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Dean sat straight up in bed, heart pounding, lines between nightmare and reality not blurred so much as totally unrecognizable. "Sammy! Sammy?!" His eyes quickly scanned the dark motel room, the only sound his harsh breathing.

Sam flew out of the bathroom, hunter instincts kicking in, "Dean?"

Seeing that Dean was sitting on the bed, eyes blown wide in fear, but no visible threat in the room, he was next to him in an instant.

Grappling to pull Sam to his side, Dean let out a sob as Sam sank onto the bed and was enveloped in his brother's sleep warm embrace. Dean pulled Sam to him, fingers clawing, unable to draw him close enough. "Sammy." His name was a rasp, torn from his brother.

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The bright light peaking around the edges of the curtains slanted across the bed, and Sam opened one eye. His brother was wrapped around him, chest pressed tight to Sam's back, arms locked around him in an unbreakable grip, not that Sam wanted to break away.

Sensing that his brother was awake, dream memories crowding in, Dean ran fingers along his baby brother's naked body as if cataloguing each inch, and stopped when he felt more than heard a quick indrawn hiss. Throwing back the covers, Dean saw a trio of deep scratch marks just below his heart, dried blood along them. His brows drew together and it occurred to him that the marks were from his frantic fingernails during the night.

"God, Sammy, I'm sorry." He leaned in and placed a kiss there, tongue coming out to lick the three lines softly.

Sam's heart clenched with knowledge of where those marks came from, what they mean. He brushed fingers along his brother's nape. "It's nothing, Dean. Didn't even realize it was there til you touched it. Forget it."

With a lifetime of scars from every evil thing in the world crisscrossing his body, Sam loved the lines made there, wanted the permanent reminder that his brother loved him enough to be unable to get close enough, unable to be reassured enough of his safety.

If Dean noticed in the following two weeks that Sam accidentally scraped off those scabs enough times to create permanent scars, he never said. But rarely did a day pass in the next fifty years that he didn't run his tongue along those white lines, just there under his beloved's heart.

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