Title: Two Winchesters Walk Into A Bar
Rating: R for some f-bombs
Characters: Dean, Sam, the wives and kids I imagined they might have. Maybe some Dean/Cas if you have your goggles on.
Summary: They don’t die young, after all. Warning for character death.
A/N: Curtain!fic. IDEK. Maybe I should never write anything when I am in the brutal throes of PMS. Ever.
Dean could never forget, as much as he wanted to at times.
Firing off every round he had into the man walking toward him, watching the man keep walking toward him. The shadow of wings, the promise (threat) that God had work for him.
The moment he realized that it had all been a lie, a pipedream. Not that Dean had ever believed in God, one of the few things he’d never shared with his brother.
Except for that little bit of time that he had.
Until Castiel didn’t.
That was when the truth ran him over like a train. He believed what Castiel believed.
Until Dean didn’t.
He’d only looked back for just a moment, but the image of the angel trapped in the circle of fire would never fade, not even a little bit.
Watching him walk into the water, knowing Castiel was gone…he’d tear out his eyes if he thought it would make him forget.
Years would pass, Sam would suffer, Dean would rip himself to shreds. But eventually, they’d find themselves on even ground again.
Sam got married. He had three kids. They were beautiful. One of them was named Dean, over the strong objections of his wife, who thought her husband’s relationship with his brother was unhealthy and co-dependent. He’d told her the truth about their lives, and she believed him and held him when he cried over what he’d lost. She nursed him through his bad spells, did her best, but she didn’t understand.
Dean got married. He had a daughter. He lived the life. Dad, husband, brother. He covered the Impala with a blue tarp when she was no longer serviceable, but still washed her every Sunday. His wife didn’t mind. Never even suggested that he try to sell the car or otherwise get rid of his baby. She never even complained, when they had an actual baby, that Dean still reserved that endearment for the car. She understood.
After they buried Dean’s wife, Sam stayed with him for a week. Their kids were grown, and Sam had been divorced for years. One of those “amicable” divorces that were all the rage now.
When Dean cried, Sam recognized it for what it was.
“She was an incredible woman, Dean. Never another one like her.”
“Never another woman like her, not in a million years.”
Oh.
“You still miss him.”
“Yeah.”
“Me too.”
Neither one of them could forget.
Five years later, it occurred to them both, simultaneously. They were old. Old men with children and grandchildren. Neither had been cut down in the prime of his life by a demon or a werewolf. They had other things to cope with now. Dean’s left arm, which was barely functional after the shoulder having being dislocated so many times, and the toll a lifetime of hunting had taken on his organs. Sam’s arthritic fingers, which made it hard to turn the pages of a book sometimes, and his rare but still terrifying seizures and flashbacks.
There were no more visions of Lucifer, those had been gone a long time, but there were entire hours, days sometimes, where Sam was lost and unsure of his surroundings.
This was not a good thing, considering his age. Sam didn’t have that kind of time to waste; Dean knew it and hated the theft of his brother’s time more than anything else. It pissed him off like he used to get pissed off at things when he was younger.
He tried not to feel nostalgia for the anger.
Children and grandchildren came to visit, once Dean and Sam had decided they’d live together again. They were so close in age that they were more like brothers and sisters than cousins, having grown up together, shared family holidays, Dean’s daughter and Sam’s son going to the same university.
Not surprisingly, Dean’s daughter was Sam’s, and Sam’s kids were Dean’s. The grandchildren all belonged to both of them, their grandchildren, not yours and mine. When Sam’s younger daughter finally gathered up the courage to tell someone she was gay, it was Dean she confided in first. Not her mother, not her father, not her siblings, her Uncle Dean, who made everything safe.
Times changed. Sam’s daughter and her wife adopted a baby boy from their county’s foster care system. He’d been left in a blanketed box outside the doors of a local emergency room with nothing but a diaper and a note saying “Please take care of my angel.”
They asked Uncle Dean if they could name the baby Castiel.
When the younger Dean had a son, there was yet another Dean Winchester.
Sam told their grandchildren the same bedtime stories he’d spun for his children, about angels and adventures and that time he got a trophy for being part of a winning soccer team as a kid.
Sitting at his brother’s bedside, after taking him home AMA from the hospital (man, if they had a nickel for every time they’d done that, but there was no fucking way Dean was dying in a hospital, they could all kiss his wrinkled old ass), Sam reminded him of all the cool stuff they saw in Heaven that one time, and neither of them mentioned the bad parts of their experience.
“Ash, man, he’s gonna be so happy to see you”, he choked out through his tears. Dean had already made him get rid of the dialysis equipment, he was done with it.
“Course he will, Sammy, you know I’ll liven up the place. Maybe I’ll even get a little action from Pamela”, he grinned.
“She always was hot for you, man.”
“Sam. I think I’m…fuck, I’m scared. I know I already got a whole lot more life than I should have, but still…”
“Yeah, Dean, yeah, I know. I’m scared too. What the fuck am I gonna do without you?”
“There’s two more Dean Winchesters now, man, remember? You can hang with them, they won’t tell anyone what a giant dork you are.”
They both laughed, a little, while they cried, a little.
“Three Dean Winchesters is too many. You’ll be fine. Do you think…”
Sam already knew the answer before his brother had even finished asking the question.
“Yes. Yes, I do, I think he’ll be there. I think he’s been waiting a long time for you. He’s probably hanging out on a bench with her, the two of them wondering when you’re going to show up and tell them a dirty joke.”
“Hey Sam. Two Winchesters walk into a bar…”