First attempt at some Hurt/Comfort Sam and Dean. Set after Truman High-in my head, a couple months after, but that may not match the canon timeline. Anyway. I wrote this to comfort myself after I went through a similar situation to Sam's in this fic. It realy helped.

Dedicated to KKBelvis, who's been encouraging me to write h/c Sammy for a while now. Sorry this took so long and that it's not that amazing. But I hope you enjoy, Favorite Author of Mine! +D

Warm Kentucky wind blew in through the open window of the motel; it wasn't a bad place, a little off the beaten path, squat, low wooden ceiling, it smelled like a plastic air freshener and someone's tangy musk. Not a bad day, either, with the sun out, barely a cloud up in the sky.

Or at least, it shouldn't have been a bad day. But for Sam Winchester, it was.

He sat at the three-legged table underneath the window, tapping his pen idly against his lips. At fourteen, on his second school of ninth-grade year, this test was pretty important. No telling how long they'd be in town for, but every Grade A paper he got was stowed in a musty shoebox under Sam's bed, and it went with him wherever he went—following his brother and dad across the country hunting monsters.

At fourteen, Sam was already sick of that life.

Usually homework was a good escape; monsters were hard to figure out, but numbers, logical arguments, essays—now, those made sense. Give him a paper to write on Nietzsche and he could tell you where the guy was from and the basis of all his philosophies. Stick him in front of a rampaging werewolf and just for a second, he'd clam up. That had led to his dad and brother having to pull him out of harm's way more than once. Dad…he was disappointed. Sam could see it in his eyes. His youngest son just wasn't shaping up to be the hunter that Dad had always wanted him to be.

Tough luck. Dad hadn't shaped up to be much of a father, either.

Sam shook the thought away, draping a mop of dark hair into his eyes, and tried to focus. Algebra was really kicking him today, something he usually blazed through in twenty minutes, tops. He had the motel to himself—Dean had sneaked off campus with Mandy Richards halfway through lunch and hadn't shown his face since. Not that Sam cared. He liked it better this way—quiet. Alone. No Dad cleaning guns in the corner, no Dean making wisecracks.

No Dean.

Sam shivered.

He didn't know how Dean was going to explain to Mandy about the inches-deep, two-foot-long gashes from his throat to his torso. They'd just been pinking up when Dad had checked them, right before he'd bailed on a job two states over. Dean played it off like it was nothing, but Sam saw him moving funny sometimes, like he was hurt. And who wouldn't be hurting with wounds like that? Barely three weeks ago, Sam had been tumbling to his knees in a pool of his brother's blood on the floor of a warehouse, Dean flat on his back with more blood soaking his gray t-shirt. That amulet had been standing out like beacon in the red. Dean's face had been dazed, stunned from the injury.

"Son of a bitch." Dean has said, staring up at the ceiling as a trembling Sam leaned over him. "This—ow."

Sam's face had been streaked with tears as he hauled his brother's unresisting, unsteady head into his lap and put pressure on the wounds with both hands. "D-Dad!"

"Stop with the girly…crying jag, princess." Dean had coughed, blood coming out of his mouth. "M'fine, all right?"

Dad had come back from finishing off the spirit they were hunting, and pulled Dean back from the brink with a lot of tender care. But all Sam could remember clearly were the moments he'd sat with Dean's head on his knees, sure that his brother was going to die. The reality had never hit home harder than right then.

The wind rushed in through the window, stirring Sam's hair and startling him from his memories. He tapped the pen harder and faster against his lips, then against the table, trying to drag himself back into focus. But the words kept swirling away from him like salt inside of water, and the harder he grabbed for them, the faster they dissolved.

You need to get your own personality, Winchester! Stop hiding behind your big brother all the time!

Sam dropped the pen and buried his face in his hands, trying to scrub the memory of taunting words out of his head. Words were just words—they couldn't gut you, possess you, haunt you, or kill you. Words were something that had to just slide off the way lighter fluid slid off a heap of bones. Clean and easy. Then you could toss in the match, light it up and watch them burn. Words and bones, smoldering together.

It was never that easy. The bones were rarely where you wanted them to be, and the words never slid off the way you expected them to.

It had just been a joke, some idiots having fun at his expense. Because he'd been eating lunch with Dean—because his brother had been in a lot of pain at school and needed help with his tray. And as much as Dean usually jabbed at him for being a clingy momma hen, today he'd been totally quiet. So Sam shouldn't feel guilty. Didn't, really.

The kids had stalked him on the way to his next class. Thrown around the typical fodder for a new kid. And then stooped lower. Telling him he was pretty deep in his "cool brother's" shadow. That he'd never have a name himself. Sam? Who's Sam Winchester? That Dean guy is cool!

And then, finally, that last jab. Telling him to get his own personality.

Sam had a personality. He knew he did. But it was a quiet, almost shy but not really, backseat thing. Where Dean as all buoyancy and bluster, rushing into situations head-first and picking himself back up later, Sam was hands-in-his-pockets, head down, observant. When he was with his dad and with Dean, it didn't matter. Even though he hadn't said his first word until he was almost two, Sam had always known how to get his point across. But out here in the real world, that didn't sit right with anyone.

Here, he was expected to be comfortable in large groups of people—even though, growing up, he'd spent most of his time with just Dean. It was weird if he didn't know what to do with himself in a school of almost four hundred kids. He was the ghost here, the loser, the freak.

Sam lowered his face into his arms.

The motel room door banged open and there was no mistaking the shuffling footfalls or the snap of the card-shaped key scraping on the counter.

"What a day, huh, bro?" Dean said tiredly. "Dad called. Said he'd be a couple days late. Sounded totally wasted, too."

Sam's hands curled into fists under his arms. And this was great. Just great. One of the few times he felt like he needed his dad there—maybe to tell him he was all right, that following Dean's lead didn't make him any less his own person—and Dad was smashed somewhere out of Sam's reach, in every sense of the expression.

Glassware chattered together as Dean grabbed a bowl. "Don't feel much like cookin', so if you want anything fancy, order out." Cheerios pinged into the bowl. "Pastor Jim called, too. Said he'd have a case for us once Dad wrapped things up here."

Keep it together, Sam warned himself. He felt like he was fragmenting, the sound of Dean's voice grating on his ears.

The Cheerios finished pouring, and there was a spell of silence.

"I found that stash of girly underwear in your—"

Sam shoved up from the table, going for the hook by the door, grabbing his jacket without even looking at his brother.

"Whoa, hey! Sam, I'm sorry. It was a joke, all right?" Dean said quickly.

"Whatever." Sam muttered, cramming his arms into the sleeves.

"Who pissed in your lunchbox?"

The thought of lunch, of the lunchroom, of the bullies, made Sam cringe. "Forget it, Dean. Who cares?"

"I care. Wouldn't be asking if I didn't."

"Whatever." Sam repeated, zipping up his jacket. Tears filled the corners of his eyes, but he refused them, Crying twice in one month? At fourteen, that was just another problem he didn't need.

"The hell is wrong with you?"

"Nothing." Sam snapped, heading for the door. Almost to the threshold, he added under his breath, "If I was more fed up with all of this, I'd put a gun to my head."

He heard the clatter of a spoon hitting the counter; hands grabbed his shoulders, yanking him back, and for one second Sam felt a punch of fear. Because he knew he'd pissed Dean off, and when Dean was pissed he was like a bull in a china shop. He didn't just rant, he rampaged.

Dean spun Sam around, and Sam braced himself to get an earful.

Instead he saw Dean's ashen face, wide eyes a few inches from his. Dean was crouched on Sam's level; he was an easy six feet whereas Sam was just over five. But right now they were eye-to-eye.

"Don't you say that, Sammy." Dean's voice was shaky, husky. "Don't you say that to me, you hear me?"

The absence of the anger he'd expected made Sam feel a hundred times worse. "I'm sick of Dad not being here, Dean. Or when he is, he's drunk."

"I know, buddy." Dean squeezed Sam's shoulders.

Sam swiped an arm across his eyes. "I just want this to stop."

Dean did something he never did, right then. He never did this stuff ever. But he grabbed Sam and pulled him in tight, thumping him hard on the back, then pinning him with his arms around Sam's shoulders. Sam tucked his head against his brother's chest and breathed in the smell of Dean's jacket—smelled like Dean, and the person who'd owned it first: their dad.

"I know you want out of this, Sam. God knows, I do." Dean's chin was heavy on Sam's shoulder. "But we gotta tough it out, all right? You and me—heart and soul of this operation. Dad's the guts. The three of us, we're not like everyone else's family. But we make it work."

"Try telling dad that."

"He knows it, Sam."

And maybe that was the part Sam was missing, that the kids at school were missing, too: that, more than his dad, John Winchester was the gut instinct Sam had, the compassion that socked him in the stomach when he saw other people in trouble. He was the strength that kept the gun in his hand steady every time Sam squeezed the trigger.

And more than his brother, Dean was Sam's heart, living and breathing, walking around. He was the pulse right under Sam's skin, and the best part of who Sam wanted to be. The part he admired most. The other kids were trying so hard to make their own identities, maybe they didn't get that Sam was a third part of a whole. He was the soul linking his family together. And if that meant stepping in their footprints to make sure they always had someone watching their backs, he'd do it. He'd do it until he died.

"You cool?" Dean rested a hand briefly on Sam's wiry hair.

Sam nodded and pulled back. "I'm not going to school anymore, Dean."

Dean sat back on his haunches. "Okay, Captain Kirk. Kobyashi Maru kicking your ass?" When Sam glared at him, Dean raised his hands. "No more school, all right."

"Thanks."

"Don't mention it." Dean hunched up not his feet. "Seriously, do not mention it. Dad wants me to keep your brain plugged in to all this stuff."

"I'll go back. Sometime."

"Whatever you wanna do, Pluto." Dean looked at Sam long and hard for a minute. "Sammy, I'm serious. Don't talk about killing yourself, all right? Don't even joke about it. Y'know, nothing out there's worth you puttin' a round in your head."

The tiredness came sweeping back over Sam, and he slumped. "I know."

"Hey, I got an idea." Dean slung an arm across his shoulders. "How about we ditch the stale Cheerios, order in some pizza and watch 'Mars Attacks'?"

"What about Mandy?"

"Eh. She broke it off." Dean steered Sam toward the ratty couch. "Saw the scars, didn't buy the whole, 'my dog got a little outta hand' bit."

Dean's rigid face told Sam it was more than that. He could imagine Mandy somehow twisting things around, blaming the injuries on Dad's negligence. Or, depending on how much Dean had let slip—maybe she'd seen it as Sam's fault, because Dean had put himself between the rampaging spirit and Sam's scared-stiff form, taking the blow that would've torn Sam apart.

He adjusted Dean's arm, realizing his brother was leaning on him more than guiding him now. "You don't wanna be with someone who hates your scars, Dean."

"Damn straight, little brother." Dean shoved Sam onto the couch and flopped down beside him. "Speaking of scars, these things hurt like a bitch."

Dean was milking it for all it was worth. But that was part of Sam being the soul of the operation—compassion was second nature.

"I'll order the pizza." Sam offered, but he couldn't resist jabbing, "What would you do without me, huh, Dean?"

Dean took a long time answering—long enough for Sam to hunt up a phone book. Then he answered, quietly, "Try not to think about it."

So that was what you did. You just buried the scars, mental, physical and emotional, buried the things you didn't want to think about—the what ifs, the maybes, the words—and you kept fighting.

And Sam could do it. He'd have to.

Because, at fourteen, Sam still wanted to be like his big brother.