Twenty minutes later Dean dropped his body heavily onto the black leather of the drivers seat, and sighed. It was well after eight o'clock and Sam had yet to show. Very unlike him. The journal was left behind, but wherever Sam was now he had his laptop with him. Not that it was left behind too often. Revving the engine of the Impala, Dean looked back at the door to their motel room and wondered for the last time, where his younger brother might be. But the brunette had more important things to do just then, than worry about Sam.

Pulling the shiny, black, muscle car out onto the Highway, Dean flipped the radio on and let the rock music blare loudly through the speaker system.

----------

It was hard for Sam to not completely lose it as he made his way back to the Super 8. He walked slowly as he headed down the road to the run-down and seedy room they had rented only a few days before, fighting the demons in his head.

The meshing images of his nightmare flashing constantly across his line of vision, made it hard for the lengthy boy to walk a straight line. The appearance of blood and dead bodies raising goose bumps over his muscular forearms. The shapes outlined in separate flashes over took his senses, and Sam couldn't help but bend over and vomit right there on the side of the street.

Not to mention that one was a shorthaired male, who looked an awful lot like the eldest Winchester.

----------

Dean pulled up to the small coffee shop that sat on the main strip of town, and had hopped out of the front seat before the engine of the Impala had even started to cool. If he was going to be awake and function at the same time, he needed coffee and lots of it.

It had become their staple on the road, something to start the day. Whether it be five A.M. for Sam, or after eight for Dean. At least they had that in common. Even if they couldn't get up at the same time.

After ordering two extra strong, large coffees, Dean pressed his back against the door he had entered through and made his way back out into the bright light of the new day. Not even halfway to the car, he looked up to see his brother walking awkwardly in the opposite direction. Obviously headed back to the motel.

"Sam." He yelled across the pavement to the dark mop of hair. It didn't seem to register with his brother that he was being called upon. "Sammy!" Dean yelled louder, until it caught other boy's ear.

Slowly glancing over, Sam stood there for a few minutes, wiped at his eyes with the cuff of his sweater and second-guessed himself about continuing on his trek back to the shit hole they were now sharing. Though, he didn't feel like facing Dean right now. He was still thinking, trying to process what he had just seen, and Dean never made that any easier.

"Hey, what the hell are you doing over there? Waiting for the bus, Miss Mary Sunshine? Get over here." Dean yelled across to the taller of the two, again.

As Dean held out the hot cup of coffee he had not drank from yet, Sam, ever so slowly, made his way to the other side of the street.

"What the hell is wrong with you? You look like you just lost your puppy." Well, Dean was never subtle, but this was a time when it would of came in handy, especially with the look that was now creeping over his brother's face.

"I had another nightmare," Sam said, pausing. "And in this one you ... died." He told his older brother quietly, but point blank, glancing over to see his reaction.

"Oh, well that's never good." Dean replied, opening the driver's door of the Impala and sliding in nonchalantly.

"You don't sound too worried." Sam told him as he did the same, shutting his own door as Dean turned the engine over. It roared to life.

"Well it hasn't happened yet. Has it, Patricia Arquette?"

Sam really hated when Dean called him that, (well, basically he hated when he called him anything but Sam) but now was really not the time to start a petty fight over it. That was not to say, he wouldn't bring it up later to do the same. Plus it was obvious the two loved to fight with one another, physically or not.

"When are you going to start taking me seriously, Dean?" Sam asked his brother as he leaned against his door, turning toward the opposite side of the car a little more. It was not something he did often, but today was different. Today they could both die. For good.

"When you start shooting rainbows out your ass and turn hay into silver." Dean responded.

"I'm not Rumpelstiltskin, Dean. And it's spinning straw it into gold, to be exact." He corrected him.

"Rumplewho? What, huh?" Dean asked looking over. A mask of complete confusion, spreading across his face. Which in reality, wasn't so hard to do.

"Never mind." Sam sighed. Dean was not going to make this easy. That was overly obviously by now. "Just take us back to the motel." He stated, nothing close to a tone of asking.

"Screw the motel, Sam. I'm starving. This beauty is taking me to eat." He told the other boy, rubbing his right hand over the dash as he kept the left clutched to the steering wheel. "If you want out, jump. Stop acting like you have a stick shoved up your ass." He told Sam, giving his brother a nasty look, but the image made him laugh inwardly. "It's not even 9 o'clock, I haven't eaten anything since seven last night, I had to listen to those two fuck bunnies again this morning and I just got my coffee." He fumed, hitting a bump in the road, which splashed hot liquid all over the dirty denim of the crotch of his jeans. "Dammit!" he yelled out.

That at least put a small smile on Sam face.

----------

It wasn't much later when Dean finally putted the car into a diner that didn't look like they might get pubic hair served to them. Even Sam had to admit that by now, his stomach was asking to be fed too.

Walking into the half way, hick-filled diner, Dean took a seat next to the window trying to ignore the fact that he looked like he had just pissed coffee down his pants to everyone that was now staring over at him. He smiled smugly to most of them and they slowly went back to their own business.

Sam slid in the booth across from Dean and looked up politely, as a barrel-chested waitress with too much makeup on her overly winked face, dropped two food-stained menus onto their table and flipped her note pad open.

"What can I get ya'?" She asked them, popping the wad of gum she was chewing, before they even had the chance to pick up the lists she had thrown before them.

Sam saw that Dean was about to say something snide, and interrupted him.

"I'll have some eggs, over easy, toast and whatever fruit you have today." Sam told her, smiling as he finished.

"Fried egg, bagel and day old melon." She stated as she wrote. Nothing remotely close to what Sam had actually asked for. "And you?" She asked Dean, looking him up and down.

"Mabel, is that your name?" He asked giving a very fake grin as he leaned toward her, looking at the tag she wore over her old and sagging breast. It read, "Jackie." "Steak, potatoes, bacon and two fresh cups of coffee." He told her. She only scribble something down on her paper, rolled her eyes and walked away.

"You know she's going to spit in your food, right?" Sam asked Dean, making himself as comfortable in the booth as he possibly could with his long limbs.

"Yeah, and you with your batty eyelashes are really going to make a difference." He bitched back. "It probably comes with every meal in this dumpster dive." He stated, a little too loudly. Some of the patrons turned around to look at him rudely. He raised a hand to wave shortly at them, and as Sam turned to see what his brother was looking at, Dean pointed to the shaggy boys head as the groups of hillbillies finally turned away. Dean dropped his arm back down to the table before Sam had the chance to turn back around and catch him.

"So, what is this bullshit about me dying?" He asked his brother outright with a smirk, as Jackie, (A.K.A, Mabel) returned with the cups of coffee. She glanced over at Dean slightly, raising an eyebrow, but didn't stay long enough to over hear anything else.

"I don't know everything, Dean. I just saw you in my nightmare. At least I think it was you." He questioned himself before continuing on. "Body laid out, bullet to the head, stomach tore ope-"

"OK, Ok. I didn't ask to hear how I died, I just wanted to know what the hell you have running around in your head up there." He said, glimpsing up at Sam's forehead and pointing with one finger, swinging it back and forth. "I'm sorry I asked." He added, taking a sip from his cup.

Just the idea of picturing Dean lain out before him again, made Sam uneasy. But how was he to tell his brother that without being called a pussy?

Since their father had died and Dean had told Sam about the last words John Winchester had spoken, something had changed between them. Something neither had acknowledged to one another. Something that made an odd tension between them, and Dean, ten times bitchier then before.

Sam sighed, He was right in his thinking before. Dean was of no help.

"I can't just sit on this one, Dean." He told him, his irritation rising. "We have to do something. I'm not just going to make myself bait and wait for you to die."

"Who says your right about this?" Dean retorted. "Do you ever just have normal nightmares? You know, feeling like your drowning, falling off a building? Maybe your annoyed brother strangling you in the middle of the night …" He trailed off.

"I'm being serious, Dean."

"So am I."

Sam slammed the cup in his hand down onto the tabletop. It made a louder noise than he intended, but he ignored it and the coffee that splattered out over the rim.

"You don't even care?" Sam asked Dean, his face softening. He looked like he might crack as he slowly looked back up and over at his bullheaded brother. He could feel the tears building up.

"Look, Sammy. This is like, what? The tenth time I've been told I'll die, or been close to doing so? I'm kinda over it. I mean how many times can that fucking yellow-eyed Demon cry wolf?"

"You do know that at the end of that story, bad things happened because the main character didn't listen when he should of, right?" Sam tried to ask without letting his pulled together façade break in front of Dean. It was taking all he had to not let the tears fall.

It wasn't like Sam to just burst out crying like a baby, Dean either. But nothing had been the same since John's death. All emotions seemed to fester on the surface now. Giving a good indication to why the two boys were having a hard time dealing with one another. Not that it had ever been something they had mastered doing.

Dean let his own heavy breath of air out. He could easily see this was something Sam really wanted, minus the fact that he was bitching about it. He couldn't help but slowly give in.

He could only be an ass to Sam for so long before he felt the need to bug him in some other way. Like itching powder in his brother's underwear. Not that that wasn't in and of itself, another form of Dean's jackass side, just the more amusing of the two.

"You're not going to let up on this until I agree to go where ever it is we need to go, are you?"

"No."

"Well then, where the hell are we going?" He asked as their food was set down in front of them and another cup of lukewarm coffee was poured.