A Moment with My Brother

Raspberries.

It's Thursday afternoon. No one is bleeding or bruised. There are no deamons, vampires (sparkly or otherwise), were-kittens or the like rapping at the door. Sam isn't coughing or collapsing and Cas is learning every day to be a little more human.

The bunker is...calm.

Dean is folding laundry and I am voyeuristically (heehee) observing him.

I'm slobbed in one of the MoL swivelly chairs, with my gigantic yet feminine feet up on the table edge and I am smiling because there is a sweetly adorable disharmony between the Martha-Stewart-i-ness of his task and his innate, inescapable bad-ass-i-tude.

He's sitting at the other end of the big library table from me and he has the laundry basket...Wait...I gotta pause there. How abso-freaking-lutely kitsch is it that Dean - genetic, career hunter Winchester has a real, honest to goodness laundry basket?

And it's not some plastic, stacking, fold-down-able crate. No, sir-ee-bob. It's an genuine old wicker thing, I suspect he found it on one of his Bunker forays. It's authentic 1930's and it still has the remnants of pink and white (so purdy!) gingham ribbons tied around the handles...Yeah, actual heart and homestead gingham!

And my crack-ish-brain-connection-synapses segue onto which brother - aka 'Seven Brides for Seven Brothers', Dean is most like? Frank I think...handsome as fuck, gallant, used to overcoming the odds...his mommy and daddy called him Frankincense for god's sake and with a name like that you'd have a big stinky heap of odds to overcome!

Sorry...I'm rambling...back to the point, Charlie B.

So there's this laundry basket on the floor beside him and neatly drilled piles of clothes spread out on the table top like they are his regiments in some tiny Bunker battlefield re-enactment.

He's humming softly as he folds, the precision of the simple task soothing the ever present thrum of tension that usually exudes from him.

His body is loose and fluid, the muscles in his tanned arms defined by the shift of his snug t-shirt sleeves as he stretches and shimmies about his business and I get to thinking how strange and possibly wonderful inanity/tranquility/safety must feel for him?

"Do you want this folded or should it be hung?"

I start a little at the sound of his voice as I'd got so caught up in my deep and intellectual observations (don't you tut...for me that was bordering on philosophical) that I had kinda forgotten that he could speak so I don't answer as swiftly as he expects and his eyes come up, a hint of worry widening them, to find mine.

They are green in a way that would make Faberge weep and alive with the very essence of his soul.

"Huh?"

I counter in a telling display of articulate and witty words-man-ship and his eyebrow raises as the edges of his (far too full to be on a man) lips curl into a smile.

"Pay attention, Bradbury."

He chides, holding up the chiffony, girly blouse that could never, unlike our more unisex t-wear (I so wanna get my hands on that 'I Wuv Hugs' shirt of his) be mistaken for his, or Sam's (size = gigantor) or Cas's.

"Fold or hang?"

I stand and move down the table to stand right beside him, taking my seduction-special, vivid coral number into my hands.

"Hang, I think."

I bend and grab one of the hangers from the basket at his feet.

"Hummm...Raspberries..."

I say as I frown accusatorially at him and I stand back up leaning in toward him, my nose sniffing at his hair as I hover close.

He looks a little sheepish and moves back in his seat but I sniff him again. Yup, definitely, raspberries. His hair smells of raspberries.

I place my hangered blouse on a conveniently located picture frame and fold my hands across my chest as he begins to squirm a little under my scrutiny.

"Your hair smells like fresh luscious raspberries and is..."

I loom over him and he cringes as I run my fingers through his light brown spikes.

"...is soft, smooth and...dammit, silky as hell."

He grins.

"You used my shampoo didn't you? My special, bought from an actual shop not looted from some cheap motel and most definitely only meant to be used by girls, raspberry shampoo."

He grins some more and his head is shaking, denying his petty larceny but the fact that he smells like a freaking fruit salad kinda paints him perjury-pink.

"Did you use the conditioner too?"

His eyes widen.

"There's conditioner as well?"

He all disarming flirtatiousness and I sigh in defeat, nodding and reaching for the powder blue in the pile of dark, shabby cottons folded before him.

I shake out the shirt and hold 'I Wuv Hugs' up to my ample (Don't laugh! A girl can but dream) chest.

"Raspberry smells good on you."

I say as I flutter my eyelashes and for a moment he frowns, thinking he has the strength to withstand the might of a determined Bradbury but it's a fleeting dalliance with male supremacy (hah, yeah like that would ever really be the case) and in seconds the frown softens to a sigh.

"And blue suits you, Charlie."

He smiles, as do I, and we shake cause how's a good big brother gonna resist the whiles of a seductively sneaky sibling like me?

Ends