Please keep in mind that I cannot respond to anonymous/guest reviews, so if you have a question or want to argue with me, kindly sign in. -KHK

Weeknight at Bobby's
K Hanna Korossy

The fact that Bobby didn't get up and leave when Sam peered into the kitchen was…heartening.

He and Dean had worked fast and hard that evening to fix the broken window in Bobby's study that Balthazar had thrown them through, but the room was still a mess. Rain had soaked the carpet and dampened the nearest books, the wind had scattered papers throughout the room, and the wall still sported a tarp-covered hole. Obviously, Bobby had not been thrilled.

But an older offense weighed far more heavily on Sam's mind, and that was what made him timid as he crept into the kitchen.

Bobby raised an eyebrow at him over a glass of malt.

Sam offered a sheepish smile back.

Singer sighed deeply and waved a hand at the chair next to him, which Sam wasted no time occupying.

"That brother of yours finally asleep?" He proffered Sam a drink with the tilt of a bottle, but Sam shook his head and leaned back to snag a cold beer from the fridge.

"Not yet. Guess we're both kinda wound up from—"

"Bizzaroland, right." Bobby sounded dry, even for him. "Where you two happened to be famous movie stars."

"TV stars," Sam corrected. "And I don't think we were really, you know, Dr. Sexy-famous, just…"

"…lived in a mansion with a walletful of platinum credit cards?"

Yeah, it did sound kinda farfetched when put like that. Thank God they hadn't mentioned the alpaca. Sam shuffled forward in his seat, hands wrapped around his beer. "But the shows they were filming, they were pretty much what happened for real, you know? Everything—Dean's deal, Ruby, Lilith, Lucifer." He just managed not to cringe at that list.

Bobby was watching him a little less skeptically. "Like those books."

"Yeah. Yes." Sam nodded. "Like Chuck's books."

"Okaaay…"

"And, uh…" Sam looked down at the bottle of El Sol—Bobby always stocked Dean's favorite—and picked at the corner of the label with his thumbnail. "I watched a couple of episodes of this season—year. This last year. And there was this one called 'Appointment in Samarra.'"

Bobby's eyebrows peaked again. "Like the story about Death?"

Sam sat up. "Right, exactly." Deflated again. "But it was about Dean's deal with Death and why I…" He swallowed; he couldn't remember, and soulless-him hadn't bothered to explain much to Bobby.

"Tried to introduce me to Death, permanently?" Bobby finished, wry. "Well, this should be good."

Sam took a breath. Bobby wasn't making this any easier for him, but that was only fair. "It was for a spell. Balthazar—" Bobby frowned at the name but Sam kept going, not sure he could finish if he stopped now. "—told me—well, soulless-me—that the only way to keep my soul out was to scar my vessel so badly that it was uninhabitable. And the only way to do that was…" He risked a fleeting glance at Bobby, who appeared riveted. "…patricide," Sam finished quietly.

"Huh. Yeah, I guess that would do it."

Sam nodded mutely and stared at his beer.

There was a pause. "And since John's dead…"

"Balthazar said he didn't have to be blood."

"Oh." Bobby took a drink, took a breath. "So I was…"

"Well, yeah, of course." Sam managed a wan smile in the direction of the older man. "I guess even soulless, I knew that."

Another beat. Then Singer suddenly laughed.

Sam's eyes shot up to him, startled.

Bobby was shaking his head as he poured himself another drink. "Only you two would manage to make a compliment lethal." He proffered the bottle. "You sure you don't want something harder?"

Feeling a little dizzy and a lot befuddled, Sam dumbly nodded.

Bobby poured him a finger, and Sam pried one hand off the beer bottle to take the glass and tip it back. It made him cough and his eyes water, but he shook it off and returned Bobby's grin.

"So, I, uh, just wanted you to know I hadn't gone Jack Torrance or anything. And I really am sorry."

Bobby huffed and tossed his own drink back like it was lemonade. When he set it down again, he eyed Sam a moment. "You know that's water under the bridge, right?"

"Sure," Sam said, too quickly and, he knew, too uncertainly. The beer label was quickly becoming a little pile of paper curlicues.

"Sam." Bobby's grip on his forearm froze him. "You listen to me, son. Okay, so it was a little hard to look you in the face when you first got back—what can I say, memory's a bitch. But it didn't take long to see how different you are from him. Honestly, I've been kicking myself since that I didn't see it sooner, might've saved us all a world of grief, especially your brother. But that wasn't you, kid. Without our souls we're, what, just a sack of memories and instincts. That's not the important part." He leaned back but didn't let go. "I meant what I said once about never cutting you out. So let's just pretend that night and this whole gab session never happened and go back to the way things were, all right?" He finally released Sam's arm, but looked as reluctant as Sam felt to let him go.

"Yeah," he said softly. "Thanks. Thank you."

Bobby waved him off with mock irritation. "Why don't you go hit the hay before the liquor catches up to you and Dean comes looking."

Sam smiled a little, pure fondness and relief. "Okay. Thanks, Bobby." He stood, poised to leave, and paused. "Hey…do you have a neighbor named Marcy?"

Bobby flushed, which was…really weird. "I did," he said through clenched teeth. "Why, did—?"

"Yeah, never mind," Sam said in a rush. "G'night, Bobby."

He left the older man sputtering behind him as he hurried out.

Dean took one look at him as Sam strode into the room and quickly shut the door behind him, and grinned. "Bobby pull his shotgun on you?" he asked as he went back to perusing a magazine.

"No, but he looked like he was thinking about it," Sam said as he threw himself down supine on the other bed, mirroring his brother.

"You asked him about Marcy, didn't you?" Dean asked, shaking his head.

Sam snorted. "Like you didn't want to."

"Yeah, but I would've been smooth about it."

Sam made another sound of disbelief and shook his head.

"So, get this. Jensen Ackles has a hot wife, too."

Sam rolled up onto his elbow to face him. "He exists here?"

"Actor and everything," Dean said with a nod. "Has this awesome house in LA, but he's on a show in Vancouver called Smallville." He gave Sam a gleeful look. "Dude, he plays Superman!"

Sam rolled his eyes. "He's gotta look a lot better than you, then."

Dean held up the magazine next to his face, and Sam blinked to see a full-page picture of "Jensen," as the magazine labeled him in pink bubble letters. Worse, the guy did bear more than a passing resemblance to Dean.

"Okay, that's just disturbing," Sam muttered.

"You wanna hear about Jared Pada…whatever?"

"No," Sam said firmly. He rolled back flat, hands clasped loosely on his belly.

Magazine pages rustled. Dean made an impressed sound. Sam's eyes grew heavy with fatigue and alcohol and contentment.

"You ever miss her?"

He had to gather his languorous thoughts to register Dean's quiet question. "Who? Genevieve?"

"Ruby."

Oh. Sam gulped.

"I mean, I know she was a lying bitch and everything, but you two were, you know, for a long time there."

"No," Sam said hoarsely. "I wanted revenge and…comfort, I guess. And then it was about the blood. It was never about her."

"Okay." Dean accepted that far more easily than Sam would've expected. "Still, had to be hard—"

Sam groaned.

"Dude, that's not what I meant!" Dean threw up his arms. "Geez, Sam. I just thought, you know, seeing her again. It was weird, right?"

"Yes, Dean. It was weird," Sam said flatly.

"So, uh." Dean cleared his throat. "Did you—?" He gestured.

Sam sat up to properly glare at him. "She's a married woman!"

"Yeah, married to you," Dean shot back.

"No, married to Jared Padaleski. Maybe she didn't know I wasn't him, but I did."

"Okay, okay, take it easy. I'm not judging." He paused. "Padalecki."

"What?"

"It's Jared Padalecki."

Sam growled and threw himself back on the bed.

"He has a normal life."

It didn't take long to figure out whom Dean was talking about. "Dude, he's an actor in a mansion with a tanning bed and an alpaca."

"Okay, yeah, not our kind of normal, but still, you know. Normal. Wife, house, a job he doesn't have to lie about, parents."

Sam's throat tightened at the last.

"That doesn't tempt you even a little bit?"

He thought about it. Dean had asked the same question when they'd first returned to their world, and Sam's answer had been automatic then. But now he really considered it, turned it over in his head. Thought about a law career and a wife and kids and a white-and-blue house in a Kansas suburb. Thought about not having to be afraid of the world ending or his brother dying or losing control of his body. Thought about not being brothers or, worse, being brothers who talked occasionally on the phone, got together a few times a year, and discussed weighty issues such as the next election and the rise of mortgage rates.

"I'd like that, someday," Sam conceded. He turned his face toward his brother. "But not instead of what I've got now. Not even a little bit."

Once upon a time, Dean would've made a joke here, played off Sam's earnestness. Too much had happened since then, however, and Dean just nodded, expression soft.

Sam settled back on the bed, blinking lazily at the ceiling. "Dean?"

"Yeah."

"Hey, did you really play golf?"

Dean spluttered. "It's a sport."

Sam's mouth tweaked and pulled. "Uh-huh."

Dean launched into a defense of hitting a little ball over a bunch of green, and Sam tuned him out, thinking of other bits of the show he'd watched that night: Dean admitting to his soulless self that he felt like a dad to Ben. Working hard to keep both Lisa and Sam in his life.

Choosing Sam to be saved over Adam without hesitation when Death asked.

Sam dozed off to the sound of Dean's grumbling, and the feel of a blanket being tossed over him, and the absolute certainty that he'd made the right choice.

The End