Kamikazeremix Fic: "Exit Interview"

[kellifer]

Title: Exit Interview (The Bobby Singer Remix)
Pairing: Sam/Dean (implied)
Rating: PG13 (Adult themes)
Warnings: None
Spoilers: None
Title, Author and URL of the original story: Stop Thinking by extraonions.
Summary: It wasn't ever Dean hanging onto Sam.

"Not too sure," Bobby Singer says, taking a moment to remove his cap and rub over his head. He's an older man, old for a hunter anyway and he seems genuinely confused. "Frankly, I'm surprised I'm still on two feet."

Bobby Singer looks tired and a little heart sick.

"I guess..." He pauses for a moment, looking out his window. "I guess it doesn't matter. Hell, he could kill me from wherever he is now without lifting a hand."

He never liked how close those kids were forced to be, seemed wrong somehow. He knows siblings that fight like cats and other more ornery cats and these boys do, no doubt, but he sees the way they also orient around each other, like they're each other's sun and moon.

He watches John Winchester too, trying to see if the man can fathom how self-destructive it is to bind his boys like that. The feeling he gets though is that John Winchester wants it that way, those boys against the world, only trusting each other.

"Ain't right," Bobby tries to sway him. "What happens when they want to go their separate ways, get married, have kids of their own?"

John Winchester looks at Bobby like he's crazy and possibly a little dumb. "I got married," John says, indicating himself with a thumb. "Maybe would've been better if I never had."

Bobby gets it, he really does. He would've given anything to have the memory of being the one to end his own wife's life wiped clean from him. He never would've wanted to get rid of the memory of her though.

Never her.

"You can't make that decision for them," Bobby dismisses, watching Dean and little Sammy make their way through the wrecks that border his place. Dean always has a hand on Sammy somewhere, whether caught in the cuff of Sammy's jeans or wrapped in the extra material of Sammy's sleeve.

Like keeping an eye on his kid brother ain't enough, he's gotta be grounded by touch.

"They'll make that decision all by themselves," John says with something ugly in his tone. "Only way they'll be safe."

"Just thought that was it, that there would've been the hardest thing I ever had to do," Bobby Singer continues. He's a quiet man for the most part, talking in fits and starts like he's not really used to the habit. He talks about his wife sparingly and only if he feels it's necessary.

I understand.

Even I can appreciate that it must've been a hard thing to do.

He gets up now, retrieves a glass and pours a finger of whiskey into it. I watch his hands, waiting for him to make another, maybe slip some holy water into it, but he doesn't.

He's not feeling charitable and I guess I can appreciate that too.

"Where's mine?" I ask anyway, because I can't really help it.

"This is my house still," Bobby says. "It'll be a cold day in hell before I give you a thing."

Bobby can recognize soldiers in the making when he sees them.

He can also recognize trouble about a mile away and trouble's what's coming if the fanatical glint in the eyes of Dean is anything to go by and the equally rebellious light in Sam's.

John Winchester got obedience like he wanted, but only from one of his sons. The other is as stubborn as the day is long and not as invested as John wished he'd be, in the life or his brother.

First real indication that Sam has one foot out the door is the summer of Sam's fifteenth year when he turns up on Bobby's doorstep, backpack slung on his shoulder and a just dare you to call my dad grimace on his face.

"He know where you are?" Bobby asks, offering Sam what he figures is a long way from his first beer.

"Does it matter?" Sam huffs, taking the proffered drink but merely wringing the bottle in his hands. "He's just such a bastard."

"Boy, more time's than I can count I'd love to fill your Daddy's rear end with buckshot but no matter what he's done, I won't have you disrespectin' him to me," Bobby rebukes, but lightly. Sam's shoulders come up around his ears and he flushes red all the way down his neck. He takes a moment to uncap his beer with a ring on his third finger that Bobby is pretty sure is Dean's.

He's wondering if Dean knows it's missing.

"He just talks like this is it for us," Sam complains. "Like I got nothing else to look forward to."

"It's hard, I know, but he only wants what's best for you," Bobby says but he's not really sure if he believes it himself. No doubt in his mind that John loves his boys, but there is a question to where they stand in John's priorities.

The distant roar of a car has Sam tensing beside him and even Bobby would know the sound of that engine anywhere.

They both sit on the porch steps and wait, neither talking till the black shape appears in Bobby's turnaround, resolving into the Impala under the weak yellow outside light. Bobby's expecting John to emerge like a flannel-clad nightmare, but it's Dean who unfolds from the driver's side, looking harried and pale.

"What the ever-living fuck Sam?" Dean demands before he's even all the way out of the car.

Sam stands, still with his backpack on and everything in him tense.

"I can stay here the rest of the school year, actually finish without needing a million transcripts," Sam gets out in a rush, like it's a plan Bobby's agreed to.

Bobby didn't have any kids and he ain't planning on starting now but he's got a feeling any protest he might mount would be moot anyhow. Dean looks fit to pop he's so angry.

"Get in the car dickwad," Dean manages to get out through clenched teeth.

"But-"

"I said now!" Dean barks and miracle of miracles, Sam does, hops too like his buns are on fire. Dean turns, right before he gets back in the car himself to treat Bobby to a betrayed glance.

Bobby didn't see them for three years after that and he wasn't at all surprised to hear that Sam had run off to college when he finally did.

"People came here looking to gather intel," Bobby says, now sitting back at his kitchen table. The top's cracked and the mug he has in hand is chipped like he's just stopped caring about the small, broken things. "Or lay blame," he adds like an afterthought. "More'n one thought I might've change sides."

Bobby Singer pauses for a moment, still staring into his cup. "They just don't understand. Ain't no sides anymore. Just staying alive or gettin' dead."

They turn up on his doorstep like he holds all the answers when they run out of them. He knows they both see him as some kind of replacement father figure and he wishes he could live up to that ideal but there's something in the back of Bobby's mind that tells him that someday...

Bobby's got about a half a dozen spare rooms they can sleep in but they always choose to hunker in just the one. Bobby tries not to read anything into it, knowing that their codependency is born of John's legacy and Sam's grief but Bobby also thinks they could do with some space.

"You going back to school eventually kiddo?" Bobby asks Sam just the once.

Sam looks at him and Bobby has to blink because he's seen that exact same expression on John Winchester's face, like Bobby's crazy and just a little bit dumb. Sam snorts instead of answering, like he can't even dignify that with a response.

Dean appears then, never far away. He drops hands on his brother's shoulders and then messes fingers through Sam's hair. Sam ducks and complains but he's grinning despite it, something secret in his smile.

"You ready to hit the road?" Dean asks and Sam nods, cheeks puffed with cereal and spoon sticking out of the corner of his mouth. Dean yanks the spoon and whaps Sam in the forehead with it and then it's on, boys wrestling until Bobby's afraid for his furniture.

"Take it outside!" he bawls at them, standing and holding the back screen door open so they can barrel out.

Watching them duck, weave and kick in the dust of his back lot makes Bobby think of simpler times, two young boys climbing wrecks, Dean hanging onto Sam.

"So what is it you want anyway?" Bobby Singer finally asks.

Hunters start turning up on his doorstep with stories that make everything in Bobby ache. He's feeling every single one of his years these days, especially if half of what he hears is true.

Brothers, not Winchester, come to his home to get patched up. Maurice and Jeb Leung speak of a vampire nest in a small town called Patience and how right before they raided it, demons came in and killed them all.

"They let us walk," Jeb says, picking splinters out of Maurice's palms. "They looked disappointed about it but they let us walk."

"They were sent," Maurice adds. "Sent by Sam Winchester."

Bobby's heard the same, how Sam's set himself up some kind of empire, all shiny and normal to the casual observer but filled to the brim with demons practically prostrating themselves to do his bidding.

Do a hunter's work.

"What about Dean?" Bobby asks, can't help it. Dean's a mystery of late, dropped off the radar and Bobby doesn't like it.

He's starting to think with Sam so far off the reservation, Dean must be dead.

The brothers look at each other for a moment, apparently weighing options before Maurice finally speaks. "From what the demons were saying, he's hanging off Sam's arm these days like some kind of prom date."

"Get out of my house," Bobby grits and when they're gone he unearths a dusty whiskey bottle that he'd only ever used for medicinal purposes.

He sets on it with gusto.

"There's nothing I want exactly," I say with a smile. I like that a smile is actually a sign of aggression, something left over from the human's days swinging in the trees.

Bobby Singer surprises me, unlike most people these days when he asks, "You got a name?"

"Nothing you could say without your teeth bleeding," I reply sweetly.

"C'mon. I know your kind. You're always calling yourself something."

He has to see for himself, before the end.

He's sure it will be the end. He's got no allusions about loyalty anymore.

Bobby's not sure what he's expecting but it throws him a little when Sam looks like... Sam. He's spiffed up, sure. Has a spit-polish on his shiny shoes and a three piece suit but his hair's escaping the tidy slick-back it was forced into and his dimple's carve as deep as they always did.

Bobby can still see the kid in Sam, the one he looked after, worried over. His eyes skip to Dean, see the way Dean's obviously checked out rather than bare witness to what his little brother's doing, what he's become. Dean might as well be carved out of stone for all that's left of him.

He works out behind them, eerily quiet. Bobby's discomforted by it.

Dean Winchester should never be silent.

He wants to ask Sam exactly what he did. Maybe grab the kid by the shoulders and shake him until whatever darkness has seeped inside comes loose. He wants to do a lot of things but he isn't strong enough.

"Using these demons, it leaves me cold," Bobby says. He'd passed a demon in the lobby, some feral kid forced into a red doorman's suit that had sneered at him but let him by. There'd been two more by the elevators, a man and woman in matching charcoal suits. One had offered him a friendly good morning and Bobby had just about jumped out of his skin.

"You don't have to like it Bobby, it works," Sam tells him, dismissive. Bobby's having trouble keeping Sam's attention, his eyes wandering to Dean whenever Bobby isn't directly speaking to him.

"Still ain't right," Bobby tries. "What does your brother think about all this?"

"Dean appreciates the necessity," Sam says, but for the first time he sounds rattled, uncomfortable. He's a kid with his hand in the cookie jar.

Bobby's gaze wanders back to Dean just like Sam's. Dean's working through some drills, stuff Bobby's pretty sure John Winchester never taught them, maybe picked up from an old kung fu movie. Dean doesn't even acknowledge them when his name is said and Bobby's getting a cold, creeping sensation that Dean's no longer inside.

He's watching a body going through the motions, a flesh and blood marionette.

There's a proprietary glint in Sam's eyes whenever he's looking at his brother and it unsettles Bobby more than any ghost ever has.

"Tell Dean to call me," Bobby says, realizing that he hasn't really come here to talk sense into Sam. He's come to say his goodbyes.

"C'mon. I know your kind. You're always calling yourself something."

"Why do you want to know?" I ask, curious.

"Guess I just always wondered if Death had a name."

Bobby sees it now, clear as day and way too late.

"Guess I just always wondered if Death had a name."

Not really sure, even now, why I answer. Maybe I saw in this man why Sam couldn't raise a hand to him, why he wouldn't give the order even though he should've.

Why I came here on my own.

"Meg," I answer Bobby Singer. "My name's Meg."

It wasn't ever Dean hanging onto Sam.

Don't let go Dean or I'll fall.

He can picture it, those young boys climbing over wrecks, Sam holding out a piece of himself for Dean to grasp onto before he'd take a step. Offering a fistful of shirt or his leg cuff or a grubby hand.

Don't let go Dean.

It wasn't ever Dean hanging onto Sam.

I'll fall.

It was always Sam hanging onto Dean.