My name is Sam -- [Part 1]
| Masterpost | Part One | Part Two | Part Three |-'-1990-'-
Sam stared at the skirt with badly disguised horror. It was ugly. Pink. He hated it; hated it even more than he hated the stupid, ugly purple top with the stupid sequins on it. He hated it. Dad never got him clothes like that; hadn't for as long as Sam could remember. Sam wore Dean's castoffs, and that was that. It'd always been like that because clothes were kinda expensive and money could be better spent on food, or so Dean was always telling Sam when he wanted new, cool stuff.
"C'mon, Sammy, it's not that bad," Dean wheedled. "Girls wear skirts all the time."
Sam stomped his foot and glowered. "You wear the stupid skirt! I don't want it!"
"Sammy-"
"No! It's ugly. I don't want it."
"Okay, fine," Dean sighed. "What do you wanna wear, then?"
Sam brightened and ran back into their room. He came out with a worn pair of jeans and an old Batman T-shirt. "Wanna wear this!" he declared.
"Sammy-"
"No, I want to!"
Dean ruffled Sam's hair as he grabbed the T-shirt and held it out. "It's dirty, see?"
"Can you clean it?"
"How about we see after school?"
Sam pouted until Dean suggested he wear the Spider-Man T-shirt instead. The pink skirt and the purple top vanished from Sam's little part of the closet and he never saw the clothes again. But he did wake up one night, a couple of days later, when Dad and Dean argued.
"You can't keep catering to her every wish, Dean!" Dad was saying, sounding angrier than Sam felt entirely comfortable with, and he pulled all the covers over himself and cuddled close to his pillow.
"She's a kid, Dad. What's it matter if she won't wear some stupid pink skirt?" It kinda made Sam feel all warm and happy inside, knowing that Dean thought the skirt had been stupid, too, even if the way Dad was talking made Sam a bit afraid.
"It's what girls her age wear," Dad snapped. "This? Her insistence on copying your every move? It's not normal, Dean. It's not what your mother would've wanted."
It hurt inside when they called Sam a girl (because he wasn't, not really, he was sure of it) or when Dad kept insisting it wasn't normal for Sam to refuse wearing girly stuff. He wasn't sure why, not just yet, but he thought maybe someone got it wrong - got him wrong - that maybe he would turn into a real boy soon enough if he just waited patiently. He didn't like girls (well, they did have all those cooties, sure) but they were all wrong, too, because even if Sam looked like them he was nothing like them.
Deep inside, he hoped Mom wouldn't have cared that Sam wasn't a real girl. He wished and hoped that she'd have just known, in that magical way he'd heard other kids explain about how moms were the best things ever, because they knew everything. In his mind, Mom never would've bought stupid, ugly skirts for him to wear, or kept insisting he have his hair really long when all he wanted was to cut it short like Dean's.
Sometimes he even wondered if Mom really would've wanted them to drive all over the country, but he hadn't been brave enough to ask Dad that yet.
-'-1993-'-
He was ten the first time he defied one of Dad's orders on purpose. Sam never understood why Dad insisted Sam keep his hair long. It was impractical - most of the time they didn't even own a hairbrush, and Sam'd be forced to grit his teeth as Dean struggled to sort it all out in a neat fashion.
So that day, twenty minutes in on another battle with the bird's nest that was Sam's hair, he asked Dean to take him to the hairdresser's and his brother readily agreed. Dean read a gossip mag and chewed gum while he waited for Sam, and didn't offer either advice or opinions. The stylist wouldn't cut his hair like Dean's no matter how much Sam wheedled or begged, but she did trim it. A lot. It was, she confided, all the rage somewhere her sister had been, and looked both cool and mature. Sam's hair was shaggy, short and rumpled. But it was awesome. He still had a fringe; his hair just barely covered his ears and only just brushed his neck. It wasn't even close to Dean's, but it was still so much better than it had been.
Sam didn't stop grinning until Dad snapped at him for getting his hair cut, but even then, after being sent to bed without supper, he still didn't regret a single thing (of course, Dean sneaked him food; he always did, so it wasn't like Sam fell asleep hungry).
-'-1995-'-
When he was twelve, he started snapping at Dad and Dean to call him Sam, not Sammy or, god forbid, Samantha. It was a bit like running up a mountain - a constant struggle. It was easier in school, because he was always the new kid and his classmates always used the name he gave them.
Sam, he'd say. My name is Sam.
-'-1997-'-
The school in Springfield, MA,had a Gay-Straight Alliance club. He was fourteen then, and was just at the point where he was starting to stand out more and more as the years went by. Dad said Sam was being ridiculous, that he should stop playing around and just be a normal girl the same way that Dean was a normal boy. Sam wasn't sure how many arguments got started that way, because they were growing in number every year now, but bottom line? Nothing the Winchesters did was normal, so why the hell did Sam have to be?
Still, whenever Dad or someone else nagged on him about being a fucking girl, Sam just clenched his jaw, narrowed his eyes and squared his shoulders as he stood even straighter. He refused to be a girl (because he wasn't; had never been and would never be), and that refusal never wavered, not once, but only grew stronger and stronger.
By then, by Springfield, MA, he was the only customer at Dean's hair salon, and they used a brutal bartering system in lieu of real money (he scored a bunch of points the time he came home from school with his pockets full of condoms that he'd snagged from the nurse's office). He dressed in Dean's castoffs, in layers upon layers, deepened his voice as much as he could, and started to actively hate the world for making him wrong.
In the GSA, he didn't really have to be anything other than himself, and he started coveting schools that had clubs like that. It wasn't something Sam'd spent a lot of time thinking about, exactly; it was kinda like how he knew that Dean was Dean and Sam was Sam, and they were the same, not different. It was just something he knew, something he'd known ever since he started toddling after Dean, determined to follow in his brother's footsteps and grow up to be exactly like him. Well, until puberty hit, at least.
Puberty sucked. Not just for him, because he'd never been happier in his life that he was one of those late bloomers everyone laughed at and pushed around like losers. No, he hated it because he was in the wrong body and everything was just so gross and wrong, and. And he'd seen, in the locker rooms, how the girls the schools made him change with all got breasts and curves and hips, and periods. It was just wrong.
Sam's skin crawled with how wrong it was.
-'-1998-'-
He got his first girlfriend when he was fifteen, and it was only the second secret he'd ever kept from Dean. She was shy and sweet and cute, and she'd sat with him in the library every day since Sam transferred to the school in Milwaukee, WI, two weeks ago.
He wasn't sure if maybe Dean knew anyway, because his brother kept giving him sort of amused, sort of knowing looks almost every day after school when Dean drove them home. Most of the time, Sam only ever went to where Dean was waiting in the Impala after saying goodbye to her as she found her own ride home (her mom, usually, sometimes her older sister). The thing was, though, that Dean never once said a word about it, so Sam never quite dared to bring it up, even though he wanted to. Oh, he wanted to tell Dean all about it so bad!
"How's your friend?" Dean would ask, and Sam would shrug and say, "Okay," and then they'd be silent as Dean navigated the streets toward the ratty trailer Dad had dumped them in for the duration of their stay in Milwaukee.
The first time she kissed him, it was a Friday, and Sam didn't stop smiling for the entire weekend.
"Oh, Sam," Dean said and laughed when Sam climbed into the car.
"I love this school," Sam murmured, his eyes stuck on the car his girlfriend - his girlfriend - had disappeared inside of.
"I bet," Dean said, voice dry. "How 'bout we splurge on some burgers and pie?"
"Uh-huh," Sam agreed, but he wasn't really paying attention, because his girlfriend was awesome and she had these amazing, soft lips and, like, the softest hair in the world and she smelled wonderful.
"Your friend okay?"
Sam grinned so hard his cheeks hurt. "She's awesome, Dean."
Dean laughed, long and loud, then he put the car in reverse and pulled out of the school's parking lot.
-'-1999(FEB)-'-
Tallahassee, FL, and everything changed. Chip away at a piece of flint stone long enough, and sooner or later you'll hit the wrong (right) spot and it'll explode in your hand.
The student counselor and some of the teachers started giving him a hard time when he switched home economics with advanced algebra, a class he'd taken at the previous two schools he'd been at that year. They were unhappy with him - to say the least - when he kicked up a fuss about running track: they wanted him to wear one of the skimpy uniforms they forced on girls, except he insisted on wearing the boys' version.
All in all? It led to awkward times in the locker rooms. Because the girls? The girls thought he was weird and started insisting he stay in the bathroom while the rest of them changed for PE, because they didn't want 'the dyke' to see them naked. The boys were easier, because they kinda thought he was the coolest girl for a while (at least until he started agreeing on certain girls being hot, and then they thought he was a weird-ass fag).
So what it led to in the end was that he was closing in on sixteen the first time he said, "Actually, I'm a guy," at a meeting in that one interchangeable high school in Tallahassee, FL, with yet another GSA club, when he was introduced as a new girl. He'd been at the school a couple of weeks by then, but up 'til that point he hadn't had time to check it out. So he just stood there, and he said, "My name's Sam. And. I'm a guy." It was the first time since he and Dean were kids that he'd said that out loud (the one time Dad caught them playing one of their games where Dean was Han Solo and Sam was Luke Skywalker hadn't ended in a way that had made Sam want to play that game - or any of the hundred other similar games they'd had back then - ever again. He'd felt ashamed, guilty, confused, but at least he'd waited until Dad went out to get dinner to let the tears fall. He'd sobbed for a long time, been asleep when Dad came back, and mumbled about wanting to be a real boy and wishing that he'd have been Dean's little brother for real).
"Really? You're a guy?" one of the other guys said, voice pitched in a way that made Sam's skin crawl.
"Yeah." He gritted his teeth. "You got a problem with that?"
Turned out, the guy did have a problem with that, and so did two of his friends.
When he got out of school, an hour late because of the detention he'd gotten when he punched the dick in the face and started a brawl in the GSA room, Dean was half-asleep in the driver's seat of the Impala. Sam had a split lip and a nasty bruise growing by the side of his eye.
The first words out of Dean's mouth when Sam slammed his way into the car were: "Whoa, girl, you all right?" It was all perfectly Dean: his special way of mixing scorn and worry and pride into a jumbled, mismatched package that no one but Dean (and Sam) ever made sense of.
Sam, predictably, exploded. "I'm not a fucking girl, you dick!"
"Sammy-" Dean started, eyes wide, but he was sitting upright now instead of half-slouched in his seat.
"Sam! I'm Sam!" Sam shouted, voice hoarse, choppy and hitched. "I hate this fucking school; I hate my crappy body; I hate fucking biology! I'm wrong, Dean! Wrong! I hate that I'm this way and I just wanna be normal; I don't wanna be stuck in this disgusting fucking body. I just wanna be normal. I wanna be me."
Dean gaped some, blinked some. He cleared his throat and looked Sam right in the eye and ignored his blotchy cheeks and red eyes. "Well, who are you, then?" he managed, sounding no less confused than he looked. "'Cause, I mean, you've always been you. Right? You're my little sister-"
"I don't want to be your sister, Dean!" Sam got out, almost choking on the words but, oh, they felt so good to say. "I, I hate being your sister."
Dean recoiled. He looked as if it would've been kinder to just carve his heart out with a dull spoon, throw it to the ground and stomp on it. "Oh," he said, all breathy and hurt. "I didn't know you hated what we do that much."
Sam just shook his head and wiped his eyes. "No, no." He shuffled closer, until their noses almost touched and they were all cross-eyed trying to keep eye contact. "I wanna be your brother, Dean," Sam whispered. "I'm Sam, not, not- I'm not a girl, Dean. I'm all wrong and I hate it. I hate that everyone thinks I'm a fucking girl, because I'm not. I'm not, Dean."
"Oh," Dean said again, sounding no closer to coherent. It didn't really matter if he got it or not, because he was still Sam's big brother and he still hugged Sam close when he broke down crying not ten seconds later.
-'-
"Well," Dean said, some time later in another time and place. "You've got that whole butch dyke thing going for you, you know? Hairy legs, my old toys, my old clothes, crushing on my dates-"
Sam shut him up by tackling him to the ground and restarting their ever on-going game of wrestling. It wasn't like there was ever a clear winner, or as if they kept count, but it blew off some steam and they got their differences sorted out.
After, Sam sat panting on the bed, legs stretched out and Dean slouched in front of him on the other bed in the room.
"I'm straight, Dean, 'cause I'm a guy," he said then, as if it was perfectly natural, even when he was sweaty and nervous and unsure about Dean.
"Right." Dean raised his eyebrows, then shrugged. "Whatever."
"No, not 'whatever'," Sam snapped.
"Why'd you get beat up?"
Sam looked mulish for all of a second. "When I stay after school? Not all the time, but sometimes?"
Dean rolled his eyes. "Let me guess: not soccer."
"No, not soccer," Sam agreed, without an ounce of guilt over his rather transparent lie. Dad never noticed because Dad was never around, but Dean kinda did. Because Sam? Didn't own a single piece of soccer related equipment. Running shoes for track, yes, but nothing for soccer. "GSA."
"The fag club?"
"The Gay-Straight Alliance, Dean."
"Yeah, that. S'what I said. So, what, they kick you out 'cause you're too much T in the whole LGBT-thingy they got going on? Their open-mindedness only go so far? They too close-minded to accept the full scale of it, or what?"
Sam pulled in a deep breath and forced himself to close his mouth. Sometimes he kinda forgot that Dean was wicked smart but chose to pretend he wasn't a lot of the time. Sometimes he even forgot how much Dean cared, when it came down to it. He cleared his throat. "This guy," he started slowly. "He. He laughed in my face. Then his buddies started, too, but they stopped when I. Well. I mighta called names, so they punched me, and I hit back."
"Except their daddies ain't marines," Dean quietly pointed out.
"You could say that," Sam agreed, tiny smile playing about his lips before he frowned at his brother. "Why do you even know what LGBT is, Dean? Hell, why d'you even know what it stands for?"
Dean ran a hand through his hair and shrugged. It took a while before he started talking, and his words took Sam by surprise, even though he knew they shouldn't, because it was Dean. "Well, for a while, I kinda figured I had a really butch, really dyke little sister. Turns out maybe I don't, not so much," he mumbled. "So I figured, y'know, I'd be prepared to be all supportive for when you started in on the confession and questions time. 'Cause you do; you always do. Hell, you ask all these questions and you demand I know everything about some weird-ass bug in fucking Mongolia!"
"Maybe because you practically raised me and kids kind of have this idea that their parents know absolutely everything?" Sam pointed out, voice dry, but his heart was hammering something awful beneath his breastbone. "So…"
"So, yeah. Bring it on, Sammy, 'cause I know a shit ton of stuff about dykes that I'll never have any use for now."
Sam snorted. "Please. Like you didn't just watch lesbian porn."
"Like you don't," Dean lazily countered just to have the pleasure of watching Sam go all red in the face. "Don't think I don't know what you get up to, you little pervert."
"Shut up," Sam muttered, but there was no real fire behind his words.
Dean laughed. Then he got up, dug through his duffel and came out with a brown paper bag that he threw at Sam. "I totally read books, too. Had it all prepared, figured out what to say and all." He nodded at the bag. "Fixed that for you, 'cause someone at one of those LGBT offices said it'd be, I dunno, helpful or something."
Sam looked skeptical and half terrified out of his mind. There was a book in the bag, one of those books with interviews/life stories from 'real people' in it, a bookmark, a round badge with all the colors of the rainbow on it and a bar of chocolate that didn't look like it'd been waiting in the bag forever to come out. There was also a T-shirt that was so like Dean that Sam couldn't help but laugh, even if it hurt a little inside. '(I'm) dyke, BITCH', it said, in black against the white, but at least the T-shirt wasn't one of those stupid women's cut versions and, hey, it wasn't like grammar had ever been Dean's strong suit (okay, yeah, that was a lie, because Dean had been the one to lay it all out for Sam back in the day, but that didn't mean that Dean wouldn't jump at an opportunity to get on Sam's nerves by putting a big, fat grammatical error on a T-shirt).
"So, yeah," Dean cut in. "I had it all planned out how I was gonna be the coolest brother ever."
"I'm so sorry to burst your bubble, Dean," Sam managed to say, but he couldn't really keep the scorn out of his voice. "I'm so sorry I'm not fucking perfect, and. Shit."
"Sam, hey, no. Sam. Listen to me." Dean tapped him on the nose, shoved the gifts out of the way and sat down next to him. "Listen, I read up on all that for you, 'cause that's what I thought was, y'know, up. So, stupid me, I skipped reading the tons of books on trans issues. But this?" Dean indicated the gifts. "That was me being all supportive and cool about it."
"And now?" Sam asked.
Dean was quiet awhile. "Well, I'm still kinda relieved that you don't go for guys, because to be frank? I gotta tell you that's one conversation I don't ever wanna have with you. And I mean, come on, how the hell does any guy let bastards like me even get close to their sisters? Or, well, brothers who got mixed up with the wrong body. How does that work, anyway?"
"I. I don't know," Sam admitted. "I just know. I look at you, or the guys at school, and I just know that's what I'm supposed to be. You know, I haven't looked at myself in a mirror in years, because what I see is so wrong I want to throw up. I just. I just, I kept hoping, for so long, that there'd been some mistake or something; that maybe I'd turn into a boy if I just waited a bit longer, but it doesn't work like that."
"No," Dean agreed. "It doesn't. I wish it did," he added in a quiet but serious tone. "Because then everyone'd be happy, right?"
Sam just nodded, so Dean went on, "And, you know, it's not like I call you Sammy because you're a girl. I call you Sammy 'cause it's you."
"I hate it when you call me- when you call me Samantha." How Sam got the name out without stuttering was a miracle. "I don't like it. It makes me feel so wrong. Like I have to be something I'm not."
"Like a square peg in a round hole," Dean murmured. He took a deep breath, then said, "This girl I was seeing once. Marina? She. Well, she had a dick instead of, y'know, the usual bits. I guess maybe she was like you, only the other way around."
Sam wasn't sure if that was too much information or not. Because on the one hand? Ew, he did so not need to know about his brother's sex life. But on the other hand? Dean had fucking dated a chick with a dick, so that had to count for something, right?
"You, you didn't mind? You don't, I mean, I."
"Sam. You're my little-" Dean cleared his throat and Sam narrowed his eyes. "Well, I guess you're my little brother now, but to me? You're still the same person you've always been. Only…"
"Only?" Sam pressed, eyes narrowed and lips scrunched tightly together.
Dean shrugged. "Only, well, I guess- I mean, you're still you, right?"
"Yeah," Sam agreed. "I won't start acting all weird or change or anything. I just. I just told you who I am, that's all."
Dean nodded once. "Yeah, right. So. You gonna get all pissed at me when I get the pronouns wrong? 'Cause come on, Sammy, you gotta realize that'll take time, even if I know now. I've spent sixteen years thinking I had a little sister when it turns out that, hey, maybe I don't, not so much. Just a bitchy little brother."
"Shut up!" Sam growled, and this time the wrestling match didn't stop until Dean accidentally banged his head against the bedside table.
"Ow," he whined.
Sam laughed and pushed at Dean until he could check if he'd been injured for real or not. "Stop being such a baby," he admonished when he couldn't even find a bump. "You're fine."
Dean looked a lot like a disgruntled twelve year old right then. "I shoulda known you were too cool and way too fucking cruel to be a girl," he whined.
Sam rolled his eyes and pretended to be annoyed, but it was kinda hard when he was grinning from ear to ear, so, well, he wasn't too sure how convincing he was.
-'-
They ordered pizza that night. Or rather: Dean went out and brought pizza home, only one of which were of the meat monstrosity kinds that the Winchesters normally went for. The other was the kind of pizza Sam only ever got when he wasn't eating it with his family; there wasn't an ounce of meat on it and it had extra pineapple.
Sam gaped.
Dean grinned. "Don't say I never did anything for you, bitch."
"I just. How'd you know?"
"'Cause I? Am an awesome brother."
Sam just grinned. "Yeah, yeah, you kinda are."
"I expect points for this."
"I got another bag of condoms."
"Consider us even."
They didn't speak much after that. Dean rarely did when he was eating and for once even Sam was starving. His busted lip was kinda sore and stung whenever he got tomato sauce on it, but it wasn't even close to popping Sam's good mood. Still, he should've known something was up when Dean cleared the table and came back with two bottles of beer and a big bag of M&M's.
"Dad-" Dean started, then stopped speaking again almost as abruptly as he'd started.
Sam froze. He felt a bit like he'd throw up any moment now, 'cause he really hadn't needed to eat that last slice of pizza, except he wasn't sure if maybe it was just that he wanted to run as far away as possible. And come on, Dean only ever bribed him with beer when he wanted to talk about something that he knew Sam didn't want to.
"Dad," Dean started up again. "Well, I think he maybe started noticing the other day, when I said I was twenty now and maybe I could stay and look after you while he took off on longer hunting trips. I think maybe he realized that if I'm twenty, then you're closing in on sixteen, and, dude, you still don't have tits."
Sam scowled. "I hate my fucking tits," he spat.
Dean blinked. The beer bottles were placed on the dingy table next to the bag of candy, and Sam kinda wanted to punch Dean in the face for ruining his good mood. He poked at Sam and shifted around on the couch until they sat chest to chest, then tugged Sam's over shirt off. Tilting his head to the side, Dean raised an eyebrow. "Dude. I can't fucking see your tits."
Sam pursed his lips, then shrugged. Throwing his shirt at Dean, Sam peeled off the T-shirts he was wearing under it - one long-sleeved, one short sleeved, because layers fucking ruled. It left him sitting in one of his old, threadbare tops that had more holes that not. Sam bit his lip.
"Sam?" Dean asked, a bit wide-eyed, and Sam supposed he couldn't blame his brother. They hadn't been naked around each other since, well. Probably since Sam started school and Dad started insisting on them not taking baths and showers together anymore. When it came down to it, right here and right now, Sam had the body of a girl some months short of sixteen and Dean was a guy who'd only recently turned twenty. Hell, Sam hadn't walked around topless since… He couldn't even remember anymore, but his best bet was since around the time that Dad freaked about how girls didn't fucking wrap their towels around their hips, no matter the fact that Sam had looked just like a guy, waist up, at the time.
Even in normal families, Sam doubted younger siblings got undressed in front of their older ones. Especially when they didn't share the same sex outwardly.
With some slight hesitation on Sam's part, he pulled off the last article of clothing that kept Dean from seeing Sam's most guarded secret - or most shameful facet of himself; he wasn't sure.
Ever since the first hard, fucking painful buds had started poking out from his chest, Sam had been ruthless in his quest to hide them and push them away and make it all just disappear. So he'd nicked a couple of rolls of bandages from their med kit, and started making what little he had in breast growth go away.
"Sammy," Dean breathed, his eyes wide.
Sam sniffed. "I hate being like this, Dean."
"Okay, yeah," Dean said. "I guess I. That's gotta hurt, Sammy."
It was just so Dean to be concerned with Sam's wellbeing that Sam kinda wanted to laugh, just a little bit. "It's not so bad," Sam said. "At first even moving kinda made me want to scream and cry and punch something, but I got used to it. And it's better than, than."
"Having tits?"
"Yeah. That really sucks."
Dean frowned, though, looking sort of concerned still, in a way that made Sam shift.
"Dean?"
"You're almost sixteen, right?" Dean put a hand on Sam's shoulder and twisted him until Dean could look at him from the side. Sam nodded, so Dean went on, "I dunno how, well. I read up on puberty - the girly bits. You should… I think, maybe, you should've had a bit more cleavage than that by now. Even tied down. You, ah… You started with periods and stuff? 'Cause-"
"No," Sam admitted.
Dean made a curious little sound. "Huh," he said. "I think maybe you should've by now."
"What kind of books have you been reading, Dean?" Sam asked, and he wasn't even sure he wanted to know the answer to that one.
"You think Dad would've?" Dean returned, and Sam had to admit Dean had just made a brilliant point. "He told me to look after you, and that's what I'm doing. Still, Sam. I kinda think you're a bit, well, late?" Clearing his throat, Dean gestured at Sam's bound chest. "How long've you been doing that?"
"Since…" Sam bit his lip as he counted backward. "I think we were in Texas, 'cause I kept getting frustrated with how fucking hot wearing all the bandages was."
"So… May, June, '98?" Dean paused. "That's kinda late, isn't it?"
"I love being late. I think I was the only, well." Sam made a face of distaste. "Let's just say, the real girls? They had tits."
"And you know this, how?"
Sam grinned. "Locker rooms, Dean. They put me with the girls; I know all about when they grow tits."
Dean's mouth fell open. "That is so fucking unfair, man!"
Shrugging, Sam said, "Though to be fair, the girls at this school make me stay in the bathroom while they change, because they think I'm a weird dyke or something and don't want me sneaking looks at them. The guys think I'm cool so long as I don't act like a dyke, I suppose."
"Are you kidding me? If I was hanging out with someone like you when I was in high school? I'd want all the juicy details."
"'Cause you're a sexual freak, Dean."
Dean laughed, but he didn't deny it, either.
Sam was halfway through his beer and they had both made a sizeable dent in the bag of M&M's when Dean said, "I've been thinking about it since you told me, Sam, but I can't make heads or tails of if we should tell Dad. Hell, what we should tell him."
Sam took a deep breath and ignored the way it was suddenly hard to hold the bottle steady. "He's the one who's really insistent on me being a, a proper girl."
"Yeah," Dean agreed.
"He doesn't like me being all tomboyish. Isn't that what he calls it? It doesn't even matter that- Look, if I was… if I was a girl, for real? How'd me wearing heels and skirts and fucking fake nails and hair extensions be a fucking good idea on a hunt?"
"I dunno, man."
Sam leaned back against the couch and brought the bottle up to his lips. The leather stuck uncomfortably against his back, and maybe he should've put his clothes back on by now, but there was a certain freedom in having Dean know, in having Dean listen to him, believe him. In Dean not flipping out on him or calling him a liar, a freak; in Dean seeing him, finally, and not who his body claimed he was. Which, of course, was when Dean dropped a bombshell on him by saying:
"I think maybe you should see a doctor, just to make sure?"
"There's nothing wrong with me, Dean!" Sam snapped. "I'm not confused, or, or-"
"Hey, no. Easy, Sammy." Dean squeezed Sam's shoulder. "Not that kind. I mean 'cause you're late."
"Late?"
"With the boobs and stuff." Dean made a gesture over his chest - as if Sam could've possibly misunderstood what Dean was talking about. "I read about it, you know? I think the books and stuff said you should've started with that stuff by now. Maybe? Or maybe we could go see Missouri, or. I don't know, man."
"Oh."
"I don't know if it's normal or not, s'all I'm saying. But I'd kinda like to make sure that there's nothing really wrong, now, rather than waiting too long and then maybe there was something seriously wrong and we were too late."
"Okay, I guess," Sam agreed, even though his skin was crawling and just thinking about it made him feel nauseous. "But I'm not confused, Dean. I know who I am."
"Yeah, I know you do. Ain't never met anyone who was more hard-headed and stubborn than you. If you say you're sure? Then you're sure. I think I had that down by the time you were three."
"I don't want a doctor to tell me I'm wrong, either."
"Okay. So we go to an LGBT doctor."
For a moment, Sam was thrown by how much reading Dean really had done when he thought Sam might be a lesbian or something; how much reading he'd done on the female aspects of puberty in the first place; how determined Dean was to make sure Sam felt normal. So Sam hugged Dean, burrowed his nose into Dean's neck like he had when he was little and needed to feel less alone. Dean returned the hug, ruffled his hair, and rubbed his back and said, "You're gonna be all right, kid."
"Dean?"
"Yeah?"
"You know how you say 'dude' and 'man' to everyone?"
"Oh, Sam."
Sam smiled. "It made me really happy whenever you called me man, 'cause I could pretend a little more that maybe, maybe-"
"It'll be fine, Sammy. I promise."
Sam thought, maybe, that he could really trust Dean to make this okay, too, like he had with everything else since Sam was so little he could barely walk. Because Dean? Well, he was magic like that.
-'-
Sam went to school the next morning, ignored the people from the GSA who looked at him funny, and ignored the whispers that spread and spread until the whole school was staring and talking about him behind his back. Two days later, he was called into the nurse's office and told to talk to the counselor about his 'delicate state of mind'. Sam sat in sullen silence until Dean came stalking in to pick him up.
"All right, what's up?" he demanded of the counselor - Mr. Fugly Sweater, Sam mentally called him, because what he was wearing was absolutely scarring (it might be wool, it might be patterned, and it might be about five colors too many).
Fugly raised his eyebrows at Dean's typically cocky attitude, then set about polishing his glasses as if he had all the time in the world. "It appears Samantha is a bit confused." Sam flinched at the name, just like he always did, but this was probably the first time Dean really noticed it, because he placed a hand on Sam's shoulder and squeezed once before turning all his attention back to Mr. Fugly Sweater.
"Confused?" Dean asked, and he sounded as if he really didn't give a damn, except his eyes were all dangerous and he was tense; too tense.
"Yes. She's been telling her classmates that she is, well, a boy; you can understand that she is confused, of course. Several girls have complained to their teachers that they feel uncomfortable changing in the same room with her for PE. I must insist you make your sister see reason about this. It is simply not acceptable behavior."
"Huh," Dean said. "Well, maybe it'd help if you weren't a complete moron."
"Excuse me?" Fugly sputtered. Sam hid a grin.
"Well," Dean went on. "It's quite simple. See, my brother? He's transsexual. You should look it up; might explain a few new concepts to you. Well, except you're such a crappy guidance counselor I doubt you'd even understand a word of it. So: It's when people are born into the wrong body. It's a bit complicated, so I see how you might be confused."
"How dare-"
"I dare," Dean said, steel in his tone. "Because Sam is my brother and you are an ignorant bigot." He turned to Sam, snapped his fingers and said, "Come on, Sam. We're leaving."
Sam's face was flushed and he was grinning ear to ear, trailing after Dean as they made their way out of the school. "Dean," he breathed.
"Yeah, yeah. You owe me, bitch."
"You're fucking awesome!"
"And don't you forget it."
-'-
In a reversal of their usual roles, Sam cooked dinner that night while Dean was busy with something else. He wouldn't say what, of course, only let enough details slip that Sam's insatiable curiosity reared its ugly head. Sam wasn't the best cook; out of all of them, Dean was the only one with any real skill in a kitchen (which, yeah, annoyed Dad to no end, but Sam was frankly sick of finding something Dad wasn't annoyed at these days). Still, he was more angry at his school because he wouldn't be the least bit surprised if he got a mark in his record for this, which sucked big time because unlike Dean's record, Sam's had always been spotless and impeccable.
Sam had plans - okay, so maybe they were more along the lines of wishes and dreams at this point, but still. Some involved vague notions of maybe going to a university or college. Others, well. Others involved him turning into a real boy. He wasn't sure how exactly he was going to manage that feat, but he didn't doubt for a moment that he would either. It was just…
It was just, he didn't want to get his hopes crushed because it wasn't possible, or if it was illegal, or if there was something wrong with him so that everyone would refuse to help him. He knew he wasn't alone, he couldn't be - it had a name and Dean had known it. So he wasn't alone. He had just never dared to actually do any kind of research about it, but now that Dean knew, now that Dean was on his side…
Maybe it wasn't impossible.
"Okay. Freak."
Sam started and glared at his brother, who was glaring right back down at the vegetables Sam was frying in the pan. "Healthy food won't kill you, you know."
"Hmm," Dean said, and he didn't sound entirely convinced. "Hey, is there bacon in that?"
"Bacon, peppers, onions and mushrooms."
Dean nodded. "So you left the eggs in the fridge."
"Yep. Figured we could have those with the milk tomorrow for breakfast."
Dean groaned. "Fuck, I need to get another job, don't I?"
"I could-"
"No," Dean interrupted immediately. "I know how insane you are about school. You honestly telling me you could hold down a job on top of that?"
Sam shook his head. "So I can still go to school?"
Dean scowled, then he reached around Sam and snatched the pan off the stove. He turned it off, put the pan on the table and had the plates out in no time; Dean could be freakishly competent in the kitchen like nobody's business when he wanted to.
"Dean?"
"They felt it would be best if you were given some time to 'figure yourself out'."
Sam looked down at the plate Dean handed to him, loaded with food. "Oh," he said. "So they won't let me back until… until I take it back?"
"Yeah, that's what I got, too," Dean sighed.
"Dad's gonna be pissed."
"Dad's not gonna know," Dean snapped. "I pulled you out; we're moving."
"What?!" Sam exclaimed, fork clattering to the table as he dropped it in shock.
Dean shrugged. "Look, Dad set it up the second I turned eighteen. In case we run into trouble and he ain't around to pull us out of it, then, well, then I got this nice, legal paper saying I'm in charge of you, right? So I figure we pull you out of school and-"
"-and go where, Dean?"
"Colorado Springs."
Sam blinked. "Okay. Why?"
"Because."
"Because what, Dean?"
Dean grinned and winked. "That's a secret. I'll pull up a school at the library tomorrow. You take the rest of the week off and pack, yeah? See if we can't be there by Saturday or Sunday."
"Wait, you're seriously my guardian?" Sam exclaimed.
Dean just nodded, not perturbed even the slightest bit. "Yeah. S'partly in case anything happens to Dad and partly in case something happens when he ain't around. This is the first time I've had to use it."
-'-
Two days later, their crappy little apartment was… well, empty wasn't the right word, because the furniture had been there when they moved in, but all their stuff was gone, packed into bags in the car. Sam had even taken the time to get hold of two cardboard boxes that he'd stuffed their kitchen paraphernalia in, along with the books and some of the other stuff - like the extra towels and the bed sheets - that usually got left behind. This time was different from the other times they'd moved, because it turned out Sam and Dean were better planners together than their Dad was alone. Also? And this was partly the real reason: Dad was the one who always insisted on leaving everything behind. Without him around, grabbing the extra stuff made no difference to Sam, and there was room for it in the car.
"Okay," Dean declared. "I drive during the day when the cops are out, and you drive at night."
"Cool."
Dean dumped a wad of newspapers in Sam's lap the second he climbed inside the car. "Find us a case."
"What?" Sam scowled. "Why? I thought-"
"Hey! You wanna tell Dad you got kicked out of school 'cause your plumbing is all wrong?"
"No," Sam mumbled, sheepish and sullen.
"Right. So find us a case."
"Did you tell Dad?"
Dean shook his head. "I left him a message saying we'd moved, but I didn't leave any details. Figured it could wait 'til he finds the time to call back."
"Right," Sam agreed. Then, "He hasn't called back?"
Dean shook his head, lips tight, and Sam didn't ask about Dad again.
-'-
They drove for two days, and by the time they reached Colorado Springs, CO, Sam felt only slightly more alive than a dead fish. His eyes were gritty, his mouth felt disgusting and Dean'd been snoring for an hour straight. Sam woke him by tickling a feather in his ear, which made him feel a little better, but not a lot.
"Christ, Sammy," Dean growled, rubbing his ear to get the tickly feeling to stop.
"We're here."
"Right." Dean yawned and sat up straight. "So."
"So."
"Motel for the night, find a place in the morning?"
"Sounds good," Sam agreed with a yawn. He pulled over at the first motel he found that fell into the Winchester category. It was cheap, downtrodden and unremarkable. Most likely, the manager'd forget they'd ever been here by the time they checked out, which suited them just fine; always had. While Dean went to get them a room, Sam pulled out their bags and locked the car.
"What's the plan, then?" Sam asked once they were inside the room that was theirs for the night. It had two beds, a tiny little bathroom and had probably needed a complete makeover about ten years ago. All in all, it looked exactly like any other motel room Sam'd ever spent the night in.
Dean shrugged. "I get a job, you go to school. That's it."
Sam was just tired enough that he didn't bother finding out what else there was to Dean's ever so simplistic plan. He just yawned, said it was fine by him, and fell into bed face first, with his shoes still on. He was asleep by the time Dean tugged them off, and when he woke in the morning Dean had somehow gotten Sam out of his jeans as well as his oversized hoodie and got him in under the covers.
-'-
Dean had coffee ready on the table after Sam came out from his shower, just wearing a towel wrapped around his waist and one of the tight sports bras he owned. He still preferred to bind his breasts, but this? Just wearing a sports bra when Dean knew? It felt kind of nice, too.
"What is it you're trying to hide, exactly?" Dean asked, looking him over. "You don't have anything there to hide."
"Yes, I do," Sam snapped. "I know they're there. They stick out."
Dean rolled his eyes. "If you say so. Anyway, breakfast is served."
They ate in silence, Sam smothering more syrup than was entirely warranted over his pancakes while Dean skimmed through the papers he'd picked up and ate several pieces of toast and slices of bacon.
"Did you find anything?"
Sam shook his head. "There might be something in Fountain Creek, though."
"Yeah?"
"Couple of locals disappear every year, but it's not like it's unheard of for people to drown, right?"
"Right," Dean agreed. "Still, it's more than I have."
"Yeah?"
"Someone claims their cat is really Jesus. How 'bout that?"
Sam blinked. "I don't even… How do you start thinking that your cat is Jesus?"
"Maybe it died and came back? Or hey, raised a tiny little army of, like, hamsters or something."
"Zombie-cat Jesus?"
"Huh. That's kinda cool. I want a zombie-cat."
-'-
They spent most of that day just driving around in Colorado Springs. Whatever Dean was looking for, he wouldn't say, and Sam did his best to be extra annoying and asked far more questions than was probably justified to fill up his quota as pesky little brother. By the end of the day Sam had a couple of new notebooks for school and a new place to live.
The bungalow had seen better days, no doubt about that, and it only had the one bedroom, but Sam and Dean had been sharing for as long as Sam could remember and, frankly, it'd probably feel way weirder not sharing, so. Sharing it was. There was just the one bed, though, and it had been years since they'd shared one of those. In all honesty, Sam wasn't sure if he'd be comfortable sleeping in the same bed as Dean. Not when he didn't feel at home in his own skin, and, well. It was complicated.
For the first time in his life, there were actual boxes to unpack in the living room/kitchen (it turned out it wasn't as fun as all those crappy shows on TV made it look). So Dean cooked, and Sam ran around carrying stuff, trying to look like he knew what he was doing.
-'-
"It's Monday tomorrow."
"Brilliant observation, Sammy."
"It's Sam, and shut up." Sam scrubbed at his plate, trying to get the last of the stubborn, sticky food off it. "Where am I going to school?"
"Right. I called around to some of Dad's contacts, and one of them hooked you up with this fancy school, so you better not flunk, you hear what I'm saying?"
Sam twisted around to stare at Dean. Dean smirked, leaning back against the sill of the one window in the kitchen. "What?"
For the first time since Dean had gone off claiming to 'research schools', he looked a bit unsure. "It's the third best school in the state, Sammy. You're a geek, so I'm betting you'll just wet yourself at the thought of going to a 'real school'," Dean said, complete with air quotes and all. "I've no idea if it's, y'know, open minded? I'm guessing not, since, well, it's the Air Academy high school. But. Sam, it's a really good school."
Sam wasn't sure what to say, because, yeah, on the one hand he was fucking ecstatic to go to a real, normal school instead of all the cheap, falling-apart, barely-hanging-in-there schools he'd been to in the past, it was just… "Is it a military school? Dean, they hate people like me in the military! Are you fucking insane? I can't go to a military school! Dean-"
"It's not a military school!" Dean snapped. "It's just… related to the Air Force, I guess. I don't know. But it's the best fucking school in Colorado Springs, man, and I gotta tell you: you fucking deserve to go to a good fucking school, all right? I've seen your reports and it shouldn't be possible to score grades like that the way we've been living, Sam. You're. You're a genius, all right? You should go to a good school."
"So why pick Colorado Springs, then? Dean, there are hundreds of schools out there, and I'm sure at least some of them have a fucking GSA chapter!"
"Yeah, maybe they do, but. I found you a fucking doctor, okay? And she's here, not upstate or in San Francisco, all right? She's here."
Sam raised an eyebrow. "What? Now, suddenly, the only doctor in the US who can take a look at me 'cause I'm late is in Colorado Springs?!" he exclaimed, disbelief practically dripping from his tone. He sneered. "I sincerely doubt that."
Dean just huffed and rolled his eyes, though. "No, you idiot. Not that kind of doctor. The other kind."
Sam flushed, feeling his heart pound a thousand times faster, and suddenly he was so angry and wretched and betrayed that he didn't know what to do or how react or even how to speak. His hands were trembling so bad he dropped the plate he was cleaning down into the sink with a crash. "You said-" he choked out. "You promised!"
"Aw, shit, no, Sammy." Dean pulled him away from the sink and into a hug Sam really wanted no part of. He put his elbow in Dean's side, which made him grunt, but not really loosen the hold he had on Sam. "They have a center, Sam, for kids like you. I figure we go see her, talk to her, and she'll help you out."
"Help me how, Dean? Make me a normal fucking girl?!"
Dean laughed. "You'll never be normal, kid. You're too much fucking Winchester for that. No, it's kind of an LGBT center. You wanna be T? They'll help you out."
Sam's breathing was shaky and irregular. "What're you talking about?" he mumbled, not really following a thing Dean was saying. "Whaddya mean, T?"
Dean didn't say anything right away. "Sam, you ever done any research on yourself?"
Sam shook his head and closed his eyes. He sort of really liked that nook, right there, by Dean's shoulder and just under his ear so that his hair tickled Sam's face. Right there? The rest of the world didn't even fucking exist and it was awesome. "Was afraid to," he whispered. "Didn't wanna know if I was a freak or if, if there wasn't anything- anything that'd fix me."
"So I can still be awesome? I mean, I'm not as prepared for this as I was on the whole butch-dyke thing, but I think I covered the basics. Sam? Sammy? Aw, come on, kid, you don't have to cry; it'll be fine, I promise."
Continue
Sam stared at the skirt with badly disguised horror. It was ugly. Pink. He hated it; hated it even more than he hated the stupid, ugly purple top with the stupid sequins on it. He hated it. Dad never got him clothes like that; hadn't for as long as Sam could remember. Sam wore Dean's castoffs, and that was that. It'd always been like that because clothes were kinda expensive and money could be better spent on food, or so Dean was always telling Sam when he wanted new, cool stuff.
"C'mon, Sammy, it's not that bad," Dean wheedled. "Girls wear skirts all the time."
Sam stomped his foot and glowered. "You wear the stupid skirt! I don't want it!"
"Sammy-"
"No! It's ugly. I don't want it."
"Okay, fine," Dean sighed. "What do you wanna wear, then?"
Sam brightened and ran back into their room. He came out with a worn pair of jeans and an old Batman T-shirt. "Wanna wear this!" he declared.
"Sammy-"
"No, I want to!"
Dean ruffled Sam's hair as he grabbed the T-shirt and held it out. "It's dirty, see?"
"Can you clean it?"
"How about we see after school?"
Sam pouted until Dean suggested he wear the Spider-Man T-shirt instead. The pink skirt and the purple top vanished from Sam's little part of the closet and he never saw the clothes again. But he did wake up one night, a couple of days later, when Dad and Dean argued.
"You can't keep catering to her every wish, Dean!" Dad was saying, sounding angrier than Sam felt entirely comfortable with, and he pulled all the covers over himself and cuddled close to his pillow.
"She's a kid, Dad. What's it matter if she won't wear some stupid pink skirt?" It kinda made Sam feel all warm and happy inside, knowing that Dean thought the skirt had been stupid, too, even if the way Dad was talking made Sam a bit afraid.
"It's what girls her age wear," Dad snapped. "This? Her insistence on copying your every move? It's not normal, Dean. It's not what your mother would've wanted."
It hurt inside when they called Sam a girl (because he wasn't, not really, he was sure of it) or when Dad kept insisting it wasn't normal for Sam to refuse wearing girly stuff. He wasn't sure why, not just yet, but he thought maybe someone got it wrong - got him wrong - that maybe he would turn into a real boy soon enough if he just waited patiently. He didn't like girls (well, they did have all those cooties, sure) but they were all wrong, too, because even if Sam looked like them he was nothing like them.
Deep inside, he hoped Mom wouldn't have cared that Sam wasn't a real girl. He wished and hoped that she'd have just known, in that magical way he'd heard other kids explain about how moms were the best things ever, because they knew everything. In his mind, Mom never would've bought stupid, ugly skirts for him to wear, or kept insisting he have his hair really long when all he wanted was to cut it short like Dean's.
Sometimes he even wondered if Mom really would've wanted them to drive all over the country, but he hadn't been brave enough to ask Dad that yet.
-'-1993-'-
He was ten the first time he defied one of Dad's orders on purpose. Sam never understood why Dad insisted Sam keep his hair long. It was impractical - most of the time they didn't even own a hairbrush, and Sam'd be forced to grit his teeth as Dean struggled to sort it all out in a neat fashion.
So that day, twenty minutes in on another battle with the bird's nest that was Sam's hair, he asked Dean to take him to the hairdresser's and his brother readily agreed. Dean read a gossip mag and chewed gum while he waited for Sam, and didn't offer either advice or opinions. The stylist wouldn't cut his hair like Dean's no matter how much Sam wheedled or begged, but she did trim it. A lot. It was, she confided, all the rage somewhere her sister had been, and looked both cool and mature. Sam's hair was shaggy, short and rumpled. But it was awesome. He still had a fringe; his hair just barely covered his ears and only just brushed his neck. It wasn't even close to Dean's, but it was still so much better than it had been.
Sam didn't stop grinning until Dad snapped at him for getting his hair cut, but even then, after being sent to bed without supper, he still didn't regret a single thing (of course, Dean sneaked him food; he always did, so it wasn't like Sam fell asleep hungry).
-'-1995-'-
When he was twelve, he started snapping at Dad and Dean to call him Sam, not Sammy or, god forbid, Samantha. It was a bit like running up a mountain - a constant struggle. It was easier in school, because he was always the new kid and his classmates always used the name he gave them.
Sam, he'd say. My name is Sam.
-'-1997-'-
The school in Springfield, MA,had a Gay-Straight Alliance club. He was fourteen then, and was just at the point where he was starting to stand out more and more as the years went by. Dad said Sam was being ridiculous, that he should stop playing around and just be a normal girl the same way that Dean was a normal boy. Sam wasn't sure how many arguments got started that way, because they were growing in number every year now, but bottom line? Nothing the Winchesters did was normal, so why the hell did Sam have to be?
Still, whenever Dad or someone else nagged on him about being a fucking girl, Sam just clenched his jaw, narrowed his eyes and squared his shoulders as he stood even straighter. He refused to be a girl (because he wasn't; had never been and would never be), and that refusal never wavered, not once, but only grew stronger and stronger.
By then, by Springfield, MA, he was the only customer at Dean's hair salon, and they used a brutal bartering system in lieu of real money (he scored a bunch of points the time he came home from school with his pockets full of condoms that he'd snagged from the nurse's office). He dressed in Dean's castoffs, in layers upon layers, deepened his voice as much as he could, and started to actively hate the world for making him wrong.
In the GSA, he didn't really have to be anything other than himself, and he started coveting schools that had clubs like that. It wasn't something Sam'd spent a lot of time thinking about, exactly; it was kinda like how he knew that Dean was Dean and Sam was Sam, and they were the same, not different. It was just something he knew, something he'd known ever since he started toddling after Dean, determined to follow in his brother's footsteps and grow up to be exactly like him. Well, until puberty hit, at least.
Puberty sucked. Not just for him, because he'd never been happier in his life that he was one of those late bloomers everyone laughed at and pushed around like losers. No, he hated it because he was in the wrong body and everything was just so gross and wrong, and. And he'd seen, in the locker rooms, how the girls the schools made him change with all got breasts and curves and hips, and periods. It was just wrong.
Sam's skin crawled with how wrong it was.
-'-1998-'-
He got his first girlfriend when he was fifteen, and it was only the second secret he'd ever kept from Dean. She was shy and sweet and cute, and she'd sat with him in the library every day since Sam transferred to the school in Milwaukee, WI, two weeks ago.
He wasn't sure if maybe Dean knew anyway, because his brother kept giving him sort of amused, sort of knowing looks almost every day after school when Dean drove them home. Most of the time, Sam only ever went to where Dean was waiting in the Impala after saying goodbye to her as she found her own ride home (her mom, usually, sometimes her older sister). The thing was, though, that Dean never once said a word about it, so Sam never quite dared to bring it up, even though he wanted to. Oh, he wanted to tell Dean all about it so bad!
"How's your friend?" Dean would ask, and Sam would shrug and say, "Okay," and then they'd be silent as Dean navigated the streets toward the ratty trailer Dad had dumped them in for the duration of their stay in Milwaukee.
The first time she kissed him, it was a Friday, and Sam didn't stop smiling for the entire weekend.
"Oh, Sam," Dean said and laughed when Sam climbed into the car.
"I love this school," Sam murmured, his eyes stuck on the car his girlfriend - his girlfriend - had disappeared inside of.
"I bet," Dean said, voice dry. "How 'bout we splurge on some burgers and pie?"
"Uh-huh," Sam agreed, but he wasn't really paying attention, because his girlfriend was awesome and she had these amazing, soft lips and, like, the softest hair in the world and she smelled wonderful.
"Your friend okay?"
Sam grinned so hard his cheeks hurt. "She's awesome, Dean."
Dean laughed, long and loud, then he put the car in reverse and pulled out of the school's parking lot.
-'-1999(FEB)-'-
Tallahassee, FL, and everything changed. Chip away at a piece of flint stone long enough, and sooner or later you'll hit the wrong (right) spot and it'll explode in your hand.
The student counselor and some of the teachers started giving him a hard time when he switched home economics with advanced algebra, a class he'd taken at the previous two schools he'd been at that year. They were unhappy with him - to say the least - when he kicked up a fuss about running track: they wanted him to wear one of the skimpy uniforms they forced on girls, except he insisted on wearing the boys' version.
All in all? It led to awkward times in the locker rooms. Because the girls? The girls thought he was weird and started insisting he stay in the bathroom while the rest of them changed for PE, because they didn't want 'the dyke' to see them naked. The boys were easier, because they kinda thought he was the coolest girl for a while (at least until he started agreeing on certain girls being hot, and then they thought he was a weird-ass fag).
So what it led to in the end was that he was closing in on sixteen the first time he said, "Actually, I'm a guy," at a meeting in that one interchangeable high school in Tallahassee, FL, with yet another GSA club, when he was introduced as a new girl. He'd been at the school a couple of weeks by then, but up 'til that point he hadn't had time to check it out. So he just stood there, and he said, "My name's Sam. And. I'm a guy." It was the first time since he and Dean were kids that he'd said that out loud (the one time Dad caught them playing one of their games where Dean was Han Solo and Sam was Luke Skywalker hadn't ended in a way that had made Sam want to play that game - or any of the hundred other similar games they'd had back then - ever again. He'd felt ashamed, guilty, confused, but at least he'd waited until Dad went out to get dinner to let the tears fall. He'd sobbed for a long time, been asleep when Dad came back, and mumbled about wanting to be a real boy and wishing that he'd have been Dean's little brother for real).
"Really? You're a guy?" one of the other guys said, voice pitched in a way that made Sam's skin crawl.
"Yeah." He gritted his teeth. "You got a problem with that?"
Turned out, the guy did have a problem with that, and so did two of his friends.
When he got out of school, an hour late because of the detention he'd gotten when he punched the dick in the face and started a brawl in the GSA room, Dean was half-asleep in the driver's seat of the Impala. Sam had a split lip and a nasty bruise growing by the side of his eye.
The first words out of Dean's mouth when Sam slammed his way into the car were: "Whoa, girl, you all right?" It was all perfectly Dean: his special way of mixing scorn and worry and pride into a jumbled, mismatched package that no one but Dean (and Sam) ever made sense of.
Sam, predictably, exploded. "I'm not a fucking girl, you dick!"
"Sammy-" Dean started, eyes wide, but he was sitting upright now instead of half-slouched in his seat.
"Sam! I'm Sam!" Sam shouted, voice hoarse, choppy and hitched. "I hate this fucking school; I hate my crappy body; I hate fucking biology! I'm wrong, Dean! Wrong! I hate that I'm this way and I just wanna be normal; I don't wanna be stuck in this disgusting fucking body. I just wanna be normal. I wanna be me."
Dean gaped some, blinked some. He cleared his throat and looked Sam right in the eye and ignored his blotchy cheeks and red eyes. "Well, who are you, then?" he managed, sounding no less confused than he looked. "'Cause, I mean, you've always been you. Right? You're my little sister-"
"I don't want to be your sister, Dean!" Sam got out, almost choking on the words but, oh, they felt so good to say. "I, I hate being your sister."
Dean recoiled. He looked as if it would've been kinder to just carve his heart out with a dull spoon, throw it to the ground and stomp on it. "Oh," he said, all breathy and hurt. "I didn't know you hated what we do that much."
Sam just shook his head and wiped his eyes. "No, no." He shuffled closer, until their noses almost touched and they were all cross-eyed trying to keep eye contact. "I wanna be your brother, Dean," Sam whispered. "I'm Sam, not, not- I'm not a girl, Dean. I'm all wrong and I hate it. I hate that everyone thinks I'm a fucking girl, because I'm not. I'm not, Dean."
"Oh," Dean said again, sounding no closer to coherent. It didn't really matter if he got it or not, because he was still Sam's big brother and he still hugged Sam close when he broke down crying not ten seconds later.
-'-
"Well," Dean said, some time later in another time and place. "You've got that whole butch dyke thing going for you, you know? Hairy legs, my old toys, my old clothes, crushing on my dates-"
Sam shut him up by tackling him to the ground and restarting their ever on-going game of wrestling. It wasn't like there was ever a clear winner, or as if they kept count, but it blew off some steam and they got their differences sorted out.
After, Sam sat panting on the bed, legs stretched out and Dean slouched in front of him on the other bed in the room.
"I'm straight, Dean, 'cause I'm a guy," he said then, as if it was perfectly natural, even when he was sweaty and nervous and unsure about Dean.
"Right." Dean raised his eyebrows, then shrugged. "Whatever."
"No, not 'whatever'," Sam snapped.
"Why'd you get beat up?"
Sam looked mulish for all of a second. "When I stay after school? Not all the time, but sometimes?"
Dean rolled his eyes. "Let me guess: not soccer."
"No, not soccer," Sam agreed, without an ounce of guilt over his rather transparent lie. Dad never noticed because Dad was never around, but Dean kinda did. Because Sam? Didn't own a single piece of soccer related equipment. Running shoes for track, yes, but nothing for soccer. "GSA."
"The fag club?"
"The Gay-Straight Alliance, Dean."
"Yeah, that. S'what I said. So, what, they kick you out 'cause you're too much T in the whole LGBT-thingy they got going on? Their open-mindedness only go so far? They too close-minded to accept the full scale of it, or what?"
Sam pulled in a deep breath and forced himself to close his mouth. Sometimes he kinda forgot that Dean was wicked smart but chose to pretend he wasn't a lot of the time. Sometimes he even forgot how much Dean cared, when it came down to it. He cleared his throat. "This guy," he started slowly. "He. He laughed in my face. Then his buddies started, too, but they stopped when I. Well. I mighta called names, so they punched me, and I hit back."
"Except their daddies ain't marines," Dean quietly pointed out.
"You could say that," Sam agreed, tiny smile playing about his lips before he frowned at his brother. "Why do you even know what LGBT is, Dean? Hell, why d'you even know what it stands for?"
Dean ran a hand through his hair and shrugged. It took a while before he started talking, and his words took Sam by surprise, even though he knew they shouldn't, because it was Dean. "Well, for a while, I kinda figured I had a really butch, really dyke little sister. Turns out maybe I don't, not so much," he mumbled. "So I figured, y'know, I'd be prepared to be all supportive for when you started in on the confession and questions time. 'Cause you do; you always do. Hell, you ask all these questions and you demand I know everything about some weird-ass bug in fucking Mongolia!"
"Maybe because you practically raised me and kids kind of have this idea that their parents know absolutely everything?" Sam pointed out, voice dry, but his heart was hammering something awful beneath his breastbone. "So…"
"So, yeah. Bring it on, Sammy, 'cause I know a shit ton of stuff about dykes that I'll never have any use for now."
Sam snorted. "Please. Like you didn't just watch lesbian porn."
"Like you don't," Dean lazily countered just to have the pleasure of watching Sam go all red in the face. "Don't think I don't know what you get up to, you little pervert."
"Shut up," Sam muttered, but there was no real fire behind his words.
Dean laughed. Then he got up, dug through his duffel and came out with a brown paper bag that he threw at Sam. "I totally read books, too. Had it all prepared, figured out what to say and all." He nodded at the bag. "Fixed that for you, 'cause someone at one of those LGBT offices said it'd be, I dunno, helpful or something."
Sam looked skeptical and half terrified out of his mind. There was a book in the bag, one of those books with interviews/life stories from 'real people' in it, a bookmark, a round badge with all the colors of the rainbow on it and a bar of chocolate that didn't look like it'd been waiting in the bag forever to come out. There was also a T-shirt that was so like Dean that Sam couldn't help but laugh, even if it hurt a little inside. '(I'm) dyke, BITCH', it said, in black against the white, but at least the T-shirt wasn't one of those stupid women's cut versions and, hey, it wasn't like grammar had ever been Dean's strong suit (okay, yeah, that was a lie, because Dean had been the one to lay it all out for Sam back in the day, but that didn't mean that Dean wouldn't jump at an opportunity to get on Sam's nerves by putting a big, fat grammatical error on a T-shirt).
"So, yeah," Dean cut in. "I had it all planned out how I was gonna be the coolest brother ever."
"I'm so sorry to burst your bubble, Dean," Sam managed to say, but he couldn't really keep the scorn out of his voice. "I'm so sorry I'm not fucking perfect, and. Shit."
"Sam, hey, no. Sam. Listen to me." Dean tapped him on the nose, shoved the gifts out of the way and sat down next to him. "Listen, I read up on all that for you, 'cause that's what I thought was, y'know, up. So, stupid me, I skipped reading the tons of books on trans issues. But this?" Dean indicated the gifts. "That was me being all supportive and cool about it."
"And now?" Sam asked.
Dean was quiet awhile. "Well, I'm still kinda relieved that you don't go for guys, because to be frank? I gotta tell you that's one conversation I don't ever wanna have with you. And I mean, come on, how the hell does any guy let bastards like me even get close to their sisters? Or, well, brothers who got mixed up with the wrong body. How does that work, anyway?"
"I. I don't know," Sam admitted. "I just know. I look at you, or the guys at school, and I just know that's what I'm supposed to be. You know, I haven't looked at myself in a mirror in years, because what I see is so wrong I want to throw up. I just. I just, I kept hoping, for so long, that there'd been some mistake or something; that maybe I'd turn into a boy if I just waited a bit longer, but it doesn't work like that."
"No," Dean agreed. "It doesn't. I wish it did," he added in a quiet but serious tone. "Because then everyone'd be happy, right?"
Sam just nodded, so Dean went on, "And, you know, it's not like I call you Sammy because you're a girl. I call you Sammy 'cause it's you."
"I hate it when you call me- when you call me Samantha." How Sam got the name out without stuttering was a miracle. "I don't like it. It makes me feel so wrong. Like I have to be something I'm not."
"Like a square peg in a round hole," Dean murmured. He took a deep breath, then said, "This girl I was seeing once. Marina? She. Well, she had a dick instead of, y'know, the usual bits. I guess maybe she was like you, only the other way around."
Sam wasn't sure if that was too much information or not. Because on the one hand? Ew, he did so not need to know about his brother's sex life. But on the other hand? Dean had fucking dated a chick with a dick, so that had to count for something, right?
"You, you didn't mind? You don't, I mean, I."
"Sam. You're my little-" Dean cleared his throat and Sam narrowed his eyes. "Well, I guess you're my little brother now, but to me? You're still the same person you've always been. Only…"
"Only?" Sam pressed, eyes narrowed and lips scrunched tightly together.
Dean shrugged. "Only, well, I guess- I mean, you're still you, right?"
"Yeah," Sam agreed. "I won't start acting all weird or change or anything. I just. I just told you who I am, that's all."
Dean nodded once. "Yeah, right. So. You gonna get all pissed at me when I get the pronouns wrong? 'Cause come on, Sammy, you gotta realize that'll take time, even if I know now. I've spent sixteen years thinking I had a little sister when it turns out that, hey, maybe I don't, not so much. Just a bitchy little brother."
"Shut up!" Sam growled, and this time the wrestling match didn't stop until Dean accidentally banged his head against the bedside table.
"Ow," he whined.
Sam laughed and pushed at Dean until he could check if he'd been injured for real or not. "Stop being such a baby," he admonished when he couldn't even find a bump. "You're fine."
Dean looked a lot like a disgruntled twelve year old right then. "I shoulda known you were too cool and way too fucking cruel to be a girl," he whined.
Sam rolled his eyes and pretended to be annoyed, but it was kinda hard when he was grinning from ear to ear, so, well, he wasn't too sure how convincing he was.
-'-
They ordered pizza that night. Or rather: Dean went out and brought pizza home, only one of which were of the meat monstrosity kinds that the Winchesters normally went for. The other was the kind of pizza Sam only ever got when he wasn't eating it with his family; there wasn't an ounce of meat on it and it had extra pineapple.
Sam gaped.
Dean grinned. "Don't say I never did anything for you, bitch."
"I just. How'd you know?"
"'Cause I? Am an awesome brother."
Sam just grinned. "Yeah, yeah, you kinda are."
"I expect points for this."
"I got another bag of condoms."
"Consider us even."
They didn't speak much after that. Dean rarely did when he was eating and for once even Sam was starving. His busted lip was kinda sore and stung whenever he got tomato sauce on it, but it wasn't even close to popping Sam's good mood. Still, he should've known something was up when Dean cleared the table and came back with two bottles of beer and a big bag of M&M's.
"Dad-" Dean started, then stopped speaking again almost as abruptly as he'd started.
Sam froze. He felt a bit like he'd throw up any moment now, 'cause he really hadn't needed to eat that last slice of pizza, except he wasn't sure if maybe it was just that he wanted to run as far away as possible. And come on, Dean only ever bribed him with beer when he wanted to talk about something that he knew Sam didn't want to.
"Dad," Dean started up again. "Well, I think he maybe started noticing the other day, when I said I was twenty now and maybe I could stay and look after you while he took off on longer hunting trips. I think maybe he realized that if I'm twenty, then you're closing in on sixteen, and, dude, you still don't have tits."
Sam scowled. "I hate my fucking tits," he spat.
Dean blinked. The beer bottles were placed on the dingy table next to the bag of candy, and Sam kinda wanted to punch Dean in the face for ruining his good mood. He poked at Sam and shifted around on the couch until they sat chest to chest, then tugged Sam's over shirt off. Tilting his head to the side, Dean raised an eyebrow. "Dude. I can't fucking see your tits."
Sam pursed his lips, then shrugged. Throwing his shirt at Dean, Sam peeled off the T-shirts he was wearing under it - one long-sleeved, one short sleeved, because layers fucking ruled. It left him sitting in one of his old, threadbare tops that had more holes that not. Sam bit his lip.
"Sam?" Dean asked, a bit wide-eyed, and Sam supposed he couldn't blame his brother. They hadn't been naked around each other since, well. Probably since Sam started school and Dad started insisting on them not taking baths and showers together anymore. When it came down to it, right here and right now, Sam had the body of a girl some months short of sixteen and Dean was a guy who'd only recently turned twenty. Hell, Sam hadn't walked around topless since… He couldn't even remember anymore, but his best bet was since around the time that Dad freaked about how girls didn't fucking wrap their towels around their hips, no matter the fact that Sam had looked just like a guy, waist up, at the time.
Even in normal families, Sam doubted younger siblings got undressed in front of their older ones. Especially when they didn't share the same sex outwardly.
With some slight hesitation on Sam's part, he pulled off the last article of clothing that kept Dean from seeing Sam's most guarded secret - or most shameful facet of himself; he wasn't sure.
Ever since the first hard, fucking painful buds had started poking out from his chest, Sam had been ruthless in his quest to hide them and push them away and make it all just disappear. So he'd nicked a couple of rolls of bandages from their med kit, and started making what little he had in breast growth go away.
"Sammy," Dean breathed, his eyes wide.
Sam sniffed. "I hate being like this, Dean."
"Okay, yeah," Dean said. "I guess I. That's gotta hurt, Sammy."
It was just so Dean to be concerned with Sam's wellbeing that Sam kinda wanted to laugh, just a little bit. "It's not so bad," Sam said. "At first even moving kinda made me want to scream and cry and punch something, but I got used to it. And it's better than, than."
"Having tits?"
"Yeah. That really sucks."
Dean frowned, though, looking sort of concerned still, in a way that made Sam shift.
"Dean?"
"You're almost sixteen, right?" Dean put a hand on Sam's shoulder and twisted him until Dean could look at him from the side. Sam nodded, so Dean went on, "I dunno how, well. I read up on puberty - the girly bits. You should… I think, maybe, you should've had a bit more cleavage than that by now. Even tied down. You, ah… You started with periods and stuff? 'Cause-"
"No," Sam admitted.
Dean made a curious little sound. "Huh," he said. "I think maybe you should've by now."
"What kind of books have you been reading, Dean?" Sam asked, and he wasn't even sure he wanted to know the answer to that one.
"You think Dad would've?" Dean returned, and Sam had to admit Dean had just made a brilliant point. "He told me to look after you, and that's what I'm doing. Still, Sam. I kinda think you're a bit, well, late?" Clearing his throat, Dean gestured at Sam's bound chest. "How long've you been doing that?"
"Since…" Sam bit his lip as he counted backward. "I think we were in Texas, 'cause I kept getting frustrated with how fucking hot wearing all the bandages was."
"So… May, June, '98?" Dean paused. "That's kinda late, isn't it?"
"I love being late. I think I was the only, well." Sam made a face of distaste. "Let's just say, the real girls? They had tits."
"And you know this, how?"
Sam grinned. "Locker rooms, Dean. They put me with the girls; I know all about when they grow tits."
Dean's mouth fell open. "That is so fucking unfair, man!"
Shrugging, Sam said, "Though to be fair, the girls at this school make me stay in the bathroom while they change, because they think I'm a weird dyke or something and don't want me sneaking looks at them. The guys think I'm cool so long as I don't act like a dyke, I suppose."
"Are you kidding me? If I was hanging out with someone like you when I was in high school? I'd want all the juicy details."
"'Cause you're a sexual freak, Dean."
Dean laughed, but he didn't deny it, either.
Sam was halfway through his beer and they had both made a sizeable dent in the bag of M&M's when Dean said, "I've been thinking about it since you told me, Sam, but I can't make heads or tails of if we should tell Dad. Hell, what we should tell him."
Sam took a deep breath and ignored the way it was suddenly hard to hold the bottle steady. "He's the one who's really insistent on me being a, a proper girl."
"Yeah," Dean agreed.
"He doesn't like me being all tomboyish. Isn't that what he calls it? It doesn't even matter that- Look, if I was… if I was a girl, for real? How'd me wearing heels and skirts and fucking fake nails and hair extensions be a fucking good idea on a hunt?"
"I dunno, man."
Sam leaned back against the couch and brought the bottle up to his lips. The leather stuck uncomfortably against his back, and maybe he should've put his clothes back on by now, but there was a certain freedom in having Dean know, in having Dean listen to him, believe him. In Dean not flipping out on him or calling him a liar, a freak; in Dean seeing him, finally, and not who his body claimed he was. Which, of course, was when Dean dropped a bombshell on him by saying:
"I think maybe you should see a doctor, just to make sure?"
"There's nothing wrong with me, Dean!" Sam snapped. "I'm not confused, or, or-"
"Hey, no. Easy, Sammy." Dean squeezed Sam's shoulder. "Not that kind. I mean 'cause you're late."
"Late?"
"With the boobs and stuff." Dean made a gesture over his chest - as if Sam could've possibly misunderstood what Dean was talking about. "I read about it, you know? I think the books and stuff said you should've started with that stuff by now. Maybe? Or maybe we could go see Missouri, or. I don't know, man."
"Oh."
"I don't know if it's normal or not, s'all I'm saying. But I'd kinda like to make sure that there's nothing really wrong, now, rather than waiting too long and then maybe there was something seriously wrong and we were too late."
"Okay, I guess," Sam agreed, even though his skin was crawling and just thinking about it made him feel nauseous. "But I'm not confused, Dean. I know who I am."
"Yeah, I know you do. Ain't never met anyone who was more hard-headed and stubborn than you. If you say you're sure? Then you're sure. I think I had that down by the time you were three."
"I don't want a doctor to tell me I'm wrong, either."
"Okay. So we go to an LGBT doctor."
For a moment, Sam was thrown by how much reading Dean really had done when he thought Sam might be a lesbian or something; how much reading he'd done on the female aspects of puberty in the first place; how determined Dean was to make sure Sam felt normal. So Sam hugged Dean, burrowed his nose into Dean's neck like he had when he was little and needed to feel less alone. Dean returned the hug, ruffled his hair, and rubbed his back and said, "You're gonna be all right, kid."
"Dean?"
"Yeah?"
"You know how you say 'dude' and 'man' to everyone?"
"Oh, Sam."
Sam smiled. "It made me really happy whenever you called me man, 'cause I could pretend a little more that maybe, maybe-"
"It'll be fine, Sammy. I promise."
Sam thought, maybe, that he could really trust Dean to make this okay, too, like he had with everything else since Sam was so little he could barely walk. Because Dean? Well, he was magic like that.
-'-
Sam went to school the next morning, ignored the people from the GSA who looked at him funny, and ignored the whispers that spread and spread until the whole school was staring and talking about him behind his back. Two days later, he was called into the nurse's office and told to talk to the counselor about his 'delicate state of mind'. Sam sat in sullen silence until Dean came stalking in to pick him up.
"All right, what's up?" he demanded of the counselor - Mr. Fugly Sweater, Sam mentally called him, because what he was wearing was absolutely scarring (it might be wool, it might be patterned, and it might be about five colors too many).
Fugly raised his eyebrows at Dean's typically cocky attitude, then set about polishing his glasses as if he had all the time in the world. "It appears Samantha is a bit confused." Sam flinched at the name, just like he always did, but this was probably the first time Dean really noticed it, because he placed a hand on Sam's shoulder and squeezed once before turning all his attention back to Mr. Fugly Sweater.
"Confused?" Dean asked, and he sounded as if he really didn't give a damn, except his eyes were all dangerous and he was tense; too tense.
"Yes. She's been telling her classmates that she is, well, a boy; you can understand that she is confused, of course. Several girls have complained to their teachers that they feel uncomfortable changing in the same room with her for PE. I must insist you make your sister see reason about this. It is simply not acceptable behavior."
"Huh," Dean said. "Well, maybe it'd help if you weren't a complete moron."
"Excuse me?" Fugly sputtered. Sam hid a grin.
"Well," Dean went on. "It's quite simple. See, my brother? He's transsexual. You should look it up; might explain a few new concepts to you. Well, except you're such a crappy guidance counselor I doubt you'd even understand a word of it. So: It's when people are born into the wrong body. It's a bit complicated, so I see how you might be confused."
"How dare-"
"I dare," Dean said, steel in his tone. "Because Sam is my brother and you are an ignorant bigot." He turned to Sam, snapped his fingers and said, "Come on, Sam. We're leaving."
Sam's face was flushed and he was grinning ear to ear, trailing after Dean as they made their way out of the school. "Dean," he breathed.
"Yeah, yeah. You owe me, bitch."
"You're fucking awesome!"
"And don't you forget it."
-'-
In a reversal of their usual roles, Sam cooked dinner that night while Dean was busy with something else. He wouldn't say what, of course, only let enough details slip that Sam's insatiable curiosity reared its ugly head. Sam wasn't the best cook; out of all of them, Dean was the only one with any real skill in a kitchen (which, yeah, annoyed Dad to no end, but Sam was frankly sick of finding something Dad wasn't annoyed at these days). Still, he was more angry at his school because he wouldn't be the least bit surprised if he got a mark in his record for this, which sucked big time because unlike Dean's record, Sam's had always been spotless and impeccable.
Sam had plans - okay, so maybe they were more along the lines of wishes and dreams at this point, but still. Some involved vague notions of maybe going to a university or college. Others, well. Others involved him turning into a real boy. He wasn't sure how exactly he was going to manage that feat, but he didn't doubt for a moment that he would either. It was just…
It was just, he didn't want to get his hopes crushed because it wasn't possible, or if it was illegal, or if there was something wrong with him so that everyone would refuse to help him. He knew he wasn't alone, he couldn't be - it had a name and Dean had known it. So he wasn't alone. He had just never dared to actually do any kind of research about it, but now that Dean knew, now that Dean was on his side…
Maybe it wasn't impossible.
"Okay. Freak."
Sam started and glared at his brother, who was glaring right back down at the vegetables Sam was frying in the pan. "Healthy food won't kill you, you know."
"Hmm," Dean said, and he didn't sound entirely convinced. "Hey, is there bacon in that?"
"Bacon, peppers, onions and mushrooms."
Dean nodded. "So you left the eggs in the fridge."
"Yep. Figured we could have those with the milk tomorrow for breakfast."
Dean groaned. "Fuck, I need to get another job, don't I?"
"I could-"
"No," Dean interrupted immediately. "I know how insane you are about school. You honestly telling me you could hold down a job on top of that?"
Sam shook his head. "So I can still go to school?"
Dean scowled, then he reached around Sam and snatched the pan off the stove. He turned it off, put the pan on the table and had the plates out in no time; Dean could be freakishly competent in the kitchen like nobody's business when he wanted to.
"Dean?"
"They felt it would be best if you were given some time to 'figure yourself out'."
Sam looked down at the plate Dean handed to him, loaded with food. "Oh," he said. "So they won't let me back until… until I take it back?"
"Yeah, that's what I got, too," Dean sighed.
"Dad's gonna be pissed."
"Dad's not gonna know," Dean snapped. "I pulled you out; we're moving."
"What?!" Sam exclaimed, fork clattering to the table as he dropped it in shock.
Dean shrugged. "Look, Dad set it up the second I turned eighteen. In case we run into trouble and he ain't around to pull us out of it, then, well, then I got this nice, legal paper saying I'm in charge of you, right? So I figure we pull you out of school and-"
"-and go where, Dean?"
"Colorado Springs."
Sam blinked. "Okay. Why?"
"Because."
"Because what, Dean?"
Dean grinned and winked. "That's a secret. I'll pull up a school at the library tomorrow. You take the rest of the week off and pack, yeah? See if we can't be there by Saturday or Sunday."
"Wait, you're seriously my guardian?" Sam exclaimed.
Dean just nodded, not perturbed even the slightest bit. "Yeah. S'partly in case anything happens to Dad and partly in case something happens when he ain't around. This is the first time I've had to use it."
-'-
Two days later, their crappy little apartment was… well, empty wasn't the right word, because the furniture had been there when they moved in, but all their stuff was gone, packed into bags in the car. Sam had even taken the time to get hold of two cardboard boxes that he'd stuffed their kitchen paraphernalia in, along with the books and some of the other stuff - like the extra towels and the bed sheets - that usually got left behind. This time was different from the other times they'd moved, because it turned out Sam and Dean were better planners together than their Dad was alone. Also? And this was partly the real reason: Dad was the one who always insisted on leaving everything behind. Without him around, grabbing the extra stuff made no difference to Sam, and there was room for it in the car.
"Okay," Dean declared. "I drive during the day when the cops are out, and you drive at night."
"Cool."
Dean dumped a wad of newspapers in Sam's lap the second he climbed inside the car. "Find us a case."
"What?" Sam scowled. "Why? I thought-"
"Hey! You wanna tell Dad you got kicked out of school 'cause your plumbing is all wrong?"
"No," Sam mumbled, sheepish and sullen.
"Right. So find us a case."
"Did you tell Dad?"
Dean shook his head. "I left him a message saying we'd moved, but I didn't leave any details. Figured it could wait 'til he finds the time to call back."
"Right," Sam agreed. Then, "He hasn't called back?"
Dean shook his head, lips tight, and Sam didn't ask about Dad again.
-'-
They drove for two days, and by the time they reached Colorado Springs, CO, Sam felt only slightly more alive than a dead fish. His eyes were gritty, his mouth felt disgusting and Dean'd been snoring for an hour straight. Sam woke him by tickling a feather in his ear, which made him feel a little better, but not a lot.
"Christ, Sammy," Dean growled, rubbing his ear to get the tickly feeling to stop.
"We're here."
"Right." Dean yawned and sat up straight. "So."
"So."
"Motel for the night, find a place in the morning?"
"Sounds good," Sam agreed with a yawn. He pulled over at the first motel he found that fell into the Winchester category. It was cheap, downtrodden and unremarkable. Most likely, the manager'd forget they'd ever been here by the time they checked out, which suited them just fine; always had. While Dean went to get them a room, Sam pulled out their bags and locked the car.
"What's the plan, then?" Sam asked once they were inside the room that was theirs for the night. It had two beds, a tiny little bathroom and had probably needed a complete makeover about ten years ago. All in all, it looked exactly like any other motel room Sam'd ever spent the night in.
Dean shrugged. "I get a job, you go to school. That's it."
Sam was just tired enough that he didn't bother finding out what else there was to Dean's ever so simplistic plan. He just yawned, said it was fine by him, and fell into bed face first, with his shoes still on. He was asleep by the time Dean tugged them off, and when he woke in the morning Dean had somehow gotten Sam out of his jeans as well as his oversized hoodie and got him in under the covers.
-'-
Dean had coffee ready on the table after Sam came out from his shower, just wearing a towel wrapped around his waist and one of the tight sports bras he owned. He still preferred to bind his breasts, but this? Just wearing a sports bra when Dean knew? It felt kind of nice, too.
"What is it you're trying to hide, exactly?" Dean asked, looking him over. "You don't have anything there to hide."
"Yes, I do," Sam snapped. "I know they're there. They stick out."
Dean rolled his eyes. "If you say so. Anyway, breakfast is served."
They ate in silence, Sam smothering more syrup than was entirely warranted over his pancakes while Dean skimmed through the papers he'd picked up and ate several pieces of toast and slices of bacon.
"Did you find anything?"
Sam shook his head. "There might be something in Fountain Creek, though."
"Yeah?"
"Couple of locals disappear every year, but it's not like it's unheard of for people to drown, right?"
"Right," Dean agreed. "Still, it's more than I have."
"Yeah?"
"Someone claims their cat is really Jesus. How 'bout that?"
Sam blinked. "I don't even… How do you start thinking that your cat is Jesus?"
"Maybe it died and came back? Or hey, raised a tiny little army of, like, hamsters or something."
"Zombie-cat Jesus?"
"Huh. That's kinda cool. I want a zombie-cat."
-'-
They spent most of that day just driving around in Colorado Springs. Whatever Dean was looking for, he wouldn't say, and Sam did his best to be extra annoying and asked far more questions than was probably justified to fill up his quota as pesky little brother. By the end of the day Sam had a couple of new notebooks for school and a new place to live.
The bungalow had seen better days, no doubt about that, and it only had the one bedroom, but Sam and Dean had been sharing for as long as Sam could remember and, frankly, it'd probably feel way weirder not sharing, so. Sharing it was. There was just the one bed, though, and it had been years since they'd shared one of those. In all honesty, Sam wasn't sure if he'd be comfortable sleeping in the same bed as Dean. Not when he didn't feel at home in his own skin, and, well. It was complicated.
For the first time in his life, there were actual boxes to unpack in the living room/kitchen (it turned out it wasn't as fun as all those crappy shows on TV made it look). So Dean cooked, and Sam ran around carrying stuff, trying to look like he knew what he was doing.
-'-
"It's Monday tomorrow."
"Brilliant observation, Sammy."
"It's Sam, and shut up." Sam scrubbed at his plate, trying to get the last of the stubborn, sticky food off it. "Where am I going to school?"
"Right. I called around to some of Dad's contacts, and one of them hooked you up with this fancy school, so you better not flunk, you hear what I'm saying?"
Sam twisted around to stare at Dean. Dean smirked, leaning back against the sill of the one window in the kitchen. "What?"
For the first time since Dean had gone off claiming to 'research schools', he looked a bit unsure. "It's the third best school in the state, Sammy. You're a geek, so I'm betting you'll just wet yourself at the thought of going to a 'real school'," Dean said, complete with air quotes and all. "I've no idea if it's, y'know, open minded? I'm guessing not, since, well, it's the Air Academy high school. But. Sam, it's a really good school."
Sam wasn't sure what to say, because, yeah, on the one hand he was fucking ecstatic to go to a real, normal school instead of all the cheap, falling-apart, barely-hanging-in-there schools he'd been to in the past, it was just… "Is it a military school? Dean, they hate people like me in the military! Are you fucking insane? I can't go to a military school! Dean-"
"It's not a military school!" Dean snapped. "It's just… related to the Air Force, I guess. I don't know. But it's the best fucking school in Colorado Springs, man, and I gotta tell you: you fucking deserve to go to a good fucking school, all right? I've seen your reports and it shouldn't be possible to score grades like that the way we've been living, Sam. You're. You're a genius, all right? You should go to a good school."
"So why pick Colorado Springs, then? Dean, there are hundreds of schools out there, and I'm sure at least some of them have a fucking GSA chapter!"
"Yeah, maybe they do, but. I found you a fucking doctor, okay? And she's here, not upstate or in San Francisco, all right? She's here."
Sam raised an eyebrow. "What? Now, suddenly, the only doctor in the US who can take a look at me 'cause I'm late is in Colorado Springs?!" he exclaimed, disbelief practically dripping from his tone. He sneered. "I sincerely doubt that."
Dean just huffed and rolled his eyes, though. "No, you idiot. Not that kind of doctor. The other kind."
Sam flushed, feeling his heart pound a thousand times faster, and suddenly he was so angry and wretched and betrayed that he didn't know what to do or how react or even how to speak. His hands were trembling so bad he dropped the plate he was cleaning down into the sink with a crash. "You said-" he choked out. "You promised!"
"Aw, shit, no, Sammy." Dean pulled him away from the sink and into a hug Sam really wanted no part of. He put his elbow in Dean's side, which made him grunt, but not really loosen the hold he had on Sam. "They have a center, Sam, for kids like you. I figure we go see her, talk to her, and she'll help you out."
"Help me how, Dean? Make me a normal fucking girl?!"
Dean laughed. "You'll never be normal, kid. You're too much fucking Winchester for that. No, it's kind of an LGBT center. You wanna be T? They'll help you out."
Sam's breathing was shaky and irregular. "What're you talking about?" he mumbled, not really following a thing Dean was saying. "Whaddya mean, T?"
Dean didn't say anything right away. "Sam, you ever done any research on yourself?"
Sam shook his head and closed his eyes. He sort of really liked that nook, right there, by Dean's shoulder and just under his ear so that his hair tickled Sam's face. Right there? The rest of the world didn't even fucking exist and it was awesome. "Was afraid to," he whispered. "Didn't wanna know if I was a freak or if, if there wasn't anything- anything that'd fix me."
"So I can still be awesome? I mean, I'm not as prepared for this as I was on the whole butch-dyke thing, but I think I covered the basics. Sam? Sammy? Aw, come on, kid, you don't have to cry; it'll be fine, I promise."
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