ᴺᴼᵂ ᴾᴸᴬᵞᴵᴺᴳ: "He'll still be the same stubborn son of a bitch he's always been."
💫✦🌺

▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰

A FEW MILES OUTSIDE OF MANNING COLORADO, Venus' motorcycle, Freddy, cruised ahead of the Winchesters' Impala on an empty stretch of road. The sun had just set an hour ago which meant that the brunette hunter had her recently gifted golden sunglasses resting atop her face, drowning the path ahead in a bright yellow.

But she was irritated.

Her hair, which she was basically forced to straighten because Dean refused to stop at a store fifteen minutes off the route and restock her curl moisturizer, blew in the wind, partially trapped by the dark blue knitted cap she had resting on top of it. She was two days into her period and, as always, her cramps were earth-shatteringly painful, even with painkillers. And to top it all off, Dean swiped the last of her fries off her plate while she was in the bathroom at the last diner they were at. 

Sam had to grab her fork before she could take it and stab Dean in the neck.

Just then, Dean's voice came through the recently purchased walkie-talkie she had hanging off her bike's windshield. Speak of the damn devil..."Uh breaker breaker 234, do you copy? Over." he called for her attention in an exaggerated trucker voice.

Venus took a deep breath and used a hand to grab the small communication device. "Dean, just so you know, I really regret buying these. Over."

Dean's chuckles sounded through the walkie, "Hey you're the one who was all like, 'It's so much more convenient, and it'll save us so much money on our phone bills, Dean, please, buy it, please, please– " he repeated her words from the previous day in a nasal, high pitched voice.

"I did not say please that many times, you piece of shit," Venus fiercely cut him off.

Sam grabbed the walkie from his brother and decided to try and comfort the girl, knowing that Dean's voice was the last thing she needed right now. "We're almost there, V, hang in there."

"hAnG iN tHeRe," Venus mocked Sam's voice, "Tell your idiot brother that when we find a motel, I'm gonna smother him with a pillow for stealing my fries. Over."

And with that, Venus returned the device to its place on her windshield and twisted the handlebar, sending Freddy sailing even farther ahead of the boys.

"She's not serious right?" Dean asked his brother a few seconds later, a tinge of worry seeping into his eyes.

Sam shrugged, holding back a laugh. "I guess we'll find out tonight."

-ˋˏ [      ] ˎˊ-

The wooden floorboards of Daniel Elkins' cozy cabin home creaked under Venus' boots as she stepped past the threshold. She clutched her flashlight and let her eyes dance around the cluttered room, ignoring the chill that nipped at her spine from the snow outside.

Why the fuck is it snowing in July? she thought to herself.

Dean stepped in behind her and used his flashlight to begin looking around as well, with Sam lingering behind to investigate something he found at the door.

They had traveled there to check out the case because Dean found an initial D. Elkins in his father's journal with a Colorado area code attached after Sam read an obituary about the mysterious death of one 'Daniel Elkins'. It was too big of a coincidence to not follow up on it.

"Looks like the maid didn't come today," Dean joked from beside Venus, both pointing their flashlights in the small living room scattered with papers and broken furniture. She stepped forward grabbed what looked like a journal and began thumbing through it.

"Hey, there's salt over here, right inside the door," Sam shouted from where he was knelt by the open front door.

"You mean like 'protection against demon' salt? Or 'oops I spilled the popcorn' salt?"

"It's clearly a ring."

Venus shined her light at where Sam was dusting salt off his fingers. "So he was a hunter," she realized.

Dean pointed to the pages of the dead man's journal he was skimming, "Definitely."

Venus turned her eyes down to it, instantly noticing how familiar the style of notetaking was. "Looks a lot like John's," she voiced, trailing her fingers across one of the pages.

"Except this dates back to the sixties," Dean added.

Venus pulled out her phone and began snapping pictures of some of the lore on the pages, gaining alarmed looks from the boys. She paused and looked up at them. "What? This dude's a real pro and I've never seen some of this stuff in our lore books."

They each rolled their eyes and headed down the hallway connected to the room. 

Venus followed after getting enough photos, coming to a stop behind Dean. She noticed that they were looking up and pointed her flashlight above them, coming face to face with a shattered skylight that gave away two points of entry.

"Whatever attacked him, looks like there was more than one," Sam said.

"Looks like he put up a hell of a fight too," Dean noted, shining his flashlight on the nearly destroyed room.

Venus looked down at the broken glass and wood beneath her feet, "Oh for damn sure." She followed Sam over to Elkins' desk, stopping to look at the few books spread across it. But just as she prepared to open one labeled 'Enochian Basics,' Sam tapped her shoulder and redirected her attention to where Dean was kneeling over something.

"Got something?" she asked, moving away from the desk and over to the older hunter.

"I don't know, some scratches in the floor," he told them, his fingers hovering over it.

"Death throes maybe?" Sam shrugged.

"Maybe."

Venus stepped over some debris and came to a stop by Dean's side, getting a closer look at the scratches. Beneath the blood, they almost looked like numbers and letters.

Dean reached up and grabbed a slip of paper and a pencil from the desk before placing it on top of the scratches and shading it, copying the indent to get a clearer image. "Or maybe a message," he said once he was done. He picked up the small piece of paper and pushed it in Sam and Venus' direction, "Look familiar?"

The brunette stood to get a better look at it, eyeing the familiar combination. "Three letters, six digits," she realized.

"The location and combination of a post office box," Sam explained, "It's a mail drop."

Dean nodded, dusting his hands and standing to his feet. "Just the way dad does it."

Finding and breaking into the only post office in town took the hunters less than an hour. But once they cracked Daniel Elkins' mailbox, they stumbled onto a letter labeled—

"J.W. You think John Winchester?" Sam asked once they returned to where their vehicles were safely parked three blocks away.

Venus shrugged from where she sat in the backseat for the first time in a month. They needed to recap the new influx of information and all three agreed that talking in the confines of the Impala would be more secure than the walkies.

"I don't know, should we open it?" Dean thought aloud.

But before his question could be answered, two sharp knocks sounded from his window. All three turned to see John Winchester and Arturo Castillo looking into the car with small grins on their faces.

"Dad?"

Venus dropped her hand from where she was reaching for her beretta and hurriedly opened the door to let them in. "Tío, what are you doing here?" she grinned at the sight of the man, bringing him in for a hug once he slid into the vehicle, with John behind him.

"Yeah, are you guys okay?" Sam added from the passenger seat.

Arturo returned her hug and pressed a small kiss against her temple. John smiled at the sight of the small reunion then turned to his boys, "Yeah, we're okay. I read the news about Daniel and I had to get here as fast as I could."

"Which meant that I did too," Arturo added with a strained smile that had his niece holding back a laugh.

John ignored him and continued, "We saw you kids up at his place."

"Why didn't you come in, dad?" Sam asked.

"You know why. Because I had to make sure you weren't followed by anyone or anything," John sternly replied. But then his face settled, "Nice job of covering your tracks by the way."

Dean shrugged, a proud grin spreading across his face. It was rare for John to ever compliment him, especially directly. "Well, we learned from the best."

"Wait, so you came all the way out here for this Elkins guy?" Venus chimed in, raising a disapproving brow.

John looked down, nodding his head. "Yeah. He was a good man. He taught me a hell of a lot about hunting."

"You never mentioned him to us," Sam said.

"We had a..." the eldest Winchester trailed off, shame crossing his features, "We had kind of a falling out. I hadn't seen him in years."

A beat of silence passed between the hunters.

"I should take a look at that," John finally acknowledged the letter.

Dean quickly handed it to him, watching along with the others as he opened it and let his eyes fall over the handwritten words.

" 'If you're reading this, I'm already dead', " he read aloud before sighing, carefully reading the rest to himself, "That son of a bitch," he eventually mumbled, turning to look at Arturo, "He had it the whole time."

Venus saw her uncle's eyes widen. "Had what?" she pressed.

John looked away from the letter and eyed each of them, "When you searched the place did you see a gun? An antique, a Colt revolver, did you see it?"

"Uh, there was an old case but it was empty," Dean divulged.

John turned back to Arturo, "They have it," he said to him, gaining a sigh from the slightly younger hunter.

"You mean whatever killed Elkins?"

"We've gotta pick up their trail," John determined, swinging open the Impala door and getting out.

Arturo began to move with him but was stopped by a sharp yank of his arm from Venus. He looked back at the confused girl. "¿Tío, qué está pasando?" she softly questioned, hoping he would be more forthcoming than John.

But he just playfully tugged on the brim of her cap and smiled before slipping out of the car.

Venus scoffed in annoyance, deflating in her seat.

"Wait, you want us to come with you?" Sam questioned his father through the window.

"If Elkins is telling the truth, we've gotta find this gun," was John's vague answer.

"The gun? Why?"

"Because it's important, that's why."

That's a shitty answer.

Venus was getting annoyed by the second. She threw open the door and stepped out, coming face to face with John. "Just a quick reminder, John, we don't even know what these things are and I'm thinking you do. So please, get a little more transparent before we go running into some random fight for a goddamn antique."

John's jaw clenched and Venus could damn near see the steam coming out of his ears, but she really did not care. "They were what Danny Elkins killed best. Vampires."

Oh shit.

"Vampires?" Dean repeated, his disbelief matching Venus', "I thought there was no such thing?"

"You never even mentioned them to us, Dad," Sam added.

Venus' brows furrowed. Her uncle had told her all about them, including how to evade and kill them, and the fact that they were extinct. He thought it important for her to know in case they did come back. Why would John not tell the boys?

"I thought Elkins and the others had wiped them out. I was wrong," John confessed.

Venus sighed. How on earth was she so unlucky to have to deal with vampires and her period in the same week?

-ˋˏ [     ] ˎˊ-

Venus was in the middle of a very good dream when she felt John Winchester tugging on her ankle. She grunted out a response at first, ignoring the older man and snuggling into her pillow. But then he tugged harder.

So she kicked him.

"Venus!"

She jolted awake at the sound of her uncle's voice, sitting up in her bed and wiping her eyes clear of sleep to see John standing from where she must've kicked him onto the floor. "What?" she muttered, irritation clear on her face.

"We picked up a police call," John sternly explained, pulling on his coat.

Dean groaned from where he was lying on the small couch in the corner of the room, also recently woken up by his father, while Sam sat up in his bed on the other side of Venus. "What happened?" the youngest questioned. 

Venus swung her legs out of the bed and waddled over to the bathroom, not even caring about why John and her uncle chose to wake her up at seven am. By the time she came out five minutes later—her sweatpants replaced with jeans, and cramps temporarily subdued by three Ibroprofens—the male hunters in the room were waiting impatiently by the door.

"If you'd taken any longer we would've had to call the fire department to come drag you out," John snapped. Sam and Dean's eyes widened, each looking at the man and then at Venus. They knew better than to mouth off at the girl right now, and so did Arturo. But it seems John forgot.

A wry laugh rang from her throat. "John, please fuck off," she said, grabbing her gun and tucking it into her waistband.

John turned to his best friend, expecting him to scold the young woman like he usually did at the rare moments when she cursed at him. But Arturo looked away and scratched at the nape of his neck. Despite being away for four years, he could never forget about this particular week in the month. He learned that the hard way. 

"Come on," John eventually scoffed and led them out to the parking lot.

Three vehicles arrived one after the other at the scene of an abandoned car that had been radioed in by police hours earlier. But John ordered the youngsters to stay back while he and Arturo approached the scene and got more information. Venus and Sam were the only two who seemed upset by that fact.

But Sam was a lot more vocal about it.

"I don't see why we couldn't have gone over with him," he told the others.

Dean looked at his younger brother and scoffed, "Oh don't tell me it's already starting."

"What's starting?"

Venus spotted her uncle and John approaching and sighed, not wanting to sit through another one of Dean and Sam's arguments. "What did you find out?" she asked the older men.

"It was them, alright," John disclosed, confirming the vampires' presence, "Looks like they're heading west."

Arturo gestured to the numerous police cars blocking the street, "We'll have to double back to get around that detour," he told them.

"How can you be so sure?" Sam asked, his eyes locked onto John's.

Dean's jaw clenched. "Sam–"

"I just want to know we're going in the right direction," he argued.

Venus and her uncle shared a look.

"We are," John bit back, his tone cold.

"How do you know?"

John dug into his pocket and pulled something out, "I found this," he brandished a tooth.

"What is it? A vampire fang?" Dean wondered, examining it.

Venus moved closer to him to get a look at it, never having seen one in real life before. "No, vampires don't necessarily have fangs," she corrected Dean, "They have a second set of teeth that descends when they attack."

Dean was visibly surprised by her knowledge of the creatures but nodded along nonetheless. 

"Any more questions?" John turned to Sam, obviously irritated.

Sam remained silent.

Arturo's footsteps broke the silence, the hunter taking off towards John's truck. "Let's get out of here," he urged them, not wanting to leave time for John's rage to build.

John followed but not before taking a look at the Impala, "And Dean, why don't you touch up your car before you get rust? I wouldn't have given you the damn thing if I thought you were gonna ruin it."

Venus frowned watching Dean's face fall in record time. She turned to say something to John but was stopped by her uncle's face behind him, silently begging her to keep whatever peace was left. So she simply sighed and gave Dean a small pat on the shoulder before stomping over to her motorcycle, muttering curses about John to herself in Spanish as she did so.

The majority of the day after that was spent driving, with John's truck speeding ahead, Venus' bike behind, and the Winchester boys in the Impala further back. She was instructed by her uncle to follow them while they picked up the vampires' trail, so that's what she did, without complaint. But the silence was driving her mad. She eventually reached down and flipped on the radio, singing along with the random pop song that came blaring through.

But it was soon interrupted by a faint crackle on the walkie in front of her. "V? It's Sam, come in."

Venus rolled her eyes, actually starting to enjoy the song playing. "What's up, hermano?" she tried to keep the irritation out of her voice.

"Are you cool with just falling into line and letting my dad run the whole show?"

Venus' brows furrowed slightly, "Okay, random. Uh no. Of course not. But I'm not gonna pick a fight with him if that's what you want."

"Ha. Exactly," Dean's voice came through the small handheld device.

"No, V, you said it yourself back in Chicago, he can't just treat us like we're kids." Sam began to argue.

Venus pulled her eyes away from the passing scenery, now focusing on Sam's words. "True but it's not worth the headache right now. I can yell and scream till the goddamn cows come home but he'll still be the same stubborn son of a bitch he's always been. Took me twenty years but I've come to terms with that now."

The line went silent after that, so Venus cranked up the radio's volume, letting Nelly Furtado's voice drown out the thoughts plaguing her mind.

-ˋˏ [  ] ˎˊ-

Night had fallen by the time Venus received the call from her uncle to take the next exit. Relief coursed through her instantly. She was growing tired of riding for hours without stopping.

But then she felt a bout of wind blow past her left side, turning to see the Impala flying past her with an enraged Sam at the wheel. She didn't have time to question it before the Impala came to a screeching halt up ahead, causing John's truck to do the same directly in front of her.

Venus skillfully avoided crashing into him and stopped the motorcycle on the other side of the road, hopping off and approaching where Sam and John had stomped out of their vehicles.

She stopped by where her uncle and Dean were standing watching the ongoing argument. "Are we really doing this right now?" she quietly asked the men, her exhaustion evident in her tone.

Dean sighed and stepped between his brother and father while the others stayed back.

Venus didn't even listen to the argument, already knowing this was bound to happen at some point. Sam clearly needed to get some of these things off his chest.

She was picking at her nails carelessly when her attention was drawn to where her uncle had rushed over and physically intervened.

"Hey, stop it," Arturo shoved his way in between the taller men, prying John's hands off Sam's collar, "Walk it off, both of you!"

Dean pulled Sam away within seconds.

John's stare hardened, "Arturo–"

"What? Mind my business? Don't tell you how to raise your sons?" Arturo finished for him, hearing it all before. He looked up at the older man with so much rage, Venus was hoping he'd hit him, "How long do you think they're gonna stay your sons if you keep treating them like soldiers, John!"

John was silent.

"Boys, get in the car. Venus, get back on the bike," Arturo faced the younger hunters.

They instantly obeyed, knowing better than to disobey him on the rare occasions when he would explode like this. 

Arturo shoved John towards the truck, not saying another word.

Venus smiled at her uncle's retreating figure, proud of him for handing John's ass to him.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

A/N: If John Winchester has zero haters then I'm dead.

Don't forget to vote and comment!
I see yall out there <3

Translations:
¿Tío, qué está pasando? - Uncle, what is going on?

Lovely GIF banner up above made by the incredibly talented prodigybitxhhh

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━