Title: Like A Father

Summary: The moment Bobby Singer laid eyes on the boy, he fell in love. The kid was so quiet, so sad, so scared. Bobby felt the need to save him, to protect him from the life of a hunter. Sure, he messed up sometimes, but he more than made up for it in the end, when Dean finally became like a son to him.

Rating: T for some language and situations

A/N: This story is basically made up of one-shots that all tie together, therefore some chapters are shorter than others. Please bear with me. I was gonna start posting tomorrow, but I figured that since it was Father's Day, I'd go ahead and begin today.

Disclaimer: Supernatural belongs to Eric Kripke and the WB. The CW might be trying to screw it up, but the network will fail… at life and at ruining the show. That said, none of these characters are mine, I just like to hang out in Kripke's sandbox, building pretty castles and writing out the longest disclaimers ever :P

Like A Father

Bobby Singer had killed his wife. There had been something inside of her, something that twisted her once-beautiful features until they were hideously deformed. His first thought had been that one of the salvage yard dogs had gotten rabies, maybe bitten her.

He stabbed her. She got back up. It wasn't rabies. He didn't know what it was, but he knew that it wasn't rabies. So he just kept on stabbing.

And stabbing.

And stabbing.

He didn't stop until the black smoke burst forth from her mouth, laughing at him, taunting him, proving that it hadn't been her. It hadn't been her when he had stabbed it, and the thing that he held in his arms in the aftermath wasn't her, ether. Couldn't be. She was all bloody and… dead.

He'd gone searching after that, had missed her funeral, all the stares. He'd said that she went crazy, but he could tell by the looks he got in town that they knew. Everyone knew. He left because he couldn't take it and he needed to find out why. He needed to know about that cloud of smoke.

Bobby got into the world of hunting after his wife's death, after he saw the report in the paper that said an autopsy had shown her to be pregnant. Almost three months along. He had killed his wife and his unborn son.

It had been a demon, but that didn't make Bobby feel any better. He'd still killed his only family, the only woman that had ever loved him, the boy he could have had.

He delved into demonology. He made himself as knowledgeable as possible, hoping to help other people like himself, other families. He traveled, and hunted, but kept his home base up in South Dakota.

After a few years, people started coming to him for help. They needed information, rituals, a place to stay and rest. Bobby was happy to oblige, happy to know that he could help.

Everyone that stopped by was single. There were a few pairs, sure, a husband and wife that had lost their baby, a couple of sets of siblings, but mostly there were loners. All those years after his wife's death- murder- and he had never seen a functional family, a group of more than two.

One day, there was a knock at his door. Bobby trudged away from the research he was doing for a new hunter, a little girl named Abbey, on demonic deals to answer it. He pulled open the door and was met by an unusual sight: a haggard looking man with a baby in his arms.

"Can I help you?"

"You Bobby Singer?" the man asked, his voice rough, eyes tired, body poised at the ready.

"Who wants to know?"

"Name's Winchester. A nice little lady in Nebraska told me you might be able to lend a hand."

Bobby's eyes traveled over the baby, looking so small wrapped up in a tattered, scorched white blanket. "I'm not a baby-sitter."

Winchester sighed. "I'm not asking you to watch the kids. I need help with a different problem. A fairly sulfuric one."

The older man cocked an eyebrow, looking across his yard to see if he could spot the other children mentioned. "Ellen sent ya, then?"

The man nodded. "Yeah. Said you're an expert or something."

"Or something." He turned back to Winchester. "You got a family?"

He sighed again, shoulders slumping. "Yeah. Name's John, by the way. My, uh, my wife died about two months ago. House fire." He leaned forward, his voice dropping to a whisper. "She was stuck to the ceiling." He leaned back. "I took my kids and left. I couldn't stand the way people were looking at me, like they thought I was crazy."

Bobby nodded. He could relate. At least the man- John- had been able to keep his baby. "What's the little tyke's name?"

John smiled, a hollow expression. He looked down at the baby in his arms. "Sammy. And this," he said, stepping aside slightly to reveal the small boy, no older than four, that had been hidden behind his legs. "Is Dean. Say hi to the nice man, Dean."

The boy wrapped tiny fingers around his father's pantleg, staring up at Bobby with large eyes that reminded him so much of his wife's that his heart actually began to ache. The boy pulled his hand away long enough to wave, then immediately went back to clutching at his father's leg.

"He hasn't been much of a talker since, you know," John added. "So, think you can help?"

Bobby wanted to answer, but he found himself incapable of taking his eyes from the small boy, still half-hidden. He seemed so tiny, so helpless, so scared. Maybe the more experienced hunter hadn't been able to save his own wife and son, maybe he hadn't even been able to save John's wife, but he was as sure as hell going to try to save the little blond boy. He was going to protect him. No matter what.

So there's chapter one. Reviews are always welcome :)