Work Text:
They had been on the road for about half an hour.
It was a bit chilly out and the sun wasn’t shining as brightly as it could have been, but Dean didn’t particularly mind. The grass was a thriving and vivid shade of green, shimmering where the frost caught the morning sun. The clear blue sky stretched out, inviting and endless like the road before them. Even if the three of them hadn’t had an ulterior motive for being out on the road, today was a good day to be driving anyway, Dean decided as the Impala eagerly ate up every last inch of asphalt.
The Winchester glanced up at the rearview mirror, lips quirking upward as he saw Cas in the backseat looking like he had his heart set on reading the book in his lap but getting continuously distracted by the scenery passing by through Baby’s windows.
Returning his eyes to the road, Dean let his voice rise higher as he sang along to Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Simple Man.” Yeah, his voice cracked occasionally and Dean couldn’t stay perfectly on pitch if his life depended on it, but “Simple Man” was an awesome song that deserved to be sung aloud, and the elder Winchester wasn’t bothered that his brothers could hear him
Dean carried on singing and tapping his fingers on the steering wheel to the beat until the last notes of the song faded out and the next track on his cassette tape started playing.
He flicked his gaze over to his baby brother. Sam was staring down at his phone with one of the dopiest grins Dean had ever seen.
“Someone looks happy,” Dean commented. “Are you texting a special someone, or did the next season of Sherlock finally drop?”
“What?” Sam huffed out an amused breath and shook his head. “No.”
“Then what are you doing?”
“I’m--” Sam cut himself off with a chuckle. “Looking at pride flags, actually.”
Sam tilted his phone in Dean’s direction, and the elder Winchester gave the screen a cursory glance. He had been expecting to see the bright colours of the pan flag, but instead was met with a darkly shaded image.
“What is that?” It looked like mountains, not a pride flag-- certainly not the pan one, assuming Dean was remembering that one correctly. There was a large black mountain sloping upwards on one side of the image, followed by light gray mountains along the bottom. Puffy purple clouds looped their way along the peaks of the gray mountains before giving way to a sky filled with off-white clouds.
The smile slipped from Sam’s face slightly before he angled the phone back to himself. “Oh, wait, hold on.”
Dean heard the clacking from the phone’s keyboard before Sam tried showing him the phone screen again, but the Winchester had to wait until he had cleared a blind curve and returned to a straight stretch of road before looking over. The picture had the same colour scheme, except the image itself was a bit different this time. There was a black triangle in the same place the large mountain had been earlier, tilted so its peak pointed to the right. Then there were large stripes of white and light gray with a smaller purple stripe nestled in between.
“That’s not the pan flag.”
“Nope. It’s the demi flag.”
Dean didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Then he snuck another glimpse at the image on Sam’s phone. “There’s a flag for that?”
“Yeah. Why wouldn’t there be?”
Dean shrugged. “I dunno. I guess I thought there weren’t that many demisexuals out there.”
“That’s the great thing about the internet. It’s so much easier for people with similar experiences to come together and form communities like this. I don’t know if I would say there aren’t a lot of demisexuals in the world; there have been studies that suggest around one percent of the population is on the ace spectrum, and those studies only include the people who were comfortable saying they were ace in the studies, and those who were lucky enough to find the terminology. I’m sure there are way more people than we realize that are on the spectrum.”
“Still,” Dean said. “One percent of the population? That ain’t very high.”
“The current world population is around 7.4 billion,” Cas said from the backseat as he flipped a page in his book. “One percent of that number is seventy-four million, just to put that in perspective.”
“Ok, I take it back. That’s a fairly high number.”
“Yeah,” Sam chuckled. “And somehow I didn’t realize I was demi until I was 32.”
“If it’s any consolation, I only just realized I am asexual, too, and I’m older than the Earth itself.”
Sam angled his head back to look at Cas. “So, Dean knows?”
“Yes, we had a small conversation about asexuality.” Cas nodded.
“Seventy-four million,” Dean muttered. “What do you think the odds are of two aces stumbling across each other in the wild?”
“Without purposefully seeking out other people like them in an LGBT+ space?” Sam asked. “Not impossible, but probably not very high. Why?”
“Just curious. And… what are the chances of two aces and an aromantic stumbling across each other?”
“Well, I’d imagine it’d be even lowe--” Sam’s voice abruptly cut out. He looked at his brother with slightly widened eyes. “Wait, really?”
Dean shifted in his seat. “Maybe?”
“Dean, that’s great!”
“Is it?”
Sam frowned, taken aback by the apprehensive note in Dean’s voice. “Is it great that you have what it takes to question things and get that much closer to understanding yourself? Yeah, I’d say so.”
Dean grunted in response, suddenly putting a lot more focus toward keeping Baby between the lines and looking around for oncoming cars.
“You know,” Sam started gently. “There’s nothing wrong with being aromantic, Dean. Your life isn’t defined by the kind of relationships you have.”
“No, I get that.” Dean could practically feel Castiel’s eyes on the back of his head. He already knew Cas was somewhere in the gray area of aromanticism, and he didn’t think there was anything wrong with Cas because of it. And he definitely didn’t want to give Cas the impression there was anything wrong with it, either. “I’m just…” Dean huffed. “Trying to figure out if that makes me a fraud.”
“A fraud?” Sam sounded flabbergasted by the very idea. “How would being aro make you a fraud?”
Dean chewed on the inside of his cheek without responding for a few long moments. “Lisa.”
“Do you care to expand on that?” Sam asked after a long pause.
“Not really.”
“Dean.”
The Winchester’s gaze moved up to the rearview mirror when Cas said his name. The angel was putting a bookmark into his book and setting it aside. “You cared about Lisa. You sacrificed everything so you could have a life with her and Ben, and then you sacrificed everything again so they could live happily. Whether or not your feelings were romantic at the time, you loved her. And she knew that, too. You’re not a fraud, Dean.”
Dean let out a self-deprecating snort, thinking of when Lisa had told him their relationship had been over the second Sam came back topside. Yeah, Lisa must have felt really loved in that moment. “What happened after Crowley-- after he--” Dean grit his teeth when his throat started to tighten. “It was bad enough taking their memories, but this? Finding out I just led her on the whole time we were together?”
After Lisa had found out about hunting, about what he was, Dean had thought that for the first time he could just be honest. Or, at the very least, that he wouldn’t have to actively keep her at arm’s length as usual. All those times he had told Lisa he loved her… he had meant it, with everything he had, but now he was starting to realize that he hadn’t meant it in the same way she did when she said those three words. And it honestly just felt like all those times, he had taken advantage of Lisa without ever being capable of returning the connection she wanted. He had taken her memories, and now, thinking about how what Lisa had called the best year of her life had in actuality been based on the false assumption that he had been in love with her, Dean wasn’t sure how he could be anything other than a thief.
And the worst part of all this was that it didn’t mean anything at all. It wasn’t like he could go up to Lisa and apologize for not feeling the way he should have about her-- the Lisa he knew was gone. She was happier now. Dean obsessing over this was just… selfish. Self-absorbed and selfish. In the end, he wasn’t even freaking out over what had happened with Lisa, he just couldn’t stomach what it meant if he were the kind of person who could easily manipulate others into being in such a lonely, one-sided relationship where they loved so deeply but never got anything in return.
Dean heard his brother heave a heavy sigh. Sam never had agreed with his decision to wipe Ben and Lisa’s memories, but then, Sam didn’t exactly know what it was like to be put in that position.
“You’re not a bad person, Dean,” Sam asserted.
Dean snickered. Sam shifted in his seat, hands fidgeting over his seatbelt.
“I remember that year when you were with Lisa,” Sam said suddenly. “I remember looking in on you from across the street, even before you realized I wasn’t in Hell anymore.”
“What?” Dean snapped his gaze over to his baby brother so quickly that Sam reached out a hand to keep the steering wheel steady. “You never told me that.”
Sam shrugged, his lips quirking upwards in an almost rueful way. “I remember you playing football with Ben in your front yard, just like we used to do at Bobby’s or in motel parking lots. I remember seeing you and Lisa through the window, tangled together on the couch, laughing and watching movies. I remember you and Lisa had an argument on your front porch when Ben came home talking about a girl he met. I remember the way you looked at each other even as you argued over the proper age to let Ben start dating. And, Dean, I was soulless, ” Sam gave a humorless, tired chuckle. “And I could still see how much you cared about Lisa and Ben, and how much they cared about you, too. At the time it bothered me, even, how happy you could make each other when the apple pie life was something so different from what you were used to. So, no. I don’t think you’re a fraud or that you led her on. I think you didn’t completely understand the nuances of what you felt, but you loved her with everything you had anyway. That’s not bad, Dean, that’s just… love.”
“Oddly enough, I did something similar,” Cas spoke up. “After I realized Raphael was trying to restart the Apocalypse, I thought about going to you for help. But when I got to where you were staying with Lisa, tucked in the etheric plane where you couldn’t see me, you were raking leaves, Dean. You had just promised Lisa and Ben that you could have a bonfire, that you would roast hot dogs and make smores over the fire with them that night. And I realized I couldn’t bring you back into another war, not when you finally had the life you never let yourself realize you wanted. Just because one sometimes doesn’t understand the nature of one’s feelings doesn’t mean that those feelings aren’t real. You have a tendency to see yourself the same way your enemies see you: as something hateful and destructive. I truly wish you could understand that everything you do, you do out of love, for family.”
Dean’s vision started to blur and he focused a tremendous amount of energy into not reaching up a hand to rub at his eyes. “So, what,” Dean said, ignoring the faint tremor in his voice and hoping Sam and Cas would, too. “Has everyone in this car gotten into the habit of stalking me without my knowing?”
“Don’t change the subject,” Sam chastised in a soft voice.
Dean huffed. His fingers were starting to ache from where he had clenched them into the steering wheel, and he unfurled them. “If it wasn’t, you know.” Oh, how he hated that feeling of his ears going red. “Romantic, then what the hell was it?”
“Well,” Sam started, smiling softly. “There’s this thing called the split attraction model. It separates romantic and sexual attraction. We’ve talked about that before: the difference between feeling the intrinsic desire to date or have sex. But there are different forms of attraction than just those two. There’s sensual attraction, the desire to touch. Aesthetic attraction, which is sort of an intense appreciation for the way something looks, and there’s also something called queerplatonic attraction.”
“‘Queerplatonic?’” The word felt just as strange on Dean’s tongue as it had sounded out loud.
“Yeah. It’s hard to explain, but a queerplatonic relationship is basically any non-romantic relationship that doesn’t really meet the expected characteristics for a platonic or a romantic connection. It’s this intense, committed relationship that exists on its own terms, outside of romance and friendship alike. And then there’s alterous attraction, which is a gray area between platonic and romantic attraction.”
“You think that’s what was going on?” Dean asked. “That I was feeling alterous or whatever?”
“Dean.” Sam shook his head. “What I think isn’t what matters here. I’m just providing information for you; it’s up to you what you do with it.”
Dean was quiet for a long time after that. He thought back to girlfriends and boyfriends he had had in his teenage years. He had always liked being close with them and had had little problem with hugging and handholding and whatever else as long as they were behind closed doors. But the second Dean tried that kind of thing in public, it always felt wrong. His chest would ache and tear viciously because he just knew that if anyone looked over at them, they would assume he was being romantic. It felt almost like he was pretending to be something other than himself in those moments, and in his head, the random passerby would glare at him like they could see it, too. Dean had never understood why showing affection in public left his stomach in knots, but eventually, it had gotten so bad that he had just stopped touching people, even in private. Dean had eventually decided he must have commitment problems.
It was weird to think that there might be other people like him who had lived the same fears and self-doubt in silence. That the way he had felt for years might not be wrong, just… different. At the same time, though, Dean had gotten so used to thinking of himself as the person with commitment issues who didn’t have time for a relationship right now, and even if he did, would only be able to cheat others into a loveless mess of a relationship anyway. It was a damaging line of thought, the kind he would be horrified to hear anyone else say about themselves, but Dean had believed it for so long that the idea of trying to take on the label ‘aromantic’ felt like yet another method of self-denial instead of facing the truth: that he was just… broken.
“Is there,” Dean faltered. “Is there a flag for aromantics, or…?”
Sam’s fingers tapped away at his phone again before he showed Dean the screen. This time, the image was of a black stripe, followed by a gray stripe, then a white one, and then two more of differing shades of green.
Dean swallowed down the lump in his throat and studied the way the yellow lines disappeared underneath the Impala as she strode over the asphalt.
As the Impala pulled up to their destination, Castiel cast a curious glance out the window. They were outside a busy cafe, and the sidewalks were practically overflowing with noise and people walking to and fro.
Sam and Dean’s doors opened, and Cas quickly followed them out onto the pavement. He had just closed the car door when a streak of red rushing toward them caught his eye. Castiel smiled as the flash of red hair launched itself at Dean, pulling him into an embrace.
“What’s up, bitches? Did ya miss me?”
Dean’s eyes gleamed as he returned the hug. “Yeah, about as much as I’d miss a bullet to the head.”
Charlie laughed at the tease, pulling away and smacking Dean in the shoulder. “Oh, stop it.” The smile slipped from Charlie’s face briefly, the corners of her lips faltering as she gestured at Dean’s forearm. “And the, uh, hickey from hell?”
“No side effects from removing it,” Dean assured, though he did unconsciously rub at the spot where the Mark of Cain had once rested.
Charlie heaved a sigh of relief before the smile worked its way back onto her face. “Awesome.” Then she turned to Sam. “And how’s our resident moose doing?”
Sam shook his head at the nickname, but there was a smile on his face as Charlie pulled him into a hug, too. “I’ve been doing great, actually. You?”
“I’m fine, but gosh, it’s been forever since I’ve seen you dorks! Would it kill ya to send a girl a text every once in a while? I’d even settle for a postcard, at this point.”
“We text all the time!” Sam laughed.
“Yeah, but I’m needy and desperate.” Charlie pulled away from Sam and her eyes landed on Cas. “And what about my favorite angel of the Lord?”
Castiel started to answer, but Charlie reached over for a hug and his brain short-circuited. Charlie’s hugs were very… unique. Cas wasn’t sure how she managed to do it, but somehow, she seemed able to hug with her very soul instead of just her arms. And Charlie’s soul was exceptionally bright, and it buzzed at a fast-paced frequency that perfectly reflected what a bubbly and excitable person she was. Castiel didn’t find himself looking at souls very much anymore, but Charlie’s was just so open and proud that he didn’t have much choice in the matter, and seeing Charlie always managed to overload his angelic senses in the best way possible.
“I’m the same as always,” Cas finally managed to answer.
Charlie pulled away slightly but kept her hands on Castiel’s elbows, looking up at him with the skin around her green eyes wrinkled from a grin. “It’s so great to see you when there aren’t lives at stake.”
Castiel nodded in agreement.
Charlie had a to-go coffee cup in her hand, and she insisted on getting coffee for the three of them as well. A few bags of belongings in the Impala’s trunk, a long wait in line, and three orders of coffee later, and the crew had piled into the Impala for the trip back to the Bunker.
Predictably, Charlie ended up climbing into the back to sit with Cas. He moved his book from earlier into his lap so Charlie would have more room to sit, but the redhead gasped when she saw what he was reading.
“Is that City of Bones? By Cassandra Clare?”
“Yes.” Cas tilted his head at her. “You’ve read it?”
Charlie raised a hand to rest against her pink and purple flannel-clad chest as though offended. “Of course. What kind of uncultured swine do you take me for? Do you like it so far? What do you think of it? Come on, you have to tell me everything!”
“The portrayal of the supernatural world is horrifyingly inaccurate, although it does provide an intriguing perspective.” Charlie nodded enthusiastically, and Cas was about to continue discussing the contrast between real-life supernatural creatures and the ones depicted in the book when Sam spoke up from the front.
“I’ve read Cassandra Clare, too.”
“Yes, and ever since he caught me reading this, whenever he sees an angel blade, Sam picks it up and says my name aloud as though trying to activate it like one of the blades from this series. Which isn’t as funny as he seems to think it is.” Castiel added this last bit in a louder voice when Sam started snickering from the front seat.
“So that’s what that was about,” Dean muttered.
“I dunno, I think that’s pretty funny, Cas,” Charlie remarked.
Castiel rolled his eyes, but there was really no point in arguing with the humans.
“God, I love that series so much,” Charlie continued, looking starry-eyed. “There’s so much queer rep in it, and I can’t tell you how much I love a good forbidden romance.”
Cas squinted at her. “Rep?”
“Representation,” Sam explained.
“Oh.” He looked down at the book in his lap before casting a curious glance at Charlie. “Is there anything about asexuality in it? Or aromanticism?”
Charlie gave him a startled look before turning toward the front of the car. “Is this the same guy who had to ask me what a pillow princess was on my last visit? Not that I’m complaining, but what did you guys do to him?”
“We may have had some conversations,” Sam said, amused. “So you’re, uh, good with aromantics and aces? They don’t bother you?”
“Of course they don’t bother me!” Charlie looked vaguely offended, and this time she wasn’t pretending. “Aros and aces are a valid-- and valuable-- part of the queer community.”
“Why the hell wouldn’t she be okay with it?” Dean asked, shooting Sam a confused glance.
Sam floundered for a second, looking embarrassed. “I-- I just know there are some people even in the LGBT+ community who don’t think aros or aces exist, or that they’re just sick. And that some believe it but don’t think being aro or ace makes you queer enough to have a spot in the community. I just wanted to, you know, make sure.”
Giving the younger Winchester a sympathetic look, Cas remembered the time Sam had told him about watching an asexual girl get chased out of a pride club in Stanford after being told she didn’t belong. It was the only example Sam had of how asexuals were treated in real life, and Cas didn’t blame him for being wary of a negative response, even from someone like Charlie.
Charlie nodded slowly. “I get it. The gatekeeping in the community sucks. You’d think everybody would understand that, even if we’re not all in the same exact boat, the point of the queer community is to build solidarity, not have an oppression Olympics contest. But, just to get it officially on the record, I one hundred percent support the A in LGBTQIA.”
“Oh, good. Because it turns out,” Sam paused briefly before flashing Charlie a smile in the rearview mirror. “I’m demi and pan.”
A wide grin slowly settled across Charlie’s face. “I’m so proud of you, Sam! How’d you figure it out?”
“A lot of late-night internet searches,” Sam admitted. “But I got there in the end.”
Charlie’s eyes settled on the back of Dean’s head. Cas cleared his throat to draw her attention instead; he doubted Dean was in a state of mind where he would be comfortable sharing this kind of information for now. “I’m also asexual, and in all likelihood grayromantic.”
Charlie, looking utterly delighted, reached a hand up as though to brush away a tear. “Oh, they grow up so fast! I’ve gotta get you boys pride flags asap! Oooh, and rings! Aces wear rings, right? I’ll totally get you those-- and oh my god, we could go to pride together, you guys! How awesome would that be?!”
“Pride?” Dean asked, glancing up at her through the rearview. “You mean like one of those parades?”
“Yeah!” Charlie chirped. “Why not? There’s room for all of us there.”
Castiel listened as she, Dean, and Sam started talking about all the things that could be done at a pride parade, although Castiel wasn’t entirely certain what that was. He had enough context clues to understand the main idea, though, and listened with intrigue.
Slowly, the concept of pride faded from the conversation as Charlie thanked them for coming to pick her up. She had been working a case just over the state line in Nebraska and hadn’t been as stealthy as she should have been, Charlie explained. She had finished her salt-and-burn case only to realize that there was an unusually heavy police presence in the area and an APB out on her car for grave robbing.
“You need to be more careful,” Dean had immediately chastised her.
“Oh, please,” Charlie immediately retorted. “I have more ‘careful’ in the bone of my little finger than you three wackjobs have combined, but we all have bad days every once in a while.”
“And just what would you have done if you weren’t close enough for us to bail you out so quickly?”
“I’m really good at hot-wiring,” Charlie sing-songed back at the Winchester.
Then Charlie had gone into the gritty details of the ghost case, seeming to relish her suspenseful, and probably embellished, depiction of the fight she had gotten into with the ghost as she struggled to set her lighter to the lighter fluid-drenched corpse, which had sparked an exchange between the four of them of the most suspenseful (and sometimes the most humorous) cases of their hunting careers.
As they talked, Castiel couldn’t quite keep himself from glancing over at Dean. The Winchester wasn’t talking as much as he usually did, probably because he was still thinking about what had happened to Lisa and Ben. Cas wished he could do something to make it better, he just didn’t know what.
Castiel wasn’t entirely sure how it had happened.
When they had returned to the Bunker, he and Sam had shown Charlie to the room she would be staying in until she could regain access to the car she had had to ditch in Nebraska. Charlie had been here for over a week now, and Sam and Dean figured the police presence had probably died down in Nebraska enough to try to get Charlie back to her car tomorrow. The three humans had been eating dinner with Cas sitting at the table, all of them feeling slightly melancholy at knowing this might be the last dinner they would have together until they met again. And then Charlie suddenly had her phone out, music streaming from its speakers as she pleaded with them to dance.
Sam and Dean steadfastly refused, and Cas was quietly grateful that Charlie didn’t ask him. Or she didn’t at first, anyway. Charlie pouted at the two Winchesters before she side-eyed Dean. Then she snatched up her phone, clacked away at a few buttons, and a new song floated through the air. It took Castiel a few seconds to recognize it as Taylor Swift’s “22,” one of the songs that Castiel heard sometimes on a vinyl album Dean had purchased after finding a record player in the Bunker.
Charlie smiled at Dean, and then she was grabbing Cas by the hand and pulling him up from his seat while the angel was too distracted wondering what the smile meant to defend himself.
“Come on, Cas!” Charlie had interlocked their fingers on both hands and was wiggling her hips as she took half-steps forwards and backwards that Castiel was forced to mirror if he wanted to avoid making them awkwardly tumble into each other, seeing as their fingers were intertwined. “Shake what your mama gave ya!”
“I don’t know what that means,” Cas said, clumsily trying to get out of the redhead's grip, but she held on with a strength that belied her small frame. “And I don’t have a mother.”
“Castiel, please?” Charlie asked, looking up at him with wide, sad eyes. “You’re the only one here who’s even marginally close to my height! Use that hard-earned free will for good and choose to treat yourself to a dance, please ?”
There were a lot of brilliant things to love about humanity, Castiel decided, but the unwavering effectiveness of the puppy dog eyes manipulation trick was not one of them.
Shaking his head, Cas put more effort into the way he mirrored Charlie’s steps, trying to channel the fluidity he had used in eon upon eons worth of battles to add elegance to the way he moved. He had no idea what he was doing, but Charlie seemed happy with the development. She let out a small squeal before bellowing out the lyrics of the Taylor Swift song.
For a few moments the two spun and moved around in what Cas hoped was a dance, but based on the laughter he could hear from Sam and Dean, the angel doubted that. Then Cas gently removed one of his hands from one of Charlie’s while he raised the other up high. He twirled Charlie around in a move he saw frequently on TV, smiling as the redhead tossed her head back with a breathless laugh.
Suddenly Charlie had untangled herself from him, but before Castiel had the chance to either be disappointed or to make a run for it while he still could, Charlie had pulled Sam from his seat with the same efficiency she had shown him.
“Really?” Sam said when she led him over to Cas.
“If this is my last dinner with you guys for god knows how long, then it has to be memorable, sillies!” Charlie said as she pushed Sam forward.
Castiel gave Sam an amused, slightly embarrassed smile when Sam stumbled into him. He expected the hunter to put up some form of fight, but instead Sam just muttered “if you can’t beat ‘em” and seemed to resign himself to having to dance.
Dancing with Sam was different. Whereas Charlie’s movements had been erratic and unrestrained, Sam’s movements were gentle and slow as they half-danced, half-shuffled on their feet. Sam had a look on his face like he couldn’t believe this was what the night had come to, and Cas figured he must have a similar look gracing his own countenance.
Out of the corner of his eye, Cas saw Charlie tug Dean out of his chair with a smug look on her face. Dean mumbled something about only doing this because it was Swift, and then he and Charlie were dancing, too.
“Hey, Dean, are you okay?”
Dean looked up at Charlie after he put the last of her bags into the trunk of the Impala. She was leaning against one of the car doors with her arms crossed and a worried frown settling on her lips. “Yeah.” Dean closed the trunk and rubbed his hands together. The garage was a pretty large space, meaning it didn’t hold in heat as much as Dean would like.
“It’s just… you’ve been zoning out more often than I do when someone is trying to convince me Frodo is a better character than Bilbo Baggins.” Charlie chuckled, but the mirth didn’t quite shine in her eyes.
Dean sighed. “I’ve just been thinking about things.”
“Ooh, that’s dangerous. What kind of things?”
‘Not the kind of things I want to talk about,’ Dean thought, glancing away from the redhead.
“Dean?” Charlie took a step closer.
“Charlie, how did you… how did you know?” Dean asked before he could stop himself. He instantly hated himself for it.
This wasn’t the kind of thing he needed to ask about out loud, but he was just so exhausted from the mental Olympics his thoughts were trying to accomplish as they raced from ‘you’re a manipulative asshole who wants to take advantage of others by tricking them into a fake relationship,’ to ‘except maybe I really am aromantic,’ before continuously circling back to ‘that’s just a lie you’re telling yourself so you won’t have to face how broken you are.’
“How did you know you were gay and not just… hiding from a different problem?”
Charlie stilled. “Oh, Dean. Who you love is never a problem.”
“But how did you know your label was the right one?”
“There is no right one.” Dean saw Charlie shaking her head.
“Of course there’s a right one,” Dean said. Wasn’t that the whole point of choosing a label?
“There’s no such thing. Labels are just tools we use that best describe our current understanding of ourselves. And sometimes your understanding of yourself changes, and sometimes who you are changes. Sexuality, gender-- it’s all fluid, and there’s no right or wrong,” Charlie said, lifting one shoulder in a small shrug. “Not in the traditional sense.”
“But isn’t it bad to change labels? That’s part of the reason why--”
Why it took me so long to come out as bi.
Dean saw the criticism online, sometimes even in person, and he saw the disdain for people who were ‘experimenting’ with bisexuality or pansexuality when in reality they were, supposedly, gay or straight. The fear over the possible repercussions of being wrong about his sexuality had kept Dean from even thinking about labels for a long time. He had only just started coming to terms with being bi, but now that he knew aromanticism was a thing, the struggle with labels was starting anew. It was like escaping goblins only to be caught by wolves. Out of the frying pan, into the fire.
“Why what?” Charlie prompted.
“Why I didn’t want to accept I’m bisexual,” Dean grunted, kicking at the ground instead of looking up. “Why I don’t want to think about maybe being aromantic.”
“Dean, what exactly do you think you’re hiding from?”
A sharp laugh escaped the Winchester at that. Yeah, he wouldn’t be able to explain the answer to that if he tried.
“You once read the Supernatural books, right? The published and unpublished stories written by Chuck?” Dean asked instead. He continued when Charlie nodded, although she looked perplexed by the change in the line of conversation. “So you read about me and Lisa?”
Charlie nodded again, and this time the bewilderment blossomed into something sad and hesitant. “Yes, I did. Sorry, that-- that was such an invasion of privacy on my part--”
“You’re literally a hacker,” Dean felt obligated to point out.
“Yeah, but I would never hack my friends. Unless I was pulling an awesome prank,” Charlie amended. “But never like that.”
Dean shrugged. There really wasn’t much to say when your entire life story was published for a bunch of angst-addicted fans to get their kicks from. But speaking of angst-addicted fans, Charlie was a nerd. He had once heard her rant for over three hours about how Donna Noble deserved a way better ending than the one Russel T Davies had given her in Doctor Who, and that was just one of the various rants about various characters who deserved better endings across a multitude of fandoms. Basically, Charlie was exceptionally good at sniffing out characters who had been wronged in media, so Dean figured she was the best qualified to answer his question since he couldn’t go directly to the person he should probably talk to about this. Not that he’d even go to Lisa even if she had her memories intact.
“Did Lisa seem--” Dean struggled to get the next word out. “Trapped, to you?”
Charlie went silent, narrowing her eyes as she analyzed Dean’s face. “Lisa’s a grown woman who made her own choices,” Charlie said finally. “And she made those choices because she wanted to be with you, Dean, and to have you around. And you were, at least until the hunter’s life came back to bite you. So, no, I don’t think she was trapped. Not in her relationship with you, at least. She’s definitely trapped in a life where she doesn’t have all her memories, though-- and I can’t say I agreed with your decision on that, especially considering how much lost memories tore up Sam when he was raised from the pit.”
“Yeah, I get it,” Dean said, tensing. “It was a crap situation.”
“Do you get it?” Charlie asked. “I won’t lie. If I suddenly regained the memories of a loved one after having them completely taken away, I don’t know how I’d react. Especially if it happened years later when I had already learned how to live without them. But I do know that I’d want to have a choice.”
“Charlie--”
“No. She deserved a choice, and she still does. You’d think a self-proclaimed member of Team Free Will would understand that. See? In terms of ‘how bad did I screw up by Lisa,’ the act of just being domestic with you has gotta be pretty far down on the list. You’ve got way worse things to worry about. But I won’t press the issue farther, I know that’s not what you need right now.”
Dean’s hands had fisted themselves into the denim of his jeans as Charlie talked about Lisa. Now, he bristled. “I don’t ‘need’ anything.”
“Dear gods of emotional constipation,” Charlie cursed, shaking her head. “You’re allowed to not be perfect. You’re allowed to want help; everyone does at some point. And you know what else everyone does? Screw up astronomically. Take Ethan Montgomery, for instance.
“Who?” Was that some fictional character?
Charlie gave a wan smile. “My eighth-grade boyfriend.”
“Your what?”
“What, you thought I came out of the womb already knowing all the lyrics to the Neighborhood’s ‘Sweater Weather?’” Charlie laughed. She reached up to twirl a strand of hair around her finger, looking nervous. “Ethan was my best friend. I’d known him all my life. We did everything together: video games, cheating on tests and homework, reading terrible books and recommending them to each other for kicks. And he was there for me like no one else was after my parents… and I remember thinking at the time, if I’m supposed to love anyone, it’ll have to be you. That’s how this works, and if this was a book, that’s the plotline I’d be rooting for, right?
“But it didn’t work. We’d argue all the time, it all felt forced, and it never felt right. Did I care about him? Absolutely. Did it suck to be in a relationship with someone I loved, but wasn’t in love with? Yes. But here’s the important bit: the situation sucked but I didn’t. I don’t blame myself for taking the time to figure myself out when I didn’t know what I wanted, and you shouldn’t, either. You can be an idiot at times, but you’re one of the least suckiest people I know.”
Dean sighed, releasing the fabric of his jeans to run his hands through his hair instead. He didn’t think Charlie was a manipulative or bad person for being in a relationship with someone she hadn’t actually been in love with. But somehow, applying the same logic to himself didn’t… it didn’t feel…
It wasn’t that it didn’t feel right, Dean suddenly realized. It was that it didn’t feel comfortable. It was a new and scary way of looking at the world and himself that hadn’t existed before, and he didn’t know how it might change things, and it was easier to pretend that it didn’t have to.
The corner of Charlie’s lip quirked up in a knowing but sad smile. She closed the distance between them, standing up on her tippy toes and wrapping her arms around him.
“It’s a process, Dean,” Charlie murmured. “And it’s a long one that takes a lot of effort and time, and it’s a process that doesn’t have a clear beginning or end. But it’s a leap of faith that we all take, one way or another.”
Dean got a phone call from the post office about a waiting package in their P.O. box a week later. It was from Charlie and, lo and behold, there was pride merch inside.
Sam laughed as he pulled pan and demi pride sweatbands out of the box for when he went jogging. Castiel’s lips quirked as he pulled out a tie with an ace flag pattern on it.
Dean found a silver keychain inside with bi and aro flags as charms on it.
“So, you told her?” Sam asked, looking down at the keychain Dean was turning over in his hands.
“Yep. She knows.” Dean reached for his keys and started to put them on his new key chain, a grin overtaking his features. “And so do I.”