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It doesn’t really start with Jack. Like, it kind of does, but if Dean looks back on it, he guesses that maybe there were a couple of signs. His skin’s never really fit right, he’s known that since forever, but it’s not until he’s helping raise a kid with some degree of self-awareness that he realises just how badly he got fucked up.
There is—urgh—mountains of shit Dean could be trying to unpack, if he wanted. He definitely does not. He is, in fact, trying damn hard not to think about any of it. He made his peace with his childhood and his dad by burying that shit down six feet under, and he’s not dragging it back up for closure. What’s dead should stay dead, and he’s managing just fine.
Then Cas takes Jack to Claire’s and they come back with the whole freaking store, and Dean thinks he should be applauded for the way he handles that like a champ. No terrible homophobic crap came spilling instinctively out of his mouth, so give him a damn fucking prize for being half-decent, or whatever.
Angels are weird about gender. That’s normal, it’s fine, Dean doesn’t really care. He thinks it probably has something to do with not really getting that some shit’s for girls and some shit’s for guys, or maybe once they figure it out they just don’t care. That’s definitely Cas. Oh, the dude’s pitched his tent firmly in the man-camp, but he’s not really like any man Dean’s ever known. Doesn’t give a crap about how they’re supposed to be, how they’re supposed to look, not anything. If Dean were feeling sentimental he’d call it fucking inspiring, but that’s way too chick-flick, too embarrassing, too exposing.
He turns a stray plate round in his hands even though he wiped it dry over a minute ago. Can’t hurt to be thorough.
Jack’s doing his thing, putting Hello Kitty clips in Sam’s hair for a joke, sliding matching pink and plasticky friendship bracelets on his and Cas’ wrists, and he’s got this big smile on his face, telling a story about how nice the shopgirl was. Dean’s chest wells up.
If he’s honest, his life is pretty much a chick flick, at this point. It’s— god, fuck it, it’s fucking awesome. Seriously. And Dean’s been getting kind of better of letting go of that Chuck Norris fantasy he held as a kid, uses his spare change to buy silly little socks and skinny jeans and his Kiss the Cook! apron, which ain’t stuff his dad woulda let him wear in a million years. He cooks them dinner and lunch and he’s a neat-freak about his kitchen, and he’s become the kind of guy who nags Jack about wearing a jacket when he goes outside, so maybe he’s not much like what a man ought to be, either.
He watches as Cas kisses Jack’s forehead, the hand with the bracelet coming up to cup the back of Jack’s head, tacky little charms clicking against each other. That dish he’s meant to be drying is dangerously close to getting snapped, because there’s something big and lonely and longing in his chest, which doesn’t make sense because his family’s under one roof and that’s pretty much the only damn thing he’s ever wanted, for all of them to stick around.
Cas is just— good. He’s so good at all of this, this parenting crap, this living his life like he wants, and Dean knows it hasn’t always been like this, that there’ve been times when Cas’ self-loathing has given his own a run for its money. Right now, though, Cas is happy, and comfortable, and it shines outta him all the live-long day, and Dean just basks in it. It’s all he can do.
“Hello,” Cas says, because he’s still got that freaky sixth sense attuned to Dean, and pulls the exact same move once he’s wandered over. The plastic beads press against Dean’s ear. He is not going to cry, because that’s dumb, but he sags against the sink and lets Cas kiss him in greeting, free hand white-knuckling the counter top.
“Hey, man,” Dean says, and Cas, thank fuck, doesn’t say anything about Dean’s little breakdown. He has this horrifying thing now where even the slightest bit of tenderness sends him spiralling, and it’s embarrassing as fuck, but it also feels too good to quit. Like, he’s denied it to himself so long, or had it denied to him, and then Cas practically laid himself at Dean’s feet and offered to give him everything he wanted, and Dean couldn’t say no.
(Actually, he could. He did, loudly and often. But it was what Cas wanted, for Dean to take it, and for Dean to give it back. It made him happy. Dean can almost accept it, when it’s framed like that. Pretty much all he wants now is for Cas to get what he deserves).
Sam thinks it’s because they finally have the chance to decompress, to exist. The first thing Sam did after killing God was to go mental and trash the library, which, Jesus, Dean had kind of expected to be doing himself, but it makes a sort of sense that it was Sam, who hasn’t been allowed to be angry in a long damn time. Who hasn’t been allowed to be his own, in a long time.
Part of that’s on Dean. He’s owning it, working on dealing with it, but that’s a long road and not really what his current predicament is about. He’s probably talking around it. He just. It’s just.
Dean doesn’t really have the words for it. He knows he’s not all hip and down with the kids, but he’ll be damned if he’s going to Google it. Ignoring it is working just fine.
Well, it works just fine until the freaky sixth sense makes its way from Cas to Jack, and the kid tries to give Dean and Sam friendship bracelets, too.
“I didn’t want you to feel left out,” says Jack, matter of factly, and proffers the bracelet towards Dean. The kid hangs out with Kaia and Claire a lot now, which is good for him, since Cas reckons he should have friends his own age and they can’t exactly drop him off at preschool (except as a volunteer, maybe, and huh, that’s not such a bad idea), but Dean’s pretty sure they spend most of that time figuring out how to extract their revenge on him through micro-aggressions. “You don’t have to wear it if you don’t want.”
Like hell. Dean’s not stupid, he hears the tiny inflection at the end of that sentence. Yeah, Jack’ll probably be fine if Dean elects to throw that thing in the back of his top drawer, never to be seen again until Christmas, but he’ll be better if Dean puts the stupid thing on. And better pretty much sums up everything Dean’s trying to do with Jack, these days.
“What, are you kidding?” asks Dean, in what Sam calls his dad-voice. Not his Dad-voice, which Sam would probably never mention even on their best days, the one that makes him flinch despite the six inches he’s got on Dean, that rips through their home like thunder and that Dean’s actively working to squash somewhere it won’t ever come out. The dad-voice is just what Sam calls it when Dean starts calling Jack sport.
But, look, in Dean’s defence, it’s not like there’s a manual for this sort of thing. Dean will be the dorkiest, stupidest, dadliest dad in the world if he’s gotta be, if that’s what makes Jack happy. For the kid, sure, but he’s also aware of the number one rule for dating single parents: you expect to be their priority and you can expect to hit the damn curb. Happy wife, happy life, or whatever. Happy kid, happy wife. Something like that.
Dean tugs the bracelet off the piece of card, in all its pink and yellow glory, and puts it on his wrist next to his watch. His big, clunky, manly-man’s watch with its face like an odometer, because if a man’s gonna tell time it better also be obvious that the man also gets up to his elbows in engine grease. You know, because that’s normal.
Dean hesitates for half a second, just looking at it, his mouth feeling kind of dry.
“Look at that,” he says, eventually. “Perfect fit.”
Jack grins. “There are hair clips, too.”
“Think I’ll pass. Thanks, though.”
Jack shrugs, non-phased. “Okay. I’m gonna go play Bed Wars.”
“I’ve got no idea what that is,” says Dean. “It sounds dirty. Are you looking at porn? Scratch that, I don’t wanna know. Am I obligated to tell your dad?”
Being classed as cool by the kid or snitching and getting in Cas’ good books: it’s an eternal struggle.
Jack wrinkles his nose. “No, it’s Minecraft. I’ll show you.”
He does, running to his room for his laptop and setting up shop beside Dean in the library, where they stay for the next hour. Dean gets precious little out of it, if he’s honest, except that Jack likes the attention, and that’s good for him. He remembers trying to tell Dad about movies he’d watched on TV the night before, how sometimes Dad’d have time for it and sometimes he wouldn’t. You’d think he’d remember the good ones, think they’d stand out amongst everyone else, but he doesn’t. He just remembers one time clearly, and it was probably post hunt, probably when Dad had seen more shit than anyone should’ve had to, probably when he was thinking about Mary, but Dean’d been yammering on about gunfights or whatever, and Dad hadn’t even looked at him, had just said, resigned and exhausted; “Shut up, Dean.”
Dean had shut up.
Anyway, Jack seems to like when Dean asks all sorts of dumb questions, including how the hell Jack knows all of these people online. Someone’s gonna have to do a stranger danger talk, at some point—Jack’s even using his real goddamn name.
The bracelet catches his attention again when he’s making burgers for them both, slicing tomatoes and frying bacon and chicken breasts in the pan. It’s just him and Jack at home today, Sam doing a lore-run with Eileen (at some point the bunker’s entire library is going to get carted over to this house, what with the amount of books they’ve been lugging home on a case by case basis) and Cas is at his pottery workshop, which is exciting because today he gets to bring home the stuff he’s been making. Dean stops and stares at the bracelet for a while, and he feels scraped raw and he doesn’t know why.
Later, when Cas is back and the three of them have eaten, Dean’s in the garage putting away the tools from where he’d been tinkering with Baby earlier just for the sake of it. Cas sneaks up on him and presses up against him from behind like the giant freakin’ sap that he is, hands hot on Dean’s hips and the length of him warm against Dean’s back.
Granted, Cas probably wouldn’t do it so often if Dean didn’t melt like a happy cat in the sun every time, but fucking fight him, man. It’s embarrassingly nice, to be touched.
“Hi,” Dean says, completely abandoning the spanners he was arranging by size, and tilting his head back against Cas’. He feels Cas smile against his neck.
“Hello. Have you been stressed?”
Dean’s gut instinct is to bristle and deny, but he manages to limit himself to the first of those and silence, which is just slightly better.
“Cas,” Dean asks, “Am I gay?”
Cas rolls his eyes. Dean doesn’t see it, but he knows he does. “I know your sense of object permanence with these things is poor,” he says, and kisses the back of Dean’s neck, “but I think even you know that’s a futile question.”
Dean sighs. That’s what he was afraid of.
“Yeah,” he mutters, and lets Cas wrap his arms around him. “I dunno. I’m being stupid.”
“You’re not stupid, Dean.”
Sometimes Dean says it just so that Cas will, which he knows is fucked up. This wasn’t one of those times, but it’s kind of nice that Cas delivers anyway.
“Jack gave me a bracelet.”
“I noticed. I think it’s very becoming.”
Dean snorts. “Yeah, okay. It’s just. It’s pink.”
“Ah,” says Cas. “I see.”
He doesn’t take the trouble of elaborating on what, exactly, he sees, which is frustrating. The angel take on gender is so annoyingly blasé that Dean’s pretty certain it wouldn’t help, but Cas is using that tone that borders on smug, not because he means it to be, but because he thinks he knows something Dean isn’t ready for, and refuses to share. The dick.
“I mean,” says Dean, before he can get the wrong idea, “it’s nice! I’m thrilled, or whatever, that he wanted to give me one. I just. Don’t know if it’s my style.”
“Well, do you like it?”
“What?”
“Do you like it?” Cas asks, like it’s that simple. Dean looks down at his own hands, resting atop Cas’ hairy forearms, which are covered in bits of dried clay that he missed while washing up. Dean licks his thumb and scrubs at one of them, taking a second.
“I mean,” Dean says. “I guess.”
“Well, there you go,” says Cas. Dean uses his left hand to pull Cas’ own bracelet further up his wrist, so he can fiddle with it and feel a little more normal. Cas would have taken it off to do his pottery, wouldn’t have wanted to risk getting it caked in clay, but Dean’d bet that he wore it there and on the way back, in plain sight of anyone who wanted to see. Probably just gave them his stupid sunny smile when asked, proclaimed that his kid bought it for him and didn’t think two ways about it.
Dean sighs. He’s getting in his own head too much, probably. It’s just a bracelet. It’s just to make Jack happy.
“The sentiment’s pretty nice,” he says, eventually. “Maybe you and I should get a couple, huh? Best friends for life. Could get some of those dorky little friendship necklaces, you know the kind with the split heart? Or BFF rings, or whatever.”
Dean grimaces the second the words are out of his mouth, and Cas is silent.
“Dean,” he says, calmly, and his fingers brush against Dean’s arms when he makes the quotation marks, “I love you, but if you... ‘no homo’ a proposal of marriage to me, I’m going to lose it.”
“Yup,” agrees Dean, instantly. “Yeah, that was my bad. We totally could, though.”
Cas squeezes his waist and finally peels himself away, only for Dean to spin around against the workbench, hands hooking in Cas’ belt loops so he can’t actually get very far. All this talking’s getting in Dean’s head, so he does what he’s good at, and uses Cas’ mouth to shut himself up.
*
The talk of rings removes another one of those freaky fucking bricks that are covering whatever they’re covering, and sees Dean, possessed by a sudden random need, ass up in the air as he rummages around the false bottom of the Impala to get to The Box.
It’s nothing fancy, just a tin with a bunch of crap in it, and his mom’s ring. He hasn’t worn it in years, took it off when it became clear hunting was gonna keep going forever and fucking ever, and Dean was sick of having to dedicate time to cleaning and polishing the thing, of getting it dented and scratched up because he wasn’t capable of looking after a damn thing. Also, somewhere along the line it went out of fashion alongside those leather bands he used to wear, and it’s not that Dean’s ever cared about that shit, but he stood out, and he didn’t want to.
Now, though, he’s got free will and whatever is going on in his chest, so he slips Mary’s ring back onto his finger, kind of surprised that it still fits. It feels weird as fuck. Not a bad weird, but just like his brain doesn’t know what to do with it.
He fiddles with it all day, not quite willing to take it off, but nobody else notices. Well, except Cas, who kisses his palm at random and makes Dean blush, in what’s definitely a sign of acknowledgement. He doesn’t ask, though, which is— good. Dean’s pretty sure it’s good. It’s not like he has the words to explain it.
Part of the problem is that the people in Dean’s life, right now, are wise to his tricks. No one’s fooled by the macho-man posturing, not that they ever were (although if he thinks hard enough about that, he will cry, so he is not. fucking. going to), so it’s kind of… pointless. Sam and he are just fucked up enough that he doesn’t think they really care about each other anymore, not in, like, a normal sense of the word. They just are, and that’s whatever. Dean’s ignoring that, too, but it doesn’t change that he’s no longer concerned with whether or not he’s the cool big brother; Sam’s sticking by him whatever happens, whatever Dean does or doesn’t do, just like he is Sam. They’re way too messed up for anything else.
No, it’s not healthy, or whatever the fuck, but it’s not changing, so who cares. Then there’s Jack, who kind of thinks Dean’s the bees’ knees no matter what he does, and Cas has talked to Dean about modelling, which is basically just fancy parent speak for ‘kids copy what you do’, no shit. So Dean picks up after himself and asks how Jack is and just in general tries not to be such a selfish dick all the time, but it’s not like he’s doing that for Jack, the way his whole cocksure Harrison Ford thing he did for a while when he was younger was for other people. Does this make any sense? Dean’s driving himself in fucking circles.
This is so dumb, thinks Dean, into the mirror.
Sometimes, lately, Rhonda crosses his mind. She makes her way to it fairly regularly, at least once a year, and it’s always this weird sense of burning shame and thrill of anticipation that builds up in him when she does. And like, Dean’s thought about it. He’s dissected it. He does actually do that, now and again. So, no, it wasn’t gay, ‘cause Dean mostly did it because Rhonda wanted him to, and that’s what got him off. He likes to please people. Chronically, as Cas would say.
Cas, the bastard, does not seem to need anything in order to be pleased by Dean, and it fucking sucks.
Because, see, if Cas needed Dean to, who even knows, become a fifties housewife in order to be happy, or become some fancy guy who wears a suit and works in sales, Dean’d do it. In a heartbeat, no questions asked. Oh, he might hate it, would probably grow to resent it, but god, he’d do it. Anything’s worth making Cas stay.
Except, when he asked Cas about it, it went like this:
“Cas,” Dean’d said, and he’d cornered him in the middle of getting something started on purpose, because it was easier to say when he didn’t have to look Cas in the eye, and when Cas was thinking about other things than Dean’s messed up brain, “you happy?”
Cas had been indulgently sentimental in his answer, so earnest that Dean’s cheeks went red.
“Yeah, but.” Dean had kissed him, Cas’ fingers tugging in his hair, and lost his train of thought for a second. “Anything you want me to do, you tell me.”
“Well, right now,” Cas had said, and what followed is not something Dean’s gonna be repeating out loud ever, but it succeeded in shutting him up for a while, until the question came back in the haze that followed, when Cas was half asleep.
“I meant it, you know,” Dean had said, quiet-like. Cas’ chest was hot under his hand, kind of clammy from sweat, not that that was acting as a deterrent. Cas hummed. “I want you to be happy. You want me to— I dunno. Start eating veggies, lose a couple pounds, whatever. I draw the line at trading Baby in for a mom-van, but I just. You gotta know I’d— you know I’d do anything for you, man. Go to Hell, the Empty, all of that, but also—you just tell me. I can— I wanna be good to you, Cas.”
“Dean,” Cas’d said, with a worrisome line between his eyebrows, and his eyes so, so sad when he tilted Dean’s jaw up to meet his eyes. Dean had flushed under the scrutiny. “You are. You’re the best man I know. I’ve never wanted you to be anything but yourself.”
“C’mon, man,” Dean had said, in this aw shucks kind of way. “You can tell me, I won’t break. My eating drives you mad, admit it. You and your fancy angel table manners.”
“Yeah, I know,” he’d added, when Cas opened his mouth to say that the fancy angel table manners were a result of finding fine-motor stuff difficult after The Fall, when he couldn’t afford to waste food dropping it on himself. It makes Dean’s stomach curdle to think about, so he only does when he’s feeling particularly self-hateful. “Don’t start.”
“There’s nothing wrong with how you eat,” Cas had said, and they were no longer about to drift off into an afternoon nap, because Cas was getting all righteous, and over Dean, of all people. “Dean. Dean. Everything you do endears me. I would never ask you to change anything about yourself, would never want you to, except, perhaps, to selfishly ask that you look after yourself more. But. Dean.”
His hand was on Dean’s face, and it was doing this stupid fucking thing where his thumb moved back and forth over the skin beneath Dean’s eye, and Dean’s throat hurt.
“Why do you think who you are isn’t enough?”
“Cas,” Dean said. His thumb kept doing the thing. “I was pretty different when we met. When you— fell for me.”
Usually the double entendree is funny, if Dean doesn’t think too hard. Then, it’d been hard to get out.
“Yes, you were. And you’ll be different another decade from now. That’s never changed how I feel about you, it never could.” He moved his hand to Dean’s forearm, touched his fingers to where the mark had lain. “I love you now, and I love you then. I love you in Hell, as a demon, when I expected to see you rampage across the world. It’s fact, Dean. It’s always been fact.”
Dean had swallowed, cleared his throat, watched Cas’ eyes linger on where his fingers touched skin. “Well, geez, Cas. You sure know how to make a girl feel special.”
Cas had grinned at him, put his hand back on his face. “Stop acting stupid,” he’d said, and so that’s all Dean’s had to go on.
Stop acting stupid.
“Great fucking job, Dean,” says Dean, to the mirror, and drags his hand down his face. He doesn’t even know what his fucking problem is. It’s just. It’s the stupid fucking bracelet, is the thing. Dean likes men! He knows that! So what if he has a gay little bracelet announcing that to the world! The last decade of his life the world’s seemed to clue in instantly anyway, why shouldn’t he shout the damn thing about? Who the fuck cares?
*
Dean does, for fucking one.
He would love to be fucking normal about this, he would. Literally, over the fucking moon. But he’s not.
When Dean was thirteen, fourteen, they went to a bar. Well, Dad went, technically, and it was Dean’s job to sit with Sammy in the car with the doors locked and try and convince that kid that sleeping in the car was fun and didn’t completely suck ass. Sam had conked out in the middle of a sulk, because Dean’s convincing had started to wear thin even to his own ears, and Dean remembers sitting there in the front with his knees pulled to his chest, eyes wide and overlooking the carpark, counting who went in and who went out, convinced that Dad’d be next, or fifth next, or tenth next out. He forgets what Dad actually was.
There was a— there was someone who went into the bar. Dean remembers. Barely remembers what they looked like, just remembers they were tall. They didn’t look right. Not like their skin didn’t fit, but like they were— too big for it, almost. And the lights hit the sequins on their jacket and Dean stared and stared way past what was polite, except he thought it might be alright ‘cause they were the kind of people you stared at, and he couldn’t tell if they were a boy or a girl and he thought— he thought they looked like a god.
*
Dean was thirteen or fourteen, and when he was nineteen, he wore a girl’s underwear because she asked him to. When he was twenty three he met Cassie, and she was awesome, she rocked his fucking world and it was almost stupid, how fast he fell for her, how she made him feel safe even though she took one look at him and figured out he wasn’t the rockstar he was pretending to be. She laughed at him and teased him and let him put eyeliner on her when he was complaining about how long it took her and was convinced he’d do it better, and he didn’t do a half bad job, in all honesty, and when she smiled and asked to do his it didn’t feel like a trap. It even felt kind of nice, so he let her put her hands on his jaw and tilt it this way and that so she could see better, and he didn’t look half bad, either.
He kissed her or they went out and however it ended, Dean got up in the morning with black smudges on his eyelids, and he looked in the mirror and he thought: there ain’t no guys like me.
So, okay. Maybe he hasn’t been the man he ought to be for a while.
Sam is not the person Dean wants to talk to about this, but he is, unfortunately, kind of what feels like his best bet. He grew up with Dad and in all the same places, heard all the same shit and saw more of the same stuff than anyone else did. And Sam ain’t exactly living up to the paragon of manliness himself, either, what with his smoothies and yoga and shit.
Dean, of course, approaches the situation with all the tact it deserves.
“So,” he says, at lunch, apropos of fucking nothing, “Eileen get tired of sleeping with a chick, yet?”
“Dude,” Sam says, and splutters wholemeal crumbs all over himself. “What the fuck?”
Dean shrugs. “Well, I just figured, you got the separate bedrooms, and all. Didn’t realise you were at that stage of marriage already.”
And Dean’s fidgeting, jiggling his leg like crazy where he leans against the counter, and maybe Sam sees that and decides to cut him some slack, because he doesn’t immediately storm out, which even Dean can see is the appropriate response here. “A), we’re not married, and B), we just like our own space.”
Dean makes a sceptical noise, and Sam sighs. Reluctantly, he elaborates, looking like Dean’s the last person he wants to explain this to. “Come on, you don’t… you don’t think it’s kind of— I dunno, lonely? To be joined at the hip so much that you’re basically one person?”
“Dude,” Dean says. “No? Cas’d fucking possess me if he could. That is the total opposite of a problem for us.”
Sam’s face twists, and if Dean has to have this conversation, he’s not doing it without giving Sam a healthy dose of humiliation, too. “What, you don’t see it? It’s the only reason he regrets not being an angel anymore. We reckon we could get real freaky with—”
“Okay!” says Sam, face screwed up like a baby with a lemon. “That’s enough, thanks.”
Dean snickers.
“Anyway, Eileen’s bi, she wouldn’t be sick of me even if I was a woman. And, dude, 2005 called, they want your insults back. What gives?”
“Nothing. I can’t talk to my little brother about his girlfriend?”
“Yeah, but. You normally do this shit when you wanna feel less bad about baring your fucking soul, or whatever, so. What gives?”
Urgh, fuck. “Why you gotta be like that, man?” Dean says, and he’s whining, fucking sue him. “I didn’t do enough for you growing up?”
“Screw you,” says Sam, “And get on with it, I’m not coaching you through another breakdown, you’re an adult.”
“I don’t ‘break down’,” says Dean, and oh, fuck his life, he did the finger quotes and everything, what the fuck. He’s gonna kill Cas. “I’m just. I’m wondering something.”
“Okay,” Sam says. “Shoot.”
Right. Okay. Words. This was a fucking mistake, actually. “Right. Yeah. So. Okay, don’t get all weird on me, but you’re like, a man, right?”
Sam blinks at him. “I mean,” he says, “I guess?”
“You guess?”
“Yeah? I dunno? What the hell are you talking about?”
Well, this has successfully thrown Dean. Time to throw the incredibly sketchy and mostly useless plan he had for this conversation out the window. “What do you mean, you guess? It’s a yes or no question, dude!”
“Okay, well— actually, never mind, not gonna go well.” Sam puts down his sandwich, gives Dean his full attention, which makes his skin crawl. Sam continues, thoughtfully, “I guess I just haven’t thought about it. Kinda had bigger problems, you know, with the demon blood, and everything. Gender kind of comes in second when you think you’re growing up with something evil in you.”
“Why?” says Sam, when Dean takes too long to respond. “Are you— Are you?”
“What? Yeah, obviously. I mean. Yeah. Duh. Have you seen Cas? We’re gay for real.”
Sam blinks again. “Jesus Christ,” he says, and Dean’s offended. “Look, I don’t really—I mean, I don’t really know about this stuff, but lots of people are— are neither, or both, or trans, and that’s— that’s totally fine, Dean. It’s totally fine to be like that.”
“Well, yeah, obviously,” says Dean, again. “You— wait, were you expecting me to get uppity about that? I’m an excellent fucking ally! I fuck men!”
“Oh my god,” Sam says. “You’re fucking insane.”
So the talk with Sam is not that helpful, except for the fact that Sam just kind of… doesn’t care. Like, maybe Dean’s putting words into his mouth, but that’s what it sounded like. He’s pretty sure he doesn’t understand that; can’t think of how anyone could walk around, especially not Sam with his eight-foot freakishness and his big shoulders, and not hear the drum of I’m a man I’m a man in time with his boots. Doesn’t know what it’s like to not be trying to prove that statement every step of the way, with women and booze and winking at waitresses. Not caring, just letting people assume whatever they like, but that can’t be— that can’t be right.
“I just,” Dean says again, later, after he’s marinated on this for a couple of hours, waving around a knife even though sharp objects and this topic probably shouldn’t mix. “Okay, you remember Rebel Without a Cause, right?”
“Yeah?” says Sam. Dean gestures at his apron, this one with a pair of women’s tits splashed across the front, because he thought it was funny. Novelty aprons and novelty socks pretty much make up his wardrobe, at this point. “What?”
“The dad, man. With the apron. Letting his old lady walk all over him. Dude was the wife in his own house.”
“I,” starts Sam. “Okay. Look, Dean, I don’t know how to answer this, man. Dad was— I know we had kind of a shitty education, with this stuff. But like. Wanting to cook dinner, or being kind, or gentle, or whatever, those aren’t like— that’s just stuff, man. It’s not like doing those things, being those things, makes you a man or a woman. It’s just stuff. Anyone can do it. It’s not— hell, even, like, the body you’re born in doesn’t have bearing on gender. You just are what you are.”
Dean looks down at his apron. “Huh,” he says. Sam gives him a tight-lipped smile.
“Just— Google it. I’m probably giving you really shit answers. And, uh, if you ever—you know, if you ever want me to call you anything different, you just let me know.”
Oh, no thanks. Backing the fuck up, right now.
“Aw, Sammy,” Dean says, and is relieved at how he manages to make that corny enough to cut through the weird undercurrent. “You too, kid.”
Sam, surprisingly, grins at him. Real fucking wide, as well. “Okay. You making stir fry? I got tofu in the fridge.”
Dean pulls a face. “It’s like I didn’t even raise you,” he says, in disgust. “I’m not putting those rubber cubes in my recipe, they don’t even taste of anything, Sam.”
“No, dude, that’s why they’re great, they just absorb whatever flavour you want ‘em to—”
“It’s an affront to all things good food,” says Dean, and then sighs. “But, yeah, come on. I put some aside for your weird veggie version.”
“Aw,” says Sam. “Thanks, Dean.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he says, “I’m a fucking treasure.”
*
He and Cas have this ritual, kinda. Or, Dean does. He’s pretty sure it started ages ago, probably that time he and Cas first worked a case, with Raphael and the brothel. Their first date, if he’s feeling super sappy and wants to make pink bloom across Cas’ cheeks. If they have to go out, in fed suits or do anything else remotely disguise worthy, Cas puts his tie on crooked and lets Dean fix it up, and sometimes even fiddle with his hair.
“There,” Dean says, and musses up the front a little, smooths down the sides. “Spick and span, man.”
“Thank you,” Cas says, like they aren’t standing in front of the bathroom mirror and he couldn’t have done it himself. They’re going out on a case, which is rare as hell as of late, so Dean’s in his nice blue suit for the first time in a while and he’s pretty sure the shoulders no longer fit right.
“You sure about this one?” he asks, because it turns out he’s a stereotype. He fiddles with his own collar, loosening it around the neck, and at least Cas doesn’t make fun of him for it, although he does roll his eyes. To be fair, Dean’s asked this question like six times already.
“Yes, Dean, you’re very pretty. Let’s go.”
Dean chokes on air. “Uh. What?”
“You’re very pretty,” Cas says again, on purpose and because he knows it’ll fry Dean’s brain, he’d bet anything. He cocks his head, doing the clueless angel shtick even though Dean’s told him it doesn’t fool him, “Is there something wrong with me saying so?”
“Uh,” says Dean, again. “No? I mean. I just. You don’t—you don’t call men like me pretty, Cas.”
He used to get it a lot, when he was younger, him and his fucking delicate features, or whatever. He always looked a bit too much like Mom, had eyes a bit too big and lips a bit too pouty. Dean resolutely avoids the mirror, but that means looking at Cas.
“That’s a shame,” Cas says, frowning. “You’re very beautiful.”
“Cas,” Dean says, again. “Come on, man. Save it for the girls.”
“But you’re here,” says Cas, and the switch board that is Dean’s brain gets muddled, connects those wires wrong. “And you like hearing it, so.”
He shrugs, pleased with himself. “Jesus,” says Dean. “You do it on purpose, you dick.”
“Yes, well,” says Cas, and fixes where Dean’s messed with the collar, lips pulling at the corners in this tiny, secret smile. “You’re very pretty when you flush.”
Dean groans, and when he tips his head forward against Cas’ shoulder, Cas just laughs in his ear, squeezing his arm.
“You’re killing me,” Dean says. “You’re killing me, Cas. Wife murderers get life, y’know.”
Cas doesn’t stiffen, exactly, but the gaze Dean’s feeling on him turns curious, and Cas brings his hand up to Dean’s face, which means he expects Dean to be freaking out or about to. “You do that a lot,” he says, softly.
“Do what?”
“Refer to yourself with a female moniker.”
Something scrapes itself up Dean’s throat, but he plays it cool. “Yeah, so? Someone’s gotta be the girl, and it sure as hell isn’t you, have you seen yourself lately? You’re, uh.” Dean loses his train of thought. If only he was like Cas and could spew out whatever adjective he liked, since Cas deserves to hear them and Dean’s got about five he could apply right now. “Looking good.”
He grins, too wide and a little crooked, he can feel it on his face. “Plus, y’know. Needy, nagging wife, I pretty much got it covered.”
He has no idea what’s going on in Cas’ expression, right now. Lots, by the looks of it. Also, a couple doors down the hall, Sam is groaning at the fact that Dean can’t retain one single thing from their conversation.
“You’re neither needy or nagging,” Cas says, eventually. “And I’d be honoured to call you my wife.”
“I,” Dean says. “What?”
Cas shrugs. “It doesn’t bother me how you refer to yourself. If it means something to you, if it makes you happy…”
Dean opens and closes his mouth.
“Come on,” he says, gruff. “We’re gonna be late.”
*
It breaks something in Dean’s brain. Like, severely. Because a couple of days later Dean wakes up in bed with Cas sprawled all over him, octopus limbs and everything, and he feels so lucky that he thinks he could probably cry. Cas is a dead weight on him, is breathing against his neck in a way which is hot and sticky and gross, and Dean’s eyes are actually burning. When Cas stirs, he noses against Dean’s skin and grumbles and tries to block out the sun with whatever piece of Dean he can find, and Dean says:
“Hey, come on, sleepyhead.” Urgh, god, he sounds all choked up. He swallows and it doesn’t help at all. “You’re not gonna give your— not gonna give your wife a kiss g’morning?”
Cas kisses his shoulder, which requires no effort since that’s what his head’s smushed against. “There,” he mutters, low and gravelly, and Dean jostles him, pokes at his stomach. “Dean, I’m sleeping.”
“Yeah, and I’m waiting.”
Sighing, Cas drags himself into the land of the living, and plants a terrible kiss on Dean’s mouth. His breath tastes gross. It’s the best day of Dean’s life.
Then, a couple of weeks later, when they’re arguing and Sam backs Dean up: “See, Cas? Listen to your old lady, man. I’ve got a plan.”
Clocking out at the bar after two drinks, he tells the bartender he’s gotta get back home to the old ball and chain. Doesn’t even think about it, just says it, and wonders what it means that this thing apparently goes both ways.
At the supermarket, to the cashier girl with her little badge with she/her written on it (and Dean can figure out what that means, thanks, he’s not that stupid), he feels this weird sense of kinship even though she’s like half his age, and says, “Hey, neat. My boyfriend’s waiting in the car.”
“Cool,” she says, and now whenever he goes back they do a stupid thing where they grin at each other like they’ve got a secret, even though all he knows about her is that she’s terrible at packing his groceries and he always has to redo ‘em once he makes it back to the car, so that the bread doesn’t get squashed on the way home.
Then, also: “Dude, I’m telling you,” he says to Cas, “when you wanna do this shit, you run it past your boyfriend first. It’s dating one oh one.”
And, after Cas brings home strawberries from his farmer’s market and Dean’s feeling all flustered and loved and other embarrassing shit, he bats his eyelashes in this exaggerated way and says, eyes lidded and voice pitched low, “You sure know how to treat a lady, Cas," and Cas kisses him right then and there.
Because the thing is, is that Cas just takes it in his stride every time, like it doesn’t even matter. Like Dean can call himself whatever he wants, and he doesn’t have to think that hard about what it means except that it feels good. And Dean keeps wearing Jack’s bracelet, at first under his flannel and jacket sleeves, on the left side of his watch so it doesn’t roll down, but then he kind of gets used to it, and he doesn’t forget about it, exactly, but in his head it becomes less like girly bracelet that announces to everyone I take it up the ass, and more like bracelet my kid gave me. Bracelet he wears ‘cause he’s a good stepdad and likes the way Jack smiles when he notices.
And eventually he picks up some more of those black leather bands from a hippie surfer shop and wears those too. When Jack and Cas go on a kick of making friendship bracelets by themselves, he’s the one who gets to keep all the duds, the ones that have messed up patterns and knots in the wrong places. He keeps wearing Mom’s ring, and when summer hits, he goes out in his t-shirt and a two dollar bracelet from Claire’s and reminds himself that he’s killed people and no one’s gonna fuck with him. They do a family trip to Sam and Cas’ organic market and Dean catches the old lady at the soap stall looking at it, smile tugging at her lips.
“Gift from my kid,” explains Dean, and next to him, Jack grins.