Notes: This was intended to be something way different from what actually happened. This is for Aithilin, who dared me to write John/Bobby and got this 'sort of almost but not quite' instead.
The haven of the Roadhouse had disappeared. It was a fact, cruel as life, but John no longer felt he could face Ellen and the look in her eyes anymore. Accusing brown eyes that reminded him of his failure - shortcomings so unforgiving that a man had died for them.
He hid his grief down deep where the boys would never see it. Perceptive as they were they knew something was wrong. Dean especially could guess, he was a boy older than his years. John could only put off the questions so long before he gave in to the need for quiet, told him to be quiet. Obedient as ever, Dean shut up. His lips pressed tight into a thin white line that reminded John so much of Mary when she was upset. He couldn't drag his hand from the wheel to ruffle his son's hair and tell him everything would be alright.
John couldn't handle the lonely road. The tarmac that stretched out to the horizon and beyond in dark winding streaks, quietly accusing. Hunters lived on the road. Died on the road. It could just as easily have been him, and Sam and Dean left fatherless, motherless; Alone in a world where nobody cared enough.
Almost nobody.
-
The scrapheap that was Singer Salvage shouldn't make John feel safe, not after such a long time away. The last time he had spoken to Bobby Singer was months ago, shop talk about a potential case. He hadn't been to the salvage yard itself in over a year, but even despite the small changes the place had an air of calm about it that John couldn't find anywhere else these days.
He settled the boys into the gust room, tucking them both into the one double bed with its starchy sheets and mohair blanket. The pillows had looked hard, no worse than any of the motels they stayed in, but Bobby's guest room came with the comfort of a small plush bear. John had found the old toy under one of the pillows. He knew where it came from, who's it had been, and knew that Bobby wouldn't mind if the bear spent the night offering comfort to the smallest of the Winchesters.
The rest of the house was quiet and dark, eerie-silent except for the low crackle of a short wave in the kitchen. Staticky voices that rumbled through the night in a code that John had mostly forgotten.
He sat down at the rickety kitchen table under the yellow electric light, feeling like a ghost. John felt incorporeal, experiencing the world through a thick fog - surreal and unanchored until a brown glass bottle thunked down onto the table in front of him. Bobby Singer sat down in the other chair this side of the table, radiating an invisible aura of confidence that spread through the air and seeped into John's skin like heat from a fire.
"Here for long?" Bobby asked, and like always his words seemed to carry a weight disproportionate to their meaning.
John shook his head, fingers cold where they grasped the bottle in front of him. "Don't know."
"Reckon you ought. Those boys could do with somewhere stable while their daddy goes round the loop of grief."
The boys. Bobby always did know the right buttons to push. John sighed. "Reckon I might stay a while then."
"Your boys are always welcome here, John. You too."
John took a swig from the bottle and couldn't look Bobby in the face. He didn't want to explain himself to the other man. With Bobby, most of the time he didn't have to. The two of them fall silent for a time, only the static of the short wave between them in the background. The next time John lifted the bottle to his lips he noticed that it was empty. He didn't even have to say anything before Bobby stood.
"I've got a bottle of whisky I've been saving. Could be this is as good a time as any to break 'er open."
"Could be," John agreed with a nod. He set the empty beer bottle on the table and turned it so the label was facing towards him. He noticed that the brand was foreign, nothing remotely similar to what was sold on tap in the Roadhouse. John wondered if Bobby did that on purpose - if 'Singer' doesn't actually mean 'psychic'.
Bobby is one of the most brilliant, well read people that John had ever known. It's not so much of a stretch to imagine he might be psychic too.
The whiskey is black label, a vintage that John didn't actually think Bobby could afford. He didn't say a word about it - the bottle could be anything from a gift to a payment, or even an impulse buy after a particularly bad case. Sometimes, John thought to himself, you just can't save them, no matter how hard you try.
Two shot glasses plonked down onto the table and Bobby uncapped the bottle.
"Bottoms up, Winchester."
John knocked back the shot and felt the warmth of the liquor blossom on the way down his throat. They drink in companionable silence, matching shot for shot until John was spilling more than he was actually getting in his mouth. It might have been embarrassing had be been anywhere else, piss drunk and almost seeing double, coin-sized drops of whiskey soaking into his shirt. But this is Bobby's house, and the man has seen him worse than this.
Somehow John wound up on a bed, partially undressed and not yet burrowed under the covers. Something warm moved from around his chest, pulling out from under his arms. John grabbed at the retreating warmth, he realised only when his hands came into contact with soft flannel and warm skin that the things pulling away from him were Bobby's arms.
"D'd you just put me to bed?" John asked muzzily, blinking up at his friend through the grayish night.
"Yup," Bobby replied and pulled back to drape a blanket over John's legs and torso. It wasn't fair that he seemed so coordinated.
"D'd I pass out?"
"Yup."
"Bill died."
"... yup."
"'Cause I fucked up. Rookie mistake."
Bobby sighed. The bed dipped with his weight as he sat down on the edge. Somewhere through the fuzz of alcohol and depression John recognised that this must be Bobby's bed. It was too large and too comfortable to be the one that folded out from the couch. "John," Bobby started, but John raised a hand to sloppily swat the words away before they could be said. His fingers landed on Bobby's chin, not where he had intended, but Bobby shut up anyway.
John opened his mouth to say something but got distracted by the way his fingers felt just resting there on Bobby's chin. He could feel warm breath against his knuckles, tickling over the back of his hand. John hesitated, squinting up at the other man in the dark. The contact stretched on too long in silence, oddly comfortable. Something buzzed or fluttered under John's skin, hard to identify through his own drunken haze. One of Bobby's hands slowly raised to touch the back of his and John caught an inkling of what it might be.
He pulled away from the contact and let his hand fall back onto his own chest; Closed his eyes, sinking down into the drink and pushing away his own personal demons.
He could feel Bobby sitting there still, his weight making the mattress sag. John wanted to know if the tension in the air was just his imagination, if the inkling he was trying hard to bury was just his own. Instead when he opened his mouth all that came out was a firm "G'night, Bobby."
The weight left the edge of the bed, taking something comforting from the centre of John's chest with it. He didn't hear the reply, if there was one.
He was on the road again the next morning with the boys bundled into the back of the impala. If he was running, leaving behind more than empty bottles and a two-ton headache, John would never admit it.