Contains dialogue from the episode 'Red Sky at Morning', it belongs to Eric Kripke and Laurence Andries.

Part of my Deleted Scenes series. Full list of fics in reading order available on my profile page. They will make more sense if read in order. :)

There's a knock at the door while Dean's rolling up a shirt and Sam's packing up his laptop, that they both ignore because they already know who going to be on the other side. Bela waltzes in a minute later, and Dean barely looks up.

"You boys should learn to lock your doors," she intones condescendingly. "Anyone could just barge in."

"Anyone just did," Sam grumbles, and Dean's just a tiny bit proud of him for being a dick to her. "Come to say goodbye, or thank you?"

Bela hums, and reaches into her purse. She pulls out two enormous wads of cash. "I've come to settle affairs."

Dean blinks, staring at the money in her hands, and stands up.

"Giving the spirit what he really wanted? His own brother? Very clever, Sam." She tosses one of the bundles to him, and the other to Dean. "So here. It's ten thousand. That should cover it. I don't like being in anyone's debt."

Dean stares at her. He's never held this much money in his hands before. "So boning up ten grand is easier for you than a simple thank-you? You're so damaged."

She smiles calculatingly. "Takes one to know one. Goodbye lads."

She's gone in a flash of curly hair and flowery perfume and the click of heeled shoes on hardwood, and Dean shakes his head and tries very, very hard not to decide he kinda likes her.

"She's got style," Sam says, echoing Dean's thoughts out loud. "You gotta give her that."

"Yeah, I s'ppose."

"Y'know, Dean, we don't know where this money's been."

Dean grins and grabs the stack of bills out of Sam's hand. "No. But I know where it's going."

"Where?" Sam asks warily, as Dean laughs and walks away from him to finish shoving his belongings back into his bag.

"Somewhere where we can double it. And eat steak and lobster for five bucks as long as we keep rollin' the dice."

"We are not going to Vegas," Sam says flatly, and Dean flashes a smile at him over his shoulder.

"Not Vegas."

"Dean, no," Sam protests in a pained voice. "The last time we were in Jersey a spirit tried to carve out your liver with a letter opener."

"What are the chances of that happening again?" Dean asks, still smiling – smiling even more because Sam's got that prickly little-brother look all over his face. He swings his bag over his shoulder and claps Sam's chest as he moves past him. "C'mon, Gigantor. Get the lead out."

"Seriously?" Sam asks skeptically, finally breaking the silence once they're a good twenty miles away from Sea Pines. "Atlantic City?"

"Hell yeah. Play some roulette, always bet on black," Dean answers. Sam doesn't respond, and Dean hates the sticky, uncomfortable feeling he gets inside whenever he tries to talk about anything important or emotional, but he still needs to make himself voice what's been going through his head the last couple of days. Sam needs to hear it. "Hey, listen. I've been doin' some thinking, um, I want you to know I understand why you did it. I understand why you went after the crossroads demon."

Sam sort of sighs and clears his throat at the same time.

"Y'know, situation was reversed, I guess I'd'a done the same thing." Dean knows he would. He knows if Sam was the one locked in a deal like this, he'd be doing everything possible to get his little brother out of it. "I mean, I'm not blind. I see what you're going through with this whole deal. Me goin' away and all that. But you're gonna be okay."

Sam looks over at him sadly, and blandly says, "You think so."

"Yeah, you'll keep huntin', live your life," Dean says casually, even though he isn't fooling either of them. "You're stronger than me. You are. You are, you'll get over it."

Sam just glances up at the Impala's ceiling and clears his throat again.

"But I want you to know I'm sorry, I'm sorry for puttin' you through all this. I am."

"You know what, Dean? Go screw yourself," Sam says angrily.

Dean frowns. "What?"

"I don't want an apology from you. And by the way, I'm a big boy now, I can take care of myself."

"Oh, well excuse me," Dean mutters.

"So would you please quit worrying about me? I mean, that's the whole problem in the first place! I don't want you to worry about me, Dean, I want you to worry about you! I want you to give a crap that you're dying!"

Dean nods and smiles. It isn't a happy smile, completely the opposite, but he was wrong. He shouldn't have said anything. He thought he could have this conversation, but he can't.

"So, that's it?" Sam asks incredulously. "Nothin' else to say for you?"

"I think maybe I'll play craps," Dean says off-handedly, and he doesn't feel good about the look he can see on Sam's face out of the corner of his eye, but he pushes that down too. It's his time-tested method of coping – if he can convince himself he doesn't care about the bad things that happen to him, he can keep moving. He did the same thing when Sam left for school, when he left Dean. Buried himself in hunting and cheap booze and cheaper women and pretended nothing was wrong until he actually started to believe it. It's not the healthiest way of dealing but it's the only way Dean knows how. And it works, so fuck what a shrink would have to say about it.

He drives for maybe an hour before his eyelids start getting heavy and he starts scanning the sides of the highway for a place to crash. Like always after a hunt, Dean wasn't actually driving anywhere. He was just driving. More often than not, when they do find another job, they end up having to go back in the direction they came from. It's just the habit Dean's been in since he started hunting on his own. A job wraps up, and he automatically gets into his car and picks a direction and drives until he has to stop. It's his way of unwinding, and when Sam came back, it became their way of unwinding. They talk or argue or listen to music or sometimes just listen to nothing but the rumble of the Impala's tires on concrete, and there are lots of times when it's the most at home Dean ever feels. Tonight, the silence is tense, but that's nothing new either. It's not unusual for Sam to be pissed at Dean about something, or the other way around. That's become as much a part of their rhythm as everything else. Dean likes that part of it too, mostly. That they haven't disappeared completely into what they do together in the dark – that he's still the big brother and Sam's still the little brother and they still get under each other's skin almost as often as they get along.

Really, though, it just makes Dean's ticking clock harder to deal with. He wants so badly to think that Sam will be okay without him, but not for the reason Sam thinks. Dean's not heartless. He knows Sam loves him; knows Sam will be devastated when the clock runs out. But Dean has to believe Sam will eventually find a way to move on and find some sort of happiness, because he's going to Hell whether Sam wants him to or not and Dean has to, has to, believe he's leaving behind a Sam that won't self-destruct when it happens. It's the only thing that keeps him going sometimes; to know that Sammy will be okay.

Sam disappears into the bathroom as soon as Dean finds them a room, and he's in there for a long time but it's totally silent – no tap-water flowing or toilets flushing or shower running – so he's not doing any of the things a bathroom is meant for, and Dean doesn't want to think about what that means he is doing, because knowing Sam, he's probably just hiding in there until he can pull himself back together enough to show his face. Dean distracts himself by watching a cooking show and wishing either of them had any idea how to make anything other than canned soup, because the casserole the woman is making is filled with cheese and tomato sauce and garlic and it looks way better than what Dean usually lives on. When Sam finally emerges, he doesn't look at Dean. He sort of glances around the room a little, and then shoves his hands into his pockets and heads slowly for the door.

"What did I do this time?" Dean asks tiredly.

"Nothing," Sam answers emotionlessly, although the darkness in his eyes betrays how upset he really is. "I'm gonna get some air."

"Oh, what, you're leaving now?"

"I'm not leaving, I'm getting some air."

"You know there's air in here, right?" Dean points out sarcastically, gesturing around the room. "Otherwise we'd be dead."

"Well look who attended the second grade," Sam mutters, and Dean sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. Sam may think he's a big boy now but he's still got little-brother in him in spades and sometimes dealing with him is exhausting.

"Sammy, I … I'm really tryin', here, okay? I'm no good at talking about shit like this, you know that, but I'm tryin', man. I'm tryin' to figure out what I did to make you so pissed at me, but you gotta at least meet me halfway."

"You're not going away," Sam says quietly, not looking Dean in the eye. "You say that like you think you're going to live in France for a year or something. You're going to die, Dean. For real, forever. And you're gonna leave me up here all alone without the one person I …"

He doesn't finish the sentence, and there are tears in his eyes, and Dean honestly can't remember the last full day that went by without that happening, and he hates it maybe more than he's ever hated anything but there's nothing he can do about it.

"I'm sorry," he offers softly, flinching a little when Sam chokes on a sob he's clearly trying desperately to hold back.

"That doesn't fix anything."

"I know." Dean wishes it could.

Sam gets himself back under control after a minute, and he runs a shaky hand through his hair. "I'm still gonna get some air. I just … I need to not think about this for a while. I …"

He trails off again, and Dean nods. "I get it. You, uh … is this like a go-for-a-walk-alone kinda thing, or you want some company?"

Sam finally looks up at him, shadows still in his eyes but they're mixed with something else. Something kind of like quiet hopefulness. He holds out his hand, and Dean stands up and takes it and lets Sam pull him in for a kiss. There's sadness shading the way Sam's lips slide against his, but at least it's better than fighting.

The night air is cool but in a refreshing way, and Dean pops his collar and puts his hands into his pockets as they walk. Sam kicks a rock on the ground, it skids in front of them a few feet and once they catch up to it, Dean kicks it and sends it bouncing along the pavement again. Sam says, "Three points," and Dean laughs even though it doesn't really make sense, and they play tin-can-soccer with it for the next block or so. After a while, they come up on a little park, and there's a locked gate since it's the middle of the night but they scale it easily. There's a pond in the center, and Sam skips a few stones while Dean just watches him. Watches the way his hair shines in the moonlight, how his skin seems to glow in the bluish hue, and tries really, really hard not to think about how much he's going to miss him. Sam is his beautiful, precious, bitchy, stubborn, perfect little brother. Dean's loved him every single day that he's been alive, and he doesn't for a second regret making the deal because it brought Sam back and Dean couldn't have lived the rest of his life without him. But the thought of spending the rest of eternity without Sammy has Dean swallowing over a lump in his throat. He's been trying really hard not to think about it so far, but suddenly he can't stop.

"We should go skinny dipping," he says, in an attempt to push the feeling away.

Sam snickers. "Dude, this thing is probably like two feet deep. We'd just be up to our knees in slimy pond water with our dicks hanging out."

Dean laughs, and then he pictures what Sam just described and he laughs even more. "Sexy."

Sam shakes his head and laughs too, his eyes bright and dimples carved into his cheeks, and Dean's going to miss that smile more than anything. He plops himself down on a bench, and Sam brushes his hands off on his jeans and joins him. Dean swallows and closes his eyes for a moment. Then he reaches over and wraps his arm around Sam's shoulders. Sam leans into him, resting his head on Dean's shoulder and pushing his forehead into Dean's neck. He slides a hand over Dean's thigh, squeezing the muscle and rubbing his thumb back and forth over the denim. Dean trails his fingers through Sam's hair and rests his mouth against the top of Sam's head. It hurts too much to think that every time Dean holds Sam like this, it's one time closer to the last time. So he shoves that away too.

"I love you," Sam whispers.

"I know you do, baby boy," Dean answers.

Dean can feel all the words Sam wants to say but doesn't – that he'll miss him, miss this – but he's happy Sam keeps them to himself. It's a trick Sam learned from Dean; that if he doesn't say something out loud, it doesn't totally feel real. Dean hates that Sam had to learn that, but right now he's grateful for it. Sam wouldn't say anything Dean doesn't already know anyway. And if Dean closes his eyes and just breathes in the smell of Sam's hair and soaks up the heat from his body, he can almost convince himself everything is okay.