Disclaimer: Not mine!

I loved Episode 3! It was so nice to see the boys together again. And Sam working out... ((happy sigh))

Thanks to jensengirl4eva, QuierdoMusic, Twinchester Angel, cold kagome and BranchSuper for the reviews!

Chapter 7: Time to Fix Things

No. No no no no no no no.

Sam didn't just jump into Lucifer's cage, he did it thinking I didn't need him, I'd be happier without him –

No no no no no no –

Get a grip, Dean!

"God, Sammy, no."

And suddenly my breath is catching, and no no no, and I can't hold Sam close enough, I'm crushing him and I'm probably hurting him but I need to feel his heartbeat and hear his breathing and God no no NO and Sam must've dropped the ice pack because his arms are around my neck but to hell with ice packs, to hell with everything, I need to hold Sam, I need Sam to hold me, I need –

I need to calm down, because I'm holding Sam so tightly that a couple of his wounds are starting to seep blood again.

But when I loosen my grip Sam only tightens his, and that's when I realize he's talking, a litany of I'm sorry and Dean, please don't, and why the hell does Sammy insist on apologizing all the time? I stroke his hair, damp with sweat – not with my tears, because I'm not crying – and hush him.

"Well," Sam says at last, thickly, pulling away, "we're pretty messed up."

I don't have it in me to provide a decent comeback. Not now.

"Sammy, what –?"

"Let it go, Dean," Sam begs. "Please."

"Sam –"

"Please."

And what can I do, anyway? It's Sam. If he uses that particular tone there isn't a thing I won't do for him.

Damn little brothers and their puppy-dog eyes.

"You know that's not true, Sam," I say gently, because I can postpone the detailed discussion but I can't leave that hanging. "You know it. And if you don't..." If you don't, it's my fault for being the world's worst brother and letting you go to Hell thinking I was happy to be rid of you. "If you don't, I'm telling you now. The day that nurse in Lawrence put you in my arms, you became the most important person in my life, and nothing is ever going to change that. Got that, Sammy?"

Sam nods.

Of course there's more to be said, because there's no way this is going to be over that easily – not if I know Sam and not if I know our Winchester luck – but he's tired. He needs rest. And I just don't have the energy to deal with more right now. I know I screwed up, I know that someday soon I'm going to have to sit Sam down and have him tell me exactly how and where I screwed up, but not tonight.

Tonight it's enough that Sam's alive and Sam's here. Now he's starting to fall asleep, and I push him down to the bed and his pillow so he'll be more comfortable. When I sit on the bed with the laptop he sidles as close to me as he can without actually admitting that he wants to. I don't know whether it's to reassure himself that I'm not leaving or to promise me that he's not going anywhere. Probably a bit of both. I don't know whether to be relieved that he's not pushing me away or worried that he's being so uncharacteristically clingy.

Sam wakes up in the morning feeling well enough to complain when I insist on him leaving the bathroom door unlocked. I'm so thrilled at his expression, closer to the Sam Winchester bitchface than anything I've seen since way before Stull Cemetery (and how did I not realize in all those months that Sam wasn't himself?), that I don't even give him the big-brother's-prerogative lecture.

It tires him enough that he doesn't argue about spending the day resting in the motel instead of getting back on the road. Werewolf's been waiting for a few hundred years. It can wait a couple of days longer.

"Not so fast," I say, when he settles down with his laptop. "Hold the research for a minute, geek boy. I need to check your injuries first."

"Dean, I'm fine."

"Fine like that time in Indiana when that poltergeist put a breadknife through your shoulder and you forgot to tell me about it?"

"That was years ago, Dean! I was sixteen!"

"Yeah, that wasn't so bad because you weren't so overgrown then so I could haul your ass back to the Impala when you collapsed from blood loss. Now stop arguing and let me see and then you can do whatever you want."

"Whatever I want?" There's a playful edge to Sam's voice that's been absent from it for so long I'd almost forgotten what it sounds like.

"Yeah. Except anything I tell you not to do."

"Dean!"

"Quit stalling, Sam. If I have to do it by force, I will."

Sam makes a face and sits on the bed. I have to help him off with his T-shirt, which doesn't take long once I've pointed out that he can either let me do it and get to his research quickly, or spend all day trying to do it himself and get to his research never.

The injuries are healing. Nothing looks infected. I mop up a bit of blood, change a couple of bandages, and pat his shoulder.

"See, Sammy? That wasn't so bad."

While he gets back to his laptop, I settle down to clean the guns. I have a feeling that this thing – and with everything that's been happening, I still don't know the details – is going to need some heavy-duty firepower.

"Hey, Sam?"

"Yeah?"

I open my mouth to ask for more information on what he's found, but my eyes fall on the pistol I'm taking apart, and I have a sudden flash of the demon's gun disintegrating to nothing the previous day.

"Dean?"

"Sammy, you..." I hesitate, not wanting it to sound like an accusation. "You did that, didn't you? To her gun."

Sam nods without a word, eyes shadowed.

"Why then?" is my next question, and the minute I hear it, I know it's come out wrong. What I meant was Why didn't you something sooner and save yourself a lot of pain and me a lot of worrying? but Sam, from the look on his face, has heard Why didn't you tell me earlier that you're still a supernatural freak so I could get the hell away from you?

And just like that, he closes himself off again.

"No," I say quickly. "I didn't mean – I mean, I wasn't saying – I'm not blaming you, Sammy." Damn it damn it damn it. Too late, Dean. "It's not your fault." Yeah, that makes it sound like he has some awful disease. "That is... I just..." Something. Say something. Say something to salvage this or it's all going straight back downhill. "I trust you, Sam." Oh God. Oh God. This isn't working. Sam's just looking at me like he doesn't believe a word of it. "Did you exorcise them, too?" Oh, well done, Dean. Now he looks like you've accused him of torturing baby animals.

"No." One word, brittle, choked out, and what the hell do I do now?

"Tell me about the werewolf, Sam." Tell me about the werewolf, and maybe while you're talking about it you'll forget what I said and I can pretend this whole conversation never happened.

Right, because that's going to happen.

Sam launches into an explanation, and I try to make sense of the maps and books and newspaper articles he's shoving at me, and it's almost like old times except that yesterday he was close to being Sammy but today he's all Sam.

Two days and a thousand miles later there's no improvement.

Sam's better, of course, healing nicely and well enough to sit in the passenger seat and stare moodily out the window. The silence is getting to me, though. It's not the I'm pissed at you so I'm not talking to you until you apologize silence. That I can deal with. It's the I give up and I'm not even going to try anymore silence.

I swallow, thinking of all the times we've argued over the years. We've had some serious fights, even when we were kids.

As soon as Sam was old enough to understand the concept of arguing it seemed like he started doing it every chance he got. The amount of time we spent in the backseat of the Impala or in some motel room, sitting as far away from each other as we could, driving Dad crazy because we wouldn't even look at each other...

Sometimes Dad made us apologize to each other when the oppressive silence really got to him. That was always only a temporary truce, though, and it didn't take long for it to disintegrate into an argument again. The real peace always came later, when I sat in an armchair with Sam's favourite book very visibly on the table next to me, and he slunk in from whatever corner he'd been sulking in to look up at me with that melting gaze (and it was even more lethal when he was four) until I relented and lifted him onto my knee.

When we got old enough not to want the proximity – actually, when Sam got old enough, because no matter what I told him I didn't mind rocking him to sleep until he got so big that it was physically painful – which, Winchesters being Winchesters, was just a couple of years later, it would be the chair next to mine that Sam slipped into and a friendly jab on the arm he got instead of a cuddle, and eventually the book was replaced by pancakes and then by beer. But there was always something on the table, and he always came.

I glance at him, and wonder if the answer could be that simple.

I consider stopping at the next bar... But no. Sam's not fully recovered yet, and I'm not taking chances with him. He gives me enough heart attacks without that.

Tomorrow, then. Tonight I'll just get us to a motel. Some food and rest is bound to make us both feel better. If Sam's still not talking to me tomorrow, I'll drag him to a bar. Maybe I'll even see if I can find a bookstore that stocks Dr Seuss; if nothing else it'll result in the bitchface.

I stop at the first motel I see: it's a little seedy, even by our standards, but we're both tired enough not to care. Sam's been dozing in the passenger seat for the past hour, and I don't really feel like driving anymore tonight. The silence has been getting almost solid; it feels like even the Impala is sulking at me. Which is really unfair. At least Sam has something to complain about.

I get our stuff out and toss it in the room before I go back for Sam. He wakes up when I open his door, blinking at me sleepily.

"What happened?"

"We're stopping for the night. Come on."

I reach down for him, and in the first few moments of disorientation he lets me ease him out of the car and walk him to the motel room with a hand at his elbow. At the door he shakes himself and pulls away.

"I'm fine, Dean."

Looks like we'll be hitting that bar tomorrow, after all. Maybe I can surprise him with a vanilla latte.

The next morning things still haven't improved, and they only get worse over the course of the day. Sam's sulking. It's never lasted this long before, except that one time when he was at Stanford, and that hardly counts because we weren't even in the same state. (And when we were... Well, Sam never knew about it.) Before Stanford – sometimes Sam stayed mad at Dad for days on end, but not at me.

When I suggest the bar he shrugs. Bad. Very bad. If he'd rolled his eyes or made a face or said something snarky about my upstairs brain I would've been happy. But indifference is never a positive sign, especially not where Sam's involved.

I drive us to the nearest bar I can find that isn't too crowded. Sam walks away from me as soon as we're inside, locates a small table in a corner and settles down with an encyclopaedia-sized book on werewolf lore.

That's perfectly normal, of course. Sam has never understood the point of bars; sitting at tables reading up on things that no other human being could possibly care about – well, OK, werewolves are kind of cool, but the rest of the stuff he reads – is what Sam does at bar. He could be in a singles joint surrounded by twenty-year-old female gymnasts and he'd sit there making notes in the margins of newspaper articles.

That's perfectly normal... So why does it suddenly bother me?

It doesn't matter – no, that's not true; it does matter, but since I can't do anything about it right now I might as well enjoy my beer.

Besides, this is starting to annoy me. I actually thought we were making progress – hell, we were making progress – so where exactly does Sam thinks he gets off sulking at me for days on end and not even telling me why? I mean, all I did was ask him a question, and a pretty natural question under the circumstances. I didn't say anything to suggest that I thought he shouldn't have done it or that I didn't believe him.

And I've apologized at least a dozen times.

The problem is that I don't even think me asking Sam whether he exorcised the demons is the real issue here. But I don't know what the issue is, and my idiot brother won't tell me. I'm not saying he doesn't have cause to be angry with me – I can think of at least a dozen reasons for him not to want to talk to me – but how does he expect me to do anything about it if he won't even tell me what he's angry about?

I don't know what to do, and this is not fair. I'm Dean Winchester. I blast demons and hack the heads off vampires and do all the cool things that would impress the girls if I could tell them about them. Dealing with girly stuff is supposed to be Sam's job. Sam knows when we need to have a talk. Sam knows when I need him to tell me I'm being a jerk and when I need him to sit and listen and just be there. Sam also knows that I don't know a damn thing about this, and I'll do whatever it takes to get him to forgive me for doing such a miserable job of being a big brother, but he has to tell me what it's going to take.

Sam knows. And he's sitting there drinking what looks like cranberry juice and pretending he doesn't know me.

And suddenly enough's enough. I know we screwed up – damn it all, I know I screwed up – but after everything we've been through together, the least he owes me is a normal conversation, a conversation that doesn't involve werewolves, hunting or badly injured baby brothers. I mean, one messed-up year can't undo the twenty-six that went before it. If this is my comeuppance for telling Sam I didn't know if I could forgive him...

Well, I can't say it's unfair, not now that I know what it did to Sammy. (I'd love to say it's partly down to Bobby and Cas for not understanding Sam, but what's the point of lying to myself? Sam wouldn't have cared what anybody else said if he'd only been sure of me.) So, yeah, I screwed up, let Sammy down, all of that.

But if he thinks I'm going to let it go at that, then Lucifer's managed to knock out whatever sense he had.

I put down my empty shot glass – not too sure how many I've had, but Sam can drive. I lay down enough money to cover my drinks and Sam's girly red stuff and go for my brother.

He looks up when I get close to him, but he doesn't have time to react before I slam the book shut and heave him unceremoniously to his feet.

"Dean?"

"We're leaving."

Sam grabs the book, which I would just as soon abandon in the bar because when we get back to the motel I don't want him fobbing off a conversation with some pansy excuse like research, and takes a step back. "Dean, what –?"

"Come on, Sammy. We're leaving." I consider grabbing him and hauling him out by force, but although he's still a little stiff from what the demons did to him, he's bigger and heavier than I am and I don't think I want to test whether I can overpower him if he really decides to kick up a fuss. "Get moving. We have stuff to do."

"Like what? The job isn't due for another week."

"Other stuff. Come on, Sam, don't be such a pain in the ass. We have to go. I'll even let you drive."

"Dean –"

I lean in close. "You don't come with me now, Sammy, I'll have to prolong this argument, and then all these people are going to think we're having a lovers' spat."

"Dean!"

I shrug and grin. "Easy way or hard way, kiddo. Your choice."

Sam glares bloody murder, but he follows me out of the bar.

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