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The cat meowed at Dean on his way downstairs. He would have kicked something at it if there'd been anything on the floor — obviously no actual person had lived here; everything but the bathroom looked shiningly, unnaturally, clean — but instead, he just scowled at it and left the front door open behind himself.
He hadn't checked his pockets before he came outside, but apparently she'd been pretty sure of her next meal, and hadn't taken anything from him besides the knife. His keys were right where he thought they'd be, back right pocket, and he unlocked the trunk. They hadn't been spending much time kicking back with a six-pack these days, but the cooler was still there, and when Dean opened it, he found three beers sloshing around in a few inches of water. He fished one out and slammed the trunk closed, then turned around and leaned on the car, facing the house.
Opening the bottle hurt his hand, although not as much as splitting his knuckles open on Sam's cheekbones had. Dean threw the cap towards the house, where it clinked in the driveway, before he took a sip. The beer wasn't strong enough to use as a painkiller — all three bottles together wouldn't be enough for that — but that was okay. It was as much of an icepack as he was going to get unless he went back inside, and he didn't hurt nearly enough to do that.
His hand did hurt, though, and his shoulders were sore from having been tied up, and his head throbbed dully, the way it always did when he was thrown hard enough to black out. He could probably look forward to a shitty few days physically, all as the minor things he didn't even notice right now made themselves known. Dean took another swig and tried to remember to take some Advil the next time he got into the trunk.
He wanted something stronger, and he wished he hadn't left his flask in a box at Lisa's. He'd thought he was being optimistic by not bringing it, but it turned out he'd just been stupid. Dean knew how the men in his family turned out, both sides of his family, and it'd been really fucking stupid to think he could wrap up any of that life and leave it in a box, leave it behind.
He wondered if Lisa would let him come get the last of his things, but decided she'd probably just think it was a plot to get to see her again. Dean didn't know himself if it would be a ploy or not, even while he was wondering what he'd need to replace and what he could do without. He wanted another chance so badly, even just to explain himself, and that'd influence anything else he'd try to do.
He drank another pull of beer and glared at the house, where nothing had moved since he and the cat cleared out. Sam could have slunk out some other door, but Dean had laid him out pretty well, and he didn't think he'd be moving around yet.
Fucking Sam. Dean was right back to wanting to kill him in his sleep, or just wanting to kill him in general. This time the year before, Dean'd been — well, a fucking wreck, but he'd at least been getting over Sam, and he'd had Ben and Lisa on top of it.
Now, he didn't have any of the three of them, other than this off-label version of Sam that lied to him and tried to get him killed. Sam who lied to him, and Cas who didn't bother to tell him what was going on, and even when Dean was cursed, the only person who'd told him the truth was a bitch who'd been planning to eat him. That was who Dean had left, thanks to Sam: the things he was trying to kill. Dean sucked hard at the bottle, almost draining it. Maybe he'd go to a bar and leave Sam to choke on his own blood; better a hangover than the mess he'd wake up to otherwise.
Or maybe a liquor store, to buy cheaper shit than he'd be served someplace. Something that'd burn going down, and as it sat in his belly, and when it came up again.
He still couldn't believe he'd been a big enough idiot to go to Lisa's place, even hopped up on vamp blood. He figured it didn't much count as their place when he could count on his hands the number of nights he'd slept there, and when he'd been kicked out. It wasn't like he could tell Lisa he'd only laid his hands on Ben to keep from eating him; that would hardly get him back in her good books. And the very worst part was, they couldn't get out of it, just by getting rid of him. Anything, anyone, that wanted to hurt Dean only had to track down the two of them. He'd have to keep tabs on them forever, for as long as he or Bobby were around to do it. He tossed the bottle towards the house and listened to it shatter, then opened the trunk and got another.
He was finishing the third, and running pretty low on patience, when he saw Sam through the windows, coming out. He was moving carefully, and as he walked through the lit entryway, Dean saw he'd wiped up his face at some point. He sort of wanted to hit him again, but he could ignore it now. Sam might hit back this time, too, and if Dean wanted to sleep in a motel instead of the car that night, which he very much did, at least one of them needed to be presentable enough to check in.
He got in the driver's seat before Sam reached him. Sam climbed into shotgun without speaking, or even looking at the left half of the car, and Dean drove right away.