A/N: I originally wrote an epilogue for "Midnight Masqueraders" featuring John's POV after their encounter with the OC prostitute. But I felt the tone did not suit her story, and pulled it. Several SPN writing buddies suggested it could be broken out into a separate little story on its own, so I tweaked it, and here it is.

Mean Streets At Midnight

Her words had been brutal, stripped bare of any semblance of courtesy. It was a sharp, shocking, bitter truth that had not occurred to him.

"Honey, you better take a hard look at what you got and have a talk with him about certain street corners. Because either the rent-boys'll beat him up, or their pimps will, or he's gonna get scooped off the street and taught a whole lotta things no decent boy should know."

A hooker, who'd spent maybe twenty minutes with his son on a street corner John had picked off of a city map because it seemed a good place for them to meet at midnight, beneath a street light. Just a corner, for Crissake.

But this city was strange to him, and he to its ways, and he'd managed to damn near put his 14-year-old son in harm's way.

He'd told her, meaning it, knowing it was true because he'd made it true, that Dean could take care of himself.

But that hadn't been acceptable to her. "Maybe he can, or maybe he can't, " she'd said. "Just be careful with him. They don't have to be pretty to catch the sharks, but it don't hurt. I'm thinkin' maybe he's lucky you told him to meet you on the 'wrong' street. On my street."

Her street. Her corner. A territory she protected, possibly with a blade or a gun tucked away in her bag, or on her person.

The wrong street for what she probably believed Dean was intended for, walking alone through a strange city in an area where hookers of both genders, and their clients, moved with impunity.

It was not a talk he'd ever truly considered having. You told your sons about the euphemistic birds and the bees, and prostitutes, but he realized that the talk with Dean—Sam was yet too young—had included nothing about sexual predators. Only about sex.

He spent far more time discussing monsters with Dean, and how to kill them.

Sammy and the motel was a matter of minutes away. He needed to have this talk now; and then at some point, when he was a little older, with Sam, too. Because maybe the streets were meaner than he expected for two good-looking boys. Humans could be monsters, too.

John glanced briefly at his oldest son as he depressed the accelerator. Yeah, she was right. He hadn't looked hard at Dean for a while, not to catalogue how the kid was growing up in looks. John thought in terms of weaponry, hand-to-hand, wielding Latin, burning bones, teaching him how to move.

He looked like his mother. And Mary had been a stunner.

John released a breath. This was going to be awkward no matter what. "Do you know what that was about? What she meant?"

Dean tapped a beat on his thigh with one quick-flashing hand. The kid seemed to always hear music in his head, a song no one else was privy to. "Yeah, Dad."

That was—too easy. John frowned, sent a quick side-long glance as he drove. "You sure?"

Dean shrugged as he stared out the windshield. "She's a hooker. And it took me a minute to get what she meant . . . but I figured it out. She thought I was, too."

John believed that was as matter-of-fact an observation as any he'd ever heard, coming from a kid, about such a thing. But this was his kid, who knew more than most. "It doesn't bother you?"

"It's not the first time."

That was a punch to the gut. With traffic at a minimum, John looked at him sharply. "What?"

Dean shrugged. "P.E. teacher two schools ago told me I was pretty. Wanted me to meet him in the showers."

John was astonished as he looked again through the windshield. For a moment he could find no words. Finally he did. "You never told me that!"

"Didn't need to." Dean looked at him, hitched a shoulder in perfect nonchalance, grinned that damnable cocky grin. "I broke his thumb, told him I'd do worse if he ever laid a hand on me."

"Jesus, Dean . . . you should have told me!"

"I took care of it, Dad."

John scowled out the windshield, feeling the slow beat of anger underscored with guilt. "I definitely need to be more careful about picking street corners."

"Nah. That one was okay. Besides, it was worth it." Dean looked at him, waited until John had time to shoot him a quick glance, then blinked wide, innocent eyes. "I got to see my dad almost give money to a hooker."

John felt an unaccustomed warmth in his face. "It wasn't for that, you little shit."

Dean did it sing-song, "I'm tellin' Sammy."

More warmth kindled in his face. "I'd like at least one of my boys to retain his innocence just a while longer, if you don't mind!"

Dean pursed his lips a moment. "Nice to know, though."

"What is?"

"What she said—and what you agreed with."

"What was that?"

"That I'll be able to get it for free."

Here came the heat again. "Jesus," John muttered, and turned the radio on so he wouldn't have to take more crap from his own son.

~ end ~