Sam already knows that Kel would sputter and cry if he had a gun trained on him, and would say in his defense only, "Man, I got problems. I'm sorry, I- I- I- l got real bad problems."

"Let's go," Dean says, slamming the trunk.

Kel has curled in on himself, practically fetal, and put his back to Sam. He's cowering, Sam realizes. Afraid. Maybe ashamed. Maybe some part of him knows might have happened.

Sam moves to get in the car.

"Uh, what's this?" Dean asks.

He stops and looks at his hand outstretched to the door handle on the driver's side. First week, he'd had to stop himself over and over from climbing into the passenger's seat of a car without a driver.

"What now you don't trust me to drive, either? Sam, believe me, no matter what I'm not crashing my baby."

Sam knows this isn't true. Dean bought it twenty-three times behind the wheel of the Impala. Twenty-four, really, but Sam doesn't think that Dean would let him count the time that they hadn't even managed to turn the engine on. Sam rounds the front of the car, and gets in on the passenger's side for the first time in three months.

Dean makes a face basically evincing 'That's what I thought,' gets in, and starts her up. They peel out, and Sam watches the town disappear in the side view mirror.

"I don't ever want to come here again," Sam says. Miles and miles of America hold bad memories for Sam, he considers entire states bad luck, but this place- he'd burn Broward to the ground if he could stand to spend another minute here. "I don't ever want to come within two hundred miles of this place."

Dean looks over at Sam, looks at him like there's something out of place, something unfamiliar about him. Sam looks back at him placidly, everything about Dean is exactly as it should be.

"Done and done," Dean says, training his eyes back on the road. "Bumfuck, Florida is on the black list."

Five miles out from Interstate 75, Dean asks "Where to?"

Sam blinks, "What?"

"Where to?" Dean repeats using the same tone of voice he reserves for those who don't speak English. "We solved the mystery of the Mystery Spot. What now? Did you have something lined up?"

Sam had been heading for Oregon before the trickster called.

"I hear Ft. Lauderdale is nice this time of year," Dean says hopefully.

"Oregon, um." Sam doesn't have his notes with him anymore. His notes don't exist yet. "Paulina, Oregon."

"Oregon?" Dean asks. "Like all the way across the country, Oregon?"

"A girl saw her brother enter a house, said an old woman gestured at him to come in. When he never came out she told her mother, who called the police. The girl took them to a dilapidated house, abandoned for years, with no sign of the boy or the woman…"

"Oregon," Dean says, as if mulling it over. "Fine. We'll go to Oregon."

"Wait. No." The boy had only disappeared two and a half months after Dean died the last time.

Dean sighs and rolls his shoulders. "Okay, we won't go to Oregon."

Sam sifts through his memories: the first case he'd taken after burying Dean was a poltergeist in Mayflower, Arkansas.

"Arkansas."

"Arkansas." Dean parrots back to him.

Sam nods.

They come up to I-75 and signs start declaring exit lanes, and east to here, west to there. "You sure?" Dean prods.

"I'm sure." Sam says, firmly.

"Okay," Dean pulls the car to the right. "Arkansas."

They drive until dark. They drive until the whole state of Georgia is between them and Florida. They drive until Dean threatens a walkout if Sam begs him to go any further.

"I don't care, I need some freaking shut-eye. We're stopping outside of Birmingham," Dean tells him.

"I can take over," Sam insists.

Dean shakes his head stubbornly. "You're not driving. We're not driving. We've driven thirteen fucking hours today. Neither of us has slept. It's time to stop for a bit."

Sam wants to argue, but the set of Dean's jaw tells him it wouldn't be worth the fight. Dean picks the first motel they come to, pulling in to the driveway, and popping out of the car before Sam has a chance to say anything. Sam gets out of the car, and immediately follows Dean inside, jogging to catch up and make sure that Dean doesn't enter the office by himself.

Dean slaps his credit card down, "Two queens." Sam stares at the clerk who stares back at them. He's a pleasant looking Indian man, balding, big glasses. His eyes move from Dean to Sam and back again, but instead of implying any too intimate connection, it's almost as if he's waiting to make sure Sam isn't waiting in line to make his own request.

"Yes, yes. Very good," he says as he runs the card. He recites it like a script, "Ice machine is on first floor, check out is eleven a.m., and we do not have pay-per-view, just HBO. Sign this, please."

One of the drawers on the dresser in their room is broken, the front piece lying askew, half resting on the floor, and the bathroom light flickers weakly, but there are two beds and that's all Dean seems to care about. He shucks his jacket, toes off his shoes, and disappears into the bathroom. He comes out dressed in a t-shirt and old sweats, rubbing his tongue across his teeth.

He's on the bed, fiddling with the alarm, before he looks at Sam again.

Sam looks back at him, sitting in the chair by the table, pushing the cap of a pen around with his thumb.

"All done, Sam, if you, um-" Dean seems to realize halfway through that it's a stupid thing to say.

"I'm not tired," Sam says. It feels like it's been months since he slept, actually. It feels like he's forgotten how to sleep. All he knows is that he woke up a hundred times and Dean was there, complete and whole and annoying and solid, and then he woke up a hundred times and Dean wasn't there at all.

He doesn't want to take any chances. He's had enough of chance.

Dean makes that face, that face that means Sam is doing something Dean doesn't approve of, lowers his eyes, purses his lips. "Sam-"

"Don't," Sam barks.

Dean blinks at him; the air in the motel, frigid and thrumming with the AC, becomes sharper. Sam keeps perfectly still and tries to pull it all back. He'd almost let it out, but he's spent a lot of time lately learning control.

When everything is reigned in again, tied down, and shut tight, Sam breathes out. "Whatever you were going to say just… don't."

Dean gets up and sits back down on the end of the bed closer to Sam. The one closest to the window, the one Sam always slept in until the first time a clerk wouldn't rent him a room with two queens. "No, honey. I mean, you're all by yourself. Save the money and just get a full. The bigger rooms ain't any nicer to be honest."

Sam hadn't slept that night, either.

"Can I say anything at all?" Dean asks.

"I thought you were tired," Sam says. "You should sleep."

"Yeah, I'll just curl up here and turn off the light not be creeped out at all by the fact you're sitting up all night in the dark."

Sam sighs. It's not that Dean doesn't have a point, it's that Sam is willing to admit he's not being rational. It's not about being reasonable, it's about knowing that he can't. He just can't.

"Look," Dean says after enough time has passed that Sam has started fiddling with the pen again. "You said I died."

Sam looks up, confused.

"Every Tuesday. You said I died."

Sam swallows and nods.

"That's fucked up, man. Really fucked up, but I mean, it wasn't real."

"What?"

"It didn't happen," Dean says, dismissive. "Or I'd remember it, too. It's like djinn, man. It felt real, it smelled real, but I bet it was all in your head."

Sam looks back down at the pen in his hand, "We'll see."

Dean sighs tiredly. "What does that mean?"

"In Mayflower," Sam explains. "We'll see."

"What's in Mayflower, Sam?"

"I don't know. As of this today I've never done any research into Mayflower. Never even heard of it."

"Jesus, Sammy." That seems to be all Dean has at this point. He stands up and spreads his hands in a quick sharp gesture of frustration. "I'm going to bed. Wake me up when you feel like making some sense."

He snaps off the light and gets under the covers in the dark. He doesn't seem to realize that he's in Sam's bed, the one closest to the window.

Sam starts pushing the cap around the to top of the pen with his thumb, again. He listens to the noise of Dean tugging at the sheets, muttering angrily to himself.

Dean pretends to be asleep for the better part of an hour before sighing. He rolls onto his back, "Sam, seriously. You're freaking me out."

He sits up, and their eyes have adjusted well enough to the moonlit dark that they can see each other almost clearly.

"I'm sorry." He pushes the cap around.

"Sam," Dean says it like their Dad used to say it. Like he was going to brook no argument. Like he wasn't going to take any shit. Sam waits for the order.

Dean is quiet for a while, like he doesn't quite know what it is he wants Sam to do. "Sam," he says, again. It's softer this time, approaching vulnerability but not quite. "Come here."

"What?"

Dean moves his head like he's trying to crack his neck, mostly he's trying to not look at Sam. "Just come here, okay?"

Sam doesn't know what to do. No matter how he tries, he can't make the words, "Come here," make any sense.

To clarify, Dean pats the empty space next to him on the bed.

Sam still doesn't know what to do, but he gets up and Dean lays back down, and looks pointedly up at the ceiling while Sam takes off his shoes, his jacket, pushes his jeans down his hips, and replaces them with old, threadbare flannel pants that he might possibly think of as having the same effect as a blankie or a teddy bear, only far more abstract.

He lifts the sheet and puts himself down on the bed as far away from Dean as possible. The next few moments are probably the most awkward in Sam's entire life up to this point. Then Dean reaches over and takes Sam's shoulder, pulling and tugging at Sam until he's on his side. Sam can't make his limbs work, and even if he could he doesn't know what he'd do. Push Dean away? Pull him closer? He just ends up curling into Dean, trying to make his body small against him, because Dean is doing his damnedest to stretch himself taller, to be big enough to cover him.

They stay quiet like that for a little while, Sam's forehead pressed to Dean's shoulder, his knees bent almost all the way to his stomach. All Sam can smell is Dean, he can't remember smelling or tasting anything for three months. The days all took on a dull gray sameness, and even now Dean is the only thing casting off any light, making any sound. He can't even remember what he ate today when Dean insisted they stop, but he shuts his eyes and breathes in deeply. Dean's chin is nestled into Sam's hair, and he's got one arm firm around Sam, palm resting flat between his shoulder blades. After a little, he slides his hand down Sam's back and up again.

"You want to tell me why I'm doing this?" Dean asks. His hand smooths down Sam's back again. "What's got you freaked so bad I have to hug it out with my freaking grown-ass brother in bed?"

Sam shakes his head. He doesn't want to do anything except lie there, breathing Dean in, feeling the friction of Dean's hand against his shirt as it creates a stripe of warmth down his spine.

"Sam, you can't-" Dean sighs.

Sam shakes his head and tries not to hear what Dean is saying.

"If I die, you can't-"

It's too much. "I can't, what, Dean?" He tries to pull away, but Dean holds firm. He tries harder, and Dean nails him to the bed, pressure on all the right points and Sam can't move an inch.

"It didn't fucking happen? Okay?"

It happened, a hundred times and more. It happened over and over, and that was hard, but it was worse when it happened and there weren't any more chances. "Dean-"

Dean doesn't let him, "If it did happen, it doesn't matter. I'm still here." He takes Sam's wrist and brings it up to his face, presses Sam's hand to his pulse. "I died on Tuesday, and now it's Wednesday and I'm back. Break out the colored eggs and chocolate bunnies."

"You died three months and twelve days ago."

Dean's hand loosens around Sam's wrist.

"A hundred and three days."

"And a partridge in a pear tree. Christ," Dean says, he relaxes back against the bed, half on top of Sam. Sam could get up now, but he finds he doesn't want to. This is his bed anyway. "Sam."

"I was dead for, what, a day? Eighteen hours? Do you remember what that was like?"

"Sam," Dean says, again. Like he's asking him to stop.

"It never stopped. Never started over. You were dead, Dean. I buried you."

"Sam."

"I started to believe- I thought I wouldn't be able to-"

"Sam, stop!" This time he shakes Sam, hard.

"Dean," Sam says. He said it a hundred times and there was no answer. "Dean, put some music on will you?" "Dean, can you…" "Dean…"

A hundred times he remembered Dean wasn't there. He hasn't said it, not once today, but it comes out of his throat and Dean is there. He's there already, his hands are warm and his breath is causing Sam's hair to tickle his cheek on every exhale.

"Dean," Sam says, and it almost breaks something, but Dean just pulls and pulls and Sam goes.

Their mouths find each other in the dark, and Sam doesn't know if he or Dean meant it to happen. It does though, and Sam knows he's got to hold on. His hands come up, gripping hard on Dean's neck, his body surges forward, and he's got Dean half pressed on the bed beneath him. Dean's mouth is already open when Sam tries to lick inside it, but Sam can't make the kiss deep enough, can't press close enough. Nothing is really right until Dean reaches up touches Sam's hair. He threads his fingers through and holds Sam still, takes control and slows it down until Sam's breathing is even again.

Sam tries to find a way to stop, to say something, but he lifts his mouth from Dean's only to set it down again. Dean's fingers are rubbing circles in Sam's hair, melting the tension from his shoulders and sending it to curl hotly low in his belly. They kiss until Sam's mouth is burning from Dean's stubble, until his lips are swollen, skin stretched thin over a pillowy numbness. They kiss until their mouths are barely moving at all against each other, lips just barely pursing. They kiss to the point of infinity, to hyperbole.

And after, they share breath like teenagers, faces tucked towards each other on one pillow. Dean is practically asleep, but Sam's eyes are wide open.

"One time. One of the Tuesdays, I almost saved you," Sam tells him. It feels like a secret he's been keeping his whole life though it's only been months.

"We need to work on your pillow talk," Dean smirks without even opening his eyes.

"It was one of the slow deaths, I kept your heart going."

Dean doesn't say anything, but Sam knows he isn't asleep. He waits patiently.

Dean finally asks, "Then what happened?"

"You died anyway," Dean died a hundred times and more, some so awful Sam thought he'd never get over the sight of it. But it was that time he thought about most, Dean's heart just refusing to keep working, no matter how hard Sam pushed it. "I couldn't keep it up."

"Sam," Dean's voice is quiet, and rough.

Sam knows what Dean is going to say. Nothing at all has changed with the deal. They're still fumbling around blindly for a solution everyone keeps promising doesn't exist. There's still a chance, and Sam hates chance now, wants certainty, wants finality. His throat closes tight, and he scrubs the heel of his hand into his suddenly stinging eyes. He almost doesn't realize what's happening until his hand smears the first tear across his cheek.

Dean doesn't say anything after all, doesn't do anything except hold Sam through it. He pulls Sam down into his shoulder again, and Sam clenches his hands in Dean's t-shirt. He doesn't know exactly why he's crying, if it's for the past, or for the unknown future; doesn't know if it's anguish, frustration, or relief.

"I'm going to save you." Sam gasps through the last of his tears.

"You did," Dean says, softly.

Sam shakes his head, he tries to say something but can't until he coughs his throat clear again. When he speaks, his voice is hoarse and weak, but he puts everything he has into saying it. "You know what I mean. I'm going to save you."

Dean sits up and strips his t-shirt, wet where Sam pressed his face into it. He gives it to Sam, probably to wipe his face but Sam just hold it in his fist and looks at up Dean. Dean's skin when he lies back down against Sam is hot, flush and alive. He nods his head once at Sam, quick and sincere, "You will."