the roads they'll travel and the places they'll go .

//

"So this is the car?" Stella asks, wrinkling her nose in distaste.

"Yes Stella. This is the car and before you tell me how unfashionable minivans are, let me tell you we are ghost hunters and we are not freaking going on a road trip with a fancy car for you to let your hair down in the wind." Kevin politely explains, his voice climbing several octaves higher though by the end.

"Geez, I just asked. No need to get your panties in a twist." Stella shrugs and climbs into the car and then takes out her phone and immediately begins texting.

Kevin swears quietly and tugs at his locks of curly hair. God grant him patience. Where is Joe when you needed to strangle him?

//

It takes a full fifty minutes before everyone is in the car.

It takes a full twenty minutes before Kevin decides that if anyone else is going to get out because they forgot something like Fluffy the dust bunny, he just might commit manslaughter and the jury won't find him guilty because obviously, it will be classified as justifiable man slaughter once the jury hears him out.

By the time they leave, Kevin is splitting hairs and Frankie is enthusiastically manning the radio stations while Joe and Stella are arguing and Nick has this patient air of long-suffering going on. Only Macy seems happy and is smiling widely with Frankie bouncing in her lap and fiddling with the radio.

//

Soon enough, they are on the highway. The next job is at this town called Cowry and Bobby tells them that there is a trickster on the loose there. Kevin frowns as he navigates the highways before him and also frowns at a Chevy Impala which seems to be tailgating an eighteen wheeler for god alone knows what reason. Tricksters are, well for a lack of a better word tricky. You never knew what they will do. Whether it is just for fun or whether it's something sinister and morbid. Truth be told, Kevin really isn't looking forward to the job.

"Have you no color sensibility at all? Does it not occur to you that peach and orange are entirely two different colours? You savage!"

"They are both the same." Joe goes in a bewildered manner. Kevin privately agrees with his doomed brother—because Joe with Stella is doomed any which way—but he wisely keeps his mouth shut.

Nick pipes in with his two cents and Frankie is the only one who doesn't stifle a groan of suffering. "Actually they are not. Peach is the lighter and somewhat rosier version of orange. You would not use the colour orange to describe someone's cheeks for instance. However you would use the word peach."

"I suppose mauve and plum would look the same to you too." Stella snipes back irate.

"You have plums?" Joe questions eagerly and Stella glances heavenwards in despair. Joe, the poor, poor guy looks even more bewildered now. He then slumps back into his seat darkly muttering about how ghost hunters shouldn't need to know pansy stuff like the difference between shades.

Black is the only thing that they need to know. And grey too. And maybe white too, just to be fair to the black and white spectrum.

"Contrary to popular belief, mauve and plum are not similar. Is there any reason why we are using so many fruit and colour comparisons that require me to make examples of a metaphorical nature?"

"Nick, shut up." Stella says before she goes back to her furious texting. Joe grins happily, thankful that the bulk of her wrath towards him is now directed towards Nick but then she glares at him too and he skulks further into his seat. Can't a guy freaking catch a break?

"I must suffer these indignities in silence for I am blessed with superb intelligence---"

"Hey Nick! How about you play word game with me?" Macy chirps brightly and Kevin sighs at the narrowly averted disaster of a boring and long monologue that was about to come on. He smiles at Macy and she winks back at him and he may or may not have stepped on the brake a little too hard, causing them all to jerk forward abruptly and him to blush profusely.

"Of course Macy, I would like to play word game with you. I have found that you are a worthy competitor to my advanced intellect.

"Nick, play the game." Frankie interjects with exasperation and the game commences but not before Nick lets out an aggrieved sigh.

The whole world is against his genius.

How rude.

//

Four hours later, Nick and Macy have ended their word game and Nick is currently engaged in an online chess battle on his portable laptop—hello cause all ghost hunters are so in tune with the 21st century—Joe and Stella are having a rather quiet and sweet moment where Joe has fallen asleep against Stella's shoulder and Stella may or may not be smiling into his hair.

Frankie is curled up on Macy's lap, securely covered by his blankie, his arms huddled against his chest and with Macy's arms providing a cocoon of sorts. He's asleep and dreaming of dragons and candy and once or twice Macy looks Kevin's way and smile warmly, with a sparkle in her eyes and Kevin smiles back, his heart thudding faster than normal.

This is one of those times when he loves his own family and his extended one too.

//

This road trip of sorts wasn't meant to happen.

Usually, Stella, Macy and Frankie stay at home and Kevin, Joe and Nick try to make it back home on the weekends.

Ever since all of their parents were consumed in a demonic frenzy, that is how things have been. Stella has her own little tailor's shop where she darns and mends clothes and Macy works part time as a sports coach and does odd tutoring jobs. The three of them chip in with whatever cash they can, earned from jobs and sometimes ends are a little hard to meet but they always manage in the end, with the brothers swiping a card or two, drawing from bank accounts that dont belong to them, doing little subterfuges here and there, things like that. Macy and Stella turn a blind eye to this though. They need to live and Frankie is still little, and sometimes you couldn't help it right? Not with the way they live, half the time on the move, changing houses and jobs and schools.

None of them ever mention the day they came home and found their houses in ruins, ceilings scorched and the smell emanating from nearly indistinguishable burning bodies though. Their parents had always kept them prepared in case of a tragedy—and with the kind of work they did, death was always around the corner—but none of them ever expected that nightmare to come to true.

All they have now each other in the world and that day Kevin makes a decision. Family would always come first and if safety meant keeping them away from the horrors of the job, then so be it. Stella and Macy accept it with a resigned weariness. They knew that was coming. They see it in his eyes and how can they say no when they see how hard he's trying not to break down?

But now things are a little different.

Bobby calls and Kevin can hear his gruff voice filled with tiredness and concern for them and asks him to keep them with him at all times and get the hell away from where they are living now. Because some demons are now becoming bold enough to adopt personalities and bodies of loved ones to get close and finish family members. The words still send a chill up Kevin's spine whenever he remembers them. He cannot bear the thought of Stella, Macy or Frankie welcome anyone into the house with open arms and then pay for the consequence of it.

That day, a week ago from today, he trades in the Mustang for a battered minivan with a peeling paintjob. He makes sure that he gets one with a big enough boot though and then he revamps the weapons arsenal and throws in some more nine millimeter Lugers and shotguns. He'll keep adding as he goes along though because you can never be too safe.

//

And now, they are on this trip to go to Cowry where he'll make sure the three of them stay put in a motel while he, Joe and Nick try to bust a demon who likes to toy with you.

And then maybe he'll think of getting a caravan because he knows the girls can't live out of car. He's not sure though. He wants the girls and Frankie to at least have some semblance of a normal life but he cannot even begin to think of the thought where one day he comes home and finds their unresponsive cold bodies with expressions of terror writ large on their faces.

He's not sure he'll be able to live or ever look at the faces of his brothers again.

//

Macy leans over and touches his arm, warm and comforting and Kevin's tense shoulder and clenched grip upon the steering wheel instantly relax.

"Maybe we should pull over and find a place for the night. Joe and Frankie are going to want dinner soon." Her smile is warm and bright and the way she calmly brings him back to the present makes Kevin smile and his heart explode a little.

Maybe the future is not set in stone and has plenty of uncertainty and grief waiting for him.

But for now, Kevin will just sit back and watch as Joe and Stella bicker and Nick argue with Frankie and Macy trying to moderate unsuccessfully.

He will smile and he will laugh because family comes first.

Everything else is secondary.

a/n - It's based on Supernatural and it was sparked off by a line I read in xovickixo's oneshot SuperNormal. She mentions Ghost Facers in that and I was thinking how awesome it would be to see Supernatural and JONAS crossover. But when I started writing and it was way back, that wasn't the idea that came to mind. What you've just now read was it. JONAS re-imagined as Hunters of the Bad Supernatural Beings with some unhealthy angst.

There's another part to this which should be up soon hopefully.

The Chevvy Impala doesn't belong to me. Nor does JONAS or Supernatural or Luger. I'm not sure what exactly I own here.