A/N: Got held up again, but finally a new chapter arrives.

Bought And Sold (Chapter 9: Love In A Hopeless Place) by frostygossamer

Samantha had a midterm the following week, so Smith didn't see her for a several days. It did not feel good.

Outside his chats with his new friend, Smith could go all week without having a real conversation with anyone. It had been that way ever since he had arrived at Plucky's all those years ago, dragged there straight off of the train with a sack pulled down over his head like some damn turkey headed for the butcher.

He might as well have been headed there. Where he ended up had turned out to be a hundred times worse.

After drugging him, Bela had left him in the 'care' of professional hitwoman Meg, expecting that he would be 'dealt with' in accordance with his matriarch-in-law's orders. Meg, however, had had other, more profitable ideas. She had handed him over to the cold-hearted Missus Pennywhistle, shady owner of Plucky's, in exchange for a substantial 'finder's fee'.

"New merchandise," Meg had called him, in her lazy drawl. "Practically unused. Ain't that right, sugarbun?"

Pennywhistle had made sure that he never again so much as stepped outside, or exchanged one word with an honest citizen. He knew he might as well have been dead, as far as the rest of the world was concerned. Sometimes it felt like he was living in some hellish bubble while the real world passed him by. Sometimes he felt like HE wasn't even real anymore. He was just Smith the living sex-toy, nothing else.

That name. Smith? Pennywhistle had given him that name, telling him that his old life was over. Everyone had been calling him Smith for so long he had all but forgotten his real one.

Dean, that was it. Dean Campbell, son of Mary and John Campbell, brother of little Sam.

Actually, he preferred the alias now. He didn't need any of these people to know who he really was, deep inside where his memories still clung, where THEY couldn't touch.

He could vividly recall how bleary and confused he had been the first time he had woken up properly in this dismal place, after falling asleep on the train happy. He knew immediately that he had been drugged from the way his head throbbed and his eyes refused to focus for the longest time.

He was still almost an innocent back then. His heartless keepers had had to explain to him what exactly went on in a manhouse, and exactly what they expected him to do if he wanted to live. He would be a sex slave, no less, servicing female clients for nothing more than a bed and a little food, and with no chance of escape. That was made very plain to him.

"We own you now, boy. Make no trouble and your kid'll be left alone," Pennywhistle had informed him, sternly. "Otherwise..." and she had made the throat-slitting gesture.

Dean knew exactly what she meant. Otherwise they would take little Samuel from Bobby's refuge as easily as they had taken him. Bobby would try but he wouldn't be able to stop them, not if they were determined, and packing heat. Dean guessed the police wouldn't help him. They barely put up with the refuge in their jurisdiction as it was. The poor kid, his beloved little son Samuel, would never get to see another birthday.

He soon realized that he had to be obedient and do as he was told, for Samuel. There was nothing else he could do. So Dean had remained a prisoner, forgotten he thought, trusting in his belief that someplace his family, John, Sam and little Samuel, were safe and well without him.

Dean was glad to sacrifice his happiness for them. After all, he wasn't important. He didn't matter.

Then things changed. He had made a new friend, Samantha the boy-genius who was willing to live as a woman just so he could get a college education. That really took some guts. He cared about Samantha, and Samantha cared about him right back.

He chuckled sadly, thinking about how his own little brother would have loved a chance at college. But poor Sammy would have been lucky to see the inside of elementary school. No high school for him. HE would have had to work and work hard to help out his old dad, too hard to worry about what had become of his big brother. Too bad if he had been forgotten, Dean reckoned.

Dean smiled sadly and touched his amulet, Sam's last gift. He wondered how his short-stuff brother Sam was. Well, at least he wasn't having to put up with the crappiness his big-boned buddy Samantha, or whatever his birth name was, had to endure every damn day.

Samantha. He prayed that he would be seeing her soon.

He didn't know what he would do if she forgot him too.

~o~

Samantha finally returned to Plucky's manhouse, anxious to tell her friend how she had done in the midterms, and Smith, or rather Dean, was delighted to see her.

"Hey, been a while," he said, trying not to overdo the enthusiasm. "How'd you do? Aced 'em I'd guess, huh?"

"Pretty much," she admitted, glancing down nervously, her eyes hidden behind her bangs.

As they sat enjoying what little sun could penetrate the streaky windows of Dean's room, Dean gazed at her in wonderment. How the heck could such a giant of a cross-dresser look so endearingly shy? Suddenly he realized that he had never once seen Samantha out of character, without her make-up or with her hair down.

"Ever go out without the paint, Samantha?" he asked. His curiosity was piqued.

"Never!" she gasped. "Look freakin' hideous without my make-up on and my hair fixed."

Her pal Jessica had often commented on the way Samantha kept the full-length mirror in her dorm room covered up. The truth was, she hated to see herself out of drag. After all the years of faking femininity, her own body just seemed weird.

"Doubt that," Dean chuckled. "Seriously."

Maybe she wouldn't pass as a woman without the frills, but he reckoned Samantha's features had a certain handsome quality to them even so. There was something about those hazel eyes that appealed to him for reasons he couldn't explain.

"Lemme take this crap off of you," he insisted.

He snatched a package of beauty wipes from his nightstand drawer. Hey, his clients needed to fix their make-up before leaving, right? Samantha dodged his first attempt but he grabbed the back of her neck with a gentle but firm hand and forced her to remain still.

"How long you been a girl?" he asked, as he carefully wiped away a thick layer of powder and blush. "There," he added, finishing up. "Not so hideous, huh?"

"Daylight hours, since I was fourteen. High school. And all the time since I been in the city, 24/7," Samantha answered, feeling strangely exposed, as if, powder-free, this guy would see right through her.

"Ever wanna see how you look as a guy?" asked Dean. "Musta changed some in the last couple years."

Samantha looked down at herself. That thought scared her a little. She had gotten used to play acting. The reality of her male body was something she chose not to think about. It only made life harder.

"Dunno," she whispered, uncertainly.

"C'mon," Dean insisted, standing up and marching to his tiny closet in the corner of the room. "Wanna see you in pants."

Samantha sighed and stood up from her chair, still a little reluctant.

Then, "Why not?" she decided, loosening her hair and shaking out that glorious, shoulder-length, chestnut mane.

Standing with his back to her, Dean was selecting a pair of jeans and a plaid shirt from his closet. He was only a few inches shy of Samantha's height, so they looked like they would maybe fit.

Samantha stripped off her female clothing, her dress, her slip, her stockings, down to her pink silk tap pants and padded brassiere. Dean turned around right as she unhooked and pulled off the comical thing. He did a double take.

"Boy, are you ripped!" he gasped, eyes wide with admiration.

Samantha, suddenly revealed as unquestionably male, bashfully covered HIS chest with his arms, which simply served to make his shoulders appear broader. A nervous giggle escaped his lips as he avoided Dean's awed stare.

"Gotta keep myself fit," he explained, awkwardly. "Can't help it if it makes me kinda... chunky."

Dean threw the clothes on the bed and walked over, lifting Samantha's chin to look him in the face. Dean's expression was one of total admiration. Sam's face was crumpled with embarrassment.

"You're fine. You know that?" Dean whispered softly.

No one had ever complimented Samantha's body that way before. He had grown up feeling gawky and clumsy. And, in his recent transvestite years, he had been painfully aware of how ridiculously unfeminine he looked to the eyes of both his bitchy and his more sympathetic female classmates. He couldn't help blushing, which only made him more ashamed.

He and Dean locked gaze for a moment. There was something warm and gentle in Dean's gaze. Samantha could feel the young man's breath gently ghost over his cheek.

He whimpered. "I'm not... queer," he hissed. "At least... I don't think..."

Honestly, he wasn't sure he even had a sexuality anymore. Romance had been so totally off the table for so much of his life.

"Neither am I," responded Dean, smiling up at him tenderly. "But... this once, I think I wouldn't mind... with someone I care about, someone I chose myself."

Samantha nodded. "I get that," he said. "Really do."

He leaned down and Dean's face tilted up to meet his. He kissed him, kissed Dean gently on the lips. Dean wrapped his fingers around the back of Samantha's neck and pulled him down, deepening the moment. A moment that seemed to last forever until, eventually, they pulled apart.

"I owe you," Dean said meaningfully. "Owe you and want you. Because you get me. Like no one else ever has."

Samantha couldn't help but mirror that sentiment. And right then, he knew that he hadn't only come to this guy because he needed someone to confide in. That wasn't all they shared together. It was the unhappy past neither could bring themselves to talk about. It was the yawning, aching loneliness they both felt every day. It was a need to be with someone, anyone, who 'got' that sadness. Who already felt it without having to be told, because the telling would be too much to bear. This guy, this stranger, and he shared something, something deep, something special.

Long repressed feelings surged up inside him like a tidal wave.

Dean let the taller guy push him backward onto the bed and cover him with his body. Barely clothed, in moments they were naked and wrapped around each other. Neither of them had been with a man before, so it was a voyage of discovery for both. A voyage into strange territory, into a magical land where every touch, every lick, every kiss was a wonderful new revelation neither had been permitted to enjoy before.

Jaded from too much of the wrong sort of sex, Dean gave himself up to the heat of genuine passion emanating from his larger, stronger, more earnest partner.

"God, feels so good," he gasped between kisses. "Baby, you feel like heaven."

Sensing, from his clumsy fumbling, that the big guy's inexperience was hampering him, he rolled him onto his back and straddled his waist. His lover gazed up at him, confused, eyes glassy with emotion.

"Lemme show you," Dean whispered, grasping him in a firm but gentle fist. "Know EXACTLY what you need."

"Smith, I-" Samantha began. Dean cut him off with a desperate kiss.

He didn't want to hear that name. Not now.

TBC

A/N: o_O! Oh dear! Accidental wincest as warned. More soon.