A/N: As people have been reminding me that I failed to post this here, I'm posting it. Enjoy. :)

Turkey

The turkey is dead. Dead and huge.

Dean's eyes light up like porch lights in a rural Southern swamp as he watches Bobby pull the neck and giblets out of the dead thing's cavity. "Turkey dinner," he says, his voice trembling with awe and anticipation, his body twitching excitedly like it does before sex or pie or killing.

"Christ, Bobby," Sam says, rubbing the back of his neck with a large hand. "How much did this set you back?"

Turkeys are expensive and hard to come by, or so Alec has gathered by the way the adults are making a big deal out of the grotesque, drained carcass Bobby is currently molesting with butter and herbs. His dad is buzzing, his uncle trying very hard not to look too eager, and Bobby looks as pleased as punch, so he bites his tongue to keep from telling them that he wishes that turkeys in general were non-existent.

One thing's for sure: Alec's not eating it.

"Not a dime," Bobby says. "Butcher owed me a favor."

"Yeah?" Dean asks, watching Bobby's hand move under the turkey's skin like a ghost under a sheet. "What'd you do for him?"

"Her. She had a poltergeist. Blood everywhere."

"There's always blood everywhere," Dean says absently, his green eyes still mesmerized by the preparation of tonight's dinner. Alec doesn't know which way he means it - if there's always blood everywhere because there's always blood everywhere (for this, of course, is true) or if there's always blood everywhere because it's a butcher shop and...well, blood. Everywhere.

Blood. Alec remembers being sick all too clearly, his puke in the grass and the blood in his shit and the turkey's eyes on him, watching the entire time as Alec suffered, taking note of his vulnerability, probably mocking him inside that stupid bird brain.

That was a long time ago, before he had his dad or his uncle or even his brother, really.

But still. Alec doesn't even want to look at its corpse, much less eat it. Sam and Dean can gorge themselves on the bastard all they want, Bobby and Ben, too, but Alec? Alec's out. Alec will skip straight to his ice cream, thank you very much.

"It'll be ready in three hours!" Dean calls after him as he slinks out of the kitchen, sounding very much like one of those spoiled children Alec's seen on the TV, the ones who count down to Christmas morning, practically vibrating with excitement over all the magnificent loot they're about to receive.

Sam's always worrying about spoiling Alec and Ben. Maybe if Alec brings up such a concept with Bobby, he won't make the turkey.

You can't make the turkey, Bobby, he'll say. You'll spoil Dad. Just look at 'im. Guy's one drumstick away from kicking and screaming in the cereal aisle.

Alec snorts to himself. He's tempted to say this if only to see Dean's wide-eyed look of surprise and Sam's inevitable, but failed attempt to hide his snickers behind his hand. But he won't. He won't because he doesn't want to make a big deal out of any of this. He won't because he doesn't want them to ask any of those prying questions.

He won't because he doesn't want them to know what the turkey knows.

He gives it an hour and a half before he breaks it to them, wiling away the time in between trying not to bother Ben, who's upstairs and absorbed in some beat-up, old novel Sam bought off a bargain table on the sidewalk a few days ago.

He doesn't wait until the last minute, when he's sitting in front of his damn plate and refusing to eat like that screaming three-year-old he saw in that diner that one time. He waits until the dead bastard's half-cooked and Bobby's basting to wrinkle his nose and say what he's been wanting to say...but not in the way he wanted to say it at all:

"M'not eating it," he informs the kitchen bluntly, because he's not. He's not eating it and he's skipping straight to his ice cream. "I'll skip straight to my ice cream."

Bobby's brows raise under his hat. Sam and Dean exchange a look. Alec's seen them share this look before. It's that half-fond, half-irritated look they get when he's acting childish and they think they know why. Alec knows what they think they know - they think he's being picky. Picky about his food.

Rare for a Dean, but not unheard of. In Alec's world, brown M&Ms might as well be candy-coated shit and while he tries to be an adult about it sometimes, he really can't stand it when his food touches.

Dean steps forward and places a placating hand on top of Alec's head. "Don't be rude, kitten," he says. "Turkey's delicious. And Bobby's cookin' it."

"M'not eating it," Alec insists.

"You have to eat it," Sam counters in that infuriating tone of reason of his. "It's what's for dinner and you have to eat dinner." His eyebrows furrow when Alec crosses his arms and shakes his head, casts a stormy green look up at his uncle from under ridiculously long lashes. "You know the rules, kid. Eating's one of 'em."

This isn't how Alec wanted this conversation to go at all. He never wanted it to come to the point where he's saying,"I don't care. I'm not eatin' it and you can't make me." but here he is.

He didn't want to be six years old and belligerent. He really didn't.

A firm tap on the top of his head has Alec tipping his chin up to find Dean's eyes asking oh, really? and Alec wants to say yeah, really, but he doesn't. Instead he narrows his own eyes and tells his dad, "M'sick."

Dean snorts. "Dude, you're not sick."

"Lookin' at the turkey makes me sick and m'not eatin' it and that's final." These words end with an irritated snarl passionate enough to cause both Sam's and Dean's eyebrows to jump back in surprise.

Dean lets out a low whistle. "Somebody needs a nap."

Daggers. Daggers coming out of Alec's eyes. Well, they would if they could, anyway. "M'not six, Dad."

So he claims. Alec is six, though. Ten in body, six in soul, and he doesn't know what the fuck is wrong with him right now.

"Well, why don't you want to eat the turkey?"

"Turkeys are uncool fools. Good Times said so."

"Good Times?" Sam sounds somewhat surprised, but mostly exasperated.

"A popular American situational comedy that originated in the 1970s, Uncle Sam. You're s'posed to know this stuff."

"I do know," Sam says, indignant. "I wasn't alive, yet, but I do know. And you're eating what's on your plate. I promise the turkey and the vegetables won't touch."

"I'm not eating the. Motherfucking. Turkey." A staccato through gritted teeth and now both Sam and Dean are staring at him with wide eyes. Alec gets that. Sure, he swears like a sailor, but he never swears at them.

"Alec-"

Alec flails his little hands. "No! Fucking shit what else do I have to say? No."

"M'thinkin' the nap's a good idea."

Dean's not even waiting for a response. He's got his hand pressed against Alec's back and he's pushing him out of the kitchen and through the dining room and into the living room, setting him onto the couch, and before Alec can so much as protest, the guy's pulling the beloved light-up sneakers off his feet, motions as fluid as if he's discarding the empty magazines from his handguns.

Alec gets it. He does. He's being a killjoy. A bratty, foul-mouthed killjoy who shouldn't talk this way to his dad or his uncle. He can talk like this to anyone else, sans maybe Bobby, but not to them. Never to them.

But really, with this nap shit? He's not six. And while he's at it, they can get rid of the fucking naughty furniture, too. They clearly just think it's funny to enact parenting methods from reality television programming. They're not thinking of his hurt ten-year-old ego at all, what it means to be put down here out in the open because they don't isolate him. Not ever. Just because of that stupid time when he and Ben got locked in the basement and he freaked out. Now he has to endure this shit where everyone can see him suffer through it. The humiliation. He doesn't like feeling eyes on him during any show of vulnerability.

But he doesn't exactly like being alone, either. The turkey's dead, and it's always seemed dead, even when it was alive and watching him because it didn't care. It didn't care that Alec had no one. It didn't care that Alec ripped into that raw chicken with his teeth, or what that did to his insides, or how that moment led to the next, with him and his pool of vile waste in the grass. All alone.

Alec was really fucking alone.

Rage and indignation dissipates just like that, and Alec reaches up as Dean's making to push him down into a horizontal position, snatches the end of the sleeve of the hunter's black t-shirt between two fingers. "I don't want to. Dad, please?" and he blinks up at Dean with pleading eyes and he's not even trying to be innocent. Dean's trying to fight the power of this look, Alec can tell, as he turns his head away and closes his eyes for just two seconds.

"Alec..."

"Please?"

Dean's gone soft, but only for him. Only for Alec and Ben. "You apologize to Sam and promise to eat your dinner and we'll make it five minutes on the couch. None of this nap shit."

"I don't want to eat the turkey."

"Tell me why without any reference to sitcoms of the 70s and we'll compromise." Alec can hear the note of self-loathing in Dean's voice as he says it, the mantra running through his dad's head: Soft soft soft. Dean Winchester is a feather-filled mattress. Dean Winchester is a baby's unworked skin.

Dean drops onto the couch. Alec swallows because the tale is embarrassing enough and he doesn't want to recount it, not for anybody and Dean can see this. Dean can always tell, and Dean is the only one ever that Alec will confide in to this degree. Not to Sam, not even to Ben. When things suck, Alec tells Dean. It's a rule. It's a necessity.

He creeps tentatively across the couch, situates himself on his dad's lap. He tells the tale in a voice that isn't quite a whisper against Dean's neck. There are arms around him, strong arms that one day Alec, too, will be able to boast, but right now they're Dean's and Dean's only and Alec's small and inside of them.

"It had eyes," Alec confesses after Dean's been quiet for a while. "Sometimes eyes see things that shouldn't be seen."

Lips brush over his hair. "You were sick, kitten. And turkeys are dumb. Dumb food. Delicious, dumb food that doesn't have eyes."

"It was the worst kind of sick. Don't like things seeing me like that."

Not even Dean's seen him like that.

"I should've been there."

"You didn't even know me then."

"I'd met you already."

"And I kicked your ass."

"I should've been there. I would've made it better. I have god-like power that way, you know."

"I know."

Alec does know. Dean would've made it better. That's fact. Dean makes everything better. They sit for a few more minutes before Dean finally sets him to his feet, leads him back to the kitchen with a hand on the back of his neck, over to Sam, where Alec finds himself drawn between two ginormous legs to spill out a pretty lackluster apology that's immediately accepted with a nod and a cuddle. He still doesn't eat the turkey that night, though. He claims temporary vegetarianism and Sam and Dean and Bobby let him get away with an extra serving of veggies, which isn't exactly a delicious alternative, but Alec's got carefully sorted M&M's buried in Dean's duffel, hiding out with Alec II, and he'll totally chow down on the non-brown candy while all eyes are otherwise distracted.

Life is easy street for Alec Winchester when nobody's looking.