At the beginning of one episode, the brothers get shot in their beds. The next scene is laid out beautifully: In a dark field, two young boys (one younger) watch fireworks explode. Dean lets his brother light them even though Dean was the one that almost got caught stealing them. Sammy doesn’t know about too much of the stealing, of the fraud, of the monsters. Death.
Dean lets him watch the fireworks.
That’s his Heaven.
Sammy’s Heaven is a classmate’s Thanksgiving dinner he’d been invited to. Dean’s not there.
I never really had siblings. Don’t tell them I said that, but it's true.
I could tell you what episode that’s from, the season and title, probably even the exact time that the gunshots turn into fireworks. I won’t though. Because you would look it up and the gunshots would linger in the air much longer than I’ve said, and Dean would make a sexist joke followed by a cheap one-liner about diner food. Like I’ve said, it’s better in my head.
Maybe it’s the length of the show. According to Bingeclock.com, it would take 13 days straight to watch every episode back to back. 327 hours. 19,620 minutes with an advertisement for Allegra every 15. I can barely hold my breath for more than 30 seconds. (My cracked phone’s stopwatch says 48).
That can’t be true though, I swear I’ve held my breath the entire length of “Stranger Things”.
I’ve fallen asleep for hours and been able to understand the plot when I wake up, maybe it’s that. The ability to feel like the end of each episode won’t conclude with a pop quiz on themes and recurring characters. Maybe my inattentiveness turned the show into a entirely new beast:
it, without trying to, suddenly had meaning.
Dean is about to die.
They die a lot, but this is his first. The one that matters the most (he doesn’t know that yet). He’s a gun-toting, lady-loving, rock-blaring macho man. In one of his final acts of rebellion, of showing his blatant disregard for his own death, he blasts Bon Jovi on the drive to his grave. His off-key screeching forces Sam to pause his pre-grief and sing even louder.
The second Sam smiles and looks away, Dean stops singing.
I’m pretty sure he dies less than 5 minutes after that.
He’s saved, of course. Dean is rebuilt, the Righteous Man. The man with a gun in his belt and a fake badge in his calloused hand. Molecule by molecule, capillary by tendon, he is formed. He is not changed. Lovingly and faithfully pieced back together, rescued from Hell, Dean is still Dean. Alcoholic, melodramatic, stubborn, blasphemous.
How easy would it have been, inbetween his brain and his skull being welded back together, to squarely press a thumb into his frontal lobe? To hold the power of resurrection, of fission, but not to change bad habits?
He was the Righteous Man before Angels even touched him.
Covered in dirt, using his oxygen to flick a lighter, Dean un-burries himself on a Thursday. He had no time to consider how his hands felt.
I used to think claustrophobia was a stupid fear. The crunch and smush of an enclosed cubby always made me feel protected. Sheltered.
Right after high school, my mom broke four of her ribs. The back ones on the right side. In the hospital, I slept on a fold-out cot. At home, I slept on the downstairs couch. To be near her, if she needed me. I could refill her ice to keep her ribs numb. I could give her pills to make her numb. But that’s all I could do.
Sometimes, her eyes looked through me like she could steal my ribs and slot them unneatly into where hers failed her.
I’ve learned there's more than one kind of claustrophobia.
Approximately 25 hours in, John dies. John Winchester shaped Dean over bended knee in a way the angel that saved him refused to. Lost, found. Lost. Dean lives and John dies, the only time his dad practiced what he preached about family.
You die for it.
The man who had sculpted him the second, kinder, time was not a man.
Castiel was old. Older than the trees that were fallowed and dead around Dean’s grave. Older than the dirt under his fingernails from digging. Older than the star that turned to gas that turned to dust that turned into dirt. The scale of a human life would be so meaningless. A 30 second ad for Allegra to an entire 19 thousand minutes of show.
Less than a year of one human’s life changed what Castiel believed for millions.
He could see through Dean’s false confidence. In a way nobody else could, Castiel could see what Dean was made of. Brimstone and flannel. Space dust and dark matter. Mother and father.
He saw all the parts that made Dean unlovable.
He loved him even more for it.
A killer had told Castiel once that his days were limited. They would only keep him alive until he was finally happy. This was probably a relief.
Happiness was hard to come by.
Not much later, Castiel needed to sacrifice himself.
Castiel needed to find pure, true happiness. To die.
So, he confessed.
His love, his changing, his hopelessness. He said that the happiness wasn’t in being loved, it was being able to say he loved. Knowing Dean. Loving Dean.
Halfway through, halfway until Castiel says I love you and means it, Dean almost says it. Castiel was killing him, and Dean had already forgiven him. He forgave him, and he loved him. The words would instantly stop Castiel, force him to make one final rebellion against Heaven and against his first family. Instead, Dean says I need you.
I say almost because the words were written and memorized, only for the man sitting next to the man holding the camera to change it.
But does this change anything? How many times have we been told synonyms for I love you that mean the same thing? I need you, I miss you, Drive safe, Text me when you’re home, Have you eaten?
Inside my head is a kinder place, filled with leniency and softness that is rarely allowed out. It never occurred to me to stop, to move on, to give up on Dean and how he deserved
To be loved.
I never thought it would happen. That Dean could be proven as so enduringly loved.
My last ex told me once that I was better in her head than I was in person. I couldn’t help but agree with her, I often feel like I would like myself in a tv show more than I do in real life. She dumped me in the car that used to be my grandfather’s. And then, two months later, she dumped me over text.
Last summer, I went to a cheesy demonstration of electrical fields. The big finale was them putting a couple into a metal birdcage and turning on the biggest Tesla coil in the country. These strangers in love were supposed to touch the cage, right where the purple tinged lightning hit, and take a picture. She was scared before they even turned the lights off, and I was worried she would back out before the cage’s door was closed. In the pitch black, we waited excitedly for the machine to be turned on. The loud zap of the coil threw everything into a harsh bright light. Inside the cage, he was touching the cage as instructed.
And her hand was on top of his, a safety barrier. Wordless and silent love.
Outside of my head, Dean’s not great. He often does and says things that make me cringe. Even after 327 hours, he’s still sometimes hard to get used to.
And for once, the version in my head matches the one out:
Castiel loves him regardless.
The part of my heart I don’t have a handle on clings onto Dean. Grave-dirt under fingernails. It’s silly, I know. It’s just a show.
But.
Tendon by tendon, molecule by molecule, he was rebuilt. Seen. Loved.
Before he could even love back.
Recently, I’ve been considering my temper as the reason why I feel unloveable. Bitterness rots my teeth sore, and I never stop to look before I spit.
There’s something sharp and harsh living under my skin, some days. I want to dig at it, pick it bloody, but I’m worried that once my scabs are open they’ll just be me.
If the ship of Theseus is rebuilt plank by plank, is it still itself? How many nails have to change in order for it to be something new?
Who am I without my faults? Is it someone I’d know?
Dean is angry. He’s brash, and brutal, and not always funny. Castiel studied the sharp and harsh thing living in his skin and left it there.
Inside my head, I let myself be Dean, just for a minute. To be truly known for all my faults. Loved, not in spite of my sandpaper-rough heart, but because of it.