Title: Further on Up the Road
Rating: PG
Summary: Bobby is also the kind of man who knows the score. Things are how they are, and there doesn’t seem to be much that’s going to come along and change that.
Disclaimer: I do not own Supernatural. A girl can dream, but, alas, that would be all that it is.
Author's Note: Set a little before 'The Magnificent Seven'.



So maybe Bobby gets Dean more than he’d like to admit. Because he’s tired too. Tired of always being on the road, of never being able to sit down, relax, for more than a few days at a time. Maybe get gets being sick of the job, the life, of fighting a battle he knows good and damn well he’s just going to loose in the end anyway.

And maybe he gets needing someone in your life so much you’d do anything to keep them there. Maybe he gets being willing to make any sacrifice necessary to keep them safe and breathing.

But at least Sam’s sitting in the car next to Dean, sleeping in the next bed day in and day out. Bobby doesn’t know where Ellen is. Tracking down Jo, sure, but the girl has obviously learned to cover her tracks pretty damn well because Ellen’s been looking all over for her for a month, state to state, and found next to nothing.

She keeps on moving and Bobby keeps on worrying, because he only hears from her when she stops to call his cell from a payphone – which is once, maybe twice a week. Bobby isn’t usually the worrying kind. He wasn’t before those boys wandered back into his life, before he started to care about Ellen more than he thought was appropriate given how well he’d known, and how much he’d respected, Bill.

But, Bobby is also the kind of man who knows the score. Things are how they are, and there doesn’t seem to be much that’s going to come along and change that. He’s long since made peace with falling in love with Ellen, with her falling in love with him back, with the fact that Bill would want her to be happy.

And, he guesses, he’s starting to come around to being okay with what Dean did. Because as much as he might wanna smack him upside the head, shake him around until all the stupid falls out of him, Bobby gets it on a level higher than that. Or lower, depending on how you look at it. Because he’d sell his soul to save Ellen’s life. Like John did for Dean. Like Dean did for Sam.

And maybe that makes him stupid and selfish, and maybe he doesn’t care. Because that’s just the way things are, and there isn’t anything that’s going to come along and change it. These days there doesn’t seem to be much he can really be sure of, but he’s sure as hell sure of that.