The New York Hotel

Housekeeping

Dean sighed as he mopped up the bathroom floor of room 28B where a college student was just removed by security for partying. Three people threw up in the bathroom, the curtains were torn in the living space, three mirrors were broken, and four pillows had been torn apart.

"Hey, Dean!" Charlie shouted from the other room.

"Yeah?" Dean shouted back.

"Come here!" Charlie said once more.

Dean went to walk out and see what she wanted when he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. It had been two days since Raphael hit him and it was starting to go down a little. there was still a faint bruise on the side of his face, but it was more tan and pink than blue and black. He quickly looked away and went to see what Charlie wanted.

"Yeah?" Dean asked as he walked to her side.

"What should I do with this?" she asked, holding up fifty one-dollar bills in her hand.

"Where did you get that?" Dean frowned.

"It was laying under the table over there." she said, nodding her head to a broken table.

"Jesus Christ these college kids are messy." Dean sighed. "Turn it over to Marcus."

"Marcus?" Charlie scoffed. "Okay and I might as well turn my dignity over too. Do you think Marcus will have a hissy fit if we split it?"

Dean frowned and bit his lip. He really could use the money. He still needed to buy groceries. He looked around and then rubbed the good side of his face. "I don't know, Charlie..."

"Oh come on. It's not like we ever get tips anyways!"

Dean frowned and then sighed. "Okay, yeah yeah, hurry up."

Charlie grinned and straightened the money up. She split it in half, but then decided to put thirty into Dean's hand. "There."

Dean frowned. "Why'd you give me thirty and yourself twenty? That's not 50/50."

Charlie shrugged as she put twenty in her bra. "Yeah, I know. But you need the money more than me. You have three mouths to feed."

Dean sighed. "Well for right now it's two. John hasn't been home for about a week now."

"John? You call your dad by his first name?"

Dean shrugged. "He isn't my father. I mean he is, but he's only the shell of the man that he used to be."

Charlie frowned but stayed quiet. She turned around and turned the vacuum back on. Dean felt a little relief flood through him.

He honestly didn't know if he could handle talking anymore about his father than that.

Dean turned around and walked back to the bathroom, grabbing the mop out of the bucket and plopping it back down on the floor, moving it around in the sudsy water. Dean and Charlie were good friends, but the only extremely personal things that Charlie knew about Dean were that he was gay and that he was paying all his bills and taking care of Sam. She didn't need to know about his dead mother. She didn't need to know about his deadbeat father. Those weren't things that anyone knew about. Dean made sure that the only people who knew about those facts were him, Sam, and Bobby. No one else.

Dean finished up washing in the bathroom and then walked out into the living room. Charlie had thrown the broken table and mirrors into a garbage bag and tied them up, but now she was struggling with the lifting part.

"Here, let me do that." Dean said as he grabbed the bag. He picked it up by the top and put his hand on the bottom so that nothing would fall out. Little did Dean know, there was a sharp shard of the mirror sticking out of the bottom of the trash bag and- "Ow, fuck!" he groaned as he pulled his hand away quickly. He looked at the palm of his hand, which had a four inch cut on it. Dean set the bag down in the garbage can on the cart and then walked over to the sink to rinse out the wound.