#underbear

okay, i have a new take on the infamous underbear panel:

we all know how INSANELY messy jensen is in it, and over the years that's been chalked up to various different reasons (jet lag, nerves, alcohol, an emotional day). which. yeah. all completely valid suggestions for why the man couldn't stop talking and literally took his pants down to show his crotch to his co-star onstage.

but this panel has always struck me as being a little more than that. we've seen jensen tispy or stressed or nervous or drained a whole bunch of times, and it doesn't look quite like this. to me, this feels like something a little more personal, like jensen is on some kind of emotional edge that he doesn't know how to deal with. and all the evidence points to it being pretty damn likely it's to do with misha.

see, jensen's behaviour is really out of character. there's absolutely none of his usual cool, self-contained demeanour, and he's constantly talking over misha in a way that's very at odds with the way they usual relate with each other during panels. he seems really highly strung and all over the place, which, again, is very unusual for any panels he does with misha - typically, jensen relaxes when misha's there and his walls go down. instead, this feels a little performative and like his walls are very definitely up.

yes, on the surface of it they're messing around and having fun - but, to me, there's a kind of an edge to it that suggests there's something more going on under the surface driving it.

so here's my take: i think that something happened between jensen and misha before this panel, maybe for the first time, or maybe during a period where they weren't quite sure what they meant to each other and it was all pretty new and overwhelming.

and this? this is jensen's way of trying to deal with the situation and regain some control over the dynamic between him and misha, because he's panicking and has absolutely no idea how to handle what happened/how he's feeling.

his preoccupation with constantly sexualising the conversation and trying to fluster misha feels VERY telling in this context. jensen feels overwhelmed in the face of his feelings for misha/whatever's happened between them, and so he compensates by trying to overwhelm misha. if you pay attention, he barely lets misha engage properly with him in any serious way at all in the first half of the panel, almost like's he's afraid of meeting misha's gaze and confronting the reality between them. which, given the way jensen usually can't stop staring at misha, is super interesting.

misha's body language is also very telling; he engages with jensen directly WAY less than is typical for their panels, and although he indulges jensen's antics, he also often seems uncharacteristically hesitant, almost awkward around jensen. like he doesn't quite know how to handle things, like he's holding something back. again, this is very at odds with how at ease and open misha usually is around jensen. it feels kind of like he's aware of why jensen's behaving the way he is and wants to coax him out of it doesn't quite know how.

misha also keeps stealing glances at jensen in a way that's at times, almost shy and reserved, is super interesting to me (you can see it particularly well in this angle). like, you can literally SEE misha ducking his head multiple times when jensen meets his eye, like he's fucking nervous. and jensen does the same thing (you can see this better in other angles). again, this is TOTALLY out of character for the two men whose panels usually literally consist of staring deeply into each other's eyes for extended periods of time.

also the fact misha absolutely LOSES his composure after the underbear moment says a whole lot about the pent up nervousness he's feeling. okay, anyone would have been a little flustered by that. but the poor man is literally shaking with laughter for a full five minutes afterwards, and there's this kind of slight hysteria to it all, like he's feeling way more flustered than he wants to let on, which, to me, definitely points to something having recently happened between them.

Wait… wait… wait…

Were they really the same brand??

Her:

@neven-ebrez  I’m putting this back up because Tumblr flagged it as porn and, well, its. just. not.  This was originally put up by @neven-ebrez. I’m giving her original credit.