So Doggone Lonesome, for serawade

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Title: So Doggone Lonesome
Recipient: serawade
Characters: Dean, John
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 4,800
Warnings: None
Summary: Dean is recovering from a broken leg and, with Sam at Stanford and John off on a hunt, he's left at loose ends in a lonely motel room until he finds a companion who needs him as much as he needs her. (Dean with a dog!)

Notes: serawade, I couldn't resist this prompt, and I hope you like where I went with it. Thank you to my heroic un-named beta for the last-minute edit! The title is from Johnny Cash.

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When John walked into the motel room loaded down with bags of groceries, Dean sighed and scratched at the part of his leg that he could reach under the cast.

“I got a call from Jim.” John didn’t look up, just talked while he unloaded the groceries into the tiny kitchenette. “I have to head out, might be a week or so. You should stay here and give your leg a chance to heal up.”

“Right.” Dean watched as John chucked two gallons of milk into the mini fridge and piled up two neat stacks of Dinty Moore meals on top along with a bag of generic Wheaties, a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter, a bag of oranges, a pack of store brand Oreos and a can of coffee. If Sam were still around, he’d complain about the lack of vegetables and the preservatives in the shelf-stable meals. He’d complain about being roped into going along with John on the hunt, and even if Dad left him behind Sam would complain about John taking on a hunt when Dean was injured. Dean missed a lot of things, but he didn’t miss all that teenage bitching.

John went over to where their duffel bags were piled next to each other on the floor and crouched down, transferring things from one to the other and back again. “You’ve got your pain pills in here if you need them, and I’m leaving you a couple of fifties in case anything comes up.”

“I’ve got a card that’s still good for a while. It’s cool.”

John stood up and looked down at Dean where he lay sprawled on the sofa. It was worn out enough for Dean to feel the skeleton of the bed frame that was folded away beneath the cushions, but he was tired of laying around in bed. Dean looked back at his father, and he could read all the words that weren’t being spoken—that John was itching to move on after several days in the same place with nothing to work on, that the two of them hadn’t been managing to do much more than irritate the hell out of each other ever since Sam left, that John felt guilty about leaving but he didn’t know what else to do.

“You need me to stay, just say so.”

“Jesus, Dad, I’ve been taking care of myself for a long damn time. Just go.”

John’s face hardened, his jaw tense, and Dean waited for some kind of reprisal but it never came. “Call me or Jim if there’s a problem,” he said, voice flat.

“Yessir,” Dean muttered.

John turned away and picked up his bags then left. Dean heard the Impala growl to life in the parking lot, and when the engine sound faded away he grabbed his crutch and hauled himself up to his feet. It was a pain in the ass, moving around with the combination of one fucked up leg and a couple of cracked ribs. The goddamn poltergeist had got him good. Dean could’ve got by without anything more than some Advil, but he had a nice fresh bottle of Vicodin so he popped one and swallowed it down with a glass of milk then put a plastic package of chicken and dumplings in the mini microwave and watched it spin around until it was done.

He crutched over to the tiny table and sat down with his leg propped up on a chair. The food was vaguely awful, something like paste covered in a salty gravy, but Dean shrugged it off and shoveled it down. The pill was kicking in, dulling the pain in his ribs and his leg, so Dean hobbled over to the sofa and carefully laid back down. He turned on the TV, found an A-Team marathon, and stared at it until he drifted off to sleep.

In the morning, Dean hobbled to the front window and pulled the heavy curtains open. What he could see of the outside world--a cracked parking lot, a dumpster, and a collection of cars--was annoyingly bright. He thought that he ought to do something, go somewhere, maybe play the sympathy angle to pick up a girl, but just thinking about it seemed like too much work. Dean shut the curtains then eased himself down to sit on the sofa with his leg propped up, and he stared at the dirty ceiling as he realized that there really was nothing he needed to do.

He didn't have to take care of Sam or watch out for him or find a way to pay him back for some prank. He didn't have school or a paying job or research to do on a hunt. His father had left without him, so there was no backing him up on a hunt, no stitching up wounds, no taking his turn cleaning the weapons. The few weapons John had left were plenty clean, and Dean wasn't in the mood for busywork. All he had to do was take care of himself, and that wasn't any more of a task than breathing.

After eating some cereal for breakfast, Dean washed his dishes then found something to watch on TV. When the ache in his leg started annoying him, he took a pill and drifted off into a nap. Charting time was a pointless task when there was nothing he needed to do and nowhere he needed to be, so Dean just let himself float through the limited world of the motel room. Bed, couch, bathroom. TV. Food. Days went by, and Dean didn't bother worrying about whether it was day or night in the permanent gloom of the room.

He was in the middle of a dream about sharing a hot tub with several Real World cast members, when a knock at the door startled him awake. Dean sat up, and before he could orient himself enough to find his crutch there was a second, louder, round of knocking.

"Yeah, yeah, hold on!" Dean pushed himself up to stand and made his way almost to the door before whoever it was started knocking again. It wasn't until Dean was yanking open the door that he realized he didn't have a weapon on him, but the person outside was just an unpleasant-looking middle aged woman. "What?"

"You didn't check out but I ain't seen anybody in or out of here in days. You staying another week or what?"

"Jesus, lady, we paid for the week upfront."

"And the week is up. I can run another week on your card but you gotta come sign for it."

Dean blinked and tried to figure out how six days could have passed since John left. "Yeah, uh, I'm not getting around too well right now."

"It ain't far." She pointed to the motel office a few doors down.

"Fine. Give me a minute, huh?"

She nodded and left, and Dean closed the door behind her then hobbled over to the bathroom. What he saw in the mirror wasn't good--pale skin covered in stubble, bleary eyes, filthy t-shirt. Brushing his teeth, washing up a little in the sink and changing into reasonably clean clothes, followed by a slow trek to the motel office, took significantly longer than a minute, but the woman didn't seem bothered. She pushed the slip across the counter, Dean signed it, and then he was done.

Now that he had moved around enough to shake out some of the kinks, Dean realized that all of that rest must have given his ribs and his leg a chance to start healing. They were sore, but not nearly as bad as they'd been days before. He leaned against the stucco wall outside the motel office and took a deep breath that made his ribs twinge but also made him realize just how stuffy the inside of his room had gotten. He could smell car exhaust and rotting garbage from the dumpster, but it still qualified as fresh air.

Dean pushed off of the wall and decided to take the long way back to his room. He took a grand tour of the parking lot, and as he limped around by the dumpster he thought he saw some kid's ratty old stuffed animal dropped next to the metal bin. Then its eyes opened and it whined quietly--a dog, alive.

"What happened to you?"

The dog perked its head up at the attention and started to stand, but it didn't get far. It whined again and looked at Dean with imploring eyes in a dirty face. Dean sighed then maneuvered himself down to crouch with his bad leg extended to the side. Up close, he could see that the dog had on an old collar, no tags, and a rope had been tied around the collar's ring. The rope was hooked up on a sharp edge of metal, and after fiddling with it for a minute Dean got it loose. The rope was less than a foot long, with a frayed end that made Dean think that this dog had been tied up somewhere it didn't want to be. The trash clearly hadn't been picked up in at least a few days, and Dean didn't know how long the dog had been stuck there but it didn't look like wherever the dog had been before wasn't much better.

"You're a mess, buddy." Dean untied the rope then scratched the dog's head. The dog scrambled to its feet, and Dean almost toppled over onto his ass when the dog lunged and licked a stinking stripe down the middle of his face. "Ugh, seriously? That's what I get for helping you out?"

The dog sat and panted as Dean hoisted himself back up to his feet. "Okay, well, good luck." Dean started to limp back toward his room when he realized the dog was following him. At the door to his room, Dean looked down at the dog's hopeful face and felt like an asshole for turning him away. "Sorry, bud. No dogs allowed in the car. Go find somebody else."

The dog whined, and Dean couldn't help bending down to pet its head again. The way the dog looked, filthy and skinny, most people weren't going to want to even touch him. There really was no way he could take a dog on the road with him, but there wasn't any reason he couldn't give the dog something to eat, maybe a bath. He thought about what was waiting for him inside--more of the same food, same bed, same boring TV, same nobody having any use for him--and the decision was made.

The dog followed Dean inside then lay down on the floor and looked up at Dean, whining again. Dean hobbled to the kitchenette and found a bowl to fill with water. He grabbed one of the beef stew meals then turned and found that the dog was at his feet again. "You know what I'm up to, huh? Here's some water."

Dean put the bowl down, and the dog set to drinking immediately, splashing droplets around him until he'd had his fill. When he looked back up at Dean with those hopeful eyes, Dean peeled the film off the top of the beef stew and set it down on the floor. "Yeah, it looks like dog food. Better you than me." The dog ate quickly then pushed the tray around on the floor as he found every last trace of gravy. Dean thought about opening up a second package of food, but he really didn't want to end up with a dog horking all over the floor.

The dog looked up at Dean, and as Dean looked down at the dog he realized that it smelled--badly. It smelled worse than John Winchester after a long hunt in a swamp and worse than Sam when he was thirteen and refused to shower for a week. Sam's filthiness had been in protest of something Dean couldn't remember anymore, but the dog just looked miserable. Dean wasn't particularly clean himself given the difficulties of showering with a cast, but there was no way he could live with the dog's rotten stench for much longer.

Dean thought about putting the dog outside, thought that maybe freeing it and saving it from dying of hunger or thirst for a few days at least was his good deed for the month, but he couldn't do it. Keeping a dog long-term wasn't realistic, but if Dean had to be stuck in a piece of shit motel room he didn't see why he couldn't have some canine company.

"Okay," he said to the dog as he unbuckled the old collar and removed it. "Let's make this shit happen."

The dog just panted in response and watched as Dean limped over to the cabinet and pulled out a large trash bag. It followed Dean into the bathroom and didn't protest when Dean lifted it up and put it in the bathtub. Dean sat down on the edge of the tub and pulled the trash bag over his cast and secured it with duct tape before picking up his bar of soap.

"I hope you don't mind Dial." Dean put one hand on the dog's back to hold it still as he started the water running, and when the water was warm he guided the dog under the tap and moved it around until most of its coat was wet. He rubbed the bar of soap over the dirty fur then used his hands to work the soap down to the dog's skin, and as he worked the dog sank down to its belly in the tub. When Dean nudged it over onto its side to get at the underside he discovered that it was a she. "Hey, girly."

She rolled onto her back, giving Dean better access, and soon Dean thought that she was as thoroughly soaped-up as he could manage. Rinsing the dog under the tap turned out to be frustratingly inadequate, and Dean was already soaked so he didn't bother undressing before he turned on the shower and stood up. The dog was on the small side of average, and as thin as it was Dean was reasonably sure he could manage holding it up under the spray without ending up sprawled on his ass with a concussion. "Please don't struggle," Dean muttered as he planted his good foot firm on the bottom of the tub and bent over to pick her up. She wriggled a little but Dean pressed his hip against the wall and kept himself from falling until the water ran clear.

Dean put the dog down then turned off the water and sank down to sit on the edge of the tub. He closed his eyes then opened them when he felt the spray of water hitting him--the dog shaking herself off. "Thanks a lot, girl." Now that she was clean, Dean could see that she was cute, with curly white fur and floppy ears, and the idea that somebody would tie her up with a rope just made Dean more sure than ever that he really didn't get people.

Dean peeled off his wet shirt and dropped it in the tub then pulled off the trash bag and struggled out of his sweat pants. He hauled himself to his feet and tied a towel around his waist then grabbed another towel and hoisted the dog up to the counter where he could dry her off and check her out. He didn't see any fleas, but there was a patch of red, raw skin underneath where her collar had been. John had taken the first-aid kit with the antibiotic ointment in it so Dean just dried the sore patch carefully. He decided to worry about it later, since she looked just about as exhausted he felt from the exertion of getting clean.

Dean put her back down on the floor, and she followed him as he limped over to the couch. He sat down with his bad leg propped up, and she jumped up to sit at the other end of the couch by his foot. Dean thought there was probably some rule about dogs being on furniture, but he really didn't care. His leg was throbbing so he dry-swallowed a pill from the bottle on the end table and closed his eyes. He wasn't sure how much time had gone by when he was woken by pressure on his good leg and then by what felt like somebody jabbing him in the balls.

"Ow, damnit!" Dean opened his eyes and saw the dog backtracking away from his lap, a nervous look on her face. "Sorry, sorry. What?"

She jumped down to the floor and padded over to the door then whined. Dean just looked at her for a moment before she started circling and sniffing at the floor. "Okay, okay, right." Dean struggled to his feet then limped over to the door. He realized that he didn't have anything to use as a leash, or at least not anything he could improvise in time to keep from having another mess on his hands. "Just, don't run in front of a car, okay?"

Dean opened the door, and the dog shot outside. She trotted over to a patch of grass by the side of the building and squatted then sniffed around for a minute before squatting again. Dean watched, and when she finished she looked around herself like she was taking in the whole scene. If she ran off, Dean wasn't in any shape to catch her. If she ran off, he thought, that would solve the problem of what he was going to do with her. Nonetheless, he realized that he hoped like hell that she would come back.

"Hey, girl," Dean called softly, and she turned to look at him. "You want to go back in?" Dean tipped his head toward the door, and just like that she came walking back toward him and went straight back into the room. Dean took a deep breath in and let it out slowly; it was some kind of fucked up that he was grateful that some pathetic stray dog had decided not to turn her back on him.

Inside, Dean put down more water for the dog and made himself something to eat. By the end of the day, he had a new routine that revolved around the dog more than it did the TV, and perversely enough walking around more was making his leg hurt less. A day and a half later, Dean realized that he was running out of food now that he had two mouths to feed, and the wound on the dog's neck wasn't getting any better.

There wasn't a store within Dean's current definition of walking distance, and he thought about hot-wiring a car but decided he wasn't mobile enough to be in and out quickly. He made his way down to the office and waited at the front desk until the lady looked up at him.

"Checking out?"

"Nah. Is there some kind of taxi service around here? I need to get to a grocery store or something."

"Sure." She pushed business card across the desk then went back to whatever she was doing on the computer.

The card was basic white with black print: Ralph's Taxi with a phone number and a crude drawing of a car. Half an hour later, Dean was in the back seat of Ralph's Cutlass on his way to the grocery store. The store was small, but Dean figured that worked in his favor. He leaned on the grocery cart as he gathered up food for himself along with a bag of dog food, some treats and a tube of antibiotic ointment. They had passed a veterinarian's office on the way from the motel to the store, but Dean didn't want to deal with that if he could avoid it.

When Dean let himself back into the motel room, he was greeted by the dog, who danced at his feet and sniffed at his grocery bags, and as Dean awkwardly crouched to pet her he realized that he was grinning like an idiot. The dumb dog was glad to see him, and it was the best feeling he'd had since before Sam left. The knowledge of exactly how fucked up that was made Dean want to lay down and close his eyes, but he couldn't. He had a dog who needed food and wound care and probably a trip outside; there wasn't any time for wallowing in his bullshit feelings.

Three days later, Dean's leg was barely hurting at all but the dog wasn't doing as well. She had started putting on weight, but the wound on her neck was worse--raw and warm and leaking fluid--and she wouldn't eat. She wasn't interested in human food or dog food, and the look in her eyes made Dean feel like he had to do something to fix it. When she didn't even want to go outside, Dean gave in and called Ralph's Taxi to take them both to the vet's office.

He didn't have a carrier or a leash or any kind of papers, much less an appointment, but after explaining that he had found the dog by a dumpster and flashing his credit card Dean finally got them to let him take the dog back to an exam room. It was weird-smelling and small with a shiny metal table that the dog didn't like one bit. Dean felt sick as he watched the woman in a lab coat examine his dog, but the prognosis didn't seem to be dire. She gave the dog a shot and some fluids and gave Dean some antibiotics to feed her as well as a different ointment to use.

When Dean was about to leave the exam room, the tech who had first checked out his dog returned to the room. "I'm sorry, Dr. K, I forgot to run the microchip scan."

Before Dean could ask what exactly that meant, the gadget in the tech's hand beeped, and in short order his dog had a name--Rosie--and an owner. The veterinarian explained that they would attempt to contact the owner listed in the microchip database and took Dean's phone number to pass on to the owner. They also took Dean's credit card to pay for the treatment, and on the cab ride back to the motel Dean sat with the dog on his lap and tried to tell himself that it was better for her to have an owner who wasn't on the road more days than not.

That evening, when Dean's phone rang with a number he didn't recognize, he almost let it roll to voicemail before answering. "Yeah?"

"Um, is your name Dean?" She sounded young, and Dean grinned. Maybe this call didn't have anything to do with the dog after all.

"It is if you want it to be, sweetheart."

"Ew, uh--" The sound was muffled then. "Dad!"

Dean heard footsteps and then a man was on the line. "Excuse me, what did you say to my daughter?"

Dean cringed. "Hey, nothing, I thought I was talking to somebody else, that's all. Who is this?"

"My name's John Brinkman, and I was told that you found my daughter's dog." The guy sounded like some kind of egghead, not the type of person Dean imagined would tie a dog up with a rope.

"Yeah, the vet said her name is Rosie?"

"That's right. Where did you find her? Where are you?"

Dean gave him the address of the motel and promised that he would still be there in the morning. When he hung up the phone he leaned back into the couch cushions and sighed, and Rosie hopped up to sit next to him. Dean scratched her head; her temperature already felt lower than it had, and Dean didn't know why he was so stupidly glad that a dog he didn't even own was feeling better. "If you don't like them, I'm not letting them take you. Okay, sweetheart? I don't care what any fucking microchip says."

Rosie ate a little bit of dinner, but Dean just poked at his food as he thought about his life going back to the blur of lonely boredom that it had been before he found her. She slept on the bed, curled up next to Dean, and in the morning he carefully applied the ointment to her wound and gave her the antibiotics with her breakfast. Dean was still struggling to pull clean sweatpants on over his cast when he heard a knock at the door, and Rosie hopped down from the bed to go stand near the door.

"Yeah, hold on!" Dean finished getting dressed, and as he limped over to the door he heard a second knock, lighter than the first. "Yeah, yeah."

Dean opened the door, and before he could say a word Rosie was outside, caught by a kneeling teenage girl who was laughing as Rosie licked the tears from her face. Her father, definitely a geek in his polo shirt and chinos, was looking askance at Dean's messy motel room so Dean stepped outside and closed the door behind him.

"So where did you find her?" The was an edge to the guy's question, like he thought Dean had stolen his dog or something.

"I found her by the dumpster over there--" Dean gestured over to where it sat near the edge of the parking lot. "There was a frayed length of rope attached to her collar, and it was caught up on the metal. I thought she mostly just needed a bath and some food but then the wound on her neck got infected, so that's about it."

"Did mean people tie you up?" The girl, who looked like she was about fourteen, asked Rosie. "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry I didn't latch the gate." She looked up at Dean then and scrambled to her feet with Rosie still in her arms. "You didn't get hurt taking care of Rosie did you?"

"No, just a run-in with a pol--" Dean caught himself mid-word. "--vault. Pole-vault, yeah. No big deal."

"Thank you for taking care of her!" The girl's eyes were wide, and there was something in her shaggy bangs and skinny legs that made Dean think of Sam.

"It wasn't a problem. Just take good care of her, okay? You know what, hold on." Dean slipped back into the room and grabbed the medication and paperwork from the veterinarian. Back outside, he handed it over to the guy. "I already gave her the antibiotics this morning, and everything else is on the sheet there."

"I promise I won't let her go again!" The girl squeezed Rosie while her father dug into his pocket.

"This should cover the vet bill and your inconvenience." He held out some cash that looked like more than enough to cover what Dean had spent on Rosie. Dean wanted to refuse the money, but the card he'd used wasn't likely to be good much longer, and he wasn't in good shape for hustling pool.

"Thanks," he said as he pocketed the bills without counting them. Dean watched as they got back into their minivan and left, and it wasn't until he was back inside the motel room that he realized he hadn't actually said goodbye to Rosie. It seemed like a stupid thing to worry about; she was just a dumb dog, after all.

Dean started working on cleaning up the motel room, beginning with throwing out the leftover dog food, and he grumbled to himself, "Why'd I have to find that dog in the first place?" Then he remembered the girl's face, how happy she'd been to have her dog back again when she'd probably been imagining Rosie dead in a ditch or eaten by a coyote. He thought that Rosie probably had a soft dog bed and toys and special bowls that hadn't started out as microwaveable dinner trays. She had a house and a yard to play in--a normal life, the kind of life Sam wanted.

Dean couldn't offer that to the dog any more than he could to his brother so he did the only thing he could; he let them go. He cleaned up the room so that he wouldn't get an earful when John got back, and he did some sit-ups because having a broken leg was no excuse for being lazy. The cast would come off soon, and Dean would need to be fighting fit, ready to do his job.

After all, the job was the only thing he had.