Author's Note: Hey! I'm really sorry for not uploading this sooner. I had meant to do this a week in advance, but my EOC for math was coming up and this chapter has proven particularly difficult to write. I'm really glad so many of you like the story so far, all the positive reviews just make me so happy! So, here's the next, chapter, and I hope you enjoy!
Chapter Two: In Which Exposition is Best Served Warm
Nico awoke with a yawn as the Impala slowed to a stop.
"Where are we?" He asked drowsily, stretching as best he could in the back seat of a car.
"Oasis Plains, Oklahoma," Sam responded. "Apparently, some construction guy fell down a hole and suddenly ended up with the kind of brain deterioration that comes from the later stages of mad cow disease." Nico gave a confused look.
"It just… happened?" Sam nodded.
"Okay, as lovely as this conversation is, we've got some questions to ask, and the sooner we can figure out what the hell happened here, the better," Dean announced, taking the keys out of the car and stepping out. Sam and Nico followed after shortly and questioned the partner of the previously mentioned dead construction guy.
After getting nowhere fast, the somewhat-newly formed trio decide that the next place to go would be the area of death itself- the construction site.
Now, conveniently, there was an open house barbecue that very day! And guess who's attending it? The developer! Now, that's plot convenience if I've ever seen it (And trust me, I have. Did you even read chapter one?).
Walking up to the door, Dean, Sam, and Nico were met with the previously mentioned plot-convenient developer, who greeted them… warmly.
"Let me just say. We accept homeowners of any race, religion, color, or… sexual orientation." He eyed Sam and Dean quickly before glancing down to Nico. The three just stared at him.
"… We're brothers," Dean finally explained, gesturing to himself and Sam. He then pointed at Nico. "He's our orphaned cousin on our father's side. We came looking for a house for our dad and our cousin here."
The man blinked several times. "O-Oh..." he mumbled, somewhat embarrassed. He quickly put a professional persona back on and smiled at them. "Well, please, follow me to the backyard!"
After an embarrassing meeting with the head of sales (who greeted them the exact same), Dean split from the group to go speak with the director, while Sam and Nico sat outside and held an awkward conversation with the head of sales. The two quickly noticed a spider heading towards her and stared at it, though for different reasons.
Nico eyed the tarantula longingly. 'If only I could set one on Annabeth...' he thought. The logical part of his brain told him that Annabeth wasn't at fault, and he was being stupid and jealous. However, his fatal flaw completely overshadowed that side of his mind, leaving Nico with frustrated jealousy and blind hate towards her.
Sam quickly scooped the spider into his hand and delivered it to the teen who was watching from afar. After a few more short exchanges, mostly with the director and the teen (his son), the three leave the barbeque and load into the Impala.
"Yeah, the director said the kid is fascinated with bugs," Dean explained when the topic of the teen was brought up.
"There were beetles were the other guy died… you think it's him?" Sam asked. Dean shrugged. Dean turned back to Nico to ask his opinion, but paused when he caught him glaring out the window.
"Pull in here!" Dean demanded as they passed by an empty home, ready to be sold. Though Sam was driving, the Impala was his brother's car, and he quickly obliged, pulling into the drive way. Dean quickly got out of the car and opened the garage, inviting Sam to drive the car in. Sam gave him a weird look but did so anyway, Dean shutting the door behind him.
"We're going to stay in an empty house?" Sam asked. Dean grinned and nodded.
"I wanna try the steam shower!" Nico shrugged.
"Eh. I've stayed in worse places."
"Like what?" Dean asked.
"A casino where no time passes inside while time passes outside, but you don't realize it and you never want to leave." Both Winchesters gave him an odd look.
Nico suddenly shot Dean a curious look. "Dean, when were you born?" he asked. "1983," Dean responded. Nico chuckled.
"I've been alive longer than both of you- I was born in the 1930's." Dean promptly called Nico an old man, and the three entered the house.
Dean instantly found his way to the shower while Sam and Nico found a room to set up camp in. The two sat in silence for a few moments before Sam broke it. "So… where did you come from before we found you in Ohio?"
Nico sighed. "Well, several places, really. I was born in Venice, we moved to D.C., and then my mom died and we were moved to the casino by my dad." Sam frowned.
"Wait… you said 'we'. You mean you and your dad?" Nico paused for a few moments.
"… No… myself and… my older sister." At the tone of voice, Sam dropped the subject, and Nico continued on. "We were moved back to D.C. in the early 2000's, before a satyr and a group of demigods found us." He paused. "Well, the monsters found us first… but I won't go into that fiasco.
"We ended up at Long Island, where there's… well, a camp for kids like me. Children of the gods and all that. After… an incident, I left, wandered around for a while. Right before I found you guys in Ohio, however, I was in California." Nico left it at that, and then gave Sam a curious look. "What about Dean and you?"
Sam looked thoughtful for a moment. "Well, when Dean and I were really little, we lived in Lawrence, Kansas. On my first birthday, though, something killed my mom, and my dad… well, he changed, that's for sure. He started hunting, and we moved around everywhere. Never really had much of a childhood- my best memories are of Dean and me hanging out."
"After a while, I got fed up with Dad, and decided I was going to college. I told him, and he kicked me out. I got a dorm by Stanford, and led a peaceful college life until Dean showed up and told me Dad was missing. We went and hunted a spirit; I came back for an interview and…" He paused. "I found my girlfriend dead, and apparently Mom died the same way. I've been helping Dean hunt stuff and look for Dad since."
Nico gave him a small yet bitter smile. "It's nice to know the two of you are so close." He looked down at his watch. "Well, now might be a good time to get some sleep." The two arranged themselves at their respective corners and drifted off, weapons at the ready.
Sam was woken up in the morning by a call coming in through the radio. Apparently, the cops were in the neighborhood. Sam glanced over to Nico, who was still sound asleep, and sighed; waking people up was never fun.
"Hey, Nico," he called over to the teen, "wake up, a police call came in." Nico opened his eyes with a groan, looking as if he hadn't slept at all. "You okay?" Sam asked.
Nico nodded. "I'm fine, don't worry about it."
Leaving Nico, Sam ran up the stairs and knocked on the door to the bathroom. "You ever gonna come out, Dean?" he asked. "
What?" Dean shouted back.
"A call came in, the cops are around." Dean opened the door and peeked out, clad in only a towel. He grinned at Sam.
"These showers are awesome!"
After everyone was dressed and ready to go, they showed up at the scene of… something, quickly locating the director (He's Larry from now on) and approaching him. "What happened?" Dean asked. Larry explained that the head of sales had been found dead.
Dean looked at the other two. "You know what this means- we gotta check the house for a bug problem."
Dean and Sam made their way to the fence, leaving Nico to grin at them from afar. When the coast was clear, he disappeared into the shadows, reappearing right outside the window Dean and Sam were climbing into.
When Dean poked his head into the window, he first spotted Nico's grinning face. "… You did your weirdo shadow thing, didn't you?" Nico chuckled and nodded.
"If that's what you want to call it."
Sam wandered into the bathroom, where bloodstains still spotted the floor. He picked up a towel, revealing dead spiders. The first thing to come to their minds was the bug-obsessed teen (and Annabeth, in Nico's case). They wouldn't cast the blame, however, until they had more evidence.
That didn't mean, however, that they weren't up for stalking the kid. They waited outside the bus stop until he left and followed him into the forest, and followed him around the forest, and finally, they stopped around a large congregation on worms on a small dirt pile.
Nico gave the dirt pile an odd look. "There's something down there…" he muttered, sounding almost dazed. The other three nearby gave him an odd look. Dean looked over at the teen (And now he's Matt, for convenience).
"You believe in the supernatural, kid?" Matt shrugged in response. "Well," Dean started, as Nico concentrated, "you're about to."
Several skeletons rose from the ground at once, and Matt stared, wide-eyed. "These are all of the skeletons in the area," Nico explained. "Judging by the number and locations, I'd say Oasis Plains is actually an Indian burial ground."
After a bit of talking around, they were able to confirm that the land was actually cursed burial ground, and bugs were due to kill everyone that night. So, of course, Dean and Sam have to run off to tell everyone, and Nico just tags along.
Larry was quickly informed of the situation, and everyone was quickly evacuated from the neighborhood- everyone except Larry's family and our trio, of course.
Now, I would regale you of the long and difficult night everyone faced fending bugs off through the night, but that's kind of boring and I have nothing new to add so I'll sum it up real quick-
Everyone hides in the attic and Dean blows fire at bees until they give up and go home (the bees, that is, though Nico was close to leaving as well).
After surviving the night, Larry promptly shut down the neighborhood and prepared to move his family. Matt lost his obsession with bugs, and all was well.
"So, where to next?" Nico asked as he hopped into the back seat of the Impala.
"Somewhere with a bed," Sam replied, "I'm exhausted."
"Actually, we'll be on the road for a while," Dean mentioned, and he was suddenly on the receiving end of two glares. Sam's was familiar and not so bad, but he looked back at Nico and paled considerably.
Nico was shooting him the darkest glare he could, and it honestly terrified Dean. Of course, Dean isn't a pansy; Nico is just scary like that.
"Okay, motel it is," Dean quickly corrected, and Nico changed his death glare to a obviously fake smile of innocence. Dean continued to fear for his life for a while.
Omake:
As they arrived in the empty house, Dean quickly located the steam shower. Dean decided that he loved the shower so much that he would forget about hunting, finding his father, and killing the thing that murdered his mom. The shower had become the light of his life, and he quickly proposed. Sam and Nico had no clue how it worked, but the shower apparently said yes, the two got married, and Dean died a month later, crushed by his own shower/wife.
