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"Hey stranger, I haven't seen you here for a while," Jo greeted Dean as he and Sam walked into their local tavern.
"Yeah, well Cas and Jess conspired together and decided we need to spend time together," Dean answered, indicating his brother. "Apparently it's been too long and we've gotten mopey."
Jo laughed. "I'm guessing that came from Jess. Cas probably didn't even notice."
"Yeah. He has his hands full with the kids." Dean agreed. "He and Jess decided to join forces and let the kids play together.
Cas was Dean's husband. They had adopted 3 kids who were actually Cas's niblings. They were 6 now and quite the handful. Jess was Sam's wife and they had one daughter who was 4 but acted like she was as old as the other three. The cousins loved each other so it was easy for her to convince Cas to have them spend the day together. The plan was for Jess, Cas, and the kids to spend the day swimming and playing in the underground hot springs behind Dean’s house.
Jo led them to a quiet corner of the tavern. She brought them food and beer and left them to catch up. It had been almost a month since they had any time to really catch up and Dean had missed his brother. They had lived together until the triplets were born and sometimes Dean still expected to see Sam just standing in the kitchen in the morning. Life moves on but they had always been close. Maybe Jess and Cas had been right, they did need this.
They were trading stories about their work when a voice rang through the din of the tavern. “Have you heard of the curse of Purgatory?”
Sam and Dean shared a look and turned to see who was speaking. It was a young man, a hunter by the looks of it. He was talking in a way to bring attention to himself and it was working. A lot of the people who passed through this tavern were hunters and mercenaries. And everyone loves a good story. The man was still paused to bring the most attention to himself.
Dean looked at Sam. “You know him?”
Sam shrugged. “Met him today. He was buying standard hunting charms and ointments. You’ll probably see him in a day or two.”
Sam was the local wizard and a strong one. People traveled across the country to get charms from him. It was almost a rite of passage for new hunters and mercenaries. Likewise they would stop at Dean’s forge. Dean wouldn’t call himself the best blacksmith in the country but he was good and he and Sam had figured out years ago how to combine their skills to make enchanted blades and other stuff (Dean and his friend Charlie had a booming business in silver sex toys). Since he’d been living with/ been mated (possibly married) to a dragon he’d been making even better blades. It turned out that blades forged in dragon’s breath took on special properties. He didn't make many but he could ask any price for them.
The man started speaking again. "It is said that about 10 years ago a curse was laid on the town of purgatory. Now every year, for one week all the beer in the town goes off and on the last night of the week a phantom fire appears, a burning building where no building stands. For years the people of the town have called on every curse breaker they can find, but none have helped. Some people have tried to flee to curse, moving to other towns but the curse followed them. Every year, the exact same week. It didn't take long for those people to be run out of their new towns, ending up back in Purgatory."
Patrons of the tavern started asking the man questions about the curse and Dean stopped listening to him. Instead he turned to Sam. “You hear about this before?”
Sam shook his head. “I haven’t even gotten any requests for curse breaking for anything like that.”
Dean snorted. “Yeah, I wonder how much longer it will be before they do. It’s funny to think of someone from Purgatory come crawling to you, the person they ran out of town.”
“Technically they ran you out of town,” Sam clarified. “Gabe and I were just innocent bystanders.”
They sat quietly for a bit, listening as the man added details to his story. Finally Dean looked to Sam, lifted his drink and said “Here’s to Purgatory.” As they drank he added “remind me never to piss of Gabe.”