Once a hunter, always a hunter. It didn't matter that Dean was now living in some suburban neighborhood in the middle of the heart land, didn't matter that the apocalypse was over thanks to his brother's death, none of it mattered, Dean was a hunter, and it was so ingrained in his being, so much a part of him, that no matter what promise he made to his brother, his senses would always be on the alert, and truth be told, if a hunt presented itself, Dean would go. He would justify himself, say that he didn't want it to hurt the little surrogate family he had adopted, that if he hunted and killed the son of a bitch he would be protecting his family. And if Dean's senses were acute enough for that, they were more than attuned to hear a teenage boy open and close the front door softly, try to walk down the driveway undetected. But even if Dean didn't have senses that could detect the slightest disturbance of the air, he would have seen the boy's worn chucks from his position underneath Lisa's car.

"What's up Ben?" Dean asked as he loosened the oil pan. Dean saw the shoes shuffle, slightly startled by Dean's sudden voice.

"How did you know?"

"I'm trained to hear a ghost. I think I can hear you open and close the front door." Dean reminded and continued his efforts to change the oil in Lisa's car.

"Oh." Ben said softly.

"What's the matter?"

"Do you have a free minute?" he asked. Dean was suddenly reminded of Sam all of those years ago, asking the same thing, while Dean's head was stuck under the Impala, doing the same thing. Sam always wanted to talk, or to ask for help, or something, when Dean was busy, when his head was so far under the car, he couldn't get up quickly enough to look Sam in the eye. The memory of the floppy haired boy made Dean's chest ache. He tried to swallow the ache away, and then he remembered that the ache never went away.

"What do you need?" he asked, trying to focus on Ben, trying to remember that Ben was the teenager in front of him, that it was 2010 and Sam was dead, that he was grown up, became Lucifer's vessel, and saved the world from the apocalypse. Dean sighed inwardly. It always sounded so easy.

"Ummm." Ben sighed and shuffled his feet. Dean finally got the pan undone and rolled out from underneath the car. Ben was standing beside it, holding a paper in front of him, looking down, and looking shamed. He held out the paper to Dean.

Dean wiped his hands on the cloth that was sitting on the hood of the car and then took the paper from the boy. It was a social studies paper with a big fat F on the top.

"Dude….what happened?"

"Don't' tell mom."

"Ben, your mom should know about this stuff."

"I can't show her. I can't let her know that I'm failing social studies."

"Ben, I can't keep something like this from your mom."

"Why not?"

"Because she's your mom."

"But…"

"But nothing. If I weren't here…"

"I wouldn't tell her even then." He said in defiance, chin up and eyes determined. Brown eyes melted into hazel, and Dean closed his trying to get his Sammy out of his mind. "If you weren't here, I wouldn't ask anyone for help. I would just fail."

Dean's brows creased and he looked at Ben carefully, trying to figure out what the kid wanted from him, and he realized with a moment of clarity followed by astonishment, that Ben wanted his help with homework.

"Ben, I don't know if you want my help with anything."

"Why not?"

Dean licked his lips. "I'm not exactly what you would call bright."

"You're smart. I've watched you figure stuff out that no one else can figure out." Ben said.

"I'm ghost smart, I'm street smart, but I'm not book smart." Dean focused on wiping the oil off of his hands for a second before adding, "I didn't graduate high school." Dean said with no pride, no bravado, no popped collar coolness, just simple regret and sadness.

"Why not?"

"Not a lot of time for that kind of thing when you are hunting monsters."

"But Sam…" Ben stopped himself remembering that his mother told him not to talk about Sam to Dean, because that hurt him, it made him sad, and they didn't want to make Dean sad while he stayed with them. Both had the unspoken fear that if they shook Dean too hard, he would get in his big black beast and never be seen again. And both had grown fond of him being with them all of the time and neither wanted him to leave.

Dean smiled a little remembering. "Yeah, he graduated valedictorian. He went to Stanford. My little brother was smart." Dean said with pride that should only be reserved for fathers.

"But, then, you had to have helped him with homework."

Dean thought back a little and remembered quizzing Sam on the finer points of everything, often when he was laid up, or when he was cleaning their dump of an apartment, or fixing a dollar store meal for the two of them. "Yeah I guess I did, but…"

"Then could you do that for me…please? I need to pass history, and my teacher told me that I could study and retake this test next Monday before school, and I was hoping that you could help me study, and then take me to school early, and you know, not tell mom, because I don't want her to be disappointed in me." Ben looked up at Dean through thick lashes, and he looked so much like Sam, and the memories of helping Sam were flooding over him like a hurricane on a tropical coast, and he felt so overwhelmed that all he could do was nod. Ben smiled.

Dean took a second and got control over his emotions, ran the back of his hand over his eyes, and nodded again. "Yeah, yeah. I'll help you."

"You won't tell mom?"

"No. I won't tell your mom." Ben smiled brightly, that same smile that Sam would get when Dean bought him his favorite food, or when he took him to see the movie he wanted, and Dean's heart swelled with emotion, nostalgia, and sadness. Ben didn't see any of it. He simply ran back into the house, happy and no longer worried. Sam used to be like that. Demons and Lucifer took that away. The sadness sizzled away by the hot burn of anger.

SNSNSNSN

Lisa found Dean later that evening, when she got home from her night out with the girls, on the couch with Ben's social studies book on his chest. She quietly put her keys on the table, remembering just how lightly Dean slept, remembering the knife that had been at her throat one night when she woke him when he had fallen asleep on the couch, and how wild eyed and strange he had been, and then how terribly apologetic, and how he refused to sleep with her anymore because of that incident, and she quietly went about putting her keys down and her purse, and she tip toed to Dean, and she noted that he was sleeping heavier than normal.

She bravely took the book off of his chest, and as she did a paper fell out. She put the book on the coffee table and leaned over and picked up the paper, it was a test that Ben had flunked. She looked down at the open book on the coffee table and realized that Dean was reading the chapter that went to the test. Knowing Ben, he had asked that Dean not tell her about the test. Ben was hard on himself when it came to grades and he didn't like to ask for help. He had asked her only a handful of times since starting kindergarten for help. That he asked Dean was remarkable, amazing even. Her heart warmed, and she thought, not for the first time, that this must be what it would be like for Ben to have a father. She pulled the blanket off of the chair beside the couch and spread it over Dean, and went to bed.