You either get it or you don't. Sam and Dean had to pack lightly. They couldn't get too attached to anything. At a moment's notice, they might've had to drop everything and run. There's an army man Sam wedged into the ashtray of the Impala. Lego blocks Dean jammed into the vents. They're not there because they were boys being boys trashing their dad's old whip. If Sam and Dean loved something, really loved it, the only way to keep it was to make it a part of the one thing that went with them everywhere. It's not one or the other. Both long to be strong enough to possess something, protect it, and fend off those that would steal it away. Both of them are still the same kids that had to leave behind something they didn't want to when Dad said, "let's skedaddle." They both still ache with pangs for all they've left behind over the years. They both still wallow in the unfairness.

It's not as simple as refusing to allow death to take the other away. Not so simple as staying by each other's side. Sam and Dean are fused. That's the only way they know how to keep something they love. They're tired of being helpless little kids crying about how life or death isn't fair. They retaliate against any oppositional force that might separate them with the vindictive wrath of a child bereaved and denied one too many times. If you pull something away from the hands of a child enough, the grip they have as adults will be ironclad. Sam and Dean hold onto each other with iron hands. They make any who would dare attempt to keep them apart taste their steel.

They used to be scared of the things that would take them away from each other. Now, the things that would take them away from each other are scared of them. Look, you either get it or you don't. 🤷

Another day, another school, where the kids all have different names but are all the same. The teacher, also different and also the same, asks her class if anyone collects things. Sam frowns. If he was old enough to know better, he’d say he collects sorrows.

Kids raise their hands and talk excitedly about stamps, flowers drying between book pages, dead butterflies pinned like trophies in transparent showcases, Yo-Yos. Sam raises tentatively his hand, because he wants to melt in this classroom, wants to be just a name, to have a bedroom, a favorite crosswalk, and the luxury to collect things. So he says the one and only thing he can think of: “motel rooms”. Because this is true, somehow. An eclectic collection of dusk in nowhere towns and first days everywhere.

She tries to explain to him that it isn’t the same, because Sam can’t carry motel rooms with him, doesn’t even own them. She sees the light dim in his eyes, as kids start to giggle around him, glancing at him like he just said something hilarious. There’s nothing funny about this. She asks him if there is anything else that he keeps somewhere safe, anything that makes him happy and that he carries with him everywhere, that he can’t get enough of, and Sam thinks about it long and hard, makes a list of everything that fits the description. 

In the end there is just one thing, but the moment he thinks it, Sam’s heart swells in his chest and the kids’ mocking gazes fade in the classroom’s background, because his collection is the coolest in the entire goddamn universe. And none of the kids here can claim to have something as great as him. They can keep their lifeless butterfly wings.

“Sammys, I collect Sammys”, he says with a big grin, and she ask “What are Sammys?” but Sam just laughs. No one in this school deserves to know. No one in the entire town deserves to see his collection. So Sam just laughs and when the bell rings, he leaves with his bag on his shoulders and his teacher’s eyes on his back. 

She’s walking to her car, thinking about dinner and going for a jog maybe, when she hears a loud and boisterous “Sammy!” behind her. There’s so much unfiltered joy and love in those five letters that she feels a half second of jealousy before she can stop herself. She looks around and sees a boy, sun bleached hair and vibrant green eyes, who must be 8 at most, waving at little Sam who is running toward him at full speed, a private smile she’s almost ashamed to be a witness of spreading on his cheeks. 

That’s when she gets it, and as she watches Sam throw himself at the other boy, who just laughs and hugs Sam just as hard, she hopes Sam’s collection will never end collecting dust on the shelves of his memories.

I've hit 1 000 followers this week!

Yes, real followers. No spam bots. If I didn't block and report them, I would be at approximately 5000 followers right now.

As a thank you to all my lovely followers, I wrote a little something. Some brotherly love, with a pinch of angst, all gen.

They used to say “Bitch - Jerk”, and it meant “I love you!” Always has. Until it didn't. Dean doesn’t really understand. 

He can remember a thousand occasions where he was overflowing with emotions and expressed them with this one word, that he put all his feelings in. 

“Bitch.”

And Sam would understand, would answer “Jerk” with as much love in his eyes and in his voice.

He can remember a thousand more, where Sam said it first, waited for Dean to return the sentiment. 

Now he never does anymore.

Dean still remembers the first time Sam actually flinched back from him after he called him a bitch. It was in that hospital where they treated Sam for sleep deprivation without any success. Dean had needed to leave him there in order to follow a lead to a spiritual healer who had turned out to be Castiel. Seeing Sam suffering and all exhausted in that hospital bed and having to leave him alone had physically pained Dain. He needed Sam to know that he loved him, so he expressed it the Winchester way.

“See you soon, bitch!”

Sam had flinched back and looked the other way, pressed his lips together and stayed silent.

Dean had thought that Sam was mad at him for leaving him alone, but he tried not to be hurt by the lack of response. Sam’s sleep deprived brain probably didn’t work a hundred procent anyway.

But that had just been the beginning.

In the following months, Dean had initiated their shared little secret “I love you” code several times, and he had either gotten no response at all or a stiff, flat “Jerk” that conveyed less emotion than a tax accountant reading numbers off a paper.

On a few occasions Sam had even turned away and distanced himself from Dean. 

It hurt like hell.

So Dean has stopped trying. If it makes Sam so uncomfortable, he won’t say it. Even though he still doesn’t quite understand. He would prefer not to be called a Jerk with that flat tone that leaves no other interpretation than the literal meaning. He should be thankful, he guesses, that Sam has not initiated their former ritual in several years. 

Sometimes Bitch lies on the top of Dean’s tongue, his overwhelming feelings for his brother needing an outlet. But he holds the word back, thinks I love you, bitch, but doesn’t say anything. It hurts too deep to be met with a reaction that is indifferent at best and borders on disgust at worst.

In moments like this, however, while he rushes to Sam's aid, he wishes he had said it anyway. His heart is beating frantically in his chest. Sam is in danger, is in an actual fucking cage with Lucifer, and Dean can’t help all the horror scenarios running through his head. Sam, locked in hell forever, and Dean hasn’t told him in years how much he loves him.

If - no, WHEN I get him back, I’m gonna tell him, his reaction be damned!, he thinks, as he rounds another corner in hell and sees the cage. Sees Lucifer as he takes a swing at his brother, hears his chilling voice.

“Bitch! You always have been and always will be my bitch, Sam. In every sense of the word. A worthless, pathetic bitch.”

And it hits Dean. Bitch. The first time Sam flinched at the word was after he got his hell memories back. And Dean had kept calling him that. Had meant “I love you”, but all Sam could hear was Lucifer's abuse. This was just another thing the devil had taken from his brother and twisted into something dark and ugly. And Dean had been too stupid to see it. Had triggered hell memories every time he called Sammy a bitch.

…

They sit in the car, driving home. Beaten and bloody, and a bit worse for the wear. But Dean is so relieved to have Sam back, right next to him. He keeps sending glances at Sam, tries to assess how bad it really is. How much of a number Lucifer has done on his brother. He wants to say I’m glad you’re back, bitch! and I’ve got you, bitch! and talk about his overflowing feelings the only way he’s ever known how. But Lucifer took that from him, from them. He’ll never say that word again. 

…

Sam keeps saying he’s fine. But he’s not eating, he’s not sleeping. He doesn’t leave the bunker in days and Dean keeps finding him cataloguing the library or cleaning weapons in the morning ass hours. He wants to tell him Everything is going to be all right, bitch! and longs to hear a I know, Jerk. The words keep echoing in his head, but he doesn’t say them. He finds them a hunt instead. It’s practically in their backyard. A banshee, killing people in an old folks home.

“You wanna know the secret to living a long and happy live?”, Mildred asks.

“Actually, yes, I do”, he says.

“Follow your heart.” She pats his chest, as she says it. 

…

After the hunt, they sit in the kitchen and drink a beer. Sam tells him, how Lucifer showed him a highlight reel of his biggest failures, and then he starts apologizing for not looking for Dean when he was in purgatory. And Dean doesn’t know how to convey to Sam that he has long since forgiven him. That all of this is in the past. He wants to follow his heart. He wants to say It doesn’t matter, because I love you.

What he says is:

“All that matters now, all that’s ever mattered, is that we’re together.”

And Sam seems to understand.

…

“I watched the man I love die. There’s no normal after that”, Michelle says. And Dean can relate. Oh, boy, can he relate! 

When he and Sam leave the hospital, Sam all stitched up and fucking ALIVE, he wants to wrap his arms around his brother and tell him I love you over and over again, reveling in the fact that he still can.

Instead he helps him down the stairs, a hand on the small of Sam's back, and tells him he planned on redecorating his room. Sam leans into the touch. He seems to understand.

…

Dean has to go on a sucide mission to kill Amara. He will never see Sam again. Sam will be left behind, all alone and miserable. Dean’s emotions are one big, burning ball of guilt, grief and worry. He doesn’t know how to handle this.

“Come on, no chick flick moments”, he tries to deflect. If he looks at his emotions too closely, he will lose it.

“You love chick flicks”, Sam counters, and isn’t he right. With Sam, he loves to get chick-flicky, just as he loves Sam. 

This is his last chance to tell Sam he loves him.

“Yeah, you’re right, I do. Come here”, he says. And Sam understands.

…

Those fucking british bastards took Sam and tortured him for days! All while Sam thought Dean was dead. Dean is furious. And fails epicly on his rescue mission. Currently he is chained up next to his brother who looks at him with big eyes, apparently not quite sure yet that he can believe what he sees.

“Dean?”, he asks, and his voice almost breaks.

Yeah, Bitch, is on his tongue. Old habits die hard. But he holds back. 

“Hey”, is all he gets out. The I love you got stuck in his throat once again. But Sam understands. 

…

Sam is about to lead a bunch of hunters against the British Men of Letters, and Dean is so fucking proud of him. He himself is no good with his busted up knee, but he will try and save Mom. Sam is more than capable of handling this and Dean tells him as much. 

There wouldn’t be a reason to hug, really, since this is not a live or death situation. But does one of them always have to be dying for them to show affection? For Dean to show Sam how much he loves him?

“Come here”, Dean says and motions his brother forward. Sam falls into his arms, clings to him for a long moment.

And Dean forgets himself. 

“Bitch”, he says, while all he wants to say is I love you. Oh damn, he thinks.

But Sam doesn’t flinch away. He claps his shoulder right back, averts his eyes and answers in a voice thick with emotion.

“Jerk.”

And Dean can hardly handle it. He heard the I love you too loud and clear.

“Yeah”, is all he can choke out. He understands.

…

“I believe in us, Dean”, Sam screams. “Why don’t you believe in us, too?”

He breaks down in Dean’s arms, and all Dean wants to do is to hold Sam and tell him he loves him. How could he ever think he would have the strength to follow through with his plan? How could he ever think he would have the strength to leave Sam?

“I do believe in us,” he says. “Let’s go home, Sammy.”

Why is it so hard to simply say I love you to Sam? Why can he show him and tell him in a thousand ways, but just not get the actual words out? 

Dean promises to himself, if they don’t find a solution to get Micheal out, if he has to go into the Malek box at long last, he will tell Sam. Sam deserves to hear how he feels. How he always felt. Sam might know anyway, but Dean can give him this one gift, can’t he? Replace what Lucifer took away with something even better, something pure. Three words that hold all of Dean's truth.

Dean will tell Sam he loves him, and if it is the last thing he ever does.

…

“I love you so much … my baby brother!”

It's always good to remember that Sam wasn't just paralleling Colette or Abel, he wasn't just combination of both, he was so much more than that. He did the thing neither of them could. He freed Dean from the mark at cost of the universe and it was something even the original lover and brother could do for Cain, neither of them obsessed and insane enough to truly save Cain.

Supernatural does this thing where it creates parallels between some duo and samdean and always ends it with "sam and dean were even more inseparable and obsessed than the thing we introduced". They were beyond biblical brothers, their bond was deeper and more intimate than anything represented in the show and there was ALWAYS this reminder that they are like no one else.

Look at those hands. One cupping Sam's face, the other petting his hair.

We're not shown Dean's face here, but we can figure out what his eyes are saying.

I totally fell in love with Dean's capacity of expressing his love with his hands grabbing, dragging around and petting baby brother. It's a perfect mix of a mother, a big brother and a man in love. It's Care at the utmost.

Petition to Stop 2025

This has nothing to do with Supernatural so anyone who wants to ignore it can. But I implore you to look up what Project 2025 is and sign the petition. You don't have to pay money you can just share it. Thank you to anyone who does this.

"Project 2025 is a plan to, in the words of project Director Paul Dans, "...march into office and bring a new army of aligned, trained, and essentially weaponized conservatives ready to do battle against the Deep State".

It is organized by the Heritage Foundation, to "muzzle woke propaganda at every level of government", "gut the administrative state" (HUD, FEMA, DOJ, DHS, the Federal Reserve, CDC, FDA, EPA, etc.) and concentrate power into the hands of the President (Leeja Miller, in a video that is linked below, goes into detail on how this would work).

Their claim is that "Only through the implementation of specific action plans at each agency will the next conservative presidential Administration be successful".

The plan includes a 180 Day Playbook, described as "...a comprehensive, concrete transition plan for each federal agency." The plan is "the conservative movement's unified effort to be ready for the next conservative administration to govern at 12:00 noon, January 20, 2025".

Project 2025 promises to "rescue the country from the grip of the radical Left" and to "unite the conservative movement and the American people against elite rule and woke culture warriors".

Project 2025 lists problems with America such as:

They believe that "These are problems not of technocratic efficiency, but of national sovereignty and constitutional governance. We solve them not by trimming and reshaping the leaves, but by ripping out the trees -- root and branch."

Their broad goals are to:

Dans states that "The long march of Cultural Marxism through our institutions has come to pass. The federal government is a behemoth, weaponized against American citizens and conservative values, with freedom and liberty under siege as never before".

Project 2025 is, in my words, a distinctly terrifying and highly detailed roadmap for:

I don't use the words "systematic eradication" lightly or with hyperbole. They obviously don't come right out and say it, but they state that:

The real problem with the above, apart from the obvious, is that they label the existence of LGBTQIA+ people as "inherently pornographic". They say that pornography is “manifested today through the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology".

They say that the fix "starts with deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity ('SOGI'), diversity, equity and inclusion ('DEI'), gender, gender equality, gender awareness, gender sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists".

They also state that "The president should direct agencies to rescind regulations interpreting sex discrimination provisions as prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, transgender status, sex characteristics, etc."

They want to "maintain a biblically based, social science-reinforced definition of marriage and family" which would remove protections for same-sex marriage.

Leeja Miller helpfully points out that the above language does not simply include transgender individuals, it includes cis women as well. I'd argue that removing the DEI language also allows them to target anyone that isn't a white, cis, heterosexual, evangelical (or other approved flavor of Christianity) male.

Some other points of note:

References

Yes. Maybe he loved them. In his way. His revenge desire and pain got always in the way, though, between him and his boys. They could never stand a chance with Mary's memory. Anyway, they had each other to love.

Happy Birthday Dean Winchester | Fav' brotherly love declarations

Dean whenever the topic of conversation is not about Sam Winchester:

Yeah, there he is

what if that's a constant thought on dean's every day life like sam returns from the grocery store and dean feels all warm inside there he is sam comes back from his morning run there he is when dean's the one to wake up first, sam beside him still asleep and yeah there he is. He's there. He's with him, sam's with him. 26 year old dean's wildest dreams could never

in 5x22 swan song these are some of the screencaps of sam's flashbacks to stop lucifer from killing dean while using him as a vessel

It's a literal mini wincest montage someone made in the editors room

these memories is what stopped sam and was strong enough for him to take over, just him and dean looking at eachother so tender, so loving. bitch me too the fuck