Author's note: So, I was playing around over at Hoodie-Time on LJ and read a prompt there I couldn't get out of my head. It nagged me for months until today, when I should have been working, I sat down and wrote this instead. I don't have the exact prompt anymore but it was essentially a request for a story involving an injured Dean showing up at Stanford. This is un-beta'd and all mistakes are mine.

As always, I don't own them but boy do I like to make them suffer.

In the quiet space before the dawn (during that elusive in-between time before the race to find their father, before demons and hell and deals and purgatory) a noise pulls Sam Winchester from sleep. There is no hint of light in the room he shares with the sleeping woman beside him and he puts an absentminded hand out to touch the skin of her arm.

Warm. Real.

Sometimes he just has to be sure.

Jessica hasn't stirred. She's a tangle of limbs and warmth and soft exhalations at his side and Sam listens in the dark for whatever it was that pulled him from his dreams. It takes a few moments but he hears it again between her breaths: a fist on wood.

Sam is out of bed and half way to the front door before his brain reprimands him for bare feet on cold hardwood floor. It's all but forgotten, however, when he wrenches the front door open and a dark figure collapses into the surprised space of his arms.

It's the smell that hits him first, clashing violently with his first instinct to fight and to protect. It's all leather and stale bar smoke and California December air and Dean and suddenly it's like the past year never happened. Stanford and the little house he rents with Jessica melts away and just like that he's transported to some random motel in some forgotten town, holding open a motel door for his injured brother to stumble through. The vision is so vivid he has to shake his head to dislodge the forgotten memories that come so quickly and so very unbidden.

Sam hears his name pass his brother's lips with the last wisps of consciousness and when they finally crash to the ground in a heap, Dean is out cold. He's a dead, heavy and familiar weight in the circle of Sam's arms and no amount of shaking or hissing Dean's name rouses his brother. There are too many layers and too little light from the street lamps for Sam to adequately triage his brother from their pile on the floor. Untangling himself from his brother's limbs, Sam pulls him in from the unnaturally chilly night air and into the stillness of the living room by his armpits. Heart in his throat, he checks pulse points and the rise and fall of Dean's chest then, satisfied his brother is somewhat stable, quickly checks to see if their melee has woken Jess. She slumbers on unmoving and Sam quietly snicks the bedroom door shut before returning to his unconscious brother's side.

He switches on cautious lights and finally gets a good look at his brother's face. It's thin, unnaturally so, and there are dark pools beneath his lashes. Fumbling for the cold zipper pull of a winter coat Sam has never seen before, he struggles to get his brother out from under the layers, and if there is anything his brother is good at, its layers. It takes a pair of scissors and a prayer that Dean is not too attached to the Black Sabbath t-shirt to finally reach flesh and Sam has to stifle a gasp.

Dean is skinny; skinnier than Sam has ever seen him, and blue and purple bruises mottle against protruding bones. Hot tears prickle the sides of his eyes but he checks them with his palm

"You're supposed to be taking care of him, you bastard." He keeps the curse internal, crushed in his shaking fists.

Unnerved by the bruising, Sam begins a frantic search for trauma. His hands move of their own accord in a dance long ago memorized under the hard tutelage of the man he's just cursed and in the same breath he offers thanks for the training.

There are no broken bones moving unnaturally beneath his fingertips but Dean's pupils show signs of concussion. A hand through sandy hair reveals a lump and a nasty gash sluggishly bubbling blood onto the hardwood. Sam gently maneuvers the remnants of the t-shirt beneath Dean's head to staunch the flow of blood and contemplates his next move. Dean is breathing softly. There is no hitch to his breath nor hint of the ubiquitous creases of skin around his eyes and forehead that are always indicative of Dean In Pain, just the steady rise and fall of his chest. Sam can measure his life by that rhythm, can separate the years between the breaths of an older sibling who never left his side, had always been around to protect him. But that did not stop Sam from leaving and now his brother is wasting away, losing his substance, and Sam is the cause of it all.

He scrubs angry tears away for the second time that night.

Sam places a palm on the bare skin of his brother's bruised chest and contemplates his next move. The gash needs stitches but Dean is still unconscious and, while skinny, Sam's not going to be able to lift him from the floor, especially after a year out of the life. He decides in the end to roll Dean into blankets on the floor and suture the head wound with the sewing kit Jess has just bought. The movements expel a wet cough from Dean who doesn't wake, but whimpers pitifully in his sleep. Sam's thoughts drift as his deft hands make quick work of the gash.

He thinks of their father and wonders where he is now. He wonders if Dean was dumped on his doorstep while their father kept up the hunt. Sick. Beaten. Concussed. The legacies of a father Sam hasn't thought of in months. But Dean… It's Dean he sees when he closes his eyes to sleep. Dean he worries about when reads the paper and comes across evidence of a nearby hunt (or the aftermath of one). For a year he's been able to ignore most of this, but Dean's sudden appearance and his borderline emaciated condition has Sam's blood boiling and his brain making plans. The indignation roils and Dean begins to respond to it, pulling Sam from his thoughts. He's finished the sutures, has been sitting staring blankly at his red stained fingertips for who knows how long, when Dean stirs.

"Sammy?" No one else in the world is allowed to call him that. Sammy is a chubby 12 year old and he'll remember to remind Dean of this just as soon as he pulls himself back together after seeing his brother's eyes for the first time in a year shatters him. Its apologies that well up into his throat first, but he suddenly loses the nerve to voice them and swallows them back down instead.

Coward

"Dean." He tries to put what he can't say behind the word and into his eyes, but he fears Dean has missed it when he looks away quickly to sweep the living room. The eye movement must trigger a wave of nausea because Sam almost doesn't get Dean on his side in time before he empties his stomach onto the floor. When it's over Dean stays on his side with eyes tightly closed and Sam rubbing soothing circles across his back.

"There's a couch. Do you think you can stand?" A year apart and you'd think he could think of something more clever but what he really wants to say won't form no matter how hard he tries.

Dean nods and Sam helps him up from the floor. There are several tense minutes of barely checked moans, nonworking limbs and a moment where Sam has to grab Dean around the middle and there is no denying how very skinny Dean really is.

"Damn it, Dean!" The words escape from behind his clenched teeth before he can stop them and Dean pushes away from him suddenly, collapsing onto the couch. Sam is by his side in an instant, instinct bringing his hand to Dean's cheek to herd Dean's eyes to his. What he sees there sucker punches Sam straight in the gut. It's raw and burning and Dean can't turn if off even though he's desperately trying to. Dean is shaking and sweating and his eyes beg Sam not to push, not to make him confess. Its then that Sam understands.

Dean can't say it out loud. To do so would give the words substance, meaning and a realness that cannot later be denied. Dean is control. Dean is the foundation on which the Winchester's world is built and to expose the cracks in that foundation would mean the destruction of that world. Sam cannot be responsible for that so he lets his hand and his gaze drop and his shoulders stoop.

"I'm going to make you some soup." He pushes off the couch and uses the force to propel himself into the kitchen and out of pull of Dean's gravity. Jessica has a good stock of soups in the cupboard and he chooses Tomato Rice without even realizing he's done it. By the time he returns to the living room, Dean has hidden away all but the evidence of the physical pain he's feeling.

Sam hand feeds his brother. Dean resists at first, of course, but his hands shake so badly that he can't get spoon to mouth. He finally admits defeat and rests his head against the couch as Sam spoons soup into his mouth. He throws most of it up minutes later but they try it again and this time it stays down. Their eyes meet briefly but continuously during it all: Sam's trying desperately not to acknowledge or name what is happening between them and Dean's searching to make sure its staying that way.

They do their best to get Dean comfortable and Sam watches his brother fall into a fitful sleep punctuated by mournful whimpers of pain. Sam pulls the living room recliner up beside the couch and is determined to keep vigil over his brother, but the soft pull of sleep is too hard to resist. Something about having Dean near shifts something deep in Sam's chest and he sleeps deeper than he has in a year. It's Jessica's soft touch that rouses him from sleep again and he jolts from dreams to find the couch empty and a quizzical look on Jess' face.

"You okay, babe?" She asks, eyeing the blanket and the odd placement of the chair she's found him in. He nods and gives her a half truth about having gotten up in the middle of the night before she disappears into the kitchen. Sam jumps from his chair and searches the house for any sign of Dean. There is none. No blood, no vomit, no indentation of his brother in the cushions of the couch. Sam runs a shaky had through his hair and is trying to decide if last night was a dream when he finds the note.

'Thanks Sammy.'

It's hastily scrawled in Dean's boxy script and Sam tries to make sense of the two words. He searches their slight slant for a hint of Dean's thoughts when he wrote them, but it feels as though the connection he's shared with Dean ever since they were kids has been severed somehow. He can feel the crackle of some strands still attached, but nothing like it used to be: a heavy weight anchoring him to the past. A weight that had reminded him daily that Dean had existed and that Sam had left him behind. It was as if Dean had let him go, willingly severed the connections so that Sam could move on and perhaps one day find that he had not thought of Dean for months like he was able to do with their father.

He crumples the note in his hand and brings the fist to his forehead. Clenching his teeth and willing himself not to cry, he releases the paper from his grip and watches it fall to the bottom of the garbage can. This is the time before demons and deals and purgatory and death and Loss still can't seem to leave the Winchesters alone. In the quiet space before the dawn he holds the memory of his brief reunion with his brother close then lets Jessica's morning noises pull him away and back to Stanford.

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