#choose “wrong”—exacerbated after the events of s4 so in the later seasons he doesn’t even give him the choice

[opheliasam]

The thing is that the ways in which dean and sam need each other are both compatible and parallel in their nature.

Dean needs sam to stay with him (let him take care of him look after him and be with him) and sam despite all his need for autonomy and freedom which he does desire of course (he needs dean to respect his choices and see him) also needs dean to need him—choose him. It’s always been that way—something we see from the very pilot itself. He goes with dean in the pilot after dean admits that he doesn’t want to do it without sam even if he is capable for it.

It affects sam profoundly when dean gets close to other people—especially men because it threatens the idea that dean could need people other than him (even the mere desire to want for others apart from him is distasteful even if he doesn’t want it to be—he just can’t help it, it’s the way they are.) Of course dean has never needed for anything more than sam, that sam and just sam has always been more than enough but sam needs that from him, constantly and actively.

In Sacrifice (8x23), when he reveals that the fact that dean chose to turn to people (an angel, a vampire) apart from him was unbearable to him was just so.. much. And it’s interesting because we know that sam too is friends with cas, has never been shown to consider him a rival in any sense (but just the mere possibility of sam and just sam not being enough for dean is devastating for him.) He doesn’t harbour any resentment or competition towards cas, it’s just that he needs to be the choice over everything else from dean. He needs it because he chose that too, even when he had a chance to get out—multiple times over. And yes, the circumstances shaping his choices are often not ideal, are sometimes not even entirely choices but he always stays because of the knowledge that dean will always choose him.

The conflict then is often caused by doubt—dean, deeply insecure about sam’s loyalty. For him, it’s a given—that sam will always be first, has always and forever been above everything else but he expects sam to know it too. Despite everything he puts on him and says to him, despite the fights and the anger and the mistrust. None of that will ever change this one fundamental thing.

But Sam doesn’t (!!) Maybe at one time he did, before the demon blood and the soullessness and the countless countless ways he thinks he fucked up but somewhere along the line it became clear to Sam that he could not trust it to always be Dean’s first choice, can’t know it for sure.

Doubt again, Sam—unable to know if Dean will always choose him over all else and Dean unable to verbalise that enough because of said insecurity (the fear that he needs sam more than sam needs him) and unable to understand why Sam would feel this way because he expects him to already know that Sam will always be above all else, at the end of the day despite whatever happens because that is who Dean is.

[leadveined-archived]

sooo thnx to a CERTAIN SOMEONE *coughcough @argentplated coughcough* i have been self-requested to do a hc post abt keith and how he views shiro, both in the past and currently. 1/2!

his feelings for shiro shift from platonic to unrequited when he’s just 16 and shiro is around 21-23 (depending on how old you place shiro and keith in s7ep1, but my keith is 15 when he steals shiro’s car), and his feelings only deepen as he gets closer to shiro.

he knows that shiro won’t view him like that, probably ever, so he pushes those feelings back to the very dark corners of his mind and doesn’t let them slip out. besides, he’s with adam, so why would keith want to be a burden or a problem to their relationship even though he knows adam’s no good for him?

then, word of the kerberos mission and pilot error come through on the garrison comms, and he rushes to iverson’s office and demands answers now. he KNOWS it wasn’t a pilot error, shiro was the best pilot in the garrison like commander holt said, there’s no way it was, they’re lying, they’re lying, they’re lying. iverson angrily calls in guards to escort him off the garrison base, and, in his rage, keith mistakenly lets it slip that he’s in love with shiro, that he’s been in love with him since the day that he saw potential in keith. he’s ordered to get his stuff from his barracks and is promptly booted from the one other place he had to call home.

so he sets off back for the desert, the little shack that he and his father lived in before his dad died,  and that’s when he feels the energy from the blue lion. his emotions intensify and he begins a bulletin board of theories as to whether this energy means that shiro is coming back or if he’s truly gone. in his emotional state, those feelings of wanting to hold shiro in his arms and never let him go are relinquished in the form of sticky notes  ‘it’s killing me when you’re away’, ‘i need you, please come back’, ‘i can’t bear the thought of you being gone’, ‘please come back to me’. he experiences vivid nightmares about shiro getting tortured and killed, and him being forced by a dark entity to watch helplessly as he cries out for himself to be in his love’s place.

he KNEW that the crash landing that fateful night was shiro, it had to be him. it wasn’t sam or matt, it was him. when he was proven correct, he connected the finding of the blue lion to be that of an event, and maybe, just maybe this was it. then they go up into space and form voltron and all of s1 happens, and during that time, keith’s feelings for shiro grow stronger, but he still pushes them to the backburner because it’s still inappropriate... it’s still wrong, shiro’s the leader of voltron now, he can’t be with his leader.

then the events of s2 come and the blade of marmora trials happen. he doesn’t want to admit to shiro just yet that he’s desperately in love with him--which is why shiro’s his greatest hope, and losing him is his greatest fear--so he substitutes it for the ‘like a brother’ line. ‘you’re like a brother to me’, he says, but it feels so... disgusting. that’s not how he feels, at all, but it’s the only other thing he can come up with because he’s still not ready to admit to himself and shiro that he has those types of feelings towards him.

s3 doesn’t show keith crying his eyes out in black’s cockpit when he leaves the group after saying that shiro was the one person who never gave up on him and that he wouldn’t give up on shiro. it doesn’t show him going into a full-on rage on black when she chooses him to be the black paladin. ‘why?! why would you do this?! shiro was supposed to be your paladin forever! i can’t do this, i can’t fucking do this without him!’ it doesn’t show him spending every night thereafter in black talking about him. it’s from black’s voice message logs that he discovers that shiro does in fact reciprocate his deepest feelings, but he’s uncertain because he keeps remembering keith saying that he was like a brother. he cries harder than ever at that.

later in the season, when they find shiro, keith has a shrivel of doubt that this is the real shiro, but when he comes out of the space shuttle looking rugged and torn up, he has no doubt that this is him. they found him, he’s home. he immediately leads shiro to take a shower and get dressed, but when shiro retreats to his own room instead of greeting the team, he senses something’s up. this is when he first has a sinking suspicion that this isn’t their shiro. he spends the next few episodes pondering about this theory that he’s a sleeper agent or a clone of some kind, and it’s only further exacerbated when this shiro takes control of the mission, because the real shiro would’ve trusted his choice to split up.

in s4, he trains with the blade of marmora to clear his head about his suspicions about “shiro”. he reluctantly leaves the team in order to distance himself from both them and this shiro imposter. then the sacrifice at naxzela happens and keith realizes that he needs to figure out whether or not this is the real shiro... whether or not it’s his shiro.