I only mention the new episode which hasn't aired yet because this story – for reasons I'd rather not get into – takes place after it. You know, those teleplay writers are really starting to annoy me.

Chapter Seven ; These Lonely Dreams Are Satisfying

There's a saying people use on cerebral cop shows, the kind of cop shows Sam couldn't remember because it was so long ago that he watched any, but he remembered how a cop would roll his eyes and say "Let's get out of here before the dancing bears show up". The detective or police officer or whoever it happened to be will say that because the setting the script writers threw him into is swarming with people; journalists, television crews, trail junkies, hair and make-up people for all the reporters there craving for the first comment from the accused, absolutely swarming with people.

On an small island such as Arrowsic, resting beneath the grey autumn clouds about to burst forth with their present of freezing rain, even one journalist and her cameraman was tantamount to a three ring, hee haw of a circus. It didn't help, either, that she looked like one of those real scrappy journalists. Sam would have bet his head to the devil that this one, this short brunette in a dress jacket and matching skirt, had waited for hours on the Sanders's front steps for a chance to speak with them about their dead son. That sickened Sam, how there were people like that walking around.

But, then again, what was he doing? He wasn't sitting on the hood of the Impala with his brother just for the fun of being soaked to the bone once the drizzle turned into a steady rain. Sam was encroaching on the opportune moment of making a set of parents feel even more depressed and lost and empty than they already were. That sickened him even more than anything else, made him feel like some kind of depraved monster.

Beside him Dean sighed, rolled his shoulders and in effect knocking into Sam. The younger brother was in a daze, body for the most part completely limp, and had Sam not had his feet planted firmly on the ground he might have made a crash meeting with the pavement. He didn't mind that, rolling down the grassy hill and colliding with the asphalt, because maybe he deserved to have the skin on his face peeled off. What kind of person dug his fingers into the injuries of hurting people, ripped their wounds wider and deeper and then poured salt into those new bleeding craters? Certainly not a good one and, though his intentions were of the utmost good, doing what he did to people called for a serious case of road rash.

"Are we going to talk about this?" Dean asked meekly, rubbing something into the ground with the toe of his boot. "I mean, it's been how many weeks and we haven't said a word about it yet."

Sam turned his head to the left and found that his brother, the King of Charisma, didn't want to make eye contact with him. That was a first, his brother avoiding one of the first rules of conversation, and it was an uncomfortable feeling. It was silly, but Sam's stomach seemed to twist up and dip itself into a vat of anxiety. If Dean Winchester suddenly didn't want to look at someone when he was talking to them, surely the world was about to end.

In all honesty, and usually Sam was pretty considerate about these kinds of things, seeing his swoon machine of a brother like this was pathetic. He had never seen Dean like this – folded up into himself, hunched over with his hands on either side of him for bracing (something Dean would never do in his right mind, not when the oils on the human hand might do so much damage to car wax), and staring so hard at his shoes it looked like he was trying to shoot lasers out of his eyes – and it was scary.

All the years Sam had known him, Dean had never been the kind of man to show a whole lot of his feelings. If Dean had ever cried, Sam had never known about it and had always assumed that Dean was physically unable to shed tears or simply hid somewhere were he couldn't be intruded upon. If Dean had ever told someone that he loved them flat out, without witty remarks or enigmas or joking tones, Sam had never heard it. If Dean had ever once felt inadequate, insecure, or downright worthless, it had never shown – until now. And suddenly Sam wished that the old Dean was back, the hard nosed and bullheaded jerk who couldn't stop thinking about getting laid.

What did it mean for Sam if all of a sudden his brother had let down his defenses? Though he had let the world know on many occasions that he hated his brother, or at least hated his personality and void emotions, in reality Sam had always counted on that. Dean being Dean, the arrogant go-getter, had been the last stable and trustworthy thing in Sam's life and now that was gone, all gone….

Who was going to scream at him to breathe now, to come back into the world, to stop being such an ungrateful little pissface? Who was going to silently badger him about his nightmares if the old Dean was gone? Who was going to lay face down on the motel bed in his skivvies, act like he had been sleeping but let Sam in on the fact that Dean had really been watching his kid brother have bad dreams all night? Now who was going to hit on every last attractive waitress in every last eatery they went to?

The entire world was going to change now that Dean's walls had been breeched. The sun was going to die out, pitch the earth into everlasting blackness and evil and Sam was going to have to fight it all alone. He was going to lose everyone now, everyone, and there was no way he'd be able to handle that. His brother was going to become lost to him, just like his father, and he'd have to wander the streets by himself for the rest of his life. Alone.

On the verge of a full blown panic attack, Sam tried to stare the old Dean Winchester back into the waking world. His heart might have stopped beating, lungs might have finally shut themselves down forever, but all that really mattered was Sam not being thrown to the sharks with no one there with him. Dammit, he wasn't made to be abandoned, and if this is what Dean had felt like when Sam had run off to that Ivy League College of his then by God he should've fallen to the pavement and ripped his skin off after all.

Dean, rocking forward, sneezed – a probable effect of the cold evening or the drizzle – and locked onto his brother's eyes when he turned his head to the right. "Don't you hate when that happens, when you have to sneeze and you're sitting there for ten days before it actually comes?"

There was that unnamed feeling again, the one living deep within Sam's circulatory system that was far stronger than any kind of loathing ever created.

That filthy swagger was back, that jealously inducing smile, the damn shine in those hazel eyes. "What I mean to say, college boy," Dean went on as he placed his hands back onto either one his thighs, "is that you haven't said one word about what happened at that house since we drove away from there."

"Should I have?" Sam asked through a clenched jaw.

"Well, seeing as how you were the one who dragged me down there, how you being the perfect sibling made Missouri treat me like a five-year-old, and how I had to save your ass again…," Dean shrugged. "Yeah, I think that might have been a very good idea."

Sam scoffed, looked back toward the Sanders home at the woman reporter still on their tiny front porch with the microphone shoved through the front door. "It's a two way street, dude, you could have talked first," he stated.

"Once, just once I'd like to get through a conversation without any snide remarks. Remember how you almost killed me back at that asylum? Looked like you were enjoying it, too, but the least you can do for that is not mock me."

"But it's so easy to mock you, Dean," Sam replied. "Half the time you don't even know it's happening."

Dean slid of the Impala's hood and shook his head, snorted something like an annoyed bull. "Just because you went to that fancy college of yours on a full ride doesn't mean I'm stupid. Hell, some of the most intelligent and successful people in the world never went to college, some even dropped out of high school!"

"Why are you so touchy about everything? You know most of what I say I never mean, it's not like my main goal in life is to drive you down – I have better things to do with my time."

"There you go again! Look, Sammy, I know I say a lot of things to you, but at least I'm decent enough to not do it all the fucking time."

"You're talking to me about decency?" Sam laughed. "Please, next to you Ted Bundy's a saint."

The eldest Winchester brother had not once in his entire life held the gift of speech. He had never been one to be able to come right out any say what he meant, not if it involved any kind of real emotion – the kind every single one of his girlfriends had scorned him for never showing. But it wasn't like he never felt them, he was simply missing the piece in him that helped him find the words to express love, sadness, anything other than anger and spite in a public setting. If he could hide behind a corner and speak into an answering machine, he was a poet, if he could write a letter to someone (thinking whoever it was he was writing to was a fictional character) the words flowed from his pen with a feverish fluidity.

But something like this was lost on him. Here Dean was, standing beside his kid brother with the perfect chance to let all the words out, the sentences and paragraphs that had been building up over time, but they were blocked. Too much mass for such a tiny hole, that's what it was like to him. So all he could do was stand there, his mouth open for his uvula to freeze, and hope that either he or his brother would be able to change the subject.

"Dammit, Sammy, I'm your brother and I love you! How can you be so blind as to not see that?" The words echoed through Dean's skull cavern, but as always they never went anyplace else.

"If we wait around here any longer," Dean said with emotion too great for such a simple sentence, "it'll be too late to do anything."

Sam got to his feet. Just as he had always done it, he made sure his apology was laced somewhere in the tone of his reply. "Are you sure about this? Given the way Gweneth was acting, I wouldn't put it past these people to stay home tonight."

"We can't exactly switch to being police officers, can we? We'll just have to chance it, hope these parents are like any other grieving family and not want to sleep in the same house with their dead son's room just down the hall. For tonight, at least."

The Impala was parked lengthwise beside the east wall of an old, dilapidated barn on top of a small hill, at such an angle that no one from the street or on the river would be able to see it. Granted, their cover was a pretty moronic one, but Dean was loath to leave his baby left unattended in the parking lot of the Doubling Point Lighthouse (or anywhere else, for that matter) for an extended period of time.

The brothers gathered themselves when they observed the woman reporter and her cameraman getting into their van – slamming the doors with quite a bit of attitude – and driving off at a reckless speed for the small road. Following not too long after, the Sanders parents and what looked to be like a young daughter. They were walking together in the general direction of the lighthouse, which meant that if any of the family looked up at the barn they'd get a good if not shady look at the classic Chevy.

Dean, who had hurried over to the back side of the barn with his geek brother, patted at the left side of his jacket to make sure his father's journal was still in the inside pocket. "How long before those reporters come back, I wonder."

Sam frowned. "Honestly, I'd rather not know, but I have a feeling that tells me not very long at all."

"You and your feelings," Dean sighed.

"Maybe I'll be wrong about it this time."

Dean gave his brother one quick clap on the back. "Unlikely, but maybe it'll come to help us."

"I don't really want to tell you this, Dean, but we're going to need all the help we can get."

Fear replaced the irritatingly soft curves of Dean's face – how a horribly awkward kid who couldn't get a date to any of the middle school dances to save his soul could wind up looking like that…. "Another one of your premonitions, Sammy?"

Sammy, who had always though himself attractive (but not overly so as to make him say "How's it going, beautiful?" and kiss his reflection in the morning, unlike someone he knew), had always longed to have the kind of luck Dean had. Surely Dean Winchester had to have pleased Lady Luck something awful to have turned around from being that ugly a duckling, but on second thought… no amount of luck would be able to help the brothers now if Sam's feelings turned true.

"No, and I don't know whether to be thankful for that or not. It's just this, this comfort beneath all the anxiety and dread I've been feeling since we came here. I know it sounds ridiculous, but it's like I'm drawn to this place or something, like it's my home."

Dean's expression was gleaming and not because of the light rain, but from strained amusement. "Sleeping pills, Sammy. When we make it through this, I'm buying you a whole truck load of sleeping pills."

"If we make it though this."

&&&

It was a wonder the people on Arrowsic Island didn't get robbed of all their worldly possessions on top of having their family members killed.

As Sam had predicted, no one seemed to lock their doors. By the time the drizzle had pumped itself up to an actual rain, in less time than it took for Sam and Dean to wipe off their shoes on the mat on the back porch, they were inside the Sanders home. Apart from the fact that they were a little stupid for not locking up their house, it was a rather warm place that sucked the Winchester duo into its apple pie smelling atmosphere.

Dean slid the glass patio door shut behind him, unable to see very well in the darkness he had walked into. As his eyes adjusted to the lack of lighting in the kitchen, shimmering a faint green from the neon glow of the microwave and stove clocks, he stared at the back of Sam's curly head.

"What are you standing around here for?" Dean whispered, just in case there was an spit fire of a dog waiting in the basement to bite his off manhood – that and bark loud enough to make the neighbors suspicious. "The kid's bedroom is on the second floor, remember? He hadn't come down for breakfast."

Sam raised his right arm, waved impatiently with his hand.

"What? Are knifes going to come flying at me again?"

He could sense Sam making a face at him, could positively feel it.

With an eye roll, Dean crossed his arms across his chest and leaned back on his heels. "I'd kind of like to get away from the window," he muttered softly.

Turning around, Sam gave his brother a glare, mouthed at him to shut it.

Dean raised his eyebrows, waited for an explanation that this time, unlike at the lighthouse, came without having to ask.

"I thought I heard something, but over your heavy breathing I couldn't tell what it was," Sam clarified.

"But I wasn't breathing heavy," Dean said tentatively, a drop of panic dancing with his words.

Even in the dark Sam's face draining of color was highly noticeable, as well as the whites of his eyes as they widened well beyond their normal state. His mouth opened to say something, but nothing came out, and he turned his head to look a little too quickly around the room.

Dean laughed. "Just kidding, Sammy."

"You're such an ass," he spat. "Let's find Adam's room before you break something expensive."

Giggling like a school girl, Dean followed his brother through the kitchen and into the front hall. "Oh, c'mon, Sammy. It was funny." He started to pant heavily behind his brother's ear as they climbed the stairs to the second floor, but that didn't last long before he reverted back to tittering.

"Honesty, Dean, sometimes I wonder how we can possibly be related."

"It was funny!"

"You're a buffoon," Sam ranted. "They must've given you something at the hospital that destroyed your frontal lobe."

"It was funny, Sammy."

The kitchen, the entrance to the basement, and the stairway to the second story were all butted up against the side of the house nearest the old barn and waiting Impala. There was only one way for anyone to turn when they reached the second floor landing, and that was right. "You were the eighteen-year-old at the back of the room who giggled every time you heard the word teat in your senior year science class, weren't you? Of course you were, you're that goddamn immature."

"Funny, Sammy. You know, affording light mirth and laughter: amusing, seeking or intending to amuse. You're suppose to laugh."

"They switched me at birth," Sam continued on sourly, "I'm sure of it." He went down the hallway, aiming for the last door on the right: it screamed teenage boy, what with the No Trespassing sign and that Pussycat Dolls poster. "I was really born to a Russian physicist or something, one who's in the running for a Nobel Peace Prize, and his wife who writes plays. But some bonehead at the hospital made a mistake and I get stuck with you."

"I love you, too, Sammy," Dean replied happily, snorting one last time before his brother reached Adam's bedroom door.

Sam, after pulling his sweatshirt sleeve down to cover his hand, opened the door with a swift, rather perturbed kind of tug. There were stairs behind the door, steeps ones, but Sam didn't see them.

There was a man standing just inside the door, built like a turtle and as tall as one too, but to Sam he might as well have been King Kong's brother. This stranger filled the doorway, dressed in sky blue surgical scrubs and hat – stained with dark red splotches all over the place – with a dripping, blood covered saw held up in his right hand.

"Ah, Samuel Winchester. I wasn't expecting you so soon," he began, but Sam didn't listen to the rest of what the doctor wanted to tell him.

Letting out a howl of fright, Sam jumped backward and slammed himself into the wall. Either he kicked the door closed or the doctor did it for him, because the attic door with the Cabaret girls poster closed with a shotgun blast like cracking noise.