Sam knows Dean will never go along with it, so Sam gets him drunk.

It's two weeks before the deal is due. Dean has been trying to live this year to the fullest, not count the days, but Dean knows how close to the end they've gotten; he must, from the ease with which he falls into throwing back tequila when Sam agrees to go shot-for-shot with him. Sam doesn't let him find out that after the first three shots, the vodka in Sam's shot glass is always water.

They both could have used a night of drinking to ease the stress they aren't talking about, but that's not what Sam's getting. Instead he waits until Dean's passing out on the table, then asks, careful to slur: "You gonna puke, man?"

With effort Dean raises his head and eyes Sam, considering the question. "Nope," he says finally.

"Good. C'mon, we gotta get you home."

Dean slides liquid-easy out of the booth and Sam hooks Dean's arm over his shoulder, holding him up by the waist. Sam grabs Dean's leather jacket with his free hand and maneuvers them out of the bar. Dean leans heavily into his side.

When they hit the blast of the outside air -- unusually cold for the end of May in Louisiana -- Dean rouses a bit, squinting into Sam's eyes. "How come you're s' much less drunk than me?"

Sam fixes him with a dopey smile and slurs, "It's just 'cause I can handle my liquor better."

"Hey," Dean says, without much force behind it. His moment of lucidity over, he slumps back into Sam's side. They're less than a block from the Rose Hills Motel, though; that's why Sam chose this bar. It still takes forever to get back, and another three minutes for Dean to fumble with the key and open the door.

"Gonna fall asleep," Dean says, collapsing onto the nearest bed.

"Okay, just let me get your clothes off first," Sam tells him.

"Sure, whatever."

By the time Sam has pulled Dean's boots off, though, Dean is already snoring, a thin line of drool trailing down his cheek. Sam doesn't bother wrestling Dean out of the rest of his clothes and under the covers. He stares at his brother's prone form for a long moment after he's done. He's got hours before there is even a chance of Dean rousing, but that's no reason to wait. He's so nervous he feels like he could vomit any second, but there's no time to waste. He won't get a second chance for this.

I'm sorry, Dean, he thinks -- the only response he gets is a wuffling snore -- and then he steals the car keys out of Dean's jacket pocket and eases the motel door shot behind him.

Sam's got sixty miles to go on ill-paved roads. He makes the drive too fast. The place should be near impossible to find, tucked away in the bayou as it is, but the image of the shack pulls at Sam's mind and he finds the roads easily, even in the dark.

She's waiting for him on the porch as he parks the Impala, his heart tripping out staccato patterns in his chest. He cannot mess this up, Sam thinks, he can't -- but the moment his eyes lock on hers he knows he won't. She won't let him.

This should be reassuring, maybe. It isn't.

She has long dark hair braided into dozens of tiny plaits; they hang heavy around her shoulders. She is wearing colorful cloths wrapped around her like robes, and her dark skin is ashy in the light of lamps filtering through the windows.

"Sam Winchester," she says, as if she is drawing the information from him. He's not entirely surprised that she knows his name. Her voice is melodic, with a hint of curiosity; it makes the small hairs of Sam's neck stand on end.

"Well," she says with the barest hint of a smile -- not so much a smile as showing the black gaps between her teeth -- "Are you coming inside?"

There's only one answer to that. Sam follows her into the shack.

The place is full of hoodoo sigils, dried animal skins and low-hanging plants that seem almost to grow out of the walls. The floor creaks beneath Sam's feet but not beneath hers. He has the sense that the house should be about to fall apart, that it would fall apart around him if he weren't with her.

She gestures at a chair covered with a brightly-striped cloth. "Sit," she tells him, and he does.

It's warm in the shack, though the smoke from the peat-burning fire is stinging Sam's eyes. She stirs the fire with an iron poker.

"So," she says, replacing the poker in the rack beside the hearth, "tell me why you're here."

She already knows, Sam is sure of it, but part of the power of this place is in him speaking it aloud. "It's for my brother."

She waits patiently for him to go on, eyes fixed on his. Sam wants to look away. He finds that he can't.

"He made a deal with a crossroads demon," Sam tells her. "I'm trying to find a way to get him out of it."

"Dean can't break the deal with the crossroads demon," she replies. "Not unless he wants Sammy to drop dead, go back to rotting meat."

"I know that," Sam says. He has spent the past eleven and a half months becoming certain of just that. "I'm not trying to break it. I'm looking to make it so that when she comes to collect, she can't do it."

She waits.

Sam struggles with his phrasing. "I want to change him, so that the demon can't take him."

"Change him," she murmurs. "And what makes you think I could do something like that?"

"There are rumors," Sam begins.

She holds up a hand and he falls silent, understanding: it wasn't really a question. "I can do it," she tells him, "but it will have its costs."

Sam swallows. "What kind of costs?"

She smiles. Sam wishes she wouldn't. "Where would be the fun in telling you that?" she says sweetly.

"It won't kill either of us, though," Sam half-asks.

"No, no, not that." She laughs. "That would defeat the purpose."

Sam doesn't have to ask to know that she won't tell him what the purpose is. Instead he asks, "When do I pay?"

"You'll pay when it's time," she replies.

Sam feels himself nodding, as if he is watching himself from far away.

"So, do we have a deal?"

Sam hesitates. She's growing impatient already; he can feel it in the air. The shack feels stiflingly small all of a sudden, as though the walls are closing around him. He's all too aware of what he's known from the start but had managed to push to the back of his mind: it was a bad idea to come here. He shouldn't have come here, and all of his instincts are screaming from him to get out now, while he can.

But it's already too late, and even if it weren't, there's one thing that trumps whatever his instincts might be telling him: he is doing this for Dean. He has to do this for Dean, or else Dean will die and his soul will go to Hell, and no matter how much danger Sam's in right now, no matter what the consequences of his actions, it'll be worth it if it saves Dean.

As soon as Sam thinks it, there's a shift in the air: the walls aren't closing in on him anymore. She's still waiting, though: reaching a decision is one thing, but it doesn't count until he says it aloud.

"We have a deal," Sam says clearly, making sure to enunciate. The air changes again, crackles with electricity.

"Good," she replies. "Very good." The electricity seems to be gathering around her, as if she is the center of it.

"How does this work?" Sam tries to ask, but the words catch thickly in his throat: he's run out of time for questions. He is no longer welcome.

"By the time you get back it will be done," is all she tells him.

He doesn't realize he's made the decision to leave until he is out the front door and turning the key in the ignition. He means to thank her, to say something before he goes, but his tongue still lies in his mouth, too heavy to move, and she hasn't followed him out of the house, anyway. The door shuts as he pulls away, the sound heavy and final in Sam's ears.

*

He makes the trip back even faster than he made the drive into the bayou. Forty-five minutes and he's back and throwing open the motel door. For the barest second, seeing Dean sprawled on the bed, Sam's heart leaps into his throat and he is terrified Dean's dead. But then Dean sucks in a huge rumbling snore and Sam is sick with relief. Dean's still alive and he's going to stay that way. The crossroads demon will come but she won't be able to take him and there's no timestamp on Dean's life, not anymore.

Everything slams into Sam at once -- Dean staying alive, what this means -- and Sam is exhausted, the stress of the past not-quite-year weighing him down so that he collapses into sleep the moment he falls onto the open bed, winter coat still on.

*

When Sam wakes up the other bed is empty. Before he gives himself a heart attack, though, he thinks to listen, and sure enough there is sound coming from the bathroom.

Sam goes to the door and knocks. "Dean?"

"Go away!"

Sam's face tugs into a smile. Dean's all right.

The sound of retching filters through the door just then, and Sam's stomach squirms briefly in guilt. Dean likes to drink, but he rarely drinks to the point of passing out, and Sam can't remember the last time he saw Dean hung-over. Dean will get over it, though. He's going to live through the deal; he'll have to get over it.

Sam listens to Dean puking for a few seconds, then asks, "Do you want me to get you anything?"

"No!" Dean yells immediately.

"Fine," Sam says, reassured, and lies back down on the bed to wait.

The puking stops after a while, but Dean still doesn't come back out. Dean usually takes a long time in the bathroom -- it's where he jerks off, after all, which Dean thinks is subtle only it really, really isn't -- but considering that Dean was just puking, Sam doubts that's what he's up to.

"Dean? You all right in there?"

"I'm fine!" Dean snaps.

Sam doesn't miss it this time, though: the fine edge of panic in Dean's tone. "You sure?"

"Just leave me alone, Sam, okay?"

And now that Dean's spoken more than two words in a row, Sam notices this, too: there's something off about Dean's voice. It's too high-pitched in a way the panic can't explain.

"Dean," he says, suddenly nervous. "Open the door."

"No."

Sam can hear so many levels of upset in that one word that the worry rolls through him in waves. He says, very calmly, "If you don't open the door I am going to kick it down."

Dean opens the door.

The first thing that registers is that Dean looks like shit. The second thing that registers is:

Dean is a girl.

He's still wearing jeans, but they're sagging low around his hips. He's got his boots on. He's topless, though, jacket, flannel shirt and t-shirt discarded on the floor beside the toilet. He's topless, displaying full breasts with dusky nipples that are hardened to points in the morning cold, and above them are Dean's shoulders and his neck, more slender now, and his face, softer lines but still the same face: freckles and full mouth and those eyelashes, longer than any girl's . . .

Dean is a girl, and he's glaring murderously at Sam through his hangover. "There," he snaps. "There, you've seen it, and I'm going to fucking kill whatever it was that did this to me."

Only then does Sam's stomach turn over; only then does he make the connection. The witch. When she said she could change Dean--

"Holy shit," Sam says.

"No fucking kidding," Dean growls. He's got his hands on his hips and -- how could Sam have missed it before? -- his hair is longer, hanging just past the line of his jaw. He's gorgeous, Sam realizes suddenly. He'd known it all along, intellectually, had known that his brother was gorgeous, but somehow the knowledge still manages to be new to him. He's not really any better-looking as a woman than he was as a man, it's just that Sam has noticed it now, really noticed it and can't stop noticing it, and his brother's breasts are right there in front of him.

"We should, uh. We should talk." Sam swallows compulsively.

"And figure out how the hell this happened?" Dean snaps. "Yeah, good call."

Sam brushes past him, completely ignoring the press of Dean's breast to his arm -- it's a small bathroom, Dean's not moving out of the way for him, it's unavoidable -- and picks up Dean's discarded flannel shirt. "Do you think you could maybe put this back on first?"

"What the--" Dean stops and takes a long look at Sam. His scowl turns to a delighted leer. "What, are you embarrassed, Sammy? You staring at my boobs?"

Sam flushes.

"You are!" Dean crows, everything else clearly forgotten for the moment. "You like my rack!" He glances down, cupping his breasts with both hands. "I gotta admit, these are pretty awesome boobs."

Sam shoves the flannel shirt at Dean and looks anywhere but at Dean's breasts. "Just put it on."

"You're killing me here," Dean tells him, but at least he takes the shirt and buttons enough of the buttons that his breasts aren't completely visible. Now he just looks like a hot girl wearing her boyfriend's clothes, which isn't helping much or, in fact, at all, especially not when they go back into the room and sit on the edge of the bed.

Sam has no idea what to say to him.

But Dean is off and running: "So it had to have happened last night, I'm thinking. I was fucking trashed. How'd I get that drunk, by the way? Did you see anything? I mean, did I piss a Wiccan off or something, and then she--"

"Dean."

"What?"

Sam tries to figure out how to say this, but there's really nothing for it. "I think I know how this happened."

Dean spreads his arms wide. "Well, tell me, Sam, I'm all ears."

Sam looks right at him, stares until Dean begins to fidget under his gaze, and then Sam tells him: the months of research, following rumor and hearsay and myth, finding the hunt in Louisiana that would get them close enough, getting Dean drunk. Dean is quiet throughout the explanation, merely nodding when Sam pauses to try to figure out how to phrase the next part of the story.

When he's done, Dean stays silent for a while, like he's still absorbing what Sam said, tugging absently at the loose end of the flannel shirt. Sam watches the fabric play through his fingers, his heart pounding.

Finally Dean says, "Tell me why you did it."

Sam doesn't hesitate. "To get you out of the deal."

Dean punches the headboard and hisses in pain. "Damn it, Sam, I thought you knew. I didn't want out of the deal!"

"That's just gonna have to be too bad," Sam tells him.

"That wasn't your choice to make!" Dean yells, standing now.

"Yeah, well, you shouldn't have brought me back from the dead!" Sam yells back, jumping up. He towers over Dean now; the thought makes him want to puke.

"That was different!"

"How, Dean? How was that different? I didn't ask you to sell your soul to bring me back!"

"It doesn't matter what you wanted," Dean says, voice breaking a little. "You were dead. I couldn't live with that."

"And you think I could live with knowing you were dead because of me?"

"It's different," Dean insists. "You would have gotten over it. You'd have had a normal life, Sam--"

"A normal life? I can't ever have a normal life," Sam snaps, automatically, but he's weary again, doesn't want to retrace the same tire tracks of this conversation yet again. Nothing ever gets resolved once they get firmly entrenched in that topic, and all Sam wants is for Dean to just freaking accept this and be happy about it, be glad that he is going to die week after next. Of course Dean wouldn't do that, though. Of course not. He doesn't have it in him.

"You know what, can we not fight about this?" Sam asks.

Dean deflates. He looks impossibly small now. Sam wants nothing more than to take Dean into his arms, tell him that he's safe now. Sam isn't going to let anything happen to him. The urge is stronger than any he's felt towards Dean ever before; it nearly bowls him over with its intensity.

"Sure," Dean says. He reaches up to run a hand through his hair and starts when his fingers don't touch his usual bristle. It doesn't make things any better at all. "Yeah, you know what, let's not talk about this."

"Dean--"

But Dean's back in the bathroom already. Sam doesn't know what he could be puking up other than bile, but he's making a real go of it, retching long and painful-sounding with the door open. Three minutes later, he runs water in the sink and washes his face off. He looks even paler than before when he comes back into the room and picks up his jacket, feeling around in the pocket.

"Where are the keys?" he asks.

"Dean--"

"The keys," Dean enunciates, staring Sam down. "Where are they?"

"On the nightstand," Sam tells him. "Dean--"

Dean snatches the keys in one hand, then wheels around to grab his leather jacket with the other. "If you try to stop me, I'll fucking kill you," he says calmly, and walks out the door.

Sam just stares after him. He doesn't see Dean again for three days.

*

Dean doesn't answer his cell phone, hasn't called any of their contacts and doesn't make any attempt to get in touch with Sam, but when Sam drives up to Bobby's house in a stolen Kia, Dean is there.

It's been a shitty three days. Sam can feel each minute of them deep in his bones, the space between his cells taken up with worry. He'd just given up and driven to Bobby's in the end, figuring that if he were going to have to hunt for Dean the hard way he might as well have some help -- but the Impala is in the gravel lot when Sam arrives, unscratched, and that more than anything convinces Sam that Dean is here, and alive.

Bobby's at the door before he's even finished climbing the steps. "Damn it, Sam, I thought you knew better than this," Bobby says quietly. It's worse than a yell somehow, the anger and disappointment in his voice, and but still the first thing Sam thinks of, pretty much the only thing in his mind, is:

"He's here, Bobby. Isn't he?"

Bobby's mouth turns downwards. "You know he is."

Somehow that's a burden lifted, hearing it confirmed, even as Bobby is staring him down. "Can I see him?"

Only then does he notice, really: Bobby's standing in front of the door so that he can't get in. Bobby's mouth is firm thin line. "He knows you're here," Bobby says. There's a rustle of curtains at one of the windows; it might have been the wind, but Sam doesn't think so. Dean. Bobby isn't moving.

"Bobby," Sam says.

It shakes Bobby out of his calm. "Haven't you Winchesters figured it out yet? You can't mess with nature, not like this. Dean made the deal. He did it even though he shouldn't have, but God damn it, Sam, you don't get to go backing out on it."

"He's my brother, Bobby," Sam says. It's odd: he's the calm one now. "I couldn't let him do that. Not like that."

"It has to stop, Sam." Bobby's voice is gravelly and low. "You have to let it be over."

"It will be after this," Sam tells him. "Come on, Bobby, what did you think I was going to do, just let him do this? He's my brother. I'd do anything for him."

Bobby stares at him for a long moment before he says, "Are you sure it's him you did it for?"

Sam stares back at him evenly, letting the corner of his mouth curl inwards the way it wants to, and thinks about how he wants to reply to that. In the end, he doesn't have to say anything at all: before the staring contest is over, Dean is at the door behind Bobby and opening it from the inside. Bobby steps aside to let him out.

Dean's wearing jeans and a high-necked ruffled blouse with hideous little red flowers on it. It's decades out of date, and Sam can't even imagine where he would have found something like that. It's probably better than going around in his regular clothes, but only slightly.

"You okay, Dean?" Bobby asks, voice gentle like Sam's never heard it.

"Yeah," Dean replies. It's pretty much clear that he's anything but okay, but Sam doesn't get to question him on this: he knows that. Dean's carrying one duffel bag Sam recognizes, the army duffel, and another that Sam's never seen before. He brushes past Sam to carry them out to the Impala and throw them both in the trunk.

"Thanks, Bobby," Dean says tightly.

"Call me if you need anything," is all Bobby says, and with another glare at Sam he disappears back into the house.

"Are we leaving already?" Sam asks stupidly. He's pretty sure he's missing something here, something big. Bobby's pissed at him for what he did, sure, he gets that, but it's not any worse than Dean selling his soul to the devil, is it, and he didn't exactly see Bobby tearing Dean a new one for that a year ago. He yelled at Dean, sure, but he didn't throw Dean out, didn't keep him from coming into the house or anything.

"Yeah," Dean says.

"Where are we going?"

"To Missouri's."

"Why?" Sam asks stupidly.

"Because I put out feelers and it sounds like she might be able to help," Dean says shortly. "Now would you get in the goddamned car?"

Dean shifts the front seat as far forward as it'll go before he gets behind the wheel. Sam folds himself into the passenger seat and doesn't say anything about the press of his knees against the dashboard, already beyond uncomfortable.

Dean rolls the sleeves of the blouse up before he turns the car on. "It used to be Bobby's wife's," he says. "Elvira's."

"Okay," Sam says. It's clear from Dean's scowl that if Sam says anything else, Dean's going to kill him.

Dean shoves Metallica into the cassette deck and turns the key in the ignition. They don't say anything else all morning.

It is a long three hours before Dean pulls over for lunch. They eat in silence, speaking only to the waitress. Dean makes an abortive attempt at flirting with her, the realization moving across his face too late that it's not going to work, not like usual -- that she sees a woman when she looks at him. He goes rigid before the waitress does. It turns into a strange staring contest, a stand-off, and Dean's quickly muttered never mind doesn't make it better, not at all.

Sam drives in the afternoon. He shifts the seat back before he gets in. His knees pop painfully as he bends them to sit again and drive. Dean curls up against the passenger side window and doesn't say anything at all. With his leather jacket on and the collar up, Sam can lose sight of what Dean looks like beneath it easily. Dean stays against the passenger side door the whole time, not surfacing once, and Sam drives straight through, even though he knows Dean isn't sleeping.

They reach Lawrence by the middle of the afternoon. Sam means to go to a hotel, sleep it all off and then drive to Missouri's in the morning, but as soon as he thinks it Dean makes a show of awakening and says through a faked yawn, "You've got to turn here if you're going to Missouri's."

I'm not going to Missouri's somehow comes out of Sam's mouth as, "Yeah, I know." He makes the turn.

*

Missouri too is at the door before they are even out of the car. "Dean, there's a shower towards the back of the house, if you want to use it," is the first thing she says, and the only thing until Dean has retrieved his things from the trunk -- the one duffel bag Sam recognizes, and another Sam doesn't -- and gone into the house. Then Missouri closes the front door and the screen door behind her and stares down at Sam.

"What did you do?" she spits, and God, Sam would've thought he'd had enough of his ass being reamed, but no, apparently there's still room for more.

"Didn't Dean tell you?" he hedges.

"Not the whole of it, not over the phone. I wouldn't let him. And I want to hear it from you, anyway."

It's the same as it was with her, in the shack in the bayou: there's power in the telling.

"Start from the beginning," Missouri says.

And Sam does.

*

It's a shorter story than he'd thought it would be, considering that the last time Missouri saw them, it was before they even knew what the yellow-eyed demon was, and before it killed Dad; long before Sam died and Dean made the deal with the crossroads demon. Sam would've thought he'd have lied to her about some of that -- he can count on one hand the number of people who know about Dean's deal -- but everything he tells her is true.

Somehow they have moved to Missouri's rocking chairs during the course of the telling. She rocks in a slow rhythm, unchanging, her hands folded in her lap. She has mastered her poker face, mostly, except for a slight downturning of her mouth, which is more difficult to identify than Sam would have thought. Worry, he thinks, but then the telling is done and Missouri unclasps her hands and the emotion builds onto her face in layers upon layers until he realizes: it is anger that he's seeing.

"All Dean told me was that he'd woken up on Tuesday in a woman's body," Missouri says, her voice rumbling and low. "Samuel Winchester, I could just smack you. When I said for you boys to keep in touch, I wasn't talking about Christmas cards!"

Sam has never in his life sent out a Christmas card and he's pretty sure that in the past twenty-five years no one else in his family has, either, but he doesn't say that.

Missouri's still going. "You can't just dump all this on a person and expect her to deal with it all at once!"

Sam waits until she seems to be calming down a bit, and then asks, "What else did you and Dean talk about when he called?'

Missouri pauses and considers the question. "What I already told you. He said he woke up in the morning in a woman's body. He said it was your fault, but he wouldn't say what you'd done."

Sam's palms are oddly sweaty. "And what did you say to him?"

Missouri folds her hands again. "I said that there are ways to change him back."

Sam is aware, suddenly, of the frigidness of the Lawrence night air, of the utter silence of Missouri's street. Their voices must be carrying far down the street, he thinks. They must be audible to anyone who has a window cracked, anyone who cares to listen -- and that there is no one, probably, is unimportant. There is a crystalline feel to the cold, that it could shatter at any second with too sudden of a movement. Sam's hoodie is too thin.

"Change him back," Sam repeats, murmuring.

Missouri shakes her head slowly. Before Sam can work his tongue around the words, before he can say, You can't change him back, you can't, Missouri says, "Come inside, honey. It's too cold to discuss the rest of this out here."

Sam makes an abortive movement towards the car. "Should I . . ."

"Bring your things inside? Well, you'll be staying the night, of course," she says, her tone leaving no room for debate.

Sam grabs his duffel bag and follows her in.

*

Dean's sitting in the kitchen, which is as immaculately clean as Sam remembers. After the last time they were here, Dean told Sam he'd had this nearly uncontrollable urge to track mud all over the kitchen floor. An eight-year-old's desire, and he was just kidding, Sam thinks. That's the kind of dumb joke that Dean only cracks because he knows it'll make Sam shake his head and grin, You are so weird, and it works every time.

Dean's not tracking mud into the kitchen tonight, though. He is sitting at the kitchen table, leaning forward with his shoulders hunched, but his posture is oddly rigid, as if he is stuck in this position and cannot move from it. He has buttoned himself into another of Elvira's blouses, this one somehow more hideous than the first: blue, more ruffles, larger flowers. Elvira must have been a small woman: the blouse is pulling across Dean's chest. Neither Sam nor Missouri mentions it. Dean's hair hangs lank around his shoulders, still wet.

"Hi," Dean says, his voice an odd croak from disuse, and still too high. Every time Sam hears it, it is still jarring, still too high.

"Hi," Sam repeats back.

Missouri looks between them, as if she is testing the thickness of the awkwardness in the air. Apparently she's decided to take pity on them. "There are some things we're going to have to discuss," she says. Dean moves to say something, but she cuts him off before he gets his mouth open. She's good at that. "I'm going to feed you first, though. Dean Winchester, when was the last time you ate?"

Dean's stomach growls, so very on cue that it's almost like Missouri knew it was going to happen. Sam wonders if she did; she's the psychic, after all. "Fine," Dean says.

Missouri's leftovers are better than most people's cooking tastes hot out of the oven, though: thick lasagna with heavy layers of ricotta and ground beef, green beans sautéed in oil, pepper and salt, chocolate cake with fudge frosting and cold milk. Sam hasn't eaten a meal like this in months, maybe not years -- not since he can't remember when -- and he somehow has the thought, while finishing it, that there must be magic in this food somewhere, that if he were to keep eating it forever it might somehow make right everything that is wrong.

After the food is gone, Missouri makes coffee. She does it slowly, moving around the kitchen at half-speed as if she is far older than she actually is, and even from behind him Sam can feel Dean's eyes in his direction, watching Missouri as well. None of them are saying anything, not yet. Only once the coffee is finished percolating and Missouri sets steaming mugs in front of each of them, then goes back for her own, does Missouri say, her voice somehow older and graver than it was when they arrived, "It's time to talk now."

Sam opens his mouth, but Missouri says, "No, Dean first."

Dean nods. His hair's a little drier now; it moves with his head. He pushes it behind his ears, automatic. "What did Sam tell you before?" he asks, hesitating a little.

"He caught me up on everything that's happened," she says evenly. "I want you to tell me where you want to go from here."

Dean doesn't hesitate this time. "I want you to change me back. I'll bet Sam didn't tell you that the demon said the deal was off if I tried to get out of the deal, did he? You have to change me back or else the deal is off and Sam'll--" He stops, as if his throat has closed off.

"He's not saying it right, Missouri," Sam tells her. "The deal's only off if he tries to get himself out of it -- there's a loophole--"

"'What does it matter which one of us tries to get me out of it? Getting me out of it is still trying to get me out of it! It's the intent that matters, Sam! The demon's not going to go for it if we try to get out of this one on a loophole!"

"Sam," Missouri says calmly, "you need to let your brother talk to me right now."

Sam closes his mouth.

"I can't risk any loopholes on this," Dean says. "Not with Sam's life on the line, Missouri. If it doesn't work and the deal breaks, I just -- I can't do it. I want you to change me back. You said that there are ways?"

In that body, Sam thinks, he looks impossibly young, easily breakable and over-eager. Sam has a sudden rush of feeling for Dean, a need to draw him close and keep him safe from everything in the world. Is this what it feels like to be the older sibling all the time, Sam wonders? Is this why Dean is always thumbing Sam's jaw, checking his pulse, standing closer than he needs to: so that he can make sure that Sam is safe?

"There are ways," Missouri says.

*

There are a number of them, as it turns out, but not all of them will work depending on how the change took place. "I need you to tell me the exact words you said to the witch," Missouri tells him.

"I don't think she was a witch, exactly," Sam says.

Missouri frowns at him. "What do you mean by that?"

Sam considers. "I don't really think it was hoodoo she was practicing." He describes the sigils, the hanging vines and the careful drawings on the floor, the ones he'd barely noticed at the time and only now can call up because of Dad's training, all that time spent memorizing all of the objects in a room -- it'll be useful, Sam, it's the kind of thing you'll need to know one day -- and it's good that he can do this now, he thinks, good to know all this.

"Hmm," she says, unease clear even from the single syllable of her sigh. "Tell me about the deal."

It feels like calling up something from a dream, but he can remember all of it, the way the room closed in as she became impatient and the way it expanded after he made the choice, after he made the deal. This is the first time Dean has heard this, too, he realizes suddenly; he didn't have time to tell Dean all of this in so much detail before Dean was taking the Impala and out the door of the hotel, heading north. Sam doesn't look at Dean as he tells this, though. Watching Missouri's frown deepen with each word that comes out of his mouth is bad enough.

"You're right about one thing," she says finally, after he is done. "That's not hoodoo, no sir."

"What is it, then?" Dean asks.

Missouri bites down on her lip. "I can't be entirely sure," she says. "But I don't like it, no sir."

"There's a way out of it, though," Dean half-asks. "Right?"

Missouri is clutching her coffee cup to her like a life-line. "There are things that we could try," she says.

*

They're not pretty things, the ways to get out of this. "It's old magic, what she did," Missouri tells them. "It's no hoodoo. And hoodoo's nothing pretty to undo, but old magic's . . ."

It's blood things, mostly. Rituals of pain and sacrifice, and hearing about them Dean's face draws into thin lines, gone pale, but he nods as Missouri talks. Sam's listening to them as if he is hearing this from far away -- this isn't something real that's being discussed, bleeding out his brother -- but it comes roaring in as Dean is saying something about a pint, and wouldn't that be enough?

"I need to talk to my brother, Missouri," Sam says.

She takes one look at him and sees, maybe, the way the skin is pulled tight across his knuckles, the strain in his face. "All right," she replies. "Let me know when you're done." She takes her coffee cup and disappears through the doorway, the rubber soles of her shoes padding softly over linoleum, and then it is only Sam and Dean in the room, Sam and Dean and Elvira's hideous blouse.

There's a way to start this conversation, Sam thinks, that will make it come out the way that he wants it to, but he cannot for the life of him think of what that that is. So he just spits it out: "You can't do this."

Dean stares at him. "What part of it don't you understand, Sam? I have to. There's no way out of this."

"Yes, there is," Sam tells him, "and I found it, and I am not going to let you throw this away just because you've got some kind of fucked up sense of, I don't know, honor that's telling you you have to go all the way through with this! I thought you believed me when I said I would do anything to get you out of this, and now after I've finally found a way to do it you're trying to throw yourself to the hellhounds? I don't fucking get you, Dean!"

"Oh, that's just great!" Dean yells. "You don't get why I'm doing this? I sold my soul to bring you back! What was I supposed to do when you were dead, huh? What am I supposed to do if this counts for breaking the deal and you drop dead again because of me? Am I supposed to live with that? I'd rather spend an eternity in Hell than that!"

"Do you want to die?" Sam shouts. "Is that it? Do you really want to die?"

Dean goes quiet all of a sudden, all the fight gone out of him now. "You know I don't," he says. "You know I don't want that. Of course I want to live. But the only thing I want more than that is for you to stay alive, and if this is what it takes, then that's what I'm doing. You have to let me do this for you, Sam."

Sam shifts his chair closer to Dean's so that he can lay his hands on Dean's shoulders. "No, I don't. You don't have to do this. You think I'm going to be able to go on and, what, have a normal life if you let her come for you? I've got news for you, Dean. It's not going to work that way. I thought I could do it at Stanford, but after everything we've been through now? No way. There's no fucking way. If there's a chance, Dean, if there's a chance that this will work, we have to take it. The loophole thing, it's going to work. I know it will, I know it."

If he just keeps repeating it long enough, Sam thinks, if he tells it to Dean over and over then maybe eventually it will stick -- but he needs Dean to be with him on this. He strokes his thumbs deeper into Dean's jaw.

"It'll work," Sam says softly, "it'll work, it has to. We'll come back as soon as it's over, and we'll change you back. We will."

Sam can feel the moment Dean relaxes, the moment he gives in. "Okay," he says.

It'll be all right, Sam thinks. He hopes.

*

They tell Missouri first thing in the morning. She nods, her face a careful matronly blank, and says, "You can stay here if you want."

Dean shakes his head. "I appreciate the offer, but no. Goodbye, Missouri."

Sam tries not to pay attention to his choice of words.

Once they are on the highway heading out of Lawrence, Dean says, "I didn't want to wait around, you know? I just -- let's just drive somewhere."

"You got a destination in mind?" Sam asks, leaning against the window with his eyes closed so he doesn't have to look at Dean.

He can hear Dean's shrug anyway. "Nah. Let's just drive."

*

Dean takes them west by north, but slowly, inexorably loops back south once they're out of Kansas. They're just driving for the sake of driving, now, not hunting anything, but Sam's got a slow-growing certainty in his gut that solidifies once they're in Arizona: he knows where they're headed.

Early in the morning of the last day of Dean's year, they drive up fourteen miles of unpaved road to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and park. They put $160 in tickets on Jefferson Airplane's credit card. The attendant doesn't even blink at the name, just hands Dean the receipt back and lets him sign. "My ultimate credit card achievement," Dean tells Sam with a grin as they pull forward and park.

It's hot as fuck but crowded nonetheless -- the Skywalk is still so new that it's overcrowded, though Sam doubts it will ever be otherwise. It's the strangest, most surreal thing he's ever done: walking a glass bridge across a gaping chasm in the earth with his brother, who is a girl.

The strangest thing about it, maybe, is that the crowds don't even seem to be there after a while. Sam is looking down a mile to the bottom of the earth, it seems, to the thin blue twine of the Colorado River and the red cliffs cutting off and jutting down. There are clouds in the distance, gray and full of rain, wisps of them reaching down to the edges of the canyon already the way that streetlights reach for the windshield of the Impala when they are driving in the dark. The whole place seems too big to be real, too oddly colored and a little hazy, so that it seems as if he is looking at a painting of the Grand Canyon rather than at the Grand Canyon itself.

Dean's wearing one of his own t-shirts today. It hangs off his shoulders, sleeves that should be tight around his biceps instead falling nearly down to his elbows, but he's grinning, a dazzling flash of teeth that's almost too much for Sam to handle, and he doesn't think about it, just slings an arm around Dean's shoulders and pulls him in close, doesn't think about the way that Dean is far smaller than he should be. Dean lets him keep his arm there. They walk like that for a while, not talking, but it's the kind of place that doesn't really need the sound.

A little bit further down the Skywalk there's a guy set up with his digital camera, taking free tourist shots that you can pay too much money for at the booth later. "You want a picture with your girl?" the guy says to Sam.

Sam waits for Dean to bristle; when he doesn't, Sam says, "Sure, okay."

The guy fiddles with the focus and takes the shot. Behind the guy's head a hawk is turning circles in the sky; in front of the camera, Sam's arm is still around Dean's shoulders. It's a good day, Sam thinks suddenly, a better day than he would have expected for Dean's last.

Not Dean's last, he reminds himself. It's not.

*

As soon as they're back in the Impala, though, Dean's twitchy, keys in the ignition and fingers tapping on the dash before the radio's even on. "Let's drive," he says abruptly. "I just -- I want to drive."

Not around three a.m., Sam thinks but does not say. No matter how often Dean's pretended not to be aware of the days, he can't be ignorant of this: he can't be behind the wheel when the demon comes. Dean knows this, Sam's sure of this. He wouldn't do that to Sam. He wouldn't do that to his car.

Dean takes the road fast, bisecting the curves in a way that Sam wouldn't if he were driving, but he's not, and Dean's a great driver, the best Sam knows. It's not that he's risking anything -- he's too good of a driver for that -- but maybe he is. It's the last afternoon of Dean's life, Sam thinks. Dean can risk this if he wants to. What does he have to lose? What does either of them have to lose?

Maybe it would be better to go out that way, Sam thinks: both of them flying off the side of the road in the Impala, a few stretching moments of movement through space -- no matter how hard he works on her, Dean's never managed to get the Impala to fly -- it would be something new for all of them, a few glorious seconds and then it would be over, all of it, but it would be over for both of them: no souls sold to demons in crossroads deals, no down-south bargains with creatures too old to be witches, no more of any of this. It would be over and finally it would be good.

If Sam were to reach over right now and take the wheel in his hands, steer it to the right and off the road, would Dean resist? He doesn't think Dean would. Dean would understand it the way he understands Sam, the way no one else ever has, not Jess. Dean would understand it the way he does when they don't speak for hours on end in the car, the Impala lapping up road and the permanent sunburn on Dean's left arm darkening, the way he can look at Sam and know what he is thinking -- from so many hours beside each other on the road, from so many years of shared rooms and spaces and clothes. Dean would understand why, and Dean would let him do it.

Somehow, though, Sam doesn't.

*

Four hours in the car and it's dark now, hard to see the road, but it doesn't seem to faze Dean. They're on 180 now, heading north towards the Grand Canyon again, when Dean pulls over abruptly onto a gravel road and pulls the emergency brake up.

Sam's not asleep, not really, but he wasn't expecting the sudden stop, either. He kind of has to blink a couple of times before he really gets with the program enough to look at where they are. "Dude, what the fuck?"

Dean grins. "Flintstones Bedrock City." He opens the door and jumps out of the car.

Sam follows him. If he weren't completely sure he wasn't asleep, he'd think Dean had to be making this shit up, but no. It's an actual swear-to-God Flintstones hotel and R.V. park. There are massive statues of dinosaurs in the yard and tiny individual hotel rooms -- Dean's always liked those kinds of places, where you get your own little cabin -- each of which seems to have its own character out front.

"I hope we get Wilma," Dean says happily.

Sam stares. "What is it with you and cartoon redheads?"

"Two words: Jessica Rabbit."

Sam shakes his head and trails after Dean into the office. Turns out Dean's in luck: Wilma's free for the night. "Dude!" Dean crows. "This is awesome!"

Sam grins back at him, near-blinded by how much of a little kid Dean looks when he's genuinely grinning through a girl's face. He loses years every time he grins, but right now, he looks about twelve, and Sam has to look away from him so Dean doesn't see how he's having to hold his face so very still right now, to keep the salt back and in.

"This was, like, my life-long dream, you know," Dean says as they head back out to the Impala to move her right in front of Wilma.

Sam stares at him, watching for the punch line, but Dean doesn't actually seem to be joking. "Really?"

"Yeah," Dean says, turning the key in the ignition. "We drove out past here once when you were really little, you know. Dad was hunting something out in the desert near Tusayan, so we came up this way. He was gonna let us stop and play here for a while -- did you know you can slide down the brontosaurus's neck, just like Fred, man! We should totally do that. Anyway, Dad was going to stop for us, but the hunt was kind of urgent on the way in, and then you got sick on the way out, like seriously stomach-flu-sick. You have no idea how glad I am that you don't get car-sick usually, dude, 'cause if you puked on the Impala now the way you did that day, I would beat you into the ground. But yeah, so anyway, Dad didn't want to stop with you puking all over the place, so we never came back here."

"So we drove five hours just to stay at this hotel?" Sam asks, a smile tugging at his mouth.

Dean shrugs, grinning back. "Yeah, maybe. C'mon, let's see what Wilma's beds are like."

There's only the one of them, as it turns out -- Dean hadn't thought to ask the kid at the desk, Sam realizes -- but it doesn't much matter: as soon as they're inside the mood breaks good and proper. Sam can feel it, the tension twanging out taut like a guitar string and snapping back, flickering in the air.

Dean sits down heavily on the bed, hand to his forehead like Sam used to do with the visions, and swallows. "Shit, Sam," he says roughly. "I thought I could do this, I really thought I could."

Sam's on the bed beside him in an instant, arm around Dean's shoulders, and draws him in close. Dean's not crying, not exactly, but he's shaking, long slow shudders that seem to build up from the ground and move all the way through his body, and Sam's got this thick feeling in his throat, can't swallow for the life of him but feels like there's too much saliva in his mouth anyway.

"It's gonna be okay," Sam says. He's not sure that he believes it, but one of them needs to say it -- it has to be him.

Dean's shaking speeds up a little. "I've been hearing them all week, you know. The hellhounds. They're getting louder now, though, Sam, like they're getting close."

Sam clutches Dean tighter to him, like that's going to keep the hellhounds at bay. "Why didn't you say anything?" he asks around the lump in his throat and the saliva in his mouth and the clenching feeling of his chest that's not going to get any better, that's never going to get better.

"Didn't want you to worry," Dean says.

Something breaks in Sam at that: that even at the end, Dean would try to do this, try to make things a little easier on him. "You think that's just your job?" Sam says. "You think it's just you that gets to worry about me and not the other way around?"

"Not anymore," Dean replies. "You won't have to worry about anything now."

Sam swallows hard and gets a little bit of the saliva down. "Dean--"

Dean smiles at him suddenly, a bright flash of teeth. "This is all I ever wanted, you know? For you to be safe. And you will be, after this."

Sam stares at him hard, but he can't think of a single goddamned thing to say to Dean, now, not a thing.

Sam can feel Dean pulling himself together, suddenly, as the shaking stops. He slips of Sam's grasp and stands in front of Sam to face him. Even sitting down, Sam's head is nearly level with Dean's. "I don't regret it," Dean tells him. "Not even now. I'd do it again. It's worth it. And thank you, for what it's worth. For trying."

"God, Dean." Sam tries to fit all the feeling in his chest into those words, how very much he loves his brother, but there's no way he can manage it.

Dean looks at him like he understands it anyway, eyes shining over-bright. "I love you," he says clearly, enunciating each word. Sam can't remember the last time he heard Dean say it. Then Dean lunges forward, presses his lips to Sam's -- too quick to be a kiss, too quick for anything but the briefest flash of warmth against Sam's face -- and turns away from him, goes out the door and into the night.

*

The worst joke the universe has ever played on Sam Winchester is this: the morning after the crossroads demon comes to claim his brother, Sam wakes up and thinks he sees Dean on the bed beside him.

Sam's eyes are thick-crusted with salt and sleep; he can't get them all the way open at first. He doesn't remember the last time it's been so hard to open his eyes. He rubs at them hard, licks his fingers and pulls some of the gunk off, and even then he can only kind of see. He doesn't remember falling asleep last night. He hadn't thought he was ever going to fall asleep, hadn't thought he was ever going to be able to sleep again after Dean went out the door--

But that's the last thing Sam remembers, is Dean going out the door. Dean standing up and going out the door and why didn't Sam go after him? It wasn't anywhere close to midnight at that point -- it couldn't have been past nine or ten when they checked into the hotel, Sam thinks -- so why in the world didn't he go after Dean? He can't remember a damned thing about it.

He chances another look at the lump on the bed beside him. It's a good likeness, he thinks, definitely the right form for Dean, but Sam's doing all right with staying detached from this right now. It's just like another vision, really, except instead of a vision it's Sam's brother: Sam's brother still in the form of a girl, the same way he looked the way Sam last saw him, hair a little blondish and messy around his shoulders, still wearing the leather jacket that used, a dozen years ago, to be Dad's -- they're in the desert, Sam thinks deliriously, it's cold at night, so wearing the jacket would make sense -- and the form is rising and falling in a facsimile of breathing.

Sam, on the other hand, is not breathing. He stares at the form on the bed until the eyes open, until it meets Sam's gaze.

"Sam," says the figure on the bed. "Oh God, Sam." It jerks upwards.

"Christo," Sam says flatly.

No flinch, nothing even close to it. "It worked, Sam, you did it, it worked," Dean says excitedly, throwing him at Sam, and Sam believes him. Sam knows it's Dean, believes him, can feel Dean's body in his arms but it still takes a minute to work all the way through Sam's brain, to get to the point where he can feel Dean's warmth and realize, truly realize:

"It worked," he says, with awe. "Dean, you're--"

"Alive, yeah, I know. I can't fucking believe it, Sam. I seriously -- God, Sam, you are one crazy fucker, but this shit worked. The demon tried to take me and she couldn't do it, she tried for fucking ages, did something to knock you out even, I think, so you couldn't interrupt or anything, but she just couldn't do it. She left and she was mad as fuck, Sam, it was the best thing, you can't even--" Dean stops talking, grins at him and starts laughing. The laughter works up out of Sam too, long rolling laughs that start deep in his gut and work all the way through him until he can't breathe at all, is doubled-over and still holding onto Dean. Dean's laughter is hearty and gorgeous, normal Dean laughter even in the strange woman's body, the body that they're going to get Dean out of, because he's still alive, even now after the end of the year, after he should have been dead.

Dean grins at him hugely and pulls back finally, a little self-conscious in the way he pushes his hair away from his face. "C'mon, dork. Let's get back to Lawrence so I can lose the tits."

"You sure I can't squeeze them once for good measure?"

Dean leers. "Anytime you want, little brother."

Sam groans, grinning. "When you put it like that, never mind."

*

Dean is so damned happy the whole way back to Missouri's: belting out "Back in Black", driving eighty on the interstate, flirting with the guy working Wendy's register when they stop for burgers in New Mexico. The guy's flustered beyond belief and Dean's just enjoying it, isn't stopping to panic about whether it makes him gay to be flirting with a guy, and Sam, he can't help grinning at it all, either. Sam can't ever remember feeling this happy. Even when they killed the yellow-eyed demon, there was still this other thing hanging over them, knowing that Dean only had the one year to live and if Sam didn't find some way to get him out of it--

But Sam's done it, he's actually gone and done it. Dean's out of the deal and they're home free and they're driving back to Missouri's now, they're going to get Dean back to his regular body and there's no way Sam could be anything less than perfectly happy right now, could feel anything less than this exhilaration, this need to whoop and yell and sing along with all the songs on the radio.

They stop for the night in Amarillo. They want to get back to Missouri's but it's a two-day drive, no doubt, and it's not worth driving the night all the way through, not when Dean's got all the time in the world to live now, not when they don't have to worry about deadlines and time stamps any longer. It'd be kind of hard to outrank Flintstones Bedrock City for utter weird, but this place is a pretty close second: they spend the night in bunk beds in teepees out back, uncomfortable as crap but neither of them cares, because Dean is alive and so is Sam and the deal is off and they're spending the night in a motherfucking teepee. There are a bunch of teenagers staying in the next teepee over, giggling and whispering into the middle of the night, but Sam doesn't even care, falls asleep listening to them and knowing that his brother is in the bunk bed beneath him, safe from the demon now.

They wake up with the dawn and are on the road again. It's a brilliant June day, the sun hot through the windows and the music on and loud. It feels just as good as it did yesterday, better even: being able to wake up and know that Dean will be there, to know that they are on the way to Missouri's to make the last of this right.

*

Sam's really starting to wonder if they are ever going to have to actually knock on a door again at this point -- it seems like everyone they know can hear them coming from miles away, although probably that's just that Missouri's a psychic and Bobby's Bobby -- but it doesn't much matter, not right now. Missouri sinks to the edge of the porch and sits at the sight of them.

Dean walks up to her and pulls her up and into a hug. She's saying something to Dean as she hugs him, Sam can't quite make out what, but it doesn't matter: they are here and soon nothing is going to be wrong, nothing at all.

It's just like the last time they were here, except that this time it's easy. Missouri feeds them again -- hot food today, chicken and dumplings and mustard greens -- and Sam and Dean dig in just like before, but Dean does it with more gusto this time, somehow, than before: chewing each bite longer, savoring it even more. Sam hadn't noticed it the last time, but now he does, the way Dean smiles around each bite, like he knows it doesn't have to be his last, like there's going to be more where this has come from, for sure there is. It's an even better feeling than the ones that have come before it, somehow, the warmth in Sam's gut at seeing Dean take such pleasure in his food. It's the same kind of feeling as realizing that Dean is here to stay, only it's better, because it's Dean realizing that he's here to stay as well, that he has time for this sort of thing.

After they're done eating, it's still early in the afternoon and Dean is smiling giddily, over-eager. "Okay, let's do this," he says.

Missouri nods. "I'm going to need to get some things."

It doesn't take long for her to gather the supplies, though. Sam wonders if she's had them ready all week, just in case -- if she'd been letting herself hope.

"Dean, you're going to need to sit in the middle of this chalk circle, now, and hold a candle upright, like so." She gestures to him and Dean does what she says, holds the candle in his small girl hands while Missouri lights the wick.

Sam watches as Missouri recites something -- old words, guttural words, the kind Sam's never been able to pronounce properly and the meaning of which he can't discern -- and a swift wind moves across the room, turns the place dark and blows the candle out, and the anticipation is light in Sam's chest, bubbling rapidly up--

When Missouri turns the light back on, though, there is nothing. Dean's still sitting in the middle of the chalk circle, in the same girl shape he was before. Missouri frowns slightly, hides it away once she realizes Sam is looking at her. Dean follows Sam's gaze. "It's okay, love," she tells Dean. "There are other things we can try. Let me just set them up, okay?"

But Sam didn't miss her frown. She'd tried the most likely thing first, he thinks, the thing that she was most sure would succeed, and it didn't work. There are other things, he tells himself, and relaxes his muscles, settles into the chair to wait until she is back with her supplies.

They try a second ritual after that, holy water and old words like before, but it's no good, either; the one after that is no different. Missouri's got her poker face fixed now. She isn't letting on that anything's out of the ordinary, but because Sam caught her before she got the poker face on in the first place, he can tell: some of this should have worked. One of these, Missouri's thinking, should have worked -- he doesn't need to be a psychic to know that -- and with each one that fails, she's becoming more and more worried, and the doubt in Sam's gut is becoming solider, more heavy.

"Let's take a break for a while," Missouri says finally, calmly, after Sam doesn't know how long. It felt like years. It could have been thirty minutes or three hours; in mid-June, with the sun as high in the sky as it is, it's impossible to tell from the angle of the shadows.

Dean nods slowly, biting his lip. "There are more things to try, right?"

"Of course there are," Missouri replies. Sam has to give her credit: she times her response just right, neither too quick nor too slow; just the right timing for reassurance. But then again, that was one of the first things she said to him and Dean when they met her, wasn't it? People came to her for good news, she'd told them. If she was good at anything, Missouri Mosley was good at faking good news.

"I'll fix us some iced tea and we'll sit on the porch for a while," Missouri says. "Dean, Sam, you both want sugar in your tea?"

"Two sugars in Dean's and one in mine," Sam says, watching Dean toy with his hair subconsciously.

Missouri nods. "You boys go ahead on out to the porch. I'll be there in a minute with the drinks."

There are two rocking chairs and a porch swing suspended from the rafters by a pair of steel chains. Dean takes one of the rockers, so Sam takes the swing. Clearly it's designed to fit Missouri: Sam's knees are bent, feet firmly on the ground even when he's sitting all the way back in it. He rocks it back and forth a little anyway, mimicking Dean.

The humidity moves over Sam in waves as he rocks, his t-shirt sliding damply against the wood-slatted back of the swing. He can feel the air moving thickly around him as he displaces it. Dean is looking vaguely in Sam's direction. Sweat is making Dean's hair stick to his head, damp strands around his hairline. Missouri is taking a long time with the tea. Sam wonders if she is making new tea from scratch, if now she has to wait for ice cubes to cool it down enough to call it iced tea.

Finally she reappears, carrying three tall glasses full of tea on a tray. She's stuck lemon wedges on the sides of the glasses, neat as any restaurant. "Yours is the one nearest you, Dean," she tells him.

Dean takes the glass with one hand then shifts it to the other hand, wiping the condensation from the glass on his forehead. Sam watches the motion before taking his own glass, before taking his first sip of the tea. It tastes fresh, like sun tea -- Jess used to make tea in the south-facing window of their apartment's kitchen, leave it there all day to steep. She'd claim it made the tea taste better, because of the slow heat of the sun instead of the rapid boil; Sam doesn't know that it makes a difference, either way, but he knew that he loved her and that was what mattered. It used to hurt to think about that: the fact that he loved her. It was something he used to wake up knowing every morning, the first thought in his brain as he looked at her, golden hair splayed out on the pillow beside him, Jess, the most constant thing in his life at Stanford. Now, thinking about the sun tea, it doesn't really hurt anymore. He did his best not to think about her at all for those first few months of being back on the road with Dean, but thinking about it now doesn't hurt; it feels more like scratching at an itch, idly, and that doing so makes him feel better now that he has done it.

He takes another sip of tea. None of them says anything for a while. Missouri takes her seat in the free rocking chair, rests the hand holding the glass against the arm of the chair and rocks back and forth, back and forth. The chairs are well-made, Sam thinks, as is the porch: nothing squeaks.

Missouri is the one to break the silence. "I wasn't lying when I said that there are other things we can try, Dean," she says finally. "But I don't think you're going to like them."

There is something about the way she says it, the deep rumbling of her voice, that gives Sam pause. Dean doesn't miss it, either. Sam can hear him trying to figure out just what to say before he asks, "What kinds of things?"

Missouri shakes her head slowly. "Sacrifice. Blood magic. It's old magic that did this to you, and old magic would be the next place to go to try to undo it. How much do you know about blood magic?"

"Not much," Dean admits. "Just that it's nasty stuff. We've never really had much to do with it."

"There's a good reason for that, you know. You're not the same after you mess with that stuff."

"And you'd be willing to help us with that?" Dean asks.

Missouri's face is unreadable. "I wouldn't want to," she says slowly. "You'd have to figure out if it's worth the costs."

"What kinds of costs?"

It feels like hearing another version of the conversation Sam had in the bayou, the same words taken and distorted like light through a refracted lens, the same pieces going in but not coming out. What kinds of costs? Sam had asked then, and she hadn't told him anything, had just told him that he would know when it was time to pay. Missouri has answers, though, this time.

"Most of the rituals are based on the sacrifice of innocents." Missouri's voice is even deeper than before. "Children, usually. You don't want to get mixed up in that, Dean."

She's not wrong: Dean doesn't. Sam wonders if she could tell even before Sam could, before he saw the way the hope went out of Dean's face.

"And there's nothing else you can think of to do for this?" he says. "You mean I'm stuck like this?"

For a long moment none of them breathe, none of them say a word. Dean's words move through Sam's brain slowly, like he's hearing them through the distortion of water: stuck like this. Because of what Sam did, Dean is stuck like this.

Sam doesn't regret it. Dean is alive and that's what matters. He's alive and his soul isn't in Hell; he's not doomed to eternal torment. That's what matters, not what shape Dean's in, no matter what kind of emotion is building on Dean's face, what terror and what anger.

Then Missouri says gently, "There are worse things than this, Dean," and whatever anger was building in Dean dies out immediately.

"I know," he says, subdued. "Fuck." He sets his glass of tea down on the wood slats of the porch beside his rocking chair, carefully enough that it does not spill, then gets up quickly and stalks off down the steps.

"Dean," Sam says quickly, out of reflex, but before he's barely gotten out of the porch swing Missouri's hand is on his arm.

"You want to let him be for a while, honey," Missouri says firmly. "Why don't you come inside and help me fold some laundry, hmm?"

There's a panic bubbling in Sam's chest. This is the first time since the morning after Dean's last day that Dean has been out of his sight for more than a minute, and what if something were to happen to him, he thinks, what if--

Missouri gives him a pointed look, her impatience clear, and all thoughts of disobeying her die.

Missouri has endless piles of towels hot from the dryer and sun-warmed white sheets from the line. None of her laundry has stains on it anywhere; the sheets are the white of teeth-bleaching commercials, that perfect white that Sam's never seen in nature. And she's not wrong about the clothes-folding: it's never really something that Sam's held stock with, but the panic in his chest is easing back slowly, very slowly. It's still there, he knows, could still lash out at any moment if there were cause, but he can breathe now, a little. The ritual of the clothes-folding helps, the repetition of the movements, and when Dean walks back in after half an hour or half a year, Sam manages to keep himself from pulling Dean into a hug immediately, checking to make sure he's still there, still okay. It's a close thing, though.

"I'm okay," Dean says, holding up a hand. "Really, Sam, I mean it. Look at me. Do I look like I'm lying to you?"

Sam takes a long look at him, trying to push his mind past the woman's body and look at his brother underneath it. And the thing is -- Sam's mind catches on this one for a moment -- it really doesn't seem like Dean's lying. He's looking at Sam straight on, eyes wide open, and his posture's all wrong, too relaxed for him to be lying. It's not that Dean's really all that rigid when he's lying -- he's been doing it too long and is too good at it for that -- but there's a difference, enough that Sam can tell, and there is no rigidity there now.

So what, Dean actually really did go walk around for half an hour and make his peace with this? Yes, apparently so.

Hesitantly, Missouri says, "There's a chance, you know."

Sam's ears perk up. Dean's, oddly enough, don't really.

"A chance of what?" Sam says.

Missouri puts down the sheet she's been folding. "A chance that you'll change back on your own, Dean. I don't know how long it would take, or even if it'll happen at all--"

Dean shrugs. The motion is enough to interrupt. "If it happens, it happens. If not, well. You're right. I'm lucky to be alive at all. I'll take what I can get."

Missouri gives Dean a scrutinizing look, but after a moment she eases back the intensity, apparently satisfied with what she'd seen. "I think you're going to be all right, Dean Winchester," she says.

Dean smiles back at her, and something loosens in Sam's chest, something he hadn't realized was wound as tight as it was.

*

They leave in the morning. They drive without much of a destination in mind, other than to get out of Lawrence. They've had too many other things on their minds than to look for hunts; Sam wouldn't even know where to start at this point, other than to call Ellen, and he'd rather be out of Lawrence before he gets too deep into looking for a hunt, anyway. They can scan the obituaries just as well from outside of Kansas.

Dean doesn't really go all that far, though. He stops off in Nebraska for the night, a little town in the middle of nowhere, nothing but cornfields to be seen for miles. Dean gets them a double room on one of the more gender-ambiguous credit cards -- Jan Bennett could really go either way -- and they spend the night cleaning the guns, since that hasn't been done in ages, and watching reruns of Seinfeld. Sam doesn't mention that he's seen all of these episodes before, or that he's noticing the way Dean's fingers are a little clumsy with the pieces of the guns, which are larger in Dean's hands now than they ever were before.

*

"I want to go hunting again," Dean announces in the morning.

Sam doesn't look up from his breakfast. It's waffles, and they're pretty awesome; and anyway he doesn't want Dean to notice the look of dismay on his face. "Now?" he replies.

"Dude, it's been a good month since the last time we went on a hunt, at least. Yes, now."

Sam cuts his waffle into careful bite-sized bits. As tactfully as he can he says, "I don't think that's a good idea."

"What do you mean, you don't think that's a good idea?" Dean asks around an enormous bite of home fries. It's kind of ridiculous, seeing that much food shoveled into a girl's mouth at once; Sam's never seen a girl that ate the way that Dean's eating. It's not worth Sam's life to call Dean's attention to that, though.

Sam puts his fork down. "It's just -- well, you were good at hunting before because you'd spent your entire life hunting, Dean. You haven't been hunting since--" the change, Sam thinks, not since the change, but he doesn't really know how to say that in a way that won't make Dean mad.

Dean gets it anyway, though, and somehow he isn't mad. He's calm, reasonable even. "All the more reason that I should start now."

"You don't know how this body works yet, Dean," Sam says.

"You know, oddly enough, I have been living in it for a few weeks now," Dean says lightly.

Sam pushes the hair back off his forehead. It's getting too long, almost to the point that he can't see. He hates getting it cut, though. He looks like he's about twelve every time he gets a haircut, like somebody held a bowl on his head and cut around it.

"That's not the point," Sam replies. "The point is, I don't want you to get hurt because you don't know how to move in this body, not right after . . ."

Not right after you could have died. But Dean's tuned in to him today, somehow, understands what he means without Sam even having to say it. It's almost eerie, how well Dean's getting him.

"Okay," Dean says. "Okay. If you want me to wait and, what, train until I've figured out how this body moves, that's fine, I'll wait. But I'm going to get back into it, you better believe it."

*

Dean's not kidding. He throws himself into training the way Sam hasn't ever seen Dean go at anything: crazy grueling hours, morning to night, figuring out what's the same and what he has to relearn and what to give up on. He can't beat Sam up anymore, but Sam could have guessed that from the start -- even before the change it hadn't been a sure thing that Dean could beat him up. The recoil from the rifles throws Dean for a bit but he gets the hang out it again after a while, and he's better with knife-fighting than he was before: more agile at close range, better able to duck and dive out of Sam's way. Sam feels clumsy fighting against him now, over-large. He hasn't felt this way since he was still growing, before he put some muscle on and figured out where his limbs went; it's strange to feel so much like a teenager again. For all the agility he's gained, though, there's nothing Dean can do about the fact that he's slower at flat-out running, now that his legs are shorter. He's still fast, but those couple of inches make a difference, as do the breasts.

"We're going to have to get me a sports bra or two," Dean announces one night a few days in. "My boobs fucking hurt." He's standing shirtless in the middle of the room, cupping the breasts in question in both hands. Sam carefully keeps his eyes on Dean's face and not on his chest.

"I could use some t-shirts while we're at it, I guess," Sam allows.

Dean's not sure that a thrift store would really sell sports bras. "That's pretty much the same as buying used underwear, dude, pretty gross," Dean comments, which is a pretty good point.

Sam has to wonder, now that Dean mentions it, what Dean's been doing for underwear all this time. Has he been wearing old underwear of Elvira's? Probably not. What has he been doing, then? Has he just been wearing his old boxers under his jeans, or the boxer-briefs they use for hunting, hanging too-big around his waist? Or did he stop somewhere on that first drive up to Bobby's and buy women's underwear? Are they sturdy cotton Hanes briefs, or did he go for something different, flimsy women's panties? Dean's always liked women's underwear, twisting his fingers up under it in the back seats of cars or in the alleyways behind restaurants. He used to tell Sam all about it when Sam was twelve or thirteen, used to torment him with the idea of girls coming hard all over Dean's clever fingers. What kind of underwear would Dean have bought himself, then? Sam's betting on the panties, and he's kind of horrified to feel his dick starting to swell in his jeans.

Luckily, Dean's not really paying attention. "I saw a Super K-Mart a couple of exits back," he says. "I think we should stop by there in the morning. I'm going to take a shower right now, though, because man, I'm rank."

"Yeah okay sure," Sam says quickly, thanking pretty much every deity ever when Dean passes right by him without giving him another spare glance.

*

Sports bras aren't the only things Dean picks out in the morning, though. He grabs a couple of fitted t-shirts and a jacket and some jeans that actually fit, and when Sam goes to get his own t-shirts, Dean disappears into the women's underwear section and comes back with a couple packs of Hanes Her Way, the plain white cotton ones, which still doesn't answer Sam's question about what Dean's been wearing for the past three weeks. It doesn't matter; that's not what Sam's stuck on.

What Sam's stuck on is this: Hanes Her Way are the most basic of women's underwear, and yet the idea of Dean wearing them, the way they would cling to the curves of his hips, is etching itself into Sam's mind, is making him go hard. It's not the thought of women's panties that made him go hard the other day, Sam knows now; it was the idea of Dean wearing them, the idea of Dean nearly-naked, stripped down to his underwear and standing before Sam. Holy shit, Sam thinks, holy fucking shit.

Dean dumps the underwear in the shopping cart with the rest of the stuff -- the clothes they'd both picked out before, the new length of rope and the axel grease -- and somehow, astonishingly, manages not to notice the way Sam insists on pushing the cart, or his awkward bowlegged stride.

Sam's never been gladder to see hideously obnoxious kids in the line for the register in his life: it distracts him enough from the curve of Dean's ass to manage to will his erection down. It doesn't really mean anything, Sam tells himself. It wasn't like he hadn't known that Dean was attractive; he just hadn't really been thinking about it. It'll be fine, though. Sam will just think about other things and it'll be completely fine.

*

They spend a while longer training, but Dean plateaus about three weeks in; even Sam has to admit that it doesn't seem like he's going to get any better than he is. And Dean's itchy, more than ready to get back into hunting. It's been more than a decade since Dean last went this long without hunting, Dean tells him at dinner, and Sam can feel the nervous energy accumulating between them on the table, the kind of energy that needs a hunt.

Sam needs the hunt too, though. Hunting wasn't always something Sam wanted, but at some point it became that. Now it's even more, something vital thrumming through his veins. As long as he didn't think about the fact that they weren't hunting, as long as he just continued on like the way he was, he'd been fine. Now that he's thought about it, though, now that Dean's brought it to a head, he needs to hunt, needs to get this energy out of his system.

So Sam doesn't even have to think about it when Dean wakes him up in the morning a couple of days later by waving a McDonald's coffee and a bacon, egg and cheese biscuit under his nose and says, "Hey, I think I might've found us a hunt in Indiana. It's a haunted park, simple salt-and-burn job. What do you say?"

Sam blinks one eye open and sits up groggily. "Yeah, sure," he replies.

Dean grins, says, "Awesome," and hands over the coffee and the biscuit. They're on the road twenty minutes later.

*

It's not a simple salt-and-burn job. That's the only thing Sam can concentrate on: fuck Dean and his fucking simple salt-and-burn job. There are multiple spirits and salting and burning them might work, maybe, if they weren't so good at trying to kill Sam and Dean that neither of them can get anywhere close to within range of the mass grave, let alone figure out which of the fifteen bodies belong to the spirits in question.

"Just salt and burn the whole lot!" Dean's yelling from the other side of the grave, firing rock salt rounds through the spirits that are coming for him, but they don't have enough gasoline and nowhere near enough salt on them to do it. Sam's going to have to go back to the car, he's the faster of the two of them, but it's looking like a close thing whether Dean's going to be able to hold them off for long enough for Sam to get back--

He has to go for it, there's nothing else for it; he makes a break for it, has a horrible moment of thinking that he doesn't have the keys and he's going to have to go back again and get them from Dean, but they left the trunk open, he can grab the rock salt and the extra gas and get back. He's going to make it in time, he is. He runs around the grave, dodging the spirits, trusting that Dean will take care of them, and throwing gasoline in the gaping pit in the earth, then salt. It took them the better part of six hours to dig up the mass grave, working as hard as they could, and the spirits never once surfaced, not until they were all the way done, fucking spirits, but he's nearly finished with the salt and the gasoline, he's throwing matches in the grave and watching it flare up and burn bright, is ready to fall over with relief at having done it when Dean screams, a deep-throated girl's scream, and Sam turns to see him gutted, falling over the edge of the grave.

Sam doesn't think -- there's nothing like thought in his head. He dives into the grave after Dean, into the fire, ignores the burning on his legs and his arms and grabs for Dean, finds him, throws him back out of the grave like he is a bag of rock salt or a doll, then scrambles up after him. He pushes Dean away from the edge first, before anything else -- he can't do anything else until he's sure that Dean won't go up in flames -- and he's a little hysterical already, before he's even gotten a good look at the gash deep in Dean's side, the way his guts are hanging out.

"Fuck," Sam says, "fuck, Dean, come on, talk to me," but Dean isn't saying anything. His face is an odd gray color, even in the dark Sam can see it, and he's not making any sound at all for a long moment. But then he groans, a deep and pained groan, and it's enough, he's alive.

"Come on, we've got to get you out of here," Sam says, talking more for the sake of talking than for anything else -- talking because one of them has to keep talking, because it's not okay if they're silent. Sam scoops Dean into his arms and walks him back to the car -- quickly, quickly, there isn't much time, but he can't run for fear of jostling Dean too much, for fear of hurting the organs that are hanging out the side of his body. Finally the car is there in front of him, and Sam lowers Dean onto the back seat -- he groans again, but it isn't reassuring like before, it's just a groan of him being in a fucking lot of pain and there's nothing Sam can do about it until he gets Dean back to the hotel. He has to jostle Dean again to get the Impala's keys out of his back pocket, and then Sam's driving, driving fast but concentrated, running red lights to keep from slamming on the brakes, then finally, finally easing them into the parking lot.

He gets Dean into the room somehow. He doesn't really know how; he isn't really thinking about anything until he gets Dean onto the floor of the bathroom, which is large enough for Dean to be on the floor of and for Sam to stand, thank God for that. It's not until he's cut away Dean's shirt, cut it around the organs that are hanging out, that he really starts to think, realizes that Dean could be dead already, that he's got organs fucking hanging out the side of his body and they're covered in dirt too. He should have driven Dean straight to a hospital, damn the consequences -- they never would have recognized him anyway, now that he was a girl -- but it's too late now, he can't move Dean when he's as bad as this.

Sam vomits into the toilet, cursing himself for being stupid, fucking stupid, shouldn't have let Dean convince him to go hunting yet, shouldn't have let Dean ever go hunting again. Then he rinses his mouth out with water, dry-heaves a little into the sink and rinses his mouth out again. He washes his hands carefully with lots of soap and then he is calm again. He can do what he needs to do. He starts running lukewarm water in the bathtub and goes for the first aid kit.

It's a long and miserable stretch of time, a couple of hours at least, before Sam's poured enough water over Dean's dangling intestines to get them clean again, or as clean as he can get them, before he's pushed them carefully back into Dean's side and stitched Dean back up. Dean's unconscious for most of it, though he comes to towards the end of the stitching -- a hundred stitches, that was, at least a hundred stitches, though it seems like more, a never-ending line of black spiders marching down Dean's side. Sam goes for the flask, pours vodka into Dean's mouth and urges him to swallow. Dean moans less after that, but that doesn't mean he's better; it could be that he's worse, that Sam's losing him--

Sam can't allow himself to think that, he can't.

It's another couple of hours after that before Dean comes to properly. Sam doesn't really let himself breathe until Dean does. Dean's moaning, and it's got to be hurting like a bitch, but he's awake and he's alive and that's going to be enough for now. Sam moves him to the bed, then, even though it makes him moan even more than before. Sam lays him on top of the covers, arranging him carefully like a child, and only then, only after Dean has fallen back into unconsciousness, does Sam notice the burns on both of them from the fire, the throbbing of his own hands. He recognizes this as if he is watching both of them from far away, can notice it without it being too much to handle. They don't look like they're bad burns, anyway, nothing life-threatening even though Sam's hands are swollen and blister-red. Or maybe it is too much, because after that Sam falls onto his own bed, even though he means to stay up and make sure that Dean makes it through the night, but somehow he collapses into sleep.

*

Sam wakes up to the sound of Dean moaning, terrible deep animal sounds coming from the back of his throat. Sam shoots out of bed, doesn't understand how he got there in the first place, and is at Dean's bedside. He's alive -- at least there is that -- but he seems worse than the night before if that's possible, if there's any way that could be possible. Why didn't Sam take him to the hospital from the start? It was so fucking stupid, and if he takes Dean there now, they're going to want to know why Sam did this, why he didn't just bring him there from the start, what the hell Sam was thinking trying to do this on his own. And Sam doesn't know what he was thinking, that's the worst of it; there was too much adrenaline in his veins for him to be thinking about anything other than getting Dean back to the hotel, making him all right. He's got to take him to a hospital now, though, no matter what they're going to say to him; there's nothing else for it.

But then, astonishingly, Dean grabs him by the arm. "Don't take me to the hospital," he croaks.

Sam starts violently. "Dean--"

"'M gonna be okay, Sammy." His voice is barely more than a whisper. "Can I get some water?"

"Sure," Sam says through the thick block in his throat. "Sure, Dean." He gets up to get a glass from the tap.

"Some morphine, too," Dean says from across the room. There's the barest hint of humor in Dean's voice, though, enough that Sam suddenly is sure, in a way he wasn't really before, that Dean is going to be okay.

*

It still looks touch-and-go for a while, though. Sam's not really sure how long it is, exactly, before he leaves the room again. Days at least. He's been living off pizza and delivery Chinese, eating the previous night's leftovers for breakfast. Dean eats a little of it, sometimes, but mostly he's still unconscious, which is better than when he's awake, really, because when he is awake he's doing nothing but moaning in pain. Sam cleans the area around the stitches every day, and wipes down Dean's forehead with cool wet washcloths for hours at a go. Dean's feverish, his skin splotchy, but the burns are healing and finally, finally, he starts to be coherent again. Not all the time, not for all that long at a stretch, but it's something, at least. And finally there is a day when Dean sits up in bed, ever so slowly and grimacing in pain, but the stitches don't tear.

"Dude, I have got to get out of this room," Dean says. "I don't care how much it hurts, I am going to get fucking bedsores if I stay here too much longer."

Sam feels like he's been holding his breath for the better part of a year. "Okay," he says.

They get in the Impala and drive to the next town over. Twenty minutes in the car is almost more than Dean can take, Sam can tell from the whiteness of his face, but Dean's glad enough to be out of the hotel that it doesn't matter. And Sam's with him on the stir-crazy thing, really. That was one nasty room after as long as they'd been in it.

It's another week before the stitches can come out, and still a while after that before Dean isn't wincing every time he stands up, but eventually he is fine. He's fine.

*

Dean's the one who brings it up. "I have to get back into it, you know," he says.

Sam knows what he's saying, but it still doesn't really make it all the way through Sam's brain. "Get back into what?"

"Hunting," Dean says.

Sam can't think right a minute after that, what with trying to figure out how he's going to reply to that. "Dean," is the only thing he can think of to say, "Dean," low and pained. "I can't go through that again."

"We're running low on money," Dean says, which doesn't make a bit of sense at all, is in no way connected to hunting.

"So we get jobs," Sam says. "Hunting's never paid, Dean." That's something he can latch onto, something Dean can't argue with. But then maybe he's underestimated Dean, because it turns out that Dean can.

"I talked to Ellen the other day," Dean says casually. "There are a couple of haunted houses in Georgia that'd pay us to get rid of the spirits. They've been using them for authentic haunted houses, but the spirits keep getting more malicious -- a kid got hurt at one of them last week, Sam. Ellen says they'll pay two thousand bucks, cash, per house."

Two thousand dollars, Sam thinks. That's more cash than they've had in weeks, and they need money, especially now that they've maxed out most of their credit cards. Sam put the first couple of weeks on one card and the next couple on another, but they would have been completely broke if they hadn't been staying in such a shithole of a hotel. As it is, they're most of the way there, and two thousand bucks is more cash -- per house -- than they could make at most jobs in weeks, and they'd have to find other jobs first--

Sam realizes, then, that he's seriously considering it, that Dean knows he's been seriously considering it, and he has to put a stop to Dean's line of thinking right now. "We can't do this, Dean, and you know it. Not after what happened last time."

"After what happened last time?" Dean says. "Dude, that was pure bad luck. That was just -- it could have happened to us any time. It didn't have anything to do with me not being ready or whatever you're thinking."

"You don't know that," Sam says. He's surprised to find that he's furious. "You don't fucking know that. If you'd been a little bit better, if you'd been a little more used to hunting--"

"If I'd been a little more used to hunting? How was I supposed to get used to hunting again except by hunting?" Dean yells. His face is mottled, hair flyaway around his head, as if his anger has made it static-wild.

"It doesn't matter!" Sam yells back. "Hunting doesn't matter!"

"The fuck you mean, hunting doesn't matter? Of course it matters, Sam!"

"No, it doesn't," Sam says, throat closing up. "Not as much as you staying alive. Nothing matters as much as that, and you, you almost--" He can't keep talking; there's nothing left to say, and he can't even see, not really, with the way his eyes are salt-blurred, but there's movement in front of him and then Dean is laying hands on Sam's face and kissing him quiet. He'd felt this before, Dean's lips against his own, but that had been so quick as to almost be a dream; this is no dream. Dean is here and he's alive and he wants to go back out hunting, wants to do it again, and Sam can't let him, he can't.

Dean pulls Sam over to sit on the edge of the bed. He kisses like he's trying to suck the breath out of Sam's lungs, hungry for it, and Sam kisses him back just as hard, long bruising kisses, and Dean's whispering against his lips sometimes, against his ear: "You have to let me do this, Sam. It'll be okay, you have to believe that it'll be okay."

Dean takes Sam's hand and places it on one of his breasts. Sam squeezes it through Dean's shirt, then says, "Dean, can I . . ."

"Yeah," Dean says roughly, "God, anything you want, yeah."

Slowly Sam pulls the t-shirt up over Dean's head. Slowly he slides his hand under the edge of the sports bra's elastic, finds Dean's nipple and rolls it between his forefinger and his thumb. Dean hisses and says, "Come on, Sam."

Sam fumbles with the sports bra but gets it off, finally, and there are Dean's breasts in front of him, more perfect even than they were the dozen other times Sam's seen them -- because he can touch them, now, because Dean wants him to. Dean pulls Sam's shirt off too and pulls him down onto the bed, so that Sam is on top of him, so that they are skin to skin, and Sam can feel Dean's heartbeat fluttering in his chest, tiny hummingbird thing, his own heart erratic on top of Dean's.

"Am I crushing you? Are you -- with your side--"

Sam doesn't get to finish the sentence before Dean is laughing at him, kissing him again, and Sam figures that's got to be a good enough sign that he's not hurting Dean, that Dean is okay. Dean's still wearing pants -- the one pair of jeans that fit him right, the K-Mart ones -- but he's got to be able to feel Sam's hard-on through them, the aching line of Sam's dick. Dean's kissing Sam and Sam can tell the exact moment that Dean realizes what that hardness means.

Dean's voice goes rough as he thumbs at Sam's jeans. "Take them off."

"Dean, you--"

"I mean it, yes, I'm sure," Dean says impatiently. "Come the fuck on."

Sam doesn't question it again. They both struggle out of their jeans, their underwear, and they are all the way naked now, lying against each other on the bed. "Do you have stuff?" Sam whispers. He's not entirely sure why he's whispering. It seems a moment that calls for it, though, a moment that could break with too-loud voices or the wrong words -- but this is neither.

Dean nods, propped on his elbow, and says, "In my bag, in the inside pocket."

Sam finds the foil packets there and pulls one out. He feels again as if he is watching everything from somewhere outside of himself. He can see the movement of all of his fingers as he rolls the condom on, as he kisses Dean and moves down his body to lick at him until he is screaming, until Dean says, "Now, Sam, Jesus," and Sam pushes into him, slow at first until Dean claws at his back and rocks his hips up and Sam is all the way in, buried deep in Dean, and it has to be hurting Dean -- he's so tight -- but his eyes are wide not with pain but with wonder. Even as Sam moves harder into him, Dean rocks to meet him, his grip on Sam's shoulders tight enough to bruise but it doesn't matter. Sam wants it, wants the bruises, wants to know that they did this, that it isn't something he's dreaming up, and it's perfect, all of it, even the dark pretty red on the insides of Dean's thighs.

Sam cleans him up, after, wiping away the blood carefully with a warm cloth and telling Dean he's amazing, he's beautiful, fingers on Dean's clit until he comes apart again, moaning under Sam's hand. Sam throws the covers back over the stained sheet and they sleep on the other bed, Dean curled up against Sam's chest.

*

It should be awkward in the morning. It should be, but before Sam's all the way awake Dean's kissing him and saying, "It's okay, Sammy, you know that, right?" and Sam does know it. It is okay, all of it. They're okay, Dean in his tiny body moving over Sam's, Dean's small hands pushing the condom on and Dean sinking onto Sam's cock, sinking down.

*

They take the haunted houses job in Georgia. Another couple of days of thinking about it actively and Sam remembers: this isn't the first time Dean's nearly died. It's the first time he's nearly died since Sam saved him from the crossroads demon, but he's nearly died before, and they hunted again after that. Sam did die, but he kept on hunting, and he was fine, or as fine as he could be. They have to go hunting again; there's no way to keep from doing it. It would drive them both mad after long enough, Sam knows this; it's what they do. They need to hunt and they need money, and the Georgia job can give them both. They pretty much have to take it.

It's an easy job, as it turns out, the kind of job Sam had thought they were getting a month or more ago. The owner of the haunted mansions knows exactly who the ghosts are and where their bones are buried -- and they are bones, no ashes or haunted objects instead, no complications. They make four grand in two days and they're set for a while, set and ready to go.

*

The best thing is, it gets easier. Sam hadn't thought that it would, but it does. The first time Dean gets his period, it kind of freaks him out, but Sam gets him off during it, with his hand, and between the weirdness of it and the orgasm it's enough to distract Dean from his cramps. And that's the worst of it, the worst thing they run across -- P.M.S. -- which sets Dean into a set of terrible jokes as soon as he's far enough past the cramps to see the humor in it.

They take on a string of successively harder cases after that, but Dean's training again and Sam's training with him and Sam knows Dean was right about the other case before: it was just pure bad luck that Dean got caught the way he did. They're good now, as good as they were before all of this. They're hunting together like they used to; even though it's different now, even though Dean doesn't do everything he could before, they're good again.

Sam should have known better than to think it would last.

*

They go to a bar in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. It's the first time they've been out since before the crossroads demon came for Dean; they've had too many other things on their minds, Sam figures, or Dean just wasn't feeling up to it. But tonight, after they waste the angry spirit they've been after for the better part of a week, Dean says, "Hey, you want to go out and celebrate, man?" and Sam can't help but say sure, why not? He's feeling good about everything lately, starting to feel pretty damned great, actually, and Dean's grinning at him hugely when he agrees.

Dean showers first, kisses Sam when he comes out of the bathroom, just a quick brush of lips, but it's enough to put the same kind of stupid grin on Sam's face that Dean's been wearing all night. And when Sam gets out of the shower and sees Dean, Sam can't help staring at him. Dean's not wearing anything different than usual, but there's something about him that's different. It takes Sam a beat to realize what it is: Dean's happy.

It makes something warm bubble up inside of Sam, something he hadn't known would ever be there again. He can't remember the last time he felt like this; probably with Jess, during those two halcyon years. Even then, though, he hadn't had everything he wanted. He hadn't known then that he needed hunting, hadn't known that he needed Dean the way he needs him now, but it had been there beneath the surface, waiting for him to figure it out -- and until then just a vague wondering, nothing more. But now, even though Jess and Dad are gone, he's okay. He's got Dean and Dean is happy and everything is okay.

Dean picks the bar. It's not a big place, but it's got a dartboard, a couple of pool tables and PBR on tap. Dean buys them both a beer and a shot and makes Sam take the shot with him. It burns going down, but it's a good burn, not even harsh after a moment, and the beer eases it. Sam gets them a table and Dean sits with him for a while, sipping at his beer. There are a couple of guys at one of the pool tables that Dean's been eyeing for a while -- easy targets, Dean's thinking, he's practically telegraphing it -- and Sam pushes him over there, laughing, says, "You might as well take them for all they're worth, since I know you want to."

Dean grins back at him. "You sure you can hold down the fort while I'm gone?"

"I'm sure," Sam says, pulling the laptop out of its case. "You just go earn us some money, jerk."

"Bitch," Dean replies, flipping him the bird, and heads over to the pool table. Sam watches him for a while. Dean's good at this, all right, setting it up so that he looks just cocky enough to beat. It works even better now, in this form: these guys will be eating out of Dean's hand all night. Sam doesn't have anything to worry about. He boots up the laptop and score, it's a college town and he's picking up wireless. He starts trolling the paranormal websites. There doesn't seem to be much of anything going on right now, all fake aliens and hoaxes, but there's something in Colorado that might be worth checking out, something about children disappearing down a well--

There's a scuffle from across the bar, a guy talking overly loudly. Sam doesn't look up until he hears Dean's voice in the middle of it, yelling something back at the guy. It's gotten crowded in the hour or so since Dean went over to the pool table, and Sam can't see what's going on until he stands up. Even then it's not really clear, but Dean looks furious and Sam doesn't really have to think past that. He pushes through the crowd to Dean, puts his arm around Dean proprietarily -- ordinarily Dean would give him shit for that, but right now Dean leans into him -- and says, "Hey, everything okay?"

"I'm fine," Dean says rapidly, "let's just get out of here, let's go." He's steering Sam towards the exit already and Sam is letting him do it, even as he's looking back to try to see what could have happened -- but the bar's too crowded and they're out the door already, in the parking lot and Dean's behind the wheel of the Impala, zooming them back towards the hotel. He's not saying anything and it doesn't seem like a good idea to get into whatever's got Dean so panicked while he's driving, not with the way he's breathing heavy, keeping his eyes firmly on the road and definitely not looking anywhere near Sam. There's a too-tight feeling in Sam's chest all the way until they pull into the hotel's gravel lot and Dean pulls the parking brake.

Dean doesn't get out of the car, though. He stays rigid in the seat, perfectly upright and still. Sam doesn't know whether to break the silence himself or to wait; he doesn't know how long it might be until the silence breaks if he leaves Dean to it.

Dean's faster than Sam had thought, though. "Sorry," he says, the rigidity leaving his body all in a rush. He leans back against the seat, boneless. "I just -- I don't know, I guess I just panicked."

"About what?" Sam asks, watching Dean run a hand through his hair. His fingers catch in a tangle; he picks through it carefully without bothering to open his eyes.

"One of the guys was hitting on me. It wasn't bad or anything -- I wouldn't have hung around that long if it was, you know?"

"Yeah," Sam replies, mostly just to push him to keep talking.

Dean exhales. "And I don't know, I guess I let it go a little too far, the guy thought I wanted to sleep with him or something, and he asking if I wanted to maybe head back to his place, drink a couple beers and hang out, and I said I didn't think so and he wanted to know why not and that's when I panicked."

Sam nods, forgetting momentarily that Dean's got his eyes closed and can't see the motion. "Okay," he says evenly, in place of the nod. There's something off about the story, though, something that Dean isn't telling him, because Dean was pretty even when he was a guy. He's so used to other guys hitting on him that he's gotten to be practically an expert at turning guys down -- Sam's watched it a dozen times -- and just because he's in a girl's body doesn't mean he's not still perfectly well aware of how it's done.

Sam can't quite pinpoint what's going on, but from what he's seeing of Dean's mood Sam doesn't want to push him. If he's patient, maybe, if he waits long enough in silence, Dean might tell him what's going on.

Even so, even being patient and silent, Sam almost misses the subtle shaking of Dean's shoulders. He's crying, Sam realizes. Dean Winchester is crying.

"Dean?" Sam says softly.

The word jars Dean into action. He throws open the car door and makes for the hotel room, not even stopping to lock the Impala, and Sam doesn't worry about it either. He goes after Dean, his strides long enough to catch Dean before he gets to the door. Sam grabs him by the arm. Dean lashes out at him, clawing at Sam, and Sam doesn't think about it, just wraps his arms around Dean and pulls him in -- and it works. Dean stops fighting immediately. He's not doing anything but shaking in Sam's arms. Sam rides it out; he doesn't know how long it takes. He waits until Dean's got himself mostly under control again and then finally he says, "Do you want to tell me what happened?"

Dean wipes his face on Sam's shirt. He's not crying anymore. "I wanted it," he says, in a voice barely loud enough to hear. "When Roy-- When the guy asked me if I wanted to come home with him. I wanted it."

That's not enough explanation, not nearly enough, but Sam's waited this long; he can wait a little longer.

And sure enough Dean continues, "You know it's not about the gay thing. Or the" -- he gestures ineloquently -- "whatever thing. Sleeping with guys. I did that before, you know. A couple of times."

Sam hadn't known, actually, but Dean's still talking and he's not going to interrupt.

"It was -- I don't even know how to describe it, Sam. It was like, he wanted the woman I look like and I wanted to be her, I wanted him to take me home with him and fuck me and maybe have kids and I don't even know, it doesn't make any sense and Jesus, Sam, what's happening to me?"

Dean's shaking again, as if he were sobbing, though his face is dry. Sam hugs him in close and Dean lets him. Sam holds him until the shaking subsides, stroking his hair like he's a child and saying, "Shh, it's okay, it'll be okay," the kind of thing Dean would kick his ass for usually but right now it works.

Finally Dean's quieted down and he pushes out of Sam's grasp. "I think I'm okay now," he mumbles.

"Okay," Sam says. "Hey, what do you say we get out of here first thing in the morning? I think I found us a hunt in Colorado. Something with children falling down wells."

"You've got to be shitting me," Dean says. "Falling down wells? Seriously?"

"Yup," Sam says.

"Man, could the world get any weirder." There's a bit of a wobbly smile on Dean's face, though, and he sounds all right. "Come on, I'm beat." He holds the door open and lets Sam go inside.

*

They take the hunt in Colorado. It sounds like something out of a book Sam remembers reading when he was a kid, something about a boy with a ridiculously long name who nearly drowned before his brother could manage to explain to anyone else in the village that he'd fallen down the well -- except that it's not quite so funny here, since kids are actually drowning. They figure it out, though, salt and burn the bones of the little kid that drowned in the well years and years ago and was never found. Kid cases always get to Dean, so Sam makes sure they take a few days off after that. They drive a long lazy route through Utah, spend a day in Salt Lake, then loop north into Idaho to take a case outside of Boise. It's an easy one, the actual 'simple salt-and-burn job' they never seem to be able to get, no matter how many times Dean claims to have found one.

They head east afterwards, towards what looks like a poltergeist in the suburbs of Chicago. They're halfway through Wyoming when Dean says, "You know, we're going to end up not that far from Bobby's on the way here."

Sam sits up from where he'd been trying to sleep with his head smushed against the window. "You want to stop in?"

"Don't see why not," Dean says.

"Huh, okay," Sam replies, then balls up his hoodie to make a better pillow. It's getting on towards fall now, the leaves brilliant orange and gold on the trees that line the road. Dean's got Metallica Mix #2 in the tape-deck and he's humming along as he drives. The sound catches in Sam's mind and carries him easily into sleep.

*

When he wakes up, it's twilight and they're pulling into Bobby's lot. The truck Bobby usually drives is parked nearest the house, but he doesn't come to the door until they knock this time. Sam's never seen Bobby look so glad to see anyone as he does at the moment he recognizes Dean. It's kind of scary to see that kind of smile on Bobby's face. "God, it's good to see you," he says, holding out a hand for Dean to shake.

Dean does him one better, though: he steps forward and pulls Bobby into a tight hug. Bobby's face goes fond in the embrace. When he pulls back, there are edges of sadness to his eyes. "Missouri's thing didn't work, then," he says.

Dean doesn't look sad, though. Dean looks Bobby straight in the eye and says, "No. It's okay, though. I'm good, Bobby, I promise I am."

Bobby looks right back at Dean, a long and scrutinizing look, and then he says, finally, "Yeah, I guess you are. You want to stay the night, don't you?"

Sam exhales. "Yeah, that'd be great, thanks."

"Well, grab your stuff and come on in," Bobby says. He waits for them to retrieve their bags, then holds the door open for Sam and Dean to go in.

They eat T.V. dinners in front of the baseball playoffs. Before the game's even over, though, Dean's yawning. "Think I might go to bed, I'm pretty beat," he tells Bobby.

"Yeah, me too," Sam says, and trails after Dean into the spare bedroom in the back. There are two twin beds here, but Sam doesn't even put up the pretense that they're going to sleep in separate beds. Dean doesn't, either. He strips down to his underwear and t-shirt, lies down and lets Sam curl around him, lets Sam keep him safe. They're too tired to do much more than press their mouths together lazily and let their breath mingle. It's enough.

*

The first thing Sam thinks upon waking up is that the bed has to have shrunk in the night. It was a pretty tight fit last night, but seriously, he's falling off the edge of it now. Dean's taking up way more space than he was when they went to sleep.

It takes a few beats longer for that second thought to process -- Dean is taking up more space than before -- and then he realizes it: Dean's not a girl anymore. Dean's himself again. For a long moment Sam cannot physically make himself breathe. Finally he does. Finally he comes back to himself enough to shake Dean awake and say, "Dean. Dean. You changed back."

There's a line of drool running down Dean's mouth. "I what?" he says groggily.

Sam pulls him up by the hand and says, "Look, come on, look." He feels a little like he's taking a kid to see the real Santa Claus, and maybe he is, because when he looks in the mirror Dean's eyes flare violently wide and he says, "Shit shit holy shit," and promptly turns around and pukes in the toilet.

Dean's hair is still long, hanging down towards the toilet. Sam bends down next to him to hold it out of the way. Dean is wearing the same clothes he went to sleep in, Sam realizes suddenly: one of his own t-shirts from before, which fits him again, and a pair of panties, which are stretched too-tight across his ass, which should look comical but somehow doesn't. It's actually kind of hot, and Sam wants to laugh hysterically, because that's his brother on the floor, looking as he should again.

Dean dry-heaves a few times then says, "Okay, I think I'm good," and stands up to rinse his mouth out with water. He's a little wobbly on his feet. "Shit," he says, pushing a hand through his hair. "I can't believe it. I actually freaking changed back."

"Yeah," Sam tells him. He can't keep the joy from his voice. "Yeah, you did. You better believe it."

Dean's mouth quirks sideways in something like a smile. "Jesus, it actually worked," he says. His eyes are wide and full of wonder and maybe a little uncertainty too, but it's okay.

Sam kisses him even though he still tastes like puke, because it doesn't matter. Nothing matters except that Dean is here with him and back how he should be, and that there is nothing left to be done. Finally, everything is all right.