Tell me, what makes you so special.

[Based off THIS by soldier_ofgod. Just trying my hand at it, because you know I love a good cop AU. Not binding on any other canon muses.]

“You can’t run away from your problems...there’s no place that far.” –Unknown

There was a reason why Dean didn’t like talking about his problems with his partner, and it wasn’t just because he was a self-righteous son of a bitch. Well, it was mostly because he was a self-righteous son of a bitch, but there was also the fact that he knew that no how much Dean explained, how much he tried to give the man context, Cas was never going to get it. Dean was pretty sure the guy had never so much given a girl the wrong kind of look, let alone gotten anywhere close to the life that Dean had had. As far as Dean was concerned? Cas’s life had been picture perfect, and he had all this faith to get him through the day when the demons came knocking on his door.

Dean? Dean had a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue and Penthouse TV. Not exactly an inspirational ideal.

His keys clattered against the side table near the door as he made his way into the apartment, bag of groceries in his hand, tucked in with the file of the latest murder in the case, dealt by the guy who seemed to see himself as the bringer of the Apocalypse. “The Hand of Lilith,” he was calling himself, and while mostly Dean thought the guy was a whackjob, he had to admit, the motivations were a bit interesting on this one. It wasn’t your run of the mill whackjob, and after a string of cases that had been nothing but ordinary whackjobs? He was game for both the challenge and the distraction. This guy was aiming to kill fifty-nine more people, though—and Dean knew in his gut that he had to catch him before he did.

( *** )

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[Set in the “Revenge is Supernatural” verse, which usually isn’t written on this journal, but Dean wanted a prompt and all the prompting is here, so! Sam is likely_evil, Anna is absit_omens, Bobby is maninflannel.]

Dean had his history teacher in high school that considered one of the best teachers he ever had. He was a history guy, who had been teaching for years, to the point where he knew he had tenure so he could teach however the hell he wanted, and there was nothing the school could do about it. Winkler was arguably psychotic, but when it came to everything but history, the guy knew his shit. And one of the most credible pieces of advice was when he talked about the one phrase of Spanish you needed to know if you ever traveled south of the border.

Una cerveza fría, por favor.

Dean didn’t tend to make it south of the border much—too much to do with the job—but on the few times he did, that was the one phrase he never forgot. Well, that and his numbers.

The trip down to Tijuana had been a bitch and a half with Sam in the back seat, but once they actually got here, things got so much easier. Dean had a feeling that was mostly because he wasn’t going to believe that he was actually going to get away with taking a real vacation until they actually got there. But here they were—all four of them.

Dean didn’t have a lot. He didn’t have a lot of money, he didn’t have a lot of material wealth. In fact, most of the monetary assets they did have were illegit, considering that that was part of the credit card fraud they happened to running, so Dean didn’t learn to count on a whole hell of a lot in the monetary sense. He learned to go without, and that was probably part of the reason why people like Bela Talbot pissed him off to no end—all about money, and no care for wealth that didn’t come in with a little bit of green.

No, Dean didn’t have much. But as he glanced back at the table where his family was sitting—Sam, Bobby, Anna, everyone who was important to him at the moment—and he knew that what he did have was enough. He had people who cared about him, and he was doing good. And he wasn’t dead. He really couldn’t ask for much more than that.

Well, with one small exception.

“Cuatro cervezas frías, por favor.”

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