WARNING: Contains allusion to major character death.
For the first week after he loses Dean, Sam doesn't even bother with motel rooms.
Maybe he would sleep better in a bed. On a mattress. Even if it's the sagging, stained, alcohol-and-sweat-soaked kind that usually crops up in the places that he's used to. But he doesn't care enough to find out. He only gets an hour or two of sleep a night, and he always wakes with his back aching so badly that it brings tears to his eyes. He still doesn't go looking for a bed, though. When his eyelids get too heavy for him to keep driving without killing himself and destroying the Impala, he pulls over in the first place he can find, and he sleeps in the car.
He lays down in the front seat after kicking off his boots. He curls up tight, to fit in his tall, gangly frame. And he buries his face in the leather of the driver's side, where the scent of whiskey and beer has sunk in deep. Of a particular brand of aftershave. Of salt. Of ash. Of wet ea