Spoilers for S11&this is happening in S11. I own nothing and I am sorry for all grammar/spelling mistakes that you are for sure gonna find. I haven't written anything in a long time, so I thought why not write something ... simple. :) Don't get me wrong, I loooove the show, but sometimes I re-watch S1-S3 just for how things were simpler back then. *shrugs* maybe that's just me.
Things hadn't always been this way. There'd been times when it'd been Sam, and him, and Baby. Open road from west to east, north to south. States blurring into one another; no definition, just a sign here and there declaring leaving one and entering another. Cities, towns, small town folk with whatever monsters ailed them ... get in, look around, get the job done, get out. They knew they had no time for friendships that would last, no time for making any long term commitments, but they still somehow managed to leave a mark, leave people they never really meant to know, behind. They had no time, but time for the job. Hunting, saving people.
No time, no need really, to put down any roots.
There'd been times when it'd all been about packing a bag after a job done; stuffing clothes into a backpack not really caring much about stains and wrinkles and bad smell. Sometimes there hadn't even been time to pack at all, before the cops or an angry mob would get to them for desecrating whatever small town folk considered sacred to them. Graves, more times than not. Loved ones in any shape and form; bones or with their hearts still beating.
He'd had loved ones, he knew love; one had always been sitting in the passenger seat, the other one had been ... lost somewhere in the great US of A until he got dragged down to Hell and the third one had been living in a junk yard. And the fourth one – the fourth one always made sure he made it safely from point a to point b.
There'd been times of getting into his beauty of a black car and driving off into the sunset, or pitch darkness, depending on how their mood stroke. Then, the only itch he felt beneath his skin, had been an itch to feel asphalt beneath the wheels and pedal to the metal, listening to the roar of his Baby stretching her wings and all but flying down the road. There'd been times when music was blasting from the speakers, drums and guitars vibrating the seat beneath his ass, and times when the music was turned down low, landscape flying by the window and his brother's soft snores comforting the fear in him.
Times when Sam'd been in the passenger seat; sleeping, eating, complaining about the music or simply ... existing. Breathing.
Alive.
There'd been times when the monsters could be found in their Dad's journal, or in the dusty books hidden in the deepest corners of the local libraries. Monsters that followed patterns, monsters that could've been killed with a knife or a gun or fire. Decapitation, now that one always worked when all else failed. Monsters that had been known to them and not monsters that they knew. Personally.
There'd been times when the Devil and demons and angels and God were things bigger than he and Sam, bigger and unknown and forces not to screw with. They didn't exist in their Dad's journal.
But now? Now ...
... those times are gone. They've got a home; sure it's more or less a bunker probably tough enough to withstand an atomic bomb going off and doesn't that just make him feel as if he's a sardine in a can? Stuck. Crowded by books and rooms and proper beds and his brother and everyone else that ever comes to this place. There's even a kitchen, a proper kitchen with appliances and a fridge and plates and cups and weren't there times when coffee was something made in a no name diner that smelled of onions and grease? But then again, he loves it. Can stretch his fingers and cook, make real food and not something he microwaves at a minimart.
Now he has a place to make his own and boy, did he make this place his own. Has a bedroom that's all his and he made sure that it looks just perfect. That whoever would step in his room, the room would scream 'I'm Dean's'. He likes it that way. Sam on the other hand … just needs a bit more time to soften up. The kid never had his own room before, probably thinks he's gonna lose this one too. The 'hang in there kitty' poster will just have to wait a little longer.
Now, he's on a first name basis with the Devil, with demons, with angels and perhaps even with God himself. He sure is 'comfy' with God's sister and that was never something he'd ever imagine being when he picked his little brother up from college.
Dad's on a hunting trip and he hasn't been home in a few days.
Now if Dad'd been missing, he'd just pick up the phone, call Castiel and have him track his Dad down. Piece of delicious pie. No worries, no sweat, no baby brother having major fits about it.
Times have surely changed.
-:-
He grabbed the six pack of beer from the fridge 'cause the evening called for a six pack and no less - but perhaps more - and walked to the map room. They had a fridge, had a hallway, had a 'map room'. A room. He had a room, Sam had a room. It was mind boggling, 's what it was. Bending the mind, bending the space-time continuum ... that's what staying in this bunker was doing to him. That's what having a safe haven was doing to him. It always used to be Bobby's junkyard that was the safe haven and now ... he did wonder, when his socks cleaned the dust from the hallway on the way to the map room, what Bobby would say to all of this. Hell, what Dad would say to all of this. What would his Dad say to his boys being the Legacies? Not getting the lore on monsters out of his journal anymore, but from books and tomes and files left behind by the people his Dad was supposed to have been.
He smiled and shook his head.
"Gotcha some refreshment." he waved the pack in the air and smiled at his brother's hungry gaze. Sam might be a prude in so many departments, but drinking wasn't one of them.
"Thanks."
He nodded and sat down in a chair opposite Sam who had the freshly opened bottle in his left hand and the fingers of his right buried in some text of a really thick looking book.
"Find anything?"
"Nah, nothing much."
There were times when Sam'd say so get this and they'd be on their merry way to kill something.
"Hey."
He raised his beer and waited for Sam's to join and when the bottles clinked, the sound travelled down his fingers and arm just like it did through the spacious rooms.
"You'll find something."
"Yeah..."
Sam always found something.
That hadn't ever changed, even if the simplicity of the old days had.
The End