A/N: First off, let me apologize for the lateness of this. I know I said Wednesday, however, I actually have a good reason. I got sick first of the week, which ended up aggravating my asthma, which resulted in the worst asthma attack I've had since I was about 6. Long story short: inhalers, hospital, and I'm on the road to recovery. However, anyone who's ever had trouble breathing knows you can't focus on anything except pulling air into your lungs, let alone writing, which is why this is late.

Second, thank you to everyone who reviewed - especially you guests who I couldn't reply too! I hope you enjoy this chapter too. One of my favorite characters from the early seasons, from one of my favorite episodes from that season.

Hunter Appreciation Day

by ThornsHaveRoses

Two: Define Normal

Lucas Barr wasn't exactly normal. Which was okay. He'd always known that. It was a combination of things, some small, some big, that were not 'abnormal', until you strung them all together.

Things like dropping out of art school. Thousands of people dropped out of school every year. And quite frankly, it just wasn't for him. But as soon as he did, his university friends all shifted back, like they were afraid his decision would taint their success. Keeping friends was hard, especially when you knew things that they didn't, so he almost didn't mind. When he was a teenager he'd tried to tell his friends, but that went about as well as can be expected. Once people found out, they had no use for him except as someone to snicker about and call crazy in the hallways. But that never changed his story. Lucas knew.

But he wouldn't petend that didn't make it hard sometimes. To know something as surely as he knew you drove on the right side of the road, and the Sahara was hot, but to have to keep it inside you because the rest of the world couldn't deal with it. Spirits were out there. Ghosts. Monsters. And to be different in a way he couldn't quite define, and definitely couldn't explain to people that made them judge him. Made them look at him different.

He didn't like to swim. Okay, he never swam. Hell, he'd even lost a girlfriend over it. Because in her mind, anyone who wouldn't take spring break and Christmas break and every opportunity to hang out on a beach down south wasn't worth her time.

And that one he'd tried so damn hard to get over. Surely he'd spent hours by now on the edges of pools or lakes just staring. His friends had ribbed him over his courage (or lack thereof), but it wasn't a lack of guts that made him stay on solid ground - it was just knowledge. The undeniable fact that sometimes there were things in the water. And sometimes those things could kill you. Even showers still made him uncomfortable.

He didn't like to think too hard about how much he let fear influence his life, but he'd he lying if he said it wasn't there. That sometimes he'd find himself for a few minutes reverting back to the silence he'd counted on like a protective shield as a kid - something else which pissed his roommate off to no end.

And those were just a few things that made Lucas Barr the odd man out. Which, granted, if one knew the circumstances of his childhood, it wasn't a mystery why. His father wasn't there anymore. His grandfather had frigging sacrificed himself when Lucas was a kid. So Lucas really didn't have a father figure to look up to growing up, which by no means made him special. Lots of kids suffered that same situation.

But Lucas had also had an honest-to-God hero come into his life at one point. Two of them, technically, which is not something a lot of people can say. But it was Dean who convinced him, with his confidence and those honest green eyes that it was okay to come out of his shell of silence.

And there were days even now that Lucas wanted to see him, just for a minute. Just to have someone say "you're okay, kid". Someone he could relate too.

Lucas still remembered the picture Dean had drawn him the first time he'd met, and the story that had gone with it. That thing they had in common - family lost to the monsters of the world. Lucas still remembered that connection he'd felt - someone who'd understood that he didn't want to talk, didn't push him to be anything else. He'd only know Dean for a few days, but he was the only person then, or now, who understood him.

Dean was the reason he had bought a leather jacket when he was 15 and wore it every single day since. He was the reason Led Zeppelin CDs were stuffed in the glovebox of his car. The reason he kept drawing - and the reason those drawing abruptly changed from stick figures and square houses to monsters.

So yeah, Lucas was not normal - but Dean was the reason he was okay with that.