"Sammy, I want you to take a look at this."

"No, Sammy, stay out there."

The two older Winchester males lock eyes, looking like two rival bucks gearing up for a rut. Both sets of eyes carry the same degree of stubbornness in them and both hold the precise same weight of righteousness, chalking up to the both of them knowing that the other will not back down on this.

Dean breaks his gaze away first, letting it fall to the butchered remains on the ground. His insides clench at the sight; a once beautiful young woman, her chest torn open and her face without skin. Her eyes are still open and that's what gets to Dean the most, the fact that she looks so human and so dead. Then there's the smell, the coppery scent of blood swirling in the air with a tinge of sulphur to make a vile cocktail of death and damnation.

And Dean doesn't want his little brother anywhere near it. Sammy's only twelve after all, for Christ's sake.

"He can't see this, Dad." Dean all but begs, his voice a harsh whisper. "He's just a kid."

"So were you when you saw your mother." John shoots back, the words making the both of the wince as soon as they leave his mouth. "He needs to see this. It'll help him understand, learn about different things. He can't be coddled forever."

Dean could almost laugh at that. Their upbringing thus far could hardly be classed as being 'coddled'. He does understand their father's point though, of course he does, but he also understands Sammy. He knows that Sammy is different from them, not just through lack of experience but through his mentality too.

John and Dean, who've been seeing dead things for far too long, have learnt to just see a dead body. Sam though, Dean knows that Sam will see more than that. He'll see this woman's dying screams, the life that could have been, the family and friends left behind.

Sometimes Dean thinks that his baby brother is way too smart for his own good.

"Guys?" A meek voice shouts from outside the dining room door; they're currently in the victim's house and Dean, having sensed that this would be far from a pretty sight, had told his brother to wait outside. "What should I do?"

Dean watches and John's eyes flick from his eldest son to the bloody corpse on the floor then to the ajar door, that too splattered with innocent blood.

"Dad, please."

"Come on in, Sammy." John calls out, sighing and looking away from Dean's fiery eyes.

The boy, not even in his teenage years, stumbles through the door and looks firstly to his big brother. Sam is anything but stupid and knows Dean would only want him to not be in there for a perfectly valid reason. Thus, he also knows that his brother will be feeling guilty for not stopping it, so he offers Dean a somber sort of smile.

But then, then, Sam's eyes find the body and his nose finds the stench. John just watches and Dean stares him down, letting him know that he will more than happily hold their father responsible for whatever is about to happen.

"Sammy?" Dean says, worry tinging the words when his brother turns horribly pale, almost like a ghost. "Kiddo, you alright?"

Sam doesn't respond, just steps closer to the body, his eyes wide and unblinking. When he reaches it he falls to his knees and his older caretakers share a brief, concerned look. Dean's saying 'I told you so' and John's responding with 'well, shit'. Of course Sam has no idea of the exchange, too captivated by this tragically beautiful and butchered woman to notice.

Softly, slowly, Sam reaches a hand out to the woman's open eyes. A most stunning blue, he notes, and gently uses his fingers to close them. He can feel the uncomfortable warmth of blood staining his fingertips but the sight has left him to numb to care.

"Sam, answer your brother." John orders, fighting to keep the nervous shake out of his voice. "Sam."

The addressed, nothing more than a boy, twists to look at Dean, at the one person he knows he can always depend on. In that moment Dean sees a kid brother who sure as hell isn't a kid anymore. And for that high crime Dean could quite easily punch his dad.

Instead he takes a step towards the trembling twelve-year-old, hands outstretched so as not to spook his clearly freaked-out little brother. When he reaches him, after what feels like a too-long eternity of a pregnant silence, he places a soothing hand on Sammy's skinny shoulder.

The reaction is instantaneous.

"De!"

The younger brother catapults himself at his rock, clinging onto his legs with a vicelike grip and Dean does nothing to get him off. Just holds him with one arm and uses the hand other to stroke his head. He spares a moment to look back at John and the look in his father's eyes tells him that maybe next time he might just listen to Dean. Thank God.

Deciding that Sammy needs to get out of there, Dean hauls the trembling, crying mess of a boy to his feet. When Sam tries to look back at the body, Dean pulls his head into his chest and holds him tight.

"Dean?"

"Yeah, Sammy?"

"I think I'm going to be sick."

It's been two hours since Dean got Sam the hell away from the body, back to their current apartment in some deadbeat Texan town.

In those two hours several things have happened; Sammy threw up a grand total of four times, John decided to continue the hunt without the boys, Sammy decided that the only way he could possibly sleep was if it was in Dean's bed with Dean and Dean, being the oh-so-loving big brother that he is, agreed.

Meaning that it's currently several hours before Dean would normally head to bed but here he is, sat atop his bed covers with a stomach full of lanky twelve-year-old. Not that he really minds, of course, he just has to act like he does. Keeping up appearances and all that.

All of a sudden his cell blasts out his ringtone into the fragile quiet of the room and Dean's picking it up with a speed he's never before possessed. He just really wants Sammy to be asleep right now. He knows sometimes it's the best way to deal with things, momentarily anyway.

He flips the phone open and holds it to his ear, greeted immediately by the ragged breathing that he can recognise perfectly as belonging to a certain out-of-breath father.

"Dean." John pants, clearly having either just ran a mile or fought like a champion wrestler. "It's me."

"Hey."

"How's Sammy doing?"

Dean wants nothing more than to lay into his dad, tell him that he has no right to be sounding worried about the son he put into this state. But there's guilt in John's tone, the kind of guilt that Dean knows could easily destroy a man, and he decides that now isn't the time to have a shouting match.

Besides, Dean thinks, a shouting match would probably wake up Sammy. Scare him too. And there's nothing Dean hates more than seeing his baby brother scared. Unless, of course, he's the one doing the scaring.

"Alright now." The older Winchester brother sighs, squeezing the top of Sam's arm in an effort to reassure himself more than his little brother. "He's sleeping. Poor bastard was sick a few times though. Wouldn't sleep on his own."

"You mean he's in your bed right now?" John lets out a chuckle and Dean thinks he's never heard a nervous, fake laugh sound more warm in all of his life. "With you?"

"Shut up."

"That's a yes then."

There's a long stretch of silence, the kind that deafens you if you listen into it too much, and Dean thinks he can hear his father thinking. He can also still hear the sounds of Sammy throwing up in shock, something that makes him all but growl and hold his brother tighter. He's never letting anything get to Sammy like that ever again, no matter what their dad says.

For his part, John is trying to think of the right thing to say. He knows he doesn't have long to say it before he has to get back to hunting monsters from under the bed but he also knows that he has to say it.

"You're a good brother to him, Dean." He breathes and he can picture the proud beam on his eldest son's face at the praise. The one that most definitely is there. "And I'm sorry. I should've listened to you."

"Yeah." Dean wants to say something comforting, of course he does, but he just can't. Not right now with the ghosted look in his baby brother's eyes and the pale pallor of his skin still plaguing his mind. And not to mention the broken fracture in his voice when he begged Dean to sleep with him. "Well, maybe next time you will."

"Yeah."

"You gonna be home anytime soon?"

"Probably tomorrow evening." John replies, feeling very much like the son in this situation, being told off by an overprotective father. "Take care of Sammy."

"Always do, Dad." He says, voice steely, feeling a tiny bit hurt that his dad even feels that he needs to ask. "You take of yourself."

The other end goes dead and Dean drops the phone onto his mattress, turning his attention back to his brother. He can tell that today will be playing on Sammy's mind for a long time and he can hardly blame him. It will be playing on his too, just for different reasons.

He knows his brother has been forced into growing up too quickly. He has too.

And it was the last thing he ever wanted for Sammy.

When Sam wakes up in an empty bed, no Dean around, he panics. His arms shoot out to the sides, reaching for his brother as though he might be hiding behind thin air. Sam, still feeling slightly nauseous, springs into a sitting position, his breath coming out in too-hot and too-quick gasps.

"Dean!"

And Dean's there like a shot, having sprinted from the kitchen where he was on his fifth round of toast and tenth of coffee. His eyes fly straight to Sammy and his heart breaks.

Because there's his baby brother, tears starting to blaze trails down his cheeks, thinking that he's been left alone. Maybe even thinking that Dean's dead. The look of slaughtered hope and murderous fear in those fragile mossy irises is enough to send his big brother to the edge of the bed, where he sits down and pulls Sam into a firm hug. It's an unspoken promise, one that runs along the lines of 'I'm never leaving you'.

"It's alright, Sammy." Dean whispers when he feels his brother's shaking stop. He holds Sam out at arms' length, inspecting him for any sign of injury or blemish. "You're okay." The look Sam gives him in response tells him that that isn't the point. "I'm okay."

Sam nods, still working to get enough oxygen into his lungs and enough carbon dioxide out of them. Dean just strokes his back, wondering how on Earth he could let this happen to Sammy, his baby brother. His responsibility.

"Easy there, Kiddo. Everything's A-Okay." Apart from Dean doesn't think it is, not completely anyway. "I'm here, you're here and everything's fine."

"Not for that lady it isn't."

Dean doesn't need to ask what he's going on about, he knows. Sam, always was the more thoughtful of the brothers; he has dangerous levels of empathy and sympathy for a hunter to possess. He's undoubtedly found a way to blame himself for yesterday, or figured out something else to make himself feel even worse about it.

Unsure of how to respond to that, Dean just nods, despising himself for not knowing how to make everything alright for his kid brother. So he resolves to just listen to what Sammy has to say and then take it from there. It's not ideal, but it's the best plan he's got.

"De, I just, I mean, she was dead." Sam stutters, hiding his face into his big brother's chest, listening out for the steady thumping of a heartbeat to reassure him that Dean really is still with him. "And if we'd got there earlier, she might not be."

"Sammy…"

"Like, if I hadn't insisted on having a shower or if I'd gotten ready quicker or I hadn't yelled at Dad or if I-"

"Sam!"

The addressed flinches but, thankfully for Dean, shuts his trap. Instead he starts crying again and Dean doesn't know which scares the shit out of him more; the insane rambling or the borderline hysterics. Either way, he has to fix this. It's what big brothers do. Especially when they know that their baby brother has every reason to be scared.

"Don't start thinking like that, Sammy." Dean's doing his best to sound stern but he knows he doesn't; it's impossible to be stern with Sammy when he's being all cuddly and crying. "You think like that and you'll go nuts."

"Maybe I'm just not like you and Dad." The baby of the pair spits, sounding more disgusted with himself than anything. It makes Dean flinch. And then, of course, hold his brother tight. "Maybe, well De, maybe I'm just not cut out to be a hunter."

Dean, although hating himself for it, wants to agree. He doesn't want his sweet, innocent baby brother to spend his life fighting monsters that kids his age normally have nightmares about. He doesn't want his brother's life to constantly be at risk. He doesn't want Sammy to have to spend every day fighting. At the same time though, he also doesn't want his brother to not be a hunter because, if he isn't, then he loses him.

Sammy sniffles and pulls himself out of Dean's arms, locking his eyes with his big brother's, searching desperately for an answer.

"Nobody is." The older says, his face taking on the features of someone far older than his meagre sixteen years. "Hunting is something nobody should have to do but we do it. Know why?" Sam shakes his head, eyes so young and enthralled that it makes Dean want to smile. So he does, softly, in a brotherly-fatherly kind of way. "Because we know how. And with that knowledge comes a responsibility, Sammy. We save lives."

"But who saves ours?" Sam blinks up at Dean, sounding so frightened that the older wants to take him so far away from this life that it isn't even a dot in the distance. "Who'll save yours, Dean? How do I know I won't lose you?"

Damn, Dean thinks, his brother really is rattled. And he knows that no amount of waving this off and claiming to be the Indestructible Dean Winchester will fix it.

So he reaches to his bedside cabinet and retrieves a small framed photograph. Their dad took it of the two boys playing out in some forest somewhere. Sammy's somehow managed to talk Dean into giving him a piggyback and Dean's running around, playing. That's when the photo was taken, with both boys laughing and smiling and being kids.

"What do you see there?" Dean hands the photo to Sammy, who starts scrutinizing it as though expecting it to be some great puzzle. "No, don't look too hard."

"Well, I see us." Dean nods and uses his hands to gesture that he goes on with it. "You and me in a forest. Having fun. You're giving me a piggyback." His brow creases and his eyes flick from the photo to Dean, looking for a hint. "I see two brothers."

"Bingo, Bro." Dean winks, taking the picture back and placing it carefully from whence it came as though it is some precious holy relic. Because to Dean, maybe, it is. "Two brothers who aren't ever gonna get separated by anything."

Sam's eyes sparkle and a smile tugs up on his lips. He finally looks like a kid again and it makes Dean breathe out a sigh of relief. Keeping Sammy happy is all he really lives for, after all.

"Because brothers have a special bond, Sammy." Dean takes his brother's hand in his, squeezing it tightly and locking their eyes together. "It means that I'll always be here. Even if you can't always see me."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

A/N:

I've had this idea bouncing about in my head for a couple of days but I'm not all too happy with how it materialized. I don't know, there's just something about I don't quite like. I think it's the ending.

Anyways, thanks for reading and please, please let me know what you think!