Disclaimer: Not mine.

This is for Cheryl, who wanted something gooey after 6.14, with thanks for reading my stuff and listening to my ranting!

Thanks to Malleus Beneficarum, twomoms, Kathryn Marie Black, godsdaughter77, cold kagome, doyleshunny, criminally charmed, angeleyenc, cookjar, BranchSuper, SandyDee84, KKBELVIS and TinTin11 for the reviews!

Summary: Post-6.14 the boys have a chat.

As Long as You're Here

I should've known how I'd find Sam.

I come into our motel room with donuts and coffee and there he is, sitting back in one of the chairs staring into space with a little line between his eyebrows. It's a classic Sam Winchester brooding expression, and right now that's my cue to snap him out of it. I don't want Sam brooding. When we're not on the job, I don't want him thinking about anything other than – well, I don't know what would give Supergeek happy thoughts. A library, maybe?

Whatever. The brooding needs to end.

I put the coffee on the table and offer him a donut. He makes a face.

"Come on, dude," I urge. "Eat it and you can have your latte. I asked her to put cinnamon in it."

"I can't believe you're trying to bribe me with coffee," Sam says, and thank God he's saying something.

"I can't believe you need to be bribed to eat a donut," I retort. "Did Dad and I forget some vital part of your upbringing, Sam? Or were you just born without taste buds?" Sam makes to reach past me for the coffee, but I grab it before he can. "No, Sam. I'm serious. Look, if you don't want the donuts we'll get you something else, but you need to eat."

"I'm not hungry."

"Tough. You weren't hungry last night, either, and you're not getting caffeine on an empty stomach."

"Dean …"

In the end he eats the donut. Not until I threaten to tie him down and force-feed him, true, but he eats it. And then drinks the coffee. It seems to settle him, and he goes back to researching our current job. He's not 100% in it, and he's still brooding a little, but it's a small victory.

I go to bed first. Sam's up with his laptop and another cup of coffee. I wish he'd get some sleep, because he looks exhausted, but I know there's no use saying anything to him. He'll go to bed when he goes to bed, and I'll let him sleep in tomorrow.

When I wake up, the bedside clock tells me it's four in the morning. The room's quiet. And dark. And, except for me, empty.

I'm on the verge of panicking, but the window's open and I spot Sam outside. He's sitting on the steps leading up to our door nursing something in a cup. I can't tell what it is but I hope desperately that he's not got hold of hard liquor from somewhere because the last thing we need now is Sam getting drunk. Sam drunk is the only thing broodier than Sam sober.

I get up, put on my jacket and shoes and go out. Sam's sitting on the bottom step, those long legs of his stretched out across the gravel path. This close I can smell what he's drinking – and finally something's going my way because it's just coffee. Coffee that's gone cold if he's been out here for any length of time, but still coffee and not tequila.

"Hey, Sammy."

There's no response. I wasn't expecting one.

I sit on the top step. It takes a minute, but eventually Sam shifts closer to me and lets his head rest on my knee. It's awkward – he's too tall for it to be comfortable for either of us. But then I feel the first tear splashing onto the fabric of my jeans and suddenly there are more important things to worry about than whether Sam's back will ache from this.

I don't tell him not to cry, because I have a feeling he needs it.

I grab him and tug him closer. Sam ends up sobbing into my jacket and I end up holding him like I did after Jessica, after Madison, after bloody Gabriel forced him to watch me die all those times.

When he finally calms down, I prod gently, "Sam? You want to talk about it?"

"I'm sorry."

"You can pay my dry-cleaning bill," I say lightly, and Sam shakes his head.

"Not that. Just… Lisa and Ben. I'm sorry."

"Well, don't be. It wasn't your fault."

"If you didn't have to worry about when I'm going to turn into a drooling idiot –"

"Shut up, Sam." There are some things that are not funny, some things we don't even joke about. Ever. "It isn't about you."

"Dean –"

"It's not." I give him a small push. He sits up and scoots back down, leaning his head on my knee again. If he's been remembering Hell then he needs human contact to anchor himself to reality – I know that better than anyone else. "It's true that I don't want to leave you on your own, but I could've persuaded Lisa to move into a place big enough for you to live with us, too."

"Yeah, because every girl wants her boyfriend's helpless little brother living with them."

"You're not helpless and I'm not saying Lisa would've loved the plan. But she might have gone with it if I'd promised that we'd both stay out of the life for good."

"You didn't even try, though."

"I couldn't. That's not me, Sam. It isn't just about wanting normal. A hunter can't retire to an apple-pie life. If you're going to retire, it has to be a cabin in the middle of nowhere. No cell phones, no Internet, no contact with the outside world."

"What are you talking about?"

"Look, the year I lived with Lisa, I didn't know or care what was happening to the world. All I cared about was what was happening to you and trying to find a way to bring you back."

"And now I'm back."

"You're back and you have your soul. Think about it. Let's say we retire tomorrow. If you wake up one morning and read a newspaper report about something that seems like our kind of problem, do you really think you'll be able to fold up the paper and go to a regular job and pretend you didn't see anything? You'll be able to just sit by and do nothing, knowing that every hour's delay might mean an innocent person dying?"

"You stayed out of it for a year."

"Because you weren't there. I was too busy trying not to turn into a miserable, sobbing mess to have time to worry about the jobs I wasn't taking."

Sam sighs. "I'm still sorry."

"For what?"

"That you couldn't have the life you wanted."

I reach out and muss Sam's hair. He leans up into the touch, and the fact that under most circumstances he'd be shoving me off him just makes it even more adorable.

Not that I'd ever tell him that.

"You had it for a year," Sam mumbles. "Normal, happy life. You could've had it longer."

"I had a normal life," I correct quietly. "You remember telling me you never really fit in at Stanford, Sam? Well, I didn't fit into Lisa's world. I tried, because I promised you I would, but I never did. I had to lie to everyone – lie about my past, about what I did, about why I wasn't in touch with any of my family… And that hurt more than I thought it would."

"So I guess we don't get normal."

"No, we don't. But we get for you to be alive with your soul. We get to kick some monster ass and we get to have each other's backs and go down fighting." Sam nods, but doesn't speak. "There anything else you need to tell me, Sammy?"

Because I know worrying about Lisa wasn't what caused the breakdown.

"No," Sam whispers, his voice shaking a little. There's a short pause and then, stronger, "No… I'm fine. As long as you're here."

"I don't have anywhere else to be."

We sit like that, Sam's head on my knee, my hand at the nape of his neck where he's still got the soft curls I remember from when he was three, and wait for the sunrise.

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