In With the New, for tesserae

[summergen-mod.livejournal.com]

Title: In With the New
Recipient:tesserae_
Word Count: 2080
Rating: PG
Warnings: none

Summary: Sam's not sure what to say when he discovers Ikea, Home Depot and one of those fancy-ass appliance places in Dean's browser history.

“Sam, wake up.”

“Sammy.”

“Saaaammmy.”

“Mmmph, whaa?” Sam grunted, rolling over with a sleepy snort as he felt the tip of a finger jabbing him in the ribs. When his blurry eyes caught sight of the clock by the bed he groaned, glaring at his brother as fiercely as he could manage without the full cooperation of his still half-sleeping facial muscles. “Dean, what the hell? It’s three in the morning. What do you want?”

“Where’d you put your computer? I need it.”

Sam rolled his eyes, instantly regretting it when he remembered that Dean couldn’t actually see his face and all it did was make him dizzy. “Seriously? You can’t wait ‘til I’m awake to steal my laptop for porn? I’ve been translating books for eighteen hours – I’m tired, man!”

Dean shrugged, a shamelessly lecherous grin stretching across his face. “What can I say? Those busty Asians just get better looking after the sun goes down.”

“You’re disgusting.”

“I’m also not leaving until you tell me where the computer is.”

“God, fine,” Sam growled, heaving himself out of bed and wincing at the dull ache in his lower back that had taken up permanent residence there ever since he started sleeping on this old box-spring mattress two years ago. It didn’t help that it was a twin, either; being as big as he was, anything smaller than a queen tended to force him to curl into a ball or else leave his limbs hanging off all of the edges, neither of which was good for his already overtaxed spine. After stretching until his vertebrae loosened up and popped like bubble wrap, he strode over to the sparsely-decorated desk on the opposite side of the room, opening the middle drawer and retrieving his laptop from beneath a pile of old case notes and Manilla folders.

“Here,” he said grumpily, passing the device into his brother’s waiting hands. “Now can I go to sleep?”

“Yup. Sweet dreams, Sammy. I know I’ll be having some…”

Sam pretended to gag and crawled back under the covers with a huff. “Just make sure you turn on the ad blocker for once, okay? If I have to see one more popup picture of a threesome while I’m trying to research I’m going to kill you in your sleep.”

Dean, the big jerk, just laughed and strode out the door, making sure to shut it extra-loudly behind him.

***

The first indication that Dean might be up to something strange came the very next day, just after Sam had finished eating a quick breakfast of cereal and a toasted bagel.

He had just booted up his laptop, wanting to do a little research on the purpose of some obscure herbs he had found in an old book of spells. Once he had flipped the book to the correct page he opened a web browser, hoping he wasn’t about to be greeted with any X-rated images. He breathed a sigh of relief when all that appeared was the Google logo, moving the cursor over to the far right side of the screen to pull up his search history from the day before so he could remember which keywords he had used.

Once he did, though, he found himself completely confused.

Listed in the browsing history, he saw no indications that his brother had visited BustyAsianBeauties.com the night before; in fact, he saw no evidence of any pornographic content at all. Instead, the list displayed a variety of furniture and home improvement stores, from Home Depot to Lowe’s to Ikea, and even a very expensive electronics store located halfway across the country.

This was beyond strange. Of course Sam was glad not to have to clean dozens of viral popups off of the screen today, but why would his brother have pretended to be surfing porn when he was really looking at furniture? Dean had always had more talent as a handyman than Sam, so it was totally within the realm of possibility that he just wanted to start some kind of home improvement project in his bedroom or the garage. But still, if that was the case, why lie about it? It didn’t make any sense.

When he asked Dean about it, though, the older Winchester proved less than helpful. In fact, he pretended not to know anything at all about how the computer had ended up at those websites.

“Maybe you were sleep-typing again, Sammy,” he said nonchalantly, taking a sip of his coffee as he sat against the headboard of his bed and watched some old black-and-white movie that was playing on AMC. “I don’t even want to know what goes through that geek brain of yours at night – maybe you were dreaming about working in a furniture store?”

“Yeah, right,” Sam said with a roll of his eyes. “If you don’t wanna tell me, I’ll just figure it out on my own.”

His brother just gave him a mischievous grin before turning back to his show. “We’ll see about that.”

***

Dean was better at concealing his activities than Sam had expected. Despite days of searching and his own extensive experience with computers and research, the younger hunter was unable to find any kind of clue no matter how hard he looked. How that had happened, he had no idea, because Dean used to be so computer-illiterate that even changing the ringtone on his cellphone was a challenge for him.

Maybe it was because of all the time he had spent with Frank Deveraux three years ago, or maybe it was just the years of being targeted by every conceivable evil under the sun, but while Sam wasn’t looking Dean had somehow become even better at hiding his online tracks than his physical ones. No matter how hard the younger hunter tried to find out where else he’d been, what exactly he had been looking at on those websites, there was literally nothing to be found. Finally, after three days of fruitless searching, the younger Winchester had to concede defeat.

For the next few weeks afterward, Sam almost completely forgot about his brother’s weird home improvement site visits, too deeply buried in piles of dusty case notes and decaying spellbooks to pay attention to anything else. He had made a significant amount of progress, using the Men of Letters’ extensive notes and his own knowledge of supernatural lore to translate several old books into readable, organized documents. There also hadn’t been any other suspicious website visits, or if there were, Dean had cleared them before Sam had a chance to see.

So when he came back to the bunker after a long supply run, he was completely surprised to find a pile of folded-up cardboard boxes sitting by the front door. When he looked closer, he noticed that they were all from different home improvement stores, and ranged in size from less than a foot across to longer than Sam himself. That was definitely strange – Dean hadn’t mentioned ordering any new furniture or appliances for the bunker lately.

Curious, Sam followed the trail of discarded cardboard down the hallway, reading each label – “Home Depot,” “Lowe’s,” “IKEA,” “Hahn Appliance Warehouse” – as he went. As he did, his confusion only grew – especially when he reached the end of the box trail and realized that it stopped just outside his bedroom.

“Dean?” he called, beginning to reach for the doorknob and wondering what exactly his brother had been up to while he was gone. “If you’ve been in my room, man, I swear I’m gonna –”

The sight that met his eyes when he opened the door was enough to freeze the words on the tip of his tongue. All of the old furniture that had been left in his room by the Men of Letters was gone, replaced instead with a collection of items that looked both modern and new.

In the spot where his lumpy twin bed had sat only that morning there was now a queen bed with a thick memory-foam mattress, covered by a soft-looking green plaid comforter and a set four pillows – two memory foam for sleeping, and two green plaid for decoration/reclining against. When Sam took a closer look, he was surprised to find that the base of the thick box bed frame contained several large drawers for storage, and the enormous headboard had shelves built into the front and sides, plus a small overhead lamp for late-night reading. Across from the foot of the bed was a new black five-drawer dresser, on top of which sat a thirty-inch flat-screen television and a Blu-Ray player.

A new desk and chair sat against the wall opposite the door, completely bare and just waiting to be covered with books and notes; when Sam opened the drawers, horrified to think that his old desk’s contents had been thrown out, he was astonished to find everything organized exactly the way he had had it before, with not a single leaf of paper out of place. The rickety stacks of crates he had been using as end tables had been replaced by actual bedside cabinets, topped with new lamps and alarm clock, and the single lightbulb on the ceiling that had served as his way to light the room had been removed and replaced with a large fan, complete with three soft fluorescent light fixtures.

He didn’t know how long he stood there, just staring in complete dumbstruck awe at the new layout of his bedroom, before he heard a soft voice behind him.

“You’d better close your mouth, Sammy, before a fly lands in it.”

Sam spun around, eyes wide with excitement but mouth pulled down in a confused frown.

“Dean, what is all this? How did – When did you – I never asked –”

“Whoa, whoa, slow down,” Dean laughed, giving his brother an affectionate couple of smacks on the back. “You remember when you found all those websites in my search history last month?” He gave Sam a meaningful look, waiting for him to get the hint. At the younger Winchester’s blank look, he sighed and continued, “Well, I knew you hadn’t done anything at all to spruce up your room since we got here, except maybe filling up that desk with all those pages of chicken-scratch, so I figured it was about time you got a place that felt a little more like home. After all, we’ve been here two years now – I think that’s the closest thing to a home either of us have ever had.”

“Wow,” Sam breathed, staring around at everything and still not quite able to believe it was all his. He’d never had a private room designed just for him, not even when he had lived with Jess. This was going to take some time to get used to. “I… don’t know what to say.”

“Well, you could start with, ‘Thanks, Dean, you’re the best brother on the planet.’”

Sam grinned. “Alright, I’ll admit it, you are pretty awesome.”

“And don’t you forget it.”

With a contented sigh, the older Winchester yawned and stretched, turning back toward Sam’s bedroom door. “Well, I gotta go clean up the million cardboard boxes in the hallway. Why don’t you chill out in here and watch some Netflix on your computer or something?”

“Yeah, sure. Sounds good,” Sam answered, and before Dean had even made it completely into the hall he was already heading over to grab his laptop. He lowered himself onto the bed, curious to see how memory foam felt, and immediately sighed and sank down into the cloudlike material, knowing without a doubt that it was going to do wonders for his back. Once he had gotten himself propped up against the pillows he flipped open his laptop, ready to watch some Game of Thrones instead of researching for once.

Once he did, though, he realized that his brother had done more that day than just redecorate the room.

Taped to the top of a screen was a small Post-It note from Dean, which read: “Just a little something to help you loosen up on that new bed.”

And just behind it, blown up to full-screen size, was a picture of an almost totally naked Asian woman, smiling and thrusting breasts too large to be real toward the lens of the camera while a scrolling bar of text beneath her showed the words, “Thank you for choosing the Busty Asian Beauties VIP Membership. We hope you enjoy your night…”

“……DEAN!!!”