Sam sighed and rolled over, a hand searching out the annoying ringing disturbing the only decent sleep he’d had in weeks. Not bothering to open his eyes, he flipped open his cell phone and pressed it to his ear.

“Hello?” he muttered around a yawn. He wondered briefly if maybe Jess needed a ride home from the party he’d turned down earlier, or if this was another drunk dial. It wouldn’t be the first time Sam had fielded drunken phone calls since he’d come to Stanford. Jess had been guilty of it a few times.

“Hey, Sammy,” the voice drawled, sinfully sweet and deep, and very, very masculine.

“Hey,” Sam yawned again, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “Who-” He stopped. His sleep addled brain slowly catching up with him. There was only one person to ever call him Sammy, only one person who could make his heart skip a beat with just the sound of their voice. “Dean?”

Sam sat up quickly. He swallowed hard and tried to slow the beating of his heart. It had been nearly three years since he’d talked to Dean, since Sam had even heard from his brother.

“Yeah, Sammy. It’s me. Miss me, baby?”

Sam blinked, replaying his brother‘s words in his head. “Are you drunk?” he finally asked, the pieces coming together. Three years without a word, then it’s Sammy and miss me, baby? Only alcohol or complete insanity could be responsible for something like this.

Dean huffed a laugh, “Maybe a little.”

Yeah, drunk. That made sense. It would have to be the alcohol’s choice to call, not Dean’s. After Dad’s failed attempt at fixing things, at checking on Dean, Sam had given up hope of ever hearing from his brother again.

Dean sniffed and cleared his throat. “Do you remember when I used to call you baby?”

“Yeah, of course I do,” Sam’s throat tightened, his head spinning now with Dean‘s questions. It was the only other affection Dean had given freely besides the nickname he’d given Sam when he was just a child. Any other kind of affection had to be dragged out of Dean, kicking and screaming. Sometimes literally.

“Those were good times,” Dean mused quietly.

“They were,” Sam agreed. Any time he’d spent with Dean had been good times, no matter what was going on at home, or in their lives. But why did he have to bring that up now? Why did he have to open wounds that had never fully healed?

“Why’d you do it?” Dean asked, the sound of old bed springs groaning, as he threw himself down onto another motel bed, in another town that Dean would probably never see again. It made Sam’s throat tighten, and his hand clench at his side. Memories threatening to overwhelm him. “We had good times, Sammy. Why’d you have to kill that?”

“Dean,” Sam sighed. He didn’t want to go down this road. They’d been down it one too many times, and it had been Dean’s idea to end things in the first place. Stanford was Sam’s way of taking out the sting of things, of making it through. What had Dean expected of him? What did he expect now?

“No, I know I told you we couldn’t do this anymore, us, I mean,” he rambled. “I just don’t get why you had to go to Stanford. Were you planning on doing that before I ended things? Or was that payback, Sammy? Giving me what I deserve for pushing you away.”

“It wasn’t punishment,” Sam denied. “I didn’t do anything to punish you, but I couldn’t do it. It was too hard to see you everyday Dean, to know what we’d been doing all that time, and to know I couldn’t have that anymore. I couldn’t have you.”

“So it is punishment,” Dean said flatly.

“No!” Sam growled in frustration and shoved a hand through sleep tangled hair. That wasn‘t how Sam had intended it to be. “I was afraid I was going to do something stupid, and hurt you.”

“Stupid like what?”

“Dean,” he warned. “Don’t go down this road, okay? Things are done anyway.” Did any of it really matter anymore?

There was a beat of silence before: “They don’t have to be.”

“You don’t mean that,” Sam argued, quickly. His heart suddenly lodged in his throat. “You’re drunk.” Dean didn’t know what he was saying. He was only doing this to change Sam’s mind, maybe pull some hidden truth from his brother. Whatever it was that Dean was trying to do, it wasn’t good.

“Doesn’t mean I don’t know what I’m saying, Sam. You’ve been drunk before. You know it doesn’t change the truth.”

“No, but it changes a lot of things. You may want this, Dean, but you won’t let it happen. We both know that.” Dean had said it then too, had sworn up and down to Sam that it wasn’t about love. It was about what was right, and what wasn’t. They weren’t right.

“I do want this. I want you.” Sam could almost see the stubbornness and indignation in his brother’s eyes, the way his mouth would part, his tongue wetting his lips nervously. Dean was nervous, always was when it came to his emotions.

“Dean,” Sam started, shaking his head at the tears stinging the back of his eyes. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t pretend that everything was okay, couldn’t sit there and listen to all the things he’d been dreaming of Dean saying since he was sixteen, and know that in the morning none of it would matter. “I can’t have this conversation with you when you’re drunk.” I can’t have it ever.

“Well, I can’t have this conversation when I’m sober.”

“Then you don’t mean it.” Sam wasn’t going to let Dean convince him this was okay when it was something he couldn’t even talk about sober. If he couldn’t say it when he was sober, then Dean shouldn’t say it ever.

Dean laughed harshly. “You always did like to tell me what I meant. What I thought, what I was feeling. Haven’t changed a bit have you, Sammy?”

“Maybe not,” he admitted. It had been the only way to get to know Dean. To push and plead, tell him that Sam knew Dean wanted things between them, that it wasn’t all in Sam’s imagination. It was the only way Sam could get Dean to be with him, to give up his fears and realize that he wasn’t forcing Sam into anything. That Sam was old enough to make up his own mind. Funny how that had worked.

“For once just listen then,” Dean ordered shakily. “God, I messed up so bad with you. I could have…if I had just told you the truth, if I had just said what you needed to hear-fuck.” There was a sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line, followed by dead silence, and for a second Sam thought that maybe Dean had hung up.

“Dean?” he asked tentatively.

“Yeah, I’m here,” Dean whispered. “I just…how did I fuck this up so bad? How could I just let you walk out like that? And everything…everything we…”

“I didn’t want you to lie to me, Dean,” Sam said gently. “I just wanted you to be honest with me. I didn’t leave for Stanford because you didn’t love me the same, I left because I couldn’t breathe around you anymore. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t pretend.”

“Fuck, fuck, fuck-Christ, Sammy.” A loud crash echoed over the phone, and Sam was pretty sure it was the lamp shattering against the motel wall. “I wasn’t going to lie to you, I never would have lied. I was so fucking scared of saying it, of telling you-”

“I can’t do this,” Sam blurted out before Dean could get to the end of that sentence. He had a sickening feeling that his brother was beyond drunk, and about to spew the most awful garbage. Tell Sam everything he wanted to hear, just to fix things. “Its been three years, Dean. Things…change.”

There was a beat of silence, then. “You found someone new,” Dean said flatly. He didn’t sound surprised, didn’t even give Sam the chance to deny it. “Who is she?” She, like Sam could never be with another man after Dean.

“What makes you so sure it’s a she?” Sam asked, taken aback by his own acceptance of the conversation they were having. He’d never expected to even have to tell Dean about Jess, but fuck, if he really wanted to do it now.

“We’re only gay for each other, remember?” Sam could practically hear the smirk in his brother‘s words.

He laughed, head falling back against the headboard. “Thought you didn’t believe that.”

“Your words, Sammy. You said you’d never looked at anyone the way you looked at me.”

Sam’s throat went tight. “Still haven’t.” His leaving really hadn’t been about needing anything or anyone else. Jess hadn’t filled any void in his heart, hadn’t lessened the ache a bit. She was just…she was normal. She was what he’d come here for, and she knew, somehow she knew, that Sam didn’t have a heart to give anymore.

“I won’t ever find someone like you, Sam. And it’s not just because of my life, or our family and our secrets, its because I just can’t ever get over you. I see you everywhere, you are all I ever think about. Why couldn’t you fucking take that when you took my heart, too?” Dean spat, his voice turning bitter.

“Dean, I…” Sam had nothing. What was there to say to something so honest and raw, and so bitter it hurt Sam almost as much as it had hurt to lose Dean in the first place. Dean was saying all the things Sam had waited to hear, but they were empty and broken. Like them.

Dean couldn’t even refer to it as their life anymore, it was his, like Sam had never been apart of it. Like Sam hadn’t been there every step of the way, following Dean around, worshipping him, and praying for Dean to fall in love with him, or to fall out of love with Dean. Whatever would stop the ache inside.

Then Dean had given in, had let him touch and taste, and whimper out every thought, every feeling he’d ever had. So Dean had called him a girl a few times-okay, pretty much everyday, but there’d been affection in his voice, and in his eyes. And it didn’t matter what Dean had thought about him, or the things he’d said, Dean had let him say it, let him kiss and hold on in every way he could.

The only thing he ever objected to was hearing that Sam loved him.

“You never let me give you my heart,” Sam finally said. “How was I supposed to even know I had yours?”

There was silence, no breath, no angry cursing or breaking motel furniture. There was just nothing. Sam sank back into his pillow and his sheets, wanting nothing more than to pull them back over his head and restart this whole conversation. To find out where Dean was and go to him, have one last shot at loving Dean, and if he regretted it in the morning, well Sam would have at least had that night. Would have had something more than silence.

“You’ve always had my heart,” Dean said, his voice so soft, but so sudden Sam nearly jumped out of his skin. “How could you not know?”

Then there was real silence. The kind of silence that was so bone deep, every inch of him shook with the intensity, and the fear it brought.

The only sound left was the click of Dean’s cell phone being shut, and the door to his heart along with it.

Sam snapped his phone shut, staring blindly at the plastic object in his hand as if he’d never seen it before. It was as foreign as this feeling. This defeat and emptiness that hadn’t taken up residence in the past three years, a credit to miracles everywhere, that finally took its place here, now, in the dark and the silence of Dean‘s accusations.

He let his hand drop, eyes locked on the ceiling that was now spinning. There was a brief thought of insanity before his mind went blank and his body completely numb. The whole thing was insane. Dean, their relationship, the phone call, the fact that Sam couldn’t hold onto his brother even now. Every last bit of it was insane. And exhausting.

Sam felt his eyes droop, sleep tugging at him, promising sweet relief from the life he’d thought he’d left behind, from his reality. He took it, reached out for that sweet relief, even if it was only for a few shining, brief moments, and let sleep pull him under. Let every memory of Dean wash over him in the only way that didn’t hurt-in dreams.