When Dean wakes up, the first thing he thinks is: Again?
He sleeps like the dead every night, courtesy of the drink, except that even when he was dead he didn't get any goddamn shut-eye. So he's earned this now, he figures. He needs his four hours, and he's got the medicine to force it along. Even still, every morning always brings with it a little painful surprise. Here you are again, and here's the headache to prove it.
He groans, rolling over onto his back. He's sore deep in his guts, and it's not just the Jack still working its way through his system. His chest hurts, shooting pains that he winces away from, and he thinks maybe he hit the ground harder than he thought he did fighting off that witch with Sam the day before.
It's just him in the motel, though, because Sam had Dean drop him at the Campbell compound. Because apparently Sammy and Samuel are two peas in a creepy little undead pod now. Neither of them need Dean; makes him wonder what they bothered roping him back in for, when they lost him damn near everything doing it. It's a Monday, closer to seven A.M. than Dean's used to sleeping in 'til. Ben should be down at the corner waiting on the bus soon, finishing off the eggs and toast Dean made just the way he liked them (overdone and underdone, respectively). That hurts a different way, and he shakes it off, focusing on the things he can deal with. He's got aspirin, he's got more liquor. He's got a motel shower that will hopefully dispense water a degree or two hotter than lukewarm. He steps onto the worn carpet and staggers into the bathroom.
He yanks down his boxers to take a piss, and his brain stutters to a complete halt, because his dick is gone. He's standing by the toilet grabbing empty air. He pats his crotch and it's as blank as his mind. He looks down, and he can't see what is (or isn't) there, because there's a pair of tits getting in the way.
At least he's in the kind of motel where if he screams, no one comes running.
He yanks his shirt off, getting two handfuls of himself in disbelief, and oh, that's what that pain was. He's got angry red marks all over his skin from the sheets and his shirt bunching up while he slept on his stomach. It hurts less when he holds them up, 'cause they're fucking heavy. He looks at himself in the dingy little mirror and an hysterical laugh bubbles up from his throat, because oh god, that's not his face. It is, but it isn't. He looks—okay, less like a girl than like him when he was a teenager and puberty hadn't quite had its way with him yet, but—oh, god. Oh, fuck. He's a fucking girl.
He's dialing Sam's number before he can think better of it. Sam does not answer.
"Son of a bitch," Dean says emphatically to Sam's voicemail, feeling his face grow hot at the way his voice comes out all wrong. He tries to bring it down an octave, feeling like he did when he used to call into school for Sam on behalf of their dad. "Emergency situation, Sam, pick up the damn phone!" He runs his hand through his hair, then looks down at the size and shape of his hand in shock. "Okay, not like—not a life or death emergency, but this is clearly some kinda bad mojo or something, so just—Sam, just answer the phone and get over here already." He hangs up, tossing his phone to the bed, then stares at himself in the mirror some more, tugging his cheeks up and then down, blinking his eyes, trying to find the sign that this is just a very convincing hallucination he's having and coming up empty.
It's all him, is the weirdest part. It's not like he got bodyswapped with some poor woman, or plopped into a vessel like an angel or a demon might. He looks like himself, just... girled up a little. He's kinda butch for his own tastes, and that in itself is a thought that's so hard to comprehend it makes him feel a little dizzy. His haircut's the same, short on the backs and sides with blunt sideburns, and the same tacky pomade is gumming it up, messy from sleep. His eyes are right, hazel-green and red-rimmed, and even his skin looks right, the same pattern of freckles splashing across his nose. There was a blemish in the corner of his nostril that he remembers worrying at the day before, and it's right where he left it too, healing but still red and sore. Only the shapes are just a little bit wrong, his jawline a little off, his neck a little too thin.
He chances another glance down at his chest. His tits looked bigger (felt bigger) in his hands than they look in the mirror, but they're not small, either, with dark pink nipples and hey, wouldn't you know it, there's his tattoo, right over his heart, and right where his left breast begins to swell. His fingers close over a nipple and pinch. He yelps, dropping his tits like he's been shocked, and when the combined forces of weight and gravity mean that hurts, he yelps again, indignant.
His waist isn't as small as he'd like it to be, he thinks, stepping back to get a better look. He's very square, and there's a little swell of fat and skin at the waistband of his boxer briefs. His stomach seems softer, too, poking out just a little at the front in a way that looks different. His underwear's too tight, though. He pats around, feeling the swell of his own ass. Yeah, that's, uh… that's different. He turns to the side, his eyes going round at the sight. Jesus Christ.
He's just about to very nonchalantly slip a hand back into his boxers when his phone rings.
He dashes out of the bathroom, holding his boobs in his hands to keep them from hurting so goddamn much when he runs, seriously, what is up with that, and snatches his phone up off the bed.
"Sam, where the hell are you?"
"At the Compound, where else would I be?" Sam says, but he sounds cagey. Sam always sounds a little bit cagey, these days, and Dean doesn't know quite what to make of it. He should be overjoyed, having his brother back, but he's not quite over being unsettled yet. "You sound…"
"Panicked?" Dean says, feeling shrill. "Yeah, maybe a little! Look, was everything… normal, when you woke up this morning?"
"Normal how?"
"Just normal! Nothing weird happened, you don't… you don't look… weird, or anything?"
"No, Dean, I don't look 'weird.' What's going on?"
Dean's face heats, his fingers tightening on his phone. "I think—I think our shitty little witch friend did some hoodoo on me. I gotta undo this man. It's not good."
"What did she do?"
"Just—" Dean covers his face with his hand. "Just get over here, will you? I'm at the Lakeview."
After finally pissing like he meant to, a strange and traumatic experience all in itself, Dean dresses himself, more heavily than the weather calls for, layering up with two t-shirts under a henley and a flannel, trying in equal parts to contain and conceal his new rack. If he slouches a little and buttons up his shirt under a jacket, he can almost hide it. His pants, he is dismayed to find, barely fit—he has to leave the top button undone, and squeezing his ass into them is only possible if he lies on the bed with his legs in the air like a fucked up turtle. Sam arrives about twenty minutes after they hang up, which is good, 'cause Dean was about to pace a hole in the carpet. His boots don't fit right anymore, so he has to layer his socks, too.
When Dean opens the door for him, Sam looks at him for a long moment, scanning over him for signs of whatever emergency Dean's got his maybe-not-entirely-proverbial panties in a twist over.
"De-aging spell…?" He asks after a minute, squinting at Dean's babyface. Dean laughs, just this side of hysterical.
"Not— not exactly," he says, and Sam looks closer, puzzling. Dean steps inside, letting Sam follow him. He puts his hands on his hips, peeling his outer layers back. "She— she turned me into a fucking girl, man."
"What?" Sam looks closer, his brow furrowing. "Uh—"
"I got tits! I woke up this morning, and it was like, bam, titty committee is in town!"
"What about—"
"Yeah, the other stuff too! I'm kinda freakin' out here, Sammy!"
"Okay. Wow. Uh." Sam looks him over again, and Dean feels uncomfortably examined, like a lab specimen or something. "Huh. Is there a hex bag?"
"I tore my bag apart looking, but I don't see anything. I haven't checked the car yet."
"All right, so let's… let's do that, I guess."
They do everything short of cutting open the upholstery and taking apart the engine, but there's no sign of a hex bag. Dean swears, kicking the tire, then muttering an apology to the car for it.
"Okay. Plan B. Back to the compound, hit the books, try to figure out ways to undo a…" Sam looks at Dean oddly. "Sex change incantation."
"You think you're real fuckin' funny, huh?" Dean says, cheeks burning.
He follows behind Sam's borrowed piece-of-shit pickup back to the sprawling piece-of-shit Compound their grandfather calls home. Dean doesn't know how they stand it, living in a boarded-up dump with a rotting roof and crumbling stairs. Sure, he's lived out of crappy motels almost his whole life, but at least they have walls. It's a little quiet; a few of the half-dozen cars that are usually parked by the gates are missing, and when they walk inside, it's just the patriarch himself and that prick Christian sitting in the kitchen drinking coffee.
"So?" Samuel sets his mug down, pushing his chair back from the battered kitchen table. "What was the emergency?"
"A witch turned Dean into a woman," Sam says simply. Dean elbows him in the ribs, face screwed up indignantly. "Ow, hey!"
"What, seriously?" Samuel scoffs. Dean can feel them staring at him, and his face heats.
"Yes, seriously," Dean grits out, and crosses his arms, only to realize his fucking tits are in the way. He has to either balance his arms on top of them or tuck them underneath, neither of which comes naturally to him, and he ends up angrily shoving his hands in his pockets after a second of fumbling.
Christian busts out laughing (prick) and looks Dean up and down with a sneer, like he's exactly the freak show he feels like. Samuel just frowns, squinting at Dean in mild disapproval.
"I guess now I know what my daughter would've looked like if she were a bulldyke," he says.
"Fuck you guys," Dean mutters darkly and storms out of the room.
"Come on, man," he hears Sam say behind him, without much feeling behind it. Gee, thanks Sammy! Dean thinks, furiously embarrassed. Strong defense from the guy who's usually the leader of the PC brigade!
He stomps his way into the library, which is basically a dining room with a desk and a lot of ramshackle bookshelves. He starts skimming through titles, barely reading them, needing to backtrack and make second passes frequently because he's too worked up to focus. If he had his way, he'd say fuck the whole Campbell clan and Sam too, and just drive straight off to Bobby's instead. Then he thinks about Bobby seeing him like this and he feels sick to his stomach.
Sam comes into the room, and Dean tries to look busy while avoiding his eyes. Lucky for him, Sam doesn't seem to want to force a touchy-feely conversation with him about getting in touch with his feminine side or not allowing their grandfather's outdated patriarchal modes of thinking to affect him. Sam's not much for touching or feeling much of anything these days, as far as Dean can tell. It gives him a reprieve from having too many difficult or confounding conversations, but it also makes him feel like Sam might not give enough of a shit about Dean to bother hassling him anymore. It's not a great feeling.
Hell changes things. Dean gets that better than anyone, and he's afraid to even think it... but it's a little like Sam never came back at all. Like maybe he's still dead, and just walking around and breathing and blinking like he's not.
Dean gets that too. He swallows his unease and tries to let it slide.
Shockingly, there's not all that much to be found in the Campbell library on this kind of thing. There's plenty of lore on weird gender-fuckery among various non-human species (the lore on shapeshifters makes Dean's head hurt a little) and there's generalized talk on breaking curses, but they all come to the same conclusion: undoing a curse is basically the same as casting it, just in reverse. To do that they need a witch with the know-how and the materials to reverse-engineer the spell. The closest they've got is Bobby.
Bobby's basically family; he's been around since Dean was just a kid, which means he's seen Dean at his most vulnerable more times than anyone left living, save Sam. That doesn't make the embarrassment of asking him for help with this any easier to swallow. Also, he'd be lying if he said his ass wasn't still a little chapped from Bobby hiding Sam from him for almost an entire goddamn year.
He's still working up the nerve to dial him up when the sound of boots on the floorboards and tires crunching over gravel breaks the quiet. A couple of hunters tromp through, packing up supplies.
"Hey Sam, you coming?" says one of them.
"There a hunt?" Sam closes his laptop. He perks up (as much as Sam ever does nowadays) at the prospect of getting out of this dingy room reading about how to summon Dean's dick back from the ether or whatever.
"Rugaru thing," he replies. "Couple hours north. All hands on deck."
Sam stands, but then pauses, like he only just remembered he was kind of in the middle of something else. "You wanna come?" he asks Dean. "Take a break from reading?"
Dean looks at the two hunters, who look at him right back. There's always a faint aura of mistrust coming off the folks coming and going through the compound, either because despite Dean's pedigree he's really just not one of them, or because he's been out of the game so long and gotten so soft they consider him a liability. Now he's gotta wonder if Samuel, or worse, Christian, told everyone about his little switcheroo. He thinks about trying to play down the fact that he got a magical boob job while hunting with the asshole squad at the same time. He's pretty sure he'd rather eat glass.
"Nah, go on ahead," Dean says gruffly, trying not to notice the way the hunters notice him. "I'm gonna get in touch with Bobby, see if he's got anything useful."
"That's a good idea," Sam says, painting on an encouraging smile. He and the others are gone before Dean can even muster up a goodbye. Right, then.
Engines are still rumbling to life on their way towards the action when Gwen comes through, a sour look on her face. She takes the chair across from Dean, crossing her arms on the table and setting her chin down on them. Dean frowns at her while the trucks roll through the gates, the sound fading as the distance grows.
"Aren't you…" he finally says. Gwen laughs once, sharply. Her smile is bitter.
"No, I'm stuck babysitting you, Tootsie."
Dean's face heats, and he hides it by pinching the bridge of his nose. "They told you, then?"
"You were already pretty," she says, snorting. "Kinda funny."
"Yeah, I'm fuckin' rolling, over here."
"Samuel wants someone to stay behind to guard the place," Gwen says. "Funny how that someone usually ends up being little ol' me."
"Well, I don't need a babysitter. I'll gladly get outta your hair."
"Hold on," Gwen says, pushing back from the table. "This place is trapped up like crazy, and the gate locks. He doesn't really need me here. He's just got some kind of a complex about his dead daughter." Dean winces. If Gwen notices, she doesn't care. "And I bet you," she says with a lifted brow, "want a drink right about now."
"I've wanted a drink since I woke up," Dean grumbles. Gwen smiles toothily.
"Girls' night out?"
Dean gives her a look that could peel paint.
"Okay, but come on, it's perfect. I get to go out without a bunch of loud-mouthed hunters acting like assholes, making me clean up after them when they end up face-down in a toilet. If I'm lucky, all the dudes at the bar see me hanging out with you, they think we're the Indigo Girls, they leave me the hell alone. I get to drink in peace, everybody wins."
"How am I winning in this scenario?" Dean grouses. He doesn't care that they're third cousins twice removed or whatever the hell, he's not gonna start singing "Closer to Fine" on Gwen's command just so she can get drunk. (He'll take the fact that he actually enjoys some of the crap on Sam's iPod to his grave, whenever he ends up back in it again.)
"I'm buying," Gwen says. Dean's jaw works. He ditched his phony cards months ago. He got paid in cash under the table at his construction jobs, and all that money stashed in his duffel is money he earned legit, but he's gonna be back to hustling pool if he keeps spending what's left of it, and his… situation might complicate that, if it lasts too long.
"Fine," he says, shoulders sinking. He does want to be drunk, or at least drunker than this, and if this is how he accomplishes that, so be it.
He and Gwen eat over-sauced hot wings and split a pitcher of beer at a sports bar up the road. It's dark inside, televisions being the primary source of light, with scuffed floors and tables that have vinyl tablecloths stapled on. Dean feels right at home.
Him and Gwen have more in common than shared ancestors, it turns out. Dean doesn't talk to many people who grew up in the life, like him and Sam, and he's spent the last year pretending he was just your average military brat. A pitcher in, Gwen is loose and talkative and brash, yanking her lip away from her jaw and opening her mouth wide to show Dean the empty gap in the back of her mouth where she'd once had to yank out a rotten tooth.
"I coulda died," she says, talking around her finger before she releases her cheek. "It was infected as hell, but you know hunters, we don't really 'do' doctors… or dentists. Like, I was born in the back of a van and my mom cut the cord herself with a silver knife, you know? That's just how it is."
"Holy shit," Dean says, eyebrows creeping up with every word. "But… yeah, I get you. First time I fired a shotgun, I dislocated my damn shoulder. Dad just jammed it right back into place himself and gave me a couple aspirin."
Gwen snorts. "He woulda fit right in. You'd never know from how Samuel talks about the guy."
Dean's expression falters. "He talks about my dad?"
"Eh, a little," Gwen says. "Gets this look on his face like he stepped in dog shit."
"Yeah, that sounds right," Dean says blandly.
"Everyone just rallied right the hell around him when he showed up," Gwen says, draining the last of her beer. Dean flags the waiter to get another pitcher. "Even though he's got this backwards-ass caveman mentality about protecting the delicate womenfolk. Fucker died in the seventies, but it's like his brain is stuck in the fifties. Uh, no offense," she adds unconvincingly.
"None taken," Dean says.
"Like, Jesus Christ," Gwen says, continuing on as if he hadn't spoken, "I don't know what his wife was like, but she had to have known her way around a gun to stay alive long enough to pop out a kid, right? Like she couldn't have just stayed home all day making egg salad and mini-hunters."
"'Kay, maybe some taken," Dean says.
"Maybe now you're a girl, he'll lay off me a little," Gwen says as another pitcher comes to replace their first, and Dean glances nervously at the waiter, who thankfully doesn't seem to give a shit about either of them or their bizarre conversation. "Put on a sundress and a wig, and you can be his little angel for a while and I'll go back to doing my damn job."
Dean thinks about what he'd look like in a sundress. Until he figures out how to get his old body back, he's got two options: hide it, or embrace it. His brain stalls in the conflict between fear of looking like a joke and fear of actually looking good, but the draw of the latter is oddly compelling. The mere idea of examining that thought unsettles him enough that he has to gulp down another glassful of skunky beer.
"Yeah, I don't think Samuel's in any hurry to take me to the Father-Daughter Dance," he says, eyes glued to the hand gripping his glass. His fingernails are still just as blunt and dirty as ever. What would they look like longer, maybe with a little polish? What color would he go for? Red's a little obvious, but he's always been a fan of the classics. Or maybe black and glossy, like Baby.
"That's a thought," Gwen says, laughing. She has a doofy fucking laugh that only gets doofier as inebriation sets in. "Screw fixing it. Just go buy a prom dress and a corsage. Lean into it. You go to your prom?"
"I—no," Dean says, still stuck on the thought of himself in a prom dress. The only image he can summon is the one of his mother Dean found tucked in the back of his dad's journal, hazy and unreal, in the high-waisted white dress she'd worn to the courthouse. He doesn't think he'd look good in white.
"Me neither. Not that anyone invited me anyway. I was kinda the resident weirdo. Army surplus jacket, knife in my backpack type of kid."
"We spent a few weeks in Kentucky when I was in, uh, I think it was ninth grade," Dean says. "I'm talking bumfuck nowhere. Every kid at that school wore camo and had a knife in the glovebox of their pickup. Only time I didn't stick out like a sore thumb, 'cept I didn't know jack shit about the kind of huntin' they did."
Gwen's nose crinkles up in a grin. "All I wanted to do was join Band. Isn't that pathetic? I didn't have time for extracurriculars. I nearly flunked out 'cause of attendance. But for some reason I just thought it would be cool as hell to play trumpet. Like I was gonna get any more dates like this," she says, and mimes playing, twiddling her fingers on an invisible instrument.
"Band kids fuck," Dean says, shaking his head. Gwen sputters, spraying his cheek with beer. Dean wipes it off on his sleeve with a grimace. "I'm dead serious. No high schooler is more sexually active than a Band geek. Believe me, I've been to a lot of high schools. They're all playing each others' trumpets all the time."
"Shut the fuck up," Gwen says, laughing broadly.
Dean doesn't end up drunk at the end of the night, but he still feels surprisingly light, all things considered. He drops Gwen back at the Compound, and he takes himself over to a new motel, 'cause he doesn't feel like getting recognized at the other one. It's too late to call Bobby now, he tells himself, but there'll be time tomorrow. He can think of how to explain it then.
This time when he wakes up, he's on his back, one hand under his pillow, the other tucked into the waistband of his boxers. Letting his eyes fall shut again, he breathes in deeply, feeling the weight of his new breasts rising with it. They aren't sore anymore. That's something.
Still safely wrapped in the fading haze of sleep, his hand dips down further.
He's not masturbating. Not really. He's just… getting acquainted. He keeps his eyes closed and just goes by feel. On the surface, it's not too different from any other pussy he's gotten his fingers in, but there's a vast difference between touching someone else's junk and touching your junk. He slips past the coarse hair and parts the lips with his forefingers, tracing along the contours of skin, trying to visualize based on feel. He's a little bit wet, but not that much. He finds his clit easily. He doesn't know why it's such a big thing, men not being able to find it—it's literally right there, kind of hard to miss, unless you're a fucking idiot. Touching it doesn't feel good immediately. Just kind of weird.
Under the blanket, he lets his legs spread a little, and he reaches lower, dipping inside. It's not very comfortable. He tugs his hand out of his shorts and slides them off, letting them bunch around a foot, then sticks his fingers in his mouth, getting them wet. When he reaches back down, he slides easily, and that sends a jolt through him that makes his legs twitch. His heart starts to beat a little faster. Okay, that's… different.
He dips his middle finger inside himself, not too far, just to the first joint. He feels around a little. Should he have a hymen or something? Is that a myth? He's got his tattoo, so obviously the body isn't new new, but he doesn't know how virginity translates. Fucking magic. He sinks in further. There's no "barrier" or anything like that. Again, it doesn't really feel good so much as weird, though he's amazed by how hot he is inside. Something inside him clenches, and he feels the walls tighten around his finger. Jesus, that's weird.
He lies there for a long time, just aimlessly petting himself. He swallows, spreading his legs a little more. His shirt bunches up under his armpits, the fabric slipping over his nipples, making them tighten, and somehow, he feels that in his cunt, a little sympathetic throb. He sighs, then shimmies out of his shirt, balling it up and tossing it to the foot of the bed.
He allows himself to open his eyes after that. Looking at tits from this angle is— new. It's new, and yes, weird, and not as sexy as he thought it might be, having your own set of tits to ogle whenever you want to, but it's also not un-sexy. If he holds still enough, he can see them wobble in time with his heartbeat. Cool, but weird.
He gives in and gropes himself. A firm squeeze kind of hurts. A gentler one is… better. And kind of fun. He slaps one, watches the fat shift, laughs. Then he does it again.
He spends a longer time than he'd ever admit just exploring boob physics until he gets too distracted by plucking at his own nipples to keep it up. When you're a guy, girls don't really pay much attention to your nipples, and now he's wondering why that is, because it kinda rules. Hello, evening news? Have you heard about this "nipples" thing? 'Cause more people should know about this.
He sucks on his fingers again, gets them wet, and returns to the task, and oh, okay, yeah, he's kinda masturbating now. The cold air makes his nipples tighten up, skirting the line of aching, but shifting into something that's a lot more good. He draws his knees up, feeling pleasant pressure between his legs. It's all tied up together into this tangled rubber band ball of sensations. He lets his hand slip back down, and realizes he's wet with more than just spit now.
There's still a disconnect. He knows how to get someone else off, he's done that plenty of times. But the angle's all different here, and his dick knows what it likes, but the same approach doesn't really work in this context. It's already better now that's he's warmed up and he's got a little slick going, but he's got no idea how to turn that into something with purpose. He's been told he's pretty good with his mouth, but he can't exactly bend himself in half and eat himself out.
The thought of it kind of makes him hornier, though, which is a whole new level of fucked up he didn't know he could reach.
Working his clit with his fingers has officially tipped over from strange to good. Fingering himself doesn't do much for him, maybe he just hasn't figured out how to do it right from this angle yet, but the clit part of it, that makes sense, until suddenly it doesn't anymore. It's frustrating. Every time something starts to work, he has to lick his fingers again to stop it chafing, or he shifts and loses the angle and has to go searching for it again.
Frustrated, he rolls over onto his stomach, and oh, that's kinda fun. The sheets are a little bit scratchy against his tits, but in a good way, and somehow from this angle he figures out he can get a couple fingers inside himself while the other hand focuses on his clit. He can't find anything he might consider a "g-spot," but he likes how it feels to have something inside him. He's not gonna go out and buy a dildo about it or anything, but he's starting to get the appeal. He starts trying to move his hips to meet his fingers halfway, fending off the cramp he can feel building, then shifts again until he's full on face-down ass-up, his cheek crushed against the mattress, hips rocking in the air. He can only imagine what he'd look like to someone else.
The thought of someone seeing him like this sends a wave of shame rocketing through him, making him flush and tearing an embarrassed groan from his throat. The sound of his own voice doubles it and twists it into something hot and shuddering. His clit throbs and pulses under his fingers. Oh god, he's drooling. He can feel wetness trickling down the inside of his thigh. He's a fucking mess. He thinks about porn, imagines the sheen of the sweat cooling in the air against his ass. He's seen a lot of videos from that angle, high up, sometimes POV, just a nice round ass and a dick pounding into it. What would that feel like? A hand on his clit, pressure on his tits while someone fucks him even harder into the bed?
He can't control the sounds coming out of him anymore. His hand is making wet sounds where he's fucking himself, and every time he breathes it comes out high and needy, ah, ah, ah. He thinks, God, I sound like a slut, and then he imagines someone else saying that to him, and it drives him even further. Oh god, he's so on display. If someone else were there, they could smack his ass, and it would be so loud in that little motel room. They could call him whatever they wanted. They could mouth at the back of his neck and bite down on his shoulder. They could fuck him raw and come all over his back and make an even bigger mess out of him, and he'd like it.
Coming is a completely different beast in this body. He's almost afraid he's gonna piss himself, and then he's falling over in a heap, clamping his legs around his hands and feeling his cunt convulse under them. It surges through him, slow and heavy, and his ears feel like they're popping. His face is hot, and he's gulping for air against the patch of drool under his cheek. When he unclenches his legs, another wave of it ripples across his skin, and he whines a little, exhausted and dazed. His wrist aches, and his legs are sore, and he's too hot and too cold all at once, and he's shivering, but at least half of that is just hazy pleasure still bubbling through him like carbonation. Fuck.
As the sweat cools, so does the shamelessness of his little fantasy, and the un-horny kind of embarrassment takes over. Jesus Christ, did he really think all that shit up? Just putting himself in the starring role of every nasty video he's ever jerked off to? What the fuck is wrong with him? He's gotta call Bobby. He's gotta get out of this body, now.
Maybe a shower first.
He scrubs down as thoroughly as he can while keeping it quick and strictly nonsexual. When he comes out, wiping the steam from the mirror and brushing his teeth, he sees himself a little differently. He's pink and soft, and he's washed all the product out of his hair, which hangs limp against his forehead, his eyelashes clinging wetly together. He spits, rinses out his mouth, and when he's done, his lips are red and swollen. He looks… pretty.
He swallows hard. Bobby. Call Bobby. Bobby can fix him.
Bobby has a dozen phone numbers. Dean calls the one that gets him Bobby, and not an FBI agent, or a chief of police, or the Fish and Wildlife service.
"Yello," comes Bobby's tinny voice through the phone. Dean's still nervous, but he feels his shoulders relax an inch.
"Bobby," Dean says, "it's me."
The voice on the other end is quiet for a long moment.
"Dean?"
"Yeah, Dean, look, I know I sound a little— weird—"
"What happened," Bobby is already asking with a put-upon sigh.
So Dean tells him what happened.
"Huh," says Bobby. "Boy, how is it that when you get into a mess, you really get yourself all the way up in it?"
"Sheer good luck," Dean says, tired. "I was thinking about buying a lottery ticket."
"Chyeah, lemme know how that turns out. Tell me about your damn witch, then."
"I dunno." Dean shrugs, worrying at a loose thread on his sleeve. "Young, pretty hot, if you go for the 'Kill All Men' type. Like a solid eight outta ten."
"You think I give a crap what she looks like, y'idjit? Tell me about the spell! I'm gonna need details if you want a better solution than, 'Buy yourself a bra and start going by Deanna'."
Dean huffs. "We spent a couple days chasing her around Ann Arbor. One dead, turned up with a little curly pig tail."
"Like…"
"Like an actual pig's tail coming out his ass, yeah. Did some digging, tracked her to her apartment, she was in the middle of working a spell. She laid some kinda whammy on me, but Sam came up behind and pop, got her just as I hit the deck. Didn't think she'd done anything worse than knock me on my ass until the next day."
"So it manifested overnight?"
"Yeah, I just woke up the next day ready for Lilith Fair."
Dean can hear Bobby scribbling something on his end. He makes Dean rack his brain—did he catch any of the words in her incantation, were there any spell components left behind—Dean tells him everything he can remember, but by the time he's reached the depth of his knowledge, Bobby is still grumbling and scratching his head.
"Where are you boys right now? I think you're gonna have to swing by if we're gonna sort this one out."
Dean runs his tongue over his teeth, aiming for casual when he says, "Just me right now."
"That so?"
"Yeah, Sammy and Samuel are working a job, they ain't back yet. I…" Dean thinks about it for a second. He's embarrassed for Bobby to see him, but if this is how he's gonna fix it, then he doesn't have much of a choice. And as pissed as he still is that Bobby lied to him, at least it was out of some messed up kind of caring. Bobby's family, and as many Campbells as Dean's met in the last few weeks, he's still feeling pretty alone right now. "I mean, I can just come up on my own. Sam'll be by when he's ready to meet back up."
"Right," says Bobby, uncertain. "Just let me know when you're in town. I'll make up your bed for you. Dean, maybe this is a stupid question…"
"What?"
"You tried calling Cas?"
Dean's stomach drops. No, he hasn't. He's kind of given up on praying to Cas, because Cas spent a year letting him go to metaphysical voicemail. There were nights when the only thing that'd get those memories out of his head—Lucifer talking with Sam's face, Castiel exploding into a mist of gore, the snap of Bobby's neck and the crunch of Dean's jaw under Sam's knuckles, Sam tumbling into an endless abyss—the only thing that made it bearable was drinking himself to unconsciousness. He knows that some of those nights, only halfway to a blackout, he was low enough to go to his knees, begging Cas to come back.
He didn't even know what Cas would've done. It's not like he could just dip into the cage Dean thought Sam was still trapped in and fish him out. If he was honest, he just wanted someone near him, someone who knew what he'd seen. He didn't want to dump all that crap on Lisa. She knew too much already, and she didn't deserve another burden. But Cas already knew, had been there too. And in moments of weakness, Dean could admit the simple truth— he just plain missed him.
"You know he's kinda too busy for me these days," Dean says gruffly.
"He might find a way to make time if he knows you're in trouble."
"I'm not in trouble, Bobby, I've got tits. It's not exactly life or death."
"Okay, I hear you, it's just a suggestion. If he can't use his heavenly mojo to zap you back to normal, we'll just have to do it the old-fashioned way."
"You know a good surgeon?"
"Ha, ha. See you soon, kid."
Dean grabs himself coffee and a sandwich, considers it while he eats. He could try calling up Cas. It took a Biblical plague to get him down here last time, but maybe now that Dean's back on the board, he'll consider him worth a minute or two of his time. He doesn't know what's going on with that guy these days. He just went and traded one Holy War for another, no time to pause in between. Dean supposes he can't blame him. Dean tried to go domestic, and look how well that went. Cas has been an angel for aeons longer than Dean's been alive, but they're both soldiers. He knows peacetime isn't really for people like them.
He'd tried taking Cas out to experience the good side of living on Earth firsthand. Didn't really go as planned, though it's still one of the high points of Dean's ridiculous life. Seems like a shame for Cas to give his whole life up for humanity if he doesn't even get to enjoy the perks.
Dean sighs, shakes his head. He doesn't want Cas to see him like this anyway. He's not planning on showing up at Bobby's looking like he does, either. Maybe it's stupid, but if he's gonna be a woman, even just until they can undo the spell, he wants to be good at it. He needs some new clothes. Just a couple things. Bobby was joking about him getting a bra, but Dean's fed up with free-boobing it. They're heavy and sore and they move around too much when he walks, and if a bra's gonna help that, then god damn it, he'll get a bra. And if it makes his tits look nice, he might as well just fucking lean into it. Go big or go home, right?
So he calls Sam, tells him he's heading to Sioux Falls, and takes his ass over to a department store.
Problem number one: Dean doesn't know what size bra he needs.
He knows bra sizes come in letters, because he's been a connoisseur of breasts long enough to know at least that much. He knows the letters go on through the alphabet as the sizes get bigger, and he knows that you get to a point where there are double letters, for some reason? But he doesn't know how you figure out what letter goes with your boob size, aside from trial and error. He's embarrassed to realize he doesn't even know what size Lisa wore, even though he did laundry and washed her underwear often enough. He just knows you're not supposed to put them in the drier, because the one time he did that, Lisa tore him a new one.
He grabs one of everything off the racks and takes them into a fitting room, examining himself in the mirror. His boobs are bigger than Lisa's, he's pretty sure of that, at least. A shrink would probably have a field day with the weird sense of pride he feels about it. It's not like he did any work to end up with nice tits. Do women get competitive about that like dudes do about their dicks? He knows Lisa looked at other women's features with envy sometimes, and he understands that, though as far as Dean knows, most guys don't look at other guys and think shit like, God, I wish I had his dick! It's a lot more abstract than that. Some kind of a confidence thing. Or at least it is for him. Looking at a guy and thinking he's cool, he's tough, he's got style, and being drawn to that— that's pretty normal, he thinks.
He goes through a lot of misses before he finds something that sort of fits, and through all of that he's frustrated to find that knowledge of how to near-effortlessly remove someone's bra (under the shirt, behind the back, one handed? no problem) is not much help at all when it comes to putting them on yourself. He's watched Lisa do it a hundred times, but she makes it look really easy, he guesses because she's had most of her life to practice. She did this crazy maneuver where she hooked it in the front and twisted it around back and just… vwoop, slid it up over her arms, but every time Dean manages to get all the hooks in place he feels like he's getting strangled, and the twisting and turning only makes it worse. Eventually he sorts out that the numbers have something to do with the band size, and he needs to go for the higher numbers, but then he's got issues with the goddamn straps falling off or digging in too hard, and then the cups are all wrong and he has to start all over again.
He's ready to scream when he finally finds one that actually sort of works. It's pretty, too, which is a nice surprise—most of the offerings are really plain, just bland whites and beiges, but this one is black and kinda satiny, with a little decorative trim, and it's just the sort of thing Dean likes on a woman. The wires don't dig into his ribs, and once he figures out how to adjust the straps, they don't cut into his shoulders, either. The effect is a little jarring at first, 'cause the lift is so noticeable he sort of feels like his tits are gonna smack into his chin, but when he looks at himself in the mirror, it doesn't look weird. It just looks… nice. He's still kind of awkward in his ill-fitting jeans, but from the waist up? Yeah. He looks pretty good.
He leaves it on and puts his shirt back on, and the change is noticeable, at least to him. Just that one item of clothing, which nobody else can even see, has him looking at himself differently and feeling a lot more confident about this whole endeavor. He could totally nail this being a woman thing.
He wears the bra out of the fitting room, replacing all the other ones on the rack. It's not his first time shoplifting clothes—Sam went through the growth spurt from hell, rendering Dean's hand-me-downs useless, so he's old hat at layering shirts on underneath his dad's bulky jacket and walking out with no one the wiser—and that's gonna be his saving grace today, because holy shit, bras are expensive. All he really needs is the one, he figures. If he saves his cash for the pants he's gonna need, and maybe a better fitting pair of shoes, he can probably sneak off with a few shirts without any of the clerks catching on.
And if a few pairs of panties end up stuffed in his pockets too, well, who's gonna know?
Trying on pants is an even more humiliating prospect than the bras were, somehow, which doesn't make any sense to Dean. Neither does the way the sizes work, which is apparently based solely on planetary alignments and star charts rather than any actual standardized sizing system. He straight up refuses to try on jeggings, even though he knows secondhand that they are much more comfortable and easier to fit into than regular jeans. That's not a line he's ready to cross. But most of the other offerings aren't much better, because half of them have rhinestones and shit embroidered into the ass for some reason, and the half that don't come pre-distressed, as if Dean can't tear holes into his jeans the old-fashioned way all on his own. He spent hours of his downtime as a kid patching holes in his jeans. Why would he want to spend sixty U.S. American dollars for something that's already half-ruined?
He finds the holy grail, a normal-ass pair of bootcut jeans that don't dig into his gut and actually fit over his ass, after going through what feels like every single pair of jeans in the damn store. While he's got them on, he tries on some shirts. Nothing too crazy. The farthest he dares is a couple of v-necks and tank tops, which feels like a big step for him, because they dip much lower on his chest than anything else he owns. It's one thing for your tits to look nice inside your shirt, it's another to give everyone else a glimpse. But it does look good, so he decides he's leaving with them.
The shoes leave him conflicted. His eyes slide wistfully over a pair of glossy black pumps. They'd look hot as fuck paired up with this bra he's got on, but they're not exactly practical, and he's already too tall. He wants to blend in, not stand head and shoulders over every other woman in the room. Maybe if he was here shopping for dresses, but he's not. He does think about dresses for a second, then stops himself. He's going to Bobby's, for godsakes, he's not going clubbing. He moves on down the line. Finding anything in a larger size is a struggle, and the bulk of the offerings are pastel-colored tennis shoes. He settles on a pair of black boots, which are practical and don't slide around on his feet, swallowing a vague sense of disappointment he doesn't want to examine too closely.
On his way back to the motel he stops at a CVS, sidling past the makeup displays and slipping things into his pockets without lingering long enough to draw attention. He feels like some kind of teen runaway, stealing eyeliner and lipstick from a drugstore, but he can't shake the feeling that someone will yell at him if he brings a handful of makeup to the counter. He might not end up really using any of it, but it's worth trying, right? He stocks up on first aid stuff, 'cause most of his stash ended up in Lisa's medicine cabinet, and pays for that. Everything else he doesn't shake out of his pockets until he's safely back in his motel room. He undresses down to his underwear and lays it all out.
A pair of black panties draw his attention like a magnet.
He doesn't need underwear any more than he needs makeup. His boxers fit him just fine, if a little snugly. He holds them up, sliding the material between his thumb and forefinger. It's nice. Silky. He doesn't need them, no, but he's got this body for the time being. Might as well enjoy it a little, right?
He drops his shorts and steps into the panties.
As he's tugging them up, it occurs to him that his legs are still covered in hair. His face burns. He hadn't even thought about that. And, okay, this is temporary, he tells himself. It doesn't really matter how hairy his legs are. No one but him is gonna see this much of his body.
He was right about the panties, though. They feel nice. The band is more forgiving on his stomach, fitting over his hips in a way that flatters the curves, and the material sort of glides over his skin. He can't see himself full-body in the bathroom mirror, but he likes that they match the bra. He tugs the new jeans on, and then a green tank, and looks at himself again, marveling at how much of a difference it all makes together. He can't speak for anyone else, but he really thinks he's pulling it off. It's not too different, but it's just different enough.
A thought occurs to him. He digs through the front pouch on his travel bag and emerges with his old bracelet and his ring. He'd given up wearing them while he was working construction, but now's as good a time as any to start again. He leaves his watch behind—it's a little too masculine. But while the ring doesn't fit on the intended finger, it does fit on his thumb, and it doesn't look too bad. He slips the bracelet on his other hand and doesn't think about how he's just putting on things he already owns to beef up his lady vibes.
He eyes the makeup fanned out on the bed. He hadn't looked too closely at most of it. He picks up a tube of lipstick and peeks at the bottom. The sticker claims it's called "Red Revolution", which Dean thinks is surprisingly Communism-positive for a makeup manufacturer. He skims his fingers over the other mysterious tubes and grabs an eyeliner pencil and mascara. He's not sure he's advanced enough to do anything with foundation or blush or eyeshadow.
This is another thing he's picked up after a year of watching Lisa go through her morning routine. The only other woman he'd been so close with was Cassie, and she hadn't ever let Dean in on her morning routine. She just always showed up looking perfectly put together. Lisa was the one that showed him how much work must have gone into that. He starts with the eyeliner, leaning over the sink and trying to line it up with his lash line. It's harder than it looks, keeping a steady hand and not stabbing yourself in the eye. Dean wondered why Lisa always had to make a goofy face while she applied makeup, but he finds himself doing it without meaning to. The lines are shakier than he wants, and he has to go over them a few times to get them sort of even. Then he has to repeat the process on the other side, which means even more frustration as he tries to match the coverage on both eyes. He ends up with much thicker eyeliner than he intends.
Mascara next. He didn't steal one of those fucked up little eyelash torture devices Lisa had, but the application seems straightforward enough. He manages not to blink and smear any on his cheek, which he considers a victory.
He finishes with the lipstick. It's really red. Not Blood Red, or even Apple Red— it's more like Sexy Devil Halloween Costume Red. When he's all done, looking at himself in the mirror, he thinks he's just one smear of glitter short of looking like a stripper. In Dean's opinion, there is absolutely nothing wrong with looking like a stripper. He loves strippers. He's met some very loveable strippers. But it's not exactly the mood he's hoping to strike when visiting Bobby. He smears the lipstick off on a scrap of toilet paper. It leaves a little residue behind, but not too much. That's actually a lot better. Yeah, he likes that.
He scrubs his fingers through his hair, manipulating it so that it looks purposefully messy, and admires himself from a few angles. He hasn't actually changed anything about his body since this morning, but he looks different. He feels different. The makeup makes his eyes look greener, his face softer. If he squints, he can see his mother looking back. A shiver runs through him.
There's a flutter behind him, and with it, another face in the mirror. Dean shrieks, the mirror rattling, as he whips around, banging his hip on the sink. Castiel stands too close in the tight space, face impassive.
"Hello, Dean."
"Jesus, Mary and—" Dean clutches his chest, willing his heart to calm. The tank he's wearing dips low enough that he feels bare skin.
"I startled you," Castiel says. "I'm sorry."
"What are you doing here?" Dean says, his voice startlingly high to his own ears. "I can't get a hold of you for days on end, but now you're just dropping in on me in the damn bathroom? What if I was... in the shower or something?" He thinks about how Cas might have found him if he'd arrived a couple hours earlier and feels his face grow hot.
Cas blinks, his eyes growing incrementally wider, then looks at the floor in something like shame. Dean doesn't know what to make of that.
"I do... check in on you, from time to time, Dean. The fight demands most of my time and attention, but that doesn't mean I don't—" Cas breaks off, head moving in uncertain little tics. "You've been ensorceled. Are you well?"
Dean coughs out a laugh. "Uh, funny you should ask, Cas." Dean sweeps a hand across his body.
Cas squints at him, frowning. Dean squirms.
"You look healthy."
Dean boggles at him. "I'm a chick."
"Oh." Cas looks again, uncomprehending. "I see."
"Do you?" Dean crosses his arms. It's getting easier. It also props his tits up in a way he thinks would have drawn Cas's attention had he been a regular human guy and not a weirdo bird-brained angel guy. "It was a witch, a couple days ago. I'm about to head up to Bobby's to try to figure out how to… you know, fix it."
Cas speaks, lifting his fingers up and aiming them at Dean's temple. "If you want, I can try to—"
"No!" Dean lurches back, just as surprised at himself as Cas looks. He just put so much work into making himself look good. And he made such a big deal about it on the phone with Bobby. "No, I— No, that's okay, you don't need to waste any grace on me."
"It's not a waste, Dean," Cas says kindly. Dean's throat constricts.
"You got your big war upstairs to worry about. It's fine, really. Me and Bobby are gonna figure it out. If I need help, I'll call you up. If you ever decide to answer. Maybe I'll… rent a plane, do some skywriting. You're bound to notice that, right?"
Cas lowers his hand, chastised. They stand there in silence for a long, awkward moment. Dean curses his existence.
"Well, now you're here," Dean says, squeezing past him to get through the doorway. "How's it going with you? Making any progress?"
Cas follows him out into the room, peering around at the cracked wood paneling and the dingy blinds while Dean scoops all of his girl shit into a plastic bag and shoves it into his duffel, like he can quarantine it somehow.
"Relatively speaking, we're at a standstill," Cas says. "I don't enjoy the uncertainty, but it's a relief from the daily losses."
"Well hey, I guess that's something," Dean says, folding his clothes and packing them away on top of the contraband. "Since it's calmed down a little, maybe that's a good excuse for you to grab some shore leave while you can. I was on my way over to Sioux Falls, but I could put it off for a couple hours, catch a movie, if you wanna tag along." Dean has no idea what's showing right now except for the usual October spookfests, and he's not in the mood, but sometimes those are good for a laugh. "We'll get some popcorn and some Sno-Caps. All work and no play makes Cas," Dean says, turning around to a suddenly empty room. "...fuck off."
He sighs, running his hand back through his hair. Right, why would he expect anything else? He tamps down the swell of hurt in his chest, steeling his jaw. He's gotta hit the road before the day's all gone.
He stops at a dive in Minnesota just as the sun's going down. He calls Bobby to let him know he should be there tomorrow around noon, and calls Sam to tell him the same, like he cares. Then he orders a double shot of whiskey and a cheeseburger. The bartender looks at him sideways, and Dean panics for a moment thinking he might get carded, because all of his IDs say he's a man, but then he just moves along, pouring Dean his drink without comment. Dean's shoulders relax, and the drink goes down a little quicker than it ought to.
He's about to order another to go with his food as it arrives when someone over his shoulder says, "I like a woman who can eat."
Dean glances back, holding in a laugh. He's pretty sure he's used that line on a girl before. Never expected to hear it from this end.
"Yeah, I'll die if I don't. It's a whole thing," he says, popping a fry into his mouth and grinning. The guy falters a little bit, but he slides onto the stool next to Dean anyway. He's not bad looking. He's tan from time in the sun, dark hair shaved close to his head, with a neat beard and friendly blue eyes. Two days as a chick and Dean's already getting reasonable offers. He's better at this than he thought he'd be.
"Can I buy you a drink? Name's Peter."
Dean swipes his tongue across his lip, swallowing panic. He hadn't thought far enough ahead to think he'd need a name. "Dee," he blurts out, which isn't really a lie. He can say it's short for Deanna, which isn't really a lie either. He hears Bobby's voice in the back of his head, Buy a bra and start going by Deanna! He smothers it with his best smile, the one he usually pulls on waitresses and co-eds. "Whiskey, neat."
Peter lifts his eyebrows, pleasantly surprised. Dean knows because he would be too. Dean had met Lisa while crashing some college party when he was nineteen and still a little desperate to impress. To Dean's eyes, Lisa, a year and change his senior, had been worldly and brimming with confidence. When she took a bottle of whiskey right out of his hand and knocked it back, the curved line of her throat working, he'd fallen in love just a little bit right there on the spot. He's too old for that now, and this guy's no easily-led teenage know-nothing, but there's a little bit of that kid left over in every man, in Dean's opinion. Tonight, Dean could be his cool girl, the one who stands out, the one who's not like the others.
He's got no idea, Dean thinks with a little anxious thrill. If Lisa could see him now…
But he shouldn't take it too far, even if him and Lisa have called it quits for real. Accepting one drink doesn't mean it has to go anywhere intentional. It occurs to him that worrying about Lisa shouldn't be his primary objection to letting a guy pick him up, but it's the first one that comes to mind.
It's just a confidence boost. If he doesn't sleep with the guy, there's no line crossed, right? So he lets Peter shoot his shot and accepts his drink and laughs at his inane stories and gives up very little about himself. When Dean excuses himself to go back to his room, Peter asks him for his number, and Dean says he's good, thanks. Peter looks disappointed, and Dean feels it in a way he isn't expecting. Maybe he's a little guilty about leading the guy on. But Peter's not hard to look at. Maybe he's a little average in the personality department, but Dean's sure he'll get lucky some other time, when he's putting the moves on a real woman. This is how Dean comforts himself when he goes to sleep that night wondering why he still feels a vague itch of dissatisfaction.