Our Sweet Rapture

16

It took him a little more than twenty minutes to get back to Singer's Salvage, and half an hour after the bond had closed, Dean finally parked the Impala in the middle of Bobby's driveway.

His insides felt hollow, wrung out and bleached of color, and the muscles in his back and shoulders were aching with a tension he knew wouldn't allow itself to be chased away with rest alone. He felt nauseous. Anger and hurt echoed through his entire body, and his brain was screaming with an anguish that pounded against the walls of his skull.

With a glower, he snatched the bag with Sammy's charger out of the passenger seat and got out of the car, reluctantly trudging his way back towards the house. He walked up the worn steps to the front porch with his eyes stubbornly glued to his boots, trying not to focus on the gaping empty space inside his head where there had once been only light.

He was actually doing a pretty good job at that when a movement in front of him caught his gaze. Looking up, shoulders squaring, he spotted Bobby sitting on a chair next to the front door, his arms patiently crossed over his chest as if he had been waiting for him this whole time. The slow, reprimanding shake of the hunter's head made Dean feel as if he had just been caught elbow deep in the world's most forbidden cookie jar.

"Dean..." the old man sighed, his voice both exasperated and pleading all at once. "What the hell have you done this time?"

Dean froze, a split second of hesitation between one step and the next, but then his face darkened and he started moving again.

"Stay out of this, Bobby," he growled darkly, but Bobby's scowl did not disappear.

"I had planned to," he huffed sarcastically, "but when your boyfriend decided to blow up my TV, I figured that some meddling might be justified."

Dean blinked, his hand freezing in midair on its way to the door.

"Yeah, you heard that right," Bobby grumbled, noticing his reaction as he straightened up in the rickety old chair he was sitting on. "Don't worry, I don't think it was intentional," he added, "but whatever you did must have made him pretty upset."

"I didn't do anything," Dean ground out sternly, and Bobby rolled his eyes.

"Of course you didn't," he said with a snort. "Now why don't you go ahead and tell me the one about Goldilocks, while you're at it?"

"Very funny," Dean growled.

"Yeah, absolutely hysterical," Bobby shot back, just as unamused. "I'm sure Cas would have laughed too if he hadn't been so busy taking out his hurt feelings on my furniture."

"Well, it was his own damn fault!" Dean snapped. "If he had just—!"

"Save it, boy," Bobby bit out, and Dean's mouth shut with an indignant snap. "It takes two to start a fight. Even though angel boy in there can be a proper ass, we both know you ain't exactly Gandhi's little poster-boy either."

Dean's jaw clenched, but Bobby looked like he couldn't have cared less about the young man's indignant glowering. Instead, he simply kept looking at the full-grown man in front of him like he was a disobedient twelve-year old.

"Now, I don't care how you do it," he declared firmly, "I don't care how long it takes , but you're gonna get a hold of yourself and sort this mess out before another angelic temper tantrum sends my house soaring into the sky in pieces."

"There's nothing to sort," Dean growled and Bobby's eyes narrowed threateningly.

"Don't you even try that with me," he warned. "Someone pissed your angel off and it sure as hell wasn't me or Sam."