“Dude, can we not?”
August 23
Two nights, that was it.
Dean was supposed to be able to trust Sam to not do anything stupid for two freaking nights.
How hard was that?
Bobby was going to go investigate the plane crash, Sam was supposed to sign up for college.
“God damn it.” Dean had his fist clenched and nearly let it fly in the wall beside him. It was just the sight of Harry watching him that made Dean drop his fist.
Ellen and Ash hadn’t heard from Sam. Bobby hadn’t heard from Sam.
Sam just got in the car Bobby spent weeks restoring and left. No note, no freaking forwarding number.
Nothing.
“Maybe he went back to California?” Harry’s softly suggested, all quiet and nervous in a way that was pissing Dean off.
Dean bonded with the kid. Dean went out of his way to make friends with Harry’s friends, make sure people knew that Dean was his family. Hell, Dean even let a bunch of magical teenagers laugh at him while he tried to play quidditch.
“Quit being nervous,” Dean snapped, continuing his irritated pacing. “If you’ve got an idea, say it.”
Dean wasn’t John, who couldn’t take outside suggestions. If Harry had an idea, he was allowed to freaking share it. It wasn’t like Dean was going to snap and lock him in a closet.
“Maybe Sam’s in California,” Harry repeated. His eyes were tracking Dean like he needed to watch for Dean’s next step, but he sounded a little more confident.
It was a bad suggestion though and a damn difficult one to prove or disprove.
“Maybe,” Dean lied. He paused by Bobby’s house, put both hands on the wall, and tried to think like Sam.
Kill the demon, avenge Jessica… Read lore, research nerd shit…
“I’ve got nothin’.” Dean closed his eyes and let his head hang down. It was two nights. Dean was supposed to be able to leave for two freaking nights.
Anything could have happened, that was the problem. When everything they did was so damn tangled up in the supernatural world, there were infinite possibilities for where Sam could be.
God.
He could be hurt. He could have been nabbed by a monster. He could have been taken by Aza—
“Sirius Black.”
Dean lifted his head to look over his shoulder. Harry was sitting on the hood of the Impala, his legs curled up to his chest - dirty ass sneakers on the fresh paint job - and his walkie-talkie mirror against his legs. Dean would have bitched about the shoes, but he just didn’t have it in him.
Sam could be dead and Dean wouldn’t know it.
Dean was about to drop his head, try and think of some contacts he could call to get eyes out for Sam, but Harry’s conversation distracted him.
“It was… odd,” Harry said in reply to whatever Sirius must have asked that Dean couldn’t hear from where he was. What Dean did hear was Harry’s next question, one that was actually kind of genius.
“Is there any potion or spell or something to track someone?” Harry asked.
That… fuck. Dean didn’t even consider that. While he was picturing Sam dead in a vamp nest or blown to pieces by Azazel, Harry was actually trying to find ways to find Sam.
Dean knew that kid took after Sam.
Dean took four long strides to get over beside his car to hear Sirius’s answer for himself. Dean didn’t care if it was witchcraft, hoodoo, voodoo, or if Mary Poppins herself showed up to track Sam. If it could be done, he wanted it done.
“You mean scrying?” Sirius asked, squinting at Harry with the most hungover looking expression. It was hard to put that guys face next to the photos Dean saw of him when he was younger. He was still a decent looking dude, but he used to be hot.
And probably less crazy, but Dean was skeptical about that. Most of the wizards he met seemed half-insane, especially the jackasses that knocked him out over the skull shit.
As if that had been more important than the humans being used as play toys.
“Sure, scrying,” Dean said impatiently. “How’s it work? Can Harry just cast some spell?”
“No, Harry can’t,” Harry breathed, staring hard down at the mirror. “I’m —,”
“You could!” Sirius grinned in the mirror and Dean thought he could smell the booze he must be sweating through the glass.
“You’d just have to summon the supplies and cast a spell while you burn the potion,” Sirius went on. “It’s not hard, it’s just not common because it needs some blood of the person you’re tracking.”
“Perfect.” Dean felt like he could breathe again. Sam wasn’t there, but they had a plan. “What supplies do we need?”
“We need a wizard who won’t get expelled for using magic,” Harry said. When Dean looked from the mirror to Harry, he saw the kid had his jaw clenched tight.
“Sirius just said you could do it?” Dean said, staying calm. Was there some wizard rule book that Harry knew and the convict didn’t?
“Sirius doesn’t…” Harry sighed and Dean didn’t understand the tension between them at all. Sirius didn’t seem like he did either, but there was something the kid was trying to say without saying.
“Just… what do we need and what’s the incantation?” Harry asked Sirius in a toneless voice.
Dean scribbled down the shit Sirius listed - frog femur, mugwort, Sam’s blood, parchment - and then carefully wrote down the incantation. It sounded like Latin, but Dean had heard enough spells by then to guess they were mostly all Latin-based.
Even the dirty ones, which was kind of hilarious. It made Dean think that a thousand years ago some dude in a toga wanted to make it easier to fuck his buddy and he just said different shit in Latin until something worked.
“Dean, I can’t cast that spell,” Harry said as soon as he disconnected his mirror. Dean didn’t understand, but he did get that Harry looked like he wished he could, so…
“Why can’t you?” Dean asked him again. “What’s the issue?”
“The issue is that I’m underage,” Harry said, blinking kind of quick. “Sirius doesn’t, er… he doesn’t always remember how old I am. But I think if we can drive back to Dallas then we could probably pay someone else to do it?”
Fuck.
That was kind of sad, actually. Harry talked to that dude pretty much every day, and he didn’t even know how old Harry was? Dean was relieved Harry didn’t look like he wanted to talk about the Sirius thing though, because even if Dean was the person to talk to about disappointing family members, he was preoccupied with his damn missing brother.
The last thing Dean wanted was to wait another ten hours to try and find Sam. It was their best shot though and if Harry couldn’t do it, he couldn’t do it.
“Yeah, alright,” Dean agreed, scrubbing his face quickly with both hands. They wouldn’t get to Dallas until late, but it was the closest place where they were guaranteed to find a witch or wizard. “Let me go check the basement for blood, you go hit your head and grab some grub, we’re not stopping on the way.”
“Okay, I - wait! Why would the basement have Sam’s blood in it?!” Harry had started to slide off the hood, leaving a freaking dirt streak from his shoes, and he tripped as he processed what Dean said.
“Because Bobby’s a freak,” Dean said breezily, sure that Bobby would have some blood on hand. The dude had dad’s blood to run against Harry’s for a DNA test, Dean would bet there was something of Sam’s down there too.
Bobby would have been one hell of a Boy Scout - always prepared.
Dean did find a vial of Sam’s blood, only identifiable by the birth date written on the side. There was a vial of Dean’s blood too - and how Bobby managed to get that was a real question. There was also a packet of paperwork tucked neatly in the box Dean found. It was a bunch of mumbo-jumbo letters and Dean pocketed them with a half-smile.
“Here ya go.” Dean slapped the papers in Harry’s hand once they were both in the Impala, headed for the interstate. “Bobby got your DNA test back, you’re a Winchester.”
Dean didn’t doubt it, but it was right there in black and white for Harry to see. It didn’t say Harry was half a Winchester, or whatever bullshit that reporter tried to make it sound like Dean said, but a Winchester.
“Oh.” Harry flipped through the papers and Dean watched him out of the corner of his eye. Harry was hard to read, too prone to a straight face, but Dean thought he was getting better at reading him.
If Dean had to guess, he’d say Harry looked surprised by the paperwork, but in a good way. Like strippers jumping out of a cake on his birthday, kind of surprised.
“And Bobby went ahead and made you some papers,” Dean explained when Harry reached the back of the packet. Dean smirked when Harry must have seen how Bobby chose to make the foreign runaway legal. Harry’s head snapped up and Dean tossed him a wink.
‘Harry Singer’ was the child of Dean Singer and Debbie Harry. It worked just fine for Dean, he’d just need to swap his actual drivers license for the one Bobby made him last year after the shapeshifter incident any time it was needed. At a minimum, Dean could get Harry signed up for school with the fakes with no problem.
“I always wanted a son,” Dean said, sighing dramatically. He let go of the shifter to reach out for Harry, mess his hair up like he used to do to Sam all the time. Harry tried to duck, Dean was quicker.
“Why do I need this?” Harry asked, shaking the paperwork when Dean finished making his messy hair even messier. “I’ve got a birth certificate?”
“Because it’s easier to say you’re my kid than explain that you ran away to move in with your brothers,” Dean said, hoping that was enough to satisfy Harry’s question.
It was going to be a real long drive if not. Sure enough, Sammy fucking Junior wanted to push the issue…
“But what do I need it for?” Harry asked, frowning at Dean just like their other brother would when he had too many questions Dean didn’t want to answer.
“Why do we have to leave all the time?”
“If Dad’s hunting the demon, why are we chasing werewolves?”
“If we died, do you think Dad would even care?”
“For - fucking- ” Dean was too worried about one brother to check himself as much as he should have with the other. “For school, Harry,” he sighed. “You need paperwork to sign up for high school with.”
Three…
Two…
Harry was easy to read then: he had disapproval in every inch of his face and the way he put the papers on his lap so he could cross his arms.
“I have a school,” he said coolly.
“Dude, can we not?” Dean asked, trying to avoid a blowup fight. It would be Stanford all over again, Dean just knew it.
Except Sam had been running from monsters and Harry wanted to run right toward them. It wasn’t that everyone who had powers were assholes, but it was clearly a hell of a lot of them.
Unlike how Sam would have handled it, Harry snapped his mouth shut so hard that it made Dean’s jaw ache in sympathy. It also made Dean give him a glare from the corner of his eye…
It was a damn Dean-like thing to do, just scowl silently instead of arguing about wanting to argue about it for hours. Dean wasn’t obedient like that because it had been fun, it was obedience that was hammered in his head.
It wasn’t obedience that Dean wanted to hammer in Harry’s head.
“Let’s find Sam, then we’ll talk,” Dean compromised.
“Fine.”
Dean rolled his eyes at the freaking teenager-reply and then kicked on the radio, letting the heavy rock and worries about Sam carry them to Dallas.
They were two hours from Dallas when Dean’s phone rang and Sam’s number appeared on the screen.
“Fuck.” Dean fumbled the phone in his haste to answer and Harry caught it. Harry flipped it open, pressed the button to put it on speaker, then held it so Dean could drive and bitch.
“Sammy?” Dean asked, worry carving a hole in his chest. It was healed up immediately when Sam answered, then it was patched by anger.
Super freaking hot anger that had Dean gripping the steering until his knuckles were white.
“Hey, I - my phone hasn’t had service,” Sam said. He had to know it was a lame excuse. Dean could hear that Sam was tired, just from the way his tongue got lazy and his s’s were slurred, but - fuck - Dean was pissed.
It was two nights. Sam was a grown man. Dean should be able to leave for two nights without Sam going AWOL on everyone.
“Yeah?” Dean’s voice had a dangerous edge to it. “Where you been?”
“I’m headed to Bobby’s now,” Sam hedged, full of shit. He might be headed to Bobby’s, Dean didn’t know, but he clearly wasn’t trying to answer any questions.
Dean grit his teeth together while he spun the car around hard enough to send Harry flying in his door. Harry’s shoulder smacked the window and he gave Dean a filthy look.
“My bad,” Dean said. He glanced at the phone still open in Harry’s hand and made sure he sighed damn well loud enough for Sam to hear. “How far out are you, Sam?”
“Eight hours,” Sam said, proving he could answer questions.
Dean and Harry were about ten out, they would make it back at six if Dean didn’t stop for the night. A quick glance at Harry, who had perfected his own blank-bitch face, reminded Dean that he didn’t actually want to be in a motel with no distractions for the conversation they were going to have to have.
“Great, see you then,” Dean said. He snatched the phone and closed it before he turned the radio back up too loudly to have any conversation.
If Dean was going to have to jump both his brothers’s asses, he’d do it at once. It meant Dean could lay down some laws - no magic school halfway across the world that was packed with monsters and shit; no lying about picking up cases and going missing - and they could pout about it at the same time.
At least if Dean did it at Bobby’s then he’d have Bobby to back him up.
And, if Sam was feeling guilty at all for what he put Dean through, there might even be pie.
*****
Dean drove through the night, staying awake with shitty gas station coffees. Harry tried to get a coffee when Dean pulled through a drive-thru and Dean snorted before ordering him a coke.
The kid was already rocking ‘quiet and pissed’, no need to make it ‘caffeinated and pissed’.
It was another weight off Dean’s shoulders when Harry passed out in the passenger seat. Nobody could argue about magic school if they were asleep.
If Dad were there he’d tell the kid that under no circumstances would he be going around the world for school. Even if it wasn’t magic school, Dad would tell him that nobody could protect him if they were separated by an ocean.
Dad wouldn’t use those words —
“IF YOU WALK OUT THAT DOOR, DON’T EVER COME BACK!”
— but Dean would know that the message was in there somewhere.
Dad was gone though, and he’d probably have put a silver bullet in Harry’s head before he fought to keep him with his family. Everything that was John Winchester’s responsibility - Sam, Harry, Azazel - once again fell on Dean’s shoulders to deal with.
Dean clenched his jaw, clenched the steering wheel.
Damn if his shoulders weren’t getting tired.
The very first thing Dean noticed when the sun was rising and the Impala was pulling in Bobby’s lot was the Mustang that Bobby fixed up for Sam. It was a beauty, for a Ford. Bobby lamed it up when he rewired the classic setup to something modern and techy in a way that made Dean roll his eyes.
It was good of Bobby to think of what Sam would want, but Dean silently assured his classic car that he would never ruin her natural beauty in such a way.
The second thing Dean noticed, after Harry stirred and pointed it out, was a house.
House was a strong word to use, but Dean slowly climbed out of the car to stare at the trailer on the back of Bobby’s property, beside the barn, that definitely hadn’t been there when he left.
“Am I seeing shit?” Dean muttered, rubbing his eyes.
Nope.
It was still there.
Dean sent one more glance toward the Mustang, reminding himself that Sam was there and he was a bitch, but safe, before making his way across the lot to the trailer. It was grey-paneled with blue shutters and freshly dropped off judging from the lack of anchors or steps to get to the front door.
With Harry ghosting Dean’s footsteps, Dean grabbed the doorway and planned on just hefting himself up to check out the inside. Dean had one foot off the ground when someone yelled at him.
“I wouldn’t!”
Dean dropped to the ground and looked over his shoulder to see Sam heading their way. Harry perked up immediately, because of course he did, and Sam had an easy grin on his face. That curl of his shoulders didn’t get past Dean though; something happened that had Sam headed for one of his moody-emo spirals.
“Sam!” Harry bounced over to Sam, Dean stayed where he was.
“Hey, how was the game?” Sam asked Harry, his eyes flickering toward Dean.
“Brilliant,” Harry said, giving Sam the full force of his grin. “How was - er… going missing?”
“Not brilliant,” Sam said drily. He blew some of his messy mop of hair off his face and then approached Dean like a kicked dog looking for scratches. “Hey.”
“Hey,” Dean repeated, mocking Sam’s forced tone of nonchalance. There was guilt on Sam’s face, weariness, and some sort of fear that Dean didn’t get, but no cuts or bruises.
So all those fucked up ideas of Sam being kidnapped (giant napped?) again or attacked or dead were finally put to ease. Sam was fine, he was just a dick.
“What’s up with 8 Mile here?” Dean asked, jerking his thumb at the trailer. Dean and Sam needed to talk, but Dean could wait until he slept, ate, and showered.
Not necessarily in that order.
“Bobby brought it here,” Sam said. When he smiled, there was a spark of humor in his eyes, just enough for Dean to start to smile automatically, sure it was a funny story if it had Sam amused.
“No shit?” Dean said sarcastically. “I thought it just showed up.”
“Dean…” Sam had his hands in his pockets and he rocked back and forth on his feet, that dumb look still on his face. “It’s three bedrooms.”
“Okay…” Dean didn’t get the joke yet. Harry must have because Dean saw him snap his head to look at the trailer, his chin hanging wide.
“Dude.” Sam let out a huffy laugh. “It’s yours.”
“What’s mine…?”
It took a second for it to click what Sam was saying and then Dean spun around on the spot to stare at the trailer with his chin just as far open as Harry’s.
Dean’s? That trailer - that home - was for Dean?
“Bobby got me a freaking house?” Dean asked, half-sure that it was a joke, a dream.
Sam wouldn’t make a joke like that though and Dean didn’t dream about getting houses. Which meant that 80’x20’ place had to be for Dean.
Dean and Sam and Harry - why else would Bobby get three bedrooms?
Sam was talking, explaining how it was a stolen trailer from a recent victim of a ghost attack (like the fact it was stolen didn’t make it that much better), but Dean couldn’t hear him. It was just background noise, a low buzz to Dean’s thoughts.
“It needs cleaned!” Sam warned him when Dean once again grabbed the doorway, needing to see the inside. Dean didn’t care if it was dirty, he had to see it.
Dean had lived more places than any other guy his age, but Dean had never, not freaking once, had a home.
“JESUS CHRIST!” As quickly as Dean opened the door to check out the inside, he swung it back closed and dropped back to the ground to get ten feet between himself and that trailer.
Sam laughed while Dean waved his hand in front of his face, trying to get rid of the smell of dead body that wanted to cling to him.
Dead body smell was a pain in the ass to get out of leather.
“I told you so,” Sam said.
Dean mimicked him in a girlie voice then added a middle finger and order for Samantha to shut up. Dean was grinning when he said it though. All the weight on Dean’s shoulders lifted for just a few precious minutes and he hauled ass toward Bobby’s house.
That old man was getting his ass kicked.
Bobby met Dean at the front door of his place and Dean just attacked.
“Stupid,” Dean said, a nearly hysterical laugh of an insult. Dean’s arms had Bobby pinned in a tight - and totally manly - hug that Bobby wasn’t exactly struggling to break.
“I’m sick of hearin’ ya bitch about real estate,” Bobby said gruffly. “Ain’t no reason to go buyin’ some overpriced piece of shit in California if ya got a place here. You hear me, boy?”
Yeah, Dean heard him.
Dean had to let go of Bobby and clear his throat before the stinging in his eyes turned into a mess that nobody wanted to deal with. Dean gave Bobby his brightest smile, the one he usually reserved for chicks who looked like Pamela Anderson. Bobby didn’t smile back, cause Bobby didn’t smile, but his beard twitched and it was the same message.
Dean was good at hunting monsters, picking up dates, and finding the messages that nobody said aloud.
“You stole it from some sad sack?” Dean asked, remaining totally casual and cool. His hands were in his jacket pockets, he was planning how to get the smell out of the house; everything was cool.
“Eh.” Bobby leaned against the rail of his porch and his eyes tracked Sam and Harry while they walked up to join the party. “I had a buddy call me, he said the dead guy didn’t have any friends or family. Free place to get you boys out of my damn house, I couldn’t pass it up.”
Yeah, Dean was so sure that was how it played out. How long had Bobby been planning on turning his property in to a trailer park for another hunter to let him know when they found a three-bedroom trailer that nobody would miss?
Dean had already been mushy with his hug so he wasn’t going to call Bobby out on his bullshit. Bobby had other insane gifts to hand out anyway.
“Me and you are gonna have a real long talk,” Bobby called past Dean. Not to Sam, but to the kid. Harry reeled backward and pinched his eyebrows together.
“It was Dean,” the little shit said. No hesitation. No smile. Just straight-faced threw Dean under whatever bus Bobby was driving.
Sam Junior.
“Is that right?” Bobby adjusted his hat enough for the three Winchesters to see he had a bushy eyebrow raised at Harry. “So Dean was the one who made friends with a damn demon?”
“What?!” Dean and Sam both took a step closer to their brother, both of them making hateful faces.
It wouldn’t be the first time that one of them got tricked by a demon, but Dean couldn’t figure out when Harry could have found time to hang out with any demons… Dean looked at Harry, but the kid seemed as confused as he was.
“I ain’t blamin’ you, not like your idiot brothers,” Bobby went on, nodding toward Harry. “But you gotta start testin’ people ya meet. Toss some holy water on ‘em, say Christo.”
Dean had a sudden thought that he knew where Bobby was going. It was bullshit, Dean was sure of it, but he thought he at least knew what the bullshit was leading up to.
“None of my friends are demons?” Harry said carefully, his voice hinting toward defensive.
“No?” Bobby snorted then spit on the ground. “So you didn’t go talkin’ to some girl with pink hair, sharin’ headphones and soulful looks?”
Son of a bitch.
Dean stood in Bobby’s front yard and looked at that man with nothing short of hero worship in his eyes. Bobby Singer wasn’t just a good man, a good hunter, and one of Dean’s favorite people in the world… Bobby was a freaking hero.
A liar, a damned liar, but a hero.
“Michaela was possessed?” Sam asked, his bullshit radar not nearly as sharp as Dean’s. “You’re sure?”
“Oh yeah,” Bobby said. “If you two hadn’t been all wrapped up in your own bullshit, you’d have noticed.”
Ding, Dean mouthed the word at the ground where nobody could see his lips moving, bullshit.
“Is Michaela alright?” Harry asked, his defensiveness traded for something that would get someone killed every time - hope.
“She was fine once I got the demon outta her,” Bobby said. “That thing was ready to chat though, talkin’ about trailin’ ya, tryin’ to screw with your brothers by killin’ ya in that crash…”
Bobby was a good man, Dean had always known it. When Dean watched Harry’s eyes go wide, green become blurred by unshed tears, Bobby seemed to become giant sized in Dean’s eyes.
“The demon admitted to crashing the plane?” Sam asked, voice choked with hope, hand clenched on Harry’s shoulder.
“It was braggin’,” Bobby emphasized. “Nasty thing, I had to scrub my skin damn near raw it was so gross.”
Harry whooped and Dean bit his lip hard to not comment on his clear relief. It was good, because no matter what had happened, Harry didn’t need to carry that shit on his conscience. Sam laughed too, not noticing anything was off about Bobby’s spiel.
Dean and Sam missed a demon possession? Not a chance, not anymore.
The demon had still been riding the girl around? Months after trying to off a kid that nobody knew about? Please.
But Dean, who wasn’t even supposed to know that Harry had been blaming himself, didn’t say a word. Dean only watched Bobby, wondered what made him so damn different than John Winchester, than Dean Winchester.
Bobby didn’t look at Dean because he knew that Dean knew.
Sam got a car, Dean a house.
Harry got 107 deaths off his skinny shoulders.
That night - after Dean had pissed Harry off by saying he’d go to Hogwarts over Dean’s dead body - after Sam told Dean about a demon disease that killed a hundred people and he had been immune to - Dean was inside the trailer.
There was blood and guts staining the master bedroom, the one that had a private bathroom. Dean was on his hands and knees, scrubbing the carpet with bleach, forcing himself to think of nothing but the task at hand.
Dean didn’t think of Harry, glaring at him with Sam’s defiance, saying that Dean couldn’t keep him from going back to school.
Dean didn’t think about Sam’s conversation he had with Azazel, the one where old Yellow Eyes told Sam what Dad’s last words to Dean were.
Dean didn’t think of himself confirming it and Sam leaving in his car, saying he needed space; space from Dean.
Dean didn’t think about Harry climbing in the passenger seat, leaving with Sam.
All Dean thought about was cleaning the carpet, airing out the trailer.
Bobby stole the thing fully loaded, so the master bedroom had a bed and dresser, clothes in the closet even. One of the other bedrooms that was connected to the third had a bed and dresser, but the third room was full of junk that Dean would need to clear out. The kitchen was toxic, the bathrooms not in any better shape.
It would take Dean a few days to clean the place out, maybe another day or two to find some furniture for that third bedroom. Maybe by the time Dean got it all finished then Sam and Harry —
Nope.
Dean had a long day and the last thing he wanted to do was keep thinking of the shit his brothers flung at him when Dean said what needed said.
“So - what? You’re going to kill me if I go dark side?!”
“Don’t be stupid, Sam. I’m not going to kill you.”
“Why the hell not? You’ve always done what Dad told you to do!”
“You can’t go to some school that doesn’t understand a damn thing about safety.”
“Hogwarts is safe! My friends are there, Dean! You can’t just bloody hold me hostage!”
“My bad, I forgot that I went looking for you in the first place.”
“You know what? Screw you.”
At least Harry was picking up on proper American slang.
Dean had the carpet as clean as it was going to get for the time being. There wasn’t water hooked up yet, so Dean just dumped the bucket he used out the window. Just after sinking down on the couch in the living room, the door popped open.
“Housewarming present,” Bobby grunted after climbing in. Dean would make some stairs the next day, use up Bobby’s scrap wood pile for it. It wasn’t a rush though, especially not when Bobby hefted in a case of cold beer and handed one to Dean.
“Thanks,” Dean said, raising the can before popping it open and taking a long and refreshing drink. Bobby settled down on the other end of the couch - and man that thing had to go too, Dean was getting poked in the ass by more than one broken spring - and they didn’t say anything for a long while.
Dean chugged the first beer, sipped the second. His eyes stayed on the cracked TV, another piece of junk that needed tossed.
“They just needed to cool off,” Bobby eventually said. Dean grunted. “They’ll be back.”
They would, Dean knew that.
“You actually make it to Nevada?” Dean finally asked, his need to know was too much to ignore.
“No need.” Bobby drained the can he’d been nursing and tossed it to the trash can that Dean had been using for towels too strained to ever be used again.
“I made a few calls, finally found one of us who knew about real witches and wizards. I asked ‘im to go poke around, see what he could find out.”
“And?” Dean asked when the silence grew. Dean looked at Bobby and saw he was about as unsettled as Bobby got.
“And,” Bobby cracked open his third can, a reminder to Dean to finish his off and have another, he’d need it, he was sure. “Your brother took that plane down. I guess a little bit of magic can make electronics go haywire, they don’t mix ‘em.”
Dean sniffed, looked down at the can in his hand, ignored the sick feeling in his stomach. It was the trailer, all the smell of dead body and some dude’s sad and sorry life being rifled through by Dean. “Makes sense.”
“Dean.”
Dean took a few seconds to settle his expression, close down on anything that wanted to show on his face. When he was sure that he just looked mildly bored, Dean looked at Bobby.
Bobby’s dark eyes were shining, bright even in the night that was filling the trailer. There wasn’t a smile twitching beneath his beard, Bobby meant business.
“I don’t think that a kid needs to know about any of that,” Bobby said. “We keep ‘im off planes, he ain’t hurtin’ anyone.”
Dean nodded in agreement and they went quiet again, just two men sharing beer and secrets in the house of a dead man.
Dean’s house. Dean’s house to clean and fill and, screw it, even decorate. Dean could do whatever he wanted with the place. With Sam and Harry off getting all the space they needed from Dean, Dean didn’t even need to factor any ideas they might have had for the place they were meant to share.
“They’re comin’ back, Dean,” Bobby said later.
“Yeah.” Dean stared at the wall, pretending he could see the potential in the dark. “I know.”