Dinner was whatever leftovers hadn't started growing fuzz yet. Dinner for Sam, anyway. Dinner for Dean was a few bites swiped from the various reheated plastic tubs in front of Sam, and a couple beers.

Sam didn't comment on the stolen food, didn't say anything when his brother popped the cap on the third bottle. He just kept chewing and swallowing and trying not to think about the chili ingredients sitting in the fridge. Dean had picked them up the day before they'd left for Minnesota, promising their mom a feast. He hadn't so much as glanced at the grocery bag when he'd gotten out the beers.

But Sam ate quietly and didn't look at the fresh tomatoes on the counter and was fine. Everything was fine. Or was going to be fine, eventually, and that's what mattered.

Until Dean got out the Jack Daniel's he'd bought for the chili, set it down on the table and stripped off the seal, and Sam found himself saying, "Can we not do this?"

Dean's jaw set. "'This'?"

"This," Sam repeated. "You getting drunk and then hungover and pissed off and beating yourself up, until you find a new hunt to throw yourself into and get some monster or ghost to beat you up instead. And me either pretending to ignore it or begging you to talk about it, until we're driving for six hours without exchanging a word, because you're scared that any opening will make me push harder. Until finally one of us snaps and says something that we'll hate ourselves for later, and we have it out, and I apologize for crossing a line and you apologize for being an ass, and can we please just skip ahead to that part?

"I know you're hurting, man, I know. I'm hurting too. Maybe I don't have the same abandonment issues, but she's my mom, too."

Whatever Dean was going to say, that made him shut his mouth, and the naked heartache and loss and shame showing on his face almost stopped Sam cold.

Then he remembered Dean recoiling from their mom's arms, remembered the final clank of the closing door, and he couldn't leave it there, not this time. Not now, when his skin was unscarred and he could walk without limping, but he was still putting himself back together inside. And three days ago Mom had been hugging him as tight as he'd ever been hugged, like she could hold him together until he was mended, and now she was gone, and the only reason he had any idea what he was feeling himself was seeing the emotions reflected in Dean's face.

"I know you're angry, and you're feeling guilty that you are," Sam said, "because you want Mom to be happy, as much as I do, even if it means she's not here with us. I know there's a part of you thinking that it's your fault, that if you'd done something different, said something different, been someone different, she would have stayed—but you know this isn't really about you. You know that, Dean. It never was, not for any of us. She loves you, she loves us—but she's her own person, and if she's going to be happy, then she has to figure out how. Figure out how to live here, in this world and time, with us or without us, and God, I hope it's with us, but if it's not...if it's not, then we can figure that out, too.

"The thing is—yeah, Mom's gone for now. But she's still alive, and we're both still here. We're alive, we're together, we don't have any apocalypse immediately nigh—and maybe that won't last, but for now... I'm not saying don't be upset; it's the opposite of that. But getting angry, hurting yourself—that's more painful in the long run than just letting yourself be sad.

"I know what you're going to say—what are we supposed to do, sit around watching tearjerkers and crying into tubs of ice cream? And I don't know; I don't think there's a recommended coping mechanism for dealing with your mother coming back from the dead and then walking out on you. All I know is, I can't do this," and he waved at the table, the space between them. "After everything we've gone through—I don't want to do this. So...can we just not?"

Dean looked at him, a long unreadable stare. Looked down at the table, at the empty beer bottles and the full ones, at the open bottle of Jack's.

He reached out, picked up the whiskey, and Sam sank back in his seat, shut his eyes.

Opened them again at the squeak of metal against glass, to see Dean screwing the cap back on the whiskey, before getting up to put it back on the shelf. Lingered for a moment with his hand around the neck of the bottle, then let it go, turned back and cleared his throat and said, just a little roughly, "Dibs on the chocolate chip cookie dough. You can have the black raspberry."

Sam swallowed to steady his own voice. "Or we can go out and get a gallon of mint chip."

"Nah," Dean said. "We gotta start Titanic now, if we're going to be done by one AM." He hesitated, added, "And I am sorry. For being a jerk."

"You aren't," Sam said. "Not about this."

"Yeah, well...You didn't even get a week with her. I at least got a couple more days. And a couple years before that..."

"Which means you know what you could lose, better than I do," Sam said. Dean shook his head; before he could go on, Sam said, "But if you want to make it up to me..."

"Yeah?"

"Stand by Me instead? I'm not really in the mood to think about Fate."

"Deal," Dean said.

Check out my sister's tumblr owehimeverything for adorable post-fic fanart!