#opportunist is Always ready to cheat but cold sees no point calling him out on it unless he actually does it

[stuffed-x-arts]

I think they like to play card games sometimes. Often they drag in others to supsrvise for cheating. (it won't stop them from cheating but it means they've gotta work harder to be sneaky about it and that just adds to the fun!) Cheated has a score-count for everybody. for every different game they play. him vs opportunist. him vs cold. the whole group playing. contrarian is often banned for bringing other card games to the table. he also never gets to supervise despite often asking to. Hero volunteers to supervise a lot but often doesn't catch the cheating so he's denied the role. Cheated, skeptic, opportunist and cold are the best. Broken is also surprisingly good sometimes. Even when he has the best hand he worries he'll screw it up somehow, and his downer attitude tends to convince the others he's gonna lose too. erm thats all i think

i just know these two have the potential to end up breaking into a fight over their silly card games. After cold left and the two eventually got tired of their games and went their separate ways opportunist stuck his leg out so cheated could trip over. they push each other down the stairs, maybe.

[monsters-demons-and-ai-oh-my]

What We Lost and What We Have

I decided to also post the fic on Tumblr since I’m desperate for feedback, and I’m really excited for this AU and I want to know if other people are too... because I really want to know if there’s an audience for it... (also on AO3)

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May 18, 2000, the night Sam learned 3 things.

John had cheated on Mary. Kelly Kline was dead. And his younger half brother Jack was born…

Nearly 17 years later their family never really recovered. But after a panicked phone call from Jack’s uncle Castiel, their family will never be the same.

“It’s Jack, there’s something wrong with Jack…”

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Chapter 1: Exes, siblings, and drunken mistakes

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May 18, 2000

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Sam had just turned 16 two weeks earlier.

Up until that point, the worst thing that had happened to him was being dumped at his sophomore winter formal and having his CD player stolen out of his locker by Bela, the opportunistic klepto of a foreign exchange student from Pre-Cal the same night.

They were celebrating Dean moving into his first solo apartment the night they got the call.

Sam had gone upstairs to get a head start on his summer reading list but he could hear the rest of his family laughing and talking over the game through his cracked bedroom door.

He'd barely even heard the phone ring and his mother getting up to answer it, only taking note after he heard the volume on the television being lowered dramatically.

"What'd you say Mary?" his dad asked, the smile still in his voice.

"I said, do you know a Castiel?" Mary repeated.

"Castiel? I don't think so, maybe someone from the shop, Dean?"

Dean must have shaken his head because he never heard a response.

"Well whoever he is he sounds really upset," Mary sounded concerned.

He couldn't make out what his mother asked the man on the phone but then…

"Castiel Kline?"

There was a deathly silence, curiosity got the better of Sam, he closed his book and went down the stairs. John had gone white as a sheet.

"He says you knew his sister…" Mary turned to look at John, eyebrows raised, "and he really needs to speak to you."

John had nearly snatched the phone from Mary in his haste apologizing profusely.

Sam had stayed hidden by the stairs his entire family looking on as John walked quickly to the kitchen.

Dean looked confused, Mary looked shell shocked. Neither moved.

But Sam did he tiptoed quietly to the kitchen door staying just outside it eavesdropping on one side of John's phone conversation."

"What do you mean she…? Calm down, I can't understand what you’re saying, slow down. What happened?"

John was pacing the room, running a hand through his hair panic in his tone and posture bent like everything teetered on the voice on the other end of the line.

"How can you be sure it's… he's… Kid, I didn't even know she was... I met her once... she never told me!"

Sam heard footsteps and jumped, his mom had finally unfrozen and moved towards the kitchen. She was shaking slightly, her mouth set tightly, eyes watering, he stepped guiltily out of her way.

"John… what's going on?"

The screaming started less than a minute later. Dean eventually pulling him away back toward the living room.

And that night Sam had learned 3 things.

John had cheated on Mary.

Kelly Kline was dead.

And his younger half brother had been born…

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April 21, 2007

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Another night he'd never forget.

Dean had said John had gotten in a car accident when he called him at Stanford, a stupid little fender bender.

The other driver had come around to John’s driver side window pissed off ready to give John a piece of his mind only to find him slumped over, pronounced dead by paramedics on the scene five minutes later, an apparent heart attack behind the wheel.

"I know you don't give a shit about him anymore, but at least come to his fucking funeral."

The years had not been kind to the brother's relationship, but even Sam thought that was uncalled for. He wasn't going to leave Dean alone to deal with the aftermath.

He'd been in the middle of preparing for finals but he’d still come.

Dean hadn’t been big on lawyers ever since the bozo divorce lawyer who’d drawn up John and Mary’s papers had cheated them out of 6k.

He'd missed John’s service but not the burial. Listening to some preacher go on about what a great guy his dad was would only have brought up inappropriate angry thoughts. He knew Dean would be angry he didn’t show up, he would have been angrier if he’d laughed.

So he'd sat in his car until everyone started to leave. One or two great aunts and uncles he’d never met, guys who worked at the auto shop, sundry friends and neighbors. Mary had spotted him and came over knocking softly on the window and giving her son a silent hug before leaving.

When he finally got out there were only three people left.

Jack was six-years-old and tow-head then, - like he’d seen Dean in pictures at that age - hiding on the far side of Castiel, watching them nervously as he was led away from the graveside hand in hand with his uncle.

It had been a weekday so the boy had thankfully been with Castiel at the time of John's death.

His brother was standing at the graveside when Sam approached him, hands stuffed in his pockets swaying side to side. Like he was getting ready to fill in the hole himself if the gravediggers didn’t get there soon. Because it was something he could do with his hands and emotions, taking out his grief on the dirt.

It made Sam a little wary to approach him but he barely looked up and over when Sam came up beside him.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

They’d stood there in silence Sam mentally stumbling over a thousand things to say in his head.

"Well, dad’s... dead.”

He imagined Dean was probably silently seething.

“Maybe I should have asked dad to die at a better time so it fit into your busy schedule.”

Emotions neither one was ready to confront kept them from moving.

“Same time next year?”

Dean had said it sarcastically, and looking back Sam wished they’d had a better story but that was how their little tradition began.

Outside of major holidays or birthdays, it was one of the few times they made an active effort to see each other. Sometimes catching up, other times just visiting the site. Rain or shine, just the two of them.

Until today.

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April 21st, 2017

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“It’s almost fucking summer,” Dean muttered, his breath puffing in the early evening air. He rubbed his hands together before handing Sam an even colder beer. Sam huffed and took it, and making no comment about how that would do next to nothing to help, or about how it was a trashy brand he hadn’t seen since pre-law.

“If it makes you feel better the weather channel says it’s the coldest spring in over a decade..” Sam sipped his beer and grimaced, it reminded him why he’d never been much of party-er in college.

But as Dean once put it “our family were salt of the earth people,” and he wore that fact like an aesthetic badge, like hipsters and the wannabe actors in Cali. Sam grinned a little at the thought.

Dean poured out 79 cents worth of beer for John before cracking open another bottle to drink himself.

“Happy ten years dad,” Dean smiled humorlessly. “Still managed not to burn your shop to the ground…”

He’d been waiting when Sam got there standing and looking down in the exact same way he did ten years previously. Rocking back and forth, processing, contemplating. Sam searched Dean’s back for something to say. A navy canvas covered back.

“You got a new jacket…”

“Huh?” Dean sipped his beer like he hadn’t heard him.

“I’ve always seen you wear Dad’s old leather one,” Sam insisted.

It took a ridiculously long time for him to respond, like Dean had settled on an unspoken rule that he had to wait until Sam's breath completely dissipated into the cool morning air before he could reply.

“Yeah well, maybe it’s too cold today, like you said ‘coldest spring of the decade,’ ever think of that Sammy?”

“It’s just a cool front, it’ll be in the seventies by tomorrow Dean,” Sam said flatly.

Dean fell silent again for a long moment.

“It’s been ten years… it got old, I got a new one, do you need me to psychoanalyze your henley now?”

Sam rolled his eyes in defeat letting the subject drop with another swing of dishwater beer.

If Sam remembered one thing about growing up with his brother it was that Dean was a creature of habit. Dean had never been big on school but he’d insisted on using the same backpack all throughout middle and high school, and one look at the parking lot told Sam he still drove dad’s old Impala, he’d repaired both items multiple times. Dean didn’t get rid of things because “it got old.”

“ It’s been ten years… ”

Maybe it was time for a change.

Sam swallowed in the charged silence, “ change... ” he’d been putting off talking to Dean about that.

He’d done something on impulse. He’d been roped into going out for drinks with his fellow junior partners in his firm after winning a case. Sorting out some accounting error that got at least three people fired. He hated those cases, making sure that companies weren’t liable for random bullshit that meant nothing in the long run. They’d had three like that in the same month. So... after a few drinks… he’d gotten sentimental, started thinking about his life choices, thinking about all the things he hadn’t done yet, the things he regretted.

Sam really should have asked Brady to stash his phone before they got to the bar.

But the secret he’d been keeping reared it’s deceivingly unassuming head before he had a chance to open his mouth..

The silence was broken by a distant but harsh sounding cough.

Dean glanced over his shoulder posture immediately stiffening, eyebrows raising, “What the hell…”

Sam at least had the good grace to look guilty.

Castiel looked about the same as Sam remembered him save for a few lines on his face. The same constant vaguely worried look was made more prominent by whatever he was talking to Jack about.

Jack, on the other hand, had changed a lot. He’d maybe been eleven the last time Sam had seen him. Since then his hair had considerably darkened with age from blond to sandy brown and he’d shot up half a foot. There wasn’t much of John visible in Jack’s face and if his resemblance to his uncle was anything to go by the Kline genetics were strong in him.

He looked a little washed out, blowing his nose in a tissue as they approached, a small bouquet of yellow flowers in his free hand, looking up from his conversation with his uncle to give Sam a cautious smile. Sam looked quickly away.

“I was uh… meaning to talk to you about... this…” Sam looked sheepish.

“Oh you were going to talk to me,” Dean scoffed, “Sam what are Jack and and and… saint Castiel doing here!?”

“I invited them?” Sam scratched the back of his neck awkwardly.

Dean looked lost for words mouthing silently for a moment, "Okay Sam so explain this to me."

Sam huffed now he distinctly didn't want to answer him, "Dean could you just…"

"No no no please tell me," Dean seemed to puff up with indignation and betrayal, "what exactly possessed you to think that was in any possible way a good idea? because it's beyond me!"

“Six beers that did not taste like piss ,” he didn’t say.

"Is there a problem here?" Castiel and Jack had finally reached the grave. He kept himself a little in front of the teenager, protective. It was painfully familiar, even the look of nervous confusion on Jack's face.

"No, not all," Dean snorted, "I just thought… some things were sacred."

"He's dad's kid too, he has as much right to be here as we do!" Sam raised his voice done with his brother's verbal assault.

Said kid just coughed awkwardly.

Dean didn't even glance his way, "yeah sure, any other day he can have a goddamn picnic here if he wants, but not today… he's never come to-day…"

"I’m right here you know," Jack piped up annoyed.

"Dean, you're acting like a child," Sam was beginning to get pissed off. Dean was embarrassing him in front of people with one of his stupid hissy fits.

"Yeah well, maybe I am," Dean reached down to pick up what was left of the six pack, the remaining bottles rattling ominously.

"You see I thought… I thought maybe this meant something to you, that I still somehow knew you," Dean shrugged, "but you're right Sam, we're not kids anymore…"

And with that Dean left, returning the wary look he got from Castiel with a sarcastic smile.

Sam just sighed not following, instead turning his attention to Castiel and Jack.

Any of the anxious hope Jack’s face had held when they first walked up had gone, replaced with an unreadable expression.

Castiel looked shaken.

"I'm really sorry about him, he's just…" Sam trailed off he didn't have an honest excuse.

"No it's fine," Castiel sighed looking harassed, feathers ruffled so to speak by Dean's tirade.

"Maybe we shouldn't have come," he gave Jack a significant look that rubbed Sam the wrong way. He felt like he had to defend his brother.

"He's not usually like that it's just…" Sam trailed off feeling lost. He didn't even know why he was doing this, he'd invited them on a stupid drunken whim, and he barely spoke to Dean anymore. He was basically defending two strangers from one another. He didn’t feel like explaining his brother’s temper tantrum. He should have stayed in California at least there the people made sense.

“I’m sorry you drove all this way from…” Sam pulled up a blank.

“Indiana, Midway, Indiana,” Cas huffed, crossing his arms and looking colder than it was possible to actually be wearing at least three layers.

“Right,” Sam awkwardly swung his arms at his side, examining the freshly pruned grass for weeds.

He had cases he needed to get back to, they were barely two month’s out from a major merger and the firm had yet to finish writing out the paperwork. He spared a glance toward Jack.

Jack seemed to shrink into himself still half hidden behind his uncle’s coat, coughing quietly into his sleeve.

“You okay?” Sam tried.

“Hotel AC…” the kid muttered not looking him in the eye. “We um… we got in late last night, been hanging around there all day.” His free hand was tucked into his patterned jacket pocket, the one with the flowers tensed into a shaking fist, crinkling the plastic, biting his lip, like he was trying not to cry.

Sam felt bad for him, wanted to say something reassuring, but he knew if he looked over an inch he’d see Castiel, glaring at him like he’d just stabbed the kid.

“I um… I’m supposed to meet Mary at six…” Sam said lamely.

He heard no objections, "good to see you again," he sighed before walking away.

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Dean stared down into his glass, swirling the amber middle shelf spirit; he’d tossed the cheap beer in the fridge before going out in search of something stronger.

He didn’t want to be alone and sober in that house… not tonight.

He took a long swallow from the glass then knocked it back against the bar counter, “fuck you Sam.”

“You got a ride home tonight Dean-o?” a familiar voice prodded sounding amused.

“You offering Gabe,” Dean gave the bar owner a thin smile.

Gabe chuckled topping off his glass, “just asking, I’d hate to have to sick the big guy on you for your keys…”

Dean glanced over his shoulder spotting the glum musclebound bartender. He was scrubbing at a table in harsh rapid spirals, treating sticky beer and peanut bits with all the intensity of someone cleaning up blood from a murder they committed.

“Where’d you find that anyway,” Dean snorted taking another mouthful of whiskey, “haven’t seen him around before.”

“Gadreel is just one of my many, many, siblings,” Gabe leaning back against the bar and shrugging, looking pleased with himself - though that was likely just his resting face -.

Dean squinted, besides brown hair, he didn’t see the resemblance.

“Gadreel?” Dean huffed into his glass, “ I get Gabriel, there’s tons of Gabriel’s, but where do you get a name like Gadreel?”

Gabe pretended to busy himself scrubbing out a lowball glass surreptitiously, “Our Dad was a religious nut, and his name started with G so he decided all his kids should have G names too. Actually, now that I think about it…” he paused to examine his reflection in the glass, “he may have just been an overall nutbag”

Dean opened his mouth to say something snide, then remembering he was named after his grandmother he decided to mind his own damn business and went back to his drink.

“Mom would have killed me if I didn’t get little bro the job,” Gabe paused eyeing Dean like he wanted him to ask why.

Dean let him hang for a long minute draining the rest of his glass and wiping his mouth before asking.

“Yeah, why?”

“Gadreel used to be a security guard for some big designer store downtown,” Gabe poured a drink for himself in the glass he’d just cleaned coming around the counter with the bottle to join Dean, - the bar was emptying out for the evening - .

“He let the wrong person in, the store got robbed, and he copped accessory charges for shit he didn’t do, ended up doing a stint in prison for it, it’s hard to get a job after that.”

Dean snorted, that sounded about right. The world was like that. You thought you knew how things worked one minute and then one friendly gesture later it spit in your face.

And Dean was beginning to think Sam was one of the most worldly people he knew.

“So how's that going for you, working with your brother,” Dean snorted at the concept, imagining Sam working at the shop was like imagining hiring a dog as a bailiff for one of Sam’s courtrooms, a terrible yappy one with a penchant for biting you in the ass.

“It’s fine, he’s a little stiff, ee-mmedially kills the mood if anyone tries to ya’know actually talk to him, but one look from him is all it takes to keep a hot-headed drunk in line so,” Gabe shrugged, “all things considered it’s a good trade-off.”

“Hmm…” Dean gave an unconvinced huff of a laugh.

“You ever work with family Deano?”

You could never completely tell with Gabriel, whether the man was actually trying to be a friend or just trying to get his patrons to buy more drinks. Dean hadn’t been in the mood to talk when he’d arrived but after four whiskeys the sun was burning low on his inhibitions.

“My dad…” Dean threw Gabe a bone tapping his glass in his general direction, “we uh… we worked together at his auto shop from when I was sixteen until a few years ago.”

Gabe poured him another glass, “Last call… I knew you worked at an auto shop, didn’t know it was your dad’s…”

“Yeah… he left it to me when he passed, it’s not like Sam would even know what to do with it even if he actually wanted it.”

The bar owner had the good graces not to comment on his dad’s death.

“Sibling problems Dean?” but apparently not the good sense not to ask about his brother.

“My brother’s a lawyer out in California, kid works in some big corporate firm and yet can’t breathe without letting me know how much more righteous he is, how that works I’ll never fucking know.”

Gabe snorted, “I got an older brother like that, Michael, real piece of work.”

Dean’s eyebrows rose.

“He goes by his middle name, first name is actually Gary,” Gabe quickly explained.

Very biblical name Gary...

“Yeah, well one idiot brother is enough for me,” Dean muttered darkly.

Today had been about six steps to far, Sam had never been as close as Dean was with their dad even before the divorce and after… he barely spoke to John from the time he moved out of the house until John’s eventual death.

Still Dean thought that even if John meant nothing to the man anymore that maybe this… thing they did... that it was their thing, meeting and going to pay respects at John’s grave. That they could just go there and deal with whatever shit they had about what had happened and just not be alone.

But inviting a kid, THAT kid… clearly what Dean thought and what Sam thought was very different.

He had no idea what their yearly meeting meant to Sam, if anything, and that terrified him.

Dean sat not saying another word clutching his glass so hard he was afraid it would shatter. Gabe seemed to lose interest after a while getting up and moving away to chastise his own brother.

“Hey, man go easy on the tables you’re gonna wear thru the varnish…”

Dean quietly got up, peeling a wad of cash out of his billfold and laying it on the counter, he was done talking for tonight. He headed out of the bar weaving slightly to call a cab.

The house was just as dead quiet as when he left it, he flicked on the lights, it didn’t really help anything, just threw the closed doors of his parents and Sam’s empty rooms into sharp contrast as he stumbled up to bed.

It was two in the morning when his cell rang a few hours later, bringing his throbbing head back into the land of the living, he saw Sam’s name and shut it off annoyed going straight back to sleep.

Only minutes later, the landline rang.

Dean kicked off the covers swearing under his breath before stomping downstairs to snatch up the old yellowed relic, ready to unleash a tirade at Sam.

“Do you having any fucking clue what time it is!?”

“Dean?”

It wasn’t Sam but the voice was vaguely familiar, “who’s this?”

“It’s… Cas… Castiel…” the man sounded shaken, “Samuel gave me your number.”

Dean’s still half drunk brain was at a loss, there were strange unidentifiable sounds in the background. He stayed silent in bewilderment.

“I um… I’m at the hospital... It’s Jack,” his voice cracked.

“There’s something wrong with Jack…”