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There’s this bowl in his kitchen.
It’s a cheap little thing — cost him barely a buck and some change — he’d found tossed in the back of a thrift store in Ohio. And it’s ugly, too. Got this ridiculous, colourful, loopy pattern on it almost as if someone gave a pre-schooler free reign of a paintbrush and left them to it. A chip in the rim, like the last owner had chucked it at the wall when the fruit punch inside wasn’t quite to his taste.
It’s — Well. You get the idea.
Dean didn’t make a habit of browsing thrift stores for kitchenware, and he made even less of a habit of buying that shit from them.
But. Well.
There was the bunker, then. New, and solid. Some place to go back to.
There was a room. A bed to call his own.
A kitchen.
So, sue him for looking.
The hunts took them all over, and sometimes, amidst all that adrenaline and the blood and the damn footwork, there were these long stretches where all you’d have to do was put your feet up and wait. For the coroner to get on with it. For the families to realize that the two dudes in cheap monkey suits would believe their outlandish stories. Sometimes, for the monsters to drop the next bodies. (Those really were the worst ones).
Dean had a routine most of the time. Hit up the local diners, the bars. Flirt with a waiter or two. Pick up a copy of some hinky sounding science fiction novel from the dollar bin at whatever run-down grocery store sat on Main Street.
But, then. The Bunker.
Right.
So. The thrift stores.
He’d begun picking up a tchotchke or two. He’d found a hand-painted wooden model of a car, once. A Ford, nice and smooth and yellow. Soft, blue sheets he’d washed thrice before he put them on the mattress in one of the spare bedrooms. Plates and mugs and odd little spoons with engraved handles that always amused him when he’d seen them on TV.
And, then. There was that bowl.
Stupid looking and too oddly proportioned for anything a respectable household might need a bowl for.
Dean wouldn’t know, gun to his head, why he’d thought it would be perfect. It just — It seemed so right.
He’d been holding a worn copy of an old-as-balls edition of Cat’s Cradle that was chock full of notes in the margins and doodles like the ones he made in his own copies. He remembers that, for some reason. That book. The cheeky cashier who’d sneered at Dean’s purchases — a book in shitty condition plopped at the bottom of a bowl that looked shittier. The way he’d felt a little like his entire body was just itching when he’d forked over the cash, wrapped that bowl in newspaper and thrown it in the pile of old jackets and torn jeans in his trunk he never quite got around to throwing out. (He still hasn’t.)
And well, it’s here now.
All this while later.
In his kitchen.
A kitchen that’s wood and tile, not cold, grey concrete. Yellow wallpaper smudged with handprints. Green and Blue and Purple and Orange.
It’s not what Dean was expecting when Cas said he’d wanted to brighten up the space a little, Dean.
Well. It is what it is.
There’s some meaning to the madness of Cas’ little home ec project, he’s sure, but he doesn’t think he’s ever gonna actually get it. It looks a little like shit, all things considered. But, damn, if it doesn’t make him happy. Like his chest is filled with fireworks that keep going off.
Because —
Well.
It looks like home. Feels like it.
So, there’s the bowl, in his kitchen that’s home in a way nothing’s ever been.
It’s a cheap little thing. Ugly as shit, too. A chip on the rim like someone’s taken a shot at breaking it in half…because who’d want it, really?
It fits, though.
In here.
In the kitchen with ugly, hand-painted walls.
They set it on the counter, next to the nicer clay bowl that Cas fills with fruit from his garden. And one of Jack’s ceramic plates that turned out a little wonky and holds Dean’s keys.
Dean fills it with packets of sugar and salt and ketchup that make their way into his pockets, even now. A few sets of plastic cutlery that accidentally come along when they get takeout. Fancy napkins he’d gotten into the habit of hoarding, because you didn’t get to have hand towels when you were on the road, and toddler brothers were messy little shits who got chocolate all over your clothes when you were trying to be nice.
It’s a mess of paper on most days, really.
And sometimes Jack sneaks a handful of ketchup packets out and empties them in his mouth, just like that, because he’s a goddamn menace.
Dean thinks it’s funny. (He does the same with the sugar and salt, sometimes. Old habits and all that. It’s not like he can actually say anything to the kid. What? He’s not a complete hypocrite.)
But Cas doesn’t.
“You’re going to have a stomach ache,” he’ll say, and more often than not, it’s true.
They do it anyway, because they’re stubborn assholes who eat weird shit. (Dean’s proud of his kid, what’s there to say.)
“God, the two of you! You’re going to be the death of me!” Cas will say, when he sees them racing to choke down packets of hot sauce.
They’ll stop, then, but he won’t realize that he’s gone and punched them in the gut until he notes the way Dean’s face crumples. He’ll apologize — of course, he will, even though there’s nothing he needs to be sorry for — petty fight forgotten. Dean tells him it’s fine.
Reassures him with a touch.
A kiss.
But — Alright.
(That one hurts, still.)
Alright.
(Dean hopes not. Dean hopes never again.)
Alright.
The bowl.
It serves no real purpose in their little house, to be honest. Dean can’t bring himself to throw it out, though. He couldn’t tell you why, gun to his head.
So, it sits there. The bowl that was tossed in the back of a thrift store in Ohio. In his wood and tile kitchen, accumulating packaged condiments.
He thinks it’s ugly as shit.
But, Well.
Damn if it doesn’t feel a little like home, too.