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Dean was used to being mistaken for a boy. He begged John to buzz his hair every summer, and John laughed and did it. He called Dean a tomboy, and my little soldier, and let Dean pick out his jeans from the boys’ section at Goodwill.
“They’re sturdier anyway,” he said. “Good for hunting.”
He bought Sammy pink shirts and sometimes little dresses. When Sammy asked to get his hair cut just like Dean, John scooped him up in his arms and said,
“But your hair is so pretty. Don’t you want to be pretty?”
***
Dean liked proving everybody wrong. He liked it when the older boys at whatever middle school he was attending for a couple weeks started picking on him, calling him a dyke, so he could tell them to meet him outside and then kick their asses. John never got mad at him for fighting. If Dean said they deserved it, John believed him. Besides, it was practice for the much bigger, scarier things Dean had to fight.
Sammy never had trouble in school. He made potions at recess with his friends, traded brightly colored scrunchies that he begged John to buy him at the grocery store, and he always got good grades, even though Dean sucked at helping him with his homework.
“It’s a good thing you’re so tough,” John said to Dean one night, five beers in, when Sammy was already in bed and Dean was cleaning up the kitchenette. “Someone’s gotta look out for Sammy.”
Dean already knew that, but it made his heart swell with pride. Just cause he wasn’t a boy didn’t mean he couldn’t be everything a boy was supposed to be.
***
Like so many other things, Dean learned about trans people from TV. It was always women, and Dean was always laughing right along with everyone else, because she was always the butt of the joke. He couldn’t have imagined something more different from how he saw himself.
At least, until he met Frank. Dean was seventeen, hunting on his own, and a spirit, a real bad one, almost got the better of him. He was bleeding woozily in an abandoned lot when someone came running and threw a whole bag of salt at the damn thing’s head. The ghost turned away from Dean, and Dean began to crawl towards the lock of hair that he needed to burn. The ghost threw the stranger into a dumpster, then went up in flames.
They both helped each other to their feet and made their introductions. Frank didn’t say shit about the fact that Dean was a girl, or too young to be doing this on his own. He just put an arm around Dean’s shoulder and helped him back to a beat up truck and pulled a bottle of whiskey out from under the seat. They each took a hefty swig and began patching themselves up. When Frank took off his shirt to deal with a nasty gash on his side, Dean saw twin scars on his chest. They were too neat to be normal hunting scars. Maybe it was from some kind of ritual.
When Dean asked, Frank eyed him warily. But something must have convinced him that Dean was safe, because he started to talk. He told Dean where the scars came from, and how he came to be the person he was.
Dean said nothing. He felt a little bit like he was underwater, his thoughts too far away to catch. He couldn’t get past Frank’s beard, the gravel in his voice. It wasn’t possible. That wasn’t how things worked— you didn’t get to just become a man.
It became a guilty obsession. Hardly a day went by he didn’t think about it. It was a pointless, selfish thing, like the times he wished he didn’t always have to be thinking about Sammy, or the times he wished John had died instead of Mary. (He always hated himself for days afterward when he thought those things).
But when he closed his eyes and imagined his body different, it soothed the raging turmoil inside him. If he could wish or hope or even pray it into being, he would. It was just the idea of having to make it happen in reality— messy and visible and terrifying— that was impossible.
***
It was when Sammy was off at college, when John and Dean started hunting separately more and more, that Dean started to slip from imagining to making it real.
He introduced himself as Dean to the families of victims, people he would never see again, people who didn’t matter. It was still his grandmother’s name, just...his own.
He’d always worn flannels like his dad, but he started adding more layers. He liked the way they hid him.
And he started putting money aside. It was easier now that he didn’t have to worry about feeding Sammy. A few dollars here, a couple good nights of pool there. He still turned enough over to John to keep him from getting suspicious, but he hustled extra hard and there was enough to stash away with his socks, to start storing in an empty ammo box in Baby’s trunk.
***
John was gone. Dean knew in his bones that it was bad, and here he was, sitting in his car outside of Sammy’s building, gathering his courage. Sammy hadn’t seen him in a while. He hadn’t heard Dean’s new voice, just the tiniest bit deeper now. Dean was only a couple weeks on testosterone and he hadn’t told a damn soul. It was out of his hands now. When he found John, John would know. He wanted more than anything to find him, and he had never been more afraid of anything.
Then he snuck inside and found Sammy shacked up with a girl . A pretty one. Dean had made sense of his own fondness for the ladies when he realized he was supposed to be a man. All the guilt gone, just like that. (The stuff with guys before— that was just him trying to be normal. He was never speaking of that again).
But Sammy? Sammy who was still pretty, even though he was apparently dressing different now, a little less girly, a little...weird. John would be able to make sense of Dean as a man. He might not even be surprised by it. But Sammy as a lesbian was a different story. This was not going to be okay.
“Don’t say a word,” Sammy said. And then— “You look different.”
Their explanations were short and sweet. They didn’t meet each other’s eyes as they confided their secrets. At the same time, in almost the same voice, they said,
“Don’t tell Dad.”
And then they caught each other’s eyes and laughed.
***
In the chaos of what came next, it was all but forgotten. Jess was gone. There was a demon to hunt. How could it matter who was a man and who liked girls when the rest of their lives were falling to pieces? By the time they finally found John, things were so dire he barely commented on the stubble growing on Dean’s chin or the new depths of his voice— part hormones, part constant practice.
And then John was gone, and his last words haunted Dean. When John called Sammy dangerous, a monster, did he just mean his weird psychic powers? Or did he know about the rest of it?
***
"Dean,” Sammy said, in a motel room like a thousand other motel rooms, after a salt-and-burn that went so well Dean was still riding the high of it. “You know how you’re— a man?”
Dean grunted, but he didn’t look up from cleaning his gun. He didn’t like to talk about this, and most of the time, Sammy didn’t either.
“What would you say if—” Sammy breathed. “What if I was too?”
Dean laughed. “Come on, Sammy. You?”
“I know I’m not like you. But I always wanted— I feel like—” He stopped. “Nevermind.”
“I get you’re like, a lesbo or whatever. It’s cool. You don’t have to be a guy, too.”
Sammy was quiet for a minute. “I know,” he said. “Just forget it.”
Dean was happy to.
Except it didn’t go away. Dean started to notice how Sam was dressing these days: more and more flannel, less and less pink. He didn’t buzz his hair, but he cut it short and floppy around his ears. It pissed Dean off a little, because it was his thing, and it made him feel a little soft, because hadn’t Sammy always wanted to be just like him?
***
Dean dragged himself out of his own grave, his blood singing with life, life, life. The first thing he did when he found a mirror was drag up his shirt, a weird suspicion lodged in the back of his mind…
But nothing was different. There were the scars from the surgery he’d finally gotten off a stolen credit card. He was healed of every scar but those, and a bright welt of a handprint on his shoulder.
When he met the creature who pulled him out of hell, when he plunged a knife into his chest, he was burning up with rage and shame. But when he finally asked the question, it came out petulant and sad.
“Why didn’t you make me whole? If you healed everything else, why didn’t you make me right?”
The angel tilted his head in otherworldly confusion.
“I saw nothing flawed in you,” he said.
***
The world was ending, and it was all Sammy’s fault. The world was ending because of Sammy’s demon girlfriend, because of Sammy’s demon blood, because of Sammy’s arrogance. Dean could barely look at him.
“I know you hate me,” Sammy said at the picnic table. Dean stared off at the mountains to avoid looking at him. “So maybe this is the best time to tell you, cause you can’t hate me any more than you already do. I wasn’t lying when I said I was a man. I wasn’t confused. I know you think you’ve got some kind of monopoly on being trans—”
Dean flinched at the word.
“ — but I can’t just be what you want me to be. I have to live my own life. Maybe it’s better if we went our separate ways for a while.”
Dean, his head ringing, his chest cleaving in two, even as the numbness settled in, nodded once and said,
“Maybe that’s a good idea.”
Sammy had to be wrong. Sammy had to be confused, because if he wasn’t, then none of it made sense. Dean was the exception. He was a man because he had always been meant to be one. It was a mix-up in heaven. God made a mistake, and Dean fixed it.
If someone like Sammy could be a man, Dean’s logic crumbled. And then he was just another sad fuck deluding himself. Then he was just broken.
***
Piecing things back together wasn’t easy. It would be a long time before Dean could look at his little brother without feeling terror and betrayal and shame and all the other shit he was always trying so hard to avoid.
But something started to emerge in Sammy, a side of him Dean hadn’t seen before. He stopped walking around with his shoulders up by his ears. He started laughing louder, more easily. Even when things were just about as dire as they could get, Sammy was more alive. And how could Dean resent him for that?
They found some kind of equilibrium. A way of getting by. And they fought things and they fought each other and they built family and watched it fall apart and tore it apart themselves. Dean grew into his body, into his grizzled self, and he started to see his father in the mirror and he was fiercely proud, and he hated it. The idea of Sammy being anything other than a man became strange, then unthinkable.
They still mocked each other now and then, a joke like the kind most hunters tossed around easily, any time the other slipped and acted too feminine. Just jokes, just ribbing, but there was a bite to it. It always made Cas look weirdly sad, and Dean didn’t love that. He really didn’t like making Cas sad.
Every now and then, a weird joy descended on Dean. When he caught sight of himself from a certain angle in the mirror. When someone gripped his shoulder and shook his hand, the way his dad always used to shake other men’s hands. Sometimes for no reason at all. It was like diving into sweetly cold water on a sweltering day. Like waking up early when you have a good day ahead. Like a first kiss.
If Dean ever thought about thanking God for anything, it was for that special, secret kind of joy. Not everyone got to have that, he knew.
(Years later, he would learn there was no point in thanking God for anything. The only one he had to thank was himself).
***
It took the sudden descent of peace for all the careful rules to start falling apart.
I love you, Dean, Cas said, and then he died.
And Dean had known Cas loved him, had held it carefully at arm’s length for so long because he was still afraid that his manhood could be snatched away from him, because he was still afraid it was something he had to earn.
But now Cas was gone, and none of that mattered anymore. How had he ever thought it mattered?
He and Sam ripped him from the Empty together, and Dean fell to his knees beside Cas on the floor of the bunker and held up his slumping body and kissed his forehead, his cheeks, his ears, and gripped him tight, and held him. Something broke open inside him. He was so, so tired of being afraid. He was so tired of letting everyone else tell him who he was.
***
Dean was scrambling eggs when Sam came into the kitchen, holding something in his hand with a funny look on his face.
“Look what I found,” he said.
Dean looked, and he burst out laughing. It was a faded purple scrunchy.
“Dude, I remember those things. You were obsessed.”
Sam’s lips quirked. “You couldn’t be cool in third grade without them.”
Dean looked at Sam, at the delicate way he held the scrunchie, and for the first time in a long time he let himself remember the kid Sam used to be. Funny and bright and clever as fuck. He used to come home from school chattering on and on about this friend and that friend, whatever eight-year-old drama had happened that day. And he realized that kid was still here, just bigger and, Dean hoped, happier. In some ways, anyway.
“Put it on,” he said, turning back to his eggs. “You’re always complaining about your hair getting in your eyes. If you’re not gonna cut it, tie it up.”
Behind him, Sam was quiet for a moment.
“You know what,” he said. “Maybe I will.”
Dean took the eggs off the burner and served up three plates; he was going to go bang on the bedroom door in a minute if Cas didn’t get his ass out of bed. When he turned around he found Sam sitting at the table with his laptop open, frowning at the screen, half his hair bunched up on top of his head in the purple scrunchie.
“Looking good, Sammy,” he said, dropping the plate in front of him.
Sam smiled at him, a quick little thing. “You too, man,” he said, nodding at the bracelets on Dean’s wrist. There were the leather ones he’d always had, the ones he’d deemed masculine enough, and two new ones, both of them from the crafting days they had whenever Jack stopped by for a visit. One was white and pink and blue, the other purple and blue and pink.
“Hell yeah,” Dean said. He still hadn’t worn the bracelets out in public, but he kept them on almost all the time when he was in the bunker. Every time he caught sight of his wrist, he felt a little tremor of something right on the cliff’s edge between excitement and fear.
As it turned out, getting old wasn’t the worst thing in the world. Sure Dean’s knees gave him shit every time he stood up, and his back was rapidly becoming his worst enemy. But there was so much less to be afraid of when you were closer to fifty than twenty. When you’d survived just about everything the world could throw at you, all that was left was bugging the crap out of the people you loved, taking your car out for long drives on the weekend, and settling into your skin, slowly but surely making a home there.
“Cas!” Dean shouted. “If you don’t get your angel ass in here I’m dumping the rest of the coffee.”
Moments later, he heard the bedroom door open and slam shut. He grinned. Yup, he was glad he’d made it here. Glad for whatever precious time he had left.