Forget about thinking Dean's a cool guy afterall just because he had a cool car, owned cassette tapes of his favorite rock bands or the fact that he said Bingo, because right now, right now he hated Dean Winchester and wished he had not volunteered to help his ass. If by sitting duck in an empty newsroom with absolutely nothing to do meant helping in the first place. That was what he had been doing for the last fifteen minutes, sitting duck, and praying (not really pray, pray) that Linda the librarian didn't decide to give a surprise and popped in earlier than promised because what the heck was he going to say when she noticed his missing buddy? The one who was supposed to be nose deep in some newspaper articles because of a soon to be dued project?

Dean said he needed to use the wireless internet connection to get some pretty tough information and in case they were being traced, they'd have an alibi in the form of a newsroom. I'm supposedly dead and I'm also in the FBI's wanted list so can't be too careful, Dean had said.

I don't even know where to begin asking you what the heck that's supposed to mean.

You might want to not begin anywhere at all.

What should I do while you're gone?

Uh...read?

She's coming back in 25 minutes man.

Then lets hope I only need 20 to find what I'm looking for huh?

And if you don't?

Well, then we're screwed.

It was weird how his perspectives had changed in a space of fifteen minutes. That was how long Dean had been gone and he couldn’t help the voice in his head saying only five minutes more Carter, five minutes…

But he continued reading the papers, currently randomly reading about events that occurred on July 25th, 1984, because why not?

Bus fire toll 16; laid to faulty breaks. Or maybe the dude was possessed and totally totalled the bus and killed the passengers on board?

Artist kills fiancé, aunt, and then himself. That might not even be him in the first place.

If there was anything scarier than woman in white, it had to be a woman in red. He decided not to read further on this mysterious woman who helped authorities nabbed and slain killer bandit, Dillinger.

Then there was the headache that came out of nowhere; the familiar yet unwelcome blinding white sparks that felt like it was pushing his eyes balls out of his head. Damn it, where the fuck was Dean?

A man in his late thirties sitting in a park with his teenage son, watching people passes by in the late afternoon. They were not talking. The man was smiling, as if watching people walking by and totally ignoring them there was the best way to spend the day. The son, about sixteen, was studying the area as if his very life depended on it.

A couple walked by and he stood up suddenly.

The father followed, rested his arm across the young man’s shoulder and smiled. “What is it son?”

“It’s them.”

“Are you sure?”

The young boy nodded his head.

“Okay, let’s go shall we?”

More sparks. More pain. More visions.

He sat on their couch, head hangs low, staring into nothingness. His arms clasped together by the fingers, not caring for the little crowd that had gathered in their house; police officers, paramedics, CSIs. Somewhere in the kitchen, lying in her own pool of blood, was his wife, killed from a deep slash wound to her abdomen.

It wasn’t all that pleasant to open his eyes only to be greeted with a frown by Dean Winchester. And then to realise he was lying on the parquet floor of the newsroom, knew he was going to get a nice bump somewhere on the back of his head and as if that wasn’t bad enough, his nose was bleeding again.

“Dude you really need to get a hang of this shinning man,” Dean said as he pulled him up and re-deposited him back to the chair.

He flipped him a bird, much to Dean’s amusement, and wiped the blood from his nose with the sleeve of his shirt, which thankfully, was red. “Are we done here?”

“We are so done,” Dean replied. “We’re getting out of here now, unless you really want that library car-”

“You got everything you came here for?”

“Sure did.”

“Okay, let’s go.”

Linda was walking towards the newsroom when they bailed out and because he was still too dizzy to come up with an excuse, he stood there and wondered if they looked like two kids caught with their hands in the cookie jar.

“Oh, are you guys leaving already?”

“Hey, yeah, thank you so much for your help. I can’t believe I pulled this off but I’m so done with this project and I have,” Dean paused and he decided this was for dramatic effect and watched as Dean took a glance at his watch. “Exactly fifteen minutes to hand this baby in. Is that the card?”

Linda looked like it was the first time she noticed the card in her hands and that almost made him giggle. Man, and Linda’s hot. He didn’t think he’d ever gone out on a date with a hot librarian before, he didn’t think he’d ever step into a public library ever since the band took off. He didn’t think –

“Oh yes, you’re now officially a member of our library.” She handed him the card but his hands felt too sluggish to do even just that. Dean seemed to be expecting this because he had intercepted what would be his reaching hand (if he had it up and reaching in the first place, so Dean was, technically, intercepting a ghost hand, which was funny considering Dean’s career choice of ghost hunting and also, he really need to remind himself to ask Dean to show him their ghost hunting gadgets because he really enjoyed watching Ghostbusters the movie) and took the card.

“I’ll take that,” Dean smiled widely and he noticed Linda was taken and that made him hate Dean even more. “Nicky here likes to misplace stuff all the time.”

“Of course,” Linda replied and this was his signal to get out of there, before she mentioned anything about the Backstreet Boys, which would definitely result in Dean leaving his ass behind and that was unacceptable because his head was spinning and you know what would be nice? To pass out in the passenger’s seat of the Impala.

= =

Of course with his luck, he didn’t pass out. In fact he was so alert that it scared him a little. He needed his sketchpad, needed to get those images out of his head before it spontaneously combust. He could hear the rushing of his blood, so close to his ears he thought for a second there that he was bleeding from his ears, but he should have known better because this wasn’t exactly the first time he had a vision, he should be prepared for such things by now.

“Hey, you with me?”

He was probably scaring Dean now and a tiny part of him was doing the happy dance because getting Dean scared, of him, was something he aimed to achieve before the Winchesters made their leave soon.

He’s bad news.

“What?”

“I said, are you with me?”

“No-”

“You’re not with me? Are you o-”

“Yes I’m okay, I meant what did you say after?”

“What did I say after what? You’re confusing me there dude.”

Well this was frustrating, and he shouldn’t have left the sketchpad behind. He’d draw on a piece of gum wrapper if he had a pencil right then! Maybe telling Dean what he saw would help? Maybe it would make him feel better about things, to let it out? Dump it on Dean, yes, that’d be a good payback for making him wait in the newsroom alone.

Dean’s bad news. He’s not telling you everything.

“And you’re no demon,” he scoffed.

“Of course I’m no demon, dude are you sure you’re okay?”

I’m your destiny Nicky, just like Sammy. Dean’s not going to help you son.

“I’m not your fucking son!”

He felt a hand gripping his wrist and he shouldn’t have jumped because he knew it was only Dean, there couldn’t be anyone else in the car, but he did, jump, because his nerve system was fried, he was there but not really there. He figured being too alert wasn’t a good idea either, maybe it was a hole, some kind of portal, to allow the supernatural to get to him (or maybe he needed to stop watching the sci-fi channels), because really, shouldn’t this voice, this assdemonhole be in his dreams, as opposed to talking to him now, in broad daylight, in this car, and obviously Dean couldn’t hear what he was hearing and it’s all too confusing.

“Hey, what did I tell you about the yellow eyed demon and when he comes to get you?”

What did he tell him? Yeah, Dean said something, something he thought he had said a million times to Sam as well. Something about not giving in to this thing.

“Uh…to fuck off?”

“Damn straight. You tell that son of a bitch to go fuck himself off because if he thinks he can talk to you in my car while I’m driving, he’s got something else coming!”

He laughed. He actually laughed because it was funny and he couldn’t help but visualise Dean, with his sawed off gun, shooting rock salt at this demon and it disintegrate into dust followed by a soft ting, because all that was left of the demon was his yellow contact lenses.

Didn’t think it helped calm Dean down though. If any, it only helped the Winchester stepped on the gas pedal and drove through every red light in sight.

Ask him about daddy.

“Hey Dean, I gotta tell you something man.”

“I don’t do chick flick moments Nick.”

“It’s not chick flick, I swear.”

“Fine.”

“I gotta tell ya about the vision I had in the newsroom, when you left me there all by myself, that was messed up, whatever was it that you had to go looking on the wireless that you couldn’t do on your laptop? I know Sam’s got one, he told me about it.”

“You want to tell me about that vision.”

“Oh yeah, sorry, sidetracked there for a sec. Not my fault though, kinda hard to concentrate when this other voice is in your he-”

“Dude the vision already!”

Ask him how he died.

“Yeah, yeah…this man, and his son, sitting in a park, well, it looked like a park as far as I can tell…and there were a lot of people walking by, and suddenly his kid got up right after this young couple passed them and he told his daddy it’s them.”

“It’s them?”

“Yeah. I don’t know what that means.”

“Then what?”

He didn’t die from a hunt son.

“Uh…next thing I saw, we were in the couple’s house and his wife was dead man. She was on the kitchen floor with her stomach slashed opened! I mean, I don’t think they had a kid you know? The husband was alone in the living room when the police came. And there was no fire at all.”

You shouldn’t have done that Nick.

“You said the woman died from a slash wound to the stomach?”

“Yup.”

Ask him!

“And there’s no fire?”

“That’s what I said.”

“The freakiness never stops, do they?”

“What do you mean?”

Dean never said anything after that and Nick pushed the play button, welcoming Metallica with open arms. If Dean was annoyed at him (because he did broke the whole shotgun and cakehole rule), he did nothing, not even a frown thrown his way and Nick soon found out why when the Impala parked right in front of room 101.

= =

Time was lost on him but he figured it was forgivable since he was preoccupied trying to hold on to the present while the voice in his head kept insisting that he listened to it. He was also glad to find out that while the voice could influence him to do things, it couldn’t control him, he decided perhaps that one would come under the possession category, so he should be glad that he wasn’t possessed, but that just screwed logic because there was nothing remotely okay about hearing the voice of evil in your head either.

The room was empty so he figured either Brian was having too much fun at the other guys’ room or they had went off to the diner for food. Either way, he was glad to have the room to himself because he didn’t need for any of the guys to see the dried blood on his nose or the stain on his shirt (even though that would be harder to notice since his shirt was red but while you can take AJ for granted, the same cannot be said for both Brian’s and Howie’s eye for details) and he could get use to the privacy and hopefully sketch this latest vision in peace (because Brian tend to ask if he needed a drink or a biscuit or if the room was too dark for him to be sketching away).

He managed to take off his shirt and gave his face a few splashes of cold tap water before someone came knocking on the door. He made a grab for the clean towel hung by the door, most likely Brian’s and boy would he be mad if he knew he had used his clean towel (again) and crossed the few steps to the door and there stood Dean Winchester.

“Dude you were so eager to drop my ass back like seconds ago.”

“Sam’s not in his room.”

He waited because surely that wasn’t it. Dean didn’t look the type who’d come knocking at someone’s door just to say his brother wasn’t in his room.

“Is Brian in there?”

“Nope. Maybe Sam woke up and joined the gang?”

Dean nodded. “Yeah maybe that’s it. I’ll go knock.”

“I’ll come with.”

Dean wasn’t one to wait on people so he wasn't surprise to see no signs of Dean by the time he had grabbed the first shirt he could reach in his bag, put it on and headed back to the door. He found Dean three doors down, standing in front of Howie’s and AJ’s room.

He could hear Sam’s voice even before he saw him.

Where have you been?

Library; feeling better?

I"m fine Dean. You've been at the library for five hours?

Yeah, didn’t Brian tell you that?

For five hours?

Dude what's so odd about that? It was a long research.

“We stopped to get M&Ms though, Dean promised.”

He always found it funny how a person’s eyebrows could disappear under a mop of hair. Whenever Kevin did that (when Kevin was on his I’m going to grow out my hair and cover my high forehead phase) he’d always felt compelled to sing pop goes the caterpillars in his head; and Sam, Sam came close to making him do just that.

“All those research makes a guy hungry you know?” Dean said lamely.

Brian emerged from the room and he wasn’t any welcoming either. He was looking at him now, accusingly like some girl he had stood up on their date. “I called you, why didn’t you pick up the phone?”

“God I feel like pulling a dumb blonde joke right now,” Dean muttered, which earned him a stare because hello?

“Hey I take offence to that and I’m on your side,” he reminded Dean and then turned to look at Brian. “We were in the library Bri, no cell phones allowed? We had to turn it off.”

“What about after?” Sam asked. Good question, he thought. Neither of them remembered to turn their cell phones back on again.

“After is when Nicky here decided to drop on the floor and had a friggin vision and I had to drag his ass out of there.”

“He didn’t drag my ass.”

“Yeah whatever,” Dean shrugged. “We have to talk about the vision.”

“Which one?” Brian asked. “And are you okay?”

“Both,” Dean replied. “And Nicky’s okay except maybe a bump in the head, hey are we gonna have to play twenty questions before you two move away and let us in?”

As they made their way inside, he noticed AJ and Howie weren’t around, which was funny cause this was their room in the first place. Sam’s laptop was there, sitting next to Howie’s and both screens showed a chess game currently on pause.

“Since when do Deano there calls you Nicky?”

Brian whispering was funny too, because he was trying to be discreet and oh boy he sounded jealous?

“So you were worried and you decided to play chess with Sammy?”

“There was nothing else to do.”

“You’ve never played chess with me.”

“Nick you hate that game.”

“I didn’t hate the game, I can play.”

“Are you jealous?”

He rolled his eyes because yeah, he had managed to turn the table and made it look like he was the one who was jealous when he hadn’t even managed to point that same accusation at Brian.

Dean cleared his throat and was about to say something when the door clicked open again and came in Howie and AJ, with three boxes of Pizza.

“Nothing says it better than pizzas and talks of creepy visions,” Dean grinned. “I hope they come with extra cheese.”

a/n: it was pointed out to me that Jared is an excellent chess player and i didnt know that when i wrote this chapter so that made me go a bit fangirl ish.