#gonna be haunted by rufus forever probably

[cajolions]

I just finished reading Another Country. If you even care

[elizabethrobertajones]

Do you think Sam's reluctance to call the Bunker "home" has more to do with the Bunker's function as a library and a laboratory and a Men of Letter's charter house (essentially not his and Dean's, especially now that they know about the BMoL), or because he's probably afraid that any place he calls home will be taken from him (like when Azazel killed Mary, then when he killed Jess)?

DEFINITELY the second, but I think there’s room in the pie chart to say that Sam has always traditionally defined “home” in a white picket fence aspirational way that may not even make him happy, truly, without a lot of other terms and conditions (e.g. never once has he got to experience an attempt at normal life while actually friends with Dean/knowing he was alive/also emotionally at peace) but he does still aspire to this whole wife, kids, dog, big house, garden for them to all run around in thing… He might not even THINK he wants it at times, and he might settle or throw himself into hunting or see no happy ending or whatever, but he and Dean both have a strong image of this as the sort of suburban happy ending. Dean still emotionally seems less suited for it and still needs to be talked out of the idea that he will never have it because he’ll die in the process of securing it for everyone else, ESPECIALLY Sam, but he is also extremely adaptable to the sense of home.

Actually, Bugs has the best little metaphor for it - Dean keeps on talking about how suburbia gives him hives, while Sam is still basically convinced he’s on a road trip and after they’re done he can have another go at college and the normal life… Dean might disdain the houses but he breaks into one, happily uses the power shower, and generally sinks into acting the part in suburbia to get free food and access to the case. 

I mean Dean could make anywhere home, and we see him in general making more use of the places they use as home bases as homes - we don’t see him, like, getting domestic at Bobby’s, but he constantly uses the car yard for fixing Baby and hanging out, in a way Sam isn’t associated with, so he and Sam have a shared more business related relationship with the main rooms of the house where we normally see them for cases, but Dean has an extra, personal connection to the scrapyard. And at Rufus’s cabin, he colonised the sofa in 7x03 and later it seems to lowkey play a part as being a domestic space belonging to Dean, the symbolically worst example in 8x10 when Sam and Dean dump Amelia and Benny and Sam gives up the chance at a normal life again to spend it with Dean, who would have been there anyways so he is very much the one invited to sit on the sofa with Dean. 

And then obviously once they find the Bunker, Dean immediately settles in while Sam sees it as a valuable resource. Dean might have a bleak outlook on the future but in a way that means that he makes the most out of where he is at that exact moment. They find a weird bunker, Dean moves in and makes a house a home with throw pillows and lava lamps (I wish) while Sam is busy just reading everything there, determined to get the job done and that metaphorically is the character traits behind the argument in 8x14 where the nesting scene takes place, that escalates into Sam trying to do the trials, and Dean ends up just the manager of the home, and responsible for who should have been there (Kevin, 8x21) who is there (Kevin, after that, for the rest of his life Dean comments on his whereabouts when he isn’t in episodes) and who can’t stay (ow. Cas. 9x03.) 

And in 9x04 we see Sam has barely altered his room except for the TV for downtime, but other than that only brought more boxes of files to his room, opposed to Dean who made it a personal space immediately that you could recognise as his. I don’t really think at this point he’s holding out for the white picket fence but he has an emotional disconnect to the Bunker as home - Dean tries to kill him in it as a demon, and in 11x04, 2 seasons later, he still picks Baby as home over the Bunker, as we get the strong reminder of Swan Song in that episode, and how Sam has literally known no other stable home, we get the poking at the concept of “someone in the life” and Dean is much more open to thinking of the Bunker and where Cas is currently as “home” while Sam’s emotional connection is adrift, because despite their best efforts he just didn’t bond with the Bunker that way. 

And 8x22 is where Sam jokes to Cas that Dean was going to make the Dean Cave that took 5 years to actually show up, and these days Dean is getting even more comfortably happy in the Bunker and less worried about despite all the fighting and occasional murder or attempted murder that takes place there, it is still where they live and they deserve real comforts, while Sam still hasn’t expressed a strong opinion about the Bunker as home - I think Cas has referred to it that way in significant dialogue more often than Sam. And that difference in how they rate their work/life balance is a significant part of their low-key, mostly unstated character stuff that is nonetheless pretty much constantly on screen in how they relate to or have it relate to them when the question of home or the Bunker comes up. 

I think fundamentally Sam’s relationship to the job goes WAY beyond just what he calls home and it’s a symptom of his own issues - which tie in with the stuff he discussed with Rowena about Lucifer, and his lingering presence in the story where he just will not go away, but Sam (and Rowena) don’t get catharsis until he is dead. That’s the overall big issue, but there’s also the one from 8x03 about how Sam could leave the job 100% but at the cost of ignoring everything that might have been a case and assuming other people would handle it, which the discussion from the end of 12x18 and 13x15 seemed to be about - Sam is wandering back to that doing the trials mindset that maybe they could find a switch to turn off all monsters forever… (not happening - your legacy is Wayward Sisters and they’re gonna need things to fight for as many seasons as the CW can squeeze out of them if things go our way, no matter when you retire :P)

Ideally Sam needs to strike a MoL/Bobby level retirement, PROBABLY in a white picket fence house (You know, like in 3x10 where he walks out of Bobby’s terrifying haunted house into the garish garden… you know what, he should just buy Bobby’s and refurbish it, and then marry Jody and be a frequently mentioned but invisible background character and once per season cameo  in Wayward Sisters) and find a peace with his place in the world where he doesn’t have to be actively ensuring monsters are being killed, but can be chill about it all and get out of the job he never wanted to have. Hunting is in his blood and he’s happy doing it in some ways so I don’t think he can tear himself out of it like he wants to at his worst moments, and burying his head in the sand is a terrible idea, and he NEEDS a someone-in-the-life to understand him and for him not to end up with that dreadful problem where he doesn’t want to ruin their view of the world so he lies to them about his entire identity for their sake… but he’s also messed up and even being the younger sibling, I honestly think he needs retirement far, far, far more urgently than Dean does (and 13x14 has utterly broken me about that >.> GO HOME. GET A DOG, SAM). Dean, with no threats to his loved ones, could happily keep hunting into his early 60s with his angel, bizarrely younger mother, and smol nougat stepson at his side :P All people born into the life and more willing to continue the fight without being utterly consumed by it like poor Sam >.>