AAAAAARGH! Frigging plot bunnies! I've just worked the 'Balls' one out of my system, and this damned thing comes hopping along! AAAAAARGH! It will - not - leave - me - ALONE! Somebody finds a cure for plot bunnies, they'll make a bloody fortune. STOP TORTURING ME YOU VICIOUS LITTLE BASTARDS! This one could be a bit painful, since the Chocolate Powered Inspiration Update Fairy seems to have gone on leave, but we'll see how we go, I'm not going to get any sleep until I exorcise it, and no, Latin doesn't work, grud knows I've tried...

DISCLAIMER: None of it is mine, although I wouldn't mind become better acquainted with Bobby Singer. He's a man ofintelligence, property, education, and literature. I'd even put up with those bickering oiks who show up in that muscle car from time to time.

TITLE: Just Like You.

SUMMARY: A werewolf hunt has some unanticipated consequences, leading Dean to wonder: was his Dad just exasperated, or did John actually put The Dreaded Parent's Curse on him?

SETTING: A Jimi the Half-Hellhound story. Set probably about a year after 'Balls', when Jimi is about 18 months old.

RATING: T. Dean talks. Need I say more?

BLAME: Those frigging plot bunnies. And the various individuals of questionable sanity who keep encouraging me. It's all their fault! Especially Bartlebead, Elf and Paulathe Cat. I think they're actually breeding the plot bunnies. Hey, separate the males and the females, will you?

Prologue

Lawrence, Kansas. February 1983.

John picked up the flowers, and smiled to himself. He imagined the surprise on Mary's face – Friday, she'd be expecting him to hit a bar with some buddies, not come straight home, but, well, he had some ground to make up. She was having a hard time, he knew, although she rarely said anything: one small tearaway child, and another one on the way. The very idea of being a father, well, sometimes the idea of that sort of responsibility scared the shit out of him... Time to man up, princess, he told himself, heading for the front door.

She was in the kitchen, starting preparations for dinner, when he came up behind her and put the flowers on the sink in front of her. "Hey, sweetheart," he said, as she turned and smiled at him. "How's my wonderful wife?"

"Feeling decidedly pregnant," she told him, taking up the flowers and smelling them while John addressed her ever-expanding belly.

"You in there, stop giving your mother such a hard time, that is an order" he told it sternly. She swatted at him.

"I'll put these in water," she said, rolling her eyes.

"Can I do something to help?" he asked, eyeing the preparations underway.

"Actually, yes," she told him brightly, "I want you to go upstairs and kill our son."

John blinked, and did a double-take. He'd thought it was too quiet, and realised that the reason for the relative tranquillity was the absence of a certain small, blonde, noisy tornado.

He smiled uncertainly. "Er, that's funny," he started, "I thought you said you wanted me to go upstairs and kill Dean."

"Yes, that's right," she confirmed, her smile just a tad brittle, "He's in his room. Go upstairs and kill him, will you?"

"Oh. Er." He was at a loss. He knew about pregnancy making women hormonal, but... Oh, God, what had the kid done?

"Um," he stumbled, "Er, do you want me to, er, how do I do it? Strangle him? Smother him? Tickle him to death?"

"Or break his neck," she suggested, shoving the flowers into the vase just a bit more roughly than was probably necessary, "Something that won't leave blood on the carpet. You have no idea how hard it is to get blood out of carpet."

"Er, no, no, I don't," he agreed. "So, er, I'll just go up, and, er, kill our firstborn, then."

"Thanks, honey," she said, pecking him on the cheek and returning to chopping vegetables with a vicious precision that worried him just a little.

He was barely up the stairs when he saw why he was being deployed to murder the kid. There on the wall was a mural executed in garish colours: it was an ambitious work on a grand scale, a depiction of their house, a surprisingly accurate and detailed portrait of the Impala, and standing outside the house was a family: father, mother, small son, and holding the child's hand, and even smaller son. The streetscape was richly represented. John had to suppress a chuckle, and took a moment to compose himself and set his features in an expression of suitable fatherly disapproval. Congratulating the kid on getting the Impala down so accurately would probably result in Mary killing them both, blood on the carpet be damned.

He cleared his throat and pushed open the door to Dean's room.

"Hey, kiddo," he began, as his son lifted miserable eyes to him.

If he'd wanted to chuckle before, he wanted to howl with laughter now. Not satisfied with decorating the hallway, Dean had done quite a number on himself: garish blue eyeshadow, splodges of something in lurid red on his face, and dear God, what the hell had he found to use as green lipstick?

"Hello, Daddy," he said in a small, wavering voice.

"So, what have you been up to?" he asked, clearing his throat and biting the inside of his lip. If Lucille Ball and Liberace had a child...

"I found Mommy's crayons and paint," explained Dean, bottom lip wobbling, "And I drew her a picture, but she's mad at me..."

"Yeah, I saw," John said as sternly as he could. Mary's make-up, he'd gotten into Mary's make-up... "I think she's upset that you took her things without asking, and drew on the wall," explained John, sitting next to Dean. "And you drew on yourself, too, huh?"

The big green eyes swam, and tears spilled over. "I wanted to be pretty, like Mommy," quavered Dean, mascara running down his cheeks. "I didn't want to make her mad!"

John cleared his throat, biting down hard on the laughter that threatened. "Well, son," he began, "For a start, boys aren't 'pretty'. Girls are 'pretty', and boys are 'handsome'. Only girls use make-up to make themselves pretty. Boys don't need it. You can be handsome without make-up, because you don't need it. Understand?"

"Yes, Daddy," Dean nodded solemnly. How the hell could he even see with all that crap around his eyes?

"Now, you wouldn't like it if somebody took your colouring books and crayons without asking, would you?" Dean shook his head, breath hitching.

"Okay, so, from now on, no going into Mommy and Daddy's room, or touching any of Mommy or Daddy's things, without asking first, okay, Tiger?"

"Yes, Daddy," Dean nodded again.

"Good man. Now," John stood up, "Let's get you cleaned up, then we'll clean the picture off the wall and surprise Mommy with a clean face and a clean wall. That'll make her happy."

Dean looked up hopefully. "You think so?"

"Yeah, I think so," John smiled down at his firstborn, who gave him a wobbly smile back.

"Daddy?"

"Yeah, kiddo?" replied John, shepherding Dean towards the bathroom.

"Mommy's really mad at me. You don't think..." he paused, and his eyes swam again, "You don't think... she won't give the baby back because I've been bad, will she?"

John made a strangled snorting noise. "No, Deano," he reassured his son, "Mommy won't take your baby brother or sister back, not for anything."

"Brother," said Dean with great conviction. "It's a boy Sam. Not a girl Samantha."

John surveyed the mural again, sighed, then set to cleaning Dean's face. "One of these days, Dean," he said, "One of these, when you grow up, I hope you end up with a kid who's just like you."

...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo...

Oconto Falls, Wisconsin, January 1996

"Yeah... yeah... look, I appreciate you're upset, but..." John's hand clenched around the phone as the irate male voice on the other end of the line shouted obscenities at him. "All I'm saying is, well, it takes two to tango, so to speak..."

Sitting at the rickety kitchen table, Dean let out a small snort of laughter. John shot a death-ray glare at him, and he subsided.

"Yeah... oh, really? Is that so? And how old is this paragon of virtue that is your blushingly innocent daughter?" he asked sarcastically – the man's angry tone was starting to piss him off seriously. "So, she's a year older. Uhuh. Uhuh..."

Dean pantomimed sticking his finger down his throat. John glared at him again.

"Tell you what, you can have him when I'm done. If there's anything left... get in line, pal, by the time I'm finished with him he won't be able to sit down, let alone... oh, yeah? Frankly, I'd like to see you try. Yeah... look, why don't you call back after you've had a nice hot cup of calm the fuck down, okay?" John hung up the phone with a bang, and turned a murderously angry expression on Dean.

"So," he began, barely trusting his own voice, "I have spent the past decade drilling into you how important it is not to attract unwanted attention. And this is your idea of not attracting unwanted attention, is it?"

"Hey, Dad," smirked Dean, "I can't help it if my awesomeness attracts a certain type of attention..."

Fantastic. Fan-fucking-tastic. The kid had decided to brazen it out.

"Right, right," nodded John, "So, explain to me, exactly how you define 'avoiding unwanted attention' as 'getting caught banging a police sergeant's daughter'? Because I gotta tell you, I'm really not understanding how this works."

"Hey, why am I getting handed my ass over this?" Dean asked angrily, "It's not like I forced myself on her! It was her idea!"

"Dean, you're fifteen years old!" shouted John.

"I'll be sixteen in a couple of weeks!" Dean shouted back, "And what does that have to do with it?"

John scrubbed a hand over his face. Dean was a good-looking boy, and he knew it. Sam had regarded girls as an uninteresting other species for a blessedly normal time. Dean had started practising his pick-up lines from the age of seven. He could imagine Mary scolding him for making their elder son grow up too soon – what do you expect? You push him to behave like an adult from such a young age, what the hell did you expect, that he was going to live a chaste and stainless life until such time as he could go live a 'normal' life, meet a nice girl, get married, and lose it on his honeymoon?

"Dean," he tried again, "It's just... God, you're a damned kid..."

"That's not how you think when I've got your back on a Hunt," his son shot back quietly.

"This is not the way I raised you," John told him.

"Yeah, you want me to live like a monk, just like you," Dean sneered in a shockingly lewd way, cocking an eyebrow at him.

John had a sudden urge to slap the smirk off his son's face. The kid missed nothing. When his father came home, stinking of booze and occasionally sex, he said nothing, but missed nothing.

"Jesus, Dean," John sat down heavily opposite the boy. It seemed like such a short time ago, he was a cute youngster, with a gap-toothed smile, and an endearing reluctance to be separated from his baby brother...

"Her father wants to make trouble," John said in a tired voice.

"He won't," Dean assured him, "He won't pursue it, because then he might end up asking questions he doesn't want to know the answers to. Like, how many there were before me."

John's eyebrows rose. "You weren't her first?"

"Shit, no! She taught me a thing or two..."

"Okaaaay, too much information right there, Ace," muttered John. "Please tell me," he sighed, "Please tell me I'm not going to have some irate cop coming after me with a shotgun, wanting you to do the right thing by his precious baby girl and marry her before a kid comes along?"

Dean looked at him with an expression that conveyed just how insulted he was by that suggestion. "Hey, I'm hot, and I'm horny, but I'm not stupid," he told his father heatedly. "I always use a rubber."

"Always?" echoed John incredulously, "You always use one? Just how long has it been since 'always' started?"

That cocky smirk was back. "Don't ask questions you don't want to know the answer to, Dad," he smiled, looking like the cat that got the cream.

Oh, fuck. This really took the cake. That urge to slap the expression right off his son's face was back with a vengeance, making his hand itch.

He came to a decision. "Go wake your brother," he sighed, "Tell him pack up your stuff. The job here is done. We're leaving."

Dean's face fell. "Sammy was looking forward to going back to school..."

"Well, maybe you'll think about that next time you can't keep your dick in your pants around a public official's daughter," growled John. "He could make trouble for us, Dean. CPS trouble."

"I'll pack our gear, Dad, let Sam sleep," began Dean, but John cut him off.

"Oh, no, you won't, because you won't be here." He pulled a tattered road map towards himself. "You got so much energy you gotta cat around, you can run some of it off." He pointed to the map. "Head south," he instructed. "We'll pick you up on the way. And if you haven't made enough progress, I'll drive further before I pull over and wait for you."

Dean looked like he was about to say something, but thought better of it.

"You're learning," John grunted. "Now, go get changed and get going. And when we stop next, you are grounded."

"For how long?" asked Dean, getting up and heading for the small room he shared with is brother.

"Until you're thirty-eight."

Dean paused in the doorway. "You haven't asked me if she was any good," he grinned.

John wished his eldest had two heads, so he could bang them together. "One day, Dean," he said tiredly, "One day, I hope you have a kid to deal with, and I hope he's just like you."

One day, I hope you write fanfics, and I hope you end up with crazy reviewers who keep encouraging you, just like you...