All mistakes are my own (but I'd love for you to point them out.)

Disclaimer: I do not own Supernatural, nor the super-sexy guys therein; I just dream about them.

AN: This is my first fanfic that doesn't have a OC and is more than pure smut (yeah, sorry about that. Give me time and I will give you smut. Really smutty-smut.) It's also the first thing I've posted on here. My Muse has been on strike for a couple of years now and I'm finally slowly getting her back. So, sorry if this sucks.

Warning: This chapter is super angst-y. The next one isn't. At this point, this chapter isn't needed to understand the later stuff so feel free to skip it, but that might change so keep a look out.

Everyone leaves, it's been the truth since day one and Dean knows it. One way or another, whether it's their choice or not, everyone leaves. Mom, Dad, Sammy. Sure, sometimes they come back, but Dean knows it's not for forever. Sammy's left and come back more times than he wants to remember (but of course the number is ingrained in his skull) and even though he loves his brother more than anything, more than life, more than himself (which is obvious, Dean hates himself), hell, even more than his Baby, it doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter how hard Dean tries to hold on to people, to the only things in his world that matter even the slightest bit to him, they leave. Everyone leaves. Which is why he's always so distant. Doesn't hurt as much if you don't get attached. But, then, Dean's a Winchester, he's cursed, in more ways than one.

Dean can't help but get attached to people, as hard as he tries not to. He puts up on his armor, wears his mask, puts up his wall (well, actually, it's more like walls, one not being near enough to feel even relatively safe.) He does his macho 'no chick-flick moments' act that he's perfected over the years but it doesn't work. Somehow someone always seems to worm there way in, past the walls, through the armor and, Goddamnit, he's attached again.

Well, he would damn God if he could, but the old fuckers gone. Elvis has left the building, and Dean can't help but take it personally, another person's left him. The only person who's love is supposed to be unconditional. Fuck that, fuck God and all his self-righteous angels (well, maybe not Cas) the only unconditional love he's even known is his for Sammy. And Sammy doesn't feel it back. Not that Sam doesn't love him, Deans pretty sure that he does (he can never be completely sure about anything, especially these days) but Sam's love isn't unconditional.

He's the one who's left the most, and even though he always comes back, and no matter how much Sammy says otherwise, Dean knows he's gonna leave again. Even if they go out together Thelma-and-Louise style, die in a blaze of what some people might mistake for glory, Sam's still gonna leave. Dean's seen Sam's heaven and he knows that he isn't in it.

Sam's heaven is other people's thanksgivings, hell, Sam's heaven is leaving Dean. And Sam can spout all the shit he wants about family not meaning the same thing to him as it does to Dean, but Dean's his family, damnit. Dean's his big brother, practically his mom and dad too; after all, Dean did raise the kid.

So Sam doesn't feel the same way about family 'cause he never knew their mother,' cause their dad's a dead-beat who'd rather fight a nameless, faceless evil than fight for his sons. And Dean understands that, he misses his mom more than John ever did. John dealt with Mary's death the patented Winchester way, shove it down and pretend it doesn't exist.

Dean didn't get that luxury. He was busy raising Sam so he couldn't become so obsessed with hunting that he didn't have to deal with the stuff that really scared him, the things that have nothing to do with the monsters and demons and evil things outside, and everything to do with the ones within. So he gets Sammy on the Mom issue. He especially understands Sam's problem with their dad (when he thinks back, mindlessly obeying his fathers orders was the way he tried to hold on to John. And that worked out so well) but why can't Sam see that Dean is his family?

They might not have a mom, they might not have a dad, but they had each other, or at least that's what Dean thought until the first time Sam ran away. And when Sam came back, Dean forgave and got close enough to forgetting for it to hurt just as badly the next time Sam left. In fact, it wasn't until Sam left for Stanford and they spent those four years apart that it really dawned on Dean that Sam had Dean, but he didn't have Sam.

Please, R&R, if only to let me know that someone has actually read this. You will be rewarded with popsicles in the shape of your favorite character. Or Misha Collins. Misha Collins is awesome.