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zmediaoutlet · 4 years ago

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fic: there will be better days

I’m so glad about the ending of Supernatural. It found its way, in the end. This fic is me drawing out that sensation as long as I could. I hope y’all like it, but it was written in a small way for a special group in a special discord, because I’m so glad we got to experience this dumb happy thing together. <3

title: there will be better days pairing: Sam/Dean rating: E length: 9500 words tags: Post-Season/Series 15, Spoilers for Episode: s15e20 Carry On, Heaven, First Time, Pining Dean Winchester

summary: Sam and Dean settle into their heaven.

(read on AO3)

They stand on the bridge, in quiet, for…

How long? It doesn't matter. Dean keeps his hand on Sam's back and Sam's shoulder tucks against his side, Sam being kind enough to slump down against the railing so that the position works, at all. The view's beautiful. Some woods, a river. A place Dean doesn't recognize but that hums with steady life. What a miracle, that death can bring them something new.

He's splitting his attention, though. The trees, the flowing water, the late-summer feel where the bright gold of everything burnishes down toward fall, it's a sweet goad toward peace, but. Dean's eyes drag away, every few minutes, and it's just—Sam. His eyes steady on the rush of the receding water, and his hair tucked behind his ear, and his back, steadily rising and falling under Dean's hand. Not pulling away. Not fidgeting, or impatient. Like he'd be content with this, exactly this, as long as eternity stretches out in front of them.

A bird flits by, blue-and-white against the green of the trees. Sam's eyes follow it and he smiles, just barely, a pull of lips that makes Dean's heart thump sorely against the inside of his ribs. His body keeps thrilling, reminding him, over and over: Sam. Sam. He slides his hand up to Sam's shoulder and squeezes, and Sam's eyes slide to his face. "Ready?" he says.

Sam doesn't ask for what. "Yeah," he says, soft and easy, and Dean drops his head, laughs. Something that had been knotted in his chest, for years and years, loose now—everything in him, free.

He steps back, and Sam turns to keep him in sight. Dean spins the keys to the car in his palm, grinning. "You want to drive?" he says, tipping his head at the car.

Sam blinks. Shakes his head, and swallows, and when he speaks his voice is thick. "No," he says, and clears his throat, and shakes his head again. "No, I want you to drive."

On the road Dean gives Sam a version of the same explanation that Bobby gave him. "We can go see him," Dean says, glancing across the seat, and Sam smiles and says, "We will," but he says, "Later," and Dean's—yeah, he's good with that. Later. They have forever, to do anything they want.

It's hard to wrap his head around. He doesn't know how long he waited, for Sam. A lifetime. The length of a drive. It felt—feels—like infinity, like every second is stretched and slow and exactly as long as it needs to be. The roads out here are gorgeous, empty, room for the Impala to stretch her legs, and Dean knows in a strange and centered way that if he wanted he could drive forever, and at the same time if he parks it'll have been ten minutes, as far as his mind's concerned, and he won't have missed a thing.

The radio's playing Zeppelin, quietly. Has been since Sam got into the car. Tangerine, right now—does she still remember times like these?—and Dean looks over to find Sam looking right at him. Dean's not sure Sam's turned his head, the whole time. He could make a crack—it rises to his lips, take a picture or what, got something on my face?—but it feels distant. He gets the impulse. Sam smiles, his back against the passenger door, and Dean smiles back sort of helplessly before he turns it back out on the road, and leans back in his seat, and settles into the drive.

Anything they want. Anything they could need, or dream of. There doesn't seem to be any real requirement to sleep, or to eat, or to do—anything. Time, slipping strange, and a stasis of a kind if they want it. That isn't what Dean wants, but he's not totally sure, about Sam.

The world changes around curves. Massive trees obscure the turns and it feels like a new road with every switchback. A short way past and there's—a house. Not a house Dean's seen, but he rolls slower, and Sam finally looks out the window at something that's not Dean, so—a house. Okay, Dean thinks. He can deal with a house.

Two stories, and a basement, and an attic full of dust. Dean goes into a sneezing fit when he opens up the hatch and Sam sniggers at him. It's not perfect, by any means. There's a sagging porch, and the sink in the first floor bathroom doesn't work, and there's some seriously fugly wallpaper that's peeling, and a stained carpet in the rear bedroom that, yikes, did something die on it? Would that even be possible? But Sam says, "This'll work," with content in his voice, and Dean looks around and tongues the inside of his cheek and thinks, well, yeah. This'll work fine.

There's food in the fridge, when Dean opens it. "I'll fix something," Sam says, and Dean looks at him in total surprise. A lifted shoulder, like Sam's been able to make anything other than eggs and bacon and bad, bad pasta his whole life. "What? I learned."

He did. They have chicken, roasted broccoli that Dean admit doesn't taste entirely like farts, these crispy potatoes that are—well, goddamn. There's not a dining table and so they sit out on the porch, a six pack of cold beer between them, watching the night settle in. It's cool but not cold. The lamp on the porch flickers, and Dean smiles, because he's damn sure that's not a ghost and instead that he's gonna have to rip out the wiring and start fresh.

Sam leaves his empty plate on the step behind them. He leans his elbows on his knees, and looks out at the darkening sky. The treetops are shadows against deep purple and Dean wants, very badly, to put his hand in Sam's hair, to feel his neck, his back. To settle himself against the fact of Sam's spine, his ribs and lungs, all of him here. Breathing, and here. "You learned to cook, huh," he says, instead of doing anything else, and gets to watch Sam turn his head, just a little. He's still wearing the same clothes he showed up in. Strange things, that tug a little at something Dean feels like he used to know. Sam turns his head but he doesn't look at Dean; Dean just gets his three-quarter profile, and the shape of his mouth turned a little solemn, and his eyes as they flick over the view of the dark, surrounding trees.

"Yeah, I did," Sam says, after too long. "I…"

That's all, for a few minutes. Dean puts his plate down, too (mostly clean, other than some broccoli he's not gonna be forced to eat), and shifts down one more step so they're sat right next to each other, and presses his knee against Sam's. Sam looks at their knees instead of at him.

"I wanna hear everything," Dean says. He reaches and gets Sam's hand, and squeezes it, and Sam's eyes close. Shit he wouldn't have done before, but hell—he's dead, he gets to. "Everything. Okay? Every—dumbass repair you screwed up on the car, and if you took Chinese lessons at a community college, and who won the World Series, okay, because I remember, we had a bet, and I need to know if I owe you or you owe me."

Sam swallows. "Jesus," he says, under his breath, and then laughs, a little. "Jesus, we did have a bet. That was—uh, that year it was the Dodgers." He swallows again, and when he opens his eyes they're wet, and a tear rolls down very slowly, against the crease of his nose, and his mouth hitches up at the side in a piled-up dimpling fold, and his chin creases, and Dean squeezes his hand very tightly. "Dodgers. But I can't remember which way you bet."

God, Sam. Dean knocks their shoulders together and lies: "Damn, I bet they were gonna lose. How's that figure, huh? I go down and my team does all in the same year? Shitty luck." Sam shudders out another laugh, wet, and nods, looking down at their clasped hands. "Guess I owe you, Sammy. Whatever you want, okay? Figure, we got time up here. I can figure it out."

Sam's chin is still shaking. A tear falls onto the back of Dean's hand, shockingly hot. Sam takes a deep breath. "I'll think of something," he says, when he can get his teeth out of his lip. Their knees grind together, close enough that Dean might get a bruise, if there's still such a thing as bruising. Sam sniffs, hard. He always was a sloppy crier. He looks at Dean a little sidelong, and smiles kind of embarrassed. Like Dean isn't an inch from losing it himself. "I kinda—I watched a lot of soccer."

Dean rolls his eyes, theatrical, and releases Sam's hand. "Of course you did," he says, layering on the disgust, and it's enough that Sam snorts and dashes his hand over his face, and when Dean gathers up their plates Sam's enough together that he can repeat his old dumb argument that there's a lot of strategy to find interesting in soccer, and anyway over the years the U.S. got better so it wasn't even really like rooting for foreign teams. Dean brushes it off, like he always did, and the argument's dumb but it feels—right. Something locking in, something solid. He washes the plates by hand in the sink and Sam dries them, and stacks them in the rickety cupboard Dean's definitely going to build a replacement for, and then he braces his hands on the countertop and closes his eyes again and breathes, slow. Calm, now, but still something built up inside that Dean doesn't know.

It doesn't bug him, like it might have, before. Dean chews his lip, and drains the sink, and tosses the dishrag over the faucet to dry, and says, neutral, "Hey." Sam makes a small noise, so he's not in some other universe. "Just—one thing. How long?" Sam turns his head, looks at Dean, and Dean lifts a shoulder. "It's—with how the time works, up here, I got no idea. How long was it, for you?"

He looks the same, is the thing. The same as he did when Dean was standing there, in the dark, with that strange numbness everywhere south of his spine and a stillness creeping up in his heart. The terror of that moment has already faded but the rest of the feeling is right there—looking at Sam and loving every single part of him. Pinning him into memory, exactly as he was, with his goddamn stupid haircut and his wide mouth. A few greys, at his temples. His body, lean-but-muscled, trim from running. His eyes, beautiful, even as panicked as they were, even as he told Dean that it was okay.

It wasn't. Dean knows that, now. Sam's cheek sucks in, on one side. "I was 68," he says. Dean feels the air go out of himself, a little. That's—jesus. Sam doesn't look sad about it. Not exactly. He slides his hands into his jacket pockets, tipping his head. "I was—I was in bed. It wasn't bad."

Dean bites the corner of his mouth. "Guess that makes you the older brother, then, huh?"

Sam smiles, just a little. "No," he says, and doesn't elaborate more than that.

There are two bedrooms, upstairs. That first night they sleep in the living room, watching old movies on an old TV, Dean in a recliner that's ridiculously comfortable when he kicks the footrest out and Sam on the couch. He wakes up at dawn to Sam still sleeping, his arms folded around a pillow like he always used to do, still in that old jacket, that hooded sweater bunched up and twisted around his waist. Dean recognizes it, now. He dreamed it. His heart feels like it can hardly take knowing, but there it is, anyway. His face is soft, sleeping, and Dean gets up with his back aching just a little—turns out that there are still aches—and he crouches down, and he settles his hand on Sam's jaw, and runs his thumb over the sharp-angled turn of his cheekbone. Sam opens his eyes, slow but not like he was even really asleep, and he looks at Dean looking at him, and Dean just—it's enough. If it was just this, for eternity and past it, that would be—that'd be good.

There's a library, in the house. A small office kind of room, off the kitchen, but Sam says the books change, when he goes in and out, so it stays fresh. The fridge always seems to have something in it. There's always gas, in the car, although sometimes little things need fixing, and in the garage there are things that Dean can use to fix it, so he gets to spend afternoons contented under the big black bulk, while Sam hands him things from the toolbox, and is distracted half the time from reading so that he hands Dean the 3/8s wrench instead of the 5/8s wrench, but that gives Dean an opportunity rag on him so it works out, either way.

"Mom and Dad are here," Dean says, one day. He's doing the wiring, on the porch. As good a place to start as any. Sam's helping, kind of—actual electric work apparently wasn't one of the things he learned, over the years. "They've got a house, Bobby said."

"That's great," Sam says, and when Dean looks down he looks like he means it, soft smile and all, but Sam doesn't suggest they visit, and Dean thinks—well, later's still always on the table. They haven't gone anywhere, really, except for drives sometimes through the mountain roads, and Sam's gone for his runs in the early dawn before Dean wakes up, and Dean's found on a path through the trees a good creek, where he's fished with Sam mostly ignoring him, reading again in a lawnchair with his bare feet kicked out into the soft grass, but still paying just enough attention to smirk behind his book when Dean doesn't catch anything.

They don't really stay apart for more than the time it takes to leave a room and come back. Even with those runs, Dean only knows they happened because as he's waking up Sam comes back with sweat in his hair, and Dean gets to make fun of him for stinking up the place before Sam rolls his eyes and clatters into the bathroom to turn on the creaking ancient shower, and he leaves the door open when he does so Dean can hear the water running, and the splashing, and how Sam's apparently started to hum. He doesn't sing, but Dean recognizes the tunes anyway. When Sam comes out Dean has breakfast ready—they take turns on dinner, but for some reason Sam doesn't like to make breakfast, anymore—and they eat, and then there's some project to do or a movie to watch or a book to finish, and—Sam's right there, solidly content. Like he's making up for lost time, and taking his sweet time in doing so.

Whisky, one night. In the cupboard. It's good—some Scottish blend Crowley had left in the bunker, once, sharp and sweet and rolling smoke down the throat—and they're out on the porch again, on the new bench this time, watching the sunset come down. Sam's mostly holding his glass, rather than drinking, but he looks okay. Head leaned back against the wall, and his shoulders relaxed, broad and strong. He doesn't seem to mind that Dean watches him as much as he does the sky, but he's looking thoughtful, and finally Dean says, "Tell me." Sam rolls his head against the wall, and meets Dean's eyes. "It's been on your mind, all day. Spit it out, man."

The corner of Sam's mouth lifts. "You would've made a good therapist, you know that?" he says. Dean raises his eyebrows. "I've been… I had a son."

Dean's jaw drops. "That's—" he starts, and his brain doesn't supply anything else. Shock—bewilderment—joy, and it's the joy that wins out, and he punches Sam in the shoulder and says, "Frickin' mazel tov, dude! That's—what was his name?"

"Ow," Sam says, half-laughing, clutching his arm. "What do you think? I named him after you."

"Great choice, pick the handsome brother," Dean says, nearly automatic, and Sam rolls his eyes like he's supposed to, but Dean's still spinning through it, taking it in. Sam—with a little boy—and Dean wants to know everything, everything, but Sam's gone from content to content-but-pensive, and Dean makes fun of him for going emo a lot, but this is… "He a good kid? Doing the name proud?"

"Yeah, he is," Sam says. He huffs, after a second, like he's remembering something—some memory that Dean doesn't share. There's been a lot of that, really, although Dean's not sure Sam notices when it happens. "You'd hate his taste in music, though. And he drives an electric car."

"Heathen," Dean says, and Sam raises his hands in surrender, and then leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. Dean looks at his back, broad in the grey t-shirt. He sips at his scotch. "We could—probably see him. I'd like to meet him. And you must…" Miss him, is what he wants to say, except that his heart seems to catch up to what it means, what Sam's saying. That he had a boy, a kid, and he was old enough to drive and have shitty taste in music, and it was a whole life—that the kid had a mother, and Sam had a world separate to this one, and of course Dean knew that and Dean always wanted that for him, and that was true, that wasn't ever a lie no matter what else Dean felt, deep inside where he never, ever intended for it to matter, but. Dean misses Jack, sometimes, in a soft sore way—misses Ben, even, when that pain's far-distant and not even truly his to feel—but what Sam's going through, that's different, and Dean doesn't know how to touch it.

Sam shakes his head, though. "I do," he says, answering what Dean couldn't say out loud. "But I—no, I don't want to see him. Not yet. He's living, and I think—I hope he's doing the best he can. I was kind of an old dad. Old-fashioned maybe, too, but I taught him right, I think, and he'll be okay. I want to just—let him live. In my head. You know? And later, when he's finally—god, he'd better be really old—then. I'd want to see him then."

Dean gets it, and doesn't. He's not sure he could've waited another minute for Sam, if he'd been forced to. He picks up Sam's glass, abandoned on the bench between them, and holds it forward. Sam takes it, and accepts Dean's clink when it's offered. "To Dean," he says, and Sam huffs and gives him a slanted look back over his shoulder, but he nods, and repeats it, and they finish the bottle between them that night.

Funny, that they ended up in the mountains. Kansas was all flat prairie and farmland and endless horizons, and Dad used to joke sometimes when they'd drive across the country's flat middle that you could roll a marble all the way from Abilene to Lincoln and the only way it'd stop is if someone picked it up. Up here it feels—different. With the hills, and the trees. Like they could be hemmed in, if they were feeling bad about it, but instead it just feels like shelter. A place of their own. A place to make their own.

Sam left the bunker, he says, one day. A fishing day, when Dean's got his cooler full of cheap beer and Sam's working on yet another friggin' book, though this time he's at least enjoying the cool air, watching the birds and the river more than he's got his nose in some old dude's ancient wisdom. "Couldn't stay," he says, and Dean—yeah. That makes sense.

Little revelations, now and then. Sam doesn't seem to be in a hurry to tell them, but he doesn't seem to feel bad about them, either. Like they're sorrows mostly dealt with, or details that don't matter in the grand scheme. Dean never had a place, when Sam was gone from him, but even the car—he couldn't drive it, when Sam wasn't there in the passenger seat beside him. He gets how the bunker could've been less a shelter than a prison, when the halls were empty, and the silence got too thick. "I left it to him," Sam says, after a little while. He tucks his bookmark into his spot, tucks the book under his arms. Dean's just holding onto the fishing pole at this point, barely paying attention to the line, but Sam's watching it for the both of them. "I didn't—take him there, ever, but I told him about hunting, about the job, and I left a letter. Explaining it all, with the key and everything. It's there if he wants it."

"Good," Dean says. Sam glances at him. "Someone should use it. He's a legacy, too."

"Yeah, he is," Sam says, and it's quiet for some reason, and then he nods down at the creek. "You're getting a bite, dude—" and oh damn it, see, this is why Sam's a distraction on fishing trips, and Dean fumbles the rod and cusses at his brother and Sam just laughs, and the afternoon's easy, and Dean finally does get a damn fish and brings it home and considers leaving the guts under Sam's pillow, but instead he fries it up with dill and cornmeal and Sam makes nearly orgasmic noises, eating out on the porch because Dean still hasn't built them a table, and Dean says, "Jeez, dude, get a room," and his ears are pink but—he's happy. Sam's happy. That's been the only goal, this whole damn time. A falling-down house in the mountains, with the two of them totally alone, turns out to be as good a place to be happy as any. Go figure, Dean thinks, watching Sam suck his fingers and then turn his eyes hopefully toward the kitchen for more.

A drive. There's a road that snakes up high, ending in an empty lookout point, and Sam convinces Dean to come further—a hike, up to the very top of the mountain, where the trees start to thin and there's a view like—

"Holy shit," Dean says, when he heaves himself up over that last friggin' boulder, and Sam says, "Right?"

A vastness. The forest is thick and the sky's this clear, depthless blue, and the valleys and hills spread out in front of them untouched. Like they're really the only people in all of heaven, nothing but them and the trees and the house. Sam stands with his hands on his hips, looking out, looking like a damn model for that weird orange hiking jacket he's wearing, and Dean sits down on a handy flat rock and feels the sun on his back, takes it in. "You know, I thought the memory thing would've been okay, honestly," Dean says. Sam glances back at him. Instantly knows what Dean means, from the way he's furrowing his massive forehead in disbelief. "I mean, maybe it would've gotten boring, I don't know. Stuck on our hamster wheels forever. But there was good stuff, in there, and we—I mean. We would've been together. Right?"

It had been brutally painful, at the time, but in later years Dean had thought about it. Approached it cautious, like something that would break if he touched it. Soulmates, he thinks, now, deliberate inside his own head, and Sam smiles, like somehow he heard it. "Yeah, I guess so," he says. He tips his head. "Could've watched that memory of you turfing it into the pasture on that wraith hunt about a hundred times, I think."

Dean raises his eyebrows, says, "Ha," while Sam grins at him, but then Sam looks back out at the view. "Would've been some choice ones of you, too, you know," he says, but then shakes his head, even if Sam's not looking anymore. "This is—better, though. Glad Jack did it like this."

"And Cas," Sam says, and, yeah. Cas.

Dean takes a deep breath. He hasn't gone there, in his head, really. Castiel, free of the death he'd cursed himself to, free of darkness. Dean drags his hand over his stubble, remembering. The dark, reaching out. He looks out at the clear, bright day. "He was in love with me," he says.

Sam turns his head, but Dean's focused on the trees—past them—through to that day. All the time after, Dean never said anything about it, out loud or even in his head. They hadn't had a body to burn, and Sam hadn't asked questions, careful and kind in that way Sam had learned to be once he was older, and it had been an old bruise, unhealed, that Dean didn't like to press on because what was the point? It doesn't hurt now, but it's…

"He told you?" Sam says, and Dean nods. A pause, again, and Sam comes and sits down on the rock, too. His hands are clasped between his knees and Dean looks at them instead of the trees. Broad and tan, and big, and calm like everything in Sam is calm, now. "And you didn't know?"

Dean looks up, sharply. "Did you?"

Sam's mouth tilts. "I wondered," he says, and Dean huffs, leans back on his hands, looks up at the clear sky. A breeze, just chilly enough that he's glad of his jacket. Sam shifts, beside him. "Did you want to see him?"

It's asked—a little careful. Like Sam doesn't want to influence him either way. Dean imagines it—praying, and saying—what? He doesn't answer, and Sam doesn't press him, and they sit there for a while, in quiet, with the breeze bringing the smell of the trees.

"I didn't marry her," Sam says, after a while. Dean lifts his head—another revelation. Sam's slowly rubbing his thumbs back and forth, a dry chafing, looking out at something Dean can't see. "She was a really good person. Good mother. I wore a ring so people wouldn't ask questions, but I—I think she would've said yes, if I'd asked, but I didn't ask. She moved across town, when Dean was ten. We got along fine—hooked up a few times, even, after we split, but it just…"

"Never came together?" Dean offers, when the pause has gone too long, and Sam lifts a shoulder, his mouth curling wry as he looks at Dean. "I know the feeling."

Maybe it was some cruelty of Chuck's. To make it impossible for anything else to feel true. Dean tips his leg out so it touches Sam's, and Sam huffs, and touches Dean's knee, and the heat of him sinks right through the denim before he pushes to his feet, and offers a hand to help Dean up, too. They walk back down the trail, back to where Dean parked the car, and they drive down the winding roads with sunset spilling through the valleys behind them, and when Dean parks in front of the house the porch light's on like they left it, and Sam's getting out and saying something about maybe burgers, for dinner, and he'll make potato salad if Dean'll take care of the cooking, and Dean has to pause, with his heart suddenly thick and full in his chest, and thinks—well, if it was intended to be a punishment, then shit if Chuck didn't get it wrong.

They have burgers, and potato salad. Sam doesn't put in enough mayo and Dean tells him so. They watch The Right Stuff, and Sam listens mostly patiently to Dean filling in all the extra details about the astronauts before he tells Dean that he's a nerd, and Dean says, "Oh, if anyone's the nerd—" and they bicker, and wash the dishes, and Sam's beautiful, is the thing. Beautiful. Whole and healthy and content, in the lamplight in the house they're building. Beautiful his whole life, from when he was a little kid and Dean was wiping his snot-nose with the edge of his t-shirt to when he was a bitchy asshole of a teenager to when he was a high-handed and distant adult to when he was just—Dean's brother, paying him half-attention in the mornings, getting all his jokes, being bossy and being kind and being himself, and himself is all Dean ever wanted him to be.

Sam picks up one of the endless books that he's left on the kitchen counter. "You going to keep watching old nerd movies?" he says, a dimple tucked into his cheek.

Dean's chest feels somehow tight and full of molten gold, all at once. "Sammy," he says, and Sam hears the change in his voice, and blinks at him. Dean knows what Cas had meant, those years ago. How it could feel so entirely perfect, just to hold it like this, under your heart. To acknowledge it and know it for true. "You're it, for me. You know that, right?"

A slight tightening, around his eyes. He searches Dean's face but Dean—he doesn't know what expression he's wearing. It hardly matters.

"Our whole lives. I never—there wasn't ever really an option, for something else, but I don't think I ever even really wanted something else. Ever since I was little. It was you and me in my head, no matter how I thought about the future. I wanted you to have more but I never pictured anything else for me, not really. Even when I got the chance. Never came together, you know? But I don't think I wanted it to. All I wanted was you." Sam's lips have parted. Confusion there, but concern too, and Dean smiles at him. "I guess this sounds—this isn't like a goodbye or anything, or a… I don't know. I just… wanted you to know. In case you hadn't guessed."

Sam lays his hand on the counter, like he's looking for something steady. "Dean," he says, and then doesn't seem to know how to follow it up.

Dean shakes his head. "Didn't mean to drop a bomb on you," he says, and it's that loose knot again, an untangled free thing. Easy, when this had never, ever been easy. When he'd died for it, and lived through way worse than dying. Here, looking at Sam's expression—shock but also not quite shock—his other hand still clutched around his book—it feels like nothing but right. He smiles, looking at Sam's eyes. "After the life we had, man, this is the cherry on top. I don't need anything more than this."

He goes to bed. Sam's still standing there, in the kitchen, when he does.

Time moves more because they expect it to than because of any rules. Sam's been studying it, sort of, out of curiosity more than anything else, and he says he thinks that if they wanted it to be it could be about two pm in a warm July forever. Dean's noticed, even if he doesn't much care. How long have they been here, and still it's those last days of summer creeping into autumn, where it's cool in the shade and the sun's warm, and it doesn't snow, and if it rains it's just for long enough to make the house feel cozy and right, and then when the sun comes out again the world's washed-new, and he doesn't have to dig his car out of the mud.

It's raining the next morning, and Dean lays in bed with the covers pulled up around his shoulders and enjoys it, knowing there's nowhere to go. His room is his room only because it's the bed he picked, with the north-facing window and the view of the car, if he wants to glance down and see it; they leave their doors open, almost all the time, and they hardly have possessions that need keeping anywhere. He lifts up on an elbow after a while, and looks over the foot of the bed down the hall, and on the opposite end by the stairs Sam's door is open and he's a solid lump, in his bed, still snoozing through the rain, and Dean's heart folds up in his chest, looking. It tends to do that.

He goes through some morning things. Making the coffee, and sipping at a cup while he eats a slice of toast. He goes into the library and picks something off the shelf, and carries it back upstairs, and then it's the solitary, strange contentment of a morning crap (the door closes for that at least, and he'd wondered why that was something that stuck around in heaven until he experienced the weird peace of an unhurried morning), and then a coffee refill, and then it's still raining and he thinks—yeah, back to bed, crawling in with his coffee and his book, his back to the headboard, the house warm, the sifting rain outside nothing but soothing.

"Hey," he hears, and looks up.

Sam—oh. In his flannel pants and one of those v-neck sleeping shirts, black this time, his hair rumpled, leaning in his doorway. He closes his book and lets it fall down by his leg. Sam's eyes follow it, with a small frown.

"You really went for the beauty sleep, huh?" Dean says, as though the clock means anything. Even in heaven, he feels weird when Sam catches him reading. In that time in the bunker—after Jack disappeared—he'd started again, like he used to when he was in his twenties. Dumb stuff, nothing like what Sam would pick, but he liked the stories. Sam's never made fun of him for it, but he still—well, still.

Sam's still looking at the book but the silence has stretched, with the patter of the rain filling the space between. "I stayed awake for a long time, last night," he says, finally. "Thinking about stuff. What you said. Other things, too."

He seems okay. Not bitter, or angry, or even particularly stressed about it. Still, "Sorry," Dean says.

Sam shakes his head, and looks up at Dean's face. "Don't be sorry." He pushes a hand through his hair, sort-of smiles. "Figures, you wouldn't say anything until you knew I was a sure thing."

Dean snorts. He moves the book over to his bedside table, leaves it with his empty coffee mug. He pulls his knees up under the blanket, making room, and Sam comes and sits at the foot of the bed, one knee pulled up onto the mattress, looking at Dean steady and—and okay. They're okay.

"I had a dream last night," Sam says, finally. Dean nods—the dreams come pretty steadily, up here. Never nightmares, just invention, and memory recontextualized. "It was about… when Azazel had Dad. You remember that? Forever ago. All I wanted was to kill him. All you wanted was for us to be together. Remember?"

Of course, Dean remembers. The way he'd dragged Sam away from another fire. Sam looking at him with almost-pity, when he'd finally admitted what he wanted.

There's not a trace of pity in him, now. He pulls his knee up against his chest, comfortable. "You know, I thought about it," Sam says. "After you were gone. How everything felt—incomplete. Half-a-loaf. Even…" He shakes his head, and Dean wonders what goes there. He'll find out someday. "We were always breaking the world for each other. Normal siblings don't really do that. I don't know if you realized."

"I bet Mary-Kate and Ashley would give it a shot," Dean says, and Sam smiles at him, but rolls his eyes, too. "Sam—"

"I wondered," Sam interrupts. He lifts his eyebrows, a little, and Dean hears it as the echo it's meant to be. Despite everything he can feel his cheeks going pink. "If it wasn't just that we couldn't find something that was better, but that we never would. If you'd…"

He trails off. Dean picks at the blue yarn-ties on his blanket, watching Sam's face. Turned now, toward the rain outside, lit beautiful with morning. "I wouldn't have said anything," he says. Sure, somehow. "Even if we'd had—hell. Another decade, just you and me. When I said this was enough, I meant it."

"I know you did," Sam says. "And I know you wouldn't have. Because you wouldn't have wanted to ruin anything for me, right? If I had some outside shot—some kind of normal I might've dug up?" Dean nods. Sam nods, too, and then reaches out and flicks his knee through the blanket, hard it enough that it nearly stings. Dean claps his hand over the spot and smacks Sam's hand away, but Sam's already retreating, hands up, smiling. "Truce, truce. Just saying. I wouldn't have tried for anything, if you'd been there. It would've just been me and you and the dog."

The dog. "Did he—" Dean says, distracted, and Sam says, "Old and kinda fat, and happy as he could be."

Sam's just looking at him, along the length of the bed. "Sammy," Dean says, and chews his cheek for a minute. Sam's patient. "I know it wasn't easy, that I was gone. But I'm still glad you got that shot. Glad I didn't ruin it."

"You didn't—" Sam starts, and then closes his mouth. He smiles at Dean with his lips closed, and then breathes out slow through his nose. "I'm glad you're glad," he says, instead, and maybe that's all the compromise they'll ever get, on the subject. Dean's not sure Sam gets it, smart as he is. That Dean would've always wondered. That there would've been some horizon, distant and gold, that Sam might've always looked to, and imagined something different.

The rain's slacking, outside. Sam looks out the window again, at how the sun's drawing out, the light changing. "Do you want to try to figure out the cabinets today?" he says.

God, Dean loves him. "You can work the band saw," Dean promises, and Sam rolls his eyes again, and stands up, and says, "Let me shower first, before all the excitement," and Dean watches him step into the hall and then into the bathroom and hears the shower come on, through the open door, and he thinks it'll be a good day. Inevitable argument over what color to stain the cabinet doors notwithstanding.

It sits between them. Dean didn't feel tense about it but saying it aloud nevertheless makes him feel almost weightless. He knows that Sam's thinking about the conversation—going over past conversations, and things they've done, and choices they've made, over and over, because Sam's an egghead who had to puzzle things out forever before he can come to some kind of peace with them—but that's okay. They're still together and nothing's ruined, and the house comes along. They work on the kitchen for a while, Sam pulling down the horrible wallpaper while Dean does the woodwork, and there's a week nearly where they build a fire outside every night and dinner's what they can rig up over the flames—hotdogs, and kebabs, and mac and cheese even that gets a weird smoky flavor to it, and honestly it's about the best version Dean's ever had.

When Sam starts talking he comes at it obliquely. They're watching a movie—Moonraker, just as dumb and wonderful as Dean remembered it—and right over the top of the scene where Jaws is whaling on the guards, Sam says, "I didn't sleep with anyone for almost fifteen years."

"Makes sense, your game is terrible," Dean says, and grins when Sam sighs. "What do you mean? After the breakup with—"

Sam still hasn't said her name. "It just didn't…" Sam shrugs. "It wasn't important somehow."

"Plus you would've thrown your back out," Dean says.

"Yeah," Sam says, dry. "Plus that." A pause, while they both watch the end of the fight. Roger Moore was a way better Bond than people gave him credit for, Dean's always thought. "How long for you?" Dean makes a sound. "Before… You used to brag about it, you know? But you didn't come home bragging for a long time."

"You trying to get me to say just looking at your goofy mug every morning was enough?" Dean tips his head on the couch to find Sam raising his eyebrows, actually surprised. "Hah. Well, it was."

"Seriously?" Sam says.

Dean shrugs, not sure why it's coming as a shock. He doesn't actually remember himself, even though it's closer in memory for him, when he last had that urge—to just go for a hookup, to let off nervous energy. On the screen, Bond's punching someone, and Holly Goodhead's in trouble. "No need to try to fix what ain't broke, as they say," Dean says, and he can tell Sam watches his face for a while before Sam turns his attention back to the movie.

Later: Dean's peeled back the scary carpet and it turns out there's good wood flooring underneath. Go figure. He's trying to decide whether he wants to cut it out in pieces or roll the whole thing up and see if he can get Sam to carry it. Sam brings him a cup of coffee, while he's standing in the doorway to the bedroom and frowning, and then says, "I never thought about being with a guy."

Dean slops the coffee, a little. Good thing he's tearing out the carpet either way. "Uh, okay."

The corner of Sam's mouth tugs up. "It just never occurred to me," he says. "Not really."

Dean takes a sip from his mug. Even in heaven Sam manages to screw it up, somehow—this time, way too strong like he used three times the amount of grounds needed—but it's Sam's coffee, and Dean's so damn gone for him that he's fond of the sludge, too.

Apparently he's been silent too long. Sam tips his head, leaning against the doorframe, opens his mouth and closes it again.

"Do you really want to know?" Dean says, after a minute. He'd answer, he thinks. If Sam asked. What would be the point of keeping it secret, after all, with what they both already know?

"I think you just told me," Sam says, quiet, but shakes his head, and then jerks his chin at the carpet. "If you think I'm carrying that whole thing downstairs you're insane."

"Worth a shot," Dean says, and they put it away, for another day.

Later: they're painting, in the hall between the kitchen and the living room, and it was a long bickering session to come up with the color but Dean thinks that Sam was really arguing just to argue and not because he cared, at all. It smells like paint, which in theory is unpleasant but which really Dean's always kind of enjoyed—because it means there's a project being done, and progress being made, and that always settles something, in his bones—and Sam's got a full on handprint of slate blue on his ass that Dean thinks somehow he still hasn't noticed, and which should cause some entertainment when he does—and Sam says, standing back and squinting at his edging work, "How did you know?" Dean grunts, not following for once. His brush needs to be cleaned. Sam reaches up and fixes a line, carefully swiping blue away from the ceiling, and says, "About us. When did you know?"

Dean pauses, fingers all tangled with the brush in the murky water. Sam's frowning up at the ceiling, patiently doing his part. That's a question he never really asked himself, and he doesn't know the answer. Too easy to say always, even if sometimes that feels like the truth. November 1983 is another answer, but of course that's wrong, too. From the first time Sam smiled at him. From the first time he guided Sam's hands around a gun and helped him pull the trigger, and they nailed that empty Coke can like it was a vamp, at thirty paces. From the day Sam left, at that shitty house in Utah, and Dean stood in the dark street with his heart bleeding out 'til it was empty. From the night Sam died, and Dean knelt in the dirt with him and understood how it felt to die, too, and yet still be forced to stand up and keep living, and to have his whole body reject it, everything in him knowing: no.

Sam crouches down by him, and nudges Dean out of the way, so he can clean his own brush. "I didn't get it, I don't think," Sam says, when Dean hasn't responded. He riffles his fingers through the bristles, blue blooming up so that Dean can't see his skin. "Not for… Man, I don't know. It might've been when I thought we were going to lose you to Amara. Maybe earlier." He draws his brush out of the water and squeezes the wet out, and Dean watches his hands, like he does so much of the time. Capable and square-palmed and long-fingered. Blue paint stuck under his fingernails. He rests his brush on the side of their paint tray and his hands lace loosely between his knees, where he's still right there, inches from Dean. "Wish it hadn't took me so long."

Dean looks at him. Sam's looking back, not really smiling but with his face soft. He stands up, after a few seconds, and from Dean's crouching vantage Sam looks impossibly tall. "C'mon," he says, easy. "Let's finish this up. I want to watch you fail at fishing at some point today."

Later—

There's no real time, and therefore it's no particular day. Days have passed and yet the days are still gold, and beautiful. Sam goes for a run, and comes back, and they have breakfast, and they shower, and it rains briefly midday and so Sam reads in the armchair while Dean watches a movie—Godfather II, and he tells Sam he's a barbarian for reading through it, but Sam calmly ignores him like he always does—and then the rain stops, and Dean thinks, maybe a drive, and so they go for a drive, with the late afternoon sun pouring down. They park, in front of the house, and Dean gets out, and he's thinking about dinner—Sam's turn to cook, but Dean wants steak and Sam's never actually gotten the hang of steak—and Sam says, "Hey," and so Dean turns, and there with the driver door still open on the car, Sam steps up close to him, and takes Dean's face in his hands.

Dean's heart thuds slow, in the base of his throat. Sam's been this close before but he hasn't had quite that look in his eye. He stands still, waiting, and Sam's mouth twitches into a quick smile, like he's had some funny thought that he'll share with Dean, later—and Sam leans down, and when their mouths press together it's...

Sam pulls back, after not long enough. "Is that okay?" he says.

Really asking. Dean's holding Sam's forearms, his lips warm. "You're supposed to be the smart one," he says, and his voice comes out raw. "You figure it out."

His eyes are closed. Sam laughs, softly, and Dean takes a breath, and then there's Sam's mouth, again, soft but insistent, just the right amount of pressure. Sam's very good at this. Who knew. Dean's hand slides to Sam's chest and he parts his lips, and Sam takes the invitation as it's given, licking just barely inside. They're both unshaven but the scratch of Sam's chin feels good. Sam's nose brushes his. Dean pulls back, and tilts so their foreheads are touching, and there's an infinite universe of time around them and he could just stay—here. Right here, with Sam's breath mingling with his, and Sam's hand on his face.

Once they've started, though, Sam doesn't seem to feel the need to stop. "Bed?" he says, quiet, and Dean nods, and then—Sam's room, with the sun coming in the window and the thick blue blanket soft under Dean's hand. Sam sits beside him and leans in and they kiss—again—for ages, Dean's arm around Sam's neck and no sound but their lips meeting and parting, and the breeze soughing against the house.

Sam's—happy. That's the only thing Dean can think, over and over, his heart thrilling for it. "Is it weird?" Dean says, at one point, and Sam touches his cheek with two fingers, and drags them soft along Dean's stubble to his jaw, to his chin, and shakes his head and then laughs and says, "Yeah, but who cares about weird," and Dean says, fervently, "Not me," and Sam laughs again and presses him down to the bed and kisses him, again, and again.

Clothes go away, slowly. Boots, and jackets, and Dean pushes Sam a little upright and unbuttons his shirt, careful, while Sam watches his face. "Do you know what you want?" Dean says, not pushing either way. When the shirt's open he spreads his hands on Sam's chest—god, even through the undershirt, it's—but Sam's shaking his head, and Dean tries to focus, even if focus seems a billion miles from here. "And you never…"

But no, because Sam told him. Sam lays his palm on Dean's stomach, warm. "What did you want?" Sam says. Gentle almost. "The first time you—when you thought about it. What did you picture?"

"Who says I pictured anything?" Dean says, and Sam just smiles at him, and, yeah, okay. So Sam knows him better than anyone. So what.

Naked, Sam is… It's not like Dean never saw it before, but he never let himself look, like he's looking now. Never with the sense of right, that he feels now. Sam's looking right back, which somehow comes a surprise. Dean lets Sam tug off his jeans, his boxers, and he's left on his back on the bed, and Sam stands there and his eyes go all over—from Dean's chest to his dick to his feet, for some reason—and Dean feels himself flushing, but it's more because—

"I didn't think it'd be like this," Sam says, and yeah. Yeah, that's it. Sam's flushed, too, a little red come into the hollows of his cheeks. His dick's half-hard, swinging heavy against his thigh, and Dean wants it. Wants Sam. It should be complicated but it isn't. He spreads his legs, and Sam kneels on the bed and then fits himself there, so Dean's thighs can slide against Sam's, and there's the warm glance of his belly, and his chest against Dean's, and how his nose brushes Dean's cheek and how his hair falls forward, and the dense familiar physicality of him. How he's Dean's brother and how he's—everything, everything else that ever mattered.

They rub together, kissing. Sam's fingers find his nipple and play with it, slow and insistent. Sam's hard, thick, pressing into the crease of Dean's thigh, and Dean nudges under Sam's jaw, kisses his throat, drags his thumb down between Sam's pecs. "Do you want to," he says, against Sam's skin, and Sam's hand cups over the back of his head and he doesn't have to say anything for Dean to know.

There's lube, in Sam's bedside table. Dean laughs, while Sam blinks surprise at it. This perfect house. He pulls Sam in close again, and he doesn't think it'll take much—hell, they might not even have to bother—but he wants it, like this is a first time they might have had, some perfect day that never existed on earth. He drizzles the lube over Sam's fingers and Sam knows what to do, reaching below, and Dean spreads his legs wide and sinks into the pillow, into how it feels. "Do you like it?" Sam says, curious and a little pleased, and Dean hooks his arm around Sam's neck and drags him down for a kiss so Sam won't ask such dumb friggin questions. The slow drag and stretch of Sam's knuckles inside—and he's not going far enough or deep enough, because he's done this to women maybe but never to a guy, but it feels good, anyway.

They don't move from that position. Dean reaches down and tugs at Sam's wrist, and gets a slick dragging hand on his hip, instead. Sam kisses his cheekbone, shifts his weight, and the press inside—ah—thick, and just that first bright sting that makes it count for something, but it doesn't hurt beyond that, and it's just the slow parting drag of Sam, inside him, until he's as far as he can go and stops with his hips pressed right up close. Dean holds him there, feeling. Sam's breath against his cheek, and his weight held tense on one elbow, and their chests rising and falling together. Dean's dick presses against Sam's belly but it doesn't feel important, right now—it's more that they're—finally, they're—

"Please say I can move," Sam says, breathless, and Dean gasps in and then laughs, dizzy, says, "Jesus, you've been waiting on me? Get the lead out, come on—go—"

It lasts—

For the time it takes Dean to curl his hips up and feel how Sam jolts, hard inside. For the time it takes Sam to lift up higher, getting enough space between them that he can see Dean's face, and for him to fit his hand around Dean's jaw and press his thumb against Dean's lower lip and look him in the eyes, startled, like even after everything he's learned something new. For the time it takes Dean to wrap his thighs around Sam's waist and arch, and for Sam to bury his head down into the curve of Dean's throat, and for Dean to hold Sam's shoulders, and for it to be…

Perfect, Dean thinks, after.

They're on their sides. Dean's leg is still caught around Sam's hip. Their heads are on the same pillow and Dean's got his hand on Sam's chest, and Sam keeps tracing some nonsense shape into the skin over Dean's ribs, and the sun's still out, and the breeze is still gentle, and it feels in a way like no time has passed, at all. Like this is still their first day in heaven. That first moment, when Sam appeared on the bridge, and Dean's heart thumped into place, like it was beating again, at last.

Sam's hand settles flat on Dean's side. Dean looks up from Sam's chest, and Sam's waiting there, to meet his eyes. A smile, small. "Good job, tiger," Dean says, and Sam's smile goes deeper, and Dean rolls his eyes, and tugs Sam's chest hair in retaliation. Sam mimes pain but all he does is pull Dean an inch closer, and sigh.

"Do you think we could've made it work?" he says, eventually. Dean hmms, asking. "Before, I mean. When we were alive. It feels like…" He shakes his head, a small movement against the pillow. "I don't know. Like we wasted time."

"Maybe," Dean says. He shifts, stretching out his legs, and lifts up on one elbow. Sam tips his head back to keep looking at Dean's face. Dean looks back, unhurried. The straight line of his eyebrows, and his tip-tilted eyes. His mouth, relaxed in contentment, and the slope of his nose, and that mole that Dean feels the weirdest fondness for. He touches it, and Sam blinks, and Dean smiles at him. "It worked out, though. Don't you think?"

Sam's mouth tips, a dimple peeking up in his cheek. He looks as glad as Dean's ever seen him. "Yeah," he says, finding Dean's hand. Their fingers tangle together, caught warm against Sam's chest. "Yeah, it worked out okay."

#wincest #carry on spoilers #my writing

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teamfreewill2pointo · 4 years ago

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Sam’s Emotional Arc 1/3

I hated the finale immediately, but I’ve spent some time with it and talked to friends who loved it. I can see now what it was about, and I’ve come to appreciate the story they were trying to tell, even if I think it didn’t land right.

I’ve been told that my meta on this has helped other people come to terms with the finale, so I thought I’d compile it in one place from across various discord channels and twitter posts. If you are struggling with the finale, I hope it helps you.

Part of this actually started with a shit post. I was making a joke about Sam being psychic since he was scared of clowns when Dean died by one. I realized that may have been deliberate. I dug into the story more and now I’m convinced it was. Then I came across some excellent meta that fit with the themes I was finding and opened up the series even more for me.

Happiness isn’t in the having, it’s in just being. It’s in just saying it.

Cas said it. Dean accepted it. Sam lived it. First, Sam’s journey.

Clowns pop up in s15 before the barn scene. In 15.01, which was written by Dabb, Sam is injured by a clown. Castiel is able to save Sam and heal his injury. The clown keeps coming after Sam, with Sam having fight scenes with the clown, while others attack the other ghosts. The clown is kicking the shit out of Sam again, and Castiel saves him once more. Sam is unable to fight off the clown on his own both times.

They run until they are able to escape outside a magical barrier. Sam turns to the clown and says, “shut up”.

This is literally Sam running from his fears. On top of that, this isn’t just any clown, but the ghost of John Wayne Gacy, from an episode also written by Dabb.

Dean: A serial killer clown. I mean, this is, like, the best/worst thing that’s ever happened to you, you know, ‘cause you love serial killers, but – but you hate clowns.

Sam gets nervous and struggles with the lighter before he’s able to get rid of the clown, for now.

I believe this is a metaphor for hunting in general: it’s both the best of Sam’s life and also the worst. The clowns symbolize his relationship with Dean.

Plucky Pennywhistle's Magical Menagerie was co-written by Dabb (see the pattern?). Sam’s fear of clowns was known since season 2. In season 7, Dabb explored where this fear came from.

On the surface, Sam’s fear is just because he found them creepy, but the episode explains that they actually come from Sam’s fear of being left behind by Dean.

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This episode comes directly after an episode where Sam worried that Dean would get himself killed

Sam: Look... Dean, the thing is, tonight... It almost got you killed. Now, I don't care how you deal. I really, really don't. But just don't – don't get killed. Dean: I'll do what I can. Sam: Well, what's that supposed to mean? Dean: It means I'll do what I can. All right? You can shut up about it.

Sam is dealing with Hallucifer at this moment, but Hallucifer doesn’t really scare him. Losing Dean does.

Sam has a conversation with an employee about greatest fears.

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Recognize the actress? She came back for s15 in 15.06. I don’t believe this was a coincidence. 15.06 featured Castiel helping a parent find their lost child in a season that features Castiel worried about losing Jack. Through his experience with her, Castiel confronts his fears and doubts and then returns to join in the fight against God. [I’ll touch on Castiel’s journey more in his chapter]

Sam’s greatest fear is losing Dean. There’s a lot in the series about how Sam felt lonely and abandoned for much of his childhood. A whole episode, Just My Imagination, centers around this. Sam hated when Dean went off on hunts without him.

source In The Chitters, Sam tells Dean how his fear of losing his family paralyzed him as child. It’s a story where an older brother dies and the younger brother never recovers from it until he’s able to lay him to rest (sound familiar???)

Sam: You know, whenever you and Dad used to leave me to go hunting, and I-and I wouldn’t hear from y’all for a while, I, um, I was always sure that some vamp or rugaru, or take your pick, I always figured one of them finally got ya. I tried to think what to do, you know, the next step to take. I was just lost. Dean: We came back, though, every time.

You might naturally think, “Wait a minute! Sam left Dean multiple times!” Honestly, this was something I had a huge issue with when watching through the show the first time. I didn’t understand Sam and hated him leaving Dean in s8. I was completely on Dean’s side at first. But, on multiple rewatches and talking to others, I’ve realized that when Sam left Dean, he was running from his fear. In this TV Guide interview, Jared perfectly sums up why Sam left in season 1; he couldn’t stand to see his family die. Dabb wrote Dark Side of the Moon along with a comic that explains why Sam left in detail. While the comic isn’t official canon, it shows Dabb’s thought process. In it, Sam sees his family as running towards a horrible end and can’t handle dealing with that.

Dean: So what are you gonna do? You're just gonna live some normal, apple pie life? Is that it? Sam: No. Not normal. Safe.

There are many more points in the series where we learn about Sam’s fear of Dean dying. This would be 3948573945 pages long if I wrote them all out, so I’m going to focus on the key moments that loop back to this ending, but there’s so much more there.

If you are struggling with this and need more, please let me know and I can do a deeper dive into that subject. We first see Sam’s inability to let Dean go in season 1 when Sam refuses to let Dean die in Faith.

Dean: You're not gonna let me die in peace, are you? Sam: I'm not gonna let you die, period. We're going.

Sam’s whole arc in s3 is him being unable to handle Dean dying. He wants to save Dean, but Dean won’t let himself be saved. This was what Gabriel was trying to teach him in Mystery Spot.

Trickster: This obsession to save Dean? The way you two keep sacrificing yourselves for each other? Nothing good comes out of it. Just blood and pain. Dean's your weakness. And the bad guys know it, too. It's gonna be the death of you, Sam. Sometimes you just gotta let people go.

This is how Ruby gets under Sam’s skin and what gets him to start working with her. Everything Sam did was to save Dean. In s4, Sam’s arc is about him sacrificing himself in order to save Dean. He’s gutted from being unable to save Dean. In 4.12, Sam decides to drink demon blood in order to save Dean

Dean: [says that they will die early] Sam: Maybe we'll be different, Dean. Dean: What kind of Kool-Aid you drinking, man? Sammy, it ends bloody or sad. That's just the life. Sam: What if we could win?Dean: "Win"?Sam: If there was a way we could just...put an end to all of it.

When Sam breaks out of the panic room, he’s suicidal. He’s determined to save Dean with his life as the cost he’s willing to pay. He didn’t think he would survive killing Lilith. He was committing suicide in that moment. The reason why Sam is so willing to sacrifice himself in s5 is because he has low self esteem. He blames himself for everything that goes wrong. In Sam, Interrupted 5.11, also by Dabb, Sam has a breakdown under the weight of his guilt. He hates himself and he feels his rage is out of control. In season 6, we see soulless Sam and, unlike souled Sam, he has no rage. Yes, he’ll kill when necessary, but he’s not angry. It was Sam’s fear driving his rage. He felt out of control of his life and let it lead him down a dark path. In season 7, he sees Dean heading down a dark path and he feels helpless to stop it. He worries about dragging Dean down and tells Dean to let him go. But, at the same time, he’s developing coping techniques. He’s starting to face his fears.

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And then Dean disappears and Sam completely falls apart. Sam didn’t have a healthy relationship with Amelia. They were two broken people clinging to each other. Sam and Dean struggle to reconnect after their time apart. There’s a lot of text addressing the horror of a partner dying and people trying to escape from it.

Mrs Holmes: He could see the end of my days were at hand, and... He had lived centuries all alone, but I don't think he could bear the thought of life without me. That's why he drove off that bridge. You must think I'm a monster.

In Hunteri Heroica written by GUESS WHO!?!? Sam finally acknowledges that he was living in a dream world with Amelia. He was running from his past. We see a flash back with Sam pressing on his scar, which he did to help himself distinguish fantasy from reality.

The episode is about a man refusing to engage in reality and harming those around him. Sam has a big confrontation with him

Sam: Look, it can be nice living in a dream world. It can be great. I know that. And you can hide, and you can pretend... all the crap out there doesn't exist, but you can't do it forever because... eventually, whatever it is you're running from – it'll find you. [CASTIEL appears to be taking Sam’s words to heart.] It'll come along, and it'll punch you in the gut. And then... then you got to wake up, because if you don't, then trying to keep that dream alive will destroy you! It'll destroy everything!

Likewise, when Sam was with Jessica, he wasn’t honest about himself. He was hiding from his family and his past. Running to avoid pain. Sam is avoidant in general. Not just in his relationship with Dean. When he talks with Rowena in 13.12 Various & Sundry Villains about his fears of Lucifer, he admits that he could talk about it with Dean, but he can’t bring himself to.

Sam: I’ve seen it too. What he really looks like behind – behind whatever vessel. It… Yeah, still keeps me up at night. Rowena: How do you deal with it? Sam: I guess I don’t deal with it. Not really. I mean, I pushed it down and, um, the world kept almost ending, so I keep pushing it down, and I don’t know. [stammering] I really don’t talk about it, not even with Dean. I mean, I could. You know, he’d listen, but… That’s not something I really know how to share.

In 15.20, Sam’s past is front and center. Literally. I know a lot of people found the Winchester family portrait odd and upsetting, but it symbolizes something I’ll get to in a bit. Instead of trying to avoid his grief, Sam has moments where he lets it wash over him. He goes and sits in the car. He’s no longer avoidant. He’s no longer running away. He’s letting his grief move through him. He’s literally sitting with it.

Soulless Puppy pointed out that the characters emotional arcs is similar to DBT. Please look through their awesome meta here.

Personally, I see them as similar to the therapy I do called ACT. Both are forms of therapy where instead of fighting against them, you accept painful emotions and allow yourself to feel them. If you don’t do that work, then you can’t stop feeling them and your fears/ghosts will always haunt you. In Swan Song, Chuck tells us that “Dean didn't want Cas to save him. Every part of him, every fiber he's got, wants to die, or find a way to bring Sam back. But he isn't gonna do either. Because he made a promise.” In 15.20, Sam initially didn’t want to let Dean go. He’s been refusing to do this since season 1. When he’s separated from Dean he lives a fake life or destroys himself/the world trying to get Dean back. There’s a moment in 15.20 where Sam looks at Dean’s guns. He wants to commit suicide, but he makes the choice to live. For the time in Sam’s life, he let Dean go and lived with his pain. He no longer ran from it. After Swan Song, Dean was unable to let Sam go. He wanted him back. After Carry On, Sam is able to do what Dean couldn’t do. He lives a life outside of Dean. What’s more, Sam has reconciled himself with his past and his family. It’s clumsy and I wish it were better shown, but having the family portrait and their parents in heaven isn’t meant to excuse the way Sam and Dean were raised. In order to move past the trauma of his relationship with his parents, Sam fully integrates them into his life. In Lebanon, Sam was able to confront and forgive his father. In doing so, he can also forgive himself. Mary asks for forgiveness too, and he grants it to her. He doesn’t forget what happened, but he’s able to move forward and leave the intergenerational cycle of violence. He’s able to raise his son, Dean, the way his brother should have been raised.

Happiness isn’t in the having, it’s in just being. It’s in just saying it.

Cas said it. Dean accepted it. Sam lived it.

I can see why people see Sam’s life after Dean as unhappy. I hated it so much because I saw it as horrible and sad the first time through. I had to sit with myself and my emotions first. I think it’s because we’ve been told by society that we have to get rid of our grief in order to be happy. The finale was showing us that it’s possible to do the opposite. [Personally I think it would’ve been better had they showed more overtly happy memories, but many of my friends saw this straight away] When I began therapy, one of the first things I learned was that there aren’t “negative” emotions. When working with our kids, we call them Big emotions. In DBT/ACT, all emotions are treated as normal and natural. Grief, anger, sadness, etc, these are all normal parts of the human existence. We don’t need to run from them in order to have happiness. We can live with them. As interstitial said in our chats, “you can't change the past, you can only change your relationship to it. To accept that your past contained both love and heartache, to miss it, but also know you can do better; that's actual recovery, as good as it gets.” As Soulless-Puppy explained to me, Sam lived in duality. Dean was dead, but Sam lived. Sam was happy, but he grieved. Dean was with him in the watch and the car and his son, but Dean also waited for him in heaven. I hated the finale the first time I saw it, then next watched it with my boyfriend who loved it. As we were watching together and discussing it, I realized that Dean’s death scene wasn’t just about him, but about the show itself.

Dean promising Sam that he will be with Sam in Sam’s heart is also the show promising us that they will never leave it. That’s why Alex kept posting “The end has no end.” Just as Sam carried Dean with him in his heart, we will carry the show with us. I hope this helps. It’s a terrible thing to feel upset about an ending and thinking of the show this way, recognizing these patterns, is bringing me peace. I still have issues with how it was written, but now that I see what they were doing, I wish all the more that they had the chance to do it right. Please share your thoughts and experiences. I love hearing different opinions. Next up, Dean. Then Castiel.

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