Basic Chores Bring Unexpected Benefits
Laundry is a glorious thing. Quite aside from clean clothes, I found my first page for my Deanna-has-cysts story today. It has been, quite logically, in my slightly dirty clothes bag ever since I finished my senior sem paper. I had been wondering where it went, and now it makes complete sense. *sticks tongue out*
Which discovery motivated me to try posting NEW things, doing the whole chronological-order dance. So that means Deanna.
The Deanna universe is girl!Dean fic inspired (of course, what else in SPN is not, for me?) by conversations with lavinialavender about the emotional, spiritual and cultural issues that would be created if Dean (yes, the manly, kick-ass, smart-mouthed, sexually active Dean that we know and love) had been born a girl. What are the influences that would have allowed or forced her (Deanna) to be the person that Dean is. lavinialavender and I are continuing to share the world, bouncing suggestions of each other and trying to keep our facts existing in the same plane. And, of course, I shamelessly use her vast knowledge of SPN trivia and detail to keep my stories accurate to the spirit and practice of Dean in the show.
So, here are my three finished Deanna fics, in the order in which I wrote them.
Titles: Haircut, Deanna is Eight, Hustling
Disclaimer: We own nothing of SPN.
Characters/Pairings: Sam, girl!Dean, a little bit of John
Genre: gen, genderswitch
Rating: G - PG-13
Word count: 2,188
Warnings: gender issues; very light hints of impending child abuse, may be triggery; blood and violence, language
Spoilers: none (preseries)
Summary: Deanna at eleven, eight, and twenty-two.
Author notes: lavinialavender is not only the best beta ever, but she also lets me steal her coding so that I can quickly and efficiently post things she has already been nice enough to post in my pre-LiveJournal past. Without her, not only would the grammar be bad (believe me, I posted an old, pre-beta version first, and the grammar had series flaws) but the stories probably wouldn't have gotten here intact at all. I also stole her warning info, with minor alterations.
Haircut
Dad never called her princess again after Mom died. Older, when she was drunk enough to let herself think about it calmly, it made perfect sense. On that night of November the second, John Winchester had learned that women he loved died. Therefore, his little daughter Deanna would have to stop being that girl.
At eleven, Deanna Winchester stared at herself in the mirror and hated her hair. It grew too damn fast to keep out of her eyes if she kept it as short as Sammy’s, and her tendency to trim it with her hunting knife made it ragged. She didn’t give a damn what they called her in school, but her brown hair was impossible to keep in a pony without wisps getting out. And even when she didn’t have hair in her face, she hated the tail. Too easy for someone to grab. Last school some asshole had gotten a grip on it, and she’d practically had to feed him his balls before he let go. Fucker had made Sam cry, though, so he deserved it.
“Dee? You okay?” Sam sounded worried.
Deanna looked up, and hated how his eyes had scrunched up. “Yeah. Fine, Sam. Hey, you think I need a haircut?”
Sammy shrugged. “You look fine to me.”
Trust little brothers to say the right thing. Any way she looked, she knew that Sam would still be there. She would never let him down. But that didn’t mean she had to put up with the freaking hair.
Deanna pushed off from the mirror. “Yeah, but you’re looking a little shaggy. Let’s go.”
Sam looked suspicious, but got up. “Where are we going?”
Deanna tucked the big knife into the back of her pants and made sure the little ones were easy to reach in her boots. “There’s a haircut place down the street.”
“You’re not just going to cut it this time?”
She was sick of Sam getting snickered at because of the way she cut his hair. Maybe she could figure it out if she watched it someone do it once. “Nope.”
There were only two stylists working and one was in the middle of a spirited gossip and shampooing session with a heavy woman with more rings than fingers. The other woman raised an eyebrow, but didn’t say a word when Deanna leaned against the glass to watch how she lathered, rinsed, combed and trimmed Sammy’s hair.
Deanna had to admit, her kid brother looked a heck of a lot cuter now than when she pared his hair down with the pocketknife.
“You want something, hun?” the hair dresser asked.
“What?” Deanna jerked upright, realizing only then that she had been staring into space. Damn, Deanna, get a hold of yourself. She shouldn't have been drifting like that, staring at her brother’s head thinking about hair styles. Anything could have come in while she was letting herself be a freaking girl, and she would have been that much slower to defend her brother.
The older woman nodded at the chair while Sam climbed out, shaking his head like a dog, getting used to the new, shorter hair. “He’s done, hun. You want a trim too?”
Being a girl made you weak and never got you anything but dead. She’d be damned before she let anything happen to Sammy because she had been distracted by her goddamned hair.
Deanna went over and climbed into the chair. “Sammy, don’t go anywhere, this won’t take long.” To the hairdresser: “Cut it all off.”
The woman started running the water. “How short you want it, hun?”
“Give me a buzzcut,” she said. “Like a Marine.”
The woman stopped and raised both eyebrows. “Now what are your parents going to say about that?”
If she ever let something happen to Sammy, Dad would never forgive her.
“Dad’s a Marine. He’s fine with it. Right, Sammy?”
Sam almost jumped at his name and took a couple seconds before catching the lie. He’d been as surprised as the woman at Deanna’s order, but she hadn’t noticed.
He smiled up at her, doing that puppy-dog thing with his eyes that could convince nice people anywhere to do anything he wanted. Didn’t work as well on bad people, but that was why Sammy would always have Deanna.
“Dee wants it really badly,” Sam said. “Dad won’t mind.”
The woman looked dubious, but she turned off the water and got out a shiny electric razor. “You’re sure about this, hun?”
Sam glanced once at Deanna, and she gave him the look. Sam didn’t look convinced, but when he hit the woman again with his smile she didn’t see anything but what he wanted her to believe.
“Please?” Sam said.
Deanna closed her eyes while her hair went away. Once or twice, her hand drifted sideways until she could touch her brother’s sleeve, just to make sure he was still there.
When Dad came home from the hunt, he dumped his duffle bag on the bed before he turned around and really looked at her. Then he froze. Deanna waited, tense, suddenly not sure if she had done the right thing. She liked not needing to fiddle with combing her hair, tying it back, or pinning it up, but it still felt strange to try and run a hand through her bangs and find nothing but stubble.
John Winchester stared for a long moment, the circles under his eyes darker than they had been before he left. He had a bandage over one bicep, and Deanna had noticed him favoring his right leg again. She could feel her stomach dropping the longer he looked at her, her hands clenching into fists. What if he didn’t approve? There was no way she could take it back. If she had thought about it, she would have kept the shredded brown strands, told Sam to put them together. Then she could have glued them back on, put them together, or something. Damnit, why couldn’t she do anything right. Sam watched them from one of the motel beds, tense and staring.
But in the end Dad looked away, looked at Sam before looking back at Deanna. “You guys were all right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Yes, sir.” Deanna felt her fists relax while something she wouldn’t even think about inside her curled in on itself a little more, a little smaller and easier to shove aside. “Are you okay, sir?”
John gave her a sharp look, but eventually nodded. “I’ll be fine.”
Dad never brought it up, but after he left for his next hunt, when her hair had already grown out half an inch, she found an electric razor in the drawer with her tampons. She left it curled up in its cord, closed the drawer, and absolutely refused to think about any possible reason that she would want to cry.
***
Deanna is eight
Deanna is eight and she doesn’t like Dad’s friend, Terry, the one who collects masks and musty books. He keeps looking at her and Sam when Dad’s not there. She always carries a knife, but now she keeps it tucked in her waistband, out of sight, and another one in her boot. His eyes follow her, and she doesn’t want him to know where all the weapons are.
She keeps an eye on him, but more importantly she keeps an eye on Sam. She doesn’t let him out of her sight unless he’s safely tucked under the covers, top bunk, in the musty, windowless room, and even then she keeps an eye on the door. Dad had an emergency, and he’ll be back as soon as he can. She’ll just have to wait it out until then.
It’s late, and Terry comes down the hallway. Deanna is sitting outside their room, sewing together Sam’s bear. She has to keep on top of every little tear, or the thrift-store animal won’t have much stuffing at all. She wants to have the leg sewn up now so that if Sam wakes up with a nightmare, he’ll have something to hold onto.
Terry crouches next to her. “Are you fixing your bear, Deanna?” he asks, reaching toward her leg.
Deanna scoots away from him, keeping the bear out of reach, but staying in front of the door. “No.”
“I could get you a better bear. Do you want to see?” He moves closer again, but she can’t move away because then she won’t be blocking the door to Sammy.
“No.” She puts Bear carefully aside, so Terry can’t hurt him, and slowly gets to her feet.
“I can get you a much better bear, Deanna,” Terry says, reaching toward her. “And your daddy doesn’t have to know anything about it. Just do a little thing for me, sweetheart.”
Terry puts his hand on her shoulder, almost wrapping around her throat, and he pushes her away from the door that leads to Sammy, and she has the realization that he wants to do something horrible. He has pushed her away from Sam and now he will turn around, go through that door, and do something horrible to her brother.
She reaches into her pants for the knife, and he smiles, and then she’s cutting his fingers off her throat and there is blood everywhere. He howls and swings at her, but she rolls, comes up and hits him hard with the knife right where Dad told her to hit a man who comes at her.
He screams and arches back and she pushes the knife upward with all her strength, and Terry falls thrashing to the floor screaming horribly, more horribly than anything she’s ever heard in her life. Deanna stares at him, at the blood, at other things, and she’s shaking and she can’t move.
And then she hears Sam’s voice, and he’s screaming for her, terrified, and suddenly she can move again.
She’s inside the room, and shuts the door securely and pushes a huge trunk across it just to be sure that Terry can’t get up and get inside. She can still hear him screaming at her through the door.
Then she climbs up into the bunk and wraps Sam in her arms and puts her chin on his head. “It’s okay, Sammy,” she says. “It’s just a nightmare.”
“I c-c-can still h-h-hear it,” he says, face buried in her shirt.
“It’s just a nightmare.”
“B-B-B-Bear?”
She hands the animal to him, and he snuggles into it, and into her, and she palms the knife from her boot into her hand. As long as she is there, no one will ever hurt her brother. And as long as she has Sam, nothing can hurt.
***
Hustling
Deanna hated to admit it, but some things were easier to try without Sam around. Like wearing that shirt to play pool. Sam would have looked at her like he knew she wasn’t telling him things and but, dammit, she had nothing to hide. And she was not going to get sucked into talking about her feelings and all that girly shit.
The tank top left her considerably less to hide. Low-cut, bright red, skin tight, it made hustling pool easier, both because Dad’s oversized jacket wasn’t catching on the table when she went for shots and because the men she played with left their brains at the bar the second she leaned over.
She sank the last ball and smiled at the guy who’d just lost a hundred bucks to her. “Lucky shot,” she said. They had all been lucky shots, but he hadn’t been watching the table. “Pay up.”
He looked startled. Then flashed a grin. “Hey, girl, how about you and me go somewhere and I give you something better than cash?”
Used to be that this was the point when she would step in, after some jerk had told Sam he wouldn’t pay up, and stare the jerk down, and he would think again about backing out of the deal. But Sam wasn’t there anymore. Suddenly, Deanna just felt tired.
“No thanks,” she said. “I’m not in the market.”
He grinned, and reached for her waist. “C’mon, girl, I’ll make it worth your time.”
Deanna had only been practicing the feminine wiles for a few months. She had the chest and the ass, but as far as application she had a ways to go. She’d been scaring the shit out of things more badass than this jerk since she was twelve.
She grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him close. She pressed the hilt of her knife into his belly and felt him break out in a cold sweat straight through the shirt. He was damn well looking at her eyes now. “Give me my fucking money, or I’ll hurt you right here.”
He fumbled out the bills and she grabbed the jacket and left. She saw him talking to a bunch of friends, and a couple of them were leaving the bar when she slid into the Impala. They got into trucks and started up.
Whatever. Let them come. Sammy wasn’t waiting for her and for tonight, she’d had enough of being a girl.
On a side note, I've had a quart of coffee today. I'm not hyper, so-zactly, but I may never sleep again.
Which discovery motivated me to try posting NEW things, doing the whole chronological-order dance. So that means Deanna.
The Deanna universe is girl!Dean fic inspired (of course, what else in SPN is not, for me?) by conversations with lavinialavender about the emotional, spiritual and cultural issues that would be created if Dean (yes, the manly, kick-ass, smart-mouthed, sexually active Dean that we know and love) had been born a girl. What are the influences that would have allowed or forced her (Deanna) to be the person that Dean is. lavinialavender and I are continuing to share the world, bouncing suggestions of each other and trying to keep our facts existing in the same plane. And, of course, I shamelessly use her vast knowledge of SPN trivia and detail to keep my stories accurate to the spirit and practice of Dean in the show.
So, here are my three finished Deanna fics, in the order in which I wrote them.
Titles: Haircut, Deanna is Eight, Hustling
Disclaimer: We own nothing of SPN.
Characters/Pairings: Sam, girl!Dean, a little bit of John
Genre: gen, genderswitch
Rating: G - PG-13
Word count: 2,188
Warnings: gender issues; very light hints of impending child abuse, may be triggery; blood and violence, language
Spoilers: none (preseries)
Summary: Deanna at eleven, eight, and twenty-two.
Author notes: lavinialavender is not only the best beta ever, but she also lets me steal her coding so that I can quickly and efficiently post things she has already been nice enough to post in my pre-LiveJournal past. Without her, not only would the grammar be bad (believe me, I posted an old, pre-beta version first, and the grammar had series flaws) but the stories probably wouldn't have gotten here intact at all. I also stole her warning info, with minor alterations.
Haircut
Dad never called her princess again after Mom died. Older, when she was drunk enough to let herself think about it calmly, it made perfect sense. On that night of November the second, John Winchester had learned that women he loved died. Therefore, his little daughter Deanna would have to stop being that girl.
At eleven, Deanna Winchester stared at herself in the mirror and hated her hair. It grew too damn fast to keep out of her eyes if she kept it as short as Sammy’s, and her tendency to trim it with her hunting knife made it ragged. She didn’t give a damn what they called her in school, but her brown hair was impossible to keep in a pony without wisps getting out. And even when she didn’t have hair in her face, she hated the tail. Too easy for someone to grab. Last school some asshole had gotten a grip on it, and she’d practically had to feed him his balls before he let go. Fucker had made Sam cry, though, so he deserved it.
“Dee? You okay?” Sam sounded worried.
Deanna looked up, and hated how his eyes had scrunched up. “Yeah. Fine, Sam. Hey, you think I need a haircut?”
Sammy shrugged. “You look fine to me.”
Trust little brothers to say the right thing. Any way she looked, she knew that Sam would still be there. She would never let him down. But that didn’t mean she had to put up with the freaking hair.
Deanna pushed off from the mirror. “Yeah, but you’re looking a little shaggy. Let’s go.”
Sam looked suspicious, but got up. “Where are we going?”
Deanna tucked the big knife into the back of her pants and made sure the little ones were easy to reach in her boots. “There’s a haircut place down the street.”
“You’re not just going to cut it this time?”
She was sick of Sam getting snickered at because of the way she cut his hair. Maybe she could figure it out if she watched it someone do it once. “Nope.”
There were only two stylists working and one was in the middle of a spirited gossip and shampooing session with a heavy woman with more rings than fingers. The other woman raised an eyebrow, but didn’t say a word when Deanna leaned against the glass to watch how she lathered, rinsed, combed and trimmed Sammy’s hair.
Deanna had to admit, her kid brother looked a heck of a lot cuter now than when she pared his hair down with the pocketknife.
“You want something, hun?” the hair dresser asked.
“What?” Deanna jerked upright, realizing only then that she had been staring into space. Damn, Deanna, get a hold of yourself. She shouldn't have been drifting like that, staring at her brother’s head thinking about hair styles. Anything could have come in while she was letting herself be a freaking girl, and she would have been that much slower to defend her brother.
The older woman nodded at the chair while Sam climbed out, shaking his head like a dog, getting used to the new, shorter hair. “He’s done, hun. You want a trim too?”
Being a girl made you weak and never got you anything but dead. She’d be damned before she let anything happen to Sammy because she had been distracted by her goddamned hair.
Deanna went over and climbed into the chair. “Sammy, don’t go anywhere, this won’t take long.” To the hairdresser: “Cut it all off.”
The woman started running the water. “How short you want it, hun?”
“Give me a buzzcut,” she said. “Like a Marine.”
The woman stopped and raised both eyebrows. “Now what are your parents going to say about that?”
If she ever let something happen to Sammy, Dad would never forgive her.
“Dad’s a Marine. He’s fine with it. Right, Sammy?”
Sam almost jumped at his name and took a couple seconds before catching the lie. He’d been as surprised as the woman at Deanna’s order, but she hadn’t noticed.
He smiled up at her, doing that puppy-dog thing with his eyes that could convince nice people anywhere to do anything he wanted. Didn’t work as well on bad people, but that was why Sammy would always have Deanna.
“Dee wants it really badly,” Sam said. “Dad won’t mind.”
The woman looked dubious, but she turned off the water and got out a shiny electric razor. “You’re sure about this, hun?”
Sam glanced once at Deanna, and she gave him the look. Sam didn’t look convinced, but when he hit the woman again with his smile she didn’t see anything but what he wanted her to believe.
“Please?” Sam said.
Deanna closed her eyes while her hair went away. Once or twice, her hand drifted sideways until she could touch her brother’s sleeve, just to make sure he was still there.
When Dad came home from the hunt, he dumped his duffle bag on the bed before he turned around and really looked at her. Then he froze. Deanna waited, tense, suddenly not sure if she had done the right thing. She liked not needing to fiddle with combing her hair, tying it back, or pinning it up, but it still felt strange to try and run a hand through her bangs and find nothing but stubble.
John Winchester stared for a long moment, the circles under his eyes darker than they had been before he left. He had a bandage over one bicep, and Deanna had noticed him favoring his right leg again. She could feel her stomach dropping the longer he looked at her, her hands clenching into fists. What if he didn’t approve? There was no way she could take it back. If she had thought about it, she would have kept the shredded brown strands, told Sam to put them together. Then she could have glued them back on, put them together, or something. Damnit, why couldn’t she do anything right. Sam watched them from one of the motel beds, tense and staring.
But in the end Dad looked away, looked at Sam before looking back at Deanna. “You guys were all right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Yes, sir.” Deanna felt her fists relax while something she wouldn’t even think about inside her curled in on itself a little more, a little smaller and easier to shove aside. “Are you okay, sir?”
John gave her a sharp look, but eventually nodded. “I’ll be fine.”
Dad never brought it up, but after he left for his next hunt, when her hair had already grown out half an inch, she found an electric razor in the drawer with her tampons. She left it curled up in its cord, closed the drawer, and absolutely refused to think about any possible reason that she would want to cry.
***
Deanna is eight
Deanna is eight and she doesn’t like Dad’s friend, Terry, the one who collects masks and musty books. He keeps looking at her and Sam when Dad’s not there. She always carries a knife, but now she keeps it tucked in her waistband, out of sight, and another one in her boot. His eyes follow her, and she doesn’t want him to know where all the weapons are.
She keeps an eye on him, but more importantly she keeps an eye on Sam. She doesn’t let him out of her sight unless he’s safely tucked under the covers, top bunk, in the musty, windowless room, and even then she keeps an eye on the door. Dad had an emergency, and he’ll be back as soon as he can. She’ll just have to wait it out until then.
It’s late, and Terry comes down the hallway. Deanna is sitting outside their room, sewing together Sam’s bear. She has to keep on top of every little tear, or the thrift-store animal won’t have much stuffing at all. She wants to have the leg sewn up now so that if Sam wakes up with a nightmare, he’ll have something to hold onto.
Terry crouches next to her. “Are you fixing your bear, Deanna?” he asks, reaching toward her leg.
Deanna scoots away from him, keeping the bear out of reach, but staying in front of the door. “No.”
“I could get you a better bear. Do you want to see?” He moves closer again, but she can’t move away because then she won’t be blocking the door to Sammy.
“No.” She puts Bear carefully aside, so Terry can’t hurt him, and slowly gets to her feet.
“I can get you a much better bear, Deanna,” Terry says, reaching toward her. “And your daddy doesn’t have to know anything about it. Just do a little thing for me, sweetheart.”
Terry puts his hand on her shoulder, almost wrapping around her throat, and he pushes her away from the door that leads to Sammy, and she has the realization that he wants to do something horrible. He has pushed her away from Sam and now he will turn around, go through that door, and do something horrible to her brother.
She reaches into her pants for the knife, and he smiles, and then she’s cutting his fingers off her throat and there is blood everywhere. He howls and swings at her, but she rolls, comes up and hits him hard with the knife right where Dad told her to hit a man who comes at her.
He screams and arches back and she pushes the knife upward with all her strength, and Terry falls thrashing to the floor screaming horribly, more horribly than anything she’s ever heard in her life. Deanna stares at him, at the blood, at other things, and she’s shaking and she can’t move.
And then she hears Sam’s voice, and he’s screaming for her, terrified, and suddenly she can move again.
She’s inside the room, and shuts the door securely and pushes a huge trunk across it just to be sure that Terry can’t get up and get inside. She can still hear him screaming at her through the door.
Then she climbs up into the bunk and wraps Sam in her arms and puts her chin on his head. “It’s okay, Sammy,” she says. “It’s just a nightmare.”
“I c-c-can still h-h-hear it,” he says, face buried in her shirt.
“It’s just a nightmare.”
“B-B-B-Bear?”
She hands the animal to him, and he snuggles into it, and into her, and she palms the knife from her boot into her hand. As long as she is there, no one will ever hurt her brother. And as long as she has Sam, nothing can hurt.
***
Hustling
Deanna hated to admit it, but some things were easier to try without Sam around. Like wearing that shirt to play pool. Sam would have looked at her like he knew she wasn’t telling him things and but, dammit, she had nothing to hide. And she was not going to get sucked into talking about her feelings and all that girly shit.
The tank top left her considerably less to hide. Low-cut, bright red, skin tight, it made hustling pool easier, both because Dad’s oversized jacket wasn’t catching on the table when she went for shots and because the men she played with left their brains at the bar the second she leaned over.
She sank the last ball and smiled at the guy who’d just lost a hundred bucks to her. “Lucky shot,” she said. They had all been lucky shots, but he hadn’t been watching the table. “Pay up.”
He looked startled. Then flashed a grin. “Hey, girl, how about you and me go somewhere and I give you something better than cash?”
Used to be that this was the point when she would step in, after some jerk had told Sam he wouldn’t pay up, and stare the jerk down, and he would think again about backing out of the deal. But Sam wasn’t there anymore. Suddenly, Deanna just felt tired.
“No thanks,” she said. “I’m not in the market.”
He grinned, and reached for her waist. “C’mon, girl, I’ll make it worth your time.”
Deanna had only been practicing the feminine wiles for a few months. She had the chest and the ass, but as far as application she had a ways to go. She’d been scaring the shit out of things more badass than this jerk since she was twelve.
She grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him close. She pressed the hilt of her knife into his belly and felt him break out in a cold sweat straight through the shirt. He was damn well looking at her eyes now. “Give me my fucking money, or I’ll hurt you right here.”
He fumbled out the bills and she grabbed the jacket and left. She saw him talking to a bunch of friends, and a couple of them were leaving the bar when she slid into the Impala. They got into trucks and started up.
Whatever. Let them come. Sammy wasn’t waiting for her and for tonight, she’d had enough of being a girl.
On a side note, I've had a quart of coffee today. I'm not hyper, so-zactly, but I may never sleep again.