They were nearly a month out from the unspeakable, and Sam was starting to wonder if it was time to talk about it.

He snuck a glance away from the road and towards Dean, who was staring out the window in silence, as he had for the last couple hundred miles out of Milwaukee.

At first, Dean seemed to be handling his manhandling by a male-bodied siren more in stride than Sam. The younger brother felt like he'd walked in on his roofied brother being date-raped, and the sight was so horrifying his impulse was to suggest counseling. That's what he would do for a female friend who had suffered the same trauma. Bobby had to talk Sam out of going after the thing that did this to his brother, counseling patience rather than going on the offensive just yet.

But Dean quickly grew annoyed at the deferential treatment, and an older brother who snapped at him for no reason felt normal enough to restore Sam's comfort level. That, and Dean getting back in the skirt-chasing game very quickly had helped Sam put aside any lingering concerns after a week or so. After all, Sam had been exposed to the venom too, and he had no special impulses away from his older brother or towards some male confidante.

They hunted. The brothers were pushed around some by angels and demons alike. The only notable difference was that Dean had completely left off any comments about Sam's link with Ruby. "Guess he figured ragging on me for being close to a demon would be too pot calls the kettle a freak, at this point," Sam had chuckled as he enfolded Ruby in his arms at one pit stop. The two brothers fought together better than ever … until Dean started to show signs of coming apart.

Returning to the motel to find his brother slathered in oil and oddly hysterical had been a pretty good indication.

Dean felt something wonderful just around every corner. It would be the fulfillment of the vow the siren whispered in Dean's ear, which was still hot with the promise that they would see each other soon. Except it was going on a month now, and Dean desperately needed to see this person for whom he'd broken his longstanding policy to only fall for people. It was his only hope for figuring out why he'd done it.

And if he was honest with himself, how he could break that taboo more often.

But only that one, only that line, Dean's brain hastened to add—every other line he'd crossed recently would be neatly re-drawn over the smudges his worldview bore after Milwaukee.

It was a regular sewing circle in Dean's head these days, so he leaned against the window and told himself over and over again, "Be brave; you're still a badass motherfucker. That's why the chicks dig you," while forcing himself to piece together exactly what had gone wrong.

He and Sam had spent a couple days in Milwaukee flushing out some poltergeists who had somehow learned to travel from house to house. Pinning down those bitches in one place and then ganking them had been a bitch. That done, naturally Sam and Dean were ready for a little R&R.

Sam was happily left to his own demonic devices doing dark-side yoga or whatever he did with Ruby these days. Meanwhile, Dean was spending every spare minute in strip clubs looking for the siren, and Milwaukee had been no exception. That night, the tired hunter had asked somebody where he could get an eyeful of some exotic dancers, and the guy had said the best sight in town was to be found shimmying on the poles at Pink's.

It took Dean a stupidly long time to realize that the sensation pressing in on him was not the siren he was hoping to see pop out from any corner, preferably dressed as a hot chick from now on. He was being scoped out but good by most of the guys in the joint. Which was a tranny bar, the second thing he was clueless about.

"Dude, I'm still trying to wrap my mind around meeting you in a guy wrapper, but this in-between-the genders stuff is too much," Dean thought to the siren he'd been trying to contact through the bond he felt like a new organ growing within him. If this creature could truly take on any aspect, all Dean had to do was see him—it—again, and the being he'd met as an FBI agent would surely appear like a buxom babe, just the way Dean liked 'em. Last time had been a misunderstanding, that's all, one that he was eager to forget in arms that made him feel equally as horny, but had no inconvenient appendages.

Dean watched the dancers, all of whom were very passable, gyrating to the music while he tried to drink away the feeling that he had this night and every night previous: that his lover was about to reveal herself. He swore under his breath. Actually, tonight might be a bad idea. He'd rather not have the siren show up on the pole and then risk geting hot and heavy with one of these vixens-and-then-some. He had just about attained the right level of lethargy to call it a night, when a voice addressed him from a neighboring table.

"Not your thing, I take it." A guy, a perfectly normal looking guy, was leaning away from his table, which seemed filled with some raucous arty types more intent on crowd-watching than taking in the show.

For a second, Dean's heart leaped. At that moment he didn't care if Nick (or Nicola, as he tried to train himself to think of her) appeared to him as a guy again. He was in need of some maudlin conversation at this late point in the evening. Dean was sure that, siren super-powers aside, what had really happened was two lonely people being shaken out of their respective killing modes to have an honest-to-God real conversation for the first time in forever.

But there was no way this stranger was the being he'd been pining over—he didn't make Dean go weak in the knees. The man said, "You want to join us? These places can get kind of depressing if you look at them through the wrong end of a whiskey or five."

Disappointed, the hunter scooted his chair and drink over to try and forget that this was going to be another no-show night. "Yeah, I wasn't expecting this kind of scene when I asked someone for a good place to take a load off."

"People are people, is my motto. I'm Gerard," the guy said in a warm manner as he introduced the newcomer around the table. Dean's rescuer was a close-cropped redhead, good-looking like everyone at his table, but he was obviously well-dressed. As opposed to his companions, who were wearing the sort of clothes that proclaimed their pricetag with how ragged they were.

All the bohemians' names flew straight out of Dean's head because he was busy thinking, "Except when they're not people," over the next hour or so, as he went through the motions with his new acquaintances. The other folks were much too self-consciously stylish for his taste, but Gerard had an outsider's sense of humor that he turned on his companions and self alike.

"I can see you're trying to do the math, so let me help you," he smiled at Dean. "I'm kind of the honorary normal person for this crowd. They live at an artist's collective not too far away and I'm in finance. I was dating an artist in their colony for a while, but when that ended they decided to keep me and get rid of him. He was a bastard, anyway, and I'll do their taxes."

Dean was glad to have the distraction of someone else's life story without paying too much attention to the details. Then he heard, "I think I have this need for the bizarre because I can't manufacture it on my own."

"Yeah? I got an endless supply of weird for you." And Dean started telling random (sanitized) stories of life on the road with the Winchesters. The part of himself that was always ready with a cover story claimed that he was a folklorist, and he and his brother were traveling around America researching for a book about urban myths. "You'd be surprised the weird shit people cook up. You have to ask the right questions, but almost everybody has had at least one thing happen to them that they can't explain."

By this time, the rest of the table was listening, and Dean felt sort of smart for a change. He sipped his drink and noted how good he felt—more than enjoying the attention from the artsy clique, Dean realized he was totally relieved on another account. He was having a nice conversation with this guy Gerard, a gay guy, along with five or six other gay guys in a tranny club, and he felt absolutely nothing. His hook up with a supernatural creature had left him an intact heterosexual. Thank God. He slugged back the rest of his drink and held up a hand to the waitperson, now in the mood to buy a round.

"Can I get in on the joke?" Gerard was asking him. "That's the first good smile I've seen from you so far."

"I feel like celebrating, that's all," Dean replied, his heart light compared to all the worries of the previous weeks.

"Then I have somewhere special to take you." Gerard waved away the server. "Don't you want to see these gals become gals? In some cases it takes an inch of spackle to see the effect you get on the stage; it's pretty unbelievable." He nodded towards the two dancers, one dressed like an angel, another like a devil, who were slinking around the pole at the moment.

"All right," Dean agreed, reminding himself that under normal circumstances he would be curious, and he'd just established that he was back in the realm of the normal.

He followed Gerard across the bar to the backstage entrance. "It's all right, Maurice, he's with me," the man said to a large bouncer stationed in the way. "They had to post someone there because the most unlikely men kept sneaking back for a peek."

"Why do they let you back here?" Dean asked.

"I do the books for this place." Gerard beckoned him into a dark hallway.

Soon they stepped into an area hung all around with discarded costumes. Several dancers rushed back and forth with headdresses all askew or shouting for some eyelash adhesive. Again, Dean felt very relaxed and sure of himself. This was the sort of story he'd get a lot of mileage out of: Dean Winchester goes backstage at the tranny bar. Sam would be all "I'm not interested" and meanwhile would be hanging on every word.

"Hey, doll-face. I'm free after the show if you'd like a closer look," a husky-voiced figure in a huge Marge Simpson-like wig said, blowing a kiss as she rushed for a costume change.

Oh shit. Except Sam would be breaking out the "our bodies, ourselves" pamphlets like he did after the Incident. Except this time they would be along the lines of, "it's all right to have feelings about other boys." He felt all of his worries rush back in.

But they kept rushing, and rushing. Dean's lost deliciousness was back in full force, and the blood was surging through his body with such a momentum that he had to grab onto the wall. Not now. His new sense told him that Nick was responsible for this tropical storm, but the mere mortal was not ready to face the source of his craving that was abruptly so close he could almost touch it.

"Hey, are you all right?" Gerard led him to a couch in a hallway. "Everyone who doesn't know a girl-by -choice wonders what they're like. There's nothing wrong with being curious."

Dean was about to protest the other man's interpretation of his flushing face when he saw the accountant eyeing the hand he'd unconsciously moved to hide his erection. "You don't understand. I'm not. There's this—woman—I hooked up with and I can't stop thinking about her. It's kind of unusual for me, to be honest, to be this hung up on someone. She's a real siren, a knockout." Who had to be a few yards a away.

His voice faded off as he felt the intimacy he'd shared with Nick—Nicola—beating upon his senses. His throat was tight. "Please come rescue me from this awkward moment," he pleaded mentally. No matter what form she was in, he didn't care—he'd ask her to turn into the girl of his dreams and everything would be, it would be—

Gerard's voice was sounding somewhere far away. Dean heard a crinkle and turned towards the sound. "What is that? I could really go for a mint."

"Blueberry," Gerard said in his friendly way.

Dean bent double with a sudden cramp. His mind reeling, he was staring at the foil wrapper that had landed at his feet—a condom packet.

"There's been some mistake," the hunter mumbled as he tried to extricate himself from a situation he should have seen coming a mile away. He was not attracted to this guy—to any guy! Some pit of wrongness began sprouting in his stomach, and then

Whoosh

The passion he had found with the siren over a month ago was in full flower.

"Try it and see," Gerard was saying as Dean stared transfixed at the condom in his hand. "You're excited, I'm excited. That's how it all starts between anyone."

No. It's one thing to be getting off so hard with a supernatural entity that you stop thinking about who's hunting who, but I don't want—

The more vehemently Dean's mind protested that he wanted to be halfway down the block, he was lashed with an arousal that he could swear was not his own.

"You've been turning this X-ray vision on me all evening and this bi-curious thing you've got going on has got my curiosity piqued, Dean," Gerard was saying. "You come off as totally inexperienced and yet not, you dress like you never look in a mirror, you're a badass who can't look me in the eyes, and I can't figure it out." He gently tugged on the packet Dean's fingers had automatically picked up from the floor and treated the paralyzed hunter to being on the wrong end of the condom application process.

No. Not this, was Dean's thought, but somehow his resistance was stoking this fire that felt exactly as though Nick—NICOLA—was watching and getting off hard on the sight of Dean's lips parting….

But they were alone, Dean tried to comfort himself as his lips closed on the man's member. "You seem to have some idea of what you're doing there, so maybe it was all an act," Gerard's voice came from very far away.

Yes, Dean had briefly been on his knees during his one-night-stand of being mostly in other positions. But by then Nick had him totally melted into a puddle of yes, and he'd eagerly absorbed whatever innovation Nick had inserted into—things—after that.

No—"yes"—No—"yes"

His consciousness twanging like a rubber band, Dean's body could not resist. Since he couldn't run, he comforted himself with the idea that he was going to give the single most miserable blowjob in history and prove once and for all that he wasn't gay. This was the sort of reasoning that had compelled him into the arms of every harlot he could get his hands on since Bedford, Iowa. He'd sincerely gotten off with those chicks, though more because he was picturing the hottie his siren would be wearing the next time they met up. He was collecting the best specimens of femininity, a luscious set of hips here, a perfect set of breasts there, so that they would all be at the forefront of his consciousness the next time Nick scanned him or whatever these sirens do to see what you desire the most.

All the while, the steady bobbing motion of Dean's head moving back and forth mirrored the recoil of his consciousness as it moved from

No

To some appreciative witnessing yes that felt more like Nick than ever, closer than ever, hot against his face.

Dean almost choked. Scratch that. There were witnesses to this humiliating moment, all right.

"Maybe deep-throating is a little advanced, so take it easy, babe. But if you've really not done this before, you're a natural," Gerard was looking down on him, flushed-faced and appreciative, and then saw where Dean's eyes were pointed. "Don't mind Maurice. He has to have something to do, but he won't join in unless asked. Oh, the look on your face. It's precious!"

The intruding member was back in place and the man was too far gone to check the power of his climax slamming drily into Dean's gullet.

No, Dean struggled to articulate, but all his muscles came un-knotted at once with a clear image of what he looked like being taken by a stranger who was 100% hu-man, and the ox-like bouncer pleasuring himself while watching.

It was hot. On some objective level, to someone of a certain taste, the scene was hot, Dean was sure anyone would have to admit that, the way he could admit that Strawberry Quik smelled good though the taste always seemed off to him. The new strawberry taste was filling him along with the impressive totality of the bounder wearing a berry-flavored prophylactic.

This guy was built like a Mack truck, and hairy, not at all his type. Wait a minute, neither of them were his type. Dean tried once more to still the engulfing motions his mouth was making, but the more he rebelled, the hotter the invisible presence got. Dean was forced to accept that he was going down on a tattooed bouncer with a couple of facial piercings and at least one more bit of metal where it shouldn't have been.

Are you there? I'd do this for you in a minute, Nick, don't tell anyone, but being near you makes me melt like jelly. We can figure this thing out, but don't make me be like this with other people, with people watching.

Dean's eyes looked around the stranger's bulk to see the audience that was peeking out from the wings. There was something particularly humiliating about the dancers coming out and smirking at him under pounds of paint, a few of the making very un-ladylike moves under their dressing gowns.

I'm sure that you came into my life for a reason, that we didn't kill each other for a reason. Let's go back to the motel and talk about this, Dean bargained with the presence whose invisibility had stopped mattering at some point. He could swear he felt a hand twining in his hair and pushing him into a rhythm. All Dean cared about was trying to discern if it was an invisible male or female hand scorching into his scalp.

For some moments, everything was a rising crescendo of humiliation, and arousal until Dean made one final effort to wrench himself off his knees and succeeded just as the alien length gave a final thrust into midair.

"Call me? I'm here on Thursdays," he heard Gerard saying sincerely to his back as he stumbled out. Dean believed the guy, he thought as he emerged onto the blessed anonymity of a back street and sprinted towards their motel. Gerard was no exploiter; he was nothing more exotic than an attractive accountant who had a knack for the weird.

Dean was the one who brought the weird to that little party, he was sure of it. Belatedly, his hunter's instincts were back in charge and the elder Winchester's mind was clear for the first time in a month. Nothing was worth this kind of scene he'd just starred in. If he were into guys, Dean was able to see that he'd be into someone like Gerard, a clean-cut wholesome dude for whom racy was sneaking away from his friends to have a quickie. He would not be into a gluttonous beast that fed off people's lust. This was a venom flashback that had made him pine over a semi-immortal thing that had fucked up all his instincts at the same time it—

"This ends now. I don't care how sexy the mere thought of Nick can make me feel. Any entity that I hook up with does not get off on humiliating me, that's criterion number one, before anything else, including gender," Dean's rational mind was still throwing the occasional curve ball at him as he walked the last block to the motel.

He was confident he was finally righting himself after a tumble on the wrong side of the sheets. Hell, Sam thought his older brother had PTSD, so that's how Dean was going to file away this evening. These dominant-submissive games were for civilians who didn't know exactly how brutal life was.

Though he wanted to give himself a concussion to forget about what just happened, Dean's instincts reminded him that he only had a little while to accomplish the task that had formed in his mind on the way home. They were slated to leave town tomorrow morning, and Sam would show up eventually.

Dean let himself into a dark room and the taste in his mouth was suddenly so overwhelming he ran to the toilet. The blueberry, strawberry, and was that banana? Oh yes, the club manager had to come by at that moment and add his two cents—the flavors mixed into some stubbornly cheerful tutti frutti in his mouth and he dry-heaved a couple times before counteracting the taste with a swig from a bottle he had laying around. Then, ashamed, Dean gave in to the need to jack off that he'd only just been able to restrain at the club.

There was nothing he wanted more than to take a shower after that act, but Dean forced himself to act like the hunter he used to be and be something close to professional about this.

Sam had the car, but they had enough of the basics in the room for any half-decent hunter to perform a diagnostic.

Dean threw around salt, holy oil and holy water. He added in some of the herbs Bobby had sent under the guise of a demon-repellent, but which the elder brother knew were part of Sam's campaign to wash away the lingering taste of siren from both of their mouths. Especially Dean's, who had been on more intimate terms with the thing. He splashed a few drops of the phial of sailor's blood Sam was keeping on hand just in case, and then lit the ring of candles placed at the signal spots around the sigil he'd chalked on the floor.

Nothing.

Dean's heart panged back and forth a few times between relief and terror as he tilted the hand mirror this way and that.

Nothing on him glowed. Not a speck. Not his clothes, which he felt to be filthy with strange men's sex-smells. He couldn't find any astral fingerprint pointing the way to blame something for the events of tonight. But he'd felt the thing's hand. He was sure.

Sam came home to Dean in the middle of the circle, with every magical exorcising substance all over him and the surrounding floor.

"Stop looking at me like that," he snapped at his brother transfixed before him. "Come over here and give me a hand. I can't see if I've got a good coating of this holy oil on my back, and that must be what's messing with— "

Dean broke off, seeing that his brother was the one all aglow. From Ruby, no doubt. That his ritual was working, but offered no supernatural scapegoat for himself, only made the older brother more furious at his brother for having evidently spent the night rolling in demon goo. "Look at you. I bet this is your fault. I'm so used to sitting in the car next to this demonic—whatever—wafting off of you. No wonder everything's all going to hell and I'm all discombobulated. Stop staring at me, I said!"

Sam had crept closer looking for all the world like he was about to give his brother some bizarre pamphlet about coping mechanisms for a mad urge to go gay while being completely miserable about it. The younger brother put his hand on the other man's shoulder when he stopped and sniffed the air. "Dude, have you been drinking strawberry daiquiris or something? You smell like you've been drinking fruit punch Kool-aid."

"I have not drunk anyone's Kool-aid, I'll have you know, Sam," Dean growled as his fist met his brother's head. "Whoever told you I would swallow that?!"

They had a knock-up-drag-down until the motel management threatened to call the cops. That was their cue to pack up on the double and run to the car before any authorities showed up.

Dean was exhausted at the effort required to relive last night and sagged against the door. The last thought that reached him before sleep was one he was unable to see the bad side of:

The siren was there. Just like he promised. Nick said we would meet up again and we did. There must be something going wrong to scramble things up between us, but I'm sure we can fix it.

And the very last idea before he lapsed into unconsciousness:

The tattoo.