Archive of Our Own ^beta

'This camping trip is a bad idea.'

That's all Spencer could think as he sat in the back seat of his brother’s '67 Black Chevy Impala. He was used to the view of staying at the back of Dean's had as he took the wheel. Sam, of course; is sitting shotgun. Spencer rarely got to see his brothers. The last time they were all together was when they were "celebrating" their Fathers 5th Anniversary Death. Spencer couldn't be there for the burial for so many reasons. First, being that he had just started working for the FBI. Secondly, his surrogate family (mainly Dean and Dad) were on the FBI Most Wanted List. (There was no way to explain that to his bosses and mentor.)

Now, almost another year later, too much has gone on that left poor Spencer in stunned silence (which happens rarely.) Sam accidentally let Lucifer out of his cage in hell (the Devils himself!) And not only that, but Sam's also his vessel. Along with Dean, who's a vessel to the Archangel Michael (yes, Angels are real too.) They have an Angel named Castiel who is trying to find a way to kill Lucifer, hoping that finding God is the answer to their problems.

Spencer also had some things to share with them. Mainly to the fact as to why he walked into their motel room with a limp and a cane. Explaining that story to Dean was not fun.

Now, after an hour or so of playing catchup, they were on the road again heading towards The Forest Park in Portland, Oregon. Dean’s bright idea of “family bounding” is to go into the woods and camp out there for the night.

“All I’m saying is that it would be better to rent a cabin for the night instead of lying in tents on the hard ground,” Sam’s strong protesting voice brought Spencer out of his thoughts.

“And I’m telling you that it isn’t real camping unless you do it old school, tents and all!” Dean argued, turning up the radio as to silence the conversation.

“Yeah,” Sam scoffed, turning down the classic rock music and turning back to his brother, “because that worked out so well before.”

“When have we ever been camping?” he asks.

“I believe Sam is referring to the first time you two worked on a supernatural case since you picked him up at Stanford 6 years ago when you were also looking for dad,” Spencer says suddenly, drawing both of his brother’s attention. “Black Water Ridge, the Wendigo…Dean almost becoming its dinner for the winter?”

“Oh!” Both brothers’ say at the same time, finally recalling their 2nd case together.

“That memory of yours Spencer! I still can’t tell if it’s a blessing or a curse,” Dean says, once again turning his attention to the road.

Sam smiled at them both, then frowned and turned his attention back at Spencer. “How do you know about the Wendigo? I don’t remember telling you that.”

“I read it in your guys’ book. The Supernatural Series written by Carver Edlund,” he states matter of factly. “By the way, is everything that happened in those actually true? Like the time Sam went on reliving the same day and Dean’s death over and over again? Or the fact that you were sleeping with a Demon?! Ruby, really Sam, of all Demons!!” Spencer yelled, leaning back into the back seat.

“Hey, I thought that you only read non-fiction and statistics,” Dean asks trying to change the subject.

“I do, but when I was browsing the library the other day I came across the series and started reading them, I found out that it was actually based on the two of you. Next thing I knew I had checked them all out and read them throughout the whole evening. By the way, I’m all caught up,” he says. Spencer couldn’t believe the first time he read the books that they were actually about his brothers. His family and everything they had been through, still going through. It amazed him that they haven’t gone completely insane yet.

Sam let out a soft sigh, then he turned back to face his little brother. “I’m sorry we kept a lot of this stuff from you Spence, but we wanted to protect you. Dean and I both thought that the less you knew about our “job” the safer you would be.”

“I don’t need to be protected anymore; I’m not 10 years old. If anything it’s the two of you that needs protecting. Both Angels and Demons want the both of you, not to mention you two are still somewhere and the FBI Most Wanted List.” Even though Agent Henriksen is dead Spencer has also kept open the brother’s files just in case someone picked it up so he could give them a heads up.

“It’s alright kid, with Cas’ help were are able to protect ourselves pretty well. Besides, just because you’re a real FBI Special Agent and carry a gun, it doesn’t mean we won’t stop trying to protect you. People we know you can handle, it’s the supernatural we want to protect you from.” Dean says calmly, taking a sneak peek at Spencer through his review mirror. He caught a small smile out of the corner of his eye and smiled at Sammy.

Spencer took a minute to take in the conversation. He scanned through his memory of reading the Supernatural series and found that the brothers did seem to handle everything rather well when it came to problems such as this one. Hell, Spencer was only ever called a few times when things got really bad (like when Dean officially dying after his contract was up.) Spencer smiled and looked at his brothers “How did we get from deciding where we should sleep to being hunted by the natural and supernatural?” he asked with a smile.

Dean laughed, “I don’t know, but I still say we do it the old fashioned way.”

“And what about Spencer’s knee, it can’t be good for him to be sleeping on the hard ground.” Sam says, still trying to convince his brother out of this idea.

“How about we put it to a vote? All in favor sleeping in tents say I?” Spencer asks.

“I” Dean says, and pauses hearing no other ‘I’ he looks at both Sam and Spencer. “Oh, come on! Spencer, I thought you had my back?”

“Dean, when have you ever known me for the outdoors type? Besides, my physical therapist says I can’t do strenuous activity.” Spencer says while giving Sam a high five.

“I’m surrounded by nerds.” Dean says under his breath and then turns up the radio to AC/DCs ‘Thunderstruck.’

 After two more hours of driving, the brothers finally arrived at the entrance of The Forest Park. They talked with the park ranger to decide which cabins were available and decided that Cabin 9 was their best choice. It was close to the road and not too far away from the park entrance. Once the car was unloaded, Dean ordered Spencer to elevate his knee since he hadn’t stretch his leg during the ride while he and Sammy took care in protecting the cabin.

He watched as his brothers gathered up their holy water, rock salt, bags of salt and other hunter materials and placed them in there respectable areas. Sam brought a lot of different old books that he assumed he got from Bobby’s collection.

“Do you guys really need all this stuff? We’ll only here for a night,” Spencer says as he picks up one of the books and skims through it.

“You’re back with us for the night kid, never know what might happen,” Dean states as he places a knife under his bed.

Spencer smiled and shook his head and looked over at the corner of the cabin. “Hey, there’s a fireplace. See Dean, it all works out in the end.”

“Oh, you’ve got jokes now kid? You’ve been hanging out with Morgan too much.”

“Out of everyone on the team you like Morgan the most and you know it,” Spencer says as he gets off the bed and digs through his belongings. He got out his matches and walked over to the fireplace and started the fire.

“Anybody feel like sharing a couple of scary stories around the fireplace?” Sam asked as he exited out of the restroom.

“I’m sure you’ve got a lot of good stories guys, too bad I’ve already read them all,” Spencer says as he passes Sam and into the restroom. Sam punches him in the shoulder lightly as he passes by and heads towards Dean.

As Spencer comb through his hear, he thought a lot about what they talked about on the ride hear. They agreed to get all their business talk out of the way so that once they got to the park it would be all fun and games. Though, Spencer couldn’t help but feel that something was going to disrupt their good night. It wasn’t often that the three brothers could be together for a couple of hours, much less a whole weekend (well 2 day and 1 night.)

As he finished up washing his face, he noticed something out of the corner of his eye. He looked up more into the mirror found that someone was standing behind him. “Oh My God!!” he shouted, turning around and continued starring at the intruder.

“No, not quite,” said the stranger as he turned his head towards the now open bathroom door.

“Spencer! What-“Sam started, but stopped as he took in the scene before him. Dean was right behind him holding up his gun.

“Cas? What are you doing here? How did you even find us?” Dean asked as he entered the bathroom to get Spencer out.

“I followed you, I thought it be best to know where you were before the protections went up.” Castiel stated coolly, following them out into the main room.

“Wait, Castiel? The Angel Castiel?” Spencer asks, looking back and forth between his brothers and the stranger.

“Yeah, umm. Spencer, this is Castiel. Castiel, this is our little brother Spencer.” Sam introduced. Spencer took a hard look at the stranger, now Castiel. He was in an ordinary suit that looked like it hasn’t been washed (or taken off) in days and a tan trench coat.

“It’s nice to finally meet you Castiel,” Spencer says.

“I did not know John Winchester had another son. He sure did, as they say, get around a lot.” Cas says, looking around the cabin and then back at the three boys.

“Wo, wo, wo Cas!! Slow down alright, his not our biological brother. Not like Adam, this one we actually like.” Dean shrugs his shoulders and looks between Spencer and Cas.

“Dean!” Sam and Spencer shout at the same time.

“What, it’s true! Anyways Cas, if it’s nothing important then could you stop by another time? This is a family only weekend.” Dean says, eyeing the angel and trying to be as subtle as possible.

“Right, of course. I’ll come find you when I’ve got something more on my search.” Cas says as he steps closer to Spencer. “It was nice to meet you Brother Spencer, though not really a Winchester.” He says and disappears before his eyes.

“Nice to meet you too,” Spencer says a he falls back onto the bed. “I just met an angel. An actual angel of the Lord!”

“Yup, isn’t he a peach?” Dean asks, placing a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Alright, who wants to roast some marshmallows?!”

“You brought marshmallows?” Sam asks.

“And crackers and chocolate, S’mores baby!” he shouts, lifting up the crackers, chocolate, and marshmallows.

Sam and Spencer looked at each other then started laughing. They followed him towards the fireplace and started making s’mores. “Did you know that nobody really knows where s’mores comes from? S'more is a contraction of the phrase "some more". Although the exact origin of the treat is unclear, reports about scouts from as early as 1925 describe them as such.” Spencer stated, looking at both Sam and Dean.

“Just enjoy the gooey goodness Spencer, just enjoy.” Dean says, taking a drink from his beer and placing another marshmallow over the fire.

The three brothers continued to tell stories and eat and drink till almost midnight, when it was finally decided that it was time for sleep.

Spencer was the first to fall asleep; he and Sam shared a bed while Dean got his own. Neither one wanted to sleep next to the guy who sleeps as crazy as Dean does. It was close to three a.m. when Spencer woke up from the pain in his leg. It didn’t come as a surprise, it happened ever so often and the doctors said that it would be normal. He looked around and found that both Sam and Dean were both gone.

“Sam? Dean?” He called out, getting out of bed and started putting his shoes on. He looked out his window and saw the Impala still parked outside. As he opened the front door, a loud sound that he was all too familiar came from within the forest. He jumped back and looked into one of his brothers bags and grabbed a shotgun. He followed the continuing sounds of gunfire through the woods, guided by the light of the full moon.

Suddenly, the firing stopped and so did Spencer. He looked around him over and over again; even with the bright moon in the sky it was still hard to see somethings. He suddenly felt eyes on him and turned around, right as he heard his brothers shouting for him.

“SPENCER, RUN!!” “GET OUT OF HERE!!” he heard over and over again. All he could do was keep staring at the beast that was before him. A wolf, a big wolf!!

He waited, waited for either the wolf or his brothers to get to him first. He imagined a lot of scenarios where he could possibly die, a crazy gunman or a bomb going off, but not here in the woods by a wolf. Its eyes dilated and it barred its teeth, finally it lunged.

“Spencer, come on kid open those pretty brown eyes for me!” That was the first thing he heard when his consciences finally came too, his name being shouted by his two brothers. His head was killing him that was the second he noticed. He slowly opened his eyes, and when he did he found Dean starring down at him.

“There you are, glad to see you’re still with us!” Dean says, letting out a breath he didn’t even know he was. He looked over his shoulder and shouted out for Sam. “Come on, let’s get you up! You’re not supposed to be on the hard ground anyways.”

He looked over and saw Sam come into his vision, he lifted his arms up so that Sam and Dean could take his hands and help him up to his feet. He looked around and shook he head to get rid of the fuzziness. He looked around and saw blood on both of his brother, then to the ground and followed it to something bigger on the ground. “The…the wolf…” he started to say before Sam cut him off.

“It’s dead, we got it. Thanks to you.”

“What? But I didn’t…”

“Yeah, you did kid. You shoot off a around and got him good in the chest. It didn’t kill him, but it stunned him long enough for Sam and me to finish it.” Dean explained, while looking over his shoulder once more. Spencer followed his gaze to what he thought was the wolf, but it turned out to be a man instead!

“That’s…that’s the park ranger! Did the wolf kill him?” Spencer asked, looking at both Sam and Dean. When he didn’t get an answer right away, he finally started to piece things together. “That wasn’t an ordinary wolf, was it? It was a werewolf?”

“Yeah Spencer, it was a werewolf.” Sam said, looking between him and Dean.

“This…this was a hunt?”

“We found a pattern in dad’s old journal, mentioning this place and a couple of names. Once we started digging we found that the deaths all had something in common.” Dean started to say.

“Their hearts were missing.” He stated, looking between them once more.

“Yeah, during the full moon. Although, no one picked up on the pattern because it didn’t happen every month. The park ranger was the werewolf and he would attack enough people to last him awhile. Once he was out of yummy hearts, bam! He’d attack again.” Dean explained.

Spencer took in everything all at once. The extra bags, books, and the equipment it all made since now. “You lied to me,” he said softly at first.

“What?” Sam asked, placing a hand on his shoulder. He was surprised when Spencer flinched away from him.

Spencer looked between his brothers, “You lied to me. You said that this was going to be a normal family get together. No hunting!” he yelled at them, letting all his anger out. He couldn’t believe them and he didn’t know what to be madder about. The fact that they did a hunt or the fact that they lied about said hunt!

“We know Spence, and we’re sorry about lying to you. But we couldn’t let this slide. We couldn’t let more innocent people die,” Sam started to say before turning back to Dean for some support.

“We also didn’t want to cancel on you. We wanted to see you, in person! Not talk to you over to phone or by email, we wanted to see our little brother.” Dean finished.

Spencer looked between his two brothers and let out a soft sigh. He was still made, probably will be for the rest of their trip together. But he wasn’t bound to let this ruin what little time they had left on this trip. He looked at both of his brother and the back to the park ranger, “what are we going to do about him?” he asks.

“We aren’t going to do anything! Sam is going to take you back to the cabin to clean that head. I’ll take care of the rest and meet you there.” Dean says, giving him a smile before turning back to the dead body.

Spencer looked towards Dean before he was ushered away by Sam. The two of them took care of each other’s wounds before Dean came back. Once his injuries were taking care of, all three brothers lied down on their beds and slept the rest of the night away. In the morning, they can discuss the night’s event and then continue the rest of their family outing before Monday rolled around.

'This camping trip wasn't a bad idea.'