Here in Victoria, I'm not in danger of being flooded out; on the Eastern seaboard of Oz, Up North is getting stormed and washed away, whilst Down South (that's me) is getting bushfired into charcoal. Go and google the Scared Weird Little Guys, and their inspiring tourism song, 'Come to Australia, You Might Get Killed'... do you lot still want me to write a story where the Brothers Winchester come Down Under? It coull be pretty damned short. I'm just sayin'...

Now, goooooooo Petunia! *shakes parsley pom poms*

Chapter Five

"So, what's our play on this one?" asked Dean just a tad too brightly. They had just crossed the Virginia state border, and the last couple of days had been... difficult.

"Well, St Clare's is not a cloistered order," Sam replied as he tapped at the keys. "They provide a lot of community services, which are pretty busy. I've got us booked into a drug diversion/rehab program, so we have a legitimate reason to be on the grounds at just about any time during business hours."

"Drug rehab?" Dean gave his brother a dubious glance. "Seriously? You want me to pretend I'm a reforming junkie?"

"They're really busy," shrugged Sam, "There weren't many options that could get us access at such short notice."

"There's not going to be, uh," Dean waved a hand vaguely, "You know, persons of a female nature, who are having personal difficulties and might kind of represent, you know..."

"An occasion of sin," supplied Sam. "That means, a person, place or thing which tempts a man to sin."

"Yeah, that," Dean nodded vigorously, "I think it would be best if I could just avoid any occasions of sin. Not that I've been having much luck with that so far," he added gloomily.

Sam had to concede that he was right; the waitress in a diner, the cashier at a check-out, the clerk at a motel desk, even a police officer directing traffic, the universe seemed to conspire to bombard Dean with attractive women who were keen to make conversation with the Living Sex God, maybe flirt a little, maybe leave a number, maybe extend an invitation... with a brittle smile, Dean had stared fixedly at a point between each woman's eyes, and brushed her off as politely as possible, leaving in his wake a number of women who were a little disappointed (and surprised to think that their usually reliable gaydar readings had been so far off).

"I told you going to a bar was a bad idea," Sam reminded him, checking the screen. "There are some female names on the enrolment list," Sam conceded, "It's co-ed. You'll just have to be strong."

"There has to be something else," Dean stated firmly, "Preferably with no female persons in it. We'll cover more ground if we split up anyway."

"The only other vacancies are in 'Men Questioning Their Sexuality'," Sam informed him.

"Like I said, it'll be safer if we stick together," Dean nodded sagely, "If we could be dealing with demons. Besides, I could never pull that off. The Living Sex God does NOT bat for the other team, and is definitely certain of his... oh, shit! Shit! Shit!" Dean thumped angrily on the wheel, then sighed, and re-set his watch. "Five and a half hours!" he raged, "I had five and a half hours of outward chasteness, and you had to go and wreck it! Damn you and your occasion of sin! AND you made me hit my car! I'm sorry, Baby," he crooned, patting the wheel, "Daddy's having a tough time at the moment..."

"Hey, what the hell did I do?" protested Sam. "You were the one who wanted to know what the other options were!"

"Well, you didn't have to tell me!" Dean shot back. "You could've lied!"

"You would just have told me to check again," Sam pointed out.

"Then you could've lied and told me that the only other vacancies were in, I don't know, 'Are You Unexpectedly Pregnant?', or 'Are You Thinking Of Becoming A Nun?', or 'Crochet For Beginners', or 'Tap Dance Your Way To Social Ridicule', or 'Are You A Repressed Vegetarian?'," humphed Dean. "You should've known!"

Sam glared back at his brother. "What was that about this being 'non problemo'?" he asked a little snidely. "You're an adult, Dean. Well, legally, if not mentally. You're supposed to be in control of your own actions. Seriously, how difficult can it be to go for twenty-four hours without doing or saying something unchaste? You really only have to do sixteen, if you allow eight for being asleep..."

"Okay, so it's harder than I thought it would be," Dean conceded grudgingly. "You have no idea how hard it is... oh, no," he turned a pleading look to Sam, "That doesn't count, does it?"

"Definitely not," confirmed Sam, "Because you were referring to the difficulty of the situation, not... anything else."

"Yeah, totally," Dean said quickly. His shoulders slumped in defeat, and he reached for his coffee. "It's not fair," he moaned, "It's so not fair, I have to act chaste for a whole twenty-four hours, and no matter where we stop, there are... female persons, and they say and do things that... are occasions of sin..."

"We could get you a little rainbow badge, and then they'll leave you alone," Sam pointed out in a reasonable tone.

Dean choked on a mouthful of coffee.

"I'm warning you, Samantha," he growled, "You make one more suggestion that suggests that I'm... of that suggestion, and I will make an impolite suggestion and back it up with putting my foot up your ass..." His eyes suddenly widened in panic. "Oh, God," he breathed, "You don't think... I mean... you know..."

"Absolutely not," Sam said firmly, "You were just telling me that you weren't happy about my idea. That's all. No other context there, no... occasion for sin at all."

"Right, right," Dean let out a sigh of relief, "Because the last thing I need is for anybody to start thinking that the Living Sex God is thinking of changing horses mid-stream, I'm SO not going to have anybody think that I'd even consider throwing a let over... oh, fuck." He sighed again. "Okay, so drug rehab," he said mournfully as he reset his watch. "Sounds like fun."

"I don't think it's supposed to be fun," Sam opined, "It's supposed to be a rehab program. You could pretend you're talking about drinking," he suggested.

"I'm a Hunter. Alcohol isn't a substance of abuse, it's one of the food groups," Dean protested. "I don't know if I can be convincing – I'm not actually addicted to anything."

"Except maybe for sex, er, occasions of sin," Sam corrected himself hurriedly. Dean let out a small, sad keening noise.

They found a motel of their usual cruddy standard to check into, and hauled their stuff into a room of dubious décor.

"I might go along to Mass this evening, scope out the church," Sam suggested, "You might want to..."

Dean strode across the room, snatched up the small pamphlet advertising a certain type of pay-per-view that could only be classified as an occasion of sin, and stomped into the bathroom, muttering ominously. The sound of flushing drifted out.

"Right, so as I was saying," Sam went on, "I'll go scope out the church, and..."

Dean let out a hiss of displeasure, and yanked a small faded print of a sparkly, ethereal, and tasteful-yet-extremely-naked fairy from the wall, pulling it from the flimsy frame as he headed for the bathroom. The sound of flushing followed.

"Er, okay," Sam said as Dean re-emerged. "Maybe you could just stay here, and, and, and... yeah, just stay here."

"You will go out and fetch food," Dean instructed, dropping heavily to the sofa with the remote, where Jimi joined him for some sympathetic Alpha snuggling. "And booze."

"Sure, bro," Sam agreed hurriedly, "You find something to watch."

As he dumped his duffel on a bedspread that was a confronting shade of lilac, Sam found his eye drawn to a dusty potted plant on the kitchenette bench. He looked at it, and couldn't help smiling.

"What's are you grinning at, Samantha?" asked Dean grumpily, flicking through channels.

"It's just a cactus of the genus Gymnocalycium," Sam replied, "You know, the ones that grow into funny shapes so that they look like..."

With a yodel of outrage, Dean shot across the room, snatched up the suggestive succulent, and sprinted for the bathroom. Sam heard the sound of flushing, then Dean re-emerged with the empty pot.

"I will have this room totally free of anything that might prove to be an occasion of sin, Sam," he announced calmly. "So watch yourself, bro. You might not flush away, but you are not too big to be swirlied."

...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo...

As she walked into the classroom, Sister Felicity's 'invisible whiskers', the term that a well respected veteran patrolman had once used to describe the feeling, no, the knowledge, that something was not as it seemed, twitched. She wondered if it was just because she was taking the session by herself today – Sister Germaine had come down with a nasty cold that had eventually left her bedridden – and then she spotted the newcomers.

twitch-twitch-twitch...

They were carrying, she was sure of it, with an ease and confidence of long practice that most of the lowlifes she'd ever dealt with never quite managed. They'd positioned themselves exactly opposite the door, backs to a wall, where they could see the door and the windows – pretty much exactly where she and a partner would've chosen to sit if sent to do a scope out. Dean and Sam Young, the roll named them, though which was which she'd have to find out. She smiled pleasantly, and decided not to turn her back on either of them.

"Good morning, everybody," she called the class to order, "First order of business, I have to tell you, is that Sister Germaine will not be with us today, or for a few days yet, I suspect – her sniffle has turned into something very nasty. It must be, to put her out of action, because I suspect the average tank would have trouble knocking Sister Germaine down..."

A ripple of concerned noises ran around the room; Sister Germaine was popular with the class. Well, she would be, seeing as her approach mostly seemed to be to keep reminding people that no matter how low they fell, God would always be there to give them a hand up, if they would just let Him.

"...So, as a consolation prize, you get me," she finished.

"I'll have you, Sister Fic!" declared a young man named Billy in a bright voice, and laughter ran around the room. "I've got a thing about nuns!"

"What makes you think I'd be interested in a youngster like you?" she rolled her eyes, "I'm a penguin, not a cougar. Anyway, I'd have to teach you everything."

"Ooooooooooh," went some of the class.

Felicity noticed that one of the Young brothers pointedly averted his gaze during the exchange. Interesting, she thought, because his general ambiance suggested that he was the type to jump anything with a pulse and two X chromosomes to bang together.

"Anyway," she went on, smiling warmly at the two additions to the group, "We have a couple of newcomers today, Dean and Sam Young, although which is which, well, I don't usually condone gambling, but I guess I've got a fifty per cent chance of getting it right."

"I'm Sam," the younger one spoke up and smiled, flashing dimples, "And that's Dean, my older brother." Dean gave her a wan smile, and a little wave.

twitch-twitch-twitch

Well, welcome, Sam and Dean," she said, "Usually we ask people to do a quick introduction, and tell us why they're here, so, who's first?"

She immediately classified Sam as one of the Trying Hards – it was a story she'd heard before: a distressing family disaster, falling in with the wrong crowd, losing perspective, thinking that the stuff made him a stronger person and better able to deal with the problems he was facing, arguing with family and friends, hitting rock bottom and a medical emergency before realising that there was a problem – at least he'd had the sense to reach out to his brother and uncle, recognised his 'friends' for what they were, and had cleaned up. Had been clean for a number of years, and was thankful for it every day.

Dean was... confusing. Everything about him evoked words like 'cocky', 'smug', 'arrogant', 'immodest', but as he talked, she heard the voice of someone recognising that they truly had a problem, and realising just how tough it was going to be to beat it...

"It's been a bit over two weeks now since I... succumbed to an occasion of sin", was how he put it, looking uncomfortable. "It's been a part of my life for so long, I mean, I started sneaking out when I was a teenager. I think my Dad knew, he just had other things on his mind, and didn't really worry about it as long as I never attracted attention from the Law. I never thought it was a problem. I mean, it never was a problem before, or at least, I didn't think it was. Really, I never thought about it, except for, uh, thinking about it all the time..." he looked to his brother, and Sam nodded in encouragement. "So, uh, I had a bit of a... medical episode recently, and that was when I realised that if I want my life to get back to normal, I have to deal with this. I can't just ask Sam and Bobby to undo it for me – I know they would if they could – but I have to do this. I have to resist... occasion of sin, and, and, and, just not do it." He looked to his brother, suddenly anxious. "That's okay, right? The not doing it bit?"

"It's fine, Dean," Sam reassured him, "You made a reference to refraining from an action, nothing else."

"Right, right," Dean relaxed a bit. "So, here I am, with my brother doing his best to help me... avoid occasion of sin."

"Kudos," smiled Sister Felicity, "For a lot of people, even realising that there is a problem is a hurdle that they never get over. That's an interesting choice of phrase you used," she noted, "The 'Occasion of sin' bit. It's an ecclesiastical term."

"It means 'A person, place or thing which tempts a man to sin'," said Dean helpfully.

"So it does," she acknowledged with another smile. "Although, I have to say, I'm not completely happy with the idea of us as these passive potential sinners, while sin floats around in the air, and bits of it break off and stick to us and infect us with sin, and make us like these sin zombies who lurch around only instead of going 'braaaaaains', we go 'siiiiiiiiiiiin'..."

" 'For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me," quoted Sam, then he looked sheepish. "Er, it's from Romans. The free will thing."

"So it is," smiled Sister Felicity. "You ever thought of becoming a nun?" she asked him.

"Would he have to cut off his hair?" Dean piped up hopefully, as Sam mouthed 'jerk' at him.

"No," Felicity assured him, "Although it might be more comfortable under the veil if he did. It's okay, Sam," she assured the blushing younger brother, "I don't think we'd have a habit long enough to fit you anyway. But the free will thing, yeah, it's about choices, and taking responsibility for your choices, which brings us back to where we were in our last class..." she indicated the words on the whiteboard behind her. "Confession, Contrition, Atonement, Forgiveness." Her eyes raked the class. "Fess up, be truly sorry, do what you can to make it up, and maybe, just maybe, you'll be forgiven. And that, people," her smile became less like a greeting, and a more like a teeth-baring warning, "Is what we are going to talk about today..."

Reviews are the Amusing Cactus On The Kitchen Bench Of Life! (You may have the Winchester Of Your Choice misting it a little if you like. But seriously, have you seen some of those cacti? They're amusing enough. Google 'suggestive cactus' if you don't believe me.)