Sam's packing when Dean walks through the motel door with dinner. Dean throws him a wide grin and kicks the door with the heel of his boot. It bangs loudly closed and causes the glass in the small side window to rattle.

Sam's lips thin in an expression that stopped being annoying around the time Sam was eleven and Dean realised how much fun it was to wind his baby brother up.

He watches Sam yank on the zip of his duffle a little too hard. It snaps and Sam lets out a long suffering sigh.

"Easy there, Sammy," Dean says, biting back a laugh and dropping down onto his bed. He tosses a pizza box across onto Sam's bed - already made, complete with hospital corners.

Sam huffs, sweeps it up quickly and moves it onto the bedside table, murmuring something about 'grease' and 'fucking slob.'

Dean smirks. There's a comfort in Sam's predictability; in the moments that are a direct echo of how things have always been between them. This last year, maybe even before his deal, there's been a shift. And Sam – Dean's honestly not sure when or how, but Sam's changed. It's more than just growing up and it feels weird to not have to fight for this life with his brother.

Dean leans back, stops himself from thinking about Sam and how Sam's going to be, and settles against his pillows. He opens his own pizza box, lifts out a slice to take a bite. It's fucking delicious and he groans, long and loud, smacking his lips a couple of times before glancing back at Sam.

Sam shoves his hair out of his eyes, glares at Dean.

"There's sauce on your chin, Dean," Sam says, eyebrow arched and disparaging.

Dean wipes at the smudge clinging to the bristles on his chin, then licks and sucks it off.

Sam snorts.

"Getting you hot, Sammy," Dean jokes. He waggles his eyebrows and licks his thumb again, slower and more salacious.

"Fuck you," Sam retorts and tosses a wad of Dean's dirt stained clothes across the room at him.

Dean ducks to the side and the clothes sail past, catching on the other side of his queen and sliding to the floor.

Sam smiles - small and tired, and takes a seat on the edge of his bed.

Dean casts him a sideways glance and takes in the bags under his eyes; wondering if he slept at all last night after they got back from salting and burning Gwen Palmer's bones. When Dean had got up at about four for a piss, Sam had still been bent over his laptop, so he thinks it's unlikely.

Sam opens his pizza and pushes at it with a finger. Dean can hear it grate against the corrugated cardboard as Sam slides it around.

"Where the hell did you find pizza this early?"

Dean shrugs. "Next to the seven eleven."

Sam pokes his finger into the box. "It's not Hawaiian."

"They were out of pineapple."

"Huh." Sam pushes the pizza again, finally seems to judge it not entirely unappetizing, and takes a cautious bite.

Dean breathes out and makes a mental note to make sure Bobby gets the kid to eat properly after –

Dean coughs and takes another bite of his own slice.

"So, I was thinking," Dean says, his mouth full, words mumbled around the pizza inside, "of taking a few days off. What do you think?"

Sam stares at Dean, opens his mouth, closes it and stares some more. "Why?" he asks, dropping the pizza back into the box.

Dean studies the unevenness of the toppings on his meat feast. "Thought we could do with a little R and R."

Sam gapes. Dean can see it out the corner of his eye. He kind of looks like a fish.

"Dean," Sam says, voice carefully soft, "you haven't wanted to stop all year. Not even in Cicero."

"I just - I've got an old friend up in Maine, figured since we were only a state over we could drop by. Pay her a visit."

"Her?" Sam asks, full of suspicion. "We?"

Dean grins, the special leer he used to save to piss Sam off whenever he brought home a girl back during their high school days. "She's kind of a wildcat." He drops his head back, folding one arm beneath it and closing his eyes. He thinks about fucking Hermione in the back of the Impala; the way she'd push him down against the seat and ride him. He thinks about catching up with her in Portland last year when he and Sammy had taken some down time, and knows he's put off telling her for too long.

Sam grunts and Dean smiles, shaking the thought. When he looks over Sam's closed the pizza box and put it back on the table. "I think I'll take a rain check, thanks. Playing third wheel while you get your rocks off got kind of old a long time ago, Dean. Kind of got more important things to think about."

Sam's voice is pissy as all hell, his face pinched, and Dean sits up. Looks at his brother. Sometimes he wishes Sam would just let this go. It's harder when he won't. Sam seems able to make Dean's deal permeate every conversation they have until it feels like it's a heavy hand on his shoulder wherever they go. It makes it hard to enjoy what's left. It makes Dean worry more about after.

"Come on. I think you'd get along," Dean says. It's true, he's joked about the fact with Hermione more than once, the idea that as soon as she met Sam she'd want to swap him for his geeky, book loving little brother; run off to a library with him.

Sam shakes his head, coughs into his hand and makes a noise that sounds suspiciously like, 'not likely.'

Dean frowns. "You thought Cassie was okay."

Sam shrugs.

It's not that he'd really been thinking too seriously when he'd made the suggestion, but now, with Sam so against the idea of visiting, Dean feels his hackles rise at the dismissal. He wants his brother to meet Hermione. It's something else he's put off too long and it feels even more important now because this is the one part of Dean's life Sam's never been a part of, and Hermione? She's a constant Dean never imagined. She's someone other than Bobby that Sam could go to after. Someone who'd probably understand where Sam was coming from; who wouldn't let Sam drink himself into following.

Plus there's the fact that they really would get along.

"You think I only date bimbos and skanks, Sam?"

"I think you don't date," Sam answers, looking up at Dean with a smirk as he opens his laptop back up.

And Dean doesn't. Not really. There was Cassie, some girls back in high school when they actually stayed in a town for a whole semester, but it's not like their lifestyle really offers much opportunity for anything more. And Dean's okay with that. Different girl in every town was always just fine with him because he had Sam and Dad and hunting. In that order.

Except then Sam left and Dad was busy chasing their mom's ghost.

He thinks Cassie was the prelude. Cassie made him want this. And then he'd met Hermione and Hermione was a little different. Different enough to fit in the way Cassie never would have.

But Sam wouldn't know and Dean can't even say please when his brother's ragging on him about not taking stupid chances, let alone about something like this.

The word forms a dry lump in his throat, it grates as he swallows and wipes away the perfect pizza taste he'd been enjoying.

"It's fine Dean," Sam says, eyes back on the computer screen, fingers already tapping. "Go get laid. Whatever! Enjoy yourself."

He doesn't look up and Dean grinds his teeth.

Sam taps a few more words, clicks and then looks up, adding, "Do you need the car or should I get a rental?"

Dean wants to break something, but the credit cards are running low and he can think of better ways to spend what's left on them than a motel repair bill for a crappy lamp.

He gets up, grabs his jacket and is at the door before Sam's tapping even pauses again.

"I'm going out," Dean says, thinks about the sudden appeal of a bottle of Cuervo over pizza.

"We need to be out by eleven. And I'm not packing up your shit."

Dean scowls. "Fine, but you're driving."

Sam murmurs an acknowledgement and Dean slams the door, thinks that this is anything but the plan he'd had when he'd woken up that morning.