Disclaimer: Sad to say, I own nothing Supernatural.

Dean's POV:

"You've gotta be kidding me." No, seriously. They can't be serious.

"C'mon, Dean," he says, shooting me those damned puppy dog eyes. "It's too tacky not to be fun." Tacky, yes. Fun? I doubt it.

"No."

"Well," Jake interrupts, "while you guys stand here figuring out just how pathetic you have to be to spend money on this, I'm gonna hit the bar." He squeezes past us and enters, actually goes inside, a bar filled with costumed Star Trek freaks. You have got to be kidding.

I look at Sam and he's got that big bright stupid smile on his face. "Man." He laughs and turns to head in, tosses his head back to say…something, probably assuring me you don't have to be a Trekkie freak to have fun here, which might be true, or might not be. I catch up with him, moving through the crowds of people. "I don't even like Star Trek."

"Liar," he says, still with that stupid-ass smile. Okay, so I've seen it before, but, so what? I catch Oprah sometimes too. Doesn't mean I want to go be in her audience and sit in on a big cry session about some chick whose husband cheated on her with a guy. "Dean, it's just for fun. Like a joke, you know. Chill." I swear if Sammy tells me to chill or relax or just have fun one more time, I'm gonna strangle him 'til his beady little eyes pop out of his skull.

"Fun? All I see is a bunch of dorks mingling with other dorks, some of whom are wearing masks and fake ears." He shoots me a quasi-dirty look and I shrug at him. It's the truth though, mostly anyway. Okay, really, most of the people here look perfectly normal, but still…the Star Trek Experience? Maybe they're all drunk. Maybe I should be drunk. I turn around to see if I can find Jake, but I can't even make out the bar through all the people, let alone one little red haired guy.

"Ow!" Dammit, that – what the hell is that thing? A Klingon? – just kicked me! "Hey!" Jerk. Yeah, whatever. Fine, keep on walking, pretend like you didn't hear me. See if I care. I know you know what you did. Damn stupid aliens.

Seriously, there are way too many people here. What the hell? And where…Sam? "Sam?" Where'd he go? "Hey, Sammy?" Oh, man.

I look around as best I can, push my way through the crowds on all sides. I see a museum. I see cocktail waitresses dressed like Vulcans. I see groups of people snapping pictures and laughing. What I don't see is a tall lanky kid in desperate need of a haircut. No, wait, there's one…but it's not my tall lanky longhaired freak. Shit. It's like the crowd just swallowed him up. The Trekkies ate my brother.

And to think, this was supposed to be a fun night out.

But, no, Sal didn't want Jake to go losing any dough at the craps table, so we all have to suffer. He drops fifty bucks in twenty minutes and all of a sudden we're only allowed to play the slots. Do I look like an eighty-year-old woman to you? No. I want Texas Hold'em, Five Card Stud, Black Jack, Roulette. I want the real Vegas. I don't want slots. And I sure as hell don't want the fucking Star Trek Experience.

Dammit, Sam, where are you?

This is so like him. Just goes and wanders off and doesn't give a second thought to anyone but himself. What is he, four? You can't just go disappearing like that, like this. You can't.

The last time this happened I found him locked up in a cage waiting to be hunted by the Deliverance wannabes. And I should have left him there, left him to figure his own way out. That's what you get for wandering off and letting yourself get snatched. I mean, really, I was gone, what, five minutes? I'm not even allowed to pee by myself, cause if I do he'll end up missing? That's sad, man, horribly, pathetically, sad.

Okay, so yeah, it might have been a little more than five minutes. I did meet a girl, a crazy hot biker chick. And I might have talked to her for a few. Maybe even offered to buy her a drink. But as soon as her huge leather clad old man showed, I went out to find Sam. And where was he? Waiting patiently outside like he said? No. Was he sitting in the car sulking like usual? No. He was gone. Disappeared. Stolen in the night.

What a pain in the ass.

And I'm supposed to what? Drop everything and go looking for him? Drive myself crazy worrying that something got him, some kind of ghost or demon or other…bad thing? Like he even cares. That's the problem with little brothers. They just don't care. He doesn't see that all I, as the responsible and trustworthy older brother, do is take care of him. And not because I want to. Noooooo. You think I want to get beat down by a little girl and tied up by a bunch of inbred freaks just to try and save his sorry ass? Or go on a plane, a plane, doomed to crash just so he wouldn't get himself killed trying to an exorcism alone? Or, shit, do you think I actually want to have to run out in the middle of the night to fill up pain pills so he can make it through the migraines those visions cause? Well, I don't.

But I don't really have a choice, now do I? You want to think our family's cursed, Sammy? Our family's not cursed, I am. Having to deal with a little pain in the ass brother like you. Seriously, man, where are you?

"Dean?" Who the…? I turn around a little too fast to see where the voice came from and, gracefully as usual, trip over my own two feet. She catches me. "Hey, I thought it was you," she says while I stand up and try to cover, make it look like someone knocked into me or something. "What are you doing here?"

"Uh, vacation," I say without really looking at her. I do a quick sweep of the crowd behind her, searching for Sam before I catch her face again. I've met a lot of girls. I've told a lot of them my real name. And I'm sure I've left a lasting impression with most if not all of them. But she's not one of those girls. "Haley." She smiles. "Haley Collins."

"How are you?" she asks, sweeping some dark hair behind her ear. It's shorter than the last time I saw her, a little bit too short to stay put, and the loose wave keeps falling in her face. I watch her try to pull it back again and feel my lips curl into a smile.

"Fine," I say finally. "Good. You?"

"Yeah, same. Hey, you're not here…fighting something, or whatever it is you guys do, are you?"

"Oh, no. Nope, just a vacation."

"That's nice." Someone bumps her from behind and she almost falls into me. This time I catch her. She smiles again, but awkward-like, before clearing her throat and asking, "Is Sam here?"

Sam. Shit. "Uh, yeah," I say and start to scan the crowd again. "He's around somewhere." I look back at her and…I don't know…women, my one weakness. Isn't this how we got into trouble last time? Sam went out to wait for me and got kidnapped because I got distracted by a hot little number at the bar. Priorities, Dean. "Actually, I kinda lost him."

"Oh," she says and starts looking around herself. "Well, I guess that's not too tough around here."

"Yeah. Who'd have thought so many people loved Star Trek so much?"

I'm keeping my eyes out for Sam, looking out over every face, but still I can hear her snicker. I turn around to face her. "Not that I'm one, a fan I mean. I'm not." She giggles a little more, tries to cover her mouth with her small hands. "What? I look like someone who knows what a Vulcan is to you?"

"Well, you would kind of have to know in order to even use the word, wouldn't you?"

I shake my head and laugh. Point taken. "Still, I'm no freak."

"Right, right. You just travel the country with your brother killing evil things. Nothing freakish there."

"I didn't hear you complaining when we were saving you and your brothers from that Wendigo."

"No," she says, suddenly serious. "No, you didn't." She ducks her head and looks almost sad, just for a minute. But she either bounces back quick or is great at hiding things because when I see her face again, it's all smiles. "C'mon, let's see if we can't find your lost little boy."

We searched for about twenty minutes before finally finding him getting his picture taken in the Captain's chair. What a dork. He comes trotting over after handing his money to some pimply faced alien looking thing and stops smiling only for a second. He cocks his head and stares in our direction and for a sec I think he can see how worried I was, how stupid and inconsiderate he was to just take off. But then I realize that he's not even looking at me, he's looking at Haley, and the expression on his face isn't guilty, it's confused.

"Hey, Sam," she says before I get a chance to bitch him out.

"Haley." He still looks kind of confused but seems to remember her anyway. I can see why, she is pretty memorable. "How are you?"

"Oh, all right, I guess. Having fun?" she says, pointing at the setup where a whole line of people is waiting to get their pictures taken. He laughs that little almost embarrassed laugh he has that somehow seems to drive women crazy, and I can't help but roll my eyes.

"Where the hell have you been?" He looks at me like I'm crazy, me, crazy. "You can't just take off like that, man," I say, and realize as soon as it comes out just how pathetic I sound.

And so does he. "Sorry, mom." I scowl at him and he stops smirking, which is something I guess. "There are a ton of people here, Dean. We got separated. I figured we'd just meet up later. If you were worried, you know, you could have just called my cell and I would have told you where I was."

Damn, why didn't I think of that? "I wasn't worried. It was just…rude, that's all."

He turns on a shit-eating grin and I know he doesn't believe me, but at least he doesn't say anything. Instead he turns back to Haley and takes a hold of her arm, leads her out of the crowd and toward the bar area, which is just now starting to thin out some. "So are you here with friends?" he asks her and I realize that I never even thought to ask what she was doing here. I mean, it isn't exactly a short little drive from Middle-of-Nowhere, Colorado to Vegas.

I follow behind them but make sure to stay close enough that I can still hear, close enough that I won't lose track of Sam again. "Sort of," she says. "Not really. I came with this guy from work. I just didn't realize he was quite so into all this. I mean I knew he was kind of a geek, but when he started talking to someone in that language – what is it? Well, anyway, that's when I split. Then I saw Dean," she looks over her shoulder at me.

"From work?" We all sit down at a somewhat out of the way table and I wave a waitress over as Sam goes on. "You work here? I mean…around here?"

"Las Vegas? Yeah. I deal over at the Mirage."

"Really?" She shrugs. I order us three beers. "So you left Colorado?" She nods.

My turn. "Let me guess, you came out here with hopes of hitting it big?"

"Um, no," she says laughing.

"Came for the lights then?"

"Came for a guy named Joe."

"Ah." Damn.

"Joe is no more though." I look up and our eyes lock for a minute. Yeah, much better.

"But you decided to stay. Waiting for a spot to open up on the showgirl circuit?"

"No, smart ass."

"Too bad."

It's weird, seeing her here. Hell, it's probably a lot weirder for her. Some incredibly handsome guy rescues you from a monster in the woods, you probably expect to never see him again. It's more romantic that way. But, hey, this is life not the movies, and what is it they say? Truth is stranger than fiction. Hmm.

"So how are your brothers?" Sam asks when the waitress brings our beers.

"Good. They're good. Tommy got this great job, computer stuff. And Ben's starting school in the fall. CU Boulder." She looks down at her beer and swirls it around as she talks, like she can't stand to look us in the eye when mentioning them. But then she says, "I miss them, you know?" And I do know.

A/N: So I decided to put Haley in b/c a new challenge was posted about adding characters the boys have met in episodes past. And I did say I'd do all of the challenges, so... Anywhoo, I've still got a few left to cover, and some are harder to pick out than others, but this chapter should at least sort of take of the one regarding The Benders. Maybe I'll go more in depth with that later. Maybe I won't. At any rate, I will now allow you to all go and hit that shiny little button beneath to review. Thank you!