Characters not mine.

(Originally written for the dressing up challenge at comment_fic. Prompt was "born-a-girl!Dean, Sam, She refuses to wear girl's clothes and wears Sam's instead.")

Sam started looking for his jacket about the time the shower started. He had been pretty certain he'd thrown it over a chair the previous night, but it was entirely possible that he, his dad, or his sister had moved it to sit down. But it wasn't near any of the chairs, either. So he checked his bags and anywhere in the motel room he could think of that clothes might have been thrown in the past week. No luck.

Given the fate of his clothing over the past few years, he wasn't all that surprised.

The shower turned off as Sam crawled out from under one of the beds (seriously, Deanna sometimes had selective blindness about things like a dirty clothes pile), and Sam debated whether or not it was worth walking into the Lioness's Den. After a moment, he decided that it was and pushed open the door.

"Dude, I'm kind of naked right now."

Sam glanced at his sister, who was toweling off still-drippy short hair, and shrugged. "So you are. Have you seen my—there it is." He grabbed his jacket off the vanity beside Deanna's other clothes. Well, beside the clothes Deanna was going to put on. Most of them—the jeans and the t-shirt, at least—were actually Sam's.

Deanna elbowed him out of the way and rooted around in the pile for the bra. "Did you have to come in and steal that back while I was in the shower?"

"Well, if I'd let you come out with it on, I'd never have gotten it back," Sam pointed out, shaking out the jacket in case he was about to walk off with any other articles of clothing. "What's wrong with yours?" Deanna's jackets seemed to be one of the few things that never got mysteriously left behind in motel rooms across the country.

She reached for the shirt. "Guess."

Sam shook his head. "I don't know, okay? I thought it looked good on you."

Deanna grinned at him in the mirror before pulling the shirt over her head. "Yeah, but you're my brother and you want your clothes back."

"Then what?"

"Girl's jackets don't have pockets, Sammy. Not real ones, anyway. I can fit a fake ID in one of them but that's about it." Sam opened his mouth, and her nose wrinkled, "And before you say anything I'm not carrying a purse."

"I wasn't going to suggest it. Why do you need pockets right now?"

Deanna ignored the question and reached for the rest of the clothes. "Are you really going to stand there and watch your big sister dress?" she asked.

Sam hadn't even noticed he was doing it, and he felt his face heating up at the thought. "Uh—"

She shoved him gently towards the door. "Give me two minutes?"

Sam let himself be pushed and, after she'd swung the door shut (making sure to hit him in the ass on the way out, he was sure), he started going through his jacket pockets, trying to figure out what she'd been so adamant about carrying with her.

It didn't take him long to come up with a lighter and a jackknife. "Deanna," he mumbled, knowing he shouldn't really be surprised. Ever since he'd been old enough to ask if she was carrying a weapon, after all, she'd been paranoid enough to complain that she'd rather show up to school in lingerie than go without it. She knew how good a button it was too, since Sam was always too busy trying not to think about how every guy in her class would stare at his older sister to notice where the knife went to when it disappeared.

Deanna slipped out of the bathroom a moment later. She'd cuffed his jeans again. Of course, Sam was shooting up like a weed and already almost a hands-breadth taller than his sister, so she'd pretty much had to, but Sam was starting to find holes in his jeans where the creases were, and it was getting old.

He didn't say that, though, just held up the knife. "Deanna, we're going to school."

She plucked it out of his hands and flipped the box of donuts on the table open. "No. You're going to school, Sammy." The knife disappeared into a pocket as she said it.

"You're skipping again?"

"Yeah."

Sam rolled his eyes. "Why?"

"I need a reason?"

"Uh, yeah?"

She shrugged. "I'm gonna head up to the community college library, look a couple of records up."

"For Dad? Wait til after school, we're not gonna see him til late, anyway."

"More to make sure something's worth bringing up to Dad. I'll be back by fourth period. Wait . . . make that fifth. There's a guy in my history class I'm gonna clock if I don't get a couple of days off from."

Sam reached up for his temples, because he could feel a headache coming on at the worst possible time, since he was still arguing with Deanna and had a test in first period. Why couldn't he have had a normal sister, one who didn't steal his clothes and require he clean out his pockets very carefully to make sure she hadn't left anything more dangerous than a bag of peanut M&Ms in them when he stole them back? "So let me get this straight. You're skipping class so you can do research because Dad might have another case—something you normally pawn off on me if you can—and because there's some dude in your fourth period you don't wanna deal with?"

Deanna cocked her head slightly, then nodded. "Yeah, you got it," she said, and pushed the donuts towards him. "You eaten yet?"

"I'm fine, Deanna. What's he been doing?"

"Just being a dick. I can handle myself, Sam."

"Have you heard of transferring to a different class?"

"Sammy."

"If you wait until after school I'll help."

"I can handle it. Now, come on. We can sit here and have this argument, make you late for school and me not show up at all, or we can get going, you can be on time, and I'll show up for a couple of classes."

"Deanna—"

"What'd you do with my lighter, anyway? Or that other jacket you've almost grown out of?" she asked, and bit into a donut like the argument was settled.

Which, Sam realized, it probably was. He couldn't exactly stop her. "Jacket's actually in your bag. I figured it still fit you and then you might stop grabbing the one that actually fits."

John Winchester had noticed, at some point, that his daughter seemed to carry less clothing and do less laundry than her father and brother. It didn't make any sense, but it didn't seem to bother her, and the few times he'd mentioned clothes, like what had happened to the shirts that fit better or were a little more feminine, she'd just shrugged and told him that they were probably just at the bottom of the bag.

That meant lost. John wasn't stupid.

But he wasn't going to dig into Deanna's life, either. They were just clothes, even if it didn't make sense to him.

Still, there were days, between the haircut and the clothes and the daughter whose security blanket was a four inch jackknife she reached for whenever someone gave her brother a funny look, that he really wished he hadn't fallen out with Ellen. When Deanna had turned thirteen he'd almost broken his silence with the woman and gone back to the Roadhouse to beg her to give Deanna a talk about womanhood, and sometimes he thought he should have done that rather than hope what little awkward information he could muster and the school nurse would suffice.

But she seemed happy enough with the way things had turned out. Most of the time. So he only occasionally wondered how it was always Deanna's clothes that got lost.

Sam opened the motel room door just enough to crane his neck out. "Deanna!"

"What?"

"Have you seen my jeans? The ones that got stained on the knee when we ran into that poltergeist a few states back?" The only clean ones he had left. They really needed to do laundry, but Dad and Deanna hadn't noticed. They were on a hunt, and Deanna would probably continue ignoring it until it was either wear some of her clothes or get to the laundromat.

"No!"

Sam started to close the door to give the place another once over, but stopped. "Are you wearing them?" he called.

There was a pause.

"Yes?"

"That's seeing them!"

"I don't look at them once I've belted them."

"Deanna! Those're my jeans."

She opened the door of the Impala and grinned at him. The smile she only got when she was teasing her little brother. "You wanna come and take them off of me?"

Sam sighed. He probably had a pair that wasn't too dirty. "We're going to do laundry this afternoon."

"Whatever."

Sam rolled his eyes and started to close the door. "Jerk."

Deanna had just enough time to smirk and answer, "Bitch," before Sam slammed the door.

Sam was wearing his "I hate you" bitchface when Deanna finally pulled up, and she almost didn't unlock the door until after the first round of insults. But looking at the stiff set of Sam's shoulders, she decided it would do more damage than it would prevent and unlocked the door.

"I've been waiting for half and hour," Sam growled, throwing the door open.

"Sorry. I needed some air."

"When?"

She shrugged. "A couple of periods ago. There's probably an angry message on the machine back at the motel about how I just walked out of class."

"Why?"

"Because the alternative was them calling Dad's numbers until he picked up because I'd been in another fight."

"Oh."

Deanna started the car and pulled out of the parking space, but she kept glancing at Sam, and he was still angry-dog stiff. "Look, I'm sorry. I kind of made a circle around town and lost track of time."

"Deanna, all I want to know is what happened this time." His voice was quiet, still angry.

"Look, is there some rule I don't know about that you must wear lipstick if you like guys or something?"

Sam's brow bunched up, and she didn't have to be a genius to know that all he was thinking was "Not this again." Deanna bit her lip.

"Look, it's not like I don't . . . don't know that there's some jackass in every classroom that's going to call me a dyke. I just sometimes wanna punch their lights out over it, you know? Not like I haven't clocked enough people for picking on you, sometimes I think maybe, when they're picking on me—"

"You could always wear your own clothes for a change," Sam grumbled.

"The hell would I do that for?"

"Well, maybe they wouldn't think you were gay if you looked a little less butch. Or maybe picked a few less fights. Or if it weren't on your permanent record that you cracked the jaw of some poor bastard in eighth grade—"

"Hey, he'd blacked your eye!"

"Yeah. And you cracked his jaw, Deanna. I'm just saying, maybe we're freaks enough with the moving around and the missing days at a time because Dad needs help without you losing it and whaling on someone because they make fun of you for wearing my clothes."

Deanna bit her lip. "I liked the guy, too."

"Yeah, punching him is not gonna get you a date."

"Sammy—"

"Have I told you this week that I'm too old for that nickname?"

"Sam, I'm sorry. I won't be late again."

Sam ignored the apology, and Deanna tried not to look at her knuckles on the steering wheel. She knew they were white. "Look," she said, "next time someone calls you a freak, you can blame it all on me. End of story."

Sam glanced at her, and she sighed and flipped her turn signal on. "It'll be half the truth anyway, right?"

Sam leaned against the backseat window of the Impala and stared up at the building it was parked outside, fiddling absently with the papers on his lap. Dad and Deanna were inside, probably split up and looking for a corpse to salt and burn. This was the last place the living person had been seen, after all.

Sam had been told not once, but twice, to stay in the car, and it wasn't really an order he planned on disobeying. He would rather be back at the motel, to be honest, and he was only there because Deanna had taken him along to help when she'd done some last minute combing through public records. It was just late and vaguely ominous, not that Dad's jobs ever weren't, and it was easier not to worry when the building wasn't right in front of him.

Or, as he realized a moment later, when Deanna wasn't swearing loudly towards the front of the building.

"Dammit," he mumbled under his breath. It was a big building. He had no way of knowing if Dad was anywhere near here—or if he could even hear her. There was something easily accessible and iron in the car, right?

What he came up with was actually a container of salt, which made at least as much sense. Deanna shouted something else about a "freaky bastard" as he opened the car door, so at least he knew where she was. Almost at the door, actually, presumably because the spirit was bound to the house and couldn't follow her out. Useful trick if she couldn't beat it.

When Sam got to the door, it ended pretty quick. Deanna saw him coming, swore at him for once, and reached out to grab him by the jacket. "Salt?"

"Yeah."

She grabbed it, flicked it open, and shook it out in a wide swath, some of which hit the spirit, and most of which ended in a semicircle around the door. "Well," she said, reaching up to rub her upper arms. "That was anticlimactic."

"Should we find Dad?"

"Dad's not gonna miss with a shotgun full of rock salt," Deanna told him. "I ran because I was outta ammo."

Sam nodded. "You okay?"

"Yeah. Just cold. That thing is good at cold spots." She shivered. "I didn't notice at first because it's February."

Sam nodded and shrugged out of his jacket. "Guess I shouldn't have stolen this back this morning."

Deanna raised an eyebrow. "I don't need your chivalry, bitch."

"Jerk." Sam made a move as if to tug the jacket back as she grabbed for it, but he let her have it. The fact that she'd taken it at all proved she was freezing.

She pulled it over her shoulders. "You. Back in the car. Guess Dad'll come and meet us in a few minutes when it's over."

She herded him towards the door and out to the Impala, but Sam just leaned against the hood of the car. "Do you wanna go back in?"

"Nearly getting my ticket punched once is enough for one night, thank you," she answered, leaning against the car beside him. "Dad wasn't sure he needed me anyway."

"Mmm."

They sat there for a moment or two, until Sam reached up to rub his own arm. Deanna raised an eyebrow. "You know, my coat's in the top of the trunk if you're cold."

"I think I'd split the shoulders."

"Well, yeah, but I could give you yours back."

Sam shook his head. "You hate the damn thing."

"I'd survive."

"Yeah? Casper didn't lower my body temperature," Sam pointed out.

"I said I didn't need your chivalry."

"I'm fine, Deanna. And I know it might be a sign of the Apocalypse if you and Dad actually have a conversation that contains the phrase 'clothes shopping,' but you're really going to have to talk to him about the whole wearing my clothes thing and getting a decent wardrobe. You know, so you're not walking into a cold spot after I stole my jacket back." He'd said something of the like plenty of times before.

She rolled her eyes and gave him the canned answer. "What's wrong with your clothes?"

"Uh, they're mine."

"Sammy." She shook her head. "I can still get my coat."

"Why?"

She shrugged. "I like men's clothes. More than I like women's. Obviously. I'm fine with yours."

"Dude, I'd like to have my own clothes again."

She mumbled something under her breath.

"What?"

Deanna sighed. "I said I'd like to keep close to you. And I can't exactly always watch your back anymore, all right? And it doesn't make any sense, unless there's some crazy Hoodoo crap going on, in which case I'm gonna have to hunt something down and kill it, but I feel better when I'm wearing your stuff. Like, I don't know, you just left, you'll be back, and I can still smell you on the jacket. All right?"

Sam shook his head. "Eventually I want my clothes back."

She slapped him upside the head. "All right. We have had our requisite chick flick moment for the month. Forget I said anything." She yawned. "You wanna get in back with me and be a pillow? Cold spots tire me out."

John came back about half an hour later and felt better seeing Deanna in the back of the Impala with Sam. For a few minutes there he'd had to wonder what had happened to his daughter. "Hey, Sam. When'd Deanna come out?"

Sam shrugged one shoulder—Deanna was asleep on the other. "When she ran out of ammo."

He nodded and opened the driver's side door. "And what happened to your jacket?"

Sam shrugged. "Lent it to her. She ran into some cold spots."

John nodded. "I thought that one was hers."

Sam smiled. "Nope. But she does like to steal it."