Disclaimer : Don't own 'em.
A/N : Um... not sure what this is. It kind of just came out. No spoilers, I don't think... relatively clean story. Read and review!
---
The first and most important thing he ever learned was that darkness was more than only an absence of light. That in the dark, the monsters were real, and that they could hurt you.
From the moment his baby brother had been thrust into his arm, he had been introduced to a whole new world. A world where being four meant you were grown up. Most people weren't responsible for another human life until they're adults, bona fide grown ups with full time jobs and places of their own, with bills to boot.
He learned quick.
He learned how to take care of his brother. To read to him, even when he was struggling to read himself. He learned to cook, standing on a chair over the hot stove, stirring the macaroni and cheese or cutting PB&J diagonally, because that was how Sam liked it. He learned how to walk to the store all by himself, to count out change for milk or bandages to patch up Daddy's new wounds. He taught Sammy everything he knew, from history to hand-to-hand combat.
He learned how to hold a gun and how to hit a moving target. He learned not to cry, because crying was for babies, and Dean was a man now. He learned to bite down and pretend it didn't hurt. He learned to watch his father's back, too, while Sammy was at the neighbor's sleeping or watching TV, because Sammy was still only a kid.
He learned that family was all the had, and he learned to hold on tight, dig in deep, and never let go. That no matter how angry Sammy made him, or how much he wanted his own room, that blood was thicker than water, and blood was all they had.
So one day when he was eleven, and Sammy was seven, hiding in their room with a sheet pulled over bottom bunk like a tent, they cut their thumbs and pressed them tightly together. And when Sammy complained that they were already blood brothers, Dean quieted him, and told him that sometime you had to hurt to prove to each other just how close you were.
There were no scars, just a silly little kid game that they indulged in secretly, but sometimes they would nudge each other and give the thumbs up, just for.
Sammy broke that same thumb only one week later, fighting in the schoolyard. He was losing, until Dean showed up and made sure everyone in the school new not to mess with the Winchester brothers.
Two things happened then : Dean was suspended, and their father decided it was time to teach Sammy to throw a punch the right way.
And from then on, Sammy was a part of it. Learning alongside his brother, picking it up slowly, but surely.
When he was twelve, and insisting on being called Sam, he was included in his first hunt, a simple investigation that turned out to be anything but.
That was the first night they shared spilled blood in combat. The first time they really fought back to back, facing something bigger and faster than the both of them.
And when their father came to save the day, he found only two young boys covered in each other's blood, arm in arm standing victoriously over the body of a demon. And while Sam had a sickly green cast to his skin, he was proud, because his brother was proud of him.
And John was proud of his boys.
They grew up taking turns of taking care of one another.
Sam returned the favor of Dean practically raising him by bandaging the wounds his brother showed up with, listening to his tails of triumph over the opposite sex with something between disgust and morbid interest.
Some nights they would help their father into bed, drunk and happy or hurt and surly, and cover him with a blanket and shake their heads before returning to their own bedroom to speculate on how the night must have gone.
Dean watched Sam grow up, amazed at how similar their lives were, and yet how vastly different. How Sam somehow managed to have a lightness about him despite it all. How he got up every morning with homework done and went to school to ace his tests, and came home to spend the night fighting the latest ghoulies and ghosties along with his father and brother.
Until one day he woke up, and Sammy was gone.
On the same too-small bunk beds they'd shared for years, in different rooms in different cities of different states, there was a bare mattress, and on top of it, an envelope.
He handed it to his dad silently, and never asked to read it.
He knew what it said.
Sammy had gone on to another life.
He had escaped, and he was going to make something out of himself.
And even though part of him hated his brother then, he was proud, just like he was always proud of Sammy.
So he took it when his father screamed and raged and went about the house turning over chairs and finally broke down in his bedroom, locked away where he thought Dean couldn't hear.
When he finally emerged hours later, disheveled and eyes rimmed red, Dean didn't say a word, didn't glance at his father, just took the duffle bag and started packing. This had never been home; it wouldn't hurt to leave. He folded the letter in the bottom of his duffle bag, stuffed it into that tear in the liner so it wouldn't fall out or get lost amongst his shirts and jeans.
Part of him worried briefly about Sammy and how he would get in touch with them if they couldn't leave a forwarding address.
But he knew Sam would never write.
And neither would he.
That's just the way it was.