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[Prompt: Bobby, early morning hours. Coffee, bullets and magic.]

The first trilling of bird song breaks into Bobby’s concentration and he raises bleary eyes from the faded pages of the book before him. His neck aches and vertebrae creak with the motion. How long since he last looked up? A weindigo ago, at least, he thinks, glancing over to the far corner of the desk and a discarded volume of Native American folklore.

A wendi-ago, he thinks then and has to quash a rising snort of laughter. Too much time spent around the kid.

Said kid snoozes peacefully, if noisily, on the beat up couch nearby. Dean Winchester - his, but not his. His all the same. Possession is nine tenths of the law, after all. All manner of discarded flotsam washed up on the junkyard’s shores over the years. Bobby takes it in, sorts it, and puts it all in its proper places; a caretaker to the lost. Although, none of his acquired treasures was quite so precious… aggravating, exhausting, exasperating… as the lanky figure snoring a morning aria to the tune of perky birds warbling just outside the window.

He shakes his head sharply and then stifles a yawn. Christ. He was a maudlin drunk and now, it seems, a sentimental old geezer when tired.

Coffee. He needs coffee or sleep and sleep is at least one potential poltergeist away, yet. He marks his place in the tome, pushes to his feet, and heads for the kitchen. Partway there, he stops to slide another book from Dean’s lax fingers and pull a tatty blanket up from the other end of the couch to cover him. Three hard, sharp sounds stop him in his tracks, reflexes and mental processing dulled after the all-nighter. He blinks down at the bullets, two rolling toward his boot and one disappearing under the couch. Two more brass jacketed shells wink at him from the couch cushions.

“Whzzat?” Dean mutters, shifting in his sleep, coming right to the edge of wakefulness.

It’s on the tip of his tongue to answer back that the kid needs to learn to put his damn toys away, but he resists the urge and after a moment of struggle, Dean succumbs to sleep once more. It’s a marvel, that. Part miracle, really, that the kid can just… sleep like that. Not just sleep, but trust that he’s safe enough to. Spells and wards and magic abounds, surrounding the house in a low level hum of spiritual energy that often keeps Bobby’s nerves on the jangling edge. Not Dean. He’s slept like a baby every night since he washed up on Bobby’s doorstep, bedraggled from the cold, South Dakota rain and whatever else he’d run into during those missing years. Alive. Alive and thin and ragged and alive. It had been all Bobby could do to choke out, “Get in here,” past the granite lump in his throat. Damn kid.

Damn kid who is now sporting another ten pounds or so and who could stand to put on a few more still. Damn kid who clanks and sings and get grease up to his elbows in the garage every other day. Damn kid who’s catching up on his Greek and Latin to help out with lore requests. Damn kid with his too young face and too old eyes and laser sharp knack for getting a laugh out of him when he least wants to laugh.

Bobby shakes his head, steps carefully around the bullets and finishes the trek to the kitchen. The smell of coffee will bring Dean out of dream land soon enough. He can pick up his toys then.