#01x02

SHAW: Why it left me alive…been asking myself that ever since.

off campus | 01x02

Here’s my take on the brothers’ sexual dynamics in Wendigo and in this rightfully famous gif, with a bit of an essay before I actually get there.

First: I do believe it is canon that the boys are psychotically, erotically codependent and that SPN is the epic love story of Sam and Dean Winchester.

When I talk about canon here, I’m talking about the actual TV show. I’m not talking about Jensen’s or anyone else’s commentary on it—I’m just talking about what we see on screen.

When I first started watching with a Wincest lens, I absolutely believed that the Wincest was latent. I believed that thinking they are fucking or that the brothers are even aware of their erotic codependency was wishful thinking.

I now truly think there is a canon-compliant, non-delusional way that they could be read as yep, actually fucking, off and on at points throughout the show and their lives.

To accept this, first you have to accept that they are both dedicated to denial, at every turn. So if somebody says to them, “Yo, people are writing porn about you and your brother,” they’ll never, even to each other, explicitly acknowledge that the eroticism is real. I believe that this is possible because what they are denying is *incest,* and this would be a normal rule a fucked up family would make to protect itself.

There’s evidence for this in the text, like that time that everyone loves to point out when Sam says “Part of this is about Jessica, but not the main part.” Dean looks at Sam and is like “What?? Why then??” and Sam looks like “you knowwww the other reason” and won’t answer.

The fact is, the boys are *constantly* confronted with people trying to tell them that they *know* something is going on—like when Lisa breaks up with Dean—and they are constantly edging around it. So I don’t think this “gag order” supposition is all that hard to swallow.

Once you accept that, there’s plenty that occurs that only makes sense if they’re fucking. I originally thought that their erotic codependency was primarily in the early seasons, but honestly, in some of the later seasons—while the chemistry is turned way down and the “incest monster of the week” subtext is way less obvious—there are things that just don’t make sense unless they are fucking.

Take Dean being really upset that when he came back from being possessed Sam hadn’t shaved his face, and then he was like “it doesn’t matter because the bunker is filled with people,” and then in the next episode he sees that Sam HAS shaved his face for Dean but Dean didn’t bother to come out for it due to the fact that, again, the bunker is filled with people, and then they excitedly go on a hunt that requires a motel. If this happened to anyone else, say, Dean and Cas, it would only mean one thing. They’re fucking.

Sometimes you can tell that they WERE fucking by the fact that they stop. Again, if you accept that they are 100% dedicated to using code and never speaking about incest directly, you get to actually understand what Sam means when he tells Dean that he absolutely will: 1. continue to live with him, 2. continue to be his hunting partner, 3. share half of his DNA, and 4. do everything else that a brother would do …but that they are no longer BrothersTM, and that’s his Final Offer.

An episode later, Sam’s been told by the ghost that has secretly been watching their behavior to get over it, and he does not. He hesitates at the door of his bedroom that evening, his hand shaking on the knob, while Dean goes into his room and listens to music on his headphones. Brothers who were never fucking generally do not do that. They do not tremble with the need to go a platonic partner’s room late at night.

So, with all this in mind, when did they start? I think it started when they were teens, mainly because the entire Stanford thing makes way more sense and is better storytelling if they were already erotically codependent when Sam left. I also think that they’d be way less likely to start something so taboo and stupid as adults.

So my headcanon, which I don’t believe contradicts canon, is that they started as kiddos, and I always felt that therefore Dean started out as being in control (in more ways than one). I have a strong headcanon of Dean maybe showing up to Stanford a couple years before the pilot and being surprised to find that Sam’s not going to act like he’s 13 forever. In my head, the boys end up vers at times—I developed this headcanon by being open-minded about what I was seeing and the fact is, they’re both pretty bi-coded, a lot of people see Dean as being bottom-coded, and very clearly, sometimes, like in Playthings, for example, Sam is *begging* to be stuffed.

So on this rewatch I’ve just started, I’ve been looking for what the text could be revealing about whether they are fucking and what their current dynamic is. I’m only at Wendigo but I’m going to keep it up.

In the Pilot, they very clearly aren’t fucking. Dean views Jess as a threat, Sam announces he doesn’t cheat, etc.

Episode 2:

Wendigo starts out with Sam not wanting to be a part of the old family dynamic. He wants to find Dad, but it’s to get revenge for Jess’ death. He doesn’t want to be a hunter and save people. It’s Dean that spends the whole episode trying real hard to convince Sam that he should accept that he’s back in the fold now, that they should return to the old dynamics that they once had … one of the dynamics being doing whatever John wants them to do, off to parts unknown when they’re handed coordinates with no other information.

Dean tries various techniques to change Sam’s emotions to ones that would make Dean feel safer, for example, by trying to get Sam to cease his mourning. Dean offers Sam the keys, but Sam points out that Dean would never have let him drive when they were younger. Sam seems unimpressed by that old dynamic but aware that Dean’s In ChargeTM.

By the end of Wendigo, Sam very clearly is becoming enamored with Dean again, with the idea of being on this adventure together with his brother. You can see it in his face when Dean’s alive in the cave at the end. He’s famously more turned on than Dean’s female love interest.

At the very end of the episode, Dean’s love interest goes to be with her brother and Dean stays with his. Dean has to give up the idea of this girl to stay with Sam (He’s given up a lot over the years for Sam and their dynamic). Then Sam looks Dean up and down with a look that can only be described as horny. The gif is at the top of this post and it makes the Wincest rounds constantly.

Imagine my surprise when I rewatched Wendigo and Sam’s being top-coded in this gif. He’s not just horny, and I’m not just saying this because I think only tops can drive (obviously bottoms can drive, too). But Sam is explicitly excited about both being with Dean again AND about having a changed dynamic. He announces proudly and playfully and hornily that *he’ll* be driving.

Dean doesn’t really have a choice here. He might want Sam under his thumb, but he’ll do what’s needed to keep Sam around, even go along with new dynamics.

You can actually contrast this with Playthings, which I think further shows that they do have a malleable dynamic. In Playthings—which is such a fucking gay episode, in fact it’s so gay that two separate people “mistake” the brothers for being gay and Sam points out that Dean comes across like he’s overcompensating—the first thing that Sam says to Dean when he is drunk is “you’re short.” He’s very obviously referencing an old dynamic, where Sam was shorter for like 16 or more continuous years. But somewhere along the line, Sam became taller. And now he’s kind of stressed by it; he kind of wants to go back to being owned by Dean. He won’t have to be responsible for his own decisions anymore if he’s little again. He begs Dean to kill him, grabbing his face the way he grabs everybody before he kisses them, and then when he’s rejected, he shoves his ass into the air.