Wohoo! A couple more replies. Gee, I really hope things pick up over the weekend... I'm gettinga complex here...
Sam blinked, his mouth working silently, brain processing unusually slow as Dean stared at him and fidgeted.

"Sammy?" the boy asked, "you ok?" Sam couldn't say anything, no matter how hard he tried. "Sammy, look, it was a joke," Dean said hastily, the words spilling from his mouth in a waterfall of consonants and vowels, sounds and syllables, "I was kidding. Really. Look, I'm-"

"I'm not mad," Sam finally managed, glad that he'd spent the past two years with the man this boy would become, had learned to read subtle signs, knew what his brother was so nervous about, "I just want to know how."

"How?" Dean asked, confused, "how…?"

"How is it my fault?"

"Not really you," the teen said quickly, "your friends. It wasn't you."

"Just tell me."

Dean sighed and hung his head. "It wasn't you," he whispered, his voice barely audible, "it's never you." He looked back up at Sam with eyes full of hurt and fear, eyes that could never really hide the truth, no matter how hard the face and mind and body tried.

Sam nodded his understanding. "Ok."

"When we were kids," the teenager began slowly, "before you were even in school, I brought friends over to play. It was cool at first, but as you got older you wanted to be included. You didn't have any friends of your own, so I let you join in. My friends didn't like that. They made fun of you. They even tried to beat you up. Actually did a couple of times."

Sam nodded again, a little unsure of what his Dean's childhood chums had to do with his attitude toward school.

"Every town," he continued, "every school. All of them hated you. I had to choose. I chose you. Family is forever, right? I stopped try make friends 'cause I figured we had each other and that would be enough, you know? No one else could ever understand what our lives were like, anyway, so why not?"

"I guess it makes sense."

"Of course it does. Or, it did. Until you went to school. You made your own friends. We still hung out, though, and you thought it was cool having an older kid around." He paused, dropping his gaze again. "Then we moved here. You've been wanting to be like them for a while now, but the guys you met here… last year, when we moved in, you started hanging out with a group of people that kinda acted like my old friends. They don't like having me around. They gave you a choice."

"You or them," Sam whispered, the memories of the town and the house and his friends flooding painfully back as he realized what Dean was saying.

"You put off choosing," Dean explained, "until April. We were at some fast food joint. You were sitting with your friends, and I was sitting across the room, making sure nothing happened to you. You were all talking and pointing and laughing, and then I heard it."

"I chose?"

"You told."

Sam leaned a little closer over the table, unsure that he'd heard correctly, his shirt coming dangerously close to a meeting with the remnants of his forgotten, syrupy breakfast. "What?"

"You told," Dean reiterated, snapping his head up, pain flashing across his face, lingering in his haunted gaze, "you told them our secret, the one you swore you'd never tell. You told them and they told everyone at school, even though you said you'd sworn them to secrecy. You chose them over me and I found a dozen copies of 'Pat The Bunny' in my locker, the teachers laughed at me, kids walked down the hallway quoting baby books at me."

"What are you talking about?" Sam asked, now thoroughly confused.

"You told them who taught me to read," Dean hissed, "you told them I learned when I was nine."

"That's why you dropped out? Because I let that slip?"

"You let it slip to people who hated me! They told everyone. They tortured me for a week. They wouldn't stop! I didn't have a choice. I had to leave."

"But to never go back-"

"I wanted to," the boy explained softly, his eyes falling back to his plate, "I thought we'd leave town and I could tell dad I changed my mind and I could start over, but we're still here and those people still hang out with you and they still make fun of me."

Sam opened his mouth to speak, but again found no words. 'I'm sorry' seemed too insignificant, but nothing else seemed right.

"Don't tell dad," Dean whispered, saving Sam the trouble of replying.

"Dad?" Sammy gasped, forgetting for the moment that he had emotionally damaged his brother during what were supposed to be the best years of the blond's life.

"Yeah. He'd just tell me to tough it out and go back. Show no fear. Ignore them. He doesn't know how hard it is."

"Dad?"

Dean nodded. "Dad. He'll be back any day. I told you that."

Sam blinked. Yeah. Yeah, Dean had told him that, but he'd been so distracted by his little time trip that he hadn't paid much attention. Of course their father was alive. It was 1995.

"Why?" Dean asked, his body rigid, eyes narrowed and suspicious, effectively pulling Sam from his thoughts. "Why would you ask about dad like that? Is something gonna happen to him?"

"Uh," the older man stumbled over the words, his mind recalling something Dean had told him the year before, "You try telling a six-year-old that his daddy's dead. I wasn't dealing with that." Six or sixteen, it definitely wasn't a good idea, especially knowing Dean. "No. No, he's fine."

"You sure?"

Sam nodded. "Positive. So, uh, he's gonna be home for Christmas this year?"

"That's what he said," Dean shrugged, relaxing, obviously buying Sam's lie, "he promised we could spend the holidays together. Not that you'll be here. You're gonna be partying with your friends."

"Because I'm gonna show up at a twelve-year-old's home like this," Sam pointed out.

The teenager perked up, a shy smile worming its way onto his face. "Hey, that's right. Unless we fix this, I'm stuck with you."

"You just might be. I remember this town, the friends, the school, but not a Christmas party. And I'm pretty sure I'd remember it."

"Maybe. Or maybe you're just getting older. Memory's the first thing to go. Besides, we need to find a way to get you back. You've still got a party to go to. Mr. Popularity, no matter the year, huh?"

The older man nodded slowly, detecting a hint of disappointment and resentment in the boy's voice. "Yeah, I guess."

"So, who's the lucky friend this time?"

"An old college buddy," Sam explained slowly. The revelation that he'd left the family for a few years had obviously hit his brother hard, and the kid had seemed to have enough issues without that little tidbit of information. It just seemed best to proceed with caution. "He invited me up to his folks' cabin in the Rockies for the holidays."

"Sounds familiar," Dean commented, getting up to start cleaning since breakfast had been forgotten in light of conversation.

"Really?"

"Oh, yeah. One of your friends this year is having a party in a cabin. You really want to go."

"I do?"

Dean nodded. "You keep begging me to let you."

"Sounds like me."

Dean nodded again, sliding the dirty plates into the sink and running warm water over them in an attempt to wash away the thick puddles of syrup and gobs of uneaten pancake. "So you're gonna want to get back. We can take the car to the library today and see if we can find anything about time travel."

"Thought dad was gone," Sam said, glancing toward the smell house's front window to see into the empty driveway, "did he ride with someone?"

"He took the truck."

"The truck?"

"Yeah, the one he got after he gave me the car."

"He gave you the car?"

"You're repeating everything I say in the form of a question."

"The form of a question?" Sam grinned.

"Wow," Dean breathed, turning from the sink to appraise his usually-younger brother, "your memory sucks. Dad gave me the car for my sixteenth birthday. He takes the trucks on hunts now."

Sam nodded. "I know that, I just… you look too young to me. I can't see you driving."

"Been driving since I was ten," Dean defended "come on, we'll head out now." He left the plates soaking in the sink and walked from the room. Sam got up and followed, finding himself in a small living room filled with moth-eaten furniture and a dusty television set. Dean was digging around in a closet. He poked his head out and tossed a familiar leather jacket to his brother. "Bundle up," he grinned as Sam put the jacket on, only to find that it was too short, "it's cold out there."