Find your tribe in a Sea of Creativity
I have no idea if anyone is even reading my stuff anymore. Between my family shit and mental health just knowing someone is reading these would be really nice.
There is a common misconception that the Winchesters were just unlucky. That it was simply a hand of misfortune that ran their way and ruined their every chance of a quiet life. But it had taken a very specific set of cruelty to lead them to that one fateful night.
It had, like most unfortunate events, started with a storm. Dean Winchester, however, is unaware of the emptiness that awaited him at home. Because as he was driving home (which was currently a crappy motel in Louisiana) from California, his younger brother was on his way to Stanford. But he doesn’t know that. He also doesn’t know that he caused this for himself in some way, (when he does, he is crushed by the weight of his actions.) And naturally, he doesn’t know the bloodshed that awaits him after what the gods call, mockingly, The Last Good Day.
So Dean drives. Screaming the lyrics of Eye of The Tiger that flooded his car from his mixtape because he could. Because he’d bumped into a girl he’d met years ago. Because he was going home. Dean sings because he doesn’t know.
And in another car on the same highway, Sam Winchester sits in silence. His hands tremble as he grips the wheel, shaking as he drives, and his eyes hold back tears he refuses to let spill. He was free. Sam had what he’s always wanted—a normal life—but it hit him that he barely knew what life was outside Dean. His brother had been everything to him, and now he wasn’t sure they’d speak again. Sam believes that Dean falls blindly to his father’s orders. Dean was the favourite, he was just the spare. He doesn’t know that this will be the last time in years that Dean and John speak about anything other than potential jobs. And he doesn’t know how, if there had not been another series of unlikely circumstances, his big brother would have driven under the influence and gotten into a fatal accident the very next May.
So Sam sips a cup of coffee. Eyes on the road. The sound of the patter on the road driving out any thoughts that dared to enter his mind. He drives because he, too, doesn’t know.
John Winchester, however, does know.
There’s a common misconception in the hunting community that Dean was John Winchester’s favourite. You and I know that while John would never admit it (despite his many flaws, he did love his sons), John found it easier to love Sam than he ever could Dean.
Sam was a lot more like Mary; both of them had an air of kindness about them. And Sam hated this life, and John assumed (correctly) that Mary would have as well. Dean, on the other hand, was the better copy of John. Dean was the mirror that showed just how ugly John really was. And sometimes John would look at Dean and want him ruined. How dare Dean love with the loudness John wished he could, despite everything that happened. Even in the weeks right after the "before," when John’s brain was a muddle from all the drinks and the sleeplessness, Mama’s boy Dean, mourning Dean, had crept out of his bed in the middle of the night daily to take the throw from the couch and put it over a blacked-out John. And for a man who knew loss better than himself, given the choice between loving himself and loving the last piece of his wife, he would choose Sam.
And so John drinks. Drinks until every step feels foreign. Until his anger spills from the cup into the room. Leaving a trail of ruin with his movements. He drinks because he does know.