#so it ends up being abour reminding us they are together

[laufire]

oh also. for a ship that I have liked in the past (sometimes. with caveats), lately everything I read or watch that includes dick/barbara manages to annoy the hell out of me.

[brelione]

Secret (Rafe X Reader)

Warnings:Literal fucking trash.Please dont torture youself by reading this :)

Can you do 3 from the prompt list with Rafe please where their parents basically forbid their relationship for whatever reason and forced them to break up even though they were good for one another and Rafe was slowly becoming a better person?

Rafe always knew he should keep his relationship with you secret.He knew that it was something too precious and too lovely to let anyone else know.He knew that his father wasnt accepting of people like you.Pogues.You were a pogue,you lived on The Cut and worked two jobs just to stay on your feet.

He didnt know he could love a pogue or anyone as much as he loved you.He couldnt really recall exactly what got you two together,it had been the work of fate.You were out for a surf while he was out for a smoke and your worlds just collided.He had seen you wipe out,only to come up to the surface a few feet away from him.You pulled your board from the water,standing up and smearing the blood from your leg.

 “That had to have hurt.”He commented.You shrugged,walking to your towel that laid on the sand,pressing it to the wound.He had somehow ended up sitting next to you,sharing his joint to ‘help with the pain’.That one night led to him sneaking out of his house to meet you at the beach where you taught him to surf,meeting him in the mornings to show him baby crabs.

One of his favorite things about you was how you carried a pencil pouch of pens everywhere you went,drawing all over your arms and legs.Eventually you had convinced him to let you draw on him,drawing a giraffe on his wrist.He had fallen in love with it and with you.Every Time you saw him and the doodle had faded he’d ask you to redo it.It was just a reminder of your love.It was nice until his father decided to call him out on it.

“Did you realy get a fucking tattoo?”He had walked into the garage as Rafe was lifting weights,seeing the sharpie doodle. “No.”Rafe answered,putting down the weights and grabbing his towel to wipe the sweat from his forehead.Ward seemed unconvinced,a grumpy expression on his face. “What is it then?”He asked.Rfe hesitated before answering,knowing what would come next. “A drawing.”He answered.

 “You cant draw shit.Who drew it?”he asked.Rafe sighed,pulling on a tshirt. “A friend.”He answered. “What friend?”Ward pushed,being a stubborn bitch as always. “You dont know her.”Rafe answered,attempting to walk past Ward when the mans hand wrapped around his wrist,strong enough to cut off his circulation. “Her?Who,Rafe?GIve me names.”Ward spoke,his voice seeming threatening. “No.”Rafe answered,flinching when Ward’s gripped tightened. 

“Why?What are you hiding?”Ward asked.Rafe let out a shaky breath,looking away from his father and contemplating whether or not to tell him the truth. “Her….her name is (Y/N).”Rafe answered,cringing at his words.Ward let go only a little,still holding tight but not so tight that his hand was purple.Rafe could feel his blood beginning to circulate again,his fingers no longer feeling cold. 

“(Y/N)?(Y/N) who?What’s her last name?”Ward asked.Rafe gulped,his heart thumping in his chest. “(Y/L/N).You dont know her.”Rafe answered,tugging his arm away and going inside the house,Ward close on his heels. “I know enough about her to know that shes trouble.I know that she ripped up one of my nets,stay away from her.Shes broke trash.”Ward spoke,voice dripping in hatred.

Rafe turned around,fury evident on his face. “She ripped up one of your nets cause you were killing fucking dolphins-shes a fucking sweetheart and she works for every single penny shes ever fucking made.”He was close to yelling,unaware of Sarah sitting on the couch and watching the fight.Ward scoffed. “Oh,please.She’s using you for my money and you’re too ignorant to see it.”Ward rolled his eyes. 

“She hasnt used a single dollar of mine!She’s never asked for money or anything you fucking asshole!She loves me for me,not for your money you selfish bastard!”Rafe shouted,his face becoming red.Ward seemed shock,not thinking abour it before his palm colided with the side of his sons face.Sarah let out a loud gasp,Rafe’s eyes widening before he ran outside and got in his truck,immediately speeding out and going to your house.

You were still asleep when Rafe came through your door,tears in his eyes.His face softened when he saw your sleeping figure on the couch,an old disney movie playing on your tv.

He kneeled down in front of you,watching as your eyes opened. “Rafe?”You asked.A smile came across his face,leaning down to kiss your forehead.You grumbled,sitting up. “What time is it?”You asked.He shrugged,kissing your lips gently. “What’s up with you?You seem sad.”You pouted,holding his t shirt and pulling him so hed sit next to you. “Im fine.”He answered,knowing he was screwed when your tongue scraped against your teeth.

Thats how he knew that you could pretty much read his mind. “You’re upset about something and your arm is bruised.Did you get into a fight?”You asked,shifting so you were straddling him and he had no other option but to look at you. “I got into a fight with my dad,its fine though.”He answered,moving up slightly to kiss you but you backed out. “Rafe,did he hurt you?”You asked.

He sighed,his hands trailing under your oversized t shirt-his t shirt-to rub circles on the warm skin. “Yeah,yeah he did.”He admitted,watching the way your jaw dropped slightly.You wrapped your arms around him,his head tucking under your chin as tears started to roll down his cheeks. “Rafe,baby,what was the fight about?”You asked.He gulped,a salty tear falling into his mouth.

 “I-I told him about you and he got mad and-and I called him a bastard so he slapped me.”He let out a sob,his grip on you tightening.You huffed,twirling his hair in your fingers. “So this was my fault?”You asked.He shook his head,still holding you close to him. “No,of course not.Its his fault.”He answered.He cupped your face,kissing you lightly. “Can I stay here for a while?”He asked.

Most of the day was spent with him cuddling with you,holding you close and placing kisses all over you.You both fell asleep on your couch,waking up to loud pounding on your door.Rafe placed an arm over you,telling you to stay put.His heart was beating loudly,his hand shaking.The color drained from his face when he saw Ward at the door.It was too late to turn around,the older man had already seen him. “Get out here and come home.”The man demanded.You came out to the kitchen,a frown on your face.Rafe cursed when he saw you,telling you to go back into the living room. 

“I’ll see you later today,okay?”He asked before walking out the door,Wrd immediately grabbing onto his arm.You were too shocked to do anything,standing there speechless.You had tried calling and texting him but they wouldnt send.He had blocked you.You tried messaging Sarah through instagram but that didnt work either.

You didnt even know what to do,resorting to crying on your couch.You found Rafe’s keys on your kitchen table a few days later,getting into his truck and driving to his house in the middle of the night.You had been quiet as possible,climbing up the side of his house and onto his balcony because of course he had a balcony.You could never understand why it was there or what it was for but you were thankful that it was here now.

You could see him on his bed,his back turned away from you.You knocked on the door,seeing it was locked.You could see him tense up,standing up and smiling wide when he saw you.He ran across the room,tapping on the glass. “He locked it,I dont have the key.”He told you,his voice quiet because of the glass separating you.You sighed,tapping along the glass before you got an idea,taking his truck keys and attempting to push them into the key hole of the door.

It was no luck and at this point you could see the desperation on Rafe’s face.You pulled off the keychain,twisting at the circle so one of the sides would stick out.His eyebrows furrowed,biting his lip anxiously as you twisted the metal in the keyhole,trying to get the door to open.You heard a click,he let out a small gasp before practically ripping the door open,pulling you too him. “He shut down my phone and locked me in here.”He spoke softly,his hands tight around you.

When you were about to suggest that he come with you his bedroom door unlocked,Ward staring at the two of you with pure anger on his face. “Get out of my house before I call the cops.”He spoke to you,his hand around his phone.Rafe shook his head,holding you tighter. “Dad-you cant keep me locked in here forever.”Rafe answered,feeling the way your hands were shaking around him. “You broke into my house and youre manipulating and abusing my son.Not only that but you vandalized and destroyed my property,you’re lucky I havent gotten you thrown into prison yet.”Ward’s eyes stayed on you.

Rafe scoffed,letting go of you and approaching his father. “Shes manipulative and abusive?Look at you!You slapped me and you’ve locked me in my room!”He shouted,probably waking up his sisters.Ward’s eyes widened. “Its for your own good!She’ll use you and then break you!”Ward exclaimed. “What?”Like mom did to you?”Rafe yelled,his fists clenching.

That had been nearly five months ago.A lot had changed since then.You had grown as a person,becoming friends with JJ,Pope,Kiara and John.B.Rafe had gone back to the way he was before he met you,a drug addict who doubled as a fucking bitch.You still missed him though,hoping that he was at least doing better since the last time you saw him.The Pogues couldnt believe that you had once been in a relationship with him no matter how hard you tried to convince them that he was different with you.They didnt believe you of course,they knew Rafe,not Rafe Alexander Cameron.

You had started to forget about him,the feelings he made you feel and all the memories you had with the boy.Then you saw him at the beach and everything just came back.The feelings,the memories,the feeling in your stomach.He glanced in your direction,eyes widening as he did a double take.He literally ran to you,a confused expression on his face. “(Y/N)-fuck,shit.Dad told me that he got you in prison-what the fuck?”He hugged you,spinning you around.

 “Oh,wow.Nice to know you still think of me.”You giggled,looking up at the tall boy.He smiled. “All the time.”He answered,squeezing your waist. “So how have you been?I havent seen you in like...ten years.”You grinned.He shrugged,biting his lip. “You know,the same old.I tried to remember your number,dad took my old phone and gave me a whole new number.What are you doing?”He asked,looking around the beach. “Um...you know,vibing.”You shrugged.He nodded,sitting down in the sand with you,his hand holding yours. “I um….I made some new friends.”You spoke quietly,not knowing what his reaction would be.He grinned,licking his lips. 

“Yeah?Does that mean you’re crushing on one of them?”He asked.You shook your head,rubbing circles on his hand. “No,its a nice change in things though I guess.I missed you.”You mumbled.He smiled,leaning forward and kissing you gently. “I missed you too,you still love me?”He asked,making you smile. “Always.”You answered,kissing the tip of his nose. “It sucks that we gotta start the whole secret relationship thing again.I wont fuck it up this time,though.I promise.”You rested your head in the crook of his neck as he spoke,kissing his collarbone lightly.

@sexytholland @28cnn  @popcrone818 @fttayla @cherryobx @n1ghtsh4d3-67 @drewstarkeyobx @poguestyleskye @judayyyw @jjtheangel @outerbongs

@sunwardsss @meaganjm @httpstarkey @copper-boom​ 

[hannah-deactivated20220725]

Now Kyle Knows...

I am warning you now, this little snippet ended up being four pages xD You have been warned.

Words: 1,673

Characters: Kyle, Aria and [Jarred]

Genre: aaaangst

Situation: You guys already know about Aria’s fight with her best friend... well, now so does Kyle. Wonderful, protective ol’ daddy...

It had been a couple of weeks since Aria had shown up at Kyle and Jarred’s house. She was out, shopping and Kyle and Jarred were at the house by themselves.

Jarred sat on the couch with his back pressed against Kyle’s side and his head resting on his shoulder.

“So… has she told you what’s going on yet?” Kyle asked randomly, muting the tv they had been watching. Jarred glanced over at his husband with questioning eyes.

“Who?” He asked, but as soon as they were look at each other, he understood. “Uh, no. You?” Kyle wordlessly shook his head with a heavy sigh.

“Do you think she’ll ever tell us?” Jarred asked with a worried frown as he settled his head back on Kyle’s shoulder. Kyle shrugged.

“I have no idea,” he said bluntly, glancing at the back of Jarred’s head and nuzzling his face into it. “I worry though. I’ve heard her crying herself to sleep nearly every night. I’m trying to give her privacy but how am I supposed to kill whoever did this to her if she doesn’t tell me?” Jarred smiled at little at his husband’s protectiveness.

“Maybe…” he hesitated, the words not wanting to escape his mouth. “... maybe she’s trying to protect them,” he said carefully.

“Protect a person that’s caused her to cry every night for the past couple weeks or longer?” Kyle asked, voice filled with disbelief. “Why would she do that?” Jarred turned to look at Kyle. His face filled Kyle with dread. “You don’t think…?”

“You did say she started crying harder when you mentioned them…” Kyle shook his head, refusing to acknowledge that that was even a possibility.

“They would never do this to her.” Jarred lifted an eyebrow.

“You know Sam is seeing that man… and that Aria has been in love with him for years…” He reminded his husband carefully. “I’m just saying… it’s a possibility. Don’t discount the possibility til we know for sure. And prepare yourself in case it’s the case.” Kyle’s mouth fell open as if to protest but no words came out. Finally, he sighed and pressed Jarred in close.

“They haven’t called us in a couple months…” Kyle said as if it perfectly explained what was going on. Jarred pressed closer.

“What are we going to do?” He asked softly.

“Get the truth from our daughter,” Kyle replied sternly.

---

Aria got home a few hours later, arms full of bags of new clothes. She had told her fathers she wanted to revamp her whole look, so slowly, she was buying new clothes. She put the bags down in front of the entrance into the living room, glancing at her fathers and smiled a little at them.

“Hey, you two. What are you watching?” She asked curiously, tilting her head to the side. Kyle spoke first.

“Nothing now.” She tilted her head more, wondering what that meant while Jarred turned the television set off so they could talk. She blinked at them as Kyle patted the couch next to Jarred and smiled gently at her.

“Sit,” he instructed, tone telling her she had no choice to argue the matter. She stared between her dads but did as asked.

“What is it?” She asked uncertainly, feeling uncomfortable suddenly.

“It has been a couple weeks now that you’ve been living with us…” Kyle began, filling her with dread.

“Are you going to ask me to move out?” She asked quietly, looking terrified. Kyle stared quietly at her for a minute before patting her hand as she sat next to Jarred.

“Of course not. I told you you can stay as long as you need, and I meant it,” he reassured her. She blinked up at him with round, curious eyes.

“What do you need to ask me then?” She asked uneasily.

“It’s been a couple weeks now since you just… suddenly showed up at our doorstep,” he said again, glancing at Jarred then back at their daughter. She was staring back, swallowing hard and he could hear every breath she took, she was breathing so hard.

Kyle and Jarred shared a silent look before Jarred took over.

“Baby girl, we’re concerned. You just showed up in tears and we still don’t even know what’s going on,” he said after a moment. Her bottom lip twitched uneasily.

“I don’t want you to kill him,” she said softly, looking down at her lap, which she was rubbing. Kyle frowned.

“Kill who?” He asked flatly.

“I still love him,” she whispered, tears welling up in her eyes. His eyes widened as he suddenly realized who she was talking about… and why she had refused to tell him what was going on up til that point.

“Sam?” Jarred asked, voice filled with suprise. Their daughter hesitated but nodded silently. The tears fell from her eyes as she closed them tightly.

“I don’t want to get him into trouble,” she whispered, fists tightening in her lap. Kyle and Jarred shared another look, this time of surprise. Jarred was wondering what was going through his husband’s head at that moment. Kyle was so attached to Sam… what was he thinking? Was he still feeling as murderous as he had been before he knew who these tears were abour or was he just conflicted now? Kyle stared at her quietly, mouth parting as if to speak but he couldn’t find the words to say. He felt so uneasy about this. He didn’t even know what happened, and he was already ready to call the son of a bitch up…

“What happened?” He finally asked, voice so tight that it almost choked off completely. He and Jarred watched Aria quietly, waiting for her to muster up the courage to tell her fathers what happened.

“Aria,” Jarred said gently after a minute, frowning while he rubbed her back soothingly. “What’s going on, sweetie?” She hesitated a little longer.

“H… he…” Her bottom lip trembled as she stared at her lap, willing herself not to cry yet again. She had already cried so much in the last few months since it happened… she kind of wondered how she still had tears to cry. “He… said awful things to me… b-because I can’t… let him go,” she said i almost a whisper. Kyle stared at her quietly for a minute, trying to wrap his mind around what kinds of awful things Sam would ever say, but he was drawing a blank. They were so close… what could he have possibly said that was so terrible that she’d cry herself to sleep every night for the last two weeks at least?

“What did he say?” Kyle finally asked flatly. Aria glanced up, eyes wide. She didn’t want to tell him, but she knew he wouldn’t let this go. Not when she was in tears like this. Jarred was still rubbing her back while he silently waited for her to answer her daddy’s question. She took a deep breath then held it for a couple of minutes before quickly telling them, “Hesaidhedoesn’twanttobemyfriendanymore.” Kyle and Jarred shared another look, this time of shock.

“Why?” Kyle asked, voice gruff and upset. She blinked away the tears threatening to well back up into her eyes.

“H-he… he said that we can’t be friends if… if I can’t get over him,” she whimpered, then buried her face in her hands, bursting into tears again. Kyle suddenly flashed back to when he’d asked her what her worst fear was and suddenly realized why she was taking this so hard.

“Fuck,” he said under his breath and moved to wrap his arms around her. “I’m sure he didn’t mean it princess,” he said, trying to reassure her, but she pulled away to cry harder.

“He meant it, daddy. You should have heard the way he said it… and seen the way he looked at me. He hates me because I love him.” Kyle swallowed hard, struggling not to stand to kill his adopted son.

“He… doesn’t hate you, Aria,” he said gently, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder. Jarred was staring at Kyle, wondering what he was thinking after hearing this news. He was also visibly upset by the news but was trying to keep calm, for their daughter’s sake. He wrapped his arms around Aria, kissing her shoulder.

“It’s going to be okay. He just needed to let off a little steam,” he said cautiously.

“Then why hasn’t he called? Why hasn’t he apologized? It’s been over a month!” Aria cried out in reply, rocking herself while she cried uncontrollably. Kyle and Jarred glanced at each other wordlessly. Jarred was surprised to see a calm expression on Kyle’s face. Why was he so calm? If it was anybody else, Kyle would already be teleporting away to kill the motherfucker… but he just sat there.

“Aria… get yourself together,” Kyle said gently, squeezing her shoulder.

“I’m so sick of everybody telling me to get over it!” She screamed, moving to bury her face into Jarred’s shoulder as she wept. Kyle frowned.

“I never said get over it,” he said flatly, face clearly showing his annoyance. “I said get yourself together. It could have been worse, right?” She looked up at him, eyes red and blotchy from crying so hard.

“How could you say that?” She asked, swallowing hard. “Aren’t you on my side?” He stared at her a minute.

“Of course I’m on your side,” he said after a moment. “I just…” He stared another minute before standing. “I need a minute,” he said, voice calm, though when Jarred looked up at him, his eyes were flashing murderously.

“Ky-” Kyle put his hand up to quiet his husband.

“I will be back,” he said simply, then disappeared. Aria pulled her face off her papa’s shoulder to look into his eyes.

“Papa, what is daddy doing?” She asked, voice full of dread.

“I’m afraid to ask that question,” Jarred answered, biting his lip. “Guess we’ll know soon enough if he’s killing your best friend or not…”

[thedogsled]

13x11: Breakdown, breaking point, breaking things, a study in Sam Winchester

It’s Defcon Sammy, one minute to midnight, and any faith Sam had has gone out the door.

I actually talked about this recently, so imma begin this post with the fallacy of quoting myself and go from there. After 13x08 I wrote that Sam was taking on Dean’s role, and we were taking a walk in the park of 4x01 only with Sam as the one with no faith..

“It’s possible that Sam doesn’t believe that he deserves to be saved. We already know that Dean has work to do because Billie told us, reminding us of 4x01 already–but what about Sam? 

I talked about Sam needing a win, but he also needs to believe in himself, and he voices in 13x04 that he was afraid he was losing his faith. Incidentally during those eps Dean was the one leaning on him, relying on him to fake it; they were switching roles with each other, but Dean’s requirement for faith has needed Castiel to fulfill it since mid season 4, not Sam, and he was never cut out for the role. So Cas is back, fulfills Dean’s requirement for faith, but Sam is the one who is having his faith slip and has nobody to put it in. So I’ll reiterate: Sam needs a win. He needs his faith to be restored.”

The link is a link to a bit of speculation on Sam’s sadness in 13x07, and again talks about his faith slipping. It’s a good post, and it holds true:

“Sam’s fear of Jack is part of why Jack leaves. Sam feels like a failure, like he messed up with this important world endingly dangerous job he took on for himself. Sam was the one who made using his power such a quality for Jack, something he should aspire to, and it ostensibly led to this, to a man dying and Jack blaming himself. So Sam’s perceived failure with Jack feeds back into undermining his own self belief (and the belief that he thinks Dean has in him as well, I think).

So it’s already pretty rough for him, and then Ketch comes along and Sam is once again wrong with his instincts. He flips to Dean’s side quickly enough, but it’s already too late, and I think we really, really have to see how Sam getting his faith knocked is going to come into the next few episodes, especially if they end up in the AU.”

So here we are, with the warning signs safely behind us, and as Jared warned us in advance, the boys firmly flipped on their view of the world, and it goes all the way back to the Pilot essentially, because Sam has felt like a bad luck charm right from the beginning. He did everything he could to get out of the life, and it is – at this point – everything awful that he knew it would be. He has nothing left. He didn’t even get a kick out of investigating a live serial killer case, when serial killers is canonically one of Sam’s hobbies. Just like Dean not enjoying his usual thrills in 13x05, all Sam wants is to get away. In the past he would be the one validating all the good they’ve done, but this time it’s up to Dean to do that. If saving people is the family business, then Sam thinks it’s going belly up.

Sam is unhappy. He is rightfully unhappy. One word that we keep coming back to in particular this season is ‘hero’. It’s what Doug calls Donna in 13x11. It’s what the Sheriff calls Dean in 13x01. Sam was arguably a Big Damn Hero back at the end of season 5, but it took real struggle for him to get there, and as Chuck points out his road to it is anything but sympathetic. But it gets worse, because when it comes down to it this is STILL a Lucifer problem. Lucifer is solidly on Sam’s mind, and for good reason as @teamfreewillbettertogether points out: Sam still believes that Lucifer is with Mary, and presumably both he and Dean therefore believe that Lucifer is the one torturing Mary. Why wouldn’t they? They never got the info that Cas needed to pass to them. Sam and Dean are so far in the dark at this point that they’re going to need a flashlight to get out.

But it is deeper for Sam, because while Dean processed his Hell trauma in his own way, Sam has never done that. He bottles up everything, and Hell is included in that. Sam was tortured, instead, by Lucifer himself, and Lucifer is heavily on Sam’s mind, you can imagine, because it’s just one more thing he personally screwed up, thinking God was talking to him back at the beginning of 11 and following the siren song right to the Cage. How does that tie into the hero discourse? Well this is from 11x10:

Lucifer: “You used to be a hero Sam. Hell, you beat me. Now... I look at you and I don’t even recognise you anymore.”

More under the cut...

Lucifer tortures Sam in this episode. That’s really the only way to describe what he does. He rips Sam down to the pins. He tells him that he’s gone soft, that he no longer has the balls to follow through with anything, and essentially that he no longer respects the man who took him down. Sam says no to him in the end, but that’s not really the point, because in the space of a conversation Lucifer guts Sam entirely, and that is what even the presence of Lucifer in the world means to Sam; a reminder that he is not good enough, a failure as a hero, someone who only ever gets people killed, and moreover someone who makes things worse when he’s trying to fix his last mistake.

What Lucifer does in 11x10 is take Sam through a walk of his greatest hits, his surmounting conquests (and that time he hit a dog), so that he can point out in no uncertain terms all the things Sam has failed at: saving Dean from the Mark and letting the Darkness out, closing the gates of Hell, giving up on Dean while he’s in Purgatory. Those things work as weapons specifically because Sam sees them as a failure in himself too, and they have still not been addressed.

It’s like this: even if you look at Sam as having been healed from his mistakes in Swan Song by making the ultimate sacrifice, he hasn’t had a single win since then. Life has moved on from one trial to another, and every attempt he had made to do a good thing has come up short.

Now add to this the complication that Sam is only able to approach his own feelings after making Dean snap, and we have a problem, because Sam’s attitude to emotional conflict is not the same as Dean’s. They both bottle it up, but Dean has ways of exploring his feelings, or at least salving them, whereas Sam pretends. He fakes it. He literally uses those words in 13x11:

Sam: “Don’t—you keep saying I’m in a dark place. But I’m not, Dean. Everything I’m saying is the truth. It’s our lives. And I tried to pretend it didn’t have to be. I tried to pretend we could have mom back, and Cas, and help Jack—but we can’t. This ends one way for us, Dean. It ends bloody. It ends bad.”

Remember what we said about Dean when he was in the emotional ‘bad place’? At your darkest moments you speak what sounds like the painful truth, but it is always so much more complex than that. Sam is literally mimicking Dean’s nihilism to the letter here, only it isn’t about Cas. It’s not about Kaia, either, imo. Or Jack. Or even Mary. Or Lucifer. For Sam, the issue is his entire life.

Honestly Dean brought this on himself. He asked for Sam to lie for his own sake, just as Sam was flagging. He asked Sam what was up, heard him out, and shut him down, right back in 13x04.

Dean: “What’s up?”

Sam: “What if you’re right? Abour mom? What if she is dead and I’m just in denial?”

Dean: “Don’t say that.”

Sam: “What? You’ve been wanting me to admit that since it happened.”

Dean: “I know I have, but don’t say that. I need you to keep the faith. For both of us, cause right now—right now I don’t believe in a damn thing.”

This exchange from 11x11 can only have made it worse, because Sam makes it clear that he’s still stewing over what Lucifer showed him, and Dean shuts him down: “That’s in the past--All that matters, all that’s ever mattered, is that we’re together.” Well isn’t that so much bullshit? It’s clearly not all that matters to Dean, so what does it leave for Sam?

And look, Dean has asked for Sam to pull the emotional weight before. In this scene in 11x13, he tells Sam that he’ll have to be the one to kill Amara, and throws that responsibility over on him too. The declaration almost brings them both to tears. It’s only, unfortunately, that it’s more catastrophic now because Sam has reached the end of his metaphorical rope. Sam has nothing left, no faith left, no hope left, and him holding the fort for Dean until Cas came back through perhaps the most terrible thing that he’s had to see Dean do to himself? That’s tough. It’s left him drained. So when his attempt to get Mary back fails, it’s the straw breaking the proverbial camel’s back. Sam is done.

There’s two more elements that come into this. One I’ve seen floating around is that it’s slap of reality to the face for Sam. For the first time in forever they haven’t had something going on. Now Kaia is dead, and she had been the only hope for recovering Mary, there’s literally no next move, no more progress to be made, only now Jack is gone too. Double slap. So here he is standing in the desert with no water, no directions, and he may as well drop dead. It’s not a great mindset, because as we discussed re. Dean’s depression, that kind of attitude is what gets you killed (and it’s not great re. It being Sam’s “turn” to die either, if anyone’s head is on the chopping block). There was one horrible moment during the monster auction where Sam even gave the impression imo that he was stunned he was worth anything, and not just in a monetary fashion. It’s particularly sad because, you know, the reason why Sam and Dean were that well known to the auctioneer and his customers was because they have been SO prolific and done so much good. I just want to shake poor Sam about it.

The other thing is Dean’s parenting of Sam stopped just before his own giant Cas shaped crisis. Dean threw the responsibilities on Sam’s shoulders, not only of his own grief – putting Sam into the role of the child parenting the parent – but for Sam to learn to do things his own way without the safety net that Dean always represented. I think there really was a symbolic lifting of the hand from Sam’s shoulder in 12x22, and maybe Sam is really feeling that too. But Sam is all grown up, and it’s different.

Needless to say it’s clear to me that Sam is done bottling this up. In an ideal world I would have Dean lay things out in front of Sam, offer him the chance to walk away, and for that to be okay. That’s endgame for me. Dean dragged Sam into hunting, and instead of Sam running away, Dean needs to let him go, or Sam needs to choose to stay. Sam doesn’t have anything of his own left, though. Jack and Mary were his future, they were, essentially, the very next salve that he was looking for to keep him moving in the life so he didn’t have to keep thinking about how he doesn’t actually want it. He accepted Eileen’s death with a kind of heartbreaking grim acknowledgement that it almost broke me. He just doesn’t expect anything for himself any more, so he pretended. He pretended he could get them back. He pretended he could make a difference.

I resolved the last two posts by saying that Sam needs a win. He does, but you know, I sort of take it back at the same time? A win for Sam is putting off the inevitable, just like it has for the last thirteen years since he lost Jess. What Sam needs isn’t a hunter’s win at all. He needs to step away from hunting and be allowed to go, not being blamed for it, being able to find something that means something for himself, and if I had it my way he wouldn’t be afraid of companionship either, which I’m especially afraid to say is where things look like they are for him right at this moment, and it’s breaking my heart. If he thinks he’s getting people killed in the hunting life, how would he take to putting someone at risk domestically, particularly when every monster in America knows his name.

But more than that, Sam needs to forgive himself so, so badly. He is carrying this weight of mistakes on his shoulders, just as we’ve seen Castiel carrying them, and Dean. They all mirror each other in that way, and how they deal with the pressures put on them has all led up to this point. But Sam? His tipping point has been a really long time coming. Sam has had an emotional buffer in Dean up until this point, protecting him from his own mistakes, and challenging him to keep rising to them. But when Dean lost his faith, I think it did finally undermine everything that Sam has built his foundation on, for example Dean’s assertation that the two of them against the world could ever be enough. Sam has got to work through those things himself now, he’s got to finally be his own man, and he’s got to find faith again--not in God, but in himself and in his future. Otherwise he’s going to get that bad end he’s talking about.

A shame there’s no ex-Reaper to come and tell him how important he is to the universe, though, right?

#endgamehappysam not #endgamedeadsam kthnx.