A/N Hello! Sorry it's been a while. I thought it was about time I took a break from the fluffy endings, so this is something a little darker. Please leave a quick review when you're done and let me know what you think.

When Sam and Dean arrived back at the bunker, they couldn't have been in more opposite moods. Dean practically bounced out of the car and through the front door, while Sam followed behind bleakly. By the time he had made it down the metal stairs and through the library, Dean was already exiting the kitchen with a peanut butter sandwich hanging from his mouth. He tried to speak, but all Sam heard was a series of incomprehensible noises. He looked at Dean questioningly.

"Hurry up and grab your stuff," Dean repeated as he swallowed a mouthful of bread.

"We just got back," Sam said.

"You can rest when you're dead, Sam," he insisted, with a stupid grin on his face. "C'mon!" Sam scowled but did as Dean asked, heading to his bedroom and grabbing one of the pre-packed overnight bags he kept by his door. He looked mournfully at his bed, the duvet slightly crumpled from the last time he had slept in it five nights ago. What he wouldn't give to be back there.

He crossed back to Dean's bedroom and waited by the door, watching him throw fresh clothes in to his bag along with a bag of chips and a few cans of soda.

"Want one?" he asked, holding out a can of cola to Sam.

"No."

"Chips?"

"No."

"Want to lighten up?"

"No."

"Jeez," Dean said with a short laugh, throwing his bag over his shoulder. "What's with you?

"Me?!" Sam asked incredulously. "What about you?"

"Ain't nothing wrong with me, buddy. Let's just go." Sam didn't move. "C'mon, daylight's burning, I want to get back on the road!" Dean took Sam's arm, chivvying him from the room. "We've got a lot of ugly-ass monsters to gank. Move, move, move!"

"Dean enough. Just stop!" Sam said, pulling his arm away from his brother and rounding on him. Dean looked taken aback. "Could you just sit down and shut up for thirty seconds? Or better still, talk to me."

"There's nothing to talk about," Dean said, his cheerful disposition slipping ever so slightly.

"Dean."

"What do you want from me, Sam?" he asked sharply, dropping his bag on to the floor. "You want me to tell you all my deepest feelings, maybe cry a little? And then after that maybe we can whip out a guitar and sing Kum Ba Yah." Sam shook his head in exasperation. "Well?" Dean said. "What do you want?"

"I want you react!" he said, his voice rising as he finally lost his temper. "I want you to stop for the first time in four days and react to the fact that Cas is gone, because there is no way in hell you are this okay."

"Yeah well maybe I'm not okay," Dean said, still making a convincing attempt at nonchalance, "but I'm handling it."

"That's just it," Sam said. "You're not handling it, you're ignoring your feelings like you ignore everything else. You can't keep all this crap in."

"Do you even know me?" Dean asked with a mirthless smile. Sam turned towards the door but instead of leaving, he paused and took a deep, steadying breath. He turned back to Dean, fighting to keep calm and said,

"As long as you're holding all of this in, you're a time-bomb and at some point you're going to go off. Maybe one night at dinner or maybe in the middle of a case and I can't spend the next few days, or weeks or months waiting for my brother to fall to pieces. I just can't."

At last Dean's blasé demeanour slipped away altogether. "Sam," he said, shakily. "Don't make me do this."

"You need to face the truth, Dean, before it messes you up inside. You need to feel something."

"I can't."

"Yes you can."

Dean shook his head, suddenly agitated, avoiding Sam's eyes and heading for the door. "I can't deal with this right now. I told you, I'm handling it." Dean went to push past his brother but Sam put out his arm to block his escape.

"Talk to him."

"What?" Dean said.

"Talk to Cas."

"Cas is dead, Sam." It was the first time either of them had said it aloud, and the words hung suspended in the air before them, stark and raw, and a heavy silence fell. A few moments passed before Sam spoke again.

"You can still talk to him," he said, as Dean sat down slowly on his bed. "I know I do." Sam turned to leave, stopping a second with his hand on the door handle. "I'm so sorry, Dean."

Dean just nodded slowly, head in his hands. "Yeah, me too."

Sam left, closing the door quietly behind him, but something stopped him from returning to his own bedroom. Instead, he slid down the wall and sat at Dean's door. They hadn't spent a moment apart since Cas had died, and he wasn't ready to start now.

He was exhausted as he sat against the cool, hard wall, but the permanent aching that burned in his chest kept him awake, as did his worry for Dean. His brother hadn't slept in days, and whenever he had managed to steal a few minutes rest, it was only to be woken by violent nightmares that jolted him awake on the verge of screaming. Sam had pretended not to notice. He had humoured Dean's attempts at denial for the first few days, but after a while it only made Sam feel weaker for allowing himself to grieve while Dean looked and acted almost normal.

Sam's thoughts were interrupted by Dean's low voice coming from his room.

"Cas?" he said. "I don't know if you can hear me… probably not." After that there was silence for almost five minutes, and Sam wondered if Dean had fallen asleep. But then he spoke again.

"I don't know much, Cas, I've never been smart like Sam, but… I know I need you. Ever since I met you, even when I couldn't stand you, I knew that I could never live without you. But now it's like I'm living my worst nightmare and I'm trying so hard to keep it together, man, but how can I when you're -" Sam heard Dean's voice catch in his throat, and Sam felt a lump rise in his own. He heard his brother begin to pace and he wondered if he had done the right thing forcing Dean to free his emotions.

"How could you do this to me?" Dean said, addressing his empty room again, but this time in a much louder voice. "You're a selfish son of a bitch, you know that? Do you think I wanted this? Do you think I wanted to love you? It's the single worst decision of my life." Dean was almost shouting now. "You just had to come crashing in with your stupid face and your stupid coat and your stupid blue eyes and turn my life upside down as if it wasn't complicated enough already."

And just like that, any personal grief Sam had been feeling for Cas was completely overcome by the sorrow he now felt for his brother. Sam had been waiting six years for Dean to admit he loved Cas, he had been looking forward to this moment almost since the day they met but now that it was here it couldn't have been more tragic or more painful. Because it was too late.

"I'm hanging on by a thread here, man," Dean said, his voice becoming increasingly desperate. "I have been through Hell, literally, but I - I can't get through this. I can't."

Sam heard a thud as Dean fell to his knees and Sam pictured him there in the middle of the floor, just trying to keep breathing as the inexpresable, incomprehensible grief clawed at him from the inside out.

Sam clenched his jaw and looked up at the ceiling, trying to hold back the tears that were pricking at his eyes as he heard the anguish in Dean's voice. Sam realised then that Dean hadn't been in denial for his own sake, he hadn't been trying to avoid the pain of losing Cas, he had been holding all of his grief back so that Sam wouldn't have to see him like this. Even when he was dying inside, suffering through the worst pain imaginable, he was still trying to protect his little brother. He was still carrying on.

"We could have had something, Cas," Dean said. "We could have had something great but I let you down and I will never forgive myself for that."

Sam heard him move across the room, sitting at the door and resting his head on the wood. There was silence for a long time until at last Sam heard his brother's voice again, quiet and broken.

"Sammy?"

"I'm here."

He didn't say anything else. Long, hollow hours passed by as they sat back to back through the door. They didn't move, they didn't sleep, they didn't speak. Cas was dead. There was nothing more to say.