I’ve been sitting on this one for months, playing around with it until I got it somewhere close to finished. I hope the final product is okay!

Pre-series so we are spoiler free :)

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Dean reminisces on water, hoping it’ll take his mind off of drowning in it.

Blue For Water

When Dean had been in preschool, many years ago now, and he’d had to draw water, he’d always colored it blue. He would find the brightest blue in the crayon box and attack the white paper with it. Then one day he’d looked at a glass of water and noticed that it wasn’t blue at all, not unless he held it up to the sky. So from then on he had always refused to color the water blue, unless the teacher made it clear the water was below an endless blue sky.

Rain was always just grey streaks of a Number 2 pencil. Rain was never ever blue, because rain never ever fell from a blue sky – that was just plain old common sense.

But now it felt like maybe water was blue, because he had his eyes open and everything was blue, blue, blue, until he looked up and up there was just a mess of other blurry things that didn’t matter right now.

Ow. Something hurt. Dean frowned and turned his mind away again.

What was that other thing about water that had always made him wonder in his artistic days? Oh yeah. How did you draw someone who was underwater? Like, were they swimming or were they challenging each other to see who could sit on the bottom of the pool the longest? Either way, he didn’t really like drawing people underwater much. Why? It was his childhood belief that the people he drew were real people so if he left one unfinished, without legs for example, it meant they wouldn’t be able to walk and then it’d just suck to be them. It was a shame he was so bad at drawing hands too, because honestly? His sketched people probably would’ve been better off without them. Nevertheless, he’d always had to ensure his doodles were fully human and comfortably placed. As a child, Dean couldn’t leave his drawn people underwater because they’d drown. The habit had taken a long time to break. Despite everything he learnt at a very young age, or maybe because of the things he knew and saw, some childish beliefs clung on tightly.

Dean didn’t like the idea of leaving people to drown very much. Not when he was a kid and not now. But he didn’t draw anymore so it wasn’t so bad.

Shit, he was twenty-three-years-old. Of course he didn’t fucking draw any more.

But this water was blue and this person was stuck below it.

He wondered if it would start to hurt soon.

Oh. It already did.

Hah, and he’d had that dumb theory that if you were underwater but drank it all, you wouldn’t need to breathe because you’d be too busy swallowing. He’d have to thank Dad for talking him out of that one someday.

Kids and their naïve little ideas, eh?

The pain was really kicking in, along with natural instinct. For someone who spent so much time relying on instincts, it was almost ironic that if Dean gave into instinct now, it’d be the thing that killed him. So he fought it, denied it, knowing that if his Dad didn’t hurry…

He looked up, watched the blurry other colors getting further and further away. When his feet touched the bottom of the 12ft deep pool, he knew he was in serious trouble. He tried to move, tried to get back up there, but he couldn’t. Not yet. Dad wasn’t done and there were hands around his ankles, keeping him down. He had struggled so hard at first but quickly realized that he had to relax, had to hold his breath as long as possible because there would be no rescue, no escape, not ‘til Dad was done burning the dead man’s bones in the hotel’s garden…

Pretty soon, Dean would be trying that old drinking theory…

Blue. Why blue? Blue, blue, blue… The more he thought the word, the weirder it sounded. Blue. Buh-loo. Bah-lu? No, it was buh-loo.

Was he turning blue yet?

He closed his eyes just as he felt the ticklish sensation of a few last air bubbles slipping out of his nose. He was too dizzy to watch them dash to the surface. He kept himself in the dark. He just had to hold on a little longer… Dad would do what he had to do and then…

It hurt. It hurt like someone was crushing his ribcage the way they’d crush a soda can underfoot. And his heart… Damn, what the hell was his heart trying to do? Was it possible for those things to kinda… move? He was pretty sure his was trying to dislodge his lungs and set up residence in his throat. But it was just another pain and pretty soon, it wasn’t going to matter in the least little bit.

He was so tempted to try that water-swallowing trick now… Whaddya think Dad? What would you do if I swallowed some buhloo water?

A muted explosion blasted down from above, a huge, blurry white cloud interrupting his buh-loo-ness.

Dean realized too late he could move again.

Just like that, it was over.

Dad.

One minute it was all blue and pain, the next he was coughing hard enough to vomit some essential organs up. And someone was holding him up, pounding a fist heavily on his back.

“Dean?”

He didn’t try talking. Dean figured breathing was enough of a chore right now.

“You’re okay son, it’s okay. The bastard’s gone. Just breathe. Deep breaths, slowly.” John’s grip tightened. “It’s over.”

Dean opened his eyes and a world full of colors, none of them blue, greeted him.

“Hey,” John greeted. Dean’s vision was blurred by water but he knew relief when he heard it. “You okay?”

Breathing, harsh and choked thought it may be, was the best answer Dean could give.

“Kinda gave me a scare there.”

Dean nodded breathlessly, acknowledgement and apology all in one. He sucked in a deep breath and finally managed to regain some rhythm.

“The body’s burnt. The old man won’t be haunting this place any more.” John kept one hand on Dean’s shoulder. “The new manager’ll be glad to know she can let her guests back in here without worrying about ‘em all drowning.”

“It was blue. Like those pictures.” Dean coughed, his throat sore and hurting. “The water was blue.”

“Dean?”

He held a hand to his aching head. “Do you remember? All those pictures I drew? The water was blue until…”

“Until your mother died.”

Dean tried to question but all he could manage was a long string of hacking coughs. “Crap, that hurt,” he managed to gasp before it began again.

John said nothing, just helped Dean to his dizzy feet. He kept a hand around Dean’s shoulder, supporting almost all of his boy’s weight.

“Dad?” Dean asked tiredly.

“Things changed. You changed. You saw things as they were.”

Dean’s grin wasn’t amused. “So I stopped using blue crayons?”

But John’s was tinged with fond nostalgia. “And you stopped Sam from eating them.”

Dean managed to chuckle, clearing his throat enough to say, “Yeah, I remembered that.”

John walked them slowly away from the hotel’s deep pool. “You were a good kid.”

“Because I didn’t eat the crayons?”

“Because you tried to see things the way your little brother did, even when you knew the truth.”

Dean leaned on his Dad, waiting for his legs (and everything else) to stop shaking. “Didn’t want the kid growing up cynical.”

John’s smile grew faint. “He didn’t.”

“All ‘cause I made sure he colored with his blue crayons?”

“Exactly.”

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Thank you for reading!