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Logically, it didn't make any sense. Why would anyone keep a phone number they'd found in a bathroom stall? It hadn't even been a nice bathroom stall. In fact, Dean thought it was safe to say that it was one of the worst ones he'd ever been in, and that was saying a lot. The tile floor had been cracked and dirty, the walls had some seriously questionable stains, and the whole place had smelled of shit and cigarettes. But Dean figured that was what he got for stopping at such a creepy gas station by the side of the highway, at night no less. He'd been on his way back east, to Kansas City after his biannual trip to California to visit Sammy, and it'd been a choice between pissing at the side of the road or in the gas station washroom. He would've chosen the side of the road, but he gotten a strong craving for peanut M&Ms a couple miles back, and hey, there was always the chance they'd have a coffee machine.
They hadn't had a coffee machine, as it turned out, and Dean was grumbling to himself in the washroom when he'd looked over and saw what looked like a freaking diary entry scrawled on the wall.
Idly curious, Dean had read it. And discovered that it basically was a diary entry. This dude (who was apparently named Matthew) had angsted for a good fifteen lines about some guy that he said was, "too good for heaven, much less me." Dean gathered that they'd broken up. But the real kicker, the part that had made this truly hilarious, was that Matt, the sad fuck, had written the guy's phone number at the bottom of the paragraph. Dean couldn't even imagine what he's been thinking, like, "Despite my broken heart, the love of my life deserves happiness! Therefore, I will write his number on the wall of the most disgusting gas station bathroom I can find, so that the patrons of said bathroom might contact him, and gain his love." Maybe he'd been drunk; the writing was certainly messy enough. Dean could understand drunk people doing crazy things. Hell, Dean himself had done some pretty wild things while drunk. There'd been that one time in New Mexico where Dean had ended up having sex in the corner of a club with some gorgeous dude named Jimmy, and Dean didn't do public sex. But god, the things that guy could do with his tongue…
But anyway, Dean had taken a picture of the writing, sent it to Sammy with the caption, "Bit of light reading for those long visits to the bathroom," and then, for reasons he still didn't quite understand, had saved the number into his contacts.
Which was why he was now realizing, two months later, that he'd sent his last text to "Bathroom Guy" instead of "Benny", who were right next to each other in his contacts list.
At least it wasn't a dirty text. Dean and Benny had a running joke from a time one summer when Benny had gotten drunk and informed him that, "If I had to fuck a guy, you're almost pretty enough to be a girl anyway."Dean had teased him about it mercilessly the next day, thankfully harboring no attraction whatsoever to Benny. He'd given back as good as he got, however, and it had eventually devolved into a contest of who would get embarrassed first, their ammo mostly consisting of increasingly dirty text messages. But fortunately, the text that Dean had meant to send Benny had been serious for once. Charlie, his neighbor, had lost her dog, and Dean had promised to text everybody he knew in the area, to ask if they'd seen it.
So now Dean was staring down at his phone, the text well and truly sent, thinking, "Well, fuck." He was starting a new text (triple-checking that it would be going to Benny this time) when his phone buzzed loudly, startling him as a notification appeared, informing him that he'd gotten a new text. Apparently Bathroom Guy had replied.
Though it was hard to tell from just one text, Bathroom Guy seemed to be a rather brusque person. Not that Dean was curious. At all. Though Dean figured it would be perfectly natural to wonder what kind of person would inspire such extensive bathroom stall graffiti.
He reread Bathroom Guy's text, which was sitting innocently under his own. Their total conversation so far was fairly unremarkable.
DEAN: "Hey Ben, Charlie's lost her dog. Keep an eye out."
BG: "What does it look like?"
Dean typed out a response. "Sorry to bother you, that text was meant for someone else. But if you want to help, the dog's small, white, fluffy, and has a collar that says VADAR."
BG: "OK"
Dean stared down at the two letters. That was it? No, "Hey, no worries, I hope you find him"? Just "OK"? Dean was feeling a bit disconcerted by the whole thing, but shrugged and continued his text to Benny.
The next morning Dean got an ecstatic call from Charlie, who joyfully informed him that she'd found Vadar sitting in front of their apartment building that morning. Bobby glared at him from under the hood of the Volkswagen he was working on when Dean picked up, but Dean just smiled and waved. It wasn't like Bobby would ever fire him. Dean had known Bobby for as long as he could remember, and Bobby had given him a job in his garage when they'd moved from Lawrence to Kansas City. John had died in a car accident, and Sam had been at Stanford when it happened, so it was Dean who ended up dropping out of his engineering program at University of Kansas to look after their mom. He'd started living with her again, and they'd moved to Kansas City not long afterward, the memories in Lawrence being too painful. They found a small apartment without too much trouble, and Mary had gotten a job nursing at the local hospital. Bobby, who of course knew about their situation, had offered Dean a job the day after they arrived in Kansas City. Without John's income, and with no scholarships to speak of, Dean had quickly figured out that going back to college hadn't really been an option. And though Mary would never admit it, Dean had known that paying the bills would be an issue, an issue that he could help with if he was working full time. He'd gotten an apartment with Benny a couple months later, making sure Mary was totally settled before moving out again. She'd offered to let him stay, but what 23 year old wants to live at home with their mother?
A couple years later, he was earning enough to have his own neat little apartment, though he still gave a chunk of his paycheck to his mom every month. These days the garage was getting more business than ever before (which had also exponentially increased the amount of grumbling on Bobby's part about "these useless foreign cars." When Dean pointed out that the foreign cars were why their business was still afloat, he got a wrench chucked at him) so Dean had gotten a couple raises over the years as he improved.
Dean worked until the end of his shift, then sat in his car for a while before going home, texting people to let them know that Vadar had been found. He hesitated before texting Bathroom Guy, but figured it couldn't hurt.
"We found the dog."
