The silence had to be the worst part.
As the truck sputtered down the still, dirt road, the silence swelling in the car was only disturbed by the ragged sound of Dean's breathing. It consumed the car, pushing against the doors and windows with an unspoken vibration of anger threatening to be broken by a sharp word at any moment. Dean could read from the shaking in Bobby's hands and the tick in his neck and jaw that he was infuriated. He knew that conversation during this car ride was inevitable ─ he had known that when he had made the decision to pick up the phone a hour ago. But the fact was, he didn't want to talk about it. He never wanted to talk about it. If he and Bobby could simply make it through this night and never mention it again, he would be perfectly content. Relieving a sigh that quickly hitched into a sharp gasp from a stabbing pain in his side, Dean closed his eyes and let his head rest against the window. Fuck, his ribs really hurt. He unconsciously clenched and unclenched his fingers a couple times as they began to prickle painfully with the sensation of feeling. He had sat out in the cold, night air for a solid hour, gasping for breath and attempting to staunch the steady flow of blood pouring from his nose like an eternal fountain before he had dimly heard Bobby pulling into the gravel parking lot.
And now he was here, in a truck that was both old and comfortable, a style that he and Sam had learned to associate with Bobby from a young age. Dean's mind and head began to drift downwards into the dull throb of exhaustion as the blaring heating system started to leech some of the chill out of his bones. He had begun to feel the unconscious arms of sleep slip around him when a gruff hand clasped his shoulder and began to shake him in a way that sent painful waves of nausea radiating throughout his body. "You can't fall asleep Dean." came out soft but imperative from the driver's seat of the car. "Can't tell if you have a concussion or not." The tense presence of silence returned for several minutes before Dean was startled by the loud thump of Bobby slamming his hands down on the wheel in anger. "Goddamn it John!" Here we go. Dean's insides felt as if they were shrinking in on themselves, but Bobby continued anyway. "Of all the jackass things I've seen your father do throughout the years, this has got to be the worst. I'm not putting up with it anymore. If that selfish, violent, son of a bitch ever so much as lifts a finger towards you again, he's going to have the front end of my shotgun to deal with." Bobby's angry voice tapered off for a moment and returned more quietly with a hint of something that Dean couldn't quite identify. Regret? Pity maybe? Whatever it was, it made the blood rush up to his cheeks in a flush of embarrassment. "Has it…ever been this way before?" The question hung suspended in the air, lingering like a bad odor. "No Bobby. Leave it be." came as a quiet response from the passenger seat.
"No Dean, I'm not going to leave it be. I've been watching over you your entire goddamn life, watching on quietly as you've sported every bruise and cut that you didn't fucking deserve. It's bad enough you and Sam have to be carted around the country, seeing things that would scare the shit out of a grown adult, but this? This beats it. I'm not going to stand for this shit. And you shouldn't either. Your entire life, I have never heard you say one bad thing about your father, not even now after he beat the absolute living hell out of you. I mean…" Bobby's voice faltered for a moment. "What's the deal Dean? Why aren't you angry? Why do you let him treat you like shit?"
At this point, Dean felt something snap inside his chest. It was as if all the fear, embarrassment and anger that he had experienced within the last several hours had been rolled into a tight ball within his chest that had now exploded into a firework of rage. "What the fuck do you want from me Bobby?" Bobby's eyes grew a little bit larger as he recognized the venom in Dean's voice. "Honestly. What the fuck do you want me to do? Should I break down in tears, maybe we can have a little heart-to-heart about how daddy's mistreated us?" Youch. That was going to sting. But for some reason he couldn't stop. "Or should I be angry? How about I punch my 45-year-old father right in the face then tell him to go to hell. I'll just walk right on out, leaving him to deal with all the shit he has to deal with on a regular basis, and just stroll out on the only family I have ever known." He was on a roll. "Maybe with that nifty GED I got, I'll just leave and go be something useful to society. How about a banker? Yeah, that sounds good. I'll just leave this whole fucked up life behind me and go be a banker. Is that what you want Bobby? Because honestly. I swear to whatever god is out there right now that I will react in any way you damn well please as long as we can stop having this conversation." He realized that his chest was heaving and he was out of breath.
The truck lapsed into silence again as Bobby turned back to face the road. Studying the side of his face, Dean had never thought he had seen Bobby look so old. The usual good humor present in his eyes seemed to have been replaced by tiredness ─ a worn-down, dog-eared, last-leg sort of tiredness that Dean had never seen there before. The explosion of anger still roiling in his chest began to intermingle with a little bit of guilt as he realized he was yelling at the one person in his life who was only trying to help him. Ever since that night in Bobby's kitchen all those years ago, Dean knew that Bobby knew. When little Sam had asked Dean why they hadn't been back to Bobby's so long after that visit, Dean had simply replied that it was because Bobby and Dad had gotten into an argument without telling Sam what it was about. When John had started letting them hang around Bobby's again, Bobby had tried to broach the subject with Dean a couple times throughout the years, but Dean always shut him down telling him it was from a hunt or school or whatever. Although Dean knew Bobby was smart enough to not believe any of that, Bobby had always had the decency to not push him on it. Instead, he'd just offer to bandage him up and maybe a beer (if he was lucky). Dean knew that Bobby brought up the origin of his injuries to John sometimes ─ he knew because he had done some snooping on a muted yelling match through a closed door at Bobby's before, only to be embarrassed to figure out what they were arguing about. On those occasions, John would storm out of Bobby's house, red-faced and fuming, to tell Sam and Dean to grab their stuff and throw it in the car, they were leaving.
Honestly, Dean hated that Bobby knew. While, yes, it was nice to have someone around in a situation like this, Dean would've preferred it to be something kept between him and his father. He had always felt guilty that he had to burden Bobby with something that was his problem. He felt guilty that he had to put a strain on Bobby's relationship with his family. He felt guilty that he was inadvertently taking away one of his father's only friends, one of the only people in John's life that let him feel not like a dad or hunter, but just a person. Just John. And now, he was sitting here feeling guilty about yelling about one of the only people he gave a damn about. "Look, Bobby." he heard himself say quietly "It's just not something that I want to talk about. It's not a big deal, I promise. I really messed up today and he just over-reacted a bit. Can you please just let this one go?" Dean wasn't sure that Bobby had heard him as the silence returned for another couple minutes. Finally, Bobby responded. "I can't Dean. I can't just let him think that it's okay to treat you like this. I'm sorry." He turned towards Dean, that ever-present tiredness lining his face. "I know that you hate this. And I know that you don't want to talk about it. And that's okay. How about we hole up at my place for a couple days, give you a chance to recover and to let everything simmer down before I talk to John? I'll call your dad and let him know that it's in his best interest to buzz off for a couple days so it can just be you and me. Does that sound fair?"
Dean felt himself nodding as a sense of relief washed through him. While it wasn't his ideal solution, Dean figured that it was probably going to be the best deal he was going to get out of Bobby. This way, Bobby and his father would have a couple days to calm down and maybe prevent the big macho showdown that Dean was so desperately trying to avoid. Also, he really didn't want to deal with his dad at the moment. Normally when he and his dad got into it, they would just go on pretending like nothing had ever happened. John's attacks were usually careful, calculated even, to prevent lasting damage and (maybe just as importantly) to be hidden from prying eyes, including those of his kid brother. But this time, John had really fucked him up good and Dean didn't think he would be able to go on pretending that everything was normal. He didn't know how his dad would react if he brought up that he thought a couple ribs might be broken or that his nose may need to be set. Would John be angry? Embarrassed? Maybe even a little regretful? Dean didn't want to have to deal with that right now. Not with his head throbbing and every breath a stabbing pain of agony. A couple days of recoup sure did sound nice.
Seeming satisfied with Dean's response, Bobby let them travel the rest of the way home without conversation. The silence that had been so stifling before now seemed almost comfortable.