You know when a writer has something really bad going on with one of their characters, and another character is given multiple clear chances to figure it out, but never really does?

God, I hate it when writers do that.

Dean still considered himself a young man. After all, he was only twenty-six. Sure, maybe he had the psyche of an eighty-year-old career soldier - he'd seen enough horrible things to keep him well-supplied with nightmares for ten lifetimes. And maybe he was riddled with dozens of injuries, both old and new, that he'd never be able to tell any doctor the truth about. But he wasn't losing his vision, his hair wasn't going gray, and he still manufactured all the hormones he needed to get it up without any help.

That said, even a twenty-six-year-old back couldn't quite make it unscathed through a night spent in the back seat of the Impala.

Dean groaned loudly as he grabbed the top of the front seat and used it to haul himself into a sitting position. His spine popped and his muscles spasmed, and his stomach sank right into his ankles at the idea of driving all day when he was already in this much pain. The thought of asking Sam to take the wheel briefly crossed his mind, but he rejected it, and not just because of his pride or how protective of the car he happened to be. Sam wouldn't want the distraction of driving; he'd probably prefer to focus entirely on staying as far away from Dean as he could. Remembering how his younger brother had been acting since yesterday's ghost hunt almost hurt more than Dean's back.

"Aw, Jesus," he grunted, pushing the door open with one booted foot. He gingerly scooted out after tossing the blanket he'd used last night aside, feeling like he was at least twice his actual age. When he straightened up completely, he had to slam a fist into the glossy black body of the Impala to keep himself from yelling. "Shit. Goddammit. Oh, man, is that gonna smart later."

Dean shook his legs out, grimacing when his knees crackled like green logs in a fire. He wasn't as tall as Sam, but he was still big enough to have had to keep his knees bent all night. He hadn't had to do that, back before he'd hit his second growth spurt. Both he and Sam could fit back there comfortably with a blanket, a flashlight, and a thermos of coffee. Maybe a bottle of lube, too, if they were both feeling it. God, did he wish he could go back to those days.

Now Dean shook his head, ignoring the fiery pain in his neck, and swallowed down the wave of longing that threatened to drag him under. He couldn't afford to get lost in nostalgia; it was hard, but he had to stay focused on right here and right now. He'd learned, when Sam left two years ago without even saying goodbye, that that was how you survived.

Maybe he wouldn't even have to drive today. That popped into Dean's head as he forced his thoughts away from how things had used to be with Sam, and he latched onto it. They hadn't even looked for a new case yesterday, so unless Sam had spent all night trawling through news sites on his laptop, they didn't have one. That would be kind of nice.

Whether Dean was going to have to get behind the wheel or not, though, he badly needed a shower. Hot water worked miracles when it came to soothing sore muscles. Stiff-legged and aching, Dean walked around the car and made his way up to the door of the motel room. He raised a hand to knock, really hoping that Sam would just let him in without too much fuss, but he didn't have to.

The door swung open, and Sam stepped out. Actually, he edged around Dean, pressing himself against the wall in an effort to keep from touching him - and maybe to keep himself out of arm's reach, too. Annoyed, Dean almost said something, but the way that Sam aimed his eyes firmly away from him, like he wanted to avoid a conversation at all costs, made him keep his mouth shut. It made him feel a little guilty, too.

Just what the hell had he done to make Sam withdraw like this? He didn't know, but he felt bad anyway.

"I found us another case," Sam mumbled, still not looking at Dean. Dean noticed that he was showered, shaved, and dressed in fresh clothes. He must've gotten up pretty early to do all that plus hunt for a new monster to...hunt. God, Dean was tired. "Lamona, Washington. We've got a long drive ahead of us. I'll go grab us some breakfast, and you go ahead and get ready."

Then he was gone, walking down the sidewalk and out of earshot before Dean could even open his mouth, much less ask him for any details about this new case that he'd dug up. He bit back a sigh, still determined to stay positive and focus on the present, and walked into the room. Sam had made the bed and packed all his things up. Dean's stuff, on the other hand, had been shoved messily into a corner. Like he'd been afraid it would crawl up onto the mattress while he was sleeping. Dean would've assumed that it'd been done to piss him off and gotten angry about it, but the gesture didn't say "spite" to him. It was clear that, whatever was wrong with Sam, it'd gotten a lot worse during the night.

Why, though? Why was Sam so weird around him all of a sudden that he couldn't even handle looking at his dirty underwear?

Dean firmly shoved that painful question off into oblivion and knelt down to fish his all-in-one and some clean(ish) clothes out of the pile. With those in hand, he walked into the bathroom, which was still a little damp and steamy from Sam's shower. Before he could stop himself, Dean closed his eyes and took a deep whiff, flooding his lungs with the scents of his little brother's shampoo and conditioner and body wash and shaving cream and cologne and toothpaste and...

He forced himself to stop. He couldn't do this, he had to focus on something else. Which he was usually pretty good at doing when something was hurting or making him uncomfortable, so as he stripped down and stepped into the tiny, mildew-slimed stall, it didn't take him very long to forget about it. What he couldn't seem to forget about, though, was how Sam was acting.

It hadn't even been that long since his behavior had done a complete one-eighty. Dean hadn't looked at a clock yet this morning, so he couldn't be sure, but he didn't think that it had been a full twenty-four hours. Weird, then, that it felt like so much longer. With all the little pieces of Dean that had been frayed and torn off by Sam's shying away and avoiding his eyes, this might as well have been going on for weeks. If it actually did stretch out to weeks...Jesus, Dean wasn't even sure how he'd survive.

He turned on the water and pivoted so that his back was to it, closing his eyes and letting himself get lost in the simple luxury of water so hot he was sure it was turning his skin pink. It felt good against his aching, abused muscles. Cold beer on a hot day good. Classic rock station with crystal-clear reception good. Falling into bed next to Sam after a long hunt good.

Dean blew out a hard breath, annoyed with himself, and raised an arm in order to put his hand against the tile wall that he was facing and lean on it. The mildew in the grout felt unpleasantly soft and wet against his calluses. He didn't bother opening his eyes, but he did grimace - not because of the mildew, though. Moving his arm had aggravated one of the many muscles in his shoulder that he'd kinked up, sleeping in the back of the Impala. Where he'd used to fit but definitely didn't, these days. Where he and Sam had passed so very many long hours together.

Dean debated with himself for, maybe, half a second before he decided to hell with it. Even if it wound up hurting him, he deserved a little nostalgia right now.

Late July, 1997

"I don't think he's coming back anytime soon," Sam said, peering through the windshield at the dull lights of the bar.

"He said he would, didn't he?" Dean replied, arms folded across his chest and eyes fixed on the building's entrance. So he wouldn't miss their dad when he cam back out - which should really be any minute now. It was getting close to midnight. "Just as soon as he's done asking people about that thing that's been messing with the church."

Sam, kneeling in the passenger seat with his hands planted on the dash, turned and gave Dean a look that he could just barely make out in the weak light. It threw weird shadows in the car, where they were parked out on the very edge of the lot, and Sam had had to use a flashlight to read the books he'd gotten from the local Goodwill a few days ago. He'd put it away a little while ago, though, in favor of watching the bar with Dean. Who'd been doing it ever since Dad went it. Dean wouldn't ever say it out loud, out of a deep-seated loyalty to him and an increasingly-useless need to protect Sam, but both of them knew that Dad hadn't been interviewing witnesses for a few hours now. If he'd ever even started.

"He's not coming back," Sam repeated, looking back to the bar.

"Well, let's give him another..." Dean lifted his arm and squinted at the watch on his wrist (a present from Sam for his eighteenth birthday - it was cheap, but worked better than any he'd ever had before), struggling to make out the numbers. "...twenty minutes."

"Five," Sam said, an edge in his voice that Dean had been trying to get used to for the past few months. He'd complained about Dad for years now, but only ever to Dean or, rarely, the friends that he made once in a blue moon. Ever since he hit high school, though, he'd been challenging him to his face. Picking fights over everything. It was like something inside him had shifted.

"Fifteen," Dean countered. It made him feel sick and weird, when he had to be between them. Whose side was he supposed to take?

"Ten."

"Fine. We'll give him another ten minutes." Dean settled back into the driver's seat, satisfied with the compromise.

"When he doesn't come back out in ten minutes..." When. Not if. "...are we gonna go back to the room?"

"What? No." Dean looked at Sam, surprised, and hoped he knew what was wrong about what he'd just said. If he didn't, though, he was gonna tell him. "We can't just drive off and leave Dad."

"He left us," Sam pointed out. Dean noticed that his hands were curled into fists on the plastic of the dashboard.

"C'mon," Dean replied, shifting so that he was talking directly to his little brother. "You know why. This place ain't like our usual one - it's more...upscale. They card." And Dad had said they wouldn't buy Dean's fake one, might even call the cops on him, which sucked, because he could really go for a beer right now. OR something stronger.

"Maybe," Sam responded in a weird, flat voice. "And maybe he just wanted to ditch us 'cause he's in there getting drunk."

"Hey," Dean admonished. Even though the chances were better than decent that that was exactly what he was doing. "You don't know that."

"I don't," Sam agreed, and now Dean could tell that he was mad. "Maybe he met someone and they snuck out the back and we don't even know where the hell he is."

Dean didn't know where this had come from, but he thought that he just might know how to defuse it. HE sighed deeply and rubbed a callused hand across his face. It caught on his stubble, which was just barely starting to fill out to something approaching acceptable thickness - about damn time, since he was old enough to vote now. If he'd been registered to vote.

"Hey," he repeated, and waited until Sam looked at him before he kept talking. His face was hard and angry, but he was still too young to know how to hide the hurt that was fueling it all. Maybe he'd never learn how to hide it from Dean. "Yeah. You're right. Dad ran off and left us - again." It couldn't be betraying Dad to say that. After all, it was the truth. "But you've still got me, doncha?"

Sam held firm for about a second. Then he sucked in a hard breath through his nose that sounded a lot like a sniffle, and slid across the seat until he was leaning up against Dean. Dean put an arm around him and stroked the curling ends of his hair with his thumb. It was getting long again; Dad didn't like that. He'd wanna cut it again soon.

"Yeah," Sam mumbled. "You're still here." He was quiet for a while. The car smelled like leather and booze and Dean's cologne, which, for some reason, Sam had been practically taking baths in lately - like Dean wouldn't notice. "If we're not gonna go back to the room without him, what's the point in waiting up?"

Dean sighed through his nose. As usual, Sam was smarter than him. "Yeah, okay. Better bunk down for the night. Go ahead and get in the back."

Sam immediately scrambled over the seat and started rooting around for the blankets and things that they had stashed back there. Dean wanted badly to lie down, all of a sudden painfully aware of just how tired he was, but he waited. Sure enough, the sounds of Sam making himself a bed stopped after a minute and he asked, "Aren't you coming?"

Dean bit back a groan, back and neck already aching. And heart already going wobbly in his chest, something it didn't do for anyone but Sam. "Sure thing, Sammy."

(It was around this time that twenty-six-year-old Dean realized that this memory didn't exactly fit the bill, since he'd already done almost all his growing by eighteen and was too long to lay comfortably in the back seat of the Impala. Screw it, though. This memory was a good one, too, and he was already about halfway into it, so he might as well roll the tape.)

He turned and hooked his arms over the bench seat, about to heave himself into the back of the car, but he stopped when Sam commanded, "Boots off." He didn't like sleeping on gravel or little bits of dirt, and Dean couldn't exactly blame him for that, so he complied. He climbed into the back seat in just his socks, the motion making the Impala rock faintly on its shocks, and found that Sam had built one of his standard little nests on top of the leather. Soft, warm blankets, and lots of them. Dean would be sleeping on his side to make sure that neither of them rolled onto the floor during the night. As per usual.

Sam pressed himself out of the way as Dean settled down into the mess of blankets, then crawled on top of him. Dean grunted as Sam's weight pressed down on his chest and a knobby knee dug into his stomach.

"Think you might be getting a little too big to do this," he muttered. It was much more comfortable when Sam laid down and spread his weight out, though, so they were chest-to-chest. His sharp edges weren't quite so evident this way.

"Don't be a baby," Sam replied, laying his head on the place where Dean's collarbones joined together. A little while later, after Dean had put an arm over him, he asked, "D'you ever think about running away?"

"No," Dean responded. He didn't have to consider it at all. But something inside of him was tight and sour, almost acidic, as he asked Sam, "Why? Do you?"

"Not really," Sam replied, with a defeated little sigh that made Dean feel immediately, guiltily better. "Not without you, at least."

And Dean's "better' was gone just as quickly as it had come. He folded the arm that he didn't have over Sam up behind his head, so that he could look down at him. Or down at where he thought he was, at least, judging by the feel of him and the sounds of his breathing. The darkness was much more complete back here than it had been in the front seat.

"Sam..." Dean began slowly, realizing that he should've asked this a long time ago. "Aren't you happy?"

Sam squirmed on top of him, soft little movements. Dean felt him take fistfuls of his T-shirt and clench them. He sounded grudging when he admitted, "Yeah. I am. I'm really happy, actually, almost all the time."

He'd been talking into the skin of Dean's throat and shoulder, getting it hot and wet with his breath, but now he lifted his head. If Dean squinted, he could make out the shine of his eyes, the movement of his mouth. "'Cause of you. I think."

After over a decade of hearing all kinds of sappy things from Sam, Dean probably should've been over it. But there was still something about it that could really touch him, and this time was no exception. He thought it might even be more meaningful now that Sam was older and almost had to force it past his embarrassment and everything - instead of just blurting it out with total, innocent honesty, like he had when he was little.

Sam was moving to kiss him, and Dean met him halfway. He tasted like the cheap, greasy dinner they'd scooped up earlier, before Dad had brought them out to this bar. Or, more accurately, the parking lot of this bar, since that was where he'd left them. Dean didn't mind the taste in the slightest, though. Underneath it, he could still detect the warm, wet, natural flavor of his younger brother.

It started out innocent enough: just a few slow kisses, something that they could've broken off in a second without either of them being too disappointed if Dad had suddenly come back. But Dad stayed in the bar, or wherever it was he'd drifted off to (Sam was right; he really could be anywhere by now), so it got more and more heated as time passed. They started touching each other, grabbing and stroking, and Dean didn't make any move to stop Sam as his hands wandered south. Just reciprocated, thinking about the bottle of lube that he'd stashed so far back under the seat he almost couldn't reach it. So far back that Dad would never be able to find it - not that Dean thought he'd ever look for it.

He had to go spelunking for the lube a few minutes later, when Sam shucked himself out of his jeans and boxers with a fluid movement of his hips and hands and started frantically dry-humping Dean, his little cock so hard it felt like a piece of iron against Dean's lower stomach. He grabbed Sam's shoulders and moved him to the side (prompting an annoyed, needy mewl) so that he could get down on the floor and stick an arm under the seat.

"Hurry up," Sam hissed impatiently. He'd taken his shirt off and was crouched, cat-like, down among his blankets, a skinny little ghost in the darkness that Dean had just barely adjusted to. Dean's fingers finally closed around the lube bottle, and he straightened up with it in his hand, chuckling.

"You little nympho," he accused affectionately, pressing a kiss to Sam's forehead. He got more hair against his lips than skin. "Be patient. You do not want me to go in dry."

Dean pulled his own clothes off before climbing back up onto the seat. Sam immediately pressed himself against him, hips moving in a steady rhythm and wetness leaking out of his dick. Dean wrapped a hand around it and stroked, thumbing the head. Sam moaned in response, a low, reverent sound. Sacred. If anybody but Dean ever heard that, it'd be ruined. Tainted. And he wasn't even sure that he was worthy, sometimes.

When Sam twitched against his palm, Dean knew it was time to take his hand away. He squeezed a generous blob of lube into it and held that instead, waiting for it to warm up as he snapped the lid of the bottle closed and dropped it to the floor. Sam groaned in frustration.

"Jerk," he growled, shoving one of Dean's hips. Dean laughed again - partly because Sam's attack hadn't budged him so much as an inch.

"I told you to be patient," he reminded him. "D'you wanna make love with me or not?" He never referred to what they did as "fucking." Not if he could help it.

To his credit, Sam waited silently after that - though, of course, he was practically buzzing with impatience the whole time. Dean was sympathetic (and impressed that he didn't even try to touch himself); he'd been a horny fourteen-year-old once, too. So he did his best to hurry.

The lube got pretty runny when it was warm. When Dean used it slick up his cock, it drooled down onto his sac in thin rivers. With a gesture from him, Sam laid back and opened his legs, exposing his hole. Which Dean couldn't even see in the dimness, but could definitely feel. As Dean prepared it, he noticed that Sam was already relatively loose. Ready to take him. Ever since the first few times they'd had sex, that had happened every time he popped a stiffy: his body knew what to expect and was gearing itself up.

Sam moved when he was finished, and Dean laid down on his back, stretching himself out as far as he could. That, of course, meant pressing his bare feet up against the cool glass of one of the windows. Sam straddled his slightly-raised thighs, kneeling, and Dean grabbed his hips and walked him forward. When he reached his cock, jutting proudly up and away from his body, Sam lifted himself up, pressed his twitching hole against the head of it, and lowered his body. He let gravity pull him down, going as slow as syrup being pulled out of a bottle. A groan rumbled out of Dean as steadily, inch by inch, the hot, tight wetness of his baby brother's ass encased him.

Sam let out an answering moan, a high, thin sound of pure pleasure. His long eyelashes caught what little light there was, and Dean watched them flutter as his lids slid closed. It felt like forever before he bottomed out. When he did, he leaned forward, grunting softly (Dean could feel his cock inside of him, nudging insistently at his prostate because of the movement), and put his hands on Dean's chest for balance. His hair hung in his face, swaying as he panted. Dean brushed it out of the way and tucked it behind his ears in dark, soft curls.

They'd only used this position a few times before, and always when they were in the car. Sex in the cramped bag seat wasn't all that conducive to their usual missionary, or even the doggy-style that they tried out oh-so-rarely because Sam had heard about it at school once and was too damn curious for his own good. The first time they'd tried it, Sam had fallen off halfway through. The second time, Dean had accidentally bucked up and made Sam hit his head on the ceiling. But they were getting the hang of it now.

"Ride me," Dean instructed, voice low and gravelly with arousal. It scratched at his throat.

"'Nother minute," Sam gasped out. Last time, he'd admitted that he still wasn't used to being filled from this angle. It took some time to adjust, apparently.

"I've got you." Dean lifted Sam's hands up off his chest with both of his own and held them, palm-to-palm. He laced their fingers together in a firm bounce and raised their hands to a good height. "Hold onto me, and ride me. I'm not gonna let you fall."

This time, Sam obeyed. Using Dean's hands as leverage and an anchor point, he lifted himself up a few inches with his arms and thighs, then sank back down. Then he repeated it. Dean groaned out encouragement as real pleasure, deep and hot, started coursing through him. No matter how many times they did this, it never failed to blow his mind, how good it felt.

Sam's pace was excruciatingly slow at first, but Dean guessed that that was okay. The feel of him was still overwhelming, and if he'd just gone to town right away, Dean suspected that he would've shot his load within a few seconds. He didn't want to do that; he wanted it to last. They both needed it to last. So when Sam started going faster, Dean was ready for it - but that didn't stop him from moaning again.

He didn't have to worry about finishing too fast now. It felt like forever as Sam frantically rocked on top of him, tongue lolling out with his shallow breaths and eyes tightly shut. Letting him have this much control meant that he could move in the way that would give him the most pleasure. Dean's cock ground against his prostate every time he lifted up and dropped, every single time, which was a much better rate than Dean got when he was thrusting on his own. His arms were starting to get tired, since Sam was using them to haul almost all of his weight up every couple of seconds, but he didn't say a word to complain.

Sam's movements got jerky and frantic when he was about to come. But even if he'd been on his back, Dean knew all of his other tells: his breathing speeding up, biting his lower lip, squeezing whatever he was holding onto (or whatever his hands happened to be closest to) as hard as he could. Dean clearly felt his heart beat only once before Sam lost it, throwing his head back with a high-pitched cry. Come popped out of him in hot, white little spurts, landing on Dean's stomach and mixing with the sweat that had pooled there. The night was already warm, and them moving around and heating up had practically made the inside of the car a sauna.

Sam slowed down once he was empty, his breathing coming out of him ragged and tired. His eyes were open now, but his lids were heavy and looked almost swollen. He let go of Dean's hands, but grabbed them again before Dean could drop them.

"S-sorry," he slurred out. He moved on top of Dean's still-hard cock, then arched his back and whined. Dean winced in sympathy, knowing how painfully sensitive everything down there got after a really good orgasm. Or a really crappy orgasm. Just any orgasm at all, really. "You didn't get to come...I'll - "

"No," Dean interrupted. "You're okay." He disentangled his fingers from Sam's. He couldn't tell if he was eager to let go or if his climax had just sucked all of his strength out of him. Dean grabbed onto Sam's hips and lifted with a grunt, and Sam helped, sliding backwards off of him with a gasp and sitting down between his thighs. "You clean up and get your clothes back on. I can take care of myself."

Sam looked like he wanted to argue, but he also looked like he was way too tired to do so. Probably why he didn't say anything when Dean pulled his legs back, swung them off the seat, and sat up. He looked down at himself, where he was still solid and throbbing.

Sam had left behind a slick mixture of lube, mucus, and precome (Dean's) when he pulled off him, so Dean just put a hand on his cock and got down to business. With his other hand, he grabbed a wad of tissues out of the box they kept on the floor. It only took a few strokes for him to finish, and he aimed into the tissues when he did, so he wouldn't have too much of a mess to clean up. He wiped his stomach and wilting dick clean when he was done, then balled the tissues up tightly and shoved them into the pocket of his jeans so he'd remember to throw them away later. He pulled his boxers and T-shirt back on, and left it at that.

Sam was already laying down, eyes closed. Dean noted that he was wearing the same thing as him as he climbed over him in order to open the back doors. The car needed to air out; it was way too hot and smelled like sex. Dad probably wouldn't come back before morning, but Dean didn't want him to have any clue about what they'd been doing then.

When Dean laid down, Sam (who he'd thought had already conked out) pushed himself up onto all fours, groaning, and crawled on top of him again. Dean groaned, too - it was too hot to cuddle, and Sam was still bony and awkward. He didn't shove him off, though.

"Dad'll flip if he finds us like this," Dean mumbled. Dad was okay - just barely - with the two of them sleeping side-by-side in the back seat, but it was his opinion that they were way too old for Sam to sleep on top of Dean.

He regretted pointing it out immediately. Since Sam had probably forgotten all about Dad by now.

Sam didn't go ballistic, though. All he did was move his shoulders a tiny bit in what might have been a shrug. Then he snuggled closer.

"Let him," he mumbled back.

Mid-October, 2005

Dean's eyes popped open when he came to the end of the memory - where he'd fallen asleep eight years and some change ago. He had to close them again a second later, to keep the motel's ridiculously-hard water off of his eyeballs. He lifted a hand to wipe the worst of it out of his face so he could see what he was doing, hesitated, and swore under his breath as he realized where his other hand was.

Dean felt his cheeks heating up, ashamed, as he yanked his hand off of his hard cock. No wonder Sam didn't want anything to do with him anymore. He really was a pervert, jacking off to a memory from when his brother was only fourteen without even realizing it.

He reached for the handles and turned the water temperature almost all the way down. He jumped and cursed again when the ice-cold spray hit him, but stuck it out. It made his muscles knot up again as he went about scrubbing himself with shampoo and body wash, but at least it definitively killed his boner.

Dean felt like an ice sculpture when he got out of the shower, numb and pale. Putting clothes on helped a little bit. When he opened the bathroom door, he saw Sam across the room, sitting in a flimsy chair. There was a Styrofoam box on his lap, and he stood up and held it out when he saw Dean. He didn't take so much as one step towards him, though.

"Here," he said, voice quiet and oddly flat. "Eggs and sausage."

"Oh." Dean was surprised that Sam had grabbed him some of his favorite food, instead of trying to force some kind of organic whole-grain gluten-free vegan crap on him. "Thanks."

It looked like Sam tried to smile, but couldn't quite manage it. "Just trying to keep you happy."

"Thanks," Dean repeated, reaching for the box. Before he could grab it, Sam's hand twitched violently, and he dropped it.

"Crap!" he exclaimed.

"Hey, no big deal. It's okay." It hadn't broken open, so the food inside had to be fine. Dean crouched to pick it up (which hurt), and sighed through his nose when Sam took a step away from him so he wouldn't accidentally touch him. He looked up at him. His hair hung around his face, which made his eyes look impossibly dark in the room's cheap, low light. Two solid black pits. The illusion passed when Dean straightened up.

"What's wrong?" he asked him, shaking his head. He just wanted to know, because then he could fix it. Maybe. At least it wouldn't hurt so bad.

"I don't know," Sam replied. To Dean, his voice sounded bleak.

Dean didn't say anything in response to that, and the two of them just stared at each other in silence for a while. Or, rather, Dean stared. Sam avoided his eyes and looked blankly at an area that might have been somewhere near Dean's knees. When the quiet had stretched out just long enough to become extremely uncomfortable, Sam coughed softly and shuffled to the door.

"I'll go and check us out," he said. With the way he was facing, Dean almost doubted that he was talking to him. "You should eat. As soon as you're done, we can hit the road."

"Yep," Dean answered. That wouldn't've been a bad course of action - if he didn't feel like Sam was just using checking them out of the room as an excuse to get away from him. His out-of-the-blue aversion gave every single thing he did a new meaning.

Dean sat down on the foot of the bed and popped the container open. He ate the lukewarm food inside only because he felt like he should; he wasn't all that hungry this morning.

Dean didn't know how far it was to Lamona from here, but between his aching muscles and Sam, he really wasn't looking forward to the drive.