Dean stared at the twisted wreckage of his father's legacy. The police were confident the accident was John's fault. Dean remembered standing behind the yellow tape with Charlie and watching as the response team shoveled his father's mangled corpse into a body bag. There wasn't anything solid left—nothing but a sealed bag of guts and viscera. Charlie sobbed into Dean's chest, and Dean stared blankly ahead at the carnage in the middle of the road. Dean gently guided Charlie from the scene back to his car. They sat in the parking lot and listened to the police sirens until dark. Charlie smoked half a pack of cigarettes. Dean drank from the bottle of bourbon he kept nestled under the driver's seat. They didn't speak.
The memories of that day flooded through Dean's head constantly. He sighed and closed the garage door, locking it securely. One day, he'd get around to fixing the car, but for now, he could barely stand to look at it. John Winchester's will was particular. Dean got the car and half of the family business. The Winchester Gospel Family funeral home and parlor was now partially Deans, with the other half belonging to Sam, his younger brother. Sam had no interest in running the business, so Dean handled the family affairs. Baby brother Sam was too busy being a fancy lawyer and leaving Dean and a few employees to take the funerals, the bodies, and the endless stream of grieving citizens flowing through the front door.
Dean returned inside the house, where the family had resided since John had purchased the property in the nineteen-seventies for a song. The basement contained the morgue, with additional floors providing the public viewing areas for funerals and the family quarters hidden upstairs. It was almost noon, Dean noticed, as he splashed water on his face in the kitchen. The following clients will be arriving shortly. Dean sighed and adjusted his suit and tie. He hated wearing the monkey suit. Goddamn, these vampires, he murmured. The clientele were sucking the life out of him. It was all too much. The grandfather clock in the front parlor chimed. It was time to get it together, Dean thought. But today, he thought about slipping out the back door and running away. The front doorbell rang gently. Dean eyed the bottle of bourbon on top of the fridge. Not yet, he told himself.
Dean went through the front parlor and gently ushered a young couple into the sitting area. The Novak's teenage daughter, Claire, had been tragically killed the night before. Castiel did the talking while gently rubbing circles on Emily's back. Dean could barely pay attention despite the severe nature of the conversation. Despite being filled with anguish, Castiel's eyes were large and expressive. Dean started to sweat. Fuck. Castiel was pretty. Dean cleared his throat and went through his spiel. Thank you for choosing us at this delicate time. We promise to blah blah blah. We'll take care of it. We will sew your daughter's eyeballs shut and fill her holes with cotton. "She didn't want to be cremated. It frightened her," Castiel murmured. His voice was gruff but somehow soft and buttery at the same time. Dean nodded and took some notes on his legal pad. They discussed options for services and burial.
When the arrangements had been made, Dean gently escorted the Novaks back to the front entrance. Castiel shook Dean's hand and thanked him for being so gracious. Dean felt the blood drain out of his face, and he was sure the couple noticed. Castiel's hand was soft, and the way their hands fit together felt like something Dean had been waiting for his entire life. The trench-coat-wearing man ushered his wife out the front door, and Dean watched them walk down the drive until he could bear it no longer. He looked down at his hand and shut the door. It felt tingly. "Are you catching feelings for that metro-sexual Columbo-looking fuck?" the voice said from inside the kitchen. Dean dropped his hand and nearly threw up right onto the carpet. He knew that voice. It couldn't be, could it? Dean straightened his tie and moved toward the kitchen, quickly pushing open the door. A man was standing at the stove with his back to Dean. The man wore a leather jacket, blue jeans, and combat boots. He turned around and faced the panic-stricken Dean. It was John Winchester, back from the dead. John flashed Dean a grin and raised his glass of whiskey before taking a big gulp. Dean threw up.
Dean bent over, retching violently onto the kitchen floor. He reached for a kitchen chair to steady himself before slowly standing up straight and looking at the man in front of the stove. It was Dad. But, younger dad. The man Dean remembered from his childhood, with the flashy grin and the soft face. John looked like he was 25 again, more youthful than his sons. John threw Dean a towel that was hanging on the oven handle. "Nothing for breakfast, I see," John said, gesturing to the puddle of bile on the tile floor. Fuck. I've finally snapped—too much stress. Dean's mind raced. The warm feelings he had felt a few moments ago were now gone. He blinked, and John still stood there, cooking bacon at the stove. "That's pretty low, Dean. Some teenage dyke is down in the deep freeze, eyeball popped out of her goddamn head, and you're busy fantasizing about her dad." John laughed and pointed his spatula at Dean.
Thirty-five years of repressed anger burst out of Dean, and he slapped the spatula out of his dead father's hand. The spatula clattered onto the floor, and Dean froze. He was half expecting the image of his father to disappear, but it didn't. John was standing there, and the spatula was really on the floor. John looked down at the spatula, then up at Dean. "What? Too early for flapjacks?" he asked, a look of mock concern on his face before Dean closed the distance and brought his fist into John's nose. Dean felt John's nose break, and more bile started rising out of his throat. John grabbed Dean's arm, twisting it as he slammed his boot into Dean's left knee, forcing the boy onto the floor. I shouldn't have gotten out of bed today. John put his foot on Dean's back, pressing him down onto warm puke, now weaving through the grouted floor tiles.
Dean felt John reach down and grab his neck, forcing him to look his father in the face. This was more like the John he remembered. He was like a goddamn freight train. Dean barely had time to react as John punched him in the face, rendering him unconscious. Dean saw himself rise out of his body, floating up near the ceiling. He watched as John took his foot off his back and looked up at the specter of Dean floating above his body. John shook his head at him before picking his glass of whiskey back up from the stove. He slammed the rest of the liquid down his throat before disappearing. Dean felt himself being pulled back into his body before everything went dark. He woke up two hours later, his father gone, and there was no evidence he was there at all besides the now-dried vomit covering Dean's suit. There was nothing on the stove, and the bottle of whiskey was where it belonged, on top of the fridge.
Dean stood up, his body aching and his mind racing too fast to comprehend. What the hell had happened? He wasn't sure, so he grabbed the whiskey off the fridge and went to his quarters upstairs. He drank the remainder of the bottle in the shower.