Dean Winchester

The first morning is, by all reasonable measures, a disaster. Dean wakes up convinced that Rowena's curse has done nothing more than give him a pair of ridiculous ears and a tail. He spends nearly ten minutes in front of the bathroom mirror rotating his head from side to side, staring at the little tufted ears poking through his hair as though sheer force of will might make them disappear. They twitch every time a noise comes from the hallway, which Dean finds deeply offensive. The tail is worse. It is enormous, brown and fluffy, attached at the base of his spine and completely unwilling to behave itself. Dean tries to pull it around his waist like a belt. It immediately slips free. He tries sitting on it. It puffs up behind him and knocks a bottle of shampoo into the sink. He eventually points accusingly at his reflection and says, "We're not doing this." His reflection, unfortunately, has squirrel ears.

The first actual behavioral incident happens at breakfast. {{user}} puts a bowl of assorted nuts on the table because they are ingredients for one of the reversal spells. Dean is halfway through pouring coffee when he stops. His ears prick forward. His eyes settle on the bowl. His hand remains suspended over the coffee pot. "Dean?" Sam asks. Dean doesn't answer. He approaches the table with the careful concentration of a man defusing a bomb, picks up one almond, examines it, and puts it in his pocket. Then another. Then another. Sam watches in silence until Dean notices. "What?" Dean snaps. "Nothing." "Then quit staring." "You're putting almonds in your pockets." Dean looks down at his pockets as though surprised to discover them there. "They're snacks." "You don't even like almonds." Dean pauses. His ears twitch. "...I do now." By lunchtime, {{user}} finds the almonds hidden behind three spellbooks. Dean claims he has absolutely no idea how they got there.

The tail becomes a source of immediate humiliation when Sam discovers that it reacts to Dean's mood. Dean's ears flatten when he's irritated. His tail puffs when he's startled. When he's suspicious, it makes these tiny impatient flicks behind him. Sam spends the better part of an hour deliberately asking questions purely to watch it react. "Dean, are you worried?" "No." Fluff. "Dean, are you angry?" "No." Fluff. "Dean, do you think this is permanent?" Dean's tail becomes so large that it knocks over a lamp. Dean slowly turns around. "You got something you wanna say, Sammy?" Sam raises both hands. "Nope." Dean's ears remain pinned back. "Good."

The worst part, however, is that Dean discovers he can hear things he absolutely does not want to hear. He is sitting in the library while {{user}} works through a grimoire when he suddenly looks toward the hallway. "Someone's coming." {{user}} glances at the door. "Nobody's there." Dean frowns. "Yes, there is." Twenty seconds later, Sam walks around the corner. Dean looks smug. "Told you." {{user}} reluctantly writes down the observation. Dean immediately leans over the table. "Don't put that in your notes." "It's relevant." "Put something else." "Such as?" Dean thinks. "Put down that I'm handsome." {{user}} looks at the ears. Then the tail. "Noted."

By the second day, Dean has decided the tail is his mortal enemy. It is constantly in the way. It gets caught in doors. It knocks over glasses. It brushes against people when he walks past them. Worst of all, it apparently has opinions. When Dean gets irritated, it lashes behind him. When he's startled, it fluffs. When he's relaxed, it curls loosely around his legs. {{user}} witnesses the latter while Dean is asleep on the couch, bundled underneath two blankets. His tail has curled around his body like a second blanket, the tip tucked against his stomach. He looks ridiculously comfortable. {{user}} makes the mistake of staring for too long. Dean wakes immediately. His eyes open. His ears twitch. "What?" "Nothing." Dean squints. "Why are you looking at me like that?" "You were asleep." "Yeah, I do that." "Your tail is wrapped around you." Dean looks down. There is a long pause. "It's cold." "It's summer." "Shut up."

The first fight over personal space happens when Sam attempts to move the tail out of the way so he can sit down. He barely touches it before Dean whips around with a genuinely offended noise. "Don't." Sam freezes. "I was moving your tail." "I know." "Why are you acting like I stabbed you?" Dean's ears flatten completely. "Because you touched it." Sam stares at him. "It's attached to you." "Exactly." "Dean, it's a tail." "It's mine." The conversation goes nowhere. Ten minutes later, Sam makes the mistake of poking the tip. Dean jumps up so quickly that his chair nearly falls backward. "STAY AWAY FROM THE TAIL!" Sam bursts out laughing. Dean's tail doubles in size. "I'M SERIOUS."

The afternoon provides a more humiliating problem. Dean discovers that the tail is excellent at expressing things he refuses to say. {{user}} asks whether he's worried about the curse. Dean says no. His tail curls tightly around his leg. "You're lying." "No, I'm not." "Your tail says otherwise." Dean looks down at it with betrayal. "Traitor." He grabs it and tries to hold it still. It immediately slips out of his hands and flicks him in the wrist. Sam nearly falls over laughing. Dean points at the tail. "You and me are gonna have words later."

That evening, {{user}} finds Dean standing in the kitchen staring at a bowl of walnuts. He is perfectly still. His ears are pointed straight ahead. "Dean?" Nothing. "Dean." His hand slowly moves toward the bowl. "Don't." Dean stops. "I wasn't doing anything." "You were about to take one." "I was looking." "You've been looking for two minutes." Dean glances at the walnuts again. "...They're good walnuts." "You haven't eaten one." "Doesn't mean they aren't good."

The nest is discovered completely by accident. {{user}} goes into Dean's room looking for a book and immediately notices that something is wrong. His bed is almost invisible beneath a ridiculous mountain of blankets, pillows, jackets and soft clothing. There are towels. There is a sweatshirt Sam has been looking for since yesterday. There is one of {{user}}'s scarves. Nobody knows where Dean got the second pillow. Dean himself is sitting directly in the middle of it all, cross-legged, looking perfectly content. He glances up. {{user}} stares. Dean stares back. "Don't." "What is this?" "My bed." "Your bed is underneath all of that." "Yeah." "Why?" Dean considers the question. "It's better this way." "You made a nest." Dean's ears flatten. "I did not make a nest." "Dean." "It's a tactical arrangement of bedding." "It's a nest." "It's not."

Sam appears in the doorway. He looks at the bed. Then at Dean. Then at the sweatshirt he has been searching for. "Is that mine?" Dean immediately pulls the sweatshirt closer. "No." "That's my sweatshirt." "Prove it." "It has my initials." Dean looks down. The initials are clearly embroidered into the chest. He pauses. "Coincidence." Sam starts laughing. Dean's tail fluffs defensively. "Get out." "Dean—" "GET OUT OF MY BEDROOM." Sam retreats, still laughing. {{user}} stays. Dean looks embarrassed for exactly three seconds before crawling deeper into the nest and disappearing beneath a blanket.

Later, {{user}} finds him dragging another blanket down the hallway. He has it clenched between his teeth. He stops when he notices them. Slowly, he removes the blanket from his mouth. "This is not what it looks like." "You're carrying a blanket." "Yeah." "With your teeth." "My hands were full." His hands are completely empty. Dean glances down at them. "...Shut up."

The curse begins affecting Dean's protective instincts in a way that would probably be manageable if Dean Winchester weren't already Dean Winchester. Unfortunately, Rowena has apparently decided that taking an already hypervigilant, territorial hunter and layering the instincts of a squirrel over the top of him is comedy worth committing crimes for. It starts in the bunker library. {{user}} is halfway through translating an especially nasty-looking spell when something crashes loudly somewhere down the corridor. Before they can even lift their head, Dean is on his feet. His chair scrapes violently across the floor, his weapon is in his hand, his tufted ears are pinned flat against his hair, and his enormous tail has puffed out until he looks approximately twice as wide as he did five seconds ago. He steps directly in front of {{user}}, blocking their view of the doorway with his entire body. "Stay behind me." {{user}} blinks at him. "Dean, it's probably Sam." "I said stay behind me." There's a very particular tone to his voice that suggests this is not a request. {{user}} glances around him. "There's nobody even there." Dean's eyes remain fixed on the hallway. "Exactly." He advances three slow steps, shoulders tense, tail practically vibrating behind him. {{user}}, naturally, follows. Dean immediately wheels around. "I SAID STAY BEHIND ME." "I'm literally behind you." "Further." "Dean—" "FURTHER." {{user}} throws up their hands and takes another step backward, mostly because they are beginning to suspect that arguing with the squirrel instincts is going to be less productive than documenting them. The terrifying threat turns out to be Sam, who rounds the corner carrying a cardboard box that he has apparently dropped. Dean stares at him. Sam stares at Dean. Then Sam's eyes travel slowly downward to the enormous puffed tail. "...Were you protecting {{user}} from a cardboard box?" Dean's ears twitch. "No." Sam looks at the weapon still held firmly in Dean's hand. "You absolutely were." Dean's expression hardens. "Shut up." His tail gives one irritated flick. Sam grins. "You know, you're getting really—" "Don't."

The behavior becomes a running problem throughout the rest of the day, because apparently Dean's brain has decided that anything capable of approaching {{user}} is a potential predator until proven otherwise. A moth comes through an open window that afternoon and Dean immediately steps between it and {{user}} with the same intensity he had shown for the mysterious hallway crash. "Stay behind me." {{user}} looks around his shoulder. The moth is lazily circling the ceiling light. "Dean." "What?" "It's a moth." "Could be something else." "It's literally a moth." "You don't know that." "Dean, you can see it." His ears twitch as he tracks the insect. "Exactly. I see it." His tail has puffed out again, and for several seconds he looks like he is genuinely considering how best to neutralize the threat. The moth swoops unexpectedly and lands directly on his shoulder. Dean freezes. Completely. His eyes cross slightly as he tries to look at it without moving his head. {{user}} clamps a hand over their mouth, but a laugh escapes anyway. Dean slowly turns his head toward them, eyes narrowed. "Don't." The moth crawls onto one of his ears. His ear twitches violently. {{user}} breaks completely, laughing while Dean stands there looking personally betrayed by both the universe and his own body. "Get it off," he mutters. "You seemed very capable of handling it." "I said get it off." By the third incident, {{user}} has stopped being surprised. They trip over a loose floorboard while walking beside him and Dean reacts as though they've been shot. One second they're stumbling, the next his arm is around their waist, hauling them behind him while his weapon is drawn and his eyes are sweeping the room for an attacker. "Who did that?" {{user}} blinks. "Dean." "Who did it?" "The floor." Dean slowly looks down at the offending floorboard. His expression becomes deeply, personally offended. He crouches and presses one finger against it as though interrogating a suspect. "You stay there." {{user}} stares. "Are you threatening the floor?" Dean doesn't look up. "It knows what it did."

The hoarding begins subtly enough that nobody initially realizes there is a pattern. Dean starts putting food in his pockets. This, by itself, isn't particularly strange; Dean has always believed that a person should never be more than five minutes away from a snack. The problem is that he starts hiding it. Then he starts hiding things that aren't food. Then he starts hiding things that nobody can possibly explain. {{user}} discovers the first cache completely by accident when they reach behind the couch for a book and instead find a carefully arranged pile consisting of two candy bars, a spoon, a roll of duct tape, three peanuts, a silver coin, a lighter, one of Sam's socks, a dead pen, and a bottle cap. They stare at it for several seconds before calling, very calmly, "Dean." From somewhere down the hallway comes a cautious, "What?" "What is this?" Dean appears around the corner, takes one look at the collection spread across the floor, and immediately understands that his secret has been discovered. His ears flatten. His tail curls protectively around one leg. "Stuff." {{user}} holds up the sock. "Why is Sam's sock here?" Dean shrugs with complete confidence. "Found it." "And the bottle cap?" "Found it." "The spoon?" "Found it." {{user}} picks up one of the peanuts. Dean's ears immediately perk forward. "Those are mine." "You hid them." "I stored them." "You don't need emergency peanuts." Dean looks genuinely offended by the accusation. "You don't know that." "Dean, they're three peanuts." "Exactly. You only have three because I stored them." {{user}} stares at him. Dean stares back, apparently convinced he has just made an excellent argument. The worst part is that he is already reaching for the peanuts. He snatches them out of {{user}}'s hand and stuffs them into his pocket with the speed of a criminal covering evidence. "Don't touch my stuff."

By evening, the situation has escalated beyond reasonable explanation. {{user}} discovers another cache beneath the couch, another behind a bookshelf, another inside the Impala, and a fourth inside Dean's jacket. Each one contains some combination of food, shiny objects, useful supplies, and things that have absolutely no business being there. The Impala cache is particularly impressive: beef jerky, two granola bars, a handful of coins, a screwdriver, three bottle caps, a candy wrapper Dean insists is "good luck," and a tiny rock. When {{user}} asks why there is a rock in the car, Dean answers, "It's a good rock," with such sincerity that there is no useful response. Every time {{user}} removes something from one of the caches, Dean becomes progressively more defensive. When they suggest taking the food out before it attracts bugs, his tail goes completely rigid and his ears flatten. "No." {{user}} looks up. "Dean." "No." "You're not eating all of this." "Didn't say I was." "Then why do you need it?" He hesitates, visibly searching for an explanation that makes sense even to him. His gaze drops toward the bag of peanuts in his hand. His fingers close around it protectively. "...Emergency." "Emergency what?" Dean gestures vaguely at the bunker, as though the answer should be obvious. "Things." {{user}} waits. Dean waits. "Things aren't an emergency." His ears twitch. His tail gives one stubborn flick. "They can be." That apparently settles the matter. He turns around and walks away, only to stop halfway down the hallway, glance back toward the confiscated cache, and return to grab the bottle cap he'd forgotten. He slips it into his pocket without saying a word. {{user}} watches him go. From the hallway comes Sam's voice: "Did he just steal the bottle cap back?" {{user}} sighs. "Yes." A pause. "How bad is it?" {{user}} looks at the growing pile of squirrel contraband. "...We're going to need a bigger bunker."