It was a peaceful sort of quiet in their rundown little motel room, the kind of night that Sam loved more than anything. It was absolutely miserable outside, rain coming down in buckets, and his brother had unapologetically decided to order delivery rather than go out for takeout.

The result of it was the two of them sprawled out on their respective beds, watching a movie that had come on a local cable channel that was turning out to be a drama about a single mother and her son. Only half an hour in, during a commercial break, Castiel appeared by the door in a rustle of unseen feathers; and after a few surprised greetings, and the initial, customary, "Is something wrong?" "No," Dean flapped a hand at them to shut up.

"The movie's back on," he griped. "Cas don't just stand there, come sit down."

The angel obliged, and Sam watched Dean, sprawled on his stomach, scoot over to make room for Cas on his bed. Cas sat as Dean turned up the volume, solemnly scooting a plate of half-eaten pizza out of the way, and Sam tucked away a smile.

He loved nights like this.

Of course "peaceful" was objective, and certainly to an outsider all the banter, smartass repartee, and empty-can-throwing looked anything but peaceful, but it was pretty much as close as they came, sort of like Sleepover: Winchester Edition- up until the boy in the movie got hit by his stepdad and they were caught up in the plot with a rush.

"Wait what the hell- "

"His mom picked another shitty guy to sleep with, that's what the hell. This movie's fucked."

When the boy got struck again, Sam's face folded into a frown. "We see a lot of messed up shit daily but thank god we never had to deal with anything like this."

There was a pause, so slight Sam almost dismissed it, before Cas said, uncertainly, "But you did."

Sam looked at him. "No, Cas. No matter how dad treated us as adults, it's not right to toss a kid around like that." He gestured at the scene on the screen without breaking eye contact. "You have to know that's wrong, man, you're an angel."

"Of course I do." Bright blue eyes are perplexed and cut from Sam, to the movie, to Dean, back to Sam. "That's what I said when- "

"Drop it, Cas."

Sam glanced at Dean, slowly. Then back at Castiel, who looked absolutely stricken at Dean's tone. Dean took a long drag of beer, eyes glued to the screen, and ignored them both.

So Sam asked, "Drop what?"

"Jesus Christ, just shut up and watch the movie."

But there was no way he could do that, was there? He couldn't leave it alone if he wanted to, the way he couldn't turn off his nightmares or decide not to breathe.

Because he was Sam, and this was Dean, and he just couldn't.

"Dean."

"You're thinking too much," was Dean's calm reply, "like always. Cas tell him it's nothing."

But Sam knew Dean, knew the ins and outs of his brother the way his brother knew the ins and outs of the Impala parked outside, and right now he knew there was something to the weighted silence.

He didn't remember any abuse- and it's hard to think abuse- not even now looking back with an adult, almost objective eye; he couldn't think of a time he'd ever seen John raise a hand to Dean. But he did recall all those times Dean had hurried him out of the room for seemingly no reason; when Dean had warned him not to bother dad, when Dean had huddled him with under blankets playing fort and explorers and any other game he could come up with, every now and then peeking out "to make sure the bad guys don't find us," an almost desperate edge to the way he would say, "One more game, Sammy, let's play one more."

"Run and get your shoes, and we'll go to the park. Hurry, Sammy."

"Sammy hide! Go hide, Sammy, quick, and I'll count to twenty. Don't let me find you!"

He sat there frozen like granite, like he'd come out the wrong end of a staring contest with a basilisk, staring across the few feet that stretched like miles and at the same time shrank into the space of a single heartbeat between the two beds in a cheap room that suddenly didn't seem like much shelter from the storm outside.

And then under the cool shock, anger exploded with intense heat, a starburst of shrapnel in his lungs that pulled tight and burned, and it was anger that moved his lips and formulated the words, "And you were just never going to tell me?"

"There's nothing to tell!" Dean's retort was exasperated. Of all things. "You know the guy- you've met him. You know exactly what he was like."

"Obviously not," he snapped, and maybe it wasn't anger at all, maybe it was terror, sharp and raw around the edges like a bleeding wound. "He hit you?" At Dean's scowl, Sam had to bite his tongue before he could force out, "I meant when you were little. When we were little. Did he hit you?"

Dean cussed under his breath and stood, stalking to the door and grabbing his jacket off the back of a chair as he went.

Sam followed, much faster with the frenzied fury of grief or rage or fear, and Dean only had the door open a few inches when Sam slammed it shut from behind him and stayed there; arm locked above Dean's shoulder, palm flat against the peeling white paint. Dean didn't turn to face him, but Sam hadn't thought he would.

"Did he hit you?" Sam asked the back of his head quietly, even though he could barely hear himself over the pounding in his ears.

"What does it matter, Sam? Dude's dead, it's not like you can fight about this too."

"It matters," he breathed, his throat tightening the way it only did when he was about to be sick or cry, and from the way his brother's shoulders tensed up suddenly, Dean could hear it in his voice. "Of course it matters. You matter, Dean."

"This is stupid." His arm was shoved away, but Dean didn't make a break out the door; he turned and scowled at him somehow without even looking at him, eyes cutting away at the last second to glare a hole in the carpet. "It's not like it broke me, Sam. I'm fine. I'm right here in front of you, I'm fine."

"But why didn't you tell me?" Sam pushed, and Dean flew apart.

"When was I supposed to tell you, Sam? When you were a baby? When you crawled into my bed at night and asked when daddy was coming home? When you were older, and the two of you did nothing but bitch at each other- was I supposed to say it then, in between "leave him alone" and "quit fucking fighting," was that it? Oh- or maybe when you left for Stanford, I should have stopped you before you got on the bus and said, "By the way, Dad's knocked me around a few times, but it's all good, thanks for deciding to ditch me with the guy." When was I supposed to tell you? When would have been a good time?" Dean still wasn't quite looking at him, but his eyes were blazing. "Cas has been inside my head. Cas knows every dumb thing about me. I didn't tell him. I didn't tell you because for awhile dad was your hero, and even when he wasn't- he was still your dad. I mean, the guy raised you. I didn't want you to lose that, after everything else you lost. I didn't- Oh jesus. Sam, don't- Sammy don't cry."

He sobbed once, rubbed his eyes with his sleeve, felt like the girl Dean always accused him of being, but how could he help it? Dean had just admitted his whole childhood was a sacrifice for Sam's, his physical and emotional wellbeing a barter, so Sam could grow up with a father to look up to and admire and respect.
"-thanks for deciding to ditch me with the guy."

Oh, god, Dean. I'm so fucking sorry, Dean, I'm so sorry.

"-only happened a few times," Dean was saying, somewhat quickly, because Sam's tears had always been one thing that put him on edge. "When he hit the bottles a little too hard, a little too early. It sounds bad, I know, but I was always afraid you'd- get in the way when he was like that, so I got you out of the way and sort of just put myself in it instead. I was a kid, it was the best I could do."

A towel was pressed into his hand, and Dean sort of hovered for a moment, stayed close enough for Sam to wrap an arm around his shoulders which is exactly what Sam did. Dean looked torn between relieved and annoyed, adopting a neutral expression that would have worked on anyone else.

"It really didn't happen all the time, dad wasn't abusive. And he loved us, Sam, you know he did. It's just- everything got to him, you know? Mom, and Yellow-eyes, and all the daily shit we had to swim through, sometimes it was just too much for him and he drank it all away."

"That doesn't make it okay," Sam said fiercely, and Dean made an absent shhhing noise Sam wasn't sure he was entirely aware of making. "None of that is okay, I don't care if he only hit you once, you were a kid."

"Well I wasn't a kid forever," Dean muttered. "Pretty soon I was old enough to hit back." He shuffled where he stood, and Sam tightened his grip on him almost on principle. "Remember when- you must have been thirteen, and you were pissed at dad about something, so you marched your cocky little ass over and knocked his books off the counter. Remember that?"

"You shoved me out the door and slammed it shut." Sam did remember. And he had been furious at Dean for taking dad's side, he didn't speak to Dean for a full day after that. "You didn't- "

"If he'd hit you, I would've shot him in the leg," Dean said with a grimace. A grimace Sam knew very well as the shit, our family's fucked up grimace. "So I kicked you out, and dad got in my face about your attitude, and we fought like assholes for a few minutes, and when he threw a bottle at me, I punched him in the face." He blinked slowly, jaw working for a moment; maybe like he was taken aback, now that he thought about it, by the violence that permeated his childhood like black ink spilled over a ledger. "Anyway. Kinda snapped him out of it. He didn't try to hit me again, that's for damn sure."

At some point, one of them had led the other back to the bed and they were sitting on the edge of it now; Dean's voice was low, and Sam was somewhat aware of Cas- who to Sam's surprise hadn't fluttered off, and was sitting on Dean's other side, listening as gravely as he did everything else.

"If my life were a damn Lifetime special, you missed the part where the boy becomes a man," he joked a little lamely. "I confronted him about it, Sammy. It took me a few years, but I did. And I know it all seems fucked up, but don't turn dad into some kind of monster up in that freaky head of yours. He never hurt you, and he never meant to hurt me."

There was a brief moment of silence, broken by Castiel's thoughtful, "If it were any other child put in your situation, you'd run his father over with your car."

"Yeah well, I'm special. And our family puts alcoholism and physical violence on a pedestal, just so you know, it's pretty much our inheritance." Sam punched him in the side. "Ow, Christ. I'm just saying, we have our reasons for being as fucked up as we all are, you gotta admit- but we stayed relatively sane so, y'know, kudos."

"Stop treating it like a joke."

"He didn't beat me black and blue, Sammy." Dean met his eyes this time. "I'm not damaged goods. Neither are you."

Sam curled his other arm around him too, and got away with it; Dean even hugged him back just as hard for a moment, but he'd long since reached his sharing-and-caring quota and Sam knew it. So when he pulled back, Sam let him go.

It wasn't okay. No matter what Dean said, despite the evidence of the two of them strong and healthy and so far unbroken, nothing about it was okay. But there was nothing Sam could do about it now.

Except, maybe,

"You're wrong about one thing," he said suddenly, long minutes after Dean flicked through the channels and settled on a cooking show. When Dean glanced at him, a hard-edged refusal in his eyes- conversation decidedly over, Sam acknowledged reluctantly- the younger brother amended, "Well you're wrong about a lot of things. But dad wasn't the one who raised me, Dean."

Dad wasn't the one who told stories and made lunches, and he wasn't the one who taught Sam to read or how to write his name. Dad had his own ideas about what was important, and he drilled those lessons into Dean every day.

But Sam's lessons had been different.

"I don't care what dad said, Sammy, you're not learning that anytime soon. Because you're still my snot-nosed baby brother, that's why, and I'll always be here to shoot the bad stuff for you. Let me worry about dad. Now forget the gun and go get that book your teacher gave you."

"And he wasn't my hero. My hero made me grilled cheese and read me Dr. Seuss. Sound familiar?"

Across the room Castiel smiled, and Dean muttered, "You hated Fox in Socks."

But there's a happy flush to his face, the tension in his shoulders all but gone; their life isn't a Lifetime movie, and the ending won't come predictably, with neatly rolling credits and an acoustic guitar. It'll be hard and gritty and earned, one way or the other, a blaze of something not quite glory, and no time for their lives to flash before their eyes when all the monsters finally win.

For now, though, Sam can pretend with him that their lives aren't completely fucked. He thinks of whispered stories and games hidden safely under blankets and a boy growing up with the weight of a family on his shoulders, growing into a man who fights demons and angels and protects everyone he can- who taught Sam to fight and protect, too.

"I'm not damaged goods. Neither are you."

Who knows- maybe they're not.