Chapter 6: Cohabitation

After that first night in the motel the group gradually felt into a rhythm. To begin with, after the first motel the room arrangements were adjusted. With the four of them it was a necessity for there to be at least three different places to sleep, sometimes this meant getting a room that had a fold-out mattress, that way the twins had their own beds and the brothers coped with sharing. But when possible they'd get two rooms side by side and open the access door in the middle, allowing them to pass from each room to the other. Dipper and Mabel would sleep in separate rooms, with one of the brothers present in either room to make sure that they were safe in case anything happened.

It was a further adjustment for the brothers having a female around. Not that either brother was unfamiliar with living with women, Sam had lived with Jess and Dean had been with Lisa, but neither had ever had to travel between hunts with one. That, on top of the fact that Mabel was young enough to be their daughter, it all made the situation more delicate. The two wanted to make sure that they gave her the privacy and respect she needed, and as a result Mabel almost always got her own time in the bathroom before the others when they were staying somewhere, to make sure that there weren't any issues.

***GF-SPN***

It was around February when Dean had checked the cyber-school classes and saw that there wasn't any health or PE listed on the twins' curricula (as it wasn't required by the state they'd registered it in). And given their ages, and the way their childhoods seem like something off of Disney Channel, I don't think they ever got any sort of 'talk'. Which means I have to give the talk. Again. Fan-fucking-tastic. Dean grimaced at the memory of having to talk with Sam about his body, his father too busy on some hunt trying to track down a werewolf in the remote Canadian wilderness as the two brothers were left in a run-down cabin.

Dean muttered, "Fuck it, this time Sammy's doing some of it."

It was eventually decided that Sam would talk with Mabel-as he was generally more successful in explaining uncomfortable things in ways that weren't so horrible, while Dean would talk with Dipper. He seemed a bit closer to the boy, which would hopefully make it less traumatizing when they discussed everything. When the day arrived Dean had opted to take Dipper out to get some supplies, while Mabel and Sam remained at the hotel.

Shortly after Dean and Dipper left Sam closed his computer and nervously rapped his fingers along the tabletop. Okay, this is gonna suck. Just do it, like a Band-Aid, just rip it off and talk. "Hey, Mabel?"

She looked up from her knitting, she was working on something with a lot of green and brown yarn. "Yeah, Sam?"

Sam exhaled slowly, "Look, Dean and I agreed that we should give you guys 'the talk'. We saw you didn't have health class at school and wanted to make sure that there weren't any…" Sam nervously waved his hands, "…questions about, you know."

"No! Not again!" Mabel shouted, dropping her knitting needles as a sudden feeling of terror and nausea grew in the pit of her stomach.

"You already heard about it?"

Mabel shook her head vehemently, "Grunkle Stan told me about it when I was in Dipper's body for a few hours. He read this awful book, and I NEVER want to even think about that stupid pituitary thing ever again!"

"Oh thank God." Sam breathed. Visibly relaxing, "And you don't have any questions, you're all good."

"Absolutely."

"Good." Sam sighed, glad that he'd managed to get out of an extremely awkward conversation.

Dipper, however, had never really had 'the talk'. So when Dean pulled the car over into the side of the road after they'd gone to the Walmart in the next town over, he wasn't sure what exactly was stressing out so much the man who'd been driving. Dean's knuckles were white as he clutched the steering wheel. His breathing was irregular for a moment before he closed his eyes to steady himself. Okay, I can do this…

"Dipper, have you ever had 'the talk' with someone? Maybe your dad or great uncle, or someone like that?" Please, let him already have heard this shit so I don't have to do this again…

Dipper frowned, "No, not really…" And I really hope I'm not about to, because I really don't want to.

Dean sighed, Well, fuck. "Okay, in that case we're going to have a brief conversation. I promise you, this is just as terrible for me to tell you as it will be for you to hear." Dean grimaced slightly, "But that being said, I don't want you catching something or, like, in serious trouble because you don't know this shit." He looked at the teen practically squirming out of his skin in the backseat. "It all starts with this hormone…"

***GF-SPN***

Seeing the country for the first time is a truly amazing experience. America is a massive place, with a plethora of different environments and scenery. As the brothers traveled eastward across the continent the deserts gave way to mountains and scrubland, where tiny mountain towns dotted the edges of the highways. From there they moved into the plains, endless fields of corn and wheat and soy. It was so far that in some places it was all they could see along the horizon, aside from the occasional barn or silo. In the south the heat signaled the start of the swampy, murky haze. A trip on a fan-boat took them to a witchdoctor's hut that the brothers consulted with to fight a voodooer's zombie hoard. Along the gulf coast the sights changed, with Georgia and Florida whizzing past as the trip up toward the Northeast began. The land got rockier and the trees grew, more old homes and towns passed by. But here lay some of the oldest and most desolate places: forests hiding abandoned mines and mills, left to rot for good reason. It was here that the brothers made sure that the twins were safe at the motel when real dangers hid in the mountains and forests.

While the scenery changed there were many constants for the Pines. There was still school, even if it was online. There weren't any live classes, just assignments, which worked well for the two given the odd hours they kept on occasion when helping the brothers. Dipper had always been a natural academic, and Mabel generally kept good grades as well. Even with this, they did occasionally need help. Whether it was with a particularly difficult paper, or something that just didn't make sense in math, Dean and Sam were there to help as best as they could. Sam's experience at college had helped refine his writing and reading skills, so he generally helped with English. And while Dean wouldn't admit it, he did have a penchant for history, especially American history, which worked to the twins' advantage when they had research projects in their social studies class.

"…which is why the south decided to secede. Given that Lincoln didn't get a single vote there in the Electoral College, they wanted no part of a Northern Republican, even if he wouldn't've been anti-slavery, he was counter to their way of life, in their minds." Dean concluded, drinking a beer as Dipper scrawled notes down.

"Wait, he didn't even win one electoral vote?" Mabel asked, glancing up from her neon kitten binder.

"No, he did in the north, he won a bunch there, but in the south he didn't win any. Because there were four guys running he beat out the southerners and the other guy from the north for total votes, which made him president. That's how the Electoral College works." Dean clarified.

In addition to their publicly sanctioned education, there was the training that the brothers had the twins in. While neither brother wanted to train the two as hunters, as they knew the risks of having anyone near and wanted the twins to have as normal lives as they could, they did feel it was necessary for the two to learn about monsters. It was essential to the brothers to make sure that the twins understood in depth the different types of creatures, their properties, etc. Enough to keep them safe in case they ever are forced to deal with one of them.

Throughout the process Dipper was amazed. I never knew that there was an entire secret society of people hunting monsters! He was filling tons of notebooks with as much data as he could compile. Between Ford's journals, John's journal (which Sam had shown him and allowed him to copy from on occasion), and the books he'd borrowed from some of the other hunters they'd met, Dipper had begun to amass an encyclopedia on the supernatural. Mabel, too, had her fair share of notes. She kept a trapper keeper covered with stickers and glitter, along with all sorts of horrific descriptions and illustrations of the monsters and their abilities.

"I swear if I didn't know her, I'd think it was out of some horror movie." Sam had commented, noting the vast dissonance between the cutesy handwriting and notes and the gruesome descriptions.

Beyond the book knowledge there was also physical training. Having the knowledge to defeat something and being actually able to do so are two vastly different things. And while Dipper knew a good bit of what Sam and Dean were teaching, he was woefully unprepared to keep himself safe in the event that they actually had to face a more dangerous threat.

"Honestly, you kids are crazy lucky you survived that summer, given all the shit you said you survived." Dean commented as he led the group jog around the most recent small town they were in. His breath fogged in front of him in the cool spring air as his hoodie flopped up and down with the even jogging pace.

"Yeah, looking back on it, there was a bunch of times we should've been mauled at least." Dipper conceded, trying to keep pace with the group and silently cursing his noodly legs.

"Yeah, those zombies definitely should've eaten us." Mabel noted, adjusting her headband, some saccharine pop music coming from her earbuds as she ran right behind Dean.

"In any case, we want to make sure you two are ready in case something else happens." Sam said, jumping over an uneven sidewalk paver and glancing back to make sure he kept a slightly slower pace to keep Dipper as part of the group.

"Yeah," Dipper panted slightly, "If it ever happens again that I'm being chased or forced to fight something I guess I need to be in shape." He paused, stretching a tender side in a moment breather, "Even if exercising sucks."

After the run the quartet returned to the motel for the rest of morning training. Today was Tuesday, which meant it was endurance. Mabel enjoyed the exercise. She quickly got into plank position and fiddled with her phone before it began playing a wide variety of boy-band songs as she worked out the remaining hour. Recently she'd been listening to some Japanese group that none of the others really understood, but she found it catchy enough. Dipper didn't mind it, and given his secret shame with ABBA, he didn't want to complain. Sam briefly thought he'd caught Dean mumbling along with some of the lyrics, which he vehemently denied before he threatened to kick Sam's ass.