#ven creates

In the Supernatural that lives inside my head, Sam Winchester never grew out of his grunge phase. He practices witchcraft and listens to The Frights. There's a sticker on his laptop that says, "This machine kills fascists."

In the Supernatural that lives inside my head, they both spit blood onto the floor after bar brawls and patch each other up with stolen bottles of percocet and a shared joint while old monster movies play on the TV.

🛏🎶🧍‍♂️🧍‍♂️🌮🤢💀🪦🧍‍♂️😭⏰

🛏🎶🧍‍♂️🧍‍♂️🔌⚡💀🪦🧍‍♂️😭⏰

🛏🎶🧍‍♂️🧍‍♂️🐕😬💀🪦🧍‍♂️😭⏰

🛏🎶🧍‍♂️🧍‍♂️🔫😵💀🪦🧍‍♂️😭⏰

Like. COME ON!

AND THIS:

God, and then the mirror image shots of the boys in bed, unable to sleep, just staring at the ceiling! It makes me crazy!

How am I not supposed to interpret this as a big gay brothers pining episode? Just. How?!

Like I see you, Supernatural. I see you trying to say something about Amara and just ... totally failing. Dean is lying in bed thinking about Sam and following his heart and pining after his little brother and maybe you want me to think otherwise, but you cannot convince me that Dean and Sam's love for each other doesn't overpower any other type of narrative beat you were trying to land here.

Sam saying, "I'm praying, duh." And he closes his eyes tight and laces his little fingers together and scrunches his face up and starts Dear Godding and asking for the Big Guy to make sure Dad comes home and to keep him safe and to say hi to his mom in heaven.

Thinking about Dean getting angry and being a brat and telling Sam God's not real and to just come to bed and be quiet already and stop being a stupid baby.

But Sam just opens his big puppy dog eyes and folds his arms across his chest and tells Dean that if monsters are real, God might as well be real, too. And Pastor Jim says that praying is just a wish you really, really mean with your whole heart. And Sam really, really means it when he closes his eyes one last time and prays for all the other little kids out there who don't have a big brother like his.

just little moments of tenderness that wear them down over the years until they sleep cuddled together every night and don’t even have to think about whether its weird or not because it’s just them. and the first time they kiss its because dean is experimenting with baking and there’s a smudge of powdered sugar at the corner of his lips and sam swipes it away and then leans in to taste without thinking and dean swats him on the back of the head and says, “personal space, sasquatch,” but he starts making sweet messes in the kitchen more often.

and they joke for years about being an old married couple until one day the part where it was funny seems to have disappeared and they start unironically referring to the other as ‘my husband.’

Here's a little Christmas moment for you. I dunno what possessed me to write this in August, but sometimes it just be that way, I guess. 🤷‍♂️ "At least you didn't steal from a little girl this time," Sam says, holding up a 3XL t-shirt with a cherry red big rig printed across the front, the words 'American by birth, trucker by choice' written over the wings of a giant bald eagle underneath. He frowns, looking down at his skinny chest. "Might be just a little big on me, though." Dean is watching Sam hold the tent's worth of fabric over his shoulders with a grin on his face. "It was the only size they had, Sammy." He nudges his booted foot against Sam's bare ankle where they sit next to each other on the scratchy polyester motel duvet. "The way you're always goin' on about girl crap, I thought maybe you'd appreciate a nice dress."

Sam rolls his eyes and shoves hard against Dean's shoulder. Then he slips the shirt over his head—cheap plastic tag still dangling from one armpit—and when his face pokes out of the collar, he's practically swimming in it; the long sleeves of his thermal are rolled up around his elbows, and Dean can barely see them anymore. Even if his little brother grows another two feet and puts on a hundred more pounds before he's done with this growth spurt, he'll still be too scrawny to fill out this particular cotton-poly-blend monstrosity. "Looks good on you," Dean says anyway, and he means it. He reaches out and tucks an errant curl behind Sam's ear. Sam's cheeks go pink and he ducks his head, swaying into Dean's shoulder affectionately. "You know I hate this, right?" He looks back up at Dean and his eyes are narrowed, fox-like. He's got his bottom lip sucked right up between his front teeth. Dean grins. "Yeah, Sammy," he says, "and that's exactly why you love it."

Sam rolls his eyes again and doesn't answer, but Dean knows he's right. Then Sam is suddenly twisting away and reaching for the drawer of the bedside table. He comes back with a thick paper envelope clutched between his fingers. He thrusts it at Dean's chest, pink all the way up to his ears now. "Here," he says to the bedspread. "Merry Christmas."

Dean opens the envelope carefully, and a splay of glossy photos spills out into his palm. He holds them in the bright shaft of morning light that pierces through the dimness of their chilly room; it's hot in Mississippi, but he cranked the AC as soon as he got up just to pretend they were somewhere white, somewhere with trees covered in sparkling lights and garlands of tinsel. He shivers now, but it's not from the cold. "When—?" he asks, eyes glued to the pictures in front of him.

Sam is stiff by his side, fingers fidgeting in his lap, tangling in the cotton of the stupid trucker shirt. "You remember I got invited to that birthday party in Tulsa?" he asks, voice soft. "They gave out disposable cameras as party favors, and I just ... didn't think there was much else worth taking pictures of."

In every photo, Dean sees himself: sitting in a booth at a diner; behind the wheel of the Impala; cleaning his guns at some long-forgotten motel table; and in each of them, he's blurry – a little out of focus in the distance. It's Sam's hand in the foreground that's sharp and clear, reaching in from out-of-frame and holding a note on a scrap of paper that becomes progressively more crumpled and folded in each subsequent image. In Sam's slanting, precise handwriting, it reads, "I don't know how to say it, but I love you."

Dean realizes that he's holding his breath as he watches months and months of their lives unfold before him in dozens of stolen moments. Sam stands in the mirror of a tiny bathroom with the door flung wide open; he's holding the note, and Dean sees himself sleeping on the double bed visible in the reflection. The words are barely legible behind the blaze of a burning grave, Dean silhouetted against its heat in the dark of the cemetery.

He'd never noticed Sam with a camera – not once. He swallows and forces himself to blink. Dean slides the last picture out from all the rest, and his heart skips.

This one is different. Framed in the warm orange light of early morning, the photo is of him—up close this time—face soft and placid in sleep as he lays on his side against wrinkled white sheets. The note is on the pillow in front of his face, and just on the other side is Sam. His eyes are wide open, and he's staring at Dean with an unreadable expression on his face; he looks young, and happy, and afraid. There's barely six inches of space between their bodies, and Dean can almost imagine the warmth. He takes a deep, shaking breath.

"I took that one yesterday," Sam whispers, and then he's moving, reaching into the pocket of his sweats under the ridiculous folds of his new shirt, and pulling out a crumpled piece of paper. Dean's eyes finally leave the photos and flick to Sam, who can't seem to look at him. "You can have this, too, if you want it," Sam says. His hand is steady as it hovers in the air between their bodies.

They stay suspended like that for what feels like hours. Dean is shaking, afraid to move. The pictures gleam in his peripheral vision where they're balanced on his lap.

He reaches out so slowly he's not even sure he's moving at first. His hand comes up, drags through the air until his fingers settle over the paper. "I do want it," he says at last, and Sam's breath hitches.

Their eyes meet, and Sam's gaze is wild and defiant and hopeful. "Really?" he asks – like he thinks Dean is playing a joke on him.

Dean nods, just once. "Yeah, Sammy," he says. "Really." He leans in, keeps hold of the note between their trembling hands, and closes the distance.