Sam stared dejectedly out the back passenger window of the Impala and felt small. The rain outside trickled sideways along the thick glass in depressing rivulets, and everywhere Sam looked, it was gray.

Sam was so tired of gray.

Dad was angry with him, but newsflash, when wasn't Dad angry with him? Dean though - that was a horse of a different color. Sam couldn't stand being on the outs with his big brother.

The kid sighed. Some birthday. He'd been looking forward to it for weeks, dropping hint after hint about maybe actually taking a trip somewhere that didn't involved killing something and burning its corpse afterward. So far in his young life, Sam had been to the Florida Everglades where Dad had taken out an ancient basilisk with a knife dipped in the scent glands of a weasel, to Jamestown, Virginia, where a spring-heeled jack had nearly pranked Dean to death, and to Aspen, Colorado where a lone gorilla-wolf, escaped from Purgatory, had taken a chunk out of Sam's left calf and left him with an impressive scar and an even more impressive run of terrifying nightmares to remember it by.

The Winchester family vacations thus far had kind of sort of sucked.

But once, just this once, Sam had hoped for a little slice of normal. He was almost an adult, at least officially, and he'd wanted to do something together as a family - something he could actually take pictures of and remember later. Who knew what could happen tomorrow? Who knew if there'd even be a tomorrow? They were hunters, after all.

Sam wanted to see a spectacular waterfall with a rainbow shimmering on it. He'd seen them in books - the colors appearing as graduating hues of, what else? Gray. Still, it'd be cool to see and to imagine. Or maybe a snow-capped mountain against the vivid blue of a Montana sky. He'd have to concentrate hard to think what it really looked like, but he'd heard people describe such things.

Most days, Sam never thought much about his color-blindness, but sometimes, on days like today, when the rain came down in torrents both inside and out, he gave in to the luxury of waxing sorry for things he couldn't control and just felt sad.

Sam didn't ask his father for much, but this was his sixteenth birthday - kind of a big deal in most people's books. And John hadn't even REMEMBERED the day, let alone deigned to celebrate it.

And Dean … Sam shoved the sadness back so hard it almost felt physical. Dean never forgot his birthday. Never. Dean always had a little something waiting on the table for him in the morning -whether it was just a handwritten IOU to see the latest blockbuster or a deliciously new copy of whatever book Sam had been coveting for months.

Sam could always count on Dean to celebrate the day Sam had been born. But things were different this year. There'd been the screw-up at the cemetery, and Dean was thoroughly pissed. And instead of a leisurely birthday breakfast at the local greasy spoon, Sam got a rude middle-of-the-night awakening and the bum's rush out to the car.

Seemed there was a hunt out Wyoming way, and John, Dean and Sam had gotten drafted with not even a "happy birthday, Sam" from his dad or his big brother to commemorate the day.

And Sam was a realist. He knew birthdays got less attention as you got older, and he knew Dad and Dean were distracted by the hunt. He was old enough now that a forgotten birthday shouldn't be the big deal it was when he was 12.

Still, Sam couldn't shake the feeling that he mattered less by the day. Dad had Dean, and Dean had Dad, and all Sam ever managed to do was screw things up.

And now Sam sat silent in the back seat as Dad and Dean discussed the new case with ever-mounting enthusiasm.

They were two peas in a pod when it came to hunting. And Sam? Sam was just the tall, clumsy wrench in the works. He hated the hunt. He hated being afraid. He hated the fact that one or the other of them always managed to get himself hurt in the process.

"So this guy, Jory - he did the research?" Dean was asking their father. Neither Sam nor Dean had ever met the hunter named Jory.

John nodded. "So I hear."

"He knows his stuff?"

John shrugged. "I assume so, Dean. I've never worked with the guy. Bobby says he's on the up and up though. That's good enough for me."

Dean was silent for a moment. "Just seems weird, you know - all these cursed objects suddenly showing up all at once. He's got no idea where they're coming from?"

"Apparently not, or he wouldn't have called us in."

Dean thought about that. "But you said he's been working the case for a good week and a half. How do you have no leads at all after a week and a half?"

John sighed. "Maybe research ain't his thing, Dean."

"Hunh." Dean replied, unconvinced. Then, under his breath but still loudly enough for Sam to hear, he mumbled. "Maybe this Jory guy has a whiny brat of a kid brother doing the research for him too."

Sam's felt his face flame, as his eyes met his Dad's in the rear-view, and he had to blink superfast to keep tears from falling.

"Dean." John reprimanded gently, aware of how badly the older boy's words had hurt his youngest.

"What?" Dean countered. "You're pissed too, Dad. Don't deny it." Dean turned in the seat then and tossed a scathing look into the backseat. "If Sam would get his crap together and stop whining about all the "normal" things His Highness has never seen or done, maybe he wouldn't be sitting back there right now with a burned foot."

And that right there, Sam thought, was the root of the problem. Sam had gotten hurt three days ago when a ghost had knocked him into the hole Dean and Dad had just dug and crawled out of. Even worse, Dean had just poured the kerosene and dropped the match into the hole a split-second before Casper had hip-checked Sam into it. Sam could still hear his brother's bellow as he felt himself falling, feet-first, into the inferno, had been hearing it in his dreams for the past two nights.

Sam was supposed to be keeping watch, but instead, he'd been going on and on about how close they were to the Pocono Mountains and about how maybe they could make the short drive up. Dad had just rolled his eyes and sent a killer glare in Sam's direction when, POW! Casper made his move. Sam didn't even have the opportunity to yell as he'd rocketed off the bank of loose dirt into the flames, and he'd never get the sound of Dean's horror out of his head, not if he lived to be a hundred. Even then, Sam was sure he'd still remember how desperate Dean's voice had been when he'd thought Sam was going to die.

Luckily, Dad had been able to think on his feet. He'd reached down and grasped the collar of Sam's coat almost before the kid even had time to hit bottom. He'd pulled the boy up and over with the super-human strength of a parent terrified of losing a child, and all Sam had as a reminder of the ordeal was a burned foot and a brother who was probably never going to forgive him.

"I said I was sorry." Sam mumbled, risking a glance up at Dean and wishing he hadn't. His brother's face was all hard lines and unforgiving scowl, and it hurt Sam's heart to look at it.

"Yeah? Well sorry don't mean shit, Sam. You almost died." Dean shot back. Turning back around, he addressed their father. "We should have just left him somewhere, Dad. Until he gets his head in the game, he's not safe to take on a hunt."

Sam's eyes widened in disbelief that Dean would actually say something like that. His brother was almost always on his team - even when it meant taking sides against their father. He was almost tempted to try and defend himself, but one look at Dean's angry profile, and he decided against it. Instead, Sam sighed more loudly than he meant to and stared out the window.

And in return, Dean snorted and shook his head. "Unbelievable." the older boy muttered, as though Sam was the most ridiculous thing that had ever stood on two, well, on one, foot.

Sam shook his head silently and swiped at his eyes. It was going to be a long, miserable ride. "Happy birthday, Sam." He muttered quietly to himself. "Don't enjoy it too much."

###

Dean was pissed. In fact, he was so pissed that he was sure the definition of pissed was a picture of Dean Winchester - pissed. Part of it, he knew, was irritation with Sam that the kid hadn't had his guard up like Dean had taught him. But most of it, he realized, was anger at himself for letting Sam get into that situation in the first place.

Dean should have been paying attention. He should have had Sammy in his sights. Dean knew the kid had trouble distinguishing between colors at night - especially between a transparent haunt and the surrounding black woods. Instead, he'd been secretly congratulating himself on his ability to set a good and speedy fire when, without warning, Sam's body had hurtled past him, straight into hell.

It happened so fast that at first Dean had thought it was the ghost trying to dive into the grave and douse the flames. It wasn't until the blurred shape was past him and in the hole that Dean realized it had been wearing a denim jacket. He'd screamed then. He was sure of it. The feeling of fear and horror that his little brother was about to burn alive in a fire that he'd set himself … well … it was too much.

Good thing Dad had managed to keep his shit together. The old man had reached right into the bowels of Hell and popped up with one lightly toasted little brother in tow.

And Dean. Dean was just so … so damned terrified. He was so terrified that it made him feel pissed as hell. And when Dean was pissed, he tended to take it out on everyone around him. He knew he was being cruel to Sam, but it was like someone had removed the filter between the pissed side of his brain and his mouth and launched him directly at the kid.

Dean couldn't shut the hell up. And that just made him more pissed.

It was an ugly cycle.

"Don't forget to make that freakin' side trip for that special antibiotic burn ointment." Dean complained to his father. "Not like that's waste of a good hour or anything. I mean, it ain't like people are dyin'."

And as his father remained silent and pinned him with a look that would have killed a lesser man, Dean turned toward the window and hated himself for the small broken voice that drifted up from the backseat.

"It's okay. I don't need it." Sam said quietly. "It's not important."

The youngest Winchester turned his eyes away from the rear view mirror then and back to the bleak outside where a light gray sky met a darker gray horizon line. Somewhere, there was color for Sam; he was sure of it - sure he wasn't meant to spend his entire life locked down in shades of grayest gray.

That would just be too depressing.