He thought he could handle it. Thought he could watch you with Dean and still breathe through the ache twisting behind his ribs. Thought he could be your friend, your confidant, the steady presence at your back—the quiet shadow content to linger just out of reach. Because it’s Dean. And you chose him.

So Sam tells himself it’s fine.

He tells himself this is what he wants: for you to be safe, to be smiling, to hear your laughter fill up the long, haunted stretches of road between hunts. And for a while, that lie holds. For a while, it’s enough.

Until it isn’t.

Because now you’re everywhere. In his head, in his dreams, in the empty space beside him when sleep doesn’t come. You’re in the way his hand brushes the passenger seat when Dean stops for gas. In the smell of your shampoo clinging to your flannel left in the back of the car. In the way silence feels heavier when you’re not around to fill it.

And every time you lean against Dean’s shoulder, every time your fingers curl into his jacket or you laugh like the world outside isn’t on fire—it knocks the air out of Sam like a sucker punch. He doesn’t flinch, doesn’t speak, doesn’t let it show.

But God, he feels it.

He tries not to look too long. Tries not to think about what it would feel like to be the one you turn to, the one you love like that. But late at night, when Dean’s snoring in the other bed and the hum of the motel sign buzzes low through the window, Sam lets the mask slip. Just a little.

Just enough to whisper the truth into the dark.

“I wish it was me.”

Soft. Shaky. A confession barely louder than breath, fragile and final all at once. Maybe you didn’t hear it. Maybe you did.

But when your breath stutters, just slightly—when your eyes flick toward him and linger for half a second too long—Sam knows.

And there’s no taking it back.