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Sam knows she has to tell Dean eventually. It’s just a fact. Silver burns shifters, fire kills rougarous, and Dean will find out Sam’s a girl, whether she tells him or not.
The idea of sitting him down and having a conversation about it terrifies her, though. Ever since Dean got that damn Mark of Cain, he’s been volatile, and angry, and even though Sam knows he’d never hurt her on purpose, he might reject her. And that scares her even more than threats of violence.
But if he finds out on his own… Sam rubs her eyes until she sees fireworks. He would be even more pissed off if he hears it secondhand. She sighs. Dean is out working a case right now (which really just means he’s going out to gruesomely slaughter some vamps who at least deserve a quick death), so Sam has time to plan how she’ll tell him.
She’s been waiting for years, deliberating but unsure if she was just confused. The only person she ever discussed it with was Jess, in the beginning, who didn’t quite understand, but she made an effort and loved her anyway. Castiel knew too, of course. He’d felt it the moment he met her, felt that the inside didn’t match the outside.
Sam had pleaded with him not to tell anyone, and he hadn’t. Now, though, maybe she needs his help. Sam takes a deep breath and almost sends off a prayer, then stops. No. This has to be between her and Dean alone.
*
So Sam sits at the table in the library, reading a book about Djinn lore, except she can’t seem to get past the sentence she’s looking at, just reading it over and over until the bunker door clicks open.
Dean walks in, bloody and dirty but with a cheerful expression. Maybe he can tell she’s anxious over something, because he frowns as soon as he sees her. “You okay?”
Sam starts to nod, then stops. “Actually, there’s something we need to talk about.”
The cheer is gone from Dean’s face now. “Alright.”
He sits opposite Sam, and she takes a deep breath, then another. Too late to go back now.
“I don’t really know how to tell you this,” she starts. The blood rushing in her ears drowns out her painful breaths, and she freezes. It feels like her tongue is glued to the roof of her mouth, she physically can’t get the words out, and Dean is still watching her intently. Sam wipes her clammy palms on her jeans, feeling like she’s forgotten every word in the English language.
Dean’s brow is furrowed. “What’s goin’ on? Sammy, do you-”
“I’m a girl,” Sam blurts out. She sees Dean’s face change, and her heart speeds up even more when he just says “what?”
Fuck, this was a mistake. There’s no taking it back now, though, and Sam swallows hard. “I’m- I’m a girl. Like, transgender.”
She watches Dean carefully, cold dread seeping through her chest when he says nothing. It’s the most stressful minute and a half of her life, she’s this close to getting up and walking away, she wants to sink into the floor or go back in time and stop herself from ruining everything-
“Okay,” Dean says, and nods slowly.
What?
Sam waits for him to say more, but he doesn’t. She stares at him incredulously.
“Okay? That’s - that’s it? No dramatic weeping? No lamenting the loss of your baby brother? Just… okay?”
She slumps back in her seat, relieved despite her confusion. She’s spend enough time on forums for other people like her to know she’s lucky to get this kind of reaction, but now Dean is speaking again.
“Yeah. Sammy, I’ve known since you were in the tenth grade and you tried on makeup in the bathroom when you thought I wasn’t home. When I saw how happy you looked, figured you were either really damn gay or a girl. Just been waitin’ for you to tell me.”
There’s a familiar burning at the back of Sam’s throat, and she rubs her face with a little laugh. She can’t believe this. Sam barely remembers tenth grade, but that moment stands out in her memory. She remembers looking at herself in the mirror and not hating what she saw for the first time since puberty. Finally, she’d seen someone who looked like Sam, but the happiness of the moment was overshadowed by the fear of Dean or John finding out and she’d wiped it all off.
“You never even let on that you knew about that,” she asks, still stunned. “All that teasing about me being girly, was- was that because of what you saw?”
Dean shrugs. “Kind of. I didn’t wanna act any different, otherwise you’d know something was up.” He pauses. “Glad you told me, though. Keeping secrets from each other never ends well.”
*
Not much changes. Sometimes Dean slips up, calls Sam ‘he’ by force of long habit, but she doesn’t mind. At least he’s trying.
What’s strange though, is how Dean reacts when other people do it. Not many others know - just Dean, Cas, and Charlie - so she hears a lot of ‘he’ out and about. Sam doesn’t mind that much (she knows she looks like a man, with her height and voice and jawline), but every time it happens, Dean looks like he’s about to go break the person’s legs. She’s had to tell him to cool it several times.
Even more interesting than that is what he does in the rare occasion that people hit on Sam. Not that it happens often, but her hair is getting long and sometimes when she’s sitting down, people read her as female and decide to shoot their shot.
Such was the case at a diner they’d stopped at after a routine werewolf case. The server - a scrawny 20-something with a name tag that read “Aaron” - had gotten a certain look about him when taking their orders, and slipped Sam a napkin with his number written on it as they were leaving. Sam had seen him wink, and clearly so had Dean, because he was in a foul mood for the rest of the day. If looks could kill, Aaron would have been six feet under.
Sam kind of likes it, honestly. Of course, Dean was protective of her before, but when she became his sister… well, if this had happened when they were younger, she would have hated it. She can almost hear her 22-year-old self yelling at her, saying “you still let him act like he owns you? Haven’t we moved past that?”, but overall, Sam is satisfied. She’s finally living as herself, and what could take away from that?