Work Text:
Dean Winchester was not posturing.
The car, the classic rock, the leather jacket, the booze, the girls. He liked them all. Dean did enjoy Pink Floyd, and Led Zeppelin, and Kansas. He could make the motor of the impala run like a dream and could drive for hours. Layers and layers of flannel and leather were warm and comforting. Even the girls were okay most of the time. The girls, and the guys too. (Just because you are a man, doesn't mean you have to be a hetero one) It was sometimes hard to explain how you were a man when the evidence of your partner's eyes and hands were telling them otherwise. So he stopped sleeping with people who didn’t see him.
Dean didn't want to change much about this body. It was a good body, a strong body. And whatever it looked like would not make Dean any less of a man. No, there were very few things he wished to change, but he allowed himself to change things that he did.
When he was younger he bought a bit of stretchy cloth and made himself something to push down his bust . It was heavy, and made him sweat, and he had to wash it all the time, but it worked well enough. With adjustment it looked like pecs instead of breasts. Dean was tall, not the way Sammy was tall, but wearing boots with a bit heel he felt fine. The kind of work boots hunters wore. Dean was a man and always had been. This body would do just fine.
So no, the clothes were not an act. The comfortable flowing male clothes with their soft double napped cotton, tailored to make his waist look narrowed and masculine, and rows of buttons on the right side weren't a costume. Nothing was as comfortable as sleeping in boxers and socks. Dirty boots, dirty jeans, and short dirty fingernails. And the hair. The hair was the best part.
Long natural hair everywhere but his head. One of the greatest feelings in the world was having someone with their fist in his hair, taking the clippers to the back of his head until it's short, and prickly, and his neck is cool. His jaw is square enough, chin slightly cleft, his hair immaculately styled. Yet he loved his green doe eyes, thick lashes, and plush lips. Sam sometimes called it his 'male model look'. Dean had to admit it was pretty funny, and knew he could make his brother laugh just by pulling a quick face. A good face.
Sam seemed to understand, and never had a problem calling Dean his brother even when everyone else was still wondering where John Winchester hid that bow legged girl that was always stuffed into itchy dresses. Everything had been well and good until Sam was born. John let Dean run wild and do all the things boys did. Taught him to fish, and play catch, and win in a fight. Then Sammy came along and John had a real son to teach things to. Dean was left to learn how to become a lady. The word felt almost like poison. Lady was the opposite of all Dean's favorite things. Ladies didn't belch, or play stick-ball, or sit with their legs spread like a boy. They demurely crossed their legs at the ankle.
After Mary died it was even more important to John that Dean be feminine, as if he were hanging on to Mary that way. That lasted until Dean was eight and took a pair of scissors and cut off the braid that had been a constant and heavy reminder of his imposed femininity. John found it curled up in the hotel bathroom trash bin one morning like a dead snake. Dean: 1 John Winchester: 0
Things went a little better after that. Dean dressed himself in whatever clothes he wanted, wore his hair short, and was chided less for being unladylike. Dean had once been daddy's little princess. Had been beautiful, and good, and all the things girls should be. But Dean was not those things, and he pushed them off on her, on the person Dean had never been. That was obvious from his answer to the question adults always asked children. What do you want to be when you grow up? Dean's answer had always been the same. I want to be a boy. Eventually John let him.
Dean thought uncle Bobby may have had something to do with it. Convinced John that it wasn't hurting anyone, Dean was just being a kid. John was the only one surprised when he didn't grow out of it. Not to say Dean and John Winchester butted heads often. Dean did whatever John asked, protected his brother, learned to hunt, gave up everything for this life. Eventually John was gone. Good riddance to parental rubbish.
With him went any doubts about what Dean could want. Pay for hormones with a hustle. Commit a little fraud to get surgery. Wear the scars like a badge of honor and frame them with tattoos proclaiming that you are free. Free to choose and free to be.
Then there was Cas. Who told Dean in no uncertain terms that he knew Dean's body as well as anyone could know a body. Who had known it intimately when the angel put it back together after hell. When he stitched it back together using a thread of grace, but left the scars. Angels don't have a gender, angels disregard sexual orientation. Vessels were gendered, but they didn't see much action. Cas made it easy to stop thinking about being a gendered body, and instead just think as a mind. Shone a holy light on all the bad things that hid there in the dark and banished them. Had caught Dean more than once without the binder, without Sam, without any other piece of protection. Had told him in his odd angel way that he loved him, body and mind.
He was the one who gripped him tight, and for a while Dean bore his sign burned into his arm. Later Cas had covered every inch of that good body with hands, and teeth, and tongue. And in his own way Dean was in love with Cas too. In love with this ethereal being who could know him so well. So Dean was a man, a brother, and in love with an angel. Dean Winchester was not posturing.
Well, maybe with the girls.