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"Look alive, Dean-o, there's a mystery afoot!" Hank announced, barging into his brother's room. Dad still wouldn't let them have locks on their doors. For safety. At least a lock would save her from the daily interruptions while she tried to study.
"What is it this time?" said Dean, setting her book down beside her on the bed. The idea would once have excited her for an afternoon of crime-solving boy-adventuring, but now it just filled her with dread. Especially since Hank's attempts at "mysteries" these days were getting dumber and dumber. Last week it was "the mystery of the stain on the carpet". Maybe he felt nostalgic.
But this time seemed different. Hank was acting way too smug as he sauntered around his brother's room, picking up random trinkets and making a show of looking under them for "clues". All while unable to hide that confident, blockheaded grin.
"If I play along, will you get out of my room?"
"Ye of little faith. What d'ya take me for, some second-rate dick? No, dear brother o' mine, this here is a real mystery, and I've got the evidence to crack this case wide open. See for yourself!"
Hank tossed something. Dean winced as a dainty scrap of fabric struck her in the face and fell to her lap.
"Any idea how this sultry little number ended up mixed in with my laundry?"
She recognized it all too well. Panties. Her totally super secret panties. "Gah!!" She shrieked and shoved both the garment and her fist hastily into her jeans pocket. She truly thought they'd been eaten by the washing machine, whisked off to odd sock world. Never again to rear their wicked, satiny head. Which had caused its own fair bit of panicked hyperventilation, but nothing like this.
"I-I-I don't know what you're talking about! I've never seen them before in my life!"
"Pshh, yeah. That's why you're gripping them like they owe you money?"
She looked down to where her fist was still balled up tightly in her pocket. Embarrassed, she let go, feeling the lace uncrumple in her shaking hand. She hugged her knees to her chest.
"At first, I thought, how would ladies panties end up in my laundry? So naturally, I checked my watch. But no cigar." Hank paced as he monologued, "And that got me thinking. If I didn't get lucky - and it definitely wasn't Pop - then whose are they?"
"Hank," Dean warned weakly, finding it hard to form words.
"D'ya think Brock had one of his ladyfriends over? Maybe I'll ask him-"
"No! I mean just, no-" Last thing she needed was Hank showing them around. Her reaction might have been a little too enthusiastic, though. Hank smirked down at her. Busted. She buried her burning face in her knees and groaned.
"Silent treatment, eh? Luckily I know how to make em talk."
Dean barely had time to look up before Hank crashed onto the bed, grabbing and shaking her by the shoulders. She wrenched her eyes shut as she was jerked around, her face hot despite the feeling of ice water in her chest. Hank's interrogation method of choice seemed to be begging hysterically.
"C'mon, Dean! Who's the dame?" he pleaded. Oh, right. He had no idea. He was just after some exceedingly rare locker room talk. "Do I know her? Is she hot?"
"Gh… fine! She goes to my school, you don't know her, you will NEVER know her, and I had sex in her vagina. Would you please get out of my room?" she snapped, shoving him off.
When Hank didn't immediately respond, Dean squinted her eyes open. Hank's expression was totally different. Almost weepy. "…What?" she dared to ask.
"Oh, nothing. S'just… our little Dean is finally becoming a man!" He pinched her cheek too hard.
"Stoppp, we're the same age," she whined.
"Four minutes makes all the difference. In matters of love." Content with his little interrogation, Hank got up from the bed, dusting his hands after a successful day's detective work.
"That doesn't work any more," Dean replied, her voice soft as her brother made to leave. The color was starting to return to her face. "Hank?" she called after him, looking up through her bangs and tucking a stray hair behind her ear. It was getting long, now. "Please don't tell anyone."
"Oh yeah no yeah, absolutely. Pop'll just give you an earful about genital herpes. Trust me, would NOT recommend." He shuddered. "Your secret's safe with me. Even if you are being a total weirdo about it."
She managed a weak smile. "Thanks, Hank."
Her brother slipped out the door, but not without pantomiming zipping his lips and throwing away the key.
When his echoing footsteps faded down the hall, Dean finally let her posture relax and her knees bow outward.
Tenderly, she took the balled up underwear and laid them flat across her lap in front of her. Creases had formed in the delicate fabric after being shoved in a pocket. She ran her thumb across to smooth them, then further along to trace the lacey hems.
Despite herself, her heart raced just feeling the scratchy lace under her fingertips. Why did she even want to buy these, anyway? It was stupid. It was all stupid.
She remembered fishing them out of the clearance bin at the store. Frantically explaining to the cashier, who had neither asked nor cared, that she was buying them for a friend. They were barely even her size. But when she got home that day – god, when she got to wear them, alone or underneath her normal clothes – she felt lighter. Like something was actually right with her. For once. Even now, she felt the corners of her mouth ever so slightly creep upward. She sighed.
Beneath it all, there was always the hair trigger impulse to burn them, to stamp down these weird feelings and be done with it. But not today.
From now on, her underwear would be hand-wash only.