Chapter Text
Deleted from Chapter 1
The Impala continued her soaring race down the highway. Dean’s hands itched, wanting to be behind the wheel now that he’d actually gotten caffeine in him, but he figured he could make it ‘til they stopped for gas or food.
Sam’s brows were furrowed. Dean knew, in the way that he had a sixth sense for brotherly shenanigans, developed only after decades of living in each other’s back pocket, that it wasn’t just because he was concentrating on driving. Sure enough, within only a minute or so of him having made that observation, Sam cleared his throat pointedly.
“So,” Sam began, in a way that he probably assumed was casual but in reality was about as subtle as a brick to the face, “Cas, huh?”
Dean sent a dry look towards his brother from the corner of his eye. “What about him?”
“He, uh, he said he loves you?”
“I was there for that, but thank you, Sam, for informing me of that fact. Really putting that Stanford education to good use.” Despite his flippant tone, he was privately grateful for the fact that Sam still referred to Cas in the present tense. As long as his brother, ever the optimist, acted like Cas wasn’t gone for good, he’d be able to believe it too. At least for long enough to figure out how to make sure that he wasn’t gone for good.
Sam huffed. “I just – I figured you’d be freaking out about it, or something. I’m surprised you’re this calm about it, honestly.”
Dean rolled his eyes and diverted his gaze back towards the road. “How about you ask me the question you actually wanna ask me, huh?”
Sam didn’t respond right away. Silence hung between them, not tense, but not entirely comfortable either. Dean chewed at his lip; he’d never been the most patient person, but he fought down the urge to discard the conversation as a whole and move onto something less vulnerable. He’d made his decision earlier, though. No more secrets, no more lying, no more leaving things unsaid.
“Are you… is Cas…” Sam stumbled over his words. “Was that the first time that you –”
“You askin’ me if I’ve ever been with a dude before, Sammy?”
“Christ, Dean! I was trying to be a little tactful about it,” Sam said reproachfully. Dean rolled his eyes.
“Yeah, and you were also struggling to form a sentence like you’re Porky fucking Pig. Now answer the damn question.”
From the corner of his eye, Dean saw Sam hem and haw for a moment before rolling his own eyes.
“Yeah, alright, fine, you jerk. Is this the first time you’ve been interested in another guy?”
“Who said anything about interested, bitch?” Okay, so maybe the urge to put up some snarky mask of bullshit when the conversation hit too close to home wasn’t completely gone. Sam shot him a bitchface, which was particularly impressive since it was from the barest sliver of the corner of his eye, and he only looked away from the road for a split second.
“Give me some credit, Dean.”
Dean snorted and rolled his eyes again. When he looked back at Sam, his brother’s head was turned slightly away from the road and towards him, and an expression of carefully fake concern was plastered across his face.
“Do you have something you want to tell me, Dean?” Sam asked, voice dripping with false saccharine.
“You are such a dick,” Dean groaned. He dropped his head back on the top of the bench seat and covered his face with his hands, cheeks burning.
“No one’s gonna judge you here – this is a safe space.”
“I’m gonna fucking beat your stupid face in, Sammy.”
Sam laughed, self-satisfied and weightless like he always did when he scored a hit in their prank wars. Dean slowly dragged his hands down his face. He let them linger for a moment over his mouth, then dropped them to reveal his own stupid grin.
“Yeah, yeah, alright, already.” He nudged Sam on the shoulder to get him to shut up and stop giggling like a teenager. “I’m bi, okay? I’m bi.” His heart hammered against his shirt at actually saying those words out loud to another person, but the grin didn’t fall from his face. “Now quit your snickering, you fuckin’ quack.”
That, of course, only sent Sam into a fresh round of hysterics. In between his own enjoyment of the situation, his mild indignation at Sam gently mocking him, and the sound of his pulse in his ears, Dean was able to spare a tiny flicker of emotion to be amazed that Sam managed to stay on the road through his giggling.
“Th-thank you for trusting me with this moment,” Sam wheezed out between giggles. The fucker had tears streaming down his face he was laughing so hard.
“Y’know how I said all that nice stuff about you and how I love you and shit? I take it all back. Fuck you.”
“I’m so proud of you, Dean.” Sam wasn’t giggling like a lunatic anymore, but his voice was still high-pitched and wobbly from his slowly-diminishing mirth.
“I’m disowning you.”
Another little hysterical chuckle slipped out of Sam, but other than that he seemed to have gotten himself under control.
“I am proud of you, though.” Sam said.
“Yeah, yeah, you’ve made your point, bitch.” Dean jostled Sam’s shoulder again. Sam grabbed his wrist before he could pull it away.
“I mean it, jerk – I know it’s not easy to say that after not saying it for so long.”
Dean was about to fire back with another snarky quip, but something about the way Sam made that statement drew him up short. He didn’t just say that with compassion, as he always did. He said it with commiseration. He cast a sidelong glance at Sam.
“You know, huh?”
If he hadn’t been about a foot and a half away from Sam, and if he didn’t know him as well as he did, Dean might’ve missed the way his brother tensed up minutely, just for a split second. Just as quickly as it began, it passed, as Sam shook his head with a self-conscious little huff of laughter.
“I’m, uh. I’m pansexual and demisexual.”
Dean blinked owlishly. “I… don’t know what either of those mean.”
Sam chuckled. “Pansexuality is kind of like bisexuality – they’re both about being attracted to more than one gender. The main difference is that bisexuality is, like, attraction to your own gender and at least one other, while pansexuality… um, well, a lot of people define it differently, but basically, I don’t really feel like gender makes a difference in who I’m interested in? Like, I don’t want to say that gender’s not important, because I’m sure it’s important to them, but it doesn’t really have any weight in whether or not I’m interested.”
Dean bit back the urge to make some tasteless joke about gender studies class; hell, he’d never asked Sam what sort of electives he’d taken when he was at Stanford. For all he knew, he had taken a gender studies class or two. Instead, he hummed to show he was listening.
“And… what was it? Demisexual?”
“Yeah.” Sam’s brows furrowed, just a bit, and Dean knew he was thinking about what to say and how to phrase it. “Y’know how, when we’d go to bars and diners and stuff, and you’d be checking out the waitresses or bartenders, like, instantly? And you’d make comments about how you hoped they were single, or how hot they were, or whatever?”
Dean felt his face grow hot. For whatever reason, thinking about all of his past sexual encounters felt mildly embarrassing. Maybe it was just the fact that he was no longer young and stupid – or maybe it was the fact that those experiences felt more like awkward attempts at something, like someone trying to cook or make art or do something that they weren’t good at yet, before eventually getting it right. Before they found what they had been looking for. Dean cleared his throat.
“Uh. Yeah. What about it?” His voice came out a little more accusatory than intended. Thankfully, Sam didn’t comment on it, but he did give him a weird look for it, which. Y’know. Fair.
“It, uh, doesn’t really work that way for me.” Now Sam was the one who was awkwardly clearing his throat. Dean took solace in the fact that at least this conversation wasn’t easy for him, either. “I mean, I might think they’re pretty, or handsome. But thinking about hooking up with them? I have to get to know them first. Demisexual means that you don’t experience sexual attraction until after a strong emotional connection has been formed.” He said the last part like he was quoting it from somewhere. Maybe a textbook or something.
“Huh.” Honestly, Dean wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that. He felt like it’d be weird to tell him he was proud of him, since he’d just gone on a whole tirade about it about half an hour earlier, and also because it seemed like Sam didn’t have the same fuckload of hang-ups about his sexuality that Dean did.
The conversation naturally died down from there. Dean and Sam sat quietly as they drove, the soft sounds of music drifting from Baby’s speakers the only sound around them. They travelled for another ten minutes before Dean thought of something else to ask. He shuffled in his seat to turn partially towards Sam.
“So when did you figure all –” he waved a hand around vaguely – “that out?” Sam glanced over at him.
“What, my sexuality?”
“Yeah.”
Sam looked back at the road. “When I was at Stanford. Well, I didn’t figure out the demisexual part until later, but – yeah, Stanford.”
“Wow,” Dean deadpanned. “You go off to some liberal college in California and you come back fuckin’ queer.” Sam chuckled drily.
“Yeah, I’m a goddamn statistic.” The smile slipped from his face as he went quiet. It was a moment or two before he spoke again. “D’you remember Brady? Or not him, I guess, but –”
“The demon possessing him? He was working for one of the Horsemen, right?” Dean wracked his brain for the memory – after so many apocalypses (apocali?) it was hard to remember what happened when, and who’d made deals with whom, and so forth. “Pestilence, right?”
“Yeah.” Sam paused again. “Brady was my roommate in freshman year, and the first half of sophomore year. I… I don’t know that I’d say he was my boyfriend – I don’t think it was ever that serious – but he was the first guy I was ever with.”
Dean scrubbed a hand down his face. “Jesus. And then all the stuff with Pestilence and the demon?”
“I know.” Sam flashed him a tiny smile that was tight and bitter and gone in an instant. “Apparently he wasn’t the only person from my past that was secretly a demon.”
“Fucking hell.” Dean felt vaguely sick just thinking about how Chuck had been pulling the strings for both of their lives. To know that Satan himself had been finding people you cared about and replaced them with demons, so that you could be monitored and manipulated through your entire life? Dean was once again blown away by how strong Sam was, and how good. He wasn’t sure he’d have been able to handle that revelation nearly as well.
“What about you?” Dean startled and glanced over as Sam’s voice cut through his ruminating. “When did you figure it out?”
Dean huffed a single amused breath. “Right around the same time, actually. I think I must have been… twenty-three? No, twenty-four. There was a hunt down in Texas that Dad and I worked. He called up a buddy of his to help out, and the guy brought his son with him too.”
Dean swallowed thickly around the lump in his throat. “Lee – Leo, but I called him Lee – was a couple years older than me. He was a good hunter, and we worked well together. We worked another couple’a hunts together after that, just the two of us. I think Dad was okay with it just because it was the first time that I was actually, like, interacting with people again, since you’d left.”
He faltered again, remembering that summer that he’d spent with Lee. It had been more than a couple of hunts – it’d been two whole months of just the two of them, working their way through the south and south-western states. He hadn’t realized until he saw him again at Swayze’s just how much he’d missed him.
“What happened?” Sam asked softly. He sounded tentative, as if he already knew the answer, or at least realized that it hadn’t ended well. A bitter smirk tugged at the corner of Dean’s mouth.
“Dad found out. Walked in on us makin’ out on some ratty old couch in the house we were squatting in.” He cleared his throat. “I ‘member he tore Lee a new one, but I don’t remember a word of it. Couldn’t hear much through my pulse poundin’ in my ears. I figured he’d do the same to me, or just try to beat it out of me, or something, but he just… never brought it up. Acted like it never happened. I didn’t wanna push my luck, so I pretty much only hit on chicks from then on out, at least while he was around.”
Sam nodded, but said nothing. Dean was kind of glad that he didn’t; he wasn’t sure what else he could say about the whole situation, and between his sobbing session earlier about Cas and awkwardly baring his soul now, he certainly didn’t want to throw in a conversation about their father as the angst-and-alcohol-soaked cherry on top of it all.
“So, uh,” Sam awkwardly broke the silence, “was Cas the first guy since then, or…?” He trailed off with a questioning look at Dean.
“That’s, uh, kinda hard to say? Timeline-wise, that is.” Dean rubbed the back of his neck and shifted in his seat, trying to get comfortable in a conversation that was anything but. “He’s not the only other guy since then, is the easy answer.” He sighed and dropped his hand. “I think I figured it out a while back, but I never did anything about it. Was too scared I’d fuck it up, or that he wouldn’t feel the same way, or whatever. Of course, I had to have the most spectacularly terrible timing to realize how I felt about him.”
Sam’s brow furrowed again. “What do you mean?”
“Purgatory.” Dean let his head flop over on the seat to face Sam, and lifted one eyebrow meaningfully. He could practically see the wheels turning in Sam’s brain.
“Purgatory? Oh.” Then the penny dropped. Sam’s eyes widened as his brows shot up towards his hairline. “Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Benny?”
Dean ignored the little twinge in his heart at the name – not one of heartbreak, but one of guilt over how the situation turned out.
“Yeah.” He shook himself out of the memories. “What about you? Any guys since Brady?”
Dean didn’t think he’d expected any particular reaction from Sam, but he certainly hadn’t expected the very obvious discomfort his little brother immediately showed at the question. His shoulders tensed, his fingers tightened on the steering wheel, and his eyes darted around from side to side. Confused, Dean leaned forward slightly to get a better look at his face.
“Sammy?”
“I, uh, can’t really remember. So much has happened since then, y’know?”
Dean had known Sam for his entire life. He’d been around for the vast, vast majority of his significant milestones and life accomplishments. He knew him as well as he knew the back of his own hand, or maybe the Impala herself. He’d seen him experience just about every emotion that a human could.
None of that was necessary to tell he was lying out of his ass, because Sam was a shitty fucking liar.
“That bad, huh? Someone I know?”
That just made Sam tense up even more.
“Iiii don’t know what you’re talking about.” Except that he did, if the way his voice jumped up about an octave was any indication.
“Uh huh. Come on, dude, rip off the band-aid. Just spit it out.” Dean nudged Sam in the side with his elbow. “I promise not to judge you too much.”
Sam groaned, which turned into some mash of grumbled syllables partway through. Dean leaned in closer to him, a carefully constructed mask of perfect innocence on his face.
“What was that? I didn’t quite catch what you said.”
“Ughhhh.” Sam groaned again. “Fine.” He exhaled roughly. “Gabriel.”
Dean blinked.
“Gabriel. The archangel fucking Gabriel? The Trickster Gabriel?”
“In my defense, I didn’t know he was an archangel at the time?” Sam said weakly.
“What do you -! Wait, you mean that was before TV-Land?” Dean demanded. “You hooked up with the fucking Trickster, who had killed me hundreds of times?”
Sam snorted derisively. “You don’t even remember any of that. And what kind of asshole do you think I am? It was before the Mystery Spot, obviously.”
Dean blinked again. “All the way back in Springfield?!”
“What happened to not judging me?” Sam retorted.
“I said I wouldn’t judge you too much, bitch,” Dean shot back. “And that was before I knew how bad your taste is, Jesus Christ.”
“Shut the fuck up, jerk. Like yours is any better.” Sam punctuated his rebuttal with an elbow to Dean’s ribs. A pointy fucking elbow, fuck. Dean rubbed the ache out of his side.
“I wasn’t the one banging a demon for a whole fuckin’ year.” Sam snorted.
“Yeah, you don’t have a leg to stand on with that one anymore, not after –” Dean watched as Sam’s eyes lit up in sudden realization and felt his own stomach drop. “Holy shit, I was just kidding about yours and Crowley’s “summer of love”, but it was, wasn’t it?”
“Oh my god, shut the fuck uuuuup,” Dean groaned and dropped his head back against the top of the bench once more.
“No, fuck you, you never get to give me shit for Ruby ever again!”
“I’m returning you for in-store credit. I have the receipt.” Not much had survived the fire, but Dean did still have both of their original, real birth certificates.
Sam was right back to cackling like a jackass in the driver’s seat again. Try as he might, Dean couldn’t help the grin that cracked across his face. Before long, he was laughing right along with him, a giddy, bubbly feeling bursting behind his ribs. He flung an arm out loosely and smacked Sam.
“We’re stoppin’ when we get to Indianapolis. I’m hungry and I wanna drive again.”