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Dean Winchester doesn’t know who he is.
He knows who he’s been built up as, he knows the sentences that are followed by a crude laugh and laughter. He knows who he’s said he is, he knows who people think he is. The mirror doesn’t know who he is, and maybe, Dean Winchester is more the clothes, less the soul.
He stole his cheekbones from his father, his nose a poor excuse for even an amalgamation of his parents. His freckles faint, hidden under layers of sleeves, they are not him. Muscles ripple through his body, hardened through years of fighting, running, protecting, they aren’t him either. His hair is short, buzzed around his ears, slightly higher on the top, than the sides. Harder for enemies to grab, John Winchester would say. Dean Winchester isn’t his hair either. His eyes are green, alike to a grassy field, he never holds eye contact for long. His eyes aren’t Dean Winchester either.
It horrified him to think that maybe, Dean Winchester isn’t Dean Winchester either.
Cas seems to believe that freckles should be called angel kisses more often, soft lips pressed to the expanse of Dean Winchester’s skin every chance even a sliver of pale peeks out from the layers and layers of flannel. Maybe, Dean Winchester’s freckles darken over time, maybe they don’t. Cas kisses him anyway.
His hands are nothing but skin stretched across fractured bone, pulled taught, veins a peaceful patchwork underneath. He washes his hands with scalding water, the blood stays.
Maybe he doesn’t know who anyone else is either. He doesn’t know if they feel the same disgust as he does whenever he looks in the mirror, he doesn’t know if they run their hands through their hair, tugging until it hurts, thinking maybe, just maybe, if they pull hard enough, it’ll grow just a little longer.
He shaves whenever he gets more than stubble, uncomfortable at the sight of him with a beard. Sam Winchester had one, Dean Winchester will never let himself have one. If he skips out on changing the blade so it cuts his skin every time, well, no one has to know.
John Winchester says that crying is for girls, so Dean Winchester mans up and shoves it down.
He’s been Dean Winchester for forty odd years, he has to start liking it now.
He doesn’t, his soul seems to peel away from his skin when he’s Dean Winchester. Maybe Dean Winchester is just some poor skin suit he’s inhabiting, Jimmy Novak to his Castiel. His soul is nowhere near big enough to fit anywhere else.
Cas holds him like a gift, hands cupped around the agonizingly sculpted parts of his face he doesn’t like to have to ignore. Cas holds him like he’s worth the world, they have fought the apocalypse many times, maybe the world to Cas is just him. Dean Winchester’s world is muddied and addled with atrocities. Cas is the only thing that isn’t shrouded by darkness.
Dean Winchester’s voice rasps as he talks, bruised and aching from the years he’s spent screaming. His vocal cords are past broken, he talks anyway, even as his voice rumbles lower than he wants it to.
Dean Winchester drinks alcohol like it’s cough syrup, the ale to all his ills. It blurs the world long enough, the mirrors don’t hurt. His scars stand tall and bumpy, he doesn’t bring himself to care about them.
Before Cas, he’d fuck girls like they were personal lifelines. Hands running across plump breasts, halting only to flick at the nipples that stood tall against their fair skin. He would run his hands up and down their bodies, every movement slow and precise. He tries to pretend he’s not jealous when their voices squeak and escape out of them in tones far higher than Dean could ever manage. He spends time on everything he wishes he could have. Soft lips, long eyelashes that bat at any near man, hair that could be thrown around his head like a halo, long enough to cover the pillow he lay on. Tits. The careful curves and smooth skin of their bodies.
He remembers when he tried on that pair of panties all those years ago, the flames that pushed against the walls of his very being, the want, the content, the silence.
Dean Winchester is not a man. And maybe he never was.
Cas holds him like he’s the angel in the relationship, and Dean Winchester sobs, whispering so as to not expose the rumble in his throat.
“I don’t know who I am.”
Cas smiles at him, soft and understanding, as if these feelings were normal, and not something he should be this ashamed of.
“Who do you feel like?”
Dean Winchester bawls, curled into the warmth Cas radiates, he feels safe. Dean Winchester doesn’t think he deserves to feel this safe.
“I don’t know.”
Dean Winchester despises talking about himself, even at the direct request from the people he loves most. Maybe this is because he doesn’t know who the man he’d talk about. Maybe this is because he doesn’t want to talk about a man.
Cas runs his fingers through his hair, encouraging growth as he whispers meaningful nothings into Dean Winchester’s scalp. Cas tells his scalp that he doesn’t have to be Dean Winchester, he doesn’t have to be the son and soldier John Winchester raised him to be. Dean Winchester sobs as he lets Cas carefully peel the layers of his being away. Exposing what he’s kept carefully hidden, shoved down like a shameful magazine.
Cas kisses her freckles when she falls into his arms. He kisses her nose as she leans back to look at him.
“Who am I if I’m not Dean Winchester?”
Cas kisses her shoulders.
“You’re the same as you were, you have never been Dean Winchester.”
Her body shakes as new tears soak her face, running races that are stopped early by a soothing swipe of one of Cas’s thumbs. He holds her until she feels alright again, alright enough to pull away and look into Cas’s eyes, he meets her halfway.
“Who am I?”
Her voice cracks awkwardly, Cas looks at her like she’s something special.
“You decide.”
She settles herself on his thighs, he holds her hips like she used to do with the girls she used to bring home, running his hands over her legs. She leans forwards and presses her forehead against his.
“Deanna.”
Cas smiles wider than she ever thought he could, gently grabbing her shoulders so that he could pull her against him, guiding her head to rest in the crook of his neck.
“Deanna,”. Cas breathes her name more than he says it, holding her face with one of his hands, pressed against her cheek, his thumb rubbing underneath her eye.
She laughs quietly at him, closing her eyes and settling against him.
Dean Winchester may not know who he is. But Deanna Winchester knows who she is.
And somehow, that’s more than enough.