#sammy is the most important person in dean’s world
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You groped for your phone in the darkness and squinted at the bright glare of the screen. Dean Winchester. "H—hello?" you asked groggily. "Dean? What's going on? Are you okay?"
"I'm outside. Can you let me in?"
"What?" Now, you sat straight up in bed and started to climb out and pull on your slippers and a sweatshirt. "It's 4 in the morning," you said, heading through your dark house to the front door.
"I know... I've been here since two," he said.
"Oh. Okay... I'm—I'm coming." You hung up and pulled open the front door to see a somewhat pale and shaky-looking Dean. He hardly let you get it open before he wrapped you up in a tight hug.
"You're okay. Thank God," he murmured, shutting his eyes as he held you and breathing in your familiar smell.
"Yeah? I'm fine. W—what's going on?" he followed you back inside and you shut the door on the night.
He shook his head. "I had this nightmare—You were—" he shook his head. It was too horrible to repeat. "It doesn't matter. I just needed to make sure you're okay and—I guess it made me realize something."
You were peering at him with a soft frown, clearly worried by the middle-of-the-night surprise wake-up. "What's that?" you asked.
"Along with Sammy and Cas, you're the most important damn person in the world to me. And I couldn't bear it if anything happened to you. I mean it. I don't think I could—" he broke off again and gulped. He hugged you again, just as tightly as before.
You hugged him back. "It was just a nightmare, Dean. I'm okay."
"Yeah. Yeah..." he murmured. He didn't want to let you go. It had all seemed far too real.
Prompt: "It's four in the morning!" / "I've been here since two."
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Season 1. Wincest Narrative
The way this story unfolds is so, so beautiful and I lose my mind a little when I think about it as a whole. When it opens, the brothers haven’t spoken in 3 or 4 years even though they've both desperately wanted to, and they both think the other doesn't want them. The first time they see each other after Sam walks out, they struggle in the dark and pin each other to the ground and then run away together.
Season character arcs
Sam begins the season ostensibly satisfied with his life at Stanford, with a career plan and a long-term relationship. Two things have to happen to disrupt that- Dean coming back into his life, and Jessica being killed. Kind of a switcheroo.
Sam was going to marry his Dean-replacement girlfriend. He was never going to talk about his past even though he still thought about it all the time, still looked up cases and tried to follow along with what was happening in Dean’s life. He was going to box his past up and put it away forever and pretend to fit in because this is the life he chose, and because Dean didn't pick him. And then Dean literally breaks through Sam's careful barriers and all it takes is a gruff “yeah well I don’t want to [do this without you]", and Sam packs his bags. He doesn't even look back when Jessica asks where he’s going. He doesn’t kiss her goodbye.
The way Dean appears to Sam as this dangerous, rough-around-the-edges, so familiar and so alive and so secret fork in the road is just delicious.
Dean starts the season believing that Sam has rejected and abandoned him. He wants his little brother back so badly, but he truly thinks Sam doesn’t want him. He finally has something to approach Sam with that maybe Sam will care about enough to come back to him- their dad, missing. I haven't seen this episode but I know later in the show Dean says he waited for hours outside before he broke in, agonizing over what Sam would say.
Over the course of the season Dean pursues Sam and shows him that he will protect him, keep him safe, choose him, respect him, and save him. The one thing he won't do is corrupt him, which is what he believes their feelings for each other would do. That's a conflict he'll bring into next season, but Sam decides to love him anyway. Sam tries so hard to hold onto the world outside of Dean but he ends up succumbing. By the end of the season, they’ve accepted that they're the most important things to each other.
John’s role is crucial to Sam and Dean’s relationship
Sam wants to belong and to be his own person. John is the force dictating his life before he leaves, so he has to get away from John. It’s not possible for Sam to grow up without breaking from his dad.
John gives bundled baby Sammy to Dean the night of the fire and that’s pretty much the way their relationships with each other form. John has handed Sam off to Dean. They hold conflicting positions in Sam’s life.
John is a larger-than-life god-like figure to Dean. He’s distant and he has all the answers and all the power and his word is law, and Dean’s contract with him is to Take Care of Sam. So Dean serves this purpose under John’s rule until they reach a point at which Dean can’t take care of Sam without breaking from John and growing up. That rupture came to a head when Sam left for Stanford and Dean takes his first steps toward replacing John when John goes missing, by going to Sam. Dean makes the first move after years have passed to reconnect, something not even John would do.
Sam and Dean are fighting against getting close again for different reasons
Sam wishes he could have a normal life. A normal life is by necessity also a life distant from Dean. In the first episode, when Dean drops Sam off at Stanford and tells him they made a pretty good team, Sam looks conflicted and chokes out a “yeah” before watching Dean drive away. He knows they make a good team, that’s not the problem. Throughout this season, he is at war with wanting to be with Dean vs wanting to be normal.
From the very first episode and throughout the entire season, it’s obvious that they were very close before Sam left. They make each other angry and they make each other laugh and they communicate just by looking at each other- strategizing and seeking each other’s opinions and assessing each other’s needs in glances. They instantly fold back into each other’s lives, they save each other over and over. They gravitate toward each other and walk in sync and stand in each other’s spaces. There’s this sense that they know one another, not just better than anyone else, but better than anyone could ever possibly know them. It's clear to the viewer that they're matching puzzle pieces.
And I don’t think Sam’s conflict is actually about hunting versus normal at all. Sam rediscovers his love and aptitude for hunting right away. He feels fulfilled, admires Dean, and enjoys himself much of the time. In “It’s a Terrible Life” (s4) he still asks Dean to run away with him and be hunters together in an alternate universe. So his conflict centers on John and Dean.
At this point Sam thinks Dean sided with John and abandoned him when he stopped hunting. But it’s more than feeling hurt and abandoned by Dean- Sam literally cannot have both Dean and a life. Dean is all-consuming. Sam could get the things he needs from Dean- belonging and respect- if it weren’t for two things: 1, Dean is still unwilling to break from John in a way that matters and 2, the way that they love each other is so abnormal it feels impossible.
Sam is unwilling to put Dean above everything else because it is in fact a dichotomy- Dean is bigger than just a brother, he can’t fit into Sam’s life as just another part of it. Sam knows that.
Dean’s conflicts mirror Sam’s. Sometimes he resents hunting and wishes his life could’ve been normal. He faces the same dichotomy- once he becomes more independent from John, he can either have a family and home of his own or he can have Sam, and he hates himself partly because what he wants more is Sam. He knows that's not normal and thinks a part of Sam hates him for it. One reason their connection is so fraught with guilt and shame is because it's sexual/psychosexual, which is why I personally tag everything wincest. The way sexual and romantic relationships are so often a blatant point of conflict between them, the way their scenes are often shot like sex scenes, the jealousy and possessiveness, the way they touch each other, the fact that they see each other as desirable. It all points to a love complicated by sex. I have no problem with the idea of them as platonic soulmates, but I honestly think the text supports just straight-up wincest.
And actually they're not soulmates
They're twin flames. The idea that they're soulmates comes in later, but I think it's more precise and also more useful to the narrative to understand them as twin flames.
Twin flames are one soul split into two people, and their purpose is to cause one another to grow and be challenged by their connection. They're halves and also mirrors. That's why their dynamic is so often this push-pull, why their connection is so palpable, why they find each other in every universe and why they know each other so impossibly deeply. Narratively, one is often pursuing the other and they tend to push each other to the deepest depths of highs and lows. They separate, but they always come back to each other.
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Oh when you used to sing it to sleep
@jinkieswouldyoulookatthis and @blue-chimera - thank you both for your kind and thoughtful replies to my reblog of this post. The og post is getting quite long and also I don't want to put too much writing effort into a reblog that's susceptible to disappearance, so I'm continuing here instead.
I agree with you both that Dean's parentification and Sam's continued acceptance of vs rebellion against it as an adult are an important part of their dynamic. Dean's dying words in the finale attest to this beautifully (as well as many other things throughout the course of the show); I love you so much, my baby brother. To a certain extent Sam is Dean's baby and always will be.
I think though to a large extent, the framing by both Sam and Dean of Dean as Sam's parentified elder sibling is a mutually employed, mostly cooperative sanitization of the central and most damaging aspect of the roles they internalized through their upbringing: Sam is a monster and Dean is the tool to "take care of" it (double reading of "take care of" 100% intentional on my part). Because of this, while readings of spn through the lens of Dean's parentification are definitely valid, I do think they sometimes risk distorting or leaving out important aspects of the characters' personalities, motivations, and relationship.
Jinkies, in my fruitless quest to process without reblogging a take I knew the OP wouldn't appreciate, I had listened to the interview before posting, and I think while Jensen is being flip, he's also getting at what he sees as a truth in the brothers' relationship. I think he's right from a Doylist/co-creator/actor's perspective--Sam is the protagonist who we see through Dean, the deuteragonist's, eyes. Dean, as a piece of the narrative artifact, Supernatural, is there to save Sammy in a way that Sam (up to that point anyway) is not a piece of the narrative artifact whose purpose is to save Dean. From a Watsonian/in-universe perspective though, I think he's mistaken, and that his mistake is the reason his take sounds uncharitable, even aside from the flippant part.
It's just not a very convincing analysis imo to frame a character who spends the first few seasons rejecting immoral power, the next few in an arc that ends with him willingly subjected himself to eternal torture for the good of the world, and the one after that intending to sacrifice himself dramatically to rid the world of one particular species of monster but doesn't because Dean asks him not to, as self-absorbed or not particularly concerned with his effect on others, including on his brother. Likewise, Dean holds up well as a parentified older sibling with no sense of internal self and abysmal self-esteem in some ways, but in others not so much. He does have interests and priorities and a sense of purpose outside Sam. They're all over spn every day, much more so in fact than Sam's are. They're just not enough to override his Sam prioritization.
The main place I think this analysis fails on Dean's side though is that he, as an adult, is just not a very good parent. Obviously as a child he couldn't be expected to be a good parent (or a parent at all) and as an adult he's already damaged and so it's understandable that if big brother-ing Sam is how he chooses to spend the rest of his life, he may still not be equipped to do it. But he fails on such a fundamental, obvious level at the the most basic aspects of parenting--providing safety, unconditional love, and preparing your child to go out into the world as an independent adult--in ways that once he's a grown up are absolutely within his power to at least attempt (for example: if he wants Sam to be safer, it would ultimately have failed because of Fate, but the logical thing to do first would be not hunt. Dean could've followed Sam to Palo Alto. He could've told him to go to Harvard Law if he can't tolerate Stanford after Jess dies. Could've refused to support him throwing his life away of a mission of revenge. Bought him his own car, encouraged him to have his own tastes. Told him convincingly that trusting Ruby was a bad decision but Lucifer is still not his fault).
None of that is meant to be insulting to Dean though, because I don't think that parenting Sam is Dean's real job--even from Dean's perspective--and I don't think his real job is palatable enough that it would be better for either of them if he admitted what it is head on. What his and Sam's real jobs both are imo is being a container for Sam. On Dean's side, this means holding Sam in his arms with love or if that's not enough, holding him in the panic room, which, from this perspective, is also an act of love. Substituting his judgement for Sam's is an act of love. Not encouraging Sam to hold his own interests first or to grow towards independence are acts of love. Given the nature of (what I believe to be) Dean's actual job, they are effective and competent acts of love undertaken under impossible circumstances, even if the results are sometimes pretty horrific. Because they're still better than the alternative.
Likewise on Sam's side, doing his job well means being a model monster--go to an Ivy, exercise, eat healthy, cultivate empathy, don't have desires of your own, hold yourself to an impossible standard, suppress your anger, kill other monsters when they get out of line. And in the moments he can't manage all that--because who can?-- submit to Dean. When he does those things, he's succeeding at his job, and while it would be nice if "let your brother hit you" or "jump in the Cage with Lucifer" wasn't his job, in the world of spn, it is. He is right to be contained by Dean and wrong to have opinions or priorities of his own unless Dean approves them first.
I do think this sometimes ends up looking like Sam has better self-regard, because Dean's job is to "take care of" Sam, and Sam's job is also to "take care of" Sam. But actually they both have absolutely abysmal shit self-esteem. "I should submit to eternal torture because it's my fault someone else is going to do terrible things he could choose not to do if he wanted" is not the thinking of a person with healthy self-regard. The reason neither of them could fill a thimble with their self-esteem or healthy boundaries imo is because neither "monster" nor "blunt instrument" is a person. Neither of these roles is better or more healthy than the other. Fundamentally, if you don't see yourself first and foremost as a human person, then your life is going to suck horribly. And neither of them see themselves that way.
#spn meta#sam winchester#dean winchester#my meta#discourse in the linked post#long post#i am ofc like all of us to some extent projecting#some of you have been fortunate enough to not have had a monster to fail at 'parenting' and it shows
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broad strokes of my interpretation of 5x04 the end/the overall guidelines i pay attention to when writing endverse fic
it's about sam. in both a positive and a negative sense, all of endverse is built on sam's absence.
on the one hand, there is a freedom and joy for dean that comes from being rid of sam. sam and dean don't really... like each other anymore from s4 onwards, and their unbreakable bond becomes more like a curse to both of them. in a way breaking it is a mercy, see: free to be you and me dean sections. sam's absence allows dean to form meaningful relationships in a way he's basically incapable of with sam around. and to dean sam is a ball and chain, he is first and foremost a duty, not a brother or friend. watch out for sammy. without that millstone around his neck dean is free to be his own person in a way he has literally never been in his whole life.
on the other hand, there's the horror of it. sam says yes, and that breaks dean. while dean was running around having a grand old time exercising newfound freedom, he was shirking his duty. his personal world was ending, and he didn't even know it. in the end, dean will never escape sam or have an identity outside of him, and with sam gone - not just separate but gone - he is fully and irrevocably broken.
endverse dean and endverse cas are so divorced, but in order to be that divorced you have to have been married first. to circle back to free to be you and me, do you see how happy dean is in that episode? do you see how sweet dean and cas are on each other? that's the starting point for endverse. that's the point of timeline divergence. whether their relationship experienced a gradual souring or a sharp decline when sam dies is unclear, but we know that it wasn't always this way. this is something that changed.
endverse cas probably isn't as pathetic as you think he is. this is a three-pronged point.
3a. when i say pathetic i don't mean miserable i mean pathetic. endverse cas is extremely miserable every day all the time bc of having to live through an apocalypse and being cutoff from heaven. however. compared to canon cas at the same time he is way less pathetic. he's a lot more self-possessed, and feels entitled enough to a good life that the fact that he's miserable makes him bitter. he may be unhappy but he does not have the kind of self-hatred/low self-esteem that canon cas has because that stuff develops later for particular reasons.
3b. dean is not like. the only thing in his life/the only reason he's miserable and he's probably not even the most important. he's literally living through the apocalypse for chrissakes. and also he's cut off from heaven, which he in the text cites as a major source of his misery. i tend to choose to interpret that as like. missing the hivemind of heaven (or even missing his angelic siblings who he cares deeply about) in order to get it to gel more with my interpretations of canon cas. but even just taking at face value that cas feels powerless and debased because of his fall that's still crunchy and like. not about dean really. like yeah the guy he fell for is no longer capable of loving him but also there's bigger problems here.
3c. drug use. obviously endverse cas uses various substances but if we look at the actual text there are three references to drug use across two exchanges. number one is "are you stoned?" "generally, yeah" ok like we are all grownups here and can admit smoking weed is fine right? right? obviously being stoned all the time is a sign that things aren't going super great in your life but that's generally a symptom of something worse. and then "[takes pill bottle] amphetamines?" "it's the perfect antidote to that absinthe" there are two references to drug use here. one is the fact that cas is taking adhd medication. that's addictive and he could be addicted to it, but also it's not exactly unusual for soldiers to take amphetamines before a battle, nor is it unusual for people who have to drive all night to take them to help them stay awake. also, the way cas talks about it, the vibe seems to be that this is one of many substances that cas occasionally partakes in. the other reference here is to the absinthe and that actually is a cut and dried reference to drug abuse. drinking heavily before driving all night and then going into battle is super irresponsible and likely indicative of a problem. and then the other body of evidence we have is that dean seems to consider cas to be absolutely competent and reliable, so if cas is addicted to something, it's definitely what you'd call a functional addiction, something that doesn't interfere with his life too much. so, broad strokes: if endverse cas is gonna be an addict he is actually probably most likely a functional alcoholic. which is also pretty fun because then you can really play in the space of He Learned It From Dean.
3d. endverse cas is textually kind of a sleazebag.
endverse dean is a shithead but not the way most people think. the notable thing about endverse dean is that he doesn't care enough about other people - endverse cas included but not unique. he's a bastard but his bastardry is lack of care, not intentional cruelty. this is, imo, if i may circle back to the first point, a result of sam's death - after that, dean became singleminded, only really interested in killing lucifer. willing to send cas and others he cares about into a meat grinder to chase his white-suited whale. but he's not mean. just cold. there is the festering corpse of a love relation between dean and cas, but it's not a situation where dean is mean to cas in the way like, season fifteen dean is mean to cas. he's not controlling, not using cas as a punching bag or chewtoy. maybe there's some mutual sniping but mostly dean just doesn't care. as a point of interest, one way in which endverse dean is cruel is he appears to be a habitual cheater. just watch cas' reaction when risa accuses dean of cheating on her. that's the face of a man who has been in her position and knows she is a fool to expect better. but again that's kind of more about not caring about the impact of his actions.
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Normal (Winchesters x Reader) - Teaser
Summary: Growing up as the baby of the Winchester family led you to be constantly guarded. Soon enough, you start to learn what's normal between families and what's not.
Pairing(s): John x Daughter!Reader, Dean x Sister!Reader, Sam x Sister!Reader
Warning(s): This story contains dub-con, use of drugs (otherwise alcohol), incest, and lots and lots of manipulation. The reader in this story is a victim of all four, starting off with manipulation. Please do not read if any of the above makes you feel uncomfortable.
W/C: 1.8k+
A/N: Little teaser/background
Normal Masterlist
Masterlist
Growing up as a Winchester was definitely an experience. Sammy was your twin, no matter how different you guys looked- it was DNA, and science didn't lie. As the baby of the family and everybody's prized possession, you were heavily guarded.
You weren't allowed to hunt or go places without your father or your brothers, but a part of you didn't mind. They were all you knew and you were okay with that. You were taught to be okay with that. You didn't know that you shouldn't be okay with that.
School was out of the question too. After being passed around from school to school, John decided that you were too smart. Too smart for his liking, because he knew that if you stayed it would eventually ruin your innocence- he hated the idea that you might want to leave one day.
John couldn't bear the thought of his little girl figuring out that there was a life outside of family, so he went out of his way to make sure you knew that family was all you'd ever have. He knew you didn't know any better, and school would ruin how naive and willing you were.
John didn't think it was useful anymore either, because at every school you went to you would sit in a classroom for eight hours, relearning things that you already knew, you were wasting away. The only reason he allowed you to go for so long was because he didn't want you hunting, and if you weren't going to hunt then you were going to sit at the motel all day. When the time came around, he pulled the trigger on the whole school idea.
Honestly, it was a relief. You liked school some of the time, but there wasn't a thing that they were going to teach you that you didn't already know. You would have much rather stayed at home and read books, and gain real-world knowledge.
Learning about creatures that most believed to be fictional was much more entertaining than writing papers about books you had already read three times over.
You wanted to stay at home with John too, you felt like you rarely got to see him. He was always on hunts and when he wasn't, you were in school desperately waiting for when the bell rang and you could go see him.
Still, you wished you could be with Sam, he was your best friend and the only person who could read you, but it wasn't really your choice anymore.
As for Sam, he fought the idea of going to school without you. He didn't understand why he was different than you. He didn't understand why John favored you over him.
Sam was just as smart and he was a good hunter, if anything he should have been the one to be pulled out of school. You barely knew how to hold a gun and John went to extremes to make sure that you never had to learn.
Overall, Sam was much more of an asset, so why did John choose you? Sam never understood. And with being the middle child, Sam always felt the least enamored- the least valuable.
The only person who made him feel important was you, seemingly the only person who loved him no matter how differently he looked at the world. Sam didn't want you to turn on him, he didn't want you to look at him the way that Dean and John did.
Dean was indifferent, he understood both John and Sam, but he only kept his best interests in mind. Often, Dean would skip out on school, whether it was for girls or to go on hunts with John, so he didn't see school as a necessity.
But Dean also knew where Sam was coming from. You were his sister, his twin, Dean knew that Sam could barely spend an hour apart from you- much less an entire school day. Even if he cared for Sam's side more, Dean knew there was no point in putting up a fight. John called the shots- even when he was away on a hunt.
However, Dean didn't care for Sam's side more. Much like John, he saw your potential, he saw how smart you were and he wanted to do as much as he could to protect you. His views about keeping you out of school were much different than John's.
Dean didn't even know the real reason behind John's decision or how twisted it was, he didn't care if you knew that there was a real life out there, but he also didn't mind being able to keep you away from all of the evil that the world possessed.
Plus, you could help research while they were on hunts. Dean figured it was a win-win, surely you didn't like school anyway.
So, for most of your days, you sat in the motel. Occasionally, you got the pleasure of a new book to read. You wrote down notes about creatures and helped John with his notebook, filling in blanks and correcting everything that he thought he knew.
When it came down to it, you were the most prepared for anything because you knew exactly what to do if you were ever in a tricky situation with the supernatural. But deep down, you knew you would never get the opportunity to.
Sure, it made you frustrated- all you wanted to do was help, but everyone, even Sam, insisted that you stayed home when everyone else went hunting.
The days got lonely from being alone, sometimes you wished you were at school with Sammy and sometimes you wished you were hunting with John and Dean, but all you got to do was stay sheltered.
By the time senior year came around, you were allowed some freedoms- freedoms you didn't even know were possible. Who would have thought that people had gatherings with their 'friends'? Those were called parties.
Thanks to Sam and Dean, finding it odd how John never let you leave, you were allowed to go out. Of course, you had to go with one of the three Winchesters, but it still beat sitting in a motel room all alone.
Dean brought out your rebellious side, which John wasn't too pleased about, teaching you several things like how to drink beer correctly and not get sick- as if it were a lesson.
Sam taught you things too. He taught you that you could have an opinion, you didn't always have to listen to what everybody said or told you to do, and he always encouraged you to be your own person.
John didn't like that either. In his mind, he wanted you to stay his baby forever.
Rebellions would lead to chaos. Having your own opinion would lead to chaos. John wanted none of the above.
John wanted you safe, he wanted you to be a good little soldier much like Dean was- just in a very different way. He wanted you to do as you were told and to be happy with doing so. He wanted for you to stay at home, wherever that was so that you were safe from all of the outside troubles.
And most importantly, John wanted you to trust him with your life. And you did. He was your father and he was never wrong about anything in your eyes. He had programmed you that way.
So, you did as you were told and you never questioned anything, because why would he ever do anything that might hurt you?
•••
Dean's POV (Ch. 4)
Dean was a mixture of angry and confused but above all that, he was scared. Sam hadn't said anything about catching Dean kissing his baby sister and Dean wasn't sure if he wanted that conversation to occur or not.
Dean wasn't sure if Sam would be upset or angry with him, and he wasn't sure if he wanted to figure that out. There was the possibility that maybe Sam thought that Dean had forced himself onto her, but Dean could deal with Sam. Dean, however, wasn't sure if he could handle the wrath of John if he ever found out.
Sam said he didn't care, he didn't even seem too fazed by the entire scene in general, but there was no telling how Sam actually felt.
It could be that Sam said what he said only so that he could get Dean and Y/N to leave the party. Maybe Sam didn't actually mean it. Maybe he was bottling up his emotions, upset for Y/N, maybe he even wanted to kill Dean, but he was hard to read.
Sam was always good at hiding his emotions, all except around Y/N, and nobody really knew how to get through to him. Dean didn't know if he should have left it up in the air, or if Sam was even worried about it in the first place, but Dean felt guilty and he had to stop the truth from reaching John.
John would kill Dean if he were the one to have caught him. Pressing Y/N against the wall, towering over her body, kissing her until his lips went numb, touching all parts of her body with his large hands. John would lose his cool, and Dean was absolutely sure of it.
John would probably scold him for the rest of eternity, tell him how bad of a brother he was- say that he took advantage of her, and Dean couldn't afford anything but praise from John.
Dean had always been the best under pressure, his reflexes were arguably even better than John's, he was the better investigator, the better everything when it came to hunting. That's the way that John had raised him.
John wanted Dean to be like him. Be a hunter. Risk his life every day for the wellbeing of others. And Dean was exactly that. If John ever found out about what Sam saw, Dean was afraid that he would never be looked at the same again.
But, what about John? Where had John been for the past hour? Y/N wasn't home and she's the one who rode with him in the truck.
Y/N was the one who accidentally told Dean, and although he didn't have much information, he knew that something was going on between the two of them.
Was John hurting her? Did Y/N tell him about what Dean had done? Did she know that it wasn't normal to be with your father like that? It wasn't right and as much as Dean's perverted mind wanted for her to stay so innocently unaware, she needed to know the truth.
That started with coming clean to Sam.
•••
Next Part
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Tag List ❤️
@hobby27 @writethelifeyouwant @deeranger
#fanfic#supernatural#spn#spnfamily#dean winchester#sam winchester#sam x reader#darkfic#sam winchester x reader#normal#dubcon#dean winchester x reader#dark!dean x reader#dark!sam x reader#dark!dean#dark!sam#dark!sam winchester#dark! sam winchester x reader#dark!dean winchester x reader#dark!john#dark!john x reader
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Hi I love your writing so much! Your late seasons/early seasons verse is one of the most interesting things to come out of this fandom, and I’m always impressed with you well you understand the characters. I was wondering, Do you think the earlier seasons boys would find any parts of later seasons Sam and Dean to be similar to John? You don’t have to answer, if you’re too busy with other asks. Have a great day!
oh shit?? holy shit??
anon?? kissing u with passion rn, anon. this compliment just made the rest of my week + an extra bonus week! i don't even know what to say! BUT THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!
and YES! I DO! we talked about this in my post on tuesday, but what specific parts of each LS!Sam&Dean remind them of john?? oh worm? let's discuss!
For ES!Sam:
again, i think LS!Sam reminds him the most of john, for a couple of reasons. for sam, he experienced john's parenting as mostly arguing and being unwilling to discuss/hear sam out. it's his way or the highway, and that's something sam really resents about his father (we're not breaking new ground here, lol.) he also hates not being treated like an equal/adult, and resents john for hiding things from him, and keeping him at a distance. sounds familiar? sam getting mad at john for being stubborn is real kettle-pot behaviour, but i digress. LS!Sam absolutely makes the ban on telling-them-the-future conversations. he has a very set idea of how things are supposed to go, and how they are supposed to act. he gets easily frustrated with ES!Sam because ES!Sam presses and presses and presses and wants to Be A Part Of Every Conversation All The Time. ES!Sam resents LS!Sam for "babying" him/not treating him like an equal. ES!Sam felt very patronized by john, and feels very patronized by LS!Sam--the holier-than-thou, i-know-better-than-you-end-of-discussion rubs him WRONG.
as for LS!Dean, i think he would appreciate the softness of him. john had quiet moments. again, if we're going with S!2, sam has softened towards his father in retrospect, so he's primed with john's better moments while he's mourning. LS!Dean is protective. he says simple facts, and it feels like more than the words do (you're my brother. and of course i look out for you. and yes, i am happy. and come here for a second. and are you okay?) he can of course see some of john's anger, but i think it would bother him a little less, because LS!Dean makes such a concentrated effort to make him feel included, and a part of this future. he invites sam out to the garage and cooks him breakfast and they bond over common things, like movies pre-2006. the most negative thing he can say about LS!Dean and john is his control. while LS!Sam is more stubborn, LS!Dean is more controlling. he's a little smothering with his mothering.
For ES!Dean:
with all the fawning he does, he sees mostly john's good qualities in LS!Sam. specifically, i think he sees a lot of the "doting" aspects of john's personality. sam keeps knick-knacks and photographs and takes charge like nobody's business. he's in charge because things work well that way. he's decisive, and true to himself, and knows exactly what he wants when he wants it. he has a truly encyclopedic knowledge of monsters, and is intensely protective of those in his life. the most negative thing he can say about LS!Sam and john is that LS!Sam tends to give orders. which ES!Dean follows, because while he wasn't always sure about dad, sammy has his best intentions at heart. unlike dad, sammy will never ask the impossible of him. sammy knows best.
however, he sees a lot of negative traits in LS!Dean. dad was absent, and emotionally manipulative, and drunk. he had a lot of anger that he kept beneath the surface, and you could be joking with him the one minute and being scolded in the other. you felt like the most important person in his world (high burden of emotional needs) and then he'd disappear for two months and leave you to fend for yourself. very up/down. he never remembers your birthday, but while elbow-deep into a fifth of whisky, he tells you that you and sammy are the only reason he still cares to be alive. he sees LS!Dean's short fuse, and it makes him angry. and it makes him sad. he sees the bottles and bottles and bottles of liquor that they have in the sammy-mandated recycling bin. he sees the hard set of his jaw and the crease between his brows, and the short, sharp replies. then he sees LS!Dean's soft looks with ES!Sam, his quiet devotion to LS!Sam, the far-away stare at nothing. he sees his father, haunted by ghosts and on a mission that LS!Dean seems hyper-focused on, but unsure what it is. so he tries to hyper-control everyone around him, and is so up/down about it that it gives dean whiplash.
i think overall, they will be a lot more critical of themselves than they will be of each other (bc this show loves to capitalize on some self-hating man pain, which...y'know. slay. that's why we're here.) so i think a lot of their perception of "john" qualities will be skewed. especially since we see S!2 boys, but especially dean, be more critical of their relationship with john.
if you had an angry man in your house, you will always have an angry man in your house, etc. etc.
again, i have NO IDEA if these john takes are hot takes because charlotte and i just go "i agree!" "i agree!" back and forth in an endless loop whenever we discuss the man in question. but i hope this was fun!
anyway, i hope YOU have a great day, anon! i hope i answered this in a time when you'll see it! i always worry about anons not being able to see these when i reply bc y'all don't get notified.
but know that this meant so much to me! and i hope you're doing well this fine thursday! i always have time for you, blessed nonnie!
mwah!
-lizzy <3
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Dean Winchester's Multiverse Adventures
"Every notebook on this particular shelf tells a version of how you die. You specifically: heart attack, burned by a red-haired witch, stabbed by a ghoul in a graveyard, and on and on... But which one’s right? That depends on you, on the choices you make." Billie says this in Supernatural season 13, Advanced Thanatology. The books are impersonal portals into Dean's own personal multiverse.
When Mary Campbell talks to John about her experiences in the gateway between worlds, she tells him that she saw "everything - every possible version of myself." In the space between the worlds, she sees herself - her beginnings and endings, her triumphs and failures. First of all, it's pretty impressive that she's not insane after this. Mary's always been stronger than we gave her credit for. But the space between the worlds sounds shockingly personal.
In Supernatural, we got a multiverse which brought us back versions of long-dead characters, and we made our way to those worlds through god-level powers. Angels may have brought us there during the Kripke era (or it may have been Zachariah's illusion skillz?). Jack's impending birth split reality - ostensibly because he was so powerfully strong. However, I propose that there is no time and space when you're talking about god-powers. Jack became God and his heaven is apparently lousy with portals to other worlds. Jack became God and his birth was riddled with portals to other worlds. Is it the godhood, or a future story that will tell us exactly why he's the key to world traveling? When you're dealing with time and space, your ending exists alongside your beginning, after all. This is a rich area to explore! The void could be where the god-powers live - the special view into the multi-verse that let Chuck see it all.
Anyway, I digress. Dean Winchester's driving through Heaven. He's heavily traumatized. The man just died, after all. In doing so, he left Sammy behind to stumble through life on his own (abandoning Sam is its own kind of trauma). He lost his best friend in the most agonizing way. And I think the Dean we saw in the finale was terrified to meddle in those larger patterns of destiny - those cosmic forces that ripped so much of his selfhood from him. He's trying to find himself and who he should be (hello, job application), he's trying to convince himself that "what's dead should stay dead" (Cas sacrificed himself and they need to accept that and live their lives), and it all feels...terrible (beer bottles everywhere). Maybe because he's looking for something new once he gets to Heaven, maybe Chuck's obsession with Dean and his car gave them extra powers, maybe future!Dean gives himself those powers and we don't even know it yet...Dean finds those cracks in Heaven's armor that lets him slip through to other worlds.
It's one thing to think of Dean slipping blithely from world to world, with his view of his other selves a bit myopic. He could take a trip to Squirrel World, and a trip to Dean Smith Verse, and that one world where everyone's a mermaid. After all, he's only seeing a sampling of AUs, just like he did in Supernatural. Right??? But Mary says she saw every version of herself when she was in the space between the worlds. Think of what that must have been like for Dean! Just stepping into that void is enough to see everything. He doesn't even need to put a toe into another doorway to know himself more than anybody should. He knows himself more than he would from reading through Death's books because the void between the worlds also shows his lives. He's dead and therefore more tear-proof in the void. I propose that he saw it all and retained it too. And being Dean Winchester, he probably focused on the worst aspects of himself.
The Dean we see in the Winchesters finale carries a sorrow that I think can provide a rich well to explore in (hopefully) future Supernatural properties. I think it's important to understand that the Dean we see would have also experienced Mary's revelation: he must have seen every version of himself. His family history spiders out from there - Dean's heard his own story out of Chuck's mouth often enough to follow the threads. I think Dean saw all of his lives and wondered if he really was cursed, or broken. I think he mostly saw sorrow. There can be no peace - no pacification in Heaven - with that weighty burden.
Dean Winchester knows all about death. He's died over a hundred times and that was just in his OWN world. What Dean doesn't understand - the frontier he's so rarely pursued - is living. In future multiverse adventures (please, please, please) I think he's going to finally learn about that.
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I'll never get over how much Sam and Dean love each other. Before they were even born they were soulmates, one soul in two bodies. Dean took care of Sam as a child himself and tried to be the best mother/father/brother he could be because he loved him so much even then. In fact, he probably loved Sam from the moment he was born. Despite it not being fair he raised Sam gladly and lovingly never resenting Sam for it. He followed their dad's orders for Sam and sometimes broke them for him. Sam being even younger than Dean tried to give back in any way he could but never felt like it was enough. He felt like a burden despite the fact that Dean has never seen Sam as something he was forced to carry.
As they got older they went through hardships and rough times but even when they were fighting they were there for each other. Through everything, they were there. Despite harsh words, they have only ever seen the good in each other. Dean may be the "man without sin" to Sam, but to Dean, Sam is the purest and most important person in the world. He is good right down to his core no matter what he does. He is Sammy. He is his baby brother and in a lot of ways, Dean still sees Sam as a kid. Not only a kid but in a lot of ways Sam is his kid and Dean is the person who raised him.
They would do anything for each other and that truly means anything. The world doesn't mean anything because they are each other's worlds. They can't live without each other. The anguish they feel when one of them is dead or hurt, the pain, goes beyond explanation. They are life and afterlife partners. They're possessive and protective and see each other as extensions of themselves. The commitment they have to each other is strictly and only to each other. They've used people, left people, and killed people for each other but they would never use each other. They are only truly capable of loving each other and they do it in the purest way imaginable but their relationship goes far beyond love. Beyond words and explanation. The love they have for each other is truly amazing.
#the epic love story of sam and dean#samdean#sam and dean#sam and dean are platonic soulmates#sam and dean winchester
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happy wincest wednesday, liz!! i agree with your nurse dean thoughts. what about nurse dean roleplay?
ooooh happy wincest wednesday, now that's an intriguing one --
-- I mean my first instinct is to be myself, aka the most boring person in the world, and go -- roleplay's the worst, lol. But! Dean's a big ol' dweeb and of course he loves roleplay, at least in concept. But!! Dean's a big ol' dweeb, so the roleplay I can actually believe him doing is entirely of the crappy 90s porno variety, because he is a Precious Dork, and that means it's about 1000 miles from the normal!AU nurse!Dean that I'd love. Like, we're talking Darryl Hannah in the little peaked cap. (Deanna could rock it, let's be real.)
But!!! Let's go with the premise, huh? So, they're in a hospital, and they're sneaking around, and because of some rock-paper-scissors shenanigans Sam got to steal the doctor's coat and Dean climbed, grumbling, into the other set of scrubs with the nurse ID (whatever, make it work for realism) -- Sam: "Dude, the pants fit you anyway, I can't be a doctor in highwaters--" // Dean: "Shut up, Sammy." -- and they're done with whatever case-related shenanigans and they're killing time in an empty patient room waiting for further shenanigans -- there, finally, purely from opportunity, I can see a little nurse scenario, lol.
Dean bitching about how Sam gets to be the doctor and he has to be the nurse; Sam, mildly: Nurses are really important to how a hospital runs, man. You'd be great at it.; Dean, irritated, and then speculative, and then putting on some kind of awful breathy falsetto to compliment the good doctor on whatever, and then asking if Sam needs his temperature taken, and -- okay, so they don't fuck in the hospital room, they've got a job to do. But Dean's badly suppressing a smile at Sam while he holds serious Temperature Taking Fingers to Sam's throat, and Sam catches his wrist and holds his hand there, and Dean blinks and his dorky roleplay expression goes away and he's just there, his hand on Sam's pulse, warm and competent and steady. You'd be a good nurse, Sam says, meaning it that time. Dean doesn't take it as a compliment but he ought to.
#dean getting past the girl!job of it all really would be the trick#i mean there's the real porno scenario#making sam play dr sexy or whatever#dean the naughty nurse who has to be punished etc#trouble being that sam likes roleplay even less than i do#so sam's heart really wouldn't be in it#'you should report me to h.r.' he'd say#'i hate you just spank me already' dean would say#happy wincest wednesday#answers#lol this was not satisfying i'm guessing#but it's what i got
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Who Pissed In Your Lucky Charms?
Word count: 1.1k
Overall Warnings: John being a neglectant POS dad, Strong language, graphic descriptions of violence, graphic descriptions of injuries, eventual smut.
Chapter Warnings: Strong language, mentions of violence, if you squint some of it can be read as homophobic, descriptions of injuries, and John being a neglectant POS dad.
Pairings, Dean Winchester x Fem!reader, Sam Winchester x Platonic!Reader, slight Sam Winchester x Jess (Mentioned) And John being a sad, lonely, dick wad that can’t get any.
Plot summary: Exhibit A of How Dean Winchester Was Royally Fucked Up By John Winchester.
A/N: I co-wrote the most part of this with @hoe-for-fictional-men, and she posted it on her blog as well!
My world ended on Dean Winchester's 17th birthday. See, instead of having a normal birthday, he went on his first solo hunt. On January 24, the day after my own birthday, his dad told him that it was time, that he was old enough, and mature enough to do it without him there.
That was bull.
I knew that.
Dean knew that, but he still went.
When he came back, he was a different person. His green eyes no longer sparkled when he heard a classic rock song, and his smile that was once brighter than the sun became a shadow of its former self.
The only time he seemed like his old self was when he was with Sammy. I think that he reminds Dean of when he was that naive. When Sam was younger, Dean would take care of him while their dad went to hunt Yellow Eyes.
I think that Dean spent more time raising Sam than John ever did. I remember one time, Sammy wanted a few books, but John was too busy to notice or remember.
That night, Dean snuck out, and went to a pool hall. He played all night so that he could have enough money to buy those three books.
The next morning, everyone was startled awake at 6:00 by a loud scream from Saean, Dad, and I came sprinting, expecting some form of monster to be attacking. John didn’t give an fuck, and stayed in bed. Obviously sleep is more important than his son possibly being in danger.
Instead of a threat, there was a stack of books, sitting on the table, encased in Scooby Doo wrapping paper.
I wonder what that was like for him, having that pressure on him 24/7. I know what he told me, and I know what it was like when my Dad went to help Bobby and I had to take care of my siblings.
Sometimes, my dad would have us stay with Dean and Sammy while helping John hunt Yellow eyes. Then I could see what the life of a hunter’s boy was really like.
On paper it sounds like one huge adventure, where it’s nothin’ but a good time,and you never know where you will wake up. But in reality it was the worst torture that you could condemn a child to.
Where each night was a new motel bed, and your only true home was a 1967 Chevy Impala. Never knowing if your family would come back, or if they would be on the 12:00 news.
I always thought that hunters were noble people that could do no wrong, but on January 17, I was proved wrong.
I thought that there was another reason for Dean going on his first hunt on his own, and I was right.
⚡Flashback⚡
See, tonight John was lazy. He left his journal out, and I was gonna be nice and put it by his bed, so he wouldn’t lose it. But, when I was walking, I didn’t have a very good grip on the leather, and it slipped.
John has a lot of bookmarks, but he had today marked with a thick envelope. When I dropped it, it opened.
I couldn’t help it, and started to read.
Dean turns seventeen today. We went shooting. Then I sent him out on his first hunt. I've let him take the lead before, but I was always there to back him up. This time he’s on his own. Partly it’s a test, and partly I wanted to spend some time with sammy. Should be no problem for dean. Ghosts of two nuns haunting st. Stephens Indian mission in riverton, wyoming. Simple salt-and-burn mission. Nuns in love with each other, then were discovered. Killed themselves. We scoped the situation out, figured that something must be left behind thats now a focus for the haunting. Bible, rosary beads, some small article that’s hidden somewhere in their room. I figured that dean would be fine, but I still stayed close with sammy.
That worthless little-! How could he? I understand wanting to spend more time with your other child, and yes, that's good. BUT NOT ON HIS BIRTHDAY!!!!
Is it a good thing that he is trusted to go on hunts by himself? Yes. Is it a good thing to have to go kill dead people on his birthday, on his own for the first time, SO THAT YOU CAN SPEND MORE TIME WITH YOUR OTHER SON??? Not OK.
I power walked over to where John's bed was and said, “WAKE THE FUCKITY UPPITY SWEETHEART!”
He bolted upright, a silver blade in one hand, a gun loaded with witch killing bullets in the other.
John spotted me and lowered the weapons, letting out a sigh of relief. “Jesus Christ kid, are you trying to give me a heart attack? Holy shit.”
He looked at my face and said, “Damn, who pissed in your lucky charms?”
Glaring at him, I made an attempt to lower my voice so that I wouldn’t wake Sam up,“Why in the name of Hell would you do that shit to Dean? Today of all days?”
He looked like a kid that got caught stealing a cookie, but still tried to play dumb.
“What are ya talkin’ about? Is Dean OK?”
ARE YOU- Stopping myself from screaming at him, I whisper hissed, “John Eric Winchester, do NOT pretend like you don’t know exactly what you did.”
If looks could kill, we would both be dead.
John just seemed to notice his journal open in my hand. “Why do you have that?” It was as if he thought that I had stolen it from his pocket when his back was turned.
“Maybe because you left it out??? AND I DIDN’T WANT IT LEFT BEHIND BECAUSE I KNOW HOW MUCH IT MEANS TO YOU??” At this point we were both quietly screaming at each other.
With that, Sammy yelled from the other room, “Dean’s back!”
Giving John one last glare, I turned on my heel to go check on Dean.
As I walked into the living room area, my breath caught in my throat, and my heart stopped beating for a full second.
Dean was being held up by Sam, barely holding on to consciousness. Every visible inch of him was covered in blood, bruises, and grime. Dean gave me a half-hearted smile, then winced from pain.
“What the hell happened?” I asked while rushing to his side. There was a shallow slash across his left cheekbone, and a dark purple bruise on his jawline. His head lolled to one side, passing out on Sam's shoulder. “Shit! ”
#dean winchester x reader#Dean Winchester x Fem!reader#Sam Winchester x Platonic!Reader#Fuck you John Winchester
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Just read a post about how Dean never challenged or endangered the cosmic order for Cas, so he must love Sam more or not care about Cas at all. And I just. First of all, I'm almost certain that there were instances where Dean tried to save Cas even though the most efficient and safe plan to save the world would've involved Cas dying.
But then again that blogger wasn't completely wrong. Dean is much more willing to risk everything for Sam than he is for Cas. I just don't think it's because he loves Cas less. I think it's because Sam is his responsibility, "take care of your brother", nothing is more important than Sam's life. It's not even second nature, it's first nature to Dean. Protect Sammy.
Cas on the hand is not a responsibility. He's a friend, Dean's best friend. He loves having him around. It's so nice to finally have someone like that. But Dean has also been taught that he can't afford to have nice things. He's been taught to give up on things he personally loves, to sacrifice whatever needs sacrificing for the greater good. And in the Winchester World, the greater good includes Sam, but it doesn't include Cas.
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1.10
-Asylum
-Dean’s expression after Sam manhandles him at the bar
-Dean flirts with Sam again by asking him “who do you think is the hotter psychic, Patricia Arquette, Jennifer love Hewitt, or you?” Sam hits him playfully and bites his lip, suppressing a smile. This is the first time Sam flirts back.
-Sam spends a long time talking to the psychiatrist answering the question “this brother you’ve been road tripping with…how do you feel about him?”
These are the expressions that cross Sam’s face when he’s asked how he feels about Dean:
Normal brother expressions for normal brother thoughts.
-Sam calls to Dean for help. I can’t remember if he’s done this before yet, but in the next few seasons, Sam calling Dean for help tends to reflect how much faith he has in Dean and how much he accepts and trusts Dean as his protector.
-Sam’s anger makes an appearance and god bless. He’s angry because he’s been fed demon blood and isolated from the world since he was a baby, angry because he feels something is wrong with him, yes. But he’s also angry because he’s a youngest sibling and he’s never been taken seriously and he wants to be seen rather than just protected or controlled. Specifically by Dean. (See also the feminine urge to become the most educated person in your family tree so that they’ll respect you [this doesn’t work]).
-“you hate me that much?” Dean asks this like he’s confirming something he fears. He probably thinks this because Sam left him for Stanford and criticizes him for following John.
-He worries Sam hates him. This is important information and it would really fit with Dean blaming himself for their incestuous feelings.
-“sorry Sammy” for what knocking him out or not being good enough to make him stay? Sorry someone sedate me
-Conflict between the brothers is coming to a head. For this to be resolved, Dean needs to show Sam that he’s not their father and he respects Sam, and Sam needs to choose Dean of his own volition.
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*dean voice* so um, i’m not great with words. most of you already know that. but this is important--you’re important, cas--so i’m...i’m gonna try. [...] i guess i spent a really long time pretending to be someone i’m not, you know? it wasn’t...i thought if i faked it hard enough then i’d become that guy, right? that guy who i thought everyone wanted me to be. and after a while...i started wondering what was me and what was this persona i was putting on. and what i wanted out of it, and shit. i wasn’t sure what was real. and then i, heh, i went to hell, and cas here pulled me out. and there was this person he needed me to be, and i just wan’t that guy. i was so sure that i wasn’t enough. but he chose me, the real me, over what his bosses thought i should be. he rebelled against everything he’d ever known. we had some ups and downs--hell, that’s an understatement--but we always came through the other side. a while back some really heavy shit went down, and me and cas weren’t at our best. i was being stupid and stubborn. but even through all of that, when i was doubting what was real, he looked me in the eye and said, uh, he said to me, “we are.” and he was right. we are real. sometimes it feels like we’re the only real thing in the whole goddamn universe. [...] cas, you have...we’ve been through a lot together. and sometimes we hurt each other, but we always came back, because. i don’t know. kind of like gravity, i guess. just sort of inevitable. we choose each other, every time. [...] god, that was sappy. ugh. [...] look, there’s no point in promising you that i’m gonna be loyal, or that i’m gonna protect you, or stay with you forever or whatever. all that’s old news. but i’ve spent a lot of the last twelve years not saying things when i needed to. when you deserved to hear them. so i guess what i’m saying is, that’s done with. i promise to...to talk to you. to say it, whatever it is. cas, i, uh. [...] huh, this is tougher than i thought. in front of everyone, you know? but i mean it, so. i love you. i’ve loved you for a damn long time, and i’m gonna keep loving you, in this world and the next, and all that crap. [...] so, uh. yeah. that’s it, i guess. sammy, stop crying, you look stupid. cas, your turn now, and it better be good after the heartfelt speech i just gave for you.
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with hearts that are guilty, not remorseful on ao3
link here
rating: Explicit
word count: 14,595
relationship: sam/dean
important tags: season 3, yearning, love confessions, anal sex, getting together, angst, hurt/comfort
excerpt:
“I’ve wanted you since I knew what wanting was.” It’s a fact, as plain as the day. The sky is blue. Their mother was killed by a demon. They hunt monsters. Sam wants Dean. “I’ve loved you for longer, I think.”
“God,” Dean’s voice is barely a whisper, raising a hand to grip his own hair by the roots and pulling. He looks absolutely wretched. “I fucked you up, didn’t I?”
Sam slams the motel door shut behind him.
Dean is already sitting down on the foot of his bed, shucking his muddy boots as if nothing is amiss. It makes Sam irrationally pissed, and he has to take a deep breath just to beat back the urge to start throwing punches.
Dean had been incredibly reckless—a-fucking-gain—and almost gotten his head ripped off by a lake monster two towns over. Sam had a clear shot (consecrated silver pellets) but Dean had shoved him to the ground to take the incoming blow from a stray limb instead, sending Sam’s shot wide. The fight had lasted twenty minutes longer than it had to, with them having to scatter in a dock-side storehouse, hiding underneath nets and overturning buckets of chum. They both smelled fucking atrocious, but their clothes had remained relatively unscathed. Small mercies, as Sam didn’t see a laundromat coming into town.
Dean was always doing this now: being stupid and reckless and almost trying to get himself killed. If it were just that, Sam could safeguard against it, but Dean was always doing it for Sam, which made him mad enough to spit. Whenever Sam would try to approach Dean’s near-suicidal idiocy, Dean would get all forehead-wrinkly and irritated.
I don’t know, Sam, I guess I was just tryin’ to save your damn life. As if Sam was the crazy one here.
Save your life. That was another goddamn thing.
Sam wasn’t supposed to be saved. Not like this, and not at the expense of Dean’s own life.
When Dean eventually died, he would join Sam on the other side, whatever that looked like. If there was a Hell, there could be a Heaven, right? Dean couldn’t have just waited, could he? They would never see each other again now, unless Sam decided to really fuck things up for his future. And in the dark of night with Dean breathing quietly across the room, Sam wondered…but no.
What pissed Sam off the most though, was the fact he was a fucking hypocrite. He didn’t have to imagine anymore—a life without Dean, fifty, sixty, seventy years (if the world was feeling particularly cruel) was becoming an increasingly probable unescapable nightmare.
Sam had loved—been in love with—his brother as long as he could remember, before he knew that there were different kinds of love. There was just Dean, and Sam would do anything for Dean. He had realized, horrified, in the sixth grade that other kids didn’t talk about their siblings the same way Sam did.
I hate my brother, his friend had said. I wish I was an only child.
An only child? When Sam tried to picture life without Dean, he couldn’t—it was just…blank.
Dean had been front row at all of his soccer games and plays and recitals. Dean had showed up to family day at school, had snuck over from the high school to have lunch with Sammy on Wednesdays, had taken Sam to get a rental suit for prom.
And then Sam realized that the reason his skin heated up wherever Dean touched him wasn’t just because Dean was a particularly warm person. It was because Sam was wrong, was fucked-up, and wanted too much.
His first wet dream was about Dean’s mouth.
And Dean couldn’t get it through his thick fucking skull that he was the axis of Sam’s life.
When he started college, he tried a bunch of different classes to pick his major. Now that he had a world of possibilities, he had gotten drunk on it. In physics, he had learned about something called restoring force. The further that you pulled a mass from its equilibrium position, the greater the force is returning it to where it’s supposed to be.
The farther that Sam had pulled away from Dean, the greater the restoring force had been in his shitty kitchen with Jessica looking at him and Dean, unable to drag their eyes away from each other.
Dean had told him, in the dark of the Impala, no oncoming lights to illuminate the look on his face. C’mon, Sammy. You get the life you always wanted. Find a nice girl, have a couple a’ kids. A normal life. You don’t need me—you were always the stronger of the two of us.
The words had almost made Sam slam his head into the dashboard until the echo of them left his ears.
Look at me! Sam wants to shout. You have doomed me to a half-life. Everyone who passes me on the street will know that half of me has been obliterated.
What is that? They’ll scream. What the fuck happened to it?
There wasn’t a delineation between what was Sam and Dean anymore. They had merged, burrowed into each other so deeply that to separate them into two disparate parts could only be called a massacre.
You can have a normal life now, Dean had said. But Sam knew. Who would want me? Who would want me with my guts falling out into my hands, with my muscles twitching in the aftermath of being stripped, string by strong, with my breath heaving, unable to adjust to taking in half as much oxygen?
The problem with the request lies in the first word: “find.” A command. Sam couldn’t. Dean couldn’t make him. His life had never had a pre-Dean, and the gaping maw of a post-Dean threatened to swallow him—not whole, but bite by excruciating bite. Sam didn’t want to find another person to fill the looming paralyzing vacancy in his life. If his arm had been amputated, he didn’t want to hold up a series of strangers’ arms until he found the one that made him look most like himself again. It wouldn’t be his dependable hands, familiar nails, the hairline scars on his fingers. A stranger, even once acquainted, would never inherently know Sam in the way Dean did.
Sam has no desire to share skin with anyone else.
Sam needed Dean in the way a musician needed their ears, in the way a chef needed their taste, the way a painter needed their sight. He could survive, in a way without him, but the color of life would be leeched from every corner.
Sam crosses over to Dean, the fight slowly draining from him with every thought. Dean shifted over to face Sam’s bed, so when he sat down, they sat knee-to-knee.
“You still pissed?” Dean asks. Sam just looks at him. He has a barely-there cut above his right eyebrow. It’s already scabbed over, but the fact that it exists at all makes Sam’s chest constrict.
“You’ve gotta stop.” He says. Dean blinks at him, a little taken aback.
“Stop what?”
“Trying to get yourself killed. For me.”
“What the hell—“
“You already sealed the deal—isn’t that enough?” Sam shoves the heels of his palms into his eyes, feeling the pressure there. Dean doesn’t say anything for a long second, and Sam finally caves, looking back up at him.
Dean’s face is closed off, and he’s not looking at Sam. His gaze is fixed on Sam’s knees, jaw working.
When Sam had nightmares as a kid, Dean would shove him over in bed, crawling into the space between the door and Sam, as if a silent promise that Dean would protect him from the monster in the dark. Sam would press his face into Dean’s collarbone, tiny hands grabbing uselessly at the collar of his shirt. Dean had effortlessly calmed Sam’s panic attacks, put bandaids on his scraped knees, told him bedtime stories when Sam couldn’t sleep, taught him how to tie a knot and shoot a gun and throw a punch. Dean had never hesitated to comfort Sam, always doing exactly what Sam needed in the moment. Sam had been chasing the goal of returning even a fraction of that devotion back, pressing small acts into Dean’s collarbone, for a decade.
Sam never had much dignity when it comes to Dean, so he slides from his perch on the bed. He tucks himself into the space between their beds, on his knees, looking up into Dean’s face to catch his blank gaze. Dean—too shocked to fight the instinct—opens his knees wider to allow Sam room to slip between them.
“I can’t lose you a second before I have to, okay? For me, Dean.” Sam tries to press as much emotion into the words as he can. Do this for me. Live for me. Try for me.
Dean looks back and forth between Sam’s eyes, his own wide. A thin smile splits the disbelief. “Yeah, whatever you say, Sammy.”
Sam doesn’t know if Dean means it—prays silently, fervently that he does—but can’t do much better than that tonight. Sam searches Dean’s face for any trace of falsehood, but Dean’s looking at his face just as intensely. Dean’s trying to probe Sam for something, but what?
He can’t make Dean want to live, even for Sam’s own selfish sake, and it kills him.
Sam sits back, but falls forward into Dean’s legs, exhausted. He can feel Dean tense, along the line of his spine, thighs clenching.
“Sam, what are you doin’?”
Sam shakes his head, feeling the hard dig of Dean’s patella into his cheekbone. Sam feels his familiar impotent anger curling low in his stomach. He hates Dean, sometimes, when he gets like this. When Dean pretends that he doesn’t need Sam, too. When he freezes up and gets his smarmy, cocky smile plastered on his face in time to hide (God forbid) an actual, genuine emotion. Sam hates him, he thinks. He doesn’t know if he believes it yet. Right now, he’s just exhausted.
“Just…shut up for a second. I just need…just a second. Please.”
Sam needs to feel the press of Dean’s bones against his own—before Dean takes them away, before they become dust and ash. Before Dean becomes the worst thing he could: not Sam’s anymore. Dean acquiesces, as he is wont to do when Sammy asks with this particular brand of whine in his tone. He should feel bad about using his Dean-power for evil, but he doesn’t. He wishes Dean’s legs were bare, so they could be pressed skin-to-skin. As it stands, Sam can barely feel his warmth through the thick denim.
Sam presses his forehead into the side of Dean’s knee. His knees aren’t as knobby as they used to be, when Sam would sleep pressed to Dean’s side, when he was young enough for that type of comfort. Dean reaches down, pressing a warm hand into Sam’s hair. His fingers are so familiar that Sam aches with it. How is he supposed to live without this? How can Dean expect him to, when Dean couldn’t live without Sam for seventy-two hours?
“Sammy,” Dean says. Just that. Just Sammy.
Sam looks up into Dean’s face, caught by the anxious need to see his eyes, as if he’ll disappear. The vise in his chest doesn’t relax until Dean looks back at him. His eyes are green, always so green and beautiful and they shred Sam’s lungs like a hellhound.
The need to be closer, as close as possible, doesn’t abate. Sam is brimming with the need to weave them together—as if anything that wants to get to Dean has to tear him asunder first—almost spilling from his lips, bursting from every pore.
He doesn’t think.
He sits up, Dean’s hand still tangled in his hair, and kisses him.
The angle is awkward, as Sam has tilted his head almost ninety degrees to get at Dean’s lips, but Dean jerks back, a little shocked. Their lips don’t part, as Sam presses forward again, blind to anything but the feel of Dean’s lips, slightly chapped.
And then.
And then, Dean kisses back.
Sam’s brain explodes in a white, hot rush of Yesyesyesyesyes. Dean presses forward, hand in his hair tightening, a noise akin to a wail coming from his mouth.
Sam had watched Dean kiss people his entire life—faceless girls in every bar in America, housewives on cases, and on one occasion, a boy with long brown hair pressed against the wall of an alley behind a motel in Vermont.
Sam had become an addict, obsessed. He watched Dean’s mouth with the reverence of a pilgrim, eyes traveling to the shrine of a full bottom lip, teased with teeth and soothed with tongue. And now, he was touching. Dean’s full mouth was pressed to his, and Sam could do nothing but fall to his knees and worship.
Sam gasps, heart catapulting so fast in his chest that he’s distantly surprised he hasn’t keeled over. He can feel his heartbeat everywhere, in his ribs, in his ears, his tongue heavy with it and pulsing against the zipper of his jeans.
Sam opens, begging Dean to come into his mouth. Anything, anything you’ll give me pleasepleaseyesyesplease. Dean’s tongue flicks out, a flutter against the top row of his teeth, testing.
Sam makes a noise he would definitely be embarrassed about later, whining and pained and so desperate it feels like his skin will peel off if Dean doesn’t touch him everywhere. The noise does something to Dean, for his other hand comes up and presses against Sam’s chest, feeling the rapid pulse there. His grip on Sam’s hair tightens further, and he uses his grip—(a scratch of nails against his scalp, Sam keens)—to force Sam’s mouth up against his so hard Sam’s sure his lips with bruise as they set in to devour each other. He’s steering Sam’s mouth where he wants him using his grip on his hair, and he tastes like whiskey and warmth and home.
It’s filthy, the way Dean is eating him alive. Sam wants it, with a power and desperation he has rarely wanted anything. He has become an animal of need, pawing at Dean’s face, letting himself be devoured by the throbbing pulse of them, combined. Dean’s tongue is on the inside of his mouth, pressing against the roof, tender strokes against his own. Sam’s lungs are burning but he’d sooner cut off his legs before he’d pull away. Dean makes the decision for him, pulling back for barely a second to reposition their mouths, biting savagely down on Sam’s bottom lip. Sam hopes desperately that it’ll leave a mark, that he will be indelibly marked with Dean’s incisors and everyone will know.
My turn, my turn, Sam’s brain whines, and he raises a hand to ball in Dean’s shirt, pulling him back to his mouth. He has to press the heel his other hand down on his cock, still straining against his zipper painfully, to alleviate some of the aching, throbbing tension there. He’s harder than he’s ever been in his life, and it twitches in his jeans at the pressure, causing Sam to whimper again into the cavern of Dean’s panting mouth. Sam worries Dean’s bottom lip with his own teeth, tongue driving out to lick a damning “S” against the flushed angle of it. Mineminemine Dean please.
“Sammy,” Dean rasps, and it’s a shock to Sam’s system more than any punch to the gut. Dean locks up all at once, tension pulling his body tight like a bowstring, and mouth leaving Sam’s in an agonizing shred of flesh.
Dean pulls away, hands pressing at Sam’s chest to keep him at a distance. A string of saliva snaps as they part, and Sam’s eyes are glue to where it sits now on Dean’s lower lip. Dean’s eyes are wild, half-feral—desperate and hurt. In the summer of 1996, Dad and Dean came back after a werewolf hunt, and Dean’s arm had almost been ripped off at the shoulder. The werewolf had gotten his teeth in the meat of his shoulder and yanked. Dad hadn’t wanted to take him to the hospital, but the sheer amount of blood and raw meat of Dean’s shredded skin—more viscera than anything resembling a human body—made Sam hysterical. The look in Dean’s eyes—genuine, palpable agony that he had always been so careful to hide—was so terrifying that Sam went into a complete meltdown. He had begged so vehemently—screaming and shaking—for Dad to turn his car around that he had vomited all over his shoes.
This is worse. Somehow, the look in Dean’s eyes now is more petrifying than back then because Sam had caused it. Dean is looking at Sam like that. Sam backs off immediately, falling back onto his heels. Dean’s chest is heaving, and he’s staring at Sam like he’s never seen him before.
“No.” Dean’s head starts to shake back and forth, a tongue flicking out to wet his lips. Sam watches the movement helplessly. That was my saliva, his brain whines. Dean, taking in a part of him, makes him throb. “No, Sam, we’re not doing this.” His hands, on his thighs now, start to shake. “You’re not giving me this. You’re not.”
He’s starting to look angry, brow furrowing and mouth flattening into a line. But worse—infinitely, blindingly worse—wetness is gathering at his bottom lashes. Sam feels so wretched, so broken and wrong and evil that he feels like he’s dying.
“No, Dee, please don’t be mad at me.” Sam sits up, distress clawing up his throat and hands grappling desperately at Dean’s calves as he stares up into his face. Tears build in his own eyes. He feels like a child again—broken Dean’s tape player and begging wildly for his forgiveness because Dean is everything. “Please don’t. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Sam’s ruined it. He’s ruined everything. Dean will die hating him, disgusted with him. Dean is still shaking his head, but he reaches down to still Sam’s grasping fingers. He might be pissed, he might be disgusted and repulsed by his fucked up little brother, but he is physically incapable of not comforting a terrified Sam.
“You don’t want me, Sammy. You don’t want this. You’re scared and sad and pissed I’m dyin’, but you don’t want this.” Dean is searching his face, but pulls away from Sam’s seeking fingers. It would have hurt less to be stabbed.
Sam lets his eyes rove in turn, soaking in Dean as he’s been trying to do for the past eight months. The swoop of his flushed mouth, the devastating curl of his eyelashes, his strong jaw. Even the things Dean hates: the curve of his nose, the splash of darkened freckles across his cheeks.
“Do you remember Leah Templesmith?” Sam asks suddenly. Dean blinks. His face screws up.
“What the fuck, Sam?”
“Do you?” Sam presses, eyes fixed on the furrow of his brow and fighting every impulse in his body that wants to press his lips to it. “From Iowa. Fall of ‘97.”
Dean shakes his head, lips (still shiny and full in the low light) thinning into a line. Sam can’t stop his fingers from tracing the grain of Dean’s jeans, thumb nail trailing over his shin bone.
“She was the first one that looked like me.” Sam says, and he might as well have shot Dean in the sternum. Dean flinches hard, but his body has nowhere to go now that Sam has his legs pinned to the bed. “She had short brown hair, hazel eyes, and I wanted to strangle her in her sleep.”
Dean is still looking at Sam like he’s going to snap and rip Dean’s head from his shoulders.
“Stop, Sam.”
Sam presses on. “You were still in school. I would see you pressing her against lockers before class and under the bleachers during lunch. I was spitting with jealousy, but I had no idea why.”
“You were fourteen.” Dean says, like it’s the saddest thing he’s ever heard. His eyes are wide. Sam shrugs.
“I’ve wanted you since I knew what wanting was.” It’s a fact, as plain as the day. The sky is blue. Their mother was killed by a demon. They hunt monsters. Sam wants Dean. “I’ve loved you for longer, I think.”
“God,” Dean’s voice is barely a whisper, raising a hand to grip his own hair by the roots and pulling. He looks absolutely wretched. “I fucked you up, didn’t I?”
He tries to give Dean a smile, but it feels false and plastic on his face, like the tree he had stolen for their Christmas all those months ago. Prickly.
“You always assume you’re the fucked up one between us.” Sam laughs, just a puff of air with no humor. “What if it’s just me? What if I was always like this?” Sam wants to start screaming, just to alleviate the pulling tension in his chest. “Loving you was the only constant thing in my life, and I’m not sorry for it. I can’t be.”
Dean looks suddenly unbearably young. And he is. He’s twenty-goddamn-seven. Way too young to look at Sam like that, to say “The truth is I’m tired, Sam.” and mean it.
“Sammy.” Dean says around a croak, a catch in his throat that Sam wants to reach up and feel. “You’re…You’re my—“ Dean chokes. Sam leans up a little—not enough to scare Dean away again, but far enough to see the golden flecks in his eyes.
“Exactly.” He cuts him off. “I’m yours. Just yours.”
Dean whispers his name like a curse. He closes his eyes, seemingly unable to bear the weight of what Sam has laid in front of him. He rubs a hand over his face, rough, his ring catching the watery light of the lamp. Sam’s knees are cramping, but he doesn’t think he’d be able to get up if he tried.
Sam sits there, an open nerve exposed to a scalpel. Please be gentle. Please sever me with care.
Dean opens his eyes.
There’s a hard set to them, a glint of steel and a flash of gunpowder. He looks at Sam in a way he never has—even when Dad had begged him to, when Sam had sulfur on his tongue and dreams of blood and his finger on triggers they had no business being on. He looks at him like Sam’s a monster, and Dean’s on a hunt. Focus. Undivided, analytical attention that makes Sam feel dangerous. His skin prickles with heat, starting low and traveling to the tips of his fingers, where they still on Dean’s knee.
He’s searching Sam for something, and Sam lets himself be searched. Throwing open drawers, helping Dean overthrow mattresses. Dean flays him open, before his eyelids slowly lower, and there it is. The flash of a tongue against his bottom lip.
Sam has seen this look on Dean before, directed forever outward, at waitresses, at Bela, at bartenders and clerks and Leah goddamn Templesmith. But never at Sam. Sam aches, and he can’t tell if it’s a good or bad hurt, but he wants more of it.
“Well.” Dean finally says, his voice an octave lower than it was a few minutes (an hour, a decade, a lifetime) ago. “I’m already going to hell, aren’t I?”
Sam’s breath catches in his throat, and he doesn’t get the chance to gasp before Dean’s mouth is on his again.
It’s more violent this time—all teeth like a punishment, but Sam believes in penance, so he melts into the curve of Dean’s body, against the hard line of him as Dean takes.
Dean pulls hard, and Sam has no choice but to follow Dean up onto the bed. It’s a tangle of limbs, Sam having to unravel from his spot on the floor. Somehow, he manages to crawl on top of Dean, pinning him between his arms on the bed. Dean goes eagerly, slotting his thigh against the apex of Sam’s thighs and against the line of his dick. It responds eagerly, and Sam feels himself hardening again. Dean does something simply criminal with his hips, and Sam has to pull back to gasp for air.
Dean doesn’t let him go far, balling a fist in Sam’s shirt to keep him close.
“If you don’t get this thing off,” Dean growls, but doesn’t get to finish his threat. Sam pulls back and rips his shirt off of his head. He’s stopped from kissing Dean again by the look on his face.
Dean’s eyes are rapidly tracing over his chest—over his pecs, his abs, the small trail down to his jeans. His irises are almost completely swallowed by the black dots of his pupils. He wets his lips. Sam feels…well, sexy.
Sam leans forward, a little hesitantly because Dean is still looking at him strangely, but Dean reaches up and puts a hand on his chest to keep him away.
“One sec.” He says, a rasp. “I didn’t allow me to look.”
Sam tries to string the words together in his brain to something that makes sense. It takes a second longer than it should, because Dean’s touch has turned into a caress, moving over ribs with a steady, firm intent. Oh.
Dean hadn’t given himself permission to look at Sam like this. Before. How long? How long had he looked away on purpose?
Sam is seized with the intense need to see Dean, too. He had snuck glances as long as he could get away with—which was much more often than one would think. In long, sticky summers when motels didn’t have air conditioning, Dean would parade around their 300-square-foot room with a glistening chest and chiseled stomach. It was enough to drive any horny fifteen-year-old into madness. Sam yanks on the bottom of Dean’s t-shirt.
“Turnabout. Fair play. All that.”
Dean eyes get a little sharper as he pulls his shirt off in a practiced movement. It feels like a mask—Dean pulling on a protective cover as familiar as Dad’s jacket or his worn pair of jeans. Sam immediately hates the look. It’s more lascivious, but infinitely less personal, less like the look that has always been the way he looks at Sam and more like the way he eyes up waitresses and secretaries.
The press of his bare skin against Sam is enough to blast the thought to ashes—salted and burned. It feels like fire, like they will melt together into one being. Sam tries to remember when he had this much of someone else’s skin pressed against him and he can’t. Every pore where Dean connects light up like a neon sign. Sam gasps, but Dean reclaims his mouth, pressing his tongue where it belongs.
Dean slithers a hand down to Sam’s stomach, trailing the softness of his stomach, the divot between his pecs, the swell of his chest. He leaves sparks in his wake.
Sam arches up into Dean’s touch, breaking the kiss to press a series of increasingly sloppy kisses to Dean’s jaw, throat, nape. He hopes, as he bites hard down on the meat of Dean’s shoulders, that he’ll leave marks. He wants Dean to look in the mirror and see what Sam had done, had done to keep him. He wants everyone who passes Dean on the street and every waitress who flirts with him to know that he has been claimed.
As Sam continues to kiss across Dean’s collarbones, his mouth catches against something hard. He pulls back a little, and sees that it’s the leather cord—body-warm and well-worn—of Sam’s necklace.
He had been surprised, two years ago, to see it still on Dean’s neck. He had figured after the words they had lobbed at each other like needle-point blades—designed to inflict as sharp of a pain as possible—Dean would have cut him from the tapestry of freckle-spotted skin, excising a tumor.
But Dean had come for him. The first thing Sam had felt, when Dean had pressed him to the cold wood of his kitchen, hands rough and warm, was a cold sting of metal brushing his cheek. He had thought, panicking, that it was a knife, but the small face of the amulet had gotten his attention.
Dean.
Sam trails the cord of the amulet now with his mouth, until his lips are pressed against the burnished gold of the figure.
Dean is panting as if he had run a marathon, chest rising and falling in spurts, and Sam rises and falls with the movement as he takes the pendant between his teeth. Mine, mine, mine.
Dean had kept it—kept Sam—as close to his heart as possible. Dean makes a noise like Sam had make the amulet into a garrote, choking on air, chest arching up to fit to every curve of Sam’s body. Sam smirks, drunk on the power that having Dean like this gives him.
His immediate, unquestioning submission to Sam, to what they have, threatens to undo him. How long could he have had this? Sam tries to imagine a younger, bright-eyed Dean pressing Sam at age eighteen to that motel wall in Vermont, replacing the brown-haired boy. He tries to imagine if Dean would be gentle with him, surrendering his first time to a boy who deserved all of his firsts.
The thought makes an unexpected lump form in his throat. No. He’d still have to leave—he needed to figure out who he was without the twin shadow of Dean, making up more of Sam than Sam himself was. Stanford was hard, but it was the first thing that was his alone.
It was better like this: crashing together when they were both strong enough to survive the collision.
Any earlier, Sam thinks, would have destroyed them. It would have mangled them so they would never fit together like this again.
“C’mon, Sammy,” Dean groans, head slamming back into the pillow so he could press the long, hard brand of his cock harder against Sam’s thigh. “That big head of yours more interesting than me?”
Sam drops the pendant from between his teeth (which he had been pressing his tongue to unconsciously, and his mouth tastes like metal) and kisses Dean hard to shut him up.
When he can finally pull himself away from Dean’s lips (who gives a hell of a fight, winding a tight hand into his hair to keep him where he wants him), he moves back to the foot of the bed. He reaches up and places a hand on Dean’s belt buckle. He looks up at Dean, with the intention of asking if it’s okay, but the view punches his breath from his lungs.
Dean is beautiful. Objectively, it’s just a fact. But this. Here. He’s looking down the firm, built line of his body at Sam, green eyes almost swallowed completely by pupil. Dean’s necklace is lying on his sternum, visibly wet from Sam’s mouth. Sam has to swallow hard to prevent from choking. “Sammy,” Dean gasps, hands bundling in the itchy fabric of the motel bedspread.
The look in Dean’s eyes from before is completely gone. He’s looking at Sam the way he always looks at him, and Sam is finally letting himself recognize the devotion there. The adoration. Dean is looking at Sam and seeing him. The armor of before has been destroyed.
This. Here. It’s Sam’s.
Sam’s suddenly fucking starving, and he wraps his fingers around Dean’s belt buckle, pulling with wide eyes.
“Dean, can I?” He’s surprised at how deep his voice is to his own ears.
“Fuck,” Dean says, more whine than word. “Fuck. Yes. Fuck, Sammy.”
Sam doesn’t think he’s ever undone a buckle faster in his life, despite the fact that he’s so overeager he drops it twice. The heat of Dean’s skin is melting his fingers even through the fabric as Sam fumbles for the button. He looks up at Dean as he pulls the zipper down, hungry for the look in his eyes.
Dean does not disappoint, mouth opening so he can pant, and Sam doesn’t even have his hands on him yet.
Dean is straining against the fabric of his boxers, and Sam eyes the outline of him hungrily. He looks up at Dean as he presses his fingers, barely there, tracing the hard line of his cock. Dean swears, and his hips twitch.
“Are you always this eager?” Sam wonders aloud, “Or is this just for me?”
Deans makes a noise like he’s been shot, and Sam can feel his own dick twitch at the noise. Noted.
Sam bends his head, and places his tongue to the spot where the fabric of his boxers is a bit darker. Salt on his tongue. He’s a little flattered, really. Or he would be, if he had the brain capacity to be flattered. If he had anything going on in his head right now but the pulsing, throbbing rhythm of Deanfinallyyesyesminefinally. He kneads the spot with his tongue, soaking Dean’s boxers through and absorbing Dean’s whimpers and trying to feel the head of his cock through the fabric.
When he feels like he can’t take it anymore, he pulls down Dean’s boxers and jeans in one full movement. When he finally gets himself settled back where he belongs (between Dean’s knees), Dean has a hand around his dick, pumping slowly and a challenging smile on his face. Sam swats his hand away, and finally gets a look.
His dick is a wonder. Sam tries to catalogue it as fast as he can (shorter than his but thick enough that Sam’s brain goes a little sideways) before he’s pressing a kiss to the base of it.
“Sam,” Dean groans, “Stop teasin’ me.”
Sam raises an eyebrow, looking up at him, and Dean opens his mouth in a clearly sass-filled retort. To nip that in the bud, Sam descends.
He takes Dean’s cock in his mouth, taking mind of his teeth and sinking down as far as he can without choking. Dean’s spine snaps taut, before bending in a sensuous arch. The noise he makes is probably the hottest thing Sam has ever heard. Sam’s hands find their ways to Dean’s strong thighs, pressing thumbs into the sensitive joint of his legs.
Sam has never given a blowjob (dreamed about it more than once, Dean in the back of the Impala, Sam in the footwell and taking Dean all the way to the back as he shook apart in his arms), but knows what he likes. He alternates between a gentle suction and teasing the tip, tongue licking into the slit and around the flared head.
Dean is loud, cursing and giving soft little whimpers that go straight to Sam’s cock. The realization that he’s really here, that it’s Dean on his tongue is enough to have him scrambling for his own belt, shoving his jeans down just enough to work his own hand into his pants.
Sam could get addicted to this: the warm press of Dean’s bare thighs, the power of having Dean entirely at his mercy, the act of finally being able to take care of Dean, returning a fraction of that devotion.
Dean’s hand finally slides into Sam’s hair, and Sam’s everything is Dean—Dean filling his nose and his mouth and his hand sliding through his hair and calves pressed into his shoulders. He smells warm and Dean, and his tongue is heavy, and his eyes are watering, but from how deep he’s managed to work Dean in his mouth or the sheer overwhelming sensation he couldn’t tell. Spit is gathering at the corners of his mouth, dribbling slowly from his lips, but Sam only increases his efforts, wanting to feel the blunt head of Dean hit his soft palate. When Sam presses the flat of his tongue fully against the pulsing vein along the bottom, Dean’s hand tightens painfully in Sam’s hair, pushing down, and Sam’s brain goes white, sparks dancing along his vision. He tries to moan, more vibration than noise and Dean fucking wails.
“Stop!” Dean yelps, pulling Sam up, fingers grazing his neck in his haste and pulling, making Sam almost choke in a way that shouldn’t be as arousing as it is. “Fuck!” Dean is panting, heaving. “Want you in me, Sammy. Don’t want to finish like that.”
Sam’s brain goes offline. He blinks. Once. Twice.
And then he has to press tightly around the base of his dick to stave off the rush of FUCK as he imagines Dean spread out, hot and slick and fucking—
Sam tries to speak, but coughs. “I—um. Fuck. Yeah, okay.”
They stare at each other.
“So…” Dean starts, looking suddenly very unsure. A second passes. Dean is looking increasingly uncomfortable, which makes Sam scramble for his brain power again.
“Have you…have you done this before?” Sam asks.
Dean raises an incredulous brow. “Sex?”
Sam swats his thigh. “Sex with a guy, asshole.”
Dean shifts his weight on the bed, propping himself up on his elbows.
“Yeah, I mean. I’ve fucked a couple of guys.”
“Have you ever…” Sam gestures down. Dean flushes a truly incredible shade of scarlet that Sam can now see goes down to his sternum. He had always wondered. Dean mumbles something, looking at the TV stand Sam’s sure is over his shoulder.
“What?”
“No! I haven’t.” Dean still looks a little spooked. “But I know the mechanics of it. We need lube and a condom. And…”
Dean trails off like Sam is supposed to fill in the blanks.
“Wait—“ He cuts Sam off before he can put Dean out of his misery. “Have you done this before?”
Sam shrugs, aiming for nonchalance. He had absolutely tried to fuck Dean out of his system in college, but no pair of green eyes or blonde hair or full lips had stuck. Until…well. Until Jess.
“Yeah, both ways.”
Dean’s eyes bulge almost comically.
“You let some guy fuck you?”
Sam snorts. “Um. Yeah? His name was Trevor.”
Dean scowls. “I didn’t need to know that. Now I’ve got a Trevor on my shit-list. Poor guy doesn’t even know what’s coming.”
Sam can’t help but smile. Dean had always been almost comically focused on his love life, encouraging Sam to get as much experience as humanly feasible. Is it possible, that maybe, it was projection on Dean’s part? Sam knows that his skin would crawl whenever Dean would pick up a girl at a bar and leave Sam sitting behind sipping a beer and trying not to imagine what Dean would look like mid-orgasm.
Jealousy. Dean’s jealous. Of Trevor, from art history.
Sam keeps having to remind himself: this is Dean. Dean’s jealous over him. Dean, whom Sam loves more than any other person, alive or dead.
“I mean, I could always…” Sam says, trailing off. Dean’s eyes widen a little. “Or not.” He hurries to add. “I mean, hell, Dean. We don’t even have to do anything tonight if you don’t want to. Or we could always jack each other off and watch TV after, if we want something slower.”
Sam would take anything Dean would give him, even if it was nothing. Sam would sit on the ratty motel couch and watch I Love Lucy reruns for hours with an aching boner if Dean wanted him to, and he’d do it with a smile. Okay, maybe not a smile. But at least he’d do it.
“No.” Dean says quickly, and then seems to remember he’s embarrassed. “I…” He clears his throat. “No. I, uh. I want you.” Dean tries for a smirk, but his eyes are still a little wide, vulnerable. “Aren’t first times supposed to be for someone special or whatever?”
Sam’s heart makes a valiant effort to eviscerate his chest cavity.
“They can be. Or they can be a logistics nightmare with Stacey Masters under the bleachers at the Homecoming game against Boston.”
Dean, caught of guard, throws his head back in a cackle.
“Your first time was in public? You sex-freak.” Dean laughs again. “You maniac. I fuckin’ knew it.”
Sam shrugs affably, just happy that the stressed set to Dean’s jaw is gone. When Dean quiets, his shoulders are much more relaxed. Sam shifts to the side, to allow Dean room to move off of the bed.
“First things first, you smell like ass.” Sam says.
He doesn’t really, but he does smell like the fresh water wet tang of fresh nickel (anything outside of this room feels like it was a year ago, a decade, the only thing that has ever existed is Dean, here, now), and…well. If they’re going to do this, Dean needs to get…clean.
Dean shoves his palm into Sam’s face, tilting it to the side playfully. Sam goes with the movement, letting Dean slip past him and off the bed. Sam stares after him, chest feeling unbearably tight. Happiness. Relief.
A slow exhale eleven years in the making.
Sam follows Dean, an action so familiar that he doesn’t recognize the movement until he’s already standing in the doorway.
Dean’s already turning the water on, holding his hand under the faucet to test the temperature. Sam has to lean against the doorway because…Dean’s still naked. His corded muscles move in his legs as he bends over, baring the full curve of his ass, the small divot where it meets the meat of his thigh. Sam wants to press his tongue there, and has to bite down on his lip to curb the urge.
Sam’s arousal, which had abated somewhat, stirs again. Dean, seemingly satisfied, turns back around to look at Sam in the doorway. A slow smile blooms on his face.
He moves forward, way too much confidence for someone completely bare, body lithe and sure from years of hard exertion. Sam swallows.
“Woah, Sammy.” Dean pulls at Sam’s jeans, unbuttoned but still low on his hips. His thumbs brush against Sam’s dick as he pulls at the waist band. Dean looks up into Sam’s face, slow and inviting. “All for me?”
The use of the nickname, here, now, with Dean’s burning fingers inches away from something more makes Sam flush.
“Always.” Sam says, a touch too earnest. Something behind Dean’s eyes flickers, then, but he’s turning back around and sliding the curtain back before Sam can chase it.
“You coming?” He asks, throwing a look over his shoulder as Sam shucks his pants.
“That’s the idea, yeah,” Sam calls over the water, and Dean boos. Sam, giddy, tries to classify the noise that comes out of him as anything other than a giggle and finds that he can’t.
Dean pulls him into a kiss as soon as Sam’s foot has cleared the rim of the tub. He spins them, clumsily, biting down on Sam’s lip again as Sam’s neck and back get pelted with water. Dean pushes him down a little, so Sam’s hair gets soaked through. He can feel water drip over his closed eyes, spilling into his and Dean’s mouths as their tongues tangle. Dean’s taste is tinged with a metallic taste as the water mixes in their mouths.
Hard water, Sam’s brain supplies distantly. That means that this is hard water.
The name feels hilarious, suddenly, and Sam smiles against Dean’s mouth. Dean, catching Sam’s infectious, shaky elation, smiles back. Sam knows because he feels the slick slide of Dean’s teeth against his upper lip.
Sam is floored then, by the realization of how good this feels. Wanting Dean had always been shrouded in so much pain and agony and guilt that even exhausted daydreams about what this would be like were always cast in dark shadows. Sam’s gut would be churning even as he imagined bringing Dean to the precipice, and so the distinct lack of agony was enough to bring Sam to his knees. This, more than anything else, convinces Sam that it is real.
This feels good. Sam’s hand in Dean’s short hair feels like worship. Dean’s hand on his hip, a benediction. Like being forgiven. Absolution.
Kissing Dean feels like absolution.
Dean chokes a little giggle into his mouth when he almost slips, and Sam can’t stop smiling. Their kisses are barely kisses, just soaked touching of lips and laughs swallowed by hungry mouths.
Dean’s hand is tangled in Sam’s hair, and he is panting wet, hot breaths into his mouth, water falling over his eyes and in rivulets down his front.
Dean pulls back to heave for breath, and Sam is surprised that he doesn’t choke. Dean looks down at their feet, and makes a choked little noise—almost a whine. He looks back up at Sam, and he recognizes the look: indecision. Dean is biting his lip so hard that Sam wants to press his thumb to it and free the flushed skin.
“Unh,” Dean makes the noise again. “Fuck it. Fuck it, fuck it.” Dean slides to his knees. It involves a lot more maneuvering of long limbs, as they’re both way too big to be in the shower at the same time. The noise Sam makes is probably humiliating, but Dean is already mouthing at Sam’s skin like he loves it.
Sam almost wants to stop him, to tell him that Sam doesn’t expect anything, but Dean’s hands are roaming over his bare calves, his mouth gaping open as he eyes Sam’s cock and up into Sam’s face and Sam’s trying to come to term with the fact that Dean might need this as much as Sam did, to feel Sam’s heartbeat in his mouth, to swallow Sam whole.
He runs his tongue over the joint of Sam’s hip, into the crease of his thigh—inches away from Sam’s aching cock. He noses along the length of him, barely a brush of mouth, before he trails lower, a hairsbreadth away from Sam’s balls, heavy and aching.
Sam can’t help himself. He grabs a fistful of Dean’s short hair, fingernails reaching to the nape of his neck. Dean pushes his head into Sam’s fingers, a throaty groan sliding out between his teeth. When his eyes open next, his pupils are blown so wide Sam almost can’t see the ring of his irises.
“Shit. Do you know how many cocks I’ve choked on pretending it was yours?” Dean says, and it’s a miracle Sam hears him over the spray of water and the creaking pipes.
And Dean swallows him.
It is immediately obvious how much better Dean is at this. Sam feels himself abut the soft, velvet heat of the back of Dean’s mouth alarmingly quick. Sam had gotten blown before, but Dean treats it like an art form, bobbing his head and using his tongue in ways Sam feels should be outlawed immediately. Hot, burning arousal almost blinds him, and Sam bites down on a keen.
Dean gags, tears coming to his eyes, poising on his lashes before being washed away by the shower but he keeps moving forward, backing off for barely a second before descending again. The sounds he’s making are fucking obscene. His throat keeps constricting around little bids for air, choked whimpers and moans.
Sam’s spine is melting. He has to slam a hand into the tile over Dean’s head to keep himself upright. His vision is narrowing into this—Dean’s big eyes, wet with tears, as he stares up into Sam’s face, watching every expression raptly. Dean is fucking starving for this, and that thought alone almost sends Sam over the edge. He can feel his heartbeat in his ears, in his mouth, in his cock as Dean flicks his tongue over the head.
Sam (against every instinct in his body that demands he press Dean to the tile and) pulls Dean off his cock by the hand in his hair. Dean lets go immediately, a wet drag as Dean licks the precome from Sam’s tip.
His smile is carnivorous.
“Sam, you gotta go.” Dean rasps, his voice so wrecked, and Sam’s whole body throbs. It takes his brain a second too long to catch up, and cold dread creeps up his spine until Dean presses a soaked hand to Sam’s calf, nudging him away. “I gotta. I gotta take care of things in here.”
Sam nods, pushing his hair dripping with water, from his face.
“I’ll get the.” He has to gasp, not enough air in his lungs. “I’ll get the…shit. The stuff.”
Dean looks up at him, eyes still dark. “I’m kinda pissed that that still sounded hot.”
Sam’s knees and laughter shake as he awkwardly steps back over the rim of the tub. He walks (waddles, really) back into the room, and beelines for his bag. He fumbles with the side pocket until he manages to grab the lube, blinking water from his eyes and shivering in the cool air of the room.
He rips a condom from the roll, and has to try twice because his fingers slip on the slick foil. He moves to sit on the bed—his this time, as Dean’s is still mussed with the fresh water from earlier. He pulls the sheets down, and cradles the bulk of the lube bottle in his hands to warm it.
He’s lost, then, in the image of a younger Dean (how young? twenty? eighteen? younger??) on his knees for hazel-eyed strangers, strange fingers in Dean’s hair. It makes him burn a little, and tries to imagine a younger him (twenty-one? nineteen? younger??) in their place, cradling Dean’s face in his hands as Dean gagged. Sam imagines the reverse—Dean pressed against a brick wall of some bar or motel or warehouse, eyes bright and face unlined with the evidence of a lived life.
“Clean as a whistle.” Dean says, and Sam jumps guiltily. Dean is fucking gorgeous, standing proud in the light of the bathroom behind him, alive and stunning and too good to be real, to be permanent. A sudden feeling of uncertainty hits him then, but Dean doesn’t give him the time to get lost in his head. He walks forward, greeting Sam with an open-mouthed kiss, hands going immediately to Sam’s hair so he can tilt his head back. Sam mewls against his lips.
They fall back, Dean crawling on top of Sam with the confidence and ease of a predator sizing up easy prey. He slips off just as easily, laying back like he was just born to take it. Sam gets his knees underneath him, clambering back on top of Dean like a giraffe on roller skates. Coordination. Sam needs to work on his coordination.
Dean reaches over to his left, snatching the supplies Sam must have dropped. When his fingers brush the foil packet of the condom, his brows furrow.
“You wanna use a condom?” Dean seems a little incredulous. He holds up the little foil packet for his inspection, flipping it back and forth like checking for nutrition facts. Sam snatches it back from him.
“Um. Yeah?”
Dean shifts on the bed, the wet head of his dick leaking onto his stomach. Sam watches the wet spot now on his skin with a laser focus so intense that he almost forgets to breathe. Dean shifts his eyes to Sam, which is possibly the only thing that could break his attention now.
“I kinda.” Dean swallows, and his throat clicks. “I kinda want to feel you.”
Sam opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. He doesn’t think it’s possible to be harder than he is, but it’s a welcome surprise as his entire body throbs in a shock of heat. His brain restarts slower than a library computer.
“That’s super irresponsible.”
Dean raises an eyebrow. “You gonna knock me up, Sammy?”
Sam sputters, and he knows he’s blushing. “You—What—That’s not the only reason to use a condom—“ His voice is mostly squeak.
Dean chuckles a little, but holds the packet out to him.
“If you wanna.”
Sam looks from him to the condom. He slowly grabs it from Dean’s fingers. He shocks a laugh out of Dean when he throws it over his shoulder, bending down to devour Dean’s mouth in his own again.
Dean is arching up into his body, water-damp skin sliding against Sam’s in a maddening push-pull. Sam reaches for the lube, shakily pouring some onto his fingers. He way overshoots the amount he needs, and the slick running down his arm shouldn’t feel as erotic as it does. He pulls away from Dean’s mouth, and Dean presses a final kiss into Sam’s mouth just as he mouths Dean’s name. Dean falls back to the bed, chest heaving. His lashes are fluttering against his high cheekbones, kissing the freckled skin. A trail of blushing hickeys are already darkening against his lithe column of his neck, and the sight makes a dark, growling part of Sam purr in pleasure.
“C’mon, Sammy. Fuck me already.” Dean gasps, humping the air in vain for some friction. “Need you baby boy, c’mon.”
Sam lowers his hand to circle Dean’s entrance, before pressing his middle finger slowly past the ring of muscle. Dean inhales sharply, and Sam stills.
“Okay?” Sam asks, looking carefully at Dean’s expression. Dean’s brow is furrowed, but he nods.
“Strange.” He says finally, tightly, like he’s been holding his breath. Sam smooths a hand over his ribcage, encouraging him to take a breath. Dean’s chest spasms, filling Sam’s palm around an inhale.
“We can—“ Sam starts, but Dean cuts him off with a glare.
“If you were going to say stop, I’ll kill you.”
Sam was going to say that, but switches tacts.
“You can flip over. It might be easier starting on your stomach.”
Dean looks at him a little strangely. He inhales again.
“I’d. I’d like to see you, yeah?” Dean looks like he’s forcing the words out, and Sam’s insides go all hot and fuzzy for a second. Sam nods, and tries make his next words as neutral as possible.
“Yeah, okay.”
Sam presses his finger in a little farther, reaching over to add more lube to the stretch. Dean’s insides are wet, hot, tight and Sam has to breathe slowly through his mouth. Dean’s muscles are vise-tight, and Sam tries pressing against his walls to no avail.
“Shh, Dean, you’ve got this. Relax for me, baby,” Sam pets down Dean’s thigh, thumb brushing the base of Dean’s flagging erection. Dean’s panting like a racehorse, lungs expanding and constricting like bellows. His eyes are wide, but his face is neither twisted in pleasure nor pain. “You’re being so good for me, sweetheart. So perfect.”
Dean bites off a whimper, and hitches his hips down.
��Not a girl. And ’m not gonna break. More.”
Sam soothes him with another hand on Dean’s stomach, but pulls out slightly to insert his ring finger alongside his middle. Sam wants to press kisses to Dean’s hip and tell him that Dean deserves to be treated like he could break—fragile, delicate—but Sam knows Dean wouldn’t take it as he means it.
He scissors his fingers gently, spreading them apart. Dean’s body opens slightly, but his muscles are still so tight. The slick, burning hot, velvet, tight skin of him makes Sam’s brain a little fuzzy, and he tries to keep this about Dean.
He pushes a little deeper (wet groan from Dean), crooking his fingers and stroking Dean’s walls until he finds—
Dean jerks in his arms, a sharp cry, as his spine shoots straight. Sam repeats the movement, stroking along the bundle of nerves punishingly. Dean is moaning like one of those girls he brings back to their motel room, and Sam is addicted to the rumble of his chest, the slick, aching heat of him, the way Dean’s hands are scrambling for purchase on Sam’s shoulders, the bed covers, anything.
He’s babbling now, aborted combinations of Sam’s name with Jesus, Fuck, More.
Dean’s cock, which had flagged earlier due to the uncomfortable stretch, is fully erect again, brushing against his stomach as Sam presses another finger into Dean.
He could do this all day. His fingers are starting to cramp, scissoring and flexing in Dean’s heat, and his wet hair is curling against his overheated skin, but Sam is completely enraptured with the sight in front of him. In minutes, he has reduced Dean to babbling, as he thrusts his fingers gently against his prostate again and again and again. Dean has loosened up enough that Sam can spread his three fingers apart and Dean’s body accommodates him, pulling his fingers deeper and fuck. Sam feels his jaw slackening, but he’s never seen anything hotter, can feel the throb down to his bones, pulsing in his own cock and saliva pooling in his mouth.
Dean starts clawing at Sam’s shoulders, nails turning punishing as he inhales sharply again.
“In me. Inside. Now now.”
It takes Sam a second to process what Dean is asking, and fuck how could he have forgotten? Sam had been so absorbed with the offering of Dean’s pleasure, the thin sheen of sweat catching the yellow light of the lamp and making his skin glow, that he had entirely forgotten his own body.
His dick throbs painfully, bringing him back to the present. Sam reaches for a condom before he remembers that Dean didn’t want one, and now his blood is aflame in his body, overwhelmed with the potential in front of him. Any second.
He pulls his fingers from Dean’s body, and Dean makes a wounded noise. Sam pumps his cock once, twice, before lining it up to Dean’s entrance.
“Tell me I can, Dean. Please.” Sam leans over to bite hard on the meat of Dean’s shoulder, where the werewolf did all those years ago—a claiming mark now, as opposed to one of violence—tongue laving the sweat and spots of water. “Say it.”
Dean makes an incoherent noise, part wail, part sob. His fingers dig into Sam’s back, pressing hard against the curve of his spine.
“Yes, yes please, fuck me, fuck me.” The words are directly into Sam’s ear, hot, wet breath curling around his cheekbone.
Sam slides home.
He goes slowly, but the second he breaches Dean’s body, every nerve in his body lights up. Even though he’d been careful about opening Dean up, he’s still so tight, still so fucking hot, that Sam’s skin aches everywhere it’s not touching Dean’s.
Sam mouths at the indent of teeth he left behind on Dean’s shoulder, apologetic kisses as Dean gasps around the intrusion.
Dean makes a noise that could sound like the word ‘more’ if given more voice, so Sam complies, sliding in inch by inch.
When he finally is in all the way, Dean sighs loudly, like he’s proud of himself, like he does after a difficult hunt or after Sam compliments him on a plan.
“Full. Fuck, Sammy. I’m so full.” Dean presses a hand below his stomach, almost as if he would be able to feel Sam’s cock through his skin. Dean’s throat clicks as he swallows, and Sam watches the movement of his Adam’s apple hungrily. “Mine?” He asks, but he sounds unsure, like he doesn’t know whether he should be saying it at all.
Sam feels a whine slide between his teeth.
“Yeah, baby. Just yours.”
Dean starts making little movements against Sam’s hips, where their pelvises are resting against each other. Being in Dean feels…indescribable. Like an itch that had finally been scratched, relief so thorough and alleviating that Sam shakes with it. Like Odysseus must have felt like stepping onto Ithaca’s shores again, like a shoe must feel placed on a mat, like the falling Sun must feel when it sees the Moon rising. Like Sam is finally whole. A whole person. There’s nothing wrong with this—nothing could possibly be wrong with the sudden, intense calm in his head.
Dean’s pelvis bone against his, legs wrapped around Sam’s thighs, as close as two people can be—inside of each other—without ripping open skin.
Dean starts making encouraging noises, shifting up in Sam’s arms, and Sam—suddenly aware of every nerve in his body—acquiesces, pulling slightly out of Dean.
Dean starts making a noise that is punched out of him as Sam slides home again.
Sam’s skin is melting off of his bones—it’s the only explanation for the prickling, throbbing heat over every pore. Sam fucks up into Dean again, and adjusts his angle so the next thrust is aimed at his prostate. Dean throws his head back, eyes wide and blissed out, mouth agape.
Sam lets go of Dean’s hip with one hand to tangle in the short hair at the back of his head and increasing the angle, forcing Dean’s head back, into bearing his throat, into submission. Sam begins mauling Dean in earnest, hips pumping and mouth biting, licking, every inch of Dean’s skin he can reach, his collarbones and sternum and neck.
Dean balls a hand in Sam’s hair, down to the roots, and Sam worries distantly that Dean will pull him off, but Dean does the opposite. He presses Sam’s face to his skin harder, turning his head back to what must be a painful angle so Sam has more access to the canvas of skin.
After sucking a particularly livid bruise over the skin above Dean’s heart is Sam satiated, and he pulls back a little.
A glint catches Sam’s eye, and he looks to see tears brimming over Dean’s lashes, trailing down his temples and to the pillow. His eyes are wet, and he gasps a wet breath, biting down on his bottom lip punishingly.
Sam stills immediately, a hand reaching up to brush the wetness from Dean’s lashes.
“‘m good. Don’t stop, don’t you fucking dare.” Dean says, but his voice is breathy, shaking and tremulous. Sam doesn’t know what to do. He’s paralyzed by Dean’s tears, but Dean is making little hitching movements with his hips, trying to slide Sam deeper.
Sam only rasps Dean’s name, a gentle prod that Dean shakes his head at.
“Good.” Dean finally manages. “Harder.” He says, shifting his hips down to meet Sam’s tentative thrust, their bodies working in concert. “More.”
Sam’s brain white-outs, and he speeds his thrusts. Every push into Dean’s body is ecstasy, every nerve and pore and inch of skin alight with mind-numbing pleasure. Sam doesn’t know how he lived without his until now—doesn’t know if he can force himself to live without it again.
Dean has fucked a lot of people, but Sam doesn’t think Dean has ever been theirs in the way he is Sam’s right now. He’s completely pliant in Sam’s arms, head rolling and hands tight in the short, sweat-slick hair of Sam’s nape. He keeps trying to say something, but he’s so fucked out that his mouth is only moving around nothing. That sick, possessive thrill runs through Sam again, and he’s dangerously close to coming apart.
“Look at you,” Sam mutters, leaning up to see the full sensuous line of Dean’s body. “God, Dean. So perfect. So beautiful baby, you’re so good to me. So fucking gorgeous.”
Dean’s brow furrows, but his cock jerks between them, leaking precome onto his already soaked skin. Sam wraps a hand around his neglected dick, sliding fingers loosely around him. Dean sobs, jerking up into his touch.
“Do you like that, hm baby? Being so good to me?” Sam leans down, licking a stripe along the hinge of Dean’s jaw. “Hearing how good you’re taking care of me?”
Dean’s eyes go comically wide, a wail ripping from his throat.
“Jesus Christ, Sam. Where the fuck did you learn to talk like that?” Dean’s pupils are blown and his words are mostly gasps, but his hips are still jerking against Sam’s hands. When he reaches up to cradle Sam’s face, his hands are shaking. He presses his forehead to Sam’s, breath panting directly into Sam’s mouth, who opens his mouth further to feel Dean’s breath directly from his lungs.
Sam smiles.
“Trevor.”
Dean puffs a laugh, a finger tilting so he can dig a nail into Sam’s sideburn. “Fuck you.”
Sam’s chest is aching, warmth and adoration and emotions too big for Sam’s body beating against the inside of his ribs.
“I love you,” Sam says, helpless to anything else. “God, I love you so much I think it’ll kill me.” He speeds his hand on Dean’s cock, tightening his grip just enough to finally provide the friction that he needs. Sam can feel the skin of Dean’s forehead furrowing against his own, as little punched-out noises are poured into Sam’s mouth.
Sam pulls back as he feels Dean’s body tensing against his own, desperate to see Dean’s face as—
Dean comes apart in Sam’s arms, mouth snapping open around a noiseless cry and body going taught. His eyes—so green and familiar and beloved—are watery and fuzzy, pupils swallowing his irises. Sam feels the hot spill of Dean’s come in his hand, cock jerking and never-ending. Sam works him through it, hand slowing as Dean starts making little overstimulated noises.
Sam chases his own release, grabbing Dean’s hips with both hands as he slams into him.
“C’mon, Sammy,” Dean rasps, making small movements of his hips to meet Sam’s thrusts. Sam is getting close, so close he can taste it, the blinding crest of agony-ecstasy-Dean, and he moves to pull out. Dean’s hands snap out, grabbing Sam’s hips and pulling him back into the hot cradle of his body.
“No, in. In me, Sammy, c’mon give it to me.” Dean’s babbling as he tightens his grip on his waist, eyes wide and watery and adoring. “I want to feel you—as far in as you can go.”
It’s the last push, and with two, three, four pumps in, he’s coming.
His whole world explodes, and he buries his cock into Dean as far as it will go, feeling Dean clench around him, pulling him impossibly farther, hot and perfect and Sam’s. The crest of his pleasure threatens to undo him, and every fiber in his body slots into place, hums in perfect key. Sam collapses forward against Dean, as every muscle in his body goes limp.
When he finally manages to blink his eyes open again, he can feel Dean squirming against him as he tries to breathe. Shit, Sam probably weighs a ton.
Sam pulls himself out of Dean’s body, Dean making a little dazed noise. He just has the presence of mind to grab the nearest piece of clothing (Dean’s shirt that had fallen off the bed) to wipe them off. He rubs Dean’s cock, to a noise of sleepy protest/pleasure, and over his ass, still leaking come onto his thigh. When he’s satisfied, Sam turns over to turn the lamp off, wrangling Dean under the covers, and pressing him close.
Dean rubs his face into the space between Sam’s face and the pillow like a cat, making a snort-grumbling noise. He pulls Sam’s leg over his waist, and Sam bends his knee so he can press against Dean’s calf. Dean pulls Sam against his chest, tucking his head over Sam’s. It’s so familiar, Sam pressed to Dean’s chest, legs sliding down until they’re intertwined. It makes tears press against Sam’s sleepy eyes, thinking about how many times he’d fallen asleep in the comforting nest of Dean’s body, too young to know that this love was damning. Too adoring and warm to resist.
Dean presses his nose into Sam’s hair and inhales deeply. Sam would like to think that Dean’s thinking the same thing, that this familiar embrace means even a fraction as much as it means to Sam. But Dean’s slow breath betrays the fact that he’s already far away in sleep.
And as Sam always does, he follows Dean.
It’s the fastest Sam had fallen asleep since Stanford.
~~~
When Sam wakes up, he’s surprised by how bright it is outside. He’s always up at the crack of dawn, rising with the sun. It drives—drove—Jess crazy, but his nightmares would wake him up more often than not.
Sometimes they were of the fire, of Jess on the ceiling, but some of them were snatches of Sam’s childhood. Hot vinyl sticking to Sam’s legs in a diner. Jeans three sizes too big. Dean holding Sam’s face in place as he taught him how to shave. Girls laughing behind Sam in geometry. Sam being pushed into a motel pool, mucky with algae, by a laughing Dean, sun-spotted with freckles and wearing paper-thin swim trunks from a gas station. Dad’s eyes in the Impala’s rear view mirror. Dad handing him his first knife, loving and hating the natural way it fit into his palm.
Sam rolls over, seeking warmth in a too-small bed, but there’s no one there.
A bone-deep knowledge, panic, shreds Sam’s insides like tissue paper. He sits up, looking around the room.
Dean’s gone.
Dean is gone.
Dean rarely wakes up before Sam, if ever. Ever since Sam completed his growth-spurt, age fifteen, his anger and anxiety would propel him up at ungodly hours. He would lace up his worn-flat sneakers and run a mile or three before the sun finished rising. The thump of his heartbeat and the rush of adrenaline calmed him a way hunting never did. But Dean was never a morning person. He had to be cajoled out of bed with promises of coffee and whatever breakfast Sam had brought back.
All warmth from seconds ago has been leeched from the room, and Sam throws the blanket off. He rushes to the bathroom, but the door is open wide and Dean isn’t there. Sam stumbles back into the room, his head-rush finally catching up with him as he wilts against the wall.
He can feel a curl of white-hot panic wedge itself between his ribs. Did Dean leave-leave? Sam, eyes wide, looks down at their bags. Their. Plural. Dean’s duffel is still next to his on the table, contents splayed open. Sam tries to breathe around the knife in his chest, but the bag does little to calm his racing heart.
He grabs a pair of jeans at random and pulls them up over his hips, only realizing they’re Dean’s when the hems brush the bottoms of his calves. He jerks open the door, blinking away the blinding morning light. Dew has sprinkled the forest beyond, and the air is fresh and bracing, but the Impala is gone.
Gone.
Sam steps out, shivering a little in the cool morning breeze. He realizes, somewhere under the chorus of He’s gone, He’s gone, He’s gone, that he should have grabbed a shirt. He wanders, barefoot and dazed, forward into the parking lot. Maybe Dean moved the car away from the road?
Sam follows the bank of rooms until the end, turning the corner to find an empty lot, with scattered Doritos bags and plastic wrappers and more forest beyond.
Sam must have gotten back in the room, but doesn’t register anything again until he’s staring at the wall, hands clenched in his lap.
Sam runs last night over and over again in his brain. It’s a full rush of Dean, naked, pressed against tile and sheets and eyes wide, watering, as Sam pressed in, in.
Did…Did he pressure Dean into anything last night?
Dean had a problem saying no to Sam. It was incredibly helpful when they were younger—it was funny when Dean let Sam have the other Hot Pocket, it was cool when Dean let Sam stay up past his bedtime, it was cool when Sam woke up one day in the fifth grade and a pair of new running shoes was sitting in his duffel like they had been there the whole time. Sam had a sway over his brother—phrase anything with a touch of that little-brother whine—and it came in handy before Sam really realized what that meant.
It stopped being funny when Sam told Dean he wanted a skateboard and Dean had been locked up overnight in Billings, Montana for shoplifting. It wasn’t funny when Sam asked Dean for an extra helping of dinner and Dean handed over his own portion, lying and saying he was already full. It wasn’t funny if…if. If Dean had said yes because Sam had asked him to.
Dean’s not an idiot, Sam tries to reason. And he’s not a pushover. If it was serious, he would say no.
But it doesn’t ease the tight cramp in his stomach, it doesn’t make the flare of panic recede. Sam is still sitting in an empty motel room, hours after having sex with Dean.
Dean couldn’t stand to look at you. Couldn’t stand to sleep in the same bed as you.
And then, a noise as familiar to Sam as his own breathing. More, even. A sound as familiar as the rumble of Deans’ voice, as familiar as the crackle of electricity, as rain.
The Impala’s door. Opening. And then closing.
Sam sits up straight, heartbeat rising in his throat as he shoots to his feet. He’s stumbling up the door, fingertips on the doorknob when it swings open.
Dean is there—jolting back as Sam presses forward into his space. Eyes wide, dazed. Dad’s coat and ratty Metallica shirt and scuffed boots and bruises dotted across the length of his neck, a fresh pink. His fingers wrapped around the handle of a plastic bag, a carton in his other hand supporting two cups of—Sam inhales—coffee.
Sam manages to tear his eyes away from Dean to see the Impala parked over his shoulder, where it should be.
“Woah, Sam, what the fuck?” Dean continues to step back, and Sam starts to reach for him—No—when he realizes it’s because the cups perched precariously on the take-out container are wobbling. Dean’s arm moves, trying to stabilize the tower, but Sam reaches out and grabs it from him.
“Sorry,” He says, reflex. It’s a bizarrely mundane exchange, in the face of it all. Sam’s skin crawls. Dean pushes past him to put the food down, and Sam watches every movement hungrily.
It’s just food. Breakfast. Dean went out to get breakfast. Sam feels the tension in his stomach slowly loosen. Dean woke up early and went to get breakfast. It’s a dance as easy as breathing, it’s a routine so engrained its biological.
Sam finally leaves the doorway, closing the door behind him and shuffling to stand next to Dean. He puts the box and the cups on the table, shifting his weight slightly to press into Dean’s side. He tries to look into Dean’s face, but Dean keeps turning slightly, just out of sight as he unpacks the bag. Two bottles of orange juice. A bag of peanut M&Ms. A bag of Sam’s favorite trail mix. Two Slim Jims. A tube of toothpaste. He crumples the bag and crosses the room to his duffel bag, shoving it into the side pocket. Sam moves the coffee cups and opens the container to find a stack of four pancakes (two chocolate chip and two regular) and a handful of syrup containers.
(It’s bad if Dean got pancakes. Pancakes were a luxury when they were younger, eaten pretty routinely until Sam was eight, at which point Dean stopped buying them. I’m sick of ‘em, Dean had said, And I’m older so what I say goes. From then on it was bacon and egg sandwiches and soggy fruit cups. Sam later found a library book stolen from a library in Vermont in Dean’s duffel titled Feeding a Family: How to Raise a Healthy Child. The pages were dog-eared. It was one of those things that Sam would remember at Stanford that would punch the breath from his lungs. Twelve was too young to realize that your father didn’t care what you ate, that you had to ration your money on food that would provide sustenance for a child. Pancakes were a luxury food—when Sam was sick, when Sam got picked on at school, when Dad uprooted them suddenly from a school Sam really liked.)
Sam can feel his heartbeat in his ears but he tears the styrofoam container in two, lid separating from the base in a noise too loud for the silent room. He separates the food, chocolate chip for Dean and plain for him, dividing the syrup, coffee, orange juice, and plastic utensils evenly. By the time Dean turns around, Sam is shifting awkwardly in one of the chairs at the table, food ready.
Dean’s eyes flick up to his face, and he’s stopped by whatever he finds there.
“Stop lookin’ at me like that,” Dean says, but he sounds agonized, as if Sam is doing something supremely unfair. Sam wants to apologize—maybe, his head is pounding and his mouth is dry, he’s not sure what he wants—but is physically incapable of moving his eyes from Dean’s face.
If this is the end, Sam wants to see it coming with both eyes open.
Dean starts moving toward him, and Sam hears the chair creak. He must’ve leaned forward. Before Dean can make contact (hand reaching up, out, on reflex before falling back down his side), he stops. He clears his throat.
“Okay, we have to talk about it.”
Sam nods frantically, relieved. He thought he’d have to beat thoughts from Dean.
“Okay, I—“
“No, Sam.” Dean cuts him off, voice firm, and Sam falls immediately silent, feeling inexplicably chastised. “I’m going first.”
Dean moves to sit across from him, and Sam kind of wishes he had stayed away. His face is so close, the undeniable evidence of his anxiety on full display.
“This can never happen again.” Dean says, and Sam feels his entire world fall into one single pinprick of light. “It was a mistake. I don’t want this. I don’t want you. You’re my brother, Sammy. That’s it.” Darkness creeps in.
“Don’t do this,” Sam thinks he says, or he means to, but he can’t feel his tongue.
“I was desperate for some kinda connection or something. I don’t know.” Dean scrubs a hand through his hair. “Losing you made me all weird. But that’s all.”
The worry of earlier comes back to Sam with a vengeance. Dean was vulnerable last night, and Sam had taken advantage.
Sam had.
Sam.
Sam’s probably breathing hard, somewhere, can hear someone raggedly breathing. Is it him? Dean’s still looking at him with hard eyes, as if he’s practiced this speech a hundred times before, as if he eats Sam alive for breakfast on days that end with ‘y.’
You sick freak, you freak. This was always going to happen, this was always—
“But you—“ told me you loved me, Sam wants to say, as petulant and desperate as a child for it not to be true. But…no he didn’t. Sam tries to run everything Dean said back in his head. I want you. First times are supposed to be special. Mine. Not love. Sam had filled in the blanks.
“You said you wanted me.” Sam has to finally settle on.
Dean’s face twists uncomfortably.
“Listen…uh. It’s not too late for you, ya know?”
Sam’s insides settle comically fast. Oh. This isn’t Dean not wanting him, this is Dean being a fucking dick about it. Relief, sharp and bitter, floods Sam’s mouth.
He had started to think he had coerced Dean into something—violated Dean, in a real and unforgivable way. He thought Dean was just as desperate as he was, but for a different reason. But, no. The asshole was trying to be fucking noble. Sam still hears his heartbeat in his head, but can finally catch his breath.
“Fuck you,” He says. Dean reacts as if Sam had lobbed a grenade on the table, pin mysteriously absent.
He bristles. “Excuse me?”
Sam has to stand, nervous energy built and built and built with no release. He starts to walk to the door with the intention to pace, but Dean jumps up, snagging Sam by the bicep.
“Woah, wait a second here, man. Don’t—“
Sam shakes the arm off.
“You’re going to ‘man’ me right now?” Sam asks. “And what the fuck is wrong with you? I thought I had assaulted you, asshole.”
Dean blanches, backing up a step.
“I never said—“
“But you’re just being a dick, like usual. And I’m not leaving—I’m not pulling what you pulled this morning.”
Dean blinks hard, and Sam can see him process what Sam waking up in an empty room probably signified to him. Dean’s face settles into a hard, dead look. It’s his Dad-face: no emotion, no twitch of expression, just solider. It makes Sam fucking infuriated to see it on Dean now.
“You wanna talk about leaving, Sammy?” Dean’s face is so flushed that Sam can’t see the spatter of freckles across his nose. “You wanna fucking talk about leaving?”
Sam’s body lights up in a white-hot pulse of anger-hurt-shock so acute that his face goes numb.
“That’s not fair.” He finally manages to say.
“‘Cause leaving is all you know how to do.” Dean plows on, shoulders lifting like he’s expecting Sam to reel back and deck him.
“I was seventeen!” Sam knows his voice is way too loud, even in his own ears, but can’t stop the trembling sick rolling up his body in waves. They’re too good at hurting each other—they know every single pressure point to target.
“And you’re my kid brother!” Dean shouts. He pales, stumbling back. He sits down, hard, in the chair behind him. The room is deafeningly quiet, only Sam’s breaths and the sound of Dean scrubbing a hand over his face, the shush of skin on skin.
“Fuck, Sammy.” Dean’s voice is choked. “You’re my little brother.”
Sam knows that getting in Dean’s space is the wrong move now, but it doesn’t stop the urge to go and press his face into Dean’s chest and keep it there.
He manages to curb the instinct, barely, but sits down on the edge of the bed facing the table. Dean sits with the weight of what he’s feeling, and Sam tries to give him time to process. Dad was a ticking time bomb, and Sam’s no better. Dean has a long fuse, and sits in his hurt before he lets anyone see it. Sam has gotten familiar with sitting in Dean’s tense silences. It always makes him feel like clawing his skin off—he’s not comfortable with sitting in the weight it. Dean inhales shakily.
“I’ve been so good about it, you were never supposed to know.” He says finally, hand coming to wipe across his mouth. He looks up at Sam through red-rimmed eyes. “I’ve been working on it. I’ve been really damn good about it.”
“About wanting me?” Sam asks, hoping that Dean will say no. He’s talking about it like an addiction—like a habit he can’t break. Sam doesn’t want to be that.
Dean keeps going, like he’s not listening. “The second I realized, I told myself I’d never do anything that…But you realized anyway? Shit, Sam. I’m so sorry.”
Dean’s shaking his head, mouth pressed into a thin line.
“It’s wrong. It’s so fucked up. I should have never let you—“
“Let me?” Sam repeats incredulously. “You were a pretty willing participant, if I remember.”
Dean flushes up to his ears, the tips as pink as a sunburn.
“It’s wrong. You’ll never get your kids, your wife, and your picket-fence-apple-pie life you’ve always wanted. You want normal? Fucking your brother is kind of the opposite of normal.”
Sam can feel his mouth twist down. It’s so crass, the way Dean says it. Sam’s not a prude—hasn’t been since Dean gave him the safe sex talk when he was thirteen. But still. Sam watches Dean’s face.
“If you never want to kiss me again, I’d still be here.” He needs Dean to know that—he’s not a stopover onto something better, he’s it.
Dean’s face shutters in a way Sam knows means he hit a nail on the head. “Stop it.”
Sam’s on a roll now, though. “I want you, damn the consequences. We’ve never lived by ‘normal,’ and I don’t see why we should start now.”
“Morally, Sam—forget everyone else.” Dean’s as recalcitrant as a mule, as dutiful and contrite as a penitent. Sam wonders if he’s ever not feared punishment from a higher-up—a striking hand from an unforgiving father. Sam wants to tear his own hair out.
“You literally said it yourself: You plan on going to hell, so what—“
“You believe in Heaven,” Dean says, like a challenge. Like struggling with his religion and struggling with his feelings for Dean aren’t the two cornerstones of Sam’s life.
“I don’t think God could make me like this,” Sam says, “And decide to damn me for it anyway.”
Dean stops at that, eyes wide.
“You think someone made me like this?”
“Made us like this.” Sam nudges his foot forward until it hits Dean’s. Whatever Sam and Dean are, they are made of the same fibre, the same fabric. “The way I love you doesn’t feel wrong at its core. It just feels like you.”
Dean looks away sharply, casting his eyes to the ceiling before falling back down to his hands. His hands are shaking where he’s clasped them together. His voice trembles, as he says,
“No one should be allowed to love anything as much as I love you.” Dean exhales, a laugh married to a sob.“People weren’t built to carry this shit inside ‘em. It isn’t right, it isn’t sane. I—“
Sam moves forward, falling to Dean’s feet. He breaks the grasp that Dean’s hands have on each other and move them to each side of his face. It’s so similar to last night that Sam’s throat closes with it.
“I don’t want to die.” Dean says, so close to Sam’s own mouth that Sam can feel each word unfurl on his lips. “I don’t want to leave you like this—now that I can—“
Dean’s mouth twitches, and he’s so damn close to crying that Sam can see the tears building on his lashes. Sam swallows around the lump in his own throat. He’ll do anything to keep him. Any damn thing. The world—hell—will have to claw Dean Winchester from his hands.
“I’m with you until the end, okay?” Sam says, voice breaking. Dean’s thumb moves over his lash line, stopping a tear before it can fall. Sam feels the liquid cool on his cheek. “Whether…whether it’s in four months or forty years. I’m in this.”
Sam watches the bob of Dean’s throat as he swallows. He looks young, so damn young in the light filtering through the window and Sam’s heart in his hands. Sam can feel the thrum of his blood (their blood, their shared blood, molecules unbreakable, down to the foundations, down to DNA) under his fingers on his wrist. His eyes flick between Sam’s own, searching for a falter, a break. He will find none.
“Until the end?”
Sam leans up, so Dean can feel Sam’s mouth form the words on his own, “The last possible second.”
~~~
Dean dies three months and twenty-nine days later, gasping blood between slick teeth, arm extended brokenly to where Sam is pinned to the wall. Sam wails into the open cavity of his chest. It’s worse than dying. It’s worse than living, too.
#supernatural#wincest fanfiction#samdean#wincest#cross posted on ao3#fanfic#spn fanfic#sam and dean#sam winchester#dean winchester#supernatural season 3#erotically codependent
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penny for your thoughts on salmondean codependency ?
Sure. Fair warning it’s long (was longer but I stopped myself.)
I think it’s complicated in a show that’s had so many different showrunners because they’ve all handled Sam and Dean’s relationship very differently. In Kripke’s era (s1-5) there was a romanticization of the bond. Sure there was a lot of in-depth exploration of how they wound up at the place they were at, spoiler alert: it was all because of John and his obsessive crusade to find the demon that killed his wife. That’s all he cared about and as a result, Sam and Dean had to be everything to each other. But Kripke had no intention of dismantling that at any point because he was (and always had been) writing a tragedy. Gamble continued that too. There was no room for anyone else in their lives and it would always just be the two of them against the world. So Cas had to go. Bobby had to go.
(Actually, it's funny because Gamble didn't intend this at the time, her plan was to kill Cas off, but by Edlund creating the masterpiece that is The Man Who Would Be King, he not only saved Cas from being seen as a villain, but he also deepened Dean and Cas' relationship in such a profound way and inextricably linked the two of them emotionally. And since Cas was eventually brought back, that laid the foundation for a lot of what their relationship would become.)
Up until this point, there hadn’t really been any significant dismantling of perhaps the more unhealthy parts of Sam and Dean’s relationship. Enter Carver. He stripped things down and started to explore what drove these characters. What they wanted and why they couldn’t have it. It starts with Dean being mad at Sam for not looking for him in purgatory, which sets up the whole speech in the s8 finale of Sam’s guilt about letting Dean down, but the thing is, Dean was never honest with Sam about his year away either. He never told Sam he could have gotten out much sooner if he hadn’t stayed to find Cas. I mean Dean had assumed Sam was up there alone doing God knows what to try to bring him back, and yet still he stayed in Purgatory because things were clear there. He needed Cas. Anyway, I just find that interesting, but Cas isn’t a victim of Sam and Dean’s relationship in s8.
Who gets the honour of being cast aside? That would be Benny and Amelia, two characters they introduced in s8 specifically to highlight that Sam and Dean’s relationship doesn’t allow for anyone else to be a significant part of their life. I mean that’s nothing new, we’ve watched that happen many times before. Lisa even said as much to Dean. The thing is this time? It’s framed as a truly sad thing. That moment at the end of 8x10 when Dean has just ended things with Benny and Sam leaves Amelia, and they’re sitting alone drinking beer and watching tv is such a hollow empty moment. This is not what they want. But it’s the way things have to be.
I’m actually fascinated by Sam and Dean’s conversation in the church in the s8 finale. Not so much Dean’s assertion that there is no one else he would put before Sam, but more so what provokes it, which is Sam saying “who are you going to turn to instead of me. Another angel? Another vampire?” See the thing is Dean saying he would always put Sam first is not news. We know this and it’s not really an unhealthy statement in itself either. A lot of people would put their sibling above anything else, not less a sibling who you raised and is the most important person to you. But in this context? After what Sam said? It just highlights how unhealthy they are if Sam believes that Dean having other people in his life means he doesn’t love him enough. That he’s a disappointment to him. That’s so profoundly fucked up.
(Note, Dean tells Sam that he killed Benny for him but he doesn’t say anything about Cas. I think like I said before, this is because Cas and Dean’s relationship has largely existed out of the Sam and Dean stuff up to this point - Sam and Cas don’t even really have much of a relationship yet besides both of their connections to Dean.)
And then from here, things start getting steadily worse. But we also keep being shown how bad they are. Dean lying to Sam, taking away his free will by letting Gadreel possess him. Dean sending Cas away, Kevin dying. It’s all awful. The whole “there ain’t no me if there ain’t no you line” from 9x01 isn’t really said by Dean, it’s Gadreel, but that is how Dean feels. He does think that’s all he’s good for. And over the season we’re shown how much of himself and what he truly wants he’s had to give up because of his ingrained “Save Sammy” and “Sammy comes first” mentality. It’s always been this way for him. In 9x07 we see that he had found a happy home, a good father figure, and his first love, a first love might I add that he had to leave behind with no real explanation because Sam needed him, and Sam comes first.
I mean just one episode earlier we had him rushing out the door elated about seeing Cas and spending time with him, only for their time together to come to sad and melancholic end when Dean once again leaves Cas behind without any real explanation, because despite what he wants Sammy comes first. What he wants doesn’t matter.
See I think after the Gadreel stuff comes out is where the narrative starts to get a little wonky for me. You can clearly see that this was intended to be a shorter story that they ended up stretching out to a much longer one because of renewals. There’s also the fact that this is a formula show so they can’t necessarily be separated for longer than an episode or two. S10 is a rough one to get through at times, I think the themes still mostly hold up but it’s a rough one to get through.
S10 highlights all the connections that Dean has, Cas, Charlie, Crowley even, but Sam doesn’t really have those bonds in the same way. For Sam it’s just Dean, so he goes down a reckless destructive “do anything to save Dean!” path and so many innocents pay the price, and ultimately with the release of The Darkness, the whole world.
They skirted right up to the edge of exploring just how toxic and dangerous their relationship had become in the season 10 finale.
DEAN: I let Rudy die. How was that not evil? I know what I am, Sam. But who were you when you drove that man to sell his soul... Or when you bullied Charlie into getting herself killed? And to what end? A..a good end? A just end? To remove the Mark no matter what the consequences? Sam, how is that not evil? I have this thing on my arm, and you're willing to let the Darkness into the world.
I can’t say evil is the right word, they were never evil, but they were wilfully blind to everything and everyone else when it came to saving each other. S10 tested my love for the show because after watching it, because there was certainly a feeling that the two of them had become the villains of this story. And don’t get me wrong, I didn’t have a problem with that, it’s just after 2 seasons of this I can’t say I had a lot of faith that this was going to be properly addressed or if we were going to keep going in circles around it. Keep being shown, it’s bad and then nothing much being done to fix it. Your mileage may vary on how it was handled, but I think s11 did a relatively ok job considering it wasn’t the end of the story, and the show needed to keep going.
See from Dean’s side a lot of the codependency rests on
1. His father’s orders to always save Sammy
2. His low self-esteem where he sees himself as nothing but a blunt instrument.
3. His guilt at not being able to perfectly fulfil every familial role in Sam’s life
4. His belief that no one could choose to love him but family has to love you.
5. The unhealthy example of what it should look like to love someone that he got from John. You give up everything but them.
For Sam (and honestly it’s not as clear for me as Dean’s side is so feel free to correct me/disagree on this)
1. Everytime he’s tried to leave and create his own life it’s never ended well.
2. His guilt over wanting freedom and a normal life when he was younger (I’m referring specifically to Stanford era here)
3. His guilt over everything Dean has given up for him.
4. John.
5. Jess.
Ultimately it all comes down to isolation. They both had to be everything to each other, and the deeper they got into this fight, the more people that they lost, the tighter they clung to this notion of family and brothers. I think s11 (and 11x23 in particular) was an important turning point, both for Sam and Dean’s relationship, as well as for them as individuals. Because they weren’t alone there anymore. Cas was there. Sam let Dean walk to his death. Of course, it would devastate him, but he knew it was what had to be done. And he didn’t walk out of that bar and go back to the bunker alone. He had Cas, he had someone who cared about him and wanted to help him and talk to him. Sure Dean asked Cas to take care of Sam for him (you know after Cas offered to walk to his death with him) but Sam let him. He let him be there for him. We didn’t get to see much before the BMOL showed up and blasted Cas away, but still, we saw enough.
I think that’s a significant difference to note why their relationship was different in the Dabb era. It wasn’t just them anymore. Cas was an important member of their family and given a level of importance he’d never been given before and couldn’t have been when the story they were telling was of the dangers of their codependency. Mary was back. Eventually, Jack would become a part of their unit too. Just the two of them wasn’t enough for them anymore. This is made abundantly clear with all of Dean’s desperate attempts to get Cas to stay in s12, followed by his inability to keep going when they lose Cas and Mary in s13. Similarly, Sam really struggles when they lose Jack and fail to get Mary back later in the season.
Another big moment is Dean letting Sam go alone to lead the hunters against the BMOL in 12x22 while he stays back to try and reach Mary. Like he tells Mary, he’s had to be a brother, a father and a mother to Sam and he never stopped seeing him as his kid, but in that moment he makes a choice. He lets Sam take charge and he shows that he trusts him and believes in him. He knows he can handle it.
Sometimes it’s not even a character growth thing. Sometimes having other people there stops you from making destructive choices even though that’s still your first instinct. I’m thinking specifically of 13x21 after Sam was killed. Dean would have run headlong into that nest of vampires and got himself torn apart, but Cas was there to stop him. He was able to make him see reason.
Basically, I think that for a long time, they thought the only relationship they could have was each other, which then became a self-fulfilling prophecy because their desperate attempts to keep each other around led to them losing the people around them. They eventually started to learn that that wasn’t true, they could have more, they were allowed to want more, and that it wasn’t an either-or situation. Dean didn’t have to choose between Sam and Cas. They didn’t have to choose between each other or Jack. The same goes for Mary. Different relationships can coexist without threatening each other, and not say that their relationship in s12-15 was all smooth sailing, but it was certainly so very different from everything that came before.
(There’s maybe a point to be made about how they didn’t have anyone or anything in the finale and how that relates to the story we got, but honestly I have no idea what the intention was with any of the choices made in that episode so I’ll leave it at that for now.)
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I Bet You Think About Me
Part two
Pairing: Sam Winchester X Reader (she/her)
Word Count: 1,806
Warnings: spoilers for season 7
Summary: A new person messes with Sam's head. For once, it's the fun kind though
part one
The next morning, Y/N was the last to come down for breakfast. Not that this was unusual, dad barely got her out of bed before twelve on a peaceful day. Today though, she was curious. Curious of the two men down there, that she had heard so much about already but never met in person.
Which really was to be blamed on the worst fucking timing in the world. Every time, Y/N showed up at her dad's the Winchesters had just taken off to the next job or she had had to leave herself. Okay, and maybe she was just the tiniest bit intimidated by them and the stories dad had told her. Or the things she had picked up on the road about the famous Winchester brothers that killed demons, worked with angels and put Lucifer back in his cage like it was nothing. They were legends amongst the hunters, even if not well liked.
Made out to be bordering on insanity most of the time, far closer to it than every other hunter traveling the roads. Stories of Sam and Dean being shot and walking the next day happy and alive had reached Y/N. Though that one had sounded made up. And always in between, she heard the warnings of how reckless they were, going over bodies to reach their goal, to finish their job. Only the fact that her father had told her so much more about them, about them as kids, their personalities, had made her able to face them. And maybe a little bit of Dean's easy comments and Sam's smile had eased her mind.
Well, now they were downstairs in the kitchen. Y/N could do this, she could face them and be as confident as she made herself to be.
"Morning sunshine," Dean greeted her, mouth full of bacon and a grin around it, "had a satisfying night?"
Oddly enough, the casual way in that he had addressed her put her at ease immediately. Y/N threw her hair over her shoulder and waved at the people at the kitchen table, ignoring the last part of the sentence. "Morning guys."
Dad grunted and Sam waved with his fork. While she was waiting for her toasts, leaned against the counter, she listened to Dean recount the events of their last hunt. Obviously, they had been talking about it before she had come down so Y/N was content to just listen and watch them.
To match the actual faces with the stories that had followed her. And to be honest, Y/N couldn't see why everyone had a problem with them. Right now, they seemed like two normal brothers, happy in their discussion and comfortable at a friend's kitchen table. Nothing like the monsters they were whispered to be. Y/N felt herself relax with every laugh and crude remark they threw at each other.
She would be lying if she said that Sam didn't draw her eyes back to him more than Dean. The way he used his face for expressing his emotions rather than his brother who talked with his whole body. Or how Sam shook the hair out of his eyes every time he added an important detail. And above all, his smile that was so painfully genuine, even after all he went through. The same smile he threw her way as she sat down opposite of him, next to her dad.
"-would've ripped my leg apart if Sammy hadn't been fast enough with the exorcism," Dean finished and nodded at his brother proudly.
The brother in question seemed uneasy at the compliment and adjusted his chair. Like he wasn't used to praise.
With a surge of protectiveness (that surprised herself just as much) Y/N wanted to cut the tension for him so she batted her eyelashes at Dean and mocked him playfully, "You're really a special kind of a hunter, letting a demon gnaw at you, huh?"
"Hey, that was one hell of a demon!" Dean protested and flicked a piece of bacon at her.
While her dad was rolling his eyes at them, Sam frowned and dropped his fork. Dean didn't notice the change in mood or at least ignored it and launched into a lengthy description of why That Demon Was Worse.
Teasing Dean was far easier than thinking about the little pinch she felt in her chest region at Sam talking exclusively to her dad, so Y/N focused all of her attention on that.
Dean let himself be drawn into the play fight with glee and proceeded to invite her for a little shooting practice in the backyard.
Breakfast got cleaned up by 'the lady' as Dean had pointed out nicely while Sam was collecting the plates with a slap over the head at his brother and No Eye Contact with Y/N. Great, now she felt like an asshole too.
Even as Y/N shot down the familiar figures on the fence and cracked jokes with Dean, she couldn't help but think what exactly she did wrong that Sam went from friendly nods hello and shared expressions in comment to Dean's outlandish stories to not looking at her at all. Which was kind of ridiculous as she hadn't spoked a word with him so far. At least not directly.
"You still there, sweetheart?" Dean waved a hand in front of her face, trying to catch her attention.
Ah shit. Y/N forced a smile back on her face and nodded. "Sure thing. I can still kick your ass though."
"I bet," he teased and reloaded his gun.
Just as Y/N prepared for another remark, another person exited the house and leaned against the wall. Sam.
And promptly her next shot went about a mile past the target. Y/N cursed, Dean laughed and Sam watched.
Why?
"Sammy get your own gun and stop lurking," Dean ordered and shoved the girl next to him to try again. She would never admit how thankful she was for his shoulder right now. Gave her something to focus on other than the man by the door. Y/N was pretty sure that Sam didn't appreciate to be stared at. Like anyone else most likely. Damn, her brain felt like chunky mud.
Sam just rolled his eyes again. "Don't be so bossy."
And went back inside. Colour Y/N confused as that was the weirdest thing she had seen all day. Apparently that was normal for Sam though as Dean just huffed something about him being too sensitive and raised his gun again.
Who was she to judge though? Everyone was entitled to a bad day here and there.
The next few days went by with just about the same routine. Dean had taken a liking to Y/N and consequently spent most of his time with her, exchanging stories and pressing her for more information of how they never heard of her before. Honestly, Y/N couldn't answer that as she had known about her dad's foster boys - as her mom had started calling them - for practically all her life.
Meanwhile Sam was holing himself up in dad's library, presumably looking into every piece of lore that he could find on the leviathans. Or at least that was what he told them in the evening, Dean looked doubtful. She couldn't tell why though so she chose to ignore it and be happy that they were talking.
Sam was not a jealous person. He was just... annoyed at having to witness his brother buttering up Bobby's daughter, which was perfectly normal in his opinion. Dean never had been one for subtlety which had caused a fight here and there already between the two of them. Waking up to suppressed moaning coming from the bed next to you was no fun. Also another reason why Sam slept with a knife under his pillow at all times.
And if Y/N laughing at Dean was making his gut twist then only because he knew that his brother was getting himself in a shitload of trouble. Bobby's daughter. Jesus.
Dinners in the household Singer came and went with surprisingly much conversation between the four of them. On the first evening, Y/N had recounted her first hunt with her father, laughing at all her dumb mistakes and Sam couldn't help but grin along. Her laughter had been just too contagious even if Dean had been watching him with that weird older brother stare for the entire time they had been sitting together.
It was getting dangerously close to becoming a routine, these shared evenings where everyone came together and talk. Naturally one of Bobby's phones started ringing just about half a second after Sam had contemplated their rhythm over his second serving of potato salad. He sighed internally. Yeah, normal wasn't for them.
"I bet on vampire attack," Y/N stated into the short silence that had created itself when Bobby had gone to pick the call.
Dean snorted. "Oh no sister, vampire's are laying low right now. I say good old demon."
"Nah," Sam shook his head at both of them. They hadn't taken into account which phone Bobby had picked up, "that's most likely Sheriff Mills with a ghost."
Before they could get into a fight about it though, Bobby came back into the room, grim face and phone still in his hand. "That was Rufus. He's got a few weird patients at the hospital. Everyone barely alive, seemingly dying of a cold."
Well, that was a new one. Dean raised his eyebrows amused. "Sure that that's for us?"
Sam threw him an exasperated glare of his own. Was he serious? Like they were above that somehow now?
"Okay okay, nevermind," Dean held his hands up in surrender, "it's our case. No need to give me that look you two."
Huh? Sam turned to Y/N next to him only to catch right the moment where her own glare was transforming into a chuckle. It was like someone had switched on a light behind her eyes, the grin lighting up her entire- why was he thinking about her smile again?
Before Sam could figure out what the fuck just happened, Bobby clapped him on the back. "Well, I guess that means research for the two of us, boy."
"I can help Sam," Y/N offered, catching him completely off guard.
No working with Dean? What?
His brother gave him that smug smile that absolutely didn't fit into the situation. Wasn't he supposed to be, like, not exactly sad, but at least scowling at him?
What was even weirder, was, that Bobby simply nodded and let them go. Usually, that man was a control freak and liked to double check everything Sam found.
Not that he was complaining. Miraculously, his mood jumped to an almost inappropriate high as Y/N knocked her shoulder against his with a scheming smile and pushed him to get up.
Part three
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