Loud sounds of metal hitting metal made Sam hastily run outside. The episode he saw stopped him in place in the doorway and made him draw a strong breath, pulling the current of cold inside his lungs from the seemingly warm air. The image of Dean, not the Dean to whom he talked to a couple of minutes ago and who seemed completely okay on the surface, but an image of Dean putting his anger out on his baby, the Impala, completely frenzied in his act.
Sam took a deep, painful breath: he knew something like this would happen, but he wasn't planning on happening it so soon. He didn't know what do to, how to act, how to make Dean stop. He didn't even know if he could stop him – Dean was handling things again, as always, in his own way, keeping everything inside him and then bursting open like a wound that was not sewed tight enough. There was always blood and scars as an aftermath of his conquests – either real, either metaphorical, always blotched against Dean's chest like Dean was the metal to its magnet.
He longed to touch Dean, to step closer and bring his hands up to Dean's forearms, to pull him close and cradle his head on his chest like Dean used to do when he was a kid and the world seemed too dark a green to be real. The world was black now, stained with red of blood and crossed with menacing thoughts of gray shades. No white, no yellow, no blue, just the jade green of Dean's eyes and hazel of Sam's speckled with gloom.
Another hit and then the expanse of Dean's shoulders where Sam was staring at stopped in spot. The metal bar hit the floor in a loud bang, the sound of it echoing through the wind basking in the afternoon sun. Dean slouched and turned, as if sensing Sam from afar, and locked his eyes with Sam's.
They were dead. The green of his irises was veiled by murky shadows and the green sea full of dark colored fish at bay didn't move at all. Dean's eyes, traitorous of his feelings in any given situation, didn't reveal any emotion right then. They were dead as a birds, so deep but not filled with anything.
"Dean," Sam could hear his own voice like from a distance, the tone of it soft and low, a gentle caress, like a swivel of protectiveness directed at Dean. Dean's stare continued, lifeless and unfocused, and Sam felt himself moving from the door in huge steps. He couldn't stand the sight anymore – it was too agonizing to watch Dean try to cover up his pain while it was so obvious that he was hurting.
He stopped a foot long in front of Dean, not daring to touch, but when Dean didn't make any move that would indicate Sam was unwanted, Sam moved and put his hand on Dean's shoulder. He felt his own eyes watering at the sight of Dean lowering his head, frantically biting through his plumb lover lip, so he put his other hand on Dean's neck to gently massage his scalp.
Dean stiffened but then his eyes closed under the tender touch. A step forward was all it took to get him into Sam's arms and then he was breathing down Sam's neck in ragged puffs. Sam's arms tightened around his shoulders, making a cocoon for the now fragile thing that was Dean.
"Fuck you and your stupid empathy shit, Sam, look what you've done," Dean said into his neck and Sam could feel him smirk against his skin, that small grin that made his heart pop back into place.
They didn't speak about the sharing and caring moment at all nor did they show to Bobby that something happened while he wasn't there. It was just them and nobody else needed to know.
But at night, when Sam was lying in his own bed trying to fall asleep, Dean climbed behind him in the small bed and enfolded his arms around his waist, making him the little spoon though he so wasn't small, and put his head between his shoulder blades, placing soft comforting kisses across his scarred skin there.
"Don't you dare to leave," Dean said and all it took was Sam's nod to make him relax and fall into slumber behind Sam. Sam took Dean's hand that was laying across his heart and squeezed Dean's fingers tightly, entwining them in the dark.
Sam will never leave — nobody sane, in his opinion, would ever try to leave important pieces of the puzzle that was them behind. And he could hold his sanity while he had Dean.