A fic for your Twelfth Night! Afternoons and Coffeespoons (1/1)
Title: Afternoons and Coffeespoons
Author: Bella Temple
Category: SPN, AU, humor, gen
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Sam, Dean, assorted cameos and OCs
Warnings: Brief allusions to old people having sex. . . .
Spoilers: General for seasons one and two, especially "All Hell Breaks Loose part I"
Disclaimer: The characters and basic premise within are property of Warner Bros, Eric Kripke, etc. No money is being made off this work of fiction.
Author's note: Lighter sided companion piece to Innocence and Cruelty. No need to read that one first, this is an alternate AU, not a sequel. Title and cut tag link text are from "Afternoons and Coffeespoons" by the Crash Test Dummies.
Summary: The Yellow Eyed Demon was a liiiiiiittle bit delayed in getting around to his psychic kids.
To be absolutely honest, when the dreams first started, Sam just assumed he was finally losing his mind.
It seemed to him it was about goddamned time, anyway. And what did he care about that stupid nurse's aide being pinned to the ceiling? It was a damned robot. That wasn't even real blood dripping down on his face.
The fire was a bit much, though. He could've done without that.
Of course, then that stupid nurse's aide really did get stuck to the ceiling, and not just because the homeopathic magnetic field generator broke down, either. Homeopathic magnetic field generators, or HMFGs, as they were more colloquially known (though Dean liked to call them "humming fuggers" and would often wax philosophic for hours about just how much harder their job was these days, what with those humming fuggers putting out constant EMF in all sorts of crazy places) were not known for splitting synthetic skin on robots' bellies, nor setting the damned things on fire.
If they had been, he was pretty sure Dean would have worked out a way to make them do that on purpose years ago, and neither of them would have to put up with the damned RNAs (that's Robotic Nursing Assistant, not Ribonucleic acid, and hadn't that taken awhile to get used to. And don't get him started on the great CNA [Certified Nursing Assistant, to you] revolt of 2058) any more, anyway.
So, while the loss of one RNA was no great tragedy, and the fire had been up on the ceiling, a good 20 feet above Sam's bed, so it'd been easy enough to roll off the bed and grab his cane to get out of the room before that really became a threat, Sam still couldn't help but worry just a bit about the fact that he'd spent weeks dreaming of exactly those things happening. And by the way the smoke stung his nostrils and the manager reassured him over and over again that the home would be paying for any damages to his health or property and would he please, please not get litigious, he could be pretty sure that this time it wasn't actually a dream.
Which put him sitting in front of the holographic chess board, pondering not his next move against his computerized opponent, but what spontaneous development of psychic abilities heretofore unknown over the course of his eighty-eight years of life might actually mean.
"Dean," he called finally, as he tapped an arthritic finger on the board. "Dean, I think we might have a problem."
Dean didn't look up from his faux-woodworking workshop, where he was cheerfully melting his fingers together with the nail-laser, looking far too proud of himself when the hot, young nail-laser instructor (actually young, this time, not like Dean's last hot young conquest, who was pushing fifty) panicked and rushed over to assist him. Unfortunately, Marcus, the occupational therapist, stopped the girl short with a shake of his head and went over himself to smack Dean upside the head.
Served him right, too, that was the sixth fake hand he'd wrecked this week.
"Dean," he tried again, only to be startled by the sudden appearance of Deanie, Dean's great-great granddaughter, on his left.
"Uncle Sammy," she said gently, ignoring his wince at being called "Sammy" completely. "You know Granpa Dean can't hear anything."
Sam sighed. "He can, too. He just pretends he's deaf so he doesn't have to deal with people."
Deanie rolled her eyes and gently rubbed Sam's shoulder. "Sure he does, Uncle Sammy." Sam would have rolled his eyes right back at the 18 year old, but that tended to give him a headache, these days. Instead he just reached for his cane, flicking the button on the side that would turn the handle into a bullhorn.
The resulting bellow of "DEAN." shook the walls of the recreation facility, bringing books down from their shelves, disrupting the projections on the holographic foosball table, and sending Dean sideways out of his chair, nail-laser flying.
Man, but he loved this cane. He shuffled himself to his feet and followed after Deanie, who was rushing over to make sure Dean was alright.
He was, naturally, just fine, and dragging his own ninety-two-year-old ass back into his chair, snarling at anyone who tried to help him. "Bobbette!" He was shouting as he settled himself back into the chair, a classic 2067 model (and hey, when the market on pretty much everything updated by the minute, a four year old model was definitely a classic. Hell, it bordered on antique). "Bobbette, get daddy his colt!"
Deanie sighed, having dealt with this on a daily basis since she started her internship at the old-age center. She picked up Dean's real hand and pressed it to her name tag. "It's me, Granpa Dean. Deanie."
Dean blinked myopically at her. He still refused to wear glasses, and really, there was only so much that laser treatments could do. "Right. I knew that."
Deanie nodded. "Of course you did."
Dean twisted in his chair to grin back at Sam, who was still making his way over. "Hey Molasses-Ass. Check it out, my great-great-granddaughter's freakin' hot!" His voice was far louder than necessary, and Sam glared at him. Still, even after all these years, when Dean wanted to con someone, he was damned good at it. Even if it meant making everyone around him actually go deaf.
"Yeah, Dean. So's the rest of your family."
Dean ignored him completely. Sam had gotten pretty used to that, over the years. He shuffled closer, then lowered himself carefully into the perfectly normal, empty chair next to Dean's suped-up motorized chair. "Dean, I need to talk to you."
Dean continued to ignore him.
"Sammy's jealous," he told Deanie at volume. "All his kids're ugly!"
Sam rolled his eyes. "Yeah, all one of 'em. . . . Some of us didn't spread our seed all over the freakin' country in our twenties."
Actually, Leigh had been a gorgeous child, just like her mother, and Dean knew it as well as Sam did, though he'd never had the chance to meet either her or Jessica. The two brothers had stopped speaking to one another when Sam went away to college, and hadn't reconnected until they were both in their thirties, when their father was taken down by a particularly nasty poltergeist, only just shy of a week after Jessica and Leigh had been killed in a car accident.
They'd been pretty inseparable after that, something which Sam figured had had a role in the fact that he never connected with another woman the way he had with Jess. Not that it mattered, all things considered. Dean had had enough kids for a small army, kept up with every single one of them (and their mothers) and was more than willing to share the joy of fatherhood, grandfatherhood, great-grandfatherhood, and even great-great-grandfatherhood with Sam.
These days, the total Winchester clan numbered somewhere around 87 people.
Each and every one of them a hunter.
* * *
It wasn't until they were both back in their room (a suite, actually, with a main sitting room and individual bedrooms for the two of them -- far more than they could afford, but Dean's seventeenth grandson was a master with insurance fraud) that Sam finally managed to sit Dean down (well, get him to stay in one place, Dean was pretty much constantly sitting since a black dog bit off both his legs back in 2047. He actually hadn't lost the hand until a few years later, when he first started trying to trick out his wheelchairs) and tell him what he thought was going on.
"What?!"
"I said, I think I'm having visions!"
"What?!! Dammit, Sam, you know I can't hear anything!"
Sam rolled his eyes and leaned well into Dean's personal space, putting most of his weight on his cane. Dean's eyes immediately focused on Sam's lips. He really was a hell of a con-man, even at ninety-two. "I. Think. I'm. Having. Visions!"
"Fishes?!"
"Vi. Sions!"
"I think they got a cream for that, now!"
Sam lifted his cane and slammed it down on the floor, once, hitting the button for the built in jackhammer as he did. The room rattled again and Dean leaned back, scowling.
"I'm psychic, you jerk!"
Dean was still staring at his mouth. "If you're so freakin' psychic, how come you can't figure out I'm freakin' deaf?"
Sam groaned and shuffled over to the stove to make them both some spaghettios.
* * *
"Deanie!"
"Hey Granpa Dean, Uncle Sammy." Deanie grinned at them as she came over and straddled the extra chair at the holographic chess board. "Uncle Sammy, you got Granpa Dean to play chess?"
"What's she saying, Sam? Is she calling you a little bitch for making me play chess?"
Sam sighed, leaning his chin on his hand. "I know you can hear, Dean."
"How's your brother, Whatsisface, Deanie, honey?"
"And stop pretending to be senile. Jesus."
Deanie shot him a grin. "Hey, there's thirty-nine of us in my generation. He can't be expected to remember all our names,"
"Used to remember every name of every goddamned person we saved when we were hunting, he can remember his own great-great-grandkids," Sam grumbled, then blinked. "Thirty-nine?"
"Betsy Jo had her third last night."
Dean, who'd been blinking steadily at both of them like he was watching a tennis match, pumped his real fist in the air. "Thirty-nine! Beat that with a stick!"
Deanie grinned, then dug out a photo cube, which she set down on top of the chess board. A life sized hologram of a sleeping infant immediately sprung to life, the name "Arun Harvelle Haryadi" floating in the space just below the dark-skinned child's chin. Dean examined both the child and the name, the same doofy grin he'd worn at the pictures of all thirty-eight of little Arun's cousins spreading across his face.
"Betsy Jo and Nitin are both doing just fine," Deanie assured them, once she got Dean's attention again. "Shanta and Mary are staying with Mama Joni until they're ready to come home." Dean nodded, still grinning, and turned to waggle his eyebrows at Sam.
"Thirty-nine!" He crowed again. Sam sighed.
"Yeah, Dean. I heard her, just like you did."
Dean rolled his eyes, then poked at the holographic baby for a few more moments. "Can't wait to meet him in person."
Sam felt his frustration die down into a fond exasperation. "Yeah," he said finally, looking down at where Dean's finger was just barely poking into the hologram's belly. "Me, too."
Dean's own smile softened. "Thirty-nine, Sammy. We got thirty-nine great-great-grandkids."
"I know, Dean."
Deanie reached out to rub both the brothers on their shoulders and said a quiet goodbye, claiming she had to get back to work. "The windows won't re-salt themselves." She pressed a kiss to Dean's temple as she gathered up the cube, then another to Sam's before she started walking away. Dean leaned his head against his half-melted false hand and peered at Sam knowingly.
"You look like crap, Sam. Those rashes acting up on you again?"
Sam groaned.
* * *
"So, let me get this straight," Dean peered steadily down at the type-pad he'd finally forced Sam to write his issue down in. "You dreamed Robot-Ratchett would die a flaming death on your ceiling for weeks before it did," He tapped the screen, then turned that peering gaze on Sam. "And you didn't tell me about it?"
"I told you six times, Dean, you refused to listen!"
"For the last time you senile moron, I'm deaf!"
Sam growled. It turned into a hacking cough halfway through, but he brought his cane around, hitting the button for the bullhorn, and raised it to his lips.
The damned bullhorn exploded. Sam let out a squawk and dropped the cane, falling backwards into a nearby chair. "The hell?"
Dean's hand hovered over a button on the arm of his wheelchair that Sam had never noticed before. His wrinkled lips curved up in a smirk.
"That damned thing'd be the reason I'm freakin' deaf, you moron. Psychic my left nut."
Sam sighed, not bothering to try to get back up from his chair. "You don't have a left nut any more, Dean,"
Dean blinked. "Oh yeah."
* * *
Dean still wasn't taking Sam's visions seriously, right up until the moment that Sam vanished while on a mission to get his chair-bound brother an extra slice of boysenberry pie.
Sam had to assume that Dean started taking him seriously, then. Not that he ever expected to find out.
He woke up lying on a broken down door that looked to be about as stiff and useless as his entire body felt in the frosty weather. He poked his wrist-com a few times, but the damned thing was about as frozen as his joints were and refused to connect with any of the thousands of available satellites, on any of the available networks.
"Competition my ass. No better than any damned monopoly, now, is it."
He sighed heavily and, after about twenty minutes worth of grunting and grabbing onto things and hoping he didn't get a staff infection from a misplaced splinter or something, he finally made it to his feet.
He was really, really missing his cane right about now.
"Hello?!" He shuffled his way slowly forward into the oddly nineteenth century little town, his hands tucked into the sleeves of his old, threadbare sweatshirt. "Anybody?!"
A whispery, rattling voice echoed from behind him, and Sam wished fervently for some salt. Dean was right, dammit, a good hunter should never "retire". Why the hell hadn't he listened? He spun -- well, turned as quickly as he could, which wasn't very, the way the cold was making his joints ache -- to look for the source of the specterish noise.
A man about his own age leaned against the doorway of what looked like it might have once been a post office. Or possibly a brothel. He wore scrub-clothes and a backpack-mounted personal oxygen tank, but his eyes were bright and sharp as they watched Sam move. He spoke again, the same horrible, dead voice.
"Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuude," He took a deep breath at the end of the prolonged syllable. "Where are we?"
"How the hell should I know?"
The man shrugged and limped slowly from his perch by the door, across the boardwalk, to lean heavily against one of the support poles for the balcony above him (and yeah, Sam decided, that definitely used to be a brothel). "Don't think . . ." *gasp, wheeze* ". . . we're in Oklahoma any more."
"That's Kansas."
"This is . . . Kansas?"
"No, the line, the line is -- nevermind."
The man started wheezing, and Sam wondered if there was actually any oxygen flowing through the canula under his nose. Then he straightened abruptly. "Artistic license!" He howled, and Sam realized the wheezing was actually laughter. Finally, he extended a stained, shaking hand. "Name's Andy. You?"
"Sam," Sam said, and took his hand.
As it turned out, there were three others who were stranded here just the same way Sam and Andy were. Two women, Ava and Lilly, and cranky old vet named Jake. They all shuffled together into the brothel to sort things out, which, naturally, included a long inventory of their various aches and pains, and something a bit more interesting.
"Powers?" Ava grumbled. "Nope. No powers. Dreaming dead people, but I been doing that for years."
"I touch people, and their hearts stop," Lilly offered, tucked back away from the others, her hands buried in an oversized sweater. "Didn't think it was anything until it was my doctor. Only thirty years old, he didn't have any right to have any heart conditions."
"Mind control," was Andy's contribution. "Can . . . tell people . . . what to do." His voice was as papery and shredded as usual. "Doesn't do me a whole . . . lot of good . . . when my voice . . . is shot." He wheezed quietly for a moment, then continued. "Woulda . . . laid off the . . . bong a little, I'da known,"
Jake's power was obvious, considering that he'd already carried both Andy and Ava into the brothel. At the same time, no less.
"So what the hell are we all doing here?" Sam wondered aloud.
No one knew.
* * *
In the end trying to figure out what to do about all of them being there was just about as difficult as figuring out why they were there in the first place. Lilly was all for just walking out, but that was easy for her to say. She and Jake still had their original knees.
Sam wanted to hole up in one of the abandoned buildings with as much iron and salt as they could all manage, but no one much wanted to listen to him. The general consensus seemed to be that Sam was completely off his nut, and that was too bad, too, according to Ava, who seemed perfectly happy to rattle on at length about how Sam was still pretty cute and even had most of his hair, and she hadn't gotten any since her husband had passed away ten years ago.
The fact that they were all born in 1983 and all outlived their significant others seemed to be something, at least. Well, until Sam pointed out that his older brother was still around, too, and had managed to rig up his wheelchair to fire tiny incendiary devices at the push of a button. They didn't believe him about the demons, but they were perfectly willing to believe that.
And wasn't that just the story of Sam's life. No one believed in the supernatural. But they all believed in Dean.
It grew dark, eventually, with all of them still sitting in their circle of chairs, and they nodded off, one by one, until only Sam was awake, sitting up and trying to figure out how to contact at least one of the members of his extended hunter family.
"I wouldn't try it, Sammy-boy," a voice said from behind him. "Wouldn't want any of those cute little bitches getting hurt, now, would you?"
Sam turned about as quickly as he could, and found himself looking into sickly yellow eyes grinning at him out of a middle aged male face.
"Who the hell are you, then?"
"Me? I'm the one you've been trying to warn your new little friends about all night." The man walked up and set his hands firmly on the arms of Sam's chair. "The one your daddy just never got around to finding, did he."
Sam frowned at that. It had been so long since he and Dean had given up on finding any leads to the thing that got their mother that it took him a moment to remember that that was what had gotten them started in the business in the first place.
"You bastard," Sam replied, not with much enthusiasm, he had to admit. "You stuck that RNA to my ceiling, too, didn't you."
"What can I say, Sammy, she got in my way."
"She was a robot," Sam pointed out.
The demon frowned. "Really?" He peered closer at Sam. "How old are you?"
"Eighty-eight."
The demon straightened, looked around at the sleeping forms of his companions. "Eighty -- crap." He reached up to rub his forehead. "I knew I shouldn't have let Beezlebub talk me into that game of darts. I'm sixty-six years late!"
Sam started laughing.
"Still, better late than never," and the demon started to grin again. "How'd you like to know what you're all doing here?"
Sam shrugged. "Pretty sure you're going to tell me, anyway."
And he did. In a narrative that involved a fair amount of gloating and gratuitous flashbacks, the demon explained his plan for Sam and "all the children" like him, up to and including this little free-for-all, to-the-death battle royal he had planned out. That last bit got Sam laughing again.
"You think we're going to kill each other? Andy and I can barely walk! Ava's so busy reliving her long and happy marriage with a man apparently hung like a horse that she'd never get around to figuring out how to kill anybody, and Jake and Lilly just want to go home. Hell, that's all any of us want. Sixty-six years ago, you maybe would've had a chance. Now you're just lucky my Latin's a little rusty."
The demon winked. "We'll see about all that, Sammy-boy. We'll see."
* * *
Sam woke to a strangely familiar rumbling noise in the distance. He thought it might be thunder, but his knees weren't aching enough for there to be rain coming. He sat up as straight as he could in his uncomfortable chair and peered around.
"Where's Ava?"
"Haven't seen her since we woke up," Jake answered. "Probably got spooked off by that yellow-eyed bastard trying to tell us we're gonna kill each other."
"You dreamed him, too?"
"We all did," Lilly said at not much more than a whisper, a small smile on her face. "Well? Snap to. . . . I'm getting tired of all this nonsense, anyway. Death might be nice."
"Not me," Andy rasped. "I still . . . gotta bong-load . . . at home . . . with my name . . . on it! Best damned . . . eyesight in the . . . county, man,"
At least, Sam was pretty sure that was what he said. It was hard to hear him over the rumbling.
Definitely not thunder. But Sam'd heard it before.
Then an obnoxious, electronic horn started beeping Dixie and Sam brought his shaking palm to his face.
"Well," he said. "That'd be my brother,"
They all shuffled their way outside, Jake carrying Andy like he was a one pound sack of flour, and watched as the Winchester Clan mini-bus (local chapter S.D. #26) came rolling in right over the fallen trees, rocks, and saplings that blocked the what Sam could now see had once been a road, Grand-Dame Bobbette Winchester sitting behind the wheel with her father, Dean himself, grinning away beside her.
And the Yellow-eyed man was suddenly there, standing in the mini-bus's path, a look of shock and fury on his face. "You!"
"Bobbette, honey," Dean could be heard saying, even over the roar of the engine. "Hand daddy his colt."
"No can do, Dad," Bobbette stuck her arm out the window, an antique gun in her hand. She lowered her chin to peer through the distance end of her trifocals. "You know I have better aim,"
And she did.
* * *
"Told you I was having visions,"
"What?! Can't hear you, Sammy, I'm deaf!!"
* * *
Sam leaned against his new cane in the middle of the street in Cold Oak, looking over his extended family. Deanie and her brother George (and come on now, was that such a hard name to remember? Just because it wasn't some variation of Dean, Sam, John, Mary, Bobby, Jim, Caleb, Jo, or Ellen. . . .) were telling some sort of joke to Andy which hand him doubled over in wheezes. Deanie's uncle El was helping Lilly into a pair of leather gloves, her great-aunt Samantha trading war stories with Jake. "Five generations of Winchesters. I can't believe it."
Bobbette set her arm gently over his shoulders, looking to where Dean was rolling out of a barn with a happy looking Ava perched on his lap. "Just be happy that Dad talked my son-in-law's family into hacking into the satellite system and running a facial recognition software on the photos." She shrugged. "Not that it was hard to do. The Patel-Haryadi branch was frantic, trying to figure out a way they could help find you. Nitin was even talking about flying over from New Delhi, and he's got little Arun to look after."
Sam nodded. "Was wondering how you all found me. Of course, if Dean had listened to me in the first place --"
"He's deaf, Uncle Sam."
"He is not, he's just pretending. I know my brother."
"He is," Bobbette countered. "El there checked him out himself. Been deaf as a brick since 2059."
Sam blinked and swallowed. "Oh. Well, he's still a stubborn jerk."
Bobbette laughed. "Well, yes." She patted him on the shoulder, then went to go tug Ava off her father's lap. Dean came motoring on up to smack Sam in the hip.
"Hey, bitch! Saved your ass again!!"
Sam grinned and made sure he was leaning close enough for Dean to be able to read his lips before replying. "Five generations, man. Took you five generations of Winchesters to find me."
Dean broke into a broad grin. "Look closer, Sammy. It's six."
Sam immediately looked at Deanie, figuring she'd gotten pregnant or something while he wasn't looking, but the 18 year old's stomach was still as flat as ever and she was wearing her birth control bracelet. He wondered if he should ask if George was pregnant, but then he saw him.
John Winchester, looking just as he must have the day he went out on his last hunt so many years before, flickered in and out of sight on the edge of the tree line. He caught Sam's eye and nodded briefly before vanishing from sight.
"Dean, that was --" Sam cut himself off, realizing he wasn't facing his brother, then turned and started again. "That was --"
"Yep." Dean patted his hip again. "Dunno how, since we salted and burned his ass over fifty years ago, but that was him. He's the one who clued us in on where to find that old Colt."
"Wow."
"Yep." Dean started rolling off, slow enough that Sam could hang on to the back of the chair and follow along. "Now come on, bitch, I promised Andy I'd show 'im the armrest-mounted mini-canon."
Sam grimaced. "That's why you're deaf, Dean."
"What?!" Dean twisted and shot Sam a small wink. "Sammy, I can't hear you bitching at me, I'm deaf!"
Right. And if anyone could fool the state of the art equipment that El no doubt tested him with, it was Dean. So Sam did the only thing he could do.
He smacked Dean upside the head.
"Ow! Bitch!"
"Jerk,"
The End
Author: Bella Temple
Category: SPN, AU, humor, gen
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Sam, Dean, assorted cameos and OCs
Warnings: Brief allusions to old people having sex. . . .
Spoilers: General for seasons one and two, especially "All Hell Breaks Loose part I"
Disclaimer: The characters and basic premise within are property of Warner Bros, Eric Kripke, etc. No money is being made off this work of fiction.
Author's note: Lighter sided companion piece to Innocence and Cruelty. No need to read that one first, this is an alternate AU, not a sequel. Title and cut tag link text are from "Afternoons and Coffeespoons" by the Crash Test Dummies.
Summary: The Yellow Eyed Demon was a liiiiiiittle bit delayed in getting around to his psychic kids.
To be absolutely honest, when the dreams first started, Sam just assumed he was finally losing his mind.
It seemed to him it was about goddamned time, anyway. And what did he care about that stupid nurse's aide being pinned to the ceiling? It was a damned robot. That wasn't even real blood dripping down on his face.
The fire was a bit much, though. He could've done without that.
Of course, then that stupid nurse's aide really did get stuck to the ceiling, and not just because the homeopathic magnetic field generator broke down, either. Homeopathic magnetic field generators, or HMFGs, as they were more colloquially known (though Dean liked to call them "humming fuggers" and would often wax philosophic for hours about just how much harder their job was these days, what with those humming fuggers putting out constant EMF in all sorts of crazy places) were not known for splitting synthetic skin on robots' bellies, nor setting the damned things on fire.
If they had been, he was pretty sure Dean would have worked out a way to make them do that on purpose years ago, and neither of them would have to put up with the damned RNAs (that's Robotic Nursing Assistant, not Ribonucleic acid, and hadn't that taken awhile to get used to. And don't get him started on the great CNA [Certified Nursing Assistant, to you] revolt of 2058) any more, anyway.
So, while the loss of one RNA was no great tragedy, and the fire had been up on the ceiling, a good 20 feet above Sam's bed, so it'd been easy enough to roll off the bed and grab his cane to get out of the room before that really became a threat, Sam still couldn't help but worry just a bit about the fact that he'd spent weeks dreaming of exactly those things happening. And by the way the smoke stung his nostrils and the manager reassured him over and over again that the home would be paying for any damages to his health or property and would he please, please not get litigious, he could be pretty sure that this time it wasn't actually a dream.
Which put him sitting in front of the holographic chess board, pondering not his next move against his computerized opponent, but what spontaneous development of psychic abilities heretofore unknown over the course of his eighty-eight years of life might actually mean.
"Dean," he called finally, as he tapped an arthritic finger on the board. "Dean, I think we might have a problem."
Dean didn't look up from his faux-woodworking workshop, where he was cheerfully melting his fingers together with the nail-laser, looking far too proud of himself when the hot, young nail-laser instructor (actually young, this time, not like Dean's last hot young conquest, who was pushing fifty) panicked and rushed over to assist him. Unfortunately, Marcus, the occupational therapist, stopped the girl short with a shake of his head and went over himself to smack Dean upside the head.
Served him right, too, that was the sixth fake hand he'd wrecked this week.
"Dean," he tried again, only to be startled by the sudden appearance of Deanie, Dean's great-great granddaughter, on his left.
"Uncle Sammy," she said gently, ignoring his wince at being called "Sammy" completely. "You know Granpa Dean can't hear anything."
Sam sighed. "He can, too. He just pretends he's deaf so he doesn't have to deal with people."
Deanie rolled her eyes and gently rubbed Sam's shoulder. "Sure he does, Uncle Sammy." Sam would have rolled his eyes right back at the 18 year old, but that tended to give him a headache, these days. Instead he just reached for his cane, flicking the button on the side that would turn the handle into a bullhorn.
The resulting bellow of "DEAN." shook the walls of the recreation facility, bringing books down from their shelves, disrupting the projections on the holographic foosball table, and sending Dean sideways out of his chair, nail-laser flying.
Man, but he loved this cane. He shuffled himself to his feet and followed after Deanie, who was rushing over to make sure Dean was alright.
He was, naturally, just fine, and dragging his own ninety-two-year-old ass back into his chair, snarling at anyone who tried to help him. "Bobbette!" He was shouting as he settled himself back into the chair, a classic 2067 model (and hey, when the market on pretty much everything updated by the minute, a four year old model was definitely a classic. Hell, it bordered on antique). "Bobbette, get daddy his colt!"
Deanie sighed, having dealt with this on a daily basis since she started her internship at the old-age center. She picked up Dean's real hand and pressed it to her name tag. "It's me, Granpa Dean. Deanie."
Dean blinked myopically at her. He still refused to wear glasses, and really, there was only so much that laser treatments could do. "Right. I knew that."
Deanie nodded. "Of course you did."
Dean twisted in his chair to grin back at Sam, who was still making his way over. "Hey Molasses-Ass. Check it out, my great-great-granddaughter's freakin' hot!" His voice was far louder than necessary, and Sam glared at him. Still, even after all these years, when Dean wanted to con someone, he was damned good at it. Even if it meant making everyone around him actually go deaf.
"Yeah, Dean. So's the rest of your family."
Dean ignored him completely. Sam had gotten pretty used to that, over the years. He shuffled closer, then lowered himself carefully into the perfectly normal, empty chair next to Dean's suped-up motorized chair. "Dean, I need to talk to you."
Dean continued to ignore him.
"Sammy's jealous," he told Deanie at volume. "All his kids're ugly!"
Sam rolled his eyes. "Yeah, all one of 'em. . . . Some of us didn't spread our seed all over the freakin' country in our twenties."
Actually, Leigh had been a gorgeous child, just like her mother, and Dean knew it as well as Sam did, though he'd never had the chance to meet either her or Jessica. The two brothers had stopped speaking to one another when Sam went away to college, and hadn't reconnected until they were both in their thirties, when their father was taken down by a particularly nasty poltergeist, only just shy of a week after Jessica and Leigh had been killed in a car accident.
They'd been pretty inseparable after that, something which Sam figured had had a role in the fact that he never connected with another woman the way he had with Jess. Not that it mattered, all things considered. Dean had had enough kids for a small army, kept up with every single one of them (and their mothers) and was more than willing to share the joy of fatherhood, grandfatherhood, great-grandfatherhood, and even great-great-grandfatherhood with Sam.
These days, the total Winchester clan numbered somewhere around 87 people.
Each and every one of them a hunter.
* * *
It wasn't until they were both back in their room (a suite, actually, with a main sitting room and individual bedrooms for the two of them -- far more than they could afford, but Dean's seventeenth grandson was a master with insurance fraud) that Sam finally managed to sit Dean down (well, get him to stay in one place, Dean was pretty much constantly sitting since a black dog bit off both his legs back in 2047. He actually hadn't lost the hand until a few years later, when he first started trying to trick out his wheelchairs) and tell him what he thought was going on.
"What?!"
"I said, I think I'm having visions!"
"What?!! Dammit, Sam, you know I can't hear anything!"
Sam rolled his eyes and leaned well into Dean's personal space, putting most of his weight on his cane. Dean's eyes immediately focused on Sam's lips. He really was a hell of a con-man, even at ninety-two. "I. Think. I'm. Having. Visions!"
"Fishes?!"
"Vi. Sions!"
"I think they got a cream for that, now!"
Sam lifted his cane and slammed it down on the floor, once, hitting the button for the built in jackhammer as he did. The room rattled again and Dean leaned back, scowling.
"I'm psychic, you jerk!"
Dean was still staring at his mouth. "If you're so freakin' psychic, how come you can't figure out I'm freakin' deaf?"
Sam groaned and shuffled over to the stove to make them both some spaghettios.
* * *
"Deanie!"
"Hey Granpa Dean, Uncle Sammy." Deanie grinned at them as she came over and straddled the extra chair at the holographic chess board. "Uncle Sammy, you got Granpa Dean to play chess?"
"What's she saying, Sam? Is she calling you a little bitch for making me play chess?"
Sam sighed, leaning his chin on his hand. "I know you can hear, Dean."
"How's your brother, Whatsisface, Deanie, honey?"
"And stop pretending to be senile. Jesus."
Deanie shot him a grin. "Hey, there's thirty-nine of us in my generation. He can't be expected to remember all our names,"
"Used to remember every name of every goddamned person we saved when we were hunting, he can remember his own great-great-grandkids," Sam grumbled, then blinked. "Thirty-nine?"
"Betsy Jo had her third last night."
Dean, who'd been blinking steadily at both of them like he was watching a tennis match, pumped his real fist in the air. "Thirty-nine! Beat that with a stick!"
Deanie grinned, then dug out a photo cube, which she set down on top of the chess board. A life sized hologram of a sleeping infant immediately sprung to life, the name "Arun Harvelle Haryadi" floating in the space just below the dark-skinned child's chin. Dean examined both the child and the name, the same doofy grin he'd worn at the pictures of all thirty-eight of little Arun's cousins spreading across his face.
"Betsy Jo and Nitin are both doing just fine," Deanie assured them, once she got Dean's attention again. "Shanta and Mary are staying with Mama Joni until they're ready to come home." Dean nodded, still grinning, and turned to waggle his eyebrows at Sam.
"Thirty-nine!" He crowed again. Sam sighed.
"Yeah, Dean. I heard her, just like you did."
Dean rolled his eyes, then poked at the holographic baby for a few more moments. "Can't wait to meet him in person."
Sam felt his frustration die down into a fond exasperation. "Yeah," he said finally, looking down at where Dean's finger was just barely poking into the hologram's belly. "Me, too."
Dean's own smile softened. "Thirty-nine, Sammy. We got thirty-nine great-great-grandkids."
"I know, Dean."
Deanie reached out to rub both the brothers on their shoulders and said a quiet goodbye, claiming she had to get back to work. "The windows won't re-salt themselves." She pressed a kiss to Dean's temple as she gathered up the cube, then another to Sam's before she started walking away. Dean leaned his head against his half-melted false hand and peered at Sam knowingly.
"You look like crap, Sam. Those rashes acting up on you again?"
Sam groaned.
* * *
"So, let me get this straight," Dean peered steadily down at the type-pad he'd finally forced Sam to write his issue down in. "You dreamed Robot-Ratchett would die a flaming death on your ceiling for weeks before it did," He tapped the screen, then turned that peering gaze on Sam. "And you didn't tell me about it?"
"I told you six times, Dean, you refused to listen!"
"For the last time you senile moron, I'm deaf!"
Sam growled. It turned into a hacking cough halfway through, but he brought his cane around, hitting the button for the bullhorn, and raised it to his lips.
The damned bullhorn exploded. Sam let out a squawk and dropped the cane, falling backwards into a nearby chair. "The hell?"
Dean's hand hovered over a button on the arm of his wheelchair that Sam had never noticed before. His wrinkled lips curved up in a smirk.
"That damned thing'd be the reason I'm freakin' deaf, you moron. Psychic my left nut."
Sam sighed, not bothering to try to get back up from his chair. "You don't have a left nut any more, Dean,"
Dean blinked. "Oh yeah."
* * *
Dean still wasn't taking Sam's visions seriously, right up until the moment that Sam vanished while on a mission to get his chair-bound brother an extra slice of boysenberry pie.
Sam had to assume that Dean started taking him seriously, then. Not that he ever expected to find out.
He woke up lying on a broken down door that looked to be about as stiff and useless as his entire body felt in the frosty weather. He poked his wrist-com a few times, but the damned thing was about as frozen as his joints were and refused to connect with any of the thousands of available satellites, on any of the available networks.
"Competition my ass. No better than any damned monopoly, now, is it."
He sighed heavily and, after about twenty minutes worth of grunting and grabbing onto things and hoping he didn't get a staff infection from a misplaced splinter or something, he finally made it to his feet.
He was really, really missing his cane right about now.
"Hello?!" He shuffled his way slowly forward into the oddly nineteenth century little town, his hands tucked into the sleeves of his old, threadbare sweatshirt. "Anybody?!"
A whispery, rattling voice echoed from behind him, and Sam wished fervently for some salt. Dean was right, dammit, a good hunter should never "retire". Why the hell hadn't he listened? He spun -- well, turned as quickly as he could, which wasn't very, the way the cold was making his joints ache -- to look for the source of the specterish noise.
A man about his own age leaned against the doorway of what looked like it might have once been a post office. Or possibly a brothel. He wore scrub-clothes and a backpack-mounted personal oxygen tank, but his eyes were bright and sharp as they watched Sam move. He spoke again, the same horrible, dead voice.
"Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuude," He took a deep breath at the end of the prolonged syllable. "Where are we?"
"How the hell should I know?"
The man shrugged and limped slowly from his perch by the door, across the boardwalk, to lean heavily against one of the support poles for the balcony above him (and yeah, Sam decided, that definitely used to be a brothel). "Don't think . . ." *gasp, wheeze* ". . . we're in Oklahoma any more."
"That's Kansas."
"This is . . . Kansas?"
"No, the line, the line is -- nevermind."
The man started wheezing, and Sam wondered if there was actually any oxygen flowing through the canula under his nose. Then he straightened abruptly. "Artistic license!" He howled, and Sam realized the wheezing was actually laughter. Finally, he extended a stained, shaking hand. "Name's Andy. You?"
"Sam," Sam said, and took his hand.
As it turned out, there were three others who were stranded here just the same way Sam and Andy were. Two women, Ava and Lilly, and cranky old vet named Jake. They all shuffled together into the brothel to sort things out, which, naturally, included a long inventory of their various aches and pains, and something a bit more interesting.
"Powers?" Ava grumbled. "Nope. No powers. Dreaming dead people, but I been doing that for years."
"I touch people, and their hearts stop," Lilly offered, tucked back away from the others, her hands buried in an oversized sweater. "Didn't think it was anything until it was my doctor. Only thirty years old, he didn't have any right to have any heart conditions."
"Mind control," was Andy's contribution. "Can . . . tell people . . . what to do." His voice was as papery and shredded as usual. "Doesn't do me a whole . . . lot of good . . . when my voice . . . is shot." He wheezed quietly for a moment, then continued. "Woulda . . . laid off the . . . bong a little, I'da known,"
Jake's power was obvious, considering that he'd already carried both Andy and Ava into the brothel. At the same time, no less.
"So what the hell are we all doing here?" Sam wondered aloud.
No one knew.
* * *
In the end trying to figure out what to do about all of them being there was just about as difficult as figuring out why they were there in the first place. Lilly was all for just walking out, but that was easy for her to say. She and Jake still had their original knees.
Sam wanted to hole up in one of the abandoned buildings with as much iron and salt as they could all manage, but no one much wanted to listen to him. The general consensus seemed to be that Sam was completely off his nut, and that was too bad, too, according to Ava, who seemed perfectly happy to rattle on at length about how Sam was still pretty cute and even had most of his hair, and she hadn't gotten any since her husband had passed away ten years ago.
The fact that they were all born in 1983 and all outlived their significant others seemed to be something, at least. Well, until Sam pointed out that his older brother was still around, too, and had managed to rig up his wheelchair to fire tiny incendiary devices at the push of a button. They didn't believe him about the demons, but they were perfectly willing to believe that.
And wasn't that just the story of Sam's life. No one believed in the supernatural. But they all believed in Dean.
It grew dark, eventually, with all of them still sitting in their circle of chairs, and they nodded off, one by one, until only Sam was awake, sitting up and trying to figure out how to contact at least one of the members of his extended hunter family.
"I wouldn't try it, Sammy-boy," a voice said from behind him. "Wouldn't want any of those cute little bitches getting hurt, now, would you?"
Sam turned about as quickly as he could, and found himself looking into sickly yellow eyes grinning at him out of a middle aged male face.
"Who the hell are you, then?"
"Me? I'm the one you've been trying to warn your new little friends about all night." The man walked up and set his hands firmly on the arms of Sam's chair. "The one your daddy just never got around to finding, did he."
Sam frowned at that. It had been so long since he and Dean had given up on finding any leads to the thing that got their mother that it took him a moment to remember that that was what had gotten them started in the business in the first place.
"You bastard," Sam replied, not with much enthusiasm, he had to admit. "You stuck that RNA to my ceiling, too, didn't you."
"What can I say, Sammy, she got in my way."
"She was a robot," Sam pointed out.
The demon frowned. "Really?" He peered closer at Sam. "How old are you?"
"Eighty-eight."
The demon straightened, looked around at the sleeping forms of his companions. "Eighty -- crap." He reached up to rub his forehead. "I knew I shouldn't have let Beezlebub talk me into that game of darts. I'm sixty-six years late!"
Sam started laughing.
"Still, better late than never," and the demon started to grin again. "How'd you like to know what you're all doing here?"
Sam shrugged. "Pretty sure you're going to tell me, anyway."
And he did. In a narrative that involved a fair amount of gloating and gratuitous flashbacks, the demon explained his plan for Sam and "all the children" like him, up to and including this little free-for-all, to-the-death battle royal he had planned out. That last bit got Sam laughing again.
"You think we're going to kill each other? Andy and I can barely walk! Ava's so busy reliving her long and happy marriage with a man apparently hung like a horse that she'd never get around to figuring out how to kill anybody, and Jake and Lilly just want to go home. Hell, that's all any of us want. Sixty-six years ago, you maybe would've had a chance. Now you're just lucky my Latin's a little rusty."
The demon winked. "We'll see about all that, Sammy-boy. We'll see."
* * *
Sam woke to a strangely familiar rumbling noise in the distance. He thought it might be thunder, but his knees weren't aching enough for there to be rain coming. He sat up as straight as he could in his uncomfortable chair and peered around.
"Where's Ava?"
"Haven't seen her since we woke up," Jake answered. "Probably got spooked off by that yellow-eyed bastard trying to tell us we're gonna kill each other."
"You dreamed him, too?"
"We all did," Lilly said at not much more than a whisper, a small smile on her face. "Well? Snap to. . . . I'm getting tired of all this nonsense, anyway. Death might be nice."
"Not me," Andy rasped. "I still . . . gotta bong-load . . . at home . . . with my name . . . on it! Best damned . . . eyesight in the . . . county, man,"
At least, Sam was pretty sure that was what he said. It was hard to hear him over the rumbling.
Definitely not thunder. But Sam'd heard it before.
Then an obnoxious, electronic horn started beeping Dixie and Sam brought his shaking palm to his face.
"Well," he said. "That'd be my brother,"
They all shuffled their way outside, Jake carrying Andy like he was a one pound sack of flour, and watched as the Winchester Clan mini-bus (local chapter S.D. #26) came rolling in right over the fallen trees, rocks, and saplings that blocked the what Sam could now see had once been a road, Grand-Dame Bobbette Winchester sitting behind the wheel with her father, Dean himself, grinning away beside her.
And the Yellow-eyed man was suddenly there, standing in the mini-bus's path, a look of shock and fury on his face. "You!"
"Bobbette, honey," Dean could be heard saying, even over the roar of the engine. "Hand daddy his colt."
"No can do, Dad," Bobbette stuck her arm out the window, an antique gun in her hand. She lowered her chin to peer through the distance end of her trifocals. "You know I have better aim,"
And she did.
* * *
"Told you I was having visions,"
"What?! Can't hear you, Sammy, I'm deaf!!"
* * *
Sam leaned against his new cane in the middle of the street in Cold Oak, looking over his extended family. Deanie and her brother George (and come on now, was that such a hard name to remember? Just because it wasn't some variation of Dean, Sam, John, Mary, Bobby, Jim, Caleb, Jo, or Ellen. . . .) were telling some sort of joke to Andy which hand him doubled over in wheezes. Deanie's uncle El was helping Lilly into a pair of leather gloves, her great-aunt Samantha trading war stories with Jake. "Five generations of Winchesters. I can't believe it."
Bobbette set her arm gently over his shoulders, looking to where Dean was rolling out of a barn with a happy looking Ava perched on his lap. "Just be happy that Dad talked my son-in-law's family into hacking into the satellite system and running a facial recognition software on the photos." She shrugged. "Not that it was hard to do. The Patel-Haryadi branch was frantic, trying to figure out a way they could help find you. Nitin was even talking about flying over from New Delhi, and he's got little Arun to look after."
Sam nodded. "Was wondering how you all found me. Of course, if Dean had listened to me in the first place --"
"He's deaf, Uncle Sam."
"He is not, he's just pretending. I know my brother."
"He is," Bobbette countered. "El there checked him out himself. Been deaf as a brick since 2059."
Sam blinked and swallowed. "Oh. Well, he's still a stubborn jerk."
Bobbette laughed. "Well, yes." She patted him on the shoulder, then went to go tug Ava off her father's lap. Dean came motoring on up to smack Sam in the hip.
"Hey, bitch! Saved your ass again!!"
Sam grinned and made sure he was leaning close enough for Dean to be able to read his lips before replying. "Five generations, man. Took you five generations of Winchesters to find me."
Dean broke into a broad grin. "Look closer, Sammy. It's six."
Sam immediately looked at Deanie, figuring she'd gotten pregnant or something while he wasn't looking, but the 18 year old's stomach was still as flat as ever and she was wearing her birth control bracelet. He wondered if he should ask if George was pregnant, but then he saw him.
John Winchester, looking just as he must have the day he went out on his last hunt so many years before, flickered in and out of sight on the edge of the tree line. He caught Sam's eye and nodded briefly before vanishing from sight.
"Dean, that was --" Sam cut himself off, realizing he wasn't facing his brother, then turned and started again. "That was --"
"Yep." Dean patted his hip again. "Dunno how, since we salted and burned his ass over fifty years ago, but that was him. He's the one who clued us in on where to find that old Colt."
"Wow."
"Yep." Dean started rolling off, slow enough that Sam could hang on to the back of the chair and follow along. "Now come on, bitch, I promised Andy I'd show 'im the armrest-mounted mini-canon."
Sam grimaced. "That's why you're deaf, Dean."
"What?!" Dean twisted and shot Sam a small wink. "Sammy, I can't hear you bitching at me, I'm deaf!"
Right. And if anyone could fool the state of the art equipment that El no doubt tested him with, it was Dean. So Sam did the only thing he could do.
He smacked Dean upside the head.
"Ow! Bitch!"
"Jerk,"
The End