It’s me and my pocketsized exorcist priest against the world
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he wasn't even looking at me and he found me

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@nooooahhhhh
It’s me and my pocketsized exorcist priest against the world
"Do they know it’s legal now?”
No. No, they don’t.
It’s actually illegal in most countries. In my country, it’s punishable by death and saying that like it’s universal overlooks the fact that a lot of people are still at risk just for existing.
John talking to his hunter friends about Sam while he was at Stanford:
Every time someone starts Supernatural and loves Sam Winchester the way God clearly intended instead of joining the socially accepted "sam hate train", an angel is born! (and immediately assigned emotional damage but we don't talk about that )
Bobby tells himself he is not a man made of regrets. Regret is indulgent. Regret is the lie that naming the sin is the same as undoing it. Guilt doesn’t mend bone or raise the dead or bleach the stains once decay has soaked into the grain. It doesn’t make a wrong thing right just because you ache about it long enough.
And it sure as hell doesn’t absolve him of the sensation that clings to his hands whenever he looks at his youngest boy. A warm, sticky wetness coating his fingers, as if blood has a way of lingering even when it has long since dried, as if blood has a way of insisting on its truth long after it’s been washed away.
Sam is fourteen when he sits across from him at his desk. Books lie open between them, spines cracked, pages gaping like wounded mouths. Papers are stacked and restacked into careful, anxious piles, order pretending it means something.
Bobby gives him a glance, brief and distracted, before going back to scribbling notes, letting the silence do what silence always does best.
Children who learn how to survive learn how to wait.
The silence stretches anyway.
When Bobby finally looks up again, he takes him in properly. Sam is wearing one of Dean’s old shirts, the fabric swallowing him whole, too large, hanging off him like borrowed armor. He’s always been too thin, all narrow shoulders and angles, like something inside him has been quietly eating away at the edges.
His eyes flicker, hands worrying at a loose thread in his lap, pale fingers sawing at it with methodical persistence, like if he keeps going long enough the whole thing might come apart. His jaw is set. The look of a boy who has already decided and is bracing himself for what it will cost.
“What is it, kid?” Bobby asks.
When Sam finally speaks, it’s barely sound at all. A confession shaped like a question, careful and small.
“Can I borrow a rosary?”
Not just any rosary. The one buried deep in Bobby’s drawers. Beads once baby blue, now dulled to the color of old bone. Silver Mary worn smooth by mouths that needed mercy more than they deserved it, cross chipped and metal sharp where it shouldn’t be, catching light like a blade. Faith made weapon.
Bobby says yes. Because saying no feels like denying water to the thirsty. Because something in Sam’s face already looks desperate enough to be dangerous.
Sam’s brown-green eyes go wide with a joy that is almost obscene in its innocence. Dimples carve themselves into his cheeks. He looks like a child on Christmas morning, like a boy receiving a miracle, not a broken charm meant to ward off evil.
The look of a boy who believes salvation is something you can hold in your hands, like God finally looked his way.
He thanks Bobby softly, reverently, and hurries away, clutching the rosary like it might vanish if he loosens his grip. Like grace is a thing that runs if you don’t clutch to it tight enough.
It’s only after that Bobby notices the scars.
Thin, familiar lines carved into the boy’s palms, pale against his skin, like something sharp had been pressed there again and again. Like penance learned too young.
It’s only later, too much later, that he notices the drops beneath Sam’s bed. Darkened specks on the floor. Small. Careful. Almost tidy. Like prayer beads fallen from a broken string. Like the house itself has begun to bleed.
Sam is eleven when he asks Bobby if he remembers his own childhood.
He is at the sink, washing dishes, watching syrup-thick plates turn the water the color of old honey. Dean is long gone, pancakes eaten, knuckles deep in an engine out in the shed, already learning how to make noise so the quiet can’t get him. Sam sits at the table, small legs swinging, feet not quite reaching the floor.
“Not much,” Bobby answers. “Nothing worth keeping.”
Sam nods, slow and thoughtful, like the answer slots neatly into something he’s already decided. He stares at his plate for a long time, tracing the empty circle where food used to be, before telling him he can’t remember much of his either.
“It’s like what happened to me,” he says, choosing each word the way people choose which sins to confess, “happened to someone else. And that someone just happened to be me.”
Bobby turns then.
“What do you think happened to you, Sam?”
Sam meets his eyes, and there’s something there that doesn’t belong.
His face is still soft, still round with childhood, hair falling into his lashes. Eyes holding something too heavy, pain without language. Like shame has already moved in, unpacked it's bags, learned the shape of his bones. Shame that no child should carry behind soft lashes and baby teeth.
“I don’t know,” Sam says at last, voice barely there, like confession filtered through static.
He picks up his plate and carries it to the sink, sets it beside Bobby’s wet hands with careful reverence. Like an offering. Like proof of goodness. Like if he does everything right, whatever it was might stay buried.
“I’ll be reading upstairs if you need me.”
The stairs creak under his weight. Bobby stands there long after the kitchen goes quiet.
Somewhere upstairs, a child is teaching himself how to disappear.
And there isn’t a prayer in the house strong enough to stop it.
By the time Sam is fifteen, the house has learned the sound of thunder. Bobby doesn’t know what changed, only that the air between the brothers feels tighter, sharper, like a wire pulled too thin. They can’t stay in the same room without something snapping.
Dean carries their father’s violence in his shoulders, his fists, his voice, hands trembling with the need to grab, tear, break. He learned love as obligation and protection as possession.
Sam carries it differently. He carries it in his mouth, words honed sharp to cut before he’s cut. In arms locked tight around his own ribs, as if he can keep himself from spilling if he just holds hard enough. He learned how to fold inward, how to reduce his shape, he learned how to make himself smaller in hopes his brother’s rage might pass over him like the angel of death sparing a marked door.
Both are inheritance. Neither is choice.
Sometimes Bobby hears things he pretends not to. Pleas whispered into darkness, bleeding through the door. Bargains struck in whispers between brothers too young to be negotiating mercy.
He doesn’t mean to listen. He really doesn’t.
“Please,” the younger boy begs, voice thin and wrecked. “I won’t do it again. I promise. Just—please, Dean. Look at me.”
Bobby tells Dean in the morning to go easy on his brother. To forgive. As if forgiveness isn’t sometimes just another word for silence dressed up as virtue.
Later, over dinner, Bobby asks Sam about the bruise blooming dark at his temple. Sam smiles.
“Me and Dean made up,” he says, and asks what’s for dinner.
Like peace is something you can manufacture if you say it sweetly enough.
Bobby thinks he should tell Dean to rein in his fists. But he doesn’t know how to say that to a boy who’s been carrying too much weight since he was four years old. To hands that learned early they were the only thing standing between family and loss.
And Sam never complains.
Starving children don’t know what love tastes like, he supposes. They learn to lick it off blades and call it nourishment.
Sam is six when he asks about heaven. Six, and already afraid he won’t qualify.
He asks if being good is enough, eyes wide and voice careful in the way children get when they’re testing a rule they didn’t invent. Bobby says yes, because anything else would be cruelty, because the truth would have teeth.
Sam nods, then frowns anyway. Deep, serious, like goodness is a test he’s already failing. He asks if he can tell Bobby a secret.
He leans in close, like the walls might testify. Like the house itself has ears and judgment.
“I think I’m sick.” His voice drops to a whisper, hands press low against his stomach, small fingers uncertain, mapping pain he doesn’t have words for. “I feel it there.”
Says he feels it worse after his dad drinks. After being laid in bed. After breath on his forehead, on his cheeks.
He says it’s okay, because Dad says it will make him better. That it just takes time.
Bobby’s insides go cold all at once, hollow like a grave left open too long.
The next morning, he asks Dean if their dad ever made him uncomfortable. Dean stares at him like he’s gone clean out of his mind.
“Why would he? He’s my dad.”
As if fatherhood were sacrament. As if blood were baptism. As if God hadn’t already proven how often fathers mistake ownership for love.
Bobby’s mother used to say forgiveness was the greatest love God ever knew. She said it while hiding bruises beneath her sleeves. She said it like a prayer meant to keep men holy and women quiet.
When Sam is seventeen, the house finally spills blood loud enough to be seen.
John drops the boys off after a fight. The argument doesn’t end with the car door slamming; it follows them inside Bobby’s house, clattering into the kitchen, sharp and echoing and rotten. Words stack on top of words until they stop meaning anything, just noise and blame and old wounds reopening. A curse with no name.
Sam is the one who breaks first, says he’s tired. Says he doesn’t want to fight anymore.
He turns away.
Dean grabs his wrist like it’s the last thing keeping the world intact. Rage flashes hot and blind, something ancient and stupid, something he learned at his father’s knee.
Sam wrenches free. He’s taller now, stronger. Not the small, breakable thing Dean learned how to shield. The change feels like betrayal. Like theft.
So Dean shoves him, hard. Sam goes down wrong, the counter catching him before the floor does.
The sound is sickening.
Red against tile. An offering nobody meant to make.
Bobby comes in just in time to see Dean go pale at the sight of it, staring like a man who’s just realized what his hands are capable of, like a man staring at proof of his own sin.
Oh no.
No—no—no—
He drops to his knees so fast it hurts, breath only coming when pain crosses the young boy’s face, life asserting itself in a grimace and a sharp inhale. Brain where it belongs, not scattered across linoleum.
Thank Go—
Oh, thank God—
Dean comes back with a towel like it’s a holy thing, like it might absolve him if he presses it hard enough. He presses it too hard, then not hard enough, terrified of his own touch. He sits beside Sam, eyes already wrecked with guilt so deep it looks like grief.
Bobby knows the bleeding hurts Dean more than it hurts Sam.
Sam knows it too.
He reaches out, slow and careful, rests a hand on Dean’s denim-covered knee, squinting up at him against the harsh kitchen light like a saint squinting into heaven.
“It’s okay,” Sam says softly. “You didn’t mean it, Dean. I forgive you.”
And Bobby feels something in himself recoil.
Because Sam forgives before anyone asks, the cruelest miracle of all.
Bobby tells himself Sam made his choices. That he invited evil in. That he failed to hold fast to faith, an option abandoned.
Ignoring the fact that faith never clung back.
If God is love, then Sam has been godless before he ever sinned.
And Bobby has no scripture cruel enough to explain how a child is supposed to repent for surviving the absence of it.
The weather is getting colder. Dean notices it in the way Sam’s breath ghosts the air, soft little clouds blooming and vanishing in front of his mouth even though the Impala’s heater is cranked all the way up.
Sam’s head lolls against the window, lashes bruising his cheeks, all soft lines and borrowed innocence, too gentle for a world that has already marked him for slaughter. Buried in his big brother’s leather jacket like borrowed grace, drowning himself in a scent that promises safety it can’t deliver. Clinging to it like it might still remember how to keep him warm. It doesn’t. Pink stains his nose and ears, his skin washed thin and almost translucent beneath the low, colorless sky.
A lamb dressed in borrowed warmth.
It’s been two weeks since Sam made him promise.
Two weeks since Sam looked at him with that quiet, terrible certainty and asked him to be the hand that breaks him. To cut off his wings before they could fully unfurl, white and downy trembling things. To press him into olive wood and hold him there, to drown him in holiness until it filled his mouth, lungs, and gut, until purity sank into his blood and burned there. Until there was nothing left inside him that could be called wrong. Until there was nothing left at all.
And Dean said yes.
There was never going to be another answer, not when your name is spoken like a prayer instead of a plea, not with Sam looking at him like that, eyes holding light the way stained glass holds the sun. Fractured, reverent, all trust and surrender. Brown hair catching gold in it, like chalices left too long in candlelight. Like belief given flesh, faith so naked it felt obscene. Sam didn’t look at him like a brother. He looked at him like a child looking to his father. Like a believer looking to a creator he trusts to be merciful.
But Dean is no god; the holy father isn’t as self serving as he is.
God gave up his son and called it love. Let him be flayed open for a world that never asked permission. Let him bleed redemption into the dirt, let him wash away their greed and sins until the world is redeemed worthy.
But even God can’t pry his brother from his grasp, not like how he took Mary’s boy and called it necessary. Nailed him up and let him choke on his own breath while the world learned the word salvation. Let a mother stand at the foot of it all and watch her son emptied out, told her to live with the hollow, told her to press her face into bloodstained clothes and to make do with the echo, with the smell left behind the iron. Told her to keep living as though her child had ever been hers to keep.
Dean won’t.
The gun presses into his side, cold and unforgiving, metal biting at his skin. Two bullets in the chamber. Only two. He keeps running the image in his mind, over and over, rehearsing the ending, sanding it down until it’s merciful by force. It would be fast, gentle. It would have to be; he wouldn’t do it unless he was sure. He wouldn't let Sam suffer, chest hitching with fear. Wouldn’t let pain be the last thing written into him.
And if there was pain, if there was even a flicker of it, Dean would be there. Following him into death like a vow fulfilled, crawling after him into whatever grave or fire or void waits next, to soothe, to hold, to finish what he promised. To gather it up with his hands like spilled wine and beg forgiveness for every drop.
Let this whole thing be damned, let this earth rot and digest itself into nothing. No angel, no demon, no so-called father gets to reach inside Dean’s chest and rip out the thing that keeps him breathing, bleeding, human. If he can’t keep his brother in life, he will keep him in death. And no one has the right to take him away from him.
They don’t get to take him.
They never did.
Please, God.
No, not to God. Never to god.
Please to the dirt, to the car, to the sick ache in his chest that calls itself love even as it rots. Don’t make him give him up. He was his before You ever looked at him and decided he belonged to the world.
He was his before god remembered his name.
He was his first.
He kneels at the foot of his bed, elbows resting against the mattress, palms pressed together in prayer. A worn rosary hangs between his fingers, the deep red beads chipped and flaking, black showing through like bruises, like something buried beneath confession. The cross is rusted from being clutched too tightly, kissed too often, begged into listening.It’s the only one he owns, and he treasures it like a relic. His knees burn against the carpet, skin split and raw. He does not shift. Pain is proof of faith.
Pain is a language God understands.
Dean is sleeping on the opposite bed, brow furrowed even in rest, but that’s the cost of having a misdeed for a brother. His keeper carries the thorns meant for him, and calls it mercy, letting it dig into his soft flesh. Sam doesn't know how to be worthy of such grace, of such sacrifice.
The righteous suffer for the sinner
Dean’s hands are wrapped around Baby’s steering wheel, knuckles split and skin dry. The same hands that hold the fate of his very being, hands that have borne too much, stained with blood that prayer can't wash away, and yet they are holy to him.
Sam wants to take them in his own trembling hands and press them to his face, to confess into their palms, to rinse the red out with his tears and apologies. He would kneel before them, beg them to tear him apart, to cut him to pieces beyond repair, to carve sin from flesh, to make him clean through ruin.
They’re in a nameless motel room when Dean finally rises and comes to him. He stops so close Sam smells leather and gasoline and dust. Earthy, sharp, alive. He feels the heat of Dean’s body like a furnace, burning him; he didn’t realize how cold his soul felt until it was blistering with his big brother’s love.
Dean raises his hand, and he closes his eyes, waiting for the pain to embrace him with biting fondness. He expects the burning hand of God through his brother, striking sin from bone, granting him the bloody taste of deliverance.
But it never comes. Instead, Dean’s hand slides into his hair, fingers made of light, burning his scalp with little touches like sunlight breaking through stained glass, warm, sacred, and unbearable. He almost weeps with how good it feels, to be loved so unquestioningly by something so good, to be held so tenderly by something so pure in its virtuousness.
He knows he’s tainted, impure, undeserving of such holiness. unclean in the biblical sense. A thing that should be cast out, burned, exorcised. But sitting here under his brother’s gaze, so full of faith, holding so much devotion. Under that gaze, under those hands, sam almost believes he is forgiven.
Almost believes he is unpunishable.
every single time i post my writing anywhere i get the strongest urge to stick a "BY THE WAY I CAN ACTUALLY WRITE A LOT BETTER THAN THIS" disclaimer along with it like even if im really proud of the piece
Like trust me bro I can do better (I can't)
Hate is no different from love. They are born of the same breath, carved from the same rib. And Sam lived long enough among both until they bled into one another. He can't remember when it happened, only that one day he looked into his brother’s eyes and found no name for what moved there.
Perhaps it was when Dean’s gaze darkened with loath, whenever Sam did something that proved he wasn’t who they thought he was supposed to be. Proved that he wasn't the sacrifice God , or dean, had carved him to be. Or perhaps it was when he lay hurt and lucid, and Dean cradled his face in his hands, trembling with a tenderness so fierce it made Sam ache with shame.
He doesn’t understand the anguish and devotion and worry and hurt, hurt ,hurt swelling in his brother’s eyes as his fist meets his face. Blood fills the hollows beneath his eyes, and Dean pushes his hair back softly, hands dripping with blood like wine spilled at an altar.
Nor how, sometimes, he catches the faint stain of revulsion buried in Dean’s gaze when he hugs him after granting forgiveness. But that must be wrong, because his brother said it was all water under the bridge. Washed clean.
As if absolution was ever that simple.
Dean says he would do anything to save him. Keep him safe. The words brand themselves into Sam’s wrists like holy iron, shackles of silver and rosaries pulled too tight. Devotion turned poison. Love spoken like a vow that can not be escaped without damnation.
And when his brother stands before him holding his gun, hands trembling with anger and empty threats, Sam yearns for the cold touch of the muzzle between his brows, dripping love and salvation.
His brother loves him. He does. He can feel it everywhere, coiling and twisting around his limbs, digging into the soft space between his ribs until it finds a home in his lungs, growing and growing and growing, until there is no room left for breath.
He is drowning in devotion and he can't breathe. Dean’s presence only tightens the hold.
A fight, was it? Or a hug?
Either way, it suffocated.
Dean would do anything for his brother. Everyone knows that. Some people find it admirable. Others find it frightening. But it’s normal, right ? That’s what an older brother is for. To love, to protect and to stand between the world and the smaller, softer thing it wants to break. Dean has never questioned it, after all he wasn’t a whole person before Sam. He was a vessel waiting to be filled, and Sam was the purpose poured into him.
Sometimes, caring for Sam feels almost sacred. Like prayer. There’s a quiet ritual to it: making sure he eats, watching life settle back into his body, muscle and warmth stretching over sharp bones like a blessing. When Sam moves, there’s a grace to him Dean can’t name, shoulders shifting beneath skin in a way that almost looks like wings, something meant to lift rather than fall.
Dean touches Sam like you touch something sacred. Carefully. Reverently. Fingers threading through his soft hair when he sleeps. In the right light his hair catches gold, each strand catching something warm and unreal, glowing faintly, falling around his face like a halo he doesn’t know he wears.
Dean's first thought is saint. Hates that his second is sacrifice.
Sam is kindness without effort. Dean sees it in the small mercies. Sam crouching to rescue a bug from the corner of a room, cupping it carefully like it matters, murmuring some excuse just to take it somewhere safe.Mercy comes to Sam as naturally as breathing. It’s instinct. It’s pure. It's divine.
It’s going to get him killed.
And the churches. God, the churches.
Sam slipping into prayer like it’s a confession he never earned. Head bowed. Jaw tight. Eyes shining with something that looks too much like longing. Like grief. Like love turned inward and sharpened. Grimacing when Dean catches him, as if faith itself is something he’s ashamed to want. Sam looks at the cross the way condemned men look at the gallows, not with fear, but with understanding. Like he already knows how to climb up there. Like he’s rehearsed the weight of the nails.
And that’s the part that makes Dean feel like he’s choking. Because Sam would bleed for it. Would lay himself down on a cross and call it penance, call it love, call it righteousness, call it necessary. He would, if it made God love him back.
But, he's wrong. So, so wrong.
Sam doesn’t need to be cleansed. He doesn’t need to suffer his way into grace or carve himself down into something smaller, purer, easier to accept.
He doesn’t need to be taken back by God.
He is already holy.
I just love Cas, Sam, and deans friendship so much. I love the moments when both brothers and Cas are just sitting around and conversing and the silly banter between them all.
Same, there's nothing i love more than seeing the three of them having fun with each other. Like even if you ship destiel or sastiel or any other ship involving them, you just gotta love when they get together.
Dean’s been carrying the feeling around for days now, that low constant wrongness that settles in his chest and won’t move. Sam’s been quiet. Not the normal teenage silence, not the sulking or the headphones on, world off kind. This is sharper. Taut. Like a wire pulled too tight. Sam’s anxious, even when he pretends he’s not. He snaps more, bites harder, like if he shows teeth first no one will notice how badly his hands are shaking.
Dean clocks it all. Of course he does. That’s his job.
He thinks about asking. He always does. But that’s never how it works between them. They don’t sit each other down. They don’t ask what’s wrong. They wait. They orbit. They talk when one of them can’t hold it in anymore. And Sam hasn’t cracked, hasn’t even acknowledged that there’s something to crack over. He acts like it’ll sort itself out. Like he’ll handle it. He’s almost grown, after all.
And that thought almost leaves something bitter on Dean’s tongue.
So Dean watches instead. Watches Sam pull out that black notebook every chance he gets, hunched over it at the tiny kitchen table of whatever dump they’re calling home this week. Watches the way Sam’s face changes when he writes: focused, distant. Dean’s commented on it once, trying to sound casual. Sam shrugged, said it was journaling. Said it helped him clear his head.
That answer sits wrong, too.
Later, when Sam’s at school and the room feels too quiet without him, Dean finds the notebook shoved under Sam’s pillow. Just… there. Like Sam forgot to hide it. Or didn’t care if it was found. Dean stares at it longer than he means to. Tells himself he’s not snooping. Tells himself this is concern, responsibility, the weight of being someone’s entire safety net since they were both too young for it.
But his hands hesitate anyway.
Because what if he’s right? What if Sam’s drowning and Dean’s missed it? What if there are words on those pages that he won’t know how to answer? What if there’s a name? What if there’s pain he can’t fix. What if someone’s hurt his little brother and Dean didn’t get there in time-
That thought makes his chest go tight.
So he opens it.
And for a second, his brain just… stalls.
Because it’s not fear or grief or secrets bleeding onto the page. It’s recipes. Pages and pages of them. Unhinged ones. Half legible, chaotic. Weird substitutions, measurements that don’t make sense. Dean flips another page. Then another.
It hits him slowly, like embarrassment turning warm and heavy in his chest. This is what’s been eating Sam up? This is what he’s been obsessing over? Memorizing Dean’s stupid meals like they’re something worth saving?
Dean closes the notebook and slides it back under the pillow, gentler than he picked it up. He stands there for a moment longer than necessary, staring at the empty bed.
Yeah. His brother’s still weird.
But maybe not for the reasons Dean was afraid of.
Btw I should mention that I would still love Sam Winchester no matter what, beard I will lick it, longer hair love it I’m going to eat it, demon blood not a good choice king but uhm, soulless sam SWEET BABY JESUSNNGHH, sam Winchester by himself I LOVE HIM RIPS OFF MY SHITTRRAGGHHHHH
Hate it when people say that they didn't like him in the later seasons cause like.... that's my wife you're talking about man wat
Dean is still getting used to Sam being there. Not that he minds, he likes having his brother within eyesight, likes knowing exactly where he is. But it’s been four years since they’ve lived this close, shared this much space and four years is a long time to unlearn how to live beside someone, even if that someone is your brother.
Especially if it’s your brother.
He still startles sometimes when Sam speaks up from the passenger seat, forgetting he isn’t alone in the car. He still grabs one coffee out of instinct, only to realize too late that he forgot Sam’s and has to turn around. He forgot how high maintenance his brother actually is : the long showers, the separate shampoo and body wash like that makes any sense. Soap is soap. If it foams, it cleans.
And then there’s this.
Sam’s fingers curling into the sleeve of his jacket as they head toward the bar. It’s not even that crowded. Dean doesn’t.. hate it, but the last time Sam did this, he was a too tall high school kid hiding behind his big brother. Not a broad shouldered, six-foot-four grown man who could probably clear the room if he wanted to.
Still, Dean always knows it’s coming. Any crowd, any tight space, the tug happens before he even thinks about it. What gets him is that Sam doesn’t seem to realize he’s doing it. Almost like it’s muscle memory. Built in. The same way Sam positions himself with an exit in sight, the same way his knife is never far, hidden but within reach.
Or maybe he’s just clingier now, after everything. God knows he’s earned the right to be.
So Dean doesn’t say a word. As long as it helps Sam breathe easier, as long as it keeps him steady, Dean will let him hold on. And if Dean finds himself angling his body just enough to shield his baby brother without making a show of it, leaning just a little closer: checking, grounding, making sure Sam is real and here and safe, then that’s nobody else’s business.
Dean's name in Arabic means "religion" as in "دين"
And Sam's name means "poisonous" as in "سام"
remember when sam used to be like psychic?? that felt like forever ago i forgot oh my god
It would have been way cooler if they had kept it ngl :-(
Sam doesn’t feel clean.
It comes in waves, the way it always has since he was little, this sense that something is wrong at a fundamental level, that his skin is wearing a second skin he can’t peel off no matter how hard he scrubs. Sometimes he swears it’s in his blood: thick, sluggish, tainted. Moving through his veins like something alive, like a punishment he carries everywhere. Like impurity etched into him, soaked past skin and muscle,written somewhere only God can see.
He hates it when Dean touches him. Not because he doesn’t want it but because he’s terrified that one day Dean will feel it too. Whatever this sickness is, whatever has made a home inside Sam’s bones, he’s afraid it might be transferable. Like rot. Like a stain. Like something that could spread if Dean holds on too long.
So Sam tries to manage it the only way he knows how. He watches what he eats. Picks the cleanest options he can find. He tells himself that if he avoids grease and heaviness, maybe it won’t coat him from the inside out. He eats just enough to quiet the hunger but never enough to feel full. If he keeps himself light, maybe he’ll be closer to pure.
Maybe God will miss him when judgment comes.
Dean notices. He always does. Every diner booth comes with the same worried look, the same gentle pressure.
The “You sure that’s enough, Sammy?” and the “You need to eat more. You’re almost taller than me.”
Sometimes he wishes that dean can reach into his chest, reaching past ribs and organs to pull his heart out. Red, slick, corrupted and washing it clean. Scrubbing it until it stops beating wrong. Until it’s worthy. He wants to beg for it. To make him clean again.
It’s been so long.
Please, god.
It hurts to breathe flith.