do you think that mary tries to mother sam in the depths of s12, when lucifer is possessing his childhood rockstar and fucking with sam every chance he gets, when sam is still trying to recover from the british interrogation and hallucinating a-fucking-gain? do you think dean gets jealous and isn’t sure of who? sammy giving mary that little-boy smile and mary pets his hair and dean is just like no no Mine!
BETH I AM KISSING YOU RN
LETS TALK MOTHERS!!!!!!!!!!! OH I AM SO EXCITED TO TALK MOTHERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!
a lot of the mary content we get in s12 is very dean-forward (which i can understand, because he was the only one who had even a little bit of a relationship with pre-her death), but i think about how she tries to mother sam a LOT!
a lot of mary's last memories of sammy were of him waking up in the middle of the night screaming his head off, or laughing and flapping his hands in the baby chair outside while dean tries to blow bubbles. i know collectively we've all kinda talked about this, but how freaky is it to see a baby, then be told the next day that this man older than you is that baby!!!
a lot of her bonding is weird and awkward and stilted. she cuts the crusts off of a sandwich she makes for dean one day, completely on autopilot, and dean freezes when he sees it.
i'm sure a lot of her comfort is very tactile, because she hasn't really had time to get used to comforting adults. she has very little--if any at all--experience comforting/connecting with adults.
given her childhood, her exposure to/relationships with other people and adults was extremely limited. her dad was very much a stiff-upper-lip kind of guy, and john dealt with his emotions/worry/frustrations (as we see in the flashbacks with him interacting with mary) with knee-jerk anger (which we later see dean doing as well with her). so i'm sure a lot of her comfort for dean is the same way she used to talk with john, a la "it [their marriage] wasn't perfect until she died."
but sam? he's a bleeding heart. he flinches when dean yells and shows up at her door after a fight with dean to make sure that she's okay (but not too much, not enough to break their united front; when mary complains about dean, sam responds noncommittally and excuse-laden, that's how he is, you know saying XYZ makes him mad). he pours the extra cup of coffee when dean refuses to, and cuts off the crusts of her sandwich one afternoon to make her laugh.
all that to say, the last time mary wanted to comfort sam, she'd kissed his little bald forehead. she'd put two of her fingers into his tiny, sticky fist, and wiggled his arms around. she'd bounced him. she'd shooed dean away, because dean had come in to watch sam cry, confused and upset and asking is he okay mommy let me look at him is he okay is he okay is he sad?
comfort with sam has always been tactile.
so now that she's back, and sam is upset, she gives him a hug. sam kind of wilts when she does, going tense and confused at first before wrapping his (frankly, terrifyingly large) arms around her.
after all the shit that goes down in s12, mary gets in the habit of checking in with him. she'll put a hand on his shoulder when he stares at the corner for too long, eyes dark and far away. she'll make sure to turn the radio up on the '70s radio channel she has on while sharpening the knives because sam is flinching as something invisible is clearly yelling at him.
she brings him an extra cup of coffee. she goes on her tip toes to kiss his cheek. she puts a hand on his head as she passes him to go to bed. she pokes his hand to shake him out of a reverie. she grabs his arm to get his attention.
and--of course--this brushes up against dean.
she brings sam another cup of coffee to find a mug already steaming next to him, a sticky note in dean's cramped scrawl that says "go to bed, asshole" peeling off of the side. she stands up to go break sam's fifty-yard stare at the chair across from him, but dean is already sliding into the chair, talking like he had been sitting there the whole time and they were in the middle of a conversation.
she pats sam on the shoulder after he finds a lead on the case, and his shoulder ticks up because dean had just slapped down on his other shoulder at the same time.
and dean is just fucking burning. he's so fucking confused, and angry, and hurt.
but mostly, he's humiliated to find out, he's jealous.
sam tilts into the kiss mary drops on the top of his head. he turns his hand over on the table so she can give it a squeeze. he puts a hand on her back to move her out of his way in the kitchen.
dean figures it's kind of pathetic to want to be mothered like that at thirty-eight years old, especially after all the shit they've been through.
but, when he walks in and finds sam sunk into one of mary's hugs, he wants to pry her off. he wants to go over and ask sam what happened, why it looks like he's been crying, what she did.
he's not jealous of sam.
he's jealous of mary.
she can hug him whenever she wants, and sam sinks into it like it's a bed every time, shaking and happy and calm. mary drops kisses on his cheek like it's nothing.
he starts to seek her out to ask questions, first. before he goes to dean. whenever they have dinner, he serves her her food first. he starts deferring to her on things. they're at a restaurant, and he pulls her chair out for her. he calls her "mom," with a smile and a laugh and crinkly eyes.
she puts toast in front of him with butter--and sam fucking hates putting butter on his toast right out of the toaster, why doesn't she know that, it makes the bread soggy, dean almost reaches across and slaps it off the table--and he smiles and says, "thanks mom" with a huge fucking smile and dean is filled with so much rage and longing and hurt that he stands up and has to take a fucking lap.
it's automatic, immediate deference. it's idolization that kids have for their mothers. that a five-year-old sam had for dean.
she doesn't even know how to be his mom. she doesn't know that sammy used to nosebleeds every fall, and dean had sit next to him as he leaned over boiling water, because they didn't have a humidifier. she doesn't know that sam likes his coffee with a very specific amount of creamer. dean spent years getting it perfect, better than sam makes it, to the point that sam will ask dean to make it if he's feeling really tired.
she didn't sit with sam when sam could only speak enochian for hours, garbling and hissing and spitting, then later shoving dean off of him, whispering in broken english i've been good, i've been good, you promised you wouldn't bring dean back if i was good.
she doesn't know a thing about being sam's mom. she shouldn't get to reap the rewards that--dean is starting to realize--he wants.
he wants to be allowed to kiss sam on the cheek or the forehead and it not mean anything. he wants his touch to be expected, to be anticipated, to be routine. he wants sam to tilt his face to the side to make it easier to reach, to sit up straighter when dean leaves a room to make his hair closer to his hand.
sammy looks up at her with a smile that looks like apple juice and missing teeth and boxes of flintstone bandaids that dean stole in hoodie pockets and pillow forts made on motel beds.
and she puts a hand through his hair and dean is fucking howling with rage, burning up from the inside out, fire tunneling up his spine.
mine. it's mine, he's mine. his childhood was mine, his skinned knees were mine, his sunburned cheeks were mine, his sleepless nights were mine. his fears are mine, his smiles are mine, his respect is mine.
and i'm his blanket, his calf to put cold feet under, the bed he would climb into after nightmares, the mouth that blew on his skinned palms, the bowl of warm soup when he was sick, the one screaming at his soccer games.
i'm his mom.
~~~
i can literally talk about this forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and [the limit does not exist]
it is no secret i love getting asks about these two losers
i'm sorry for the late response, work has been killer recently, but know that i opened our tumblr and lovingly stared at this ask! i hope you're doing well <3 i love when i see your name on our dash!
THANK YOU FOR THIS ASK <3333
-lizzy