Washing Away the Hurt, for theatregirl17299

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Title: Washing Away The Hurt
Recipient: theatregirl7299
Rating: PG
Word count: 2,160
Characters: Sam, Dean, Annie (OC)
Warnings: none, unless you include brotherly affection, feels and some humor!
Author’s notes: I went with your first prompt. ’Sam and Dean at the laundromat’. I don’t know if it’s quite what you were looking for but I hope you’ll enjoy it anyway.
Many thanks to JaniceC678 who kindly played beta for me. Any ulterior mistakes are mine alone.

Summary: Dean is in urgent need of clean pants. Unfortunately, the bunker’s washing machine has broken down. A trip to the nearest laundromat seems the only remedy. Sam gets dragged along too.




“Sam, what’s wrong with the washing machine? It isn’t working.”
“It was fine last time I used it,” Sam replied, barely glancing up from his laptop as his brother stomped indignantly into the library.
“Well, it’s not now,” Dean grumbled, “and I’m down to my last pair of boxers. “
“That washer’s a museum piece,” Sam observed. “It’s probably as old as the bunker. It was bound to break down sooner or later. What’s amazing is that it’s held up so long.”
“I don’t suppose Rowena concocted a spell on how to fix mechanical objects? Something useful for a change,” Dean scowled.
“I’ll take a look at it later,” Sam sighed, ignoring his brother’s jibe about Rowena, “though I wouldn’t hold out any hope. I’m guessing we need to shell out for a new one.”

“What about my pants, Sam? I told you it’s urgent.”
“Go buy yourself some or take the dirty ones to a laundromat. There’s bound to be one in Lebanon.”
“A laundromat! You’re joking, dude. I haven’t been to one of those boring places since we found the bunker.”
“Well if you want clean boxers, you’re going to have to just suck up and go.”
“I expected a little more sympathy from my only brother,” Dean sniffed.

Sam rolled his eyes. ‘Listen, I need to stock up with ingredients for my spell box. I’ll come along with you. Is that sympathetic enough?’
‘Well...if you need to stock up your ‘Spell Box’…’ Dean formed quotation marks in the air with his fingers. “Next, you’ll be wanting a pointy wizard hat and a Harry Potter cape.”

Sam studied his brother carefully. There was something else going on with him, the laundry was just a front.
Dean had taken their mom’s death hard. Things hadn’t been great between them but Dean had been eternally hopeful that given time a better relationship would blossom.
Now that chance had been taken away by Jack’s action and Mary’s loss had left his big brother bereft of closure. Not that Dean would ever come out and admit it. He was, if nothing else, a master at avoiding anything resembling an emotional issue.

“You okay?” he asked, wondering if maybe this time Dean would open up to him about what was causing him to be so cranky.
“I’m fine, Sam. I just need sone freakin’ clean pants!”
“Fair enough.” He wasn’t going to insist. Dean would talk when his feelings boiled up and exploded and Sam would be there to listen.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

As the Impala rumbled into Lebanon, Dean seemed to have cheered up somewhat. Whether it was simply because he was behind the wheel of his baby or that the rock music blaring out from the speakers had upped his mood, Sam wasn’t sure, but he was glad to see the smile once more on his sibling’s face.

“Where to, Sammy?”
“The laundromat’s on River Street,” Sam replied, consulting his phone. “Take a left at the crossing then left again.”
Sure enough, there it was in all its glory. “Don’t Be Mean, Be Clean” the name above the door read in huge pink letters.


“Park in front of the shop, Dean. I’ll go for my herbal supplies while you get the laundry done.”
“Uh! You’re with me, Sam. You wouldn’t want to come back and find me dead from boredom, would you? And I need your expertise. Back when it was left to me, the clothes came out all the colors of the rainbow. You, my dear brother, have the patience to separate the stuff into piles. You’d have made the perfect little housewife,’ he added, going for a hopeful smile.
“How come you don’t say that when I do the cooking?” Sam huffed. “Then it’s insults all the way.”
“Even housewives can’t have talent in every field, dude but as far a dusting, cleaning up, and washing go, you’re the best.”
Raising his hands in surrender at his brother’s shameless pandering, Sam hissed. “Please stop, Dean. I give up. Just… keep quiet!”

So saying, he dragged the duffel from the Impala’s trunk and pushed through the shop door while a grinning Dean followed him in.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Sam flexed his shoulders in annoyance.
Somehow Dean’s trip to the laundromat had ended up becoming Sam’s trip to the laundromat and the duffel didn’t just contain the famous boxers his brother had been complaining about; Dean had seen fit to lump in an entire wardrobe of dirty clothing he’d conveniently stacked up in the corner of his bedroom to wash in future.
The items of clothing Sam was separating into three piles as he emptied the duffel, were growing bigger by the second.

Currently, Dean was chatting to the shop’s owner, a middle-aged lady called Annie who’d fallen under his brother’s spell. She was smiling up at him with the sappy expression Dean seemed to provoke in that age group.

Sam was an expert on all things Dean and through the years had silently cataloged how women responded to him.
The twenty to thirty-five age group looked on him as a sexy one-night stand, the thirty-five to fifties as a potential partner and the over fifties as a toy-boy.
Although Dean never had any intention of settling down with one woman, he fully enjoyed their attention. His brother had been blessed with movie-star good looks and Sam couldn’t begrudge him the female devotion it brought.

The fact that he too was just as attractive didn’t enter Sam’s mind.
If asked, he’d have replied that he considered himself passable, not realizing that the majority of women found his tall lanky looks every bit as eye-catching as his big brother’s. The difference between him and Dean was only in the way Dean pitched himself with engaging smiles and bedroom eyes.

::::::::::::::

“You boys have never been in here before,” Annie was saying to the older Winchester, “but I know who you are all right. The Campbell brothers. It’s a small town. The place is awash with gossip.”

Dean smiled smoothly. “If I’d known what a marvelous creature was manning the desk, I’d have brought my business here sooner. Truth is, our washer broke down.”

She glanced over at Sam. “Your brother seems to have everything in hand.”
“Who? Sam? He just loves coming to a laundromat. He’s really missed our weekly visits since we moved here and got our own laundry room.”
At his brother’s nonsensical comment, Sam’s plaid shirt almost quivered with a life of its own as it stretched across the younger Winchester’s broad back.

“So, have you boys always been together?”
“Yeah. We’re…uh… orphans, had a bad childhood. I guess we just stuck together out of habit more than anything else. I had to look out for my kid brother, so....” Dean mixed in a bit of truth to his story, just enough to make it acceptable.

The woman gave him a sympathetic smile. “Life isn’t all sunshine and roses is it?’’
“No, it certainly isn’t,” Dean agreed, the memories of what he and Sam had suffered spinning through his mind.

“I used to know a Campbell once,” Annie hummed, a frown of concentration creasing her forehead. “Pretty thing she was. Kept to herself though, never talked much and she always seemed kind of sad. Let me think. Now, what was her name…? Mary… that was it. Mary Campbell.”
From his stance at the washer, Sam could almost sense his brother’s surprise at Annie’s words.

“She wouldn’t be any relation, would she?” Annie was asking. “I get that it’s a pretty common name. I used to live in Lawrence before I married my Harry. Mary and I were in the same class at school.”
“Maybe,” Dean said, regaining his aplomb. “We never got to know our relatives, though our dad was from Lawrence too. So, a quiet type, huh?”

Now that Annie had discovered a common bond, however flimsy, with the handsome dudes in front of her, she was all for milking it to the hilt.
“It’s not that she didn’t get on with the rest of us, she’d talk about school and homework and stuff, but she never really SAID anything. Know what I mean?”
Dean flashed a smile but he was almost trembling with eagerness to hear more. This was his mom in the “before time”, earlier even than when Dean had met her in nineteen seventy-three.

‘’You hear that Sammy? Could be we and Annie here have something in common.”

Sam finished stuffing the clothes into three separate washers and set the programs.
He too was curious to hear what she had to say about their mom, for it had to be her. Sam doubted there had been two Mary Campbells in the same school at the same time and Annie looked to be around the age his mom would’ve been if she hadn’t died in his nursery all those years ago.

As if she’d been reading Sam’s thoughts, Annie gave a bright smile. “You two boys hang on a second. Now that we’re on the subject, I’m sure I have a class photo taken on our first year in school. It might take me a few minutes to find it. Keep an eye on the shop for me, will you?”

“If anyone tries anything, you can be sure we’ll defend your washing machines to the bitter end,” Dean assured her solemnly.

Annie eyed him with a penetrating stare. “I can’t say why, but I’d trust you with my life.” With that, she disappeared into the back of the store.
Somehow the woman’s simple words caused a mote of emotion in Dean’s heart. The older Winchester didn’t consider himself a good man, he’d done evil things, yet Annie seemed to have sensed a goodness in him.

“She knew mom, Sammy,” Dean said as his sibling came to stand at his side. “How coincidental is that?”
The fact that his brother’s face was bright with anticipation made Sam smile. Dean was still crushed by his mom’s death, maybe just talking to a complete stranger about her would give him some of the closure he needed.

It wasn’t that Sam himself didn’t feel pain at Mary’s death, but unlike Dean who could recall childhood memories, however fragile, of his mother, to Sam, she was essentially a stranger.
He understood that she was his mom, that he should love Mary for that alone, but love can’t be switched on like a light, it has to grow and mature until that person becomes a part of you.
There hadn’t been enough time for that to happen with his mother before she was lost to him.

He gave Dean a fond glance. The love that should have been Mary’s had been transferred onto his big brother. Dean had raised him, been there for him in all the ways a mom should, from scraped knees to cooking him a meal, and at times, Sam mused ruefully, stealing gifts to make his dreary Christmases less barren.
Dean was more than a brother now. When two people had gone through what they had, those experiences had cemented their brotherhood and turned it into…?
Well, Sam didn’t have a name for what they shared, but if it wasn’t a soul-bond, it was pretty close.

They’d stolen, lied, and killed for each other and as Annie strolled back in with a photo in her hand, he had to think that if she knew the things he and Dean had done, she’d run off in horror. Still, Sam would do it all again if it meant protecting his brother and without any false modesty, he knew Dean would do the same for him.

“Here we go,“ Annie smiled, handing the photograph over to Dean. “Mary’s the one with the pigtails in the middle of the back row.”
The little girl immortalized in the picture looked up at him, her face composed and serious. She could never in her wildest dreams have imagined that she would die twice, killed in turn by a demon, then by a Nephilim, the son of Satan himself.

“Cute kid,” Sam said, knowing Dean was immersed in silent grief as he studied the photo, “though I don’t know if she’s related to us.”
But either Annie was more psychic than she seemed or she was just a good businesswoman.
“You can hang on to it if you like. Bring it back on your next visit.”

Dean lifted his head to meet her eyes. “Thanks, Annie,” he said. “I will.”

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

“You want to go and buy a new washer?” Sam asked when they were back in the Impala.
“Let’s wait,” Dean replied. “Take a look at the one back home first. Maybe you can fix it. If not, Annie will be glad of our business.”

The rumble of the engine, so familiar to the brothers, accompanied their thoughts until the towering red-bricked walls of the bunker came into view.


The End