The way I'd like to see the boys' reconciliation play out!

I want to say a huge thanks to Sharlot for beta reading this, and for general all round awesomeness! :)

Disclaimer: I do not own Supernatural, nor any canon characters therein, and I am making no profit from this piece of fiction.

Alone I Break

Dean Winchester wondered when he'd stopped tasting the alcohol that seemed to slide lifelessly down his throat like bland water, wondered when his world had shrunk to the the size of the spent bottle cradled in his nerveless grasp, the glass warm from the heat of his touch. He tried to remember when it had been full, or how long it had been empty.

Or if it had been full at the same time as the discarded ones carpeting the floor around him.

His sluggish gaze slunk around the room, eyes feeding him details of his surroundings that seemed to crumble to dust in his consciousness before he could scramble to make sense of them. There was the fuzzy sensation of sludge coloured walls, of yellowish circles of light casting upside-down halos against the gloom. There was a bed behind him, he thought, maybe two.

A motel room then.

It looked like he was sitting in a chair; he could see the wooden arms his elbows were resting on, the way his knees curved over the edge of the seat. But vision and proprioception weren't on speaking terms. Somewhere around the halfway point on a bottle of Glenlivet whisky that had nearly produced steam from his ears at the first sip, Dean's senses had decided to cut ties and abandon him to numbness. His body was as alien to him as a cadaver on a mortuary table: a soul deep rigor mortis bending heart and limbs into a stiff contortion as he slowly pickled in a sea of alcohol.

Conscious thought was a small rubber ball bouncing around his skull, careering from images to sounds to wounds to I-can't-friggin'-go-theres with a momentum that was dizzying; each item a powder-keg of explosive, unbearable agony that sent his mental shutters crashing down and had him writhing internally in burning bonds of self-loathing.

Dean Winchester. The eternal screw-up. The killer. The man who had tortured thousands of souls.

Sam had been right to leave. There was no denying that, just like there was no justification in avoiding his own culpability. He'd lied. He'd convinced Sam that he'd trusted him, at a time when the kid had needed it most; at a time when it was what his brother had wanted most. But then Dean had gone behind his back. He'd undermined everything that was sacred in their brotherhood. He'd ruined his brother's faith in him.

And that was the point he kept getting dragged back to despite all attempts to block it out, the line in the sand he couldn't go beyond; the precipice he was teetering on the edge of, arms windmilling madly as he fought to keep his balance.

Dean was a killer. Amy had been a monster. And Sam...Sam had been distressingly fragile. Only a few weeks ago he'd been shooting at thin air, had needed physical pain to ground him in reality. His little brother hadn't seen what had needed to be done, hadn't had the same insight he'd had with Madison. Hadn't seen the necessity for friggin' human-killing monsters to be annihilated.

Killing Amy had been unavoidable. But there had been regret, a spark of guilt ignited at the sight of her young son standing devastated in the motel room doorway, but very quickly snuffed out by the fingers of self-righteousness. The adrenaline had been intoxicating, Dean remembered, the feeling of finally doing something right. It had almost felt like his early hunting days, where victories had actually seemed possible, where they hadn't been like mythical oases in an ever expanding desert of utter hopelessness.

But as he'd stared at the young boy, he'd known he was beyond redemption. He'd accepted it. Knew he was defined by it. At least life had become simple again.

The supernatural couldn't be trusted. He'd tried that once, against everything he had ever believed and had ever been taught. Dean had given all of himself to the angel he'd considered both friend and brother. And Cas had betrayed him.

The shades of trench-coat grey that had become so fundamentally important to him had vanished, drowned irrevocably in a lake of black.

But he shouldn't have deceived his brother. No matter how well meaning his reasons. No matter how much the elder hunter had wanted to protect Sam from the pain of having to take another life he cared about.

All he'd ever brought his brother had been pain and suffering. He'd wanted Sam to live in ignorant bliss, to not realise the extent of his big brother's darkness. But the cracks in his rendered façade had been chipping away long before that Leviathan sonofabitch had kindly spilled the beans on his illicit activities, ever deeper chasms that even a single malt couldn't fill any more. One more expression of Sam's respect and gratitude and he'd have been haemorrhaging apologies faster than an aortal rupture.

When Sam had ordered him to leave, the older man realised he'd been expecting it for weeks. The camaraderie with his brother seeming like a pleasure he'd only ever be allowed to enjoy in finite quantities. So when the big moment came, when Sam had stared at him in disgust, bracing himself for an argument that had never been forthcoming, Dean had just felt...numb.

Accepting. Deserving of his punishment.

That had been two days ago, now. Maybe three.

Dean glanced vaguely at the fallen empties, wondering fleetingly if counting their number would be an appropriate method of gauging the passage of time; realising that even that small task was well beyond the grasp of his blustery mind.

He hadn't heard from his brother, though he'd gazed at his cell often enough, gaining an almost pleasurable thrill of self-flagellating despair when it continued to stare silently back at him. Once Bobby had called and Dean had nearly dropped the phone in surprise, heart kicking into a manic foxtrot that had quickly slowed down to a half-hearted shuffle when he caught sight of the caller ID. His surrogate father had repeated the action several times over the past...however many days.

Dean hadn't answered a single one, and knew he'd face hell for it. But hey, he'd been there and had more than done that.

Many times his finger had hovered tentatively over the speed dial, his hand playing a gleeful game of chicken with his mind. But he'd done the voicemail dance with Sam many times before, and wasn't about to add to the amount of epic chick-flick lines they'd both been spouting by leaving a breathy, dramatic apology that Sam would probably delete without even listening to.

Gripping the ear of his consciousness and dragging it kicking and screaming back to reality, he forced movement into his limbs. He grasped his bottle and reached forward, aiming for the table that seemed to be ebbing and flowing in front of him hypnotically like lava lamp goo and failing miserably as he slumped gracelessly to the floor in a tumult of limbs. A smashing sound told him that he'd broken at least one of his discarded bottles, the feeling of warm liquid trickling through his fingers endorsing the conclusion with depressing accuracy.

"You gotta be kiddin' me," Dean muttered thickly as he caught sight of the growing patch of crimson on the carpet beneath his hand, the thought of even attempting to negotiate the treacherous journey to retrieve the first aid kit from the car enough to make him want to retch.

There was no pain, just burbling blood.

Dean almost laughed as he watched it flow with transfixed intensity. That scotch had been freakin' awesome. He couldn't feel a thing.

Oh, wait.

A lightheadedness was buffeting his head like a gusty wind, blasts of icy air so strong they appeared to make the room flap and shake around him. Suddenly the situation wasn't seeming so freakin' awesome any more.

"Crrrrrrraaap," He murmured in a mangled slur as he began trying to push himself up, swaying dangerously as he buried his hand deeper into the shards of glass beneath him. And oh, there it was. Pain was coming late to the party, but it had brought with it an army of spirited revellers, all keen to kickstart the festivities.

Dean blinked slowly as the floor bounced up and down beneath him, was paralysed by deadened limbs as he felt the light around him begin to fade at the edges of his vision.

All of a sudden, large hands were gripping his shoulders, pulling him upwards with a gentleness he was too far gone to appreciate. There was something familiar about the grip, about the incoherent rumbling of speech in his ears. Something innately comforting and soft and safe.

Maybe the whisky had been freakin' awesome after all. If this was death by alcohol, it wasn't so bad. Even the illusion of having his brother with him was better than dying alone.

"Dean...hell...dude!" The elder Winchester frowned as words began to take shape in his mind, shrouded in hissing white noise as if their speaker was addressing him through a radio with poor frequency.

The world began shifting before his eyes as he was jostled slightly in the firm grip, and he realised he was moving. Or being moved. What the...?

He let out a low groan as he felt his injured hand being lifted, the tenderness in the gesture acting as incontrovertible proof that he was dreaming. He had to be imagining this.

"Hey, it's okay. It's okay. It's just a scratch. I'll get you cleaned up. C'mon." The litany of comforting phrases began in earnest as gentle fingers probed the torn skin.

Sam had gone. He'd left. Told Dean to go on without him. Had said he didn't even want to be around his big brother. Sam couldn't be there, in that motel room. With him.

"Still a piece of glass in there, man. I'm going to have to take it out, Dean."

The low, soothing commentary continued as he was manhandled towards the nearest bed and manoeuvred floppily onto his back. And that was the moment that he realised he wasn't hallucinating.

"Sammy?" He coughed out through a throat that pricked him with tiny needless as his heart delivered a huge kick to his chest.

Shoving his good hand beneath him, he struggled to rise from the bed, only to come face to face with his brother's twisted, concerned features.

"It's all right. I'm here." And all it took was one touch of a giant paw before Dean was flat on his back once more, drinking in the sight of his brother with a cavernous, unquenchable thirst.

The younger man's eyes were bright with anxiety as they swept down Dean's prone form, the planes of his features growing hard as his gaze landed once more on his big brother's wounded hand.

"What're you...?" Dean began, pausing to clear his throat as his voice suffered total engine failure. Swallowing as Sam glanced quizzically at him, he attempted to hot-wire his speech once more. "How'd you...?" But again he was out of luck.

"It's okay, Dean. We can talk about this later. I need to take care of your hand."

There was a stiffness to Sam's words now, Dean noticed. Something formal and contrived. He'd been about to venture another question when Sam suddenly disappeared from view. In a moment of weakness he'd later insist had never happened, Dean was unable to stop himself from letting out a wordless protest of primitive need and fear at his brother's sudden absence.

In an instant Sam was at his side, a restraining hand ghosting over Dean's arm as the hesitancy vanished from his tone. "Dean, take it easy. I'm not going anywhere. I just need to get the first aid kit, all right? You're bleeding all over the place, man. I'll be back in a sec."

Dean took Sam at his word. Which was why, after a second had passed without Sam's reappearance, the familiar, crippling bonds of self-doubt began wrapping themselves around his heart once more. When a further five seconds had ticked by with a continued lack of little brother, Dean had reached the point of utter conviction that he'd dreamed up the whole situation.

The sense of complete desolation swarmed through his body like a plague of flesh-eating locusts, and Dean didn't fight it. He welcomed it. Threw his arms out and stared up at the moulded ceiling plasterwork, his expression stoic as the despair burrowed through him.

He hadn't realised he'd been moaning out loud until Sam's fraught voice cut through his dramatic attempt at martyrdom.

"Hey, hey! Easy, Dean. Take it easy. I'm here!" Dean fell silent instantly as his brother's presence finally registered through his addled brain.

"Sam?" He asked, hating the pleading overtone that he couldn't suppress. Please be real.

There was a brief lull as Sam glanced around the room - eyes nearly popping out as he took note of the number of empty bottles - and cursed under his breath. "Jesus, Dean. How much did you-?" He ran a hand across his creased forehead and let out a huff of breath. "Okay. Later. We will talk about this later. Right now, I need to get that glass out of your hand."

Dean winced as Sam began tending to the wound, unable to prevent the reflexive scrunching of eyelids and the gasping, stuttering attempts at breathing through the pain. Okay, decision made this time. Whisky was definitely not freakin' awesome.

Sam's features had drawn together into an expression of honed concentration as he slowly eased the small, oblong shard of glass from his big brother's palm, and it suddenly struck the older man that their positions had been reversed just a few weeks ago: Dean calming an agitated, fidgeting Sam after he'd sliced open his own hand.

What a pair they were.

"Sammy?" Dean mumbled, pain rising within him in a hazy bubble and warring with the numbness that continued to lie in a thick blanket over his body. The resulting combination had left him hanging on the edge of consciousness, but he couldn't shake the fear that Sam would be gone when he woke up. He had to get this out now before he missed his chance. The last time hadn't been good enough. This time it had to matter.

Sam rewarded him with a minute flicker. "Yeah, Dean?"

"M'sorry." He felt his eyes easing closed as relief gave the green light to the waiting oblivion. He'd done it. He'd said it. And he'd really friggin' meant it.

"I know, Dean," Sam's voice was like a lullaby as he drifted off. "Go to sleep."

o0o0o

Someone was blowing a tuba into his right ear, in direct competition to the trumpet that was already jauntily trilling away into his left. They had to be. There was no other explanation for the clamouring and clattering and clanging that was exploding within his head, the pressure building in a great rumbling crescendo that had him crushing a hand to his skull in an attempt to stop it from imploding like an eggshell.

The single malt had definitely lost its freakin' awesome title. He was never drinking again.

Well, not whisky anyway...beer was still his friend. He'd definitely be sticking with beer from now on.

"Urgh!" He groaned, keeping his eyes glued firmly shut, realising that one hand was not enough protection to prevent his brain from oozing out through his nostrils. His other hand had a curious heaviness to it as he raised it, but he ignored the sensation and proceeded to smack his palm against his forehead with gusto.

The resulting yelp of pain had panicked footsteps thudding to his side. Who the...?

"Dean! You okay?"

The elder Winchester chanced an achingly sneaky peek from behind blackout eyelids, the tiny chink of light that slipped through jabbing his brain like an ice-pick and causing him to recoil from where Sam was leaning over him in wide-eyed disarray.

Sam? When the hell had Sam gotten there? After all that had...oh.

Stray film reels from the night before were playing in hand-held camera motion before his eyes. He had cloudy memories of being more drunk than he had ever been in his life, of slicing his hand open on a broken bottle, of his kid brother appearing mirage-like out of the blue to put him to bed.

Huh. If Sam hadn't been right there in front of him, he'd have been sure he'd dreamed the whole thing.

"Dean?"

Oh, right. Sammy had asked him something. But the trumpet was entering into a particularly rousing refrain, and the tuba had more than upped its game to match it.

"Huh?" He grimaced, edging his eyelids upwards by degrees until his eyeballs could tolerate the natural light that was streaming in through the motel windows. Well, damn. The place looked even worse in daylight.

Sam shook his head and moved to sit on the opposite bed – and Dean almost snorted as he realised that he had indeed rented a twin room - rolling his eyes as the lingering anxiety washed from his features. The closeness of the previous moment seemed to evaporate at the gesture, and Dean felt himself tense as his Sammy-sensor picked up signs of a gathering storm.

"How you feeling?" Sam asked once more, with considerably less enthusiasm, though he couldn't turn off the low, bass beat of concern that underlined the melody of his words.

Dean let out another, throaty groan as the brass duellists continued to battle between his ears. "Awesome." He began levering himself upright against the cool metalwork headboard behind him, keeping his injured hand cradled against his chest.

The silence that followed was intense, smothering; the pressure beginning to weigh down on the two men like a physical burden.

"Sam, I-" Dean began, eyes intently tracing the ugly flower pattern that adorned his duvet. There was a rose, and a...some kind of ugly orange thing, and a-

"What the hell, dude?" Sam cut across him, causing his eyes to snap up involuntarily. He was dimly surprised to find that the kid had managed to beam himself across to the other side of the room. Right next to the table.

Where he'd laid out every single one of Dean's bottles on the surface. There were many more there than the elder hunter remembered. And if Sam's off-the-Richter-scale bitchface was anything to go by, there were many more there than the kid was happy with.

He opened his mouth to voice an as yet unformed defence when Sam leapt in again.

"I mean, for Christ's sake, Dean! This is...When I found you last night, man, I thought..." Sam faltered, eyes straying to the dried pool of Dean's blood that still decorated the carpet.

"So I had myself a little party here, dude. No big deal." Dean felt himself bristling at the unvoiced accusation. What was Sam's problem? Alcohol was what helped him deal. It was the sweet nectar that kept all his horrors at bay. This was not what they should have been talking about.

There was still that large, lumbering pink elephant that was charging around the room. The one that was so freakin' obvious they were both studiously avoiding it.

"No big deal? Dean, you can't keep doing this-."

"What? Bottlin' things up? Yeah 'cause sharin' always works out so well for me. Every time you find out what I'm keepin' 'bottled up', you take off Sam!"

"What?" Sam squawked incredulously, arms gesticulating in wild, uncontrolled sweeps. "You're seriously going to blame me for this? I had to find out from your friggin' doppelganger, Dean! You killed Amy after you promised you wouldn't. You told me you trusted me. You lied to my face Dean! And not just once. You expected me to be okay with that?"

Dean sighed, digging the heel of his uninjured palm deep into his eye sockets. "No. I didn't expect you to be okay with it, Sam. That's kinda the whole point. I shouldn't have gone behind your back. I'm sorry. But you havta understand. I was worried, and you were goin' all Donnie Darko on me...and Amy was dangerous. She'd been killin' people, Sam. I know she was important to you, but we're hunters Sam. I did what I had to do, but I am sorry I lied to you."

"This is what Osiris was going on about, wasn't it? Amy was the final witness, wasn't she?" Sam's eyes were weaving blindly from side to side as he considered Dean's words.

"I don't know," Dean answered truthfully, biting his lip softly. "But I think so."

"So you signed your own death warrant so that I wouldn't find out about what you did?" Sam raised his eyebrows as he puffed out a shocked breath.

Dean jammed his lips together. This was a crapstorm he wasn't going anywhere near. There was no way he was telling Sam what he'd poured out to Jo.

"Dean?" Sam moved to stand in front of the bed, hands on hips, neck craning forward like a bird stretching for a worm.

"So where have you been anyway? Why'd you come back?" It wasn't one of his more subtle dodges, but finesse was going out the window as his mind dissolved into fight or flight mode.

Besides, he really, really wanted to know.

For a moment, Sam looked as if he was going to challenge the wildly swerving subject change, but he appeared to weigh his options in favour of capitulation.

"I just needed some space, Dean. Time to think about what you did, and whether I can trust you again. And I thought about it. A lot. I hate what you did, and I hate that you lied to me, man," He paused, inhaling deeply. "But you're my brother, Dean. You really think there's something you can do that I won't forgive? I am still mad, and I still don't agree that you did the right thing, but I guess I understand why you did it." Sam's mouth seemed to disappear into his face, as if he'd just swallowed something sour and unpleasant. "Just...don't lie to me again, okay?"

Dean nodded slowly, latent guilt rising again despite the warmth of Sam's declaration, and his brother's obvious commitment to start working through their problems.

"And I was worried."

The words were laden with something Dean couldn't quantify as he swung his gaze up to meet his brother's. The concern was gleaming once more in Sam's eyes, and the elder hunter felt himself shrink beneath it. He knew where this was going. Again.

"Why?"

"I talked to Bobby, who by the way is royally pissed. Said you'd gone radio silent on him..." Sam blinked as a shadow crossed his face, and Dean realised belatedly that his brother had arrived at the motel expecting to find him dead. The notion drenched him like a vat of icy water, shocking him into a wakefulness more potent and genuine than he'd felt in weeks.

"I'm fine." He replied automatically while his mind toppled and fell from the inebriated cloud it had happily been reclining on since Cas' death, hitting the ground with a thud that felt physical.

"Dean, you're not fine. Was this...was this what the drinking was about? Amy?"

The elder hunter snapped his head up, grimacing as his brain sloshed around inside his tender skull. Dean Winchester was an idiot in countless ways, but even he knew a freakin' lifeline when he saw one. He swallowed, gave a quick jerk of his head to the affirmative.

"So, now I know about it...you don't need to use drink to bury it any more, right?" Sam was looking so hopeful that Dean nearly caved there and then. He knew he'd be going straight back to hell; promising his brother that he wouldn't lie any more and then breaking said promise within five freakin' minutes had to be some kind of record.

"Yeah, I guess," Dean muttered, knowing that if he locked gazes with his brother that he'd never get away with his ruse. A broken lamp in the corner made for an excellent substitute, and he began a staring contest with it in earnest.

"So, you'll stop?" Sam stepped into his line of sight, forcing him to concede his loss to the friggin' lamp, which winked back at him cockily. Smug sonofabitch.

"Gimme a break, Sam!" Dean snapped, but the bile was rising at his throat as his heart began to flutter anxiously. Sam wasn't seriously suggesting that he go cold turkey? Was he?

"Dean?" Apparently he was.

"Look, I'll stick to beer, all right?" He compromised, thinking fondly of the half-finished bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue he'd stashed under the driver's seat of the heap of junk he'd been forced to ride around in. He'd just keep that one between himself and...well, himself.

Sighing, Sam nodded in agreement, though he looked far from pleased. "All right. Now scoot over, I need to check your hand."

"Aw c'mon Sammy, it's fine!" Dean groused, but obligingly slid over anyway, happy that their roiling relationship seemed to be slowly returning to something that might have vaguely resembled an even keel.

"Dean, I had to put twelve stitches in!"

"You said it was just a scratch."

"Of all the things from last night, that was what you chose to remember?"

"Who says I don't remember all of it?"

"Just give me your hand, Dean!"

"Okay, okay. Listen, Sam..."

"Yeah. I know. Me too."

Thanks for reading! I'd love to hear your thoughts...