I can't help but stare at my brother for a moment, my chicken sandwich halfway to my mouth. He's totally pigging out and it's really kind of gross.

"What?" Dean demands with his mouth full.

I grimace in disgust and embarrassment at my brother, "Dude, close your mouth."

Dean quickly chews and swallows, "Sorry, Mom, but I'm kind of hungry."

I roll my eyes at my brother and return to my meal. I'm hungry, too, but I can at least eat without sharing the digestive process with everyone else at the table. I glance over at Lindy to see that she's making kind of a face, but she doesn't seem as completely put off by it as Sarah was when Dean practically stuffed his cheeks with hors d'oeuvres. She's definitely got it bad for my brother if she can stomach his table manners or lack thereof.

The three of us are silent as we work on our respective meals. Dean and I both eat with the quickness that comes from being raised with another teenage brother around. Both our plates our clean by the time Lindy is finishing off her sandwich. She catches me looking, notices our empty plates and pushes her fries to the center of the table.

"So, Dean, what's the plan?" I ask.

Dean is leaning way back against the cushions, looking fairly satisfied with his meal. He looks at me and shrugs, "Exorcism?"

"Wait a minute." Lindy interjects, quickly swallowing what's left of her sandwich, "How can you two perform an exorcism when you're not priests?"

Dean grins, "You don't think we're Father Dean and Father Sam?"

Lindy gives him a level look in return that says she doesn't think he's being particularly funny and would rather he just spill. Dean continues to grin anyway.

"We were ordained online." he admits, reaching over and taking one of Lindy's fries.

"You're kidding." she says it like she's sure.

Dean's starting to look suspiciously like a kid that's gotten away with stealing a cookie from the cookie jar. He shakes his head, his grin actually reaching his eyes. Most of the time he's just trying to weasel things out of people and his smiles are fake. This one's real. I know my brother well enough that it's easy for me to tell the difference.

"That's insane!" Lindy protests.

"Anyone can do it. It's really easy. Twenty bucks and you're all set to do exorcisms, marriages, whatever." Dean insists.

"If I were Catholic, I'd be really depressed right now." Lindy remarks.

I hate to interrupt their conversation, but they're both avoiding the real issue. We need a plan for facing this thing that we don't know how to kill, but we do know will use our fears against us. Dean may be okay with charging in there with guns blazing, making the rest up as he goes, but I want to think this through a little before we put our lives in danger. Especially with Lindy along for the ride.

So, I once again find myself being the voice of reason, so to speak, "Guys, we really need to figure out how we're going to handle this thing."

"Any brilliant ideas, college boy?" Dean immediately challenges me.

"Well, I was thinking that we should probably figure out what fears this thing will most likely use against us and try to manipulate that as much as we can. And we should probably avoid letting it use fears that involve living people dying." I look pointedly at Dean, knowing that one of his greatest fears is losing me and Dad. I don't particularly want to have that fear realized.

"No offense, but I don't really feel up to sharing my deepest, darkest fears with you guys. I mean, I like you both and all, but I've only known you guys a day." Lindy says honestly, leaning back and crossing her arms across her chest as if to block us out.

"Yeah, I vote no to sharing, too." Dean agrees.

I sigh heavily. I should have known that never of them would agree with me that as much as we might not want to share our inner fears with each other, the pressing danger is more important. I especially should have expected that Dean would be against this. Dean's spent his whole life avoiding talking about his feelings. I suppose that's because Dad didn't raise us to be the sharing type. Emotions just got in the way of the hunt, made you reckless. But they are also unavoidable, so, solution, keep them buried deep down inside and don't talk about them. That's how Winchesters function: don't talk about it and hope that all the problems will go away.

"Look, we know this thing is going to make our fears materialize. We can either talk about this now and prepare for them or we can be surprised by them later." I try to explain it to them.

"Sammy, I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure I've got a couple dark scenarios bubbling in my brain. What makes you think that we'll be able to pick the one that this demon will use?" Dean stubbornly continues to argue with me.

"Well, Dean, it feeds on fear so I'm assuming it'll use the ones that provoke the most fear."

"Smart ass." Dean grumbles, "I'm still not doing this."

I'm almost surprised not to hear him add 'and you can't make me.' It looks like I'm going to have to compromise.

"Fine, can we just figure out whose fears involve other people dying? I'm thinking we might want to avoid that."

Dean doesn't say anything which is as close to agreement as I'm going to get out of him at the moment. I already know that his fear do involve death so there's no point in pushing it any further with him. I turn to Lindy, questioningly.

"Me?" she seems startled that the focus has turned to her so abruptly. She shifts uncomfortably in her seat, "Well, no, not other people, necessarily."

She looks down at her hands and I get that her fears involve her own death.

"Gee, Sam, you were right. This is fun." Dean snaps.

I meet his glare with one of my own. It's not my fault this sucks. I didn't ask for a fear demon to appear. I didn't even pick this hunt. Dean was the one who had singled this out as possibly "our kind of problem." I open my mouth to yell at him, call him an asshole for pinning this on me, but I think better of it at the last second. Blowing up at Dean in public is probably not the best way to maintain a low profile. So, I get up and walk outside before I can change my mind.

Damn, Dean. Does he really believe that if we don't talk about our fears, they can't hurt us? I know that's the Winchester way, but he can't really believe it's true. Just because I'm not that naïve doesn't mean that this is all my fault for bringing it up.

I pace back and forth in front of the diner, my fists clenching and unclenching as I slowly work through my anger at my brother. I glance back inside to see him leaning forward across the table, talking to Lindy. Probably apologizing to her, making himself look like the good guy and making me look like the jerk. God, it's all I can do to stop myself from kicking his precious car.

But no, I need to calm down. Dean is an ass, I know that. That hasn't changed since we were kids. I just can't let him piss me off like this. I should have known better than to press an issue like this. Dean's never nice when it comes to facing his fears or even admitting that he has them. I should have expected that he'd lash out, been prepared for it. It's his coping mechanism. I shouldn't have let it get to me. I take a few deep breaths and stop pacing. This demon is already being a pain in the ass.

Well, at least I know now that I've got to be the one to face it. I'm the only one of the three of us whose fears don't involve the death of people currently living. Jessica and Mom are already gone.

I turn and head back into the diner rather than sulk outside waiting. When I reach the table, Dean is sitting there alone.

"Where's Lindy?" I ask.

"Bathroom." Dean replies.

He's casually finishing off her fries like nothing's happened. I guess I'll play along since I don't really want to continue fighting. I sit back down across from Dean.

"So how was your hissy fit?"

"Just let it go, Dean."

"Whatever you want, Samantha."

He's pushing my buttons on purpose now. I won't give him the satisfaction of getting angry. So I ignore him and wait impatiently for Lindy to return. Thankfully, she doesn't take too long, preventing Dean from pushing me any further.

"Oh, hey, Sam." she says, looking between Dean and me and obviously noticing the almost tangible tension.

I scoot over so that she can sit down, wishing that the few remaining hours until dark would pass more quickly. Not that I'm looking forward to this hunt, but the sooner we get this over with the better. Besides, Dean's less grumpy when there's a demon around threatening his life. Pre-hunt Dean is just a pain in the ass. Which makes Dean a pain in the ass ninety-nine percent of the time.

Nobody's saying anything, which is making this extremely awkward. Mattie returns with the bill, but apparently notices the negativity and quickly heads off without a word. Lindy finally breaks the silence by snatching the bill slip before Dean can get his hands on it.

"I've got this." she announces.

"You don't have to." Dean protests.

"Yeah, our part is most of it and Dean ate half your food anyway." I agree.

"No, I'm paying. Think of it as a thank you for not letting me walk into this alone." she says as she quickly slides out of the booth and heads over to the counter to pay before Dean or I can say anything more to the contrary.

"That's our second meal today that she's paid for." Dean muses, "Maybe you were right to pick her up, Sammy."

"It's Sam." I grumble, knowing as I do so that it's futile to point this out to Dean. No matter how many times I tell him I don't want to be called Sammy anymore, he'll keep doing it. He claims it's his older brother privilege. I think he just likes to be annoying.

"Too bad we'll be leaving town tomorrow." Dean continues, ignoring me.

I stop mentally griping about the many ways Dean is irritating and consider his words. Dean's already written off our relationship with Lindy as one of those odd, brief friendships we sometimes have with people while we're in town on a hunt. They're nice, but they don't really last. We won't call, we won't write. Maybe we might run into each other someday in the future, but it won't be because of any conscious effort on our part. It makes me upset to think that we've accumulated so many relationships of this variety. It's part of what I hate about this kind of life. I hate not being able to connect with people for more than a day. I want lasting relationships, enduring ones. I want more people in my life than just Dean and Dad (as if Dad even counts right now considering his constant absence). Hunting is important, sure, but I don't want it to be my whole life. I want to avenge Jessica, avenge Mom. But when that's over, I want a life of my own. And I want that for the rest of my family, too. Problem is, I can't see Dean understanding that. He doesn't seem to get why it's so important to have people he can trust other than his family. Maybe it was kind of rash and irrational, but I was kind of hoping that maybe Lindy could help him see that. She just seems like maybe the kind of girl for the job: someone who gets what he does, but won't let it consume him. But maybe I'm getting too far ahead of myself. The demon is still out there. We still have a job to do before even I can consider a somewhat normal life. I can't expect any more from Dean.

"Yeah, too bad." I agree quietly.

Dean looks up at my words and gives me a searching look, but I avoid his eyes and look out the window. We still have time to kill.

"Alright, boys. What now?" Lindy asks, appearing back at the table.

I keep my eyes on the sky outside. I don't really have an opinion on what to do next since it will only be a distraction to try and keep us from going nuts while we wait for the sun to disappear.

"Well, we've got a couple more hours to go before we need to drive back out. I can think of a few ways to keep us entertained." Dean says, his voice dripping with innuendo.

Lindy surprises me by not missing a beat, "But what will Sam do?"

I can't resist glancing over at Dean who seems a little surprised himself. Lindy sure has turned things around from when we met her the night before, blushing and hardly saying two words. It's clear though that this is her naturally, that she was off her game before, so to speak.

Dean quickly recovers, "I'll buy him a book."

I catch Lindy giving him a sarcastically sweet smile out of the corner of my eye, "I don't know. Couple hours is a long time. Maybe I'll need a book, too."

"Trust me, you won't need it, sweetheart." Dean replies, immediately, eyebrows raised suggestively.

I can't stop myself from making a face, "If you two are going to keep flirting, I'm gonna wait in the car."

"Be out in a minute, Sam." Dean answers without even looking at me.

I make a disgusted noise, but Lindy laughs and rolls her eyes, "Come on, Sam. You can drive my car again, if you want."

She moves out of the way so that I can slide back out of the booth and hands me her keys. Without waiting for either of us, she starts for the door, glancing back at us over her shoulder.

"Coming?" she asks.

I nod, noticing Dean nodding quickly also. He hurriedly gets up.

"Hey, Sam. Not that I ever need your help with women, but…nice one." he says before striding after her.

I shake my head, but I'm barely suppressing a smile. At least he's happy. It seems like momentary happiness is the most we can expect for now. I just wish it didn't have to come at the expense of hard goodbyes tomorrow. And that's assuming we make it through tonight.