10It was the peanut butter and banana sandwich that sealed the deal.
Dean had never questioned whether Lisa had lied to him about Ben.
He had noticed similarities. Ben liked Dean's music, even though Lisa's tastes ran more toward old school hip hop. Ben liked cheeseburgers with extra onions, while Lisa rarely ate red meat. Ben played baseball, just like Dean had Before The Fire, like John had as a child.
However, Dean had dismissed all of those as coincidence. Lots of kids liked cheeseburgers. And baseball. Subjecting an impressionable child to Rapper's Delight probably counted as child abuse in some states.
But five weeks, five days, and four hours after Sam jumped into Hell, Dean walked into the kitchen to find Ben making a peanut butter and banana sandwich.
Sam's favorite sandwich.
"What?" Ben asked. "I've always liked these. Mom thinks it's weird too."
That was the moment Dean started making notes on Ben's similarities to the Winchesters.
Working the kid like a case, the voice in the back of his head whispered.
Ben slept on his back with his left arm over his head, which was John Winchester's favorite sleeping position.
Ben made straight A's in school, which Sam had done and Dean probably could have done if he had bothered to turn in his homework half the time.
Ben walked like a Winchester.
Ben shared Dean's sense of humor and fascination with Godzilla movies.
Ben had freckles like Dean. No one in Lisa's family had freckles.
All the little things, taken alone and out of context, were just coincidences and similarities.
Put together, though, they were starting to make Dean wonder if Lisa had lied about Ben's paternity.
Seeing as how he had promised Sam that he would come here and try to make things work with Lisa and Ben, he really didn't want to upset her by asking if she had lied. Not to mention the fact that if she kicked him out, his only alternative was to go to Bobby's, and that wound was too fresh.
He decided to be subtle about it, waiting until Ben brought home another straight A report card and the three of them had gone out for ice cream to celebrate.
That night, as they were getting ready for bed, he said "Ben is the most amazing kid. I couldn't be more proud of him if he was mine."
Lisa had answered "I really wish he was yours."
He gave her a few days to see if she would say anything further, but she hadn't.
After a few more days, he called Bobby, who cautioned about opening Pandora's box and asked Dean if the answer would really make a difference.
Dean thought about it. He really did, for almost two weeks.
The conclusion he finally reached was that he would still love Ben either way. He certainly wasn't going to leave the kid, because Dean knew what it was like growing up with only one parent, and Ben certainly didn't have anyone else stepping up to be his dad.
But there was a part of him that just needed to know whether he was the last Winchester.
So he called the number he found online, and ordered a DNA test kit to be sent to the post office box he rented just for this purpose.
He swabbed the inside of his own cheek, and Ben's one night while the boy was asleep (with his mouth open, just like Sam). He ended up using some hair from Lisa's brush when he couldn't think of a good reason to give her as to why he needed a sample of her DNA.
Two weeks later an envelope arrived bearing the return address of the lab.
Dean sat in his truck for half an hour staring at it, wondering whether he really did want to know.
He finally slit the envelope open with his pocket knife and fished out a chart and the short letter explaining the results.
He had to read them three times before he grasped the meaning of the words.
When they finally sank in, he couldn't breathe for a moment.
Lisa wasn't lying when she said she had a type - leather jacket, couple of scars, no forwarding address.
Dean wasn't Ben's father.
Dean wasn't the last Winchester.
Alleged father is excluded as the biological father of the child.
Lab note: The alleged father and the child share 11 of 16 genetic markers. The five unshared markers establish conclusively that the alleged father can not be the biological father of the child. However, the high number of shared markers indicate that the alleged father and the child have a close familial relationship, most likely half siblings through the same father.
