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Sam has this vivid recurring dream. It started when they were really young, long before they ever started consciously thinking about things like femininity and nonbinary genders.
In the dream, someone is always braiding their hair. The fingers scratch slim and cool at their scalp, tug at their hair gently, twisting and bringing loose pieces together. Sam can’t see a face, but they smell lavender and vanilla, and they know they’re somewhere safe. Sometimes, when the dream goes on long enough, Sam can hear faint humming. The sound is quiet and calm, and carries a tune Sam recognizes but can’t place, drifting sweet and slow like a lullaby for the already-sleeping.
+
When Sam is fifteen, they lift tubes of lipstick and eyeliner and palettes of eyeshadow from the drugstore by their school and stash them at the bottom of their sock drawer. Sometimes they pull them out and practice doing their hair and makeup in the cracked little mirror on their bedroom wall. They’ve been trying to grow their hair out longer now that dad isn’t around often enough to bother them to cut it.
One night, when Sam is at a friend’s house studying, Dean goes looking through Sam’s drawers for a lighter and comes out with a fistful of sparkly hair clips and nail polish instead. Dean doesn’t mention it, but when Sam sees how the drawer has been searched through, hot panic starts winding tight through their lungs and around their throat.
Sam takes a deep breath and gathers up the little bottles and brushes. They go into the living room of their cramped apartment where Dean is watching TV and dump the stash on the coffee table. Sam tries to glare disapprovingly at Dean like they’re the one uncovering dirty secrets and not the other way around.
Dean looks at the collection on the table. His gaze flickers up to Sam and he swallows reflexively. “Shit. Sammy, I didn’t mean–”
He breaks off, looks back at the little colourful pile. Sam thinks he looks guilty, and intrigued, maybe, but not angry. Not disgusted.
Still, Sam has to know for sure. They do their best to hide the tremor in their voice and snap, “If you’ve got something to say to me, then say it now.”
Dean says, “Sit down. You look like you’re about to fall over.”
Sam sits, folding down into the cushions like a puppet with its strings cut. They look down at their nails, dirty and bitten-down.
There’s the faint click of the TV turning off. Dean says, “What’s going on with you, Sam? What is all this? You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want.”
“I’m not a girl.” The words come out in a rush before Sam can stop them.
Dean looks thrown and maybe a little amused, like: well, duh.
Sam keeps going. “But I think maybe I’m not completely a boy either. Sometimes it feels more comfortable to dress like a girl. And, um, a couple of times people have thought I was a girl when they saw me, and it just feels right when it happens.”
Dean is nodding slowly. He’s got this faraway look and his mouth is pinched at the corners. Sam tries not to freak out. They don’t think Dean is upset with them. He looks more contemplative than anything, a little constipated.
“Okay, Sammy,” Dean says after a minute. “Um. Is there anything. Do you like, want me to call you by girl pronouns and stuff?”
“Nah. Um. I don’t know yet. I’m still at least partly a boy, I think.”
Dean’s still nodding. He licks his lips nervously and then says, “Um. I’m. I’ve kind of done some stuff with guys before. And, uh, I like to feel pretty sometimes too.”
Sam realizes then that Dean thinks he’s a lot more discrete about the guys he brings home late at night than he actually is. It’s not his fault, though. The thin wall separating their bedrooms can only filter out so much sound, after all. Sam thinks mentioning this would ruin the moment, so they just say, “Oh. Thanks for telling me. If you want, I could maybe paint your nails for you sometime?”
Dean laughs, and it breaks the tension crackling in the air. “Nah. It’s not exactly like that for me.”
Then they sit on the couch and watch TV together and nothing really changes between them, which is unsurprising and a huge relief. After that, Sam spends a lot of time wondering what Dean meant when he said sometimes he liked to feel pretty too. It isn’t until a couple of years later, when Sam is digging through Dean’s drawers trying to find a pair of clean socks, that they come across the pair of pink satin panties in a very particular cut and think: oh.
+
In Sam’s freshman psychology course there’s this stunning blonde girl who sits one row in front of them. She’s got this amazing golden hair that tumbles around her shoulders in messy shimmering waves. When she laughs the sound is bright and clear and Sam wants to hear it all the time.
Sam has been looking for an excuse to talk to her for weeks, and sees an opportunity after they’ve been sick for a couple of days. They ask to borrow a copy of her notes after class, and while they’re scrawling their email down in her notebook she says, “Oh my god. I love your eyeshadow. How do you get it to do that?”
She doesn’t say it like some other girls have said it in the past, like Sam is out of the loop on a very funny joke they all understand. She’s completely earnest about it, eyes warm and blue and open. She looks at Sam, honestly waiting for an answer, until they manage to fumble out: “I can show you sometime if you’d like.”
She smiles, bright and a little flirty, and says, “I’d love that. I’m Jess, by the way.”
Sam doesn’t end up giving her makeup tips, but she does come over to study for the final, and they spend a lot of time kissing on her dorm room floor instead of studying. Jess is soft and warm, and kissing her is easy. She isn’t particularly pushy or demanding, but she knows what she wants, what she likes. She tastes like the fruit gum she’s always chewing. When they break apart, her cheeks are flushed a deep rosy colour and Sam’s lip gloss is smudged on her mouth.
Sam’s whole face is tingling.
+
With Jess, everything is comfortable and exciting, and Sam spends a long time thinking that it wouldn’t be particularly hard to fall in love with her. She’s beautiful and brilliant and quick-witted and shockingly dirty-minded, and Sam can spend hours and hours with her and never run out of things to talk about.
When Sam tells Jess about their mom, about what her death did to their dad and how Dean had to raise them because of it, she’s the first person who doesn’t react with pity or discomfort. Instead, she pets their hair absentmindedly and tells them that her mom hasn’t been the same since her younger brother died when Jess was fifteen, sometimes goes days without getting out of bed or eating and won’t talk to anyone. Sam knows then that Jess understands them more than anyone except Dean ever has.
But things between them never turn romantic. They hook up a few more times freshman year, but then Jess admits that the idea of romance and dating kind of freak her out. It’s never been hard for Sam to separate sex from romance and other kinds of deep emotional bonds, so it’s a smooth transition to being just friends.
Right after Sam finishes their third year at Stanford, Jess drags them to a house party with a bunch of her friends. The party is near the campus, and it’s the kind of affair Sam thinks Dean would enjoy if he hadn’t dropped out of high school to look after Sam: loud music, kegs, and attractive men and women in various states of inebriation and undress pressed together in the alcohol-soaked summer heat.
After an hour or so, when they’re starting to sweat through their eye makeup, Sam heads out to the back porch for some fresh air. Outside the house, the night is cool and clear, and the stars are wavering and glittering like maybe they’ve been drinking too. There are a few people standing around smoking, and a guy sitting by himself on the wooden steps.
Right away, Sam concludes that the guy is either on a bad trip, or teetering at the edge of a panic attack. They’ve seen Dean through both enough times to recognize the signs. The guy is rocking back and forth convulsively, fingers clutching at his elbows, staring out at something in the distance across the dark yard.
Sam sits next to him on the steps, keeping enough distance between them to hopefully avoid making things worse. “Hey. You okay?”
The guy starts a little, looks over at Sam. His eyes are wide with panic, and very blue. He’s breathing shallowly and his lips are white with how hard he’s pressing them together. His dark hair is mussed from where he’s been worrying it with his hands. He shakes his head minutely.
Sam says, “Okay. I’m Sam. Can I sit here for a bit?”
A pause. Then, the guy gives a jerky little nod.
“Thanks. This party blows, huh?” Sam pulls at a hole in the knee of their tights, unravelling the thread. “I wouldn’t have come, but my roommate dragged me. And, uh, my brother texted me earlier and said I’d better celebrate the end of the semester, and if I didn’t he’d find out about it.”
Sam keeps talking for a while, about school and Dean and their opinions on books and TV shows. They aren’t saying anything important or interesting, but they remember Dean telling them once that just hearing someone’s voice could be enough to anchor him, pull him out of his head, start to untangle some of the anxiety. Sam picks at the blue polish chipping away on their fingernails while they talk. The guy’s breathing is still unsteady and he’s shaking a bit, but he’s nodding along with Sam’s words, which Sam takes as a good sign.
Eventually, the guy lets out a long, sharp breath and rubs his palms over his face. He looks exhausted when he glances back at Sam gives them a wan smile. Sam breaks off in the middle of a sentence about plot holes in The Lord of the Rings. “Hi. Better?”
The guy nods. “Yes. Thank you, Sam.” His voice is hoarse and surprisingly deep. “I’m Castiel.”
Weird name, Sam thinks. Castiel is staring at them so intensely it’s kind of creepy and his eyes are bluer than anyone’s have the right to be. His lips are very pink, and they’re parted just a little. He’s looking at Sam like someone just showed him a particularly interesting work of art.
Sam says, “Nice to meet you, Castiel.”
+
Castiel, Sam learns, is a graduate student in Religious Studies. Despite the state of his hair, Castiel’s apartment is immaculate. He leaves bowls of food and water out for the stray cats that hang around outside his building. Castiel is a vegetarian.
He and Sam get along right away. They spend hours at a time talking about school and gender and God and purpose. Sam talks about Dean, how they’ve been trying to get Dean to move to Palo Alto so he can have a fresh start the same way Sam did. Castiel doesn’t talk about his family at all, but Sam has gathered enough clues – the extremely Biblical name, the panic attacks, the cross he worries between his fingers when he’s anxious – to make several educated guesses.
They’ve been hanging out for a few weeks and they’re lying on Castiel’s carpet, smoking up. Castiel is talking animatedly about seal ecology in the Bay Area. Sam has a good buzz going, and their whole body feels loose and floaty. Castiel is radiating warmth in the space between them, and Sam rolls over and kisses him.
Castiel freezes mid-sentence and goes very still, stops breathing.
Sam pulls away and sits up. “Um.”
“I’m asexual,” Castiel says, quickly.
“Oh.” Sam’s brain still hasn’t quite caught up. “Okay.”
“Shit.” Castiel pushes himself up on his elbows and stares at Sam intensely. “Sam, I have feelings for you. I just want to make my position clear. So you can make an informed decision.”
“Oh.” Something loosens in Sam’s chest. “You wanna go out with me sometime, Cas?”
Castiel smiles, and his whole face crinkles with the force of it. “I’d like that, Sam.”
This time, Castiel is the one to reach up, thread his fingers through Sam’s hair, and seal their mouths together.
+
Later, after more kissing, Sam drifts in Castiel’s bed. There are warm fingers carding through their hair, scratching gently at their scalp. Sam smells laundry detergent and something spicy, like cinnamon. The rhythm of Castiel’s breathing like a lullaby, soothing them to sleep.