Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural in any way, shape, or form

Author's Note: A reponse for the "Missing Scene" challenge from P.L. Wynter's Fanfiction Challenges. This particular scene is from "Faith", when Sam and Dean are driving to LeGrange's

Warnings: Spoilers for Faith, but no real language - a pretty clean read

Sam couldn't help but glance over at his brother. He hadn't moved since he'd gotten into the car. Dean wasn't meant to sit still. Dean was meant to fidget. Dean was meant to complain loudly about Sam's choice of music, and tell him that he drove like a grandma and then get really mad because what was Sam trying to do, maim his precious baby and tell Sam to never just cut around a corner like that again because if he so much as put a scratch on the car he'd never be in the driver's seat again, let alone the car again.

Dean was too quiet. It was scarier than the thing that had sent him silent.

Sam turned his attention from the road to glance at Dean. Was his chest even moving? God, was he breathing? He shot a quick look at the road to make sure that he wasn't going to kill anyone driving around him before he started to stretch over to grab his brother's wrist. He searched for a pulse blindly in a moment of panic before Dean woke up. "Watch the road!" he barked before he started to cough, choke, splutter.

Sam's eyes returned to the road for a millisecond. "You okay?"

"I'm fine," he said, trying to sit up and wincing. He pushed his head back into the headrest. "Who taught you to drive?"

"You."

Dean glared at his brother for a second before he continued. "I'm sure I told you to keep your eyes on the road, especially when you're driving my baby."

Sam laughed a little bit. "I'm sure you did."

"And I'm sure that I told you whatever music is playing is chick music."

"It's called the radio."

"It's crappy chick music, change it."

Sam sighed as he grabbed a cassette tape and popped it in. "You hungry?"

"No."

"Thirsty?"

"No."

"Handsome?"

"No." A beat. "That was cruel, Mama Hen. I'm still loopy from all those pain meds, the mind's slower than the mouth." He sighed.

Sam sighed.

The air was full of heavy sighs.

"How much longer until we get to…wherever you're taking me?" Dean asked, closing his eyes again. Sam cringed; even his voice was different. Dean didn't talk slow. Dean talked fast and laughed and flirted and chewed with his mouth open sometimes. He didn't talk slow. Nothing about Dean Winchester was supposed to be slow. Sam remembered when they were just kids, they had been walking back from school and Sam had told him to slow down. Dean turned to his brother and said, "You slow down, you get old, you die. I'm not slowing down."

Sam had always tried to keep up with Dean's stride after that, but usually found that he walked a few steps slower than his brother.

He draped his arm over the wheel as he drove. "A few more hours at least," he said. His brother nodded ever so slightly, closing his eyes again. Dean's harsh breathing slowly steadied into even and rhythmic. His head bounced a little bit against the seat every time that they hit a bump in the road.

He didn't even look like Dean. He was a strange, imposter Dean that had somehow found its way into his brother's body. This Dean's hair wasn't the picture of perfection that it usually was, and dark half moon crescents were under his eyes, standing out boldly against skin that was white as a new book page, white as freshly fallen snow, white as perfect movie star teeth. This wasn't Dean. He had half a mind to stop the car and wrestle this person who wasn't Dean out of the car and demand that he give Dean back.

There was a problem, though. He knew that this person who was sitting next to him, drifting between the conscious world and the unconscious world, was Dean.

And that was enough to scare him more than any monster in the closet.

-end-