Dean was gone, probably possessed by a demon, and Sam just needed to be near him.
So he locked himself in Dean's room and laid down on the bed, feeling grief unlike anything he'd known in quite a while. It was different when Dean could just be Dean, and Dean could just…be. But someone had ruined that, had taken that closure from him, and the rage broiled hot and fierce inside him.
But for now, he closed his eyes and tried to pretend that Dean was there next to him. They'd shared a bed in motel rooms until Dean was about nineteen, and John had made them start sleeping apart. It was easy to pretend he was a child for just a moment because it hadn't been very long since Dean disappeared and his scent was still on the pillow.
He felt pathetic.
He could hear the faint ticking of Dean's watch on the bedside table, and he counted each one. Hours go by, and he was no more rested than he was walking in here.
Tears were not far behind his hitching breaths.
He sat up quickly, trying not to break down again. He pressed his palm to his stinging eye and stood up, taking deep breaths.
In and out, in and out.
Aimlessly, he wandered over to Dean's desk once he felt some measure of control and opened one of the drawers. He furrowed his eyebrows and pulled out some old newspaper clippings that he could vaguely recall, but that was mostly because his handwriting was all over it. Old hunts, interesting news clips that were stupid or funny, and actual jokes from the back of the paper.
The next drawer held much the same, though there were a lot more pages torn from books. Sam had never realized that Dean had been doing that. His neat letters pepper the pages, stained with fingerprints and coffee and beer.
It's the last drawer that had his breath catching in his chest again.
Sam hadn't seen this stuff in over a decade.
There were cards, drawn with a child's unpracticed hand, small ceramic projects from various mandatory art classes, the occasional report card when Sam was in a school long enough to have one generated. Any drawing, project, or paper that Sam had been proud of; Dean kept it all.
He pulled one out with a shaky hand.
Valentine's day, 1989. He'd been - what? Six? He didn't even remember this, but he opened up the card and found a crudely drawn picture of he and Dean (he can only tell the difference because of the labels) and a note with misspelled words. He had to squint at it a little, but he thought it said something about Dean being the best big brother ever.
He couldn't believe Dean kept this stuff, that it's lasted all these years. Where had he even hidden it?
Sam saw a chord under the papers.
When he pulled it out, the card he was holding fluttered to the ground, unnoticed.
He thought Dean had thrown this away.
He remembered it so vividly; nothing Dean had ever done had broken his heart the way he'd broken it when he threw this necklace into the hotel garbage.
The tears started again without his consent. He breathed in and held it, trying to rear in the tears. It didn't really work.
He pocketed the pendant and put the fallen card back in the drawer.
He didn't go back in there.