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Logic told Dean that he couldn’t be floating. That wasn’t physically possible. Humans couldn’t float, and Dean was fully, one hundred percent, definitely human.
His body was convinced otherwise.
With his eyes stubbornly closed against reality, Dean couldn’t see where he was floating, nor could he remember where he was before the strange occurrence. He couldn’t feel the ground beneath his feet or the rush of the wind against his face. His entire body felt nothing, touched nothing, was nothing.
Hang on, that’s a bit dramatic. Rewind, refocus.
So, he’s floating. The rush of blood deafened his ears from any clues as to where he was, and his nose seemed to have pissed off. He could taste the familiar metallic tang on his heavy tongue, though. That wasn't good.
It wasn’t too bad though, the void. At least he couldn’t feel any pain. Was he supposed to be in pain? Is that why he was floating?
Dean tried to breach the fluffy walls in his mind, scavenge for any recollection of what the fuck was going on before he had broken the laws of physics, but his brain remained irritatingly blocked, so Dean settled, gave up, continued to float in the strange peace of ignorance.
Heh, ‘strange peace of ignorance’. Sounds like something Sammy would say.
Sammy .
At the thought of his name, flashes of memories of his younger brother flashed before his heavy eyelids like fireworks - raising the boy, fighting with the boy, you protect that boy with your life, Dean. He saw his geeky smile that lit up his eyes whenever he talked about the book he had just read, the laugh that he failed to contain when Dean would tell one of his crappy jokes.
He saw their camping trips with Bobby. Sam was seven, maybe eight, and cold, Dean could see him shaking from here. He shrugged off his jacket with a roll of his eyes and chucked it to his younger brother, smacking him in the face. Sammy flailed, throwing a glare his way but wrapping the jacket closer around himself anyway.
“For the record, I wasn’t cold, jerk.”
“Sure thing, bitch.”
“Dean?”
“Hm?”
“Dean.”
“What?”
“Dean!”
Dean’s eyes opened with a harsh blink, and suddenly he wasn’t floating alone anymore. Sammy’s face, his much older and, frankly, much uglier face, hovered right above his eyes, and Dean would have flinched if he could feel anything.
“Hey, Dean, there you are.” Sam’s face was red, scratchy, like his eyes. Had he been crying? What was wrong?
“Sss-” Dean couldn’t work his numb mouth and faintly felt his brows pull into a frown at this rather frustrating predicament. How was he supposed to console his baby brother if he couldn’t speak, or even move?
“Shh, don’t try to talk, okay? Focus your energy on keeping awake.”
Instead, Dean focused his energy on that well-deserved eye roll. ‘Don’t try to talk’? Hadn’t he talked to Sammy about chick-flick moments?
Sammy seemed to read his mind, and rolled his own eyes for him. “Oh shut up, jerk.”
“Bitch.” Dean said, or rather he tried to. His ears were met with what was more of a troglodytic grunt. This fucking sucked.
Why was Sammy here? Was he floating too?
Dean swallowed, wet his tingling lips, and tried the whole talking thing again. “Why-” The taste of metal flooded his mouth and his ears were met with a rather gross sounding cough that he supposed came from him.
“Shh, Dean.”
“Why’re we fl’tin’?”
Sammy’s brows pulled into a frown that reminded Dean of refusing him cereal for dinner. “We’re not floating, Dean. We're in...some alley. You got stabbed, remember?”
Dean hummed to acknowledge what Sammy had said, but he didn’t understand it. He was definitely floating, definitely couldn’t feel any ground beneath him, and he definitely thought he would remember something like getting stabbed. That seemed pretty high on the ol’ awareness list, you know?
He could feel his face now. Could feel the sweat dripping down from his brow, past his temples and back into his hair, telling him he was probably on his back, since that’s normally how gravity works. His chin was damp, though Dean couldn’t tell if it was from sweat or blood.
His nose reliably told him it was the latter. Thanks, nose.
“Dean?”
He blinked up to Sammy, now being able to feel the achy crust that coated his lashes. His eyes stung, for some reason, and apparently he needed glasses now - Sam’s shaky smile was coated in a thick layer of blur.
“You gotta stay awake, okay?”
Dean’s throat came back into reality just as he grunted, and it scraped across it’s surface like fucking sandpaper, son of a bitch.
The back of his neck ached, and his shoulders tingled from where he was now aware of lying in Sammy’s lap. He must admit, it was a little strange to be the one being cared for, and he would do something about it if he had the energy.
His abdomen came into reality with a rip of pain, and Dean floated further before slamming back, another guttural grunt escaping. Fucking hell, ow, ow, owww.
“Hey, hey, Dean, open your eyes.”
Dean frowned, blinking the stubborn bitches back open before he realised they had even closed. His abdomen throbbed with the pulse in his ears, and the pressure on top of the fire pressed harder, crushing him, fucking stop-
“Dean, stop, I’m stemming the blood flow.”
Dean whimpered and continued to weakly swat with sausage hands, all attempts at maintaining his usual stoic facade thrown into the vortex by the deathly grip that the pain currently had him in.
“I know, Dean, I know it hurts but you just gotta deal with it, just a little longer until the ambulance gets here.”
Ambulance? Dean froze and threw his best warning glare he could muster through the growing haze of pain, its grip tightening, making it harder to fucking breathe.
“I know, it’s not ideal, but I can’t move you without jostling the wound any further and I really don’t feel like dealing with you dying again so we gotta do what we gotta do to keep you alive, alright?”
Dean groaned, dropping his hand to his side. His pinkie hit cold, damp concrete before floating away.
Uh, oh. That’s not good.
“S’m.”
“Hang on, Dean, just hang on.”
Dean shook his head and grunted, grabbing a fistful of Sam’s shirt before that too floated away.
“S’m-”
“It’s on its way, okay, just hold on.”
His body floated away from Sam’s lap, the grip on his gut fizzing away with a relieved sigh. With one last great effort, Dean rolled his eyes to meet Sam’s, holding his gaze.
“Floating.”
“What, Dean, wha...alki...ean?”
Dean sighed, letting his eyes close, embracing the lack of gravity that the void held.
“Dean! De...no, co....stay with me!”
Sammy’s voice faded into the blare of an ambulance siren, before that too fell into the dark, dragging Dean along with it.