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It all started with a game of hide and seek. There wasn’t a hunt, the weather outside was rainy, and Jack had been perfecting Sam’s patented puppy eyes. So, when the boy asked if they could play hide and seek, it took Dean about two minutes before he gave in.
They established some basic rules. Any room with magical artifacts was off limits because the last thing they were going to do is to get cursed. No one was allowed to use their powers to assist in either hiding or seeking, because Castiel and Jack were at an unfair advantage against the brothers. And Dean, because he had the worst knees, got to be the one who searched first.
It took Sam five minutes to find a place that was both suitably big enough to contain all of him and well hidden enough that he could potentially win. Finally sequestered away, Sam sighed into the silence, before pulling out his phone to lazily scroll the internet.
He had every intention of researching for a case or just finding a website with cool true crime facts, but when he opened up his phone, he noticed a notification from Reddit. It was from r/supernatural. He wasn’t a member of the subreddit, couldn’t even remember the last time he read something from there. Sam had no intention of even clicking on notification, until he noticed the name of the thread. Do you guys think that Sammy knows? (META)
Sam was vaguely familiar with the word meta in how it applied to the way people consumed media. Charlie had mentioned something about it being about reading between the lines in media to see implied content or subtext. But, she had insisted, it was done in a totally intellectual way. She had showed him a meta about how a lot of his healthy eating habits were tied to his continued discomfort with the lack of his bodily autonomy surrounding the demon blood. And it might have hit just a little too close to home for his comfort.
So, with an unknown amount of time on his hand, Sam clicked.
Hey guys, crossposting this here as well as on my Tumblr. I’ve been rereading the Edlund books for the last few weeks, and I’m back on my bullshit. I’m still new to the meta analysis, but I’ve done some before. Here’s the link to my analysis of Dean’s sexuality (hint: he’s def not straight lol), and I also have one discussing the abusive nature of John and his interactions with his boys here. But today I want to discuss something new.
Do you think Sam knows about Dean’s past sex-work?
Sam blinked slowly at the screen. “Dean’s what?” He stiffened slightly at the sound of his own voice in the silence of the dark cupboard he had hidden in before letting out a breath.
While it isn’t explicitly stated in the text, it’s heavily implied through multiple of the volumes told primarily through Dean’s perspective that he has some sort of past with sex work. For instance, take this description Edlund used in the novel Lazarus Rising. Dean, “felt none of his 40 years in Hell in his body. He ached like a 29-year-old, not someone who was soon to turn 70. His knees still felt stiff, but it was a stiffness of hours knelt on shitty bathroom tiles, not the torture of Hell” (4).
In addition to this, there’s implications in Bad Boys, that while Dean went to Sonny’s home for stealing food, theft was far from the only crime Dean committed to feed his little brother. Take Dean’s panicked inner thought on page 48. “For a moment, Dean can’t help but be relieved that he had only been caught stealing food. If his dad knew- Dean didn’t even want to imagine the rich vocabulary Dad would use if he knew how Dean usually made money. If he was going to get caught, thank God it was just for stealing food.” (Before you all bitch about Bad Boys not being an official Edlund work, please refer to this pinned thread by the mods explaining how these later works match the style and tone of the original books with complete accuracy.)
Sam quickly locked his phone and slumped his head back. There were a million thoughts running through his head. Unbidden he remembers a night when Dean had come back to the motel room and just brushed his teeth for ten minutes until he was gagging on toothpaste and his gums were bleeding. And Sam’s stomach sinks because he knows. He knows.
Sam remembers other hunters his dad knew, who would tell him how much like Dad he was even at 7 years old. They’d tell him he’d be tough, a real man’s man, hard and unforgiving. They’d laugh when he tried to defy his father, clapping John on the back, and saying that Sam was going to be quite a man someday. But with Dean, it had always been innocuous sounding comments. He looks so much like his mother. Such delicate features. Prettier than my wife.
When he was a kid, Sam might not have understood the way they talked about Dean, but now in his memories it seemed glaringly obvious. Dean was thirteen the first time Sam had witnessed a hunter cups Dean’s jaw. He was muttering something about Dean’s lips that Sam didn’t catch, but he saw the deer in the headlights look in his brother’s eyes. The hand dropped as soon as the hunter realized Sam had left the bathroom.
On long hunts, when Dad didn’t leave the boys with enough money to survive, Dean would slip out at odd hours of the night and come back with a couple of twenties to get them a little further along.
And Sam knew, no matter how good of a fake ID they had doctored up, Dean was not passing for old enough to get into a bar to hustle pool at the age of fifteen. Hell, there were times in their twenties when Sam could order drinks without getting carded while his older brother got regularly carded until he was in his thirties.
Even recently, Sam remembers seeing Dean approach young girls and boys on the street and surreptitiously placing a couple Benjamins in their palms. He had always thought it was nice gesture towards those down on their luck. But Dean had always sported a strange look of melancholy when he spotted them. One that Sam now recognized as a mixture of horror and relief.
Sitting there in the dark he’s met with a strong wave of nausea and an even stronger wave of anger. Sam was going to raze Heaven, find John Winchester, and personally drag him back down to Hell himself.
How dare he. How dare he leave his own kids to starve. How dare he let his friends talk about his own son, a literal child, that way. How dare he leave his son to make money on his hands and knees instead of being an actual father.
The tears are rolling down Sam’s cheeks before he even realizes he’s crying. Because Sam knows, and he wishes he didn’t.
Sam doesn’t know how long he’s been crying before Dean finds him. Some crude comment about how Sam even fit in such a tiny space is lost as Dean wrenches open the cupboard door to see his little brother with drying tear tracks and snot running down his face. Through the blur of tears, he sees his older brother’s face shift to one of concern.
“Hey,” Dean said, quietly. “Sammy, you okay?”
Unable to speak, Sam shakes his head. Dean takes one more look at him, before texting Cas that the game was over. Then, he reached in to pull Sam out. It could have been minutes or hours, but soon Sam found himself bundled up in a blanket with a cup of hot chocolate somewhere more comfortable than his hiding spot had been.
Dean was sat facing him, his own mug in hand. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Yeah.” Sam’s voice sounds rusty and aged from disuse and sorrow.
“Whenever you’re ready.”
“Dean, if I-if I ask you a question, will you answer honestly?” There’s a reluctance in his brother’s eyes that Sam can see, and Dean’s jaw tenses three times before he nods. “When we were kids, how did you make money to help us survive?”
“Hustlin’.”
“But that’s not all, is it?”
Dean bites his bottom lip. “No.”
Sam feels like his tongue is glued to the roof of his mouth. “Did you used to-did people pay you for-”
“Whoring myself out?”
Sam nods weakly.
“Fuck, this was not the conversation I thought we’d be having today.” Dean sets his mug down on the bunker’s concrete floor a little too loudly. “I never wanted you to find out.”
The words of confirmation hit Sam like a speeding train. “How old were you?”
“Fourteen, maybe fifteen.”
Sam thinks to all the teens that he and his brother saved on hunts. Thinks to when Claire was younger. And Sam cannot imagine any human being looking at these children and wanting them that way. He hoped they were all rotting in Hell.
They sit in uncomfortable silence for a few minutes before Dean speaks again. “I didn’t have a choice Sam. We needed school supplies, you couldn’t fit in your old shoes anymore, and I hadn’t eaten in five days.”
“Dean-”
“I had thought it could be a one-time thing, bat my lashes at some closeted trucker, put my ‘oral fixation’ to some good use, and buy a damn cheeseburger.” He chuckled dryly and without any humor. “But shit Sam, it was so much money. And the demand was high. When we’d start to run low on cash, it was just easier to find a gas station or alleyway.”
Sam’s shaking now, shaking with rage. He doesn’t think even Castiel could hold him back now if he raged. “It’s not funny Dean.”
“I’m not laughin’.” His older brother swallows nervously. “It really fucked me up in the head. And I felt even more fucked up when I realized I found some of the guys attractive. That if it hadn’t been for money, for survival, I might have considered doing it anyway. I was so afraid that Dad would find out somehow. That he would be able to read my mind when I stared too long at Harrison Ford or Clint Eastwood. That he would know his son was a cocksucker.”
Sam could remember uncharitable things that his dad used to say. He could remember some of the shockwaves of AIDS and the impact on the queer community. Heck, Dean had forced Sam to watch RENT. “Thanks.” He wasn’t sure if he was thanking him for coming out, or providing for him, or any of the million of other things Dean had done.
Dean merely nodded.
“I wish you wouldn’t have had to.”
“Yeah, but better me than you.” Dean reached out to touch Sam’s arm through the blanket. “Listen man, you may be my brother but you’re my kid, too. And maybe you understand now that Jack’s around, but there is nothing a parent wouldn’t do for their kid.”
Sam does understand. He knows that he, Dean, and Cas would all fight thousands of demons singlehandedly if it was with the goal of keeping Jack safe. But he still wishes he could have done something to help, and he tells Dean as much.
“Sammy, you did help. When you figured out how to reliably commit credit card fraud and taught me how, you gave me a way out. I could pay for all your AP tests and food and hunting supplies, even if Dad left us with nothing for weeks on end.”
Sam shrugged the blanket off so he could awkwardly pull Dean into a sideways hug. In response, he felt his brother rub small circles on his upper back.
“I’m not going to lie to you and say it doesn’t still affect me. Just like Hell and Purgatory, it’s all still there.” Dean sighed. “But it’s been twenty years Sammy, the pain’s a lot duller now.”
“You should probably still go to therapy.”
“Yeah, we probably all should. Think there’s a hunter therapist out there?”
“Knowing Chuck, probably not.”
Dean chuckled. “Yeah, bastard can’t get off on us dealing with our emotions healthily.”
“I don’t want to think about Chuck getting off at all.”
“Well-”
Sam sits up and looks at Dean scandalized, “Oh God Dean, please tell me Chuck is not your type.”
Dean lets out an actual full-bodied laugh. “No, no. Bad joke, sorry.”
“Good,” Sam manages to chuckle lightly, “might make things awkward when you finally admit your feelings to Cas if you hook up with his dad first.”
His brother laughs so hard he starts to choke and splutters out a few coughs. “Fuck Sam, warn a guy next time.” The pair sit in silence for a while before Dean speaks up again. “Even if Chuck was my type…I’m not interested. Cause Cas is it for me, y’know.”
“I know. Just make sure Cas does too before it’s too late.”
Dean ruffles Sam’s hair and draws out an indignant squawk from his little brother, before standing up and stretching his legs. “I promise I will Sammy, but for right now you need dinner kid.”
Dinner that night is relatively quiet. Sam still isn’t in the mood to talk. Jack is off in his own little world. Cas keeps throwing worried glances between him and Dean until Dean places his hand lightly on his and whispers a promise that they’ll talk about it after dinner.
Jack, bless his heart, doesn’t notice the awkward silence and volunteers to wash the dishes. Sam is hit afresh with the innocence of youth, and he sees red. Dean should have had the ability to sit down and have family dinners he didn’t have to cook. Dean should have been able to rely on food being on the table. Dean should have had the ability to be a kid.
If John thinks- if Chuck thinks that they can just get away with ruining his brother’s life, they had another thing coming.
What they didn’t understand was that there was a reason Sam was Lucifer’s true vessel. It had nothing to do with the story Chuck planned for his life or the demon blood he was fed as a baby. Sam Winchester was all passion and anger, hot and burning bright. He was a fire kindling and spreading out of control.
Sam was what Lucifer could have been if he ever truly cared about someone who was not himself. Fury, righteous anger, a warrior. He’d scorch the earth with his touch. He’d choke Chuck to death with his own bare hands.
Because Sam knew. He knew. And he wasn’t afraid to raise a little hell.