SPN FIC - Do You Believe in Magic?
As promised: Bobby!fic. Summer 1990.
It's got space for a whole platoon, that house. They'd thought three or four, he and Margie. Could fit five, maybe six, in a pinch. But the whole concept of kids died pretty early on, way before Margie...before it happened. The doc said he was sorry, and maybe he was; maybe he was just sorry to be delivering bad news, and maybe he genuinely felt bad when people couldn't do as the Bible said, go forth and multiply.
Characters: Bobby, Sam (in flashback, age 4), Dean (flashback, age 8), with a dash of John
Genre: Gen
Rating: PG, for language
Spoilers: Dream a Little Dream of Me
Length: 2035 words
DO YOU BELIEVE IN MAGIC?
By Carol Davis
Sam Winchester is seven years old. More than old enough, Bobby figures, to know there's no such thing as a magic closet. But keeping the magic closet running is one of the few things in his life that are easy to accomplish and make someone truly happy, so he'll keep doing it right up until the day that someone looks him straight in the eye and says, "You don't need to do this any more."
Maybe he'll even keep doing it after that.
He walks into the church hall at East Side Methodist a little after 9:30 - late enough to avoid the crush of early birds, early enough that there'll still be good stuff to choose from. He takes a minute to pick out a cardboard box from the neat stack at the near end of the hall (used to hold Star Kist Chunk Lite tuna, and it's just the right size, not too big, not too small), then starts walking along the row of tables.
It amazes him, sometimes, what people will donate to church rummage sales. A lot of it's broken, or dirty, or both. He helped Margie, a time or two, when she'd come down to help her ladies' group sort through the boxes and bags of donations. Dirty socks, he remembers: one time, somebody donated a whole sackful of dirty white tube socks. Clothes that'd gotten mildewed so bad you couldn't be within ten feet of 'em without your stomach turning. Broken toasters and radios. How the donors figured anybody would want that crap, he couldn't imagine then and can't now. Maybe it's a message - a way to tell their neighbors, and their church, how they really feel. How angry they are at their neighbors, at God, at something.
Or maybe they're just dumber'n a goddamn stump.
About two-thirds of the way down the row, he finds the toys. Two tables full, plus a bunch of boxes of odds and ends sitting underneath, on the floor. That's where he finds what he needs, every time he comes to a rummage sale. Smiling absently, he crouches down, sets his Star Kist box alongside his left boot, and starts sifting through, a 49er panning for gold nuggets for Sam.
For Dean, too, though Dean would never admit he gets any kind of a charge out of the magic closet. It's little-kid stuff, he'd say.
He's not a little kid any more. Never has been, the whole time Bobby's known him.
The closet thing started back when Dean was eight and Sam was four. Bobby'd put them in the bedroom down at the end of the hall, the one where you can actually see the furniture. (Then, and now.) One of the ones he and Margie figured they'd fill up with their own kids.
It's got space for a whole platoon, that house. They'd thought three or four, he and Margie. Could fit five, maybe six, in a pinch. But the whole concept of kids died pretty early on, way before Margie...before it happened. The doc said he was sorry, and maybe he was; maybe he was just sorry to be delivering bad news, and maybe he genuinely felt bad when people couldn't do as the Bible said, go forth and multiply.
Maybe it was just as well. If there'd been kids in the house when it happened...
Bobby stops himself there, shakes his head hard, like he'd shake a bad cat. No point in reliving any of that, ever - it's not like he can change any of it, not one bit of it. He can't bring her back, he can't change who killed her, and where he's gonna end up when things are all said and done...well, he's not gonna worry about it.
Not now, anyway.
Either way, Dean was eight and Sam was four, that first time. It was raining outside, coming down like God's own fury, and the boys were stuck inside. They were okay for a while, then they started making too much noise for what John figured he wanted to get done. He sent them upstairs, told them to read or sleep or whatever, long as it was something quiet. Didn't bother asking Bobby's advice on the matter. (Never does, really, but that's John, and you either take him or you leave him.) The boys did as they were told, and they were so quiet up there that after half an hour or so Bobby started to wonder whether they'd climbed out a window and were out running around in the rain.
"Pretty quiet," he ventured. All it got was a "Hmm" from John.
Forty-five minutes into it, Bobby got up from his chair, climbed the stairs and walked down to the bedroom at the end of the hall. The door was shut, so he opened it and looked inside to find Dean and Sam sitting cross-legged on one of the beds, with a bunch of old toys spread out on the comforter between them. Sam looked up long enough to grin, then went back to playing. Dean, though, turned kind of purple. Figured he'd done something wrong.
"You boys all right?" Bobby asked.
"I'm sorry," Dean told him. "We'll put it back."
Put what back? went through Bobby's mind. Sam looked up again and beamed at him, and Bobby realized his little hands were full of green plastic toy soldiers. He'd built a wall of sorts out of plastic checkers, and had a couple of Matchbox cars lined up - ready to transport the troops, Bobby figured. He thought the toys all belonged to Sam and Dean until he noticed the open closet door and the box on the floor near the bed.
There was something about that day that made him choose the road less traveled - which was to say, he lied. Not that he was much of a proponent of lying to kids, but the storm and John's banishing the kids so he could go through his heap of old books in peace and the pale, guilty look that made Dean's freckles stand out like mud splatters all added up to a need to bend the rules a little.
A little, or however much it took.
"I'll be damned," Bobby said. "Is it working again? I thought it was busted."
"What's busted?" Sam asked with a little bit of a frown.
"The closet." With those kids' eyes pinned on him like searchlights fastened on somebody trying to bust out of jail, Bobby went to the closet and peered inside. There was supposed to be kids in this room, he thought fleetingly. A whole bunch of 'em, laughin' and havin' a good time. Behind him, Sam scooted off the bed, sending some of the plastic soldiers flying like they'd been caught in a mortar blast. "They told me when I moved here that this was a magic closet," Bobby told him when Sam tucked in close. "The kids who lived here before me used it all the time. But I never have been able to get the damn thing to work."
"What does it do?" Sam asked, goggle-eyed, his mouth a small, perfect O.
"It makes toys. Or...brings 'em here from someplace, I guess."
"Like from Santa Claus?"
Bobby turned a little. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Dean, wearing the kind of smug, self-satisfied look kids get when they know the score (or think they do) and figure they can use it to play on the grown-up team. Dean wasn't going to buy into any of this, and Bobby didn't much want him to - but the name of the game was Keep Sam Happy, and Dean was Olympic caliber at that nonsense.
"No," Dean said, fingering one of the soldiers. "It's not new stuff. Maybe it's like...when kids grow up, and they don't want the toys any more, the closet brings 'em to some new kid. Like that?" he asked Bobby.
"That's exactly it," Bobby said.
The boy was Olympic caliber, for sure.
"You couldn't make it work 'cause you're not a kid," Sam announced.
"Probably so."
Without preamble, Sam burrowed into the closet, into the collection of old clothes and long-unused junk Bobby had forgotten was in there - if he'd ever realized it was there in the first place. He came out a minute later with dust bunnies stuck to his hair and his clothes and informed Bobby that nope, there wasn't any more toys.
"Could be it's one box to a customer," Bobby told him.
One box, for each of Sam's visits.
One box, of toys and games and puzzles and books, whatever Bobby can put together at rummage sales, yard sales, the dollar store. None of it fancy, almost none of it new, because John found out about the magic closet on the second go-round and he told Bobby he'd have none of Bobby giving charity to his kids. But he's all right with the used stuff, the toys that look like they were well-loved before they ended up in a tuna fish box.
One box, that's all there ever is, and the magic works for Dean too, even though he'd deny it with his last breath. He loves his little brother, and seeing Sam happy - the pure, giddy kind - makes him happy too. Dean would never say it, but he likes it here, in Dakota, at Bobby's place; Bobby knows that like he knows his own name. Dean likes being under a familiar roof, in somebody's home, someplace that feels safe and warm and dry, where he can relax a little bit and know the load's not his alone to carry. He's eleven now, and starting to take on some of the look of the man he'll be someday - but he's not a man, he's a kid, and he shouldn't have to carry the load that makes him frown and duck his head and shuffle his feet and say I'm sorry when he didn't do anything wrong, not any damn thing at all.
It's not all John's doing, the load Dean carries. He put a lot of it together himself, and he hates to give any of it up. He seems to think that without it, he's got no purpose, got nothing tying him to the earth.
With people milling around behind him and on both sides of him, Bobby fills his Star Kist box with treasures. A G.I. Joe and some odds and ends of accessories. A Slinky. A card game that's probably missing two or three cards, but never mind that; the boys always find a way to get along without what's not there. Two water pistols, one blue, one green. A Mr. Potato Head set. A nice metal model car, six inches long, with working doors and wheels that turn. A few other things, enough to half-fill the box. The collection sets Bobby back ten bucks, but he'd pay ten times that, if he knew John wouldn't find out.
He's halfway out the door when a thought occurs to him. He circles back, nudges his way through the crowd, and picks up three items from the table alongside the cash boxes: a transistor radio, a Walkman with a big crack in the lid, and a beat-up record player.
Dean's eleven now, and he can fix things. He's got a good eye and a careful hand, and he likes tinkering with busted stuff, to see if he can cast a spell on it, make it work again. Mostly, he works on the car, under John's supervision. For eleven, he's a damn good mechanic. A fixer. Somebody who'll make things operate or fall down dead trying.
"Eight dollars," says the woman handling the cash box. "I believe they all work."
"Probably better if they don't," Bobby replies.
He juggles it all out to the truck, the tuna fish box full of toys and the beat-up electronic stuff, and sets it all down in the passenger side footwell.
They'll be here by morning, John Winchester and his boys. Long before that, the magic closet will be set up and ready.
For Sam.
And for Dean.
Like always, until they tell Bobby to stop.
And maybe for a while after.
~~~~~~~~~~~