It was 2am and Sam was lying awake on the motel bed staring at the ceiling with a pit in his stomach that made him feel sick and empty at the same time. The curtains still hung open, and a dim yellow light seeped in to the room from the street lights outside, faintly illuminating a watery brown stain on the ceiling, and damp, bulging patches of drywall. But Sam couldn't see any of that. The image of his girlfriend burning to death was playing relentlessly in his mind, over and over again, the panic in her eyes as she looked at him, confused, terrified, and then the screaming as she burst in to flames, pinned to the ceiling, bleeding, dying. Sometimes Sam could go days at a time without thinking about her, but not today, because today it was ten years exactly since he looked up to see the love of his life die.
He heard the key turn in the lock and the familiar footsteps of his brother entering the dim motel room. The door clicked shut, and he heard it lock again from the inside, but then there was silence. He sat up to see that Dean had only managed to make it a few feet into the room and was now standing with his head resting against the partition that separated the rest of the room from the front door.
"Dean?" Sam said quietly. Dean looked up at him, apparently unaware that his brother was awake, and Sam was surprised to see his eyes were filled with tears. "What's wrong?"
"I had no idea," he said, his voice barely more than a whisper. "I had no idea how much you loved Jess."
Sam nodded slightly. "You remembered."
"All this time I knew that you loved her and it broke your heart when she died, but I didn't realise, Sammy..."
"Dean, you're not making any sense." Sam walked over to him, pulled him by the jacket sleeve and sat him down on his bed, sitting down opposite and watching his brother with concern. He could tell he had been drinking, but when Dean spoke again his words were clear and sincere.
"You know," Dean said, "it wouldn't have mattered how many times you told me you loved her, or how well you described it, I never would have been able to understand what it felt like. Not really."
"But now?"
"I get it now. It's like… being with her makes everything else fall away because you love her so much that you can't feel anything else. Just touching her can make you feel more alive than you ever thought you could in a life that has been nothing but death and misery. And you'll make a complete ass of yourself just to see her smile because seeing her happy is the only thing in the entire world that really matters and at the end of every day you look at her and you can't believe she's actually there, by your side, because you never thought in your wildest dreams that you might deserve someone so incredible."
Sam just sat there, startled to find that his gruff, guarded brother had just put into words the grief, the love, and the loss that he had never been able to describe himself.
"What I'm trying to say is… I'm sorry, Sammy. I'm sorry for all these years I never realised how much you loved Jess."
Sam smiled sadly. "Where did this sudden revelation come from?" Dean gave a shaky sigh and raised his head to look at his brother. His eyes were still shining with tears, but he smiled.
"That's how I feel when I look at Cas."