A/N: Hey guys! I'm back and with better grammar thanks to dancing fiyero (a really stellar author-love of mine). Thanks to all the reviewers you guys are awesome, I hope this doesn't disappoint you. Sorry it's so short. The next is hyper long, promise!

Chapter Two:

Must or Bust

Flick flick Dean batted at his keys in the ignition waiting for Sam to get back with a new map. Their old one bit the dust after an unfortunate dispute over directions, in the end they discovered that two maps certainly weren't better than a whole one. Sam stood outside the tourism building with the map in his hands engaged in a conversation with a local man who looked about their age. Said man was pointing off to the east, Sam nodding and taking notes on the palm of his hand with a pilfered ball point pen they'd lifted from the bank. Flick flick Dean irritation was starting to bubble over like a hot bubbly mass of…bubbles. Okay anger subsiding, thought Dean trying to picture an indignant bubble. The slam of the car door brought his attention back to the unfrothy present where Sam sat staring at the dashboard blankly, his eyes looked ages older than the rest of him.

"You okay?" He reached over from the driver's seat and squeezed Sam shoulder lightly.

"Yeah, fine, peachy really." Sarcasm and witty retorts were becoming more common with Sam though he was no where near as practiced as Dean. Still, something in Dean regretted the attitude change, Sam used to be so…Happy.Sure, hewas a lot more fun to talk to without his snow-white-and-the-happy-elves perspective on life, but he was like a younger version of Dean. Realization dawned on him, albeit slowly justdictated by his nature, Sam wasn't cut out for this job at all but he'd have to learn for his own sake. Dean could teach him the moves and techniques, strategies and lore but no matter how well he protected Sam he'd end up resenting his older brother ever so subtly (maybe even subconsciously) like Dean resented their Dad.

"Hey? You in there?" The younger Winchester was waving his hand in front of Dean's eyes jokingly but it was about to make him nauseous.

"Yes, I hear you, and if you make he hurl in my own car I'll make you clean every violated inch of her."

"You're such a freak. It's called personification. Dean, it just a car."

"Shhh, quiet" he stroked the wheel affectionately "She'll hear you!"

"Okay I'm sorry…"

"Beatrice." Dean supplied Sam with his beloved's name.

"I'm sorry Beatrice." For a few moments they sat in a content silence. Everything seemed so much more bearable now more than ever. They joked and laughed, they stuck up for each other (and on occasion were each other's wingman) but most importantly they had each other's backs no matter the situation. Trying feebly to suppress a warm fuzzy feeling Dean revved the engine and squealed the tires leaving skid tracks ten feet long out of the parking lot.

A few moments later Sam was wedged against the car door and the headrest, eyes closed but still not quite asleep as he felt the need to quip up.

"You know, you could have given her a better name, Beatrice sucks balls of yarn!"

"Balls of yarn? Holy hell, I refuse to be related to you! Balls of yarn, that awful."

"What, I'm trying to be somewhat…"

"Nerdy?"

"Civil, I don't need to be vulgar to get my point across."

"Okay college boy, but I'll have you know that vulgarity in place of 'Balls of yarn' will keep you from wedgies, swirlies and most other bodily harms." Dean smirked over at Sam, though Sam's eyes were still reluctantly shut. He's just a kid in his brother's eyes mostly because right now he looked like one. Sam hair was ruffled up from trying to sleep when a) he knew full well that sleep would result in serious nightmares, and b) he was sleeping in a space that was clearly not for sleeping in. Beatrice was a chick magnet car, not the family van. Headlights of passing cars cast shadows on his slackened face like Dean's flashlight used to. When they were kids, back when they shared their room, Dean would always flick on his flashlight halfway though the night to make sure that Sam was there and okay. Let's say that chronic nightmares weren't recent, besides it was an older brother's duty to worry about his siblings a right even. Back then Sam had such a mouseketeer attitude to life, so happy. There's that word again, happy. How did Dean know that Sam was unhappy aside from Jessica being dead and not being able to talk with his friends and Dad being gone and for being hunted by the cops for dozens of cases of fraud? He must be miserable, concluded Dean letting his question answer itself.

The next morning Sam stretched out yawning and pushing the covers off his bare chest, wait, blankets? BARE CHEST? My god I've been kidnapped! Panic flares in the moments before Dean walks in the room with a bundle of laundry in hand.

"Morning." Dean says brightly.

"Don't do shit like this!" Sam was exasperated but relieved, even more so when he found that Dean had left his boxers on and alone.

"Like what? Find you a clean and horizontal place to sleep?"

"I thought-"

"That a demon had stolen away with you in the night to his dark and sinister lair at the motel 6? I don't think so dude, nothing's that weird."

"I just didn't know where you were."

I take it back he doesn't look like a kid, he looks like a dejected puppy. But that's as far as he can bring himself to joke because Sam does something out of character that throws Dean slightly. He cries. Not wracking girly sobs, just relieved and overwhelmed tears leaking unasked for down his cheeks.

"Sammy, I'm sorry. I should have woken you up it's just-…I didn't wanna chance ruining a good thing."

"Yeah, it's okay, I really needed it anyway. But next time leave a note? And my clothes?"

"Sure thing little bro. So, what do you say to some toast and juice?" Gentle thumbs brush the rebellious tears away and warm arms wrapped Sam up tightly in a hug. It's days like these that he was glad he didn't set the little mutant adrift when they were younger.

Sam's stomach grumbled loudly and they both laughed.

"Breakfast now?"

"I don't think they have a full continental but I'm sure we could rummage something up." And just to spoil things the phone rings. With a quick and exasperated flip of the phone cover, Dean answered. How to spoil a brotherly moment? Technology. Great.

"Yello? Dean here."

Sam watched the one sided conversation still wiping the left over tears off his face, which was now a lovely splotchy red color. Dean would give some sort of affirmative noise and then a slur of mumbles would come from the other side. Sam flopped back onto the cool bed and pulled the covers up to his shoulders, then flipped over onto his stomach and buried his head under the pillow, another childhood habit. See, they had this cat named Alice, she was soft and friendly but really pushy. When Sam was a baby Alice would try to sleep on Sam's pillow and when the baby wouldn't move his fat head Alice would sleep on it instead. She didn't do this once or twice, it was every night for sixteen years. So naturally now Sam isn't accustomed to sleeping without some sort of weight on his head, how he doesn't suffocate is any ones guess.

The younger Winchester inhaled deeply and stretched waiting for his brother to get off the phone. The room smelled like clean laundry, clean but damp, Dean never did keep it in the dryer for long enough. That and…coffee. The latter was particularly enticing after a wonderfully long sleep, a hot cup of coffee after a cold shower would be the ticket, decided Sam. Shower; function, coffee; fantastic. But shower first, after all, he was a twenty something year old boy with an over active imagination and a Winchester with an over active sex drive, a deadly combination on a road trip.

"Right, we'll be there in an hour." Said Dean clicking the cell phone shut.

"Where are we going?" asked Sam.

Dean sighed and ripped the pillow off Sam's face.

"To see a friend of dad's. Put some pants on we leave in five."

It felt like someone had knocked down his house of cards, a phone call wrecked the affectionate moment he'd waited for, for nine and a half months. Just now Sam thought that Dean was going to forgive him for going to college, guess not.