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Dean dies for the eighteenth time in as many Tuesdays. And this time - the eighteenth fucking time - a part of Sam dies with him.

He doesn't know why it took so long. Why the first seventeen times didn't truly stick. Why this one did. Maybe like a death for each year they spent together before Sam left; and this time, Dean leaves him. Maybe its a death for each year he's been pining for his brother, aching since he was seven in ways he could barely comprehend. Maybe its the number of freckles that cluster above Dean's right brow, abstract and divine. They belong in the fucking MoMA, framed and admired by millions.

Maybe he can only clench his teeth so many times before his jaw starts to crack. He's become too acquainted with his brother's dead body. But only the first stage of death, never longer. Still limp and cooling slowly in his arms. Almost feels like the hot rumble of Baby as she cools down after a long drive, ticking of engine moving through his bones as he tries to sleep. And oh god, does he just want to close his eyes.

Thinks maybe he'd be okay with moving past that first stage, for Dean to harden, then soften again, for his cheeks and chest to swell, for his lips to curl back in a snarl he only directed at Sam once - at sixteen, not eighteen, thank god - when his safety was busted and he waited two hunts to fix it. Tries to picture Dean's green eyes clouded and thinks no, no, no. Not that. Would love through a thousand deaths to never see that.

His brother is slowly sinking down his seat in the diner, slouch to sprawl to splay. His limbs look all wrong. People that say the dead look like they're sleeping are full of shit. Nobody else has noticed. Sam wonders if pressing a bullet to his head would stop this nightmare. Tries to believe in God and heaven and angels as the cold metal of his gun digs into his spine as a reminder.

Dean has died seventeen other times, but the light didn't dim like this. Sam's heart didn't stutter and resume a slow steady pound like this. Sam didn't watch his brother slither towards the floor with apathy in his eyes like this. He aches. He aches so much he is catatonic from the weight of it. From the force of gravity pulling Dean's limp body and his heavy chest down, down, down.

He wonders, how much more he can endure. He wonders if the brightness of the world will snap back into focus with the blare of the alarm clock that will resound at any second. Like Dorothy venturing into Oz, from monochrome to splendid technicolor. He waits....

And waits. And waits.

Dean is slumped on the floor and Sam can feel his weight on his feet. Doesn't know the last time Dean has touched his feet. If he ever had. Ah, dim memories: tying shoelaces, slipping on socks, warming toes cold from Detroit snow. It's an intimacy he didn't know he craved. For Dean to touch him there, to touch him in a hundred innocuous, innocent places.

Like a cluster headache waiting to form, black spots dance across his vision, Dean's heat leaking over his toes and dissipating into the air, sound of music a hammering against his temple, hands feeling diner vinyl and cheap starched cotton sheets on tender fingertips, ears ringing, vertigo spinning as he is both lying down and sitting at once, all of it a pain, so much pain. And he wakes.