From Me to Sam

Sometimes, it doesn't matter so much that he's always trying to joke away the reality. Sometimes it doesn't matter that he can't ever admit when he's hurting, or that he always acts as if his safety doesn't matter. Sometimes the fact that he wakes up in a cold sweat every morning and still says he's fine can be overlooked. Sometimes it doesn't matter that the closest he'll ever come to saying he loves you is a firm hug that he backs away from afterwards like he's ashamed of himself. Sometimes it's not so important that he refuses to tell the truth about the demons in his head. Sometimes, it is enough to simply [be] together, to look over at him in the car and see his eyebrow raise, to crouch down next to him in the woods and hear his quiet breaths right next to you, to stand side by side in the motel and face the world as two instead of just one. Sometimes it is enough to feel him leaning on you, needing your help to recover his breath. Sometimes it is enough that he wakes you up in the middle of the night to make sure you are still okay. Sometimes it is enough to know he will come for you every time you need him to. Sometimes, it is enough that he still lives. But mostly everything is forgiven every time he almost doesn't make it, and the hug at the end of the day says more than anything else ever could.

:::

Me On Horror Versus Love

The subject matter is ridiculous, and I can't abide the horror - but I'm hooked anyway. I'm hooked because I've seen six episodes and in every single one I've been brought staggering down to my knees by their love. By their pain, their fear and their loss and their brokenness - but mostly their love. They love like no one I've ever seen on TV before, and the sheer authenticity of it is worth any other part of the show. See, he looked into his brother's eyes and listened to the hatred directed towards him and still decided he was worth dying for. And the other pleaded with a murderer for his brother's life to be spared, stepped with his words in front of the bullet. One stood crying at a hospital bed, and one promised with utter, utter sincerity that he would die before failing to protect. And they both try to pretend as if they are not close - but every single thing about them proves that is wrong. Four years apart, and they are still instantly ready to die for each other, able to communicate with just their eyes, and willing to trust when the issue is life and death. And I am completely certain, tonight, that I will hate this show but love the brothers. They are as real as anything I'm ever going to get.

:::

Love That Strong Kills

Maybe. Maybe someday I will learn to love like that, learn to love with a full-throated desperate gripping. Love that strong kills - I know it as sure as I know that the best love I have ever known only crushes. To love like that and lose it all would be enough to die for. I have said I have loved, claimed I have known what it is to be lost - but the love I felt was lost and all I had was a crushing, crushing pain. I have never loved like them. Never. But I think...maybe I was meant to.

:::

Sam on Dean and Love

You know, they say love is defined by who you would die for, that there is no greater love than to lay down your life for your friend. But for me, in my family, it's not. Our love is not defined by whether we are willing to die or not. Don't get me wrong - love is always willing to die for the ones they love, and I would die for my brother in a heartbeat. And I know he would die for me without a second thought - but that's not the deepest measure of his love. The deepest measure of love, I think, is defined by who you are willing to live for.

There are so many days when it would be easier to give the fight up, leave the battles to be fought by someone else. We have sacrificed enough, haven't we? Hasn't my brother given up enough? I know he thinks about it, because I can see it in his eyes at the end of a long day when we didn't get there in time and we couldn't save anyone and he still had to watch me being hurt yet again.

So I know he would die for me, but I know he loves me because he continues to live for me when dying would be so much easier. And I haven't sacrificed as much as he has, but I like to think that he knows I'm living for him too. After all, what else do I really have that's worth living for? I would die for the stranger on the roadside who needs to be rescued, but Dean is and has always been the only one I live for. I think that maybe, there is no deeper love than that.

:::

Re: What I'm Waiting For

There is an overwhelming urge within me, compelling me to [see] them, driving me to watch just one more in the hope of finally seeing what has been hovering since the very beginning. They love so deeply that it tears me to pieces, but what I'm waiting for is the hug. I'm waiting for the final push that will propel them into a visible display of the something more that holds them together, waiting for the catalyst that will reveal each to the other with a strong and tender need to actually [touch]. Brother to brother, gripping each other as if the physical presence and strength will be enough to keep them from ever losing this love that is so deep. I know it is coming, has to be coming - and I'm just waiting.

:::

From Me to Dean After the Djinn

Maybe I am not like you as much as my ego would have me think. To look my heart's deepest desire in the eye and choose to give it up for a stranger is more than even I could do, I think. Even with all my pride and surety of my heroism, I am not ready to say I could do that. But you did. Not for yourself, not even for the brother you love more than life - you did it for the girl in your dreams who you never knew and never will. And after it all, you sat in a cheap motel room and you looked love full in the face and wondered if you were worth loving. And your brother looked you back straight in the eye and promised that you were. So... maybe I am not like you at all.

:::

Season Two Finale and After

I said it, I've been saying it. The first moment I saw them, I knew them - knew him. I wrote about him before I saw anything more than their hug on YouTube and everything I wrote was exactly as I would write it now after two seasons. I didn't have to learn about these characters - his character - I already knew him. And I've been waiting for the last desperate moment that would ferociously tug him into the hug they are always avoiding and it finally came and he clung to his brother and he cried like he never cried before. He was supposed to be the strong one, but he looked at the loss of the only thing he had left and he gasped the words he always wanted to say but never did to the empty one stretched out on the bed. And I said love like that kills, and I was right. He sold his soul rather than try and live without that love, and the moment he came back he knew it was worth it. He gripped his living brother tight and tried to swallow his tears but he was just so damn happy that he couldn't control it. And later, they spoke and the younger brother tried to be angry but the desperate honest hurt in his brother's eyes compelled him to simply declare that his love would be enough to buy even a soul back. And I have found [enough] in that to sleep tonight.

:::

Dean to Sam on the Occasion of his Death

His body

fills my arms

as I clutch his shirt in my fists

squeezing,

trying to keep him here

With Me.

He is limp

unresponsive,

But I won't (I can't) give up

trying.

But my eyes change.

they change from desperate

to shock

to sad.

Just sad.

And I know I will never forget

this moment

how you feel,

the smell of rain and blood,

and your hair against my cheek.

It is raining; but

that has nothing to do with my wet face.

my sobs are gasping,

sucking all the air

from my deepest being

And I can't breathe.

I don't know what to do with my hands.

I squeeze your shirt

And let go.

I hug you closer to me

But my hands are

shaking

And I am rocking, on my knees

I think I cry your name,

a guttural noise

Because I can't manage anything else.

But I'm not sure.

Later I will cry the hot tears of controlled pain

But now, in this eternal moment,

the loss is too great,

the pain too deep to be controlled.

This is something primal,

and it came in the moment

I started saying all this to you

Because I

Don't

Do

That.

Never.

My pain is mine to bear, mine alone.

But dead ears can't hear

I know that.

God! I know it.

Your limp body

fills my arms

as I scream to the sky

Why

does it have to be this way?

But there is no answer.

:::

Re: Dean Chooses To Sell His Soul

I am finding my answers all over again here, and I didn't even know I was still looking. But this is what Dean did - he dropped all his weights in the dust at their feet and he turned his back on all the sacrifice he lived for and it was so freeing that he smiled for half a season. He made the first selfish decision of his life and he was hurt too badly to even feel guilty for it; and I wondered if I could do the same. But he came back. They always come back - all of them! Why do they come back? He struggled his way back to his old position as protector and silent suffering and the deep, deep hurt that flows out of deep, deep love. He took on all the weight again, decided that without it he wasn't anyone worth being. So he dropped all of his burdens but he picked them all back up again and I'm not sure what that means for me except that the love he died and lives for is the kind of love you can't live without or with. My heart aches only imagining it, and I don't want to ever have to fathom the unutterable grief of a brother with nothing left to live for. Of love, with no one left to love. Before he was anything else but a boy, he was a brother - and after all he has done and seen and regretted, that is the only thing that has stayed. So maybe that's why he came back.

:::

To Dean On Selfishness

Love is a tricky thing. It is to die and not to die, to live and not to live. It is to be completely unselfish while looking out for your own good entirely, it is twisted and convoluted enough that sometimes to love someone means to cause them unimaginable pain. It compels you to die for them, yet compels you to protect them by keeping yourself alive. Which would be worse - to die, or to have love die and have to live on? And who is love, that it should make you be the one who has to answer that question and live with what you choose? Love is not logical, and when the time came to make your choice you had no other options, really. So you went with your gut and you never regretted it [becauseHEwas livingandthatsallyoueverneeded] until the moment you looked into his eyes and knew that it hurt him far worse to watch you die. You lived to protect, but died as a result of the only selfish thing you ever chose - the most selfish thing that could ever be chosen. You made him have to live on. Because you couldn't do it, but he was stronger and he could. At least, that's what you told yourself. But at the end of the day, did you ever really believe it?

:::

Dean The Torturer Confesses

He's drowning slowly in the wide gap between who he used to be and who he is, and even I with my reality can't save him. So someone told him that he didn't have to be alone, that when he was ready she was sure his brother would be there. And she was right, because at the end of the day it was just them two left [hasntitalwaysbeenlikethat] and he sat on the hood of the only home he's ever owned and he spilled his tears out in the open. He couldn't bear to look his brother in the eye, so he stared at the distant horizon like it would be far enough away to run to but no matter how long he stares he is always still trapped. He told his brother that, told him that he lied and he remembers every damn second of it and he knows -God, he [knows] - what pain is. But most of all, he knows guilt and shame and what Hell is really made of. And his brother sat on the hood of his car and he cried for him, cried for his awful knowing and the curse of interminable memory. He had no words to give to his protector, his brother who has always chosen to bear the weight and keep his pain inside - but he listened and he cried for him and there was nothing else that could be done. So the first brother was too worn to be strong, so he finally gave in to the tender understanding and he let himself be weak because maybe that was the only way he could keep surviving. And the second brother was too wise to speak, but he sat there and the quiet trembling of his shoulders was enough for the first to know he is not alone. And for the moment, the tears and the shared pain was Enough for the both of them - and maybe for me, too.

:::