uploading this early because i don't know if i'll be up to even looking at a computer screen later today. hopefully i'll get better by the time my reserves of pre-written chapters are out. enjoy

I wake up on my side, to the weird sensation of my chest being heavier than I'm used to. I sit up quickly, hoping that it's something on my chest I can dislodge. I spring up way faster than I'm used to, because the rest of my body is lighter. Except my head. My head and chest are heavy, the rest of me is light.

Sam always said Dean liked to prank him. Maybe… maybe he's done something to me. "Dean?" My voice – the one oft described in comparison with gravel – sounds shrill. High-pitched and shrill. "Dean?!"

He usually wakes up when I first say his name. I turn around quickly – too quickly, the light weight is really disorienting – and touch his arm to wake him up. His arm is soft, and I small enough that my hand would wrap around it. What is going on!? I pull my hand quickly, but green eyes blearily blink open. At least, I'm assuming they're green. If his arms have changed…

He leans on his arms – but, no. That's not quite accurate. She leans on her arms, and flicks her hair out of her face. "You haven't called me 'Dean' in years. It's 'Di', I've told you. You're not Sam. Fuck off with the boy nickname."

"Di?"

"Short for Diana. You know this."

"Your name is Diana."

"Has been since I was born. Did you have some fucked up dream again, Cas?"

"My name is still Cas?"

"Yeah, you had a crazy dream again. Short for Cassandra."

"No, that was your high school girlfriend's name."

"Oh, God, did you dream we were in high school again? No wonder you're acting so weird."

"I… I'm male."

She laughs, and it's nice, but it isn't Dean's laugh. "Oh, no you're not. Would you like me to prove it?" Hands stray, and they're too soft. My skin feels more sensitive than ever before.

I close my eyes, tight. I can't handle this.

"Okay, or not. I know I'm the insatiable one, but you don't need to act quite so repulsed." She's still here. What is happening? "You know what? How about we just go back to sleep? That always works. Come here, you know I can't sleep without a nice cuddle." I hear her rustle back into the duvet, and her hand lightly glides down my side – my naked side. Wow, this would be heaven for anyone but me.

Sleep sounds good, though. Maybe if I go to sleep, I'll wake up, and everything will be back to normal.

I open my eyes carefully, and Dean's – Diana's – green eyes are watching me expectantly. I want to cuddle with Dean, not with you. But I lean back into her arms in compliance; it can do me no harm.

Her soft body is no comfort to me, however, and I stay awake to the sound of her soft breathing for an unsuitably long time.

###

I wake up again, and the distribution of weight is still wrong. Instead of being shrill and confused, this time, I'm merely resigned. I sit up. All I can do is go along with it and hope for the best.

Going along with it, so far, is following the smell of bacon to the kitchen. After putting a large shirt on.

I recognise the shirt as belonging to Dean. I don't know how Diana and 'Cassandra' have it, and it's probably unhealthy to gravitate towards it, but I somehow find myself not caring.

Diana is cooking and singing along to the radio. The weird part? It's music that sounds suspiciously like pop. Dean would probably be happy that his female counterpart is 'hot' (at least by his standards, which I well know), but this would disgust him. She's also wearing only a large shirt, one of mine. I blink a couple of times, because this is weird.

"Morning, sleepyhead. Well, I should say afternoon, really." She grins.

"Uh… afternoon." I rub the back of my neck, slightly uncomfortable. In order to avoid looking at her, I look around at the room – surprisingly similar to the way Dean and I have it, but just a little more put-together; a few cushions on the sofa, a couple of pictures on the wall.

"Must have been some weird dream. It's really thrown you off, hasn't it?" Her eyes are sympathetic, and way more… vocal than Dean's ever have been.

I clutch my nose. It's a weird gesture, but it feels natural. "Uh… yeah. It was… really vivid."

Diana winces in sympathy. She knows what the nose-clutching means, even if I don't. Then she shrugs, "well, it's the weekend. We can do whatever you like." She turns around to the frying pan, throwing "but it better start with bacon" over her shoulder.

I smile. That's Dean coming through, all right.

When we eat, Diana chooses the stool next to me, and our legs brush. She allows us to eat without conversation, only humming along to the music and flashing me brief smiles.

I feel waves of affection for her. This won't be so bad, as long as it's only short term.

I mean, she's great. But I simply have no attraction towards females. Cassandra clearly should, however, which could cause some trouble.

When we finish, Diana simply puts the plates by the sink and leans on the counter. I meet her eyes levelly, thinking all the while Dean Dean Dean that's what Dean does.

Her eyes narrow. "Not even a glance at my tits. What the fuck did you dream about?"

The difficult question. "I… I dreamed I was a guy."

"Guys stare."

"A gay guy."

"And that part stuck? Fuck my life."

I shrug apologetically.

"No, sweetie, it's not your fault. We'll… deal with it as it comes, I don't know." She looks worried, and I really don't want her to.

Without any conscious decision, I'm off my stool and in front of her. I'm shorter than her, still, and it somehow bolsters my movement. I hold my hand to the side of her face, and she leans into it gratifyingly. "No. I… I still love you, despite… gender. Gender is practically transient, it seems." She smiles a little, but still she seems worried. "In the dream I was in love with a Dean. He loves bacon and puts the plates by the sink, too. And he has this shirt." I quirk a small smile, and stare into her eyes, Dean's eyes. "He has to have got that from somewhere, right?"

She relaxes for a second, eyes closed, before pulling back. "You… shouldn't be comforting me, I should be comforting you. You were the one with the fucked up dream."

"Yeah, well, maybe I'm the one who can handle it."

"We'll hold each other up." She smiles, and I can tell this is something she's said a lot – to… me. She wraps her arms around my waist, so I wrap mine about her neck.

It's all instinct; she somehow feels like Dean, even as much as she feels entirely alien.

It's like the feeling you get in dreams, how you know instantly who someone is, without ever seeing their face.

"Okay, I said we'd do what you want today, but we both know how crap you are at decisions, so I'm making the executive decision of movie marathon." She pulls back from me and heads toward the sofa. "Movie marathon means snuggling. You love movies, I love snuggling; we both win. Deal?"

"How could I say no?" The left side of my mouth twists into a wry smile.

She rolls her eyes with a grin – a very, very Dean grin. "There's the Cas I know and love."

That sentence makes me feel uncomfortable in ways I'd rather not think about.

I sit cross-legged on the sofa. This light, lithe body is fairly… it's rather like a holiday, actually; I'm pretty flexible for a man, but a thin woman is always going to be more so. I decide to enjoy what I can.

Diana puts in the film – I don't know which – and turns toward the sofa. "No, this isn't going to work. We can't snuggle in that position. I'll end up with a knee in my back."

I frown a little. Maybe I won't.

"Look, I know you think I have some fetishes or whatever," she gestures to the shirt she's wearing, "but that ain't one of them. Budge."

I mechanically straighten out of my legs.

"Okay, this Dean wasn't a snuggler? I can teach you again, no big." She grins at the prospect, actually, and it's pretty terrifying.

I don't like girls, Dean, protect me.

Dean can't hear me. I'm fucked.

She pulls my legs up onto the sofa, so I'm almost in foetal position. It's surprisingly comfortable, so I don't regret the loss of the crossed legs. "Put your left arm around your legs. They'll get weak otherwise." At my look, she expands. "I know guys don't sit like this, and I know you do. Just trust me, all right?" I nod, placing my left arm around my legs. It feels… nice. She then pulls my right arm around her, and she lies down, so her back is against the line of my body.

I relax in one movement, and Diana notices. Her voice sounds smug when she says "bet your Dean didn't do this, huh?"

"Are you… jealous of your male counterpart?" It's not my voice, but it has the same tone of amusement to it mine would have had.

"Maybe a little."

I open my mouth to tell her how stupid that is, but I can't force more than a shaky laugh out. All of a sudden, I miss Dean. He wouldn't admit to any level of jealousy, and maybe he wouldn't snuggle or teach me how to sit, and maybe he wouldn't cook for me or be quite so… cheerful, and stoic, as Diana is, and maybe she's more conventionally desirable or normal, but I really, really want my Dean. The pit of my stomach feels heavy with it.

My eyes feel wet in a way mine shouldn't. I can handle this, I won't cry, I don't need to.

All of a sudden, I wonder what it will be like to never go back. I'll have to learn how to walk in this body, and probably in heels, too. I'll have to love girls, or at least Diana, and do so sexually, because I already know she's too similar to Dean and I can't bear to hurt her, even a little. I'll have to get used to soft skin and over-sensitivity and painted nails and long hair and oh God, I'm going to have to menstruate.

Crap. Am I on my period?

And that's all it takes for tears to fall.

I hate being a girl.

This body knows how to cry silently, in lieu of knowing how not to cry. I don't want to worry Diana, so I make full use of that instinctual knowledge. Unfortunately, I soon realise that silent tears don't stop the huge, wracking breaths that accompany the rivers of salty water.

"Cas? Oh God, Cas, are you okay? We've not even got to the emotional part yet!"

She turns around to look at me, and her eyes are wide but not quite shocked; Dean would be more than shocked, and he wouldn't know what to do. Diana immediately sits up and wraps her arms around me in a gesture that's so inherently comforting that I don't know how it's not an instinctual action for me whenever anyone's upset. The comfort is offset at the fact that she isn't Dean.

She kisses the top of my head and mutters to me, softly, soothingly, despite the vulgarities and harshness of what she says. "This dream so fucked you up, didn't it? I'm so sorry, sweetie, I wish you didn't have to do this… I wish I could just punch something and fix this for you, but it ain't that simple, is it? Look, just… just breathe. We'll get through this. We'll figure it out. Anything it takes. Just… take it minute by minute. If that doesn't work, take it breath by breath. We'll fix this shit."

"It isn't broken." I mutter back, a line that I somehow know won't mean anything to her, but that means a lot to me.

All the same, my tears have stopped, and I find myself clutching onto one of her arms.

"Thank you, Diana."

I can feel her open her mouth, but she doesn't correct me.

###

The rest of the day passes unremarkably, but it's more sombre than I had hoped it would be. Diana and I go to bed early. She doesn't tell me she needs cuddles to sleep, and she doesn't tell me what we're both thinking: I hope you don't dream again.

Of course, it means something different to the both of us; she wants me to get over the 'dream' of Dean. I want to leave this dream of her.

I'm used to the dull ache of Dean, at least enough to handle it, for now, so I wrap my arms around Diana until her breathing evens out sufficiently that I can pull back.

When I lie on my back, her breathing sounds like Dean's, and the weight distribution feels almost normal. I fall asleep quickly.

###

I wake on my side to arms over me, and I automatically think it must be Diana… but they feel heavy, and I don't feel like I have breasts.

"Dean," I breathe, and the arms around me twitch.

"Cas, don't wake me up when I'm dreaming, you know the rules."

The two deep voices make me almost cry in relief. But I don't. I know how not to.

okay, this one was pretty difficult. I am a girl, but I'm not and never have been a boy, and nor have I ever heard of any boy being a girl. So I had to take some creative liberties. I'm sorry to anyone who thinks I portrayed either boy or girl badly; I tried my best...

plus, I wasn't sure how to work this prompt into the very, very human universe i've been writing this in. It's up to you whether you think it's a dream or real, or somewhere in the middle... i didn't make that clear at all. kind of on purpose.

ALSO: yesterday I reread the past chapters, and I realised the first paragraph of the first chapter was missing. I've fixed it now, and it makes more sense, so if you wanna go back and check that out... :)