Sam lowers his fake badge after showing the store owner before beginning his questioning. "Any flickering lights? Or cold spots? Or, I don't know, scratching from the walls?" He asks, not so subtly.

"Oh, I get it, you're larping!" The heavyset comic store owner declares, the confusion clearing from his features. Sam and Dean exchange bewildered looks.

"What the hell is larping?" Dean asks, straying from his polite FBI agent façade.

"Like you don't know," the man replies mockingly. "Larping! Live Action Role Playing! Pretty hardcore, too," he adds, regarding their suits and fake ID's. "You know, from the book series. What was it called? Where they fight demons and vampires and ghosts? Aha! Supernatural!" He says, snapping his fingers. "You're larping as the two main characters! What were their names? Shawn and Dan? Sid and Drew?"

"Sam and Dean?" Sam supplied.

"Yeah. That's it!"

The two brothers make eye contact. "We're gonna need all the copies of... Supernatural... You've got."

*Later*

"Okay," Sam says, "I think we've read enough of these to know that this is really the story of our lives." Sam puts down the book he was reading. Dean readily agrees, standing and walking out the door without bothering to see if Sam is following.

*Later*

"These books really didn't get the publicity they deserved," the publisher says wistfully, tracing her finger along the spines of several Supernatural books.

"Yeah, they were so... interesting to the both of us. We really connected with the characters," Dean says, and Sam grins. If only this woman knew...

"Me too!" She agrees immediately. "But the characters were so sad! Like when Sam lost Jesse... Oh, as if he hadn't lost enough!" Sam's smile drops. "And when Dean is confronted with himself, his own worst enemy in Dream a Little Dream of Me, and the dream Dean talks about how worthless real Dean feels and how much he hates himself and how dead he is inside… And that part when he said 'Your own father didn't care if you lived or died, why should you?' Ugh, that just broke my heart!"

Sam shoots Dean a look, but his brother suddenly seems intrigued by the floor tiles and refuses to meet his gaze. Sam smiles weakly at the publisher. "A minute, please," he says, not waiting for a response before dragging an objecting Dean into the next room.

"You didn't tell me that!" Sam whisper-shouts.

"Are we really gonna do this right now?" Dean hisses back.

"Well, we would've done it a year ago if you'd bothered to tell me how you felt!" Sam says, not even bothering with the whisper part this time.

"It didn't- it doesn't matter." Dean replies, looking away.

"Of course it matters," Sam says softly. "You're my brother... I need to know when you're in pain. "Dean... You're not worthless. You know that, don't you?"

Dean smiles cockily. "Of course. I'm adorable."

Sam doesn't laugh. "Honestly. Tell me."

Dean's smile drops. "I'm fine, Sam."

Sam narrows his eyes. "You'd say that if you just been shot and you were bleeding out."

Dean's getting angry. "Well, what the hell else am I supposed to do, Sammy? Talk about pain that I know you can't fix? You've got enough on your shoulders, no need to worry about me in addition to it." He says dismissively.

Sam stares at his brother incredulously. "You're telling me I've got enough on my shoulders? Dean, will you acknowledge for one second everything that you've done for me? Everything you've kept inside for my sake? Every time you've been hurt just so I could be a little safer?"

Dean locks eyes with his brother. "And I'd do it all again in a heartbeat."

Sam sighs. "I know, Dean. That's what scares me." The older boy frowns, and his brother continues. "You never give a second thought to your own health. You act like your own existence is just... I don't know... Unimportant. You act like you're only being tolerated, like you don't really matter."

Dean looks away. "Sammy, it's not like that."

"Then what is it like?! Because you haven't given me a lot to go on!"

"It's the only thing that keeps me going!" Dean explodes. Sam stares at him, open mouthed. "Your safety... Your happiness... It's all I got, man. It's too late for me. My motivation to keep going, to keep trying, is you. If I can give you one more shot at a normal life... Maybe it was all worth it."

Sam lets a tear roll down his cheek. "Dean... I don't want to be safe or happy if you're not there right by my side. You've done enough for me. I can carry some of your burden. You don't always have to be alone." Dean opens his mouth to object, so Sam hurries on before he can.

"You sacrificed your childhood so I could have a chance at innocence. Even when I was little... I noticed how dad treated you. He kept pushing and pushing because he knew that you would never break. Or maybe he just didn't care enough to see that you were already long broken. I called him Daddy. He protected me. You called him sir. He treated you like you didn't matter.

"You gave up everything you had so I could have everything I wanted, or as close as you could get it. But don't you see? No kid is supposed to do that. You're allowed to be selfish sometimes. Expected to, even. Kids aren't supposed to know how to shoot. They shouldn't have to keep a gun under their pillow. You destroyed your own childhood, accepted your own happiness as a lost cause, and you didn't complain. Not once. Not ever. You just... Took it. Why did you take it, Dean?"

Sam is shouting now, and Dean's jaw is clenched- his brother knows this means he's fighting back tears. "You can cry if you want. You don't always have to be the strong one. God damn it, Dean, just this once, let me take care of you." Dean lets a tear escape his sad green eye, and nods. He says a single word, just one, but it's enough: "okay."