A/N: Sorry it took a bit for this update! Real life is hitting me hard.

This one is for Tospringe, who requested Lisa learning about Dean's upbringing. Hopefully this is what you were looking for :)

June 2010, roughly one month after Swan Song

"Dean? Dean, I'm back!"

Lisa's call went unanswered. She pulled her keys out of the front door with one hand, groceries balanced in the other. Ben was at a friends for the night, leaving Lisa and Dean alone for the first time in a long time.

Lisa walked into the kitchen to deposit her goods, noting that Dean wasn't in his usual spot in the living room, a haphazard pile of supernatural books marking his territory. "Dean?" she called again.

Still no answer.

Dean had been living with the Braeden's for a little over a month. He had been on edge, jumpy and neurotic, for much of that time, afraid for something that Lisa didn't want to ask about. She knew he hunted the things that went bump in the night, but she didn't know if those things were also hunting him. She wasn't sure she wanted to know.

Worry clenched her heart as Lisa walked outside to the small shack that functioned as a garage. It was the last place Dean could be. With trepidation, she slowly opened the door.

Her worry was short lived as she spotted Dean sitting in the front seat of the big black car he loved, staring blankly down at the steering wheel.

"Dean?" Lisa called out hesitantly. She slowly approached the car, leaning down to look at Dean through the open window. Dark circles marred his handsome features under eyes blank and unseeing. "Dean? Hey. It's me. I'm back," she said gently.

Dean blinked several times as he came out of his reverie. He looked around blearily, surprised to find Lisa there. "Hey," he said in a low, raspy voice.

"You ok?"

Dean cleared his throat, coming back to himself a little more as he did so. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm ok."

Lisa noted the half empty whiskey bottle sitting next to him on the bench seat, and figured his response was more or less truthful. Dean had been drinking a lot, but he usually managed to keep it to the evening hours for Ben's sake. Lisa figured that with Ben gone that self-imposed rule was gone too.

"What are you doing out here?"

Dean didn't answer.

"Can I join you?"

Dean hesitated briefly, before nodding his head once.

Lisa climbed into the passenger side, the metallic creak of the door loud in the small garage. She had only ever admired the Impala from afar, knowing that it was Dean's domain. But now it seemed he was losing himself in it.

She sat quietly, taking in the car's interior. The floor mat beneath her feet was worn away in very specific places, as if one person had frequented this seat much more often than anyone else. The leather was creased and cracked by one person's almost continuous use.

Sam.

While Lisa hadn't really known Sam, she still felt his lose as she sat in what had been his place. She grabbed the whiskey bottle from Dean's loose grip, taking a hefty swing.

Dean looked at her, slightly bewildered. "What?" Lisa said, "I can't day drink too?"

"Just surprised is all."

"Oh, come on. Just because I have kid now doesn't mean I don't know how to drink."

Dean pursed his lips and raised his eye brows in agreement, but said nothing.

She ran her fingers along the door paneling, feeling the well cared for leather. A silence fell between them, and Lisa quickly realized Dean wasn't going to be the one to break it.

"You guys did a lot of driving in this car, huh?"

Dean scoffed. "That's an understatement. I'm pretty sure I've spent more of my life in this car than out of it."

"Even when you were a kid?"

Dean looked at Lisa as she took another pull from the bottle, her deep brown eyes never leaving his face. Seems like she wasn't going to let him sit here alone then. He inwardly cursed and thanked her for it.

Dean sighed heavily.

"Well, not so much then. Dad tried to let us stay in one place as often as he could so we could go to school. He would get some kind of crappy job, rent some crappy old apartment or house, and we'd stay somewhere for a while. It was nice… until Dad found another hunt."

Dean took the whiskey bottle from Lisa and took another swig. He chuckled to himself.

"I remember this one time, we were living in this little podunk town in California. Dad had rented this little house, so we actually had a yard for once. Think I was about 10. Sammy couldn'tve been older than 6 or 7. Dad was at work so it was me and Sammy. He did something stupid to piss me off – can't even remember what it was – so I locked him out of the house. He cried and pounded the door for like an hour and I still wouldn't let him in. When I opened the door for dinner he was sitting on the stoop with a bunch of weeds in his hand. Said that's what people on TV do when they do something wrong – they give flowers." Dean smiled sadly, the usual sparkle missing from his eyes.

"Couldn't be mad at him after that." Dean muttered against the bottle as he took another pull.

"That's sweet." Lisa said quietly.

"Yeah, well, that was Sam." Dean said quietly. He looked up from where he was boring a hole into the steering wheel with his eyes to see Lisa looking at with those deep brown eyes he loved.

"You took care of him a lot, huh?"

"Yeah… I mean, I practically raised the kid. Didn't mean to. Just kind of happened. Dad would be gone on a hunt or at work and I was in charge of Sammy," Dean adopted a deep gruff voice in what Lisa supposed was an imitation of his father, "Watch out for Sammy. Make sure Sammy eats. Don't leave him alone. Make sure Sammy's safe. Lock the doors. Do your homework. God." Dean said the last word with a voice of disgust.

"Sounds like he forget he was the Dad."

"He just… he wanted revenge. For the way my mom died. For what it did to our family," Dean scoffed, "We weren't much of a family after that. Dad took care of us the best way he knew how: orders. I was his little soldier," Dean said bitterly.

"Sam too?"

"No," Dean said, "No, I made sure Sammy got to be a kid for as long as possible."

Dean looked around the car, grasping the steering wheel tightly with both hands.

"This car was our house, Lisa. I taught Sammy how to read in the backseat. I've bled in this car, with Sammy scared shitless trying to make the bleeding stop. He shouldn't have to have done that. There are still legos stuck in the vents when we'd been trapped in the car for too long and bored out of our minds. We never had a home, really. Sam was my home. This car was my home."

"Why are you telling me this?" Lisa asked.

Dean shrugged. He supposed his sudden story telling mood was a result of the whiskey bottle sitting next to him.

"Any more questions then?" Dean said, turning slightly to face Lisa.

Lisa paused, considering the many questions bouncing around her mind. "Why Ohio?"

"Ohio?" Dean asked, puzzled.

"The license plates. They're from Ohio."

"Oh." Dean sighed heavily, "I let Sam pick a state. He said Ohio was the most "inconspicuous" state we could get. Whatever the hell that means."

"What? Were you running from something?"

"Kind of. They were Kansas for a long time. That's where Mom and Dad were from. But we got in trouble with the law a couple years ago so we changed 'em. I still have the Kansas ones though."

A comfortable silence fell between them, interrupted only by the occasional slosh of whiskey as Dean or Lisa took a swig. It had been long time since Lisa had drank this much, and she felt it sitting warm and heavy inside her. There was a reason they called alcohol liquid courage. This was the most she had ever heard about Dean's childhood. Wanting to hear more, and desperate to keep Dean from retreating back into himself, she asked, "Did you hunt too? When you were a kid?"

"Yeah."

Lisa raised her eyebrows, and looked at him imploringly. "And?"

"Jesus, are you trying to get me to tell my life story or something?"

Lisa smirked. "Eventually." Her eyes sparkled mischievously.

Dean laughed lightly. He admired her boldness. "I was 8 when Dad took me shooting for the first time. Just bottles and stuff. But I was damn good at it."

"I'll bet," Lisa said with a grin.

"He took me out on my first hunt when I was 10. Just a salt and burn."

"Salt and burn?"

"Ghost hunt. When ghosts get vengeful you have to salt and burn their bones."

Lisa cringed. Sometimes it seemed like the man next to her was a complete stranger.

"Sometimes, Dean Winchester, you are a mystery to me."

Dean scoffed. "Why?"

"Because you raised a kid to be a kind hearted and brave man, but you also desecrate graves and exorcise demons. You are an enigma."

Dean pursed his lips. "I'm going to go with that's a good thing."

"It's a very good thing." Lisa said as she leaned over and kissed him. She felt Dean smile under her lips.

"C'mon. I thought we could order a pizza and watch Die Hard." Lisa said, climbing out of the car a little unsteadily. It really had been a while since she had drunk like this.

"Just give me a minute."

Lisa smiled sadly, but left Dean to himself in the garage. She walked back to the kitchen and started putting away the groceries, whiskey making her have to consider twice where certain things went.

The more Lisa heard about Dean and the way he had grown up, the more she understood the intense pain and grief at the lose of his brother. Sam was Dean's life, his home. The only thing Lisa could hope for is that Dean would see the home she was offering to him here. In the end, though, he would have to accept the offer himself.

Lisa heard the back door open, signaling Dean's arrival. She walked into the living to see him staring down at the pile of books he had slowly been collecting over the past month. Research, he would say when Lisa asked about it.

Lisa walked over to him, pulling him into a hug.

Lisa pulled back and looked up into Dean's face, "You ready for pizza?"

"With you? Any time sweetheart."

A/N: Sorry if formatting is weird... Word was acting funny and I couldn't figure out how to fix all the weird line breaks.

As always, let me know your thoughts! I don't think I ended this very well, but I just wanted to be done with it.

I'm about halfway through another chapter, so that will hopefully be up soon.