I'm going through Season 4 yet again. While I love the endless brotherly love that lots of writers focus on in the realm of fan fiction, I wanted to explore a tiny bit into the general lack of that feeling in these past few episodes, and that I know will continue through the entire season. Dean loves his brother, no doubt, but I think he's feeling more scared than loving at this point in the show. So here's my attempt to explore. Enjoy!

Needless to say, I don't own any of these characters.

The silence between them was heavy, only the rumble of the car's engine and the familiar ring of rubber on asphalt filling their ears. Sam stared out the window, eyes pinched; Dean watching the road, his foot carefully steady on the pedal.

Sam hadn't said a word in explanation as he brushed by, leaving Samhain's empty vessel lying in the middle of the crypt, leaving Dean with cleanup. Dean found him waiting in the car, his face cleaned up, expression carefully neutral. Dean had eyed him, but he appeared uninjured, just… sullen. Neither had spoken a word. To Dean, it felt like they were in a pressure cooker, the explosion imminent. He didn't know how to avert it.

They stepped into the motel room, and Sam went straight for the bathroom. Dean dropped the weapons bag on the ground and sank onto the bed nearest the door. Exhaustion threatened to drag him all the way to horizontal, but he fought it, thoughts of Sam's outstretched hand, his face stretched in anger and fear, threading through his mind's eye. He'd just exorcised one of the strongest demons in history with his mind. The power it took to do that…

Sam was right: he was a whole new level of freak. And Dean was scared. Maybe not of Sam per se, but of what Sam could become. Something had changed in his little brother in those months that he'd been… away. And something had changed in Dean, too, during the decades in Hell. If only Sammy knew what Dean had become. And while Dean fought tooth and nail to move away from the darkness that had taken hold of him, it seemed like Sam was barreling straight toward it.

He was still wrestling with these thoughts when Sam finally appeared in the bathroom door, looking tired and defensive. Dean glanced at him, waiting for the start of the conversation.

But Sam didn't speak first; he just sat on his own bed, and the silence stretched. Again.

And Dean didn't know what to say. That he was scared? Freaked out? Haunted? That Sam was becoming more and more a reminder of his time in Hell? None of that passed his lips, and he found himself staring through the paper-thin curtains at the empty road outside the motel. Talking had always been Sammy's prerogative.

Sam still didn't speak. Dean still waited.

"Can we have this conversation in the morning?" Sam finally muttered, his voice hitching slightly.

Dean glanced over again, taking a closer look. Sam was hunched over, elbows braced on knees, forehead in hands, not even looking.

"Are you hurt?" Dean asked gruffly.

Sam sighed, heavily. "No. Nothing that a little sleep won't cure."

So he was hurting. Probably a headache. The kid deserved it.

And Dean stuttered to a stop at that thought. Sam had just saved an entire town full of people, not to mention Dean. And Dean thought he deserved to suffer for it.

God, he was selfish. And screwed up. He was taking his own inability to deal with what was happening out on his brother. Freaky powers or no, Sam didn't deserve that.

"You got some Tylenol?" Dean asked into the silence.

Sam's breath shifted from its steady pattern for just a second, but Dean could tell that the question had surprised him. "I'm fine."

He probably wanted to suffer, the idiot, just to prove that he felt guilty about what had gone down.

"Take the Tylenol, Sam," Dean ordered tiredly, before getting to his feet and claiming the bathroom, shutting the door behind him.

He never knew if Sam took the pills, because when he came out fifteen minutes later, Sam was conked out. Guess they would have that talk in the morning, after all.