Life settled down, and Dean started to feel like maybe he and Sam were safe. Well, as safe as they could be when a demon who didn't follow the rules was still out to get them. And they didn't know what she looked like anymore, or what name she was going by. And since demons could pretty much possess anyone, she could take the form of anyone they knew. And she might be mad that Dean forced her out of a body she'd possessed for like twenty years.

So, you know, Dean didn't really feel like he and Sam were safe. But they had to relax their guard sometime, and Sam couldn't spend his entire teenage years under lockdown or in training. If Dean and Bobby treated Sam like that they'd hardly be better parents to Sam than John had been.

Not that Dean and Bobby were trying to win any awards for being awesome co-parents or anything. They were mostly trying to get by and not screw up too much. But even they knew Sam had to be allowed to be a kid sometime.

Or at least, Bobby did, and he made Dean ease-up on the poor kid.

Bobby had even allowed Dean and Benny to go down to the little town north of Corpus Christi, Beeville, where town officials had apparently impounded Benny's camper since it had been left at the gas station on the outskirts of town for so long.

The trip was actually fun. Dean was starting to get a feel for life on the road, and he was starting to love it. He knew hunters usually spent a lot of time on the road, and kind of liked the idea of spending a lot of his life that way. Of course, it was more fun on the trip down, when Benny was there to talk to, but he actually kind of liked driving alone, too.

What he needed to do, though, was get some good cassette tapes. They were on the way out, for sure, you couldn't really buy new tapes, but you could still get some pretty awesome ones at used stores since everyone was unloading them in favor of CDs, or even the new and free MP3 files that everyone was suddenly sharing on the internet illegally. Dean supposed he could get an MP3 player for the impala, but they were still really expensive, and no matter what Sam said about the technology being around forever, unlike cassettes and CDs, he couldn't help but think an MP3 player would douche-up his baby.

When Dean drove into the scrapyard, he was impressed to see Sam's little friend Jade was over again. Either the pretty, dark-haired girl was dumber than a sack of hammers and really needed to be tutored three times a week, or she was hot for Sam. Dean suspected the latter.

"Good for Sammy," Dean muttered. He waved over to where the two teens were sitting under a big oak tree and went inside.

"What's Sam tutoring her in, today? Sex ed?" Dean asked Bobby, who was reading something at his big desk.

"Don't even joke about that," Bobby muttered. "I worry enough about you knocking someone up without having to think about Sam being sexually active, too."

"You gotta go for the really ambitious high school girls. You want one who's headed for college. You do not want to sleep with a girl whose ambition is to get married and have kids, because she might just decide you're her best option," Dean said.

Bobby gave him a hard look, "Well, I'd tell you that I would keep that in mind, but I think my days of sleeping with high school girls are over. Anyway, how was your trip? You get everything sorted out, now?"

"Yep. I no longer have to chauffer Benny around town," Dean said.

"I hope that means you won't be spending any more time with him," Bobby said. "It ain't right, a hunter palling around with a vampire."

"Bobby, I know it sticks in your craw and all, but he's my friend. I don't have enough friends these days to start tossing them aside right left and center. It seems like hunting is pretty rough on friendships. I mean, he saved my life. And it's not like he's just waiting around to corrupt me and turn me into a vampire. None of us knew the vampire cure even existed, and he gave it to me. If he wanted me to join his nest or whatever, he could have just kept his mouth shut about the cure."

"Dean, you're pretty much an adult, and you don't have to do what I say, but I don't see this friendship ending well. I don't just mean for you. Benny seems like a…good sort, for a vampire. What'll other vampires say when it gets around he's friends with a hunter?"

"Benny can take care of himself. I mean, he was alive during the civil war. I ain't gonna tell him who he should and shouldn't hang out with," Dean said.

"Fine. Well, how's the impala running after all those long trips you've taken her on?"

Dean was grateful for the change in topic and gave a detailed answer.

The next day at school, he was surprised to see Sammy's little friend Jade with a group of high school boys he wouldn't have thought she would be talking to. They were waste-of-space stoners and criminals, and although Dean knew most of them by name, he didn't think they were the kind of boys a grade 8 girl should be talking to.

He went up and put a hand on her arm. "Hey, can I talk to you for a minute?" he asked.

She gave him a snotty glare. "I don't think so," she said, hooking her arm around one of the boys.

He shrugged. "Okay, whatever," he said, walking away.

When he saw Sammy that night, thankfully alone and boiling water for pasta, he nudged his brother obnoxiously. "Hey, bro. What's up with you and Jade?"

"She's just someone I tutor," Sam said. The words would have been reassuring, but the blush that was blooming in Sam's cheeks told a different story.

"You know she hangs out with high school boys? And not a good crowd, either," Dean said.

Sam shrugged, stirring the pasta in the pot. "Maybe one of them is her brother or cousin or something. Anyway, she's not my girlfriend."

"But have you kissed her?" Dean asked.

Sammy didn't answer, and Dean gently kicked his foot. "Whatever happened to that nice girl you used to hang out with? What was her name...Jessica? Why don't you go out with her?"

Sam rolled her eyes. "She is so out of my league, Dean. Anyway, Jade isn't my girlfriend. We just hang out and I help her with her homework."

"You ever smoked pot with her?" Dean asked.

Sam didn't answer right away, and immediately Dean realized that Sam had smoked pot with her and was trying to decide whether he should lie about it or not. Finally Sam shrugged his shoulders. "You gonna tell me you never tried it, Dean?"

"Where did you do this?" Dean asked. "Was it here? Her house?"

"At school," Sam mumbled.

"You smoked weed at school?" Dean asked. "In grade 8? Are you kidding me? They could kick you out or call the cops on you. Sam, do you know how that would look? You think social services wouldn't get a call about that?"

Sam looked at the floor, sullen. "I guess I never thought about that," he said.

"That's fine. Don't think about that if you don't want to. Just don't be surprised if you end up in a foster home," Dean said.

"It was just a little weed, Dean," Sam said.

"Yeah, and I don't give a shit if you smoke it until your brain fries, Sam. Maybe then I wouldn't feel like an idiot talking to you half the time. But I do mind if you do it at school where you could get caught and get in trouble. I don't want social services to split us up. But I guess I was crazy to think you'd want to stay with me and Bobby. If you want some apple pie normal life, you can go to social services and ask for a placement right now," Dean said.

"Of course I don't want that!" Sam said.

"Then goddamned act like it!" Dean shouted.

Sam and Dean stared at each other, both breathing hard and angry. Sam didn't say anything and Dean raised his hand to signify that he was done arguing. Finally he sighed and said, "Just promise me you won't hang around that girl anymore, Sam," he said.

"Oh, you get to be friends with a hundred-year-old vampire, but a thirteen-year-old girl is too bad an influence for me?" Sam asked.

"There's a difference. Benny's only ever looked out for me. This girl could have gotten you in trouble," Dean said.

"But she didn't," Sam said.

Dean should his head. "You can't see that this girl is trouble, but I can. Can't you trust me on this, Sammy?"

"Can't you trust me to know what I'm doing?" Sam asked.

Dean stared at his brother hard. How do you tell a kid as mature and smart as Sam that he didn't know anything when it came to girls? That he didn't even know anything about being a teenager, and he would do things in the next four or five years that he wouldn't believe later? How could he warn Sam that hormones and friends and great times could turn bad or even deadly in the blink of an eye? Dean was lucky he'd lived through his teenaged years, and he wished he could make Sam understand that, even though four years didn't seem very long, when it was the four years between thirteen and seventeen, they meant a lot of growing up.

But he was wise enough to know that Sam wouldn't believe it, so he just sighed and said, "Well, promise me that you'll always ask yourself what would happen to our family if you got caught. Remember that you only get to live here with us because they think the arrangement is working and you're a good kid getting good grades. They don't want to screw that up by taking you away from us. If you get arrested or in serious trouble, they'll change their minds about me and Bobby being your guardians."

"I'll be careful, Dean. I won't do anything to mess this up. I promise," Sam said.

Dean stared at Sam's back as his brother stirred the pasta. He knew what being a teenager meant, and he knew Sam would screw up more than he ever imagined possible. Even the best kids made mistakes.

Dean walked into Bobby's study. He hadn't realized Bobby was sitting right there, listening to the whole argument. He smiled ruefully at the older man, fully aware of the irony of him trying to tell Sam who to be friends with. Well, if Sam discounted Dean's advice about Jade, then he supposed he could disregard Bobby's advice about Benny. He wondered, though, if everyone's warnings were right.

Was there just too much separating a hunter and a vampire for them to remain friends in the long run?

Time would tell.

Meanwhile, Dean hoped that he was wrong about Jade. Maybe she wasn't as bad as she had seemed, and her attitude had been because she had low self-esteem or something. And just because she'd done pot during school and encouraged Sam to do the same didn't make her evil. She was like thirteen years old. Her judgment wasn't impaired; she didn't have any judgment yet.

Dean hoped the talk they'd had had at least gotten Sam to think about things before he did them, and decide whether or not they were things that would look bad to a judge deciding custody.

There wasn't much more he could do. He couldn't follow Sam around and make sure he did the right thing. He would just have to trust him.

Bobby came up beside Dean. "How does the argument feel from this side?" he asked.

"So much worse," Dean said.

"You've taught him to take care of himself. And he's got good instincts," Bobby said.

"He's got no instincts whatsoever," Dean said. "I have good instincts."

"Yeah, well, everyone goes through a bad-girl stage," Bobby said. "Most of them don't go through it while still making the family dinner."

"Foods on!" Sam called.

Dean shook his head. "He's a good kid," he said.

"If his heart gets broken, we'll help him pick up the pieces. And if he goes to a foster home, we'll get him back. Don't worry so much, Dean. You can't take care of everyone all the time," Bobby said. He walked into the kitchen and sat down at the table.

"If I don't take care of them, who will?" Dean muttered to himself before following.