Chapter 24: Little Brothers.

Dean didn't go back to Sam's motel. He texted his brother, and then set a course for Rufus's cabin, taking the opportunity to drive through the night when the roads were empty of everything but his Baby and the beckoning trail of moonlight ahead. He wanted the time to think, and it would take him at least two days to get to the cabin.

The truth was, Bobby Mercer's story had shook Dean a bit. A lot of it, he knew, came down to how similar the Mercer brothers were to him and Sam. Isolated, outsiders, fiercely loyal to each other, driven by revenge, used to violence and all too familiar with the worst side of the human race. The people Sam and Dean met and helped didn't think about that much, Dean knew. They were grateful to be free of the ghost or the poltergeist, or the demon that had twisted their life into something they never wanted it to be. They were relieved it was over.

It was never over for the Winchesters. Sam and Dean had grown up doing triage on other people's fucked-upedness. Ghosts occur because of violent deaths, so almost every case was a lesson in the shit people do to each other. Little Sammy had been the family researcher. At an age when the most violence kids saw happened in their video games, Sammy already knew all there was to know about why people commit suicide, and all the ways to get it done. When his schoolmates were talking about killing each other out on the field at the next game, Dean was already up close and personally familiar with most of the ways and reasons people murdered each other. It's one of the reasons he never went out for any sports. Not only were he and Sam rarely in one town long enough to finish a semester much less a football season, but Dean was pounded on and did enough pounding of his own in real life, thank you very much.

Each of the Winchesters had their own way of coping with the relentless horror and hopelessness of it all. John Winchester drank, seriously and with single-minded determination, and spent long hours plotting revenge against the thing that had killed his wife. Dean fucked anything willing, and told himself he was like a special ops solider on a classified mission that saved innocent people. Sam Winchester read books and dreamed about a different life away from all the gore.

Huh. Thinking about it, it's possible that Sammy's had been the healthiest response to the kind of life they'd lived.

So Dean got it - the way Sam had latched on to the Mercer case - he did. Sam's family was broken, how could he resist a shot at fixing one just like it? And Dean recognized enough of himself in Bobby Mercer to understand why Sam would be drawn to the other man, and want to keep him around for awhile. He was on board with the whole Mercer "It's us vs. them" approach to life. Dean's thoughts drifted to Benny and he shifted uncomfortably. As substitute brothers went, once again Sam's solution had points over Dean's. Sam found a reflection of the brother he missed. Dean found someone to be…what? The brother he wished he had? He wondered what his Dad would have said. He wondered what Bobby - their Bobby - would have said.

Actually, no, he didn't. Idjit.

He could hear Bobby's voice so clearly in his mind that his hand automatically went to his breast pocket to touch the flask. But of course, the pocket was empty.

As the sky lightened to the east, Dean found a truck stop with a few cabins in the back and a diner that was already busy with the earliest of the early morning haulers. Dean took a seat at the end of the counter - not liking to sit with his back to the door, but also not quite up for sitting in a booth that didn't have a little brother sitting across from him bitching about the lack of low-cal options on the menu. He ordered the pancake special, with extra bacon, and drank down his cup of - surprisingly good - black coffee. He checked his phone, but there were no messages. "Going to the cabin," he'd messaged Sam. "Bobby's cool." As olive branches went it was really more of a twig with a couple of leaves on it, but Dean didn't think Sam would have listened to anything more emphatic, given how they'd left things. Besides, if he knew his little brother, Sam was busy trying to close the can of worms Dean had opened up for him when he sent him back to Texas in the first place. Sam wouldn't be back in touch until he'd fixed things with Amelia, one way or another. That was one thing about his little brother. When you had his attention, you had it one hundred percent. Sam never blew anybody off. The best Dean could do is let Sam know where he'd be. That was practically "Wish you were here" in Winchester speak.

Instead of making him sleepy, breakfast has re-energized him, so Dean got the waitress to put a slice of apple pie in a box for him to eat on the road (remembering at the last minute he'd dumped all his cash on Francie-not-a-stripper's tray, so thank god for credit card fraud), and gassed up his Baby, ready to get another full day's worth of driving in. As he set the pie on the passenger seat and put the key in the ignition, his phone buzzed. Dean fished it out to take a look.

"Okay."

It was Sam, finally replying to his text. Then a second message came through.

"Thanks for not getting into a fight…."

Dean frowned, because he had got into a fight last night and how had Sam found out? And why did he have the only little brother on the planet who texted in grammatically correct sentences anyway? The phone buzzed again.

"…with Bobby. "

Dean laughed, feeling hope not just bubble up inside his chest but actually spread out and settle in. He texted Sam back.

"Bitch."

And got an immediate response.

"Jerk."

Dean smiled, the weight of worry that had been pressing on him suddenly lifting away. Sure there was stuff to work through, but he and Sam would be okay. He started up the car and pulled out onto the road, determined to make Montana by the next day. The sun was shining, he had a full tank of gas, and the car smelled like apple pie. He and Sammy were talking. In Dean's world that was as good as it could get.

And a week later when the two of them were standing in front of each other in Rufus's cabin, wondering what the fuck had really gone down in their attempt to rescue Alfie-the-Angel, Dean was able to look Sam in the eye and make a real apology for the stunt he'd pulled that had sent Sam running back to Amelia. He was even able to say he understood why Sam had done what he'd done while Dean was fighting it out in Hell's suburb; say it, and mean it. Because ultimately Bobby Mercer had been right about that. Big brothers were supposed to watch out for their little brothers and keep them safe, not drag them into the shit. So if Sam had found "safe" then Dean wasn't going to get in the way of that, and he said as much while they were standing there trying to figure out "what's next?"

And Sam, listened. He listened, and then he chose. The one thing Dean had forgot while he was stewing over whether Sam still wanted to be family was that little brothers always followed their big brothers around, everywhere. A life with a girl and a dog and house, or sitting on a threadbare couch with his brother watching a game and eating chili from a can? It really was no contest.