Chapter Text
“Listen, I don’t think this is another Wendigo case” Sam said, head hung over his hashbrowns as he balanced a small book and a journal in his lap.
“Oh yeah?” His brother said eloquently into his breakfast.
Sam flipped through the book for the 5th time in as many minutes before looking back at the notes in his journal: ‘Cannibalism, voice mimicry, evidence of cooking, relocated home base (?)’. He frowned at the note, and underlined ‘cooking’ several times, his pen tearing through the paper slightly with the movement.
They'd tracked something to this sleepy little Wyoming town, something that had stolen a couple of kids and apparently lured them out of their beds and into the woods by sounding like a friend from their school. But when Sam and Dean had gotten to the abandoned Dollar Tree that the kid's tracks led to, their trail ran cold. All he and Dean had found there was one of the kid's shoes, the embers of a large fire, and a big unopened spice mix bottle labeled 'Geryon's Greatest Grilling Rub!' from the 'Triple G Ranch' Brand.
Sam had barely succeeded in convincing Dean that no, they probably shouldn't trust a random spice mix that they found in a monster's lair. He wouldn't be surprised if his brother had swiped it anyways, though.
“I mean, sure, the cannibalism and mimicry aspects ARE both there, but that’s where the similarities start and end.” Sam finished, leaning heavily into his hand.
“Mmhmmmph” Dean practically moaned, his mouth full of pancake.
Sam’s head snapped up. “Are you even listening right now?” He asked incredulously. Dean glanced up at him with unapologetic green eyes, chewing a massive bite with excruciatingly slowness. Behind him, the diner's front door jingled open, and a young couple walked in. The kind waitress that Dean had attempted to hardcore flirt with earlier led the two to the booth across the aisle from them. The diner was empty, otherwise.
He turned his attention back to his brother as Dean finished chewing, and then swallowed. “Why, are you saying something important? Or just nerding out like usual?”
Sam kicked him under the table. Dean hissed in pain and tried to kick him back, but Sam swiftly moved his own legs out of kicking range.
“It IS important, asshole. I don’t think our case is Wendigos. It’s something else entirely”
“So what is it?” Dean asked, pouring more syrup on his pancakes. Sam watched with barely concealed disgust as the syrup flowed over the top of the stack and created a veritable moat inside the plate’s rim. Usually he’d say something about it, but he knew was a useless endeavor.
“I don’t know,” Sam sighed honestly, flipping through his journal again.
Dean chewed thoughtfully on his spongy pancakes, using the side of his fork to cut his next bite. “Is it the cooking thing that’s getting you?”
Sam paused for a moment.
“Yeah.”
“Could just be a weird one, Sammy. We’ve seen crazier, after all.” he mused. “I mean, if I was always hungry for human flesh, I'd probably kill for a nice sear on my meat, or a little barbecue sauce… salt n' pepper... I mean fuck, that spice rub did look pretty good.”
“Why the hell do you sound hungry right now? You’re eating.” Sam deadpanned, giving his brother an unimpressed glare.
Polishing off his pancakes, Dean grinned back. “Not anymore- I just finished.” he said smugly, pushing his plate to the middle of the table. “besides, it’s not my fault you brought up barbecue” He teased.
“I really didn'-”
“Whelp, I’m gonna go take a leak. Don’t die while I’m gone” Dean interrupted, getting out of the booth and scooting past the waitress in the aisle, who was bringing the young couple their meals.
Sam huffed, turning back to his journal. He eyed it warily for another moment before sighing and closing the damn thing. He could give the investigation a rest until they were back at the motel room, but right now his breakfast was getting cold.
Just like our case, he thought glumly.
Eating his lukewarm hashbrowns, Sam listened in on the conversation of the couple in the booth across the aisle. He was used to eavesdropping in places like this. Locals had all of the good gossip, after all- and even if the conversation wasn’t case related, it was usually better than overthinking the case with the limited information they had on hand.
“Seaweed brain, why do you have food dye with you?” he heard a feminine voice ask, sounding like she was holding back a disappointed sigh.
“Why do you think, wise girl?” He heard the boy reply with a slight New York accent, “I’m missing mom’s blue pancakes, but it would be a little too weird to ask the employees here to make that. So…. I was thinking maybe I just… mix this with my syrup?” Sam could almost hear the smirk on this kid's face. Who the hell makes blue pancakes? He brought his own food dye?
When Sam heard the syrup dispenser click, he risked a glance at the couple’s table. He watched as a lean boy with inky black hair, probably around 17 or 18, absolutely drowned his pancakes in syrup, and then used a dropper of blue food dye to ‘add color’ to the monstrosity.
The girl’s long-suffering sigh graced the air, and he chanced a peek at her next. She had blonde princess curls, was also leanly built, and about the same age as the boy. She was currently wearing a look of mixed resignation and disgust on her face.
That's probably exactly the face I made at Dean earlier, Sam mused. He returned his attention to his plate, but kept half an ear on their conversation, just in case.
The couple seemed pretty normal, probably not monsters in disguise, and besides their shared streak of gray and general fitness, seemed like stock-standard local teens getting a bite to eat. Maybe not local, actually, based on the boy’s accent. They both wore orange shirts, but that wasn’t too unusual. He hadn’t been able to read them because of the angle he was at, but thought that he could make out the word ‘camp’ on the blonde's tee. Summer camp counselors? Maybe there's one in the area.
Sam started on his now cold eggs, eating slowly and catching snippets of conversation from the other table while they talked and he chewed.
“Y'know, Grover seems to be doing really well-”
“D’you think Nico and Will would go on a double date with us?”
“-we should IM Thalia soon! I miss her-”
It all sounded extremely normal, until the tone of their conversation shifted suddenly, the tones of their voice going dour all at once.
At the same moment, it somehow got far harder to listen to their conversation- and not just because they'd dropped their volume. It felt almost like he was listening through a layer of white noise, but Sam was still able to hear them, if he concentrated hard.
“Percy, we need to find them tonight.” The blonde said softly. When Sam chanced another glance their way, he saw the way her hands were clenched into fists on the table’s laminate. “Apollo said they were twins, Percy. They were 7, and now they’re just gone.”
Sam felt his brow furrow as the boy- Percy - replied. “I know, wise girl. We’ll find those monsters and kick their asses, alright? Hopefully the kids are okay, but it sounds like the… others who were taken were… eaten pretty quickly. Maybe we should go after breakfast instead of tonight?” he suggested. Sam paused with his bite of eggs halfway up to his mouth when he heard that. Calling people who might have taken kids 'monsters' was one thing. It was a objectively correct way to refer to the kinds of assholes that would do that- But 'Eaten?'
That raised an entirely different set of red flags for Sam. The hunting kind of flags. On top of that, he and Dean were hunting a monster that ate humans. There were plenty of those out there, sure, but what were the odds of them hunting a different monster, in this sleepy town, that had also kidnapped a couple of kids. What were the chances of two sets of twins going missing in a town this small, in a time period this brief?
Slim to none, one would think. Or maybe hope.
There was a pause as the girl shook her head, and Sam caught the movement out of the corner of his eye. “We can try, but knowing our luck, we’ll only find their hideout after nightfall. The dark should help hide our approach but…"
Sam's eavesdropping was abruptly cut off when Dean sat back down across from him in the booth, making silverware clatter against porcelain as he picked something out of his teeth with his pinky nail.
He scowled at his brother, and tried to eavesdrop on the teens again. His efforts were fruitless though, because the strange staticky feeling was harder to listen through. He'd only heard it when he tried to listen in on them specifically, and Sam got the sense that he wouldn't have noticed the sensation at all had if he hadn't been actively trying to hear their conversation.
It was frustrating, to say the least. But as he paid the bill and pulled Dean out to the car, he knew that those kids would be their best lead today. If they were hunting the same kind of monster, then… great?! But one way or another, two seven year old kids taken from their parents wasn't pretty, and he and Dean had always been willing to help with the non-supernatural kinds of monsters anyways.