I have no explanation for this. It just happened this afternoon. *hands*

"Sam?" Dean calls. He wanders the halls when it goes unanswered and determines Sam isn't here. He didn't say he was leaving. Instantly Dean is worried – too many years of things going wrong when they get separated muting his memories of all the times Sam's turned up okay. "Sammy?"

Silence echoes off thick, steel walls and Dean mutters, "Fuck." He grabs a gun and takes off, heart in his throat, images of Sam bloody flashing behind his eyelids when he blinks.

He finds Sam outside. He isn't hurt. He's just sitting there, on the little hill that hides the bunker's entrance, on the grass. Leaning back on his hands, looking up at the sky, unaware of how fast Dean's heart is racing.

"What the fuck are you doing?" Dean demands.

Sam looks up slowly. His eyes find and focus on Dean – they're red-rimmed and puffy but not like he's been crying. Like he's exhausted. Like he always is these days.

"Nothing. What's wrong?"

"You were just gone is what's wrong, asshole!" Dean stomps up the incline to meet his brother and kicks Sam in the ankle, hard enough to sting. "One minute I can hear you rummaging around in the next room and then the place is empty and I had no idea where you went!"

"I was out here."

"Yeah. I can see that." Dean bends and gingerly lowers himself to the ground beside Sam. He's still banged up from the hunt earlier. Sam's worse – bruised ribs and caked blood along his hairline that he hasn't cleaned off yet. "Any reason you didn't tell me you were leaving? I thought something got you."

"Sorry." Sam sounds like he means it. "I didn't think."

"Idiot," Dean grumbles. He only half means it. "What're you doin' out here?"

"This." Sam gestures around himself vaguely like that's supposed to be some kind of explanation.

"Breathing? Farting? What?"

Sam smiles and looks down at his hands, his hair falling forward over his eyes. "Little a'both."

Dean shakes his head and laughs quietly. "Sounds like a good time."

"Just wanted to see the sky, I guess. There's no windows in there." He's acting aloof and dreamy and Dean's not sure he likes it – Sam's temperament or the possible reasons behind it.

"Because it's underground."

"I'm aware of why."

"It's fuckin' cold out here," Dean mumbles, pulling down the rolled-up sleeves on his denim shirt.

"So go inside."

"I'm sorry, am I disturbing your solitude?"

"You can stay if you want. You said you were cold."

"I am. Because it's November."

"The stars are so bright here," Sam says softly, ignoring Dean's complaining.

Dean narrows his eyes and studies his brother's profile. "Are you on meth or something? Seriously, what's up with you right now?"

"You never liked being in nature, huh?"

Dean rolls his eyes at no one in particular. "I spend half my life runnin' through the woods, chasin' after shit. Or chasin' after you chasing after shit. So yeah, in my down-time, I like central heating."

Sam nods. "I don't know. I wanted some fresh air."

"Are you feelin' okay?"

"I'm fine," Sam answers shortly, and Dean rolls his eyes again.

"You're not fine. I've never seen you sit in the grass and star-gaze in my life."

"We've done it on the Impala."

"Yeah, together."

"We're together now."

"Sam!" Dean snaps, losing patience all at once. "Just … talk to me like a normal human, would you? You're being weird. I'm worried. It's not that unreasonable."

Sam presses his lips together and sighs slowly. He stretches his arms over his head and sits forward, elbows resting on his knees. "I don't know what's happening, alright? That's the truth. The trials are messin' with me lately."

"Messing how?"

"Just little things. I'm not, like, in pain. I just feel weird sometimes, like I'm not … not quite in my own body. And they're making me remember things."

"What things?"

"Not bad things. Just things. Stuff from a long time ago, stuff I'd forgotten. Books I had to read in school, things we did when I was really little. I fell off a couch, once. Before I could walk. Smacked my head on the coffee table. You freaked out, thinkin' I was dead or something."

Dean frowns. "How the hell do you remember that? Nobody remembers shit from when they were a baby."

"I know, that's what I'm saying. That all these things are coming back to me that I shouldn't be remembering. I don't know why."

Suddenly the stars are too brilliant. Too shiny. They seem happy up there, twinkling away, and Dean has to close his eyes. Most days, he's so worried about Sam he's in a near-constant state of dull nausea, like sea-sickness. The boat won't stop rocking.

"What're you gonna do if they kill me?" Sam asks.

"They're not gonna kill you."

"They might, though," Sam says, entirely too rational about it for Dean's liking. "I'm not sayin' I'm happy about it, man. I'm sayin' it's a possibility you should be prepared for."

"Like you were when I died," Dean points out sarcastically.

Sam exhales heavily. "And look what happened. Both times I ran off with some girl, got all twisted up in shit I shouldn't've been. Drove a wedge between us before you even got back."

"You didn't know I was coming back."

"That's not the point."

"Would it have helped? If you had prepared for it? Had some kind of plan?"

Sam tilts his head up and gazes at the dark blue sky for a moment before he answers. "No."

"So then why the fuck even bring it up."

Sam doesn't respond and Dean was hoping he wouldn't.

"You gonna let me take care of you this time?"

"You wanna wipe my ass or something?"

Dean wrinkles his nose and then laughs. "Fuck no. That's all you."

"Then what?"

"I just wanna help, Sam. If you're getting sick, or weak, or whatever. I'm not gonna be your friggin' day nurse but that doesn't mean I can't make you a meal every now and then. Get you an extra blanket when you're runnin' a fever."

"Would it make you happy? If I let you?"

Dean rubs his hands over his face and leaves them there for a moment, but then he answers honestly because he begrudgingly accepts that this is a two-way street. "Yeah. It would."

Sam nods. "Okay. I will, then. Sometimes."

It's on the tip of Dean's tongue, to tell Sam he doesn't have to do anything if he really doesn't want to, but then he swallows it. If Sam's willing to let Dean be the big brother again, even only sometimes, that's a deal Dean will take.

"How long you plannin' on sittin' out here?"

"Till I get too cold, I guess," Sam says with a shrug. "You don't have to stay."

"Can I?"

"If you want."

"What do you want?"

Sam shifts a little closer to Dean instead of answering. Dean lifts his arm up and wraps it around Sam, taking his brother's proximity as an invitation, and Sam slouches down just a little to rest his head on Dean's shoulder.

"I used to wish so much that I could be everything to you," he whispers. "Did you know that? When you'd bring girls over, or when I'd see you talkin' to other kids at school. Used to make me so mad that you ever talked to anyone but me. Or even looked at them. I wanted to be your whole world."

"Careful what you wish for, right?"

"Are you gonna be okay? If I don't make it?"

Dean closes his eyes again and turns his head, pushing his nose through Sam's tangled hair and inhaling. "No. So stay alive."

"I'll try."

"Don't try. Fuckin' do it. You're all I've got. You can't skip out on me. You're not allowed to, you got it?"

Sam nods. "Yeah."

"The stars are bright here," Dean says, repeating Sam's earlier word in agreement.

"Wanna go back inside?"

"In a minute." Dean wraps his other arm around Sam too and holds him too tightly. He's always held Sam too tight. From the minute he was born. Kept him too close and guarded him too much and tried so hard to shelter him from everything. He was never as good at it as he wanted to be.

"You did the best you could," Sam tells him.

"You're a mind-reader now? Is that the trials too?"

"No. I just know you. Know when you're thinkin' shit like that."

Dean doesn't have an answer for that so he doesn't say anything. He kisses the top of Sam's head instead, and wishes the wind would die down so he'd have a good excuse to sit here with his brother forever.