nekare

I've been meaning to write a long, insightful, 'five things___' fic for a very long time, and while your guys' prompts are fun, I can't exactly make them long with so many requests. Number 4 creeped even me a bit.

Title: Five Ways Dean Winchester Doesn't Die
Rating: PG
Characters: Sam, Dean, John
Word Count: 2035
Author Notes: AUs for the most part. I actually really like the way this turned out.

1.

Sam has been married with Jess for two years when John calls him.

He sits up in the bed, completely awake as he holds the phone with too much strength. Jess stirs beside him, stretching slowly while still asleep like she does every morning, muttering nonsense into the pillow. “Dad?” he asks again, “Is that really you?”

“Sam. I—” John’s voice breaks, the first sign that something’s wrong. “It’s Dean.”

Sam’s pretty sure John speaks more, but he doesn’t register much other than an address in Michigan.

Jess wakes up as he hangs up the phone, and asks with a smile if he forgot to buy the milk again.

She falls quiet as soon as she sees the look on his face.

---

Jess holds his hand until they reach the morgue’s swinging doors, her heels creating echoes in the empty hallway. The lights are dim and have some sort of green tint to them. Sam guesses it just makes him look even sicker than he already does. John is waiting for them, hands in his pockets and looking more defeated than Sam ever remembers seeing him. They look at each other for a moment, not knowing what to do, until Sam finally hugs his father, not knowing what to say after so many years of silence between them.

He enters the morgue on his own. Dean’s is the second body in a long row of metal tables. Sam’s hands shake as he lifts the white sheet, and everything is suddenly final, as he sees his big brother laying there, not breathing, cut in a million places that aren’t bleeding anymore.

He might have not seen Dean in seven years, but that doesn’t stop him from crying all over his brother’s corpse.

---

There are no burials for Winchester men.

Jess stands a few steps behind them as Sam and John spill salt over Dean, silent and tear-stained. The fire catches up fast, and soon, all that’s left of the boy that cooked his dinner while their dad was out in a hunt, of the teenage boy that slipped a dirty magazine inside his bag when he was thirteen, of the man that Sam barely had a chance to meet; is ashes and the smell of burning flesh that stays on their clothes.


2.

Sam has been dead for over a year, but his kids keep on harassing Dean all the same, entering his cluttered apartment as if they had every right in the world, not giving a shit that he’s never given them a key, even when they won’t ever need one because they’ve known how to pick a lock since they were five. It’s always Uncle Dean you have to take your pills, this and Uncle Dean, need help with this hunt that, and in all, he never has a quiet time to himself.

The only high point in his week is on Wednesdays, when little Sally, Sam’s youngest granddaughter, comes for her weekly shooting practice. She did missed that time and shot the neighbor’s dog with rock salt, but the whiny thing was a mean son of a bitch, so Dean wasn’t all that angry when the neighbor tried to charge him the vet’s bill.

Other than that, he’s bored.

All of his relatives (and shit, when had his family gotten so damn big) had forced him to stop hunting around the time he turned sixty, and even when he still sneaked out for the occasional exorcism or something, even he had to agree that he wasn’t up for it anymore. It wasn’t as fun doing it by himself, anyway.

He feels trapped, as if his feet refused to be rooted to this place, as if the road kept on calling him with a soft flutter of fabric against the windows. He’s lived here for twenty years already, after he had realized ten years were all it took to make this town Sammy’s home, and well, of course he had to follow him, because blood’s thicker than water, in the end.

It’s not his home, though. Home’s a nice, big house in Lawrence with mom warming milk for him in the stove and prodding baby Sammy with his toys until he gets a warning look from dad reading the newspaper in the couch.

Two of his nephews come for dinner, bringing their families, and the small space if filled with the kid’s laughter and the Stop touching that machete, Johnny!”s and Would you please stop trying to shoot your sister?s. It almost feels too silent, when they finally leave and Dean can hum Metallica to himself again.

His heart is still as healthy as ever, a souvenir of a long time ago, but so many self-sewn cuts and shot wounds leave a dent on a man, and Dean takes his daily three pills before heading for bed. His arthritis is driving him mad these days, and just laying on the bed is an effort on its own. He takes a deep breath then, tired after a day of doing mostly nothing. Sammy would probably laugh at him if he could see him this way. Let’s not even talk about his father, who died proud and strong protecting his boys.

He dreams with the Imapala, broken and abandoned in a ditch somewhere now. He’s young again and just a smile of his could make even the hardest girl’s knees grow weak. He smiles, in his sleep.

He doesn’t wake up again.


3.

“It’s alright, Mary, it’s alright,” John murmurs into his wife’s ear, but he knows he’s lying. He’s just called 911, the ambulance is on its way, and they’re still sitting on their bed, rocking back and forth as they cry together, the blood coming from between Mary’s legs coating the sheets and their clothes and their skins dark crimson.

They’ve just lost their first son, and right now, John doesn’t think he could handle a second one.


4.

Sammy is only four, but even he can tell that Dean’s not supposed to look that stiff, or be that cold. “Dean, wake up,” he mutters, soft enough so his father won’t hear. “Dean,” he starts shacking him then, his little hands bunched in the fabric of his older brother’s shirt.

Dean had been coughing an awful lot after that fire demon last night, Sammy knows, even if he didn’t see anything because his daddy had locked him in the back of the Impala. Dean hadn’t been supposed to be there either, but he had sneaked out. Sammy had been so angry to be left out, but Dean had been coughing and coughing on the ride back, as their father yelled at him from the front seat, so Sammy had just leaned against Dean and offered his hand. Dean took it, which was strange because he was eight, and a big boy already, and big boys didn’t held hands, or so his brother claimed.

Sammy keeps on shaking Dean, eyes big and scared, because Dean’s lips look almost blue, and his chest isn’t moving. “Dean, this isn’t funny, wake up already!” he says, voice high-pitched with fear, but Dean still doesn’t move. He finally climbs down the bed, his small legs getting caught on the sheets.

He shakes his father, saying “Daddy, Daddy, please wake up, Daddy,” afraid out of his mind for a second as he thinks that he won’t wake up either, but then his daddy is awake, instantly, as always, and Sammy is pulling him towards the bed he shares with his brother, chubby fingers pointing at Dean because he can’t seem to be able to speak anymore.

And then he lets out a big breath, because his daddy is so, so strong, and he will make everything better and Dean will laugh at him and tell him what a baby he is as they go away in the back of the Impala, but his daddy is kneeling next to the bed, saying “No, no, no, no, please no,” in a low, constricted voice, and then he’s doing something odd, it seems like he’s hitting Dean’s chest but Sammy guesses he’s too young to get what it is. His daddy is crying now, something he has never seen before, and he’s hugging Dean too strongly, and Sammy vaguely thinks that Dean won’t like that, that he doesn’t like hugging, and he’s about to tell his daddy when he turns around, and pulls him into a hug as well.

“Oh, Sammy. Oh fuck, this is so wrong.” And now Sammy’s afraid, really afraid, because his father won’t stop crying and holding on to him and his unmoving brother, and No, no, no, but you were supposed to make it better!” he’s muttering against his daddy’s neck.

“Sam, Sammy, your brother-- oh shit,” says Daddy, voice breaking as he shudders. “Dean’s with mom now, Sammy. Oh God. I’m so sorry Sammy, I’m so sorry,” his daddy continues, and now Sammy’s crying as well, because he might not remember mom, but he does know that she’s not here anymore, and he doesn’t want Dean to be gone too, so he just holds Dean’s cold hand, and tries to convince himself that it will all be alright if only he doesn’t let go, doesn’t let Dean go away, because he can’t imagine life without his older brother.


5.

Dean jumps in front of him.

And it’s so stupid, really, when Sam gets his wits back and shoots the spirit, watches him dissolve in a cloud of black dust, and then turns around to see Dean looking down at his stomach, mouth open in surprise even as he starts to bleed out.

It’s not until Dean starts falling, eyes unfocused, that Sam reacts, throwing the shotgun to the ground and trying to keep Dean on his feet. Dean’s knees give out anyway, and he instinctually holds on to Sam’s jacket, bringing him down with him. “Oh God, oh God,” Sam murmurs as he lays Dean on the ground, trying not to hurt him more than he already is. The wound is deep, deeper than whatever Sam knows a human being can take and survive, and his breathing goes shallow with fear.

“Shit, Dean, why did you do that,” he half asks, half speaks to himself, as he takes off his jacket and uses it to press the wound with. His eyes move along the old room, all moldy wood and broken furniture, looking for something, anything, that could help him save his brother.

Dean actually chuckles, spitting some blood in the process. “Just did what I had to do, baby brother,” he says, trying to smile, and Sam wants to hit him a little.

“You asshole, you asshole!” says Sam in between tears, hands pressing hard on Dean’s stomach. The blood, dark and thick, keeps on flowing though, from in between his fingers as if it wanted to escape. It’s trickling into the dirty floor, turning the dust into mud.

“Ah, fuck, you’re too loud, Sammy,” Dean says with a frown, as if he was just scolding his baby brother for being so damn annoying while he’s hungover, instead of dying in the kitchen of a haunted house in the middle of nowhere. Sam’s shaking just as hard as Dean is. “You better take good care of my baby, or I’ll haunt your ass for life, geek-boy. She needs waxing at least twice a month, got it?”

“Fuck, Dean, stop talking like that, you’re not--”

“Yes I am, Sammy, and you better get that through your thick skull,” Dean interrupts him in that no-questions-allowed tone he learned from Dad and he seldom uses. Dean’s eyes close for a moment, and Sam panics.

“No!” He’s barely aware of how every single object in the room is shaking in tune with his hands, of how an old bottle of wine falls to the ground, followed by some china in a shelf. The wine mixes with Dean’s blood, seeps into Sam’s pants.

Dean dies, fast, unannounced, sudden, and all Sam can do is sit on the floor, crying silently, hands still pressing too hard on Dean’s stomach, thinking It’s my fault, over and over again.