"Dean?"

"Mmph?"

"Dean, c'mon!"

"G'away, Sammy."

"Dean, you said that if Dad didn't get back-!"

"All right, all right, I'm up, pint-sized," Dean growled, rolling off the motel bed. He looked at his younger brother, who was already dressed and ready to go. He glared at the smaller boy, since it had taken him half the night to get to sleep and he was exhausted and cranky and ready to punch someone in the gut for the simplest reason… but he had promised. And even at age eleven, Dean Winchester did not back out on a promise.

"Jus' lemme grab some clothes," he told him.

"Uh," Sam brought up, "you are gonna shower and stuff, right?" Seeing that Dean's glare heated up again, Sam stood his ground, already learning not to wilt under his older brother's morning temper. "Dean, it's the middle of the summer and you smell like a junkyard."

"Do we have enough time for that?"

"Yeah. And for you to find clean clothes, too."

"You woke me up early for a shower and clean clothes?"

Sam spoke slowly, as though speaking to someone with the intelligence quotient of a rock. "You. Smell. Like. A. Junkyard. I'm not gonna sit next to you for almost two hours with you smelling like that, and neither will anybody else."

"Could've gone by yourself. You're old enough."

"I'm seven, Dean."

"And what, there are gonna be boobies in a kids' movie?"

"Dean! Dad said I can't go out by myself when he's out."

"'Dad said, Dad said,'" Dean grumbled, tossing off his rumpled t-shirt and padding towards the bathroom. "For a kid who complains so much when Dad lays down the ground rules, you sure pick the crappiest times to follow them."

He shut the bathroom door behind him and looked into the mirror. Okay, so the motel air conditioning was out of whack. And okay, he sweats a lot when he tossed and turned, but he had nightmares, for crap's sake! Experimentally, Dean raised his arm and sniffed his armpit. Wincing, he had to admit that his freakishly smart brother was right; he stank like a junkyard in 100-degree weather.

He'd just flushed the toilet when he heard Sam's small voice hesitantly calling from the other side of the door. "If you wanted to use the bathroom," Dean barked, "you should've done it before dragging me out of bed!"

"Dean," Sam piped up lowly after a pause. "If-… if you don't want to go… I mean, I could always go some other time, maybe when Dad's not so busy."

"Dad's always gonna be busy, Sammy," Dean replied tiredly.

"Yeah, but… if you don't want to go-"

"Look, I already said I'm going, so shut it and let me do what I gotta do, okay?"

Dean listened for a response from the other side of the door, and it was only when he was nearly done brushing his teeth that he realized he'd snapped at his little brother. With a groan, he spat out his toothpaste and began to rinse out his mouth, knowing full well that if he didn't do something about it soon, he wouldn't be sleeping much at all the next couple of nights.

After wiping his mouth with a towel, he opened the bathroom door and looked around, expecting to see Sam watching his stupid cartoons on the bed. Instead, he was surprised to find his little brother sitting on the floor outside the bathroom, looking decisively miserable. "Hey," Dean remarked, crouching down beside him. "What is it, short stack?"

Sam glanced up at his brother before looking away with a shake of his head, his eyes downcast. "Nothing." The boy's low response was enough to prove to Dean that it wasn't nothing, and he immediately plopped down next to him. Something inside of him shifted when he saw Sam edge away a little.

"You could move as far as you want," Dean told him, sliding closer to him. "I'm still gonna smell funky until you tell me what's up."

It was a long while before Sam let out a sigh, sounding much older than any seven-year-old boy had any business sounding. Reluctantly, he brought up, "I wish Dad wasn't always working. I wish we weren't always moving. I wish we were like other kids, and had a mom and dad and a real house, and that Dad would actually do things with us. This guy Kyle at school, he said that he and his Dad were going fishing this weekend. And another one, Charlie, he and his dad are going camping."

"That's a lie," Dean interrupted. "No kids actually go on fishing and camping trips with their dads. It's a proven myth, like an American folk legend. If it were true, half the kids in this country would be covered with rashes from poison ivy and the other half would stink of fish guts."

Seeing that his light-hearted words didn't do much for Sam's disposition, Dean shrugged and grew serious. "Sammy, I told you, Dad's got important work-"

"Yeah, and what's your excuse?" Dean was dumfounded to hear his baby brother snap at him for a change, and Sam looked just as surprised. "Sorry… I just… I know you don't want to spend any time with me, but-"

"Hey," Dean interjected, "I do want to spend time with you. If I didn't, I would've told you to go to Hell a long time ago. I don't play around, Sammy. You know that. If you weren't my little brother, I would've kicked you in the face as soon as you tried to wake me up. But I didn't. Not because you're my little brother - … okay, not entirely because you're my little brother - but because I want to hang out with you."

He took a deep breath before going on. "You're growing up fast, Sammy. Soon, you might even be, y'know, big enough to reach a doorknob all by yourself." He soldiered on even though Sam rolled his eyes. "Dad's missing a big part of his life when he's out working. But that doesn't mean that I wanna miss out on it, too. I made you a promise about today, and I'm gonna keep it. So stop looking so depressed, will ya, or I won't put any butter on your popcorn."

"I don't like butter on my-"

"Atta boy," Dean told him, clapping a hand to his shoulder. "So you get your nerdy dolls out of your backpack and start playing with them while I get ready."

"They're action figures."

"Not if I put Spider-Man in a tutu."

"Where are you going to get the tutu, from one of your dolls?"

"Ouch, the kid's got wit!" Dean laughed, slinging his arm around Sam's shoulders. "Definitely my little brother, all right. Watch, wait until puberty sets in and you grow another foot or two, and you'll be my spitting image."

Sam said nothing for a moment, his face scrunched up in distaste. "Dean?"

"Yeah, Sammy?"

"You still smell like a junkyard."

"Right. Shower it is, then. Then we'll grab something to eat, and head on out." Pushing himself up to his feet and seeing that he'd managed to cheer Sam up a little, Dean turned back to the bathroom, muttering, "Cowa-freakin'-bunga."

"Good movie," Sam commented.

"Not bad," Dean agreed, still munching away on leftover popcorn. Sam hadn't touched it, since the container was practically drenched with butter, just the way Dean liked it. "You know, for a kiddie movie."

"If it was such a kiddie movie," Sam protested, "then how come I can't say that word that Raphael kept screaming every ten minutes?"

"Because you're not a teenage ninja turtle," came the reply. "Just a mutant."

Sam paused for a moment before asking, "Does green ooze really turn animals into mutants?"

"There's no such thing as mutants, Sammy," Dean informed him. Werewolves, witches, demons, and vengeful spirits, sure, but unless he saw one himself or his father told him they were real, then Dean would never believe in something as silly as a bunch of chemicals turning somebody into a mutant.

They walked in silence for a few moments before Sam inexplicably laughed. Dean glanced down at him, silently asking for an explanation, to which Sam shook his head. "You remember the part where Raphael woke up from being unconscious, and he and Leonardo were hugging in the bathtub?"

"Seemed a bit fruity to me," Dean commented. "Brothers don't hug, and even if they did, it wouldn't be in the tub. But then, I dunno, maybe turtles don't think the same way humans do."

"Anyway," Sam went on, not quite old enough to completely understand what Dean was getting at, "do you remember the first thing he said when he woke up?"

"… something about being hungry, right?"

"'What's a guy gotta do to get some food around here?'"

Dean chuckled, remembering the scene now. "Yeah, that's right."

"Well… doesn't he remind you of somebody?"

Munching on his popcorn, Dean thought hard about it. Their father wasn't much for food, and neither was Uncle Bobby or any of the other hunters they knew. Maybe someone they'd met in one of their old schools? The principal of Dean's last elementary school was a bit of a pudge ball-

"Dean, seriously?" The older Winchester looked down at his younger brother when he saw that he was being laughed at. "Come on, you pretty much are Raphael."

"What?" Dean argued. "Nah, I'm the oldest and the leader; I'm obviously Leonardo."

"No one ever said he was the oldest," Sam protested. "Besides, Leonardo's too boring to be you!"

"He's the leader so he has to be-." Dean paused halfway through, looking at Sam in surprise now. "Oh, so hold on, you think I'm interesting, then?"

"You're too weird to be boring," Sam told him. "And anyway…." He trailed off for a moment, hesitating. "Anyway… you're always there, watching out for me. When we're that age, I want to be the one looking out for you when you go and do something stupid."

Surprised, Dean opened his mouth to say something, but he didn't even know how to respond. A seven-year-old boy shouldn't be thinking about protecting his big brother when they were older. A seven –year-old boy shouldn't even know that there was anything to protect his brother from.

"Pfft," he eventually scoffed, tossing a few more bits of popcorn in his mouth. "Keep dreaming, short stack. The only way you'll ever help me is with homework, you nerd."

They were quiet for a moment, and Dean made sure to chew loudly to block out any kind of hurt he might have caused Sam by his comment. Though he didn't quite understand it on a conscious level, he knew that he couldn't keep insulting Sam whenever the boy got sentimental. Sam was more sensitive than Dean. Sometimes Dean wondered if Sam had turned out to be a lot like their mother, but he didn't remember Mary Winchester well enough to say.

Seeing their motel looming up a few blocks away, Dean ran a hand through his hair and sighed a little as he looked down at his brother. "Sam, you know you don't have to worry about things like that, right? Me and Dad will always have your back. You don't gotta do the same for us, not when we're the ones trying to keep you safe."

Looking a little perplexed as he looked up at his big brother, Sam remarked, "Sure I've got to. That's what family does."

Dean tried not to tell Sam that he had an odd sense of family, considering that Uncle Bobby wasn't even an uncle, just some guy that their dad would occasionally go and kill evil things with. But hey, maybe that's what family is. It doesn't have to be blood; it just has to be that… that weird sense of protection and duty one person feels for another.

After all, nobody said the Ninja Turtles were actually brothers, anyway; just a bunch of pet shop turtles that got sent through an ooze-filled adventure together.

Putting an arm around Sam, Dean remarked, "Okay, how about this: I'll promise to watch your back and keep you out of trouble until you're big enough to take care of yourself, if you promise to do the same for me after that, if you ever can."

Thinking about it, Sam remarked, "So I've basically got ten years of you taking care of me, and then I need to watch out for you for the rest of our lives? That kinda sucks."

Dean laughed. "Nah, it's not so bad. At the rate you're growing, I'll actually be responsible for you for about twenty years. And after that… well, we don't know how long we'll live, so it'll even out."

What Dean didn't tell Sam was that he was fairly sure that he'd die young, maybe even young enough to barely fulfill his promise to Sam. But he knew one thing for certain: if nothing else, Dean was going to make damned sure that he'd live long enough to live up to that promise, to take care of his baby brother until even he couldn't look at Sam as 'little' anymore. And if he died right afterward, well, that was just the way things went, and he was willing to accept that. Because that was what family did.

"Okay," Sam replied after a moment of thought. "I promise."