Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue, please and thank you.
A/N: Blame a combination of Dead in the Water, Nightmare, and Home for this. Dean's PoV, preseries, small reference/spoiler to Bloody Mary. Read and let me know what you think.
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Dean's eyes bled too.
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When Dean was three his mommy told him that God was going to send him a little brother or sister to take care of and love, one that would care of and love him back. Momma smiled and put his little hands against her big belly—the skin was tight and pulsing beneath Dean's hands and it scared him—and she said, "You're gonna be the best big brother, aren't you baby?"
But Dean just stared at his hand against her stomach, felt something jump against his palm and recoiled.
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But Sam never asked.
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Daddy picked him up and his fingers dug into the tickle-spots along Dean's ribs, made him squirm and kick mid-air, but Dad didn't seem to notice. "That's you're little brother" he said, pointing to the big head with a blue hat. "His name's Sammy." Dean stopped squirming long enough to look at the baby his dad had pointed out, noted the wrinkly skin that was red—like a bad sun burn after it begun to peel—and the hands that didn't have any distinguishable fingers, but instead just curled in on themselves.
"What you think, kiddo, think he'll be up to throwing around a pig skin soon?" His dad was smiling, like it was going to take up his entire face any minute. Dean didn't need to answer, though, because the head started crying, low, sharp wails that Dean could hear through the looking glass dad had him pressed up against.
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It was only fair that his brother keep his secrets too.
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Sammy had been home from the hospital a week the first time Dean dreamed.
He dreamed of fire and Sammy crying and when he woke up he half-expected flames.
He crept down the hall and made sure there the fire alarm wasn't beeping or that the door handle wasn't hot and that there was no smoke coming out from under the door—the things his teacher said were signs of a fire—and his hand shook when he pushed the door open. There was a lump of something hot and tight inside Dean's chest, beating like crazy near his heart, and he braced himself as he looked up into the room. But there really was no fire inside Sammy's nursery, just a napping baby beneath the still baseball mobile.
He took a step in, breathed in the nursery smell, like talcum powder and Mommy and the scent made something less tight in Dean's chest. He walked closer to the crib and pressed his face in between the boards, watched as Sammy's little chest moved up and down and up and down, again and again, a little wheezing noise that droned in Dean's eardrum.
And something in his chest came apart completely at that sound, but he hardly even noticed.
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Dean's eyes bled too.
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Dean dreamed of fire and he dreamed of crying and yellow eyes for almost a week before the fire.
The night the house burned, he wasn't woken by his mother's scream or his father's bellows or the roar of the flames as they engulfed the scent of talcum powder and his mother.
He was already awake for all that. Because Dean had dreamed of something else before the real fire and the true wails—before that yellow glow in the darkness consumed his father's soul—he had dreamed of blood, trickling like rain drops from the ceiling, falling like a baptismal rite against his forehead.
And when Dean opened his eyes he saw his mother, pale and terrified, pinned above his bed and raining down on him.
His scream at waking was cancelled out by his father's.
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But Sam never asked.
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End