Spoilers up to 7x03.

Home is where the heart is
(Home is where the Winchesters are)

The first time Bobby ever saw a Winchester, there were three of them.

He'd heard of John before, through the grapevine. What hunter hadn't? Lost his wife in those weird nursery fires the previous year. A few guys had checked those out, but didn't find squat. No EMF, no sulfur, no anomalies, no nothing. They all had agreed it had been a serial killer of the human variety with a fixation on six month-old babies before John showed up, claiming his wife was trapped in the ceiling while she burned.

Bobby had no idea what could do that, back then. Half the bets were on a poltergeist, the other half on an elemental. Neither hopped through state lines, so Bobby guessed it could be a Chimera, even if those were never seen outside of Europe. Nobody thought it could ever be a demon. Nobody thought demons did much more than hand crappy deals and be general douchebags back then.

John was looking for clues when he showed up on Bobby's porch the first time. In good old 1984, there were no fancy cell phones or internet to easy up research. John kept going through states, through hunters, through libraries, looking for anything that could help him track a thing without even knowing what it was. It looked desperate. Looking back, life was so much easier.

Bobby didn't really know what to expect when he got Murphy's call that he had sent Winchester up his way. The pastor wasn't really forthcoming. Said John was a good man, but Murphy said that about pretty much everyone. And Winchester didn't really have what you would call a good rep.

It really meant something to be considered crazy among hunters. At least 80% of them, functional alcoholics (the other 20% were non-functional). Most had been through the loony bin once or twice. But apparently John Winchester had managed to impress his craziness on the bunch. Hunting with a baby and a toddler could do that, after all.

Stories had piled on and on about his manic driving cross-country dragging his sons around. One hunter Bobby met on Harvelle's a few months before swore up and down he saw Winchester face a werewolf while carrying his son on a baby sling across his back. Which wasn't entirely true. It was not the baby, but his eldest and there was no sling, he was carrying him on his arm. Also, it wasn't a werewolf, but a wolf of the regular kind that had attacked Dean when they were camping.

But Bobby would only find out about that months later, from Dean's mouth. At that first moment, the image before his eyes did little to assuage John's reputation. It was the middle of the night, for starters, way past any child's bed time. He held a baby on his right arm and Bobby could see clearly the pearly shaped handle of a handgun on his left side, inches from the child's feet. By his side, a spiked hair kid, not a breath older than six, holding himself together sharp and straight as if he was 25.

He welcomed them inside already looking for a good excuse to send them packing. Bobby didn't like kids. Babies freaked him out. He knew about John's family but he honestly had hoped the man would have the sense to come by alone.

He got the books he had separated and refrained from offering a drink or a coffee. But when Winchester got up and said he'd be at the Willow Motel down the road… Bobby knew for a fact that place had no heating. And they were in November. He looked at that kid playing with his baby brother on his lap. He couldn't.

Bobby offered John a place to stay for the night and Winchester wasn't so proud as he was poor, so he accepted it. It was the first night Sam and Dean slept on his raggedy old couch. Back then, he had no idea how important that would be.

He does now.

Almost thirty years and an Apocalypse-that-wasn't later, they were still there, at that same spot. Not both, of course. They got big, too big. If they were honest, the couch was way too small for even one of them. Not that it stopped them from leaving it and using the spare room. Sam slept on the couch, Dean on pillows on the floor, same as it had been when they were kids. Dean was the smaller brother now, but Sam couldn't convince him to trade. And when Bobby lost his legs and his bed went to the first floor, Sam just joined Dean on the floor.

Bobby realizes now how much of his sanity depends on that small thing.

His house is gone.

That couch burned away to nothing.

Bobby thinks maybe he should feel sad about it. Some pain. But see, he doesn't. He didn't lose the tools of his trade, he had enough copies. And he didn't lose the most important thing of all. In Whitefish, Montana, on Rufus' old cabin, Sam is sleeping on the couch, stubborn Dean, even with a cast, is on the floor.

John's journal, the last possession of the man that brought those boys in to his life is sitting on the kitchen table. In all those years, Bobby never touched it. It was too private, too personal, too much the boys'. Their last link to their old man.

He touches it now. Holds his hand over the thick leather. Looks at the boys. Sleeping. Breathing. Alive. Against all odds. Bobby smiles. And whispers.

"Thanks, John."