hello is this anything

The scene where Dean wakes up from a nightmare a little before his alarm in 6.01 is such a specific thing, and the way Lisa immediately shifts over and checks on him (along with Dean's dialogue later in the episode about persistent nightmares over the whole year) gives us these tiny little insights into their dynamic and how Dean's been managing... and despite Dean putting himself down about it later, it's clear that he's improved a lot over the course of a year.

Ever since coming back from hell in season 4, Dean has dealt with nightmares. We see Dean startle awake from a nightmare about hell in 4.03. In 4.08, it's specifically pointed out to us that Dean has been drinking more heavily to cope with his nightmares specifically.

This is further addressed in 5.11 "Sam, Interrupted", when Dean "tells" Dr. Cartwright (really talking to himself since she's a figment of his imagination) the following:

DR. CARTWRIGHT: How many drinks do you have a week? DEAN: Well, I gotta sleep sometime. So, uh, what's seven days times--somewhere in the mid fifties. 

Dean drinking large amounts of alcohol as a sleeping aid is shown to us again (visually only) in 5.16, when the episode opens on Dean asleep in a motel, with several empty beer bottles littered around his bed.

In 6.01 though, we see Dean's drinking has cut back. Dean's still having nightmares, but he's sleeping through the night, waking just a little before his alarm, and with only a nightcap—not chain-drinking beers (5.16) or drinking hard liquor straight from the bottle to rid his mind of the remnants of a nightmare (5.08). Under his bed, instead of a liquor bottle, there's a gun and a jar of holy water.

SUPERNATURAL 6.21 Let It Bleed

SUPERNATURAL -> 5x22 ❝ swan song ❞

Anyone being mean about deanlisa or drowley or deanbela or deanjo or deanbenny or w/ever just consider that this bisexual man has a heart the size of Texas and there is more than enough space in there for everyone even if it already accommodates a Chrysler Building sized angel

okay if dean winchester showed up at my house all wet and pathetic i'd make him fall in love with me too. not that it's hard, you just gotta be genuinely nice to him once and he's putty. what i'm saying is, lisa was so real for this

deanlisa is so crunchy to me because it makes no sense and yet it makes perfect sense.

why would dean dream about living a perfect life with lisa when cassie exists? why would he go to lisa and tell her that when he pictures himself happy, it's with her and the kid? that's crazy behavior. he doesn't know her and the only woman he's ever loved is still alive somewhere. but that's exactly why it's lisa. lisa isn't real. she's a prepackaged fantasy with a built-in kid and a lawn to mow. cassie is real. she's a person he loved, who maybe loved him back but who saw what he was and opted out. she's not a dream he can just insert himself into.

but still, why would lisa let dean into her home? she's not actually just a fantasy. she's a real person and he's a stranger and he's broken and he's lived a harrowing life. why would she possibly want him in her life? and i think the answer is simply that he wants to be there. it's nice to be wanted. dean is a guy who saw that she already had a kid and instead of walking away, decided to run right towards her.

do the details even matter?

not at first, no, but by the time the details catch up to them, they genuinely do love each other. it's not enough, of course, but it's not nothing.

Lisa doing Dean's nails because she's wonderful and wants to take care of him and it's basically holding hands for an hour and he's only a token amount of resistant and her hands are so soft and gentle and the Only purpose is to make him feel nice so he absolutely gets misty eyed as she delicately does a silver, sparkly devils trap on a black basecoat.

It’s interesting to me that Dean won’t specify to Lisa what Ben was doing when Dean yelled at him in 6.02. Dean shouldn’t have yelled at him, but Ben did do something he very much should not have done. He found Dean’s car keys, unlocked his trunk, and started messing with Dean’s guns. This isn’t something a child who’s never touched a gun and therefore has zero gun safety training should be doing, and regardless shouldn’t be happening without supervision at his age. This is an incident that Lisa, as Ben’s mom, would probably want to sit down with Ben and discuss. But when Lisa comes around and asks Dean what happened, Dean says Ben didn’t do anything, and then when pressed, says “He got into my tools. I shouldn’t have gotten mad”. They’re surrounded by tool boxes for regular tools. When Dean says this, he’s holding a regular old tool box. There’s no implication that he means hunting tools specifically. The omission of that detail may make Dean feel truthful enough, but he’s not being truthful at all. He’s deliberately lying by omission.

Not only is this omission not fair to Lisa as Ben’s mother who should be afforded the opportunity to discuss this with Ben and correct his behavior—it also overtly understates Ben’s actual actions, inflating the irrationality of Dean’s reaction which is basically… self-sabotage on Dean’s part. He is making Ben a blameless figure who essentially did nothing wrong at all—making himself out to be horrible villain who yells at kids for messing with screwdrivers or hammers, when Ben was actually doing something potentially deadly.

Why does Dean lie? We specifically see Dean close up the trunk and put the key in a box. Despite securing his weapons appropriately, does he feel responsible for Ben being able to find the key and get in the trunk? Does he think maybe he forgot to lock it properly? Is he worried that Lisa would be angry at him and blame him for Ben being able to get to his weapons? Or does it make him so sick to think of the image of Ben holding a weapon that he can’t bring himself to talk about it? Is it possible he’s even genuinely rewritten the reality of what happened? That isn’t something out of Dean’s wheelhouse. He rewrites losing Cas at the Purgatory portal as his failure because he can’t handle the actual reality of it. Does he do the same here with Ben, unable to face the fact that Ben felt driven to pick up a gun because (from Dean’s perspective at least) Dean’s own attempts to keep their family safe are inadequate and he’s already failed?

She's lying. [...] She's fine, Ben. She's fine. She's gonna be just fine.

SUPERNATURAL -> 3x10 ❝ dream a little dream of me ❞

same energy

(Season six is making me angry so have this rant)

I'm sorry, but Dean and Lisa could've stayed together if Dean knew how to communicate!! Like, tell her Ben wanted to be a hunter and you said no instead of this "nothing" crap. Tell her you were turned into a vampire and missed her which is why you were there! She knows the supernatural exists, it's not like you'd open a whole new world! And hell, listening is important too. She says she wants some freedom, you worry about monsters that are out there. Ok, talk to each other. Set some parameters, make some sort of compromise, just do SOMETHING other than hope it can all be forgotten! But especially don't wipe their memories. Monsters can still try and get to you by hurting them. The only difference is they will have no idea of what's going on and no clue on who to ask for help!!

@orpheuscas you get me