Romance is Boring

EXHIBIT A:

Sam is unbelievably pissed at Dean after Gadreel. He agrees to live with Dean, be hunting partners, share half their DNA, etc etc etc, but not to being “Brothers” and Dean understands exactly what he means.

Then after they rescue Kevin’s ghost from being trapped in the bunker, Kevin tells Sam to get over his anger at Dean for the whole Gadreel thing. (Keep in mind he’s been watching them as a ghost since Gadreel killed him!) Kevin leaves and Dean tries to initiate a hangout … and Sam rejects him hard.

Sam walks to his own bedroom and his hand practically shakes on the door as he forces himself to go to his own bed instead of to Dean’s room. Dean, meanwhile, goes to his room and puts on his headphones and tries extremely hard to cope with the fact that Sam’s not coming to his room tonight

EXHIBIT B:

Once Eileen is back in Sam’s life, Dean has a very hard time coping. He drinks a lot, and you see the beers stacking up above his head as he tries to handle being alone in his room.

He goes and finds Sam and Eileen and they’ve made breakfast, including actual meat which Sam has recently been refusing. It’s a sign Sam is much more well emotionally and mentally. Dean feels left out (and also hurt that Sam will eat bacon when Eileen makes it but he won’t eat bacon when Dean makes it). Dean had had to trick him into putting his meat in his mouth and made weird sexual jokes about it that annoyed Sam (yes Dean announced that he’s the Meat Man, despite Sam’s protests) but here he is happily eating Eileen’s meat.

Dean tries to be good about Eileen, he tries really hard, but it burns. He tries to encourage Sam “practicing sign language” but he’s walking around with a gaping hole in his chest. When he hears that Sam and Eileen have an “arrangement” that isn’t as serious, it’s an enormous relief to Dean and you can see it in his eyes.

At one point, he jokingly-not-jokingly tells Sam to put a sock on his door so he knows when Eileen is in there, so he knows if he can come by at night. But Sam doesn’t think it’s funny. He doesn’t want Dean coming to room in the middle of the night right now whether or not Eileen is there and whether or not he and Eileen only have an arrangement. He silently rejects the sock idea.

IN CONCLUSION: This is all directly canon. They are in each other’s rooms at night and you can tell because something is wrong between them when they aren’t.

(Off topic but …. By the way, this is one reason why I reject the idea that Dean doesn’t ever let Sam say no. We see Sam say no on camera. Dean agrees to let Sam live with him even if they aren’t currently BrothersTM. Yes, he tries to trick Sam into eating bacon in part because his feelings are hurt and because he can’t respect Sam’s autonomy and right to choose vegan or turkey bacon or whatever. But Dean’s still trying to get consent, still suggesting hangouts and not forcing them, still jokingly and with semi-plausible deniability trying to figure out what he’s allowed and not allowed to do, trying to see what’s permissible in the most eyerolly way known to man. He probably becomes intolerable to live with until Sam’s back where he wants him, but no he doesn’t violently rape Sam. He’s a complete disaster but not evil come on.)

second this was honestly like so beautiful to read like literally jaw dropping because i forgot entirely about eileen’s existence so you really provided some context i couldn’t immediately connect to which is LOVELY! it was like learning something new. i absolutely love meta posts esp meta that aligns with my interpretations and this most certainly does. :))) what you said also makes me want to introduce a belief of mine when it comes to how fandom can categorize them having sex with women (and im really curious what your take on it is) because for me i feel they basically had an open relationship as long as it was no strings. like early on before they were comfortable with their dynamic (idk if you’re a pre-stanford truther or not im not) so for me i felt like they probably actually started having sex during their time in the bunker because it was like their source of extreme privacy, not anyone could just walk in like in a motel. so for me when they had sex with women pre-bunker i feel it’s more of you can get your rocks off but come home to me type deal, and afterwards like say the women they slept with during the baby episode even though it’s post-bunker now i feel the same rules apply. so i like what you said about dean feeling threatened by eileen but then comforted by the fact this wasn’t a ruby or amelia 2.0 (and amy i mean he killed her poor lass lmaoo). so im curious if you agree with this or have a diff framing.

lastly i 100% agree that once they got the bunker they were sleeping in each other’s rooms. the ambiguity of the text points in that direction. dean asking gadreel if he was listening to their private conversations it makes you double take because what exactly are you implying by private? sure you can say he means hunting but i wouldn’t personally classify hunting as like something to hide from gadreel, he was involved in the angel case, so what else could dean mean by private that he doesn’t want gadreel to know? and sam’s whole “i will basically invite you back to the house but we’re only working together and not brothers” was EXTREEEEMLYYY telling and fucking hurt dean so much and you have to question what they’re trying to imply in the text. in real life terms (since antis love saying they’re as close as sam and dean as a gotcha which immediately makes me side eye their relationship lol) but in real life what he said shouldn’t have been so emotionally damaging and yet it was in the show. sam wasn’t cutting off their hunting partnership (which is a big part of their identities and if you want space from someone isn’t that what you’d start with?) no he still wanted dean in his life but he had to cut off something else. he had to cut off them being brothers and cutting off them being brothers doesn’t make sense either unless it’s framing them outside of regular brothers, which it is. normal siblings do exactly what sam set as his boundaries. normal siblings eat together, work together, have small talk, and their separate ways or rooms at the end. so what exactly was different? what exactly was sam depriving dean of that would drive him to a place so dejected it made the mark’s ability to change him easier? THAT’s when subtextual framework matters even if it isn’t explicitly stated in the episode. when you trace the origin of the boundary dean broke you remember it was him violating sam’s body autonomy. dean let another man take ownership of sam’s body in order to keep him alive without sam’s true consent. he went far beyond what it means to be “brothers” with that action that sam no longer allowing dean access to their brotherhood following this can absolutely be read as he was no longer consenting to giving dean access to his body.

dean prone boning sam with his huge bicep wrapped around his neck. his entire weight is resting on sam’s body, and his erection is driving into that tight hole with his pelvis rhythmically slapping against sam’s plush ass.

and it’s just too good on sam’s end, the constant thrusts of dean’s cock jabbing at his prostate and him being suffocated by dean’s muscular arm has his brain turning into mush and his own cock leaking on the mattress. there is not a single coherent word that is slipping past his mouth besides the little mewls and high-pitched moans.

sam can’t squirm away either; with the very little strength that he has, he takes every deep stroke dean is giving him. and he doesn’t realize that he’s starting to drool on his bicep till dean lifts his head with his other hand, where he sees a string of saliva connected from his mouth to dean’s arm. the room may have spun on a tilted axis, but his brother was the only pull sam needed. dropping his chin into the meat of dean’s bicep, sam clamped down. and dean just stares down at the messy, slobber-soaked display, chuckling as he tightens his hold. it wasn't a malicious bite, but a dull gnawing.

WTF IS EVEN SUBTEXT? WHAT IS SUB ABOUT THIS TEXT?

> episode about cheating husbands and too-forgiving wives

> revolves around dean's desire for the darkness (which he had been hiding from sam- even telling casifier to not tell him about it,) and also starts w/ dean sleeping with someone and sam not being too fond of that yet, of course, forgiving

> dean paired with the cheating husband. sam paired with and directly paralleled to the forgiving wife who was fighting for her marriage (empathizing with her, the episode's villain making him a target, him making a bunch of excuses for dean re:amara).

"You will never, ever, hear me say that you, the real you, is anything but good."

Very stubborn not speaking to or even acknowledging Dean or John. They treat him like a fussy toddler and they’ll try to get him to laugh, recalling dumb stuff that they’ve done and cracking jokes

But eventually he’s just so fed up with not being taken seriously he starts crying, it’s not that he’s really upset about the fight but the realization that there’s nothing he can do that will change anything.