Ficlet: Dead Things
Author: sandymg
Summary: A 6x03 The Third Man tag. Conversations about dead things.
Genre: Drabble, Episode tag, Gen
Spoilers: Through S06x03 The Third Man
Dead Things
Dean remembers when the worst thing he could imagine was a ghost. Those suckers creeped him the hell out. All translucent and jerky. Dad would use iron mostly back then. Hadn't started using the rock salt shotgun yet. Iron crowbar and it would flicker into cold tendrils that licked his skin and made him shiver.
He'd give just about anything for a ghost now.
He watches the grandfather that was. And the brother that isn't. And the cousins he wishes weren't. They talk in this strange language that finds pride in things ugly and shame in the normal and it's more upside down than it should be given his upbringing. But that's how it is.
They all look at each other, talking without words. He feels like he did in the many schools he breezed through. Perpetual outsider. Staring into people's houses. Watching the normal. Felt like that this past year, too. The year Sam roamed around with … these people. Family. Which made Dean what, exactly?
Grandpa Samuel said something about ghosts when he and Sam suddenly popped up. Enough ghosts for one day or some such thing.
Except. They weren't the ghosts. He was. Remembering the hunter he was, fighting the sluggish responses of a body gone soft. Gotta stay sharp, son. Dad knew never to rest. Discipline and order and practice. Obsessed son of a bitch. What he wouldn't give to have him here with him again. Solid and real. Arms like steel telling him the ghosts wouldn't get him. That he wouldn't ever let them.
Sam tries to get his attention. "Dean … Dean you with us?"
He blinks madly, lest he give anything away and looks up at the peering stares, slightly bemused, mostly bored. Christian smirks his mouth in a near sneer. "Princess need his beauty sleep?"
Dean's up like a shot, nitro in his veins, jaw muscles ticking. Sam presses against him. "Easy."
Dean looks into his brother's calm, emotionless face and wonders what Sam would do if Dean whipped out his pistol and simply shot everyone in this room. The blankness of Sam's eyes answers wordlessly. Dean imagines the Campbell blood rolling in angled rivulets all round them while Sam tilts his head and says, "Oh."
He has to shake himself out of the living nightmare. Sucks in air until his heartbeat slowly eases. He begs Sam one last time with his eyes. "I miss Casper." He laughs then. Knows they think he's a weak pussy and that this isn't helping.
Sam's brows crunch slightly. Dean has the impression his brother knows he's supposed to react to this. Just isn't sure why. Forget about how. That ship's sunk deeper than China.
So, he's surrounded by ghosts, only iron ain't gonna do a thing now.
fin