Contains dialogue from the episode The Devil You Know, it belongs to Eric Kripke and Ben Edlund.

Part of my Deleted Scenes series. Full list of fics in reading order available on my profile page. They will make more sense if read in order. Or, look up paperstorm on AO3 for a much easier way to follow this series.

You say you have the counsel and the might for war, but you speak only empty words.

Kings 18:20

Sam storms into the motel room as soon as Dean finds them one, up and out of the car before it's even fully stopped, and Dean doesn't follow him inside like he usually would. He stays in the parking lot, taking his time to clean a gun on the hood of the Impala and then reorganizing their stash of weapons. It doesn't need to be reorganized. Dean keeps everything in perfect order all the time so that he'll know exactly where things are when he needs them at a moment's notice. But he takes everything out and puts it all back in again anyway. He's stalling because he wants to give Sam some time. Because Sam needs it, and because Dean's a little scared of what he'll find when he goes inside.

Dean can't imagine how angry his brother is, how used he feels. When Sam was younger he always wanted normal so much, and he thought he had it at Stanford, even if it was short lived. To find out there were demons controlling everything that far back in his history, that even his love for Jessica was all part of some plan … Dean's heart is broken for him. He's torn between wanting to go in there and hold Sam forever and wanting to turn tail and run away, because seeing Sam as upset as he's bound to be might be more than Dean can handle. When Sam hurts, Dean aches.

He finally does work up the courage to go inside, and he finds Sam in the bathroom, shirtless and bent over the sink, rubbing soapy water off his face. His hair has fallen forward, covering his eyes, but Dean doesn't need to see them to know how irate Sam is. Sam splashes the last of the suds off his face and reaches for a towel to dry his skin. He knows Dean is there, Dean can tell he does, but he isn't acknowledging him. Dean wonders if maybe Sam just has no idea what to say – how to process what he learned today. Dean wouldn't know how, if he was in Sam's shoes. The fact that Sam isn't currently in a bar chugging whiskey like it's water and propositioning anything with breasts shows he's already better adjusted than Dean is.

Dean moves in behind Sam because he doesn't know what else to do and the tension in the room is too thick. He gently places a hand between Sam's shoulder blades and then rests his forehead down on the back of Sam's neck when Sam doesn't immediately pull away from him.

"What d'you want, Dean?" Sam asks in a tired voice.

"M'sorry," Dean says.

"For what?"

"Crowley. Brady. Everything," Dean answers. "It's not like you needed any more shit like this."

"None of that was your fault," Sam counters flatly.

"I'm not sorry because it was my fault," Dean says. Sam should know that isn't what he meant. "I'm sorry because you're upset."

"I'm fine," Sam mutters, stepping sideways and leaving Dean alone in the bathroom.

Dean sighs, scrubbing a hand over his face and contemplating taking Sam at his word and just dropping it. He can't, though. For whatever reason, they've switched roles in the last week or two. Sam's the one who's often angry and aggressive and refuses to talk about it, and Dean's the one desperate for his brother to let him in, to let him help. Dean's not entirely sure how to play this part, but he has to try, because in spite of it all, Sam is still his everything and Dean can't leave him when he's in this much pain.

"No, you're not," Dean says, following Sam back into the room and staring at the back of his head. "You haven't been fine in a long time. Not really."

Sam's shoulders tighten – even more obvious without a shirt covering the muscles – but he doesn't turn around. "Yeah. Okay. You're right, I'm not fine. I'm horrible. I'm a big, steaming pile of completely fucked up. What exactly would you like me to do about it?"

"Talk to me?" Dean suggests weakly.

Sam shoots a glare at him over his shoulder. "What the hell would that accomplish? What is there to say? You were there. Brady was my roommate, he was my friend, and tonight I found out he's the one who killed Jess. How am I supposed to feel about that, huh?"

Dean frowns. "He – wait, I thought Yellow-Eyes killed Jess."

Finally turning around, Sam regards Dean with the most worn-down, exhausted expression Dean's ever seen on his brother's face. "Yellow-Eyes gave the orders, but Brady was the hit-man."

"Oh. Oh, God," Dean groans, his whole chest clenching and releasing uncomfortably at Sam's words. He physically hurts for Sam right now, and even worse, there's nothing he can do to make it better.

"Apparently she let him right in the door," Sam continues, laughing humorlessly, no color left in his cheeks and only emptiness in his eyes. "Because he was my friend. She thought she could trust him."

Dean shakes his head helplessly. "I'm sorry. I … I should've kept you away from him. You didn't need to know all that. Crowley said we shouldn't bring him back to you, I was too stupid to listen."

"He was right," Sam mumbles, collapsing down onto the bed and dropping his head down into his hands.

"Crowley?"

"Brady. Everything he said back there, about me being like them."

"No, he wasn't," Dean says immediately, crossing the room and joining Sam on the bed. He wants more than anything to touch him, but he doesn't feel much like getting punched in the face so he keeps his hands to himself. "You are nothing like them, Sam, do you hear me?"

"I'm everything like them."

"No you aren't," Dean insists. "You gotta stop this. You're really scaring me, you've been scaring me. The way you've been acting lately, the look in your eyes sometimes, it's not like you."

"I'm not like me anymore," Sam says shortly, standing up again and pacing agitatedly away.

"What're you talking about?

"Why do you suddenly care?" Sam turns back and glares at Dean. "I tried to talk to you about this months ago! I told you I am angry all the goddamn time, and you told me to bury it. So that's what I did."

"Yeah, well, clearly it isn't working!" Dean yells back. "It's not buried at all, it's exploding all over the fuckin' place!"

"What the fuck do you want me to do?!" Sam spreads his arms wide and stares at Dean incredulously. "After everything that's happened, after everything I did? I think I'm entitled to be a little pissed off!"

"I'm not sayin' you shouldn't be!"

"Then what are you saying?"

"I … I don't know!" Dean growls. "I don't, I just … everything's all screwed up, and you got a bomb dropped on you today and you're upset, and you should be upset but it sucks because I used to be able to make you feel better and now I can't. You won't talk to me anymore, you just keep saying I won't understand and maybe that's true but still I hate it."

"I'm not … look." Sam sighs. "I'm not saying you don't understand because you don't want to, okay? I'm just saying you don't. Because you can't."

"Why?"

"Because you have light in you, Dean! I don't!"

Dean shakes his head. "I don't – what does that mean?"

"It means there's a reason I was Azazel's favorite. There's a reason I was supposed to be the next king of Hell. And there's a reason I'm the Devil's vessel, and it's not just 'cause I was rebellious of Dad. There is something inside me, something bad. I don't know if it's just the demon blood or if it's something else too, but there is darkness in me. There always has been."

"Sammy."

"Don't call me that."

Dean's stomach feels like it drops about a foot. Sam hasn't said that for years. Five years, actually, since their first hunt together after Dad went missing. "Why?"

"'Cause I'm not him anymore. You said it yourself."

"That's not what I said."

"Well it's true anyway."

Dean doesn't know what to say to that. Sam stares at him for a minute, a blank, resigned look in his eyes, and then sits back down on the bed. Dean sits beside him and wonders, half-seriously, whether if they both shot themselves in the temples right now, they'd end up back in Heaven – like Sam said they might, the other day. Dean thought it was a pretty shitty way to spend the rest of eternity while they were there, but more and more it's starting to look better. He and Sam could get into the Impala and just drive, forever. To all the people they've lost, and to nowhere at the same time. They could just be together. No more pain, no more fighting; no more struggling day after day and sacrificing everything to save the world when the truth is, they can't save it. Maybe they can stop the Apocalypse. Maybe. But even if they do, Dean isn't stupid enough to think that everything will just be fine from then on. Monsters will still exist. People will still need to be saved from them. There will always, always be something else just around the corner. There will always be more hills to climb no matter how many times he and Sam finish this race. And lately, the idea of just pulling the pin on the whole thing doesn't seem like such a bad ending to their story.

Dean knows they can't. That just doesn't stop him from wishing they could sometimes.

He clears his throat and leans over a little, resting his hands on his knees. "When you were … I dunno, maybe about eight? You brought a stray puppy home, you remember?"

"Yeah. I remember. I hid him in a box in the backseat of the Impala for almost two weeks before Dad found out."

"You named him Peter," Dean says, warmth spreading all the way to his fingertips at the very small but real smile on Sam's face. "Remember what happened when Dad found out?"

"I was devastated," Sam says.

"You cried for like six hours straight." Dean laughs softly, fondly remembering the way Sam's face used to puff up like an allergic reaction when he cried. "And then when Dad said you had to get rid of it? He wanted to just leave it on the side of the road, but you threatened to call child services if he didn't let you take it to a shelter."

"Yeah." Sam sniffs and drags the back of his hand under his nose. He looks like his walls have come down just a little, so Dean takes the opportunity to move in a little closer and put his hand on Sam's back. He traces his thumb over the smooth, bare skin.

"It wasn't a happy ending for you. But that dog? It was a stray, Sam. Because of you, that little thing got adopted by someone who could give it a home, a good life. You saved it. You think someone who only has darkness inside them would do something like that?"

For a long time, Sam doesn't answer. He shakes his head a few times and Dean rubs his back slowly, and then when Sam does speak his voice is tired and small, and it cracks with emotion. "I think that I was a kid. That's a nice story but it doesn't mean anything. Hitler loved dogs."

Dean huffs and almost rolls his eyes until he realizes Sam isn't joking. "Y'know, I almost ripped Gordon Walker's head off once for comparing you to Hitler. You think I'm gonna let you get away with it?"

"I did rip Gordon's head off," Sam points out dryly.

"Yeah, and you felt like crap about it."

Sam shakes his head again. He stands up again and pushes his bangs off his face. "I get what you're trying to do. You always have a lotta stories, Dean. But that's all they are. Stories. I know you're just trying to help, and that's … but it doesn't help. I'm sorry. I wish it did."

It's a thought Dean has on a daily basis and it never hurts any less – once again he wishes they could turn the clock back a few years to when he could make things better for Sam. The fact that he can't anymore leaves him scattered and unsettled; makes him feel so damn handcuffed. He stands up, reaching out when Sam starts to walk away and catching his elbow. Sam turns back and looks at Dean over his shoulder with so much sadness in his hazel eyes it burns like looking directly at the sun. Dean pulls him closer and steps into his brother, sliding his hands up into Sam's hair and kissing him.

Sam doesn't kiss back.

"Do you still love me?" Dean whispers, slit open and stripped bared and too far gone to care.

Sam squeezes his eyes shut tight. "That's not fair."

"Answer the question."

Dean hears Sam's throat click as he swallows thickly, feels Sam's hands as they reach up between their bodies and curl around fistfuls of Dean's shirt. "Yeah," he breathes. "Couldn't stop if I wanted to."

Dean nods, pressing his lips together and then brushing them against Sam's again even though Sam still doesn't respond. "Goes double for me."

"You're still mad at me. And you should be."

"I'm not," Dean promises, and means it. "And even if I was, it wouldn't mean I don't … you know?"

Sam just shakes his head, like he doesn't believe it.

"You've been pretty pissed at me before. Did it mean you stopped?" Dean asks.

"You've never done anything as bad as what I did."

"I don't know about that. And anyway, it isn't a contest." Dean brushes his fingers slowly through Sam's hair and kisses the corner of his mouth. "The point is, you're my brother. That doesn't change. Ever."

"I don't know what that means anymore."

Dean is willing to go to his grave swearing those words don't hurt as much as they do. "It means exactly what I said. We're family. It doesn't need to mean anything else."

Sam makes a funny noise, halfway between a sigh and a sob, and his hands shake. "I thought … after everything …"

"You thought I didn't love you anymore?" Dean's voice breaks over the words, it's like a double edged knife right through his already-wounded sternum that Sam could have actually thought that.

Sam shrugs a little. "I don't know. Sometimes, maybe. We were so good for a while. And then ever since the stuff that happened in Heaven, it's been … just, different. Every now and then it's like I get little glimpses of you lookin' at me the way you used to. And we had that one night where I thought things might be okay again. But at the end of the day, they're not. Even if we pretend they are. You threw away the amulet."

Dean acts like he didn't hear the last part because he can't think about it. That stupid necklace meant so many things to him. To go through everything they did in Heaven, to be paraded through the greatest hits of Sam's life and not find himself on a single track, and then to hear Cas call the amulet useless? It was too much. Dean never wants to see it again. But, despite everything, despite how hurt he is to find out he's never meant as much to Sam as Sam means to him, Dean can't stop loving him. It's like his heart doesn't know how to.

"I do. Okay? Even when things are shitty. Even when we're pissed at each other. It's us, y'know? Has been since the first time you kissed me. You remember?"

"I was so scared you wouldn't kiss back," Sam barely whispers.

"I did, though," Dean reminds him. "I always will."

Sam nods and exhales shakily like he's struggling to keep from breaking down. "Okay."

"M'sorry about Jessica," Dean tells him gently. "She didn't deserve what happened to her. And neither did you."

"I thought killing Brady would make me feel better," Sam admits, sounding ashamed. "It didn't, though."

"Revenge never really takes the pain away. We should both know that by now."

"I should've let him live. Should've let Lucifer torture him for rest of forever."

Dean shakes his head and slides his hand down to squeeze around Sam's neck. He steps closer into his brother, one foot tucking between Sam's, so their chests are almost touching. "You did the right thing. If he was still alive, he'd have found a way back to us. They always do."

"Just feels like he got off too easy, after what he did."

"M'sorry, baby boy," Dean whispers again. He could say it a thousand times and it wouldn't begin to express how much he feels it. Crowley warned him about this, is what really kills him. He should have listened. He just didn't want a demon to be right. If Dean hadn't been so arrogant, he could have spared his brother all the pain he's feeling right now.

"I'll get over it," Sam mumbles dully. "We've got more important shit to deal with anyway."

"Not tonight, we don't." Dean shrugs out of his jacket and lets it fall to the floor, and then he gets his arms around Sam and kisses him, slow and sad and hopefully filled with the things he can't say, even if Sam would let him.

Sam kisses back like he isn't strong enough not to, holding on to Dean with arms wrapped around his waist. Dean fumbles with Sam's jeans while they kiss, and then his own, pushing them both down. His knee knocks into Sam's as they step out of their pants, and it hurts but it feels like being alive. He nudges Sam backwards toward the bed and they fall down onto it in a tangle of limbs and hearts and tears and unspoken shattered souls. It hurts almost more than it helps, being with Sam like this, when they're so beaten down and close to the end of their ropes already, even before the latest blow had been dealt. But it's healing, too. In the twisted way that they've always been each other's missing half, it's like sewing them back together. Bringing them back to the only place where they find some semblance of sense in this broken world.

Sam cuddles too close and holds on too tightly when it's over, and Dean just hugs back and lets him. Sam spent enough time in beds just like this one, trying desperately to put Dean back together when he was smashed to pieces after Hell. Dean's more than willing to return the favor. If Sam needs closeness to stitch the holes inside himself back up so he can keep going when tomorrow comes, Dean's more than happy to wrap his brother up and not let him go until the sun rises over the horizon and reality calls them away from the safety and love and peace they find only in each other's arms.