**Time skip brought to you by: real plot now**
Things had been a little Awkward between Dean and Lance since Dean had found his dad's journal on the counter and realized that Lance had read it, but he couldn't resist asking about new years eve.
"Why are we buying all this shit?" Dean asks, poking Lance's shoulder. "I thought New Years Eve parties were just drinking until you passed out."
Lance shakes his head with a sigh. "You see Dean, new years eve differs from family to family and such, my family didn't drink, well at least as far as I know, but we basically eat a bunch of junk and got sick the next day after staying up till midnight, making a bunch of bad decisions and blow up a few firecrackers." Lance adds two platters of shrimp to their cart as they walk down the aisle.
"I think we blew up a werewolves face once." Dean looks down at his shoes, thinking hard. "And there might've been a poltergeist."
"Well not this time." Lance proclaims, he turns down the next one and grabs the biggest bag of pretzels he can get his hands on. "Just pretzels and shrimp." Lance throws it into the basket, most likely breaking half of the pretzels.
"The hell is that?" Dean asks, pointing at the shrimp. "It looks like someone's insides. I would know."
"It probably is." Keith shrugs shoving his hands deeper into his pockets. "But we'll eat it anyway, and most likely enjoy it." Keith takes out the third box of popcorn Lance added to the cart and put it back on the shelf receiving a pouty face.
"Jeez, you fucking wendigo." Dean mutters, grabbing the popcorn and putting it back.
"It's seafood, ok? My mom loved shrimp." Lance says as they go into the candy aisle, Lance smiles wider. "And I love sugar."
"Isn't that what doctors call gateway drugs?" Cas asks, sure he'd read that somewhere.
"Yeah, they say that." Dean says, grabbing a giant bag of jumbo pixie stix. "But it's not true. Sugar never makes me want drugs again."
"Well that's good." Lance says in his motherly voice. "Drugs are not good, stick with hugs not drugs." Lance says putting at least four bags of peanut butter M&M's in the cart.
"Believe me, I've never agreed more. I OD'd on that shit, and we had to go to the hospital anyway, so it didn't fix anything." Dean says, grabbing more Twix than anyone alive will ever eat. Ever.
"Can we slow down with the junk food please?" Cas cuts in stopping Lance from putting in a large bag of assorted Hershey's chocolates.
"Cas, that's sacrilegious." Dean says, grabbing a six pack of soda.
"No it's not. Sacrilege is making light of holy things, or treating it like it doesn't matter."
"Exactly." Dean agrees, picking up a box full of cookies.
"We'll need more soda than that." Lance says backtracking to the soda.
"Ok seriously, Lance that's enough." Keith says after Lance adds another six pack.
"Nope." Lance adds another one. "Ok that's enough." Lance decides.
Dean looks longingly at the Nutter Butters for a second, then turns away and says, "I'll get the booze." and disappears down a different aisle.
"Get the nutter butters." Keith sighs crossing his arms over his chest. Lance nods and Cas places it in the cart.
"I hope Dean can find us at the checkout" Lance says heading in that direction.
"Don't worry." Cas says. "He probably memorized the layout the minute we walked in here. His dad used to quiz him on it and get him in trouble if he was wrong. Reflex."
"Makes sense, my dad did some stuff like that when I was a kid, and he was alive…" Keith pauses. "Let's just go check out."
They're just finishing putting all their stuff in bags when Dean comes around the corner with no booze at all. He's pale and scared looking. "We need to go. Now." he says, grabbing Keith's and Cas's wrists and pulling them along, trusting Lance to keep up.
"Dean, what's wrong with you?" Lance asks
"Nothing. Just move your asses."
They get all the way out of the store and to the car before Dean just sits down hard on the pavement and wraps his arms around his knees, shaking like a leaf. "It killed him." he says over and over again. "It's the same one. It's got the scar. I gave it to him. It killed him, it killed him, it killed him…" He starts rocking back and forth, hyperventilating.
"Dean, Dean calm down, what's wrong, who killed who, what scar." Lance hands the cart full of groceries off to Keith and sits down next to him.
"Wendigo - Sammy - store - followed - can't-" he puts his head down on his knees trying to pull it together. Good hunters, good soldiers, do not go to pieces. What the hell is the matter with him?
"Shit, we gotta go, as fast as we can. Dean calm down, you're driving." Keith pulls both the boys to their feet and makes a B-line for Baby.
"Yes sir." Dean says out of habit, going into 'hunting mode' and heading over to the car. They all run for the car, pile in the groceries and then themselves and make a get away to the apartment. When they get there Cas takes Dean inside while Keith and Lance unload the bags from the back seat seeing as Dean wouldn't let them open the trunk.
They walk in with their last trip and Dean is curled up in a ball in the corner of the coach, looking so small compared to the rest of the world.
He looks up at them all, clearly not knowing what to say. There's an odd fractured light to his eyes. It's like inside, he's broken into a million tiny shards, but his lifestyle for years is reasserting itself, and he's refusing to completely lose it until this is done and he can do it in private. It's almost like he's losing ground in all the progress he's made, disappearing back behind his armor. Tucking it all away again.
"What exactly happened?" Keith says as Lance and him sit next to him or in front of him on the floor. Cas sitting on the opposite side of the coach as Dean.
"It was- it was-" Tears well up in his eyes. And for a second, it looks like he's about to cry. But then a wall of bullet proof glass seems to drop behind his eyes. He straightens up and clears his throat, his brain going into autopilot, soldier mode, ready to deliver the concise reports with no emotion that his father had always expected from him.
"I saw a Wendigo. The one that killed Sammy. I know, since it had the same scar on its eye. The one I gave to it. It's here." He looks around at them all, and Cas actually scoots a little farther away in fear. Dean's eyes are burning with cold fury. He's seen that from Dean before. It's the kind of cold fury that he knows, in Dean, could kill. "We're gonna gank this son of a bitch." Dean says, his hand tightening around the hilt of his knife in his pocket. "It's gonna be long and slow and painful. And I wanna be the one to do it. I wanna make that sick bastard scream."
"Ok, we need a plan, and probably cool outfits." Lance says with a look in his eyes that says he wants to kill whatever hurt Dean this way.
ok, I know that was a short chapter, but the next one is going to make up for it, I promise! -Sam