A/N: Sorry for the delay. My Document Manager utterly ceased functioning. Since early Thursday I have tried to upload this about two hundred times. Grrr.

I don't own anything Supernatural.

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They were back in the motel room and Sammy had moved to the grimy window that overlooked the parking lot, but he wasn't really seeing anything, wasn't focused on anything. While they were finally squarely in the present, Sammy was still focused on the past: Dean's past.

He was astounded by how much he didn't know. If you had asked him last week if he knew his brother inside and out, the answer would have been an unhesitating 'yes!' and he would have been utterly assured that he knew all there was to know. Which after his 'lessons' was abjectly not the case. He apparently didn't know his brother at all.

Well, that wasn't true. He did know his brother; he still knew Dean probably better than any other living breathing human being on the planet – barring, of course, the occasional non-living, non-breathing figments of literary imagination – but he had fallen into the trap of believing what he saw, and of only seeing what he wanted to see. One of the first lessons their father had taught them, one of the most basic tenets of survival, was camouflage, blending in. And Sam had forgotten that Dean excelled at being what people expected, including him. Especially him. And their father. Dean filled the big brother role and the good son role so well, that both Sam and John were guilty of assuming that that was all there was. But as Chris had taken such self-satisfied glee in pointing out, there was more to Dean than meets the eye. Much more.

He was smarter, obviously, than Sam gave him credit for, and way more devious too. With the blinders removed, Sam cast an eye over many of their interactions and games and playtimes, and realized that Dean had been working survival and hunting lessons into the mix for as long as he could remember. And not only that but Dean was subtly subverting all of their father's training by easing up on the youngest Winchester and by allowing as many opportunities for Sam to be his precious 'normal'. He tried to let Sam have as many untainted by paranormal moments as possible while still keeping Sammy safe.

He'd never appreciated what a balancing act his big brother's life had been. Dean had had to juggle school and home and hunting; he'd had to learn to manage taking care of Sammy, cooking and doing laundry, studying for tests and homework, and learning how to identify and nullify different spirits, demons and possessed persons. And he'd been the primary caregiver and patch-er-upper for Sammy way more than any normal big brother. And in later years he'd been the buffer between the two warring Winchesters and had had to work hard to keep the family together – a task he'd ultimately failed at when Sam left for college. He had also somehow had to plot his own life and make his own mark, a feat which he hadn't quite managed as he'd always seen his primary role as defined by his brother and father.

And he didn't seem to want more. He didn't feel colossally gypped. He didn't hate their dad, their lifestyle or the fact that they had no lives outside of hunting. He didn't miss being 'normal', whatever that was. He hadn't wanted to go to college – Sam really didn't understand that one.

But if Chris was to be believed, Dean didn't want more, didn't feel gypped, and didn't hate their dad because he had what he wanted. He had his family. What was left of his family was alive and well and he'd had a large hand in keeping it that way. Family came first – even fucked-up, obsession-driven, demon-killing, credit card-scamming, just plain warped family came first. Hunting let Dean remain with his family, it let Dean protect his family, and having to take care of Sam and often John wasn't a pain-in-the-ass as it meant they were still there to take care of. Sam supposed it was because that before today his mother wasn't a real person to him that he'd never really appreciated how lucky he was that no other thing or monster had yet deprived him of any more of his family. He had largely taken his family for granted.

And he'd had the gall to tell Dean that because he was only four when their mother had died that he didn't know what loss was, didn't understand what drove Sam and John. Fuck. Dean's whole life had been coloured by Mary's death too: he'd just reacted by clinging to the family he had left, and by doing everything he could to make sure their family worked and stayed together, stayed safe. Shit.

Sam's life might not have been normal, but he'd grown up in a world of certainty that Dean had never had. Sam had grown up knowing that his father and brother would be there for him, would answer his endless questions, would teach him what he needed to know, and would do everything in their power to keep him safe. He'd never doubted his place in their small, hunting-focused family, or worried that it would all change tomorrow – he'd never lived with the uncertainty and fear that Dean had learned very early on, and had never let go of.

Sure he'd had that assumption that they'd always be there tested several times: the time when he was nine and thirteen-year old Dean had been all but skewered by a possessed crow-bar-wielding carpenter came to mind. As did the time an energy depleting succubus had almost drained Dean dry and it had taken three awful days for Dean to even respond, let alone wake up. But he'd never really believed in Dean's mortality until he'd been shaken by the shape-shifter's corpse, and Dean's electrocution had definitely brought the point home for him. Both his father and brother had always seemed invincible to him, and even seeing the various injuries over the years and learning to stitch some of the worst of those injuries up himself hadn't really shaken his belief that his family would always be there. Somehow.

As much as Sam despaired of being the young one in the family, the truth was that he was always protected, looked out for and watched over. And being the young one had definitely allowed him to escape many of the responsibilities and experiences that Dean had had no choice but to shoulder: experiences like Morse. Man was he glad he hadn't had to face decisions like that. Growing up had been hard enough: Chris had forced him to see how much worse it could have been.

What really got Sam though was the fact of how little of his brother's obstacles that he even knew about. Dean spent every moment of his life protecting Sammy both physically and emotionally. All the things that Dean had been forced to deal with and worry about had never even appeared as blips on Sam's radar: all the mundane things like how to get homework done while watching Sammy and getting ready for a hunt; whether they had enough money for groceries all those times when John was gone. Dean had kept his worries to himself, not wanting to burden Sammy with things he couldn't control or fix.

Sam suddenly wondered what Chris hadn't shown him. Sure he'd said that Dean had never sold himself, had never faced another Morse, but what choices had he had to make to keep Sam safe and fed and looked after. What other sacrifices didn't Sam know about?

Because the one thing that Chris hadn't needed to show Sam, the one thing that Sam knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, was that his brother would do anything for him. Anything. Without hesitating, flinching or thinking twice. Not only did family come first, but Sam came first. Always had, always would. On Dean's scale of importance, Sam was first, John was next and whatever Dean wanted for himself came a distant third. Dean was by no means perfect, but he never put what he wanted ahead of what was needed to keep his family safe and, relatively speaking, content. It's just how he was, and it was a trait that both John and Sam had come to rely on, come to expect and take for granted. Dean was the steady, reliable one who could be trusted to do what needed to be done and get on with it: it made him a great soldier and an awesome older brother. He really was the glue in their little triumvirate. He was what made their twisted trio tick.

Sam still couldn't believe he hadn't wanted to go to college though.

He'd had a perfect opportunity to escape, a perfect out, and he'd just ignored it, just thrown it aside in favour of buying his car and continuing with the hunt. And even having seen the memory of Dean's justification for not going, having heard him say that it didn't have as much to do with leaving the volatile combination of John and Sam to cope on their own, Sam knew that the fact that thirteen-year old Sam and their increasingly obsessed father were at odds more and more with Sam questioning the hunt, their lifestyle and most of John's decisions at every turn, had to have factored heavily into Dean's choice. Dean was all about family, and even the specter of his own death before he was thirty couldn't …

Wait. Hold up. His own death? Before he was thirty? What the fuck..?

"Dean's going to die before he's thirty? What the hell is up with that? Just because he decided not to go to college, because he decided to keep hunting? That's not right, that's not fair. That's…"

"That's part of the reality that's Dean's been living with every day for the last ten years." Chris cut off Sam's diatribe. Chris now looked like Giles in his tweedy librarian phase from the early seasons of Buffy, and was speaking in a calm rational tone, his cultured British accent more pronounced. "Do you want to know how your brother can live, knowing the exact date and time he'll die? He was pretty shook up when we told him, but he's managed somehow. I'll give you a hint: it's the same way he's lived every day since his mother died. He's lived every day not expecting anything, not even expecting that both you and your father will necessarily be there when he wakes up, so he has had to make the most of every minute he does have. And so he makes the best of a very difficult situation and he just adapts to whatever environment he's in and tries to make things as smooth and painless, and in your case, as normal, as possible. It's all he knows how to do.

"He keeps expecting the rug to be pulled out from under him, so when it isn't he's happy and grateful. Which mean that the things that you think that he must think are a burden and onerous, are actually things and chores that he revels in and savours each moment of being a family and being together as he knows it could all disappear, like that.

"So, are you listening here, Sammy? You were never a burden, you were never a chore – yes you were a pain-in-the-ass, and a sometimes utterly normal pesky younger brother, but Dean wouldn't have changed a moment of it – okay maybe the moment when you threw up on the girl he was trying to impress in tenth grade – but he loves being part of your family as weird and un-normal as it is. And even though he didn't have a choice about hunting, he worked hard at it as it was something that the family did together and if he did it well, it meant that you'd all be alive to do it together for that much longer. It was a win-win situation for him.

"And I'm not The Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come, I only do the past, so I don't know if Dean's best before date has been changed or altered already or what will happen to him in the future. But we, my siblings and I, never undertake this process if a change can't be affected, and while 'Bob' isn't here to tell us, I think that understanding and believing in your brother will be enough to keep you together long enough to push that expiration date back by several years. I'm guessing here, as I don't know the future, but I believe that if you don't give up on your brother, you'll both live longer."

Sam looked stunned again. It was hard for him to accept that Dean was content in their crazy quest, that he wasn't bitter or angry at their dad for robbing him of a carefree childhood of forcing him into a mold whether he liked it or not.

But Dean didn't hate John, he liked hunting and he loved his family. In his own way Dean was happy. Hunting wasn't Sam's thing, it was something he did as a means to finding the piece of hell-spawn that killed Jess, but it wouldn't be what he'd do forever.

He might however do it until Dean had safely turned thirty… it was only another three years away…

It was something to think on. He didn't know quite what to make of it all. He wasn't sure what he'd say to Dean the next time he saw him. How to acknowledge all that Dean had done for him, how to say thank you and I'm sorry without turning it into a dreaded chick-flick moment. He turned away from Chris, and turned back towards the window…

"Wha…?" Sam stared at his bed, at his pillow, stunned yet again in a very short time. But stunned in a good way. A very good way. Sam could feel the grin forming on his lips, threatening to overtake his entire countenance. There were Mickey Mouse ears on his bed… which could only mean…

Disney World. They were going to Disney World. To a place Dean would normally have avoided like the plague, citing that anyone who voluntarily dressed up as a giant mouse had to be possessed. They were going to Disney World. For his birthday.

Because Dean did love his little brother, and Dean understood his little brother and Dean would do anything for his little brother: including braving the crowds the line-ups and the larger than life Donald Ducks to give his brother a piece of normal, a perfectly ordinary couple of days out of their screwed up world.

Apparently the dreaded chick flick moment would start with a huge hug and some Mickey Mouse ears.

Sam's grin became a full-fledged smile as he tried to imagine Dean in mouse ears… He laughed out loud as he turned back to Chris, hoping for the final favour – and he finally recognized the gift he'd been given for what it was: the almost unheard of opportunity to truly see his family, and finally an almost impossible chance to get to know his missing mother. It was the chance of a lifetime.

Sammy couldn't wait.

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TBC