Disclaimer: Don't own. Don't sue.
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Death doesn't smell like copper.
Dean knows the common assumption, because people see the blood and think, gee, must smell like pennies, but it really doesn't.
Death smells rancid. Like wet clothes left to rot in a corner for too long a time. It smells lukewarm and sticks in the back of the throat, like fog or humidity. It seeps into the skin and stays for a while. Oh, and don't get him started on clothes. Death has a way of searing itself right into the molecule makeup of fabric, makes clean up a bitch, because the smell always stays on long after what ever gooey bits have been cleaned up.
It's enough to make anyone go a little south in the head. Because there's only so much you can take before you're taking a leaf out of Lady Macbeth's book, out-damn-spoting, cruising through town at dawn looking for a laundry mat because you're sure your nose is going to fall off if you have to smell weeks old death a second longer.
And Dean knows that not all death smells the same, and that's wrong, maybe, but he doesn't really lose any sleep at night over it. He just knows what he knows, what comes with the job so regularly there's not point in ignoring it.
So he knows a few things. He knows death can smell like smoke and heat, leave ash on the tip of your tongue and in your hair and scorch marks everywhere that matters. He knows it can smell like gunpowder or mold or rain, like something that's mundane and sinister all at once. He knows death can smell like a woman, cold and beautiful and damned.
Dean has a long lists of things death smells like, one time occurrences and repeating motifs, but copper isn't anywhere on them.
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End.
