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Look, Sam knows about biases.
Pre-law isn’t actually a major. It’s just a path of coursework. You can major in anything, and Sam, he triple-majored in psychology, sociology, and philosophy because he had to maintain eighteen credits a semester (including summer) to keep his full ride and he thought it was all interesting.
So Sam knows, as a psychology and sociology major if nothing else, about bias.
Hell, Dean teases him constantly about his awareness of bias. Sam watches news on the same topic from sources on both sides of the partisan divide to ensure that he isn’t overly confirmed and slowly radicalized, double-checking statistics every time he chooses to believe them, double-checks every fact he can and cross-references and does all of these checks to avoid any misinformation or bias-
But part of the reason he keeps glancing over from the driver’s seat of the Impala to the passenger’s is that he was apparently far, far more biased than he ever realized.
He remembers Dean at this age. Sam was starting high school because Dean stuck up for him and helped him skip up to ninth grade even though he was twelve, and Dean was fifteen. Sam had barely gotten to be taller than Dean, and he’d had so much fun with the fact that he was taller, but Dean, in his mind, was still strong. Dean was still the strongest person in the world, invincible and unshakeable and competent to the point of being infuriating, steady as concrete.
But this is a fifteen-year-old Dean next to him in the passenger seat of the Impala, de-aged for some inexplicable reason, and he… isn’t concrete like Sam remembers.
Even on top of the attitude and personality differences between the hero-Dean that Sam remembers and the scared-Dean right now, he’s physically different than Sam remembers.
The shape of him is wrong. He should be boxy, broad-shouldered and muscular and tough as well as lean, but instead, the hoodie he’s wearing is oversized to the point that it hangs off his shoulders and the sleeves swallow his shoulders. His jeans are too tight, even with the belt cinched tightly, and he’s visibly malnourished, his wrists too thin and his jaw too sharp. He’s far shorter than Sam remembers - not in the form of triumph like Sam felt when he was twelve, but in the form of ‘he’s maybe 5’4 and fifteen, and I’m remembering why he’s still short next to me.’
And that’s without the… the pure horror and disgust that Sam feels, watching Dean, because he’s not concrete. This boy is afraid, and he’s very clearly not… not well.
He’s got bruises around his throat. Finger-shaped ones. Ugly, dark things that match ones on his wrists when the hoodie sleeves come up. Sam hadn’t noticed them at first, dismissing the gravel in his voice as how Dean should normally sound and too focused on how Dean keeps flinching at every passing car, on how his eyes are wide and frightened until he catches Sam looking at them and squints again with an “eyes on the road, Sammy, don’t crash my baby.”
There are more marks. Scars and scabs in strange random places, marks on the inside of Dean’s wrists - Sam knew about those, he lived with Dean long enough to notice scars, especially as someone taught to diagnose and understand that shit, but he figured Dean was so strong that it was probably done by a monster to make him seem less sturdy and stable on a hunt, but here, they’re fresh and very clearly done himself - a bruise marring a too-prominent cheekbone-
His eyes are larger than Sam remembers. This Dean hasn’t grown into himself yet, even though Sam remembers him already being some kind of sex god at this age, all large eyes that are dilated - from adrenaline, Sam’s brain supplies, he’s so afraid that his eyes aren’t green - and awkward, disproportionate features that remind Sam of the era that he’d get weirded out because people would refer to Dean as ‘pretty’ and that didn’t fit with his strong, badass older brother.
Sam, when he was twelve, was completely unbothered, completely good with how his brother looked and acted because he was just… everything. Cool and calm and collected and suave and strong.
But right now, he remembers weeks when Dean wouldn’t be there to help with homework, acting strange and only talking through frantic movements with his hands in the sign language that Sam never learned, and Bobby would come and pick them up and take them back to his home, clearly worried about Dean. He remembers being sent off to play or read or do something else when Dad got home pissed-off or drunk and Dean insisting that he got into a fight at school the next morning. He remembers a childhood of Dean always giving Sam the most of and the last of their food, of Dean sneaking out at night and coming home with money and crying in the shower, of Dean being a completely unfit guardian because he was a kid himself, just a scared, hurt kid who was told to take care of another kid all by himself and actually doing it.
Dean wasn’t a badass straight out of the womb. He wasn’t always the cocky, charming, self-sacrificing man that Sam has always seen Dean as - nothing less, sometimes more, never anything close to broken except for when he first came back from hell and admitted he wished he couldn’t feel so it wouldn’t hurt. Dean has always been solid concrete, immovable and steady and secure, someone that Sam could look up to as a parent and a brother and a miracle when he was a little kid.
This boy, this fifteen-year-old Dean, is a kid. A scared, exhausted kid who keeps flinching at loud noises and bright lights and sudden movements, who physically makes a noise when Sam has to swerve to avoid a shitty Oregon driver. An abused kid, one who hurts himself, one who can’t always talk, one who’s hungry and who’s probably sold his body before based on Sam’s memories, one who was already hunting at this age - Sam feels sick.
Bias.
Cognitive bias. Confirmation bias. Survivability bias. Anchoring bias. Observer bias. Availability heuristic, framing bias, self-serving bias.
All of which basically boil down to, ‘Sam has always seen Dean as what he needed him to be, and never as he actually was.’
And, looking at this kid, he thinks back, and Sam has never felt more shitty.
Because he dismissed everything. Everything confirmed what he thought about Dean - strong, steady, kind of dumb, kind of goofy and idiotic, but strong enough to take care of Sam - while glossing over who he actually was. Glossing over the fact that Dean was a kid too, that he was the one expected to do anything to keep Sam safe.
And now he thinks, and God, he’s treated Dean badly because of all of the biases he held towards him. How he saw Dean.
The sheer amount of times that he’s called Dean stupid alone is astounding, looking through the lens of ‘I’m not in the right.’ It went from making jokes about Dean not liking research to pretending to be shocked when he quoted or referenced Lord of the Rings or classic lit or actual books, to Dean snapping an ‘I read’ at the end of every sentence about research and books. Dean didn’t graduate high school because he dropped out to take care of their dad and Sam, but he got a GED. Sam hadn’t cared, hadn’t thought twice about throwing the letter from Dean into the trash, and it occurs to him that Dean had, all alone, studied and studied and studied for it and passed and had nobody to tell. Dean didn’t go to college, but it was because it wasn’t an option if he wanted even a chance at keeping Dad alive as a hunter. Sam had always seen himself as ‘the smart one,’ and he tried to force Dean to be ‘the dumb one’ in contrast when he’s not.
Shouting at him as a teenager, calling him selfish, saying how much of an asshole and a bastard he was, telling him that he was holding Sam back and that he was just like Dad and that he was suffocating and controlling and obsessive-
Sam had been so desperate to get out that he’d seen Dean as the face of everything keeping him in place instead of the person who had sacrificed everything, from an education to his body to self-worth, to keep Sam safe and alive and as close to happy as possible. So he’d lashed out at him, over and over and over, until Dean just took it.
God. His whole life, Sam has pushed Dean into the same boxes that other people have trapped him in and seen no problem with it. He’s been a psychology major - specializing in clinical and social psychology, by the way, so this is literally his area of expertise - for nearly a decade now, and he’s never even thought about it.
Dean has been saying he’s fine when he’s not for years, and Sam just… accepted it. Took it at face value because it was convenient, because if Dean was fine, it was okay to not feel guilty about eating the last of the food that Dean had asked him not to eat, no guilt over taking the last twenty bucks for a textbook or for shouting at Dean when he was mad at Dad or for walking away over and over.
Because acknowledging that bias would mean that Sam had fucked up, and it would mean that he lacked the anchor and rock of his life, so… he just didn’t.
Sam’s hands are tight on the wheel, nails digging into the cover, and Dean laughs from next to him.
“Jesus, Sammy, gonna have an aneurysm.” Dean jokes, but Sam hears the nervousness now that he’s listening for it, and he wants to throw up, because Dean is nervous about Sam being pissed-off and rough with a steering wheel because it classifies him as a threat.
Sam doesn’t answer. Can’t, around the lump in his throat. All he manages to do is make the Impala start to turn to park on the side of the road.
“Sammy?” Dean asks, clearly legitimately worried slash frightened now, and Sam feels like the worst person in the world as he gets out of the car.
Dean’s door opens right after, scrambling out as Sam walks around the hood. “Listen, man, I know that you’ve got a shit grasp of time, but there is actually someone that needs our help-”
He takes a step back when Sam walks forward too harshly, and Sam hates everything because Dean looks freaked-out as he reaches forward and grabs Dean and yanks him into his arms.
Dean is frozen as Sam tucks him under his chin, hugging him like Dean used to hug Sam when he was little and wanted comfort, none of the headlock-hug bullshit that they do as adults.
He’s completely still for a moment as Sam just stands there, squeezing all of the ‘I’m so sorry’s and ‘I love you’s in the world into his brother’s body, before Dean quietly says ‘oh’ and melts, hands clutching Sam’s shoulder blades as he buries his face in Sam’s chest before he can think about it.
Sam wants to cry. Instead, he just hugs his big brother like he’s the strong one and whispers, “I’m so sorry.”