Sam buried his girlfriend in a match box.
In much the same way he'd buried his pet goldfish when he was seven.
He wore a suit and put product in his hair and shook hands with people he'd never even met. And that night, when it was over, he'd watched his brother get slowly wasted and try to hit on the girls serving the hors d'oeuvres at the wake.
Dean didn't know Jess. Didn't know that she loved apple martinis, or Huey Lewis, or vanilla-scented soap. He didn't know, so he had no reason to stay sober. But Sam didn't want to dull his thoughts for a second. He wanted pure sharp remembrance with the bright pain of clarity. Sam reasoned that thinking about her memory when he was sober and rational and angry, was better than being drunk and maudlin and vengeful.
Two months after she died he took his first mouthful of beer.
It tasted like ashes.
II.
From the get go he'd never truly believed it. Never believed that Dean was going to die, that his heart was failing, that he wouldn't live to see his next birthday, even when Sam had heard the words from the Doctor's lips with his own ears.
And when Dean didn't die, when he was "cured" at the hands of a healing minister, when they counted the cost of that cure, and when they eventually left town having destroyed the hopes of so many, and saved the lives of countless others, even then Sam never raised a glass.
Dean drank, out of thanks, out of guilt, out of a sheer need to prove that he was alive. Out of pity.
Sam had watched him slide down the wall in their motel room, singing softly to himself and trying to numb the reminder that everyday he lived was a day that the guy that took his place, didn't. Sam stayed sober, an overly tall Jiminy Cricket who put his brother to bed and watched over him to make sure he didn't choke on his own vomit.
He didn't resent a second of it.
III.
When Dean didn't die the second time, when Sam had thought that it was a pair of defibrillator paddles and a Doctor's tenacity that had brought Dean back, Sam wanted a drink. He wanted to drink and holler and party on down.
He stayed sober.
When they eventually learned the price of Dean's second (or was it third now?) chance at life, Dean drank and hollered and beat the shit out of the Impala.
Sam stayed sober.
Jiminy Cricket, right.
IV.
Time of death, ten forty-one.
Dean drank to remember, and he drank to forget.
Sometimes sober wasn't better.
But it helped.
V.
So what has history taught them? That Sam is the good one, the sober one?
The one who stays behind to pick up the pieces of others as they fall?
That he stands without judgement and will pat the back of his brother as he pukes his guts up. There's been more than one occasion that Sam's been thankful that Dean doesn't have long hair. Yet he's never really stopped to wonder if Dean would ever do the same for him…
It was a moment stopped in time; and he thought that if he didn't blink or flinch, or look away, then he could trace the line of the bullet through the air as it traversed its single-minded deadly path.
The movies would call it Sammy Time.
And he watched, in glorious Technicolor, as the bullet tore its way through flesh; dermal layers and subcutaneous fat. He listened, in full Pro-Logic, as it drilled its way through bone and burrowed, like a parasite, into the softness of her grey matter.
The bullet that he had fired.
He had stood there and looked upon her lifeless body. He was a blade of swaying grass, unsteady on his feet, undulating in the absent breeze. And if he bent, he knew he would break, and not even Dean's lies would comfort him now.
Sam sits at the scratched wooden table picking sulkily at the label on his beer bottle. Same damn story every time, he thinks. Go to a bar and watch Dean pick up women while he gets to sit by himself and read a newspaper.
He tugs the corner of the condensation-softened label and it begins to come away from the glass easily. There's a knack to the art of label removing, and he has it down pretty good. This, he reflects, is beer number three. And this is where he usually stops.
Usually.
Usually he doesn't shoot pretty girls in the head.
Tonight he's in the mood for tequila.
At the bar Dean is all "Bring on the Jose man.", confident that he will drink Sam under the table in under three shots.
It's when Sam is knocking back shot number fifteen or something, pupils blown and quite obviously spoiling for a fight that Dean realises that for once he's gonna have to be the sober one. And dammit if Sam doesn't have long bangs.
It's only the times when Sam loses control that Dean realises just how big of a fucker he actually is. And, despite what Sam might say, Dean is not short. Sam knocks back another three shots in quick succession and grins at Dean with a wedge of lime between his teeth. The brunette that Dean's been making nice with all night is whispering sweet nothings into his ear and trying to slip her hands down the back of his pants and Dean's sure as shit not going to spend the night mopping up his brother's puke if he can help it. A friendly nibble on his ear lobe confirms he has other plans.
Dean removes his new friend's hands from the waistband of his jeans and takes the bottle of tequila off the bar and away from his brother. "I think you've had enough." He says gently.
Sam raises himself up to his full height of eight foot and glowers down at Dean "Nope," he says thickly "You're still ugly." And takes back his bottle, takes a long swig and shudders.
"You," Dean says cautiously "Are a belligerent drunk."
Sam narrows his eyes and laughs loudly "Do you even know what that means? I know you can't spell it."
"Sam you are wasted."
"I'm nicely drunk."
"If this bar had a karaoke machine you'd have been up and singing "I Will Survive" ten shots ago."
"You're just jealous because I can sing."
"Oh yeah man, you have the voice of an angel."
Sam gave him a lop-sided drunken smile of approval, nodded his head and said "Oh yeah." And punched Dean playfully on the shoulder.
It was like getting kicked by a mule.
Dean grabbed the bottle again, "I meant a Hells Angel."
Sam snatched it back "Hey!"
"A drunken one at that."
Sam slammed the bottle on the bar "You don't care about me," Dean opened his mouth to protest but Sam continued "You don't, no you don't. All you can think about is going off to make out with new "girlfriend" here."
Dean's special new friend was draped all over him like some kind of exotic accessory. She slithered off him and sidled up to Sam, she put a hand on his chest and said "You two ever think about a threesome?"
Dean sputtered but Sam just looked her up and down and said "With you? Sweetheart let me sing you a little song about how I feel about you."
The girl smiled up at him sweetly and Dean braced himself.
"Every time I drink a beer, it makes your lazy eye disappear. Every time I do a shot, I think you're hot but I know you're not. Oh I'm just trying to drink you pretty."
Sam grinned and there was a brief stunned silence and then the ringing slap of flesh on flesh and Dean's new friend was making a hasty exit and Sam was rubbing the red mark on his cheek.
Sam shrugged and looked at Dean, "Was it something I said?"
"I don't know what bothers me more. The fact that you actually sang a song like that, or that she was the one you didn't want in the threesome. I don't like you when you drink, you scare me."
"I'm a puppy dog."
Dean grabbed Sam by the shoulders and steered him out of the bar and into the fresh night air. Sam wobbled and leant heavily on his brother. "Dean?"
"What Sammy?"
"You're a good brother."
"I know Sammy."
"You've always taken care of me."
"Yes I have."
"Dean, I…"
"Don't say it Sam."
"I have to."
"I don't want to hear it."
"But Dean?"
"No Sam."
"But Dean?"
Dean wheeled him in through the motel room door and let him drop onto the bed.
"No."
"But Dean?" Sam's voice was really whiny and pleading now.
"For God's sake Sam, what?"
"I'm gonna puke."
"Oh for fu…"
And that night was the first night of all their nights when Dean held back Sam's hair and rubbed his back while poor drunken Sammy talked to God on the big white telephone.