Disclaimer: I do not own Supernatural or any of its characters. I am not making any money from this. The only gain I get is heartache when I realize this isn't canon. Please don't break my heart even further by suing me. Have some sympathy for a poor fangirl. Emphasis on poor...

"Okay. That's it, Sammy. I wanna know what the hell has your panties in a twist. This isn't just about Benny. This has been goin on since Cas! What the hell is your problem? Am I not allowed to make friends at all?" Dean yelled at his younger brother, glowering seriously at him in the middle of their shared motel room.

"Wait a minute, aren't you the one who kept telling me we have to leave everything behind, no attachments? Remember those speeches from-" Sam stopped short, but still fuming. He still had trouble talking about Jess.

"Yeah, I remember those speeches. And I was always talkin about people who aren't in the life and you know it. Havin friends like Cas, Benny, guys like Bobby and Garth...that's useful! You can talk to people like that about stuff we deal with, you can't talk to your college buddies about shit like that. They don't get it, hell they don't even believe it!"

"Whatever, Dean." Sam said, huffing and turning to continue stuffing things into his duffel bag.

"Hey, we're not done." Dean said, reaching over and grabbing Sam's arm.

Sam jerked his arm away from his older brother and glared as he faced him again, abandoning the duffel bag once more.

"Okay, fine, Dean. You want to know what's got me pissed off all this time? Ever since Cas showed up, it's like you forgot I existed. Before Cas, it was just us and we did fine. Then he showed up and it's like I'm invisible to you!"

"Seriously, Sam? That's what this is about? You aren't invisible, okay? But, Cas saved my life! I wouldn't even be here to have this argument with you if it weren't for him, and you'd be layin in a hospital somewhere waitin on a liver transplant considering all the booze you were drinking while I was down under."

"Yeah. You're one to criticize my alcohol consumption, Dean." Sam scoffed.

"Okay, fine. But that's not what this is about." Dean said, adjusting his stance, moving from one foot to the other.

Sam sighed and sat down on his twin bed. "Okay, Dean. Fine. You win." he reached up and ran a hand through his hair, giving a long, loud sigh.

All signs Dean had come to know over the years as Sam getting ready to admit something he didn't want to. Something that had him embarrassed.

Dean's eyebrows furrowed a bit.

"Maybe you didn't mean for it to come off like it has been. But, every time you make a new "friend" it ends up with me being the third wheel. Listen, I'm grateful for Cas bringing you topside, but you gotta remember he didn't do that to be your friend. He did it because of the Apocalypse. If you hadn't...done what you did down there, you'd still be down there getting tortured..." Sam said, obviously having a tough time visualizing that.

Dean winced a bit at the memory, looking down at the floor. He still had a tough time remembering. But, he knew it was tougher for Sam to think of him being down there, agonizing in hellfire and all manner of torture. He knew that, because as much as it hurt Dean to remember his own time in Hell, it hurt him more to think of Sam's time in the Cage.

"Sam..."

"Just...shut up and let me finish, Dean. Okay? You wanted to hear this." Sam said, looking up at Dean with those soulful eyes that hit Dean right in the feelings every time.

Dean looked at Sam, really looked at him for a few moments before he gave a slight nod.

"I like that you've got friends, Dean. I do. But, it's a lot like they're...more than friends."

Dean blushed. Why did everyone think he was into dick? Okay...so he wasn't exclusively for chicks, but he'd never acted on those...non-chick impulses. So, how did everyone fucking KNOW about it?

"Sammy, that's not how it is. Cas is my best friend, Benny too. We were in the trenches in Purgatory, if we didn't have each other there I might not have survived. They're like brothers-"

"And that's another thing! With Benny, you constantly throw it in my face that he's like a brother to you, that he's a better brother than me!"

"Dude..." Dean was ready to deny it, to excuse it away, but he knew he couldn't. He frowned. "Fine. Okay. You got me on that one. I was pissed that you didn't look for me after I got sent to Purgatory, okay? I'm over it now."

"Yeah, but, Dean..." Sam sighed and ran his hand through his hair again, this time in a way that belied much more anxiety than embarrassment. "I get that, okay? And I'm sorry. But..."

"But what?" Dean asked, holding his arms out wide, asking for the answer to whatever all these Feelings had to do with so they could get through it and move on. He hated conversations about emotions, but he could deal with talking about Sam's a lot easier than talking about his own.

"It's like you're fucking them, okay?! You're way too close, even for best friends or brothers! You haven't been anywhere near that close with me since Cas showed up and started talking about this fucking profound bond you two share, and then when Benny showed up it was even worse!"

"What...what are you talking about? I've never touched a guy like that!" he said, completely focusing on that rather than the comparison Sam made about himself.

"Oh, come on...I haven't spent a whole lot of time around you and Benny, but I see the way you and Cas look at each other." Sam gave Dean his skeptical you-can-tell-me look.

Dean bristled. Why didn't anyone ever believe him? "Listen, I haven't done the nasty with either of them, okay? And I don't see what this has to do with anything. Even if I had, so what? Are you gonna disown me for it or something?"

"What? No!" Sam said, giving Dean his patented how-could-you look.

"Then what's this obsession with who I sleep with? You never had a problem with it when you knew I was pickin up chicks."

"That's...that's not the same thing. I mean, it is. But, it isn't."

"Sammy, come on. You gotta help me out a little bit here. I don't understand whatever it is you're tryin to say. So just...say it, whatever it is." Dean said, sighing.

"It's always some other guy, why isn't ever me?!" Sam finally yelled, standing up again, glaring fiercely.

"W...what...?" Dean asked, in a soft and disbelieving tone.

"Why isn't it ever me? Why can't you ever be into me like that? Why can't you look at me that way? You used to..." Sam said, his own voice lowering with the sadness he felt over their diminished bond over time. He remembered all those times people used to mistake them for a gay couple, even the one or two times Dean played along, slapped him on the ass and called him honey.

Sure, Sam knew Dean had only been joking, but...still...

"So...so wait a minute." Dean said, moving his hands in front of him for a moment. "You're upset because you think I'm doin the horizontal cha-cha with Cas and Benny...and not you?"

Sam was quiet, staring at the floor now, reaching up and scratching his head nervously.

"Sammy, you're my brother..."

"I know!"

"That would be incest." Dean reminded.

"I know that!"

"It's illegal, Sam!"

"Right. Like credit card fraud, pool hustling, card sharking-"

"Okay, okay, I get it." Dean said, looking away and waving his hand at Sam to stop listing off all the multitude of illegal things they've been doing since they were kids.

"Are you telling me that you never felt anything like that for me? Not at all?" Sam asked, his voice at once pleading and coercive, begging and willing Dean to tell him it wasn't all in his head back then.

Dean paused for a while, long enough for Sam to start to worry and lose hope, before he finally stepped forward and lightly touched Sam's shoulder. "Sammy..."

"No, Dean! I don't want comfort, just...tell me the truth!" Sam yelled, trying to shrug his shoulder away from his brother, already sure he knew he was going to get a rejection. He was sure he hadn't been imagining things all that time, or remembering it wrong. But, Dean had always been really repressed so he'd never mentioned it before and now he was regretting giving in this time. Dean was never going to admit the truth.

"Sammy, I did..." Dean said, gripping Sam's shoulder a little tighter.

"...What?" Sam asked, stopping his struggling to stare at his older brother.

"I did...feel that way." Dean answered, letting his hand loosen a bit and slip down to Sam's bicep, rubbing gently.

"Then why didn't you ever say anything?" Sam asked, still a slight note of desperation to his voice, the need for answers.

The truth was that Dean had figured it was wrong to have feelings for guys. For him to have those feelings, anyway, because that wasn't what a man's man was like. That wasn't what Dad was like. He didn't want their dad to be even more disappointed in him. And he'd also thought it was even more wrong to have feelings like that for your brother of all guys to have feelings for. He'd figured if he ever admitted how he felt, even just to Sam, then he'd not only get a big fat rejection, but his little brother would be disgusted with him. He couldn't bear to see that in Sammy's eyes.

But, he couldn't say something like that. This was already enough of a chick flick moment as it was.

"Well, I mean...I wasn't sure you could handle me." he said, licking his lips, giving a crooked grin and slanting his eyes to the side a bit.

"What?" Sam asked, deadpan. Apparently, that wasn't the answer he'd been expecting.

"Well, I mean, I am pretty big...and I usually get an A+++ rating in bed so-"

"Wait a minute, Dean. What makes you think you'd be the one topping?" Sam raised an eyebrow, holding back a smirk, finally getting it, playing along.

Dean looked up at his brother. "Seriously?"

"Seriously."

Dean was silent for a while, before he went over to grab his jacket from the chair.

"Where are you going?" Sam asked in confusion and disbelief that his brother was going to actually leave the room right now.

"Dude, we don't have any whipped cream here. I gotta go to the store..."

"We'll try out your weird whipped cream fetish later." Sam said, going over and grabbing Dean by the arm before dragging him over to the nearest bed, knocking the duffel bag off of it – who cared which one of them it belonged to – and shoving him down. Sam wasn't about to let this moment go to waste.

Dean figured they could try out the whipped cream next time.

End