Fic: Getting Soft, Part 2/3: (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 comment fic meme #5
Part One: http://hoodie-time.livejournal.com/421179.html
This time Dean did cry out, jolting back from the car door.
Dad shot him a sidelong look. "I'm gonna find a place to stop. I think we could both use a break."
It was the last thing he wanted. Dean wasn't sure he'd be able to hide the new shape of his body or his red-rimmed eyes if the old man were to sit across a diner booth from him. But there was no arguing with Dad when he made an executive decision, so Dean trailed along behind him until he could veer off for the bathroom.
The bindings weren't doing the job as well as they had at first, because -- and here was a massive non-surprise -- they had more to hold back.
"Tell me what you like in a girl," she'd murmured as her hands had worked the twin mounds of his ass. He had thought he'd be bare through this whole thing, but she had just draped the sheets back over his legs before she went to work here.
His surprise had shifted his attention from her words, so "girl" hadn't pinged any warnings for him. Not then. He had laughed quietly into the strange space below his face, which was cradled in a horseshoe-shaped support. "I'm not picky," he'd said. "I like all shapes, sizes and shades of girls. Willing and eager, that's my type."
"Aren't you broad-minded," she'd said.
He'd laughed like the asshole he was. "I wouldn't call 'em broads. They don't like that."
She hadn't reacted to that, just concentrated on some insanely blissful thing she was doing around his hipbones. "But there must be something you particularly like."
She'd been simultaneously asking him questions and robbing him of the ability to think or speak. But somehow Dean managed to answer her question.
"I love a great rack. They have to be real, though. Soft." There was so little softness in his life. "I even like them just a slight bit different in size. It's hot, because it's real." He drifted for a moment or two, carried along on this current of unfamiliar sensation. Then, because he could never shut up soon enough: "Curves. That nipped in waist, then boom! -- mammary awesomeness."
Jesus, what an asshole he was.
All this time he'd been remembering this, Dean had been locked in a stall unwrapping the Ace bandage, assessing the damage. He was still able to cup them completely using his whole hands, but he wondered if that would be true by morning. Panicked, he wrapped them again, brutally tight, and layered back up again.
When Dean pushed his way out of the stall, he was confronted with a wild-eyed reject from the grunge era who might or might not be in the wrong restroom. It took him several skittering heartbeats to realize that he was seeing his own reflection above the sink. Bracing himself on the porcelain, he leaned in to study his face. His bone structure was unchanged -- he knew by now he'd be well aware when that was happening -- but there were changes already. His face seemed just a little bit rounder, its lines softened. Where he should have had two days' worth of stubble, there was none. His eyelashes, which Dean had always thought were too girly as it was, were now a mascara commercial of length and thickness. But that wasn't the worst of it, not by a longshot.
Jesus God, he looked -- he looked so much like his mom. How could he even go out there and make his dad look at this face?
Turning the taps on full blast, he scrubbed at his face as viciously as he'd rewound the bindings on his chest. As if water could have any effect on what was happening -- what had already happened.
As he reached for the paper towel dispenser, the door banged open and his dad burst through. Dean started at him stupidly, water dripping from his nose and chin, as Dad took him in.
"I was about to ask if you fell in, but I guess I already got my answer. Shake a leg, son. Food's already on the table. I ordered you the fried chicken. Waitress says it's the best thing they've got."
Dean finished wiping at his face and followed his dad to the dinner that awaited.
***
He expected the third degree, or at the very least to be told to stop the fucking moping. But instead Dad talked about the food -- the waitress had told the truth about the chicken; it was damn fine. He told Dean about a guy he'd known in the Marines who came from around here -- Dean wasn't even sure where "here" was, too wrapped up in his freakout. The story was the kind he'd never heard his father tell; there was no lesson or warning worked into the narrative. Just some memories about a guy Dad hadn't thought of in years. He wished Sam could hear this -- he'd never believe it otherwise.
Dean managed to eat some of his dinner, but the waitress finally gave up on him and packed the leftovers into a styrofoam box already heaped with extra biscuits. He put them away on the back seat of the Impala, where they perfumed the air in the car, but didn't stir his hunger. All Dean could think about was what came next.
Once she had urged him to turn onto his back, she'd worked his shoulders, collarbone and sternum, murmuring soothing nothings as Dean blissed out. At least he'd thought they were nothings, but now he wonders if they were incantations. He'd been so far gone at that point that she could have been hog calling for all the impression it made. But he remembered her hands. They spent a long time on his chest, giving him an elaborate lesson (supplemented with tongue and teeth) about the sensitivity of guy nipples. Then she'd moved on to running her hands along the line of his throat, her touch as soothing as a warm shower after a hunt in frigid weather. Then face and scalp. He could only imagine how it would feel when the planes and angles of his face began shifting and refining.
Remake you from the ground up.
Except for that one last detail. The happy goddamn ending.
"Stop the car!" Dean blurted, hurriedly rolling down the window to get some air on his face.
His dad pulled onto the gravel shoulder and Dean threw open the door, emptying his stomach.
***
Dad found them a motel as soon as Dean stopped retching his guts out. He even let Dean sleep in, which had to be an all-time first. As soon as Dean was awake, though, Dad delivered the news: He'd been asked to lend a hand with a poltergeist job just over the state line in South Dakota, and was leaving Dean here to start the research on the original job.
"Shouldn't be long," his dad told him as he gathered supplies for the new hunt. "All the groundwork's been laid, it's just it'll take two men to handle this thing. I'll be back as soon as I can."
It'll take two men. "Okay, sure." Maybe this was it. Dad had seen the emergence of Mary Winchester's features in their son, and he was bailing before it got worse. Dean couldn't blame him; he'd do the same if he could.
Dad paused at the door. "You call if you need something, son. You hear me?"
"Yes sir," Dean said without hesitation, just as he'd been trained to do.
***
The sound of the Impala's engine had no sooner faded than some kind of clarity settled over Dean. The realization hit him that he had to do something about this, not stand there like a fucking deer in the headlights watching his oncoming doom. He'd already lost too much time to denial and then panic. The presence of his old man played a not inconsiderable part in that, he knew, but that didn't change the fact that he'd wasted a lot of time.
He speed dialled Pastor Jim, breathing something close to a prayer of thanks when he got him on the second ring. Cutting the pleasantries short, Dean told him, "Dad and I are working separate jobs at the moment, and I've run into something that looks like it could be heavy spellwork. You know any hunters who have experience with that? It's kind of urgent."
He wrote down the name and number of Bobby Singer. The name sounded familiar, as does the rough voice that greeted him.
"Mr. Singer," he began, "I'm Dean Winchester, John Win--"
"I know who you are," Singer growled. "What, too good for 'Uncle Bobby' now that you're a grown-ass man?"
Now Dean remembered. Gruff ol' Uncle Bobby and that demented dog of his, the both of them in the bark category in the bark vs. bite faceoff. And that junkyard of his, a ten-year-old's dream. The memory made him grin. "Hell, I thought it might make you feel old."
"Don't need you for that, kid. To what do I owe the pleasure?"
"Dad and I are working on separate jobs, and I've kinda stumbled into something that sounds like it could be weapons-grade magic. Pastor Jim told me you know your stuff."
"Dunno if that's true, but I got a helluva library. What's your situation?"
The phone nearly slipped through his sweaty grip. "It's not my situation. It's this guy I ran into. I said I'd try to help him."
"Well, let's have it, son. What's his problem?"
"He's ... turning into a girl. A woman," he corrected himself.
There was a pause, then Bobby repeated, "Turning. Not turned overnight or shazzam, in the blink of an eye."
"Right. It's been going on a while."
Bobby grunted. "He have any theories on when this started, or what could've set this in motion?"
"Yeah, he does," Dean said. "There was this woman he slept with, and he might've pissed her off without meaning to." Because that was what could happen when you were a cheerfully clueless dick.
"And you think maybe she was a witch?"
"Well, from what the guy said there were candles and incense and some kind of smelly tea."
Dean didn't like the sound of the nothing that was coming down the line, or the fact that there was such a lot of it. Finally Bobby asked, "Did she get any nail clippings or a snippet of hair from you?"
Dean closed his eyes, thinking of a condom and its disappearance (which he hadn't even noticed, not in the state he'd been in) after the happy ending. He palmed the phone for a moment, trying to get his breathing under control, then he raised it and spoke. "There might've been body fluids."
The pause that provoked was even longer than the previous one. Dean's heart sank.
"Do you have a line on who this woman is?"
"Uh, no," Dean said. "He uh, uh --" Think, goddammit! "He met her at a rave or something. Some big one, out in California. There were people there from all over." Sounded better than I have no idea where I was at the time.
Bobby hmmmm'd over the line. "Well, you found yourself a helluva case there, Dean. I'm gonna have to crack open some books, see what I can find. Can your friend hang tight while I dig around, maybe make some calls?"
Dean laughed darkly. "He hasn't got much choice, has he?"
"Guess not. Well, hang in there, and I'll see what I can come up with. You say hello to your daddy when you see him."
"I will. Thanks, Bobby."
"Sure thing. And you come out and visit sometime, Dean. Last time I saw you, you didn't even come up to a toad's nuts."
"I'll do that."
Dean knew how research went, especially when it came to musty books without indexes. Slipping his phone in his pocket, he went out for a huge breakfast, then found a barbershop and got his somewhat shaggy hair (nothing like Sam's, but starting to brush his collar) chopped short. The barber was one of those who didn't like kibbitzing while he was working, Dean guessed, because almost the whole time the man had Dean's chair facing away from the mirror.
When the barber finally whirled his chair back to face his reflection, Dean was struck anew at how much he'd changed. And for the first time it occurred to him that it wasn't just the fact that he was being turned into a girl -- it was that Dean was being erased. The face beneath the short cut was more a girl's face than a guy's, and the hand wasn't covered by the plastic cape looked slender and delicate. Not the broad, rough hand he was used to.
The barber scowled. "You don't like it?"
"What?" Dean recovered himself. "No, it's fine." He tipped the guy twice as much as he should have and headed out of the shop.
He should probably hit the library, he thought, and do some of the preliminary work Dad had left in his hands. But the thought of his dad's return filled him with panic. By that time there would be no hiding what Dean was becoming. The soldier that Dad had molded in his image would be gone, and in his place would be a girl whose face bore too strong a resemblance to the woman Dad had lost. How could Dean not be a liability then? He was no longer certain of his strength, and he hadn't thought to test it. But worse than that, how could Dad stand the constant reminder of a life he'd lost?
He walked back to the motel and gathered up his shit, then hotwired a car and aimed it toward Chicago.
***
By the time Dean was even halfway to Albert Lea, his throat was on fire. It hurt like hell even to swallow. Pulling off the highway at a truck stop, he gassed up the car and bought every kind of throat lozenge they had with the money Dad had left with him. All he had left was enough for a cheap motel and maybe a meal. He'd have to get more somehow, but that was beyond his capabilities right now.
Another thirty miles down the road, his cell rang. Dean turned off the music he'd had cranked up to drown out his thoughts and picked up the phone. The caller ID read Singer Salvage.
"Hey, Bobby. What's the news?" His voice sounded funny to him, and felt like it was forced through a straw lined with broken glass.
"Still working on it, kid. I've got some calls out, and they're working on it. How's your client holding up?"
"Client? Oh. About like you'd expect."
With an abruptness that took him off guard, Bobby asked, "Those car noises I'm hearin'?"
Dean nearly ran off the road at that, and then there were muffled noises on the other end of the line followed by, "Dean." It was his dad's voice.
"Dean, answer me." This wasn't the tone of voice he was used to hearing his dad's orders in, but there was something familiar about it.
"Yes sir."
"Where are you now, son?"
There was no question whatsoever that Dean would answer him. "I-90, going east. Coming up on Fairmont."
"Are you headed to Pastor Jim's?"
Dean laughed, which felt and sounded like it was pushed through a cheese grater. "God, no."
"Listen to me, Dean," Dad continued in this strange voice. "I want you to stop somewhere in Fairmont. Our SOP for emergency situations. How about you tell me what that is."
Finally it occurred to Dean what was familiar about that tone of voice. He's heard it on TV and in movies, when characters are trying to talk someone off a ledge.
"Son," Dad prompted, and the word made Dean's gut twist.
"First motel listed in the phone book. Under the name Jim Rockford."
"Good, Dean. That's good. I want you to go there and wait for me."
"Yes sir."
"I'll be there as soon as I can."
Dean thumbed the phone off and dropped it on the passenger seat, all at once feeling completely defeated.
***
He did exactly as he was told, of course. Being remade from the ground up did not include removal of the instinct to follow John Winchester's orders.
Dad knows. It was the only thought in his head, but it ricocheted around in his head like a Yosemite Sam pistol shot until it seemed to fill every space. Dad had been right there with Bobby, so he knew.
***
Somehow Dean managed to get himself a room and stash his things there, then he ditched the stolen Honda in the parking lot of the Wal-Mart and made the freezing walk back to the motel. It was hard to tell at first whether his head ached from the cold and his lack of a hat, or if the next phase of the rebuilding project was getting underway. By the time he made it back to his room, he fumbled the key three times before he managed to get it open.
If he were this cold after a hunt, he'd take a shower to warm up, but the thought of taking his clothes off and unwinding the strapping around his chest was more than he could stomach. Without removing his coat, Dean wrestled off his new boots, caked with snow. Once he'd left them by the door he padded to the far side of the room, his worn socks looking oversized and ludicrous on his feet, like the grubby little pixie shoes of a welfare elf.
Pulling the puke-patterned bedspread around his shoulders, Dean settled onto the bed farthest from the door, sitting with his feet drawn in close and his arms around his knees. He was out of the little stash of Vicodin pills he'd pocketed, which was a bitch because he could feel the headache ramping up along with the sting of his skin from the sudden shift in air temp. His whole fucking skull hurt, right down to his teeth.
Not too much after that, he heard a light, sharp pair of knocks at the door, then the key working in the lock. Dean's whole body tensed in the expectation of Dad ripping him a new one for disobeying and taking off. Instead, his dad gave him a long look and said softly, "Hey, Champ. How are you doing?"
Dean couldn't look at him. "I figured Bobby would tell you how I'm doing. Didn't he call you after the first time I talked to him?"
"No, son."
Dean couldn't remember the last time his dad had talked to him in that tone: quiet and soothing. Before his mom died, he was fairly sure.
"I was already there. I got in touch with him for the same reason you did."
Dean blinked. "You knew." His own voice sounded odd to him too.
His dad approached Dean the same way he'd come near a wounded creature, slow and easy. "I ain't blind, son."
"Better start easing that word out of your vocabulary, Dad."
"You're my son. That won't change." He settled on Dean's bed, near his feet, angled sideways so he could meet Dean's skittish gaze.
Averting his eyes, Dean said, "Bobby didn't tell me much. Has he found anything at all?"
Dad let out a long breath. "I wanted to be the one to tell you, and not over the phone."
Dean rubbed a hand over his face. His ring, he noticed, was gone, slipped off his finger unnoticed. "That sure sounds like Woo hoo, we found a cure to me."
"He's still making calls and digging up what he can, but he has had experience with transformations of this type. I won't lie to you, Dean. You deserve the truth. Bobby said it's a curse, and a pretty powerful one. If this witch had wanted to teach you a lesson or throw a scare into you, you would have woken up the next morning and you'd have been a female, and it would've been over in a few days. This kind of thing -- slow, with the shifting of muscle and bone and the pain that goes with it -- this is deep. He thinks it's permanent. Though he's still on it, I think we need to hope for the best, but prepare for it to be permanent."
All at once Dean's face felt numb, just like it had when he'd been walking back from ditching the car, before the pain from the cold and the transformation set in. No words would come to him at all.
His father's voice dragged him back, more commanding but not sharp. "Stay with me, Dean." He seized Dean by the wrist. "Let's take care of first things first. The pain Bobby talked about -- you've been having that." It wasn't a question; he'd seen Dean's discomfort when this all started. At Dean's nod, he asked, "How bad?"
"It's bad." Before his dad could scowl at the vague response, he added, "It's a nine, easy. And you know my scale -- ten is reserved for watching a rugaru eat my liver. I've been stealing your Vicodin, that's how bad."
"There is no damn need to steal pain meds in this family, Dean. If you need something, all you have to do is say so."
"Yeah," Dean said on a breath. "I was scared."
"Not of me?"
"No. Of what was happening -- is happening. Admitting it scared the shit out of me."
"How far has this progressed?"
Dean's hands clenched with no conscious intention. "Almost as far as it can." This would have been the point where he'd have given his father a meaningful look, if he could stand to meet his eyes at all. "Let's just say if I wanna --" Dean's throat squeezed tight against the next words -- "write my name in the snow one last --" And then his throat closed to a pinhole, so narrow nothing could escape but a keening sound that Dean cut off as quickly as he could.
Before it had even died away, Dad had moved closer, pulling him into a bear hug. "I've got you, Dean. You're gonna weather this." His breath moved over Dean's newly-chopped hair as he spoke. "You're a tough kid."
Dean refused to cry, but he grabbed a fistful of his father's shirt as if it were the only thing keeping him from being swept out to sea.
After a long moment, his dad pulled back just enough to put his hands on Dean's shoulders at the base of his neck. "I've watched friends of mine lose pieces of themselves to guns and bombs, and I've met guys since who lost them long ago. It didn't make them any less than they'd been, not unless they let it. You're more than your dick, Dean, even though you let it do the thinking for you more often than you ought to."
Though he might've thought that was funny under any other circumstances, all Dean managed was a sour twist of his lips.
"You have every right to your feelings, son. But that right ends at the point where you start giving up. Are we clear on that?"
Letting out a long, shaky breath, Dean nodded. "Yes sir."
"Good." Dad released him. "All right then. What's going on right now? Are you in pain now?"
Nodding, he said, "Yeah. My head."
"Are you at nine?"
"Not yet, but it's been ramping up. It's maybe a six."
Dad stood abruptly. "I'll get the kit."
As Dad put on the jacket he'd shed, Dean stared at the hands curved over his knees. Long, slender fingers, ringless. He couldn't shove aside an image of Dad just getting behind the Impala's wheel and peeling out of the parking lot, leaving Dean behind forever. Just like Sam had left them both. He heard the muffled thump through the motel room door, but he'd spent enough of his life in and around that car that he knew it was the trunk, not the driver's door. A few seconds later his dad was back in the room with the medic's kit.
As he opened it on the other bed, dad asked, "You think you need the Vicodin, or can you start with something a little less heavy-duty?"
"You can cut me loose," Dean said. He'd had no idea this was going to emerge from his mouth.
"What?"
"If you want to hunt without me. I mean, if there's no curing this --"
Dad turned from the med kit. "Stop talking nonsense, Dean. I'm not leaving you behind."
His eyes stinging, Dean said, "I'll be a liability."
"Bullshit. I trained you. I know you're a damn fine hunter, and I know some women hunters who'd kick your ass for suggesting you wouldn't be as good because of this. You've got a steady hand, a sharp eye and a good head on your shoulders. Last I looked, women had that same equipment."
Something swelled in Dean at this praise from his father, as fiercely delivered as a quick Pull your head out of your ass, I know you can do better.
Dad tossed a bottle of pills toward Dean. "Here, give these a try. They'll do more good at a six than a Vicodin will at a nine."
Dean opened the bottle and shook out a couple of pills as his dad went for the bathroom to fill a plastic cup with tap water. He downed them dry and chased them with the water his dad brought him.
"I can see her when I look in the mirror," Dean said. "This hasn't even finished yet, but I can, so I know you do too." He didn't have to say who she was. He fidgeted with the empty cup, his vision wavering with unshed tears. "How can you stand that?"
Crouching down beside Dean's bed, his dad reached out and laid a hand on the scruff of Dean's neck. "Listen to me, Dean." His tone was firm but not harsh. "I've seen your mom in you since before you could walk and talk. The same goes for your brother. It's not some kind of torture for me. There've been plenty of times it was the only thing that got me through."
"Really?"
"Really. It's hard to tell sometimes, I know. But those nights would be so much worse if I didn't have you and your brother."
Dean wasn't sure if it was his own blurry vision, but it seemed Dad had tears in his eyes too.
***
The headache descended full force later that night, and despite the pain meds, it was the worst the curse had produced, progressing beyond the usual nine to rugaru level. It lasted two full days, during which he was curled up into a tight ball in bed. Dad brought soup and Vicodin and coffee throughout the days, otherwise quietly engaged but present.
As the pain reached its peak the night of the second day, Dean thought couldn't see how someone could hurt this bad without dying from it. I am dying. RIP, Dean Winchester. A groan poured from him, so loud his dad abandoned his journal and crouched by Dean's bed, putting a hand on his head.
"Tell me what's going on, son."
"Oh god, Dad, it hurts. I'm dying."
"No, Dean, you're not. I've got you, you're going to be okay."
"Dean is all but gone," he snapped, and the voice that came out of him was fierce, but it was a girl's voice.
"Changed," Dad said firmly. "Not gone. Not dead."
"Fuck!" Dean shouted, as much in response to his dad as to the pain in his head. He thrashed in the tangled nest of sheets and bedspread.
Dad moved onto the bed, settling against the headboard and pulling Dean up to huddle against his chest. He stroked Dean's head as he held him against his body, pinning his arms. "Shhhh," he murmured into Dean's hair. "Hold on, champ. This is the worst of it, then you'll be through it."
But it wasn't. There was the happy fucking ending, and the idea of this kind of pain tearing through his groin scared him so much he thought he might go for the Impala's trunk and blow his brains out if he wasn't so fucking crippled with this pain.
"I can't do this, Dad," he muttered wetly into his father's shirt. "I can't man up and be one of your war heroes. I'm not ... I'm not ..."
"Shhhhh. It's all right."
"i can't live up to this. I couldn't before."
"Just be still." Dad's hand kept moving rhythmically over Dean's short hair. "Let yourself get some rest."
As he kept stroking Dean's head, the headache began to unclench and despite his reluctance to let go, Dean eventually fell asleep.
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 comment fic meme #5
Part One: http://hoodie-time.livejournal.com/421179.html
This time Dean did cry out, jolting back from the car door.
Dad shot him a sidelong look. "I'm gonna find a place to stop. I think we could both use a break."
It was the last thing he wanted. Dean wasn't sure he'd be able to hide the new shape of his body or his red-rimmed eyes if the old man were to sit across a diner booth from him. But there was no arguing with Dad when he made an executive decision, so Dean trailed along behind him until he could veer off for the bathroom.
The bindings weren't doing the job as well as they had at first, because -- and here was a massive non-surprise -- they had more to hold back.
"Tell me what you like in a girl," she'd murmured as her hands had worked the twin mounds of his ass. He had thought he'd be bare through this whole thing, but she had just draped the sheets back over his legs before she went to work here.
His surprise had shifted his attention from her words, so "girl" hadn't pinged any warnings for him. Not then. He had laughed quietly into the strange space below his face, which was cradled in a horseshoe-shaped support. "I'm not picky," he'd said. "I like all shapes, sizes and shades of girls. Willing and eager, that's my type."
"Aren't you broad-minded," she'd said.
He'd laughed like the asshole he was. "I wouldn't call 'em broads. They don't like that."
She hadn't reacted to that, just concentrated on some insanely blissful thing she was doing around his hipbones. "But there must be something you particularly like."
She'd been simultaneously asking him questions and robbing him of the ability to think or speak. But somehow Dean managed to answer her question.
"I love a great rack. They have to be real, though. Soft." There was so little softness in his life. "I even like them just a slight bit different in size. It's hot, because it's real." He drifted for a moment or two, carried along on this current of unfamiliar sensation. Then, because he could never shut up soon enough: "Curves. That nipped in waist, then boom! -- mammary awesomeness."
Jesus, what an asshole he was.
All this time he'd been remembering this, Dean had been locked in a stall unwrapping the Ace bandage, assessing the damage. He was still able to cup them completely using his whole hands, but he wondered if that would be true by morning. Panicked, he wrapped them again, brutally tight, and layered back up again.
When Dean pushed his way out of the stall, he was confronted with a wild-eyed reject from the grunge era who might or might not be in the wrong restroom. It took him several skittering heartbeats to realize that he was seeing his own reflection above the sink. Bracing himself on the porcelain, he leaned in to study his face. His bone structure was unchanged -- he knew by now he'd be well aware when that was happening -- but there were changes already. His face seemed just a little bit rounder, its lines softened. Where he should have had two days' worth of stubble, there was none. His eyelashes, which Dean had always thought were too girly as it was, were now a mascara commercial of length and thickness. But that wasn't the worst of it, not by a longshot.
Jesus God, he looked -- he looked so much like his mom. How could he even go out there and make his dad look at this face?
Turning the taps on full blast, he scrubbed at his face as viciously as he'd rewound the bindings on his chest. As if water could have any effect on what was happening -- what had already happened.
As he reached for the paper towel dispenser, the door banged open and his dad burst through. Dean started at him stupidly, water dripping from his nose and chin, as Dad took him in.
"I was about to ask if you fell in, but I guess I already got my answer. Shake a leg, son. Food's already on the table. I ordered you the fried chicken. Waitress says it's the best thing they've got."
Dean finished wiping at his face and followed his dad to the dinner that awaited.
***
He expected the third degree, or at the very least to be told to stop the fucking moping. But instead Dad talked about the food -- the waitress had told the truth about the chicken; it was damn fine. He told Dean about a guy he'd known in the Marines who came from around here -- Dean wasn't even sure where "here" was, too wrapped up in his freakout. The story was the kind he'd never heard his father tell; there was no lesson or warning worked into the narrative. Just some memories about a guy Dad hadn't thought of in years. He wished Sam could hear this -- he'd never believe it otherwise.
Dean managed to eat some of his dinner, but the waitress finally gave up on him and packed the leftovers into a styrofoam box already heaped with extra biscuits. He put them away on the back seat of the Impala, where they perfumed the air in the car, but didn't stir his hunger. All Dean could think about was what came next.
Once she had urged him to turn onto his back, she'd worked his shoulders, collarbone and sternum, murmuring soothing nothings as Dean blissed out. At least he'd thought they were nothings, but now he wonders if they were incantations. He'd been so far gone at that point that she could have been hog calling for all the impression it made. But he remembered her hands. They spent a long time on his chest, giving him an elaborate lesson (supplemented with tongue and teeth) about the sensitivity of guy nipples. Then she'd moved on to running her hands along the line of his throat, her touch as soothing as a warm shower after a hunt in frigid weather. Then face and scalp. He could only imagine how it would feel when the planes and angles of his face began shifting and refining.
Remake you from the ground up.
Except for that one last detail. The happy goddamn ending.
"Stop the car!" Dean blurted, hurriedly rolling down the window to get some air on his face.
His dad pulled onto the gravel shoulder and Dean threw open the door, emptying his stomach.
***
Dad found them a motel as soon as Dean stopped retching his guts out. He even let Dean sleep in, which had to be an all-time first. As soon as Dean was awake, though, Dad delivered the news: He'd been asked to lend a hand with a poltergeist job just over the state line in South Dakota, and was leaving Dean here to start the research on the original job.
"Shouldn't be long," his dad told him as he gathered supplies for the new hunt. "All the groundwork's been laid, it's just it'll take two men to handle this thing. I'll be back as soon as I can."
It'll take two men. "Okay, sure." Maybe this was it. Dad had seen the emergence of Mary Winchester's features in their son, and he was bailing before it got worse. Dean couldn't blame him; he'd do the same if he could.
Dad paused at the door. "You call if you need something, son. You hear me?"
"Yes sir," Dean said without hesitation, just as he'd been trained to do.
***
The sound of the Impala's engine had no sooner faded than some kind of clarity settled over Dean. The realization hit him that he had to do something about this, not stand there like a fucking deer in the headlights watching his oncoming doom. He'd already lost too much time to denial and then panic. The presence of his old man played a not inconsiderable part in that, he knew, but that didn't change the fact that he'd wasted a lot of time.
He speed dialled Pastor Jim, breathing something close to a prayer of thanks when he got him on the second ring. Cutting the pleasantries short, Dean told him, "Dad and I are working separate jobs at the moment, and I've run into something that looks like it could be heavy spellwork. You know any hunters who have experience with that? It's kind of urgent."
He wrote down the name and number of Bobby Singer. The name sounded familiar, as does the rough voice that greeted him.
"Mr. Singer," he began, "I'm Dean Winchester, John Win--"
"I know who you are," Singer growled. "What, too good for 'Uncle Bobby' now that you're a grown-ass man?"
Now Dean remembered. Gruff ol' Uncle Bobby and that demented dog of his, the both of them in the bark category in the bark vs. bite faceoff. And that junkyard of his, a ten-year-old's dream. The memory made him grin. "Hell, I thought it might make you feel old."
"Don't need you for that, kid. To what do I owe the pleasure?"
"Dad and I are working on separate jobs, and I've kinda stumbled into something that sounds like it could be weapons-grade magic. Pastor Jim told me you know your stuff."
"Dunno if that's true, but I got a helluva library. What's your situation?"
The phone nearly slipped through his sweaty grip. "It's not my situation. It's this guy I ran into. I said I'd try to help him."
"Well, let's have it, son. What's his problem?"
"He's ... turning into a girl. A woman," he corrected himself.
There was a pause, then Bobby repeated, "Turning. Not turned overnight or shazzam, in the blink of an eye."
"Right. It's been going on a while."
Bobby grunted. "He have any theories on when this started, or what could've set this in motion?"
"Yeah, he does," Dean said. "There was this woman he slept with, and he might've pissed her off without meaning to." Because that was what could happen when you were a cheerfully clueless dick.
"And you think maybe she was a witch?"
"Well, from what the guy said there were candles and incense and some kind of smelly tea."
Dean didn't like the sound of the nothing that was coming down the line, or the fact that there was such a lot of it. Finally Bobby asked, "Did she get any nail clippings or a snippet of hair from you?"
Dean closed his eyes, thinking of a condom and its disappearance (which he hadn't even noticed, not in the state he'd been in) after the happy ending. He palmed the phone for a moment, trying to get his breathing under control, then he raised it and spoke. "There might've been body fluids."
The pause that provoked was even longer than the previous one. Dean's heart sank.
"Do you have a line on who this woman is?"
"Uh, no," Dean said. "He uh, uh --" Think, goddammit! "He met her at a rave or something. Some big one, out in California. There were people there from all over." Sounded better than I have no idea where I was at the time.
Bobby hmmmm'd over the line. "Well, you found yourself a helluva case there, Dean. I'm gonna have to crack open some books, see what I can find. Can your friend hang tight while I dig around, maybe make some calls?"
Dean laughed darkly. "He hasn't got much choice, has he?"
"Guess not. Well, hang in there, and I'll see what I can come up with. You say hello to your daddy when you see him."
"I will. Thanks, Bobby."
"Sure thing. And you come out and visit sometime, Dean. Last time I saw you, you didn't even come up to a toad's nuts."
"I'll do that."
Dean knew how research went, especially when it came to musty books without indexes. Slipping his phone in his pocket, he went out for a huge breakfast, then found a barbershop and got his somewhat shaggy hair (nothing like Sam's, but starting to brush his collar) chopped short. The barber was one of those who didn't like kibbitzing while he was working, Dean guessed, because almost the whole time the man had Dean's chair facing away from the mirror.
When the barber finally whirled his chair back to face his reflection, Dean was struck anew at how much he'd changed. And for the first time it occurred to him that it wasn't just the fact that he was being turned into a girl -- it was that Dean was being erased. The face beneath the short cut was more a girl's face than a guy's, and the hand wasn't covered by the plastic cape looked slender and delicate. Not the broad, rough hand he was used to.
The barber scowled. "You don't like it?"
"What?" Dean recovered himself. "No, it's fine." He tipped the guy twice as much as he should have and headed out of the shop.
He should probably hit the library, he thought, and do some of the preliminary work Dad had left in his hands. But the thought of his dad's return filled him with panic. By that time there would be no hiding what Dean was becoming. The soldier that Dad had molded in his image would be gone, and in his place would be a girl whose face bore too strong a resemblance to the woman Dad had lost. How could Dean not be a liability then? He was no longer certain of his strength, and he hadn't thought to test it. But worse than that, how could Dad stand the constant reminder of a life he'd lost?
He walked back to the motel and gathered up his shit, then hotwired a car and aimed it toward Chicago.
***
By the time Dean was even halfway to Albert Lea, his throat was on fire. It hurt like hell even to swallow. Pulling off the highway at a truck stop, he gassed up the car and bought every kind of throat lozenge they had with the money Dad had left with him. All he had left was enough for a cheap motel and maybe a meal. He'd have to get more somehow, but that was beyond his capabilities right now.
Another thirty miles down the road, his cell rang. Dean turned off the music he'd had cranked up to drown out his thoughts and picked up the phone. The caller ID read Singer Salvage.
"Hey, Bobby. What's the news?" His voice sounded funny to him, and felt like it was forced through a straw lined with broken glass.
"Still working on it, kid. I've got some calls out, and they're working on it. How's your client holding up?"
"Client? Oh. About like you'd expect."
With an abruptness that took him off guard, Bobby asked, "Those car noises I'm hearin'?"
Dean nearly ran off the road at that, and then there were muffled noises on the other end of the line followed by, "Dean." It was his dad's voice.
"Dean, answer me." This wasn't the tone of voice he was used to hearing his dad's orders in, but there was something familiar about it.
"Yes sir."
"Where are you now, son?"
There was no question whatsoever that Dean would answer him. "I-90, going east. Coming up on Fairmont."
"Are you headed to Pastor Jim's?"
Dean laughed, which felt and sounded like it was pushed through a cheese grater. "God, no."
"Listen to me, Dean," Dad continued in this strange voice. "I want you to stop somewhere in Fairmont. Our SOP for emergency situations. How about you tell me what that is."
Finally it occurred to Dean what was familiar about that tone of voice. He's heard it on TV and in movies, when characters are trying to talk someone off a ledge.
"Son," Dad prompted, and the word made Dean's gut twist.
"First motel listed in the phone book. Under the name Jim Rockford."
"Good, Dean. That's good. I want you to go there and wait for me."
"Yes sir."
"I'll be there as soon as I can."
Dean thumbed the phone off and dropped it on the passenger seat, all at once feeling completely defeated.
***
He did exactly as he was told, of course. Being remade from the ground up did not include removal of the instinct to follow John Winchester's orders.
Dad knows. It was the only thought in his head, but it ricocheted around in his head like a Yosemite Sam pistol shot until it seemed to fill every space. Dad had been right there with Bobby, so he knew.
***
Somehow Dean managed to get himself a room and stash his things there, then he ditched the stolen Honda in the parking lot of the Wal-Mart and made the freezing walk back to the motel. It was hard to tell at first whether his head ached from the cold and his lack of a hat, or if the next phase of the rebuilding project was getting underway. By the time he made it back to his room, he fumbled the key three times before he managed to get it open.
If he were this cold after a hunt, he'd take a shower to warm up, but the thought of taking his clothes off and unwinding the strapping around his chest was more than he could stomach. Without removing his coat, Dean wrestled off his new boots, caked with snow. Once he'd left them by the door he padded to the far side of the room, his worn socks looking oversized and ludicrous on his feet, like the grubby little pixie shoes of a welfare elf.
Pulling the puke-patterned bedspread around his shoulders, Dean settled onto the bed farthest from the door, sitting with his feet drawn in close and his arms around his knees. He was out of the little stash of Vicodin pills he'd pocketed, which was a bitch because he could feel the headache ramping up along with the sting of his skin from the sudden shift in air temp. His whole fucking skull hurt, right down to his teeth.
Not too much after that, he heard a light, sharp pair of knocks at the door, then the key working in the lock. Dean's whole body tensed in the expectation of Dad ripping him a new one for disobeying and taking off. Instead, his dad gave him a long look and said softly, "Hey, Champ. How are you doing?"
Dean couldn't look at him. "I figured Bobby would tell you how I'm doing. Didn't he call you after the first time I talked to him?"
"No, son."
Dean couldn't remember the last time his dad had talked to him in that tone: quiet and soothing. Before his mom died, he was fairly sure.
"I was already there. I got in touch with him for the same reason you did."
Dean blinked. "You knew." His own voice sounded odd to him too.
His dad approached Dean the same way he'd come near a wounded creature, slow and easy. "I ain't blind, son."
"Better start easing that word out of your vocabulary, Dad."
"You're my son. That won't change." He settled on Dean's bed, near his feet, angled sideways so he could meet Dean's skittish gaze.
Averting his eyes, Dean said, "Bobby didn't tell me much. Has he found anything at all?"
Dad let out a long breath. "I wanted to be the one to tell you, and not over the phone."
Dean rubbed a hand over his face. His ring, he noticed, was gone, slipped off his finger unnoticed. "That sure sounds like Woo hoo, we found a cure to me."
"He's still making calls and digging up what he can, but he has had experience with transformations of this type. I won't lie to you, Dean. You deserve the truth. Bobby said it's a curse, and a pretty powerful one. If this witch had wanted to teach you a lesson or throw a scare into you, you would have woken up the next morning and you'd have been a female, and it would've been over in a few days. This kind of thing -- slow, with the shifting of muscle and bone and the pain that goes with it -- this is deep. He thinks it's permanent. Though he's still on it, I think we need to hope for the best, but prepare for it to be permanent."
All at once Dean's face felt numb, just like it had when he'd been walking back from ditching the car, before the pain from the cold and the transformation set in. No words would come to him at all.
His father's voice dragged him back, more commanding but not sharp. "Stay with me, Dean." He seized Dean by the wrist. "Let's take care of first things first. The pain Bobby talked about -- you've been having that." It wasn't a question; he'd seen Dean's discomfort when this all started. At Dean's nod, he asked, "How bad?"
"It's bad." Before his dad could scowl at the vague response, he added, "It's a nine, easy. And you know my scale -- ten is reserved for watching a rugaru eat my liver. I've been stealing your Vicodin, that's how bad."
"There is no damn need to steal pain meds in this family, Dean. If you need something, all you have to do is say so."
"Yeah," Dean said on a breath. "I was scared."
"Not of me?"
"No. Of what was happening -- is happening. Admitting it scared the shit out of me."
"How far has this progressed?"
Dean's hands clenched with no conscious intention. "Almost as far as it can." This would have been the point where he'd have given his father a meaningful look, if he could stand to meet his eyes at all. "Let's just say if I wanna --" Dean's throat squeezed tight against the next words -- "write my name in the snow one last --" And then his throat closed to a pinhole, so narrow nothing could escape but a keening sound that Dean cut off as quickly as he could.
Before it had even died away, Dad had moved closer, pulling him into a bear hug. "I've got you, Dean. You're gonna weather this." His breath moved over Dean's newly-chopped hair as he spoke. "You're a tough kid."
Dean refused to cry, but he grabbed a fistful of his father's shirt as if it were the only thing keeping him from being swept out to sea.
After a long moment, his dad pulled back just enough to put his hands on Dean's shoulders at the base of his neck. "I've watched friends of mine lose pieces of themselves to guns and bombs, and I've met guys since who lost them long ago. It didn't make them any less than they'd been, not unless they let it. You're more than your dick, Dean, even though you let it do the thinking for you more often than you ought to."
Though he might've thought that was funny under any other circumstances, all Dean managed was a sour twist of his lips.
"You have every right to your feelings, son. But that right ends at the point where you start giving up. Are we clear on that?"
Letting out a long, shaky breath, Dean nodded. "Yes sir."
"Good." Dad released him. "All right then. What's going on right now? Are you in pain now?"
Nodding, he said, "Yeah. My head."
"Are you at nine?"
"Not yet, but it's been ramping up. It's maybe a six."
Dad stood abruptly. "I'll get the kit."
As Dad put on the jacket he'd shed, Dean stared at the hands curved over his knees. Long, slender fingers, ringless. He couldn't shove aside an image of Dad just getting behind the Impala's wheel and peeling out of the parking lot, leaving Dean behind forever. Just like Sam had left them both. He heard the muffled thump through the motel room door, but he'd spent enough of his life in and around that car that he knew it was the trunk, not the driver's door. A few seconds later his dad was back in the room with the medic's kit.
As he opened it on the other bed, dad asked, "You think you need the Vicodin, or can you start with something a little less heavy-duty?"
"You can cut me loose," Dean said. He'd had no idea this was going to emerge from his mouth.
"What?"
"If you want to hunt without me. I mean, if there's no curing this --"
Dad turned from the med kit. "Stop talking nonsense, Dean. I'm not leaving you behind."
His eyes stinging, Dean said, "I'll be a liability."
"Bullshit. I trained you. I know you're a damn fine hunter, and I know some women hunters who'd kick your ass for suggesting you wouldn't be as good because of this. You've got a steady hand, a sharp eye and a good head on your shoulders. Last I looked, women had that same equipment."
Something swelled in Dean at this praise from his father, as fiercely delivered as a quick Pull your head out of your ass, I know you can do better.
Dad tossed a bottle of pills toward Dean. "Here, give these a try. They'll do more good at a six than a Vicodin will at a nine."
Dean opened the bottle and shook out a couple of pills as his dad went for the bathroom to fill a plastic cup with tap water. He downed them dry and chased them with the water his dad brought him.
"I can see her when I look in the mirror," Dean said. "This hasn't even finished yet, but I can, so I know you do too." He didn't have to say who she was. He fidgeted with the empty cup, his vision wavering with unshed tears. "How can you stand that?"
Crouching down beside Dean's bed, his dad reached out and laid a hand on the scruff of Dean's neck. "Listen to me, Dean." His tone was firm but not harsh. "I've seen your mom in you since before you could walk and talk. The same goes for your brother. It's not some kind of torture for me. There've been plenty of times it was the only thing that got me through."
"Really?"
"Really. It's hard to tell sometimes, I know. But those nights would be so much worse if I didn't have you and your brother."
Dean wasn't sure if it was his own blurry vision, but it seemed Dad had tears in his eyes too.
***
The headache descended full force later that night, and despite the pain meds, it was the worst the curse had produced, progressing beyond the usual nine to rugaru level. It lasted two full days, during which he was curled up into a tight ball in bed. Dad brought soup and Vicodin and coffee throughout the days, otherwise quietly engaged but present.
As the pain reached its peak the night of the second day, Dean thought couldn't see how someone could hurt this bad without dying from it. I am dying. RIP, Dean Winchester. A groan poured from him, so loud his dad abandoned his journal and crouched by Dean's bed, putting a hand on his head.
"Tell me what's going on, son."
"Oh god, Dad, it hurts. I'm dying."
"No, Dean, you're not. I've got you, you're going to be okay."
"Dean is all but gone," he snapped, and the voice that came out of him was fierce, but it was a girl's voice.
"Changed," Dad said firmly. "Not gone. Not dead."
"Fuck!" Dean shouted, as much in response to his dad as to the pain in his head. He thrashed in the tangled nest of sheets and bedspread.
Dad moved onto the bed, settling against the headboard and pulling Dean up to huddle against his chest. He stroked Dean's head as he held him against his body, pinning his arms. "Shhhh," he murmured into Dean's hair. "Hold on, champ. This is the worst of it, then you'll be through it."
But it wasn't. There was the happy fucking ending, and the idea of this kind of pain tearing through his groin scared him so much he thought he might go for the Impala's trunk and blow his brains out if he wasn't so fucking crippled with this pain.
"I can't do this, Dad," he muttered wetly into his father's shirt. "I can't man up and be one of your war heroes. I'm not ... I'm not ..."
"Shhhhh. It's all right."
"i can't live up to this. I couldn't before."
"Just be still." Dad's hand kept moving rhythmically over Dean's short hair. "Let yourself get some rest."
As he kept stroking Dean's head, the headache began to unclench and despite his reluctance to let go, Dean eventually fell asleep.