One Thing I Love

One thing I love

Is how Sam has this just bonkers, bananas, insane attachment to Dean, that's also just entirely unexamined by him.

Like, it's a bit different on Dean's end. Dean is absolutely ludicrously attached to Sam as well, but Dean *knows* this. He talks about how "watching out for Sam" is his job and identity. He talks about how he knows he goes too far for him. He even acknowledges sometimes that he knows it isn't a normal or healthy way to be.

But then Sam. Intellectual, rational, introspective, analytical Sam. Sam the "more independent" brother. Sam the "selfish" brother. Sam who left, Sam who ran, Sam who maybe could have lived a normal life.

That guy started combing through John's journal halfway through Season 1, looking for a way to magick Dean out of dying. *He never even attempted this for Jess*. Jess died, he grieved. Dean was going to die, Sam's brain just did one big "NOPE!" And he never asked himself why that was.

And so it's gone throughout the series. Dean's in danger, Dean's gone, Sam loses his mind. Dean rejects him - or Sam just thinks Dean's rejecting him - Sam loses his mind some more. But... for a guy who seems really self-aware in other ways, prior to Season 11 the most he'd ever say would be a shrug and "He's my brother." It's almost like it doesn't even occur to Sam that this is something he maybe *should* examine. Like to him, if course anyone would react to their sibling's death that way (but not a spouse's death? Jess didn't raise that level of insanity in him). Of course the proper response to your brother being disappointed in you is to want to kill yourself. There's nothing to think about.

Dean knows it isn't normal. But to Sam, it doesn't even register.

Even later, when he had examined this enough to tell Dean they had to chill out a bit on the whole ending-the-world-to-save-each-other thing. He still told his mother that he and Dean only hug when it's "literally the end of the world." The fact that he didn't catch the inaccuracy of that comment, the fact that that's really what Sam thinks, is fascinating. This guy is usually a relatively reliable narrator. He's usually pretty good at seeing things as they are and not distorting. But he processed "Dean and I hug when death is on the line" as "We hug when the world is ending", and he didn't even catch that he did that. He didn't realize he had conflated "Dean dying" with "world ending." And that is so completely *not normal* for Sam in any other way.

Like, Dean is aware that he's bonkers where Sam is concerned, and he's aware of the pros and cons of being that way. Sam's out there straight-up stabbing people and drinking demon blood and releasing Darkness, saying "Well yeah, he's my brother." And that disconnect, in a guy who spends his life trying to know everything, is just... Agh.