One more chapter after this one! :)

Thanks to everyone who followed and I warn that the next chapter will be the reason for the rating.

This could have been the last chapter, but I felt the need to continue and round it out just a tiny bit more.

I hope you like it.

Ch. 10

Dean decides to walk the gauntlet before breakfast. Make sure Sam doesn't get sick with the anxiety. He knows for a fact that with the way his brother's stomach is still getting used to food again, it wouldn't take much to make it rebuke breakfast if they ate first.

Rolling off the couch, he stretches his back and turns on the coffee maker so it's done when they are. Going into the bedroom, he sits at the end of the bed and puts a hand to Sam's leg. "Hey." He shakes it a little. "Wake up."

Sam groans, sitting up to look over his shoulder. "Yeah?"

Dean motions for him to sit up, hands moving to his lap.

"Dean?"

It had been a long few days since the hunt. From the hospital to now, Dean's carefully thought about what to say. Now, he sits on the edge of the bed by Sam's feet and looks down at his hands until Sam says his name.

Sam speaks up again when Dean doesn't answer. "Dean, what's wrong?"

It takes Dean another minute to gather his words. "I'm not very good at this. You of all people know that. But for you… I'm going to do my best." He finally looks up to see Sam staring questioningly at him.

Eyebrows furrowed, Sam tilts his head.

Dean takes a deep breath, and takes the plunge. "You've been waiting a long time for someone to listen to you. To notice what's going on with you. And I think it's about time that someone did." When he sees tears well up in Sam's eyes, he reaches out to lay his hand on Sam's ankle through the blanket. A small point of reassuring contact. "Talk to me. I'm ready to listen."

The word 'floodgates' don't even begin to describe what opens then. Words just start pouring out of his mouth in spurts and sobs. How walking back to the Impala alone that day brought back so many horrible memories. How not having a body to even claim and not know what happened made everything seem so hopeless. How he researched how to fix the Impala so he could do it himself and keep someone else's grubby hands from touching what Dean cares for most.

He goes through the month before he met Amelia. How he just drove, ending up at a new bar almost every night if he didn't pull over to pass out in exhaustion first. He goes through the wreck with the dog. How he was a little drunk and a lot depressed and didn't see the dog run into the road until it was too late and almost wrapped the car around the tree to keep from killing something else.

"Story of my life," he interjects.

Dean flinches. It goes unnoticed as Sam continues.

He finally gets to how that accident had sobered him up right quick enough to get the dog to the vet where he finally met Amelia. Through the major parts of the year where she was the only reason he wasn't drunk, she was the only reason he wasn't dead, and she was the only reason he didn't go through with trying to find a way to get dead because there was no possible way to get Dean back this time with no idea what happened.

Through the whole thing, Dean is a comforting weight on his ankle. Even if he can't look at Sam for some parts, for fear of losing it to tears or to anger, he never moves his hand. In the end, he's hating himself for taking this long to see how underneath the 'normal' Sam pulls on, he's still falling apart because Dean hadn't taken the time to put him together again. And then it gets worse.

"And I'm sorry I didn't look for you," Sam is sobbing now, finally reaching out to Dean with a hesitant hand. "I was a mess and it all seemed so hopeless and I didn't have anyone, I didn't know where you were or if you hadn't just exploded with Dick. I just… I can only take losing you so many times…"

Dean finally closes the distance then, wrapping his arms around Sam's shoulders and not even feeling a bit annoyed when tears start soaking his shirt where Sam tucks his face into his chest. "Easy, Sammy. Easy. I'm sorry. So sorry, little brother. I should have let you explain sooner. It's alright. I understand. Shhh…"

But Sam keeps on sobbing, the tears loose now until they're gone. "But you can't understand. You can't understand how I… I couldn't even find out what happened to you. Why I didn't even try. And I get it. I'm a pathetic excuse of a brother. Of a person. Because I didn't-"

"Hey." Dean cuts him off with a growl. "I don't want to hear another word like that. You hear me?" He squeezes Sam to his chest as if he can protect him from all of the bad thoughts. "I shouldn't have said that Benny has been a better brother. I'm sorry. I didn't mean it. I don't mean it. I was angry. But now… I had no right to be. There was probably nothing you could have done. Even if you did know I was in purgatory. But you didn't. I should have got that."

Sam shakes his head. "You couldn't have. And…" He loses his words then.

Dean shushes him, rubbing his back. "And what?"

Sam shakes his head. "It doesn't matter."

"Sam. It matters. You matter. I'm not going to ignore you like that again. God, when those people looked at me like I was the reason you were so sick…" He shakes his head. "And in a way, I was."

Sam pulls back now, shaking his head. "No. You weren't. I haven't been eating well since you disappeared. I just…"

"It's been worse since I got back," Dean says lowly, leaning forward to get Sam's attention. "I know that. Now that I've thought about it, I can see you've barely eaten at all. And I know that Amelia fed you when you were with her, right?"

Sam nods once, not looking at him.

"And I didn't catch it. I know that when things go wrong, the first thing to go is your appetite."

Sam shrugs.

"What were you going to say?"

Sam's entire body tenses. "It doesn't matter," he murmurs.

"Sam."

"Dean. Please."

"You can't keep going like this. Do you think I can't see what's going on? You're drowning yourself, Sam. We aren't truly going to be able to fix this if you don't let me in again." Dean reaches out, ignoring Sam's slight flinch to take his face in his hands. "Sam. Let me in."

"You'll hate me," he chokes out.

"Never." He runs his fingers through Sam's hair, pushing it out of his face. "I'm still here, aren't I? After everything?"

Sam sniffs, eyes looking away. He grits his teeth, trying to keep the new tears at bay. He's so tired of crying.

"Easy, Sam. It's okay."

Sam shakes his head. "It's not. It's not okay because you were down there fighting for you life everyday and I didn't even look for a way to save you. And when you got back, I just…" Sam folds in on himself in shame, looking so small for someone so big. "I almost felt disappointed."

Dean feels that like a punch to his gut.

Sam won't look at him. "You were back. Again. And I'll never know for how long. I don't know when I'll lose you again. When I won't be able to save you from something else. I thought I was losing you again already when you were with Benny taking care of those other vampires and didn't answer your phone. I got there as fast as I could and you… you could have been dead. I don't know how many more times I can stand you dying."

The fist around Dean's heart loosens when he thinks back to how Sam was after the Mystery Spot case. How crazy he was for a few days when it came to Dean leaving his sight. How every morning, he would look for Dean first, as if making sure he was still there. He never got the full story, but he could see how it tore Sam up. This is exactly the same thing.

He pulls Sam back to him. "I'm not going anywhere, Sammy."

"You don't know that," he murmurs into his shoulder.

"I do."

Sam shakes his head. "You don't. And with all of this demon tablet crap…"

"We'll figure it out. Right? And we'll get better. We'll fix this. Us. And we'll work our way towards getting you better and working together again. Okay? I'm done chewing you out. For now."

Sam smiles a tiny bit at that. "Fair enough."

Dean chuckles. "You want to try and eat something?"

Sam sits for a minute, looking down at his hands. Then nods. "Yeah. I think… I think I'm actually hungry."

Dean smiles. "Good. That's real good Sam."

"Dean?"

"Yeah?"

"Why…" he shrugs, looking out the window, "why did you kiss me? Back at the cabin? It's just…"

Dean nods. He understands. He hasn't made a move to repeat the performance and has been sleeping on the couch, seemingly to make that clear. "I wanted to. It felt like the right thing to do." He shrugs. "And I was a little selfish. I missed it. But… now that I know you're okay… we need to make sure we are okay before… if, we're going to get into that again."

Sam nods, looking down at his lap again. "Okay. I… understand."

Dean reaches out, touching his arm. "That was okay… right?"

Sam huffs out a tired laugh. "Yeah." He finally looks up through his bangs. "I missed it too."

Dean gives him a soft smile. "Okay. First, breakfast. Then, we start looking for another job. In the meantime, we start figuring out ways to help us get better. As a team."

Sam smiles a little back. "Okay."

"Oh." Dean pauses standing up. "Just… I want to let you know that I acknowledge the fact that… you gave up Amelia. Obviously you stayed. And plan on staying. So… just wanted to say… I'm sorry for that. And… thanks for sticking around. At least until this is all over."

Sam shrugs, standing.

Dean lets it go, turning to start breakfast. Obviously the Amelia thing will be touchy for a while. He respects that. They don't talk anymore for a while.

"So…" Sam starts as he's looking through the paper after breakfast, "a riddle."

"Oh boy." Dean turns to him from the couch. "Lay it on me."

"How does someone get a crushed skull in a locked apartment with nothing heavier inside than her flat screen TV which was untouched?"

Dean thinks a minute. "No idea."

Sam chuckles. "Me neither. Wanna find out?"

It was a simple salt and burn. Two days total to take care of it. Vengeful spirit and whatnot. Driving from that case is when Dean brings up Amelia again. Offers a night of fun. Wanting to pull Sam out of that slight depression he still seems to be in. His stress over what the demon tablet could tell them. Then Garth called them and assigned them their next case.

It wasn't until after solving the LARPing problem that Sam answers him.

He thinks back to what Dean said at Rufus's cabin. We need to make sure we are okay. "Having fun won't help me. It'll help both of us." The crooked smile that spreads across his face is genuine. He knows this is just the thing to help them with that. Judging by the grin that Dean almost can't keep from his face, his brother agrees with him too.

It's running onto that fake battlefield side by side, that Sam remembers what it's like to fight so seamlessly with Dean. It may have been a fake battle. It may not have been life or death. But it was the first time in a long time that they had so much fun standing back to back, fighting for some sort of victory. Together.

He had to tell Dean to take it easy on the poor civilians sometimes. He had to put up with the never ending stream of movie quotes (which he sometimes answered with his own) and quick witted responses to threats from the opposing team. But it was probably the most fun he'd had in a while. Dean too.

When they were done winning (Charlie thanked them profusely for their help) it was Dean who wiped off Sam's face, just like he was the one to put it on. And vice versa. He yanked the string that held Sam's hair back out when they were done, teasing him about his little pony tail and grinning at the put upon sigh that told him Sam knew he'd never hear the end of this one.

It was a step in the right direction for both of them. Of course, that's why after that, they get hit with a few tough cases. Then, Kevin translates the demon tablet and it all heads straight to hell.