Fic: Vacation Slides (PG) - SPN, gen
Sep. 26th, 2010 04:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
apocalypsosTitle: Vacation Slides
Author: [Bad username or unknown identity: ”apocalypsos”]
Fandom: Supernatural
Spoilers: “Exile On Main Street”
Disclaimer: Trust me, if the Winchester boys were mine, I would have gotten them both better haircuts.
Summary: Bobby read this thing somewhere once, about how the FBI swaps out their agents on serial killer cases every eighteen months to avoid the inevitable mental breakdown.
* Vacation Slides *
Bobby read this thing somewhere once, about how the FBI swaps out their agents on serial killer cases every eighteen months to avoid the inevitable mental breakdown. Or maybe he saw it in a movie. Hell if he knows. He just knows he's seen hunters with that special twitch, with that unsteady shake to their hands, that make him silently curse the fact there ain't some authoritative higher-up around to order these lousy sons of bitches to take a goddamn vacation.
Hunters are never much ones to respect authority anyway. Bobby knows this well and truly, that's for damn sure.
Former Marine for a daddy notwithstanding, the Winchester boys have never been any different in that regard.
*
There's one last embrace before Dean heads off to his normal life, and Bobby catches the faint scent of whiskey on Dean's breath.
It ain't much, not enough to fret about twisted steel and strangely bent appendages, but just enough to worry about quaking hands shooting off target and slurred words screwing up exorcisms. Maybe Dean ain't drunk now, but he will be when he finds a home base, when he strikes the place he'll settle and grows some roots.
Bobby claps him on the shoulder with one hand, on the cheek with the other.
“Don't think I won't check in, boy,” he says.
Dean offers up an uneven smile. “Don't think I won't let you,” he says, and his voice croaks.
Bobby rattles off reasons in his head for the crack in Dean's voice – from emotion, from exhaustion, from the liquor. He may not shove the damn kid into the driver's seat, but it's a close call.
*
Bobby calls.
Dean calls.
Bobby calls.
Dean calls.
The thing is, Dean made a promise. Winchesters may not like authority, but they sure as hell get off emotionally on their deathbed promises. Dean swore he'd hang up his weapons and bring in a paycheck, quit using the salt for protection and start using it for seasoning, give up on gunfights and start in on family barbecues.
Bobby talks about his latest case and that thing in Minnesota that might be a Lady in White. Dean changes the subject like he's punching the conversation. He jabs at Bobby's update on his werewolf hunt with his complaints about having to replace a few roofing tiles after a bad storm. He sucker-punches Bobby's mention of the Lady in White by asking what Bobby thought of that bullshit call during the seventh inning of the Red Sox game.
He ducks and dodges. He dances out of the way of hunting business like a goddamn prizefighter.
Bobby calls.
Bobby calls.
Bobby calls.
Bobby calls.
*
One day, Sam is on Bobby's doorstep.
Ain't all that long after the apocalypse went to hell that Sam in on Bobby's doorstep. After the threats at the end of a shotgun and the unsurprising exorcism and the expected pop quiz on things only Sam Winchester would know, he takes in Bobby's overjoyed hug with the resigned patience of a child taking his Flintstone vitamins in the morning, pats Bobby's back with a few awkward thumps between his shoulder blades.
“Dean,” Bobby blurts out, and the word is choked with tears. “You told your brother yet?”
It's a stupid question and Bobby knows it. If Dean knew Sam were alive, he'd be wrapped around Sam's torso like a needy baby spider monkey. Sam's face tells an even more heartbreaking tale, saying in silence that he wouldn't, that he couldn't, that he can't, that he won't.
Bobby snaps off a pounding rainstorm of curses and insults upon Sam's head, “idjits” and “stupid morons” flying at him like errant bullets. Sam barely deflects them with a guarded but apologetic look.
“If you ain't gonna call the poor bastard,” Bobby says, “I'll call him myself.”
Sam does the hangdog look well, plasters his most practiced sad-eyed stare on Bobby as Bobby snatches his cell phone up from the counter and …
… and tells him over the phone that his brother is alive again?
Well, hell.
Sam edges towards the door, leans and tilts those broad shoulders of his just so. He could dart out and back into the wild wide world long before Bobby could even spill the damning truth across the pristine white-picket-fence normality of Dean's new apple-pie life.
Bobby knows better, knows normal life doesn't work like that, doesn't fix all your ills or scrub away a broken heart. Life ain't a Norman Rockwell painting, but try telling that to the kid still seeing his own short slice of normal through rose-colored glasses still reflecting angry flames.
“Goddamn it,” Bobby mutters. This isn't the sort of thing you just drop over the phone. It's the Hiroshima of bitter truths, Bobby thinks, but he doesn't have the time to dwell on it because suddenly he's got to snap, “Where the hell do you think you're going?” as Sam takes unsubtle steps towards the front door.
“Your brother --” he starts, but there's no time to grab hold of Sam and shake sense into that shaggy head of his or even to pull his shotgun on the jackass once again and hold him in place.
And then he's gone.
Sam's gone, and there ain't even a trail of sorry excuses floating in the air in his wake to grasp as flimsy evidence of his mere existence.
*
It's a dream. It's a hallucination. It's something evil. It's the spawn of Jack Daniels.
Dean doesn't own the concept of nursing his problems with a flask. Bobby's been known to knock back his medicine just like the rest of the hunting world. It's easy enough to handwave Sam's appearance as the haunting aftereffects of scotch or whiskey or beer.
The fact that he hasn't touched the stuff in days is something he's almost willing to ignore.
Bobby packs his truck, ready to ride to that cookie-cutter house of Dean's and bang down his front door, but stops. Without Sam, there is no announcement to make. He sure as hell can't make Dean believe him without his resurrected little brother in tow, and isn't sure he's all that keen on sending the idiot on a goddamn wild goose chase across the country to go find him.
The last time he spoke with Dean, Dean's voice didn't draw out from drink, wasn't rough from lack of sleep. It's been far long since there's been life in that gruff rumble of his.
Bobby wonders more than once if he's the one to ruin that.
*
Sam calls.
Sam calls.
Sam calls.
Bobby gets the story in drips and drabs, unraveling what he can over the phone from the tightly knitted cap Sam keeps over his mysterious return. It's not Castiel, that much Bobby figures out. Outside of that, it's anybody's guess.
And now there are Campbells.
Sam mentions his grandfather, risen from the dead as well, and cousins, distant ones but blood relations nonetheless. Bobby scribbles down every detail he can wheedle out of Sam about the hunters he's taken up with, pulls every string he can and researches the hell out of what turns out to be one doozy of a hunting dynasty. Sam is with family, with his blood. From everything he hears and reads and learns, Bobby should feel better.
He doesn't.
He doesn't know how you fix something like this, Dean in one place, Sam in another. Convincing Sam to come back to the salvage yard doesn't work, and Dean's following Sam's deathbed promise to the letter like the perfect Winchester. Bobby keeps picturing magnets repelling one another, sliding in opposite directions for months and months no matter how you move them around until you finally find out that flipping them over does the trick.
How do you flip a couple of stubborn cusses like the Winchesters?
Bobby feels like a man standing on the sidelines, staring at someone who's just had their arm ripped off, the severed appendage lying on the ground as its delirious owner calmly walks away in shock.
How to put Humpty Dumpty back together again, he thinks wryly every time the phone rings, and chases every phone call with a steeling drink.
Author: [Bad username or unknown identity: ”apocalypsos”]
Fandom: Supernatural
Spoilers: “Exile On Main Street”
Disclaimer: Trust me, if the Winchester boys were mine, I would have gotten them both better haircuts.
Summary: Bobby read this thing somewhere once, about how the FBI swaps out their agents on serial killer cases every eighteen months to avoid the inevitable mental breakdown.
Bobby read this thing somewhere once, about how the FBI swaps out their agents on serial killer cases every eighteen months to avoid the inevitable mental breakdown. Or maybe he saw it in a movie. Hell if he knows. He just knows he's seen hunters with that special twitch, with that unsteady shake to their hands, that make him silently curse the fact there ain't some authoritative higher-up around to order these lousy sons of bitches to take a goddamn vacation.
Hunters are never much ones to respect authority anyway. Bobby knows this well and truly, that's for damn sure.
Former Marine for a daddy notwithstanding, the Winchester boys have never been any different in that regard.
There's one last embrace before Dean heads off to his normal life, and Bobby catches the faint scent of whiskey on Dean's breath.
It ain't much, not enough to fret about twisted steel and strangely bent appendages, but just enough to worry about quaking hands shooting off target and slurred words screwing up exorcisms. Maybe Dean ain't drunk now, but he will be when he finds a home base, when he strikes the place he'll settle and grows some roots.
Bobby claps him on the shoulder with one hand, on the cheek with the other.
“Don't think I won't check in, boy,” he says.
Dean offers up an uneven smile. “Don't think I won't let you,” he says, and his voice croaks.
Bobby rattles off reasons in his head for the crack in Dean's voice – from emotion, from exhaustion, from the liquor. He may not shove the damn kid into the driver's seat, but it's a close call.
Bobby calls.
Dean calls.
Bobby calls.
Dean calls.
The thing is, Dean made a promise. Winchesters may not like authority, but they sure as hell get off emotionally on their deathbed promises. Dean swore he'd hang up his weapons and bring in a paycheck, quit using the salt for protection and start using it for seasoning, give up on gunfights and start in on family barbecues.
Bobby talks about his latest case and that thing in Minnesota that might be a Lady in White. Dean changes the subject like he's punching the conversation. He jabs at Bobby's update on his werewolf hunt with his complaints about having to replace a few roofing tiles after a bad storm. He sucker-punches Bobby's mention of the Lady in White by asking what Bobby thought of that bullshit call during the seventh inning of the Red Sox game.
He ducks and dodges. He dances out of the way of hunting business like a goddamn prizefighter.
Bobby calls.
Bobby calls.
Bobby calls.
Bobby calls.
One day, Sam is on Bobby's doorstep.
Ain't all that long after the apocalypse went to hell that Sam in on Bobby's doorstep. After the threats at the end of a shotgun and the unsurprising exorcism and the expected pop quiz on things only Sam Winchester would know, he takes in Bobby's overjoyed hug with the resigned patience of a child taking his Flintstone vitamins in the morning, pats Bobby's back with a few awkward thumps between his shoulder blades.
“Dean,” Bobby blurts out, and the word is choked with tears. “You told your brother yet?”
It's a stupid question and Bobby knows it. If Dean knew Sam were alive, he'd be wrapped around Sam's torso like a needy baby spider monkey. Sam's face tells an even more heartbreaking tale, saying in silence that he wouldn't, that he couldn't, that he can't, that he won't.
Bobby snaps off a pounding rainstorm of curses and insults upon Sam's head, “idjits” and “stupid morons” flying at him like errant bullets. Sam barely deflects them with a guarded but apologetic look.
“If you ain't gonna call the poor bastard,” Bobby says, “I'll call him myself.”
Sam does the hangdog look well, plasters his most practiced sad-eyed stare on Bobby as Bobby snatches his cell phone up from the counter and …
… and tells him over the phone that his brother is alive again?
Well, hell.
Sam edges towards the door, leans and tilts those broad shoulders of his just so. He could dart out and back into the wild wide world long before Bobby could even spill the damning truth across the pristine white-picket-fence normality of Dean's new apple-pie life.
Bobby knows better, knows normal life doesn't work like that, doesn't fix all your ills or scrub away a broken heart. Life ain't a Norman Rockwell painting, but try telling that to the kid still seeing his own short slice of normal through rose-colored glasses still reflecting angry flames.
“Goddamn it,” Bobby mutters. This isn't the sort of thing you just drop over the phone. It's the Hiroshima of bitter truths, Bobby thinks, but he doesn't have the time to dwell on it because suddenly he's got to snap, “Where the hell do you think you're going?” as Sam takes unsubtle steps towards the front door.
“Your brother --” he starts, but there's no time to grab hold of Sam and shake sense into that shaggy head of his or even to pull his shotgun on the jackass once again and hold him in place.
And then he's gone.
Sam's gone, and there ain't even a trail of sorry excuses floating in the air in his wake to grasp as flimsy evidence of his mere existence.
It's a dream. It's a hallucination. It's something evil. It's the spawn of Jack Daniels.
Dean doesn't own the concept of nursing his problems with a flask. Bobby's been known to knock back his medicine just like the rest of the hunting world. It's easy enough to handwave Sam's appearance as the haunting aftereffects of scotch or whiskey or beer.
The fact that he hasn't touched the stuff in days is something he's almost willing to ignore.
Bobby packs his truck, ready to ride to that cookie-cutter house of Dean's and bang down his front door, but stops. Without Sam, there is no announcement to make. He sure as hell can't make Dean believe him without his resurrected little brother in tow, and isn't sure he's all that keen on sending the idiot on a goddamn wild goose chase across the country to go find him.
The last time he spoke with Dean, Dean's voice didn't draw out from drink, wasn't rough from lack of sleep. It's been far long since there's been life in that gruff rumble of his.
Bobby wonders more than once if he's the one to ruin that.
Sam calls.
Sam calls.
Sam calls.
Bobby gets the story in drips and drabs, unraveling what he can over the phone from the tightly knitted cap Sam keeps over his mysterious return. It's not Castiel, that much Bobby figures out. Outside of that, it's anybody's guess.
And now there are Campbells.
Sam mentions his grandfather, risen from the dead as well, and cousins, distant ones but blood relations nonetheless. Bobby scribbles down every detail he can wheedle out of Sam about the hunters he's taken up with, pulls every string he can and researches the hell out of what turns out to be one doozy of a hunting dynasty. Sam is with family, with his blood. From everything he hears and reads and learns, Bobby should feel better.
He doesn't.
He doesn't know how you fix something like this, Dean in one place, Sam in another. Convincing Sam to come back to the salvage yard doesn't work, and Dean's following Sam's deathbed promise to the letter like the perfect Winchester. Bobby keeps picturing magnets repelling one another, sliding in opposite directions for months and months no matter how you move them around until you finally find out that flipping them over does the trick.
How do you flip a couple of stubborn cusses like the Winchesters?
Bobby feels like a man standing on the sidelines, staring at someone who's just had their arm ripped off, the severed appendage lying on the ground as its delirious owner calmly walks away in shock.
How to put Humpty Dumpty back together again, he thinks wryly every time the phone rings, and chases every phone call with a steeling drink.
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Date: 2010-09-27 02:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-27 06:11 am (UTC)