Hello again! Thank you guys SO SO SO SO much for all of your kind reviews and thoughts! I've loved each and every one of them. I only had a few minutes to reread through this, so I apologize for any mistakes! Thank you for reading!
Bobby put his keys on the table next to the front door. The highways were brutal, there had been two accidents, and hundreds of rubberneckers. Bobby had a theory that if people didn't slow down to look at the carnage left behind by two cars going high velocities and crashing into one another, that an accident wouldn't shut down a major highway for hours, or make the traffic crawl at an infinitesimal speed. He supposed that if these people had seen half of the horrors that he had in his lifetime, they wouldn't be so inclined to look at the mangled bodies and metal on the highway.
He shrugged the thoughts off, and went deeper into his house. He expected to see Sam in the kitchen, on the phone, probably with Holbrook again, and Dean sitting at the table with him drinking a cup of coffee researching the hunt they were talking about attempting this weekend, but the phones were on their hooks, Dean's laptop wasn't even open, and no Winchester brother was to be found. Then he heard it. He heard the yelling coming from the back yard. It sounded like Dean was shouting at…Bobby waited a moment and realized that it was the voice of Andrew Winchester.
"Balls!" Bobby muttered and strode towards the back door, picking up his trusty shot gun on the way out.
Andrew was about six inches from Dean's face, drunk and yelling about how Dean was a liar, and Bobby found himself impressed that Dean wasn't the one shouting back. No one got in Dean's face like that and expected to get out unscathed. But there Dean stood, back bowed slightly away from the taller man, and nose at an angle trying not to inhale the man's booze breath. What was impressive was that it was Sam yelling. Sam had taken over the verbal assault. It was Sam, who was standing behind Dean, taller and straighter than Bobby had seen in a long time, yelling back at granddaddy Winchester. Bobby noted that he would have to take a moment to be impressed by the display after he took control of the situation and got the obnoxious man off of his property. Bobby cocked the shot gun, the sound silenced Sam, and would have silenced Andrew as well if he hadn't been yelling loud enough that his neighbors three miles away could hear it. So, to get the man to shut up, Bobby put the shotgun in Andrew's chest and nudged the elder man away from Bobby's boys.
"I suggest you quit yelling at my boys." Bobby said calmly.
Dean swallowed, the last time Bobby pulled a shotgun on someone was their dad. And that memory made Dean sad and uncomfortable all at the same time.
"Your boys?" Andrew slurred. "They aren't your boys. They are my son's boys. You have no right…"
"I have every right in the world. Their daddy is gone, and someone needs to watch over them, and that's what I've been doin'."
"They are grown men, they don't need someone to watch over them. What are you, some kind of pervert?"
Bobby pushed the shotgun a little harder against the man's chest. "I understand you're grieving, over your son, and I'm gonna assume, judging by the state you're in, your wife too. I respect that. I've been there couple of times myself. And I'm going to give you the benefit of a second chance. You either get your act together, and state your business, or you will get your ass off of my property and away from my boys. I ain't going to ask you again."
"I'd believe that too if I were you." Dean said casually. "Gave that same ultimatum to Dad, and Dad was never allowed back."
"Now. What do you want?"
Andrew swayed a little and then said, "These boys, of yours are liars. You know that? Liars."
"Are they now?" Bobby asked. "And you came all of the way out here to tell me, to tell them even, that they are liars?"
"I want the truth."
"What truth are you looking for?" Sam asked bitterly. "Truth you want to hear?"
"No, damnit! I want the truth about my son."
"That is one thing that we did not lie about." Dean said angrily.
"I don't trust you." The distraught man said. For the first time since they had met their grandfather they saw him as a weak and fragile old man. Sam and Dean shared a look. He stood there in the muddy ground of a South Dakota salvage yard trying to reconcile the loss of his only son and the loss of his wife. Sam and Dean both knew what it felt like to lose the one person in your life that meant the most to you, and they knew that grief made one do crazy things, and sympathy replaced the bitterness in Sam's stomach, and sympathy began to abate the anger in Dean.
Dean took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Come inside."
"We'll talk." Sam finished. Bobby nodded taking his cue from the boys, and lowered the shot gun.
Sam turned and walked in first, followed by Dean. Andrew stood there dumbfounded. "I suggest you go in there. Them boys can forgive family one time, then it's done. You better not screw this up." Andrew nodded. "Go. Git in there." Bobby said and gestured with the shotgun to the door that had just closed behind Dean.
SNSNSNSNSN
Once inside they Andrew sat down at the table Sam had occupied most of the afternoon, and Dean and Sam stood at the kitchen counter, arms and ankles crossed, casualness that only the skilled observers of Winchesters would know was deceptive. Both bodies mirrors of each other, Bobby had to repress a smile, the boys were back on the same page, they were once again comfortable with each other, they trusted each other again, and their synchronous body language confirmed it.
Bobby put a bottle of water in front of the older man. "Might want to drink this, help you get sober, this might be a long conversation." Andrew took a sip from the holy water infused bottle of water. The sound of the bottle being returned to the table was the only sound in the little kitchen. Andrew stared at the boys, and the boys stared at the man who tradition dictated they should call grandfather. It was a staring contest of Winchester proportions, and one didn't often engage in such practices with two stubborn men who had survived the depths of hell, but Andrew didn't know any better, but ignorance wasn't going to be Andrew's saving grace.
"You lied to me." Andrew grumbled.
"We did." Dean said.
"You boys weren't in the military."
"We both served in a form of military. We just let you believe it was one sanctioned by the government." Sam said.
"If it wasn't a military sanctioned by the government, what the hell kind of service have you boys been in?"
"One that is very important to this world. We were on the front lines saving the world from the apocalypse." Sam said chin angled up with a hint of pride that he had never felt before when he thought of what he and Dean had done for the world: grief, pain, guilt, loss, worry, and panic, those were emotions that were common, that usually filled both of them up to the point of overflowing, but somewhere in the healing process, somewhere in conversations with his brother over his role in the near destruction of the world, guilt had abated and a sprinkling of pride was filling the gaps left behind by the receding emotion.
Andrew snorted. "I must be drunker than I thought. You aren't making any sense boy."
"We saved the world from the devil and a crazy ass angel." Dean said. "Is that plain English enough for you dude?"
"You boys are delusional." Andrew turned to Bobby. "You can't tell me you believe this nonsense."
Bobby shrugged. "I'd like to think I had a hand in the saving of the world too."
"Oh, so you are all nuts." Andrew put his head in his hands. "I ask for the truth and you give me nonsense?" Andrew got up and headed for the back door.
"You leave, you may not get another chance to ask your questions." Sam said without looking at him. "It's true. You can look it up. You might want to start with your family tree. Your side of the family houses the vessel line."
"What? Vessel? What are you talking about?"
"We're descendants of Cain and Able. The two brothers who went postal on each other. Look it up." Dean said and pushed away from the kitchen counter to look at Andrew. "Well, let's just say, the devil needed some skin, and so did Michael, because they are two douche brothers who don't know how to keep their petty squabbles in their own backyard and tried to drag me and Sammy into it. They made some judgment errors."
Sam snorted a laugh. "That's an understatement."
"And let's just say we beat them at their own game." Andrew stood there and stared at them as if they both had grown a second head and a second set of arms. "Your son raised us to hunt evil. Taught us how to protect ourselves, and how to survive. We've hunted ghosts, we've hunted vampires…"
"Skinwalkers, shapeshifters," Sam picked up the list, "We've even hunted fairies. You name it. We've hunted it."
"And that's the God's honest truth." Dean said into the unbelieving face of Andrew Winchester.