Fic: Families
Title: Families
Author: Kaye
Rating: PG13
Characters: Bobby, with mention of Sam, Dean, John
Spoilers: None
Summary: Bobby understands more they anyone knows about family . . .
Families
They don’t know Bobby often sits all night in his car, watching the door of whatever fleabag hotel they’ve flopped. They think he’s back on the farm, making calls, chasing leads. Fighting the fight. They don’t know he’s fighting right outside their door. He’s lost count of the “visitors” he’s ganked so they can catch up on the precious shut eye they need for the ones he misses. First asked by their father, then compelled by his sons. “Protect them,” John would say and disappear into the mist like a fucking ghost.
Bobby would peek in sometimes when they were younger. Watch Dean try to be brave, turn away when Sam couldn’t stop crying because of the nightmares. Curse at anyone and everyone who allowed those boys to grow up like this. Like ghosts. Walking in the footsteps of their father, when they should be walking school hallways, walking big yellow dogs. Walking away from what they never asked for.
He almost took them once. John hadn’t been around for months, Dean had started stealing 12-packs and cigarettes, and Sam stopped going to school. Bobby showed up one night with warm clothes and new shoes and was about to knock when he heard their voices. Happy, excited, chattering away like, well, like kids. He peeked in the window and there was John, sitting on the bed, cleaning his piece. At his feet, Sam built a giant starship out of a new set of Legos and Dean, his shoulder glued to his father’s, mimicked every stroke of the cloth against the barrel of his brand new gun. Bobby left the shoes on the steps. He knew it was too late. For all of them.
That night, he killed three monsters while his sons, wrapped in the arms of their father, slept.