A/N: Alright, I really don't know what this is. Just something I've had in my head after writing Daddy Drabble 20 (The Thunder Rolls). And I think some of y'all will like it because you asked what happened after the last one ended. I was needing some angst and some good Bobby and Dean time. Anyway, who knows if anyone will even read it but here goes.

Warnings: mentions of suicide and drug abuse.

"C'mon, Sam, let's do this tomorrow." Dean had put a shirt on after tucking Lydia in and now he was slumped over the kitchen table, head cradled in his hands.

"Like hell," Sam growled. He and Bobby were standing on the other side of the table.

"Can I least get a couple aspirin?" Dean said. "Or a drink?"

"This isn't a game," Sam snapped. Dean raised his head, green eyes narrowed and bloodshot. He looked awful. Sam had known his brother was having problems, that's why he'd been offering to take Lydia off his hands more often. And Dean had been accepting, maybe too accepting. But this was a new low.

"Never said it was."

"You can't just parade around here drunk off your ass and bringing home prostitutes! You have a daughter." Dean stood up fast, chair scraping against the kitchen floor.

"Don't you dare bring her into this," he warned.

"How can I not?" cried Sam. "She thought you were dead because you were too out of it to wake up. And then she comes over here in the middle of the night to find a stranger in her father's room."

"What exactly was she doing outside at two in the morning, Sam? Weren't you supposed to be taking care of her?"

"Enough!" Bobby broke in. "I ain't listening to you two bickering back and forth like schoolgirls. We're all adults here, let's act like it." Sam muttered something unintelligible under his breath and Bobby reached out a hand to whack him upside the head. "I mean it," he said. "This is serious."

"I don't get what the big deal is," Dean said. Sam threw up his hands, any sympathy leeching out of him.

"He's impossible," he said to Bobby.

"Don't talk about me like I'm not here!" The brothers glowered at each other, Sam's hair still matted to his head from the rain, Dean's eyes flashing dangerously. They'd had some rough spots over the years but Sam was absolutely disgusted with his older brother's actions tonight. It was as if he wasn't even thinking, as if he'd forgotten all about the little girl down the hall. Life had grown bigger than the two of them.

"Alright!" Bobby shouted when Sam went to retort. "Sam, go home. No," he said, shaking his head when Sam began to protest. "This ain't getting fixed tonight."

"Bobby, you can't just let him-,"

"I'm not letting anybody do anything. Dean's not going anywhere, you can have another go at him tomorrow." Sam looked like he was about to protest some more but even as a full-fledged adult, he wasn't about to disrespect Bobby.

"What about Lydia?"

"What about her?" Dean said, bristling. Sam ignored him.

"She'll be fine," Bobby said. "Now, scoot. And take the weapons with ya," he said. "Make sure they're locked up proper."

"Yessir," Sam mumbled. He scooped up Bobby's gun and knife from the table and made his way out into the dark. The storm had ceased and all was quiet both inside and outside the house as Bobby made himself busy around the small kitchen. Like Sam, he had tried to keep a close eye on the elder Winchester but it was hard considering Dean spent so much time in his own house. Come to think of it, the Hunter had been holing up in here a lot more often. Usually, he was out and about in the yard, helping Bobby with the cars or doing small repairs on either of the houses. The boy had turned into quite the handy-man.

But now, as Bobby rummaged through the cabinets, he realized there wasn't nearly enough food in the house that there should be. Again, Bobby thought back to the last few weeks and couldn't remember a day when Dean hadn't dropped Lydia off for breakfast. The little girl usually stayed through dinner. In the back of a cupboard behind an opened bag of tortilla chips, Bobby found a box of lemon tea he remembered Dean buying for Lydia when she had a sore throat. He chucked the chips in the trash and started boiling some water. Then he went back out to check on his charge.

Dean's chin was resting on folded arms as he stared across the room at the wall. His eyes were open but vacant, as if sleeping. But Bobby knew better. There was something working in that Winchester mind of his and Bobby was willing to bet the '85 Corvette he'd fixed up last spring that it wasn't anything good. Dean flinched when Bobby patted him on the shoulder and the older man tried not to let it get to him as he continued down the hallway. He peeked into Lydia's room, happy to find her fast asleep. He hoped she wouldn't remember this night or at least that she never figured out what her Daddy was up to.

Bobby grabbed the bottle of aspirin from the medicine cabinet in the bathroom and frowned at how empty it felt. He poured three out and tucked them into his pocket before entering Dean's bedroom. It was a mess. Bottles had piled up in the corners, some standing upright with beer still in them, most rolling on their sides. The sheets were filthy, covered in a combination of dirt and car grease and God knew what else. As a Christmas present to Dean last year, Bobby had taken a handful of precious photos to a print shop four towns over and had them framed. He and Dean had spent a whole day hanging the pictures around the room. Most were of Lydia, but some were of Sam and Dean, from when they were younger. Only a couple remained on the walls. The rest had been torn down and smashed in what Bobby assumed was a drunken temper tantrum. He nudged the glass shards with his boot, saying a quick thank you to the higher powers that Lydia hadn't stepped on any of it.

When Bobby went to shut the drawers to the nightstand, his gaze caught something in the far corner of the top drawer. Pulling it out, he find himself holding an orange prescription bottle that most certainly did not have Dean's name on it. Bobby recognized the name as some heavy sleeping medication. Dean was fooling around with some serious shit.

Pill bottle in hand, he headed back out to the kitchen where he found Dean in the same exact position, slumped over the table, eyes wide and rimmed with red.

"Here," Bobby said, putting the three aspirin on the table next to the Hunter. "Take those. I bet your head is killing ya. Go on," he said. "You need water?" Dean shook his head and dry swallowed the pills, throat convulsing a couple time as he struggled to down them.

"You and I are going to have a talk," Bobby said. "But not tonight." Dean looked up in surprise and Bobby just shook his head. "You're in no shape. I'd say go to bed but I'm worried you'll catch something in that room of yours. I'll make up the couch for tonight."

"You don't have to." Dean's voice was low and it was the kind of tired that made Bobby's bones ache just to listen to it.

"Well, I'm gonna," was all he said. Dean lowered his gaze to the floor.

"Bobby," he said to his bare feet. "Is she, uh, is she okay?"

"She's fine," Bobby assured him. "Just checked on her. Snug as a bug in a rug."

"You said she hurt her knee." Dean's voice sounded even more defeated and worse, he sounded frightened. It wasn't an emotion Bobby often paired with the skilled Hunter but when it broke through, it tended to consume Dean.

"Just a scrape. Kids get bumps and bruises all the time. She'll be fine. Let me rustle up some spare sheets and then we'll get you to bed."

"Can't sleep," he thought he heard Dean mutter as he turned away.

Bobby wasn't surprised to find that there weren't any clean sheets in the house, so he made do with a few blankets. He had a feeling Dean wouldn't care. The kettle on the stove was whistling just as he was tucking the blankets into the cushions and Bobby set about making two cups.

By the time he was done, Dean had disappeared from the kitchen table. Bobby found him standing outside Lydia's open door, the hallway light switched on so he could watch her sleep.

"Hey," Bobby said. "I made you a cup of tea. It'll help with the hangover. I gotta feeling you're gonna be pretty sick in the morning." Dean's face was hidden in the shadow, silhouetted against his daughter's pink wallpaper.

"She wasn't a prostitute," he said suddenly.

"Shh," Bobby said as Lydia rolled over in her sleep, clutching one of her many stuffed animals. Her rooms smelled fresh, like rainwater.

"You'll tell Sammy that, right?"

"You'll tell him yourself tomorrow. Now come out to the kitchen before she wakes up." Dean followed him like an old dog, slow but loyal to his quasi-father's command.

"I wouldn't bring a prostitute here," he said once they were both sitting at the table. He stared down into the golden tea, watched the tea bag swirl around the bottom of the mug.

"I ain't worried about that," Bobby said, looking at him straight on. "I'm worried about you." Dean didn't say respond, just heaved a sigh and raised the mug to his lips. It was one that Lydia had made in school for Father's Day. Pink and purple blobs of paint wove underneath his fingers, the hot water seeping through the ceramic.

"You know, Dean," Bobby said after a while. His gravelly voice was as soft as Dean had ever heard it. "You're going to have to talk to one of us. Me or your brother. I know something's eating at you. Real bad by the looks of it." Bobby put the bottle of sleeping pills on the table between them. "These come from your friend?" As weary as he was, Dean made a swipe for the bottle but Bobby got to it faster, a frown settling in.

"Thought so."

"Those are mine," Dean said, a slight edge to his voice. "Give them back, Bobby."

"I don't think so," Bobby said.

"I'm not sixteen!" Dean said angrily. "And you can't just go through my stuff! It's against the law."

"I don't need you reciting laws to me," Bobby snapped. "And no, you're not sixteen, are you? Because back then, I could see why you found these damn pills so attractive. But now…?" Dean glared at him but didn't say anything. "I'm not sure what's going on with you, Dean, but I sure as hell would like to. You trying to kill yourself with these? Mixing it with all that booze?"

"No!" Dean said, eyes widening. "No, I would never…"

"Yeah, well you better think long and hard about that. You know how many people die from shit like this? You got a kid, boy! That little girl needs you to stay alive, you got that? As if your brother and I don't need you enough already." Dean had silent tears streaming down his cheeks at that point and Bobby could feel the wetness welling up in his own. It hurt so damn much to see Dean like this, so empty and…hopeless. How had he missed the signs? He stood and came around to Dean's side of the table, grabbing the boy roughly and pulling him close. Bobby thought Dean would have resisted but instead he melted into the touch, letting his body fall into Bobby's open arms.

"Alright," Bobby soothed as Dean's body shuddered with a sob. "We'll figure it out, okay? We'll get to the bottom of this, you and me and Sam. You ain't alone, son. Never have been, never will be."

They'd been down winding roads before, that's what Hunters did for a living. But Bobby would go to his grave before he let one of his own boys start down another one of those roads alone. And for the sake of himself and for Dean and for the child sleeping down the hall, he held on tight to the full-grown man crying against his chest.

A/N: So? It's kind of in between a Daddy Drabble and a oneshot so I just put it in this series. Let me know what you thought!