#meta on wincest

[flowersintheimpala69]

what is and should never be is a crazy episode cuz it basically goes like

deans: wow in this world my mom’s alive, I have a smoking hot gf, and I’m not a hunter, this is the best. I never want to leave this dream world!

Sam: we don’t share an emotionally incestous relationship in this world

Dean: I have to get out of here rn.

[vanitasmagoria]

metamorphosis. yes there's a man transforming into a literal monster and yes it's about sam's descent into demon blood freak monsterhood but to me, above all, it's the episode in which dean's controlling codependency takes a monstrous turn.

he's petty and he's jealous and he's violent and he hits sam for lying and he hits sam again for talking back and he's trashing the motel room and he's the image of an abuser. dean is threatening to leave sam and to hunt sam and they both know he's not going to do either (i can't escape you, you can't escape me). there's dark fury and despair and panic in dean's eyes because sam (in tears, bleeding, taking it) is becoming more than he can control.

sam says "this blood, it's not in you the way it's in me" and dean can't fucking stand it. he immediately tries to write himself into this, sam's not doing this alone. that's his brother, his blood, how dare he go there. their blood not being the same is the gravest, most personal insult to dean.

sam says "i'm not doing it for you" and "this is my choice" and dean cannot STAND IT. sam still craves autonomy and dean STILL. CAN'T. STAND. IT.

[1nbred]

my favorite kind of samdean is when sam so desperately wants dean's affection but dean isn't sure how to feel about it . Like how in playthings it fully seemed like sam was going to kiss him, wanted to kiss him, wanted more to be kissed by him, and dean shoves him away because how could this be happening? dean's worked so hard on shoving down any of those sorts of feelings towards sam because its sam. But when sam is depressed, scared, crying over this so-called destiny lined up for him, he pleads for dean to kiss him. Just to take away whatever else he's feeling--he needs it, dean knows that--and dean couldn't ever say no to sam's eyes, he's just afraid he won't be able to stop.

[winchester-co]

Mystery Spot needs unpacking in a 20K fic exploring the impact of trauma associated with watching your brother die for three months, then having to live with the reality that he is for another six months.

Because even when Sam’s out of the loop, it’s like nothing’s changed: Dean’s still on a countdown.

I need to see the fallout. I want to see panic attacks and night terrors and getting too clingy for comfort. I want to see Sam get wasted and spill the truth, sobbing and slurring about how fucked up he got while he was hunting the Trickster. I want to see Sam waking up and thinking Dean’s dead, remembering he’s not, and then remembering he will be very soon.

[holyfreaks]

it's about leaving the door open with sam's back turned against it. it's about dean slipping in quietly and taking the key. it's about the darkness of the room sam is sitting in. it's about the implications

[samdeancrimespree]

wincest is so interesting because there are Endless points in their lives where the relationship could go from gen to full wincest and all of them feel equally true. weecest? valid. awkward coming of age? valid. right before stanford? makes perfect sense. pilot reunion? obviously. pre/post hell? Very valid. late season realization? sure. Literally Any Point during the entire run of the show? Yeah.

like that’s… such a unique ship dynamic. they’ve been so Like That for their entire lives that at any point you could slot in a little kiss or whatever and it wouldn’t feel strange. i don’t think it could feel strange. their love runs so much deeper that classic romance/ sexual behaviours just seem like a given

[shinelikethunder]

i don't actually think teenage Dean Winchester would be spurned-lover-style jealous of teenage Sam's girlfriends i think based on his s1 behavior that it's far more likely he went "HELL YEAH my little brother is DATING he is going to SLAY at this and i'll make sure of it," unilaterally appointed himself Sam's wingman, had to be beaten back with a stick from micromanaging his brother's love life, and probably lovingly fantasized about all the hot chicks Sam was gonna hook up with and all the things they'd get up to because let's face it, who wouldn't fall head over heels for the guy? (speculation about kissing practice, which of course Would Not Count as anything except making sure the little nerd did their family proud, is left as an exercise to readers who are so inclined.)

also probably the closest thing to a jealous shitfit he pulled involved one (1) time Sam ditched a hunt to be there for his then-girlfriend's Important Life Event, and it'd be like 40% loudly-expressed "he should be putting his FAMILY first" and 60% ferociously-suppressed "we don't get to just DO that! if i've accepted only ever being able to date super casually for a few weeks at a time before we blow town then where the fuck does he get off thinking he can just PRIORITIZE this COMMITTED RELATIONSHIP BEHAVIOR bullshit. that i tooootally don't want or care about anyway. because it's for SISSY NORMIE LOSERS, not a tight-knit clan of ULTRA-COOL SECRET MONSTER HUNTERS like us"

like i think Dean did accept much more readily, long before he could even realize the ramifications of what he was accepting, that the way they lived meant the Winchesters' only long-term relationship option was "rampant emotional incest that we don't have to acknowledge as long as we all only bang girls," but he also canonically had all kinds of festering resentment about missing out, and was aware on some level that their lives required the sacrifice of a lot of things he secretly longed for (and made a lot of noise about devaluing in favor of What's More Important)

and the toxic cocktail of that + envy of Sam's ability to just go "nah fuck expectations i want something else" + boundary-challenged investment/enabling/policing of each other's heterosexual exploits as a bulwark between their family dynamics and The Unspeakable + freakout over the early warning signs of a difference in values on family loyalty + inchoate terror of losing him to the outside world one day + unthinking idolization and projection along the lines of "well of course this girlfriend would take him away from us and wrap her entire life around his if she could, i mean, have you met him? who wouldn't want that? this is WHY we have to keep it casual and not get girls' expectations up"...

...the entire dynamic of Dean being Sam's number one hookup cheerleader but also perceiving signs of romance/commitment as a threat... s1 Dean trying to have a hand in pushing him towards actual romantic prospects anyway, because he's worried about Sam grief-spiraling and has reluctantly accepted that the rupture in the family is about things Sam genuinely wants, even as Sam's grief is already driving him to the conclusion that they aren't worth the cost and meanwhile the brothers have spent all season bonding even closer and more claustrophobically as adults...

well, i think all that is way more interesting, and in many ways even more fucked-up, than applying bog-standard jealous boyfriend tropes to the absolute mess of their upbringing

[finalgirlsamwinchester]

do i ship wincest. yeah they're an inseparable pair on a narrative and thematic level, can you truly understand one without understanding the other? they're two halves of a dialectic on heroism and sacrifice. they're two points on the family trauma survivor spectrum, sometimes opposing, sometimes intersecting. they're like watching your parents who should've gotten a divorce years ago somehow stay together, against all reason. they're two inheritors of a rugged American masculinity and isolated individualism, internal and external violence springing forth. regressing to the nostalgia of frontier brotherhood as substitute for the nuclear family. they're a set of quintessential outlaw lovers. maybe true love only exists in the kind of freedom you keep when you're always moving, on the road, in your childlike bubble excluded from society, left with nowhere to burrow your roots except into each other's very being. they're the world's loneliest childhood shared between two feral dogs, one biting down on the other, unable to let go. they're the fantasy of an unconditional love so powerful it can survive the apocalyptic enormity of your own self-loathing. they're a set of matryoshka dolls, one consuming the other. journeys end in lovers meeting, but what kind of journey is it really when you've never left home: it's been sitting in the seat next to you this entire time. your haunted house is not a home but a person who'll never let go. they're an erotic fantasy of domestic horror as a sweet, sickening embrace as opposed to an all-consuming fire, a car driving off into heaven's sunset as opposed to one crashing into a tree. (wrong: they're both). so horribly enmeshed and trapped in a magnified love so destructive to the world around them they leave catherine and heathcliff wuthering heights in the dust. they're two brothers trapped in a 15 year long spiral of an abusive codependent pseudo-marriage, in part due to a network unable to let go of a successful show format, thus unable to afford them any growth that might disturb the status quo. but the implications of it all.

[flowersintheimpala69]

yall remember when Sam & Dean were investigating psychic siblings and were at a museum of famous psychics and the museum tour guide was like “sibling psychic acts never lasted long cuz of the pressure of working together and being so close their entire lives” drawing a clear parallel between the psychic siblings and Sam & Dean esp cuz in that episode they’d just had a fight and then the tour guide went “but not the campbell (Sam and Dean’s mother’s MAIDAN name) brothers tho cuz they were actually boyfriends”

so basically the narrative draws a clear parallel between these psychic siblings and Sam&Dean and then turns around and goes “those psychic ‘siblings’ were fucking btw” like whatttt

[ihatedean]

it's so small but there's something so interesting to me about the fact that when dean makes eileen's "pro list" with sam he says "she gets it. she gets us" instead of... you know, the much more normal and sane alternative when talking about your brother's potential partner, "she gets you."

it speaks volumes I think because there are so many examples of their attempts at a committed relationship failing specifically because [she] (insert whatever name you want here) did not get them. like, as a unit. [she] understood sam or understood dean and could maybe have given them something they wanted; you think you love someone, and yeah, there's baggage, he's been through some shit he doesn't want to talk about, but sometimes that's relationships, right? but if you had to pinpoint a moment in the relationship when things got bad, it would literally be the second the brother shows up. that's when you realize this man can't even imagine being anything but a half of something else. you love a person that is incapable of seeing himself as such. you loved a coping mechanism.

i don't think dean believes sam ever needed his seal of approval to be with eileen, not consciously at least, but the highlight of these late seasons is witnessing the aftermath of these two accepting that they cannot breathe if they don't know where the other one is. even worse, how natural they make it seem. of course i killed myself to bring you back. water is wet, dude, keep up. and just like dean said, eileen just... gets that. definitely because she met them at a very different point in their lives in comparison to, say, lisa or amelia. they have a security that only comes with seeing with your own eyes as your brother literally kills death for you. eillen knows that if she wants sam, he'll always carry dean with him. she might not fully understand how deep it goes or how bad it can get because she never witnessed it, all she knows is that brother trumps over girlfriend, she's not fighting it.

compared to sam who barely opens up to his partners and i assume only scratched the surface of The Thing with his brother, dean personally had his ex calling him out on his weird relationship with sam. like, lisa borderline insults them lol and though i don't think lisa's words made him insecure about it, it's not surprising he'd be more aware of eileen's reaction to it. "i tried the family thing" essentially means "i let someone see it."

if eileen stays there she'll be dating the two of them, just... in a not-fun, very unsexy way. and no one in that bunker stops for a second to think how deeply disturbing that is.

anyways i wrote this three days ago and thought maybe my brain made up the "she gets us" part, so i looked up the clip to make sure i'm not crazy and found this in the comments. thank you sinasina4170 on youtube two years ago. you said it a lot better in a lot less words.

[shadystranger]

Dean's outbursts and occasional mistreatment of Sam in the later seasons stem from his new-rooted certainty that Sam will never leave him no matter what anyway. But, when someone else mistreats Sam, Dean's response is immediate and protective. He becomes exceptionally attentive and caring, almost to an exaggerated extent, ensuring Sam's well-being. The presence of a primary abusive figure triggers Dean's reverting to his role as Sam's primary protector, performing his role with such exceptional dedication tailored to Sam that it borders on too perfect like a high. And Sam considering his history he doesn't work too well resisting temptation and these intervals of extreme high even if in the long run there'll be downs that are outright harmful to him. That catalystic payoff diminishes everything else in Sam's possibly tunnel visioned rationalizing of things. Especially when it comes to Dean because that's when his call is mostly distorted.

This cold-and-extreme-hot, robe-pull that Dean performs with Sam intentionally or not. Both Sam and Dean are acutely aware that Dean is uniquely positioned to affect Sam profoundly; he possesses the singular ability to bring Sam down to his lowest points, while simultaneously being the only one who can elevate him to his highest peaks. This dynamic solidifies Sam's belief that no one will ever treat/know him so good to 'him' as Dean does. And Sam who never resisted his addictions just loses himself completely in it and chases it the duration of his life.

Sam cements the notion that his safety and happiness are inextricably linked to Dean.

[pagannatural]

2.11 Playthings 👭👬

-episode of my life. If you only ever watch one episode of supernatural let it be this one. Creepy dolls creepy dollhouse creepy little girls a lonely Connecticut inn a desperate drunken tousle between the incest brothers. It doesn’t get any better than this.

-Dean gives Sam a hard time about suggesting a case after they’ve been looking for Ava for a month. Dean doesn’t even know Ava, but he’s spent the last month looking for her because it was important to Sam. When Sam doesn’t respond to Dean’s teasing, he backs right off. Dean is controlling and possessive but he is also respectful and considerate because he thinks the world of Sam.

-Dean says Sam’s attitude “is just way too healthy for me, I’m officially uncomfortable now” which is funny because it’s not true that Sam’s attitude is healthy and he will get drunk and misbehave about it, but it checks out that Dean is uncomfortable with healthy dynamics.

-Sam smirks at Dean’s joke in this really cute way. It shows that he still looks up to Dean, even though he wouldn’t admit it.

-the innkeeper mistakes them for a gay couple and assumes they’ll want a king sized bed and Sam says “what? No—no two singles. We’re just brothers.”

Spot the difference between these two pictures

That mighty flustered, genuinely panicky “just brothers” sounds exactly like a “we’re just friends” moment between a will they/won’t they couple and it’s so weird that he says it that way. A normal answer would be “oh this is my brother” and then everybody moves on. But this is a tv show and there’s a reason for this scene to be included in this episode. It highlights that the nature of their relationship as brothers is more layered, and this messy denial tells the viewer that there is a romantic/sexual layer.

Back in Asylum in s1, Dean was mistaken for Sam’s boss specifically to make it clear to the viewer that Dean had more authority in their dynamic at the time, which played into Sam’s anger at Dean. This is a similar way for an outsider’s interpretation of the relationship to shed light on it. Their individual reactions to the assumption that they’re a romantic couple are meaningfully different—Sam is embarrassed and nervous like he’s been caught. Dean is feeling some kind of way.

He looks guilty, like he’s doing something wrong. He played along with people thinking he and Sam were a couple in Bugs and went as far as to slap Sam’s ass and call him honey. He seems pretty comfortable with his sexuality and with people being gay in general, like the joke he made about the only real thing about him being his boobs or the time he sarcastically told a scowling male store owner that his smile really lights up a room. He’s playful, he’s not weird about it (until season 8 but that’s another post). So something else is going on here.

His attitude toward this kind of mistake has changed since season 1. A lot has happened, but I think the point at which things shifted for Dean was that moment in Croatoan when he decided that he was going to stay with and protect Sam when they thought he was infected. The episode was a major turning point for Dean. That’s what pushed him to finally tell Sam what John said, and it was the first time Dean really thought Sam was going to die. It also paralleled the scene from Provenance in which Sam almost puts his feelings for Dean into words. Back then, Dean was able to take control of the situation to avoid Sam’s feelings and his own. In Croatoan, he’s the one forced to consider his feelings and why he would live and die and kill for Sam, and Sam alone. It’s no longer possible for him to ignore the feelings between them. He knows or suspects strongly that Sam has feelings for him, and now he can’t deny that he does too. It’s one of his major conflicts moving forward.

-Dean asks Sam why people always assume they’re gay, saying it’s a “troubling question,” and Sam says “you are kind of butch. They probably think you’re overcompensating” which Dean takes in as though it’s an equally troubling revelation. They look like a couple, and therefore they look queer, from the outside: Sam with his shy demeanor, soft voice, longish hair, deference to Dean in most situations (Dean goes to the front desk, Sam hangs back a little, his body mostly facing Dean), and just general feminine-coding throughout the show. Dean with his cropped hair, gravelly voice, overconfidence, and constant womanizing.

Queer people have this shared experience of never feeling like they’re doing masculinity or femininity correctly, and knowing or realizing that other people can tell they don’t fit in, but not really being able to name what they’re doing wrong. Sam is too feminine and Dean is too masculine and when they’re together they read as a gay couple.

Croatoan drew attention to this too, but again, it’s not really about coding them as lgbt, it’s about coding them as queer and incestuous in a gothic, monstrous way. They are Other and it’s in their blood just like the monsters they hunt.

-Dean has Sam pretend to love dolls, to further underscore his feminine role in their relationship for the viewer. It would be so cute if Sam really did love dolls as a kid.

-Dean tells Sam not to look at porn in their room, apropos of nothing.

-someone else dies. Shot of Sam, damsel, gazing out the window of his tower as the body is carried out and Dean talks to the innkeeper.

Dean goes into their room, where Sam is sitting facing away from the open door in a way that feels foreboding, like something is wrong. It’s similar to the shot of Rose a little later in the episode, with her in her chair facing away from the door.

Sam is drunk because he couldn’t save the guy who died, and “the more people I save the more I can change.” He’s afraid of becoming corrupted and at least some part of him believes that he will (that he already is) and needs to make up for it.

Sam says Dean has to watch out for him “and if I ever turn into something that I’m not you have to kill me.” He argues that John said Dean has to and Dean says “Yeah well dad’s an ass” which is a very bold thing for Dean to say about the dead father he once idolized. He obeyed John to keep Sam safe, and he’s finally letting himself be angry with John.

Sam says even now everyone around him dies. He says “please, Dean, you’re the only one who can do it. Promise.”

So Sam is drunk and in crisis over believing that he will become evil, in this episode that makes sure to emphasize the sexual undertones in his relationship with his brother, in an interaction that looks charged and erotic. He’s begging his brother to kill him rather than let him fall, holding onto Dean’s shirt and pulling him down toward him, his eyes locked on Dean’s.

Dean says “Don’t ask that of me” but Sam gives him the puppiest tear-filled eyes so Dean lies, he says “I promise.” At this point Sam is sitting on his bed and Dean is leaning over him, Sam grasping his shirt to keep him close and keep his attention.

Sam looks at Dean’s lips, says “thank you,” inhales, and grabs Dean’s face in both his hands, his thumb near the corner of Dean’s lip. It looks like he’s trying to kiss Dean. The fact that he inhaled rather than exhaled also just makes it feel more like a lead-up to something rather than a conclusion.

Dean pushes Sam away, closing his eyes as if conflicted, Sam still holding onto his face. It’s a little aggressive. Dean has to shove Sam off of him forcefully.

Dean pushes Sam onto his back on the bed, where he watches him turn to his stomach and nestle into the mattress, arching his lower back with his face in the pillow. Dean puts a hand over his mouth and traces his lips, his eyes dragging over Sam’s body.

Just describing the basic mechanics of this scene makes its eroticism clear. Dean touches his lips after Sam looks at them in a gesture loaded with restraint and tension. It’s another of those scenes that usually happen between romantic leads: the woman gets drunk and confesses something and/or needs to be taken care of and the man treats her respectfully but not so respectfully that he isn’t a little seduced. Dean could have let Sam kiss him (or do whatever he was going to do), but he has so many reasons not to: fear of hurting him, of Sam leaving him, of betraying his role as his savior and protector. Dean’s self worth comes from loving Sam, so if he loves Sam Wrong he feels worthless.

And that’s to say nothing of the fact that Sam is begging Dean to take ultimate control over his body by deciding whether he lives, and deciding whether he’s good or bad. His fears are soothed by the idea that whatever happens he can be Dean’s, he can belong to his brother. He’s okay with dying only if it’s by Dean’s hand. His whole life he’s felt something was wrong with him, so if it’s true and Dean confirms it, he is the only one who can kill it. The corruption in Sam (in both of them) has already been heavily linked to blood and their relationship and now Sam is verbalizing it—No! We’re just brothers. Why does everyone assume we’re gay? Sam holding Dean’s face, drunk, saying there is something wrong with me and it’s your responsibility. Please, you’re the only one who can do it.

-Sam is throwing up the next morning. Dean says something gross about a sandwich in an ashtray that makes Sam gag and say “I hate you” and Dean says “I know you do.” The way Dean says this sounds like he really thinks Sam hates him, which came up in Asylum as well. After last night, this has to have something to do with Sam’s feelings for him and the fact that Sam thinks Dean is the only one who should kill him. He thinks it’s tied to Sam hating him and his self-hatred for loving Sam wrong.

-Maggie tells Tyler “I can’t leave this haunted house and you can’t leave me.” Sam and Dean can’t leave the haunted house that is their life because they can’t leave each other.

-Maggie tells Rose “you’d do that for me?” which Sam has basically said to Dean, and “you kept me away for so long I thought you didn’t love me any more” which fits both of them at different times. Rose is the little sister choosing to die so that Maggie doesn’t have to spend eternity alone, and saving Tyler. It’s a creepy, haunting ending that parallels Sam and Dean. The sisters play together forever in a haunted house and the brothers drive off to hunt together out of the haunted houses and motels and backroads they were raised in.

[winchester-co]

Dean: We’re just really close, you know? We’re brothers. We live in each other’s pockets, it’s just a product of the life we live. Sometimes we sleep in the same bed, low on funds and all that. Maybe I kiss him on the head sometimes, when he’s sleeping. He’s the best part of my existence, this whole fucked up life we live. I want to eat him alive and crawl inside his head. He’s my brother.

Literally anyone other than Sam: Uhhhhhh

[whoopsitswincest]

I don't even have a problem with dean/cas as a ship. It's lovely. I can see it - i really can. Under different circumstances, I might even love it and be obsessed with it.

Those different circumstances being if Dean and Cas were in a completely different show. Cause in THIS show, Dean and Sam, as written by Eric Kripke and portrayed by Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki, have such palpable chemistry that it reached through my laptop screen and punched me in the gut.

I'm like, "aw yeah Dean would be so cute with that gay angel! Too bad he's desperately, wretchedly, fatally in love with his little brother though. Sorry Cas, it's not your fault. You never even stood a chance."

By the time Cas arrived, it was way too late. I had already seen how deep the codependence went. I already knew that there was no hope for Sam and Dean. I already knew that their love was terminal. It's not that dean/cas isn't appealing. It's just...impossible.

[vanitasmagoria]

is it just me or would "we're brothers" have been a way more normal way to correct her than "we're *just* brothers"? like, way less called-out and defensive? no?

*just* regular brothers, nothing out of the ordinary here ma'am (proceeds to get blackout drunk and try to kiss his *just* brother on the mouth)

[odesofmeddea]

trying on an argument why sam and dean were in factual canonical enmeshment: their bond presumes the absence of nuclear family or any long-term partner in the lives of either; the very formulation of this rigid condition - me or her, - is telling, overtly so, how their relationships are rooted bog-deep in the belief in its crucial self-sufficiency. the bond between related people devoid of such an incestuous tilt generally endorses that a relative builds and commits to a family of his own and puts not a stipulation of choice. that is, ‘it is fine if my brother marries - how and why would that affect our connection?’ - is not fine with sam and dean. if it was so, sam would've kept dating ruby, amelia, etc., etc., without dean putting him under the exigency of picking, without the uncontrollable invasion of his sexual and general privacy by dean (‘did you have sex with her? first madison then ruby now cara then lilith’, dean eavesdropping on sam's calls and going through his phone, or interrogating him concerning his whereabouts, if there's a woman he doesn't know about), and, moreover, without sam feeling an unspelt obligation of either concealing (why, right?) or rescinding these side hook-ups. oh, also it's him or benny. same with lisa, who knew the fact of her secondariness when competing with sam and that the existence of one naturally excluded that of the other. why can't they all be a big family performing roles socially allotted to them?.. because sam fills in all the roles. because dean and sam want to live in one room and they brush their teeth together and share one car and invariably solve cases together and own a dog and coparent jack and even their afterlife is a shared homoheaven bereft of other love interests. where a woman is to put herself between, in what inextant interstice? ultimately she is reduced to a blur in the background while sammy raises his kid, dean ii, and she is not addressed, not once, in the script, her only definition is of a nemo-womb sam cohabits with to conceive a replica of dean he can nurture as a solace during his lifelong premeditation of reunion with his brother, his nóstos - this is an awful lot of all women and possible partners of have been and to be. one would say that's rather too much. were sam and dean a girl and a boy conforming to gender binarism & heteronormativity the ambiguity of their relation would've been acknowledged more widely, the incestuous codependency interpreted more obscene. but since they're not and also are very uneasy with the innuendo (‘the most troubling question is why they keep assuming we're gay? - we're just brothers!’), it's very convenient to diminish it to just a strong fraternal love. which it is. but not only that.

the potentiality of erotic subtext inside of their greedy proximity seems scary and stupid and is eschewed by both - how are they to subvert and subsume their relationship into non-brother categorization when it's just their life, just the only thing they've known, being this close? still, the only affairs permitted are the ones that are treated as and are simple, emotionally untethered one-night-stands because sam and dean are not sexually available to each other. nor they're resolute into directly consummating their relationship - the need to is either lacking or suppressed and is to be interpreted variously because covert incest is not primarily about coition but miscellanea of things, more often than not of un/subconscious genesis and procession. sam and dean know their relationship is bonkers. they don't necessarily have to know or admit they're a couple. what else they know, though, is they can't have sex. they cannot consciously translate their enmeshment into overt eroticism. that's why the siren episode is titled ‘sex and violence’ - there the mutual violence unleashed onto each other (along with the symbolic penetration through knife and breaking of the door) serves as a surrogate for sex. that, along with impulsive hugs, is the only form of lingering physical contact they usually have. but the yearning, although not experienced in one concreteness, compensates and provides for itself in a safer realm of sam and dean's emotional spaces. they can't have sex but they can fall into possession of each other's feelings. that's why once the personal attachment to anyone else is developed it is construed as betrayal by either. if you need another person, if you feel something for them that you're supposed to feel only with me (intimacy, trust, love, loyalty, belonging) - that's when you abandon me because we can't coexist with others.