Author's Notes: Quick note on the title, it's meant to refer to Dean and Sam having the same need for the other one in their lives.

My take on a post-resouled, unstable Sam…again. Am I seeing a pattern here? I should maybe branch out, but I just love hurt Sam so much.

Everyone ready for the boys to be back on the 28th? I think this ends a little abruptly, but I just wanted to get something out there before I went mad from hellatus and I do hope you like it. Please read, review, and enjoy!

Summary: Dean looks at a blood-covered Sam and finally understands, all they have to do is protect each other. It's all they need. Sam just understood it first.

Synonymy

Dean slams the door behind them and shoves his blood-covered brother onto the floor.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" He doesn't even stumble over 'hell'. A testament to how angry he is, how frustrated.

Sam scrabbles backwards across the floor and pulls himself up with the first thing he runs into. He makes no move to defend himself, arms limp at his sides, eyes gone wide, looking for all the world like a kicked puppy.

A kicked, blood-covered puppy who'd spent the day romping through and gnawing on corpses.

Dean takes a deep breath, then another, trying not to hit Sam, who couldn't help it. Couldn't help that something was wrong; twisted and broken. He scrubs a hand over his face and grits out carefully controlled words toward his trembling brother.

"Is this how it's gonna be, huh? You gonna kill everything, everyone, that comes across the wrong way?" Dean shakes his head, eyes gone dark, and huffs out a humorless laugh. "You gonna come after Bobby again? Maybe try and kill me?"

Dean's not prepared for the look of utter devastation and horror on his sibling's face.

"No, no." Sam's eyes are wide and wet. "I'd never…You…You…and Bobby and Cas. Never. I'd never hurt you. Not for anything. That's why…"

Sam flutters and falters wildly, almost hysterical; all sincerity and damage.

"They were coming after me and that would've been okay. It'd been fine if... I'd only be back where I'd been before, maybe even better, but you-" Sam looks at him in that way he did when he was a kid and could break his older brother's heart with a sideways smile. "You would've gotten in the way. You wouldn't have let them hurt me and…you'd have gotten hurt."

Sam looks away and makes a face that says the mere thought of Dean being hurt disgusts him, makes him ill.

"That's why." Tears are threatening in Sam's eyes when he looks up again, all begging and imploring and hopeful. "Understand?"

Not an ounce of anger left in him and Dean's not even surprised anymore that he does understand. He gets it and knows it. And some small, sick part of him loves that Sam would do this for him. So when he sighs, when he leans down and presses his forehead against his little brother's, tacky from drying blood, he's not even remotely caught off guard by the warmth and love and home he feels there.

He doesn't need to say he understands. He knows that Sam gets it and they've always done better without words anyway.