starry-eyed
trans!dean, sam, dean/cassie -- rated pg-13
summary: "It's Dean," he says, sitting up and spitting blood onto the ground.
notes: i've wanted to write trans!dean for a while now. this fic features FTM dean, a really supportive john and sam winchester, and lots of dean!feelings. title from "starry-eyed" by ellie goulding. read by haley (
sailetheach).
Dean holds the scissors in his hand and untucks his hair from the baseball cap on his head. It spills over his shoulders and stretches down his back, almost past his hips. He's spent years growing it out, at the insistence of his mother, ages and ages ago, who would run her hands through it before she tucked him into bed, or would comb through it with an ivory handled brush and murmur, You are beautiful. You are perfect.
Dean clutches the hair in his fist and opens the scissors wide.
By the time John returns from a hunt, the dirty blonde locks are in a pile on the bathroom floor and Dean is warming up a can of raviolis for Sammy's dinner.
Later, John sits Dean on the floor in front of a chair and takes the scissor in his own hand, cleaning up the ends and smoothing them out.
"Is it better, daddy?"
"It sure is."
John slips only once. It's Dean’s first hunt and they're in the woods, back to back, the gun aimed straight and true in Dean's hands. Something falls from above and rips and tears until Dean can smell his own blood, can taste it in his mouth.
"Deanna!" Dean hears it and only registers it for a moment before he's free and he can breathe, the monster twitching on the ground next to him, John's face filling his line of vision.
"It's Dean," he says, sitting up and spitting blood onto the ground. John smiles weakly and nods, hoisting him up and helping him back to the car.
"I know it is, kiddo." He presses a rare kiss to the top of Dean's head and hands him a towel. "Don't you get blood on the seats, you hear me?"
"Yes, sir."
He's sixteen when he tears a spare bed sheet into strips and wraps it tight across his chest, pleased with the results when he's finished taping it down. Sam looks up from his breakfast, confused for only a minute before going back to his cereal. John doesn't comment.
He's sixteen when he hears his father, for the first time, say, "These are my boys, Sam and Dean."
Sam leaves and it's just Dean and John. The days seems to carry on heavily and slowly. They're more comfortable apart and Dean sometimes hunts on his own. He can survive now. He knows how. He's happy alone, sometimes. Being with John reminds him that there's an empty space to be filled -- alone, he can pretend there was never anyone else. And then he meets Cassie.
She's the first person he's ever wanted the way he does. He's admired from afar, always confident in his looks, but never confident enough to broach the subject of attraction. It's never been about his body, it's always been about John or Sam. It's always been about coming into a town and being gone, just like that.
But alone, there's no one to check his threads of attachment, and Dean finds himself thinking about Cassie for hours and hours. She comes to him first, though, and tells him she's been doing the same thing.
She knows his body and her hands map it like she's been there before, fingers sliding gracefully over his arms and thighs. Dean teaches her how to hold him, teaches her the language of his skin and bones and nerves, and she speaks it like she was born with the words on her tongue, unfolds him like she's known how he was made forever. He loves her, he thinks. And then he knows he does and then he realizes what he's done. And he doesn't even care.
It stings when she turns her back to him, to his honesty. He knows the rules: no one should know what they do. No one else needs to know what hides in the dark. But he's shared everything else -- it seems a shame and a terrible, awful lie to hide this from her. "Do you think I'm stupid?" she says, voice bitter and angry. He feels like a fool. A fool for being in love and a fool for being honest.
Having Sam back makes him feel whole again, makes him feel good about life. He'd forgotten how natural it is to be around Sam, to not be alone. He'd forgotten how much he hates being alone, how it wounded him and scared him and kept him awake at night. That first year, Sam hardly sleeps, but Dean does. He sleeps well for the first time in years. He has someone else to take care of. He'd made that promise, years and years ago. You take care of Sammy, John had said. You're brothers, that's what brothers do. That's what Winchesters do. And he'd been proud to be Sam's brother and his father's son -- but he'd been proud to be a Winchester, above all else.
Somewhere along the road, Sam turns to him and says, "I missed you." And Dean looks at him, one hand gripping the steering wheel and the other fiddling with the radio.
"I missed you, too," he admits, and Sam smiles like he's won a prize. The road uncurls like a ribbon in front of them and Dean keeps driving, well into the night, blanketed by the comfortable silence between the two of them and the expanse of highway before them, limitless and free.