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Dean’s been awake for a while when Sam’s labored breathing and thrashing limbs finally pull him from the nightmare they both know he’s having. For a moment, all he can hear is Sam’s pointed gasping directed at the ceiling. In this dark, anything could be there and they wouldn’t be able to tell. Dean likes it that way. He thinks Sam does too.
“Do you think she loved me?” Sam asks breathlessly.
Dean thinks of that week away from Stanford, with Sam in the passenger’s seat again, murmuring mindlessly along to Aerosmith. How he woke earlier than Dean and turned on all the lights while padding around the room, going through a half-awake routine of brushing his teeth and pulling clothes on. The way his eyes shone and the corners of his lips pulled up when he folded open his wallet to tip the diner waitress. That easy smile that Dean’s memory had almost forgotten, like a polaroid dulled and tattered at the edges, now back in vivid technicolor.
“Yeah,” he whispers back, voice hoarse from the tightness in his chest. It sounds rough in the quiet of morning, like someone's been rubbing sandpaper against his lungs. Like the words have been cutting up his throat where Dean's been holding them hostage.
“How can you be so sure?” Sam’s voice comes back from across the divide, so empty and unknowing. As if he can’t fathom how someone could possibly love him, just little ol’ Sammy. Dean wants to reach across the space between them, thrust his thumb onto the pulse there, hold Sam’s hand until he just sees, but even he can’t span four years of running in opposite directions. The gap between their beds has never seemed wider, not even when Dean used to still order two queens knowing that the other would never be used.
In the safety of the darkness he wants to say some sentimental shit like ‘ you have mom’s eyes’ or ‘ kinda hard not to with that laugh.’ He bites his tongue until the pain is a sharp reminder in the dull, soundless room. He's been quiet too long. The blood is bitter behind his lips. It reminds him that Sam’s would taste exactly the same.
“You’re you,” is what he says instead, and immediately regrets it, knows he said too much. The words were sharp in this paper-thin silence, slicing it open until all Dean can taste is blood, blood, blood. Sam stays quiet on the other bed, on the other side of the world from him. Dean can still hear his breathing, and knows he’s not asleep.