tw: kidnapping reference, child neglect/endangerment, parentification

summary: Jim sends John to investigate the disappearance of a counselor and two campers at a summer camp in Colorado, but John has other ideas for the hunt.

word count: 2,527

Dean stared at the sun as it began to peak over the horizon and resisted the urge to scream.

It was mind-numbing enough to be forced to sit alone in the front seat of the Impala all night, not even allowed to turn on some music to keep him company, without the bit about staking out a house where nothing supernatural had ever happened or was ever going to happen in the name of his father's newest hot lead.

A spear of guilt throbbed through him even as the utterly disrespectful sarcasm floated through his mind, but he couldn't find it inside of him to take it back.

This lead was garbage, and it was fixing to make Sammy miss soccer practice.

He could hear his father's scoffing laugh in response to such a trivial thing, and part of him even agreed with it. In the grand scheme of things, what did soccer matter?

Except that it mattered to Sam, and that meant it mattered to Dean.

And, there was the fact that John had promised Sammy they'd be home in time to take him to get him to not throw a fit about him dragging Dean out on a demon hunt in the middle of the night.

If they got home a second after the required time to make the fifteen-minute drive from short-term apartment to practice facility, World War III was going to break out in their living room. Again.

Dean checked his watch for what felt like the hundredth time in the past hour. 5:47. Their apartment was thirty minutes away from the glorified shack he'd been staring at for twelve hours and counting, if they were going the speed limit. If his dad let him open it up, he could cut it down to under twenty-five. But with practice starting bright and early at 7:00 sharp, they were still beginning to push it.

He hoped Sammy would at least take initiative and pack his own lunch, so they could just get there and go.

That was assuming their dad planned to even try to make the promised curfew.

The sixteen-year-old waited as another three minutes ticked away before finally picking up the walkie which was currently his only form of communication with his father. Deep breath.

"Hey, Dad, I'm not seeing anything and we promised Sammy–"

John didn't even let him finish the sentence, cutting him off with his own transmission. "Quiet, Dean! I think something's happening."

Dean took a deep breath and forced himself to drop the walkie back onto the seat next to him so it would be harder for him to yell that if he couldn't see anything or get a sliver of an EMF reading from his place in the car, he highly doubted there was much more of a show from John's position, staked out in the overgrown grass to one side of the broken down little house.

He just didn't get it. He wanted to catch the thing that murdered his mother more than almost anything in the world, but he wasn't interested in chasing his tail while doing it. This was a dead lead, and he didn't know why his father insisted on continuing to chase it at Sammy's expense.

His thoughts were interrupted by the buzzing of his father's cell phone, abandoned on the seat beside him. His stomach dropped as he looked for the caller ID, expecting his brother, but instead Pastor Jim's name was displayed on the front screen.

The minister was an early riser himself, but it was unusual for him to make a phone call before the social norm of 8am.

Unless something was wrong.

With a sudden, fierce stab of anxiety, Dean snatched up the phone and flipped it open, doing his best to drive it from his voice as he greeted the man on the other side.

"Hello?"

"Is that a Dean I'm speaking to?"

There was a fondness in the Guardian's voice that made Dean's chest throb a little, but behind it was a note of tension that kept his initial fears at the forefront of his mind.

"Yeah," he confirmed, still struggling to keep his voice steady. "Uh… hey, Pastor, Jim."

"It's good to hear your voice, my boy," the pastor told him with that sustained tone that just sounded so genuine it killed him. "But can I ask where your father is?"

"Uh… he's in the weeds?" Dean shook himself a little. The night of no sleep was evidently going to his brain. "I mean, we're staking out a house. I'm in the car, he's… closer."

"A stake out? Are you on a hunt?" It was clear by Jim's tone that he would have appreciated knowing about said hunt before they went on it.

The teenager sighed heavily. "Not exactly."

"Care to elaborate on that?" the Guardian pressed evenly.

"I mean, Dad thinks he found a lead on the demon. The… the one that…"

Jim's hum of understanding saved him from having to spell it out for him. "You don't sound too excited about that."

"I mean…" He hesitated a moment longer, but the man was just too perceptive for his own good. "It just feels like we're grasping at straws here. This lead was weak to begin with, and now we've been here all night with nothing."

And Sammy's gonna be late to soccer.

He didn't say that part out loud. More open to an outside life than their father though he clearly was, Jim's loyalty was still to the Brotherhood, and a slim risk of a lecture was too much of one for Dean when he'd been awake for twenty-four-hours straight.

"Well, maybe it's best that it's not going anywhere," the pastor said, his tone becoming more serious and business-like. "Because I'm going to need you to call him in. You can tell him it's me and it's urgent."

"Yes, Sir," Dean agreed quietly, hoping the apprehension in his tone wouldn't carry through the phone.

"Are you using walkie-talkies?"

"Yes, Sir," he repeated as he retrieved his from where he'd just dropped it.

"Then you can leave me on." There was a note behind the minister's voice that said his own anxious tone hadn't been lost on him.

He didn't respond directly, instead switching the cell phone to speaker mode, heaving a deep breath, and pressing the walkie button to talk once more.

"Pastor Jim's asking for you. Says it's urgent."

There was a long pause in which Dean didn't do much breathing, then, "How urgent?"

"Let me, Dean." That was a sternness that Dean didn't like to mess with, so he pressed the button.

"Yeah, you're on."

"Now, Jonathan."

Another pause. Dean didn't have to be able to hear his father to know the colorful words he was no doubt spitting into the nothingness of the New Mexico countryside.

Then, "Copy that."

Dean checked his watch again as the car fell back into silence. Just past 6:00.

He let out a slight, amazed scoff. The Guardian to the rescue.

"What was that, Dean?" Jim asked on the other side of the phone, reminding the boy that he was still there.

"Oh, nothing, just…" He hesitated, but he doubted Jim was going to like a non-answer. "It looks like Sammy's actually gonna be ontime to soccer practice."

The second the passenger's side door had closed behind his father, Dean was starting the car and leaving the shack he'd seen far too much of over the course of the night in the dust behind them. John didn't bother to switch the phone off of speaker, leaving it where Dean had set it on the seat between them.

"This better be good, Jim."

"Good morning, Jonathan," the pastor replied evenly, his tone patient but also making it clear he didn't appreciate the younger man's. "Sorry to pull you off your case, but I'm afraid this one can't wait."

"What do you have?" John's tone was dangerous and distracted, rather like he felt like he was indulging a small child, and Dean wondered for the thousandth time how he didn't see how absolutely iced the trail they were on was.

"A prayer request from my ministry network, actually."

Dean swallowed hard and forced himself not to look over at his father's face. He could tell by the sharp breath he took alone that he was about to lose his cool completely.

"Two weeks ago, two children and a young counselor disappeared from a summer camp in Colorado which the network sponsors," Jim continued before he could. "They've been trying to keep it all very quiet for a number of reasons, but they're completely gone, no signs of struggle, no signs of wild animals, nothing. The authorities are at a loss."

"Familiar story." Despite the real urgency of what Jim had just told him, John's tone was still far-off and tired. "You have any ideas as to what I'm dealing with?"

"Not anything specific yet," the pastor replied. "I have Robert and Mackland both looking into local legends and similar cases. However, while the camp it happened at is shut down, a sister camp on a bordering property isn't, so there's a good chance it could happen again. And two weeks is already far too long, especially with children involved. I knew you were in New Mexico, so that makes you a good deal closer than Caleb, and I wanted one of the two of you on this hunt."

John opened his mouth like he was going to argue, but once again, Jim kept talking before he could. He was in business mode, and Dean couldn't imagine being foolish enough to so directly defy him.

"Bobby has connections with a hunter outside of the Brotherhood, Drake Quin, who operates out of southern Colorado. I'm going to send you his information, and you're to meet up with him as your partner for the hunt. However, whatever we're dealing with obviously targets children, so I don't want the boys anywhere near it."

Dean opened his mouth to argue, then hesitated, remembering his thoughts mere seconds before about the utter foolishness of doing so when Jim was in his current mode of operations. And, there was the fact that he didn't particularly want Sam in the vicinity of such a creature, either.

"I will purchase them plane tickets for you to send them here until you're finished with the hunt."

That made Dean's stomach drop. Getting baby-gated from an important hunt and having to get on a plane. This got better and better.

"That won't be necessary."

For the first time since the conversation had begun, he actually looked over at his father, brow creased. Was he really going to argue to drag his twelve-year-old son on a child-abducting monster hunt?

"We have a place here in Santa Fe," he continued. "And Sammy is really enjoying the summer soccer program."

Oh, so now he remembered about soccer.

"The neighbors are friendly…"

No, they weren't.

"And I've already paid this month's rent."

He hadn't yet paid last month's rent.

"They'll be alright if I just leave them here for a few weeks and come back after I'm done. I already promised Sam we could stick around until the end of the season."

Miraculously, he'd made no such promise, but if he had, Dean found it hard to believe it would mean much more than the one about getting him to practice on time this morning.

"You want to leave them alone in Santa Fe?" Jim's tone said exactly what he thought of the idea. "Jonathon, they're children."

Dean scoffed a little, wondering if the Guardian was aware he was still on speaker, but bit his tongue, if only because he was very interested to see what exactly his father was doing here.

"I told you," the Knight replied, his voice unusually even. "The neighbors are friendly, and they'll look out for them. It won't be the first time they managed alone for a little while."

It took everything in Dean to keep a straight face at that.

Oh, Jim had no idea.

"I just don't want to uproot Sammy again."

Dean swallowed hard and kept his eyes straight forward, on the road. He didn't know if this sudden appearance of caring about Sam having any semblance of a steady life made him want to laugh or cry, but either would be inadvisable.

"Not again."

There was a long pause, then a heavy sigh from the pastor.

"Dean, are you there?"

So he did know.

"Yes, Sir."

"Will you be okay alone with your brother for a few weeks?"

"Yes, Sir."

Once again, his oblivion was laughable.

"I want you to check in with me often, alright?" The Guardian's tone was pure reluctance to the point that Dean could hardly believe he was agreeing at all. "Your father might not have service in the mountains, but I will here. If you need anything, call me or Caleb, and we will come straight out."

"Yes, Sir," he said for the third time. "We'll be fine."

"Alright." Jim exhaled once more, but the matter seemed to be settled. "Jonathon, I'll send you the hunter's contact and the coordinates and camp information. Call me when you make it to Colorado, before you go up the mountain and lose service."

"Will do," John agreed. There was an extremely satisfied note in his voice from having won the battle over where Dean and Sam would be staying. "Talk to you then."

He picked up the phone and snapped it shut, and there was a long moment of silence in the Impala.

Dean didn't even know where to start when it came to why he was actually so insistent on leaving them there, so he decided not even touch the subject, asking instead, "When're you leaving?"

"I'm not."

That caused the boy driving to look over at him sharply. "But Jim said–"

"You are."

Dean, opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Was he saying…

"I can't abandon this lead, not now," the senior hunter continued, his voice gruff and decisive. "And chances are, this thing's either a standard kidnapping or a wild animal. If it's not, you're always begging for more hunting responsibility anyway."

He was saying.

He was getting his own case. Like, alone.

Which they weren't supposed to do at all, but that would just be a single entry on an endless list of things they'd be in trouble for if Jim found out.

"What about Sammy?" he asked quietly, unable to process his own emotions about the case and so following back to his norm of worrying about his brother.

"Keep him away from the danger, but don't let him out of your sight if you can help it."

Dean didn't comment on the logic of the order.

"You're better equipped to take this one than I am, anyway," John added after a beat of silence, causing Dean to look over at him once more.

"Why?"

Eyes back on the road, he saw his father shoot a tight smile his way. "Your brother always wanted to go to summer camp, didn't he?"