. While he was carefully double-knotting his laces, Dean picked up the empty peanut butter jar and went to throw it away. Sam had scraped the jar clean - even the far corners that were hardest to reach - but the plastic spoon still had a little peanut butter inside it that Sam hadn’t finished licking out.Dean turned to check that Sam wasn’t watching him, and then he licked every last smear of peanut butter out of the spoon before dropping it into the trash with the plastic jar.It was hot and sunny outside. Sam, smiling and humming a made-up song, used a rock to scratch white lines into the asphalt of the motel parking lot. As Dean watched, he started feeling tense, his face getting even hotter. Sam had gotten to eat peanut butter for breakfast and a sandwich for lunch so he was doing just fine. Sam had been watching cartoons while Dean had to count the money and talk to the motel manager and be the grown-up. Sam was bored and wanted to play outside because he hadn’t had anything to worry about all day because Dean took care of everything. Dean grit his teeth against the indignation that was so suddenly bubbling up inside him.“It’s called Hopscopch,” Sam told him eagerly when he was done making his lines. “I learned it at recess.”“It's Hopscotch, and it's a girls' game,” Dean scowled in reply. He knew Hopscotch: he’d seen girls play it before at school during recess. They drew the squares themselves with rainbow chalk. He’d only ever seen girls play it. Dean was hungry and irritable and he didn’t want to play a girls' game.Sam’s face fell. “I thought it was fun,” he said, looking between the chicken-scratch squares he’d drawn on the ground and his older brother.“That’s probably because you’re really a stupid girl.” It felt satisfying to say that and watch Sam’s shoulders slump. See how you like it, Dean thought venomously. If he felt bad then Sam should feel bad, too.“But… Please, Dean,” Sam begged, “I wanna play with you. You promised.”“I never said I’d play a dumb girls’ game with you, I just promised we’d go outside,” Dean snapped. “And since you’re being such a friggin’ baby about it, I don’t wanna play at all.”“Dean!” Sam’s voice was high and dismayed, and he reached out to grab at Dean’s hand when he spun on his heels to walk away. Dean smacked his little hand away and kept trudging forward, kicking at the pebbles on the asphalt and heading over to sit on one of the cement parking blocks near the outside of the motel that was partially shaded by the building.“Just play your dumb game. I’m gonna wait here, and when you’re done we have to walk to the store to buy dinner.”Dean sat down and immediately folded his arms over his knees and buried his face in them. He didn’t want to watch Sam play Hopscotch, and he didn’t want to walk to the grocery store to buy macaroni. He just felt so angry all of the sudden, and he hadn’t really known why at first but that didn’t really matter because it was quickly turning in on himself.He’d fucked up. Dad had left him in charge, and he’d fucked up. If Dean had been smarter, he would have figured out a way to divvy up the money better and then they wouldn’t be in this position. He could have called Uncle Bobby sooner and then maybe he would have been home to pick up the phone. And Dean had just been mean to Sam for no good reason when all that Sam wanted to do was play with him; he was a godawful big brother.Suddenly, Dean felt a light touch on the top of his head. It felt like little fingers, petting his hair.“Dean?” he heard Sam ask hesitantly. Dean raised his head and saw his little brother standing in front of him, wide-eyed and solemn-faced. “You okay?”Dean blinked at Sam, tight-lipped, still angry but feeling regretful now, too.“Yeah. I’m fine. I’m just not feeling too good.”“You got a tummy ache? Is that why you didn’t want lunch?” Sam asked. Dean’s stomach growled, the empty pit of it hurting inside.“Yeah. Sorry. Sorry I yelled at you, Sammy. I didn’t mean it. I’m just really not feeling good.”“That’s okay. I yell sometimes when I’m sick, too.”“Thanks.” Dean tried to lift up the corners of his lips into a small, fake smile, but he couldn’t do it. “I’m gonna be okay, Sammy. Really. You go play and I’ll just watch.”Sam turned back to look at his makeshift Hopscotch game and then shook his head.“It’s not really gonna be any fun playing Hopscopch without you, so it’s okay. We can go to the store now, if you want.”Dean closed his eyes and took a deep breath. A better brother would suck it up and put on a smile and go play with Sam for a while like he’d promised. But Dean wasn’t that brother.“Fine. We’ll go shopping. Let me get the money.”They walked the half-mile to the mini mart and back in relative silence. All Dean had been trying to do all day was keep calm so that Sam wouldn’t be worried about Dad being late like he was, but he’d ruined it by being mean to him in the parking lot. Now, Sam seemed like he was walking on eggshells and it was all his fault.The rest of the weekend was awful. Dean was so hungry, and he knew that Sam was pretty hungry too because just one serving of plain macaroni wasn’t all that much. Sam didn’t complain, though, which was a blessing because Dean really really didn’t want to have to deal with that. He was already driving himself crazy just sticking by the phone and waiting for Dad or Uncle Bobby to call and looking out of the motel window every time he heard a car pull into the lot.“Wasn’t Dad supposed to be back by now?” Sam asked him.“He’ll be back soon.”Dad still wasn’t home on Monday morning. Dean paid the front desk and walked Sam to school and stared down at his breakfast, unmoving, for a long time before he forced himself to wrap it up and give it to Sam to eat for lunch.“My stomach still hurts,” he said to him, “So you can eat this for lunch so we can… So we can save the lunch money for something else.”One cent. A single penny. That was the only money in the world that Dean had left.He couldn’t pay attention in class. All Dean could think about was what they were going to do when they got back to the motel. There wasn’t any food left, and Dean couldn’t pay for another night. They’d have to pack everything up and take it with them in the morning, or the motel manager would probably throw all their stuff away after they didn’t pay for the room. But if they brought everything to school then someone would notice and they’d get found out and Dad would be pissed. So maybe they could just take their stuff under the nearby bridge and wait there for Dad or Uncle Bobby to come. Dean had his shotgun; he could keep Sam safe under the bridge even if he had to stay awake all night. But Sammy’s gotta eat, Dean thought, a pang in his own stomach reminding him. How am I gonna get food for Sammy? At lunchtime that day, Dean sat quietly near the wall and watched as other kids talked and ate and threw away their leftovers and trash. There was a table of five boys who were all eating bag lunches, and Dean stared at their food as they brought it to their mouths. Carrot sticks and peanut butter sandwiches and apple slices and little bags of chips taunted him and made him want to leap out of his chair and run over and punch them, but he didn’t. He made himself sit still. And then, after the boys put their leftovers into their bags and walked over to throw them away, Dean moved.Quickly, Dean went over to the big trash can. After glancing around furtively to make sure no one was watching, he bent over and grabbed the five paper bags that the boys had just thrown away and stuffed them hurriedly into his backpack and then raced with it into the bathroom. Sitting on the toilet, Dean opened up each of the bags to check what was left inside. There were some leftover carrots and apples, half a peeled tangerine, two little unopened pre-packaged tubs of peanut butter, three half-eaten sandwiches and part of an oatmeal-raisin cookie.Dean didn’t care that there were bite marks on the food. He could cut off the bitten parts later at the hotel for Sam.Just then, though, with shaking hands, he inhaled the cookie and one half a sandwich and then turned the crumpled-up empty chip bags upside-down over his mouth to catch the shower of crumbs on his tongue. He wanted to eat more; he wanted to eat it all. But he carefully wrapped up the rest in one of the paper bags and tucked it back into his bag. He could wait. Dean would split it with Sam for dinner.During their walk home, Dean rehearsed in his head what he was going to tell Sam in the morning. We're going to have an adventure, Dean practiced silently. Kind of like camping. We're gonna skip school and live off the land like cowboys and Indians. It's gonna be fun. It’s gonna be fun. It's gonna be really fun, Sammy.When they walked up to the motel room, the Impala was parked in front of it. Dad was back."Your Uncle Bobby called the room phone while you and Sam were at school," Dad told Dean later while they were on the road. Sam was lying out in the back seat, sleeping, and Dean was sitting passenger side on the bench next to his dad. "He said you tried to call him over the weekend. Wanna tell me why?"Dean ran his finger over a patch of stitching on the seat. "It's just that you were a little late getting back. And we were running out of money for the motel room, and food. So I was just… calling to see if he could help. If it came down to that."Dad twisted his mouth and furrowed his brows into a thoughtful grimace, keeping his eyes on the road. After a second, he nodded decisively."Good thinking. Sometimes, shit happens, and I'm trusting you to figure it out when it does. Sounds like you had it all handled."Dean wanted to tell Dad that hadn't been all handled, exactly; that they had run out of money, and they would have been out on the street with no food if he hadn't had his emergency fund. But he knew for a fact that Dad would be pissed to hear that he had kept that much money a secret from him."I guess so.""You kept Sam fed, right?"Dean thought of the hungry hungry ache he'd lived with for the past three days. It was gone right now, because Dad had taken them to a diner."Yes, sir.""I'll be more careful in the future and leave you with a little extra, just in case. Alright, Dean? You just need to promise not to touch it unless you really need to. If you go spending it on candy or arcade games, there'll be hell to pay.""Yes, sir."After that first time, Dean knew what to do when Dad left them alone. He always checked for free meal programs first thing when they started a new school, so he could take advantage of that shit. Just in case. And he kept an eye out for teachers that kept candy or snack jars and sneaked handfuls when they weren’t looking, and he dedicated himself to learning how to steal from vending machines. Just in case. And during school lunch, he'd walk around with his eyes on the tables for food items no one was watching - apples, granola bars, sometimes even Ziploc bags with sandwiches or peanut butter crackers or Goldfish in them - and he’d sneak them into his pockets if he was sure no one would see. He'd eat his pilfered goods for lunch so he could save his lunch money. Just in case. And whenever Dad came home late at night, slurring and stumbling and barely able to recognize him - which was loads better than when he came home slurring and angry - Dean would guide him to his bed and then take a few bucks out of his wallet. Not enough for him to notice it missing, but… enough. Just in case. Dad taught him how to drive shortly after he turned eleven. Well, that wasn’t exactly true; he’d taught him how to steer when he was eight, but he’d been a little too short to reach the pedals at that age and he’d had to do it while sitting on Dad’s lap. When he was eleven he was tall enough, though, to drive by himself for real. Dad took him out to a big dirt field that was already full of donut tracks and let him sit in the driver’s seat and just go. It didn’t really matter that Dean was still too short to fully look over the dashboard through the windshield and touch the pedals at the same time, because they were out in the middle of nowhere with no one around and nothing to hit. He’d get even taller soon enough.Wasn’t too long after that, that Dad gave him the printed out papers talking all about puberty. Dean already knew most of it because there’d been a big class lesson at one of the schools he’d gone to a couple years ago, where the PE teachers split up the boys and girls into different rooms and then told them what was going to happen to everyone in the coming years while they “matured”. Dean had sat through it with a stomach ache, feeling like he wanted to sink into his chair. Conflicting feelings had warred inside him: every projector slide on boy puberty had made him pang with longing and envy, and every slide on girl puberty had made him feel sick and ashamed. Through the whole thing, he had stayed quiet and lonely while the other boys giggled around him.The feeling of the empty space in his underwear had been getting a lot worse even before the puberty class at that school. Dean noticed every second of every day that he didn’t have something taking up that empty space. He hadn’t ever stopped putting something in his underwear while he slept at night - he didn’t use toys anymore (not like they even really had toys, anymore), he rolled up a pair of socks - but he had never done it during the day because he thought he remembered someone telling him it was gross a long time ago and he still felt like he had to hide it. He didn’t want Sam or Dad to think he was being gross, but he couldn’t fall asleep without his socks in there. Sometimes, Dean couldn’t even pay attention at school because the empty space where something should be was all he could think about. The socks just made him feel normal and meant he could just relax in his body and not think about it.But after that puberty talk, and after Dad gave him those papers - like he just wanted to really make sure that Dean was being realistic about how life was gonna go for him - Dean decided he couldn’t take it anymore. He started keeping his socks in his underwear all the time after that. The first time that he let himself do it in front of his dad and brother, Dean had braced himself for some sort of objection, ready to tell them it was none of their business and he could do it if he wanted. But to his relief, neither Dad nor Sam ever made him feel weird about it. He wasn’t sure they understood why he did it - not fully, at least - but it was almost like they did.Sam found Dad’s journal on Christmas. Dean knew that Dad was gonna be so mad at him for letting Sam find it, even though Dad had never forgotten to take his journal with him before so how was he supposed to know to keep it away from Sam? And now, thanks to him, Sam was only eight and he knew about monsters. Dean could protect him from monsters, but he couldn’t protect him from nightmares.Late that night, Dean sat on the floor in the bathroom with his hand closed tight around the amulet that Sam had given him. The metal had been cold at first, but had warmed quickly in his grasp and the sharp points dug into his palm and his fingers with a biting sort of comfort. He had Dad’s journal open in his lap. Sam had read Dad’s journal… Dad had never let Dean read his journal before. He’d caught glimpses of the pages before while he was helping Dad do research. He knew there were paper clippings and symbols and even sketches that Dad had drawn of different monsters and things; sometimes, his dad showed him a page or two while they prepped for a hunt; but he never handed it over, never let Dean flip through the pages and read any of the other things that he’d written. Now, Dean was reading them.Dean had figured that the writing would be all about monsters and magic and stuff, but that wasn’t true; not for all of it. Some of it wasn’t about monsters at all. Some of it was about Sam and Dean.His eyes had been staring at one paragraph in particular, reading over the handwritten words over and over again for half an hour.
‘November 14, 1985: Took Dean shooting. If he’s big enough to try to comfort me, he’s big enough to start learning the tools of the trade. I only let him fire the .22, but he is a deadeye marksman. My drill sergeant would have taken him over me in a second. Times like this, I sure am proud of my boy. I have a feeling it’ll be different with Sammy. Maybe he’s just too young to show it, but I don’t think he’s got the same kind of killer instinct.’
Dean wasn’t sure what was the first hunt that Dad had ever taken him on. Maybe it was the shapeshifter when he was nine? Dad hadn’t let him participate, he’d just wanted him to sit in the car and observe. He'd told Dean that he’d seen him kill a shapeshifter once before when he was four or five, pretty soon after they left Lawrence, but Dean didn’t remember it. He remembered that second time, though; he remembered watching his dad raise his pistol and shoot what looked like just a normal person point-blank in the heart. He remembered the blood pooling underneath the fallen body and the way he’d felt in his chest knowing that he was watching because Dad wanted him to do that himself one day, soon.Since that time, Dean had been on other hunts. Especially after the shtriga, because Dad had wanted to make sure that Dean learned not to be a coward. He’d helped by handing Dad weapons when he’d asked for them, and by swiping through ghosts with iron rods while Dad was trying to make whatever the spirit was attached to catch fire. One or two times he’d had to bury his knife in a creature’s chest, and he’d even been the marksman on some hunts when his dad needed backup; someone with a good eye and a steady hand and a… And a killer instinct.Is that what Dean had?Dean had thought that he went on hunts because he wanted to protect his dad and because he wanted to help people. He’d thought that he killed monsters because someone had to and he was willing to take responsibility because he didn’t want people getting hurt. When he pointed a gun and took his aim and watched the life drain out of a monster’s eyes… That empty feeling that rose in his chest and that sort of rushing he felt in his head as his thoughts went clear and fear tightened his gut? He’d thought it was just what you felt when you were in that kind of situation. The kind of situation where you had to act fast to save lives. He didn’t like getting blood on his hands. He hadn’t really thought…Had it been a killer instinct that made him hit his mark every time six years ago when Dad had taken him out to the field? Dad had re-told the story often enough that Dean remembered the facts - that it was his first time with a gun in his hand, but he’d been a natural and he’d hit every bottle on the first shot - but Dean couldn’t remember anything else. Not what he’d been thinking, not what he’d been feeling. Had he really been thinking about killing things? Had he really been picturing flesh and blood-spray while centering the bottles in his sight?With the amulet still clutched tightly in his fist, Dean left the journal open on the floor and stood to stare at his reflection in the mirror. He didn’t really like his reflection; he hadn’t liked it for a long time, though he couldn’t remember when he’d started feeling that way. Dean could remember flashes of a stranger’s face - an ugly little girl’s face - staring back at him from mirrors a long, long time ago, and he hadn’t liked that reflection back then. Maybe the last time - the only time - that he’d liked his reflection in the mirror was when Dad had cut his hair short for the first time. Then again, maybe he’d just liked the haircut.Whenever Dean was at Uncle Bobby’s place, he didn’t really feel like a hunter. He felt like a kid, kinda. He would bury his arms elbow-deep in the guts of old cars with Uncle Bobby at his side, and then later that day he’d be washing black grease off his skin and out from under his fingernails with mechanic’s soap and think about what it would be like to work in an auto shop when he was grown up. To wash grease off his hands instead of blood at the end of a hard day's work. But then every time his dad called to let them know he was coming back for them, Dean was ready; he was ready to walk away and pick up a gun. He was ready to walk Sam to and from school and make them dinner and make sure that Sam did his homework, and he was ready to tighten his grip around a blade and watch his dad’s back and save some people and kill some monsters. And when the hunt was over, and Dad was patting Dean’s back and they were driving back to Sam with blood on their hands, Dean felt… good. Proud.Dean’s reflection in the cracked motel mirror was pallid and there were dark circles under his eyes. He felt something wet drip down his wrist and blankly released his grasp on the amulet to open his hand, finding blood welling up from two small punctures where the horns had dug into his palm. He watched the blood pool in his open palm for what felt like ages, and superimposed over it he could see that same hand the way it had been two months ago: covered in blood from a man that Dean had tried to save who’d been mauled by a werewolf. He’d felt the man’s heart stop beating while his hands had been applying pressure, his whole body weight pressing down onto his wrists because he’d wanted so badly for the guy to survive.Dean turned on the faucet and began to wash his hands, blood splashing into the sink and coating it crimson. Dad had known that Dean was a killer when Dean was only six years old. What kind of fucked-up six-year-old is like that?Dean felt the leather cord around his neck tighten like a chain. Bitter, painful disgust rose in his throat as washed the blood off, imagining that he could still see red from countless other monsters and victims crusted underneath his fingernails on both hands.Violence was so much a part of his nature that his own father had been able to see it on him when he was only six fucking years old. He’d given Dean a gun and Dean had raised it and aimed at those bottles like he was aiming to kill and he’d bulls-eyed every one of them. What the fuck was wrong with him?Maybe this was why his body was wrong. Dean’s body was wrong because he was wrong. It suited him.Sam and Dean liked to explore a lot, to keep themselves entertained when there was nothing on TV. There was this one time, when they were exploring in the trees behind a motel that they stayed in for a few weeks, that Sam and Dean found a dead raccoon. It was freshly dead, and they thought it was only sleeping at first and sneaked in close to check if it was breathing.The furry animal was lying on its stomach with its limbs curled up beside it like it could just be lying down for a nap, and when they did get close enough they saw that the only thing about it that made it really look dead were the eyes. They were all sunken in and dark like crushed blackberries, and flies were crawling over them.Dean and Sam played with it for a while. They picked up sticks and poked at it from a distance at first, but then once they were absolutely sure it wasn’t going to wake up and be a zombie raccoon, they got brave enough to get right up close. They poked their sticks in its eyes, and used them to pry its jaws open to see if there was anything in its mouth. They rolled it over and swirled the ends of the sticks through the lighter fur on its belly, and giggled when they tried to see if it was a boy or a girl raccoon, and tried to poke the ends of their sticks in its ass and all the other holes. Then, when they got bored of that, they tried to see if they could poke the sticks hard enough to go right through the stomach so they could see its guts. There was a school Dean went to for a little bit when he was in seventh grade. He couldn’t remember it much. He knew that he got in trouble with his dad there for punching some kid in the face, but he couldn’t remember why he did it (or even doing it at all). All he remembered about that school was sparring with Sam behind the motel, and the stairs leading up to the school’s metal front doors with the tall safety-wire glass windows, and a poster hanging on a wall in the locker room about the right way to wash your hands.He could picture that poster with the little cartoon germs on it so vividly that he must have read it like fifty times - "Stay healthy, wash your hands!" - but he couldn’t remember why. It was a pretty stupid poster. He must have been reading it to distract himself from something.There was one other thing that Dean remembered about that school. He remembered feeling like a dead raccoon; rotting in the woods while little boys laughed and poked him with sticks. Whenever he tried to remember why he felt that way, his fingers started going numb and black spots started dancing in his vision and his head started feeling fuzzy and floating, so he always stopped. Eventually, Dean managed to forget all of that, too.A half year later in the hot hot summer, Dean messed up and got cornered by some older boys in a gas station. When Sam asked Dean afterwards about the names that the gas-station-boys had called him, Dean told him that he didn’t know what they meant, but that was mostly a lie.Dean knew what a dyke was because he was thirteen and he’d been hearing other kids at school calling each other dykes and fags for a few years by then. But if Sam didn’t know what a dyke was then Dean didn’t want to tell him because he didn’t want Sam to know that sometimes - if Dean went somewhere and he wasn’t dressed quite right - people thought he was a lesbo.Dad and Sam seemed to be under the impression that people saw Dean the way they saw him all the time, and that was how Dean wanted it. Hearing snide comments or getting looks of disapproval from soccer moms at the grocery store was one thing, and he could deal with it; but seeing the look on Sam’s face (or worse, Dad’s) if he found out? Whatever mix of pity, sympathy, and discomfort it would end up being, Dean would put off seeing it for as long as he could. Maybe he would find some spell to fix himself before it ever came to that.So, Dean knew what a dyke was. And a tranny? Dean still didn’t know exactly what that one meant, but he remembered the way Dad’s friend Abe Johnson called him that and he figured he could guess. It meant him, whatever he was.Of course Sam, being Sam, couldn’t leave well enough alone. When he came to Dean with his big pile of papers - his ‘research’ - Dean didn’t really know what to think. The fact that he wasn’t the only one like this - that there were other people out there who were like him, and not just other boys but girls, too - was somehow equal parts unsurprising and earth-shattering.Unsurprising, because it had always seemed like Abe and Pastor Jim and even Caleb saw him a certain kind of way… As a certain kind of thing, different in a way that maybe had a name that they wouldn’t say out loud (except, well, turns out Abe had been saying it out loud to him for years).Earth-shattering, because whether or not Dean had really thought he was the only one like this, he’d at least figured it was rare enough to be a sort of urban legend. Like whatever he was, it was something you kind of heard about in the abstract; tales told around a campfire, something that might exist but no one ever really came across. Like a monster.But what he was - Sam had said “transgender” - it wasn’t like that, not at all. Sam’s stupid papers had newspaper clippings. Web articles. What Dean was was written about in the fucking DSM. Doctors, professional doctors, knew about it. This wasn’t some sort of underground, unknown thing; Sam’s papers told him that there had been people like him since way before he was born. Since before Dad was born, even.While he read through everything in the bathroom, lying curled up in the cracked bathtub with his clothes on and the shower curtain pulled all the way closed, Dean took a moment - just a moment - to think to himself, Does Dad know? He didn’t dwell on the question, though; the answer was obvious. Of course Dad knew.Dean had wondered, a long time ago, if he was cursed. He’d been afraid, once, that he might be a ghost possessing Dad’s real daughter. Absent any other knowledge, those had seemed like rational conclusions to draw. But Dad had never once thought either of those things; he’d never even entertained the idea of them. Because why would he, if he had the most obvious fucking answer right in front of him? One that didn’t rely on monsters or magic at all?Dad knew. Dad knew what Dean was. He’d known all along and just hadn’t bothered to tell him. Seemed like Dean was on a need-to-know basis about everything, his own fucking self included. It’s not like he was hiding it, though, his mind reasoned, supplying his dad’s defense unbidden. You never even asked. And you could have done your own research. Sam heard the word ‘tranny’ one time and found all of this in an afternoon. You’ve been hearing it for seven years and never even bothered looking it up. The words on the pages blurred and the papers started to crumple in Dean’s tense fingers as tears welled up.He didn’t know why he was like this. Brainless. It was like he never even bothered finding things out for himself. If it wasn’t about taking care of Sam, or hunting, or helping Dad, it didn’t even cross his mind. He got bad grades because he spent so much time thinking about what he had to buy at the grocery store, or rehearsing how to kill different kinds of monsters, or wondering how Dad’s hunt was going.Sam made nerdy friends at every school they went to, but Dean never did; he didn’t know how. The only thing he was good at that wasn’t shooting was working on cars, but that didn’t count for anything since it wasn’t like he was going to be able to grow up and be a mechanic one day. Uncle Bobby knows, too, he realized matter-of-factly. There was no way that he didn’t. Probably everyone in the world knew, except for Dean. Uncle Bobby had never said anything, but that was likely just because he'd assumed that Dean had already been smart enough to look it up for himself. He always thought Dean was smarter than he really was.After a long time, Dean started to feel the ache in his back that meant it was time to get up. He stared at himself in the mirror, at his pale face and his reddened eyes. He didn’t look any different. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t known - or that he knew, now - anyway. It didn’t change anything. Everything was still just the fucking same.And things didn’t really change, until winter that year. Things did change then. Dean’s body changed.His chest had started growing when he was eleven, but not that much. His dad had given him the sports bra a little after he gave him the puberty papers, but Dean hadn’t really used it for a while. He hated the way it felt. Dean could ignore the softness of his chest if he wasn’t looking in the mirror - or even when he was looking in the mirror, depending on the clothes he was wearing - but he couldn’t ignore the tight bands of elastic digging into his ribs like a taunt. His dad wanted him to wear it while he was training, so he did, and some of his schools had requirements for what to wear to PE so he’d wear the stupid sports bra under a baggy PE uniform with an extra undershirt and it flattened everything down fine. His chest was small enough that it really never mattered.Until that winter.It didn’t happen overnight, Dean knew that, but it almost seemed like it did. It was like from one day to the next, Dean went from appearing flat under the sports bra to appearing very much not. Looking at his body in the mirror felt like watching a horror movie; the way his skin was suddenly stretching and bulging was foreign and disturbing and wrong. He thought he resembled the Thing, and imagined his chest bubbling and the skin sloughing off and revealing gnashing, slimy monster teeth and spindly spider arms.Dean was grateful that it was winter. He figured out how to layer his clothes so that no one could see. The sports bra didn’t work at all anymore; instead of flattening, it just mushed everything together like a mound on his chest. What worked best, Dean found, was camouflage; he’d wear a baggy shirt over a loose undershirt, and then a button-up overshirt (or two) on top, unbuttoned. That way, if he hunched his shoulders right, the lumps on either side were camouflaged by the draping clothes while he was still flat in-between.He was very careful, now, around Dad and Sam; he didn’t want them to know. Didn’t want them to see how fucked up his body was. It felt like he was failing at something he didn’t even have control over. Back when his chest was small, it had been fine. Dad and Sam and even Bobby had never really looked closely at it. They’d kind of ignored them, and that meant that Dean could ignore them, too. Dean never felt their eyes on him there, not even when he had his shirt off. Yeah, the gas station boys had stared, but that was just because Dean hadn’t been careful and he’d been practically flaunting it in a wet T-shirt. That was the only time something like that had happened before. So it had been fine back then. Back when they were small. But now, they were so much bigger. They looked like the ones in the skin mags that Dean had found in a motel trash can, once; big enough to cup in his hands (if he could’ve been able to stomach the feeling). The thought of Sam or Dad or anyone knowing that he looked like that under his clothes made Dean want to die.So he hid them. He changed in the bathroom and wore an old Marine Corps hoodie he’d found at a Salvation Army to bed every night since they shared a room. If they had to sleep in the same bed, Dean didn’t let Sam curl up against him anymore and he made sure to shove him away in the morning before he could wake up if they ended up cuddling during the night.He kept Sam and Dad from finding out pretty well. But school was different.Things were going okay, at first. Dad had dropped them off at a shitty little motel in Fort Dodge, Iowa with only one full-size bed before taking off on a hunt. It was January, and a very cold one, so Dean could even keep his jacket on at school and no one could tell. Only problem was, they wouldn’t just let him fail PE by skipping class.“We don’t take repeated absences lightly at this school,” the principal told him on his third day. Dean had been called to the office during his fifth period class. PE was supposed to be his fourth period - right after lunch - but he’d been skipping it to hang out in a bathroom that he’d found, the one that doubled as a janitor’s closet. Barely anyone else ever tried to use it because it smelled like the sawdust that got put down when someone vomited in the hallway and the mop and its bucket were kept right beside the single toilet. “This is your first warning. You don’t get another. If you skip another PE class - or any other class - you’ll be suspended.”And that was it. That was when the world that Dad had so carefully constructed for Dean eight years ago came crumbling down.Dean had been a boy at every school that he’d been to since halfway through kindergarten. Dad had taken care of that for him; Dad had spent money on fake documents that let Dean go to school with his real name and without any of the teachers ever knowing the truth about him. Dad had done that for him, given him that gift, and now Dean had thrown that all away.The day he had been called into the principal’s office had been a Friday. On the following Monday, Dean stood in front of the doors to the locker rooms with his hands gripped white-tight on the straps of his backpack for what felt like forever, back against the wall opposite the doors so it wasn’t obvious what he was doing. Eyes flickering back and forth between the two signs on the two doors, knowing which one he’d have to go into but feeling like it would kill him.Dean squeezed his eyes closed and sucked his lower lip between his teeth. He could remember the look on his dad’s face while he glared at him in the hall of Uncle Bobby’s house. He could remember what his dad had said to him. "What you look like now, Dean, you’re not going to look like this forever. Your body is going to start changing in a few years."Dean opened his eyes again, watched other students going into one of the two locker rooms. None of them looked hesitant or doubtful about which door was the right one for them."Uncle Bobby was going to find out eventually," Dad had told him, a fact that he’d wanted Dean to understand. What Dad hadn’t said aloud was 'And everyone else, too.' That had always been implied, though, hadn’t it? Dad had wanted Dean to be realistic about what the world had in store for him. Dean was going to hunt monsters and kill things, he was going to protect Sam like he always had, and one day, his body was going to change and everyone was going to find out and that was just the way things were going to be.Dean had been having a lot of thoughts in the past couple of months since his chest had grown about what he could do to hide it - duct tape and ace bandages were out of the question, because Dean wouldn’t do anything that could compromise his ability to back up Dad on a hunt or to keep Sam safe - but that moment, standing in the hallway in front of the two locker room doors, was the first time that Dean considered taking a knife to them himself.When Dean finally entered the girls’ locker room he could hear the chatter slowly taper off as the girls in his class noticed him. He could only bear the sight of their discomfort and confusion for a moment before he looked around for the toilet stalls and headed straight for the disabled one on the far end. After he locked the door, he stood in front of it, feeling a familiar tightness under his sternum as he listened to the sound of whispering. He knew they were all talking about him. It wasn’t like he had any friends, but he knew that the girls that he shared other classes with thought he was a boy, and he knew that he still looked like one in all of his layers.He wished he didn’t have to be such a wimpy little bitch about this. He wished he could crack a smile and joke to himself about being able to spy on girls in the locker room like other boys always talked about. But he didn’t have it in him.With shaking hands, Dean rummaged through his backpack for the PE uniform and the sports bra, which he’d hidden at the very bottom underneath all of his notebooks. The uniform was one size too big for him - usually they cost fifteen dollars, but poor kids could pick out used ones from the charity bins for free - but when he put it on and tied the drawstring for the shorts, the baggy fit wasn’t hiding anything. With a sinking stomach, he realized that he’d have to take the socks out of his underwear, too. If he didn’t, there was no telling what people would do to him.Dean could hear the locker room slowly starting to clear out as the girls finished getting dressed and moved on to the gym. He didn’t leave the stall, though; his hands were trembling and he was trying to calm down. He was always scared when Dad took him on a hunt, but he hadn’t felt this scared in as long as he could remember. This was different. This felt like Dean was about to give up a part of himself that he’d never be able to get back.The sound of footsteps could be suddenly heard approaching the stalls, and instead of entering one of the others along the wall, Dean saw a pair of big tennis shoes come to a halt right in front of the door to the one he was in. The door to the stall shook when the owner of the shoes rapped on it firmly.“I’ve got girls telling me there’s a boy in here,” an adult voice said sternly. The female PE teacher. “You know that’s grounds for suspension, right?”Dean clutched his backpack to his chest, unable to speak. The PE teacher waited a moment for him to respond, and when he didn’t, Dean could see her square her feet through the gap under the door.“If this was all just an honest mistake, you can clear it up right now by coming out and explaining yourself. But if you don’t cooperate, it’ll only take me a second to get this door unlocked, and then we’ll be going straight to see the principal.”Dean realized that his breaths were coming in short bursts and struggled to rein them in. He took a half-step towards the door.“I’m gonna count to three. One…”Dean reached out and turned the latch, and the PE teacher stepped back while the door swung open.She was a harsh-looking white woman with greying blonde hair tied back in a ponytail at her nape. Mid-forties, maybe, with deep creases in her sun-tanned face. Her brown eyes followed him disapprovingly as he stepped out of the stall with his backpack still clutched at his chest.“Finally. You wanna explain what you’re doing in the girls’ locker room?”Dean swallowed. He knew what he should say, but he still couldn’t make himself form the words. Instead, he lowered his backpack so the teacher could see his chest. The action felt gratuitous and obscene, like he was stripping in front of her. While Dean watched her eyes lower to follow the movement and land on him there, Dean wished a monster would crash into the room and tear out his throat so he wouldn’t have to deal with this. And so he wouldn’t have to deal with everything that was going to happen next.The teacher’s eyes returned to his face. One hand on her hip and the other clutching a bulky clipboard, she narrowed her eyes contemplatively at him.“What’s your name?”“Dean Winchester,” Dean said, voice barely louder than a whisper. His name seemed to elicit recognition, and she nodded, raising her clipboard to glance over it.“Dean, hm?” She quirked her eyebrow. “You’re the new kid who skipped all last week, right? I remember, ‘Winchester’. Yeah, that’s right. I’m Coach Albright, you’re supposed to be in my class. Nice to finally put a face to the name.” She said the last part wryly, then gestured towards the lockers. “Find a locker and put your stuff away. You need to be sitting in our section of the gym in three minutes or I’ll be counting you tardy.”When Dean entered the gymnasium a minute later, all eyes were on him. There were three different classes, the students all sitting on the gym floor in neat rows with their teachers standing in front of them with their clipboards. Dean walked over to the group that Coach Albright was standing in front of. She was watching him, too, as he walked around to the back of one of the rows to sit cross-legged.He could see the other kids whispering to each other and looking over their shoulders at him. It was clear that there’d been gossip; they’d all been waiting for Coach Albright to come back out so they could see which pervy boy had so idiotically tried to spy on girls in the girls’ locker room. It looked like he’d given them something even better to gossip about.“I really thought she was a boy,” Dean overheard a girl muttering from just a few feet away. He turned to look at her, and she didn’t even look away or lower her voice. “With the way she was dressed? And look at her haircut.”“Hey, I know that girl, she’s in my math class,” another student whispered, sounding almost excited. “She let Mr. Rockwell call her ‘Mr. Winchester’ all last week. And I think she goes by a boy’s name.”Dean dug his fingernails into his knees.A different girl giggled, one in the row right next to him. “Look, she doesn’t even shave her legs.”“Alright!” Coach Albright clapped her hands together loudly from her spot in front of the class. “Settle down! It’s time to get started!”Dean’s classmates quieted and turned around to face the teacher. Dean stared straight forward down the row of students in front of him; both they and the gymnasium itself seemed to stretch out infinitely, dizzyingly. He felt trapped.The events of his first PE class spread quickly until everyone in his grade knew who he was. It didn’t matter that Dean’s layers of camouflage still worked, because everyone knew what he looked like in his PE uniform underneath it all. Dean kept dressing that way anyway, because that’s how he felt best; even though the girls in his classes made fun of his clothes now and mocked him for dressing up like he wanted to be a boy. There was a group of boys who were convinced that Dean wasn’t his real name, and jeeringly hissed a new guess at what his "girl name" was every time they passed him in the halls. But the locker room was still the worst, because everyone still stared at him like he was a predator even though he just stared at the floor and always changed in the bathroom stall and waited until everyone was gone before he went out into the gym.Once, while he was reaching up to get his stuff out of his locker after PE class before making his usual beeline back to the stall to change back into his normal clothes, a girl grabbed his raised arm tightly about his forearm. Dean was shocked and disturbed and felt like… He saw something flash behind his eyelids when he blinked dumbly: a poster on handwashing that he may have seen, once, in another locker room at another school… Dean tried to yank his arm away with his heart suddenly racing, panicked, in his chest, but the girl kept her grip on him and hooked her finger into the armhole of his short sleeve where it was hanging open and pulled the opening wider so she could peer through it.“I was right!” the girl called out to her friends with a self-satisfied grin. “She doesn’t shave her armpits, either!”Dean dropped his arm and pulled it close to his chest when she released him and watched, red-faced and mortified, as the girl skipped back to her small group of friends, who all welcomed her like she’d just done something brave and impressive. Like violating Dean had been just as worthwhile an endeavor as Dean helping his dad save a family from an evil spirit. The girls all looked at him, giggling behind hands that couldn’t hide their vicious sneers. I’ve saved people, Dean thought to himself as he watched the bullies laugh. His fingers were tingling and he saw black spots dancing in his vision that didn’t disappear even when he blinked. I’ve seen things, done things those bitches couldn’t even imagine. I’m a fucking hero. He’d helped his dad dig up and burn a corpse only a week before they’d settled in Fort Dodge, and he’d killed things - dangerous things, things that bled all over his hands - that’d make that girl that had touched him piss her pants with fear. He was way taller than her - taller than pretty much every girl in the locker room - and he could shut her up with a fist to the face so easily that he wouldn’t even break a sweat. But he couldn’t just beat up school bullies, especially not girls. He knew that, Dad had made sure he knew that. There was nothing he could do to stop what was happening. He was just glad that Sam didn’t go to the same school; he didn’t know what he would do if Sam knew. If Sam told Dad. As long as it was just Dean that knew, he could deal. He could deal. He could deal. He was glad that he had the single-toilet janitor’s closet/bathroom, even if it was all the way on the other side of the school from most of his classes.Over the next few weeks, Dad came and went, stopping for a night or two between short hunts to see how Dean and Sam were doing. When Dad was in town, he’d get the bed and Sam and Dean slept on the floor. Dad never really asked Dean what he was learning at school or if he was settling in or making friends or anything like that - those never had been questions that his dad cared about the answers to - which was just fine with Dean because it meant that he didn’t have to lie. He didn’t have to make things up to pretend that things were going just fine.There was a part of Dean that wanted to tell his dad what was going on despite the shame and embarrassment that it would bring him, because he thought that maybe Dad would care enough to move them to another town so that Dean could go to a different school. In his gut, though, Dean knew it wouldn’t matter. This whole thing would just happen again at another school, one way or another. Even if he convinced Dad to write him a note excusing him from PE, Dad was right; Dean wasn’t done growing yet, and neither were the other boys. The older he got, the more obvious it was going to get.Except… Maybe it wouldn’t be obvious, if he got rid of them. Dean stared at himself in the mirror sometimes, picking apart his reflection. He had a girly face, he guessed (he hated) but it had never really been something that made people think he was a girl. He had his dad’s jaw and chin and he was tall for his age, even compared to the other boys. Maybe he’d grow up to be even taller. And if he kept up his training and watched what he ate then maybe he could keep the rest of his body looking like how it was supposed to. And if he did that, and got rid of the things on his chest…As time continued to pass far too slowly, Dean’s thoughts were consumed with all of the ways that things might get better. He wondered how hard it would be to cut them off with his silver knife; if he’d be able to stay conscious for long enough to finish the job. It was a nice fantasy, but he knew he’d never be able to do it, because it would make his dad so fucking furious. It couldn’t be his own hand, or Dad would never forgive him.So Dean imagined getting taken by ghouls that ate off his chest before he could fight them off. He imagined injuries sustained from ghosts and werewolves and wendigos, gashes and slashes exactly where he wanted them. The dark, bloody fantasies were a welcome respite from the horror of his eighth grade classes.“Dean,” Dad greeted him through the motel phone one Thursday afternoon. It was maybe the second week of February; they’d been at the school in Fort Dodge for over a month, and Dad had only recently left for his latest hunt. “Listen, I just got word from Abe that him and Caleb are staying near you and Sam. They’re renting an old farmhouse just outside Eagle Grove.”“Oh,” Dean said in response, standing next to the bedside table, the phone in one hand and the cord tangled in the fingers of the other. It’d been a long time since he’d seen Abe Johnson or Caleb, even though Dad still hunted with Abe a few times a year.“Thought you boys would welcome the company, so Caleb’s gonna come pick you and Sam up later, bring you two over. Give you some work to do this weekend. Sam needs some weapons training, and Abe’s got some lore for you to look over. I already called your schools and got you excused for tomorrow.”It wasn’t rare for Dad to call them out of school if there was an opportunity for them to do some sort of training. Dean would have been ecstatic to be excused from school for any length of time, but going to spend time with Abe Johnson felt like he was jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire. “When’s he comin’?” “Not tonight; early tomorrow morning. You and Sam need to be ready for him by six.”“Yessir. We will.”“Good man, Dean,” his dad told him before hanging up. Dean swallowed, cherishing the brief words.He told Sam about the plan later while they ate steaming bowls of soup. They were eating a lot of canned soup lately, since the motel’s heating left a bit to be desired but their hot plate worked really well.“Dad wants you to practice with some weapons,” he told his little brother. “Caleb’s real good at throwin’ knives, so that’s probably what you’ll be doing.”Sam’s eyes lit up at the thought. “That sounds cool. Is that how you learned?”Dean nodded. He could still remember Caleb’s fingers on his hands, positioning his fingers on the knife properly. Dean had been much younger, then, and Caleb’s hands had been a lot bigger than his. Dean wondered how much bigger they’d be now; how far past Dean’s fingers Caleb’s own would extend if they put their palms together.Caleb pulled up outside their grungy motel at ten after six the following morning. Dean and Sam were already waiting for him in the parking lot, duffels packed for the weekend and a “Do Not Disturb” sign hanging on the doorknob to their room.Dean didn’t recognize the truck Caleb pulled up in; the one that he remembered Abe driving was a ‘78 Ford F-150 with chipping, rusty red paint. The one Caleb stepped out of was an ‘82 Chevy Silverado painted brown and tan.“The Winchester boys!” Caleb greeted them jovially as he came around the hood to ruffle Sam’s hair and give Dean a friendly handshake. His hand was warm, and still bigger than Dean’s. He hadn’t expected to feel so nervous seeing Caleb again; it was Abe he was wary of. Still, he felt a flutter in his stomach when his eyes met Caleb’s and Caleb smiled at him. “Little Sammy Winchester. Not so little anymore now, are ya?”“It’s Sam,” Sam protested. He’d been at that age for a year or two, now, where being called Sammy felt like an insult to him. “I’m not a little kid anymore.”“You’re sure not. And look at you, Blondie. That’s some handshake; you been workin’ out?” He winked, and Dean blushed. He couldn’t really tell if Caleb was making fun of him or being nice. Last time he’d spent any time with him, Dean’d still had the feeling like Caleb was just humoring him. But Caleb had never been mean. Maybe things were different.After the greeting, Caleb beckoned them into the truck. It was much better taken care of than Abe’s old Ford had been; the outside was covered in mud and speckled with road salt, but the paint wasn’t chipped (though Dean could see several patch spots that hadn’t been sanded down). Sam climbed in first to slide into the middle of the bench, and Dean followed into the passenger seat.“Is this truck yours?” Dean asked after Caleb had settled back into the driver’s seat. The older man nodded, grinning and patting the dusty dashboard with a pleased expression.“Got ‘er maybe four years back. I had an ol’ Dodge for a while - Dad got it for me after I turned eighteen - but it was a piece of shit. Kept fallin’ apart on me. When I saw Janie here with the ‘for sale’ sign in the window, I knew I had to have ‘er.”Caleb turned the keys and the engine rumbled to life. He operated the clutch smoothly, pulling out of the lot and onto the road without a hitch.“She’s real nice,” Dean offered. He wondered if Dad would get him a car when he was old enough so they could work on hunts separately. Cover more ground that way. He liked the idea of having his own car, but the thought of watching the Impala drive away without him made him sad.“Hey, thanks, Blondie,” Caleb said, reaching across Sam to give Dean’s shoulder a hearty pat. Dean tensed at first, irrationally afraid that Caleb’s hand was aimed at his chest, but relaxed into the friendly touch.“Why d’you keep calling him ‘Blondie’?” Sam asked, irate at being overlooked even though it wasn’t like he’d even tried to start a conversation yet.“‘Cause Dean’s a maverick, that’s why.” He glanced down to see Sam’s face scrunched up in confusion, and then looked up over at Dean. “What, you haven’t shown Sammy the classics yet?”“I’ve tried. He doesn’t like them,” Dean commiserated at the same time that Sam again protested, “It’s Sam.”“Well, we’ll have to do something about that over the weekend, huh, Sam?” Caleb teased.The drive took a little over half an hour. Light flurries had begun to drift down from the early morning sky but they weren’t sticking quite yet. Dean glanced often at Caleb during the drive; he was older, now. He’d looked like a grown-up to Dean back when Dean was little, even though he’d only been sixteen when they’d first met, but he really looked like an adult now. His hair was longer - darker, even - tucked back behind his ears. He kept his facial hair in a neat goatee, but there was still dark stubble on his cheeks and neck like maybe he didn’t shave every day. Though he looked older, he hadn’t changed his style much: he was still wearing a sawtooth shirt with pearl snaps and ratty old sun-bleached bootcut jeans. Dean couldn’t see his feet now from where they were down in the footwell on the gas pedal, but Dean hadn’t missed catching sight of the brown cowboy boots that Caleb was wearing when he’d greeted them at the motel. They weren’t the same pair that Dean remembered, but they were just as cool.Dean licked his lips nervously as he stared at Caleb’s handsome profile and at his big hands confidently holding the steering wheel. Caleb turned his head suddenly to look at his side mirror and caught Dean’s glance, and Dean quickly looked away.The drive was nice, conversation with Caleb feeling easy even though it’d been so long and Caleb probably didn’t actually want to spend time with a couple of dumb kids. But when they stepped through the front door into the farmhouse and he saw Abe, any warm feeling quickly dissipated. Even if things had changed and Caleb was treating him different now - different in a nice way - it was instantly obvious that nothing about Abe was going to be any better. The man’s cool eyes and blank expression told him that before any words were spoken.Sam and Dean greeted Abe uncertainly with handshakes. Sam didn’t seem too warmed to the man either, and appeared to be relieved when he was told that Dad did, in fact, want him practicing knives with Caleb.“I’ve got research for a case,” Abe said in Dean’s general direction. “John wanted his oldest t’help with that, get some book learnin’.”Dean gritted his teeth and nodded. He could do this. Abe wasn’t some ghost or ghoul that he had to overpower, and it’s not like the old man could say anything worse than his classmates in Fort Dodge had been saying for weeks now, anyway.Caleb, though, seemed to hesitate before taking Sam out into the yard. He knew what his dad was like around Dean.“We’ll be out there for a few hours,” Caleb said as though he was talking to the whole room, but Dean felt like he was actually just talking to him. “If anyone needs anythin’. Just, uh, call for us.”It became quickly apparent that Abe hadn’t planned to give Dean any actual research teaching or training of any kind. Instead, he was to be used as Abe’s personal reading mule. He was left at the kitchen table with some old newspaper prints and a couple of lore books while Abe relaxed in the living room.Dean could hear Caleb and Sam laughing in the yard while he sat at the wooden table poring over dusty old books. He glanced despondently up towards the window, where the light that poured through was cool and the dust motes that swirled in it were almost as bright as the snowflakes falling outside.He and Sam could’ve been spending time together at the motel; he could have taught Sam how to throw knives - not quite as good as Caleb could, but almost - and then he wouldn’t have to be stuck in this farmhouse reading the same lines of text over and over again because he couldn’t focus because Abe Johnson was sitting twenty feet away in the next room, watching TV with a can of beer in his hand.“Get me a Coors from the fridge, girl,” Abe had ordered him after Sam had bounded off to follow Caleb into the winter air and left Dean alone with the old man. Abe didn’t use his name, just called him “girl” like he always had during the rare moments when they were alone in a room together, ever since Dean was little. And, like he always had, Dean had said nothing and obeyed.What was there to say? There was no doubt in his mind that there was no combination of words on this Earth that would change anything. Besides, Abe was Dad’s friend. What would talking back or correcting him or even punching him in the nuts do, except get him in trouble or lose Dad a good hunting buddy? There was nothing he could do; there never had been. Just like there was nothing he could do about this school where he had to use the girls’ locker room and the other kids kept calling him names.Dean had been reading the same three sentences over and over again for about five minutes when he heard a loud grunt from the living room as Abe stood up from the couch. Fingers pressed flat against the tabletop on either side of the open book, Dean ardently maintained eye contact with the yellow pages, hunched over in the uncomfortable wooden chair. He could feel his ears twitch and the little hairs on the back of his neck stand up as Abe’s heavy footsteps came around the couch and into the kitchen.Abe’s presence behind him was heavy and dark. Dean wanted to get out of his seat and run away just about as much as he desperately didn’t want to be such a fucking coward. He didn’t know what Abe was doing just standing there, but he was certain that Abe was staring at him; observing him with the same indecipherable apathy that he always looked at him with. Why would he do that, why would he just be watching me? Dean thought, trying to convince himself that he was just being paranoid. I’m just sitting here reading. There’s nothing to look at. There’s no way he’s just standing there staring at me. It was like that for several minutes, Dean thought; long enough that his hands had started aching with how hard he was pressing them into the surface of the worn, wooden table.When Abe moved again finally, Dean allowed his fingers to relax, but immediately they tensed again and curled into claws as he heard Abe’s steps carry him forward until he was standing right behind Dean, right behind him. He could feel Abe’s protruding stomach brush against the back of his chair, could hear him breathing through his mouth. He imagined that he could feel the exhales ruffling the hairs on the top of his head.Dean couldn’t help it; his breaths sped up and he could feel his heart thumping in his chest, the rate ramping up with every moment that Abe stood so close at his back.What was he doing? What could he possibly be doing? It felt like it had been an hour since Abe had stood from the couch, though realistically he knew it had been less than five minutes. Was Abe waiting for Dean to acknowledge him? Was Dean supposed to say something? Maybe he just wanted another beer? That had to be it, right?It was while those thoughts raced in loops through his head that Abe finally moved again, but it wasn't to walk away. Out of the corner of his eyes, which were still wide and unblinkingly staring at the pages in front of him, he saw Abe’s hand reach past his shoulder and descend towards the collars of his shirts.Abe’s hand was like a malignant shadow; like a monster approaching Dean in the middle of a nightmare. A cold sweat broke out across Dean’s forehead and his breath juddered and froze in his chest.Rough, dirty fingers brushed his collarbone, and thick yellow fingernails dragged against his pale skin as the fingers edged underneath the collar of his white undershirt leaving goosebumps in their wake.The hand pressed further, burrowing under Dean’s protective layers of camouflage like a scabby and diseased rodent until Abe was feeling him - his chest - groping him and squeezing him, gritty calluses digging into him. Holding him like he was weighing him, there; like he was shaping a handful of ground meat.Usually, it was like the things on his chest could have been made of rubber and stuck on with glue for all Dean felt them. Other boys at his various schools talked about nipple sensitivity and how much girls liked it when they got touched and licked, like that was what was normal; but Dean felt as good as numb, there. They didn't feel like a part of his body, they just felt like blobs taking up space on top of the flat chest buried underneath.That was how it usually felt. But Abe’s hand was rough, his fingernails overgrown, and he was digging his fingers into Dean so hard that it was like he could feel it down to his ribs.Dean couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t speak.All he could do was continue to stare at the book. All he could hear were his own heartbeat and Abe’s steady breaths. All he could feel was the hand, warm and repulsive on that part of him that he didn’t want anyone to see.“That’s what I thought,” Abe said, his voice gravelly and emotionless.He sounded matter-of-fact, deadpan. Like he was commenting on some casual confirmation of fact; like he had said 'I’ll bet it’s cold outside', and opened the front door to see the snow.“You’re not foolin’ anyone, girl.”With a final squeeze, Abe’s hand withdrew from the confines of Dean’s shirts. With his other hand, he set his empty can onto the table near Dean’s book.“Get me another Coors.”Dean felt his body stand and go to the fridge to get Dad’s friend Abe another beer.When he returned to the book, he found that he could suddenly focus. It felt like his eyes flew across the pages, his entire body vibrating and a sort of rushing feeling in his head. He’d figured out that the monster was a wraith before Caleb and Sam came back in from the yard, red-nosed and dusted with snow, but he didn’t speak up to tell anyone.“Y’all want lunch?” Caleb asked. He was smiling broadly, but Dean saw it flicker when he finally laid eyes on Dean. Maybe Dean wasn’t looking too good or something.“I’m not feeling too good,” Dean said. “I think me and Sammy should go back to the motel.”“What?” Sam objected, looking disheartened. “I haven’t even been able to hit the target yet!”“Yeah, but if I’m sick it’s no good for Caleb or Abe for me to stick around.”Sam squeezed his hands into fists and pouted. “If you’re getting a cold, you’re just gonna give it to me, too, if we go back. The motel only has one bed.”“I can sleep on the floor if you really don’t wanna get sick.”“Come on, D,” Caleb said. His eyes went from Dean, sitting at the table, to the doorway to the living room through which he could just see the back of his dad’s head over the couch. “If you’re comin’ down with somethin’, that’s fine. We got two guest rooms here, you can rest all weekend in one of ‘em.”“Yeah, Dean, come on,” Sam begged. “I don’t wanna go back. I want my own room, and Caleb’s still gotta finish training me or Dad’s gonna be mad.”Dean pressed his lips together. He wanted to say, ‘Please, Sammy, can’t you just let it go? Can’t you see I don’t want to be here?’ even if it made him sound like a whiny little girl.He looked at Caleb instead.“Caleb, I really don’t feel good. I can just… I can do research anywhere, right? I can just take this stuff back to the motel with me, and… And Sammy can stay here if he wants.”Caleb sucked his lower lip between his teeth. “I dunno, kid…”“You gotta take me back to the motel, man. Please. I’ll do the research, I swear, I just can’t stay here. I don’t… I don’t feel good. I just really don’t feel good. I can’t stay here.”Caleb stared at the back of his dad’s head with wary resignation. Dean wondered if he could tell what had happened; if he had suspicions. Dean hoped not. He didn’t want anyone to know that Abe had touched him like that. Caleb already knew how Abe talked to him, and that was bad enough. That was probably what Caleb was thinking about, anyway; Dean wouldn’t say anything, he’d just let Caleb keep on thinking that his dad had just said something mean enough to chase him away.“Alright. I’ll take you back, okay? But you gotta call me every day to let me know you’re alright, or I’m gonna have t’come back and check on you.”“You sure, Dean?” Sam seemed relieved enough to start feeling concerned about his well-being.“Yeah, Sammy, don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine, I swear. I just… I just think it’ll be better if I go back to the motel.”Abe didn’t say anything from his spot in the living room, not even when Caleb called out to let him know that they were leaving.The drive back to the motel was silent. Dean could tell that Caleb knew he wasn’t sick. The air between them was heavy with the question that Caleb didn’t want to ask and Dean didn’t want to answer.When Caleb pulled his Silverado up to the motel in front of Dean and Sam’s room, he watched regretfully as Dean climbed out with his duffel and the borrowed research materials tucked under his arm.“Hey, Dean?” he spoke up, just before Dean closed the passenger door behind him.“What?”Caleb gnawed at his lip before answering. “I’m sorry.” It was almost an apology - I’m sorry about my dad, I’m sorry that he treats you like that, I’m sorry that I let him - but Caleb quickly added, “Sorry you’re, uh, not feeling good.”“Oh.” Dean shrugged. “Thanks.”“Feel better, Blondie. Yeah?”“Sure.” Dean nodded, and finished shutting the door. Caleb pulled away.Dean went into the motel room and dumped the papers and books onto the bed. He already knew it was a wraith so he didn’t actually have any more research that he needed to do that weekend.He stared around the room at the dirty walls. At his backpack on the floor in the kitchen, stuffed with paper folders of homework that he hadn’t bothered to pack for Abe and Caleb’s and the old PE uniform and sports bra.It felt like everything was coming to a head. He still felt like his body was buzzing with some sort of manic energy.Dean wanted to go somewhere, wanted to feel the frozen ground slapping the soles of his feet until his legs hurt and his lungs burned. He wanted to be around people who didn’t see him as a girl and didn’t say mean things on purpose just to hurt him and didn’t think it was okay to put their hands inside his clothes like he wasn’t a person.He didn’t put down his duffel.Dean walked to the bus station downtown. He asked the information desk if there were any buses going to Sioux Falls, South Dakota that afternoon; the employee informed him that there was, but only if he switched buses in Sioux City after a ten-hour layover.“You’re in luck, the bus is leaving in twenty minutes but there’s still two seats left.”“Can I just get the ticket to Sioux City?” Dean asked. He could hitch a ride the rest of the way, that would be quicker. The employee pointed him towards the ticket counter.The lady at the ticket counter stared down her nose at Dean while he counted out $14.30 in change from his emergency stash for the bus. She accepted it with a sniff and re-counted every cent while he waited before reluctantly handing him a paper ticket.Dean sat next to the window in the last row of the bus where the two empty seats were. The trip took about two hours.The closer to South Dakota they got, the more snow was stuck to the ground. The bus was warm and muggy and smelled like sweat and every once in a while Dean caught a whiff from the bathroom when someone opened the door to use it, but the window was cold and soothing when Dean pressed his forehead against it.He kept his duffel in the empty seat next to him the whole ride with his hand on top of it. He could feel the gun that his dad had left him packed on top, just beneath his palm behind the rough fabric.He imagined accidentally shooting Dad’s friend Abe in the back of the head with it.Dean would never… He'd never murder a human in cold blood, but... what if he was cleaning his gun at the table at that farmhouse where Caleb and Abe were staying, and he forgot to check the chamber - like that time when he was eight at Uncle Bobby's place - and it went off in his hands and just accidentally hit the back of Abe's head where he was sitting on the couch…? There were shooting accidents all the time.After the bus dropped them off at the Sioux City station, Dean walked down the road until he found a truck stop gas station. He’d never hitchhiked before, but he’d always wanted to; it looked exciting in the movies he caught on TV. He just kind of wanted to be able to say he’d done it, like it’d make him seem cool.He stood at the exit to the gas station with one hand on the strap of his duffel and the other extended with his thumb out.A few cars and a couple trucks paused over the next hour and a half and lowered their windows to ask him where he wanted to go, but none of them were going in the right direction until a white-haired trucker wearing wire-rimmed, oval glasses stopped for him.“Hop in, son. I’m going to Brookings; Sioux Falls is right along the way.”The old man peered at Dean over his spectacles after Dean climbed up into the passenger seat and stowed his duffel at his feet. “You look a little young to be traveling alone. You’re not running away from home, are you?”Dean shook his head. “No, sir, I’m just visiting my uncle for the weekend. But there weren’t any buses that could take me all the way in time.”The trucker nodded, accepting that he’d likely never know whether Dean was telling him the truth, and pulled out onto the road. Dean was disappointed that the trucker only wanted to listen to golf, but the ride to Sioux Falls was shorter than the one to Sioux City had been. He was dropped off at another gas station when the trucker stopped for food.“You need something to eat, kid?” the kindly old man asked him, and his stomach did growl - he hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast just before six that morning, he realized - but he shook his head.“Thanks, but my uncle will have dinner ready for me.” It wasn’t exactly a lie. He knew that the first thing Bobby would do would be to feed him.Dean trudged along the rural roads towards Singer Salvage. There was a lot more snow in Sioux Falls than there had been even in Sioux City; snow plows had made big piles that lined both sides of the roads, some of them taller than Dean. There weren’t many cars, so he could avoid the muddy slush near the snow piles for most of the walk, but sometimes headlights did approach and light up the snow behind him and he had to move all the way over to the side. It was already getting dark, and it was cold, and it would be a long walk to Bobby’s place. But he had traveled the route before and he knew the way; he and Sam had walked into town and back many times, shiny quarters from Bobby in hand, for ice cream cones in the summers.It was pretty near as dark as it was going to get by the time Dean could see the tangled shadows of the salvage yard in the distance.He was feeling really cold by then, and his toes were numb. He had the fleeting thought that maybe he should have just called Bobby from a pay phone in town and had him come pick him up; if he keeled over and died out here in the dark, no one would know what happened to him.It’s not like Bobby was expecting him, and he didn’t have any ID. He’d be taken to the morgue and they’d probably list him as a fucking Jane Doe.That is, if a snow plow didn’t come by and mangle his body enough to make it too hard to tell what it looked like before.Destination in sight, Dean sped up his pace, hands tucked against the warmer skin of his stomach underneath his many layers. He pictured a warm fire, a warm drink, and an even warmer smile waiting for him. The thoughts propelled him forward until he was knocking on Bobby’s front door.Dean waited on the porch for several minutes, hearing no sounds to indicate that Bobby was coming to the door, but it didn’t cross his mind to worry that the man wasn’t home because he could see light glowing from inside. When he finally heard Bobby’s footsteps approaching from the hall, he felt himself smiling.“Who is it?” a gruff, suspicious voice asked him through the door.“David Hasselhoff!” he called back with a grin.The sight of his uncle’s face - well, not really his uncle, but almost - swept Dean with such a feeling of profound relief that he nearly fell to his knees, even though he was looking at it over the barrel of Bobby’s trusty shotgun. It didn’t matter, Dean knew he wasn’t going to use it. Uncle Bobby would have recognized Dean’s voice through the door, and his current bluster was all for show.When Uncle Bobby finally let him step into the warm house, he reached out right away to touch Dean - his shoulder, his hair - as though he couldn’t help himself, and it didn’t even remind Dean of Dad’s friend Abe’s touch. It felt too loving.Dean almost wished that Uncle Bobby would pull him into a hug; his skin suddenly felt crawling with the need for one. He hadn’t even let Sam hug him in months because he was afraid that his brother would feel Dean's chest against his if they embraced.Dean had been right; Uncle Bobby heated him up some dinner right away. It was lasagna, the simple recipe that he knew Bobby made in big batches and kept frozen in his basement freezer. They rarely got ovens in the motel rooms, so Dean almost never got to eat things like lasagna or casserole unless he was at Uncle Bobby’s. It was delicious.Dean didn’t mention Abe’s name when he told Bobby about where Sam was because he didn’t want to sour his mood in case it made him less inclined to let Dean stay. He’d overheard his dad on the phone with Uncle Bobby once, maybe a year or two ago, when Dad had called him to ask if he could drop Dean and Sam off while he went hunting with Abe.“You still hunt with Abe Johnson?” he’d heard Bobby respond, his tinny voice sounding incredulous over the speaker. “I haven’t even talked to the man, not since…”Uncle Bobby’s voice had tapered off as if, whatever Abe had done to him, he hadn’t been able to stomach saying the thing aloud. Seemed like Dad had known what Bobby was talking about, though, because he’d just nodded and frowned and told Bobby that he wasn’t throwing away a good contact over a disagreement.Dean still wondered, sometimes, how Uncle Bobby knew Abe and what Abe had done to piss him off so much.When Dean went to bed that night, he wore only pajama pants and one of Dad’s old shirts because Uncle Bobby’s house was kept toasty and the blanket was heavy and he was alone in the room and the bed so he didn’t need to hide under a sweatshirt. Knowing that it was Bobby sleeping in the main bedroom instead of Dad’s friend Abe made him sleep easier, as did the absence of his backpack, which was still back at the motel with the PE uniform and the sports bra buried at the bottom.The frozen lake that Bobby took him to the following morning was maybe the most beautiful place that Dean had ever been to. But even more precious than the picturesque vision all around him was the small glimpse of Uncle Bobby’s old life from before.Bobby never really talked about himself from when he was a kid. Dean felt like he was privy to something secret and valuable, and it was different than when Dad told him stories because this one had nothing to do with killing."My mom always wanted grandkids,” Uncle Bobby told him, looking out over the lake at the snow-covered trees on the other side. “I guess you probably noticed I never gave her any. But when I was younger, I always thought if I had a son one day, on the hockey team, I'd take him here to practice."Dean hadn’t ever really thought about Uncle Bobby having kids. He’d be a real good dad, though; Dean was sure of that.For a moment, he wondered what kind of kid Uncle Bobby would want for a son. Bobby was pretty rough around the edges, but it wasn’t hard to see how kind he was underneath his gruff exterior.He’d want a kind son, too. He’d want a son who was friendly and minded his manners and didn’t talk back, who did what he was supposed to without needing any reminders. He would want his son to like cars, too, and to help him out in the salvage yard and get his arms greasy in the workshop.And Dean could tell that Bobby didn’t like that he hunted with his dad; didn’t like how he was a killer. Uncle Bobby wouldn’t want his son to be a hunter, either. He’d want a son who was brave and smart and paid attention in class and… a son who could play on the boys’ hockey team and who wasn’t a freak who had to use the girls’ locker room at school.A son who didn’t get laughed at in the hallways.A son who didn’t get groped by his dad’s friends.Dean was startled suddenly out of his thoughts when he felt Uncle Bobby’s hand fall onto his leg. He gave Dean’s ankle a pat, gentle but solid enough that he could feel it through the leather of his boot, and when Dean looked up at him he gave him a wink."Now, I know you're not on the hockey team. But I figured, you can always learn."Dean stared at Uncle Bobby’s face. He searched in Uncle Bobby’s eyes, feeling the ground drop out from under him until he was floating.Had he misheard? Had Bobby misspoke? Surely he didn’t mean what Dean thought he did?But there was a part of Dean that could see, while he held his uncle’s gaze, that Uncle Bobby was nervous, too. He knew that what he’d said was weighty. He’d said it, and he was worried about how Dean would react. That meant… That meant that…Uncle Bobby really felt that way? Even though Dean was a killer? Even though he knew about Dean being a… About his body being wrong? Even though he knew that Dean got C’s and D’s in all his classes every year and didn’t know how to make friends? Even though he knew about all those times that Dean had fucked up? But what about the rest of it? Dean wondered desperately. Would he still feel that way if he knew what they’ve been calling me in the halls at school? If he knew about the awful, horrible things I think sometimes? If he knew that Abe Johnson calls me a tranny? He could feel his skin crawl and his breath hitch.
What if he knew that I let Abe’s dirty hand touch me like that, just yesterday? Would he still feel that way, then? Would he still think I’m good enough to want me as a son?
Staring into Uncle Bobby’s loving eyes, Dean thought that maybe he would. Then the weight of Bobby’s words and the swelling ache in Dean’s chest made him look away.But the next day, when Bobby dropped Dean back off at the motel, he felt lighter than he had in months.Dad ended up keeping Sam and Dean at their schools in Fort Dodge for the rest of the year, which maybe was fine because at least it meant that Dean didn’t have to go through the whole thing over again with new people. It had been bad enough once.That was the thing, though, he reminded himself: it wouldn’t be just once. Dean knew that. It wasn’t like it would stop in Fort Dodge. This was going to be how it was, with every new school and every new person he met for the rest of his life, forever. And soon, he wasn’t gonna be able to hide it or even his body from Sam or Dad anymore. They’d see it; they’d have to watch it happen.But Dean didn’t want it to be true. If this was really just gonna be what his life was like from now on, then he’d rather die.Dad took both him and Sam on Sam's first hunt that summer in the forest in Connecticut. Dean had never hunted a black dog before, and he was nervous for Sam.Whether it was luck or grace, it was a good thing that Dad took Sam along with him so that he could keep him safe, because Dean ended up being really off his game that night. He could have gotten Sam hurt, or even worse.The thing was, Dean could have shot the black dog.He’d had his sawed-off ready with the silver bullets. Sure, the beast had taken him by surprise; it had jumped out of the darkness from the trees towards him just as he was turning to go back to Sam and his dad, assuming that the hunt was over. It had caught him off-balance and unprepared, but he hadn’t lowered his sawed-off yet and he was the best marksman out of anyone that he’d ever met.Dean was sure that he could have shot the black dog before it hit him. It was just that, in those lightning-quick moments between seeing the beast coming towards him and getting pounced on, his eyes had taken in everything: the huge body, the glowing eyes - Were they angry-red or were they dead-white? The color was different every time he remembered - the slavering fangs bursting through black gums in a snarling jaw, and finally, the trajectory of the black dog’s leap.He'd seen where that snapping jaw was aimed at, and he’d raised the end of his sawed-off just those few inches needed to aim at the monster's breast, and then…And then - still floating in those tense, time-defying, breathless moments between realization and impact - he’d registered that the jaws weren’t heading towards his neck. They were heading towards his chest.He would have shot it anyway, really; he could have. He should have. He’d tried to, he was sure of it; he could remember sending the signal from his brain to his finger to twitch and pull the trigger.Maybe it hadn’t been his brain that had stopped him, but something else. Maybe it had been the hours and hours of accumulated fantasies from the past half a year, overflowing in his mind: visions of blood and gore and fangs and claws and blades both shiny and sharp and rusted and dull (it had all depended on his mood). Dean had seen the black dog coming and he’d tried to pull the trigger, but his fantasies hadn’t let him.His imagination hadn’t prepared him for how bad it would hurt.The huge body rammed into him with the force of a truck, its teeth sinking immediately into the soft flesh of his chest. The impact twisted the shotgun in his hand and his finger finally did close on the trigger, then, firing a bullet uselessly into the sky as he fell onto the ground with what felt like two tons of raging beast on top of him.While he was lying on his back in the grass with a hulking shadow sinking its teeth into his bones, he could feel the tearing like it was coming from inside of his rib cage. The pain was indescribable, ripping at him, aching and bright: so bright that all he could see was red and white no matter whether his eyes were open or squeezing shut.Dean was trying to call out for his Daddy, for his Sammy, but he couldn’t hear anything except for the blood rushing in his ears so he wasn’t even sure that sound was coming out of his mouth. He forgot about everything else except for the pain and the knowledge that he was about to die and there was nothing he could do about it.He’d always known that he was going to die young, but he hadn’t thought he’d die this young.Waking up in the hospital was a surprise. In his final moments of awareness, back in the forest, he’d been convinced that he was dying, and having that knowledge was the last thing that he could remember. It felt like it’d been only moments ago, but there he was: awake and lying under white lights in a white room wearing a white gown.And there, curled up in a chair beside him with his head pillowed on his forearm, propped up against the railing of the hospital bed, was his little brother.At the sight of him, Dean felt emotion well up in the back of his throat so strong that he could have cried.“S’mmy?” he forced himself to whisper, finding it difficult to form the word. But Sam heard him and immediately his eyes opened and his head popped up and he turned to look at Dean.“Dean!” Sam exclaimed, a look of relief and a smile softening his face. “Oh god, Dean! Are you really awake now? You’ve been coming in and out but you always kinda seemed like you were just dreaming and saying weird stuff but the nurses said that was normal… But are you really, actually awake, now?”Dean was pretty sure that he was, even though his head felt pretty floaty and it was hard to follow what Sam was saying. It didn’t really matter, though. He gazed at his little brother’s lovely face, at his chubby kid cheeks and his floppy brown hair and his shiny eyes and the way he looked so happy to just be talking to Dean. Thank you, Dean said in his mind to no one. I get to stay with him. I’m so happy, I don’t have to leave yet, I get to stay with him. Thank you. “‘M ‘wake,” he mumbled, and with a smile Sam chattered on. Dean was happy to let him. He was just happy to be alive.As he listened to Sam talk and talk, Dean let his eyes drift around the room and his hand drift upward to gingerly touch his chest, just to see if it would hurt…Dean’s eyes widened and he laid his palm flat against his chest, fingers splayed. He could feel the bandages wrapped around him underneath the gown, and underneath those, he could feel… nothing.They were gone. They were gone and he was flat underneath.He couldn’t help but feel all around with his fingers splayed wide, and his eyes welled with tears.It took a while for him to realize that Sam had gone silent, and Dean looked back at him to see that he was watching Dean with a too-serious, too-knowing face for a ten-year-old.He felt embarrassed that Sam was seeing him like this, but he couldn’t pull his hand away. He had to keep it there, had to make sure that what he was feeling was real and not a dream. He hoped that Sam didn’t know and couldn’t guess that maybe Dean could’ve shot the black dog before it could do this to him.It had hurt so much while it was happening, and he'd really thought that he was going to die and leave Dad and Sam behind... But now that it was over, Dean couldn’t bring himself to regret it.“You should know something, Dean,” Sam suddenly said, expression still serious and a little angry.“What?” Dean croaked, palm flat over his sternum and fingers tapping a rhythm that he could feel in his ribs without anything on top of them to buffer.Sam darted his eyes to the doorway and then leaned in close to whisper to him. “It’s Dad, he…”Dean felt his stomach drop through the floor.“Dad’s hurt?”Oh god, had Dad gotten hurt because he hadn’t killed the black dog? Had it gone after Dad after it’d finished with Dean? He couldn’t remember…But Sam was shaking his head.“No, Dean, Dad’s fine. But he… He’s making you be a girl in here, okay? He’s friggin’ letting the doctors and nurses and stuff think you’re a girl. He said it’s so they treat you right, ‘cause they might not treat you right if they know you’re…” he paused and looked around furtively before whispering the next word, “... transgender, but… I mean, it sucks, right? But it’s okay, Dean, I’m not gonna go along with it. I mean, I will, to keep you safe, but I’m not gonna say anything like that. But I just thought you should know, before he comes back or one of the nurses and you gotta hear them call you… you know.”He finished and sat back in his chair, looking at Dean with wary concern like he thought that Dean was gonna burst into tears or something.“Oh. Okay,” Dean replied. Sucked, maybe, but it made sense. And he could deal with some nurses and doctors calling him ‘she’ for a few days when it meant that later, he wouldn’t have to deal with it ever again.
Because they were gone.
Plus, it wasn’t like he hadn’t just spent half a year being a girl in Fort Dodge. Not that Sam knew about that.“Okay?” Sam said incredulously, looking affronted. “It’s not okay! You can be mad at him, Dean, you don’t have to just…”“Dean? You’re up?”It was Dad’s voice, and Dean turned away from Sam to see his dad smiling at him, relieved, from the doorway. Dean managed a shaky grin and a nod.“Up and… ready to rumble,” he managed to say, though his voice sounded weak and too high. Dad walked over and put a big hand on Dean’s forehead, pushing the hair out of his face and gazing into his eyes.“I’m glad you’re with us, kiddo.”There was no mistaking the heaviness behind Dad’s words, and Dean felt guilt weighing down his guts even while the flatness of his chest under his hand still felt like the best thing in the world.“We gotta work on your aim, son. That black dog almost… That was almost it.”Though they went unspoken, both Dad and Dean knew what the next words were: 'What if Sam had been with you when you missed that shot?'Letting people think he was a girl in the hospital was awful, just like it had been in Fort Dodge, but it was mostly manageable since Dean knew that he would be leaving soon.There was this one nurse that Dean hated, though, who seemed to think that a teenage girl losing her tits was the saddest thing in the world and that Dean should think so, too.The nurse kept trying to offer to do his makeup or paint his nails to prove that he could still be pretty without boobs. In return, he adamantly refused to remember her name, which was about his only available method of retaliation."You have such a beautiful face,” she told him once while she was swapping out his IV bags.Sam and his dad were in the room, too; they were all eating McDonald’s that Dad had bought them for dinner as a treat.“You'd look so pretty if you let your hair grow out.”The lady reached out without even asking and ran her fingers through his hair, pulling on the ends as if to encourage them to grow faster, and Dean scowled and tried to jerk his face away from her hand when she moved to caress his cheek.Undeterred, she turned to look between Dad and Sam as if wanting their input.“Wouldn't she look so pretty if she grew out her hair?"She widened her eyes and nodded meaningfully at his dad and brother, clearly trying to communicate to them that they should speak up and tell him about how fucking pretty he could still be if only he tried to look like a girl in other ways. As if Dean didn't know that his hair and his now-flat chest made him look like a boy and he hadn't done it on purpose.Dad avoided the nurse’s eyes uncomfortably, while Sam glared at her with righteous indignation. Dean just flushed red from his bandage-covered chest to his ears with embarrassment and anger.He wanted to backtalk, wanted to tell her to worry about her own hair, wanted to smack her across the face and ask her if she still wanted to call him pretty after that. He didn’t do any of that, though.The nurses mostly changed his bandages during the times when Dean was alone. Probably because they didn't think he'd wanna be topless in front of his dad or brother. Dean didn't exactly mind, because he knew how he looked - all patchy like Frankenstein - and he didn't want Sam to have to see that. And he didn't want Dad to have to see him all weak and kitteny while the nurses cooed and manipulated him like a baby since he could barely move his arms and couldn’t even sit up by himself.The first time that Dad did watch the dressing change, Dean glanced up at him when all the gauze had been pulled away and the crusty stitches were revealed and he saw him staring at his chest with this look.Dean knew that look; that was the look of disgust and shame and disappointment that got leveled at Dean whenever he fucked up, and he just wanted the nurses to put the new wound dressings on already so he could curl up into a little ball of guilt and shield himself from his dad’s eyes.Dad thought that he was weak. Dad thought that he couldn't hit a black dog when it was coming right at him.Dad was mad at Dean for putting their family in this situation: stuck in a hospital for days on end, with Dad working through piles of paperwork as he tried to figure out how to keep the billing department off his back.Dean almost wanted to tell him that it wasn't his ineptitude that had made him miss the shot, but he didn't think that his dad would think any more highly of him if he knew that Dean had just… not taken it.He didn’t want to see that look again. He wanted to pretend that Dad had never looked at him in that way. He decided that he’d never take off his shirt in front of his Dad again; not after that.When the hospital finally discharged him, Dad brought him some clothes from his bag to change into in the hospital room. Dean, who still wasn’t supposed to lift his elbows and could barely tense his abs without feeling the wounds on his chest pull scarily, stared at the proffered clothing with trepidation. There was no way that he was going to be able to put those on. Dad seemed to know what he was thinking."I’m gonna help you get dressed. C'mon, Dean, it's alright," his dad encouraged him gently, and he helped Dean sit up fully and swing his legs around so that his feet were hanging off the side of the hospital bed.Dean clutched at his hospital gown, feeling humiliated as he watched Dad kneel in front of him and hold out his underwear to step into as if he were a child. Dad looked tired and haggard, but he was smiling reassuringly up at him.Dean managed to get his feet into the leg holes and stand with his hand gripped on the bed railing to brace himself. He felt his dad's knuckles brush against his thighs as he pulled up his underwear for him until they were high enough that Dean could grab the waistband and finish the job, and Dean felt a rush of hot shame shoot up to his chest. A knot had formed in his throat and it was only getting bigger every time he swallowed.The jeans were even harder; Dad had to guide Dean's toes into the legs and then have Dean sit down so that he could pull his feet all the way through."'M sorry," Dean said hoarsely as he stood to let Dad pull the jeans the rest of the way up to his hips."Nothing I haven’t done before," his dad said with a chuckle. "I used to get you dressed in the mornings, did you know that? Back before your brother was born."Dean hadn't known that. Hearing it somehow surprised him. He shook his head, and did up his zipper and then clumsily fastened the button while Dad turned to pick up the flannel he'd hung on the back of the chair."You did?""I had to. You were giving your mom too much trouble."Dean couldn't help but crinkle his nose and furrow his brows with incredulity. "I was?"With his pants finally up, Dean turned to let his dad undo the ties at the back of his hospital gown and then ease it off of his shoulders. Dad was grinning fondly."You were a little terror. Threw a tantrum every morning, so I stepped in to help. Turned out you just didn't like your clothes; ended up having to get you new ones.""Oh. Well, y'know me, I got expensive taste."There were only a few old family photographs that had survived the fire because they’d been either in the glove box of the Impala or in Dad’s office at work at the time. You couldn’t see what Dean was wearing in all of them, but in the ones that you could he was mostly wearing boy clothes, except for one that he’s wearing a dress in.Dean didn’t know why it felt so important to learn that Dad was the reason why he was wearing boy clothes in the rest of those photographs, but it did.When Dad helped him slip the flannel on he still felt embarrassed, but not nearly as much anymore. He was able to button it by himself… Well, he buttoned it part-way and then gave up because who cared?"You ready?" Dad asked him, jabbing his thumb towards the door. "Sam's waiting for us downstairs.”Dean was barefoot in the cheap sandals that the hospital had given him to wear to walk between his bed and the room's bathroom after he'd gotten the catheter out. He wished he was wearing his boots, but he didn't want to ask Dad to put them on and lace them up for him."Yeah, I guess."Dad had decided to take them to Uncle Bobby’s so that Dean could recover there over summer break. The drive was twenty-two hours. They split it between two days. Two days that were maybe the most hellish of Dean’s life.He’d never gotten carsick before, but the fatigue that weighed down his limbs and the pain that he felt at every jolt caused by a pothole or a bump in the road made him nauseous. Sam sat up front with Dad while Dean lay across the bench in the back, moaning and sweaty and wanting to die.“I can’t, Dad,” Dean couldn’t hold back his whimper in the sixth hour of day one. “Dad, you gotta stop the car, I can’t do this anymore.""Just five more hours, Deano, and we'll stop for the night."Dean let out several dry, heaving sobs and dug his fingernails into his denim-clad knees. While realistically he knew that he didn't hurt worse now than he had while the black dog was actively ripping him apart, at least then he'd only been conscious for maybe five minutes, tops.Six hours felt like it was killing him, and they were barely more than halfway done for the day. And he'd have to sit through it all again tomorrow? It felt like Hell."Dad, come on, can't we just stop?" Sam asked. He was twisted around in his seat to watch Dean, eyes wide and face pale with concern. "Look at him! He's hurting!""Give him his pills, then. Should be time for his next dose, anyway.""No," Dean moaned, shaking his head. He scrunched his eyes closed and felt tears slip out of them down the sides of his face.The pills helped with the pain, but not with the nausea and they made it hard to breathe. It was like it wasn't automatic anymore and he stopped breathing if he wasn't thinking about it. It made him terrified to fall asleep in case he suffocated."He doesn't want them," Sam relayed uncertainly."Dean, take your damn pills. There's no sense in forcing yourself to be in pain. The doctors prescribed them to you for a reason.""Can't we just stay at a motel for a while?" Dean felt defeated. "Just for a day or two? Until I'm a little better?" … and it doesn't hurt so bad? Dad sighed, and Dean could hear his tense jaw in the sound of it; imagined he could see his resigned yet determined expression."There's a hunt. A big one. Montana. I can't leave you and Sam alone in a motel when you need help like this. And I've already had to put it off long enough."Dean's face crumpled against his will as he really did start to cry, then. People had been getting hurt or even dying because Dean had been keeping his family chained to that hospital.He didn't say anything in response, and Dad and Sam listened quietly to his wet, gasping breaths for a few minutes. He didn't even try to get control of himself, it hurt too much. His chest, his head, his neck and back, his legs that couldn't stretch all the way out in the cramped back seat."Go on, Sammy. Give your brother his pills," Dad finally said softly. Dean could hear Sam fumbling in the footwell for the bag of Dean's discharge stuff."I can't… swallow them… lying down," Dean whimpered. Unspoken, And I can't sit up by myself. Dean could feel the Impala slow and veer slightly as his dad pulled them over to the side of the interstate. Once they were parked, Dean heard the car door open and close as Dad got out and walked around to the passenger side; the side Dean's head was on.The door behind Dean's head opened gently, and Dean looked back and up with squinted eyes to see the blue sky and his dad's upside-down face looking down at him. He didn't look angry, just tired."C'mon, Deano."He felt Dad's hands slip under his back and shoulders to support and lift him into a seated position, Dean lowering his legs off the seat and swinging them around. Dad took the orange prescription bottle and a bottle of water that Sam was holding out over the back of the front seat, and then counted out two pills and handed them to Dean.Defeated, Dean put the pills into his mouth and then let his dad carefully hold the water bottle to his lips and tilt it up for him, just enough to trickle past his lips but not make him choke.Dean swallowed the mouthful of water and pills, then weakly croaked, "More." He'd had barely any water that day yet, since he couldn't drink by himself while he was laying out in the back seat.Dad helped him drink until the water bottle was empty and then brushed his too-long, sweat-damp hair out of his eyes. Dean could feel his rough fingers wiping away tear tracks as well. The touch was sweeter than he deserved."Y'good, now? You wanna lie back down?" Dean shook his head. "Alright. Just five more hours, son. Just hold on."Dad shut the door for him, and Dean leaned against it, letting his head fall against the glass of the window. Sam was still watching him with concern from the front seat."You okay, Dean?" his brother asked. "Want me to come sit with you?"Dean let his eyes fall closed and shook his head. He'd kinda like for Sam to be back here and maybe stroke his arm or hold his hand or something embarrassing like that while he pretended to sleep, but he didn't feel like he deserved that, either.As the car started to move again, pulling away and back onto the interstate, Dean raised a hand and put his palm flat against the center of his chest. Just to feel it. Just to feel how flat it was. Just to remember that it was worth it.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
When Dad came back for them at the end of summer, Dean was pretty much all healed up and bracing himself to get torn a new one. After all, Dad had the whole summer to sit and stew on Dean’s fuckup; a whole summer of hunting alone, not able to rely on Dean’s help with so much as research, let alone a hunt. But Dad didn’t even bring it up when he greeted them, he just gave both him and Sam a warm hug, thanked Bobby for putting up with them for so long, and then helped them load up the car.Dean had managed to grow a whole half inch over that summer at Bobby’s despite all the energy that went into healing from the black dog attack, and he was nearly five foot seven. When Dad noticed how far his threadbare jeans stopped above his ankles, he took Dean shopping. Let him buy three new (used) pairs from a charity store, and threw a faded Rolling Stones T-shirt onto the pile when he saw Dean eyeing it, even though Dean hadn’t even asked.He wore that T-shirt on the first day at his new school at the end of August, with nothing else under or over it because it was so hot. When he walked through the halls, he was taller than almost every girl and a lot of the other boys, too, and he caught more than a few interested glances from pretty girls in his classes. He used the boys’ locker room for PE, though he did change in one of the toilet stalls.“I think Winchester has a third nipple he doesn’t want us to see,” jeered one of the other guys in the second week, eliciting some obliging laughter from the boys around him.“Nah, man, I just got some inappropriate tattoos,” Dean retorted with a wink. “Why d’you wanna see my nipples so bad, anyway?”The boy scowled as the others turned their laughter on him, and Dean just swaggered his way into the stall.“He’s lying, we’re too young to get tattoos,” he heard the boy mutter darkly.“I dunno, man, I think he was in a gang or something where he used to live. Probably had to get inked as some sort of initiation or something.”“A gang? That’s bullshit,” someone else cut in.“No seriously, I heard it from Bridget. She lives across the street from the apartment block his family moved into.”“So? What would she know?”“Her mom tried to welcome them to the neighborhood. His dad is this big scary guy, and he was real secretive, wouldn’t even say where they were moving from or why. And Bridget sees them doing these weird, hardcore training drills in the parking lot before school. Like, military-type training. That’s gang shit. Maybe his dad is a mob boss on the run.”Dean snorted to himself as he eavesdropped and pulled his gym shirt over his head. He preferred this gossip to the kind at his last school.They ended up going to four or five different schools that year (Dean didn’t keep track like Sammy did). Dean was used to being the weird kid; quiet and overlooked, picked last for team projects, the poor kid in the holey clothes that people could tell were from thrift stores. But he shot up another inch over the rest of the year until he was usually one of the tallest kids in every class, and when he grew out of his old tennis shoes his dad replaced them with a sturdy pair of work boots, and he was going on more weekend hunts with Dad (as long as they were fairly local) so he often went to school with scrapes and bruises and all his clothes smelled like graveyard smoke. So, instead of thinking he was weird-kid weird, his classmates started thinking he was rough-you-up weird.It didn’t change things too much, really. He still got picked last for team projects, but he usually got picked first for dodgeball now. He used to sit at the end of the nerdy kids’ table during lunch because he liked listening to them talk about movies and TV and stuff and he could sometimes join the conversation, but he couldn’t do that anymore because now he made geeks nervous and they either ate in wary silence or, at one school, moved to another table after he sat down the first time. So instead, Dean usually took his lunch outside to eat under a tree if the weather allowed.The upside, though, was that usually there were at least a few girls who thought his whole deal was mysterious and cool and liked his face enough to want to flirt. He got a lot of practice flirting that year.“You gonna ask Madeline on a date?” Sam asked him once while they walked home from their current schools. Madeline was in Dean’s homeroom class and also had a little brother that went to Sam’s school, so she and Dean usually ended up walking over and waiting for them together. She had red hair and blue eyes and freckles and the biggest rack in their grade (other than Jennifer Higgles, whose boobs were massive but whose clothes were too frumpy and ill-fitting for it to be hot).“Who wants to know?”“I know Alan. That’s her little brother, he’s in the grade below me. He says he thinks she has a crush on you.”“Well then maybe she should ask me on a date.”“You’re the boy, you’re supposed to ask her out.”Truth was, he thought Madeline was pretty, but she was a popular girl and except for when they fell into step halfway to the elementary school in the afternoons, she pretended he didn’t exist. Dean was fine with their after-school flirting, but he had some self-respect. Dean really did think about what it’d be like if he had a girlfriend, sometimes: he’d treat her right, kiss her a little bit in-between classes by her locker just to make her feel special. He’d introduce her to Led Zeppelin and Metallica and borrow the Impala - you know, once he was old enough - to take her to watch the sunset and make out. He’d even make her a mixtape of his favorite songs. The problem was that he kinda wanted his girlfriend to like him. Like, him, and most of the girls who flirted with him just liked the bad boy that they thought he was.“I don’t wanna limit myself, Sammy. You know the second you ask one girl out, all the others just stop talking to you.”“But don’t you wanna kiss her?”Dean laughed at the face Sam made; clearly, his little brother knew that boys Dean’s age kissed girls all the time, but found the idea pretty gross.“You don’t gotta date a girl to kiss her, Sammy.”Wide-eyed, Sam stared up at him. “But I thought you could only kiss your girlfriend.”“Nah, you can kiss any girl, long as she wants it.”“How many girls have you kissed?”He hadn’t kissed any. He waved his hand airily. “Too many to count, Sammy.”Of course, Dean wasn’t expecting Sam to relay the news to their father that evening. Then again, he wasn’t expecting their father to be home.“Dad, Dean says he’s kissed loads of girls, he doesn’t even know how many,” Sam announced across the kitchen table with his fork halfway between his plate and his mouth.“Sam!” Dean hissed, stomping on his brother’s foot under the table.“Ow!”“Is that so?” Dad replied with a raised brow.Dean hunched down in his chair and glared at his plate, moving around some mushy peas with the end of his fork. He didn’t say anything.“I said I thought you’re only supposed to kiss your girlfriend. But he says you can kiss any girl if she wants you to.”Dean could feel Dad’s eyes on him and shoveled a forkful of peas into his mouth.“I guess that’s true. But that’s only if you don’t have a girlfriend, Sammy. If you have a girlfriend, and you kiss another girl, that’s cheating.”“Oh.” Sam sat in thoughtful silence as he moved his own food around on his plate. “But you don’t have to kiss a whole bunch of girls that aren’t your girlfriend, right? If you don’t want to?”“I never even said anything like that,” Dean muttered under his breath.“No, you don’t have to kiss any girl you don’t want to,” Dad assured Sam.“I’m only ever gonna kiss my girlfriend, then,” announced Sam. “So it’s special.”Dean felt himself heat up, irritated and defensive, even though it was all a lie and he hadn’t even had his first kiss yet. Who cared if he kissed a lot of girls? It wouldn’t make kissing his girlfriend any less special when he got one.“You’re such a little bitch, Sammy.”“Hey! Jerk!”Dad groaned and rubbed his temple. “Finish your dinner, boys.”Later that night, Dad sat on the foot of Dean’s bed while he was watching The Twilight Zone on the fuzzy TV and Sam was in the shower. Dean’s arms were crossed over his chest and he hadn’t been able to relax his scowl since dinnertime.“It’s alright to be a little girl-crazy, Dean. It’s normal for a boy your age,” Dad said gently, hands clasped between his knees.“Whatever. Sammy didn’t have to be such a friggin’ tattletale.”“Hey, stow the ‘tude, dude, and forget about Sammy. I’m just trying to have a talk, you and me.”Dean reluctantly dragged his eyes away from the black-and-white picture on the TV screen.“Fine. What.” Dad gave him a look, and Dean forced his arms to uncross and tried to relax his frown. “Sorry, Dad. Whatdya wanna talk about?”They looked at each other in silence for a few moments; Dean watched his dad’s eyes flicker as they moved around, tracing the curves of his face. His dumb freckles and his girly lips. He wondered what Dad saw in them.“You’re growing up,” Dad finally continued, and it sounded eerily similar to what he’d once said to Dean in the hallway at Uncle Bobby’s. His tone was different now, though. Cautious instead of weary. A little awkward instead of regretful. “Like I said, liking girls is normal for boys your age. I can’t stop that, even if I wanted to. And I know if you wanna kiss girls, you’re gonna find a way to do it, even if you have to do it behind my back. I don’t want to make you feel like you have to keep secrets from me, Dean.”“Oh,” Dean said, pushing against the mattress to shove himself further up the headboard. This was one of those talks. Dad didn’t have talks like this with him too often; serious talks about regular life stuff that had nothing to do with hunting. Like a normal father-son talk. “Yeah, Dad, I know. I don’t feel like I have to keep secrets from you, I promise. The kissing girls stuff, it’s just…”Dad raised his hand. “It’s alright, Dean, I get it. I don’t need all the details, that’s not what I’m asking for. I guess I just… wanted to make sure you’re safe.”“Safe?”“Yeah, Dean, safe. If you’re kissing girls now, you might want to… try other things, soon. And I want to make sure you stay safe.”They stared at each other, communicating silently. Dean knew that Dad wasn’t talking about STDs and stuff. He knew what Dad wanted to make sure that he was keeping safe from.“Don’t worry, Dad,” he said with a reassuring smile. “I’m real careful.” Like what he’d said about kissing loads of girls wasn’t a load of horse shit. “I know what I need to do to stay safe.”Dean was grateful that they weren’t saying the words aloud. That his dad didn’t feel like he had to verbally remind him that he couldn’t just drop trou with any girl from school (even if he wanted to); that he was treating Dean like an adult and not making him feel weird or bad even though they both knew what the message was underneath it all.“That’s good, Dean. I know you do. I just wanted to make sure.”Dean offered his dad a hesitant smirk. “They taught us how to use condoms in my seventh-grade health class. I swear I won’t get a girl pregnant.”Dad raised an eyebrow but then he just smiled, and he didn't call Dean on his fake bravado because they both knew that he didn't have to. He reached out and put his big hand on Dean’s shoulder with a chuckle. “Glad if my son is a ladykiller, at least he’s a responsible one.” They both laughed a little. It was like a normal father-son talk, one that any man would have with his teenage boy. “Y’know, I’m not exactly surprised you’d have girls knocking down your door. You’re a good-looking boy, Deano. You're taking after your old man.”They both knew which parent Dean really looked more like, too, but that didn’t need to be said aloud either. That was something that Dad only ever said aloud when he was drunk. “You look so much like your mother,” he would slur while Dean ducked under his father’s arm and wrapped his own arm around his father’s ribs to help him stumble across the room onto his bed or the couch. Dad would get this look on his face when he said it, like longing and pride and grief all mixed together. Sometimes he'd cry a little bit, too, just a few tears from each eye that he'd be too sloshed to be ashamed of. He usually only cried like that if he'd been yelling in a drunken rage earlier, though.Dean didn't mind looking like his mom; it made him feel less bad about his girly face. He wouldn't mind if his dad told him that sometime when he was sober. Dean almost thought he'd prefer it; for his dad to say it while they stood facing each other, for him to clap his hand on Dean’s shoulder and say it with a smile. Instead, Dean only ever heard it when he was helping his dad out of his boots and the sentence smelled of whiskey and salt. It made the words feel dirty.Not as dirty as some other things made him feel, though.Sickness was very rarely something that Dean had to deal with. He'd gotten the flu once or twice in elementary school and usually got a cold that gave him the sniffles for a few days every winter, but he generally didn't catch bugs. So when he woke up one morning a few months after his sixteenth birthday feeling a little under the weather, he didn't think too much of it.It started with just a sort of weird, shaky feeling in his arms and legs. By the time he dropped Sam off at his middle school, though, the muscles in his legs had started to ache; the kind of weary muscle ache that he barely remembered from the bad flu he caught in fifth grade.Over the course of the rest of the morning, the muscle aches got worse and Dean started to get a stomach ache, too. It wasn't like any stomach ache he'd had before, either. Felt like his guts were twisting into knots, the pain ebbing and flowing. Each time it disappeared, Dean hoped it was for the last time. Then the pain would return. God, he hoped it was just something he ate and not, like, appendicitis or something. He didn't feel all that hungry when lunch time came, but he got into the lunch line anyway. He was planning to just get the tomato soup and crackers in the hopes that it'd settle his stomach. As the line progressed, Dean noticed that his shoulders were hunched and he had unconsciously wrapped his arms around his middle, wincing every time his stomach throbbed. He could hear a couple girls giggling in the line behind him. That wasn't all that unusual, but after a while when the giggles and whispers didn't stop, he felt the short hairs on the back of his neck prickle with the sense that the girls were laughing at him. He tried to ignore the feeling until a familiar, mocking laugh joined in. It was one of the boys in his class, Nick Jameson, who always made a point of commenting on Dean’s ratty second-hand clothes because he’d heard about his ex-girlfriend kissing Dean under the bleachers. She hadn't, of course; they'd just ran into each other there one time and talked for a while, but Nick didn't believe that.Rolling his eyes, Dean turned to scowl at the kids in line behind him. Some of the girls went silent at his expression, though a couple could only try to muffle their laughter behind their hands and Nick was grinning ear to ear.“Wanna let me in on the joke?” Dean asked irately. He wasn't in the mood for this, what with his full-body aches and the chills and the bizarre way his stomach had been hurting all morning. The girls tittered and Nick shrugged.“The girls here were just wondering if you wanted to borrow a tampon,” he said jeeringly, “‘Cause it looks like you got your period!”Nick and the girls broke into fits of laughter again, and Dean felt all the blood leave his face to pool in his gut. His lips suddenly felt very dry and his tongue darted out to wet them. His hands twitched and moved unconsciously; he almost reached around to touch his fingertips to the seat of his jeans to see if he could feel anything, but thought better of touching himself there in the middle of the crowded cafeteria.“What?” he managed to force through gritted teeth, and his voice came a lot harsher than he'd really intended. Some of the girls stopped laughing again, nervous, but Nick didn't seem perturbed.“I mean either you sat in ketchup or you bled through your panties, Winchester. Don't worry, Jenna’s got a spare skirt in her locker if you need to change.”Dean scowled and clenched his hands into fists as he shoved out of the lunch line through the small group, knocking shoulders with Nick as he walked past him. “Fuck you, Jameson,” he growled, and Nick held up his hands as he stumbled out of the way. As he stalked through the cafeteria, Dean began shucking his flannel down over his shoulders. While he slung it around his waist to cover the back of his jeans, he could hear Nick saying to the girls, “Damn, he should go to the school nurse for that PMS.”Dean made a beeline to the farthest boys’ bathroom with a knot in his throat. He knew before he’d even locked himself in a stall and pulled his pants down, though. He knew before he saw the blood. How dirty he was. Why’d this have to happen to me? he thought bitterly to himself as he yanked off one of his boots and pulled off his holey sock to tuck into his underwear to soak up the blood (he probably could have just used one of the socks that he was already packing, but the thought of bleeding like this and also not being able to feel that comforting bulge between his legs was too much to bear). Why couldn’t it just… He didn’t really have a coherent end to that thought. This is what happened to people like him. People with bodies like he had.He ducked out of the school through the side door and went behind the dumpsters to pull on his hair and try not to scream or cry in peace. Every time his guts twisted in pain - not your ‘guts ’, you know what it’s called - he felt like puking.“Fuck,” Dean said to himself under his breath. “Fuck.” A black dog can’t get you out of this, the little voice whispered into his ear. What are you gonna try this time? You think it’ll make your dad proud? Full of rage and self-disgust, Dean didn’t even realize that he’d thrown the punch until he felt the bright burst of pain as his knuckles collided with the brick wall.He sat in the Impala for half an hour, key in the ignition, staring at his bleeding knuckles as he thought. He needed supplies, but he couldn’t make himself start the car to drive to the store. The thought of making that purchase was unbearable. The idea of getting caught trying to steal it was even worse. In that moment, Dean thought that he’d rather die. He didn’t know what to fucking do.It was a hot day, and he’d lowered the windows to let the air in. Through the open window, Dean heard the sound of giggling; it carried on the breeze and landed softly in his ears. Dean turned his head to see a young mother walking along the sidewalk, pushing along a toddler in a stroller with a small boy walking beside her. As Dean watched, the young boy tugged at his mother’s pants and asked for water. The toddler in the stroller heard his brother’s question and stuck his chubby hand out towards him, offering his own sippy cup of juice.Dean swallowed dryly. Yeah, Dean was the big brother… he took care of Sam. He cooked and cleaned and budgeted and hunted and he… he just did everything that he was supposed to do. But he could remember small fingers in his hair, a quiet voice asking him if he was alright. Concerned hazel eyes looking up at him. A hand offering up the prize from the emptied cereal box. Dean turned the key in the ignition. Sometimes, when he needed it, Sammy took care of him.Dean finally had his first kiss when he was still sixteen and Dad left him to stew at a troubled boys’ home. Robin was sweet and soft and made him go all giddy when he thought about her in a way that he’d never felt before.Life at Sonny’s was weird. Dean didn’t have to count out the cash and revise the budget twice a week like he normally did. He didn’t have to write the grocery list and do the shopping. He didn’t have to walk Sammy to school or pick him up after and he wasn’t helping his dad with a hunt, which meant he had hours free after school every day; so many that he could join the wrestling team. He didn’t have to help his dad clean up and get ready for bed at night after he got home from the bar, either, which meant he was going to sleep early and getting a full eight hours a night. And he got fed three times a day, and he didn’t even have to pay for it or plan the meals; he just had to do his fair share of the chores, which meant helping with meal prep once a week. Dean didn’t remember a time in his life - outside of staying at Uncle Bobby’s house for the summer after the black dog - where he’d ever been so consistently not hungry for so long.He missed his dad and little brother like absent limbs, but for some reason even despite that, school seemed easier than it ever had been before. Something about the classes, maybe; or maybe Sonny put a good word in for him with the teachers. It wasn’t so hard to stay awake or pay attention and he got good grades for the first time in his whole life. It even felt easier to talk to the other kids in his classes, and he felt like he actually had buddies on the wrestling team. And none of them ever commented on why Dean never changed or showered with them.Dean wished that he could have taken Robin to the homecoming dance; wished he could have put his hands on her hips and swayed with her to whatever dumb pop music the student council blared over the speakers in the decorated gymnasium, even if it was Mariah Carey. He wished that he’d gotten to kiss her more; to feel that nervous joy flutter in his stomach and that throbbing heat flare in his groin as she moved her soft lips against his. Maybe they could have gone outside at some point and made out under the cover of the night. He could imagine her pushing him onto his back in the grass, getting on top of him, holding him down with her hands on his chest to kiss him with the moon lighting up the back of her brown hair and making the flyaways glow silver. Maybe she would have taken his hands in hers and put his palms on her breasts. He would have been so appreciative; touched her so gently, made her feel so pretty. There would be other girls, though. He only had one dad and one brother, and they needed him.“You learn your lesson, Dean?” Dad asked him when he climbed into the car outside of Sonny's. Dean wasn’t sure what lesson he was supposed to have learned. It certainly wasn’t about stealing, because Dad stole all the time. When the budget went short, it was Dean’s job to make it work. If he had to spend food money on rat traps and steel wool because the landlord refused to, then he had to try to make it up somehow with odd jobs or poker games. And if a few bad hands meant that he lost the rest, then… Well. It was Dean’s job to keep Sam safe from rat bites and rat shit and the Bubonic plague, and his job to keep Sam fed. Dad wouldn’t have minded him stealing to do that if he hadn’t gotten caught. And it wasn’t like letting him get sent to a boys’ home had taught Dean how to not get caught shoplifting or taught him how to not lose food money. Dean was pretty sure that this was one of those times where Dad had just gotten pissed off and reacted without really thinking too much about what his actions were meant to be teaching, and that if Dean asked him to clarify what lesson he was supposed to have learned then his dad would just get mad and lecture him but never be able to give him a straight answer.It didn’t matter, though. Dean had learned a lesson. It didn’t have anything to do with getting caught shoplifting or losing the food money, but he’d learned one alright.“Dean?” his dad prompted, and Dean looked at him, then made eye contact with Sam in the rearview mirror.“Yes, sir. I learned my lesson.”A few months after Sonny’s Place, Dad sat across from Dean at the dinner table one night with a grin while Dean was half-heartedly struggling through his biology homework. School had gotten hard again. He knew that they’d been going easy on him while he was at Sonny’s.Dean glanced up at his dad absent-mindedly, but then put down his stubby, chewed-on pencil at the sight of his father’s eager expression.“What?”“You’ve got your winter break coming up in a few days, right?”Dean tapped the eraser-less end of his pencil against the table and searched his dad’s face for an explanation for his mood. “Yeah, Friday’s the last day of school and then we’re off until January third.”His dad nodded along and put his forearm on the tabletop, leaning forward with a smile. “You up for a hunt?”Dean was always up for a hunt, but Dad’s mood made him think that he thought Dean would be particularly interested in this one. He was curious.“What kind of hunt?”“Something’s injured a few ranchers down near San Antonio. Been killing their livestock, too. Haven’t IDed it yet; could be vampires, maybe a wendigo.”Dean felt himself perk up at the mention of San Antonio and ranchers; taking a trip down south where it was warm and sunny in December sounded fun even without the added bonus of fuckin’ cowboys. But then he furrowed his brows in confusion.“But Dad, that’s like a sixteen-hour drive. It’d be at least a week before we could get back. It’s almost Christmas.” He bit his lip; he didn’t want to leave Sammy all alone in their shabby little Kentucky apartment for the holiday, even if celebrating it together usually amounted to eating takeout Chinese and watching the game (and Dad letting them put a little rum in their eggnog as a treat).But Dad just smiled. “Don’t worry about that. I got it covered. I’ll be staying here with Sam; you’re going without me.”Feeling even more confused, Dean cocked his head and felt himself frown, mouth hanging open slightly but not knowing what he wanted to say. Dad was still grinning like he expected Dean to say thank-you, which meant that this wasn’t supposed to be some sort of punishment.“I don’t get it,” Dean finally admitted, and Dad laughed.“Alright, alright. Here’s the deal: I was talkin’ to Abe this morning and he told me that Caleb was gearing up to go on this hunt solo. And I got to thinkin’, sounded right up your alley, and even though it doesn’t look like a hunt that needs more than one hunter, it never hurts to be careful. So I volunteered you; asked if Caleb would appreciate an extra hand, and he said he’d always welcome one coming from Dean Winchester.” Dad finished with a smile and spread his hands in a benevolent gesture. “So, whatdya think?”Slowly, Dean let a smile spread across his face as he felt nervous excitement expand in his stomach. “Really? Just me and Caleb?”His dad nodded. “He happens to be in Virginia right now, he’s gonna swing up and pick you up on the way tomorrow morning. I’ll get you excused from school for tomorrow and Friday, let them know we’re leaving early on a family vacation.”Dean put down his pencil with a smile. “So I don’t have to finish my homework?”“No, you’ve gotta start packing,” his dad responded with a chuckle.By midday the next day, Dean was sitting in the passenger seat of Caleb’s truck, duffel tossed in the backseat on top of Caleb’s gear. Dean was a little quiet at first, since it had been a while, but Caleb acted so happy to see him and excited to talk to him that it wasn’t too long before Dean was chattering and laughing and singing along to the radio.They got burgers for lunch and for dinner, and Caleb even paid for Dean’s. That first night, they slept inside the truck; Dean sprawled, cramped, in the back and Caleb sitting up in the passenger seat. The next night, though, having finally reached San Antonio, it was warm enough at night for them to lay out Caleb’s bedrolls in the truck bed and lie down on them, side-by-side, to fall asleep with their eyes turned up to the night sky.Caleb was still just as much older than Dean as he always had been, but he felt so much more real now. Still larger-than-life, but solid. And warm. Tall and cool, dusty cowboy boots kicked off and thrown back into the truck through the open rear window. Holey wool socks and ratty, washed-out jeans and slightly too-long facial hair that he kept scratching with blunt fingernails. They had to lie so close in the truck bed that Dean could feel Caleb’s body heat like a physical touch along the line of his side. It made Dean feel hot."You know,” Caleb said quietly in the dark as they looked up at the starry sky. “My old man is pretty set in his ways. And… Well, I used to be like that a little bit, too.” He took a breath, and Dean held his. “Like I, uh, felt like I was humoring you, kinda, back when you were a kid. But I don't feel like that anymore. I don't even think of that old you as someone different, you know? That little boy at Pastor Jim’s place, followin’ me ‘round like a goddamn duckling… It's like you've always been Dean to me."Dean felt his cheeks heat up and something swell in his chest. “I didn’t follow you around like a friggin’- like a fuckin’ duckling.” It wasn’t like he’d been a baby or anything, he wasn’t that much younger than Caleb. And now he was sixteen; still a kid, yeah, but only a month away from seventeen and so close to eighteen that he could almost taste it.“Aww, c’mon, Blondie, you don’t gotta be embarrassed. It was cute.”“Fuck off, I ain’t cute.” He rolled over onto his side so that Caleb couldn’t turn his head and see how darkly he was blushing. Caleb just laughed and reached over to ruffle his hair like… like Dean was his kid brother or something. Dean knocked his hand away with enough force to make Caleb yelp.“Jee-zus, Blondie; you’re gonna break my finger ‘fore we even start the hunt.”Dean and Caleb worked well together. An hour or so outside of San Antonio, the two of them posed as brothers and got short-term jobs as ranch hands at one of the local ranches. Dean toted hay and shoveled shit in the barns and chatted up the fourteen- and seventeen-year-old daughters of the cattle rancher, while Caleb helped some of the full-time ranch hands mend fences and herd the cattle for feeding and asked about the strange happenings while they ate their lunches in the fields. What it ended up being was a chupacabra - well, two chupacabras - which might have been the coolest thing it could’ve been. “Y’know, people only started seein’ these things in the eighties?” Caleb asked Dean as the two of them stood over two frankly bizarre corpses. The monsters looked like the mutant crossbreed of some sort of weird dog and a mosquito. Almost like someone had taken two animals and melded them together with some sort of wacky sci-fi contraption.“So they’re new? Do they make new monsters? Always kinda figured whatever’s out there’s been around since… like, forever.”Caleb shrugged. “Beats me. To be honest, I thought they were an urban legend.”“‘Cause we know those are never real.” Dean kicked at one of the chupacabra’s hairy, hook-clawed feet. “Why’d they call ‘em chupacabras, anyway? I woulda called it a… skeeterdog. A dogsquito. Wait! I got it: Brundlesquito!”Caleb laughed, a full belly laugh, and clapped his hand on Dean’s shoulder. “I guess it does look kinda Cronenberg.”Caleb left Dean to get started on making the fire pit while he went to find some lighter fluid. He returned forty minutes later with the lighter fluid, a six-pack, and two joints tucked into his breast pocket.“You smoke, Blondie?” Caleb asked him after the fire was roaring, the sounds of branches cracking and monster flesh spitting and popping filling the air. He held out one of the joints to Dean, who took it between his fingers.“Uh…”Caleb smirked. “I’d stop at three hits if it’s your first time. You can save the rest for later.”Dean put the joint between his lips the way he’d seen Caleb do with cigarettes, and then leaned forward when Caleb beaconed him to. With the heat of the fire beating on the side of his face, Dean watched Caleb’s hand as he lifted his Zippo up to light the end of Dean’s joint. The man’s expression was relaxed, a contented grin curling up the corners of his mouth, the light from the fire making his facial hair reddish and casting shadows on his cheekbones and well-defined jaw. He looked like he could be a classic movie star. He and Dean could be real cowboys, camping together; that smell from the fire pit could be a spitted rabbit instead of torched dogsquito.The first inhale from the lit joint tasted just like the stink that always clung to the clothes of the stoners at school. A second later, Dean’s lungs protested the heat and the smoke and he had to grab the joint out of his mouth so that it wouldn’t fall to the ground when he bent over, coughing.Laughing, Caleb rubbed Dean’s back. His big palm burned Dean’s skin through his shirt and left his skin tingling. “Everyone coughs the first time, D. You’ll get used to it.”An hour later, Dean’s body felt light and floaty and everything around him just seemed… really, really awesome. He and Caleb had cracked a couple beers after they got high, and they’d been talking and laughing and watching the sparks from the fire float up into the sky and melt into the stars. Caleb’s voice was really nice. It vibrated. Dean wanted… He wanted to say something and have his voice sound like that. He wanted to feel it in his own chest. He wanted to swallow Caleb’s voice.They were sitting next to each other, so close that Dean could feel Caleb's knee brushing his own whenever Caleb shifted to pick up his beer bottle and take another drink. The firelight was making him glow up in the night, the shadows across his handsome face flickering and dancing in the faint desert breeze. Everything else around them was dark and quiet. Caleb turned and caught Dean staring, grinned and shook his head.“You really are somethin’, D, you know that?” he asked. His big hand reached over to pat Dean's knee fondly. Innocently. The feel of Caleb's hand on his leg sent a hot spark shooting from the warm touch straight to Dean’s groin, and Dean looked away quickly and shifted his hips. His dumb, floaty brain suddenly wondered what they'd be doing right now if Dean was a girl… He lifted his bottle to his lips and downed a swig, hoping that Caleb couldn’t see him blushing in the firelight. Even if Dean was a girl, they probably wouldn’t be doing anything. Caleb was twenty-seven and Dean was just some punk-ass kid that he was forced to babysit sometimes. And, and why was Dean even thinking about that in the first place? He pushed the thoughts away.When Dean woke up the next morning, he wasn’t lying next to Caleb in the dirt by the blistering fire pit, or even in the bed of Caleb’s truck. Instead, Dean was lying on a pile of dusty straw with his hands tied behind his back, his feet similarly bound.“Fuck,” he hissed quietly; his head was throbbing, his stomach turning, and his bladder was uncomfortably full. A knicker sounded from behind him, startling him enough to nearly piss his pants, and Dean rolled over to find himself in one of the horse stalls with an unimpressed stallion looking down at him.“What?” Dean whispered to the horse indignantly. “Obviously I’m not here on purpose!”It took him a good ten minutes to struggle out of the rope binding his limbs, but his dad had taught him well. He pissed on the hay in the corner of the stall before doing anything else, because hunting with a full bladder was a surefire way to make a dumb mistake and get yourself killed. He tried to ignore the horse side-eyeing him the whole time.After he’d finished, Dean quietly jumped the stall door and then found his knife and his gun tossed on top of a wooden table. He gingerly checked the cartridge - there were two bullets left - before prowling through the shadows towards the faint voices that he could hear coming from the main barn.“I just want to know who else knows,” an agitated voice was saying. “You hunters are like roaches; there’s never just two. You tell me who else knows about me or I’ll drag your little brother out here and slit his throat right in front of you.”“Don’t.” That was Caleb’s voice; it sounded raspy and strangled, but it was him. “Don’t hurt the kid. I told you, no one else knows; we didn’t even know you were involved. We thought it was just the chupacabras, we were about to leave.”Dean peered through the ajar barn door; inside, one of the ranch hands - an older guy with a craggy face who hadn’t started long before him and Caleb got there - was brandishing a cocked revolver at Caleb. Caleb was standing on a stool, barely conscious, strung up with his wrists bound in front of him and a rope tied around his neck. The end of the rope was looped around one of the rafters above him, and a slow trickle of blood had dripped from his hairline to his earlobe. Dean felt his heart thumping hard in his chest, his pulse racing.“Liar!” the ranch hand spit at the younger man. “Any hunter worth his salt knows chups ain’t born natural, they gotta be made. If you were after my pets, you were after me, and I wanna know who sent you my way! I’ll let the kid live if you tell me the truth.”“Listen, hoss, I don’t know what the hunters this close to the border know, but where I’m from we ain’t know jack shit about chupacabras! We didn’t even know they were real, honest.”The man sneered and raised his gun. Dean could see Caleb’s eyes widen, his Adam’s apple bob under the tight rope around his neck.“If you’re not gonna tell me, I’ll see how talkative your brother is,” the guy said, and Dean felt the world fade around him as he saw the older man kick his foot out at the spindly legs of the stool that Caleb was balancing on.Dean slammed open the barn door at the same time that the man’s booted foot collided with the leg of the stool, knocking it out from under Caleb’s feet. Without hesitation, Dean raised his pistol and shot clear through the rope before it even went taut.With a shout, Caleb collapsed to the floor in a heap and the other man turned around to look at Dean with shock and fear, the whites showing all around his eyes. He swung his arm to point his revolver at Dean. Just as the ranch hand’s finger began to tighten on the trigger, Dean shot him in the shoulder with his last bullet.The man fell into the dust, gun tumbling from his limp hand. Dean darted forward, reaching out to help Caleb to his feet and pull the loop of rope off and over his head.“Caleb! You alright, man?” he asked, panicked. Caleb coughed for a second while Dean rubbed his back, but otherwise seemed alright."Damn, D, y'sure are somethin’," Caleb told him, staring at him in awe while Dean cut away the ropes that tied his wrists together. With his freed hands, he raised his fingers to rub at his neck, brushing over the burns left by the rope that had nearly killed him. “Fuck. Fuck. Ain’t never seen anyone make a shot like that, not ever. Not outside of fuckin’ Clint Eastwood flicks.”Shaking with adrenaline and itching to get away from the bleeding body that was lying barely a few feet away, Dean grinned. “Well, you do call me Blondie for a reason.”“I guess I do.”If they were in a Western flick and Caleb was a girl, this was where Dean would lift him up into his arms and carry him away on horseback. Instead, he helped Caleb get to his feet and dust off. Caleb looked over at the unconscious man on the floor, and then walked slowly over to him and bent to pick up his dropped revolver.“Guess he was hired to take out competin’ ranchers’ livestock,” Caleb told Dean. “Seems chupacabras really were made in the eighties. Some sorta Mexican witchy invention. Freaky stuff.”“Well, I took out his firing arm, so if the spell or whatever takes more than one hand, he won't be making any more for a long time,” Dean said.Caleb stared down at the bleeding body with an indeterminate expression creasing the corners of his eyes and etching into his tanned face.“No, he won't,” he agreed, and then he pointed the gun at the unconscious man’s face and shot him in the forehead.The body didn't even twitch, but Dean flinched and stumbled back a step, wide-eyed.“What the fuck, Caleb?” he hissed. “He was human!”“The monsters he was makin’ weren't,” Caleb replied grimly.“Okay, sure, but no one got hurt except for a few cows!”“And you and me,” Caleb added, gesturing to the rope burns around Dean’s wrists and his own neck. “In case you forgot what just happened two minutes ago, I'd be hangin’ with my head on crooked if you weren’t a better shot than fuckin’ Wild Bill. And he was about to turn this gun on you; you think he wouldn'ta took that shot if you hadn’t got ‘im first?”Dean just stared down at the corpse. The man’s eyes had been closed before Caleb shot him, but they were slitted now, a sliver of off-white sclera showing underneath his lax eyelids. When Caleb’s hand landed on Dean’s shoulder, he jumped.“C’mon, Blondie,” Caleb said gently. “You musta heard what he was tellin’ me. He wouldn’ta just let us get away with killin’ his ‘pets’ and you shootin’ his arm. This was how it had to be. You get that, right?”After a beat, Dean nodded. Caleb was right. The man had had the power to make mutant monsters; there was no way to know what else he could’ve done. That knowledge didn't quell the bitterness festering in his gut, though; Dean hadn't talked to the guy more than a handful of times, but he remembered the man talking about a daughter off at college. How he was working at the ranch to pay for her tuition. He’d probably taken the job of sabotaging the cattle to support his daughter, too.Dean wondered if the man’s daughter would be sad when her dad went missing.They were able to find a dusty tarp hanging up on the wall of the barn and used it to wrap up the body. Then, Caleb dragged it to load into his truck while Dean mopped and scrubbed the blood off of the concrete floor. He stared intently at his dry-cracked knuckles as he did so and only focused his vision on the soapy water when it was clear, the suds white. He didn't watch the pink water pour into the dirt when he emptied the bucket out onto the dry grass around the side of the barn.They dug a grave for the dead man three hours northeast of San Antonio, ten feet away from the highway in a dusty field under the black night sky. This time, when they salted and burned the corpse, they didn't smoke a joint or crack any beers.A couple days later, after Caleb had dropped him back off at their little apartment in Kentucky, Dean recounted the tale of his heroics to Sam and Dad over dinner. "Then the witch or whatever he was kicked the stool out from under Caleb’s feet, an’ he was literally falling through the air, an' I whipped out my gun lightning-quick and just aimed and -" he mimed holding up his gun and staring down the sight, bracing against the kickback with both hands, "- Pow! One shot, dude! I shot through the rope before he could even finish falling. You shoulda seen it, it was like, like the friggin' shot of a lifetime!"“No way!” Sam said, mouth agape. He looked suitably impressed, and Dean preened and then looked to his father with a hopeful grin.“Just don't let it go to your head,” Dad said wryly. “Can’t get too confident. You've missed easier shots before.”Dean felt the spark in his chest snuff out immediately like a bucket of cold water had been poured out over him. He swallowed the knot in his throat, his grin faltering.“‘Course not, Dad. I won’t let it get to my head.”It was harsh, but fair. Dad was right, Dean had missed easier shots before. It never hurt to remember that. Dean pushed his food around with his flimsy fork and decided not to mention that when he'd shot the man right after - when he’d pointed his gun at Dean - Dean hadn't shot to kill. The guy had died anyway, so what did it matter? He hadn’t blown the guy’s brains out, but some college girl out there still didn’t have a dad anymore.He pushed himself a little harder in training after that. If he missed a target during shooting practice, his dad would twist up his mouth and raise an eyebrow at him; a silent You can do better than that, kiddo, that didn’t need to be vocalized. Because missing a shot, that was as good as getting someone killed on a hunt. As good as getting his dad or his brother killed.If he hit every target dead-on, then… Well, that was just what was expected, so his dad wouldn’t say anything. What was Dad supposed to do, smile at him and spin him around and take him out for McDonald’s? At least he didn’t give Dean that silent look of disappointment.Sometimes, though, Dad would surprise him on just a normal day when Dean hadn't even done anything particularly noteworthy. He’d swing by when he was supposed to be casing a haunted house and take Dean and Sam out for chicken wings, and he’d laugh and joke around with them just like how the other dads did with their kids. And he’d look at Dean with such gratitude, sometimes, when he came home after a long night of research or a rough hunt and Dean had the apartment or motel room or trailer tidy and dinner in the mini-fridge and all that Dad had to do was take off his boots and Dean took care of the rest.And a week after he turned seventeen, Dad swung by his high school during lunch break just to wish him a late happy birthday - even though he was still in the middle of a hunt - and take him to the diner down the road. And Dean felt really special when he was dropped back off at school afterwards, because his dad was a hero and had told him all about the Crocotta that he was hunting, and Dean had gotten to eat a good burger and an ice cream sundae for lunch when all the other kids had been stuck in the cafeteria.And life was almost okay, with Dean old enough to start scoring higher paying odd jobs to keep the money flowing while Dad was gone, and with graduation on the horizon. Life was almost okay, because even though Sam’s voice had started to crack and he was shooting up like a weed and Dean didn’t have a single mustache hair to his name, Dean was tall, too. Life was almost okay, because even though people thought he was a couple years younger than he really was, at least they thought that he looked like a boy. At least he’d only been ganged up on in the bathroom once, and never again since then.Life was almost okay, except for when he absent-mindedly rubbed at his jaw and felt that horrible pang in his gut at the baby-smooth feel of his cheek; except for when he glanced at himself in the mirror and wondered how long he’d be able to pass as a teenage boy until people started to read him as a dyke again; except for when he had to go to the bathroom and be reminded that all he was packing in his jeans were a silver knife or his .45 and a pair of socks.And then Sam went on his first hunt with Dad, just the two of them, and called Dean afterwards to let him know that they were okay and that the whole thing had been some sort of backdoor conspiracy to get Dean sex change drugs.“It’s the coolest place, Dean,” Sam told him breathlessly over the phone. “There’re other transgender kids there, too, and they’re getting these treatments, and the doctor said he’d give you them for free.”Dean listened to the way his little brother’s voice was cracking in his excitement, the way it was at least two octaves lower than it had been a year ago - probably lower than Dean’s was now - and he couldn’t help but feel angry.“Dean?” Sam finally said after a long moment of silence, and Dean swallowed.“What, like dick pills? The fake supplements they give to old geezers to keep them feeling macho in their old age?” he retorted sourly. “Hormone replacement therapy,” Sam replied after hesitating, taken aback by his brother’s tone. “You know. I told you about it once. You get it like an injection, I think.”Dean remembered reading about it in that stupid packet that Sam had given him all those years ago. Hormone pills - or injections or whatever - that people like him could take to feel a little bit better about themselves. He’d toyed with the idea a few times, late at night while he tried to fall asleep, and sometimes early in the morning while he studiously ignored Sam’s morning wood and tried not to feel like a creep for being jealous of his little brother’s wet dreams. But they were just idle thoughts, flights of fancy; he’d known that it wasn’t like he’d ever be able to be issued any kind of prescription. They didn’t have health insurance, they never went to the doctor, and on top of that, no one was ever supposed to know. Besides, what did it matter? What did he need those stupid drugs for? Dean didn't care about fucking medicine. What, to fix up his brain? To turn him into a 'roided out freak? He knew what those female bodybuilders looked like, and they didn’t look like men. Who cared about what stupid chemical was floating around with his red blood cells; Dean was already a man, he didn’t need to inject himself with fake hormones to make him feel like less of a faker or something. And Dean didn’t want to have to inject himself with something every day just for a shadowy imitation of what other guys’ balls could produce naturally. What Dean wanted was for his body to feel right. He wanted to rub his chin and feel stubble against his palm, he wanted to feel his voice rumble in his chest like it was supposed to. He wanted to run his fingers over his belly and feel hair there like his fucking baby brother was starting to grow. He wanted his body to not feel so awkwardly shaped. He wanted to see himself when he looked in the mirror, instead of the baby-faced child that stared back at him every time. He didn't want to be stuck in limbo, bending over backwards to stay in the good graces of doctors, just so that his dad could feel like he was doing some good fucking deed. What did he care about hormone medication to ‘make him a man’ when the only thing he really wanted was to actually look like one? Instead of saying all of that to Sam, Dean just said, “We don’t have the money for that.”“No, Dean, it’s free,” Sam assured him in response. “No strings attached. We saved his patients, he’s just doing us a favor.” Dean scoffed. “Yeah, ‘no strings attached’? Since when have we ever gotten something like that that didn’t bite us in the ass down the line? No way is Dad gonna go for that.”“God, Dean, it was Dad’s idea. He’s the one who asked.” “Well, then tell him thanks but no thanks.”“But Dean…” Sam started, but then Dean could hear Dad’s voice rumbling, saying something in the background. “Dad wants to talk to you,” Sam finished, and then it was his dad’s voice in Dean’s ear and Dean just wanted to sink into the floor. He just wanted them both to drop it.“Dean? You there?”“Yessir,” Dean answered, all traces of anger and bitterness gone from his voice. Now, he just sounded small.“You know what Sam’s talkin’ about?”He picked at the scab on his knee that he could scratch at through the hole in his jeans. “Some doctor you helped said he’d give me some kind of treatment. Some kind of, uh, hormone treatment.”“This stuff, it’ll make you change, son. I’ve looked into it. I think it’d do you good.”Dean could feel his eyes well up as he heard the tone in his father’s voice. He tried to swallow around the painful knot in his throat and swiped the back of his hand across his face to wipe away the tears that had spilled down his cheeks. Am I not good enough for you like I am right now? he asked silently. I’m trying so hard. He really hadn’t thought that his dad cared about this kinda thing. Dad knew that Dean was a boy - a man. Dad showed that he knew it in every clap on Dean’s shoulder and every time that he called Dean his son. No matter what Dean wished about his body and no matter how good or bad he was at training or hunting, Dean knew that he had nothing to prove to his father on that front. At least, he’d thought that he didn’t. “I don’t wanna owe anybody nothin’,” he managed to say raggedly. He was pretty sure that he hadn’t betrayed his tears in his voice.“And you won’t, because this is the doctor owing me something, owing us something.” When Dean didn’t reply, he could hear his father sigh heavily. “Dean, you don’t gotta go through with this treatment if you don’t want to. But you will come with us back to the clinic, and you will sit down and listen to this doctor tell you all about what it can do, and you will make a decision only after you have thought about it damn hard. You hear me, boy?”And, like he always did, Dean answered obediently. “Yes, sir.”The time spent waiting on Sam and Dad to finally come home was filled with pacing and cleaning the guns and picking at his various scabs until they bled. Wondering how he was gonna tell his dad that he didn’t want this, that injecting himself with drugs wouldn’t make him feel like more of a man but instead would just be a horrible reminder of what he couldn’t have. Figuring out how to tell his dad that if he really wasn’t good enough, he could do better. He could be better.“For god’s sake, Dean, you’ve been my son for thirteen years now!” his dad told him later while they were standing in the motel parking lot, and the words were a balm that washed over him, warm and tender. Dean swallowed and felt his eyes sting at the look in his dad’s eyes as he shook his head in bewilderment. “That’s not gonna change, whether or not you decide to take this treatment. But dammit, Dean, I see the way you look at yourself in the mirror.”Was that true? Did his dad really see what Dean saw in his reflection? Sometimes, when they didn’t think he was an ugly dyke or a tranny or a punk freak, people called Dean pretty. A pretty boy. Dean hated it, hated the way that the kids at school said it with a sneer or the truckers that came up behind him in the truck stop bathrooms whispered it leeringly, the words ghosting over the back of his neck. Mostly, though, Dean hated it because it was a lie.Picking apart the pieces of his face, Dean could see why people thought he was pretty. He had a nice nose, nice eyes. He had those girly lips. But when he put all the pieces together and saw the full picture of Dean, that's when the image fell apart for him; Dean could never like his reflection because… Well, because it looked too much like himself. If those people really knew him, they wouldn’t think he was pretty either.But Dean didn’t need to be pretty. And Dean still wasn’t convinced that a bunch of hormone drugs were gonna change the way he looked at himself in the mirror; not unless they changed his reflection, too. But his dad looked at him with such desperation that Dean couldn’t say no. He wanted it to work. He wanted his dad to be right.The clinic that his dad and Sam brought him to was… normal. It looked pretty much like any doctor’s office that he’d seen on TV. Stacks of old magazines on tables, a waiting room full of uncomfortable chairs, a receptionist behind a big wooden desk.Right away, Sam called out to some chick in one of the seats, and Dean cringed because he didn’t want Sam drawing attention to them; didn’t want some cute girl looking at him in this special clinic and being able to tell what he was. Between him and Sam, it was pretty obvious to anyone who knew what to look for. Dean avoided making eye contact with the blonde girl, instead focusing on slouching down in one of the seats and opening a random magazine while Dad walked up to the receptionist.“She’s transgender too,” Sam whispered, and Dean tried to shoot a weak smile at the girl and then turned back to his magazine, but then… Then he peered over the top of it back at the girl, who wasn’t looking in their direction anymore but instead at a little paperback book that she was holding in her lap.She was probably a bit younger than Dean, but older than Sam. She had straight blonde hair, shoulder-length, tucked behind her ear and a light smatter of freckles across the bridge of her nose. Her skin looked soft, and her thighs looked soft, too, one leg crossed over the other. She looked like she had cleavage. Did they let boys that young get boob jobs? He winced internally, feeling guilty for calling her a boy, but he didn’t mean it like that… Just that, that’s what other people would think about her. That she was a boy. And would they give her a boob job that young if that’s what they thought she was?When the girl got up later and walked into the office, she smiled at Sam and waved at him. Her hands were girly. Her boobs didn't look fake. Dean looked down at his own fingers, then back up and watched the girl's ass sway as she followed the nurse that had called her. That looked like a girl’s ass. Dean blushed.“She don’t look like a dude,” Dean whispered, mostly to himself, but of course his brother heard him.“Well, she’s not a dude,” Sam told him in that tone that he put on when he thought he was telling Dean something that he didn’t know, and Dean felt a flare of irritation. Sam liked to make him feel stupid sometimes. Dean didn't mind that his little brother was smart; he could be proud of him if it was just that. But it pissed him off when Sam thought that him being smart meant that Dean was dumb, and when he tried to educate Dean on something as if Dean didn’t know any better even when Dean probably knew better than he did. Sure, Dean hadn’t known what transgender was back when Sam had given him those papers, but that didn’t mean that he was a fucking ignorant idiot.“I just mean, she doesn’t look like… you know,” Dean replied, trying to get Sam to understand what he’d meant, and his little brother looked back at him with something like condescension. Or maybe pity.“That’s what the hormones do,” Sam said slowly, and that… that didn’t make sense. The hormones were supposed to make you feel different, yeah, but she looked like a girl. “Dean, you…”“Dean Winchester?" a nurse finally called, excusing him from the conversation, and Dean was pulled up a minute later by his dad’s hand on his shoulder and they left Sam alone in the waiting room. Dean sat nervously in the room while they waited for the doctor, and then while the doctor calmly explained the hormones. What the doctor was saying, it honestly made Dean feel a bit dizzy.It wasn’t like he’d thought. It wasn’t like he’d thought at all. They weren’t steroids, and they weren’t for treating his brain. They were for changing his body; making it look like how it was supposed to look. Making it feel how it was supposed to feel.“Mr. Winchester, if you’d excuse the two of us?” Dr. Trewett asked his dad with a smile after he’d explained what the hormones would do, and Dad hesitated before nodding, clapping Dean on the back before leaving him alone in the room with the doctor. Trewett came back and sat down in his rolling chair and smiled at Dean, who was staring down at his own hands, wondering what kind of medical examination he’d have to undergo to get the prescription.“So, Dean, is there anything you’d like to say or ask me before we get started?”Dean picked at a little tear in his jeans, just above his right knee. “You need me to take my pants off or something?” he asked, trying to sound sarcastic but just sounding nervous. He’d never had anyone look at him down there before. He didn’t even look at himself down there. But if… If he needed to let the doctor do that to get the hormones, then he’d do it. If the hormones would do to him what the guy had said they would.But Dr. Trewett shook his head. “No, I don’t. That’s not necessary. I just need to get your vitals and do some bloodwork, to get your base level hormones.”“Oh.” Dean felt himself relax, his abs aching as they unclenched even though Dean hadn’t even realized that he’d been tensing them. “Cool, I can do that.”The doctor smiled at Dean’s obvious relief. “Before we start on that, though, there are a few other things that I thought you’d rather discuss without your dad in the room.”Dean chuckled nervously. Great, so maybe the good doctor wasn’t gonna bad-touch him, but it looked like he’d still have to suffer. “Yeah? What… Whatdya wanna talk about?”Trewett tried to look sympathetic, but it didn’t do much to ease Dean’s nerves. “Well, I want to go over a few other ways that the HRT will affect you, first. We already discussed the changes in things like your voice, body hair, and fat distribution. Can I ask you what terms you prefer that I use to refer to your anatomy?”Mortified, Dean felt the urge to squirm like a child on the medical exam table. His anatomy?“You mean… Like, my junk? Why… Why d’you wanna…”“Some of my patients prefer that I use clinically accurate anatomical terms to refer to their genitals and sexual organs, while others are very uncomfortable with hearing those words and prefer I use others. For example, some transgender girls prefer that I refer to their penis as a clitoris, and vice versa.”Dean could feel himself blushing red from the shells of his ears to his chest. His mouth gaped dumbly for a few moments as he tried to find an answer to the doctor’s question. At least the man didn’t look as embarrassed by the conversation as Dean was; he just looked understanding. He waited patiently for Dean to speak.“Uh, I… I don’t really know,” Dean finally managed. “Can you just… Call them my, you know, my sexual organs? I guess? And. Um.” He averted his gaze and fiddled with a loose thread in the tear in his jeans, which he’d unraveled into a small hole. “Like you said before. You know. Call it, uh, a penis.”Dean was relieved that Dr. Trewett simply nodded, not pressing further or making some sort of big deal out of it.“Of course. Well, HRT will affect not just what we already discussed, but your sexual organs as well. It’s likely that you will experience cessation of your menstrual cycle; for some men, this happens right away, while for others it takes a few months while their hormone levels adjust.”Dean perked up. “I won’t have to deal with that shit anymore?”The doctor nodded. “Most of my patients report total cessation after about six months. If you’re still seeing it after that, it can usually be fixed with an adjustment to your prescription.”“Awesome,” Dean grinned.“I do need to inform you that HRT should not be considered a form of birth control. Even without a cycle, there is still a possibility for pregnancy. Other forms of prophylactic should always be used, and if anything ever happens that could result in unwanted pregnancy, it’s important to seek out contraceptive care.”That had the grin slipping right off of Dean’s face. “I’m not… That’s not gonna…”Dr. Trewett held up his hands. “I’m not making any assumptions about your life, just doing my due diligence of making sure you are fully informed.”Wringing his hands, Dean nodded. “Alright.”“The HRT is also likely to impact your libido. Most of my male patients like yourself report a marked increase in their sex drive. It’s also possible that you will experience atrophy in your internal genitalia over time. If this begins to cause problems, I encourage you to see a doctor, as it’s easily treatable.” He paused, waiting to see if Dean had anything to say in response, and then continued. “Lastly, one of the first changes that you’re likely to see is growth of your penis.”Dean did a double take, eyes practically popping out of his head. “My dick’s gonna get bigger?” He wasn’t really able to disguise the glee in his voice, and Dr. Trewett wasn’t really able to hide his responding smile. The doctor nodded. “How big? Like… is it gonna…?” His chest felt full to bursting. This stuff, was it really as magical as it seemed? Could it do everything?But the doctor shook his head. “One inch is typically about the average growth that my male patients see, though I’ve heard of patients who have grown more than two inches. But that’s highly unlikely.”“Oh. Alright,” Dean said sheepishly, but he still couldn’t wipe the hesitant little smile off of his face as he ducked his head. It was just… well. Even if he wasn't gonna grow an eight-inch dick. It sounded kind of cool.Trewett smiled and slapped his hands down onto his thighs before heaving himself to his feet.“Now, that’s pretty much the last thing that I wanted to cover. If you’re ready, I can perform your physical. When we’re done, I’ll get your blood sample. Sound good?”Dean wasn’t really used to doctors poking and prodding him; it wasn’t like Dad ever took him or Sam to get an annual physical. Most of Dean’s experience with medical professionals were in emergency rooms. Trewett was okay, though; he was respectful and his hands didn’t linger. He took Dean’s pulse, blood pressure, checked his lymph nodes and felt around his stomach. Apparently, Dean was thin enough that the doctor could actually feel up his organs through his abdomen, which was a little freaky.“Everything looks good,” Trewett said, and then brought out the needle and a little vial that he filled with blood from Dean’s left arm.“All done?” Dean asked, pressing his thumb over the cotton ball that the doctor had given him for the needle prick.“All done,” Trewett nodded. “I’m going to go give this to Sherry; she’s been told to rush it. If you and your family wait a bit, we can have the results ready in time for you to take home. Wait here for just a minute.”The doctor left and then returned just a minute or two later holding a paper bag in his hand. Dean watched curiously as he withdrew a small glass bottle and then a syringe.“Do you need more blood?” he asked.“No, no, this is your prescription. I thought I’d have you take your first dose now, so I can show you how it’s done.”Shocked, Dean just stared at the doctor as he pulled out some sort of antiseptic wipe from a drawer and started prepping the needle.“Wait, we’re doing this now?”The doctor glanced up at him. “Unless you’d rather wait?”He shook his head, his heart thumping in his chest.“No, I, uh, I was just surprised is all.” Trewett smiled at him and nodded. “Good. Let’s get you started, then, huh?”The doctor showed Dean how to use the antiseptic wipe to clean off the top of the vial and then wipe down the injection site. Dean had to lower his pants a little, but the doctor didn’t make him feel weird about it. He just pointed out the spot on the outside of Dean’s thigh and then handed the vial and the syringe over to him.“You want me to do it?”“You’ll be doing it every time after. Might as well do it the first time, too.”The man guided Dean to pull 0.2mL from the bottle before injecting it into his thigh. Dean barely felt a thing when he sank the needle into the muscle of his leg and depressed the plunger, watching that clear fluid shoot into his body. When he took the needle out, it didn’t even bleed, but Trewett gave him a band-aid to put over it anyway. When he pulled his jeans back up and buttoned them, his hands were shaking.“Usually I start my patients off at a lower dose and we titrate up over several months, accompanied by further bloodwork, until your baseline levels are within the typical male range. But I understand that your family travels a lot, and doesn’t always have access to a doctor.”Dean shrugged, and nodded. “We don’t really have much in the way of expendable cash.”Dr. Trewett nodded. “Well, I’m going to give you a list of associates I have. I tried to find as many as I could that I felt could be trusted with a matter like this; I only have a handful, but they’re scattered across the country. You’ll be only a fifteen-hour drive, maximum, from any one of them at a given time. I’d like you to try to stop by one of their offices for labs at least once every four months or so, at least for the first year while you figure out your dose.”“Sure thing, doc,” Dean said, though privately he thought that he probably wouldn’t be getting labs done unless the hormones were totally fucking him up.“I want you to start with a weekly dose of 0.2mL, but you can increase by 0.1mL every two weeks. Stop at 0.5mL; that’s the highest I generally prescribe.” He cocked an eyebrow at Dean and gave him a stern look. “I understand that you’re probably excited for changes to start happening, but I can assure you that a higher dose won’t make them happen faster. It may cause you other health problems, though. Do you understand?”“Sure thing, doc,” Dean nodded.“This is a 10mL bottle. I’m going to issue you three of them. This should last you over a year, but with your lifestyle, I’m sure you’ll be wanting a safety stock. Any of the associates on my list will be able to get you more when you need it, just have them call me. Alright?”“Alright.”Dean left the clinic with the promised blood results, three bottles of testosterone, and a bag of syringes and needles. He felt like he was walking on air; he couldn’t stop grinning. It felt so easy to breathe, like it was nothing to take in great big lungfuls of fresh air, and he hadn’t even realized that it’d been so difficult before.“Where d’you wanna go for dinner, Deano?” his dad asked him when the three Winchesters got back to the Impala. “Let’s do something special.”His dad was smiling at him, looking so warm, eyes crinkling at the corners. Dean was so full up with gratitude just then that he felt like crying.“Can we just find a diner somewhere?” he asked. “Someplace that has homemade pie?”Dad clapped a hand on his shoulder and looked at him silently for a long moment before he pulled Dean in close and hugged him tightly. Dean could feel his dad’s hand on the back of his head, fingers tangled up in his hair. His other hand was on his mid-back, rubbing over his shirt. Dean clung to him, buried his nose in the collar of his dad’s jacket and inhaled deeply.God, this was really happening. He was really gonna become a man. His dad had really done this for him.After a long time, Dad finally pulled away and patted Dean’s cheek with his open palm. He gave Dean another smile, thumb stroking gently over his freckled cheekbone.“Sure thing. We passed one like that on the way into town; the sign said they had the best pie in the tri-state area. We’ll get a whole one to take back to the motel.”“What about a bunch of different slices instead? So we can try ‘em all?”Dad chuckled and ruffled his hair. “Anything you want, son. Anything you want.”And the hormones worked. God, they really worked.Trewett hadn’t been lying about his dick; Dean thought that he noticed a difference practically overnight, and it kept getting bigger. He was glad that Trewett had told him about that in private, though; he kept it a secret from Sam and Dad. They didn’t need to know.And the libido thing was no lie, either; not that Dean had been exactly celibate before, but it became downright painful to have to share a motel room with his dad and brother after that. He was sneaking into the bathroom or out to the Impala nearly every night just to take the edge off.And the voice drop. And the body hair. It just, it just kept happening. With his voice, he could really feel it, it felt different in his throat and in his chest. And when he noticed the bulge of his Adam’s apple for the first time, well. Dean would often find himself just running the back of his knuckle over his throat, almost absent-mindedly, just to feel the novelty of it. After six months, his voice had even caught up to Sam’s.Dad noticed the changes, too. Dean could see it, could see it in the way that Dad treated him. The look on his face that he’d get when he watched Dean while he thought that Dean wasn’t looking. He'd look satisfied - maybe proud - of the angle of his eldest son’s jaw or the dusting of blond stubble on his upper lip or the timbre of his lowered voice. He took Dean on more hunts than he’d used to, and he let Dean take point more than he ever had before, and he clapped Dean on the back or the shoulder with more strength than Dean was used to. And Dean was glad that his dad was so pleased.“Got a bead on something goin’ down tomorrow,” Dad told Dean one night, maybe six months after that first T shot, as he settled into the couch. He kicked up his booted feet and rested them on the coffee table. “Some hunter died, and a big group is getting together in Meeker, Oklahoma to pour a few out for him. It’s just outside Oklahoma City, maybe four hours’ drive from us.”“Okay.” Dean was stirring a pot of meat sauce while spaghetti cooled in the strainer in the sink. He knew better than to ask questions until Dad was done with his exposition.“You’re a man now, and you’re starting to look the part. You’ll be hunting on your own soon. This is a good opportunity for you to start networking. I want you to make your own connections, Dean. So we’re going to head out there tomorrow. Think of this as field work.”Dad took a pull from his bottle, indicating that it was Dean’s turn to talk. Dean tucked his left hand into his jeans pocket and chewed on his cheek for a moment while he continued to stir the sauce with his wooden spoon. “What about Sam?” he asked.“He’s got school, and he’ll keep himself busy with homework. He can make himself a sandwich. It’ll be just you and me, Ace.”Dean didn't bother trying to remind his dad that he had school, too. Sometimes, it felt like he missed more than he attended, with all of Dad's various letters of excuse written and handed in so Dean could accompany him on hunts.“Alright. Do I know the guy who died?”“No; I don’t either. Abe Johnson did.”Dean felt his abs tense. His jaw flexed as he ground his molars together. “He’s gonna be there?”“Yeah, Caleb too. Thought you’d be happy to see him again.”His head nodded weightlessly as he stared into the depths of the boiling pot. “Sure.”The last time he’d seen Caleb was the chupacabra job outside of San Antonio. He’d been sixteen, fresh out of Sonny’s place. The memory of the warm night after the hunt they’d spent getting high together still made him feel flushed and nervous. The last time he’d seen Abe Johnson, though, he’d been only fourteen. The reminder shot phantom sensations itching across a body part that he no longer had. He didn’t want to see Abe again.“Do I need to pack anything specific?”“Just enough for a night. We’ll get back the next morning.” Dad chuckled, then added, “And your game face and a good attitude.”Right. Dean would probably be able to find that somewhere in the nooks and crannies of his twisting stomach.Dad made Dean break the news to Sam when he got home from school, which was just great, because there was nothing Dean loved more than gritting his teeth through a bitch fit about Sam not being able to go along with them somewhere that Dean didn’t even want to go in the first place. But whatever.When they finally left, Dad let Dean drive them while he navigated, only needing to pull out the map when they pulled off the highway. Dean cherished every moment his dad let him behind the wheel of his baby, and it helped him keep calm while they drew closer to their destination.When they finally pulled up to the farmhouse, they parked the Impala half-off the dirt road behind a row of other cars. The house in Meeker was a mile and a half away from its nearest neighbor, surrounded by farmland, with a small nestle of trees on one side. There were six hunters standing and talking on the wooden front porch with beers in hand, none of whom Dean could recognize. As he followed Dad up to the front door, the hunters all seemed to quiet down, pausing their conversation to appraise the newcomers.“Hi, all. The name’s John Winchester, and this here’s my boy, Dean. We’re friends of Abe Johnson. Heard about Darrel from him and wanted to come pay our respects.”The group of hunters accepted them easily enough, shaking hands with Dad and then with Dean, in turn. With every rough, big hand that closed around his, Dean put every ounce of strength he had into squeezing it. His dad had taught him that early, how to shake another man’s hand; you had to put your back into it. Show him that you wouldn’t back down from a fight, that you might not win it but you’d sure give it your all. He was taller than half of the men on the porch, not including his dad, but every one of them was broader and bulkier than he was. And, despite Dean’s lowered voice, it had only been a little over half a year since he’d started the testosterone. He felt as immature as a pre-teen compared to the men around him, but he didn’t want to show it.The other hunters made their introductions. All but a couple had heard of John Winchester before, which didn’t surprise Dean. His dad was one of the best, and he’d made a name for himself. None of them had heard of Dean before, but that didn’t surprise Dean, either.After some initial small talk that Dean tried his best to participate in to make Dad happy, his dad excused them into the house to meet the people inside and try to find Abe and Caleb. They introduced themselves to a few other hunters before one of them pointed Dad in the direction of the kitchen. There, they found Abe and Caleb chatting with one of the few woman hunters Dean had seen at the gathering: an older woman with weather-worn skin and a wicked-looking silver knife strapped to her thigh.Dean hesitated in the doorway while Dad walked in with a broad grin to greet Abe with a hearty handshake. He patted Abe’s sizable forearm with his other hand before releasing him and turning to clap Caleb on the shoulder.“Look at you, boy! I’ve heard some impressive things about you from your dad, but he didn’t mention you’d gotten taller than him.”Caleb grinned crookedly, a familiar expression that reminded Dean of standing next to him in the dark, smiling at each other over the burning chupacabra corpse. “Yeah, he never seems to mention that. Good to see you, Winchester.”Dad talked to the two men for a few more minutes, looking well at ease. Dean reluctantly stepped further into the kitchen, keeping the kitchen table - which was piled with foil-wrapped plates of ribs, chicken wings, potatoes and corn - between him and the others. The woman hunter had stepped away to pour herself a drink at a rickety wooden table that seemed to be acting as a bar cart. Caleb, who was leaning against the kitchen counter with his arms crossed and a sweating beer resting by his elbow, looked up at Dean’s movement and caught his glance, eyes lighting up. His gaze raked up and down Dean’s body swiftly; Dean didn’t think he looked all that different yet, but he’d noticed people were starting to think that he looked his age, so he supposed he must.“You waitin’ for an invitation, D?” Caleb asked, his crooked smile brightening. Dean shrugged and his arms unconsciously crossed over his chest when his dad and Abe turned to look at him, too.“Who’s that?” Abe asked, voice just as gruff and emotionless as Dean remembered it being whenever the old man directed it towards him. His dad laughed.“Guess he was only up to your shoulder last time you saw him, huh? That’s Dean. C’mon, kiddo. Mind your manners and say hello.”Dad met Dean’s eyes with a casual, affable lightness, but Dean knew that could change in an instant if Dean acted out. He was here to prove himself capable enough to meet other hunters on his own like a fucking adult, let alone play nice with ones he’d known since he was a kid.The wrinkles around Dad’s eyes softened in approval when Dean stepped around the table to give Caleb a handshake that quickly turned into a brief hug as they slapped each other’s backs. Dad moved away to introduce himself to the other hunter, who was sipping her drink at the bar cart. As Dean pulled away from Caleb and turned towards Abe, he saw his dad follow the woman out of the kitchen and back down the hall towards the living room.Like a little girl, Dean had spent the morning agonizing over what to wear to the get-together, knowing that Abe was going to be there. A part of him had wanted to layer up; put on a T-shirt over an undershirt and pile a flannel and a jacket on over that. But layers hadn’t protected him last time, so instead he’d chosen a tight, pale-colored T-shirt to wear by itself on top of his threadbare jeans. Partly because he wanted to prove that he wasn’t scared, and partly because the thin shirt showed off very clearly that there was nothing underneath it to grope.He squared his stance and stuck out his jaw, holding out his hand to Abe for a handshake, making sure his arm didn’t waver. He was startled to see that he was the same height as Abe, now.Abe looked up and down his body slowly, expressionless, a much different appraising than the one Caleb had given him. Abe's eyes paused at Dean’s chest and at his throat where Dean knew his Adam’s apple was visible, before taking Dean’s offered hand. The man’s hand was rough and dirty, black under his fingernails, just like Dean remembered. He gripped Dean’s hand tightly, and Dean squeezed back until his fingers hurt.“Good to see you again,” Dean lied, making his voice as deep and as gruff as he could without sounding ridiculous. His voice was tight and it had been hard to push the words out of his mouth, but it didn’t crack, and the way it vibrated in his chest was comforting.“Hmm.” Abe didn’t release his grip on Dean’s hand. Dean could see Caleb in his periphery, shifting a little at the tension. Discomfort was filling Dean, too. Anticipation.After too much time had passed, Dean tried to loosen his grip to withdraw his hand. Abe tightened his for a moment, grinding the delicate bones of Dean’s hand together until he feared they would splinter.“Don’t matter how ugly you make yourself,” Abe said, emotionless blue eyes staring into Dean’s. “You’ll always be a woman where it counts.”Dean tugged his arm back until Abe’s grasp loosened enough for him to yank his hand away. Heart racing and his breaths quick and shallow, he glanced around the kitchen; no one else had entered, and his dad and the other hunter were long gone. It was just him and Abe and Caleb.Abe was still staring at him, taking a swallow from his beer. Caleb was staring at the floor, at the wall; at anything that wasn’t his dad or Dean. Dean could feel the blood draining from his face and knew that his stupid freckles would be standing out darkly, but Caleb’s cheeks and ears were flushing red with embarrassment. Caleb didn’t say anything to his dad. He never said anything to his dad.Dean took a stumbling step back. His teeth were cemented together, his lips sealed shut. He could feel his heartbeat in his throat. Caleb pushed away from the counter and moved until he’d placed his body between Dean and Abe, beer in hand and fake smile splitting his face. He threw his arm around Dean’s bowed shoulders and forcibly turned him away and towards the doorway.“C’mon, D, y’meet everyone yet? Probably not, huh? Lemme introduce you ‘round to some folks. Here, relax, have a drink.” He grabbed a beer from one of the cases on the counter a few feet down the kitchen from where Abe was still standing, unaffected and silent. Dean let Caleb guide him out of the kitchen, feeling his hand grip Dean's shoulder and squeeze, belying his effort to have the contact appear casual. Dean struggled to forget about the words he’d just heard in the kitchen, though they were buzzing through his brain on repeat. Caleb had heard the words, too, but he was pretending he hadn’t. He always pretended he hadn’t. That was good, right? Kind, even. Polite. Pretend he hadn’t heard, so Dean could pretend he hadn’t, either.Caleb took him around the house, introducing Dean to the hunters gathered and talking in the various rooms. Dean could see his dad watching him approvingly from across the room whenever they found themselves in the same one. The socializing gave Dean a welcome distraction; he grinned and nodded and talked about hunts and monsters and forgot new names as soon as he’d heard them. Abe came in from the kitchen after a few minutes, and Dean forced himself to laugh and grin, to show that he was unbothered. The beer Caleb had given him was gone in five minutes, and he grabbed another one from the coffee table. That one was downed quickly, too. Caleb asked him if he wanted something to eat, but Dean shook his head. For some reason, his stomach was writhing and twisting in his belly like a dying snake. He got another beer. Caleb pulled him back into the kitchen to try to get him to drink some water after the third beer was drained, but Dean served himself a tall glass of whiskey - too tall, more than three drinks' worth - from the dumpy bar cart instead. He downed half of it in one gulp, grimacing as it burned down his throat.“You wanna pace yourself, there, Blondie?” Caleb asked him, tone trying at casual. Trying to act all fraternal, calling him 'Blondie'. Trying to conjure up the good memories of introducing Dean to Clint Eastwood, like that would make Dean listen to him better. Dean laughed and topped up his glass while he shook his head.“Nah, man, pacing is for sissies.” He started to walk back towards the living room where he could hear his dad’s booming laugh, but found the kitchen tilting disorientingly around him. After pausing for a moment, the room was suddenly still and upright again, and Dean noticed Caleb next to him, supporting him with an arm around his ribs. With a huff of objection, Dean pushed him away and walked towards the door. He banged his hip on the corner of the kitchen table along the way but didn’t stumble.“I know you're not a sissy, pal,” Caleb said carefully, lowly, and it only made Dean feel humiliated.“Whatever,” Dean said darkly and waved his hand dismissively in an arc that put him a little off-balance, but he recovered quickly and took a long sip from his glass.He stomped back down the hallway, Caleb still following him. Dean didn’t look back at him and carefully peered around the room instead, seeing that both Abe and his own father were absent. He joined a group of hunters that included the woman one from the kitchen before; he’d already been introduced to all of them, but he couldn’t remember their names. It didn’t matter, because it wasn't like there was going to be a test.They talked, everyone rowdy and tipsy if not drunk. Dean laughed with them, and knocked glasses with them as one of them toasted to the dead guy, Darrel, while Caleb stood just behind his shoulder like an irksome watchdog.Dean could be good at this stuff. He could make connections. Some of the other older guys seemed to acknowledge him approvingly as he continued to participate in the conversation; he easily demonstrated that he knew his shit and had more than a few notches in his belt. He didn’t need Dad or Caleb watching over his shoulder, supervising him like he was a child. Dean was a grown man. A man. He was almost nineteen.Movement, out of the corner of his eye. Dean saw Abe Johnson enter the room, coming back into the house from the front porch. Without speaking, Dean turned away from the conversation and made to go somewhere else, but he was halted by an arm thrown across his chest as his shoulder knocked into Caleb’s. Oh, right. Caleb had been standing just behind him, practically on top of him.“Whoa, Blondie, where you off to?” he asked, getting at eye level in front of his face, trying to force Dean to meet his eyes.“Hittin’ the head,” replied Dean, spitting out the first excuse he could think of, and then realizing in the next moment that he really did have to pee. How many drinks had he had already? “Gotta piss like a racehorse.” He looked into the depths of his glass, vision graced with just a small amount of amber liquid swirling at the bottom. He downed it quickly and smacked the empty glass down onto the coffee table before knocking Caleb’s arm away and pushing forward out of the circle.Dean swam through the living room. He avoided bumping into anyone and stayed carefully upright, only having to brace himself against furniture a couple times. He could feel Caleb watching his departing back.Dean wanted to get away from all the strangers and the noise, so instead of looking for a bathroom in the hallway, he turned and carefully climbed the wooden stairs to the second floor of the old farmhouse, hand gripping the railing with determination.The sounds of the hunters’ raucous chatter faded behind him, though there was still a faint ringing in his ears as he walked down the upper level hallway. He pushed open a couple doors, finding an empty bedroom and a hall closet. It almost sounded like someone was coming up the stairs behind him, the floorboards creaking under heavy boots. But the next door Dean tried revealed a bathroom, so it didn’t matter.The door opened inward, and Dean followed it lurchingly into the small room. He gazed around with unfocused eyes at the chipped sink, dirty mirror, and yellow wallpaper. He found the toilet behind the open door, and released the doorknob, stumbling a little on a patch of the floor where the linoleum was peeling as he pressed his hand against the other side of the door to close it behind him.But the door wouldn’t close, because something was blocking it. In confusion, Dean pushed harder, but instead of accommodating, the door started to push back open into the bathroom. Before Dean could turn around to see what was happening, something big and solid was crowding into the tiny bathroom behind him, pushing him forward until he tripped and had to throw his arms out to catch himself against the wall.“Wha’?” Dean asked, uncertain. He managed to recognize the big thing that had shoved into the room behind him as a person, and heard a soft bang as they finally closed the bathroom door behind both of them. Feeling confused and woozy, Dean tried to turn, but a big belly pressed up against the small of his back and strong arms wrapped around him, confining his own arms at his side. The man behind him bent forward until his stomach and chest were squished flush against his back, forcing Dean to bend over, too. Dean’s face was shoved against the wall, though he managed to turn it at the last moment to avoid banging his nose, leaving his cheek flattened and rubbing against the matte wallpaper.With his cheek and collarbones knocking against the wall in front of him, and the strong arms around him, Dean dizzily wondered who this person thought he was. He had to have mistook Dean for someone else; Dean didn’t know why anyone would want to follow him into the bathroom and hug him like this. Even at his most affectionate, his dad didn’t give him bear-hugs from behind.“H'llo?” Dean slurred, voice muffled with one side of his mouth shoved against the wall. Maybe at his unfamiliar voice, the guy would realize Dean wasn’t whoever he thought Dean was and let him go.But at the sound of his voice, the man’s hands moved. One went down and grabbed at Dean’s hip, hitching it back until his ass was pressing up against the front of the man’s legs, just like his back was against the man’s bent-over torso. A coarse beard was rubbing against the skin on the side of his jaw, and foul-smelling breath was puffing against him, moistening the back of his neck. The other hand went to Dean’s stomach where his T-shirt had gotten rucked up, rough fingers slipping under the hem until the whole palm was pressing roughly against his bare skin.Dean recognized the touch of that rough, dirty hand.Dean started to struggle, then, as Abe’s thick fingernails scratched against the skin of his stomach. One dipped into his navel and pressed down hard there, sending a stab of pain through him and making his stomach turn over nauseatingly. Dean swallowed back vomit. He tried to shove himself away from the wall, but his arms were caged against his sides and he couldn’t raise his hands enough to put any strength behind them. He tried to buck his hips enough to knock Abe away from him, but quickly found that he could barely move them, either, and the movement he was able to make caused Abe to let out a low groan that didn’t sound like one of pain.Eyes suddenly frozen wide open in horror and heart again racing in his chest, Dean felt Abe's hands move to the front of his jeans. The thick fingers made short work of unbuttoning and unzipping them, even as he tried to push them away. But Dean’s limbs were wobbly and weak from alcohol and fear. He felt as defenseless as a kitten. Dean had done this to himself. He’d drunk too much. He’d put himself in this position. If Dad knew he’d dropped his guard like this, let this happen…Dean almost threw up again when Abe’s monstrous hand crept under the waistband of his underwear. He could feel Abe’s fingers close around the socks he was packing, and then Abe huffed a noise of disgust and pushed them to the side so he could put his fingers… So he could touch him… Touch him there. ‘Where it counts.’ A hitching noise of despair erupted unbidden from his mouth and Dean squeezed his eyes shut. He could feel something hard pressing against him from behind, over the back of his jeans. And the fingers in his underwear. They were hurting him. He clamped his legs together in defense. In the darkness behind his eyelids, he was overtaken by flashes of images: Abe’s hand crawling spider-like down through the collar of his shirt, a dead raccoon in the woods with flies eating out its sunken eyeballs, a poster on handwashing hanging on the wall of a locker room. He felt like his entire being was just his head, floating in space like a balloon on a string.Suddenly, noise flooded the room. The sounds of raucous laughter and jeering from the floor below. It took a moment for Dean to realize why the noise was so loud: the bathroom door had been thrown back open, momentarily forcing Abe forward to press even closer at his back, and there was a third person in the little room, now, to witness Dean’s shame.Abe was pulled away from Dean. The scratchy beard, sour breath, and fleshy press of Abe’s belly and chest were gone from Dean’s back first, followed by the hardness that had been poking insistently at the space between Dean’s clenched legs. Abe's hands were the last to leave, calluses and fingernails dragging against Dean’s flesh as they were yanked out of the front of his underwear. It hurt. Trembling with adrenaline and relief, Dean collapsed to his knees, his cheek dragging roughly as it slid down the wall. He could hear a scuffle taking place behind him, angry voices.“Don’t you fuckin’ put your hands on ‘im like that!” someone said, voice low and thick with emotion. Dean wondered, for a moment, if it was his dad. “You can’t- I won’t let you do that!”“I was just teachin’ it a lesson -”A wordless noise of anger. A smack. “Shut your goddamn mouth!”Dean struggled to turn over, falling onto his ass as he moved his legs around until he was facing away from the wall. There was another smacking sound of flesh against flesh, a wheeze, and then a heavy thud. Dean tried to focus his blurry vision: there was Caleb, standing in the doorway to the bathroom with panic and guilt writ across his tanned face. He’d dragged his father out of the room into the hall. Abe was hunched over on the floor. Seemed like Caleb had punched him, maybe kneed him in the gut. Maybe in the groin. The older man’s pants were undone just like Dean’s were. Seeing that made Dean’s stomach lurch.After a second of hesitation, Caleb re-entered the bathroom and grabbed Dean under his armpits. With a bit of help from Dean’s shaky legs, Caleb heaved Dean up until he was back to standing on unsteady feet. He ran the back of his hand over his mouth and looked away as Dean struggled to readjust the socks in his underwear and zip up his jeans. Closing the button felt like the hardest thing Dean had ever done. Something was flooding his eyes, burning like vinegar, and when he blinked he felt wetness from somewhere dripping onto his trembling hands.Dean allowed Caleb to put his arm around his shoulders again. He didn’t know what else he was supposed to do. He stumbled over Abe’s sprawled legs when they moved down the hall. He barely noticed where they were walking as Caleb guided him down the stairs, into the kitchen, and out the back door into the dark of the night.The sound of two pairs of boots moving across the grass was quiet. Crickets were chirping, the noise filling the warm air around them. It had gotten really dark. Lightning bugs were flashing around them, lighting up the fields. Caleb only stopped when he’d led him over into the small group of trees that Dean had noticed when he and Dad had first pulled up to the house.“Fuck, Dean,” Caleb said. His voice sounded shaky and breathless. He leaned Dean up against the trunk of a tree and finally let him go. The rough bark dug into the back of Dean’s thin shirt as he watched Caleb, barely visible in the shadowy gloam, rummage with desperation into his pockets for his cigarettes and lighter. “Fuck.”Pressing his palms against the tree, Dean braced himself against it before tipping his upper body forward and throwing up onto the grass at his feet. Caleb flinched and looked up at the initial retching noise, then skidded away at the sound of the splatter to avoid getting the mess on his cowboy boots. He probably wasn’t fast enough. Dean couldn’t find it in himself to feel bad about it.His stomach was still roiling, and his body clenched over and over again, wracked by relentless spasms, as it attempted to forcibly eject every ounce of alcohol from his guts and every disgusting memory of the touch of dirty hands from his mind. It took minutes; every time Dean thought he was done, another heave rolled through him, until he was hacking up nothing. Strings of bile - and a little blood from his torn-up throat - dripped down his chin. He shifted his feet and cringed in confusion at the sensation of wet socks, until a shameful realization washed over him. The legs of his pants were soaked, too. He’d been vomiting hard enough that he’d pissed himself. Just another source of humiliation to pile onto all the rest.Bracing his hands on his knees, Dean finally sucked in a full breath uninterrupted by gagging. It took a moment for him to register the feeling of a hand on his back, rubbing in circles. Dean turned his head and saw Caleb bent over beside him with a lit cigarette trapped between his lips. “I saw him follow you up the stairs after you left,” Caleb said. Dean could see his eyes even in the dark, the glow of the cigarette shining in his pupils. He didn’t say anything in response, raising one hand to wipe the slippery mess off of his face. “I didn’t know why he was followin’ you. I dunno, Dean. I didn’t think anythin’ of it. But you were gone for too long. And I know… I know you don’t like bein’ alone with him, so I came up after you. I swear, D, I never thought he would ever do anythin’ like that. I swear.”Dean spat down onto the mess in the grass and stayed silent.“I…” Caleb tried to start again, opened and closed his mouth a few times with no sound coming out. “I’m sorry, D. Fuck. I swear, I’m never lettin’ you alone with him again. Never lettin’ ‘im touch you again. Dean? You gotta say somethin’, Blondie. You good? You okay?”“Is that what it takes?” Dean asked, quietly, staring down into the pool of his sick. He could tell Caleb wasn’t able to make out the words, but the older man let out an audible exhale of relief. He bent down closer to Dean’s downturned face, cigarette held precariously in the corner of his mouth.“What? Come on, Blondie, speak up. You good?”Dean straightened with a lurch and shoved Caleb away from him with all the strength he could muster in his whiskey-loosened arms, overbalancing himself and stumbling back until he caught himself against the tree. The action had surprised Caleb, and Dean had managed to knock him to his ass a few feet away, where he was looking back and up at Dean with his eyes wide and mouth hanging open, his dropped cigarette smoldering in the grass.“Is that what it takes?” Dean yelled, years of pent-up anger flooding through him and shaking the foundations of his chest until it felt like his voice was wrecked with it. The trees were swimming sickeningly around him as he braced himself against the one at his back. “You’ve heard what he says to me! You’ve heard what he calls me! You’re the only one who knows!” He could feel his voice crack in the back of his throat, moving over the sore areas where his sick had scraped him raw on the way up. Caleb was gulping silently, making no movement yet to lift himself onto his feet. “Known for fuckin’ years, and you always just stand there like a dumbfuck and never done anythin’ about it!”The vinegar was back in his eyes, burning until he could barely see Caleb’s face through the dark around him. It felt like it was raining, but strangely, the drops were only falling onto Dean’s cheeks. He swiped the wet streaks away unthinkingly with his dirty hand, and gagged again at the smell of it. He could feel his legs shaking. Could still feel Abe’s dirty fingers touching him where it counts.“Is that what it takes for you to fuckin’ grow a pair?” Dean asked the shadows, no longer yelling. Tired. “Is that what you were waitin’ for?”It was silent between them for a long time. Lightning bugs continued to drift through the air around them, and the song of the crickets soothed Dean’s ringing ears. Eventually, Caleb pushed himself up until he could cross his legs. He propped his elbows on his thighs and buried his face in his hands.“You’re right.” His voice was low, resigned. He kept his face buried in his hands. “I’m a coward. I’m sorry.”After that, neither of them said a thing for half an hour. Maybe a little more. Caleb stayed on the ground with his head in his hands. Dean felt his heartbeat start to slow as he remained standing, leaning back against the tree, willing his legs to stop shaking underneath him. Feeling the urine drying on his pants, the vomit and bile drying where it had dripped down onto the front of his shirt. He smelled rank; no one else would want to touch him, not that night, which could have been reassuring if the thought wasn’t so dark. He was glad he’d been the one to drive himself and his dad here, because it meant that he still had the car keys in his pocket and could go get a change of clothes without having to go back into the house first.“How far did he get? Before I got there.” Caleb suddenly asked, his voice sounding anguished. Dean wondered if he’d been obsessing over the question in silence for the last half hour, turning it over and over in his head like a fucking pervert. Caleb wanted to know if his dad had gotten to put his dirty fingers up inside of Dean, where it counts. Wanted to know how guilty he had to feel.“You don’t get to know that,” Dean said through gritted teeth. Dean didn’t really know, either. Couldn’t really remember where the fingers had touched him once they’d gone inside his underwear. He just remembered that it had hurt. Maybe he’d be able to tell if he tried to… If he… But the thought of trying to confirm it was even worse than not knowing.“Alright.” Caleb finally raised his head, lowered his hands to the ground. Picked up the cigarette from the grass. He pulled his lighter back out of his back pocket and relit it, then took a long, sad drag. He held the smoke in his lungs like he was trying to make it hurt, then blew it out into the night. “Do you want me to be the one? To tell John?”Dean almost fell over when he whipped his head around to look at Caleb in horror. “You’re not telling my dad!” he gasped, frantic, almost shouting again. “No one tells my dad! My dad doesn’t fucking hear about this, got it, Caleb? If you tell my dad I’ll fuckin’ kill you!”Caleb held up his hands in surrender. “Alright, alright, I hear you. I just thought… I mean, John’d want… He’d kill my dad, I think, you know?”The words were so frank. Resigned, sincere. Caleb was… offering. He was offering to let Dean’s dad kill his own father. Not only that, but to be the one to deliver the death sentence. It struck something in Dean; allowed him to calm down somewhat. He loosened his fingers out of the fists they’d clenched into and shook his head slowly.“I guess.” Dean’s first thought at the idea of his dad finding out had been of the look Dad would give him. Dean wouldn’t be able to stomach it. Yeah, Dad would probably be furious at Abe for touching Dean like that. He maybe even would kill Abe. Even if he didn’t kill Abe, Dean knew he’d beat Abe bloody and never talk to him again. And if that happened, that was one less hunting buddy to give Dad backup on hunts. Dean didn’t want that. He’d never wanted that.“But you’re not gonna let him touch me again, right?” Dean sighed. “Not gonna let him alone with me ever again, right? That’s what you said. So he doesn’t need to die. And my dad doesn’t need to know. Okay?”“Okay.” Caleb took another drag from his cigarette. He stared into the middle distance. Dean realized Caleb looked different to him. Normal, somehow, when he’d always been larger than life to Dean before. Something had changed. Maybe Dean had grown up more than he’d thought.Finally, with a heave, Caleb shoved himself up to his feet and brushed off the back of his pants. “I’m gonna go inside, get you some water. To drink, and to clean yourself up a bit. Wait here.” He turned back to the house, and steeled himself, sucking in a breath that lit up the end of his cigarette, before starting forward.Dean stayed in the dark in the trees, letting his thoughts drift, watching the lightning bugs flicker around him. He held out his hand when one flew close by, cupping it gently and catching it in his palm. It stood there, tiny legs tickling his skin. It lit up his hand when it flashed.Dean felt his chest break open while he watched the tiny insect. The lightning bug didn’t know what had just happened to him. It didn’t even know that Dean was disgusting, covered with his own bodily fluids and smelling like a roadhouse bathroom.The lightning bug had departed by the time Caleb returned carrying a twelve-pack of plastic water bottles. He’d even brought Dean a little bar of white soap. After handing them over, he left, retreating back into the house to give Dean privacy.Dean left the water on the ground next to a different tree in a clean patch of grass to go fetch his change of clothes and a trash bag from the Impala. He ran into one hunter, who was getting into his own car to leave for the night, but neither of them exchanged a word and it was too dark for the guy to see what a mess Dean was.Back amongst the trees, Dean took off his clothes and used four of the water bottles and the soap bar to gingerly clean the sick off his face and chest and the piss off his legs. He couldn’t wash off the lingering feeling of Abe’s fingers on his stomach and everywhere else, and he couldn't do anything about his wet boots; he'd have to wash them in the tub when they got home. He wasn’t sure if Caleb had noticed he’d pissed himself. Dean hoped he hadn’t, but he wasn’t optimistic. Caleb had probably picked up on the smell, sharper than usual from all the beer and whiskey and dehydration.Dean got dressed in the fresh outfit, and stuffed the soiled clothes into the trash bag, before drinking two of the remaining water bottles. It took him an hour to finish, all in all, drinking the water slowly so he wouldn’t trigger his gag reflex.When he was done, he sat there for another long while, back against the tree trunk and fingers buried in the cool grass, not wanting to go back inside and face the people yet. Practicing his expression for when he saw his dad. The whole reason they’d come here was because Dad wanted Dean to socialize and make connections, and there he was spending over two hours away from everyone, sitting out in the dark. He knew Dad wasn’t gonna be happy when he showed his face back inside.And Dean was nervous. He didn’t know what to expect from Caleb. Or Abe. He knew neither of them had left, yet; he’d had his eyes on the front door, and their trucks were still parked in front of the house. He’d probably run into them, when he got back inside.At the thought of seeing Abe again, Dean’s whole body went numb and his stomach turned over. He wrapped his arms tightly around himself, holding on with desperation, grounding himself with the pressure. He wanted… He wanted his dad.Dean choked on a sob and doubled over, clutching at his hair, gripping it between his fingers and tugging, hard. "Goddamn motherfucking sonuva bitch," he gasped. Pulling his hair didn’t hurt enough to distract him from the thoughts and sensations that just kept fucking cycling through his brain.He didn’t want his dad to find out, but he wanted Dad to keep Abe away from him.He didn’t want his dad to know what he'd let happen, but he wanted Dad to tell him that it wasn’t his fault, because maybe if he did, then Dean could believe it himself.He didn’t want to tell his dad what Abe had done, but he wanted Dad to just know, and for it to not change anything, and for him to tell Dean that everything was going to be alright.Instead, Dean was going to walk back into that house and no one was going to know except him and Caleb and Abe. And Dad wasn’t going to take care of him, he was going to be disappointed in him for slacking off. And Dean was just going to have to take it. And he was just going to have to be there, in the same room as Abe. And he was going to have to listen to the hateful words Abe directed his way. And Dad might make him shake Abe’s hand when it was time to leave, the same hand that had hurt him... And what if Abe tried to… to touch him, somewhere else, with that hand again...?But Caleb had promised him. He’d promised he’d never let Dean be alone with Abe again, and Abe had never tried to touch him like that when there were other people around. So Dean didn’t have to be nervous. There was nothing to be nervous about. He could do this. He wasn’t a coward.Dean double-bagged the trash bag containing his filthy clothes to mask the smell and tucked it into the far corner of his baby’s trunk. Then, fists and teeth clenched, he psyched himself up and walked up through the front door of the farmhouse.A part of him had been bracing for everyone in the house to fall silent as he walked through the door and stare at him. He felt stupid when that didn’t happen. Everyone was too engrossed in their own conversations with the people they were friends with to even notice him; Dean was barely a blip on their radar. They probably hadn’t even noticed he was gone.Only one person seemed to see Dean hovering awkwardly just inside the door, and that was Caleb, who was standing in conversation with a small group of hunters. When he caught sight of Dean, still pale and shaky but clean and freshly dressed, an expression of pure relief flitted across his face. He shot Dean a hesitant smile and nodded at him. Dean forced himself to smile back and managed a flicker, then crossed his arms over his chest, tucking his hands under the flannel he’d put on over his shirt, and walked over to sit in an armchair in one of the far corners of the room where his back was to the wall and he didn’t think anyone would pay attention to him.He felt the urge to curl his knees into his chest and wrap his arms around them like a child, but instead, he sprawled, trying to sit like a man. He’d brought one of the water bottles with him, and took a sip every couple of minutes. Between swallows, he watched the hunters in the living room and picked at the paper label. His dad wasn’t in the room, and neither was Abe. Dean kept trying to work up his nerve to get up and bust his way into one of the conversations, but he couldn’t stomach the idea of talking to anyone. So he sat.Dad came into the living room after a while. Dean, who had been doing nothing but waiting for him, saw him immediately. A part of Dean wanted to sink back into the chair in avoidance, but a more instinctual part made him sit up straight at attention. He watched his dad’s eyes trail across the room, searching. Dean was pretty well hidden, tucked into a corner with maybe fifteen other hunters between them, but he wasn’t surprised when Dad quickly found and locked eyes with him. He looked irritated.Dean stood up and squared his shoulders as his dad made his way across the room to him.“You’ve been gone a while,” Dad said flatly as soon as he’d reached Dean’s corner.“Yeah. I, uh, I was out in the yard. I got sick.”“I bet you did. Heard you got pretty sloshed.” Great, so Dean had made enough of a fool of himself that the other hunters had noticed even before he’d left for the bathroom. “You know better than that, Dean. I thought I told you to bring your game face. You knew what this was. You knew what you were supposed to do.”Dean kept his face straight but he couldn’t help lowering his eyes so he didn’t have to see his father’s disappointment. “Yes, sir. I know. I’m sorry.”With his eyes trained on the floor, all he could see of his dad were denim-clad legs and dirty boots. Dean waited, bracing himself for a further reprimand, but he had to wait for longer than he expected to. Dad usually wasn’t slow with his words, especially not when Dean had fucked up, but he was silent for several long moments. As Dean waited, the back of his neck started to prickle. He could feel fingers crawling across his skin again, and the urge to turn around and look over his shoulder was rising in his chest even though he knew the only thing behind him was the armchair and the wall.“Are you alright, Dean?” his dad finally asked him. The question surprised Dean so much that he looked up from the floor and back at his dad’s face.“What?”Dad reached forward and pressed the back of his hand over Dean’s clammy forehead as though feeling for a fever. Dean felt his dad’s fingers brush over the shell of his ear as he lowered his hand to clasp at his shoulder. Dad’s fingers were warm and rough, clean and gentle. They didn’t feel like Abe’s. With his hand on Dean’s shoulder and Dean meeting his eyes, Dad searched Dean’s face with an expression of concern that he hadn’t been expecting. He felt something swell in his chest, in the back of his throat.“I was talkin’ to Abe, just now, in the kitchen.” Dean kept his face carefully blank while he felt his body go numb again. “He said he’s got a hunt and was hoping I might want in. It sounded interesting; haven’t offered yet, but I thought you and I could stick around for at least the weekend to look into it, spend some time with him and Caleb. It’s been a while.”Dean stayed silent. This felt like a nightmare. Dad’s eyes didn’t leave his face.“But,” Dad continued, thumb gently rubbing over the point of Dean’s shoulder, “Now that I think on it, I don’t know that we need to. You’ve still got school tomorrow. And Abe and I can talk things through over the phone. What do you think, Dean?”Dean wasn’t sure he’d heard his dad right. He felt like he had whiplash; one second living through a bad dream, and the next, hope blooming in his chest. He parted his dry lips and hesitantly ran his tongue across them.“Sammy’s expecting us home by tomorrow,” he said, praying that would be enough. Dad nodded. “Okay.” His thumb was still there, stroking Dean’s shoulder. “You know, I was hearing some good things about you from the other hunters before you went off to get sick. Seems you made a good impression. And to tell you the truth, all this socializing’s wearing me thin. We don’t have to stay any longer, if you’re ready to go.”Feeling desperate and weak with hope, Dean tried to keep the emotion from his voice when he responded. “Yeah, we can go. I mean, I’m ready. If you are.”With a final squeeze, Dad released his shoulder and nodded. “Then let’s get outta here. You got the keys? You’re in no shape to drive.”Dean nodded and fumbled the car keys out of his pocket to hand over. “You don’t want… you don’t wanna say goodbye first, to all of them? To Abe?”Dad took the keys from him and paused, meeting Dean’s gaze before shaking his head. “No. It’s fine. I can always call him from the road.”And he turned and headed towards the front door.After a moment, Dean stumbled after him. As he went out into the night, he met eyes with Caleb one last time and gave him a nod. He could feel Caleb watch him leave.In the passenger seat of the Impala, Dean let himself lean over and press his face against the window, his jacket cushioned under his head. The purr of Baby’s engine was comforting, and his dad was a calming presence at his side. Dean allowed himself to close his eyes and at least pretend to get some sleep, though he felt like the muscles of his body were so tightly coiled he’d never relax enough to actually do so.After maybe forty minutes on the road, Dean felt the car veer off, then pull over and slow to a stop. Keeping his eyes closed and his breathing slow, Dean pretended to be sleeping. He listened to his dad get out and fill up the gas tank. When Dad got back into the car, he didn’t start it for several minutes. Eventually, Dean heard Dad fiddling with the buttons on the radio and the sound of a tape sliding into the tape deck. When the music came on, it was quiet; not loud enough to wake him up if he’d actually been sleeping. It was Dean’s favorite Zeppelin mixtape.The feeling of something being laid over him almost startled Dean enough to flinch, but he quickly recognized the familiar scent and feeling of the worn, supple leather. Dad was draping his jacket over him just like he’d used to when Dean was little, even though he was a man now. He felt Dad’s big hand rub briefly over his back, and then Dad’s fingers were gently brushing over his forehead and stroking through the longer hair on the top of his head. Dean could feel his dad's fingernails scratching softly at his scalp. It felt nice.His dad finally let out a sigh, so soft that Dean could barely hear it over the quiet music. He moved his hand from Dean's hair to trail his thumb along his cheek, a touch so caring and unexpected that he almost opened his eyes. Dad held his hand there for a minute, cupping the side of his face, brushing the pad of his thumb delicately along the freckled skin under his eye. Then, finally, his dad's hand withdrew, and Dean heard him straighten back up in the driver's seat and turn the keys in the ignition.The car rumbled back to life a moment later, and his dad pulled out of the gas station and back onto the highway. In time, Dean was finally lulled to sleep for real; safe and warm under his dad’s leather jacket - engulfed by the familiar smell of sweat and graveyard smoke and whiskey - and, hidden underneath the dark cover of the night, tears of gratitude dripping silently down his face. Dad got a call from Abe the next day, and he left Dean and Sam alone soon after that for the hunt in the mountains. And two months later, Dean was a high school dropout and Abe Johnson was dead.After that, with Dean out of school, something changed in their family dynamic. He could spend a lot more time with Dad, helping him out with research during the day and hustling pool or going on hunts with him at night. His dad had seemed disappointed in him at first, but quickly warmed up to the benefit of having Dean around to help out more. But his punishments changed, too.Now, If Dean pissed Dad off too much by saying the wrong thing or not saying the right thing fast enough or seeming like he was taking Sam’s side in an argument, Dad would send him off to do solo hunts. He’d say it was to help Dean build his confidence, maybe meet other hunters and continue with his “networking”, but Dad only kicked him out to hunt alone when he was angry.Dean figured part of it was the T. He hadn't been able to see it very well at first, but as the months went on it was clear how much the hormone was manning him up. The first time he caught his reflection and felt like he was really seeing himself in the mirror, the wonder of it was enough to make him grin. He got stronger without even trying, which meant he could cut back on the dreaded exercises he'd used to put himself through, and the trail of hair that grew in under his navel made him want to stretch his arms up all the time so his shirt would ride up and show it off. By the time he was nineteen, people stopped thinking he could be the same age as Sam. A couple gas station attendants even asked him if he wanted to buy cigarettes when he stopped in for snacks. He would never pick up a habit that would stink up his baby, but he sometimes bought a pack of menthols just for the hell of it. He usually kept one in his jacket pocket in case someone ever tried to bum him for a smoke; easy way to get people to talk when he was working a case.With all of that, it figured Dad would be more comfortable sending him out on his own. Or maybe he just thought that now that Dean looked grown, he needed to grow up; shouldn't be riding on his dad's coattails all the time.So, Dad fathered in the way he thought was best: he taught Dean how to shave, taught him how to hustle and scam, and he kicked Dean out on his ass to teach him how to be a man.The hunts, Dean didn't mind. Didn’t even mind going it solo every once in a while if there were monsters needing killing in two places at once. But getting kicked out hurt like a punch to his gut every time it happened, and he hated the thought of Sam home alone with Dad. Especially since, whenever he came back, it seemed like Dad had always told Sam that Dean had left on his own accord. Like he'd just up and decided to take off, ditch and leave Sam to fend for himself for a while.Dean never corrected him, because he knew better. But he wanted to. He really wanted to.It was one of these such hunts that sent him chasing werewolves in Miami. Dean didn’t even remember what he’d done to piss Dad off, but Dad had given him a clutch of newspaper clippings about a string of mysterious deaths and told him to hitch a ride “and don’t show your face back here until the hunt is over.”“Yessir,” Dean had responded. Whatever. With his fake credit card and a meager wad of cash, Dean worked his way to Miami from their trailer park in Jacksonville. He wished his dad would spring for a second car already, because then maybe Dean could have taken it and he would have been down there in six hours. Hitchhiking wasn’t as fun or convenient as he’d imagined it would be when he was fourteen, but he’d had plenty of experience since then. Between waiting with his thumb out at truck stops and having to hitch with three different rides, it took Dean a day and a half to finish what could have been a five-hour drive.Dean was bone tired by the time he’d found himself a decent enough hostel with a private room with a door that locked for under eight dollars to use as home base. He’d be able to get a couple hours of sleep and leave his duffel behind while he investigated.Dean hadn’t slept at all the night before, having spent it sitting in a huddle outside of a truck stop, leaning against his duffel bag with his jacket draped over his lap, hiding the pistol in his hand. Truck stops at night were never fun - especially when Dean was alone - and he’d learned that the hard way over the past few times hunting solo. Barely any rain cover, hordes of mosquitos, no locking door, and too many passing strangers who might either thumb him as an easy mark for a mugging or catch a glimpse of his face in the streetlamp and think he was too pretty for his own good.After a dreamless two hours of sleep in the hard hostel bed, Dean woke up and put on some street clothes and a lanyard with a fake school ID and hit the pavement as an investigative journalism student to get the low-down on the reported victims.The admin lady at the police station looked down her nose at him when he asked for copies of the police records of the crimes written about in his newspaper clippings.“You’re not one of those weirdos obsessed with serial killers, are you?” she asked suspiciously as she made photocopies on her office machine. “Because the department has determined these deaths are all unrelated, no matter what those civil rights kooks are saying. They just like finding reasons to get mad at the MPD.”Raising his eyebrows, bemused, Dean shook his head. “No, ma’am. It’s just my school assignment.”He took the police records to the library and combed through them. They didn’t tell him much; the police didn’t bother to include relevant information, like details of the injuries sustained. “Cause of death: Fatal injury ” was written on every one, opaque enough to be suspicious. At least something like “Boating accident” would have told him the victims had died on the water, even if it was a cover-up for “Shark attack”. But “Fatal injury” could just as easily be cryptic for “eaten alive”, “impaled by a skewer”, or “fell off a ladder”. Great. There was no way Dean would be able to get into the morgue to see the autopsies, either; he still looked way too young for Dad’s FBI schtick.But as Dean continued to pore over the sparse reports, and cross-referenced them with the lunar calendar, he realized that they did tell him two very interesting things: every single one of the five victims (so far) hadn’t just been found after a full moon, they’d been found after a full moon by a cop.Dean had never seen anything like that before; cops don’t find bodies, they just yellow-tape the crime scenes after civilians find bodies. So, five different bodies found in four months, all after a full moon by a pig who’d then written a suspiciously nondescript police report? All signs pointed to werewolf cop. "Awesome."It was with a little more digging and interviewing with some locals that Dean learned that the victims were also all queers, and at least three of them had been last seen the night before their deaths at one of two local gay bars. Dean couldn’t find witnesses for the other two, but their bodies had been found nearby. Less awesome, but did explain the police admin lady’s comment about “civil rights kooks”.Poking around the old crime scenes didn’t yield Dean anything helpful, and the next full moon was only one night away, so he decided to scope out the two gay bars and hope he’d be able to figure out which one was going to be the source of the next hit. There hadn't been a discernible pattern so far.Dean tried to look casual as much as he tried to be invisible, sticking to the shadows near the walls and silently begging to not be hit on. He didn’t see anything strange at Purgatory, but a couple hours later, at Salvation, he spotted a creep with a regulation haircut who was instantly recognizable as a cop in civvies. Dean eyed the man until he was sure he’d be able to recognize him, then retreated to his room at the hostel to get a full four hours and prepare.Dean geared up the next day, loaded his .45 with silver bullets and tucked his silver knife into his jacket, and hovered in the shadows outside of Salvation, waiting. After watching people come and go for a few hours - no sign of the cop from the night before, and worrying he was staking out the wrong location - Dean observed two men exit the bar, obviously drunk, arms slung around each other’s waists. They turned and began their slow and giggly walk down the street, wearing tight pants and mesh tops, and when they turned to walk down a dark side street, Dean felt the hair on the back of his neck prickle. He didn’t ignore the feeling.Collar turned up, Dean followed the pair swiftly around the corner to see an empty street. Cursing, he hurried forward, peeking into alleys and seeing nothing, until he heard the unmistakable sounds of a scuffle. A voice pleaded in a language Dean couldn’t understand - maybe Spanish - before cutting off with a gasp of pain while another man yelled.Down the next alley, Dean could see one of the gay guys from the club struggling with a monstrous figure wearing a police uniform, teeth and fingernails too long and sharp to be human, while the guy's boyfriend or hookup or whatever lay unmoving on the ground. The gay guy’s back was towards him, blocking Dean's view of the werewolf; no way Dean would have a clear enough shot to use his gun. Rushing forward, silver knife in hand, Dean shouted "Hey!"Maybe in surprise, the werewolf turned away from his prey and saw Dean coming at him, his silver blade glinting. The werewolf shoved its prey away from it and leapt towards Dean, knocking him back and up against the brick wall of the alley where Dean just barely avoided getting his head busted open. He almost managed to sink his blade into the werewolf's chest, but the monster was able to knock his hand away at the last second and it sank into its shoulder instead. The werewolf howled and bucked, and the knife twisted out of Dean's grip, lodged between the beast's clavicle and rib.Suddenly unarmed, Dean's eyes widened and he felt a strike of fear as he grappled with the werewolf cop (less awesome now that it was about to kill him). He just managed to prevent its snapping jaws from closing around his neck when suddenly the monster was dead weight, slumping forward onto Dean and almost sending him toppling to the ground underneath it. With gritted teeth, Dean shoved the body away from him, where it slumped lifelessly to the grimy asphalt. Glancing down, Dean saw a silver arrowhead, smeared with red, sprouting from the werewolf's chest.Breathing heavily, Dean wiped werewolf slobber and blood off of his face and the front of his jacket and looked up to see a woman standing maybe fifteen feet away, outstretched arm holding steady a mechanical crossbow. It was already loaded with another arrow that was pointed unwaveringly at Dean's heart."Whoa," Dean said, holding his hands up placatingly. "Wanna point that thing somewhere else, sweetheart? Clearly I'm not with him."The woman narrowed her eyes and pursed her full, red-painted lips. She had a beautiful face: a deep brown complexion, big dark eyes shining over round cheeks, and long black braids tied up behind her head. She was wearing combat boots and a miniskirt under a lime green tube top and short leather jacket, with a purse big enough to fit about ten encyclopedias - and, Dean realized, probably her crossbow and a sheaf of arrows - slung over her shoulder."I seen you around the last couple days," she said. Her voice was deep. She looked normal - like any other woman - but after hearing her voice, Dean could tell right away that she was like him. Transgender. He felt a lurch in his chest. "You been poking around, showing up at the crime scenes, lurking ‘round the edges of the clubs, yo’ white ass sticking out like a sore thumb. Thought you was an undercover cop, maybe scoping out marks for your buddy, there. Maybe a werewolf, too.""Well, clearly you got me pegged all wrong. I was huntin' him." Dean gestured to where his silver knife was still buried in the werewolf's shoulder. Then, moving slowly, well aware of the woman’s finger on the trigger of her crossbow, he stepped forward and bent down to put his foot on the dead cop's chest and use it to leverage his strength and pull the knife out of the body.By the time he straightened back up, the woman had tentatively lowered her crossbow and was watching him, mouth twisted with disapproval. "Y'know,” Dean said, “I've been mistaken for a lot of things, but a cop is a first. People usually don't think I look the type. I like to think I give off a sort of Dirty Harry vibe." He flashed his most rakish smile and wiped the bloody blade on the dead cop's shirt, then tucked his knife back into its sheath and safely slipped it into his inside jacket pocket. "Y'know, ruggedly handsome, vigilante hero, operating outside the law…"The woman looked unimpressed. "You stupid or something? Dirty Harry was a cop. Besides,” she eyed him up and down, and Dean didn’t miss her pausing briefly on his finer assets; “All white boys look the type."She tucked away her crossbow and turned to kneel down and check the unconscious man, who was still lying in the dirty alleyway. The man's partner had collected himself and was kneeling at his friend's side as well, pressing his shaking hands to the fallen man's shoulder where blood was seeping through ragged gashes."Is he bitten?" Dean asked, tone serious again; back to business."What the fuck was that cop on?" the man asked, voice thick with tears. "He wasn't human!""Don't worry about it, honey," the woman hunter comforted. She glanced up at Dean from her position on the ground. "He ain’t bit, just scratched. He gonna be just fine.""We gotta call… Gotta call an ambulance, he needs an ambulance!" the frantic man said. The hunter shook her head."You really wanna do that with a dead cop on the ground six feet away? Hell no. Listen, I'm gonna call for some people, and they gonna come here and take care of you and your friend. You just calm down, it'll be alright. I've gotta take care of the body, but I swear, my people will be right here for you in no time."She stood and pulled a flip phone out of her pocket, dialed a number and stepped away to speak quietly to someone. The man on his knees had pulled his unconscious friend's head into his lap, hands still applying pressure to where the guy was bleeding and rocking back and forth with tears streaming down his face. Dean crouched down next to him and put his hand on the guy's shoulder."Hey, man, what's your name?" The man turned to look at him with unfocused eyes. "Tyrese.""And your boyfriend there?"Tyrese choked on a sob. "Angel.""Alright, Tyrese. I'm Dean. Listen, I know what just happened was scary and confusing. But you're okay, and Angel, he's gonna be fine. I know it looks like a lot of blood, but you gotta lose a lot more than that to be in any real danger, okay? I've had a lot worse, and look at me. Walkin’ and talkin’ and almost saving people from monster cops in back alleyways."Tyrese cracked a watery smile. "Really?""Yeah, man, really."The hunter had finished her phone call and was standing over them, looking down at Dean contemplatively. Dean met her gaze with a raised brow."My friends are coming to help. But we gotta take care of the cop.""We?""Yes 'we', Dirty Harry Wannabe. You wanted to get involved, and now you're gonna make yourself useful.""Whatever you say, sweetheart."The woman was strong, well-muscled like hunters had to be. Not as strong as Dean, but they both carried the dead cop easily enough between them, stopping occasionally for short breaks as they quickly moved the body through a short maze of alleys and dark side streets until the other hunter seemed satisfied that they were far enough from the scene of the crime, hidden behind a metal side door just inside an abandoned building."What's your name?" Dean asked her while she bent over to start stripping the body of its equipment. For a moment he just stood there, appreciating her curves underneath the miniskirt; then, chivalrously, he reached down to grip the arrow behind its silver tip with the intent to pull it out of the corpse, knowing that silver arrowheads didn't come cheap. It moved a little but then got stuck and slipped out of his grasp, nearly nicking his fingers and leaving his palm covered in cop-blood."Yeuch!" he exclaimed in disgust, hastily wiping his hand off on the front of the cop's black vest. The woman watched him make a fool of himself with a straight face."Rhonda Hurley," she answered him when he was done, then bent over and easily unscrewed the silver arrowhead from the shaft. She pocketed it, then rolled the body over halfway to pull the rest of the arrow easily out from the other side.Chagrined, Dean made a face. Rhonda smirked, and started to strip the body of its uniform, which Dean began to help with after taking a moment to nurse his pride. Once finished, Rhonda shoved the police uniform into a nearby trash can that looked like it had been a container for used needles once-upon-a-time, a few still clattering at the bottom. She lit a match and dropped it into the trash can, watching the fabric catch, and then tucked the cop's badge and gun into her purse along with her crossbow. She examined the cop’s radio after that, pried open a small hatch and pulled out the batteries before tucking it all into her purse, probably to use or repurpose later. Dean admired the way her skin glowed in the firelight."And you, prettyboy?""Dean Winchester.” He flashed her a winning smile.They stood silently next to each other, watching the fire eat the contents of the trash can."What are you gonna do with the body?" Dean finally asked, after the mess in the trash was just a smolder. The werewolf cop's body, nude except for its underwear, was sprawled carelessly in the dust and grime of the old building's floor. Rhonda glanced at it with a hard expression."I've got friends in low places. They'll be coming by later to pick it up, take it out of the city somewhere to salt and burn it." She kicked the corpse's bare foot bitterly. "I been hunting this pig for half a year now. He got turned maybe seven months back, started waiting outside queer bars on the full moon so he could eat the hearts out of some fags. He’s the only werewolf on the MPD, least as far as I can tell, but they all been covering for him.” She curled her lip in distaste. “Killing this werewolf only does so much when there's more than one kind of monster on the force."Dean grimaced in sympathy. "I can imagine."Rhonda looked at him curiously, and her eyes fell on his upper arm. "You're bleeding."Dean looked down, and noticed for the first time a tear in his canvas jacket that blood had finally started to soak through. He could feel it running down his arm, and when he lifted his hand, a couple drops fell onto the floor. "Goddamn. Looks like it."He clamped his other hand over the tear and felt a flare of pain from the gash in his arm, but it wasn't too bad. Rhonda's eyes seemed to soften."Come on. Dean, right? Come over to my place. I'll patch you up good. You kept the wolf busy long enough to keep those boys alive. That’s worth something to me." She smiled, then; sweet, and maybe a little playful. “Plus, you kinda cute.”Rhonda lived in a tiny three-bedroom apartment with two roommates. She introduced them as Coco and Lizabella, and they didn’t seem perturbed by Rhonda walking through the front door with an unfamiliar white man at her heels, even with both of them dirty and covered in blood. Whether or not Coco and Lizabella were also hunters, they at least seemed to be in the know.“I got a spare towel your hunk can use,” Coco offered with a flirtatious wink. “You both look like you need a good shower.”“Thanks,” Dean replied, blushing, rubbing the back of his neck.“C’mere, Dean,” Rhonda beckoned him down a short, narrow hall. She pulled a fluffy towel, stained but clean, off of one of the closed bedroom doors and handed it to him before directing him into the bathroom. “You can shower first, I don’t mind. You better wash out that cut on your arm. When you’re done, you can wait for me in my bedroom, it’s the one at the end of the hall. I’ll get you patched up after.”Dean showered somewhat nervously. He’d never been in a bathroom that so clearly belonged to women before. There were piles of various hair products and scented soaps in the bathtub, washrags draped over the shower curtain and satin-lined shower caps dangling on strings from the shower head. What seemed like thousands of makeup containers and bottles of nail polish were cluttered around the sink. It felt strangely intimate, looking around at the women’s toiletries as he shampooed his hair and washed the sweat and blood off his body with honey-vanilla-and-oat scented soap.While he was lathering, he heard a knock on the door, but before he could answer he heard it open; the door didn’t have a lock, but he hadn’t exactly expected anyone to barge in. Panicked, he cupped both hands over his groin, as though whoever was there was about to tear open the shower curtain.“Dean? I’m gonna get your dirty clothes and put them in the wash with mine. That alright?” It was Rhonda.“Sure,” Dean managed, breathless. The door closed again a minute later. It was only then that Dean remembered that he didn’t have any other clothes to change into. Awesome. After Dean was done, he dried himself off with the towel and then stood in the bathroom for a couple minutes, just breathing. He wrapped the towel around his waist and tied it into place and stared at himself in the mirror. The scars on his chest were visible, but they had faded significantly since the summer he was fourteen. And Rhonda was a hunter, too; she wouldn’t be surprised he had scars.He noticed that Rhonda had left some gauze pads on the toilet seat when she’d come in to collect his clothes, and he picked them up and pressed them to the still-bleeding gash on his upper arm. Then, he poked his head out of the bathroom door and verified the coast was clear. He could hear Rhonda talking with Coco and Lizabella in the kitchen.“Shower’s free!” he called briefly before beelining to Rhonda’s bedroom to wait for her.Rhonda’s bed was a futon set directly on the floor, layered with leaking down duvets. The sheets and pillowcases were silk. Piled on the ground beside it were a few books, a pile of CDs, and a dark green CD player.There was nowhere else to sit in her room, so Dean sat on the end of her bed. Her walls were plastered with cut-out pages from magazines, a shabby wooden dresser was in the corner overflowing with colorful clothing, and a full-length mirror was propped up leaning against the wall.When Rhonda finally joined Dean in her room, she looked warm and damp in a fuzzy little green nightgown with Kermit the Frog’s face on it. She’d let her braids down, and they swayed gently as she walked towards Dean, who was still holding the gauze to his arm with one hand while the other lay in his lap closed in a nervous fist, and his legs stretched out in front of him. She pulled a first aid kit out of one of her dresser drawers and took it over to the bed where she sank down next to Dean and nudged the hand on his arm aside, lifting the gauze to peek at Dean’s injury.“You don’t need stitches,” she told him, breath ghosting over his shoulder and making him shiver. “I’ll disinfect it and put on some butterfly bandages and you’ll be all good.”“Thanks,” Dean replied, a nervous tremor in his voice. Rhonda hummed a low tune as she poured some isopropyl alcohol onto a swab and when he let out a pained hiss after she dabbed it into his wound, she skimmed her fingers soothingly over his collarbone. There was something electric between them, filling the air with possibility.Rhonda’s fingers were warm and gentle when she squeezed the edges of the gash together to apply the butterfly bandages, and after she taped gauze over it and cleaned her hands, she turned and leaned her head against his shoulder. Her braids hung behind them, tickling his back. Her hand, smooth and delicate, reached down and landed at his thigh, just beneath where the towel ended and just above his knee.“What are you doing?” Dean breathed, voice husky with anticipation.“I seen you looking,” Rhonda answered. “Not like you don’t know you been flirting with me all night. And I don’t know about you, but I get all hot and bothered after a good hunt.” Her breasts underneath the fuzzy nightgown pressed against his arm, and when Dean didn’t make a move, she slowly crept her hand further up his leg over the towel. “You seem curious. I don’t mind. You ever been with someone like me before?”“Another hunter?”“You know what I mean.”He wondered if part of the reason why she’d taken his clothes away - including the knife and the gun in his jacket - had been so she’d feel safer, doing this. Offering to sate his perceived curiosity.Dean couldn’t lie; he was curious. Ever since Sam had given him those stupid papers when he was thirteen, he’d been curious. Wondered what it would be like to meet someone else who was like him after living so long not knowing there was a real word for what he was. And since he’d seen that trans girl at Trewett’s health clinic that day he got his T for the first time, a part of him had wondered what it would be like to be with a girl like that. A girl like him. Maybe he wouldn’t mind taking his clothes off in front of her, since he wouldn’t be as scared of what she would do if she found out.Shemale porn popped up occasionally during his infrequent internet forays, but Dean had never watched one of those videos. He always scrolled past them quickly, pretending not to see the images in the thumbnails or read the video titles. Enough teenage boys had made crude jokes and jeering accusations about tranny porn in his high school locker rooms for just the idea of watching those videos to fill him with shame.But Rhonda, she was normal in the same way that Dean was normal: a freak, and a hunter, but not some sort of pornified caricature. Her cheek against his shoulder was warm, and her hand, continuing its slow journey up his leg, was clean and soft. Her fingernails were long and brightly colored.When Rhonda’s hand got dangerously close to the V of his legs, Dean finally pushed it away and turned towards her. She lifted her head to meet his eyes, lips parted, cheeks warm.He felt both insecure and excited, wanting. He didn't want to tell her he was a virgin, at least in this way; he'd never been naked like this with anyone before, and no one else had ever touched him down there, not except… well. He pushed the thought away, not allowing the itching crawl of bad memories to flood his skin.With his eyes fixed intently on hers, Dean raised his hands and hooked his thumbs under the straps of her nightgown. He waited a moment, and after she gave him a barely perceptible nod, he slipped the straps off her shoulders and pulled the dress down over her chest to bare her soft breasts. He lowered his hands to cup them gently in his palms - they fit in his hands perfectly - rolling his thumbs over her dark nipples and feeling them swell and pebble under his touch.Rhonda let out a soft little gasp and raised her chest into his touch, eyelids fluttering closed. Dean looked up from her breasts to her face, to her lips. They were now lipstick-free after her shower; dusky, pinkish brown and looking so plush and inviting. He tipped his head down, and she tipped hers up, and he raised his hands from her breasts to cup the sides of her face, stroking his thumbs lightly along her jaw as they kissed open-mouthed. He felt a little stubble scratch against the pads of his fingers - softer than his own - and that was fine, and her skin was soft and lovely. As soft as Dean’s used to be, but Dean’s skin was rougher, now.After a long moment, she pulled away from him. Both of them were breathless. Her eyes were shining. “So? Have you?”Dazedly, he shook his head. “No, I haven’t. Have you?” She furrowed her brows and peered up at him, confused. He swallowed, shy. “I guess I don’t really look like it. But I’m like you, too.”It took only a brief moment for Rhonda’s eyes to widen in realization. She pulled back a bit, and Dean felt his stomach sink, but she didn’t retreat all the way and she kept her hands where they’d ended up; on his chest. She looked down to where her palms were gripping at his pecs, spread her fingers wide, glanced over the patchwork of scars decorating his skin underneath them. “Oh,” she said, and she sounded reverent. “So you really see me, huh?”He surged forward, wrapping his arms around her and joining their lips with passion. She met him gladly, dipping her tongue into his open mouth. They fell together onto her bed, hands running greedily over each other’s bodies, and made out until they were sweating. Somewhere along the way, both her nightgown and his towel ended up on the floor beside them, until Dean was naked and Rhonda was sitting on top of him wearing only a pair of pink satin panties.Dean looked up at her, at her heaving chest and her shining eyes and open mouth, running his hands up and down her smooth, brown thighs. She shifted slightly, and at the feeling of the satin rubbing against him he let out an involuntary moan and bucked his hips. Her eyes grew darker.“Wait,” she gasped. “Wait, I want… Wait. I got something for you.”She rolled off of him and Dean whined his disapproval, reaching towards her with one hand and the other going between his legs to cover himself, almost subconsciously. He watched as she went once again to her dresser and pulled something out of her underwear drawer; Dean didn’t recognize it at first, a tangle of straps and silicone, but after a moment his eyes widened. Rhonda was holding a harness with a fake cock attached to it.“I use it sometimes, when someone wants me to fuck them,” she said, sounding almost shy. She took out some sort of disinfectant and sprayed it onto the toy before turning around. “It’s the E; I can’t get it up anymore. Anyway.” She stepped back towards him, fell to her knees and held out the harness. “I want you to wear this, Prettyboy. Want you inside me.”Breathless, he nodded.Rhonda stood back up and pulled him to his feet, and she continued to kiss him, starting at his lips and then moving down over his neck, his clavicle, his sternum, his stomach, the coarse hair just above where his legs met. He leaned unconsciously into that one, and felt her lips curl up against him.She put the harness on him, adjusting the straps until it was tight and moved with him like it was a part of him, and when he looked down at her through heavy-lidded eyes, she looked back up at him and smiled. She had a foil-wrapped condom on the ground at her knees, cherry flavored, and she tore it open and placed it at the tip and then leaned forward and rolled it down over the length with her mouth. Dean bit his lip and let out a noise, one he’d never heard himself make before; he could feel it. As he watched, he could feel her mouth on him.After she’d sucked on him for a little while, until his head felt flushed with arousal, Dean reached down and pulled ever-so-gently on her braids - not enough to hurt - until she straightened and stood onto her feet. He kissed her again, tenderly, tasting cherry on her lips, and then turned them both and lowered her onto her bed.He moved down her body - mouthing at each of her nipples and then peppering kisses over her soft belly - before breathing hotly onto the soft bulge underneath her satin panties. Dean stroked over the satin with his fingers, loving the feel of it and letting it excite him. Finally, he put his mouth on her and soaked through the fabric with wet, filthy kisses, moaning at the sensation of the smooth satin under his tongue. He wanted to taste it, to taste her; to get her panties so wet with his spit she was dripping with it. One of his hands grasped her inner thigh, pushing her legs apart; his other went between his own legs, closing around the hard length there, just the feeling making his hips buck into his grip and lights burst behind his closed eyelids.Rhonda gasped and shifted underneath him, tangling her fingers in his short, damp hair. Eventually, he slid his fingers under the hem of her panties, prepared to pull them down.“This okay?” he paused to ask, and Rhonda lifted her hips in response.Dean pulled the panties off and down her legs, slipped them off her feet - her toenails were painted apple green, the same color as her fingernails; he thought green might be her favorite color - and laid them respectfully aside on the bed. He then returned to lavish attention where she was soft and warm.She didn't smell like he did, there; at least, not like he did now since starting the T. It was different, and tasted more like the few other women he'd gone down on than he'd expected. When he took her into his mouth, she felt so nice on his tongue, and small, not filling him up.Dean went down on her for a while, until she was practically begging him to stop and get to the main show, and then moved lower to eat her out and soften her up with his fingers and some flavored lube she’d procured from under her pillow. When she was finally ready, he let her flip him over onto his back and sink down onto him, throwing her head back in ecstasy. There were tears in his eyes when he came, which was shortly after Rhonda did. She was breathing deeply after her orgasm, bowing down to let her face hover over his and looking at him through heavy-lidded eyes. She was still seated on his hard length, moving her hips in tiny gentle circles and grinding back down onto him while his hips twitched needily beneath her. She gazed down at his flushed face and bitten lips and pressed kisses to the tears that leaked from the corners of his eyes when the overwhelming pleasure moved through him, fingernails trailing along the line of his jaw.Rhonda lay on top of him for a while, and he rested his chin on top of her head and ran his hands up and down her back while she had one of hers up and carding through his hair. When they'd both rested enough to recharge, she propped herself up and grinned down at him, braids hanging around him like a curtain. He felt her right hand reach down and close around the length between his legs."You ready to go again, Hot Stuff? You feel ready," she teased.Dean grinned and tried to lean up and kiss her but she pulled away playfully. "I'm ready.""Good. Want you to do something else for me, though, Prettyboy." She ran a finger over his lips, and he flicked his tongue out to wet them and her finger, too, just to see the way her eyes darkened with desire. Her finger moved away from his mouth, trailing along his cheeks like she was tracing his freckles, and then she brushed her fingertip across the ends of his eyelashes, making them flutter."What do you want?" he asked, voice rough and deep. It felt good, and new, the way it was rumbling in his chest.She finally sat up, straddling him, and turned to pick up her pink satin panties from where Dean had placed them on the duvets. She held them up and smiled at him knowingly."You liked these so much," Rhonda said. "You like the way they feel. You gonna put them on for me. Wanna see you in them."Mouth suddenly dry, Dean's throat clicked as he swallowed. "You gonna make me?"Rhonda cocked her eyebrow and looked down at him with an unimpressed expression that reminded Dean of the way she'd looked at him back in the alleyway."I didn't think I’d need to. But I will if you want me to."If it was any other moment other than that specific one - that particular instant in time and space - Dean would have denied her, refused to do it. But he was still flushed and heated and loose and comfortable, and he could see the fire in her eyes. And he could see that she wanted him to wear them because she wanted to see them on a man. And, he couldn't ignore the spark of interest he felt jolt between his legs at the thought of that pink satin tight against him.Dean licked his lips, then bared his teeth with a nervous smile. "I want you to make me."They stood up together, and she pulled him off the bed until they were standing in front of the mirror. Suddenly feeling shy, he focused his eyes on the ground until he felt her tilt his head up to meet her eyes. She smiled at him and bent down, the panties in hand, and held them out for him to step into.Rhonda pulled them up slowly so he could feel every moment of the satin against his skin, brushing over the hair on his legs and making him shiver and ache in his core, until they came to rest around his hips. He watched her tuck the length of silicone into them until it was nearly covered up, just the tip poking out over the top of the waistband. She pressed her mouth against the satin where it was still wet from Dean's prior attention, tongue out, wet and messy like he'd done for her, and Dean leaned into it.When she pulled away, she stood and came around behind him. His face still down-turned, Dean was hesitant to look up."God, Dean, look at you," Rhonda breathed, and nervously - almost scared - Dean raised his eyes to look in the mirror.He saw himself through Rhonda's eyes. The man in the reflection was hot. His hair was messy, his cheeks and chest flushed with arousal in a way that disguised the freckles and the scars, his lips swollen red and spit-slicked. The trail of hair leading down from his navel disappeared into pink satin that bulged in a way that looked so right. The panties covered up any hint of the straps of the harness; it looked like that was just his body. Dean felt a hot rush of arousal zing through him so strong that his legs nearly collapsed beneath him.Rhonda stood behind him, slender hands and long fingers stroking over his abdomen, up over his pecs, pausing to play with his nipples. Her chin hooked over his shoulder. Her brown skin was so beautiful against his pale chest. So soft and warm, Rhonda's breasts and belly pressed up against his back, a few of her braids trapped between them. She reached one of her hands down to between his legs, where she squeezed the length underneath the pink satin with a heat blazing in her blown-black eyes and Dean could feel it again, feel the touch like it was his own hot hard flesh."Fuck, Prettyboy, I really ain't never met a man like you before."He kept the panties on, feeling vulnerable and embarrassed and sexy, and she backed him up until his ankles knocked against the futon. He sank back onto it, sitting upright. Rhonda pulled the front of the panties down just enough for Dean's cock to spring free, and then sat on his lap, plunging down onto his length for the second time that night with a grateful sigh.Later, taking another break, Dean pressed kiss after kiss onto Rhonda’s shoulders and back, brushing aside her braids for access to that delicious expanse of skin. She was sorting through her CDs, idly musing to herself as she picked an album.When she reached one of the CDs she let out a gasp, and then turned towards Dean. Rhonda held the CD up pressed against her mouth, hiding her face behind it but blocking the album cover with both of her hands.“Don’t make fun of me!” she said, “I got it in a mystery bag at a flea market for five cents. I only listened to it as a joke.”“But?” he smirked, trying to reach out and take it from her to see. She leaned away, nearly falling off the futon before Dean caught her about the waist with his arms and pulled her back until she fell onto him instead, trapping the CD between them.“But, I liked it. The second track is my favorite song,” she confessed into the side of his jaw.“With that introduction, now I have to see,” he laughed, playfully wrestling with her until he had her pinned beneath him and the CD held triumphantly in his hand.He looked between Rhonda and the album cover for Lost in Love with an open-mouthed smile of incredulous delight. On her back underneath him, she covered her face with her hands.“Air Supply?” he exclaimed, and she nodded. “You’re worse than my kid brother!”Rhonda slid her hands down her face, revealing wide, pleading eyes and a luscious pout. He softened his expression, caressed her lower lip with his thumb.“Aww, shit. I can’t say no to that beautiful face.”Still straddling her, he leaned over to open the CD player, popping the CD in and pressing ‘Play’. He pressed the button to skip to the second track, and when the first few notes of “All Out of Love” started to fill the room, he laughed and looked down at Rhonda’s pleased expression, shaking his head fondly.“It’s romantic!” she asserted, and he leaned down to layer kisses over her round cheeks and wide nose. As the song continued to play, the music filling the room, he gently moved his hips back and forth against her underneath him. He was still wearing her panties, embarrassment forgotten, and he could feel her soft bulge pressing up against him through the satin fabric, right in the space there between his legs. It felt nice, and he felt comforted in a way he couldn’t explain: straddling a girl and grinding against her in her bed like a high school boy in his girlfriend’s bedroom, listening to her favorite song.He moved his face slightly lower so he could press his mouth against hers again, and after a moment she parted her lips and Dean dipped his tongue between them. She sighed into his mouth, and reached down to cup her palm around the hard length between his legs with gentleness, like she just wanted to feel him there - like she didn’t want to hurt him - even though it wasn’t really a part of Dean’s body. When the song drifted to an end, Dean reached out to press the button to replay it. It really is romantic. They each came two more times that night and fell asleep only in the wee hours of the morning. When Dean woke up, it was bright outside, sun glaring through the slats of Rhonda's bedroom window. Rhonda was sleeping beside him, curled into his side with her arm draped across his waist. He was still wearing the panties and the harness. He felt so comfortable, so at home in his body in a way he hadn't really felt before. I gotta get myself one of these, he thought, the desire bright and glowing. But a moment later, it dimmed, because he knew that if he ever had the extra cash in hand, he couldn't spend it on something as frivolous as a strap-on. And the thought of Dad or Sam rummaging through his bag and finding it was humiliating.His thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door, and Rhonda shifted at his side, blinking her eyes open."Get yourself decent, I'm coming in!" Lizabella's voice called from the hallway, and Dean quickly reached over and pulled one of the duvets to cover their bodies before the door creaked open.Lizabella poked her head through the doorway and smirked at the two of them lying in bed together."Whatchu want?" Rhonda asked, irritated, voice bleary with sleep. Dean caressed her forearm soothingly."Just wanted to let you two know that we made pancakes. Oh, and I put your laundry in the dryer for you last night. Seemed like you and Boy Band were pretty busy." She wiggled her eyebrows at them, and Rhonda let out a groan and buried her face into Dean's neck, sending warm shivers down his spine.After taking a half hour to wake up, Rhonda slipped back into her Kermit nightgown (no underwear on underneath, which made Dean bite his lip), and went out to fetch their laundry so Dean could get dressed. While she was out, he peeled off the satin panties and clumsily undid the harness, setting them both aside on the floor. He felt more naked than he usually did, and pulled one of Rhonda's pillows over his lap.When Rhonda returned, she handed Dean his clothes and leaned down for a kiss - just a press of their lips together, chaste, like the way couples kissed good-morning in the movies - then turned around and let him get dressed while she chose her own outfit from her dresser. Dean pulled on his briefs, jeans and T-shirt, and rolled up one of the two pairs of socks she'd handed him to tuck into his underwear. It made him feel a little better, but not as good as he had last night. They both showered quickly, separately, before entering the kitchen.Breakfast was nice, friendly. Dean had been worried about Coco and Lizabella grilling him or maybe asking invasive questions about him and Rhonda's night together, but they only teased him a little bit, and it was lighthearted and playful."How long are you staying with us, Dean?" Coco asked him, elbow resting on the table and chin propped in her hand. He looked to Rhonda quickly, then back to Coco."I think… One more night, maybe. To make sure everything's taken care of." He wanted to at least stick around to ensure the other cops weren't going to be after Rhonda. "I'll need to go check out of my hostel before two o'clock."Rhonda casually reached out and put her palm on Dean's thigh. "I'll come with you. Show you around a bit. All the cool spots white boys like you won't know how to find.""Ooh, a date," Lizabella sang teasingly, and Dean looked down at the table, blushing.Dean and Rhonda spent the day together. She returned his pistol and knife, no worse for wear, from wherever she’d hidden them near the washer and dryer that the women had in their hall closet. He tucked his gun into his jeans, but let her carry his knife so that she could leave her crossbow behind.They got lunch from a taco truck and ate it at her favorite beach. Rhonda was wearing another little skirt and a ribbed tank top, and carried a smaller purse that she’d tucked Dean’s knife into. When they were done with their tacos, she pulled her tank top off over her head to reveal a string bikini - forest green and shimmery, like the rainbow haze of gasoline over water - that made Dean’s mouth go dry and his fingers twitch, aching to reach out and touch. Dean loved watching the way Rhonda's long braids fell over her shoulders, the way her breasts bounced in her little bikini top as she walked.As they walked along the sand, the sun beating down on them, Dean hesitantly reached out to brush the side of Rhonda’s hand with his. At his touch, Rhonda threaded their fingers together, and they continued their walk hand-in-hand. Dean had never held hands with a girl before. He felt like a fucking kid at how much he liked it, at how fast it made his heart beat and how it made him blush.“Anyone looking at us probably thinks we’re dating,” he said suddenly, hand tightening around hers like he was worried she’d pull it away at his observation. But Rhonda squeezed his hand back and smiled at him.“We can be,” she said. “You can be my boyfriend for the day.”She didn’t say it like a joke, but like an offer. Dean’s smile was blazing, and he felt giddy.Wanting to treat her, like a boyfriend would, Dean pulled out a few dollars from his pocket and bought her a frozen strawberry paleta from a street vendor. He watched the surprised delight light up her face when he handed it to her, and later kissed a sweet, sticky stain from the tip of her nose, eliciting a husky giggle.Rhonda went with him to get his things from the hostel just before two, and then took him to a little Mexican bakery where he treated her again, buying them both conchas and a large shaved ice drink - a chamoyada - that Rhonda had been gushing about earlier that afternoon. They shared the chamoyada while people-watching on Rhonda's favorite boulevard, and then kissed leisurely, both of their mouths tasting sweet and sour and a little spicy."People are staring at us," Rhonda said softly, gazing up at Dean while he cupped her cheek with one hand, the other at her bare waist just under the string of her bikini. She was tall, and only had to tilt her head up slightly, and Dean liked that he didn't have to bend his back down to kiss her.He glanced around them at the crowd and noticed that while most of the people around walked past without noticing them, some of them did in fact stare at the pair with curiosity. He glared at one man who was watching for a tad too long, and the guy averted his eyes and carried on down the sidewalk."Maybe it's because they're jealous." The line even tasted cheesy. Rhonda shook her head and tucked her fingers into the belt loops of his jeans, pulling his hips flush against hers like they were in some kind of teen drama. It made Dean's stomach flutter."You know, I'm used to people staring at me," she laughed, shaking her head slightly, "But for once, I don't think it's me they looking at. I think they looking at you, kissing me with you looking like you stepped right out of Days of Our Lives."Dean scoffed. "Now you're just making fun of me."Rhonda's eyes softened and she put her hands on his chest, smiling understandingly."You really don't know what you look like, do you?"Dean didn't know what to say to that. He knew what he looked like to other people, in a rational, logical sort of way. Men sneered and called him pretty under their breath in bars and girls blushed and flirted around him. But that wasn’t… It didn't really mean anything. They didn't really know him, know what he was; if they did, they'd look at him different. What they saw wasn't what he saw when he looked in the mirror.He shook his head, rolled his eyes, pulled Rhonda closer and bent to whisper into her ear."You're gorgeous," he told her. She wrapped her arms around him and buried her face into his neck.That night, Rhonda, Coco and Lizabella dragged him out to Purgatory, partially under the guise of checking that the cops weren't scoping the place out but mostly to have fun. This time, with Rhonda at his side, he didn't stay on the outskirts in the shadows. He danced with her for hours, holding her body tight against him, swaying to the beat of disco music. Occasionally, some guy would brush up behind him too, ask to dance for a minute, and Dean found that he didn't mind. But he always went back to Rhonda quickly, and she would pull his face down into a kiss like she was showing the club that he was hers.When they finally got home and fell into bed together, they didn't have sex. Instead, they played some of Rhonda's CDs, starting with Lost in Love again. Rhonda had an eclectic collection, a mix of current hip hop, R&B, pop, and older pop rock and disco. Rhonda let him wear the harness again, underneath his own underwear. She wore nothing except another pair of satin panties, this one teal. They pressed every inch of skin they could together, and Rhonda lay her head on his chest and listened to his heartbeat.Safe and warm beside him, Rhonda told Dean about running away from home when she was sixteen - she was twenty, now - and getting picked up by someone who she'd thought was a pimp but turned out to be a vampire. About how he'd used her as a blood bank for two days before she'd managed to cut off his head with a fire axe, and how she'd been hunting ever since.He wrapped her tightly in his arms, wanting to protect her."How'd this happen?" she asked him later, tracing the scars on his chest with her fingers. "I seen some other guys' before, and they're usually a little more… professional-looking." Dean chuckled, grabbed her hand. "Did you do it yourself?" Rhonda joked, but she looked a little knowing, a little sad.Dean shook his head. "Got a black dog to do it for me. Cheaper than a plastic surgeon."Rhonda smiled, an understanding smile, and pressed her closed lips against his scars. Dean didn't feel like he had to say anything else. And a thought struck him, suddenly; I could fall in love with this girl. If I stayed here, I could fall in love with her. In the next moment, he thought of Sammy, and felt his heart clench painfully in his chest.They said goodbye the following morning. Dean accepted brief hugs from Coco and Lizabella, and then a much longer, deeper embrace from Rhonda."You could stay for a while, Prettyboy," Rhonda muttered into his ear when she wrapped her arms around him. He rubbed her wide shoulders, her narrow waist, the curve of her hips. "We could hunt together. There's always shit going down in Miami."A part of Dean wanted to. To stay there for a few weeks… A few months, even. For the rest of his life. He wouldn’t have to just be her boyfriend for a day. He could spend each night sleeping next to Rhonda on her bed, kissing her, and fucking her. Falling in love with her. They'd hunt together, eat together. He'd become friends with her roommates, get a day job to help cover rent. He was nineteen, the right age to move out and find his own way. No one would blame him for doing that.But Sammy and Dad were back in Jacksonville, waiting. They needed him there, to take care of them. He couldn't abandon his family like that."I wish I could, but I gotta get back," Dean said, regret clawing at his throat in a way that hurt.It had been nice for a day, to have a normal life with a beautiful girlfriend, where he didn't have to take care of anyone or mediate shouting matches or stay awake overnight at truck stops to hitch a ride. But Dean knew where he belonged. He could feel the chain pulling tight around his neck, tugging him back towards Jacksonville, the choke of it both familiar and comforting.Dean called Dad from a pay phone - having neglected to keep his cell phone charged - to let him know the hunt was over and he was on his way back. It only took him nine hours and two rides, this time, switching cars in Kissimmee. He fought back tears in the backseat, feeling a stabbing pain in his chest even as the chain around his neck loosened the closer he got to Jacksonville. For the first time in a long time, he found himself thinking It's not fair. He hated himself for it.And for two weeks after his return home, each moment felt like he was on the precipice of breaking down; forcing himself to grin for Sam's sake, assisting his dad with research, and wishing - not for the first time - that he had someone in this godforsaken world to talk to about shit like this. Someone who didn't rely on his stiff upper lip and his calm in a crisis. Someone who wasn't his responsibility. A best friend, maybe. Or any friend at all.Instead, Dean had no one. Five - ten, fifteen - years from now, no one else would ever know about Rhonda Hurley from Miami, who had taken his virginity, who he had dated for a day, who he could have fallen in love with. No one else would ever know how much he missed her in those first few months after that hunt, how frequently he thought of her in that first year after. No one else would ever know how scared he was that he'd never feel that way about anyone again, that he'd let his one shot at love slip through his fingers. No one but him would ever know about Rhonda and her pink satin panties.