Archive of Our Own ^beta

Dean's back woke him up after all.

They was still deep in the dark of the night the first time it happened. Sam's arm, slung across his ribs, probably had something to do with it, but Dean squirmed around enough to get Sam to move down to his waist instead, and it was easy enough to go back to sleep after that. The second time, though, the sun was high enough in the sky to fill the room with light, even through
Bobby's boarded-up window. His back ached, throbbing in time with his heartbeat, and his muscles protested the stretch when he tried to roll the stiffness out of his shoulders. Dean had lived with worse, but he still hissed through his teeth when he pushed himself upright.

Sam had left the painkillers on the windowsill, next to a lidless bottle of stale water and the glass still painted with the shape of someone's mouth. Dean eyed the Percocet longingly but wound up taking three ibuprofens instead.

He checked his watch after stepping into his pants. It was barely after noon, and he hadn't gotten anything close to eight hours of sleep. He was waking up fast, though, so he bent slowly to pick up their empties from the night before. He collected the other plates and cups from around the room and carried them downstairs, trying to be quiet enough that he wouldn't disturb Sam or Bobby on his way.

It wasn't until he picked up the whiskey glass to rinse it in the sink, like he'd done with all the other dishes, that he realized he'd brought it downstairs at all. He stared at it for a moment, where it lay cradled in the fingers of his left hand, then dropped the sponge he'd been using and shut off the water.

In the daylight, he could see smudge fingerprints on the glass and the thin amber line of dried liquor at the very bottom of the cup. The lipstick itself was closer to brown than to red, almost clay-colored, and Dean didn't know who had worn it. For all he knew, they'd shared; he and Sam had used the same toothbrush before, the same deodorant, the same socks and underwear, and it stood to reason that other hunters shared stuff as well. He touched the rim of the glass, where someone, Jo or Ellen or maybe both of them, had put her mouth, and then placed the glass on the counter, in the sunlight, while he finished his work.

He headed back upstairs to gather their laundry next. He could hear Sam in the shower, probably fighting with the water heater to get anything warm upstairs right after Dean had been doing dishes, and Dean cleaned up while he had the chance to work without distractions. He stripped the sheets first and balled them up, then shoved them into a pillowcase and squashed a few shirts, plucked from the floor, on top of that. All the other clothes he could find got loaded into the other pillowcase — at least the pillowcases were still clean, christ — and Dean headed back down before Sam turned off the shower.

Bobby kept his washer and dryer in what used to be the garage, out behind the house. It wasn't heated out there, or even very well insulated, and Dean dropped the laundry by the house's back door for a moment as he shrugged into his coat.

He found a damp load of Bobby's clothes still in the washer. Dean moved them to the dryer before dumping his own stuff on top of the machines and sorting it into a few piles. He didn't think Bobby would be coming out to dig through their laundry, but he didn't want to take any chances, either. He left their clothes and put the sheets into the washer first. He poured in more detergent than was probably necessary and watched the water fill before turning to go back inside.

The wind was blowing harder than it had been on his way out and Dean shoved his hands into his coat pockets as he crossed Bobby's side yard. He'd been wearing this coat for long enough that, most of the time, it felt like his with no strings attached — not something he was borrowing, not Dad's that he'd inherited, but his own coat. Here at Bobby's, though, hauling laundry around and hoping no one could tell what he'd been up to the night before, wearing Dad's coat to dart through the cold tossed him ten, fifteen years into the past. He was still cold when he stepped inside, but he had to fight the old habit of hanging the coat on a peg by the door, right where Dad always wanted it.

Bobby was off the couch when Dean passed the living room, and his chair was gone as well, but Dean didn't see him anywhere on his way to the kitchen. He found Sam there, though, standing at the counter with his hands braced on either side of the lip-stained cup as he stared down at it.

Dean watched him for a moment, then came to stand beside Sam. He thought about wrapping his arms around his waist or something but wound up putting his hands on the counter, bracketing one of Sam's without touching him. He planted his feet, let Sam tip against him, and took Sam's weight before he reached over and picked up the glass as well. He turned the sink back on without looking at his brother and held the cup underneath the flow.

His still-chilled hands ached in the cold water, but he cleaned the glass with his fingers anyway. He rubbed the dust and old whiskey and makeup away one careful swipe at a time. The water splashed onto the sleeves of his coat, but the Harvelles, this entire family, were all dead because Dean, and his family, couldn't stop fucking up, and he didn't move out of the spray.