Seeking the Bubble Reputation
Title: Seeking the Bubble Reputation
Rating: PG-13
Words: 3,686
Spoilers: Up to the end of season 3.
Warnings: Language, descriptions of injuries, canon character death.
Summary: Bobby watching Dean as he seeks the bubble reputation, even in the cannon's mouth. Written for karai9's wish: "I'm really missing Bobby these days, so any fic that emphasizes on the special relationship that Bobby had with Dean sans Sam (we love the guy but you see Dean at his most readable when he's away from Sam) would be perfect. Especially if it includes whump. ;) Gen."
Neurotic author's notes: Well, it's 2 am, better post some fanfic. This is...I don't know what this is. Bobby and Dean being their sad sweet selves. The title is from the famous "all the world's a stage" speech in Shakespeare's As You Like It: "Then a soldier,/Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,/Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,/Seeking the bubble reputation/Even in the cannon's mouth." Cut text is from Leonard Cohen's "The Stranger Song."
Also: The first part is kind of the rest of the scene I sketched out in " Forgetting Any Other Home But This." I plagiarized myself like a sir.
1987
Karen would have made an excellent mother. She was patient, gentle, fanciful. Bobby thought he was rather less predisposed to dealing with small children-he was gruff, efficient, set in his ways. The opportunity to test this theory never arrived, but in round, serious Sammy Winchester, Bobby caught a glimpse of what might have been.
Sammy was four, not a baby but not quite a person yet either, and Bobby did better than expected. Soon enough he found Sammy’s puzzling ramblings to be charming, even sweet; found himself forgiving the boy for minor transgressions, for being younger and slower than Bobby ever remembered being; found himself tolerating, even inviting, the boy’s bouts of silliness.
In contrast to squat, round little Sammy was Dean. Dean had, like his brother would some three years later, shot up and shed his baby weight. He was reedy and diminutive, animated only when talking to his father or to Sam. In John’s presence he was an auto-man, and in Sammy’s, he’s a doting, mischievous delight. Bobby falls into the habit of lingering outside the door to the spare bedroom after he puts the boys to bed, listening to Dean’s animated storytelling and the gentle ways he reassures his brother-“Yeah, Sammy, Dad’s doin’ jus’ fine, yeah, Sammy, you can sleep with me tonight, no, Sammy, there’s nothin’ under the bed-I checked, and so did Bobby. You wan’ me to check again?” If Dean has such worries, he keeps them to himself.
One afternoon they’re all out in the yard, Bobby sitting in a lawn chair, in the shade, writing a letter to Rufus Turner detailing the earliest warning signs of a rugaru, the boys playing in the hollow corpses of irreparable cars, when Bobby hears the high whine of bending metal followed by a heavy thump, and he’s out of his chair in an instant, twisting his way through the maze of his own making.
After a moment, he finds Dean, sitting at the base of a teetering pile of wrecked parts, hands wringing frantically around a leg he’s too afraid to touch, and Bobby can see why-there’s a greasy gash that runs from the middle of his thigh almost to his ankle, and blood is absolutely everywhere, and eight-year-old Dean has reached his limit. He’s making high, desperate keening noises, too shocked to cry, though snot is streaming down his white little face. Bobby slides to his knees beside the kid, putting an arm around his shoulders, tries to ascertain if the cut his deep or just long as Dean makes the kind of noises Bobby had last heard that time Rufus had to pass a kidney stone while they were holed up in his cabin during a snowstorm.
“Calm down, Dean,” he says uselessly, pulling delicately at one side of Dean’s shredded pant leg as Dean lets out a panicked wail. “Dean. It’s alright. I can stitch this up. Look at me, son.”
Dean lets out one more stifled sob before looking up at Bobby’s face, and he takes several big, shaky breathes before he manages to mumble, “Don’ tell my dad.”
Bobby doesn’t have anything to say to that, so he just slides one arm gently under Dean’s legs and lifts the kid with ease. Dean whimpers, high and miserable, before a panting, alarmed Sammy makes his presence known and Dean manages to bite down his sobs.
Dean is almost entirely silent as they trek back to the house, Bobby taking it slow, weighing the urgency of Dean’s pain against the potential fallout if he stumbled and dropped the kid, Sammy plodding behind, bossy and curious. By the time Bobby’s deposited Dean in the sink and started washing out his leg, Dean has managed to set his jaw and told Sammy everything’s alright, to stop fussing.
Sammy continues to wander aimlessly around the kitchen, lets out a little sing-song sigh of “my brave brover,” and Dean’s face slips into a crooked, soft smile, even as Bobby pokes the needle into the sensitive, reddened skin of the kid’s thigh.
Something in Bobby’s chest does a somersault at that, and as he carries Dean to the bedroom nearly thirty minutes later, he puts his hand up to cradle the back of Dean’s head, and lets the kid tuck his face into the crook of his neck.
“Sorry ’bout this,” Dean mumbles as Bobby lowers him carefully onto his bed.
“Don’t be,” Bobby huffs, and he runs an awkward, oversized hand through Dean’s hair before letting him sleep.
•
1991
Dean hates school. He hates the seventh grade. He hates pre-algebra, he hates A Wrinkle in Time, he hates stupid Life Sciences and he hates the stupid constitution of the stupid United States of America, he hates Judy Reynolds and Matt Spiegleman and Mr. Ritter and Ms. Siskins and Animal Farm and absolutely everything about school, and he is a old enough to hunt and should be allowed to do that instead of go to stupid school all the time where he’s too dumb to get anything anyways.
Bobby, who had entered the kitchen with the intention of grabbing a beer and ducking back out of Dean’s way, stands in the doorway, totally at a loss, staring at Dean, who is scrunched up in his seat at the kitchen table, schoolwork spread in front of him in a haphazard mess, arms crossed and face screwed up and red.
After a long moment, Bobby says, “Okay.”
And Dean picks up and pencil and lobs it clear across the room and says, “No, it isn’t! Sammy’s in the third freaking grade and he reads better’n me!”
“That’s not true,” says Bobby automatically, but it is-Sam’s quicker and more engaged in his reading then Dean is now, and he’s not shy about it. He’s precocious as anything, and doesn’t seem to recognize that he’s setting up a rivalry with Dean. John, typically helpful, has taken to calling Sammy the brains of the outfit.
The bitch of it is that Dean’s quite smart, he just lacks Sam’s ability to transition from school to school relatively smoothly-and, if Bobby’s being honest, Sam’s diligence or social skills. Dean’s never been taught to think much about school, and now he’s not a young kid anymore it’s been catching up with him.
“Yes it is,” Dean mutters, and this is as bad a funk as Bobby’s ever seen him in. Lord, you’re going to be a fun thirteen-year-old, Bobby thinks, before returning his attention to Dean. He stoops low to pick up the pencil Dean threw and goes to the table, sets it down in front of him. After a tense moment, Bobby pulls a chair out a chair and joins Dean.
“Let’s get one thing straight,” he says firmly, and at his tone Dean glances up quickly, looks him in the eye, sheepish and diminutive. “You are not stupid. Don’t let anybody tell you different. And next time you throw something at me, boy, you’re going down.”
Dean looks slightly miserable, but the ghost of a smile flits across his face. Bobby considers telling Dean a number of things-that it’s not his fault he has to change schools so often, that no one else in his class has to worry about the things Dean does. That it takes a very clever kid to do the things Dean does with cars and guns already, that nothing could make a boy like Dean Winchester worthless.
He considers all of this, and says none of it, and instead begins talking Dean through his pre-algebra homework, step by step.
•
1996
There are precisely two people in all the world for whom Bobby Singer would willingly buy condoms, and they are Dean and Sam Winchester, and the latter is, thankfully, still at an age where girls are a notion and sustained physical contact with one is uncomfortable and awkward.
The same could not be said for Dean, who according to his father could not be trusted with any female between the ages of fifteen and fifty, ever, for any reason. Dean got hot around the collar when his father said that, and clearly wanted to object, but there was no denying the kid had grown up handsome and he knew it. John seemed to believe Dean was young and stupid and constantly, aimlessly horny, and while Bobby couldn’t bring himself to disagree with that assessment he couldn’t help but bristle at how dismissive John was. The kid’s priority was still his brother and his dad, and he hadn’t lost his head. Seventeen-year-olds got restless, wanted to do things by themselves, bold things, adult things, stupid things. Dean, who had become at adult around the time of his fourth birthday, was only stretching his legs a bit.
And Bobby Singer is standing in line at a pharmacy at eleven o’clock at night, buying condoms. Bobby had never once told a Winchester he loved him, he hadn’t done much more than clap Dean on the shoulder in years, and he had not-nor would he ever-admit to those boys just how badly he missed them when they were gone, but if this isn’t the grandest gesture of pure and forgiving love a man like Bobby Singer could ever manage, he isn’t sure what is.
When he gets back to the house, Dean is on the porch, hunched over and picking at the lace of his boot. Bobby gets out of the car and tosses the box of condoms, still in the plastic “Have A Nice Day” bag, in Dean’s direction, and they land next to his foot. Dean starts, pulls the bag open with two fingers and peeks inside, then flushes bright red and looks back up at Bobby.
“I always…” he mumbles, and Bobby nods.
“Well, now you can always some more,” says Bobby, fondly exasperated, and Dean nods vigorously, swallows convulsively. He’s giving Bobby a very strange look, wounded and grateful and astonished all at once, and it’s making Bobby uncomfortable. He closes the car door, and makes his way to the porch.
“Thanks, Bobby,” says Dean, a little hoarsely, and Bobby nods, cuffs the side of Dean’s head affectionately, and Dean leans momentarily into the touch, his incessant fidgeting stopping for just a moment. Bobby pats him once and heads inside, leaving Dean to contemplate the vast yard and the starless sky.
•
2002
“Is this a tooth?”
Bobby squints at the yellow-white, raggedy thing lodged in the space between Dean’s knuckles and confirms, grimly, that it is, tucked among the scrapes and abrasions and blood that splatter Dean’s hands. He’s already got the kid sitting Very Fucking Still with his head tilted back, an ancient pack of frozen peas balanced over his black eye, a wad of tissues stuck up his nose.
“This is gonna hurt like a bitch when I pull it out,” Bobby reports dispassionately, and Dean sets his jaw all the more firmly and grunts in acknowledgement. A thin, dark trail of blood from his split lip is making its way down the side of his face, sluggishly dripping down the side of his neck.
Bobby sets the tweezers on either side of the tooth and grips it tightly. Nothing for it, he thinks as Dean’s hand twitches once. “On three,” he says, “one, two-”
Dean lets out an indignant yelp as Bobby yanks the shard of tooth free. A short spurt of blood explodes out, gets on Bobby’s face, and by the time he’s wiped it off Dean has pitched forward in his chair and is examining his left hand with horrified fascination as a surprising amount of blood spills over his knuckles onto his hand, his wrist, his pant legs. Bobby makes a frustrated noise and seizes Dean’s hand, takes the washcloth he’d just been using to clean his own face and presses down on the cut between Dean’s knuckles, hard. Blood rises up through the towel to his hand almost immediately, but he doggedly presses down.
“Dean,” he says, and Dean makes a little “hmm” noise. “Dean,” he repeats, the Dean looks up blearily.
“Yeah, Bobby,” he grunts.
“This has got to stop,” he says plainly, and Dean blinks owlishly, then drops his head again. Bobby has no intention of letting him play stupid. He’d been reckless since Sam left last year, but never sloppy, and never so angry as to start a fight with three complete strangers that left him with teeth lodged in his knuckles and in such appalling condition it makes Bobby nauseous to think he drove here. That started when John began taking leave of his eldest whenever he damn well felt like it.
Most boys of twenty-four would be more than capable of handling their father’s absence, but Dean had only ever really known John and Sam. Even as Sam grew up and began to spend as much time away from home as he could manage, began to see more appeal in hanging out with kids his own age than his brother and dad, Dean had remained steadfastly loyal to John, acutely aware of the fact that he was needed.
Something painful bloomed in Bobby’s chest as he realized, like a slap, that John-and Dean-had spent two decades wrapping Dean’s entire identity up in two people and their need for him, and now they were both gone, effectively telling Dean that they didn’t need him after all.
So now he’s doing the only other thing anybody else ever taught him to do, Bobby thinks with a dull, exhausted sadness, which is fight like hell.
“Dean, enough of this,” he says aloud, firmly, the mounting despair in his heart giving his voice a hard, bitter edge. “You’ve got to stop fucking around like this, do you hear me? Do you hear me, Dean? Look at me, son.”
Dean does, looks exhausted and bone-tired, but he nods, mumbles, “Yessir.”
“You’re staying here tonight,” says Bobby, hauling Dean to his feet, “and until I decide you’re fit to leave.”
Dean doesn’t say anything, and Bobby lets it go, and they make their slow, teetering way to the bedroom that used to be Dean and Sam’s. Dean flops onto the bed by the window, the one with a periodic table and a Savage Garden poster pinned up on the wall above it. Sam’s bed. Bobby lets that one go, and flicks off the light without a word.
•
2006
Bobby knows the dead, is intimately familiar with them, with the way their bodies go utterly still, the way a human loses his realness in death. And it’s a lucky thing, too, or he might have mistaken Dean for the dead Winchester in his car.
It’s hard to think straight, past the yawning chasm inside of him, the pure, overpowering grief, the total and irreparable horror that was Sam Winchester dead in the mud. Every breath Bobby takes ios punctuated by the re-realization, awful and unforgiving, Sam’s dead Sam’s dead Sam’s dead. Little round Sammy, so serious, brave little Sam, clever little Sam, Sam who came back and kept coming, Sam who was Dean’s whole world.
Prying Dean off of Sam had been quite possibly the worst thing Bobby had ever had to do. He’d clung, wordless, trembling, kneeling in the dirt with his oversize baby brother secure in his arms, held so tightly it was like Dean was trying to crawl into Sam, to make them one, to give his treacherously beating heart to the boy who he loved in a way that eclipsed everything else of note about him, at least in that moment.
“Dean,” Bobby had said, and he was ignored.
His hand on Dean’s shoulder had been ignored, but when he tried to extricate Dean from Sam’s grip Dean had let out a harsh little noise, almost a dry sob, and held tighter.
“Son,” Bobby had rasped.
Now they were in the car-and Bobby had steered Dean away from the backseat, couldn’t let him cradle his brother in the back of the Impala, even as Dean had tried, had breathed, “I’ve got you” to his brother’s corpse, but Bobby had manhandled him into the front seat-and Dean was leaning against the window, staring dully ahead.
There was nothing to say, but the silence was torturous, the air thick with coiled pain and nothing to distract from the roar of Sam’s dead Sam’s dead Sam’s dead.
“Dean,” says Bobby, and is ignored, of course.
I’m sorry, he thinks, this is not your fault, Sam would never want you to give up, you’re more than your daddy and your brother, Dean, but they are all empty and Dean could never believe it, and what good could it ever do? Sam is there, in the back, and in the rearview Bobby can see the toes of his boots, the hem of his jacket, his hair-never his face, slack and waxy and horribly devoid of Sam.
Dean makes a horrible, dry noise, a choking, sobbing, hollow sound, and Bobby watches the road, doggedly, tries to cover the litany of Sam’s dead with Dean’s alive Dean’s alive Dean’s alive.
“You might just be the best man I know,” Bobby says, eyes on the road, and it’s the wrong thing to say, even if it’s true, it’s useless and Dean doesn’t appear to hear him anyways, and they drive on.
•
2007
Dean isn’t even thirty yet. Bobby had seen men in their nineties regard death less coolly.
Sam is a whirling dervish, all furious panic and scrambling and drowning in his own helplessness, but Dean is cool and contained, nearly philosophical in the face of his own death, acting out only in the smallest of ways-more sex, more calories, more drinking, less sleep. Bobby thinks of Dean’s brave face in the sink all those years ago, as he stitched Dean’s leg and Sammy prattled about his brover, and waits for the wound to show.
It comes three months after Cold Oak. Sam is passed out on the couch, looking young and small with his hair in his face and a pile of books surrounding him, and Bobby finds Dean leaning in the doorframe, a mostly-empty bottle of Jack dangling from his fingers, just watching. He tips it briefly at Bobby in acknowledgement as he approaches, and the two stand in the doorway for a moment, watching Sam sleep.
“Used to watch ’im like this all the time,” Dean grunts after a moment, and Bobby turns to look at him, but Dean’s gaze is fixed on Sam, his eyes far away. “When we were little. Use’to get these nightmares-not like Sammy’s, wit’ the yellin’ and the crying, jus’...I’d wake up and, and Dad wouldn’t be back and my heart would be goin’ and I’d just sit up and watch Sammy for a bit. Put my hand on his chest, feel ’im breathin’.” He lets out a hollow chuckle and shakes his head, dropping his gaze. “I never told anyone that. Calmed me down.”
They stand in silence for another moment. Sam gives a little snuffle in his sleep and scrunches up his nose for a moment. A strand of hair falls over his left eye.
“I can’t leave him, Bobby,” Dean gasps suddenly, wetly, meeting Bobby’s eyes with a look of childish fear on his face. “I can’t. I have to take care of him. He’s just a-he’s just a kid. He’s my job.”
Dean is looking at him pleadingly, and Bobby doesn’t know what to say, so he lies.
“You’re not goin’ nowhere,” he says, like it’s an order, and Dean nods quickly, sniffs, drops his eyes again. He swallows noisily, then visibly pulls himself together, takes a swig from the bottle, turns to go.
“Night, Bobby,” he says, and Bobby nods. Dean makes his slow, drunken way up the stairs, and Bobby stays, listens to the staircase creak as Dean goes up one step at a time, careful like a child, while Sam sleeps like a baby on the couch.
•
2008
Sam won’t let him burn the body. He’s near feral, run ragged, mad with grief and guilt, sick with fear and horror, exhausted beyond what anyone can be expected to handle. Bobby’s letting it go, for now, waiting for Sam to furiously pace himself to sleep.
Meanwhile Dean is hardly recognizable, placed carefully on the bed he’d claimed so many years ago, so shredded Bobby is afraid to move him. Sam had closed his brother’s eyes, but not right away, not before holding his brother, before trying to do something-Bobby can see the pattern of Sam’s desperation, his despair, in the incomplete, bloody fingerprint on Dean’s right eyelid. He feels sick.
“You never deserved this,” he tells Dean’s body, “you never, ever deserved this.”
Downstairs, there’s a series of dull thuds and a clatter. Sam has punched something, knocked something over, given a dull yell of frustration. Bobby steels himself, waits for Sam to wear himself down. Remembers him as a little boy, pitching a terrific fit about brushing his hair or about cereal or cartoons, about John leaving, about Dean getting to stay up later, remembers him as a teenager, a coiled bundle of anger and adolescence, railing against his father at the top of his voice. Thinks about Dean, always there to talk him down, to make him focus, to make him breath, to make him rational. Looks at Dean now, half inside-out and splayed on the bed that will always smell of his aftershave and the Impala’s seats.
“You deserved a hell of a lot better than this,” Bobby chokes out, and then it’s all he can say, again and again, “you deserved so much better than this.”
Dean can’t hear him, can’t respond, can’t give a crooked little smile and turn pink, brush off the praise, make a joke-he can’t do what he always did, can’t pour everyone a drink and say, “It’s okay, Sammy. It’s okay, Bobby, it’ll be okay.”
And it’s only then that Bobby realizes just how badly he needs to hear it.
Rating: PG-13
Words: 3,686
Spoilers: Up to the end of season 3.
Warnings: Language, descriptions of injuries, canon character death.
Summary: Bobby watching Dean as he seeks the bubble reputation, even in the cannon's mouth. Written for karai9's wish: "I'm really missing Bobby these days, so any fic that emphasizes on the special relationship that Bobby had with Dean sans Sam (we love the guy but you see Dean at his most readable when he's away from Sam) would be perfect. Especially if it includes whump. ;) Gen."
Neurotic author's notes: Well, it's 2 am, better post some fanfic. This is...I don't know what this is. Bobby and Dean being their sad sweet selves. The title is from the famous "all the world's a stage" speech in Shakespeare's As You Like It: "Then a soldier,/Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,/Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,/Seeking the bubble reputation/Even in the cannon's mouth." Cut text is from Leonard Cohen's "The Stranger Song."
Also: The first part is kind of the rest of the scene I sketched out in " Forgetting Any Other Home But This." I plagiarized myself like a sir.
1987
Karen would have made an excellent mother. She was patient, gentle, fanciful. Bobby thought he was rather less predisposed to dealing with small children-he was gruff, efficient, set in his ways. The opportunity to test this theory never arrived, but in round, serious Sammy Winchester, Bobby caught a glimpse of what might have been.
Sammy was four, not a baby but not quite a person yet either, and Bobby did better than expected. Soon enough he found Sammy’s puzzling ramblings to be charming, even sweet; found himself forgiving the boy for minor transgressions, for being younger and slower than Bobby ever remembered being; found himself tolerating, even inviting, the boy’s bouts of silliness.
In contrast to squat, round little Sammy was Dean. Dean had, like his brother would some three years later, shot up and shed his baby weight. He was reedy and diminutive, animated only when talking to his father or to Sam. In John’s presence he was an auto-man, and in Sammy’s, he’s a doting, mischievous delight. Bobby falls into the habit of lingering outside the door to the spare bedroom after he puts the boys to bed, listening to Dean’s animated storytelling and the gentle ways he reassures his brother-“Yeah, Sammy, Dad’s doin’ jus’ fine, yeah, Sammy, you can sleep with me tonight, no, Sammy, there’s nothin’ under the bed-I checked, and so did Bobby. You wan’ me to check again?” If Dean has such worries, he keeps them to himself.
One afternoon they’re all out in the yard, Bobby sitting in a lawn chair, in the shade, writing a letter to Rufus Turner detailing the earliest warning signs of a rugaru, the boys playing in the hollow corpses of irreparable cars, when Bobby hears the high whine of bending metal followed by a heavy thump, and he’s out of his chair in an instant, twisting his way through the maze of his own making.
After a moment, he finds Dean, sitting at the base of a teetering pile of wrecked parts, hands wringing frantically around a leg he’s too afraid to touch, and Bobby can see why-there’s a greasy gash that runs from the middle of his thigh almost to his ankle, and blood is absolutely everywhere, and eight-year-old Dean has reached his limit. He’s making high, desperate keening noises, too shocked to cry, though snot is streaming down his white little face. Bobby slides to his knees beside the kid, putting an arm around his shoulders, tries to ascertain if the cut his deep or just long as Dean makes the kind of noises Bobby had last heard that time Rufus had to pass a kidney stone while they were holed up in his cabin during a snowstorm.
“Calm down, Dean,” he says uselessly, pulling delicately at one side of Dean’s shredded pant leg as Dean lets out a panicked wail. “Dean. It’s alright. I can stitch this up. Look at me, son.”
Dean lets out one more stifled sob before looking up at Bobby’s face, and he takes several big, shaky breathes before he manages to mumble, “Don’ tell my dad.”
Bobby doesn’t have anything to say to that, so he just slides one arm gently under Dean’s legs and lifts the kid with ease. Dean whimpers, high and miserable, before a panting, alarmed Sammy makes his presence known and Dean manages to bite down his sobs.
Dean is almost entirely silent as they trek back to the house, Bobby taking it slow, weighing the urgency of Dean’s pain against the potential fallout if he stumbled and dropped the kid, Sammy plodding behind, bossy and curious. By the time Bobby’s deposited Dean in the sink and started washing out his leg, Dean has managed to set his jaw and told Sammy everything’s alright, to stop fussing.
Sammy continues to wander aimlessly around the kitchen, lets out a little sing-song sigh of “my brave brover,” and Dean’s face slips into a crooked, soft smile, even as Bobby pokes the needle into the sensitive, reddened skin of the kid’s thigh.
Something in Bobby’s chest does a somersault at that, and as he carries Dean to the bedroom nearly thirty minutes later, he puts his hand up to cradle the back of Dean’s head, and lets the kid tuck his face into the crook of his neck.
“Sorry ’bout this,” Dean mumbles as Bobby lowers him carefully onto his bed.
“Don’t be,” Bobby huffs, and he runs an awkward, oversized hand through Dean’s hair before letting him sleep.
•
1991
Dean hates school. He hates the seventh grade. He hates pre-algebra, he hates A Wrinkle in Time, he hates stupid Life Sciences and he hates the stupid constitution of the stupid United States of America, he hates Judy Reynolds and Matt Spiegleman and Mr. Ritter and Ms. Siskins and Animal Farm and absolutely everything about school, and he is a old enough to hunt and should be allowed to do that instead of go to stupid school all the time where he’s too dumb to get anything anyways.
Bobby, who had entered the kitchen with the intention of grabbing a beer and ducking back out of Dean’s way, stands in the doorway, totally at a loss, staring at Dean, who is scrunched up in his seat at the kitchen table, schoolwork spread in front of him in a haphazard mess, arms crossed and face screwed up and red.
After a long moment, Bobby says, “Okay.”
And Dean picks up and pencil and lobs it clear across the room and says, “No, it isn’t! Sammy’s in the third freaking grade and he reads better’n me!”
“That’s not true,” says Bobby automatically, but it is-Sam’s quicker and more engaged in his reading then Dean is now, and he’s not shy about it. He’s precocious as anything, and doesn’t seem to recognize that he’s setting up a rivalry with Dean. John, typically helpful, has taken to calling Sammy the brains of the outfit.
The bitch of it is that Dean’s quite smart, he just lacks Sam’s ability to transition from school to school relatively smoothly-and, if Bobby’s being honest, Sam’s diligence or social skills. Dean’s never been taught to think much about school, and now he’s not a young kid anymore it’s been catching up with him.
“Yes it is,” Dean mutters, and this is as bad a funk as Bobby’s ever seen him in. Lord, you’re going to be a fun thirteen-year-old, Bobby thinks, before returning his attention to Dean. He stoops low to pick up the pencil Dean threw and goes to the table, sets it down in front of him. After a tense moment, Bobby pulls a chair out a chair and joins Dean.
“Let’s get one thing straight,” he says firmly, and at his tone Dean glances up quickly, looks him in the eye, sheepish and diminutive. “You are not stupid. Don’t let anybody tell you different. And next time you throw something at me, boy, you’re going down.”
Dean looks slightly miserable, but the ghost of a smile flits across his face. Bobby considers telling Dean a number of things-that it’s not his fault he has to change schools so often, that no one else in his class has to worry about the things Dean does. That it takes a very clever kid to do the things Dean does with cars and guns already, that nothing could make a boy like Dean Winchester worthless.
He considers all of this, and says none of it, and instead begins talking Dean through his pre-algebra homework, step by step.
•
1996
There are precisely two people in all the world for whom Bobby Singer would willingly buy condoms, and they are Dean and Sam Winchester, and the latter is, thankfully, still at an age where girls are a notion and sustained physical contact with one is uncomfortable and awkward.
The same could not be said for Dean, who according to his father could not be trusted with any female between the ages of fifteen and fifty, ever, for any reason. Dean got hot around the collar when his father said that, and clearly wanted to object, but there was no denying the kid had grown up handsome and he knew it. John seemed to believe Dean was young and stupid and constantly, aimlessly horny, and while Bobby couldn’t bring himself to disagree with that assessment he couldn’t help but bristle at how dismissive John was. The kid’s priority was still his brother and his dad, and he hadn’t lost his head. Seventeen-year-olds got restless, wanted to do things by themselves, bold things, adult things, stupid things. Dean, who had become at adult around the time of his fourth birthday, was only stretching his legs a bit.
And Bobby Singer is standing in line at a pharmacy at eleven o’clock at night, buying condoms. Bobby had never once told a Winchester he loved him, he hadn’t done much more than clap Dean on the shoulder in years, and he had not-nor would he ever-admit to those boys just how badly he missed them when they were gone, but if this isn’t the grandest gesture of pure and forgiving love a man like Bobby Singer could ever manage, he isn’t sure what is.
When he gets back to the house, Dean is on the porch, hunched over and picking at the lace of his boot. Bobby gets out of the car and tosses the box of condoms, still in the plastic “Have A Nice Day” bag, in Dean’s direction, and they land next to his foot. Dean starts, pulls the bag open with two fingers and peeks inside, then flushes bright red and looks back up at Bobby.
“I always…” he mumbles, and Bobby nods.
“Well, now you can always some more,” says Bobby, fondly exasperated, and Dean nods vigorously, swallows convulsively. He’s giving Bobby a very strange look, wounded and grateful and astonished all at once, and it’s making Bobby uncomfortable. He closes the car door, and makes his way to the porch.
“Thanks, Bobby,” says Dean, a little hoarsely, and Bobby nods, cuffs the side of Dean’s head affectionately, and Dean leans momentarily into the touch, his incessant fidgeting stopping for just a moment. Bobby pats him once and heads inside, leaving Dean to contemplate the vast yard and the starless sky.
•
2002
“Is this a tooth?”
Bobby squints at the yellow-white, raggedy thing lodged in the space between Dean’s knuckles and confirms, grimly, that it is, tucked among the scrapes and abrasions and blood that splatter Dean’s hands. He’s already got the kid sitting Very Fucking Still with his head tilted back, an ancient pack of frozen peas balanced over his black eye, a wad of tissues stuck up his nose.
“This is gonna hurt like a bitch when I pull it out,” Bobby reports dispassionately, and Dean sets his jaw all the more firmly and grunts in acknowledgement. A thin, dark trail of blood from his split lip is making its way down the side of his face, sluggishly dripping down the side of his neck.
Bobby sets the tweezers on either side of the tooth and grips it tightly. Nothing for it, he thinks as Dean’s hand twitches once. “On three,” he says, “one, two-”
Dean lets out an indignant yelp as Bobby yanks the shard of tooth free. A short spurt of blood explodes out, gets on Bobby’s face, and by the time he’s wiped it off Dean has pitched forward in his chair and is examining his left hand with horrified fascination as a surprising amount of blood spills over his knuckles onto his hand, his wrist, his pant legs. Bobby makes a frustrated noise and seizes Dean’s hand, takes the washcloth he’d just been using to clean his own face and presses down on the cut between Dean’s knuckles, hard. Blood rises up through the towel to his hand almost immediately, but he doggedly presses down.
“Dean,” he says, and Dean makes a little “hmm” noise. “Dean,” he repeats, the Dean looks up blearily.
“Yeah, Bobby,” he grunts.
“This has got to stop,” he says plainly, and Dean blinks owlishly, then drops his head again. Bobby has no intention of letting him play stupid. He’d been reckless since Sam left last year, but never sloppy, and never so angry as to start a fight with three complete strangers that left him with teeth lodged in his knuckles and in such appalling condition it makes Bobby nauseous to think he drove here. That started when John began taking leave of his eldest whenever he damn well felt like it.
Most boys of twenty-four would be more than capable of handling their father’s absence, but Dean had only ever really known John and Sam. Even as Sam grew up and began to spend as much time away from home as he could manage, began to see more appeal in hanging out with kids his own age than his brother and dad, Dean had remained steadfastly loyal to John, acutely aware of the fact that he was needed.
Something painful bloomed in Bobby’s chest as he realized, like a slap, that John-and Dean-had spent two decades wrapping Dean’s entire identity up in two people and their need for him, and now they were both gone, effectively telling Dean that they didn’t need him after all.
So now he’s doing the only other thing anybody else ever taught him to do, Bobby thinks with a dull, exhausted sadness, which is fight like hell.
“Dean, enough of this,” he says aloud, firmly, the mounting despair in his heart giving his voice a hard, bitter edge. “You’ve got to stop fucking around like this, do you hear me? Do you hear me, Dean? Look at me, son.”
Dean does, looks exhausted and bone-tired, but he nods, mumbles, “Yessir.”
“You’re staying here tonight,” says Bobby, hauling Dean to his feet, “and until I decide you’re fit to leave.”
Dean doesn’t say anything, and Bobby lets it go, and they make their slow, teetering way to the bedroom that used to be Dean and Sam’s. Dean flops onto the bed by the window, the one with a periodic table and a Savage Garden poster pinned up on the wall above it. Sam’s bed. Bobby lets that one go, and flicks off the light without a word.
•
2006
Bobby knows the dead, is intimately familiar with them, with the way their bodies go utterly still, the way a human loses his realness in death. And it’s a lucky thing, too, or he might have mistaken Dean for the dead Winchester in his car.
It’s hard to think straight, past the yawning chasm inside of him, the pure, overpowering grief, the total and irreparable horror that was Sam Winchester dead in the mud. Every breath Bobby takes ios punctuated by the re-realization, awful and unforgiving, Sam’s dead Sam’s dead Sam’s dead. Little round Sammy, so serious, brave little Sam, clever little Sam, Sam who came back and kept coming, Sam who was Dean’s whole world.
Prying Dean off of Sam had been quite possibly the worst thing Bobby had ever had to do. He’d clung, wordless, trembling, kneeling in the dirt with his oversize baby brother secure in his arms, held so tightly it was like Dean was trying to crawl into Sam, to make them one, to give his treacherously beating heart to the boy who he loved in a way that eclipsed everything else of note about him, at least in that moment.
“Dean,” Bobby had said, and he was ignored.
His hand on Dean’s shoulder had been ignored, but when he tried to extricate Dean from Sam’s grip Dean had let out a harsh little noise, almost a dry sob, and held tighter.
“Son,” Bobby had rasped.
Now they were in the car-and Bobby had steered Dean away from the backseat, couldn’t let him cradle his brother in the back of the Impala, even as Dean had tried, had breathed, “I’ve got you” to his brother’s corpse, but Bobby had manhandled him into the front seat-and Dean was leaning against the window, staring dully ahead.
There was nothing to say, but the silence was torturous, the air thick with coiled pain and nothing to distract from the roar of Sam’s dead Sam’s dead Sam’s dead.
“Dean,” says Bobby, and is ignored, of course.
I’m sorry, he thinks, this is not your fault, Sam would never want you to give up, you’re more than your daddy and your brother, Dean, but they are all empty and Dean could never believe it, and what good could it ever do? Sam is there, in the back, and in the rearview Bobby can see the toes of his boots, the hem of his jacket, his hair-never his face, slack and waxy and horribly devoid of Sam.
Dean makes a horrible, dry noise, a choking, sobbing, hollow sound, and Bobby watches the road, doggedly, tries to cover the litany of Sam’s dead with Dean’s alive Dean’s alive Dean’s alive.
“You might just be the best man I know,” Bobby says, eyes on the road, and it’s the wrong thing to say, even if it’s true, it’s useless and Dean doesn’t appear to hear him anyways, and they drive on.
•
2007
Dean isn’t even thirty yet. Bobby had seen men in their nineties regard death less coolly.
Sam is a whirling dervish, all furious panic and scrambling and drowning in his own helplessness, but Dean is cool and contained, nearly philosophical in the face of his own death, acting out only in the smallest of ways-more sex, more calories, more drinking, less sleep. Bobby thinks of Dean’s brave face in the sink all those years ago, as he stitched Dean’s leg and Sammy prattled about his brover, and waits for the wound to show.
It comes three months after Cold Oak. Sam is passed out on the couch, looking young and small with his hair in his face and a pile of books surrounding him, and Bobby finds Dean leaning in the doorframe, a mostly-empty bottle of Jack dangling from his fingers, just watching. He tips it briefly at Bobby in acknowledgement as he approaches, and the two stand in the doorway for a moment, watching Sam sleep.
“Used to watch ’im like this all the time,” Dean grunts after a moment, and Bobby turns to look at him, but Dean’s gaze is fixed on Sam, his eyes far away. “When we were little. Use’to get these nightmares-not like Sammy’s, wit’ the yellin’ and the crying, jus’...I’d wake up and, and Dad wouldn’t be back and my heart would be goin’ and I’d just sit up and watch Sammy for a bit. Put my hand on his chest, feel ’im breathin’.” He lets out a hollow chuckle and shakes his head, dropping his gaze. “I never told anyone that. Calmed me down.”
They stand in silence for another moment. Sam gives a little snuffle in his sleep and scrunches up his nose for a moment. A strand of hair falls over his left eye.
“I can’t leave him, Bobby,” Dean gasps suddenly, wetly, meeting Bobby’s eyes with a look of childish fear on his face. “I can’t. I have to take care of him. He’s just a-he’s just a kid. He’s my job.”
Dean is looking at him pleadingly, and Bobby doesn’t know what to say, so he lies.
“You’re not goin’ nowhere,” he says, like it’s an order, and Dean nods quickly, sniffs, drops his eyes again. He swallows noisily, then visibly pulls himself together, takes a swig from the bottle, turns to go.
“Night, Bobby,” he says, and Bobby nods. Dean makes his slow, drunken way up the stairs, and Bobby stays, listens to the staircase creak as Dean goes up one step at a time, careful like a child, while Sam sleeps like a baby on the couch.
•
2008
Sam won’t let him burn the body. He’s near feral, run ragged, mad with grief and guilt, sick with fear and horror, exhausted beyond what anyone can be expected to handle. Bobby’s letting it go, for now, waiting for Sam to furiously pace himself to sleep.
Meanwhile Dean is hardly recognizable, placed carefully on the bed he’d claimed so many years ago, so shredded Bobby is afraid to move him. Sam had closed his brother’s eyes, but not right away, not before holding his brother, before trying to do something-Bobby can see the pattern of Sam’s desperation, his despair, in the incomplete, bloody fingerprint on Dean’s right eyelid. He feels sick.
“You never deserved this,” he tells Dean’s body, “you never, ever deserved this.”
Downstairs, there’s a series of dull thuds and a clatter. Sam has punched something, knocked something over, given a dull yell of frustration. Bobby steels himself, waits for Sam to wear himself down. Remembers him as a little boy, pitching a terrific fit about brushing his hair or about cereal or cartoons, about John leaving, about Dean getting to stay up later, remembers him as a teenager, a coiled bundle of anger and adolescence, railing against his father at the top of his voice. Thinks about Dean, always there to talk him down, to make him focus, to make him breath, to make him rational. Looks at Dean now, half inside-out and splayed on the bed that will always smell of his aftershave and the Impala’s seats.
“You deserved a hell of a lot better than this,” Bobby chokes out, and then it’s all he can say, again and again, “you deserved so much better than this.”
Dean can’t hear him, can’t respond, can’t give a crooked little smile and turn pink, brush off the praise, make a joke-he can’t do what he always did, can’t pour everyone a drink and say, “It’s okay, Sammy. It’s okay, Bobby, it’ll be okay.”
And it’s only then that Bobby realizes just how badly he needs to hear it.