Haven't posted in "Mighty Winchesters" for quite a bit, and this one seems like it fits here.

Slight spoilers for season 7, particularly 7x03.

Welcome to this story, where everything is made up and the points don't matter. You'll see what I mean.

Paintbrush Wings

Sunrise came on the wings of a drunken fly, light blossoming up at the corners of the world and tilting into the window at a strange half-angle, as if the fly had decided that after a night of too much whiskey, it would do well to take a sideways plunge into the thin double-pane.

Dean watched the sloppy ascent from his chair beside the window, admiring the elegant swoop of barely-there clouds that hung in the brightening sky like wispy, half-crescent moons that hadn't yet realized their glow was no longer required.

His own tumbler of whiskey, probably larger than that of the fly's, sat beside him on the table of the small motel room, full and glistening with sweat. It had gone untouched all night, seemingly too much effort to be picked up and brought to lips. And while that task had seemed daunting to Dean, sleep had also been an impossibility, of that he had been sure. Exhaustion was evident in the lines of his unsmiling face, a criss-cross of fissures pulling at the corners of his mouth and burrowing deep into the space above his nose and between his eyes in what seemed a now permanent indentation, but Dean was still sure he wouldn't've caught a blink of blessed unconsciousness.

Stretching with the sun, Dean lifted stiff arms and crackling fingers above his head, pulling first on his right wrist, then his left, leaning just enough to stretch unmoved muscles but not enough to disturb the monstrosity that enveloped his right leg. The pristine white cast sat on the chair opposite him and seemed to gleam up at him as the fly finally gained some stability, its wings shifting just enough to allow sunlight to stream in straight and proper. Behind him, Dean hear his brother shift in the bed farthest from the door, Sam's long arms no doubt moving to shield exposed eyes from the light. He always seemed to sleep facing Dean, consciously or not, and because of their routine motel sleeping arrangement, this usually meant that Sam rose, sometimes regretfully, as the sun did. But this was just a small, shifting adjustment and Dean knew he still had a little time before his brother awakened fully, no doubt ready to paste on another of his fake "I'm okay, can barely hear Satan's voice shrieking in my ears, honest to god, I feel just great!" grins, directed right at Dean.

But Dean had been up all night, so Dean knew exactly how often the Devils' invisible laughter had invaded his little brother's eardrums. While last night had been better than most, the fitful moans and agonized twisting of sheets had not been fully escaped. If Dean could've, he would've woken Sam several times during the night. Lack of mobility thanks to the broken leg wasn't the only thing that stopped him. No matter how fitful, Sam needed his sleep.

"Why're you up?" The words were a bit dulled, as if Sam was speaking from beneath several layers of loose dirt, and they made Dean flinch in surprise. He'd been expecting a few more minutes of morning stillness before his own mask needed to be painted on.

"S'morning," he replied lamely, not yet turning to look at Sam, his gaze instead focused on a small black bug trapped between the two panes of the motel window. It wasn't that same drunken fly that had been in charge of this morning's sunrise because there were two red spots decorating the center of each wing. They looked to him like the stray droppings of a distracted artists' paintbrush, falling wasted and unnoticed onto a brightly stained floor. From his position at the table, all Dean had to do was pull the window open a bit and the bug could eventually wiggle its way to freedom.

Dean didn't move.

"Did you sleep at all?" Sam asked, a more pronounced rustle from the bed this time. Still without looking, Dean knew Sam was now sitting up with his legs flung over the side of the bed facing him, most likely running both hands over his face and through his hair, flattening the strays. Dean smiled softly and forgot to answer. The black bug wit the red dots had given up on its initial fruitless path and had now begun to crawl straight up the middle of the glass. This new course meant that it would eventually run right into the thick ridge between the upper and lower portions of the window and would once again have no place to go.

"Dean, you gotta get some sleep, man. I know it's probably hard with the cast on, but you gotta at least try before you run yourself ragged."

"Doesn't really seem to be an issue seeing as I'm not running anywhere anytime soon."

He hadn't meant to spit the words with quite so much venom, but even the bug had paused in its journey for a moment, its delicate legs pressed insistently against the glass as if appalled at Dean's grating tone and expecting an apology. Sam did not expect the same. He just sighed, low and sad and weary (and whose fault was that now? Whose fault was it always? Starts with D and you have three guesses and holy shit, it's not even 9am). Dean heard another hand pushing through shaggy hair, this time a byproduct of exasperation, not just morning routine.

"Sorry." Dean gave into the bug's faceless judgement a moment later, directing his words to the glass. The bug began to climb towards a dead end once more.

"I know," Sam said. "I know you're frustrated."

Dean smiled again, a small and unentertained quirk of his lips, and shook his head. Through the window he could see that a few of the wispier clouds from earlier in the morning had disappeared altogether, their fragments so scattered as to appear to blend with the blueness. It was going to be a beautiful day.

"Doesn't matter. I don't have anything to complain about. Nothing in comparison."

Another shifting of sheets. This one more pronounced than the last, and how funny that Dean could see without looking, could know that Sam was now gaping at him, perhaps a touch of anger in his eyes. How funny that Dean could know all of this, and still not know why. He turned. He was wrong. It was more bewilderment than anger.

"It's not a competition," Sam said, eyes finally locked on Dean's, earnest and huge and reminding Dean of why he should've just kept watching the damn bug. "There's no quota of suffering to fulfill here, no…scale to measure the validity."

Dean rolled his eyes, licked dry lips and regarded the whiskey with interest for the first time since he'd poured it the night before. But it was too late now. Sun was out and Sammy was awake and watching and waiting for a response. Dean gave him one, typical Dean style:

"Can you cool it with the big boy words, man? I'm too tired for that crap."

Dean turned back to the window, blinking against the now-sober sun. The bug between the windows had changed direction again. Another dead end.

"I know," Sam said again. It sounded sad and full of layers; a weight he'd yet to share. Dean rolled his shoulders away from the sound of it and regretted mentioning what the bruises under his eyes already gave away.

He tilted his head a little to the left and wondered at motel windows, the style of them. Why not the big, French ones that opened up wide? No double layers, just one hand on each little handle and pull it and boom. Open air. Nothing would get trapped that way, nothing lost between the gaps and left to die. He envisioned a swarm of bugs marching diligently across the window ledge carrying their tiny protest signs: "Let us fly!" "Double pane is a double PAIN!" He saw himself at the front of the line, tiny and self-righteous; the first to be smushed beneath a sneaker. Behind him, Sam was working up to something. Dean could hear it in the way he breathed.

"I know you're tired and I know you're not sleeping," Sam said after more of that particular brand of breathing. "And I also know it's not the cast. It's because of me. But Dean, you need to take care of yourself. Honestly, I'm fi…"

"Stop." Dean had to say something, had to butt in before Sam kept talking. He could feel that old, familiar anger settling into the suddenly rolling pit of his stomach, biting and stinging and eating through the lining of it and moving up into his chest. "Goddammit don't you dare say you're 'fine.' This isn't something you just shake off, Sam. It's deeper than that, it's…"

"It's under control." Said calmly, softly.

"For how long?" Dean exploded. His hands jerked up in a motion that might've seemed over dramatic to anyone but Sam, who winced, biting his lip as Dean's sudden movement settled as fast as it had come on, his right hand coming to rest beside the whiskey glass, left hand dropping over the leg of the cast almost delicately, as if attempting to shelter the wilting petals of a flower from a torrential storm.

Sam's answer was a bad one, and Dean tried not to let the words sink in too far, but they joined the rest of the traitorous acid floating inside the walls of his chest.

"For as long as I can hold it all together," Sam replied. "I know that's not fair and that's not the answer you want, but it's everything I have. That's what I can give. Can you accept that? Because if you can't I don't know how much longer we can keep doing this."

Dean swallowed. Digested. Felt the sting of it and thought he might lose his dinner from the night before which had actually been a pretty decent burger with extra onions the way he liked it. The aftertaste now felt a little less like comfort food and a little more like strategy on his brother's part, a tool used to soften him up a bit, make him more pliant for an argument like this. God knew how Sam would've predicted this conversation, but Dean had begun to believe long ago that the kid was capable of anything.

Plus, Dean had been sulking.

He hadn't meant to, but the whole 'not moving, not hunting for the next however many weeks' thing had been torture. And with nothing else to occupy his time, Dean had taken to doing what he did best: worrying about his little brother, the one with the Devil whispering secrets in his ear. And so Sam had no doubt been arming himself for this fight the moment he'd begun to notice Dean's lack of sleep or that wrinkled indent on his forehead or the way he held his fork or whatever the hell kind of other tiny details the damn kid picked up on. And this was a fight, right? Dean thought it was. He had to make sure.

"What does that mean, exactly?" he asked.

Sam sighed. "It means I refuse to be a liability to you. So if you feel like you can't trust me anymore, then I'll go," he said. Sam was standing now, Dean could see out of the corner of his eye. He looked to be almost swaying next to the bed as he spoke, each word carried off on one of his currents. Seemed he was building toward something deadly and terrible. A tsunami, maybe.

"Because if you're distracted by the possibility of me screwing up due to the fact that Satan's my backseat driver, that means you're in danger," he continued. "And I won't do that. I won't put you at risk."

Dean snorted. "You giving me an ultimatum?"

"I'm giving you a chance to be honest. To let down the stupid walls you always build and just tell me where we stand so we don't have to keep tiptoeing around each other. So that if it's what's best, we subtract me from the equation."

"This ain't a math problem." Now. Now Dean was pissed, the short sentence bubbling up out of his throat.

"I know that, Dean. I live with this crap every single day, and I get that it's...complicated." Another snort from Dean. "That's not the point. The point is, you have to tell me what makes sense to you."

Dean blinked once, slow, before twisting around as far as his broken leg would allow so that he could watch Sam, who was still swaying slightly with arms crossed over his chest. "Why does this sound like it all comes down to me?" Dean asked. "Always my decision, what I can deal with. What about you? What about what you see every time you close your eyes? Hell, every time you turn a corner? Even if I say I think you're in control of it, that I trust you, how are you supposed to keep going like this? How am I supposed to...to watch?"

"We'll figure something out…"

Dean huffed and twisted a little more, pushing his glass of whiskey to the far side of the table, almost out of reach. "First of all, that's my line. And we will. I know we will, but in the meantime, how are you gonna stay on your feet? What's the solution for…" Dean paused and gestured to Sam, still swaying back and forth, arms like tree branches. "...all that?"

"I'm just standing here."

"Oh please, you're a friggin' house of cards right now. And not the badass, manipulative, Kevin-Spacey kind."

"Dean, that doesn't even make sense." Sam's lip quirked as he spoke, as if not sure whether or not Dean was trying to steer the conversation into less serious territory. He would've gladly taken that route at this point, but Dean's answer held an edge.

"Sam, I don't care. I just...can't keep having this fight." And he knew now, knew for sure that that's what this was. A fight.

"So then what are you saying?" Sam asked. "That I should go?"

"No!" Dean all but shouted the word. Panicked.

Sam swallowed, watching the way his brother's jaw worked in aggravation, the way the fingers of Dean's right hand curled into a fist. He chose his words carefully.

"I need this to be different then, Dean. No treating me like I can't be on my own. No scaring yourself out of sleep. And no guilty conscience for a bunch of shit you can't change that isn't even your fault in the first place. Can you do all that?"

Dean didn't say anything, focused too intently on his fist. He unfurled each finger carefully. Then he turned again to stare at the doomed insect still crawling its way up the glass of the window. Finally, he nodded.

"Dean, I'm serious."

"I know. I am too. You gotta cut me a little slack t though, man," Dean insisted. "You can't go running off the second I pull out a thermometer or whatever."

"What?" Sam asked, somewhat lost now. Dean rolled his eyes and clarified.

"I just mean I'm entitled. This isn't exactly a normal situation we've got here. It's...scary." He huffed at the admission. "And you're my brother. So I'm allowed to be an ass about it sometimes. I'm allowed to be worried and to take some steps to make sure you're good. Especially since it's my ass you're supposed to be covering."

"Wow."

"Wow, what?"

Sam smiled and uncrossed his arms. "As in 'wow, this might be our first mature, adult compromise. Ever. Because you're right. I know I can't expect you not to do or say anything about...all this," Sam continued, gesturing to himself in a mockery of Dean's earlier words. "So I guess that's it then, huh?"

"What's 'it'? We haven't even settled anything," Dean growled.

"I disagree."

"Yeah well, you're an idiot."

"And you're a gimp."

"Ouch. Low blow, Sam."

Sam smiled. "Bobby wants us back at his place. I'm gonna start packing, okay? You just sit there. You know, being all gimpy."

Dean sighed, recognizing the end of a fight when he heard it. He'd heard it a lot. He leaned back in his chair, intertwining his fingers behind his head. "It is nice to have you pick up some of the slack for once. I'm so tired of doing all the work."

Sam snorted. "Okay. Sure. All the work."

Dean stuck his tongue out and didn't bother to answer, instead watching as Sam began to clean the motel room, organizing his own clothes and tossing a few stray socks into Dean's duffle. And Dean thought that maybe Sam had been right. Maybe that conversation had changed something. It was small, insignificant to most, but Dean could feel it in the particles of the room and he could see it in the way the corners of Sam's mouth were turned up slightly as he cleaned.

Later, when the Impala was packed and Dean stood in the motel room doorway on one foot and two crutches, he paused.

"Dean, you okay?"

"I'll meet you at the car. Forgot something," he said.

Sam gave him a look, but shrugged. He readjusted the duffle on his shoulder and began walking to the car, stride long and steady and not swaying.

Behind him, Dean limped slowly over to the table where he'd sat this morning. Leaning against it, crutches tucked beneath one arm, he pushed the bottom pane of the glass window up by a few inches. Then he shut the door after him and joined his brother.

Behind him, the little black bug with the painted wings changed direction once again, this time heading for open air.

In some ways this story was maybe a little pointless but I'd like to think it's maybe not. Anyway, share your thoughts if you have time and thanks for reading!