Title: child of my right hand, and joy
Disclaimer: not my characters; just for fun. Title from Ben Jonson.
Warnings: spoilers for season two
Pairings: none
Wordcount: 510
Point of view: third
Bobby met John Winchester by accident, on his last hunt. John was still just a pup by hunter standards, still burning with rage at Mary's murder.
Fool boy nearly got himself killed and Bobby saved his life. John was bleeding from his left shoulder, a wound like Bobby hadn't seen in years. They were half a day from Bobby's house, but a hospital was only twenty miles down the road.
John was in no shape to argue, so Bobby hauled his ass to the emergency room.
-
Two days passed before John was in any condition to introduce himself, or tell Bobby about his boys. He gave Bobby the room number.
Bobby went to the motel, wondering when he became a 'sitter for baby hunters and their kids. He let himself into the room with John's key, immediately searching for the boys. They were huddled together in the bathroom, the older no more than five and the younger still just an infant.
"Dean," Bobby said softly, like he talked to his dogs. "I was sent by your daddy. He wants me to bring you to him."
The boy's hazel eyes were wary, and he shifted so that the baby was more behind him.
"He said to tell you that the password is toss around a football," Bobby continued.
At that, to Bobby's relief, Dean relaxed and allowed Bobby to pick Sam up, lead them to his truck. Sam babbled to Bobby, but nothing he could understand; Dean never made a sound.
He dropped the boys off with John and headed home, never expecting to see them again.
But he did, a dozen times over the years. He came to love the boys like nephews, though John often got on his nerves. The last time he saw John alive, John told him to keep out of his affairs when Bobby asked him about Sam. They'd never agreed that John raised his boys right, and John started in on how Bobby had no kids of his own, where the hell did he get off?
Bobby reached for his shotgun, cocked it, and said, "Get the hell of my land, Winchester."
John went, Dean with him, and Bobby never saw John again.
Maybe, Bobby thought later, he should've told John about Catherine and the baby that died with her, but by then it was too late.
-
Bobby knew the boys when they were babies, knew them as stormy teenagers, knew them as men.
After Jim and John's deaths, he was the one that knew them best in the world. So when he saw Sam dead in Dean's arms, Bobby knew the boy would do something. He flashed back to that first time in the bathroom—twenty-four years gone and yet nothing had changed.
Dean was his daddy's son, and Sam was all he had. Bobby wished he could keep Dean from doing something stupid and irrevocable, but he knew better.
So he helped Dean move Sam. He knew them at their beginning, and he was determined to know them at their end.