• Disclaimer •
THE WESSON TO MY SMITH
Sam dies first.
It doesn’t really matter how it happens. Leviathan, ghost, monster, whatever the newest big bad is. But it gets him, like it was always going to, like something was always going to. Hunters always die young, and they always die bloody. Sam is no exception.
He falls in an echo of his first Great Fall (that’s what they call it in the Winchester Gospel, years later), but the destination is the opposite. Lucifer is gone. Heaven is broken, but it was always a collection of pieces. Those pieces survive even when the angels are in chaos. In a way, it’s not much different from Earth at all.
Dean watches his brother die for the last time. He’s on the ground, swallowing blood and blinking away tunnel vision. There are only a few seconds left.
When they were little and John was off on a hunt, Sam and Dean would play with their army men, setting them up on the motel room floor. Dean would always make the explosion noises so loud it seemed real, while Sammy lay on his belly setting up the soldiers in battle formations. He’d get so into it that he wouldn’t notice Dean army-crawling toward him until Dean had flicked a line of soldiers over like dominoes. About a thousand fights began like that.
Now, covered in blood and dirt, Dean army-crawls toward his brother’s body. He takes one last look, then leans forward and kisses Sam on the forehead. Like all those years before in a small bedroom in Kansas.
He brushes a hand over his brother’s eyes.
Night, Sam.
*
Cut to a shot of Dean sitting on the Impala gazing up at the stars, like in Swan Song, except he’s alone. The crickets are singing, the stars and just coming out, and there’s a cooler of beers on the grass beside his feet. It is peaceful.
Then he twitches a bit, like something startled him. He looks at something we can’t see, just past the camera’s line of view.
The screen goes black.
We hear the words, “Heya, Sammy.”
And then it ends.
I don’t think it was selfish, really. After all, it wasn’t like Dean didn’t want Sam to have a normal life - remember when he said he wished Sam could have had innocence, blissful ignorance of the monsters in the dark? So I think it was less of that and more of just…Dean was losing everything.
Sam’s end of the deal was different: he may have lost his father’s support (“You walk out that door, don’t you ever come back”) but he gained so much: normalcy, friends, knowledge, a future. He was moving forward. But Dean, Dean lost his brother, his best friend, his son, the one person he loved more than anything. I don’t think there’s anything selfish about not wanting that.
Dean’s being against it was probably partly influenced by John, but honestly I think most of it was just him not wanting Sam gone. Sam would be somewhere far away, out of arm’s reach, somewhere Dean couldn’t watch out for him. That’s basically Dean’s worst nightmare right there. I think he felt betrayed, in almost an ashamed sort of way - don’t you need me as much as I need you? - and worried sick, and hurt, and…yeah. That was a bad night.
I think he probably tried to avoid thinking about him at all. I think Sam threw himself into his classes, his work, Jess, his new friends - real friends, for more than a week, for the first time in his life - and just about everything else. And sometimes, it worked. Sometimes he would go for hours without thinking about the look on Dean’s face that night. Those were the good days, when he felt almost normal. Just your average college kid, right?
At nighttime, though, it was different. Sam would lie in bed for hours, trying to go to sleep, trying not to think about what Dean and Dad were doing right then. What they were hunting. Sam’s a natural worrier, but he was so muddled up then: he was worried about them, furious at them, missed them so much it hurt. He always gave himself comfort in the small fact that, at least wherever they were, they were together. Dad would protect Dean. Dean would be safe.
That was why he was so surprised when Dean said he’d been on a hunt by himself. At the time he was just like, “Huh,” but later - alone in bed, when these thoughts always come - the full meaning of this slammed into him. Dean hadn’t had Dad with him. Dean had been alone, hunting monsters.
But it didn’t really matter at that point. Sam never went back to Stanford anyway.
I don’t see it as them falling in love at any specific point. Like…I don’t think it was Sam seeing Dean do something or look particularly beautiful and all of a sudden he was like, Oh shit. I think it less of falling in love and more of building love over the space of a lifetime.
I think Dean fell in love with Sam the second he saw him, when he was four and Sam was just born - and obviously I don’t mean falling in love in the sexual sense, or even the romantic sense. It’s like when you fall in love with poetry, or art, or a book. There is your life, and then all of a sudden that isn’t enough. All of a sudden your entire world is divided in two parts: “before ____” and “after _____.” Before Sam and After Sam. And honestly? Dean doesn’t remember anything before Sam. He doesn’t remember not revolving around Sam, or a time when he was an only child. Dean’s entire life is the After stage. It isn’t that he fell in love; it’s that he was never not in love.
For Sam, it’s very similar. Sam has looked up to Dean his entire life, trying to be just like his big brother. Dean may be the moon to Sam’s Earth, but God, it’s really fucking dark without him, you know? I think Sam’s loved Dean forever, through fire and loss and blood and guns and so many different motel rooms, so many different worlds when his only constant was Dean. Yeah, he resented Dean sometimes. Yeah, he went to Stanford. Yeah, he loved Jess as well. I think of Jess as the sun: something bright and beautiful that warmed Sam and lit him up, but we all know that the Winchesters are meant for the nighttime.
So to end this, I’ll say it again: it wasn’t falling in love, it was being born into love, created by love until they were both so tangled and twisted up into each other that there was no “before.” Only a million afters.
I think - and this is all headcanon, because if I’ve heard any official word about his motives, I’ve forgotten it - but I think maybe he didn’t just hit the road. See, Dean didn’t have Sam for two years. Didn’t call him, didn’t ask him for a thing. And Dean loves Sam more than anything, wants to protect him more than anything. He doesn’t let go of Sam that easy.
I’m guessing that not only did Dean miss his brother during those two years (even through all the anger and confusion and resentment and self-hatred over Sam leaving) but he was also scared as hell for him. What if something attacked, and Dean wasn’t there, and Sam got hurt? You can try to escape the life all you want, but the thing is, your job is to hunt monsters. And sometimes those monsters have nestmates, or even family (ghouls, for instance), and sometimes those monsters hunt you back.
So I think he lingered. I think it was such a staggering relief for Dean when he first saw Sam in the apartment, annoyed and reluctant to leave but definitely doing okay. Then Dean had Sam all to himself for a few days, just the two of them on a hunt in the Impala, almost like old times. Dean wouldn’t want to let go of that quickly…and hey, he’s always been a bit of a masochist.
He stopped driving as soon as Sam couldn’t hear the engine anymore. Pulled back up in front of the building, just waiting for a light to go on in Sam’s apartment. Dean just wanted that last little glimpse, that last look at what he was driving away from, and then he’d go. Or, hell - maybe Sam would change his mind and come back out. Ridiculous, sure. Stupid even. But Dean had never been that rational when it came to Sam.
He waited for a light to go on, waited and waited, and then he felt it. That prickle, that tiny sense of wrong. He’d felt it a thousand times over the years, and he’d learned to trust it.
By the time the lights came on in Sam’s apartment, Dean was halfway up the stairs.
By the time he realized it was fire, he was breaking down the door.
I think Dean actually loves to read. It’s a good escape - the only way he can really lose himself in another life, taste something different for a change. Of course, he knows that fiction is about as useful as fingernail polish when it comes to his own life, but I feel like it’s one of the guilty pleasures he allows himself sometimes. Maybe not so much anymore - he’s had less and less time (and ability) to just chill out over the years. I think maybe he hasn’t read for a while, not since the months after Sam jumped into the Pit when he realized that for once, the books couldn’t help him escape and he ended up throwing Ironweed against the wall so hard it left a dent.
But I think before that, he’d do it like this: they’d be at the library doing research and he’d carefully slip away from Sam (and his dad, when they were still together) and go into the fiction section. Sometimes he would spend a while just reading the backs of the books until he found something good, but mostly he would either grab one at random or pick one he vaguely remembered one of his old English teachers mentioning. He’d crouch down in the aisle and start to read - not as fast as Sam, but not slow - and stay in that position until his legs began to cramp up.
When John or Sam went looking for him, he’d stand up quickly. “Man, this place sucks. Where are the comic books? What’s the point of a library if it doesn’t have a good collection of skin mags, am I right? Anyway, Sammy, I hope you’re done doing your nerd thing, because I am so out of here.”
But all the while, Dean would be folding down the top corner of the page he was on and slipping the book inside his leather jacket. He’d read in the bathroom, after everyone went to sleep, during quiet moments in the Impala when he was waiting for his brother to get back from interviewing a witness.
When he was done with a book, he’d never keep it. He would simply return it to whatever library they went to next, stuffing it onto a shelf and figuring a librarian would organize it later. Their job, not his.
His job was to kill things.
Other than just…the lack?
I think it was the smell. Sam and Dean smell the same. There are the little differences - Dean is leather and whiskey, Sam is books and coffee - but they use the same shitty motel shampoo, drive in the same car all day, wash their clothes with the same cheap detergent. They smell like gunpowder and salt and metal, sunlight and blood. It runs bone-deep, and John smelled like it too, so they don’t even notice it.
Then Sam is gone, and Dean notices it. Oh, he notices it. Suddenly just getting into the damn car makes him want to scream his throat raw because that’s Sam, that’s Sam right there, that’s what Dean breathes in every time they brush against each other or hug or just step closer.
He goes so far as to ask Lisa to buy the fancy kind of shampoo. He uses aftershave, fucking cologne. But it doesn’t help: Sam is beneath his skin. Sam is there, always.
And it fucking sucks.
I want Supernatural to end with Sam and Dean dying together. Going up to Heaven, or maybe some sort of New Heaven, after all that’s happened.
But I can’t decide whether I want it to go completely full circle, with Sam kissing Dean on the forehead (“Night, Dean”) right before they both die
or with Sam kinda looking sidelong at Dean because they’re lying there spread-eagle next to each other and maybe their hands are just barely touching, like that moment in You Can’t Handle the Truth
and Sam just smiles a little bit, which is all he can do, he’s broken and bloody everywhere, he smiles a little bit and he looks sidelong at Dean and he says, “Looks like this is it.”
Dean’s just like, “Yeah.”
Sam says, “Nice knowing you.”
And Dean sort of snorts and rolls his eyes because really, that’s the biggest fucking understatement in the history of the universe, but they both know what Sam’s getting at so it’s okay.
Then Sam says, “Jerk.” Real soft, ‘cause he’s slipping away and everything is going black and now he can pretty much only see Dean. But that’s okay too.
It’s quiet for a couple moments, and then Dean says, “Sam - ”
“Dean - ”
“I - ”
“Shut up.”
And then Sam’s eyes close, and so do Dean’s, and you think it’s over, but then Dean murmurs, “Bitch,” and the camera shows the way Sam’s lips turn up at the corners, and then it zooms out over their bodies and fades to black.
Cut to a shot of Dean sitting on the Impala gazing up at the stars, like in Swan Song, except he’s alone. Then he twitches a bit, like something startled him, and he looks at something we can’t see, just past the camera’s line of view.
The screen goes black.
We hear the words,
“Heya, Sammy.”
And then it ends.
If Sam were to make a list, it would start out a bit awkward. Like when you’re doing some sort of self-introduction, on the first day of school or whatever, and you’re like “My name is ____. I’m ____ years old. My favorite food is pasta, favorite color is blue…”
So he’d start out with the basics, the tangible things. Probably scowl and blush a bit when he was doing it, roll his eyes.
Anyway, Sam likes the way Dean smells. Like leather, metal, gunpowder, the sweet heady smell of whiskey. Sweat, but just in a sort of boy way.
He smells like ashes, too. Salt and ashes.
Sam likes how Dean’s eyes are kind of green, but they’re also gold and gray and hazel, and sometimes when the sun hits them - not just any light, not a dim lamp in a motel room, it has to be the sun when the sky is huge and blue and it’s just the two of them leaning on the hood of the Impala - they almost glow.
Once when Sam was dealing with one of the girls who always falls for Dean (she was drunk, crying a bit, rambling on about how wonderful his brother was) she said something about Dean’s eyes looking like fire.
Sam doesn’t agree. He thinks Dean’s eyes are nothing like fire, because fire is a weapon and a destroyer and it brings images of bones, corpses, rotting houses filled with ghosts. He’d never, ever say this out loud in a million years (God knows the comments it would provoke - pansy, girl, you’re such a chick) but Dean’s eyes are wheat fields and sun-bleached pavement, yellowed pages from old books, rain and grass and fireworks and the ocean (Sam’s never really been to the ocean, but he’s seen photos).
Yeah. Sam likes Dean’s eyes.
He likes the feeling he gets in his chest whenever he makes Dean laugh. Really laugh, the one where he practically collapses in hysterics and doesn’t care if he looks stupid. (He never does.)
Dean is the bravest and toughest person Sam has ever met, but he’s also the nicest. It shows when he says, “Hey, you okay?” all gruffly and Buck up, soldier but then he actually stops whatever he’s doing to make sure the answer is positive. When he reaches out to touch Sam almost unconsciously, calming him down.
Sometimes Sam thinks it’s not so much comfort as Dean making sure his brother is still there.
That’s why they walk so close together on the sidewalk, sleep within arm’s reach, occupy only one end of benches. Ever since they were kids it’s been like that, Dean constantly reassuring himself that yes, Sammy is here and yes, Sammy is okay.
Maybe that’s Sam’s favorite thing about Dean: how he can give himself completely to someone.
Maybe Sam’s least favorite thing is how Dean gives himself completely to someone and has absolutely no idea how amazing a gift it is.
But they’re working on it.
