Aaaaaaargh! Aaaaaaaaargh! The bunnies! The bunnies! THEY WILL NOT STOP! MAKE THEM STOOOOOP!
This one will stand as a one-shot, just a little glimpse into the future in the Jimiverse, unless those damned rabbits come up with a job to drag the Winchesters out of retirement...
DISCLAIMER: Not mine, I just prod them to see if they do anything amusing.
TITLE: Grumpy Old Men
RATING: T. Because words. And Dean. And words. And Dean. And Dean words.
SUMMARY: Time catches up with everybody eventually, even the inhabitants of Singer Salvage. Growing older is unavoidable, but growing up, that's optional...
BLAME: Lies entirely with the Denizens, especially the ones who asked for something like this, and especially especially whoever sent this plot bunny *shakes fist*
Sam peered at his notes, then into the mortar where he was grinding his components. He adjusted his glasses, and felt a small stab of amusement that he didn't need bifocals like his brother. Yet, anyway. It was probably only a matter of time. Of course, when it became necessary, he wouldn't complain like hell the way Dean had, he'd just accept that his body was ageing and learn to use them, not walk around bumping into things and shouting at newpapers for being printed too closely and yell at screens for being too fuzzy, like somebody he could name did...
He added a pinch of the dried rosemary flowers that he'd carefully collected last time the gnarled almost-tree had flowered with its unusual blood-red petals. Zara, it had been, he thought fondly, his eyes might be going, but he remembered the names of all the dogs 'brought home' by their Hunters, big men and hard women reduced to sobbing kids as they scattered the ashes of a fallen friend around the large, sprawling shrub, where the dog would have played as a pup. The rosemary always bloomed afterwards, and over the last few years he'd found that it could do some amazing things.
Of course, other Hunters mostly were kids these days compared to the Winchesters, he thought to himself.
"Okay," he muttered, tipping some small piles of the mix onto a white ceramic tile, "I think we're ready to rock and roll here. Ladies!"
A couple of ageing Rottweilers, sprawled by the fire, lifted their grizzled heads to grin doggily at him, then yawned, and resumed their snoozing.
"Hey!" Sam called them in mock outrage, "Where's your sense of scientific enquiry?" One dog thumped her tail on the floor, while the other exerted just enough effort to roll onto her back in the universal canine appeal for a belly rub.
With an exaggerated sigh, he got up from his chair. "Well, if the mountain must come to Mohammed," he grinned at them, kneeling carefully to avoid jarring anything, because his joints sometimes ached something shocking in the cold these days, and obliged.
"Come on, then, you degenerate freeloaders," he ordered, brandishing his swabs, "Work for your kibble, you lazy pensioners! Open up in the name of research!" Mercury yawned again, and lolled her tongue at him as he ran the swab around the inside of her mouth, while Shiloh tried to nibble the swab, and whuffed happily at the game she thought he was playing.
"Hey! Let go of that!" he laughed, wiggling the swab in her mouth, "Let go! Philistine!" Shiloh whuffed cheerfully again, and extruded her snaggled hellteeth for one last snap at the swab. "Aaaaaaargh!" Sam snatched his hand away. "Whose side are you on here?" She made a contented grumphing noise, and pushed her head under his hand for pats. "Hedonist," he chided her.
The two elderly dogs followed him back to the table, where he rubbed each swab in a small pile of the greeny-black crumble on the tile. The first one didn't do much, just turned into a dark grey-green glob of slobber. The second one didn't look like it was going to do much, then...
As he watched, the end of the swab began to glow, and pulse with heatless red light, like a cyalume glow stick. A smile broke out across his face, dimples still clear on the weathered skin. "Aha!" he declared to the dogs, "Ladies, we have ignition!" Both dogs stood and wagged their tails at his happy tone, Shiloh's eyes whirling gently with the dark red of dying embers. "This is great," he mused, half to himself and half to the dogs. The deep rumbling of the Impala's engine signalled his brother's return. "Dean will be pleased to hear this," he told them. "Well, after he comes in and yells for his lunch. And," he shuddered, "Gives me a disgustingly detailed description of his morning's 'activities'..."
Sam put down the swabs and headed for the kitchen. Bobby was already there.
"It works," he grinned at the greyed old man who was practically his father, "The Winchester Hellhound Lineage Detection Kit works!"
"Yeah?" Bobby's face was as lined as a road map as he smiled. "Well done, kid. You think you can get it to quantify the Blood in a particular dog?"
"Probably," Sam nodded. Bobby grunted in satisfaction, and got on with his preparations – it became apparent that French toast with bacon was on the menu.
"Bobby," Sam sighed, "You're supposed to be avoiding undercooked eggs and fatty meat."
"Yeah?" Bobby squinted at him. "Says who?"
"Dr Alderton says..."
"Bah! A pox on Doctor Alderton!" the elderly Hunter snapped. "Doctor Alderton would have me living on lettuce, Sustagen and Metamucil if she had her way! That woman is on a crusade, Sam, a crusade to make what's left of my life as miserable as possible!"
"She's your doctor, Bobby," Sam tried not to roll his eyes, "She's thinking of your health. At your age, you should be avoiding..."
"I should be avoiding doctors who tell me what I should be avoiding," Bobby grumped. "You ever considered exorcisin' her?"
"No," Sam said through clenched teeth, "Because she's not possessed, Bobby, she's a medical practitioner."
"She's a sadist, is what she is," Bobby shot back. "Avoid booze! Avoid cheese! Avoid salami and pepperoni! Moderate red meat! That woman is some sort of changeling variant, Sam, only instead of sucking away life energy, she sucks away fun..."
"I've always found her to be professional and courteous," Sam told him. "She just wants you to be as healthy as you can be. So you can live as long as possible with a good quality of life."
"Oh, goody," scoffed Bobby, peeling rashers from the bacon packet, "I'll live another ten years, that's another ten years to be hungry and miserable and pizza-deprived! Look at me, everybody! I'm more 'n a hundred years old, my colon is the strongest muscle in my body, I'm the most regular man in the nursing home – all the nurses set their watches by my bowel habits – and I'm so hungry I could eat my own incontinence pad!"
"Oh, God," moaned Sam, "Bobby..."
"I'm not goin' for it, Sam! I gotta die of something, and I'd rather die of bacon than of bran and boredom!" Bobby broke more eggs into the bowl. "I don't wanna live long enough to be shipped off to one of those places," he muttered, "I've chased down, faced down and dispatched some of the most evil damned sumbitches that roam God's green Earth, and I deserve better! I'd rather die in a congealing pool of bacon grease than a pool of my own drool."
"You know we won't let that happen," Sam sighed, getting a pan out of a cupboard. "You can stay in your own home. When needs must, we can get a visiting nurse to help you out with any daily activities you might need help with..."
"Aint no strange wimmen followin' me into the shower," declared Bobby. "And the day I can't take myself to the can is the day I blow my own head off."
"You're as bad as Dean," Sam shook his head.
"Nope," countered Bobby, at the sound of feet on the porch steps, "At least I don't regale you with tales of, well, you know." He shuddered. "Crap, I hate that bit," he muttered. "I'd swear she dips her hands in ice water first..."
"Well, not this time," said Sam firmly. "There are some things that nobody should have to listen to, and a blow by blow description of... that is one of them. This year, I am putting my foot down."
"Good luck," offered Bobby fatalistically.
The dogs made their way to the door, woofing and wagging their tails as Dean came banging through, pulling off his jacket.
"Hey, girls, you been keeping an eye on Francis and Methuselah for me?" he asked them as they greeted him. "Is this lunch? Oh, cool, French toast and bacon!"
"Dean," huffed Sam in exasperation, "You've just come from your annual check-up, and I just know that you've been told to lay off the fatty food and booze..."
"Just like every other year," shrugged Dean, helping himself to a beer from the refrigerator. "Don't get your panties in a twist. I got the cholesterol levels of a 40-year old, the muscle tone of a 40-year-old, the heart-lung capacity of a 40-year old..."
"And the liver of a guy in his nineties," finished Sam.
"Ah, so that's where it went!" cackled Bobby. "Give me back my liver, you asshat!"
"You guys are unbelievable," sighed Sam in resignation.
"Don't you talk to me about unbelievable," replied Dean, "I'll tell you something unbelievable, I sure as hell didn't believe it, I went along for my appointment, right, just to keep my baby bro happy, because the Living Sex God might be well past the halfway mark but he remains a magnificent physical specimen, and does not need an annual physical, I only do it to humour you, and because Doctor Alderton is kinda hot for her age, in an uptight sort of way, so I turn up, and put on that stupid paper gown, and then..."
"Hold it!" barked Sam. "Stop right there!"
"What?" Dean looked bewildered.
"You heard me!" Sam told him. "Stop right there!"
"What's wrong?" Dean asked. "I'm just telling you about..."
"And I don't want to know!" Sam snapped. "You do this every year, Dean! Every year! And I'm sick of it!"
"Well, you're the one who's so keen for me to go," Dean replied, "I thought you'd want to hear all the gory details."
"Well, I don't!" Sam was emphatic. "You don't tell me to keep me informed Dean, you tell me to squick me out! You are a depraved individual..."
"She's an attractive professional older woman, Sam," grinned Dean, "If she'd just let her hair down – I've fantasised about sinking my teeth into her bun, you know..."
"I said, I don't want to hear it!" repeated Sam. "So, shut the hell up!"
"You know, you could consider it intel for when you go," Dean began.
"No!" Sam cut him off. "Be quiet! Stop it! I don't want to hear it, Dean! I seriously do not want to hear it! You do this every year, and this year, I do not want to hear it! Do you understand? I do NOT want to hear the details of your prostate exam, you pervert!"
"Mine's like that of a 40-year-old," grinned Dean smugly, "Because I've kept it well exercised. Yours, on the other hand, is that of a guy in his nineties..."
"I don't want that back," Bobby interrupted, "You can keep it, I got no use for it."
Sam sank into a chair and dropped his head into his hands. "I hate you so much," he moaned.
"Have some bacon on French toast, Sam," grinned Dean. Sam glared at his brother; in his sixties, the Killer Smile had hardly dimmed at all. "It's not too late, you know," Dean went on, "You should go along to some of those seniors' aquarobics classes that Doc A. is always going on about. There are a number of ladies of an appropriate age who look damned fine in their bathing suits."
"How would you know?" queried Sam.
"Because I went along to one," replied Dean.
"What?" Sam snorted in disbelief. "You never did an aquarobics class in your life!"
"Well, of course I didn't do the class," Dean rolled his eyes, "I just went along to watch. I'm serious, bro, a lot of those ladies have made an effort..."
"Oh, God," moaned Sam, "Whatever happened to growing old gracefully?"
"Getting old is not for wimps, Sam," Dean asserted, "And life is too short to do aquarobics. Unless you're doing it to meet women. You gotta do something. You need to get laid, Sam. Have you got laid any time in the last decade? Do you even remember how to jerk off? Do we need to talk to Doctor Alderton about getting you some little blue pills?"
"You don't, you know," Bobby commented, "You can get 'em over the counter from the drugstore these days, you just gotta discuss it with the pharmacist."
"I don't want to know why you know that," griped Sam, as Bobby cackled and Dean grinned. "I got the test for Hellhound heritage working," he went on, trying to change to direction of the conversation.
"Do you think Doctor A would take the hint if I took along my own flavoured lube next time?" pondered Dean out loud.
Sam shot his brother a well-practised Bitchface #13™ (You Are So Totally Gross I Don't Have A Bitchface Adequate To Convey My Utter Disgust), and took his plate out of the kitchen.
"That never gets old for you, does it?" Bobby rolled his eyes.
"Nope," grinned Dean, "I've been grossing out my baby bro for so long, I can't imagine not doing it."
"You've got Merlin Syndrome," Bobby told him, "The older you get, the less grown-up you get."
"Growing old is unavoidable, Bobby," Dean shoved another rasher of bacon into his mouth. "But growing up, that's optional."
"Amen," smiled Bobby. "Now, get me a beer, Junior."
Reviews are the Not So Geriatric Winchester Of Your Choice Choosing Not To Grow Up On The Porch Swing Of Life!