Notes: I'm fairly new to this fandom and I'm sure this has been done before, often, so I apologize. Also the canonical timeline is a bit . . . wibbly, so I estimated as best as I could. Tell me what you think!
There aren't words.
There never are on nights like this, when they sit against a cooling engine and stare up into a clear sky. Tonight is different, though. Tonight there's no relaxed lounging on either side of the Impala, no barely-there brush of jacket against jacket. Tonight Sam is pressed up against Dean, hardly even trying to be casual as he strives for as much contact as dignity will allow. Maybe even a bit more. Shoulder to shoulder, elbow to elbow, knee to knee.
Dean can feel him trembling.
The older Winchester takes another swig of beer, his eyes on the stars which offer their only light. Sam didn't say how many Tuesdays it was, and Dean isn't sure he wants to know. Just for an instant, he allows himself to think about it, to imagine if it had been him who was forced to live the same day over and over, watching Sam die again and again and again . . .
He finishes his bottle and reaches down for a new one. When he sits up again, Sam's head drops onto his shoulder. He doesn't have to look to know that his brother is crying, silent and shuddering. Dean doesn't speak, doesn't even move except to fix his gaze back on the sky.
These are the moments when he wonders if he did the right thing, making his deal. Not because he's piss-pants terrified of Hell (he is), or because anything resembling cooperation with demons make him feel sick and filthy (it does), but because of what he's leaving Sam to. Sam is stronger than him, but he shouldn't have to be. He should be sleeping in some cozy little cookie-cutter house with a wife and a degree and some rugrats, not sitting out here in the middle of nowhere with a beer bottle slipping from his limp fingers.
He shouldn't be crying. Nobody gets to make Sammy cry. Nobody and nothing. Nobody – (Dad's words always seemed to bounce off, but Dean watched his own cut deep, deep, deeper) – nothing – (he saw the aftermath of that journal and those revelations, saw and acted like he didn't) –
He empties another bottle, grabs a fresh one, tries to stop thinking. It doesn't work. He just wants to make things right, or at least get back to where he can pretend they are. To where he can spout a line and a joke and pretend that he doesn't see the crack in his brother's smile or feel the lie in his.
He opens his mouth.
He closes it again.
Dean is going to die in three months. His bottle of beer is cold beneath his fingers, his brother's tears are hot against his neck, and above them, a thousand thousand stars glitter with a beauty which never seemed so distant.
There aren't words.