"We're supposed to be a team. It's supposed to be you and me against the world, right?"

"Dean. It is."

"Is it?"

- 5.16, Dark Side of the Moon

"In fact, every relationship I've ever had has gone to crap at some point. But the one thing I can say about Benny? He has never let me down."

"Well, good on you, Dean. Must feel great finally finding someone you can trust after all these years."

- 8.09, Citizen Fang

So you know how much I need you,

but you never even see me, do you?

Sometimes Sam doesn't think he'll ever understand his brother, but it's usually through this bewilderment that he realizes he knows Dean all too well. He sees him pretending—sees his empty jokes and grins and general statements which, maybe somewhere under five layers or so, contain the truth—and knows that he wouldn't be who he is without his walls, but he still can't help but wish that his brother weren't built so fundamentally on self-loathing.

It's a little frightening. His own self-loathing goes up a notch each time Dean alludes to his quiet preconceptions (to how goddamn fragile he really is, no matter how much he tries to hide it). It's like Sam could say anything and Dean would take it at face value. He'll pretend he doesn't, of course, but beneath it all he'll believe every god-forsaken word.

This has become increasingly obvious now that Dean is back from Purgatory. They perceive things in such different lights that it's like they've been on different wavelengths their whole lives, parallel to one another and seeing the same things but eons apart at the same time. Sam can hardly remember anymore all the nights spent sleeping against each other in the back seat of the Impala, all the little fragments of conversation that made his childhood worth it, and he holds onto every piece of his brother that he can recall now, because they're few and far between.

It's just that no matter what he does, he can't seem to get Dean to realize how important he is to him. How much he loves him. He understands that Benny means a lot to Dean, but for him to act like a guy he's known for a year can replace Sam, like Benny could possibly love Dean more than Sam does?

It's so goddamn frustrating.

Because who went to Dean for bedtime stories over his own father, snuck into Dean's bed pleading for him to chase away the nightmares about the fire? Who asked Dean to teach him how to play pool and poker, how to pick up girls, how to hunt? Who set up pranks just for a chance to see that glint in Dean's eye, made dinner when Dean got detention for beating up a bully, doted on his every word when they were in school (still does, god damn it, believe it or not)? Who patches Dean up after hunts, puts him to bed when he's drunk, cleans up after him when he leaves clothes around, murmurs away the nightmares that they don't talk about?

Who's the guy who knows Dean's quirks like the back of his hand, better? Who can read him with a glance, used to be able to make him laugh with one well-placed smirk?

Sam. Sam sees. Sam understands. Sam has always been here.

And where the fuck did all that go?

Lately, Sam's been thinking about what happened in Heaven, too, back before Hell. Their versions of paradise had been so different, and Dean hadn't understood—but I'm your family—hadn't understood how deeply engrained he is in Sam's life. I just don't look at family the way you do, he'd said, and it's true. Family, to Sam, has always been a foreign idea. Family meant a mom and a dad and a house and Sunday night dinners, something Dean had once but lost, something Sam never knew. So his Heaven—Zachariah's version of it, anyway—had been the little bits of that vision he got when he was alive.

But that didn't mean he didn't want Dean there with him. He always has. Dean is his life, no matter what, no matter where they are. Family never mattered, because he had Dean.

And shit, he hopes Dean sees it in his eyes when he looks at him, hears it in his voice and in the quiet concern between fake smiles. He hopes that sometime Dean will take a second to wonder why Sam usually falls asleep facing Dean's bed, why he still takes the time to buy Dean breakfast in the mornings when he wakes up first, why he doesn't complain when Dean goes out to bars too late at night, why he trusts Dean's judgment over anything else (he let him go to Benny, didn't he, to see what was going on, even when it looked like Benny was guilty as shit?).

Hell, Sam will hold his breath and wait as long as he needs to if it'll make Dean see how much he means to him, that he's only ever wanted to do right by him, even if he goes about it the wrong way.

(They're supposed to live normal lives when the other is gone, aren't they? He was only trying to do what Dean wanted, and who's to say he didn't research it to all hell? Who's to say he wasn't seriously messed up the entire time Dean was gone? He was he was he was.)

And no matter how many times Sam ends up letting Dean down, he's not going to stop trying to do what's right. Dean deserves that much, whether he thinks he does or not. And even if, in the worst case scenario, it turns out that Dean doesn't want that anymore, that he sees Sam as a part of his past he needs to leave behind, that all those moments, all those grins and quirked eyebrows and comfort, all that sacrifice for a love so deep neither of them ever really knew how to talk about it—if that only matters to Sam now, he isn't going to give it up. Not his brother.

Not ever.

But on and on,

from the moment I wake

to the moment I sleep,

I'll be there by your side—

just you try and stop me.