The soapy, warm water lit up with the last light of the setting sun slanting through the small window as Bobby hand-washed the dishes, letting his mind relax for the first time in what seemed like ages. He had always liked washing the dishes, even as a kid— something about the heat of the warm water against his hands and the rhythmic motion of cleaning let his body relax and allowed his mind to wander. The orange-hued light pouring through the window illuminated the multitude of tiny dust flecks floating aimlessly through the air, spinning lazily around each other in lackadaisical circles as they waited for gravity to inevitably drag them back down to a settling place.
Looking through the dust, his eyes fixated on the ghostly reflection of himself staring back blankly from the cobwebbed interior of the semi-translucent window. God, he looked terrible. The last twelve hours had passed in such an uproar that he hadn't had more than a moment to himself to calm down. He found his left hand raising to trail across the dark circles weighing down the bottom of his eyelids and the permanent frown lines etched into the sides of his mouth and between his eyebrows. He didn't just look tired, he looked….old. Worn. Used up. When had he started looking like this? It hadn't always been this way. He remembered seeing a much younger, carefree version of that foreign face reflected back in the very same mirror as he had snuck up behind Karen doing dishes, snatched her up around from the waist and spun her around the kitchen. They had both laughed themselves to tears as they sat in disheveled heaps on the floor, trying to regain their balance enough to stand. Her faced flushed with the heat of laughter and blonde hair hanging askew around the sides of her face, he had sat there thinking that he had to be the luckiest man in the world. They had been so young….so hopeful, and so painfully naïve when they first moved into this house.
But that was all over now and he was alone.
A sigh was pulled from his chest as he averted his eyes from his grizzled, exhausted reflection and plunged his hands back into the water. Rolling his shoulders, he felt the faint beginnings of soreness beginning to creep into the muscles of his back—Dean wasn't exactly the kid he used to be and Bobby had been carrying him around all day. Dean had been trying to hide it that morning at the motel, he had already been mortified enough by the crowd that they had attracted with all Bobby's yelling, but he was having major difficulty standing, much less walking. Later, in the safety of his kitchen, Bobby's suspicions aroused from the hitched, raspy breathing rattling out of Dean on the car ride home were confirmed when he had Dean take off his blood-soaked t-shirt to see two distinct lines of bruising—dark as the midnight sky—stretching nefariously across his torso. Prodding ever so carefully at the bruises, Bobby could feel the indentation of the cracked ribs underneath his fingers as he'd scrambled to find a bag of frozen vegetables for Dean to hold against them as he tried to stop the incessant flow of blood pouring steadily from his nose and the nasty cut above his left eye. He'd hated the sense of déjà vu that he had gotten as he propped Dean up on the stool in his kitchen, ordered him to take off his shirt and went to grab them both a beer from the fridge before he got to work methodically cleaning up Dean's injuries.
But it had never been quite like this before. As Bobby had continued to work over Dean for the greater part of the morning—stitching up his eye, setting his nose and trying to get some of the swelling in his face to go down—he had wondered if he had made the right decision in bringing Dean to his house instead of the hospital. His house didn't exactly offer the greatest selection of painkillers, but Bobby knew that Dean would've hated being poked and prodded at in a hospital bed; John was a moron, but he was right about one thing—Dean hated being doted on, especially when he was hurt. And on a more private note, Bobby had thought that keeping Dean at his place would be his best chance at keeping John out of their hair. In the public setting of a hospital, there wasn't really much Bobby could do in keeping John away from his son—at least not without causing a scene and embarrassing Dean even more. The best way to ensure Dean was safe was going to be underneath his supervision in his own house. And, to be honest, Bobby wasn't sure that if John came to get him, Dean wouldn't willingly leave with him.
John had always had this weird effect on Dean that Bobby had never quite understood; it wasn't exactly fear and it wasn't exactly loyalty, but for some reason Dean had never seemed angry at the way John treated him, never upset at the bruises and cuts from hits he'd never deserved. For someone that had gone through something similar with his father, Bobby just didn't get it. He'd hated his father. In all those tense dinners and long nights of hearing his mother cry quietly in the other room, he'd never once doubted that his father, the root of all his childhood pain, was nothing more than worthless, violent alcoholic. But Dean's opinion of John had never reflected anything like that— at least not from what Bobby could tell. Never angry, Dean still loved his father wholeheartedly, constantly looking for his approval and maybe just a little bit of his attention (if he could spare it from arguing with Sam for more than 10 seconds). And honestly, that was the part that worried Bobby the most. Anger, he could work with; or at least he could rest easier at night knowing that Dean had the good sense to leave when John started to get out too out of hand. But no, Dean would never complain or fight back, he'd just quietly take it, always trusting his father to have his best interests at heart and never take things too far. It was fucking heartbreaking.
His attention was snatched away from his thoughts as he registered the creak of a footstep coming from the guest bedroom upstairs—old houses like this made it very difficult to sneak around. Drying his hands on the rough flannel of his shirt he walked into the dark hallway, seeing Dean's dark figure outlined by a faint ring of light pouring from the fluorescent bulb of the opened guest room door. Although he was leaning heavily on the wooden banister, at least he was up and able to support himself. Bobby fought the urge to immediately snap at him to get back into bed; he'd always tried to avoid being too militant with the boys knowing how much they got that with John. He didn't want to be just another person in Dean's life that pushed him around.
"How ya feeling, kid?" His voice echoed up through the darkened stairwell.
"Fucking fantastic." A pause. "How long have I been out?"
"About twelve hours. I'm honestly surprised you're awake with how many sleeping pills I gave you. I don't exactly sleep very well anymore and one of those usually puts me on my ass for the whole night—I gave you three."
"Oh, is that why I feel like shit?" He clipped out a guttural sound that sounded vaguely like a chuckle. Bobby knew he was trying to lighten the mood, but couldn't bring himself to smile, even for Dean's sake. The silence hanging between them again, Dean cleared his throat nervously before continuing. "So, uh… have you heard anything from my dad?" He shifted his weight to lean more heavily on the railing.
So he didn't know then. When John had bolted out of there like a bat out of hell earlier, Bobby had assumed that he'd been too much of a coward to apologize after he had seen what he had done. Fixing Dean up in the kitchen earlier, Bobby had been able to wrangle out of him that John hadn't exactly been the clearest of mind last night. John had already been pretty lit when he'd left last Bobby's house and he'd had his suspicions John may have stopped for a few more when he didn't answer the door to Bobby's yelling that morning. It also explained the seeming lack of control surrounding Dean's injuries—John usually avoided the face. Seeing John roll up in his car earlier, eyes squinted in pain from the sunlight and yesterday's clothes wrinkled from sleep, it'd been pretty obvious that John had had a pretty rough night. Bobby had gotten immense satisfaction seeing that cowardly son of a bitch fly out of there, embarrassment painted all over his face, when he'd realized how much damage he'd done.
Bobby cleared his throat, mulling over the best way to approach this. "Yeah, he stopped by." No use lying, not fully at least.
Dean's posture immediately tensed up. When Bobby didn't continue, he barked out. "And?"
"And, we had a discussion about how he's going to leave you here with me for a week or so. No violence, just like I promised. He's gonna take some time, do a little reevaluating and come back when he gets his priorities straight. And you and I are going to have a chat."
"Oh." Dean breathed out so quietly that Bobby barely heard it, his head dipping a little further down to the floor. "So, he uh, he didn't want to see me?"
Bobby made a split decision. "Course he did." Dean looked backed up. "I just didn't let him." Bobby knew how much Dean cared about what John thought. He didn't know how Dean would react if he knew how angry and embarrassed his father had been—best to just it alone so Dean could focus on recovering and not worrying about what John was doing.
"Was he mad?" Standing at the top of the stairs, his face hidden from the light behind him, Bobby couldn't help to see Dean as the kid he once was. No matter how old he got, that kid was still inside him, desperately trying to seek out his father's approval.
"Well, he wasn't exactly happy, but we uh, we worked out a deal. He's gonna come back in a week and then all of us can talk together about how things are going to be." That's enough for now. Dean's posture was leaning more and more heavily on the railing as he silently began to struggle to hold himself up; Bobby could see his arms beginning to shake with the exertion. Better to give him an out.
"I'll tell you what…" Bobby continued. "I will bring you a beer if you go lay back down. An old man like me needs an excuse to climb the stairs every once in a while, and I wouldn't mind one myself."
Dean paused a second, then "Yeah, alright. I think I'm beginning to feel those sleeping pills you gave me, anyway. Three, Bobby? Really? You trying to put me out for days?" His voice rose up slightly in a joking tone at the end.
Bobby reciprocated, "If it keeps you out of my hair." Bobby heard the faint snort of a chuckle as he turned his back to the dark hallway, headed to the fridge and pulled out two beers, the pillar of his and Dean's oldest tradition.
