Since I've already written a suicide fic for 10x16 and try to write something different each week, this episode tag is mainly inspired by my favourite line of the ep, and also more than a little influenced by the titular reference.
(In case anyone is wondering why this ficlet doesn't deal with 8x15 and 9x05, I'm purposefully ignoring those episode since they were annoying and offensive in several respects, and I prefer to pretend that they never actually happened. Oh, and once again I'm going with the screwed-up official timeline of the show, in which it's actually 2015 right now.)
Unbetaed, apologies for any mistakes.
Gone to the Dogs
Dean never liked dogs, not even the fluffy ones, not even the floppy-eared ones, not even puppies. Which may be kind of ironic given how he grew up with a puppy eye master for a younger brother and found it impossible to say no to any of his requests. Then again, that never was about the puppy dog eyes, not really.
o0o
When he's six, a free-roaming German shepherd tries to attack his baby brother. Dean ends up with his calf half torn out, but his aim is steady. He doesn't cry, because that would only upset Sammy, and Dad told him not to anyway.
o0o
When he's eighteen, Sam runs away and has a merry time with a dog, while Dean searches for him with increasing desperation and comes in contact with the dark side of Dad's drunken anger. Watching Sam pat the dog goodbye, his young face twisted into a belligerent expression, Dean doesn't puke, but it's a near thing.
o0o
When he's twenty-four, he spends the summer at Bobby's, laid low by a broken ankle, and Rumsfeld follows him everywhere. "Stupid mutt adores you," Bobby mutters gruffly and bends down to scratch the animal behind the ears. Dean grimaces at the pair of them, feeling lonely, grateful and befuddled all at once.
As far as dogs go, Rumsfeld is a good-natured creature, but he seems to have developed a secret sense for the supernatural, and whenever he starts barking, Bobby tenses up, lays fresh salt lines and chants Latin, while Dean hobbles around the house, more burden than help.
If you ask Dean, Rumsfeld barks way too often.
o0o
When he's twenty-nine, he can see the hellhounds that sink their jaws into his flesh and carry him down to Hell. Ugly, freakishly large beasts, more brutal than any monster Dean's ever sparred with in his all too short life. Amidst all the agony, a terrible sense of déjà vu flows through the veins and guts that his bestial attackers tear open messily. In the final moments just before his heart gives out, he can't quite shake the feeling that a dog ripped him apart long before these hellhounds did.
o0o
At twenty-nine he also gets chased by a pink-ribboned Yorkie, and the only thing which manages to be scarier than that is a little girl with white eyes.
o0o
When he's thirty, he encounters hellhounds yet again, and while he can't see them this time, he has to watch two of their closest friends die on a futile mission.
Beggars can't be choosers, so a couple of months later he finds himself working together with a demon named Crowley and accepting help from a giant hellhound, which its master pets as though it were no more than a cute lapdog.
There's nothing cute about the fact that it doesn't stop his brother from throwing himself into a gaping chasm, locking himself up far, far below the ground as Satan's personal punching bag for all eternity.
o0o
When he's thirty-one, he works a case involving skinwalkers for the first time, and has to discover that even the creepy monster they're hunting is more human than the ruthless shell of his brother in the passenger seat.
o0o
When he's thirty-three, he comes back from Purgatory to discover that Sam hit a dog. With little effort Dean could also find many other phrases to describe what his brother did (or didn't do), but that one sticks. It's not a euphemism. No euphemism would be able to hurt this much.
o0o
When he's thirty-four, he comes face-to-face with yet another hellhound and the accursed beast refuses to die under Dean's hands. Instead Sam's the one who kills it and ends up in a hospital bed in a coma, because all dogs are evil and the universe isn't fair.
o0o
When he's thirty-five, he can see hellhounds again for the first time in years. This time he doesn't feel fear, only boredom and disgust. "I could give you one, if you want," Crowley offers from where he's crouched down on the ground, trying to teach what has to be the ugliest puppy in the history of nature how to play fetch. "No thanks," Dean replies, kicking one of the dogs out of his way as he heads back inside the bar for a fresh round of karaoke.
o0o
When he's thirty-six, he tells Sam to stop looking at him like a diseased killer puppy. It's only the soothing buzz of his most recent kill that allows him to get the words out. They scrape over his tongue like acid and ash.
Because it's true. Sam does look at him like something that needs to be put down, and yet something he still loves, God knows why.
Sam looks at him like something Dean hates.
o0o
In his dreams he surveys Purgatory from an elevation. Fighting as far as the eye can reach, a blend of muscle, daring and blood in all directions.
There are no dogs in Purgatory. Only skinwalkers.
Metatron steps next to him, making him jump. One hand is cradling one of the tablets. If this weren't a dream, Dean would stab him. But he doesn't have a blade. The blade. And he doesn't want to fight, always and always, every waking and every sleeping hour.
Instead he watches, bristling, as Metatron extends his free hand and waves it across the scenery, his mouth puckered into an obscene smile. There's something canine about the twist of his lips. "Rousseau," Metatron says quietly after a couple of minutes, his voice soft, just a shade too self-satisfied and cruel to be mistaken for rapt with admiration.
Dean stares at him, nonplussed. "What?"
Disappointedly, Metatron purses his lips. "And here I thought we were having a Klopstock moment… You should read more."
Dean glares at him, refusing to answer. His hands ball into fists.
Metatron glances down at them with a smirk. "That's the spirit, boy." He licks his lips and nods. "When he was eight years old, Rousseau's nanny decided he needed to be chastised for his faults. But little Rousseau enjoyed it, and his nanny was smart enough never to punish him like that again. And for the rest of his life, he sought to recover that state of early bliss, and never quite obtained it."
"I don't get off on decapitation, if that's what you're trying to imply."
Metatron's lips curl sardonically. "Please. Are you just as slow-witted as your boyfriend Asstiel?" He leans a little closer and it's all Dean can do not to give him the satisfaction of recoiling. "There's a lesson to be learnt here, slugger. God built this place for the monsters, but not for monsters like you. Having fun down here was never part of the design. So no matter how you live, no matter how you die, no matter what happens to that skeevy tattoo on your arm, you'll never get back to your happy place, and it will never let you go. You've well and truly gone to the dogs, my dear fiend. Ironic, don't you think?"
As if in answer to Metatron's words, Dean's stomach lurches and the Mark on his arm begins to burn, and before he knows it, his fist connects with Metatron's smug, revolting face.
Metatron finally moves away from him, limping ever so slightly, but otherwise unfazed by the punch. "You really should read more," he says again, patting the tablet he's still holding in his hands. "It's why I always beat you."
o0o
When Dean wakes up covered in sweat, Metatron's words still echo in his head, and in the dark and empty hallways of the bunker.
Somewhere far off in the distance dogs are howling.
Thanks for reading. Feedback is warmly appreciated.