(Fic) Writer Picks the Music: The Family Business/Elegy for John

[tyrsibs]

If you’d asked Bobby, just before he opened his front door on that spring morning, who he expected to see on his old porch, he probably would have said Rufus Turner, come to complain at him about old times for a while. Or Deputy Mills with a complaint writ in hand. Hell, maybe even one of those young cusses that Ellen kept sending to him for intel, even after he’d practically begged her to stop. It would not have crossed his mind that it might be John Winchester’s boys.

And yet, there they stood, and Bobby wanted to take a swipe at his eyes to be sure he wasn’t sleepwalking. Sam hovered a step behind his older brother, hunching in on himself just like he had when he’d first spurted up past Dean’s height. An uncertain smile flickered across his face. Dean’s smile, though, was bright as he said, “Hey, Bobby. You are a sight for sore eyes.”

Which wasn’t true, of course. Bobby narrowed his eyes, wondering why Dean Winchester was trying to snow him. “Hell, you don’t hafta be sweet to me,” he said. “It’s—good to see you boys.” He stepped over his threshold and drew Dean in for an awkward hug, slapping his back gently before releasing him and turning to give Sam the same. Around the corner of his house he heard Rummy’s chain leash rattle as the dog no doubt settled back down at the sound of Bobby’s voice. He cleared his throat. “So—do I gotta ask—”

“It’s Dad—he’s—” Sam blurted, then suddenly stopped himself. Bobby sighed. Shoulda known they weren’t just passing by. He cursed John’s name, not for the first time in his life, for bringing more trouble on his kids.

But he let them in, and they let him run his tests without a word, as the three of them studied each other like a clump of kids in a schoolyard on the first day of school. The boys looked good, anyway, even as tense as they both were, at least good enough for the day they were apparently having. Sam had grown his hair out into a shaggy mop and was thin and rangy, like he’d just put on a couple more inches, though that was impossible. His brother seemed to be bucking for a part as the new James Dean, his shoulders slouching under his popped collar and hands in the pockets of his coat. They were studying him, too, and he grasped the bill of his trucker’s cap, self-consciously re-settling it on his head as he walked into the study for his flask of holy water.

Dean started talking first—the boy never could stand idle for long. He was filling Bobby in on what had happened in Salvation and the phone call they’d gotten from a demon wearing a pretty girl. Sam let Dean talk, and drifted over to a side table, where he became occupied with one of Bobby’s books that was laying open on top of his latest pile.

Bobby listened to Dean.

Bobby remembered.

“John, I’m not sayin’ it again. He ain’t leaving my house this afternoon, and that’s all there is to it.” The kitchen screen door banged shut between them as if to bring his point home.

“Bobby, he’s my son. Mine.” John glared at the older hunter from the top step of the rickety kitchen porch. “Don’t think you’ve got the final say here.”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass what you think right now.” The shotgun he kept by the door was in Bobby’s hands before he even had time to think about it, and he used it to push the door back open. John’s eyes widened in surprise when he saw the gun, and he backed up. Bobby could’ve grinned as Winchester almost stumbled trying to find the lower step. He could’ve, but he held his face in a grimace instead, pumping the gun and bringing the stock up to his waist, though he kept it trained low and pointed at the porch planks. “What are you even doin’ here right now, John? You care so much? Where were you a week ago?”

Bobby’s grimace tightened as he thought about the phone call he’d gotten from the hospital in Cheyenne, asking him—him, not John—for medical info on an unconscious young man who’d been found bleeding out in some rancher’s outer pasture. A boy with a next of kin phone number on a card in his wallet, whose dad hadn’t bothered to pick up his phone. So said the tired-sounding charge nurse who had taken in upon herself to go through his phone contacts while her patient was in surgery to set a compound fracture of the radius in his forearm.

“Look, I know you’re mad—”

“Don’t think you really do, John.” Bobby took a step across the porch, then another, pleased at how John backed away towards his truck. “He’s been out of the hospital for a day. He’s on my couch right now with a busted arm and twenty stitches in his leg. Because of a hunt you sent him on. Because you were too busy to back him up or to answer the damn phone. Far as I’m concerned he’s welcome to stay here, on my couch or anywhere else, as long as he needs to. But you ain’t.”

John was backed up against his monster of a truck now and had his palms up in a placating gesture, but Bobby could tell he was livid. Well, that made two of them. He opened his mouth to say some fool thing along the lines of “get the hell off my land,” when the anger in John’s eye turned to a glint of satisfaction. Behind him he heard the screen door open with a screech and then bang shut.

He turned around, his righteous stance deflating. Dean stood behind him, his duffle strap slung over his right shoulder. The kid ducked his head at his would-be defender in what he probably thought was a manly nod, and managed a small grin. He was still a mess, bruises on his face and his casted arm in a sling pressed up against his ribs, with most of his weight on his good leg. He took a step forward and Bobby could see that he was trying not to limp on his bad leg. The one with the slash that hadn’t killed him only because he’d been able to cinch his shirt down over it with his belt before he’d passed out ten yards from the rancher’s fence line. Bobby didn’t even know what he’d been hunting, just that Dean had assured him that he’d “ganked that son of a bitch” before he collapsed on the couch.

Dean didn’t look at his dad as he walked deliberately forward. He paused at Bobby’s side and brought his good hand up to the old hunter’s shoulder. “Thanks, Bobby,” he said. “For everything.”

“You good, son?” John called from the dusty driveway. Bobby could’ve lifted his shotgun just in answer to the tone in that man’s voice, except Dean—

Dean dropped his eyes, said, “Yes, sir,” and didn’t look back at Bobby as he walked slowly down the steps to his father.

John looked into his son’s face for several seconds before nodding and turning to open the truck door. He took the duffle and stood at Dean’s elbow as the kid hoisted himself up into the passenger seat with the help of the panic handle above the door frame.

Neither of the Winchesters waved goodbye.

“Here you go,” Bobby said, picking the flasks up from his desk where they’d been all along.

Not too long after that, the demon riding the pretty girl barged in, talking big, spreading around some bravado about not being impressed with the Winchesters, but she wasn’t smart enough to know that Sam was playing her right into Bobby’s devil’s trap. Her exorcism was something he wasn’t going to forget anytime soon. If he was being honest—though no one would be asking him about this—Dean scared Bobby, there, pushing ahead even knowing that he’d be killing the girl underneath.

A bit.

And then afterwards, after she’d thanked them in spite of the fact that they’d all but killed her themselves--

He’d sent them off to help their father, a storm of regret rising in his chest that he was just letting them drive away again. But he knew that John needed them more than Bobby did. The bastard.

XXX

When Sam called him a few days later, he didn’t say too much, just that they’d found John, but all three of them had wound up in the hospital thanks to a demon-possessed trucker. Sam said he needed help with the car and that, “Dean’s not awake yet, but he will be, soon, and I just—I want to take care of the car.” Bobby was on the road barely an hour after hanging up the phone.

Bobby realized just how much Sam had left out when he saw the shape of the car at the wrecking yard. But the boy now standing next to him needed that car to be seen to, for his brother, and facing his tremulous hope was more than the older man could stand up against. They loaded the car onto the trailer together. And when Bobby’d asked him if he still wanted to get the spell ingredients on John’s list, even though they were proof that his father had lied to him, Sam said yes. And he’d helped with that, too. Then he drove the kid back to the hospital where Dean lay in silence, any fight he had going on submerged beneath tubes and monitors.

He didn’t move to get out of the truck, even though Sam had paused with his hand on the door handle, when they pulled up outside the hospital. The boy was clutching his paper bag of ingredients and looking at him expectantly. Bobby looked away, cleared his throat. “Sam—me and your dad—I know I said to bring him by, but right now—with Dean in such a bad way—”

Sam huffed and looked at the bag in his lap.

“Let’s just say, I don’t want to pick up where we left off.” Bobby glanced in his rear view mirror at the car they’d covered and strapped to his trailer. “So—I’ll get the Impala to my yard for ya. She’ll be waiting. But you call me if anything changes. Or when John stops being a damn idjit.”

Sam nodded. “Sure—thanks.” He lifted the handle and slid out of the cab without looking back. Bobby watched him, hating the way his thin shoulders slumped, until he walked through the automatic door and into the green hospital light.

He sighed.

XXX

Bobby drove through the night, fueled by coffee and an unreasonable amount of anger, coupled with an itchy guilt. The miles stretched out between him and that hospital where Dean was probably dying while John fixed to do something stupid. Sam had wanted him to stay, though he hadn’t asked. John had practically announced his plan to have a chat with a demon, handing that shopping list to his youngest and knowing that he would give it to Bobby to fill. And Dean—

Yet here he was, driving away from all of them with their once-beautiful car on its way to what would surely be its last stop amongst his piles of unsalvageable wrecks. Bobby’s hands tightened on the wheel. He should let it go. He wasn’t a part of this. John—and Dean—they’d set him outside the family, a fond memory rather than an active member, when Dean climbed into that truck four years ago.

When the day dawned in his rear window he was twenty miles away from his own home, which stood empty without even a dog to greet him.

“Balls—” Bobby wiped his hand across his eyes and he stomped down on the gas, tearing up the last few miles as fast as he dared.

His phone sat silent in his pocket as he whipped into the driveway to his house. It weighed on him as he pulled up in front of his repair shed, and he found himself touching it like a talisman throughout the process of releasing the Impala from the trailer into a sheltered bay, before replacing the tarp that hid her, damaged and forlorn, away again. When a tear stung his eye as he covered her up, he called himself a damn fool.

He pulled the phone out as he climbed the steps to his back porch and let himself into his messy little kitchen. He stared at it, tired and bleary, as if it could tell him what was going on five hundred miles behind him all by itself, if he just held it long enough. He stood in the center of the room, the silence that he usually welcomed in his house growing heavier and heavier, until he had to snort at his own behavior. “Balls,” he said again, and chucked the phone onto a pile of bills on the kitchen table.

John and Bobby sit at the old formica kitchen table, both staring at the closed pocket door that blocks off the living room. Dean is on the other side of that door, sleeping fitfully on Bobby’s couch.

“He’s been out since we got home,” Bobby says, “about three hours now.” He breaks off to take a long pull on the beer bottle in front of him.

John sets down his own bottle. “You know, I tried,” he says softly.

Bobby startles at the words. He knows the memory he’s having now, and John sure as hell hadn’t tried explaining himself the first time around. In fact, right here at the kitchen table is where everything started to go downhill, with John clearing his throat and starting in on how he and Dean weren’t even going to spend the night. That they had to be off somewhere in upstate Michigan before the weekend.

But this John is gazing down at his hands, his fingers wrapped loosely around the base of his bottle. “I never wanted them to grow up the way they did. I never told you, but one time, when Dean was about eight, he asked if him and Sam could stay here all the time. With you. And I said no.” He takes a swig. Bobby holds his breath. “It wasn’t safe.”

In spite of his better judgement, Bobby finds himself saying, “You didn’t think I could take care of ‘em-“

“No. Not that. It wasn’t safe. For them, or for you. Something would have found them if they were stuck in one spot. Or they’d get careless, let slip at school what their dad and uncle did for a living, and bring on a whole other set of problems. You know how kids are. I had to keep them moving, keep them sharp. After the thing in Flagstaff—” he smiles to himself wistfully, and brings his gaze up to meet Bobby’s stare. “We butted heads a lot, you and me, but the boys, they mean it when they call you Uncle Bobby.”

“I’m dreamin’ here, right?"

The John in front of him fades away and then another version replaces it, standing before him with haggard lines around his eyes and defeated shoulders. This John does not look at his old friend, but keeps his eyes on the closed door where—in the real-world memory that lays over the scene like a smoky haze—Dean must have been waking up to the sound of his adopted uncle kicking his dad out of the house. This other John hangs his head and speaks urgently but without turning around.

“I need you to take care of my boys. Can you do that? Take care—

Take care—

Care—"

One of Bobby’s phones was ringing and he jolted upright on the couch where he’d drifted off to sleep. He staggered up, cursing as he bashed his shin against the coffee table, and made his way to the kitchen. His cell phone was beeping at him, Sam’s number scrolling across the flip-top display. He grabbed it before it fell silent and pulled it open. “I’m here, Sam.”

“Bobby? It’s--

“Dean?” He sagged against the metal edge of the table. “By god, it’s good to hear your voice. What happened?”

“You didn’t get Sam’s messages, huh?”

“Fell asleep.” There was an unfamiliar drag in Dean’s voice, a drone that Bobby tried to tell himself was just a side effect of waking up from a near-fatal coma. But he knew better, and was not surprised when the kid’s next words were, “I know that you just got home, and I’m sorry to even ask—but do you think you could come back here? It’s Dad, he—” Bobby’s heart sank into his stomach.

“He didn’t make it. Sam found him—” Dean broke off, choking on the words he was forcing out.

“I’ll be there, soon as I can,” Bobby promised. “Are you still at the hospital?” Dean cleared his throat, said yes. “Alright, sit tight. Don’t go anywhere.”

“Where are we gonna go?” Dean hung up.

Bobby closed his phone. These boys might be the death of him, yet. But he thought of Sam’s face in the salvage yard, bruised and puffed from tears, but still full of fight. He thought of Dean’s voice on the phone, exhausted and numb but, heaven help them all, alive.

It seemed that he owed John some thanks, for pulling him back into the family after all, even in the midst of hard times just starting.

For that, and for the boys, he thought he could mourn John Winchester as he deserved. Just maybe he could do that much.

Part 2 of my playlist fic challenge. This is my personal SPN playlist, and I am going from the beginning. This one is based on soundtrack music by Christopher Lennertz.

Next up is "Carry On (My Wayward Son)"! I am nervous about this one, and would love some prompts to work my way in. Should it be funny, angsty, future fic? Something else? Which character(s) should take the lead? I appreciate any help and feedback you might be able to give. Thanks for reading!