Disclaimer; I don't own Supernatural, I only own the writing

xxx

Sometimes, it's easy to forget how quickly people can change.

Dean glanced over at Sam for what felt like the thousandth time and clenched his jaw. The sun was hitting the windscreen at just the right angle to obscure his little brother's eyes, but it wasn't hard to tell he was crying. Dean could still see the signs, even after all these years. The tightened set to his shoulders, the loosely fisted hands, the odd tilt to his head. It was all still the same.

"We can't save everyone, man. You know that." Pretty much as soon as the words had left his lips, Dean knew it was the wrong thing to say. But he couldn't take them back, couldn't swallow them back down, however much he wanted to.

Sam didn't reply, but his back stiffened and he turned his head further away from Dean's probing eyes.

It never used to be like that. There was a time when they told each other everything, because they were each other's everything. Before life and college and Jessica got in the way. Before Sam grew up.

And it hurt; there was an ache in his stomach that he was stemmed from the fact he couldn't just reach out and touch Sam. Because he didn't know how his brother would react. He didn't seem to know anything anymore.

When Sam left, it was safe to say that Dean's world had been thrown into chaos. Without Sam, there was no one for him to protect; no one for him to soothe back to sleep or watch over or cling onto. There was no purpose. Just Dad, and his orders. The only thing left for him to latch onto, and latch he did.

Maybe it was jealousy, the pain in his gut. Maybe it was because he was jealous of Sam, because Sam escaped. Sam coped on his own. Sam didn't need Dean anymore. And Dean would always need Sam, more than anything else in his world. Because to Dean, Sam was more than a brother. Sam was a father and a son and a friend and a partner. Sam was his everything.

They had been so close, once. And it had been perfect. They had shined brighter than any star.

And now they sat beside each other in their father's Impala, a foot between them, nothing more. But it was a foot that stretched into three years of hearing nothing, three years of change. And suddenly Dean couldn't reach far enough to breach that gap, like he always used to. Suddenly, he was lost. He had no idea how to help, how to make it better; take away the pain.

So he tightened his hands around the wheel and stared straight ahead, trying to ignore the man sitting next to him, so far away – the only man he'd ever truly loved.