dean-centric fic & art meme #8
So that fantastic, all-expenses-paid weekend getaway you had planned--you cancelled that, right? You're ready for this? BECAUSE I AM READY FOR THIS. MY BODY IS READY FOR THIS. In anticipation of S9, let's pour some chum in the waters. Bring on the Dean!pain (and comfort!). >:D
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In theory, he didn’t like running to Bobby’s. It smacked of showing up with his tail between his legs, the pathetic, codependent little child Sam and John surely believed him to be, begging with big baby eyes to please let me stay? It felt like a forfeit, or like something more deeply pathetic--I can’t take care of myself, and daddy and little brother won’t do it for me. Will you?
But in practice, he ran to Bobby’s a lot. Usually he had some excuse at the ready--a question, an object, a case, a cryptic set of instructions from his father. Occasionally he had to steel himself, knock on Bobby’s door, and ask the hard question: Have you heard anything? Do you--do you know where my dad went? Is he alright?
He frequently was alright, and simply not responding to Dean’s calls, which made Dean feel needy and clingy and pathetic, and Bobby frequently reacted to this with a look of pity that was near unbearable, but then he’d drag Dean inside, make him dinner, make him laugh. Dean would fall asleep on the couch--if he took up the guest bedroom, it would be too much like he’d come here seeking a home--and sleep until Bobby started frying bacon the next morning.
He could hate himself for it forever, but Bobby was an open door in a sea of closed ones, for Dean, and now Sammy was gone--and not coming back, he’d remind himself, fiercely, again and again, he isn’t coming back, Dad told him he couldn’t, he left us--he’d take whatever welcomes he could get, and was careful not to overstay them.
Very careful, he tells himself, as he speeds down the interstate to Bobby’s place on a crisp, pretty Sunday in the fall. He doesn’t have an excuse this time, not one Bobby will buy for half a second--sure, John hasn’t answered the phone in over a week, and the last conversation they had was a nitpicky, tired, bitchy one regarding Dean’s weapons maintenance (and it didn’t matter, Dad was drunk and reeling from a rare failure, that nothing Dean did or didn’t do could have prevented a spirit from ruining John’s ammo), but that’s not really a reason to show up at Bobby’s.
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But Bobby is always saying he’s welcome anytime. He might just mean it. Dean swallows, attempts and attempts to beat down the voice in his head that reminds him with relentless consistency that absolutely nobody wants him around, especially if he isn’t even going to get anything done.
Because while John hollers and Sammy snarls and Caleb rolls his eyes and Pastor Jim has his entire congregation to take care of and Fred falls down the stairs because he’s too drunk to walk, and all of them just need Dean to get out of the fucking way, Bobby seems to want him around. He always invites Dean to stay, day after day until Dean tears himself away. He puts him to work on old cars, and it’s heaven--this must be what Sammy feels like in a good, dusty library--and makes them big meals, buys twelve packs of beer for the two of them and gets the busted old TV working long enough for a few M*A*S*H reruns. He tells Dean old hunting stories, and sometimes even gives him edges and details about the early days of John’s hunting career, incidents Dean can barely remember. Once, in a moment of tipsy, small-hours weakness, Bobby had admitted that Dean, when he arrived at Bobby’s house for the first time all of seven years old, his hand practically to little Sammy’s, was the cutest thing he’d ever seen.
He gets to Bobby’s at dusk, and quels the last vestiges of his anxiety as he makes his way up the long, dusty road. Bobby will be happy to see him, he’s sure, or at the very least, not annoyed. And he’ll be an excellent guest. Make at least three cars gleam tomorrow, maybe for dinner afterwards he’ll make that thing Sam used to love, with the rice and beans and spices--though that’s a little kid’s meal, he thinks, and revises himself. He’ll make the lasagna he used to make when they spent that entire summer in Michigan and he got a job, with the vegetables if Bobby has them. Even Dad loved that. He’ll make a good dinner and the two of them will watch M*A*S*H and laugh their asses off, and it’ll be good, two people who are, you know, okay with each other, who are friends.
Dean is fidgety and energetic when he makes his way up Bobby’s porch, surprised that Bobby hadn’t come to the door when he heard the roar of the Impala. He knocks several times and receives no answer. He knows Bobby is home--the two fully functional cars he’s got at the moment are both plainly parked, plus Bobby rarely travels for cases, and when he does, he doesn’t go far. He hasn’t been a roaming hunter since before Sammy was born. Dean knows that, Bobby told him.
After a few minutes nervous debate Dean decides to enter the house--if Bobby isn’t there, he can leave and pretend it never happened, and if Bobby is there and needs help it’ll be worth any embarrassment later. He pushes open the door and heads inside, calling Bobby’s name tentatively a few times before he hears a series of abrupt thumps followed by Bobby’s voice calling, “Wha--who’s there?”
There’s something up with the way he’s talking, and fearing the worst Dean rushes in the direction of the voice, finds Bobby on the staircase, balanced precariously on the bottom step, leaning heavily on the wall. He’s squinting, and his eyes are puffy and red, and he absolutely reeks of booze. Dean freezes, watching him. Something is rising up in his chest and throat and head, something big and dizzying and like an unexpected slap, hard and bright and stinging, because this isn’t right. Bobby drinks, a couple beers, maybe some whiskey here and there after somebody dies or, back when Bobby and John were still talking regularly, when it was late and they were swapping stories. Never--never like this. He can’t stand up he can’t stand up, no no no.
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“Bobby,” says Dean again, when he is back in the living room and back to crouching beside Bobby’s slumped form, kneeling before him, propping his shoulders up and trying to make eye contact, and this is another familiar scene, Dad, stop it, Dad, listen, Dad, it’s okay, Dad, Dad, Dad--“Bobby,” he says, and his voice is thin and trembling and he doesn’t care, he doesn’t, because Bobby has never ignored him, not when Sammy left and not when John was angry after the shtriga and not talking to him, not when he was younger and had a fever and had to stay inside while Sammy played in the snow all day, but now he doesn’t matter, Bobby won’t even look at him, he’s talking and Dean can’t even hear over the noise in his ears because this was the one thing, the one thing he was supposed to--
He shuts down that line of thought in an instant, burns hot with shame as he considers his own selfishness, and returns his attention to Bobby, who is regarding him blearily. “Dean?” he croaks, sounding surprised, and Dean nods, forestalls any questions about why he’s here or why she’s dead or why Bobby never listened, and Dean gets him to drink the glass of water and makes him sit still when he moves to get up.
“Just stay,” he says, aware he sounds a little desperate, “just stay still. I’ll get it, whatever it is you want,” he promises, knowing Bobby wants more whiskey and knowing he won’t do it, knowing Bobby wants whoever she is back, wants this annoying twerp out of his fucking house, wants out, but Dean cannot in good conscious provide any of those things at the moment, so he says, “Shh, Bobby, stay. Whatever you want, I’m, I’m just gonna go get it for you, okay?”
“Why’re you here, boy,” Bobby groans, and Dean rocks back on his heels, a kicked puppy. The rejection is scarcely more than any imagined one, but this was supposed to be--the one place where he could--
“You should go,” continues Bobby, muttering, and Dean jolts to his feet like he’s been electrocuted.
“I’m getting you more water,” he blurts, and hurries back into the kitchen, doesn’t hear Bobby continue, doesn’t hear anything but the roar in his ears and his own pounding heartbeat and the taunting voice in his head wondering if he’s really about to cry because Bobby fucking Singer doesn’t wuv him, and then there are hot tears spilling down his face anyways, he is twenty-three fucking years old and he’s crying in Bobby’s kitchen because just one fucking person, all he wanted was one fucking person who stayed, who wanted him around, who didn’t wish he’d fucking go away, and he hurls the glass into the sink and hears, distantly, that it shattered, doesn’t bother inspecting it or cleaning it up, just stands there and wishes he had the strength to take every car in the junkyard and throw each and every one at the house with all his might, wishes he could rip the walls down and throw the chairs and tables until they came apart, wishes he could stomp all of it to dust and then tear at something until his fingernails bled, wishes he could fucking rip it all down and not just stand there in the kitchen in the dark looking pathetic and impotent and awful and useless, with tears streaming down his face and his fingernails biting into his palms hard enough to leave deep stinging grooves.
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“--everything I touch,” Bobby is saying when Dean wordlessly passes him the water, “you can’t stay, boy, everything I fucking touch turns to shit.”
It’s an unexpected sentiment, and one that makes Dean’s chest hurt in a way he can’t quite articulate, and he is seized with the sudden childish urge to dive onto the couch and gather Bobby in a hug, cuddle up to him like a child and tell him no, no, Bobby, you’re better than that. He doesn’t, though, because long experience has taught him that tough love works best in these situations (get off me, Dean, just get off--Christ, you’re too big for that shit, go to fucking sleep already).
“You should drink all of that,” he says, and he sounds hollow even to his own ears, but Bobby blinks up and him and does it. Satisfied for the moment, Dean sinks down to the floor and sits in front of the couch, where Bobby is listing sideways. “All of it,” he says firmly, when Bobby makes to set the half empty glass on the side table.
Curiously, Bobby does it, and Dean is glad for it, because John is a bitch to wrangle when he’s drunk, and doesn’t take kindly to being ordered around by his son, goddammit. When the glass is empty Bobby stares down into it, blinks rapidly for a moment, and then slurs, “She wouldn’t stop.”
“I know,” says Dean, because that’s what he needs to say.
“I--I begged her,” says Bobby in a low voice, still staring down into the glass, “but she--again and again, and she was screaming, I was screaming, and I didn’t know. I--I didn’t know!”
The last word is shouted, and Dean ducks, waiting for Bobby to throw the glass or worse, but he doesn’t, just grips it tighter and curls into himself. “It’s okay, Bobby,” says Dean, sitting up into a kneel and reaching up to lay a hand on Bobby’s shoulder. “It’s okay, man, you didn’t know.”
“She wouldn’t stop,” whispers Bobby. “I loved her.”
Dean swallows, don’t fucking cry, fists Bobby’s shirt involuntarily, he is not talking about your mother, he is not Dad, don’t fucking cry, and he says, “I know, man. It wasn’t your fault. Bobby. It wasn’t.”
Bobby nods, miserably, not believing him, and Dean pries the glass from his hands, sets it on the side table. “Lie down, man,” he says, guiding him, tugging the throw blanket from the back of the couch and settling it around Bobby’s shoulders. “On your side,” he adds, “okay? Stay on your side.”
Bobby stays, pressing his face into the pillow Dean propped beneath his head and mumbling incoherently for a little while longer before he goes quiet, and his heavy breathing, still thick and teary, grows rhythmic and relaxed. Dean falls asleep sitting with his back to the couch, his head tilted back onto the cushion, not far from Bobby’s face, pinched in misery even as he sleeps.
He awakens with a wicked crick in his neck, the blanket draped haphazardly over his own curled up body, to the smell and crackle of frying bacon.
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I'm glad you...liked it? <3
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I have a feeling Bobby was exceedingly gentle with Dean all morning before the panic got to be too much and he scurried off--but I also have a feeling he was back pretty quickly because Bobby "just really needed a second pair of eyes" on some document or some such...because Bobby is a mensch of the highest order, really, even when he fucks up.
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The thoughts in the poor messed up head. Perfection.
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This is beautiful. <333 I especially love the line about one door being open, in a world of many closed ones, and the way that folds back on itself in some ways, as the fic continues onward. These two, good god. <3
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