Brady turned Sam's antique chair around and straddled it. He leaned his forearms on the back while Sam lay in a defeated heap on the mattress.

"So she bitched you out for saving her?"

Sam shrugged. "Kinda. I guess."

"See this is why you don't rush in to play white knight."

Sam rubbed at his temples. "Brady look I'm tired. If you've come to rub my nose in it..."

Brady tipped his head and flashed a dimpled smile. "Hey... I'm not rubbing anything of yours, okay? Becky on the other hand..."

Sam huffed. "Yeah, good luck with that."

"You don't think I could win her over?"

Sam's lips drew into a tight line as he evaluated his friend. "I think she has something called self respect."

Brady laughed. "Oooo. He slides one in." He stood up smirking and approached Sam.

Sam half sat up, a tangle of long limbs and shaggy bangs, and puppy eyes. He always looked like a chastised golden retriever when he was vulnerable. He was vulnerable now. So much so that it took a bit of self restraint to not jump into that beautiful meat suit and leave Brady's rotting on the floor.

Something inside of Sam seemed a little bit deflated. His light was dimmed, like dappled sun through trees.

Brady couldn't place what was wrong.

Physically, yes, he'd been beat to shit. Emotionally, maybe he'd taken a blow when the girl was pissed at him for saving her.

Dumb bitch. Women were so predictable like that. Always jumping in to protect their man. Even when that man gave them a black eye or a concussion. Couldn't tell the difference between love and possession.

But with the life Sam had lived, that didn't seem quite right as an explanation for his depressive mood. He had to have grown up witnessing that type of behavior in the slums they'd lived in. All the rat trap motels and bars their daddy had taken them to. He'd probably grown up hearing people having sex through the thin walls, cheating couples meeting for trysts, pimps slapping around their prostitutes. Desperate junkies with low self-esteem crawling back to their men. He may be disappointed by Shelley's behavior, but he wouldn't be surprised by it. This was just another facet of Sam's hard knock life at such a young age.

Something else seemed off.

Brady knelt down and tilted Sam's face up by the chin. "So..." he said, feeling the slightest bit of raspy stubble under his thumb. "How are these stitches holding up?"

Sam pulled away a little. "They're fine."

"I'll take them out in a few more days...Hey what's wrong with you, big guy?" He didn't know why he bothered asking. Not like Sam was going to surrender information suddenly.

"I'm just tired."

"You're more than tired."

"Yeah," Sam replied, flopping back onto the pillow. "I got the shit kicked out of me too."

Brady patted the boy's denim pant leg. "Sorry you got hurt for some dumb cow."

Sam gave him a reproachful look. "We don't know what her story is."

"She's an idiot." Brady replied dismissively.

"Maybe, " Sam said, looking like he didn't agree.

Leave it to Sam to try and see the other side of things. Always. It was both his strength and his weakness.

"I had to help, Brady. If we didn't do anything we'd be...complicit in the whole situation."

Of course he would think that.

"That's bullshit and you know it." Brady answered.

Sam's eyes took on a determined air. There was a glimpse of that steel that underlied the lambswool fluff of him. It made Brady delighted to see, sent a shiver through him. Made his human skin goose pimple with it. That is what would make him a brilliant addition to their ranks. He had all the right elements. They just had to get them working together in the correct way.

"I'd do it again if I had to." Sam said definitively.

Brady had no doubt that he would.

"Okay, Pollyanna."

Sam gave him the same hard look, somehow carrying an edge of defiance to it even when the kid was so tired he still had himself folded into his mattress like a gangly Great Dane trying to fit into a dog bed. Sam's gaze broke off and he put his hand over his eyes. "Brady I don't want to be antisocial but I've got a head ache."

Brady stood staring at him a moment and suddenly it occurred to him what was wrong.

Sam Winchester was...lonely.

Utterly alone.

He'd been longing for some real solid human connection. Something to replace the ache left by Dean's absence. The relationship with the true Brady had supplied that, but since Belial had taken over and they'd drifted on moral matters, Sam had pulled away emotionally. Fenced himself off so that he could protect that soft Sammy Soul.

And now...well now he was lonely. Lonely in his self-constructed, rather isolated prison. He was feeling the pull toward family and trying to resist it.

Brady had been biding his time, setting all the dominoes up, waiting to play the long con. Well now It was approaching the time to knock those dominoes over and watch them ripple as they toppled-with Sam none the wiser until the final one knocked him over.

Brady had the perfect blonde ray of sunshine in his sights. One to light up Sammy's lonely world for a while, just the thing to make him connect, bring him out of his shell, fill the yawning hole of emptiness inside him...they'd be a perfect match. Both of them none the wiser about a demon playing cupid.

Yes. The perfect flame for Sam to warm his hands by before it combusted and left him burned.


Sam was a Winchester. Which means he tended to heal quickly and when he didn't heal quickly, he shouldered through the pain like his father had taught him.

So after a few days of sore muscles and aching joints, he was back on his feet again, although feeling some sort of nagging loneliness that he couldn't quite keep at bay with books and studies and work.

Sam ignored the protest in his back and reached forward with the hedge trimmer to round off the edge of a manicured bush he'd started on. He'd had spare time to pick up some yard work. The pay was minimum wage but the guy let him pick up extra hours as needed.

Despite the slightly cooler day, Sam's shirt was soaked through with sweat. He felt a line of it drip down his back. It was odd how sometimes he preferred this work to the bookstore or tutoring. There was an honesty to it...a purity. A way to push his body through its endurance with hard physical labor. It tired him out at night and despite the ever present whirring of his mind, he slept soundly. Soundly enough to forget the occasional nightmare thoughts that plagued him.

That other life seemed so far away. So remote and removed from where he was. There were no ghouls in Palo Alto. No ghosts. Nothing more dangerous in the night than drunken frat boys, although, he thought dolefully, perhaps they were some times the most dangerous of all.

The utter normalcy of it all almost made him question if his other life had been real.

Had it? Had the sweat and blood and horror all been real?

Sam wiped a bit of green pulp from a shorn branch off of his forehead with his arm. He blinked away the dirt.

He wondered if somewhere dark and scary Dean was sheering off something's limbs with a chainsaw. The thought made his lips draw into a thin line.

Dean.

His dad he didn't often miss... but Dean.

There was that refrain that he couldn't shut out. It sounded like his brother. His brother and their life together and Dean's voice and his affectionate "Hey Sammy" and fighting over the last waffle until Dean eventually let Sam have it.

That refrain.

Late nights and secrets and girls and fights and confidences. Squabbles and pranks and having each other's backs and being together forever- and Dean siding with Dad.

That brought Sam's reminiscences to an abrupt halt, yanked him out of his nostalgia and called up that bitter disappointed anger simmering underneath. Dean didn't take his side. When the chips were down and Sam had really needed him as backup, Dean had tried to play middle man. When middleman failed, he had stepped over the line onto Dad's side.

Sam picked up the severed branches by hand and hurled them into the open back of the pickup truck, destined for the wood chipper.

Thank you Michele, domino dark wolf, shadowhuntingDD, and Sallyannerenee for the reviews. Love you guys!