Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Sam should be happy and fine.

OK, maybe not happy. But content, at least. That's the conclusion he came to when everything first started happening.

It wasn't Dean being gone, really.

When that happened it was just like he said, it was like his world was ripped in two. It was horrible. He’d lived it before and it didn’t feel like it had been any help. He wasn't just saying that. He sat on the edge of his bed for hours every night, unwilling to lie down and unwilling to get up and do anything, just staring at the floor.

He couldn't move, he was so wracked with guilt.

Hitting that damn dog didn't help, either. Even when he took Dog in and let him live with Sam, drive in the car and sleep at the foot of his bed, even when he started spending a lot of his money on treats and food and a cute, flowery collar that Dog picked out in the store.

Not that he needed it, of course. Dog trailed around behind him and responded to everything Sam said like a goddamn person, and every glimpse at him made that guilt resurface.

In his mind he could hear Dean's snarky comments, his irritating dudes, the shaking of his head every time Dog did anything. And by god, did it hurt.

The guilt was eating him alive, but he knew there was nothing he could do about it.

The God that's out there- not Castiel's absent father, the tangible god, the one who was a person, but the capital G God who exists but only in an unconscious hand guiding humanity- doesn't seem to let them die. So he has faith that Dean'll be back someday, somehow, and if he isn't... well, maybe Sam will meet up with him one day, but he's tired of running himself to the ground.

But the guilt never stopped chewing at him, and it was the worst.

That's what he thought it was for the longest time. Guilt. Because what else could it be?

It's always something with him, he likes to joke, always something that's not going well. Something's always breaking down and maybe he doesn't want it to be like that anymore! Maybe if he works hard enough, settles into a life a little less on the road, and gets used to living by himself, things will get better. Maybe he'll learn to be OK with it all.

“To our new house, right?”

“To our house.”

Their glasses clink together and she has this just... radiant look on her face. And Sam can't help but smile.

At first he would say its been a while since he smiled like that, but now she has him smiling like that all the goddamn time. It’s odd in the best way possible.

They haven't gone and bought a table yet, so they spread a blanket out on what will be the living room floor and set it all out like a picnic. Only it's inside, their meal is ramen from the package, and they're drinking wine in a homemade pottery mug and a Christmas cup. It's laughable, kind of, and all Sam feels is a kind of bubbly warmth that he never felt before. Maybe he felt it with Jess, he can't remember.

It's almost... it's almost unnameable.

He can't reach out and grasp just what it is.

“It’ll be nicer when we can move into it for real,” he says, taking a bite. They don't have chopsticks, just plastic forks from last night's takeout. “You know, put some stuff on the walls, maybe repaint them first... then it’ll look like real people live here.”

She snorts. “Yeah, I know, it looks like someone's just using it as a front to deal drugs or something, you know?”

“A ‘BnB for laundering.”

“Yeah, exactly that.”

It's not even the good kind of spicy ramen, just the regular 50¢ package, but it feels more like a dinner that he and Dean ever shared. It feels… not to get too ahead of himself, but it feels kind of like a real family.

He smiles at her, soft and genuine, and Riot whines on his bed, a beanbag they thrifted so he wouldn't have to sleep in their bed every night- they have to pay for laundry with quarters still, for now at least, and he is still a dog. It's one of his 'give me attention' whines, and Amelia laughs, leaning back so she can reach him, lying on the floor looking up at him with her big eyes. She scratches behind his ears, cooing.

“Poor baby,” she whines back, “we've been so busy! Have you not been getting the attention you deserve?” He barks as if to say exactly! “Aww, puppy.”

"He just isn't spoiled enough," Sam shakes his head, dragging another laugh out of her.

He loves that she named him that. A dog named Riot, the gentlest boy anyone could ask for.

“Tomorrow well take him on a big walk.” She sits back up, wiping her hands on the paper towel on her lap and clearing her throat. “There's a big forest preserve nearby that I think hell have a good time with, right?”

“Definitely.” Sam doesn't think about all his encounters at forest preserves, because that's not relevant right now. It hasn't been relevant in a while.

This is it. This is the American dream, a suburban utopia.

For one night in a while, the thought doesn't cause a chasm to open in his stomach, fill up with guilt and spill over. He waits, expectantly, jaw clenched like it's coming to overtake him, but then it... doesn't.

It's just the two of them. A boy and a girl. In love. Sitting on the floor for dinner.

A week or so passes.

Amelia's busy working. Since she started back up with dentistry it's been a bit hectic, and Sam's alright with it. He's being supportive.

They have dishes now, more than a few, and they've started cooking. Sam's gotten good at a few dishes, right now he's trying to master casserole. Other than that, they've been eating a lot of rice. He walked Riot down to the grocery store early this morning, still in the habit of waking up at an ungodly hour, and surprised her with an omelet and whole-wheat toast.

She got home late, saying that she worked insane overtime, and she's exhausted. So she's upstairs sleeping and Sam's doing the chores.

He stands there, scrubbing their dishes, his hands starting to wrinkle with the water. He stares down at the plates, and that feeling starts to come back up.

Sam squeezes his eyes shut for just a moment, the world disappearing around him.

He thought that whatever this was, it was gone.

He's not guilty anymore. It's not guilt because it can't be, and it's not fear or anxiety or insanity.

Everything is good, everything is fine, but this feeling just doesn't go away. He can sit there as much as he want with all these good things- not suffocatingly good, just… just enough. The alternative lifestyle he always wished for.

But somehow, if he sits and rests, those feelings creep up on him, and he has to get moving again to keep them down.

Sam didn’t mean to unturn those stones. He was perfectly happy to leave them unturned, as a matter of fact.

He can't help being bored, and there's only so much time you can spend in your own head without getting bored. He walks Dog, he sits around, he tries to get back into reading. This has been his life for almost a month, and he's been done with hunting for almost a year. It shouldn't be boring to sit around and have a life like everyone else, but at a certain point he wonders how they do it.

He gets restless, and he starts drinking. And when he starts drinking, he wants to avoid places where he'd see anyone he knew.

Back in college he went to a few gay bars, because hey, it's college? What else is that experience fo other than making out with a few guys to see if you like it and realizing that no, bisexuality could not be for you.

There's not many in the middle of nowhere, and the scene's different than Sam remembers it.

He has to drive out a little bit, but when he's there, it's like a breath of fresh air.

Without cutting his hair in more than a while he has to start tying it back, but because of how he trims it some parts aren't long enough to make the ponytail, so he has little bangs like a girl. His outfit balances it out to be just as masculine as he wants, though, none of it makes him look gay. Other than his hair, he tries to wear his straightest outfit, plugs headphones into his cell, and orders a few drinks to take to the back of the room.

The only problem with gay bars is that everyone is just a little bit too friendly.

Not in a necessarily sexual way. Nobody wants to let somebody sit by themself, despite the signals that that's all they want to do.

Most of the encounters go away quickly after Sam repeats “What?” Enough times before eventually taking his headphones off, looking annoyed. He hasn't drank enough to get actually drunk, just enough to be pleasantly buzzed out of his mind.

That's the thing he regrets most of that time on the road, how high of a tolerance he has.

HA!

This is nothing like those dingy bars Dean would drag them too. There's no pool table, the music is much louder, and people are talking in excited, animated voices. It's a much more positive environment if you want to drink to forget your troubles.

The only real interaction Sam has is when two girls sit down across his table, having to drag over chairs to talk.

“You know,” the feminine one starts, “you don't have to sit all the way in the back if you don't want to. A lot of environments aren't the best for girls like us, but this one's good.” She squeezes the hand of the other one, who is either an incredibly effeminate goth man or a boxy girl. “It's alright.”

“Huh?”

She repeats herself, and Sam sighs, wondering what on earth made her think he was a girl.

“Huh?” He half removes one headphone, waiting for them to get frustrated and leave, but she just repeats herself again, and then the other one starts.

This is his third night here, and no one has ever been so... insistent on having a versation.

Goddamn gays are getting a little too friendly.

The androgynous one nods. “I mean, yeah, there are some creeps, but they're pretty easy to spot and they will be kicked out. You just have to say the word, you know? We look after each other here.”

OK, so definitely a dude.

“Look, man, I'm just here to drink.”

“Right. And we're just here to tell you... you don't have to pretend. There's a girl here who sells DIY HRT, if you're concerned about that, but not everybody here has insanely high standards, E isn't a requirement-”

“I'm serious,” he says, laughing a little. “I'm not a chick, I have- I have no idea why you would think that. I'm not very androgynous, no offense, and I have no idea what any of these words mean.”

The man laughs. “Then you really have some soul searching to do, sister.” Man? Probably a man. Or… probably not. Sam has no idea anymore.

“That, or you need to stop lying,” the other chips in.

Sam raises his eyebrows. “Wow.” That's just... “wow.” Rude. “If anyone's the one with a masculinity problem, it'd be my brother.”

“OK,” the genderless one shrugs. “Just letting you know there are people you can talk to. You don't have to be so defensive.” She, or whatever, gets up, reaching for her partners hand and twirling her as they stand. “Back to the bar?”

Sam sits quietly for another moment, finishing his drink.

He's going to go home, and then he's going to have some googling to do.

There were few things worse than explaining to Amelia why he was hanging at a gay bar. He tried to explain that his brother had a drinking problem and he did by proxy, and she almost cried a little bit. And then he didn't want to explain the things he had been googling.

He wasn't a girl, he wasn't- he wasn't trans. A lot of what he found was porn that looked weird and degrading, nothing he could see himself in. But some of the blog posts…

He pushed those thoughts out of his mind until a few weeks later, when she was doing her makeup in the morning before work.

It wasn't his fault. He couldn't help it.

They all talked about their first times... doing girl things, feeling like a girl externally, how it felt so liberating.

What he told himself was that he was just checking that he didn't really feel that way, that he was just a guy who was curious. A midlife crisis was all this was, and he'd get over it.

When he expressed curiosity in what makeup felt like, Amelia grinned and told him to shave a little closer. That evening they sat side by side on the couch, facing each other, and keeping his eyes closed so she could draw shapes and patterns on his eyelids and soften his face with her creams and powders was a kind of vulnerability, a kind of intimacy he'd never felt before. It was terrifying, but they both smiled at each other and laughed when she was done, and Sam realized how weird it was to kiss someone with lipstick on.

…

And yeah, the 'he' thing didn't really last, either.

After reassuring Amelia that she wasn't gay, she didn't like men(Saying “I tried in college, but who didn't?” got a laugh from her), they went to the doctor. They got her a prescription and went shopping for women's jeans and women's flannel.

“I've spent years in these clothes, do you think I'm suddenly gonna want to wear, what, tube tops and short shorts?”

She kissed her cheek and said “I love you so much. But we are going to have to get you some fitting bras soon.”

Then it was over. She sat by herself all day in that old house, avoiding the mirrors.

There's a word for that old, creeping feeling. Dysphoria. It's not just her body, it wasn't until she opened those doors and it flooded over her, before it was just… that creeping dissatisfaction with the world. With how she fit into

She won't look too different, unless you're looking closely. Electrolysis has made it so that she doesn't have to shave, she doesn't really wear makeup. There's not too much of a point, anyway, except on nights out when she wants to feel cool and sexy and like a woman in someone else's eyes.

Without changing much of how she dressed and her tits still small, it's not all that much. She doesn’t look too different.

Except how when she looks in the mirror she sees a mannish woman, and she's fine with that.

Oh, how things have changed, and how they haven’t one bit.

She doesn't have that common lament most other trans folks she met seem to have- what would've happened if I'd known younger? How much better could it have been? Look at all that I could’ve reversed!

It doesn’t work like that for her.

You can't be a hunter in the world like this. You can't go out and be tough and kill shit, not because the things that go bump in the night will somehow have another reason to kill you- that's normal. No, you can't because you'll never be able to impersonate FBI again, you can never work with the police, you can't go to the grocery store without being marked out as other. There's no way to go unnoticed, not really. And that's not even to mention how other hunters would treat you.

No, you'd never work again.

Would she really hate that so much, though? She's happy to be done, even if she did still wind up back in the cabin.

They never really leave. It always finds them, in the end. This is all they have to go back to.

A knock at the door startles her out of her thoughts and she goes to answer it, maybe a little carless. Dean's face at the door almost shocks her, and she stutters, “uh, come on in.”

“Thanks.”

He trudges in without a second thought, popping the fridge for a beer. Sam makes a face to herself before moving to stand in front of the couch, surprised to see him.

“So... how've you been?”

“Oh, you know, bad- hold on.” He narrows his eyes at her and Sam brings back her old teenage habit of shrinking her shoulder in, this time to hide her chest. The cut of her clothes is undeniably off, her jeans hold up on undeniably plumper hips. It's not Ignorable. “Have you been hunting looking like this for the past... how long has it been? Jesus, you look like a friggin' girl.”

Sam inhales, corners of her mouth twitching. That, he hasn’t missed. “It's been almost two years. And, uh, that's the thing.” She cringes.

God, he's not going to take this well. 

Chapter Text

She was right about Dean's lack of understanding. It wasn't that she passed when Dean insisted they go out looking for Kevin. He tossed his jacket at her, muttering something about covering up before they left the car for the motel, and Sam knew it wasn't just concern for her safety that he was thinking about.

Dean's always had his... masculinity problems. She knew that, and she left a wide berth for it in every part of her life to avoid problems when she could. Sometimes... well, it's not always her fault if she pokes fun at him or points it out. What are siblings for, anyway? If her brother came back, she expected it not to go well. And, well, Dean doesn't disappoint.

Now in the motel, Dean refused to look at her.

Well, it's not like he was ignoring her. He was unsurprisingly quiet, sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at his folded hands like he's deep lost in thought.

He must be. Purgatory must've been…

Just like with Hell, she doesn't want to ask about it.

Instead, Sam leaves him to his brooding, retreating to the bathroom and locking the door. She blocks all thoughts from her mind as she runs a shower, scrubbing off the remnants of makeup on her face. Of all times for Dean to run into her, then demand they leave right that instance. Maybe the whole situation would've been a lot less intimidating if she'd been just a little bit more butch.

That's just it. She was happy to see him, a little unsurprised, but she was having a pretty rough month. Worse than rough, and she knew she could share absolutely none of it with her brother.

And that was fine. He always said they could talk, but he never talked and there were things that couldn't be seriously discussed. “No chick-flick moments”, right?

She could recognize it now for what it was: misogyny and toxic masculinity. She had the words now to communicate it, if he was willing to listen, she had the arguments and tactics and the ability to hit him if he got too goddamn annoying. But he doesn't listen to girls, and she's less than a girl to him right now.

Fine. It's fine.

She smooths her hair back out of her face, scrubbing at her eyes a little more. Eyeliner never comes off like it's supposed to. Amelia used to joke that she was ‘healing her inner emo teenager’ by experimenting with the big, exaggerated patterns that made her look so ridiculous, but she couldn't deny how fun it was. Amelia also-

No. Now wasn't the time to be thinking about her.

She shuts down the shower, wrapping a towel now around her whole body and scrubbing her hair dry with a smaller hand towel. Anxiety furls in her stomach, twisting like worms and crawling like bugs as she thinks about going out to face Dean like this.

It was one thing when she thought that she was going to settle down in some suburban hellscape with the love of her life, it's another thing if her brother's going to drag her back into a life of hunting. It's another thing if she has to talk to her brother, to see the disappointment and disgust in his eyes that he doesn't even think he should have to hide.

God. There's no way this could ever go well. She was stupid to think it could.

She glances at her toiletry bag resting on the bathroom sink, estrogen and antiandrogen prescription where she's kept it for the last while.

It's been tempting, lately, to stop taking them. A part of her would wonder how quickly the testosterone and lowered estrogen would take over her body, hijacking it like they once did. How well would electrolysis hold up? Would her fat redistribute? Would she just look like a slightly odd shaped man instead of whatever androgynous skinny thing she was now?

She can't lie to herself about how she's perceived. When people ask, which they tend to if they're well meaning but stupid, she says she's at peace with who she is and how she is. The truth sounds more like “I'm working on it”.

It's always hard around Dean. The comparisons died down after long enough, but it didn't help that she wasn't the son her dad wanted, and Dean always seemed to be just a guy. The guy. He smoked in high school, he drove a cool old car, leather jacket and casual relationships, always with some girl, a thing that made him look all the more masculine in contrast. Is that why so many cis men like hyper feminine women? It most likely was with Dean.

She had... questioned her brother's sexuality enough times throughout their life. No one can really be that rugged, right? No one seriously approached relationships like that. And then, later, she thought to herself(always quietly and privately) that no one else looked at Cas like that.

She brought it up once, in high school, as an angry jab at him. He told her to shut the hell up and when she didn't, he socked her in the eye, just like their father would to him.

It's hard to be aware of all of Dean's stupid little unhealthy mannerisms and just let them go.

Trying not to think about it too hard, she closes her eyes and takes her pills with a swig of water from the sink.

It's... it's fine. It's going to be fine. At some point, everything ends up resolving itself.

“I just don't get it,” Dean says out of nowhere in the car. They're almost to Kevin's girlfriend's college, which he's probably been spotted at and can at least get them a lead, and Sam has been tapping her foot anxiously while waiting for this to finally play out.

“Get what, Dean?” She sounds more tired than she swears she's trying to. She wants to be good and patient, but by god, it's so much effort.

“This whole... thing. I mean, I was gone for, what, six months? A year? And you- you-” he sputters kind of uselessly, and Sam can't help but crack a smile. Sometimes his lack of change is nice in a reliable sort of way.

“The term is transition. Past tense transitioned.”

“Yeah, whatever, OK.” He takes a deep breath, flexing his hands on the wheel. They've been driving on a straight and relatively empty road for a while now. “You felt this way forever, or- or did it change when you stopped hunting? Did you- Jesus, man. Was there some chick with a weird fetish-“

“Hey,” she says, brow furrowing as a pang goes straight to her chest, “watch it.”

“I ain't gonna watch shit,” he spits, a bit more hostile than he probably means to come off. Or maybe he does. She never knows what he's doing for show and what he's actually feeling. “I'm just gonna say what I want and get it off my chest.”

“Well, maybe you should, Dean, because you seem to be doing a bang-up job of communicating anything, ever.”

“Oh, trust me, you don't want to hear what I have to say.” He does that stupid eye widening thing and shakes his head and Sam wants to drive this car off into the ditch on the side of the road.

“What, that I've- I've ruined porn for you, or I'm disgusting, or I'll regret this, or- or what, Dean? I'm too mannish to be a girl? Trust me, it's nothing I haven't had said to myself or thought to myself, or something that isn’t so you that I expected it, so just let it out.”

“This isn't about my feelings,” he rants, irked, “It’s about you- you not looking for me, instead getting shacked up with some chick and then turning into her and for some reason not having her and changing while not even trying to find me, man. And I don't know anything about this- this whole world you're part of now, or whatever, and- and I don't get it. That's it. I just don't get it. You're my brother, Sammy.”

She has to pretend it doesn't sting. She thought she was prepared to hear shit like that, without him understanding any of what it means to her to learn she was uncomfortable with being gendered as a man and then doing things to stop having to be uncomfortable all the time, only to suddenly be put back into that position.

But that's too complicated for Dean to understand right off the bat.

“Well, fine, do you want to know? What do you want to ask about, man, because I'm more than happy to talk.”

“No! I don't want to know anything about this!”

She's not going to laugh. Sam has to promise herself that she's not going to laugh, even though it's so goddamn funny. “...OK.”

“I don't want to know anything,” Dean punches out his words, “that's the point. You-you gotta keep that shit inside.”

“I don't think people would call that healthy.”

“We do what we gotta do,” he insists, and Sam doesn't know what to say to that, and Dean doesn't seem to want to say anything more, so the conversation falls flat after that.

The car gets quiet, and Sam watches the expanse of open fields and electricity towers and lines flash past them in a never ending kind of similarity. It's like a natural suburbia, where everything looks the same from a distance. The same kind of plants, the same silos and abandoned barns, a bland and uneventful copy and paste. But each little bit has its own unique qualities, and it's certainly interesting enough when one is avoiding tough conversations.

She doesn't really know what she would've wanted from him.

This never would've been an option if he was in her life. If everything had happened the same, she would've pushed it down further and it would've come out years later in a fight that started about something else. Without Amelia's love and support, she probably wouldn't have been able to do all this. Or she would've died having never tried.

Unfortunately, now she has to live with the consequences of following it through.

“We're almost in town,” Dean says roughly. “Wanna get lunch?”

Sam eyes him, wondering how long he's going to successfully avoid a conversation.

Apparently, his pause is too long, because Dean demands, “what?” and continues “if a guy's been in Purgatory for the last year, the dude's gonna want a decent burger.”

“I don't know if this place can do decent,” she sighs, like typical, and he grins.

“Greasy and bad burgers is just what I miss. Come on, you can't say you haven't missed eating absolute garbage junk crap with me, right?” Sam can hear the insecurity underlining it, something you could never notice if you weren't in her exact position.

You're still a guy, right? We never did guy things before, but we can still do guy things now. Please don’t make me think of you any differently. He needs her to eat shitty burgers out in public like pigs because he needs her to be so much more of a man than she ever was, even when she was an egg, because otherwise he's left to know he has a tranny for a sibling for real and forever.

There's a little Catholic church down the road from the downtown area. It's not in the best condition, the paint is clearly old and noon mass just got out an hour ago- the congregation probably doesn't cough up much. Sam expects some jab from Dean when she mentions she'd be stopping in for a little bit, but he surprisingly just tells her that he'll be in the car.

Her steps don't echo like they do in larger churches, a feeling that always made her feel so small that she didn't realize was so heavily associated with being in the presence of God.

They tried to find Him. He's not all the bible cracked Him up to be, but Sam would be lying through her teeth if she said that being in the building didn't alone lift some stress from her shoulders.

She clears her throat as she enters the confessional booth, holding her hands together awkwardly and trying to relax.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been... wow. Um. At least a year since my last confession, I think. I…” she exhales.

“I've lied, I've been greedy, I've been… generally a terrible person, I think.”

The priest on the other side tells her to keep talking, so she does.

“My brother... I thought he was dead for a year, to put it simply. I gave up on him, and I moved on with my life. It wouldn't be the first time he… that we all thought he just died. So I moved on with my life and I did things I never would've done if he were around.”

She takes a shaky breath.

“I've been on hormone replacement therapy for almost five months. Estrogen, I'm- I'm trans, I- my girlfriend helped me get to a- to be happy with myself. But now that my brother's back and she's gone, all we do is fight. I've been cruel to him in the past, and I shouldn't- I don't think I should've given up on him. But he's so mad at me for living my life, I don't know how to- I can't stop seeing it,” she stresses. “Neither of us are good people, but I think…” her throat starts to close up and her eyes start to sting and well up. Ever since all of this started, she hasn't been able to shove things down with as much ease as she once could.

“I think this could change things forever if I stick to what I think is right, what I know is right.” A single tear escapes from the prison of her eyes, usually a locked fortress. It slides halfway down her cheek before she wipes it away, determined to at least be quiet.

There's quiet on the other side of the booth, too.

“Father?” She asks tentatively.

“I heard you," the voice of an old man says slowly. “I'm working on... processing what you have to say and what I know about our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”

Her heart sinks in her chest.

“You're having problems with your family. You believe you bear guilt for living your life to the fullest. These are problems we all face through our lifetime, no one more uniquely horrible than the other. Your unspecified lies are a problem the same way your repression is,” he continues, “and I worry that all this preoccupation is just putting more and more space between you and God. Do you feel that?”

Voice still hoarse, she admits, “I don't know where God and I stand anymore.”

“Then that is your problem, my child. Focus on your relationship with God, not your brother stuck in the past.”

Sam's forced to wipe more tears from her face, clearing her throat. “Yeah, I can- yeah. OK.”

She can't even begin to articulate the weight that removes from her chest, to focus on the words of affirmation from a man so close to the God he believes in. What would he say, if he were to see half the things Sam has seen? Would he still think like that?

At the moment, she'd never felt farther from God.

Chapter Text

She gets into the car with Dean, who's waiting impatiently outside the church. Sam ducks her head and he pretends he didn't follow her and park outside in waiting and she pretends not to notice that he did.

Focus on God.

What does God even mean to her in a time and place like this? What has it ever?

The car speeds down the road, blowing a few stop signs on their way back to the highway. Dean blasts the radio, music that if their childhood had churches present would've been deemed satanic but Sam just considers noisy. She much prefers the gentle sounds of different kinds of shoegaze and admittedly a few emo bands. Radiohead, Death Cab for Cutie, the Smashing Pumpkins, and sometimes Jimmy Eat World are the only consistent things she plays, but she's not really a music person.

She tries to focus on the important things- her brother, back. Kevin, missing. World, ending. Probably. It always seems to be doing that.

All she can focus on is Dean's shitty music taste.

When they drive far enough that the radio station fades out to static and Dean doesn't change it. The mindless sound drives Sam crazy, slowly, until she snaps, “do you mind?”

Dean’s face flickers almost with surprise as he comes back down to earth.

“I didn't even notice.” He almost punches the off button, and the car is silent once more.

Sam tries to look out the window. She's not thinking about music anymore. She doesn't know what she's thinking about.

By nightfall, they're only a few hours from the campus. Dean makes the silent decision to take them to a motel for the night and just get there the next evening.

Sam thinks they've exchanged maybe ten words apiece, and it's not that they've never taken silent road trips before, but it's that she can feel her brother boiling under the surface, and she wonders when the water's going to foam over the top and burn her.

“Do you have to do that?” Dean glares at her from where he stands, packing their computer and everything else up into a backpack for the trunk.

Sam blinks, confused. “Do what?”

She's just finishing up in the bathroom, trying to brush her teeth before breakfast.

“Pop your crazy pills first thing in the morning. I don't know what you need to do to get through the day, OK, but-”

It's impossible not to laugh at Dean when Sam glances back at him with the mirror, holding her little orange bottle in her hand. “You can save the speech, Dean. It's-it's estrogen with a big fat silent O. It doesn't- what do you think these are? They're pastel colored and have a little E printed on them. Despite the O, it doesn't make sense.”

She can see his face turning red as he gets up and heads for the door, muttering something under his breath about how he doesn't really care and she could just do that shit privately.

When the move out of the motel, Sam glances at Dean before he starts up the car.

“Can you not be weird about this? Just-” she sighs, exasperated. “You can take all the time to adjust and whatever, but can you, you know…” she gestures with her hands. “Start with the adjusting?”

Dean clenches his jaw as if that constitutes an answer.

“…Fine.”

Somehow, Sam doesn't believe him.

He starts talking slowly.

“Can I still say bro?”

“I don’t really care,” she lies. He nods as if to say good.

“So, do I need to start calling you Samantha?”

“Hell no.”

Dean's phone rings in his pocket and he pauses, checking around the car before reaching into his pocket to pick it up. “Hello?” He pauses for a second, and a look flashes across his face that Sam hadn't seen before. “Wrong number. Damn spam calls…” He clears his throat, turning to Sam. “Why no makeup? Or- or childhood crossdressing.”

“Not all women wear makeup, Dean. Besides, do you see me in full glam right now? It’s inconvenient. I wear it... sometimes. On occasion. It's not really me.”

“That is a girly answer.”

…She'll take it.

He pulls out at the next exit, pulling over at a gas station.

“I need some beef jerky,” he clarifies. “Want a… bagged salad?” He says it with as much disdain as a slur and doesn't wait for an answer before heading out of the car. Before he enters the station, Sam can see him pull his phone out.

Weird.

“Does it smell like dog in here?”

“Uh…”

“SAM! You brought a dog? In my car! Oh, baby, I'm so sorry he did that to you…” he coos, before turning his rage back on his sister. “What the hell, Sammy?”

“It's… a long story.”

“So what do the... the chick pills do?”

The discomfort is more than audible, and damnit, Sam is trying to make him comfortable. Really, she is.

“Mostly fat redistribution. Hips, tits, softer face, that kind of thing. I'm less hairy and less oily, too, I guess. It's just, like... female puberty, I guess. I take a few other pills with it and they just… help the effects.”

“So do you get periods?”

She scrunches up her face. “How would that work?”

“I don't know, hormonal- hormonal cycles?” He sputters uncomfortably, fidgeting with his hands on the steering wheel.

Sam considers it for a moment. “I never really noticed. I heard some people get, like, phantom cramps. Lucky me that the answer is no, I guess.”

He makes a face somewhere between revulsion and discomfort like the idea of periods in general freaks him out, and she decides not to push this one. Not right now. Not when he can even say the words girl pills without throwing in an insult.

“So, with Amelia... was she, you know…” he makes a gesture that Sam interprets as a less nice version of queer. She regrets telling him about Riot and Amelia already.

“She's bi,” Sam says through tight lips. “Bisexual. Likes both genders?”

“I know what bisexual means, Sammy,” he grumbles. “When chicks make out with other chicks when they're drunk. Threesomes.”

Sam chooses to ignore him. “I was… I was her girlfriend. After a bit.” She doesn't want to get into Amelia right now.

He doesn't notice, and doesn't exactly let it drop. “And… the pills. Do they, you know…” he lets the sentence hang before impatiently snapping, “what's up with your dick?”

“DEAN!”

“WHAT!”

Sam hits him in the shoulder with the newspaper she's reading.

The car gets quiet for a while.

“I'm still mad at you.”

“I know.”

“And I don't get it.”

“You don't have to-”

“You're my brother, Sammy, and I love you.”

“…I’m sorry.”

Girlfriend broke up with Kevin for his grades or something stupid. The important part was that she hadn’t seen him. Pity, really. She wasn't too useful, anyway.

They do track Kevin down, eventually, because that's what they do. It's not that hard.

Funnily enough, they find him in a church. He sprays them with borax in a water gun, and he looks different than Sam remembers, and she pushes back the guilt she's feeling. It's not her fault she got out and he didn't.

“Stop! Stop! Not Leviathans,” Dean says harshly, “it's us.”

Kevin's got a look of kind of bewilderment on his face, glancing between the two of them several times before looking Sam up and down. “What the hell happened to you guys?”

“Cliff Notes? I went to Purgatory. Sam's a dyke now.”

Kevin smiles as if that's the first bit of good news he's heard in a long time. “Hey, congrats on the transition, br- uh, comrade.” He claps Sam on the shoulder and she grins almost against her will. “You look great. But, y’know, fuck you for leaving me all alone and probably to die and all that.”

“Thanks, man.” Sam ducks her head, unsure how to respond. She hasn’t exactly been used to friendly affirmation from old friends.

“Yeah. Yeah, I know.” He looks at them, still covered in borax. “Wanna come in? I have something I think you guys should hear about, but, uh…” he looks all around them. “Not here.”

Later that night they regroup outside the church, away from Kevin. Sam's still shocked into silence.

“Okay, if this kid is right, he's sitting on a bombshell. Hell, he is the bombshell.” Dean's amazed, but Sam can't look at him.

He notices and demands, “what?”

“That. I mean, there's no way that Kevin's getting out of this intact, is there?” She runs a hand through her hair, hating how it looks down. She wishes she had a hair tie on her wrist, but she never got in the habit of carrying one around. Amelia… Amelia always had one.

“Well, he's doing pretty well for himself so far.” Dean clenches his jaw.

“Yeah, he got out.”

“And now he's in it whether he likes it or not.”

“So... free will, that's only for you?”

“And getting to live a free life, that's only for you?”

Sam has to look away again.

Dean shakes his head. “I can't believe what I'm hearing. Sam, we have an opportunity to wipe the slate clean. We take Kevin to the tablet, he tells us the spell, we send every demon back to hell- forever. Every single bastard that destroyed our lives, killed our mother, killed Jess. And you're not sure? You know- you know you can't be a hunter like this, right?”

Sam snaps her head up at that one. “And what the hell's that supposed to mean?”

“You know what I mean.”

"Then say it, Dean."

“I mean you can't pass for an FBI agent, a priest, any- any of our disguises are null,” he stresses, words exploding out of him like he finally can't stop himself, “you're clearly losing muscle, you're out of the game, and now you're as vulnerable as Jo was, only people don't look at you and just see some chick.”

Sam shakes her head, brow furrowing.

“Screw you, Dean," she huffs.

“Yeah, how often can you say that to a guy now without getting your head bashed in-”

“How could I before? You think I haven't made my way out of my fair share of fights? I'm a woman now, so that all means nothing? Trans inclusive misogyny, love to see it, God, why can't you get over yourself!”

For a moment, Dean looks genuinely hurt turning on his heel and storming off back into the church.

Sam tries to take a deep breath, tilting her head up at the sky so that the tears don't find her.

She finds Kevin in the main part of the church, sitting in a pew and looking up at the broken stained glass. Uncomfortable, she tries to aprouch with loud footsteps so he doesn't startle, and sits down in the pew behind him. She clears her throat, hating the way her voice echoes in the church, no matter how broken.

“Kevin, I, uh… I owe you an apology. Um… look, when you disappeared and Dean disappeared, I… needed to clear my head, and… I'm thinking maybe you were one of the pieces that I should have been there to pick up.”

It's a shit apology. It's not at all what she wants to go for, but she doesn't think she can explain. Besides, what's done is done.

Kevin hesitates before responding. “You've been a hunter since you were a kid, right?”

“Yeah, mostly. Yeah.”

“Ever since I realized I was a prophet… It's just hard to believe this is actually my life.” He laughs, but it's more bitter than anything else.

“Yeah. It sucks right now. I know that. Um, it might suck for a lot longer, but... trust me on this- it gets better."

"You know I'm not gay, right?" He pauses. "Or bi, or transgender, you know-”

Sam chooses to ignore him. She isn't used to being around… allies. “If we can do this, get the tablet, get you everything you need to close the gates of Hell, there's a world out there where nobody- not Crowley, no demon- is chasing you anymore.”

“I guess I just don't see how I get from here to there.”

“I used to not be able to see it, either. But there is a way. For… for everything.”

“Just give me five minutes. Please?”

Kevin walks away, troubled, but Sam thinks she got through to him. She hates to admit when her brother's right, but when she looks over to make eye contact with him where he stands in the doorway- who did he think he was hiding from?- he walks away, too.

And, as always, she follows.

Sam's amazed Dean didn't notice her following him. She thought purgatory would've given him some kind of super hearing or super attentiveness, but he's the same hotheaded asshole she's known her whole life, so it probably shouldn't surprise her.

He makes his way back behind some bar into a sleazy alley, hands stuffed in his pockets with his shoulders back but lifted so high and tense Sam wonders how her brother can go so long without chronic headaches.

Dean walks up to another man just as broad as he is. The man has more facial hair, though, and a grin on his face that Sam knows means trouble.

They're talking.

She shuffles closer, trying to make out what they're saying without giving herself away. There's no one else in this alley, and it's clearly unsafe, and what does it have to do with saving the world from all demons forever? Dean's standing tense, but not ready to fight tense, just... regular tense. She doesn't know how to describe it.

The men keep talking, and at one point the other puts his hand on Dean's shoulder as if to give him a back pat for something, but it stays there. Dean shuffles in closer, and-

Sam tears her eyes away, walking quickly back to the car. It might not be at all what she had expected, but her heart pounds in her chest the whole drive back to Kevin's.

Numbly, she walks inside the church, apologizes to Kevin for stealing his car, and lies down on one of the two cots he pulled out so they could stay here rather than a motel. It was nice of Kevin, she thinks. She doesn't really deserve that right now.

Running a hand through her hair, she tries to relax. she closes her eyes and hugs the thin blanket to her chest, trying to will herself into sleep.

It was in everything he did, from the rugged forced masculinity to his short-standing relationships with women, and the disasters that followed the ones that lasted. Disasters that couldn't just be pinned on hunting. Through all of high school he never had a single male friend, or female friend, but that last part made more sense. He made a few too many insensitive jokes, he didn't care just enough for them to notice. Sam can't count how many times he quietly let himself out of the motel room when Dad was hunting and Dean had a girl over, a girl he might say hi to once ortwice before she was never seen again. No matter how long they stayed in one place.

And Sam remembers the longing looks. The isolation. He remembers Dean when he was younger, with longer hair and too big clothes. In one fond memory, they're 4 and 8, and Dean's helping Sam tie a string around the waist of her too-big shirt. They laughed and he told her now it's like a dress, like real clothes. He remembers looking at posters of Dean's favorite metal bands, all men who looked so convincingly like women that she was transfixed, fascinated by how they did it.

Why did Dean like them so much? There was plenty of rock that wasn't so flamboyant.

None of those things made him gay, of course. It was just how they added up.

Against her will, her mind flashes to Dean kissing that man in the alley, close and stiff but certainly familiar.

Maybe it was her fault for bringing this all up to him. He tends to crash and burn at this stuff, and she can't deal with that when it happens again. Cas is stuck in purgatory, probably dead, and Kevin's just a kid and Sam's never had to take care of anything. Riot was the first thing she really had, and Dean's not a dog! And she's not a therapist.

Not that Dean would ever agree to anything as effeminate as therapy.

It's late when he comes creeping back in.

The door to the church swings open and Sam cracks her eyes open, just to make sure it's not Crowley here to snatch them up, and shuts them quickly when she hears Dean's boots thumping against the floor, closer and closer.

He doesn't look twice at her, just plops down on his own creaking cot, shedding his jacket and boots and crawling contentedly under the sheet they dug out from somewhere. It was most likely used when they were painting the church, or to stop dust collecting in some areas, before it became so decrepit. it's stiff and uncomfortable and kind of waxy, and it makes Sam feel like she's hiding under a tarp.

It's that tense and quiet moment that she realizes she can't let Dean do the trials. Not if there's the chance it might kill him in the process.

She got her time free. She got a house and a dog and a girlfriend and to reinvent herself as a whole and it was. good. It was happy. It was perfect.

But she got it.

When had Dean ever really had the chance to come to terms with himself? This could work. This time, it could work.