Fic: Getting Soft, Part 1: (R), Pre-series, Dean, John, Bobby
Title: Getting Soft
Author: nwhepcat
SPN pre-series,
Characters: Dean, John, Bobby, a flicker of Sam
Pairing: some D/OFC, but for all intents & purposes gen
Rating: R
Summary: Dean should have known better than to ask for the happy ending. Set in the first winter after Sam's departure for Stanford.
Note: Written for an anonymous prompt in the hoodie_time Dean-centric h/c challenge #5
At first Dean thought it all had to do with Sam and Stanford and the way his brother's absence hurt all the damn time.
A long while later, when he finally realized what was happening to him, he knew that was exactly the case, only in a completely different way than he'd originally thought.
It started that first Christmas without Sam. Dean had conducted a massive campaign to convince his dad to go to Stanford and get Sam for a family holiday. It might be a Winchester style holiday, but at least they'd be together. That had been Dean's thinking, because he couldn't bear the idea of Sam being all alone in the dorm for a week because he had noplace to go.
Only when they'd gotten there, Sam was nowhere to be found. Dad expected the worst, but when he picked the lock on Sam's door, they'd entered to find his bed made with military neatness, his duffel missing, and one of Sam's ever-present lists balled up in the trash. Turn in econ paper. Pack psych text and Merchant. Gift for Paul's parents.
"Awesome," Dean had said when Dad wordlessly handed him the paper. "He's found himself another family."
So it had turned into an extra special Winchester Christmas, with Dad staying plastered for a fair amount of the holiday week, and Dean screwing his way through a large assortment of women.
When Dean woke up on New Year's Day he had nothing more than the customary headache and sour stomach.
It was a damn shame he didn't know at the time it would be the best morning he'd have for a long while.
***
What woke him at three the next morning wasn't his dad, but the pain. It shot through both his feet. Like a giant's hands folded around them, crushing the bones together until it was all Dean could do not to yell out. For a long time he lay in bed, dreading the thought of putting any weight on them, but after an hour he knew he wouldn't get back to sleep unless he got something to take the edge off. The Vicodin Dad had scammed was reserved for real pain, requiring jagged bones poking through flesh, so Dean rummaged in the field kit for the aspirin and downed four.
They didn't seem to do anything at all, but eventually he drifted back to sleep, only to be roused with a rough hand shaking his shoulder at six. "Look sharp, son. We're heading out to Pastor Jim's. He's been looking into some things for me."
Biting back a groan, Dean swung his legs over the bed, conducting his morning rituals as quickly as he could before packing up his duffel.
His dad watched him closely as he hobbled out to the Impala. "You hurtin'?"
While he never would have complained without prompting, Dean knew better than to insult his father's intelligence by denying it. "Yes sir. Some."
Dad frowned. "Yeah, looks like 'some.' Which one's bothering you?"
"Both."
"You went for a run yesterday. Were they bothering you then?"
"No sir."
"And nothing happened. You didn't twist anything or stumble."
"No sir."
Gesturing for the duffel, Dad said, "Let me look at those sneakers." He dug out the shoes Dean wore to go running and scowled at the rundown soles. "These are shot. Let me see the ones you've got on. Lift up a foot."
Dean leaned against the Impala, her cold metal skin making him suck in a breath. He lifted the left foot, then the right.
"Those have got to go too," Dad said. "You should have said something."
"They weren't bothering me before," Dean said, and after looking at him intently for a moment, his dad seemed to take that as the truth.
"We'll find an army surplus store," Dad said, leaving Dean to sit gratefully in the passenger seat while Dad went to the motel office to ask for directions.
Dad hadn't said anything about the cost, but Dean knew this was the last thing they needed right now. They were down to their last credit card, waiting for the next batch to appear at their mail drop. The one that was left had to stay uncompromised, used only for jobs.
When Dad settled back behind the wheel, Dean said, "Dad, it can wait. You want to get to Pastor Jim and besides --"
"No it can't wait," his dad declared. "A soldier takes care of his tools, and that includes your boots and your feet."
"Yes sir," Dean said.
It wasn't easy determining the fit of shoes when Dean's feet felt like they were being crushed even when he wore nothing but socks, but eventually he left the surplus store with a pair of boots, another of shoes, some socks without holes and an old man bitching about how surplus stores used to sell actual military surplus instead of overpriced shit for campers and sportsmen.
That bitchfest was nothing compared to the one two weeks later when he discovered Dean pulling on a third pair of socks so the boots would fit. "Goddammit, Dean," Dad shouted, despite the fact that Pastor Jim's housekeeper was working downstairs. "I've told you a million times, fuck what you like, you buy the shoes that fit!"
"I did, I swear," Dean countered, despite the danger of arguing with his dad. "They fit then. But they don't feel right anymore."
That went over about as well as expected. Dean found himself dismantling, cleaning and reassembling the old man's entire arsenal. If it hadn't been for his fucked up feet, there'd probably have been a fifteen mile run on top of that, so he counted himself lucky. By the time he finished, he was fumbling every small piece he picked up, and the ache in his hands, wrists, arms and shoulders was nearly as fierce as the pain in his feet. Without complaint, he downed a handful of aspirin and a Benadryl on top of it to help him sleep, then went to bed.
If anything, he felt worse in the morning, but he knew better than to report this information to his dad. Jim took him to the church's clothes closet and let him pick out some shoes that actually fit.
They were two sizes too small for him, but they fit perfectly.
While they were there, Dean saw more of Pastor Jim than dad, who seemed to be hand-copying entire texts into his goddamn notebook. Hell, making an illuminated perfect copy, for all Dean knew. It was taking long enough. Dean kept himself as busy as he could, considering the way he felt: training, doing jobs for Pastor Jim, sparring with him while Jim made him recite Latin exorcisms. Dean pushed through the pain like a good soldier, but he knew he fought like he was phoning it in. Dad would have been all up his ass over a performance like that, but Jim just backed off his attacks and gave him concerned looks when he thought Dean wasn't looking.
When Dad finally emerged, he looked haggard and beaten down, but he was raring to go. While Dean wished he could remind Dad that his birthday was the next day, he knew as ideas went it was a piss poor one. Jim, on the other hand, had things to say to John, though Dean was upstairs packing his duffel, so he didn't know what those things were.
Dad's voice, however, carried just fine, at least for the part that went, "Don't need you telling me how to raise my goddamn kid."
If Jim pointed out that Dean was almost 22 and no longer in need of raising, Dean didn't hear. In the end, nothing changed. They loaded the car up and took off before sundown. By 10 pm they were in Solon Springs, Wisconsin.
The birthday surprise that greeted him the next morning was a fresh round of pain. His whole torso hurt like someone had given him his birthday whacks with a tire iron, though the worst of it was concentrated around his hips. He found himself curled into a tight ball in bed when he awoke. It overwhelmed his body and mind to such a degree that it took him a while to realize that the pain in his feet had completely receded, and his arms and hands hurt but that was largely swallowed by the crushing pains elsewhere.
His birthday present to himself was a couple of the Vicodin from the first aid kit. It took the edge off the pain, but not the longing for his phone to ring and for it to be Sammy on the other end. Just a lousy fucking five minutes, if that's all he could have. Dean spent the day without complaint in a small-town courthouse, looking up death records and land transactions while Dad was in the library combing through old news reports. Dad hadn't said whether this was about a typical job or the epic, super-secret project Dean wasn't supposed to realize he was compiling. Dean didn't much care, he just took notes as neatly as possible while shifting in his chair or standing with his arms braced on the desk where he workeds. Every two or three hours, Dean would take a break to stand on the courthouse steps and down Vicodin with a bottle of Coke.
To Dean's surprise (brutally suppressed), Dad had remembered it was his birthday. After they finished for the day, he took Dean out for a steak dinner and a few beers. No way was Dean admitting to raiding the Vicodin stash, so he let his pace lag behind Dad's only slightly.
Which was why, when Sam did call to wish him a happy birthday, he caught Dean both asleep and epically fucked up. "Hey," he slurred into the phone when it finally registered as something he needed to answer.
"Hey. Dean," Sam sounded like he'd been caught off-guard. But he was the one who'd called Dean. Dean frowned. Wasn't he? "I thought I was gonna have to leave a message. Are you with someone?"
"Sammmeeeeee," Dean said. "Hey, Sam. No, man, I'm not with anyone. 'S just me. You okay? Is everything all right?"
"Yeah, of course. I'm good. I'm just calling cause it's your birthday."
"Is it?" Dean scrubbed a hand over his face, trying to concentrate.
"Huh," Sam said after a brief pause. "It still is in California, anyway. Sorry. I've got a big paper due, and it's been kicking my ass."
"You want me to come up there?" Dean asked. Because I will. I'll kick its ass so hard--"
"It's a paper, Dean. An assignment. I can handle it, I'm just saying it's eating up my time."
"Oh," Dean said lamely. "Sure."
"Sounds like you've been celebrating."
"Yeah, I guess I hit it a little hard tonight. Dad and I went out. Steak and beers."
The mention of Dad added an instant note of tension into the conversation.
"Hey, that's great. Well, I wanted to wish you a happy birthday."
"Awesome. Well, thanks." He thought of launching into one of the things that had been left unsaid, but since there were a million of them, he couldn't untangle just one to start with. Not that any of them would change anything. "Don't be a stranger."
Sam added some meaningless noises, and they hung up.
The next morning, Dean wasn't sure if the conversation he remembered was real or imagined or dreamed. He let go of the question fairly early, given little mental room for anything that wasn't the pain in his hips. Dad noticed and kept Dean on research duty while he hunted. Though he hated it, Dean couldn't argue with it. He spent at least half his library time looking up symptoms on medical sites. If not every road led to cancer, the ones that did were expressways.
As if it wasn't enough that he needed to down some Vicodin to get any sleep, one morning Dean found he could barely fit into his jeans, and once he did he could hardly breathe. After trying his other two pairs, he went back to the first. It took a few deep knee bends to get them a little looser, but he still felt like the waistband would cut him in half as he tied his new hand-me-down sneakers. Jesus, he was getting soft. He'd have to get back to running and hunting whether he felt like it or not.
In the meantime, he scraped together some cash and went to the thrift shop he always passed on the way to the library. Throwing half a dozen pairs over his arm, Dean closed himself in a dressing room and tried on every single one, with no luck. If they fit in the hips, they were ridiculously loose in the waist, but if they looked like they'd work at the waist, he couldn't even get them all the way on.
"What the everlasting fuck?" he muttered as he tugged off the final pair.
Yanking his tee up to get a better look at the problem, he froze in horror at the outward curve of his hips, leading to the inward curve at his waist. "That's fucking impossible," he said. This was not how guys were shaped. This was not how he was shaped. And you didn't just turn not-guy-shaped without noticing.
Except there was no mirror in the shithole he and Dad were renting, except a cracked and mottled one the size of a paperback book. Dean always showered quickly, unless he was taking what he liked to think of as A Moment, and there was always a washcloth between him and his body (except during said Moment, but that was just his dick). Had this ... rearrangement been going on the whole time he'd been having pains in his hips?
Beginning to freak, Dean stripped off his socks. Finally he realized his feet had undergone more than a change in size. They looked ... daintier. His undershorts flew off next, and his dick was still there (thankfuckthankfuckthankfuck), surrounded by a thatch of brown with glints of gold, but the narrow line of hair that led up toward his navel like ants to a dropped cookie, that was gone.
The t-shirt fell back around his hips in his frantic assessment of the damage, and with trepidation he pulled it off and let it drop on the pile of discarded jeans. Dean stared at himself in the mirror, his breath stuck somewhere in his chest.
It wasn't just the widening of his hips and the change in his feet. Everything had just ... gone soft. It wasn't that his muscles had gone to fat, just that they weren't as sharply delineated. His chest and shoulders were still broad -- enough that they looked out of proportion, even with the widened hip -- but they had been smoothed out somehow. And the planes of his face --
That's just fucking crazy. It's the lights in here, that's all.
Hastily he snatched up his clothes and pulled them on, stuffing his feet into his shoes without even putting his socks on first. Stumbling over the tangle of denim on the floor, he crashed hard into the door jamb of the dressing room, recovered, and hurried out of the shop.
Refusing to believe what he'd seen, he went to another store and grabbed some jeans off the rack, more to have an excuse to look into another full-length mirror to chase away the effects of the first store's bad lighting. The effect was the same, though, and he quickly left in search of a third opinion. Again he got more evidence that his body really had changed. Practically strangling on a sob, he sat on the bench in the changing room, head in his hands, until the clerk came thumping on doors to find an empty room. Dean grabbed up a badly fitting pair and bought them, along with a belt that cinched them in at the waist and a couple of flannel shirts to camouflage the things that were happening to him.
But what the hell was happening to him?
If it had been Sam asking the same question under the same circumstances, Dean would have said, "Now that's just willful stupidity." As it was, not even Dean's strong will could keep the answer at bay for more than a couple of days. The pain subsided in his hips but moved upward into his shoulders and ribcage. For the first time it was not just bone but the soft tissues of his pecs ached as if something with inhuman strength had punched him there repeatedly.
That was precisely when the self-indulgent bullshit stopped and he was forced to admit what was happening. Because when he reached up to smooth his hands over the fierce ache, there were small mounds he could cup in his palms.
This time when he rummaged through the med kit he bypassed the drugs and went for an Ace bandage, winding it around his upper ribcage until it nearly cut off his breath. For good measure he layered a couple of t-shirts and one of the thrift shop flannel shirts over it. Push them down. Hide them. But if he were completely honest with himself, he'd have to admit part of him was hoping he could push them down, make them go away.
Right. Cause magical thinking always helps. The thought actually made him laugh out loud, because what the fuck. This was magical. This was fucking witchery, if he knew anything at all about how things worked.
As it turned out he had plenty of time to think about it, thanks to Dad finishing the job and deciding to take on another in southwest Minnesota. Dean sat hunched in the passenger seat of the Impala, working it all out in his head. He was certain this whole thing started during the blur of women he'd slept with right after the Christmas trip to Palo Alto. He had a damn good idea exactly which one it was -- and not just because she was the only one he remembered that well.
She was a massage therapist. And at first he'd thought he'd lost her with the happy endings joke, but she'd smothered her clear irritation and kept him talking. When he admitted he'd never had a real massage, she'd talked him into trying it. Though it wasn't his nature to be shy about getting naked with a member of the fairer sex, he'd felt nervous and awkward about this. Maybe it was the office she'd led him to, a cross between beaded hippydippyland and a medical office. She (and Dean couldn't for the life of him remember her name) gave him a cup of tea while she went into the massage room to set everything up.
"I've never done this before," she'd said as she showed him back into the massage room. "I mean, brought a guy back here this way."
"Well, like I said, I've never done this before, so I guess we're even."
She smiled. "Not quite." She didn't go on to explain that, but told him to get undressed and lie on the padded table, face down. Then she left the room, shutting the door behind her.
Dean closed his eyes, barely aware of the music on the tapedeck or the Impala's rumble. Everything shifted inside his head, rearranging so that innocuous details suddenly carried enormous weight. Candlelight. Incense. Music -- not soft and new agey, but so low in volume it was more subconscious than heard. Full of drum beats and chants. Scented oil -- aromatherapy, she'd said when he asked. Fuck, he'd laid himself out there naked in the midst of all this like a sacrificial lamb, and it had not even occurred to him. Because he was going to get his rocks off, and that was going to help him forget that Sam had gone off to spend the holidays with some other family that fit better into his new and perfect life.
"Champ?" his dad interrupted, startling Dean so that he bumped his head against the side window. "You okay?"
Dean must have made a noise of some kind. His throat felt full of noises -- whimpers, howls, curses -- all backed up behind a massive knot. "Must have dozed off," he said. "Guess it was a dream."
"Sing out if you want to stretch out in back, or need to stop to grab some food or hit the head. We've got a ways to go."
"It's okay," Dean lied. "I'm fine right now."
***
"How are you feeling now?" she had asked when she came back into the room. "Still nervous?"
"No." He would have turned to look at her, drink her in, but he was so relaxed he felt melted into the table.
"Good," she said. "I can do my work so much better if you're relaxed. Ready?"
Dean didn't really remember much now about what he'd said, except that he'd made that fucking happy ending joke again. Because, seriously, he never learned.
She had only laughed, trailing a hand along his sheet-covered leg. "Don't worry, it'll be an ending you'll never forget." Folding the sheet up to his upper thighs, she took one of his feet in her hands, kneading with a slow, delicious pressure that made a moan slip from his throat. "Sweetie," she said, "I'm going to remake you from the ground up."
Author: nwhepcat
SPN pre-series,
Characters: Dean, John, Bobby, a flicker of Sam
Pairing: some D/OFC, but for all intents & purposes gen
Rating: R
Summary: Dean should have known better than to ask for the happy ending. Set in the first winter after Sam's departure for Stanford.
Note: Written for an anonymous prompt in the hoodie_time Dean-centric h/c challenge #5
At first Dean thought it all had to do with Sam and Stanford and the way his brother's absence hurt all the damn time.
A long while later, when he finally realized what was happening to him, he knew that was exactly the case, only in a completely different way than he'd originally thought.
It started that first Christmas without Sam. Dean had conducted a massive campaign to convince his dad to go to Stanford and get Sam for a family holiday. It might be a Winchester style holiday, but at least they'd be together. That had been Dean's thinking, because he couldn't bear the idea of Sam being all alone in the dorm for a week because he had noplace to go.
Only when they'd gotten there, Sam was nowhere to be found. Dad expected the worst, but when he picked the lock on Sam's door, they'd entered to find his bed made with military neatness, his duffel missing, and one of Sam's ever-present lists balled up in the trash. Turn in econ paper. Pack psych text and Merchant. Gift for Paul's parents.
"Awesome," Dean had said when Dad wordlessly handed him the paper. "He's found himself another family."
So it had turned into an extra special Winchester Christmas, with Dad staying plastered for a fair amount of the holiday week, and Dean screwing his way through a large assortment of women.
When Dean woke up on New Year's Day he had nothing more than the customary headache and sour stomach.
It was a damn shame he didn't know at the time it would be the best morning he'd have for a long while.
***
What woke him at three the next morning wasn't his dad, but the pain. It shot through both his feet. Like a giant's hands folded around them, crushing the bones together until it was all Dean could do not to yell out. For a long time he lay in bed, dreading the thought of putting any weight on them, but after an hour he knew he wouldn't get back to sleep unless he got something to take the edge off. The Vicodin Dad had scammed was reserved for real pain, requiring jagged bones poking through flesh, so Dean rummaged in the field kit for the aspirin and downed four.
They didn't seem to do anything at all, but eventually he drifted back to sleep, only to be roused with a rough hand shaking his shoulder at six. "Look sharp, son. We're heading out to Pastor Jim's. He's been looking into some things for me."
Biting back a groan, Dean swung his legs over the bed, conducting his morning rituals as quickly as he could before packing up his duffel.
His dad watched him closely as he hobbled out to the Impala. "You hurtin'?"
While he never would have complained without prompting, Dean knew better than to insult his father's intelligence by denying it. "Yes sir. Some."
Dad frowned. "Yeah, looks like 'some.' Which one's bothering you?"
"Both."
"You went for a run yesterday. Were they bothering you then?"
"No sir."
"And nothing happened. You didn't twist anything or stumble."
"No sir."
Gesturing for the duffel, Dad said, "Let me look at those sneakers." He dug out the shoes Dean wore to go running and scowled at the rundown soles. "These are shot. Let me see the ones you've got on. Lift up a foot."
Dean leaned against the Impala, her cold metal skin making him suck in a breath. He lifted the left foot, then the right.
"Those have got to go too," Dad said. "You should have said something."
"They weren't bothering me before," Dean said, and after looking at him intently for a moment, his dad seemed to take that as the truth.
"We'll find an army surplus store," Dad said, leaving Dean to sit gratefully in the passenger seat while Dad went to the motel office to ask for directions.
Dad hadn't said anything about the cost, but Dean knew this was the last thing they needed right now. They were down to their last credit card, waiting for the next batch to appear at their mail drop. The one that was left had to stay uncompromised, used only for jobs.
When Dad settled back behind the wheel, Dean said, "Dad, it can wait. You want to get to Pastor Jim and besides --"
"No it can't wait," his dad declared. "A soldier takes care of his tools, and that includes your boots and your feet."
"Yes sir," Dean said.
It wasn't easy determining the fit of shoes when Dean's feet felt like they were being crushed even when he wore nothing but socks, but eventually he left the surplus store with a pair of boots, another of shoes, some socks without holes and an old man bitching about how surplus stores used to sell actual military surplus instead of overpriced shit for campers and sportsmen.
That bitchfest was nothing compared to the one two weeks later when he discovered Dean pulling on a third pair of socks so the boots would fit. "Goddammit, Dean," Dad shouted, despite the fact that Pastor Jim's housekeeper was working downstairs. "I've told you a million times, fuck what you like, you buy the shoes that fit!"
"I did, I swear," Dean countered, despite the danger of arguing with his dad. "They fit then. But they don't feel right anymore."
That went over about as well as expected. Dean found himself dismantling, cleaning and reassembling the old man's entire arsenal. If it hadn't been for his fucked up feet, there'd probably have been a fifteen mile run on top of that, so he counted himself lucky. By the time he finished, he was fumbling every small piece he picked up, and the ache in his hands, wrists, arms and shoulders was nearly as fierce as the pain in his feet. Without complaint, he downed a handful of aspirin and a Benadryl on top of it to help him sleep, then went to bed.
If anything, he felt worse in the morning, but he knew better than to report this information to his dad. Jim took him to the church's clothes closet and let him pick out some shoes that actually fit.
They were two sizes too small for him, but they fit perfectly.
While they were there, Dean saw more of Pastor Jim than dad, who seemed to be hand-copying entire texts into his goddamn notebook. Hell, making an illuminated perfect copy, for all Dean knew. It was taking long enough. Dean kept himself as busy as he could, considering the way he felt: training, doing jobs for Pastor Jim, sparring with him while Jim made him recite Latin exorcisms. Dean pushed through the pain like a good soldier, but he knew he fought like he was phoning it in. Dad would have been all up his ass over a performance like that, but Jim just backed off his attacks and gave him concerned looks when he thought Dean wasn't looking.
When Dad finally emerged, he looked haggard and beaten down, but he was raring to go. While Dean wished he could remind Dad that his birthday was the next day, he knew as ideas went it was a piss poor one. Jim, on the other hand, had things to say to John, though Dean was upstairs packing his duffel, so he didn't know what those things were.
Dad's voice, however, carried just fine, at least for the part that went, "Don't need you telling me how to raise my goddamn kid."
If Jim pointed out that Dean was almost 22 and no longer in need of raising, Dean didn't hear. In the end, nothing changed. They loaded the car up and took off before sundown. By 10 pm they were in Solon Springs, Wisconsin.
The birthday surprise that greeted him the next morning was a fresh round of pain. His whole torso hurt like someone had given him his birthday whacks with a tire iron, though the worst of it was concentrated around his hips. He found himself curled into a tight ball in bed when he awoke. It overwhelmed his body and mind to such a degree that it took him a while to realize that the pain in his feet had completely receded, and his arms and hands hurt but that was largely swallowed by the crushing pains elsewhere.
His birthday present to himself was a couple of the Vicodin from the first aid kit. It took the edge off the pain, but not the longing for his phone to ring and for it to be Sammy on the other end. Just a lousy fucking five minutes, if that's all he could have. Dean spent the day without complaint in a small-town courthouse, looking up death records and land transactions while Dad was in the library combing through old news reports. Dad hadn't said whether this was about a typical job or the epic, super-secret project Dean wasn't supposed to realize he was compiling. Dean didn't much care, he just took notes as neatly as possible while shifting in his chair or standing with his arms braced on the desk where he workeds. Every two or three hours, Dean would take a break to stand on the courthouse steps and down Vicodin with a bottle of Coke.
To Dean's surprise (brutally suppressed), Dad had remembered it was his birthday. After they finished for the day, he took Dean out for a steak dinner and a few beers. No way was Dean admitting to raiding the Vicodin stash, so he let his pace lag behind Dad's only slightly.
Which was why, when Sam did call to wish him a happy birthday, he caught Dean both asleep and epically fucked up. "Hey," he slurred into the phone when it finally registered as something he needed to answer.
"Hey. Dean," Sam sounded like he'd been caught off-guard. But he was the one who'd called Dean. Dean frowned. Wasn't he? "I thought I was gonna have to leave a message. Are you with someone?"
"Sammmeeeeee," Dean said. "Hey, Sam. No, man, I'm not with anyone. 'S just me. You okay? Is everything all right?"
"Yeah, of course. I'm good. I'm just calling cause it's your birthday."
"Is it?" Dean scrubbed a hand over his face, trying to concentrate.
"Huh," Sam said after a brief pause. "It still is in California, anyway. Sorry. I've got a big paper due, and it's been kicking my ass."
"You want me to come up there?" Dean asked. Because I will. I'll kick its ass so hard--"
"It's a paper, Dean. An assignment. I can handle it, I'm just saying it's eating up my time."
"Oh," Dean said lamely. "Sure."
"Sounds like you've been celebrating."
"Yeah, I guess I hit it a little hard tonight. Dad and I went out. Steak and beers."
The mention of Dad added an instant note of tension into the conversation.
"Hey, that's great. Well, I wanted to wish you a happy birthday."
"Awesome. Well, thanks." He thought of launching into one of the things that had been left unsaid, but since there were a million of them, he couldn't untangle just one to start with. Not that any of them would change anything. "Don't be a stranger."
Sam added some meaningless noises, and they hung up.
The next morning, Dean wasn't sure if the conversation he remembered was real or imagined or dreamed. He let go of the question fairly early, given little mental room for anything that wasn't the pain in his hips. Dad noticed and kept Dean on research duty while he hunted. Though he hated it, Dean couldn't argue with it. He spent at least half his library time looking up symptoms on medical sites. If not every road led to cancer, the ones that did were expressways.
As if it wasn't enough that he needed to down some Vicodin to get any sleep, one morning Dean found he could barely fit into his jeans, and once he did he could hardly breathe. After trying his other two pairs, he went back to the first. It took a few deep knee bends to get them a little looser, but he still felt like the waistband would cut him in half as he tied his new hand-me-down sneakers. Jesus, he was getting soft. He'd have to get back to running and hunting whether he felt like it or not.
In the meantime, he scraped together some cash and went to the thrift shop he always passed on the way to the library. Throwing half a dozen pairs over his arm, Dean closed himself in a dressing room and tried on every single one, with no luck. If they fit in the hips, they were ridiculously loose in the waist, but if they looked like they'd work at the waist, he couldn't even get them all the way on.
"What the everlasting fuck?" he muttered as he tugged off the final pair.
Yanking his tee up to get a better look at the problem, he froze in horror at the outward curve of his hips, leading to the inward curve at his waist. "That's fucking impossible," he said. This was not how guys were shaped. This was not how he was shaped. And you didn't just turn not-guy-shaped without noticing.
Except there was no mirror in the shithole he and Dad were renting, except a cracked and mottled one the size of a paperback book. Dean always showered quickly, unless he was taking what he liked to think of as A Moment, and there was always a washcloth between him and his body (except during said Moment, but that was just his dick). Had this ... rearrangement been going on the whole time he'd been having pains in his hips?
Beginning to freak, Dean stripped off his socks. Finally he realized his feet had undergone more than a change in size. They looked ... daintier. His undershorts flew off next, and his dick was still there (thankfuckthankfuckthankfuck), surrounded by a thatch of brown with glints of gold, but the narrow line of hair that led up toward his navel like ants to a dropped cookie, that was gone.
The t-shirt fell back around his hips in his frantic assessment of the damage, and with trepidation he pulled it off and let it drop on the pile of discarded jeans. Dean stared at himself in the mirror, his breath stuck somewhere in his chest.
It wasn't just the widening of his hips and the change in his feet. Everything had just ... gone soft. It wasn't that his muscles had gone to fat, just that they weren't as sharply delineated. His chest and shoulders were still broad -- enough that they looked out of proportion, even with the widened hip -- but they had been smoothed out somehow. And the planes of his face --
That's just fucking crazy. It's the lights in here, that's all.
Hastily he snatched up his clothes and pulled them on, stuffing his feet into his shoes without even putting his socks on first. Stumbling over the tangle of denim on the floor, he crashed hard into the door jamb of the dressing room, recovered, and hurried out of the shop.
Refusing to believe what he'd seen, he went to another store and grabbed some jeans off the rack, more to have an excuse to look into another full-length mirror to chase away the effects of the first store's bad lighting. The effect was the same, though, and he quickly left in search of a third opinion. Again he got more evidence that his body really had changed. Practically strangling on a sob, he sat on the bench in the changing room, head in his hands, until the clerk came thumping on doors to find an empty room. Dean grabbed up a badly fitting pair and bought them, along with a belt that cinched them in at the waist and a couple of flannel shirts to camouflage the things that were happening to him.
But what the hell was happening to him?
If it had been Sam asking the same question under the same circumstances, Dean would have said, "Now that's just willful stupidity." As it was, not even Dean's strong will could keep the answer at bay for more than a couple of days. The pain subsided in his hips but moved upward into his shoulders and ribcage. For the first time it was not just bone but the soft tissues of his pecs ached as if something with inhuman strength had punched him there repeatedly.
That was precisely when the self-indulgent bullshit stopped and he was forced to admit what was happening. Because when he reached up to smooth his hands over the fierce ache, there were small mounds he could cup in his palms.
This time when he rummaged through the med kit he bypassed the drugs and went for an Ace bandage, winding it around his upper ribcage until it nearly cut off his breath. For good measure he layered a couple of t-shirts and one of the thrift shop flannel shirts over it. Push them down. Hide them. But if he were completely honest with himself, he'd have to admit part of him was hoping he could push them down, make them go away.
Right. Cause magical thinking always helps. The thought actually made him laugh out loud, because what the fuck. This was magical. This was fucking witchery, if he knew anything at all about how things worked.
As it turned out he had plenty of time to think about it, thanks to Dad finishing the job and deciding to take on another in southwest Minnesota. Dean sat hunched in the passenger seat of the Impala, working it all out in his head. He was certain this whole thing started during the blur of women he'd slept with right after the Christmas trip to Palo Alto. He had a damn good idea exactly which one it was -- and not just because she was the only one he remembered that well.
She was a massage therapist. And at first he'd thought he'd lost her with the happy endings joke, but she'd smothered her clear irritation and kept him talking. When he admitted he'd never had a real massage, she'd talked him into trying it. Though it wasn't his nature to be shy about getting naked with a member of the fairer sex, he'd felt nervous and awkward about this. Maybe it was the office she'd led him to, a cross between beaded hippydippyland and a medical office. She (and Dean couldn't for the life of him remember her name) gave him a cup of tea while she went into the massage room to set everything up.
"I've never done this before," she'd said as she showed him back into the massage room. "I mean, brought a guy back here this way."
"Well, like I said, I've never done this before, so I guess we're even."
She smiled. "Not quite." She didn't go on to explain that, but told him to get undressed and lie on the padded table, face down. Then she left the room, shutting the door behind her.
Dean closed his eyes, barely aware of the music on the tapedeck or the Impala's rumble. Everything shifted inside his head, rearranging so that innocuous details suddenly carried enormous weight. Candlelight. Incense. Music -- not soft and new agey, but so low in volume it was more subconscious than heard. Full of drum beats and chants. Scented oil -- aromatherapy, she'd said when he asked. Fuck, he'd laid himself out there naked in the midst of all this like a sacrificial lamb, and it had not even occurred to him. Because he was going to get his rocks off, and that was going to help him forget that Sam had gone off to spend the holidays with some other family that fit better into his new and perfect life.
"Champ?" his dad interrupted, startling Dean so that he bumped his head against the side window. "You okay?"
Dean must have made a noise of some kind. His throat felt full of noises -- whimpers, howls, curses -- all backed up behind a massive knot. "Must have dozed off," he said. "Guess it was a dream."
"Sing out if you want to stretch out in back, or need to stop to grab some food or hit the head. We've got a ways to go."
"It's okay," Dean lied. "I'm fine right now."
***
"How are you feeling now?" she had asked when she came back into the room. "Still nervous?"
"No." He would have turned to look at her, drink her in, but he was so relaxed he felt melted into the table.
"Good," she said. "I can do my work so much better if you're relaxed. Ready?"
Dean didn't really remember much now about what he'd said, except that he'd made that fucking happy ending joke again. Because, seriously, he never learned.
She had only laughed, trailing a hand along his sheet-covered leg. "Don't worry, it'll be an ending you'll never forget." Folding the sheet up to his upper thighs, she took one of his feet in her hands, kneading with a slow, delicious pressure that made a moan slip from his throat. "Sweetie," she said, "I'm going to remake you from the ground up."