Chapter Twenty-Nine
Job done, the Winchesters were making plans to head back to South Dakota the next day – the timing on the spell meant that they could look forward to it expiring the day after that. Sam made a point of reminding Dean of that when they were unexpectedly forced to spend an extra day in Chicago.
"Only one more day to go as a woman, Dean," he said as cheerfully as he could manage, returning from his latest supply run.
Dean lay on his bed, wearing a pair of track pants and Sam's hoodie, curled into the foetal position, and moaned. "I'll be dead by then," he droned unhappily, "Oh, God, why can't I just die now?"
The dogs were curled into Deans' body front and back, and RJ sat on the bed next to him, occasionally reaching out to pat his feminized father comfortingly. "Ow," he said sympathetically, offering Stanley the well-sucked knit toy honey badger by way of consolation.
Dean produced a wobbly smile for his son. "Thanks, little dude," he quavered, "But I need something a lot stronger than kid spit for this." He took a flask of JD from under the pillow. "Did you get me more booze?"
"You don't need booze, Dean," Sam tried not to roll his eyes.
"I do need booze, Sam," his big brother protested in a breaking voice, "I need booze! I need chocolate! I need heavy duty opiates, I need drugs! I need to spend a week in a coma until this is done…"
Sam bit down on his temper as he filled the kettle in the kitchenette, and set it to boil. "I got you something specific for your, uh, trouble," he handed over a blister pack. "So, take two of those now, and…"
With a pitiful moan, Dean popped six out of the packaging and washed them down with JD. He lay back with a groan. "How long will it take for those to kill me?"
"They're not supposed to kill you, Dean," Sam tried but failed miserably to keep the Bitchface #8™ (You Are Now Officially Talking Complete Shit, Dean) off his face. "It's an analgesic with anti-inflammatory properties, including downregulation of prostaglandins, which contribute to the cramping. Besides which, given the hammering your liver has been taking since you were sixteen, if it hasn't given up and keeled over by now, then hey, a little thing like acetaminophen overdose won't worry it."
"It has to kill me," Dean moaned miserably, "The only way for something that feels this bad to end is in death, pain and despair and death." He sniffled. "You'll look after RJ for me, won't you?" he said in a hitching voice, "And RJ, you'll look after Uncle Sammy when I'm gone? Tell Bobby I said he's been awesome, and he can have my Desert Eagle and my jacket and my Busty Asian Beauties, and you'd better look after my car until RJ's old enough to drive her or I'll come back and haunt you…"
"Look, I think you might be over-reacting to this," Sam said as patiently as he could, "It's a perfectly normal aspect of healthy adult female physiology."
Dean glared at his brother. "Don't you DARE try to tell me this is NORMAL!" he hissed angrily, sounding like he was on the verge of tears, "It feels like I'm re-enactin' the chest-burster scene from the first 'Alien' movie, only this is worse!" He glowered resentfully. "If you're boilin' the kettle to try to make me some sissy tea from grass clippings and hippies' toenails, I warn you, you'll fuckin' wear it…"
"Now who's PMSing?" demanded Sam, with a wince of his own.
"I'm not PMSing!" snapped Dean, "I'm actually MSing, okay?"
"The kettle is for the hot water bottles," Sam said through clenched teeth. "And don't knock the tea, I got some…"
"Fuck that shit," Dean growled, "Unless it's laced with pot, I don't want to consume vegetable matter in any way shape or form! Give me saturated fat, refined carbs and empty calories!"
Muttering a brief prayer to whatever saint it was who offered assistance to those beset by drama queens, Sam filled the hot water bottles, wrapped them in towels, and went back to the bed.
"Here, put this one in front, and this one on your back…"
"I feel really terrible, Sam," Dean moaned.
"Yeah, it's not much fun," agreed Sam, lowering himself to the floor. "I got a new appreciation for what women have to put up with."
Dean glared at him as he pushed up onto all fours. What the fuck are you doing?"
"Marjaryasana," replied Sam, letting out a little sigh of relief as he flexed his spine outwards. "The cat pose."
"Cat pose?" Dean yelped. "What the hell is that?"
"It's a yoga posture," Sam replied, exhaling and sliding into bhujangasana, the cobra pose. "It can be very helpful for this sort of discomfort."
"Discomfort?" Dean echoed incredulously. "Did you just use the word 'discomfort' to describe what's happening to me?"
"Hey, it's happening to me, too!" Sam shot back.
"This is not discomfort, Sam!" Dean shrilled, "This is like having your guts ripped out through your ass!"
"Well, get down here with me and try this," Sam suggested, stretching up and back into the camel pose.
"Where the fuck did you pick up this hippy drippy New Age crap?" demanded Dean.
"From Jess," Sam replied, "I used to do these with her – they were good for my back too, if I'd been spending lots of time sitting down reading or typing."
"Huh," grunted Dean, "Why does that not surprise me, you're such a girl." He pouted. "I'm probably suffering more than you, because I'm a more womanly woman than you."
"Or, maybe because you're just more insufferable than I am," countered Sam.
"This is all your fault!" Dean snapped.
Sam knelt up again. "What?" he demanded. "Dean, how the fuck is this my fault?"
"I warned you," Dean scowled, clutching his hot water bottle and wincing, "I warned you, if we womanised ourselves and this happened there would be pain, and horror, and it would be worse than death…"
"It's just unfortunate timing!" Sam spat in exasperation, "We've been women for a week, and it just kind of happened!"
"It would never have happened if you weren't such an emo little bitch to start with!" accused Dean.
"What?"
"You heard me!" Dean shrilled, "You've been PMSing since we started this job! You've been PMSing so hard, your hormones and shit have dragged me into synchronising with you!"
"Huh?"
"You forced your cycle onto me, Sam!"
"Dean that's ridiculous!"
"Your rampant emo hormones grabbed hold of mine, and dragged me alone for the ride!" sobbed Dean, "You did this to me!" With a wail, he grabbed hold of Stanley, buried his face in the toy, and cried.
Dean complained and whined and railed for another twenty minutes or so until the Midol formulation kicked in – they might not have had any opiates in them, but there was an antihistamine and Dean had taken six.
RJ patted his gently snoring father's hair. "Meh," he pronounced, managing to put into that one syllable all the incomprehension that Man can feel when confronted with the more disruptive aspects of That Particular Feminine Mystery.
"I got nothin', dude," shrugged Sam to his nephew, "I guess that the rest of fem!Dean is so, well, overtly female, this part was bound to be, uh, intense, too." He glanced at the clock. "It won't be long now," he said, picking up RJ to start readying the child for bed, "We'll be back to ourselves again tomorrow. And your Dad will be less hormonal." He gave his brother a fond glance. "Well, he'll be just as annoying, but less hormonal, so I'll take that as a win."
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Sam knew it as soon as he woke the next morning: he'd gone to bed swimming in one of his own tees and a pair of sweat pants, and now they fit and he was too long for the bed. He was himself again.
"Hey, Sammy," he heard his brother say, rolling over to see Dean's grinning face. "Welcome back to manhood."
"Yeah," Sam smiled back, "Femaleness is a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there. Not so long as there are bras."
"Well, we can salt and burn 'em when we get back to Bobby's," Dean said cheerfully, swinging his legs out of his bed and grabbing up some clothes. "I call first on the shower."
"Knock yourself out," grunted Sam, yawning and taking his time to get up, enjoying the feeling of stretching his own proper body. He glanced down at the floor, where the dogs were once more their own male, Rottweiler-shaped selves. "Welcome back, guys," he murmured, as they thumped their tails on the floor at him. "Hey, watch RJ for me," he instructed as the boy began to stir, "He'll be wanting changing and feeding, and if we can get a head start on breakfast, we can minimise the amount of outraged screaming…"
As if in response to the suggestion of outraged screaming, it started in the bathroom.
Sam had his gun in his hand and had burst through the door before his brother had time to draw breath to scream again. "Dean!" he yelped, looking around for the threat. "What?"
There was nothing in there except Dean, wearing a towel around his waist, and he turned a white-faced look of horror to his brother. "It's… it's… "
"Uh, yeah?" Sam looked around the bathroom, seeing nothing particularly threatening if you didn't count the unwashed shirt that Dean had taken with him. "What's the problem, bro?"
Dean's expression went from horror back to outrage. "What's the problem?" he repeated, "What's the problem? I'll tell you what the problem is, Sam." He thrust a foot at Sam. "That right there is the problem!"
Sam dutifully inspected the offending appendage. "It's your foot," he announced.
"It's my leg, Sam!" Dean snapped, waggling the limb, "My leg!"
"Yeah, your foot is attached to your leg," agreed Sam, "It's still there." He inspected it again. "It doesn't seem to be, uh, injured."
"It's not injured Sam," Dean railed, "If it was injured, I could bandage it, or stitch it up!" He looked expectantly at his little brother.
"Okaaaay, so, not injured," mused Sam, "Uh, you're gonna have to help me out here, bro. What exactly is wrong?"
Disbelief suffusing his features, Dean smacked Sam in the arm. "I'll tell you what's wrong, since you're blind as a bat! It's bare, that's what's wrong!"
"What? It's…" Sam peered at the shin being thrust at him once more. "Oh. Oh."
His brother was right. There was not a single hair to be seen. The skin was completely smooth, the follicles empty, the hair having been plucked from each of them less than a week earlier.
"Oh," he straightened up with a mixture of relief and annoyance, "It's just your leg hair. You had your legs waxed."
"I had my female legs waxed," Dean corrected, "Because women gettin' waxed is cool. But men, not so much. And now I'm male me again – so, where's the hair?"
With a sigh, Sam decided that there was no point in taking Dean to task over his appalling stereotyping and crude assumptions about a person based on whether they chose to defoliate or not, regardless of gender. "Well, male or, uh, womanised, they were your legs," he said, "But don't worry, leg hair grows back."
Dean's face was haunted. "It's not just my legs, Sam," he muttered, raising an arm to reveal a perfectly epilated armpit. "It's all gone!"
"Oh." Sam blinked. "Well, that'll grow back too, bro, you really don't have anything to worry about…"
"Sam, you aint listenin'," Dean's voice held an edge of hysteria, "I said, it's all gone!"
"Yeah, you said, I heard you," Sam rolled his eyes, "And I don't think you need to…" he stopped, and looked into his brother's harrowed face. Then followed his gaze as Dean's eyes travelled south…
Sam felt his own eyes bug. "You mean…" he swallowed. "You had, I mean, when you were Dee, you had it… seriously?"
"It's, it's…" words failed Dean. "It's not… right!"
"You seem to think it's a good look on women," Sam pointed out.
"On women, yeah," nodded Dean, "But not on men! It looks, it looks…." He turned a despairing face to his brother.
"What? Bare?" provided Sam earnestly. "Exposed? Naked? All out there?"
"What am I gonna do, Sam?"
"Oh for fuck's sake Dean, just wait!" snapped Sam. "It's hair! Like all hair, it will grow back!"
"But when?" wailed Dean, "When will it grow back?"
"I don't know!" yapped Sam in annoyance. "A few weeks, I guess, how should I know? I've never waxed my legs, or my pits or, uh, you know, there…"
Dean sank onto the small bathroom stool with a groan of despair. "This is a disaster," he moaned, "A total, total disaster."
"Don't be such a princess," Sam snapped, "It's not permanent."
"Weeks?" Dean sounded horrified. "I gotta wait weeks?"
"Wait for what?" asked Sam.
"For sex, that's what!" Dean was a picture of misery. "The Living Sex God can NOT go out lookin' to hook up for beautiful natural acts in this state of, of, of clear felling!"
"Why not?" Sam wanted to know.
"Because, what sort of a man would, you know, go, uh, you know…"
"Brazilian beach versus Amazonian rainforest?" Sam supplied helpfully.
"Yeah! No! You know what I mean!" growled Dean.
"Well, some of 'em must," Sam shrugged, "I mean, there's a market for male waxing, right? And if there weren't men who wanted it, salons wouldn't offer it, right? So, you just find a girl who likes the whole, uh, groomed look. Some of them obviously like it," he added.
"They do?" Dean sounded doubtful.
"It's not necessarily weird," Sam said reassuringly. "They'll just think, hey, he's a metrosexual, he's a guy who takes care of himself."
"Oh." A small smile crossed Dean's face. "You think?"
"Sure, bro," Sam gave his brother a reassuring smile. "It'll be fine. No drama."
Dean let out a long breath. "Okay," he said, sounding relieved. "Well, maybe it aint so bad after all."
"Course not," Sam agreed, heading out of the bathroom. Then, just as he reached the door, he turned. "Either that, or they'll just assume that you work as a drag queen or a porn actor."
"Bitch!"
Oh dear, I'm not sure what would be worse for Sam, listening to Dean complain about regrowth for the next four weeks, or Dean deciding he likes the look and sticking with it, forever trying to convince his little brother to try it just once...
Alfie-Con is thundering towards the finish line - go, little plot bunny! Shake your review pom-poms to get him there! (Short skirts and leg waxing completely optional.)