Disclaimer: Supernatural, its plotlines, and its characters are all property of the CW and the show's writers. I probably wouldn't be worth only $7 and a bottle of pop if I was actually involved with the show, so it's really not worth the effort to sue me, even if I would love to actually meet Misha Collins.

Summary: A little one-shot about what happened after Dean barged in on Bobby just as he was forced to kill his wife (again) in 5x15. Short and fluffy with tons of angst. Hurt/comfort. Rated K+

A/N: I really love the Dean/Bobby relationship, and as soon as I rewatched this episode the other day I knew I wanted to write a little fluffy fic about Dean comforting Bobby in the aftermath of this tragedy. Review if you like it!

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Family Comfort

….

Dean was worried. More worried than he had been in a long time. The dead rising in a little town like Sioux Falls, and because of Death, the horseman, was bad enough as it was. But having it happen to Bobby, knowing that Mrs. Singer was going to turn on the old hunter soon, and he would have to suffer through her dying all over again…

Dean may have been a tough, surly alcoholic with a go-get-'em attitude most of the time (though not so much lately), but seeing Bobby in this state was worrying him a lot more than he wanted to let on.

So, of course he had decided to stay behind and watch the house while Sam went on to find the other zombies and kill them. Of course he left the fate of an entire town to his dorky little brother and one untrained sheriff who may or may not choose to help him. He would have left a pack of poodles on the case if it meant saving his only remaining father figure.

So, of course, when he heard the gunshot echo from the direction of Bobby's house, he started sprinting, running faster than he had in a long time, to get to him. Bobby's guns be damned, if that woman had hurt him…

But when Dean burst through the front door, nearly knocking it clean off its hinges, Bobby was not the one lying still with blood oozing out of a hole in his head. Bobby was not the one with his lifeless hand grasped in a still living one, tears silently dripping onto the colorless flesh.

"Bobby?" Dean whispered, setting his rifle down on the floor and making his way over to the older man. Bobby didn't look up from the place where his dead wife's hand was enveloped in his, only moving to place his gun on the bed on the other side of his dead wife, showing Dean that he had given up, and the younger hunter was in no danger.

"Bobby?" Dean repeated. He inched forward and knelt in front of Bobby so he was slightly below the older man's eye level.

Finally, Bobby looked up, tears splashing down his face.

Pain ripped through Dean's heart at the sight of his surrogate father looking so utterly broken and defeated, so he did the only thing he could think to do. He reached up with his left hand and clasped it over the back of Bobby's neck, pulling the older man's head into his shoulder, and wrapped his right arm around his hunched back. This was the closest Dean could get to hugging him, especially in his kneeling position, so he settled for it. Bobby immediately wrapped his left arm around Dean's back, but his right hand remained lying on the bloody sheets, still clamped around his wife's. After a few minutes, though, he even let that go, wrapping his other arm around Dean and practically bawling into his shoulder.

Dean knew it had been a long time since Bobby had broken down like this, and he had every intention of kneeling there for the rest of the night, the week if he had to, in order to take away a little of the older man's pain. No matter how simultaneously painful and numb his legs were growing, he would kneel there for eternity if he had to in order to get his surrogate father through this.

….

Dean left Sam with Jody to watch the zombie bodies burn, intending to see that Bobby was surviving.

He made his way around the back of the house and walked up behind him, not saying a word. What had passed between them the night before hardly made any words necessary.

Dean simply laid a hand on Bobby's shoulder, and the broken man before him reached up and covered it with his own.

That was all they needed to say.