was wondering if you have any Sam and Dean growing up headcanons and if you’d be willing to share? Love your blog!
Thank you so much and yes yes I do, so many, thank you for asking
That bike Dean rode Sam to the ER on the handlebars of? John bought it for Dean when they were staying in the same town for a while and Dean needed a way to get to school, but could only afford one. Sammy usually rode on the back, but Dean didn't trust him to hold on with only one arm, so he rode him to the ER one handed, the other wrapped around Sammy's waist. They had to leave the bike behind when they left that town.
Why does Dean say that they've never been the Grand Canyon, but Sammy remembers Dean riding a farty donkey? Well. When they were little, John was working a case in a town that had their own (smaller) tourist attraction canyon, and decided to take the boys on a rare day out. He told little Sammy it was the Grand Canyon. Sam still hasn't realised that it wasn't, even after all these years.
Dean did the typical older-sibling-blaming-things-on-their-younger sibling thing only once. He was eight, Sammy was four. John came back to find the motel room a mess of drifting feathers (Dean accidentally exploded a pillow) and Dean panicked, said it was Sammy that had done it. He had never wanted to eat his words more. To Dean's relief, John still blamed him, said he was the oldest and should have known better, but Dean still hates himself for it. Sam doesn't even remember.
On some unconscious level, Sam has sort of always known about the way Dean craves certainty and control and structure and -- well. All of that lead to Sam bossing Dean around quite a bit when they were kids. Sam's younger, but in some ways, he was the driving force of the two. He was angry, independent, opinionated, especially in teenagehood. It wasn't until he was quite a bit older that he began to realise that Dean would do pretty much anything if Sam told him to with the right amount of strength and authority in his voice. He tried to stop then (unless Dean is cursed, see: Yellow Fever), but he catches himself doing it even now, and it always sends the same jolt of guilt and discomfort through him. Dean has no idea.
The most the boys ever acted like normal kids was at Bobby's. Bobby sometimes had the boys for weeks at a time, and in that time, despite Dean's protests, he did his best to give them little slices of normal childhood. He took the boys fishing, played games with them in the garden, built up bonfires for marshmallows. It usually took a few days for the boys to lighten up, but when they did they were just as energetic and rowdy and irreverent as kids should be. Bobby's house was the only place the boys ever felt safe, not that they would ever have admitted it.
Dean used to tease Sam about being adopted, about how they stole him from a town when they were passing through and that's why they had to keep moving all the time. Unbeknownst to Dean, little Sam could already feel the demon blood in his veins. He already felt different, wrong, unclean and impure. Once, Sammy couldn't take it anymore, and burst into tears. Dean never said a word about it ever again, but the next time Sammy asked about their mum, Dean told him, as casually as he could, that Sammy looked like her.
Dean did used to read to Sam when he was little. But Dean was also so little when he first started that he couldn't even read yet, so he used to pretend, turning the pages and making the story up as he went along. Even when he started to learn about letters and things, he fell back into the habit of made-up stories as soon as the words got tricky.
Dean is...deeply empathetic, and extremely emotionally intelligent. When he was little, he was always watching, always learning. Eyes on faces, catching things most adults would have missed. He learned to read emotional cues very early on, before Mary died even, comforting her after she and John had a fight, trying hard to make his dad happy too when John was around. He's been trying to take care of his family since he was born, pretty much. The concept of thinking about what he wants for himself is entirely alien to him. When your priority has been other people for as long as you've been alive, what concept of self can you have?
Sammy loved bugs when he was little. Caught them in jars, in cupped hands. He loved grasshoppers most. He tried to bring them with them in the Impala a couple times, till one day he opened the jar inside the car and suddenly the car was full of five big grasshoppers hopping around and Sammy was crying and John had to pull over. Sammy wasn't allowed jars after that.
Sam has called Dean "dad" more than once. He's called his dad John more than once, too.
Sammy always thought that Dean was off on hunts, when John sent him away. Dean coming back unscathed over and over again only cemented his big brother in his mind as brilliant, solid, untouchable.
The first time Dean got badly injured on a hunt, Sam, sent back to the Impala for the first aid kit, stumbled into the bushes and threw up.
Dean didn't do good in school. Undiagnosed AuDHD is one thing for a hunter, an advantage, even, but in the American schooling system...well. He tried. He actually liked school, when he was little. But as he got older he got in trouble over and over, for not paying attention, for fidgeting, humming, clicking his teeth, tapping his pencil, you know how it goes. The more he fell behind, the worse it got. Until eventually he decided he didn't care anymore. Leave the education to the normal kids. He'd always been a dead-eye marksman, and that's what mattered to his dad.
One of Dean's teachers wanted to talk to John about Dean having autism, when he finally went back to school after Mary died. She only had her suspicions because Dean wouldn't speak, but she was on the right track anyway. The Winchesters left town before she got the chance.
Sammy used to cling to Dean any way he could, little hand fisted in Dean's too-big trousers, plaid shirts, tugging at his sleeve, both before he could talk and after. Dean got used to the reassurance of it. As they got older, Sam only did it out of habit, unthinking, when he needed Dean's attention. The first time a monster grabbed Dean by the back of the shirt, he almost died because he thought it was Sammy.
The boys slept in the same bed until Sammy was ten.
Dean didn't trust John to take care of Sammy when he was really little. Made him promise over and over before he went to school, got up and ran as soon as the bell rang.
When John was away, the boys watched TV. Scooby Doo, Saturday morning cartoons. Sam grew out of them pretty young. Dean never did.
Sam used to copy everything Dean did or said. Everything, words and clothes and games. You know how little siblings are. Dean didn't mind.
Dean used to sing "Hey Jude" to Sammy when they were both small and Sammy was upset or he was trying to get him to sleep.
When Sam learned to read and started spending all his time with his nose in a book, Dean, AuDHD and bored, used to try anything and everything to get his attention. Pinging elastic bands at his head. Chucking pillows at him. Attempting handstands. Singing loudly and badly. Once at Bobby's he even got out the leaf blower. Success meant Sam putting his book down to try to kill him.
The year Sam outgrew Dean, Dean Would Not Stop sticking his foot out to trip his brother up. When Sam eventually retaliated he accidentally sent his brother flying. Dean stopped doing that.
To this day, Dean's favourite prank he ever played on Sam was when Sam fell asleep on his front, Dean plaited his hair in his sleep (badly), and Sam sleepily wandered down to Bobby's kitchen without realising. Bobby just raised his eyebrows. Dean lost it laughing. Sam later tried to jump him and they ended up tussling on Bobby's floor till he yelled at them to stop shaking his house down.
Sam's favourite prank he ever played on Dean was either when he replaced every single one of his tapes with classical music and swapped the labels over the day Dean was planning on taking someone out on a date, or when he woke Dean up with a foghorn he stole from school and Dean startled so hard he got tangled in his blanket and fell backwards out of bed. Sweet and simple. The look on his face was just too good.
Dean fell down Bobby's stairs once. Not as like a little child, as a teenager. Sam did at least ascertain that he was alive before laughing at him.
Every time Sam left his phone unattended, Dean would record a new voicemail for him. He still does.
The boys once broke Bobby's window playing baseball. He helped made them fix it. He never yelled.
Once, when Sammy fell over and scraped his knee, Dean carried him over a mile back to where they were staying. He was seven.
Dean got expelled from a school once for beating up a kid who said something awful about his mum. The same thing almost happened the first time someone dared pick on Sammy, but Sammy yelled at him to stop before he broke the kid's nose.
When Sammy was born, when they brought him home, tiny and precious, Dean made a promise to himself to be the best big brother ever.
Dean's favourite Robin was Jason Todd.
When they were little, Dean used to always peel Sam's oranges for him, white bits and all. He always gave Sam the bigger half of his, too.
Sam never learned how to cook until he went to uni. Dean always did it. The first time he tried making scrambled eggs, he set off the smoke alarm.
In fact, Sam, brave, intelligent, incredibly capable Sam, did not learn how to do a good amount of things until he went to uni. Laundry. Grocery shopping. Packing a lunch. Cleaning. Making a bed. Budgeting. Tying a tie. Cutting his hair. People assumed his parents had done it all for him. They were wrong.
Dean once got Sam's computer infected with a virus when they were teenagers and Sam poured away all his beer and replaced it with apple juice.
Dean used to make Sam hold his hand to cross the road when they were small, because that's what his mum used to do.
Dean has a scar on his finger from cutting grapes in half for baby Sammy because his mum told him once that she had to do that for Sammy so he wouldn't choke.
Sam's first word was Dee.
Dean once got up and drove in the middle of the night to pick Sam up from one of the only sleepovers he ever had.
When Sam left for Stanford, Dean...he didn't stop talking entirely, because he was an adult and a good soldier. But he wasn't the same, either.
The first night in Stanford was the first time Sam had ever felt alone. He was a lonely kid, sure. But he was never truly alone.
Sam was actually very good at team sport growing up. Dean wasn’t. He was a damn good wrestler though, he loved recreational sparring without threat of death. He tried BJJ too once and loved it, but he was only at that school for a couple of weeks.
As soon as Dean got his license (or even before) whenever Sammy was sick or tired and being stubborn, Dean would make up some kinda excuse for the two of them to take a drive, put on a soft rock station, and Sammy would be out for the count.
Sammy's favourite thing in a playground was the swings. Dean always had a struggle trying to get him off them.
Sam usually came up with the games, but Dean liked playing superheroes and cowboys and always dragged Sammy along too.
The first time Sammy got sick, and Dean would have been four or five, he tried to stay up all night to watch over him but ended up falling asleep in Sam's cot.
It always bothered Dean that Sammy didn't look anything like him.
Once, after Sammy got injured on a hunt, Dean, tired and distraught, asked John if he really thought that this was what their mum would have wanted for them. John hit him. When Sammy woke up Dean told him he got the bruise from the hunt.
Dean's sensory seeking behaviour got him in trouble fairly often. Sam once had to slap Dean's hand away from an electric fence.
Dean once tased himself to see if he could take it. He could not.
The first time Sam got drunk, he told Dean that he loved him for the first time since they were both very small. Dean half-carried him to bed and pretended, for a moment, that they were still that small.
