Thinking About Dean During The Stanford Era Just Before Everything Went Down Going To See Brokeback Mountain

Thinking about Dean during the Stanford era just before everything went down going to see Brokeback Mountain in theaters. He heard whispers about it but would deny that he knew anything about it if anyone had been around to ask. One night he sneaks into a theatre in a mid-sized town (not so big that it would be busy, not so small that he would stand out). He buys tickets for a different film and sneaks into a late-night showing, and makes sure to sit in the back so he can avoid the judgmental gaze of other patrons (they're not judging you, Dean, they're here for the same reason you are).

Thinking about Dean watching the slow-building yearning and the casual displays of intimacy and affection between Jack and Ennis during their summer ranching. Thinking about how they both go on to get married and have kids but continue to feel so deeply dissatisfied with their lives. Thinking about their reunion 4 years later and a kiss so frenzied that it bruised their noses. Thinking about twenty years of back-and-forth, of yearning for something one of them is too afraid of have. Thinking about the heartbreak of “I wish I knew how to quit you” and “sometimes I miss you so much I can’t hardly stand it” and "it's because of you, Jack, that I'm like this," and "there ain't ever enough time." Thinking about Dean silently breaking down during Ennis' call to Jack's widow, and again when he enters the closet of his lover's childhood bedroom to find a relic of their relationship, hidden away in a dark corner. Private. Loved.

When Dean left the theatre, he was a changed person - heartbroken for something that, in that very moment, he couldn't name within himself. I think that he carries the story with him throughout the series. Eventually, he is able to name that heartbreak - of loving someone so completely but never being able to say it. Of fearing what others would do if they knew, of having someone but never allowing yourself to actually have it.

Of course he sees the comparisons to be made between Cas and him. He sees what his insistence in believing in Cas, even when his gut tells him otherwise, means. He understands what is being left unspoken in long, drawn out gazes and crooked smiles. He knows that their post-death hugs and late nights spent chatting with each other while watching the old westerns that Dean loves mean so much more than they pretend.

I think that over the years, Dean would return to the film and re-mourn the loss of Jack. Over and over, on nights when Sam is out late researching in an archive and Dean knows he has a few hours alone. He has a torrented copy (because he can't risk the physical evidence being found, even after settling into the bunker). I think that Charlie probably downloaded for him, because of course - she knew. Maybe she slipped it in a batch of movies Dean requested from her, with a few of her own added in for good measure. He regrets never having the chance to thank her for that.

After Cas dies and goes to the empty, Dean hangs the jacket with the bloody handprint on the inside of his dresser door. He stands there and thinks about Ennis finding his and Jack's bloody shirts intertwined in a hidden spot in the back of his closet, together, after his death. Dean stands, staring at the jacket, heartbroken. He thinks about loving and losing and never-really-having. Of letting yourself bask in the sun, shining on your face. If he can't have Cas, he wishes that the universe, or Chuck, or whatever, had at least seen fit to have left him with Cas's trench coat to protect on the inside of his stained jacket. But it (or he) didn't, all he has left is the relic of his not-lover's handprint, marked in blood.

Thinking About Dean During The Stanford Era Just Before Everything Went Down Going To See Brokeback Mountain

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