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Lisa Braeden remembers very clearly the first time she saw Dean Winchester.
He was doing the kind of drinking you do in celebration; of a job well done. He also looked like he'd either just come from a fight, or was looking for one.
Or both.
And despite the fact that he was clearly trouble of the He-Might-As-Well-Have-It-Written-On-His-Forehead-In-Neon-Paint variety, when he smiles at her in a way that paradoxically manages to be both suggestive and boyish, Lisa's first thought is:
Why the hell not?
That same thought is, incidentally, the one that slips into her mind years later every time she looks out the window to see Dean and Ben throwing the frisbee in the front yard.
(Dean's terrible at it, and gets sulky and defensive any time that point is brought up. He prefers getting out the baseball and mitts to play catch, but Lisa suspects Ben requests frisbee specifically to see Dean flustered and determined.)
Or when Dean pulls Ben from his homework to show him something under the hood of the truck, and Ben ends up turning in assignments with smears of grease on them.
(He'd asked Dean to help him with homework before, but conventional schooling was not exactly Dean's forte. He stuck with teaching Ben what he referred to as 'practical knowledge'.)
Or even when Dean is yelling down the hall at Ben about something or other, and Ben is playing the part of the passive-aggressive child by slamming his door shut after delivering a last parting shot of his own.
(It's a terrible thing, but sometimes Lisa is glad that there's someone else to argue with Ben when he's being unreasonable. And Dean certainly knows how to stand his ground.)
In short, any time they look more like father and son than either of them are likely aware, she can't help it.
Why the hell not?
And though she might have told one or both of them at one point, Lisa now knows exactly why not.
Because she knows what happens to Winchester men.
To Dean's father, and most recently to Sam.
(He won't talk about what happened to Sam, but knowing that he has faced unimaginable nightmares leaves a lot of room for imagination when he wakes, screaming for his brother as if his heart is being torn in two.)
And someday -- though she tries her best to ignore it -- to Dean.
But just maybe, if Ben grows up a Braeden, he will escape that.
Maybe, if he doesn't know what fate has done to every other man who carried the name that should be his, he will live a normal life.
Maybe, if he is fatherless despite living with both of his parents, Ben will never know the touch of whatever specter hangs over the men who are branded as Winchesters.
Dean likes to tell Ben that he can't lie to him, and Lisa believes it. A man who has lived his life in deceit knows the ring of truth when he hears it.
And yet, she told him she took a test, and that Ben was and is not his child. By all appearances, he seemed to accept that.
But she wonders.
(It isn't only Lisa, who knows what happens to Winchester men.)