A/N 1: guess where I got this idea?

Sam came back from the diner with dinner and found Dean at the motel table - playing with a rubber duck. Playing dress up with a rubber duck apparently, trying to maneuver the squeaky toy into what looked like doll-sized scrubs and doctor's white jacket. Waiting on the table was a doll-sized stethoscope and a miniature one of those reflecto things that doctors used to wear on their foreheads.

"Uh - Dean?"

"Yeah?" Dean answered briskly, not looking up from his task.

"What's going on?"

"Why? What? What's going on?" He looked up then, like he had no clue what Sam was talking about, like Sam might be talking about a hunt or something serious going on.

"What's with the ducky?" Sam asked, and Dean's expression brightened right up like he won the lottery.

"Dr. Sexy, the TV show, they're having a thing where they want people to send in rubber ducks to the studio. I figure anybody can send in a plain old duck. I'm making mine look like a doctor duck."

Sam knew he was supposed to respond, and favorably, but it took a good five seconds for anything to come to him. They'd been under a lot of strain lately, with Cas going rogue and Sam's wall going down, and Sam knew the stress was bad – he just didn't realize it had gotten this bad.

"Oookaaay." He answered, slowly, like Dean might be on the edge and not realize it and he didn't want to be the one to push him over. "Where did you hear about that?"

"It was on Twitter." Dean said, happily shrugging over to his computer.

"You have a Twitter account?"

"Yeah. Of course I do. And they gave the address and everything where to send the ducks, and they're going to post pictures of all of them."

Still trying to find his way carefully around the subject, Sam put the bag of their dinner on the table and sat across from Dean.

"I thought you don't like that show anymore."

"Oh, I don't. It stinks." Dean answered, engrossed once more in decorating his duck. "But I still like the actors. Oh – hey – they're having a convention too. We should go to that."

"We should go – to a convention – about a TV show - ?" Sam said and asked, and was kind of afraid of the answer. If Dean was losing it – if Dean was losing it, Sam was going to need to start making plans. Fast.

"Yeah, it's in Buffalo. In September. They're calling it BuffCon." Dean looked up and gave a knowing nod. "If there's anywhere we should be, it's definitely BuffCon."

"Rrrright."

Okay, they were about seventeen hours away from Bobby's. Sam could slip out and make a fast call to have Bobby invite them there on some pretense that Dean would believe. Then they could just take a break for a few days or – Sam looked at Dean's supplies again – or a few weeks, to let Dean rest and regroup and let Sam and Bobby figure this all out.

"What? What's wrong?" Dean asked. He was serious now, and concerned. "You doing okay? Something happen when you went to get dinner?"

Sam gestured to the table.

"Apparently you went duck hunting while I was getting dinner."

"There's that dollar store just down the way." Dean nodded vaguely to the front door. "I grabbed all this stuff in a few minutes. I want to mail it out tonight if I can. There's a mail-your-packages-here place down there too."

"Yeah." Sam picked up the reflecto thing to have a look at. It was a circle of cardboard faced with silver and strung on a piece of elastic. "Where'd you get this stuff?"

"They were selling a 'doctor bear' teddy bear there. I bought that too, to use the clothes and stuff off of it." The scrubs shirt finally went on the duck, and Dean picked up the lab coat next.

Sam just had to ask.

"Dean? Are you feeling okay?"

"Yeah, sure, why?"

"Why? Because – " Sam gestured again to the scene in front of him. "Because you're dressing a duck up like a doctor and you're going to mail it off to a TV show you don't even like anymore."

Dean looked at the toy in his hand and sighed.

"I just wanted to – be part of it, you know? The show stinks but the actors are okay, and I kinda think they know the show stinks," he added in a stage whisper, "but there's going to be thousands of people sending in ducks and I just – I just wanted to be part of it. Bobby sent a pound of peanuts in when they cancelled Jericho. I just -." He shrugged and didn't finish the sentence and buttoned the lab coat around the duck.

Sam watched him. He watched his big brother who'd had to be grown up since he was four, who'd had the weight of the world on his shoulders more time than Atlas, who only wanted fifteen minutes of being able to do something utterly ridiculous but utterly fun.

It'd been way too long since Sam had seen that in Dean.

"You got the stuff to mail it?"

"Yeah, in the bag there on the chair." Dean said. "A box and packing tape. They didn't have any peanuts though, so I got some newspapers to crumple up to cushion it in the box."

Sam reached for the plastic bag and the newspapers. "I'll get started with the crumpling."

Dean looked up, surprised, but then he smiled.

"Thanks."

"Sure."

And when Sam found the now-naked teddy bear under the blankets in his bed that night, he thought maybe they could make a swing through Buffalo, too.

The End.