It started with Dean’s hand-me-downs.
She just thought they were more comfortable, more practical as she continued to grow, and she liked having something to drown in when her anxieties got to her. The mean jokes that she endured because of her fashion choices were just added to the pile of all of the reasons that Sam Winchester hated middle school.
—
An old woman who Sam helped cross the street once said she was “a lovely little boy” and she had no idea what she’d planted inside her prepubescent head.
—
Sam struggled to get along with other girls her age, but she chalked that up to Dean being the only constant in her life. She thought she just hadn’t learned how to “girl” yet thanks to her upbringing, that one day it would all click and she’d have a girl-friend or two. It wasn’t like she had many boy-friends, either, she just happened to understand them better thanks to her brother. He’d insisted on teaching her all about boys so they wouldn’t take advantage of her and he wouldn’t have to beat their asses if they broke her heart or messed with her. Sometimes it felt like Dean was the only person who really understood her, and others it felt like they were two completely different species.
—
Dean stole an eyeliner pencil from Walmart, a purple that was explicitly said to accentuate green eyes. He presented it to her like a cat giving its owner a dead mouse. She tried to follow the packaging and drew a pointed crescent that started in the middle of her top eyelid and ended at the outer edge of her bottom one. Even when she smudged it, she felt like she was dressing up like someone she wasn’t. Dean told her she looked pretty, though he hesitated to say the word at first, but he added that she didn’t need to wear makeup. She decided she never wanted to wear it again.
—
Dean hadn’t been around the first few times Sam got catcalled. They were at the laundromat, Sam wearing clothes she’d outgrown two years ago because they were all she had left, and a guy a few units down from them whistled at her. She crossed her arms tightly over her chest and looked out the window, trying to pretend he wasn’t staring. She’d almost been suspended for punching a guy who yelled at her to show him her tits, she didn’t want to draw any more attention to the fact that she had a body that people would gawk at when she didn’t hide it well enough.
But she wasn’t her brother. Before she could intervene Dean was confronting the man, telling him to leave his sister alone or else. She barely got their clothes out of the washer and dryer when they were kicked out, the catcaller refusing to call the police when Dean promised he’d get arrested so he could have a little alone time with the man. Sam put Dean’s semi-damp utility jacket on and felt comfortable again, though she couldn’t shake the bruise on her brother’s cheek.
She patched him up back at the motel and asked him to stop fighting her battles for her, only for Dean to defend his decision succinctly: “You were going to let him get away with treating you like a piece of meat.”
“Like you don’t gawk at girls,” she said back.
“But you don’t like getting looked at. You shouldn’t put up with it.”
She wanted to point out that she was sure that most girls he ogled probably didn’t want his attention, either, but she didn’t have any more energy to fight him on this. Sam stared at him and wondered if she’d do the same if it was Dean getting whistled at. She hated that girls looked at his ass when he walked by, that they looked at her like she was competition that needed to be eliminated. They’d have Dean for a night at best, but Sam would have him forever. She was certain of that.
—
She started layering sports bras in high school. She barely had mosquito bites but there was a kind of ease that came from flattening her chest completely.
Sam wore a henley and found herself smiling in the mirror at her lack of boobs.
—
She didn’t go to her senior prom despite Dean insisting he’d buy her a dress if she wanted to go. Sam didn’t want to wear the long purple gown Dean pointed out in a thrift store’s front window; she knew it’d draw attention to her wide, pointy shoulders and her complete lack of curves. It wasn’t like she was unaware of the standards girls were meant to adhere to, of the magazine covers that swirled around in her mind when she knew Dean was asleep in the bed beside hers. She knew that she’d look like a scarecrow and she wanted to avoid the embarrassment. Her prom night was spent at a diner with Dean, sharing fries and wondering if he was intentionally brushing her hand with his greasy, salty fingertips.
—
She dyed her hair blonde that summer and felt fake. She didn’t want her hair turning green trying to color it back to brown, so she’d have to wait until it grew back out.
—
Sam liked her college roommate right away. Jessica was warm, funny, and she always tried to encourage Sam to get out of her comfort zone. She was the one who insisted that Sam get her hair cut short when a mobile salon stopped outside their dorm, who smiled at her as bright as the sun when she came out to greet Jess with her new shag. Sam hadn’t called it that, though, she felt a bit too flustered at the idea of telling the gorgeous hairdresser with the lip piercing that she “wanted a shag.” Jess said she was beautiful and she hid her blushing face.
She insisted they go out to celebrate the weight Sam had lifted off her shoulders, and the night ended with Jess’s hands on them instead, her lips on Sam’s. For the first time in her life, she felt like she understood some part of herself.
—
Sam dreamt about being a boy once and tried to forget it the second she woke up. Unlike every other dream she’d ever had, it stayed with her.
—
She closed off after Jess, and Dean could tell that she “wasn’t Sammy” anymore. Every night she overthought her life, everything she was, and she thought back to the clothes, the struggle to make friends, the way she hadn’t ever thought of herself as a girl except in other people’s terms.
It wasn’t something she could say to Dean, he’d never get it, but it was an idea she kept close to her chest.
“My name is Sam,” she’d deepen her voice every time she repeated the phrase to her mirror image. “My name is Sam. I’m Dean’s brother.”
She looked down into the sink and disregarded that last sentence. That was ridiculous.
—
Sam was always going to be a girl. It was a sharp reminder the first time she crawled into bed with Dean, sidling up against his body and wrapping her arms around his shoulders. She kissed him first, he groped her ass and tits, she kissed his neck and moaned his name, he fingered her in her jeans and apologized after they finished. Sam could only imagine what it would have been like if she was like Dean.
She crossed her arms over her sore chest and got up from his bed, going back into the bathroom and really looking at herself. Gangly, pale, her hair overgrown and hiding her face that only Dean and Jessica had ever called pretty.
She wasn’t pretty. Not in the way girls were. She and Jess were in completely different realms and she was surprised she’d ever wanted her to begin with. She was surprised Dean would fuck her when she looked nothing like the girls he usually hooked up with. Sam was an exception.
Sam was a girl but not really. Her brain was something else, and she had no clue what that made her in the end.
—
She was drunk when she told Dean that she didn’t like her body, that she felt like she’d been put in someone else’s with no way of getting out. He watched her with the kind of intensity in his eyes that made her nervous, made her anxiety combine with her nausea into a sickly-green portrait of nothing.
“What, like you wish you were one of the girls in the magazines? You don’t need to be like them, Sammy, you’re good as you.”
She shook her head, turning ahead and putting her face in her hands.
“No. I don’t want to be like those girls. I don’t want to be a girl at all.” The words felt clunky coming out of her mouth; like hunks of cement.
Dean sighed, unsure how to broach the subject. She was glad he was being considerate but she could only anticipate what he’d say to her. He could be abrasive and cruel, but he tried to keep it to a minimum with her. Sam could only wonder how far that sibling courtesy would stretch.
She was surprised when he opened his mouth to say: “I mean, it makes sense.”
“What?”
She faced him, her eyebrows furrowed, and he took one glance at her before looking forward again.
“You’ve never been girly, you always steal my clothes and if I’m being honest, you look weird with long hair. Plus, I can hear you in the bathroom at night.”
She flushed, putting a hand over her mouth as she teetered on the edge of hurling and not.
Dean smiled and leaned back in his seat, his eyes flicking up to look at the night sky through the windshield. The moonlight made his eyes glow.
“I don’t get it, why you’d wanna be a dude when chicks are so hot, but you make sense like this, Sam.”
That was better than she could have hoped for, and her heart swelled in her chest. “You think so?”
Dean nodded.
“You’ve been unhappy, I’m not so far up my own ass that I can’t see that. If this is something that makes you feel better, I’m not gonna be an asshole about it. And if I ever am, punch me in the face. Got it?”
Sam laughed, putting her hand on the seat to steady herself. “I’m not gonna punch you.”
“Brothers punch each other when they’re being dicks to each other, Sammy, them’s the rules.”
She shook her head. “No, I’m not gonna. Can you do something for me, though?”
“Anything.”
She scooted across the bench towards him, resting all of her weight against his side. Sam put her head on Dean’s shoulder and felt warm when he put his arm around her.
“Can you… can you say something, please?”
She leaned into his ear and whispered under her breath, unsure if he’d catch it all or if he’d end up refusing. But she was just preparing herself for the worst, preferring to be disappointed but not surprised. Like it would somehow hurt less if Dean turned on her immediately and decided to make her feel ridiculous for the ridiculous things she’d said. It all seemed too good to be true.
Dean exhaled, and her stomach started to sink.
“I’m Dean Winchester, and this is my brother, Sam.” He turned to Sam and smiled warmly, going off-script. “He’s the best person I know, even if he gets on my nerves sometimes. I love him.”
Sam repeated those words: he's the best person I know, I love him, and it all felt right. Words meant for him, not just words applied to him.
He leaned in and kissed Dean gently, hesitantly, still unsure if he was going to puke. Dean pulled Sam closer and it felt like the second weight was lifted off of his shoulders. He wished Jess could have seen it.