#eventually cas takes down the poetry book he wrote for jimmy

[norestwithoutlove]

“If jimmy came back from the dead, what do you think he’d say when he finds out Dean and cas are together and have kids”

(i was asked this on twitter and shared there. but i know not all of you follow me there i thought i’d share on here too. this is how i answered)

sorry this one took a while to answer. i wanted time to think about it because i never even considered the thought before. a lot of people say to me "imagine if jimmy had never died in tbah" and kind of miss the point of the fic. like yeah, it’d be great. it’d be great if none of the people we loved had died. yeah, “imagine if jimmy had never died” misses the point - but this question doesn't. and i think it's what a lot of bereaved people wish for, anyway. just a chance to say everything, one last time.

  where to start.

  i think if jimmy came back for a day (and the thought makes me cry)... he'd knock on the door of the big white house. or they'd just find him sitting in his old armchair in the living room like nothing had happened at all. but something has happened, something massive and irreversible, so maybe him knocking on the door would fit better.

jack's probably the one to open it. he frowns and thinks he recognises the face smiling back at him, but it's older than he's ever seen it, and he's not so good with faces, so he's not sure. jimmy smiles and says hello, does castiel still live here?

and jack says “yes, why?”. jimmy still smiles. his smile is wider, warmer now. he says he's travelled very far. he says he's an old family friend. could he come in? it’s raining outside. it’s raining - and though jimmy stands under the porch, it’d be mean to leave him out in it. jack pulls open the door and says if jimmy is selling anything, they probably wont need it: they have everything they need in this house. jimmy smiles and says he's glad. he treads slowly down the hall, looking around him, like he's trying to savor it. he runs his finger along the crack in the mirror that has always been there, at least since jack arrived. he smiles to himself, but it’s a little sad.

he stops at a photo of dean and castiel playing on the tire swing they made when they were kids. his eyes pinch at their corners. jack says, “what are you smiling at?” jimmy says, i was there when that was taken. jack says “oh. that's my father”. and he points to castiel. jimmy turns to jack and smiles so wide tears wring out of his eyes. he asks, really? jack frowns and says “of course”. why would he lie about that? jimmy says, i hope he doesn't miss his own dad too much. jack says “sometimes he and dean get sad about it”. jimmy pauses. castiel and dean are friends? he asks. jack nods seriously. “best friends,” he answers. “everyone knows that.” jimmy takes a gentle hold of jack's shoulder and squeezes.

jack says “that's how dean squeezes my shoulder, too”. jimmy asks, you see him often? he asks it with a hopeful smile. jack nods with a frown, very serious. jimmy laughs and says, you know, you frown just like your father. funny thing, family resemblance. jack shrugs and says “maybe, but i was adopted”. 

jimmy falters. he blinks. he glances down the corridor again, and his eyes light on a different picture, taken decades after the one on the tire swing. he treads slowly towards it. jack follows after him, speaking. “i just think,” he frowns, and it's still castiel's frown, “if you really were close family friends with castiel, you'd know he adopted his children.” 

jimmy has stopped in front of the photograph and he stares at it, lips parted in a ghost-smile. family, friend. family, and a friend, jimmy corrects. that’s what i meant. i’m old family, and an old friend. jack watches him. “that's them on their wedding day,” he supplies. jimmy smiles. soft tears, tears like a gentle autumn rain, are on his cheeks, now. yes, he says, it is. a little late, considering, but maybe... he trails off. timed perfectly. a heavy footfall sounds on the stairs, a thunder to match the rain outside, and claire calls to jack, “dude, you said you'd get me a snack! it’s not rocket science! what’s the holdup?” but she stops short at the sight of the old man in the hall. claire's better with faces than jack. 

hello, jimmy smiles, but claire is already yelling for her dads.

it's a sunday afternoon. dean hadn't planned on being awake and active. he’d been napping while cas did a grocery run. but claire screaming to high heaven is a surefire way to set elanor into confusion. he groans and rolls out of bed, rubbing his eyes. he picks elanor up and carries her down the stairs in one arm. “claire,” he grumbles, “you know cas is out fuelling your damn addiction to lucky charms. what is it?”

he stops short at the foot of the stairs. his mouth is open and his eyes are glassy. elanor keeps asking “daddy are you okay? who’s that man?” and it takes dean a minute to stop staring before softly putting elanor down and telling her to go get her brother, jacob. “tell him there’s food in the kitchen, or something,” dean says, and jimmy hasn’t stopped staring or smiling warmly at him and his eyes are leaking autumn rain. “but there isn’t,” elanor says, and dean answers “so lie. there’s someone i—” but he can’t finish the sentence. and elanor shakes her head with serious disapproval and climbs back up the stairs.

dean steps toward him, trying to stammer out his name, but the tears strangle his voice and before he knows it he’s wrapped tight in jimmy’s arms, taller than him by far, now, but feeling eighteen again. feeling eighteen again and like he’s just finished yelling at jimmy that he doesn’t need a father, never needed a father, that he coped just fine without one, anyway. all of those things were lies when dean said them. he wants to say they were lies, wants to tell jimmy now that he needed a father, always needed a father, didn’t cope without one but that also, when he needed one most, jimmy was his father. he wants to say thank you. thank you, thank you, thank you for everything and sorry for every angry answer and scowl and bitter lie, please know dean didn’t mean them, he was just hurt and afraid. but jimmy already knows this. knew that, even then, and besides, the words won’t come. he just holds onto jimmy tight and thinks he probably did fall asleep in his bed and this is another one of those grief dreams, another one of those grief dreams that’s gonna throw him off for weeks but one he wants to savor forever.

he’s soaking jimmy’s shirt with tears. the guy smells like his old cologne. and blueberry pancakes. dean cries a little harder, afraid to let go.

“are you proud of me?”

it’s the first thing he’s managed to say to the old man. “are you proud of me?” he keeps asking, over and over again, and jimmy holds him tight and answers yes, yes, every time. yes.

and then cas comes home. cas comes home dripping from the rain from the walk to the front door and drops the damp brown paper bags onto the floor and apples roll onto the floor and he’s staring at his father and can’t speak, just like dean couldn’t speak, and can’t breathe. and jimmy is sat at the kitchen table with his grandchildren just like castiel mourned he would never be able to, and jacob is showing jimmy one of his paintings and elanor is holding his hand and claire has just made him a cup of tea, and jimmy smiles at castiel. “i see you got my last letter,” he says. and castiel steps into the kitchen and sobs that he’s sorry he never got to reply. and jimmy says that he’s sorry, too. cas shows him the little saplings they all planted for tu b'shevat, standing in a line on the windowsill. jimmy loved growing things. and cas asks how long jimmy has with them. when he’s going… back. to wherever ‘there’ is. 

and jimmy says he has until the rain stops. and castiel wishes it would rain forever, that all of kansas would be blanketed in it, a second flood, torrenting about the land, and them in their own ark, the big white house, bobbing about on the water, sharing food and stories and laughter and lost time, stolen time, time which was stolen from them. aren’t his and dean’s tears a substitute enough for rain when it stops, anyway? their tears are sure as rain in autumn, and not likely to ease soon. he wishes the rain would never stop. 

but it has to, eventually. all things do. no matter how blessed.