Dean wondered about a supernova nebula, proclaiming the heavens with its overwhelming colors and shattering sounds. It was the fascinating intricacies of it. An exploding star which told of tectonic dreams, truth whirling through sandstorms and tornadoes of myth.
In a way, Dean thought, that the reason he was attached to books was because he'd been under an unfair amount of spells. It was being bewitched too, only here there was a purity to it, something you'd never want to be unwoven from. And, keeping in tune with his profession, it was magical too. There were many ways to express many a thing, in vague and varying degrees of opinion, but reading couldn't be measured, it couldn't be cut and cornered. It was an all encompassing marvelousness.
Dean loved it. He adored it. And he was possessive over it, even though that was senseless. Billions of people read, knew the same stories he did, had memorized them, and yet he liked to think they were all his. In spider-webbed closets, authors had penned Dean Winchester in invisible ink beneath the other names the book was dedicated to. They welcomed him, whispering, warmth away from wrath. So he tied himself to stories that knew him the way everyone else refused to do.
Books, he thought, were letters written by authors to nameless readers with understanding souls. It was not to random people with those conventional lives, but maybe the ones who would see the nuances beneath seemingly basic sentences and had been through lives as indescribable as the oceans. He thought that he might meet these authors someday, and they might actually be able to converse with him, know that his attitude was a story all unto its own, and not only grainy coffee and uncouth company. Perhaps he would tell them that grief was a quagmire surrounded by monsters or cloudless blue skies could be the only luck you'd had in years.
Books. A magnetism all unto their own.
He watched them grow all around him, without elegance or structure, stems seeking absolution. They got into satchels so used, the leather had cracked into maps his fingers had memorized, or next to cereal bowls, spoons flickering milk onto pages, soon to crackle as they dried, or underneath the driver's seat, left with the smokiness of gasoline. They held his soul, seizing, mourning, drowning, as his wounded chest left zigzagged blood stripes all over pages thirty-four and five.
It did not matter where books came from or where they were laid to rest, as long as someone listened. They would not even seek gratefulness. They reminded him of a boy who gave and gave, accepted gratifications as minute as Lego characters. They had that in common. Sometimes, Dean wanted to snap his life closed, the way you did with books you'd finally gotten information from, but had not enjoyed the journey with.
Books, hidden behind Sam's knitted fingers, his determined locks or spread out all over the table, passages underlined with pen marks, demanding research or in fervent libraries grown like apple trees in the small towns whispering through the US, and of course, in school, with teachers full of grammar and brows darkened with enough eccentricity to accept just enough but would not reach forth to embrace him. When he held books, clutched in a hand rubbed raw with combat and gunpowder, it seemed incongruous to everyone.
Dad, axiomatic with his quest, had long ago misinformed himself about Dean's existence. When he saw Dean with a book, he immediately presumed that it had to do with helping out with the hunt or getting on with homework. One day, Dad was sitting at a table in a chair that looked preposterously small, the coffee ugly and cold, and his journal bitten through with vengeance and Wendigo pawprints. 'Dad's Journal' by John Winchester. Dean was in the presence of an author.
The table wobbled, a rickety leg, an imitation for Robin Hood & his Monster Murdering Sons. Dean shoved a book beneath it's broken leg, steadying it. 'Better use of Sammy's book,' Dad had grinned 'he'll take a book on a hunt next, if we don't stop him.'
That 'we' was debatable. That book was mine.
It was something classic and morbid. Perhaps the word to illustrate its prose, even if it seemed so utterly obscure to Dean's entire existence, was one in a litany of vocabulary that girls used to describe him. 'Gorgeous,' he'd muttered, feeling slightly insane, the world being anti-relativity, it was unseemingly to destroy his carefully assembled -with nuts and bolts, some glue, even titanium- street-cred, even when no one could hear him.
Magniloquence could be mucho.
He wanted his book, underneath that ridiculous table, holding Dad's creepy credentials. He wanted to curl up in the Impala's front seat, to tuck his knees to his chest and to cry seamlessly, like lyrics. He wanted to read and read and read, until his bones quivered and his brain fell down a time traveling well and he woke up five hundred years ago. Dean wanted to be dying within an imagination.
Eerily, it was not Sam's to share with either. Although Sam would see him reading sometimes, there would be a wariness in his gaze, as if it was unsettling to the air. Dean was slightly curious, somewhat miffed and entirely cautious. It might mean that he was something more and that chasm, he hoped, would never be crossed by Sam, even though he kept testing, trying, tricking Dean into acceptance.
There was a defining difference between the way they read. Sam lived books. They were Sam;, ink dripping into his heart, words entwined into years of his existence. Dean thought of books as a wicked blessing that he was not often allowed to be graced with. It could twist those malevolent nights into something beautiful. He needed that desperately, in static with a mirage.
So, a long time ago, books become his secret. It was his life that had molded it that way. A misconception here or a command there and somehow they had become as blurred as the memories of his mother. Just like those though -when Dad had forgotten her (besides his delusions) and Sam didn't know- he'd kept them both close. He read them in the Impala, while the stitches on his limbs sung their praises. In corners of diners, holding treasure chests and philosophy theories away from syrupy pancakes. When winter's dawn had smothered it's grey feathers over the world, and the parks murmured with mocking ghosts, he sat on the swings, the words in tandem with the winds.
Sometimes, reading made sense upside-down.