a/n: summary is from a line in 'colour bandits' by kickthepj on youtube, which is a very beautiful thing and you must watch it. Title (I do hope) becomes self-explanitory in about 300 words :)
The answers are never at the bottom of a bottle, so it's probably a good thing that Dean has never been a man with a thirst for knowledge (though needless to say the whiskey's going down pretty well).
What you see standing before you is not a man, but merely a cracked shell. He's tired. Dean's tired of it all. He's meant to die in two months and yes, he did it to save his brother; but was it worth it when he knows that when he's gone Sam'll just wear himself down to the bone working and reading book after old mouldy book trying to get him back?
(Shut up, Dean. You know that Sam will always be worth it) (He's worth ten of you).
Everything he does is for Sam in the end, anyway (somehow). So he goes about his business, wiping blood off of his face (and his brother's, when he has to) and ending the day with a mouthful of apologies swallowed down with quite a bit of whiskey, and he doesn't complain.
He knows that Sam worries, and he knows that the dark circles underneath his once warm eyes are the result of yet another fruitless night of research. He's never been one for comfort, so he does what little he can. He turns on the radio one night when the sound of the tires on gravel isn't quite loud enough to drown out the silence of all they're not saying, and that damn song by Meatloaf comes on.
Oh I would do anything for love: I'd run right into hell and back.
And that's why he's doing this, really. Of course it is. He loves his brother- maybe not in quite the right way, but nevertheless.
He's not going to let the fact that he's in love (might as well admit it, he's only got two months left) with his baby brother ruin the time that they have, although it's itching, scratching, biting beneath his skin; it's crawling up from the dark recesses, the cavern where his heart should be. It slants his vision, makes him breathe just a little more heavily, but he won't let it change anything (he won't).
Dean's long accepted that he's perverted, twisted, sick in the head. He'll be damned if he lets his brother go down the same road.
So he goes about his business, looking after Sam and trying to hold it together as best he can (can't let Sammy here see that his big brother's falling apart at the seams), and maybe he drinks a bit too much and wishes with all his heart that things could be normal, but he doesn't complain.
With hell hounds that only he can see carving at his chest and his brother pressed against a wall shouting his name with tears streaming down his face, Dean's first thought is I love him, and I can't remember the last time I told him that and his last is at least I won't die alone.