S8 E2
It had been an awful, awful couple of days. Kevin was gone. Crowley was pissed. They didn't have the tablet. Dean was itching to go and kill something. But he also knew deep down that if he wanted to keep Sam around, talk him out of retiring, they needed to pace themselves. The weather was awful - a mix of snow and rain that somehow came with thunder - so it wasn't like they could start putting real distance behind them anyways. So he decided it was time to bring back a Winchester day-off tradition. Movie night.
Sam and Dean had been using days off to binge action movies since Dean could convince Sam to sit still that long. Decades at this point.
But Dean remembered, fondly, the first time they'd done it with Sophie. It was the apocalypse. And they'd just spent the better part of a week hunting down and killing Famine. It was pouring rain and set to continue for the next day and a half. Sophie was fighting off a migraine. They needed a break. And so Sophie made cookies, Dean got his hands on the original Indiana Jones trilogy. And they rested. Sam gave inane commentary about special effects. Dean shushed him incessantly. Sophie fell asleep on his lap half way through.
It became a sort of ritual after a particularly bad hunt.
Dean and Sophie kept the practice alive in Fayetteville. If either of them had a rough week at work, or if the memories of Sam started to choke them so badly it felt like they couldn't see daylight, they'd wrangle up some James Bond or Mad Max or Bruce Lee and lay on the couch together with tea for Sophie and beer for Dean, since Sophie had a no whiskey rule for movie night, until they started to feel a bit more human again.
And this, this was their first movie night since Dean got back from Purgatory. Sam looked at Dean like he had three heads when he suggested it.
"You want to do what?" Sam asked in disbelief.
"Storm's awful," Dean said, "We need a break. Go rent Lord of the Rings, Sophie's gonna make cookies and we're taking a day off."
And, for what may have been the first time since Dean got back, Sam smiled and it actually reached his eyes.
"Okay," the excitement in his voice was palpable.
And that night, on their crappy motel couch, with Sophie in his arms and Sam talking about the difference between Quenya and Silvan - whatever that meant - things felt normal. For the first time in a long time. And Dean couldn't have been more grateful. Sophie's head drooped against his chest after Helm's Deep. And part of him felt like he should put her to bed. But Sam hadn't noticed. And it felt cruel to end the fun. So Dean just pulled his wife closer into his arms, bundling up his jacket and tucking it under her head, and let the movies play on.