a/n: Oneshot response to LJ challenge. Follows certain events from "Lights Out", but I don't think it's necessary to be familiar with the story. Long live the Impala.

Raiders

"Sammy. Sam."

Sam's head snapped up off of his laptop keyboard as he jumped a full foot out of his chair, elbow knocking his forgotten to-go cup of coffee onto the dingy Berber carpeting, a dark puddle of long-gone-cold liquid quick to add a new stain. Dean stood in front of the open doorway as though he had just entered the dark room; a disorienting thought considering Dean was supposed to be asleep across the room. And as far as Sam knew, he had been for a few hours. Having neglected to shut the door behind him, Dean was silhouetted by fluorescent parking lot light to the point that Sam couldn't see his face. But he knew that tone of voice; it meant business.

"The hell, Dean – I thought you were asleep." Sam rubbed at his eyes and the keyboard indents on his cheek, checked the time in the hazy corner of his computer screen: 3:42 AM. He flipped on the tabletop lamp, illuminated a fully-dressed Dean and the rumpled bed he had stealthily vacated. "What were you doing outside?"

"I wanted a burger. Sam, we have to go back to Claremont."

Sam straightened his spine with a crack as his mind slowly and sleepily worked its way through what he was hearing. "You wanted what? Dean…we're two hundred miles from Claremont."

"Well, we have to go back."

"Why?" Sam blinked tiredly as Dean loped further into the room, still not caring to close the motel room door, and Sam noticed the smallest of stumbles as Dean made his way across the room to where he had fallen asleep at the desk. The bottle of pills – the second prescription, the one that came after the Dean and F150 acrobatic routine down into the ditch, the one Sam was sure he had ditched before they'd left town – was sitting in plain view on the bedside table. Never while I'm looking. He squinted as Dean braced himself on the tabletop. "How many of those pain pills did you take?"

"I'm not screwing around, Sam. We have to go back. Now."

Dean violently shoved something under his nose, and Sam leaned back as Dean's tangible anger put him all up in Sam's personal space. Ignoring the hand in his face, he met Dean's eyes, concerned. "Why? Did you hear from Nate, or – "

"No. Just…" Dean waved the piece of paper in Sam's face, apparently too pissed, or possibly too distraught, to go on.

Sam stared until the continuous back and forth movement of the paper started to make him dizzy and snatched it from Dean's hand. His fingers found a slimy spot on the paper and he grimaced, rubbing it away. "'Your car is ugly'," he read aloud. "What is this?"

"I found it tucked in the visor."

"It's almost four in the morning. What did you need in the car?"

Dean spoke slowly, as though Sam was a small child. "I woke up. I was hungry. Went for a burger but I left my wallet here. Always keep some cash in the visor." Dean ripped the note from Sam's hand and slammed it onto the table. "Found this there."

"Instead of the money?"

"Do you know how to follow a story? This has nothing to do with the money!"

Sam blinked slowly, trying not to think about how long Dean might have been gone while he'd been passed out, or how far he would have had to drive to find someplace open this time of night, or how he shouldn't be driving at all if he'd taken the meds.

Dean was livid, close to losing it, and Sam's eyes narrowed as he tried to make sense of what Dean was saying and figure out what could possibly be so damn important. It took a moment for it to work its way through the haze an hour and a half of sleep had clouded over Sam's mental processing, and then a grin broke across his face. "Bernie."

"Bernie," Dean growled. He pulled away from the table and stalked across the room.

Sam wrinkled his nose at the paper in front of him, naming now the smudge in the corner as grease, another near the center as mayonnaise, but could not mask his amusement that the man had known where to hit Dean. "I told you not to mess with him, man. You should be happy this is all he did, considering the time he spent with the car."

Dean halted, as though the thought hadn't yet occurred to him. He made a jerky movement towards the still-open door. "If he – if that...oh, I'll kill him."

Sam leaned back, one hand covering his mouth as he spoke around a yawn. "Dean, it's a piece of paper and it's really late. Let's just go to sleep."

There was no pause for consideration. "Nope."

"Dean – "

"Hey, come with me, don't come with me. I'm going."

As Dean started to gather the few things that made their way out of various duffels during the whole seven hours they'd had the room, Sam thought about how happy he was that they had paid for a full night only to split in the middle of it. "And what are we going to do when we get there?"

"Dude, I got it covered." A plastic grocery bag materialized in Dean's hand. Or he might have brought it in with him and been holding it the whole time. Sam wasn't all that certain he was really awake. His eyes focused on what was inside the grocery bag: a carton of extra large eggs.

He groaned. "Dean. No."

"Sam. Yes. Come on."

"And this really can't wait til morning?"

"He'll there in the morning."

"Of course he will," Sam said with a sigh. He rubbed the bridge of his nose. "How did you get eggs?"

"I keep cash in the visor – do you not listen?"

Sam stored this information away for later use. "I thought that money was for a burger-"

"Fuck the burger, Sam! This is war."

He could just see it. He could just see Dean so angry that he peeled out of the drive thru of some twenty-four hour burger joint, leaving behind a bewildered window worker and the smell of rubber. Because a greasy mechanic who had been in their lives for all of four days had left a note declaring the car to be ugly.

Sam protested. Dean stood firm and called Sam names. Sam bitched and tried to count the pills in the prescription bottle. Dean ripped it out of his hands and smacked him upside the head. Sam finally relented by four-fifteen. Sam also drove, because he still wasn't as sure as he'd like to be that this wasn't a slightly paranoid-delusional, prescription drug-induced middle of the night road trip they were taking.

It took them nearly three hours and two giant twenty ounce coffees to the Claremont city limits, and the first rays of the day's sun were just starting to peek over the treetops when they rumbled their way into town. As they pulled to a stop in front of the pudgy mechanic's shop Sam sank low in the seat. "I cannot believe we're doing this." It was not forgotten by him that they had been asked never to return, and here they were, back within twenty-four hours.

Dean grinned. "Where's your sense of fun?"

Hunched in the bench seat, Sam glared up at him. "This kind of fun? I think I left it back in the sixth grade, Dean."

Less than three minutes later, Dean had emptied the carton, had pitched every last extra large egg at the garage doors of Bernie's body shop. As they drove away from town for the second time in two days, Sam fumed exhaustedly and grilled Dean about whether the whole episode was really worth it; the forgotten burger, the lost sleep, the unnecessary extra gas money, of which he really shouldn't have had to remind Dean that they didn't have.

"Totally, Sammy." Dean leaned his head back against the seat and closed his eyes. "Because now I can sleep."

Sam gritted his teeth, gripped the steering wheel tighter. "I'm so happy for you."

It took every last bit of self-control for Sam to not dump the remaining two inches of chilled coffee in his cup onto Dean's smug little face.