A/N: Hi guys! Welcome back and happy Friday! Everybody survive that first week of September? My voice sure didn't. Anyway, thanks to spnfanforlife, Sallyannerenee, Magi Madpie, NightReader22, lenail125, and Xeraphina Laurentia for the reviews. They mean a lot!

Just a quick note: unfortunately, I'm going to have to go back to updating only once a week. I can't keep up with the demands of two chapters a week. Updates will go back to just being on Tuesdays, so this is the last Friday update for a while. Hopefully, I'll have enough chapters written by the new year that I can start updating twice a week again. Hope you guys are okay with that!

Okay, enough administrative stuff. This one is tagged to 2x15, Tall Tales. Love, love, love this episode! Not only does it introduce the The Trickster/Loki/Gabriel to the show, but it's also absolutely hysterical! As I've said before, I don't really do well with the funny. So, of course, I had to put my own spin on it. On the plus side, I finally got to write about Bobby, who I adore! Okay, that's enough jibber-jabber! On with the chapter!

Disclaimer: Pas le mien.

Hurricane Winchester

Thinking back, Bobby remembered it was a nice March morning. It had been calm and cool. He remembered that because it was such a contrast to the storm that was brewing inside his house.

Dean had been a bored 14-year-old who had taken to picking on his brother as a way to pass time. He'd been chasing Sam around the house, teasing him about his long hair or a girl he had a crush on or the fact that Dean had a better shooting average than him, Bobby forgot which. Dean had accidentally stepped on the G.I. Joe action figure that Sam had left lying on the floor. Joe's arm popped off, and Sam's temper went through the roof. Dean had shrugged it off and retreated to their shared room while Sam went outside to throw stones at old clunkers so that he didn't kill his older brother.

Bobby walked into the spare bedroom twice. The first time, he witnessed Dean using every ounce of his concentration to figure out how to pop the old G.I.'s arm back into place. "I've popped Dad's shoulder back into place half a dozen times, a toy should be a piece of cake," he had shrugged when Bobby asked him what he was up to.

The second time, he'd found poor Joe in three pieces on the floor, along with the remains of Dean's favourite Batman comic book, which Sam had evidently ripped into pieces and thrown in Dean's face.

The next day, Dean had been fuming when Bobby had picked them up from school. He was soaking wet, and Sam was bright red and kept clutching at his pants. Apparently, Sam had told some crazy gal at school that Dean was in love with her. It wouldn't have been a problem, except A) Dean had spent a solid month flirting with Crazy's best friend, and B) well, her nickname was Crazy. Sam's scheme resulted in Best Friend dumping her milk on Dean when she found out about the 'betrayal', and Crazy following Dean around like a lost puppy. When Crazy told her new 'boyfriend' the truth, Dean had chased Sam down to the football field and pantsed him in front of the sixth grade girl's gym class.

When they got home, Sam disappeared into the kitchen while Bobby searched for something to get rid of the smell of sour milk, which had soaked into Dean's jean jacket. Sam had entered not long after, phone in hand and a Cheshire cat grin on his face. He'd handed the phone to Dean and escaped upstairs. Bobby could still hear the raging voice of John Winchester berating his son for breaking the TV at the last motel and letting his brother take the fall. Dean's face had been stoic the entire time, even though he knew a heaping serving of corporal punishment had to be coming his way. In retrospect, Bobby should have seen the next morning coming, when Sam had screamed and come down the stairs wrapped in a towel, hair still soaking wet and a small bald spot forming on his scalp. Bobby had found the bottle of Nair in Dean's backpack, and snapped.

Dean spent three days of his Spring Break in the attic, throwing out the piles and piles of useless junk Bobby had collected over the years. Sam had spent it in the cellar, helping Bobby pack salt rounds and sort rifles into Keep, Donate, or Throw Away piles. That was the eye of the storm. Bobby could sense the tension, but could do nothing to make it dissipate. The tension rose whenever they all gathered for meals, when insults were hurled and blame was assigned. The hateful, hurtful words were almost worse than the attacks and counter-attacks that had been happening before, as Bobby could tell that the words were truly breaking his boys.

It was on the fourth day that the storm finally cleared. Dean emerged from the attic, dusty and dirty but bearing gifts. He had found his old G.I. Joe doll while moving an old crate, and brought it down to make up for the one had had originally damaged. He had placed it on the table in front of Sam and quickly scampered up the stairs again. Sam had considered it, then looked up at Bobby with a sad look on his face. When Dean had come down for dinner, he found the latest Batman comic sitting on his dinner plate. Bobby hadn't minded the five bucks Sam had bummed from him to buy it; it was worth it just to see the boys getting along again.

When school started again, some idiot eight graders thought it would be funny to try to pants Sam in the hallway. The hallway that just happened to be shared between the primary schoolers and the high schoolers on their way to lunch. Dean almost got suspended for breaking one of the kid's noses. The only reason he didn't get suspended was because the lunchtime supervisor had gotten distracted by Crazy getting milk dumped on her by Sam, who claimed it was an accident. When Crazy had tried to get her beloved boyfriend Dean to punish the "twerp" who dared to do such a thing, she had been forced to break up with him because he refused to "defend her honour". By the time the boys got home, they were too busy playing cops and robbers in the junkyard to worry about impending punishments or bald spots.

The point of all this is this: Bobby hadn't seen his boys so out of synch since Hurricane Nair. Bitching at each other about stolen wallets and missing laptops, food on the bed and bent rims. "Idjits," Bobby muttered to himself. How were these his boys? Just a few months ago, Sam had shown up at his place in tears because Dean was in the hospital being hunted by a reaper, and Sam didn't know how to save him. And just last week, Dean had been ready to burn the world to find his brother. There was definitely something going on with those two chuckleheads.

Bobby loved those boys like they were his own kids, even though they were even more stubborn than their idiot father. Those two had grown up in each other's pockets, and he had it on good authority that they had both been equally broken up about the Stanford separation. They'd had their fights, but they'd never once complained about being in close quarters, or having to spend so much time together.

Still, much like Mother Nature after a storm, after the case was wrapped up and the Trickster staked, Bobby got to witness the rebalancing of the scales.

"Here," Dean grunted, tossing Sam's billfold onto Sam's bed as he packed up his bag.

Sam looked semi-stunned to see that all of his money was still there. "What is this for?"

"It's your money, dumbass," Dean laughed.

"What happened to 'reparations for emotional trauma'?" Sam questioned, slinging his duffel over his shoulder.

"Well, you definitely have to make it up to Baby. But I hustled enough last week to buy her a new set of whe—What the hell?"

Bobby peeked around the doorjamb to see the Impala sitting in front of the motel room, glistening in all her freshly washed glory, and sporting a new set of wheels.

Sam shrugged. "I had enough left in my savings account. Besides, I use the car too. Figured I should start pulling my weight in taking care of it."

Dean shook his head slowly. "Sammy…"

"Just shut up and take it, bro."

"Fine, but you have to shut up and take this too." Dean pulled a box out of the trunk and shoved it into Sam's arms, pulling Sam's bag off his shoulder at the same time so he could plop it into the trunk.

Sam gazed down at the box that housed within it a new, top of the line laptop. "Dean, no. This…this is way too expensive. We can't afford this."

"Correction: you can't afford this. And before you start bitching, I didn't use a fake credit card either. I worked a gig and got paid for it a little bit before I picked you up from school, and I still had some money left over. Since we still can't find your laptop, and we need it for research, there." Dean jerked his chin in the direction of the box. "Hope that'll work."

"Yeah, Dean. Thanks. It will. This is amazing."

"Alright, alright, enough already. Stop drooling all over it and get your ass in the car. Bobby, you comin'?"

Bobby smiled. His boys were the foremost monster hunters in the continental U.S., but they were blind when it came to seeing how much the other cared.

"Yeah, I'm comin'. Just give me a minute; my legs don't work as well as they used to."

"That's because you're gettin' old, Old Man," Dean called back, climbing into the driver's seat of his freshly waxed Impala.

"Dean!"

"What?"

"What do you mean, 'what'? You can't say that kind of crap to people!"

"It's not people; it's Bobby! He used to babysit us, for Christ's sake! Besides, he knows I'm only joshin' him, right Bobby?"

Bobby chuckled. "You better hope so, ya idjit! My trigger finger works a hell of a lot better than my knees, I'll tell you that much!"

Bobby could hear the laughter even after he'd slammed the door to his truck and shook his head ruefully. Those were his kids. Unbreakable, unbeatable, and inseparable. Forces of nature.

A/N: Aww, don't you just love Bobby? I know I do. Anyway, I want to apologize for not including everyone's favourite Trickster in this one. I believe I have at least one chapter told from his perspective coming up, and I'm sure he'll wreak havoc on a few other chapters if the mood strikes him. I'm going to try to find a way to include every prominent character into at least one chapter, so if there's one you'd like to see, let me know and I'll see what I can do. Until then, auf wiedersehen!