Sam has always been a dreamer. Dean has loved them and left them all over the country and has never looked back. It's different for Sam. He knows it can't last, that they'll be moving on in the morning, but every time he opens up enough to let someone into his bed for the night, he can't help that spark of "what if."

What if she is the one? What if everything is about to change? What if he could be honest for once in his life? What if he could tell her who he was, what he did? What if she could be the one to overlook his tainted blood, his broken mind, his scarred body?

When he is feeling strong, he lets them lie beside him, he holds them in his arms after and he imagines what it would be like to have this, to wake up every morning in the same bed with the same pillows and sheets washed in the same laundry room and to see the same face on the pillow beside his, to have days stretching out before him without number, to have love without a finite end.

But maybe they recognize the transience in his stance, or the smell of the road on his skin. Maybe they see the big black car, built for traveling, and the older brother in leather with irresistible magnetic pull. But whatever the reason, they can never pretend with him that this is anything more than a moment of pleasure that hangs outside reality.

But it is here most of all, in the back seat of his brother's '67 Chevy, the warm weight of the diner waitress drooling on his chest, her strange but familiar blonde hair stirring with every breath, that he feels like perhaps his worlds can collide. Maybe he can travel with his brother, save the world, and have this, warmth and love, family.

And this is how it would start, one crazy night with a girl who isn't afraid to take a chance on a stranger. She's close to a hunter's bar, maybe she knows about the life already. It isn't hard to convince Dean to come back through once they've stopped the Darkness. There are other reasons to spend the night here after all. Soon, she waits for him and only him. Sometimes Dean will drop him off for a week, take off with another hunter to kill a vampire, salt and burn a ghost. She and Sam spend it in bed, sometimes blowing each other's minds, sometimes talking about the future. When she tells him she's pregnant it's scary as hell but also everything Sam had never dared to wish for. They find a house near enough to the bunker that Sam can still use the library. Sam hunts less. He's more the Bobby now than anything.

He has beautiful children, a daughter first. Her name is Jessica and it doesn't hurt to see her blonde curls shining in the sun. Dean dotes on her. Sam thinks he may settle down soon too

A son comes later. It seems right to have another John Winchester running around. Dean's been hunting with the same woman on and off for a year now. He beams with pride when he tells Sam over a beer that he too is going to be a father. Sam cried when he first holds his niece, Mary. He has waited so long for Dean to have this too.

And then they grow old. They have their own homes but they never live far away from each other. Jessica is bright and beautiful and will single handedly restore the glory of the Men of Letters. John is a lawyer. Mary is a hunter.

All this, Sam sees as he lies cramped in the back of the Impala and the waitress cuddles closer in her sleep.

And it isn't love that looks into Piper's eyes when they say goodbye in the morning. It isn't love when he offers her his phone number and asks if he can stop by this way again. It's hope.