Thanks again for all of the great reviews. You have no idea how much I appreciate it. I honestly didn't think this story would attract many (read 'any') readers. Thanks so much!

Oh, and for everyone who saw last night's episode: OMG! HOW AWESOME WAS THAT?!?!?!?

Bacon and eggs. He would have preferred pancakes, to tell the truth, but Dean had made bacon and eggs. Why Dean had bothered to get up and cook breakfast in the first place, Sammy didn't know. That didn't really matter, though, because it had been a while since he'd had a meal that hadn't been preheated at a convenience store.

He sat down at the circular table, pulling his chair in and watching as Dean made up a couple of plates. "Any reason you made breakfast?" he asked, glancing down at the heaps of food piled on the plate in front of him.

"Well," Dean shrugged, "we got free room and board for once, so I figured it wouldn't hurt to give a little something back."

"Who are you and what have you done with my brother?"

Dean smirked as he sat down across from his brother, pushing his eggs around with a fork. "Don't look at me," he said, "it's your pansy emo vibes that've got me so messed up."

Sam just shook his head and turned back to his breakfast. He could feel Dean's eyes on him, knew that his brother was watching him. He waited a couple of minutes before finally addressing the slightly awkward situation. "Uh, you all right?"

Dean jumped, startled. "Huh? Yeah. Thinking."

Sam nodded. "I can see how that would distract you, but, you know, you shouldn't be so afraid of new things. Thinking is good."

Dean snorted and flicked a spoonful of scrambled eggs in his brother's direction. "Oops," he said, his voice sliding up an octave or two, "did your easily offended inner child make me do that?"

"Oh, that is it," Sammy said, picking up a large handful of bacon from the plate in the middle of the table, "you're going down, emo."

"Me? Emo? I'm not the one who cried when we went to see 'House of Wax.'"

"That girl was seriously upset about the death of her boyfriend," Sam defended, still holding the bacon in his hand, "she wasn't expecting to see him like that."

"What, she thought he was gonna come waltzing out and whisk her off to happily ever after? The guy went inside the killer's house at the beginning of the movie to take a leak and two hours later she expected him to be alive?"

"She deserved a happy ending."

"She should have seen it coming. Besides, the guy who played the boyfriend is always the first one offed in horror movies."

"It's not his fault," Sam said, "he's just an easy target."

"Yeah, I hear a couple of years in Star's Hollow will do that to a guy."

"He… wait. You watch 'Gilmore Girls?'"

"Do you?" The brothers started at each other over the table for a while before Dean finally decided to speak again. "Uh, you gonna throw that at me or let it drip grease all over?"

Sammy cleared his throat, setting the handful of bacon back on the plate. "This conversation never happened."

The elder nodded. "Agreed. But we can still talk about 'Grey's' on Thursdays, right?"

"How did you… never mind."

Dean smirked. "I knew you liked that show. Man, I'm good. So, who's your favorite, Izzie, Meredith, Callie, or the chief's wife?"

"Personally," a voice from the doorway answered, "I'm a fan of the chief's wife. But Sammy here likes Izzie. Thinks she's cute." Sam blushed as Missouri entered the room and took a seat at the table. "No need to be embarrassed, though," she assured, "at least you didn't cry like a baby the day Denny died."

Sam's eyes widened as Dean ducked his head. "No way."

The empath shrugged, rubbing a hand along the back of his neck. "He was ok," he muttered, "kinda reminded me of dad, you know?."

"We gonna drop it now?" Sam asked.

"We're gonna drop it, yeah."

o0o0o0o0o

Sam spent the day in front of his laptop, staring at the glowing screen, looking up everything he could on empathy and taking notes. He was constantly aware of Dean, sitting on the other side of Missouri's library and leafing through some old books. Dean, who wasn't really looking at the pages so much as he was Sam's back.

"You mind?" Sammy finally asked, starting to feel a little nervous. On the other side of the room, he heard Dean jump, the springs in the chair creaking with the shift in weight. Serves you right, he though bitterly.

"Sorry," Dean muttered, squirming in his seat, annoyance flooding his system, "just thinking again, I guess."

Sam nodded. "You want to know if Alexis Bledel is gonna sign on for another season, right?"

"I thought we dropped that. And no, I'm more worried about the mom. She's the fun one."

"So, there's another reason you've been staring at the back of my head for the past hour and a half?"

Dean cleared his throat. Had it been that long? He'd lost track of time, trying to focus on whatever was going on inside that stupid emo heart that seemed to control Sam's life. "Remember when you were six and scared of the thing under the bed? Every motel room we went to, you had me check before you would go to sleep."

Sammy nodded. "Yeah, I guess I remember that. Any reason you're bringing it up now?"

"You never let dad check. Said it had to be me."

"I asked dad once and he gave me a gun and told me to aim for the heart. Why?"

Dean shrugged. "Just wondering." He dropped his head to the book in his lap, eyes skimming the pages without really taking anything in.

It shouldn't have been so damn hard. Sam was always so upfront with his feelings, so eager to share, so why couldn't Dean get anything but a mixture of interest and annoyance off the kid?

Why was he even trying? He knew his brother loved him. Loved him like his parents had. Like his mother, who had walked right past him to talk to Sam. Like his father, who had confessed to liking Sammy better before telling Dean to kill the kid.

That was why he was trying. He had to know. Had to know if Sam was just like everyone else, just putting up a front until the time came to let the truth be known. The only problem was that there wasn't any warmth there, no happiness, just worry. And that was worrying.