Some Secrets Count – The MudDog

Summary: Lisa loves all of Dean's smiles, but the one smile that matters is the one she'll never see. Girl!Sam. Implied Wincesty feelings.

Warnings: Implied Wincest (whether it's one-sided or not, I'll leave up to you).

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the recognizable characters, settings, or plot points from Supernatural. They belong to Eric Kripke, or the CW, or whoever else the fates have deemed worthy of such things (i.e. not me).

The first time they'd met, it had just been sex. Good sex (alright — great sex), but just sex. It had been that story she'd tell her friends when they'd all had two shots too many, starting with the same, sleazy smile and the words, "You remember that weekend when you all thought I'd died?" and they'd poke their elbows onto the slick tabletop and lean in to listen. Lisa'd always known how to tell a good story, and Dean had slipped the material straight into her capable hands.

When he'd come back, it had been awkward at first. He'd still been young, and hot, and a little too careless, and Lisa had still felt the feathers stretch in her chest, the rib-ache to catch his essence and steal it away, keep it for herself. But she had a kid now. She had a house and a job that paid the bills and a bunch of reliable, responsible friends who would always think of him as the guy from her drunken drabblings.

Things had changed when he'd saved Ben's life. Or, more accurately, Lisa had realized the real-life Dean didn't fit into the alcohol-slurred mold she'd made for him. The tequila in his eyes went deeper than shot glasses; his hands hosted a city of scars she'd never noticed, cut in straight lines like street maps, and, even after he'd explained his world to her, she sometimes caught him staring when he should've been speaking. He filtered. She hadn't gotten the whole story and maybe never would, but that was easy to forgive in the moments he smiled at her. Cheesy and crinkled when he wanted something. Skewed to one side when embarrassed. Lips only when she'd hit home, or else just a quick flash of teeth. It didn't take her more than two months to realize addiction had set in. Dean's smile was a drug. She'd ask a question, and, instead of answering, he'd break out a head-rushing smile, and she wouldn't press him. He could get away with all the crap in the world as long as he kept smiling.

They'd been living together for five weeks before he mentioned his sister, and even then it was by accident.

"Hey, look," she'd said, tossing a postcard across the table for Ben and Dean to see, "That's the Golden Gate Bridge."

"Ever seen it in real life?" Dean had asked, today's smile hitched in a challenge. "I'd always thought it was gonna be gold-colored 'cause it's called the Golden Gate. Obviously. Then I get there and it's red! State's got a great public university system, but they're still bat-shit crazy."

"It's not named for the color," Ben had protested as he'd snatched the letter out of Dean's hands to trace the swoop of the suspension cables. "It's the gateway to the golden state. That's why."

"Oh really," Dean had puffed, straightening up and turning on Ben in mock rivalry. "Lisa, your son thinks he knows more about American history than I do. You haven't even been through high school, kid."

"And you didn't graduate, Mr. GED," Lisa had pointed out. She'd spun away towards the sink so he wouldn't see the crook of her mouth. "Anyway, the postcard's from my cousin, Annalise. She just moved in with her boyfriend in Oakland."

"Huh," Dean had huffed across the table. "Never much liked Oakland."

"Did you do a job there?" Lisa had asked absently. Everywhere Dean had been was for a job; it was like he'd never taken a vacation. Twenty-eight years, most of it on the road, and not a single deviation from the plotted course.

So when he'd said, "Nah," the casual tone didn't do much to prevent her hands from freezing under the tap. She'd turned the water off and set her hips against the counter.

"So why'd you go?"

His right hand had slipped around his back to rub at his shirt. He always did it when he got uncomfortable, one of the scarier side effects of carrying a concealed weapon for three-quarters of his life: any type of threat and he reached for the gun. Except there was no gun now, just the back of his belt and his shirt hem.

Lisa had stiffened at the action, expecting him to brush it all off with a joke and a smile. Or, if not, then unleash one of his more horrific stories. He had plenty to choose from.

But she was wrong on both accounts. He'd hesitated for a moment, placed two, dry hands decidedly on the table, and then shrugged. "My sister lives there."

Lisa felt like someone had hit her over the head with an iron pot or a brick maybe. They'd talked about his family. She knew his mother had died when he was six, that he'd been close with his father until his death just a few years ago, but Dean had always given the impression that he was an only child. Or, at least, Lisa'd always gotten that impression.

Ben, curse his precious soul, had halted her thoughts there with a drawn out, "Mom."

She'd blinked away from Dean to focus on her son. "Yeah?"

"It's 7:45."

"Shit. School." She'd patted down her pants and jacket, searching for keys. "Damn it. Meet me at the car." And then she was rushing away to tear up the living room.

Needless to say, the conversation with Dean had been forestalled until that night when she was spread out against his side in their bed, head cushioned on his arm, hair cascading over the muscles there like a black waterfall.

"You never said you had a sister," she'd murmured to the ceiling, half hoping that it didn't come out like an accusation and half hoping that it did.

His ribs had stilled for a moment in their compressed state before swelling outwards again, and the air swooping in had passed his throat with an audible rush. With the corner of her mouth and ear against his arm, she had both felt and heard the quickening of his pulse.

"She ran away."

Lisa had stayed silent. If Dean started a story, he finished it. It sometimes took a long time, but prompting only made him guarded, and tonight she was dying to know. She counted the seconds by the rise of his chest, marveling over the bands of shadow that the window's faint light had painted between his ribs.

"My dad and I never told her about what we do," he'd continued at last. Not whispering, but quiet. More hoarse than breathy. "We dragged her all over the country. State to state. School to school. And she hated it. Asked a thousand questions that we never answered, and when she realized she was chasing a lost cause she whined. Let me tell you," he'd said, letting out a snort that limped and fell flat, "that girl could whine. I wanted to strangle her sometimes."

Lisa had stroked a finger down his side, but he'd stiffened slightly, and she pulled back, waiting again.

As if nothing had happened, Dean had run a hand through his hair, the tension in each finger so palpable that the air around them seemed to crack with static. "She stopped whining senior year of high school," he'd gone on, "and we - me and Dad - thought she'd finally made peace with the lifestyle. But then I found drafts of her application essays. I didn't tell her I'd found them, and I didn't tell Dad. I kept thinking she was gonna bring it up." He'd paused then, the hand making another, faster pass through his already scuffed hair. "But she never did. Never said a word, and then she was gone." Eerie dispassion had pervaded his voice as he'd stuck on, "Went to Stanford for a year, but even with the financial aid she couldn't cut it, so she dropped out, moved to Oakland, and now she's a waitress."

"What's her name?" Lisa had whispered towards his shoulder, because it seemed like he'd finished his piece, and she couldn't not know.

"Sam," he'd said. Shrugged. "Samantha, I guess, but I can't think of anyone who called her that."

"How did you guys make up?"

He'd rolled his head in her direction then, tipping his chin down to see her face. "We didn't. Whenever I'm in Cali, I drive to Oakland and stop by the restaurant she works at — make sure she's still there, still doin' okay — but we haven't talked in years. Six years, I guess."

Lisa hadn't been sure what to say to that, so she'd reached out again and run her finger down his side. This time he'd let her, and they hadn't revisited the conversation that night.

But some door had been opened, and Dean had begun to mention Sam's name in casual conversation. When Lisa'd found a centipede in the bathtub, and summoned Dean with an embarrassingly high-pitched yell, he'd said, "Usually I'd give you hell for screaming, but Sam told me some o' these critters are actually poisonous."

Lisa had said, "I didn't scream," with a harmless scowl and a punch to his shoulder before realizing in silent shock that he'd mentioned his sister. She'd thought it was a tabooed topic, but she vowed to pay closer attention in the future.

A week later, when Ben had asked for help on his biology paper, Dean had snorted and said, "You don't want my help. I made my little sister be the brains in our family. More time for the ladies that way."

Lisa had thrown a dishtowel at him, but the reference hadn't slipped by her this time.

After about a month, Lisa figured it'd be okay to bring it up herself. She asked to see a picture.

Then she wished she hadn't.

Dean had looked almost guilty when he'd handed it to her, pulled from a pocket of his wallet, and she'd realized with a confused prick of jealousy that that meant he carried it everywhere. Before she could worry too much about it, she'd rubbed the thick folds of the paper between her fingers and then noted the faded date scribbled in pencil on the back. 2000. So Sam had been eighteen when it was taken, maybe seventeen. Right before she'd left.

She'd unfolded it carefully and surveyed the captured scene with x-ray eyes. It was a candid shot of both siblings outside in the snow. A warm winter evening if their attire was anything to go by: boots and waterproof pants, but Dean sporting just a tee on top and his sister with her sleeves rolled up. Samantha Winchester had paler skin than Lisa, though not by much. Fewer sunspots and a more prominent blush breathed across her cheekbones. They were high, the only modelesque feature about her, and Lisa was sickened by the satisfaction she took in knowing Samantha would never make the big screen. Not that she wasn't beautiful, but her eyes were large and soft rather than defined at sexy, feline angles. Her lips had been drawn on in small, straight lines like a tightly tied bow, no kissable fullness to them. Nothing like Dean's lips. Her hair was a thick, brown mess of tangled curls and waves that no conditioner could fix, and, while her upper body may have been worthy to learn Victoria's Secret, no one ended up on magazine covers with hips that wide. She was beautiful like a soccer player or a high-school crush, but nothing to turn heads.

Lisa had no idea what inner bitch had compelled her to analyze the photo that way until she turned her attention to the frozen frame of Dean's face, and she knew she must have subconsciously taken it into account before. His mouth, with its lips so much larger than his sister's, had been caught partially open, curves like parentheses cutting smooth and deep at the corners, and, for all that she'd studied Dean's smiles, Lisa had never seen that one before. The muscles around her heart clenched. His eyes were on Samantha's face, and the adoration in them shone bright enough to dim the snow glare. A hot-chocolate glow. Warm. Content. Complete.

Lisa bit her lips together and folded the picture back up. She didn't want to look at it anymore, and she didn't want to think too hard about why. Dean slipped the square out of her fingers, and neither of them tried to talk about it.

Dean had continued to mention Sam in passing, and he'd continued to smile at Lisa, and each day Lisa had felt the feathers in her chest spread that much further. She knew she loved Dean, but, for each second he stayed, it seemed a new drop of warmth plinked down to stretch the confines of her heart. It almost hurt.

It was a twisted string of fate that eventually brought it all to light.

Annalise, Lisa's cousin, was getting married in the Oakland hills, and they'd been close enough growing up that going wasn't a question. It was with that reasoning running on repeat in Lisa's mind that, on a windy morning in early June, she, Ben and Dean had packed themselves and all their gear into the silver minivan and rolled onto the highway heading west. Ohio to California was a long drive, but the motels they stayed in weren't too shabby, the car's stereo hadn't given out yet, and Dean knew about a thousand word games from a childhood spent crisscrossing the states on car trips much like this one.

When they crested the last ridge of the coastal hills at 6:00pm on Friday, the fog swallowed them whole. Ben opened his window to suck in the fresh wetness of it, and Lisa tugged her sweater tight around her shoulders. Dean didn't seem to notice, just kept humming along to the soft opening of "Nothing Else Matters" as his eyes tracked the yellow line that was keeping them grounded to the wild turns of the road. Coastal live oaks spat fat drops of fog onto the roof, and the streetlights blurred out into nothing as if a ghostly host had gathered to obscure them. Lisa shivered and prayed that Annalise wouldn't pressure them into staying long after the wedding. The west had always felt foreign to her.

The ceremony itself, once it arrived, passed in a blur of music, food, and chatter. Most of the guests were from the groom's side, so Lisa spent her time running through introductions, and then again, until she hated her own name. They were all friendly seeming people, but the separation between one face and the next began to fuzz around relative number thirty, and after that it became more of a smiling haze than a series of sensical events.

When they got back to their hotel room, she flopped onto the bed and shot Dean her most pleading smile before asking if he would pretty please massage her feet. Maybe her back, too. He scoffed at first, but that was for show; when it came down to it, he always did what she wanted.

Annalise wasn't so easy to manipulate. She batted aside Lisa's complaints of homesickness and insisted, with wringing hands and drawn out vowels, "This restaurant in Rockridge is amaaaaazing! Who knows when you'll be back in the Bay Area? We may not see each other for yeeeears, Lisa. Yeeears! Pleeease come." And Lisa had caved, bundled up against the fog, and followed Annalise's confusing directions to the obscure Cajun place called Remy's.

"Where does your sister work?" she'd asked on the car ride. Just passing the time, which Dean might buy even if no one else would.

"Geez, it's gotta be two years since I've been here," Dean admitted with a scratch to the back of his collar. Lisa reached over to adjust it for him. "But, um… as far as I know she's still waiting tables at a pizza joint over by Temescal."

"Are you planning to visit?"

When Dean shook his head, a small weight dissolved from Lisa's stomach. Her mind had been flashing to unwelcome images of the photograph ever since they'd crossed the state line, and it made her itchy underneath the skin until, inevitably, her gaze would flit down to Dean's back pocket. His wallet was there, stretching the denim with every movement, and the picture was there, too, creased into neat folds and secured in thick, leather armor. It was always there. Hidden in the background. Waiting.

Lisa tried not to remember the expression on the face of the twenty-two-year-old, polaroid Dean. When she couldn't avoid remembering, she quelled the prickling tingle to analyze by immersing herself in something else. Anything else really. Everybody knew that facts weren't true until admitted.

Dean snapped away her troubled thoughts when he parked the car. "We've got about three blocks to walk," he said with a good-natured grimace. "Whoever designed these streets didn't think ahead very far."

Ben had asked to stay at the hotel, so it was just Lisa who huddled into Dean's side for the short trek. Fog, she'd determined, was merciless, and she squeezed Dean's waist in relief when Remy's distinctive, old-fashioned lanterns came into view. They met up with Annalise and her husband inside where it was "no soul, no service" so the fog couldn't come in. A table near the back had been set up for them, and Lisa relaxed as she walked through the warm buzz of laughter and chit-chat that pervaded the room, the smoky smell of good food.

She settled into her chair and met Dean's easy smile with one of her own. He loved all southern cooking, even when it had been transplanted to a city as far removed from the south as Oakland, and Lisa loved that he loved it. She took another deep breath of the buttery, oven-heated air and glanced around at the other customers, the honeyed walls, the waiters and waitresses in their white tops, the trays of steaming dishes swinging past their heads. There was a beauty to the controlled chaos of it all, patterns that hid just under the surface, like how she knew which waitress was heading for their table even from across the room.

She was about Lisa's height but with a figure that swooned heavier on the bottom half. And it was a bottom half to stare at, hips that danced with each step in the swish and roll only working-class girls could pull off, overtly sexual without trying. Lisa knew because she'd used to walk like that back in the day. Before she'd had a kid. Before she'd tied herself to one town, one job, one man. She felt a small sense of comradery towards the thick-hipped girl until she stepped into the veil of a hanging light, and, with a shot to the stomach, Lisa recognized her. The baby-doll lips, the Huggy-Bear eyes, the sculpted cheekbones and their ruddy tinge. It was a beautiful nightmare of sorts, this girl moving steadily closer. The photograph hadn't explained how her shoulders hunched ever so slightly inwards in testimony to some childhood diffidence yet to be entirely overcome. It hadn't warned her that the rhythm of the girl's movement would ripple out wave after wave of distilled confidence, put to use like all smart girls learned to do. It hadn't given her any clue as to the malleability of the mouth as it contracted away from a professional smile towards confusion. And worst was that Lisa recognized it all — the posture, the hesitation, the mindset that backed it — because it was her own. Except, it wasn't Sam who was like Lisa; it was Lisa who was like Sam, and the realization dawned on her in a long-foretold high tide that she'd been a substitute. Always.

And when Dean asked her, "Who are you glaring at?" and then followed her gaze up, the parting of his lips was all she needed to see. The air around him melted coffee-hot like it had never done for her, and those parentheses she'd been trying to forget inched across his cheeks until they outshone the ceiling lights, outshone the streetlamps and the lanterns in the windows.

The wings in her chest ached as they reached out to him between their chairs. Her heart choked, and her blood shivered; her muscles betrayed her. She couldn't look away. So much time together, so many smiles, and yet the one that mattered was the one she'd never see. A bare arm's breadth from her face, but she couldn't have it.

"Dean?" came the high-pitched question, the girl's vocal chords tight and so failingly human.

And Dean, never a man of many words, grumbled, "Hey, Sam," like old dogs growl at their favorite owners.

If it hadn't hurt so much, Lisa might've found it ironic. Her here. Dean next to her. Neither able to get what they wanted, even now when it was right in front of them.