fic summary: When Pastor Jim orders John onto an urgent case while he's in the middle of a perceived lead on the yellow-eyed demon, he sends Dean to take care of it for him... by enrolling him and Sam at the summer camp the monster they're hunting is threatening. While Dean tries to keep Sam away from the danger, solve the case, save the kids, and kill the monster, and not get himself sent home or CPS called on his absent father, Caleb gets wind of his mentor's latest genius parenting move and dives into the church camp trenches beside his best friend. However, the case is a complicated one, and thanks once again to Johnny's A+ Parenting, Dean is even more vulnerable to the monster he's hunting than they realized.
notes: Hello I'm alive! Sorry for the several month absence, but for once it actually had a reason besides me having another mental breakdown which decided to inhibit my creativity instead of feeding it. *cough* What I mean to say is, I was working at a summer camp, and being a single parent to 7 children at a time on the top of a mountain with almost no wifi or cell service or breaks/time to myself doesn't leave a lot of time for writing. However, what it does leave room for is mindless daydreaming for a future fic which places Dean Winchester and Caleb Reaves in the very specific environment which my world was consumed by at that moment. And that's what leads us here... to a long fic about Sam and Dean going to summer camp and Caleb getting on staff to bail his little brother out of water that's way over his head.
This fic is nothing if not a fever dream (Jamie as my beta and the unfortunate witness to my mind-dump outline can attest to that), but I'm excited for it nonetheless. Living at summer camp really is like going into a little alternate reality, so forgive me in all of my odd specifics and know that if it seems like I have to be exaggerating I'm definitely not. Also be warned that while I feel like Dean and Caleb relate to and react to it in-character, this fic is set in a Christian camp and uses a lot of Christian language, so if that's not something you want to read, this fic probably isn't for you.
Also, I have not forgotten about my wips. I just had to get this off my brain.
Okay, enough rambling. Love you guys, missed you tons, onto the fic.
tw: unknown monster, implied abduction of minors
summary: In the mountains of Colorado, a camp counselor goes after her wayward campers in the middle of the night.
word count: 907
For my father and my mother have foresaken me, but the Lord will take me in.
- Psalm 27:10
"Alicia."
Heavy eyelids forced themselves open and met the wide, innocent ones of a ten-year-old child that Alicia was currently not awake enough to identify. She forced herself up on one elbow best she could in a hammock and resisted the urge to groan out of pure exhaustion.
"Yeah?"
"Can I go to the bathroom?"
She looked behind the girl, but she was the only one there.
"Where's your buddy?"
"I don't have one." Said in such an innocent way, like this wasn't her third night here, and she didn't definitely know she needed one.
A deep breath to make sure her tone stayed patient. "Go get a buddy."
With a small sigh like she'd honestly thought she was gonna get away with going alone, the girl turned and sulked her way back up the porch steps, leaving her counselor to sink back on her hammock and resist the urge to go straight back to sleep.
Hard cabins were rewarding cabins.
Hard cabins were rewarding cabins.
The kid, who she was now awake enough to identify as Elle, one of the more difficult out of this week's unusually difficult group of girls, reemerged a minute later, joined by Erica. Not her first-choice for a pair she could count on to go there and come straight back, but it was fine.
Everything was fine.
Hard cabins were rewarding cabins.
She resisted the urge to remind them not to doddle as they headed in the direction of the shower house. They knew.
When they'd disappeared over the hill that separated their cabin from their destination, she checked her watch against her better judgment.
2:47.
She had a whole three hours and thirteen minutes before she had to get up.
And jump in a lake.
She heaved a deep breath.
And then, coffee.
Coffee fixed everything.
FTK and Decs and all of that good stuff.
She spent five minutes struggling to stay awake, then another five.
The shower house really was right over the hill. There wasn't much of a reason for this trip to take more than five minutes, much less twice that.
But she'd seen this coming.
She gave them another three minutes before mild annoyance started to turn to a sick sort of worry in the pit of her stomach.
What if they weren't just messing around?
Either way, they were probably waiting for her to come and get them, because that was just the way they were.
She'd given them almost fifteen minutes, and there was now less than three hours until she had to get up and hurl herself into a freezing cold lake.
With a soft groan, she climbed out of the warmth of her sleeping back and slid her feet into the sandals on the ground below the hammock.
They weren't bad kids. They were just going through it.
Burying herself as far as she could into Rylyn's hoodie she'd confiscated for its oversized qualities, she flicked her flashlight on and half-hiked, half-stumbled her way up and over the hill which stood between her and her wayward campers.
A quick sweep of the area with the light found no sign of the girls.
The camp was incredibly creepy without little hooligans running all over it.
And that was not where her head needed to be while she was looking for two girls who were quite possibily hiding somewhere to jump out and scare her when she came to get them.
"Elle?" she called as she got closer to the dark mass of the shower house. "Erica?"
Nothing.
Then, a rustling from the bushes which grew against the far side of the bathroom building.
That sounded bigger than two skinny ten-year-olds.
It also sounded bigger than a skrawny nineteen-year-old camp counselor.
Maybe she was finally about to come face-to-face with their ever-persistent moose problem.
Or maybe it was a bear.
She'd always told her kids she'd fight a bear for them. Like David.
"Elle!" she tried again. "Erica! Come on, girls, I think I hear an animal. We've gotta get back to the cabin."
Nothing.
She muttered one not-camp-appropriate word and continued her hike to the shower house.
God, this place was creepy at night.
"God is bigger than the boogeyman," she sang softly to calm her own nerves. "He's bigger than Godzilla, or the monsters on TV. Elle! Erica!"
Every hair on her body stood on end at the sound of giggling from somwhere inside the showerhouse. That was much creepier than she remembered their laughter being.
"God is bigger than the boogeyman. Erica! Elle! Come on, girls, I'm serious."
They were really gonna make her go in there and get them.
"And He's watching out for you and me."
She'd refrained from sending them to Recovery Time as of yet, but this might be where she broke down and did it.
She finally reached the camper side door and knocked, just so she could say she tried before going in when they weren't supposed to unless absolutely necessary.
"Elle, Erica! Seriously, girls, that's enough. It's time to go back."
Nothing but more giggling, somehow sounding as far-off as it had from the top of the hill.
She went to push the door open, but just as she did, a twig snapped behind her. She turned just in time to see a dark, faceless figure, a foot away from her own face. She opened her mouth to scream, then everything went black.
