When Sam wakes up to the miles-long legs of a woman sloping from beneath his rumpled comforter, he thinks for a moment he's gotten very, very lucky.

Then he realizes the legs are attached to him and knows he's very, very fucked.

The thought that it's a not real hardly occurs to him because he's been around that block before, but just to be sure, he presses with his thumbnail into the scar on his hand. No change. He jerks around, alert for a sign of a djinn or a trickster or—

Shit, he has breasts. He's not going to look, because it's before 6 AM and breasts, what the fuck, but he can feel them pulling and sweaty under the blankets so he doesn't have much of a doubt that they're there.

His first thought is to wake Dean, but no, holy shit, Dean can't see him like this. He'd never hear the end of it. His second thought is that he should assess the situation in full before he does anything else. Covers shoved aside, he slips out of bed and goes unsteady on his feet to his bedroom's adjoining bathroom. Everything is off-kilter; he's still nearly the same height but his hips are all wrong and he's really distracted because damn, lady nipples, but he makes it and locks the door behind him. He turns to the mirror with a spin of hair and almost pisses himself.

The woman in the mirror is, in a word, fine. She's all long, sculpted limbs and sloping curves and lean muscle, broad-hipped but tight around the waist, battered by a patchwork of old scars and new scuffs. Her hair's longer than is practical, tumbling into the gullies of her collarbones and breasts (which, hello there, are really filled out), and there's a demon warding tattoo peeking from between the tangled strands. Her stare is wide and bloodshot from never enough sleep, set in a regal kind of forehead above a smooth, sloping nose and soft lips just sort of hanging open.

"Holy shit," says the woman in the mirror, except Sam's saying it too, and it's coming out a shade higher, because that's actually his mouth, because, "Oh, God, I'm a chick." He probably should have picked that up sooner, but there's no process for accepting these kinds of things— which is, most likely, why the situation devolves into Sam standing so close to the mirror that his breath fogs it, incredulously running his hands from the heaviness of his breasts, to the dip of his waist and finally across his crotch, which is despairingly flat beneath his ill-fitting boxers.

He's a few rounds into the Macarena of disbelief before he realizes that he is essentially fondling himself in the bathroom mirror. This forces him to step back and suffer a brief, horrifying flash of empathy for Becky Rosen. Now the lady in the mirror is blushing, which something especially unhelpful in the back of his head is associating with Jess and the way she used to flush when he'd catch a glimpse her between the shower and her towel.

Sam groans, puts a hand to his face and moans, "Oh, God."

"Hell, Sam, I don't want to hear you jerkin' off in there! You sound like a hooker!"

Heat overtakes Sam's face. Dean's awake. He's going to have to tell him. He's going to have to tell Dean that he's turned into a freakin' woman. "Damn it," he hisses, snatching yesterday's shirt off the floor. His hands are awkward over the buttons, smaller and slimmer and slipping off the edges. Finally he gets the damn thing all done up, and then pulls on a pair of pants, which are less than fitted but will do for now. Satisfied that he's not completely indecent, he makes his way to the library.

When Dean sees his younger brother, he chokes on his coffee and shoots off the edge of the table where he's been seated.

"Sam?"

"I think so."

"What the fuck?"

Sam tosses his arms up. "I don't know!"

"You don't know?"

"I just woke up this way!"

Squinting, brows arched, Dean asks, "You can't think of any reason for this?"

"No!" Sam crosses his arms over his chest (which is not as easy as it used to be), suddenly very conscious under Dean's thorough thrice-over. "I'm telling you, Dean, I have no idea!"

For a painful moment Dean just stares. Then he comes stomping up close, pulls a knife from inside his jacket, and draws a slice across Sam's (still surprisingly large) bicep. Sam watches the blood drip, frowning.

"Dude, I'm not a—" He yelps when Dean uncaps a canteen of holy water in his face. "Dean!" He sputters, wipes his eyes. "Jesus, it's me, okay?"

"Well, fuck me," Dean says. He screws the lid back on the canteen as his face slides with alarming fluidity from skeeved out to mildly approving. "You're finally a real girl."

Sam frowns with every iota of his energy. "This isn't a joke, Dean!"

"Don't get your panties all twisted," Dean snipes. "You checked for hex bags yet?"

"No."

"Then let's go."

They overturn Sam's room three times and find nothing out of the ordinary. The library welcomes them back echoing their huffs of annoyance, Sam's a register higher than usual. Dean goes to the mug of coffee he left on the table and slides it away with only a hint of melodrama, then goes to pour himself something stronger. "I guess I know what we're doing today. Hit the books, Samantha."

Sam groans, rakes a hand through his hair (there's so much and his fingers snag in it), and heads to the card catalog.

It probably says a lot about them that they slide back into rhythm within the hour.

Sam settles into to his new body fairly quickly, though there are several instances when he reaches for something and doesn't quite make it, or his hip knocks a leaning book off its shelf as he passes, or his feet won't fall right and he stumbles into the table. But for the most part, it's the same. Four limbs, eyes, ears, mouth. He even manages to forget about the breasts a few times. Dean alternates between staring at him and avoiding him, which is all the same, though Sam expected more jokes. It's awkward, and it's temporary, so he doesn't expect Dean to adjust.

Dean's tossed down his sixth glass of amber medicine and Sam's on his ninth deceptively-promising encyclopedia entry when a throbbing silence cripples Sam's mind and he slumps forward into the table. In the distance, as in those paralyzed moments between sleep and wakefulness, Sam thinks he senses hands on his shoulders, shaking him, but he can't connect with it. All he knows is sharp, sharp quiet and the tension spooling out of his muscles. It hangs oppressive over him, writhing and heavy and crawling across his skin, like bugs he can't bat away or a lover that's fallen asleep on top of him. And then a voice: low, shuddering, more a vibration than a sound.

"Come to me, Sam."

And it's over like that. Awareness snaps in with terse muscle and the grating noise that is Dean saying, "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuckfuckfuckfuck!"

"Dean?" Sam's clutching his brother with both hands quite before he knows what he's doing, a wild grab for purchase in a world that's gone spinning. His ribs feel too small inside of him, crushing his lungs, squeezing his heart. He passes a moment wonder whose slight hands those are against Dean's strong arms. Nausea blooms in his belly when he remembers they're his.

"Hell, Sam, what was that?"

"I don't know." Deep breaths, then he's able to let go. Embarrassment sets in instantly at Dean's widened eyes, the rigid alarm in his posture. The guy's terrified for him. "I'm fine," Sam lies, and it doesn't seem to help. Never does. It's purely habit to say it.

Dean grasps him by the shoulder. "That wasn't fine. You fuckin' checked out, man. Did you faint?"

"I didn't faint." Sam rakes away the overabundance of hair that's fallen into his face. He's gotta do something about that. Can hardly see around the stuff. God, he still can't breathe evenly. "I just— everything went still and silent, and then I heard this... this voice."

Dean sits down heavy next to him, squinting. "A voice?"

"Yeah."

"Not like one of your psychic visions."

A weight settles into Sam's chest at that, and he's not sure if he fields the impulsive look of shame before it hits his face. "No, no. Completely different. The visions were always really crazy and full of too much information, but this was the opposite. It was just a lot of nothing, and then the voice. That's all."

"It say anything?"

"Yeah. 'Come to me.'"

The chair creaks as Dean leans back in it, arms crossed. "Well, that's friggin' creepy."

Understatement. "Yeah." They sit there for a moment, mutually stumped. Sam looks down and scoffs in the back of his throat when the hair overtakes his face again; he rights it by jerking off the little twined bracelet he always wears and using it to pull the hair back. Dean's amusement goes ignored as Sam wrestles with the overwhelming bounty that is his new hair, but finally gets it into a ponytail. The bangs can't be tamed, though, and he blows at them, annoyed.

Dean snorts. "Gimmie five minutes with clippers, man."

"Shut up."

Twelve hours, a couple hundred books and two failed rituals later, Sam and Dean realize simultaneously that neither of them have eaten all day. The fact that Dean's spent three fourths of their waking day more concerned with Sam than food says a lot about the gravity of the situation; after the Episode earlier, the Dean's been pretty shaken up. Sam's just done his best to put it out of his mind.

"Kitchen's empty," Dean grunts, moments after vanishing with the promise to whip something up. "Takeout?"

"No, I wanna get out of here." Sam stands and stretches, breath hitching a little at the pull of his shirt over his breasts. That strikes him funny— hisbreasts. Don't breasts make him a "she"? He doesn't feel any more like a woman, but then, he doesn't feel that being called "she" would interfere with his identity, either. He's still Sam, even if he's packaged different. He logs the issue away for later, however, at the sight of the frown sitting all self-righteous on Dean's mouth.

"You sure you should be going out?"

Sam reciprocates the glower. "I'm not invalid, Dean."

"It's not that," Dean snaps, then looks away, jingling the Impala's keys in his pocket. When he looks back, his expression is careful, not revealing much. Sam wants to kick him. "That Girl, Interrupted thing was freaky shit, okay? If there's some kind of a demon or a dreamwalker or something trying to get in your brain, you shouldn't be running all over town just 'cause you want some air."

Sam huffs. "Dean, whatever it is, it did this to me in the first place while I was in here. I don't think a change of scenery will make it any worse."

A scoff comes scathing off Dean's tongue, but judging by the way he shifts and looks at the ceiling, he knows he's lost this one. And maybe Dean's just a teeny bit right, but hell if Sam's going to sit in the stale library air any longer.

"Wanna do that place down the street?" Sam asks, scooping up his jacket.

"With the flat burgers? No."

"Oh, come on! You can survive a flat burger. All that means is a slightly smaller chance of you dying of a heart attack at 45."

"I'll be dead before then," Dean snorts, and Sam lets it slide despite the prickle at the base of his neck and the pit in the bottom of his stomach. Best not broach that hornet's nest right now. The coat dwarfs Sam when he pulls it on, his shoulders swallowed and just his fingertips hanging beyond the cuffs of the sleeves. Dean gets an odd look, glaze-eyed and frowning a little, then breaks the tiniest smile as he turns away.

"Alright," he snaps over his shoulder, "corner place with crappy burgers it is."

The burgers, Sam concedes, are pretty crappy. The specimen on Dean's plate is sad even by Sam's standards, who is very happy with the crisp salad in front of him, thanks. What he is not happy with, however, is the inordinate amount of attention he's received from strangers ever since they arrived. At first, he took it as a few cases of awkward eye-contact, then as his own paranoia, but now he's fairly sure every guy in the place has raked their eyes over him like bed of leaves at least twice.

He leans across the table, voice low. "They're leering at me."

Dean hisses out of the corner of his mouth, "It's 'cause you've got huge tits, your shirt's tight, and you're not wearin' a damn bra."

"Oh, right, let me go get my extra one out of my bag. I think I packed it next to the I didn't plan on growing a vagina today, Dean."

Dean just scoffs into his crap-burger. Sam drops his fork with a clatter and buttons his jacket up to his neck. That'll teach 'em. It's not that he isn't used to being ogled by strangers, because that happens when you're practically six and a half feet tall and you aren't half bad-looking. But this never-ending parade of bystanders with elevator eyes? He's getting really tired really quickly. And, it's worth mentioning: there's something alarming about that many men looking on like he's at their mercy. He can still beat the daylights out of any given eight of them at a time, but they don't seem to think that, and it rubs him nine different wrong ways.

"You think chicks have to deal with this all the time?"

Shrugging, Dean speaks through a mouthful of beef. "Only the hot ones."

Sam blinks at Dean for a dragging moment, then the older Winchester seems to realize what he's said. He gives Sam a dead look.

"Not that you're…" He rolls his hand to supply for a nonexistent adjective, and Sam marvels that a man of 34 years and change can backslide into elementary awkwardness so easily.

"Dean—"

"Could I interest either of you in a desert?"

The Winchesters whip around as one to face the short, slight waitress at the end of their table. Her hair is dishwatery and fried in a manner that suggests she's dyed it so many times that the current color isn't quite intentional.

"Double-portion deserts are half-price for couples," she chirps, and Dean grinds to a halt with his mouth half-full of food.

Sam coughs. "Um, we're not togeth—"

"Definitely not," Dean snaps, and swallows his mouthful. He snatches up his beer and hisses "don't need this shit" down the bottleneck.

Sam frowns at him. Like this is any different than the innumerable times they've been mistaken for a gay couple. He turns to the waitress and pulls on his best sympathetic smile, though his mouth isn't quite the same and he's unsure if he hits his mark. "Nothing else for either of us, thanks."

"Oh!" says the waitress, and pushes her fingers over a chunk of hair that is already tucked behind her ear. "Right. Okay." She turns away, stiff, then whips back to Sam. He's seen lapdogs move with more fluidity.

She stares at Sam, her mouth slightly open, and when it becomes apparent that she's not going to move, he leans forward with a raise of his brow. He's about to inquire as to her wellbeing when she blurts, "You're really pretty!" and makes a mad break for it. She's no sooner hit the swinging kitchen doors than she stops with a hitch, runs back to the table, and slaps the tab on it. She scrambles off again, and her escape is finally complete with the flapping of the kitchen's doors behind her.

Dean blinks after her, laughs once, and says, "That was freakin' weird." He takes a swig of his beer, puts it down, and laughs again.

Sam scoffs and turns to his salad. It appears suddenly soggy. He pushes it away. "You done?" he asks.

"Seriously?" Dean cocks an eyebrow. A smile crouches, ready to pounce, on one corner of his mouth. "You were the one all hot and bothered to get out of the cave."

Sam finds himself inexplicably unwilling to dredge up any humor, though something spoilsportish inside him points out that this is an uncommon opportunity to diffuse tension. He wonders if they'd actually be able to talk to each other without tension's silent chaperoning. "Yeah, well, now I'm ready to go back."

"Calm your tits." Dean takes a gargantuan bite, perhaps to chase all that snark. "Almost done."

True to his word, Dean finishes quickly, and they're back to the bunker in no time. Wordlessly they tuck into their research again; Sam boots up his laptop and ends up forfeiting it to Dean when his new fingers won't type the same. Instead he lugs a tome of remedy spells from one of the taller book cases and winces when the volume plummets from the edge of the shelf, nearly popping his arms out of their sockets. He wonders if that would've happened 24 hours ago.

Sam drops the huge book to the table with a resounding thunder, then sits and pushes into the pages. He's nestled between afflictions andailments when Dean slaps the laptop shut and says, "This is fuckin' ridiculous."

Cutting a look through the mess of his bangs, Sam feels the rising nausea of knowing, the anxiety that warns him what his brother's thinking. Sure enough, Dean starts, "I wish we could—" and he doesn't finish, but Sam hears the understood "—just ask Bobby" at the end.

"It's gonna be fine, Dean." The aged velvet bookmark of the tome runs smooth against Sam's fingers as he marks his place; when the pressure of his hand rises off, the pages flip back slowly, years of disuse calling them to together. Sam looks up, finally, and finds Dean topping off an umpteenth glass of liquor. It's a wonder they keep the stuff stocked.

"You say that," Dean says gruff into his glass, "but while we're grasping at straws, there's some kinda mojo goin' on that we can't ward against, and there's some nasty sonuvabitch out there that we can't even identify— let alone gank— and I'm just not so hot on sitting next to the braless wonder, okay, Samantha?"

Sam breathes a sigh that shakes into a low chuckle. "You know, I didn't think a real life situation where I turned into a girl would end in you making so few boob jokes. Pretty sure that's only, like, the third one."

Dean's eyes flick momentarily to the boobs in question, and he snorts. "Ain't no jokin' about something that impressive."

There's no helping the grimace that twists Sam's face. "Dude, don't even go there."

"They sag like hell, though."

Sam lifts a hand to rub his temple. "You know, pointing out that you weren't making jokes wasn't permission to be an asshole."

Dean gives a derisive chuckle and Sam glowers in anticipation of another remark. Instead, Dean intones a slow, "Sam…" which earns him a glare. They watch each other a moment, and Dean forges on: "Look, here's the thing. Right now, I look at you, and it's freakin' weird. I don't know how it is for you, but for me, it's—" A pause as he looks away and breathes sharp through his nose. He turns back. "Remember Lucifer, Sam?"

Sam's hand drops from his face and he levels Dean with a look meant to say, Of course I remember the devil, you asshat, which Dean takes with a nod and a grain of salt.

"When he... jumped you or whatever, I looked at you, and I knew you weren't you. I looked you right in the face, and you weren't Sam Winchester. Same when your soul was still in the pit. You, but not you. Now, it's like the opposite. I look up and there's this stranger sitting there, this chick, and it's not you, but I look close and it is. And it's just— weird, okay? Too close to all that possession shit. I just need to ice whatever did this and get you back to your normal, ugly self, kapiece?"

"Uh... yeah. Kapiece."

And Dean reclines in his chair, nonchalant and retreating to his alcohol, yet Sam can't help but sit in silence at the realization that that's the closest Dean's come in years to actually talking about Sam's various fuck-ups. He's not sure if that is a blessing or an omen.

"We're gonna fix it, Dean," he says, and a flurry rises in his stomach at the sweet, soft sound in his own voice. A sound that doesn't belong to him, new and feminine and sort of mothering.

Dean heard it, too; he watches, guarding something so carefully that the tightness of his face gives him away. "Yeah." He pushes up from the table, movements stronger than necessary. "Sure, Samantha." And he departs from Sam with a long look, two parts wary, one part disturbed.

Yeah, no way in hell this will end nicely.