Note: Okay, I was wrong, at the end of this chapter, you'll realize it's before AHBL, sometime after "In My Time of Dying." And I wonder, if Sam and Dean had really had the conversation at the end of this, if Dean still would have done what he did. Thoughts? Forgive my ambiguity, I don't want to give away spoilers. heheh.

- - -

Part 3: "Paper Heroes"

Sam swore, when Dean slammed the door practically in his face, and then turned, paced back down the hall a little, turned again, cussed again, viciously, then after placing his hands on his hips and staring at the ceiling in frustration, pulled back and slammed his fist into the wall.

A second later, he regretted it, wondering if he'd managed to break his knuckles. 'You'd think I'd have learned to stop pushing by now,' he thought wryly, as he sucked in a breath and held his injured hand to his chest. 'But I haven't, apparently, and now I've gone and pushed him right out the door.'

The more ironic thing struck him then. That it was exactly what his father had done to him, and he'd just turned around and proved himself John Winchester's son, through and through. What was it, their motto or something? "Push until something breaks"?

Sighing, he wandered back into the living room where Dean had left his-- And that was weird to think, but it was Dean's sketch book. Dean's sketchbook. It was almost an oxymoron.

He picked it up and sat down, opening it up again. He'd flipped over the sketches before, but he hadn't really been paying so much attention to the subject as he had the skill. Himself, looking like Superman... He blinked. Stared.

Even caricatured as it was-- Sam swallowed and turned the page. Himself, a bit less stylized, shooting a shotgun-full of rock salt into a roughed-up looking ghost. Seriously, Dean needed to see a psychiatrist.

But the idea behind it threw him completely. Dean thought of him like that? Really? Unbelievable. Literally, not figuratively. Sam just couldn't believe it. Dean couldn't possibly think of him that way because that would make him Dean's hero. And that just didn't make any sort of sense whatsoever.

If anything, Dean was his hero, not the other way around. Therefore, Dean shouldn't even be allowed to think of him in that way. And what sort of burden was that to place on your little brother anyway. In fact, the more he thought about it, the less it made sense. It was actually more the way Sam had always believed Dean thought of their fathe--

And then he got it, and he snarled and tore the page out of the book, fully intending to tear it to shreds.

Dean didn't think of him that way. Of course he didn't. He'd thought of their father that way, but now John was dead, and Dean couldn't bring himself to draw Dad. So he'd gone and replaced Dad with Sam, and that was just messed up in major freakin' ways.

Before the impulse took over, though, it occurred to him how Dean might feel about his work being destroyed. Sam took a deep, frustrated breath and tucked the paper back in between the pages before and after it.

He turned a page... saw a boy and his mom, a picture that screamed "happy! normal!" and because of it, "wistful, longing" too, whispered beneath the fun, thick lines and lively expressions.

They were drawn like comics, but suddenly Sam realized these were renderings of real people. Dean had met these two once. Who knows when because Dean was Dean after all, and Sam wasn't ever sure what he really knew and didn't know about his brother.

'Julio Johnson,' he thought, contemplatively, remembering the pseudonym Dean had used for the comic he put in the paper, 'Julio, could be this kid. Johnson... John... John's son. Julio, John's son.'

He snapped the book shut, sat there staring off into space, and when he couldn't stand it anymore, he got up and walked out of there. He needed to give back the car, anyway. Hopefully, Dean would be back at the motel, and he would just go from there. Because it was becoming pretty obvious that Dean had some major issues, and they were starting to come out in the strangest ways.

- - -

Dean didn't go back to the motel because he knew Sam would only find him there, if he did. And then Sammy would want to talk, and Dean wasn't sure if he could stop himself from talking this time around.

So he endeavored to get himself well, good and plastered in the middle of the day. So by the time he hobbled out of the bar, where he'd chosen to accomplish this "amazing feat", he could barely say his name right, let alone drive the Impala.

He double-checked to make sure it was locked, then stumbled out of the parking lot and down the street. He was so going to get hit by a car, he decided, but somehow he made it back to the motel safely.

To congratulate himself on his fine skills of "alertitude," he started singing as he fumbled for the doorknob to the bathroom. He'd needed to take a leak since he left the stupid bar. Go figure he hadn't noticed when he was still there, and he wasn't about to go in an alley. With his luck, he'd probably get arrested for indecent exposure.

About that time, he started feeling a little woozy, and leaned over, hands on his knees to catch his breath. And WHAM! Suddenly, he was on the floor, seeing a universe of little stars and Sammy-Superboys dancing in front of his vision. When they cleared, he found himself looking dazedly up at his very tall sibling.

"Oh, crap!" Sam said, "Dean, I'm sorry! Are you all right?"

"A'right?" Dean questioned, hazily. Vaguely, he felt as if something might have hit his head. So he offered, uncertainly, "Did'you hit me?"

"Sort of," Sam answered, sounding distracted, as he reached down to help Dean up. Dean took his hand and found himself dizzily pulled to his feet. "I heard you singing and opened the door. It hit you in the head."

"Oh," Dean said, leaning heavily against his little brother, who wasn't actually so little, if you thought about it, which Dean was certainly doing, at that particular moment. "How'd'you get so tall, Sammy?"

Sam rolled his eyes and hauled Dean over to the bed and practically tossed him onto it. Or maybe it just felt that way because he was friggin smashed to the gills, whatever the heck gills were... did people have gills, or was that just fish? Well, whatever. Maybe fishermen used to get drunk, and that's where the expression came from... or maybe it was the fish that had gotten drunk, and the fishermen just stole the expression from them.

"Hey, Dean!" Sam called, snapping his fingers in front of Dean's face and pulling him back into a sitting position. "Are you with me, man?"

"I was thinkin'," Dean grumbled, while trying to focus on one of the Sammy's in front of him.

"Uh, huh," Sam said, skeptically, "How much did you drink, anyway?"

"I forget now," Dean replied, deciding that the left Sam was by far the more handsome one.

"Yeah, that's never good. When you regain consciousness, we need to have a talk." Ooh, an ultimatum... scary.

"Yeah, whatever," Dean retorted, flopped back down on the bed, gills and all, and promptly passed out.

- - -

When he woke up again, Sam was sitting at the motel room's desk, back to Dean, researching something on his laptop. Dean groaned when he became conscious enough to realize his head freaking hurt.

Sam glanced over his shoulder at Dean, frowning immediately as if that were his all-purpose greeting-expression for his older brother. It usually was. Holding a hand to his pounding, aching skull, Dean told Sam in a rough voice, "Stop looking at me so loud."

Sam pursed his lips. "When you get through throwing up whatever it was you imbibed this afternoon, we need to have that talk."

'Talk? What talk?' Dean wondered, then grumbled aloud, "I didn't say I would talk to you."

"Yes," Sam said, definitively, "You did." His tone made Dean's stomach turn over, and a moment later, he was dashing for the bathroom and up-chucking into the friendly, yet blinding-white toilet.

Moaning, he closed his eyes against the shinyness, and lowered his forehead to his arm, just huddling there beside the cool surface of the porcelain. It occurred to him then that maybe Sam was bluffing. But he couldn't really remember, so he couldn't prove it, and besides, his brain was too shot at the moment to try and argue the finer points.

"Hey," Sam said from above him, and Dean squinted upward, seeing his younger brother leaning against the bathroom's doorjamb.

In the florescent light of the bathroom, Sam's head looked like it had a halo around it. The light was catching those blond highlights in his girly hair. And blurry as Dean's vision was at the moment, it gave Sam's hair a golden sort of glow. "Man, turn down your hair, will ya?"

Sam blinked. "Dean, you can't possibly still be drunk, can you?"

"I'm not drunk, I'm too hungover to be drunk," Dean refuted, another groan followed, and he was soon vomiting into the toilet bowl again.

He heard water running and a moment later, something wet and cool was pressed into his hand. Dean looked down, seeing a brilliant, bleached washcloth in his hand. He shut his eyes against the nausea, and wiped his face down then draped the cloth over the back of his neck and left it there.

"I looked at your sketchbook again, Dean," Sam said, in a tone of voice that said, 'I found out your secret.' And Dean wondered what secret it was that Sam thought he knew.

"Yeah, and?" he retorted.

"And I know that you wanted to draw Dad, but instead you drew me."

'What the heck?' Dean looked up, scowling, and questioned, "What is that supposed to mean?" He was practically yelling, and winced a moment later at the repercussion he'd caused to his own throbbing brain.

"It means," Sam said, "That I know you couldn't draw him because it hurts you too much. And I know why you picked 'Julio Johnson' as your pen name."

'Oh, crap,' he thought, but he kept up his front, using anger and intimidation as an all too handy shield. "And why is that?" His voice was as flat and cold as the toilet lid.

Sam didn't back down, ignoring the huge warning signal. "Because you saw yourself in that kid, and what you saw was this, and it's always going to be this, Dean: John's son. You're his son, and that's how you defined yourself, and now that he's gone, all you've got left is me. But I'm not a very good replacement, am I? I'm not half the hero that Dad was."

Dean swallowed, stood up as quickly as his aching head and roiling belly would allow, the washcloth dropping down to the tiles with a dull splat. He clenched his hand in Sam's shirt, and got so close Sam wrinkled his nose from the smell of his breath.

"You listen close," he hissed, "'Cause I'm only gonna tell you this once. Dad is gone. I'm Dean. You're Sam. And my job is to protect you. That's what I define myself by. And if I ever fail, it doesn't even bear thinking about."

Sam paled, and Dean realized he'd taken a misstep somewhere in there. His anger had caused the truth to inadvertently burst out of him, and now he was going to have a freaking hard time taking it back.

"Dean..." Sam said, all soft-spoken and wide-eyed. "You're so much more than that. How--? How can you just say that you'd toss it all away if I died?"

"Sammy," Dean pleaded, turning away, then putting the toilet seat down, and slumping down onto it, his head in his hands, elbows on thighs. "Don't go there, okay?"

"No, Dean. You started this, and now I want to hear what you have to say. You can't keep this locked away forever."

"I can try," Dean said, weakly. His eyes were closed, but he felt Sam crouch down beside him, then his hand was on Dean's shoulder.

He looked up, squinting. Sam's face was so pinched with worry, Dean thought it might actually get stuck like that, as the old saying went. "Talk to me, Dean. Why can't you just go on without me? Why does it have to be so black and white, for you? You could... you could make a comic, give up hunting. You could start a family, or something. It doesn't have to end with me."

Dean laughed harshly. "Do you really think a guy like me could have normal? And if normal's out of the question, then so is a family." He smiled a smile that didn't feel like one. "So ya see, Sammy, when you're gone, I'm just screwed."

Sam clenched his jaw stubbornly. "You're lying to yourself, Dean. I'm your brother, not your freakin' savior. You can still have a life without me. Just because you don't want one doesn't mean crap. If I had known this beforehand, I would've made you promise to stick around instead."

"Stop talking about this, Sammy, or I swear..." he said threateningly, but Sam just shook his head. "I mean it," he tried again, but it sounded more like pleading, this time.

"Dean, suicides are supposed to end up in Hell," he said, always the logical one, "What if that's true? Do you know how I would feel if I knew you were there? Do you?"

"No..." was all Dean could get out, and, God, did it sound pathetic.

Sam laughed humorlessly. "It would suck, dude. It would suck a friggin' lot."

Dean nodded a little, but couldn't speak for awhile. "So what am I supposed to do?" he finally got out.

Sam looked him in the eye. "Don't give up." He grinned. "It's not like you."

When Dean chuckled it was hysterical and a little bit sad. He licked his dry lips, stared down at his lap. "You suck, man. Go away and let me take a shower."

"Whatever," Sam retorted, after a moment of silence. "Just remember this conversation." And he left the bathroom and Dean, shutting the door behind him.

Dean chewed on his bottom lip, stared down at his hands. Maybe if Sam could believe there was something more... afterward... then he could too, no matter how painful the thought was of there ever coming such a time. Because the thing he wanted most, when this thing was all over and the Demon was gone, was that Sam would be left standing.

Even if it was only Sam, and no one standing beside him.