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The phone rings shrilly in the middle of dinner.
“‘Lo?” he growls into the phone, still trying to swallow down his beef stroganoff.
“Bobby, hey.” The deep voice is oddly serious, a higher pitch than he expected. Despite the obvious relief, there’s a shyness, a reticence there.
His stomach twists, the stroganoff congealing in the pit of his belly. He hates this moment. The gap where he’s never sure who he’s talking to. He knows it’s Dean Winchester’s voice, sure, but the kid never quite had his reality screwed on straight. Not since the fire.
He can still remember the first time he met the solemn kid with wide green eyes and thinking damn, the boy’s gonna be a heartbreaker someday with his backside permanently filled with buckshot as his Daddy pressed a huge-ass orange prescription bottle filled with horse-pills into his hand, muttering something about dissociative identity disorder, bedtime being eight-ish, and the pills to be parceled out twice a day — breakfast and dinner — and always taken with food, and ditched them both without a backwards glance, his black muscle car roaring into the horizon after some Shapeshifter out near Boise.
He hazards a guess, “Sam.”
“Better hair.” The voice quips tiredly.
Bobby swallows. “Dean?”
There’s a pause and he can hear Dean emptying his sinuses. He’s grateful they’re on the phone and the kid’s germs are far away from him.
But when the boy hacks wetly and doesn’t stop for nearly a full minute, he feels slightly guilty. God and Heaven and the Internet knows Dean has next to no one anymore. Not since his Daddy died in the car crash. “Y’don’t sound so good, kid.”
There’s some substantial throat-clearing and a hawking sound.
Then: “What can you tell me about shtrigas?”
Bobby sits at the table, takes a long swig of his beer, and tells him everything he knows.
The next time the phone rings, a few days later, it’s late at night.
“Bobby?”
This time, there’s no question who’s speaking. No mistaking the gruffness.
“Cold’s soundin’ better,” he allows in way of greeting.
There’s nothing on the other end except dead air. And as the long, silent seconds tick by, Bobby feels cold apprehension slip into his gut. “Dean? You there?”
There’s a soft exhale and Dean’s voice crackles over the line, sounding vulnerable, almost scared, “I got somethin’ really crazy to ask you. Like full-on, Twelve Monkeys crazy.”
Bobby closes his eyes. He knows exactly what’s coming.
“Shoot.”
There’s another pause. Then: “Is Sam real?”
“Where are you, kid? You alone?”
Dean audibly gulps. “Cas is around,” he rasps uncertainly.
“Christ on a goddamn sled. I always wondered if you'd…”
“If I'd what?” Dean’s voice is suddenly sharp, defensive.
Bobby releases a slow breath, trying to rein in his temper. It should be John explaining this. In person. But… “Dean. Son,” he says gently. “Sam died when he was a baby. We lost him in the fire.”
There’s no answer, no sound.
“Ya know I love ya like a son,” Bobby tells him, mumbling so low into the phone he isn’t sure if the kid’d heard.
There’s a shift in the breathing on the end of the line.
“Dean? Where are you?”
“Thanks, Bobby,” Dean tells him roughly, before hanging up.
Bobby waits thirty minutes and calls him back.
Dean answers on the fifth ring and his voice is wrecked, like he’s been crying. “Yeah?”
“You okay, son?”
There’s a shaky exhale, bordering on a shiver. “C-can I get back to you on that?” Dean lets out a harsh, humorless bark of a laugh.
“Yeah. How’d the hunt go?”
“Had a spot of trouble but she’s wasted.” There’s a pause. A hard sniff, followed by a sigh. “Sam was never real, was he?”
Bobby can almost see the boy curled up on the backseat of his beloved Impala, legs drawn up, back against the door. “Why don’t you come down here. Stay for a few days?”
There’s silence. Then: “Yeah. Yeah, I’d like that. Thanks, Bobby.”
When Dean pulls up sometime in the early afternoon, Bobby can tell the kid feels like crap, if his pale, washed-out appearance is any indication.
Dean doesn’t really talk. Or eat. Or do much of anything but sleep in the guest bedroom Bobby’d designated as his way back in ’83 or ’84 when John first dumped him on his doorstep. Not for the first thirty-six hours anyways.
Then, when Dean awakes, he stumbles into the study, where he collapses on the couch, cheeks fever-scarlet, coughing productively into the crook of his elbow. With a low moan, he pulls up the afghan Karen’d knitted — or is it crocheted? — to his throat, fingers working in and out of the holes, worrying at the yarn. He’s quiet, subdued. More the mute, too-serious kid Bobby'd first met all those years ago than the loud, brash persona he’s acquired over the years. Bobby pretends not to notice.
After a while, he leaves the room and when he returns, he places a steaming mug of Campbell’s Chicken-and-Stars on the pile of books besides Dean and returns to the desk, resuming his reading about runes.
He pretends to be utterly engrossed in his book when Dean sits up, dragging the blanket around his shoulders and drinks down the soup. The kid still looks terrible, but nowhere near the death-warmed-over he’d looked that first day.
“What can you tell me about Sam?” Dean croaks at last, setting down the mug. “I mean…”
Bobby shuts his book and looks up. “He’s buried in Lawrence, if that’s what you’re asking. Right besides your mama.”
Dean nods, mouth pinched tight.
“How’re you feeling?”
“Okay… I’ve been better.” Dean sighs. “Do you know anything about… you know...” he reaches up, taps his temple with two fingers.
Bobby exhales, reaches into his desk drawer and pulls out a bottle of Jim Beam. “You’ll need this,” he says, taking a swig before handing it over to Dean.
Dean rolls the newly-prescribed, newly-filled large orange bottle between his fingers, rubbing at the label with his thumb, catching his lower lip with his teeth, studying the parched, frozen ground. It’s a semi-illegal refill on his old prescription.
Bobby watches his worried expression, waiting for him to say something.
Finally Dean looks up and Bobby suspects there’s more than a low-grade fever glittering in his eyes. “It’s gonna be just like Stanford, isn’t it?”
“You sure you don’t want to stay on for a couple more days?” Bobby offers. “It’s no trouble at all.”
“No. Thanks, though. I appreciate it,” Dean sighs, buries the plastic vial into one of the large pockets of his black nylon jacket. “I gotta get going.” He sniffles, smears the cuff of his coat under his nose. “There’s another hunt out by Nebraska.” He tries for a smile as he slides into the driver’s seat but it doesn’t quite stick.
“Take care. Call me sometime, willya?”
Dean frowns, brow furrowing as he nods. “Will do.”
“Good. Ya better. Else I’ll hunt down your ass.”
The next time Bobby hears word, nearly a week and a half later, Dean’s in Lawrence.