SPN Fic: Isochronism 1 of 2
Yes. I did it. I admit, I've read approximately 2.5 gender swap fictions total but the idea has been stuck in my head forever and what is this gig all about if not getting out all your weird ya yas? This one is not really way far on the HAHA side of gender swap but I guess it has its moments as gender swap naturally will do.
Soooooo, if this has all been written and done before I apologize, but I won't lie? I'm having way too much fun to worry about it too much. And hey, will this finally land me in the "other" category on the spnnewletter? :D
-Mink
Title: Isochronism part 1 - part 2 (Completed)
Continued in Sequel: Sam's Turn
Author: Mink
Rating: NC-17 - Gender Swap
Pairings: girl!Winchester/OFC
Warnings: Edge of consent & monthly women's issues
Spoilers: General (for aired episodes only)
Disclaimers: SPN & characters are owned by their various creators.
Summary: Dean is marked by a Goddess and must suffer the woman's curse.
The wound down the inside of his arm was a perfect straight line.
It was as if a blade had been guided carefully and slowly down his flesh instead of the brief lightening flash of its metal, the hot searing tear of its edge and then suddenly nothing at all.
The wielder of the weapon had been as indistinct as the shadows that filled the cramped stone place. The ceiling low and sagging with tree roots from above. It was more like some long forgotten bunker from a century old war than what it really was. They’d come to set a fire and found nothing left to burn. It was empty and gutted, a home for forest life and the cold seep of wet earth that made its floor. But it hadn’t been completely empty. It hadn’t been deserted.
The moon was obscene that night, the strong pale cast of its glow like a presence in itself. They'd searched the ground with all their senses, fingers brushing through damp soil, over crumbling stone, disturbing the gnarled ancient vegetation clinging to the walls. The trip back through the tangle of woods eventually lead them back to the road. There under the orange glare of the street sodium lights Dean examined his wound more closely. It was shallow. A thin slice into the very first layer of skin and nothing more. The placement and lack of true damage meant only one thing.
“You got marked.” Sam said, turning Dean’s arm back and forth in his hands.
Dean studied the strange color of the line, a dark blue instead of a swollen inflamed red like it should have been.
“Whatta ya think? Slow death? Poisoning?” Dean waved his fingers. “Mind control?”
Sam didn’t return his smile.
“How do you feel?”
Dean took a moment so he could honestly answer that question. He felt like he had just hiked in and out of about ten miles of thick unobstructed forest in the middle of the night and found next to nothing they had been promised they’d find. His muscles ached. His feet hurt. His shoulder rang with pain every time he raised his arm more than a few inches above his waist. Not quite sure how that one happened but sometimes in the thick of a fight, you lost track of what exactly made impact with your body and how hard.
He hadn’t eaten since that morning so he felt half sick with nausea. Dean examined and cracked his right wrist. Oh yeah, his wrist that he’d fractured several times over the years now felt like every tendon in was on fire and he could barely make a fist.
“I feel fine.” Dean answered with a shrug.
Sam studied him a moment longer before he swung the car door open.
“Let’s get out of here.”
Dean did feel fine.
By the time they had gotten to a place to crash, he hit the pillow without so much of a toss and turn before he was out like a light. The next morning, he found himself almost in the exact same position he’d landed in. A rare sign of a full night of deep uninterrupted slumber.
He studied the strange smooth blue line on his arm when he got into the shower, tracing it with a finger tip. It was a strange thing he never admitted to anyone, not even their father, but he was fairly proud of the marks that ended up on his body. He particularly liked the deep ones. The type that had gouged and tore enough to leave a sign on his skin for the rest of his life. He liked to look at them, think of how exactly they became to be there.
This perfect blue line was no good, he knew enough to know that. But there was something about it that was serene and almost decorative in a way that he couldn’t quite stop looking at it. Looking closer he saw the skin around it had seemed to have grow paler. Running his fingers along the blade’s passage, the warm shower water seemed hotter to the touch on his flesh there. More sensitive. As if dozen of new nerve endings had formed up and down its length.
Turning off the water’s sputtering flow, he decided it was time to see if Sam had found anything about the temple they entered and what it meant.
The steady clicking of the keyboard was thankfully the only sound in the room.
Dean was laying very still on his bed, one wrist clasped in the other across his forehead. Ever since they had quietly eaten breakfast at the grease pit adjoining the truck stop he had had a weird sickening feeling down in the pit of his stomach. Several times he thought about just trying to make him throw up to rid himself of the sensation, but it didn’t quite stop there.
It radiated down his limbs, the room’s temperature going from too cold to too hot in moments, his clothes feeling sweaty then not enough all at the same time. The line on the inside of his arm hadn’t changed. If anything it had faded a little, the navy blue of its color paled. Like a vein just below the skin, shallow and washed out.
“Anything?”
He felt like breaking the silence. He briefly wondered if all this was the onset of some annoying flu that would bog him down for a good week or so. That would be just freaking perfect.
The steady typing stopped.
Sam sighed, pushing the laptop away a little to signify that he was allowing himself a break.
“Nothing.” Sam breathed as he stretched back, tipping back his chair as he yawned. “What we found was old Dean. Old as in, when the Native tribes around here found it that place was already half buried and done.”
“Fantastic.”
“The fact that we found it all surprised the prof I e-mailed, he said he just read about it a few years back when he was doing research for his thesis.”
Dean pulled up one hand to look at Sam.
“What was his thesis about?”
“Pagan Goddesses, female shamans mostly and um, the divinity and power of those that maintain creation. You know, women.”
“Moon power.” Dean sighed, another wave of strange rippling up the back of his throat.
“Something like that.” Sam mumbled as he drew his laptop closer to him once again. “You feeling anything else, you know, besides tired?”
Dean realized he hadn’t mentioned to his brother all the other funky stuff he’d been experiencing since that morning. But why should he? It felt like every single other time he’d ever started to get sick. If violating a temple meant he had to eat soup and crackers for 7 days, he could live with that just fine.
“Nope, just tired.” Dean answered him.
It was just out of his mouth when he felt it. Sharp and bright hot, something twisted like a knife in his belly. No, not his belly, just below it, under his belly button and above the hardness of the pubic bone. His hand went involuntarily down over the spot, letting out a small pained hiss when he felt it again.
“I-I think I just need more shut eye.” He rolled over.
"You hungry?"
The thought of food made his brow crease. He was hungry. But his limbs were useless and made of lead and he could not bring himself to think about the bother of food though his belly lurched and rumbled.
"Nah." He said into his pillow.
Unbuttoning the tops of his jeans he slid his hand over the spot just beside his hip bone, somehow trying to ward off the strange pain by holding his palm over it. Pushing and rubbing his face into a decent dent in the stiff pillow, he sighed.
Whatever it was, it would go away. It always did.
The next day Sam decided to take the car and go to the university himself to comb through their library.
Dean wished him well, preferring the feel of the bed than anything else. He felt weird enough to pop a few aspirin, cursing his luck. The truth was he couldn't remember ever feeling this degree of bad before. His lungs were clear, his head and nose unclogged. But he felt thin and pale and ultimately less like himself.
Queer would be the word he'd use.
He could think of very few things a full day's rest did not fix. So he slept. Or tried to. His head ached, keeping him on the edge of full sleep for hours. The blur of the beige curtains that did almost nothing to blot out the sunlight wavered as his eyes closed for the last time. When the black finally blissfully did come, he felt every strand of discomfort that tethered him to waking break one by one. But for some reason last thing he saw before he was gone completely was the fine straight line of blue.
Curving softly, it settled into the shape of the waning moon.
Hanging there silently in a night sky that didn't have one single star in it at all.
His dreams were lit with the washed out white of moon light, vague shadows echoing a deeper ache which thrummed in time with his pulse. But the dream pain was fragile and strange and in no way did it ready him for the waking.
Opening his eyes slowly, he groaned at the agony that had settled between his hips.
The room was almost dark. A glance at the clock showed him that the afternoon was long gone and the night was settling in. Flexing his hands, he started to stretch, hoping the pain that had gathered would dissipate and fade with the dream. A scent he knew made him blink, grimace and swear he was mistaken. Rolling slowly off his side onto his back, he paused. The sheets felt cold, almost wet. Sliding his hand under the blanket, he pulled it back out.
His hand was bright red.
“What the-“
Sitting up, he flipped the blankets back, the entire middle of the white bottom sheet a wide circle of blood, darker at the edges were it had dried, slick on the skin of his thighs, the wet material of his boxers sickeningly cold as they moved sluggishly over his flesh. Unable to catch his breath, he ran his hands over his abdomen, checking for the wound that would have bled this badly. In the gray dim light under the curtain edge he could barely see anything.
Stumbling to his feet, a wash of dizziness made him stumble, his vision flashing white as he felt his knees hit the carpet. Grasping the bed’s edge he slowly pulled himself up, the churn sharp pain in his gut doubling with his movements. Staggering in the bathroom he fumbled for the light. All he could see was bright red blood. On his hands, all over his stomach, his legs-- another wave hit him and he clutched the sink, a shaking hand twisting the faucet, the blood on his hands making everything damp he touched pink, the sink suddenly swirling with it. It was about then that he caught his refection in the mirror.
The slow wave of nausea flowed through him again.
It was some kind of trick. Some kind of charm.
Whoever it was looking at him with wide eyes in that bathroom mirror wasn’t him.
Leaning closer to the glass, he blinked and raised a trembling hand just to see if the action would be mimicked in the reflection. It was then that he saw his eyes were still there. Slowly his wet hands came to his face, touching it gently as if it might not be real. It was his face. Somehow his face but changed in a thousand inexplicable ways, the contours softened, the shape of his jaw less severe. His quaking fingertips stayed on the soft flesh below his eyes. He couldn’t tell if his eyes looked larger or his face appeared smaller, the skin under his finger tips was not the rough feel of three days of beard but sickeningly smooth and seemingly too thin. It felt like it could be ripped if he dug his fingernails into it too hard, tore if he pulled at it.
Running his hands through his hair, he felt it was the same, looked the same.
He heard himself make some kind of noise. Of disbelief. Of horror. His gaze falling to his bare chest, the muscles of his arms leaner and finer, running down to the flat of his stomach. His hands went to the new flesh that hung heavy and strange there. Pushing down at it hard as if the act would make them go away, pushing until he felt pain burn from new nerve endings he’d never had before. Clawing at it, the flesh was red and raw, the acute pain furthering the terrible truth that what he saw was nothing but real.
Backing against the wall he heard himself whimper, a small lost sound, his hands pushing at the soaked fabric of his boxers, falling in a tangled wet clump at his feet, his hand running down between his legs to fine smooth short soft hair slicked with blood, the flesh sloping between his thighs into nothing. His stomach heaved again, he just made it to the toilet, the contents of his stomach burning up this throat, the hot wetness between his legs running freshly down onto the white tile.
Where was it coming from? He frantically felt between his legs and down the insides of his thighs, he couldn’t feel anything but the odd feel of too smooth flesh. The absence of the friction of hair. Leaning over the bowl, he found himself looking at his red hand. It was too small. The fingers too slender.
“Oh god-“
He froze when he heard the motel lock turn.
Scrambling on his knees he fumbled for the bathroom door and slammed it shut. Sitting on the floor, he tried to will his heaving chest to calm, tried to will his shaking hands to still just for a moment. Give him a moment just to think-
The sharp agony in his belly roiled gain, doubling him over on the floor, panting.
“D-Dean?”
Alarm in Sam’s voice. He’d let himself in and he’d seen the bed by now.
There were three strong knocks on the door.
“Uh, Dean? What’s going on?”
Staggering to his feet, he almost fell backwards, his balance so off it was like he’d tried standing up for the very first time. Catching his hand on the sink edge he plunged his bloodied hands into the running water.
“Just-just a minute.” He managed.
The sound of his voice stilled him. It was his, but it wasn’t. It was finer, an octave too high, too smooth like his skin.
“You okay?”
He could see Sam standing out there, looking back and forth from the stained bed to the weird locked bathroom door they never closed even in each other’s company.
“Dean open the door.”
Dean moaned, sinking back down onto his knee as he felt something inside of him feel like it had started to rip. He knew he was going to throw up again but he couldn’t move from where he was crouched. It came again, harsh and brutal, and he cried out, clenching his teeth and clutching his hand over the base of his stomach. He shivered from hot to cold, vaguely aware that he was now naked and that by now the once pristine white bathroom now looked like someone had been murdered in it.
“I’m coming in.”
“N-No-“ Dean gasped, hearing the first hard impact of his brother’s shoulder up against the flimsy motel door.
The second shove was all it needed.
The door flew back on its hinges and Sam was there, one foot already inside, his face set to demand answers until he caught sight of the room. He looked down at Dean and then his gaze flickered quickly over the mess all over the toilet, the sink, and the broad crimson smears left all over the floors.
“Oh my God.” Sam breathed.
Dean felt his mouth open and close. His relief at seeing his brother mixed with some urgent need to hide from him, take this sight and whatever strange thing his body had somehow changed into, away.
"S-Sam..." He croaked weakly.
Dean could see what it all looked like, what he looked like, right there in the carefully controlled startled stare of his brother’s eyes.
But something hadn't registered.
"Do... do I know you?" Sam asked.
Using one hand to right himself to something close to a sitting position, Dean held onto one knee to keep his legs drawn up tight as they could go towards his chest. It relieved the pain for some reason just by a little bit. The pain was so intense that just a little bit was good enough for him. His cheek against the wall kept him upright, his other hand felt behind him until he felt the bathtub. Using those two points to ground himself, he steadied his gaze at his stunned brother.
He had to say something. He had to explain what he couldn’t. He didn’t know what was happening, he didn’t know-
“Ah shit-“ Another wave of sick forced him to lean forward and grasp the toilet.
A hesitant hand was on his shoulder, Sam was kneeling down next to him.
“I don- I don’t know what-“ Dean rasped over the toilet water.
“Look, it-it’ll be ok. Tell me your name?"
The horrible knots in his belly tightened, and his red flecked knuckles turned white on the porcelain. “S-Something-something happen-“
There was nothing left to come up, but the pain inside tore on, much lower than his churning stomach, centered so low that he had never been so keenly aware that the small expanse of flesh existed on his body before. With a shudder and a sudden tightening of muscle he felt a fresh warmth run down the inside of his sticky thighs and pool around his knees. Light headed, Dean blindly groped for Sam, catching him on his jacket collar, clutching onto him as the pain kept swelling and shattering against his insides like a ruthless tide.
He felt Sam's body recoil slightly even as his arms moved to steady him.
"Hey, hey talk to me…"
Dean felt his head suddenly buzz, light with the glare of the over head mirror lamps. He felt hands gather him up, his body easily handled, easily lifted, too light, his weight meaningless.
“Can you hear me?”
Sam had that waver in his voice when he was actually scared. Frightened by something he wasn’t sure how to handle. Dean wanted to reassure him somehow. Wanted to tell him it was fine even if it wasn’t true. The bare bulbs above him got brighter and brighter.
They blurred into one blinding mass growing and then dimming until he couldn’t see anything else at all.
Dean roused to the roar of water pouring down into the bathtub.
Seated up against the wall, he was wrapped in a large white blanket, the front of it stained pink and red. The floor had been wiped almost clean. He couldn’t see the sink. The feel of his too thin legs shuddering under the terry fabric reminded him of what his body must look like under it. He swallowed back another wave of sickness.
He heard the dull tones of Sam working his cell phone.
“N-No.”
“Don’t worry.” Sam muttered. “I’m just calling my-“
"No calls.” Dean heard himself say angrily.
He watched Sam turn at the sound of Dean’s phone ringing in response on the opposite side of the wall. Right in his jacket where he left it. His brother’s face shifted from vague worry to troubled confusion.
“D-Don’t move okay? I’ll be right back.”
Sam left him alone for a moment, moving around in the room beyond, making Dean start to fear maybe Sam had already called someone while he was out of it. The police maybe or even a hospital. Panic flared and quickened his already pounding heart. However, if he had either of the two would have been here by now. Sam was dealing with this like Dean probably would have. Moment by moment, putting out the fires until the smoke cleared enough for him to figure out what he should do next.
“Drink this.”
A cold glass, water condensed and beaded on its sides was placed in his hands. The water was fizzing.
“Wha- what is it?” His voice was rasping, like he’d spent a night smoking cigarettes or screaming too loud at a music concert. Swallowing painfully, his licked at his lips.
“It will make you feel better.”
Dean tipped the cool glass to his lips and drank down the bitter bubbly stuff as quickly as he could. The cool liquid did sooth this throat, his dry tongue suddenly saturated, a small piece of his unflagging illness bating for just a moment. The glass was taken out of his hands.
“Just gonna get you cleaned up.”
Dean tensed at the sound of those words. He drew back as hands reached for the blanket that covered his now altered body. The body that had changed into something else. Something strange. He didn’t want anyone to see it. He didn’t want to see it.
Hands went under his arms and before he could protest he was lifted easily to his unsteady feet, then lifted again until his feet rested ankle deep in the hot boil of the tub. The blanket he clutched was pulled out on either end to release him while shielding his body from any kind of view before the curtain was drawn back. Dean crumbled down limply in the shallow water, the overhead spray from the shower already mixing the pure bath pink. Looking down, he saw his legs were the worst of it. He could see Sam’s shadow through the curtain, seated on the closed toilet seat. Elbows on his knees, his hands rubbing at his face.
“Who- who are you?”
Dean paused while numbly dragging a hand up to hold one knee. His scars were still were they always had been. His colors and flaws all taken and remade, set back in place but onto some other frame. So different but so much the same- Suddenly freezing in place, he quickly looked at the inside of his arm. The blue line. It was still there. Faded even a little bit more than he remembered but still there.
Dean didn’t know how to start talking. He didn’t know how to use words to prove or describe anything. Ripping back the plastic curtain, Dean met Sam’s confounded eyes. Sam immediately tried to look off to the side, avoid the nudity of this bizarre stranger that he’d discovered half crazed in his motel room.
Dean held out his arm, the underside out.
“Look.”
Sam was staring hard at the opposite wall, one knee bouncing in agitation.
“Damn it, LOOK!” The stern yell morphed into some petty soft protest. A muted tantrum. Subdued and weak. It made Dean sicker just hearing what was left of his voice as it echoed off the tiles.
Sam’s gaze flickered away from the wall and reluctantly down at the arm Dean was holding out.
Sam blinked at it. He blinked again before he took the arm in his own hands and studied it closely. He paused even further when he saw the white slash that zigzagged across the wrist from the time Dean had caught it on the top of a chain link fence. The minute grazes and stark round scar tissue of suture points that canvassed Dean’s flesh were better than any ID on the planet.
He finally looked back up and straight into Dean’s eyes. He saw the shape of them. The color of them. What burned just behind them. Sam’s baffled and suspicious glare suddenly all at once disintegrated, and he was looking at him. Really looking at him.
“Holy shit.” Sam whispered.
The arm Dean was holding up suddenly went limp in Sam’s hands.
"Oh-oh god. Y-you gotta...gotta help me, Sam.”
Dean felt his body start to shudder. Unaware of what was happening he involuntarily wrapped his arms across his naked chest. His lungs seized and then seized again, and then before he knew it, a hot crush of tears were flowing down his cheeks, unchecked and unstoppable. Shivering with the brutality of them, he gripped his hands desperately under his knees, the blinding raw feel of helplessness and vulnerability so overwhelming that he couldn’t stop to even form words.
Startled by the violence of it, he choked on the raw emotional dredging from what seemed like the very bottom of his being. It was nothing he’d ever felt in any shape form or matter in his entire lifetime. It was mindless crushing sensation beyond his grasp. It was every emotion he kept under tight control at all times. Guarded. Unattended. Unneeded. Sam was suddenly there, sliding into the slurry of pink water, sitting up behind him even though he had all his clothes on, he pulled his arms up around Dean’s and squeezed as tight as he probably could.
Adrenaline that had made him lightheaded and weak now flooded through him in disgusted rage.
"Get the hell off me!" He growled, thrashing in Sam's hold. He fought, elbows digging into the broad hardness of Sam's chest but his brother was solid and he didn't even seem to feel the blows.
"J-Just calm down!" Sam grunted as one of the strikes met its mark.
"Fuck you!" Dean snarled, bucking again in his grip. His chest heaved, eyes burning.
Dean wanted to say more. He wanted to tell him not to touch this freakish body his own had shifted to against his will. He wanted to punch him in the face for humiliating him this badly, hating how his now small and slender hands were grasping onto his brother’s arms as if it was the only thing that would keep him from shifting any farther away to disappear completely.
It was becoming hard to breathe. Oh god… why couldn’t he stop?
He could feel Sam's breathing against his back, familiar and steady. Shaking, he finally found enough to reign it back, stop the horrible keening sounds that were coming out of his mouth. Eventually he went limp, felt the rock hard grip around him relax. Spent and panting, he closed his eyes, shoulders shivering with soft ebbing sobs. Vaguely, he realized something, blinking up into the warm chaotic spray of the shower.
For the first time in years, crying had never felt so good.
“I’m dying.”
“Well, actually, yer not.”
“I know what death feels like Sam, and this is it.”
The sound of his own words in that creaking newborn throat offended him. He didn’t like talking. He didn’t like how it sounded coming through these new sets of vocal cords.
“You were marked,“ Sam sat back and sighed patiently. “And now you are being punished."
"Great."
Sam continued reading from the tome. Glimpsing the pages, Dean caught brief snatches of illustration. Dark blue inked designs swirled like vines across the harsh, beautiful face of the deity.
"For any man that profanes the cleanliness of my House shall suffer my womb and my flesh."
Dean closed his eyes. The words were making him cringe.
“Well, she got you good,” Sam had the audacity to try to hide most of his smile. “You've got the curse."
Dean blinked at him from where he’d crawled into a sprawl on the bed. Curse? Sam was going to have to get a whole lot more specific.
“The curse of all curses,” Sam folded the book shut. “The woman’s curse.”
Dean frowned.
He knew what that curse was all about. Some tears at a Hallmark commercial, some Midol and eating lots of ice cream? That was not what he was undergoing right now at this moment. This was some new brand of it, made up to extra especially horrible just for him. Women didn’t do this every month. They couldn’t. Society would crumble. There would be fires and rioting in the streets.
“I dunno Sammy,“ Dean rolled tighter into a ball, trying not to feel how much smaller his form felt. “I think I have something else. Check again.”
“Dean, all you need is a heating pad and some herbal tea.” Sam informed him.
If he had the energy he would have gotten up and decked him one. A heating pad didn’t sound like a bad idea though. Anger shifted to shame as the thought of how he had utterly and totally lost his shit in the shower. That little episode was even more confusing and baffling than what his body now looked like. The ridiculousness of it made the muscles in his jaw tighten. It was like he was losing his fucking mind along with everything else.
“Look, while you were sleeping I went out and got you some stuff…. You know… to uh, use?”
He wasn’t aware he had slept long enough for Sam to leave and come back again without his knowing. Rolling over to look where his brother was gesturing, Dean spotted the ten or so plastic bags that Sam had left on the far side of his bed.
“What the hell is all that?”
“Just-Just read the instructions and just um, take care of it, ok?”
Reluctantly, Dean leaned over and pawed through the closest one.
“Tampons Sammy? You bought me fucking tampons?”
Sam bit at his lower lip and started paying hard attention to whatever it was on his laptop. “Yeah? They’re for-“
“I know what they’re FOR but what the hell do you want me to DO with them?”
Sam was suddenly all business, he leaned forward and pushed his computer shut and closed. That never meant a good thing. Being lectured by Sam was one of things Dean strode hard through life to purposefully avoid.
“Dean.” Sam began pointedly. “I don’t wanna be your 8th grade health class teacher but this is how it has to be.”
Dean scowled at him while trying to punch his stiff pillow into a more accommodating shape. His body suddenly fit into everything differently now, even pillows.
“You? You are now a girl-“
“I am not a fuckin’ girl-“
“And apparently if that wasn’t exciting enough, you are a girl on her menstrual cycle,” Sam told him. “That means you have to take care of it.”
“I won’t leave this room!” Dean countered. “I can just bleed right here until I die.”
“No?” Sam rubbed the spot between his eyes. “You can’t bleed anywhere you want to, you have to w-wear something so it doesn’t get all over the freakin place.”
“Why not?” Dean snorted. “Bout time I left one of these roach motels even worse off than I found it.”
"Because you’ll attract bears.”
Dean was in no mood for any laughing or anything that remotely resembled any merriment at the moment. But he couldn’t help it, he felt himself smile before he had any decent chance of squashing down into the grim dark expression he felt like holding onto.
“It’ll pass Dean,” Sam said softly. “It will go with the cycle.”
“Just like that?” Dean asked doubtfully.
“According to this?” Sam sat back with the large book with a sigh. “Just like that.”
“I’m not leaving this room.” Dean repeated, finding what looked like some kind brillo pad with wings.
It felt like an affliction. All that accompanied the concept of She was not at all how he and the rest of the world envisioned. It was gruesome. It was awkward. It was painful.
No wonder women hid it all so well.
All the things he enjoyed about them in his life. Their smell, their shape, their pliant bodies and how equally hungry they could be. The thought made his insides clench and throb with a relentless warmth that made him ill. He felt a tired he'd never felt even after the longest of his nights.
He closed his eyes and willed himself not to have one single dream.
Not even a pleasant one.
Dean avoided the mirrors.
He found that the only pair of pants he owned that would stay on his body were the sweat pants he usually didn't have to tie up top. He sure as hell had to now. He didn't let his hands linger anywhere on himself for too long. The alien feel of the arc of his limbs and uncomfortable hollows made his jaw clench.
"How are ya feeling?"
Dean really wished Sam would stop asking him that. He also really wished Sam wouldn't look at him anymore either. He could feel him watching him even when they weren't talking, turning away when Dean forced eye contact to make him stop. He realized he hadn't answered his brother's question.
Sam cleared his throat from across the room.
"This-- this isn't just happening to you Dean."
Those type of sentiments always pissed Dean off. That we're in this together crap worked all well and fine when you all actually were. But Sam wasn't the one with what felt like a telephone book between his legs taped down into his underwear, and Sam wasn't the one that had to move in a different skin.
"I mean, I did have to go shopping down the maxipad aisle like I was on some game show and had to spend a hundred bucks under 1 minute--"
The pillow Dean hurled smacked his brother nicely right in the face. Nice to know his aim wasn't off. He caught himself in the mirror as he turned to flop back into his unmade bed. Jesus, he looked strange. The lines, shapes, slopes and angles that made him a man were all shifted right to the other side. What it left wasn't exactly what anyone would call beautiful. It was more like some awkward new adolescence to his features, his hair chopped too short to make any kind of sense, the muscles of his former self reordered but still prominent.
If he saw this chick he'd wonder what freak show she just busted out of.
"You didn't eat much." Sam was picking up the styrofoam containers that were left on the table.
The truth was Dean had eaten so much he thought he was going to start puking again. He couldn't put down even close to half of what he usually did. But he didn't feel like cluing in Sam to this recent and delightful new fact. He might have tried to eat more a little later on but the Chinese take out Sam had gotten didn't taste all that good anyway. Like it was off or too old even though he had just picked it up that evening.
"Shouldn't go back to that place," Dean muttered into the mattress. "Smells weird."
Sam lifted one of the carton's up to his nose and sniffed it for himself. "Seems fine to me."
Dean shut his eyes. That was another thing. For some reason the world suddenly just smelled. He could smell the cheap soap in the sheets. Their laundry in the corner. Sam even seemed to give off waves of scent when he walked past him in the room. He didn't smell any different. Just stronger, sharper and heavier. Dean felt his brow furrow when he tried to explain it even to himself. Everything was just more of what ever it already was.
Rolling onto his back he absently slid his hand down the front of his sweat pants and cupped the protruding wad of netted cotton wedged between his legs. He'd read the neatly folded paper he'd found in the tampon box and decided there was no way in hell he was trying that fucking procedure out without some kind of professional present. The alternative was uncomfortable and disgusting but he didn't have much of a choice. Of course there was this new scent that was somehow everything he was concentrated into a deep moist heat settled between his legs. And the blood of course. The smell of old blood was nothing new to him. He moved his hand lower, between his thighs where the familiar hanging weight of his flesh was simply just no longer there.
Grinding his jaw, he swallowed down hard, his hand tightening on the bulky pad under his palm.
He looked at the window. The sun was just going down leaving it that time of day that he always really liked. The sky was always at its best right there in that delicate span of not even an hour. Scarlet and purple. Calm and quiet. It suddenly occurred to him that he'd kept his word and hadn't left the room for almost an entire three days. With a deep breath, he sat up and dug around the bottom of his bed until he found his boots. He knew they weren't going to fit but he didn't care. Thinking about it for a second, he pulled on two extra pairs of socks. Pulling the laces tight he stood up thinking that it wasn't too bad. Tugging at the T-shirt he'd been laying around for one too many days he yanked it off up over his shoulders and looked around for his duffel bag.
Sam was watching him from behind his laptop.
"Drink it in Sammy." Dean forced a smirk, finding some kind of sick glee in the hope of making his brother as uncomfortable as he felt. "It's all for free."
"Very funny," Sam mumbled. "What are you doing?"
"Taking a walk." Dean answered.
With a slight smile he found the smallest shirt he owned, something he only wore when he was out of just about everything else because it hugged his arms and chest too tightly. He always felt like a big douche bag when he had it on, disturbed to be mistaken for someone that wore that kind of shit on purpose.
It still hung down past his waist but that was okay because it covered up the cinched tied top of his sweat pants. Man, with this get up he looked like some homeless dude. His hands moved in annoyance over his chest, shifting around the weight there like it would go away if he did. The leather could cover all that up. If he walked with his head down no one would even notice him as anything but some whatever just taking a stroll down the street. Grabbing a coffee. Looking for a paper. Maybe going to the corner to that little convenience store for a pack of smokes.
"When are you coming back?"
Dean was zipping up his jacket, sighing at how long the sleeves traveled over the end of his hands. He experimentally rolled one back and found it did the trick.
"Dunno," Dean shrugged, checking for his wallet and wondering if he tried to pick up some beer if someone would actually ask him for his driver's license. "Whenever."
Sam was suddenly up on his feet, digging under the sheets of his bed for his own coat.
"What are you doing?" Dean asked.
"Coming with you."
"Ya know, the point of a walk is to get the hell away from you for a while." Dean liked how being smart ass sounded just the same no matter what freaking body he had.
"I could use the air." Sam said.
Dean didn't like the fact that he was now about eye to eye with his brother's collar bone. It made him immediately frustrated and angry that the look he could give Sam as a man would have made his little brother back off. Think twice. But not now.
"I know you're doing your best to fucking ignore it Dean," Sam murmured as he zipped up his own jacket and yanked up his hood. "But you aren't exactly the same person anymore."
He didn't like the way Sam said it. He didn't like the honest deep down fear under the words. Like it was a sentence. As if this was going to be the way it was going to be forever.
"It's just a walk," Dean heard himself say as he watched Sam slip a pistol into the back of his jeans. "What's- what's going on?"
But he knew exactly what was going on. He backed up until his legs hit the bed, fighting not to let the miserable humiliating burn in his eyes turn into anything else. This was how it was going to be? Now that he was a few inches shorter and had to wear diapers he couldn't go out after dark all by himself? He was now some crime waiting to happen just because he had tits? His hands rose absently to his hidden chest.
Fucking small ones at that.
Dean straightened his back and worked his fists in his pockets. If this was how Sam wanted to play this fun new game than he could knock himself out.
"Fine." He mumbled even though Sam hadn't answered him. "Gonna just hit the head first."
Sam didn't question him shutting the bathroom door anymore. He also didn't start knocking when Dean didn't reappear after some normal amount of time. Twisting on the water over the sink, he slipped behind the shower curtain making sure he didn't move it one inch on its noisy rack.
In a way, this body finally worked out for him in a way he wouldn't have considered before. His real body would have never fit through the narrow stretch of window that ran along the shower ceiling. Dropping down onto the gravel of the back of the building, Dean grinned a real genuine heart felt grin with the full deep sky and the first deep breath of real air he'd had in a while. Quickly trailing the back on the complex and hitting the sidewalk, he doubled his pace to put himself as far away from that room and Sam as could. Grimacing when he found that the simple act of walking had gained a whole new aspect unto itself, he ducked his head down and just tried to look as natural as possible.
He was about three blocks away when his phone started ringing. Pulling it out, he almost answered it. Instead, he shut it off. He wanted to go somewhere dark and crowded. Some place noisy and distracted with its own chaos. Clutching the dead phone in his pocket, he relished the thought of Sammy standing in that bathroom and looking at the screen he'd pulled out.
If he wanted to take a damn walk he was going to take a god damn walk.
What the hell could happen?
Yanking up his jacket collar, he took a turn down an alleyway to save time and keep himself out of sight if Sam decided to go on patrol. Cursing himself for not snaking the car keys he edged around a dumpster and emerged on a blissfully unlit street. Taking a left where he figured Sam would think he'd make a right, he headed towards the edge of town where he'd seen some bars the days and nights ago when they'd first pulled in. He could have used a lot of things right at the moment. But what he really wanted was a drink.
A stiff combustible drink.
Maybe even two or three.
tbc