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“Someone’s been in my room!” Dean was yelling, and angry, and since he practically hadn’t come out of his room since Michael had disappeared, that didn’t leave a lot of opportunities for foul play. Sam tried to head him off at the pass.
“Dean, no one’s been in your room. What’s the problem, what’s happened?”
“He’s gone, is what’s happened, someone’s taken him!”
Sam blinked, regarded Dean warily. His brother was looking a little wild around the eyes; Sam decided to humour him for the moment, but whatever it was he’d lost, he couldn’t have him blaming one of the other hunters.
“Dean, there’s no way anyone here would take something from your room. There has to be another explanation,” he said patiently.
Dean was having none of it. “There are way too many people around here, Sam. You don’t know them all that well, you can’t vouch for them! One of them could be a thief, or, or a kleptomaniac… I’ll bet it was while we were off chasing down Hatchet Man. Son of a -”
“Okay, okay,” Sam put out his hand in a placatory gesture. “Let’s look at this logically, see if we can work out what happened instead of jumping to conclusions. And if it does turn out to be a thief, I’ll deal with it, all right?”
Dean eyed him with faint hostility for a moment, then grimaced. “Fine. Since you won’t believe me ‘til you’ve exhausted your Sherlock Holmes fantasies, let’s just go. And he isn’t under the bed, I already looked there!”
Sam followed Dean back to his room and stood with his back to the door, looking around. It never ceased to amaze him how tidy Dean kept his room here at the bunker. In all the years Sam had known him, Dean had been a revolting slob; it had occurred to him, more than once, that maybe Dean didn’t do it deliberately, that he kept spilling over into their shared space as some kind of subconscious territorial challenge. Or maybe it was on purpose, just to annoy Sam.
Either way, it was hard to see how anything could just get lost in here; Dean’s possessions were sparse and the room was neat as a pin. First things first; what, exactly, were they looking for? The repeated use of the pronoun was worrying. Had Dean got himself some kind of pet? Sam didn’t relish searching the entire bunker for an escaped hamster or the like.
Dean was standing there, puffed up belligerently, staring at Sam with a challenging look in his eye.
“Right,” said Sam. “Let’s start from the beginning. What’s gone missing, Dean? What am I even helping to look for, here?”
Dean’s eyes slid away and he turned slightly and looked at the bed. “It’s Mr. Stabby,” he muttered.
Great. Name like that, what were they dealing with here, please let it not be a scorpion! Sam thought to himself.
“Mr… Stabby?” he repeated. “And… what is Mr. Stabby, Dean?” There was an outside chance Dean had named one of his favourite knives. He anthropomorphised the hell out of his car, after all.
Dean stared at Sam again, looking outraged. “You know, Mr. Stabby! Dude, I’ve had him for like, forever! Since we were kids! And, in all that time, all the thousands of motels and backwoods cabins, running from the law and monsters crashing into our room, I have never, not once, mislaid him.”
“Yeah, okay, I believe you, that’s great Dean; but I’m sorry, I still don’t know who… what Mr. Stabby is.” He was relieved it wasn’t a pet, at least. The knife theory was starting to seem promising; and really, if a hunter were to take anything from in here, a weapon made more sense than the rest of his brother’s belongings.
Dean was looking away again, clearly uncomfortable in the face of Sam’s utter incomprehension.
“’S’a stuffie,” he mumbled.
“Sorry, what was that?” Sam asked, not sure he’d heard him correctly.
“A stuffed toy,” Dean said loudly, glaring again, but not quite meeting Sam’s eyes. “You know; my old cowboy horse? I used to let you play with him sometimes. He – it has sentimental value, okay? It was the only one of my old toys to survive the fire, I’d left it in the car, and… he helped me get to sleep at night… after. Got me through a few bad times, did Mr. Stabby. Hey, you had your very own Zanna, don’t give me a hard time! I was just a kid too, once!”
Sam had been staring at his brother, weighing the opportunity for some serious piss taking and possibly blackmail against the distinct chance Dean was actually a little unhinged and could get nasty if provoked. There was an underlying air of desperation about him and he hadn’t been dealing well since the whole Michael fiasco. Sam decided prudence and brotherly sympathy were the better option.
“Okay, stuffed horse, got it,” he said slowly. “So… why’d you call him Mr. Stabby? Seems an odd name for a horse.”
Dean hunched his shoulders defensively. “I turned him into a unicorn,” he said just a little more aggressively than was warranted.
Sam blinked. Concentrated very hard on forcing down the laughter that really wouldn’t help right now. “A… unicorn?” he asked, carefully.
“Yeah.” Dean seemed to realise a little more explanation was required, if he didn’t want Sam to think he was (had always been) completely crazy. “Look, I stuck the blade off a pocket knife in his head, okay? I kept him under my pillow, and if anything came in after us, I was gonna shiv them in the face.”
So since he was a little kid, throughout the entire time Sam had known his brother in fact, Dean had slept with a toy under his pillow that had a knife in it to fight off intruders. That… actually did sound pretty like him, after all. And an accident waiting to happen, Sam was amazed it never had.
“Right,” he said, unable to think of anything else to say. “Well… Dean, no offence, but I really don’t think a thief would be interested in an old stuffed toy, so… You definitely checked under the bed, behind the night stand – all the drawers?”
Dean nodded. “I told you, I looked everywhere -”
“I know,” Sam cut him off, “but you were panicking, mind jumping to theft; you could have overlooked it. Let’s check again. C’mon, we’ll strip the bed, lift the mattress.”
They swung into action and Sam helped diligently, but Dean was right, there was no sign of the errant toy. Sam frowned.
“Dean,” he said slowly, “when was the last time you did laundry?” The bed linen had smelled pretty fresh, and he’d spent a whole week in here watching movies and munching on snacks before Sam had managed to drag him out on their last case.
Dean stared at him, hope gradually dawning in his eyes. “Yesterday?”
Sam stared back for a beat or two, counting to ten and squashing the urge to throttle his brother.
“Then let’s go check the laundry room, okay?”
“I’m sure I’d have noticed if he was left in the machine,” Dean grumbled, as they entered the utility room.
The washer was huge, an old fashioned top loading model gone out of production long since before they were born, but it worked, just like everything else in the bunker, so they hadn’t seen any reason to replace it.
“Besides, he couldn’t have gone into the wash. The blade would’ve torn the sheets up, I’d have noticed that!”
Sam automatically looked over to the wooden drying racks that telescoped down from the ceiling, another vintage feature of their home from days gone by. There were two sheets, carefully folded over the rack with not a mark on them; and a pillow case. Wait – one pillow case? Sam’s pillow had two, an inner to protect the pillow as well as the outer cover.
He went over to the washing machine and peered inside. Looked like Dean hadn’t taken care to empty the full load. Sam stuck a long arm into the drum and fished out the crumple of white linen from the bottom. He turned to face Dean and shook out the pillow case with theatrical flair. Something fell from it to land with a tiny metallic ‘clunk’ on the floor at his feet.
“Mr. Stabby!” Dean cried with delight, and swooped to retrieve the small, soggy brown bundle. “Aww, his horn’s gone all rusty! Never mind, soon have that polished up; could do with sharpening, too.” He turned to walk away, the toy cradled protectively against his chest in both hands, fussing over it like a doting parent.
“You’re welcome,” Sam said, shaking his head with a wry smile. “And, Dean?”
“Yeah?” Dean paused, but didn’t quite turn around, throwing the word over his shoulder.
“Next time you lose something, try tracing back over your recent actions before rushing to lay the blame on our friends, would you?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Dean waved a hand absently. “Hunters, not thieves, got it. But any of them come snooping around my room, they’ll have me and Mr. Stabby to deal with.”
Sam gave up. Some things, you just couldn’t change.
