This is a disclaimer.
AN: Weird-ass creepy fic that mutated out of what was meant to be crack. I don't remember what ending it originally had, but as Neil once said, once the story got underway, the real ending was inevitable. Title from Tolkien.
All things devours
All in all, you're rather proud of the way you dealt with the situation. You held out for as long as you reasonably could, and when you couldn't hold out anymore, you went to your fate like a man.
OK, so Sammy would have managed it a little more smoothly; could perhaps have avoided it altogether, because avoiding shit he doesn't like is what Sam Winchester does best, after all. But still. The point was: you acquitted yourself well in a terrible situation from which there was, by all the laws of brotherhood, honour-among-thieves, and the ancient rules of the riddle game that once won a hobbit a magic ring, no escape. Congratulations should be in order, really. Considering your track record, it's quite the achievement. Pour the drinks; hand round the pralinés.
Not that Dean Alexander Winchester has EVER eaten a praliné in his LIFE.
But. As before... it's the principle of the thing. Right?
And anyway, it's not like any of it was your fault. Per se. In fact, it wasn't really anyone's fault; unless you wanted to blame it all on that bitch Meg, in which case, fair enough. Because seriously, who has time for laundry when you're busy warding off a possible attack by a demonic pitbull shadow thing that wants to rip you to shreds, scatter said tatters about the room, remove your heart, and then drag it off back to its lair to use as a teething toy for its fugly threeheaded hellhound puppies?'
"Dean!" Sam yells when you point this out to him. "I don't care about the hellhound puppies, OK? I don't care about demon attacks, or Dad taking off, or any of it. I want clean clothes. That's all. Just... clean clothes. I'm sick of smelling like a laundry basket. Fuck, I'm sick of being the laundry basket! You lost the bet. Now go wash stuff."
All right, all right. There's no need to get so worked up about it.
Geez.
Dad sent you to do laundry once. You were fourteen, he had a broken leg, and Sammy was still the floppy-haired, bouncy, endlessly curious kid you still think of whenever his name gets mentioned, rather than the surly teenager he later became and still is.
Anyway, the laundry trip. It was... eventful. Eventually. Eventually eventful. But the police left in the end, and you didn't even get a warning, so that was all right.
Dad was somewhat less impressed. Still, he's not here to object now, is he?
You're halfway through the cycle when the girl comes in. She's a few years younger than you are, not tall, dark hair, high cheekbones, a wide, smiling mouth and very blue eyes. Probably a student. Possibly single, by the way she's checking you out, and definitely your type.
Not that you're sure you've even got one of those.
She's silent as a cat walking, silent as you are yourself, movements slow and trancelike, executed with that extraordinary concentration of someone who knows they're drunk and wishes they weren't. She's striking, handsome even, rather than pretty, and you're strangely grateful, in the mood to talk to a real person, not a plastic robot. She's dressed in what are undoubtably her worst, most hated clothes, all fifties skirt and blouse that her mother probably bought her, her real clothes all in the basket.
You smile at her, exchange hellos, mutter something about the weather, laugh when she gripes about missing her one favourite TV show to do laundry. She's a student. History, junior year. You tell her about the road-trip you're not on, and your pain-in-the-ass little brother. She has a younger sister, and you sit together in silent sympathy for a minute or two, no words needed for the universally hellish experience of older-sibling-hood.
If you were in a bar, you'd toast each other, and order more whiskey.
You don't exchange names. There are times when the endless anonymity of your job grates on you; when you want to be able to walk up to someone and tell them 'I'm Dean Winchester' as if it's the most natural thing in the world, rather than a secret given only to those who've earned your trust, paid for it in blood and sweat and fear. But this isn't one of those times; this anonymity is different. It's the anonymity of mystery, of chance encounters fondly remembered and brief meetings by the roadside, full of excitement and possibility.
The church clock strikes the half-hour while you're silently commiserating, and she gets up to check her machine. You watch her closely, and realize absently that you're not really all that attracted to her. Or if you are, there's… something else there, about her. Something more.
It's that look she's wearing now that that prods a different side of you into wakefulness. An absent, almost ethereal, look on her face. No one looks like that while doing laundry. No one.
You slide out of your seat and stand up, noiseless in bare feet, slight rub of your jeans the only sound beside the hum of the machines. She stands there, drums her fingers on the top of the machine for a second, then goes to sit down once more. Her movements are bored but her face is still so distant, so otherworldly.
She doesn't look at you again.
They're never here long. Soon, it'll happen. Soon…
Sound of a car door slamming, footsteps, she looks up, eyes wide in surprise, and then the door slams back with a crash, man about your own height, looking utterly distraught. He screams at her, words long since lost, swept away by the passage of time, she's on her feet, hands outstretched to him, pleading, and then a gun in his hands and sudden, all-consuming silence.
Her body is slumped across the seats, two dark stains quickly spreading across her pale blue blouse, but as you reach for her, she's gone. So's her murderer. Jealous lover, you're sure.
Behind you, your own machine stops spinning with one last and rather pained whirr and a worrying clank. The noise breaks your trance as if it had hands with which to grip your face and yank your head forcibly round to look at it. You're as breathless as if you'd just been punched in the gut, and there's an empty pit in your stomach where your emotions used to be. It's an effort to turn away, as if the scrubbed seats where she died so long ago were a lodestone and your eyes the iron.
Tomorrow, you'll look up her sister. Tomorrow, you'll walk alone into the graveyard (Sam, I'm just going for a drink and hopefully a decent lay for once, so unless you're interested in a threesome, stay here, OK?), and you'll find her grave, shovel the dirt off her and set her free before you turn your attention to the bastard who killed her so viciously. Tomorrow. Now, you're doing the laundry.
Bare feet shouldn't feel this heavy, this leaden. Movements mechanical, you bend, open the door, dig out the wet knot of clothes, yours and Sam's tied together, and dump them all in the drier. As the lid snaps shut, the door to the Laundromat opens, and the girl walks in.