Sam woke up with a start, fumbling for pen and paper before he even had his eyes open. He wrote down the coordinates he'd gotten from Hannah and double-checked that he got them right. Then he rushed out of the room to find his brother.

He found him and Cas in the kitchen, preparing dinner.

"I know where Claire Novak is." He burst out when he came to a skittering halt in the door.

"You what?" Dean turned around a spoon dripping with red sauce in hand.

"I know where Claire is." He repeated, somewhat fascinated by the red dripping. It looked like blood and he wondered if that was a bad omen. On the other hand, did they really need a bad omen for things to go sideways? They usually managed that just fine on their own.

"How did you find her?" Cas looked up from the onions he was chopping. "I thought she vanished without leaving a trace."

"Yeah, about that …" Sam cleared his throat and stepped farther into the kitchen. He probably should have told them about Hannah earlier. Why she had contacted him and not Cas he had still no idea, though. It would have been the logical step to go directly to Cas. Instead she had invaded Sam's head.

"Hannah told me." He said and braced himself for the questions.

"Hannah?" Dean asked immediately in his you-have-to-be-kidding voice. "When have you seen Hannah?" The way he asked Sam knew that he at least suspected the right answer.

"I met her the other day when we where on the road." Sam explained as casually as possible, it hadn't been that important with all the other stuff going on. He sighed, he should have mentioned it.

"What did she want?" Dean's focus was completely on him now, he didn't even notice that he was dripping red sauce all over the floor.

Sam glanced at Cas who watched him in curious silence. Dean followed his gaze and his eyes widened just that little bit that told Sam he understood.

"Oh." Dean made while Cas tilted his head in confusion over the attention he suddenly got from the brothers.

"What did she want, Sam?" Cas asked when the brothers failed to clue him in.

"She wanted to know if you're alright." Sam raked a hand through his hair. "I told her that we were looking for Claire and asked her if she could find out if her soul is in Heaven. You know, just to make sure that she's still alive." He hasted through the explanation without looking Cas in the eye.

"And now she visited you in your dream?" Dean came back to the initial question, glossing over the fact that obviously Hannah had only dropped in to check on Cas without letting him know.

"Yeah." Sam cleared his throat. "Looks like Claire is alive, which is good, and that Hannah has found her. She gave me the coordinates."

"How did she find her?" Of course Dean didn't just believe the good news. "For all we know she could send us on a wild-goose chase."

"Hannah wouldn't sent us to hunt geese." Cas interrupted and Sam couldn't help but exchange an amused glance with Dean. Metatron may have corrupted their pop culture clueless angel but some idioms he still didn't grasp and for some stupid reason Sam felt relieved every time Cas didn't quite get it.

"It's not an actual goose chase." Dean started to explain. "It means a pointless quest. To distract somebody for example."

Sam didn't blame his brother for that thought, more than once the angels had toyed with them, had sent them on a wild-goose chase, Balthazar and Bizarro TV world came to mind, but for some reason Sam doubted this was the case here. He had no reason to trust Hannah but he was at least willing to check out the information she gave him. What else could they do anyway?

"Where is it?" Dean turned back to Sam.

"Dunno yet." He raked his hand through his hair again and only now wondering what he looked like. Not that Dean hadn't seen him in worse conditions but with Cas around it was somewhat different. Sam and Dean had lived in each other's pocket all their life, there wasn't much they hadn't seen of each other and it took quite a bit to embarrass them when it was only the two of them. However, with Cas examining his bed-hair with that slightly curious look of his, Sam felt the urge to go back to the bathroom and find his brush. But for now his fingers had to do.

"We'll figure that out after dinner." Dean decided and turned back to the pot on the stove to stir the sauce. "Dammit."

Sam smirked when Dean used a wad of paper to clean up the floor.

"You could have mentioned that."

"I could have." Sam shrugged. "Anything I can help you with?"

"You can set the table." Was Dean's nice way to tell him to get out from under his feet. "Dinner's going to be ready in about half an hour."

Sam nodded to that and quickly set the table. After that he just made sure that he wasn't in the way and watched Dean and Cas preparing dinner. It was odd to see the angel doing ordinary tasks like these for Dean, always asking what to do next and then fulfilling the task with a set jaw as if his life depended on it. It was kind of adorable, seeing the two of them together like this.

Like Dean had promised they sat down for dinner half an hour later and this time Sam was actually hungry. And since they knew Claire's location, this was probably the last home cooked meal he'd get for a while, Dean never cooked on the road, so Sam enjoyed it as much as he could.

He did feel Cas' eyes on him and he knew what the angel was thinking about. Why had Hannah contacted Sam and not him?

That was a question Cas should ask her himself but for now Hannah was gone and they didn't know when or if she would come back again.

Turned out they had a good three days journey ahead and they decided to get on the road early the next morning.

Sam would have loved to start right after dinner but Dean didn't want to hear any of that. And he was right. All three of them, and it was kinda scary to include Cas in this, were still not up to one hundred percent after their encounter with the witch and they needed the rest.

"If she really is where Hannah said she is, we'll find her." Dean promised and Sam wanted to believe him. But truth be told, things rarely turned out in their favor.

They had slept all afternoon but turned in early in the evening to get the much needed rest. However, when Sam lay there in his bed, staring up to the ceiling, he couldn't sleep. Thoughts about Claire circled in his mind. How would she react when she saw her father's face again? Would she be willing to help?

With a sigh Sam let go of those thoughts, they could only wait and see. There was nothing he could do about it now.

Another thought came to mind, this one more personal. There was something going on between Cas and Dean. Over dinner Sam had noticed the way Dean looked at Cas whenever he thought the angel wouldn't notice and once in a while Cas had done the same, watching Dean with an expression Sam couldn't quite place.

He'd thought everything would be fine once they'd admitted their undying love for each other but he got the feeling that there was something on their minds. Not that it was any of Sam's business and they could work out their bedroom problems just fine without him, thank you very much, but it was obvious that there was something going on between them and that bugged Sam. Sometimes living in close quarters wasn't fun at all.

Sam turned to his side and tried to will himself to sleep but couldn't help but wonder if Dean and Cas were sleeping by now or if they were busy with something else. That thought generated some bleach-worthy images and with a groan Sam flopped back to his back.

In the end he switched the light on and grabbed his book, just to distract himself. At least he wasn't the one driving tomorrow so it didn't really matter if he slept that much this night or not.

Of course he was the first one awake in the morning. He used the chance for a long shower and then he set up the coffee maker. He had packed everything he would need for the trip already in the evening, not that he really needed that much packing, and now he had nothing else to do than to wait for the lovebirds to wake up.

Rereading the notes they had from the Men of Letters about the procedure of extracting grace from a former vessel, Sam made sure he knew everything he had to know. That he did that in the far corner of the library, as far away as possible from Dean's room, was purely by accident.

With the road-trip in mind Dean and Cas didn't sleep in that long and around nine they were on the road again. Dean behind the wheel with Sam next to him and Cas in the back seat. The last part still felt weird to Sam. Cas had been there before but now he was a constant presence and that was something he wasn't used to just yet. The way Dean glanced in the rear view mirror once in a while he felt the same.

There was urgency in this trip, they didn't know if Claire would stay were she was or if she was moving, so they skipped the first night and drove through. With three people taking turns it was less exhausting and Sam could get used to that. The second night, however, all of them were longing for a shower and a bed to stretch out in and food that wasn't bought at a gas station.

So in the evening, it wasn't even that late but nobody complained, Dean stopped at a motel.

"I'll get us rooms." Dean announced and got out of the car. Standing next to it he stretched and even through the closed door Sam heard his back popping. They weren't getting younger, he thought. But at the same time it was a miracle that they had it made past thirty in the first place. Kind of. He didn't want to think of that right now. They were alive now and that was all that mattered.

Out of the corner of his eye he noticed the way Cas was looking at Dean. Or at least the part of Dean he could see through the window. Dean shirts were ridden up from the stretching, he still wasn't done with that, maybe he was putting on a little show for Cas, and Sam had a good view on his brother's butt and lower back.

"Get the rooms, asshat." Sam yelled. If Dean wanted to tease Cas he could do that when Sam wasn't sitting right next to him. For good measure Dean wiggled his butt at the window before he finally sauntered off to get them their rooms.

Sam just shook his head in amusement.

"What is so funny?" Cas asked and Sam lost it at that.

"Dean." He chuckled around the word.

"Did he make you uncomfortable?" Cas leaned forward, forearms braced on the seats in front of him.

"Not more than usual." Sam hurried to say. He didn't want to destroy something here with a wrong word. "It's good that you two finally have this. Trust me, I can survive Dean wiggling his butt at me."

Cas raised an eyebrow to that but didn't say anything.

"At least this time he isn't farting when he does it." He muttered to himself, thinking back to their teenage years when farts had been the most hilarious things in the world. Not that that had changed for Dean since then.