When Dean was 15, he fell in love with this girl named Shannon.

She had brown hair, the kind that goes gold in the sun, and green eyes, I think.

No, blue.

Yeah, blue, because he used to call them sapphires all the time which I always get mixed up with emeralds in my head, and so, yeah. Blue.

We were living in Maryland, in the little slip that's out near the mountains, tucked in between Pennsylvania and West Virginia. That was the one cool thing about the place for me, that there were so many states so close together like that. I stared at that page in the atlas for days when we first moved in, and I made all these elaborate plans about buying a house in just the right place so I could make breakfast in Maryland and take a shower in Pennsylvania and watch TV in West Virginia. I even drew a little diagram—on the back of one of my notebooks, I think—and showed it to Dean after dinner one night when I was supposed to be getting ready for bed.

He studied it, really looked at it hard, and I loved him for that. Even then, as a kid, I knew that flights of fancy or even flashes of imagination were, at best, utterly wasted on Dad.

"Looks good," Dean said, leaning back on the bed. Mine. "But there's something missing."

My face crumpled like the cheap lined paper inside. I studied the outline again and felt my eyes go smeary, kicking myself for showing it to him, for even caring what he thought. "It was a dumb idea," I mumbled. "Forget it."

He made this exasperated huff like he did all the time, it seemed like, and swooped over, tapped his finger on the page. "Dude, calm down. It's awesome. It's just—where'm I sleeping? Don't see my bedroom on here."

I turned my head and he was smiling at me. So I had to smile, too. Easier to smile than to try and explain. "Oh!" I said, fumbling for my pencil. "Yeah. You're right. Sorry. I'm sorry."

He waggled the notebook at me. "Less sorry. More drawing."

I reached down and fished my good pencil, the mechanical one I used for math, out of my backpack and scrambled back beside him, wiggling a little under his grin. He slapped the picture in my lap and leaned in, peered over my shoulder as I worked.

"Put my room in Pennsylvania. Yeah, yeah, right there. And draw a pinball machine in the corner, ok? Wait! No! A foosball table. Yeah. That's way better."

I may have been the one holding the pencil, but he was the one drawing the lines.

"Ok, ok," I huffed. "Geez. You're blocking the light."

He ruffled my hair. "You're a block."

"Wow, Dean, you're so creative," I groaned.

He snorted, shifted so quick on his knees that his amulet beaned me in the ear. "I ain't the artist in the family, kiddo. That's for damn sure."

That's one of the reasons he fell for Shannon, he said. Because of her art.

She was in his drama class, some stupid elective thing he whined about for the first few weeks like it was torture. It sounded great to me:reading plays—which I didn't even know you could do, honestly—and then acting them out seemed way cooler to me than the ditzy arts and crafts they made us do in fourth period.

"No, but," Dean said, flinging his fork around his face. "Dude. Honestly. It is so very, very lame. And I always get paired with these, like, monosyllabic dorks who're afraid to look at me, much less, you know, emote or whatever."

I made a mental note to look up emote. "Um, ok, but at least you're not weaving potholders in the style of the Pueblo Indians"—I broke out the air quotes—"'in honor of the First Thanksgiving.'"

He stared at me, macaroni temporarily forgotten. "There are so many things wrong with that sentence."

I jammed my elbows on the table too hard and sent the ketchup flying. "I know, I know. I tried to explain that to Mrs. Blaine, but—"

Dean chuckled, his favorite sound of disgust. "Lemme guess. She didn't take too kindly to your sass."

"She sent me to the library. To, uh,"—I reached for her teacherly screech—"'educate yourself through research, young man, to avoid outbursts of such shocking ignorance in the future.'"

Dean laughed, for real this time, and brought his chair down with a bang. "Outbursts of shocking ignorance, huh? Man."

I shrugged, trying to be cool about it. Trying not to remember how she'd made my face burn, how hard it had been not to just bolt out of the room and down the fucking hall and never, ever come back to her tight face, to the eyes of all the kids I didn't know, didn't want to.

But what I said was:

"Yeah. It was ok. I just read until it was time to go home."

He reached over me and grabbed a fistful of onion rings. Gave me this sideways glance that made my face hot, but in a good way, this time. "Sammy. You hellion."

"Yeah, well," I said, smacking his elbow out of my plate. "But, see, your drama thing? So much cooler than that."

He crossed his eyes, which always made me laugh. "Whatever. No big deal. Not like I'll have suffer through it forever, right? We'll be outta here before long."

But we weren't.

It was one of those snowball hunts, Dean called them. When Dad would kill one big bad, working through it with another hunter, who then caught wind of something a town over, to be quickly followed by something else in the next state, and before you know it, a month was slicked away like blood off a blade and Dad was a thousand miles away from where he'd left us. One month. Then two. Then more.

Long enough, apparently, for Dean's crush to build slow burn, to work its way out of physical attraction and crash land in puppy love, though even then I knew he'd punch me if he heard me say that.

At first he just brought her name up a lot, usually in the middle of something else.

"Yeah," he said, conversational, his hip jammed in the doorframe. "I gotta work on my lines later. Shannon said it'll be easier for us to practice if we don't have scripts in our hands."

I looked up from where the fitted sheet was trying to strangle me. "Practice?"

He shook his head, impatient. "Yeah. Our scene thing. For drama."

"Oh. I thought you hated that."

He pushed off the wall and grabbed the other end of the sheet, helped me wrestle it around the mattress. "Eh," he said with a shrug. "It sucks. But Shannon's ok." His voice lit up. "She's really into the drama thing, dude. Totally knows what she's doing, unlike those other weirdos."

I grabbed the clean pillowcases off his bed and chucked one at his head. He caught it with one hand, his face all soft and swimmy.

"Yeah," he said. "Shannon. She's cool."

Honestly, for all his fake nonchalance, it was hard to not be jealous of Shannon. Dean was the one steady thing in my life, with Dad vanishing off into the ether all the time, never saying when he'd be back or even where he was going. But Dean? He'd never left, all the big brother he was supposed to be and a little more on top of it—a mix of friend, provider, protector—this sort of solid weight at the end of the day, always waiting for me out beyond the buses or sometimes lurking right around the front door when it was cold.

But one day, he wasn't. Wasn't stamping his feet by the flagpole and cursing at me good-natured to hurry the fuck up. Wasn't leaning against the front windows like a crocodile, peering in to watch all the middle school ducklings swim by.

I walked home alone once that week, twice the next, and by the end of February I did it all the time. Wouldn't see him until dinner, or even after, when he'd burst in whistling and breathless with this big, stupid grin.

It was like taking a sweater off too early in spring; made me feel vaguely cold and unnerved, being alone like that. A little exposed and open, even in our cramped, narrow house where I could see all the exits in one sweep and lay my hand on a weapon in one step. I felt—I was—alone, like even more than normal.

At least, I was until Dean got home and filled my ears with Shannon.

And yeah, okay: I was jealous.

"She's teaching me to move," he said over a microwaved bowl of soup one night, late, while I was yawning my way through the last of my history notes.

I didn't react fast enough, I guess, was too engrossed in the War of 1812, because he rattled his spoon loud in the clam chowder and leaned over.

"Sam. You hear me? She's teaching me, man, how to move."

I heard him, had the first time, but now something got through, pushed past Andrew Jackson and Dolly Madison and shot hot and fierce right through me, made my ears burn, and I had this weird porny flash of strobe lights and some girl's hands on Dean's back and—

"What?" I spluttered.

Dean laughed and reached over, shoved my cheek with his palm. "Please. Get your mind out of the gutter, kid." He shoved away from the table and dunked his bowl in the sink with the rest of the dishes. "Shannon, she's like, I dunno, a drama prodigy or something."

He hit the tap and kept yapping, raised his voice over the water. "She goes to some summer super-camp for drama and she's good, Sam. I mean, she's teaching me stuff, ok, and you know how much I am so not into that crap. All that acting, you know." He spun around, being 'dramatic,' I guess, flinging water everywhere, all over my notes. I spluttered and gave him a death glare, but he didn't notice. Kept running off at the mouth.

"Like today, she told me that people get stuck in the vertical when they first get on stage." He twisted around, elbows deep in suds, and he must have seen my face, because he said: "I know, right? I'd never have thought of that, man."

"She said you have to remember to move outwards, too," he declared, spreading his arms out. He did this dumb little twirl, Palmolive dripping from his fingers and his face glowing, like she'd given him the key to some great revelation—but it all sounded kind of silly to me. Like when Dad was harping about staying grounded and use your center of mass when he made us spar.

But I didn't say that. Dean looked so happy, lit up and smile-y, that I just rolled my eyes a little and let him ramble.

When he was down to the silverware, he said, too casual:

"Shannon, she thinks I should try out for the spring play. Some Shakespeare thing, I guess. I dunno."

I opened my mouth to mock—because come on, Dean? On stage? In makeup?—but something about his voice, the way his whole body had stopped, was just staring off into space, knives in his hands forgotten, that caught the jibe in my throat and made me swallow it hard.

"Um," I said finally. "That's—that'd be cool. You'd be good."

Because, yeah. He would. I guess I'd never thought about it before—Dean and actor in the same sentence, Dean like one of those guys on TV—but hey, it's what he did everyday, practically. What we did. Pretending to be normal, just like everybody else, and all that practice had to count for something.

Something in his face cracked and he grinned over his shoulder, back to being Dean again. "Of course I would. I'd rock the hell out of some tights." He pointed a soapy hand at me, mock stern. "Dude. It's so far past your bedtime I can see your first period class. Get to getting."

I could hear him, as I grumped into my pajamas, singing soft to himself as the water went down the drain.

One night he came home way late, somewhere out past Conan O'Brien. I was on the couch half-asleep, the remote clutched tight in my fist, when the door blew open and Dean breezed in and I knew something was different, something good, just from the sound of his voice.

"Sammy! Hey," he fake whispered. "You awake?"

He hit the overhead light, just to be sure. Jerk.

"Gah!" I shrieked, shoving my head under my arm. "Awake! I'm awake! Jeez! Dean!"

He laughed. I heard him clump across the room and the couch went voom as he sank down beside me. Smacked my knees until I threw them off the side and sat up, squinting.

"So," he said, smiling so hard he could barely get the word out. "Um. Can I tell you something?"

"Duh," I huffed, exasperated. "Like I even have a choice."

He scritched his fingers through my hair, which I hated, but it made me feel happy, too, that press of his hand to my head. Like he was trying to give me some of what he was feeling, letting it bleed over into me.

"Yeah, well. Listen up, squirt." He paused. For dramatic effect, I guess. "Shannon? She is totally in love with me."

I peered up at his face, still a little stupid with the light. "Uh. Ok. Is that good?"

He gave me this look, half-rolled eyes, half-smirk. "Is it—? Yes, ok? It's good. It's really fucking good." He leaned back and took me with him, thanks to the lumpy couch. "She is really, really cool."

"Did you kiss her?" I asked, curious, thinking suddenly, for some unknown reason, about fairytales where people only knew love was real when the hero kissed the girl.

Dean snorted. "Hey look, Pervy McPerv, my life ain't porn for your enjoyment. Whatever happened, that's between me and her, ok?" He ruffled his feathers a little, preening. "And anyway, she's the one who kissed me."

I frowned. "Is that how you know someone loves you? 'Cause they kiss you?"

He hummed and tugged me a little tighter. "No, dude. It's when somebody tells you; when they say it, you know. I love you. That's how I know. She said."

He said it like it should have made sense to me, like it was logical or something, but I didn't get it. Not really. So I turned my face and knocked my eyes into the dark press of his shoulder.

"You like her?" I asked.

At first, I thought he didn't hear me, that the words had gotten lost in the leather, because he didn't say anything. Just patted my back like he did when I was little, when I couldn't sleep. He was quiet for a long time. So long that I started to drift there, tucked up safe under his arm.

"No, kiddo," he said finally, fingers keeping score on my shoulder. "No. Don't like her. I love her." I could hear the grin there, when he said it. And again. "I love her, Sammy. Huh. How about that?"

"'S awesome," I mumbled, love and like floating behind my eyes.

He chuckled low in his belly, the sound shoving into my side. "Pretty fucking awesome, yeah. I know."

I woke up in my own bed, so he must have picked me up, tucked me in, but all I could remember was that note in his voice, the way it rang funny and beautiful when he said that word. Love.

Dean had like, liked, plenty of girls before. Tossed their names at me like pom poms in the backseat, or under the covers, or in front of the TV. Jenny Debra Colleen Simone Ashley and Georgia, just to name a few. But he'd never loved one, at least not that he'd told me, and I knew he would have. He never could keep crap like that to himself.

In those days, he wore his heart way out on his sleeve. And Shannon stuck there like nobody else had.

"What do you think?" he asked, a week later.

I was fighting with the topic sentence in my paper on The Outsiders. Had been for what felt like forever so I wasn't interested in whatever he wanted attention on right that second.
"Uh huh," I muttered, bitterly shoving eraser shards across the tabletop.

"Dude, you have to actually look," he said, rattling something by my ear.

I sighed and turned my head, melodramatic. "Geez, ok, what?"

He sat down beside me, so close I could smell Irish Spring on him and feel the heat of the sun rolling up off his body.

"I got it for Shannon," he said, laying a small, open box on the table in front of me. "Think she'll like it?" His eyes were all burning hope, his tongue caught on the edge of his incisor, the way it always did—still does—when he's nervous.

The box held a tiny, silver-y looking necklace: a charm of a sailboat dangling from a delicate chain. The kind that costs $12.95 at the mall and turns green after six weeks. Even I knew that, but Dean actually blushed, looking down at it, like it was some rare precious thing.

"She's always talking about this house her grandfather used to own in Nantucket, before he died," he said, his voice this odd mixture of heedy and needy, edged with desperation so thick I could feel the butterflies in his stomach. "She, ah, goes on and on about watching the boats on the water from the back porch, you know. When she was little. So I thought—it reminded me of her, I guess."

I swallowed the sudden awful taste in my mouth, wondered why my ears felt like volcanoes. "Yeah," I said. "Yeah, Dean. She'll love it."

He looked at me, then back at the boat. "Think so?" he said, uncertain, and that was—weird. Dean was always so sure, to the point of pig-headedness, always steady and solid and it was strange to think that some girl could come along and tie him up in knots like that.

In retrospect, I guess I found it scary, that crack in his foundation. It meant Dean was vulnerable, and that was something that couldn't be salted and burned or tracked and cut down. I hated the idea that something so everyday, so normal, had the potential to hurt him in ways that monsters never could.

He closed the lid, held the box between his palms for a moment and ducked his head. "Wanted to get her sapphires," he told the floorboards. "Something to match her eyes. Cause, man, her eyes—" He stopped. Sat in silence a moment, then shook his head like he was chasing away the flies. "You need help?" he asked, jutting his chin at my paper.

"Pfft! No!" I said, just like he knew I would, and he shuffled off towards the bedroom. Singing again.

Two things happened that March: the spring formal and the last of the winter snow finally melting away.

One caused Dean to drag me out to Goodwill with a pocket full of cash he'd saved from shoveling the neighbors' driveways all winter. I bitched the whole way there, but he just ignored me, dragged me along behind like the little brother I hated being, sometimes. Like right then, when he could overpower me with sheer will and arm strength. But the worst part was how freaking cheerful he was about the whole thing.

"Oh, come on, Sammy!" he chirped. "This'll be awesome. I promise."

"Ugh awesome ugh," I gulped out, wiggling under his grip like crazy, all to no avail. No, he mushed me through the doors and pulled me through the industrial strength detergent-scented rows of clothes till he found was he was looking for, which was—

Dress shirts?

"Her cousin is seventeen and he's got a convertible Cavalier," Dean said with a bit of a sneer. He yanked a black oxford off the rack, saw it was way too big and shoved it back. "I mean, it's nothing fancy. It's not the Impala."

I rolled my eyes.

"But Shannon likes convertibles. She says they make her feel closer to nature."

I looked up from inspecting the bizarre embroidery of seahorse? a skull? on some poor shirt's sleeve to see if Dean made a face at the idea that a convertible Cavalier could make someone feel closer to nature.

He didn't.

"But, you know," he shrugged. "Whatever. Her cousin is gonna drive us."

I pulled out a bright purple button-down, convinced it belonged on the costume rack. "Drive you where?"

"To the spring formal," Dean said. His voice didn't have nearly the shame I would've expected, saying a sentence like that out loud.

"What do you think of this one?" he asked, while my brain was still trying to get past the idea of Dean doing anything that could be called "formal." It was even crazier than the acting thing.

He held up a forest-green shirt that had neither embroidery of sea life nor any unidentifiable stains.

I nodded. "Matches your eyes," I said, and instantly felt ridiculous.

But Dean didn't notice. Just gave me a grin and bobbed off towards the old guy section.

He paired the shirt with a skinny black tie, like the one Kevin Bacon wore in Footloose—"One note outta your mouth, Sammy, and I'm leaving you here!"— and a pair of dark-wash jeans, because he may have loved Shannon, sure, but not enough to put on slacks.

It was three days later, Wednesday, that spring finally managed to win the war with the sturdy little patches of snow that had been hiding out in the shady spots along the edges of our house. Places the sun just hadn't gotten her fingers into yet, but, no, it was gone overnight. Spring set up camp in western Maryland and wouldn't you know it, that meant—

The end of Dad's snowball hunt.

I loped home from school—right elbow still feeling awkwardly empty without Dean clocking into it every other step—to find Dad, two days' stubble on his face, cleaning guns at the kitchen table like it was nothing. Like the place was all his. Like he hadn't just reappeared out of nowhere after almost three months away.

When he lifted his head, saw me wavering in the doorway, I could have sworn he looked right through me. That he was disappointed with me, all the way down to the core.

But what he said was:

"Sam. Your brother. Where is he?" Black gumdrop eyes on my face, just waiting for me to make a mistake.

"Um!" I managed. "He's—he's at school. Probably. Had to stay late, or uh. Something."

And if Dean onstage was a weird idea, me as an actor? Even worse.

Dad squinted over at me, his fingers soaked in oil and burnt-up salt. "Dean. At school. Any second later than he has to be," he said, flat, like I'd said Dean was a lobster or something. "You wanna try that one again, boy?"

I flinched and tried to hide it in a shift, knocking my backpack from one shoulder to the other. "I, uh. No, he's—"

He shoved back his chair, this old wooden thing that creaked like it was dying. "Sam. Don't lie to me."

"Not!" I wheezed, and in my head I saw this swirl of Dean these last weeks, happy and whistling and kind of annoying, frankly, and even weirder than usual, but happy—even I could see that—and I knew, I just knew sick certain what Dad was gonna make of all that, and oh, jeez, the acting, I'd never thought about what Dad would do when he—

His hand found my shoulder, bang. I raised my head like a weight on a chain, heavy and steady, until he was blinking down at me, bemused. Not angry. Not yet. But it was there, hanging out in the line of his jaw and just waiting for me to unleash it.

Heat rushed up to my forehead and my brain went egg salad.

"He's, um, sir. He's at the—what I mean is, Dean's—"

"Dean's what?"

Dad's eyes went right to the sound, to the door, and I heard Dean's breath snap to attention.

"Sir," he said, stiff, a totally different voice than before. "Good to see you."

Dad let me go, moved past my shoulder fast. I curled myself around the arm of the couch. Caught Dean's eye for a second, but—

"Son," Dad said. A test. Always a test, that word. "Where you been?"

I didn't have time to warn him. But Dean was always a step ahead. Always thinking vertical.

"Tutoring," he said with a sigh. "Some required crap." He raised his eyebrows at the ceiling and smirked. "This old crone thinks I don't know enough algebra, you know?"

And hell, I knew he was lying, but the crap just rolled like honey off his tongue, sincerity swimming out with every shrug.

Dad chuckled, cuffed Dean easy on the ear. "Algebra, huh? You never were any good at math."

Dean laughed, too, dismissive. "Yeah. I didn't have the heart to tell her she was wastin' her time. And mine."

And just like that, it was over. Danger in the rearview and I was the one heaving like I'd just run a marathon.

Fuck, Dean was a good actor. Is.

"Well," Dad said. "You can forget about her. We're rolling out."

I saw Dean freeze, all that bravado gone in a flash.

"We are?" I said for him. "When?"

Dad flipped around, irritated. I think he'd forgotten I was even there.

"First thing. No later than 0500. So you boys better hit the sack early tonight, am I clear?"

"Yes, sir," I mumbled.

Conspicuous silence. I couldn't bring myself to look at Dean's face.

Dad's brow clenched. "Is that clear?" he said again, his voice dropping through the floor.

"I, uh—" Dean choked. "Can we—? Is there any way we could stay a few more days, sir?"

Dad had this uncanny ability to pack days of that calm before the storm feeling into the line of his shoulders, and damn if you didn't know what was coming the second you saw them draw tight.

But Dean, always ready to run headlong into danger, even into things he knew he couldn't win, acted like he couldn't feel that shift in the room. Pretended he hadn't spent fifteen years under the same roof as Dad and didn't know that the twitch in his jaw was the harbinger of trouble.

"Stay a few more days?" Dad repeated slowly, like he hadn't quite caught it.

"Yes, sir," Dean said.

Dad took a step in on him.

My stomach dropped out and my mouth went desert then, for Dean, 'cause there was no way this was gonna end well.

"Why?" Dad asked, now all might and muscle. Sometimes, I forgot how big he was—or I figured it was my imagination that made him seem that way, my brain filling in all those missing pieces from when he wasn't around. But moments like this, there was no question: he was huge, towering over Dean like a challenged titan.

That was when Dean's bravado shook a little. When his silver armor started to lose luster and look a little more like tinfoil. "I made a promise," he said. "To a friend."

Even though his voice didn't crack, I could still hear it, where it wanted to waver. But John Winchester didn't raise sissyboys—he raised men who speak their minds. Unless their minds tried to speak up against him.

"What kind of promise?" Dad asked, careful. Much too careful.

Dean swallowed, and then I could see the shadow of that big ugly beast of puppy love looming larger than life over him.

"IpromisedI'dtakehertothedance," Dean said, all at once. One big mouthful like that and he turned pink and pale and clammed right the hell up and stopped being so brave, so sturdy, so Dean. Stared down at the floor. Not even at Dad's shoes, but at the cracked floor boards by the front door.

Dad blinked. Stepped back. Lost tension like water. "What?" he said, because all the things he expected to come out of Dean's mouth, it was clear that one hadn't made the list.

Dean sneaked a peek up. Just one. Cleared his throat and tried for that swagger, that good ol' lie he could tell like no one's business, but he couldn't get it that night.

"I promised her I'd take her to the spring formal," he said. Clear this time, slower, but no less rickety than the first time through.

And Dad?

Dad laughed.

A big, belly-roll kind of a sound. Tilted his head back and set a hand on his stomach and laughed. Like something wild being unleashed.

Dean shot me a glance. To see if I was as taken by surprise as him, and seemed to take some messed-up form of solace in the fact that we were both taken aback. The knot in my stomach got tighter.

Dad finally caught his breath. Wiped at his eyes with one palm. "You promised a girl you'd take her to a dance?"

I watched this red climb slow and steady up Dean's throat and head straight on towards his ears.

"Well," he started, tried to smile, that slick smile I'd seen him use on a 100 authority figures at all hours of the day and night. The one that says he knows what he's doing, sir, so trust him.

But Dad knew it, knew Dean, knew all his tricks 'cause Dad wrote the damn book on them all, and as soon as Dean looked him in the eye with that forming smile, it dropped right off and, well.

All that acting stuff only went so far.

Dad waited. Like he waited for monsters to crawl into a baited trap. He waited. Patient and smooth.

"You've been gone for almost three months!" Dean tried.

I gripped the seam of the couch cushion so hard that threads snagged my nails.

"And I got to know this girl," Dean continued. "And she's—" there it was, the little spark of happy that was going to get him killed— "she's really something and I promised I'd take her to the spring formal. On Saturday."

I held my breath. Dean held his ground.

To my surprise, Dad didn't yell. Didn't scream. Didn't say no. Not out right.

Instead he turned to me. "Sam, go pack your gear," he said.

I froze for a second—halfway between protesting and just too tangled up to move for a second. Just long enough for him to raise an eyebrow and yeah, I got it.

"Yes, sir," I coughed out and hurried out with only a quick glance at Dean. I bolted to our room two doors down the hall. Closed the door, careful, and leaned against it, listening.

Because no way in hell was I missing this conversation.

The thing was—Dad wasn't mad.

After all that, I expected him to be. Expected him to yell or, or something. Something equally terrifying in the way that Dad could be, that nothing else was.

Instead, I heard him make Dean sit down and tell him it was time for a talk, and, well, that sounded about as uncomfortable as the year prior when Dad had given me a talk.

But it wasn't like that, either.

It was something even more awful.

"We don't get a lot of time with people," Dad said. Like we, duh, even I'd figured that one out by that point.

But Dean didn't say anything snarky, like I would've. Good little soldier boy. Just sat back and listened.

"So when you find someone you connect with, you don't get to keep them. They're not family, Dean," Dad said, in this end-all sort of voice. The same one that'd said my name more times than I could recall—now it said Dean's name like that.

"You don't get to keep them," Dad repeated, slower this time, so Dean'd have no choice but to follow, to digest that statement. "You have to get what you want from them and get out. People are tools. We're going for bigger fish, Dean. We have greater purpose. This?" I could almost see him flipping his hands around, taking in the house, the street, the town and everyone in it. "Whatever this is, son, is nonsense. You'll see in time. You have a purpose. You're a hunter. You get close to people and those people get themselves dead. So don't make that mistake. Because you're better than that."

There was this long pause, so long I thought it was over, but then Dad came back, steady and a little too strong:

"Son. Tell me the truth. You fuck this girl?"

My breath went out in a punch, heard Dean's do the same as he wheezed: "No! No, sir, I—" and it was like an oil spill in my ears, like Dad had made Shannon, this good thing between she and Dean into something dirty and sad. My stomach twisted and I pushed my forehead into the door, willing Dean to get up, get out of there and away from Dad, but—

Dad sighed, this long drawn out thing like he had the weight of the world on his chest. "That's exactly what I mean," he said. "You were operating on a false assumption: that you'd be here to see it through, with this girl." I heard the chair creak, and I could just see Dad pitching forward, his face right there in Dean's. "I appreciate your sense of romance, Dean. Really. But despite what the rest of the world tells you, you ain't got time for that shit. None of us do, as hunters."

For a second, he was quiet and all I could hear was Dean breathing ragged and fast. In my head, I could see the look on his face: his lips twisted like they always did when he was trying not to cry or scream or punch me in the face.

"So," Dad said, certain, like everything was all settled. "Next time you meet a girl like this. A girl you think you like. One who likes you back. Take what you need from her, son, as soon as you fucking can. Because I guran-damn-tee you that if you don't, you may not live long enough to regret it. You know what I mean?"

I barely caught Dean's muffled "Yes, sir," through the door. I knew that voice, too. It was the one that said Dean was hurt, the one he used when his skin was ripped up and bloody but he wanted to show Dad that the pain didn't matter, that he could fight through it like Dad always told him he should, and like always, I was the one who cried.

I stumbled around in our little room, throwing dirty clothes and books at my bag, but my face was all wet and red. Made it hard to see. I could still hear the hum of them talking outside but I didn't want to, didn't want to hear Dean's little huffs of assent and the rumble of whatever else Dad was spewing, so I gave up on packing, and threw myself under the covers. Shoved my head up under the pillows and fell into that uneasy kind of sleep that only sobbing will bring, my cheeks hot against the sheets and my little kid heart stuttering in my chest.

I woke up to a knee in the back.

I don't think that's what Dean was going for.

"Fuck, Sam," he whispered. "Sorry. Sorry, dude."

I blinked, bleary-eyed up into the darkness. "Dean?"

"Shh," he muttered, lifting the edge of the old army-issue blanket and sinking into the bed beside me. Which was kinda dumb because his bed was right there and in better shape than mine, with its lumpy twin mattress that sagged beneath us as he rolled, curled one of his hot hands over my shoulder and hauled me up against him.

I just went, ragdoll limp from crying, and settled against him, let the overwhelming smell of summer-in-waiting that always seemed to radiate off him, even in the dead of winter, seep into my nose where it was pressed against his collar.

"s'okay, Sammy," Dean said, rubbing his palm across my back. Like I was the one Dad had just torn apart at the kitchen table.

I sighed, my breath still ragged with tears, and that made him clutch me harder, press his fingers into my spine and say it again.

"s'okay, Sammy. Everything's gonna be fine."

He kept saying it, over and over, until I fell asleep.

XxX

A week later and we were in another no place, nowhere with miles at our back and Dad already gone off somewhere to kill who knew what. Me with a new schedule at a new school, Dean with a newly soured attitude, already finding the bad side of teachers and principals and a whole list of jocks itching to prove their masculinity. It was a miracle, frankly, that the cops weren't on that list, too.

He came home late one Friday, way after school. Slammed the door, rubbing at his face and whining about his "beard." He was always complaining about his facial hair itching, but I think he just wanted to remind me that he had facial hair, finally.

"Sorry, Sammy," he breezed, leaning back against the door. "I was going to walk you home, but I got detention." He gave me this look that I couldn't pin down. Something significant, though: frustration? Anxiety? Pride? With Dean, who knew?

"It's okay," I said, squelching the truth inside me that I had hoped, I had looked for him by the flagpole, thinking maybe, maybe.

Dean vanished off into our room, and I knew better than to bug him, what with the black cloud he was dragging around. It wasn't worth getting rained on.

But he went out ten minutes later and didn't come back till sometime near dawn.

And for all the shit we'd been through, he and I, all the crappy towns we'd hunkered down in—he'd never done that before. Left me alone all night, like that.

He smelled like cigarettes and beer when he blew in, and it was a good thing Dad was off killing whatever needed to be dead this time because otherwise, Dean would have been next.

But there was something else to it, too, when Dean stumbled into our room. He sat heavy on the edge of his bed like his bones were weary, like his body weighed more than he could stand. He sat there a long time, staring at nothing in the dark.

I pretended to sleep. Dean must have known I was awake, though. He had to. But he didn't say a word.

After a while, he pitched up and stumbled away. I heard the water run, his toothbrush hit the sink, his belt buckle clatter to the floor. His bed heave as he rolled inside.

I laid awake a long time, my mouth full of smoke and my head filled with the sound of his breathing. It was hard and low, and he sounded just like Dad.

The next day—after getting up at the crack of two in the afternoon—he took me out to the edge of town. Where the houses let out into a thin forest that followed a shallow creek up into the hills a little. The whole way was littered with broken glass and trash, up to a clearing—clearly the local teen hangout, if the Natty Light cans were any indication—where the water got a little deeper and pooled clean and clear.

He stood there, a long moment. "Some of the guys on the lacrosse team showed me this last night," he said, squinting into the sunlight. "I dunno, it was kind of cool."

Something unsettled inside of me, snapped its moorings and drifted away from the dock, because all that self-assurance, all that ease, that had formed Dean back in those days, it wasn't there anymore. Flat out gone.

It wasn't in his eyes or spread smooth over his shoulders or set into the line of his jaw. All that suave and cool and smoothness that made Dean, well, Dean, my big brother, seemed tarnished and swallowed whole. Crushed.

"But, you know what Dad would say. Don't get too attached."

He reached into his pocket and pulled out that cheap necklace with the sailboat on it, sparkling in the afternoon light.

"It was stupid, wasn't it?" he asked, finally looking at me. But it wasn't a question. Not really. More like a statement of fact. His face twisted, went heavy and sad, and his eyes wouldn't let me go. "No use in bein' sentimental, Sammy."

Then he reared back and hurled that cheap trinket as far as he could, as hard as he could, like the thing was burning his hand. We heard it splash somewhere. Sink somewhere. Get lost somewhere.

I felt my eyes sting, opened my mouth to ask why, why he hadn't even tried to call her, at least, try and explain that we had to leave, that it wasn't his choice, but Dean was faster.

"Come on," he said, gruff, but he drew his arm around me like he used to when I was little, and we stumbled back down the path, over the trash, little vestiges of other people's lives, and home.

He made me spaghetti and garlic bread and didn't say Shannon's name again for a long, long time.