AN: Lol, okay, to the anonymous reviewer who doesn't know Peggy: she's not a canon character.

Hollywood Babylon is one of my favorite episodes, and so I did a rewrite of it with the addition of Peggy Patcher as an intro to the Supernatural land of fiction. It's a writing crutch, I know, but it was fun. Reviewers on A Hollywood Hazing wanted to see more of Peggy, so I kept her in contact with the boys and kept on writing…now she kinda has a plot arc. It's wacky.

In any case if you want to see more of her too, all the Clothesline stories are listed on my profile page in order.

And now, as a follow up to the gratuitous Peggy angst, we have plot-furthering obligatory WINCHESTER ANGST.


Walls
Three

By the time they roll into Windom, they still can't decide what to do about Adam, or what to tell him. Do they lurk in the shadows, try and lay down ground work around his school, his house, in his car to keep him safe… or do they come out of the woodwork and tell him who they are.

And if… if they do tell him, how much do they tell him? 'We're your brothers' or 'we're your brothers and we hunt monsters'?

"We'll get run off," Dean mutters, pulling into the motel car park. "It'll freak him out, ruin his memories of Dad and his mom'll get a freaking restraining order against us. And won't that be the perfect way to bring Hendrickson down on our heads?"

"Dean, look, he's our brother; we can't just sit on the sidelines like a pair of tools! You said it yourself, he's a kid; he needs to be protected –"

"And Dad did that, Sam," Dean says, turning the car off and giving Sam a look, "by keeping him out of our world. The stuff we encounter on a job would eat him for breakfast."

"It's not like we're going to be taking him on jobs with us, Dean."

"No, but say he believes us, if we tell him about what we do. Say he decides he wants to make his dad proud, huh, and go hunting with his brothers. We say no, like Dad used to, and he takes it into his I'm invincible teenage skull to go it alone and try to hunt anyway. What then, Sam?"

Sam just looks back at him, nettled.

"I'm not having his blood – my brother's blood – on my hands," Dean says, low and rough. He turns away and throws his door open, climbing from the car. "I'm going to Hell as it is. No need to add fuel to the fire."

"You're not going to Hell, Dean," Sam says fiercely, following him out of the car. They stand on opposite sides of her, watching each other over her glossy roof. "And Adam's not going to die. Not because of us. But I don't… I don't want to turn into Dad. I want to be honest with him, not keep secrets because we decide it's for his own good."

Dean's mouth hardens, jaw tightening, and Sam leans towards him, just as determined and typically earnest.

"Keeping him in the dark about all this is just as likely to hurt him as telling him, Dean." He shakes his head, looking down at those damn dinner-plate hands of his, folded on the car's roof. "I hated that Dad lied to us. Kept stuff from us. I hate what it's done to our family. I've been as honest with Peggy as you've let me be and… and she's… she's our friend."

"Well, she's my friend," Dean feels he has to interject. "I don't know what she is to you, but that kiss–"

"Not the time, Dean," Sam mutters, "never the time. Look, my point is, being honest with Peggy has kept her as a friend. She's someone we can trust. I want that with Adam, and with Kate. I want to trust them, but they have to trust us first. That means being honest. And it means teaching them how to protect themselves."

"They won't need protection if we keep out of their lives," Dean says, and even he can hear the stubbornness in his voice. "And we can protect them without telling them about – all of that."

"You know that's not true," Sam says softly. "The stuff we hunt comes after everyday people. It hurts them, kills them… And I'd never forgive myself if something happened to Adam, or Kate, because we didn't teach them how to keep themselves safe, really safe."

They stand, unspeaking for a moment. Then Sam continues, very, very softly, "You were so desperate to get here, so worried. I thought this was why."

They're talking themselves round in circles now, but Dean knows that Sam's right. Knows it, but doesn't like it. There isn't much he wouldn't give to let Sam go back – back to Stanford, with Jess, to have the sweet little life he had set out for himself.

It wouldn't have worked, in the long run – all of Azazel's chosen had been consumed by the shadow of Cold Oak eventually – but if he could, he'd give his little brother a home, and a real life… Maybe, after he's gone, Sam will grow a lick of sense and have a life like that – one full of sunlight, and smiles, and the scent of Peggy's cooking. She loves Sam, even if Sam doesn't seem to know if he loves her yet, so Dean knows she'll help him, and look after him.

For Adam… for Adam he wants sunlight too, unbroken by all the dark, miserable crap that's dogged him and Sam all their lives. He wants it so much, but…

But Sam's right – again – and this time it stings so that Dean almost can't stand the silent appeal on his brother's face.

He clears his throat and looks down.

"Alright," he says, scuffing one boot against the asphalt of the Kelsey Manor Motel's parking lot. "Alright, Sam, we'll do it." He looks up, holds his brothers eyes sternly with his own. "But we'll do this my way, Sam, clear?"

"What's your way?"

"Slowly. We're not just going to drop all this crap in his lap at once. We need to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that we're his family first. After that… after that, we'll see. We'll see, Sam," he says, voice firm when Sam opens his mouth to protest.

"Okay, okay. Fine. So, step one then?"

Dean steps away from the car, going to the trunk and beginning to unload their stuff. "Step one," he says, throwing Sam his backpack, "is simple. We're going to their house."

Sam's eyebrows go up. "Just like that? No scoping out, no planning, no tests?"

Dean scoffs. "Oh, there're gonna be tests. And scoping out and planning. We're just gonna be subtle about it."

"'Subtle'? Who are you, and what have you done with my brother?"

Dean cracks a smile for the first time in twenty-four hours.