SPN FIC - One Hundred
My 100th one-shot. Whee! Happy 100th birthday, Bobby Singer.
Characters: Bobby, Dean, Sam
Pairings: none
Rating: PG, for language
Spoilers: none
Length: 2199 words
Disclaimer: Still. No. Money.
ONE HUNDRED
By Carol Davis
His name is Bobby Singer. He remembers that much.
Hell, he remembers a lot of things.
Unfortunately, the identity of the brown-haired kid trying to wrestle him up out of his chair isn't one of them. He ought to know who this is, he figures, but he's not completely sure, and not having a chance to make up his mind one way or the other is damn frustrating.
"Turn me loose, ya idjit!" he barks.
The kid backs off. Stands there looking at him, kind of sulky.
"Goddammit, Sam," Bobby sputters.
That gets out before he can stop it, and even before he's done saying it he knows he's wrong. The kid looks like Sam, kind of - no, a lot - but it's not Sam. He's pretty sure of that. Sam looks…different. Sam hasn't looked like this for a long time.
"Which one are you?" Bobby asks, defeated.
"I'm Michael, Uncle Bobby."
"Michael."
"Yes, sir."
That's not a whole lot of help.
The problem is, there are too damn many people around here, and even on his best day he wouldn't be able to keep track of them all. Men, women, kids of all ages - the place is like a damn hotel. It used to be a hotel, he thinks he remembers, but that was a long time ago, too. It was a little hotel, years ago. Kind of a…
Hell. He can't remember the name they used to give it.
"Are you okay, Uncle Bobby?" Michael asks.
"I haven't been okay since long before you were hatched, kid," Bobby sighs.
"Do you want me to get somebody?"
Bobby looks up at him - he's tall, like Sam - and offers him an apologetic look. The kid feels bad, that's pretty obvious. He's not one of those kids who thinks old people are a pain in the ass, end of story. He's a good kid. And that's not just intuition. Bobby knows him. Somehow.
He's a Winchester.
That doesn't help much, because none of them looks like the right part of the family. Sam's kids look like Dean, Dean's kids look like Sam.
Jo's kids don't look like anybody. She's got a whole bunch of 'em, picked up all over the place - she's like that Angie…Angela…whatever that girl's name was. The one who used to be in the movies. Jo's just like that, picking up kids who need a home, somebody to look after 'em. She ought to have stopped at three or four, because even that many's a handful, but the number got way up past a dozen, near as Bobby remembers.
No wonder she needed a hotel to park 'em all in.
You're wandering again, you damn fool, Bobby thinks.
"Your father here?" he asks Michael.
"Yes, sir."
"Send him on in here, then."
It's either Sam or Dean, he figures. His money's on Dean, because Michael looks like Sam. Like the genes got all ass-backward in the translation. He's kind of surprised, and does his best to conceal it, when the guy who shows up isn't Dean or Sam, it's somebody with a shaved head and an earring and a couple tattoos.
"Need some help, Uncle Bobby?" he asks, sounding a little impatient.
"Am I your goddamn uncle?" Bobby snaps.
The guy looks amused. "No."
"Where's Sam and Dean?"
"Around. Somewhere. Outside, maybe."
"Get 'em in here."
"Will do."
It takes a long time for anybody to show up after Chrome Dome leaves. That's actually a good thing, because it gives Bobby a little peace and quiet in the middle of this cyclone of people.
He sits in his chair by the fireplace - nothing's burning in there now, although the heat would feel good; it's summer, but his bones are always cold - and looks around at the room they gave him when he moved in here for good. It's downstairs, tucked in at the back of the place, past the stairs. They used to use it as a living room, but he hasn't been able to manage stairs for what seems like three lifetimes, so they converted it into a nice bedroom. There's a bathroom close by, and he's got a comfortable bed and some chairs, and a lot of his books are here, lined up on the shelves. They let him pile a few on the floor, but not too many, not like back at the house in Dakota.
He misses the house, sometimes.
But maybe that's wrong. Maybe he doesn't miss the house, or the junkyard. Maybe he misses the Bobby who used to live there.
After a while somebody shows up at the door.
"Hey, Bobby," Dean says.
His hair's white now, and he caved in a while ago and got glasses. Other than that, he still looks the same.
But maybe that's Bobby's heart filling in the blanks.
"Dean," Bobby sighs. He meant to say more, but he runs out of gas a little bit.
Dean comes over to the chair and rests a hand on Bobby's shoulder. "Happy birthday, you crazy old fart."
"Who you callin' old, you smartmouth little bastard?"
"You, I guess."
The smirk is still there, the flash in Dean's green eyes. He grasps Bobby's shoulder firmly, but carefully. The warmth of his hand, slight as it is, feels good. These days, anything that generates heat is good.
"How the hell'd I get to be a hundred years old?" Bobby asks, and it's a lot more plaintive than he meant it to be. He meant to make a joke. Make light of it. But really, there's no way to make light of this. He never figured on being this old. Never figured he'd make it this far. Not in the business they're in. "Oldest living hunter? What the hell is that?"
"Dunno," Dean says. "Means you're a lucky sonofabitch, I guess."
"Not sure what's lucky about it."
There's somebody else in the doorway. Bobby squints over that way. His vision comes and goes, day to day. Minute to minute, even. He supposes he ought to be glad that he can see at all; some days he can even read a little, and that's like a blessing. It lets him feel like the Bobby who hoarded all those books in a farmhouse in South Dakota.
The Bobby who bought a farmhouse for a pretty girl and carried her over the threshold and said, "We're home, baby."
She's been gone a terrible long time.
"You okay, Bobby?" Dean asks softly.
The somebody who was in the doorway moves closer and crouches beside his chair. Rests a hand on top of Bobby's.
"Hey," Sam says.
Bobby blinks at him. His damn eyes are so old that he can't work up a lot of tears any more, and that's probably a good thing. He could always lie and say it's dusty in here, say it with enough cantankerousness that they'll go along with it - even though nobody ever believes him, and he pretty much never wants them to, not really.
Sam's mostly bald now, and the top of his head has spots all over it. He's not that little kid John Winchester carried into the farmhouse that night.
When was that? Bobby wonders.
John's been gone a long time.
Sometimes he feels like John bequeathed these kids to him. The crazy bastard never had a will, not that there honestly would've been much use for one, when all he had was a truck full of weapons and a duffel of clothes and some odds and ends, but just as if John had sat down with lawyers and worked things out proper, Bobby feels like he ended up guardian to these boys. It was always him they called when they needed somebody to help out, or to talk to. They didn't always listen, but that's the proper way of things, isn't it?
Dean pulls over a chair and sits down. The boy's knees are pretty much shot, Bobby remembers. And he had a scare of some kind a while back, but he got through it.
And Sam?
That takes some thinking. When Bobby pulls the answer together, he has to shut his eyes for a second.
The thing in Chicago. They almost lost Sam then.
"Hey," Sam says, and grips Bobby's hand in his own. Not too tight; everybody's gentle with him now, like they think he'll break.
"Lot of people here," Bobby says without opening his eyes.
"They're here for you."
"Couldn't find something better to do?"
John Winchester's been gone a long time. That night he showed up at the farmhouse with his kids in tow, he just wanted some answers. Wanted some hard info about demons, and Bobby Singer was the go-to guy for that. Not by his own choosing; he would've given anything not to have found out there was such a thing.
Would've given anything not to have found out the way he did.
He figured on answering Winchester's questions, then showing him the door, because he was a surly bastard, all cut-off sentences and requests that sounded like orders. He was too gruff with his kids for Bobby's taste, Dean especially. Treated that little boy like a grunt. But time went on and John didn't leave; then he left and came back, and came back some more, and nobody objected. He saw more in Bobby Singer than a source of knowledge, seemed like, and Bobby saw him as more than a surly bastard with a lot of questions, and it wasn't just because they'd both lost the same thing for pretty much the same reason.
If Jim Murphy hadn't been killed, Bobby thinks sometimes, John's boys might've ended up making him their go-to guy, him being a preacher and good with kids and all. So maybe Bobby got them by default.
Either way, he got them, and they got him.
They brought him here to the mountains in New York a while back. Sold the farmhouse and the junkyard in Dakota for a decent amount of money and brought him here to live in this thing that used to be a little hotel, with a nice lake to look at when he's sitting out in the big room with the picture window. It's pretty here, and the food's good. The boys are around most of the time. Jo's here a lot, because some of her pack of kids still live here.
They've got grandkids, Dean and Sam and Jo.
He thinks he remembers something else. "There a baby?" he asks Dean.
"Isabelle? Yeah."
Bobby looks into Dean's green eyes. He's in a good mood all the time, Dean is. Might not actually feel good all the time, but he puts on a good show. Sometimes he acts like he can't figure out how he got here, like it all might be something he made up in his head. Bobby sees him once in a while, standing by a window with his hands on the windowsill, like life's overwhelmed him and he has to take a minute to get his bearings.
Boy's a great-grandfather. Bobby's pretty sure he's got that right.
"You feel like having some cake?" Sam asks. "There's a whole bunch of people waiting for you, and I think they're getting restless."
"Let 'em wait," Bobby says.
The boys both smile at that.
The ones they've lost along the way - Bobby wishes they were here now. Figures they are here, in a way. His Karen, and John, and Ellen, and the others. Probably won't be that much longer before he's with 'em for real, because damn, he's a hundred years old, and that clock has to stop ticking at some point. Some days he wishes it was now, that he could hang it up and rest, because his back hurts and he can't walk and his damn eyes and ears don't work and half the time he doesn’t understand what people are saying to him.
Then one of those kids will come in and give him a hug and a kiss and he figures he'll tough it out for a while longer.
"What kinda cake is it?" he asks Sam.
"Didn't ask."
"Ya idjit," Bobby says. "You're always supposed to ask. Otherwise they'll give you any damn thing."
"I guess so," Sam replies, chuckling softly.
They're old, the three of them.
He never figured he'd get this far. They probably didn't, either. None of 'em figured they'd end up with home and family, that they could turn the reins over to other people and not feel too bad about it, like they'd let somebody down in some colossal way. How they all managed to outsmart the odds, Bobby hasn't got a clue…but there are some things you just don't question.
"Gimme a hand," he tells John's boys, nodding toward the wheelchair in the corner. "Gotta get out there before that pack of idjits throws a riot over goddamn cake."
Best thing anybody ever gave him, these two kids.
He hitches forward in his chair and lifts his arms. Sam tucks under one shoulder and Dean under the other.
He'd rather be walking on his own, but things are what they are.
These are his boys.
And it's his birthday.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Characters: Bobby, Dean, Sam
Pairings: none
Rating: PG, for language
Spoilers: none
Length: 2199 words
Disclaimer: Still. No. Money.
ONE HUNDRED
By Carol Davis
His name is Bobby Singer. He remembers that much.
Hell, he remembers a lot of things.
Unfortunately, the identity of the brown-haired kid trying to wrestle him up out of his chair isn't one of them. He ought to know who this is, he figures, but he's not completely sure, and not having a chance to make up his mind one way or the other is damn frustrating.
"Turn me loose, ya idjit!" he barks.
The kid backs off. Stands there looking at him, kind of sulky.
"Goddammit, Sam," Bobby sputters.
That gets out before he can stop it, and even before he's done saying it he knows he's wrong. The kid looks like Sam, kind of - no, a lot - but it's not Sam. He's pretty sure of that. Sam looks…different. Sam hasn't looked like this for a long time.
"Which one are you?" Bobby asks, defeated.
"I'm Michael, Uncle Bobby."
"Michael."
"Yes, sir."
That's not a whole lot of help.
The problem is, there are too damn many people around here, and even on his best day he wouldn't be able to keep track of them all. Men, women, kids of all ages - the place is like a damn hotel. It used to be a hotel, he thinks he remembers, but that was a long time ago, too. It was a little hotel, years ago. Kind of a…
Hell. He can't remember the name they used to give it.
"Are you okay, Uncle Bobby?" Michael asks.
"I haven't been okay since long before you were hatched, kid," Bobby sighs.
"Do you want me to get somebody?"
Bobby looks up at him - he's tall, like Sam - and offers him an apologetic look. The kid feels bad, that's pretty obvious. He's not one of those kids who thinks old people are a pain in the ass, end of story. He's a good kid. And that's not just intuition. Bobby knows him. Somehow.
He's a Winchester.
That doesn't help much, because none of them looks like the right part of the family. Sam's kids look like Dean, Dean's kids look like Sam.
Jo's kids don't look like anybody. She's got a whole bunch of 'em, picked up all over the place - she's like that Angie…Angela…whatever that girl's name was. The one who used to be in the movies. Jo's just like that, picking up kids who need a home, somebody to look after 'em. She ought to have stopped at three or four, because even that many's a handful, but the number got way up past a dozen, near as Bobby remembers.
No wonder she needed a hotel to park 'em all in.
You're wandering again, you damn fool, Bobby thinks.
"Your father here?" he asks Michael.
"Yes, sir."
"Send him on in here, then."
It's either Sam or Dean, he figures. His money's on Dean, because Michael looks like Sam. Like the genes got all ass-backward in the translation. He's kind of surprised, and does his best to conceal it, when the guy who shows up isn't Dean or Sam, it's somebody with a shaved head and an earring and a couple tattoos.
"Need some help, Uncle Bobby?" he asks, sounding a little impatient.
"Am I your goddamn uncle?" Bobby snaps.
The guy looks amused. "No."
"Where's Sam and Dean?"
"Around. Somewhere. Outside, maybe."
"Get 'em in here."
"Will do."
It takes a long time for anybody to show up after Chrome Dome leaves. That's actually a good thing, because it gives Bobby a little peace and quiet in the middle of this cyclone of people.
He sits in his chair by the fireplace - nothing's burning in there now, although the heat would feel good; it's summer, but his bones are always cold - and looks around at the room they gave him when he moved in here for good. It's downstairs, tucked in at the back of the place, past the stairs. They used to use it as a living room, but he hasn't been able to manage stairs for what seems like three lifetimes, so they converted it into a nice bedroom. There's a bathroom close by, and he's got a comfortable bed and some chairs, and a lot of his books are here, lined up on the shelves. They let him pile a few on the floor, but not too many, not like back at the house in Dakota.
He misses the house, sometimes.
But maybe that's wrong. Maybe he doesn't miss the house, or the junkyard. Maybe he misses the Bobby who used to live there.
After a while somebody shows up at the door.
"Hey, Bobby," Dean says.
His hair's white now, and he caved in a while ago and got glasses. Other than that, he still looks the same.
But maybe that's Bobby's heart filling in the blanks.
"Dean," Bobby sighs. He meant to say more, but he runs out of gas a little bit.
Dean comes over to the chair and rests a hand on Bobby's shoulder. "Happy birthday, you crazy old fart."
"Who you callin' old, you smartmouth little bastard?"
"You, I guess."
The smirk is still there, the flash in Dean's green eyes. He grasps Bobby's shoulder firmly, but carefully. The warmth of his hand, slight as it is, feels good. These days, anything that generates heat is good.
"How the hell'd I get to be a hundred years old?" Bobby asks, and it's a lot more plaintive than he meant it to be. He meant to make a joke. Make light of it. But really, there's no way to make light of this. He never figured on being this old. Never figured he'd make it this far. Not in the business they're in. "Oldest living hunter? What the hell is that?"
"Dunno," Dean says. "Means you're a lucky sonofabitch, I guess."
"Not sure what's lucky about it."
There's somebody else in the doorway. Bobby squints over that way. His vision comes and goes, day to day. Minute to minute, even. He supposes he ought to be glad that he can see at all; some days he can even read a little, and that's like a blessing. It lets him feel like the Bobby who hoarded all those books in a farmhouse in South Dakota.
The Bobby who bought a farmhouse for a pretty girl and carried her over the threshold and said, "We're home, baby."
She's been gone a terrible long time.
"You okay, Bobby?" Dean asks softly.
The somebody who was in the doorway moves closer and crouches beside his chair. Rests a hand on top of Bobby's.
"Hey," Sam says.
Bobby blinks at him. His damn eyes are so old that he can't work up a lot of tears any more, and that's probably a good thing. He could always lie and say it's dusty in here, say it with enough cantankerousness that they'll go along with it - even though nobody ever believes him, and he pretty much never wants them to, not really.
Sam's mostly bald now, and the top of his head has spots all over it. He's not that little kid John Winchester carried into the farmhouse that night.
When was that? Bobby wonders.
John's been gone a long time.
Sometimes he feels like John bequeathed these kids to him. The crazy bastard never had a will, not that there honestly would've been much use for one, when all he had was a truck full of weapons and a duffel of clothes and some odds and ends, but just as if John had sat down with lawyers and worked things out proper, Bobby feels like he ended up guardian to these boys. It was always him they called when they needed somebody to help out, or to talk to. They didn't always listen, but that's the proper way of things, isn't it?
Dean pulls over a chair and sits down. The boy's knees are pretty much shot, Bobby remembers. And he had a scare of some kind a while back, but he got through it.
And Sam?
That takes some thinking. When Bobby pulls the answer together, he has to shut his eyes for a second.
The thing in Chicago. They almost lost Sam then.
"Hey," Sam says, and grips Bobby's hand in his own. Not too tight; everybody's gentle with him now, like they think he'll break.
"Lot of people here," Bobby says without opening his eyes.
"They're here for you."
"Couldn't find something better to do?"
John Winchester's been gone a long time. That night he showed up at the farmhouse with his kids in tow, he just wanted some answers. Wanted some hard info about demons, and Bobby Singer was the go-to guy for that. Not by his own choosing; he would've given anything not to have found out there was such a thing.
Would've given anything not to have found out the way he did.
He figured on answering Winchester's questions, then showing him the door, because he was a surly bastard, all cut-off sentences and requests that sounded like orders. He was too gruff with his kids for Bobby's taste, Dean especially. Treated that little boy like a grunt. But time went on and John didn't leave; then he left and came back, and came back some more, and nobody objected. He saw more in Bobby Singer than a source of knowledge, seemed like, and Bobby saw him as more than a surly bastard with a lot of questions, and it wasn't just because they'd both lost the same thing for pretty much the same reason.
If Jim Murphy hadn't been killed, Bobby thinks sometimes, John's boys might've ended up making him their go-to guy, him being a preacher and good with kids and all. So maybe Bobby got them by default.
Either way, he got them, and they got him.
They brought him here to the mountains in New York a while back. Sold the farmhouse and the junkyard in Dakota for a decent amount of money and brought him here to live in this thing that used to be a little hotel, with a nice lake to look at when he's sitting out in the big room with the picture window. It's pretty here, and the food's good. The boys are around most of the time. Jo's here a lot, because some of her pack of kids still live here.
They've got grandkids, Dean and Sam and Jo.
He thinks he remembers something else. "There a baby?" he asks Dean.
"Isabelle? Yeah."
Bobby looks into Dean's green eyes. He's in a good mood all the time, Dean is. Might not actually feel good all the time, but he puts on a good show. Sometimes he acts like he can't figure out how he got here, like it all might be something he made up in his head. Bobby sees him once in a while, standing by a window with his hands on the windowsill, like life's overwhelmed him and he has to take a minute to get his bearings.
Boy's a great-grandfather. Bobby's pretty sure he's got that right.
"You feel like having some cake?" Sam asks. "There's a whole bunch of people waiting for you, and I think they're getting restless."
"Let 'em wait," Bobby says.
The boys both smile at that.
The ones they've lost along the way - Bobby wishes they were here now. Figures they are here, in a way. His Karen, and John, and Ellen, and the others. Probably won't be that much longer before he's with 'em for real, because damn, he's a hundred years old, and that clock has to stop ticking at some point. Some days he wishes it was now, that he could hang it up and rest, because his back hurts and he can't walk and his damn eyes and ears don't work and half the time he doesn’t understand what people are saying to him.
Then one of those kids will come in and give him a hug and a kiss and he figures he'll tough it out for a while longer.
"What kinda cake is it?" he asks Sam.
"Didn't ask."
"Ya idjit," Bobby says. "You're always supposed to ask. Otherwise they'll give you any damn thing."
"I guess so," Sam replies, chuckling softly.
They're old, the three of them.
He never figured he'd get this far. They probably didn't, either. None of 'em figured they'd end up with home and family, that they could turn the reins over to other people and not feel too bad about it, like they'd let somebody down in some colossal way. How they all managed to outsmart the odds, Bobby hasn't got a clue…but there are some things you just don't question.
"Gimme a hand," he tells John's boys, nodding toward the wheelchair in the corner. "Gotta get out there before that pack of idjits throws a riot over goddamn cake."
Best thing anybody ever gave him, these two kids.
He hitches forward in his chair and lifts his arms. Sam tucks under one shoulder and Dean under the other.
He'd rather be walking on his own, but things are what they are.
These are his boys.
And it's his birthday.
~~~~~~~~~~~~