Swivelling around in a frantic and fruitless attempt to locate his father once again, Dean simply refused to accept that his dad had left. However, the loyal son was being entirely irrational, and soon realised this, therefore mentally quelled his panic, quit spinning around and stilled his head instead of twisting it restlessly from side to side. John was still nowhere in sight.

"Damnit!" The Winchester yelled in frustration, his hands balled into fists by his sides to represent his excessive rage. He reverted to standing helplessly in the centre of the room, an expression of shock gradually spreading across his face as the recent events fully sunk in. Dean Winchester had just been involved in a conversation with his dead dad. It was enough to drive anyone crazy; the hunter, however, wasn't anyone. Having been through forty years of Hell (thirty of which had been spent enduring unimaginable torture at the hands of the most malevolent and experienced, violence-wise, demons), Dean knew he would get over it and deal with it. That was the Winchester way, after all.

At that moment, Sam entered their motel room, perceiving his brother's facial expression, and therefore, after also having heard Dean's more than irritated exclamation, he became rather concerned. His eyebrows knitted together and the corners of his mouth turned down slightly, his heterochromic eyes revealing his superficial worry.

"What's up, Dean? Man, if I didn't know better, I'd say you look like you've seen a ghost."

"Haha, right." Dean laughed nervously to comfort his brother, yet was secretly amused at the irony of Sam's choice of wording. He honestly had absolutely no idea how close he was to the real reason for his brother's anger and/or shock. "No, I just thought I had a lead on my research but it turned out to be a dead end." Yet another ironic phrase.

"Wow. It's not like you to get so wound up about research. Then again, you usually leave it to me." Ignoring his brother's dig at him, Dean stayed quiet and waited for Sam to continue. He did. "Anyway, I found out some valuable info from the victim's friend…"

The younger Winchester went on to describe his findings – he'd also checked out the crime scene while he was there – but Dean kind of filtered out his voice, only picking up the most important points. Following his conversation with John, Dean couldn't help but dwell on the matter, and he was naturally curious as to where and when he would next appear, which meant not paying attention to his brother. However, his glassy-eyed look kind of gave away the fact that he wasn't listening.

"…Dean. Dean? Are you actually hearing a word I say?" Sam asked, his eyes narrowing in suspicion as he picked up on the ignorance of his big brother. A moment later, Dean's head turned upwards slowly and he replied, snapping out of his reverie.

"What? Uh, yeah, sure; you were saying about the nest of vamps. Right?" But Sammy wasn't convinced.

"Dude, what is your problem? You've been acting strange ever since I got back. And don't give me that 'I couldn't find anything from my research' garbage."

"Okay, okay, fine. I just had another nightmare when I fell asleep a bit earlier, that's all. I'm alright now." Which was true. He simply chose to avoid mentioning the part that happened after. Dean never made the choice of lying to his brother purposely; it was always for a fundamental reason that would cause him less pain in the future, always good intentions. This time he was actually obeying their father's order again, but of course he couldn't say that as it would give the game away.

"Fair enough." Thankfully, Sam seemed to accept Dean's reason, as he was reluctant to speak about his nightmares, since he had never been to Hell himself, he had sympathy for his brother, but not empathy. This made it difficult to comfort him, yet he was sure it would likely be even more challenging to help him if he did know what it was like.

Changing the subject back to the job at hand, the Winchester boys resumed the case and, before long, headed out together to hunt the vampires, successfully beheading the entire nest with some degree of difficulty. After that, Sam and Dean continued hunting as normal. A werewolf here, a spirit there, a rugaru thrown in every now and then. They never forgot to stop at Bobby's place regularly, reluctant to be in his bad books again and enjoying his company and inevitable expertise concerning any task at hand.

The next time John appeared was in Wisconsin, when the brothers were faced with a particularly odd series of homicides which even extensive research could not reveal the root of. The boys spent many an hour sat in their motel room, poring over ancient lore on the web and in library books, but nothing came to them. They were, of course, too stubborn to call Bobby, being unwilling to uncover their ultimate confusion on the matter. Sam was just about to ring their adoptive father up, surrendering to his perplexed attitude, curiosity and also frustration at not being able to finish the job. He was outside for only a brief minute, reaching out his abnormally long arm to increase the height of his phone in order to get a signal, however in that time, John materialised in front of Dean after the general warning signs – EMF going nuts, Dean's breath condensing in the air, etc. Dean almost jumped a foot in the air. He spoke after taking a deep breath to calm down after the shock.

"Dad. I haven't seen you in a couple weeks. What's up?"

"Not much. Listen, I don't have long before Sam returns so I'll tell you quickly; you're dealing with a powerful spirit…" He went on to describe how to kill it, with Dean attentive as possible. John disappeared after explaining the second that Sam walked through the door without as much as a 'how are you?' Dean simply pretended he'd finally found the information via research, and Sam went along with it. They finished that hunt successfully too.

That was how the father and son meetings played out for the next few weeks. Dean getting stressed over a case, then John appearing when he least expected it and informing him how to destroy whatever they were facing. Sam was still entirely clueless, and John still refusing to see him. And so it went on, until one very different day a month later…